MEN IN CHAINS There were no happy endings in this tale of dodgy dealings, deception and death sentences
George ‘Whitey’ Rudnick was a handsome man, all olive skin and Brylcreemed matinée-idol hair. Or at least he was up until one day in May 1937, when his blood-soaked body was discovered slumped across the rear seat of a stolen automobile in Brooklyn. The loan shark had met a grisly end, stabbed no fewer than 63 times with an ice pick. Just to make certain of his demise, his assailants had applied a meat cleaver to his skull.
Rudnick’s savage murder was far from an anomaly. He was merely the latest victim of Murder, Inc, a brutal crew of hitmen-for-hire responsible for hundreds of killings across New York City and beyond during the 1930s. With organised crime tightening its hold on the city during the Prohibition years, these killers were commissioned by mob bosses to wipe out anyone who could undermine their empires, be they double-crosser, police informant or rival mobster stepping on their territory.