Murder, Inc. (or Murder Incorporated) was the name the press gave to organized crime groups in the 1930s through the 1940s that acted as the "enforcement arm" of the American Mafia, the early organized crime groups in New York and elsewhere. The groups were composed of largely Italian-American and Jewish gangsters from the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Brownsville, East New York, and Ocean Hill. Originally headed by Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, and later by Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anastasia, Murder, Inc. was believed to be responsible for between 400 and 1,000 contract killings, until the group was exposed in the early 1940s by a former group member Abe "Kid Twist" Reles. In the trials that followed, many members were convicted and executed, and Abe Reles himself died after falling out of a window. Thomas E. Dewey first came to prominence as a prosecutor of Murder, Inc. and other organized crime cases.

Origins

The Bugs and Meyer Mob was the predecessor to Murder, Incorporated. The gang was founded by New York Jewish American mobsters Meyer Lansky and Benjamin Siegel in the early 1920s. After the Castellammarese War and the assassination of U.S. Mafia boss Salvatore Maranzano, Italian mafioso Charles "Lucky" Luciano created the Commission. Soon after, Siegel and Lansky disbanded the Bugs and Meyer gang and formed Murder, Incorporated.

Murder, Inc. is a 1960 American gangster film starring Stuart Whitman, May Britt, Henry Morgan, Peter Falk, and Simon Oakland. The Cinemascope movie was directed by Burt Balaban and Stuart Rosenberg. The screenplay was based on the true story of Murder Inc., a Brooklyn gang that operated in the 1930s.

Falk plays Abe Reles, a vicious thug who led the Murder Inc. gang and was believed to have committed thirty murders, for which he was never prosecuted. The film was the first major feature role for Falk, who was nominated for a best supporting actor Academy Award for his performance. In his 2006 autobiography, Just One More Thing, Falk said that Murder Inc. launched his career.

The movie was the first film directed by Rosenberg, who later won acclaim for films that included Cool Hand Luke (1967), and also launched Stuart Whitman's career as a leading man.

A more highly fictionalized film on the same basic events, The Enforcer (1951), starring Humphrey Bogart, was released in the United Kingdom with the title Murder, Inc.

The Murder Inc. group was the early version of The Inc. Records, a label headed by Irv Gotti. The collective consisted of Inc. Records' star MC Ja Rule, Ruff Ryders' DMX and Roc-A-Fella's Jay-Z. Irv Gotti provided production for many of their songs together, and Mic Geronimo was an associate.

Appearances

Kings Cross or King's Cross may refer to:

"King's Cross" is a Pet Shop Boys song, written by Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant and is a track on their 1987 album Actually. It was covered and released as a single in 2007 by Tracey Thorn.

Original version and the King's Cross Fire

Although the lyrics appear to refer to the King's Cross fire of November 1987, the album that the song appeared on was released two months before it. The song is actually about desperation and unemployment.

It was suggested that Pet Shop Boys release it a single to raise money for charity following the fire, but they never did. Music magazines at the time though (such as Smash Hits) carried adverts to call premium rate phone lines to hear the song, and the money from the phone call would then go to the charity for fire victims.

Tracey Thorn version

On 9 December 2007, Tracey Thorn released "King's Cross" as the final single from her Out of the Woods album.

A cover of "King's Cross" first appeared as an iTunes exclusive bonus track to Thorn's album Out of the Woods. Recorded for inclusion on the main album, Thorn says on her Myspace page that there was not enough room to include it.

Coordinates: 51°31′49″N 0°07′25″W / 51.5303°N 0.1236°W / 51.5303; -0.1236

King's Cross (also Kings Cross) is an inner city area of London, England, 2.5 miles (4.8 km) north of Charing Cross. It is the location and namesake of King's Cross railway station, one of the major gateways into London from the North.

Formerly a red light district and run-down, the area has been regenerated since the mid-1990s with the terminus of the Eurostar rail service at St Pancras International opening in 2007 and the construction of King's Cross Central, a major redevelopment in the north of the area.

History

Toponymy

The area was previously a village known as Battle Bridge or Battlebridge which was an ancient crossing of the River Fleet. The original name of the bridge was Broad Ford Bridge. The corruption "Battle Bridge" led to a tradition that this was the site of a major battle in AD 60 or 61 between the Romans and the Iceni tribe led by Boudica (also known as Boudicea). The tradition claims support from the writing of Publius Cornelius Tacitus, an ancient Roman historian, who described the place of action between the Romans and Boadicea (Annals 14.31), but without specifying where it was; Thornbury addresses the pros and cons of the identification. Lewis Spence's 1937 book Boadicea – warrior queen of the Britons includes a map showing the supposed positions of the opposing armies. The suggestion that Boudica is buried beneath platform 9 or 10 at King's Cross Station seems to have arisen as urban folklore since the end of World War II. The area had been settled in Roman times, and a camp here, known as The Brill was erroneously attributed to Julius Caesar, who never visited Londinium. The name is commemorated in two streets lying behind King's Cross and St Pancras stations. St Pancras Old Church, also set behind the stations, is said to be one of the oldest Christian sites in Britain.

Inc. may refer to:

Inc may refer to:

See also