September 5, 1939
Irving “Puggy” Feinstein put up a heck of a fight. In fact Feinstein, an ex-boxer, bit several chunks from the finger of “Pittsburgh Phil” Harry Strauss, but it just wasn’t enough. Of course, Feinstein didn’t really have much of a chance. He had been lured to a meeting by three of Murder Incorporated’s most notorious killers, and these were guys who took a great deal of pride in their work.
Feinstein was strictly low-level, a bottom-feeder who could have happily spent a long and fulfilling career running second-rate rackets out of Brooklyn if not for one mistake he made some time in the late 1930s. Apparently he ripped off Vincent “The Executioner” Mangano, who was top dog of the Mangano family. People don’t generally walk away from things like that.
Whatever it was that Feinstein did is now lost to history, but it probably consisted of working in an unauthorized territory or not paying street tax. Anyway, the offence was grievous enough to have Mangano underboss Albert Anastasia himself put the finger on Feinstein. And that was it—Feinstein’s days were now strictly limited edition.
Murder Incorporated sent its best, its most prolific boys to take care of Feinstein; and the best, of course, meant the worst. Irving’s killers are known to have been Martin Goldstein, Abe “Kid Twist” Reles and naturally Pittsburgh Phil, the most hated members of the murder-for-hire clique. Phil especially was a fiend, and used to volunteer for as many jobs as he could, just for kicks.
Poor Feinstein. He was brought to Reles’s house and murdered by the ghastly trio, supposedly while Reles’s mother-in-law was in an adjoining room. The elderly lady must have been very deaf, or how she could have missed all the commotion is anybody’s guess.
During the proceedings Feinstein battled for his life, but taking chunks out of Pittsburgh Phil’s finger was a very unfortunate move, because it just made his death all the more tortuous. At last, when Feinstein was no more, the trio of murderers took his pitiful remains out and burned them.
After that, though Feinstein was gone, he most certainly was not forgotten. In 1940, when Abe Reles sang a swan song about the doings of Goldstein, Phil and Murder Incorporated, the spectre of Irving Feinstein rose again. The gorillas of Murder Inc. were accused of Feinstein’s murder as well as countless others (it’s said Pittsburgh Phil alone killed at least one hundred people).
During the ensuing trials, the once handsome and dapper “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss decided to play the insanity card and showed up to court dirty, unshaven and mumbling. Every once in a while Phil, who had never been to Pittsburgh, would try to take a bite out of his lawyer’s briefcase for added effect, but it was all for nought. Goldstein and Phil were found guilty and along with other members of the murder club—Harry “Happy” Maione, Frank “The Dasher” Abbandando, Louis Capone (no relation), and Louis Buchalter—went to keep an appointment with Sing Sing’s “Old Sparky”—the electric chair. Of course that didn’t bring back Irving “Puggy” Feinstein, but it did bring down the final curtain on Murder Incorporated.