In the late summer of 1936, the life of Irving Ashkenas, a 34-year-old man, came to a violent and abrupt end. In the early morning hours of September 5th, a milkman discovered Ashkenas's body sprawled outside his taxi cab near the entrance of the Paramount Manor, ironically known as the 'Hotel of Happiness,' in the Catskills region of upstate New York. Ashkenas, who worked as a self-employed taxi driver splitting his time between Brooklyn and Loch Sheldrake, had been brutally killed.
An examination by the county coroner would later reveal a total of sixteen wounds, including both stabs and gunshots from two different caliber firearms. At the time of his death, Ashkenas was on parole, having previously been convicted of manslaughter in connection with a death during a garment strike riot in 1930.
The initial investigation into the murder quickly hit a wall, leaving law enforcement with few leads and a case that grew cold. For years, the violent slaying of Irving Ashkenas remained an unsolved mystery. It wasn't until 1940 that a breakthrough came from an unlikely source within the criminal underworld. Abe 'Kid Twist' Reles, a notorious killer for the organized crime syndicate known as 'Murder, Inc.,' decided to cooperate with authorities. In his extensive testimony, Reles provided the missing pieces to the puzzle of Ashkenas's death. He revealed that Ashkenas had been targeted because he was believed to be an informant for Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey, who was waging a war against organized crime. The order for the hit, according to Reles, came directly from the top, from the infamous crime boss Louis “Lepke” Buchalter.
Reles named his accomplices in the murder as fellow Murder, Inc. members Allie Tannenbaum, Harry 'Pittsburgh Phil' Strauss, and Irving 'Big Gangi' Cohen. With this new information, indictments were brought against the three men. However, the path to justice would prove to be complicated. Allie Tannenbaum, whose family owned a resort in the area, chose to turn state's evidence, and in exchange for his testimony in this and other cases, he escaped prosecution. Irving 'Big Gangi' Cohen, who had fled to California and was working as a film extra, was arrested. Despite being brought back to New York, he was never brought to trial for the murder of Irving Ashkenas. Harry 'Pittsburgh Phil' Strauss, one of Murder, Inc.'s most prolific and feared hitmen, also evaded prosecution for this specific crime. His reign of terror came to an end when he was executed for committing one of the many other murders attributed to him. In the end, despite the identification of his killers, no one was ever convicted for the murder of Irving Ashkenas.
