Abe "Kid Twist" Reles had already done the unthinkable: he turned on Murder Inc., the Brooklyn killing squad for organised crime, and his testimony was sending its hitmen to the chair. In protective custody at Coney Island's Half Moon Hotel, he was never meant to be alone. Six police officers were stationed to guard him around the clock.
On this day in 1941, Reles was found dead on a hotel rooftop extension, having fallen from his sixth floor window. Bedsheets were found knotted below the sill, as though he had tried to climb down to another floor, but detectives found the story impossible to square with a man who held the key to half a dozen murder prosecutions. The verdict returned was accidental death.
No one was ever charged over how he went out that window, and the cases he had built collapsed without him. Reles took whatever he knew about his own fall to the grave.
