Louis Kravits
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Louis "Shadows" Kravits [Kravitz] was a New York labor racketeer and drug trafficker who was involved in a major heroin operation with Jack Lvovsky and Yasha Katzenberg during the early 1930s (although accounts differ between the Bureau of Narcotics, who claimed the operation was organized by mobster Louis "Lepke" Buchalter in 1933, and the FBI who claim the syndicate was run by Lvovsky, Katzenberg and Samuel Gross).
During Butchalter's trial in December 1939, Katzenberg testified against his former associates including Kravitz who he claimed approached him regarding his bringing Buchalter into the operation.
A fictional character based upon Kravits, under the same name, is used in the Marvel Comics universe. He appears in Heroes for Hire #6.
[edit] Further reading
- Block, Alan A. East Side-West Side: Organizing Crime in New York, 1930-1950. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers 1983. ISBN 0-87855-931-0
- Fried, Albert. The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980. ISBN 0-231-09683-6
- Messick, Hank. Lansky. London: Robert Hale & Company, 1973. ISBN 0-7091-3966-7
- Parssinen, Terry M. and Kathryn Meyer. Webs of Smoke: Smugglers, Warlords, Spies, and the History of the International Drug Trade. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998. ISBN 0-7425-2003-X
