Seymour Magoon
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Seymour "Blue Jaw" Magoon (? - ?) was a Jewish American hitman in New York's Murder Inc gang, one of many members who were implicated by the testimony of former member and government informant Abe "Kid Twist" Reles.
A longtime member of Murder Inc., Magoon was heavily involved in the painters unions with Martin "Buggsy" Goldstein during the 1920s and 30s. Magoon was one of the most feared members of Murder, Inc.; he even famously challenged Harry "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss and lived to tell the tale.
In 1940, Abe Reles and Louis Levine began to give evidence to New York District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey on Murder, Inc. Magoon decided to follow suit and helped testify against the other members of Murder Inc., along with Albert "Tick Tock" Tannenbaum and Sholem Bernstein.
To this day, few details exist about Seymour Magoon. In 2003, Magoon's skeleton was uncovered in the desert outside Las Vegas. The incident inspired "Whatever Happened to Seymour Magoon?", a 2005 episode of "Las Vegas".
[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
- Cohen, Rich. Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998. ISBN 0-684-83115-5
