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Waxey Gordon (1886/1889- June 24 , 1952 ) was an American gangster who specialized in bootlegging and illegal gambling.

Born Irving Wexler to Polish-Jewish immigrant parents in New York's Lower East Side around 1889, Gordon became known as a pickpocket and sneak thief as a child, becoming so successful he earned the nickname "Waxey" for supposedly being so skilled in picking pockets it was as if his victims' wallets were waxed. Joining "Dopey" Benny Fein's labor sluggers in the early 1910s Gordon helped organize Fein's operations before being noticed by Arnold Rothstein, who hired him away from Fein and put him to work as a rum-runner during the first years of Prohibition.

Gordon's success later led him to run all of Rothstein's bootlegging on most of the East coast, specifically New York and New Jersey, and importing large amounts of Canadian whiskey over the U.S.–Canadian border. Gordon, now earning an estimated $2 million a year, began buying numerous breweries and distilleries as well as owning several speakeasies. Gordon began to be known to live extravagantly, traveling in limousines and living regularly in prominent Manhattan hotel suites, as well as owning mansions built for him in New York and Philadelphia.

With Rothstein's death in 1928, Gordon's position began to decline. He made an alliance with future National Crime Syndicate founders Charles Luciano, Louis Buchalter, and Meyer Lansky. Gordon, however, constantly fought with Lansky over bootlegging and gambling interests and soon a gang war began between the two; several associates on each side were killed. Lansky, with Luciano, supplied interim United States Attorney Thomas E. Dewey with information leading to Gordon's conviction on charges of tax evasion in 1933. Gordon had a large million-dollar operation which included many trucks, buildings, processing plants, and associated employees and his business front could not account for this ownership and cash flow and he paid no taxes on it. Gordon was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. At this time he was married to a Rabbi's daughter and their son was in medical school. This son died in a weather-related automobile accident while traveling from an out-of-town college planning to plead with the judge for leniency with his father's sentence. Waxey had tried to insulate his otherwise respectable family from his organized crime career and after this incident a wall of cultural shock descended over their relations and great stress was put on his deteriorating marriage.

Upon Gordon's release from prison, he found his gang long since disbanded. Ignored by his former political connections, he reportedly remarked to a journalist, "Waxey Gordon is dead. Meet Irving Wexler, salesman." He moved to California, a single man, and during World War II he was able to obtain 10,000 lbs of scarce, coupon-rationed sugar to sell on the black market. (Sugar was also used in the processing of imported illegal drugs.) FBI investigations revealed he had high-level international narcotics connections and was given the West Coast of the United States as a protected territory for distribution of imported illegal drugs since he lost his bootlegging business on the East Coast. In 1951 Gordon was arrested for selling heroin to an undercover police officer. The 62-year-old gangster reportedly offered the detective all his money in exchange for his release. When the detective refused, Gordon jokingly pleaded with the detective to kill him instead of arresting him for "peddling junk." Gordon was later convicted and due to his long criminal record was sentenced to 25 years' imprisonment in Alcatraz, where he died of a heart attack on June 24 , 1952 .

Further reading

• Chiocca, Olindo Romeo. Mobsters and Thugs: Quotes from the Underworld. Toronto: Guernica Editions , 2000. ISBN 1-55071-104-0
• 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

References

• Kelly, Robert J. Encyclopedia of Organized Crime in the United States . Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000. ISBN 0-313-30653-2
• Phillips, Charles and Alan Axelrod. Cops, Crooks, and Criminologists: An International Biographical Dictionary of Law Enforcement, Updated Edition . New York: Checkmark Books, 2000. ISBN 0-8160-3016-2
• Sifakis, Carl. The Mafia Encyclopedia . New York: Da Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8160-5694-3
• Sifakis, Carl. The Encyclopedia of American Crime . New York: Facts on File Inc., 2001. ISBN 0-8160-4040-0

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