Last mob boss executed during World War II

You have to go back to the days of World War II for the last time a major New York mob boss was executed, the same fate that federal prosecutors hope Bonanno gangster and once acting boss Vincent Basciano will soon face.

It was early 1944 when Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, the head of the infamous Murder, Inc. syndicate, and associates Emanuel Weiss and Louis Capone, played out a dramatic three months in which their scheduled executions were postponed six times.

All three were convicted of carrying out the killing of potential witness Joseph Rosen, who owned a candy store in Brooklyn. Buchalter was reputed to have taken part or ordered as many as 80 mob hits. Buchalter's middle name of "Lepke," some historians said, was a Yiddish nickname.

From January 1944 until the day he died, Buchalter tried every legal maneuver in the book to cheat death. He was about an hour away from being electrocuted in Sing Sing prison once when Gov. Thomas Dewey gave him a two-day reprieve so his lawyers could make a last-ditch appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Finally on March 4, 1944, Buchalter and his two cronies made the final walk from their cells to the Sing Sing death chair. Capone went first. Weiss, 37, followed and, in his final words, said, according to news accounts, "I am here on a framed-up case," adding "give my love to my family and everything."

Buchalter, 47, went last and was described as a "beaten, frightened little man" who apparently had no last words.

Capone, 47, and of no relation to the infamous Chicago mob boss Al Capone, had a flamboyant gangland Roman Catholic funeral in Coney Island.

Buchalter and Weiss both had rites at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing in accordance with Orthodox Jewish tradition. Today, Buchalter's grave has a view of the Van Wyck Expressway and still attracts visitors who leave small stones according to Jewish tradition.