About a year ago, after knowing my friend and fellow filmmaker JW for a while, the conversation came around to my plans to make a film about Lepke. So it turns out that JW's father's great uncle was Charlie "The Bug" Workman, one of Lepke's hitmen - in fact, the one who rubbed out Dutch Schultz at the Palace Chop House in Newark. JW's been trying to find a relative of his that'll talk to me about it ever since - same same.So then over the weekend, I get an email from SS, the great nephew of Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro. Lepke and Shapiro met as teenagers doing petty street crimes together, and only prison separated them.
It was Gurrah who pushed Lepke to kill Dewey when he had the chance.And when Dewey got Lepke's racketeering charges upped to murder, it was Gurrah who sent Lepke a note from his own Atlanta jail cell with the age-old words "I told you so."
Looks like the band is getting back together. What have I started here?
sounds like a potentially hilarious re-enactment !
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