Harry Strauss was convicted of murder in the first degree for the death of Irving Feinstein in 1939. He was tried with Martin Goldstein by the Kings County District Attorney's office, which was led by William O'Dwyer, and the prosecution was conducted by Assistant District Attorney Burton Turkus. Both defendants received death sentences, and both were executed in June 1941. They were the first of the men from that prosecution to be executed.
Strauss is counted among the hired killers of the Brooklyn criminal ring that the press called Murder, Inc. Prosecutors and local historians have attributed further deaths to him. The Feinstein conviction is the only one on record, and a second matter, in Sullivan County, ended without a verdict against him.
The case against Strauss grew out of the break-up of the Brooklyn ring in 1940. The collapse began with the arrest that year of Abe Reles for the murder of Alexander Alpert. Reles became a witness for the prosecution, and he named both Strauss and Goldstein. In March 1940 two other men had also begun to cooperate with Brooklyn authorities.
By the summer of 1940 the Kings County District Attorney's office had Strauss in custody. He was among the principal suspects that prosecutors wanted to bring to trial first.
Irving Feinstein died in 1939. The prosecution treated his death as a murder carried out for the Brooklyn syndicate, and the charge against Strauss and Goldstein was murder in the first degree. Feinstein's background and family are not on record.
The District Attorney's office chose to try Strauss and Goldstein together for the Feinstein murder. The case, People v. Goldstein and Strauss, went to trial in 1940. Both men were convicted of murder in the first degree. Both men were sentenced to death. Strauss presented himself at trial as insane.
A separate prosecution arose in Sullivan County, in the Catskills. After the 1940 disclosures, five men were indicted in two Sullivan County murders. One of them was Strauss, who was charged as an accomplice in the July 1937 death of Walter Sage. Another defendant in the Sage case was tried in Sullivan County Court, and on June 21, 1940, Judge George L. Cooke read a verdict of not guilty.
No conviction of Strauss in Sullivan County is on record.
Strauss and Goldstein were executed on June 12, 1941, at Ossining, New York. Harry Maione and Frank Abbandando were executed in 1942, and Louis Buchalter, Emanuel Weiss and Louis Capone on March 4, 1944.
The Brooklyn prosecutions began after the 1940 cooperation of Reles and the other witnesses and continued through the early 1940s. Buchalter, Weiss, Capone, Abbandando, Maione, Goldstein and Strauss were among the men convicted of murder and executed. In all, nine defendants were convicted of first-degree murder and that all were sentenced to death. Burton Turkus, the lead prosecutor, later became a figure of local history.
The number of deaths attributable to Strauss is unproven. Prosecutors and writers have named many, including deaths in Sullivan County, but only the Feinstein conviction is on record. Whether his claim of insanity at trial was genuine is disputed. The exact date of the verdict is not on record.
July 1937: Walter Sage dies in Sullivan County; Strauss is later charged as an accomplice.
1939: Irving Feinstein dies in Brooklyn.
March 1940: two other men begin to cooperate with Brooklyn authorities.
1940: Reles is arrested; Strauss is in custody by summer; Strauss and Goldstein are tried together for the Feinstein murder.
June 21, 1940: a co-defendant in the Sage case is found not guilty in Sullivan County Court.
June 12, 1941: Strauss and Goldstein are executed at Ossining, New York.