Back in California, as I was reviewing the photographs I had taken on the last trip to Brooklyn, I actually found that a single frame I had shot at the Murder, Inc. headquarters, showed to have eight orbs circling the second floor of the building.

Now, this did not appear in any other frame I captured at that location. I studied it, and the angle of the sunlight on that day, well, it could not have been lens flare. I mean, this was extraordinary. You can see this image on our website. Yes, folks, eight orbs circling the second floor of Midnight Rose's candy store, caught on camera.

​

Well, on top of that craziness, I still needed to polish my list of culprits, and I had a few post Brooklyn questions for Maria.

Since we had heard from the spirits of so many from that time, I was curious if Maria could make contact with the Special Prosecutor, John Harlan Amen. I figured if any spirit had answers to Abe's murder, it would be the Racket Buster himself.

Maria and I met via video. She did make contact with Amen and said he was talking a mile a minute. He told her that although Abe's ledger had 20 names that he was given, there was also another list with over 50 more names of people who were involved in Abe's case.

​

Amen told Maria to look at the surveillance pictures, but she didn't know what that was. But I sure did. In the copy I had of Amen's final presentment to the grand jury, there was surveillance footage of cops taking bribes from bookies.

I held it up for Maria to see, and she started shouting, “The higher ups did it! He's telling me the higher ups did it! And look at the list of names! That would be a list of people with titles under their names. Amen saying they weren't officers. They ranged from high ranking officials to clerks and they had something to do with the taking of funds.”

​

 Maria instructed me to ask Amen questions.

​

“Okay, uh, well, uh, who does Amen think was involved in killing Abe?”

​

Maria started saying names, and they were the same names she had mentioned a few months earlier: Connor, Kelly, Sweeney, Jeffrey, Beine.

​

“Amen's telling me, Jana, all the higher officials were on the take. They had boats and things that they shouldn't have had. They weren't caught, but this list of 50 names had the ability to alter things if it hadn't been destroyed.”

​

“Who ordered the hit?” I asked.

​

“He's telling me they all work together. I'm hearing ‘district attorney’ and something about the ‘police commissioner.’ He's saying they all were in cahoots. The guys who did the hit, including White Fedora Man, did not order it. Amen's saying they did it for someone else. They did it for everyone above them.”

​

Then I asked, “Was Abe killed for more than just the list of names?”

​

“Amen is telling me that Abe was smart, he had a lot of information and he knew what was going on. If Abe had been in a situation of safety, this would have been one of the most infamous cases of dirty officials that would have ever shaken the city. Amen showing me that candy store we went to, and Abe had information about that place. Amen's saying he had information on the cops and everyone.”

Maria was silent for a moment, and then she blurted, “Holy shit!” and started fanning herself in excitement. “He has more to tell you, Jana. He's saying, research and review. He's telling me to tell you, look at the ‘island,’ ‘go to the tower’, go to the ‘island,’ go to the ‘tower.’ I don't know what this means, Jana. Do you have something laying around? Maybe like a map? I don't know, but he's telling me to tell you, go to the ‘tower,’ and then ‘Levine’ and ‘Harry’. I…, I don't understand what this means, Jana.”

​

Well, I didn't understand it either. The only map in my office was of Brooklyn, which was pinned onto a large crime board I had created. I got up from my chair to examine it, disappearing from Maria's view on the video call.

​

I yelled back at her, “Oh, yeah, there's a Harry Walsh. He's on my crime board. He was the second assistant DA.”

I removed the pushpin from the news article on O'Dwyer's cabinet and reviewed it more closely. “Hey, Maria, there's also an Edward Levine listed as an assistant DA as well.”

​

“Oh, ho, ho, crap!” Maria hollered and fanned herself even faster.

​

The news articles on my crime board that I was looking at was about the police that Amen had taken down and they were directly behind the tall, vertical, wireless router in my office. Holy snooping! I think the tower was my router!

​

Maria was shouting through the video connection with excitement, “Hold on! There's more! He keeps saying tower, tower and something about a citizen came and met with him. Jesus, Jana, I don't know this kind of language. But he's saying ‘a citizen met in the original state.’ He's talking up a storm. Keep reviewing. Go back to reviewing your crime board. He's going to help you research.”

​

Then, as quickly as Amen's spirit had come through, it disappeared This was insane! Well, I started reading through Amen's Grand Jury Investigation Report, and guess what?Every single name Maria had channeled was in Amen's report! Robert E. Conner, Lawrence J. Beine, Charles Jeffrey, John Kelly, and John Sweeney. Unbelievable. And that's five, people. Just like the five men she saw around Abe that last night.

​

Maria had said in the beginning of all this that I would be given names. I wasn't sure what to do with all this new information. I mean, I'd never be able to prove any of these men were involved in Abe's killing. But, if Amen was supposedly giving me these names It was probably a good idea to hold this information as very valuable.

​

In the spring of 2016, there was still a few items left to investigate. I decided to return to New York City alone this time. One of my stops was going back to the New York Municipal Archives to do some additional digging. Everyone there knew me at this point.

One of the archivists said to me, “We have other stuff.”

​

I was like, “What stuff? Other investigation reports?”

​

Well, he replied with mischievous grin, “No, we have objects.”

​

Uh, well, there were no objects listed in the Murder Inc. collection inventory. But my pals at the archives shared that they had Kid Twist Reles' suitcase, which contained the blanket and bedsheets the police claimed he used to climb out of the window to a 40-foot drop. Did I want to see them? You bet!

​

This was a monumental piece of history. The holy grail of Mob lore. But, I'm going to tell you all about that in a special deep dive episode about Reles along with my new theory on his murder. So, stay tuned, we're going to get back to that.

​

Everything was about tying up loose ends at this point, which meant it was also time to check in with Detective Stradford of the Cold Case Squad. He had had over a year to find the police investigation into Abe's murder.

​

When I called, he was talkative, always taking the time to speak with me, but his news was not good. It seems Abe's murder evidence and paperwork were thought to be in a warehouse location that had been flooded during Hurricane Sandy back in 2012.

​

The city was in a lawsuit with the government to shut it down, but the feds wouldn't let them because many important cases were housed in there. The city wanted the warehouse destroyed because it had become a breeding ground of pathogens, carcinogens, and rodents. Detective Stradford said that no one was allowed access without a very special court order. If for some small chance you were granted access, you would have to wear a hazmat suit and nothing could be removed.

​

Bottom line, there were still no official records to be accessed about Abe's murder. This had really been my last hope to find the police report, and it was now gone.

​

I was still trying to find out whether Uncle Frankie had ever picked up his inheritance, which had been left in the city treasury back in 1953. This would give me an idea if he was around in the 1950s, or if he had really vanished in 1947.

​

Well, it took a while for someone to get back to me, but I did learn that any monies that sit in the city treasury, unclaimed for over five years, well, they're moved to the New York State Comptroller's Office of Unclaimed Funds.

​

Well, it winds up, nothing there was listed under Frank Balzac, his official name, on the surrogate court papers. So, the simple answer from unclaimed funds was that the money had probably been picked up.

​

But, then I found out that in order for funds to be picked up, a petition would have to be made to remove the money, which meant going to court and having a kinship hearing. Even if Frankie himself had tried to get the money, he'd have to go to court in Brooklyn and prove who he was. I was told that the transcript of a kinship hearing should be filed in surrogate court. But there was no hearing recorded in the files. So that should mean the inheritance wasn't picked up.Well, the representative helping me was just stumped.

​

You know, it really was just two simple questions to be answered. Were the funds ever claimed? And if so, where is the record of who received the funds and on what date? Well, the Comptroller's Office got back to me replying that they had nothing claimed or unclaimed under Frankie's name or several of his aliases and they said, quote, they were unable to answer my questions.

​

Well, the Department of Finance had an attorney reply to my Freedom of Information request saying, “please be advised that your request has been researched and neither Finance nor our warehouse has any documents responsive to your request. Well, it did not make sense that issues involving money had no paper trail.”

​

If the funds were never picked up, then why weren't they at the Comptroller's office? No one had said there was a statute of limitation on unclaimed funds. I was back to square one. Initially, I hadn't cared about the sum of money. I just wanted to know if Frankie was still alive to pick it up. But now, I did want to know where that money was.

​

So, through a friend, I was able to locate a Senior Advisor of Intergovernmental and Community Affairs for the Department of Finance. He returned my call and spoke as fast as an auctioneer. He rattled on that unclaimed funds did have records going back to the 1940s and 50s, but there was nothing under Frank Balzac, Babchook, or any other alias, claimed or unclaimed.

​

But the Department of Finance had said that they did not have information going back that far, i.e., no paper trail of what may have happened to a disbursement. I mean, does any of this make sense? So what was it? They did or they didn't have paperwork from the 1950s. What's the correct answer here, people?

​

Well, the senior advisor suggested I go back to the Brooklyn surrogate court for information on guardianship disbursement of funds. Well, there I was, back in the queue of the court, and I was passed around several times to the guardianship department, the probate department, the estate proceedings department, and finally to the chief clerk of the court, who said they had no answer for me.

Well, I found it all suspicious that there was no record of a money transaction. And once again, I was left with my questions unanswered. I guess this information would just never be found.

​

Next, I tried to follow up on that whole Philadelphia angle. I kept thinking about Maria's messages, “Goldstein” and “Fishtown.”

You see, I knew that Brooklyn Homicide Chief John J. McGowan and three detectives had flown to Philadelphia just four days after Abe's murder to confer with the Philly PD about Abe's racket. The news article said that the police, “refused to state the nature of the new lead” and that “several politicians in the New Jersey and Philadelphia areas were on Abe's payroll as protectors.”

​

Well, all roads seem to lead to Philadelphia. I was curious what the detectives had hoped to discover there. Maybe they were conferring with bigwigs who also had an interest in assuring that Abe never uttered their names to John Harlan Amen or anyone else. I hoped there would be some Philly records I could look through.

​

Mark-the-Cop and Patrick from the Seven Point Star Group had connections at the Philly PD. They inquired about old records for me. But the replies from the sergeants were that Philly kept no records before the 1960s. Okay, so then I called the Philadelphia Archives and they had no police or DA files.

​

Well, this was just plain weird that the oldest police department in the country had no archived records. Again, there was no answer to be had. You know, when you're constantly told that there's just nothing to find, when do you accept that, and when do you trust your instincts? I mean, when does one decide that the journey has come to an end? And how do you say goodbye to the faces of the past that you've come to know so well?

​

The old saying, third time's a charm, well, that was the hope when Cousin Jared suggested that we go back to Lincoln Place Headquarters one more time, before my stay in New York was over. You know, on our last visit, we came close to unearthing where that paperwork was that Maria had envisioned. But we just couldn't get that ancient dumbwaiter door open before the neighbors became suspicious.

​

Jared still believed the evidence was there, and so did Maria. Me, I wasn't so sure. But when my sister Valerie and her son Zach, now 12-years-old, jumped at the chance to go to the old racket headquarters, I agreed to give it one last attempt.

I decided to call the landlord this time, making the visit legitimate. Before, I had been afraid that he might say no, but at this point, I figured we had nothing to lose if he did.

​

Much to my surprise, he loved the idea of an old mystery in the building and was happy to let us in. “Have at it,” he suggested enthusiastically. He gave us permission to do what we wanted in the basement, saying, “As long as you take responsibility if you tear out a wall.” Well, I wasn't planning to tear down any walls!

​

I spoke to Maria at length and drew maps of exactly where she said to look, not only for the paperwork, but for something buried in the adjacent empty lot. She planned to join us via video on location to help us navigate, which was probably best since she had such violent reactions when she was there.

​

Accompanied by Mark-the-Cop, Cousin Jared, my sister Valerie, and nephew Zach, we met up with the landlord's handyman in front of Lincoln Place. He was there to supervise and help if needed. Small birds were chirping and flittering through the empty lot next to the building. Without Maria's psychic attacks happening, the area seemed peaceful in the morning sun.

​

The handyman unlocked the doors to the separate storage areas of the basement. He thought that the dumbwaiter was located in the security camera room, covered by sheetrock.

​

“Uh, no, um, that's the dumbwaiter,” I said, pointing further down the hallway.

​

Well, the dumbwaiter actually had a giant letter “A” painted on the cover. , that's when it struck all of us that there were probably two dumbwaiters to service the building in the old days. Dumbwaiter A was for the front of the building, and obviously there was a dumbwaiter B for the back. But nonetheless, our group planned to search where Maria had directed us to go.

​

We decided to divide and conquer. The guys started on the empty lot searching with a metal detector and then digging with shovels where Maria had mapped the location of either an insignia ring or watch that belonged to the uncles.

​

Valerie and I put on masks and long gloves and ventured into the smallest storage room where Frankie had been beaten. On video, Maria directed us to the back corner of the brick room. There were a lot of cracks and openings between the crumbling mortar and bricks, and this is where she said there was something to find beneath it or behind it, something like a false floor.

​

Val was determined as she scraped, picked, and dug at the bricks and mortar. We used a camera scope that connected to my laptop and jammed it into the crevices to see what was between the bricks. We were excavating like archaeologists on an ancient dig. Bricks were crumbling, dust was flying, the thick stench of mold filled the air.

​

Maria said she saw an apparition of Frankie standing near us, disheveled and exhausted. And then she started to feel nervous from what she sensed was a foul smell. Well, 30 seconds later, Valerie and I smelled gas. My fully charged phone battery drained to absolutely nothing and Maria's transmission abruptly disconnected. These were all signs of spirit activity.

​

As the handyman checked for a gas leak, Val and I leaned against a wall. Although it was brick, we noticed that it had a different sound when we knocked on it. It was actually hollow. Excitedly, we started knocking up and down the length of the perimeter wall and agreed that this must be the false floor that Maria had channeled.

​

When the handyman gave the okay that there was no gas leak, we continued to dig, pecking away at that hollow wall and trying to find an opening for the camera scope.

​

We found only old newspapers that had been stuffed between the bricks for insulation. The area had obviously been re-bricked and something could have been behind it, but unless the building was getting demolished, we were never gonna’ see what was back there.

Over an hour had passed and the guys had dug through almost a ten square foot area on the empty lot. They found lots of stuff: keys, Atlantic City tokens, a toy police badge. But nothing of prominence.

​

With our spirit of adventure still high, we all moved to the back storage room to finally open that dumbwaiter. Our flashlights streaked across piles of junk. Cobwebs were whipping our faces as we cleared a path to the dumbwaiter door.

​

The decaying ceiling above the dumbwaiter had large gaping holes, and we shoved the camera scope into its black void. But, we found only shredded pieces of garbage and rodent droppings. Valerie crawled up to the adjacent brick shelf that lined the back wall, looking for crevices around the dumbwaiter, but there were no openings. The area was sealed with cement. You know, as rack and ruin as this whole place was, there were few crevices in the wall to investigate.

​

Jared and Mark used crowbars to yank the dumbwaiter's front door off its hinges. A cloud of dust particles and tumbling bricks came crashing down as the metal door swung open. A long, decrepit rope that once wheeled the contraption up and down, unraveled like a snake.

​

Mark hoisted the dumbwaiter several inches from its stationary position while Jared shone a light to look underneath.

​

“I see something! Oh, I see something like paper!” Jared was excited and reached down into the darkness of the shaft. His arms were covered in black soot and he lifted out a piece of paper. Old candy wrappers. He reached into the blackness again with the camera scope. But, again, there was nothing. Only large cockroaches scurrying about.

​

Mark let the dumbwaiter go and it crashed back into position within its metal and wood structure. Crawling into the narrow shaft, Mark searched the crevices above and behind the dumbwaiter with the camera scope. But it was too dark to see.

Exasperated, Mark started just tearing apart the structure, piece by piece, with sheer force, his headlamp bobbing through a heavy fog of dust.

​

“Be careful! Maria warned that someone might get hurt trying to move that thing,” said Val.

​

“Yeah, yeah, enough already,” Mark declared, and continued ripping the wood frame of the dumbwaiter out of its casing.

“Ho, ho! I have waited over a year to see what's back there!” Jared was excited.

​

Through buffeting clouds of gray ash, they both yanked and tugged, heaving the bottom out first, then the metal sidings, and finally dismantling the entire casing, until the brick wall of the shaft was exposed.

​

Well, the shaft rose one story, and then was completely sealed with cement. There was no mysterious paper waiting for us. There were no crevices, no leather clutch. Nothing.

​

“Oh man, this is so disappointing,” sighed Jared.

​

“Well, at least we can say we gave it our all,” said Mark, shaking a thick layer of grey powder from his clothes.

​

Everyone was feeling rather crestfallen as we prepared to leave. But as I watched them pack up, you know, a different feeling came over me. One really of pride, and a deep satisfaction. I mean, we were all together. Jared, Valerie and I, we were the generation that had pried open the secret story of our ancestors.

​

You know, our day of digging through the rubble, it really wasn't about whether we found something or not. It had been about being together, in this place, where this chapter in our family history had started some 80 years earlier.

​

Zach, the new generation, he would always remember this day at Lincoln Place. And for me, that was almost reward enough. We were the storytellers who would carry this adventure into the future. It was a circle that somehow felt complete.

​

Jared was hypothesizing as we walked toward the car, “Maybe at one time something was there. I mean, even Leo had thought something was here.”

​

I looked at Jared and replied, “Well, it's gone with the ages at this point.” I looked back at the building one last time. I knew I would not be returning to this place of enormous family history again.

​

We decided to lunch in the neighborhood and gathered around a table at a Mediterranean eatery.

​

“So, who was Uncle Abe and what really happened in that building?” asked my nephew. He was not aware of the extensive hunt that had taken place over the last two years.

​

Jared leaned across the table toward Zach and said, “Your great great uncles, Abe and Frankie were very smart men who made a lot of money to support the family when they first came to America. They were what's called racketeers. They were Jewish gangsters.”

​

“Wow!” Zach slid down in his seat, and his eyes became large as Jared explained a numbers policy, who Kid Twist Reles was, and how the headquarters were used to count and stash money, and hold records, like we had been looking for that day.

​

Well, we all jumped in to tell Zach the story of Abe's last night, his big gambling win, and giving that list of names from cops to politicians to John Harlan Amen. It was a list that ultimately led to his demise.

​

“Why? What happened?” Zach was eager to know.

​

Mark jumped in and explained, “Well, the police were afraid that Abe would give him up. I mean, they probably didn't realize that he had already given their names to the Special Prosecutor Amen before they snatched him. So they abducted Abe and they took him to an abandoned area where they interrogated him and then they killed him. But then they staged this crime scene like a few miles away, leaving Abe's body and car on a very busy street. They were sending a message to anyone who might rat them out. Keep your mouth shut or this can happen to you too.”

​

 I jumped in, as the storytelling turned to our recent conclusions. “I'm pretty confident at this point who was responsible, most probably Homicide Chief John J. McGowan, who was the White Fedora Man that Maria saw, and he did it with the support and cover up of the DA's office, like Edward Heffernan and that diabolical clerk, James Moran. And there were five cops who carried out the orders. I mean, look, it's clear that law enforcement at the highest levels were involved with the Mafia. Which meant that Uncle Abe and Kid Twist, they were aware of the authorities who were taking bribes and possibly doing the bidding of the mob.

​

“I mean, patrolmen, they may have been taking the bribes from local bookies, but the payments, they were going all the way to the top of the food chain. If Amen needed Abe to testify against high-ranking officials like the DA and the police commissioner squad, or even higher, well, I think they would do whatever was necessary to conceal themselves.”

​

“Absolutely,” agreed Mark. “Since Abe worked with Reles, they must have known the same incriminating information. I mean, think about it, Jana. members of Murder, Inc., they were on trial. Reles was in custody. Abe, he was out there on his own. He was the partner who got away with everything. For the cops, it was too dangerous having him on the streets.”

​

Zack asked anxiously, “Is that why he was killed?”

​

I replied to Zack, “The motive was much more than just that list of names that Abe had. It was for all the knowledge he possessed of who was doing what. I believe that Abe's death may have been actually a warning to John Harlan Amen about blocking his investigation by taking out two of his most important witnesses, Abe and Kid Twist.

​

“Amen was too close to the truth. I mean, the authorities were letting him know that they were willing to kill the two Abe's and anyone else who could trace the DA's association back to the mob. Or, perhaps, maybe, it was a warning to Kid Twist himself. to keep his mouth shut.”

​

“That's the key” said Mark, nodding his head. “And I believe the link is Reles. Their deaths were signs of just how far the authorities were willing to go to steer clear of Amen's investigation. It was a warning to all of them.”

​

“Absolutely. And let's not forget that during the Kefauver Committee hearings, it came out that O'Dwyer placed gangsters in city jobs. I mean, hell, O'Dwyer was publicly fighting the mob as a cover for Cosa Nostra's Anastasia and Costello. Everyone was connected. Uncle Abe's list, well, it had been a deadly possession. It was a secret that held fatal consequences for anyone who knew its contents. And that's what Uncle Frankie knew as well.”

​

Mark agreed. “Yep, it's important to remember that underworld activities, well, they can only exist with the participation of corrupt officials at the highest levels.”

​

I looked over at Zack and said, “And you know, their deaths remain unsolved murders to this day. But I think we did a pretty good job of unraveling it, huh?”

​

“That's the story,” nodded Jared. “Leo had hinted at this, and now we know why the family was so scared. They had nowhere to seek protection from the authorities.”

​

 Zach shook his head. “Is this for real?”

​

“Yep, this is part of our legacy, kiddo,” Valerie put her arm around her son. “Great Uncle Frankie, the cowboy, well, he was really Abe's enforcer. Being the older of the two brothers, I bet he was entrenched in that whole underworld architecture even before Abe.”

“Yeah, but he sure loved the family,” added Jared. “I find the most amazing part of his story was that he fearlessly pursued Abe's killers and then vanished.” 

​

I responded with a long exhale, “Ugh, this whole thing, it is just tragic.”

​

We were all quiet for a moment as the massive weight of all of it sank in.

​

Although we never found the missing documentation at Lincoln Place, the list had been the final lethal piece of information that had ended the uncle's lives and erased them from the history books.

​

By 2016, many truths had been revealed, and I realized that what hadn't been found might never be known. I was so thankful to Mark, Maria, and everyone involved that it helped me take this search as far as I could. But it was time for me to go home. Time to go home, to California.

​

There was an old tale that Grandma Rae once told, that mysterious red roses were left on Abe's grave weekly for years after his death.

Before I left New York, I felt it was important to mark the end of my journey by returning to Abe's resting place to pay my respects, and in many ways, to say goodbye.

​

I purchased a dozen red roses and boarded the Long Island Railroad to visit the old Montefiore Cemetery. It was a work day for everyone in the family, so I asked Mark to join me there.

​

As I sat on the train for the 20-minute ride, I realized that in my mind's eye, Uncle Abe, The well-dressed policy mobster breaking the bank at Chinatown crap games? Well, he was like Skye Masterson to me, from Guys and Dolls. All fancy suits, wads of cash, and flirtatious grins. And Frankie, the lovable tough guy? He was his Nathan Detroit.

​

This was a fun and romantic image, but the reality is that a gangster's life is tumultuous, filled with paranoia, and a gritty sense of survival of the fittest. You know, what I most respected about the Uncles’ is that they never pretended to be anything other than what they were.

​

Abe and Frankie, they didn't fool themselves into believing their way was righteous. They knew their lives were dangerous, and maybe that danger was a thrill unto itself. As I've said before, they were now on the other side of the guns. They had been the victims in the old country, but in the new world, they were in charge of their own lives, living fully in the moment by their own rules, and taking care of those they loved. Although the uncles were not angels, to me, they were the true family heroes.

​

Formal documentation will never be found as to who pulled the trigger that ended Abe's life, or who was responsible for Frankie's disappearance. Almost every trace of them had been erased, and I will have to live with that.

​

And while there can be no going back in time to bring justice to those who deserve to be held responsible, I had to remember that we all face the consequences of our decisions and actions. And maybe, just maybe, justice is naturally meted out in the end.

Irrefutable facts of what happened over 80-years ago probably don't matter anymore. My father used to tell me that part of being alive is the search for answers, trying to solve unanswerable mysteries. My journey, it has been the experience and not the conclusion.

You know, I felt deeply connected to this side of the family in a way that I never expected to. I understood them now and held in my heart an appreciation for who they were.

​

Mark met me at the train station in Jamaica, Queens. I felt a bit guilty dragging him along this crazy route it took us to get to the cemetery. But he shook his head at me saying, “I have been on this journey with you for so long, Jana. I need to say goodbye to Abe as well.”

​

The wind was picking up as we walked under the large, arched entrance to the necropolis. It had been almost 10 years since I had visited the Babchick plot at Montefiore. That trip, with Dad and Valerie, had revealed a neglected old burial ground. Sad and forgotten.

The Babchick monument was 10-feet tall. Great Grandma Anna and Uncle Abe's footstones lay in its shadow. Much to my surprise, a thick, green bed of ivy and plants was thriving on the full length of Abe's plot. Ten years ago, this plot had been parched and dry, but the current abundance of greenery seemed to almost indicate a contented acknowledgment, as if Abe's spirit was saying thank you.

I've learned that the dead do talk, if you listen. They reach out to tell their stories. Abe and Frankie had taken me on a journey to discover their stories, and it had become akin to a spiritual pilgrimage, a quest that had spanned half of my lifetime. Now, that journey was coming to an end.

​

Mark was investigating the hidden scripture at the base of the monument. Moving back the ivy, he read aloud, “The stars may fade. The sun grow dim. But you shall always be remembered.”

​

I was surprised at the flood of emotion that came over me as I knelt next to Abe's foot stone, and place the roses on the hard, pale rock. I didn't want to say goodbye to Abe or the connection with my father that this journey had helped keep alive.

As I ran my hand across Abe's name, I felt this merging of the past and the present. My family's history had become a microcosm of human history. In the beginning, I had questioned if my great grandparent’s journey from the Old World to the New had stopped with them, or if it continued through me.

​

I could now see that I had not been just a relentless researcher, but actually an active participant in their ongoing story, carrying into the future their hopes and dreams. Each step that I had taken was recognition, and also a memorial for those who were no longer here. That's when I realized that I didn't have to say goodbye. As my father had written in a poem for me and my sister, “For whatever lives in them of me, the dream begins right here.”

​

Yes, they were each a part of me and always would be. They are my line of blood.

​

Trying to lift my melancholy state, Mark suggested we go back to the city for drinks. Later, sitting at a crowded bar, we ordered Manhattans. There was an empty seat next to me to my right, yet somehow, I felt compressed and elbowed in my seat.

​

We were not alone. Abe, Frankie, Leo, Grandma Ray, and Dad, they were all present. I could feel them, and for a moment I thought I actually saw them sitting across the bar from us–their sleeves rolled up, laughing, drinking, and kibitzing.

​

Mark handed me a glass. The entire city seemed to be floating on the surface of the heavy red liquid, buoying back and forth. Mark smiled and clinked my glass. “Here's to Abe, Frankie, and your whole family.”

​

Well, it seems we've come to the end of this story. At least, at this point. Maybe there's still something to discover?

​

Back in California, I felt a sense of satisfaction with all that had been discovered. But also, a bit of melancholy that this whole adventure was actually over.

​

But about a week later, I received the FBI file on Abe Reles that I had requested months earlier. Most of it was redacted, so much for that Freedom of Information Act, right?

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But, at the end of the file, there was a small penny dreadful on Murder, Inc. that had been xeroxed. I thumbed through it, and it was profiles on the big mob leaders.

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The section on Lucky Luciano mentioned his 1936 vice trial. There were court drawings of witnesses who had taken the stand.

And then, I saw it…Oh, oh my God…one of the drawings looked exactly like Grandma Rae!

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Well, join me next season, folks, as I delve deep into the mystery of who Grandma Rae was and unravel her unbelievable story as we continue Line of Blood.

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Thank you for listening this season, I'm Jana Marcus. Join me for our remaining bonus episodes this season as I delve even deeper into Line of Blood with further details of the mysterious murder of Abe Kid Twist Reles. We're also going to have interviews with Maria-the-Psychic and Mark-the-Cop, so stay tuned.

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Don't forget that you can see all the documentation and videos that accompany this story by checking out everything on our website at lineofblood-podcast.com. We'd appreciate your reviews and stars and all your likes. And don't forget to subscribe so that you know when the next season drops.

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Special thanks go out to Suki Wessling, Eric Sassaman, Valerie Marcus Ramshur, and Amy Scott. Music by Blue Dot Sessions.