A&E - The Real Godfathers (2007) Part 3 Louis Lepke

A sweeping saga of bloodshed, betrayal and big business, this collection of documentaries from A&E and HISTORY offers a cold-blooded examination of organized crime, from prohibition and WWII to the hitmen and women who are currently administering the brutal judgments of the mob. An investigation into the origins - and present-day activities - of the ethnic gangs that turned criminal activities into family enterprises, The Real Godfathers exposes an underworld of danger, money, glamour and murder, covering such notorious figures as Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Carlo Gambino and John Gotti, as well as topics including the bloody mob wars , the ordinary, privileged, and at times remarkable women who gained stature in a male-dominated world, and the gangster-turned-informants who make it possible to prosecute the Mafia.

Part 3: Louis Lepke

In the heyday of organized crime he was one of its most powerful figures. While he avoided the attention, his death in the electric chair made headlines nationwide. Names like Bugsy Siegel, Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello were on everybody's lips in the Roaring Twenties, but Louis Lepke preferred the shadows to the spotlight. There, he built a racketeering network second to none. BIOGRAPHY uses extensive archival footage, period accounts and modern interviews to probe Lepke's life, from his hardscrabble childhood to his much-publicised death in the electric chair. Authors Robert Rockaway (But He Was Good to his Mother) and Albert Fried (The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster) trace his extraordinary criminal career, while reporter Gilbert Millstein, who covered the case for the New York Daily News recalls his execution. Friends like Donald Wetzel, who served time with Lepke, offer a picture of the private side of the mild-mannered man who happened to be a criminal kingpin.