Murder, Inc. (or Murder Incorporated or the Brownsville Boys; known in syndicate circles as The Combination) was the name given by the press to organized crime groups in the 1920s through the 1940s that resulted in hundreds of murders on behalf of the American Mafia and Jewish Mafia groups who together formed the early organized crime groups in New York and elsewhere. The name was a journalistic invention. In his biography The Valachi Papers, Mafia turncoat Joe Valachi insisted Murder, Inc. did not commit crimes for the Mafia.