Editing Eastman Gang (section)

==Eastman's imprisonment and fragmentation==
Eastman was convicted of assault and imprisoned in 1904. His removal did not produce one uncontested successor. Max “Kid Twist” Zwerbach and Richie Fitzpatrick headed rival factions, while later Lower East Side gunmen such as Jack Zelig emerged from the same shifting environment.

Zwerbach was killed in 1908. Subsequent violence and arrests further divided the former Eastman organization. Some members joined successor gangs or independent labor, gambling and vice rackets; others moved into organizations that later participated in broader Jewish-Italian criminal partnerships. The later [[Lenox Avenue Gang]] operated in the same gunmen-and-gambling environment but is not documented as the institutional successor to the whole Eastman organization.

This was fragmentation and personnel migration, not a single documented merger into one successor syndicate.