Edwin Helfant, a 51-year-old lawyer and part-time municipal judge from Atlantic County, New Jersey, was killed in a brazen, gangland-style execution on the evening of February 15, 1978. While seated with his wife Marcie and a business associate in the Flamingo Motel cocktail lounge on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, a man posing as a motel employee approached carrying a snow shovel, steadied himself and fired a .22 caliber pistol multiple times at Helfant, striking him in the head and chest at close range before fleeing. The slaying was quickly suspected to be a mob contract killing.

Helfant, known as the Fining Squire for strict enforcement of underage drinking ordinances, also ran a private law practice and had known associations with organized crime figures. At the time he was under indictment in a bribery case alleging he accepted $700 to fix an assault and battery charge, and his name had surfaced in the prior-year murder investigation of a local tailor that involved the nephew of a prominent mob figure. Authorities later connected the shooting to long-standing disputes involving mob money and alleged double-crossing.