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Greed in the Desert: The Murder of Herbert Blitzstein
Herbert BlitzsteinAt 300 pounds, Chicago mobster Herbert Blitzstein looked like a heart attack waiting to happen. Instead it was three bullets to his head that stopped his heart. As his profits from...
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Vannie Higgins: Brooklyn's Last Irish Boss
Charles "Vannie" Higgins and William BaileyProhibition spawned greed, and greed in turn spawned mayhem and murder throughout the underworld. Bootlegger Vannie Higgins ran booze by seaplane, speedboat,...
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Part IV of Chicago's Unione Siciliana: 1920 - A Decade of Slaughter
Joseph AielloJoseph Aiello was Al Capone's most bitter rival. Each wanted control of Chicago's Unione Siciliana and the enormous profits its "alky cookers" generated during Prohibition. The St....
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Part III: Chicago's Unione Siciliana 1920 – A Decade of Slaughter
Antonio "Tony" LombardoBeing the president of Chicago's Unione Siciliana was a ticket to the morgue, but that didn't stop Tony Lombardo, Capone's man, and Joe Aiello from wanting that job more than any...
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Part II: Chicago's Unione Siciliana 1920 - A Decade of Slaughter
Mike MerloAs president of Unione Siciliana, Mike Merlo was able to keep the peace among Chicago's various underworld factions during the early years of Prohibition. When he died of cancer in 1924, Al...
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Chicago's Unione Siciliana 1920 – A Decade of Slaughter (Part One)
Anthony D'AndreaThe political feud between Anthony D'Andrea, the head of Unione Siciliana, and John Powers, the entrenched alderman of Chicago's 19th Ward, was a fight to the death.by Allan MayThe...
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The Rat
Wilfred "Willie Boy" JohnsonFor 15 years "Willie Boy" Johnson ratted out his mentor John Gotti and other major New York crime family figures to save his own skin and got away with it. And then an...
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The Brothers Capone
James CaponeImagine having the most notorious gangster in U.S. history for a brother. James, the oldest of the seven Capone brothers, did everything he could, including changing his name and becoming a...
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The History of the Kansas City Family
Tom PendergastOther than Tammany Hall in New York, the Pendergast machine in Kansas City was the longest-running and most thorough melding of vice and politics ever seen in the United States. So...
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The Original Teflon Don: Des Moines's Louie Fratto
Louis Fratto"Cockeyed Louie" Fratto stared down three U.S. Senate committees -- Kefauver, McClellan, and Capehart -- by taking "the Fifth." His 30-year reign as the mob's lead man in Iowa netted him...
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