Robert: 5744 books

Around 1903 the Italian Mafia in New Orleans experienced a rash of dissension involving grocery merchants. Rivals attacked the family of Antonio Luciano, resulting in the murder of his brother Salvatore Luciano. The violence occurred in the aftermath of Mafia investment in a Donaldsonville, Louisiana...

Philip "Little Farvel" Cohen was a rackets collector for Murder Inc. and its head Louis Lepke Buchalter. In September 1949 Cohen's body was dumped on the Southern Parkway in Valley Stream, New York. Authorities discovered it laying on the side of an access road. The corpse had 3 bullets...

Murder, Inc. was a Brooklyn based criminal organization that dealt in murder, protection rackets, loan sharking and coercion. Headed by Louis Lepke Buchalter, the group of gangsters turned to Albert Anastasia as leader when Buchalter was imprisoned for heroin smuggling. There were also small players...

Lupe Velez was a vibrant star of motion pictures from the late 1920s until her untimely death in December 1944. Silent film stalwart Douglas Fairbanks gave Lupe her first break in the role of the wild mountain girl in The Gaucho (1927). Velez had little trouble breaking into sound movies when they...

Montreal became a fulcrum for a drug distribution ring organized by Charles "Lucky" Luciano after his exile to Sicily. Imprisoned on a 30-year sentence for forced prostitution in 1936, Luciano was paroled specifically to organize mobsters to watch for Nazi saboteurs in the New York City...

The New York Playboy Club in Manhattan opened in December 1962. The new venue interviewed around 3,000 young women before selecting 135 mostly 18-25 year olds. Playboy Magazine founder and editor Hugh Hefner's brother Keith was in charge of training novice Bunnies. Among the most essential requirements...

Auguste Joseph Ricord was the most important foreign national to be convicted of drug crimes on United States soil. Convicted in New York in December 1972, he was sentenced in January 1973. Ricord had immigrated to Argentina from France in the years after World War II. He became an Argentine citizen...

Lenny Bruce pioneered the way for freedom of speech for a multitude of comedians who came after him. Beginning in 1962 Lenny faced charges for drug possession and obscene language every year until his untimely death four years later. Way ahead of his time he was barely able to get work by the time...

Angelo Caruso was a criminal who was involved with numerous rackets such as prostitution, kidnapping and shaking down and coercion of merchants. Caruso was handpicked as underboss by Salvatore Maranzano who succeeded Giuseppe Masseria in 1931 as Mafia boss of bosses. Caruso lived in Manhattan, the...

Kid Gavilan was a fixture in the boxing world of the early 1950s. He fought on television more than thirty times, in bouts for championships and non-title fights. From Camaguey, Cuba, the Kid was named by his first manager, who had a restaurant called El Gavilan or The Little Hawk. Kid Gavilan fought...

Jacob "Jack" Drucker was the finger man for Murder, Inc. in Sullivan County, New York. Numerous murder victims turned up on land near Loch Sheldrake, Monticello, Liberty and other towns in Sullivan. Drucker was arrested in Wilmington, Delaware in 1943 after being pursued by Federal Agents. He was...

My e-book considers possible connections between the murder of gambler Arnold Rothstein, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago of 1929, and other gangland slayings. Rothstein's was killed in November 1928. A succession of murders followed including the Coral Gables, Florida murder...

Joi Lansing was a contemporary of Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. She has been called "the Marilyn Monroe of television." Lansing got her first break when she was spotted by a talent agent who worked with Bob Cummings on the "Love That Bob" TV show. Her recurring role in this...

The mod British fashion model arrived in the United States on March 20, 1967. Weighing just 92 pounds her slight figure reminded observers of a young boy. When a retinue of photographers surrounded the unique 17-year-old she was soon surrounded by a throng of teenage girl admirers. Twiggy came to...