Robert: 5744 books

Anthony Corallo was an important figure in the history of New York City Mafia crime. Beginning in the 1950s, as a capo for the Lucchese family, he teamed with garment industry hoodlum Johnny Dio and Teamsters' boss Jimmy Hoffa to pack Teamsters Joint Council 16 with thugs. The so-called paper unions...

Francis "Two Gun" Crowley was a young criminal who grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Only 20 when he murdered a Long Island police officer, Crowley held out for several hours against an enormous police siege near Harlem. The date was May 7, 1932. With him were an accomplice, chauffeur Rudolph Durlinger,...

Claudia Jennings was raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin before moving to Evanston, Illinois for her high school years. She joined a theater company in Chicago and while working as a receptionist at the Playboy Building she was asked to pose nude for Playboy Magazine. Her September 1969 centerfold was...

William Landon Gorilla Jones was a middleweight champion in 1932, winning an elimination tournament in Milwaukee a year after Mickey Walker gave the title up. Jones beat Italian boxer Oddone Piazza for the title. Jones conceded the title a year later in France following a unification bout that he...

George "Blah Blah" Smurra was a button/soldier for the Genovese crime family. He first gained notoriety as one of the shooters in the gangland murder of Ferdinand "the Shadow" Boccia on September 19, 1934. It is likely that Smurra and an associate murdered Boccia and dumped his...

Hyman "Curly" Holtz was a Murder Inc. associate who was in charge of the then newly organized drug traficking operation. Murder Inc. operated out of the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York. Newspaper accounts date Holtz's disappearance to 1932. Some sources report that law enforcement...

Damiano Thomas Vonnie Licavoli was a powerful bootlegger in the Prohibition era. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he made his fortune in Detroit before a grand jury investigation forced him to move elsewhere. He relocated to Toledo where he dominated the beer and liquor racket until the end of Prohibition....

George Schachter, aka Harry "Big Greenie" Greenberg was a Murder Inc., associate who was gunned down in his Ford convertible coupe on Thanksgiving Eve, 1939. Greenberg was raised in New York's East Side with future Murder Inc., leaders Louis Lepke Buchalter and Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro....

Aniello Ercole doubled as a fight manager and gambling supervisor of the New York docks. He was closely associated with mobsters Albert Anastasia and Joe Adonis. Anastasia attended lightweight Pat Marcune's fights while the boxer was managed by Ercole. Adonis was heavily involved in mob gambling activities....

Anthony Granza was a Gambino soldier who was most often involved in large scale drug trafficking. In 1951 and 1967 he was busted for trafficking heroin. Both incidents are profiled in my e-book. The 1951 operation was penetrated by a combination of New York Police and federal agents. This drug ring...

Nancy Ling Perry was an integral player in a radical terrorist group that emerged in 1973 and existed until 1975. The Symbionese Liberation Army came to life through a network of university students and prisoners, who initially formed the Black Cultural Association. Nancy was a graduate of the University...

My e-book looks at a large scale cigarette smuggling ring that operated in New York and various eastern U.S. states. The gang that ran the ring was closely linked to the Gambino, Bonanno and Colombo crime families. Among the lynchpins in the illegal operation was Mari family associate John Carneglia....

Ernest Rupolo was a Mafia informant who started his life of crime in the 1930s as a nineteen-year-old. On May 19, 1934 Rupolo appeared in a Manhattan Police lineup, charged with trying to kill William Gallo. Reportedly the target of a plot to poison him Rupolo received extensive police protection...

The Mafia began making inroads into Sullivan County via paper unions that threatened the livelihoods of legitimate Teamsters unions. Later the son of Colombo syndicate boss Joseph Colombo Sr., teamed with an entrepreneur to enter the vending machine business. They began introducing cigarette machines...