Robert: 5744 books

Louis "Pretty" Amberg and his brothers, Joseph, Hyman and Oscar were likely the most feared organized crime figures in Brooklyn's Jewish neighborhoods. They were active from the mid 1920s through the 1930s. Hyman Amberg was one of a trio of men who attempted to escape from the Tombs Prison in...

Colleen Marie Applegate/Shauna Grant underwent a personality change during her final year in high school in Farmington, Minnesota. Replacing the wholesome, All-American girl was someone her parents did not know or understand. Colleen began to smoke and use marijuana. She dropped her regular friends...

Brown University was the center of a mid-1980s prostitution scandal. University administrators at the elite Ivy League school had contacted Providence Police authorities by November 1985. Specifically, they reported attempts to coerce female students at Brown into prostitution. Then in March 1986...

An incident of horse doping at a stable inside Jamaica Racetrack in 1938 brought to mind the laxity with which the sport of horse racing was addressing the doping issue. By the early 20th Century jockey clubs and other organizations had clamped down on horse doping. However by the early 1930s the...

Jacob "the Bum" Wellner was a union official who was renowned for introducing gangsters into the Brooklyn Painters AFL Local 860. By the late 1920s Wellner's group was at odds with Jacob "Little Augie" Orgen. Little Augie's 1927 murder was followed by several mysterious bombings...

Harold Gibbons was a progressive unionist who came to St. Louis during the 1940s. He was considered a likely successor to James Riddle "Jimmy" Hoffa as President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters until the two labor leaders clashed in 1963. Before this they were a tandem as president and...

Pietro Peter Panto was a union leader who tried unsuccessfully to remove mob control from the loading docks of the Brooklyn shipyards. In July 1939 Panto disappeared after saying goodbye to his girlfriend one morning. He told her he was meeting two men that he didn't trust. Within weeks she contacted...

Extortion and Fake Labor Unions worked hand in hand in a scheme concocted by Solomon "Sol" Massarsky, two private detectives and a well known lawyer. The men banded together in a attempt to defraud Wheelan Studios of money in 1943. Picketing the Manhattan offices of the business the extortionists had succeeded in coercing a payment of $1,000 before they were arrested by police detectives.

Johnny Guista was a powerful force behind the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) in the years before his death in May 1931. Guistra was from Calabria like Carmelo Liconti, his partner in the undertaking business. Liconti and Guistra attempted to broker a halt to the Castellammarese...

Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli aka Paul Kelly was a notorious gang leader in New York City beginning in the 1890s. The son of Italian immigrants he legally changed his name to Paul Kelly when he became involved in political and labor issues that concerned the Irish population of the city. Kelly propped...

Al Capone moved into union racketeering in 1920s, one of many Mafia bosses who did so. Three Capone surrogates were murdered in cold blood in the Blue Hour Saloon on April 20, 1930. A single assassin was responsible for all three deaths. The murders represented a rupture in the peace agreement in...

In November 1953 American Federation of Labor boss William DeKoning Sr. and eight other union officials were indicted for extortion of money from building contractors in Hempstead, Mineola and other Long Island cities. The builders were forced to contribute to a union defense fund or accept the appointment...

A badly charred Frank Kierdorf entered St. Joseph's Mercy Hospital in Pontiac, Michigan in the early morning hours of Monday, August 4, 1958. Burned over 85% of his body, the wounded man lived for nearly four days. During this time he maintained a story that he'd been abducted by captors who took...

Medico Industries is a defense contractor formerly based in Pittston, Pennsylvania. It was later relocated to Wilkes-Barre. The period I have written about is from 1957 until the early 1970s. William Medico was chairman of the board and his brother Phil was a significant player in the organization....