Robert Reynolds: 560 books

Armand "Tommy" Rava was a Gambino family capo in the mid 20th century. Involved in booze and drug rackets, Rava was also closely associated with illicit gambling. Several New York State Liquor Authority investigations of the 1940s targeted Rava and numerous other mobsters for manufacturing...

Tony Brancato and Tony Trombino left their Kansas City roots for Los Angeles. They settled in Los Angeles and worked for a time for notorious L.A. hood Mickey Cohen. Later they were suspected of murdering mob lawyer Sam Rummel and making a hit on Cohen himself. Brancato had graduated to the ranks...

The Camp Fire Girls as an organization for the education and recreation of young women has been a great part of the cultural heritage of New York State. My book looks at the Camp Fire Girls with individual memories of its leaders and members. Much of my text is compiled from newspaper accounts and...

The huge KLM Super Constellation with its 4 propeller driven engines crashed into the Atlantic Ocean around dawn on August 14, 1958. The plane's flight originated in Amsterdam and the difficulty began soon after a stopover for refueling in Shannon, Ireland. My e-book looks at the likely reasons...

American aviatrix Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished on July 2, 1937. The two fliers were flying in a Lockheed Electra Model 10E. They were flying on the next to the last leg of an around the world trip. Departing from Lae, New Guinea, Earhart's planned destination was tiny...

An American Airlines Boeing 727 that crashed on its approach to landing at Greater Cincinnati Airport in November 1965 was the second Boeing 727 to come down in only a few months time. One exploded in a ball of flame before it fell into Lake Michigan the previous August. The Cincinnati crash involved...

Harry Stromberg was a prominent Mafioso of the 1930s in Washington, DC, Philadelphia and New York. A Jewish gangster, he later sought exile in Israel. Aka "Nig Rosen", he was aligned with several gambling/fight promoter personalities. Among these were Frank "Blinky" Palermo of...

People have gone to extremes to photograph nude women. In the 1950s a medical doctor in Hatfield, Pennsylvania risked his professional career on a nude modeling business. A chemical plant manager and his wife teamed with him in this risky endeavor. Aside from this incident I have profiled cases of...

In 1912 gambler Herman M. Rosenthal was a desperate man. His business was in decline and he turned to telling reporters what he knew about a police protection racket involving New York Police Department Lieutenant Charles Becker. In fact Becker was the head of a criminal organization designed to help...

My e-book presents a sampling of documented cases in which photographers and marketers of photos, films and magazines were subjected to trials, fines and imprisonment. Most are from the 1950s. The Brooke Shields-Gary Gross trial of 1981 dealt with a photographer's use of photos that were made...

George Cvek was a congenial drifter and hitchhiker who roamed up and down US Highway 1 from Maine to Washington until he was apprehended in March 1941. Cvek attacked, raped and strangled at least 14 women and perhaps more than 30. A native of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania George Joseph Cvek was the son...

Joseph Paterra criminal life was intimately tied to the career of Joseph "Joie" Aloe. The latter gangster virtually controlled inmate life in the notorious Welfare Island (Roosevelt Island) Prison of the early 1930s. Aloe and Joe Sweets made headline in 1932 with their assault of a New York...

Charles Albero was in trouble for truancy by the time he was nine years old. He was sent to the Elmira Reformatory in the 1920s. His first active prison sentence occurred in 1929. Albero was in a Lucky Luciano inspired multinational drug ring that operated from 1941-1945. Broken up in '45 the ring's...

Meyer Shapiro and his brothers, Irving and Willy, were tutored by Irish American hoodlum Legs Diamond. Aside from Willie Shapiro all of them died the same year, 1931. Diamond was gunned down in Albany in December. Meyer was found dead in a Lower East Side tenement with a single bullet wound in his...