Robert Reynolds: 560 books

Carmine Lombardozzi was once targeted to be killed by mafia assassins so flagrant were the liberties that he took with the money he collected for the mob. Case in point was the Apalachin meeting in upstate New York in 1957. His fate was decided while he waited in the garage of the Joseph Barbara home...

Herman Webster Mudgett was responsible for the deaths of as many as 200 people. Most of them were murdered during the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, which was held in Chicago. Mudgett confessed to 27 of these killings. So far as I know there has not been a published account of Herman Mudgett's...

Anthony Carminati was a Gambino family caporegime who was involved in gambling operations in northern New Jersey. In 1975 he was indicted with multiple co-conspirators in a bribery and gambling racket that involved a high level police detective. On several occasions the mobsters offered lists of names...

Owney Madden owned a large stake in the Cotton Club, perhaps the most famous of New York City nightclubs in the 1920s and 1930s. He also controlled the supply of beer distributed to America's largest metropolitan area. These two facts alone make him an important figure in the history of early twentieth...

Big John La Rocca was a somewhat insignificant crime boss as far a big cities are concerned. He got his start as a whiskey runner after he failed running a gas station. The Pittsburgh crime structure is different than New York, Philadelphia or Chicago. For example crime in the city was controlled...

Pretty Boy Floyd was one of the machine gunners who held up a group of lawmen taking a prisoner to Leavenworth Penitentiary in June 1933. From Georgia originally, Charles Floyd was raised in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, the son of a farmer. Floyd began his criminal career by robbing a local post office of...

Jacob Little Augie Orgen and Jack Legs Diamond controlled the garment industry racket in New York City for a time. Legs came to Little Augie with his brother, Eddie, who was employed by the East Side gang chieftain before him. Legs worked for the notorious Arnold Rothstein beginning in 1919. He served...

Elmer Trigger Burke was an Army Ranger who took out a troop of Germans during World War II. Highly decorated Burke returned to a life of crime when the war ended and he came back to the United States. His specialties were robbery and assassination by contract. A psychopath Elmer was raised in New...

Pasqualino Lolordo was an underling of Al Capone who the Chicago crime boss made head of the Unione Sicilliana. Lolordo was murdered in cold blood in his own home one afternoon in 1929 after he and his wife returned from a shopping trip. Two groups of men visited his fashionable northwest Chicago...

"Skinny Razor" DeTullio was a lynchpin in the Philadelphia crime syndicate of the late 1950s and the 1960s. He lived in Camden, New Jersey until his death from natural causes in 1966. DeTullio's main function was lending money to underworld figures and businessmen who couldn't rely on banks to loan...

An ugly incident that occurred in a popular Toronto night spot brings to mind the struggle for supremacy in the Ontario gambling world, circa 1961. Gambler Max Bluestein was beaten with brass knuckles and lead pipes as he was leaving the Town Tavern on the night of March 21, 1961. Later it was learned...

Unsolved Mafia murders occurred in numerous American cities in 1959. Among the most prominent was the slaying of Joseph Bronge, a Chicago beer distributor. Gunned down outside his Melrose Park office, he attempted to escape through a chained link fence near an apartment building. Bronge was tied to...

Christine Jorgensen sex reassignment was among the first of its kind. The former Army Private from the Bronx had gone to Copenhagen, Denmark in 1950 as a tourist. When he returned to his home in the United States he was no longer George. Instead with extended hormone therapy treatments and the collaboration...

Angela Dorian is a famous Playboy Playmate who used her magazine modeling to become a successful actress in motion pictures and on television. She appeared in numerous mid 1960s television shows and debuted in movies in Chuka, a 1967 western that starred Rod Taylor. Her best known film is When Dinosaurs...