Grey: 2040 books

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...

Carmelo Liconti was a racketeer in Brooklyn who was involved in the barber shop, funeral home and policy rackets. From Reggio, Calabria, Liconti came to the United States in the early years of the 20th Century to join his father, His mother emigrated a year later. Carmelo was tied to other noteworthy...

Five defendants were tried in Federal Court in Los Angeles in November 1980. The accused were members of the Los Angeles La Cosa Nostra. They were charged with killing mobster turned informant "Frank the Bomp" Bompensiero and defrauding pornographers who ran a firm called Forex. Bompensiero...

Dominic (Dominick) D'Agostino was a lynchpin in the Magaddino crime family of upstate New York. Based in Niagara Falls, the syndicate reached as far as portions of Ontario and Ohio. Closely associated with the illegal narcotics trade, D'Agostino was also linked to mob boss Vito Genovese. My e-book...

Nicholas Tolentino was a Lucchese family soldier most closely associated with narcotics/heroin trafficking. "Big Nose Nick" was arrested for his part in two 1950s drug rings. Both were taken down by the combined effort of federal agents and New York City Police. The syndicates had labs in...

Rudolph Prisco was a Mafia figure whose criminal record dates to the 1920s and 1930s. Involved in policy rackets and gambling, he was once indicted for the murder of a pinochle player. In another incident he beat a man with a apparatus in a disagreement at a service station. In November 1933 Prisco...

The Gallo brothers, Larry and Joey, were enforcers for the old Joseph Profaci crime family. In 1960 a rift between Profaci and Gallo erupted over the issue of territory promised by Profaci. By 1961 this break had erupted into total war between the two factions. My e-book looks at the struggle between...

68-year-old Genovese hit man/soldier Philip Buono was accused of killing contractor Nat Masselli in Van Cortlandt Park, the Bronx, on August 25, 1982. His accomplice in the crime was 67-year-old Salvatore Odierno. In court the following year prosecutors claimed the motive behind the grisly Mafia hit...

William Clarke Quantrill was a famous bushwhacker who led an infamous raid on Lawrence, Kansas on August 21, 1863. My e-book looks at Quantrill's late 1864 move into Kentucky, which by then had become a much more fervent theater for bushwhacking than Missouri. The defeat of Confederate General...

Vincent "Big Vinnie" Teresa was the #3 man in the New England Mafia until 1969. When the Mafia failed to protect him and his family, he turned government informant. In 1973 a Miami jury acquitted gangster Meyer Lansky despite evidence offered in court by Teresa. Vincent Teresa was closely...

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...

A town that had a man for breakfast every morning. That's how Tombstone, Arizona was described in the late-1800s, bolstering the myth that a corpse would be found cooling in the town's dusty streets each sunrise. The reality was quite different and much less violent, of course, but that hasn't...