Grey: 921 books

Adolfo "Big Al" Bruno was a major figure in the western Massachusetts underworld until he was gunned down in 2003. Bruno and his associate John Nettis were tried on two occasions in connection with the attempted murder of bookie Joseph Maruca. One of the trials was for trying to kill him...

Jacob Gurrah Shapiro was a Mafia enforcer in the fashion fur industry. He worked as a lieutenant to the notorious Louis Lepke Buchalter who was himself executed at Ossining Prison (Sing Sing) in 1944. Shapiro and Buchalter were a tandem that single handedly dominated an industry in which shopkeepers...

John Tortora, aka "Johnny T", was a Yonkers mobster who first made headlines in 1958 by wrestling and pinning an alligator. Tortora was a member of the Genovese crime family, involved closely with Ralph Ferrara. At issue in 1969 was the opening of the mob controlled Red Grove Social Club...

George "Big Frenchy" DeMange is a somewhat murky figure in criminal history. A mobster with a long criminal record he avoided jail for his entire career. Not even his business partner, the more well-known Owen "Owney Madden", was able to elude imprisonment. Madden went to prison at Sing Sing in 1923....

Sam Lagattuta is well-known for his appearance at the Apalachin meeting of November 14, 1957. A New York State Policeman informed his colleagues about the big mob conclave that had descended on the small town in upstate New York. Lagattuta entered crime as early as 1933. In 1937 he was one of five...

James Vintaloro was a Lucchese soldier who is most often remembered for the death of heavyweight boxer Johnny Grosso. Grosso and Vintaloro argued repeatedly when both were involved in gambling rackets in New York City. Grosso was gunned down while crossing the street with some companions in 1932....

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....