Grey: 921 books

Raymond Wean was a burly man. On one occasion an FBI agent trying to arrest was prevented from placing handcuffs on his thick wrists. A driver for a trucking company, he became a Bonanno Mafia family enforcer. As a prisoner at the Manhattan Correctional prison Wean had served as a trusty. At this...

Eugene Boffa was a La Cosa Nostra associated who was convicted of labor sharing under the Racketeering Influenced (RICO) Act. Along with Chandler Lemon he operated a labor sharing service that bilked workers of money and benefits. He was sentenced to twenty years in prison and fined $250,000. Boffa...

Murray the Camel Humphreys was a sophisticated Mafioso, the only Welsh mobster of his era. He ascended into the upper echelons of Al Capone's Chicago Outfit. He was given charge of managing the criminal organization when the Mafia boss was imprisoned in Atlanta, and later Alcatraz. Humphreys...

Luigie LoBue was a Genovese soldier who was closely connected to the French Connection multinational drug syndicate. Masterminded by mobster Charles "Lucky" Luciano, the criminal organization flourished in the 1950s and early 1960s. LoBue was linked to heroin smugglers who brought illegal...

My e-book looks at the murder of John James Barbera, a Buffalo fruit merchant whose father also sold fruit at the Chipppewa Market. Barbera was murdered in April 1938 while reading a newspaper in Genco's Tavern on Niagara Street in Buffalo. There were numerous others murdered over the years in...

Francesco Cucola was known as the Artichoke King during the mayoral administration of Fiorella LaGuardia. In the 1930s he was half owner of a large New York City produce company. In response to this burgeoning monopoly Mayor LaGuardia had prohibited the sale of small artichokes. Years later Cucola...

Joseph McCarthy's career in the United States Senate was a tempestuous one to say the least. Elected in 1947 as Republican U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, he is most noted for his campaigns to eliminate Communists from the State Department, the U.S. Army and various government agencies. Many are...

Jack McVey was a scientific type of boxer who fought in the welterweight and middleweight classifications of boxing from 1920-1936. He made good use of both his left and right hands and was an excellent defensive fighter. Originally from Georgia McVey fought out of Harlem in venues from New York to...

Prince Bira was a member of the Thai Royal family, descended from his grandfather HM Mongkut of Siam. Bira's cousin, another royal named Prince Cula, funded his racing career from the 1930s through the mid 1950s. Bira was educated at Eton and Cambridge in England. Following his eventful career...

Joey Glimco was head of Chicago Local 777, a Teamsters affiliated labor union. From 1939 until the mid 1950s he was a corrupting influence who bilked the union of dues paid honestly by its members. He used the money to defend himself in trials, pay for his secretary's travel to Los Angeles and...

S-51 sank almost immediately after it was rammed around 10:30 p.m. off Block Island Sound on Saturday evening, September 25, 1925. Her crew of 34 was in the water, sailors who begged for a line to save their lives. In a Boston courtroom the following December the steamship company that owned the ship...

The crash of a DC6 in broad daylight with excellent flying conditions was a puzzle to bystanders in the Pocono Mountain region of Pennsylvania as well as investigators who probed the reasons for the plane crash on June 17, 1948. The plane contained a fatal flaw that led to loss of 43 lives on United...

Continental Airlines was in business for 28 years before it incurred its first airline fatalities. This happened near the border of Iowa and Missouri on the night of May 22, 1962. The plane was flying into a line of thunderstorms and received a warning as it neared its landing at Kansas City Municipal...

Pan American-Grace Airlines formed in 1928. It combined Pan Am and W.R. Grace & Co. The latter was already a formidable cultural force in Peru as early as the 1920s. On July 16, 1932 a Pan Am-Grace Ford Tri-Motor airliner, the San Jose, disappeared in the Andes Mountains near Santiago, Chile....