C.F. Marciano

Greg Scarpa

Blood Oaths and Burning Crosses: How the Mafia Helped Break the Klan’s Holy Hypocrisy

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In the summer of 1964, Mississippi became a graveyard of lies, hate, and twisted faith. Three civil rights workers—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner—were abducted, executed, and buried by the Ku Klux Klan. The killers called themselves God-fearing men. They claimed to be righteous crusaders. But their gospel was hate, their scripture violence, and […]

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Teamsters

The Mobbed-Up Teamster Files: Union Power, Mafia Muscle, and the Secrets They Tried to Bury

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By the time anyone realized what was happening, the Mafia had their hands on the throat of America’s labor movement—and no one dared to say a word. The Union That Built America—And Was Bought by the Mob The International Brotherhood of Teamsters was once the most powerful labor union in America. At its peak, it

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Richard Nixon

“I Am Not a Crook”: Richard Nixon, Denial, and the Shadow of the Mafia

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In the fog of American history, few faces peer back as defiantly—or as infamously—as that of Richard Milhous Nixon. The 37th President of the United States, once seen as a stoic Cold War warrior and a cunning political strategist, ultimately became synonymous with scandal, secrecy, and denial. His infamous declaration—“I am not a crook”—was less

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Carlos Marcello

Blood in the Bayou: Crime and Power in Louisiana Under Carlos Marcello

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Louisiana has always had a taste for the gothic. Cypress swamps swallowing secrets, jazz spilling out of midnight clubs, politics marinated in corruption—this is a state that thrives in shadows. But in the middle of the twentieth century, those shadows belonged to one man: Carlos Marcello, the undisputed boss of the New Orleans Mafia. His

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Boo Boo Hoff

Boo Boo’s Kingdom: Max Hoff, Police Corruption, and Philadelphia’s Grand Jury of 1928

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Max “Boo Boo” Hoff was no ordinary gangster. Born in South Philadelphia in the early 1890s to poor Russian-Jewish immigrants, Hoff abandoned school in favor of work at a cigar store—where gambling was part of the service. His smooth charm earned him a raise from $12 to $15 a week, but ambition pushed him further.

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Fulgencio Batista

Shadows on the Malecón: Batista, the Mafia, and Cuba’s Long War on Free Expression

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Cuba in the 1950s was a country suspended between paradise and ruin. Tourists from Miami, New York, and beyond descended on Havana for glitz, jazz, casinos, and women—many never realizing that the neon lights hid something far darker. Beneath the champagne glasses and high-stakes poker tables, Cuba’s capital had become the playground of American mobsters

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Cigarette

Smoke & Mirrors: The Mafia’s Takeover of America’s Cigarette Machines (1940s–1960s)

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In the dim corners of smoky diners, dive bars, and truck stops across mid-century America, cigarette vending machines stood like sentinels—gleaming chrome boxes promising a moment of indulgence for spare change. But behind the click of coins and the metallic thunk of a sliding cigarette pack was a far more sinister operation. From the 1940s

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Jack Dragna

Crossing the Line: The Mann Act and the Mob’s Most Dangerous Weakness

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There are weapons you see coming—bullets, indictments, rivals with knives. And then there are the quiet assassins, cloaked in morality and bureaucracy. For the American Mob, few laws were more deceptively dangerous than the Mann Act. Enacted in 1910 and known officially as the White-Slave Traffic Act, the law was born out of public panic—moral

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Florence Cokey Flo Brown

Testimony for Sale: The Prostitute Witnesses Who Framed America’s Most Famous Mob Boss

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They were hustlers, addicts, madams, ghosts in the neon: Florence “Cokey Flo” Brown, Nancy Presser (aka Genevieve Flesher), Mildred Harris, Thelma Jordan, and Joan Martin. For a few hot weeks in the spring of 1936, they stood under courtroom lights and pointed at the most notorious man in New York. Thomas E. Dewey—hawk-eyed, jaw like

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Frank Costello

The Kingmaker in the Shadows: Frank Costello and the Rotten Heart of Tammany Hall

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Frank Costello didn’t need a gun. He didn’t need to order hits, run drug rings, or get his hands bloodied in turf wars. He controlled something far more powerful—politics. From the smoky back rooms of Manhattan to the marble corridors of city hall, Costello was a shadow emperor. And his scepter? Cash, connections, and quiet

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Charlie Luciano

OPERATION UNDERWORLD: The Government’s Lie About Charlie Luciano’s Prison Transfer

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They said it was routine.They said it was nothing special.They said he was just “one of many” inmates being shuffled around in a standard prisoner relocation program. But when Charles “Lucky” Luciano was quietly moved in the dead of winter from the icy walls of Dannemora Prison—nicknamed “Little Siberia”—to the comparatively accessible Great Meadow Correctional

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Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso

The Devil in Denim: How Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso Lied, Denied, and Dug His Own Grave

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Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso wasn’t just another mobster—he was the Lucchese family’s underboss, a man with ice in his veins and gasoline in his blood. He wasn’t interested in being the boss. He didn’t care about press, pomp, or tradition. He was the Mafia’s butcher, the underworld’s grim reaper. And when it all came crashing down,

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