Joe Bonanno
The Banana War: Joe Bonanno’s Last Gambit
By the early 1960s, Joseph Bonanno had it all. The suit. The smile. The swagger. They called him "Joe Bananas," a nickname he loathed—too fruity, too flippant for a man…
Richard Nixon
“I Am Not a Crook”: Richard Nixon, Denial, and the Shadow of the Mafia
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…
Carlos Marcello
Blood in the Bayou: Crime and Power in Louisiana Under Carlos Marcello
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.…
Boo Boo Hoff
Boo Boo’s Kingdom: Max Hoff, Police Corruption, and Philadelphia’s Grand Jury of 1928
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…
Frank "Frankie" Frost
Chilling the Odds: Frost’s Trail Through the Mob
a Luciano, a Capone, or a Gambino. But if you trace the bloodlines of mob violence and the shady tendrils of America’s gambling underworld, his name keeps surfacing like a…
Fulgencio Batista
Shadows on the Malecón: Batista, the Mafia, and Cuba’s Long War on Free Expression
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…
Cigarett
Smoke & Mirrors: The Mafia’s Takeover of America’s Cigarette Machines (1940s–1960s)
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…
Jack Dragna
Crossing the Line: The Mann Act and the Mob’s Most Dangerous Weakness
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…
Florence Cokey Flo Brown
Testimony for Sale: The Prostitute Witnesses Who Framed America’s Most Famous Mob Boss
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…
The Kingmaker in the Shadows: Frank Costello and the Rotten Heart of Tammany Hall
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…
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