Building Criminal Empires in Galveston, Texas
In the Lone Star State, Texans have always prided themselves
on their resourcefulness and resilience, topped off with a dash of down-home
humor. It’s just a part of the...
You gotta hand it to him. Like a Danny Ocean of his day,
Alvin Karpis—public enemy number one in the mid-1930s—didn’t rob the train
because he had to. He robbed the train because he wanted to.
When
we think of New York gangsters, certain names always come to mind—Jimmy Hoffa, ‘Lucky’
Luciano, Jon Gotti. Immortalized in films, storied in urban legends, awed by
cops and criminals alike—these founding godfathers of the city have earned
their reputation throughout...
Before America saw headlines about the Capone Mob, the Purple Gang and Murder Inc., the specter of the Black Hand terrorized nearly every major city. Fears that the Mafia had reached our shores and infiltrated every Italian...
Every
great gangster has an origin story. In the age of classic mobsters, tales of the
rascally kid from the Bronx or the self-made thief from the Boardwalk give us a
hero we can all root for, someone whose rags-to-riches...
Hinds County deputy sheriff Bill Russell confiscating champagne during the liquor raid at Jackson Country Club in February 1966. Courtesy of Fred Blackwell. (From Mississippi Moonshine Politics )
Extortion. Gambling rings....
Timmy Overton of Austin and Jerry Ray James of Odessa were football stars who traded athletics for lives of crime. The original rebels without causes, nihilists with Cadillacs and Elvis hair, the Overton gang and their...
Here
on Crime Capsule we’ve looked at bootlegging from a number of angles – from the
ingenious stills of North Carolina to the
secret speakeasies of Wisconsin. But one subject we haven’t covered is the
process of fermentation, and how the...
Snoopy
would have approved: it was indeed a dark and stormy night when Officer Dan
Herion first received the call to the scene of a crime. Deep winter, 1959, on
the frozen streets of Chicago, dispatch sent Herion and his...
Who was the real godfather of organized crime? No, it’s not Al Capone or Bugsy Moran. Neither was it Alvin Karpis, the escape artist, or Tim Overton, one of the leaders of the Dixie mafia. It’s none...