Oct 10, 2009
Spica car bombing
Sonny Spica, the rash protégé of St. Louis Outfit boss Tony Giordano, was a marked man. Nick Civella in Kansas City wanted him dead and so did Ray Flynn, the most violent labor racketeer in St. Louis. The car bomb that killed Spica in 1979 ignited St. Louis...
Oct 10, 2009
St. Louis, Missouri
Paulie Leisure wanted to control St. Louis' underworld and he was prepared to kill anyone who stood in his way. In using car bombs to take out Tony Giordano protégé Sonny Spica and then Jimmy Michaels, the venerable head of the Syrian-Lebanese faction, he...
Oct 10, 2009
The car bomb that killed Philip J. Lucier – the president of the Continental Telephone Co. and the father of 11 children – was meant for an attorney whose clients had swindled a minor New Orleans Mafioso. The FBI misread and mishandled the case from the beginning. Subsequent...
Oct 10, 2009
Jesse Stoneking
Before Jimmy Fratianno made ratting out mob bosses fashionable, Jesse Stoneking's testimony against St. Louis mob figures was the most damaging ever heard in a courtroom. It helped send more than 30 gangsters to prison. Stoneking was a respected and feared...
Oct 10, 2009
Randy Kraft
The reporter who coined the phrase "Freeway Killer," sets the record straight about why serial-killer Randy Kraft should not be confused with William Bonin.
by J. J. Maloney
There are those who call Randy Kraft the ''Freeway Killer'' and they are wrong....
Oct 10, 2009
William Bonin
An examination of not only the notorious murders committed by William Bonin, but the role the media played in the case. Written by J.J. Maloney who, as a reporter for the Orange County Register, first coined the term "Freeway Killer".
by J.J. Maloney...
Oct 10, 2009
The City Market Kansas City, Missouri
A first-hand investigative report of the Kansas City Mafia's attempt to take over a major Kansas City entertainment area in the mid-1970s -- an effort that included bombings, extortion, and a large number of murders.
by J.J. Maloney...
Oct 10, 2009
Updated Dec. 19, 2007
Belton Missouri
The story of Jeffrey Gardner, a young man sentenced to prison for shooting an abusive husband who was threatening his wife with a knife.After the printing of this story, the Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, on March 2, 1999...
Oct 9, 2009
April 15, 2007
Howard Hughes in the 1940s with his new Boeing Army Pursuit Plane in Inglewood, California.
In the early years of the Nixon presidency, billionaire Howard Hughes bribed Nixon with $100,000 in cash. When Hughes's secret lobbyist Larry O'Brien became Democratic...
Oct 9, 2009
South Kansas City Blast Site Five innocent people were convicted in February 1997 in the deaths of six Kansas City firefighters in 1988. These two stories run a total length of 20,000 words, and won the Missouri Bar Association's annual "Excellence in Legal Journalism"...
