Oct 10, 2009
Downtown Pacific MO
Lawyers don't always confine their differences to the courtroom. Attorney Joseph Langworthy's murder was a cold-blooded execution paid for by an attorney so well connected that the chief of police "lost" all the evidence in the case for over a year.
by...
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
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 9, 2009
June 1, 2007
Vito Genovese
Tim Newark is the author of the recently published Mafia Allies: the True Story of America's Secret Alliance with the Mob (Zenith Press). This article is an adapted extract from that book.
by Tim Newark
Top Mafia Mobster Vito Genovese fled...
Oct 5, 2009
October 21, 2006 Gilberto Rodriguez OrejuelaThe sentencing of Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela brought down the world's most successful drug cartel, but did little if anything to halt the flow of drugs to the United States. by Ron Chepesiuk U.S. justice was finally...
Oct 5, 2009
February 5, 2006 President Richard Nixon with Bebe Rebozo (left) and J. Edgar Hoover (center) at the "Florida White House". Credit: National Archives. By the time he became president in 1969, Richard Nixon had been on the giving and receiving end of major underworld...
Oct 5, 2009
September 15, 2005 Tony Spilotro (Courtesy LVMPD)The introduction to Griffin's book entitled The Battle for Las Vegas — The Law vs. the Mob. The book chronicles the wide-ranging, criminal exploits of Chicago Outfit enforcer Tony Spilotro, the mobster portrayed by Joe Pesci...
