q1903

On the morning of April 13, 1986, Frank DeCicco walked out of the Veterans and Friends Social Club in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, carrying a cup of coffee. He was 50 years old, dressed in a custom-tailored suit, and had recently been named underboss of the most powerful crime family in America. He approached his Buick Electra, … Read more

Before dawn on February 7, 2008, federal agents were taking positions for one of the largest Mafia takedowns New York had seen in years. By sunrise, an 80-count indictment was set to be unsealed in Brooklyn. Sixty-two defendants were named. The charges reached the acting boss of the Gambino family. They reached his acting underboss. … Read more

In 1946, Meyer Lansky stepped off a train in Miami carrying the quiet confidence of a man who had survived the deadly corners of New York and Chicago’s criminal underworld. For Lansky, Florida was both a paradise and a blank canvas. The sun, the beaches, and the booming post-war economy offered perfect cover for something … Read more

On a July afternoon in 1979, three masked men walked onto the back patio of a Brooklyn restaurant and shotgunned the boss of the Bonanno family. By the time police arrived, his cigar was still clenched in his teeth, and the photograph ran on front pages nationwide. There was a palm print inside the getaway … Read more

On Valentine's Day in 1979, FBI agents entered a house in Kansas City and went straight to the basement. They were not looking for a body or hidden cash. They came for paperwork: stacks of handwritten notes so cryptic they looked like a child's scribbling, kept by a mob enforcer named Carl DeLuna. Those notes … Read more