In July 1993, inside Anthony Spero's social club in Bath Beach, Brooklyn, Paul "Paulie Brass" Gulino stood arguing with one of the most powerful men in the Bonanno crime family. The room was full of men who knew exactly who Spero was. Known as "the Old Man," Spero was a veteran Bonanno leader and a … Read more
Frank Amato walked through the front door of a neighborhood bar in Flatlands, Brooklyn, on the night of September 20, 1980, believing he was there to discuss a business deal with a Gambino family soldier named Roy DeMeo. He was 38 years old. He never walked back out. What happened inside that building on the … Read more
In February 1945, at a Third Army prisoner of war processing facility in the Lorraine region of France, a group of German prisoners laughed at the condition of recently liberated American POWs. The laughter was audible, witnessed by American guards, the facility commander, and a visiting Third Army inspector. Within 48 hours, a report describing … Read more
On the evening of April 13, 1991, a big man stepped out of his house in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and walked toward his 1991 Lincoln Town Car. He was 47 years old, six foot three, 230 pounds of South Brooklyn muscle. For more than a decade he had been one of the most feared men in … Read more
On January 14, 1979, Tommy De Simone walked out the front door of his house in Queens, New York, climbed into a car with two men he knew, and disappeared forever. He was 28 years old. Tommy believed he was on his way to become a made man in the Lucchese crime family. Instead, he … Read more
In January 1945, German commanders near the shattered Belgian village of Malmedy began noticing something strange about the American forces pressing toward them. The Americans were not simply advancing. They were driving forward with a ferocity that defied their earlier performance in the Ardennes. A captured American soldier east of Bastogne told his German interrogators … Read more
On December 22, 1947, in Krakow, Poland, the former staff of the Auschwitz concentration camp heard their sentences read aloud. After a month of gruesome testimonies, 23 of the 41 defendants were sentenced to death by hanging. Among them was Hans Aumeier, the former deputy commandant of Auschwitz, the deadliest German Nazi concentration camp. Hans … Read more
For nearly eight decades, one question has haunted historians, survivors, and ordinary readers alike: who told the Nazis where Anne Frank was hiding? After more than 75 years of speculation, dead ends, and carefully kept secrets, a team of cold case investigators believes it finally has an answer. Anne Frank was 15 years old when … Read more
Karl Hermann Frank was one of the most powerful Nazi officials in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, a man whose name became synonymous with terror, mass executions, and the destruction of Czech villages. He was born on January 24, 1898, in Karlovy Vary, then part of Austria-Hungary. His father Heinrich was an elementary school … Read more
Theodor Gilbert Morell was born on July 22, 1886, in the Tru district of Münzenberg, then part of the German Empire. He was the second son of an elementary school teacher. Morell studied medicine in Grenoble and Paris before completing an internship in obstetrics and gynecology in Munich in 1910. After finishing his doctoral studies … Read more