Curated playlist

American drug traffickers

Jay-ZNo major label would sign Jay-Z, so he sold burned CDs out of his car.
Vito GenoveseOn the 2nd of June 1958, Vito Genovese sat before the McClellan Hearings of the United States Senate on organized crime, called there under subpoena. He answered nothing. Instead, he cited his Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution…
The Notorious B.I.G.The Notorious B.I.G.'s second album hit number one sixteen days after he was shot dead. He was twenty-four.
James Burke (gangster)James Burke, nicknamed Jimmy the Gent, spent his criminal life beside the Lucchese crime family without ever being allowed to join it. He was born on the 5th of July 1931. He is believed to have organized the 1978 Lufthansa heist. His…
Henry HillIn 1955, an eleven-year-old boy named Henry Hill crossed the street from his Brooklyn home and wandered into a dispatch cabstand, hoping for a part-time job after school. The men who gathered there were local mobsters, and Hill had admired…
Lucky LucianoLucky Luciano, born Salvatore Lucania, was arrested 25 times between 1916 and 1936 and spent no time in prison. The charges ranged from assault and illegal gambling to blackmail and robbery. Then a trial over a prostitution racket ended…
Frank LucasFrank Lucas liked to ask one question when he explained how he moved heroin. "Who the hell is gonna look in a dead soldier's coffin?" He put it that way in an interview for a New York magazine article published in 2000. Lucas operated in…
Frank Matthews (drug trafficker)Frank Matthews, who went by Black Caesar and Mark IV, was an American drug trafficker whose reach covered much of the eastern United States. From 1965 to 1972 he sold heroin and cocaine, and his dealers worked in 21 states. The Drug…
Bumpy JohnsonBumpy Johnson, a crime boss of Harlem in New York City, died shortly before 2 a.m. on the 7th of July 1968 at Wells Restaurant. A waitress had just set down his coffee, a chicken leg and a plate of hominy grits. Then he fell over,…
Freeway Ricky RossRicky Donnell Ross, better known as Freeway Ricky Ross, was born on the 26th of January 1960 and learned to read at the age of 28. That happened during his first stint in prison. He then spent much of his time behind bars studying law. The…
George JungIn the 2001 biopic Blow, Johnny Depp played George Jacob Jung, the American smuggler nicknamed Boston George and El Americano. Jung is often described as a major figure in the United States cocaine trade of the 1970s and early 1980s. He is…
Barry SealBarry Seal, born Adler Berriman Seal, was shot dead in a parking lot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on the evening of the 19th of February 1986. The lot belonged to a Salvation Army center, and he had been on probation for just three weeks.…
Whitey BulgerOn the 22nd of June 2011, agents in Santa Monica, California, used a ruse to lure an 81-year-old man out of his apartment. They arrested him without incident. He was James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger Jr., who had once led the Winter Hill Gang,…
Sammy GravanoSammy Gravano, known to the world as Sammy the Bull, once faced up to 20 years in prison and received a sentence that amounted to less than one year. In 1994 a federal judge gave him five years, but he had already served four. The judge…
Roy DeMeoRoy DeMeo, a Brooklyn mobster in the Gambino crime family, was found dead on the 20th of January 1983. His body lay in the trunk of his own Cadillac Coupe DeVille, parked in the lot of the Varuna Boat Club in Sheepshead Bay. The corpse was…
Anthony CassoAnthony Casso signed his letters "Tony Gaspipe." In 2006, writing to his biographer Philip Carlo from a federal cell, he made a startling statement for a man in his position. "I have always hated rats and as strange as it may sound I still…