Curated playlist
Criminals from Manhattan
- 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…
- Sean CombsSean Combs founded Bad Boy Records, which launched the Notorious B.I.G. He was later sentenced to four years in prison.
- Meyer LanskyShortly after The Godfather Part II reached theaters in 1974, Meyer Lansky picked up the telephone and called the actor Lee Strasberg. Strasberg had played Hyman Roth, a gangster based on Lansky, and had earned an Oscar nomination for it.…
- 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…
- Arnold RothsteinArnold Rothstein, a New York gambler nicknamed The Brain, lay wounded in a hospital while police asked who had shot him. He refused to help. "You stick to your trade," he told the officers. "I'll stick to mine." Pressed again, he answered…
- 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 CostelloFrank Costello, an Italian-American crime boss, tried to keep his face off television during the Senate's organized crime hearings. The attempt backfired. Cameras settled on his hands instead, and his fidgeting and evasive answers played…
- 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,…
- Larry Ray (criminal)In September 2010, a 50-year-old man moved into a student apartment at Sarah Lawrence College, a liberal arts school in Yonkers, just north of New York City. His name was Larry Ray, born Lawrence Grecco, and he had a simple reason to be…