Curated playlist
Criminals from New York City
- Sean CombsSean Combs founded Bad Boy Records, which launched the Notorious B.I.G. He was later sentenced to four years in prison.
- Phil SpectorPhil Spector's first number one song came from his father's gravestone.
- Tupac ShakurTupac Shakur wrote and recorded the album The Don Killuminati in three days. Mixing took four more.
- Jordan BelfortJordan Ross Belfort is an American former stockbroker who spent 22 months in prison for fraud. He is also the author of a memoir that became a major film. For years he ran a brokerage that defrauded its own customers. Then he helped the…
- Julius and Ethel RosenbergJulius and Ethel Rosenberg open Sylvia Plath's 1963 novel The Bell Jar, in a single sultry sentence. The line reads: "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs..." The couple were a married pair from New…
- 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…
- Bernie MadoffBernie Madoff told his own sons in December 2008 that the fund he ran was "just one big lie." Bernard Lawrence Madoff was an American financier, born in 1938, who had once served as chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange. He admitted to…
- Lyle and Erik MenendezLyle and Erik Menendez became known to the public through a telephone call placed late on the 20th of August 1989. Lyle told a 9-1-1 operator, "Someone killed my parents!" He said he had just come home and found their bodies. Erik could be…
- Billy McFarlandBilly McFarland sold a luxury island weekend, and the guests who flew to Great Exuma in the Bahamas found tents and pre-packaged sandwiches. They had been promised lavish villas and fine meals. The festival, planned for April 2017, was…
- Lou PearlmanIn June 2007, a tourist couple from Germany noticed a man staying at a hotel in Nusa Dua, on the Indonesian island of Bali. Their sighting ended a search that had stretched across several continents. On the 14th of June 2007, the man was…
- Robert William FisherRobert William Fisher is an American fugitive, wanted for allegedly killing his wife and two children in Scottsdale, Arizona. At 8:42 in the morning on the 10th of April 2001, the family's house exploded. Neighbors grabbed garden hoses…
- Sonny FranzeseSonny Franzese walked out of the Federal Medical Center in Devens, Massachusetts, on the 23rd of June 2017, at the age of 100. On that day he was the oldest federal inmate in the United States, and the only centenarian in federal custody.…