Real Life Criminals
August 23, 1936 "Virgo/Rat" in Blacksburg, Virginia - March 12, 2001 (age 64) in Huntsville, Texas (apparent heart failure)
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- Bonnie Parker was born on 1 October 1910 in Rowena, Texas, USA. She was married to Roy Thornton. She died on 23 May 1934 in Gibsland, Louisiana, USA.Bonnie Elizabeth Parker
October 1, 1910 "Libra" in Rowena, Texas - May 23, 1934 (age 23) in Gibsland, Louisiana (shot by police in ambush) - Clyde Barrow was born on 24 March 1909 in Telico, Texas, USA. He died on 23 May 1934 in Gibsland, Louisiana, USA.Clyde Chestnut Barrow
March 24, 1909 "Aries" in Telico, Texas - May 23, 1934 (age 25) in Gibsland, Louisiana (shot by police in ambush) - One of the most famous bank robbers in history, he was born John Herbert Dillinger on June 22, 1903, to a grocery store owner named John Wilson Dillinger and his wife Mollie (the family also included an older sister, Audrey). By all accounts the Dillingers were a normal "all-American" family, but the normality was broken when John was three and his mother passed away (her death has been ascribed to a variety of causes, but the best guess is that she died of pneumonia). With his mother gone and his sister getting married and moving out a few years later, John was left alone with his father, who was caring but not very affectionate. In that kind of environment young John, a naturally rambunctious boy, began to rebel and get into all sorts of mischief, including shoplifting, vandalism and even stealing coal from train cars and selling it to neighbors. In order to curb his son's wild behavior, as well as to fulfill his own need for companionship, John Sr. married Elizabeth Fields and moved the family back to her hometown of Mooresville, IN, but the change of scenery did little to deter John's behavior. He was still in and out of trouble, and by the time he was 16 he had dropped out of high school and taken a job at a machine shop. Even as a young adult, though, John was irresponsible and in 1921 he was caught by a policeman in Indianpolis trying to steal a car. He managed to elude the officer in a foot pursuit, fled home and joined the Navy. He was assigned to the U.S.S. Utah (a ship that would later be sunk by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor). Unable to stay out of trouble even in the Navy, he soon deserted and returned home, and not long afterwards in 1924 he married Beryl Hovius and took another job. He was a neglectful and sometimes abusive husband and an absentee worker, and hooked up with an ex-con named Ed Singleton. They hatched a plan to mug an elderly grocer named Frank Morgan, who was known to carry his weekly cash and receipts with him to the bank after his store closed on Saturday night. The plan was for John to rob the old man at gunpoint on the street and hop into a getaway car driven by Singleton, which was parked at a nearby curb. However, when John confronted Morgan, the old man fought back, knocking the gun out of John's hand and causing it to fire. Thinking he had accidentally shot the old man (which he hadn't), John fled to the pre-arranged getaway spot, only to find that Singleton wasn't there. He fled on foot but was caught two days later. The incident aroused public indignation, and after a trial and conviction, the judge gave John 10 years for assault with a deadly weapon (he had tried pistol-whipping the old man) and 20 years for attempted robbery, despite the fact that this was John's first crime and he had pleaded guilty and confessed freely to the crime. Embittered, Dillinger vowed revenge.
He was sent to Indiana's Pendleton Reformatory, where he hooked up with experienced thieves Harry Pierpont and Homer Van Meter. There John learned a little bit about crime. In 1929 Beryl divorced him and he was denied parole. He was later transferred to the reformatory at Michigan City, where he was reunited with the recently transferred Pierpont and Van Meter and introduced to Charles Makley, Russell Clark and John "Red" Hamilton, all professional robbers. While John learned the art of bank robbery, the cons groomed him to help plan their escape from prison. In May of 1933 he used the fact that his stepmother Lizzy was dying as a reason to ask for parole, which was granted. He hung around his family farm enough to help his father for a while and to make a positive impression on the townsfolk before embarking on his life of crime. He hooked up with a group of petty thieves who were associated with his jailhouse buddy Pierpoint and pulled off a string of grocery-store heists before robbing his first bank in Daleville, IN, in July of 1933 (his take was $3,500). He then embarked on a series of bank robberies in Indiana and Ohio, using the proceeds to buy guns and bribe key guards at the Michigan City prison in order to help his friends Pierpoine and Van Meter escape. The escape went off without a hitch in September of 1933. Pierpoint and Van Meter got away scot-free, but Dillinger was captured by police in an Ohio boarding house and taken to Lima to be held in the local jail. Learning of Dillinger's capture, Pierpont and the others (minus Van Meter, who struck out on his own after the escape) broke John out, killing an elderly deputy sheriff in the process. Reunited, the full-strength gang was one of the most efficient and professional of the era due to their careful planning and execution of robberies, their tactic of avoiding confrontations with police and their calm and respectful manner towards their victims, which earned the gang the moniker "The Gentleman Bandits" and turned handsome and dashing ringleader Dillinger into a household name.
From the fall of 1933 and into the winter, the gang robbed banks in Indiana, Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin, using Chicago as a base of operations. While living there, John fell for a party girl named Evelyn "Billie" Frechette, who would become his lifelong companion. In December of 1933 the gang decided to take a break from the "heat" caused by law enforcement and went on vacation in Miami. In January of 1934 they decided to temporarily split up, with Pierpont, Clark and Makley heading for Tucson, AZ, and Dillinger and "Red" Hamilton heading back to Chicago. It was there that John committed his one and only murder. During the robbery of the East Chicago (Indiana) bank, an alarm went off, and the arrival of police forced Dillinger and Hamilton to take hostages to escape. As they were leaving the bank, a patrolman named Patrick O'Malley fired at the exposed Dillinger, only to have his bullets bounce of the bandit's bulletproof vest. In a fit of anger, Dillinger--carrying a Thompson submachine gun--shot and killed O'Malley. The resulting gun battle with other officers resulted in Hamilton being wounded before the pair managed to escape. Once Red was tucked away in a safe house where he could get medical aid, Dillinger reunited with the others in Tucson. Unbeknownst to Dillinger, however, Tucson police had taken notice of Pierpont, Makley and Clark, whose fancy clothes, flashy girlfriends and heavy suitcases (which carried their guns and robbery proceeds) aroused their suspicion. When police discovered their true identities they quickly arrested the gang, and when Dillinger arrived in Tucson he was arrested, too. Extradited back to Indiana to stand trial for the murder of Officer O'Malley, Dillinger was found guilty at a lengthy trial (in which his defense was that he wasn't in Chicago at the time), sentenced to death and returned to Michigan City Prison, where he was placed on Death Row. However, in transit to Michigan City he was held overnight at a jail in Crown Point, IN, where he pulled off one of the great jailbreaks of all time by carving a "pistol" out of a bar of soap and coloring it black with shoe polish, fooling his jailers into thinking it was a real gun (adding insult to injury, he escaped in the town sheriff's personal car). Although the fake gun story may be apocryphal, it was a fact that the most notorious criminal in America was on the loose again.
Reuniting with Van Meter and Hamilton, and joining forces with the infamous Baby Face Nelson (born Lester Gillis) and his gang, the new "Super Gang"--as the press had dubbed them--robbed banks in Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa. This time, though, they were dealing with more than local police. Since their robbery spree had crossed state lines--a federal offense--they were now subject to pursuit by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Despite the fact that every lawman in the country was looking for him and that his picture was on every magazine and newspaper, John defied the logic of "laying low" by making a surprise visit to his father and relatives during a Sunday gathering at the family farm while FBI agents had the place under surveillance (he even posed for a now-famous photo in which he laughed and held a tommy gun in one hand and a wooden gun in the other). Eventually settling in St. Paul, MN, the gang laid low between heists until the FBI found them in early April of 1934. Dillinger, his girlfriend Billie and Van Meter had to shoot their way out of an apartment building to escape FBI agents, who had shown up acting on a tip. Two days later gang member Eddie Green was shot and killed by the FBI. Not long after that the agents struck again, this time nabbing Billie at a bar where John was supposed to meet an underworld contact, not knowing the contact was setting him up for capture by the FBI. Dillinger knew that they finally had to "lay law" and arranged with an underworld contact of Baby Face Nelson to stay at a resort lodge in Wisconsin called Little Bohemia, which was owned by a former Chicago saloonkeeper. The man, despite initial reservations about having the gang stay at his facility, raised no objections. However, his wife wasn't as accommodating. She managed to slip a letter out of town to the FBI agent in charge of the Chicago office, Melvin Purvis. On April 22, 1934, Purvis and a squad of agents and local cops descended on the lodge. When the lodge owner's dogs began barking, the startled officers, believing they'd been discovered, rushed the house at the same moment three locals were driving away after having eaten at the restaurant. Believing them to be fleeing gang members, Purvis ordered agents to fire at their oncoming car. One man was killed and his two friends were wounded. Meanwhile, Dillinger, Nelson and the others escaped. Before getting out of the area Nelson, cornered by agents at a nearby lodge, shot his way out of the trap, killing one FBI agent and a local police officer.
A statewide alert was issued for the gang, and not long afterwards Dillinger, Van Meter and gang member Red Hamilton ran a roadblock in Minneapolis. Dillinger and Van Meter escaped without injury, but Hamilton was shot and killed. A few weeks later gang member Tommy Carroll died in a shootout with police in Iowa. For the next several weeks the gang laid low and avoided each other, with only Dillinger and Van Meter running together. Eventually the two outlaws were so afraid of being spotted that they went to an underworld doctor in Chicago to have plastic surgery performed to change their face. The doctor botched the operation--an associate commented that they looked like they had been mauled by rabid dogs--the two were convinced that they would no longer be easily recognized. Out of desperation what was left of the original gang--Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and Van Meter, along with Nelson's associates Johnny Chase and "Fatso" Negri, robbed a bank in South Bend, IN, on June 30, 1934. It would be the last heist for any of them. They had hoped the haul would be enough to finance an escape to Canada or Mexico, but it was only enough to keep them in hiding or on the run from ever-closing lawmen--the FBI had just declared Dillinger "America's First Public Enemy #1". While the others hit the road, John settled in Chicago, living under the alias of "Jimmy Lawrence, a clerk for the Chicago Board of Trade" in a boarding house owned by bordello madam Anna Sage, an illegal immigrant from Romania. Dilliner even began dating one of Anna's girls, Polly Hamilton. However, if he thought he was safe and secure, he was wrong. Sage, whose real name was Ana Cumpanas, was facing deportation by the INS for her numerous prostitution arrests. Desperate to stay in America, she called the FBI and made a deal: She'd set up Dillinger to be arrested and the FBI would intercede on her behalf with Immigrfation and Naturalization Service (INS) officials. Purvis agreed to the terms. On the evening of July 22, 1934, Anna called Purvis and told him that she, Polly Hamilton and Dillinger would be going to see a movie at the nearby Biograph Theater (Manhattan Melodrama (1934), with William Powell and Clark Gable). Purvis assembled a squad and headed to the theater. On that sweltering summer night, Purvis and his assistant, Sam Cowley, positioned agents around the theater with Purvis stationed by the door to alert the other agents by lighting a cigar upon seeing Sage (they didn't know what Dillinger looked like after his surgery). When the movie let out, Purvis spotted Anna, whose orange dress looked red under the lights of the awning--thus giving birth to the "Woman In Red" --and lit his cigar. Two nearby FBI agents muscled their way through the crowd of exiting patrons. Just as they were coming up behind Dillinger, he spotted them and made a run for it. Seeing him desperately groping for a gun in his pants pocket, the two agents opened fire. Mortally wounded, Dillinger stumbled forward and fell face down in the mouth of a nearby alley while Polly Hamilton, who may not have known who "Jimmy" really was, screamed hysterically. Only 31 years old, the infamous John Dillinger was dead.
Even in death, however, Dillinger still managed to captivate the nation. When the news hit the radio waves, friends called friends saying, "Did you hear what happened?". Newspapers carrying the story were instantly sold out. His corpse was taken to The Alexian Brothers Hospital in Chicago, who put it on display for several days so people could come in and look at the slain outlaw like he was an art exhibit. Finally his body was returned to his father, who buried his notorious son in the local cemetery in Mooresville, Indiana. Before the dirt was shoveled onto John's coffin, cement was poured in to prevent treasure seekers from robbing Dillinger's grave.
John Dillinger continues to fascinate the public, with his good looks, cocky attitude, daring robberies and fantastic escapes. He has been immortalized in folk songs, books, television and movies. He has gone down in history as one of the most famous criminals who has ever lived.John Herbert Dillinger
June 22, 1903 "Cancer" in Indianapolis, Indiana - July 22, 1934 (age 31) in Chicago, Illinois (gunshot) - US gangster and racketeer. Born Charles Salvadore Lucania in Sicily, he emigrated with his family to the US in 1906. In 1907 he started shoplifting. He was given his nickname by childhood friend and fellow gangster Meyer Lansky for his luck with betting on racehorses, but it also could have applied to the many times he avoided imprisonment and prosecution as a Mafia "godfather" who operated successfully and profitably in the 1920s and 1930s. Between 1928 and 1930 the Castellammarese War broke out between the gangs of Giuseppe Masseria (aka Joe the Boss) and Salvatore Maranzano. Maranzano sent some men to "rough up" Luciano, and when they caught him they not only beat and stabbed him, but addition severed the muscles of his right cheek, leaving him with a droop in his right eye. He was left for dead under the Brooklyn Bridge. However, he lived up to his nickname and survived. Recovering, he sided with Maranzano in the conflict. By 1931 Masseria had been assassinated and Maranzano had won. He named himself "boss of bosses" (capo di tuti capo), but that title proved to be short-lived. Luciano and Lansky's had their men visit Maranzano in his office, disguised as government agents, and assassinated him. Luciano followed that with anywhere from 40 to 90 additional murders during the series of killings that came to be called the "Night of the Sicilian Vespers". Luciano was now the undisputed boss of a "new" Mafia. His business included narcotics-peddling, extortion and, especially, prostitution, including everything from low-rent streetwalkers to high-priced call girls. Luciano, one of the most powerful figures in organized crime, was arrested 25 times between 1919 and 1936 but convicted only once. When three prostitutes finally agreed to give evidence against him, he was arrested (1936) and found guilty of compelling women to become prostitutes. Even from prison, he retained control of his Family, setting up the Crime Syndicate of Mafia Families. During World War II he helped U.S. military intelligence through his Mafia connections in Italy and was given a suspended sentence on condition that he leave the US. In 1946 he was released from prison and deported to Italy as an undesirable alien. He returned to Naples, Italy, where he lived out his life in luxury. Luciano died of a heart attack at Naples Airport. He was only posthumously allowed to return to the USA, where he was buried at St John's Cemetery in New York.Salvatore Lucania
November 24, 1897 "Sagittarius" in Lercara Friddi, Sicily, Italy - January 26, 1962 (age 64) in Naples, Campania, Italy (heart attack) - Infamous Chicago gangster Al Capone was born in the tough Williamsburgh section of Brooklyn, NY, the fourth of nine children of Italian immigrants from Naples. Capone was a born sociopath. In the sixth grade he beat up a teacher and promptly quit school. He picked up his education from the streets, "making his bones" when he joined the notorious James Street gang. This was run by Johnny Torrio, who later graduated Capone into the even more notorious Five Points gang. It was here that Capone became friends with Lucky Luciano, another who would become a hallmark in the '30s gangster era.
By his late teens Capone had been hired by Torrio and Frankie Yale as a bouncer at a saloon / brothel in Brooklyn. In 1918 he was involved in a bar fight over a prostitute with hoodlum Frank Galluccio. Gallucio went after Capone with a knife, resulting in Capone's picking up the moniker by which he would be known for the rest of his life--"Scarface" (although that word was NEVER used in his presence). Capone, however, would attribute the scar to wounds he received in battle while fighting with the famous "lost battalion" in France during World War I (the fact that Capone never spent one minute in the army was a minor point, apparently). By 1919 he was already suspected by New York police of at least two murders, so he moved to Chicago to work under Torrio's uncle, "Big" Jim Colosimo, a Chicago gangster who ran a string of brothels. Torrio and Colosimo had a dispute over bootlegging during the Prohibition era--Torrio was for it and Colosimo was against it. Torrio hatched a plot with Capone to have Colosimo "rubbed out" and they got their old pal Frankie Yale to do it. Over the next few years the new Torrio-Capone regime went to war with rival bootlegging gangs in Chicago. In 1924 they killed Charles Dion O'Bannion, head of the Irish North Side gang. That didn't end the war, however, which went on for several more years. Capone's younger brother Frank died in a hail of rival gangsters' bullets in 1924. In February 1925 Torrio, who had been badly wounded in a shootout, decided to retire. He told Capone, "It's all yours". At the tender age of 26, Al Capone found himself in control of a sophisticated crime organization with 1,000 gunmen at his command and a $300,000-a-week payroll. He was up to it, however, and made a smooth transition from a simple gun-toting leg-breaker, pimp and killer to a "business executive" (his business card stated that he sold "second-hand furniture"). It was estimated that at one point he had approximately half of Chicago's police department on his payroll, and his reach extended to the highest levels of Chicago's city government and even into the Illinois legislature (he was also suspected of having the Illinois governor "in his pocket"). He controlled the local political process by terrorizing voters into voting for candidates he picked. So great was his power that he claimed he "owned" Chicago, and once publicly assaulted the mayor of nearby Cicero--who was on his payroll--on the steps of City Hall for doing something without his clearance, while the local police looked the other way.
Capone was probably the first "equal-opportunity" mob boss. While many of his fellow Italian and Sicilian gangsters would only hire those from their own ethnic group, Capone hired Jews, Irish, Poles, Slovaks, blacks--as long as he considered them trustworthy, they could work for Capone. He even purged the Chicago organized crime scene of "Mustache Petes", the old-time Sicilian gangsters who he didn't think were capable of running a "modern" crime organization. Capone ran Chicago's gambling, prostitution and bootlegging empire, getting rich giving people what they wanted. He was soon wildly popular among the citizenry and was even cheered at the ballpark, while "respectable" citizens like President Herbert Hoover were not. Capone absorbed smaller gangs into his own--sometimes by negotiation, other times by gunfire--extending his reach to outside the Chicago environs and expanding his empire even further. He was, however, always concerned for his own safety and surrounded himself with trusted bodyguards (including Frank Gallucio, the man responsible for his nickname, "Scarface"). Several attempts were made on his life by rival mobsters--one time a convoy of cars full of gangster Hymie Weiss' gunmen shot up a restaurant at which Capone was dining; the place was destroyed, but Capone came through unscathed. Another time would-be assassins poisoned his soup, but his luck held out again.
On Valentine's Day in 1929 Capone ordered the bloody "St. Valentine's Day Massacre". His underlings found out the location of the warehouse of his rival George Moran (aka "Bugs" Moran) and that Moran was to attend a meeting there at a particular time. Capone sent a carload of his gunmen dressed as police officers to the address. Once there they lined up the seven men they found, but Moran wasn't among them; he was on the sidewalk heading towards the building when he saw the "police car" pull up in front and he quickly ducked into a nearby store. Nevertheless, Capone's gunmen machine-gunned them to death. Following the massacre (when Moran was later asked who he thought was responsible for the murders, he replied, "Only Capone kills like that"), public opinion about Capone began to change. He was not above killing on his own, either. When he was informed that his bodyguards John Scalise and Albert Anselmi were part of an assassination plot against him, he decided to take care of the matter himself. To put their minds at ease, he threw a banquet in their honor. While delivering a glowing testimonial to them, Capone suddenly pulled out an Indian club and beat both men to death.
Although local and state authorities had been trying to bring down Capone for years, the federal government finally managed to do it by prosecuting him for income-tax evasion. He was tried, found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, GA. In 1934 he was transferred to Alcatraz, a federal prison on Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay that was set up to hold the nation's worst criminals. He never finished out his sentence, though. In 1939 he was paroled because of the ravages of neurosyphilis, a disease he contracted while running Torrio's and Colosimo's whorehouses. He lived the last eight years of his life as a virtual zombie at his estate in Florida, his brain almost totally destroyed by the disease.Alphonse Gabriel Capone
January 17, 1899 "Capricorn" in Brooklyn, New York - January 25, 1947 (age 48) in Palm Island, Florida (syphilis) - Polish-born Meyer Lansky emigrated to New York with his family and grew up in the Lower East Side. It was there that he ran into Bugsy Siegel, at the time a teenaged neighborhood gangster, and the two would remain lifelong friends. When Lansky saw the kinds of money Siegel was making from his various illegal activities--mainly gambling--he decided that this was the line of work for him. His specialty was the floating crap game, and he was so successful at that and other gambling schemes that he and Siegel soon controlled a large gang that was known as the Bugs and Meyer Mob. The gang's size, and Lansky's business acumen, attracted the attention of another local gangster, Lucky Luciano, who approached Lansky and invited him to participate in his idea of forming a national criminal syndicate. The Prohibition Era was a goldmine for Lansky and other gangsters, and he, Siegel and Luciano became incredibly wealthy from bootlegging, prostitution, drug smuggling, gambling and other rackets. In the 1930s Luciano's dream of a national crime commission became a reality, and Lansky was appointed to a seat on its board of directors. Lansky's specialty was financial matters and he proved to be a genius at laundering the mob's illegal profits and squeezing every last penny from its legal and illegal investments. When his friend Luciano was sent to prison, Lansky managed to get him an early release by ensuring his cooperation with the U.S. government in its preparation for the invasion of Sicily. After Luciano was deported to Italy, Lansky took over the management of his empire. Friendship only went so far in the mob, however. His good friend Siegel got into trouble by wasting millions of dollars of "wiseguy" money building Las Vegas, and when the decision was made to have him killed, Lansky went along with it.
In the 1950s Lansky formed a friendship with Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, and the mob was given basically a blank check to run all the rackets in Cuba, especially the gambling casinos, prostitution and drug smuggling, with a large cut of the profits going to Batista. From Cuba Lansky spread his gambling and prostitution rackets to other South American countries, and even had a hand--although not a public one--in the casinos in Hong Kong and Macao. Lansky's fortunes began to wane, however, in the late 1960s when the U.S. government went after him for income tax evasion. He fled to Israel, and claimed citizenship there as a returning Jew. However, after legal wrangling with the Israeli government, Lansky's visa was revoked and he was deported back to the U.S. He stood trial, but managed to avoid conviction, reportedly because of his extensive political connections. He settled into a comfortable life in Miami, Florida, where he died of a heart attack in 1983.Maier Suchowljansky
July 4, 1902, "Cancer/Tiger" in Grodno, Poland, Russian Empire [now Hrodna, Belarus] - January 16, 1983 (age 80) in New York City (lung cancer) - One of seven children of dirt-poor Georgia farmers, Charles Arthur Floyd was born on February 3, 1904. His family moved to Oklahoma shortly after his birth, where they bought a small farm. Their luck was no better in Oklahoma than it was in Georgia, and drought, plagues of insects and devastating dust storms combined to keep them just barely out of the poorhouse. When Floyd was 16 he married, had a son and left the farm looking for work, but was unable to find any. Desperate to keep his family fed, he got hold of a gun and robbed a post office, netting $350 in pennies. He was soon arrested for the crime, but his father managed to get him out of trouble. Charles, however, liked the idea of being able to score such "easy money" and he and his wife headed to St. Louis, Missouri, where he figured the pickings were better than they were in rural Oklahoma. He robbed a grocery store and got more than $16,000. The money didn't last long, however, as he was soon arrested by local police who became suspicious of someone who had no job and no means of support driving a brand-new car and wearing expensive clothes. They searched the car and found money from the grocery store robbery, some of it still wrapped in paper with the store's name on it. He was sentenced to five years in state prison, during which time his wife gave birth to a son and divorced him. Released after having served three years, Floyd vowed that he would die before going back to prison again. He went back home to Oklahoma and discovered that his father had been killed in an argument with a local man, who was tried for the crime but acquitted. Soon afterward the man disappeared and was never seen again. Floyd, who had told several people that he would kill the man the first chance he got, was suspected of murdering him, but there was no evidence and he was never charged. He soon moved to East Liverpool, Ohio, which was a haven for bootleggers and liquor smugglers. He hired himself out as an enforcer for many of the gangs that operated in the area and gained a reputation as a cold, efficient killer. Heading to Kansas City, he hooked up with one of the criminal gangs that infested the area at the time, many of which were under the protection of the corrupt Pendergast political machine. It was there that he picked up the two things that would make him one of the era's most famous criminals: his skill with a machine gun and the nickname "Pretty Boy," given to him by a prostitute who was enamored of him. He hated the name, but it stuck and added to his reputation. Also adding to his reputation was his involvement in more than 30 bank robberies and ten murders.
Floyd robbed so many banks in Oklahoma that bank insurance rates doubled. He was involved in a shootout with police in Bowling Green, Ohio, in which his accomplice and a police officer were killed and his girlfriend was shot and captured, but he managed to escape. His name and that of fellow professional triggerman Adam Richetti surfaced during the investigation into the infamous "Kansas City Massacre" of June 17, 1933, in which five men, including an FBI agent and several local police officers, were killed during an attempt to free a gang leader being transported to prison, although Floyd always denied being involved. One theory, however, was that it wasn't an attempt to free the hood, a small-timer named Frank Nash--who was one of those killed--but an assassination ordered by Nash's associates, who were afraid he'd rat them out in exchange for a release from prison or a reduced sentence. The theory was given credence by the fact that both Floyd and Richetti didn't belong to any particular gang and had no real ties to Kansas City, but were well known as killers for hire.
His spree of murders and robberies continued, and after gangster John Dillinger was shot to death in an FBI ambush in Chicago in 1934, Floyd was named "Public Enemy #1." Although there was a $25,000 reward for his capture, Floyd was considered a hero in his area of Oklahoma, one reason being that whenever he returned there he would use some of the loot from his previous robberies to buy food and clothes for many of the poverty-stricken residents of the Cookson Hills, where he grew up. Also, whenever he robbed banks in the area, the first thing he did was tear up all the mortgages he could find, an act that endeared him to many of the local residents who were on the verge of losing their homes, farms and businesses to the banks.
Floyd's career was coming to a close, though. On October 19, 1934, three men robbed the Tiltonsville (Ohio) Bank. Two of them were positively identified as Floyd and Richetti. The next day the two gunmen were spotted by police in nearby Wellsville, and in the ensuing chase and gun battle Richetti was shot and captured, but Floyd once again escaped. Three days later, acting on a tip, police and FBI agents surrounded him at a farm outside East Liverpool, Ohio. Although armed, he didn't fire at the lawmen but attempted to flee. After ignoring orders to halt, Pretty Boy Floyd was shot dead by an East Liverpool sheriff's deputy.Charles Arthur Floyd
February 3, 1904 "Aquarius/Dragon" in Georgia - October 22, 1934 (age 30) in East Liverpool, Ohio (shot by police) - Bugsy Siegel (born Benjamin Siegelbaum) came out of the tough Williamsburgh section of Brooklyn, and was involved in criminal activities from an early age. As a teenager he struck up a friendship with another local gangster, Meyer Lansky, that would last the rest of their lives, and in fact one of their first business dealings together was the formation of a gang of local toughs called the "Bugs and Meyer Mob". Siegel, unlike many of his contemporaries, didn't fit the stereotype of a typical gangster. He was tall, had thick wavy hair, movie-star good looks and clear, piercing blue eyes. While Lansky - as always - was the brains and financial genius behind the mob, Siegel was the brawn, always preferring to use his fists, his knife or his gun whenever an obstacle appeared, and soon got a reputation as a vicious and fearless killer. It was during this period that he acquired the nickname "Bugsy". While that name often was used as a term of respect or honor, in Siegel's case it was used as a synonym for "crazy" in recognition of his penchant for explosive, senseless violence (he hated the nickname and was known to physically assault anyone unwise enough to use it in his presence).
Siegel is most famous for his transformation of Las Vegas, Nevada, into a gambling mecca, although in reality that isn't quite true. Gambling had been legal in Nevada for quite some time and there were already gambling establishments in Las Vegas when Siegel got there. A Los Angeles businessman was trying to build a huge luxury hotel and casino to which he was hoping to attract wealthy film-industry and businesspeople from Los Angeles, but he was running into financial problems. Siegel, who had been unsuccessfully trying to gain a foothold in the gambling business in Las Vegas, seized the opportunity and bought a controlling interest in the project. He renamed the hotel "The Flamingo", after his nickname for his girlfriend, actress Virginia Hill. Siegel convinced many of his organized-crime friends and associates to put both the mob's money and their own into the venture, and he soon had more than a million dollars to work with. Unfortunately, Siegel's lack of business experience and his unfamiliarity with Las Vegas and the construction industry in general resulted in huge overruns as costs escalated, much of it due to theft, double-billing and other fraudulent business practices by many of the resort's contractors and suppliers. Soon the estimated price tag of the complex had ballooned from $1 million to $6 million, with no end in sight and no revenue coming in. The casino finally opened at the end of 1946, but opening night was a disaster. The weather was awful and kept many potential customers away, few of the locals showed up, and since the hotel wasn't finished yet, the customers who did gamble there took their lodgings at several of the other downtown casinos, thereby cutting into the hotel's profits on food and services. A few days after it opened the Flamingo was basically empty, and shortly thereafter Siegel closed it in order to finish up the hotel.
Siegel's mob "friends" were furious and wanted to put out a contract on his life, but were persuaded by Siegel's friend Lansky to let him have more time to finish the complex. In March the hotel was finally finished and the casino opened up again, and since gamblers were now able to stay in the hotel and avail themselves of food and entertainment in addition to the gambling, the casino began to make money, By the middle of 1947 it was showing a $250,000 profit for the year.
However, if Siegel thought he was off the hook, he was mistaken. On June 20, 1947, he was sitting on the couch at his home in Beverly Hills when gunmen standing outside his living room window opened fire on him. He was killed instantly. Although it has never been established who had ordered the hit, conventional wisdom is that his mob associates, even though they were now making money from the casino, were still angry with him for the financial losses they incurred during the construction phase, especially since much of the money came out of their own pockets.Benjamin Hymen Siegelbaum
February 28, 1906 "Pisces/Horse" in Brooklyn, New York - June 20, 1947 (age 41) in Beverly Hills, California (homicide by gunshot) - Lester Joseph Gillis, aka "Baby Face Nelson", began his crime career at an early age in a street gang in the Chicago slums. He was given the nickname "Baby Face" by his gang members because he looked much younger than he actually was (14). His specialties were car theft, bootlegging and armed robbery. He spent several years in prison on auto theft and bank robbery charges. In 1932, while being returned to prison from a trial for another bank robbery, he escaped custody and fled to California, where he hooked up with a bootlegging gang. Nelson traveled among California, Indiana and Minnesota, becoming involved in several murders.
In 1934 he returned to the Chicago area, where he hooked up with a gang led by the infamous John Dillinger. Later that year the FBI learned that Nelson, his wife and other members of the Dillinger gang were staying at a resort lodge in northern Wisconsin. They surrounded the lodge, but in the ensuing gun battle Nelson, Dillinger and other gangsters escaped. Nelson broke into a nearby house and took its occupants hostage. When FBI agents and local police checked the house, Nelson opened fire, killing one of the agents, then escaped. Not long afterward the Dillinger gang, including Nelson, robbed a bank in South Bend, IN, killing a police officer. Later, in Chicago, Nelson killed two police officers who happened upon a meeting of the gang. On 6/22/34 Dillinger was shot dead by FBI agents in Chicago, and Nelson and the rest of the gang fled to California, but returned to Chicago a short time later. The FBI received a tip that he had been seen driving a stolen car near Barrington, IL, and sent two agents to investigate. The agents spotted the car with Nelson and a fellow gang member, Paul Chase, and a running gun battle ensued. By the time it was over the two FBI agents had been killed and Nelson, mortally wounded, was driven away by his accomplice. He died that night. His body was left near a cemetery, where it was found the next morning.Lester M. Gillis
December 4, 1908 "Sagittarius/Monkey" in Chicago, Illinois - September 27, 1934 (age 25) in Barrington, Illinois (shot by FBI agents) - Mickey Cohen was born on 4 September 1913 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was married to Lavonne Weaver. He died on 29 July 1976 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Meyer Harris Cohen
September 4, 1913 "Virgo/Ox" in Brooklyn, New York City - July 29, 1976 (age 62) in Los Angeles, California - Chicago gangster George "Bugs" Moran was born to French immigrants on August 21, 1893 as Adelard Cunin in St. Paul, MN. He left St. Paul at age 19 and moved to Chicago, where he soon hooked up with several of the city's street gangs and got a taste of the criminal underworld. He took to it readily, and before he was 21 he had been jailed three times.
Moran, like most gang bosses of the 1920s, came into his own with the advent of Prohibition in 1920. He became the head of a very successful bootlegging outfit known as the North Side Gang. In that capacity he came into conflict with Chicago mobsters Johnny Torrio and Al Capone. Torrio, who only used violence when absolutely necessary, worked out an agreement with Moran and another gangster, Charles Dion O'Bannion, but that didn't last too long. Moran and O'Bannion detested Capone, often calling him by his nickname "Scarface"--Capone was extremely sensitive about the big knife scar on his face and was known to have killed men who used that nickname in his presence--and O'Bannion eventually paid the price for his defiance of Torrio and Capone: he was assassinated by Capone/Torrio gunmen. Moran attended O'Bannion's funeral--as did Capone and Torrio--and vowed to avenge his friend's murder.
Moran's mob, and the remnants of O'Bannion's gang, engaged in a bloody war with the Torrio/Capone outfit. They tried to kill both Torrio and Capone, once when Capone was spotted getting out of his car on the street and another time when he and his associates were dining in a restaurant. Capone escaped both attempts uninjured, but Torrio was not so luckily. A carload of Moran's gunmen spotted Torrio's car on the street and opened fire, hitting Torrio at least five times. He survived, but shortly afterward decided to retire and turned over the reins to Capone.
Capone and Moran eventually reached a truce, of sorts. While there were no bloody gun battles as there had been in the past, the two continued to take potshots at each other--Moran would hijack some of Capone's bootlegging trucks, Capone would burn down one of Moran's legitimate businesses, etc. However, it wasn't long before this escalated into full-scale violence, and Moran had several of Capone's friends and associates killed. Two of them were Antonio Lombardo and "Patsy" Lolordo, who had been longtime friends of Capone. He vowed to wipe out Moran once and for all. To that end, he engineered an elaborate assassination plot against Moran and his mob at their headquarters on Clark Street in Chicago. On Feb. 14, 1929, Capone sent a squad of killers dressed as police, complete with police car, to the building, expecting to find Moran and his gang there. Unfortunately, they mistook one of Moran's gangsters for him, not realizing that Moran was in fact walking toward the building when he saw the "police car" outside of it, and he turned around and walked away. Capone's killers lined up the seven men they found in the building and machine-gunned them to death, an incident that became known as The St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
Moran, when asked by reporters who he thought was behind it, replied, "Nobody but Capone kills like that". His organization remained intact, but when Prohibition was repealed, his gang's fortunes declined, and a few years later Moran decided to leave Chicago. He didn't completely forgo the gangster life, however. In 1936, seven years after the St. Valentine's massacre, a hitman named Jack McGurn--aka "Machine Gun" McGurn--who was widely suspected of being the main triggerman in the massacre was murdered in a bowling alley by a squad of gunmen, and a valentine's card was left near his body. A rhort rhyming limerick about McGurn was also left with the body, and since both Moran and his mentor O'Bannion were known to favor pranks and limericks, it was widely assumed that it was Moran who had McGurn killed as payback for the 1929 killings.
Moran's fortunes declined in the 1930s. He spent several stretches in prison, for relatively penny-ante crimes like mail fraud and robbery. He was eventually sentenced to ten years in Leavenworth Federal Prison on a bank-fraud charge, and it was in Leaenworth that he died of lung cancer on Feb. 25, 1957. He was buried in the pauper's section of the prison cemetery.Adelard Cunin
February 25, 1893 "Pisces/Snake" in Minnesota - February 25, 1957 (age 64) in Leavenworth, Kansas (lung cancer) - Louis "Lepke" Buchalter--the nickname Lepke means "Little Louis" in Yiddish)--was one of the top Jewish-American gangsters of the Depression Era and the only major mob boss to ever have been executed by authorities for his crimes. He was born February 6, 1897, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. His introduction to crime was pushcart shoplifting, and he had already served two prison terms by 1919. He and his friend Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro strong-armed their way to control of the unions representing garment workers on the Lower East Side, enabling him to shake down factory owners by threatening to hit them with strikes. Control of the unions also guaranteed income and capital by diverting union dues and bank accounts. From their base in the garment industry, Buchalter branched out into shaking down other area businesses with his protection racket. Though he was later to enjoy greater power and income from his ventures after becoming a major mob boss, he kept control over the garment industry unions as they were so highly lucrative.
In the early 1930s Buchalter and Italian-American gangsters Lucky Luciano and Johnny Torrio--the former boss of the Chicago mob and mentor of transplanted New Yorker Al Capone--allied themselves. Luciano's Jewish-American associates Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky formed "Murder Inc.", a group of professional killers who would be on call 24/7 to handle any "problems" that afflicted La Cosa Nostra. Murder Inc. originally was a group of mostly Jewish-American "torpedos" from the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. Opeating out of the back of a candy store, they proved highly effective in maintaining mob discipline and eliminating problems such as eyewitnesses, informants and "customers" unable or unwilling to pay loan sharks. The band of brothers-in-arms eventually were used to fulfill most murder "contracts." As Siegel and Lansky (the latter widely regarded as the financial brains of organized crime in America) had moved on to other, larger pastures, control over Murder Inc. was ceded to Buchalter and Albert Anastasia (known in underworld circles as "The Mad Hatter" and, more ominously, "The Lord High Executioner".)
The group of killers was credited with carrying out many contract killings throughout the country, including the slaying of Jewish-American bootlegger and northern New York State crime boss Dutch Schultz at the Palace Chophouse in Newark, New Jersey, on October 23, 1935. The Schultz murder was a major event for Buchalter and Murder Inc., signaling their arrival as a major force in organized crime (another Jewish mobster, Louis Amberg, was murdered by the group the very same day). Among Jewish-American gangsters, Buchalter arguably was the most violent and the most feared. He reportedly killed as many as 100 men himself, and may have ordered 1000 or more hits, nationwide, from his underlings, which included 'Abe Kid Twist Reles' (played by Peter Falk in Murder, Inc. (1960), which brought him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod) and Frank Carbo, who later established himself as "The Czar of Boxing" (the Mafia, via Anastasia, Carbo and Carbo's partner Blinky Palermo, took over the sport of boxing and manipulated the odds and fixed the fights to abet their bookmaking operations. Carbo ran New York boxing, which WAS boxing until the 1960s, when he and Palermo were convicted and sentenced to prison). The FBI--whose director J. Edgar Hoover denied the very existence of the Mafia until 1957, possibly due to their blackmailing him because of his alleged homosexual proclivities--investigated Buchalter during the early 1930s, but he managed to avoid arrest due to the bribing of federal judges and the Mafia's political connections (until the Richard Nixon administration, the Mafia was associated with the Democratic Party. Gore Vidal, in one of his essays, estimated that organized crime provided approximately 15% of the Democratic Party's budget in the 1960s. In mobbed-up cities like Chicago, a Democratic Party ward headquarters was synonymous with local Mafia headquarters/clubhouse). The FBI continued to hound Little Louis, anxious to convict him on a narcotics trafficking charge, while New York City special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey went after him as one of many targets of the "Syndicate" he was dedicated to obliterating. Fearing the implacable Dewey (who would use his fame as the country's most successful crimebuster, the man who put away Lucky Luciano and other organized crime bigwigs, to the state house in Albany and two bids for President as the Republican nominee in 1944 and '48), Buchalter was tricked by a childhood friend into surrendering to federal authorities on a narcotics trafficking charge on the stipulation he would not get turned over to Dewey. Convicted, he was sent to Leavenworth for 14 years, later extended to 30 because of Lepke's involvement in union racketeering.
After being arrested for murder, "Kid Twist" Reles turned informant for New York state authorities in 1940 and fingered Buchalter for four murders, including that of Brooklyn candy store owner Joseph Rosen, a former garment industry trucker, in 1936. Reles, himself a professional killer who was seeking to avoid the electric chair for his own crimes, said he overheard the order for the Rosen hit given by Buchalter himself. New York City District Attorney William O'Dwyer, who planned to run for mayor, arraigned Buchalter and other of his Murder Inc. associates on the basis of Kid Twist's testimony to the grand jury.
The trial of the Murder Inc. boss was scheduled for November 12, 1941, and Lepke was transported from Leavenworth to New York City to stand trial for the Rosen murder. However, on the morning of the trial, Reles--who was being by guarded by six New York City police officers in Room 623 of the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island--"fell" from the sixth-floor window to his death. The detectives said it was a suicide, but the angle of trajectory of his body indicated that he had been pushed or thrown out of the window. Albert Anastassia, the "Lord High Executioner" himself, had allegedly put a $100,000 bounty on the Kid's head, though it was widely believed that Mafia boss Frank Costello "touched" the detectives guarding the Kid, bribing them to ensure that Reles would never get to the courtroom to testify. What is known is that Kid Twist, the would-be "stool pigeon", became known after his death as "The canary who sang, but couldn't fly."
Lepke had run out of luck, however. O'Dwyer obtained a conviction based on the testimony of another Murder, Inc. turncoat, Albert Tannenbaum. In December 1941 the jury convicted Buchalter of first-degree murder four hours after being handed the case for their perusal and judgment. Buchalter was sentenced to death by electrocution in the electric chair. In October 1942, the conviction and sentence was upheld by the New York State Court of Appeals, and New York City requested that Buchalter be turned over by the federal government for execution of sentence.
Lepke put up the greatest fight of his life to avoid his fate, calling in favors from the Mafia's friends in the U.S. Justice Department and the court system and managed to remain at Leavenworth until January 1944, when he was turned over to New York. His execution was slated to take place on March 2, but it was postponed when the state's highest court of appeal decided on one final review. Gov. Dewey was forced to grant his former nemesis Buchalter, along with fellow defendants Emanuel Weiss and Louis Capone, a 48-hour reprieve. Ultimately, the court confirmed the conviction and sentence. Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, one of the most powerful figures in organized crime history, was executed at the state penitentiary in Ossining (the fabled Sing Sing) in the electric chair affectionately dubbed "Old Sparky" on March 4, 1944. He 47 years old.
After Lepke's conviction Albert Anastassia was the sole boss of Murder, Inc., but with the incarceration and deportation of Lucky Luciano he moved up in the Mafia ranks, eventually taking over the Mangano Family (later known as the Gambino Family), after the family don, Anastassia's nemesis Vincent Mangano, disappeared. With Frank Costello's support, he was elevated to boss of the Magano Family after The Mad Hatter successfully claimed he had hit Mangano in self-defense, as the don was determined to kill him. Costello wanted Anastassia as a don in order to counter the ambitions of Vito Genovese, the real-life model for Don Corleone in The Godfather (1972).
As a boss, Anastassia's brutal ways eventually worked against him. In 1952 he violated a cardinal rule of the mob--don't kill outsiders. Anastasia ordered the murder of one Arnold Schuster, a young tailor's assistant, after seeing Schuster on television taking credit for fingering fugitive bank robber Willie Sutton (the man who said he robbed banks because "that's where the money is"). In a rage, Anastasia ordered Schuster to be killed, telling his men, "I can't stand squealers! Hit that guy!"
The murder of an outsider opened up the Mafia to unwanted public scrutiny. Genovese used the incident to begin undermining Anastassia, but it wasn't until Anastasia's own ambitions alienated Mafia kingpin Meyer Lansky (the inspiration for "Hyman Roth" in The Godfather Part II (1974)) that Genovese could act. When Anastasia horned in on Lansky's highly lucrative Cuban gambling operations, Lansky gave Genovese permission to eliminate the interloper, which Genovese arranged as part of his greater plan to undermine Frank Costello's role as "Prime Minister of the Mob" and establish himself as "Capo di tutti capi" ("Boss of Bosses").
On the morning of October 25, 1957, Anastasia was assassinated in the barber shop of the Park Sheraton Hotel (now the Park Central Hotel, on 56th Street and 7th Avenue) in New York City by two men wearing scarves. Anastasia's bodyguard was not on the scene, having decided to go for a walk after parking the boss's car in an underground garage. The Anastasia hit was carried out with an efficiency of which the Lord High Executioner's former Murder, Inc. partner, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, surely would have approved.Louis Buchalter
February 6, 1897 "Aquarius/Rooster" in New York City - March 4, 1944 (age 47) in Sing-Sing Prison, New York (executed by electric chair) - Frank Costello was born Francisco Castiglia in Cosenza, Italy, in 1891. His family moved to New York, and as a young man he joined the local Mafia gang. When the "Castellamarese War" between gang bosses Giuseppe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano ended, Costello was one of the few who were held in high respect. Maranzano feared the young men who survived the gang bloodbath, however, so he put together a hit list that included Costello, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and many others. Luciano succeeded in getting rid of Maranzano first, though, and Costello was put in charge of Luciano's own family along with Vito Genovese (aka "Don Vitone"). Genovese and Costello rarely saw eye to eye, and when Genovese went into exile in Italy to escape serious criminal charges, Costello took over complete control. Luciano was also arrested and, later, deported. Along with gangster Meyer Lansky, Costello ran Luciano's business in America. A few years later Genovese suddenly returned, and wanted to re-assert complete control over the family.
A man who could have been a valuable Costello ally was his close friend Albert Anastasia. Anastasia did not get along with his bosses, brothers Phillip and Vincent Mangano, so he stuck close to Costello. Costello and Anastasia soon began talking about killing the Manganos. If Anastasia had an entire family behind him, he reasoned, he could easily then take down the hated Genovese. Sure enough, in 1951 the Mangano brothers went missing and were declared dead. Phillip's body was eventually found with three bullet holes in the back of his head, and Vincent was never found at all. As he had counted on, Albert was made boss of the family.
Anastasia was not as helpful to Costello as he could have been, however. He was one of the most feared men not only in the organized crime world but in the country due to his incredibly violent nature and his propensity for killing anyone he felt like, at any time and for any reason--or for no reason at all. He also affected the speech patterns of tough-guy actor James Cagney, which added to his fearsomeness. Costello also was beginning to be plagued with mental breakdowns, and soon began seeing a psychiatrist regularly. When Genovese heard about it he decided that Costello could no longer be trusted to keep the deep, dark secrets about the Mafia that he was privy to. Genovese then hired contract killer Vincent Gigante--who would later become boss of the Genovese family--to kill Costello. In the lobby of a New York City hotel in 1956, Frank Costello was shot in the head, but amazingly did not die. He did, however, retire soon afterward, although he did keep his hands in the "company business".
Over the years, after Anastasia's murder--shot to death while in a barber's chair--and Genovese's death, Costello became friends with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and would fix horse races as a favor for his new "friend". As the years passed Costello's health declined and he died of a heart attack on his estate on Long Island, New York.
Frank Costello will forever remain one of the biggest Mafia legends in history.Francisco Castiglia
January 26, 1891 "Aquarius/Rabbit" in Cosenza, Italy - February 18, 1973 (age 82) in New York City (heart attack) - Joseph Bonanno was born on 18 January 1905 in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, Italy. He was a writer, known for Bonanno: A Godfather's Story (1999). He was married to Fay Labruzzo. He died on 11 May 2002 in Tucson, Arizona, USA.January 18, 1905 "Capricorn/Snake" in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, Italy - May 11, 2002 (age 97) in Tucson, Arizona (heart failure)
- 'Legs' Diamond was born on 10 July 1897 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was married to Alice Kenny. He died in December 1931 in Albany, New York, USA.Jack Moran
July 10, 1897 "Cancer/Rooster" in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - December 18, 1931 (age 34) in Albany, New York (shot to death) - Arnold Rothstein was born on 17 January 1882 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. He was married to Mrs. Arnold Robinson. He died on 6 November 1928 in New York City, New York, USA.January 17, 1882 "Capricorn/Horse" in New York City - November 6, 1928 (age 46) in New York City (gun shot)
- Dutch Schultz was born on 6 August 1901 in Bronx, New York, USA. He was married to Frances. He died on 24 October 1935 in Newark, New Jersey, USA.Arthur Simon Flegenheimer
August 6, 1901 "Leo/Ox" in Bronx, New York - October 24, 1935 (age 34) in Newark, New Jersey (homicide by gunshot) - Prohibition-era gang boss Johnny Torrio was born Giovanni Torrio in Irsina, Italy. When Johnny was two years old his father died, and his mother left Italy for New York City.
Torrio got his start in the criminal underworld at an early age, working as a bouncer in several Manhattan dives. He eventually joined a street gang and within a short time was the gang's leader. His leadership abilities resulted in the gang accruing a considerable amount of money, and the savvy Torrio opened up a legitimate pool hall as a front for the gang and a place they could meet and plan their criminal activities, such as gambling and loan-sharking. His abilities brought him to the attention of the leaders of the notorious Five Points Gang, among whose members were a squat Brooklyn gangster named Al Capone. Capone and Torrio developed a close, and lifelong, friendship, with Capone looking to Torrio as his mentor. Torrio had a mentor, too, in Five Points boss Paolo Vaccarelli (aka Paul Kelly), who taught him invaluable lessons about how to survive and prosper in organized crime. One of them was to stop acting, dressing and swearing like a street thug and adopt a more diplomatic, conservative way of doing things, a lesson that Torrio took to heart, he earned the nickname "The Fox" because of his slyness at getting what he wanted and keeping out of the spotlight at the same time. Torrio's gang branched out into legitimate businesses, among the first to do so, but its main sources of income were prostitution, the numbers racket, truck hijacking and drug-trafficking.
One of Torrio's mob associates was a squat killer named Frankie Yale. At a time when Capone and Torrio were in trouble with the New York authorities (Capone was facing a murder charge and looking at some considerable prison time), Yale suggested they take off for Chicago until the heat died down. Torrio owned some brothels and bars in Chicago and in 1919 took Capone with him to work his places as a bouncer/bartender. When Prohibition went into effect in 1920, Torrio immediately saw the huge profits that could be made in smuggling, making and manufacturing illegal liquor, and tried to persuade Chicago gang boss Jim Colosimo to get in on the ground floor, but Colosimo didn't think the heat he would draw from the police and rival mobsters was worth it, and refused. Not long afterward, Torrio invited Colosimo to a meeting in Colosimo's restaurant. After Colosimo arrived and sat down at a table, a squad of gunmen showed up and shot him dead. Torrio, Capone and Yale were suspected of the killing, but nothing was ever proven and they were never arrested for it. Torrio took over Colosimo's vast criminal holdings and entered the bootlegging business.
The Capone-Torrio mob prospered, raking in millions from bootlegging, prostitution, loan-sharking and gambling. They controlled criminal activity in the Loop, the city's main business district, and the ethnic areas of the South Side. However, one area they did not control was the city's prestigious Gold Coast, including the wealthy lakefront area. That was controlled by Irish gangster Charles Dion O'Bannion and his North Side gang. The Torrio/Capone and O'Bannion gangs entered into a somewhat uneasy truce, but it didn't last long because Torrio and O'Bannion hated each other. O'Bannion was also having trouble with a vicious and extremely violent Italian gang led by the notorious Genna brothers. The Gennas wanted to kill O'Bannion and wipe out his mob, but Torrio stopped them because he didn't want the heat that a full-fledged gang war would bring. However, when Torrio discovered that O'Bannion had cheated him out of more than $500,000 in a bootlegging deal, he gave the Gennas the go-ahead to kill O'Bannion. Unfortunately for Torrio, he was right about the possible repercussions from O'Bannion's murder. O'Bannion's allies in the North Side gang waged a brutal war against the combined Torrio/Capone/Genna forces, known as The Outfit. Murders were followed by reprisal murders, and on January 24, 1925, several of O'Bannion's mobsters spotted Torrio's car on the street and opened fire on it. Torrio was hit at least five times; the would-be assassins thought he was dead so they left the scene. Torrio survived, but eventually decided to leave Chicago. Three of the six Genna brothers were soon murdered, and the gang war continued for several more years, eventually resulting in the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre. When Torrio recovered from surgery for his wounds, he went to prison for a year, having been convicted of several charges of violating the Volstead Act (Prohibition). Upon his release from prison he was a changed man. The assassination attempt had deeply affected him, and he was troubled by the continuing and escalating violence he saw in the underworld. He decided to retire. He gathered his wife and mother and moved to Italy, leaving Capone in charge of his holdings.
Torrio stayed in Italy for several years, returning to the US in the 1930s to testify at Capone's income-tax-evasion trial. While in New York he met with gang boss Lucky Luciano and suggested that Luciano and other crime bosses stop their internecine wars and create one syndicate, a conglomerate of the various gangs that would work together for the good of the organization. Luciano liked it and took the idea to the other New York bosses. Eventually the idea took fruition, and an organization known variously as "The Outfit", "The Syndicate", "The Commission" and a host of other names was formed that consisted not only of the bosses of the New York gangs but of gang bosses from across the US.
In 1957 Torrio was sitting in a barber's chair waiting to get a haircut when he keeled over. He had had a massive heart attack, and although he was taken to the hospital and placed in an oxygen tent, he died several hours later. True to Torrio's code, his associates kept their mouths shut and no one found about about Torrio's death until almost a month after his burial.Giovanni Torrio
January 20, 1882 "Aquarius/Horse" in Irsina, Basilicata, Italy - April 16, 1957 (age 75) in Chicago, Illinois (heart attack) - Irish-American gangster Charles Dion O'Bannion, nicknamed "Deanie", was, unlike many of his fellow contemporary gangsters, born and raised in the US. From the small Illinois town of Marca, his family moved to Chicago after his mother's death in 1901, settling in an Irish neighborhood on the city's North Side.
O'Bannion's childhood friends included future gangsters Hymie Weiss, George Moran--aka "Bugs Moran"--and Vincent Drucci (aka "The Schemer"), all members of an Irish strongarm robbery crew called The Market Street Gang. The gang came into its own during the infamous Chicago newspaper wars, in which the city's competing newspapers hired gangs of thugs to beat up business owners who didn't sell their paper or newspaper boys who sold the competition's paper. O'Bannion graduated from beating up newspaper boys to safecracking--for which he was eventually arrested--and drugging patrons' drinks in the dives he worked at, after which he and his gang would rob them when they passed out.
O'Bannion was still a small-time hood when Prohibition came into effect in 1920, and it was then he found his calling. He began by smuggling beer, whiskey and gin from Canada to the US, and was extremely successful at it. He built his own outfit, known as The North Side Gang, and made huge amounts of money supplying the wealthy Chicago area called the Gold Coast, along the lakefront, with illegal liquor. He still kept his hand in the strongarm business, however, and his mob became infamous for hijacking the trucks of rival bootleggers, beating up or killing the drivers and taking their loads. When he married in 1921, he indulged his passion for flowers--and got himself a legitimate front for his rackets--by buying a flower shop, which eventually became the main supplier of floral arrangements for the funerals of many of the gangsters killed in the city's internecine mob wars.
Italian gangster Johnny Torrio had called a meeting of Chicago's bootleggers in 1920 to divide up the city and put a stop to the bloody battles among the various gangs. O'Bannion attended the meeting and was awarded the North Side territory, including the very profitable Gold Coast section, in exchange for supplying the Torrio gang with muscle in its effort to ensure that their candidate won the election for mayor of nearby Cicero, thus ensuring a haven from which they could run their organizations without fear of prosecution.
The "agreement" only lasted for a few years before O'Bannion started chafing under Torrio's control. In addition, the city of Cicero had become a virtual gold mine for Torrio since he assumed control of it, and O'Bannion wanted in. Torrio mollified him by giving him a strip of the city in which to establish his speakeasies. O'Bannion used that to persuade other Chicago speakeasy owners to move their operations to his Cicero fiefdom, to which Torrio took strong offense, but O'Bannion refused Torrio's order to stop bringing in new speakeasies. In the meantime, a family of brutally violent Italian bootleggers called the Gemma Brothers began moving into O'Bannion's Chicago territory, and his complaints to Torrio about them went unheeded. Infuriated, O'Bannion began hijacking the Gemma gang's trucks. The Gemmas decided to kill O'Bannion and wipe out his mob, but were stopped by the other Italian gangs, who did not want a full-fledged gang war bringing heat on them. The last straw, though, was when Torrio discovered that O'Bannion had double-crossed him on a liquor deal that had cost him more than $500,000. He finally gave the Gemmas the go-ahead to kill O'Bannion.
On November 10, 1924, on the pretense of buying flowers for a fellow mobster's funeral, gangster Frankie Yale and two compatriots visited O'Bannion's flower shop. As O'Bannion extended his hand to greet Yale, the mobster suddenly grabbed his arm with both hands and the two gunmen pulled out pistols and emptied them into O'Bannion. He died instantly.July 8, 1892 "Cancer/Dragon" in Aurora, Illinois - November 10, 1924 (age 32) in Chicago, Illinois (assassinated) - John Wayne Gacy was born in 1942 and grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. His father, John Stanley Gacy (1900-1969), was an alcoholic and beat him frequently during his violent rages. As Gacy grew up, he began to develop a identity crisis - doubting his own masculinity. At the age of 11, he suffered a blow to the head from a swing. Over the next five years, he had frequent blackouts until doctors found a clot in his brain that was removed with medications. Following that, he would feign 'heart problems' for attention.
He graduated from business college and started to work as a shoe salesman. Gacy married a co-worker worker, whose family owned a KFC in Waterloo, Iowa and began to work there as Manager. He gradually earned the respect of the local Jaycees. In May 1968 he was arrested for sexual misconduct with a young male employee. Gacy actually hired a thug to beat up the witness, which failed, and only increased the charges against him. He plead guilty to sodomy and was sentenced to 10 years. Gacy was a model prisoner and was paroled in 1970 after serving only 18 months.
He then moved to Chicago where he began his life anew as a building constructor. Gacy became popular with his new neighbors and colleagues. He would throw theme parties and often dress up as 'Pogo the Clown' for children's parties and charity shows. Gacy was also involved with the Democratic party and even had his picture taken with then First Lady Rosalynn Carter (wife of former President Jimmy Carter).
On February 12, 1971 he was once again charged with sexual misconduct towards a young man. The witness did not show up in court and the charges were dropped. He finished his parole on October 18, 1971. Gacy committed his first murder on January 3, 1972. His modus operandi would be to drive around town looking for young male runaways, ex-jailbirds or even male prostitutes. Gacy's victims ranged in age from 9 to 20 years. He would flash them a 'badge' or a 'gun' pretending to be an officer of the law and 'arrest' them. Gacy would then befriend them and take take them home where he showed them tricks with 'magic handcuffs'. Once he had subdued his victim he would torture, sodomize and garrote them. Then he would bury them in a crawl space beneath his house. When he ran out of space he began to dump bodies in neighboring rivers. After he divorced his second wife in 1976 the killings escalated as he had the house to himself. On October 25, 1976 he committed a double homicide! In December 1977 he actually let one of his victims leave after he had 'done' with him.
On December 12, 1978 he killed his 33rd and last victim; a 15-year-old boy, named Robert Piest, who lived in his neighborhood. This was Gacy's one big mistake. The victim had told someone he was going to see his "contractor" about a job and was never seen again. The "contractor" turned out to be Gacy. When the police dropped by his house they noticed the smell from the decomposing corpses underneath. When they saw his police record, it wasn't hard for them to get a search warrant of his house. A total of 29 bodies were extracted from the crawlspace and five more from the nearby river, of which 9 remain unidentified. Gacy was judged sane by the court psychiatrists and in 1980 was charged with 21 counts of life for murders committed before June 21, 1977 when Illinois reinstated the death sentence. For the 12 committed since then he got the death sentence.John Wayne Gacy Jr.
March 17, 1942 "Pisces/Horse" in Chicago, Illinois - May 10, 1994 (age 52) in Joliet, Illinois (executed by lethal injection) - Theodore Robert Bundy, more commonly known as "Ted", was one of the most prolific serial killers in the USA. He confessed to 36 murders, but nobody really knows how many had been committed or when he began his legacy of horror; the true total could be higher.
Ted was born to Eleanor Louise Cowell (Louise Bundy) and a father that had taken off when Eleanor discovered she was pregnant. In 1946, faced with limited options, she gave birth to him in an "unwed mother" facility and began a hopeless charade: as Ted grew up, she told him that her parents were his parents and that she was his sister. It wasn't until 1974 when he realized that his mother had lied to him for so many years. He grew to be a handsome, educated and intelligent man who appeared to be well-adjusted and affable. Bundy even volunteered for a crisis telephone hot-line (where he met famed author Ann Rule who was also a volunteer) and had a steady relationship with Diane Edwards (a.k.a. Stephanie Brooks), a girlfriend that would fuel his maniacal rage after she left him.
Ted was studying psychology at the University of Washington on January 31, 1974 when an attractive female student suddenly disappeared. Over the coming months and years, more disappearances followed. Ted's victims were generally young attractive women with dark hair parted in the middle. His modus operandi was to approach his potential victim feigning injury (for example, by wearing an arm-sling or a cast) ask them to help him carry his books or packages. He led them to a secluded area and when they were alone he would knock them on the head with a crowbar, stuff their bodies into his car, strangle them while they were unconscious and then rape the dead bodies (necrophilia). He would then leave the naked body in a wooded area, mostly Taylor Mountain in Washington State, where many of his victims were found.
Along with countless other suspects he was questioned by the police but he initially came out clean because he just didn't seem to 'fit the mold' of a maniacal serial killer. Bundy then went to law school at Salt Lake City, Utah where he murdered a police chief's daughter on October 21, 1974. Another murder followed, and another young woman went missing in Bountiful, Utah. In January 12, 1975, killings eerily similar to the Utah murders began popping up in Colorado. On August 16, 1975 he was arrested for being in possession of burglary tools by Salt Lake City police. When his bronze Volkwagen beetle was searched they found handcuffs, stockings and a home-made mask. Bundy was identified from a police lineup by a woman who had narrowly escaped his clutches in November 1974. In January 1977 he was extradited to Colorado to be tried for murder. In June 1977 he fled the Pitkin County Jail by jumping out of an open window. He was captured 8 days later.
He managed to escape again from the Garfield County Jail by sawing a hole in the ceiling of his cell on December 30, 1977. This time he traveled all the way to Tallahassee, Florida where he lived under pseudonyms including Christopher Hagen and Kenneth Misner. On January 15, 1978 he invaded the Chi Omega sorority on the Florida State University campus where he bludgeoned four girls and killed two. After he fled the Chi Omega sorority, he broke into the house of another woman and beat her severely before her worried roommates next door phoned the police. The young woman survived the attack. She would be his last living victim. On February 9, 1978 he kidnapped 12 year old Kimberly Leach, raped her and sliced her throat. Her body was found eight weeks later in a state park.
On February 15, 1978 he was arrested by Pensacola police when they did a check on his license plates and realized his car was stolen. Teeth impressions were made to compare to bite wounds found on one of the Chi Omega victims and the impressions matched the teeth marks on the victim. Bundy conducted his own defense with the help of several attorneys but, of course, it was all for naught; he was found guilty and sentenced to death by electrocution in 1979. A decade later, when death was finally looking down on him, he began confessing to a staggering amount of murders, 36 in total, but some investigators believe that the real total could be higher. He was executed on January 24, 1989 at the Florida State Prison in Starke, Florida. Many spectators cheered and celebrated his death with champagne.Theodore Robert Cowell
November 24, 1946 "Sagittarius/Dog" in Burlington, Vermont - January 24, 1989 (age 42) in Starke, Florida (execution by electric chair) - One of the USA's most notorious serial killers, Jeffrey Dahmer was born and raised in Bath Township, Ohio, a middle-class suburb of Akron. Much has been made of his childhood tendencies -including cases of cruelty to animals- but to outward appearances, at least, he seemed to be a normal child. As an adult he was always gainfully employed and was perceived as quiet and polite by co-workers. At the time of his arrest he had been working at a chocolate factory in Milwaukee and living alone in a small one-bedroom apartment. Dahmer's home was searched on July 22, 1991, after a young man fled his apartment and flagged down a police car. An investigation revealed that the apartment contained the remains of 11 young men, most of them black, Hispanic, or Asian. The bodies had been dismembered, and Dahmer confessed that he had cooked and eaten some of the remains. Asked why he committed such heinous acts, Dahmer told police that he killed because he was "lonely" and did not want his victims to leave him. He explained that he would meet potential victims in bars, shopping malls, or adult bookstores, and invite them back to his apartment where, in exchange for money or beer, he would photograph them naked. He would then drug the beer and, once the victim was unconscious, strangle and dismember the body. Dahmer's victims ranged in age from 14 to 33. On February 15, 1992, Dahmer was found guilty on 15 murder counts in Wisconsin. He was subsequently convicted of another killing in his Ohio hometown. Charges linking him to other murders were dropped for lack of evidence. He was sent to prison in Wisconsin with 15 mandatory life sentences to serve. The first year of his sentence, Dahmer was isolated from the general prison population for his own protection. In 1994 he was sent to a maximum security facility in Portage and was allowed some contact with the other inmates. He died after a brutal beating to death late night November 28, 1994, by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate who claimed God had instructed him to murder Jeffrey Dahmer. Even after Dahmer's death, legal battles continue over his estate. Several families of his victims sued him and were awarded millions of dollars in restitution. Those families have since been trying to gain control of the contents of Dahmer's apartment, including a 55-gallon vat he used to decompose bodies and the refrigerator where he stored his victims' hearts.Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer
May 21, 1960 "Gemini/Rat" in Bath Township, Ohio - November 28, 1994 (age 34) in Portage, Wisconsin (homicide) - Albert Fish was born on 19 May 1870 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. He died on 16 January 1936 in Ossining, New York, USA.Hamilton Howard Fish
May 19, 1870 "Taurus/Horse" in Washington, D.C. - January 16, 1936 (age 65) in Ossining, New York (executed by electric chair) - Additional Crew
Ed Gein and his elder brother Henry lived on a rural farm near Plainfield, WI. George Gein, his father, was a tanner and carpenter and was drunk most of the time. Augusta, Ed's domineering mother, was the real power of the house. She was a religious fanatic who constantly warned her sons about the sins of premarital sex and railed against "evil" women. Ed's father died in 1940, and brother Henry died four years later fighting a marsh fire (although it was later suspected that Ed might have killed him). Ed stayed at the family farm with his mother and never strayed out of the surrounding few counties. When she died of a stroke in 1945, Ed was left all alone at the "tender" age of 39. He sealed her bedroom and the rest of his house off, living in just the kitchen and one other room. During the period of 1950-55, he visited three local cemeteries at night and dug up at least ten graves. He removed bits and pieces from each body, returning some to their graves. He used skullcaps for bowls, and stitched chair seats and lampshades out of human skin. On special occasions, he would dance outside in the moonlight wearing numerous stitched skin coverings, including the face masks of some of his victims. His first murder was committed on December 8, 1954, the other occurred on November 16, 1957. He attacked his last victim in her store and dragged her body to a truck parked out back. Later that evening the victim's son stopped in at the store to check on his mother and found the doors locked, the cash register missing and a trail of blood leading out to the back door. He recalled that he had seen Ed at the store the day before. When the police went to his farm, they found her headless body in his shed, hanging by it's heels from the rafters. Gein was arrested and eventually confessed to his crimes. On January 16, 1958, he was sent to Central State Hospital at Waupun, WI. In November 1968, he was judged competent to stand trial. He was now diagnosed to have chronic schizophrenia, found "not guilty by reason of insanity" and returned to Waupun. It has been theorized that Gein might have killed two men who hired him as their hunting guide in 1952 and were never seen again. There were also two other unidentified women's body parts were found at his farm. In that his murder & grave robbing victims were all of middle or elderly age, these two women's remains were decisively young, in their teenage years. This was never conclusively investigated. In 1978, he was moved to Mendota Mental Health Institute. Gein was a model prisoner and died quietly in his sleep in the geriatric psychiatric ward in 1984. He is buried next to his mother in the Plainfield Cemetery.Edward Theodore Gein
August 27, 1906 "Virgo/Horse" in La Crosse, Wisconsin - July 26, 1984 (age 77) in Madison, Wisconsin (respiratory and heart failure)- Considered to be the first American serial killer and possibly the most prolific, he was also a con-man and bigamist. He was a doctor who studied medicine at Ann Arbor, MI. He then moved to New York where he practiced briefly. His first brush with the law occurred there when some corpses were found in his possession. He fled to Chicago where he worked for a drug company. The owner mysteriously disappeared and he became the owner. Over the next few years several people who crossed his path also mysteriously disappeared. In 1891 he began construction of a hotel at the corner of 63rd St. in Chicago. It was constructed by several builders over time and had a labyrinthine network of passages that would become his "torture chambers". It was during the Chicago World Fair of 1893 that he did most of his killings when his victims checked into his hotel. They were mainly young attractive women. Holmes would drug them, have sex with their bodies and then drop them down a chute into a gas chamber. There he would watch through a glass panel as they slowly choked to death. Then he would dissect their bodies and dispose of them in acid baths, furnaces or by using quicklime. However, it was because of insurance fraud in Texas that he was brought to the attention of the authorities again. Detective Geyer followed his trail through Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. The bodies of the Pietzel family were found in an Indianapolis boarding house and Holmes was arrested. On 11/30/1895 he received the death sentence. Holmes wrote in his memoirs that he had killed 27 people; however, when he was taken to the gallows he retracted his confession saying that he had done it just for a publicity stunt. Over 200 bodies were found in his Chicago death house, known as "'Holmes' Torture Castle".Herman Webster Mudgett
May 16, 1860 "Taurus/Monkey" in Gilmantown, New Hampshire - May 7, 1896 (age 35) in Moyamensing Prison, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (hanged) - David Berkowitz was born as Richard David Falco. His mother had him out of wedlock when she had an affair with a married real-estate agent named Joseph Klineman. Her husband Tony Falco had left her a few years before that. His mother gave him up for adoption to Nathan and Pearl Berkowitz who named him David Berkowitz Chicago. Being rejected by his birth mother caused David to develop an inferiority complex especially with women and thought he was unappealing to them. He worked as a postman and a security guard. In 1974 he 'heard voices' in his head that ordered him to kill. Berkowitz began to blame these voices on his neighbor Sam Carr's black Labrador that kept him up at night by its barking. He would send hate letters to Carr and in April 1977 even shot and wounded the dog. On July 29, 1976 he killed his first official victim. His modus operandi was to approach unsuspecting people late at night, pull out a gun from a brown paper bag and shoot them at point blank range. Most of his victims were couples, necking in their cars or in a park late at night. His female victims tended to be brunettes with long hair, which caused a scare in parts of New York and had women 'blonding' themselves and cutting their hair short to avoid being targeted. Couples were also advised not to stay out late at night by the local authorities as the serial killings escalated. They were all shot with a .44 caliber bulldog gun and hence his first nickname by the press - ".44 Caliber Killer". Most crimes occurred in the boroughs of Bronx and Queens but other parts of the city felt the terror too. The police task force for the case - 'Operation Omega' was formed. Inside the car of one of the victims the police found a letter. One was addressed to Cpt. Joseph Borelli and another to NY columnist Jimmy Breslin (June 1, 1977). The killer identified himself as "Sam's" and now the press had a new moniker - "Son of Sam". The last "S.o.S" killing took place on July 31, 1977. A witness had seen a young man (David) near the crime scene walking away with something tucked under his jacket. He was observed removing a parking ticket from a yellow Ford Galaxie that had blocked a fire hydrant. The police traced tickets in that area to Berkowitz address in Yonkers. Inside the car they found a loaded .44. They waited for him and when he approached the car they arrested the pudgy unassuming postman. He surrendered without a fight and confessed to being 'Son of Sam'. Though diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic he was found sane enough for trial. On August 23, 1977 he was sentenced to six life sentences.Richard David Falco
June 1, 1953 "Gemini/Snake" in The Bronx, New York - Richard Ramirez was a drifter from Texas who ended up in Los Angeles (the serial killer capital of the world) in the early 1980s when 5 serial killers where committing crimes independent of each other.
Ramirez worked as a car mechanic and did odd jobs while in Los Angeles. He was fascinated with "satanism" and would play the rock band AC/DC's song "Night Prowler" on his stereo for hours on end. His first murder occurred in June 1984. His modus operandi was to break into his victim's house late at night through an unlocked window. Then he would threaten them in their beds with either a gun or another weapon. He would either shoot or club his victims to death and then mutilate their bodies. His oldest victim was 84 and his youngest only 6 years. In between his murders he would sometimes just abduct young girls, sexually molest them and then let them go. He began killing again on March 17, 1985. This time one of his victims survived and gave police a description her assailant--tall, Hispanic, curly hair, bulging eyes and wide-spaced, rotting teeth! The police began to check with local dentists because they believed their killer needed to have major dental work done. Most of Ramirez's initial targets were in and around the Montery Park area of Los Angeles. On March 27, 1985, in Whitier he beat a man to death and then carved out his wife's eyes and took them with him. On May 29 he left satanic pentagrams on one victim's body and on the walls. On July 20 he killed a total of 5 victims in 2 different locations. On August 8 authorities released information to the public that they were looking for a new serial killer dubbed "The Night Stalker". Ramirez then left Los Angeles for San Francisco, and the killings soon began there. On August 28 al stolen car from one of the "Night Stalker" murders was recovered near Mission Viejo. Police found fingerprints on the backside of the rear-view mirror. They matched Ramirez's, whose prints were on file because he had previously been arrested for traffic and drug violations. The police believed they had their killer.
They checked at places where Ramirez was known to have worked and found that he closely matched surviving victims' descriptions of the killer. On August 30, 1985 his mugshot made its way to the television and newspapers. On August 31 he was recognized by residents of an East Los Angeles neighborhood as he was walking down a street. They chased him and, though he tried to escape by attempting to steal a car, they caught him. Someone called police, and by the time they arrived the crowd had almost beaten him to death.
On September 29, 1985, he was charged with, among other felonies, 14 murder and 22 sexual assault charges. When Ramirez appeared in court he had a pentagram drawn on his palm that he proudly displayed and proclaimed, "Hail Satan!" Jury selection began on by July 22, and he went on trial. On September 20, 1989, he was found guilty of 13 murders and 30 felonies. He was sentenced to death.Richard Munoz Ramirez
February 29, 1960 "Pisces/Rat" in El Paso, Texas - June 7, 2013 (age 53) in Greenbrae, California (liver failure) - Charles Starkweather was born on 24 November 1938 in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. He died on 25 June 1959 in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA.Charles Raymond Starkweather
November 24, 1938 "Sagittarius/Tiger" in Lincoln, Nebraska - June 25, 1959 (age 20) in Lincoln, Nebraska (execution by electric chair) - Lizzie Borden has mystified and fascinated crime buffs for over a century. Few cases in American history have attracted as much attention as the hatchet murders and the unlikely defendant: a church-going, respectable "spinster" daughter charged with parricide, a crime worthy of Classical Greek tragedy. On August 4, 1892, a heavy, hot summer day in Massachusetts, a maid discovered the bodies of Andrew Borden, 70, a wealthy developer, and his second wife Abby, a short obese woman of 64. Mr. Borden's face had been struck 11 times while he slept on the couch; Mrs. Borden had been struck 19 times from the back. A broken hatchet was found in the basement. The day after the Bordens' funeral, a neighbor observed Lizzie burning a stained dress in the kitchen stove. The neighbor's testimony prompted Lizzie to be charged with the murders. The chaotic and stumbling murder investigation against Lizzie was circumstantial, without incriminating physical evidence or clear motive. After a trial in June 1893 and one hour of jury deliberations, Lizzie was found not guilty on all charges. Lizzie and her sister Emma moved into a 13-room stone Victorian house named Maplecroft. In 1904, she met actress Nance O'Neil, and the two became inseparable, prompting rumors of a romantic relationship. Lizzie died at age 67, after a long illness. Emma coincidentally died nine days later, after a fall down the stairs of her house. They were buried together in the family plot, along with their mother, stepmother, and father. Despite popular belief of Lizzie's guilt, it remains technically an unsolved crime.Elizabeth Andrew Borden
July 19, 1860 "Cancer/Monkey" in Fall River, Massachusetts - June 1, 1927 (age 66) in Fall River, Massachusetts (pneumonia) - Albert DeSalvo came from a violent and abusive home. His father 'Frank DeSalvo' beat his wife and kids frequently. 'Frank DeSalvo' was in jail twice and his parents finally divorced in 1944. As a teenager Albert was arrested for breaking and entering. At 17 he joined the army and was stationed in Germany, where he met his wife, a German girl whom he brought back with him to the US. In 1955 while posted at Fort Dix, New Jersey he was charged with molesting a 9 year old girl. No charges were pressed and he was honourably discharged in 1956. He was arrested twice more for robbery when he became short of cash. Albert then began his "measuring man" crimes. He would pose as a talent scout and approach women with a measuring tape. He would then take vital measurements and in the process fondle his unsuspecting victims. No charges were made despite complaints as no violent assault had occurred. On March 17, 1960 he was again arrested for burglary when he confessed to the "measuring man" crimes. He was sent to prison for 11 months. After coming out he began his "green man" crimes as he wore green clothes while perpetrating the crimes. Over a period of 2 years in the neighbouring states of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticutt and Rhode Island he raped around 300 women. The "Green Man" raped up to 6 victims in one day. The "Boston Strangler" crimes involved 11 women who were killed between June 14, 1962 and July 1964. They were raped and strangled with one victim being stabbed. The ligature around their neck had a bow. Victims ranged in age from 19 to 85 years. There was only 1 black victim, the rest white. There was a $110,000 reward for any information leading to his arrest. On November 3, 1964 Albert was arrested for a "Green Man" crime, as one of the victims described it resembled a "Measuring Man" crime. He was put in Brigdewater state hospital for observation. There a fellow inmate George Nassar turned him in as the "Boston Strangler". However a sole survivor from February 1963 couldn't pick him up from a police line up. A psychic Peter Hurkos too felt that it was someone else. Psychiatrists claimed that the "Boston Strangler" had a mother fixation
- which was why some of the victims were quite elderly, but DeSalvo
September 3, 1931 "Virgo/Goat" in Chelsea, Massachusetts - November 25, 1973 (age 42) in Walpole, Massachusetts (homicide) - Andrei Chikatilo was one of the world's most prolific and barbaric serial killers. Born on October 16, 1936, in the Ukraine, he witnessed the devastation of his country at the onset of World War II. His mother Anna repeatedly told him of an older brother, Stephan, who had been murdered and cannibalized during the Ukrainian famine in the 1930s, in which it is estimated that several million died.
Although he was extremely tall and attractive, Chikatilo was always shy with girls and believed himself to be impotent. However, in 1963 his younger sister Taytana introduced him to a friend of hers named Fayina. Things clicked, and he and Fayina married that same year. They had two children, a daughter Ludmilla in 1965 and a son Yuri in 1969. Chikatilo graduated from Rostov University and became a teacher for a brief time, but he was eventually caught molesting some students, which led to his expulsion from the profession. By the end of 1978 Chikatilo had murdered his first victim, Lena Zakotnova, in Shankty, Russia. He didn't kill again for three years, but over the next nine years he tortured, murdered and cannibalized at least 51 more women and children. Russian authorities at first refused to believe that a serial killer could operate in their midst -- that sort of thing only occurred in degenerate capitalist societies -- but Chikatilo's victims began turning up so often and in so many places that the authorities finally were forced to admit that a monster was indeed loose among them. A task force consisting of the best homicide detectives in the country was assigned to hunt down and capture the killer (although they had no idea it was Chikatilo). He was finally captured on November 20, 1990, when a policeman noticed him acting suspiciously at a railroad station, detained him, and further investigation revealed that he had just committed three murders. Chikatilo confessed to 55 killings -- although due to the initial indifference and incompetence of the authorities it's been estimated that he likely committed at least twice that many before he was finally caught -- but was charged with only 53.
His trial opened on April 14, 1992, with victims' relatives screaming for retribution. Chikatilo acted like a raving maniac throughout the trial, rolling his eyes, moving back and forth, contorting his face and hurling curses at spectators and the judge, among others. On October 14, 1992, Andrei Chikatilo was convicted of 52 murders -- one charge was dropped for lack of evidence -- and five counts of child molestation. The next day he was given 52 death sentences and taken to Novocherkassk Prison in the Rostov-on-Don region of Russia. Sixteen months later, on February 14, 1994, his death sentence was carried out in the manner prescribed by Russian law -- a single bullet to the back of the head.Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo
October 16, 1936 "Libra/Rat" in Yablochnoye, Velikaya Pisarevka Rayon, Kharkov Oblast, Ukrainian SSR, USSR [now Yabluchne, Sumy Oblast, Ukraine] - February 14, 1994 (age 57) in Novocherkassk, Rostov Oblast, Russia (executed by gun shot wound to the back of the neck) - Aileen Wuornos was born on 29 February 1956 in Rochester, Michigan, USA. She was married to Lewis Gratz Fell. She died on 9 October 2002 in Raiford, Florida, USA.Aileen Carol Pittman
February 29, 1956 "Pisces/Monkey" in Rochester, Michigan - October 9, 2002 (age 46) in Florida State Prison, Starke, Florida (executed by lethal injection) - British serial killer, Peter Sutcliffe, who is infamous as the 'Yorkshire Ripper' was born under fairly normal surroundings. His father John Sutcliffe was a mill owner. Sutcliffe was very attached to his mother Kathleen. He was a loner in school and his grades were generally poor. Sutcliffe quit school at 15. He loved to visit the local wax museum where he was fascinated by specimens that showed the effect of venereal disease on the body.
He worked as a municipal gravedigger and mortuary assistant for a while. During this period he was known to steal things from the bodies he was burying. Some of his early tendencies towards necrophilia may have stemmed from here. He would later tell authorities that it was during this time that he started hearing the voice of God coming from a grave telling him to 'rid the world of harlots'. He attempted his first murder in 1969 with a home made weapon - a sock filled with bricks. On two occasions his victims escaped.
On Oct 30, 1975 however he had perfected his modus operandi. He used a ball peen hammer to bludgeon his victim to death. Then he stabbed them with a chisel or screwdriver to mutilate their bodies. He killed mainly in the cities of Leeds, Bradford and in the West Yorkshire area but two were in Manchester. His victims were all women. Though many were prostitutes, several were not - the only common factor being they were lone women who were out late at night. The age range of his victims was 16 to 47. One of his victims was even killed in her own apartment. In one case, Sutcliffe actually revisited the crime scene a week later to further mutilate the body before it was finally found by the police.
Sutcliffe was a schizoid personality who was able to remain a devoted husband at home while still committing his brutal crimes outside. The largest manhunt in British history was launched to catch the man who was dubbed "The Yorkshire Ripper". It involved interviewing 250,000 people and searching 20,000 houses. In June 1979 the police were sidetracked when they received a hoax tape and letters from someone claiming to be the Ripper. Sutcliffe was among those dismissed at this point as a suspect because he did not have the 'Wearside accent' of the hoax tape.
The last 'Ripper' murder took place on 17 Nov 1980. There had been 13 victims with at least eight attempted murders. On January 2, 1981 Sutcliffe was arrested by two Sheffield police officers on routine patrol for displaying false number plates on his Rover car. (The number plates actually belonged to a Skoda.) Peter Sutcliffe had stolen the plates from a scrapyard in nearby Dewsbury. He had a prostitute in his car with him at the time. He requested permission to 'pee' before going to the station. While he was being questioned at the station, one of the arresting officers decided to go and check the bushes where Sutcliffe had urinated. He found a hammer and chisel behind some shrubbery.
Sutcliffe quickly confessed to his crimes. he said he harbored a vendetta against prostitutes after one of them had swindled him of money and given him a venereal disease. On May 22, 1981 he was declared guilty of committing 13 murders and sentenced to spend not less than 30 yrs in prison.Peter William Sutcliffe
June 2, 1946 "Gemini/Dog" in Bingley, West Yorkshire, England - An unwanted child born to a destitute family in Blacksburg, Virginia, Henry Lee Lucas' mother, 41-year-old Viola, turned tricks in their dirt floor cabin in front of the family. She hated her new son from the time he was born and continually abused him. Her husband Anderson, who had lost his legs in a railroad accident, was also constantly subjected to Viola's violence, but Henry, being a child, got the worst of it. Anderson eventually committed suicide by sleeping outside in the snow when he could no longer bear it, Viola entertaining another trick in his home; he contracted pneumonia and shuffled off this mortal coil. Henry, thus, bore the full focus of Viola's wrath after his pappy's unseasonable demise.
When Henry entered school in 1943, Viola in her meanness deliberately dressed him as a girl, even going so far to coif his hair into sausage curls, then sent him off to the schoolhouse, all dolled up, albeit barefoot. Not only forced to face the antagonism of his boy schoolmates as he attended to his education in such unlikely duds, he also had to face Viola's wrath when a teacher, pitying the lad, bought young Lucas a pair of shoes. Viola beat her son for accepting charity. This charmless woman killed any animals that her son tried to keep as a pet, and denied him medical attention when he cut his eye with a knife, leading to its surgical removal.
Viola once beat Henry with a a piece of lumber that put him in a coma, off and on, for three days. Viola's live-in lover, familiarly known as "Uncle Bernie," eventually took the Lucas lad to the hospital. In the demerit column, Uncle Bernie introduced Lucas to the joys of bestiality, teaching the boy how to kill hapless and unhappy animals after they had been tortured and sexually abused.
In March 1951, the 15-year-old Henry Lee Lucas picked up a 17-year old girl near Lynchburg, Virginia, propositioned her, then strangled her when she resisted the advances of this loathsome Lothario. He buried the corpse in the woods near Harrisburg, Virginia. (Lucas confessed to the murder in 1983.) Three years later, he was sent to prison for six years, convicted of the crime of burglary. Lucas escaped from prison twice in 1957, but was caught each time.
On September 2, 1959, he was released from prison and moved in with his sister in Tecumseh, Michigan, but his now-elderly mother demanded that he return with her to Blacksburg. It was there, on the night of January 11, 1960, that an intoxicated Viola struck her likewise intoxicated son with a broom and was stabbed to death for her transgression against his person. After his arrest, Lucas confessed that he had sexually assaulted his mother's corpse, though he soon recanted, a pattern of behavior that was a harbinger of things to come.
Henry Lee Lucas was sentenced to 20-40 years in prison for the killing of Viola and was clapped in the hoosegow in March 1960. He was soon transferred to the state hospital for the criminally insane, where he remained for six years. Paroled on June 3, 1970, he moved in with his relatives in Tecumseh. However, he ran afoul of the law in December 1971, charged with molesting two teenage girls, a charge later reduced to simple kidnapping. Sent to the state penitentiary, he was paroled in August 1975, over his own objections. Employed by a Pennsylvania mushroom farm, he married his cousin's widow in December of that year. They moved to Maryland, but they broke up, his wife eventually divorcing him in the summer of 1977, claiming that he had molested her daughters by a previous marriage.
Cast out, Henry Lee Lucas became a drifter, roaming throughout the South, allegedly killing female hitch-hikers as he moseyed along Interstate 35 in the Lonestar state of Texas. Fatefully, the 40-year old, one-eyed bisexual met the 29-year-old homosexual drifter Ottis Toole in a Florida soup kitchen in late 1976.
They hit it off immediately, becoming lovers and boon traveling companions; whether they actually were serial killers together is still clouded in mystery, though it likely is true.
In 1978, Toole and Lucas moved in with Toole's mother and sister in Jacksonville. Lucas fell in love with Toole's 10-year old female cousin, Frieda "Becky" Powell, whom he eventually adopted and lived with as husband and wife. But that lay in the future. Toole and Lucas went to work for a local roofing company, but they often missed work as they frequently went back on the road, two men born to ramble, spreading their version of hell along the highways and by-ways of America.
In 1981, Toole's mother and sister died within a few months of each other, and Becky and Frank were placed in juvenile homes. Returning to Jacksonville, Lucas helped obtain their release, and Becky and her brother Frank were taken on the road by the Henry Lee and Uncle Ottis, where they were exposed to the depravity of their murderous traveling show. It was at this time that Becky, Ottis Toole's niece, became the common-law wife of Lucas, who was over 30 years her senior. When child welfare authorities launched a search for Becky and Frank in January 1982, Becky fled to California with Lucas. Her brother Frank eventually wound up in a psychiatric facility in 1983 after bearing witness to the the brutality of his uncle and "brother-in-law."
From California, Lucas and Becky made it to Texas, winding up in the All People's House of Prayer, a religious commune outside of Stoneburg, Texas. But Becky was homesick, and in August 1982, this odd couple, husband and wife, were on the road again, hitchhiking, returning to Florida. On the night of August 23rd, in Denton County, Texas, the unlikely pair of lovers had an argument, and Becky slapped Lucas. As he had done 22 years earlier, Henry Lee reacted with a knife. He stabbed his young common-law bride to death. He then dismembered her corpse before returning to Stoneburg,
Lucas' story about Becky's disappearance was that she had vamoosed with a passing truck driver. Three weeks later, Lucas turned up missing the day after the disappearance of a local, Kate "Granny" Rich, an octogenarian. Lucas' car was found abandoned in Needles, California, less than a week later, on September 21st, then Lucas showed up again in Stonesburg on October 18th, the day after Rich's home was destroyed by a mysterious fire. The police arrested Lucas on a fugitive warrant from Maryland, but he was soon released.
Eventually, Lucas was jailed after returning to Stoneburg on June 11, 1983, arrested as he was an ex-convict who possessed a handgun. Lucas was remorseful for his murder of Becky, and had returned to the field where he had scattered her body parts to commune with the soul of his beloved. On the night of June 15th, Lucas summoned the jailer and offered a confession to expiate his sins: "I've done some bad things," he began.
Henry Lee Lucas confessed to the murder of Granny Rich, commenting that "he had killed at least a hundred more." For a year and a half, Lucas confessed to multiple murders.
At first, Lucas estimated he had killed 75 to 100 people, then he boosted the body-count to between 150 and 360, eventually reaching the 500 to 600 range when he factored in killings by his friends. Lucas implicated his erstwhile pal Ottis Toole in many of the murders, furthermore claiming that he and Toole had committed many murders as a hit-squad directed by a Satanic cult, "The Hand of Death," that Toole had introduced him to. A cannibal, Toole sometimes ate the flesh of their victims, although Lucas didn't join him in his insalubrious repast.
Toole, who was serving time on a Florida arson charge, didn't mind being implicated in mass murder by his former lover. In fact, he offered confessions of his own. By October 1983, police were sure that Toole and Lucas had committed at least 69 killings, which they announced at a press conference. The number was increased to 81 at a January 1984 press conference, and by March 1985, 90 murders had been attributed to Lucas in 20 states, and he and Toole were credited with a further 108 killings. Police would eventually claim over 200 murders were solved due to Lucas' confessions, as Lucas was taken to various states and had his memory prodded about unsolved killings.
At his trial, Lucas took responsibility for over 600 murders. He even claimed to have supplied People's Temple stalwart Jim Jones with the cyanide to effect the Guyana massacre. Ottis Toole, now on Florida's Death Row for murder, corroborated much of Lucas' confession, including his claims to have committed hundreds of murders, singly and as a duo.
Henry Lee Lucas eventually recanted his confessions, claiming that he was only trying to improve his living conditions in jail. He eventually claimed he only killed one person, his mother. Because of significant doubt as to Lucas' guilt, his death sentences were commuted to life in prison by Governor George W. Bush; it was the sole death sentence ever vacated by the then-governor, and allowed Henry Lee Lucas to die a peaceful death in prison. There were too many contradictions in Lucas' confessions which may have led to the re-opening of cases, so he could not be executed. - Dennis Andrew Nilsen, 1945 in Strichen, Fraserburgh, Scotland, also known as the Muswell Hill Murderer is a British serial killer who lived and murdered in London. In 1983 he was convicted of six murders and two attempted murders and is believed to have killed at least 15 men and boys between 1978 and 1982. He abhorred cruelty to animals, yet murdered human beings. He was a loner, yet kept the corpses of his victims in his flat for company. He was eventually caught after his disposal of dismembered human entrails blocked his household drains: the drain cleaning company found that the drains were congested with human flesh and contacted the police. Nilsen was brought to trial at the Old Bailey on 24 October, 1983. He pleaded diminished responsibility as a defense, in order to seek a verdict of guilty to manslaughter, but was convicted of six murders and two attempted murders. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on 4 November 1983. In 1993, he was given permission to give a televised interview from prison.Dennis Andrew Nilsen
November 23, 1945 "Sagittarius/Rooster" in Fraserburgh, Scotland - Pedro Alonso López is a serial killer. In 1981, he was convicted by an Ecuadorian court of the murders of 57 girls. Despite several extensive confessions, the exact number of victims is unknown but believed to be somewhere between 61 and 300. After spending time at different prison facilities, in 1994, he was released and deported to Colombia, his country of birth. There, he was re-arrested and tried for yet another murder and declared insane. Merely three years later, in 1998, he was declared sane and released again. He has been at large ever since.October 8, 1948 "Libra/Rat" in Santa Isabel, Tolima, Colombia
- Gary Ridgway who would become infamous as the 'Green River Killer' was born in Utah. He then moved to Washington state where he worked as a truck painter in Renton Washonton for nearly 30 years. Ridgway also worked at a computer company. Ridgway claims to have killed a man as early as 1971 but it was only on July 15, 1982 that the first of the Green River Killings would be committed. This would go on to become one of the longest and most expensive serial murder cases in the US. The task force included Major Richard Kraske, Detective Dave Reichert, FBI profiler John Douglas and criminal investigator Bob Keppel. His victims ranged in age from 15 to 31 and one victim even had an unborn baby! They were all prostitutes who worked the main strip in Seattle, stretching from South 139th Street to South 272nd Street. The bodies were fished out of the Green River in King County and hence the nickname for the killings. His m.o. was to have sex and then strangle them. In April 1983 attention was drawn to Ridgway in the killings when his 1977 black Ford F-150 was spotted where a victim was last seen. He was released after questioning. During this period Keppel in collaboration with notorious serial killer Ted Bundy published a book called The Riverman (2004) which used Bundy's own insight into serial killer to try and profile the psyche of the Green River Killer. A psychic, Barbara Kubik-Pattern was also involved in the case. In May 1984 Ridgway was again a suspect and even passed a polygraph test. In April 1987 his house was examined and insufficient evidence was found. In September 2001, detective Reichert asked for samples from Ridgway to be examined with newer techniques. On September 10th he was told that there was a match between Ridgway's semen and those found on the victims. On November 30, 2001 Ridgway was arrested for murder. During pretrial on November 5, 2003, Gary Ridgway, avoided the death penalty in Washington state by confessing to the murders of 48 women. He was sentenced to 48 life sentences without the possibility of parole. Ridgway may have actually killed more than 48 but cannot remember the exact number. It is believed that he might have even killed as far north as British Columbia in Canada. He could however still face the death penalty for murders in Oregon and other areas outside King County jurisdiction.Gary Leon Ridgway
February 18, 1949 "Aquarius/Ox" in Salt Lake City, Utah - Charles Cullen was born on 22 February 1960 in New Jersey, USA.Charles Edmund Cullen
February 22, 1960 "Pisces/Rat" in West Orange, New Jersey - Leonard Lake was born on 29 October 1945 in San Francisco, California, USA. He was married to Claralyn Balasz. He died on 6 June 1985 in San Mateo County, California, USA.Leonard Thomas Lake
October 29, 1945 "Scorpio/Rooster" in San Francisco, California - June 6, 1985 (age 39) in San Mateo County, California (suicide) - Charles Ng was born on 24 November 1961 in Hong Kong.Charles Chitag Ng
November 24, 1961 "Sagittarius/Ox" in Hong Kong - Along with his adopted cousin Angelo Buono Jr. he was part of "the Hillside Stranglers" pair. Bianchi's mother was a prostitute who gave him up for adoption as an infant. By the age of 11 he was having problems at school with his conduct and frequent tantrums. He tried for the police force but was rejected by the Glendale and Los Angeles Police Departments. In 1971 he wrote to a girl-friend claiming he had killed a man, but she did not take it seriously. From 1971 to 1973, 3 girls were killed in Rochester that became known as the 'Alphabet Murders' because the first and last initials of the their names were the same! Bianchi was later suspected of being responsible. In 1976 he moved down to Los Angeles where he lived with his adopted cousin (Angelo Buono). Ten women were killed between Oct 17 and December 9, 1977. The Hillside Stranglers displayed the bodies on hillsides near freeways to taunt the authorities. They impersonated policemen and preyed on prostitutes and female motorists. Their victims were tortured, raped and finally garroted. One of their prospective victims was Catharine Lorre (daughter of actor Peter Lorre) who testified that she had been approached by 2 policemen. The authorities now knew they were dealing with a pair of killers. In 1978 Bianchi went to Bellingham, Washington where he worked as a security guard. On January 11, 1979 2 women who had gone to meet him for a house-sitting job were found dead. Bianchi had been their last contact. His house was searched by the police and they found items stolen from his security guard posts. He was finally tied to the Hillside slayings in June 1979. In jail Bianchi feigned multiple personality. He agreed to testify against his cousin Buono and was facing 10 counts of murder. His cousin was arrested in Oct 1979. In June 1980 he received a letter from Veronica Lynn Compton (23) a poet, playwright and aspiring actress who wanted his opinion on new play regarding a female serial-killer. Compton it seems was fascinated with necrophilia. She agreed to go to Bellingham, strangle a woman there and deposit Bianchi's semen at the scene to confuse the police into thinking that the real killer was still on the loose. On September 16, 1980 she got a book from Bianchi, in prison, within which was concealed a glove containing his semen. On October 3, 1980 she was arrested for attempted murder. Bianchi's trial went on from November 1981 to November 1983. He was finally found guilty of 9 counts of murder and sentenced to 9 life terms without parole.Kenneth Alessio Bianchi
May 22, 1951 "Gemini/Rabbit" in Rochester, New York - Along with his adopted cousin Kenneth Bianchi he was part of "the Hillside Stranglers" pair. When he was young his parents divorced. His mother got custody of him and took him across the country from New York to California. He began stealing cars by 14 and was in a youth reformatory by 16 for grand theft auto. He became fascinated with his "idol" sex offender Caryl Chessman the "red light rapist" and began to emulate his techniques. He had several children, legitimate and illegitimate and frequently abused his wives and girl friends. In 1977 along with cousin Bianchi he began the infamous 'hillside slayings' in Los Angeles. When Bianchi was arrested in Washington state in early 1979 he confessed to the crimes and 'betrayed' Buono. Angelo Buono was arrested in October 1979. After his trial in 1983 he got 9 life terms without parole.October 5, 1934 "Libra/Dog" in Rochester, New York - September 27, 2002 (age 67) in San Quentin Prison, California (heart attack)
- Dennis Rader was born on 9 March 1945 in Pittsburg, Kansas, USA. He was previously married to Paula Dietz.Dennis Lynn Rader
March 9, 1945 "Pisces/Rooster" in Pittsburg, Kansas - Ottis Elwood Toole was a self-confessed serial killer and cannibal who admitted to many murders and was the suspect in many more unsolved murders, some of which he committed with his friend Henry Lee Lucas. Toole was convicted of murder twice and confessed to four more murders, for which he was convicted by a court of law. Toole admitted to the killing of Adam Walsh, the young son of John Walsh, the creator and host of the television program America's Most Wanted: America Fights Back (1988). Although never proven, Walsh believed that Toole was the murderer of his son.
Toole was raised in Jacksonville, Florida in a broken home. His father ran away when he was a child; his mother was a religious fanatic, and his grandmother was a satanist. While his sister dressed the young boy in girl's clothes to play with him, Toole's satanic granny allegedly involved him in various occult practices, including robbing graves for body parts to be used in her fiendish rituals. Grandma dubbed Ottis "the devil's child," an epithet he would live up to while still in his teens. Understandably, the young Toole repeatedly ran away from home.
Toole claimed to have begun his career as an amateur arsonist, beginning with the burning of abandoned homes, while still a youngster. He allegedly claimed his first murder victim at the age of 14, when he killed a traveling salesman who propositioned him for sex by running over him with his own car after they had trysted in the woods. The murder has never verified.
First arrested as an adult in 1964 on a charge of loitering, Toole had an IQ of 75, which is considered border-line retarded, though the low score might be the result of his being virtually illiterate. No charmer, Toole did manage to get himself married for a short-time, but his wife left him in a huff after realizing he was homosexual. A drifter, Toole would support himself as a male prostitute.
Fatefully, Toole met the one-eyed bisexual Henry Lee Lucas in a Florida soup kitchen in late 1976, when he was 29 years old and Lucas was 40. The two hit it off, becoming lovers and boon traveling companions; whether they actually were serial killers together is still clouded in mystery, though it likely is true.
In 1978, Toole and Lucas moved in with Toole's mother and sister in Jacksonville. Lucas fell in love with Toole's 10-year old female cousin, Frieda "Becky" Powell, whom he eventually adopted and lived with as husband and wife. But that lay in the future. Toole and Lucas went to work for a local roofing company, but they often missed work as they frequently went back on the road, two men born to ramble, spreading their version of hell along the highways and by-ways of America.
After Lucas had been arrested, he implicated Toole, who was serving time on a Florida arson charge, in mass murder. Toole then offered confessions of his own. By October 1983, police were sure that Toole and Lucas had committed at least 69 killings, which they announced at a press conference. The number was increased to 81 at a January 1984 press conference, and by March 1985, 90 murders had been attributed to Lucas in 20 states, and he and Toole were credited with a further 108 killings. Police would eventually claim over 200 murders were solved due to Lucas' confessions, as Lucas was taken to various states and had his memory prodded about unsolved killings.
Toole, now on Florida's Death Row for murder, corroborated much of Lucas' confession, including his claims to have committed hundreds of murders, singly and as a duo.
In 1983, Toole claimed to have committed the 1981 abduction and murder of six-year-old Adam Walsh. Since he knew the store from whence the child was kidnapped, a fact that had been withheld from the public, and had claimed to have injured Adam in a way consistent with the physical evidence, Adam's father, John Walsh, believes to this day that Toole was the culprit. The negligence of the local police, who impounded Toole's car but lost the blood-stained carpeting that could have provided a forensic link to the murder, stymied any attempt to positively attribute the heinous murder to Toole. Cruelly, the cold-hearted Toole offered to take Walsh to the body of his dead son for a fee, but was turned down. Toole later recanted this confession, but Henry Lee Lucas insisted that Toole had killed the boy.
John Walsh became a crusader for victim's rights and the host of the TV program America's Most Wanted: America Fights Back (1988) after the tragic loss of his son.
In April 1984, Ottis Toole was convicted of murder for a 1982 arson incident in his hometown of Jacksonville, Florida that resulted in the death of an elderly man. He was sentenced to death, and received a second conviction and death sentence later that year for the 1983 murder of a 19-year-old girl from Tallahassee, Florida. Both death sentences were reduced to life in prison on appeal. In 1991, Toole pleaded guilty to four more murders and received four more life sentences.
Many officials who doubt the veracity of Henry Lee Lucas' confessions believed that Ottis Toole was a genuine serial killer, and a cannibal. In November 1983, police taped a jail-house telephone call between the two while Lucas was in the midst of his confession spree. Neither had seen or spoken to the other for more than half a year, making it impossible for them to fabricate a joint story congruent with their confessions for the purpose of fooling the authorities. Ottis Elwood Toole died of cirrhosis of the liver, in prison, in September 15, 1996.Ottis Elwood Toole
March 5, 1947 in Jacksonville, Florida - September 15, 1996 (age 49) in Hollywood, Florida (cirrhosis of the liver) - Born 1943 in San Antonio, Texas, he was a convicted sex offender and serial killer, who died while awaiting execution at San Quentin State Prison. He was convicted of five homicides, but is believed to have killed many more. He graduated from UCLA School of Fine Arts, and was charged with the rape and attempted murder of a 13 year old girl in 1968. He fled to New York and studied film at NYU under Roman Polanski.Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor
August 23, 1943 in San Antonio, Texas - Gary Gilmore was born on 4 December 1940 in Texas, USA. He died on 17 January 1977 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.Faye Robert Coffman
December 4, 1940 in McCamey, Texas - January 17, 1977 (age 36) in Draper, Utah (executed by firing squad) - Richard Kuklinski was born on 11 April 1935 in Jersey City, New Jersey, USA. He was a writer, known for America Undercover (1983), The Iceman and the Psychiatrist (2003) and The Iceman Confesses: Secrets of a Mafia Hitman (2001). He was married to Barbara Kuklinski. He died on 5 March 2006 in Trenton, New Jersey, USA.Richard Leonard Kuklinski
April 11, 1935 in Jersey City, New Jersey - March 5, 2006 (age 70) in Trenton, New Jersey - Ronald DeFeo was born on 26 September 1951 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was married to Nissa Burkhalter, Tracey Defeo and Barbara Puco. He died on 12 March 2021 in Albany, New York, USA.Ronald Joseph DeFeo Jr.
September 26, 1951 in Brooklyn, New York - Serial killer who single-handedly committed the most number of murders in a single day - 8. He was the 7th of 8 children born to Robert Speck and Gladys Sterner. His father died when he was 6 and his mother moved the family to Dallas. While there he had 37 arrests for drunk and disorderly behaviour and burglary. He worked as a garbage man for a while. In 1965 he was caught trying to assault a woman at knife point. He was sentenced to 490 days and released as a parole violator. In March 1966 he was separated from his wife and went to Monmoth, Illinois where he has some distant relatives. By then he had become an alcoholic and harboured homicidal threats against his wife. He worked as a merchant seaman on the ore barges that plied the Great Lakes. Speck suffered from Satyriasis (sexual addiction in men) and though he is remembered now for his 8 victim tally on one bloody night he was resposible for 4 other killings that occurred over a period of 3 months before that. This truly makes him a serial-killer and not just a mass murderer. His first killing took place on April 10, 1966. Most of his victims were women who were abducted, raped and either strangled or stabbed to death. His oldest victim was 65. On July 10, 1966 he moved to Chicago. Speck needed money to get passage on a vessel bound for New Orleans. On the 'infamous' night of July 13/14, 1966 he approached Jeffrey Manor a 2 storey townhome at 2319 East 100th Street. It served as a dormitory for nursing students from South Chicago Community Hospital. He was high on downers and inebriated when he knocked on the door. The door was opened by a young Filipino nurse who was immediately taken hostage at both gun and knife point. Speck then aroused 5 other students and herded all 6 of them into one room where he bound and gagged them. Over the next hour 3 more nurses came back to their dormitory and Speck now found himself with 9 potential victims. Speck then came to his brutal decision - he would just dispose of them. He took them one by one, like lambs for slaughter, into adjacent rooms, where he stabbed, strangled and at times raped them. While this was going on the remaining nurses tried to crawl under beds or escape. Speck finished killing 8 out the 9 nurses. He had lost count and the lone survivor of the carnage - the Filipino nurse who had let him in, had managed to crawl away in the darkness and hide in a dark corner in another room. She waited there until 5 in the morning before she came out and screamed for help. The nurses were young who ranged in age from 20 to 24. When the police examined the corpses and noticed the use of square knots they suspected their killer might be a seaman. The lone survivor gave a description of the pock-marked Speck, including a tattoo on his left forearm that said 'born to raise hell'. On July 17, 1966 Speck was found in his crashpad and admitted to Cook County Hospital. He had tried to overdose on drugs to commit suicide. He was recognized by the doctors as the possible killer and the authorities were alerted. In April 1967 he was convicted of multicide and sentenced to death in August, 1967. However in 1972 the verdict was overturned when the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. His sentence was commuted to consecutive life terms amounting to 400 years. While in prison Speck considered sex change and even got regular injections with female hormones so that he could gradually change his appearance. He died in 1991 after serving only 19 years.Richard Benjamin Speck
December 6, 1941 "Sagittarius/Snake" in Kirkwood, Illinois - December 5, 1991 (age 49) in Stateville Correctional Center, Joliet, Illinois (heart attack) - Born in Sicily, Carlo Gambino came from a family that had been involved in the Mafia for centuries. Although he was thin and somewhat frail-looking, he was also single-minded, ruthless and tough as nails and made a name for himself as an enforcer in local Mafia circles before he was out of his teens. In fact, he was made a full member of the organization on his 19th birthday. Shortly afterward he left Sicily for New York, where he already had family connections, the Castellanos. He went to work for them in their bootlegging business. He started out as a truck driver, worked his way up the ladder and moved over to the family of Giuseppe Masseria, aka "Joe the Boss", an old-time gangster who at the time was engaged in a war with another old-timer (collectively - and derisively - known by the younger hoods as "Mustache Petes") named Salvatore Maranzano. Gambino became friendly with another Masseria hood named Lucky Luciano, whose ambitions were to get rid of both "Mustache Petes". In 1931 Masseria was assassinated in a restaurant while meeting with Luciano, and Luciano hooked up with the Maranzano gang. Soon, however, Maranzano himself was dead, having been murdered in 1931 on orders from Luciano, leaving him the #1 boss in New York. Luciano divided up New York among five Mafia families, and Gambino was assigned as second in command to the Brooklyn family run by Vincent Mangano. Although ambitious, Gambino was patient and built up his fortunes and his influence over the years. In 1951 Mangano mysteriously vanished and his family was taken over by Albert Anastasia, a much feared killer, who made Gambino his underboss, leading many observers to believe that both Gambino and Anastasia had something to do with Mangano's disappearance. Anastasia himself met his end in a New York City barber shop in 1957 and, much as Anastasia took over the assassinated Mangano's empire, Gambino took over the assassinated Anastasia's empire.
Gambino, unlike many other mobsters, always kept a low profile, making sure to stay out of the spotlight, and lived unostentatiously in a modest row house in Brooklyn. His frail, grandfatherly appearance made it difficult to believe that at the time he was the single most powerful organized-crime figure in America - and one of the most ruthless. Although both federal and state authorities had been after him for years, his secretive and illusive nature thwarted their efforts. Finally, in 1969, he was charged with planning the armed robbery and hijacking of a truck. Legal wranglings delayed the case for several years, during which time Gambino's wife died and his health began to deteriorate. When federal authorities discovered that Gambino had never become a US citizen and, in fact, had been smuggled into the country, they instituted deportation proceedings against him. His doctors claimed that his heart problems meant that he was too weak to make the journey from the US to Italy, and his case was delayed time and time again, amid rumors that the Gambino family had paid off two U.S. senators to help delay the proceedings. In 1976 Gambino was in his Long Island summer home watching a Yankees game on TV when he had a heart attack and died.August 24, 1902 "Virgo/Tiger" in Palermo, Sicily, Italy - October 15, 1976 (age 74) in Massapequa, Long Island, New York (heart failure) - Albert Anastasia was born February 26, 1903, in Calabria, Italy, famous for its hams and the 'ndrangheta, which was every bit as vicious as the Sicilian Mafia. He was brought to America as a child along with his eight brothers. When he was starting in organized crime, he helped Salvatore Lucania, who later became known as Lucky Luciano, murder Giuseppe Masseria (aka "Joe The Boss" or "The Chinese"). When the "Boss of Bosses", Salvatore Maranzano, was murdered by Luciano, La Cosa Nostra was divided into different families known as The Commission. The bosses of the family Anastasia belonged to were brothers Vincent Mangano and Philip Mangano.
It wasn't long before Anastasia started to lust for power. As the underboss, he and Vincent Mangano often fought physically. Anastasia, being younger, would usually win. Anastasia's old friend and boss of the Luciano family, Frank Costello, soon found himself in a pickle when his partner, Vito Genovese, returned from Italy after nine years' exile. Costello needed Anastasia's help but couldn't do a thing unless he had an entire family behind him. Costello and Anastasia soon came up with the idea of killing the Manganos. On April 19, 1951, one of the most mysterious murders in Mafia history occurred. The body of Phil Mangano was found in a marshland with three bullets in the back of his head and two in each cheek. When the police tried to contact his brother, they couldn't reach him. When Vincent didn't show up at his brother's funeral, the police and Mafia bosses assumed that Vincent had been murdered as well. Frank Costello stuck up for Anastasia when the families had a sit-down to discuss the murder, saying that the Manganos were planning to kill him. Anastasia was now the boss of the former Mangano family.
After he became the boss, he and his younger brother, Anthony Anastasia (aka "Tough Tony") - who changed his last name to Anastasio, most likely in order to avoid public connections with his brother--ran the Brooklyn waterfronts for over a decade. When Lucky Luciano was arrested, Albert and his brother Tony sabotaged a huge French ocean liner moored at a pier and spread the word that it had been done by Nazi saboteurs. They then made a deal with the US government that they would "protect" the waterfront from further "sabotage" in exchange for Luciano's release. A compromise was reached in which Luciano was sent to a minimum-security prison. Under Luciano's order, Anastasia became the head of the Mafia's enforcement arm, known as Murder Inc. This group of killers was responsible for an estimated 700 to 1000 murders, the large number of killings attributed to Anastasia's hot temper and love of violence. When he saw an interview with a New York shop owner named Arnold Schuster, who had recognized notorious bank robber Willie Sutton on the street and notified the police, who then arrested Sutton, Anastasia immediately ordered that Schuster be killed; he had no connection with Sutton, but his reasoning for ordering Schuster's murder what that "I don't like rats".
Schuster's death enraged the public as well as the other Mafia bosses. A few years later Luciano was deported to Italy, and the Italian government then exiled him to Sicily where, during WW II, he and the local Mafia ingratiated themselves with US forces after the invasion of Sicily by identifying and helping capture "fascists" and "fascist sympathizers" (most of whom, strangely enough, turned out to be Luciano's competitors in his various criminal enterprises).
When Luciano left, Genovese wanted more and more power, but Frank Costello, Albert Anastasia and Anastasia's underboss Frank Scalise ran things. Genovese was growing irritated with Albert because of the many murders committed by Albert's crew, which Genovese considered unjustified and which went against the Mafia's laws. Albert was also selling memberships for his family for a few thousand dollars apiece. Genovese hired future boss Vincent Gigante (aka "The Chin") to kill Costello. In 1957 Costello was shot in the head by Gigante, but Costello's phenomenal luck held and he was only grazed by the bullet. However, the assassination attempt persuaded him to semi-retire from his life of crime. By tradition, an underboss was murdered before the boss, in order to prevent retaliation. Anastasia's strongest ally, Joe Adonis, was suddenly deported to Italy. His underboss, Frank Scalise, was murdered not long afterwards when he went out to buy some fruit.
One of Anastasia's capos, Carlo Gambino, who later became the most powerful Mafia boss in US history, was secretly meeting with Vito Genovese to discuss the planned killing of Anastasia. Genovese promised that Gambino would be named the boss of the family if he killed Anastasia. Carlo could not refuse. Anastasia was about the same age, so by the time Carlo became boss, he wouldn't have much longer to live. Gambino consulted Joe Profaci, another Mafia boss, and the two hired the Gallo brothers, including the infamous Joe Gallo (aka "Crazy Joe"), to kill Anastasia. Anastasia's favorite barber shop was on the bottom floor of the famous Park Sheraton Hotel. He loved getting his beard trimmed and the feel of the towel on his face. When the barber put the towel on Albert's face, two of the three Gallo brothers rushed in and fired five shots into Anastasia, blasting him out of the barber's chair. The New York criminal and law enforcement communities were relieved that "The Lord High Executioner" had been taken out. Some people, however, were not so happy about it, and one of the most troubled was future boss John Gotti. Albert had been his role model and, at the time, his one hope of getting in the family. Albert's brother Tough Tony continued to control the waterfronts after Albert's death.February 26, 1902 "Pisces/Tiger" in Calabria, Italy - October 25, 1957 (age 55) in New York City (homicide) - James 'Whitey' Bulger was born on 3 September 1929 in Dorchester, Massachusetts, USA. He died on 30 October 2018 in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia, USA.James Joseph Bulger Jr.
September 3, 1929 "Virgo/Snake" in Dorchester, Massachusetts - The man once described as the most powerful organized crime gangster in American history was born in Italy in 1897. His first arrest came at the age of 20 in New York City for weapons possession. The coming of Prohibition was a stroke of luck for Genovese, as he graduated from being just a street gang member to professional killer. He worked his way up the ranks of organized crime, and by 1930 was partners with top gangster Lucky Luciano and Giuseppe Masseria -- aka "Joe the Boss" -- an old-timer who ran most of the crime in the city. The partnership didn't do Masseria much good, however, as on April 15, 1931, after a lengthy dinner with his pal Vito, Masseria was surprised by Luciano, Joe Adonis, Albert Anastasia, Bugsy Siegel and Carlo Gambino, who promptly shot him full of holes. Luciano took over Masseria's operations, and he and Genovese expanded them to reach every corner of the country and to get their hands into every racket imaginable, from drug smuggling to gambling, from prostitution to bootlegging, and everything in between. Shortly before World War II the authorities began looking into the murder of a Mafia gangster named Boccia -- a murder Genovese had contracted years before -- and he fled to Italy, where he promptly cozied up to Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. During the invasion of Italy in World War II Genovese made himself invaluable to the American military police authorities by informing on local black market rings and drug and weapons dealers; what the MPs didn't know was that as these men were arrested, Genovese replaced them with his own. His scheme was thwarted, however, when an MP investigator -- who had been a New York City detective in civilian life -- recognized Genovese as being wanted for involvement in the Boccia murder, arrested him and had him sent back to the U.S. Unfortunately the only witness in the case was found dead, and Genovese was acquitted.
After the war Genovese built up his drug trade, although many Mafia leaders, including Luciano, thought it was a dangerous business to get into and tried to talk him out of it. Their efforts were in vain, however; there was just too much money in it for Genovese to give it up. By the early 1950s he was head of one of the five New York Mafia families, and began to think that he should be head of all of them. He tried to take over the families of Anastasia and Frank Costello by having both men killed. Costello escaped the attempt on his life and retired, but Anastasia wasn't so lucky and met his end in a New York barber shop in 1957. Eventually Genovese's plan worked, and he was made the "boss of bosses", but unfortunately for him it didn't last very long. Several of his underlings turned on him when they were arrested and began to spill the beans about his heroin-smuggling operation. After an investigation into those activities, Genovese was arrested by federal authorities on drug charges, tried, convicted and sentenced to 15 years in a federal penitentiary. He died in prison in 1969.November 21, 1897 "Scorpio/Rooster" in Tufino, Campania, Italy - February 14, 1969 (age 71) in Federal Prison Medical Centre, Springfield, Missouri (heart failure) - John Gotti was born on 27 October 1940 in Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. He was married to Victoria DiGiorgio. He died on 10 June 2002 in Springfield, Missouri, USA.John Joseph Gotti Jr.
October 27, 1940 "Scorpio/Dragon" in Bronx, New York - June 10, 2002 (age 61) in Springfield, Missouri (cancer) - Paul Castellano was born on 26 June 1915 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was married to Nina Manno. He died on 16 December 1985 in New York City, New York, USA.Constantino Castellano
June 26, 1915 "Cancer/Rabbit" in Brooklyn, New York - December 16, 1985 (age 70) in New York City (homicide by gunshot) - Tommy Lucchese was born on 1 December 1899 in Palermo, Sicily, Italy. He was married to Concetto Vassallo. He died on 13 July 1967 in Lido Beach, New York, USA.Gaetano Tomasso Lucchese
December 1, 1899 "Sagittarius/Pig" in Palermo, Sicily, Italy - July 13, 1967 (age 67) in Lido Beach, New York (brain tumor)