Thomas Hunt

BIG news for little Whiting, Vermont:  The Whiting General Store opened Friday, January 31, at the historic building (also housing our post office) at the corner of South Main Street (Rt 30) and Leicester-Whiting Road. Whiting had been without a general store for some years, since one a bit further down South Main Street closed. The store's Day 1 offerings included coffee, snacks, grocery / home essentials, holiday cards and treats. Many goods are from Vermont producers. (I picked up a Sap! maple soda.) The building, which first housed a general store at least 150 years ago, is bright and clean with antique charm. It is decorated with old time photos and grocery containers. Among the Day 1 visitors was a descendant of the family that long ago ran the Whiting General Store. He reminisced about the old store layout. Proprietor Garrett Law says he's hoping to hear suggestions about how to best serve the community. Business hours are weekdays 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sat 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.,...

  There's plenty of interesting reading in Informer's 2024 issue, The Treacherous World of Joseph Valachi   (shown in hardcover above - red bow not included).  The issue is available for online purchase in (easily wrapped) hardcover book, paperback book and magazine formats. (Electronic book and magazine editions are available too, but good luck getting a bow to stick to those.) Books are sold through Amazon:  https://amzn.to/3ZxMwR6 Magazines are sold through MagCloud: https://informer.magcloud.com Click here for more information.

Gangster Hunters How Hoover’s G-Men Vanquished America’s Deadliest Public Enemies by John Oller John Oller’s meticulously researched account of the FBI’s early days is due to be released by Dutton (imprint of Penguin Publishing Group) on November 26, 2024. John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd – these infamous Depression-era criminals have been immortalized as some of the most vicious felons in our history, but they share another commonality: every single one was brought down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during a chaotic war on crime, which started in 1933 and thrust the FBI into the national spotlight for the first time.  Surprisingly little has been written about field-level agents responsible for hunting down the most dangerous criminals and bringing them to justice... until now. In this new book, Gangster Hunters , critically acclaimed author John Oller (also author of the 2021 release Rogues Galle...

Informer's November 2024 issue, The Treacherous World of Joseph Valachi , has been released and is now widely available in magazine, book and electronic formats. The issue focuses on Mafia informant Valachi, his time and place, and many of the individuals who played roles in his life. A rare primary source into American Mafia history of the Castellammarese War-era, Joseph Valachi also described early gangland of East Harlem and the Bronx, and provided a unique soldier-level view of New York-area organized crime from the days of Prohibition up to Apalachin. An early FBI informant, Valachi became the focus of a best-selling book and a popular movie, as well as televised Senate testimony and a lengthy autobiography. Despite this coverage, a great deal of the true Valachi story has remained untold. Now, 60 years after Valachi put pen to paper in an effort to bring his story to the attention of the public, a team of historians from around the globe is revealing long hidden asp...

The Bulldog Detective: William J. Flynn and America's First War Against the Mafia, Spies, and Terrorists by Jeffrey D. Simon was released today (January 16, 2024). It is available in hardcover and ebook formats through popular booksellers Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com , as well as through academic nonfiction publisher, Rowman & Littlefield . Publisher's description :  America in the early twentieth century was rife with threats. Organized crime groups like the Mafia, German spies embedded behind enemy lines ahead of World War I, package bombs sent throughout the country, and the 1920 Wall Street bombing dominated headlines. Yet the story of the one man tasked with combating these threats has yet to be told.  The Bulldog Detective: William J. Flynn and America’s First War Against the Mafia, Spies, and Terrorists  is the first book to tell the story of Flynn, the first government official to bring down the powerful Mafia, uncover a sophisticated German spy ring i...

Friend and colleague Justin Cascio has penned a book-length discussion of transatlantic family connections of Corleone, Sicily, mafiosi. In Our Blood: The Mafia Families of Corleone , now available through Amazon in hardcover, paperback and ebook editions, is Cascio's first book. The Mafia criminal society is traditionally viewed as a hierarchical organization, but Cascio argues that Mafia networks are largely based on kinship ties.  He has poured years of his research into this project. The publisher of the Mafia Genealogy website and a frequent contributor to Informer journal, Cascio is highly regarded as an underworld historian and genealogist. He notes that pivotal figures in Mafia history, including present-day mafiosi, have direct ties to one another and to the earliest recorded gangs in Corleone, Sicily. In addition to bloodline and marriage connections, some mafiosi also linked through the significant religious/family role of godparent.  Cascio discusses dozens o...

Informer's October 2023 issue, Gangsters of New York's Lower East Side , is now available in seven formats (print and electronic magazine, hardcover and paperback book, Kindle and EPUB ebook, and audiobook). Contributors to the issue include historians Justin Cascio, Patrick Downey, Michael O'Haire, Steve Turner, Matt Ghiglieri. Visit Informer's website for more information. A dozen articles focus on aspects of Lower East Side gangland history:  End of the Whyos gang. Historic Photo: Bandits' Roost. John H. McGurk and Bowery's "Suicide Hall." The death and life of hoodlum/hero Monk Eastman. NYC's first Mafia boss? Italian gang chief with an Irish name: Paul Kelly. Sai Wing Mock and the New York "Tong Wars." Frank Lanza's New York firms may have been Mafia fronts. In search of "Johnny Spanish." Racketeering future was molded in young Meyer Lansky's neighborhood. "Death Avenue": Second Avenue, 1910-1924. 1964 n...

Be especially kind to your ass today. (Sebastian - one of our two donkeys)  Since the middle ages, this date - January 14 - has been the "Feast of the Ass" on Christian calendars.  Not kidding. See: "Feast of the Ass." Note that donkeys, long the target of human abuse and ridicule, played significant roles in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. (They are also nearly always present in the nativity scenes used in Christmas celebrations.) In Christian legend, the humble, thoughtful donkey not only carried Mary and newborn Jesus out of harm's way (the Flight into Egypt), it also carried adult Jesus into Jerusalem (the Palm Sunday tradition). Donkeys also were used extensively by Abraham and Moses. This was a deliberate choice, as there were horses, oxen and camels available. They were the ONLY form of animal exempted from sacrifice instructions in the Book of Exodus. The sacrifice of the first-born male domestic animal was mandated in Exodus, but it was sugges...

We were treated to a special show about 7 a.m. on December 29, 2022. Rippled clouds near the Green Mountains horizon showed up as tightly packed layers of magenta and orange light, while pink cotton candy puffs filled the rest of the sky. A 14-second video, scanning the sky from northeast to southeast. Apparently, the spectacle wasn't limited to the Whiting area. TV news in Burlington shared dawn photographs taken around the state of Vermont.

 ... will find this the sort of thing they like." I attended a showing of Violent Night yesterday at the Majestic 10 Cinemas in Williston, VT (after a nice, quick meal at Bliss Bee). The movie is, well, not for everyone.  If you feel a solemn reverence for Christmas, you're not likely to enjoy it. From the early moment in which a woman marveling at a flying, reindeer-drawn sleigh is splattered by a downpour of drunk-Santa vomit, it is clear that this not a traditional holiday flick. There are some heartwarming, sensitive moments - plenty of them (mostly involving John McClane-like walkie-talkie communication between Santa and young Trudy Lightstone) - but the movie is basically a comedy bloodbath (set to an up-beat holiday soundtrack). A disillusioned Santa regains his holiday spirit as he dispenses brutal, gory justice upon a gang of very naughty home-invading thieves and saves a not-entirely-nice (except for certain members) family from an apparently deserved punishment. Th...

I don't think I will ever again be able to listen to a wine description without laughing out loud. (Honestly, this was already a tough thing for me.) The Menu deliciously mocks pretentious cuisine, faddish "deconstructed" edibles and food journalism, while drawing a horror story out of kitchen enslavement to critics (and to much of the rest of restaurant-going society). I left the theater smiling, thinking and craving a double-cheeseburger.

Leaving the Twits behind. If you'd like to follow me on social media, give Mastodon a try.

Through decades, Youngstown, Ohio, endured painful nicknames like those, due to the rackets, violence and corruption of organized crime in the region. In its November 2022 issue - just released yesterday - Informer addresses the history of organized crime in the Mahoning/Shenango valleys of northeastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania. Articles on the subject range from the earliest "Mafia" reports of the 1890s through the apparent dissolution of the Mob more than a century later. I spent much of the past two years coordinating "The Mob in Youngstown" issue. I had the pleasure of working on this massive project with extremely knowledgeable organized crime historians James Barber, Justin Cascio, Margaret Janco, Thom L. Jones, Michael A. Tona and Edmond Valin. There were some special challenges. The Youngstown-area underworld was unusually complex, as four Mafia organizations - those from Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit and Buffalo - a non-Mafia Calabrian criminal soc...

Oct. 26, 2022 - Informer's November 2022 issue, The Mob in Youngstown , isn't scheduled for release until next week, but it is already available for preview and purchase through Amazon.com, Google Play Books and MagCloud. (With a total of seven different formats, coordinating availability by the scheduled release date required that the formats go live earlier for testing and online linking.)  Here's everything you need to know:  Some information about the issue is shown on Informer's website. Additional information, including summaries of all articles, will be posted there on October 30-31. The Mob in Youngstown issue is of course available in its traditional magazine and e-magazine (PDF) formats through the MagCloud service . Every Informer issue, since the first one released fourteen years ago, remains available for preview/purchase on MagCloud .  In recent years,  Informer page counts and production costs dramatically climbed, and we became concerned abou...

Organized crime in the Youngstown, Ohio, area (including much of northeastern Ohio and nearby western Pennsylvania) will be the focus of Informer's next issue.  Articles for the issue will be accepted through September 1, 2022. Advertising will be accepted through September 30, 2022. The scheduled release date is November 1, 2022. The issue will be a lengthy one, with more than a dozen feature articles covering more than a century of the region's organized crime history. We expect to release it in the usual magazine and e-magazine (PDF) formats, in addition to e-book (Kindle, EPUB), softcover print book and hardcover print book formats.

Mafiosi of the West Coast Our look at mobsters who set up shop on America's West Coast begins with excerpts from a fact-based crime noir by J. Michael Niotta PhD. These excerpts relate to the escape to California of New York gangsters - a young Jack Dragna and his cousin Ben Rizzotto - implicated in the 1914 murder of wealthy Manhattan poultryman Barnett Baff ( PREVIEW ). This is Dr. Niotta's first article in Informer . A brief biography of Baff is provided as a sidebar. Dragna and Rizzotto also make appearances in Justin Cascio's study of the legendary “San Pedro Gang” and Corleone Mafia transplant Sam Streva ( PREVIEW ). The San Francisco gangland murder of Nick DeJohn, found stuffed into the trunk of his car in 1947, and that killing's possible relationship with Chicago's so-called “Cheese War” are considered by Thomas Hunt ( PREVIEW ). The article is accompanied by a sidebar story on early Chicago shootings linked with the DeJohn family and by a collection ...

Possibly I've been writing about crime history for too long. While rewatching It's a Wonderful Life recently, I couldn't help but compile a list of legal offenses presented within the 1946 holiday classic - charges ranging from child abuse to possible homicide.   I know that I am not alone in viewing Wonderful Life with a critical eye. The movie has long been criticized for a theme some feel instigates class warfare. (I always find it odd that so many Americans are more concerned over the possibility of friction between economic classes than by the actual existence of economic classes.) This accusation is particularly popular among America's Henry F. Potter-types. The movie actually was investigated by the FBI as possible communist propaganda. I don't find that charge credible.  Wonderful Life does encourage have-nots to constructively work together to improve their lives, using the example of the shareholder-sponsored and generous-spirited Bailey Brothers ...

This Informer special issue (No. 30) focuses on Nicola "Nick" Gentile, underworld leader in U.S. and Sicily, who published an Italian-language tell-all autobiography in 1963. The issue is available as a 214-page printed and bound magazine , a 382-page paperback book and in PDF and Kindle e-book formats. (Searchable PDF and EPUB e-book formats should be available soon.) Informer strives to bring Gentile's entire life story to the English-language reader. Building on extensive original research by a team of Mafia history experts and on U.S. government documents designed to extract meaning from the memoirs, this issue attempts to balance Gentile's obviously self-serving and self-aggrandizing autobiographical work with verifiable history, to correct his misinformation and to fill in the wide gaps left in his personal account. Informer closely examines a number of aspects of Gentile's life, such as the launch of his underworld career in the Kansas City area; r...

A few months shy of her ninety-ninth birthday, Concetta (Mangione) Prisco died Monday, May 4, 2020, of COVID-19 complications at Mamaroneck, New York. She had been a resident of the New Jewish Home long term care facility in that Westchester County municipality. George and Concetta Prisco Concetta "Connie" was born Maria Concetta Mangione to Liborio and Emma (Arnetta) Mangione, Sicilian immigrants, in Manhattan, New York, on August 5, 1921. (Baptismal records from St. Lucy's Church on East 104th Street place her birth on August 2, 1921.*) Brother Vincent "Sonny" was born in June 1925, and brother Joseph was born four years later. The family's early homes were in Italian East Harlem: first with Liborio's parents Vincenzo and Maria (Capizzi) Mangione at 344 East 105th Street and later at 225 East 108th Street. 1973 passport photo Her later childhood appears to have been spent with relatives in the Little Italy neighborhood in the Bronx, New Yo...

The 1000-plus page memoirs of Mafia turncoat Joseph Valachi are valuable source material for organized crime historians. The manuscript, entitled "The Real Thing - Second Government: The Expose and Inside Doings of Cosa Nostra," is one of just three authoritative inside sources on the Mafia during the period of the 1930-31 Castellammarese War (the others are published autobiographies, Vita di Capomafia by Nick Gentile and A Man of Honor by Joseph Bonanno). The Valachi memoirs were consulted and quoted by author Peter Maas for his 1968 book, The Valachi Papers , which grew into a 1972 Charles Bronson motion picture . Until now, these Joseph Valachi papers could only be accessed through the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. I have been working to change that. I first published a couple hundred pages of the manuscript on the mafiahistory.us website some years ago. The pages were acquired through the assistance of another Mafia historian, who requested anonym...