Thomas Hunt

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...

(UPDATE: Following publication, it was learned that the discovered photograph, labeled as Maranzano by an Italian periodical, was actually NOT the Mafia boss but a German serial killer.) Print and electronic journal editions can be previewed and purchased through MagCloud Kindle e-book edition can be ordered through Amazon.