Which criminal from La Grange, North Carolina boasted that he smuggled heroin into the United States by using coffins of dead servicemen?
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American Gangster (film) American Gangster is a 2007 American biographical crime film directed and produced by Ridley Scott and written by Steven Zaillian. The film is fictionally based on the criminal career of Frank Lucas, a gangster from La Grange, North Carolina who smuggled heroin into the United States on American service planes returning from the Vietnam War, before being detained by a task force led by detective Richie Roberts. The film stars Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington in their first lead acting roles together since 1995's "Virtuosity". The film also co-stars Ted Levine, John Ortiz, Josh Brolin, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Norman Reedus, Ruby Dee, Lymari Nadal and Cuba Gooding Jr.
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Frank Lucas (drug dealer) Frank Lucas (born September 9, 1930) is an American former drug trafficker, who operated in Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was particularly known for cutting out middlemen in the drug trade and buying heroin directly from his source in the Golden Triangle. Lucas boasted that he smuggled heroin using the coffins of dead American servicemen, but this claim is denied by his South East Asian associate, Leslie "Ike" Atkinson. Rather than hide the drugs in the coffins, they were hidden in the pallets underneath as depicted in the 2007 feature film "American Gangster" in which he was played by Denzel Washington, although the film fictionalized elements of Lucas' life for dramatic effect.
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Herbert Allen Farmer Herbert Allen "Deafy" Farmer (March 9, 1891 – January 12, 1948) was an American criminal who, with his wife Esther, operated a safe house for underworld fugitives from the mid-1920s to 1933.
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William Webber (criminal) Louis William "Bridgie" Webber (1877 – July 30, 1936) was an underworld figure in New York City and a former associate of gang leader Monk Eastman who later testified against police lieutenant Charles Becker during his murder trial in 1912.
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Pierre Hotel robbery The Pierre Hotel robbery was a $3 million (worth $27million today) hotel robbery in early 1972, by Samuel Nalo and Robert Comfort, an associate of the Lucchese Crime Family, Christie 'the Tic' Furnari, and carried out by several of his Gang burglars. This robbery would later be listed in the "Guinness Book of World Records" as the largest, most successful hotel robbery in history.
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James Autry James David Autry (September 27, 1954 – March 14, 1984) was a convicted murderer in the U.S. state of Texas, executed by lethal injection.
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Mikey Coppola Michael J. Coppola (born in May 18, 1946), also known as "Mikey Cigars", is an American mobster and captain in the Genovese crime family. He has been a key figure in the Genovese crime family New Jersey faction. It is unknown if he is related to Michael "Trigger Mike" Coppola, who was also a member of the Genovese family. He made national headlines when he went into hiding for 11 years to avoid a possible murder conviction.
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George Musey George Musey, also known as "one-armed George Musey", was an associate mob boss in Galveston, Texas, during the 1920s and early 1930s. He, with the "Beau Brummel of Galveston" Johnny Jack Nounes, led the Downtown Gang, one of the two gangs which controlled Galveston underworld until the early 1930s. Musey was the gang's top enforcer and would not let anyone ruin the rise of the Downtown Gang. Bootlegging was his specialty, therefore, when the law would arrive to seize the illegal hooch, Musey always escaped. However, he was convicted on conspiracy liquor charges and sent to Atlanta Penitentiary. He went on to head the gang as Nounes's absence was in effect due to his prison terms. He was the only right-hand man to gang boss Nounes and he was the best acting boss the gang ever had. He was later assassinated in 1935, eight days after his 35th birthday.
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William W. &quot;Bill&quot; Kirtley William W. "Bill" Kirtley (December 10, 1897 – September 23, 1944) was an early American anti-death penalty crusader and lead defense attorney to Rainey Bethea, the last man ever publicly executed in the United States. He was also the husband of feminist Louise Gasser Kirtley, the first female Kentucky State Representative (serving two terms, 1962-1966) and first female Kentucky Bar Association President and grandfather of French international arbitration expert William Kirtley, who now chairs his grandfather's Paris-based foundation and teaches at the University of Paris. Arguing that capital punishment was the "most premeditated of murders," Mr. Kirtley was unable to convince Rainey Bethea to testify on his own behalf, and he was ultimately hung before a crowd of 20,000 people in what was described as a carnival-like atmosphere, drawing media attention throughout the United States that was fanned by Mr. Kirtley and his wife. Afterwards, he sought to have Kentucky adopt a law based on a Missouri statute (L.1919, p. 781) banning all public executions. Following his early death, his wife took up the cause, playing a key role in the Kentucky legislature's ban on all public executions still found in statute KRS 431.220. More significantly, many legal scholars and human rights advocates credit the scandal he generated and the execution itself to have led to the eventual ban of all public executions in America.
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Red Dillard Morrison Dillard Morrison Sr. (1919) — known as "Red" Dillard — was an American mob boss and enforcer in New York City's Harlem neighborhood. Once called the "most dangerous man in the country" by federal law enforcement agents, Morrison’s underworld résumé includes running a multimillion-dollar heroin ring, enforcing, pimping, extortion, and engaging in shootouts with rivals like Bumpy Johnson. A Robin Hood like figure in the Harlem community, Morrison's exploits with crime, women, and music are legendary. Though he would spend decades behind bars over the course of his life, Morrison was never convicted of murder.
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Forrest Turner Forrest T. Turner (February 8, 1915 in McDonough, Georgia-January 5, 2001 in Snellville, Georgia) was an American bootlegger and rum-runner who gained notoriety for multiple escapes from prison in the 1930s and 1940s. Georgia Governor Ellis Arnall gave him a full pardon with the understanding that he would speak out against crime and in favor of prison reform. From that time until his death, he gave more than 10,000 speeches to church and school groups about prison reform. He earned his living making dentures, a trade he had learned in prison.
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Gaston Means Gaston Bullock Means (July 11, 1879 – December 12, 1938) was an American private detective, salesman, bootlegger, forger, swindler, murder suspect, blackmailer, and con artist.
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Daniel Conahan Daniel Owen Conahan Jr. (born May 11, 1954) is a convicted American murderer and suspected serial killer. Conahan was convicted of one murder but has been linked to over a dozen murders, mostly of homosexual men in the Charlotte County, Florida area in what came to be known as the Hog Trail Murders.
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Richard Ramirez Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramírez, known as Richard Ramirez (February 29, 1960 – June 7, 2013), was an American serial killer, rapist, and burglar. His highly publicized home invasion crime spree terrorized the residents of the greater Los Angeles area, and later the residents of the San Francisco area, from June 1984 until August 1985. Prior to his capture, Ramirez was dubbed the "Night Stalker" by the news media. He used a wide variety of weapons, including handguns, knives, a machete, a tire iron, and a hammer. Ramirez, who was an avowed Satanist, never expressed any remorse for his crimes. The judge who upheld his thirteen death sentences remarked that Ramirez's deeds exhibited "cruelty, callousness, and viciousness beyond any human understanding". Ramirez died of complications from B-cell lymphoma while awaiting execution on California's death row.
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John LaRocca John Sebastian LaRocca (December 19, 1901 - December 3, 1984) was the Sicilian-born American boss of the Pittsburgh crime family from the 1950s until his death in 1984.
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Rufe Persful Rufe Persful (May 25, 1906 – May 16, 1991) was an American criminal, convicted for murder, kidnapping and robbery. He was considered one of the most dangerous criminals of his era by the authorities. Convicted with the murder and robbery of an elderly man at the age of 18, he was sentenced to 15 years in Arkansas State Penitentiary, but unlike a standard prison, it involved farm labour. He was given the task of shooting fellow inmates with a shotgun if they attempted to escape. He killed and disabled many prisoners during his time at the Arkansas Penitentiary, punctuated by periods of parole as a reward for his prison protection, and then re-offending and being sent back to resume his role.
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William Miller (criminal) William "Billy the Killer" Miller (1906 – April 16, 1931) was an American bank robber and Depression-era outlaw. In his brief criminal career, he committed numerous bank heists in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Oklahoma, and teamed up with George Birdwell and Pretty Boy Floyd during the early 1930s.
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Frankie Carbo Paul John Carbo (born Paolo Giovanni Carbo on August 10, 1904 – died November 22, 1976), better known as "Frankie Carbo", was a New York City Mafia soldier in the Lucchese crime family, who operated as a boxing promoter and a gunman with Murder, Inc.
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Lavinia Fisher Lavinia Fisher (1793 – February 18, 1820) is reported by some legends to have been the first female serial killer in the United States of America. Her origins are unknown ; however, Fisher resided in the United States for much of her life. She was married to John Fisher, and both were convicted of highway robbery—a capital offense at the time—not murder. Historians have begun to question the veracity of the traditional legend and some assert that Lavinia Fisher never killed anyone. Some, however, believe she would kill her victims by crushing their heads between her legs. She was, however, an active member of a large gang of highwaymen who operated out of two houses in the backcountry near Charleston, the Five Mile House and the Six Mile House. It is not clear whether the Six Mile House was a hotel, but it did serve as a hideout for a number of outlaws.
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Monroe Edwards Monroe Edwards (1808 – January 27, 1847) was an American slave trader, forger and convicted criminal who was the subject of a well-publicized trial and conviction in 1842. Originally from Kentucky, Edwards moved to New Orleans then settled in Texas. He smuggled slaves into Brazil in 1832, and used the proceeds to purchase land in Texas. In 1836 he was again smuggling slaves, this time into Texas. After attempting to swindle his partner out of the profits of the venture, partly with forged documents, Edwards was forced to flee the Republic of Texas to the United States. He then tried to scam money out of various abolitionists in the United States and the United Kingdom, partly with forged letters of introduction. He traveled to the United Kingdom, but his schemes were mainly unsuccessful and he returned to the United States in mid-1841.
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Robert &quot;Bobby&quot; Germaine Robert "Bobby" Germaine, Sr. (October 1, 1925 – April 1986), the son of French-Canadian immigrants, was a drug trafficker, burglar, and freelance writer in New York, NY. He was friends with Henry Hill and involved in his criminal activities following the Lufthansa heist up to Hill's incarceration. Germaine was also a friend of Jimmy 'the Gent' Burke. On January 3, 1972, Germaine was one of the gunmen of the Pierre Hotel armed robbery, where he and his seven cohorts, after binding and gagging the hotel employees, taking the Pierre under siege, ransacked the safe deposit boxes, and plundered an estimated $28,000,000 in jewels and cash. (Refer to 'Contract Killer' by William Hoffman & Lake Headley).
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John Felton Parish John Felton Parish (July 4, 1933 – August 9, 1982) was an American mass murderer who shot dead six people and wounded three others at two warehouses in Grand Prairie, Texas, United States on August 9, 1982. Afterwards, while driving a hijacked semi-trailer truck, he led police on a high-speed chase through Grand Prairie downtown that ended only when he broke through a police barricade, injuring an officer, and crashed into a building. He was subsequently killed by police during a shootout.