Ernesto Miranda

popular name: John Dillinger

date_of_death: July 22, 1934

age: 31

cause_of_death: Gunshot wounds

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: John Dillinger was an infamous American gangster of the Great Depression. He led a group known as the "Dillinger Gang", which was accused of robbing 24 banks and four police stations. Dillinger was imprisoned several times but escaped twice. The media ran exaggerated accounts of his bravado and colorful personality and cast him as a Robin Hood. Dillinger was shot and killed by the special agents on July 22, 1934, at the Biograph Theater in Chicago. Dillinger's death came only two months after the deaths of fellow notorious criminals Bonnie and Clyde. There were reports of people dipping their handkerchiefs and skirts into the pool of blood that had formed, as Dillinger lay in the alley, as keepsakes: "Souvenir hunters madly dipped newspapers in the blood that stained the pavement. Handkerchiefs were whipped out and used to mop up the blood."

popular name: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

date_of_death: June 19, 1953

age:

cause_of_death: Execution by electric chair

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: It was a case that mesmerized the country and the world. On June 19, 1953, at the height of the Cold War, New York City–born Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were put to death in the electric chair. Convicted of conspiring to pass atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union, they were the first civilians to be executed by the United States on espionage charges. Their conviction of spying for the Soviet Union included providing top-secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and nuclear weapon designs. Convicted of espionage in 1951, they were executed in 1953 at Sing Sing in Ossining, New York. For decades, many people, including the Rosenberg's sons (Michael and Robert Meeropol), maintained that Julius and Ethel were innocent of spying on their country and were victims of Cold War paranoia. Several years after their execution, top nuclear scientist Boris V. Brokhovich stated the Soviets had developed their own bomb by trial and error. "You sat the Rosenbergs in the electric chair for nothing", he said. "We got nothing from the Rosenbergs." The notes allegedly typed by Ethel Rosenberg as dictated by her husband apparently contained little that was directly used in the Soviet atomic bomb project. According to Julius's contact Feklisov, the Rosenbergs did not provide the Soviet Union with any useful material about the atomic bomb: "He [Julius] didn't understand anything about the atomic bomb and he couldn't help us."

popular name: Rudy Marfeo

date_of_death: April 20, 1968

age: 42

cause_of_death: Gunshot wounds from mob hit

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: In 1968 local bookmaker Rudolph “Rudy” Marfeo had recently defied New England mob boss Raymond Patriarca by refusing to pay his "tribute money" and publicly disrespecting Ray Patriarca. This was not wise considering Patriarca had Rudy’s brother Willie whacked in a Federal Hill restaurant just two years earlier for doing the exact same thing. Patriarca wanted Marfeo, “straightened out,” as soon as possible and ordered the hit on Rudy. On April 20, 1968 Rudy and his bodyguard Anthony Melei were observed shopping at Pannone’s Market on 282 Pocasset Avenue in Providence. Rudolph Marfeo, the bookie, fell near the front door, a drawn .38 in his hand, his left side blown apart. Anthony Melei, the bodyguard, died next to the ice cream freezer, his face shot away by Double OO buckshot. The shopkeeper and his wife dived behind the deli counter as the killers retreated. What makes these murders so important in the history of the New England Cosa Nostra is that subsequent charges and guilty verdicts against Ray Patriarca and his associates signaled the downward spiral of the Patriarca crime family and to their New England operations.