Elena Semander

popular name: Antonio Pollina

date_of_death: February 27, 1993

age: 100

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Antonio "Mr. Miggs" Pollina was an Italian-American mobster and was the short lived boss of the Philadelphia crime family during the late 1950s. Shortly after immigrating from Caccamo, Sicily he developed an arrest record dating back to 1927 and included arrests for murder, concealed weapons, untaxed liquor, assault & battery. His legitimate employment was as a cheese salesman for Maggio Cheese Co. (owned by the powerful mobster Micheal Maggio) Pollina was one of the top leaders of the mafia group known as "The Greaser Gang" and controlled a large loansharking operation. In 1959 Pollina was made interim boss of the Philadelphia crime family. It was then Pollina began plotting the murder of his rival and top earner Angelo Bruno. Pollina ordered his Underboss, Ignazio Denaro, to murder Angelo Bruno, but Denaro instead informed Bruno of Pollina's intentions. Bruno used his connections to The Commission to take Pollina's power away from him. The Commission authorized Bruno to murder Pollina. Pollina stepped down and Angelo Bruno replaced him and kept Denaro as his underboss. Upon his death, he was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, PA.

popular name: Sam Giancana

date_of_death: June 19, 1975

age: 67

cause_of_death: Homicide - gunshot wounds

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Sam Giancana started out as a wheelman for Al Capone and worked his way to the top of Chicago's illegal gambling operations. He had many ties with politicians, including the Kennedys, and was called to testify regarding Mafia involvement in a CIA plot to assassinate Castro. Giancana himself was killed in his own home before giving testimony.

popular name: H. H. Holmes

date_of_death: May 7, 1896

age: 34

cause_of_death: Execution by hanging

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: The country’s first serial killer was a smooth-talking doctor who ran a murder hotel in Chicago. The tale of H. H. Holmes and his Murder Castle is perhaps one of the most fascinating cases in American criminal history. Born Herman Webster Mudgett, he was a bright young doctor who had graduated from high school at sixteen and always had a penchant for anything to do with death. While enrolled in the University of Michigan’s Department of Medicine and Surgery, he worked under Professor William James Herdman in the university’s anatomy lab. The pair were said to have aided body snatching to supply bodies as medical cadavers, which Mudgett then burned or disfigured with acid, then planted to it look as if they had been killed in an accident. Mudgett began taking out insurance policies on these people—before he stole, disfigured, and planted them—and would later collect the insurance money once the bodies were discovered. After graduation, Mudgett started a new job working at a Philadelphia drugstore. When a child died after taking medicine purchased from the drugstore Mudgett was employed at, the young doctor denied any involvement and immediately left the city. Before he moved to Chicago, he changed his name to avoid any connection to his previous scams. Herman Webster Mudgett, M.D., donned the name Henry Howard Holmes. In 1893, the bustling city of Chicago won the honor of hosting the World’s Columbian Exposition. While the World’s Fair brought millions of visitors from all over the world, nearby, a clever killer hid in plain sight, capitalizing off of the slaughter of naive tourists. For the next two years Holmes either killed or is suspected of killing around two dozen people using his murder mansion residences to facility cruel and diabolical murder of men, women, and even children. He was finally caught and convicted of murder in 1894 and executed in 1985. Until the moment of his death, Holmes remained calm and amiable, showing very few signs of fear, anxiety, or depression. Despite this, he asked for his coffin to be contained in concrete and buried ten feet deep, because he was concerned grave robbers would steal his body and use it for dissection. Despite popular belief, Holmes's neck did not break; he instead strangled to death slowly, twitching for over fifteen minutes before being pronounced dead. He was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, Pennsylvania.