Elena Semander

popular name: Nicholas Femia

date_of_death: December 16, 1983

age: 44

cause_of_death: Gunshot - .357 magnum to the head

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Nicholas "Nicky" Femia was a low-level, but extremely violent, mobster and member of the Joe "the Animal" Barboza gang on Bennington Street in East Boston. After the Barboza gang diminished in 1967, he later became involved with the Winter Hill Gang of Somerville during the early 70s, which by then wielded power in areas like South Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, Brookline, South End, Charlestown and Cambridge. All other parts of the Greater Boston area were controlled by the Patriarca Crime Family, the Mafia's New England Branch. Femia was suspected in several gangland killings during the violent feud of the mid 1960s between the Charlestown gang lead by the McLaughlin Brothers, and Winter Hill Gang lead by James "Buddy" McLean in Somerville. Barboza's East Boston gang backed McLean along with various members of The Bennett Gang in Roxbury, which included; Stephen "the Rifleman" Flemmi, his psychotic brother Jimmy the Bear, and Francis "Cadillac Frank" Salemme. Femia was heavily involved in armed robberies and extortion. He was a bulky guy with a vicious temper known to use a baseball bat or a sawed-off shotgun when making a point. Femia would come to an abrupt end quite befitting of a man of his violent personality. In December 1983, Femia was killed in a shootout with the occupants of an East Boston Autobody shop on Condor Street, in a shakedown attempt that went horribly wrong. Nicholas Femia shares his grave with his father in the Winthrop Cemetery on Cross Street, a small upscale beach community in Suffolk County, just outside of East Boston.

popular name: Sir Harry Oakes

date_of_death: July 8, 1943

age: 68

cause_of_death: Murdered - blunt force trauma

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: The Bahamas in the 1940s was, in all reality, a seething cauldron of Nazi sympathizers, British spies, money launderers, narcotics traffickers, gambling mobsters, land swindlers, murderers and paid-for-hire assassins. And then you had the richest man in the world: Harry Oakes. Sir Harry Oakes, 1st Baronet was a British gold mine owner, entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist. He earned his fortune in Canada and moved to the Bahamas in the 1930s for tax purposes. Though American by birth, he became a British citizen and was granted the hereditary title of baronet in 1939. Oakes was murdered in 1943 under mysterious circumstances, and the subsequent trial ended with acquittal of the accused. No further legal proceedings have taken place on the matter.

popular name: Stringbean Akeman

date_of_death: November 10, 1973

age: 58

cause_of_death: Homicide - gunshot wounds

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: David "Stringbean" Akeman was an American singer-songwriter, musician, comedian, actor and semiprofessional baseball player best known for his role as a featured original cast member on the hit television show Hee Haw and as a member of the Grand Ole Opry. Akeman was well-known for his "old-fashioned" banjo-picking style, careful mix of comedy and music, and his memorable stage wardrobe (which consisted of a long nightshirt tucked into a pair of short blue jeans belted around his knees — giving him the comical appearance of a very tall man with stubby legs). Akeman and his wife were shot and murdered by burglars in their rural Tennessee home near Ridgetop in 1973.