Timothy O'Bryan

popular name: Joe Profaci

date_of_death: June 6, 1962

age: 64

cause_of_death: Liver cancer

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Giuseppe "Joe" Profaci was an Italian-born New York City La Cosa Nostra boss who was the founder of the Profaci crime family. Established in 1928, this was the last of the Five Families to be organized. He was the family's boss for over three decades. On December 5, 1928, after the murder of Brooklyn boss Salvatore D'Aquila in 1928, Profaci attended the infamous mob meeting in Cleveland, Ohio that would make him an organized crime boss in Brooklyn to maintain calm among the Brooklyn gangs. In addition to his illegal enterprises such as protection rackets and extortion, Profaci continued with his olive oil company making him a wealthy man both legally and illegally. When Profaci died from liver cancer in 1962, his second in command would take charge, Joe Magliocco. A year after taking control of the family Magliocco made plans with Joseph Bonanno to assassinate several rivals such as Tommy Lucchese, Carlo Gambino, and Stefano Magaddino in order to get control of the entire syndicate. Joe Columbo stepped up to The Commission and turned in Magliocco and Bonanno. Magliocco was forced out of the family and Joe Columbo took over the reins of the Profaci crime family and renamed it the Columbo Family.

popular name: John Nardi

date_of_death: May 17, 1977

age: 61

cause_of_death: Car bombing from a mob hit

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: A high level member of the Cleveland crime family who was involved in labor racketeering, drug trafficking and extortion in Cleveland, Ohio. Upon the death of mob boss John Scalish, the Five Families' decision to appoint James Licavoli as boss of the family and the latter's attempts to confiscate Nardi's rackets leads the Nardi crew to fully align themselves with Danny Greene. After two unsuccessful attempts on his life, Fat Tony Salerno hired hit man Ray Ferritto who killed Nardi with a bomb planted in his car.

popular name: Velma Barfield

date_of_death: November 2, 1984

age: 52

cause_of_death: Execution by lethal injection

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Velma Barfield was an American female serial killer and is remembered for being one of the first women to be executed in the United States after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Barfield was 1 of 9 children born in South Carolina into abject poverty. As the eldest girl, she was expected at a young age to cook, clean and mend clothes for the entire family (no easy task in a house with no electricity, no running water and no toilet facilities). A childhood marked by abuse and a difficult relationship with her family, she met and married Thomas Burke in 1949 and had two children. It was during her marriage to Burke that she developed a debilitating addiction to narcotics to treat depression and pain from several surgeries. Over a period of 16 years, Velma Barfield poisoned several victims when they discovered she was forging checks to fund her drug habit. Those victims include her own mother, her fiancé, and her mother-in-law, among others. She used arsenic to kill them, often claiming they had died from natural causes. After the death of Stuart Taylor (Barfield's boyfriend and a relative of victim #6 Dollie Edwards) the local police were tipped-off by Barfield's sister in 1976, thus investigators were able to link the deaths to her through forensic evidence. Upon her arrest and without a lawyer present, she confessed initially to 3 of the murders. In 1978 she was convicted of the death of her fiancé, Stuart Taylor, and sentenced to death. After 2 appeals and 6 years on death row, the "Death Row Granny" Velma Barfield was executed on November 2, 1984, by lethal injection in North Carolina. Her execution was notable because she was the first woman to be executed in the U.S. since 1962 and one of the few women executed in the 20th century. She was buried next to her first husband in a grave that remains unmarked in Parkton Cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina.