Timothy O'Bryan

popular name: Vincenzo Rao

date_of_death: September 25, 1988

age: 90

cause_of_death: Natural Causes

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Vincenzo Rao was a Consigliere for the Lucchese crime family in New York City. In 1957, Rao was arrested with 60 other mobsters at the notorious Apalachin Meeting. During the 1963 Valachi hearings, Rao was listed as the Lucchese family's consigliere, and was convicted on perjury charges and was sentenced to five years in prison. At the same time the longtime boss Thomas Lucchese had become ill and Rao was thought as suitable successor. His chance to become the new boss never came to fruition due to his trials. When he retired in the 1970s, Rao was considered one of the wealthiest mob members due to his real estate business he used to launder money.

popular name: Raymond Patriarca

date_of_death: July 11, 1984

age: 76

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Raymond Patriarca was an American mobster from Providence, Rhode Island, who became the long-time boss of the Patriarca crime family, whose control extended throughout New England for more than three decades. Even at an early age, Patriarca was charged with hijacking, armed robbery, assault, safecracking, and auto theft. He was indicted as an accessory to murder before Prohibition's end in 1933. During the 1940s, Patriarca continued to rise in power. In 1950, mobster Philip Buccola fled the country to avoid prosecution for tax evasion, and Patriarca took control of his criminal operations. Throughout the notoriety of the last half of his life, Mr. Patriarca insisted he was a legitimate businessman who operated the National Cigarette Service, a vending machine business, in the Federal Hill section of Providence. But law-enforcement officials contended that Mr. Patriarca controlled a web of illicit activities that spread across New England, including loan sharking, numbers lotteries, trafficking in marijuana and cocaine and, for a time, jukebox vending rackets and the smuggling of immigrants. Make no mistake, Patriarca 30-year reign was brutal and violent with the mob boss arrested more than 30 times on charges ranging from bootlegging to conspiracy to murder, and served several prison sentences. The last was a six-year term at the Federal penitentiary in Atlanta stemming from his 1968 conviction for conspiracy in the slayings of Rudy Marfeo and Anthony Melei at Pannone’s Market in Providence, Rhode Island on April 20, 1968.

popular name: Mike Genna

date_of_death: June 13, 1925

age: 30

cause_of_death: Homicide - gunshot wounds

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Mike "The Devil" Genna was an enforcer in the Genna Crime Family. The Gennas were Sicilian brothers who ran the Taylor Street section of Chicago (better known as Little Sicily) making and distributing a very low end of type of booze during Prohibition. Just 19 days after his younger brother Angelo is gunned down, Mike Genna, after a shoot out with the North Side Gang, is killed at 59th Street and Western Avenue by police after he and his fellow gangsters (Anselmi and Scalise) shoot and kill two police officers.