Timothy O'Bryan

popular name: Meyer Lansky

date_of_death: January 15, 1983

age: 80

cause_of_death: Lung cancer

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Meyer Lansky was one of the most important figures in the development of organized crime in New York, nationwide and worldwide in the 20th century. Known as "The Mob's Accountant" Lansky’s work spanned the pre-Prohibition days of the New York City rackets, where he had an early partnership with Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, to the consolidation of the New York Mob under Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, and on to the development of Las Vegas and Havana, Cuba, as “open cities” for the Mob. He controlled casinos in the Bahamas and in London, as well as, reportedly, a Swiss-based bank through which he laundered profits. The authorities described him as a genius of finance who applied his Midas touch to bootlegging in the Prohibition era, to gambling in Cuba, the Bahamas and the United States and to loan-sharking, stock manipulation and underworld penetration of legitimate businesses throughout the United States. Upon his death, he was laid to rest at Mount Nebo Miami Memorial Gardens in West Miami, Florida.

popular name: Joe Arridy

date_of_death: January 6, 1939

age: 23

cause_of_death: Execution - gas chamber

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: In August of 1936 Joe Arridy was arrested for vagrancy and shortly after confessed to the rape and brutal murder of Dorothy Drain, a 15-year-old girl in Pueblo, Colorado. Only problem was that Joe Arridy had an I.Q. of 46 and the understanding of a 6-year-old child. Unfortunately that did not matter to the arresting sheriff, the prosecutor or the judge who sentenced Arridy to death in the gas chamber. Despite the exhaustive work his attorney did along with a host of professionals to halt this travesty of "justice" Joe Arridy was murdered by the State of Colorado on January 6, 1939. So unaware of his surrounding or his situation, he enjoyed his last meal of ice cream and smiled and joked with the guards as they escorted him to the gas chamber.

popular name: Ernest Haywood

date_of_death: December 14, 1946

age: 86

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: The Haywood family was a politically and socially influential white family in Raleigh, North Carolina during with 1800s through the early 1900s with plantations dependent on slave labor in North Carolina as well as Alabama. Ernest Haywood was an attorney practicing in Raleigh where he specialized in commercial, insurance, corporation, and real estate law. On February 21, 1903, Saturday afternoon, the young lawyer Haywood met Ludlow Skinner, his mistress's brother-in-law, on the steps of the Fayetteville Street Post Office. After a brief argument Haywood pulled out a pistol and shot at Skinner one time and missed. He then chased Skinner briefly and shot him dead in the street with 100 witness. The murder and subsequent trial achieved nationwide attention and rocked the foundations of turn-of-the-century Raleigh society. As a lawyer and founding member of the Raleigh Bar Association, he was found innocent by a jury of his peers after only 15 minutes of deliberation.