Elena Semander

popular name: Frank Palermo

date_of_death: May 12, 1996

age: 91

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Boxing has a dark history of gangsters, crooked fights and mysterious murders. In the world of boxing at the time, Frank “Blinky” Palermo, a member of the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra crime family, was indeed royalty. Along with his partner, Frankie Carbo, a New York Lucchese crime family member, Palermo managed and controlled many of the professional boxers around the country. Although this Philly hustler was only five feet tall, he was a giant at assault and battery, big at bootlegging, jobbing, racketeering, numbers runner, petty thief, shakedown artist, wiseguy - Blinky was a man of many talents. Palermo's partner was Mafioso Frankie Carbo, a soldier in New York's Lucchese family who had been a gunman with Murder, Inc. During the 1940s, Frankie Carbo became a boxing promoter, working along with Ettore "Eddie" Coco, James "Jimmy Doyle" Plumeri, Frank "Blinky" Palermo, Harry "Champ" Segal, & Felix Bocchicchio. The group was known as "The Combination", together they were highly successful in fixing high-profile boxing matches. Even worse Palermo would cheat his stable of fighters out of their share of the purses of their fights. In 1961, the Feds zeroed in on Carbo and Palermo and were charged, tried and convicted of committing a dozens of crimes. Blinky Palermo was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Upon his death, he was laid to rest at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, PA.

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: Dutch Schultz

date_of_death: October 24, 1935

age: 34

cause_of_death: Mob hit - gunshot wounds

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Dutch Schultz was a New York based mobster who made his fortune bootlegging rum during Prohibition, followed by gambling, the numbers racket and the restaurant racket afterwards. Schultz was known for his extreme brutality and the accumulation of a frightening body count of those opposed to him including Legs Diamond, Arnold Rothstein and Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll. By 1935 he was in open conflict with US attorney Thomas Dewey. Schultz was arrested, then freed (to the utter surprise of everyone) when he bribed the venue of his trial, but as Dewey continued to pursue he started hemorrhaging money and power. Afterwards, Schultz called an emergency meeting of the Mafia Commission for permission to kill Dewey. Worried that there would be immense law enforcement pressure on the Commission if such a popular public official was murdered, the members refused. Schultz was furious, blaming the commission for "feeding him to the law", and vowed to kill Dewey himself. After Schultz stormed off, after six hours of deliberations the Commission ordered Louis Buchalter of Murder Inc. to eliminate "The Dutchman. A few days later, Schultz along with 3 of his henchmen were shot at The Palace Chophouse Restaurant (his headquarters at the time) by two hit men (Charles "The Bug" Workman and Emanuel "Mendy" Weiss) from Murder Inc. All 4 of the shooting victims died within a day of the ambush. He was laid to at Gate of Heaven Cemetery Hawthorne, New York.