Ernesto Miranda

popular name: John Schuessler

date_of_death: October 16, 1955

age: 13

cause_of_death: Homicide

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: John Schuessler was a young boy who was brutally raped and murdered with his brother Anton Schuessler and friend Robert Peterson in 1955. The crime scene where the bodies where found was largely contaminated by investigators and photographers who destroyed important evidence. This murder case remained unsolved for 40 years until stable handyman Kenneth Hansen became a suspect (along with his boss Silas Jayne) thanks to evidence that was unearthed as a result of an investigation into another sensational cold case - the 1977 murder of candy-company heiress Helen Vorhees Brach.

popular name: J. Edgar Hoover

date_of_death: May 2, 1972

age: 77

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: J. Edgar Hoover was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the fifth and final director of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) and the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). President Calvin Coolidge first appointed Hoover as director of the BOI, the predecessor to the FBI, in 1924. After 11 years in the post, Hoover became instrumental in founding the FBI in June 1935, where he remained as director for an additional 37 years – serving a total of 48 years leading both the BOI and the FBI under eight presidents. In the years before his death, he was seventy-six and showing his age, napping for hours in his office in the afternoons. He was also showing increasing levels of vitriol and instability, informing the White House, for instance, that the four student demonstrators shot to death by National Guardsmen at Kent State had “invited and got what they deserved.” Upon his passing only then did it come to light that Hoover was a horrible choice as the nations top law enforcement officer. Under his direction, the FBI relentlessly harassed Martin Luther King Jr., which included wiretapping his hotel rooms and sending him an anonymous letter urging him to commit suicide. Hoover viewed King and the civil rights movement as a communist-inspired threat to the social order. Hoover was also known for his personal bigotry. He actively pushed LGBTQ+ individuals out of government service (despite persistent rumors about his own sexuality and close relationship with Deputy Director Clyde Tolson) and initially refused to hire Black agents. And for decades, Hoover publicly denied the existence of the Mafia, likely to avoid diverting FBI resources from his anti-communist crusades or because he lacked the legal tools to effectively combat them until much later in his career.

popular name: Angelo Bruno

date_of_death: March 21, 1980

age: 69

cause_of_death: Shotgun blast to the head

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Known as the “Docile Don,” his time at the top of Philadelphia’s criminal hierarchy was marked by a relative lack of violence, and like Bufalino, he kept a low profile. His organization ran gambling and loan sharking enterprises, and owned stakes in multiple legitimate businesses including an extermination company in New Jersey, an aluminum products company in Florida and a share in the Plaza Hotel in Havana, Cuba. Bruno was a powerful figure, and was reportedly a member of the mob’s all-powerful national commission. But he was considered something of an old-fashioned don and riled his underlings by refusing to allow them to be directly involved in drug trafficking and the considerable profits that accompanied it. This old-fashioned approach worked—the FBI didn’t make the Philadelphia mafia a priority during Bruno’s reign. But it also may have cost the crime lord his life. “He wasn't making any new members,” one investigator told the New York Times in 1982. “They say he was 'the gentle don.' That's bull. But he was conservative. He was cautious. He was old, and he didn't want to go to jail. These young guys were getting restless because they weren't making any money.” He prohibited his family’s involvement in narcotics trafficking and focused on traditional Costa Nostra operations like bookmaking and loan sharking. Some family members were discontent with this decision and suspected Bruno of profiting from the narcotics business secretly. This will ultimately lead to his murder. Upon his death, he was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, PA.