Timothy O'Bryan

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: Ruth Snyder

date_of_death: January 12, 1928

age: 32

cause_of_death: Execution by electric chair

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Ruth Brown Snyder was a bored housewife from Queens, New York who, after 7 or so unsuccessful attempts, finally succeeded in killing her husband Albert Snyder with the assistance of her lover Henry Judd Gray. Although found guilt and executed in Sing Sing Prison, that is not what made her famous. During the execution photographer Tom Howard of the Chicago Tribune, with a small plate camera strapped to his ankle, took the infamous picture just as the electricity was running through her body and was published the next day in the New York Daily News. Upon her execution Ruth Brown Snyder grave was dug in the Brown family plot in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, NY and she was buried under her maiden name.

popular name: Robert McGonagle

date_of_death: March 10, 1987

age: 39

cause_of_death: Drug overdose

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Robert “Bobby” McGonagle was a Boston fireman and member of the Mullen crime family in South Boston. McGonagle’s family were heavily connected to Boston’s underworld primarily involved in burglary, auto theft, and armed robbery. His brothers, Donald and Paul, who were twins, were killed by Whitey Bulgar during a war between their Mullen gang and Whitey Bulger’s Killeen gang. One was killed in 1969, the other in 1974. Bobby McGonagle himself was also wounded in a gang battle in 1974. To make it even more confusing, Bobby married Catherine Greig who later went underground for 16 years as Whitey Bulger's girlfriend.