Timothy O'Bryan

popular name: Johnny Torrio

date_of_death: April 16, 1957

age: 75

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Johnny Torrio was an Italian-American gangster, known for his cunning and finesse, who became a top crime boss in Chicago after he order the hit on his boss - Big Jim Colosimo. Johnny Torrio helped build the Chicago Outfit in the 1920s, which was later taken over by his successor Al Capone.

popular name: Frank Sheeran

date_of_death: December 14, 2003

age: 83

cause_of_death: Cancer

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Frank Sheeran was a truck driver, corrupt labor union official and alleged mafia hitman. Sheeran is thought by some to have murdered Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa, (among dozens of others) and was the subject of the 2019 film "The Irishman" starring Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. The truth of the matter is that Sheeran, near death struggling with cancer, dictated his life story to writer Charles Brandt who created a book that was adapted into the movie "The Irishman." In the book Sheeran told Brandt that he had committed one of the country's most infamous unsolved crimes: the murder of Jimmy Hoffa, a powerful onetime leader of the Teamsters Union with ties to organized crime. Sheeran also took credit for killing "Crazy Joe" Gallo, a mobster who was taken out at his own birthday party in 1972. Sheeran's claims got even wilder. He portrayed himself as a peripheral character in JFK's assassination, and a minor player in the Bay of Pigs invasion. Somehow, this previously low-profile thug was the lynchpin in every major unsolved, mob-linked hit. In the end, he claimed to have killed more than 25 people yet the FBI has not been able to link Sheeran to a single killing. Upon his death, he was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, PA.

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.