Was there a gangster story in your family???

[OldSkoolFrat]

My uncle's father was an associate of Jake "Greazy Thumb" Gusik

 

[Lincsong]

I wouldn't consider this as being a "gangster", but during Prohibition my Grandpa had a still "enterprise" up in the Kukuihaele Mountain on the Big Island of Hawaii where he made rum from sugar cane and sold it. My Dad said he and his brother would go up there with Grandpa and while the still was going,the suds would spill on the floor and rats would come, drink the suds and they'd watch the rats stumble around drunk.lol

 

[Ed Bass]

Interestingly enough, it's thought today that the kidnapping was staged by Factor himself along with the help of "honest" G man Melvin Purvis and Capone

Big Al had been incarcerated since October '31. In 1933 he was serving federal time in Atlanta.
Best, Toots

 

[Dixon Cannon]

You be the judge.....

Is they are, or are they aren't? That's my Dad and his 'gang'.

-dixon cannon

 

[Blackjack]

Big Al had been incarcerated since October '31. In 1933 he was serving federal time in Atlanta.
Best, Toots

A thousand pardons. The Capone gang, that was still very much around...

 

[sweetfrancaise]

I haven't heard if there was any gang activity in my family, but my great-grandfather had quite a bit of influence in the mining town of Butte, Montana. Take a look at him (far right) and his pals...

Maybe...

 

[Cracker]

My wife's family claims relation to Ted Hinton, one of the posse that gunned down Bonnie and Clyde. (Her father's middle name was Hinton, a family name.)

And supposedly Sir Francis Drake, the English Sea Dog, is my gr-gr-gr-something-or-other.

Confirming these juicy tidbits are next on my list of projects, after I finish genealogical work on my parents' families.

 

[Miss Dizzy Dame]

A family member of mine dated a few mob men..I can't think of the names on top of my head..but I can certainly find out. Supper always ended up with someone being thrown out of the house.. lol! She sang in Nyc at the clubs in the early 40s,so thats how she met the wise guys.

 

[AmateisGal]

One of my Italian cousins by the name of Tony Ricco was involved with the mafia in Chicago in the 40s. My grandfather used to tell me stories of how he would show up on their farm in Nebraska (Tony was my great-grandmother's nephew) with a bunch of stuff in the backseat of his car, all of it covered with a tarp. He would never reveal what was in that seat to anyone. He always had different women with him, too. I think it had to do with either guns or counterfeit money, according to Grandpa.

I think the law caught up to him, though, and he was deported back to Italy. Since we are from northern Italy (Piedmont region, near Turin) and most of the mafia came from Southern Italy, I'm not sure how he got involved with them and probably never will know.

 

[amynbebes]

My grandfather's brother supposedly had connections and was involved in some illegal things. He ended up dead in some mysterious fashion but for the life of me I can't remember right now how.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

mY great aunt Mary, who passed recently, had to ride for a bit on the running board of a green packard while Dillinger & his goons made their getaway from a Souix Falls Bank robbery.

 

[Miss Dizzy Dame]

mY great aunt Mary, who passed recently, had to ride for a bit on the running board of a green packard while Dillinger & his goons made their getaway from a Souix Falls Bank robbery.

did your aunt ever go into detail about it??
Dillinger and gang actually let off a women during the getaway because they were passing her house "oh btw heres my house boys let me off" lol!

 

[Carlisle Blues]

My Godfather. Member of the Columbo Family.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

did your aunt ever go into detail about it??
Dillinger and gang actually let off a women during the getaway because they were passing her house "oh btw heres my house boys let me off" lol!

Can't say that she did. I only met her once back in the mid 90's. We do however, have copies of the newspaper articles that describe her ordeal.

 

[Viola]

Some cousin of my dad's were what you call "honest crooks" - they were running a crooked ticket agency for boxing and so on, pretty shady - but were let off at one point because they were the biggest sellers of war bonds in the city.

Decades later one of them, over sixty and retired, stopped a robbery because he just happened to be packing, because he'd gotten in the habit of taking a pistol everywhere he went.

And on a totally different branch of the family, or rather family-of-family, my aunt's husbands' mother's (yes, but i just think of her as my aunt and doesn't that make life easier) cousin was Dutch Schultz.

 

[Matt Deckard]

Just bootlegging in my family, no gangsters.

 

[TomS]

My grandfather was a policeman from 1930 or 1931 through the 1950s. While on the job he was arrested for some illegal activity or another, and sentenced to jail for a year. Once he was released from jail he continued to work as a policeman (no kidding). The real kicker is the city counted the time he served in jail towards his years of service for pension purposes; The family lore is the police department was so corrupt in the early 1930s that they also continued to pay his salary while he was "away". Apparently the sergeant would stop by the house and drop off his check every other Thursday. My grandmother in turn signed it, and the sergeant would go to the bank and cash it for her!

 

[Nick D]

The Italian side of my family was bootlegging during prohibition. We still have gallons of the wine vinegar my great-grandma made during the period from their homemade wine. Good stuff.

 

[Stearmen]

Barrow Gang

My parents grew up in Stuart, Iowa during the 30s. My mother always told me the story of her and her sister staying at their aunt and uncles house, when suddenly her uncle Jass ran home yelling Bonnie and Clyde are in town, then grabbed the girls and ran them out to hide in the root cellar! My mother said she was never so scared in her life, the root cellar was damp, dark, and full of spiders. For those that think that Bonnie and Clyde were harmless, she said it still scares her to this day, and the whole part of the Mid West were terrified of the Barrow gang, no Robin Hood tale there! Turns out they really did rob The First National Bank, Stuart, Iowa- April 16th, 1934. Take:$1,500. Though I wounder if there really was that much money in that little bank? Also, a great uncle of mine died from strychnine poisoning while making moon shine. Not bad for people from a little nothing town in Iowa!

 

[Ghostsoldier]

My dad tells a story of his late older brother, who befriended a guy named Dick Dudley, who had mob ties in eastern Ohio back in the mid-40's. One day, for whatever reason, Dick ended up on a hit list, because two torpedos came to the house where he lived, looking for him....he saw them coming, and ran to hide in a bedroom closet. My uncle and several other guys, who were hanging out there, recognized these guys for what they were, and got the hell outta Dodge. My uncle used to tell me how they cowered in the back yard, behind the outbuildings, hearing the chattering sound of machine guns in the house. The two enforcers left, without a word, and my uncle and the others went back in the house to find Dick's bullet-riddled body in the closet.

My uncle said it was then and there that he cut all ties with those friends...

He always loved to tell that story to my dad!
Rob