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- Feed Preview Crime & Criminals – City of Smoke
Inspector Byrnes, Inventor of the Third Degree
New York's first great police detective was Thomas F. Byrnes. A largely self-educated Irish immigrant, Byrnes joined the force in 1863. He rose to sergeant by 1869 and captain by 1870. In 1878, t...
Bill the Butcher
My first "Old Smoke" column recounted the adventures of the Hon. John Morrissey, Congressman and heavyweight boxing champion of the United States, who once, according to the Philadelphia Bulletin...
Conman of the Century
The luxury apartment building at 1155 Park Ave. was brand new in 1915. Among its first tenants was Maude King, a boozy, scatterbrained wealthy widow from Chicago. She rented three neighboring apa...
The Jesus de Galindez Case
On March 12, 1956, Jesus de Galindez, a lecturer in Spanish and government at Columbia University, conducted a graduate seminar in Hamilton Hall on Latin American government. At 10 p.m., he enter...
The Murder of Joe Petrosino
Giuseppe Petrosino, who Americanized his name to Joseph, was born in Padula, near Salerno, in 1860. His family emigrated to America in 1873. While shining shoes near police headquarters on Mulber...
Big Bang on Wall Street
Around 11:55 a.m. on Thursday, September 16, 1920, an old single-top wagon, drawn by an elderly dark bay horse, plodded westward on Wall Street. It stopped about seventy-five feet from Broad, nea...
The Missingest Man in New York
Every August 6 for more than three decades, an attractive older woman entered a Greenwich Village bar that had been a restaurant back in the Jazz Age. She sat alone in a booth and ordered two coc...
Mr. Wood Is Mayor
December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union in response to Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency. "Poor South Carolina," exclaimed James L. Petigru, one of the Palmetto state'...
Family Fare
Arecent encounter with the first half-hour or so of Jane Eyre, The Musical put me in mind of the 1857 murder of Dr. Harvey Burdell. (The connection won't immediately be apparent.) A friend with a...