mafia history

Get Gotti is a Netflix documentary series about the federal investigation that dismantled John Gotti's reign over the Gambino crime family, ending in his 1992 conviction.

The Iceman Tapes: Conversations with a Killer is a 1992 HBO documentary special in which convicted murderer and alleged Mafia hitman Richard Kuklinski confesses to multiple contract killings on camera.

HBO documentary in which convicted Mafia hitman Richard 'The Iceman' Kuklinski confesses to murders including a NYC detective, while serving four life terms.

Fear City: New York vs The Mafia is a Netflix docuseries about the U.S. government's historic 1980s RICO prosecution of all five New York Mafia families, culminating in the landmark Mafia Commission Trial.

Escobar by Escobar is a 2021 documentary series in which María Isabel Santos, widow of Pablo Escobar, gives her firsthand account of life with the world's most notorious drug lord.

The Mafia Commission Trial was a landmark 1985–1987 federal prosecution targeting the leadership of New York's Five Families organized crime network under RICO statutes.

The Mafia Commission Trial was a landmark U.S. federal RICO prosecution (1985–1986) targeting the bosses of New York's Five Families for running the Mafia Commission as a criminal enterprise.

The Danbury Trashers case is a US federal racketeering, tax and wire fraud prosecution against Connecticut trash-hauling executive James Galante, owner of the UHL hockey team, charged in June 2006.

The Philadelphia Mob War was a 1993–1995 Mafia power struggle between boss John Stanfa and rival Joseph 'Skinny Joey' Merlino, resulting in multiple murders and federal convictions.

Explore New York City's darkest history on foot — from the 19th-century gang strongholds of Five Points to the terror of Son of Sam. Guided true crime tours take visitors to the real locations where infamous crimes unfolded.

In August 2007, six Italian men were shot down in a parking lot in Duisburg, Germany. The 70 bullets fired were the expression of a bloody mafia feud—and shocked an entire nation.

Friedrich Heinrich Karl Haarmann, known as "The Butcher of Hanover," murdered at least 24 young men and boys between 1918 and 1924 in Weimar Germany. Operating from the city's railway station, he lured vulnerable victims to his attic apartment before killing them in a calculated campaign of sexual violence and dismemberment that shocked the nation.

Albert Fish, born in 1870, murdered at least three children between 1924 and 1928, including 11-year-old Grace Budd, whose dismembered remains he cannibalized. Arrested in 1930 and convicted in 1936, Fish claimed to have killed over 100 children across America before his execution.

James Riddle Hoffa, the powerful president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, disappeared on July 30, 1975, from a restaurant parking lot in Michigan. His case has become one of America's most enduring unsolved mysteries, with the FBI pointing to organized crime involvement but no body ever recovered.

John Dillinger, the mastermind behind the Dillinger Gang's string of bank robberies across America, was shot and killed by federal agents outside Chicago's Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934. His death marked the dramatic end to one of the most intense manhunts of the Depression era.

The Lucchese crime family's New Jersey faction has undergone a dramatic criminal evolution over five decades, shifting from armed conflict toward large-scale illegal gambling and racketeering that generated billions in illicit profits.

In the late 1970s, Camorra boss Raffaele Cutolo established Sacra Corona Unita in Italy's Puglia region, creating what would become the country's fourth-largest mafia organization. Operating across Brindisi, Lecce, Taranto, and beyond, the loosely-structured criminal network trafficked drugs internationally and terrorized southern Italy with extortion and bombings—until law enforcement dismantled it within two decades.

Albert DeSalvo confessed in 1965 to being the Boston Strangler, responsible for at least 11 murders across the Boston area between June 1962 and January 1964. Yet he was never charged with any of those killings, and his confession never reached a courtroom—a legal peculiarity that would haunt the case for generations.

The United Bamboo Gang, also known as Bamboo Union, has operated as Taiwan's largest criminal triad since its founding in 1956–1957, commanding approximately 20,000 members across 13 divisions and 68 branches. What began as a local protection racket has transformed into a sophisticated international criminal enterprise involved in drug trafficking, human smuggling, cyber fraud, and money laundering—with operations spanning California, Las Vegas, and mainland China.