Gangland Wire starts in an unusual place. In 1971, a local businessman named Marion Trozollo had an idea to revitalize a blighted area close to downtown. At that time, city dwellers were fleeing to the suburbs and downtown was losing businesses and population. Mr. Trozollo envisioned a French Quarter or Greenwich village type of district …
Gangland Wire tells the real story behind the book and film, Casino. The film’s Director, Gary Jenkins, was an Intelligence Unit detective with the Kansas City Police Department. It is not often that a documentary filmmaker is a participant in the events documented. He starts with a local mob squabble that escalates into several murders …
Mario Puzo took from real life in his novel, The Godfather. In New York City younger Sicilian immigrants were seeing their fathers victimized by the old fashioned “Mustache Petes” by the Black Hand organization. The young guys were also being kept out of the more lucrative rackets. They struck back eventually. In 1940s Kansas City, a …
The Chicago Outfit has its roots in Sicily as with other La Cosa Nosta (LCN) style organized crime organizations of La Familia. As with the New York based LCN families, the old world Mustache Petes were usurped by the younger mobsters in the 1920s. Al Capone and Prohibition brought national attention to the Chicago family. Capone made …
The origins of the Kansas City Crime Family, known better on the street as the “Outfit,” date back to the early part of the 20th Century. A small band of immigrant Italian/Sicilian predators, operating in the Little Italy north end section of the city, coalesced, organized and united during prohibition to become an organized crime …
