THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW YOU NEEDED TO KNOW

In 1931 the toughest gangster in America went down hard. Felled not by a blaze of bullets,  Al Capone  was sent to prison on three counts of tax evasion. The man behind his arrest was a 32-year-old Prohibition agent. Eliot Ness was tough, loyal, and incorruptible. He fought for the law. This once untouchable G-Man became an alcoholic whose law protecting days were long gone. Although Eliot Ness' tale ended sadly, his story should be told as a lesson that some law men do fight for what is right. Eliot Ness  was born in 1903 in Chicago. His parents ran a bakery and had three children by the time Eliott came along, ten years after the birth of their third child. A shy bookish kid who excelled in school, Eliot loved the tales of Sherlock Holmes. Eliot Ness attended college, graduating in 1925 with degrees in political science and business administration. He took a job administering background checks for a credit card company. Ness' brother-in-law worked for the Bureau of Inve...

The 1920s roared with jazz, booze and shorter skirts and hairstyles for ladies. Prohibition caused economic hardship and a rise in crime. A married couple expecting their first baby went on a short-lived robbery spree and captured New York City's attention. Celia Cooney, "The Bobbed Hair Bandit," and her husband Ed predated Bonnie and Clyde as bank robbing sweethearts. Celia and Ed Cooney were not criminal masterminds.  In fact their crimes spree lasted only three and a half months and netted barely enough money to eke out a meager survival. Sylvia Roth was born in poverty in New York City, in 1904. She and her eight siblings were neglected by their parents. Celia left home at 16 and found work in a laundry. She married Ed Cooney, a mechanic five years for senior, in 1923. The couple soon found they had a baby on the way. Ed and Celia hatched a plan to attain the money they would need for proper furniture and baby gear. January 5th, 1924 Celia entered a Park Slope grocery...

  On August 6, 1930 a man said goodbye to his dinner companions and turned off to head toward a Broadway theater. He'd purchased a ticket for a new show - Dancing Partner . This seems like an ordinary circumstance, but the man was Judge Joseph Force Crater, who remains missing 94 years later. Despite many searches and theories, no trace of Judge Crater has ever been uncovered after that night. Once declared "The Missingest Man In New York," few people remember this shocking missing person's case. Judge Crater was born in Easton Pennsylvania January 5, 1889. He graduated Columbia Law School in 1913 and began practicing law. He represented Stella Wheeler in her divorce case, and the two married in 1916. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then Governor of New york, appointed Crater associate Justice of the New York Supreme Court in April of 1930. Crater had dealings with Tammany Hall, the New York City political institution corrupt since the Gilded Age. The simple facts of what ...