When the studio lights went dark on November 14th, 1974, no one imagined what Johnny Carson was really facing. Lucille Ball, America’s most beloved comedian, was standing backstage with tears streaming down her face. And what Johnny did next stopped [music] The Tonight Show dead in its tracks and created a moment that 40 million…
Marlon Brando walked onto the Tonight Show stage on May 11th, 1968 and did something nobody in Hollywood had ever seen him do before. He sat down across from Johnny Carson, leaned forward in the guest chair, and began to cry. Not the controlled, technical…
They say motorcycle racing separates the actors from the real riders. That you can’t fake the kind of fearless precision it takes to push a bike to its limit and walk away alive. But on March 14th, 1973 in Studio 1 at NBC Burbank, 50 million people watched the King of Cool challenged Clint Eastwood…
The construction foreman wasn’t supposed to go down there. The subb wasn’t on any blueprint the development company had been given. Wasn’t in any permit filing. Wasn’t in any city record going back 30 years. But Ray Bosamonte went down there anyway. Flashlight in hand, boots crunching on 30-year-old concrete dust. And when the beam…
20 years ago it was where people pop down to buy an eighth of cannabis or something like that. Now it’s crack cocaine. >> I sold this patch, you sold that patch. There’s a conflict. It’s natural really to happen, isn’t it? >> Teenagers recovering. He was stabbed in whistle. >> It’s a…
The First and Second Colombo Wars August 18, 1956; a wedding is held in New York City with over 3000 guests that would later inspire the beginning of the Godfather novel and movie. It was an event of mafia royalty with Salvatore Bonanno, son of Joe, the head of one of New York’s five families…
June 11th, 1970, 2:17 a.m. A shallow grave on secluded land in upstate New York, far from Queens, Jimmy Burke and Tommy Desimone are burying a body wrapped in tablecloths. The body belongs to William Bent Fenner, a maid member of the Gambino crime family. Everyone called him Billy Bats. He’d been beaten with fists,…
March 8th, 1855. A cramped bedroom somewhere in lower Manhattan. William P, 33 years old, 6 feet of muscle and fury, lay dying on sweat- soaked sheets, while a crowd of hard-faced men stood around his bed like pbearers who had arrived too early. A bullet was lodged in his heart. It had been…
On the night of March 13th, 2019, a little after 900 p.m., the quiet on Hilltop Terrace in Staten Island broke with the sound of metal striking metal. Then gunfire, a black SUV sat in the street with fresh damage. A man lay bleeding on the pavement outside…
While Sam Jen Conana got his brains blown out in his basement, while Tony Spelotro was beaten to death in a Bensonville basement, while Jimmy Hawa disappeared into history, one man ruled the Chicago outfit for longer than any boss in American mob history. And he died exactly the way no gangster ever does….
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