Kingpins

Here’s one of our listeners’ most requested episodes of 2019: In the 1970s, cocaine was seen as a “rich man’s drug” — reserved for the wealthy elites in the Hollywood Hills. That is, until 1979, when ...

27 Dec 201945min

To surveil the seedy underworld of organized crime in the 1940s and 50s, a special undercover unit of the LAPD was created to track the city's most notorious gangsters, including Mickey Cohen and Jack...

20 Dec 201952min

He ruled his family with an iron fist. But among his peers, Carlo Gambino was considered so fair that when he became head of the Commission, he earned the title “Boss of All Bosses.” Throughout the 19...

13 Dec 201946min

After growing up surrounded by the Sicilian mafia in the early 1900s, Carlo Gambino immigrated to America and put the knowledge to use. In an endless hail of bullets, Gambino solidified his status and...

6 Dec 201942min

In 1940, after the charges against Siegel were dismissed for the murder of Harry Greenberg, he reinvented himself in the deserts of Las Vegas and began his sordid affair with Virginia Hill. Learn mo...

29 Nov 201950min

No man was feared in New York during the 20s and 30s more than Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. After teaming up with Meyer Lansky, Bugsy made his bones carrying out vicious murders for the mob.  Learn more ...

22 Nov 201947min

Even while he was on the run, Dawood Ibrahim continued to rule Mumbai's underworld with an iron fist. But as his riches increased, so did his appetite for violence. And in 1992, his operations expande...

15 Nov 201936min

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dawood Ibrahim, a young Muslim-born Indian would rise from a small time street thief to gang leader, bringing a more businesss-like—and ruthless—approach. And in the...

8 Nov 201943min