How 10 Mob Killers Escaped Every Prison Sentence

A war hero acquitted in a police killing after a single ballot, who was killed less than three years later by a rented horse. A Brooklyn bootlegger whose murder charge made a patrolman tear off his badge. A college graduate and Army flyer who hid for years behind a false name, until his fingerprints gave him away. A New Jersey man whose key witness was gunned down outside the boilers he tended, a year before the trial. And a Chicago gunman who stayed free for sixty-two years and liked to say he had never spent a night in jail. We count down ten Prohibition-era killers by how long each one stayed free after the first killing the record puts on his name, from less than three years to sixty-two. Not one of them ever served a prison sentence. The record shows how each one walked away: a jury, a judge, a false name, a murdered witness, a canceled warrant, a state supreme court, a federal appeals court. CHAPTERS 0:00 Number 10 · Samuel “Nails” Morton 4:38 Number 9 · Vannie Higgins 8:54 Number 8 · Myles O’Donnell 12:41 Number 7 · Umberto Valenti 15:53 Number 6 · Fred Goetz 19:34 Number 5 · Danny Stanton 22:29 Number 4 · Nick Delmore 26:33 Number 3 · Joe Massei 29:49 Number 2 · Stefano Magaddino 34:07 Number 1 · Tony Accardo 39:04 How they got away The illustrations are dramatized recreations. The newspaper pages, government records and photographs are real archival images, credited on screen and below. Where the sources disagree, the video says so. SOURCES Chicago Daily Tribune, August 24, 1920, October 21, 1921, May 14-15, 1923; Homicide in Chicago 1870-1930 (Northwestern University School of Law), cases 3858 and 4451; F. D. Pasley, Al Capone (1930) The New York Times, March 20-22 and April 4, 1929; Chicago Daily Tribune, January 8 and 15, June 19-20, 1932; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 27, 1931 Chicago Daily Tribune, November 24 and December 5, 1924, May 12-13, 1925, February 19, 1932; The Illinois Crime Survey (Illinois Association for Criminal Justice, 1929) The New York Times, August 10, 12 and 13, 1922; Thomas Hunt, American Mafia History; Jon Black, Gang Rule Chicago Daily Tribune, October 5-6, 1925, February 5 and 10, 1926, March 21-22 and 30, 1934; Homicide in Chicago, case 7897; Federal Bureau of Investigation, St. Valentine's Day Massacre file (memorandum of August 27, 1936) Homicide in Chicago, cases 5959 and 6715; People ex rel. Stanton v. Meyering, 345 Ill. 598 (1931); Chicago Daily Tribune, February 10, 1924 and May 6, 1943 The New York Times, September 20-21, 1930; Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bremer kidnapping and Zwillman files; U.S. Senate, Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce (Kefauver Committee), Hearings, Part 7 (1951); Associated Press dispatches, November 7, 1932 and October 19, 1933; Delmore v. Brownell, 135 F. Supp. 470 (D.N.J. 1955); FBI, Chronological History of La Cosa Nostra (1987) Kefauver Committee Hearings, Parts 2, 6 and 9 (1950-51); Associated Press dispatches, June 15 and 20, 1932 Thomas Hunt and Michael A. Tona, "The Good Killers"; The New York Times, August 18 and 22, 1921, November 5, 1922, July 21, 1974; United States v. Magaddino, 496 F.2d 455 (2d Cir. 1974); United States v. Bufalino, 285 F.2d 408 (2d Cir. 1960); The Mob Museum United States v. Accardo, 298 F.2d 133 (7th Cir. 1962); People v. McGurn, 341 Ill. 632 (1930); Chicago Daily Tribune, February 2 and 5, August 7, September 27, October 1-2 and November 13, 1930, March 14, 1931; FBI identification record, Anthony Accardo; Kefauver Committee Hearings, Part 5 (1951); Fortune, November 10, 1986; United Press International and Associated Press obituaries, May 28-29, 1992 ARCHIVAL IMAGES (public domain) No. 10 · Nails Morton, Chicago: Chicago, May 15, 1923 · Chicago Daily Tribune, via Internet Archive · public domain No. 9 · Vannie Higgins, Brooklyn: The New York Times, March 20, 1929 · via Internet Archive · public domain No. 8 · Myles O’Donnell, Cicero: Chicago Daily Tribune, May 12, 1925 · via Internet Archive · public domain No. 7 · Umberto Valenti, New York: The New York Times, August 12, 1922 · via Internet Archive · public domain No. 6 · Fred Goetz, Chicago: Chicago Daily Tribune, October 5, 1925 · via Internet Archive · public domain No. 5 · Danny Stanton, Chicago: Chicago Sunday Tribune, February 10, 1924 · via Internet Archive · public domain No. 4 · Nick Delmore, Elizabeth, New Jersey: The New York Times, September 20, 1930 · via Internet Archive · public domain No. 3 · Joe Massei, Detroit: U.S. Senate Kefauver Committee, Appendix, Exhibit No. 3 · U.S. Government Printing Office · public domain No. 2 · Stefano Magaddino, New York: New York, August 1921 · Underwood & Underwood, via Poughkeepsie Eagle News / Wikimedia Commons · public domain No. 1 · Tony Accardo, Chicago: Chicago, October 1, 1930 · Chicago Daily Tribune, via Internet Archive · public domain #Prohibition #TrueCrime #MobHistory