10 Places in Ohio the Mob Used to Control

Ten places in Ohio the mob used to control, from a bookmaker's mill town to the city a national magazine branded Crimetown, USA. There was a kind of car repair they only ever joked about in one Ohio city. A stick of dynamite wired to the ignition, so a man turned his key in the morning and the whole street learned his name. For most of the last century, organized crime in Ohio did its work in broad daylight. It ran the sheriff, the slot route, the courthouse, and the county line, because almost nobody with a badge was willing or able to stop it. Part of the reason is the map. Ohio sat wedged between two of the most powerful crime families in the country, one in Cleveland and one just over the line in Pittsburgh, and the towns caught in the middle became a battleground both sides bombed and bribed for decades. This countdown builds from the quiet places toward the loud ones. A gambling habit that ran a hundred years and was still being taped by federal agents in the year two thousand. An illegal casino so sure of itself that it turned away the county's men at the door, got closed by Eliot Ness, and reopened a month later a few blocks over. Plush carpet joints whose profits became the seed money for the Desert Inn in Las Vegas. A river town so openly crooked people called it Little Chicago, where a young Dean Martin dealt cards before anyone heard him sing. A casino with a machine gun nest over the front door. And the Danny Greene car bomb, wired in part by men who ran the numbers an hour away. All of it ends in the one city where the mob did not just run the gambling. It ran the police, the sheriff, the judges, and in time a seat in the United States Congress. Real names, real dates, from the public record. Watch next:    • Exploring Ohio: Small Towns, Hidden Histor...   Subscribe:    / @ohiouncovered   Which of these towns does your own family remember? Tell me below. Historical documentary. Names, dates, and cases are drawn from the public record and published reporting. Some footage is illustrative. #Ohio #OhioHistory #Mafia