Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set Read Online Free PDF

“If you have any grudge against me, you must forget it. I can make you a fortune in this country.”
    Bristol Bill worked with Drury and his crew for a full four years, robbing banks, valuables, and jewelry, from various places as far away as New Orleans. He even traveled to Montreal, to steal a large quantity of silver plate from the home of the Governor-General of Canada.
    Bristol Bill's specialty was making his own burglary tools, and he was the best lock-picker in the entire United States. He once escaped from jail with a key he had made from silver oak. Another time, Bristol Bill opened his cell door with a key he had fashioned from a piece of stove pipe.
    Bristol Bill's biggest heist was the robbery of the barge “The Clinton.” After opening the ship's safe with a key he had made from a wax impression, Bristol Bill walked away with $32,000 in cash. He kept $10,000 for himself, and sold the rest of the money to Drury for $7,000, which Drury disposed of, little by little, from a bank he owned in upstate New York.
    By 1849, Bristol Bill had earned over $400,000 in America, which he spent mostly on his three “wives”: one living in Manhattan, one in Brooklyn, and one in New Jersey. The three women were fast friends, and they usually accompanied Bristol Bill on his out-of-town robberies; one posing as his wife and the other two as his sisters.
    Living the lush life, Bristol Bill thought it was finally time to exact his revenge on Drury. Bristol Bill knew that Drury had bombed the home of a lawyer with whom Drury had quarreled. Not needing Drury as a fence anymore, Bristol Bill, at the request of the New York Police Gazette , provided information to the police about Drury's involvement with the bombing. While Drury and his son, along with One-Eyed Thompson, were in jail awaiting arraignment, the police raided Drury's mansion in Astoria. They found counterfeit plates and thousands of dollars in counterfeit cash.
    For his help in nailing Drury, the New York City police gave Bristol Bill a pass. Knowing New York City was not safe for him any longer, Bristol Bill traveled to Vermont with his current squeeze, a former opera singer known only as “ Gookin' Peg.” Bristol Bill was also accompanied by a counterfeiter named Christian Meadows and a London crook, English Jim.
    They leased a cottage in Groton, near the Canadian border, and got ready to engage in what they did best: robbing banks. In the spring of 1850, acting on information supplied by the New York Herald and the New York Police Gazette , the Vermont police raided the cottage. They found Bristol Bill's home-made burglary tools, a counterfeit machine, and freshly made bills. In addition, there were several diagrams of the banks Bristol Bill had planned to rob.
    Faced with insurmountable evidence, Bristol Bill and Meadows were arrested. English Jim was not at the cottage when the police arrived, and for some reason, “ Gookin' Peg” was never charged. Bristol Bill and Meadows were sentenced to ten years at the Windsor State Prison. When Bristol Bill was released, he was almost 60 years old, and he disappeared from the American crime scene. Some said Bristol Bill went back to London. Others said, he died broke in America.
    While he was in prison, Bristol Bill confided to fellow inmates that the biggest mistake he had ever made was inventing an unpickable lock in his early locksmith days in London. This lock was subsequently sold widely in the United States.
    Bristol Bill said there were many times when he encountered his own invention on bank vaults and on the front doors of homes, which made his mission of breaking, entering, and stealing almost impossible.
     
     
    C apone -  Al “Scarface”
    Most people associate Al Capone with Chicago, but in fact, Al Capone was born and bred, and got his start in the mob in the borough of Brooklyn, New York.
    Alphonse Gabriel Capone was born the fourth of nine children, on January 17, 1899, on Navy Street, in the section