‘Dead’ man returns to Louisiana alive
Sam Jones, 38, told New Orleans States reporter George Jackson he didn’t know until the fall of 1951 that he had been “murdered” in 1949. The lanky six-footer spoke with Jackson that year inside the Denver police station, where police arrested him in the climax of a grotesque case. Back home in Louisiana, Donald Easterwood, a World War II veteran, had confessed to killing Sam Jones and stood trial for his murder.
What happened to Congressman Boggs?
The disappearance of Congressman Hale Boggs remains, to this day, an unresolved chapter in American history, a story without an ending.
Senator’s assassination still a mystery
After Huey Long died in a Baton Rouge hospital, the Times-Picayune reported that all of Frank Costello's slot machines had returned to Baton Rouge and New Orleans as mysteriously as they had vanished two weeks earlier. Decades later, before a government committee, Costello claimed Huey Long invited him to ship his slot machines to Louisiana from New York, an offer he could not refuse.
New book explores News Orleans’ Dixie Mafia links
In the 1980s, I began interviewing retired police officers and service workers who worked at businesses linked to reputed organized crime families. Over time, I found those most willing to share were retired burlesque dancers and bartenders from mob-connected clubs. That interview project became the Carnal Knowledge book series, and this week, we released the first in that series, Dirty Phenix: Birth of the Dixie Mafia.