organized crime has become a very hard to understand facet of the modern world
arguably norm wants to support crime but by the same token we have a habit of elevating
organized crime figures to a kind of hero status you need to look no further than tony soprano to
appreciate that and while you could argue that he's fictitious the number of movies
about people like al capone or bugsy siegel supports the idea that our culture is really
into their exploits but part of any anti-heroes story arc is their inevitable downfall and in
real life many of these figures come to ends that are just as dramatic as their lives
10. the hitman taken out by a hitman alexander solonick was one of the most notorious hitmen
in history rising to prominence at a time when hitmen were working for as little as 500
a job in the 1990s he famously took out high-profile targets including mob bosses
solonic had served time in the military and the police and was notoriously brutal in performing
his duties the police fired him after just six months for brutality once he turned to crime he
was even more unhinged but punishing him proved to be nearly impossible during a rape trial he
leapt from a window and escaped in a hearse later after having a shootout inside a police station he
was caught and incarcerated once more despite that he escaped from maastricht gaia toshina prison the
only inmate to accomplish that feat at the time solonic fled to greece to live out the rest of
his days and plot the murders of the crime bosses who had turned on him his home was bugged however
and his former employers sent hit men sasha sold out to kill him solenick was actually friends with
soldat when the killer arrived solemnic let him in without hesitation his strangled body was found by
authorities some time later 9. mateo dinaro has been on the lamb for 30 years make no mistake mob
boss matteo dinaro has done some bad stuff he's wanted in connection with over 50 murders not to
mention drug trafficking bombings and extortion he's been on the radar of law enforcement for
decades so what was his ultimate fate no one knows dinaro has been on the lam since june 1993. in 30
years law enforcement has been unable to catch up with him this despite his brags being able to fill
a cemetery with his victims which includes the 11 year old son of a rival mob boss in 2021 some
hapless formula one racing fan was blindfolded and dragged away by dutch police when they mistook
him for dinaro who remains one of europe's most wanted criminals and the number one criminal in
italy after all these years the fan was later released when it was determined he was just an
ordinary guy who looked vaguely like dinaro 8. whitey bulger was a victim of government lsd
experiments there was a time when yt bulger was the most wanted man on the fbi's list behind osama
bin laden bulger was wanted for 19 murders back in 1994 and he wasn't caught until 2011. bulger
was brutally murdered in prison at age 89. other inmates beat him with a padlock in a sock and even
tried to gouge his eyes out an inauspicious end to the career of one of the most famous mobsters
in american history but there's more to his story than a brutal life that met a brutal death baldr
had tried to redeem himself by turning informant at one point at his trial this didn't do much to
help keep him from prison but after his sentencing he started corresponding with one of the jurors
she learned over a series of letters that baldr had been subject to cia experimentation with lsd
after his first arrest this was what many of us now know as project mkultra
bulger said he was told they were looking for a cure for schizophrenia he was not informed about
what drugs he was being given and they dosed him around 50 times apparently he'd never been prone
to violence before the experiments the juror said had she known about the experiments she would have
never convicted bulger 7. vincent gigante faked insanity for decades in the acting world method
acting is when an actor commits to a role even when the camera is off so it's playing pretend no
matter what it sounds tiresome in that context but when your freedom is on the line maybe it makes
more sense and maybe that's what vincent gigante thought when he committed to acting insane for
years gigante ran the genovese crime family for decades and amassed a fortune of a hundred million
dollars in the process in an effort to elude law enforcement or at least prosecution he pretended
to be insane constantly he would walk around town in a robe and slippers pee on the street mumble
to himself and seem like a harmless old kook it got in the nickname of the odd father according
to law enforcement this was a decades-long ruse to help obey prosecution by making it seem like
he couldn't possibly be the leader of a crime family gigante ended up being found competent
to stand trial in 1997 he died in prison in 2005. number six frank guzenberg got shot 14 times and
denied it nobody likes a snitch in the mob world call it honor among thieves but the idea that one
criminal will turn on another even if their rivals is looked down upon so when someone does turn
informant their chances of being assaulted or even killed are remarkably high but how far do some
people take it well as far as frank goosenburg did guzenberg was a hitman for the mob and was
involved in the infamous and valentine's day massacre in 1929. seven gangsters were shot dead
and killed by a rival gang disguised as police one of the victims was gusenberg who was shot
at staggering 14 times his six companions were dead already and guzenberg was amazingly still
alive when police arrived they asked him who shot him and guzenberg said no one shot me with six
companions including his own brother on ice and his own fate pretty much sealed the man refused to
rat on the killers and he died of his injuries a few hours later number five richard blast cheated
death many times canada has a reputation for politeness and peacekeeping but that doesn't
mean their criminals necessarily follow those stereotypes rich of blas is a prime example of
a man who pushed the envelope living and dying by a brutal creed blast was known as the cat not
because he was agile or sleep but because he had several lives to spare he survived three separate
assassination attempts in the span of two months after trying and failing to murder a rival mobster
the rival returned the favor failing to kill blas in the process two weeks later they burned down
the hotel where he was staying failing to kill him a second time a couple of months late he was
actually shot in the head while fleeing the third assassination attempt but still drove himself to a
hospital blaz had a serious hatred of italians not just rival criminals but anyone of italian descent
and was wanted for the murders of numerous italian citizens montreal it wasn't until he shot a police
officer that he was finally caught and sent to jail from which he soon escaped when he was caught
and sent back he managed to escape again several years later instead of lying low blas hunted down
the witness who helped convict him and killed him he then killed the witness to that killing a man
unensued and when police finally found him they shot him 27 times years later one of the officers
at the scene who had said they shot blas because he came at them with a gun admitted that they had
surprised the gangster and that all he had in his hands was a sock number four john v z was
invincible in the 1990s the mob scene was heating up in philadelphia and john veezy was hired to be
extra muscle during a particularly bloody time he was paid to kill people and he was apparently good
at it he killed several rival members of the gang but at some point he began to feel bad about what
he was doing after talking with his brother he decided to contact the fbi and turn informant his
cover was blown in just three days and his own gang put out a hit on him vesey wasn't wearing
a wire when his mob associates invited him to a meeting in an apartment the entire room was coated
in plastic but being a mob hit man he didn't think anything of it he worked in plastic rooms all the
time bafflingly the associates told vc that the room was being painted and he believed them the
man shot vc three times in the back of the head and once in the chest it didn't work because he
pulled a knife from one of his attackers stabbed him and ran away he later went on to testify
against the whole crime family and presumably he's still alive to this day with a new identity
3. rocco perry al capone is arguably the biggest name in american organized crime history but if
you went north of the border around the same time you may have heard of his canadian counterpart
rocco perry perry was a bootlegger and actually worked with capone running alcohol from canada to
chicago for capone's outfit his criminal dealings were no secret either even bragged to his local
paper that he ran a bootlegging operation and it was so fine-tuned his guys didn't even need guns
his belief was that bootleggers just needed to outrun cops not shoot them anyone who got caught
was at fault for being too slow his time as a crime boss allowed him to amass a fortune which
is still being contested by his family members to this day that's because one day in 1944 rocco
perry went out for a war and no one ever saw him again this occurred at the height of his criminal
career and speculation ran rampant that one of two things happened it was possible rival gangster
simply killed him but some family members think he walked away literally and figuratively starting a
new life south of the border after learning of a plot to kill him number two tokyo joe survived a
hit and turned informant ken ito was known as tokyo joe during his mob days he ran the
asian gambling racket in chicago and during the 1980s he flipped on his associates and ended up
helping the fbi put 15 mobsters behind bars ito's about-face began when he was indicted on federal
gambling charges mob bosses feared that ito was a danger to keep around they went wrong the mobsted
injured japanese internment camps as a young man was willing to do whatever he needed to survive
the seneca put a hit out on ito after he got out of jail in 1983. two hitmen approached ito
in his parked car they fired three shots into his head at point-blank range and left neither of the
men bothered to check it over a pulse of course because who survives three shots to the head well
john veas he did and so did kenito realizing his options were limited ito became an informant he
testified against mobsters politicians and even chicago's chief of detectives ito died in the
year 2004 at 84 had been living in witness protection since he turned informant number
one amardo fuentes suffered an unexpected fate amado fuentes was a major drug kingpin in mexico
as far back as the 1980s his reach and reputation only grew from there by the 1990s he was perhaps
the most feared man in mexico he killed the head of the juarez cartel and took over it's estimated
he made about 25 billion during his reign with police in mexico and the u.s on his trial fuentes
decided to give them the slip by getting plastic surgery in 1997 he went in for liposuction and to
have his face altered and then in a surprise to everyone he had a heart attack under anesthesia
and died on the table many people refused to believe it was true and fuentes's rotten corpse
was actually put out on display for journalists to take pictures of to prove it was him to this day
some people think it was a fake and fuentes went underground but he's never been seen since