Robert Reynolds: 504 books

Mike Parkes was an engineer before he became a driver for Ferrari in the 1960s. He was drafted by Enzo Ferrari to drive the Maranello, Italy's F1 cars in midseason of '66. Of his 7 grand prix starts Parkes qualified his Ferrari on the front row along with teammate Lorenzo Bandini for the...

Luigi Musso was the son of an Italian diplomat who gained fame as a Formula 1 racer, first for Maserati and then Ferrari. He began racing in an outmoded Giannini which he entered in sports car races in Italy. By 1955 Musso was the top driver for the Maserati Grand Prix team. He changed to Ferrari...

Umberto Maglioli competed in the most noteworthy sports car races beginning in the 1950s and concluding in 1967. It was after he won the world's oldest sports car race, the Targa Florio, that he was recruited to race for Scuderia Ferrari. He also raced in the Pan American Road Race in Mexico...

Willy Mairesse was a Belgian Formula 1 and Sports Car driver with a penchant for wrecking his Ferraris. So much so that his death by suicide in 1969 was attributed to a severe wreck he had at Le Mans in the Mulsanne Straight in 1968. Mairesse drove in races with friends before making the big time...

Jose Froilan Gonzalez was eleven years younger than his more famous countryman, Juan Manuel Fangio. Both were Formula 1 and sports car drivers in the heyday of Formula 1 racing, the 1950s. Fangio and Gonzalez each profited from the dictatorial regime of Argentine strongman Juan Peron. In fact Fangio...

On February 12, 1963 a Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 720B commercial airliner crashed deep in the Florida Everglades. The plane was a Boeing model slightly smaller than the 707. The 720B was most often used for short trips. More than 100 of them were in use in 1963. At takeoff the aircraft flew...

The KLM Constellation that crashed on approach to Santa Cruz Airport in Bombay, India killed all 45 persons on board. Among them were 13 American journalists, two of them Pulitzer Prize winners. They worked for Time, Scripps-Howard, Business Week and many more newspapers and publications. The flight...

Klondike and Myles O'Donnell were rivals of Al Capone in the beer racketeering era of the mid 1920s. When the O'Donnells tried to move in on Scarface's Cicero beer and gambling rackets, a team of hit men was dispatched to stop them. Capone was eating an evening meal when he sent out the team of killers....

Charles 'Cherry Nose" Gioe was a mobster in the Chicago syndicate led by Al Capone. In charge of gambling rackets Gioe consulted with Dutch Schultz as an emissary for Capone in the early 1930s. Later Cherry Nose was imprisoned for racketeering in Hollywood. Along with three other defendants he was convicted of bilking motion picture studios out of more than $1 million dollars.

Joseph Canepi Jr. was the son of one of the earliest Italians to settle in Yonkers, New York. Joseph Canepi Sr. was a contractor and wealthy citizen whose business he passed on to his son. Joseph Jr. became involved involved in many shady dealings during his business career. Among these was a 1932...

Roger Touhy was a Prohibtion era gangster, a rival of Al Capone in Chicago. It was said that Scarface feared Touhy more than any of his enemies. In 1934 Touhy was sentenced to a long term for the kidnapping of a Polish/Russian thug named Jake Factor. His sentenced was reversed on one occasion before...

Maspeth, Queens Crimes was researched from old news accounts of the Prohibition Era of the 1920s and 1930s. Included is the robbery of a candy store, the unsolved murder of a Maspeth bootlegger/housewife, the accidental murder of a contractor/builder by a Maspeth policeman and other somewhat obscure...

Cornelius F. Gallagher was a Congressman from New Jersey's 13th District. Elected successively from the late 1950s until the early 1970s, the politician became enmeshed in a scandal in 1968. In August of '68 Life Magazine published an article tying him to a La Cosa Nostra figure in his hometown, Bayonne,...

"Crazy Joe Gallo" was a renegade mobster who was pursued by Colombo hit men for some time. An original murder plot was planned for the exclusive West Shore Towers apartment complex in Nyack, New York. Mobsters wanted to lure Gallo to apartment L-K where the hit would be put in motion. Then...