1960s Timeline

Oct. 9, 1963 - Underworld songbird Joseph Valachi today told Senate racket probers how he recruited three killers and then fingered...

Oct. 3, 1963 - Italian-Americans in New York expressed resentment today over the national spotlight that is being given the story of...

Oct. 2, 1963 - The Cosa Nostra stopped accepting new members in 1958, Joseph Valachi (pictured right today speaking to counsel) told...

Oct. 1, 1963 - Joseph Valachi calmly recited today the bloody history of a war for control of the Cosa Nostra crime syndicate. From this...

Sept. 25, 1963 - Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy today commended the Los Angeles Police Department for its fight against organized...

Sept. 25, 1963 - Hank Thompson (right with Monte Irvin and Willie Mays in 1951), former infielder for the New York Giants, was sentenced...

Sept. 25, 1963 - Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (pictured with Senator Edmund Muskie) said today that organized crime had become a...

Sept. 13, 1963 - A Paris television figure was sentenced in Brooklyn today to 3 to 6 years in prison for smuggling into this country 24...

Sept. 12, 1963 - A Los Angeles Superior Court jury of nine men and three women voted the death penalty today for the two ex-convicts...

Sept. 11, 1963 - The Nevada Gaming Control Board issued a complaint today against Frank Sinatra (picured with his son, Frank Jr.),...

Sept. 4, 1963 - Dennis Bennett, a left-handed pitcher for the Phillies, singled to drive in the tie-breaking run in the fifth inning...

Sept. 4, 1963 - Two ex-convicts accused of killing a Los Angeles policeman in a remote Kern County onion field were found guilty of...

Sept. 3, 1963 - A coloring exercise that carries a serious safety measure will be distributed starting tomorrow to elementary school...

Aug. 31, 1963 - Frank Sinatra’s Cal-Neva Lodge on the north shore of Lake Tahoe is threatened with closure pending investigation of...

Aug. 24, 1963 - Richard Honeck, 84 years old, has been in prison longer than many men expect to live. Honeck (left in 1899 and right this...

Aug. 19, 1963 - Thomas (Three-Finger Brown) Lucchese (pictured appearing before the Senate Labor Rackets committee in 1958), reportedly...

Aug. 16, 1963 - Eddie Lee Mays, 34, was executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing last night for the 1961 Harlem holdup murder of a bar...

Aug. 14, 1963 - Raymond V. Martin, retired chief of detectives in Brooklyn South, the heart of that borough’s Cosa Nostra crime...

Aug. 13, 1963 - The United States Army is guarding Mafia canary Joe Valachi behind barbed wire at Fort Monmouth, N.J. The mobster who...

Aug. 9, 1963 - The five-year underworld war between the Gallo and Profaci gangs of Brooklyn reached a new peak of violence today with the...