Newark, New Jersey.

Sometime between 1972–1976.

He had in his hand the power to make sure the scumbag never bothered his family again.

He felt the gun pushing against the back of his adversary’s mouth, heard the teeth chattering against the metal of the gun and saw the saliva dripping from his mouth onto the gun. Most of all, he felt the pressure of his finger on the trigger, knowing one slight tug could end his adversary’s reign of terror forever.

Speckles of blood from the beating of his lifetime sprayed the plastic lined walls in the small room located in the basement of a restaurant. He had been set up, lured there by a rival drug dealer who was trying to beat his capitalistic spirit out of him; the beatings would not stop until he promised to cease his south Boston operations.

"I am going to St. Petersburg, Florida, tomorrow. Let the worthy citizens of Chicago get their liquor the best they can. I'm sick of the job-it's a thankless one and full of grief. I've been spending the best years of my life as a public benefactor."

-Al Capone at a press conference in 1927.

Date: August 14, 1928

Time: Shortly after 9 p.m.

Place: Outside El Dorado Café, Eighth Avenue and 14th Street in Ybor City

Surely someone had to have seen something.

Two men shouted violently at one another in a popular Ybor City café bustling with business. One of the men stormed from the room. The other soon followed.

A gunshot echoed throughout the establishment.

Moments later, a man lay on the sidewalk in front of the café bleeding to death from a gunshot to the abdomen.

Did the Hillsborough County Sheriffs Office Make a Deal With Castro  to Bring Down the Mob?

When Floridians voted for and approved a state lottery system in 1986, it must have seemed like déjà vu to the people of Tampa. The government-sanctioned Florida Lotto, with its little white numbered balls, is strikingly similar to another game of chance, one responsible for gangland shootings and rampant corruption. The game was bolita and for over 60 years Tampa’s criminal underworld battled for control of the illegal lottery and its profits.

Author Scott Deitche takes us to the casino tables of Havana in the 1940s and 1950s with an excerpt from his book, The Silent Don. Dietche carefully unravels Tampa's organized crime network, showing us threads that reached from Havana to New York to Dallas and beyond.

History was about to be made. The evidence was inside that home:  thousands of bolita tickets collected throughout multiple counties- enough to deliver a crippling financial blow to the Trafficante empire and, perhaps, finally a change that could stick to Santo Trafficante and put him in jail for a long time. The months-long investigation was about to come to fruition.