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History That Doesn't Suck

159: Scofflaws, Moonshiners, Bootleggers, and Crime Lords

History That Doesn't Suck

ProfGregJackson

Education, History, Society & Culture

4.5 • 5.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2024

⏱️ 63 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“Don’t ask me nothin’! You hear me? Don’t ask! And don’t bring anybody in here for me to identify. I won’t identify them even if I know they did it!” This is the story of the nation’s up-and-coming criminal underground. By 1920, with few exceptions, producing, buying, and selling alcohol is outlawed, but that doesn’t stop enterprising Americans. Many feel perfectly comfortable flouting the law and continuing to drink at their leisure, albeit with the added thrill that comes with evading halfhearted lawmen. Some cops are even in on it! But even as law enforcement steps up their game with undercover agent extraordinaire, Izzy Einstein, criminals get organized and start doing serious business—serious as in murderous. Home-brewers like Maude Vogan can be found in rural America, but in the big cities, Prohibition provides a marketplace for organized crime to flourish. There is money to be had, if one can ignore that the likelihood of getting killed just shot up dramatically. Notorious gangsters George Remus, Legs Diamond, and Lucky Luciano run this underworld, double-crossing each other, planning takeovers, and making millions off of booze-loving Americans. But can law and order triumph over these mafiosos? For now, fuhgeddaboudit. ____ Connect with us on HTDSpodcast.com and go deep into episode bibliographies and book recommendations join discussions in our Facebook community get news and discounts from The HTDS Gazette come see a live show get HTDS merch or become an HTDS premium member for bonus episodes and other perks. HTDS is part of the Airwave Media Network. Interested in advertising on the History That Doesn't Suck? Email us at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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Explore traditional Maltese cuisine, dine at Michelin-starred restaurants,

0:10.4

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0:24.0

Package holidays you can trust.

0:26.0

Ab sat and at all protected, subject to availability and conditions.

0:30.0

Hello all, Eric Rivenus with the most notorious podcast here.

0:35.0

Each week I interview an author or historian about a historical true crime, tragedy, or disaster.

0:41.0

Subject matter ranges from gunslingers to Gilded Age murder, to gangsters, to fires, to pirates, to

0:48.4

to wild prison breaks.

0:50.1

My guests bring their incredible knowledge directly to you.

0:53.7

Please subscribe to Most Notorious on your favorite podcast app.

0:57.8

Cheers and have a.m. Monday, March 22nd, 1920, roughly two months since the start of prohibition.

1:17.0

We're on the Washington State Coast about 20 miles north of Seattle where a lieutenant Roy Olmstead of the Seattle police and a dozen or so others

1:26.6

are waiting impatiently on Meadowdale dock.

1:29.7

They haven't been here long, and they know that their intel is good that any minute now a

1:35.2

rum runner that is a bootlegger ship or boat will arrive with an obscene amount of

1:40.5

Canadian whiskey but still standing in the cold dark morning grows tedious fast.

1:47.1

Suddenly, they hear it, the distant sound of a humming motor. Now peering across the Puget sound the lute the Ah, most excellent. His contacts have come through. This bootleging policeman couldn't be happier.

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