64 Years Ago Today: "They Are the Best Kidnappers in the World."

For years, New Orleans mobster Carlos Marcello turned to the courts and a brilliant immigration lawyer to avoid deportation, until the government surprised him with a Guatemalan birth certificate.

In the upcoming weeks, CenLamar (2.0) will be featuring a selection of excerpts from The Original Gangster: The American Saga of Carlos Marcello, the working title of a book I have been researching and writing for the past five years.