In 1950 and 1951, Senator Estes Kefauver chaired a Senate committee charged with investigating organized crime and exposing its corruption of public institutions. It was officially known as the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce, but is sometimes referred to as the Kefauver committee or Kefauver hearings.

Subpoenas were issued for hundreds of underworld figures across the country, from Mob bosses to gambling kingpins, to shady accountants, and gang molls. Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, Tony Accardo, Mickey Cohen, Jack Dragna, Virginia Hill, and Johnny Rosselli, were among those subpoenaed.

But not everyone who was subpoenaed wanted to submit to questioning. Some went into hiding, others tried to evade an appearance with medical excuses. Al Capone’s cousin, Charles “Trigger Happy” Fischetti, in fact, craftily dropped dead of a heart attack nine days before he was to testify.