All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories

ABC:LHS #079-4   Victor "Babe" Andreoli...

...was raised in East Falls in a large, hardworking family, but fell in with bad company. After a botched robbery attempt, he was sentenced to life at Eastern State Penitentiary. His escape in a laundry truck did not end well.

ABC-079, part 3

Willie was one of six brothers in the crime business. They never bothered to affiliate with the Mafia, but three of the six brothers were picked off during gang wars. Willie was one of the victims. 

ABC:LHS #079-2   Potito "Little Petey" Bisciotti...

...was on the lower rungs of the mob but wanted to move up in the numbers racket. A rendezvous with fellow gangsters in a deserted tea room led to an untimely death by sawed-off shotgun. 

ABC079-1: How Crime Emerged in the Quaker City

In the early 20th century, ethnic groups clashed over control of gambling operations, protection, the numbers racket, prostitution, and eventually bootlegging. These criminal enterprises weren’t just about making money, but were also about gaining power and influence, sometimes even forging ties with local politicians and the police.

ABC:LHS #079-0 Thugs and Gangsters  

Some Laurel Hill residents are remembered today for their involvement with organized crime in the 1930s and 1940s. 

Petito "Little Petey" Bisciotti was a wannabe numbers man killed in what has become known as the Flag Day Massacre.

Willie Lanzetti was one of six notorious brothers in constant legal troubles; he met his end in a gangland slaying before his body was cremated and the ashes scattered at Laurel Hill West.

East Falls resident Victor “Babe” Andreoli was a cop-killer and Eastern State Penitentiary escapee who was gunned down at a breakfast café in Chester.

You’ll also hear part of the long sordid tale of the arsenic poisoning for insurance ring that took dozens of lives in the late 1930s. Two women who were tried based on the most circumstantial evidence against them were found “not guilty” when they were represented by Raymond Pace Alexander.

BBB:LHWS #048   John Henry Fow...

...was a lawyer with two nicknames - "Ducky" for the walk and "Foghorn" for the talk. He was tough and had an uncanny knack for figuring out what was unconstitutional. He debunked the supposed story behind the famous “Washington Crosses the Delaware” painting and then seriously challenged the Betsy Ross flag anecdote.

ABC:LHS #078-5   LTC Edgar Loftus...

...was a Wharton grad who rose in the Army Air Corps to Lieutenant Colonel. On VE Day, he was ranking officer in charge when a small squadron of German Aces landed and then augured in their aircraft at his air base to end their war. One of them was Hitler's favorite pilot. Yes, this really happened. 

ABC:LHS #078-4   Jacques Louis Francine...

...from a well-established Philadelphia family was the ultimate outdoorsman who collected specimens for the Academy of Natural Sciences and established a canoe camp. He rarely mentioned that he was also decorated fighter pilot and bomber pilot with more than 30 missions to his name.

ABC:LHS #078-3   Holger Hoiriis...

...bought an airplane in 1924 and took up barnstorming. He was the first pilot to carry a paying customer across the Atlantic and the first pilot to complete night airmail delivery for the US Postal service. After the war a story emerged about the time he was hijacked by Nazi agents in the Catskills. 

ABC:LHS #078-2   The First Philadelphia Fliers

Beer heir Grover Cleveland Bergdoll took to flight early; it is his Wright Brothers biplane that suspends from the ceiling of the Franklin Institute. He was also the most notorious American Draft Dodger during the Great War.

You met Hobart Amory Hare "Hobey" Baker in ABC:LHS #019 when fellow guide Paul Sookiasian and I talked about his athletic prowess; now I discuss his life as a pilot, and add new information uncovered only last year by ESPN.

Benjamin Lee II eagerly shipped off to be a flier before he finished his college days at Penn. His plane went down and his body never found. He has a cenotaph at Laurel Hill East.