In the small hours of December 18, 1931, a landlady in an Albany rooming house heard a man's voice drift through the ceiling: "Did you think we killed him?" Minutes later, three close-range shots shattered the silence at 67 Dove Street, and Jack "Legs" Diamond-born John Thomas Nolan-lay dead on a rented bed, executed just hours after a Troy jury set him free. The unsolved murder that followed would haunt Albany long after the headlines faded.
The Unsolved Murder of John Thomas Nolan is a narrative investigation of the one hour between 4:30 and 5:30 a.m., from the moment Diamond staggered in from the Kenmore Hotel to the instant two gunmen slipped out and a red Packard rolled away into the dark. Drawing on courtroom records, witness accounts, and a documented chronology, it rebuilds the crime scene: the calm voices above the landlady, the gangland execution in the rented room, the pearl-handled pistol and flashlight found blocks away, and the missing police file later replaced by clippings.
For readers of deeply reported true crime, this book follows Diamond from Philadelphia street corners and Manhattan nightclubs through the Prohibition underworld of Catskills roads and Troy courtrooms, tracing how a small-time thief became a symbol of American organized crime. It also examines the lives in his orbit-his wife Alice, murdered two years later; his mistress Marion "Kiki" Roberts, who fled to Boston; the Albany detectives and political bosses whose names resurface in later confessions. Was this a simple mob hit, a political clean-up, or something even more personal?
PART II turns the reader into a witness, walking the narrow hallway and standing at the foot of the bed while a forensic investigation unfolds. You move with the first patrolman up the stairs to test how the killers could have entered without force, fired three shots to the head, and vanished without waking the house. PART III and PART IV widen the lens to weigh Dutch Schultz's men, local muscle, and allegations against Albany's Night Squad detectives, using one-hour tests that measure each theory against time, distance, and opportunity.
This book contains no images-only cinematic narrative written in the style of a detective-investigator. Instead of photographs, you get a working case file: a documented chronology, character map, suspect overview, and alternative theories that let you follow the evidence step by step. This is a cold case treated as living record, inviting you to see where the trail ends in paper and where it continues in memory. Step into the one hour when New York's most hunted gangster finally stopped moving.
You will not be told what to think; you will be shown what is known, what is missing, and what still might surface. You will see how political machines, vanished files, and competing testimonies can turn a single killing into a mirror of a city's fears and silences. What would it take, even now, to break a quiet that has lasted nearly a century?
This Book Is For Readers Who...
- Want a grounded, humane account that keeps victims at the center.
- Enjoy narrative history blending courtroom drama, street detail, and archival research.
- Like stories that walk minute by minute through a homicide timeline and test every route in and out.
- Are curious how mob money, local politics, and police culture intersect.
Perfect For Fans Of...
- Gregg Olsen and other investigative crime storytellers.
- Michelle McNamara's I'll Be Gone in the Dark.
- Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City.
In the space between three muffled shots and a city that chose not to look too closely, this story endures as more than a headline-it is a test of how justice fails, how memory persists, and how far we are willing to go to face what happened in that quiet room at 67 Dove Street. Open the file and decide what you believe
