The Gravedigger Who Ate Carrots

New York City, 1947—detectives collar a quiet mob handyman named Lester “Bugs” Milano. Everyone on Arthur Avenue knew him: the guy chewing carrots like cigars, dirt always under his nails. He wasn’t a hitman; he was the Tremont crew’s disposer. No one ever saw him with a weapon—just a shovel and a vegetable sack.

NYPD followed him to Van Cortlandt Park, unearthed 17 shallow graves—each ringed with gnawed carrot stumps, as if Bugs snacked while he buried the bodies. One pit contained a crude tunnel system, suggesting long-term practice. In court he grinned: “Digging beats going underground the other way.” Sentenced to life at Sing Sing, he escaped six months later by tunneling under the prison garden—leaving a single carrot wedged between the bars of his empty cell.

Seventy-eight years later the FBI still fields ...