Henry Hicks Messick

Background

Henry Messick was born on August 14, 1922, in North Carolina, United States.

Education

Hank Messick studied at the University of Iowa where he received a Master of Arts degree.

Career

Henry Messick started his carer as a teacher at Colorado State University. There he taught journalism, but soon he left the post of a teacher and started to work as a reporter at The Waynesville Mountaineer. In 1957, he started to work as a reporter at the Louisville Courier-Journal. He held this post until 1963 and started to work at the Miami Herald. Messick briefly worked for the Boston Traveler in 1967 but was fired after investigating the business activities of Joseph Linsey. After that, he started to work as an author.

Henry Messick's first book The Silent Syndicate was published in 1967, followed by Syndicate in the Sun in 1968. His other books include Syndicate Wife, Lansky, The private Lives of Public Enemies, Razzle Dazzle. Most of his 19 books involved organized crime’s infiltration into certain geographical or commercial areas, including the Bahamas, drugs, gambling and show business. He also examined the history of particular crimes, such as kidnapping, and the role of key government officials in dealing with crime.

Achievements

• Henry Messick was an American writer and journalist famous for his books about organized crime. He was best known for his book Lansky, a 1971 biography of Meyer Lansky. Messick also was a co-author of an autobiography of Joseph Barboza, a killer in the Boston gang wars of the 1960s.
  
  In 1957, Henry Messick received the Sigma Delta Chi Award for best reporting.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Private Lives Of Public Enemies

    (Are mobsters interesting people? Are they really rich? Ar...)

    1973
  • The Silent Syndicate

    (Noted Organized Crime researcher, Hank Messick takes aim ...)

    1967
  • Syndicate In The Sun

    ("Syndicate in the Sun" is the story of Miami gone wild, t...)

    1968
  • Lansky

    (The Mob runs America and Lansky runs the Mob. The Syndica...)

    1971
  • Syndicate Wife: The Story of Ann Drahmann Coppola 1968
  • King's Mountain: The epic of the Blue Ridge "mountain men" in the American Revolution 1976
  • Razzle Dazzle 1995

Connections

Hank Messick was married and had three children.

Sister:

Mildred Messick

Daughter:

Marda Messick

Son:

Hank Messick

Son:

Jon Messick