Gasparilla International Film Festival 2009

It may have been the South, but in the early 1900s, Tampa, Florida, specifically its Latin community known as Ybor City, was more reminiscent of the Wild West. Gambling parlors and whore houses were located on almost every corner in Ybor City, shootouts between police and gangsters were a regular occurrence, election ballot boxes were stuffed, police and politicians were on the take, and very few residents found any of this to be odd. The man behind all this insanity was Charlie Wall, Tampa’s first crime lord and perhaps the earliest crime lord to control most of Florida. This documentary tells the tale of one the nation’s most unknown gangsters.