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Crime Tours & Museum

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115 S 21st Ave

Hollywood, FL 33020

Serving Hollywood Area

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About the business.

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Chris J. Mancini M.

Business Owner

Escape into South Florida's underworld on our climate-controlled and video equipped bus. Our bus tours include: Crime History, Black History, & South Florida History tours. You can also visit our Crime Gallery and have one of our knowledgeable historians take you on a walk through the era of the Cuban bombers, the Cocaine Cowboys right up to the Ponzi schemers of today. Tour packages. But why just do one activity when you can do both? Our guide will take you on a guided tour through our gallery (30 minutes) and then take you on one of our bus tours (60 minutes). …

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My husband and I had a great time on the van tour! Proprietor Chris Mancini is a former U.S. prosecutor and a veritable fountain of information when it comes to South Florida's dark past which was truly fascinating and not the kind of thing you hear about every day. Mobsters, crime bosses and more, there are elements of both history and, at times, comedy here that will enlighten and entertain. Definitely a unique experience and a great activity.

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Hollywood crime tours and gallery dives into south florida’s mobsters, drug lords and crooked cops.

Mike Stocker / South Florida Sun Sentinel

Hollywood Crime Tours and Museum has just opened in downtown Hollywood, after relocating here from its original Lauderdale-by-the-Sea home. The 2,000-square-foot hub, devoted to South Florida's history of notorious criminals and mobsters, rumrunners and thieves, features 1,000 pieces of memorabilia, including mug shots, an exhibit re-creating the 1929 murder of mobster Thomas "Fatty" Walsh at the Biltmore in Coral Gables; and a replica of the "Old Sparky" electric chair.

A replica of the "Old Sparky" electric chair at the Hollywood Crime Tours and Museum. It has just opened in downtown Hollywood, after relocating here from its original Lauderdale-by-the-Sea home. The 2,000-square-foot hub, devoted to South Florida's history of notorious criminals and mobsters, rumrunners and thieves, features 1,000 pieces of memorabilia, including mug shots, an exhibit re-creating the 1929 murder of mobster Thomas "Fatty" Walsh at the Biltmore in Coral Gables; and a replica of the "Old Sparky" electric chair.

Hollywood Crime Tours and Museum has just opened in downtown Hollywood, after relocating here from its original Lauderdale-by-the-Sea home. The 2,000-square-foot hub, devoted to South Florida's history of notorious criminals and mobsters, rumrunners and thieves, features 1,000 pieces of memorabilia, including mug shots, an exhibit re-creating the 1929 murder of mobster Thomas "Fatty" Walsh at the Biltmore in Coral Gables; and a replica of the "Old Sparky" electric chair.

In 1929, according to newspaper clippings at the time, the boisterous and burly Walsh had a target on his back as he threw dice with underworld high-rollers at an illegal gambling den on the 13th floor of the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables. An associate of late gangster Arnold Rothstein gunned down Walsh, who was suspected of killing Rothstein months earlier.

“The hotel staff comes in and empties out all the gambling tables, and then they call the cops, who show up to find a dead mobster in a hotel room, not a casino,” says Chris Mancini, a Fort Lauderdale attorney and crime-history buff. “No one knows who did it. This is South Florida corruption in a nutshell.”

A puppet of Walsh’s bullet-riddled body lays in the “Biltmore Room” of Mancini’s new Hollywood Crime Tours and Gallery, a 2,000-square-foot tourist spot that opened Dec. 21 in downtown Hollywood. Framed by two antique elevator doors, the room is a vignette of that bloody night at the Biltmore, re-created with rum barrels, poker chips and stage blood.

The gallery, divided into themed rooms devoted to Broward County crime, WWII and other subjects, carries a kitschy assortment of relics from the early 1900s through present day, gathered by Mancini over the years from friends in law enforcement and the State Attorney’s office.

For Mancini, the gallery — located where Hollywood Boulevard meets the FEC tracks — ends three years of headaches to find a permanent home for his monument to South Florida’s biggest mobsters, drug lords and crooked cops. After spending a year in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, his museum migrated to a squat warehouse in Fort Lauderdale’s Flagler Village that “no one really visited,” Mancini says.

Talking to Mancini, who wore an “il Padrino” Godfather T-shirt on a recent visit, is like chatting with a Wikipedia of crime. “See that guy?” Mancini says, pointing to a black-and-white photo of 1930s “Tarzan” actor Johnny Weissmuller. “He was a swimming instructor at the Biltmore. Someone once stole his [Olympic] gold medals by — get this — swinging from a tree into his Hallandale apartment.”

“There’s enough crime in this place to last many lifetimes,” he says.

The crime timeline

Every visit to Hollywood Crime Tours and Gallery begins by spinning the “Wheel of Misfortune,” an oversize wheel near the entrance carrying mugshots of Jim Morrison and Frank Sinatra, Ted Bundy and Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.

Next to that is an illustrated “South Florida Crime Timeline,” bearing black-and-white photos and informational wall text spanning the 1930s mobster invasion through the 1970s pot-hauling trade (which used old moonshine routes) to the 2000s and its Ponzi-scheming crooks Bernie Madoff and Scott Rothstein.

“South Florida profits from crime in these spurts and cycles, and that dirty money builds skyscrapers in Miami and Fort Lauderdale,” Mancini says.

Venture deeper into the gallery and you’ll notice the swastika-covered World War II room, filled with a bomb shelter handbook, radiation detection kits and newspaper clippings about Cuban spying. During the war, South Florida mobster Meyer Lansky and his associate, Italian-born crime boss Charles “Lucky” Luciano, controlled the Miami ports against a Nazi invasion, Mancini says. “They all wanted to turn Miami into Chicago South,” he says.

Also of note: A framed display about 6-year-old Adam Walsh, abducted at the Hollywood Mall in 1981 and later killed; and a Miami Herald newspaper clipping of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union and executed by electric chair in 1953.

Speaking of electric chairs, visitors aiming to Instagram their crime-tour experience can do so behind bars: a 6-by-8-foot jail cell contains a replica of “Old Sparky,” a wooden Florida electric chair, framed by mugshots of serial killer Ted Bundy and other criminals.

Skip ahead to the Room of Shame (self-explanatory), and you’ll find a Palm Beach County voting booth from the disastrous 2000 presidential election. Nearby, Al Pacino-as-Tony Montana brandishes his “little friend” — an AR-15 — on a “Scarface” poster. The poster sits next to the “Evolution of Killing” wall, which contains an actual AR-15. “The receiver has been removed and can’t fire,” Mancini says.

The Broward room

One hundred years ago, South Florida stood as an easy place to become a bootlegger, gambler or mob-connected gun-runner — or all three, especially if you joined the Broward Sheriff’s Office.

BSO deputy Joe Williams peers around the Broward room at displays of old Broward Sheriff’s Office gear: chain handcuffs, old lie detector tests, tin stars, wooden nightsticks. The donations come from his personal collection, and his eyes land on his favorite black-and-white photograph: a 1942 image depicting an officer named Dwight Johnston and Broward Sheriff Edward Lee, both posing in front of money and betting slips collected at a police raid.

“This moment is like ‘The Untouchables’ meets ‘L.A. Confidential,'” says Williams, a BSO deputy since 1973. “It’s the moment we started cleaning up the sheriff’s office. I’m not saying it’s right they were corrupt, but it’s what police did: running numbers, collecting gambling winnings.”

In 1947, Johnston was killed, and Williams believes Sheriff Lee’s successor, the corrupt and racist sheriff Walter Clark (1931-1939, 1941-1950), orchestrated the hit. Clark and his brother, deputy Bob Clark, oversaw a county besieged by organized crime, and allowed 52 illegal casinos to operate in South Florida — and even owned three with mobster Lansky.

“Walter was the most nasty, devious son of a b—- in Broward County, and his brother Bob held the rope,” Mancini says. “These were bad guys.”

“He was definitely involved with Meyer Lansky,” adds Williams, who is working on a book about the sordid beginnings of the Broward Sheriff’s Office. “Clark’s uncle told me that Johnston was an opponent running against Clark for Sheriff.”

Hollywood Crime Tours and Gallery also features $25 bus tours that last roughly two hours and cover South Florida’s crime history and Florida’s pioneers. Tours, which begin and end at the gallery, take place aboard a climate-controlled bus with video screens playing history documentaries self-funded by Mancini, he says.

Tours will visit hot spots such as the Versace Mansion in Miami Beach and Palm Island (home of Al Capone), and Miami Cemetery. In Broward, buses will visit Himmarshee Village, the King-Cromartie House and Evergreen Cemetery, where Sheriff Walter Clark is buried.

“The gallery and tours are there to address the problems in the criminal-justice system that continue to plague Broward,” says Mancini, citing the 2018 Parkland shooting. “I love looking at the past, but unless we’re doing something to fix the present, what’s the point?”

Hollywood Crime Tours and Gallery is now open at 115 S. 21st Ave., in downtown Hollywood. Admission is $10-$12, $15 for a 30-minute guided tour, and $25-$35 for guided bus tour. Hours of operation are 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. Call 954-300-1063 or go to CrimeToursMuseum.com .

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• Local Business

Former U.S. Prosecutor opens crime museum in Hollywood

If you want to learn about the history of crime prevention in Florida, you might want to visit Crime Tours and Crime Gallery in downtown Hollywood. There are a myriad of crimes presented: Some funny, and others more serious.

The Gallery recently opened at 115 South 21 st Ave.

Upon entering, you will see a wheel known as the Wheel of Misfortune that includes pictures of notorious individuals such as Ted Bundy, Manual Noriega, and Jim Morrison. There is even a mugshot of Frank Sinatra who had a run in with the law.

There is also a South Florida Timeline of Crime that shows some of the famous mobster activities in the 1930s on up to the illegal drug activities of recent times. The timeline goes into the 2000s with people such as Bernie Madoff and Scott Rothstein.

The Gallery is being run by Chris Mancini, an attorney and former U.S. prosecutor, and his daughter, Yetcel Jimenez.

According to an article in the Sun-Sentinel written by Phillip Valys on Dec. 27, 2019, “For Mancini, the gallery . . . ends three years of headaches to find a permanent home for his monument to South Florida’s biggest mobsters, drug lords and crooked cops.”

The museum used to be located in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, followed by a stint in a warehouse in Fort Lauderdale’s Flagler Village.

“We have funny crimes and serious crimes,” said Jimenez. “We have a focus on the prohibition and illegal gambling joints.”

Mancini conducts tours of the gallery and offers a unique perspective on criminal activity. He believes that financial crimes are becoming more prominent today and that more and more people are being caught up in these crimes.

According to Valys’ article, the gallery is “divided into themed rooms devoted to Broward County crime, WWII and other subjects.” In addition, each room “carries a kitschy assortment of relics from the early 1900s through present day, gathered by Mancini over the years from friends in law enforcement and the State Attorney’s office.”

During a tour, visitors will see:

• A replica of Old Sparky, a wooden electric chair
• The Biltmore Room, wincludes gambling equipment such as an old roulette table and a slot machine
• A room dedicated to German and Cuban spies
• A display on guns.
• Displays showing criminal activity related to racial injustice in South Florida, including lynchings and murders.
• And a presentation on some of the conflicts and injustices that occurred many years ago — such as the taking of land from Native Americans.  

Amanda Jones specializes in content marketing. She holds a Master's degree in Marketing Management from the University of Florida and a Content Manager Professional Certificate from the University of Miami.

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