| Ah, Thanksgiving, that comforting November tradition involving pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, and barely suppressed family tension at the dinner table. But whether seeing relatives fills you with excitement or dread, take a moment this holiday to be grateful that you aren’t related to Harold (Kayo) Konigsberg, a remorseless hit man for the mob. In 2001, Kayo’s grandnephew, the New Yorker contributor Eric Konigsberg, wrote about his relative for the magazine. Kayo—as in K.O., or knockout—had been notorious to law enforcement for decades, but the younger Konigsberg learned of his great-uncle’s existence only by chance, from a near-stranger at his boarding school. The writer admits to experiencing a minor thrill at the discovery: Kayo, a boxer turned contract killer, lived the type of life that gets glamorized in gangster movies—seedy but compelling if you don’t stop to think about the victims. (During one prison stint, he received regular visits from a former Rose Bowl Queen, and was rumored to escape confinement on some days to visit a racetrack with the warden.) Kayo’s relatives disapproved, however, and demonstrated their moral uprightness by distancing themselves from the clan’s black sheep. The feeling cut both ways. “It’s a funny thing,” the aging convict bitterly tells his grandnephew. “Family don’t seem to mean anything anymore.” | 
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