It begins with a cemetery.
March 6, 1985. Columbus, Ohio. Arthur L. Shapiro, a local attorney at the firm then known as Schwartz, Shapiro, Kelm & Warren, is gunned down in broad daylight. Shot as he runs. Finished at close range. His car was stolen and used as the getaway vehicle.
Clean. Public. Professional.
For years, the case has lingered in that frustrating category of unsolved, half-remembered, quietly uncomfortable. But six years after the killing, in June 1991, an internal Organized Crime Bureau analyst wrote a memorandum that reframed the case in stark terms.
It described the murder as having “strong marks of a La Cosa Nostra (L.C.N.) ‘hit.’”
And it mapped a network of business relationships, including entities connected to Leslie Wexner and The Limited, that investigators believed warranted scrutiny. For those who aren’t up to speed, Wexner is the billionaire owner behind the linked of Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch. He was named in the Epstein Files by the FBI as a “co-conspirator” in Epstein’s crimes.
You can read the full eight-page memorandum here.
What follows is not speculation. It is what the document itself says.