On this day in 1929 Joe Morgan was born in LA, and went on to become a co-founder of the Mexican Mafia.

He also had a prosthetic leg which dealt him the nickname Joe “Peg Leg” Morgan. On October 27, 1993, he was diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer while serving a life sentence, and died a little over one month later.

On this day in 1929, Joe Morgan was born in Los Angeles, California, entering a world that would eventually see him rise to become one of the most feared and influential figures in the history of American organised crime. While the East Coast was gripped by the brutal power struggles of figures like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, the streets of Southern California were developing their own distinct criminal culture, one that Morgan would help shape in ways that continue to reverberate through the prison system and beyond to this day.

Morgan, whose full name was José René Morgan, came of age in the barrios of Los Angeles at a time when Mexican-American street gangs were becoming an increasingly prominent fixture of the city's underworld. It was within this environment that Morgan found his calling, gravitating toward a life of crime that would eventually land him behind the walls of the California state prison system. It was there, in the brutal confines of San Quentin, that Morgan joined forces with fellow inmate Luis "Huero Buff" Flores and a small group of other Mexican-American prisoners to establish the Mexican Mafia — known on the streets as La Eme — around 1957. The organisation was conceived initially as a means of protection and control within the prison system, but it rapidly evolved into a sophisticated criminal enterprise with tendrils extending far beyond prison walls into drug trafficking, extortion, and murder-for-hire operations across California and the wider Southwest.

Morgan carried with him a distinctive physical characteristic that would follow him throughout his criminal career. Having lost a leg, he wore a prosthetic that earned him the enduring nickname "Peg Leg" Morgan — a moniker that, far from diminishing his reputation, seemed only to add to the air of menace that surrounded him. Those who underestimated the man on account of his disability invariably came to regret it.

Despite spending the greater portion of his adult life incarcerated, Morgan remained a commanding presence within La Eme's hierarchy, regarded as one of its founding fathers and a figure of enormous respect and authority. On 27th October 1993, whilst serving a life sentence, he was diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer. He died a little over a month later, never having tasted freedom in any meaningful sense during his final decades.

Morgan's legacy is a complicated and deeply troubling one — as co-founder of an organisation that the FBI has classified as one of the most dangerous prison gangs in the United States, his influence on American criminal history is both undeniable and lasting.