Rural Gangsters

People tend to associate gangsters with cities. For the most part, this is true—major population centres provide the infrastructure that allows everyone from Gangbangers to The Mafia to operate with ease. Conversely, rural regions are typically seen as, if not free from crime, then at least free from organized crime, and the various issues associated with it.

As a Generic Ethnic Crime Gang whose defining characteristic is "backwoods", the Rural Gangsters disproves this idea. Expect meth labs hidden in out-of-the-way forest clearings, grow-ops disguised as agriculture, turf wars over who controls the county, nearby farms used as a convenient way to dispose of dead bodies, and drive-by shootings that involve pick-up trucks and shotguns. Reactionary attitudes, redneck dress sense, cowboy hats, and especially with American examples, a family history of running bootleg whiskey during Prohibition and potentially into the present are also common.

The Rural Gangsters are typically—though not always—white and poor. They may have connections to urban criminal gangs, or they may be in conflict with them. Either way, expect them to guard their personal turf even more jealously than most criminals—this is their home after all.

Fittingly, they are commonly presented as less refined and far more straightforward than their more urban counterparts. Sometimes even to the point of coming across as blunt, crude or even especially bigoted (having flat-out links to local hategroups is not unheard of) in comparison.

Expect conflicts between them and their more urban counterparts to lean into The City vs. the Country, with more sympathetic depictions presenting them as dangerous but overall more reasonable, personal, steadfast, and protective of their community compared to the greedier and more ruthless City Gangsters. More unsympathetic depictions will present them as far more vicious, sadistic, and depraved, often caring more about avenging perceived slights and treating even minor conflicts like blood feuds compared to their more pragmatic and business-minded city counterparts (although it's also possible for both sides to be presented as being as bad as each other).

Generally, the Rural Gangsters will be presented as lacking the widespread power, wealth, and influence of other crime syndicates, with their power being limited to their own turf (although there are exceptions, with more successful branches potentially even having footholds within more urban environments).

However, the payoff for this will often translate to them actually holding far greater direct power over their domains, with them casually treating their territories more akin to personal fiefdoms, and thus being able to commit crime and violence without having to worry about local law enforcement, who are often forced to tolerate them if not flat-out powerless to stop them, assuming, of course, they're not all outright on their payroll.

If the gang manages to successfully ingratiate themselves within the community, or indeed are the community, this tends to result in any honest law-enforcement personnel walking into a very hostile environment with plenty of locals willing to passively or actively obstruct their investigations.

Incidentally, said law-enforcement personnel tend to be two cops, consisting of an by-the-book city slicker who has no idea what they're getting into and a better-informed local colleague, who the former dismisses as a dumb hick until they find out just how dangerous the Rural Mafia actually are.

Generally, examples will be based in the actual rural countryside, however, this is by no means a rule. Organised crime syndicates active in the forests, steppes, swamps, mountains, moors, plains, or even jungles are not unheard of. Overall what matters is they're based outside of the urban areas that people would expect gangs to operate.

Expect the gang to contain at least one Small-Town Tyrant (potentially as their leader or at the least a key player in the operation), have one on the payroll, or flat out rule the town themselves. May cross over with Hillbilly Horrors, however, as such individuals normally lack the organisation and restraint to form a stable crime syndicate, they are more likely to be associates or special enforcers than outright members.

See also Bandit Clan and The Rustler, the historical ancestors of this trope.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: The Sonozaki yakuza family lives way out in an isolated country town. Why is never explained, although it probably has something to do with the absolute, cult-like control they can have in a small area like that and the family's increasing desire to go legit.

Comic Strips

• Knights of the Dinner Table: Martin "Switch" Wucjik, Crunch's "friend" and local crook, used to work for an organized rural crime ring that specialized in stealing agricultural machinery, like combine harvesters, and shipping them overseas for resale.

Film — Live-Action

• Casa de mi Padre: Set in rural Mexico, it features narcs that produce their drugs there and then send them to the USA.
• Even Lambs Have Teeth: Set in the Rural Pacific Northwest, it involves two young women travelling to work on an Eco farm, only to be adducted by a gang of rednecks running a sex trafficking ring. The gang keeps their victims captive in storage containers hidden in the woods, and the local Sheriff and his deputies are affiliated with them. The girls escape, and along with their uncle's assistance, utterly slaughter the entire operation.
• Hot Fuzz: Played With. The seemingly-idyllic village of Sandford is in fact plagued by the deranged Neighborhood Watch Alliance, who aren't a crime gang per se, but are happy to murder anyone who possibly could interfere with Sandford's chances of winning Village of the Year.
• Made Men: Features fast-talking Con Man Bill "The Mouth" Menucci, who went into Witness Protection after informing on The Syndicate he used to work for, and was moved from Chicago to somewhere in the backwoods Savage South. Even in Witness Protection, however, Menucci can't control his urge to scheme and fleece people, including the head of the largest meth operation in the state, who Bill involved in a pyramid scheme. Considering how often the film pokes fun at the Southern locals, the rural gangsters prove surprisingly ruthless and effective, which comes in handy when Bill has to manipulate them into fighting members of his old Syndicate, who have found out where Bill is and have come for revenge.
• Prime Cut: This gangster movie features Gene Hackman as Mary Ann, a Slaughterhouse owner and mob boss in Kansas City, who lives on a cattle farm, has minions who dress in bib overalls and turn people who upset him into sausages. He likewise runs a particularly brutal Human Trafficking scheme where he gets vulnerable orphaned girls addicted to drugs and then sells them as Sex Slaves in a manner deliberately designed to resemble livestock sales (with him even mockingly renaming the girls after prize-winning cows just to twist the knife further). Lee Marvin plays Nick Devlin, a gangster from the Irish Mob in Chicago (who likewise has a much more professional, refined and urban aesthetic) who comes to collect an outstanding debt from him, after Mary killed the previous two guys who came for the money.
• Road to Perdition: John Rooney heads a Irish crime family in Rock Island, one of the more rural satellite communities around Chicago. As such, whilst he effectively rules the island, Rooney tithes a percentage of his racketeering and bootlegging profits to the much larger and more powerful Chicago outfit led by Al Capone. Rooney also commands a cadre of thugs, chief of whom is Michael Sullivan, a no-nonsense triggerman with a Tommy gun.

Literature

• Chet and Bernie: In the first book, "Dog On It" there is a sect of The Mafiya (along with an American henchman) operating from a warehouse out in the middle of the desert in Nevada, led by a crime boss named Gulagov. They have their hands in loansharking and dog fighting. When one of their debtors is too slow paying them back, they abduct his daughter.
• Jack Reacher: "Worth Dying For" features the Duncan Family - Jacob Duncan (their de facto leader), his two brothers Jonas and Jasper, and Jacob's adopted son Seth - whom for twenty-five years have ruled over a Nebraska farming town like tin pot dictators. Through their trucking business, the Duncans run a brutal extortion racket forcing all the local businesses and families into exclusively using their trucks or else face a visit from their muscle (comprised of former Cornhusker football players) who will beat them or their families senseless and destroy their homes. They likewise terrorise anyone who dares do anything they disagree with, even forbidding the local doctor from treating Seth's wife Elenore after Seth beats her. However, this is merely the tip of the iceberg of the Duncans' depravity, with them secretly in partnership with Rossi, a Mafia boss based in Las Vegas and his contacts of Lebanese and Iranian gangsters. Together they run an operation using the Duncans' infrastructure to smuggle women and girls out of the heart of Asia into America, where Rossi forces the women into prostitution and the Duncans keep a portion of the children for themselves to rape, eventually killing them when they get bored with them.
• Road Kill: Texas Horror by Texas Writers: Vol. 3: "The Consequence of Thought", by Aaron Milstead features Clifford Brennan, a vicious, psychopathic dim-witted Neo-Nazi who leads a gang involved with Meth production off a farm on the outskirts of rural Texas. Also involved in a variety of criminal enterprises, including Human Trafficking (namely virgins abducted from Mexico for forced prostitution) and contract killing, Clifford turns to dealing Meth solely because he considers it more economically viable, taking over production within the region by having all his rivals gang-raped and then hanged by their own intestines as a warning to all who dare cross him. Amongst his rackets he also creates and sells snuff films, including him selling three to a crooked Japanese businessman to get his hands on Adolf Hitler's DNA, all part of his grand plan to resurrect Hitler by cloning (thanks to his pet geneticist Richard) and lead forth the Fourth Reich, intending to create a "a world where there is one true pure race to rule over all others... and we have exterminated every last fucking mongrel."

Live-Action TV

• Amish Mafia: Essentially parodied in the "reality show" about a gang that protects an Amish community from other criminals.
• Banshee: Takes place in the small town of Banshee, Pennsylvania. Kai Proctor is the local crime lord and runs most of the organized crime in the area. He was born in the local Amish community but as a young man, he broke the prohibition on violence and was kicked out. The area also has smaller criminal groups, composed of neo-Nazis and various rednecks. The local Indian tribe operates a casino and its leaders are not above resorting to criminal acts to get what they want.
• Fargo: The series deals with several generations of organized crime syndicates operating in the rural Dakotas/Minnesota area.
  • The most prominent example is the Gerhardt crime family in season 2, who use a farming/construction empire to mask their criminal activities and deal with a potential war with a city-based organization looking to expand into their territory.
  • In season four, while most of the story is focused on the gangs in Kansas City, Gaetano Fadda came up through the rural Sardinian branch of the Fadda Family, having been exiled there before the war for sleeping with the daughter of one of his father's lieutenants. His time in the countryside of Sardinia has seasoned him into a skilled, vicious enforcer and given him a ruthless twisted morality (even by the series standards) but also leaves him ill-prepared when he relocates to Kansas City to try and take over the family business after his dad dies, with him repeatedly failing to adapt to his new environment.
• FBI: Most Wanted: In "Chattaboogie" investigations into a DEA agent seemingly going rogue and committing several murders, leads the team to a rural drug ring called "The Board" based in a small town in largely rural Tennessee. Originally founded as a Moonshine operation back in the 30s, the Board is composed of four prominent local families and runs a sophisticated operation smuggling drugs in from Florida under the cover of a local auto dealer, and then transported out into Missouri to be sold through a local supermarket chain, with the profits laundered through a textile mills and a chicken farm (with each family operating one part of the process). As the Team eventually realise the events centre around a former member the others betrayed making their moves to take over the entire operation, and another running her own lucrative side business laundering illegal gold for a drugs Cartel at a metal refinery in nearby Louisville, Kentucky.
• Gangs of London: The Welsh Travelers featured in the series provide a non-American example. Led by Kinney Edwards, whilst officially posing as just a community in reality they make up their faction in the underworld, with Kinney running a smuggling and arms trade operation, taking advantage of their nomadic status and connections to transport merchandise which illegally arrives in the more rural parts of Wales into London, as well as having their hand in small time murder for hire and body disposal. They likewise all have a distinctly more rural and working-class appearance compared to the other organisation's more sophisticated fronts. Nevertheless, Kinney knows full well they don't stand a chance in direct confrontation against the much more powerful Wallace Organisation, so after his son accidentally kills Finn Wallace and Sean refuses to negotiate he attempts to smuggle him out of the country. Sure enough their organisation is quickly slaughtered by the vengeful Wallaces, and Kinney and his son both end up dying at the hands of the Danish Mercenaries hired by the Investors (albeit after putting up a significant fight).
• Justified: Is based around this trope, with numerous crime families and criminal organizations jostling for control of Harlan County, Kentucky. Notable examples include former Harlan crime lord Bo Crowder, Bo's son and successor, Boyd, Bennett township marijuana kingpin Mags Bennett and her three sons, the alligator poaching, drug-smuggling Crowe family, and Dixie Mafia shotcaller Wynn Duffy, who operates out of a trailer in Frankfurt. These local criminals regularly ally with or fight against outside organizations, like the Miami cartel and the Detroit Mob.
• Maigret: "Maigret's Night at the Crossroads" involves Chief Inspector Maigret leaving his familiar Paris, to help investigate a murder in Arpajon, a rural farming district in North Paris. Whilst seeming a peaceful and unassuming community, the Parisian police's investigations quickly uncover the area to be a hotbed for crime, being not just the site of an illegal fight club but also the centre of widespread smuggling ring that transports and fences stolen goods and jewellery, with the local police all being corrupt and their head Inspector Grandjean being one of the ringleaders.
• Mystery Road: In Season two, whilst investigating a decapitated body found in the Mangrove swamps outside the small isolated town of Broome in largely rural Northern Australia, Detective Jay Swan discovers the area is the source of the largescale cocaine smuggling operation that he's been hunting for years, with drug labs in the outback producing the products and it being smuggled out through Australia by long-distance truckers stopping at the local truck stop. As it turns out his ex wife's new love interest, the charming local businessman Simon is the mastermind and the local police boss Sergeant Owen is in his pocket.
• Narcos: Specifically a Rural Cartel in the form of the Sinaloa Plaza of the Guadalajara Cartel, who have been growing and smuggling Marijuana to the US for generations, and prefer the old style of Vaquero dress. When they get involved in the cocaine trade, the extra money and cosmopolitan contacts lead the younger generation to re-style themselves as urban Narcos.
• Ozark: The Snell family is the Ozark area's ruling rural crime syndicate dating back to the The American Civil War, using their vast farm to grow and create heroin while employing numerous locals in their operation. They don't appreciate Marty moving in on their turf with his Mexican crime backers and coming into conflict before making an uneasy deal.
• The Peripheral (2022): The small Southern town of Clanton, one of two primary settings in the series, is dominated by the sadistic car salesman turned drug lord Corbell Pickett and his gang. They are responsible for a significant part of the country's economy thanks to his drug-building operations and have the local police department in their back pocket: so much so that Pickett can happily mutilate his own men in public places without any fear of reprisal.
• Queen of the South: While Teresa and her various enemies often fight their gang wars in urban locales like Miami or New Orleans, her supplier El Santo runs his operation way out in the middle of nowhere in Bolivia. He is likewise an insane yet scarily competent Cult Leader, his members preparing his drugs and acting as his enforcers, with him viewing his Cocaine to be a sacrament and Teresa as the moyocoyotzin chosen to spread it.
• Suburban Shootout: Parodied. The series features an all-out turf war between two all-female gangs of wealthy housewives, the "good" gang led by Barbara du Prez and the "bad" gang led by Camilla Diamond, taking place in a stereotypically idyllic English village. It revealed Barbara's group originally started as Neighbourhood-Friendly Gangsters designed to rid Little Stempington of crime until Camilla got corrupted by the monetary returns that came with the job.
• Sons of Anarchy: SAMCRO (Sons Of Anarchy Motorcycle Club — Redwood Originals) combine this with All Bikers are Hells Angels, appearing as a stereotypical biker gang operating in the small town of Charming, California. They have their fingers in many pies, manipulating the local police and controlling illegal gun sales and drug smuggling throughout the region. With them even making deliberate efforts to chase away outside business and investors, to keep Charming rural and thus under their control.
• SWAT:
  • "Whistleblower" involves the team dealing with a sex trafficking ring that operates on the outskirts of LA, with them transporting the girls to truck stops and distant motels to pimp them out.
  • Whilst on a sabbatical in Thailand in "Thai Hard" and Thai Another Day" Hondo, Deacon and Tan end up facing Zaw Min a vicious Burmese drug lord, who has set up his base in the jungles of a strip between the Thai and Myanmar border. Zaw terrorises the local villages, having his men regularly abduct children as young as six to force work as slave labour producing and packaging his Heroin. Zaw was responsible for shipping massive amounts of the drug, to the point of having set up a base within LA, smuggling the drugs out of Thailand in shipments of green tea.
  • "Stockholm" involves the team going after Eli Wyatt, a brutish yet cunning and charismatic sex trafficker. Following being forced to abandon his original ring to escape the FBI, Eli murdered a man to steal his identity and managed to con his way into taking over the Evans farm on the outskirts of LA, which he turned into his base for his new forced prostitution ring. Abducting vulnerable teenagers from the city, Eli would pimp them out at local motels whilst keeping them trapped in the barns when not working.
• Top of the Lake: Set in the remote town of Lake Top in rural New Zealand, Matt Mitchum is an ageing yet vicious, misogynistic gangster who dominates the town through his meth racket, using his two eldest dim-witted sons as his primary enforcers, has the local police in his pocket, and uses the local biker gang to distribute his drugs and act as additional muscle.
• The Tourist:
  • The crux of the first season is revealed to link to a drug empire that runs throughout the Australian outback, where the drugs are smuggled into the country in the stomachs of trafficked drug mules, and then distributed under the supervision of "Big" Billy Nixon (a stereotypical Texan who dresses like a cowboy), who uses his long-distance trucking company to secretly smuggle the drugs. Likewise whilst it implied the ring leader, the international Greek crime boss Kosta is based and regularly operates in more urban surroundings, he has several traits in common with the country setting, such as being introduced out boar hunting in the woods which he'd done since boyhood.
  • Season two introduces the Cassady's (for whom the Man happens to be a member, an Irish Mob crime family who, whilst their territory extends into the nearby towns, are based within a small village in largely rural Ireland. Niamh Cassidy's men dress like labourers and she possesses massive amounts of sway and support in the local community, partially due to her reinvesting her profits within it. This stands in contrast to their rivals the McDonnel's who use a whiskey distillery in town they own as their base and have a more urban and sophisticated presentation (something Niamh even mocks when rallying her troops whilst holding a meeting at her base of operations, her families pub).
• Tulsa King:
  • The premise of the series, Dwight "the General" Manfredi is an old school New York mafia Capo who following serving a 25-year sentence in prison, is "rewarded" by his family by being sent to the largely rural Tulsa, Oklahoma to set up a new operation there, without being provided any resources. Despite recognising this for the exile it is, Dwight immediately adapts to his new environment forming partnerships with Bohdi, a legal marijuana dealer, Mitch Keller, a former rodeo star turned Saloon owner, and Jimmy, an indigenous Marijuana farmer, propping up their businesses and expanding his operations into dealing party drugs and gambling, as well as building up his crew, including using Mitch and Jimmy contacts to get his hands on quality muscle (leading to him joking about hiring "Cowboys and Indians"). By the season one final, following wiping out the Black Macadams who previously controlled crime in Tulsa and realising his previous loyalty was misplaced, Dwight declares independence from his former family dubbing Tulsa his city.
  • Whilst primarily a Biker Gang, the aforementioned Black Macadams also have shades of this, with their leader Caolan Waltrip certainly believing he's entitled to the status and respect benefiting a rival mafia Don. Considering Tulsa his domain, it is made clear that before Manfredi's arrival, they ran all the serious crime throughout Tulsa, dealing in meth, party drugs, guns, and murder for hire. They likewise have links to several militia groups, providing them with arms and explosives (something that's put them on the ATF's radar). Caolan likewise has two corrupt Sheriff's deputies on his payroll, and responds to any threats to his authority with brutal and often unnecessary violence. The final revealed he had his fingers in more pies than anyone expected, with him managing to build himself a massive fortune well into the millions through his illicit dealings.
• Young Sheldon: Set in the small town of Medford, East Texas in "A Roulette Wheel and a Piano Playing Dog", Connie decides to expand her gambling business by introducing a Roulette wheel. However, following Herman (the roulette wheel operator) telling Georgie about how it has previously gotten him into trouble with the "Dixie Mafia", it leads to him having a nightmare of them arriving to shakedown the Casino.

Music

• The music video for the Brantley Gilbert song "Bottoms Up" portrays him as the leader of a gang delivering a shipment of moonshine to a party in a dry county. When the sheriff follows him home, it leads to a shootout between him and Gilbert.
• Steve Earle's song "Copperhead Road" is about a family with a long history of bootlegging moonshine. The protagonist talks about how, after coming home from Vietnam, he's decided to diversify into marijuana, planting up an entire holler near the eponymous Copperhead Road, and dodging the DEA.

Video Games

• Grand Theft Auto:
  • Grand Theft Auto V features the O'Neil Brothers, one of Blaine County's more organised and well-armed redneck factions, a large family of meth dealers from rural Grapeseed whose base of operations is the family ranch and whose operation is in competition with Trevor Philips Industries. They come very close to striking an alliance with Wei Chang and the Los Santos Triads to help him expand his operation into the area, in exchange for buying their drugs.
  • Grand Theft Auto Online: The aforementioned O'Neils also pop up in missions now and then, running various crimes and rackets around Blaine County that the player character sabotages or robs.
• Mafia:
  • Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven: While both the Salieri and Morello Crime Families are based in and mainly operate in the city of Lost Heaven, they also have notable rackets and businesses established in the countryside just outside the city. Two levels, "Ordinary Routine" and "A Trip to the Country", have Tommy, Paulie, and Sam fighting against the Morello's goons and Dirty Cops under their payroll when the latter two threaten their money collecting and bootlegging operations.
  • Mafia III: The Dixie Mob are presented this way (especially in comparison to the more upper class Marcano Family and the more urban Black and Irish mobs in New Bordeaux), being composed of racist rednecks who are identifiable for their cowboy hats, denim jackets and constant plastering Confederate battle flags on everything they own. They run drugs and forced prostitution throughout Delray Hollow (New Bordeaux's primary black district which they were given to run by Sal Marcano following their leader Ritchie Doucet assisting him in massacring the Black Mob), as well as running Moonshine out of the Bayou. Proud Neo-confederates, they claim to be the remnants of actual Confederate holdouts and hardliners in the area who hid from the authorities in the Bayou and acted as bandits after the Civil War, viewing themselves as their successors. They likewise have strong links to the Southern Union, though are ironically looked down upon by the more upper-class members of the Union (as well as the Marcanos) as little more than disposal foot soldiers.
• Watch_Dogs: The Pawnee Militia is a gang of Gun Nuts and Crazy Survivalists who can be found lurking out in the sticks north of Chicago. Amidst their doomsday prepping, they're more than happy to engage in drug dealing, extortion, and hiring themselves out as muscle to legitimate businesses and other gangs alike.

Web Original

• The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Lampshades and Zigzags this; the comic's Myth Arc after it transitions into colour involves Doc fighting against the "Cumberland Mafia". When he first learns of its existence, a footnote appears saying that Cumberland has a population of about 21,000, too small for any serious organized crime outfit. However, as pointed out in a later chapter, Cumberland is a few hours' drive from Washington, D.C., and is part of a larger metropolitan area with a population of about 90,000.
• Ultra Fast Pony: Applejack and her family are members of The Irish Mob, operating from a farm in the small town of Ponyville. They maintain the farm as a front for their real business: smuggling drugs, fixing prize fights, and similarly lucrative, illegal activities.

Real Life

• The Mafia started up as a vigilante organization from overseers wanting to protect the landed estates they were managing.
• Given the intensive agriculture involved in the production of some drugs, it isn't uncommon to find grow-ops and other drug-related crime in the countryside. Afghan poppy farmers and Colombian cocaine growers are both fairly classic examples, and their narcoterrorist backers regularly retreat into rural regions to hide from government security forces.
• Drug cartels:
  • Many small towns and villages in Mexico are ruled by the cartels as quasi-feudal domains.
  • Cartels have been known to operate marijuana farms in U.S. Federal and State parks.
• Rising poverty rates in rural America as manufacturing and mining move overseas and small family farms go bankrupt have actually led to the crime rates of small towns starting to surpass urbanized areas in some cases. The "trailer park meth lab" has become a stereotype in and of itself.
• The Johnston Gang terrorized Chester County, Pennsylvania for nearly two decades through robbery, and several members later graduated to murder. The 1986 movie At Close Range is loosely based on them.
• The Aryan Nations and The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord combine this with Western Terrorists and Right-Wing Militia Fanatic, being Neo-Nazi Hate groups based within the rural areas in the US (Idaho and Coeur d'Alene for the Aryan's and Arkansas Ozarks for CSAL), as well as being heavily involved in organised crime. The CSA engaged in bank robberies, illegal conversion of firearms to full-auto, creation of explosive weaponry, and storing gallons of cyanide to poison major cities' water supplies. The Aryan Nations were likewise heavily involved with bank robbing to fund their activities, as well as heavily engaging in extortion and large-scale racketing, and are known to have strong ties with the Aryan Brotherhood. Both grounds likewise regularly engaged in terrorizing black, Jewish and LGBT people in the area during their heyday, including bombing and burning down houses, with the Aryan Nations going as far as planning a mass bombing to overthrow the US government.

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