There is an urban legend that the canal served as a dumping ground for the Mafia. Some cases are on record: news reports state that the bodies of a Brooklyn racketeer in the 1930s and a president of the Grain Handlers Union in the 1940s were found in the Gowanus Canal. In "Lavender Lake", a 1998 documentary film about the canal, two New York City police discussed the then-recent discovery of a suitcase containing human body parts that was taken from the waterway by fishermen.