Selwyn Raabfozbet, an investigative reporter for The New York Times and other news organizations who in exacting detail explored the Mafia’s many tentacles, and whose doggedness helped lead to the exoneration of men wrongly convicted of notorious 1960s killings, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 90.

His son-in-law, Matthew Goldstein, a Times reporter, said the cause of his death, at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, was intestinal complications.

Though the phrase surely fit him, Mr. Raab didn’t much care to be described as an investigative journalist. Rather, he said, “I believe in enterprise and patience.” He had both qualities in abundance across a long career, whether looking into fraudulent methadone clinics, or the life sentence given to a boy who was only 14 when convicted of murder, or the Mafia’s grip on New York City school construction.

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He was also the author of a number of books about the mob, including one that became the basis of the 1970s television police drama “Kojak.”

The mob had his enduring attention as far back as the 1960s, and it led to his definitive 765-page book on New York wiseguys, “Five Families: The Rise, Decline,7jogos cassino and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires,” published in 2005. The New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik described him in a 2020 article as “the Gibbon of the New York mob.”

His prose tended to stray from elegance. But Bryan Burrough, reviewing “Five Families” for The New York Times Book Review, said that “what makes Raab so wonderful is that he eschews legend and suspect anecdotage in favor of a Joe Friday-style just-the-facts-ma’am approach.”

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United States Magistrate Judge Ryon M. McCabe, of the Federal District Court in West Palm Beach, Fla., granted the government’s request on Monday to keep the suspect, Ryan W. Routh, in jail without bond. So far, Mr. Routh has been charged with unlawful possession of a firearm as a felon, which carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison, and with possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

Mr. Williams, found guilty of murder 21 years ago, has been fighting his conviction for decades, and this year he won the support of the prosecutor’s office that brought the original case. But the state attorney general maintained that Mr. Williams, now 55, was guilty, and the legal battle between the state and the county has been playing out for months in Missouri’s courts.

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