Crime Books and Films

March 19, 2011

Crime Magazine's Review of True-Crime Books

The first two books this time around share a common modus operandi: A young and much-loved son, whose parents had always given him everything, brings about the vicious murders of those very parents in the would-be comfort of their own suburban home. It's an MO so dark, so outrageous, so ironic, such a precise perversion of all that humanity holds sacred as to be almost Shakespearean. Taking the lives of those who gave you life: Murder is murder, but could any other kind of murder be crueler? The coldhearted calculations of Andrew Wamsley and David Legg led to four deaths, but destroyed many more lives than that.

 by Anneli Rufus

Dec. 9, 2010

by Denise Noe

November 29, 2010

Crime Magazine's Review of True-Crime Books

Have history's best-known true-crime cases become "classics," their real-life supervillains now elevated to "legend" status? It's hard to choose the right words for actions that are so very, very wrong. Several volumes in this latest column revisit killers and cases that have received so much press over the years — Ed Gein, the Washington D.C. sniper, Roman Polanski, John Wilkes Booth — that, in any other realm or genre, they would be defined as landmarks, milestones, or classics. Maybe we could say "milestones in misery." I'd be okay with that.

by Anneli Rufus

Nov. 15, 2010

An excerpt from the book War in the Woods: Combating Marijuana Cartels on Our Public Lands.

by Lt. John Nores Jr. and James A. Swan

Nationwide, there are around 7,000 game wardens, or about as many of NYPD's finest as are assigned to cover the New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square.

Nowhere are game wardens abundant, but the situation is especially bad in California, and man and nature are paying a price.

California's game wardens are responsible for protecting more than 1,000 native fish and wildlife species, more than 6,000 native plant species, and approximately 360 endangered species, as well as criminal, civil and traffic law, plus search and rescue, hunter education and assisting wildlife biologists; yet, at any given time, today there are about 240 wardens on patrol in California, and that's nearly 50 wardens more than in 2007, when I began making a documentary about California's game warden crisis..

Nov. 8, 2010

An excerpt from Dan Zupansky’s true crime book Trophy Kill: The Shall We Dance Murder which Prohyptikon Publishing-Toronto released in April 2010. All rights reserved. www.TrophyKill.tv

By Dan Zupansky

Winnipeg in the province of Manitoba is a cosmopolitan city with a rich history, the capital of the province and the eighth largest city in Canada. Situated in the Red River Valley in the geographical center of North America, it covers over 145 square miles. The population in 2003 was almost 700,000 people, comparable in size and population to the city of Seattle, Washington, without Seattle’s vastly more populated surrounding suburban area.

For decades the license plate for the province read “Friendly Manitoba” and for many years running, Winnipeg has held the distinction of having the highest per capita murder rate in Canada.

Sept.29, 2010    

Joseph "Scotty" Spinuzzi

An excerpt from the book: Mountain Mafia: Organized Crime in the Rockies, detailing the 1960 murder trial of “Scotty” Spinuzzi.  The book covers some of the more colorful leaders in the West's organized crime operations, including Joe “Little Caesar” Roma, “Black Jack” Colletti, and the Smaldone brothers. In addition to the "Scotty" Spinuzzi, trial, the book details the connection these Colorado mobsters had with notorious crime members in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.  Mountain Mafia: Organized Crime in the Rockies is available on-line, at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and can be ordered through any local book store.

by Betty Alt and Sandra Wells

Like characters in The Godfather film or “The Sopranos” television series, Colorado has had its share of Mafia personalities. One of the most colorful was Joseph “Scotty” Spinuzzi, who was first mentioned by the Kefauver Committee as a mob member and link between the criminal empires of Al Capone in Chicago and Frank Costello in New York. In 1971, a Colorado Task Force of “The National Council on Crime and Delinquency” listed Spinuzzi as the head of organized crime in the state.

Born on March 26, 1910 in Pueblo (known during the prohibition era as “Little Chicago”), Spinuzzi was considered a handsome man, approximately five-foot-eight-inches tall with dark, curly hair, dark brown eyes and often a short temper. Some indicated that former Colorado bosses Charles Blanda and James “Black Jim” Colletti found it difficult to keep Scotty under control and felt he brought unwanted publicity to the Colorado organization. Blanda frequently lamented that “Spinuzzi was often a problem as his subordinate tended to be a “very volatile, loose cannon.”

Spinuzzi, who apparently was involved in a vending-machine business and at one time owned a bar with his brother Tony “Turk” Spinuzzi, would have a long history of problems with law enforcement, being charged for bootlegging, extortion in Las Vegas, burglary, theft, counterfeiting, income tax evasion, as well as numerous counts of gambling and bookmaking. His name continually appeared in Colorado newspapers, and he became the head of the Pueblo “family” of La Cosa Nostra in 1969. He would continue as its boss until his death (after a brief illness) in 1975.

Sept. 23, 2010

An excerpt from the opening chapters of Marilyn Z. Tomlins’s Die in Paris, published in the United States in September of 2010 by Raider Publishing International. The book is available at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and borders.com.

by Marilyn Z. Tomlins

In the early evening of Saturday, March 11, 1944, the telephone rang on the desk of the duty officer at the Porte Maillot police station house. Until that moment, Rue le Sueur in Paris’ elegant sixteenth arrondissement had made it into the news just once. That was in April 1912. That month, the French singer and actress, Léontine Pauline Aubart, from Number 17, had set sail from Southampton for New York with her lover, Benjamin Guggenheim, but she had returned to Rue le Sueur, alone and grieving. The ship she and her Ben had boarded in Southampton for the Atlantic crossing was the Titanic. Guggenheim had gone down with the ship.

Rue le Sueur would yet again be in the news.

On the phone was Jacques Marçais, a retired clerk. Jacques and Andrée, his wife, lived in an apartment at Number 22 Rue le Sueur. He was calling to report that for the past six days pestilential smoke has been pouring from the chimney of a townhouse across the street.

The duty officer did not understand why someone would think that a smoking chimney needed investigating. In 1938, world war had broken out and France had capitulated to the enemy – Nazi Germany – and, since June 1940, when the Germans had occupied northern France, which included Paris, they’d been imposing frequent power cuts on the Parisians.  It might have been spring, but it was still cold in Paris, and the Parisians had to light fires for heat. Consequently, in just about every Paris living room, a fire was roaring, and, from every Paris chimney, poured smoke.

Jacques explained. It was the chimney of an uninhabited house, and that was certainly not normal. The duty officer promised to send a patrolman over as soon as possible.

June, 15, 2010 Special to Crime Magazine

An excerpt from Ron Chepesiuk’s new book, Sergeant Smack, The Legendary Lives and Times of Ike Atkinson., Kingpin, and his Band of Brothers. (www.ikeatkinsonkingpin.com)

by Ron Chepesiuk

PROLOGUE

December 9, 1972—It was to be a routine flight, one of dozens the retired U.S. Army Master Sergeant had taken since 1966 when he first arrived in Bangkok, Thailand. Given the colorful nickname “Sergeant Smack” by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), 47-year old Leslie “Ike” Atkinson, the squat retired U.S. Army master sergeant, was dressed appropriately for the long flight to the U.S. mainland: khaki pants, casual loafers and a loose white short-sleeve sports shirt. With his short-cropped curly black hair and military bearing, Atkinson looked like one of the scores of American servicemen, active and retired, black and white, who came to Bangkok in search of romance and excitement.

With Atkinson in the black Mercedes that sped through the chaotic streets of Bangkok was 30-year-old Thomas Southerland, a friend and fellow African American from Wilmington, North Carolina, whom Atkinson had known for nearly a decade. Like his companion, the trim, tight-lipped Southerland, or Sonny, as friends knew him, was a gambler—a card shark and hustler—and, their paths had crossed often in the numerous craps and poker games common in the black communities of eastern North Carolina. Southerland had visited Bangkok frequently, and over time Atkinson had become almost like an older brother to him.

Relaxing in the car, Ike assessed Southerland and could not help but admire what he saw. Fitted resplendent in an Army uniform complete with battle and service ribbons, Sonny looked like a war hero. He carried a military card that identified his rank as sergeant. His special orders explained that he had served a 12-year hitch in the Army, and they instructed anyone reading the orders to please accord all privileges worthy of such service. In reality, Southerland’s orders were totally bogus, forged by Atkinson himself, who, as a retired 20-year service veteran, knew the military system inside and out. His “privileges” made obtaining military uniforms, NCO stripes and badges as easy as shopping for groceries.

Forging IDs was so easy to do, in fact, that Atkinson did it himself in the comfort of his bungalow on a klong (a small canal), located in the heart of Bangkok. Southerland could spend several years in prison for impersonating a U.S. military non-commissioned officer; it was a serious criminal offense. But he looked confident; after all, he had performed this role before—as a courier, carrying heroin in the standard army AWOL bags. Specifically designed for military travel, the bags looked like gym bags, except that they folded out like an accordion and contained hidden pockets. The false bottom of the AWOL bag had been stitched and fitted to carry two kilos each of a potent type of heroin commonly known on the “street” as “China White.”