Crime
Magazine is about true crime: organized crime, celebrity crime, serial
killers, corruption, sex crimes, capital punishment, prisons, assassinations, justice
issues, crime books, crime films and crime studies.
New:
Richard Nixon’s Plots Against Ted
Kennedy by
Don Fulsom.
(06/29/09)
Chappaquiddick was a bonanza for the
Kennedy-hating Nixon, who tried many tactics to catch Ted Kennedy in an
extra-marital affair in order to derail his anticipated 1972 presidential
bid.
Updated:
Murderous Mothers
by
Marilyn Z. Tomlins
(9/19/07; updated 06/22/09).
Eleven recent cases of infanticide in France are causing the French to ask what
is it in their psyche that makes the nation's mothers kill their newborns.
New:
Nixon’s Plot to Assassinate Jack Anderson
by Don Fulsom. (06/15/09)
Richard Nixon detested syndicated reporter Jack Anderson and put
him right at
the top of his “enemies list.” When Nixon-ordered CIA and FBI volunteered
surveillance of the muckraker failed to dig up any dirt, the plot to
assassinate Anderson took on a life of its own at the White House.
From
Poisoning to Poison Pen: The Josacine Affair by
Anthony Davis (
06/01/09)
Blood In, Blood Out: The Violent Empire of
the Aryan Brotherhood by
John Lee
Brook.
(05/17/09)
An
excerpt from the forthcoming book.
Updated:
Murder in Versailles by
Marilyn
Z. Tomlins (05/19/09)
It took the French government 14 years to
bring American expatriate Barrie Taylor to justice for the 1993 murder of her
lover's estranged wife. After three trials and three convictions in
France for the murder, Taylor continues her fight to be allowed to live freely
in the United States.
“The Mumia
Exception” by J. Patrick O’Connor
(05/01/2009)
Not even the U.S. Supreme Court is immune from “the Mumia Exception.” On
April 6, 2009 the high court denied Abu-Jamal’s request for a Writ of
Certiorari, scuttling his last chance for justice.
Money, Power, Sex and a Murdered
Banker by Marilyn Z. Tomlins
(04/12/09).
French billionaire banker Édouard
Stern, wearing a latex bodysuit, was shot dead in his luxury Geneva
penthouse by his mistress, Cécile Brossard, for reneging on the $1 million
he gave her.
Updated:
Book 'Em: Crime Magazine's Review of
True-Crime Books, Vol 29 by Anneli Rufus
(Updated 04/12/09)
Caught up in the immediacy of modern-day crime, which we can follow in all
its horror millisecond-by-millisecond via the Internet...Current crimes have
a way of eclipsing older crimes, which fade into history and feel, in
retrospect, almost quaint. Seven books about crimes old and new are reviewed
by Anneli Rufus in her latest edition of Book 'Em.
The
Unsolved Murder of JFK's Georgetown Mistress by
Don Fulsom (04/05/09).
In the two years leading up to the assassination of President Kennedy, Mary
Pinchot Meyer visited JFK about 30 times in the White House. Within a year of
the assassination, the former mistress would be gunned down execution style on a
Georgetown towpath.
Speaking Truth to Power
by J. Patrick O'Connor
(04/05/09).
A review of Mumia Abu-Jamal's book, Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners
Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A.
Written in Blood by
Anthony Davis
(3/29/09).
French justice can be quite curious. After being pardoned but not exonerated
in the murder of his employer, Omar Raddad risked being re-imprisoned by
asking for a new trial to clear his name.
Updated:
The Austrian Ogre: The Case That Shocked the World
by Marilyn Z. Tomlins
(05/20/08; updated 03/22/09).
Josef Fritzl locked his 18-year-old daughter Elisabeth in his cellar and raped
her repeatedly for the next 24 years. She would bear him seven children, three
of whom he moved upstairs to live with him and his wife, and four to languish
below, one of whom would die days after birth.
Updated: Richard Nixon's Greatest Cover-Up: His Ties to the
Assassination of President Kennedy by
Don Fulsom.
(10/15/03; updated 03/22/09)
Nixon's ties to the
assassination of President Kennedy run deep, from his association with Jack
Ruby, his ties to Jimmy Hoffa and the Mafia, and his connection to CIA operative
E. Howard Hunt. On a tape recorded in Nixon's White House office in 1972 he told
two top aides that the Warren Commission Report pulled off "the greatest hoax
that has ever been perpetuated." No one knew that better than he did.
GRÈGORY by
Anthony Davis
(03/08/09).
The murder of little Grègory Villemin was one of the most mysterious and media-hyped criminal cases
of the 20th century. During the 25 years since, the investigation has seen new
and surprising developments, throwing light on numerous dysfunctions within both
the French judicial system and the media, and leading to repercussions including
a second murder, the resignation of a high-ranking gendarmerie office, the
destruction of one judge's reputation and another's loss of health and
subsequent premature death. Who was the murderer? Who was the corbeau?
A quarter of a century later these questions remain unanswered in a story of
murder, revenge, bizarre family feuding, strange twists and surprise suspects.
Rose Cherami and the JFK Assassination by
Don Fulsom
(03/08/09).
A dope courier for Jack Ruby informed a Louisiana State Police lieutenant and
numerous hospital personnel of the planned assassination of President John F.
Kennedy two days before he was gunned down in Dallas.
The Steward, the Steamship and the Missing Starlet by
Marilyn Z. Tomlins
(03/08/09).
Dubbed "The Porthole Murder Case" by the British tabloids, a
steward was sentenced to hang for the disappearance at sea of an aspiring
actress.
Mickey Machine Gun Is Back! The Return of the
Irish-American Gangster to the Silver Screen by
Steven Gerard Farrell
(03/08/09).
Updated: The
Shame of Lorain, Ohio by Lona Manning.
(Bulletin 02/16/09: Nancy Smith, one of two people wrongfully convicted in
this case 15 years ago, was released on bail February 4, 2009 pending a
resentencing hearing.)
The ritual abuse hysteria that swept across the United States in the 1980s and
early 1990s resulted in hundreds of innocent people being wrongfully convicted
of committing a bizarre concoction of sexual acts on preschoolers. Most of those
convicted were eventually freed from prison on appeal, but some innocent people
remain behind bars. One of the most blatant cases of wrongful conviction
occurred in Lorain, Ohio. There a politically ambitious prosecutor's office
coaxed and manipulated a few Head Start preschoolers into testifying that they
had been sexually abused repeatedly over a six-month period by their bus driver
and some stranger -- two people who never even knew each other, but who are now
serving life prison terms for crimes that never occurred in the first place.
Updated:
One Murder, Two Victims: The Wrongful Conviction
of Ryan Ferguson by Jane Alexander
(7/22/07; updated 2/16/09).
In a case rife with DNA and other
physical evidence, not one shred of evidence linked 17-year-old Ryan
Ferguson to the murder of Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune sports writer
Kent Heitholt in 2001. Ferguson's conviction in 2005 proved only how far the
police and prosecution would go to close Columbia's only unsolved murder. A
Boone County (Mo.) Judge, at a three-day-evidentiary hearing in mid-July 2008,
heard testimony of how the police and prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence
from Ferguson's trial attorneys and manipulated and threatened witnesses who
dared not support their trumped-up case against Ferguson.
Did Jack Ruby Know Lee Harvey Oswald? by
Don Fulsom (02/01/09).
There's no hard evidence that he did, but numerous people say they saw Oswald at Ruby's club, The Carousel, weeks before the JFK
assassination.
The Murder of Céline Jourdan by
Anthony Davis.
(01/25/09)
Homophobia had a field day at the trial of young Céline.
Updated:
Blowing Smoke From the Grave: E. Howard Hunt and the JFK
Assassination by Don Fulsom.
(06/06/07; updated 01/25/09)
Howard St. John Hunt, the son of
super-spook E. Howard Hunt is now peddling a story that his father rejected an
offer to take part in plot by rogue CIA agents to kill President Kennedy. Isn't
it about time a congressional committee finds out what the CIA's role was in the
assassination?
 |
Crime Magazine editor Pat O'Connor's new book, The Framing of
Mumia Abu-Jamal, was released to book stores on May 1, 2008, and is available online at
Amazon,
Barnes & Noble, and
Borders.
|
Traitor in the White House
by Don Fulsom.
(12/30/08)
How Richard Nixon gained the Oval Office by playing politics with peace.
Adoption Forensics: The Connection Between Adoption and Murder
by Dr. David Kirschner
(09/19/07).
Of the 500 estimated serial killers in U.S.
history, 16 percent were adopted as children, while adoptees represent only 2 or
3 percent of the general population. Adoptees are 15 times more likely to kill
one or both of their adoptive parents than biological children.
What Watergate Was All About by
Don Fulsom.
(04/15/07)
In the early years of the Nixon presidency, billionaire Howard Hughes bribed Nixon with
$100,000 in cash. When Hughes's secret lobbyist Larry O'Brien became Democratic
Party chairman, Nixon had O'Brien's phone at the Watergate tapped to find out if
he knew about the bribe.
The
Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping by Lona
Manning. (3/04/07)
More than seven decades after his execution for committing "the crime of the
century," Bruno Richard Hauptmann still has his defenders and sympathizers.
Updated: Cold Case: The Murder of Emmett Till by
Denise Noe. (11/27/06; updated 3/12/07)
The brutal murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi
in 1955 galvanized the fledging civil rights movement like no other killing of a black
by white racists before it. After an all-white, all-male jury acquitted Till's two killers,
the case festered for 49 years until the U.S. Justice Department reopened it in 2004. In late
February of 2007, a Lefore County, Miss. grand jury declined to issue any new indictments,
effectively bringing the case to an abrupt and ignoble end.
Updated: Nixon's Greatest
Trick: Orchestrating His Own Pardon by
Don Fulsom. (08/30/04;
updated 01/14/07)
On the eve of the
release of the "smoking-gun tape," President Nixon cut a blanket pardon deal
with Vice President Ford that would put Ford in the Oval Office eight days later.
Updated:
The
Forgotten Innocent Man by Lona Manning.
(Updated 10/16/06)
The courtroom testimony of twin 8-year-old boys – a concoction of fantasy and
fear – led to a life sentence for Robert Halsey in 1993. In 2004 the National
Center for Reason and Justice took up his case, but all of its appeals have been
denied and the Massachusetts Supreme Court has denied Halsey's Application for
Further Appellate Review. Now in his 70s and in failing health, the former bus
driver will most likely die in prison, a victim of the child sexual-abuse
hysteria that put him there.
Updated:
The Murder of JonBenet Ramsey
by J.J. Maloney and J. Patrick O'Connor.
(Updated 08/30/06)
Astoundingly, this highest of high-profile murder case goes unsolved. John Mark
Karr's arrest and subsequent exoneration served only to demonstrate anew how
inept JonBenet's investigation has been from the beginning.
The "Assassination" of Marilyn Monroe by
Mel Ayton. (07/24/05)
Since Marilyn Monroe died in 1962, an unabated stream of books,
articles and documentaries have attempted to link her death to then U.S. Atty.
Gen. Robert F. Kennedy -- despite the complete lack of any credible evidence.
The Truth About J. Edgar Hoover by
Mel Ayton. (07/19/05)
Since his death in 1972, J. Edgar Hoover's reputation has plummeted
for the wrong reason -- a false charge about cross-dressing. He should be
reviled for what he was: an egomaniacal, self-righteous subverter of the Bill of
Rights.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination: What Really
Happened? by Mel Ayton.
(06/12/05)
Obfuscation, manipulation, lies, greed, and distortion of the facts have
characterized this case, allowing James Earl Ray to escape full blame. The truth
of the matter is that Ray murdered King and he acted alone when he shot him. One
or both of Ray's brothers -- before and/or after the fact -- may have aided him.
Devil's Island by
J.J. Maloney.
(Updated 02/07/05)
An essay on the history of the most famous and dreaded prison of all time.
Recommended reading for those who think a ''get tough'' policy on crime is a new
idea, or that it works.
Crime
Books of Note. (Updated
01/15/05)
Crime Magazine's list of favorite books on crime,
criminals, and criminal justice. View list sorted
alphabetically by author, by title
or by by
category.
The Manson Myth by
Denise Noe. (12/12/04)
Thirty-five years after the Tate-LaBianca
murders, it's time to demystify the would-be messiah that Vincent Bugliosi
portrayed in the best-selling true-crime book of all time, Helter Skelter.
The real Charles Manson was a semi-literate, petty criminal – car thief, check
forger, pimp, drug dealer – so insecure about his ability to cope in the real
world that on the day of the parole that plunged him into infamy he begged
prison officials not to release him.
The Hurricane Hoax by
Lona Manning. The movie The
Hurricane portrays Rubin ''Hurricane'' Carter as a black man
wronged by a racist justice system. But Carter is a fraud and so was the movie,
from beginning to end.
Alcatraz: Rigid and Unusual
Punishment by Michael Esslinger. During the 29 years Alcatraz
operated as a federal penitentiary it built a reputation as a Devil's Island
of the soul. If Al Capone was the nation's symbol of lawlessness, then
Alcatraz would be the nation's symbol for punishing the lawless.
Frank Sinatra and the Mob by
J.D.
Chandler. The recent release of Sinatra's extensive FBI file exposes his
mob connections in voluminous detail, putting to lie Ol' Blue Eyes' most
celebrated claim that he did it his way.
Tainting
Evidence: Inside the Scandals at the FBI Crime Lab
by John F. Kelly and Phillip K. Wearne.
The FBI's vaunted crime lab is a scandal of atrocious forensic science. Its "junk science" permeates the U.S. criminal justice system as it bogus
"findings" routinely punish the innocent and set the guilty free, affecting thousands of lives in the process.
Updated: The
Execution Photos.
(Updated
6/20/07)
When the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the electric chair
was a constitutional form of execution, an outraged justice of the court
attached three photographs to his dissent. The photographs show the
agonized and contorted face of a recently executed Florida prisoner, his
shirt-front drenched in blood. It is said a photograph is worth 1,000 words.
Some are worth more. Be forewarned that photograph #3
is particularly gruesome.
The Secret Life of a Sexual Predator by Lora
Lusher. Jack Bokin was bright and handsome. He
had a natural charm and a knack for making people laugh, although he had no
real friends. He ran his own plumbing business, was married and had two
children. As a child he had been something of a prodigy: a whiz at chess and
the piano. By age 10 he was also a sexual predator. His first victim was his
3-year-old cousin, his last – while he was out on bail after being charged
with raping and assaulting three other women –was a 19-year-old he bound,
raped repeatedly and beat for five hours before bashing in her skull with a
hammer, tying her up in a bag and dumping her into San Francisco Bay.
The
Dumb-Bell Murder by Doris Lane. The 1927 murder
of magazine editor Albert Snyder by his wife and her lover generated more
publicity than the sinking of the Titanic. A book and a movie, Double
Indemnity, and a Broadway play, Machinal, were based on the case. But
what is remembered most is a secret snapshot taken of the electric-chair
execution of ''The Bloody Blonde.'' It remains one of the most famous
photos in tabloid history.
James Earl Ray and
Martin Luther King are
in-depth articles by J.J. Maloney, who knew James Earl Ray and has researched
the King assassination over a 30-year period.
The
Death Penalty -- By
J.J.
Maloney. A primer on the battle over the death penalty in the 20th
Century covering historic cases in the 20th century, arguments for and against the death
penalty, and how the death penalty can motivate people to kill.
Firefighters Case
Part I and Part II by
J.J. Maloney Five innocent people were convicted in February 1997 in the deaths of six Kansas City
firefighters in 1988. These two stories run a total length of 20,000 words, and won
the Missouri Bar Association's annual ''Excellence in Legal Journalism''
award. On Oct. 30, 1998, the 8th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals denied the appeal in the Kansas City Firefighters case. Read the full opinion here and our analysis of the opinion. On
Oct. 4, 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant certiorari in the case.
American Lynchings
These photos of whites torturing and lynching black men present a side of U.S.
history that most history books ignore. They provide one of the many reasons why
blacks (and Indians) hold a different view of U.S. history than whites. Notice
the carnival atmosphere prevailing as these crowds of U.S. citizens watch the
completely lawless and most inhumane executions imaginable.
DNA Exonerations
is based on a 1996 study by the U.S. Department of Justice that details 28 cases in which
men convicted of sex crimes, including murder, have been released as a result of
subsequent DNA testing. It will challenge your assumptions about such things as the
reliability of eye-witness testimony. Because of its length, we've broken the study
up into three parts. But it is a must read, for many reasons.
The American Gun by J.J. Maloney. An in-depth look at the
''gun problem'' in the United States, along with suggestions for sensible new laws.
Chicago's Unione
Siciliana: 1920 a Decade of Slaughter
by Allan May. Part I:The
Fight between Anthony D'Andrea, the head of the Unione, and powerful Alderman
John Powers was a fight to the death. Part II:
When Uunione President Mike Merlo died of cancer in 1924, Al Capone had the next
two Unione presidents murdered so he could gain control of the Unione and its
fabulously profitable ''alky'' stills. Part
III: Capone's man, Tony Lombardo, is the next Unione president to be
killed. In Part IV Capone retaliates with the
St. Valentine's Day Massacre, but Joe Aiello responds by putting a $50,000 price
tag on Capone's head.
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