Updated:
Murderous Mothers by
Marilyn Z. Tomlins
(9/19/07; updated 03/30/08).
Seven 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:
Adoption Forensics and the Tankleff Case by
David Kirschner
(3/03/2008).
After serving 17 years for the 1988 murders of his adoptive parents,
Marty Tankleff's conviction was overturned by an appellate court. Although now
out on bail, the indictment against Tankleff still stands and he may face a new
trial where adoption forensics could well point to his guilt.
The Raid in Teaneck, the prologue from
Ron Chepesiuk
and Anthony Gonzalez's upcoming book, Superfly: The True Untold Story
of Frank Lucas, American Gangster. (A major movie about Lucas entitled American Gangster and starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe will be
in theaters beginning Nov. 2, 2007.) The book investigates Lucas's life and
criminal career and the claims to fame the movie makes about him. This includes Lucas's relationship with legendary
Harlem gangster Bumpy Johnson, his connection to La Cosa Nostra, the money he
made in the drug trade and the development of the Asian drug pipeline. Lucas's
life as a government informant is also examined. Beginning Oct. 25, 2007,
Superfly can be purchased from the web site
franklucasamericangangster.com. A documentary is also available.
(9/07/07).
This chapter chronicles how The Outfit, Chicago's
powerful white mafia, moved to take over the lucrative policy racket in the
Windy City's so-called Black Belt in the 1940s.
Manhunt Case Closed by
Hal Mansfield. (Updated
6/20/07)
The great Southwest manhunt of 1998 came to a quiet close on June 10, 2007.
The Great Prevaricator by
Lona Manning.
(Updated 05/29/07)
Edgar Smith,
with William F. Buckley Jr. blithely playing his stooge, wrote his way to
freedom from the Death House in Trenton State Prison in 1971, becoming the most
famous death-row prisoner of his time. Fourteen and-a-half years earlier, Smith
-- at age 23 -- had bludgeoned to death 15-year-old Vickie Zielinski in Mahwah,
N.J. Less than five years after his release from prison, Smith kidnapped a
petite but scrappy young mother who miraculously managed to escape from Smith's
car with a knife stuck in her side.
Black Caesar
by Ron Chepesiuk (02/20/07).
An excerpt from Chepesiuk's new book Gangsters of Harlem: The Gritty Underworld of New York
City's Most Famous Neighborhood, depicting the rise of drug king Frank
Matthews and his jumping bail in 1973.
Cons, Frauds
and Schemers by
Lona Manning.
(01/01/07)
They
can look you in the eye, win your trust and melt your heart. They can lie about
the past, the present, and the future. They are chameleons, changing names and
identities as easily as we change our outfits.
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 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.
Leopold and Loeb's
Perfect Crime by Denise Noe. (02/29/04)
Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold were as unlikely a pair of cold-blooded
murderers as ever appeared in U.S. history. Privileged, brilliant, and coddled,
they conjured up the perfect crime – just for the hell of it – and then executed
it quite imperfectly. Only Clarence Darrow's virtuoso courtroom performance
saved these remorseless, self-styled "supermen" from being hanged.
Rapist, M.D. by
Lona Manning.
(Updated 02/06/04)
It’s said that the Royal Canadian Mounties always get their
man -- but in this case justice was delayed for seven years, and the doctor
might never have answered for his crimes if it hadn’t been for one very
determined young woman who knew that her doctor had drugged her, raped her, and
somehow had managed to falsify his DNA to escape prosecution.
The Murder of Madalyn
Murray O'Hair: America's Most Hated Woman
by Lona
Manning.
(Updated 09/29/03)
When atheist Madalyn Murray
O'Hair, her son, and granddaughter mysteriously disappeared from their Austin,
Tex., home in 1995, the police didn't lift a finger to find the family that had
taken God out of America. Five years went by before a determined reporter would
unravel the mystery of her disappearance.
Richard Speck by
David Lohr. (08/20/03)
Speck's murders of
eight young women -- all in nurse's training and rooming together in a quiet
apartment house on Chicago's Southside -- stands as one of the most horrific
and shocking crimes in U.S. history. During the mayhem of the killings, a
ninth student nurse wedged herself under a bed and went undetected. Her
description of the intruder with the "Born to Raise Hell" tattoo on his arm,
led to Speck's capture. Her testimony at trial got him the death sentence.
Murdering women was nothing new to Richard Speck. He had done it often before.
The Murder of Sal Mineo
by
Denise Noe. (05/01/03)
Residents of New York City’s
crime-ridden Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood predicted that Salvatore Mineo Jr. –
the slight boy who would grow up to set off "Mineo Mania" and become known as
"The Switchblade Kid" in the process –
would end up on the wrong end of a knife.
They were right, but not for the reasons they thought.
Exclusive:Solving the JonBenet Case by
Ryan Ross. (04/14/03)
Colorado Gov. Bill Owens could crack the JonBenet case wide open by appointing a
special prosecutor to determine if John and Patsy Ramsey conspired to cover up
their daughter's tragic death. Secret forensic evidence not in the public record implicates the Ramseys in such a cover up.
Killer Behind a Badge by
Charles Hustmyre.
The psychiatrist who interviewed Antoinette Frank for the New Orleans Police
Department said she was too emotionally unstable to become a police officer. He
was right, but she was hired anyway. She proved to be a lousy cop and then she
turned killer. (01/25/03)
How
Lizzie Borden Got Away With Murder
by Denise M. Clark. When Lizzie Borden axed her stepmother and
father to death in 1892 it was unthinkable that a woman of such upbringing could
commit such vicious crimes. The savagery of the murders set her free.
Airport
Heists by Jon Tait. The daring $6.5 million robbery of a British
Airways van in February at Heathrow Airport had all the markings of an inside
job, according to former mobster Henry Hill. At JFK, Hill took Air France for
$480,000 in 1968 and Lufthansa for a record $6 million in 1978.
The
Serial Killer the Cops Ignored by Jason Lapeyre.
Serial killers are among the most reckless of murderers. Their need to keep
killing far outweighs their need to be cunning or discreet. What allows many
serial killers to keep killing is that their carelessness is dwarfed by police
and investigative incompetence. The great majority of serial killers, like John
Wayne Gacy, are well known to the police as violent sexual offenders long before
their murders finally catch up with them. Such is the case of Henry Louis
Wallace, a black serial killer who killed young black women the police just
didn't seem to care about.
The Trophy Wife Murder by Peter
Davidson. To control-freak Steve Colosi, wives
were trophies, adornments to his 111-acre estate on Virginia's Eastern Shore and
his 52-foot yacht. When his fourth wife left him, he arranged to have her
beautiful face so disfigured that no other man would want her.
Too Many Hit Men by
Gary Boynton. Marty Malone hired a
hit man to murder her former husband and then tried to hire the detective
assigned to investigate her to kill the hit man. The hit man, in turn, tried to
hire a fellow inmate to murder Malone.
The Murder of Madalyn
Murray O'Hair: America's Most Hated Woman
by Lona
Manning. When atheist Madalyn Murray
O'Hair, her son, and granddaughter mysteriously disappeared from their Austin,
Tex., home in 1995, the police didn't lift a finger to find the family that had
taken God out of America. Five years went by before a determined reporter would
unravel the mystery of her disappearance.
Gothic Murders by
Gary Boynton. The Christmas holidays that had brought 20-year-old Kimberly Wilson home for a rocky visit were waning the night she was strangled to death in a park near her house. Then, to cover their tracks, the two 17-year-old boys who murdered her -- friends of hers with "Gothic" interests -- broke into her family's house in an upscale Seattle suburb, went to the master bedroom and bludgeoned and stabbed to death her father and mother before proceeding down the hallway to murder her younger sister.
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.
Murder
in the Brothel: The Courtesan and the Clerk by Doris Lane.
Helen Jewett was famous in 1830s New York. Elegant and strikingly dressed, she
was known to every pedestrian along Broadway. Young Richard P. Robinson, one of
her regular clients at the brothel, became infamous by murdering her in bed and
getting away with it.
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, Mechanil,
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.
The Secret Life of a Sexual Predator by Lora
Lusher. Jack Bokin was bright and handsome, but his face he used as a mask. 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
Original "Dream Team" by Doris Lane.
Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, the most star-crossed political foes in U.S.
history, joined together in 1800 to defend a man accused – and all but
convicted in the court of public opinion – of the murder of his fiancée.
The
Great Brinks Robbery by J. J. Maloney. At the time, the Brinks heist in
Boston was called "the crime of the century." The take of over $2.7
million was the largest in U.S. history, but it was the cold, calculating
efficiency of the robbery that so stunned and intrigued the nation.
Sharon Kinne:
The story of one of the most remarkable criminals in U.S. history. Sharon Kinne
started as a housewife and became a cold-blooded killer. She beat the
system. By J.J.
Maloney.
The
Man Who Got Away by J.J.
Maloney. The story of Albert Bradford, a talented and charismatic man who
went to prison at the age of 17 with three life sentences for rape, transformed
himself into an artist of note and a leader of men -- then committed his most
heinous crime of all and beat the system.
The
Greenlease Kidnapping of 1953 was a sensation of that time, and $300,000 of
the $600,000 paid in ransom has never been recovered. Two police officers and a
gangster are commonly thought to have stolen the money -- but did they? Written
by J.J. Maloney.
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.
The
Brother Who Fleeced His Flock by J.
Patrick O’Connor. For years, the Catholic brother in charge of a Kansas
City home for developmentally disabled men had embezzled his way to a fortune.
When the board of directors found out, its cover-up – with the help of The
Kansas City Star – was as bold as the theft.
