Book picks similar to
Yardies The making of a Jamaican Posse by Prince Kofi
crime
international-mob
jamaica-mob
organized-crime
The Trafficantes, Godfathers from Tampa, Florida: The Mafia, the CIA and the JFK Assassination
Ron Chepesiuk - 2006
For nearly seven decades, Santo Trafficante, Sr. and his son, Santo, Jr. were prominent gangsters on the Tampa crime scene. Santo, Sr. arrived in Tampa in 1902 and settled in the Ybor City area where he slowly began his climb to the top of the Tampa mob scene. Along the way, he became a clever and ruthless gangster who preferred to operate in the shadows. By the mid 1920s, Santo, Sr. had become a powerful force in the Tampa mafia. Two decades later, the U.S. government reported that he was “strongly suspected of having financed important narcotics transactions.” During Tampa’s “Era of Blood” from 1930 through the 1950s, in which several local gangsters were murdered, Santo, Sr. emerged as Tampa’s most powerful mobster. He would remain so until his death in 1954.His successor, Santo, Jr., lead the Tampa mob for more than three decades and became involved in some of history’s most seminal events. They include mob dominance of the gambling scene in pre-Castro Cuba, the CIA plots to kill Castro, the spectacular mob hit of godfather Albert Anastasia in 1957, the famous mob meeting at Apalachin in upstate New York that followed shortly after, the John F. Kennedy assassination, and the development of narcotics networks in Latin America and Southeast Asia, among others. Unlike most other godfathers, Santo, Jr. never spent more than a night in an American jail. When he died in 1987, organized crime expert Ralph Salerno described Santo, Jr.’s death as “the end of an era” and the godfather as “the last of the old time (gangland) leaders.” In vivid prose and concise detail, Chepesiuk weaves the fascinating story of the legendary gangsters, the Trafficantes.“Ron Chepesiuk’s book on the Trafficantes takes the reader behind the headlines to the real story, uncensored and without filters. The book is fast-paced with fascinating factual details told in Chepesiuk's trademark tell-it-as-it-is writing style. A must read for true crime aficionados.”--Elle Andra-Warner, author of several best-selling books, including Edmund Fitzgerald: The Legendary Great Lakes Shipwreck and The Mounties; Robert Service.
BAD INTENT
Michael Tabman - 2013
Douglas and his partner NYPD Detective Mark Zucarelli on the streets of New York City as they find themselves in the middle of raging drug wars.The Colombian Cartels are flooding the streets with cocaine. They are violent and ruthless criminals.The Mob has been cut out. What will they do?The FBI and the NYPD have an uneasy alliance.Who can be trusted?Does everyone have bad intent?Inspired by my years on the FBI-NYPD Drug Task Force, BAD INTENT will take you to the dark side of the drug wars.Peek into the hearts and minds of the FBI Agents and NYPD Detectives on the front lines.Do you have BAD INTENT?
Under Siege
Belinda Neil - 2014
She loved her roles as a homicide investigator and hostage negotiator with the NSW police force, but she never knew what her work day might bring. She might be investigating a crime scene; talking a suicidal woman down from a cliff; or trying to convince a deranged man not to slit the throat of his wife and children.As a negotiator, Belinda often found herself on cliff edges, waiting in doorways or out amongst the elements, persuading the murderous and suicidal to drop their weapons, stop terrorising their families, step back from the ledge.Belinda was so physically slight she needed help lifting on her ballistics vest, but her team never doubted her physical or mental courage. She was put forward for a bravery award and promoted to inspector but every time she stepped into a negotiation, her life was in danger, and over time the horrors she saw and her punishing schedule began to take their toll. After years of broken sleep, traumatic crime scenes and death, a series of disastrous events one weekend brought everything to a head.The next morning when she awoke, Belinda found she was shaking so badly she could not get out of bed. Unsure what was happening to her, she sought counselling but one day, shortly after, she saw the name of an old hostage-taking adversary in the paper; he had killed his ex-girlfriend. It was too much and as the continued stress took its toll, Belinda found herself contemplating jumping off a cliff in the Moreton Bay National Park. She had even written the suicide note.Under Siege shows us the remarkable job homicide investigators and hostage negotiators perform, and their endurance and courage in impossible circumstances. More than that, this courageous memoir reveals how the daily trauma and stress affected Belinda's roles as wife and mother, how she fought against the terrifying post-traumatic stress disorder that resulted to come back from a very dark place.'Her extraordinary journey juggling the roles of police negotiator, homicide investigator, wife and mother shines a light on this little-understood limb of law enforcement.' Mark Whittaker, Fairfax newspapers
Family Secrets: The scandalous history of an extraordinary family
Derek Malcolm - 2017
The secret, though, that surrounded my parents’ unhappy life together, was divulged to me by accident . . .’ Hidden under some papers in his father’s bureau, the sixteen-year-old Derek Malcolm finds a book by the famous criminologist Edgar Lustgarten called The Judges and the Damned. Browsing through the Contents pages Derek reads, ‘Mr Justice McCardie tries Lieutenant Malcolm – page 33.’ But there is no page 33. The whole chapter has been ripped out of the book. Slowly but surely, the shocking truth emerges: that Derek’s father, shot his wife’s lover and was acquitted at a famous trial at the Old Bailey. The trial was unique in British legal history as the first case of a crime passionel, where a guilty man is set free, on the grounds of self-defence. Husband and wife lived together unhappily ever after, raising Derek in their wake. Then, in a dramatic twist, following his father’s death, Derek receives an open postcard from his Aunt Phyllis, informing him that his real father is the Italian Ambassador to London . . . By turns laconic and affectionate, Derek Malcolm has written a richly evocative memoir of a family sinking into hopeless disrepair. Derek Malcolm was chief film critic of the Guardian for thirty years and still writes for the paper. Educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford, he became first a steeplechase rider and then an actor after leaving university. He worked as a journalist in the sixties, first in Cheltenham and then with the Guardian where he was a features sub-editor and writer, racing correspondent and finally film critic. He directed the London Film Festival for a spell in the 80s and is now President of both the International Film Critics Association and the British Federation of Film Societies. He lives with his wife Sarah Gristwood in London and Kent and has published two books – one on Robert Mitchum and another on his favourite 100 films. He is a frequent broadcaster on radio and television and a veteran of film festival juries all over the world.
Essex Boys: A Terrifying Expose Of The British Drugs Scene
Bernard O'Mahoney - 2000
It is the true story of the rise of one of the most violent and successful criminal gangs of the 90's whose reign of terror was finally terminated when the three leaders were brutally murdered in their Range Rover one winter's evening. On their way they had built the drug-dealing organisation that which supplied the pill that killed Leah Betts. They were responsible for a wave of intimidation, beatings and murder. Until, it seems, they took one step too far. Now there is compelling evidence that the men convicted of shooting the dead men are innocent. Which means the real murderers are still at large. Bernard O'Mahoney was a key member of what has been one of the most feared gangs of the decade. His inside account of their cold-blooded violence reveals that facts can be more terryfing than fiction.
Joey the Hitman: The Autobiography of a Mafia Killer
Joey the Hit Man - 2002
"Joey" -- a journeyman Jewish hitman, numbers king, and loan shark -- collaborated with David Fisher (co-editor of the hit Adrenaline title Wild Blue) to lay out the rackets in gripping detail. His story includes detailed accounts of his chillingly "professional" murders of thirty-eight victims. The strong sales of Mob are further evidence that the best mafia stories -- and this is one of the best -- capture the public's interest. Joey the Hitman's original best-seller status reflects the quality of the writing, the frank intelligence of the subject/writer, and Joey's convincingly matter-of-fact, regular-guy tone. When he writes, debunking The Godfather, ". . . Actually very few mob members even have Bronx-Italian accents . . . a lot of mob people are not very tough, the people we meet and deal with are very ordinary, most of us stay home at night and watch TV, and we only shoot each other when absolutely necessary," you know you're listening to the original Soprano. This edition includes a new afterword from David Fisher, who for the first time reveals Joey's identity and the incredible story of how Joey finally died.
Judas Pig
Horace Silver - 2004
But he becomes increasingly haunted by childhood ghosts and by the ever-growing influence of Danny, his psychopathic partner in crime. Billy finds himself starting to look beyond the violence and the scams, slowly descending into a drug-fuelled netherworld that affects his judgment and his perceptions. He is finally tipped over the edge when Danny commits an act even Billy cannot stomach. And that's when things really start to go wrong. This explosive first novel from a reformed career criminal comes with authenticity stamped throughout.
Texas Tragedy: The Story of Priscilla Davis: A True Story of Money, Murder and Survival
Greg Brown - 2016
Worth, Texas. Cullen Davis was one of the richest men in Texas and his second wife, Priscilla Davis, was shot in their mansion. Also shot and murdered were her twelve-year-old daughter and her thirty-year-old boyfriend, Stan Farr. Priscilla and two other people said it was Cullen. The culprit was wearing a wig so his identity was somewhat hidden but not completely. Cullen was arrested in the early morning hours of August 3, 1976, at his girlfriend's house. He later went on trial for the murder of Priscilla's daughter. He was found not guilty but the next year he was put on trial for a murder-for-hire plot to kill the judge overseeing his divorce from Priscilla. He got off from that charge, too. And somehow he finally skirted any murder charge for Stan Farr. Finally in 1979 he and Priscilla were divorced. Priscilla received 3.3 million dollars and Cullen was able to move back into his 19,000 square-foot mansion. Two books have been written and a movie was made describing these events and characters. But nothing has been written about what really happened in the decades after the trials of the 1970's. This book explains the facts of that fateful August night and what happened in the courtrooms of Texas. But the majority chronicles the path Priscilla took after the trials of the 1970's. Priscilla was not done with Cullen yet and she would try tirelessly to obtain some kind of justice. She also decided to have a little fun along the way. The press loved Priscilla but the general public were split. She had been painted as a low-rent gold-digger in the Texas courtrooms but everyone also knew that Cullen was probably guilty of murder. In the end, only the two of them really knew the truth. This is the story of how Priscilla learned to live with the fact that justice was denied her and Cullen would probably never pay. In 1995, a 26-year-old man named Greg Brown moved in with Priscilla, who was now 53. They became lovers and Greg tells how Priscilla learned to make the most of tragic situations which were both of her making and not of her making. It's a story of struggle, love and compromise even in the most dire of circumstances.
A Criminal and an Irishman: The Inside Story of the Boston Mob - IRA Connection
Patrick Nee - 2006
After returning from Vietnam where he served as a combat Marine, Pat Nee fought a gang war against Whitey Bulger. When members of Nee's Mullen gang killed the leader of Bulger's Killeen faction, Nee arranged for the dispute to be mediated by Howie Winter and Patriarca crime family captain Joseph Russo. The two gangs joined forces, with Winter as overall boss. When Winter was convicted of fixing horse races in 1979, Bulger became leader, and Nee responded by concentrating his energy on raising money and smuggling guns to the Provisional IRA. Disgusted by Bulger's brutality, and increasingly focused on the Irish cause, Nee distanced himself from his former ally. Ultimately it was revealed that, for years, Bulger had served as an FBI informant. A Criminal and an Irishman is the story of Pat Nee's life as an Irish immigrant and Southie son, a Marine, a convicted IRA gun smuggler, and a former violent rival and then associate of James "Whitey" Bulger. His narrative transports the reader into the criminal underworld, inside planning and preparation for an armored car heist, inside gang wars and revenge killings. Nee details his evolution from tough street kid to armed robber to dangerous potential killer, and discloses for the first time how he used his underworld connections and know-how as a secret, Boston-based operative for the Irish Republican Army. For years Pat smuggled weapons and money from the United States to Ireland - in the bottoms of coffins, behind false panels of vans - leading up to a transatlantic shipment of seven and a half tons of munitions aboard the fishing trawler Valhalla. No other Southie underworld figure can match Pat's reputation for resolve and authenticity.
Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob
Bob Delaney - 2008
Delaney accepted, and became Bobby Covert, the president of Alamo Trucking, a fully-operational business used by law enforcement as flypaper for snagging crooks. At the height of The Godfather era, Delaney wore a wire and lived among wiseguys who modeled themselves on their on-screen counterparts, quoting lines from “The Movie” and boasting of how often they’d seen it. Delaney even crossed paths with Joe Pistone, the real-life Donnie Brasco (though neither knew the other was undercover), knowing all the while that a single slip could get him killed.Ultimately gathering enough evidence to convict 30 members of the Bruno and Genovese crime families, Project Alpha was a success, but Delaney struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder and traces of Stockholm syndrome after getting too close to those he investigated. Therapy helped him come to terms with all he’d endured during his three tense years undercover, and, once a college basketball star, Delaney began officiating high school and intramural games as a way to rebuild his life—eventually working his way up to the NBA, where he has been a referee for more than two decades.
Heist: The True Story Of The World's Biggest Cash Robbery
Howard Sounes - 2008
From the author of the bestselling true-crime classic 'Fred & Rose', comes the astonishing inside story of the world's biggest cash robbery: the Tonbridge Securitas heist.
The Life and Times of the Stopwatch Gang (Kindle Single)
Josh Dean - 2015
And for the duration of their reign, no bank robbers were more feared (though they never fired their guns) nor more pursued or more mythologized than the Stopwatch Gang. The members themselves were straight out of central casting: Lionel Wright, a meticulous introvert who could disappear in a room full of people; Paddy Mitchell, a charming and well-connected crook who saw an angle in everything and would go to any lengths to avoid the hell of being locked away; and Stephen Reid, a fearless point man who could find the weakness in any system and whose story—of addiction and descent into crime, of redemption and literary fame—was all prelude to a tragic but life-saving fall from grace. In The Life and Times of the Stopwatch Gang, Josh Dean reconstructs the Gang’s glory days and reveals how the real story, pieced together through months of research and reporting most prominently with Reid himself, as he comes to the end, at age 64, of his final days in the custody of the state—is more remarkable than the myth that has long been told.
Blood Frenzy
Robert Scott - 2010
. . Frankie Cochran knew her boyfriend, David Gerard, was possessive, controlling, and prone to violent rages. When she tried to break up with him, Gerard threatened her with a hammer. One week later, he used it to club her in the head. Again. And again. Then he stabbed her in the throat--and left her for dead. . .And A Sharp Knife. . . Miraculously, Frankie survived--but cops began to suspect Gerard of other vicious crimes. One of his previous girlfriends had died in a house fire, along with her children and her mother. A local prostitute's brutalized body was found in a pool of blood. But it was the unsolved murder of another woman--repeatedly run over on a country road--that finally exposed Gerard as a rage-driven monster out of control. . .To Unleash His Rage Justice finally caught up with Gerard. Hounded by the tireless efforts of detectives and incriminated by DNA evidence as well as up-to-date forensics that matched the tire marks at a crime scene to Gerard's car, one of the Pacific Northwest's most dangerous killers was finally locked behind bars. With 16 pages of shocking photos!
Murder of an Elvis Girl: Solving the Jenny Maxwell Case
Buddy Moorehouse - 2021
Death Comes Knocking: Policing Roy Grace's Brighton
Graham Bartlett - 2016
His friend Graham Bartlett was a long-serving detective in the city once described as Britain's 'crime capital'. Together, in Death Comes Knocking, they have written a gripping account of the city's most challenging cases, taking the reader from crime scenes and incident rooms to the morgue, and introducing some of the real-life detectives who inspired Peter James's characters. Whether it's the murder of a dodgy nightclub owner and his family in Sussex's worst non-terrorist mass murder or the race to find the abductor of a young girl, tracking down the antique trade's most notorious 'knocker boys' or nailing an audacious ring of forgers, hunting for a cold-blooded killer who executed a surfer or catching a pair who kidnapped a businessman, leaving him severely beaten, to die on a hillside, the authors skilfully evoke the dangerous inside story of policing, the personal toll it takes and the dedication of those who risk their lives to keep the public safe.