Book picks similar to
The Franklin Cover-Up: Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska by John W. DeCamp
true-crime
non-fiction
conspiracy
history
Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice
Sidney Powell - 2014
Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice is the true story of the strong-arm, illegal, and unethical tactics used by headline-grabbing federal prosecutors in their narcissistic pursuit of power. Its scope reaches from the US Department of Justice to the US Senate, the FBI, and the White House. This true story is a scathing attack on corrupt prosecutors, the judges who turned a blind eye to these injustices, and the president who has promoted them to powerful political positions.Former federal prosecutor under nine US attorneys from both political parties over ten years and three districts, Sidney Powell was lead counsel in 350 criminal appeals for the United States and more than 150 since in private practice. It was from her experience in several of her cases that she felt compelled to write LICENSED TO LIE: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice after seeing a core group of federal prosecutors break all the rules, make up crimes, hide evidence, and send innocent people to prison. The book reads like a legal thriller, but it names the prosecutors who then rose to positions of great power and the judges who turned a blind eye to their abuses of unfettered power. Sidneyis highly sought to comment on current legal issues and government investigations--especially the special investigation lead by Robert Mueller and his chief lieutenant Andrew Weissmann, who is a true villain in LICENSED TO LIE.
Murder, Inc.: The Story Of The Syndicate
Burton B. Turkus - 1972
Murder, Inc. is the book that exposed the Syndicate to the eyes of the world. First published in 1951, it rose to the top of the best-seller list, but later fell out-of-print. Now, here is a new edition of the classic that tells all about the great gangsters of the late ’30s and ’40s: Frank Costello, Louis ”Lepke” Buchalter, Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, Buggsy Siegel, Johnny Torrio, Willie Sutton, Joey Adonis, Dutch Schultz. Here are the stories of how Pittsburgh Phil and Buggsy Goldstein literally set Puggy Feinstein on fire; how and why Kid Twist Reles sang to the D.A. for twelve straight days, confessing dozens of murders; how the killers’ boss, Albert Anastasia, slipped through the arms of the law.From the highest levels of the U.S. government down to the lowest levels of street crime, the Syndicate infiltrated American life. Murder, Inc. tells how it was formally organized by the nation’s ranking mob lords at the end of Prohibition to control all crime, from gambling to crooked politics to labor extortion and murder. It describes the carefully built organization with its board of governors and its kangaroo court, and shows how this massive and powerful organization was finally broken.For it was only from the murderers themselves that the truth could be learned. And no man was more qualified to tell the whole story than Burton Turkus, the Brooklyn assistant D.A. who listened to the killers’ tales and who sent seven of them to the electric chair. Together with Sid Feder, a veteran journalist, they produced Murder, Inc., the definitive work on the most dangerous group of gangsters the law has ever known.
The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War
Ben Macintyre - 2018
In his grey suit and tie, he looked like any other Soviet citizen. The bag alone was mildly conspicuous, printed with the red logo of Safeway, the British supermarket.The man was a spy for MI6. A senior KGB officer, for more than a decade he had supplied his British spymasters with a stream of priceless secrets from deep within the Soviet intelligence machine. No spy had done more to damage the KGB. The Safeway bag was a signal: to activate his escape plan to be smuggled out of Soviet Russia. So began one of the boldest and most extraordinary episodes in the history of spying. Ben Macintyre reveals a tale of espionage, betrayal and raw courage that changed the course of the Cold War forever...
The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man
David W. Maurer - 1940
A professor of linguistics who specialized in underworld argot, Maurer won the trust of hundreds of swindlers, who let him in on not simply their language but their folkways and the astonishingly complex and elaborate schemes whereby unsuspecting marks, hooked by their own greed and dishonesty, were “taken off” – i.e. cheated—of thousands upon thousands of dollars. The Big Con is a treasure trove of American lingo (the write, the rag, the payoff, ropers, shills, the cold poke, the convincer, to put on the send) and indelible characters (Yellow Kid Weil, Barney the Patch, the Seldom Seen Kid, Limehouse Chappie, Larry the Lug). It served as the source for the Oscar-winning film The Sting.
The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World
David Jaher - 2015
A desperate search for reunion with dead loved ones precipitated a tidal wave of self-proclaimed psychics—and, as reputable media sought stories on occult phenomena, mediums became celebrities. Against this backdrop, in 1924, the pretty wife of a distinguished Boston surgeon came to embody the raging national debate over Spiritualism, a movement devoted to communication with the dead. Reporters dubbed her the blonde Witch of Lime Street, but she was known to her followers simply as Margery. Her most vocal advocate was none other than Sherlock Holmes' creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who believed so thoroughly in Margery's powers that he urged her to enter a controversial contest, sponsored by Scientific American and offering a large cash prize to the first medium declared authentic by its impressive five-man investigative committee. Admired for both her exceptional charm and her dazzling effects, Margery was the best hope for the psychic practice to be empirically verified. Her supernatural gifts beguiled four of the judges. There was only one left to convince...the acclaimed escape artist, Harry Houdini.David Jaher's extraordinary debut culminates in the showdown between Houdini, a relentless unmasker of charlatans, and Margery, the nation's most credible spirit medium. The Witch of Lime Street, the first book to capture their electric public rivalry and the competition that brought them into each other’s orbit, returns us to an oft-mythologized era to deepen our understanding of its history, all while igniting our imagination and engaging with the timeless question: Is there life after death?
A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America
Bruce Cannon Gibney - 2017
In A Generation of Sociopaths, Gibney examines the disastrous policies of the most powerful generation in modern history, showing how the Boomers ruthlessly enriched themselves at the expense of future generations.Acting without empathy, prudence, or respect for facts--acting, in other words, as sociopaths--the Boomers turned American dynamism into stagnation, inequality, and bipartisan fiasco. The Boomers have set a time bomb for the 2030s, when damage to Social Security, public finances, and the environment will become catastrophic and possibly irreversible--and when, not coincidentally, Boomers will be dying off. Gibney argues that younger generations have a fleeting window to hold the Boomers accountable and begin restoring America.
Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend
Jeffrey S. Victor - 1993
After an introductory section, his book begins with a description of this research, then proceeds with an excellent general review of recent fear about satanic cults in the U.S. He concludes that there is no evidence for the actual existence of organized satanic cults". -- Choice
The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War
Eileen Welsome - 1999
Fearful that plutonium might cause a cancer epidemic among workers and desperate to learn more about what it could do to the human body, the Manhattan Project's medical doctors embarked upon an experiment in which eighteen unsuspecting patients in hospital wards throughout the country were secretly injected with the cancer-causing substance. Most of these patients would go to their graves without ever knowing what had been done to them.Now, in The Plutonium Files, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Eileen Welsome reveals for the first time the breadth of the extraordinary fifty-year cover-up surrounding the plutonium injections, as well as the deceitful nature of thousands of other experiments conducted on American citizens in the postwar years. Welsome's remarkable investigation spans the 1930s to the 1990s and draws upon hundreds of newly declassified documents and other primary sources to disclose this shadowy chapter in American history. She gives a voice to such innocents as Helen Hutchison, a young woman who entered a prenatal clinic in Nashville for a routine checkup and was instead given a radioactive "cocktail" to drink; Gordon Shattuck, one of several boys at a state school for the developmentally disabled in Massachusetts who was fed radioactive oatmeal for breakfast; and Maude Jacobs, a Cincinnati woman suffering from cancer and subjected to an experimental radiation treatment designed to help military planners learn how to win a nuclear war. Welsome also tells the stories of the scientists themselves, many of whom learned the ways of secrecy on the Manhattan Project. Among them are Stafford Warren, a grand figure whose bravado masked a cunning intelligence; Joseph Hamilton, who felt he was immune to the dangers of radiation only to suffer later from a fatal leukemia; and physician Louis Hempelmann, one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the plan to inject humans with potentially carcinogenic doses of plutonium. Hidden discussions of fifty years past are reconstructed here, wherein trusted government officials debated the ethical and legal implications of the experiments, demolishing forever the argument that these studies took place in a less enlightened era. Powered by her groundbreaking reportage and singular narrative gifts, Eileen Welsome has created a work of profound humanity as well as major historical significance.From the Hardcover edition.
Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground
Michael Moynihan - 1998
The book focuses on the scene surrounding the extreme heavy metal subgenre black metal in Norway in the early 1990s, with a focus on the string of church burnings and murders that occurred in the country around 1993.
Dr. Mary's Monkey: How the Unsolved Murder of a Doctor, a Secret Laboratory in New Orleans and Cancer-Causing Monkey Viruses are Linked to Lee Harvey Oswald, the JFK Assassination and Emerging Global Epidemics
Edward T. Haslam - 2007
Following a trail of police records, FBI files, cancer statistics, and medical journals, this revealing book presents evidence of a web of medical secret-keeping that began with the handling of evidence in the JFK assassination and continued apace, sweeping doctors into coverups of cancer outbreaks, contaminated polio vaccine, the arrival of the AIDS virus, and biological weapon research using infected monkeys.
Rush to Judgment: A Critique of the Warren Commission's Inquiry into the Murder of President
Mark Lane - 1966
By the author of Plausible Denial. Reprint.
Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt
Debbie Nathan - 1995
In this powerful book, Debbie Nathan and Mike Snedeker examine the forces fueling this blind panic.
I: The Creation of a Serial Killer
Jack Olsen - 2002
. .In February 1990, Oregon State Police arrested John Sosnovke and Laverne Pavlinac for the vicious rape and murder of Taunja Bennet, a troubled 23-year-old barfly who had suffered mild retardation since birth. Pavlinac had come forth and confessed, implicating her boyfriend and producing physical evidence that linked them to the crime. Authorities closed the case.There was just one problem. They had the wrong people.And the real killer wasn't about to let anyone take credit for his kill. Keith Hunter Jesperson was a long haul truck driver and the murderer of eight women, including Taunja Bennet. As the case wound through police precincts and courts--ending in life sentences for both Sosnovke and Pavlinac--Jesperson began a twisted one man campaign to win their release. To the editors of newspapers and on the walls of highway rest stops, Jesperson scribbled out a series of taunting confessions:I killed Tanya Bennett . . . I beat her to death, raped her and loved it. Yes I'm sick, but I enjoy myself too. People took the blame and I'm free . . ..Look over your shoulder. I may be closer than you think.At the end of each confession, Jesperson drew a happy face, earning for himself the grisly sobriquet "The Happy Face Killer."Based on access to interviews, diaries, court records, and the criminal himself, I: The Creation of a Serial Killer is Jesperson's chilling story. It chronicles his evolution from angry child to sociopathic murderer, from tormentor of animals to torturer of women. It is also the story of the fate that befell him after two innocent citizens were imprisoned four years for one of his killings.Edgar Award winner Jack Olsen lets the killer to tell his story in his own words, offering unprecedented insight into the twisted thought process of a serial murderer. Olsen takes his readers along on Jesperson's vicious cross-country killing spree, letting him describe how he played his "death game" with eight innocent victims and how he finally came to grips with the fate he deserved.I: The Creation of a Serial Killer is one of the most revealing and insightful pieces of crime reporting ever published.
Ruby Ridge
Jess Walter - 1995
By the next day three people were dead, and a small war was joined, pitting the full might of federal law enforcement against one well-armed family. Drawing on extensive interviews with Randy Weaver's family, government insiders, and others, Jess Walter traces the paths that led the Weavers to their confrontation with federal agents and led the government to treat a family like a gang of criminals. This is the story of what happened on Ruby Ridge: the tragic and unlikely series of events that destroyed a family, brought down the number-two man in the FBI, and left in its wake a nation increasingly attuned to the dangers of unchecked federal power.
The Last Book on the Left: Stories of Murder and Mayhem from History’s Most Notorious Serial Killers
Ben Kissel - 2020
Deeply researched but with a morbidly humorous bent, the podcast has earned a dedicated and aptly cultlike following for its unique take on all things macabre. In their first book, the guys take a deep dive into history’s most infamous serial killers, from Ted Bundy to John Wayne Gacy, exploring their origin stories, haunting habits, and perverse predilections. Featuring newly developed content alongside updated fan favorites, each profile is an exhaustive examination of the darker side of human existence. With appropriately creepy four-color illustrations throughout and a gift-worthy paper over board format, The Last Book on the Left will satisfy the bloodlust of readers everywhere.