Command Appearance

February 16, 2023 Show

Julie K. Brown  the journalist who took down the infamous Jeffrey Epstein discusses her book, Perversion of Justice: the Jeffrey Epstein Story.

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February 9, 2023 Show

Jeffrey Sussman

discusses his book, Sin City Gangsters: The Rise and Decline of the Mob in Las Vegas, Sussman charts Vegas from the first modest mob-owned casinos to the present billion-dollar-resorts; its cast of characters is an assembly of exceedingly ambitious risk takers who let nothing stand in their way of turning their dreams into stunning realities. Vegas became the domain of Jay Sarno, Kirk Kerkorian, Steve Wynn, and Sheldon Adelson, visionaries who transformed Vegas into the entertainment capital of the world by building billion-dollars-plus resorts and hiring the most popular contemporary entertainers. Sussman chronicles how the most powerful mobsters in the country built, bought, and controlled not only gambling casinos in Vegas, but also many important politicians, who did the mob’s bidding. Some of the more notorious mobsters were Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Moe Dalitz, Sam Giancana, Tony Accardo, and Nick Civella.

Don Stradley

discusses his book, Boston Tabloid: The Killing of Robin Benedict. The disappearance of Robin Benedict, a twenty-one-year-old woman from a Massachusetts suburb, became one of the most discussed crimes of the twentieth century. The discussion intensified when the public learned that she worked as a prostitute in Boston's notorious red-light district, the “Combat Zone,” and was linked by a trail of blood to a famous professor from Tufts University. When Robin Benedict vanished the investigation and media circus that gripped the city of Boston hadn't been seen since the days of the Boston Strangler case. Stradley reconstructs a grisly murder, and explores one man's bizarre obsession.

January 26, 2023 Show

Marla Bernard

discusses her book, By the Side of the Road: The True Story of the Abduction and Murder of Anne Harrison. Bernard chronicles is the true crime story of the kidnapping, rape, and murder of Ann Harrison and the long journey forced upon her family who had to wait nearly three decades to see her killers brought to final justice. In the early hours of March 22, 1989, two friends – career criminals with violent felony convictions - drove around the eastern Kansas City area in a stolen car committing a series of crimes. The weather was mild for late March in Kansas City; the sky was clear, and there was the pale remnant of a Full Moon that bore the dubious name of Death Moon, A little before 7 a.m., 15-year-old Ann Harrison walked to the end of her driveway on Kansas City’s east side to wait for the bus to take her to Raytown South High School. Ten minutes later, she disappeared, but no one saw what happened. As if waiting for her return, her belongings were still stacked carefully by the side of the road.

January 19, 2023 Show

Norm Boucher

discusses his memoir, Horseplay: My Time Undercover on the Granville Strip. Boucher offers a gripping, account of his eight months as an undercover drug agent for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1983, starting with his insertion into the Granville Street drug scene.. Boucher’s varied career included postings on the national anti-terrorist Special Emergency Response Team, as Marine drug enforcement coordinator on Canada's West Coast, and as liaison officer in Madrid, Spain, and Santo-Domingo, Dominican Republic. He is the recipient of the Governor General's Medal of Bravery, the Carnegie Medal, and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal.

January 12, 2023 Show

Matthew Gentile

screenwriter and director to discusses his movie, American Murderer. The thriller is based on the true story of Jason Derek Brown, elusive con man wanted by the FBI after hatching his most elaborate scheme yet. Brown has been on the run for 15 years. The movie stars Ryan Phillippe, Tom Phelphrey and Idina Menzel. We will be discussing movie making as well as Brown's story brought to the big screen.

Command Appearance

January 5, 2023 Show

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Command Appearance

December 29, 2022 Show

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Command Appearance

December 22, 2022 Show

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December 15, 2022 Show

Alan Warren

discusses his book, Bruce MaArthur: The Gay Village Murders. During the seven years between 2010 and 2017, Bruce McArthur, a Canadian landscaper, preyed on men from Toronto's gay community and managed to avoid any detection by carefully cutting the bodies of his victims into pieces and burying them in the pot planters and grounds of his landscaping customers. During the first two years of gay men going missing, the LGBTQ community of Toronto suspected that there was someone stalking men in their community. The police didn't feel there was any evidence of this until, in 2012, 42-year-old Faizi, 40-year-old Navaratnam, and 58-year-old Kayhan went missing. By November of that year, police launched an investigation called "Houston "into the gay men who were missing. After two years with no results, they closed the investigation. Three years later, in 2017, after 49-year-old Kinsman and 44-year-old Esen went missing, police launched another investigation. When the investigation finally ended, there were over 1800 pieces of evidence from searches of over 100 properties. McArthur's reign of terror in the gay village of Toronto finally ended on January 17, 2018, when police arrested and eventually charged him with the eight murders.

December 8, 2022 Show

Bob Batchelor

discusses his book, Road house Blues: Morrison, The Doors and the Death Days of the Sixties. In Roadhouse Blues. Batchelor presents an epic tale of one of rock’s (and America’s) most significant periods, as the Age of Aquarius gave way to a new age of mayhem, presidential misdeeds, and murder. Batchelor combines cultural history, musical and lyrical analysis, and a broad stroke of pop-culture mythos to give fresh perspective on a pivotal time. Roadhouse Blues is a biography of Jim Morrison, a man, a band, and an era that set the tone for the contemporary world.

December 1, 2022 Show

Linda Lou Long

discusses her book, The Tuskegee Strangler: The “Nicest” Serial Killer They Ever Met. Jerry Marcus fooled them all. He was “a nice guy,” always helped at home, did well in school, an athlete, and always employed. When things went wrong, he was the first to help clean up the mess. He was the last person anyone suspected of being a serial killer. After Marcus was caught and sentenced to life in prison in the late ’70s, author Linda Lou Long spent years corresponding with him. The Tuskegee Strangler gives an inside look into the workings of a man who is not your typical serial killer.

Command Appearance

November 24, 2022 Show

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November 17, 2022 Show

Alan Geik

talks about his book, Uncle Charlie Killed Dutch Schultz: The Jewish Mob: A Family Affair. Labor racketeers, casino operators, jewelry thieves and one time Murder Inc. assassins provide an intimate look into the biggest cash flow business in American history—organized crime. They were there from the beginning. They were Alan Geik’s Jewish family crime culture. Alan Geik, his sister, an attorney, and their late brother, a New York Police Department detective, were an appreciative, and often amused, audience for this history that has since become part of American folklore. These same gangsters’ battles with Nazi sympathizers are a recurring theme. They relished street brawls with Henry Ford’s strike breaking thugs and other Nazi sympathizers on American streets. The author’s late father-in-law, Lou Lenart, the first fighter pilot in the Israeli Air force, tells of organized crime’s crucial support of the Israelis in their armed struggle for an independent state in Palestine.

November 10, 2022 Show

John Borowski

discusses his book Panzram at Leavenworth. On February 1, 1929, Carl Panzram, the self-described “meanest man who ever lived”, stepped through the gates at the Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas. Upon entering the penitentiary, Panzram mentioned to the Warden that he would kill the first person who bothered him. Keeping his word, Panzram murdered the civilian laundry foreman who was taunting Panzram about his past crimes. A life of torture and suffering led Panzram to hate the entire human race and himself. His only friend was Washington D.C. corrections officer Henry Lesser, who Panzram continued corresponding with while incarcerated at USP Leavenworth. Eventually, Panzram is placed in segregation across from another famous criminal, Robert Stroud, The Birdman of Alcatraz, who observes Panzram and writes about him. Panzram does not censor himself as he conveys his thoughts on murder, segregation, the death penalty, and his desire to die. Panzram at Leavenworth is the first book to accurately depict murderer Carl Panzram's time at the federal penitentiary.

November 3, 2022 Show

Mike Vecchione

discusses his book, Homicide Is My Business- Luigi the Zip, A Hitman’s Quest for Honor. The story of Luigi Ronsisvalle is an intimate look at the life of a professional killer. Luigi had done everything asked of him by his Mafia bosses. This included the murder of 13 people. But unlike other hit-men, whose stories have been told in the pages of bestsellers and on movie screens, Luigi was denied the Mafia recognition he felt he deserved. Drawing on personal files, handwritten notes, and official sources, this book attempts to explain his complicated life.. Ronsisvalle once told a presidential commission, “American child falls in love with baseball, I fall in love with Mafia.”

October 27, 2022 Show

David Larson

is back to discuss his book, The Last Jewish Gangster, The Middle Years, The book is the second installment in a three-part chronicle of Michael Hardy, one of organized crime’s least known but most fascinating gangsters. The book starts in 1968 with gangster Michael Hardy sentenced to twelve years in the world’s most dangerous prison in Mexico after taking the rap for his mother’s counterfeiting scheme, hoping to have finally earned her love and respect. It then follows Hardy, further down his twisted criminal path. Throughout his career as a criminal, Hardy robbed banks and drug dealers alike, ran a finger of an international stolen car ring, kidnapped drug lords, and even became a hired gun.

October 20, 2022 Show

John Madinger

discusses his book, Going Undercover: Kidnapping, Murder, and A Life Undercover. "What is it like to work undercover?" Here is the skinny. You’re a sheepdog in wolf’s clothing, running with the pack, and Madinger ran with the wolves for almost two decades. Madinger will offer us a unique look at American crime and the "War on Drugs" from the perspective of both cops and criminals. You’ll go with the undercover cops to meetings with street-corner hustlers and rip-off artists and into the lives of America’s biggest rock stars, the world’s richest man, an Academy Award-winning actor, the marijuana traffickers conspiring to assassinate a federal judge, and the President of the United States. It’s an amazing ride, and there has never been another story like it.

October 13, 2022 Show

Michael Benson

discusses his book, The Devil at Genesee Junction: The Murders of Kathy Bernhard and George-Ann Formicola. While June 25 started like any other day it ended in a nightmare. In The Devil at Genesee Junction, Benson, returns to his formerly rural hometown to take on the double homicide of his friends Kathy Bernhard and George-Ann Forrmiciola that took place that night. The two girls were missing for a month and then found in the bushes horribly mutilated. The double homicide changed the author’s childhood suddenly, and drastically. He went from living in a rural play land, to being encased in fear, wondering who among them was the werewolf who cut up Kathy and George-Ann. This heinous crime was never resolved, and didn’t go away. In recent years, the author has teamed up with a victim’s mom, and a local private investigator to delve deep into the 6/66 murders, developing along the way some strong new leads and shocking details. Together they have heated up this icy cold case, and their investigation has led them in a startling new direction.

Command Appearance

October 6, 2022 Show

Nate Hendley

discusses his book, Dutch Schulz, The Brazen Beer Baron of New York. Dutch Schultz was a vicious gangster who rose to prominence as a bootlegger in New York City. “The Dutchman” always seemed to come out on top in conflicts with courts, cops, and disloyal members of his own crew. Uncouth and unpredictable, Schultz was also unpopular with his mob peers who conspired to bring him down. Dutch signed his own death warrant when he defied the powerful Mafia Commission led by Lucky Luciano.

Alan Warren

discusses his book, D.B. Cooper: The Interviews. The book investigates the story of the famous unidentified man who hijacked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_hijacking  Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_727  aircraft operated by Northwest Orient Airlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Orient_Airlines, in United States airspace on November 24, 1971. . We will talk about the facts we know about the hijacking, the primary suspects listed according to the FBI, media, or public opinion, supported by the show’s best interviews with authors and researchers who covered these suspects, the other major suspects popular among the public but not considered Cooper by the FBI or law enforcement authorities and the major suspects who came forward to police and confessed to being D.B. Cooper. The last part of our discussion will focus on the wave of copycat hijackings that occurred after the Cooper case. And there were quite a few.

September 15, 2022 Show

William Craig

discusses his book, All Along the Watchtower: Murder at Fort Devins. It was a dreary winter afternoon in Ayer, Massachusetts, a quintessential New England town, the type which is romanticized in Robert Frost’s poems. But on January 30, 1979, a woman’s scream was heard piercing the northeast tempest wind.In an unassuming apartment building on Washington Street, Elaine Tyree, a mother, wife, and US Army soldier, had her life brutally ripped from her. Her husband, William Tyree, a Special Forces soldier, was convicted of this heinous murder, which he has always vehemently denied. The Tyree case sent a shockwave through the idyllic community of Ayer, the United States Army, and the judicial system of Massachusetts. This case provoked suspicions of judicial misconduct, government cover-up, clandestine Black Ops by the military, and various conspiracy theories ultimately implicating “Deep State” involvement.

September 8, 2022 Show

Leslie Ghiglieri

discusses her book, The Decision to Kill: A True Crime Story of a Teenage Killer and the Mother who Loved Him. The book chronicles the story of a family tragedy that propels a mother to search for answers in the shocking murder of her husband—and conviction of her son. In the early morning of October 18, 1986, Cherie Wier’s life collapses when her teenage son takes the life of her beloved husband. For years, Cherie grapples with events preceding and following the crime, struggling to overcome the consuming grief she suffers from her loss and the difficulty she faces as she attempts to forgive her son. The courtroom accounts of gruesome details and the shocking testimonies from experts, only add to Cherie’s yearning to make sense of the crime. She is tormented, wanting to know how and why this tragedy happened and if there was anything she could have done to prevent it.
 

September 1, 2022 Show

Charles Gardner

discusses his book, Dannemora: Two Escaped Killers, Three Weeks of Terror, and the Largest Manhunt Ever in New York State. In June 2015, two convicted murderers broke out of the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, in New York’s North Country—launching the most extensive manhunt in state history and dominating the news cycle with the sex scandal linking both inmates to the prison employee who aided them. Double murderer Richard Matt and cop-killer David Sweat slipped out of their cells, followed a network of tunnels and pipes under the thirty-foot prison wall, and climbed out of a manhole to freedom. For three weeks, residents of local communities were prisoners in their own homes as law enforcement swept the wilderness near the Canadian border. Dannemora is a gripping account of the bold breakout and manhunt, and addresses lingering questions about those who set the deadly drama in motion.

Command Appearance

August 25, 2022 Show

Warren Dudley

British filmmaker Warren Dudley talks about his film career and making crime films and working as a screenwriter, something that is dear to my heart. We discuss two of his excellent films, Cage and Six Years Gone, both crime thrillers BOTH and how he got to make those films.

August 11, 2022 Show

S.J. Peddie

discusses her book, Sonny: The Last of the Old Time Mafia Bosses: John “Sonny” Franzese. Sonny Franzese reportedly committed his first murder at the age of fourteen. As a “made man” for the Colombo crime family, he operated out of his Long Island home specializing in racketeering, fraud, loan sharking, and other illicit deeds he would deny to his dying day. His career in organized crime spanned over eight decades—and he was sentenced to fifty years in prison for robbery charges. But even behind bars, Sonny Franzese never stopped doing business. Newsday reporter S. J. Peddie interviewed Franzese, an old school mafifioso, in prison—and uncovered a lifetime of shocking secrets from the legend himself

July 28, 2022 Show

Carmine Imbriale and his biographer Craig McGuire

discuss their book, Carmine and the 13th Avenue Boys: Surviving Brooklyn’s Colombo Mob.  The book is the true story of Carmine Imbriale, gambler, brawler, bandit, bookie, and enforcer with the Colombo crime family. For two decades, Imbriale was a street-level operative in one of the most violent crews in the Colombo Family, and he endeared himself to some of the major figures of organized crime while developing deadly disputes with others. We will go inside the 13th Avenue rackets at the height of their violence. The book is a jarring account of his lawless lifestyle culminating in a gang war in South Brooklyn, from which Imbriale emerged a survivor.

July 14, 2022 Show

Alan Warren

to discusses his book, Leopold & Loeb: The Killing of Bobby Franks. The book focuses on what has been called "The Crime of the Century" in 1920s United States. At the center of this murder case were Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb – two wealthy University of Chicago students who, in May of 1924, kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks. With Leopold and Loeb, both males, the dominance shifted from one to the other. Regardless of who held it, the result was the same. They were both very interested in crime and pushing the envelope for the next thrill. The vicious "thrill kill" of Bobby Franks was the bloody result of an intense and unhealthy co-dependent bond between the murdering duo.

July 7, 2022 Show

Craig Shirley

Acclaimed historian and New York Times bestselling author Craig Shirley discusses his book, April, 1945: The Hinge of History, The book is a  compelling account of 1945, particularly the watershed events in the month of April, that details how America emerged from World War II as a leading superpower. The year of 1945 bought a series of watershed events that transformed the country into an arsenal of democracy, one that no longer armed the world by necessity but henceforth protected the world by need. In April, 1945, we had the sudden death of President Roosevelt followed by Harry S. Truman's rise to office; Adolph Hitler's suicide; and the horrific discoveries of Dachau and Auschwitz. Americans doubled down on their completion of the atomic bomb and their plans to drop them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the destruction ultimately leading the Japanese Empire to surrender on V-J day and ending World War II for good. The world was transformed.

June 30, 2022 Show

Alice Kay Hill

discusses her book, Under a Full Moon: The Last lynching in Kansas. Hill’s book recounts the shocking murder of an eight-year-old girl which in turn led to the last mob lynching in Prohibition Era Kansas. In April of 1932, eight-year-old Dorothy Hunter was abducted while walking home from school. Her mutilated body was later found hidden in a haystack. Not long after, police reported that a local farmer named Richard Read confessed to Dorothy’s rape and murder. But his arrest was not enough for the citizens on Northwestern Kansas. Removing him from his jail cell in Cheyenne County, a mob bound and hanged Read from a tree in what would be the state’s final lynching.

June 23, 2022 Show

David Larson

discusses his book, The Last Jewish Gangster: The Early Years. Larson chronicles the story of Michael J. Hardy, a chubby Jewish boy from the Brownsville streets in Brooklyn to the world's most dangerous prison in Mexico. Michael wants nothing more than to prove to his "Queen of NYC crime" mother that he deserves her love and is tougher than the famous gangsters she dates (Bugsy Siegel is Michael's godfather). Coming from a mixed heritage of Southern Baptists and Ashkenazic Ukrainian Jews, without a father, and rejected by his mother at birth, Michael Hardy becomes a fearless and lawless gangster over the next five decades.

June 16, 2022 Show

Frank Stanfield

discusses his memoir, Vampires, Gators and Wackos: True Stories From a Florida Newspaper Man’s Life. During his decades-long crime coverage in Central Florida, journalist Frank Stanfield covered every atrocity that man or nature could unleash. We will talk about some of the frequently craven, and at times downright stupid, crimes Stanfield covered during his time in the field. He somehow made it through without winding up more mental than the crackpots he tracked. However, his unvarnished, no-holds-barred account of news events reveals just how crazy making a case can be when you are dead set on nailing the truth.

June 9, 2022 Show

Ralph Friedman

author of Street Justice: The True Story of the NYPD’s Most Decorated Detective and the Era That Created Him. Two thousand arrests. One hundred off-duty arrests. Six thousand assists. Fifteen shootings. Eight shot. Four kills. These are not the performance statistics of an entire NYPD unit. They are the record that makes Detective 2nd Grade Ralph Friedman a legend.  Friedman was arguably the toughest cop ever to wear the shield and was the most decorated detective in the NYPD's 170-year history. Stationed at the South Bronx's notorious 41 Precinct, known by its nickname "Fort Apache", Friedman served during one of the city's most dire times: the 1970s and '80s, when fiscal crisis, political disillusionment, an out-of-control welfare system, and surging crime and drug use were just a few of its problems. Listen to Friedman discuss his career and the era he served in

Michael Benson

discusses his book, Gangsters Versus Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Gangsters in World War 11 America. Benson tells the stunning true story of the rise of Nazism in America in the years leading to WWII—and the fearless Jewish gangsters and crime families who joined forces to fight back. Benson reveals the thrilling role of Jewish mobsters like Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky. As Adolph Hitler rose to power in 1930s Germany, a growing wave of fascism began to take root on American soil. Nazi activists started to gather in major American cities, and by 1933, there were more than one-hundred anti-Semitic groups operating openly in the United States. Few Americans dared to speak out or fight back—until an organized resistance of notorious mobsters waged their own personal war against the Nazis in their midst, Gangland-style.

May 26, 2022 Show

Luis Navia

Luis Navia and Jesse Fink are the co-authors Luis Navia’s memoir, Pure Narco,. It’s Goodfellas on go-fast boats, the inside story of Luis Navia, the 'Gentleman Narco'. Navia smuggled $10 Billion of cocaine for the Italian mob and Colombian cartels until, after 25 years, drug agents from 12 countries brought him down in 'Operation Journey'. The Cuban-American Navia smuggled hundreds of tons of white powder for the biggest cartels in Colombia and Mexico, including Pablo Escobar 's Medellín Cartel. What made him good at his dangerous job was amassing trusted contacts, losing very few shipments of coke, and maintaining a low profile. He refused to carry a weapon.

May 12, 2022 Show

Alan Warren

discusses his book, The Butcher of Hanover: Fritz Haarmann. The book focuses on Fritz Haarman,  the serial killer of at least 27 young men and boys in Germany in the post-World War 1 era. At the center of this murder case with Fritz Haarmann was Hans Grans. The two were lovers while committing these murders. It wasn't until the skulls and bones started washing ashore from the Leine River in Hanover that Germany realized they had a cold-blooded serial killer in their country.

May 5, 2022 Show

Suzanne Buchanan

discusses her book, The Curse of the Turtle: The True Story of Thailand’s” Backpacker Murders.  Koh Tao is a small island in the Gulf of Thailand, surrounded by pristine beaches, swathed in sunshine, and a Mecca for tourists, divers, and backpackers. But “Turtle Island” has its dark side. In 2014, Koh Tao was the site of the brutal double murders of two British backpackers, but theirs weren’t the only suspicious backpacker deaths. Suzanne Buchanan was the former owner and editor of the Samui Times, a news publication on Koh Samui, and she covered the stories of the so-called “backpacker murders” and other suspicious deaths. Although she is a British citizen, because of her investigation and stories, as well as her support for the two Burmese migrant workers sentenced to death for the murders, she had to flee Thailand for her own safety. There is currently an active warrant for her arrest should she return to Thailand, which had been her home for more than 20 years, and she continues to receive death threats.

April 28, 2022 Show

Chuck Lutz

discusses his memoir, Unpopular Causes: A Career in Service to America. The book tells of Lutz’s year in the Vietnam War, the most unpopular in our history, and his thirty-two years as a federal agent in the war on drugs working in virtually every region of the world where drugs were produced or transited through to the United States. It also covers his four years with the Transportation Security Administration, the agency everyone loved to hate and ends with his service in the war on international terrorism with the Department of State. Chuck Luitz was a major source for Ron Chepesiuk's book on Ike Atkinson, Sergeant Smack, for which Lutz received the 1976 Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service.

April 21, 2022 Show

Robert Buschel

discusses his novel God’s Ponzi.  The novel revolves a genius computer who desires vengeance for the death of his best friend—a man essentially killed by relentless greedy lawyers baiting to possess his revolutionary wok in data mining and analysis. Robert Buschel litigates criminal and civil cases. He often advocates and counsels clients when business and public image issues are at stake. His high profile cases have been featured on 48 Hours, Dateline, People Magazine and other national news outlets, and USA Today.

April 14, 2022 Show

Sean Patrick Hazlett

is the author of Weird World War IV. What if there was a war after Armageddon? How would the survivors emerging from World War III’s radioactive slag heaps fight in this conflict? Would they wage it with sticks and stones . . . and sorcery? Or would they use more refined weapons, elevating warfare to an art and unleashing bureaucratic nightmares worse than death? Would they struggle against themselves or inter-dimensional invaders? What horrors from the desolate darkness might slither into the light? Hazlett’s book, Weird World War IV wipes away the ashes of civilization and peers into a pit of atomic glass to witness the haunting visions of World War IV from today’s greatest minds in science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

Renee Fehr

is the author of the Wheels of Justice: The True Story of a 27-year Battle to Convict My Sister’s Killer. The Wheels of Justice is the story of a monstrous killer, a harrowing look at domestic violence, and an inspirational story of a family that wouldn’t quit until justice prevailed. The moment it happened, Renee Fehr knew that Gregory Houser had murdered her sister Sheryl. Cruel, abusive, and increasingly violent, Greg had threatened to kill Sheryl if she tried to leave him. Yet Sheryl’s death was ruled a suicide. And for twenty-seven years after her death, Greg continued walked free. But Renee wouldn’t rest until he was convicted for murder. As the old saying goes, “the wheels of justice turn slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.”

Ken Croke (Top) and Dave Wedge (Bottom)

the co-authors of the Croke’s memoir, Riding with Evil: Taking Down the Notorious Pagan Motorcycle Gang Former ATF agent Ken Croke was the first federal agent in history to go undercover and successfully infiltrate the infamous—and infamously violent—Pagan Motorcycle Club, a white supremacist biker gang.  Croke had earned the right to coast to the end of a storied career, having routinely gone undercover to apprehend white supremacists, gun runners, and gang members. But after a chance encounter with an associate of the Pagan Motorcycle Gang created an opening, he transformed himself into “Slam,” a monstrous, axe-handle wielding enforcer whose duty was to protect the leadership “mother club” at all costs. He befriended the club’s most violent and criminally insane members and lived among them for two years, covertly building a case that would eventually take down the top members of the gang in a massive federal prosecution, even as he risked his marriage, his sanity, and his life.

March 17, 2022 Show

Bob Batchelor

talks about his book, Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel. In his book, Bob Batchelor offers an eye-opening look at this iconic visionary, a man who created (with talented artists) many of history’s most legendary characters. From the mean streets of Depression-era New York City to recipient of the National Medal of Arts, Lee’s life has been almost as remarkable as the thrilling adventures he spun for decades. From millions of comic books fans of the 1960s through billions of moviegoers around the globe, Stan Lee has touched more people than almost any person in the history of popular culture. Join

David Crow

discusses his best-selling book, The Pale-Faced Lie: A True Story. Growing up on the Navajo Indian Reservation, David Crow and his three siblings idolized their dad, a self-taught Cherokee who loved to tell his children about his World War II feats. But as time passed, David discovered the other side of Thurston Crow, the ex-con with his own code of ethics, one that justified cruelty, violence, lies—even murder. Intimidating David with beatings, Thurston coerced his son into doing his criminal bidding. David’s mom, too mentally ill to care for her children, couldn’t protect him. Through sheer determination, David managed to get into college and achieve professional success. When he finally found the courage to refuse his father’s criminal demands, he unwittingly triggered a plot of revenge that would force him into a deadly showdown with Thurston Crow. David would have only twenty-four hours to outsmart his father—the brilliant, psychotic man who bragged that the three years he spent in the notorious San Quentin State Prison had been the easiest time of his life.

March 3, 2022 Show

Alan Warren

discusses his book, After Zodiac, an examination of celebrity mystery deaths. We will look at the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, Bob Crane, Princess Diana, Natalie Woods, among others. Are questions about their deaths just conspiracy theories or is there some truth to them?

Bill Kimberlin (R)

is the author Watch Me Die: Last Words from Death Row, a firsthand account of Ohio's death row and the state’s execution process unlike any other. In his book, Kimberlin, a trained clinical psychologist and professor of psychology, presents an unbiased look at the realities of death row, in Ohio and America as a whole. This book is much more than an argument about the death penalty. Instead, Kimberlin exposes the harsh truth of what it is like to be on death row, counting the days until your own execution, as told to him by those who have lived it.

February 17, 2022 Show

Matthias McCarn

is the co-author of Deadly Associates: A True Story of Murder, Survival, and Bringing Down the Chicago Mob. It is the 1960s, and Danny Seifert, a street-smart and ambitious young man, follows his father’s example in his efforts to provide a good, comfortable life for his wife and children. Soon, however, his path leads him toward the dark heart of the Mob. His career choices eventually bring him to a point where he must choose between loyalty to the Mob and probable prison time, or coming clean to the FBI, testifying against Mob leaders, and risking retaliation to himself and his family. He chooses the latter, which ultimately leads to his murder and decades of living in fear for his widow, Emma, and their children. As they grow into men, Danny’s sons, Joe and Nick, take it upon themselves to find the man responsible for their father’s death and make him pay. In seeking retribution for Danny, will they also succumb to lives of crime, or will they follow the high road of law and justice all the way to the Family Secrets trial in 2007, one of the largest Mob trials in history?

February 10, 2022 Show

Patrick Strickland

discusses his book, The Marauders: Standing Up to Vigilantes in the American Borderlands. Strickland spotlights one Arizona town’s efforts to fight back against a flood of extremely dangerous, virulently racist, and heavily armed outsiders who have flocked to the U.S. border with Mexico in recent years. Patrick Strickland is a journalist and author based in Athens, Greece. His first book is Alerta! Alerta! Snapshots of Europe's Anti-Fascist Struggle.

January 27, 2022 Show

discusses his book, The Beatle Bandit: A Serial Bank Robber's Deadly Heist, a Cross-Country Manhunt, and the Insanity Plea that Shook the Nation. The book is about Toronto, Canada bank robber Matthew Kerry Smith, who donned a Beatle wig when robbing banks in the mid-1960s Beatles’ era. In 1964, bank robber Matt Smith’s getaway was interrupted by Jack Blanc, an army veteran brandishing a revolver. A wild shootout left Blanc dead and Smith the object of a massive manhunt. Smith, a troubled young man, is hunted down and captured and faces the death penalty for the murder.

January 20, 2022 Show

Peter Bronson

discusses his book, Forbidden Fruit: Sin City’s Underworld and the Supper Club Inferno. The Beverly Hills Supper Club was Vegas before Vegas was cool. It was known as the "Showplace of the Nation" before it burned to the ground in 1977, killing at least 165 people—one of the worst fires in U.S. history. But few knew that the Beverly Hills had a violent past of deadly arson beginning in 1936, when it was taken over by the Cleveland mob that ran "Sin City" in Newport, Kentucky—an open city of prostitution, extortion, gambling and violence for decades, until new U.S. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy went to war on the mob in 1961. His first target was Newport. This is the story of a crime empire on the banks of the Ohio River, in the backyard of Ivory clean Cincinnati, and the war to clean it up that led to the assassination of Bobby's brother, President John F. Kennedy. It’s a story of mobsters, hookers, murder and dice; dirty cops, crooked politicians and the underworld bosses whose power reached into the FBI, Congress and the White House.

January 13, 2022 Show

Jeffrey Sussman

discusses his book, Holocaust Fighters: Boxers, Resisters, and Avengers. The book is a remarkable portrait of the heroic people who faced the threat of extermination by the Nazis and resisted by any means possible—whether through boxing, exposing the reality of death camps, armed guerrilla attacks, or deadly acts of vengeance.  The lives of five boxers who were forced to fight for their lives while imprisoned in concentration camps are explored in depth, followed by the stories of those who managed to escape captivity and reveal the truth about the death camps.

December 16, 2021 Show

Larry Loftis

discusses his New York Times best-selling book, The Princess Spy: The True Story of World War II Spy Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones. Loftis’ book tells the remarkable and thrilling hidden history of Aline Griffith, an ordinary American girl who became one of the OSS’s most daring spies in World War II before marrying into European nobility. It’s the story of a remarkable American woman who risked everything to serve her country.

December 9, 2021 Show

Lucy Adlington

discusses her book, The Dressmakers of Auschwitz: The Story of the Women Who Sewed to Survive. Lucy Adlington’s book is a powerful chronicle of the women who used their sewing skills to survive the Holocaust, stitching beautiful clothes at an extraordinary fashion workshop created within one of the most notorious WWII death camps. It was the height of the Holocaust, and twenty-five young inmates of the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp—mainly Jewish women and girls—were selected to design, cut, and sew beautiful fashions for elite Nazi women in a dedicated salon. It was work that they hoped would spare them from the gas chambers. Historian Lucy Adlington exposes the greed, cruelty, and hypocrisy of Hitler’s Third Reich and offers a fresh look at a little-known chapter of World War II and the Holocaust.

December 2, 2021

James Stewart

discusses his book, Mystery at the Blue Sea Cottage: A True Story of Murder in San Diego’s Jazz Age. Set in Jazz Age San Diego against the backdrop of yellow journalism, notorious Hollywood scandals, Prohibition corruption and a lively culture war, Mystery At The Blue Sea Cottage tells the intriguing true crime story of a beautiful dancer, a playboy actor, and a debonair doctor. In January 1923, 20-year-old Fritzie Mann left home for a remote cottage by the sea to meet a man whose identity she had revealed to no one. The next morning, the barely clad body of the beautiful and bewitching dancer washed up on lonely Torrey Pines beach, her party dress and possessions strewn about on the sand. The scene baffled investigators. Was it suicide, murder, or an accidental drowning? The investigation revealed a scandalous secret and, possibly, a powerful motive for murder. After a suspect was arrested and charged with murder, an ambitious district attorney battled a high-profile L.A. private counsel in the most sensational trial in San Diego’s history that was followed avidly across the nation. The big question: What really happened at the Blue Sea Cottage?

November 18, 2021 Show

Alan Warren

discusses his book, the The JFK Assassination: The Interviews.  The John F. Kennedy assassination is the grandfather of all conspiracies in America and arguably where they all started. A highly popular President with movie star looks and charisma, effecting significant changes in society, was brutally cut down in his prime. The official story was that JFK was killed by a sole assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. However, many conspiracy theorists believe in an assassination plot involving the FBI, CIA, U.S. military, VP LBJ, Cuba's Fidel Castro, Russia's KGB, the Mafia, or some combination of those entities. These fascinating interviews were done for the House of Mystery radio show, presented by Alan Warren. Who killed JFK?

November 11, 2021 Show

Charles Farrell

is a world-class jazz pianist who made his living working Mob clubs from the time he was a teenager to the 1960s, to discuss his book, (Low)life: .A Memoir of Jazz, Fight-Fixing and the Mob. Farrell later moved from music to the complex world of professional boxing, managing dozens of fighters, including former heavyweight champion Leon Spinks and former gang leader Mitch “Blood” Green, who famously went toe-to-toe with Mike Tyson―once in the ring and once in the street. A fight-fixer and gangster, Farrell ran afoul of New York mobsters in the 1990s and retreated to the mountains of Puerto Rico, coming home only after an infamous boxing legend brokered his safe return. Retired from the fight game, he returned to jazz and, among other collaborators, played frequently with his friend Ornette Coleman, the godfather of “Free Jazz” and one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century.

November 4, 2021 Show

Alicia Dill

discusses her new novel, Beyond Sacrifice. The book tells the story of Concepcion Chapa, an Army veteran, FBI special agent, and the orphaned daughter of two CIA .agents, has lived a life of sacrifice for her country. When she learns that her parents may not be dead, just undercover, she allows herself to be recruited as a killer-for-hire for the CIA. Faking her death and undergoing surgery to change her looks, Concepcion leaves everything behind-her friends, family, and country. Under the identity of Sofia Paltrini, she travels the globe doing the dirty work of the US government. But in a world of subterfuge and hidden motives, no one is quite who they seem. Concepcion is left not knowing who to trust and wondering if there's a way to live a life for herself that's beyond sacrifice. Alicia is an army veteran.

October 28, 2021 Show

Sara Gay Forden

discusses her book House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour and Greed. The show will be focused on a book that’s been turned into a major motion picture from director Sidley Scott, starring Lady Gaga and Adam Driver.  The book deals with the murder of Maurizio Gucci and chronicles the sensational true story of murder, madness, glamour, and greed that shook the Gucci dynasty. On the morning of March 27, 1995, four quick shots cracked through Milan’s elegant streets. Maurizio Gucci, heir to the fabulous fashion dynasty, had been ambushed, slain on the steps to his office by an unknown gunman. Two years later, Milan’s chief of police entered the sumptuous palazzo of Maurizio’s ex-wife, Patrizia Reggiani—nicknamed “the Black Widow” by the press—and arrested her for murder. Did Patrizia kill her ex-husband because his spending was wildly out of control? Did she do it out of jealousy, because he was preparing to marry his mistress? Or is it possible Patrizia didn’t do it at all?

October 21, 2021 Show

Pete Walsh

Crime Beat goes across the pond to the United Kingdom and a discussion with investigative journalist Pete Walsh about his book Drug War: The Secret History. Drug War is a landmark modern history: the first ever full account of the United Kingdom's fight against the illegal importation of drugs. It tells for the first time the story of the high-level traffickers who drugged Britain, and the secretive organization that tried to stop them: the Investigation Division of HM Customs and Excise. The ID's elite officers waged a fifty-year battle to stem the tide of cannabis, cocaine and heroin arriving by land, air and sea, and to track, arrest and prosecute the smuggling gangs, both organized and chaotic, who turned an amateur pastime into a multi-billion-pound trade.

October 14, 2021 Show

Janice Hisle

discusses her book, Submerged: Ryan Widmer, His Drowned Bride and the Justice System. Sarah Widmer, a young bride, drowns in her bathtub. Ryan, her husband of four months, is accused of murder. What happened in their tiny suburban bathroom--and why--was never resolved? It’s a gripping true-crime drama, based on exclusive new information. In SUBMERGED, Hisle exposes hidden angles of a case that divided an American community, tore apart two families and tested the criminal justice system.

October 7, 2021- Show

Robyn Maharaj

Detective Patrick "Pat" Kennedy

discusses her book, Grilling Dahmer: The Interrogation of the “Milwaukee Cannibal.” In the late hours of July 22, 1991, Detective Patrick "Pat" Kennedy of the Milwaukee Police Department was asked to respond to a possible homicide. Little did he know that he would soon be delving into the dark mind of one of America's most notorious serial killers, the "Milwaukee Cannibal" Jeffrey Dahmer. As the media clamored for details, Kennedy spent the next six weeks, sixteen hours a day, locked in an interrogation room with Dahmer. There the 31-year-old killer described in lurid detail how he lured several young men to his apartment where he strangled, sexually assaulted, dismembered, and in some cases, cannibalized his victims. It was a horrifying tour into the mind of evil and Robyn Maharaj will share the story.

September 30, 2021 Show

Dean Jobb

discusses his book, The Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era serial Killer. When a doctor does go wrong, he is the first of criminals,” Sherlock Holmes observed during one of his most puzzling murder investigations. Incredibly, at the time the words of the world’s most famous fictional detective appeared in print in the Strand Magazine, a real-life Canadian doctor was stalking and murdering women in London’s downtrodden Lambeth neighborhood. Dr. Thomas Neill Cream had been a suspect in the deaths of two women in Canada, and had killed as many as four people in Chicago before he arrived in London in 1891 and began using pills laced with strychnine to kill prostitutes. The Lambeth Poisoner, as he was dubbed in the press, became one of the most prolific serial killers in history. 

September 23, 2021 Show

Carl Denaro

In 1976, a killer who called himself ‘The Son of Sam’ shot and killed a half dozen people and wounded as many more in New York City. During his crime spree, the madman left bizarre letters mocking the police and promising more deaths. After months of terrorizing the city while garnering front-page headlines and international attention, a man named David Berkowitz was arrested. He confessed to the shootings, claiming to be obeying a demon that resided in a dog that belonged to his neighbor “Sam.”

Among the alleged victims was Carl Denaro, but miraculously, Denaro survived the attack. When Berkowitz was arrested, he was charged with trying to kill Denaro. However, there was a twist. Although he confessed to the other shootings, after his conviction Berkowitz denied attacking Denaro. Now, after years of research, Denaro is convinced that Berkowitz was telling the truth, and that someone else tried to kill him. Denaro, the co-author of the Son of Sam: The Truth About Why I Wasn’t Shot by David Berkowitz,
 

Monte Barrett

former heavyweight boxing challenger who competed from 1996 to 2014 and challenged once for the WBA heavyweight title in 2006. Barrett fought many top heavyweight champions and contenders during his career, including Wladimir Klitschko, Greg Page and David Tua. This past July, Barrett revealed how he was molested as a child, the trauma it caused, and how it impacts him as an adult. Monte Barrett shares his story.
 

September 9, 2021 Show

Daniel Levin

discusses his book, Proof of Life: Twenty Days in the Hunt for a Missing Person in the Middle East. Daniel Levin was in his New York office when he got a call from an acquaintance with an urgent, cryptic request to meet in Paris. A young man had gone missing in Syria. No government, embassy, or intelligence agency would help. Could he? Would he? So begins a suspenseful, shocking, and at times brutal true story of one man’s search to find a miss­ing person in Syria over twenty tense days. Levin, a lawyer turned armed-conflict negotia­tor, chases leads throughout the Middle East, meeting with powerful sheikhs, drug lords, and sex traffickers in his pursuit of the truth. In Proof of Life, Levin dives deep into the shadows—an underground industry of war where everything is for sale, including arms, drugs, and even people.

September 2, 2021 Show

Noah Hurowitz

discusses his book, El Chapo: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Infamous Drug Lord. Hurowitz. The book is a stunning investigation of the life and legend of Mexican kingpin Joaquín Archivaldo “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, building on Noah Hurowitz’s revelatory coverage for Rolling Stone of El Chapo’s federal drug-trafficking trial. It’s the true story of how El Chapo built the world’s wealthiest and most powerful drug-trafficking operation, based on months’ worth of trial testimony and dozens of interviews with cartel gunmen, Mexican journalists and political figures, Chapo’s family members, and the DEA agents who brought him down.

Julie K. Brown

the journalist who took down the infamous Jeffrey Epstein discusses her book, Perversion of Justice: the Jeffrey Epstein Story. In her book, journalist Julie K. Brown recounts her uncompromising and risky investigation of Jeffrey Epstein's underage sex trafficking operation, and the explosive reporting for the Miami Herald that finally brought him to justice while exposing the powerful people and broken system that protected him. Brown investigates and tracks Epstein’s evolution from a college dropout to one of the most successful financiers in the country—whose associates included Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, and Bill Clinton. Brown’s investigation revealed how Epstein ran a global sex trafficking pyramid scheme with impunity for years, targeting vulnerable teens, often from fractured homes and then turning them into recruiters

August 12, 2021 Show

Alan Warren

discusses his book, Conspiracy Culture: The Interviews. The book focuses on theories that go against the scientific facts that we have learned over many generations of the human race. There is something uniquely intriguing about a good conspiracy theory. They tell tales of heroes, villains, and alternative realities. Conspiracy theories represent secret knowledge: real or not, and there is something very pleasing about having supposed insider knowledge. Because of their entertainment value, you can find conspiracy theories everywhere. Implausibility doesn’t make conspiracy theories less entertaining. What if the moon landing was faked? Who would have been involved? How could they have pulled it off, and why? What if the earth is encapsulated by a celestial lid? What if the infamous leader of the Third Reich escaped Germany? What if the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen? These are a few of the theories we will discuss.

August 5, 2021 Show

Gabrielle Bluestone

discusses her book, Hype: How Scammers, Grifters and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet—And Why We're Following, We live in an age where scams are the new normal. A charismatic entrepreneur sells thousands of tickets to a festival that never happened. Respected investors pour millions into a start-up centered around fake blood tests. Reviewers and celebrities flock to London’s top-rated restaurant that’s little more than a backyard shed. These unsettling stories of today’s viral grifters have risen to fame and hit the front-page headlines, yet the curious conundrum remains: Why do these scams happen? Drawing from scientific research, marketing campaigns, and exclusive documents and interviews, former Vice reporter Gabrielle Bluestone delves into the irresistible hype that fuels our social media ecosystem, whether it’s from the trusted influencers that peddled Fyre or the consumer reviews that sold Juicero

Mike Rothschild

discusses of his book, The Storm is upon Us In The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult and Conspiracy of Everything. QAnon is an online conspiracy theory that claims Trump is waging a secret war against a deep state of Democratic elites and Hollywood stars who are pedophiles and Satan worshipers. In his book, mike Rothschild takes readers from the background conspiracies and cults that fed the Q phenomenon, to its embrace by right-wing media and Donald Trump, through the rending of families as loved ones became addicted to Q’s increasingly violent rhetoric, to the storming of the Capitol. What is QAnon really, where did it come from, and is the Capitol insurgency a sign of where it’s going next? Tune in to Crime Beat for the answers by one of the leading experts of conspiracy theories.

Frank Stanfield

discusses his chilling book Cold Blooded: A True Crime Story of a Murderous Teenage Vampire Cult. Investigators and Central Florida residents were horrified when 16-year-old vampire cult leader Rod Ferrell was arrested and charged with bludgeoning a cult member's parents. When they realized the slain couple's 15-year-old daughter was missing, they feared she was a victim, too.  Detectives and journalists swarming over three states soon uncovered a web of blood-drinking occult rituals, illicit sex, wildly dysfunctional families and spiritual warfare. Then, when police officers captured the teens, they discovered that the murdered couple's daughter was among them. But was she a victim or a participant? Decide for yourself when you listen to veteran newspaper reporter Frank Stanfield, who has covered the case from the beginning in November 1996, and sheds new light on one of the darkest killers in modern history.

Warren Cole Smith

discusses his book Faith Based Fraud: Learning From The Great Religious Scandals Of Our Time. In his book, Warren offers a clear-eyed look at fraud in the church from Jim and Tammy Baker's PTL Network to Mark Driscoll, Todd Bentley, Davis Jeremiah and Bill Hybels.  Smith Author and Ministry Watch President penned his new book to advocate for transparency and accountability in Evangelical churches.

July 8, 2021 Show

Anthony Destefano

Pulitzer prize winning journalist Anthony Destefano to discuss his newest book, The Deadly Don, Vito Genovese, Mafia Boss. Genovese is the namesake of a crime family that is still considered one of the most viable and dangerous in the U.S. today. From enforcer to Godfather, Vito Genovese rose through the ranks of La Cosa Nostra to head of one of the wealthiest and most dangerous crime families in American history. Destefano’s book is the first comprehensive biography of the legendary mafioso--from his childhood in Naples, Italy, and the beginnings of his bullet-ridden criminal career on lower Manhattan's mean streets, through his self-exile in the mid-1930s back to his homeland where he ran a black market operation under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, and his return to New York where Genovese made a fortune as the head of an illegal narcotics empire.

July 1, 2021 Show

Jim Campbell

talks about his best-selling book, Madoff Talks: Uncovering the Untold Story Behind the Most Notorious Ponzi Scheme in History. No name is more synonymous with the evils of Wall Street than Bernie Madoff. Arrested for fraud in 2008―during the depths of the global financial crisis―the 70-year-old market maker, investment advisor, and former chairman of the NASDAQ had orchestrated the largest Ponzi scheme in world history, fleecing thousands of investors across the globe to the tune of $65 billion. To this day, questions remain: Why did he do it? How did he get away with it for so long? What did his family know? Who is the elusive Bernie Madoff? In Madoff Talks, author Jim Campbell presents the most comprehensive, insider account of the Madoff saga to date, and he will share his insights with Crime Beat.

June 24, 2021 Show

Eric Dezenhall

discusses his book, Best of Enemies: The Last Great Spy Story of the Cold War., In Best of Enemies, two espionage cowboys reveal how they became key behind-the-scenes players in solving some of the most celebrated spy stories of the twentieth century. They include the crucial discovery of the Soviet mole Robert Hanssen, the 2010 Spy Swap which freed Gennady from Soviet imprisonment, and how Robert De Niro played a real-life role in helping Gennady stay alive during his incarceration in Russia after being falsely accused of spying for the Americans. We will discuss the distinctions between the Russian and American methods of conducting espionage and the painful birth of the new Russia, whose leader, Vladimir Putin, dreams he can roll back to the ideals of the old USSR.

Ron Chepesiuk, and Jesus Ruiz Henao, discuss their recently published book, The Real Mrs. Big: How a Colombian Refugee Became the United Kingdom’s Biggest Cocaine Kingpin. The interview will be conducted by Zman, ArtistFirst Radio Founder. British intelligence’s MI6 described Ruiz Henao as “the Pablo Escobar of British trafficking,” and he is considered the UK’s first billion pound cocaine kingpin. After the Real Mr. Big was busted in 2003, the price of cocaine rose 50 percent in the UK, such was his foothold in the British cocaine trade.

June 10, 2021 Show

Jeremy N. Smith

discusses his fascinating book, Breaking and Entering: The Extraordinary Story of a hacker called Alien. We often hear about the exploits of some of the most infamous cybercriminals--but who are the hackers working against them? Breaking and Entering follows the career of one of the good guys, a brilliant woman who calls herself “Alien”—a moniker she adopted on her first day at MIT—who now runs her own cybersecurity firm. The company is a boutique hacking outfit that caters to some of the world’s biggest and most vulnerable institutions—banks, retailers, government agencies Jeremy Smith has written for the New York Times, the Atlantic, and Discover, among other outlets, and he and his work have been featured by CNN, NPR News, and Wired.

June 3, 2021 Show

Jeannette Hensby

Her book, Falsely Accused takes a look at how being falsely accused of murder affected the lives of Ian Bernard Spencer, Fred Barlow and William Herbert Wallace. Hensby looks at the three men, who were falsely accused and eventually acquitted and freed by the justice system. But were they ever truly “free” again? What must it feel like to be arrested and accused of a murder that you didn’t commit? In her book, It would appear that sometimes the “Court of Public Opinion” is a far harsher critic than any Court of Justice. If the community decides that “there is no smoke without fire” and that you “got away with murder” there is no need for any real evidence to be produced or for the benefit of an assumption of innocence to be given. In their eyes you are guilty and always will be. What effect does this have on the life of the falsely accused?  Crime Beat investigates.

May 27, 2021 Show

Alan Warren

discusses his book, Zodiac Killer Interviews: House of Mystery presents. Warren’s book covers a serial killer who has stayed in the spotlight for years after their case has gone cold. It's been over 40 years now, and fascination with the Zodiac is still going strong. Experts passionately debate Zodiac suspects, Zodiac’’s letters/ciphers, opinions, and theories. Even which murder victims to include in the case is widely debated. The House of Mystery Interview series is a curated collection of interviews from the show. The diverse mix of authors interviewed includes cryptologist and cipher expert David Oranchak, authors who propose their suspects are already convicted serial killers, authors who claim the Zodiac was their father, authors who offer new or already considered suspects, and an author who argues the Zodiac killer didn't exist at all and that Zodiac was a hoax.

May 20, 2021 Show

Heather Chavez

discusses her best-selling book, No Bad Deed. The book is a thrilling debut about a mother desperate to find the connections between her missing husband and a deadly stalker who knows too much about her own dark family history. Driving home one rainy night, Cassie Larkin sees a man and woman fighting on the side of the road. After calling 911, she makes a split-second decision that will throw her suburban life into chaos. Against the dispatcher’s advice, she gets out of her minivan and confronts the attacker. That’s when he turns on her and spits out a chilling ultima­tum: “Let her die, and I’ll let you live.” A veterinarian trained to heal, Cassie can’t let the woman die.

May 13, 2021 Show

Vince Granata

discusses his powerful memoir, Everything is Fine: A Memoir. Vince Granata remembers standing in front of his suburban home in Connecticut the day his mother and father returned from the hospital with his three new siblings in tow. He had just finished scrawling their names in orange chalk on the driveway: Christopher, Timothy, and Elizabeth. Twenty-three years later, Vince was a thousand miles away when he received the news that would change his life—his younger brother, Tim, propelled by unchecked schizophrenia, had killed their mother in their childhood home. Devastated by the grief of losing his mother, Vince is also consumed by an act so incomprehensible that it overshadows every happy memory of life growing up in his seemingly idyllic middle-class family. In this powerful personal memoir, Vince examines the disease that irrevocably changed his family’s destiny.

May 6, 2021 Show

Ron Fino

discusses the nature and impact of the Russian mafia. Ron Fino is a former mob associate, noted FBI and CIA undercover operative and author of Mr. Undercover: The True Story of Undercover Operative Ron Fino. The Russian mafia has been around since the time of the Czars, but didn’t gain international infamy until after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, when different mobs vied for control of Russia and brought their clashes to the streets of America. Today the Russian mafia presents the FBI’s most formidable adversary as it continues to grow in power and influence.

April 29, 2021

Mary Brett

discusses her book, Out of the Mouths of Serial Killers. Brett corresponded with some of America’s most evil convicted serial killers and asked just one question: Why? Their return letters give an insightful look into the dark mind of each killer. The reader is able to scrutinize direct quotes, unedited, from ​interrogation statements, trial testimony, media interviews, and parole hearing inquests. Seventy-five Serial Killers are included in the book. Some only known to the unfortunate victims’ family, friends, and community, while others are the most infamous in the annals of serial killers.

April 22, 2021 Show

Steve Kosareff

is the author of Satin Pumps: The Moonlit Murder that Mesmerized a Nation. It was a murder that fascinated a nation and kept it glued for two years to radio, television and newspapers through three trials. Did the handsome, wealthy doctor and his beautiful young paramour plan to kill his glamorous socialite wife? Or did the gun accidentally discharge as he claimed? The book is set against the mid twentieth century CinemaScope glamour of Hollywood, Las Vegas and Palm Springs.

April 15, 2021 Show

Larry Loftis

discusses his New York Times best-selling book, The Princess Spy: The True Story of World War II Spy Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones. Loftis’ book tells the remarkable and thrilling hidden history of Aline Griffith, an ordinary American girl who became one of the OSS’s most daring spies in World War II before marrying into European nobility. It’s the story of a remarkable American woman who risked everything to serve her country.

Tori Telfer

discusses her entertaining book, Confident Women: Swindlers, Grifters and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion. From Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey to Frank Abagnale and Charles Ponzi, audacious scams and charismatic scammers continue to intrigue us as a culture. As Tori Telfer reveals in Confident Women, the art of the con has a long and venerable tradition, and its female practitioners are some of the best—or worst. Tori Telfer’s Confident Women book asks the provocative question: Where does chutzpah intersect with a uniquely female pathology—and how were these notorious women able to so spectacularly dupe and swindle their victims?

April 1, 2021 Show

Monique Faison Ross

discusses her powerful memoir, Playing Dead: A Memoir of Terror and Survival, Monique, the daughter of San Diego Charger’s football great Earl Faison, married her high school sweetheart soon after she discovered she was pregnant with his child. Her relationship with Chris was shaky from the start, but turned tumultuous as he became verbally and physically abusive. When she could no longer put up with the abuse, she left him with their children. That was when the stalking and genuine threats began. Nothing stopped him—not protection injunctions, police warnings, or even arrests. One fateful Monday morning, Chris kidnapped Monique in front of her children and drove off on a nightmarish car ride that involved car crashes and rape. He mercilessly beat her on the head with a shovel and abandoned her brutalized body in the woods in the rain. He left, presuming she was dead…but was she?

March 25, 2021 Show

Rick Riley

discusses his memoir, Thief on the Cross. Riley grew up on the tough streets of Los Angeles to become one of the longest active members and leader of one of the nation's bloodiest prison gangs and criminal organizations, La Nuestra Familia. Riley spent thirty-three years of his life in and out of the prison system and has now become an ordained minister. He has created the Thief on the Cross Prison Ministry, which he hopes to be able to help many prisoners with Rick’s mission in life: to speak in public forums on gang-related topics and how he escaped the gang life with God’s help.

March 18, 2021 Show

Richie Salerno

the author of From the Mob to the Movies: How I Escaped the Mafia and Landed in Hollywood. Salerno’s book chronicles his journey from the mean streets of Brooklyn and as a child of the mob to the silver screen. The public knows him as the character Tony Darvo in the movie Midnight Run, but Richie Salerno was born into the world of the Brooklyn Mafia during the heyday of the New York mob and for a time it looked like he'd get caught up in a life of crime. After all, some of the most notorious figures in the gangster world he knew as uncles, aunts, cousins and family friends. During a stint in prison for theft, Richie turned his life around using the tailoring skills he learned from his father and butchering abilities he picked up from his father-in-law to ingratiate himself with the warden and guards which got him through one hundred and twenty months without a scratch. As luck would have it, after his release he scored an audition for a film Serpico directed by Sidney Lumet, best known for "12 Angry Men" and "Dog Day Afternoon." That audition turned into a career of long standing as a character actor in major Hollywood films

Rod Sadler

discusses his book, KILLING WOMEN: The True Story of Serial Killer Don Miller's Reign of Terror. Don Miller was quiet and reserved. As a former youth pastor, he seemed a devout Christian. No one would have ever suspected that the recent graduate of the Michigan State University School of Criminal Justice was a serial killer. However, when Miller was arrested for the attempted murder of two teenagers in 1978, police quickly realized he was probably responsible for the disappearances of four women. Offered a still-controversial plea bargain, he led police to the bodies of the missing women. Now, after forty years in prison, Miller has served his time and is due to be released into an unsuspecting population.

www.rodsadler.com

March 4, 2021 Show

David Bowman top and Dennis Griffin

discuss their book, Bringing Down Cullotta. We will hear the untold story of David Bowman, who, in the 1980s, became an associate of the Hole in the Wall Gang, a gang lead by Frank Cullotta. After a series of events, Bowman turned and offered the FBI information on Frank Cullotta, causing the arrest of Cullotta. Following his arrest, Cullotta took an immunity agreement and turned on notorious mobster Tony Spilotro. David Bowman's memoir details his participation in the Chicago Outfit's criminal activities and his subsequent work as a government informant and gives us a fascinating look into a bygone era in Las Vegas.

February 25, 2021 Show

Joe Broadmeadow top

Thomas Denniston

discusse the article: "Tangled Web: Did the FBI Leave a cop killer on the streets? The article appears on Joe’s blog www.joebroadmeadowblog.com  and investigates the murder on December 20, 1980 of Saxonburg, Pennsylvania Police Chief Gregory Adams. Shortly after the Chief’s brutal murder, police identified Donald Eugene Webb, a jewel thief and bank robber with ties to the local Patriarca Crime family, as a suspect . Despite having this evidence, the FBI did little to catch Webb. In fact, It took the FBI thirty-six years to get a search warrant to search a location intimately connected to Webb. .As Joe Broadmeadow writes: “It would seem they put his name on the most wanted list and forgot about it.” So Crime Beat asks: Was this another case of the FBI turning a blind eye to criminal activity in their single-minded pursuit of Organized Crime? Did the FBI let a cop-killer walk free in exchange for information on the mob?

February 18, 2021 Show

Joe Lapello

Joe Lapello is the author of Murder Lost To Time: The True Story of One of Canada’s Oldest Unsolved Murders. It was Prohibition, and Carmine Lopello was a self employed taxicab driver who became caught up with notorious people in a small immigrant community of Toronto Ontario Canada, known as “The Ward”. Circumstances would change for the worse, turning this young man from a secretive life of crime, to that of a police informant, and eventually, paying the ultimate price. In the early morning hours of July 20, 1917, Carmine would be found brutally murdered in the street. We will talk to Joe Lapello, Carmine’s great nephew, and unravel  Carmine’s unsolved murder.

David Hill

discusses his book THE VAPORS: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice. Back in the days before Vegas was big, when the Mob was at its peak and neon lights were but a glimmer on the horizon, a little Southern town styled itself as a premier destination for the American leisure class. Hot Springs, Arkansas was home to healing waters, Art Deco splendor, and America’s original national park—as well as horse racing, nearly a dozen illegal casinos, countless backrooms and brothels, and some of the country’s most bald-faced criminals. Hill tracks the town’s history through the lives of three central figures: Owney Madden, Dane Harris, and Hazel Hill (the author’s grandmother). It is a story about one of the country's last oases of illegal gambling.

February 4, 2021 Show

Don Stradley

discusses his book, Berserk: The Shocking Life and Death of Edwin Valero.  Stradley uncovers the gritty details of the undefeated life of troubled boxer Edwin Valero. Edwin Valero’s life was like a rocket shot into a wall. With a perfect knockout record in twenty-seven fights, the demonic Venezuelan boxer, known as “El Inca” and “El Dinamita,” seemed destined for a clash with all-time great Manny Pacquiao. But the Fates had other ideas. Fueled by cocaine and booze and paranoia, Valero blazed into a mania that derailed his career in the ring and resulted in the brutal death of his young wife Jennifer–and soon afterward, his own. For the first time, Don Stradley chronicles one of history’s darkest and most sensational boxing stories. Join us at 8 pm!
 

January 28, 2021 Show

Alan Warren

discusses his latest book, Murder Times Six: The True Story of the Wells Gray Park Murders. On August 2, 1982, three generations of a family set out on a camping trip – Bob and Jackie Johnson, their two daughters, Janet, 13 and Karen, 11, and Jackie's parents, George and Edith Bentley. A month later, the Johnson family car was found off a mountainside logging road near Wells Gray Park completely burned out. In the back seat were the incinerated remains of four adults, and in the trunk were the two girls. But this was not just your average mass murder. It was much worse. Over time, some brutal details were revealed; however, most are still only known to the murderer, David Ennis (formerly Shearing). His crimes had far-reaching impacts on the family, community, and country. It still does today. Every time Shearing attempts freedom from the parole board, the grief is triggered as everyone is forced to relive the horrors once again.

January 21, 2021 Show

Antony Amore

Author of The Woman Who Stole Vermeer: The True Story of Rose Dugdale and the Russborough House Art Heist. The book tells the remarkable story of the extraordinary life and crimes of heiress-turned-revolutionary Rose Dugdale, who became the only woman to pull off a major art heist. Dugdale’s life is singularly notorious. Born into extreme wealth, she abandoned her life as an Oxford-trained PhD and heiress to join the cause of Irish Republicanism. While on the surface she appears to be the British version of Patricia Hearst, she is anything but. In 1974, she led a gang into the opulent Russborough House in Ireland and made off with millions in prized paintings, including works by Goya, Gainsborough, and Rubens, as well as Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid by the mysterious master Johannes Vermeer. And it’s likely that this was not her only such heist.

January 14, 2021 Show

Jeffrey Sussman

talks about his latest book Big Apple Gangsters: The Rise and Decline of the Mob in New York. The book reveals how influential the mob in New York City was during the 20th century. We will look at the origins of organized crime in the 20th century by examining the corporate activity that dominated New York City and how these entrepreneurial bosses supported successful criminal enterprises in other cities. We will also look at some of the colorful gangsters who followed in the footsteps of gangland’s original founders.

January 7, 2021 Show

James Patterson

one of the world bestselling authors, will be discussing Patterson’s latest book, The Last Days of John Lennon, the biggest true crime story in music history. The Last Days of John Lennon is the thrilling true story of two men who changed history: John Lennon, whose indelible songs enliven our world to this day, and the other, Mark David Chapman, Lennon's killer, who ended the beautiful music with five pulls of a trigger. Patterson’s numerous books have sold more than 300 million copies making him the world’s highest-paid author. He is also the first author to have sold more than one million e-books. Patterson is also recognized by the ‘Guinness Book of World Records’ for having the maximum number of books on The New York Times' best-seller list. Patterson has emerged as a passionate advocate of reading and books, donating millions of dollars from his personal wealth to teachers’ colleges, universities, school libraries, students, and independent bookstores. The ‘National Book Foundation’ has awarded the prestigious ‘Literarian Award’ for his efforts “to make books and reading a national priority.”

December 31, 2020 Show

William Rosenau

discusses his book, Tonight We Bombed the U.S. Capitol: The Explosive Story of M19, America's First Female Terrorist Group. By the end of the 1970s, many radicals had called it quits, but six veteran women extremists came together to finish the fight. These women had spent their entire adult lives embroiled in political struggles: protesting the Vietnam War, fighting for black and Native American liberation, and confronting US imperialism. They created a new organization to wage their war: The May 19th Communist Organization, or “M19,” a name derived from the birthday shared by Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, two of their revolutionary idols. Together, these six women carried out some of the most daring operations in the history of domestic terrorism—from prison breakouts and murderous armed robberies, to a bombing campaign that wreaked havoc on the nation’s capital. Three decades later, M19’s actions and shocking tactics still reverberate for many reasons, but one truly sets them apart: unlike any other American terrorist group before or since, M19 was created and led by women. William Rosenau, PhD, is a senior research scientist at CNA, a nonprofit research and analysis organization, and a fellow in the International Security program at New America.

December 10, 2020 Show

J. Chester Johnson

discusses  his book Damaged Heritage: The Elaine Race Massacre and a Story of Reconciliation The 1919 Elaine Race Massacre, arguably the worst in our country’s history, has been widely unknown for the better part of a century, thanks to the whitewashing of history. In 2008, Johnson was asked to write the Litany of Offense and Apology for a National Day of Repentance, where the Episcopal Church formally apologized for its role in transatlantic slavery and related evils. In his research, Johnson came upon a treatise by historian and anti-lynching advocate Ida B. Wells on the Elaine Massacre, where more than a hundred and possibly hundreds of African-American men, women, and children perished at the hands of white posses, vigilantes, and federal troops in rural Phillips County, Arkansas. As he worked, Johnson would discover that his beloved grandfather  had participated in the Massacre. The discovery shook him to his core. Determined to find some way to acknowledge and reconcile this terrible truth, Chester would eventually meet Sheila L. Walker, a descendant of African-American victims of the Massacre.  She herself had also been on her own migration in family history that led straight to the Elaine Race Massacre.  Together, she and Johnson committed themselves to a journey of racial reconciliation and abiding friendship An illuminating journey to racial reconciliation experienced by two Americans—one black and one white.

December 3, 2020 Show 517

Gerard Koeppel

discusses his book, Not a Gentleman’s Work: The Untold Story of a Gruesome Murder at Sea and the Long Road to Truth. It’s the true story of the most notorious crime in American nautical history. The Herbert Fuller, a three-masted sailing ship loaded with New England lumber, left Boston bound for Buenos Aires on July 8, 1896 with twelve people on board: captain and owner Charles Nash, his wife and childhood sweetheart Laura, two mates, the "mulatto" steward, six crewmen, and one passenger. Just before 2 A.M. on the sixth day at sea, the captain, his wife, and the second mate were slaughtered in their individual bunkrooms with the ship's axe, seven or eight blows apiece. Incredibly, no one saw or heard the killings . . . except the killer. After a harrowing voyage back to port for the survivors, the killer among them, it didn't take long for Boston's legal system to convict the first mate, a naturalized American of mixed blood from St. Kitts. But another man on board, a twenty-year-old Harvard passenger from a proper family, had his own dark secrets. Who was the real killer, and what became of these two men

Jimmy Tobin

discusses his book, Killed in Brazil? The Mysterious Death of Arturo “Thunder” Gotti. Arturo Gatti hung up his gloves in 2007, closing the book on a boxing career that bordered on the mythical. At long last, he seemed ready to leave the business of blood behind for a long, happy life outside the ring. His retirement was celebrated―boxing’s modern gladiator had earned his freedom. Two years later, he was gone―found dead in a hotel in Brazil under mysterious circumstances. He was only thirty-seven years old. Did he commit suicide? Or was he killed by his new wife? We will examine the dramatic events surrounding Gatti's tragic demise and explore what may have happened on that fateful night.

November 19, 2020 Show

Patrick Gallagher

discusses his book, Til Death Do Us: A True Crime Story of Bigamy and Murder. In August 1945, Gladys Lincoln of Sacramento contacted prosperous Dr. W. D. Broadhurst of Caldwell, Idaho, and rekindled a romance from twenty years earlier. After many passionate letter exchanges and several sexually-charged meetings, they were married in Reno, Nevada on May 20, 1946. After a passion-filled three-day weekend together, the doctor returned to his home in Idaho, and Gladys returned to Sacramento … and to her husband, Leslie Lincoln! But Gladys was much more than a bigamist. Gladys needed something even she didn’t understand. She married her first husband when she was 20, and her second husband only 14 months later. The second marriage lasted only two years, the third less than 16 months. Leslie Lincoln was her fifth, and Dr. Broadhurst became her sixth. But what desperate need drove her to go from marriage to marriage? Then what dark mindset moved her and her young cowboy chauffeur to commit murder? We will find out tonight!

November 12, 2020 Show

Bob Batchelor

talks about his book, Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel. In his book, Bob Batchelor offers an eye-opening look at this iconic visionary, a man who created (with talented artists) many of history’s most legendary characters. From the mean streets of Depression-era New York City to recipient of the National Medal of Arts, Lee’s life has been almost as remarkable as the thrilling adventures he spun for decades. From millions of comic books fans of the 1960s through billions of moviegoers around the globe, Stan Lee has touched more people than almost any person in the history of popular culture. Join

Don Stradley

discusses two of his books, Slaughter in the Streets: When Boxing became Boxton’s Murder Capital, and A Fistful of Murder: The Fights and Crimes of Carlos Monzon. Slaughter in the Streets tells the the true-crime stories of men in Boston in the first half of the 20th century who dreamed of being great fighters but couldn’t make it past the fringe of the sport. In their desperation, they chose criminal plots, resulting in grim ends. A Fistful of Murder tells the story of Carlos Monzon, one of Argentina's most celebrated figures. A renowned boxing champion and movie actor who enjoyed affairs with beautiful women, he also harbored a secret life of drug use, alcohol, and domestic violence. When his estranged wife was found dead―strangled and tossed from a balcony―Monzon confessed that they'd fought the night before, but he couldn't remember what had happened.

October 29, 2020 Show

Steve Hassan

discusses his explosive book, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control. One of America’s leading experts in cults and mind control provides an eye-opening analysis of Trump and the indoctrination tactics he uses to build a fanatical devotion in his supporters. Since his election as President, Trump’s behavior has become both more controversial and yet increasingly familiar. He relies on phrases like “fake news” and “build the wall” and continues to spread the divisive mentality of us vs. them. He lies constantly, has no conscience, never admits when he is wrong, and projects all of his shortcomings onto others. He has become more authoritarian, more outrageous, and yet many of his followers remain blindly devoted. His need to squash alternate information and his insistence of constant ego stroking are all characteristics of other famous leaders - cult leaders argues mind-control and licensed mental-health expert Steven Hassan. Hassan draws parallels between our current president and people like Jim Jones, David Koresh, Ron Hubbard, and Sun Myung Moon, arguing that this presidency is in many ways like a destructive cult.

October 22, 2020 Show

Allan Lichtman

discusses his book, Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House. In the days after Donald Trump’s unexpected victory on election night 2016, The New York Times, CNN, and other leading media outlets reached out to one of the few pundits who had correctly predicted the outcome, Allan J. Lichtman. For this year’s election, Lichtman predicts Joe Biden the winner. While many election forecasters base their findings exclusively on public opinion polls, Lichtman looks at the underlying fundamentals that have driven every presidential election since 1860. His 13 keys Using his 13 historical factors or “keys” (four political, seven performance, and two personality), that determine the outcome of presidential elections. Lichtman applies the keys to every presidential election since 1860 and shows readers the current state of the 2020 race. In doing so, he dispels much of the mystery behind electoral politics.

October 15, 2020 Show

Susan Hall

discusses her monumental book series, The World Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. The series is the most comprehensive set of its kind in the history of true crime publishing,  Hall’s four-volume set has more than 1600 entries of male and female serial killers from around the world. Defined by the FBI as a person who murders 3 or more people over a period of time with a hiatus of weeks or months between murders, serial killers have walked among us from the dawn of time as this series demonstrates.

October 8, 2020 Show

Elaine Smith

discusses her book, A Gun in My Gucci, a true story of two “outsiders” who helped bring down the Chicago Mob — the middle-aged mobster Ken “Tokyo Joe” Eto, and a determined young woman and FBI agent, Elaine Corbitt Smith. In the early 1980s, Joe Eto was the highest ranking Asian-American mobster in the country. His nemesis, rookie Elaine Smith was one of only a few female Special Agents in the FBI at that time. Her relentless pursuit of Eto resulted in his detention by the Bureau on interstate gambling charges. Afraid that he would “spill his guts”, his Mob bosses decided not to gamble on Joe’s ability to remain silent. He had to be eliminated and a “hit” was ordered. Joe Eto never talked, nevertheless the Mob still tried to kill him. But the “hit” was botched and Tokyo Joe walked away with three bullets in his head. Alive, with his honor intact, he sought revenge. He was ready to talk, but only to Special Agent Elaine Smith.

October 1, 2020 Show

Dennis Griffin

discusses his book, Survivors: Shocking True Stories about America's Pursuit of Police Transparency and Justice. The survivors of victims of murder and suspicious death are often victimized twice—first by the loss of their loved one and subsequently by the system they rely on for justice. In pursuit of police transparency and search for justice, retired investigator Dennis Griffin takes us inside the world of real crime cases to expose the shocking truth behind the alarming number of unsolved murders and suspicious deaths classified as accidental, self-inflicted, or natural—with little to no investigation. Griffin is the founder of  The Transparency Project, which helps families of suspicious death victims gain access to police records related to the investigation of their loved ones
 

September 24, 2020 Show

Jax Miller

the author of Hell in the Heartland: Murder, Meth, and the Case of Two Missing Girls. On December 30, 1999, in rural Oklahoma, sixteen-year-old Ashley Freeman and her best friend, Lauria Bible, were having a sleepover. The next morning, the Freeman family trailer was in flames and both girls were missing. While rumors of drug debts, revenge, and police corruption abounded in the years that followed, the case remained unsolved and the girls were never found.  In 2015, crime writer Jax Miller--who had been haunted by the case--decided to travel to Oklahoma to find out what really happened on that winter night in 1999, and why the story was still simmering more than fifteen years later. What she found was more than she could have ever bargained for: evidence of jaw-dropping levels of police negligence, entire communities ravaged by methamphetamine addiction, and a series of interconnected murders with an ominously familiar pattern

September 17, 2020 Show

Chris Russo Blackwood

discusses her book My Brother's Keeper: A Thirty Year Quest to Bring Two Killers to Justice. The moment he found out his brother was missing and presumed dead, Ted Kergan launched a relentless effort to bring two suspected killers—a teenaged-prostitute and her much older grifter boyfriend—to justice and find Gary Kergan's body. Little did he know his quest would consume a fortune and take thirty years to reach its dramatic conclusion. It's an amazing story with many twists and turns.

September 10, 2020 Show

Alan Warren

Crime Beat welcomes back Alan Warren to discuss his book In Chains: The World of Human Trafficking. Human trafficking is the trade of people for forced labor or sex. It also includes the illegal extraction of human organs and tissues.  Most of us believe human trafficking occurs in countries with no human rights legislation. This is a myth. All types of human trafficking are alive and well in most of the developed countries of the world like the United States, Canada, and the UK. It is estimated that $150 billion a year is generated in the forced labor industry alone. It is also believed that 21 million people are trapped in modern-day slavery, exploited for sex, labor, or organs. Most of us also believe that since they live in a free country, there is built-in protection against such illegal practices. But for many, this is not the case. Traffickers tend to focus on the most vulnerable in our society, but trafficking can happen to anyone.

September 3, 2020 Show

Jamie Collins and Jessica Pelley

will be discussing their book, I am Jessica: A Survivor’s Powerful Story of Healing and Hope. When Jessica Pelley was nine, she went to a sleepover at a friend's house for the weekend. While away, Jessica’s entire family was murdered. Jessica spent the next 30 years fighting, crawling, and clawing my way through the darkness and the pain. The author is Jessica's cousin. Jessica's story is indeed powerful as well as eye opening.

August 27, 2020 Show

John Collier

the author of Inside Out: A Father’s Love. Collier’s story is one of a police officer who overcame a battered and abused childhood. His success as a police officer brought him recognition from the state police, and he was often assigned to personally protect and guard the governor of the state of Indiana.  As a police officer his world changed. The anger and hatred he carried for his father eventually changed the outward person he was. The rage that eventually surfaced took him on a self-destructive path of failure and tragedy. His life shattered as he became the person he hated most. It is a life-changing story, a miracle, of how Christ saved him from death, and how his life became transformed.

August 20, 2020 Show

Benjamin Risha,

is the author of The Son of Seven Mothers. In the book, Benjamin Risha must choose between the life he knows, and was “chosen” to lead, and his freedom. As the adopted son of two cult leaders, Benjamin Risha was raised to someday assume a place of leadership in the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation with the Bible, and his parents’ interpretation of it, as his guide. He believed the prophecies of his adoptive mother and father, which included them being the two prophets foretold in the Book of Revelations as preceding the second coming of Jesus Christ, them raising from the dead when they died, and such dire warnings as the ground opening up to swallow non-believers into hell. He was sure that Susan Alamo could raise the dead as promised. However, when none of it happened, and the foundation slid from bucolic communal lifestyle to insufferable criminality that included absolute obedience to the Alamos, and polygamous marriages with girls as young as eight years old, Benjamin knew he had to escape. If he was caught trying to escape he would be beaten nearly death, forced to go without food and water for his sins, and he would be shamed in the community. He embarked on a journey to locate his birth parents, discover the truth about a world he knew nothing about … and find himself.

Mark Paul

discusses his book, The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told: A True Tale of Three Gamblers, The Kentucky Derby, and the Mexican Cartel. When Mark Paul and two other gamblers unknowingly place their bet with members of a suspected drug cartel at a racetrack in Tijuana, Mexico, they must figure out how to claim their prize -- without getting killed in the process. In a heart-pounding race of their own across the U.S.-Mexico border, the trio come face-to-face with suspected killers, are arrested by the Border Patrol, and fumble their way through the riskiest bet of their lives. An inspiring true crime sports story about a filly who broke through the male-dominated world of horseracing and inspired crowds of men and women alike... along with a trio of gamblers who embark on an epic adventure. It's Seabiscuit meets Narcos, and the best non-fiction adventure and gambling story ever told

August 6, 2020 Show

Synova Cantrell

talks about her just released book, Silenced by the Dixie Mafia. You will learn about the Stateline Mafia, Bufford Pusser (Walking Tall), Louise Hathcock, Toehead White, Kirksey Nix, Jr, and more, and we will compare the Dixie Mafia’s modus operandi to that of the Italian mob.

July 30, 2020 Show

Paula May

discusses her book, First Degree Rage: The True Story of ‘The Assassin,’ An Obsession and Murder. First Degree Rage is the true crime story of a homicide case in which Paula May was the lead detective. As a law enforcement officer in the state of North Carolina for over thirty years, she investigated a number of violent and sinister cases, but this one stood out above all others as a story that had to be told, a book that had to be written. It began when a man’s nude, murdered body was found in the snowy woods in the Appalachian Mountains of northwestern North Carolina, where Paula worked in the criminal investigations unit of the Watauga County Sheriff’s Office. The murder victim turned out to be Viktor Gunnarsson, a man accused of assassinating Prime Minister Olof Palme of Sweden. Paula May’s book details the nearly four-year old investigation that followed and the intriguing facts that were uncovered.

July 23, 2020 Show

Bob Batchelor

Bob Batchelor discusses of his book, The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition's Evil Genius. The tale of George Remus is a grand spectacle and a lens into the dark heart of Prohibition. Congress gave teeth to Prohibition in October 1919, but the law didn’t stop George Remus from amassing a fortune that would be worth billions of dollars today. As one Jazz Age journalist put it, “Remus was to bootlegging what Rockefeller was to oil.”  Bob Batchelor breathes life into the largest bootlegging operation in America—greater than that of Al Capone—and a man considered the best criminal defense lawyer of his era. Remus bought an empire of distilleries on Kentucky’s “Bourbon Trail” and used his other profession, as a pharmacist, to profit off legal loopholes. He spent millions bribing officials in the Harding Administration, and he created a roaring lifestyle that epitomized the Jazz Age over which he ruled.

July 16, 2020 Show

Donna Hylton

discusses her book A Little Piece of Light: A Memoir of Hope, Prison, and a Life Unbound. The book is a memoir of survival, redemption, hope, and sisterhood from a woman on the front lines of the criminal justice reform movement. Donna Hylton's early life was a nightmare of abuse that left her feeling alone and convinced of her worthlessness. In 1986, she took part in a horrific act and was sentenced to 25 years to life for kidnapping and second-degree murder. It seemed that Donna had reached the end--at age 19, due to her own mistakes and bad choices, her life was over. Behind the bars of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, alongside this generation's most infamous criminals, Donna learned to fight, then thrive. For the first time in her life, she realized she was not alone in the abuse and misogyny she experienced--and she was also not alone in fighting back. Since her release in 2012, Donna has emerged as a leading advocate for criminal justice reform and women's rights who speaks to politicians, violent abusers, prison officials, victims, and students to tell her story.

July 9, 2020 Show

Diane Fanning

discusses her book, Death on the River: A Fiancee's Dark Secrets and a Kayak Trip Turned Deadly.  Diane Fanning recounts a tragic kayak accident that left one man dead―and his fiancée arrested for his murder. It seemed like the perfect romantic afternoon: a kayaking trip for two on the Hudson River. But it ended in tragedy when beautiful, blonde Angelika Graswald called 911 to report that her fiancé, the handsome and athletic Vincent Viafore, had fallen into the choppy frigid waters. Authorities assumed it was an accident, but when the bereft bride-to-be posted videos of herself doing cartwheels on social media―shortly before Vincent’s body was found―suspicions of murder rose to the surface, After hours of questioning, Angelika made several shocking admissions.

July 2, 2020 Show

Kate Dawson

discusses her book, American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI The book chronicles the fascinating story of Edward Oscar Heinrich, an investigator who would go on to crack at least two thousand cases in his forty-year career. Known as the "American Sherlock Holmes," Edward Oscar Heinrich was one of America's greatest--and first--forensic scientists, with an uncanny knack for finding clues, establishing evidence, and deducing answers with a skill that seemed almost supernatural. .His work, though not without its serious--some would say fatal--flaws, changed the course of American criminal investigation.

June 25, 2020 Show

Casey Sherman (top) and Dave Wedge

Boston reporters Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge to talk about their book, Hunting Whitey: The Inside Story of the Capture and Killing of America’s Most Wanted Crime Boss. The book draws on exclusive interviews and exhaustive investigative reportage to tell the complete story of Whitey Bulger, one of the most notorious crime bosses in American history and a longtime FBI informant. The leader of Boston’s Winter Hill Gang and #1 on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, Bulger was indicted for nineteen counts of murder, racketeering, narcotics distribution, and extortion. But it was his sixteen-year flight from justice on the eve of his arrest that made him a legend and exposed deep corruption within the FBI.

June 18, 2020 Show

Trish Posner

discusses her book The Pharmacist of Auschwitz. The book chronicles the little known story of Victor Capesius, a Bayer pharmaceutical salesman from Romania who, at the age of 35, joined the Nazi SS in 1943 and quickly became the chief pharmacist at the largest death camp, Auschwitz. Patricia Posner exposes Capesius’s reign of terror at the camp, his escape from justice, fueled in part by his theft of gold ripped from the mouths of corpses, and how a handful of courageous survivors and a single brave prosecutor finally brought him to trial for murder twenty years after the end of the war.

June 11, 2020 Show

Shannon O'Leary

a pseudonym for a prolific writer and performer from Australia. Her first book, The Blood on My Hands, told the story of her traumatic and violent childhood in the 1960s and '70s Australia. Her sequel, Out of the Fire and into the Pan, which was published last march, explains how she progressed into the adult world while coming to terms with her terrifying past. It is a story of personal growth and of how O'Leary navigates her transition into adulthood, while seeking out the social norms and finding her place in the world. O'Leary has acted and directed on the stage and on Australian national TV. She also runs her own production company and several music schools.

June 4, 2020 Show

Alan Warren

discusses his book, Doomsday Cults: The Devil’s Hostages. Jim Jones convinced his 1000 followers they would all have to commit suicide since he was going to die. Shoko Asahara convinced his followers to release a weapon of mass destruction, the deadly sarin gas, on a Tokyo subway. Charles Manson convinced his followers to kill, in an attempt to incite an apocalyptic race war. These are a few of the doomsday cults examined by Alan R. Warren in his book. Its focus is on cults whose destructive behavior was due in large part to their apocalyptic beliefs or doomsday movements.

May 28, 2020 Show

Richard Jewkes

Richard Jewkes discusses his book, Gabacho: Drugs Landed Me in Mexican Prison, Theater Saved Me. Over Christmas break of his senior year, Richard Jewkes, a University of Utah theatre student disenchanted with his conservative Mormon upbringing, took off for Mexico with a college friend seeking a wild adventure. If the adventure hadn’t included smuggling drugs it might have been another college road trip. But after a disastrous encounter with a drug cartel, they ended up being arrested by Mexican Federales while trying to make it to the US border. Jewkes and friend were tossed into a Mexican prison, where they found themselves anticipating torture, rape and even death. A fight with a notorious killer, struggles with tormenting guards and the difficulties of foreign prison lead to a disastrous escape attempt. To survive, Jewkes starts a theatre group with a rag-tag bunch of Mexican convicts.

May 21, 2020 Show

Rick Porrello

Rick Porrello discusses his book Bombs, Bullets and Bribes: The True Story of Notorious Jewish Gangster, Alex Shondor Birns. Birns was Cleveland’s Public Enemy Number One, friend of powerful Jewish and Italian mobsters, and trusted partner of black gambling racketeers. He was actively involved in a wide variety of racketeering and other organized crime related activities such as prostitution, theft, numbers, etc., from the days of Prohibition until his demise. He went toe-to-toe against relentless challenges —the cops wanted him in prison, immigration officials wanted him deported, and the IRS wanted his nightclub, car, and cash. Black gangsters wanted the old white man out of the numbers racket, and rogue underlings wanted to kill the king. For half a century, the charismatic hood beat the odds, cultivating allies high and low.

May 14, 2020 Show

Pete Walsh

Crime Beat goes across the pond to the United Kingdom and a discussion with investigative journalist Pete Walsh about his book Drug War: The Secret History. Drug War is a landmark modern history: the first ever full account of the United Kingdom's fight against the illegal importation of drugs. It tells for the first time the story of the high-level traffickers who drugged Britain, and the secretive organization that tried to stop them: the Investigation Division of HM Customs and Excise. The ID's elite officers waged a fifty-year battle to stem the tide of cannabis, cocaine and heroin arriving by land, air and sea, and to track, arrest and prosecute the smuggling gangs, both organized and chaotic, who turned an amateur pastime into a multi-billion-pound trade.

May 7, 2020 Show

Steve Hodel

discusses of his book, Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder: The True Story. In 1947, the brutal, sadistic murder of a beautiful young woman named Elizabeth Short led to the largest manhunt in LA history. The killer teased and taunted the police and public for weeks, but his identity stayed a mystery, and the murder remained the most tantalizing unsolved case of the last century, until this book revealed the bizarre solution.

Steve Hodel, a retired LAPD detective, took up the case, reviewing the original evidence and records as well as those of a separate grand jury investigation into a series of murders of single women in LA at the time. The prime suspect had in fact been identified, but never indicted. Why? And who was he? Steve Hodel’s research shows that the murderer, a true-life Jekyll and Hyde who was a highly respected member of society by day and a psychopathic killer by night, was his own father.

April 30, 2020 Show

Steve Hassan

discusses his explosive book, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control. One of America’s leading experts in cults and mind control provides an eye-opening analysis of Trump and the indoctrination tactics he uses to build a fanatical devotion in his supporters. Since his election as President, Trump’s behavior has become both more controversial and yet increasingly familiar. He relies on phrases like “fake news” and “build the wall” and continues to spread the divisive mentality of us vs. them. He lies constantly, has no conscience, never admits when he is wrong, and projects all of his shortcomings onto others. He has become more authoritarian, more outrageous, and yet many of his followers remain blindly devoted. His need to squash alternate information and his insistence of constant ego stroking are all characteristics of other famous leaders - cult leaders argues mind-control and licensed mental-health expert Steven Hassan. Hassan draws parallels between our current president and people like Jim Jones, David Koresh, Ron Hubbard, and Sun Myung Moon, arguing that this presidency is in many ways like a destructive cult.

April 23, 2020 Show

Wayne Clingman

discusses his co-authored book, The Life and Times of Frank Balistrieri: The Last, Most Powerful Godfather of Milwaukee. Balistrieri known as "Mr. Big", "Frankie Bal", "Mr. Slick", and "Mad Bomber", was a powerful Mafia boss of the Milwaukee crime family who was a central figure in casino skimming during the 1970s in Las Vegas, Nevada. The book chronicles Balistrieri's rise through the ranks of the Italian-American criminal underground and through his time controlling Milwaukee’s underworld.

April 16, 2020 Show

Anthony Raimondi

Pope John Paul 1 was elected Pope on August 26, 1978. Just 33 days later, he was dead. This week Crime Beat features Anthony Raimondi, the man who says he helped murder Pope John Paul 1. Raimondi claims he helped his cardinal cousin Paul Marcinkus kill the pope by force-feeding the latter with valium. The reason given was that John Paul had allegedly threatened to expose "a massive stock fraud run by Vatican insiders." Raimondi , a former mob enforcer for the Colombo crime family, is the nephew of Lucky Luciano and author of When the Bullet Hits the Bone: The Dead Don’t Walk

April 9, 2020 Show

Barbara Casey

discusses her book Velvalee Dickinson:: The “Doll Woman’s Spy, the story of the first American woman to face the death penalty on charges for spying for a wartime enemy.. In the early 1930s, Velvalee Dickinson moved to New York City where she opened her own exclusive doll shop and built a reputation as an expert in rare, antique, and foreign dolls. She traveled extensively around the country lecturing and exhibiting her dolls while building a wealthy clientele. Due to her husband’s poor health and her failing business, she accepted the role as a spy for the Imperial Japanese Government.

April 2, 2020 Show

Dennis Griffin and Ori Spado

discuss Vinnie Curto’s memoir, Survival: From Childhood Abuse Victim to World Boxing Champion. Vinnie Curto’s father, Jimmy Curto, was a raving, sick, alcoholic homosexual. The father and his drunken friends sexually abused young Vinnie, frequently raping him and performing other deviant sexual acts on him, while his mother, Loretta, stood by and let it happen. When Vinnie was fourteen, his father forced him to pursue a boxing career. To escape his living hell at home, at the age of sixteen Vinnie lied about his age and joined the Navy. After his stint in the military, Vinnie joined the Olympic boxing team, where he made several more valuable contacts, including the legendary trainer Angelo Dundee. Later he was managed by actor Sylvester Stallone. On September 20, 1996, Curto won the World Boxing Federation Super Cruiserweight Title in Lincoln, Nebraska

Gerald Posner

Pulitzer Prize winning finalist Gerald Posner to discuss his explosive and timely book, Pharma: Greed, Lies and the Poisoning of America. Posner investigates the heroes and villains of the trillion-dollar-a-year pharmaceutical industry and uncovers how those once entrusted with improving life have often betrayed that ideal to corruption and reckless profiteering—with deadly consequences. Pharma also uncovers the real story of the Sacklers, the family that became one of America’s wealthiest from the success of OxyContin, their blockbuster narcotic painkiller at the center of the opioid crisis.

March 19, 2020 Show

Charity Lee

author of How Now Butterfly: A Memoir of Murder, Survival, and Transformation Losing a young daughter to murder is the worst nightmare that a mother could possibly imagine, but what if the killer was her son? Charity Lee was thrust into this unimaginable situation when her 13-year-old son Paris murdered her beloved 4-year-old daughter, Ella.  Charity Lee goes through intense grief at the loss of her daughter, while at the same time trying to understand why her son would have done something as horrific as this, and how she could have missed the signs that Paris was a true psychopath.

March 12, 2020 Show

Christian Barth

discusses his book, The Garden State Parkway Murders: A Cold Case Mystery.” True crime writer and attorney Christian Barth investigates the harrowing story of the unsolved murders of Elizabeth Perry and Susan Davis. College friends, the two women were brutally knifed to death and their bodies left off the New Jersey parkway in the early hours of May 30, 1969.  Among the numerous suspects Barth identifies are infamous serial killers Ted Bundy and Gerald Eugene Stano, who were living within an hour’s drive from where the murder scene at the time they occurred. The killers also resided next to one another on Florida’s Death Row, and indirectly confessed to the double homicide.

February 27, 2020 Show

Tom Satterly,

is the author of All Secure: A Special Operations Soldier's Fight to Survive on the Battlefield and the Homefront. As a senior non-commissioned officer of Delta Force, the most elite and secretive special operations unit in the US military, Command Sergeant Major Tom Satterly fought some of this country's most fearsome enemies. Over the course of 20 years and thousands of missions, he's fought desperately for his life, rescued hostages, killed and captured terrorist leaders, and seen his friends maimed and killed around him. All Secure is in part Tom's journey into a world so dark and dangerous that most Americans can't contemplate its existence. It recounts what it is like to be on the front lines with one of America's most highly trained warriors. All Secure is an insider's view of "The Unit".

February 20, 2020 Show

William Rosenau

discusses his book, Tonight We Bombed the U.S. Capitol: The Explosive Story of M19, America's First Female Terrorist Group. By the end of the 1970s, many radicals had called it quits, but six veteran women extremists came together to finish the fight. These women had spent their entire adult lives embroiled in political struggles: protesting the Vietnam War, fighting for black and Native American liberation, and confronting US imperialism. They created a new organization to wage their war: The May 19th Communist Organization, or “M19,” a name derived from the birthday shared by Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, two of their revolutionary idols. Together, these six women carried out some of the most daring operations in the history of domestic terrorism—from prison breakouts and murderous armed robberies, to a bombing campaign that wreaked havoc on the nation’s capital. Three decades later, M19’s actions and shocking tactics still reverberate for many reasons, but one truly sets them apart: unlike any other American terrorist group before or since, M19 was created and led by women. William Rosenau, PhD, is a senior research scientist at CNA, a nonprofit research and analysis organization, and a fellow in the International Security program at New America.

Jesus Ruiz Henao

the man MI5 described as the United Kingdom’s first billion dollar cocaine kingpin. Emigrating to the United Kingdom about 1990 as a refugee, Ruiz lived a quiet, suburban life in London while holding down mundane cleaning or bus-driving jobs. But Ruiz was actually importing cocaine with a street value of a billion dollars over the course of 10 years -- the largest operation of its kind British police have ever uncovered. Detectives suspect that up to 20,000 people could have been involved in the operation, mainly in Colombia, collecting the drug money which was transferred there in very small quantities. The scope of their network, supplying drugs to every major UK city, was such that, after their arrest, the price on the streets shot up by 50 per cent. The life rights to Ruiz Henao’s story has been optioned by Crime Beat host Ron Chepesiuk.

February 6, 2020 Show

Roman Martin

Author of UNDERWORLD: How To Survive And Thrive In The American Mafia. Have you ever fantasized about being able to do whatever you want, when you want, and to whom you want? Or perhaps you’ve dreamed about never having to take crap off anyone ever again? If so, then the Mafia could be the perfect new profession for you! For the first time in history, Roman Martin has published an easy-to-follow self-help guide on how to join and rise in the most exclusive men’s club in the world—the Italian-American Mafia (aka La Cosa Nostra). He can teach you about everything mob-related, from loan-sharking to leg-breaking to corpse disposal, all without leaving the comfort of your home or prison cell.

January 30, 2020 Show

Alan Warren

talks about one of the world’s most scary prisoners: Robert Maudsley. Alan Warren is the author of Hannibal the Cannibal: The True Story of Robert Maudsley. Robert Maudsley is deemed to be the ‘Most Dangerous Prisoner in Britain.’ Even though he only killed one person outside of prison, his remaining victims were claimed while incarcerated. Robert Maudsley was dubbed “Hannibal the Cannibal’ on account of his thirst for eating the brains of his victims.

January 23, 2020 Show

Jay Goldberg

discusses his book, The Courtroom Is My Theater: My Lifelong Representation of Famous Politicians, Industrialists, Entertainers, "Men of Honor," and More. The book chronicles Goldberg’s journey through the practice of law with some of the world’s most powerful and colorful characters, including Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy, Willie Nelson, Miles Davis and Armand Hammer. In The Courtroom Is My Theater, Jay Goldberg shows why he is one of the preeminent trial attorneys in America, as he shares stories of his high-profile courtroom drama as well as his adventures outside of the courtroom with some of the country’s most prominent politicians, businessmen, entertainers, and “men of honor.”

January 16, 2020

Anthony Celano

discusses his novel, The Case of Two in the Trunk: A Sergeant Markie Mystery. Celano is a retired NYPD police officer and Organized Crime Control Bureau investigator. He worked narcotics cases involving John Gotti, Greg Scarpa and other noted mobsters.. Characters in Celano’s entertaining novel include a psychopath detective who alternates between reality and invented fantasy and views this case as a stepping stone that will catapult him to great heights and a women who is a career mafia assassin.

January 9, 2020 Show

Ori Spado

discusses his book, The Accidental Gangster: From Insurance Agent to Mob Boss of Hollywood. For nearly forty years Orlando 'Ori' Spado was a friend and associate of John 'Sonny' Franzese, underboss of the Colombo organized crime family. His relationship with Sonny brought him to the attention of the FBI, and eventually led to his being indicted with Sonny on federal RICO charges, and imprisoned. The book documents Spado’s fall from a well-known Hollywood fixer mixing with A list celebrities to serving 62 months in Federal prison, and ultimately making a determined comeback.

www.TheAccidentalGangster.com

January 2, 2020 Show

Nick Christophers and John Alite

discuss their book, Prison Rules. The book takes an inside look at the U.S. prison system as told through the eyes of ex-mobster John Alite, who was the bodyguard for the son of the notorious mob boss John Gotti. We will take a look at prison life from the time someone is arrested to when they are released from their cell.. You will learn what is needed to survive on the inside and hear some shocking statistics about life in prison.

www.NickChristophers.org        www.JohnAlite.com

Jota Cardona and Thomas Salme

Jota Cardona, a former drug kingpin with the Medellin Cartel and the subject of the documentary, Rescued from Hell. Also appearing on the show is Thomas Salme, the documentary’s director. Cardona made millions in the illicit drug trade, smoked marijuana and worked with Pablo Escobar, as well as Griselda Blanco and other notorious drug lords. Convicted of drug trafficking, Cardona spent 18 years in prison. Cardona is also the author of the book, El Narco Rescatado del Infierno. The cover shows Pablo Escobar in hell surrounded by monsters.

December 19, 2019 Show

Elaine Shannon

discusses her book, Hunting LeRoux: The Inside Story of the DEA Takedown of a Criminal Genius and His Empire. The book tells the story of Paul LeRoux, the twisted-genius entrepreneur and cold-blooded killer who brought revolutionary innovation to international crime, and the exclusive inside story of how the DEA’s elite, secretive 960 Group brought him down. Shannon’s book introduces a new breed of criminal spawned by the savage, greed-exalting underside of the Age of Innovation—and a new kind of true crime story. We will get a good look into the future of crime—a future that is very dark.

December 12, 2019 Show

Fake News—Is it a Threat to Democracy?

This week’s Crime Beat show features a timely panel discussion on the topic of Fake News—Is it a Threat to Democracy? It was not a term many people used four years ago, but "fake news" is now seen as one of the greatest threats to democracy, free debate and the Western order. As well as being a favorite term of U.S. President Donald Trump, it was also named 2017's word of the year raising tensions between nations, and may lead to regulation of social media. So great is the danger, the Doomsday Clock, which symbolizes the threat of global annihilation, remains at two minutes to midnight thanks to the rise of fake news and information warfare, its keepers have said. To discuss this topic, we have three distinguished journalists: On the panel are Diane Dimond, an American investigative journalist, author, syndicated columnist, and TV commentator, John Dedakis, novelist and  former editor on CNN's  “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer;” and Dr. Ginger Blackstone,  an Assistant Professor at Harding University and News Director of the university's cable television station, HU16.

August 15, 2019 Show

Bob Walason (L) and Joe Broadmeadow (R)

 the authors of Unmade: Honor, Loyalty Redemption. Unmade is the story of Bob Walason, who, as a child, endured abuse no child should ever face. Walason survived, and through the lure of organized crime, descended into the brutal and violent world of a feared mob enforcer. Resilient and determined, Walason escaped the mob and established himself successful entrepreneur. Writer Joe Broadmeadow is a writer and retired captain from the East Providence, Rhode Island Police Department.

August 8, 2019 Show

Alan Warren

discusses his book, Dinner, Drinks and Death: The Dennis Nilsen Story. The quiet and soft spoken Scottish Nilsen, a retired policeman with military service. Nilsen was a necrophile and one of the United Kingdom’s worse serial killers He murdered at least twelve young men between 1978 and 1983 in the middle-class neighborhood of Muswell Hill, London.

August 1, 2019 Show

Rich Cohen

Distinguished journalist Rich Cohen talks about his latest book  The Last Pirate of New York: A Ghost Ship, a Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation The book tells the story of Albert Hicks, New York City’s notorious underworld figure, from his humble origins to the wild, globe-crossing, bacchanalian crime spree that forged his ruthlessness and his reputation, to his ultimate incarnation as a demon who terrorized lower Manhattan, at a time when pirates anchored off 14th Street.  Albert HIcks could well lay claim to being the Big Apples first big gangster.

July 25, 2019 Show   2 Guests

Laura Lippman

New York Times bestselling author. We will be discussing her latest book, Lady in the Lake.  It is a novel set in 1960s Baltimore that combines modern psychological insights with elements of classic noir. It is about a housewife  turned aspiring reporter who pursues the murder of a forgotten young woman.

John Dedakis

Journalist, Educator, and Writing Coach Jorhn DeDakis. He is is a former CNN Senior Copy Editor for the Emmy and Peabody-Award winning news program "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer." His novel Fake offers a real-life look behind-the-scenes at the ethical struggles of a female journalist in a #MeToo world.

July 18, 2019 Show

Shannon O'Leary

a pseudonym for a prolific writer and performer from Australia. Her first book, The Blood on My Hands, told the story of her traumatic and violent childhood in the 1960s and '70s Australia. Her sequel, Out of the Fire and into the Pan, which was published last march, explains how she progressed into the adult world while coming to terms with her terrifying past. It is a story of personal growth and of how O'Leary navigates her transition into adulthood, while seeking out the social norms and finding her place in the world. O'Leary has acted and directed on the stage and on Australian national TV. She also runs her own production company and several music schools.

July 11, 2019 Show

Johnny Curry

a major Detroit drug dealer from the 1980s. Curry is played by actor Johnathan Majors in the recent White Boy Rick movie. Johnny Curry's story is interesting and significant because he rose to underworld power by taking advantage of Detroit’s corrupt political establishment. Johnny was married to, Cathy Volsan, the favorite niece of Detroit’s politically powerful mayor, Coleman Young, and Detroit’s highly politicized police department knew the mayor’s family was to be treated with kid gloves. A federal grand jury indicted Curry and his gang in the summer of 1987, and after pleading guilty, they received prison sentences of various lengths.

June 27, 2019 Show

Todd Merer and Shaun Attwood

discuss the history and legacy of Colombia’s Cali Cartel, arguably history’s most powerful criminal organization. At the height of its reign the early 1990s, the DEA cited the Cali Cartel as hving control over 90% of the world's cocaine market and were said to be directly responsible for the growth of the cocaine market in Europe, controlling 90% of the market there as well. The cartel became dominant after a brutal war of attrition with Pablo Escobar and came close to turning Colombia into a “narco state”. The cartel was led by the brothers Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, Jose "Chepe” Santacruz Londono and Francisco Helmer “Pacho” Herrera. Todd Merer was the American lawyer for Pacho Herrera and met with him and the cartel numerous times in Colombia. Shaun Attwood, who once served time in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s infamous ArIzona jail and is banned from entry to the U.S., is the author of The Cali Cartel: Beyond Narcos (The War on Drugs Crime Beat host Ron Chepesiuk has written and published extensively about the Cali Cartel since the early 1990s.

June 20, 2019 Show

Don Brown

the author of Travesty of Justice: The Shocking Prosecution of Lieutenant Clint Lorance. The book chronicles the true story of one of the most controversial prosecutions in American military history. Lorance was a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army who in August 2013 was found guilty on two counts of second-degree murder for ordering soldiers in his platoon to open fire at three men on a motorcycle in southern Afghanistan in July 2012. In Travesty of Justice, Brown charges that the prosecution railroaded Lieutenant Lorance into a 20-year sentence by hiding crucial evidence from the military jury and ordering Lorance’s own men to testify against him or face murder charges themselves. Lorance is serving a 20-year prison sentence at Fort Leavenworth. Brown, a best-selling author, is a former military JAG officer and Special U.S, Assistant U.S. Attorney who serves as lead counsel on Clint Lorance's legal team.