October 11, In a command appearance, Robert K. Whitman,
former FBI agent discusses his book, Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures, on Crime Beat Radio.
The Wall Street Journal called him “a living legend.” The London Times dubbed him “the most famous art detective in the world.”
In Priceless, Robert K. Wittman, the founder of the FBI’s Art Crime Team, pulls back the curtain on his remarkable career for the first time, offering a real-life international thriller to rival The Thomas Crown Affair.
On the air since January 28, 2011, Crime Beat is a weekly hour-long radio program that airs every Thursday at 8 p.m. EST. Crime Beat presents fascinating topics that bring listeners closer to the dynamic underbelly of the world of crime. Guests have included ex-mobsters, undercover law enforcement agents, sports officials, informants, prisoners, drug dealers and investigative journalists, who have provided insights and fresh information about the world’s most fascinating subject: crime.
Crime Beat is currently averaging 130,000 listeners plus each week, and the figure is growing. Crime Beat is hosted by award-winning crime writer and documentary producer Ron Chepesiuk (www.ronchepesiuk.com) and broadcast journalist and freelance writer Will Hryb.
Get the latest breaking current news and explore our Historic Archive of articles focusing on The Mafia, Organized Crime, The Mob and Mobsters, Gangs and Gangsters, Political Corruption, True Crime, and the Legal System at TheChicagoSyndicate.com
Sunday, October 07, 2012
Thursday, October 04, 2012
Mob Wives Chicago on DVD
"Mob Wives Chicago" follows the lives of five women allegedly connected to "The Outfit," Chicago's version of the Mob, as they bear the cross for the sins of their Mob-associated fathers. With lives that are right off the pages of a story book, each woman has chosen her own way to live her life in the city that was once home to Al Capone, sometimes in spite of and many times because of who her father is. Along the way these women battle their friends, families and each other as they try to do what's best for themselves and their children. But ultimately, it is the ghost of their fathers they battle, living and dead, as they try to overcome and persevere in the face of these men's notorious legacies.
Tuesday, October 02, 2012
Bill O'Reilly's "Killing Kennedy" Released Today
Bill O'Reilly describes himself as a journalistic "watchdog" and a "champion bloviator."
He's not a historian — "not really. That's not my discipline," he says in his corner office at Fox News, home of The O'Reilly Factor, the top-rated show on cable news. But few history books can approach the popularity of O'Reilly's Killing Lincoln, which has sold more than 2 million copies since it was released a year ago. His new book, Killing Kennedy (Henry Holt), about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, could be as popular. It goes on sale Tuesday.
Both books were co-written by Martin Dugard, who did most of the research, leaving the writing to O'Reilly, whose approach is to write "history that's fun to read" in a "populist way. No pinheaded stuff, just roar it through!"
It's history as fast-paced thriller, with dramatic foreshadowing in a you-are-there present tense. And, O'Reilly says, "it's all true!"
A few historians questioned details and a lack of documentation in Killing Lincoln. O'Reilly, a former high school history teacher, says any errors, corrected in later editions, are "picayune." The criticism, he says, is just jealousy.
"These guys toil in obscurity their whole lives, and a punk like me comes along and sells 2 million copies. They're not happy."
O'Reilly, 63, is to traditional history what best-selling novelist James Patterson is to literature. Neither gets much respect from academic types. Both say they don't care — all the way to bank.
They also share a collaborator. Dugard (whom O'Reilly calls "the best researcher I could find — and I talked to all the top guys") co-wrote Patterson's 2009 non-fiction bestseller, The Murder of King Tut, about a 3,000-year-old mystery.
O'Reilly says he didn't solve all the mysteries of the Kennedy assassination. He found no evidence of a conspiracy but stops short of ruling it out.
"I know that Oswald killed Kennedy. Now, was he pushed? Encouraged to do it by outsiders? Possibly. Possibly. Was he sitting down with Fidel Castro? No."
But he adds, "There were people around Oswald who shouldn't have been there." He cites George de Mohrenschildt, a well-educated Russian immigrant with possible CIA connections, who "had ties to some very, very important people. Why is he hanging with this loser (Oswald)?"
De Mohrenschildt pops up in other books on the assassination. He's even a minor character in Stephen King's best-selling novel 11/22/63. But O'Reilly has a personal connection.In 1977, as a Dallas TV reporter, O'Reilly tried to interview de Mohrenschildt, who also was a target of congressional investigators re-examining the assassination. As O'Reilly tells it, as he knocked on the door of de Mohrenschildt's daughter's house in Palm Beach, Fla., he heard a shotgun blast. Police later ruled that de Mohrenschildt committed suicide. "There were rumors he was murdered," O'Reilly says, "but I found no evidence of that." He adds, "I'm still working the story. There's something there. What it is, I just don't know."
O'Reilly's biggest surprises were "how crazy, and I mean crazy," Oswald was, and "how little the authorities did to protect Kennedy" in Dallas.
Two-thirds of the book deals with Kennedy's presidency and private life, including his extramarital affairs. It portrays Kennedy as a pragmatic and decisive leader who treated sexual risks as "his carpe diem way of living life to the utmost."
"I wanted to show the good and the bad," O'Reilly says.
He says his biggest break was getting FBI agents who flooded Dallas after the assassination to share what they learned about Oswald. He says that helped him understand the assassin, a former Marine who defected to Russia, then returned to the USA with his Russian-born wife, Marina.
For a taste of O'Reilly's style, consider his description of Oswald on the eve of the assassination as he visits his estranged wife.
As O'Reilly sets the scene, Oswald is undecided about shooting Kennedy as he begs his wife to take him back. "But if she doesn't, " O'Reilly writes, "Oswald will be left with no choice."
"That's how delusional Lee Harvey Oswald's world has become. He now deals only in absolutes: either live happily ever after — or murder the president."
O'Reilly may not be a historian, but his office walls are filled with historic artifacts, including the last South Vietnamese flag to fly over the U.S. Embassy in Saigon and the errant Chicago Tribune front page proclaiming "Dewey Defeats Truman."
He boasts, "Everything in here is an original," which could be applied to O'Reilly himself.
His love-him-or-hate-him personality is part of his appeal. To viewers who complain that he shouts, he says, "Turn down the volume. I don't really shout that much. I'm just a loud Irish guy."
He says that the liberal media "don't get me" — that he's not a conservative but a "traditionalist." In 2009, he supported President Obama's financial bailouts and economic stimulus, which, he says "led to a big brouhaha with (Rush) Limbaugh." Now, O'Reilly complains, Obama "has lost control of the economy." Mitt Romney, he says, can't connect with "the guy making $40,000 a year."
He writes popular history "to get people engaged with their country." He complains that few history books are fun to read: "Even the really good ones, by Robert Caro and these guys — I mean, they're brilliant guys, but to get through 800 pages, you either have to be retired or on vacation for six weeks."
For those keeping score, Caro's fourth book on Lyndon Johnson,The Passage of Power, is 712 pages, including 79 pages of footnotes and sources. Killing Kennedy is 325 pages, including seven pages about its sources.
The Passage of Power landed on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list at No. 15 and spent seven weeks in the top 150. Killing Lincoln landed on the list at No. 3 and has been in top 50 for 42 weeks. It's now No. 38. (A kids' version, Lincoln's Last Days, landed on the list at No. 42 and is now No. 61.)
No history book has sold so well since David McCullough's 2001 biography, John Adams, which was adapted as an HBO miniseries. A two-hour version of Killing Lincoln, narrated by Tom Hanks, will be on National Geographic in February.
But beyond its commercial success, Killing Lincoln got mixed reviews. Its "narrative flair" was praised by University of New Hampshire historian Ellen Fitzpatrick in a Washington Post review, but she said it "offers no direct citations for any of its assertions."
Rae Emerson, deputy superintendent at Ford's Theatre, site of Lincoln's assassination, cited seven errors in the book — such as references to Lincoln in the Oval Office, which wasn't built until 1909.
O'Reilly says he invited anyone who challenged his facts to appear on his TV show, but no one would. Emerson didn't respond to questions from USA TODAY.
As with Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy doesn't always name names or cite its sources.
It describes a 1962 party at Bing Crosby's home and a rendezvous between Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe this way: "There is an intimacy in their movements that leaves no doubt they will be sleeping together tonight."
O'Reilly says that's based on an article in the British tabloid Daily Mail, confirmed by a federal agent who was at the party. "I don't want to sound defensive, but either you believe what we wrote, or you don't," he says. "I'm not writing a Ph.D. dissertation."
Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University historian and prolific author (most recently of the biography Cronkite), says that popular history often omits footnotes and that O'Reilly shouldn't be "held to a double standard because of his politics."
But Brinkley adds that the Kennedy assassination remains a heated issue, and "whatever O'Reilly writes, it will be picked apart. The lack of footnotes and details about its sources make it harder to find the book's frailties. But someone will find them — if they are there."
Thanks to Bob Minzesheimer.
He's not a historian — "not really. That's not my discipline," he says in his corner office at Fox News, home of The O'Reilly Factor, the top-rated show on cable news. But few history books can approach the popularity of O'Reilly's Killing Lincoln, which has sold more than 2 million copies since it was released a year ago. His new book, Killing Kennedy (Henry Holt), about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, could be as popular. It goes on sale Tuesday.
Both books were co-written by Martin Dugard, who did most of the research, leaving the writing to O'Reilly, whose approach is to write "history that's fun to read" in a "populist way. No pinheaded stuff, just roar it through!"
It's history as fast-paced thriller, with dramatic foreshadowing in a you-are-there present tense. And, O'Reilly says, "it's all true!"
A few historians questioned details and a lack of documentation in Killing Lincoln. O'Reilly, a former high school history teacher, says any errors, corrected in later editions, are "picayune." The criticism, he says, is just jealousy.
"These guys toil in obscurity their whole lives, and a punk like me comes along and sells 2 million copies. They're not happy."
O'Reilly, 63, is to traditional history what best-selling novelist James Patterson is to literature. Neither gets much respect from academic types. Both say they don't care — all the way to bank.
They also share a collaborator. Dugard (whom O'Reilly calls "the best researcher I could find — and I talked to all the top guys") co-wrote Patterson's 2009 non-fiction bestseller, The Murder of King Tut, about a 3,000-year-old mystery.
O'Reilly says he didn't solve all the mysteries of the Kennedy assassination. He found no evidence of a conspiracy but stops short of ruling it out.
"I know that Oswald killed Kennedy. Now, was he pushed? Encouraged to do it by outsiders? Possibly. Possibly. Was he sitting down with Fidel Castro? No."
But he adds, "There were people around Oswald who shouldn't have been there." He cites George de Mohrenschildt, a well-educated Russian immigrant with possible CIA connections, who "had ties to some very, very important people. Why is he hanging with this loser (Oswald)?"
De Mohrenschildt pops up in other books on the assassination. He's even a minor character in Stephen King's best-selling novel 11/22/63. But O'Reilly has a personal connection.In 1977, as a Dallas TV reporter, O'Reilly tried to interview de Mohrenschildt, who also was a target of congressional investigators re-examining the assassination. As O'Reilly tells it, as he knocked on the door of de Mohrenschildt's daughter's house in Palm Beach, Fla., he heard a shotgun blast. Police later ruled that de Mohrenschildt committed suicide. "There were rumors he was murdered," O'Reilly says, "but I found no evidence of that." He adds, "I'm still working the story. There's something there. What it is, I just don't know."
O'Reilly's biggest surprises were "how crazy, and I mean crazy," Oswald was, and "how little the authorities did to protect Kennedy" in Dallas.
Two-thirds of the book deals with Kennedy's presidency and private life, including his extramarital affairs. It portrays Kennedy as a pragmatic and decisive leader who treated sexual risks as "his carpe diem way of living life to the utmost."
"I wanted to show the good and the bad," O'Reilly says.
He says his biggest break was getting FBI agents who flooded Dallas after the assassination to share what they learned about Oswald. He says that helped him understand the assassin, a former Marine who defected to Russia, then returned to the USA with his Russian-born wife, Marina.
For a taste of O'Reilly's style, consider his description of Oswald on the eve of the assassination as he visits his estranged wife.
As O'Reilly sets the scene, Oswald is undecided about shooting Kennedy as he begs his wife to take him back. "But if she doesn't, " O'Reilly writes, "Oswald will be left with no choice."
"That's how delusional Lee Harvey Oswald's world has become. He now deals only in absolutes: either live happily ever after — or murder the president."
O'Reilly may not be a historian, but his office walls are filled with historic artifacts, including the last South Vietnamese flag to fly over the U.S. Embassy in Saigon and the errant Chicago Tribune front page proclaiming "Dewey Defeats Truman."
He boasts, "Everything in here is an original," which could be applied to O'Reilly himself.
His love-him-or-hate-him personality is part of his appeal. To viewers who complain that he shouts, he says, "Turn down the volume. I don't really shout that much. I'm just a loud Irish guy."
He says that the liberal media "don't get me" — that he's not a conservative but a "traditionalist." In 2009, he supported President Obama's financial bailouts and economic stimulus, which, he says "led to a big brouhaha with (Rush) Limbaugh." Now, O'Reilly complains, Obama "has lost control of the economy." Mitt Romney, he says, can't connect with "the guy making $40,000 a year."
He writes popular history "to get people engaged with their country." He complains that few history books are fun to read: "Even the really good ones, by Robert Caro and these guys — I mean, they're brilliant guys, but to get through 800 pages, you either have to be retired or on vacation for six weeks."
For those keeping score, Caro's fourth book on Lyndon Johnson,The Passage of Power, is 712 pages, including 79 pages of footnotes and sources. Killing Kennedy is 325 pages, including seven pages about its sources.
The Passage of Power landed on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list at No. 15 and spent seven weeks in the top 150. Killing Lincoln landed on the list at No. 3 and has been in top 50 for 42 weeks. It's now No. 38. (A kids' version, Lincoln's Last Days, landed on the list at No. 42 and is now No. 61.)
No history book has sold so well since David McCullough's 2001 biography, John Adams, which was adapted as an HBO miniseries. A two-hour version of Killing Lincoln, narrated by Tom Hanks, will be on National Geographic in February.
But beyond its commercial success, Killing Lincoln got mixed reviews. Its "narrative flair" was praised by University of New Hampshire historian Ellen Fitzpatrick in a Washington Post review, but she said it "offers no direct citations for any of its assertions."
Rae Emerson, deputy superintendent at Ford's Theatre, site of Lincoln's assassination, cited seven errors in the book — such as references to Lincoln in the Oval Office, which wasn't built until 1909.
O'Reilly says he invited anyone who challenged his facts to appear on his TV show, but no one would. Emerson didn't respond to questions from USA TODAY.
As with Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy doesn't always name names or cite its sources.
It describes a 1962 party at Bing Crosby's home and a rendezvous between Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe this way: "There is an intimacy in their movements that leaves no doubt they will be sleeping together tonight."
O'Reilly says that's based on an article in the British tabloid Daily Mail, confirmed by a federal agent who was at the party. "I don't want to sound defensive, but either you believe what we wrote, or you don't," he says. "I'm not writing a Ph.D. dissertation."
Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University historian and prolific author (most recently of the biography Cronkite), says that popular history often omits footnotes and that O'Reilly shouldn't be "held to a double standard because of his politics."
But Brinkley adds that the Kennedy assassination remains a heated issue, and "whatever O'Reilly writes, it will be picked apart. The lack of footnotes and details about its sources make it harder to find the book's frailties. But someone will find them — if they are there."
Thanks to Bob Minzesheimer.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Thomas Foley and John Sedgwick Discuss "Most Wanted: Pursuing Whitey Bulger, the Murderous Mob Chief the FBI Secretly Protected" on Crime Beat Radio
On October 4, Thomas Foley and John Sedgwick discuss their explosive book, Most Wanted: Pursuing Whitey Bulger, the Murderous Mob Chief the FBI Secretly Protected, on Crime Beat Radio.
Most Wanted is a true-life thriller, and Foley is the hero at its center. His investigative efforts resulted in criminal convictions of a half-dozen of Boston’s most notorious thugs and also led to the conviction of John Connolly, one of the FBI agents who abetted Bulger; Connolly is now serving a forty-year prison sentence. In this book, Foley, a cop’s cop, honestly recounts how his wide-eyed admiration for the nation’s top law enforcement agency was gradually transformed by dark realities he didn’t want to believe.
On the air since January 28, 2011, Crime Beat is a weekly hour-long radio program that airs every Thursday at 8 p.m. EST. Crime Beat presents fascinating topics that bring listeners closer to the dynamic underbelly of the world of crime. Guests have included ex-mobsters, undercover law enforcement agents, sports officials, informants, prisoners, drug dealers and investigative journalists, who have provided insights and fresh information about the world’s most fascinating subject: crime.
Crime Beat is currently averaging 130,000 listeners plus each week, and the figure is growing. Crime Beat is hosted by award-winning crime writer and documentary producer Ron Chepesiuk (www.ronchepesiuk.com) and broadcast journalist and freelance writer Will Hryb.
Most Wanted is a true-life thriller, and Foley is the hero at its center. His investigative efforts resulted in criminal convictions of a half-dozen of Boston’s most notorious thugs and also led to the conviction of John Connolly, one of the FBI agents who abetted Bulger; Connolly is now serving a forty-year prison sentence. In this book, Foley, a cop’s cop, honestly recounts how his wide-eyed admiration for the nation’s top law enforcement agency was gradually transformed by dark realities he didn’t want to believe.
On the air since January 28, 2011, Crime Beat is a weekly hour-long radio program that airs every Thursday at 8 p.m. EST. Crime Beat presents fascinating topics that bring listeners closer to the dynamic underbelly of the world of crime. Guests have included ex-mobsters, undercover law enforcement agents, sports officials, informants, prisoners, drug dealers and investigative journalists, who have provided insights and fresh information about the world’s most fascinating subject: crime.
Crime Beat is currently averaging 130,000 listeners plus each week, and the figure is growing. Crime Beat is hosted by award-winning crime writer and documentary producer Ron Chepesiuk (www.ronchepesiuk.com) and broadcast journalist and freelance writer Will Hryb.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Live by Night - Novel which Centers on Gangster Joe Coughlin, Steeped in Bootleg Booze and Organized Crime of Prohibition-Era America
Boston, 1926. The '20s are roaring. Liquor is flowing, bullets are flying, and one man sets out of make his mark on the world.
Joe Coughlin, the son of a prominent Boston police captain, has long since turned his back on his proper upbringing. Now in the pay of the city's most fearsome mobsters, Joe enjoys the spoils, thrills, and notoriety of being an outlaw.
Joe embarks on a dizzying journey up the ladder of organized crime that takes him from Jazz Age Boston to Tampa's Latin Quarter to the streets of Cuba. Live by Night is a riveting epic layered with loyal friends and callous enemies, tough rumrunners and sultry femme fatales, Bible-quoting evangelists and cruel Klansmen, all battling for survival and their piece of the American dream. A compelling saga of love and revenge, it is a spellbinding tour de force of betrayal and redemption that brings to life a bygone era when sin was cause for celebration and vice was a national virtue.
Joe Coughlin, the son of a prominent Boston police captain, has long since turned his back on his proper upbringing. Now in the pay of the city's most fearsome mobsters, Joe enjoys the spoils, thrills, and notoriety of being an outlaw.
Joe embarks on a dizzying journey up the ladder of organized crime that takes him from Jazz Age Boston to Tampa's Latin Quarter to the streets of Cuba. Live by Night is a riveting epic layered with loyal friends and callous enemies, tough rumrunners and sultry femme fatales, Bible-quoting evangelists and cruel Klansmen, all battling for survival and their piece of the American dream. A compelling saga of love and revenge, it is a spellbinding tour de force of betrayal and redemption that brings to life a bygone era when sin was cause for celebration and vice was a national virtue.
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- Mob Hit on Rudy Giuilani Discussed
- The Chicago Syndicate AKA "The Outfit"
- Aaron Hernandez: American Sports Story - The Truth About Aaron: My Journey to Understand My Brother
- Village of Stone Park Place Convicted Mob Felon on Pension Board, Trustees Hide and Sneak Out Back Door, When Asked About It
- Mexican Drug Lord and Sinaloa Cartel Co-Founder, Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada Arrested along with Son of El Chapo, Joaquin Guzman Lopez #ElChapo #ElMayo #Sinaloa #Fentanyl
- Mob Boss Dies
- Son of Mob Hit Man Takes Witness Stand
- Growing Up the Son of Tony Spilotro
- Prison Inmate, Charles Miceli, Says He Has Information on Mob Crimes
- Mob Murder Suggests Link to International Drug Ring