NEARLY FORGOTTEN TRUE CRIMES - BOX SET

                                                           

Now available on Kindle by clicking here

 
Nearly Forgotten True Crimes tells the story of 7 crimes, and the events around them, which took place in the USA in the early 1900s, and captured the attention of the American press and public at the time.

* Alma Kellner, the 8 year old daughter of a wealthy brewing family in Louisville, Kentucky, disappeared on December 8, 1909. Initially thought to be a victim of a kidnapping, her mutilated body was eventually discovered in a church cellar six months later. The church janitor, disappeared at about the same time, and after her body was discovered became the subject of a nationwide manhunt.

* Patrolman James H. Masterson was murdered in January, 1927, in a New York City speakeasy. Two of the best sleuths of the Homicide Squad, were picked for the task and were soon on the trail of the four ruthless murderers, eventually tracking them down to their mountain hideout where a deadly shootout ensued.

* Born 17th February, 1909 Irene Schroeder was the first female to go to the electric chair in Pennsylvania for murder. Together with her hapless lover, they embarked on a short lived rampage across the countryside robbing and killing as they went leaving a trail of destruction behind them.

* Terrified screams brought police rushing to a bleak and windy underpass in Fall River, Massachusetts, to find the butchered body of young and attractive Domka Peremybida. It didn't take them long to find a main suspect in Anton Retkevitch. Her inability to keep away from him, had ultimately lead to her brutal murder.

* Mild, scholarly and well respected local man Elvin Wood snapped under the pressure of mounting debts and shot to death his best friend in cold blood in a botched blackmail plan. After receiving the death sentence, and in jail waiting for his execution to take place, this is Elvin's own story and confession that led him to the electric chair.

* Alfred L. Sells was a career criminal, as hard and tough as they come. In the frame for a brutal double murder, but with only circumstantial evidence, two detectives from Los Angeles police department were given the almost impossible task of persuading Alfred to admit he was the killer. The usual third-degree techniques would not work with Alfred Sells. This story tells how the detectives adopted a totally unique and unusual approach in what was to become the "Strangest Third Degree" they'd ever attempted.

* Most people have heard of a "Ponzi Scheme". This is the story of the man this type of fraud is now named after, Charles Ponzi, and how after going on the run, one of the most intensive manhunts ever undertaken in the USA followed.

True American Crime Stories 

Special 4 Volume Box Set

Volume 1 contains:
• The Jekyll and Hyde Mob
• The Whispering Bride
• The Red Bandit
• The Master Forgers

Volume 2 contains:
• Antonio Boccadora – The Human Cat
• Frankie Yale – The “Al Capone” of Brooklyn
• A Gang War in Manhattan
• Ray Sutherland – The Terror of Mohawk Valley

Volume 3 contains:
• "Pretty Boy" Floyd - The Baby Faced Killer
• Jack "Legs" Diamond
• Waxey Gordon
• Machine Gun Kelly

Volume 4 contains:
• Dillinger - Mad Dog of the Mid-West
• Capone’s Trigger Men
• Charlie Birger – A Short and Bloody Life
• The Unknowns

Order your copy today..!

Volume 2 of my series "Public Enemies - Gangster Stories from the Roaring Twenties" is available now on Amazon Kindle here

 

Joe Masseria - The Mafia boss who 'dodged' bullets
Now known as the Genovese crime family, Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria became the leader of one of New York's five Mafia families after waging a bloody war to take it over. In 1922 he survived a point blank assassination attempt when two gunmen opened fire on him. He miraculously evaded them without a scratch - just two bullet holes in his straw hat.  Superstitious mobsters dubbed him "the man who can dodge bullets", but his luck wasn't going to last forever.....   
                                     
Louis "Lepke" Buchalter - The man behind Murder Inc
Based in New York City, Buchalter was a leading racketeer of the time and became the boss of the Mafia assassination gang eventually famously dubbed by the press as "Murder Inc".  His organization controlled many rackets in the city and it's thought that he and his partner had around 250 men under their command at one time, pulling in around US$1m per year, (equal to around 20 times that at today's value). 
Convicted of murder, he was the only prominent gang boss to eventually be executed in Sing Sing prison in 1944.       
                                                                                  
The 'Terrible Genna  Brothers' 
Out of the violent and garbage filled streets of Chicago's West Side slums, the wild Genna brothers were unparalleled in the art of murder as they smashed and crushed everyone in their path.  Operating in Chicago's Little Italy after arriving from Sicily they teamed up with the Chicago Outfit, another Italian gang. They ran afoul of other mobsters like Dean O'Banion and Bugs Moran resulting in a bloody gang war and the eventual killing of 3 of the brothers.     

                                                                                                                                                                                 Alvin Karpis - "Old Creepy" - The Last Public Enemy Number One                                               
In a ruthless career of robbing, killing and kidnapping, Alvin Karpis (Old Creepy to his friends due to his sinister smile), earned himself the title of Public Enemy #1 in which he reveled.  One of the leaders of the Barker-Karpis gang in the 1930s, he was one of the last prominent depression era gangsters caught, eventually arrested by J. Edgar Hoover himself and imprisoned in Alcatraz where he spent 26 years.
                 
Vince and Pete Coll - Killers for Hire                     
Brothers Vince and Pete Coll arrived in New York fresh from Ireland, determined to succeed. Starting as bodyguards for mobster Dutch Schultz, they graduated to hijacking booze shipments and working as assassins for Dutch. Vince became a killer feared by all, earning the nickname, "Mad Dog".  A vicious shooting war started when the Colls fell out with their boss and formed their own gang.  After Pete was murdered, Vince went on the rampage during which time around 20 of Dutch's men were killed.  Vince had to pay, and Dutch made sure he did.

Order your copy today..!

 

The first edition of my new series "Public Enemies - Gangster Stories from the Roaring Twenties" is available now on      Amazon Kindle here

 

 Public Enemies – True Crime Gangster Stories from the Roaring Twenties
From the era of gangsters, molls and prohibition, almost (but not quite), lost in the mists of time, these tales romp along with plenty of action and recreate the atmosphere of this exciting and dangerous era using the vernacular of the times.

You’ll have heard of most of these notorious criminals, but possibly not so much about one or two of them. All of them were real, ruthless hoodlums, and all had their "15 minutes of fame", leaving trails of death and mayhem behind them. Most did not live to an old age, and those that did were probably in jail.

Their escapades were daring and reckless and many paid the ultimate price in the end.


• Lucky Luciano –From Streetwise Kid to the Father of Organized Crime
Leaving poverty ravaged Sicily for New York with his family at the age of 10; Lucky was running his own protection racket and making a name for himself whilst still in his teens. Inevitably, he moved on to become the undisputed boss of organized crime in the USA, but it was his own ‘family’s’ involvement in prostitution which landed him a jail sentence of 30 to 50 years. It didn’t end there however as he continued to run the family affairs from prison where Lady Luck visited him with an offer he couldn’t refuse.

• Bugsy Siegel and “The Flamingo Hotel”
Through his gambling and bootlegging operations, plus numerous ruthless contract murders, Bugsy Siegel established himself as a key member of “The Syndicate” in New York. Relocating to Las Vegas with the blessing of Lucky Luciano in 1945 to expand the organizations activities, he built the famous Flamingo Club and Casino in the desert of Las Vegas using money provided by the East Coast mobsters. The hopelessly mismanaged project went way over budget, implicating Bugsy in the ‘misappropriation’ of funds and enraging his bosses – Bugsy’s day were numbered.

• Dutch Schultz – Beer Baron and Vicious Killer
From the slums of New York, Dutch Schultz rose through the ranks of crime to be named “the nation’s top gangster” by the FBI. Claiming to be a good guy simply supplying people with the beer they wanted, (illegally of course), he was also responsible for killing at least two of his own men he suspected of ‘skimming’ more of the proceeds than was due to them.

• Hymies Weiss - The Man Al Capone Feared
Earl Wojciechowski was born on Jan 25th 1898 in Chicago, but over time became known as Hymie Weiss, eventually teaming up with Dean O'Banion the leader of the North Side Gang who he succeeded after his murder in 1924. Hymie swore to avenge his friends death and waged wore on the Torrio-Capone criminal empire, even attempting to assassinate Capone himself. Violent gun battles on the streets of Chicago were regular occurrences during this period as the gangs fought for control of the lucrative bootlegging and other rackets - things had to come to a head sooner or later.

• Wilbur Underhill – The Tri-State Terror
It took a 24 man task force to bring down Mad Dog Wilbur Underhill in the end. During 12 years of rampaging through the Southwest he was sentenced to life for a murder in Oklahoma, and received another life sentence in Kansas after escaping jail in a ten man breakout and murdering a policeman. Suspected of involvement in the famous Kansas City Massacre, Wilbur began his life of crime as a burglar, and quickly moved on to armed robbery and murder.

79 Hangings - Now available on Kindle

Hanging as a method of execution began around 2,500 years ago in Iran (previously known as Persia), and was brought to the USA originally from the UK.  As a public spectacle, it was considered by some in early times as entertainment, but at the same time served as an extremely visible example of the kind of punishment offenders could expect.

The local sheriff, or other legal representative in the area where the sentence was passed, usually got the unenviable job of carrying out the grim task, but most of them had very little idea of how to calculate the optimum "drop" of the rope to ensure the neck was broken. Consequently many victims suffered extremely painful deaths from strangulation, choking, and quite often decapitation if the drop was too far.

The US began hanging at about the same time the "New World" was being settled, and one of the first was a man named John Billington who met his end at the hands of a mob of pilgrims in 1630, apparently for murder.  

This book refers to a selection of 79 'judicial hangings' in the USA from 1900 to 1996.  Most US states have now abolished it, but prisoners in Washington, Delaware and New Hampshire can still choose this method instead of lethal injection if they wish.

79 Hangings is now available on Amazon Kindle by clicking here Just $0.99 cents for a short time or download it FREE if you're a member of Kindle Unlimited

79 Hangings tells the stories of criminals who met their violent end after being sentenced to death by hanging for their crimes. Each short tale relates the often brutal and ruthless deeds they committed leading to their final appointment on the gallows. It begins with the execution of Charles Cross on July 20th 1900 through to the hanging of William Bailey on Thursday, January 25th, 1996 - to date the last man executed by hanging in the USA.

*In 1903 Gustave Marx was a third of the "Automatic Trio", America's first shoot-to-kill gangster team. Along with Harvey van Dine and Peter Neidermeier he killed eight men in just five months, two of whom were detectives.

*Johann Hoch, 44, left his wife and children in Germany in hopes of marrying and conning German women in the US out of their money. It is estimated he murdered more than a dozen women before being caught.

*Edward Wheed shot and killed six people during his criminal career. Known as "Ammunition Eddie" Wheed carried out multiple armed robberies as a member of a Chicago gang.

*Eva Dugan, 43, murdered her 65-year-old neighbor, Arthur Mathis. She attacked him with an axe, before burying him in another neighbor's rubbish pile. When Mathis' skull was found, the gag Eva had used either to choke or stifle him was still visible, wedged between the jawbones of his skull.

*Carl Panzram, son of Prussian immigrants, had a violent upbringing. When he visited Africa, Panzram hired six local men for a crocodile hunt. He then sodomized and killed the men, feeding their remains to the crocodiles.

*Rainey Bethea raped and killed a 71-year-old woman. 15,000 people arrived to watch him hanged, not because of Bethea, or the woman he raped, but because his was to be the last public hanging in the United States.

Volume 2 of Very Bad Women is now available

• Mable Rein – Queen of the Hobos
Rescued from a plane crash by tramps at the age of 6, she rose to lead an army of vagrants, thugs and looters and ransacked whole towns. Only the FBI could put a stop to her brutal rampage and greedy ambition.

• Bonnie Parker – Cigar Smoking Gun Moll
The undisputed queen of all gun molls, she and her companion and lover Clyde Barrow became two of history’s most infamous outlaws. In 21 months they murdered at least 13 people in a crime spree across four states and inevitably died in a hail of bullets.

• Jo Ardway – Roadside Murderess
Drifting down America’s highways and hitching rides from unsuspecting motorists who she bludgeoned and robbed, was a profitable game for this evil woman, until the day she was picked up by a serial killer even more deadly than her.

• Juanita Perez – Gypsy Killer
Gypsy thief, embezzler, dope pusher, gun toting underworld boss, the greed of this thrill crazed murderess knew no bounds and only a slice of good luck for the police brought her corrupt activities to an end.

• Hilda Pomeroy – Devil in Petticoats
Beautiful and deadly as a cobra, she used murder to become wealthy and part of Vienna’s social elite, ultimately becoming Austria’s first woman to be beheaded for more than 100 years.

Very Bad Women 2 - Now available from Amazon Kindle