Little William "Billy" Ranieri was abducted one day in September 1928, while he was on his way from school to his Northwest Chicago home. The youth was later able to provide eyewitness testimony against his kidnappers. The Sicilian boy was held by several men who worked in association with a former employee of Billy's father. Alex Frank Ranieri was a wealthy sewer contractor. Soon after learning about his son's abduction he began working on his own...

Jimmy Hoffa, formerly Teamsters Union President, disappeared suddenly without a trace in the summer of 1975. My e-book looks at the circumstances of this event and points an accusing finger at two men, one of them a mobster who was based in Detroit, Michigan. The Federal Bureau of Investigation believes that Hoffa was killed by men who were flown in from outside Michigan to eliminate Hoffa. One of the men who was instrumental in Hoffa's disappearance/demise...

I believe that the successful plot to murder President John F. Kennedy took shape in New Orleans during the summer of 1963. It was then that W. Guy Banister ran a detective office where malcontents, right wingers and perhaps left wing radicals also frequented. Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged Presidential assassin, was certainly one of the individuals who worked out of Banister's Camp Street address. Oswald was either a confirmed left winger or was...

Started by Italian brothers from North Denver, the high-profile Smaldone crime syndicate began in the bootlegging days of the 1920s and flourished into the 1980s. Connected to notorious crime figures, politicians, and presidents, Clyde Smaldone was the crime family's leader. Through candid interviews and firsthand accounts, Dick Kreck reveals the true sense of what it meant to be a Smaldone, not only the corrupt but also the virtuous.Dick Kreck retired...

Hutch Mansell is an underestimated and overlooked dad and husband, taking life's indignities on the chin and never pushing back. A nobody. When two thieves break into his suburban home one night, Hutch declines to defend himself or his family, hoping to prevent serious violence. His teenage son, Blake, is disappointed in him and his wife, Becca, seems to pull only further away. The aftermath of the incident strikes a match to Hutch's long-simmering...

"An engrossing look inside Al Capone's murderous ranks." -Kirkus Almost before the gunsmoke from the St. Valentine's Day Massacre cleared, Chicago police had a suspect: "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn. They just couldn't find him. But two weeks later police found McGurn and his paramour, Louise May Rolfe, holed up at the Stevens Hotel. Both claimed they were in bed on the morning of the shootings, a titillating alibi that grabbed the public's attention...

"From Connelly's first career as a prizewinning crime reporter--the true stories that inspired and informed his novels. Covering the homicide beat in Florida and Los Angeles in vivid, hard-hitting articles, Connelly leads the reader past the yellow police tape as he follows the investigators, the victims, their families and friends--and, of course, the killers--to tell the real stories of murder and its aftermath. Connelly's firsthand observations...

The Almanac of World Crime chronicles the exploits of the underworld-murder, robbery, arson, torture, rape, kidnapping, extortion, and blackmail, to name only a few-and takes the reader on an iniquitous tour of the world's gambling halls, dope parlors, cathouses, and clip joints. Everything from the devastating eruption of Mount Vesuvius and Mount Pelée to the looting during the Black Plague is featured in these pages. Here are the stories of some...

"One of our most engaging crime journalists. --Katherine Ramsland True Love Kills In the midst of Pennsylvania's Amish country, on a peaceful summer night in 2008, the body of 45-year-old Jan Roseboro was found at the bottom of her backyard pool. Her husband Michael, a successful businessman and member of a prominent family, showed no emotion as he learned of her death. But the next day an autopsy revealed Jan had been savagely beaten and strangled...

In September 1970, two boys met in the playground on their first day at secondary school in North London. They formed what would be described at the Old Bailey thirty years later as 'a unique and wicked bond'. Between 1982 and 1986, striking near lonely railway stations in London and the Home Counties, their partnership took them from rape to murder. Three police forces pooled their resources to catch them. It was the biggest criminal manhunt since...