I saw a trailer for a movie called Masterminds and something about it seemed familiar, beyond the usual familiarity of derivative comedy. I looked it up on Wikipedia and discovered the movie was based on a true story, a story I had entertained myself with while bored at work in 1999. A little more research led me to the book, Heist, written by Jeff Diamant, a journalist who had covered the case for the Charlotte Observer. Heist is about the 1997 Loomis heist in Charlotte, North […]
I’m the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you will ever meet.
The title is a quote from Ted Bundy, but it could apply to Joshua Wade. Ice and Bone is a report of the murders of Della Brown and Mindy Schloss, committed by Joshua Wade in Anchorage Alaska between 2000 and 2007. I’m not the most objective person to review this book because I knew Della Brown and Joshua Wade. Not well, but in passing and had met them several years apart. I met Della working for a victim’s advocacy group shortly before she was murdered. […]
Honeycombed by Grifters at City Hall down to the Flatfeet on the Beat
Alan Hynd was a prolific writer of “fictionalized true crime” stories for the True Crime magazine. Which means he took real cases and created dialogue and filled in the blanks to form a complete story. While the magazines are hard to find, his son Noel has compiled some of his dad’s work into anthologies, of which this is the first volume. The introduction is so sweet. Noel’s love for his dad and his dad’s writing is evident from the start and his genuine fandom […]
The Truest of True Crime, predecessor to everything
I had heard of In Cold Blood because of its resonance in popular culture, as it is considered to be a true crime masterpiece, if not THE best true crime book ever written. My favorite podcast “Literary Disco” did an episode on some Capote stories, which jogged my memory that I had never tackled this classic, and I decided to make this one a goal for the year. I “read” this via audiobook, and I highly recommend both that format, and the book. In 1959 a well known […]
As the Scum Begins to Circle the Drain, Everybody Loves a Winner
I was 13 when the O.J. Simpson trial verdict was announced. It’s my only clear memory of the trial: my math teacher halting class so we could watch the verdict. My parents were purposely avoiding the case, so I knew very little about it (I don’t know how they did it, as much as this case saturated the media). When the jury declared him not guilty, I didn’t think much of it. Guilty, not guilty–I was too young to have ever seen Simpson play football, so […]
I got this rat, this gnawing, cheese eating fuckin’ rat…
From Marcus Brutus to Judas Iscariot, there are few figures people hate more than the double-crossing informant. In places like 1970s South Boston, there was a rule about it. Never talk to cops. Don’t be a rat. Better to die or rot in jail than snitch. It was a Mafia rule enforced from the top down. If a guy was even suspected of going to the cops, things weren’t going to end well for him. The notorious gangster Whitey Bulger loved to rail against snitches, […]
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