Organized Crime History

In A Bright and Guilty Place, an exhilarating tale of murder in L.A., Richard Rayner finds the source of the city's darkness in real-life events that unfolded in the 1920s, when the booming early years of L.A. started to shade into the Depression, and the city of sunshine revealed the hidden darkness and corruption at its heart.

Alla fine degli anni Sessanta, nel triangolo fra Padova, Treviso e Venezia abitano alcuni degli uomini più feroci del terrorismo italiano. Hanno un disegno: spargere terrore per instaurare un regime militare autoritario, proprio come era accaduto in Grecia con il golpe dei colonnelli. Alle 16.37 del 12 dicembre 1969, a Milano, sotto il grande tavolo al centro della sala aperta al pubblico della Banca nazionale dell'Agricoltura esplode una bomba. Diciassette persone muoiono. Centinaia rimangono ferite. Da allora sono passati anni di inchieste e decine di sentenze.

Most folks think of Hawaii as a vacation destination. Mob-style executions, drug smuggling, and vicious gang warfare are seldom part of the postcard image. Yet, Hawaii was once home to not only Aloha spirit, but also a ruthless, homegrown mafia underworld. By 1980 - the year Charles Marsland was elected Honolulu's top prosecutor - the honeymoon island paradise was also plagued by violence, corruption, and organized crime. The zeal that Marsland brought to his crusade against the Hawaiian underworld was relentless, self-destructive, and very personal.

They were the first outlaws to rob a moving train. But from 1864 to 1868, the Reno brothers and their gang of counterfeiters, robbers, burglars, and safecrackers also held the town of Seymour, Indiana, hostage, making a large hotel near the train station their headquarters. When the gang robbed the Adams Express car of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad on the outskirts of Seymour on October 6, 1866, it shocked the world - and made other burgeoning outlaws like Jesse James sit up and take notice. The extraordinary efforts to take them out defined the term "frontier justice".

During the peak of the Somali piracy crisis, three ships - from Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan - were hijacked and then abandoned to their fate by their employers, who lacked the money to pay ransoms. All would still be there, were it not for Colonel John Steed, a retired British military attaché, who launched his own private mission to free them. Author Colin Freeman, who has himself spent time held hostage by Somali pirates, takes listeners on an inside track into the world of hostage negotiation and one man’s heroic rescue mission.

In the long annals of sports and crime, no story compares to the one that engulfed the Luckman family in 1935. As 18-year-old Sid Luckman made headlines across New York City for his high school football exploits at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, his father, Meyer Luckman, was making headlines in the same papers for a very different reason: the gangland murder of his own brother-in-law. Amazingly, the connection between sports celebrity son and mobster father was studiously ignored by the press and ultimately overlooked for eight decades.

This work from 1894 offers an eyewitness account of Wyoming's Johnson County range war of the early 1890s. The conflict between cattlemen and small homesteaders erupted when cattle companies started to persecute supposed cattle-rustlers in Wyoming. The cattlemen hired armed gunmen to invade Johnson County, whereupon the homesteaders and smaller ranchers formed a posse of 200 men to oppose them.

Women of Southie tells the story of six women who grew up in and, in most cases, still live in their beloved town of South Boston, a place most notably recognized as the home of organized crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger. But while Bulger might have been ruling the town with an iron fist, as depicted by Johnny Depp in Black Mass, what the town ought to have been recognized for are the brave women who ruled their own lives and their families with equally strong but far more beneficial hands. The stories of these women, ages 40 to 67, are filled with honest details.

Be the FBI Agent in training under J. Edgar Hoover and run the gauntlet of Machinegun Kelly, Baby Face Nelson, and the Barker Karpis Gang. Step back into downtown Chicago of the 1930s and retrace the steps of some of America's most notorious mobsters. True Stories from the Files of the FBI was written by W. Cleon Skousen under the direct supervision of Mr. Hoover himself. These first-hand accounts of actual "do or die" situations were used for decades to train thousands of FBI agents.

America's first African American heavyweight boxing champion, Jack Johnson, has a chance encounter with a mysterious Irishman, named Altamont, when they meet at the boxer's restaurant, Café de Champion, in August 1912. Johnson's new relationship with the unusual man, with beady eyes and hawk-like nose, places him in an unusual circumstance to help Altamont get out of a tough situation.

They called it Satan's Circus - a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway. At the turn of the twentieth century, murder was so common in the vice district that few people were surprised when the loudmouthed owner of a shabby casino was gunned down on the steps of its best hotel. But when, two weeks later, an ambitious district attorney charged young policeman Charley Becker with ordering the murder, even the denizens of Satan's Circus were surprised.

Dalla Torino degli anni Settanta alla Palermo dei Novanta, trentacinque anni di storia italiana attraverso lo sguardo di un protagonista della lotta contro il terrorismo di sinistra e contro la mafia. Due guerre in difesa della democrazia, una vinta (quella contro il terrorismo), una in sospeso (quella contro la mafia). Dal processo ai capi storici delle Brigate rosse al pentimento di Patrizio Peci, dalle stragi di Capaci e via D'Amelio all'arresto di Totò Riina e di decine di altri latitanti, passando per il caso Cossiga/Donat-Cattin e il processo a Giulio Andreotti.

È il 20 agosto 2015 quando per la prima volta l'Italia si accorge dell'esistenza del clan Casamonica. I petali piovono sul piazzale davanti alla chiesa di San Giovanni Bosco, mentre le note del Padrino accompagnano l'arrivo di una carrozza funebre scortata dai vigili urbani. Sulla facciata della chiesa, c'è un grande ritratto di Vittorio Casamonica su cui campeggia la scritta "Re di Roma". Da allora, abbiamo visto al telegiornale video di pestaggi efferati, giornalisti minacciati e percossi, ruspe e abbattimenti nelle periferie romane. Eppure a Roma tutti conoscono i Casamonica.

In the late 1970s, criminal mastermind John Milligan and his associates conspired to import heroin into Far North Queensland via a remote mountaintop airdrop. In a story that is stranger than fiction, it took them three trips through dense jungle to locate the heroin, but they only recovered one of the two packages. When narcotics Agent John Shobbrook took on the investigation of this audacious crime, codenamed 'Operation Jungle', his career was on the rise within the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

Rear Admiral Terry McKnight, USN (Ret.) served as Commander, Counter-Piracy Task Force - Gulf of Aden. After his tour in the waters off the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, he retired from the Navy and began seriously researching the subject. Pirate Alley explores every aspect of Somali piracy, from how the pirates operate to how the actions of a relative handful of youthful criminals and their bosses have impacted the world economy. The book examines various answers to the question: "How do you solve a problem like Somalia?"

Detroit, mid-1930s: In a city abuzz over its unrivaled sports success, gun-loving baseball fan Dayton Dean became ensnared in the nefarious and deadly Black Legion. The secretive, Klan-like group was executing a wicked plan of terror, murdering enemies, flogging associates, and contemplating armed rebellion. The Legion boasted tens of thousands of members across the Midwest, among them politicians and prominent citizens - even, possibly, a beloved athlete.

La vera storia della banda della Magliana. Quali misteri avvolgono ancora la banda della Magliana? Perché, pur macchiatosi di innumerevoli delitti, Enrico De Pedis, il boss della frangia più pericolosa della banda, è stato sepolto nella cripta della basilica vaticana di Sant'Apollinare, tra monsignori e cardinali e con il benestare del Vicario del Papa? Proprio lì vicino il 22 giugno del 1983 scomparve la quindicenne Emanuela Orlandi, e gli inquirenti sono ormai convinti che la banda della Magliana sia coinvolta nel rapimento.

They called it Satan's Circus, a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway. At the turn of the 20th century, murder was so common in the vice district that few people were surprised when the loudmouthed owner of a shabby casino was gunned down on the steps of its best hotel.

One of the most fascinating law enforcement agencies in the world is the FBI. From the J. Edgar Hoover days to present, the Bureau has investigated the most famous cases, including, mobsters, gangs, bank robbers, and terrorism. They have also received a few black eyes including, Waco Siege, and Ruby Ridge. In Top Cases of The FBI, RJ Parker captured 12 of those cases and prepared case files on these criminals up to and including their sentencing or demise.

Chi sono gli uomini che hanno combattuto in prima fila il terrorismo negli anni di piombo? Chi sono gli uomini che agli ordini del generale Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa hanno indagato, rischiato, vissuto come clandestini, servito il Paese e la democrazia, per essere dimenticati dopo l'uccisione del loro comandante passato a combattere la mafia? Questo audiolibro racconta per la prima volta la lotta al terrorismo attraverso la voce dei protagonisti che sostennero il peso di un impegno senza limiti. Ne nasce una storia sincera, per molti aspetti nuova, che smonta sospetti.