DUAL LIVES: from the Streets to the Studio - "Teacher of the Year" becomes Mob Artist

In DUAL LIVES: from the Streets to the Studio, renowned American artist and 3-time national award-winning “Teacher of the Year” Michael Bell has written an inspiring and brutally candid memoir that chronicles his meteoric rise to becoming one of the most highly decorated public school teachers in America, all the while, living out a storied and often controversial professional painting career as “Mob Artist” to America’s most infamous.

Go behind the scenes with his intriguing clientele on how these friendships also fueled his career—from John Gotti to Al Capone’s great-nephew, Dominic Capone to numerous actors from “the Sopranos”, “Goodfellas”, “A Bronx Tale”, and more. Then, take a roller coaster crusade through the ever-changing, volatile landscapes of the art world and a US public education system that has begun placing more of an emphasis on "data mining" than on "building relationships."

This is the ultimate story of overcoming extreme adversity and being a true champion for today’s youth from someone still in the trenches, still at the top of his game. And, in the education arena, Bell has done the unprecedented. His students have earned tens of millions in scholarships; 7 back-to-back NAEA Rising Star Awards in art—an award presented to just one student artist in the entire nation annually; and 8 Scholastic Art National Medalists 3 years straight.

Bell also discusses the impact of his family life on his art—on the tragic stillbirth of his sister; on his lifelong relationship with his Grandmother, Violet, a self-taught artist from Lyndhurst, New Jersey; on his inspiring son, Carmen, (“Lil' C”), and his battles with Autism while on his quest to become a Golden Gloves boxing champion. Then there's Bell's notorious cousin Vinnie, who was part of the longest double-murder trial in the history of the State of New Jersey. Learn how Bell, himself, went from being a troubled youth once facing twenty-years-to-life to saving one of his own students from a similar fate nearly two decades later.

DUAL LIVES: from the Streets to the Studio, is passionately written, and just as courageously vulnerable as the compelling narratives found within Bell’s paintings. So, ride shotgun alongside Michael Bell throughout his meteoric rise across two very different worlds—from the streets to the studio.

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Examining the Crimes of the Calabrese Family #FamilySecrets

Why are we so fascinated by the mob? Well, there's violence: garroting, shooting, stabbing; the thrill of men hunting men. Money: While most of us sweat for our daily bread, gangsters take what they want. The unknown: Gangster stories give us special knowledge of dark, hidden places in the city and in the human heart.

That last point is important, because half the fun is pulling back the veil. The author strips away the pretenses and pleasantries of daily life and reveals how the world really is. Which is to say that force reigns supreme, not intelligence or character or merit. But part of the popularity of gangster lit is the assumption that the veil is only ever half-raised. Mob stories feed our most paranoid fears by implying that so much more remains to be told. Because we really can't see the subject whole, never know the limits of the mob's influence, we can imagine it as all-powerful, with cops, politicians and businessmen bought and paid for. Authors let us in on the secrets, but the thrilling question always remains, just how big is this menace?

That is one of the reasons that Chicago Tribune reporter Jeff Coen's "Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob" is so refreshing. He never reaches beyond his story, sticks close to his evidence, lets the carefully gathered wiretaps and eyewitness testimony and reporter's notes do the talking. Like Nicholas Pileggi's classic "Wiseguy," on which the film "GoodFellas" was based, Coen keeps it at street level, focusing on his distinct cast of characters, the gangsters and their victims, the federal agents, local cops and attorneys who played out the drama.

During the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, Frank Calabrese Sr. operated a lucrative loan-sharking business on Chicago's South Side. He had ties to higher-ups in the "Outfit," as the Chicago mob is known, men like Joey "the Clown" Lombardo, and James "Jimmy Light" Marcello. Calabrese was not a nice man. In the late '90s, his son, Frank Jr., musing on his father's abusiveness, decided to turn state's evidence against the old man. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, young Frank's uncle Nick (Frank Sr.'s brother) also decided to cooperate with the feds.

With that the Outfit's cover unraveled, and the case finally came to trial in 2007. Coen gives us fine-grained pictures of the loan-sharking and extortion, and, above all, at least 18 killings.

Nick Calabrese, a reluctant hit man, committed multiple murders at brother Frank's behest. Nick told the feds that his sibling would willingly kill him had he failed to carry out a hit. Frank Calabrese himself specialized in garroting his victims, then cutting their throats to make sure they were dead. Coen gives us gruesome accounts of the murders and burials in corn fields and at construction sites.

"Family Secrets" isn't for everyone. It is a complex narrative of a long case that resulted in several convictions. The devil is in the details, there are a lot of them, and they thoroughly de-romanticize the mob.

This is a well-written and researched book, but its subject might disappoint some readers. Unlike the East Coast mob, Coen tells us, "Chicago had been unified for much of the century, since the days of the infamous boss Al Capone. ..." That statement is true but a bit deceptive. This late 20th Century crew seems a little pathetic. They're not exactly the gang that couldn't shoot straight, but they're certainly not Capone's Outfit either. When we pull back the veil, we get a strange blend of Don Corleone and the Three Stooges.

Thanks to Elliott Gorn, who teaches history at Brown University. He is author of "Dillinger's Wild Ride: The Year That Made America's Public Enemy Number One," published this year by Oxford University Press.

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Iced: The Story of Organized Crime In Canada

If police really want to end the gang war raging throughout the Lower Mainland, they might want to have a sit-down with the Hell's Angels.

That is one of the more provocative suggestions by criminologist Stephen Schneider, who has written a new book called Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada.

"The most powerful criminal group in B.C. is probably the Hell's Angels," Schneider said. "They have a lot of ties to the United Nations gang, so they could possibly step in and end the violence."

Born and raised in Richmond, Schneider now teaches criminology at St. Mary's University in Halifax. He went to Steveston secondary. His parents, Werner and Shirley, still live in Richmond.

In an interview with the News, Schneider said organized crime has deep roots in Canada -- largely tied to smuggling -- and is not going to go away.

"If you are going to outlaw certain vices and certain substances that are in high demand -- like cocaine or marijuana -- you're going to have organized crime, and you're going to get violence. And you just have accept this is the reality."

Not that Schneider believes legalizing drugs is necessarily the answer. But neither is what he calls "ad hoc, piecemeal" laws like the Conservative government's new crime bill, which includes minimum sentences for some crimes.

For one thing, punitive measures don't have much of a deterrent on the lower echelon criminals who carry out the grunt work for organized crime, largely due to their upbringing. "It may deter you and me, but it is not going to deter the chronic offender," he said.

The biggest impact of the crime bill may be on prosecutors. "The prosecutorial services are just completely overwhelmed," he said. "By bringing in minimum sentencing, what you've done is create even more work for the prosecutors."

Richmond has been spared the recent spate of gang slayings, although it still has a significant organized crime presence, Schneider said.

The gangs here are largely Asian -- not surprising, given its demographics, he added.

Schneider said he is surprised by all the "hand-wringing" over the recent spate of gang-related shootings in the Lower Mainland.

The public is reacting like this is something new, when in fact gang wars have been erupting in Canada for the last couple of decades, he said. "It was ignored and downplayed by police officials and politicians for years, and now it's caught up to us and sort of bit us on the ass," he said. "Now we're dealing with the aftermath of a lot of neglect."

Schneider said there has been more gangland violence in the last 20 years than any other period in our history.

He blames the recent trend, in part, on a rising "underclass" that has produced a generation of young men coming from poverty and broken homes who are easily drawn into the criminal lifestyle.

He said the few countries that have had success fighting organized crime are countries like Denmark, Sweden and Finland, which have put resources into addressing the root causes of crime. "They're fairly crime-free because they have such a strong social welfare system."

Schneider has studied the roots of organized crime in Canada and found they go back as far as the 17th century, when pirates operated of the Atlantic coast.

The one constant in organized crime here is smuggling.

Canada was the back door for smuggling booze into the U.S. during prohibition. And whereas today B.C. is famous for its marijuana, at the turn of the century B.C. was famous for producing opium.

With three vast coastlines to police, Schneider said Canada simply does not have the resources to stop the smuggling of drugs, or any other contraband, that fuels organized crime.

He concedes there may be some legitimacy to the criticism -- the U.S. being our harshest critics -- that Canadian laws and immigration policies are too lax and help fuel the drug trade that is the bread and butter for organized crime.

"I do believe that the lenient prosecution of marijuana traffickers may help the proliferation of the industry," he said. "But on the converse of that, there's no evidence whatsoever that strong punitive penalties have any impact on organized crime. If that were the case, then China and the United States and Russia would be the most crime-free countries in the world and they're not."

If there is any hope of ending the current gang war in B.C., it may come -- ironically enough -- from organized crime itself. "Quite frankly, law enforcement is quite limited in what they can do," Schneider said.

Gang wars draw a lot of heat, and sometimes prompt the more powerful organized crime leaders to step in because it is bad for business.

In the 1990s, a biker war in Quebec resulted in 160 deaths.

Schneider said it is widely believed that it was Montreal Mafia boss -- Vito Rizzuto -- who stepped in and helped put a stop to the killings. And in the 1980s, Schneider said it is believed some high-powered crime bosses from China intervened in a gang war raging in Vancouver among Asian gangs.

He said the Hell's Angels may well be the organization best position to put a stop to the blood feud going on.

He believes B.C. has been spared the kind of biker wars Quebec has suffered because the Hell's Angels are in control here. "There was never any biker war in B.C. because the Hell's Angels were the only biker gang in town. They controlled everything."

Thanks to Nelson Bennett

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Without Fear or Favor: A Novel (A Butch Karp-Marlene Ciampi Thriller)

In the twenty-ninth novel in the New York Times bestselling Karp-Ciampi series featuring “the best fictional prosecuting attorney in literature” (Mark Lane, #1 New York Times bestselling author), Butch Karp and his wife Marlene Ciampi must stop a radical organization of armed militants bent on the cold-blooded murder of uniformed on-duty police officers.

When a cop shoots down the son of a respected inner-city Baptist preacher, the community rises up in anger and demands to have the officer prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But there’s something more than a call for justice at work here: a plot to bring down the city’s police force through a conspiracy so vast and malicious only Butch Karp and his band of truth-seekers can untangle it.

Full of Tanenbaum’s signature page turning intense action and heart pounding suspense from “one hell of a writer” (New York Post), Without Fear or Favor: A Novel (A Butch Karp-Marlene Ciampi Thriller), will keep you guessing until the final scene.

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Discover "The Mafia Curse"

The Italian-American experience is a saga of tragedy and triumph - the struggle of proud, religious, life-loving people stained by an unfair curse of criminality that is still perpetuated today by crime writers, TV shows and movies. Author Cy Egan reveals the story of how "The Mafia Curse" began during the Italians' early life and times in America and of the exploits of an intrepid Italian-American detective who loved his fellow Italians passionately and drove himself to the limit to punish their tormentors and preserve their honor and dignity in a new found land.

Every other immigrant group that came before and after brought its own share of criminals, but most were excused on grounds that their lawlessness was bred by poverty and an inability to break into the economic mainstream. Only the Italians were burned with the brand of infamy and reviled by a nation that conveniently ignored the reality that crime infects all races and knows no nationality. The Mafia Curse, tells how the stigma was born in the late Nineteenth Century when emigrants to America from Italy were terrorized by a small band of their own compatriots and unfairly smeared as criminals by an American press seeking to boost readership by pandering to public prejudice.

Adopting the great American spirit of hard work and stick-to-it-iveness, the Italians survived the onslaught of hate with a deep devotion to family life that centered on nurturing and educating their children. They rose to the highest levels of academia, government, industry, science and show business, slowly carving out a slice of the American dream. Enshrined in the pantheon of their American accomplishments are names like Alito, Coppola, Cuomo, De Niro, DiMaggio, Fermi, Giamatti, Giuliani, Iacocca, LaGuardia, Puzo, Scalia, Scorcese, Sinatra, Stallone and Travolta. Despite these successes, one survey showed that 78% of teens and 74% of adults in America still identify Italians with blue-collar jobs or organized crime while the U.S. Justice Department says 67 percent are white collar workers and executives, and only .075 percent are mobsters.

The Mafia Curse, offers readers a refreshingly positive approach and reveals the real historical roots of how the mafia stigma began. By exploring its true origins, people's eyes will be opened to the truth and they will learn about the prejudices that led to its negative image as they further explore its history. Get a copy of this fascinating read now and discover how The Mafia Curse was born!

Mr. Egan. an award-winning crime writer, was a reporter and editor for the Associated Press, the Journal-American and the Post in New York. He covered major news events for nearly 40 years. These included the capture of famed bank robber Willie "The Actor" Sutton, the executions of Atom spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the mob shootings of Frank Costello, "Crazy Joe" Gallo and other underworld wiseguys, the gangland blinding of labor writer Victor Riesel, the civil rights riots and antiwar bombings of the 1960s and 70s and dozens of famous murder cases, including the Son of Sam serial killings. An author, he also has written hundreds of articles, many on women criminals. He lives in Tryon, N.C.

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Touhy vs. Capone: The Chicago Outfit’s Biggest Frame Job

Touhy vs. Capone: The Chicago Outfit's Biggest Frame Job.

When beat cop Don Herion and his partner responded to shots fired on December 16, 1959, they didn’t know that they had heard the final, fatal salvo in one of the most contorted conflicts in the history of organized crime. A canny bootlegger, Roger Touhy had survived a gang war with Al Capone, false imprisonment for a faked kidnapping, a prison break and recapture. His story dragged in all the notorious men of his day: Frank Nitti, John “Jake the Barber” Factor, Mayor Cermak, Melvin Purvis, J. Edgar Hoover, Baby Face Nelson, Dan “Tubbo” Gilbert, FDR and JFK. As Touhy’s life was ending on his sister’s front porch, Herion’s quest to unravel the tangle of events that led to his assassination had just begun.

A native of the Windy City, Don Herion joined the Chicago Police Department in 1955. On a cold winter night in 1959, he was called to the scene of Roger Touhy’s murder. Herion retired after forty-eight years on the job, including two years of undercover work for the Chicago Crime Commission. He is the author of Pay, Quit, or Die: Chicago Mob Ultimatum, and The Chicago Way.

Touhy vs. Capone: The Chicago Outfit's Biggest Frame Job.

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Motor City Mafia by @burneystweets Takes You inside the Belly of the Beast

Motor City Mafia: A Century of Organized Crime in Detroit (Images of America), chronicles the storied and hallowed gangland history of the notorious Detroit underworld.

Scott M. Burnstein takes the reader inside the belly of the beast, tracking the bloodshed, exploits, and leadership of the southeast Michigan crime syndicate as never before seen in print. Through a stunning array of rare archival photographs and images, Motor City Mafia captures Detroit's most infamous past, from its inception in the early part of the 20th century, through the years when the iconic Purple Gang ruled the city's streets during Prohibition, through the 1930s and the formation of the local Italian mafia, and the Detroit crime family's glory days in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, all the way to the downfall of the area's mob reign in the 1980s and 1990s.

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Family Secrets Mob Book by @JeffCoen is Indispensable to Know How Chicago Truly Works

If you're interested in understanding the real Chicago—and there can be no serious understanding of this completely political city without examining the Chicago Outfit—then you'll soon have a great new book on your shelves:

"Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob" (Chicago Review Press) by Chicago Tribune federal courts reporter Jeff Coen.

Yes, Coen is a colleague of mine who is well-respected in our newsroom. But the reason I recommend this book is that I've followed Coen's work chronicling this case. His careful eye and clean writing style have produced years of compelling Tribune stories and now this authoritative account of one of the most amazing Chicago Outfit cases in history.

It involves the FBI's turning of Chicago Outfit hit man Nicholas Calabrese into a top witness and informer. Calabrese's access and insight into unsolved murders, offered up at trial by the expert killer and brother of a Chinatown Crew boss, were more than astounding. And, in a creepy but necessary way, illuminating.

Calabrese, a deadly though perpetually terrified hit man, testified against the bosses about more than 18 gangland murders in the federal Family Secrets case. Now mob bosses including his brother Frank, Joey "The Clown" Lombardo and Jimmy Marcello, and fellow hit man Paul Schiro will spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Later this week an Outfit messenger boy—Anthony Doyle, a former Chicago police officer who worked in the evidence section and who visited Frank Calabrese in prison to discuss the FBI's interest in an old bloody glove—also will be sentenced.

From the witness stand, Doyle gave Chicago one of my favorite words, "chumbolone," the Chinatown Crew's slang for idiot or fool. He deserves a long sentence. Federal mob watchers consider him to be close to the Outfit's current overall reputed street boss, Frank "Toots" Caruso.

Outfit helpers like Doyle, placed in sensitive government posts, in politics, in law enforcement, in the judiciary, in city inspection and business licensing bureaucracies, have long allowed the Outfit to form the base of the iron triangle that runs things.

"Doyle was one of the most interesting aspects of the case," Coen told me this week. "Here you have a police officer as a mole telling the Outfit when evidence in a murder was being sought by the FBI. I don't think the public is aware of the effort that goes into placing people in low-key clerical positions that give them great access, people that can fly under the radar."

Doyle learned the FBI was interested in a glove worn by Nick Calabrese in the murder of John Fecarotta, who himself received an Outfit death sentence for botching the 1986 burial of brothers Tony and Michael Spilotro.

"If Nick doesn't drop that glove, the FBI doesn't have the physical evidence to tell him he'd be going away forever," Coen said. "Without the glove, they wouldn't have Nick."

Nick's testimony involved the planning and surveillance of his victims, and the final end that came to them, either by a remote-controlled car bomb on a suburban highway ramp, or shotguns from a van along a country road near Joliet, or the laying on of hands and feet and ropes in a suburban basement.

The movie "Casino" depicted Outfit brothers Tony and Michael Spilotro beaten to death in an Indiana cornfield. That's how many of us thought they were killed, until Family Secrets revealed that they were actually beaten and strangled in a Bensenville basement.

In the gangster movies, the hit men are usually the roughest characters. But Calabrese wasn't a movie hit man, he was a real one, so frightened that he wet himself during his first killing.

On the witness stand and in the book, he comes off like what he is, a nerd of homicide, a man plagued by a sickening fear that settled on him at the first one and became like a second skin, and he found one way to deal with that fear—meticulous planning.

"He was nothing like a movie hit man," Coen said. "During testimony, he looked like somebody you'd bump into at a store in your neighborhood. But if the bosses pointed him at somebody, they could sleep, knowing the murder would be done."

On my shelf, there are books I consider to be indispensable to truly knowing how Chicago works. There is:

• Clout: Mayor Daley and His City
  by Len O'Connor,
• Captive City : The Startling Truth about Chicago and the Mafia
  by Ovid Demaris
• The Outfit
  by Gus Russo

And now, there is Jeff Coen's Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob.


Thanks to John Kass

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A Mob of His Own: Mad Sam DeStefano and the Chicago Mob's "Juice" Rackets

The true story of one of Chicago's most sadistic murderers who killed for power, money and pleasure. Sam "Mad Dog" DeStefano controlled the flow of money on Chicago's streets backed by the Chicago mob, he became a multimillionaire by squeezing the "juice" out of his victims. This book details the life of Mad Sam and describes the sick methods he used to kill. This book also explores Chicago's Italian mob and what was commonly known as the "juice" rackets, loan sharking, and shylocking.

A Mob of His Own: Mad Sam DeStefano and the Chicago Mob's "Juice" Rackets, explains the rackets in full detail as well as the men who made a living at killing and destroying lives.

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Jane Byrne's Chicago

By the end of her first meeting with the late mayor Richard J. Daley, Jane Byrne had been questioned, berated, and told she might, one day, reach the House but probably not the Senate-and she had also reduced him to tears. That would be but the first of many altercations in her pioneering political career.

My Chicago, is the story of Jane Byrne's rise from young campaign worker to the mayor's office, all within the bruising arena of Chicago politics. Part sociopolitical history, part memoir, it begins with a history of the city and her early life, before she enters politics as a paid staff member of JFK's presidential campaign and, soon after, begins service in the Chicago Machine, but not of it.

Her view from the inside allows Byrne to sketch portraits of Daley, for whom she eventually worked, members of the Kennedy family, and Presidents Carter and Reagan. And, of course, it provides a fascinating perspective on the battle to succeed Daley, which ended with her own triumph over the Machine and a controversial term as mayor, which saw her begin development across the city and (famously) move into the Cabrini-Green housing project. The first memoir by a Chicago mayor in two generations, My Chicago is a valuable history as well as an entertaining look at no-holds-barred city politics.

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Drummer for the Mob

Drummer for the Mob, a novel by by Frank Catanzano (AuthorHouse), is an irreverent and often funny look at life working with members of organized crime who ran many of the clubs in Pittsburgh. Based on true events, Frank has taken great pains to disguise the people, places and things in this tell-all story of how the wise guys ruled through intimidation and threats.

"Frankie, give this envelope to Mr. Passano when you see him tomorrow," club manager and ever-vigilant doorman Jerry D'iorfio said. The envelope was sealed but I could tell there was a great deal of cash in it. I'm just the drummer with the band, and now suddenly I am making some sort of delivery to the syndicate. My mother would have been proud.

"Don't worry," Jerry laughed. "We trust you. After all, you're a paesano, am I right?" He suddenly grew serious. "Plus, you pull any fast one and, bing bada bing, you're history." Then Jerry laughed again. Frankie Severino wasn't laughing. When the FBI and IRS investigated him four years later, they weren't laughing either.

In Frank Catanzano's novel, Drummer for the Mob, main character Frankie Severino launched his musical career at the tender age of 14 in bars and clubs in the city, where men pushed their inebriated wives on him and girls would make offers he couldn't refuse. He quickly learned the charisma and power a musician held for some, and grew into a young man who would crack wise to anyone, from the wise guys themselves to the FBI and IRS, which tried to coerce him into identifying the men he worked for. In his own inimitable fashion Frankie said, "I had the FBI so far up my ass I could taste Brylcream…but I gave them bupkus." This investigation ultimately cost him his day job at an advertising agency. It wasn't until he met the 17-year-old Toni that his life began to change and with her support, would break the hold the syndicate had on him.

Frankie's narrative is a personal account of the sometimes hilarious and often dangerous years he and his fellow musicians in The Nite Lites toiled in these clubs. Drummer for the Mob is a no holds barred, behind the scenes look at the sex, drugs and rock and roll during these pre-AIDS years, told through the lens of social values and the music genres of the period. Drummer, a work of fiction, is based on actual events. The names of the crime families, bosses, clubs and band members have been changed to protect Frankie "because he can't swim."

The reader can almost smell the beer and cigarette smoke settling like a shroud over the infamous after hours club, the Horizon Club, as Frankie Severino has to deal with owner Big Julie Passano, who intimidates with a heavy hand and a deadly stare. When Frankie and his band tried to leave the Horizon, Big Julie called him:

"You ain't going nowhere. My customers like you guys. I like you guys." I could feel his love through the phone."

"Mr. Passano, we've played at the Horizon for a little over three years, and we're tired. I believe it's a good time to bring in new blood, and another band that will re-energize the club." There was a deafening silence on the other line. Then Julie Passano calmly said in a frosty voice, "Frankie, can you swim?"

Drummer for the Mob will appeal to a wide range of readers, including those fascinated with the Mafia and organized crime, the millions of musicians who ply their trade in cover bands around the country and the Baby Boomers who boogied their way through the 70s in the clubs, while dancing to live music. They will find Drummer to be a compelling look at the way the wise guys ran their operations and controlled their customers. The millions who watched The Sopranos and The Godfather will love the way this book uniquely combines the color and sounds of Saturday Night Fever with the violence and dark humor of Good Fellas.

Frank Catanzano is a respected journalist and public relations consultant who has worked for corporations and organizations around the world. He has written speeches for top executives and hundreds of articles on subjects ranging from stainless alloys for aerospace to life aboard an oil super tanker. Frank has won more than 16 national and local writing and publicity awards and today owns Emerald City Communications, one of Pittsburgh's leading marketing firms. An accomplished musician, he also plays drums with local bands, primarily for fund-raising events.

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The King of Sting: The Amazing True Story of a Modern American Outlaw

The King of Sting: The Amazing True Story of a Modern American Outlaw, is an amazing true story of an modern American Outlaw. While not a typical mob book, it is a stunning tale that crosses over several times into organized crime themes.

No one could have predicted that a petty crime against Craig Glazer would be the catalyst for a life on the edge. But then again, nothing about Craig Glazer was predictable.

In 1971, as a skinny Jewish kid from Kansas City, Glazer was attending Arizona State University when he was robbed while buying marijuana for his fraternity brothers. His head filled with lessons in crime and criminals learned from movies such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, in which the hero was just on the edge of the law, Craig decided to get even with the dealers who robbed him. He set up his first fake "sting," pretending to be law enforcement. Unbelievably, his plan worked with him walking away with $50,000, and it set him on a path that was as unlikely as it was dangerous.

He masterminded a two-year spree of stings that stretched from Boston, Chicago, and Cleveland to Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Posing as everything from local police to IRS agents to hotel managers, he and his crew set up cons and raked in a fortune.

Craig and his partner, the streetwise Viet Nam veteran Donald Woodbeck, had such success that the Attorney General's office asked them for help ferreting out some of the most sought-after drug lords in the country. It was a dangerous double life. Like many other rags to riches stories, Craig's does not lead to a Hollywood happy ending. There was payback. Woodbeck was murdered which led to Craig posing as the Mafia to extract revenge, but eventually, he landed in prison. The King of Sting is a story of wanting to be famous, even if it meant becoming infamous.

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The First Vice Lord: Big Jim Colosimo and the Ladies of the Levee

While some people are fascinated or repulsed by the evil crimes committed by Chicago mobsters, others have studied it. And one who has is studied the mob is Wauconda author Arthur J. Bilek, whose book is "The First Vice Lord: Big Jim Colosemo and the Ladies of the Levee."

"The First Vice Lord" covers the early years of the Chicago outfit through 1920. Bilek found that it began with Big Jim Colosimo, who came to the United States from Italy, worked as a Chicago street cleaner and rose in Chicago's political ranks.

The book details Colosimo's career through the time period. Bilek has also co-authored a book with William Helmer, entitled "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre."

Bilek's life of battling crime began after graduating in 1953 from Loyola University with a masters degree in criminology. He spent the rest of his life in law enforcement and education, climbing the ranks of the Chicago Police Department and was appointed Chief of Cook County Sheriff's Office in 1962.

He said he started the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Criminal Justice bachelor's of science program in 1966, was the associate director of Northwestern's Traffic Institute in 1989, He also worked on Cook County's Cold Case Task Force.

Most recently he was a board member of the Chicago Crime Commission and followed the Family Secrets trials. He believes the outfit still operates but its political prowess has dwindled since Colosimo's day.

Thanks to Ilene Haluska

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The First Vice Lord: Big Jim Colosemo and the Ladies of the Levee

My tendency to either skim books or proofread them (from early magazine days) has encountered a new one from former Cook County police chief Art Bilek that I can’t put down: The First Vice Lord: Big Jim Colosemo and the Ladies of the Levee.

This is a masterpiece of writing and excruciatingly accurate research that describes how Big Jim Colosimo rose from a lowly street-sweeper to the most prominent operator of whorehouses, gambling joints, and low-life restaurants in the days leading up to Prohibition, with the collusion of the police and politicians and the managerial skills of John Torrio and Al Capone. When his increasingly notorious Colosimo’s Café combined with his growing desire for respectability, love for a young songbird, and failure to exploit the opportunities afforded by Prohibition, Torrio (we must presume) had him murdered in the vestibule of his elegant restaurant in 1920—and the band marched on.

Nowhere has Chicago’s graft and corruption been so carefully and entertainingly documented, with special attention to the backgrounds of Torrio and Capone, who worked hard to weld the new and competing bootlegging gangs into the greatest illicit booze empire the country has ever known--one that did not factionalize into Chicago’s bloody Beer Wars that began with the killing of North Side mob-leader Dean O’Banion four years later. My own work has concentrated on the years following Prohibition, so I’m especially happy to report that Bilek’s book explains what made the Roaring Twenties possible.

Reviewed by William J. Helmer, courtesy of On the Spot Journal.

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El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency

The world has watched, stunned, the bloodshed in Mexico. Forty thousand murdered since 2006; police chiefs shot within hours of taking office; mass graves comparable to those of civil wars; car bombs shattering storefronts; headless corpses heaped in town squares. And it is all because a few Americans are getting high. Or is it part of a worldwide shadow economy that threatens Mexico's democracy? The United States throws Black Hawk helicopters, DEA assistance, and lots of money at the problem. But in secret, Washington is at a loss. Who are these mysterious figures who threaten Mexico's democracy? What is El Narco?

El Narco is not a gang; it is a movement and an industry drawing in hundreds of thousands, from bullet-riddled barrios to marijuana-covered mountains. The conflict spawned by El Narco has given rise to paramilitary death squads battling from Guatemala to the Texas border (and sometimes beyond). In this "propulsive ... high-octane" book (Publishers Weekly), Ioan Grillo draws the first definitive portrait of Mexico's cartels and how they have radically transformed in the past decade.

El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency.

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Umbrella Mike: The True Story of the Chicago Gangster Behind the #Indy500 @IMS

Editor's note: Much of the information that follows is from the book "Umbrella Mike: The True Story of the Chicago Gangster Behind the Indy 500" by Brock Yates, which was published in 2006 by A Thunder's Mouth Press

As the son of a Chicago South Sider, I learned long ago that if you want to get something done, "It takes a guy who knows a guy."

Michael J. "Umbrella Mike" Boyle was just such a guy.

One of most colorful and controversial labor leaders in the history of this country, Boyle ruled the Windy City's most-powerful electricians' union for more than a half century.

In a time when corruption and lawlessness gripped the city, Mike Boyle walked the fine line between crooked politicians and the Chicago Mob. He did it all the way to the pinnacle of the American labor movement, constantly doing it in a shroud of mystery.

When he wasn't in Chicago dominating union politics, he was racing at Indianapolis with his Boyle Racing Team, winning the Indianapolis 500 three times.

The early years

Born in rural Minnesota in June of 1879, Michael J. Boyle was one of 11 children raised on a potato farm. His early years were spent in parochial schools until he joined the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) at the age of 16.

By 1905 he became certified as a full-time electrician for the Chicago Tunnel Company, the firm responsible for the construction and management of some 60 miles of underground tunnels that linked Loop businesses -- 40 feet below the streets of downtown Chicago.

Boyle joined the IBEW in Chicago 1906, and by 1909 was a business manager for Local 134. By the 1920s he rose to the position of vice president within the local and ruled IBEW Local 134 with an iron fist, eventually amassing a union membership of 10,000 steadfastly loyal electricians.

Early in his career, "Umbrella Mike" Boyle reportedly earned his nickname for his ability to gather "tributes" or "donations," if you will, from contractors and other citizens who sought his much-needed support for various business projects.

Boyle would simply hang his umbrella on the edge of the bar at Johnson's Saloon, his unofficial headquarters on West Madison Street, when he entered early in the evening. Those requesting his favors or guidance would then drop cash in the unattended umbrella. At the end of the evening Boyle would then retrieve the cash-laden umbrella on his way out.

When once confronted on how he was able to amass a grand total of $350,000 on a weekly paycheck of $35, Boyle replied, "It was with great thrift."

Rising to the top in labor

The early 1900s was a period of great unrest between the corporate owners of American industry and the American worker. Long hours and low pay, coupled with abuse of the worker's rights, gave rise for the need of unions to protect the rights of working men and women.

As the country's industrial base prospered, workers across American united under the guidance of men who showed no fear in the face of overwhelming odds. Mike Boyle was such a man.

In one of the clearest examples of Boyle's power, in January of 1937 he yanked 450 of the 800 city-employed electrical workers off the job at 8 p.m., shutting off 94,558 municipal street lights, all the traffic lights in Chicago's Loop and put 38 of the 55 drawbridges that cross the Chicago River, in the up position.

Automobiles, streetcars and pedestrians were trapped, with the city's police force helpless as the power to their telephones was shut off, too. Two hours and 40 minutes later, Boyle acquiesced and turned the city back on, all with a simple phone call.

Racing at Indianapolis

Mike Boyle was a sportsman at heart who loved competition. That was what drew him to Indy-car racing. Once Boyle made up his mind that he wanted to go racing, he pursued his quest with abandon. Starting in 1926, Boyle first got his feet wet with a single-car entry in the 13th running of Indianapolis 500. In his first showing at Indianapolis, the No. 36 Boyle Valve Miller driven by Cliff Woodbury overcame a flat tire to capture third place, earning a purse of $5,000.

Over the next seven years Boyle entered a total of 15 cars in Indianapolis 500 competition with the best finish being a seventh place. He always entered top-notch equipment and hired the best drivers, such as Woodbury, Ralph Hepburn, Billy Arnold, Peter DePaolo and Lou Moore.

In 1934, all of Boyle's efforts came to fruition when "Wild Bill" Cummings in the No. 7 Boyle Products Special/Miller took the checkered flag in record time, earning a record purse of $29,725.

Having won the Indianapolis 500 only made "Umbrella Mike" thirst for more.

The next four years saw him enter 13 cars in the Memorial Day Classic, garnering three top-five finishes.

In 1939, having tired of trying to wring out more speed from the oversized Millers and Stevens-Offy he owned, Boyle reached across the Atlantic Ocean to a tiny Italian automobile company and without fanfare quietly purchased a Maserati 8CTF. The car was shipped to Boyle Racing headquarters in Indianapolis.

There Boyle turned the car over to his crew-chief, Harry "Cotton" Henning, a former riding mechanic. Henning was greatly respected by his peers and along with Boyle's money was able to outfit a pristinely kept racing operation that was second to none.

Then Boyle hired arguably the best "shoe" in the business, Indiana native Wilbur Shaw.

The marriage between Shaw and the Boyle Special Maserati was magic, dominating both the 1939 and 1940 Indianapolis 500s. Boyle's combined winnings for the two successive victories was $58,100. In addition, Boyle's other driver, the legendary Ted Horn, copped successive fourth place finishes to add another $9,325.

Following his two-year domination of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Mike Boyle raced again in 1941 and 1946, with the best results being a sixth and third-place finishes, respectively. But the war years took their toll on Boyle and he left Indy-car racing for good after 1946, while in his mid-60s.

During the course of his racing career, it was never clear where the money was coming from that funded one of the most well-equipped racing operations in the business. "Umbrella Mike's" livery on the cars was seemingly changing from season to season. Boyle Products, Boyle Valve, Boyle Racing Headquarters, the IBEW -- all these names were seen on the side of Mike Boyle's cars.

After retiring from Indy-car racing, "Umbrella Mike" still dominated union politics in Chicago through his role as a vice president of Local 134 of the IBEW. He died from heart failure in 1958 while in Miami Beach, Fla.

The Chicago Daily Tribune reported on the filing of Boyle's estate in probate court. It was revealed that his entire estate -- which included a 40-acre ranch in Texas -- was valued at only $19,000.

It would appear that "Umbrella Mike" left us with one more mystery.

Thanks to William LaDow

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Richard Nixon: The Life

From a prize-winning biographer comes, Richard Nixon: The Life, the defining portrait of a man who led America in a time of turmoil and left us a darker age. We live today, John A. Farrell shows, in a world Richard Nixon made.

At the end of WWII, navy lieutenant “Nick” Nixon returned from the Pacific and set his cap at Congress, an idealistic dreamer seeking to build a better world. Yet amid the turns of that now-legendary 1946 campaign, Nixon’s finer attributes gave way to unapologetic ruthlessness. The story of that transformation is the stunning overture to John A. Farrell’s magisterial biography of the president who came to embody postwar American resentment and division.

Within four years of his first victory, Nixon was a U.S. senator; in six, the vice president of the United States of America. “Few came so far, so fast, and so alone,” Farrell writes. Nixon’s sins as a candidate were legion; and in one unlawful secret plot, as Farrell reveals here, Nixon acted to prolong the Vietnam War for his own political purposes. Finally elected president in 1969, Nixon packed his staff with bright young men who devised forward-thinking reforms addressing health care, welfare, civil rights, and protection of the environment. It was a fine legacy, but Nixon cared little for it. He aspired to make his mark on the world stage instead, and his 1972 opening to China was the first great crack in the Cold War.
   
Nixon had another legacy, too: an America divided and polarized. He was elected to end the war in Vietnam, but his bombing of Cambodia and Laos enraged the antiwar movement. It was Nixon who launched the McCarthy era, who played white against black with a “southern strategy,” and spurred the Silent Majority to despise and distrust the country’s elites. Ever insecure and increasingly paranoid, he persuaded Americans to gnaw, as he did, on grievances—and to look at one another as enemies. Finally, in August 1974, after two years of the mesmerizing intrigue and scandal of Watergate, Nixon became the only president to resign in disgrace.

Richard Nixon is a gripping and unsparing portrayal of our darkest president. Meticulously researched, brilliantly crafted, and offering fresh revelations, it will be hailed as a master work.

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Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America

In a ranch south of Texas, the man known as The Executioner dumps five hundred body parts in metal barrels. In Brazil's biggest city, a mysterious prisoner orders hit-men to gun down forty-one police officers and prison guards in two days. In southern Mexico, a crystal meth maker is venerated as a saint while imposing Old Testament justice on his enemies. A new kind of criminal kingpin has arisen: part CEO, part terrorist, and part rock star, unleashing guerrilla attacks, strong-arming governments and taking over much of the world's trade in narcotics, guns and humans. Who are these new masters of death? What personal qualities and life experiences have made them into such bloodthirsty leaders of men? What do they represent and stand for? What has happened in the Americas to allow them to grow and flourish? Author of the critically acclaimed El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency, Ioan Grillo has covered Latin America since 2001, and gained access to every level of the cartel chain-of-command in what he calls the new battlefields of the Americas. Moving between militia-controlled ghettos and the halls of top policy-makers, Grillo provides a new and disturbing understanding of a war that has spiraled out of control - one that people across the political spectrum need to confront now. Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America, is the first definitive account of the crime wars now wracking Central and South America and the Caribbean.

Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America.

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Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City, Was Extorted out of Millions by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in FBI History

A gay man who created New York’s most notorious den of heterosexuality . . . an anxious, anything-but, hard-boiled lawyer who became one of the most successful undercover mob informants in history.

In this hilarious and fascinating account, Michael Blutrich takes you inside star-studded 1990s New York, mafia sit-downs, and the witness protection program.

Meet Michael D. Blutrich, founder of Scores, the hottest strip club in New York history. A resourceful lawyer at one of the city’s most respected firms, Blutrich fell into the skin trade almost by accident, but it was his legal savvy that made Scores the first club in Manhattan to feature lap dances and enabled him to neatly sidestep a law requiring dancers to wear pasties by instead covering their nipples with latex paint. Soon Scores, the club Howard Stern called “like being in a candy shop,” was a home away from home for everyone from sports superstars and Oscar-winning actors to pop singers and political notables alike.

The catch? The club was smack dab in John Gotti’s territory, and the mafia wanted a piece of the action. The Gambino family doesn’t take no for an answer . . . and neither, as it turns out, does the FBI. In his memoir, Blutrich recounts in detail how his beloved club became a hub for the mafia, and how he found himself caught up in an FBI investigation, sorely struggling to juggle roles of business owner and undercover spy.

As his life spiraled out of control, Blutrich would face the loss of almost everything dear to him. But whether marching a line of topless strippers as human exhibits into a trial to save the club’s liquor license or wearing wires to meetings with armed gangsters, he never lost his sense of humor or his nerve. In Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City, Was Extorted out of Millions by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in FBI History, Blutrich finally tells all—from triumph to betrayal—in his own funny, self-deprecating voice.

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All Against The Law: The Criminal Activities of the Depression Era Bank Robbers, Mafia, FBI, Politicians, & Cops

This book tells the remarkable true stories of America’s most infamous Public-Enemy-Number-1 gangsters. Based on exhaustive documented research, Bill Friedman chronicles the true history of illegal gambling, rum-running, organized crime, and the politics of law enforcement during the Prohibition era.

Based on crime-scene eyewitness accounts, state’s witnesses harborers’ accounts, and historical records, Friedman paints exciting portraits of John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson and other luminaries of the underworld—and documents how surprisingly different that world was from the way Hollywood portrays it. Like great literary characters, history’s gangsters and bank robbers were complex and fraught with contradiction.

Captivating tales of criminal daring are balanced with shocking political exposés revealing how complicity and incompetence hindered the effectiveness of law enforcement. Written in fast-moving prose that’s sure to entertain, All Against The Law: The Criminal Activities of the Depression Era Bank Robbers, Mafia, FBI, Politicians, & Cops, is a must-read for anyone who loves classic American ‘cops and robbers’ stories. Friedman’s historical accounts are as exciting and dramatic as any genre fiction, while ringing with the power of truth and authenticity.

“All Against The Law: The Criminal Activities of the Depression Era Bank Robbers, Mafia, FBI, Politicians, & Cops” covers U.S. major crime in the Great Depression era. It is the incredible stories of daring prison escapes and breathtaking police pursuits by the Great Depression’s four successive Public Enemies Number One - John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Alvin Karpis with the Barker brothers. These were the most aggressive and dangerous killers ever. When fleeing from pursuing lawmen, every one of these bank robbers either whirled their cars around and floored their accelerator towards their pursuers, or they ran in the open, charging pursuers while relentlessly blasting away with machineguns. All these ferocious counterattacks made them dreadfully successful at killing the most policemen and FBI agents of any American outlaws. This is the first complete history because the newspaper accounts and trial testimonies by both their criminal cohorts and the harborers during their long fugitive manhunts are included.

Against these fierce killers, Congress assigned a fledgling Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), an accounting agency of government money made up of politically-appointed accountants and attorneys with no police experience. Headed by J. Edgar Hoover, a librarian, he failed to teach his agents any of the fundamentals of police and detective work or instruct them to respect individual liberties and rights. Thus, his courageous but ill-prepared early agents conducted one amateurish and failed raid after another that occasionally caused disastrous results for both his agents and innocent civilian bystanders caught up in the lines of fire.

Hoover’s leadership and management of the FBI has been thoroughly discredited by contemporary exposé articles and scholarly historical biographies. This book penetrates the veil much further in presenting how politically-conservative Hoover failed to prosecute serious criminals, used underhanded illegal tactics against critics; occasionally fought to survive his malfeasance in office; and blackmailed errant Congressmen to further his own political agenda. All this made him an unaccountable malevolent fourth branch of the federal government totally outside the brilliantly-conceived Constitutional checks-and-balances system.

To disprove that the FBI’s chief suspect, Pretty Boy Floyd, was involved in the Kansas City Massacre that slaughtered four lawmen, and to finally reveal the actual perpetrators and their motives, the forty-year reign of that town’s unique political-power structure is laid bare. The town’s political kingmaker Jim Pendergast chose as his lieutenant the city’s Mafia leader, and this Mafioso selected the chief of police and his detectives. The state legislature tried to stop this affront to justice by having the governor appoint a Police Commission to control the city’s departmental hirings. This action just led Kansas City’s Mafia chieftain to expand his political sphere of influence across the state to elect puppet governors who appointed Commissioners of his choosing.

These Kansas City political leaders stuffed ballot boxes in every election of politically-progressive Harry Truman, who later became the only president to sell out to organized crime because of his long political ties to the Kansas City Mafia. The entire last chapter strictly covers the many interactions Truman had from the White House with this Mafioso. Their mutual political hijinks, conflicts, and intrigue are astonishing. As tensions mounted this Mafioso was murdered, and Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress directly accused the President of ordering his political henchmen to kill him. This whole period in the White House is beyond mind-boggling.

A number of the gangsters in this book had ties to the early Nevada gambling industry, where the author spent his whole career. The action opens in that state, when Reno was its largest city, and Bill Graham and Jim McKay were the biggest casino operators both before and after gambling was legalized in 1931. Prior to Baby Face Nelson going into bank robbing, he was their doorman/bouncer. Graham and McKay operated the most popular casino in the state’s largest hotel, the Golden, and they developed an effective but very illegal tourist-marketing program to bring in high-rollers during the Great Depression. They offered an emporium of services for criminals who stole money through armed robbery, kidnapping, or by con. This drew financial criminals in large numbers from across the country. One service was to hide fugitives on the run in this isolated town and protect them from police interference. In the weeks to months before the FBI took down Dillinger, Nelson, Floyd, Karpis, and Fred Barker, all enjoyed the safe haven provided by Reno’s casino operators.

Before Ben Siegel began construction of his Fabulous Flamingo gambling resort, Kansas City Mafioso Charles Binaggio, who was shot to death under President Truman’s portrait, had planned to become a major investor in the Thunderbird Hotel & Casino on the Strip. A number of other links between the Kansas City Mafia and the Nevada casino industry during this era are presented. This book closes with the career of Kansas City’s fifth Mafia leader, Nick Civella. As the original pioneer gangsters, who had built the Las Vegas Strip from their Prohibition fortunes, retired and sold out, Civella financed a new wave of hidden underworld casino owners through the Teamsters Union Pension Fund, as was fictionally presented in the 1995 movie Casino.

This book is based on 47 years of research, and it has an enormous amount of new information. It details the major crimes of that era, and it exposes major corruption by politicians, police detectives, prosecutors, and judges. Justice eventually prevailed as the vast majority were imprisoned.

Every word comes from the victims, eyewitnesses, local police officials, or the pursuing FBI agents' official internal reports, as documented in 34 pages of 326 endnotes. the subject Index is 14-pages of double-columns.

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