September 19, 2014 – New York Times #1 Best Selling author Dean Koontz commented on my upcoming book America’s Literary Legends: The Lives a& Burial Places of 50 Great Writers.

“This delectable compendium of authors” lives and final resting places is highly entertaining, informative, and beautifully illustrated. Although it deals with literary celebrity, in a quite way the book recommends humility as the sane response to fame.”

This week (October 13-19) in crime history – Palestinian terrorists hijacked a Lufthansa airliner (October 13, 1977); Amityville murder trial began (October 14, 1975); Pierre Laval, the Vichy leader of Nazi-occupied France was executed (October 15, 1945); Exotic dancer turned spy, Mata Hari was executed (October 15, 1917); Mass shooting at Luby’s Cafeteria in Kileen, Texas (October 16, 1991); Ten high ranking Nazi officials were executed at Nuremberg (October 16, 1946); Al Capone was sentenced to prison for tax evasion (October 17, 1931); John Lennon and Yoko Ono were arrested for drug possession (October 18, 1968); John DeLorean was arrested for drug dealing (October 19, 1982).

Highlighted Crime of the Week –

On October 17, 1931, mob boss Al Capone was sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion and fined $80,000, signaling the downfall of one of the most notorious criminals of the 20^th century. Alphonse Gabriel Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1899 to Italian immigrants. He was expelled from school at 14, joined a gang and earned his nickname “Scarface” after being sliced across the cheek during a fight. By 1920, Capone had moved to Chicago, where he was soon helping to run crime boss Johnny Torrio’s illegal enterprises, which included alcohol-smuggling, gambling and prostitution. Torrio retired in 1925 after an attempt on his life and Capone, known for his cunning and brutality, was put in charge of the organization.

Prohibition, which outlawed the brewing and distribution of alcohol and lasted from 1920 to 1933, proved extremely lucrative for bootleggers and gangsters like Capone, who raked in millions from his underworld activities. Capone was at the top of the F.B.I.’s “Most Wanted” list by 1930, but he avoided long stints in jail until 1931 by bribing city officials, intimidating witnesses and maintaining various hideouts. He became Chicago’s crime kingpin by wiping out his competitors through a series of gangland battles and slayings, including the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929, when Capone’s men gunned down seven rivals. This event helped raise Capone’s notoriety to a national level.

Among Capone’s enemies was federal agent Elliot Ness, who led a team of officers known as “The Untouchables” because they couldn’t be corrupted. Ness and his men routinely broke up Capone’s bootlegging businesses, but it was tax-evasion charges that finally stuck and landed Capone in prison in 1931. Capone began serving his time at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta, but amid accusations that he was manipulating the system and receiving cushy treatment, he was transferred to the maximum-security lockup at Alcatraz Island, in California’s San Francisco Bay. He was released in 1939 for good behavior, after spending his final year in prison in a hospital, suffering from syphilis. Plagued by health problems for the rest of his life, Capone died in 1947 at age 48 at his home in Palm Island, Florida.

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemgazine.com and is the author of numerous award winning books that includes Murder and Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California, 1849-1949.

On this date in American literary history – October 7, 1955, poet Alan Ginsberg reads his poem “Howl” at a poetry reading at Six Gallery in San Francisco. The poem was an immediate success that rocked the Beat literary world and set the tone for confessional poetry of the 1960s and later. Ginsberg was born in 1926 to a high school English teacher father and Marxist mother who later suffered a mental breakdown. Her madness and death were the subjects of Ginsberg’s poem “Kaddish.”

Ginsberg’s father raised Allen and his older brother to recite poetry by Poe, Dickens, Keats, Shelley, and Milton. Ginsberg attended Columbia University, intending to study law. At Columbia, he met Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and Neal Cassady, who would become central figures in the Beat movement. Ginsberg was expelled from Columbia in 1945 for a series of minor infractions, then bummed around, working as a merchant seaman, a dishwasher, and a welder. He finally finished Columbia in 1948 with high grades but was arrested when a drug-addict friend stored supplies in his apartment. He successfully pleaded not guilty on the grounds of insanity and spent eight months in the psych ward at Columbia.

After his arrest and trial, Ginsberg went through a “straight” period, working as a successful market researcher and helping to develop a successful ad campaign for toothpaste. He moved to San Francisco and soon fell back in with the Beat crowd. In 1955, over a period of a few weeks, he wrote his seminal work “Howl.” It was printed in England, but its second edition was seized by Customs officials as it entered the country. City Lights, a San Francisco bookstore, published the book itself to avoid Customs problems, and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti was arrested and tried for obscenity, but defended by the ACLU. Following testimony from nine literary experts on the merits of the book, Ferlinghetti was found not guilty.

Ginsberg was center stage at numerous milestone counterculture events during the 1950s and 1960s. His name made it onto J. Edgar Hoover’s list of dangerous subversives. He wrote about his own experiences as a gay man, experimented with drugs, protested the Vietnam War, was clubbed and gassed at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, studied Buddhism, toured with Bob Dylan, and recorded poetry and music with Paul McCartney and Philip Glass. He became a popular teacher and lecturer at universities across the United States. He won the National Book Award in 1973 and was a runner-up for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He wrote and read poetry in New York until his death from liver cancer in 1997.

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of numerous books that includes the soon to be released America’s Literary Legends: The Lives and Burial Places of 50 Great Writers.

On this date in American literary history – October 3, 1895, Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage was published in book form. The story of a young man’s experience of battle was the first American novel to portray the Civil War from the ordinary soldier’s point of view. The tale originally appeared as a serial published by a newspaper syndicate. Crane, the youngest of 14 children, was born in 1871 and grew up in New York and New Jersey. His father died when Crane was 9, and the family settled in Asbury Park, New Jersey. He attended Syracuse University, where he played baseball for a year, but then left. He became a journalist in New York, taking short stints for various newspapers and living in near-poverty.

Immersed in the lower-class life of New York, Crane closely observed the characters around him, and in 1893, at age 23, he published Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, about a poor girl’s decline into prostitution and suicide. Finding a publisher was difficult given the book’s scandalous content, so Crane ultimately published it himself. The book was a critical success but failed to sell well. He turned his attention to more popular topics and began writing The Red Badge of Courage, which made him into an international celebrity at age 24.

The newspaper syndicate that serialized the novel sent him on assignment to cover the West and Mexico. In 1897, he went to Cuba to write about the insurrection against Spain. On the way there, he stayed at a dingy hotel where he met Cora Taylor, who became his lifelong companion. In 1897, his boat to Cuba sank, and he barely survived. His short story “The Open Boat” is based on his experiences in a lifeboat with the captain and the cook. Crane later covered the war between Greece and Turkey, and finally settled in England. Crane contracted tuberculosis in his late 20s. Cora Taylor nursed him while he wrote furiously in an attempt to pay off his debts. He exhausted himself and exacerbated his condition and died in June 1900, at the age of 28.

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of numerous award winning books that includes the soon to be released America’s Literary Legends: The Lives and Burial Places of 50 Great Writers.

On this date in American literary history – September 30, 1868, the first volume of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women was published. The novel will become Alcott’s first bestseller and a beloved children’s classic. Like the fictional Jo March, Alcott was the second of four daughters. She was born in Pennsylvania but spent most of her life in Concord, Massachusetts, where her father, Bronson, associated with Transcendentalist thinkers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The liberal attitudes of the Transcendentalists left a strong mark on Louisa May. Her father started a school based on Transcendentalist teachings, but after six years it failed, and he was left unable to support the family. Louisa dedicated most of her life and writing to supporting her family. In 1852, her first story, The Rival Painters: A Tale of Rome, was published in a periodical, and she made a living off sentimental and melodramatic stories over the next two decades. In 1862, she worked as a nurse for Union troops in the Civil War until typhoid fever broke her health. She turned her experiences into Hospital Sketches (1863), which earned her a reputation as a serious literary writer.

Looking for a bestseller, a publisher asked Alcott to write a book for girls. Although reluctant at first, she poured her best talent into the work, and the first volume of the serialized novel Little Women became an instant success. She wrote a chapter a day for the second half of the book. Her subsequent children’s fiction, including Little Men (1871), An Old-Fashioned Girl (1870), Eight Cousins (1875), and Jo’s Boys (1886), were not as popular as Little Women. She also wrote many short stories for adults. She became a strong supporter of women’s issues and spent most of her life caring for her family’s financial, emotional, and physical needs. Her father died on March 4, 1888, and she followed him just two days later at the age of 55.

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of numerous books that includes the soon to be released America’s Literary Legends: The Lives and Burial Places of 50 Great Writers.

This week (September 29 – October 5) in crime history – Cyanide laced Tylenol kills six in Chicago (September 29, 1982); Polly Klaas was abducted from her home in California (October 1, 1993); Suicide bomber strikes in Bali (October 1, 2005); Nazi war criminals were sentenced at Nuremberg (October 1, 1946); British Major John Andre was executed for spying during the Revolutionary War (October 2, 1780); West Nickel Amish School massacre (October 2, 2006); Amanda Knox’s murder conviction was overturned (October 3, 2011); Evangelist Jim Bakker was indicted on federal charges (October 4, 1988); Dalton gang attempts last train robbery (October 5, 1892)

Highlighted Crime of the Week –

On October 3, 2011, an Italian appeals court overturns the murder conviction of Amanda Knox, an American exchange student who two years earlier was found guilty in the 2007 murder of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy. At the time of her 2009 conviction, Knox, then 22 years old, received a 26-year prison sentence, while her ex-boyfriend, Italian college student Raffaelle Sollecito, who also was convicted in the slaying, was sentenced to 25 years behind bars. The sensational, high-profile case raised questions in the United States about the Italian justice system and whether Knox, who always maintained her innocence, was unfairly convicted.

On November 2, 2007, the 21-year-old Kercher of Coulsdon, England, was found fatally stabbed in the bedroom of the home she shared with Knox and two other women in Perugia, the capital city of the Umbria region in central Italy. Investigators said the British exchange student had been slain the previous night. After questioning by police, Knox, a Seattle native and University of Washington student doing her junior year abroad in Italy, was arrested. She denied any wrongdoing, saying she was at computer science student Sollecito’s house the night the killing occurred. Police claimed Knox later gave them conflicting statements about her whereabouts at the time of the crime, and said she also accused her boss at the bar where she worked, who turned out to have a solid alibi, of Kercher’s murder. The American student, who was first questioned without an attorney or professional interpreter, said police coerced her into making the accusation as well as other incriminating statements.

During the nearly yearlong trial that followed in 2009, Italian prosecutors charged that Knox, along with Sollecito and another man, Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast native, had viciously attacked Kercher in a sex game gone wrong. (Guede was convicted for his role in Kercher’s death in a separate, fast-track trial in 2008. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison, which was reduced to 16 years on appeal.) The prosecution’s main evidence against Knox included tiny traces of her DNA and that of Kercher’s on a knife discovered at Sollecito’s home. Traces of Knox’s DNA were also found on a bra clasp belonging to Kercher. Knox’s attorneys argued the bra clasp was found over a month after the murder at a contaminated crime scene, and that the knife blade couldn’t have made the wounds on the victim.

The case received extensive media coverage in the United States and Europe. In the Italian and British press, Knox was painted as a promiscuous party girl. However, in America, she was often portrayed in the media as an innocent abroad, a young woman who had worked several jobs to earn money to study in Perugia, where she had been railroaded by an overzealous prosecutor. Knox and Sollecito appealed their convictions, and at their subsequent trial court-appointed experts testified the original DNA evidence was unreliable and did not definitively link the young American and her former boyfriend to the crime. On October 3, 2011, an appellate court jury of two judges and six civilians in Perugia acquitted the two defendants of murder. (The court upheld Knox’s conviction on a charge of defamation for accusing her former boss at the bar of murdering Kercher. Knox was given time served along with a fine.) The 24-year-old Knox, who been jailed in Italy since her 2007 arrest, flew home to the United States the following day.

In March 2013, in a new twist in the case, Italy’s highest court overturned the acquittals of Knox and Sollecito and ordered that they be retried. In January 2014, the two were re-convicted in Kercher’s death. Knox, who remained in America during the trial, was sentenced to 28 1/2 years behind bars, while her former boyfriend received a 25-year prison sentence. Lawyers for the two vowed to appeal the convictions. If Knox’s conviction is upheld, she’s unlikely to return to Italy unless extradited.

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author of numerous books that include the award winning Murder and Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California, 1849-1949.

On this date in American literary history – September 25, 1897, William Faulkner was born near Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner’s father was the business manager of the University of Mississippi, and his mother was a literary woman who encouraged Faulkner and his three brothers to read. Faulkner was a good student but lost interest in studies during high school. He dropped out sophomore year and took a series of odd jobs while writing poetry.

In 1918, his high school girlfriend, Estelle Oldham, married another man, and Faulkner left Mississippi. He joined the British Royal Flying Corps, but World War I ended before he finished his training in Canada, and he returned to Mississippi. A neighbor funded the publication of his first book of poems, The Marble Faun (1924). His first novel, Soldiers’ Pay, was published two years later.

In 1929, Faulkner married Estelle, his high school sweetheart, who had divorced her first husband after having two children. The couple a home near Oxford and began restoring it while Faulkner finished The Sound and the Fury, published in October 1929. Other novels to follow included As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932) and Absalom, Absalom (1936). Faulkner’s writing did not earn him enough money to support his family, so he supplemented his income selling short stories to magazines and working as a Hollywood screenwriter. He wrote two critically acclaimed films, both starring Humphrey Bogart: To Have and Have Not was based on an Ernest Hemingway novel, and The Big Sleep was based on a mystery by Raymond Chandler. Faulkner’s reputation received a significant boost with the publication of The Portable Faulkner (1946). Three years later, in 1949, he won the Nobel Prize in literature. His Collected Stories (1950) won the National Book Award. For the remainder of his life, he lectured frequently on university campuses. He died of a heart attack at age 65 on July 6, 1962.

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of numerous books that includes the soon to be released America’s Literary Legends: The Lives and Burial Places of 50 Great Writers.

September 19, 2014 – New York Times #1 Best Selling Author Dean Koontz comments on my next book – America’s Literary Legends: The Lives & Burial Places of 50 Great Writers.

“This delectable compendium of authors’ lives and final resting places is highly entertaining., informative, and beautifully illustrated. Although it deals with literary celebrity, in a quiet way the book recommends humility as the sane response to fame.”

This week (September 22-29) in crime history – Mid-town Slasher claims first victim (September 22, 1980); President Gerald Ford survives second assassination attempt (September 22, 1875); Outlaw Billy the Kid was arrested for the first time (September 23, 1875); Chicago Seven go on trial (September 24, 1969); Mobster Anthony Carfano was murdered (September 25, 1959); Mistrial was declared in Phil Spector murder case (September 26, 2007); Wild Bill Hickok shot and killed Samuel Strawhun in Hays City, Kansas (September 27, 1869); Pompey the Great was assassinated (September 26, 48 B.C.)

Highlighted Crime of the Week –

On September 25, 1959, mob assassins shoot Anthony Carfano, known as Little Augie Pisano, to death in New York City on Meyer Lansky’s orders. Lansky, one of the few organized crime figures who managed to survive at the top for several decades, was estimated to have accumulated as much as $300,000,000 in ill-gotten gains by the 1970s. Still, the government was never able to prove any wrongdoing.

Meyer Lansky, the son of Russian immigrants, had an eighth-grade education, which put him far ahead of many other criminals. According to legend, Lansky was a straight arrow until one day in October 1918, when he joined a fight between teenagers Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano over a prostitute. After the three were charged with disorderly conduct, Lansky and Siegel became friends and began running a high-stakes craps game.

The two later expanded into bootlegging, car theft, and extortion, and helped form the New York “syndicate.” Lansky, a ruthless leader who would not tolerate disloyalty, ordered the murder of a thief who failed to provide an adequate kickback. Although he was shot several times, the thief survived to name Lansky as one of the assailants. Lansky then poisoned his hospital food, and though he survived a second time, the threat was enough to change his attitude toward testifying. Later, he even rejoined Lansky’s gang.

In June 1947, Lansky ordered the death of his old friend Bugsy Siegel in Beverly Hills, California. Siegel, who had been sent to the West Coast in order to establish a new mob presence, came up with the idea of building The Flamingo, Las Vegas’ first major casino. The casino had been built with mob money, and Lansky was angry over the pace of Siegel’s loan payments.

When Lansky ordered the murder of Anthony Carfano 12 years later, Carfano had been intruding on Lansky’s gambling interests in Florida and Cuba. His death eliminated all competition and opened up emerging markets for Lansky in South America. During the 1960s and 1970s, Lansky made a special effort to stay out of the public eye and was fairly successful. He died of lung cancer in 1983.

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author of numerous books that includes the award winning Murder and Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California, 1849-1949.

On this week (September 15-21) in crime history – Bombing of the 16^th Avenue Baptist Church in Bombing kills four children (September 15, 1963); Gunman kills 12 in shooting rampage at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. (September 16, 2013); Lonely Hearts Killer Harvey Glatman was executed (September 18, 1959); Patty Hearst was captured (September 18, 1975); Unabombers manifesto was published by the New York Times and Washington Post (September 19, 1995); Benedict Arnold commits treason (September 21, 1780).

Highlighted Crime of the Week –

Serial killer Harvey Glatman was executed in a California gas chamber on September 18, 1959 for murdering three young women in Los Angeles. Resisting all appeals to save his life, Glatman even wrote to the appeals board to say, “I only want to die.” As a young child, Glatman developed an obsession with rope. When his parents noticed that he was strangling himself on occasion, they took him to a doctor who told them that it was just a phase and that he would grow out of it. As a teenager, he threatened a girl with a toy gun in Colorado. Skipping bail, he made his way to New York, where he later spent two years and eight months in prison on robbery charges.

Following his release, Glatman moved back to Colorado and then to Los Angeles, where he began working as a television repairman. During this same time he took up photography as a hobby. On August 1, 1957, with the pretense of a freelance modeling assignment, Glatman lured 19-year-old Judy Ann Dull to his apartment, where he raped her and then took photos of her, bound and gagged. He then drove her out to the desert east of Los Angeles and strangled her to death. By the time Dull’s body was found, there were no clues linking the crime to Glatman. Back in Los Angeles, Glatman posted the pictures of Dull on his walls and became further obsessed with rape and murder. His next victim was Shirley Ann Bridgeford, whom he also strangled to death in the desert. In July 1958, Glatman struck again, following the same twisted procedure. But in October, his luck ran out. Lorraine Vigil, who answered one of Glatman’s modeling ads, was driving with him to his studio when she noticed that he was heading out of the city. She began to struggle with Glatman, who pulled out a pistol and attempted to tie her hands. After being shot through the hip, Vigil was able to wrestle the gun away from him. In the ensuing struggle, they both tumbled out of the car just as a police officer drove past. Glatman was arrested and confessed to the three murders, seeming to delight in recounting his sadistic crimes. His trial lasted a mere three days before he was sentenced to death.

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author of numerous books that includes the award winning Murder and Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California, 1849-1949.