FBI Spy Catcher In John Walker Spy Case Remains Legendary 35 Years Later

Joanne Kimberlin at the Virginian-Pilot offers a piece on the FBI agent who oversaw the take down of Navy spy John Walker and his spy ring.

At 75 years old, Wolfie remains a rock star among spy hunters.

Joe Wolfinger led the Norfolk FBI squad that cracked the Cold War-era Walker spy ring — one of the most notorious cases of espionage in the nation’s history.

That was 35 years ago, but when Wolfinger showed up last month at FBI headquarters to share his memories with a reporter, his presence drew staff like moths to flame. The interview turned into an all-ears gathering of fans — agents, analysts, supervisors — who settled into chairs to soak up his every word.

One of them, Laura Harper, explained why: “Agents love to hear about any case from the past but this one is a legend.” 

She tilted her head toward the silver-haired Wolfinger: “He’s a legend.”

For the Norfolk FBI, the Walker case remains their Olympic medal: The biggest leak ever of classified Navy documents stopped by one of bureau’s smallest field offices.

When it was over, “we felt great but also kind of guilty for feeling that way because something so awful had happened to our country.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.pilotonline.com/history/vp-db-walker-spy-ring-35-years-later-20200816-xcbp2c6cqzacvpnt5ietkumrzi-story.html

You can also read my Crime Beat column on the Walker spy case via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2009/04/john-walker-notorious-navy-spy.html

Note: The top photo is of John Walker, center, shown here without his toupee, began spying in 1967 while he worked for the Navy, allowing the Soviets to follow U.S. troop and fleet movement - and leading to speculation that his treachery contributed to the deaths of American soldiers in Vietnam in the late 1960s and early 1970s. (John H. Sheally II).

The middle photo is of Joe Wolfinger, center, pictured in 1987, was the FBI supervisor in charge of the Walker spy ring case. Agent Bob Hunter, left, was lead agent on the case. At right is Agent John Wagner. (JOHN H. SHEALLY II / THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT). 

And the below photo is John Walker in his Navy uniform.

10 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About The Making Of Martin Scorsese's 'Mean Streets'

Before Raging Bull, before Goodfellas and before Casino, Martin Scorsese made a great crime film called Mean Streets.

The 1973 film about young Italian American hoodlums in New York starred Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro and many other talented actors. As I’m half-Italian and grew up in South Philly’s “Little Italy” section with the local hoodlum Mean Streets' counterparts, I found the film to be both recognizable and entertaining. Mean Streets is one of my favorite films.

I also love the music from the film. The late film critic Pauline Kael called the music the soundtrack of the character’s lives.    

Jake Dee at Screenrants.com offers 10 behind the scenes facts about Mean Streets.

Despite the poor box-office performance at the time of its release in 1973, Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets has gone to be recognized as one of the greatest gangster movies ever made.

The film currently boasts a 97% Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 96/100 Metascore. In 1997, the film was selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Mean Streets stars Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel as a pair of low-level street hoods trying to make it big in New York's Little Italy. For a better understanding of the movie that put Scorsese on the map, here are some behind the scenes facts about the making of the film.

10 Conception

Following the poor critical and commercial reception of his previous film, Boxcar Bertha, Scorsese's friend, and fellow filmmaker John Cassavetes urged him to get back to his roots and make a personal film, much as he did with Who's That Knocking at My Door in 1967.

Scorsese agreed and decided to make the semiautobiographical Mean Streets as a result. Scorsese based the story on his own personal experiences coming of age in New York's Little Italy, molding many of the characters on people he knew in real life.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://screenrant.com/behind-the-scenes-facts-about-making-of-martin-scorsese-mean-streets/

As I noted in my Crime Beat column on Martin Scorsese, I’ve been a Scorsese fan since Mean Streets came out in 1973.

I was a young aspiring writer at the time, hanging out at a bar in South Philly that was the same type of bar that Scorsese portrayed in Mean Streets.

The characters in the film, based on people he knew from the Lower East Side of New York, had their counterparts in South Philly. Replace New York’s tenements with South Philly’s row homes, and you had the same type of neighborhood and people.

… I later read The Playboy Interview with Scorsese and he mentioned a story about another crew that had flocked to see Mean Streets. He said that while filming Goodfellas, Henry Hill told him that he and Paul Vario’s son had seen Mean Streets and loved it. They saw Paul Vario, who was a capo in the Lucchese crime family, and urged him to see the film. Vario, who rarely went to the movies, gave in and saw the film.

Vario, who would years later be portrayed by Paul Sorvino in Scorsese’s Goodfellas, called his crew together and instructed them to see Mean Streets. Vario, a man of few words, simply told his astonished crew, "It’s about us."

You can read my column on Martin Scorsese via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/11/happy-birthday-to-martin-scorsese.html

You can also watch clips from Mean Streets via the below link:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ7UwnfQ2nA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkGDaroLl_M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag9zbMV5URM

Heather Mac Donald: There Is No Epidemic Of Racist Police Shootings

Heather Mac Donald, (seen in the below photo), the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of The Diversity Delusion and the War On Cops offers a piece tin National Review debunking the idea of an epidemic of racist police shootings.   

The Democratic presidential candidates have revived the anti-police rhetoric of the Obama years. Joe Biden’s criminal-justice plan promises that after his policing reforms, black mothers and fathers will no longer have to fear when their children “walk[] the streets of America” — the threat allegedly coming from cops, not gangbangers. President Barack Obama likewise claimed during the memorial for five Dallas police officers killed by a Black Lives Matter–inspired assassin in July 2016 that black parents were right to fear that their child could be killed by a police officer whenever he “walks out the door.” South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg has said that police shootings of black men won’t be solved “until we move policing out from the shadow of systemic racism.” Beto O’Rourke claims that the police shoot blacks “solely based on the color of their skin.”

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demolishes the Democratic narrative regarding race and police shootings, which holds that white officers are engaged in an epidemic of racially biased shootings of black men. It turns out that white officers are no more likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot black civilians. It is a racial group’s rate of violent crime that determines police shootings, not the race of the officer. The more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that members of that racial group will be shot by a police officer. In fact, if there is a bias in police shootings after crime rates are taken into account, it is against white civilians, the study found.

The authors, faculty at Michigan State University and the University of Maryland at College Park, created a database of 917 officer-involved fatal shootings in 2015 from more than 650 police departments. Fifty-five percent of the victims were white, 27 percent were black, and 19 percent were Hispanic. Between 90 and 95 percent of the civilians shot by officers in 2015 were attacking police or other citizens; 90 percent were armed with a weapon. So-called threat-misperception shootings, in which an officer shoots an unarmed civilian after mistaking a cellphone, say, for a gun, were rare.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/white-cops-dont-commit-more-shootings/

You can also read my Crime Beat column Q&A with Heather Mac Donald via the below link:

www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2017/07/my-crime-beat-column-war-on-cops.html 

George Anastasia's 'Mob Files': A Look Back At The Philadelphia Cosa Nostra Organized Crime Family

For a look back at the bad old days of the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family, you can read my Crime Beat column on George Anastasia's Mob Files: Mobsters, Molls and Murder, via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2009/08/philly-mob-files-mobsters-molls-and.html

My Crime Beat Column: Consumer Beware, Postal Inspector Warns Of Mail Fraud And Crooked Schemes

The below column appeared in the South Philadelphia American in August of 1997:

"Congratulations! You've just won the National Sweepstakes for one million dollars!"

Well, maybe not.

You see, the caller who just informed you over the telephone that you'll soon be a millionaire added subtlety that you will be required to mail in an advance fee of of $5,000 for "administrative costs."

I ventured over to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service's Bala Cynwyd offices to discuss this type of fraud with Tony Wolchasty, a postal inspector, and Judy Starliper, the Philadelphia Division's public information officer and forfeiture specialist.

"Mail fraud is a scheme to defraud an individual or a business using the U.S. Mail to carry out the scheme," Wolchasty said.

Wolchasty went on to explain that a change in the law now includes mail carried by Federal Express, UPS and other private firms. The law was amended because criminals were using the private companies to circumvent the law.

Mail fraud is the oldest consumer protection law in the U.S. and is one of the most effective tools in fighting white collar and organized crime. Millions of dollars are lost each year through mail fraud, which cheats not only the poor and the elderly, but also business people and the consumer as well. Prevalent schemes include insurance, banking, false billings and advance-fee selling swindles; charity schemes, promotions of fake health cures, franchise schemes, beauty devices, fast-working diets and sex stimulants; chain letters, lotteries, and solicitations for the sale of advertising specialty items.

Wolchasty has been a postal inspector for more than 25 years. He works on a fraud team with three other inspectors who investigate complaints from businesses, consumers, and organizations like the Better Business Bureau.

"There are myriad schemes out there and it all depends on the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the promoter," Wolchasty explained. "You have the common schemes, what we call your "work at home" schemes an chain letters. We also have more sophisticated schemes involving investments of thousands and millions of dollars."

Wolchasty said frauds against businesses include "false billings" schemes where a business gets a bill for a product or a service that was never rendered or provided, but the bill is paid anyway because the small amount of money. With a mass mailing, enough companies pay to make it a very profitable scheme,

"Boiler Room" schemes are when you have a room full of telephone operators pitching schemes. Wolchasty said they started out in boiler room basements, hence the name, but today they operate in large office complexes. Senior citizens are the most vulnerable victims.

"These people are so good, they make you believe you really won something. But if someone says you won something and asks you to pay expenses, you should automatically know it's not going to be legitimate," Starliper said.

"No matter how enticing it is, think about what was just proposed," Wolchasty added. "The caller will say that what's coming to you will be more than enough to offset this small amount of money you'll have to pay up front. Let the buyer beware. If you don't know who you are dealing with, don't deal with them."

Wolchasty spoke of one case where a company promised people they were getting cash bonuses and all they had to do was send in money for taxes, shipping and handling and other associated fees.

"People from all around the country bought into this and sent this company over $600,000 in a space of seven months. Then the company completely shut down. We were able to catch up to them and all of them pleaded guilty," Wolchasty said. "They were fairly sophisticated. They worked with "lead brokers" who sell lists of names, addresses, phone numbers and the amount of money sent to promotions in the past. If they gave three thousand, the pitch person will call and ask for a thousand an probably get it."

Who could be victimized twice, I asked? Wolchasty replied that some people are victimized twice and more.                           
                 
"Seniors are predominantly the victims in these cases. They grew up at a time where their word was gold. These people may have problems or a death in the family an this call comes at that inopportune time when they could use some extra money. The con artists are on the phone for hours getting their confidence, building a rapport, and maybe they are the only person they have talked to on the phone in months."

As the forfeiture specialist, Starliper handles the property seized from criminal cases. The 18-year Inspection Service veteran said the forfeiture funds are used for law enforcement's fight against crime. Starliper spoke of a major restitution case she worked involving 22,000 people.

"I was contacted by family members who had no idea that their loved one had been taken." Starliper said. "I advise those with elderly relatives to check their mail and see who they are sending money to."

Wolchasty added that one should keep copies of the advertisements and any literature and envelopes used in a scam. And don't give out your bank account number or Social Security number.

"If someone wants to file a complaint, go to your local Post Office and they'll direct you to the Postal Inspection Service," Starliper said. "You can also call 895-8450 or 1-800-FRAUDIS."

My Crime Beat Column: A Visit To the Philadelphia Police Department's Sex Crimes Unit

The below column originally appeared in the South Philadelphia American in 1997:

A child is abducted walking to school one early morning. A woman is assaulted while getting into her car at a parking lot one early evening. Another woman is attacked while waiting for a subway on a lonely station.

I visited the Philadelphia Police Department Detective Bureau's Sex Crimes Unit and asked if these commonly feared incidents were typical.

"It happens, but that's not the large percentage of our cases," said Philadelphia Police Captain Eileen M. Bonner, the commanding officer of the unit. "Over 75 per cent of sex crime victims know the person who assaulted them."

I met with Bonner and Lt. Ken Coluzzi, who heads up the unit's special investigations, at their office at the old Frankford Arsenal. The unit has city-wide jurisdiction.

"A sex crime is committed when sex occurs between two people by force or intimidation, intellectual or sexual compulsion," Coluzzi said. "Force doesn't only mean a weapon. Any kind of force, like a physical threat or to suggest that harm may come if they don't comply with their wishes."

Typically, uniform patrol officers get the 911 call and then pass on the report to the sex crimes unit. Unit investigators go to the crime scene to protect it and gather as much physical evidence as they can. They talk to the victim if they are available and can speak, and they talk to potential witnesses.

"One crime is too many, but there are no crime patterns right now that we are investigating. There are only isolated incidents," Coluzzi explained. "We just recently had four women who were raped in the Center City and Fairmount area. Three were elderly women and one was a 38-year-old. A man broke into their homes and once inside he raped, robbed, and in one case, beat the woman."

Fortunately, Coluzzi told me, they apprehended a man who was charged with three of the four rapes.

I asked Coluzzi about sex offenders who use the Internet to entice victims.

Coluzzi replied that the unit coordinates Internet crimes with the State's Attorney General and U.S. Postal authorities. The unit gets involved when the case involves child  pornography or the solicitation of a minor for a sexual act.

Bonner added that the unit handles physical abuse of children as well as sexual abuse. She explained that the unit works closely with the city's Department of Human Services.

I asked if there was a typical sex offender, a "Chester the Molester" type.

Coluzzi said no, but he said that a profile of a sexual offender can be done on an individual series of crimes. He spoke of the FBI's Violent Crime Apprehension Program (VICAP) and the Pennsylvania State Police's Analytical Technique of Apprehension of Criminals (ATAC) systems. Homicides, violent sexual crimes and missing persons are registered in the two systems.

The unit submits a 15 page form with the particulars on the victim, the assailant and how the crime took place. A computerized consolidation of information and a profile of an assailant is disseminated throughout the country.

There is also no typical sex crime victim, I was told. The victims cross all social, economic and racial lines.

"The youngest victim was three months old and the oldest was in her nineties," Bonner said.

Coluzzi recalled one of their more well-known cases. In 1996 a man abducted young children out of their homes in the middle of the night, drove them away to be raped and then returned them to their homes. For two months the unit conducted extensive crime scene searches for searches for physical evidence and investigators worked the streets. Witness who came forward due to media attention were very helpful, Coluzzi said. The sex offender was caught and he is now in prison.

Another major case, dubbed by the media as "The Center City Stalker," was worked by Sgt. Patrick Ghegan, who joined our discussion.

"Back in '88 a man was accosting women in parking lots and buildings, and in one case, he waited in the ladies room," Ghegan said. "One woman near 8th and Market resisted and he beat her with a pistol."

Another one of the victims was having a baby and the assailant told her he was a security guard and could help her. He took her to a secluded area ad attacked her. After a three-week investigation the man was apprehended and was later imprisoned.

Coluzzi said that the unit's investigators can't get personally involved, but sex crimes do affect them more than a common burglary.

"It's a crime against a person. For the victim, it's a very traumatic experience that stays with them for the rest of their lives,' Coluzzi said.                    

My Crime Beat Column: Should A Black Actor Be The Next James Bond?

A remake of Shaft is in the works. The black private detective character was originally portrayed in the 1971 film by a black actor, Richard Roundtree, and by another black actor, Samuel L. Jackson, in a 2000 remake.

Should a white actor now be cast as John Shaft in the newest remake?

Ridiculous?

No more ridiculous, it seems to me, than the calls for a black actor to portray James Bond.

Back in December, Rush Limbaugh caused a controversy with his comments that the next actor to portray Ian Fleming's iconic character James Bond should certainly not be Idris Elba, a British black actor being touted by liberal commentators.

Limbaugh noted on his popular radio program and web site that the hacked Sony emails revealed that Amy Pascal, the then-cochairman of Sony, wrote that when Daniel Craig's run as James Bond was over, Elba should play the iconic secret agent character.

"James Bond is a fictional character, obviously," Limbaugh said. "James Bond was invented, created by Ian Fleming, a former spy, MI6, and James Bond is a total concept put together by Ian Fleming. He was white and Scottish, period. That is who James Bond is. But now Sony is suggesting that the next James Bond should be Idris Elba, a black Briton rather than a white from Scotland."

Limbaugh went on to suggest that any future film about President Obama should have George Clooney as Barrack Obama and Kate Hudson as Michelle Obama. He further suggested that Kelsey Grammer portray Nelson Mandela.

Perhaps this was not a good comparison, as President Obama and Nelson Mandela are real people, historical figures, while James Bond is a fictional character. (And Ian Fleming served in British naval intelligence during WWII, not MI6).

The controversy lives on. Many liberals are all for Elba or another black actor to be cast as the next Bond, even if they are not truly Bond fans, as they believe that a black actor portraying the beloved character would signify a social and cultural milestone.

Sony's Amy Pascal is a notorious liberal and financial backer of President Obama, although the hacked Sony emails revealed her mocking Obama, stating in what she believed was a private email that Obama probably only likes films with black actors.

Perhaps that's why she was suggesting that Elba play Bond.

And now David Oyelowo, a fine black actor who has announced that he will narrate the audio book for Anthony Horowitz's James Bond continuation novel, Trigger Mortis, has also called for Elba to be the next James Bond. He suggests that Elba portraying Bond would be a cultural event, a cultural statement that goes beyond entertainment.

Well, call me a traditionalist, but like many true Bond fans, I believe James Bond should be portrayed by a white Brit, as the late, great thriller writer envisioned him.

And to be frank, I, like many Bond fans, have had trouble accepting anyone other than Sean Connery as James Bond.  

I first saw Sean Connery as Bond in Dr No in 1963. I went on to read Fleming’s Bond thrillers and was pleased to discover that the novels were darker and more complex than the films. I’ve been an Ian Fleming aficionado ever since. 

If there were multiple TV and film productions of Ian Fleming's stories featuring James Bond, as there are with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories featuring Sherlock Holmes, few would care if one or more of the productions offered a black actor as Bond. But the character of James Bond is the exclusive property of Eon Productions, so the actor playing Bond for them is the one and only screen representation of Ian Fleming's iconic character.

    

Now I think Elba is a fine actor and I liked him in The Wire and Luther, but I don't think he should be the next Bond. Is this racist? I don't think so.

Would a black person who objected to the idea of a white actor being cast as Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins be a racist?

Rawlins, a fictional character created by black crime novelist Walter Mosley, is a black, street-wise, hard-boiled private detective and WWII veteran. Rawlins was portrayed very well on screen by black actor Denzel Washington in Devil in a Blue Dress in 1995.

I suggest that if another film is made featuring Mosley's Easy Rawlins, the film makers should cast Washington again or another black actor.

Idris Elba comes to mind.

Organized Crime Reporter And Author George Anastasia On 'Black Mass' Film And Gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger

Former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter George Anastasia (seen in the below photo), author of Gotti's Rules, Blood & Honor and other books on organized crime, offers his view of the film Black Mass and the backstory of the FBI and Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger for BBC.com.

It’s sure to be compared to The Godfather and Goodfellas, but Black Mass is in a category all its own. It’s a dark character study – grim, sinister and brooding. And while there’s lots of talk about loyalty and honour, as there was in The Godfather and Goodfellas it isn’t about those things – Black Mass is really a story of seduction and betrayal. That doesn’t make the film better than the two underworld classics to which it will be compared but it does make it more realistic.

Director Scott Cooper has kept the story as close as possible to the book on which it is based. And that book, Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil's Deal, by Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, is by far the best of nearly a dozen written about James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, the Boston wiseguy who used his role as an FBI informant to literally get away with murder. And drug dealing, gun running, loansharking and extortion.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150924-a-mobster-expert-separates-truth-from-fiction-in-black-mass

You can also read my interview with Dick Lehr, the co-author of Black Mass and Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss, via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/06/crime-beat-column-q-with-dick-lehr-co_17.html

And you can read my Philadelphia Inquirer review of George Anastasia's Gotti's Rules via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/02/my-philadelphia-inquirer-review-of.html 

Hemingway's 'The Killers' On Film: Blu-Ray's Double Feature

Raymond Benson, who wrote several James Bond continuation novels, looks back at the two film versions of Ernest Hemingway's great crime story The Killers at cinemaretro.com.

The Criterion Collection gave us the DVD versions of these two excellent crime thrillers twelve years ago. The company has now seen fit to upgrade the release to Blu-ray.

Based loosely on a short story by Ernest Hemingway, both versions of The Killers begin with the author’s premise and then take off from there in very different directions. It’s interesting to see how the respective screenwriters adapted the story and then created two disparate feature-length tales out of it. In Hemingway’s piece, two hit men arrive in a small town looking for “the Swede.” They terrorize the owner, cook, and a customer in a diner in an attempt to find the guy. After the killers leave in frustration, the customer runs to the Swede’s boarding house and finds him in bed with his clothes on. He warns the Swede about the men, but the Swede says he’s not going to do anything about it. The customer goes back to the diner and, after realizing no one cares, leaves town. And that’s it.

The 1946 version faithfully captures the short story—even down to the dialogue—for the first ten minutes. Where the short story ends, the movie goes on and we see the hit men actually kill the Swede (played by Burt Lancaster in his first starring role). Enter Jim Reardon (Edmond O’Brien, with third billing, but he’s really the protagonist of the film!) as an insurance inspector—it turns out the Swede had a life insurance policy that benefits an old lady who helped him once. Reardon is determined to uncover the story behind it all, and the rest of the movie follows his investigation into the Swede’s life in crime (told entirely in flashbacks). The Swede was a boxer who got mixed up with Big Jim, a racketeer (played by Albert Dekker), and falls in love with Big Jim’s gal, Kitty (played by smokin’ hot Ava Gardner, in one of her first starring roles; Gardner had been kicking around Hollywood since the early 40s—this was her big break). As we all know, it’s not good to mess around with the crime boss’s dame.

 

... The 1964 version is a different animal. It was produced to be the very first TV movie, but NBC viewed the finished product and deemed it too violent for television. Instead, the producers released it theatrically worldwide. Directed by Don Siegel (billed as “Donald Siegel”), The Killers Mach II stars Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager as the hitmen, who here become the focal point of the new story. John Cassavetes plays the Swede character, only here he is a racecar driver named Johnny. The femme fatale, Sheila, is played by Angie Dickinson, and get this... the crime boss is none other than Ronald Reagan in his last film role before he became a politician.

 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

 

http://www.cinemaretro.com/index.php?/archives/8699-BLU-RAY-REVIEW-THE-KILLERS-Double-Feature;-1946directed-by-Robert-Siodmak;-1964directed-by-Don-Siegel-The-Criterion-Collection.html 

 

You can also read more about Hemingway's short story The Killers via the below link to my Crime Beat column:

 

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2009/08/on-crime-thrillers-hemingway-on-crime.html 

'Child 44': A Film Based On Tom Rob Smith's Thriller

Although the early reviews of the film Child 44 have not been kind, I look forward to seeing the film, as I enjoyed the Tom Rob Smith thriller that the film is based on.

The thriller, set in the bad old days of Stalin's Soviet Union, is about a Russian serial killer and the MGB (forerunner to the KGB) officer out to catch him.

I wrote about Tom Rob Smith's Child 44 in my Crime Beat column.

Andrei Chikatilo is not as well known as his fellow serial killers Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, and if the Soviets had their way, no one would have ever heard of him.

 According to the Soviets, crime did not exist in their worker’s paradise. But as the dead bodies piled up, the killer who came to be known as The Rostov Ripper was finally caught and convicted of brutally murdering 52 women and children between the years 1978 and 1990.

Chikatilo told the Soviet court that he performed a service for the Soviet system by eliminating what he called “worthless people.” Chikatilo was executed in 1994.

HBO made a good film about Chikatilo called Citizen X and Tom Rob Smith has written a good fictional account of the Chikatilo case, called Child 44.

The 30-year-old writer said he was researching a screenplay when he came across the Chikatilo case.

“The more I dug into the case, the more clear it became that he evaded capture not because he was ingenious but because the Soviet criminal system was reluctant to admit he even existed,” Smith wrote in his web page http://tomrobbsmith.com/.

“Their preconceptions about their society were as important, if not more important than stopping these terrible murders,” Smith continued. “Reading the nonfiction account of the investigations was incredibly frustrating. My reaction was so strong I knew I wanted to tell my own version of the story.”

 

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

 

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2009/10/soviet-serial-killers-and-secret-speech.html

 

My Crime Beat Column: The King Of Tartan Noir: Ian Rankin And the Scottish Crime Scene

While laid-up in the hospital for more than a month with severe nerve and spine damage, I had the opportunity to do a good bit of reading. In the batch of books I asked my family to bring in to the hospital were a couple of Ian Rankin’s crime novels.

I enjoy Rankin’s Inspector Rebus novels partly because they are well written and interesting, and partly because they take place in Scotland.

I served on a Navy harbor tugboat at the U.S. nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch, Scotland in 1974 and 1975. Back then, Ian Rankin was only a "wee lad," as they say in Scotland.

Being of Scot-Welsh blood on my father’s side, I felt quite at home there. In addition to the blood tie, I was and am a student of history and I’ve always been interested in Scottish and British history. We share a "special relationship" with the United Kingdom. The United States and the United Kingdom have been close allies through the two world wars and right up to our current war on terrorism.

I traveled all over Scotland during my Navy tour of duty, from Inverness in the Highlands to the capital city of Edinburgh in the Lowlands. I also kept a weekend flat (apartment) in Glasgow.

The country has God-awful winter weather and the food is much too bland for my taste when compared to the Italian food I was raised on in South Philadelphia (my mother was Italian), but I found the Scots to be a friendly and charming people. I also found the country to be nearly crime-free, at least by American standards.

Even so, as a serious student of crime, I followed what there was of a crime scene. Through a girlfriend, I met a police constable and over many a pint we had many discussions about crime in Scotland. He also drove me about the city of Glasgow when off duty and pointed out places and people of interest.

To return the favor, I often spoke of American organized crime, which fascinated him. I also met some local toughs and a few "villains" (what the British call criminals) while pub-crawling through Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Although many years have passed since I left Scotland, I’m still interested in the country and the people.

 

Which brings me to Ian Rankin and Detective Inspector John Rebus of the Lothian and Borders Police in Edinburgh. Rankin’s character has battled Scottish street crime bosses like Morris Gerald "Big Ger" Cafferty, serial killers and corrupt politicians and business people. He also fights his police bosses. They know him to be an effective investigator, yet he often goes too far in his pursuits and ruffles official feathers.

Rebus is a troubled character. He experiences guilt for his failed marriage and his failure as a father to his only daughter. He finds some solace in music, excessive smoking and drinking - and in his job as a detective. He is a loner with few friends among the police.

Although I’m generally bored with the too typical troubled, maverick loner cop who breaks rules (and laws) in crime fiction, Rankin’s Rebus seems fresh and different.

 

Rebus is a veteran of a British army parachute regiment and served in Northern Ireland during the "troubles" there. He became a member of the elite commando group, the Special Air Service (SAS), but later resigned. His army bosses arranged to find him employment as a policeman.

American crime writer James Ellroy called Rankin "The King of Tartan Noir," and according to a leading British newspaper, Rankin has been praised not only for his gritty realism, but also for his exceptional depiction of contemporary Scotland. Rankin covers much more than the crime scene. He covers the various worlds of government, business, the clergy and the working people of Scotland.

"Edinburgh is the perfect setting for crime writing," Rankin has said. "It has a split personality – on the one hand it is the city of history and museums and royalty, but at the same time there is this feeling that behind the thick walls of those Georgian townhouses there are all sorts of terrible things happening."

Rankin was born in 1960, graduated from the University of Edinburgh and published his first Rebus novel, "Knots & Crosses," in 1987. He has gone on to become the United Kingdom’s number one best-selling crime writer. His newest novel, "A Question of Blood," will soon be published in the U.S.

So if you’re interested in reading a series of crime novels with a setting other than New York City or LA, I heartily recommend Ian Rankin.

 

Note: The above column originally appeared in The Orchard Press Online Mystery Magazine in 2003.   

Welcome Us Back, Mr. Bond: Producers Announce That 'SPECTRE' Will Be The Name Of The Upcoming James Bond Film.

MI6, the James Bond web site, not the British intelligence service, offers a look at the Bond film producers' press release regarding the upcoming James Bond film. The title of the film will be called SPECTRE.

SPECTRE, the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion, is the international criminal organization created by Ian Fleming in his James Bond novel Thunderball. The organization was run by the mad, evil genius Ernst Stravo Blofeld, who appeared in the next two Fleming thrillers, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice. SPECTRE was the principal villain in the early Bond films.   

PRESS RELEASE: James Bond Producers, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli today released the title of the 24th James Bond adventure, SPECTRE. The film, from Albert R. Broccoli's EON Productions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, and Sony Pictures Entertainment, is directed by Sam Mendes and stars Daniel Craig, who returns for his fourth film as Ian Fleming's James Bond 007.

SPECTRE begins principal photography on Monday, December 8, and is set for global release on November 6, 2015.

Along with Daniel Craig, Mendes presented the returning cast, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw and Rory Kinnear as well as introducing Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Dave Bautista, Monica Bellucci and Andrew Scott. Mendes also revealed Bond's sleek new Aston Martin, the DB10, created exclusively for SPECTRE.

A cryptic message from Bond's past sends him on a trail to uncover a sinister organisation. While M battles political forces to keep the secret service alive, Bond peels back the layers of deceit to reveal the terrible truth behind SPECTRE.

You can read the rest of the press release via the below link:

http://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles/bond-24-spectre-title-announcement

You can also read Ryan Smith's piece in the Daily Mail and watch videos of the Bond film announcement via the below link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2860541/Daniel-Craig-set-joined-star-studded-cast-anticipated-James-Bond-movie-Spectre-sleek-new-Aston-Martin-unveiled.html

And you can read my Crime Beat column on the Ian Fleming and the James Bond phenomenon via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/06/casino-royale-revisited-film-that.html

Getting Made: The Making Of Martin Scorsese's 'GoodFellas'

I'm a big fan of Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. I think Goodfellas is one of the finest crime films ever made. In my view Goodfellas is also one of the most realistic organized crime films ever made.  

Kevin Jagernauth at indiewire.com offers a piece on the making of the film and offers a link to a 30-minute documentary on the making of the classic crime film. He also notes that yesterday was the great film director's birthday.

Today, Martin Scorsese turns 72-years-young, and his vast filmography gives you plenty of ways to celebrate (check out our retrospective of his films). But for many, particularly those of a certain age, "Goodfellas" remains, if not his best film, then certainly his most rewatchable and plainly enjoyable. While you've likely seen the movie more than a few times already, you might want to go behind-the-scenes to learn how it was made.

The 30-minute "Getting Made: The Making Of Goodfellas," which was included on the film's home video release, has made its way online, and it's great stuff.

You can watch the video via the below link:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/watch-grow-up-a-be-a-gangster-with-30-minute-getting-made-the-making-of-goodfellas-20141117

Note: In one of my Crime Beat columns I wrote about Goodfellas:

Over the years I've heard from a number of law enforcement officials who complain that The Godfather and the other mob books and movies glamorize crime. When I was a producer and on-air host on Inside Government, a public affairs radio program that aired on WPEN AM and WMGK FM on Sunday mornings a few years ago, I interviewed the assistant U.S. attorney in charge of organized crime in the Philadelphia area

He did not agree with my assessment of Goodfellas, which I said was the most realistic film portrayal of organized crime. He felt that audiences liked the actor Joe Pesci in the film because he was funny and charming, but they failed to realize that he and the other criminals in the film were vicious and murderous.

I countered by saying that I’ve found some of the real mob guys to be funny, charming and even generous. And I’ve also seen them quickly turn vicious, cold and heartless – just as Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro portrayed them on the screen. They can be good friends and good company - unless you owe them money or you have something they want. Serial killers and con artists have also been known to be quite charming. 

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2011/09/goodfellas-dont-sue-goodfellas-look.html

I also covered Goodfellas in my Crime Beat on Martin Scorsese's film world of crime. You can read the column via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/11/happy-birthday-to-martin-scorsese.html

Ten Years Ago, A Bugging At The Mayor's Office Shook Philadelphia

Craig R. McCoy and Mark Faziollah at the Philadelphia Inquirer offer a look back at the bugging of the mayor's office.

Before it all blew up, the FBI's bugging of Mayor John F. Street's City Hall office went off without a hitch.

... In perhaps the most audacious act by law enforcement in recent Philadelphia history, the FBI and federal prosecutors chose to rig Street's office with listening devices as the climax of a "
pay-to-play" investigation weeks before before Street was to stand for reelection.

It was all for naught. The FBI would not pick up a single conversation, incriminating or otherwise, before someone leaked word of the bug to the Street administration. A top aide to the mayor then instructed the police commissioner to sweep the office for listening devices.

Ten years ago Monday, Philadelphia police pulled down the small bug from the ceiling of Street's office, revealing the massive federal investigation.

The news was a bombshell. It rocked the electorate and triggered a tumultuous week rivaled for governmental chaos in recent memory only by the aftermath of the MOVE bombing. The furor grew as FBI agents fanned out across the region, raiding city offices, businesses and homes and handing out a blizzard of federal subpoenas.

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20131006_Ten_years_ago__a_bugging_at_the_mayor_s_office_shook_Philadelphia.html

You can also read my Crime Beat column on the subject via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/07/politicians-dubious-prison-sentence-bug.html

My Crime Beat Column: The Assassination of President Kennedy Is The Crime Of The 20th Century

Despite the passing of decades and competing tumultuous world events to stimulate our interest, we remain fascinated with the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

We still see a cottage industry of articles, documentaries, books and movies that deal or refer to the tragic death of the U.S. President.

Even Cuban dictator Fidel Castro – one of the usual suspects – got into the act a few years ago when reports came out of Cuba that he was personally conducting a one-man Warren Commission into the shooting of Kennedy.

Although Castro has considerable personal experience in shooting people, usually with a wall behind his victim and a complementary blindfold, I lean more towards the FBI’s more scientific tests that conclude that there was only one shooter – Lee Harvey Oswald.

As a crime writer, I too have maintained an interest in what is no doubt the Crime of the 20^th Century.

Conspiracies abound, then and now, that accuse forces within the U.S. government of killing Kennedy to avenge his failure to fully support the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and his supposed plan to abandon South Vietnam.

I don’t subscribe to this theory. Had agents of the government been involved in the shooting, I believe they would have missed John and hit Jacqueline.

A government operation of this magnitude would have ended up, like we used to say when I was in the Navy, in a SNAFU (situation normal, all fucked up).

We should also take note that in our free and open society, the government has never been very good at keeping secrets (The Pentagon Papers, leaked and published in newspapers, is one of many examples of this).

Considering the long line of spies reporting to Moscow during the Cold War and the "Deep Throats" who routinely leak to the media, surely some substantial testimony or evidence of government involvement would have surfaced by now. Human nature makes us all blabbermouths.

One of our best crime writers today, former LAPD Detective Joseph Wambaugh, covered this in his recent true crime book Fire Lover.

He wrote that "the vast-government-conspiracy theories floated in hundreds of books and films have never failed to produce howls of laughter when mentioned at law-enforcement gatherings, especially in the aftermath of JFK, when the vast government conspiracy included the FBI, CIA and all the other three-letter agencies staffed by bureaucrats who are mostly loathed and distrusted by street cops. Those with an alliterative flair call them grandstanding government geeks in penny loafers, or bumbling back-stabbing bureaucrats who wouldn’t conspire to peek inside a girlfriend’s underwear without the approval of a U.S. attorney and a search warrant."

"But what really brings down the station house," Wambaugh continued, "is when, in order to make the JFK conspiracy work, all the revisionists had to include the Dallas Police Department. And that does it every time. Cops get to knee slapping and falling out of their chairs over the thought of it. Because everyone who’s ever worn a badge knows the moment a cop gets a real secret, the drums start beating and the asphalt jungle wireless starts humming, and the first leggy news chick with tits out to here will be blabbing the secret on the news at ten even before the cop wives get to tell it to the gang at the office and the girls at the gym."

Kennedy, as some conspiracy buffs and revisionist historians would have us believe, was attempting to rein in the covert operators when they struck him down in retaliation. I don’t buy this. Kennedy, a WWII naval officer who read and promoted Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, gave new birth to the Army’s Green Beret Special Forces and ordered the Navy to expand the Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) frogmen into today’s SEALs (Sea, Air and Land).

He was the special operators’ champion and had used them to counter communist insurgencies around the world, much as the Special Operations groups of today are combating terrorism.

Patriotism was and continues to be the special operators’ prime motivation for doing dangerous and thankless work. To these men, killing a president would be downright un-American.

Another popular conspiracy is that organized crime was behind the assassination of Kennedy to halt Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s war on crime. The theory goes that the mob was upset with Kennedy’s ingratitude, considering the mob’s large donations and their assistance in wide spread voter fraud in Cook County, Illinois. It seems that some Illinois residents were so enamored with Kennedy that they rose from the dead to vote for him. Some even voted twice! Some political analysts believe the voter fraud threw the election to Kennedy.

I don’t subscribe to the idea that the mob killed Kennedy. American organized crime leaders decided very early in their development that the killing of public figures like politicians, policemen and reporters was bad for business (I particularly appreciate the ruling on reporters).

This ruling was not based on morality or civic duty; it was based on the idea that the ensuing public outrage would bring on a crackdown of criminal operations and a loss of revenue. The mob, then and now, is all about making money.

The mob strictly enforced this rule in 1935 by killing one Arthur Flegenheimer, aka, "Dutch" Schultz," when he threatened to kill prosecutor Thomas Dewey. Based on their history and transcripts of wiretaps, I don’t think they would have violated this very practical tradition by killing a president.

The so-called "Men of Honor" in Sicily have discovered what Salvatore "Charlie Lucky" Luciano and the other old time crime bosses warned against. The Sicilian criminals, having boldly murdered crusading prosecutors and priests, lost most of their public acceptance and now face the wrath of the Italian National police and the Pope.

Like many of the military, intel and security people I knew when I served in the Navy and later as a Defense Department civilian, I used to believe that Castro killed Kennedy. President Johnson shared this belief.

Kennedy attempted to kill Castro with plots derived by "Operation Mongoose." Castro told reporters at the time that he was going to turn the tables on Kennedy. Oswald’s communist past and ties also point decidedly leftward.

And - although it is often glossed over - prior to the Kennedy assassination, Oswald attempted to assassinate General Edwin Walker (Ret), a controversial conservative figure in the early 1960s. Why would the mob, the CIA, the military and all of the usual suspects want Walker dead?   

Today I have doubts about any and all conspiracies, left or right. Gerald Posner’s Case Closed initially sparked my change of mind and heart. Posner answers a number of questions about the assassination, effectively disputes testimony of so called "witnesses" and proves that a number of coincidences were just that – coincidences.

Posner also points out that science has made great advancements since 1963 and by putting the old evidence through modern scientific tests, he dispels many of the conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, I don’t have the space to go into detail, so I suggest you read Posner’s book.

I now lean towards what I call the "Two Nuts" theory. Simply put, Oswald was a nut and the man who shot him, Jack Ruby, was also a nut. So unless further evidence concerning the Crime of the 20^th Century is uncovered, for me, the case is closed.

Note: The above column appeared in the Orchard Press Online Mystery Magazine in 2002 

My Crime Beat Column: Peace, Love And Homicide - The Unicorn Killer Is Convicted

I’ll never let you leave me. If I can’t have you, no one will.

The jilted lover turned murderer is a classic character in crime fiction and in the true annals of crime.

 "To kill what you love when you can’t have it seems so natural that strangling Rita last night seemed so right," Ira Einhorn wrote in his journal in 1962 when their love affair ended. Fortunately, she survived the attack, but a later girlfriend would not be so lucky.

Einhorn, often called Philadelphia’s "Hippie Guru," in the 1960s and 70s, was recently convicted in Philadelphia of the murder of his former girlfriend, Holly Maddux.

The long road to his conviction and life sentence in a Pennsylvania prison began in 1977 when Maddux, a young woman who left Texas to attend Bryn Mawr College, was reported missing after she broke it off with Einhorn. When the police could not find her, the Maddux family hired a private detective to search for her.

When neighbors complained about a horrible smell coming from Einhorn’s apartment in 1979, the police searched and found Maddux’s body in a locked steamer trunk in his closet. 

Arrested and charged with her murder, Einhorn’s attorney, former Philadelphia District Attorney and current U.S. Senator, Arlen Specter, arranged for several prominent business, social and civic leaders to testify to Einhorn’s good character. Despite the obvious fact that Einhorn kept his mummified girlfriend in a closet for 18 months, bail was set at $40,000. He skipped his pretrial hearing and fled the country.

Einhorn, a local media darling, often appeared on TV and in the newspapers during the 1960s as a counterculture hippie spokesman and in the 1970s as a "New Age activist." He was a friend of 60’s radicals Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, as well as the pet radical of some of Philadelphia’s bluest bloods and wealthiest corporate leaders (to get a better understanding of this type of odd social pairing, read Tom Wolfe’s great piece, Radical Chic).

As the name Einhorn translates to "one horn," he began to call himself "the Unicorn." He lived off of the kindness and money of gullible supporters. He was largely a media creation, it seemed to me. He was, both then and now, a sociopath and con artist.

Having been a teenager during the 1960s, I recall the decade’s counterculture vividly. The true believers, called hippies by the media, were a small, though highly visible minority group. They rejected conventional morality and personal hygiene (Einhorn was known to not bathe and smelled horribly) and claimed to believe in peace, love and understanding. Also active during that time and confused with the hippies were the radicals who participated in violent protests against the Vietnam War and other issues.

On college campuses and in urban centers like Philadelphia, most of the young people were enamored with the music, clothes, movies, drugs and other stylistic trappings of the age, but the great majority never truly subscribed to the extreme radical politics of the day or the dreamy hippie philosophy. Reporters looking for good copy and sound bites flocked like groupies to charlatans like Einhorn.

Throughout the 1980s Einhorn was a fugitive from justice. He was spotted in Ireland and Sweden, but no arrests were made. In 1993 the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office tried Einhorn in absentia. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

In 1997, the TV show Unsolved Mysteries told the story of Maddux’s murder and Einhorn’s fugitive flight. The tips rolled in after the show was broadcast and Einhorn was reported to be living in France under the name of Eugene Mallon. The French police arrested him, but then the French court refused to extradite him back to the U.S.

The French are much taken with our murderers – and Jerry Lewis. I suppose it’s a French thing.

Finally, after much public debate and political maneuvering, as well as Einhorn’s pathetic and phony attempt to slash his own throat, the French turned Einhorn over to the American authorities in France in 2001.

He was flown back to Philadelphia and granted a new trial. The trial, which received both national and international news coverage, was a strange one.

Einhorn’s defense was that he was framed. Although that is not a particularly original defense - "The DA framed me not knowing that I was really guilty. Ain’t that a coincidence?" a small-time hood said to Dashiell Hammet’s fictional detective Nick Charles in The Thin Man – Einhorn said the CIA framed him because of his extensive knowledge of secret, mind-control weapons. Some called this the "X-Files" defense.

Einhorn took the stand and told the court that his research into psychotronic mind-control weaponry, and the use of telepathic power and radio waves to control people was the reason Maddux was murdered and her body placed in his apartment. His egomania clearly came through in the court and the jury only took two hours to return a verdict of guilty.

Before sentencing Einhorn to life in prison, Judge William Mazzola called him an "intellectual dilettante who prayed on uninitiated, uninformed, unsuspecting, inexperienced people."

The judge quoted one witness who said Einhorn was a gadfly who ingratiated himself into organizations, as when he received a fellowship at Harvard and then passed himself off as a professor.

"He’s the type of person who I would describe as someone who would buy a book and read the first and last chapters of the book and feign a special understanding. I think the criticism we heard during testimony of other witnesses was not unfounded and the sentence is justified," Judge Mazzola said from the bench.

Now, after all these years, the Maddux family finally has justice. Einhorn has gone from sipping fine wine on his French farm to being prisoner ES6859. They don’t serve wine, fine or otherwise, at the State Correctional Institution at Houtzdale.

Note: The column originally appeared in the Orchard Press Online Mystery Magazine in 2002.