No comments about The Murder of Ivar Kreuger.

No comments about The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook.

5 comments about The Osage Indian Murders: The True Story of a 21-Murder Plot to Inherit the Headrights of Wealthy Osage Tribe Members.

1. The reader from Edmond, OK did not like this book, but apparently he is a minority of one among Osage Tribe members. The Osage Tribal museum as well as commerical establishments owned by Osages have sold thousands of copies of "The Osage Indian Murders."

   He claims the book is inaccurate historically, but the book was written with access to all of the FBI's files about the case as well as historical material available at the White Hair Memorial near Fairfax, OK, the Osage Tribal museum in Pawhuska, OK, the Tulsa Public Library, the Tulsa world and other sources. The reader objected to the book stating that Baconrind "bellowed," but that is a verbatim quote from a magazine writer who personally interviewed Baconrind. Baconrind's grandson and namesake, incidentally, has bought several copies of the book. If this reader from Edmond, OK has some specifics to back up his objections about inaccuracies, the author and publisher would be pleased to have this information as is stated in the introduction to the book.

   Many Osages have purchased multiple copies for relatives and friends without ever objecting to anything in the book.

   The author would be pleased to personally hear from this reader if he has any specifics to back up his objections.

   Amlex, Inc.




2. How can the author claim to write the "true story" of the Osage murders without citing ANY research documentation whatsoever? Obviously, Hogan did not interview any Real Osages, nor has he visited the Osage Museum or the Whitehair Memorial. This book is yet another attempt by a white person to recreate Osage history from his own perspective and call it factual. And, as far as selling "thousands of copies" of the book, well, that does not establish its veracity. As an academician, I cannot endorse this book. No research, no interviews, no inclusion of Real Osage accounts = no true story. Finally, I take exception to the publisher's attack on the only other person who wrote a review similar to mine. A review should be just that--an opinion of a text's quality (or in this case, failure). This book does nothing but perpetuate negative stereotypes of Osage Indians. In any case, the subtitle should instead read "One White Man's Fictionalized Account..."



3. A pretty good book. The author had a great story to begin with....it would make an excellent motion picture. However, I thought it had a few shortcomings. The absence of an Osage perspective on the whole ordeal was a major flaw. Surely, Hogan could have found some documents from tribal members who experienced the "Reign of Terror" or interviewed the few remaining Osage members who lived through this period. Also, as a Native American, I thought the use of "Squaw" and "Squaw Man" was gratuitous and offensive. Furthermore, the jumping around from case to case was confusing at times. Nonetheless, I have recommended the book to many friends. As a person who works with the Osage Tribe, I found his account consistent with my knowledge of the "Reign of Terror" that I have accumulated through many meetings with tribal leaders and elders in Pawhuska. I was also pleased that he included an accurate, though brief, tribal history section at the beginning of the book. Furthermore, the author was successful in giving the reader a adequate sense of the setting in Osage County during the 1920s- a place replete with scoundrels, bootleggers and con men. Additionally, I was very pleased with his writing style. Often times when a "true crime" story is being told, the book is bogged down with picayune details of court proceedings. However, Hogan was able to offer a succinct, yet comprehensive account of the trial involving the Osage Indian Murders.



4. I half expected ghosts to step out of "The Osage Indian Murders." The book is that dry, that dusty. Yet from the author's chapter-and-verse narrative and bare-bones prose comes a haunting look back at a lawless time and place.

   In 1870 Congress forced the Osages to sell their lands in Kansas and buy lands from the Cherokees in what was then Oklahoma Territory. The price quoted was 25 cents an acre. When the Osages hove into sight, of course, the Cherokees upped the price to 70 cents an acre. It was a seller's market.

   Who could know that the "poor grave" (as the Osages called the new reservation) would start gushing oil in 1897? The real tragedy of things to come was these once-proud Plains warriors had never wanted money. They wanted to hunt buffalo, plant a few field crops and steal horses -- a special passion of the Plains Indians.

   But the oil flowed, the Osages spent money with both hands and the vultures circled. One way for a white thief to get his hands on Osage money was to marry an Osage woman, have her killed and inherit her headrights.There was always someone willing to pull the trigger -- a shiftless hanger-on or an outlaw hiding in the woods of Osage County.

   This, then, was the setting for a string of Osage Indian murders that terrorized both Indians and whites. In 1923, the FBI was called in. Agents worked undercover for three years, turning over one rock at a time to put their case together. Trials began in 1926 and eventually several life sentences were handed down.

   Author Lawrence J. Hogan -- a former FBI agent and former U.S. congressman -- did voluminous research for this book. He quotes from original documents, interviews and confessions, and organized an interesting bibliography.

   Old black and white photos of Indians and outlaws, murder scenes and city streets evoke the time and place in ways that words never can. The people in the photos bring the story to life. They look straight out of the page and their eyes speak volumes.

   After a while it sinks in: They were real people, and they really did those things.

   Note: This review is excerpted, with permission, from a review I wrote for The Hanford Sentinel newspaper.




5. The only value in Laurence J. Hogans book the Osage Indian Murders is in giving some dates and settings in an otherwise forgotten or ignored chapter in America's history. As an Osage, the book also keeps grandma's stories of how thing actually happened fresh and in mind, other than that it is of little or no value. Mr. Hogan in his, almost jubilant, heralding of the F.B.I. fails to mention that they had to be begged numerous times to investigate the murders that where in their jurisdiction or that the tribe finally had to pay them $3,000,000.00 to do a "shoddy" investigation or furthermore how the F.B.I. records contain page after page of blacked out sheets that protected many criminals and murders from public scrutiny for the crimes they committed against the Osages. In short the book seems to be more of a white wash of the F.B.I.'s handling of the case than anything else. Moreover the book is simply poorly written, you learn nothing about the victims other than stereotypes and cliches of dumb & drunk indians. The book zooms way past racially offensive right out of the gate. The book seems to be nothing more than a simple work of fiction, based on dusty F.B.I. files, to make a buck. The book most certainly has little historical value but does, however, serve as handy reference tool if you know the truth. Had Mr. Hogan done any real research he would have found, rather than the "small gang" of "desperate men" responsible for a few murders and swindles, the murders & swindles were far more wide spread, common, accepted, intriguing & darker, than his work of fiction could ever create.

5 comments about Phishing Exposed.

1. What do phishers gain from their techniques, and how do they steal identities, passwords, and information? Learn to identify the three classes of security attacks, how phishers scour the net for valid email addresses to attack, and how they are able to exploit computer vulnerabilities with Lane James's Phishing Exposed, which will interest programmers, network administrators and legal officers alike. Chapters expose attacks then probe the world of organized phishing gangs and operations to show how phishers operate, and how you can protect your system.



2. Phishing Exposed is a powerful analysis of the many severe problems present in Web-based activities. Phishing Exposed is another threat-centric title from Syngress. The book presents research conducted by Secure Science Corporation as a way to understand the adversary. The author demonstrates his own attacks against multiple popular e-commerce sites as a way to show how phishers accomplish their goals. I was surprised by the extent to which the author could repeatedly abuse high-profile financial sites, and for that reason I highly recommend reading Phishing Exposed.
   
   The book begins with an overview of the phishing problem. Three basic phishing techniques (impersonation, forwarding, and popup) are explained. The mechanics of email and HTTP are also described. The heart of the book appears in chapters 4 and 5, where almost 270 pages are devoted to the author's assessment and abuse of banking sites. I was shocked by the author's ability to repeatedly take advantage of vulnerabilities in client and server software and configuration. These chapters made me wonder if it is possible for an average end user -- or even a skilled technical user -- running popular operating systems and browsers to survive these sorts of high-end attacks.
   
   Ch 6 featured some innovative material on subverting caller ID by using Voice over IP and other methods. I also appreciated the historical perspective in that chapter.
   
   My only real concern is that the author devoted lots of material to his own attacks, and not as much to attacks by real phishers. I would have liked additional details on how to detect and potentially defeat these attacks using network-based and proxy-based means.
   
   Incidentally, reviews by "relatives" should be considered suspect, although reviews with the title "inadequate and unoriginal" should be completely ignored. Reviews like that demonstrate another instance where that particular "reviewer" has once again skimmed the text and not spent any time reading the book. Phishing Exposed is incredibly original -- and that's why I've given it five stars, despite some rough editing from Syngress.



3. If you're on your way to a security conference this summer, and you'd like to get up to speed on web site abuses and browser design vulnerabilities, this book makes for excellent airplane-reading fare. I say this because Phishing Exposed manages to succeed on two fronts: it is both an instructive technical reference, as well as a surprisingly compelling narrative.
   
   The first is unsurprising -- it is, after all, a Syngress book, and so is typical of technical books from this imprint. The second accomplishment, though, was a pleasant surprise. It's not common that someone as deeply involved in the technologies of network security are also talented writers.
   
   As an example, while documenting the technical characteristics of e-mail delivery, James illustrates example forensic techniques of identifying the home city, working schedule, and handedness of the attacker. It's this mix of CSI-meets-ITSec that makes the book an honest page-turner.
   
   Given this literary attention to narrative and even elements of plot development (especially on the follow-the-breadcrumbs analysis of a seemingly endless series of HTTP redirects), this book illustrates the phishing problem in a way that both technically-oriented defenders and interested "power user" readers will understand and enjoy.



4. Phishing quickly exploded from a nuisance to a full-fledged threat in the middle of 2005. Weaknesses in email, combined with flaws in Web security and with a little social engineering mixed in make for an effective tool to get the attention of users and lure unsuspecting people into the trap.
   
   It didn't take long for the organized crime elements of the malware underground to recognize the power and efficiency of this tool. Phishing is a virtual poster-child for the convergence of malware because it is a malicious tool that helps tie viruses, worms, spam, Trojans and other malware together and get them delivered effectively to their designated targets.
   
   While a book like Phishing: Cutting The Identity Theft Line is aimed at managers and executives and users, this book is more along the lines of Inside The Spam Cartel in the way it dives deeper to look at the secrets and techniques and explore the underground that makes it work.
   
   While the content is more technical, James writing is engaging. Phishing Exposed is an excellent resource for developers, specifically Web developers, and for security experts to understand more about how and why phishing works, rather than just what it is and how to detect and defend against it.



5. Here are the chapters:
   
   - Chapter 1 Banking On Phishing
   - Chapter 2 Go Phish!
   - Chapter 3 E-Mail: The Weapon of Mass Delivery
   - Chapter 4 Crossing the Phishing Line
   - Chapter 6 Malware, Money Movers, and Ma Bell Mayhem!
   - Chapter 7 So Long, and Thanks for All the Phish!
   395 pages paperback
   
   As others have stated in their reviews, this is the book if you are involved in Internet security either at an ISP, webserver administrator or a security analyst at a large corporation or in law enforcement dealing with cybercrime. Phishing Exposed is also very useful for watch dog individuals on the web who actively report Internet scams to ISPs. It is an eye opener on how phishing scams have gotten more sophisticated in snaring unsuspecting victims' data within the last few years. This book was released in late 2005, however, most of the information is still rather relevant and useful for today for those who are working to minimize Internet fraud. For example, the use of botnets and malware have gained a larger role in the proliferation of phishing scams since this book was published; the author does cover some detail on this newer approach to perpetuating fraud online.
   
   I have pretty much read the entire book, though I read quickly through all the scripting and coding details Lance outlines in his book and the detail takes up quite a few pages. I did enjoy reading it, thus why it only took me about 2 days to get through it. As I come across some of the coding complexities Lance outlines, I will return to this book as a reference.
   
   One criticism I have is there is no glossary of terms. Lance uses many many technical terms, a few here and there that I didn't know and when I did read them, sometimes I forgot what they stood for.
   
   I will point out a few highlights which may be useful for some of what is covered:
   
   Email Headers
   The author provides us information on how to read email headers we receive in spam from phishers who are just a subset of spammers anyway. This is quite useful for those still learning how to decode email headers line by line. Though there are a few things the author leaves out regarding explaining the breakdown of headers, he covers this seldom-covered subject quite well. Most of the samples of spam we have here are Lance's own fake phishing spams, similar to examples you will read in the scripting sections.
   
   Scripting
   The author tells us about CSS (Cross Site Scripting) - Cross site scripting (also known as XSS) occurs when a web application gathers malicious data from a user. The data is usually gathered in the form of a hyperlink which contains malicious content within it. The user will most likely click on this link from another website, instant message, or simply just reading a web board or email message [...]. This part of the book will take me longer to grasp as my own scripting knowledge is not very strong.
   
   Lance covers the scripting exploits in creating phishing websites in regards to DHTML, DOM, SSL, JavaScript, redirects, and covers HTTP responses (common status codes) via user-agents. Lance uses his own made-up phishing sites to demonstrate how these scripts work. Status codes example: such as 404 file not found.
   
   Money Laundering
   Finally, the author also covers phisher money laundering in chapter (6) "Chapter 6 Malware, Money Movers, and Ma Bell Mayhem!" of the book. Phishers use mules to forward the funds for them (mules have bank accounts setup to accept the money and transfer it elsewhere: sometimes the "mules" do not even realize they are participating in illegal activity); this is similar to what drug dealers do to launder their money. He also covers caller ID spoofing in this chapter. This area is probably generally less well known, as it is more of the bank side of things of how the stolen money is transfered from account to account.

5 comments about Serial Murderers and Their Victims.

1. Being one of the lucky people in this world to study from Dr. Hickey at Fresno State, I consider this book and the Dr. to be two of the most amaizing sources of knowledge in this dark field. If you begin reading this book knowing nothing about the topic, you walk away being a sudo-expert in the field and study of Serial Killers



2. After reviewing and studying the material within this cover, you will see life in a different way. We all want to see the good in people; As any physical realm, there is the duality from good to evil. What exactly happens when what we see the destructive nature of man? What makes the destructive destructive? Who are they? What do they think? Where do they come from? and What will they do next?
   This book helped me to breeze through my serial and mass murder class ... AND actually lock onto possible perpetrators in real world scenarios.
   After reading this book and studying the nature of homocide, you'll be analyzing everything through rational choice. When you walk down the street, youll look at everyone as you notice their demeanor and watch their subtle actions. You'll look at the small and obscure nuacnes in nature as you enhance your deductive reasoning. Most of all, you will build a base in whch to combat becoming a victim.
   I highly recommend the first piece you read in this book to be (pg 278) "An Interview with a Male Serial Murderer". This passage will restrain you to read and study this work to its end if not for learning, but to possibly stop a tragedy such as this from happening to someone you love.
   You should supplement this book with TV: A&E, Biography, and History Channels will suffice.



3. This is an excellent reference book, but what really makes it stand out is the "Mind of a Killer" CD-ROM included with it.
   
   The videos and searchable information on the CD-ROM really bring the subject vividly to life. There documentaries on about a dozen famous cases with footage I'd never seen before including confessions made to police, interviews and courtroom scenes.
   
   I was also impressed with the mapping system that plots the locations of different cases or types of cases with all kinds of search options.



4. I am a graduate student of Dr. Hickey's at California State University, Fresno. I came to this institution specifically as a matter of curricula, and I must say that after a review of the literature both broad and exhaustive Dr. Hickey's book is the closest thing we have to the reality of our special killers' doctrine. What is most compelling about this piece of literature is the open mentality that is greatly lacking in nearly every other book out there. We have relied to a great extent on the works of the FBI and, in a much more aniquated way, the works of Freud and the general positivists.
   
   This text is certainly a sociological treatise, but even more so it underlines the issues inherent in both criminology and a general study of human nature. What should be garnered from this read is what we DON'T know as compared to what we do. One must applaud Dr. Hickey for his ability to admit that the evaporative quality of this field of study is prevalent and must be dealt with.
   
   Of particular interest is the discussion of the mythology surrounding "serial killers" and the true affect with which they operate. Take these things for what they are worth and you are left with many questions. I have no doubt in my mind that this was the objective of Dr. Hickey, and is ideally the objective of any social scientist. Those who wish to comprehend the nature of serial killers will not find all their answers here, but they may find some questions that our humanity dearly needs to be addressed; the most important part.



5. Of the many, many books I have read on this topic (which is one of my areas of interests) this is book is by far the best one I have read. This would be, in my opinion the most complete, informative and unbiased work on the subject.
   The book covers just about everything most readers would like covered on Serial Murder. It covers fact, fiction, history, definitions, in fact everything you could imagine. I could not believe just how much is packed into the 380 odd pages.
   Not only is the book a wealth of knowledge on the subject (and many related areas eg Stalking, Insanity Defences) but is also loaded with 'Profiles' of many individuals (and teams) to illustrate the area under discussion. Many tables also provide interesting reading.
   The book also looks at the phenomina of Serial Murder in countries other than the USA.
   Another thing I really like is the way Hickey presents various aspects and theories. Hickey discusses all the theories, views etc along with their apparent strenghts and weaknesses. For example, other authors I have read flatly dump the FBI Psychological Profiling Model. Hickly presents all the pros and cons on the topic in a very unbiased manner.
   This book is not just a good book, it is a great book. It is a 'must have' in your collection, if this is your area of interest or you really want to learn about it. If someone asked me for just one book to read on Serial Murder, this would be the one. It covers so many topics within a topic, yet it is concise and very readable. The average person with no knowledge on this topic would walk away with a good 'working knowledge'.
   I have read the book twice and have now been drawn back to a third read.
   I will now be searching for other works by this author and congratulate him on a 'classic'.

No comments about Not Released Unharmed: Kidnap Victims.

5 comments about Torso: The Story of Eliot Ness and the Search for a Psychopathic Killer.

1. Very good. Accurate, concise, and interesting. Could have used more elaboration on both the potential connected crimes and the Elliot Ness socialite nut goofiness. Best book on the Kingsbury Run Butcher yet.



2. Not long after his "Untouchables" days, Eliot Ness experienced many successes as Public Safety Director of Cleveland (OH). Unfortunately, capturing the 'Torso Murderer' was not among them. A relatively little known crime, this serial killer haunted Ness' time in Cleveland. This book is both a look at Ness himself after his Chicago accomplishments, and an examination of one of America's greatest unsolved serial killings. If you are interested in either subject, this is an excellent purchase.



3. In the 1930s over a dozen murders were attributed to the "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run", a ravine that runs through Cleveland Ohio and contains this stream and railroad yards. Most of these bodies were unidentified: headless, the arms, legs, and torso were cut up by someone who knew anatomy or butchering. It was never solved, altho one suspect was made to confess, repudiated this confession, and then found a suicide in jail. Such serial murders were rare in America; earlier serial murderers did it for money and left this trail. No motive was ever established for these murders. Most sex murderers are the product of large cities, which have anonymous victims or perpetrators. Chapter Eleven summarizes these cases.

   This book is about the later career of Eliot Ness. After Chicago, he was put in charge of the Alcoholic Tax Unit of norther Ohio. He cleaned out bootleggers, hitting a still every day. Organized crime made Cleveland a safe haven for criminals on the run. Corruption had spread everywhere; neighborhood crime had greatly increased. Harold Burton became mayor, and chose Eliot Ness as Director of Public Safety to oversee the police and firemen. (Burton later became a Senator, a friend of Truman, and was appointed to the Supreme Court.) The ineffectiveness of the police was due to widespread corruption and complacency. With Prohibition gone, Ness prosecuted gambling and union racketeering. Ness cultivated a good relationship with reporters, and got favorable publicity. He tried to purge corrupt policemen but was met with silence. Then a police captain was caught in a cemetery lot racket. Another owned a restaurant which fronted for a gambling room. The bodies found in Kingsbury Run highlighted the corruption.

   Cleveland had been the worst city (after Los Angeles) for traffic deaths and injuries. Ness purged the traffic division, began arresting drunk drivers, prosecuted ticket fixing, gave harsher penalties for unpaid fines, and started tougher automobile inspections. Ness promoted traffic safety with a public awareness campaign. He began an Emergency Patrol with first aid training to reach any accident within two minutes. This cut traffic deaths by half, and he received national recognition. Some of the increased traffic fines were put back into the police budget. Squad cars now had two-way radios. A single phone call brought police assistance within 60 seconds. Ness was criticized for wasting tax dollars, but in one year overall crime dropped 38%, robberies by 50%! Public success was followed by private problems: divorce, late night socializing, stories of drinking.

   Ness later resigned to join the Federal Social Protection Program during WW 2. Afterwards, he became a businessman but was not successful. His campaign for Mayor of Cleveland flopped. He later met Oscar Fraley and began to write his book. Just before its publication, Ness died of a heart attack; he never knew of its success.




4. The book's title is somewhat misleading us into believing that the 1930s `The Untouchables' character of Elliot Ness ran a serial killer investigation. Half this book is the life and times of Ness who happened to be Director of Public Safety in Cleveland while his skid row turned up mostly unidentifiable dismembered remains of vagrants, it was Ness who gained the most attention throughout the investigation by eventually burning down the homeless slums of the Kingsbury Run district in an attempt to clean out, tag, and fingerprint potential victims in the making, probably destroying the killer's Cleveland homeless hunting grounds, also a turning point event in Ness's career, a prohibitionist alcohol distillery buster, who once put away the national crime lord Al Capone, sadly failed systematically to progress his ratings with the city, eventually becoming involved in a hit and run accident that cost him an election run as Mayor, the over-hyped but none-the-less interesting account of Ness is all here, but maybe a little bit more than a seasoned non-crime fiction reader would care to expect, means you get only about 100 pages of the Torso investigation, where we concentrate on the city coroner Dr. Samuel Gerber and Detective Peter Merylo.
   
   Ness comes into play now and again, obviously as a propaganda figurehead designed to play to the media, backfires most of the time he does appear by getting involved in the wrong thing at the wrong time, still had a very high success rate in exposing corruption, and did work on a number of highly constructive policies like getting kids off the streets and stressing the fight against disease, obviously behind the scenes worked with the ""good guy"" force heavies getting all the important political prohibition work done (alcohol prohibition was a failure not because alcohol is safe to use but because prohibition itself actually increases the prohibited drugs risks, usage rates and overall crime goes up because of it, a statistical fact). It is reading the situation of these same propaganda violent cops becoming cold case serial killer squads, even before the term serial killer was used, makes it an absurd situation of bad police management for the 21st century reader to contend with, and was the reason Ness went bust in the end and even more importantly, why the killer got away with so much in the first place.
   
   Thus the investigation in Torso is not like any other, the cops are a different breed (just like out of a comic book meaning useless in real life) and the concept of `stranger killing' was not even present then. The classic book "The Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Philip Sugden" is based on the police records at Scotland Yard of the investigation at the end of the 19th century, news paper clippings and various memorandums that followed with surprising valid detail (all 500 pages of it). Torso reads like trying to find anything factual as if anyone except the leads could read, write or file reports, pounded and smashed their way across Cleveland in the hopes of stumbling across a sexual sadist who would suddenly admit to picking up homeless people, decapitating them with a large blade while they where asleep and or tying them up beforehand so they could not escape, a paraphiliac, expertly removed all the appendages after death with `knowledge of surgery' and bisected the body, sometimes used chemicals or freezers to keep his victims, would then wrap the pieces and begin his very strange dumping process which ranged from never-found victims, to victim's body parts appearing in the middle of the city for everyone to see, going to great lengths to leave two incomplete victims from different time periods together in the same spot, it stands to reason that Dr. Samuel Gerber and Detective Peter Merylo would give us a much better angle, and it is with the medical evidence that Gerber comes off as a sort of new-wave criminology serial killer expert, knowingly prevented other coroners from going near the victim's body parts, rightly asserts himself as a scientist in among all the investigative despair, leading some to suspect and challenge Gerber himself, after his conclusions that a recent severed leg was the work of the same hand, this statement exonerated various numbers of peoples who where obviously rotting in jail on suspicion of being the killer.
   
   Merylo correctly guessed that the killer was somewhat mobile in the area and probably moved on after the killings that did not stop at #12, Merylo at the end of his career guessed that it was probably above forty. Dr. Francis E. Sweeney is the mystery Ness suspect not named in this book but the evidence is circumstantial at best. Gerber may have given the investigators a better idea of who there man was if he did not also subscribe himself to propaganda theories (druggie maniac). It is almost a certainty that if the investigators conducted better searches of abandoned train carts that they would have discovered the killer's `laboratory', a series of abandoned carts containing three different bodies that came from Youngstown after being there for almost a year, was almost certainly that unacknowledged lab of his, but Gerber did not examine these bodies. From the victims that could be identified all where prostitutes or homosexuals. The killer probably killed them away from his home, suggesting that he lived homelessly or with a family, certainly hung around the lower classes of society, befriended vagrants and some other loiterers who where happy enough to sleep with him in train carts (if this fact you are reading now had have been known at the start it would have probably prevented more death), resided in the general area and probably killed and mutilated several times before the first official Torso was found, meaning he learned his `surgical skill' that way.
   
   He should have been caught earlier. Torso is a shallow account of the subject matter but still essential non-fiction crime literature.



5. The Kingsbury Run murders were gruesome and the killer seemingly mocked Cleveland, Ohio, Public Safety Director Eliot Ness in executing the perfect crime.
   
   The crimes - still unsolved - were committed in the mid- to late-1930s with the victims surgically butchered; the heads, arms, legs and torsos cut by someone who seemingly had a medical expertise in removing body parts. Only three of the fourteen victims were ever identified.
   
   Ness - who took center-stage in the investigation - was criticized for the inability in finding the killer. Police detective Peter Merylo actually believed that there were at least 40 murders in Cleveland, Youngstown and Pittsburgh, Pa., spanning three decades that were perpetrated by the individual.
   
   Torso captures the frustration of Ness and the concerns of the public and city leaders while discussing the various theories and suspects. In as much a political as safety decision, Ness ended up raiding & burning several shantytowns in The Flats to clear out an area where it was felt the murderer could feast on any number of "nameless" victims.
   
   According to The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, a film on the murders could be released in 2008. While that may bring new focus - and books - on the crime, Torso will surely remain an outstanding resource for those seeking an understanding of those frightening years.

No comments about The Krays and Me: Blood, Honour and Respect. Doing Porridge With the Krays..

2 comments about The Torso Killer.

1. For sure not worth reading,for one who likes true gore and to be right there in a sense,to feel the reality of it all to be in the story this book did nothing but put me to sleep. I do not recommend true-crime buffs like myself to bother with this story.



2. True, the beginning few chapters are a bit graphic in their descriptions of the attacks on the prostitutes...but that's to be expected a bit in a book about serial murder. Also, the second half of the book that describes the 2nd murder trail, starts to go back over some of the ground already covered in the first trial - kind of like a TV show coming back from commercial. But overall I think it tells a good story and gives you enough info into both the suspect and the victims to get a good feel for those involved.

No comments about East Side-West Side: Organizing Crime in New York 1930-1950.