New in paperback: Fred 'Killer' Burke

Just released: Fred “Killer” Burke: The Hunt for the Most Dangerous Man Alive by Chriss Lyon. The book is available in paperback, 394 pages, through Amazon.

This is an updated special edition of A Killing in Capone’s Playground: The True Story of the Hunt for the Most Dangerous Man Alive, which won a National Indie Excellence Award for True Crime in 2016. It includes new details and photographs acquired since the earlier book's release in 2014.

“Bloody Chicago” was the name given to America’s most corrupt city after the grotesque scene that left seven humans embedded into masonry walls and oil-slickened concrete. Two Thompson submachine guns did the majority of the damage, but the masterminds behind the St. Valentine's Day Massacre escaped. Ten months later on December 14, 1929, St. Joseph, Michigan Police Officer Charles Skelly, working a routine traffic crash, came face to face with a killer.

Shots were fired, the assailant escaped, and the dying Officer Skelly identified his murderer before taking his last breath. The trail led to a home in Stevensville, Michigan, where authorities found an arsenal of weaponry, over $300,000 worth of stolen bonds, bulletproof vests and two Thompson submachine guns. The hideout belonged to Fred Burke, a highly sought suspect in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and the most wanted man in the nation.

Lyon

The “backwash of bloody Chicago” had made its way into the rural neighborhoods of Southwestern Michigan and Northern Indiana. Citizens who turned a blind eye to crime helped create “Capone’s Playground,” an environment abundant in all that is illegal and immoral.

Using unpublished police reports, interviews with family members of key witnesses and leading experts, historian Chriss Lyon establishes the foundation for what would develop as a haven for gangsters from the onset of the Prohibition Era through to the mid-twentieth century, while revealing new information about the eventual capture of notorious gangster Fred “Killer” Burke.

Chriss Lyon, a retired public safety professional and historian, has not only walked the beat but shot the most famous Thompson submachine guns in the world, all while documenting and researching the historic era of "The Roaring Twenties." Using techniques of forensic genealogy combined with investigative research, Lyon has been able to uncover little known facts about the people and events surrounding the notorious St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

November release planned for Gangster Hunters

Gangster Hunters

How Hoover’s G-Men Vanquished
America’s Deadliest Public Enemies

by John Oller

John Oller’s meticulously researched account of the FBI’s early days is due to be released by Dutton (imprint of Penguin Publishing Group) on November 26, 2024.

John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd – these infamous Depression-era criminals have been immortalized as some of the most vicious felons in our history, but they share another commonality: every single one was brought down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during a chaotic war on crime, which started in 1933 and thrust the FBI into the national spotlight for the first time. 

Surprisingly little has been written about field-level agents responsible for hunting down the most dangerous criminals and bringing them to justice... until now. In this new book, Gangster Hunters, critically acclaimed author John Oller (also author of the 2021 release Rogues Gallery) brings to light the true stories of FBI’s unsung heroes. He gives play-by-play accounts of the G-men’s blood-soaked shootouts and intrepid pursuits of fleeing desperadoes while also exploring their methodical detective work.

John Oller

It might come as a surprise that most young FBI agents in the 1930s weren’t prepared for the wild lifestyle their careers would require. The Bureau initially had no jurisdiction over violent crimes, such as murders, bank robberies and kidnappings, and its special agents had little reason to believe they would be involved in such matters. But with Hoover at its helm, FBI quickly gained power and the fresh-faced agents found themselves in high-speed car chases wrapped in bullet-proof vests. Some agents sacrificed everything in the pursuit of justice, some were unceremoniously blacklisted by Hoover, and others simply never received the attention they deserved.

Gangster Hunters is full of exciting new primary research and dozens of never-before-seen photos. Oller interviewed thirty descendants of the early FBI agents he profiles. Weaving together their accounts, his book is able to correct historical accounts and myths about gangsters and manhunts that have long been considered fact.

The print edition of the book contains about 500 pages, including index, endnotes and bibliography. Hardcover and Kindle ebook formats can be ordered now through Amazon.com.

Why Maranzano? Why now?

• Print and electronic journal editions can be previewed and purchased through MagCloud
• Kindle e-book edition can be ordered through Amazon.
• More information on Informer's website. 

Informer e-book can be pre-ordered now

The official release date of Informer's August 2019 special issue on Salvatore Maranzano is still a few weeks away, but the issue - in Kindle e-book form - can be pre-ordered NOW through Amazon.com. (Link: https://amzn.to/32GaLgr or click on the cover image below.)

This is only the second time an Informer issue has been available for purchase through Amazon. It is the first time that an issue has been sold in Kindle e-book format.

The usual magazine formats - standard-size print and electronic PDF - will be available soon through the MagCloud service.

Criminal Curiosities: Twelve Remarkable reprobates you've probably never heard of.

Out now for the Amazon Kindle.

As a crime writer with a long-time interest in crime's more unusual aspects, I often try to find some of its more overlooked stories. Who needs yet another rehash of Jack the Ripper or JFK reshuffling old evidence while seldom offering anything new? Apart from accountants at publishing companies wanting bestsellers to boost their quarterly balance sheets, at any rate?

All walks of life have their pioneers, those who stand out as the first, last or only example in thier field. Crime is no exception., but crime's stand-outs are seldom as widely acknowledged as, say, the first Moon landing or the discovery of the New World. It's time that changed. Criminal Curiosities is a small step toward that.

Some readers will have heard of William Kemmler or Herbert Rowse Armstrong. Kemmler was, after all, the first convict ever to be legally electrocuted. Armstrong was (and remains, the UK having abolished capital punishment) the first and only British lawyer to be hanged for murder.

But who was the first convict to face the guillotine? Why were legendary figures Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse so closely entwined with William Kemmler and he with them? Whose murder trial saw the victim's body transported to the scene of the crime, then used in a live reconstruction in front of the jury? And how on earth did Dutch art forger Han van Meegeren get away with trading a fake Vermeer for 137 genuine paintings (today worth around $60 million with, of all people, Gestapo founder and Luftwaffe commander Herman Goering? 

You probably don't know. Criminal Curiosities is where you find out.

They're all singular in their own particular way. All have a fascinating tale to tell of their own misdeeds and how they sometimes forever changed the world around them. All of them are often overlooked and some are barely historical footnotes, if that.

Criminal Curiosities is currently available for the Amazon Kindle.

New book: 'Robbing the Post Office'

Howard K. Petschel's latest book, Robbing the Post Office: A Target of Opportunity, is available through Amazon.com.

The book covers such topics as the 1924 Rondout mail train robbery in Illinois and the 1962 Plymouth mail truck hijacking in Massachusetts. (In each of those cases, criminals relieved the U.S. Postal Service of cash and other items worth more than $1 million.)

The author is a former postal inspector who has previously written about stamp counterfeiting and postal service robberies.

Paperback, 190 pages.
ISBN 978-1879628526

Link to this book on Amazon.