Download or read book From Innocence to Mafia written by Alex Pedrin and published by Book's Mind. This book was released on 2014-09-18 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when an innocent child grows up in dangerous neighborhoods, surviving on bread and sugar, and works on a ranch run by the Mexican Mafia? He evolves into a drug kingpin. It's hard for Alex Pedrin, former Mexican Mafia leader, not to sit and reflect on the roads chosen-especially since his current residence is the Arizona Department of Corrections. However, his path has led him to a unique opportunity: sharing his trials and tribulations with those who still have the chance to choose a different path for their lives. Alex Pedrin's desire is to reach young adults who feel lost and that everyone has given up on them, as well as their parents, and the schools full of at-risk students. "If my life story were available to those who have experienced the same violent and destitute neighborhoods and gang-influenced life I grew up with-a large chunk of the population-I know it would make a difference." -Alex Pedrin

Download or read book Murder Unpunished written by Thornton W. Price and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In November of 1977, Terry Lee Farmer, a white inmate at Arizona State Prison in Florence, walked up to black prisoner Waymond Small in front of sixty witnesses and stabbed him in the heart with a shank. Small had agreed to testify before the state legislature about gang violence inside Arizona State Prison and was murdered the day before his scheduled appearance. This murder proved the catalyst for an all-out war between the State of Arizona and the Aryan Brotherhood. Through five trials, Farmer claimed self-defense and the jurors acquitted all ten of his co-conspirators. Thornton Price, one of the defense attorneys, now tells how Farmer and Small became cannon fodder in this war to reclaim ArizonaÕs prisons from rival gangs. These gangsÑthe Aryan Brotherhood, the Mau Maus, and the Mexican MafiaÑwere suspected of committing more than a dozen murders over the previous two years, motivating politicians to crack down after the violence could no longer be ignored or contained. To reconstruct the case, Price reviewed 16,000 pages of court records and conducted interviews with key participants to piece together an insiderÕs account of the crime and the politics behind its investigation. Prison murders should be easy to solve, but investigators quickly learned that the convictsÕ code of silence makes these cases often impossible to win in court. Price focuses on the special problems posed by prison crime by getting inside the skins of men like murderer Terry "Crazy" Farmer and William "Red Dog" Howard, one of the Florence Eleven and a founder of the Aryan Brotherhood. He also presents the perspectives of state investigators and reveals how they calculated to pit black witnesses against white killers until one black would break the code of silence and provoke feuding within the Brotherhood. Murder Unpunished tells how societyÕs most outrageous criminals ran the prison through gang violence as outside the walls Arizona struggled to outgrow its Wild West past. Like few other books, it reveals how prisons incubate predatory criminals and gangs, and it exposes the unique difficulties of prosecuting prison crimes. It is a gripping account that cuts to the heart of our penal system and a cautionary tale for citizens who prefer to keep prisons out of sight, out of mind.

Download or read book The Politics of Murder written by Dave Wagner and published by Gracenote Books. This book was released on 2016-05-12 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Politics of Murder is a history of organized crime in Arizona from the heady days of prosperity after World War II to the end of the 20th century. It is a history of unsolved murders that include figures like Willie Bioff, a society gangster who was killed for double-crossing a Tucson kingpin on an unpaid loan. Another was Phoenix crime boss Gus Greenbaum, a friend of the state's most powerful politicians, who helped develop the Las Vegas casino industry. He was rewarded with a grisly murder that is still officially unsolved. Land-fraud king Ned Warren stole nearly a billion dollars from veterans and retirees. The Phoenix political network protected him even as he hired saboteurs and Mafia hit men to eliminate a dozen witnesses. All of these killings remained unsolved at the time of the most notorious murder in the state's history, the 1962 car-bombing death of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles. The newsman was investigating a tip that one of the most powerful businessmen in the state was working with the Chicago Mafia to launder Las Vegas casino skim through Phoenix racetracks. The motive for killing Bolles was directly related to evidence the reporter uncovered about the Las Vegas money laundering, but his murder remained unsolved for other reasons.Solving Bolles? death would have revealed a carefully kept secret: When Bolles was assassinated, Barry Goldwater's political operation was in the process of removing from office by covert means the president of the Navajo Nation. It was a case of domestic regime change imposed on a sovereign Indian government that refused to submit to policies imposed by Washington to benefit non-Indian interests.The connection between the Bolles case and the Navajo plot was a strange and ruthless man, an assassin who made a living by building dynamite bombs. Before he killed Don Bolles, he built a bomb for the Goldwater political operation as it set out to remove the leader of the Navajo Nation. The connection was never revealed to the public. It had to remain a secret at all costs, and it was-- until now.

Download or read book From Clans to Co ops written by Theodoros Rakopoulos and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Clans to Co-ops explores the social, political, and economic relations that enable the constitution of cooperatives operating on land confiscated from mafiosi in Sicily, a project that the state hails as arguably the greatest symbolic victory over the mafia in Italian history. Rakopoulos’s ethnographic focus is on access to resources, divisions of labor, ideologies of community and food, and the material changes that cooperatives bring to people’s lives in terms of kinship, work and land management. The book contributes to broader debates about cooperativism, how labor might be salvaged from market fundamentalism, and to emergent discourses about the ‘human’ economy.

Download or read book The Mexican Mafia written by Tony Rafael and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2007-07-09 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has been called the most dangerous gang in American history. In Los Angeles alone it is responsible for over 100 homicides per year. Although it has fewer than 300 members, it controls a 40,000-strong street army that is eager to advance its agenda. It waves the flag of the Black Hand and its business is murder. Although known on the streets for over fifty years, the Mexican Mafia has flown under the radar of public awareness and has flourished beneath a deep cover of secrecy. Members are forbidden even to acknowledge its existence. For the first time in its history, the Mexican Mafia is now getting the attention it has been striving to avoid. In this briskly written and thoroughly researched book, Tony Rafael looks at the birth and the blood-soaked growth of this criminal enterprise through the eyes of the victims, the dropouts, the cops and DAs on the front lines of the war against the Mexican Mafia. The first book ever published on the subject, Southern Soldiers is a pioneering work that unveils the operations of this California prison gang and describes how it grew from a small clique of inmates into a transnational criminal organization. As the first prison gang ever to project its power beyond prison walls, the Mexican Mafia controls virtually every Hispanic neighborhood in Southern California and is rapidly expanding its influence into the entire Southwest, across the East Coast, and even into Canada. Riding a wave of unchecked immigration and seemingly beyond the reach of law enforcement, the Mexican Mafia is poised to become the Cosa Nostra of twenty-first-century America.

Download or read book Mountain Mafia written by Betty L. Alt and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: MOUNTAIN MAFIA IS A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BLACK HAND AND MAFIA in the Rocky Mountain region. It brings to life some of the more colorful leaders in the West's organized crime operations throughout the 20th century, including Roma, Colletti, and the Smaldones. Especially examined is the famous court case of "Scotty" Spinuzzi, who was acquitted of murder "because no one saw the bullet leave the gun." Also mentioned is the connection these western mobsters had with notorious crime members in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Download or read book What s in It for Me written by Joesph Stedino and published by HarperPrism. This book was released on 1993-08 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The astonishing behind-the-scenes story of how sex, drugs, gambling, and greed govern Arizona politics. Ex-wise guy Joe Stedino posed as a mobster willing to buy votes to legalize gambling. Cameras recorded every bribe as one politician after another lined up for palm greasing. Now Stedino tells the story behind the eventual 20 indictments. Photo insert.

Download or read book Operation Family Secrets written by Frank Calabrese, Jr. and published by Crown. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chilling true story of how the son of the most violent mobster in Chicago helped bring down the last great American crime syndicate: the one-hundred-year-old Chicago Outfit. In Operation Family Secrets, Frank Calabrese, Jr. reveals for the first time the outfit’s “made” ceremony and describes being put to work alongside his father and uncle in loan sharking, gambling, labor racketeering, and extortion. As members of the outfit, they plotted the slaying of a fellow gangster, committed the bombing murder of a trucking executive, the gangland execution of two mobsters—whose burial in an Indiana cornfield was reenacted in Martin Scorsese’s blockbuster film Casino—and numerous other hits. The Calabrese Crew’s colossal earnings and extreme ruthlessness made them both a dreaded criminal gang and the object of an intense FBi inquiry. When Frank Jr., his father, and Uncle Nick are convicted on racketeering violations, “Junior” and “Senior” are sent to the same federal penitentiary in Michigan. It's there that Frank Jr. makes the life-changing decision to go straight. But he needs to keep his father behind bars in order to regain control of his life and save his family. So Frank Jr. makes a secret deal with prosecutors, and for six months—unmonitored and unprotected—he wears a wire as his father recounts decades of hideous crimes. Frank Jr.’s cooperation with the FBI for virtually no monetary gain or special privileges helped create the government’s “Operation Family Secrets” campaign against the Chicago outfit, which reopened eighteen unsolved murders, implicated twelve La Cosa Nostra soldiers and two outfit bosses, and became one of the largest organized crime cases in U.S. history. Operation Family Secrets intimately portrays how organized crime rots a family from the inside out while detailing Frank Jr.’s deadly prison-yard mission, the FBI’s landmark investigation, and the U.S. attorney’s office’s daring prosecution of America’s most dangerous criminal organization.

Download or read book A Man of Honor written by Joseph Bonanno and published by St. Martin's Paperbacks. This book was released on 2013-06-04 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Friendships, connections, family ties, trust, loyalty, obedience-this was the 'glue' that held us together." These were the principles that the greatest Mafia "Boss of Bosses," Joseph Bonnano, lived by. Born in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, Bonnano found his future amid the whiskey-running, riotous streets of Prohibition America in 1924, when he illegally entered the United States to pursue his dreams. By the age of only twenty-six, Bonnano became a Don. He would eventually take over the New York underworld, igniting the "Castellammarese War," one of the bloodiest Family battles ever to hit New York City... Now, in this candid and stunning memoir, Joe Bonanno-likely a model for Don Corleone in the blockbuster movie The Godfather-takes readers inside the world of the real Mafia. He reveals the inner workings of New York's Five Families-Bonanno, Gambino, Profaci, Lucchese, and Genovese-and uncovers how the Mafia not only dominated local businesses, but also influenced national politics. A fascinating glimpse into the world of crime, A Man of Honor is an unforgettable account of one of the most powerful crime figures in America's history.

Download or read book The Mafia Encyclopedia written by Carl Sifakis and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 500 alphabetical entries provide information on the people, places and events associated with the Mafia.

Download or read book The A to Z of Modern Italy written by Mark Gilbert and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2010-04-20 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Italy is a country that exercises a hold on the imagination of people all over the world. Its long history has left an inexhaustible treasure chest of cultural achievement. The historic cities of Rome, Florence, and Venice are among the most sought-after destinations in the world for tourists and art lovers, and Italy's natural beauty and cuisine are rightly renowned. Italy's history and politics are also a source of endless fascination. Modern Italy has consistently been a political laboratory for the rest of Europe. In the 19th century, Italian patriotism was of crucial importance in the struggle against the absolute governments reintroduced after the Congress of Vienna, 1814-15. After the fall of Fascism during World War II, Italy became a model of rapid economic development, though its politics has never been less than contentious and its democracy has remained a troubled one. The A to Z of Modern Italy is an attempt to introduce the key personalities, events, social developments, and cultural achievements of Italy since the beginning of the 19th century, when Italy first began to emerge as something more than a geographical entity and national feeling began to grow. This is done through a chronology, a list of acronyms and abbreviations, an introductory essay, a map, a bibliography, and some 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on prominent individuals, basic institutions, crucial events, history, politics, economics, society, and culture.

Download or read book Khallaas an A to Z Guide to the Underworld written by J. Dey and published by Jaico Publishing House. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a journalist on the crime beat, the author has spent long hours talking to those in uniform, those in the underworld and those in the grey zone – people who work as police informers. Much of what he has seen, heard and observed in over a decade of covering crime has found its way into print. But there’s a lot that’s spoken of in hushed tones, or buried in underworld lore. The underworld speaks its own language, and words are invented on the spur of the moment. A shooter is referred to as an “artist”, an informer is simply “zero dial”, Dubai is “Delhi”, while arrest is “get admitted”. Most of these are aimed at sending the police or adversaries on a wild goose chase. It’s a world that thrives on the spirit of enterprise, actively courts power and danger, and has conquered fear. The rules are straight and the ethics sacrosanct. The principles of ‘dhanda’ apply equally here – risk, profit and competition are at the very core. An informer will think nothing of selling precious information on a rival if it can earn him extra bucks or goodwill from the police.

Download or read book A to Z written by Abhijit Sengupta and published by Hachette India. This book was released on 2017-05-20 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do we need good ? or better ? English? Just 26 letters, five vowels and 21 consonants have created perhaps the largest lexicon in the world and made English globally the most widely used language today for interaction in international trade, world sports and global politics, not to forget education. A to Z explores, letter by letter, how the English language can be a powerful tool for writing, communication and creative expression for studies, business, entertainment and enjoyment. With the use of many examples and some amusing anecdotes, it also shows how, when used incorrectly, it can make one thing mean something entirely different! The book informs and reminds readers of the basics of grammar and punctuation, while offering tips on vocabulary for impressive communication. Simultaneously authoritative and friendly, this is the perfect book for students, lovers of language and everyone who wants to explore the nuances of the English language, and succeed at clear, correct and smart communication.

Download or read book The A to Z of Italian Cinema written by Gino Moliterno and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2009-10-12 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Italian cinema is regarded as one of the great pillars of world cinema. Films like Ladri di biciclette (1948), La dolce vita (1960), and Nuovo cinema Paradiso (1988) attracted unprecedented international acclaim and a reputation, which only continue to grow. Italian cinema has produced such acting legends as Sophia Loren and Roberto Benigni, as well as world-renowned filmmakers like Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone, Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and Lina WertmYller, the first woman to ever be nominated for the Best Director award. The A to Z of Italian Cinema provides a better understanding of the role Italian cinema has played in film history through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, appendixes, black-&-white photos, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on actors, actresses, movies, producers, organizations, awards, film credits, and terminology.

Download or read book Sunny Skies Shady Characters written by James Dooley and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2015-08-31 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For thirty years starting in the mid-1970s, the byline of Jim Dooley appeared on riveting investigative stories of organized crime and political corruption that headlined the front page of Honolulu’s morning daily. In Sunny Skies, Shady Characters, James Dooley revisits highlights of his career as a hard-hitting investigative reporter for the Honolulu Advertiser and, in later years, for KITV television and the online Hawaii Reporter. His lively backstories on how he chased these high-profile scandals make fascinating reading, while providing an insider’s look at the business of journalism and the craft of investigative reporting. Dooley’s first assignment as an investigative journalist involved the city housing project of Kukui Plaza, which introduced him to the “pay to play” method of awarding government contracts to obliging consultants. In later stories, he scrutinized bloody struggles over illicit gambling revenue, the murder of a city prosecutor’s son, local syndicate ties to the Teamsters Union, and the dealings of Bishop Estate. His groundbreaking coverage of the forays by yakuza into Hawaii and the continental United States were the first of its kind in American journalism. As Dooley pursued stories from the underside of island society, names of respected public figures and those of violent criminals filled his notebook: entertainer Don Ho, U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye, Governors George Ariyoshi and Ben Cayetano, Mayor Frank Fasi, and notorious felons Henry Huihui, Nappy Pulawa, and Ronnie Ching. Woven throughout is the name of Big Island rancher Larry Mehau—was he the “godfather of organized crime” in Hawaii as alleged by the FBI, or simply an ex-cop who befriended power brokers in the course of doing business for his security guard firm? The book includes a timeline of Mehau’s activities to allow readers to judge for themselves.

Download or read book From Mafia to Organised Crime written by Anna Sergi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-07-19 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents primary research conducted in Italy, USA, Australia and the UK on countering strategies and institutional perceptions of Italian mafias and local organized crime groups. Through interviews and interpretation of original documents, this study firstly demonstrates the interaction between institutional understanding of the criminal threats and historical events that have shaped these perceptions. Secondly, it combines analysis of policies and criminal law provisions to identify how policing models which combat mafia and organised crime activities are organized and constructed in each country within a comparative perspective. After presenting the similarities between the four differing policing models, Sergi pushes the comparison further by identifying both conceptual and procedural convergences and divergences across both the four models and within international frameworks. By looking at topics as varied as mafia mobility, money laundering, drug networks and gang violence, this book ultimately seeks to reconsider the conceptualizations of both mafia and organized crime from a socio-behavioural and cultural perspective.

Download or read book Twisted But True written by Darren Burch and published by Page Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2020-12-11 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Retired Phoenix Police Sergeant Darren Burch captivates you on another wild police ride-along with outrageously macabre and compelling stories from his thirty-year career as a rookie cop, sex crime detective, and night detective sergeant in the Phoenix Police Department’s Homicide Unit in this gut-clinching, horrific, and oftentimes laugh-out-loud funny follow-up to Darren’s award-winning true-crime book, Twisted But True. Darren’s dark humor reemerges with a vengeance, starting with death and despair, and then to the hilarious as a rookie cop in “That First Squad,” to a case of animal sexual depravity in “Choking the Chicken,” and a deadly home invasion beyond belief in “That One Case”, which was featured on the ID Channel’s American Detective TV series. These thirty true-crime stories mirror the time frame of Twisted But True, but this time, Darren goes even deeper and darker by filling in the cracks.