Icons of Crime Fighting: Relentless Pursuers of Justice

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ICONS OF CRIME FIGHTING

Recent Titles in Greenwood Icons Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares Edited by S.T. Joshi Icons of Business: An Encyclopedia of Mavericks, Movers, and Shakers Kateri Drexler Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture Edited by Mickey Hess Icons of Evolution: An Encyclopedia of People, Evidence, and Controversies Edited by Brian Regal Icons of Rock: An Encyclopedia of the Legends Who Changed Music Forever Scott Schinder and Andy Schwartz Icons of R&B and Soul: An Encyclopedia of the Artists Who Revolutionized Rhythm Bob Gulla African American Icons of Sport: Triumph, Courage, and Excellence Matthew C. Whitaker Icons of the American West: From Cowgirls to Silicon Valley Edited by Gordon Morris Bakken Icons of Latino America: Latino Contributions to American Culture Roger Bruns

ICONS OF CRIME FIGHTING Relentless Pursuers Of Justice VOLUME 1 Edited by Jeffrey B. Bumgarner

Greenwood Icons

GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut

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London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Icons of crime fighting : relentless pursuers of justice / edited by Jeffrey Bumgarner. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-313-34129-8 ((set) : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-313-34130-4 ((vol. 1) : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-313-34131-1 ((vol. 2) : alk. paper) 1. Law enforcement—United States—History. 2. Crime prevention—United States—History. 3. Criminal investigation—United States—History. 4. Criminal justice, Administration of—United States—History. 5. Personality and history. I. Bumgarner, Jeffrey B. HV8138.I36 2008 363.20920 273—dc22 2008018447 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright C 2008 by Jeffrey B. Bumgarner All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008018447 ISBN-13: 978-0-313-34129-8 (set) 978-0-313-34130-4 (vol. 1) 978-0-313-34131-1 (vol. 2) First published in 2008 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America

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Icons of Crime Fighting is dedicated to all the individuals who have made it their life’s work to fight crime and injustice in the United States and elsewhere. While this publication recounts the service of many individuals who are well known for this fight and are deserving of accolades, there are countless more men and women who work visibly in their own communities or behind the scenes in all realms of the criminal justice system—as police officers, federal agents, prosecutors, victims’ advocates, social workers, etc. They too are deserving of tribute. This book set is for them.

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Contents List of Photos

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Series Foreword

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Preface

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Volume 1 Gun Fighters: U.S. Marshals of the Old West, Tusty Zohra and Jeffrey T. Walker

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Allan Pinkerton, Scott H. Belshaw and Amanda L. Belshaw

27

The Texas Rangers, Ronald Burns

57

August Vollmer, Willard M. Oliver

83

J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, Kilby Raptopoulos and Jeffrey T. Walker

117

Thomas Dewey, Clarrisa Breen

143

Robert Kennedy: The Enforcer Within, J. Scott Granberg-Rademacker

167

Jim Garrison, Elvira M. White

197

Buford Pusser, Jacob Rodriguez

235

Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, Ellen Leichtman

257

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein: Presidential Crime Fighters and Shapers of American Public Opinion, Christopher Larimer

291

Contents

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Volume 2 Francisco Vincent Serpico, Morris A. Taylor

319

Joseph Pistone, AKA ‘‘Donnie Brasco,’’ John Dombrink

343

Vincent T. Bugliosi: Justice Purist—The Prosecutor with a Heart, Edward J. Schauer

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For Adam: The John Walsh Story, Elizabeth Quinn DeValve

421

FBI Profilers, Richard N. Kocsis

437

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Kelli Stevens

463

Mark Fuhrman, Scott H. Belshaw

493

Rudolph ‘‘Rudy’’ Giuliani, Camille Gibson

521

Curtis Sliwa: Vigilantism, Victims’ Rights, and the Guardian Angels, Brion Sever, with Al Gorman and Greg Coram

553

Dr. Henry Lee: Leading Practitioner in Forensic Criminal Investigations, Janet E. McClellan

577

Dr. Bill Bass, Cecile Van de Voorde

605

Selected Bibliography

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About the Editor and the Contributors

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Index

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Photos Sculptured bust portrait of James Butler ‘‘Wild Bill’’ Hickock, atop C 2008 Chaiba. tombstone (page 1), Deadwood, SD. Dodge City Peace Commission, 1882 (page 2). From left to right, members are shown as follows. Back row: W. H. Harris, Luke Short and Bat Masterson. Front row: Charles Bassett, Wyatt Earp, F. McClain and Neil Brown. Courtesy AP Images. Allan Pinkerton of Antietam (page 27), MD, 1884. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Hon. James Francis Miller of Texas (page 57), ca. 1875. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Captain Samuel Hamilton Walker (page 58), ca. 1846. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. August Vollmer (page 83), 1929. C Corbis/Bettmann. J. Edgar Hoover (page 117), 1969. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey (page 143), holds up his right hand as he is sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Philip J. McCook in New York City, 1935. Courtesy AP Images. Robert Kennedy (page 167), appearing before the Platform Committee, 1964. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Jim Garrison (page 197), who stands 6-foot-6, towers over assistants James Alcock, right, and Andrew ‘‘Moo Moo’’ Sciambra as they huddle prior to the trial of Clay Shaw, Jan. 16, 1969. Courtesy AP Images. Sheriff Buford Pusser of Tennessee (page 235), shortly before he was killed in C Getty Images. a suspicious car crash, 1998.

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From the 1971 film ‘‘The French Connection’’, directed by William Friedkin. Shown from left: Sonny Grosso as Det. Phil Klein, Eddie Egan as Lt. Walter Simonson (page 257). Courtesy of Photofest. Washington Post writers Carl Bernstein, left, and Robert Woodward (page 291), who pressed the Watergate investigation, are photographed in Washington, D.C., May 7, 1973. Courtesy AP Images. New York City detective Frank Serpico (page 319), with beard, sits in front of his attorney, Ramsey Clark, at the Knapp Commission’s investigation of alleged police corruption at a hearing in New York, 1971. Courtesy AP Images/Jim Wells. Joe Pistone (page 343), the American F.B.I agent upon whom the film C Fotos International/Getty Images. ‘Donnie Brasco’ was based, 1997. Deputy District Attorneys Aaron Stovitz (left) and Vincent Bugliosi (page 371), display an aerial photograph of the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Courtesy of Photofest. The death of the prime suspect in the kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh (page 421), shown in this 1981 file photo, doesn’t close the still-unsolved case. Police believed Ottis Elwood Toole killed Adam, who disappeared from outside a Hollywood, Florida shopping mall in 1981. Courtesy AP Images. John Douglas working in his Virginia office (page 437), 2002. Larry Stone Photography. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (page 463), speaks during a news conference in Avondale, AZ. The conference was held May 10, 2006, to kick off the beginning of the sheriffs’ departments efforts to find illegal immigrants. Courtesy AP Images/Roy Dabner. Former police Detective Mark Fuhrman (page 493), shown testifying at the O. J. Simpson trial, March 10, 1995. Courtesy AP Images/John McCoy. U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani (page 521), talks to media in New York City, Dec. 13, 1984. Courtesy AP Images/Debbie Hodgson. Radio talk show personality and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, center (page 553), enters Manhattan federal court in New York surrounded by other Guardian Angel members, Feb. 27, 2006. Courtesy AP Images/Louis Lanzano. Forensic scientist Dr. Henry C. Lee (page 577), shows the court a cotton swab similar to the one he used to collect evidence from the crime scene at music producer Phil Spector’s home, during Spector’s murder trial for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, 2007. Courtesy AP Images/Paul Buck, Pool. Dr. Bill Bass (page 605), carefully cleans a skull before examining it in his laboratory at the at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Courtesy of the University of Tennessee.

Series Foreword Worshipped and cursed. Loved and loathed. Obsessed about the world over. What does it take to become an icon? Regardless of subject, culture, or era, the requisite qualifications are the same: (1) challenge the status quo, (2) influence millions, and (3) impact history. Using these criteria, Greenwood Press introduces a new reference format and approach to popular culture. Spanning a wide range of subjects, volumes in the Greenwood Icons series provide students and general readers a port of entry into the most fascinating and influential topics of the day. Every two-volume title offers an in-depth look at approximately 24 iconic figures, each of which captures the essence of a broad subject. These icons typically embody a group of values, elicit strong reactions, reflect the essence of a particular time and place, and link different traditions and periods. Among those featured are artists and activists, superheroes and spies, inventors and athletes—the legends and mythmakers of entire generations. Yet icons can also come from unexpected places: as the heroine who transcends the pages of a novel or as the revolutionary idea that shatters our previously held beliefs. Whether people, places, or things, such icons serve as a bridge between the past and the present, the canonical and the contemporary. By focusing on icons central to popular culture, this series encourages students to appreciate cultural diversity and critically analyze issues of enduring significance. Most importantly, these books are as entertaining as they are provocative. Is Disneyland a more influential icon of the American West than Las Vegas? How do ghosts and ghouls reflect our collective psyche? Is Barry Bonds an inspiring or deplorable icon of baseball? Designed to foster debate, the series serves as a unique resource that is ideal for paper writing or report purposes. Insightful, in-depth entries provide far more information than conventional reference articles but are less intimidating and more accessible than a book-length biography. The most revered and reviled icons of American and world history are brought to life with related sidebars, timelines,

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Series Foreword

fact boxes, and quotations. Authoritative entries are accompanied by bibliographies, making these titles an ideal starting point for further research. Spanning a wide range of popular topics, including business, literature, civil rights, politics, music, and more, books in the Greenwood Icons series provide fresh insights for the student and popular reader into the power and influence of icons, a topic of as vital interest today as in any previous era.

Preface Americans have always been fascinated by the social problem of crime and society’s response to it. This fascination is easily diagnosed by the number of murder mysteries that have been published over the ages, the fictional and nonfictional police television shows peppered throughout the network and cable channels, and the innumerable cinematic productions that focus on police officers, detectives, and federal agents marching through adversity to make the case and thwart the violent criminal villain. Indeed, much of what Americans and others around the world know about crime fighting has been learned through these mediums. This often results in an incomplete, and in many cases, inaccurate, understanding of crime fighting and crime fighters. Criminal investigators and prosecutors are in wide agreement, for example, that securing a conviction in certain types of criminal cases has been hampered by popular television. The so-called ‘‘CSI effect’’ has resulted in many juries harboring an expectation that there will be significant scientific evidence in every serious case to link an alleged offender to the crime, just as on television. The fact is that most crimes continue to be solved through old-fashioned police work, eyewitness accounts, solid suspect interviews, and other circumstantial evidence. Most cases do not involve definitive forensic evidence, and certainly most cases are not resolved in the span of a sixty-minute television show (where none of the cops take notes, suspects’ rights are marginalized, search warrants materialize out of thin air, and the offenders always seem willing to talk to the police in custody without an attorney). In Icons of Crime Fighting, and in keeping with America’s fascination with criminal justice and criminal investigation, readers are introduced to different individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to general or particular realms of fighting crime. However, an emphasis is placed on historical accuracy and an accounting of how criminals are actually countered and thwarted. Most of the twenty-two chapters in this twovolume set relate to individuals who are noteworthy for their crime-fighting

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efforts and accomplishments. A few of the chapters relate to organizations that are regarded for their respective contributions to fighting crime. All of the individuals and organizations are ‘‘iconic’’ in the sense that people are aware of them, certainly in criminal justice circles, but also in popular culture. Their notoriety in popular culture, however, does not diminish their serious and significant professional contributions to the areas in which they operate or operated. The two-volume set starts off with a historical chapter: ‘‘Gunfighters: U.S. Marshals of the Old West.’’ This chapter explores the history of America’s oldest federal law enforcement agency and profiles famed federal lawmen from the nineteenth century, including Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Pat Garrett. Chapter 2 continues with a nineteenth-century American historical theme by profiling Allan Pinkerton, America’s most famous nonfictional private eye. Indeed, it was Pinkerton and his National Detective Agency that coined the term ‘‘private eye’’ to begin with. Rounding off the discussion of law enforcement in the American West and Southwest during the 1800s is Chapter 3, which focuses on the famed Texas Rangers. Texas lawmen from this organization such as W. J. McDonald (for whom the expression ‘‘one riot, one ranger’’ was coined) and Frank Hamer (who tracked down Bonnie and Clyde) are introduced. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 bring readers forward into the early twentieth century. Chapter 4 profiles the life and career of August Vollmer, the most significant of police reformers. Vollmer was an early twentieth-century police chief who is credited with many innovations and approaches to crime fighting and police professionalization that are still in place today. Chapter 5 is concerned with the famous FBI director, the late J. Edgar Hoover. There is no law enforcement leader, past or present, who possesses a legacy that can rival Hoover’s. This chapter also necessarily delves into the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which by itself readers will find to be inherently interesting. Chapter 6 explores the career of one of New York City’s most famous prosecutors, Thomas Dewey. His crime-fighting career was at its zenith during the 1930s—an accomplished career that would propel him eventually to become governor of New York and the Republican presidential candidate in 1948. Although he has been immortalized in the famous photo of President Truman holding up a Chicago Daily Tribune newspaper with the erroneous headline ‘‘Dewey Beats Truman’’ in 1948, his efforts at fighting organized crime and mobsters such as Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano were among his most significant accomplishments. Beginning with Chapter 7, Icons of Crime Fighting shifts to more recent history, particularly the last half of the twentieth century through the present day. Chapter 7 is devoted to Robert Kennedy. Although well known as President John F. Kennedy’s brother and attorney general, his service as an attorney for the U.S. Senate in the 1950s really marks the beginning of his crime-fighting career. In that capacity, he investigated the influence of organized crime in the labor unions as well as the infiltration of communists

Preface

in American public service. Of course, his life tragically ended when he was assassinated as a presidential candidate in 1968. Speaking of the Kennedys, Chapter 8 examines the career and crusade of famed prosecutor Jim Garrison. He was a very well-known district attorney in New Orleans during the 1960s and 1970s, but Garrison became iconic when he prosecuted Louisiana businessman Clay Shaw as a conspirator in the John F. Kennedy assassination. Shaw was found ‘‘not guilty’’ by a jury after less than an hour of deliberation. Nonetheless, the case raised enough doubt about President Kennedy’s death to warrant an Oliver Stone film (JFK) on the matter, with Kevin Costner playing the lead role—that of Jim Garrison. Garrison isn’t the only iconic individual profiled in this book about whom movies were made. Chapter 9 examines the life of Buford Pusser, the threeterm sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee, in the 1960s. His fight against the criminal element in his county inspired the movie Walking Tall. Pusser survived an assassination attempt in 1967, but his wife was killed in the attack. The resolve Pusser possessed to continue the fight for justice in the wake of this tragedy is truly an inspiration. Chapter 10 profiles two crime fighters: Eddie Egan and Sonnie Grosso. These two New York City police detectives were partners in the 1960s and conducted one of the most famous drug-trafficking investigations in American history. The international drugtrafficking scheme they investigated is famously known as the French Connection because of the fact that the drugs came into the United States through France. Egan and Grosso were the inspiration for the characters Jimmy ‘‘Popeye’’ Doyle and Sonny Russo, played by Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider, respectively, in the 1971 movie The French Connection. The movies keep on rolling in Chapter 11. Here, readers will learn about the story of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The movie All the President’s Men highlights the significance of their fight for justice in the political realm. These two Washington Post reporters investigated the 1972 burglary of the Democratic National Committee’s office at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. Their efforts (and others’) ultimately resulted in the convictions on conspiracy and perjury charges of several high-ranking government officials connected to President Richard Nixon. President Nixon eventually resigned over the scandal. Chapter 12, which begins Volume 2, also deals with an individual associated with a fight against government corruption—Frank Serpico. Serpico was instrumental in fighting corruption in the New York City Police Department (NYPD) during the 1960s. He exposed widespread criminal activity among NYPD officers, including routine acceptance of gratuities and kickbacks, as well as acts of bribery and extortion. Al Pacino starred in the title role of the 1973 movie Serpico. Interestingly, Al Pacino also starred in a movie about the icon profiled in Chapter 13, the 1997 film Donnie Brasco. Joe Pistone, aka ‘‘Donnie Brasco,’’ was an FBI agent who went deep undercover to infiltrate the New

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York Mafia. His six-year undercover effort resulted in more than one hundred convictions of members of organized crime. Pacino does not star as Pistone in the movie, but rather as a mobster befriended and investigated by Pistone. Johnny Depp plays Pistone in the movie. Chapter 14 is the most exhaustive chapter in the book and profiles the life of famed prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. Chapter author Ed Schauer interviewed Bugliosi extensively in preparing the chapter and brings a unique perspective on this influential and contemporary crime fighter. Bugliosi is mostly known for his successful prosecution of Charles Manson and Manson’s associates. Later, he wrote Helter Skelter, a book chronicling Manson’s crimes. Chapter 15 explores another contemporary crime fighter in the public eye: John Walsh. Walsh is best known for hosting Fox television’s longrunning show America’s Most Wanted. He is a tireless victims’ advocate. Sadly, personal tragedy propelled him into his life’s work. In 1981, Walsh’s own 6-year-old son was abducted and murdered by a child predator. He has crusaded against child predators and for victims’ rights ever since. In Chapter 16, readers have the opportunity to learn about a group of individuals that has captured the imagination of America and Hollywood for many years: the profilers of the FBI. The chapter explores the history of profiling as a criminal investigative technique and delves into the FBI’s early effort to develop profiling as a viable tool. Famous FBI profilers such as Greg McCrary, John Douglas, Robert Ressler, and Roy Hazlewood are introduced. These individuals, along with the FBI’s Behavior Analysis Unit, inspired several popular movies and books, such as Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs. Chapter 17 deals with another contemporary icon, the current and longserving sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio. Some have labeled him ‘‘America’s Toughest Sheriff.’’ He is famous for housing county prisoners in tents and subjecting them to unconventional forms of punishment. The chapter goes further to explore the efficacy of these alternate forms of punishment. The author of this chapter also had an opportunity to interview Arpaio personally and secure his unique perspective on his service as sheriff. Although Joe Arpaio is controversial in many quarters, Chapter 18 deals with probably the most controversial individual profiled in Icons of Crime Fighting: Mark Fuhrman. Detective Fuhrman first received national attention as one of the investigating officers of the O. J. Simpson case. His denial of using the ‘‘n’’ word, which later proved to be false, impeached the credibility of the entire investigating team. However, his stature as an investigator has been resurrected after privately investigating the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley. His investigation resulted in renewed official interest in the case and the conviction in 2002 of Michael Skakel, who is a relative of the Kennedy family. He has similarly investigated and written about several other high-profile crimes.

Preface

Chapter 19 explores the career of Rudy Giuliani. Most recently, he was a presidential candidate in the Republican Party who dropped out of the race after the 2008 Florida primary. However, his career before that included many high notes and accomplishments as a crime fighter. Giuliani was the mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He was affectionately dubbed ‘‘America’s mayor’’ after his handling of the tragedy on 9/11. He presided over a sharp decline in violent crime in the city and was very supportive of aggressive police tactics. He also served as a U.S. attorney and is well known for his fight against organized crime in that capacity. Another New York City icon is the subject of Chapter 20, Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels. Sliwa is the founder of the Guardian Angels, a worldwide crime prevention organization that relies on citizen patrols. The chapter explores Sliwa’s efforts in crime prevention as well as the issue of vigilantism and citizen crime prevention efforts generally. Icons of Crime Fighting ends with its final two chapters devoted to iconic forensic scientists. Chapter 21 profiles Dr. Henry Lee, who is perhaps the world’s most famous forensic scientist. He has consulted on hundreds of murder and sexual assault investigations, including many high-profile cases. He is affiliated with the University of New Haven, Connecticut, which is home to one of the most renowned forensic science degree programs in the world. Chapter 22 examines the career of Dr. Bill Bass. Dr. Bass, a professor at the University of Tennessee, is renowned for founding the ‘‘Body Farm,’’ which is an outdoor forensic laboratory where donated dead bodies are permitted to decay. As a forensic anthropologist, Dr. Bass has consulted on numerous homicide investigations involving decomposed human remains. Both Dr. Lee and Dr. Bass are counted among the most famous and highly regarded criminal investigative scientists in the world. It is hoped that readers of Icons of Crime Fighting: Relentless Pursuers of Justice will find the profiles of individuals and agencies contained therein to be interesting and informative. Certainly the chapters can serve as a springboard for further research into their respective and associated crime-fighting topics. In fact, each chapter ends with a Further Reading list, and there is an extensive Selected Bibliography at the end of Volume 2 to aid further exploration and study. Ultimately, my desire and the desire of the various chapter authors is that readers will be edified and inspired by the stories of dedication and professionalism relating to the many crime-fighting icons, past and present, who serve or have served to protect society from those who would perpetrate evil. Jeffrey B. Bumgarner, Ph.D. Minnesota State University, Mankato

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Gun Fighters: U.S. Marshals of the Old West Tusty Zohra and Jeffrey T. Walker

Icons of Crime Fighting

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Courtesy AP Images

The legends of the Wild West have become a part of American history and folklore. Stories of lawmen and cowboys facing death in the town square have been passed on from generation to generation. The images behind western folklore have often been exaggerated by movies and books, stretching the truth to provide an interesting climax in western stories. Such stories typically portray lawmen as heroic symbols, devoted to keeping the peace and upholding the law. They are responsible for apprehending criminals and restoring justice. The oldest known lawmen in American history and folklore are the U.S. Marshals. They were depicted as the image of bravery and heroic virtue. They stood by their post in front of the marshal’s office or town saloon, watching for trouble and keeping the peace. Equipped with their pistols and the occasional shotgun, they were ready to apprehend any criminal who violated the law. Movies and books often portrayed these lawmen as possessing supernatural characteristics of strength, poise, and speed in drawing their pistols. Classic scenarios illustrated dusty streets, full of horses and carriages; men,

Gun Fighters

women, and children walking the streets in fear; and cowboys pillaging the town for personal gain. Typically, for the purpose of exemplifying the existence of evil, the story would begin with villains breaking the law, usually at the town saloon. There is usually a bartender, always a bystander, polishing glasses in a room full of town residents who were fearful for their lives. Then in walks the hero, the marshal, who will apprehend the criminals. The story will typically end with a gunfight at the climax of the story. These stories possess a romanticized, yet fictional interpretation of gunfighters in the Wild West. Marshals such as Wyatt Earp, James Butler Hickok (Wild Bill), Edward and Bat Masterson, and many others are heroic symbols of lawmen in the Wild West. They were portrayed as drifters who came into town, apprehended the outlaws, and moved on in search of new adventures. They were, typically, hired for their swiftness and skills and not for their ability to police the towns. Where these myths ended and the true stories began is an ambiguous line. Although the gunfighting days are over, the stories still remain. In all reality, the lawmen from the past are not so different from the lawmen of today. Their objectives and responsibilities are to uphold the law and provide peace in the communities. The men of the Wild West are gone, but their spirits and stories are still very much alive today.

THE WILD WEST The stories of the Wild West represent engaging parables of the struggles of the beginning of western civilization. Although many of the tales are deceiving accounts of history, the origins and establishment of the western region is truly enticing. During the 1850s to the early 1900s, people moved west looking for new adventures, the lure of land, and the dream of gold and silver. Settling the West often meant coming into direct contact with Indian tribes. The West consisted of miles of open land, where the buffalo grazed and the Indians resided. There were no boundaries and few regional limits. It was full of mystery, adventure, and dangerous possibilities. The conflict between the settlers and the Indians began with claiming territories, westward extension of the railroads, and competition for wildlife. In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase doubled the area of land owned by the United States. The first attempts to explore the new territory came in 1804 when Lewis and Clark launched an expedition. The exploration progressed westward to the Pacific Ocean and affirmed that the West could be settled. Not long after, settlers began to move into the unclaimed territories, especially in California when the gold rush became prevalent around the end of the 1840s. Farmers, businessmen, and others packed their belongings and headed to western states such Oregon, Kansas, and California.

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Even after conflicts with the Indians were over and most of the Indian population was confined to reservations, peace was not guaranteed. Anarchy and disarray characterized many towns because of minimal law enforcement, no direct control from the East, and lack of communication. Any crimes committed would often go unreported because the nearest law enforcement agency could be located hundreds of miles away. Many times, the settlers could not get word to the lawmen because of the lack of communication or lack of time to make a difference. Communication between the settlers and the law finally became more useful when the telegraph system was implemented around the 1860s. This invention was followed by the telephone in the late 1870s. At this time in history, law and order became a demand in western towns, resulting in the rise of the six-shooter lawman. The rise of the lawmen was mainly due to the high criminal activity of what history calls the ‘‘outlaws.’’ Bank, train, mine, and ranch robberies increased in alarming numbers and residents of the towns demanded justice. They needed men who could fight, shoot, and apprehend the criminals. Residents felt fear when walking down the streets, especially at night when the saloons and brothels were filled with rowdy cowboys and outlaws. Many of these criminals were attracted to the West during the California gold rush because they were driven by the thought of hidden fortunes. Many were disappointed and resorted to other means for money. Before the U.S. Marshals became the men of law, residents had to defend themselves when crimes were committed. Residents of the town conducted citizen courts and executed sentences on those who were found guilty. Outlaws who violated the law were caught and hung, often without a proper trial. This method became problematic when too much blood was being spilled. Although outlaws were being caught, other members of their gangs sought revenge on the town; therefore, many town residents would live in fear because of the repercussions of their actions. Soon the residents realized that they needed some sort of police organization to deal with the criminals. They wanted a police structure that would prevent criminals from participating in criminal activities or apprehend those who had. This precipitated the rise of the marshals. At this time, both outlaws and lawmen were equipped with six-shot, revolver pistols made popular during the Civil War. This symbol of the Wild West demanded expert shooters, because the six-shooter was known for its lack of dependability and capabilities. Lawmen who were proficient with six-shooter pistols were sought out. Here begin the tales of gunfights in town squares and heroic figures who rescued the residents of their towns. Although many stories regarding lawmen are true in nature, they often include an engaging account that may have been distorted through years of retelling stories and producing fictional movies.

Gun Fighters

Six-shooter lawmen were initially created at the local or state level. Cities would hire a city marshal (often to cover the whole county). Sometimes this was done privately by landowners; other times it was an effort of the state. For example, Kansas set up a police system where the towns were run by city marshals. Each town would have one city marshal and several deputies. Usually the deputies would work during cattle season and were terminated when the season ended. One of the most famous attempts at local-level law enforcement in the West began with the development of the Texas Rangers in 1870. Federal agents such as the U.S. Marshals were also moving into the West as the need for assistance became pronounced. ‘‘The duties of the town’s police force varied in detail from place to place, but followed an overall pattern. The police had power to enter any saloon, billiard hall, or other place of amusement and arrest drunks or others who refused to ‘be restored to order and quiet’’’ (Drago 1975). With the number of people carrying guns, especially pistols, and with the number of people willing to use them in the aftermath of the Civil War, keeping the peace often meant engaging in a gunfight.

THE BEGINNING The U.S. Marshal system is the oldest federal agency in the United States. Its purpose was to handle civil, criminal, and judicial matters. The Marshals were established by the Judiciary Act of 1789, which implemented the new judiciary system. The act created district and circuit courts and established positions for judges and clerks, along with the U.S. Marshals. The Judiciary Act set up thirteen U.S. Marshal offices across the nation. In Section 27 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, Congress asserted that the following were the responsibilities of the marshals: That a marshal shall be appointed in and for each district for the term of four years, but shall be removable from office at pleasure, whose duty it shall be to attend the district and circuit courts when sitting therein, and also the Supreme Court in the District in which that court shall sit. And to execute throughout the district, all lawful precepts directed to him, and issued under the authority of the United States, and he shall have power to command all necessary assistance in the execution of his duty, and to appoint as there shall be occasion, one or more deputies, who shall be removable from office by the judge of the district court, or the circuit court sitting within the district, at the pleasure of either; and before he enters on the duties of his office, he shall become bound for the faithful performance of the same.… (Judiciary Act of 1789, 1 Stat. 73)

Congress developed the U.S. Marshals for several reasons. First, as discussed above, they were to assist in court proceedings for both lower and higher

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courts, by transporting prisoners, executing processes, and implementing legal documents such as judicial writs. They were also responsible for upholding peace and law among residents in their communities.

Judiciary Act of 1789

Creation of the Office of U.S. Marshal Section 27. And be it further enacted, That a marshal shall be appointed in and for each district for the term of four years, but shall be removable from office at pleasure, whose duty it shall be to attend the district and circuit courts when sitting therein, and also the Supreme Court in the District in which that court shall sit. And to execute throughout the district, all lawful precepts directed to him, and issued under the authority of the United States, and he shall have power to command all necessary assistance in the execution of his duty, and to appoint as there shall be occasion, one or more deputies, who shall be removable from office by the judge of the district court, or the circuit court sitting within the district, at the pleasure of either; and before he enters on the duties of his office, he shall become bound for the faithful performance of the same, by himself and by his deputies before the judge of the district court to the United States, jointly and severally, with two good and sufficient sureties, inhabitants and freeholders of such district, to be approved by the district judge, in the sum of twenty thousand dollars, and shall take before said judge, as shall also his deputies, before they enter on the duties of their appointment, the following oath of office: ‘‘I, A.B., do solemnly swear or affirm, that I will faithfully execute all lawful precepts directed to the marshal of the district of __________ under the authority of the United States, and true returns make, and in all things well and truly, and without malice or partiality, perform the duties of the office of marshal (or marshal’s deputy, as the case may be) of the district of __________ , during my continuance in said office, and take only my lawful fees. So help me God.’’ Section 28. And be it further enacted, That in all causes wherein the marshal or his deputy shall be a party, the writs and precepts therein shall be directed to such disinterested person as the court, or any justice or judge thereof may appoint, and the person so appointed, is hereby authorized to execute and return the same. And in case of the death of any marshal, his deputy or deputies shall continue in office, unless otherwise specially removed; and shall execute the same in the name of the deceased, until another marshal shall be appointed and sworn: And the defaults or misfeasances in office of such deputy or deputies in the mean time, as well as before, shall be adjudged a breach of the condition of the bond given, as before directed, by the marshal who appointed them; and the executor or administrator of the deceased marshal shall have like remedy for the defaults and misfeasances in office of such deputy or deputies during such interval,

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as they would be entitled to if the marshal had continued in life and in the exercise of his said office, until his successor was appointed, and sworn or affirmed: And every marshal or his deputy when removed from office, or when the term for which the marshal is appointed shall expire, shall have power notwithstanding to execute all such precepts as may be in their hands respectively at the time of such removal or expiration of office; and the marshal shall be held answerable for the delivery to his successor of all prisoners which may be in his custody at the time of his removal, or when the term for which he is appointed shall expire, and for that purpose may retain such prisoners in his custody until his successor shall be appointed and qualified as the law directs.

The U.S. Marshals played several notable roles in American history. For example, in 1850 when Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, marshals were assigned to capture and return all fugitive slaves to their owners. During this time, all free slave states were mandated to return any slave who was not yet free, as deemed by the state that they resided in. This brought a lot of anguish to the marshals from citizens who did not believe in having slaves. Another role was the responsibility of guarding the home front of the United States against enemies. On April 6, 1917, the U.S. Congress declared war against Germany, entering what is now known as World War I. During this time period, the marshals guarded the United States against enemies, spies, and attackers. They were responsible for protecting the American citizens against hostile attacks. The range of responsibilities of the U.S. Marshals is broad, and they differ depending on the situation in which they are needed, although overall, they were implemented to execute court proceedings and federal responsibilities. After the Judiciary Act of 1789 was passed, President George Washington appointed thirteen U.S. Marshals to office. By 1791, President Washington had appointed sixteen U.S. Marshals, one for each of the original sixteen districts. The first sixteen Marshals were Allan McLane (Delaware), Henry Dearborn (Maine), Isaac Huger (South Carolina), Nathanial Ramsay (Maryland), Jonathan Jackson (Massachusetts), Clement Biddle (Pennsylvania), William Smith (New York), Lewis Morris (Vermont), Robert Forsyth (Georgia), Thomas Lowry (New Jersey), Samuel McDowell (Kentucky), Edward Carrington (Virginia), John Skinner (North Carolina), John Parker (New Hampshire), Phillip Bradley (Connecticut), and William Peck (Rhode Island). About seven of the sixteen original marshals lived and remained agents their entire lives in the district to which they were assigned. Others remained as marshals for an average of six years and moved on to higher governmental positions. The sixteen marshals were appointed to office because of their loyalty, dedication, and leadership shown for the government. After they

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were assigned to their district, they executed their duties, although their responsibilities sometimes differed. For example, when the Secret Service was established in 1865, the marshals were assigned to assist them in counterfeiting investigations. Before the twentieth century, currency in the United States was not standardized; therefore, counterfeiters were not uncommon. The marshals were designated to help control this problem. Also during this period, the marshals were assigned to the Old West to capture fugitive outlaws such as Billy the Kid, the Dalton Gang, and several other criminals. The population of the Wild West was growing in massive numbers as citizens realized that the western regions could be settled. As the population grew, the need and demand for law and order became fierce. The government started appointing U.S. Marshals to western regions to assist in creating and maintaining some sort of police structure. Hence, we have the rise of the marshals in the Wild West. Although the U.S. Marshals played an important role in taming the Wild West, many iconic figures who established the name of being a U.S. Marshal had different policing duties. For example, western heroes such as Wyatt Earp, Ben Thompson, and Pat Garrett were never really U.S. Marshals, although they are portrayed as such. Because of fictional movies and books, much of the truth has been greatly exaggerated. For the purpose of this chapter, iconic figures who were U.S. Marshals and city marshals in western history are discussed.

ABILENE: A MARSHAL CITY Abilene, Kansas, was a small, cattle-roaming town that was often violent and prone to crime. The first city marshal was appointed in Abilene on May 2, 1870. The marshal was Thomas J. (Bear River Tom) Smith. Bear River Tom received his nickname for his shooting abilities, illustrated during some riots on the Union Pacific Railroad. The riots were a result of infuriated railroad workers who were tired of being robbed by local outlaws. The retaliation was known as the Bear River Riot, and through the assistance of various gunmen, the railroad workers defended themselves against the attacks. Soon after the riots, Smith arrived in Ellsworth, Kansas, and noticed an announcement of an opening for city marshal in Abilene, Kansas. Smith was intrigued by the position, because he had spent several years in the New York Police Department. Soon after arriving in Abilene, Smith was appointed city marshal, receiving $125 a month and an additional $2 for each apprehension. At first, Smith’s policing methods seemed unusual to many residents and officials. He prevented crime and apprehended criminals without using his

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pistols. He believed in policing with logic and reason, instead of by instilling fear with firearms. This concept surprised many residents of the town because firearms had been the means of controlling criminals. He also strictly enforced the no-gun law in town. Smith quickly gained respect when the nogun method was equally as effective as that of his predecessors, who policed with weapons. In contrast to many lawmen in the West, Smith also policed his city on horseback instead of walking the streets. This technique allowed him to have a broader view of the town. Bear River Tom’s unique policing techniques, poise, and mysteriousness gained much respect in Abilene. Although he seldom used his pistols, residents and criminals were fully aware of his shooting abilities and knew that his pistols were always hanging in the sides of his leather belt. The city was so impressed with Marshal Smith that they even raised his salary to $225 per month. Sometime in the latter part of 1870, Abilene began to experience a decline in prosperity, which led city officials to dismiss several deputy marshals until the town could afford them. Smith assumed he was going to be fired as well and attempted to turn in his resignation, although the officials would not accept it. Historians now claim that his resignation may have been the best thing for him, because Smith’s death was soon to follow. Marshal Smith’s death came when he and Deputy James H. McDonald went to arrest Andrew McConnell. McConnell was charged with the murder of a local resident. McConnell had been on a hunting trip and upon his return, realized his neighbor’s cows were in his pasture. He was further enraged after realizing the cows were the property of a particular neighbor, John Shea, whom he despised. When McConnell went to Shea’s farm, they got into an argument, at which time Shea was killed. Later in court, McConnell claimed Shea drew his firearm first, although the gun malfunctioned and did not fire. According to McConnell, Shea attempted to shoot him three times before McConnell shot back in self-defense. When an examination of Shea’s gun revealed it was working properly, the court issued a warrant for McConnell’s arrest and told Sheriff Cramer to make the arrest. Cramer had recently been elected Sheriff of Abilene and was a somewhat cowardly man. Sheriff Cramer and Deputy McDonald requested Marshal Smith to assist with the arrest, although on the day of arrest, Cramer found reasons not to go with them. Smith and McDonald found McConnell and a friend, Moses Miles, in a dugout near Chapman Creek. When Smith and McDonald attempted to make the arrest, McConnell and Smith got into a fight and McConnell shot Smith in the stomach. While wounded, Smith still continued to fight until Miles came from behind and nearly decapitated Smith with an axe. McDonald ran to town when the struggle began, claiming he left to get help. Both McConnell and Miles were arrested and sentenced to the state penitentiary. McConnell was sentenced to twelve years in prison, and Miles was sentenced to sixteen years. The city townsmen were

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outraged at the court’s decision, asserting that the sentences were too lenient. The city mourned the death of their beloved marshal and thereafter compared his successors to the level of Smith’s capabilities as a lawman. Years after the death of Marshal Smith, the city constructed a statue in his honor. With Smith gone, the city faced the need for a new marshal who would be fierce enough to control the brutal and aggressive city of Abilene.

ENTER WILD BILL Just over a year after the death of Bear River Tom, James Butler (Wild Bill) Hickok was appointed the new marshal of Abilene in April of 1871. Wild Bill Hickok has been one of the most popular U.S. Marshals known throughout history. Even at the time, he received some notoriety as a scout, spy, bodyguard, and stage driver, among other things. He was also known for his quick draw with his pistols and excellent shooting ability. He first began to gain notoriety in the shootout at the Rock Creek (Nebraska) station of the Overland Express, in which he had killed—murdered, his critics have it—Dave McCanles, the former station owner, and two others. During this time, he was a town constable. For most of the well-known part of his career, Wild Bill was typically either a city marshal or sheriff. He became a U.S. Marshal in the latter part of his career, and not many tales are told about that period in his life. The tales of Wild Bill Hickok began in Fort Riley, Kansas, where he was appointed deputy city marshal around 1866. During this time, he became associated with other frontier icons such as Wyatt Earp (Deputy Marshal of Wichita, Kansas), Bat Masterson (Sheriff of Ford County, Kansas), and Doc Holliday. After his time in Fort Riley, Wild Bill moved on to other ventures including being a part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Around 1869, Wild Bill ended up at Hays City, Kansas, where he was appointed the sheriff of Ellis County and city marshal. Hays City became the stomping ground for cattle runs and railroad trails. Thousands of cattle runs made their way through Hays City to places like Nebraska, Wyoming, and Dakota. With the population boom, the officials of Hays City realized the need for someone to maintain law and order. Shortly thereafter, the city council decided to hire James Butler Hickok, known as ‘‘Wild Bill,’’ or the ‘‘Prince of Pistoleers,’’ as the sheriff and city marshal. As the sheriff of Hays City, Wild Bill patrolled the streets with a shotgun and two pistols. He went from gambling saloons to brothels, maintaining a fierce presence. Having the reputation of being one of the best gunmen in the West, Wild Bill was constantly challenged by outlaws or troublemakers who wanted to prove their skills. They usually wanted to fight the best

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gunfighter in the West. Wild Bill typically avoided such confrontations, although he did not retreat from a challenge. Although Hickok kept the peace in Hays City, his time there was controversial. One instance brought Wild Bill into direct confrontation with the U.S. Army stationed nearby. Wild Bill was a friend of an Army officer named Captain Tom Custer, although many of the members of the Army did not care for Wild Bill. On one occasion, Captain Custer was racing up and down the streets of Hays City shooting his pistols. Hickok arrested Custer and took him back to the military fort. Captain Custer was outraged by Wild Bill’s actions and sought retribution for the embarrassment that he had endured. A few days later, Custer and some other soldiers went to a saloon where Wild Bill was located and attempted to settle the matter. Wild Bill shot several of the soldiers before some of his friends stopped him by reminding him of the repercussions of the actions. After the event, Wild Bill either quit or was fired from Hays City and moved to Ellsworth, Kansas, until the situation had subsided. When the upheaval from Hays City settled down, Hickok sought out the position of city marshal in Abilene, Kansas. Hickok began his duties at a salary of $150 a month and 25 percent of all fines executed by the courts. The city council also gave him three deputy marshals, James Gainsford, Tom Carson, and James McDonald (Tom Smith’s previous deputy). Hickok’s policing methods raised concern when residents realized that he policed the town quite differently than Marshal Smith. Wild Bill had no problems utilizing his gun power. He maintained peace and order with his pistols. Wild Bill was also strict on the no-gun laws, although he was not quite as friendly about administering the law. He used his weapons and sharp tongue to police the town, which made him a target for attacks from those who found his manner undesirable. Wild Bill was also a careful and cautious man. He distrusted most of his deputies and many of the residents of Abilene. He rarely supervised the town at night, always watched carefully when walking by dark alleys, and (contrary to popular depictions) usually had his back to the wall at saloons and gambling pubs. Although many felt that Tom Smith’s techniques were better, Abilene residents soon came to respect Wild Bill as an authoritative figure. However, outlaws who felt like they had something to prove constantly challenged Wild Bill. On one occasion, Hickok and a man known as Phil Coe came to a faceoff. Coe was part of a gambling problem occurring in Abilene around October 1871, and story has it that Coe was also messing around with Jessie Hazel, a woman Hickok had claimed as his own. When Wild Bill heard this rumor, he went and found them drinking wine in a secluded room. He was outraged, and the men got into a fight, during which Coe got the better of Hickok. After the brawl, Coe bragged to the town about how he got the best of Wild Bill, which did not please the marshal at all, although Wild Bill took no action at the time.

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One night, Coe and several of his friends were drunk and indirectly challenged Wild Bill to a gunfight. Surrounded by fifty Texan friends, Coe was ready to fight the marshal of Abilene, Kansas. During the fight, Coe was shot in the stomach twice, and Hickok was grazed when two bullets hit his coat. During the showdown, Hickok’s friend, Mike Williams, ran in to save Hickok but was killed. History states that Hickok was responsible for accidentally shooting his friend, assuming the person running up behind him was an enemy. In a rage because of his friend’s death, Hickok then went into every bar, brothel, and gambling burrow in town and cleared out all the gamblers, prostitutes, and drunks. The report of this gunfight was very exaggerated and was misinterpreted by the newspapers. Many newspapers applauded Hickok for his efforts in keeping the peace and maintaining order, while other reporters criticized Hickok for his violent actions. Various demeaning accounts of the story portrayed Hickok as the ‘‘Wild Bill,’’ ‘‘terror of the West,’’ and ‘‘notorious gambler and desperado.’’ Other accounts of the story indicated that Hickok killed Coe by shooting him in the back. Although many versions of the story were relayed, most residents of Abilene still respected Hickok. They sought him out as an authoritative figure, friend, and considerate individual. James Butler Hickok’s days at Abilene, Kansas, were ultimately shortlived. He was the marshal for about eight months. His problems were not due to the gunfights but were because of the differences he had with the city council. Around late 1871, because of a reduction of the cattle business, the city council ordered Hickok to fire a number of deputies. Hickok refused to do so, which caused conflict between Wild Bill and the officials. James Butler Hickok was relieved of his marshal duties around December of 1871. The rationale behind this decision was unclear; the city council only claimed that they no longer needed his services. Some believe many residents of Abilene still compared him to Marshal Smith and remained disappointed about his policing techniques. The council later hired James A. Gauthie at a substantially lower salary. Hickok was later appointed U.S. Marshal of Ellsworth, Kansas. Although Wild Bill was a U.S. Marshal, most of the stories about him are of when he was a sheriff or city marshal. Numerous tales have it that Wild Bill was responsible for many deaths, although the number of deaths was never quite clear. Legend has it that many Indian chiefs and tribe members died at the hands of Wild Bill, although this account remains unclear, as well. ‘‘On the other hand, court records reveal that he was responsible for the death of eleven white men and absolved of responsibility in each instance by reason of self-defense or accident’’ (O’Conner 1959). Wild Bill spent many years policing towns in the West. He was a lawman by trade and a gambler by habit. In 1876, he was killed during a poker game in Deadwood, Dakota. Ironically, on that day, for the first time since Hays City, Wild Bill sat without his back to the wall. He was a very

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cautious man and always sat where he was able to view everything occurring around him. It seems to be unclear if there were no seats by the wall or if his friends were playing a joke on him, but reluctantly, Wild Bill sat in the game room with his back to the door. All of sudden, a man named Jack McCall shot Wild Bill in the back of the head, killing him instantly. McCall was only twenty-five years old at the time and wanted to be the best gunfighter in the West. McCall claimed he was seeking revenge for the killing of his brother. It was later found out that McCall had no brothers at all. Legend has it that when Wild Bill was shot, he was holding a pair of aces and a pair of eights, which is now called the Dead Man’s Hand. After the shooting, McCall was caught by the residents of the town. At the first trial, he was found not guilty and was permitted to go free; however, McCall’s boasting about the killing of Wild Bill resulted in his demise. He was charged for the second time, found guilty, and sentenced to death for the murder of Hickok. History indicates that Wild Bill was a both lawman and a gambler. It was not uncommon for lawmen to be gamblers, as well. Some men were businessmen, lawmen, gamblers, family men, and even outlaws. One of the most notorious lawmen-outlaws was Ben Thompson.

A GUNMAN OR LAWMAN: BEN THOMPSON The story of Ben Thompson is not as well known as other marshals, but is indicative of the multiple roles/personalities of lawmen of this time. Thompson was never a U.S. Marshal, although he played a unique role as a city marshal. He was a gunman, a soldier, a gambler, an outlaw, a businessman, and a marshal. He was known as a fierce gunman, a loyal friend, and a drunk. He never had much money, although he was loved by his friends for his loyalty and reliability. He was a soldier for the U.S. Army during the Civil War. Shortly after the war, he was sentenced to prison on murder charges for killing an acquaintance. After being released from prison, he became a gambler and businessman. Around 1870, he traveled to Abilene, Kansas, completely broke. After a lucky gambling streak, he and his friend Phil Coe bought the Bull’s Head Saloon. During this time in Abilene, Wild Bill Hickok was the marshal of the town. Thompson’s business partner, Phil Coe, was the same person who had issues with Wild Bill. The Bull’s Head Saloon proved to be a profitable venture. After a while, Thompson left the saloon in the hands of Coe while he went to Kansas City to meet with his wife. After the death of Coe, Thompson sold the saloon and went to Ellsworth, Kansas. Ben Thompson could never seem to stay out of trouble, especially when his brother, Billy, was involved. In August 1873, Thompson was at a saloon gambling when one of the gamblers, John Sterling, claimed that if he won

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the hand, he would split the winnings with Thompson. After the gambler won, he left the saloon without splitting the winnings. Thompson later found Sterling and demanded his half of the winnings. Sterling refused, slapped Thompson in the face, and left the saloon. This ultimately led to a gunfight involving Thompson, Sterling, and others, during which the local sheriff was shot. Thompson was forced to leave town because he was wanted by the law. After leaving Ellsworth, Thompson went to Austin, Texas. In Austin, he ran for city marshal but was defeated. Ben blamed this defeat on a man known as Mark Wilson, who was a local businessman. When Thompson confronted Wilson, Wilson started firing his shotgun. Thompson retaliated by shooting Wilson several times and killing him. Many believe that the death of Wilson was premeditated, although Thompson was acquitted on the basis of self-defense. Around 1883, Thompson ran for city marshal for the second time and was elected marshal of Austin, Texas. After he became marshal, Austin reported a dramatic decline in the crime. During this time, he ran into another enemy, Jack Harris, who attempted to kill him, but Thompson shot back and killed Harris. Thompson was indicted for the murder but was acquitted on the grounds that both men had threatened each other at various times in their lives. After this incident, Thompson was asked for his resignation. Thompson was killed on March 13, 1884, after a gunfight broke out between he and some old enemies. Thompson was hit eight times. Ben Thompson’s story was different in the sense that he was a lawman and an outlaw. He was also known for his many acquaintances. One of Thompson’s close friends was Bat Masterson, the sheriff of Ford County, Kansas. The Masterson brothers were also lawmen who were a central part of western history.

A TALE OF DODGE CITY: THE MASTERSONS Stories of Dodge City have captivated western movie lovers all over the nation. Heroic western icons such as the Masterson brothers, Wyatt Earp, and Doc Holliday made Dodge City a central part of western lore. In 1872, Billy Brooks became the first unofficial city marshal for Dodge City, because it was not yet incorporated. History indicates that Billy ‘‘Bully’’ Brooks was an unruly, cowardly man, who was ultimately driven out of town. Many assumed it was because of murder charges for the death of Matt Sullivan, a saloonkeeper. Other reports indicated that he was killed in 1877 by Virgil Earp, Wyatt Earp’s older brother. In 1876, Lawrence E. Deger became the first official city marshal of Dodge City. In 1877, he was later replaced by Edward J. Masterson, who

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was the younger brother of Bat Masterson, sheriff of Ford County, Kansas. Ed Masterson was killed when Masterson and Assistant Marshal Nat Haywood were patrolling the streets of Dodge City one night. They heard a commotion coming from the Lady Gay Theatre, a local entertainment center. When they arrived at the theater, they realized that Jack Wagner had been frantically waving his gun around the theater. Marshal Masterson approached Wagner and took away his weapons. Masterson then handed the weapons to Wagner’s employer, who was also in the crowd. After the crowd had settled down, the two lawmen turned around to leave. Wagner had reclaimed his weapons and followed them to the sidewalk. Ed Masterson began to take away his weapons again, and Wagner and Masterson started to brawl. Haywood attempted to intervene but Wagner threatened to shoot him if he did. Wagner shot Masterson in the stomach and the gunshot set his clothes on fire. Ed Masterson, in return, shot Wagner through the body, killing him on the spot. Another account of the story claims that Bat Masterson, Edward Masterson’s older brother, heard of the trouble and came to the rescue, although it was too late to save his brother. Upon arriving at the scene, Bat Masterson shot both criminals to death, Wagner and another individual who came to rescue him. After the death of Edward Masterson, city officials of Dodge City appointed Charley Bassett as the new city marshal. By this time, Wyatt Earp had returned to Dodge City from his travels and should have been a prime candidate for the marshal position, although he was appointed assistant city marshal instead. A couple years earlier, Wyatt Earp was the assistant city marshal of Dodge City, but left in 1877 to travel through Texas on gambling ventures. During this time in his life, he met his soon-to-be close friend, Doc Holliday, a gambling dentist from Georgia. Upon his return to Dodge City, he was reappointed assistant city marshal. As discussed below, the time Wyatt Earp spent in Dodge City was suspicious because when he arrived in Dodge City, he was penniless, but when he left he had enough money to buy the Oriental Saloon in Tombstone, Arizona. Historians credit Earp’s increase in money to the legend of Dora Hand. Hand was a prosperous, attractive saloon singer who was murdered accidentally by a culprit who thought she was someone else. The murder suspect was a man known as Spike Kenedy, who was seen running away from the murder scene. As the investigation began, Sheriff Bat Masterson, Marshal Bassett, Assistant Marshal Wyatt Earp, and Deputy Sheriff Tilghman set off to find Kenedy. After Kenedy was arrested, his father, who was wealthy, came to his son’s assistance. At the indictment hearing, no press or public was allowed to watch the proceedings, and the charges were dropped because of lack of evidence. Legend has it that Bat Masterson may have also been involved in the suspicious circumstances of the Kenedy case. He had the reputation of being a gambler and was known to be paid minimal

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wages, although shortly after the Kenedy incident, Masterson bought a saloon/dance hall without explaining where he had acquired the funds. The legend of Bat Masterson is more prominent than the tales of his brothers. He was born the second of seven children in Quebec, Canada, although his family moved to the United States around the mid-1850s. Masterson was born Bartholomew Masterson (shortened to ‘‘Bat’’) but changed his name to William Barclay Masterson years later. Throughout history, Bat Masterson has been recognized as one of the most iconic of western figures. Along with his brothers, Jim and Edward, Bat was a lawman by trade. He began his career as a scout for the U.S. Army, and toward the end of his life, he became a sportswriter. His close friends included Wyatt Earp, Ben Thompson, Wild Bill Hickok, and Alfred Henry Lewis. Legends have it that his first fight was in Sweetwater, Texas, probably over a woman. During the gunfight, Bat was shot in the pelvis, which crippled him and caused him to use a cane for the rest of his life. Around 1877, Bat ended up in Dodge City with his brothers Jim and Edward. Jim was a saloon owner, while Ed was a deputy sheriff for Dodge City. Around the first week of November 1877, Bat was elected sheriff of Ford County, and he filled that role for about two years. Most of the stories told about Bat Masterson were during his years as the sheriff of Ford County. After Bat was elected sheriff of Ford County, he was eager to show his ability to do the job. He got his opportunity soon enough when a group of outlaws attempted to rob the trains of Santa Fe, close to Kingsley. At first, two groups were dispatched to apprehend the criminals. The first group was led by Edwards County Sheriff Fuller. The second group was led by exSheriff Bob McCanse. After a somewhat exhaustive search, both groups came back empty handed. The agents of the Adams Express Company requested the assistance of Bat Masterson to apprehend the criminals. Bat was eager to take on this task and formed a party to assist his search. As they rode to a nearby ranch, Masterson saw several outlaws riding toward the ranch. When the outlaws arrived, Josh Webb, one of the inhabitants at the ranch, went to greet them at the door. Bat Masterson quickly reacted, sensing that this was an opportune time to capture the outlaws. One account of the story follows: Bat suddenly kicked wide the partly open door and leaped out with leveled rifle. ‘‘Throw up your hands!’’ he snapped as Riley and Morrow scurried to his flanks with drawn guns. The startled West quickly complied with Bat’s orders, but Rudabaugh was a tougher customer. His hand flew from his saddle horn to his gun butt. He froze with the weapon half out of the scabbard as Josh Webb’s six-gun hammer clicked behind him. Then the man whom Wyatt Earp once called ‘‘the most notorious outlaw in the range country’’ slowly

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raised his hands, and Bat told Riley to disarm the pair. From the gun belt of each outlaw, Big Kinch extracted a Colt and a .45-caliber government carbine. He stepped back, thinking his task complete, but the sharp-eyed Bat detected a suspicious-looking bulge under Rudabaugh’s greatcoat. He pulled open the coat and reached for the revolver the bandit had hidden in his waistband. Rudabaugh made one last desperate attempt to escape capture. He grabbed for the gun as Bat extricated it from his clothing, but Bat wrenched it away from him. (DeArment 1979)

Masterson’s quick-wittedness and diligent reactions apprehended the wanted outlaws. The residents of Dodge City and Ford County acclaimed him a hero for capturing the train robbers. Although there are many tales of Bat Masterson, his time as sheriff of Ford County was short-lived. He was not reelected in 1879, serving only two years as sheriff. He later became a U.S. Marshal for Trinidad, Colorado, but lasted only a few months as marshal. He then traveled from city to city gambling and conducting business ventures. Later in life, he left the West and moved to New York City, where he was appointed deputy U.S. Marshal of the lower part of New York City in 1908. His life as U.S. Marshal didn’t generate as many stories as when he was a sheriff of Ford County. Toward the end of his life, he became a prominent sportswriter for a New York newspaper. William Barclay (Bat) Masterson died in 1921, at the age of sixty-seven. He died sitting at his desk, while writing his sports column for the Telegraph. WYATT EARP: REALITY OF THE MAN Wyatt Earp was one of the most legendary lawmen of western history. The legend of Wyatt Earp has been interpreted by many scholars and journalists and by the media. Because of the movies and media attention, the image of Wyatt Earp has almost become fictional. Wyatt Earp was a lawman, gambler, businessman, and gunfighter. His legendary reputation characterized him as a tall, courageous frontiersman who wore a long black coat and an ironed white shirt. He was portrayed as a man who was fearless no matter what the situation. As are many iconic figures, Wyatt Earp was portrayed as a U.S. Marshal, although he was never actually a federal agent. His occupation as a lawman was typically limited to deputy city marshal. However, Wyatt’s brother, Virgil, was a U.S. Marshal during his lifetime. Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp, the third of six children of Nicholas and Virginia Earp, was born in 1848 in Illinois. The Earp family moved around quite a bit, a trend that continued with the next generation. Earp had very little formal education but picked up the survival tricks of the streets. In 1870, Earp obtained his first lawman position as the town constable in Lamar, Missouri. He left Lamar in 1871 after the sudden death of his first wife from an

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unknown illness. Earp traveled the next few years through several states, including Kansas, Texas, and New Mexico. Through his travels, he earned his travel expenses by being a gambler and a law enforcement officer. He was a deputy city marshal for Wichita, Kansas, and then ended up in Dodge City, Kansas, where he was briefly an assistant deputy marshal. While Earp was in Dodge City, he met a prostitute named Cecilia Ann Mattie Blaylock. Wyatt and Mattie lived together for years and eventually had a common-law marriage. Wyatt and Mattie continued to travel through various states and even ended up in Dodge City again, where he was appointed deputy city marshal for the second time. As mentioned above, he was deputy marshal when Bat Masterson was sheriff of Ford County. After his time in Dodge City, he and Mattie went to Tombstone, Arizona, in 1879. Wyatt Earp became legendary because of one particular fight that took place at the O.K. Corral. The Earp family and the half-bloods, a local outlaw gang, became rivals when the Earps tried to restore law and order in the city of Tombstone. The members of the gang were well-known outlaws such as Ike Clanton, Tom McLaury, Billy Clanton, and Billy Claiborne. They were known for their savage behavior and red sashes, which indicated their membership in the gang. Shortly after arriving at Tombstone, Wyatt Earp became a shotgun messenger and then a deputy sheriff for Pima County, Arizona, for about three months. Wyatt Earp had wanted to become the sheriff of Tombstone, but lost that position to a politician named John H. Behan. Wyatt soon after resigned as the deputy sheriff because he felt that he should have been the sheriff of Tombstone. Virgil Earp was appointed Deputy U.S. Marshal for the Arizona Territory before he arrived in Tombstone. After his arrival, he became the city marshal, as well, and appointed his brothers Warren and Morgan as his deputies. As mentioned before, during this time Wyatt was no longer a deputy sheriff and spent most of his time at a local saloon called the Oriental Saloon, which he purchased with other investors. The showdown between the Earp family and the half-bloods began when a Kinnear and Company carriage was robbed. During the attack, the driver of the carriage was murdered. To apprehend the criminals, two groups were formed to find the murderers. Sheriff John Behan and his deputies led the first group, and the second group consisted of the Earp brothers, Frank Leslie, and Bat Masterson. Both groups were competing against each other, which made the search difficult. The group led by Sheriff Behan found Luther King and made him name the other participants in the robbery, who were Bill Leonard, Harry Head, and Jim Crane. King was arrested but managed to escape and leave town. When the Earp brothers heard about King’s escape, they decided that they needed to find the culprits first. Stories indicated that soon thereafter, Doc

Gun Fighters

Holliday was also implicated in the robbery and murder. Doc Holliday was eventually acquitted. The Earps were enraged at the accusations against Doc Holliday, which only caused more conflict between Wyatt Earp and Sheriff Behan. The struggle between the lawmen split the city of Tombstone between those who favored the Earps and those who favored the sheriff. Meanwhile, Sheriff Behan established a support group by involving himself with outlaws and gang members. The rivalry between the half-bloods and the Earp family began when Wyatt Earp tried to bribe Ike Clanton to divulge information on the whereabouts of the criminals. Earp offered Clanton all the monetary rewards for the capture of the murderers in return for information on his friends. A few days later, the outlaws were killed and rumors began that Ike Clanton had ratted out his friends to Wyatt Earp. In one incident, Clanton started screaming in the middle of town that he did no such thing and that the stories were all lies. After several conflicts between the outlaws and the Earps, Virgil Earp, now U.S. Marshal and city marshal, appointed Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday as deputy marshals. There were several stories that indicated that some of the members of the half-bloods, including Ike Clanton, were threatening to kill the Earps, who expected a showdown almost every day. On October 25, 1881, the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday decided to take action. Earlier that morning, Ike had some heated words with Virgil Earp after playing cards in a saloon. Later that afternoon, Virgil and Morgan Earp stopped Ike in the middle of the street, where Ike threatened the Earp brothers again. Virgil and Morgan arrested Ike and took him to the courthouse, where the Judge charged him 25 cents for possession of a weapon. On the same day, the Earp brothers heard that several members of the half-blood gang were near the O.K. Corral. The brothers started on their way down to the O.K. Corral, first Wyatt and Morgan, who were joined by Holliday and Virgil. Sheriff Behan heard of the upcoming showdown and urged Virgil Earp to remove the weapons the outlaws were carrying with them. Tired of all the threats against his family, Virgil Earp refused that idea and asserted that if they wanted to fight, he would let them fight. Sheriff Behan, at this time, went to disarm the outlaws and urged everyone to follow him to his office, although both parties resisted. The Earps claimed they intended to disarm the cowboys, although the situation turned out differently. One account of the showdown went like this: Later Behan was to testify that when the Earps reached the McLaurys, one of them—he thought it was Wyatt—said, ‘‘You sons of bitches, you have been looking for a fight, and now you can have it.’’ Wyatt testified that as his group came up to the Clantons, Billy Clanton and the two McLaurys had their hands by their sides and Frank McLaury’s and Bill Clanton’s six-shooters were in plain sight. Virgil ordered them to throw up their hands, saying that he had come to disarm them. Immediately, Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury

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dropped their hands to their pistols. Virgil called out, ‘‘Hold, I don’t mean that; I have come to disarm you.’’ Billy Clanton cried out, ‘‘Don’t shoot me, I don’t want to fight.’’ Tom McLaury quickly threw open his coat to show that he was not armed saying either, ‘‘I have nothing,’’ or ‘‘I am not armed’’ (according to Behan, who later reported the conversations under oath). Behan claimed that Holliday fired the first shot from a nickel-plated pistol. Almost instantaneously two more shots were fired. No accounts of the fight seem to agree, but it is apparent that Wyatt Earp and Billy Clanton got off the first shots. (Rosa 1969)

The Earps claimed they were trying to disarm the troublemakers and therefore were defending their lives. All that is certain is that several participants of the gunfight were injured. Billy Clanton, Tom McLaury, and Frank McLaury were all killed in the fight. Virgil Earp was shot in the leg, Morgan was shot in the spine, and Doc Holliday had a bullet tear in the skin on his back. Wyatt Earp went untouched, as did Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne. One account claims that Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday were arrested because of the deaths at the O.K. Corral. The warrants were issued by Sheriff Behan and Ike Clanton. The bail bond was set at $20,000, which was raised by friends of the Earp family. The trial date was never set because the judge threw out the case on the grounds that Tom McLaury had access to a gun; therefore, they were not shooting at unarmed men. Around the end of November, Virgil Earp was shot in the arm and side, which crippled him for life. About four months after Virgil Earp’s incident, Morgan Earp was killed while playing pool at a saloon. Another version of the story claims that, instead of being arrested for the deaths at the O.K. Corral, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday were arrested because they killed Frank Stillwell, one of the murderers of Morgan Earp. The Earp family soon realized it was too dangerous for them to be in Tombstone and moved out of the city. Stories have it that Virgil Earp and his family accompanied Morgan’s body to Colton, California, the hometown of their parents. Wyatt Earp went his separate way, accompanied by Doc Holliday. Legend has it that Wyatt Earp traveled westward to avenge the death of his brother, during the time frame that Frank Stillwell was killed. Wyatt and Doc were charged with Stillwell’s murder but were acquitted. After this, Wyatt and Doc left Arizona, never to return again because of the possible dangers it possessed. During his time in Tombstone, Arizona, Wyatt left Mattie for the town sheriff’s girlfriend, Josephine Marcus, also known as Josie. Josie was a young actress from San Francisco, who lived with Wyatt for the rest of his life. They were married in San Francisco, California. The couple then moved from town to town, seeking business opportunities and participating in gambling ventures.

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The gunfight at the O.K. Corral became popular after the release of the western film, Tombstone. The recap of history illustrated in this movie was truly exaggerated at points, yet was quite interesting to the general populace. Toward the end of Wyatt’s life, several versions of his life story were published in local newspapers, which enraged him. The articles portrayed the Earp brothers as troublemakers, who initiated the fight between the members of the half-bloods at the O.K. Corral. To set the stories straight, Wyatt Earp tried to recapture the past in words, twice. A biography of Wyatt Earp’s life, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal by Stuart Nathaniel Lake, formed the basis of many movies about the Earp family. Facts of Lake’s book have been widely criticized as fictional, although it remains the primary account of Wyatt Earp’s life. Scholars argue that Wyatt Earp and Lake exchanged letters and had meetings with each other, although Earp died two years before the book was actually published. Scholars have indicated that Wyatt Earp was much cared for and loved by many of his friends and was viewed as one of the true western frontiersmen. ‘‘When asked by Teddy Roosevelt why he had not written about Earp’s colorful life, Bat Masterson is said to have answered, ‘Mr. President, the real story of the Old West can never be told unless Wyatt Earp will tell what he knows…’’’ (Cohen 2003). Wyatt Earp died in 1929 in Los Angeles, at 83 years of age. Virgil died in Nevada in 1906. Around 1885, the West started becoming more modernized as its population increased. The days of the cow towns and the cowboys were at an end. Law enforcement agencies became more organized and structured. ‘‘In 1885, the Kansas cattle boom was ended by passage of a state law banning the trail-cattle industry. Soon the boom days were only memories—of twogun marshals who shot it out with the lawless on the dusty streets or in the smoky saloons of the cow towns. The days of the men who ruled with revolvers.’’ (Cohen 2003).

THE U.S. MARSHALS TODAY Currently, there are ninety-four U.S. Marshal offices throughout the country, one for each congressional district in the United States. The president of the United States appoints the U.S. Marshals, and deputy marshals are recruited through a hiring process. They are responsible for fugitive investigations, court security, the witness protection program, transporting prisoners, and assets relinquishment, as well as other duties. Fugitive responsibilities for the U.S. Marshals include investigating and apprehending criminals. They investigate escapees and those who fail to pay bond and/or fail to appear in court, arrest parole and probation violators, and assist the other federal agencies in various investigations. They are

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responsible for arrest warrants until the warrants are either executed or dismissed. ‘‘The U.S. Marshals work with other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies on multi-agency task forces. These task forces focus law enforcement resources and attention to the most serious cases. Task forces allow law enforcement officers to work together, increasing the opportunities to locate and capture dangerous violent fugitives.’’(Cooley 1959). Judiciary responsibilities involve protecting court administrators, including judges, witnesses, and jurors. Currently U.S. Marshals protect more than two thousand judges, witnesses, and jurors and more than four hundred federal courthouses. Marshals are responsible for court security during and after proceedings and also for transporting prisoners to court proceedings and from court back to confinement. ‘‘When a person is arrested, they must go before a magistrate (judge) to be charged (told why they were arrested)… While in Marshals Service custody (hold) each prisoner is safely moved to and from court, securely housed and, provided meals and medical care. The Marshals Service may be required to escort prisoners many times during several legal proceedings.’’ (Cooley 1959). This includes the preliminary hearing, all trial examinations, sentencing, and transportation to specific locations. U.S. Marshals are also in charge of the witness protection program. ‘‘The Marshals Service protects witnesses who testify against dangerous defendants such as drug traffickers, organized crime members, terrorists, and other criminals. For a witness’ testimony, the government offers protection, a new name and a safe location’’ (U.S. Marshal Homepage). This includes 24-hour surveillance, counseling, physical examinations, documents providing new names and locations, and finding the witnesses new jobs. The marshals conduct asset repossessions, as well. They work with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) when properties need to be seized by federal agencies. This responsibility also requires the marshals to manage properties or assets such as houses until the court decides either to sell the asset or dispose of it. The responsibilities of U.S. Marshals have grown over the years, although the core duties still remain the same. They are mainly responsible for court proceedings and handling prisoners. The duties of the western icons of crime fighting were similar to the responsibilities of the U.S. Marshals today, although because of the media, the perception of much of what the western marshals did is skewed. Much of their occupation did involve apprehending criminals and enforcing the law, but the romanticized, fictional versions portrayed in movies and books fails to include the tedious details involved in the marshals’ occupation.

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Becoming a Deputy U.S. Marshal (http://www.usmarshals.gov)

Major Duties Under the close supervision of senior U.S. Marshals law enforcement personnel, Deputy U.S. Marshals will perform the following vital law enforcement responsibilities: • fugitive apprehension • court security • transporting and processing prisoners • conducting body searches of prisoners and persons under arrest • producing prisoners in court and maintaining custody of prisoners throughout court proceedings • protecting sequestered juries • providing protection for court facilities and personnel • executing civil and criminal processes, and • enforcing court orders and Attorney General orders involving civil disturbances, acts of terrorism, etc.

Qualification Requirements You must be a U.S. citizen, be between the ages of 21 and 36, be in excellent physical condition, have a bachelor’s degree or three years of qualifying experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience, possess a valid drivers license with a good driving record, complete agency FCIP requirements and structured interview, and undergo a rigorous 171=2 week basic training program at the U.S. Marshals Service Training Academy in Glynco, GA. General Experience Requirements (GS-5): You must have had a minimum of three years of responsible volunteer or paid experience, or you must substitute a four year degree from an accredited college or university. The following types of experience are illustrative of acceptable experience. • Law enforcement • Work involving the correctional treatment and supervision of criminal offenders in correctional institutions • Classroom teaching or instruction • Sales (other than taking and filling orders as in over-the-counter sales) • Interviewing experience in a public or private service agency which involved making determinations on individual requests for services, benefits, etc., and explaining, interpreting, and applying rules, regulations, and procedures (continued )


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• Work involving contacts with the public for the purpose of gathering information, such as credit rating investigator, claims adjuster, journalist, etc. • Volunteer teaching or counseling • Other experience that has demonstrated the ability to take charge and make decisions, such as civilian/military supervisory, managerial or leadership responsibility Specialized Experience (GS-7 only): In addition to the GS-5 experience requirement above, you must have one year of responsible law enforcement experience that required the exercise of tact, courtesy, and the ability to deal effectively with associates, subordinates, the general public, and prisoners. This experience must demonstrate your abilities as a competent law enforcement officer, to include the ability to make arrests and use firearms proficiently. (Superior academic achievement may also qualify you for the GS-7 level.) Substitution of Education for Specialized Experience (Superior Academic Achievement) GS-7 only: A bachelor’s degree and one of the following Superior Academic Achievement provisions: 1. A grade point average (GPA) of 3.0 or higher for all completed undergraduate courses, or for those courses completed during the last 2 years of undergraduate study. 2. Rank in the upper one third of your college or university undergraduate class. 3. Membership in a national scholastic honor society (other than freshman honor societies) recognized by the Association of College Honor Societies. 4. Successful completion of graduate education in law, or in a field related to law enforcement (e.g., criminal justice), or completion of one full year of graduate study (minimum of 18 semester or 27 graduate quarter hours). Combination of Education and Experience: If you do not qualify based on education or experience alone we will combine your education and experience in an attempt to satisfy the minimum general experience requirements, at the GS-5 level, for Deputy U.S. Marshal positions. Medical Qualifications: Deputy U.S. Marshals must be physically able to safely and efficiently perform the full range of duties of the position. Any medical or physical condition which affects this ability is disqualifying. Some conditions which may be disqualifying are: diabetes mellitus, convulsive disorders, hernias, orthopedic conditions that affect mobility, stability, flexibility and strength, hypertension, heart disease, color vision deficits and eye surgery. (continued )

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Specific medical requirements are: 20/20 binocular vision is required and may be corrected with lenses to meet this standard. Uncorrected vision must test 20/200 or better in each eye. Any surgery to correct vision may be disqualifying dependent on the outcome of the surgery. Near vision, corrected or uncorrected, must be sufficient to distinguish basic colors and depth perception must be clinically normal. Hearing must test at 30 decibels (dB) or better in each ear at 500, 1000, and 2000 hertz (Hz) and 40 dB or better at 3000 Hz. Fitness in total standards in the categories of flexibility, push-ups, sit-ups, and 1.5 mile run must be met by all candidates before the hiring process is completed. (Call a District Recruitment Officer for more information)

CONCLUSION Western movies and books have portrayed the U.S. Marshals as possessing supernatural powers, excelling in their abilities to fight and shoot. These men typically possessed extraordinary courage. They rode their horses with poise; they shot their guns from many yards away and never missed a shot; they saved the town from evil outlaws; and when they were done for the day, they rode off into the sunset. In reality, U.S. Marshals were designated to assist court proceedings, court security, and citizen protection. Many of the actual responsibilities of the U.S. Marshals have been overlooked and misinterpreted by fictional stories. Also, city-elected law enforcement officers have been confused with true western U.S. Marshals. Icons such as Wyatt Warp and Ben Thompson are known for being marshals, although the fact that they were city-elected officers has been lost in the stories. Interestingly enough, contrary to popular belief, the Wild West was not so long ago. For example, many of the marshals were in their prime when the use of the telephone was first established. Many of the marshals even drove around in automobiles before they died. The first powered car was built in 1872. The first car run by gasoline engine was built in 1893, and after that, various car companies started building different versions of the automobile. When we think about the Wild West, we imagine it to be so long ago, but many of the heroes of the Old West died after the automobile became popular. Western legends and tales provide an interesting version of the beginning of western civilization. The U.S. Marshals are important figures in history. The origin of the West was established through the help of these men. They controlled and maintained law and order in towns and cities that were run by criminal outlaws. Icons such as James Butler (Wild Bill) Hickok, Wyatt

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Earp, Bat Masterson, and Thomas J. (Bear River Tom) Smith will be forever remembered for their services and the roles that they played in history. FURTHER READING Cohen, Hubert I. 2003. Wyatt Earp at the O.K. Corral: Six versions. Journal of American Culture 26 (2): 204–23. Cooley, Rita W. 1959. The Office of United States Marshal. Western Political Quarterly 12 (1): 123–40. DeArment, Robert K. 1979. Bat Masterson: The Man and the Legend. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Drago, Harry S. 1975. The Legend Makers: Tales of the Old-time Peace Officers and Desperadoes of the Frontier. New York: Cornwall Press. Judiciary Act of 1789, 1 Stat. 73. O’Conner, Richard. Wild Bill Hickok. New York: Doubleday, 1959. Peterson, Roger S. 1994. Wyatt Earp. American History 29 (3): 54–62. Rosa, Joseph G. 1969. The Gunfighter: Man or Myth? Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. United States Marshal Homepage. http://www.usmarshals.gov.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

Allan Pinkerton Scott H. Belshaw and Amanda L. Belshaw


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Allan Pinkerton (1819–1884) is regarded as the father of modern private investigation, an interesting title to hold considering he happened upon that career entirely by accident. With his hands-on approach to business, he pioneered several innovations in the field, the derivatives of which are still practiced today. Several government agencies today have their roots in a Pinkerton-run enterprise. It was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency that comprised the first Secret Service for the United States, serving as undercover antiespionage agents for the Union during the Civil War. Pinkerton also employed the first female investigators in America, a notable feat because women were not permitted to become police officers until just before the dawn of the twentieth century. It was Allan Pinkerton’s agency that created the first central files on criminals, keeping notes of their crimes, their habits, their hangouts, and their photographs. These files became the predecessor to the criminal databases for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and other law enforcement agencies. Allan Pinkerton was well known across the country in his time for his strong work ethic and for the cases his agency successfully resolved, but many people today are not aware of Pinkerton’s contributions to the law enforcement community that still exist today.

THE EARLY YEARS Allan Pinkerton was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on August 25, 1819. Pinkerton proved to be an adventurous child, full of energy, who often ignored his schoolwork in favor of hunting and fishing in the Scottish countryside. His parents, William and Isabell, often had difficulty encouraging their inquisitive child to pay attention to his studies. Life for the Pinkerton family was tough in the working-class Gorbals area of Glasgow. William Pinkerton was a police sergeant who was removed from active duty after an on-thejob injury. When Allan was still young, his father was killed by a mob during a political riot, leaving Allan to assist his mother, a weaver, with caring for the family. Pinkerton quit school and went to work to earn living wages—first as a patternmaker, then as a cooper, or barrel maker. As a young adult, he joined a young revolutionary group called the Chartists, who wanted the working class to have a larger voice in the country’s system of government. On March 13, 1842, twenty-two-year-old Allan married a young woman from Edinburgh, Joan Carfrae. Shortly after their ceremony ended, a friend arrived and hastily informed Allan that the authorities would arrive almost immediately to arrest Allan for his involvement with the Chartists. The following morning, the newlywed Pinkertons set sail for North America for a new beginning. Starting over would prove to be challenging for the young couple, for their troubles started before they ever set foot in North America. A terrible storm, catching the couple’s ship in a whirlpool, happened as the

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boat was nearing Halifax. The ship took on water and then rammed against a reef near the shore. Almost everything in the storage compartments was lost, including everything the Pinkertons owned, save what they were wearing on their bodies. The exhausted and injured survivors made their way to land, only to meet a group of Indians who demanded that they hand over any shiny trinkets they had. Joan Pinkerton was forced to give up her new silver wedding ring, which held great importance for her; Allan nearly refused to allow her to give it away, but an officer from their ship convinced Pinkerton that it was better to give the Indians his wife’s ring rather than his own life. The Pinkertons had intended to move to Quebec, but after hearing stories about a fast-growing city in the northern United States, Pinkerton opted instead to settle in Chicago. He believed he could find a good deal of work there as a cooper. The couple disembarked their next ship near Detroit and bought supplies: food, a wagon and horses, and tools. Making their way slowly across the unknown landscape, the Pinkertons slept in the barns of kind farmers and hunted and foraged for food when they ran out. Upon arriving in Chicago, Pinkerton met fellow Scotsmen who told him of a brewery that needed barrel makers. Pinkerton was hired quickly and began earning his living in America. The family lived reasonably and had stability, but the adventurous Pinkerton eventually grew restless. He wanted to own his own business and began exploring how to best make that happen. He learned of a town forty miles from Chicago, named Dundee, which also had a large population of Scots, but no barrel-makers. The Pinkertons packed up their home and moved to Dundee, and Pinkerton soon earned a reputation as an excellent craftsman and fair businessman. Pinkerton’s One and Original Cooperage of Dundee grew very quickly, and soon he employed several craftsmen who worked six days a week in his shop. Pinkerton was flexible with his customers, often taking payments in produce and farm goods from area farmers and never insisting on being paid during slow farming seasons. His patience with his clients furthered his positive reputation. In 1846, the first Pinkerton to be born in America, William, arrived, followed later by twins Robert and Joan. Four other daughters followed over the next five to six years, but none of them survived childhood, and very little is known about them. Save for the deaths of their youngest children, the Pinkerton family appeared to be living the early version of the American Dream, complete with a prosperous business and three healthy, happy children. Pinkerton continued to improve the business by devising cheaper ways to make his product without sacrificing its quality. In fact, Pinkerton took a very hands-on approach with his business; even though he was the owner and supervisor, he was not above performing hard labor himself if it got the job done. It was this work ethic that unwittingly led the future ‘‘private eye’’ to the career for which he became renowned.

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Careers in Private Investigation

Significant Points Work hours are often irregular, and the work can be dangerous. • About 30 percent are self-employed. • Applicants typically have related experience in areas such as law enforcement, insurance, the military, or government investigative or intelligence jobs. • Keen competition is expected for most jobs despite faster-than-average employment growth.

Nature of the Work Private detectives and investigators assist individuals, businesses, and attorneys by finding and analyzing information. They connect small clues to solve mysteries or to uncover facts about legal, financial, or personal matters. Private detectives and investigators offer many services, including executive, corporate, and celebrity protection; pre-employment verification; and individual background profiles. Some investigate computer crimes, such as identity theft, harassing e-mails, and illegal downloading of copyrighted material. They also provide assistance in criminal and civil liability cases, insurance claims and fraud, child custody and protection cases, missing persons cases, and premarital screening. They are sometimes hired to investigate individuals to prove or disprove infidelity. Private detectives and investigators have many methods to choose from when determining the facts in a case. Much of their work is done using a computer, recovering deleted e-mails and documents, for example. They may also perform computer database searches or work with someone who does. Computers allow investigators to obtain quickly huge amounts of information such as a subject’s prior arrests, convictions, and civil legal judgments; telephone numbers; motor vehicle registrations; association and club memberships; and even photographs. Detectives and investigators also perform various other types of surveillance or searches. To verify facts, such as an individual’s income or place of employment, they may make phone calls or visit a subject’s workplace. In other cases, especially those involving missing persons and background checks, investigators interview people to gather as much information as possible about an individual. Sometimes investigators go undercover, pretending to be someone else to get information or to observe a subject inconspicuously. Most detectives and investigators are trained to perform physical surveillance, which may be high- or low-tech. They may observe a site, such as the home of a subject, from an inconspicuous location or a vehicle. Using photographic and video cameras, binoculars, and cell phones, detectives often use

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surveillance to gather information on an individual; this can be quite timeconsuming. The duties of private detectives and investigators depend on the needs of their clients. In cases that involve fraudulent workers’ compensation claims, for example, investigators may carry out long-term covert observation of a person suspected of fraud. If an investigator observes him or her performing an activity that contradicts injuries stated in a worker’s compensation claim, the investigator would take video or still photographs to document the activity and report it to the client. Detectives and investigators must be mindful of the law when conducting investigations. They keep up with federal, state, and local legislation, such as privacy laws and other legal issues affecting their work. The legality of certain methods may be unclear, and investigators and detectives must make judgment calls when deciding how to pursue a case. They must also know how to collect evidence properly so that they do not compromise its admissibility in court. Private detectives and investigators often specialize. Those who focus on intellectual property theft, for example, investigate and document acts of piracy, help clients stop illegal activity, and provide intelligence for prosecution and civil action. Other investigators specialize in developing financial profiles and asset searches. Their reports reflect information gathered through interviews, investigation and surveillance, and research, including review of public documents. Computer forensic investigators specialize in recovering, analyzing, and presenting data from computers for use in investigations or as evidence. They determine the details of intrusions into computer systems, recover data from encrypted or erased files, and recover e-mails and deleted passwords. Legal investigators assist in preparing criminal defenses, locating witnesses, serving legal documents, interviewing police and prospective witnesses, and gathering and reviewing evidence. Legal investigators also may collect information on the parties to the litigation, take photographs, testify in court, and assemble evidence and reports for trials. They often work for law firms or lawyers. Corporate investigators conduct internal and external investigations for corporations. In internal investigations, they may investigate drug use in the workplace, ensure that expense accounts are not abused, or determine whether employees are stealing merchandise or information. External investigations attempt to thwart criminal schemes from outside the corporation, such as fraudulent billing by a supplier. Financial investigators may be hired to develop confidential financial profiles of individuals or companies that are prospective parties to large financial transactions. These investigators often are certified public accountants (CPAs) who work closely with investment bankers and other accountants. They (continued )


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might also search for assets to recover damages awarded by a court in fraud or theft cases. Detectives who work for retail stores or hotels are responsible for controlling losses and protecting assets. Store detectives, also known as loss prevention agents, safeguard the assets of retail stores by apprehending anyone attempting to steal merchandise or destroy store property. They prevent theft by shoplifters, vendor representatives, delivery personnel, and even store employees. Store detectives also conduct periodic inspections of stock areas, dressing rooms, and restrooms, and sometimes assist in opening and closing the store. They may prepare loss prevention and security reports for management and testify in court against people they apprehend. Hotel detectives protect guests of the establishment from theft of their belongings and preserve order in hotel restaurants and bars. They also may keep undesirable individuals, such as known thieves, off the premises.

Work Environment Many detectives and investigators spend time away from their offices conducting interviews or doing surveillance, but some work in their office most of the day conducting computer searches and making phone calls. When the investigator is working on a case, the environment might range from plush boardrooms to seedy bars. Store and hotel detectives work in the businesses that they protect. Investigators generally work alone, but they sometimes work with others during surveillance or when following a subject in order to avoid detection by the subject. Some of the work involves confrontation, so the job can be stressful and dangerous. Some situations call for the investigator to be armed, such as certain bodyguard assignments for corporate or celebrity clients. In most cases, however, a weapon is not necessary because the purpose of the work is gathering information and not law enforcement or criminal apprehension. Owners of investigative agencies have the added stress of having to deal with demanding and sometimes distraught clients. Private detectives and investigators often work irregular hours because of the need to conduct surveillance and contact people who are not available during normal working hours. Early morning, evening, weekend, and holliday work is common.

Training, Other Qualifications, and Advancement Most private detectives and investigators have some college education and previous experience in investigative work. In most states, they are required to be licensed. There are no formal education requirements for most private detective and investigator jobs, although many have college degrees. Courses in

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criminal justice and police science are helpful to aspiring private detectives and investigators. Although related experience is usually required, some people enter the occupation directly after graduation from college, generally with an associate or bachelor’s degree in criminal justice or police science. The 2006 educational attainment for private detectives and investigators, in percent, was as follows: high school graduate or equivalent, 18 percent; some college, no degree, 26 percent; associate’s degree, 8 percent; bachelor’s degree, 34 percent; master’s degree, 13 percent; professional degree or Ph.D., 3 percent. Most corporate investigators must have a bachelor’s degree, preferably in a business-related field. Some corporate investigators have a master’s degree in business administration or a law degree; others are CPAs. For computer forensics work, a computer science or accounting degree is more helpful than a criminal justice degree. An accounting degree provides good background knowledge for investigating fraud through computer forensics. Either of these two degrees provides a good starting point, after which investigative techniques can be learned on the job. Alternatively, many colleges and universities now offer certificate programs, requiring from fifteen to twenty-one credits, in computer forensics. These programs are most beneficial to law enforcement officers, paralegals, or others who are already involved in investigative work. A few colleges and universities now offer bachelor’s or master’s degrees in computer forensics, and others are planning to begin offering such degrees. Most of the work of private detectives and investigators is learned on the job. New investigators will usually start by learning how to use databases to gather information. The training they receive depends on the type of firm. At an insurance company, a new investigator will learn to recognize insurance fraud. At a firm that specializes in domestic cases, a new worker might observe a senior investigator performing surveillance. Learning by doing, in which new investigators are put on cases and gain skills as they go, is a common approach. Corporate investigators hired by large companies, however, may receive formal training in business practices, management structure, and various financerelated topics. Because they work with changing technologies, computer forensic investigators never stop training. They learn the latest methods of fraud detection and new software programs and operating systems by attending conferences and courses offered by software vendors and professional associations.

Licensure The majority of states and the District of Columbia require private detectives and investigators to be licensed. Licensing requirements vary, however. Seven states—Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, and South (continued )


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Dakota—have no statewide licensing requirements, some states have few requirements, and many others have stringent regulations. For example, the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs requires private investigators to be eighteen years of age or older; have a combination of education in police science, criminal law, or justice and experience equaling three years (6,000 hours); pass a criminal history background check by the California Department of Justice and the FBI (in most states, convicted felons cannot be issued a license); and receive a qualifying score on a two-hour written examination covering laws and regulations. Detectives and investigators in all states who carry handguns must meet additional requirements for a firearms permit. There are no licenses specifically for computer forensic investigators, but some states require them to be licensed private investigators. Even where licensure is not required, a private investigator license is useful to some because it allows them to perform follow-up or complementary tasks.

Other Qualifications Private detectives and investigators typically have previous experience in other occupations. Some have worked in other occupations, for insurance or collections companies, in the private security industry, or as paralegals. Many investigators enter the field after serving in law enforcement, the military, government auditing and investigative positions, or federal intelligence jobs. Former law enforcement officers, military investigators, and government agents, who are frequently able to retire after twenty-five years of service, often become private detectives or investigators in a second career. Others enter from jobs in finance, accounting, commercial credit, investigative reporting, insurance, and law. These individuals often can apply their prior work experience in a related investigative specialty. Most computer forensic investigators learn their trade while working for a law enforcement agency, either as a sworn officer or a civilian computer forensic analyst. They are trained at their agency’s computer forensics training program. Many people enter law enforcement specifically to get this training and establish a reputation before moving to the private sector. For private detective and investigator jobs, most employers look for individuals with ingenuity, persistence, and assertiveness. A candidate must not be afraid of confrontation, should communicate well, and should be able to think on his or her feet. Good interviewing and interrogation skills also are important and usually are acquired in earlier careers in law enforcement or other fields. Because the courts often are the judge of a properly conducted investigation, the investigator must be able to present the facts in a manner that a jury will believe. The screening process for potential employees typically includes a background check for a criminal history.

Allan Pinkerton

Certification and Advancement Some investigators receive certification from a professional organization to demonstrate competency in a field. For example, the National Association of Legal Investigators confers the Certified Legal Investigator designation on licensed investigators who devote a majority of their practice to negligence or criminal defense investigations. To receive the designation, applicants must satisfy experience, educational, and continuing-training requirements and must pass written and oral exams. ASIS, a trade organization for the security industry, offers the Professional Certified Investigator certification. To qualify, applicants must have a high school diploma or equivalent; have five years of investigations experience, including two years managing investigations; and must pass an exam. Most private-detective agencies are small, with little room for advancement. Usually, there are no defined ranks or steps, so advancement takes the form of increases in salary and assignment status. Many detectives and investigators start their own firms after gaining a few years of experience. Corporate and legal investigators may rise to supervisor or manager of the security or investigations department.

Employment Private detectives and investigators held about 52,000 jobs in 2006. About 30 percent were self-employed, including many for whom investigative work was a second job. Around 34 percent of detective and investigator jobs were in investigation and security services, including private detective agencies, while another 9 percent were in department or other general merchandise stores. The rest worked mostly in state and local government, legal services firms, employment services companies, insurance agencies, and credit mediation establishments, including banks and other depository institutions.

Job Outlook Keen competition is expected for most jobs despite faster-than-average employment growth.

Employment Change Employment of private detectives and investigators is expected to grow 18 percent over the 2006–2016 decade, faster than the average for all occupations. Increased demand for private detectives and investigators will result from heightened security concerns, increased litigation, and the need to protect confidential information and property of all kinds. The proliferation of criminal activity on the Internet, such as identity theft, spamming, e-mail harassment, and illegal downloading of copyrighted materials, will also increase the demand for

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private investigators. Employee background checks, conducted by private investigators, will become standard for an increasing number of jobs. Growing financial activity worldwide will increase the demand for investigators to control internal and external financial losses, to monitor competitors, and to prevent industrial spying.

Earnings Median annual earnings of salaried private detectives and investigators were $33,750 in May 2006. The middle 50 percent earned between $24,180 and $47,740. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $19,720, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $64,380. Earnings of private detectives and investigators vary greatly by employer, specialty, and geographic area. Source: Excerpted from Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2008-09 Edition, Private Detectives and Investigators, on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos157.htm.

A SURPRISING TURN OF EVENTS AND A NEW CAREER Pinkerton, in an ongoing effort to be thrifty, often cut his own wood in the wild to make barrel staves rather than spending the money to buy poles. One day, Pinkerton went to a small island in the middle of the nearby Fox River to cut wood. While there, he noticed a thin trail had been worn through the tall grasses. It had long been thought by locals that the island was uninhabited, so Pinkerton became curious. Following the trail, he found what appeared to be a well-used, and probably just recently used, campsite. Pinkerton went back to town and reported his discovery to the sheriff, thinking the campsite was used for suspicious activities. The sheriff, impressed with Pinkerton’s keen observation skills, deputized Pinkerton and asked for his assistance. The sheriff speculated that the campsite might be involved with an elusive counterfeiting ring that had been in the Dundee area for some time. Several local residents were suspected of being involved in the ring, but no money had been found in their homes or on their persons, so the trails had gone cold. Sheriff Yates believed Pinkerton might have found a link to the counterfeiters and reasoned that the island would have made an excellent place to hide the false money. Pinkerton and the sheriff, armed with rifles, watched the island campsite and arrested several participants in the ring one night when they returned to the hideout. The Dundee town council was pleased with Pinkerton’s work and asked him to help discover and arrest the ringleader. Pinkerton agreed and began monitoring the home of a local landowner named Crane. An older, well-dressed

Allan Pinkerton

man would ride to Crane’s home frequently, meet with some of the local suspects, and then leave again. Pinkerton met the gentleman, a Vermont man named John Craig, at a local watering hole and struck up conversation. Pinkerton pretended to be interested in taking over the local operations from Crane, whom Pinkerton said was starting to falter in the business because many of his cohorts had recently been arrested by the police. Pinkerton used $125, a large amount of money at that time, to buy false bills from Craig. Thinking that the police would like to know where Craig’s central operation was housed, Pinkerton arranged to meet Craig at the latter’s home base, using the excuse that the police might be watching him at the Dundee tavern. The sheriff made arrangements with the Chicago police, and they were waiting when Pinkerton met with Craig at the Sauganash Hotel in Chicago for lunch some days later. When the deal was being made, police rushed out and arrested Craig. Many patrons in the bar appeared to be watching the scene with great interest, and Pinkerton and the police believed some cohorts of Craig’s were present and saw the bust. The counterfeit money disappeared from the Chicago area soon after Craig’s arrest. The Cook County sheriff heard about Pinkerton’s work on the counterfeiting case and offered him a job as an investigator. Pinkerton and his family once again packed their things and moved, this time back to Chicago, where Pinkerton began work as a police officer, following in his father’s footsteps at a later age in his own life. Pinkerton discovered that Chicago had changed dramatically in his absence: the city had exploded in population and several areas had been improved. He also learned that with the advancement of progress came the dregs of society—pickpockets, robbers and burglars, rapists, and murderers. At the time, before 1850, Chicago claimed to house a population of approximately 30,000, but only twelve police officers were employed to enforce the laws. In addition, there were several neighborhoods that the officers would not approach or patrol, for they were seen as too dangerous and unsafe, further causing a breakdown in societal norms. Pinkerton wholeheartedly dove into his job as a police officer and earned a reputation for his toughness. He would not accept bribes and would not tolerate cheekiness, sass, or disrespect from suspects. He was so successful as an officer that he was asked to become Chicago’s first detective. Pinkerton was also tremendously successful in this role because of his bravery and his ability to trick suspects into confessing to their crimes before they realized they had done so.

A PRIVATE VENTURE LEADING TO NEW ADVENTURES After some time, Pinkerton grew tired of his rather meager policeman’s pay, which was not helpful to his growing family. Pinkerton found himself in the predicament of deciding whether to return to barrel making or perhaps, to

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remain an investigator, but in the private sector, not employed by the police. There were, after all, very few private investigators in the United States at that time, and there were none in the Chicago area. Pinkerton went to some of his clients and determined that they would continue to use his services and pay well for them, if he broke free of government work and opened his own business. In particular, Pinkerton created a working relationship with the Rock Island and Illinois Central Railroad, which eventually became his first large client. He had investigated, and successfully solved, several shipping thefts for the company. Pinkerton would frequently be seen about town, dining with the railroad’s president, George B. McClellan, and the company attorney, Abraham Lincoln. Confident with the belief that he could successfully support his family as a private investigator, Pinkerton resigned from police work and opened an office in Chicago’s market district, partnering with Chicago attorney Edward Rucker. The North-Western Police Agency, later called the Pinkerton Agency, was born. Pinkerton advertised his services and ethics in newspapers around the United States. He was committed to honesty and integrity in business and promised openly to accept no bribes or make agreements with criminals. Pinkerton would not accept divorce cases or other matters that might create embarrassing scandals for his clients, and he would not keep reward money offered on any cases. He also did not raise his fees without authorization from his clients, and Pinkerton kept those clients informed of the work’s status as the cases progressed. Pinkerton promoted his company by freely discussing his agents’ successes with the press as the company solved murders and apprehended crooks. Anyone who hired Pinkerton was impressed with not only his company’s reputation but also with the results it promised—and provided. Pinkerton enforced a strict code of conduct and decorum among his workers. He insisted that his agents not smoke or drink alcohol and that they not gamble or use foul language. Pinkerton worked with telegraph operators, gun experts, and others in technological fields to make sure that his employees were current with the latest advances and inventions. Pinkerton created a catchy, distinctive logo for his company, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. The logo featured an open eye with the words, ‘‘We Never Sleep’’ underneath it and the name of the company surrounding it. The graphic could soon be spied in newspapers and magazines and on billboards and wanted posters. This logo apparently led to the birth of the term ‘‘private eye,’’ which is still used today as a moniker for a private investigator. The country, in fact, began referring to Pinkerton as ‘‘The Eye.’’ Another innovative move made by Pinkerton was his hiring of the first female investigator, Kate Warne. When she appeared in his office looking for work, Pinkerton assumed that she was hoping for a clerical position. Not so, she informed him, and the surprised Pinkerton found himself interviewing Warne for an investigator’s position he had advertised in a Chicago newspaper. Pinkerton was initially reluctant to hire Warne, but she argued her case with

Allan Pinkerton

such fervor and eloquence that he decided to take a chance. Women, Warne stated, were able to put themselves into certain situations more easily than men could, becoming confidantes of wives, girlfriends, and mistresses and learning information through collateral sources; men, Warne pointed out, would often brag in the presence of females and give away more information than they believed the women paid attention to. Some time later, after her successes on many investigations, Pinkerton made Warne his supervisor of female agents. Warne was recently widowed when she joined the agency, and she had no children, so she was able to wholly emulate the roles that she played, from Southern society matron to cleaning woman to street fortune teller. The fact that Pinkerton hired women was highly unusual, because women were not even allowed to join police forces until 1891 and the first female police investigators did not arrive upon the crime-fighting scene until 1903. The case that made Pinkerton and his agents famous involved the Adams Express, a railroad and stagecoach mail and cargo carrier. The line repeatedly experienced missing money from strongboxes on its route between Columbus, Georgia, and Montgomery, Alabama. Pinkerton placed some of his best agents on the case, including the effective Kate Warne. On the basis of the available information and clues, Pinkerton knew the missing money had to be the work of an operative inside the agency. Assuming undercover identities, Pinkerton’s agents were able to determine that the sending agent in Columbus was actually sealing up the strongboxes without putting the money in them, hoping that the messenger would be blamed for the thefts. The sending agent and his wife, who knew about her husband’s actions, were arrested, and Pinkerton personally returned the remainder of the $50,000 reward to Adams Express. The grateful carrier helped spread word around the country of the tremendous success. Pinkerton and his agents quickly earned a reputation for diligence and thoroughness. The agency took on the most difficult cases and solved them when law enforcement could not. Pinkerton himself became well known among members of the underworld. They knew Pinkerton the man was incorruptible, as was Pinkerton the agency. They also knew that both the man and the agency would continue pursuing them, looking in every nook and cranny, until the scoundrels were found and justice was done. Some years later, in 1866, the Pinkerton Agency would again come to the rescue of Adams Express by capturing the thieves who stole $700,000 from the carrier on a New York, New Haven, & Hartford train; the agency also recovered all but approximately $12,000 of the missing money.

WARTIME ‘‘PROFIT’’EERING In 1860, tensions ran high in the United States, which was not yet even one hundred years old. Slavery was a divisive issue, and the presidential election

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of 1860 would be the final deciding factor on whether the United States remained one nation or went to war against itself. Pinkerton and his agency had become hugely famous after the first Adams Express job, having been discussed in newsprint around the country. Their popularity nearly overshadowed developments in another area entirely. In the political arena, an antislavery lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, was expected to be nominated for president of the United States, and the proslavery South was expected to secede from the Union if Lincoln were elected. Pinkerton himself was antislavery and used his barrel making shop near Chicago as a stop on the Underground Railroad, providing shelter to runaway slaves in transit to Canada and freedom. Pinkerton’s old friend Abraham Lincoln, also an abolitionist, was elected the 16th president of the United States. The political and emotional climates in the United States were strained to their breaking points. In January 1861, Pinkerton was hired by the president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad to protect the trains and the line, which was a major mail route on the eastern seaboard, from Confederate insurgents. Pinkerton placed agents all along the route, but his agents were unable to find a plot to destroy the rail line. Rather, Pinkerton investigators began to learn bits and pieces of information that, when added together, suggested that there might be a plot to assassinate newly elected President Lincoln on the way to the inauguration ceremony. Most of the information came through Pinkerton’s agent Timothy Webster, who had worked his way deep undercover into a Baltimore-based group of secessionists named the Knights of the Golden Circle. Webster learned that men had been assigned to shoot the new president in Baltimore as his train chugged through the town at a particular hour. At the time, the newspapers printed the entire schedule of Lincoln’s trip from Illinois to Washington; the group was able to accurately estimate Lincoln’s arrival and departure times in Baltimore on February 23. Pinkerton acted immediately, as Lincoln had already left Illinois when the information was learned. Pinkerton knew one of Lincoln’s staff members— his new press secretary, Norman Judd—and believed that Judd would assist him in speaking personally to the president. Pinkerton contacted Judd as the president’s train stopped in Philadelphia. His hunch proved to be right, because Judd scheduled a meeting between Pinkerton and Lincoln. Lincoln turned out to be surprised to see his old friend from some years past, and Pinkerton felt bad at giving Lincoln the news. Lincoln was obligated to keep appointments in Philadelphia and Harrisburg the following day, so his evening and nighttime schedule would have to be changed to avoid the assassination attempt. Pinkerton had made arrangements to have Lincoln leave Harrisburg that night on a private train to Baltimore, and the tracks would be kept clear so that the train could safely travel at top speed. The president would arrive in Baltimore hours before he was expected to and would board an express train that had already been hired by Pinkerton, which would

Allan Pinkerton

take Lincoln to Washington before the sun rose. Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania, with whom Lincoln was scheduled to attend dinner while he was in Harrisburg, would tell his guests that Lincoln had become ill and had to rest in his quarters in the gubernatorial home. Pinkerton, however, would take Lincoln out through the carriage entrance and into a waiting transport. The plan would be divulged to only those parties who needed to know in order to maintain the appearance that Lincoln would be traveling as scheduled. Telegraph lines would be cut so that anyone who learned of the changes to the president’s schedule could not wire ahead to their co-conspirators. The conspiracy, unfortunately, even included the Baltimore chief of police, who had scheduled very little police protection during Lincoln’s stop in the city. The following night, Lincoln was placed quickly into a carriage with darkened windows, which also carried Pinkerton and another agent, both armed. Another agent placed Lincoln on the waiting train and then sliced the telegraph wires. Kate Warne and other Pinkerton agents were already on the train, heavily armed. Pinkerton joined the crew on the train and retreated to the back of the train to make sure the charter was not being followed. A light signal system had been implemented along the train’s route so that Pinkerton’s agents could signal each other that things were proceeding as planned. The signals worked, and Lincoln’s train arrived in Baltimore at 3:30 A.M. In Baltimore, another group of Pinkerton agents formed a protective circle around the president and led him to the connecting train. Hearts stopped briefly when the second train was late, but it arrived not far behind schedule, and the plan was back in action. The train was inspected, the president took his seat, and for the final 50 miles to Washington, the same safety precautions with the light signal system were taken. Lincoln’s train arrived in Union Station at approximately 6:10 A.M., with General Winfield Scott and the secretary of state waiting to meet the president. Lincoln made it safely to Washington for his inauguration, which happened a few weeks later, but the slave states in the South made good on their promise to secede from the Union if Lincoln became president. The Confederate States of America fired guns upon Fort Sumter, located in Carolina harbor, on April 13, 1861. This proved to be the first act of what would become known as the Civil War. Political conditions in the United States deteriorated rapidly once the antislavery Abraham Lincoln took office. President-Elect Lincoln had not yet been inaugurated, and he already had an impending civil war to address. Lincoln was determined to maintain the wholeness of the Union and would send the army marching into the South if it was needed to squash the rebellion of the slave states. Lincoln approached some old friends to help him set up his new network: George McClellan, whom he placed in command of the Army of the Potomac, and Allan Pinkerton, whom Lincoln asked to

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organize a ‘‘secret service’’ undercover police force for Washington, because there were many Southern sympathizers in the city. Pinkerton was ready to accept the assignment as the head of the secret service, but General Winfield Scott, commander-in-chief of the Union army, wanted someone else to do the job. Instead, McClellan made Pinkerton his personal spy to ferret out any potential espionage by Confederate operatives. Pinkerton placed agents around the South, including Kate Warne and Timothy Webster. Warne posed as a southern matron in Tennessee and Virginia, making her way around the social circuit, while Webster remained in Maryland, a confidante of the Knights of the Golden Circle, the same group that had plotted to assassinate the president on the way to his inauguration. Pinkerton himself accepted some particularly special assignments, some of which resulted in nearly getting him discovered. Utilizing the name ‘‘Major E. J. Allen,’’ Pinkerton operated in Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi, pursuing spies who helped the Confederate cause. In 1861, General Scott retired, and Lincoln made McClellan the commander-in-chief of the army. McClellan maintained regular counsel with Pinkerton, and the general gave Pinkerton credit for some of the Union army’s victories because Pinkerton and his operatives passed on accurate information about troop movements and the like. Pinkerton assigned some of his agents to McClellan so they could spy on the Southern army on-site, but he remained behind in Washington to take on a new apprentice. The newest recruit of the Pinkerton agency was sixteen-year-old William Pinkerton. William proved to have keen observation skills and could easily blend in with his surroundings. William was in charge of several agents who worked in the Confederate states. The younger Pinkerton was wounded in the knee at Antietam by an exploding shell, but after he healed, he went right back on the job with his father. Pinkerton paid a good deal of attention to his son, teaching him everything he knew about the industry, down to his high standards for ethics and for the work. Pinkerton particularly trusted Kate Warne with some of the agency’s more difficult assignments. Warne lived in the South, as a southern belle, under a false name and family background and flirted with many a Southern man to learn information about the secessionist movement. One of the southern sympathizers Warne met was a Shakespearean play actor named John Wilkes Booth, who would later earn fame not on stage but in another area of the theater. Each bit of information was transmitted back to Pinkerton in Washington city. Another Pinkerton operative who assisted with special projects was a newcomer, Elizabeth Baker, from Richmond, Virginia. Baker was a Union loyalist and would assist with any case that furthered, directly or indirectly, the Union cause. Baker helped discover the existence of a new invention, the submarine, being built at an iron works in Richmond. The submarine was said to travel underwater so that it could blow up Union ships that were blockading the James River. Baker was able to secure a visit to the iron

Allan Pinkerton

works and actually see the submarine being built; she made a sketch of the ship and its external breathing system, which could be detected easily by an observant sailor on the surface who knew what to look for. Baker presented her sketches to the Secretary of the Navy, and the South was never able to disrupt the blockade at the James River. The ever-growing Pinkerton agency reportedly employed more active agents than the standing army of the United States of America, causing the agency to be outlawed in the state of Ohio. There were fears from locals that the Pinkerton agency would be hired out by the presidency as a private army to quell any resistance. Despite the growing number of Confederate spies being arrested by Pinkerton agents, Allan Pinkerton knew that there was an extremely wellhidden source of the information the spies leaked to the South. Pinkerton was determined to find the source of the leak, which he believed was from a high-ranking person within the Lincoln administration because of the type of information that was being provided to the South. With persistence, the Pinkerton agents found the source of the information being leaked to the Confederacy—Rose O’Neal Greenhow, the widow of a newspaper editor whose paper supported slavery. Greenhow had managed to befriend many influential members of the upper-class circles in Washington city through her familial connection to Dolly Madison, widow of the late President James Madison. Greenhow passed Union army plans and other information to the South using the cipher code of the Confederate Signal Corps. Greenhow’s information helped the Confederate Army plan several successful defenses or counterattacks against the Union army. It was Greenhow who warned Confederate General Pierre Beauregard about an approaching Union advance upon Manassas, Virginia. After an extensive ongoing investigation, Greenhow was arrested on August 23, 1861, and placed under house arrest. In her possession was a great deal of information that included troop movements, supply routes, maps, and names of other spies she used, mostly female. Many of the female spies were arrested and placed in the Greenhow home, which became referred to jokingly as ‘‘Fort Greenhow.’’ Greenhow was not put to death by hanging because she was a woman and had a child; instead, she and her fellow agents were held until they could be escorted to Richmond, Virginia, where they could no longer pass information that would harm the North’s cause. While not putting Greenhow and her fellow female conspirators to death was appropriate for the times, the act of generosity lead to the undoing of Pinkerton Special Agent Timothy Webster. Webster had remained in Baltimore, acting as a double agent by passing information to and from the Knights of the Golden Circle, who were loyal to the Confederate cause. Webster had garnered such favor with the Knights of the Golden Circle that the Confederate secretary of war, Judah Benjamin, hired Webster as a special agent of the underground spy network. Webster would often haul mail

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between Richmond and Baltimore, usually traveling via Washington. Webster would open letters from the South, find pertinent information, then carefully reseal the letters, and deliver them to their rightful recipients. Using this method, Webster could notify Pinkerton, who in turn advised General McClellan, of any planning done on behalf of the South on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Webster carried out his duties as a double agent until he began suffering from inflammatory rheumatism. The work became too much for him to handle alone, so he requested two additional operatives to assist him. Pinkerton sent Pryce Lewis and John Scully, both of whom had worked in the Chicago Pinkerton office, to Richmond to assist Webster. The three spies carried out their work successfully and quietly until an unfortunate incident happened. The Union War Department unwittingly released Rose O’Neal Greenhow from house arrest too early, while Webster and his assistants were still active in the rebel community. Pinkerton became aware of the snafu and dispatched an agent to Richmond to warn Webster, Lewis, and Scully, but by the time the agent arrived in Richmond, it was too late. Greenhow and her sister spies had seen Scully and Lewis, both of whom had been instrumental in Greenhow’s arrest, in their hotel and identified them to the Confederate government. The Confederate legislature captured Scully and Lewis and tried them via court martial. Webster, who remained out of sight because of his ailments, was safe for the moment, but Scully and Lewis were convicted as traitors to the Confederacy and ordered hanged. On the night before the executions, Scully sent for a priest to make his confession as a Catholic. The South sent a false priest to do the job, and although Lewis did not confess, Scully did—and by doing so, he implicated Timothy Webster as the Baltimore chief of the Secret Service for the U.S. government. Webster was later arrested and found guilty in a court-martial and then ordered by Confederate President Jefferson Davis to be hanged. Webster, though still sick, bravely met his death when he was hanged on April 30, 1862. Pinkerton buried his loyal detective in his own family’s cemetery plot in Chicago. Shortly thereafter, Pinkerton’s role as an operative for the North came to an end. A Union colonel, Lafayette Baker, convinced the Secretary of War to appoint his own operatives as the official antispy unit for the presidency. Furthermore, President Lincoln had become dissatisfied with his friend George McClellan’s performance as commander-in-chief of the Union army and had him replaced. Pinkerton left Washington, where he had worked for two and a half years as the chief antiespionage officer in the Union, to perform other jobs for the government. One such job was the location of dishonest suppliers who were cheating clients by overcharging for supplies and deliveries. Years later, Pinkerton would lament that he did not supervise Washington city’s security on April 14, 1865. That night, during a stage production at Ford’s Theater, actor John Wilkes Booth fatally shot President Lincoln in

Allan Pinkerton

the head, an act that Pinkerton believed would never have occurred if his agents had been in place.

POSTWAR VENTURES: A CHANGE IN DIRECTION During Pinkerton’s tenure in Washington, his business had grown dramatically. His trusted employees George Bangs and Francis Warner not only managed the Chicago office, but they also opened offices in New York City and Philadelphia. After the end of the Civil War, Pinkerton returned to his home office in Chicago with his son William. His second son, Robert, joined his father and brother in the family business. The sons researched traits of fugitive criminals and the criminal mind in general. William proved to be an excellent and driven detective, while Robert excelled in administrative duties, even creating a filing system that later became the basis for filing systems for other law enforcement agencies in this country. By the 1870s, the Pinkerton agency owned the most extensive collection of criminal mug shots in existence. The collection was maintained regularly by field agents who cut news stories and notations from the media and sent them to the home office with notes. The country dubbed the Pinkerton agency’s investigators the ‘‘Pinks,’’ and they were everywhere. Pinkerton had turned the pursuit and capture of professionals into a successful private enterprise. Pinkerton seemed to possess an innate ability to sniff out guilty criminals before the police were able to do so. He used his experience and determined that criminals have their own personal traits and techniques that give them away. When lecturing in front of an audience in 1880, Pinkerton stated: ‘‘On reading a telegraphic newspaper report of a large or small robbery, with the aid of my vast records and great personal experience and familiarity with these matters, I can at once tell the character of the work, and then, knowing the names, history, habits, and quite frequently, the rendezvous of men doing that type of work, am able to determine, with almost unerring certainty, not only the very parties who committed the robberies, but also what disposition they are likely to make of their plunder, and at what points they may be hiding.’’ In this way, Pinkerton became a sort of early criminal profiler. Pinkerton and his sons William and Robert consulted with banks, shipping companies, mail services, and other money-handling businesses to provide them with advice or preventive measures to protect their assets. Pinkerton also kept lines of communication open with those companies—and with police agencies—to exchange mug shots and felon identification cards, circulating information with which to better apprehend criminals around the country. Pinkerton and his agents compiled a glossary of terms used by bank and train robbers and their associates. Put together in the 1880s, the glossary gives the reader a glimpse into the seediness of the

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criminal element of the time. A sample of these terms, taken from the Pinkerton Web site follows: Bull Chip Ditched Jimmying a bull Rattler Sapper White Liner

A law enforcement officer A money drawer in a bank Arrested Shooting a law enforcement officer Freight train An officer who freely uses his club An alcoholic

One tragedy that befell the Pinkerton agency early in the postwar years was the loss of crack agent Kate Warne. Warne became ill with pneumonia very suddenly at the end of 1867 and died on January 1, 1868. Pinkerton was greatly saddened by the loss of one of his best agents and had Warne buried in his own family’s plot, near Timothy Webster.

GO WEST, YOUNG CRIMINAL, GO WEST! With the end of the Civil War came American expansion into the West. As pioneers and settlers moved toward California, so did the criminals. Pinkerton followed the trend and opened offices in trail towns between Kansas and California, as far north as the Canadian border and as far south as Texas. Whenever a bank, stagecoach, or train was robbed, Pinkerton agents were always close by to solve the crime. Pinkerton, now aging physically, allowed William to manage field officers more often. William assembled posses to hunt down some of the Wild West’s most famous bad men: Jesse James, Cole Younger, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. These men, and more, were brought to justice one by one by Pinkerton agents. The Pinkerton agency developed a constantly moving, constantly updated network of agents who exchanged information and closed in on the outlaws as they traveled through the West. The Pinkertons would use their knowledge about the criminals’ habits to taunt them and cause them stress, forcing them to panic and do something foolish, which would ultimately lead to their captures. One of the first desperado busts by the Pinkerton agency was that of the Reno brothers, a gang of six brothers who robbed trains. In 1867, they robbed an Adams Express car, and the Pinkertons were set upon their trail. The Reno brothers were doggedly pursued by the Pinkertons at every crevasse in the badlands, until the Renos were so desperate that they tried several times to kill William Pinkerton in an effort to throw his men off their trail, even momentarily. William survived all the deadly encounters to see that all the Reno brothers were either dead and buried or imprisoned by the end of 1868.

Allan Pinkerton

The frontier outlaws who probably found the Pinkerton agents most irritating were Frank and Jesse James, former Civil War activists who became law-dodging gunmen. In southern Missouri, the homeland of the James boys, they were considered heroes long into the 1870s. Much of the population there still fumed that the Union had won the war and portrayed Jesse as a kind of modern-day Robin Hood who railed against wealthy Yankee bankers and railroads. The Pinkertons, including Allan himself, who joined on some of the searches, were the evil agents of the conglomerates and were given no assistance whatsoever when they came through the Smoky Mountains, where they frequently lost the James brothers. It was their pursuit of the James brothers that led to a frenzy of rare negative press for the ‘‘Pinks.’’ The Pinkerton detectives had reputations for fairness that even the most insidious outlaws tended to respect. In 1875, that reputation was seriously damaged when two members of the James family were attacked by a posse led by Pinkertons. Pinkerton agents surrounded a small cabin near Kearney, Missouri, believing Jesse was hiding inside. The posse called out demands for Jesse to surrender peacefully, but nobody reportedly answered the cries. Supposedly, someone threw an explosive device through a window that had been found open. Jesse’s mother, Zerelda James, was so injured that a hand had to be amputated, and a mentally challenged stepbrother was killed. Allen Pinkerton, from his Chicago office, expressed his sincere regrets, but flatly denied that any of his agents had thrown a bomb. He admitted that his men were present at the scene, but they had only waited in the surrounding underbrush for James to come out with his hands up. It was obvious that an explosion had happened, but nobody publicly accepted the blame for its cause. The Pinkertons’ reputation wore this blemish for some time afterward. Some historians believe one of the hired deputies threw the bomb; others claim that the warning shot from a detective’s gun had possibly broken and ignited a kerosene lamp inside the cabin. Later, when the James brothers branched out into Minnesota for a bank robbery, the populace was much less sympathetic to them. The Pinkertons warned the town of Northfield, Minnesota, of the impending arrival of the James gang, which included three of the Younger brothers, also on the run from the law. The citizenry prepared itself and met the James posse with firepower. The bandits escaped from the gun battle injured and vulnerable and thus began their downfall. One of Jesse’s men, desperate for money, killed him in April of 1882. Frank served time in prison and retired peacefully to his farm back in Missouri. Another group of outlaws in the Wild West who found its freedom at the mercy of the Pinkertons was known as ‘‘The Wild Bunch,’’ who terrorized banks and money-carrying trains between Texas and Wyoming. Their two most well-known members were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Operating from 1895 to 1902, the Wild Bunch had at least twenty members in its heyday. After a robbery, the Wild Bunch would retreat to Wyoming

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and hide in canyons and caves; then, when public outcry ceased, the group would return to west Texas to plan subsequent heists. On June 2, 1899, the Wild Bunch stole $30,000 in unsigned banknotes from the Union Pacific Railroad’s Overland Flyer. The Pinkerton agents were asked to assist local law enforcement with the apprehension of the gang. One diligent Pinkerton agent located a group photo of some of the Wild Bunch at a photography studio in Fort Worth, Texas. This photo was made into wanted posters and circulated in towns all over the West, making it much more difficult for the gang to hide out without being recognized. The Wild Bunch pulled off two more large heists after the posters were circulated: one in 1900 at a Nevada bank and one more train robbery, this time in Montana, a year later. While the Pinkertons had slowly but surely captured or killed many of the Wild Bunch, a one-hundred-man posse and a special train were commandeered to chase the gang after the Montana train robbery. The Wild Bunch retreated to Fort Worth, where they disbanded before they were all killed or captured. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with his wife Etta Place, left the country and moved to Bolivia, where they could not be extradited because they had no detectable criminal records in that country. Despite the violence in the West in the late 1800s, the Pinkertons were able to survive as an agency by diligently pursuing lawbreakers and practicing their honest, strict work ethic. A reformed safecracker, George White, said of the Pinkertons in his 1895 memoir: ‘‘…I had to acknowledge that they were honest and it was dangerous for a crook when a Pinkerton was on his trail’’ (Geringer, 2007).

PINKERTONS AS STRIKEBREAKERS In 1871, the Pinkertons found themselves contractors for government work again. In that year, Congress gave $50,000 to the newly founded Department of Justice to create a subcommittee that would investigate and prosecute federal lawbreakers, including bank robbers and forgers. Although the amount of money given was not enough to create an internal investigations unit, it was enough to contract the investigative services to the Pinkerton agency. Also in the 1870s, the Pinkerton agency began investigating labor unions for various industries. In an odd twist of fate, the same Allan Pinkerton who had once advocated for workers’ rights in Glasgow had become known as one of the driving forces behind squashing the growing labor union movement in the United States. One notable union investigation was conducted under the authority of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, based in Pennsylvania. One of Pinkerton’s agents, James McParlan, used an alias to penetrate and infiltrate a labor organization named the Molly Maguires. The Mollies were a secret organization of Irish Catholics who banded

Allan Pinkerton

together as militant strikers in response to a 20 percent wage reduction at their coal mines. Beatings and murders, some committed by the Mollies, were rampant throughout the mining region. Over time, membership in the Mollies grew to 30,000, or more than 80 percent of the area’s anthracite coal miners. For years, McParlan’s investigation labored, until December 10, 1875. On that date, three men and two women were attacked in their home by masked vigilantes. McParlan had secretly identified the three men as Mollies, and somehow this information found its way to unauthorized parties. One of the Molly men was shot inside the home, and the other two were wounded but escaped death. One of the women—a wife of one of the Mollies—was also killed. McParlan became outraged that his undercover information had been used to kill a woman and nearly resigned from his undercover assignment. He remained in the position after heavy coaxing from the Pinkertons. Union leaders were imprisoned, and after six months, the strike failed. The starving strikers reluctantly, but out of necessity for their families, accepted the 20 percent pay cut. In 1876, ten union leaders were convicted of committing or inciting vigilante violence on behalf of the Molly Maguires. The men were hanged in June of 1877 at two different prisons in Pennsylvania. Ten more accused Molly leaders were convicted and executed at four separate prisons over the next two years.

THE LATER YEARS: AN AGENCY REFOCUSED Pinkerton wrote seventeen books in the decade of 1874–1884, including The Expressman and the Detective (1874) and a memoir titled Thirty Years a Detective (1884). Just a few weeks shy of his 65th birthday, Allan Pinkerton had a freak accident with tragic results. He slipped while walking down a Chicago street and badly bit his tongue when his chin hit the pavement. Pinkerton failed to properly care for the injury and developed gangrene. Pinkerton died on July 1, 1884. He was buried in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, near two of his favorite agents who preceded him in death. Pinkerton had allowed Timothy Webster and Kate Warne to be buried in his family’s plot as tribute to their years of faithful service to his agency. Today, Pinkerton, a member of the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame, lies in the same spot, near his wife, Warne, and Webster. Pinkerton’s sons, William and Robert, were in charge of the agency after their father died. Pinkerton had left behind a strict code of ethics that was faithfully followed by his boys. William and Robert Pinkerton worked fluidly, almost as one mind. They kept their father’s best interests at the forefront, but they expanded the agency to look beyond American borders for outlaws. The more ‘‘modern-era’’ criminal had discovered that the one way to escape the Pinkertons was to travel overseas. New steamships could sail from New York to England within one week, vastly increasing the amount

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of time it would take for the Pinkertons to capture any sea-bound fugitives. Because of foreign policies, the Pinkertons were usually unable to directly arrest any criminals in Europe, but the agents would work with national authorities, such as Scotland Yard and the Paris Surete, to locate fugitives for extradition back to the United States. One of these fugitives who fled to Europe, Adam Worth, led the Pinkertons on a multinational chase, only to be apprehended by another person. In a strange turn of events, the Pinkerton’s ethics and compassion led to a partnership between pursuers and the pursued. Worth gained William Pinkerton’s attention when in 1869 he robbed the Boylston Bank in Boston, Massachusetts, to the tune of one million dollars. Worth fled to Liverpool, then Paris, then London, living the high life and portraying himself as a director of many illegal money-taking businesses. In 1876, he led a group to steal a famous painting, Duchess of Devonshire by Thomas Gainsborough, from an art gallery in London. Worth then remained on the run from the Pinkertons for several years, moving between several major cities in Europe to avoid apprehension. Somehow, despite his illegal business, Worth earned William Pinkerton’s admiration to a degree, for Worth despised guns and never physically harmed anyone during his illegal activities. William always believed that, had Worth not ventured down a criminal path, he might have been a successful leader in the business world. Pinkerton followed Worth across Europe, often visiting his foreign associates and updating the Pinkerton data files on Worth’s travels. Worth, who knew Pinkerton by sight, would often dine at particular restaurants or frequent various watering holes, only to be joined at his leisure activities by Pinkerton. Pinkerton and Worth chatted regularly about different subjects, but the subtle message Pinkerton sent to Worth was the fact that he was being watched. After their last meeting at the Criterion Restaurant in London, Worth told Pinkerton that he had always respected the Pinks. The men shook hands upon parting and Worth reportedly said, ‘‘May the best man win’’ (Geringer, 2007). Years later, in 1891, Worth was arrested for mail theft in Belgium. The Belgian police wired international law enforcement and detective agencies for any information on Worth in the hope that they could force a longer sentence on him. While Scotland Yard and Surete responded to the wire, William Pinkerton ignored it, telling his brother Robert, ‘‘The old man’s going to suffer enough. Let’s leave him be’’ (Geringer, 2007). Worth spent almost ten years in prison and then returned to America to visit William Pinkerton. While in prison, Worth had learned of the kindness William had done him and wanted to repay the favor. The offer could not have come at a better time. During the labor movement of the late 1800s, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency had once again received bad press after assisting the Carnegie Steel Company with a strike of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and

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Steel Workers at its steel plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892. The union had won a Lyrics: ‘‘Father Was Killed By the Pinkerton Men’’ sliding-scale contract in 1889 after striking; V1. ’Twas in a Pennsylvania town not very the contract based the employees’ wages on long ago, the fluctuating prices of Bessemer steel billets. Men struck against reduction of their pay. The contract expired on June 30, 1892, while Their millionaire employer with philancompany owner Andrew Carnegie, who had thropic show often shown compassion for union members, Had closed the works till starved they would was in Scotland. Carnegie left mill manager obey. They fought for home and right to live where Henry Clay Frick, a vocal antiunionist, in they had toiled so long charge of operations. Before the deadline had But ere the sun had set some were laid low. arrived, Frick ordered a wood-and-barbed- There’re hearts now sadly grieving by that sad wire fence constructed around the perimeter and bitter wrong. of the mill property. While negotiations God help them for it was a cruel blow. between the company and the union contin- CHORUS: ued through June, Frick ordered the mill to God help them tonight in their hour of begin shutting down operations on June 28, affliction and the union was locked out of the mill on Praying for him whom they’ll ne’er see the morning of June 30. On July 6, a company again. of three hundred Pinkerton detectives arrived Hear the orphans tell their sad story from New York and Chicago, having been ’’Father was killed by the Pinkerton men.’’ called by mill manager Henry Clay Frick to V2. Ye prating politicians, who boast proprotect the plant and its replacement workers, tection creed, known as ‘‘scabs.’’ A bitter fight erupted upon Go to Homestead and stop the orphans’ the arrival of the Pinks when union workers cry. Protection for the rich man ye pander to his and their families tore through the new fences greed, around the mill. Gunfire was exchanged for His workmen they are cattle and may die. more than twelve hours that day, which The freedom of the city in Scotland far resulted in the deaths of approximately nine away strikers and three Pinkerton men. The strike- ’Tis presented to the millionaire suave, breaking Pinkerton agents had been fired on But here in Free America with protection in by a group of armed picketers. The Pennsylva- full sway, His workmen get the freedom of the grave. nia National Guard was brought in on July (CHORUS) 12 to weaken and disrupt the union fighters. Although both Pinkerton men and union members were killed, the media capitalized on the event and portrayed the plight of the working class as it was oppressed by crooked conglomerates who used paid mercenaries to get their way. The Pinkertons were labeled as turncoats who were disloyal to the cause of the common man, and after years of international praise, their reputation suffered desperately, though they continued to be used as guards for coal, iron, and lumber strikes in four states and for the railroad strikes that swept the country. After the Homestead fiasco, in fact, Pinkerton agents were immortalized in popular culture in song lyrics.

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Adam Worth, seeing the Homestead debacle as an opportunity that would mutually benefit him and the Pinkertons, offered a solution. He wanted to return the stolen Duchess of Devonshire to the art gallery in London—but only if William Pinkerton brokered the deal. Worth acknowledged that Pinkerton had known all along that he had stolen the painting, but, rather than apprehending Worth outright, he allowed other law enforcement entities to do so, which dramatically decreased his time in prison. Worth wanted to repay William’s kindness and professionalism by allowing him to be the ‘‘face man’’ on the return of a long-lost famous painting. The newspapers gobbled up the story and praised the wonderful job and ethics of the Pinkerton agency, and the company’s reputation for diligence and fairness was once again restored.

THE AGENCY OF OLD MORPHS INTO A NEW ENTITY After the deaths of Robert in 1907 and William in 1923, the Pinkerton agency remained a family-run business. Robert’s son, Allan, ran the agency after his tenure as a World War I soldier until he died in 1930. The final Pinkerton descendant to run the business was Robert II, the great-grandson of its founder. After he died in the 1960s, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency became a corporation. At that time, the agency was divided into six regions around the United States: Cleveland, Ohio; Kansas City, Missouri; Atlanta, Georgia; Dallas, Texas; Saddle Brook, New Jersey; and San Francisco, California. There were also Canadian and international headquarters in Montreal, Canada, and London, England. In modern times, as more specialized law enforcement agencies have been established, the Pinkerton agency found that it was needed less often as a fugitive hunter and strikebreaker, but its security services were in higher demand. The Pinkerton agency ceased its labor spying after revelations made by the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee hearings in 1937, which publicized that businesses using espionage to prevent unions from forming and to harass union members was unfair. The creation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the police modernization movement contributed to the decrease in detective work for the agency. By the middle of the 1950s, the Pinkerton agency spent most of its time investigating frauds, particularly insurance frauds, and providing constant security for corporations. In the 1960s, the word ‘‘Detective’’ was dropped from the agency’s official name and letterhead, due in part to its change in focus. The original company founded by Allan Pinkerton was sold in 1983 after having been managed by Pinkerton descendants for more than 118 years. In 1999, the company merged with Securitas AB, based in Stockholm, Sweden, making Pinkerton a senior partner in the world’s largest security company, holding

Allan Pinkerton

offices in more than thirty countries. All this came from a crime-fighting company begun by a Scottish barrel maker who believed in ethics and humanity. An independent grant-making organization was founded by Robert Pinkerton, great-grandson of Allan Pinkerton, in 1966, just one year before he died. The Pinkerton Foundation, based in New York City, was established with the broad goals of reducing crime and preventing juvenile delinquency. At this time, the foundation assists with establishing and supporting youthbased programs in at-risk and impoverished communities. When Pinkerton’s, Inc., was sold in 1983, the foundation did not retain any affiliation with the company. In 2000, the Pinkerton Agency celebrated 150 continuous years of service. To commemorate the anniversary, the agency donated numerous materials to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Among these materials are rare files, photographs, and other documents on such individuals as Jesse James and Butch Cassidy. Included in the collection are the wanted posters of the Wild Bunch and documentation and case notes pertaining to the Pinkerton agents’ pursuit of those outlaws. The donated files, some dating back to 1850, also detail firsthand the formation and history of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Also in 2000, an organization calling itself the Old Pinks Association, was formed, dedicated to former employees and agents of the Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency. The group has assembled a collection of documents, photographs, paintings, and other memoirs related to their former agency. The group even has an employees’ reunion every two years in a different American city, which is attended by former investigators and their families. The group is not affiliated with the current Pinkerton’s, Inc.

EXAMPLES OF THE PINKERTONS IN MODERN POPULAR CULTURE Samuel Dashiell Hammett, known by his middle name, served as a Pinkerton agent from 1915 to 1921. Calling on his experience as a private eye, he wrote detective novels and short stories and is credited with the invention of the American hard-boiled detective novel. Some of the most famous characters he has penned include Sam Spade of The Maltese Falcon, Nick and Nora Charles of The Thin Man, and the Continental Op from Red Harvest and The Dain Curse. Popular singer-songwriter Sir Elton John includes a reference to the Pinkertons in his song, Ballad of a Well-Known Gun. The Pinkerton Agency, and some agents by name, is often referred to in the Home Box Office television series Deadwood. The series takes place in Deadwood, South Dakota, in the 1880s, shortly after the incident known as

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Custer’s Last Stand. Deadwood is an uncivilized town rife with crime and corruption, and Pinkerton agents frequently arrive in or near town to locate outlaws. In the 1994 movie Bad Girls, starring Madeline Stowe, Mary Stuart Masterson, Andie MacDowell, and Drew Barrymore, four Wild West prostitutes on the run from the law are pursued by hired Pinkerton detectives Graves and O’Brady. Actor Timothy Dalton portrays Allan Pinkerton in the movie American Outlaws (2001). Pinkerton is shown pursuing American outlaw Jesse James, played in the movie by actor Colin Farrell. Author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle included a Pinkerton agent in his fourth, and last, Sherlock Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear. In the book, a Pinkerton detective is featured among a renegade gang of Freemasons in the western United States. Allan Pinkerton and the Pinkerton National Detective Agency were influential in the evolution of modern law enforcement. Without the Pinkertons, our modern Secret Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation might not operate as we know them today. Maintaining a central headquarters but dividing the agency into regions around the country vastly improved the ability of the agency to apprehend mobile criminals. Pinkerton taking the chance to hire Kate Warne as the first female private investigator helped pave the way for women to become law enforcement officers and eventually investigators and detectives. Wanted posters in the Wild West took on a whole new life when Pinkerton agents included an actual photo of the wanted individuals along with the descriptions of their appearances and their possible whereabouts. Pinkerton even contributed colorful terms, such as ‘‘Pinks’’ and ‘‘private eye,’’ to the modern American vernacular. In summation, Allan Pinkerton’s effects on the investigations and law enforcement communities have stood the test of time and can still be witnessed today—if one does a little investigation. Note The authors thank an old gumshoe, Edmund Pankau, for his kindness and for teaching us the tools of the trade. Rest in peace, my friend. We also thank private investigator Ralph Thomas for his assistance with this project, and we do not want to leave out our children Clayton and Dillon, who are the true meaning of what love really is. FURTHER READING Allan Pinkerton. http://www.thrillingdetective.com/eyes/pinkerton.html. Allan Pinkerton and His Detective Agency. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/james/ peopleevents/p_pinkerton.html.

Allan Pinkerton

Allan Pinkerton and His Secret Role in the Underground Railroad. http://www. suite101.com/article.cfm/the_underground_railroad/114256. Axelrod, Allen. 1992. The War between the Spies. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press. Deadwood. Home Box Office Online. http://www.hbo.com. Detective Allan Pinkerton Was Born in Glasgow, Scotland, August 25, 1819. Library of Congress. http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/jb/nation/pinkerto_1. Father Was Killed By the Pinkerton Men. The Musical Saga of Homestead. http:// historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5322. Geringer, Joseph. 2007. Allan Pinkerton and His Detective Agency: ‘We Never Sleep.’ http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/cops_others/pinkerton/1.html. Lavine, Sigmund A. 1963. Allan Pinkerton—America’s First Private Eye. New York: Dodd, Mead. Macintyre, Ben. 1997. The Napoleon of Crime. New York: Delta Books. Mackay, James. 1997. Allan Pinkerton: The First Private Eye. Indianapolis: Wiley. Morn, Frank. 1982. The Eye That Never Sleeps: A History of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Nash, Jay R. 1994. Western Lawmen and Outlaws. New York: DaCapo Press. Pinkerton, Allan. http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/people/A0839106.html. Pinkerton Corporate Web site. http://www.ci-pinkerton.com/index.html. The Pinkerton Foundation official Web site: http://www.thepinkertonfoundation.org. Pinkerton Government Services Web site. http://www.pinkertons.com. Plot Summary for Deadwood. Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com. The Old Pinks’ Association official Web site. http://www.oldpinks.com.

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The Texas Rangers Ronald Burns


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The history of the Texas Rangers is rife with accounts of tradition, valor, and controversy. As one of the oldest state law enforcement agencies in North America, the Rangers faced several unique challenges and responded admirably to most of them. The story of the Texas Rangers has been the subject of many books, movies, and television shows, and their legend is shaped largely by their ability to respond, often successfully, to the call of duty. Their success, however, has been tempered in part by criticism of some

The Texas Rangers

Ranger practices. Nevertheless, the Rangers have been compared to other famous law enforcement agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Scotland Yard, Interpol, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Rangers’ success is highly attributable to the tenacity with which they perform their duties, the legend of the Rangers, and their ability to adjust to fluctuating societal conditions. Law enforcement agencies are often assessed on their ability to adapt to changing situations. Criminal behavior changes with the times, thus generating the need for law enforcement to keep pace. Recently, we’ve seen law enforcement agencies change their practices to address the need for homeland security. Historically, the Rangers engaged in their own version of homeland security when dealing with various threats from different groups, spread out over the frontier. Early on, the Rangers figured prominently in many battles related to the independence of Texas, while later in their history they confronted a wide array of social issues that commanded law enforcement intervention. The group’s significant contributions to social control remains one of the most interesting stories in American folklore. Many authors suggest the Texas Rangers are the oldest state law enforcement agency in North America. Others refute the complete accuracy of this suggestion, noting that Texas was not yet a state when the Rangers were created in 1823, nor was it a U.S. territory. Instead, Texas was still part of Mexico. The debate regarding the Rangers’ status as possibly the first state law enforcement agency symbolizes the historical and current ethos of the group: prestigious, yet subject to controversy. The storied history of the Texas Rangers can be discussed according to four distinct eras. The first era (1823–1866) pertains to Ranger involvement in fighting Indians and protecting the frontier border. The second era (1874–1900) involves Rangers as Western lawmen. The third (1900–1935) and fourth eras (1935–present) relate to changes and political patronage with regard to the Rangers, and the Rangers as part of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), respectively.

ORIGINS (1823–1866) The storied history of the Texas Rangers begins when the sparsely populated province of Texas was under the control of Spain. In 1821, Mexico would gain independence from Spain, and the area currently recognized as Texas fell under the control of the Mexican government. The impact of Mexican independence, including the newly established Mexican government in Mexico City, would have little effect on Texans. Indian attacks continuously made it difficult for any settlers to begin life in the province of Texas, and the Mexican government realized the need to populate the area if the Indians advances were to be quelled. Moses Austin

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proposed colonizing the area with American settlers who would become Spanish citizens. In 1821 Austin received approval to distribute 20,000 acres among three hundred American families. Austin’s death coincided with the end of Spanish rule, but his son, Stephen F. Austin, continued his father’s work. Soon, Texas would become inhabited and residents would begin facing many challenges as they established the area. Initially, the settlers were content with their situation. The American settlers were pleased to receive free land with no taxes, have a liberal constitution, and have the right to retain slaves even though slavery had been abolished by the Mexican government. The settlers, however, had no intention of acculturating into Mexican society. They viewed themselves as an independent group, ready to protect their lives and property by fighting marauding Indians. About 90 percent of the American settlers were Southerners who brought with them a ranger tradition. The term ranger was used in Scotland in the 1600s to describe armed men who ranged the countryside to protect against enemy groups. The practice made its way to the American colonies as early as 1739, and became the basis for one of the world’s most storied crimefighting groups, the Texas Rangers. Although the Rangers didn’t officially appear in a piece of state legislation until 1874, the group’s roots are traced back to 1823 when Tonkawa and Karankawa Indians raided the coast of the Mexican province of Tejas. Historian Robert Utley notes that modern day Rangers prefer to believe the Rangers originated in 1823, although contemporary records suggest the Rangers originated in 1835 when they served as soldiers. Stephen F. Austin, the impresario of Tejas, and his lieutenant Moses Morrison, assembled a group of men to protect the coast and the developing colony. The Anglo families that constituted Austin’s colonists in the areas settled away from established Spanish-Mexican towns and Comanche trails, yet this did not protect them from invasion and the need to establish protection. The Mexican government agreed to assist the colonists; however, appropriate military support was too distant. With permission from the Mexican government, Austin established a ten-person force in 1823 and allegedly paid the men with his own money. The group of rangers expanded to twenty as Austin led an expedition against a group of Tonkawas who had stolen horses. These Rangers, as they were called, would eventually assume the jurisdiction of Texas and adopt the name Texas Rangers. The early Rangers were organized along the legal lines of a militia, as opposed to a military, given their lack of uniforms and their freedom from military laws and regulations. They were also distinct from what would today be considered municipal or county-level law enforcement, particularly in light of their region-wide jurisdiction. This early group of peacekeepers consisted of armed and mounted individuals from all backgrounds. The early forces were also multicultural, as

The Texas Rangers

Hispanics, Anglos, and American Indians served as Rangers as early as the 1820s. The terms of their Ranger volunteer enlistment ranged from three to six months. They were called upon as needed, and returned to their occupations as blacksmiths, masons, farmers, and other occupations when their services weren’t required. More than thirty thousand Anglo colonists were in Texas by 1830 and the Mexican government began efforts to limit Anglo settlement. Over the next five years, relations between the American settlers and the Mexican government deteriorated, eventually leading to Mexican troops sent to garrison San Antonio. The colonists, now intent on independence, began establishing volunteer troops. Mexican authorities provided little assistance in preventing Indian attacks against settlers. Austin called a conference of the six districts in the settlement with the goal of providing a system of defense. The leaders agreed to keep a permanent force of twenty to thirty Rangers. By 1835 the Rangers had a force of fifty-six men organized among three companies. These early Rangers were required to provide their own weapons and horses, although the government would provide both for a charge if a recruit so requested. Rangers were also required to be prepared for action at a moment’s notice. The early Texas Rangers often fought battles in which they were outnumbered. Accordingly, they often carried several weapons and were skilled in using each. With the impending movement toward Texas independence in 1835, a council of Texas representatives established a ‘‘Corps of Rangers’’ to protect the frontier from Indian advances. Corps members enlisted for one year and were paid $1.25 per day. It was during this period that the Ranger legend and lore largely began, as the Rangers participated in some of Texas’s most famous battles with Indians. The Texas Rangers played a limited role during the Texas Revolution, serving primarily as scouts and couriers for those seeking protection from the Mexican army. The Rangers further served by retrieving cattle and destroying produce or equipment abandoned by those seeking shelter. Their limited role would continue as the region became the Republic of Texas (1836–1845) under its first president Sam Houston, who sought favorable ties with the Indians. Mirabeau Lamar succeeded Houston as President of the Texas Republic in 1838. He sought to enhance Ranger forces out of concern for Indian advances. Texas was alone as a nation and in turn formed a navy, an army, and an organized militia. Charged with protecting the frontier, the Rangers were instrumental in the battles against the Indians. Indian raids continued through the late 1830s, and both the Indians and settlers recognized that there was more to the conflict between the groups than stolen horses or disputes over hunting grounds. Accounts of Comanche atrocities were prominent, and to many Texans the Indians represented a savage threat that threatened the spread of civilization. In return, Texans

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responded at times with similar or even more brutal attacks. The conflicts between the groups ‘‘became a brutal race war, a clash of vastly incongruous world views.’’ (Hardin 1991, 7). By the end of Lamar’s tenure in office the Republic had successfully defeated many of the more powerful Indian tribes. Sam Houston was reelected to the presidency in 1841 and soon realized the significance of the Rangers in protecting the frontier. The Rangers were effective and inexpensive. In response, 150 Rangers were notably helpful in repelling Mexican and Indian invasions over the next three years under the direction of Captain John Coffee Hays. In the 1844 Battle of Walker Creek just outside of San Antonio, Captain Hays and fourteen men equipped with Colt revolvers defeated seventy Comanches, killing twenty-three and wounding another thirty. The revolvers, procured by Hays from the Texas Navy, contributed largely to the fifteen-minute battle that resulted in Hays’ troops suffering only two lance wounds. Hays instilled Ranger traditions and recruited skillful individuals who could help protect the frontier. It was during the Battle of Walker Creek that three elements converged to further establish the Ranger tradition. First, the event showcased the battleworthiness of the Rangers and their expertise in fighting while on horseback. The swiftness and effectiveness with which the Rangers won the battle is testament to their fighting abilities. Second, Captain Hays further established the Ranger tradition of having superiors lead by example as opposed to command. Hays’ involvement in fighting alongside his troops would help him become the preeminent Ranger captain following Texas’ annexation into the United States and the standard by which subsequent Ranger captains would be evaluated. Third, the introduction of the revolving pistol by the Rangers further solidified the tradition of hard-fighting law enforcement agents. In the early 1840s, Ranger Samuel H. Walker visited with firearm maker Samuel Colt. Colt was interested in getting Walker’s endorsement for Colt’s revolving pistol, which was opposed by the Ordnance Department. Walker commented on the usefulness of the Paterson Colt, particularly as used by the Rangers to subdue the large number of Comanche fighters during the Battle of Walker Creek. While meeting with Colt, Walker purchased weapons for the Rangers and offered suggestions to Colt regarding improvements to the handgun. Particularly, Walker was interested in a lethal weapon that could be used while one was mounted on a horse. Colt embraced the idea and created a .44-caliber, six-shot revolver with a nine-inch barrel. The Walker Colt, as the gun was named, significantly impacted Ranger law enforcement practices and, arguably, historical and modern day law enforcement practices. The new revolver would better equip the Rangers to fight the many battles in which they were outnumbered. The Rangers’ adoption and use of the revolver would help establish and contribute to the legend of the Rangers.

The Texas Rangers

The annexation of Texas into the United States and the Mexican-American War, which began in 1846, provided the Rangers another opportunity to showcase their abilities. As federalized volunteers, the Rangers had garnered the admiration of many in society and were loosely accountable to the regulations of commissioned regiments. In doing so, they were also able to maintain many of their traditions, including short terms of service, the absence of uniforms and flags, and scorn for military proprieties and the chain of command. They also maintained enough freedom to inflict atrocities on Mexican civilians and exact revenge for Mexican actions at the Alamo. The ability of the Rangers to navigate the frontier and their guerillastyle warfare contributed to the American offensive during the MexicanAmerican War. Ranger assistance was notably showcased in the battles in Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, and they provided effective guidance for the American army to Monterrey, where U.S. forces invaded the city. After being furloughed following a brief armistice, the Rangers returned to battle and secured and provided information that significantly helped win the battle in Buena Vista. Their role in the war would soon change from one involving guidance and intelligence to involvement in combat actions in March 1847. Involvement in the Mexican-American War enabled the Rangers to prove themselves worthy fighters. Under the direction of Jack Hays and Samuel Walker, the Rangers assisted the U.S. forces and created an impressive reputation that remains. Their fierce fighting tactics led some, including General Zachary Taylor, who would become the twelfth president of the United States, and General Winfield Scott to comment that the Rangers perhaps acted too violently toward military and civilian Mexicans. Taylor and Scott, who commanded Rangers during the fighting in several battles, commented that the Rangers were ‘‘unsurpassed both as fighters and troublemakers.’’ (Croke 2002). Ranger behavior was applauded and bemoaned during this period, and General Taylor would eventually request that no more Rangers be provided for assistance. Their brutalities, which in some ways tarnished and in other ways enhanced the reputation of the Rangers, exemplified the racism existent in nineteenth century Anglo-Texas. It was during this period that some Mexicans referred to the Rangers as los Diablos Tejanos, the ‘‘Texas Devils.’’ The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed in 1848 ended the MexicanAmerican War and the Rangers retreated to Texas. The United States and Mexico agreed that the Rio Grande River would serve as the national border. The war was costly to the Rangers, who lost several soldiers including Samuel Walker, who perished leading a group called the U.S. Mounted Rifles. Ranger involvement in the war against Mexico would be the only time the Rangers would operate as a military unit. After the Mexican-American War, the Rangers became less involved in social control practices and most of the force was disbanded. Captain Hays relocated to California, and his wartime adjutant John Salmon ‘‘Rip’’ Ford

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took his place as Captain. The U.S. army now assumed the responsibility of protecting the Texas frontier, and Ranger assistance was not requested. Most Rangers returned to their ‘‘non-Ranger’’ lives, while some, including Jack Hays, headed to California as part of the gold rush. Despite the lull in activity, the Rangers were not disbanded and were sometimes called on to settle skirmishes between Indians and settlers who wanted to locate in what was previously Indian land. The United States had set up reservations for the Indians, although not all Indians were content with the establishment. The Army forces now assuming primary law enforcement in Texas would prove ineffective in deterring Indian advances. Now a U.S. senator, Sam Houston requested federal funding for the Rangers to confront the Indian threat, but received nothing in return. This seemingly dormant period in Ranger history would not last, however. Apache raids on southwestern Texas in 1855 inspired Governor Elisha M. Pease to assemble three companies of Texas Rangers under the direction of James H. Callahan. Many Texans volunteered for the expedition, which would involve chasing Indians who had recognized the effectiveness of evading law enforcement by crossing the Mexican border. Callahan refused to recognize international boundaries, or international laws for that matter, and led his troops across the Rio Grande in pursuit of fleeing Indians. Mexican authorities objected to the intrusions, as did Washington officials. Nevertheless, the Rangers would not be deterred and Governor Pease, who supported the Rangers, became the target of criticism from several directions. The Ranger practice of unlawfully crossing the border eventually ceased in response to the pressure, though the renegade practices of Callahan and troops would perpetuate the Ranger legend. The Rangers continued to cross the border, albeit during hot pursuits deemed ‘‘expedient,’’ a term that encompasses much subjectivity. The election of Hardin Richard Runnels as governor in 1857 and the appointment of ‘‘Rip’’ Ford as senior captain in 1858 further reinvigorated the Rangers. Runnels allocated $70,000 to support the Rangers, who saw their forces increase to roughly one hundred members who were tasked with controlling the invasive acts of the Comanche and other tribes whose raids against settlers generated concern. During the 1858 Battle of Antelope Hills in what is now Oklahoma, Ford proved his worthiness as a leader. Rip Ford was only thirty-four years old when he began his career as captain, and his troops destroyed the sizeable village of Chief Iron Jacket while killing seventy-six Indians. Only two Rangers were killed and three wounded. Eighteen Indian women and children were taken as prisoners for future trade for white captives. The tactics used by Ford and his troops during this battle were soon emulated by U.S. army forces in subsequent attacks on Rush Springs and Crooked Creek. Ford, whose nickname ‘‘Rip’’ stood for ‘‘rest in peace,’’ was a tenacious fighter who led the Rangers against Juan Cortina, who had seized the

The Texas Rangers

border city of Brownsville. Cortina’s troops, some 400 strong, were defeated in the bloody battle that consumed 151 of Cortina’s men and roughly 90 Texas citizens including a few Rangers. After this expedition, the Rangers ceased to significantly impact social control for the next fourteen years. The beginning of the Civil War led many Rangers and other law enforcement officials to support the Confederacy. The federal forts that had been established were abandoned with Texas’ secession from the Union, leaving Texas with little law enforcement and the reemergence of Indian advances. Further, rebel deserters from various parts of the South made their way into Texas, which at the time was ill prepared to confront the unruly behavior. Despite taking place mostly outside of Texas, the Civil War impacted the Texas Rangers. Many suitable candidates for the Texas Rangers left the state. In response, Texas relied on those left behind, including young boys, older men, and men who were deemed unfit to fight in the war, to protect its frontiers. Immediately following the war, law enforcement in Texas was ‘‘disorganized and haphazard’’ (Horton and Turner 1999, 97). The Ranger legend continued during the Civil War. For instance, the wellknown Terry’s Rangers and several other units from the Texas cavalry adopted the Ranger title; however, they were not true Texas Rangers. The adoption of the term ‘‘Ranger,’’ nevertheless, depicts the significance of the group. The period of Reconstruction (1865–1873) is referred to as ‘‘the darkest period in the history of the organization’’ (Texas Department of Public Safety: Texas Rangers). Federal troops commanded by General Philip Sheridan occupied the state, and under the direction of the Governor E. J. Davis, the Rangers were charged with enforcing unpopular laws. It is argued that, for all practical purposes, the Rangers disbanded for almost a decade after the war. The State Police of Texas, created by Governor Davis and consisting of many carpetbaggers, were charged with enforcing martial law, which compounded the problem. The State Police eventually disbanded as a result of their inefficiency and citizen distrust of any authority, either civil or military, after the Civil War. The Rangers, who were busy fighting Indians, were left to enforce the laws in Texas. The current stereotype of the Texas Rangers as lawmen neglects the citizen soldier practices of the early Rangers. Early Rangers largely engaged in soldier-like practices when defending against Indian advances. These early Rangers pursued justice as vigorously as the current and more recent Rangers; however, the concept of justice has changed and procedural law and police professionalism have impacted Ranger practices. The concept of justice recognized and enforced by early Rangers involved limited concern for individual rights, particularly as applied to Mexican and Indian foes. Nevertheless, justice, as applied by the early Rangers was understood and accepted by the Anglo-Texans, who dominated the Republic of Texas and later, the state of Texas.

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THE LEGEND CONTINUES (1874–1900) Crime and social disorder were problematic in Texas after the Civil War. A poor economy and displaced veterans contributed to the problems, as did the presence of a Reconstruction government that maintained a different ethos from many Texans. Unlike the period prior to the War, however, Indians no longer posed the primary threat. The enhanced military presence provided by the Johnson and Grant administrations in their attempts to address the ‘‘Indian problem’’ largely contributed. Law-breaking Anglos and Mexican bandits provided notable challenges for Texas. Unfortunately, there was no full-time organized law enforcement agency to provide adequate protection. Democrats regained political power in 1873, officially ending Reconstruction in Texas. Following a period of federal intervention, the new state government attempted to restore some of what Texas was all about, including the Texas Rangers. The legislation attempted to recast the Texas Rangers as a permanent military outfit to perform the tasks of citizen soldiers, but more effectively. The Rangers maintained many of the defining features of earlier Ranger groups, only they were no longer citizen soldiers. The Rangers would fight Indians as the need arose, but for the most part, the Rangers became more recognizable as state law enforcement agents than protectors against Indian advances. Particularly, the legislation authorized funding for two Ranger forces to provide formal social control. The Frontier Battalion, the first of the two Ranger forces, was led by Major John B. Jones and consisted of six companies comprised of seventy-five men in each. Their primary responsibility was to protect the border with Mexico along the Rio Grande and prevent crime. The second force, known as the Special Force, was led by Captain Leander H. McNelly and was responsible for controlling general lawlessness across the state. The Special Force engaged in a wide array of activities, including tracking down robbers and horse thieves. The significance of this legislation is notable in many ways, not the least of which involves its being the first time the Rangers were provided legislatively directed responsibilities and statewide jurisdiction. It was around this time that a half-century of war with Indians in Texas would come to an end. The Frontier Battalion under John B. Jones defeated a group of Comanche Indians during the 1874 Red River War. With the exception of a few skirmishes with Apaches along the New Mexico border in 1880, the Red River War signified the end of major battles fought by Texans against the advancing Indians. The $75,000 allocated to the Frontier Battalion was expected to cover two years, when legislators would once again meet and appropriations could be made. Unfortunately, the funding was consumed too quickly, and after about five months the number of troops in the six companies of the

The Texas Rangers

Frontier Battalion was reduced from seventy-five men to forty. The need for fighting Indians had decreased, and the Rangers shifted their attention to traditional law enforcement activities. Major John B. Jones designed the Frontier Battalion and presided over the Rangers’ transformation into an agency set on state law enforcement. Jones was able to effectively address the administrative, logistical, financial, and political challenges associated with the transition of the Rangers from protectors of the frontier to law enforcement agents. He was also able to maintain command of his troops, and, holding to tradition, led through example by riding the frontier several times each year. Jones was able to transform the Rangers into a state law enforcement agency while maintaining many Ranger traditions. For instance, the Rangers still provided their own horses and arms, wore no uniforms, and enjoyed great camaraderie with their colleagues and officers. For all intents and purposes, the Rangers were a military organization subject to discipline, order, accountability, and other characteristics associated with a military outfit. They nevertheless maintained their informal relationships within the companies. They faced a continuous struggle in that they retained much of their tradition and took pride in their social control expertise, yet were consumed by the changes, particularly as they pertained to law enforcement, associated with a developing state and country. Leander McNelly would play a significant role in furthering the Ranger reputation as protectors of Texas. McNelly, whose standards for Rangers was rigorous and whose fighting tactics were brutal, led a militia group requested by the governor to quell the violent Sutton-Taylor feud. The company largely resembled the Frontier Battalion, and the public and those in the militia regarded themselves as Rangers: McNelly’s Rangers. McNelly and his men failed to quell the Sutton-Taylor feud, but the group soon took on the task of confronting Mexican cattle thieves on the Rio Grande. It is suggested the group used tactics not legally permissible by government-sanctioned groups. Unconventional law enforcement tactics such as violently improper interrogations were not beyond McNelly’s approach (Utley 2002a). McNelly, who was tough on his Rangers, yet even tougher on outlaws, engaged in questionable practices such as ‘‘shoot first and ask questions later,’’ and the historical Spanish practice of la ley de fuga, which holds that prisoners were to be summarily shot in the event of a rescue attempt. McNelly’s legend, and that of the Texas Rangers, would thrive in 1875 as he and thirty Rangers attempted to find stolen cattle. McNelly and company crossed the Rio Grande and mistakenly entered a village thought to be the refuge for the cattle thieves and shot a dozen or so men in the streets. A large Mexican contingent drove the Rangers back to the Rio Grande where fighting took place over two days. The Rangers continued the fight despite the advice of U.S. army officers to cease fire, and the presence of four hundred Mexican troops gathering to stand up for their sovereignty. The

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Mexican leader of the troops agreed to turn over the cattle and the thieves upon ceasefire, and the Rangers returned home. Although only one-third of the cattle were returned, none of the bandits were turned over, and his Rangers’ actions nearly provoked an international incident, McNelly’s reputation as a leader soared as a brave man who fought for justice. The public viewed the Rangers entering Mexico and killing men of uncertain guilt for the sake of a few cows as justifiable. The Rangers were standing up for and representing justice. McNelly died from tuberculosis in 1877, and his company was incorporated into the Frontier Battalion. The practices of the Frontier Battalion generated controversy, particularly with regard to their use of firearms while investigating crimes and maintaining order. As peace officers, the Rangers could legally make arrests with or without arrest warrants and were encouraged to use all reasonable means to do so. At this time, justifiable homicide was permitted by Texas peace officers to prevent arson, burglary, castration, maiming, murder, rape, and other offenses. Further, Texas was among the states that changed the common-law tradition of requiring one to retreat prior to engaging in selfdefense, which encouraged further violence by both Texans and their law enforcement officers. The Rangers engaged in two distinct types of social control during this period. When interacting with outside agents such as Indians or bootlegging Mexicans, the Rangers acted in a soldier-like manner. In contrast, they performed like detectives and policemen when confronting the unruly within their society, such as outlaws and train robbers. The law enforcement aspect of the Rangers largely involved dealing with bloody feuds, lynch mobs, cattle thieves, killers, and the like. Ranger crime-fighting energies were, in part, directed by the creation of a ‘‘crime book’’ compiled by Adjutant General William Steele. The book contained a list of known outlaws, which guided the Ranger lawmen. The organization and scope of the two Ranger units created in 1874, the Frontier Battalion and the Special Force, had outlived their purpose with the settlement of the West and the demise of the Western outlaw at the turn of the century. The need for frontier justice was fading, and along with it went the Frontier Battalion in 1891. Nevertheless, the vast lands of southwestern Texas provided fertile ground for cover to many outlaws, and local law enforcement was ill equipped to respond. In response, the Rangers would continue to contribute. In 1894 and 1895 the Rangers rode 173,381 miles, arrested 676 suspects, recovered and returned 2,856 head of stolen livestock, and assisted local law enforcement on 162 occasions. These numbers attest to the ongoing need for Ranger intervention regardless of substantial societal changes. The Rangers, toward the latter part of this era, were no longer citizen soldiers who assembled in times of need and returned home when their services

The Texas Rangers

were no longer required. Now they were recruited and served as long as financial support for the Rangers existed. Nevertheless, changing from a militia-type group of frontiersmen to a formal law enforcement agency provided particular challenges for the Rangers. For example, the Rangers needed to keep pace with the rise of the professionalism in policing that was taking place at the time. Emphasis on careerism, scientific techniques of crime detection, and the increased use of technology, resulting from the industrialization of America, perpetuated changes in Ranger practices. The move toward crime prevention, as opposed to crime enforcement, was something new to the Rangers, while new technologies such as telephones, repeating firearms, trains, and cars also challenged the Rangers. These developments provided new crime-fighting threats while simultaneously offering new crime-fighting tools. The Rangers were forced, in large part, to adapt to a new society and move beyond their historical social control practices. Accordingly, the Rangers were able to continue protecting the frontier while transforming into a professional state law enforcement organization dealing with more conventional forms of crime and disorder. The eighteenth century Rangers were described as hard but fair men during a period when hardness was required and fairness a bonus. In his insightful work Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers, Robert Utley closely examines the events and practices that shaped the Texas Rangers. He notes the distinctively different functions of the Rangers during 1823–1910. From 1823 until 1874 the Rangers were citizen soldiers called on to confront unruly Indians or Mexicans. After 1874, the Rangers became ‘‘Old West lawmen’’ under the institution known as the Frontier Battalion. Much of the legend and lore associated with the Texas Rangers originated in this period, for instance, as the Rangers tracked down and arrested (or killed) notorious outlaws. Included among the outlaws were John Wesley Hardin, a preacher’s son who allegedly killed thirty-one men, train robber Sam Bass, and gunfighter King Fisher. Things would change with the arrival of the twentieth century, as the lawmen Rangers faced a new set of challenges with which they had to contend.

CHANGE AND POLITICAL PATRONAGE (1900–1935) The twentieth century brought about notable change for the Texas Rangers. Particularly, law enforcement practices evolved from a frontier style, through which the Rangers had established much of their reputation, to a more mundane domestic approach. Second, gubernatorial intervention and political patronage hampered the Ranger reputation. Modernization and urbanization were impacting the group, for instance, as the introduction and widespread use of automobiles and trains rendered the horseback Ranger almost obsolete.

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Nevertheless, the Rangers would continue to provide social control in Texas. In July 1901 the Texas Legislature passed legislation charging the Rangers with protecting the frontier against marauding or thieving parties and suppressing lawlessness and crime throughout the state. Four companies of no more than twenty Rangers would now be officially recognized as a state law enforcement agency. The Rangers were authorized and funded by the Texas adjutant general, who was appointed by the governor and charged with overseeing the Texas National Guard. In other words, the Rangers became highly susceptible to gubernatorial influence. Despite greater accountability and enhanced bureaucratic concerns, the Rangers were able to maintain particular traditions including control over who became a Ranger and the refusal to wear a uniform and badge. In fact, there has never been an official Texas Ranger uniform. Part of the ongoing Ranger tradition is their style of dress, which they continue to proudly wear today: western wear with a white or tan hat, cowboy boots, western cut shirt, tie, pants, and boots. The early part of the twentieth century found the Rangers expanding their duties to include a wide range of peacekeeping duties with which they were somewhat unfamiliar. This role was unpopular with many Texans, who had come to expect something different from the Rangers. Things would soon change as the Rangers responded to trouble along the Texas-Mexico border between 1910 and 1920. Ranger responses to the situation brought negative attention to the group. Specifically, the Rangers were called on to deal with Mexican revolutionaries, outlaw groups, war-time spies, draft dodgers, liquor smugglers, and other social problems, and the Rangers resorted to the some of the controversial practices of McNelly’s Rangers. At a 1919 legislative hearing initiated by State Representative J. T. Canales, who made eighteen charges against the Rangers, they were accused of unscrupulous behavior including pistol-whippings, cold-blooded murders, and intimidations. The investigation led to the dismissal of questionable Rangers and the reorganization of the group. The hearing helped to restore public confidence in the force; however, it did not end the political influence in Ranger affairs. Between 1919 and 1935 the Rangers showcased their ability to adapt to meet the needs of a changing society. Particularly, the Rangers confronted many significant social issues and problems, including labor strikes, violations pertaining to Prohibition, Mexican border raids, and Ku Klux Klan activities. In 1918, National Prohibition, as provided by the Eighteenth Amendment, generated a new set of challenges for the Rangers, because bootleggers would cross the border from Mexico with the intent of selling liquor. Shootouts between Rangers and smugglers were not uncommon, although some Rangers viewed Prohibition as ludicrous and often chose not to enforce the associated laws. The Rangers also had to contend with providing protection during the oil boom, particularly during the 1920s and 1930s. The oil boom areas during this period seemed to attract unruly citizens looking to illegally cash in on the fortunes in the area.

The Texas Rangers

Compounding the need for the Rangers to change was the transition of Texas away from a frontier era into a more domestic period. Although some Texans didn’t appreciate the Rangers’ new focus on peacekeeping or some of their heavy-handed tactics, the Ranger crime-fighting reputation would persist and Texans would remain proud of their state law enforcement agency. Captain Frank H. Hamer is among the most famous Rangers, for instance, in light of his role in shifting the Rangers from horse to car and his ability to subdue the infamous outlaws Bonnie and Clyde. The Great Depression brought about a number of bank robberies and murders, leading the Texas Bankers Association to offer a standing $5,000 reward for killing bank robbers. Some outlaws staged bank robberies and killed their accomplices to receive the reward. Facing a somewhat new type of crime, the Rangers reacted by enlisting the services of the media. Captain Hamer got the press involved, which ultimately led to the banking association changing its reward policy. Hamer was not done, however. Subduing the infamous Texas natives Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker greatly enhanced the Ranger reputation as crime fighters and kept alive the spirit of the force, which had dwindled. Captain Hamer was given responsibility for apprehending the fugitive couple, and after 102 days he and fellow officers ambushed and killed the couple on a rural country road in May 1934. This incident served to reinvigorate the Rangers, who had seen their role as true crime fighters dwindle and their reputation suffer. Political intervention and patronage would contribute to the hard times faced by the Rangers. Placing the Rangers under the auspices of the Texas adjutant general meant that the Rangers were largely accountable to the Texas governor. Several governors would take an active role in filling the ranks of the Rangers during this period; however, the most controversial of the group was Miriam A. Ferguson, who served from 1933 to 1935. Ferguson summarily fired all Texas Rangers who supported her opponent, incumbent Governor Ross Sterling, in the gubernatorial election. About forty Rangers who weren’t fired resigned in disgust. Governor Ferguson then replenished the diminished Ranger ranks with ‘‘Special Ranger’’ commissions to political allies. Ferguson appointed roughly 2,300 Special Rangers, and commission as a Ranger became easier to obtain. With that move, however, came the hiring of less-than-worthy Rangers. Those selected by Ferguson would be termed, in a derogatory manner, ‘‘Ferguson’s Rangers.’’ Some of Ferguson’s appointees were ex-convicts, and many were convicted of various crimes while Rangers. The Rangers would see their reputation become tarnished, earning them the title: ‘‘the most scandal-ridden law enforcement agency in American history’’ (Horton and Turner 1999). The Rangers would become ‘‘a source of patronage, corruption, and ridicule’’ and the effects on state law enforcement in Texas were ‘‘catastrophic’’ (Proctor 1991, 11). Needless to

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say, criminals took advantage of the absence of an effective Ranger group and negative attention was again directed toward the Rangers. In 1934 the Texas Senate reacted to the problematic state of law enforcement in Texas and formed a committee to investigate. The committee’s report was critical of law enforcement in Texas. The Rangers were forced to revisit their place in law enforcement and made several changes in the period that followed. Perhaps most significant among the changes was the 1935 incorporation of the Rangers into the newly created Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), which originated following the senate committee’s recommendation. MODERN DAY RANGERS (1935–PRESENT) Texas Governor James V. Allred is credited with restoring the Texas Ranger reputation and maintaining the Rangers as a legitimate law enforcement organization. Upon taking office in 1935, Allred canceled all of the Special Ranger commissions created by former Governor Ferguson and persuaded the Texas Legislature to move the Rangers from the Texas adjutant general’s office to the newly created Texas DPS. Until the 1940s Ranger law enforcement practices largely resembled the frontier ethos of the State of Texas. The Rangers became increasingly professional following their incorporation into the Texas DPS, because they now had access to a top-notch crime laboratory, improved communications, and political stability. Although smaller in numbers, the quality of the Texas DPS Rangers was better than in years past. The Rangers would also be protected from their recent role as a political pawn. These changes largely assisted the Rangers in making the transition from a seemingly lawless group ranging over the frontier to a state-of-the-art law enforcement agency. However, the early DPS Rangers were still personally ill equipped by today’s law enforcement standards. They were provided a Colt .45 and a Winchester .30 caliber rifle by the state; however, they were required to provided their own car, horse, and saddle. Although part of a new agency, Ranger duties were essentially the same: enforce the state’s laws, particularly with regard to felonies, gambling and narcotics; locate fugitives; and suppress riots. The Rangers were also charged with maintaining order during labor disputes and working with other law enforcement agencies across Texas, and more generally, the United States. Rangers provided internal security in Texas during World War II, with duties ranging from showing educational training films regarding air raid alarms to tracking down escaped German prisoners of war. By 1945 there were forty-five Rangers, and two years later the number increased to fiftyone. The Rangers were once again adapting to a changing society and locating and establishing their place within modern state law enforcement. The Ranger legend was perpetuated during the 1950s when Ranger Captain R. A. Crowder single-handedly calmed rioting inmates at the Rusk

The Texas Rangers

State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in 1955. During the rioting the inmates had taken several hostages. Crowder entered the maximum-security unit, conversed with the leader of the mob, and quelled the riot. The Rangers were also instrumental in providing a much-needed law enforcement presence while schools were being racially integrated, assisting with violent labor disputes, shutting down illegal gambling functions, and providing many other law enforcement services. The cultural revolution of the late 1960s again drew negative attention to the Rangers as many Americans questioned much of what the Rangers stood for—authority. The Rangers became a target of protest, and sometimes adopted earlier, questionable tactics in quelling riots, which would perpetuate public criticism (and praise). Some questioned their effectiveness working within the boundaries of modern-day procedural law, while others still held to the belief that the Rangers ‘‘get things done’’ at all costs. Recent decades have brought about ongoing professionalism with the Rangers. They continue to investigate felonious crimes, suppress riots, and apprehend fugitives, and their efforts are enhanced through notable government support. Ranger appropriations have increased in recent times, and the Rangers receive great assistance from computerized information systems. Rangers are more experienced and better organized than in years past. The training and education of recent Rangers is also much better. The overall increased professionalism is much needed in today’s society where issues concerning procedural justice are seemingly more common than ever. The history of the Texas Rangers suggests they are indeed icons in crime fighting. The following section sheds further light on the group, through examination of the day-to-day duties of the current Rangers, issues pertaining to their organization and personnel, and finally, the story behind the Texas Ranger badge. Duties The Texas Rangers currently derive their statutory authority from the Texas Government Code, and the Rangers are responsible for many law enforcement functions as provided in the Texas Penal Code. Among their primary functions are the following: • • • • • • • •

criminal and special investigations, apprehending wanted felons, suppressing major disturbances, protecting life and property, rendering assistance to law enforcement officials, gathering and disseminating criminal intelligence, serving as officers of the court at the request of a judge, providing protection for designated elected officials, and

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• participating in educational training and providing training to other law enforcement agencies. (Texas Department of Public Safety: Texas Rangers)

The Rangers have become increasingly active in law enforcement since their 1935 incorporation into the Texas DPS. Their significant involvement in the crime scene investigation of the Branch Davidian compound and their investigations of mass murderers, drug lords, and serial rapists demonstrate the Rangers’ continued importance to state-level law enforcement. The Rangers took part in an estimated 255 cases during their first year in the new agency, followed by involvement in 16,701 cases two decades later in 1955. In 2005 the Rangers conducted 5,488 investigations resulting in 1,496 felony arrests and 137 misdemeanor arrests. They executed 475 search warrants and obtained 3,437 statements, including 563 confessions to various crimes. Rangers recovered stolen property valued at $1,832,101 and seized contraband valued at $1,518,392. Their activities contributed to 1,828 convictions for various crimes, resulting in 23 death sentences, 52 life sentences, and a total of 10,168 years in prison time being served. They issued 546 subpoenas and 823 warrants. Further, in 2005 the Rangers provided nine hypnosis sessions in criminal investigations. The ability to have such a large impact with a relatively small staff speaks volumes about the Rangers’ capacity to fight crime. In 2000 the Texas Legislature authorized the Unsolved Crimes Investigation Team (UCIT), which is led by a Ranger captain and lieutenant and staffed by eight Ranger sergeants. The UCIT is tasked with providing Texas law enforcement agencies a process for investigating unsolved murders or what seem to be serial or linked criminal transactions. During the same year, the Rangers acquired a forensic artist who is based at the Ranger headquarters in Austin. The artist assists law enforcement agencies throughout the state by providing various forms of investigativerelated artwork. Composite drawings, age progression updates of missing individuals or fugitives, courtroom displays, postmortem drawings, computer facial imaging, and skull reconstruction are among the types of artwork provided by the forensic artist. The services help identify victims of violent crimes and apprehend criminal offenders. Providing such services demonstrates the Rangers’ capacity to adapt to changing times while maintaining a distinct specialization in law enforcement. ORGANIZATION AND PERSONNEL The historically fluctuating mission and organization of the Texas Rangers contributed to consistent organizational and personnel changes. Perhaps the simplest manner of describing the historical organizational design of the Rangers is to focus on the highest level of accountability. Early in the

The Texas Rangers

history of the Texas Rangers, captains, lieutenants, or sergeants in charge of companies spread throughout Texas reported to the Austin-based headquarters officers. The Adjutant General oversaw the Rangers once Texas became a state. However, this arrangement only lasted until 1935, when the Rangers became accountable to the Texas DPS. The Ranger Headquarters remains in Austin while six companies and the headquarters for the UCIT are spread throughout Texas. Texas Ranger Division Locales Headquarters: Austin Company A: Houston Company B: Garland Company C: Lubbock Company D: San Antonio Company E: Midland Company F: Waco Unsolved Crimes Investigation Team: San Antonio

As noted, the number of Rangers has fluctuated over the years. Recent numbers suggest that the Ranger force has been small since the demise of the Ferguson Rangers, with fewer than one hundred Rangers being the norm. There were only thirty-four Rangers when the force was reorganized in 1935. As of April 2007 the Texas Rangers Division consisted of 140 members, including 118 commissioned officers, three crime analysts, a forensic artist, a fiscal analyst, and seventeen civilian support personnel. As noted, early Rangers were primarily volunteer citizens. Formal selection and recruitment practices were established as the Rangers became increasingly institutionalized. Rangers were typically recruited from county sheriff or municipal police departments between 1935 and the early 1980s. That approach changed when Texas DPS Director James Adams mandated that Texas Rangers be recruited and selected from the ranks of the DPS. Little recruiting has ever been necessary, as it was not unusual for the Rangers to receive more than two hundred applications for a small number of openings. To become a Ranger one must first meet the requirements for entry employment with the Texas DPS. Candidates must also meet special requirements to be eligible to be a Ranger. Accordingly, each applicant must • be a U.S. citizen, • be in excellent physical condition, • have an outstanding record of at least eight years of investigative experience with a bona fide law enforcement agency, • be currently employed with the Texas DPS as a commissioned officer with the rank of at least Trooper II,

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• • • •

pass a thorough background investigation, possess a valid Texas driver’s license, be at least twenty years of age, and have a minimum of ninety semester hours from an accredited college or three years or more of military or law enforcement experience. (Texas Department of Public Safety: Texas Rangers)

These requirements are much more stringent than those in place in 1919, when state legislation led to the reorganization of the Rangers. The 1919 Rangers had no specific requirements for enlistment; physical condition, previous law enforcement experience, and formal education and training were not examined. The average age of the Rangers in 1987 was forty-five and remained there as of 2005. The level of education of the Rangers, however, increased during that period. In 1987 the Rangers’ average level of education was 42 hours of college. As of 2005 that number increased to 117, with 56 Rangers possessing a college degree compared to 28 in 1987. It wasn’t until the Rangers became part of the Texas DPS that they received formal in-service training. Current Rangers are required to attend at minimum forty hours of in-service training every two years, although most Rangers attend far more than the minimum number of required hours. While the early Rangers were demographically diverse, the modern Rangers have been criticized for a lack of diversity. The changing demographics of society and increased societal concern for multiculturalism provided new challenges for the Rangers. Although they have constantly sought to maintain their core attitude amidst many changes, questionable hiring practices recently attracted negative attention to the Rangers. Females were appointed Special Rangers in the 1930s and 1940s; however, they were generally administrative assistants or handled security for the governor or projects involving sensitive information. The most recent and first full-time female Rangers were appointed in 1993, or 170 years after the Rangers first assembled. Racial and ethnic minorities have also been underrepresented as Rangers. The 1969 hiring of a Hispanic recruit was the first in more than fifty years and in 1988 Sergeant Lee Roy Young, Jr., became the first African American Texas Ranger in the twentieth century. Ranger hiring practices had been criticized, as some questioned whether the Rangers adhered to the ‘‘good ol’ boy’’ approach of hiring and promotion. Some questioned the absence of Hispanic Rangers in 1967 following farm worker strikes, which brought the question of diversity to light. In 1986 the Ranger oral interview board denied a position to Texas DPS trooper Michael Scott who scored well on all tests and seemingly did well in the interview although he received a low score. Scott applied again, scored well again, and was once again denied a position. Scott noticed that the Rangers had no African Americans on the force, leading him to speculate

The Texas Rangers

that race played a factor in his inability to be hired. Along with other African American troopers who wondered the same thing, Scott approached that NAACP which in turn filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on behalf of the officers in 1988. Texas DPS officials agreed to negotiate and two African American Rangers were hired that year. Neither Michael Scott nor any of his colleagues who filed the complaint with the NAACP were among those hired. The complaint filed with the EEOC caught the attention of the DPS who, in turn, reacted. Historically, the Ranger candidate-interviewing practices involved several Rangers, all of whom were white. After the complaint, the practice changed to involve more diversity in the interview process. This change was not enough, however, as the Texas state government was becoming increasingly diversified and more politicians were paying attention to DPS and Ranger hiring practices. Particularly, in 1993 several minorities on the Texas House Appropriations Committee made strong recommendations that greater diversity was needed among the ranks. Thengovernor Ann Richards supported the claims and suggested the need to include women on the force. Despite the earlier, fringe involvement of females in Ranger practices, no woman had ever served as a full-time Ranger. The idea of a female Ranger did not sit well with many current and former Rangers, who voiced their concerns. Nevertheless, the pressure was too much. On August 1, 1993, the Texas DPS announced the hiring of nine new Rangers: two women, two white males, three Hispanic males, one black male, and one Asian American male. The goal was to diversify the force and make it reflective of the state as a whole. Michael Scott was not among those hired. The applicant pool of minorities and women was small, and some suggest the Rangers failed to hire the most qualified of the pool. Based on the inexperience of several of those who became Rangers, it is suggested that the only thing the new hires had in common was a low likelihood of generating controversy.

THE BADGE The Texas Rangers are often associated with law, justice, and a badge on their chest. The early Rangers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, didn’t proudly display a badge. It wasn’t until later in the twentieth century that the five-pointed star became part of the Ranger attire. The badge has come to symbolize much of what the Rangers stand for. The original group of Rangers didn’t wear or have a badge primarily because they weren’t official lawmen. The star now proudly worn by many Texas law enforcement officials was created in 1835 by Texas’s first secretary of state Charles B. Stewart. However, it wasn’t worn by law

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enforcement officials until 1870 during Reconstruction. It was during 1870 when Governor E. J. Davis created the state police to control unruly former Confederates that the badge was first worn by law enforcement. It was not until the Rangers were through devoting much of their efforts toward troubles at the border and Indian attacks and began considering themselves peacekeepers around 1875 that they began carrying badges. Still, only a few Rangers carried a badge and those who did generally placed the badges out of sight until they needed to display it as a sign of authority. The purpose for this was twofold: wearing a badge provided a target for outlaws, and it was better that nobody knew they were a Ranger until the need for an arrest arose. The original badges were carved out of Mexican silver coins and early Ranger badges were not made to specific standards. Some Rangers molded the coins into a shield with a star, while others placed the star within a circle. Still, others simply carved a star from a tin can or used jewelry, leather, or wood. Regardless of the material used for the badge, the fivepointed star was present in the design. In 1900 the state issued the Rangers a five-pointed star inscribed ‘‘Texas State Ranger.’’ Only a few were made, and some Rangers continued the tradition of carving their own badge when the government supply of badges ran out. The most common design used by the Rangers was the wagon wheel. Ranger badges changed in 1917 when a star-shaped badge with a circle on the inside was issued. Still, some Rangers preferred to create their own, contributing to the historical inconsistency of Ranger badges. The badge once again changed in design when the Rangers became part of the Texas DPS in 1930 and a diamond-shaped badge featuring the star and the wheel was issued. Most Rangers carried the badge until 1967 when the DPS redesigned the badge, choosing the earlier circle-star used in the 1800s for the design. Despite the changes, Mexican coins are still used to create Ranger badges, one of the many traditions maintained by the Rangers.

IN THE END In his 1935 work documenting the history of the Texas Rangers, William Prescott Webb predicted the group would soon disappear. Webb’s prediction failed to materialize, as the Rangers have adapted to the many challenges they’ve encountered. They’ve done so while maintaining, despite some disruptions, a reputation as an exceptional crime-fighting group. In fact, several states have attempted to create law enforcement groups along the lines of the Texas Rangers. The Arizona Rangers and the New Mexico Mounted Police, established in the early twentieth century, are among the more successful attempts. It is said that ‘‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.’’ To be sure, the Rangers have received a lion’s share of flattery.

The Texas Rangers

The history of the Texas Rangers is aptly described by several authors, including Harold Weiss (1994), who suggests, ‘‘The reality of the Texas Rangers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries lay between the images of the good guys in white hats and ‘los Diablos Tejanos’ in black hats.’’ Robert Utley describes the two contrasting views of the Rangers that have taken shape. The first view depicts the Rangers as ‘‘fearless men of sterling character and unswerving dedication to the mission’’ (Utley 2002b, xii). They appear as a highly efficient and effective group that provide shining examples for generations to come. As citizen soldiers they outfought their opponents. As lawmen, they always brought the criminal to justice. The other view of the Rangers, as described by Utley, depicts the group as ‘‘ruthless, brutal, and more lawless than the criminals they pursued’’ (xii). As citizen soldiers they indiscriminately killed innocents and enemies of all sorts. As lawmen, they used unscrupulous tactics without concern for individual rights. One must consider Ranger practices within the time period when they exist. To judge their earlier, legend-generating practices by today’s standards would render many Rangers criminals. However, nineteenth-century Ranger practices occurred at a time when violence was more common than it is today, and procedural law was a figment of one’s imagination. Many of the individuals the Rangers killed were trying to kill them or do harm to others. There was little, if any, crime-fighting technology and very little concern for police professionalism, at least by today’s standards. The criminals were sometimes ruthless, and law enforcement, as it existed, needed to keep pace. Consideration of Ranger practices with regard to the time does not justify the sometimes barbaric and illegal Ranger practices of law enforcement. Instead, it helps temper the negative attention sometimes drawn to the group. Many early local law enforcement officials avoided procedural concerns, and little procedural law controlled law enforcement practices. The ability of the Rangers to survive as a group despite questionable practices and occasionally being the target of public and government discontent speaks loudly of their success. To be sure, the group would have been permanently disbanded if they were systematically barbaric in their practices. Instead, it can be safely argued that the Rangers, like some modern law enforcement groups, went to extreme measures in taking the law into their own hands. Yet, along the way the Rangers established a legend unlike any other law enforcement group. The Rangers had the benefit of establishing their reputation at a time of little media scrutiny or concern for police professionalism, and even less concern for procedural law. Regardless of sporadic negative public opinion, political controversy, questionable personnel practices, and a sometimes skewed view of justice, the Rangers remain well respected among law enforcement agencies and the general public. The Rangers have been the topic of volumes of academic writings and the subject of many popular culture features. The legend and

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lore of the Rangers have been acknowledged and perpetuated in various forms of popular culture, ranging from comic books to Hollywood motion pictures. Movie stars such as John Wayne, Robert Duval, and Clint Eastwood have all portrayed Texas Rangers. Mike Cox’s ‘‘Texas Rangers Filmology’’ identifies 161 television and big screen movies about the Rangers that were made between 1910 and 1995. Such a large number of movies is, at the very least, testament to Hollywood’s fascination with the group.

Media Portrayals of the Texas Rangers There have been hundreds of motion picture and television productions focused on fictional and nonfictional, dramatic accounts of the Texas Rangers. The Texas Rangers have been popular fodder for Hollywood for decades. This is evident as far back as 1936, with the release of the Oscar-nominated motion picture The Texas Rangers starring Fred MacMurray from Universal Pictures. More recently, of course, the Texas Rangers have been depicted fictionally through the long-running television series Walker, Texas Ranger starring Chuck Norris. This series, which chronicles the fictional life and casework of Dallas-based Texas Ranger Cordell Walker (Chuck Norris) premiered on April 23, 1993, on NBC. The show ran nine seasons, with the last episode airing on May 19, 2001. The show continues to entertain in reruns on the USA Network.

Television series such as The Lone Ranger and Walker, Texas Ranger and famous novels such as Lonesome Dove also recognize the Rangers, and poet Walt Whitman’s 1892 poem Song of Myself pays tribute to the Rangers. A major-league baseball team bears the name, and the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame located on the Brazos River in Waco, Texas, opened in 1968, provides evidence of the significance of the Texas Rangers to law enforcement. The Hall is a repository for historical artifacts associated with the Rangers and helps keep alive the legend and lore of the Rangers. The Rangers began as a small, informal group that used exceptional personal skills and a host of freedoms to their advantage on the range. Their historical successes, albeit controversial at times, helped the force establish a reputation among the elite law enforcement agencies in the world. Times change, however, and the Rangers had to make adjustments. For instance, early Rangers countered Indian arrows with bullets from a revolver. Indians fought on horseback, so in response the Rangers rode a superior horse, the large, American horse that was fed grain or corn instead of grass. The adjustments have been in tune most of the time, yet there have been blemishes. However, a strong argument can be made that no law enforcement agency has aptly changed with the times without missteps. The high-profile

The Texas Rangers

nature of the Rangers often places them in the spotlight, which can both help and hinder the group. The legend of the Texas Rangers feeds on and contributes to the public’s perception of Texas as a ‘‘law and order,’’ ‘‘do-it-yourself justice’’ territory. The historical rebellious nature of Texas and the pride maintained by its citizens are unlike most, if not all, other states. To have a state law enforcement agency with a reputation for ‘‘getting the job done,’’ sometimes at all costs, seems apt for the state. Unfortunately, times change and law enforcement practices must respond. A strength of the Rangers is their ability to succeed in challenging situations. There are seemingly few obstacles they cannot overcome. The popular culture and research literature provide for interesting study in depictions of the Rangers. As with any historical account there is a notable amount of subjectivity in the storytelling. Historians and other researchers use official records, Ranger biographies and autobiographies, news accounts, and other artifacts to tell the story of the Rangers. However, each of these sources is filtered in the sense that an individual at some earlier point in time documented what happened. Such filtering involves subjectivity that distorts storytelling in one way or another. For instance, official records, as well as biographies and autobiographies, contain few accounts of self-incrimination. With regard to the biographical and autobiographical accounts of Rangers and their practices, all, for a large part, are framed in the heroic mold. The role of the historian is to determine what information most accurately depicts the story being told. This task is often easier said than done and undoubtedly involves subjectivity. Given the emotion attached to the Texas Rangers, with some recognizing the group as icons in enforcing social control and others recognizing them as brutal, lawless demagogues, the subjectivity becomes more pronounced. It is not uncommon to encounter skewed accounts of the Rangers in the popular culture, commercial, and academic literatures. Some accounts of the Rangers neglect the ruthlessness associated with Ranger practices, choosing instead to focus on the bravery and valor. Other accounts challenge the historical Ranger reputation through highlighting the injustices inherent in early Ranger attempts to ensure justice. Yet other accounts, for instance, television shows such as The Lone Ranger, glamorize the violence used by the Rangers as part of their social control efforts. Unfortunately, the real truth regarding Ranger practices may never be known. This dilemma is associated with many historical accounts of people, places, and things. So, what’s next for the Rangers? Despite their placement under the Texas DPS, their legend continues and the group maintains many traditions. The Rangers will continue to contribute to the Texas’ most serious crime cases, because their ability to move with more freedom than most law enforcement agencies, their access to the sophisticated DPS crime lab, and their ability to avoid departmental red tape makes them extremely useful. The Rangers will

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continue to find ways to significantly contribute to law enforcement and retain their status as an icon in crime fighting. FURTHER READING Cox, Mike. 1999. Texas Ranger Tales II, 265–79. Plano, TX: Republic of Texas Press. Croke, Bill. 2002. Lone Rangers: When Texas was really Texas. The Weekly Standard 7 (43): 31–33. Draper, Robert. 1994. The twilight of the Texas Rangers. Texas Monthly 22 (2): 76–83, 107–8, 110, 112–13, 118. Eckhart, Jerry. 1993. Texas Ranger’s badge. True West 40 (9): 46–49. Gathman, Roger. 2007. They didn’t ride off into the sunset. Austin AmericanStatesman March 25: J05. The Handbook of Texas Online. Available at: http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/ online/articles/TT/met4.html (accessed May 2, 2007). Hardin, Stephen L. 1991. The Texas Rangers. New York: Osprey. Horton, David M., and Ryan Kellus Turner. 1999. Lone Star Justice. Austin, TX: Eakin Press. Oliver, Willard M., and James F. Hilgenberg, Jr. 2006. A History of Crime and Justice in America. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Proctor, Ben. 1991. Just One Riot: Texas Rangers in the 20th Century. Austin, TX: Eakin Press. Roth, Mitchel P. 2005. Crime and Punishment: A History of the Criminal Justice System. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Texas Department of Public Safety: Texas Rangers. Available at http://www.txdps.state. tx.us/director_staff/texas_rangers/index.htm. (Accessed April 14, 2007). Texas Ranger Hall of Fame: Visitor Information. http://www.texasranger.org/visitor/ visitor.htm/. (Accessed April 14, 2007). Utley, Robert M. 2002a. Tales of the Texas Rangers. American Heritage 53 (3): 40– 44, 46–47. Utley, Robert. 2002b. Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers. New York: Oxford University Press. Webb, Walter Prescott. 1935. The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Weiss, Harold J., Jr. 1994. ‘‘The Texas Rangers revisited: Old themes and new viewpoints.’’ Southwestern Historical Quarterly 97 (4): 620–40. Wilkins, Frederick. 1998. The Texas Rangers: Birth and legend. Wild West 11 (2): 42–48.

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The citizen expects police officers to have the wisdom of Solomon, the courage of David, the strength of Samson, the patience of Job, the leadership of Moses, the kindness of the Good Samaritan, the strategical training of Alexander, the faith of Daniel, the diplomacy of Lincoln, the tolerance of the Carpenter of Nazareth, and, finally, an intimate knowledge of every branch of the natural, biological, and social sciences. If he had all these, he might be a good policeman. —August Vollmer

If ever there was an individual who deserves to be called an ‘‘icon of crime fighting,’’ it is assuredly August Vollmer. Hailed by many as the ‘‘Father of American Policing,’’ Vollmer established a reputation for fighting crime, not through brute force, as was common at the turn of the twentieth century, but rather as an educator, an educator of the police officer. While only having a vocational education himself, Vollmer became a self-educated man through his voracious appetite for reading. Combined with his early experiences as a town marshal (1905–1909), which later evolved into an appointment as police chief in the city of Berkeley, California (1909–1932), Vollmer began to innovate on how best to fight crime. The adoption of an emergency signal system, the department-wide adoption of bicycle patrols, a fully motorized police department, the installation of radios in patrol vehicles, a police training academy, the lie detector, and the establishment of a crime lab are but a few of the innovations with which he is credited. It was, however, his dedication to educating the police officer and turning policing into a profession for which he is most renowned. It was specifically the establishment of a criminology (police science) program at the University of California at Berkeley, to ensure that his police officers were educated and received a college degree, that would lead him down the path of being remembered as an educator. Vollmer would receive the first professorship in Police Administration at the University of Chicago and then later, a similar position at the University of California at Berkeley, where he continued to call for the professionalization of the police through education. Eventually, Vollmer would create what would become the American Society of Criminology (ASC), and its spin-off, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS), two associations dedicated to scientific research and education related to the issue of crime fighting. Born in humble conditions in New Orleans, Louisiana, with little evidence that he would go on to a career in policing, August Vollmer is credited with moving policing out of the political and corrupt era of the nineteenth century and into the modern era of police professionalization. Through his dedication to police reform and education, August Vollmer had a significant impact on policing and should be remembered as one of the greatest icons of crime fighting in America. THE EARLY YEARS He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, to John and Philippine Vollmer, both of German descent, who had been brought to America by their parents.

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John and Philippine met and married in the city of New Orleans. John Vollmer ran a local grocery store that turned out to be reasonably profitable for the family. John and Philippine had three children: Josie, August, and Edward. Josie had been adopted five years before Philippine gave birth to August, who was born on March 7, 1876. Two years later, in 1878, she gave birth to another son, Edward. In May 1884, at the age of eight, August was beaten and bloodied by a local ruffian. His father, finding out that August had run from a fight, chastised his wife for encouraging this type of behavior. John Vollmer would not have one of his children run from an honest fight. So, John Vollmer sent his son to Pierre La Blanc at a local gymnasium to teach him how to box and defend himself. John taught his son never to run from a fight. It would be the last lesson his father would teach him about life, as three months later, he died of a heart attack. In the following months, August was challenged by another one of the local boys. Remembering all his father had taught him and drawing on his new-found skills in boxing, he handily defeated his opponent. Yet, the victory was somewhat lost on August, for life had changed greatly with the unexpected death of his father. His mother had to take over the duties of running her husband’s grocery store, thus allowing her to spend very little time at home. Prior to John’s death, she had always been at home for the three children, and August had found her presence comforting. Now that she was forced to work full-time, he lost the stability of what had been a secure home. There were, however, some benefits to not having a watchful mother’s eye, for he could go anywhere he chose during the day. He and his friends took many hikes to Lake Pontchartrain where he would fish and swim the days away. He was also able to roam the streets of New Orleans and explore the various alleys, storefronts, and neighborhoods that had continued to spring up around the city. Working full-time in the grocery store had, however, taken a toll on his mother’s health and, after running the store for nearly two years, she was forced to sell it. With the proceeds from the sale and realizing she still needed to care for her three children, Philippine decided that her best option was to return to Germany to be close to her family. They packed up what they could and embarked on the long journey across the Atlantic Ocean to live in a small town in Germany. Vollmer was ten years old. Although at first August and his siblings did not like their new life in Germany, they did find that they had more freedom to roam about and there were many new and interesting things to explore. They were enrolled in a local school and they began learning to speak German. Just as Vollmer started to adapt to life in Germany and was becoming proficient in the language, his mother decided they needed to return to the States. Life in Europe is vastly different than in the States, for America has always held much more in the way of conveniences. So, after two years in Germany,

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they once again crossed the Atlantic Ocean on board a ship headed for what had once been their home. The Vollmers returned to New Orleans and quickly settled back into life in the city. August was sent to the New Orleans Academy, a vocational school, where he worked hard in his studies. Under the encouragement and tutelage of the principal, John Wilson, August set his sights on becoming a stenographer and was enrolled in classes on bookkeeping, typing, and shorthand. August enjoyed being back in New Orleans, and despite his studies, he continued to find time to roam the city streets and venture back to Lake Ponchartrain. New Orleans assuredly offered more opportunities for those who lived there and it continued to grow, but it also faced many problems with corruption, local gangs, and crime. Philippine decided it was not the proper place to continue raising her children. After a visit to California, she decided to move the family to San Francisco, a city that afforded many new opportunities and where she had a number of friends. Vollmer wasn’t sure he wanted to leave New Orleans, but he did recognize that he stood a better chance of getting a job as a stenographer in such a large and established city. So, after he finished his course work at the New Orleans Academy, the family packed up, and took the train west to San Francisco. The year was 1888. The family rode on one of the cars that consisted of benches, not exactly the best of accommodations for the long trip, but with Philippine’s dwindling cash reserves, it was the best they could afford. Josie was not happy about the move, as she had developed a group of friends, not to mention a boyfriend she did not want to leave. Yet, that was, in part, one of the reasons for the move. Philippine was not happy with the crowd that Josie was running with, and she also feared the same for August. Perhaps highlighting the realities of life in New Orleans at the time was the fact that a woman riding in the same car as the Vollmer’s was the widow of New Orleans’ police chief David Hennessy, who had been assassinated by the Mafia. This murder, by the ‘‘Black Hand,’’ a Sicilian gang that was fast growing into the Mafia, which would dominate America’s attention in the 1920s and 1930s, was the incident that forced American law enforcement to finally acknowledge the existence of the Mafia. Although nineteen Sicilians were arrested and placed on trial, including one as young as nine, all of them were acquitted of the murder charges. Incensed by the failure of the local justice system to convict, a vigilante group formed, broke into the jail, and killed ten of the accused. In a sense, the widow of David Hennessy was fleeing to San Francisco to start a new life, and so was Philippine. Vollmer, at thirteen years of age, was well aware of this. He was sad for his mother, who had lost her husband, and he was sad for Mrs. Hennessy, who also had lost hers. He was also disappointed in the New Orleans’ Police Department for failing to protect the

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city. As O. W. Wilson, writing shortly before Vollmer’s death, queried, ‘‘it is interesting to conjecture the extent to which knowledge of the Hennessy tragedy may have influenced the future law-enforcement activities of August, who was then twelve’’ (1953, 92). If it had, it must have been on a subconscious level, for August never gave thought to becoming a police officer, even less a police chief. The Vollmers rented an apartment on O’Farrell Street in San Francisco, and true to form, on day one, August began exploring the new city. August told his mother the next day that he was going to find a job as a stenographer to help the family make ends meet. Try as he might, no one was willing to hire a thirteen-year-old self-professed stenographer, despite his training at the New Orleans Academy. He finally had to settle for a job as assistant shipping clerk and messenger at W. and J. Sloane and Company, Household Furnishings. He quickly fell into a routine with working during the day delivering packages around San Francisco, working out at a gym after work, taking hikes, going to the beach, and becoming active in the local church. In 1890, when he was fourteen, his mother decided she was going to have a home built for the family in a small college town across the bay—Berkeley, California. The process of having the house built took almost a year, and during this time, Josie, who had never liked the idea of moving to San Francisco, and assuredly did not want to move to a small town like Berkeley, ran away from home. The family never heard from her again. In 1891, the family moved into the house in North Berkeley, located on Bonita Street. Mrs. Vollmer was able to secure a job as a practicing nurse, thus allowing her to supplement the family’s funds. Around the same time, August was hired as a stenographer by E. H. Driggs. Driggs had refused August a job two years previously but had stayed in contact with August when he delivered packages to his office. August worked for Mr. Driggs for almost a year, but it meant a daily commute from Berkeley into San Francisco. Mrs. Vollmer encouraged August to find a local job in Berkeley, but Vollmer was comfortable with the life he was leading. He worked during the day, hiked the hills around Berkeley, swam in the San Francisco Bay, sailed in his old boat, The Ruby, and even bought a guitar and learned how to strum the popular songs of the day. August also began taking an interest in girls around this time. He met a young lady named Pat Fell at one of the church socials in San Francisco, whom he continued to date even after moving to Berkeley. He also met a young lady named Lydia Sturdevant in Berkeley. Although he liked Pat enormously, having listened to his mother and quit the job in San Francisco, he was now in and out of jobs in Berkeley. Although he wanted to get more serious in his relationship with Pat Fell, she would not condone his transience in the job market; they quarreled and subsequently parted.

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In 1895, at the age of nineteen, August did manage to land a steady job by becoming a partner with a friend, Ted Patterson, in the opening of a coal and feed store in Berkeley. Despite their age, Vollmer’s steady personality won over many of the locals who at first did not take the boys seriously. Many of the locals began to deal with Vollmer and Patterson and over several years, the two made the coal and feed store into a relatively prosperous venture. During this period of his life, August also helped to organize a volunteer fire department for the area in which he lived, North Berkeley. Two years later, Vollmer received the town’s Fireman Medal for his role in forming and maintaining the volunteer fire department. It is clear that August was quickly settling into life in Berkeley and he was fast becoming a wellrespected member of the little college community. His life, however, would quickly change when America declared war on Spain in April of 1898. Within minutes of hearing that America was at war with Spain he told his mother he was leaving in the morning for San Francisco. He was going to sell his half of the business to Ted Patterson and enlist in the Army as a volunteer. His country had issued the call for volunteers, and out of a profound sense of duty he knew he had to answer that call. True to his word, he sold his interest in the coal and feed store and left for San Francisco the next morning. Arriving at the Presidio he enlisted and was assigned to the Third Artillery, Company G. After being issued his khaki uniform, campaign hat, and bed roll and receiving six weeks of military training and drill, he was deemed ready for war. He was allowed to return home for a one-day leave, where he discovered his mother had tried to enlist herself, in the Army Nurse Corps, but she had been turned down because of her age. However, his brother Edward had also enlisted in the Army, and, after being accepted, served for a year in the military band. In June of 1898, at the age of twenty-two, August boarded a ship destined for Manila in the Philippines. The trip across the Pacific was tedious, but August was familiar with long voyages, having previously crossed the Atlantic twice. He passed the time reading aloud from his Bible to his new buddy, Jim Ball. The troopship arrived in Manila Bay in June of 1898, and they witnessed the remains of the flagship of the Spanish admiral, the Reina Christina, as they entered. Seeing the destruction that had been wrought by Admiral Dewey’s fleet, August began to think that the war was probably over and there would be no fighting left for him and the army. However, despite the fact that Dewey had utterly destroyed the Spanish fleet, the Spanish still held Manila, and the army continued to form for its assault on the city. Vollmer began to grow impatient and wondered why the attack did not commence. The reality of the matter was the Spanish wanted to surrender, but they were afraid the local Filipinos would rush in and destroy them, showing no quarter. Hence they were much more willing to surrender to the Americans

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as they knew they would receive safe passage from them. However, Spanish machismo and military dictates would not allow the Spanish to surrender openly, hence a fight had to ensue before they could actually surrender. Thus, an informal agreement was reached that dictated that the Americans would attack, the Spanish would surrender, and the Filipinos would be kept out of the city. August joined in the fight, which lasted longer than intended because of some miscommunication, but still resulted in the taking of Fort Malate. The Spanish surrendered; Manila was captured. August thought that was the end of his fighting days, but little did he know that would quickly change and his more serious engagements were still to come. In the meantime, however, Vollmer’s unit began conducting police duty in and around Manila, something he came to relish, despite its lacking the glory of battle. This lasted for nearly six months. During that time, Aguinaldo began generating a strong following of Filipino insurgents who were attacking soldiers along the roads and rivers and at the ports. As the amount of damage and destruction increased, the military was forced to order the capture of Aguinaldo and his men. It was February of 1899. Captain Randolph, Vollmer’s company commander, was given charge of the Laguna de Bay, a steam-engine riverboat that was converted into a gunship by nailing sheets of steel to the wooden sides of the old boat and installing three-inch gun turrets on the upper deck. The mission of the Laguna de Bay was to secure the rivers and keep them open to travel as they were the main arterial highways of the island. The problem was that Aguinaldo was employing snipers along the river-way, who would shoot at the passing boats and then melt into the dense foliage. Vollmer’s boat had to patrol the rivers and engage the Filipinos, which proved difficult for there were skirmishes and engagements nearly every day. The other difficult part of the operation was that the rivers were often very narrow and the boat did not have adequate turning room. Soldiers on board, like Vollmer, had to enter the water and turn the boat in place, exposing themselves to gunfire. It was a dangerous job and one in which many men were killed. August somehow survived; his only injury was to his hearing from the repeated firing of the three-inch guns on the upper deck. One aspect of fighting any insurgency is trying to win over the locals who are not sympathetic to the insurgents’ cause, but are not necessarily assisting in the fight against them. Vollmer had heard Captain Randolph talk of the Macabebes, an indigenous tribe that was against the insurgency, but were located far upriver. Vollmer volunteered to lead an expedition to make contact with the Macabebes to see how the army could help them to fight the insurgents. At first the commander refused, but after much persuading, August was allowed to try to make contact. A friend, Alfred Vanza, agreed to go with him. They hid in a boat manned by friendly locals underneath a cargo load of nipa grass. At one point they were stopped by some of the

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insurgents, and the nipa grass was prodded with bayonets. Luckily, Vollmer and Vanza were not detected and their guides did not give them away. Eventually, they made contact with the Macabebes, learning that they were in need of both weapons and ammunition. Vollmer and Vanza stayed with the Macabebes for two days, assessing their situation and promising them the guns they needed. Vollmer and Vanza returned safely, having found that the weapons and ammunition were available, but that the greater problem of supply was the ability to deliver them to the Macabebes. Again Vollmer volunteered to take charge of the mission to get the weapons and ammunition to the Macabebes. He decided to take the local train as far as it would go and then transfer the weapons to small canoes, which were far more maneuverable in the Philippine rivers. Armed with better weapons, the Macabebes were able quickly to drive the insurgents from the main waterways and, combined with other actions led by General MacArthur (the father of the famed World War II general), the insurgents were defeated and Aguinaldo surrendered. The insurgency was over. In the end, Vollmer had been involved in the taking of Manila and twenty-four major battles and engagements during the Philippine insurgency. On August 17, 1899, Vollmer boarded a ship, ready to cross the Pacific Ocean once again, this time heading for home. August returned home to a celebratory parade through the streets of San Francisco, followed the next day by the less-than-glamorous process of being mustered out of the army. Vollmer was once again a civilian with no job, but an adequate amount of money saved from both the sale of his interest in the feed store and his year in the military. He arrived home, again to a hero’s welcome, where he found his brother had beat him home by two weeks. In fact, he had been home long enough to land a job with the local telephone company. Although Mrs. Vollmer encouraged August to take some time off, August was restless from the long voyage across the ocean and was ready to move on with his life. He quickly landed a job with a local grocery store, delivering groceries via a horse-drawn wagon. It was not what he wanted, but it managed to keep him busy and he was making money again. Several months later he saw in the local paper that the examination for mail carrier was to be held in Berkeley, a job that interested him more than the delivery of groceries. He tested, passed, and became one of the mail carriers for the little town of Berkeley. He enjoyed the job immensely for it kept him out-of-doors, walking the streets of Berkeley, and he came to be friends with all the people on his delivery route. It also gave him the time to pursue his interests, and the pay was very acceptable for his lifestyle. Although he had toyed with going back into business for himself, he never actively pursued self-employment. The routine of being a mail deliverer was punctuated one day in 1904, when a railroad flat car broke away from its mooring and raced down the hill toward a local commuter train. Although the train operators were not aware

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of their loss, several passersby attempted to throw bricks underneath the wheels to stop it. Although the bricks momentarily slowed the train car, it continued to race downhill. Vollmer, seeing all that had occurred, dropped his bag and took off in a run, leaping onto the runaway car. He managed to get to the hand break and pulled back hard. The car slowed and came to a halt. He managed to not only avert what would have no doubt ended in enormous property damage, he most likely saved the lives of dozens of people by his heroic actions. The newspaper reported that ‘‘Vollmer is very modest about his performance and refuses to admit that he did anything unusual, despite the fact that his friends are congratulating him on his bravery.’’ (Carte and Carte 1975, 21). Although his reputation was already well established, the railcar incident demonstrated his ‘‘grit and courage,’’ so that one day in January 1905, after Vollmer had served as a mail carrier for four years, Mr. Friend Richardson, the editor of the Berkeley Daily Gazette, asked August to stop by his office; he had something he wanted to talk about. A CAREER IN POLICING Richardson greeted Vollmer, engaged in some small talk, and then got to the point of his request for August’s visit. Richardson asked Gus, as he was generally known, to run for town marshal. The current marshal, Charles Kearns, had allowed gambling and opium dens to operate openly in Berkeley, and he failed to enforce the liquor laws. Kerns’ defense was that his small force of only three marshals was too small to enforce the laws. The reality, however, was the corrupt nature of policing during that period, and Kern was as corrupt as they came. While the citizenry grew tired of the lack of enforcement, many of the Berkeley political elites grew tired of the corruption, and they saw Vollmer as the right man for the job. Vollmer had never given policing any consideration, although he had enjoyed his time serving as military police in the Philippines. It was the military experience that Richardson recognized as giving Vollmer credence for the job, coupled with his intimacy with so many citizens of Berkeley from being a mail carrier; he reasoned that Vollmer’s chances of winning the election were good. Richardson told Vollmer that he was needed to clean up the dope dens and gambling joints and to staunch the flow of criminals coming into Berkeley from the surrounding cities. Vollmer was hesitant and told Richardson that he needed to think it over. He spoke with family and friends about the idea, and although his family was united in opposition, all of his friends agreed he was the right man for the job. Vollmer acquiesced and Richardson announced his candidacy the next day in an editorial explaining that Gus Vollmer is a man of mental acumen and sagacity and his service in the army has particularly fitted him for the job of hunting down and

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apprehending criminals. He is a man of great physical powers. He has the physical strength to cope with any criminal and besides he has the necessary grit and courage. (Parker 1961, 41–42)

Another Berkeley newspaper, the Advocate, endorsed Vollmer for marshal by explaining, ‘‘this man is a Berkeley product and known of Berkeley men,’’ and that ‘‘he is ambitious to make a record for himself and the record will be good’’ (Carte and Carte 1975, 17). The fact that Thomas Richard, the mayor of Berkeley; Jim Kenney, the fire chief; Professor Jacques Loeb, a worldrenowned biologist from the University of California; George C. Schmidt, the local postmaster (whom Vollmer had worked for as a letter carrier); and Mr. Friend Richardson, the editor of the Berkeley Daily Gazette, along with the Republican Party, were all behind his candidacy, Vollmer handily defeated the long-time incumbent, Marshal Kearns, by a three-to-one vote. On August 15, 1905, at the age of twenty-nine, August Vollmer was installed as the marshal of Berkeley, California. It should be noted that policing at the time Vollmer began public service as the marshal of Berkeley was not a well-respected career. In fact, it was not even perceived as a career, much less a profession. Policing in America up to that point was rife with political corruption and brutality. As Raymond B. Fosdick, one of the leading police reformers at the turn of the century had argued, the police were ‘‘perhaps the most pronounced failure in all our unhappy municipal history’’ and that ‘‘it cannot be denied that politics lies at the root of much of it’’ (Walker 1977, 3). The political machines controlled much of what policing did, which tended to revolve around the procurement of money through graft. And, in many situations, whether warranted or not, the police resorted to brutal violence over suspects, criminals, and innocent people. As Vollmer himself would later point out, ‘‘the only requirement necessary for appointment as policeman was political pull and brute strength…No preliminary training was necessary, and the officers were considered sufficiently equipped to perform their duties if they were armed with a revolver, club and hand-cuffs, and wore a regulation uniform.’’ It was, as Vollmer so succinctly concluded, an ‘‘era of incivility, ignorance, brutality and graft.’’ Vollmer, however, was an innovative individual and according to Douthit, at the time in 1905, ‘‘Berkeley proved to be a good place for an innovative police leader to begin his work’’ (Douthit 1975, 104). And innovate he did. Drawing on his previous military experience, Vollmer quickly identified the problems of the marshal’s office, began developing a plan for improvement, and set about working to put that plan into action. His first move was to petition the city council in person to expand the force from three to twelve deputy marshals to develop a night patrol to supplement the existing day patrol. In addition, he asked for the funds to put uniforms on all his deputies; up to that point the Berkeley marshal’s deputies simply wore plain clothes

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and a copper badge. This would be the first of many battles with the city council, for as Vollmer would later write, one of his former officers who, having become a police chief himself, was having difficulties with his own city council: What you are suffering right now was endured by me when I first entered police service. It was a constant battle and there was never an occasion in the first few years when I had any more than a bare majority of the Council. It was fight every day and fight every night. (Douthit 1975, 107)

In order to use his force to clean up the town’s crime problem, Vollmer began his policing career by ordering a raid on an opium-gambling den. Although he and his men managed to break up the illegal activities despite advance warning obtained by the gambler, those arrested were let go by the court because of insufficient evidence. Vollmer and his men had failed to adequately identify each of the men for they were all Chinese. Although discouraged, Vollmer redoubled his efforts to avoid those kinds of oversights in the future by educating his marshals on how to not only secure an arrest, but to secure the evidence as well. At about this time there were several attempts to bribe Vollmer to steer clear of certain opium dens and gambling parlors, graft that his predecessor had accepted readily. This was simply an effrontery to August and he took it personally. He specifically targeted these dens, ensuring he had the necessary evidence to convict. Vollmer’s early success with implementing his ideas encouraged him to think more about how best to implement the duties and responsibilities of policing. He adopted the use of bicycles to make his force more mobile and, after several timed checks verified it, faster in its response to calls for service. Thus, Vollmer became the first police chief in the nation to implement such a practice. This action put him not only in the local spotlight, often with much derision, but it brought him national attention as well. Also, after hearing about an emergency signal system being used in Los Angles by a private detective, Vollmer visited the city and brought back the concept to Berkeley. After much harassment on his part, the city council floated a $25,000 bond to pay for the emergency light signal system, which was implemented and proved quite successful. Once again, Vollmer had implemented a first for a public police agency and found himself in the national spotlight, this time receiving much praise, even from the locals. Another innovation developed by Vollmer was through an early study of criminal behavior. As he and his men arrested criminals, he interviewed them to learn not only why they committed crimes, but what kind of crimes they committed and how. Through this careful study he was able to begin classifying the different types of crimes and associating them with certain types of criminals. Vollmer then began writing letters to other police chiefs in the surrounding area to learn about the types of crimes and criminals they were experiencing. In one particular incident, Vollmer found that

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several ministers’ homes were being burglarized in a very similar manner to crimes occurring in Berkeley. One contact with another police department provided Vollmer with a picture and identification of the individual committing these crimes. A short time later the individual was arrested in Berkeley by one of Vollmer’s deputies. As a result of these early experiments, Vollmer adopted the modus operandi file system originally developed by the English constable L. W. Atcherly. Drawing on what he had learned, as well as the knowledge of one of his deputies, Clarence D. Lee, who had been a business clerk before becoming a police officer, Vollmer was able to modify the older Atcherly system of classification and update it into a better and more modern system. Vollmer once again became the first police administrator in America to advance this innovation. On the morning of April 18, 1906, having served in his position of town marshal a little less than one year, Vollmer was startled awake by his bed moving from side to side and his entire house shaking. Berkeley had just experienced the same earthquake shocks that devastated the city of San Francisco. He ran to wake his mother and told her to leave the house. He then reached his brother Edward’s room upstairs where he woke both him and his wife and snatched up his niece, Laura, taking her outside to safety. Once the tremors had stopped, Vollmer ran back inside to get dressed, for he knew there would be plenty of work for his marshals and he needed to get to police headquarters. Once there, he and Jack Le Strange, his executive officer, began riding around Berkeley on their bicycles trying to assess the amount of damage. Eventually their journeys took them to the hill overlooking San Francisco where they witnessed the heavy black smoking rising from the city. San Francisco was on fire. Vollmer knew that the ferryboats and trains would be carrying people fleeing the city and that they would have a refugee problem of epic proportions. The marshals had to act and act fast. The response organized by the city of Berkeley was as efficient as it could be under the circumstances. They opened up many of the city buildings, the local ice skating rink, and the university itself to shelter incoming refugees. Vollmer put out a call for veterans of the Spanish-American War in the local newspaper, for them to come to his aid to police the refugees. His marshals and these newly deputized veterans would prevent looting, police the refugee camps, and investigate any allegation of criminal behavior. Vollmer’s organized response, as part of the larger city response to the earthquake, was efficient and highly effective for dealing with the influx of more than fifty thousand refugees. All of this after only having been in the job of marshal for a little less than a year won him the admiration and respect of all. The refugees who remained in Berkeley, an estimated 25,000, would translate the small town of 20,000, into a rather large town of 45,000 citizens, creating far more work for Vollmer’s growing force. Additional

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deputies were added to the force, bringing the total number to twenty-six regular deputies and one special officer on the payroll. Their uniforms also finally arrived by early 1907. Vollmer, during this same time period, sought not only to advance his own police department, but to advance policing in general. In 1906, police chiefs across California organized the California Police Chiefs Association, a forum for police chiefs to share information and innovations. After having only served as the chief police administrator for Berkeley for two years, Vollmer was elected the president of the new association. In early 1907, another event would spark Vollmer to innovate further, generating a number of ideas that would create a lasting legacy for Vollmer. A dead body found in Berkeley was reported to have been a suicide, but Vollmer thought it might be a homicide. He drew upon his own knowledge and that of his friend at the University of California at Berkeley, Jacques Loeb, a professor of biology, to obtain evidence that it was in fact a homicide. The individual was thought to have committed suicide by taking the poison potassium cyanide. However, Professor Loeb explained that the poison relaxes the body, so there would have been no way in which the dead body could have remained clutching the bottle of pills. The grand jury, however, decided there wasn’t enough proof to rule the death a homicide, stating that without a photograph it could not be proved the dead body had been clutching the pill bottle, thus rejecting what Vollmer thought to be incontrovertible evidence. Rather than wallow in self-pity, Vollmer set himself to learning more about the natural sciences and how they could be better applied to the ‘‘science’’ of policing. Vollmer began educating himself, not only in the natural sciences, but also in the areas of criminal psychology, criminology, and criminal investigation, by reading works by such people as Gross, Pinkerton, Garofalo, Ferri, and Lombroso. By this point it was clear that Vollmer had taken to his position with such relish that he was fast becoming an instrumental leader of the community. In 1907 he became an active member of the Berkeley Charity Organization and the president of the Berkeley SPCA. When his two-year term as marshal was about to expire, he eagerly ran for a second term and won with a wider margin than in his first election. This affirmation of his abilities, mixed with his new-found education, moved him further into his innovation period. Realizing he shouldn’t be the only one on his force with this special knowledge, Vollmer proposed creating a police training school. Vollmer started a police school with the assistance of Walter Peterson, an officer from the Oakland Police Department. Vollmer then drew on his contacts with many of the professors from the university, in order to solicit their support and to teach such topics as ‘‘police methods and procedures, fingerprinting, first aid, criminal law, anthropometry, photography, public health, and sanitation, as well as occasional lectures on related subjects in criminology, psychiatry, and anthropology’’ (Douthit 1975). While the town of Berkeley once

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again found humor in Vollmer’s ideas, his deputies took well to the implementation of his suggestion. As Frank Morn, a leading historian of criminal justice, has pointed out, Vollmer’s establishment of the police school ‘‘was one year before Philadelphia’s School of Instruction was set up, in effect, making Vollmer the father of the police academy movement’’ (Morn 1995). As Vollmer’s ideas began to prove their worth, the city council of Berkeley voted unanimously to change the position of marshal to that of police chief. Rather than being elected every two years, the office of the chief of police would be an appointed position, serving under the will and pleasure of the mayor and city council indefinitely. The city council, of course, voted to make August Vollmer their first police chief, granting him this appointment on August 13, 1909. While Vollmer’s professional life continued to prosper, his relationship with Lydia Sturdevant, now a respected soprano with the Milan (Italy) Opera Company, did as well. In the summer of 1911 they were married and the newlywed couple honeymooned in Los Angeles. While there, he came to the assistance of two police officers who, while affecting an arrest, had come under a mob attack. Back at work, Vollmer began lobbying the city council to build a new police headquarters, because his current office was located in the basement of city hall. In addition, he adopted the use of motorcycles to further enhance the mobility of his officers. However, after several years of contending with injuries from motorcycle accidents and having half of his force in the hospital in 1914, he switched his entire force to police cars, becoming the first police department in the nation to be a fully mobile patrol force. Once again, however, he faced much derision for his actions, only to be vindicated later when the entire nation’s police agencies moved to motor vehicle patrols. In the summer of 1916, he added a full-time criminologist, Dr. Albert Schneider, a professor at the University of California Medical School, to be in charge of the department’s brand new criminal investigation laboratory. This was another first for Vollmer, the first police crime lab in the United States, making him also the father of American criminalistics. It proved beneficial and Schneider quickly demonstrated his worth when a bomb left by the Mafia was recovered and Schneider’s analysis of the bomb led to the arrest of two suspects. This example of the hard sciences being applied to policing would lead Vollmer to create, through a joint effort with the University of California, the first crime lab in the United States. Around the same time, Vollmer decided to move toward not just trying to educate his officers, but to hire college-educated men for his police department. He placed an advertisement in the local paper that read, ‘‘College men wanted for police force. Interesting experience. Learn a new profession. Serve on the Berkeley police force while you go to college. Contact August Vollmer, Chief of Police’’ (Parker 1961, 100). Employing the intelligence tests

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used by the U.S. military for World War I, Vollmer screened the college applicants, using some of the earliest screening applications in policing in America. Once again the newspapers derided Vollmer’s actions and once again Vollmer was vindicated over time; one of his hires included O. W. Wilson, who not only became the police chief of the Wichita Police Department, but the first dean of the school of criminology at the University of California at Berkeley. In addition, as Wilson explained, ‘‘among the ‘college cops’ were men destined to become the heads of a number of law enforcement agencies, several college and university professors, the Chairman of the California Adult Authority, a psychiatrist, a notable physician, and a Major General in the Army’’ (Wilson 1953, 99). As Vollmer himself would later explain, what ‘‘distinguishes the Berkeley police department from others is the fact that rigid entrance requirements were set up many years ago and have been strictly adhered to since that time’’ (Douthit 1975, 107). In addition to hiring college students to be police officers, Vollmer also worked with the University of California at Berkeley to create a three-year course of study for his new hires in police sciences. The curriculum that he had devised nearly a decade earlier and that saw some developments and changes over time was crafted into a very demanding program. In the first year, students would take such classes as physics, chemistry, biology, physiology, anatomy, anthropology, toxicology, and criminology. In the second year, the students would take courses in criminal psychology, psychiatry, police organization and administration, police methods and procedures, and both theoretical and applied criminology. Finally, in the third year they would take such classes as microbiology and parasitology, police microanalysis, public health, first aid, and criminal law. The police and criminology courses were offered exclusively every year from 1916 to 1932 (except for 1927) to Berkeley officers during the summer sessions, but the other courses could be taken throughout the academic year. In order to advance his thoughts related to a police school, Vollmer, along with Schneider, coauthored an article for the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, related to the Berkeley Police School in 1916. In that same issue, a Chicago newspaper editorial was reprinted that encouraged policing to develop into a profession and cited the Berkeley police school model as the most efficient means for achieving this. The editorial quoted Vollmer, who compared police training with that of the well-established models for educating doctors and lawyers by explaining that ‘‘inefficiency and all the ills that follow in its wake may be expected until this professional status is recognized by the public and prepared for by the press’’ (Carte and Carte 1975, 28). Vollmer’s ideas of policing as a profession were starting to gain traction in America, and not just among a few innovative police chiefs. It was beginning to enter the mainstream and was becoming, albeit slowly, conventional wisdom on how best to create a better police force.

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In addition to writing for the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vollmer’s friend Professor Kidd was a member of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, which published the journal out of Northwestern University. He recruited Vollmer to join the association. Vollmer joined without hesitation and threw himself immediately into a leadership role. He was elected the president of the California chapter in 1917 and was elected the national vice president the very next year. At the same time that he was elected president of the California chapter, he was also appointed as an associate editor of the journal, thus establishing a long-term dedication to the journal, for Vollmer would author and coauthor a number of articles for the journal over the next several decades. Vollmer had always had an interest in children throughout his career. He helped to organize the junior police in the years just before World War I and after the war, the School Boy Patrol. During this time frame, hundreds of boys would join, receiving instruction on military drill, and they became actively involved in community service projects. However, it was toward the study of juvenile delinquents that Vollmer would dedicate much of his time. He fully believed that the criminal behavior one exhibited as an adult had its source in childhood and that the only proper means of deterring future criminality was to deal with juveniles when they were young. As early as 1906 or 1907, Vollmer served notice to his deputies that juveniles were not to be placed behind bars. In 1915, Vollmer ordered the department to begin separating crime statistics into two categories: adult and juvenile. In 1919, he helped organize the first Community Coordinating Council for the Prevention of Delinquency, a series of councils that would be adopted by other jurisdictions throughout the United States. One of the initiatives of this council was known as the Hawthorne School Study, a study of juveniles in the first six grades in Berkeley. What the study attempted to understand was the relationship between the personal abnormalities of juveniles and their criminal behavior with that of their social and familial conditions. The study found that some juveniles exhibited the same abnormalities, both personal and social, that many adult criminals exhibited. These children, the study argued, as did Vollmer, should be labeled ‘‘predelinquents,’’ and they should be afforded attention from the social agencies to avoid the onset of criminal behavior. Vollmer was largely reflecting the leading movements of the day. These movements were aimed at ‘‘saving the child’’ from poor social conditions and entering a life of criminality and became the popular reforms by those known as the ‘‘child savers.’’ Even Vollmer’s speeches, such as the one on ‘‘predelinquency’’ that he delivered at the annual meeting of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) in 1921, reflected this progressive movement when he stated that ‘‘when parents are unable, by reason of economic or other conditions, to furnish the proper home training and their offspring acquires delinquent tendencies, or when temptations tear the

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moral fabric, or where bad habits of defective or neglected children are transmitted to others, the community and the child would profit were it possible to place these potential offenders in parental schools until they are taught how to adjust themselves in a normal environment’’ (Douthit 1975, 114). The problems with this popular movement, however, were many. The child savers in reality neglected the rights of children and grossly overestimated their abilities to actually improve the child’s situation, thus becoming, in many cases, part of the problem. In addition, it was very much a government intrusion on the private lives of not only the child, but the family unit as a whole. In fact, the interventions were plainly a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, namely the protections against illegal seizures. Moreover, Vollmer never fully explained what the interventions by the social-science-trained police officers or others would consist of, sticking rather to very vague language suggesting they work closely with the schools and other agencies. Finally, it has been noted that even when relegated to the role of making referrals, Vollmer was not clear as to whether or not the referrals would be mandatory, hence depriving children of their rights without due process, or merely a suggestion, which could simply be ignored. Vollmer’s dedication to developing the police sciences and his work ethic caused him to spend little time at home with his wife Lydia. At the same time, Lydia continued singing with the Milan Opera as well as giving voice lessons to others. Their lives were vastly different and both were wrapped up in their own respective careers. The marriage of nearly a decade began to falter, for they had simply drifted apart. In 1920, although it was unusual for the time, they quietly filed for a divorce and they both went their separate ways. Remaining wrapped up in his work, Vollmer continued to find ways to innovate. In the early 1920s, one of Vollmer’s lasting innovations was his initiative to develop a means of screening his police applicants based on the physical responses the body exhibits when lying. Vollmer called on one of his college cops and future psychiatrist, John Larson, to develop a machine that would do just that. In coordination with Robert Gesell of the Physiology Department at the university, they were able to develop a rudimentary ‘‘lie-detector’’ machine. Vollmer became its first subject, with Larson administering the test. The test was successful as Larson was able to catch Vollmer lying on two occasions. Additional tests supported this anecdotal test; thus the lie detector became not only a means of screening police applicants, but for determining if suspected criminals had committed a crime. Although the polygraph was never fully accepted by the judicial system, it has remained an integral part of the police hiring process, because well over 90 percent of police agencies screen their applicants with the machine. In 1921, Vollmer’s next idea was the creation of a radio communication system that could be placed in the police cars so that headquarters could communicate with officers while on patrol. Vollmer once again put his

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college-educated police officers to work and they adapted a crystal radio set for use in the Model-T Ford patrol cars. Now Vollmer could communicate with his officers in the field, thus providing him the ability to respond faster to crimes and calls for service. Once again, the Berkeley Police Department was the innovator for something that would rapidly become a staple of American policing. That same year, Vollmer, on a visit to San Francisco, happened to run into his former girlfriend, Pat Fell. They went out to dinner. Pat had heard much about August in the San Francisco newspapers. Although they picked up where they had left off in their relationship, Vollmer feared that his work ethic would get in the way of a relationship. Despite this hesitation, he invited Pat to his home for dinner the following week, and they continued to date in this manner until their marriage in the summer of 1924. Vollmer’s reputation and that of the Berkeley Police Department continued to rise. One of the premier police authorities of the day, Raymond B. Fosdick, praised the Berkeley police force in his book American Police Systems, which was published in 1920. Fosdick explained that between 1908 and 1915, the city of Berkeley saw a 73 percent increase in population, but criminal complaints only rose 14 percent during the same time period. Even more impressive was the fact that stolen property had actually decreased by 28 percent during the time frame. Although Vollmer consistently tried to add more officers to his police force, he was only able to add five additional officers during this time period. Fosdick credited Vollmer’s movement of the police department to full motorized patrol for keeping the crime problem in check. Because of the number of innovations on the part of Vollmer and his willingness to speak out on behalf of the Berkeley Police Department, the department—through Vollmer—had become an active member of both the California Association of Chiefs of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP). Having served as the president of the California association in 1908, he began attending meetings of the IACP in the mid1910s, giving a number of speeches on police work. These early speeches were quite often filled not only with his convictions of educating police officers and adapting the hard sciences and technology to policing, but also with rhetoric that the police should be seen as professional social workers. At the 1919 convention, Vollmer gave a speech titled ‘‘The Policeman as a Social Worker.’’ It was assuredly just as controversial then as it would be if given today. Vollmer argued, however, that police officers must engrain themselves in the community, recognize the needs of individuals in the neighborhoods they police, especially the needs of juveniles, and work toward providing and coordinating the necessary social resources to improve the individual and the quality of life in each neighborhood. These ideas are highly reflective of the concepts in policing that became popular in the 1980s and 1990s in American policing, referred to under the rubric ‘‘community

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policing.’’ His advocacy for these and other ideas and, more importantly, his outspokenness on policing overall, would earn him election to the presidency of the IACP in 1921. At the annual convention in June 1922, presiding as president and giving the annual president’s speech, Vollmer advocated for the creation of a centralized national bureau of criminal records and statistics. His argument was that as technology improved and criminals became more mobile, agencies must have a way of communicating with each other to know if a certain individual entering their community had a criminal past or was wanted for a crime in another jurisdiction. In addition, simply having reliable statistics on crime in various towns and cities would give the police agency the information necessary to determine how best to deploy the police to fight crime more effectively. His advocacy would never wane and in time the IACP would adopt a system that eventually gave way to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s criminal records and fingerprint system. As Vollmer was recognized by this time as a leading authority in policing, several representatives from the Los Angeles Police Department, an agency facing numerous allegations of corruption and brutality, came to recruit him for police chief. August declined the offer, but the Mayor of Los Angeles was both persistent and desperate. Eventually a deal was worked out where Vollmer would be ‘‘on loan’’ to the police department for one year, while his administrative staff in Berkeley would continue to operate the police department. Thus, on August 4, 1923, August Vollmer became the police chief of one of the largest police departments in the United States. Vollmer’s first day on the job was taken up with a reception held in his honor. This was not how Vollmer wanted to start on the job; almost immediately he was inundated with the politics of the job, something that was far less prevalent in Berkeley. In fact, Vollmer quickly learned that the political influence had control of most of the department and the city administration. In much the same manner as in his past, Vollmer immediately set about trying to identify the problems of the police department by beginning a study of the issues through both a formal review and with private contacts with the criminal underworld. As in Berkeley, he also organized a vice squad and wanted this squad to fly under the radar of political influence by being untouchable. He gave the responsibility of the unit to a no-nonsense officer, Clyde Plummer. Vollmer also tried to apply the same methods of hiring qualified candidates and educating them for the job in Los Angeles. He implemented the Army alpha-rating intelligence test not only to new candidates, but to the entire force of three thousand officers. He then used the information for purposes of reassigning certain officers to certain duties. He also began moving the police department toward the adoption of a police academy. The new police school would soon develop ties with the University of

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Southern California, and the university’s extension division would soon offer courses in police administration. It did not take long before these changes and his crackdowns on vice operations began giving Vollmer undue political grief. Those who were affected by the attempts at shutting down the vice by loss of graft quickly crafted a way to get rid of Vollmer. They implemented a civil service examination that was structured so the highest score by those who took the test would become the police chief. The political hacks figured Vollmer, with nothing more than a grade school education, wouldn’t be able to pass. Vollmer took the test, writing for eight hours, and handily scored the highest score of the seventy-five individuals who took the test. Vollmer would remain the chief of police of Los Angeles. In the meantime, Vollmer effected a review of the Los Angeles City Jail, of which he was ultimately in charge, and found the conditions to be deplorable. He pushed for the building of a new jail by appealing to both the mayor and the city council. His appeal was for the building of a modern jail, one that would ‘‘consist of one-story buildings with modern plumbing and kitchen facilities and with space for growing flowers and vegetables’’ (Douthit 1975, 117). He also made the proposal that to cut costs, the prisoners should be the ones to build the new jail as they would stand to benefit the most. The mayor and city council, however, thought the proposal was too soft on the criminals and immediately rejected the idea. However, a grand jury that investigated the conditions of the city jail found the same deplorable conditions Vollmer had witnessed. They ordered the city to build a new jail in the manner that Vollmer had called for and to use prison labor. Vollmer’s prison was an early concept of the prison farm, a prison style that would become popular during the 1920s and 1930s in America. Vollmer made it to the end of his temporary tenure as the Police Chief of Los Angeles. In the summer of 1924, his report on the Los Angeles Police Department was issued, and in it he made a number of recommendations for its improvement. The report was met with mixed reviews and controversy, and the rousing cry became ‘‘the first of September will be the end of August.’’ Vollmer’s tenure had come to an end and he returned to his comfortable position as police chief in Berkeley. The report was filed away and ignored for twenty-five years. In 1949, the report was pulled from the shelf and a number of the recommendations were acted on. While simply too far ahead of their time, their adoption in the 1950s coincided with the movement toward a professionalized police system under Chief William H. Parker. Once again, Vollmer’s ideas were vindicated. This time, the vindication was more personal and one he relished. Vollmer, having stepped down from his one-year appointment as president of the IACP and knowing that his departure from Los Angeles was imminent, found the timing to be right, and he proposed to Pat Fell, who

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accepted. They were married on July 23, 1924, and moved into a new house in the Berkeley hills. Unlike his previous marriage, this one would stand the test of time, as Pat’s interests were in her husband and she became his confidante in his work as a police executive. This proved helpful for his reputation as a leading police expert, and his willingness to assist the Los Angeles Police Department gave other agencies the idea of calling on Vollmer for assistance. Many would call on Vollmer for assistance in a variety of ways. One of those calls was from Alameda County, the county in which Berkeley was located. The district attorney’s office made it a policy to send their assistant deputy district attorneys to work in solid and respectable departments to gain experience in noncorrupt jurisdictions. In 1923, one of the new assistants sent to work in Berkeley was Earl Warren. Vollmer and Warren would work on a number of projects together, and they developed a working friendship. In 1925, when Warren was elected the district attorney himself, he continued to work with Vollmer on a number of projects. For instance, when raids were ordered against bootlegging, prostitution, or gambling operations, Warren would call upon Vollmer and his police force because he knew they were not corrupt themselves and, hence, would properly effect the arrests. In addition, whenever evidence needed to be collected and preserved to ensure it wasn’t tampered with, Warren would call on Vollmer’s police department. Thus, Warren was heavily influenced by Vollmer in his understanding of professional police work. When he became the California attorney general, he again called on Vollmer to help establish an education program for all California law enforcement officers. One can only speculate as to the influence that Vollmer had on the future governor of California and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, but there is little doubt that he heavily influenced that young assistant district attorney. Another individual who would call on Vollmer during this same time was J. Edgar Hoover, the acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He visited the Berkeley Police Department to review Vollmer’s records system, as well as to learn first-hand about Vollmer’s other innovations. Although Hoover was clever enough to learn from others and determine how best to apply the innovations of others to his bureau, he was politically astute enough to avoid giving anyone else credit. Therefore, it is not known how much influence Vollmer had on Hoover, but they did maintain a professional correspondence over the ensuing years. In the summer of 1926, Vollmer received another request to conduct a police survey, this time from the Havana Police Department in Cuba. He requested temporary leave from the Berkeley City Council and, once it was granted, he and Pat traveled to Havana. He spent time investigating the status of the agency and authored a report with a number of recommendations for the department’s improvement. Upon his return, he found a similar request for assistance awaiting him from the Detroit Police Department. He

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conducted the study of Detroit’s department and again returned to find more requests. One of the requests was from as far away as Nanking, China. This time he sent one of his trusted captains to conduct the police survey. The next police survey request to which he responded came from the Kansas City Police Department in Missouri, where he recommended that, because of political corruption, the police department should be placed under the authority of a state commission. No sooner was this survey completed than Vollmer received another request from the city of Chicago. It was this survey that opened up a number of new doors for Vollmer. The first door was to serve as the police chief of Chicago, which he declined. His experience in Los Angeles had taught him the true value of remaining Berkeley’s police chief. The second door opened when Vollmer received a call from Robert Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, who offered Vollmer an appointment as Professor of Police Administration in the Department of Political Science. Once again, Vollmer requested a leave of absence from Berkeley, and again it was granted. In 1929, Vollmer served as the first professor of police administration in America, a post he would hold for two academic years. During this time frame, Vollmer would also assist in the organization of a regional peace officer’s association, the creation of the Illinois State Identification Bureau, and with the assistance of his graduate student Spencer Parratt, the completion of a survey of all the police departments within a fifty-mile radius of Chicago. The final door opened was to serve on President Herbert Hoover’s National Law Observance and Enforcement Commission, which was directed by George Wickersham and was commonly referred to as the ‘‘Wickersham Commission.’’ Vollmer served as the primary consultant and lead author for volume 14, the report on The Police. The majority of the work on this monograph was completed while he served as a professor in Chicago. One benefit to his having moved to the University of Chicago was the fact that he was given two graduate students from the Department of Political Science, David Monroe and Earle Garrett, who helped Vollmer prepare his report. Recognizing the valuable asset they had in their own backyard and having worked with Vollmer over the previous two decades, the University of California in his hometown of Berkeley offered him a similar position. He began his tenure in the spring of 1932. Recognizing the difficulties of managing both careers, feeling satisfied with his run as a police executive and excited about the prospects of continuing a new career as a professor of Police Administration, Vollmer resigned his position as chief of police of Berkeley, a post he had held for twenty-six years. Rather than immediately moving into his teaching duties, he and Pat traveled the world for one year, visiting Honolulu, Tokyo, Manila, Singapore, Amsterdam, Glasgow, and London. Along the way, he mixed business with pleasure as he visited all of the major city police departments along the way.

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His reputation, which had become international, preceded him wherever he went. It was also around this time that Vollmer’s career would earn him several prestigious awards. The first came in 1929 when he received the Harmon Foundation Medal, which recognized him for the most notable contribution to the social sciences in the previous year. The second, awarded in 1931, was the Benjamin Ide Wheeler ‘‘Distinguished Citizen of Berkeley’’ award. Finally, the third award was from the Academy of Science, which awarded him the ‘‘Public Welfare Medal,’’ in recognition of his application of scientific principles to police administration.

Timeline of Police Innovations Credited to August Vollmer In 1906, the department installed a basic records system (One of the first in the United States) • In 1906, installed the first Modus Operandi (MO) System. • In 1907, first use of scientific investigation (Kelinschmidt case—analysis of blood, fibers and soil). • In 1907, the department’s police school was established. It included instruction from professors on such subjects as the law and evidence procedures. This was the first school of its kind in the world and had a far-reaching effect on law enforcement. • In 1911, organized the first Police Motorcycle Patrol. • In 1913, changed to automobiles for patrolling. • In 1916, Chief Vollmer established the first School of Criminology at University of California, at Berkeley. Chief Vollmer became a strong advocate of college-educated police officers. • In 1918, began using intelligence tests in recruiting police officers. • In 1920, the first lie detector instrument was developed at University of California and used by our department. • In 1921, began using a psychiatric screening in recruitment. • In 1923, the first Junior Traffic Police Program was established. • In 1924, established one of the first single fingerprint systems. • In 1925, established our first Crime Prevention Division and hired the first police woman. Source: City of Berkeley, CA, http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/police/history/ history.html.

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A CAREER IN ACADEMIA What had made Vollmer’s second career as a professor possible was the receipt of a Rockefeller Foundation grant for a project regarding the administration of criminal justice, which was obtained by the Bureau of Public Administration and the Department of Political Science. The project was able to lure away Herman Adler from the University of Chicago, and it obtained the appointment of Hugh Fuller, an expert on criminal statistics. Vollmer was to teach courses in police administration and conduct research in his area to support a new group major in criminology that was launched in the fall of 1933. The group ‘‘major’’ idea was established as a topical area of concentration that was housed in an existing academic discipline. The study of police sciences, in this case the topical area, or group major, was housed in the Department of Political Science. Vollmer had returned to Berkeley from his work-styled vacation around the world and took up his duties at the University of California at Berkeley as Professor of Police Administration. Just prior to his assumption of his professorial duties, the report he had worked on for the Wickersham Commission was finally published. Although Vollmer’s report presented a police movement that was beginning to adopt professional standards like other bona fide professions, the other Wickersham Commission report on the police that explored police corruption, titled Lawlessness in Law Enforcement, was much more damning of the police in general. Vollmer’s portion of the overall report on The Police was very much a compilation of all he had learned from his police department surveys and was highly reflective of Vollmer’s philosophy of policing. He made numerous recommendations for the betterment and professionalization of the police, including the removal of the police from politics, an independent police chief, higher recruitment and training standards, the adoption of modern communication and record systems, improved working conditions for the police, and the use of an active crime prevention unit. The response to Vollmer’s recommendations was limited, for it was not so much that his recommendations were shunned or disputed, it was simply a reality that during the Great Depression municipalities did not have the funds to implement any of the recommendations, and the report was relegated to the shelves to gather dust. Even the recommendation to improve police working conditions could not be maintained in his own police department; two months after his retirement, the city of Berkeley cut the pay of its police officers. One of his first actions as a professor was to assist with the development of the first college-level training program in the country, not at the University of California, but at San Jose State College in San Jose, California. The program had actually developed out of an earlier collaboration with Earl Warren, in 1930. They had combined to create a police science training program. The first course began as an extension course taught at San Jose

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Teachers College. At the time Vollmer became a professor, the program was moving toward becoming a two-year academic program, and Vollmer was called in to help develop the program. The program he helped create was very reflective of Vollmer’s ideas of the well-educated police officer. According to Douthit: The first year requirements consisted of courses in police administration, physical education, psychology, English, chemistry, physical science, and political science with electives in commerce (typing and stenography) and physics. In the second year students took advanced courses in police administration, sociology, physical education (boxing and wrestling), introduction to psychiatry, bacteriology (micro-analysis), student health (first aid), political science, and American institutions, with electives in commerce, public health, and foreign languages. (1975, 116)

The curriculum leaned more broadly and away from police-specific classes, for as Vollmer explained, ‘‘After spending nearly a quarter of a century instructing policemen I have come to the conclusion that the mechanics of the profession are of less importance than a knowledge of human beings’’ (Douthit 1975, 117). The program was finally established in 1935 and was known as the San Jose State College Police School. Vollmer’s desire to create a program in higher education for police did not stop with the San Jose program, but continued with the program in which he was currently teaching. While it was more oriented toward concepts of administration and criminological theory, Vollmer envisioned a program that would consist of more police-specific courses, such as police science, that would ultimately lead police officers toward a bachelor’s degree in policing. Vollmer was, however, also realistic about the prospects of that happening. He knew that a degree program tailored specifically to police was best left to the future. In the meantime, he focused his energies on professionalizing the police and training future police administrators. In 1933, he was given the opportunity to make an assessment of police progress since the turn of the century by the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. He took on the task with relish and spoke at the end about the changes in policing, of which he had been an instrumental part, and what was beginning to be recognized as the police professionalization movement. Vollmer highlighted the fact in the article titled, ‘‘Police Progress in the Past Twenty-Five Years,’’ when he explained that ‘‘in no other branch of government have such remarkable changes been made as those made in the field of police organization and administration during the last quarter of a century’’ (Douthit 1975, 110). He continued: One can scarcely believe that such great advances could be made in so short a time. It is a far cry from the old politically-controlled police department to the modern, scientifically-operated organization. Under the old system, police

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officials were appointed through political affiliations and because of them. They were frequently unintelligent and untrained; they were distributed through the area to be policed according to the hit-or-miss system and without adequate means of communication; they had little or no record system; their investigation methods were obsolete; and they had no conception of the preventive possibilities of the service.

Vollmer would specifically cite advances in ten specific areas that, according to Samuel Walker, a leading police scholar, included five dealing ‘‘with internal administration and five dealing with scientific crime fighting’’ (Douthit 1977, 135). Walker pointed out that the article demonstrated a strong shift in Vollmer’s thinking about policing. In just over a decade, Vollmer had left behind the rhetoric of the police officer as social worker and had moved to the more contemporary and conventional idea of the police officer as crime fighter. Thus, the application of bureaucratic principles to policing (the first five advances), combined with the latest technology (the second five advances), were all geared toward equipping the police with the proper organizational structure and tools to combat crime. The police professionalization movement was not only well entrenched, but it had also become well defined. Over the ensuing years, between teaching and writing various articles and book reviews, Vollmer tackled the arduous chore of writing several books. The first major book at the time was coauthored with Alfred E. Parker, a local schoolteacher and friend of Vollmer’s. The book was titled Crime and the State Police and was published in 1935. It was largely based on Vollmer’s changing beliefs about policing. He had moved from advocating for the police officer to be a social worker to seeing the police officer as a professional crime fighter using all of the tools available to him, ranging from the latest in technology to the scientific study of criminals. In order to further the latter, Vollmer saw the centralization of police forces as a far more efficient means of effecting this professionalization. Writing to the president of the Los Angeles Bar Association in 1934, Vollmer explained that ‘‘it is my opinion that a single state police force which would eliminate all other police forces in the state would be much more efficient and economical than the multitudinous police units that are to be found in California’’ (Douthit 1975, 118). As Vollmer so succinctly declared, ‘‘we could wipe out of existence all constables, sheriffs, village marshals, municipal police forces, the state motor vehicle police force, and a number of other state forces that have police power, and substitute a carefully selected and well-trained body of men to do their work.’’ One does have to wonder if Vollmer ever considered the fact that were this plan implemented, his beloved position of chief of the Berkeley Police Department would have been one of the positions eliminated. Regardless, this new model of centralized control of police forces at the state level was the thrust of the new book. In the publication, Vollmer and Parker praised the efficiency of the European police forces, all of which

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were highly centralized and controlled. In particular, they singled out the Guardia Civil of Spain, which was a military-structured national police force, as being an exemplary agency. Although Vollmer was serving as a professor during the early thirties, he still advocated for various programs that he had supported as a police chief. One such program was the centralized federal program of fingerprint records. In 1935, a new initiative was pushed by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), for all Americans to submit their fingerprints to the FBI’s Civil Identification Division. Vollmer actually had advocated this same program in 1930 while still the police chief, but it was not part of a national campaign, rather simply an insider’s request and one that Vollmer made to the citizens of Berkeley. More than two thousand citizens submitted their fingerprints to the FBI. In 1935, however, the FBI launched a national campaign and Professor Vollmer got behind the four-month campaign. To highlight the initiative, Robert G. Sproul, president of the University of California at Berkeley, posed for a photograph with Vollmer before submitting his own fingerprints at the university-based fingerprint station. The net result was more than fifty-two thousand sets of prints forwarded to the FBI’s Civil Identification Division. Perhaps Vollmer’s greatest contribution to the research of policing, and what many see as his greatest contribution to policing overall, was the publication of his book The Police and Modern Society in 1936. The book was written in association with the Bureau of Public Administration, one of the grant recipients under which he was teaching at the University of California at Berkeley. The book presented a holistic treatment of Vollmer’s views regarding the police role in society and its organizational structure. The book was divided into six major sections. The first looked at major crimes and the role of the police in relation to them. It is here that Vollmer’s earlier notions of the police officer as a social worker had completely disappeared, for Vollmer clearly saw the proper role of the police officer as that of crime fighter. His second area was vice control. He argued the police were not the proper agency to deal with the problems of vice and that it was this type of enforcement that often led many departments into corruption and lawlessness. Vollmer advocated that other social institutions should be responsible for restraining such vices as gambling, prostitution, and alcoholism and that the police should only become involved when a crime had occurred. The next area that Vollmer explored was the police role of controlling traffic. While Vollmer stated that it was a role and function of the police, he clearly was not an advocate of this role and found it a duty that was mostly beneath the professional crime-fighting police officer. The next area was general services, which Vollmer recognized as a necessary duty of the police officer, and, in the next chapter, he advocated heavily for the creation of crime prevention units, because he believed a true profession would work to prevent crime before it occurs. Finally, Vollmer focused on the proper means

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of recruiting, hiring, promoting, and organizing police personnel. His conclusions and recommendations for the future were once again highly reflective of Vollmer’s passion, the education of the police. Vollmer truly believed that most of the problems with the police and all of the problems they faced could be overcome through education, training, and the application of scientific principles to all facets of policing.

RETIREMENT Vollmer retired from the University at the end of the spring term in 1937. He moved all his papers and books into an office at his home on Euclid Avenue, where he took up writing about criminology and police administration. In his retirement, Vollmer limited his travels and tended to stay closer to home. In fact, wherever and whenever possible, he preferred to work entirely out of his home office. He conducted several seminars in his home on how to conduct police surveys with several of the senior officers of the Berkeley Police Department, through correspondence he consulted and advised police chiefs, many of whom were his former officers, from all over the country, and he engaged in other teaching and writing projects. In 1939, Vollmer saw one of the things he had championed not only as a police chief, but as a professor, come to fruition: the establishment of his beloved police studies as a full major. After his retirement from academia, David Barrow, the chairman of the Political Science Department, and Professor A. M. Kidd attempted to keep Vollmer’s ideas alive. It took more than a year, but they finally had gained the support of the university president, Robert Sproul, to create a freestanding department. Prior to this move, the university used the ‘‘group major’’ concept, which allowed for a major area of study to be housed within a host department of discipline. Hence, police studies had become the group major within the Department of Political Science. Now, however, it was rolled out from under political science to become its own department. As Morn explained, this move ‘‘was a significant development, and it testifies to the academic political skills of Vollmer’’ (1995, 37). Still further, with Vollmer’s lobbying, O. W. Wilson, Vollmer’s protege, became the chair of the newly created department. Wilson moved to Berkeley in the summer of 1939, in advance of the program, beginning his own academic career in the fall of that year. Vollmer continued to remain very active in terms of academic pursuits. In the early 1940s, he contacted the Charles C. Thomas Publishing Company and persuaded them to begin a book series on law enforcement. This line of books would become literally a reference shelf for police departments across the country on everything from patrol work and crime scene investigations to police administration. Also, popular at the time were books aimed at the young teen crowd that told true-life police stories. Pulp magazines were rife

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with these types of stories, and J. Edgar Hoover himself had written (with assistance) a number of these FBI crime file books. Vollmer agreed to write one with Alfred E. Parker, a former student at Berkeley who became good friends with August in the 1920s and would not only write books with Vollmer, but also several books about Vollmer after his death. The book was titled Crime, Crooks, and Cops, and was published in 1937. Vollmer did not look back favorably on this book’s publication for he once reflected that the book was ‘‘in a class with Heine Faust pot-boilers—only much worse!’’ (Carte and Carte 1975, 81). Although these books remained very popular during the 1940s and 1950s, the book did little to enhance Vollmer’s reputation. As America entered World War II, several wars now removed from the Spanish-American War, Vollmer rendered his services once again. He became active in a group that went by the lengthy title of the Pacific Coast Committee on American Principles and Fair Play. The organization was aimed at reducing the hostility against the Japanese community living in America. After the surprise attack on the United States by Japan in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, the citizenry became very hostile toward all Japanese, and the government responded by relocating all Japanese to internment camps spread mostly throughout the American southwest. The committee, while not opposed to the relocation of the Japanese, attempted to alleviate the animosity toward the Japanese by placing the internment under civilian control. It was at the time under military control, where it would reside for the remainder of the war. In addition to the committee’s attempts at changing the agency responsible for oversight, the group also ‘‘fought the efforts by some groups to pass legislation discriminatory against the Nisei, including efforts to remove their citizenship.’’ The committee disbanded in 1945, upon the unconditional surrender of Japan to the United States. Although the war had put Vollmer’s ideas for a school of criminology at the University of California at Berkeley on the back burner, he continued to move forward with his advocacy of this academic field, especially as a means of educating police officers. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the war, Vollmer hosted a meeting in his home on Euclid Avenue to talk about the future of police education. The meeting was a group of powerful, although not necessarily like-minded, individuals interested in police education, including Benjamin W. Pavone, the chairman of the Peace Officers Training Division of San Francisco Junior College; William Wiltberger and Willard Schmidt from San Jose State; O. W. Wilson, University of California at Berkeley; and V. A. Leonard of Washington State College. There was much debate regarding the emphasis that should be placed on educating police officers: whether it should be more theoretical and academic in nature or if it should be more practitioner-oriented. While the debate was never fully settled and in many respects continues to this very day, those in attendance did agree that a society for the advancement

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of criminology should be formed. The decision was made to call it the Association of Heads of College Police Schools, and Vollmer was nominated to be the first president of the association. O. W. Wilson would serve as president the next year, a position he remained in for the next seven years, despite his own service in the military. Part of the reason for this lengthy tenure had to do with the war, which interfered some with the plans for the society. In 1946, with the war over, a meeting was held in Berkeley, and the name of the society was changed to the Society for the Advancement of Criminology. The society continued to meet yearly in Berkeley until 1956, the year after Vollmer’s death. The next year, the conference was held in Los Angeles and the name of the organization was once again changed to the name it still holds today: the American Society of Criminology (ASC). In 1959, the Society created the August Vollmer award, naming it for its founder, and it has been awarded annually to recognize outstanding research in the field of criminology. Although the war had ended and America was entering a time of prosperity and hope, Vollmer’s life was met with one of those inevitable tragedies; Pat, his most trusted companion, died. Vollmer was greatly affected by her passing for she truly was his life companion, but, as in the past, he busied himself by throwing himself into his work. It was at this point that he began the research and writing for his final book, perhaps his second most respected book. It was published in 1949 and was titled The Criminal. While his most renowned book, Police and Modern Society, was focused on police administration, this book was aimed at categorizing and dealing with the theoretical issues surrounding criminality. In his early years, Vollmer had constantly been in search of one theory to explain criminality. As he progressed in age he realized that there was not necessarily one theory to explain all crimes and that the nature of crime and criminality was vastly complex. The book, thus, became a compendium of various theories drawn from a number of disciplines. He divided the book into chapters on biological, physiological, psychological, sociopsychological, and pathological theories. Finally, at the end of the book he dealt with the various aspects of law enforcement and how it related to crime and criminality. Vollmer concluded that more research was needed, but he held out hope that medical science would be a significant contributor to understanding criminality and that the key to prevention remained in early childhood. As Vollmer entered the new decade of the 1950s, he was able to witness one of his early endeavors finally come to fruition. In 1951, the University of California at Berkeley established the School of Criminology. This accomplishment was the result of his decades of working toward bringing a police education program to the college campus. His former police officer and student, O. W. Wilson, was appointed as the first dean of the new school.

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Although Vollmer was now finally able to witness the establishment of what would become, in part, his legacy, he was now in his mid-seventies and beginning to suffer from Parkinson’s disease. He was fast losing the ability to take care of himself and he was also losing his sight. Within several years he was diagnosed with cancer, and he confided to several close friends that ‘‘he would never become a bed patient, a person who would be helpless and a concern to other people’’ (Carte and Carte 1975, 82). He also did not want to take the numerous medications that he was prescribed. These feelings became so strong, that in the end, he committed suicide with the same revolver he had carried as the police chief of Berkeley. Vollmer died on November 4, 1955; he was seventy-nine. Despite having been married twice, he left behind no children, only a legacy that continues to reverberate through the years. In the editorial pages of a brand new police journal, published shortly after Vollmer’s death, the editors noted that ‘‘the Vollmer system of police administration attracted national attention, illuminating the way for an emerging profession and launching the American police services into a period of transition, the full implications of which are not yet generally understood’’ (Douthit 1975, 120). Since the time that was written, that has changed. The full breadth and depth of Vollmer’s contribution to the police has not been lost on those scholars of policing, and in both the criminal justice and criminology disciplines, academicians continue to attribute much of the professionalization movement to Vollmer. Despite this fact, little has been written beyond the scholarly endeavors about his life. In the early 1960s, Alfred E. Parker, Vollmer’s friend and coauthor on several books, would begin the research to write a biography of Vollmer. Drawing on his previous conversations with Vollmer that had developed through both his professional and personal relationship, Parker was able to write the only true biography on Vollmer’s life written to date. The book, while an adequate overview of Vollmer’s early years and his time as a police chief, was written for the ten- to twelve-year-old crowd. Parker, as he reached his later years, once again picked up the idea of reviewing Vollmer’s life through a book detailing the history of the Berkeley Police Department. This book, aimed toward the adult reader, did a good job of focusing on Vollmer’s life, but was limited because of the fact the book attempted to be more about the police department, rather than its first police chief. Thus, it would appear that Vollmer’s legacy is one not forgotten in the field of criminal justice and especially in policing, but it is oddly lacking in a general historical sense. Nathan Douthit, writing in 1975, clearly stated that ‘‘it is certain that when historians set out to explore the development of police professionalism, one of the most important figures will be the man who served as the head of the police department in Berkeley, California, for over a quarter of a century—August Vollmer.’’

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Gene and Elaine Carte, writing that same year on police professionalism, stated that ‘‘through his writings and teaching and by the example of his own department—probably the most effective and creative ever developed— Vollmer made the best case possible for the ‘new policing’’’ (Carte and Carte 1975, 3). As they further explained, ‘‘in a field in which leadership abilities are traditionally preeminent, Vollmer was the outstanding leader of the first half of th[e twentieth] century, and his own skills were inextricably related to the image of policing that he created.’’ As a police chief with a cadre of ‘‘college cops,’’ he was able to leave a legacy through the numerous officers he educated, trained, and influenced, who left the Berkeley Police Department to become police chiefs in their own right. These included such notables as George Brereton, William F. Dean, Walter A. Gordon, John D. Holstrom (later a Berkeley police chief), V. A. Leonard, William Wiltberger, and, of course, O. W. Wilson. In terms of academia, as a professor, he again had the same kind of impact on the field through his proteges’ creation of numerous college programs in police studies. These included Frank Boolsen, who helped create the University of Toledo’s program; Oscar G. Olander, who pushed for the program at Michigan State College; George Brereton’s program at San Jose State; V. A. Leonard’s program at Washington State College; and, once again, O. W. Wilson’s leadership in Vollmer’s own program at Berkeley. In addition, two of these proteges, V. A. Leonard and O. W. Wilson, went on to write, like Vollmer, highly influential books, A Theory of Police Administration and Police Administration, respectively. In terms of the program of police studies in higher education, Vollmer’s legacy would perhaps reach the farthest. He helped to create a major in police studies and subsequently a School of Criminology at the University of California at Berkeley, and these types of programs were emulated far and wide across America. While Vollmer always envisioned them as a training mechanism for police officers, the dispute between the programs being practitioner-oriented or theoretically driven would grow, but would contribute greatly to Vollmer’s legacy. While Vollmer helped create what would become the American Society of Criminology and served as its first president, the field of criminology came to focus more heavily on sociological theory by the 1960s as did the society. Those in the ASC who had felt, like Vollmer, that criminology should focus more on the police practitioner, broke away and created their own organization: The International Association of Police Professors (IAPP). As the focus on police, courts, and corrections developed in the 1960s and came to be known as ‘‘criminal justice,’’ the IAPP changed its name to the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS), becoming the premier organization for analyzing the American system of justice. Although Vollmer was not there at its founding, it was clearly in line with his vision for higher education, and, thus, a part of his extensive legacy.

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Vollmer left America an extensive legacy, one that continues to reverberate nearly a century later. Moving the police from the political era into the reform era, as it has been called, through his adherence to the professionalization movement, coupled with his devotion to educating the police, have largely been achieved. Moving police education from the realm of practitioner skill training to that of higher education is most evident today in the number of police officers with advanced degrees and the number of criminal justice and criminology programs across the United States, but perhaps his greatest vision for the future, that every police officer would be required to have a degree in the police sciences and that armed with this knowledge they would have the greatest ability to control crime and disorder, has not been achieved. Yet, it remains a goal for the future, a future born out of the innovative police reformer, August Vollmer. NOTE The author thanks Ronald ‘‘Chip’’ Burns of Texas Christian University for agreeing to give up his right to author this chapter on the life of August Vollmer. I also thank my graduate assistant, Hector Esparza, for his invaluable help on researching the life of August Vollmer. To both of you, I am most gratefully indebted. FURTHER READING Carte, Gene E., and Elaine H. Carte. 1975. Police Reform in the United States: The Era of August Vollmer, 1905–1932. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Douthit, Nathan. 1975. August Vollmer, Berkeley’s first chief of police, and the emergence of police professionalism. California Historical Quarterly 54:101– 24. Morn, Frank. 1995. Academic Politics and the History of Criminal Justice Education. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Parker, Alfred E. 1961. Crime Fighter: August Vollmer. New York: Macmillan Company. Parker, Alfred E. 1972. The Berkeley Police Story. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Vollmer, August. 1936. The Police and Modern Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Vollmer, August. 1949. The Criminal. Brooklyn, NY: The Foundation Press. Vollmer, August, and Alfred E. Parker. 1937. Crime, Crooks, & Cops. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. Walker, Samuel. 1977. A Critical History of Police Reform: The Emergence of Professionalism. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Wilson, O. W. 1953. August Vollmer. The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 44 (1): 91–103.

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When one thinks of directors of government agencies in Washington, D.C., there is always one who comes to mind first for many—J. Edgar Hoover. He directed the FBI from 1924 until his death in 1972, surviving seven presidents of the United States and sixteen attorneys general. He has been called a master of politics, the Man, and the Power. Many thought of him as a bully who held too much power. He was answerable only to the president and the attorney general, neither of whom, in reality, had much power over him at all. Hoover did become friends with a few presidents. Hoover and Richard Nixon became friends despite Nixon’s rejection from the Bureau during an earlier job interview. Nixon once asked Hoover why he was not hired for the position; Hoover explained to Nixon that the Bureau’s budgets were cut that year, forcing the Bureau to freeze all hiring. If Nixon had checked the Bureau budgets from 1937, he would have discovered that the Bureau’s budget was actually increased that year by $825,000 from the previous year. Time, however, would prove that the friendship would disintegrate. By the time Nixon became president, he actively advocated removing Hoover from his position, but he could not bring himself to ask Hoover for his resignation. Hoover was not worried. He had outlasted the previous six presidents, and he was confident that this one posed no real threat.

EARLY LIFE OF HOOVER John Edgar Hoover was born on January 1, 1895, to Dickerson and Annie Hoover, a middle-class family living in Washington, D.C., as the baby of four children. He came quickly after the death of their second daughter to diphtheria at the age of three. His father and grandfather worked for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. However, it was his mother who had the greater influence on Edgar, as she used to call him. Hoover’s ancestors immigrated to America from Switzerland in the early 1800s. Annie came from this ‘‘Swiss stock’’; her grandfather, Hoover’s great-grandfather, was the first Swiss consul-general to the United States. His great-uncle was one of the Swiss stonemasons who worked on the Capitol. Hoover grew up in their family home on Seward Square in Southeast Washington, D.C., and remained there until his death in 1972. The area was known to locals as ‘‘Pipetown.’’ It was a two-story stone home in a middleclass neighborhood, surrounded by many other mid-level Washington bureaucrats’ homes. Annie lived in the house with Hoover until her death; Hoover was forty-three when she died. Annie Hoover was a strict disciplinarian with very ‘‘old-fashioned virtues,’’ which she impressed upon her children. She was a staunch Lutheran, which influenced Hoover at an early age. He attended Bible school religiously and sang in the church choir; he was even rewarded for not missing church once in fifty-two straight weeks.

J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI

Annie’s attempts to mold her son into religion produced mixed results. After meeting a Presbyterian minister named Dr. Donald MacLeod, he joined the Presbyterian Church against his mother’s wishes. Hoover even considered becoming a Presbyterian minister himself; however, he later abandoned this career path for another where he also believed his talent of being able to ‘‘distinguish between right and wrong’’ would be put to good use. Hoover did, however, hold close to his mother’s teachings. He taught Sunday School for some time, and he even ‘‘served as assistant superintendent of the church’s junior department’’ (Toledano 1973, 30). Hoover began his education at Brent Public School, where he was known as a loner who read his Bible quite a bit. He never participated in neighborhood fights where the boys from Seward Square would fight the boys from other neighborhoods. He was a good, quiet student who loved sports, although he did not excel much at any. He was prevented from playing football because of his small size; however, he did make the baseball team for a few years. As a young child, Hoover learned a hard work ethic and the value of a dollar. He created his first job at the age of twelve. Hoover began standing outside of the local grocery store advertising himself to carry groceries home for tips. His first employer paid him ten cents to carry two baskets of groceries for about two miles. He quickly learned the sooner he got back to the grocery store, the sooner he could start earning more money; thus, he would run back to the grocery store as quickly as possible. This resulted in some of his family and friends calling him ‘‘Speed.’’ Young Hoover began working every day after school and all day on Saturday from 7 A.M. till 7 P.M. Hoover later stated, ‘‘I could earn as much as two dollars a day. In those times, that was a king’s ransom.’’ (Toledano 1973, 30). Hoover showed his hard work and determination continuously throughout his youth. He created the Weekly Review at the age of eleven, a newspaper he wrote and edited himself about activities and observations on Seward Square. ‘‘The two page mimeographed handout told of life in Seward Square’’ (Hack 2004, 34), and it resulted in Hoover’s meticulous journal entries about the daily activities and observations on his street. The weekly newspaper sold to neighbors for a penny apiece. Hoover had a serious obstacle to overcome as a child: his stuttering problem. His father promised Hoover the disability would disappear with time; however, his mother was more concerned with the condition. She took him to several specialists to try to overcome the problem. One doctor suggested that he simply talk faster because the faster he talked the less opportunity there would be for him to stutter. Hoover practiced reading as fast as he could for many hours, and he was not only able to solve his stuttering problem but he also improved his reading level dramatically. Hoover not only overcame this disability but went on to lead his high school debate team successfully several years late. The team went undefeated for twelve straight matches.

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Hoover chose not to attend the high school in his neighborhood. Instead, he chose to walk three miles one way every day to attend Central High School because it was a much bigger and better school. Although Central High was still a public school, they were geared more toward gifted students with a much more expanded curriculum. They offered foreign languages, classic literature, and advanced science in preparation for college. Hoover quickly became involved in the library club and the choir. After being cut from the football team before the first practice, he tried out and made the track team. He soon excelled and mastered the short sprints division. One of Hoover’s prized accomplishments at Central High School was his participation in the school cadet corps. Hoover progressed quickly, and by his senior year he had passed the ROTC officer’s exam, made captain, and was given command of Company B, which he led down Pennsylvania Avenue at Woodrow Wilson’s inaugural parade. He was later given command of Company A, which he would use as a pattern to organize the Bureau. Hoover found it difficult to make friends in high school; thus, he stuck to studying. He took rigorous schedules, including accelerated classes in sciences such as chemistry, physics, Latin, and history. Hoover graduated with high honors from Central High School and was selected valedictorian of his class. He was offered a scholarship to attend the University of Virginia. Instead, he decided to stay at home and attend college at George Washington University, where he joined the Kappa Alpha Order and graduated with honors with a law degree in 1916. He went on to graduate a year later with his master’s in law. During that time, Hoover worked in the Library of Congress to help put himself through school. He quickly advanced to clerk and began earning an annual salary of $840.

HOOVER’S EARLY CAREER While studying at George Washington University, Hoover took a special interest in a U.S. postal inspector from New York City named Anthony Comstock, who was also one of the founders of an organization called the Society for the Prevention of Vice. Comstock was known for his relentless fight against ‘‘fraud and vice as well as pornography and information on birth control.’’ It has been suggested that Hoover studied Comstock’s techniques and later modeled his own crime-fighting techniques after them. The year 1917 proved to be full of life-changing events for Hoover. Just as he was graduating from law school, the country was drawn into World War I. Hoover was criticized by many for not joining the war effort; however, it has never been decided whether or not he really was a ‘‘draft dodger.’’ The facts could be interpreted either way. For example, Hoover’s father, Dickerson, Sr., had a severe mental disorder that caused his mood to


fluctuate between bouts of irritability and extreme sadness. He even spent several months in a sanatorium for the condition. Literally a day before the United States declared war, he was forced to resign from his position from the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey without pension, where he had worked for the U.S. government for forty-two years. With their sister Lillian sick, it was left to both Hoover and his brother Dickerson, Jr., to support their family. It became necessary for Hoover to gain employment, and the Justice Department was hiring many young attorneys. Hoover’s law clerk position with the Justice Department was draftexempt, and it paid an annual salary of $990. However, Hoover has been criticized nonetheless because he did not apply for this new position with the Justice Department for three months after he graduated from law school, indicating that the money was not as necessary as one might think. Hoover’s career with the Justice Department took off rapidly. He was promoted after only three months and was again promoted after another three months. Now in charge of the Enemy Alien Registration Section, he was well on his way to making a name for himself at the department. He was quickly recognized for his hard work ethic by John O’Brian, special assistant to the attorney general, for his long hours, quick and efficient ability to get things done, and his habit of also working Sundays. Hoover was also known for his well-dressed appearance, his eagerness to complete even the smallest of tasks, and his pursuit of new duties. As department head, Hoover led a team of fourteen individuals who were dedicated to keeping America safe from foreign threats. Because of World War I espionage and the threat of German spies, Hoover was given the challenge of sorting through raw intelligence collected by an amateur ‘‘spy hunting’’ organization called the American Protective League. The group developed out of a public fear of German infiltration into American society in an attempt to corrupt the war effort. This spy organization involved 250,000 members in six hundred cities. Their activities resulted in an immense amount of collected raw intelligence on friends and neighbors in their own communities. Although many of these reported suspicious activities ended up being nothing more than unfaithful husbands, Hoover and his team were given the task of sorting through the intelligence and determining any potential leads. Hoover spent the next two years at this task, meticulously evaluating each case. This thoroughness did not go unnoticed. Hoover’s supervisors continued to notice and acknowledge Hoover with raises in his annual salary and by giving him additional duties. By 1918 Hoover was allowed to hire his own secretary to keep his files and do all of his typing. Hoover’s department began to develop and grow. They eventually began sending undercover agents out to investigate organizations who protested the war effort; thus began Hoover’s focus on entrapping foreign ‘‘radicals’’ who opposed U.S. involvement in the war.

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By the age of twenty-four, Hoover had risen to Special Assistant to the Attorney General, and, as of August 1, 1919, he received the break he needed to accelerate his career. It started with a terrorist ring that sent thirty-nine bombs to various political figures in Washington, D.C. One bomb exploded in front of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s house, demolishing half of it. Luckily, the police recovered the rest of the bombs before anyone was seriously injured; however, the damage had already been done. In light of World War I and the ‘‘red scare,’’ the threat of a communist invasion prompted the attorney general to appoint Hoover as the head of the General Intelligence Division. Hoover’s new tasks included ‘‘studying subversion in the United States and recommending ways and means to contain it.’’ (Toledano 1973, 51). All special agents from the Bureau of Investigation, which would later be renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935 by Hoover, were to report to Hoover with their intelligence so he could better conduct his research. Hoover condemned communism using two strategies: appealing to citizens’ morals and their patriotism. Hoover claimed that communism was morally and ethically wrong, and he asserted it posed a threat to democratic freedoms. Hoover ‘‘traced the evolution of communism from the theories of Marx to the realities of Lenin and Trotsky…he cited extensively from Communist literature.’’ (Nash 1972, 18–19). In light of the progression of the war and the growing fear of communism, the government launched what became known as the ‘‘Palmer raids’’—a complex, coordinated series of raids that took place in thirty-three cities within twenty-four hours. More than five thousand arrests were made, mostly immigrants participating in Communist Labor Party meetings or officers of the Federation of the Union of Russian Workers. Although the initial raids could be considered somewhat of a success, the aftermath quickly disintegrated into chaos and confusion. The local jails and police departments were unable to accommodate the large number of arrestees. The jails were too small, many officers could not communicate with the foreign-speaking arrestees, and warrants could not be written fast enough. Although quite a few were able to resist deportation, many immigrants were held in inhumane conditions and denied proper legal representation. The damage had been done; news of the raids leaked out and the public was outraged. Hoover was assigned to help with the prosecution of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, the two most notorious of the arrestees. The final victory came on December 2, 1919, as Emma and Alexander were boarded onto the Old Buford and set sail back to Russia. The deportation was just the beginning of a long battle that Hoover and the Bureau would wage against immigrants in their fight against communism. In 1920, Palmer commenced the ‘‘red raids’’; investigators from the Bureau of Investigation stormed homes and businesses, arresting some twenty-five hundred illegal immigrants. The agents were instructed to report directly to Hoover himself.


The public again became outraged. Many agents took it upon themselves to use brutal force when making arrests, beating many of the immigrants. The public protested the raids, claiming many agents stormed the homes and businesses illegally without warrants. Many of the immigrants were again denied proper legal representation. Despite Palmer’s unpopularity, Hoover remained unscathed. Through his work in the General Intelligence Division, Hoover also developed a large index-card system as a means of cataloging individuals and organizations in radical movements. The cataloging system quickly accumulated entries and by 1921 contained 450,000 files on individuals from all over the country. Hoover ingeniously ‘‘cross-indexed’’ them by location so that if he needed to pull all the names from a specific location it could be accomplished quickly. Hoover also kept more detailed comprehensive files on the more significant radicals, which eventually grew into some 60,000 files. Hoover began amassing names for his cataloging system through American Protective League reports and seized membership lists from radical leaders such as Emma Goldman; however, Hoover wanted more. He sent out private detective agencies to gather their own lists of names and to work closely with special agents from the Bureau of Investigation. Hoover also had a team of bilingual translators scanning multiple foreign publications for anything radical pertaining to names or organizations.

HOOVER AS DIRECTOR The year 1921 brought yet another significant promotion in Hoover’s career. Newly elected president Warren G. Harding fired William J. Flynn, Director of the Bureau of Investigation, and hired William J. Burns on August 22. This change in leadership brought Hoover up to Assistant Director of the Bureau of Investigation and increased his salary to $4,000 a year. That same year, Hoover decided to change his name. He had discovered there was another man living in Washington, D.C., who also had the name John Edgar Hoover and who had accumulated quite a bit of debt. Hoover prided himself in paying all debts in a timely manner and felt it necessary to distinguish himself from the other John Edgar; thus, Hoover from then on became J. Edgar. By 1921, the Bureau had become a haven for corruption. ‘‘It had become a cesspool of graft. Agents were appointed to their posts through political connections; with such immunity agents felt free to bribe and be bribed.’’ (Nash 1972, 26). By 1923, President Harding had become ill and eventually died. Vice President Calvin Coolidge became president and immediately fired Attorney General Harry Daughtery and replaced him with Harlan Fiske Stone. Stone wanted to get rid of William J. Burns in an attempt to clean up the Bureau; however, he needed the right replacement. The president asked

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then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover if he had any suggestions, and he, in turn, asked his aide Larry Richey. Richey suggested J. Edgar Hoover. Secretary Hoover went to Attorney General Stone with the suggestion, and on May 10, 1924, Stone named J. Edgar Hoover director of the Bureau of Investigation. At the age of twenty-nine, Hoover was now in charge of the Bureau and set out quickly to improve it by making it more efficient and improving the quality of its special agents. Hoover created a complex fingerprint database, an idea he had for quite some time. He also bombarded his agents with memos on how they should conduct themselves personally. Hoover forbade them to drink alcohol and demanded they conduct themselves with ‘‘proper personal conduct.’’ Hoover even fired a special agent from Denver who casually mentioned to an agent from the Washington office that they should go out for a drink after working on a long assignment. Two days later the Denver agent was released from his position with the Bureau. Hoover promised the attorney general he would rid the Bureau of all politics; however, by 1931 Hoover had abandoned that promise entirely. By 1932 the national elections brought an overturn in power. The Republicans were voted out of office and the Democrats were voted in. In response to this change in power, Hoover fired more than a hundred well-trained and capable special agents and replaced them with agents recommended by the newly elected congress. This new birth of power led Hoover on a rampage over the next several decades, making himself one of the most feared men in Washington. Hoover investigated and accumulated information and files on politicians from the lowest ranks all the way up through the White House, and he used this ‘‘dirt’’ to his advantage. He claimed to many very innocently that this sensitive information had been delivered to him through the mail, his way of warning them not to cross the all-powerful director of the Bureau of Investigation. He not only simultaneously secured his position with the Bureau, he also secured the Bureau’s position in politics. Throughout the late 1920s and 1930s, Hoover and his G-men (a nickname for government men) gained national momentum, bringing down such criminal legends as Machine Gun Kelley, John Dillinger, Charles Arthur ‘‘Pretty Boy’’ Floyd, Frank Nash, and the Lindbergh kidnapper. Hoover loved public attention and never missed an opportunity to gloat on his agency’s superior ability to ‘‘bring down the bad guys.’’ This, however, was not always reality. For example, Hoover took all the credit for apprehending the primary suspect, Bruno Hauptmann, in the Lindbergh kidnapping. In reality, however, the big break came when a gas station attendant took down Hauptmann’s license plate number on the five dollar bill that Hauptmann had used for a payment. The clerk at the bank saw the bill and called the Treasury Department to inquire if the bill was stolen. In fact, the bill was part of the ransom money paid by Lindbergh in hopes of getting his son back. The Treasury Department contacted the New York Police


Department who in turn tracked down the license plate number through the New York State Motor Vehicle Department. Hoover conveniently left out the part of the story where Charles Lindbergh ordered special agents out of his house in disgust at their inept inability to carry out their duties properly. Amid the public triumph, Hoover came under attack during a senate hearing with Senator Kenneth D. McKellar, Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee for Appropriations. McKellar disputed Hoover’s request for an additional $1,025,000 toward his annual budget, claiming Hoover was spending an excessive amount of money on advertising and publicity. The additional funding request seemed excessive to the appropriations committee, considering that Hoover only had a staff of less than seven hundred special agents plus some support staff. McKellar insinuated Hoover was trying to bolster the Bureau’s public image by paying the media extraordinary sums of money for false press releases and advertisements with Hoover’s face displayed during ‘‘G-men movies.’’ Hoover denied the allegations. Although he denied having any hand in the making of this type of movie, he was unable to deny the fact that his face was displayed during advertisements that were shown throughout the movies. He also failed to disclose how he went to Baltimore to screen one of these movies before it was released in Washington. After McKellar asked Hoover ‘‘if any of the money appropriated by Congress for the Bureau’s budget was ever used to promote the Bureau’s image, Hoover quickly responded that not a penny had been appropriated to pay writers to build up the image of the Bureau’’ (Nash 1972, 53). Hoover, in fact, had been working diligently to bolster the Bureau’s public image. In addition to releasing constant press releases to the media and assisting in the making of such motion pictures, Hoover used several other tactics. Hoover assisted a Washington newspaper reporter with the creation of a radio program about G-men. Hoover also created a comic strip designed to ‘‘embellish’’ the Bureau that would be widely distributed via newspapers throughout the country. Author Courtney Ryley Cooper, whose book Ten Thousand Public Enemies praised Hoover and his special agents, was given a job at the Justice Department specifically to ‘‘publicize the division of investigation’’ (Cooper 1935). Even the Attorney General appointed Henry Soudam, chief Washington correspondent for the Brooklyn Eagle, to ‘‘build up the FBI’s image of invincibility…, later turning Hoover into a household word within a year.’’ (Nash 1972, 54). McKellar also questioned Hoover’s qualifications, stating that Hoover had never even made an arrest. Hoover referred to himself as a criminologist; however, when McKellar questioned him on this Hoover stated that he had never received any formal training in criminology nor had he ever attended his own National Police Academy. Hoover left the senate hearing embarrassed and humiliated, with a burning need to prove himself. Several weeks later he left for New Orleans to arrest personally ‘‘public enemy number

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one’’—Alvin ‘‘Old Creepy’’ Karpis. In actuality Hoover waited in a nearby apartment building until federal agents had Karpis captured and then paraded out to lead him away in Bureau custody. By the time cartoonists McDayter and Drew released their version of the events, the public saw a mighty Hoover single-handedly manhandle Karpis out of his car and into the street subdued by a hammer lock as special agents watched in awe.

HOOVER AND ESPIONAGE Despite the embarrassing McKellar hearings, President Roosevelt placed Hoover in charge of counterespionage in the United States. President Roosevelt requested that Hoover begin gathering information on not only communists but fascists as well. Roosevelt even brought Secretary of State Cordell Hull at Hoover’s request to ‘‘make it legal.’’ Hoover created the Special Intelligence Service (SIS) to conduct the Bureau’s counterespionage investigations and immediately dispatched teams of agents to South America. Hoover had read a book published in 1911 that Germany would use South America as a springboard with which to push agents into the United States. Hoover became convinced that South America was swarming with Germans; however, his preoccupation with South America probably contributed to his lack of attention to other more imminent threats here on U.S. soil. Although South America was important enough for Hoover to send many agents, apparently Hawaii was not. Hoover made a serious mistake by refusing to investigate Dr. Keuhn and his family, who played a major role in gathering intelligence for Japan in the bombing of Pearl Harbor. When the bombing occurred, Hoover was out of his office. Hoover was finally tracked down in New York City. His response was fast; he quickly began rounding up every Japanese American he and his agents could find. Hoover eventually envisioned the Bureau as the chief counterintelligence agency in the United States; however, President Roosevelt had other visions. Roosevelt had instructed Major General William J. Donovan, Chief to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), to create a ‘‘new worldwide intelligence service,’’ thereby creating competition with Hoover. Donovan had had heroic successes with the OSS, even ‘‘shortening World War II by years because of his intelligence operations’’—something that angered Hoover greatly. However, Hoover finally won this battle when he was able to persuade President Truman to disband the agency. Hoover quickly requested he pick up OSS’s duties, although Truman never agreed to this. In desperation, Truman, plagued with increasingly complicated intelligence reports that were beginning to contradict one another, reluctantly created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1947, much to Hoover’s dismay. With this move, Hoover had a new fight on his hands. He was determined to ‘‘dominate intelligence activities’’; however, he found this increasingly


difficult due to the fact that Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, had been granted ‘‘autonomous rule’’ of the intelligence community by Congress. In response, Hoover meticulously placed agents overseas and attached them to U.S. embassies in an attempt to continue his counterespionage investigations. The National Security Act of 1947 diminished Hoover’s position greatly by moving the Bureau’s intelligence division to the CIA’s jurisdiction. Hoover found himself, as head of one of the federal government’s intelligencegathering agencies, answerable to the chairman of the board of the U.S. intelligence community—the director of the CIA. Hoover, however, never went to great lengths to inform the CIA of anything. The Bureau reported as little as possible and only when demanded to do so. Hoover’s unwillingness to share information with other intelligence agencies soon caught up to him. Hoover’s Bureau was criticized by the Warren Commission in regards to JFK’s assassination. The Bureau refused to share vital information with the Secret Service about Lee Harvey Oswald’s communist background, his knowledge of the motorcade route, his job at the schoolbook depository, and lies he told the special agents during interrogation. The Dallas field office also ignored repeated threats that someone was going to kill Oswald. Despite the mounting evidence of the Bureau’s negligence in the JFK assassination, Hoover still publicly claimed that the assassination was inevitable and that totally securing the president was impossible. Hoover had lost credibility in the foreign intelligence community as a result of the assassination. Not recognizing Oswald as a real and potential threat was a severe blow. But to most in the underworld, this was no surprise. One spy who had worked in the United States for years stated after returning to Europe, ‘‘however efficient the FBI may be in pursuing gangsters and kidnappers, they are out of their depth when trying to deal with a sophisticated intelligence network. Most of their successes in this field have been due to information being handed to them on a plate by turncoats…he [Hoover] has a genius for publicity and an unrivaled capacity for extracting money from Congress.’’ (Nash 1972, 130). Despite Hoover’s inability to gain credibility in the foreign intelligence arena, he did, however, convince Nixon to allow him to place special agents in twenty-five foreign cities, attached to foreign embassies. Nixon agreed to this without congressional approval or the public’s knowledge. Nixon rationalized that it would be appropriate because of their expert ability to investigate American hostages. Hoover, however, had already placed special agents in at least twenty foreign cities several years prior to Nixon’s approval. Hoover’s credibility was called into question again in another embarrassing situation, this time not only in regard to counterespionage but basic law enforcement criminal procedure. In 1949 Hoover received information from an FBI informant that a female employee of the Foreign Registration Office at the Justice Department was supplying the Soviet Embassy in Washington

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with top-secret documents. The Bureau immediately began following her. They meticulously monitored her every move for weeks, gathering a great deal of evidence. Her name was Judith Coplon, and according to the evidence, she was definitely working as a Soviet spy. Coplon eventually began requesting top-secret information from her supervisor, which she assured him was necessary for her to do her job properly. Hoover purposefully ordered her supervisor to start feeding her false information. Within weeks special agents had caught her feeding false information to Soviets in New York City. Coplon, along with a Soviet spy, was arrested. This case also created problems for the Bureau. The trial required certain top-secret FBI files to be entered into evidence and brought forth in court to corroborate testimony. The Bureau was officially backed into a corner. To turn over the files would be disastrous because of the sensitive content. The files were full of evidence solely based on hearsay, rumors, gossip, and innuendos. However, to refuse to release the files would force the case to be dropped. In the end, the files were released, to the Bureau’s public humiliation. The charges against Coplon were ultimately dropped anyway on a technicality. The arresting special agents failed to obtain an arrest warrant, thereby violating Coplon’s civil rights and allowing her to walk away a free woman.

HOOVER AND THE KENNEDY BROTHERS Hoover’s fascination with the ‘‘red menace’’ stayed with him throughout his career. Throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s Hoover continued to investigate communist leaders and virtually ignored an increasing problem attacking America’s urban cities—the Mafia. By the 1950s, organized crime was flourishing. Hoover believed this area of crime posed the greatest threat to his agents because they would be most susceptible to corruption; thus, he chose not to expose them to it. To put it simply, Hoover refused to acknowledge the Mafia as a problem. In 1959, Senator Robert Kennedy, then chief of the senate Labor Rackets Committee, attacked Hoover, stating that they needed to quit ‘‘pushing paper and start investigating more.’’ At the time of the attack, Hoover had only four special agents in New York City investigating organized crime. The rest of the special agents, which numbered nearly four hundred, were focusing on communism. Hoover was therefore forced into the fight against organized crime, and he blamed Robert Kennedy for it. Kennedy, consequently, was the only attorney general that Hoover could not manage his way around, and the White House was no help either. The attorney general’s brother, President John F. Kennedy, agreed with Robert that organized crime was a serious issue. Despite Hoover and Kennedy’s constant clash as to who should be dictating what the Bureau investigated,


Hoover publicly claimed responsibility for arresting famed mob leader Joseph Valachi after he was actually apprehended by federal narcotics officers. As a result, Hoover proclaimed to the American people the dangers that were arising from these ‘‘criminal cartels whose memberships seem to be Italian…who control major racket activities in metropolitan areas…who operate on a nationwide business…and who have until recent years carried out its activities in complete secrecy.’’ (Nash 1972, 95–97). On March 22, 1966, Hoover made another severe blunder. Chicago’s underworld leaders gathered together at the Edgewater Beach Hotel for an honorary dinner for Fifi Buchieri, a well-known Mafia leader. The only law enforcement officer to cover the event was from the Northwest Indiana Crime Commission, who managed to gain access to the meeting. He reported on it the next day in the Chicago Tribune. When Hoover saw the paper the next morning, he was furious that none of his agents from the Chicago office had covered the event. Hoover demanded a full report on his desk within hours. A stunned and embarrassed Chicago office ran to the local police department to borrow and photocopy police reports. Hoover, not wanting to take the blame, quickly informed the media that his special agents were not allowed to perform undercover work. Hoover considered the matter a shame because of his long-time friendship with Joseph Kennedy, father of John and Robert. Hoover, however, showed little mercy to the attorney general before JFK was shot, an event that probably saved Hoover’s job. President Kennedy was said to have been within days of asking for Hoover’s resignation because of conflicts with Robert Kennedy. The resignation would have been easy to get because the White House staff was going to have to submit a presidential proclamation to keep Hoover as active director because he had passed the mandatory retirement age—which JFK did not intend to do. Hoover and Robert Kennedy butted heads for the rest of Robert’s term. Robert would barge into Hoover’s office, often unannounced, which usually irritated Hoover to no end. He would request Hoover’s presence at staff luncheons, which Hoover refused to attend. Robert would often call field offices and talk to special agents without Hoover’s permission, to the extent that agents were fearful Hoover would find out they were not following protocol. After JFK died, Hoover continued to show no mercy to Robert. He called Robert the day of the assassination to inform him of the situation, and all he stated to him was ‘‘I have news for you, the President has been shot’’ and abruptly hung up. Robert got another call later from Hoover stating ‘‘The president is dead,’’ and again abruptly hung up. From that point forward Hoover and Robert’s relationship deteriorated rapidly. They hardly ever spoke. Hoover ordered the Bureau to discontinue the driving services they offered to Robert. Hoover quit reporting to Robert altogether and took his intelligence reports straight to President Johnson. The final fight came when

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Robert requested Hoover start hiring more African American special agents. By the time Johnson became president and especially into Nixon’s presidency, Hoover began to settle down into a more comfortable, unopposed position. Robert Kennedy forced Hoover to begin investigating civil rights violations, and the first civil rights violator he wanted fixed was Hoover himself. Hoover claimed there were no problems with the Bureau, and he had plenty of black agents. Hoover’s idea, however, of a black FBI agent was his chauffeur and personal receptionist. After Kennedy’s inquiry, Hoover quickly called the Chicago office and demanded they go out and hire another African American agent. The supervising agent in Chicago asked the black janitor if he wanted to be made a special agent. Stunned, he nodded yes as the agents handed him a badge, credentials, and a much higher salary. By the end of the week he had been moved to a new position: chauffeur for the chief special agent of the Chicago office. It was not until 1962 that the Bureau had an official African American special agent. Aubrey C. Lewis, a professional football player, was admitted into the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia. Hoover seized this opportunity to show the nation publicly that he was not a racist. Hoover had Lewis’ photo published with himself, stating ‘‘We’ve paid no attention to race, creed, or color. This has been my strict FBI policy.’’ (Nash 197, 152). When asked by the media exactly how many black agents the Bureau employed, Hoover commented that he could not divulge that information.

PROFILE OF HOOVER’S SPECIAL AGENTS In fact Hoover’s agents did fit a certain profile, and Hoover did not tolerate agents who strayed from this protocol. All were white males, had a cleancut appearance and very neat trimmed hair; their socks and ties had to match, and they always wore dark suits. Hoover went to great lengths to ensure his agents fit the profile and that the profile fit the public’s image of what a G-man should look like. Hoover went so far as to dismiss one of the recruits at the FBI academy after he had successfully completed all the requirements simply because his face was disfigured from his previous military combat. Hoover required strict education requirements as well. Only recruits from conservative schools were chosen for the academy. They had to have successfully completed an accredited law or accounting school and have at least three years of experience in the field. Hoover made sure his agents were well compensated for their accomplishments. FBI agents have generally been the highest paid federal law enforcement officers. Hoover justified this by persuading Congress that only a high salary would keep them free from bribery and corruption. Hoover also created a lucrative retirement package for all agents serving the Bureau for at least twenty years.


Hoover had little compassion for agents who even barely strayed from his profile. For example, Hoover once fired an agent for wearing a tie that was too loud. He threatened to fire an agent because Hoover found out he was reading Playboy. He also fired a man for marrying a woman of Arabian descent. Hoover’s strict policies did not stop with the agents. Hoover expected his clerks to follow similar standards. Hoover fired a clerk from the Washington office in 1968 for ‘‘sleeping with young girls.’’ The clerk sued Hoover; however, he did not win. Hoover required a strict work ethic as well from his agents. They were expected to work overtime and to spend much of their time submitting meticulous progress reports to their superiors. Each agent was required to regularly submit a detailed progress report on every case, and depending on the type of case, to their agent in charge until the crime was solved. The agent in charge then forwarded all the progress reports to Hoover, who spent a great deal of his time reading through them. Hoover’s clerical staff was also held to a high work ethic. They too had to submit regular progress reports on how many pages they typed each hour. They also had to abide by Hoover’s handbook of conduct. They were subject to a very rigorous dress code and were forbidden from attending public political meetings. Two clerks from the Washington office helped organize an antiwar march through the National Peace Coalition, which resulted in their dismissal. They too sued Hoover through the American Civil Liberties Union; however, the suit came to nothing. To ensure proper adherence of his rules, Hoover employed the Inspection Division of the Bureau to travel to different field offices unannounced to investigate the agents and ensure they were following proper protocol. The Inspection Division interrogated agents about why they had not solved certain cases. The agents, of course, would often comment that they did not have time because they were too busy writing lengthy memos about their every action. Agents were questioned about their personal life and reminded that they should always adhere to Hoover’s strict code of conduct. Agents were also required to report all suspicious behavior of other agents that they might happen to witness. In so doing, Hoover created an elaborate spy ring within the Bureau, where no one was safe from being informed upon to Hoover. Hoover also implemented a demerit system. Agents were given demerits for the smallest things. For example, agents were not allowed to take their coffee back to their desks, men were allowed to smoke on the job but women were not, agents were not allowed to leave their car windows down, and one agent was even given a demerit for dirty windows. If demerits were not enough punishment, Hoover always had the option of transferring them to another office in a remote region of the country. Agents were always fearful they would be transferred to some far away remote region such as Montana. As a result, the unspoken bureau motto quickly became ‘‘don’t embarrass the Director.’’ (Nash 1972, 171–75).

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Despite Hoover’s many faults as a director, there was one thing he mastered during his time at the Bureau: publicity. Although the Bureau claimed they ‘‘had no public relations office,’’ there was, however, a Crime Records Division. This division had several duties. For example, they were required to handle all press inquiries and write press releases; they analyzed FBI crime statistics and prepared reports and wrote and published the nationwide FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin that was distributed to local and state police officers. Hoover’s Bureau was also notorious for leaking information to a ‘‘leak man’’ who always worked for a ‘‘Hoover-approved’’ newspaper: the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, and the Washington Star. Hoover never allowed information to be leaked to newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the National Observer, and the New York Times. Hoover believed these newspapers were ‘‘anti-Bureau’’ and chose not to include them when he leaked material he wanted the public to read. Special agents also hand-picked certain reporters to accompany them on raids they knew would be a success, to ensure positive coverage the next day in the newspaper. HOOVER’S FINAL YEARS At the age of seventy-seven, despite criticism, Hoover had no intention of retiring. He planned to work until his eightieth birthday and then make his public announcement that he was stepping down. This, however, changed on May 2, 1972. Retired chauffeur James Crawford had come over to Hoover’s home early that morning to help Hoover plant some rosebushes. Crawford arrived fifteen minutes early, as usual, and quickly got to work. A little later a worried Annie Fields, Hoover’s longtime live-in cook and housekeeper, came out the back door of Hoover’s home. She was concerned because Hoover had not risen from bed yet, and he rarely overslept. Crawford volunteered to go check. Several minutes later, he called down frantically for Annie to phone Hoover’s personal physician, Dr. Robert Choisser, while he called Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s long-time best friend and closest companion. Crawford found Hoover unconscious on the rug next to his bed. Tolson had been Hoover’s right-hand man for years, earning the nickname Junior. Hoover’s chauffeur would come by and pick up Hoover, and then they would go by Tolson’s place and pick him up as well. If weather permitted, the chauffeur would drop them off several blocks early so they could walk the rest of the way. They had a lot in common; both never married. They ate together, vacationed together, both loved sports, had no other real interests, and both were used to the ‘‘Washington bureaucracy.’’ Tolson was initially hired by the Bureau as a special agent in 1928 and later became chief clerk of the Bureau in Washington. Two years later he rose to


inspector, and only one year later assistant director. With time and patience, Tolson was finally promoted to the position in which he remained for the rest of his FBI career; he was named associate director of the Bureau in 1947, where he finally resigned after Hoover’s death. Hoover was laid to rest two days later in the congressional cemetery. His hour-long funeral, which took place at National Presbyterian Church, was broadcast live by all three networks. It was referred to as a ‘‘political event.’’ Tolson, along with a few of Hoover’s remaining relatives and a few of Hoover’s closest office staff, were watching the funeral from a private section, shielded from the news cameras. The president gave the eulogy and the Army chorus sang. It was an event that ended a political era.

Three Areas of Law Enforcement Improvements Credited to Hoover 1. Personnel and management appointments and promotions based on qualifications agents must have degrees (law or accounting) uniform discipline policy agents must have character (even off-duty) bureaucratic (hierarchical) organizational structure 2. Investigative practices work ethic for agents ¼ results oriented agents to use technology and science to solve crime forensic laboratory created extensive intelligence files for investigative leads specified investigative procedures put into policy to protect the rights of suspects 3. Law enforcement liaison and training created FBI National Academy in 1935 (teaches management and investigation to state/local officials FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin created Fingerprint Identification division created to collect fingerprints from law enforcement around the country Source: Herbert Johnson and Nancy Travis Wolfe, History of Criminal Justice, Cincinatti, OH: Anderson Publishing, 2003.

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CREATION OF THE FBI In 1908 Attorney General Charles Bonaparte created an executive order that did two things. First it banned the Justice Department, through ‘‘appropriation restrictions,’’ from using the Secret Service as investigators for other governmental agencies, including their own. Through this executive order, Bonaparte, along with President Roosevelt, created the Bureau of Investigation, which sparked much controversy due to the rising concerns that a federal police force might abuse its newly granted powers. Now, with the removal of Secret Service investigators, the Department of Justice was left crippled. Second, Bonaparte was thus forced to create a new subdepartment under the Justice Department to be their investigative arm. This new investigative force began with thirty-four special agents, nine of which were former Secret Service agents. The remaining agents were from special investigative committees from within the Justice Department. Needing congressional approval for the newly created Bureau of Investigation, Bonaparte assured Congress that the Bureau would only investigate ‘‘interstate commerce and anti-trust violations.’’ Congressional approval finally came in January of 1909 (Theoharis and Cox 1998, 223). The Bureau expanded its number of special agents and the number of crimes it investigated greatly over the next two decades due to several factors. During this time the federal government, under the Progressive Era, initiated such programs as the New Deal. The Bureau grew to 300 agents by World War I, and by 1920 the number of special agents had risen to 579—the largest the agency would be until 1936 when the number of agents would again start to increase dramatically. In the beginning, the Bureau investigated fewer than twenty-five criminal statutes, ranging from violent crimes to ‘‘counterintelligence matters.’’ However, in 1910, the White Slave Traffic Act, or the Mann Act as it is sometimes referred to, was passed, making the transportation of women across state lines for prostitution illegal. This made it a federal crime, adding it to the list of crimes investigated by the Bureau. This led the Bureau to divide itself into two units, allowing one unit to investigate illegal prostitution and one unit to tend to all other matters. The prostitution unit was headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, while the main headquarters remained in Washington, D.C. The Bureau’s powers were once again expanded with the Dyer Act of 1919, which made the transportation of stolen vehicles across state lines a federal crime. Between 1932 and 1934 crimes such as bank robbery, kidnapping, and extortion were federalized, again extending the Bureau’s investigative powers to encompass an even wider range of enforceable crimes. President Coolidge named J. Edgar Hoover FBI director in 1924, where he remained until his unexpected death in 1972. The President chose Hoover because he believed he could ‘‘reform and clean it up from its reputation as a haven for corruption.’’ It was under his leadership that the name


of the Bureau was changed in 1935 to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). By the twenty-first century, the Bureau had spread out across the globe, with fifty-six field offices across the country and more than four hundred smaller satellite offices in all fifty states. It also has more than fifty international offices located in U.S. embassies worldwide. The FBI’s headquarters are on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., in the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building. The building was completed in 1975; however, it was named after its long-time director three years early, just two days after Hoover died. By March 2006, the FBI had grown to 12,515 special agents with 17,915 support staff. It now investigates ‘‘violations of more than 200 categories of federal law’’ (FBI Homepage). According to the FBI, these investigations include counterterrorism, counterintelligence, cyber crime, organized crime, civil rights violations, violent crimes, and theft. FBI PRIORITIES The FBI follows ten priorities grouped into two categories: national security and crime. The following ten priorities encompass a wide range of areas that not only focus on fighting crime and terrorism but also allow the agents to assist other law enforcement agencies in a cooperative effort. These priorities include ‘‘protecting the United States from terrorist attacks; protecting the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage; protecting the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes; combating public corruption at all levels; protecting civil rights; combating transnational and national criminal organizations and enterprises; combating major white-collar crime; combating significant violent crime; supporting federal, state, county, municipal, and international partners; and upgrading technology to successfully perform the FBI’s mission.’’ (FBI Homepage). CRIMES THE FBI INVESTIGATES The FBI explains they investigate all federal crimes, clustered under its main two priorities of preserving national security and enforcing the federal criminal code. Special agents investigate crimes such as international and domestic terrorism and threats of possession of weapons of mass destruction, all of which directly relate to counterterrorism investigations. In regard to counterintelligence investigations, special agents investigate counterespionage and economic espionage along with counterproliferation. Special agents also investigate cybercrimes, for example, online sexual predation, Internet fraud, and computer intrusion. According to the FBI’s Web site, enforcing the federal criminal code requires special agents to investigate a wide range of federal laws. Special

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agents combat public corruption by investigating government and election fraud. They also investigate civil rights violations such as hate crimes and human trafficking. Investigating organized crime includes examining domestic terrorist organizations from all over the world. White-collar crime investigations include investigating bankruptcy fraud, health care fraud, money laundering, telemarketing fraud, identity theft, and insurance fraud. Special agents also investigate violent crimes and major thefts such as crimes against children, environmental crimes, Indian country crimes, gang violence, illegal narcotics, fugitives, art and jewelry theft, vehicle theft, and retail theft. In addition to investigating and enforcing foreign and domestic crimes, they also conduct background investigations and internal investigations within the FBI and assist local, state, and other federal law enforcement agencies. QUALIFICATIONS TO BECOME AN FBI AGENT According to the FBI’s homepage, the first step in becoming a FBI special agent is obtaining a top-secret security clearance, which requires a thorough background investigation. Special agents must also be a U.S. citizen, must be between the ages of twenty-three and thirty-six, must obtain a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university, must successfully complete several personal interviews, and must pass a written exam and an extensive medical examination. Traditionally the FBI has been interested in recruiting applicants who are specialized in law, accounting, or law enforcement; however, the FBI’s interests are ever changing. Today the FBI is actively recruiting applicants who also specialize in foreign languages, computers, and the physical sciences. TRAINING PROGRAM Once hired by the FBI, all special agents are required to complete a seventeen-week training program at the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia. The complex is home to a complete training facility including dorms and dining services, classrooms, indoor and outdoor firing ranges, a gymnasium, a pursuit/defensive driving course, a chapel, an auditorium, and a mock town known as Hogan’s Alley. Quantico is also home to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s special agent training facility. During the program training, agents are exposed to more than 640 hours of teaching focused in four primary areas: ‘‘academics, firearms, operational skills, and the integrated case scenario.’’ (FBI Homepage). Special agents are tested through nine comprehensive examinations in seven areas where they must score at least 85 percent. The seven areas of study include ‘‘law, forensic science, behavioral science, interviewing, ethics, interrogation, and basic and advanced investigative techniques.’’ (FBI


Homepage). In addition to academics, special agents are required to pass a physical fitness test that is administered upon entry into the academy, at week 14, and again at week 17. Special agents are also required to pass a defensive tactics course and qualify on two handguns and a shotgun with an 80 percent or higher score. Hogan’s Alley is another unique feature of the FBI training academy. Hogan’s Alley allows special agents to apply what they have learned in practical settings, allowing them to practice surveillance techniques and handling dangerous situations involving firearms and hostage situations. Hogan’s Alley opened in 1972. It is structured to look and feel like a real town. Behind the imitation restaurants and businesses are classrooms and surveillance rooms that assist new agents in applying their newly learned tactical skills in a real-life practical setting.

OTHER ENTITIES AT QUANTICO The FBI academy is not the only FBI-run operation at Quantico. According to the FBI homepage, Quantico is also home to several research institutions that provide FBI special agents and other law enforcement agencies with support services and training. For example, Quantico houses the Behavioral Science Unit, a division of Training and Development that focuses on training new special agents and providing the Bureau with a research arm to help special agents stay abreast of current criminological trends. Although the instructors are mostly experienced officers and agents who hold higher degrees in either criminology, psychology, or sociology, they also employ forensic psychologists, research and management analysts, and technical information specialists. The Behavioral Science Unit trains special agents in such areas as ‘‘domestic terrorism, death investigations, gangs, criminal behavior, counterterrorism, and applied criminology’’ (FBI Homepage). The unit’s primary research focus is the criminal offender and his or her ‘‘behaviors and motivations.’’ Currently the Behavior Science Unit is researching various topics including ‘‘hate crimes, use of deadly force, juveniles, religion and crime, and gang violence.’’ For interested students, the Behavioral Science Unit offers several internships, which can be accessed through the FBI’s Web page. Quantico also houses the FBI National Academy. This is a specialized program that allows law enforcement leaders and managers to take undergraduate and graduate-level college classes specializing in ‘‘law, behavioral sciences, forensic sciences, leadership, development, communication, and health/fitness’’ (FBI Homepage). The academy is held four times a year, with around 250 individuals in each class. The academy is by invitation only. Attendees are selected from all levels of government, all fifty states, and from all over the world. Once an officer has completed the academy he or

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she is asked to join the FBI National Academy Associates, an organization committed to raising standards of professionalism in law enforcement by ‘‘developing higher levels of competency, cooperation, and integrity’’ (FBI Homepage). This organization has some 15,000 members from all over the country, all committed to excellence in law enforcement. The Technology Service Unit, which is also located at Quantico, is part of the FBI Academy. This specialized unit is located in Hogan’s Alley, specifically to assist special agents training at Quantico and to provide ‘‘FBI Academy students and staff with the technological resources and support they need to improve their ability to access, store, retrieve, and exchange information via a computer and to do it in a timely, cooperative and supportive manner’’ (FBI Homepage). This unit also assists special agents with their audiovisual, graphics, information technology, photography, and video needs. In addition to assisting special agents and training agents, they also support a distance-learning program that provides FBI personnel and other law enforcement agencies worldwide with enforcement training and education. They distribute material globally via the Internet and also in CD-ROM format, as well as assisting with live and prerecorded productions for the Law Enforcement Television Network. The FBI Laboratory, located at the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., is another division of the FBI, providing special agents with the forensic technical assistance needed to collect, process, and preserve critical evidence. The FBI lab is one of the largest in the world, and its assistance is offered to not only special agents with the FBI but other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies at no charge. The laboratory processes evidence such as DNA analysis, explosives, computer analysis, firearms, hazardous materials, latent prints, material analysis, and trace evidence, just to name a few. The laboratory also operates CODIS (the Combined DNA Index Analysis), a nationwide DNA index system that catalogs DNA from local, state, and federal violent offenders. The FBI Laboratory established the Forensic Science Research and Training Center at Quantico in 1981, which is a division of the FBI Laboratory. It provides newly hired special agents with forensic science training. FBI lab technicians and other personnel from local, state, and other federal law enforcement agencies are also able to continue their forensic training and learn new advanced methods in forensic analysis. The Forensic Science Research and Training Center also provides law enforcement agents with a continuing education program that offers in-service hours to help agents continue their training and knowledge to keep up with the ever-changing trends and new advanced methods. Cost-free training to law enforcement personnel is provided in areas such as ‘‘latent fingerprint identification, DNA analysis, hairs and fibers examination, firearms and toolmarks identification, document examination, bomb disposal, polygraph testing, shoe prints and tire tread analysis, and artist sketching’’ (FBI Homepage).


CRIMINAL JUSTICE INFORMATION SERVICES The Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) is the largest division of the FBI. It is located in Clarksburg, West Virginia. The CJIS serves not only the FBI but the entire law enforcement community as well. It was created in 1992 to merge several other smaller departments within the Bureau into one large information services division. Several departments located at the CJIS complex are the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR), and the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The FBI’s National Crime Information Center 2000 (NCIC 2000) is an updated extension of the previous NCIC, originally established in 1967. It is a nationwide information system that is linked not only with federal law enforcement agencies but state and local agencies as well. It even allows mobile access for patrol cars, thus linking local patrol officers with other local, state, and federal agencies, allowing immediate access and sharing of files. It is currently linked to all fifty states, Washington, D.C., Canada, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. The NCIC 2000 provides several services vital to fighting crime. For example, it contains an online sex offender database that allows law enforcement offers to obtain and share immediate access to violent sexual offenders’ records. It also stores mugshots and other identifying photos, life scars, or tattoos. It has an advanced name search, so officers can not only search a specific name but all other phonetically similar names as well. It contains the SENTRY file, a complete database of all incarcerated federal prisoners and their location. Officers are able to search fingerprints and offenders currently on probation and/or parole. These features makes NCIC 2000 unique in that it allows law enforcement agencies of all levels immediate access and shared information from all over the country, making it much easier to track down or investigate offenders traveling across the country. The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), which began operations in 1999, is a complex database that stores fingerprints and criminal records of offenders from all over the country. The ‘‘Criminal Master File’’ contains 47 million offenders’ fingerprints and criminal histories that correspond to the prints. They gather data on a voluntary basis from federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies nationwide, which is submitted electronically. This electronic submission allows agencies to give and retrieve information in record time. Officers are able to retrieve information from IAFIS within two hours of their initial request. The NICS performs background checks for federal firearm licensees in accordance with the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (1993). Without the successful completion of a background examination, federal licensees are unable to obtain their firearm. The Uniform Crime Reports (UCRs) are

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also prepared at the CJIS complex. These reports help law enforcement agencies of all levels measure and analyze crime all over the country. More than 17,000 agencies nationwide contribute data. The NIBRS was created to improve the collection methods and analysis techniques to ensure greater quantity and quality of data. NATIONAL SECURITY BRANCH The National Security Branch of the FBI was created in 2005 to enhance the Bureau’s ability to combat terrorism. This branch combined the counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and intelligence divisions all under one FBI director, who then reports to the National Director of Intelligence. This division has recently added a fourth department known as the Weapons of Mass Destruction Division. The National Security Branch is located at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in the Washington, D.C., area. The NCTC allows the Bureau’s intelligence departments to better share information and coordinate with the federal intelligence community. STRATEGIC INFORMATION AND OPERATIONS CENTER In addition to the Headquarters in Washington, D.C., the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, the CJIS in Clarksburg, West Virginia, and the National Security Branch in the Washington, D.C., area, the FBI has a Strategic Information and Operations Center (SIOC) that houses a permanently staffed round-the-clock crisis management team. The SIOC was designed as a command post where the FBI could run two crisis management teams simultaneously. Two of the major crises and their investigations that were managed at the SIOC were the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 attacks. The structure itself is 40,000 square feet, with theaters for large briefings, a watch floor with a control room, and a twenty-four-hour watch post. Conclusion Hoover’s reign over the FBI stretched for forty-eight years and resulted in one of the largest and most elite law enforcement agencies in the world. After quickly rising through the Justice Department, Hoover became director at the age of only twenty-nine and soon after started transforming the FBI into his model agency. With Hoover’s leadership, it has grown from a small field office in Washington, D.C., to a multicountry intelligence agency that stretches all across the globe. With Hoover’s masterful ability to bolster images and enhance dramatic truths, he managed to mold the FBI into a powerful intelligence agency that is now the largest law enforcement agency in the country. Throughout his career, he devoted endless amounts of time


investigating communism and avidly pursued placing the FBI at the forefront of the intelligence arena. He demanded the utmost adherence to FBI policy from not only special agents but support staff as well and held both men and women to a strict disciplinary code. One can only wonder how proud Hoover would be now if he had the opportunity to come back and sit once more in the director’s chair. FURTHER READING Cooper, Courtney Riley. Ten Thousand Public Enemies. Boston: Little-Brown and Co., 1935. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Homepage. http://www.fbi.gov (May 6, 2007). Fox, J. F., Jr. Unique unto itself: The records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation: 1908 to 1945. Journal of Government Information 30 (2004): 470–81. Gentry, Curt. J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991. Hack, Richard. Puppetmaster: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover. Beverly Hills: New Millennium Press, 2004. Nash, Jay Robert. Citizen Hoover. Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1972. Theoharis, Athan, and John Stuart Cox. 1988. The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Toledano, Ralph de. 1973. J. Edgar Hoover: The Man in His Time. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House.

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Courtesy AP Images

Thomas Dewey Clarrisa Breen

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Thomas E. Dewey was born on March 24, 1902, to Annie Thomas and George Martin Dewey of Owosso, Michigan, in rooms above his maternal grandfather’s store. His youth was spent around the same store and in the garden his grandfather planted behind the store. He was a Boy Scout, raised chickens (a job he hated), was a printer’s devil for the local paper, and later did volunteer farm work during World War I. Dewey was close to his mother and would consult with her even during his years as special prosecutor and governor of New York. When he started at the University of Michigan in 1919, he paid for his first year from wages earned as a sales agent for the Saturday Evening Post. The Post was offered in Owosso through the Curtis Publishing Company, and Dewey’s first taste of the courts came when he was asked to testify at a hearing of a federal antitrust suit against this company. Despite his aunt’s ruminations that he should be a lawyer, he began his studies at the University of Michigan in literature and music. He excelled, performing in operas and with the Glee Club. He also wrote as a reporter for the Michigan Daily, covering events occurring at the Law School and reviewing concerts. He pledged the Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity, an organization that, as a lawyer, he would later advise in legal and tax matters. In the summer of 1923, when he finished his first year in Michigan’s School of Law, Dewey went to Chicago where he split his time clerking in the law firm of Litzinger, Healy, and Reid—Reid being his mother’s cousin—and studying voice with a scholarship to the Stephens Studio. It was here that he met a young mezzosoprano named Frances Hutt, who would later become his wife. At the end of the summer, he decided to follow the Stephens Studio (and Miss Frances Hutt) back to New York City and to complete his legal education at Columbia Law School. Dewey grew his signature mustache during a trip to Europe after his third year of law school. He and friend, Ward Jenks, challenged each other to see who could grow a mustache first; he kept his for life. The fate of Jenks’ mustache is unknown.

Dewey referred to his time at Columbia as one of the happiest of his life, in which he lived in two worlds at once, those of music and the law. In regard to music, he sang as the bass soloist for St. Matthew’s and St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church, earning just enough each Sunday ($15) to cover his weekly voice lessons with the Stephens Studio. After a year at Columbia and a disastrous bout of laryngitis, Dewey gave up on music and turned his full attention to his legal studies. Upon graduation and passing the bar in 1926, Dewey went to work for Larkin, Rathbone, and Perry, a Wall Street law firm. Dewey’s early practice consisted of relatively simple matters: adoptions and estates, amounts owed,

Thomas Dewey

insurance claims, negligence, and income tax returns, when taxes paid may have amounted to as little as ten dollars and Dewey’s fee, half as much. It was a fellow lawyer who introduced Dewey to politics in New York City. Sewell Tyng, who would later assist Dewey as special prosecutor, was a volunteer captain of the Tenth Assembly District. With his encouragement, the next year, Dewey became the captain of a two-block district between 10th and 11th streets, one block east and one west of 5th Avenue. He held this position for three years and called on every voter he could find, encouraging straight-ticket Republican voting. If he failed to get a voter to agree with the entire Republican ticket, he would pitch support for the district’s assembly candidate. As a district captain, Dewey first encountered the corruption and sophistication of Tammany Hall. On election day, gangsters employed by Tammany Hall would create diversions that allowed an abundance of bogus votes to be cast for their candidates. In 1928, Dewey served as a special assistant attorney general in charge of supervising the polls at the 110th Street School in Harlem. It was this position that brought Dewey into alignment with what would be the pursuit of his life. There he witnessed the flooding of the polling place with armed members of the Dutch Schultz mob. As soon as these individuals were in place, unregistered voters would swarm into the polling place and cast votes for the mob’s preferred candidate. Dewey and his associates attempted to hold the unregistered voters for fraud, but the police did nothing. Dewey’s fellow poll supervisors experienced similar events, and many were injured as they attempted to fulfill their supervisory duties; one was pushed down a flight of stairs, and others were beaten and thrown out of the polling places. At this time, Tammany Hall had the tightest hold on politics in New York City. Dewey observed that citizens were disillusioned with their political situation but believed that nothing could be done, that it was not only unwise, but dangerous to fight city hall. Tammany Hall commanded loyalty and subjugation through violence and threats against merchants, but also through the disbursement of turkeys at Thanksgiving and free buckets of coal and other handouts around the hollidays to the poor and to immigrants, ensuring their gratitude and cooperation. It was in response to these early experiences with New York politics and Tammany Hall that Dewey joined the Young Republicans in 1928. At the time, the Young Republicans in New York City was composed mostly of fellow Wall Street lawyers; they conducted research on political concerns at the local, state, and national levels. The associations Dewey made in this group would stay with him for the rest of his career. The group would meet and dine together often, especially in winter, from the 1930s through the 1960s. Though he was now active in the political sphere, Dewey continued his legal practice, beginning his trial work with mostly pro bono work and a few cases of technical violations by corporate clients. In June of 1928,

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Dewey married Frances Hutt, who was by this point a well-known professional mezzosoprano under the stage name of Eileen Hoyt. After the stock market crash of 1929, Dewey, who had moved on to the firm of McNamara and Seymour, first came into contact with George Z. Medaille, considered at the time the best trial lawyer at the New York bar. Dewey’s involvement with Medaille began with a case where a woman sued a corporate client of McNamara and Seymour’s after she lost money in the October 1929 crash. Dewey did not believe, though he had done the research for the case, that he could adequately try the case, because of his limited trial experience, and recommended Medaille to his firm. During the course of this case, Medaille was called on to become the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Upon accepting the position, Medaille requested that Dewey provide him with the names of young lawyers from the Young Republican Club and downtown law offices who could infuse new life into the staff. Medaille offered Dewey a place on his staff the day he took his oath of office. Dewey refused because he was making $8,500 a year, an impressive sum for the Depression, and taking the position Medaille offered would mean a decrease in pay. Medaille offered a second time, a week later. This time he offered Dewey the chief assistant U.S. attorney position, and after discussions with his boss at McNamara and Seymour and with his wife, Dewey accepted and Medaille made the appropriate political maneuvers to make certain the appointment was approved. Dewey was twenty-eight years old. As chief assistant U.S. attorney, Dewey held to the strict policies put in place by Medaille: 1. No assistant could conduct an outside law practice. 2. No photographs were permitted of an assistant and a defendant. 3. No public announcements of investigations, except announcements necessary to court procedure such as indictments or arraignments. 4. No leaking of information. 5. Absolutely no trials by newspaper. 6. No discussion of office work outside of the office.

Medaille believed that ‘‘the walls had ears, and so had the elevators.’’ He identified some of those ears as the bail bondsmen who waited in the halls. Considering them a danger to witnesses, Medaille had them cleared from the halls. Medaille encouraged his staff to conduct mock versions of the trials they were to pursue in the office, while he sat as judge. Of their purpose Medaille stated: ‘‘We are not sludges or political hacks, like the state prosecuting offices. We have the benefit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Intelligence Service of the Treasury, the Post Office inspectors, the Secret Service, the Narcotics Squad, and all the other federal agencies. Many of them are superb. However there are limits to what they can do alone, while together we can do a great job’’ (Smith, 1982).

Thomas Dewey

Dewey and Medaille worked very well together. In fact Dewey picked up many of Medaille’s habits, including that of juggling coins. The first case assigned to Dewey by Medaille in 1931 came from the Seabury investigation, aimed at disrupting Tammany Hall. It was named the Seabury investigation after Judge Seabury. This case was the income tax evasion case of a New York City vice squad police officer named James Quinlivan. The income in question was an estimated $80,000 worth of graft. The case was a sensational one and Dewey was uncertain of how he would do, because he still possessed little actual trial experience and this case had drawn the attention of newspapers and radio. Dewey’s key witness was a petty thief who had served as an informant and pickup man for Quinlivan. Over the course of his testimony he informed the court of how he had over the years provided Quinlivan with the passwords for brothels and speakeasies and later that Quinlivan and his partner William O’Connor sent him to similar locations as well as gambling establishments to collect payoffs. He testified that those places that did not pay were subjected to what Quinlivan called an observation sale. For those locations, Quinlivan would go to the Federal Court and submit an affidavit that he witnessed an unknown person making a purchase of alcohol at that location, allowing Quinlivan to acquire a warrant that allowed him to go back with a prohibition agent for an arrest. To corroborate the thief’s testimony, Dewey called witnesses who would be viewed as more respectable by the jury, to testify to the house and cars bought by Quinlivan. At a time when a police officer’s salary was $2,500 a year, a $16,500 house would certainly raise some eyebrows. Even though approximately a thousand cases of extortion, bribery, and obstruction of justice had been identified through the course of the investigation leading to his indictment, these charges were not pursued by the state and did not fall under federal jurisdiction. Quinlivan was convicted solely on income tax evasion and sentenced to three years in an Atlanta penitentiary. Within a year from its beginning, the Seabury investigation lead to corruption charges being filed against Mayor Walker of New York City, resulting in Walker’s resignation in the midst of his hearing before Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. Dewey turned his attention to Arthur ‘‘Dutch Schultz’’ Flegenheimer, Irving ‘‘Waxey Gordon’’ Wexler, and Jack ‘‘Legs’’ Diamond. This investigation required that ordinary citizens come forth with information, something Dewey would stress in later radio addresses as special prosecutor. Over the course of the investigations into Schultz and Gordon, Dewey and his associates employed a variety of techniques to gain information: wiretaps, reports from special agents, names of witnesses, grand jury subpoenas of bank records, and so forth. However, it was a frequent revelation that witnesses engaged in obstruction. Dewey worked to gain power within the court to employ valid sanctions for obstruction in the case of witnesses.

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The first witness who became a test case for this scenario was a bank clerk named Frederick Lang. Lang controlled accounts for Waxey Gordon and his suspected brewery. Though he was repeatedly called before the grand jury and given the option of protection if he was afraid of reprisals, Lang refused to talk and was cited for contempt. He served ninety days and maintained his silence, even after Waxey Gordon was indicted. Though contempt citations were a useful tool in Dewey’s arsenal, he and his associates were careful in how they were employed, because of the importance of public opinion and the desire to prevent the witnesses who kept silent up to and including the point of contempt from being viewed as sacrificial victims.

How a Beer Empire Operated During Prohibition Part of the testimony used against Waxey Gordon was an explanation of how breweries continued to operate during prohibition. The federal government permitted what was called ‘‘near beer,’’ a substance made by removing the alcohol from real beer. Breweries developed for the creation of near beer had to be licensed with the federal government. This application had to be filed by a corporation whose owners and officers were real, living, and respectable. The federal government required books that could be regularly inspected to show the amount of near beer made, with a ledger of sales. Although these breweries also produced real beer, prohibition brewers kept the real beer off the books. In the case of Waxey Gordon’s brewery, near beer accounted for only 1 percent of his operation. The real beer was piped out of the brewery through an underground series of pipes and hoses running through the sewers beneath the brewery. From there, the beer was piped into the garage where it would be poured into prepared barrels. If the brewery wanted to hide its involvement with real beer after a garage was discovered, a new garage could be purchased within the area and more hose added to the underground system to move the beer to the new location. In the case of Waxey Gordon’s product, the quality was likely rather suspect. Gordon’s brewmaster (a man with thirty-three years of legal brewing experience) testified that good beer took six to eight weeks to make and should be allowed to sit in the vats for as much as three months, depending on season, demand, and weather. Gordon’s beer sat for no more than fortyeight hours before being sent through the pipelines to the trucks.

Legs Diamond was originally charged with kidnapping and torturing a farmer for refusing to divulge the location of a still in what Diamond considered his territory; however, he was acquitted because of lack of a connection between himself and the actual event. Dewey followed this acquittal

Thomas Dewey

with a charge of operating a still, while he and his office continued to investigate Diamond for income tax evasion. An unfortunate element of the Diamond case was the fact that Medaille had been retained by Diamond years earlier to represent him in a murder case. Although the indictment was dismissed because of lack of evidence and the case never went to trial, the ethics of the situation prompted concern as a possible point of appeal because of Medaille’s signature on the still operation indictment. Medaille, in the interest of the case, went on vacation for the duration, leaving Dewey as acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Diamond was convicted and sentenced to four years imprisonment and a fine of $11,000 for operating the still. Associates of Diamond’s tried at the same time received slightly lesser sentences. However, Diamond was released on bail at the request of his counsel pending appeal. Diamond was shot dead within a few days of his release. Further cases during his tenure as chief assistant U.S. attorney included the ‘‘Cupid of City Hall’’ case against deputy clerk James McCormick, who after mumbling the words of the marriage ceremony would open a drawer full of money and fumble with the marriage certificate until the bride or groom gave him a ‘‘gift’’ for performing the ceremony. McCormick was indicted for tax evasion for failing to pay income tax on these ‘‘gifts.’’ Upon the testimony of sixty witnesses over the course of a four-day trial, McCormick was convicted and sentenced to four months and a fine of $15,000. McCormick was the first of the Tammany Hall leaders to be removed from office by Dewey and his associates. That fall, 1932, Dewey’s first son, Thomas E. Dewey, Jr., was born. Following the birth of his son, Dewey did not decrease his case load but made certain to be the one to feed his son each morning at 6 A.M. before heading to the office. Dewey tried Patrick Commerford, boss of Local 125 of the International Union of Operating and Hoisting Engineers and vice president of the New York Building Trades Council. Members of the union brought evidence to Dewey in this case, mostly of strikes conducted without discernable reasons and ended just as quickly with no change in treatment or pay. Each strike or walk out was orchestrated to acquire payoffs from companies to Commerford and other Tammany Hall politicos. He was convicted and sentenced to a year and a day in prison, as well as a fine of $2,000. While still in pursuit of Dutch Schultz and Waxey Gordon, Dewey’s team indicted and won a conviction for income tax evasion against Joseph Castalado, who ran a racket on artichokes. If vegetable dealers did not get their artichokes through Castalado, he would make certain the artichokes they did order through others did not make it to market before they spoiled; other dealers were robbed and/or beaten until all acquiesced, and his racket was established. Among the multitude of cases, one that influenced a change in federal policy related to a code-writer whose services were no longer deemed

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necessary with the end of WWI. Herbert Yardley had at one time been responsible for the creation of the State and War department’s joint code and cipher office, referred to as the ‘‘Black Chamber.’’ However, the Black Chamber and Yardley were denied funding by Secretary of State, Henry Stimson, who considered the activities of the Chamber inappropriate and closed the office. Yardley, without a job or outlet and with limited funds, went on to publish a series of books about codes and code writing in the United States, which were translated into several languages and eventually raised concerns about national security, both in the United States and in other nations. Dewey brokered a deal with Yardley to prevent the publication of further books by convincing the new Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, to sign a letter of apology. This case resulted in Dewey and his staff drafting a bill signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 that provided criminal sanctions against leaks of codes or encryptions between foreign powers and their ambassadorial mission in the United States. Subsequently in December 1943, Yardley sent an encrypted Christmas card to Dewey that decoded to read: ‘‘Real Merry Christmas we send to you H. O. Yardley and Frank Ochs too New name upon the White House Door, Thomas E. Dewey Elected in Forty Four.’’ (Herbert O. Yardley, personal communication, 1943). By 1933, Dewey had frequently engaged grand juries to hear cases against various rackets. These grand juries, though complimentary to Dewey, often remarked about the long hours and the abundance of witnesses that they were called to endure, sometimes as many as five hundred per session. These grand juries marveled over the lack of quality and the fear present in the witnesses, especially in the victims of racketeers. During the winter of that year, Dewey and his staff were able to assemble enough evidence to indict Schultz and Gordon for income tax evasion. The Schultz case was exceedingly difficult to build. Many involved in Schultz’s operation were subpoenaed and questioned before grand juries without providing any information; many were cited for contempt and imprisoned, and others ignored their subpoenas and also served time. Schultz himself stayed in hiding until Medaille, Dewey, and their associates were no longer in office. Dewey and his associates were, however, able to arrest Waxey Gordon. The case against Gordon was also a difficult one to build, as Dewey and his staff raced to acquire records and materials from banks and offices before Gordon’s men could remove them. Other books and records were simply rewritten to remove mention of Gordon’s name or his brewery. The investigation employed handwriting analysis by Scott Leslie, who helped Dewey identify the false identities of Gordon’s associates and sort out changes in books and records. Politicians also attempted to dampen Dewey’s case against Gordon. The district attorney of New York County, a long-time Tammany Hall supporter, announced he would be conducting his own investigation of

Thomas Dewey

Waxey Gordon, one that ended shortly thereafter with the announcement that ‘‘no witness was brave enough to testify against Waxey Gordon’’ (Smith 1982). This announcement resulted in many of Dewey’s witnesses promptly forgetting what they had told Dewey and his staff. During this time, as Dewey collected telephone records, bank accounts, toll slips, and other bits and pieces to assemble his case against Gordon, Waxey Gordon was in hiding because of rumors of a gang war raging in New York City. He was found at his summer home on White Lake in the Catskills and surrendered without violence. Gordon’s holdings were extensive, including two breweries; at least sixty trucks outfitted for the hidden transport of beer; warehouses; hotel suites; offices; and a complete automobile repair shop. However, before the case began, Medaille, anxious to return to private practice, resigned and Dewey served in his stead until President Roosevelt could appoint a successor. Upon leaving, Medaille said of Dewey, ‘‘Mr. Dewey is young, but he has the head of a veteran on his shoulders. He is a very good trial lawyer and a great administrator.’’ In taking the office until Roosevelt could appoint a successor for Medaille, Dewey was the youngest to hold the office at the age of thirty-one. The trial began on November 20, 1933. The trial was based in the testimony of those not scared off by Gordon and his mob, including a restaurant operator named Helen Dellbeck, considered by Dewey and his staff as the heroine of the trial. She operated a small restaurant across from the garage where barrels were loaded onto trucks. She had sought out Gordon to send some of his men to eat at her restaurant, since business was poor. When the men did come they rang up large telephone bills that Gordon advised her to give to him and he would pay them. Her testimony was essential in linking Gordon to an organized mob. Roosevelt appointed Medaille’s permanent replacement, Martin T. Conboy, on November 25, 1933. On December 27, Thomas E. Dewey was appointed special assistant to the attorney general specifically for the case against Irving Wexler. Dewey rested his case, in which he used 131 witnesses and 939 exhibits to show the volume of Gordon’s net income, which from beer alone was estimated to be $1,338,000 in 1930. This was compared to his reported net income of $8,100 for the same year, on which he had paid income tax totaling $10.76. At this time the Gordon case was considered the biggest racket case to have occurred in the East. The defense put forth witnesses attempting to prove that Gordon was a poor man, stating that his house was purchased with money he had borrowed and money made when his wife asked him to sell her jewelry, saying that she would prefer a nice house to jewelry that she never wore. They ascribed his brewery and all its accoutrements to two men who had been assassinated in gangland fashion years before and two other men who were considered fugitives at the time of the trial.

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In his summation, Dewey reminded the jury, ‘‘This is not a beer case, it is not a murder case, it is not a case of any kind except an income tax case. I said that to you with all sincerity and clarity at my command at the beginning of this case, and I repeat it. This is a prosecution of the most flagrant violation and the most flagrant conspiracy to violate the revenue laws of your government which has ever been committed in the history of the United States and I believe that that statement can stand uncontradicted.’’ (Dewey 1974). The jury took fifty-one minutes to convict Waxey Gordon, and he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment and a fine of $20,000. Among his last actions as acting U.S. attorney, Dewey indicted public officials and also those who identified and counseled officials to take bribes. He issued hundreds of warrants for illegal voter registration and dispatched U.S. Marshals to polling places and campaigned against voter tampering. Of his work for the U.S. Attorney’s office, Dewey believed, ‘‘We had all done a useful job. Among other things, the underworld had learned it was dangerous not to pay its income taxes. It was established that with manpower and enough patience and skill the biggest criminal enterprises could be broken up. We had pioneered what we considered to be new techniques of combining investigative and legal skills in criminal investigation with new, investigative accounting procedures and extensive use of grand jury examination of hostile witnesses.’’ (Dewey 1974). In 1934, Dewey left the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York and resumed private practice, though he maintained his position as special assistant to the attorney general, specifically for the case against Irving Wexler because of appeals in the Waxey Gordon case. Gordon lost those appeals by the summer of 1935, and Dewey resigned from the position on July 13, 1935, submitting a bill for $1,200 for his time and services rendered. In 1934, mostly free of work with the U.S. attorney’s office, Dewey also became chairman of the Committee of Criminal Courts Law and Procedure of the city bar association. He advocated for a shift away from defendant’s protection by the law including: 1. The grant of authority for a prosecutor to comment on a defendant’s failure to testify in his own defense. 2. The presumption of ownership for firearms found in vehicles. 3. The establishment of a central felony court. 4. The acceptance of a majority verdict of ten of twelve jurors. 5. The creation of laws forbidding lawyers to advise in the operation of criminal enterprises. 6. The denial of bail for individuals with two convictions.

None of these suggestions were adopted and some were considered unethical by the bar. During this time, one of the investigators from the Seabury investigations, Irving Ben Cooper, announced that seventy-seven bail bondsmen

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continuously perjured themselves in order to claim funds from Dutch Schultz for assisting his numbers runners. Public outcry resulted in the empanelling of a grand jury, but internal squabbles in the district attorney’s office seemed to bring the investigation to a halt. The foreman of this grand jury, Lee Thompson Smith, stated that ‘‘We have labored under the most difficult handicaps. Every conceivable obstacle has been put in our path’’ (Smith 1982). He and the rest of the jury, refused to quit, but subsequently refused the admittance of any assistant to the district attorney’s office, subpoenaing witnesses on their own, and publically demanding that District Attorney William Copeland Dodge appoint a special prosecutor of their choosing. They were dubbed the ‘‘runaway grand jury’’ (Smith 1982). The district attorney, who appointed a man of his own choosing, sending the grand jury into another deadlock, refused the runaway grand jury’s suggestions for a special prosecutor. Meanwhile, further allegations were being brought in front of the grand jury including charges against the district attorney as being involved in a poultry racket. The grand jury stepped down with a demand that then Governor Lehman appoint a special prosecutor, a demand that was supported by many civic groups in New York. In 1935, Dewey was not the first choice for special prosecutor after the demands made by the runaway jury. Four other lawyers were identified and offered the job: Charles Hughes, Jr., George Medaille, Charles Tuttle, and Thomas Thacher; however, as a group they refused and offered Dewey’s ‘‘I am confident that with your name instead. help we can stamp out racketEven with this support, the governor was reluc- eering in New York. We can tant to appoint Dewey to the position. When he did, make this city too dangerous he referred to Dewey as relatively unknown, but for organized crime. To what competent. Dewey accepted a position as special extent this investigation sucprosecutor for the county of New York, appointed ceeds, is largely in your hands. to investigate concerns of vice and graft in the Your cooperation is essential. county (F. W. Adams, correspondence, 1935). In his position as a U.S. attorney, Dewey relied Your confidence will be upon the support of the federal government, as spe- respected. Your help will be cial prosecutor, he himself admitted that he was on kept secret and your persons his own. Further, when District Attorney Dodge protected. If you have evidence referred to Dewey’s position, he stated that Dewey of organized crime, of whathad accepted a position as deputy assistant district at- ever kind, however large or torney, the lowest rank in the district attorney’s office. small, bring it to us. The rest An anonymous letter to the attorney could be is our job. We will do our posted for two cents, and at this time, anonymity best.’’ was the norm. Letters with tips and information —Thomas E. Dewey radio address, about cases bore signatures of assumed names, amJuly 30, 1935, on stations WABC, biguous organizations, or simply nameless concerned WOR, and WMCA citizens. In his first weeks as special prosecutor,

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Dewey picked Acting Deputy Chief Inspector John Lyons to head the detectives who would report directly to his office. During Dewey’s tenure as special prosecutor, dinner for twelve, with drinks, cost $67; dinner was $2 a plate and a telephone call was 10 cents. The bulk of the bill was incurred over mixed drinks and scotch. After the Criminal Courts Committee attended such a dinner at Dewey’s club, Dewey sent a note to those in attendance that the cost came to $6.70 per person, and if they had enjoyed the party, they were to send him a check for the same.

Lyons assembled an investigative staff of seventy-six. He began with a dozen veteran police officers, from undercover units and the alien and bomb squads. Other officers were selected as they finished their training at the police academy; these officers would make the bulk of what became known as the ‘‘grand jury squad.’’ These men were chosen based on their education and lack of political associations and bad habits. Lyons’ men were to be loyal to him and to Dewey and not be jaded by precinct routine. Added to these men were men with backgrounds in pharmacology, photography, and stenography. Lawyers selected to work with Dewey were to be paid between $1,500 and $4,000 a year. These numbers were to increase over Dewey’s years of service as special prosecutor, but the original staff consisted of nineteen men and one woman, ranging in age from twenty-five to forty. Most were distinguished graduates, young lawyers with varying political and educational backgrounds. Many were members of Phi Beta Kappa, and stories are told that the prevalence of Phi Beta Kappa keys on the watch chains of Dewey’s staff convinced some defense attorneys to argue that they should be removed as potential weapons. Both the legal and support staff of Dewey’s office were chosen with great care, to be beyond reproach and trustworthy, mainly to prevent leaks of information to the press and to those who would report back to organized crime and political figures under investigation. Some lawyers picked to work with Dewey’s staff were paid only a dollar a day, but were selected with as much care and consideration as those who received the highest salary his office could offer. One of these dollar-a-day lawyers, Manuel Robbins, remarked of the experience and of Dewey: ‘‘He had an air of inspiration about him that certainly got carried on to his staff. It was a crusade, and we were all young enough to be very ardent crusaders…we were battling the whole, organized underworld of New York City, and we were the forces of decent living’’ (Smith 1982) Dewey ran his office under the same rules as Medaille had during his tenure as U.S. attorney. However, Dewey’s position as Special Prosecutor was not without troubles. He could not maintain Medaille’s rule against discussing investigations with the press. Publicity and a good relationship with the

Thomas Dewey

press were essential to Dewey’s work as special prosecutor and with maintaining his legitimacy in that office, especially since the press, when not given information by Dewey, were inclined to focus on gossip and rumors about problems and rackets not investigated by Dewey and with speculation regarding possible ongoing investigations. He had to convince the police that he was not a politician or someone who talked a good game without accomplishing anything. To do this, Dewey made certain that he consistently highlighted the activities of Lyons and the other detectives who worked for the special prosecutor’s office on rackets investigations in press releases and public speeches, praising their efforts and establishing his relationship with the police as a partnership, rather than treating the police as his subordinates. His biggest problems arose, however, when his request for appropriations to fund his salary and that of his staff was the subject of an injunction against the comptroller, seeking to prevent Dewey from receiving any payment at all. Arguments were made before the Supreme Court of New York and in the Daily News against Dewey’s appointment and his salary (Letter to City Editor, July 30, 1935). In order to prosecute organized crime figures in New York, it was necessary for Dewey and his staff to draft a new bill for the New York state legislature. Dewey submitted the proposed bill in 1935, as investigations into loan sharking and prostitution rackets were initiated in the special prosecutor’s office. Up to this point it was necessary to file separate indictments for each offense. In this case, there were ninety indictments, some of which rested on the testimony of a single witness, whose cooperation and survival were not guaranteed. The bill Dewey and his staff sent to the state legislature mirrored one in place on the federal level, allowing for a joinder of felonies. It was passed just days before Dewey submitted his first racket indictment. Dewey’s office’s first rackets investigation targeted loan sharks, considered by Dewey to be ‘‘one of the most vicious rotten rackets that ever plundered our city’’ (Dewey 1974). This first investigation led to the arrest of twenty-two loan sharks, all with ties to organized crime and within a month, the conviction of twenty-one, one escaping on a technical violation made by a young assistant in Dewey’s office. Over the course of these trials more were arrested, bringing the total to thirty-six convictions. Loan-sharking investigations led to targeted investigations of political corruption and graft, as well as other elements of organized crime. Dewey indicted Edward S. Moran, Jr., in 1937 for receiving bribes as a member of the legislature. Moran accepted funds upward of $8,500 from taxicab operation organizations for influence over his votes and authority in the assembly to prevent unfavorable legislation against taxicab services and organizations. As special prosecutor, Dewey won convictions in seventy-two of seventythree cases.

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Included in those cases were racketeering investigations regarding Louis Lepke Buchalter, Dutch Schultz, and Charles ‘‘Lucky’’ Luciano, as well as Tammany Leader James Hines, who lost his hold over the 11th District when LaGuardia was elected in 1937 with Dewey as district attorney. Of those, Lepke was sentenced to death in the electric chair after Dewey resigned his position as special prosecutor. The phrase United We Stand has gained modern recognition as the motto of the war on terror after the events of September 11, 2001. During Dewey’s investigation of Schultz and Luciano, similar signs were frequently seen in restaurants and cafeterias, displaying images of an American eagle with its wings spread over the skyscrapers of New York City. These signs identified establishments as part of Dutch Schultz’s restaurant extortionist racket.

Dutch Schultz was tried and acquitted for income tax evasion in the small town of Malone, on the New York/Canadian border. Schultz returned to New York City, where Dewey attempted to prepare an indictment against Schultz for charges of failing to file an income tax return not covered in the Malone trial. Dewey was the recipient of continual death threats by this time. His wife, pregnant with their second child, received repeated crank calls requesting that she come to the morgue to identify Dewey’s body. J. Edgar Hoover sent Dewey letters warning him that his life was in danger. The price on his head was $25,000. Dewey employed a bodyguard, who also served as his chauffeur. The biggest threat to Dewey was Dutch Schultz himself, who considered Dewey a personal nemesis. It was Schultz’s desire to see Dewey assassinated that ultimately led to his own death by gangland assassination in October of 1935. Lepke and Luciano were concerned about Schultz’s intention to have Dewey assassinated, despite their refusal to be involved and warnings against such an occurrence, because they believed it could be the catalyst for a ‘‘national crusade against organized crime.’’ (The Herlands Report 1954). Schultz had purportedly planned Dewey’s assassination for October 25, 1935, seven days after the birth of Dewey’s second son. Lepke is credited with ordering the assassination of Schultz in the men’s room of the Palace Chop House on October 23, 1935. Schultz succumbed to his wounds on October 26th. Charles ‘‘Lucky’’ Luciano was considered a major organizing force in the criminal underworld of 1920s and 30s New York. He was called ‘‘Lucky’’ partly because of his survival of an assassination attempt by rival narcotics sellers and partly because of a tattoo on his right arm. The horseshoe tattooed on his arm was pointed out by Luciano himself, as a reason for the nickname. The case made against him by Dewey was based on charges of running prostitution rings.

Thomas Dewey

World War II and Charles ‘‘Lucky’’ Luciano Born Salvatore Lucania in Sicily in 1897, Lucky Luciano was instrumental in the organization of crime in America. He immigrated illegally and is considered responsible for loan sharking, drug trafficking, and protection rackets for prostitution. He was tried for his involvement with prostitution, narcotics, and racketeering in 1936. He was sentenced to thirty to fifty years in prison. Of Dewey, Luciano said, ‘‘Dewey was such a. . .racketeer himself, in a legal way, that he crawled up my back with a frame and stabbed me.’’ (The Herlands Report 1954). As World War II escalated, Meyer Lansky brokered a deal for Luciano to be transferred to Great Meadow to be of easier access to Naval Intelligence. Luciano’s influence was employed to secure cooperation with other members of organized crime and among unions and dock workers to rout out spies, communists, and saboteurs. It was highlighted in the Herlands Report that without Luciano’s say-so, it would have been impossible for Lansky or others to convince dockworkers that it was ‘‘all right for them to cooperate.’’ Through Luciano, Lansky and others were allowed to introduce naval personnel as ‘‘okay, regular guys,’’ allowing them more access and less interference on the docks. Luciano was particular about his involvement, especially when his influence was used to generate contacts with the Mafia in Sicily. Luciano stated, ‘‘When I get out—nobody knows how this war will turn out—whatever I do, I want it kept quiet, private, so that when I get back to Italy I’m not a marked man.’’ (The Herlands Report 1954). Luciano was well aware of his imminent return to Italy, because a warrant of deportation was already lodged against him. His collaboration with naval intelligence was corroborated by the district attorney’s office, whose wire taps on known organized crime locations picked up naval intelligence work. Among the specific actions taken under Luciano’s advisement was the determination of the location where antiwar and anti-American literature was being printed in Harlem and the avoidance of the organization of longshoremen by Harry Bridges. The Herlands Report closed with the findings that: ‘‘No practical purpose would be served by debating the technical scope of Luciano’s aid to the war effort.’’ Over and beyond any precise rating of his contribution is the crystal clear fact that Luciano and his associates and contacts during a period when ‘‘the outcome of the war appeared extremely grave’’ were responsible for a wide range of services that were considered ‘‘useful to the Navy.’’ Luciano’s body was returned to the United States after his death of a heart attack in 1962. He is buried in a New York cemetery.

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Dewey and his investigators moved against the prostitution racket in January 1936 in a raid that covered eighty brothels, of which forty were inexplicably unsuccessful. However, this fact was never fully investigated because Dewey found it necessary to commandeer taxi cabs to transport the sheer number of people picked up in the successful raids back to his offices and to local jails.

Eunice Carter Eunice Carter was the only female and the only African American attorney in Dewey’s original special prosecutor’s office and was also distinguished as the first African American woman in the New York district attorney’s office. She also sat as secretary of LaGuardia’s Committee on Conditions in Harlem in the mid-1930s. She was the wife of a Harlem dentist and a graduate of Smith College and Fordham University Law School. Carter was instrumental in identifying the prostitution racket that led to the prosecution of Charles ‘‘Lucky’’ Luciano. Carter was active in the magistrate’s court, often when campaigns against prostitution were at their peak. Carter identified that no prostitute represented by Attorney Abe Karp was ever sentenced to a prison term. Though Dewey was not inclined to investigate prostitution as a racket, convinced it was more a social rather than criminal concern, Carter and another lawyer in Dewey’s employ, Murray Gurfein, convinced Dewey that organized crime was definitely involved in prostitution. Along with others in Dewey’s employ, Carter, who conducted most of the interviews with prostitutes in preparation for the case, was highlighted for her untiring efforts in bringing about the conviction of Luciano. Dewey later appointed her as head of the Special Sessions Bureau of the district attorney’s office with another veteran of his staff, Sol Gelb, a position she held until 1945. Carter entered into private practice after that and worked as an activist as a charter member of the National Council of Negro Women and with the United Nations.

It was the scope of the raids that convinced three of the madams in custody that Dewey must have arrested the entire mob. Those madams decided, unlike others who swore they were simply housewives and their girls were students, models, artists, or telephone operators, that they would cooperate in order to get the mob out of their business. Dewey was disappointed by this initial cooperation, three of one hundred arrested prostitutes was hardly the beginnings of a successful prosecution, but others were swayed as Dewey and his staff informed them, ‘‘We are not in the business of prosecuting prostitutes and madams and pimps and heels in this business. We are here in an effort to get the big shots’’ (Dewey 1974).

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Further, they asked those they arrested, the prostitutes held on bail set at $10,000 each and gangsters, a much higher rate, that they simply provide information, whether they wanted or were willing to testify or not. Those who were willing to testify were granted immunity. Over the course of four months, after placing Frank Hogan in charge of the women and as they were gradually weaned off drugs and treated for diseases picked up in the brothels, many were convinced to talk. The medical records of each girl were kept to corroborate their standing as prostitutes, as some continued to swear that they were only students or had legitimate jobs. Once it became apparent that Dewey was convincing those prostitutes he had in custody to give up information, despite warnings and threats, others associated with the business began to talk: bookers (men who convinced women to enter brothels), thieves who had worked as collectors of protection money, and pimps. These men assisted in creating the clearest links between prostitution and Luciano. Luciano’s primary involvement with the prostitution racket was in establishing a cut of the profits of ‘‘You cannot convict the men at each brothel. He would send enforcers, such as Tommy ‘‘the Bull’’ to convince, through threats and the very top of a criminal enterviolence, madams to pay fees for protection. If they prise, who deal with criminal refused to do so, their establishments were trashed subordinates, who deal through and girls and madams were hospitalized. Further links criminal subordinates beneath were established when employees of the hotels where them, except upon the testiLuciano kept suites identified leaders of the prostitu- mony of the people who are tion racket as frequent visitors of those rooms. These their associates, their subordiwitnesses were crucial, as they were among a handful nates, or their intimates. There of individuals not involved in criminal activities who is not any other way known to could be called to testify. the law under the system of Luciano was arrested on April Fool’s Day 1936, in jurisprudence . . . we cannot get a casino in Hot Springs, Arkansas; he was jailed, but bishops; we cannot get clergyshortly was released on $5,000 bond. A second warmen; we cannot get bankers, or rant for his arrest was issued, as it was imperative to keep him in jail until he could be extradited to New business men to testify about York. This time his bail was set at $200,000, and gangsters, pimps and prostituLuciano was transferred to a jail in Little Rock, tion. They just don’t happen to Arkansas, to await extradition. Bribes were offered be available as witnesses. . . to the attorney general of Arkansas to allow Luciano We have to use as witnesses to escape, and politicians and lawyers advocated for such of the associates of these his release. They failed to have an effect, and defendants as we can compel to Luciano was extradited to New York. Once in New tell the truth.’’ York, Luciano was held under the highest level of —Thomas E. Dewey, summation, bail ever set in New York at that time, the sum of trial of Charles ‘‘Lucky’’ Luciano $350,000.

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As the trial began, attempts were made by the defense to distance Luciano from the charges, identifying him as being involved in race tracks and gambling, but not prostitution. The defense swore that Luciano was not acquainted with his codefendants and that none had ever worked for him. Cross-examinations of prostitutes by the defense was brutal, and many were questioned about why they had decided to cooperate with Dewey’s office. This line of questioning, however, led to the downfall of the defense, when prostitute Thelma Jordan detailed torture methods, such as being burned by cigars or having one’s tongue split, used by Luciano’s organization to prevent and punish prostitutes for talking. Her testimony provided further assistance to Dewey, when she stated that she testified because of her faith in the special prosecutor’s office. Frequent objections were made, especially when witnesses, such as booker Al Weiner was asked by the defense what Dewey had promised in return for his testimony. To this question, Weiner replied: leniency and placement in ‘‘a jail where I won’t be murdered’’ (Dewey 1974). Problems arose for Dewey when respectable and criminal witnesses alike backed out of their testimony, and some even swore that they had lied in previous statements given in Dewey’s office. Others claimed a failure of memory. Luciano took the stand in his own defense. Under cross-examination by Dewey, he admitted to as much as he believed Dewey might be able to prove. He admitted to involvement in bookmaking, race tracks, narcotics, bootlegging, gambling, lying about his occupation on gun permits, and failure to pay state income tax. He denied involvement with prostitution, other than hiring prostitutes for his personal use, despite the testimony of fifty prostitutes and madams contrary to that fact. He was found guilty and sentenced to thirty to fifty years in prison. In 1938, as district attorney, Dewey filed an indictment leading to the arrest of arguably the most powerful Democrat in New York State. James J. Hines was arrested on May 25, 1938, and charged with running a numbers racket. Dewey received substantial negative publicity for his initial persecution of Hines, his opponents in the courtroom and politics believing the indictment was a political maneuver to assist Dewey in establishing himself as a gubernatorial nominee. Dewey did not back down, however, and began the prosecution’s case by establishing the link between Hines and the late Dutch Schultz, as well as how former District Attorney Dodge assisted Hines in controlling the maneuvers of police and judges throughout New York City. Witnesses for the prosecution included the fire chief of Troy, New York, Schultz’s former lawyer, and other key members of Tammany Hall, as well as principal numbers runners within the racket. This case had its roots in the original information given to the runaway grand jury that had established the need for a special prosecutor. In those

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sessions, the police commissioner had testified that Hines protected slot machine and poultry rackets. However, points raised by the defense allowed for a mistrial to be declared when a member of the runaway grand jury was called to testify. Hines was released on bail as Dewey prepared for a new trial. The second trial occurred a year later on January 26, 1939, after Dewey made a failed run for governor. His popularity had not diminished with this failure to win the election, and he received an abundance of anonymous support. Letters were sent with Dewey’s photograph from the newspaper in place of an address and still were delivered, many without postage or with the district attorney’s office as the return address. The first blow to the case, however, came when a key prosecution witness, George Weinberg, com- ‘‘Whispers concerning racial mitted suicide over his fears of being subject to ret- and religious preferences have ribution for his involvement in the case as state’s been injected into both sides. evidence. Judge Nott, who sat on the bench for the The man or woman who votes trial, permitted Weinberg’s testimony from the first for a candidate because of his trial to be read into evidence, after he had informed race or religion, or votes the jury of Weinberg’s suicide. New witnesses were against him for such a reason, brought forward, including a bartender who estab- is a disgrace to American citilished the connection between Hines and Dutch zenship. I condemn and Schultz, citing frequent meals he had witnessed despise any support that is between the two. The jury agreed with Dewey about connections based on racial or religious between Hines and Schultz, as well as Hines’ prejudices. There are some involvement in widespread political corruption and things more important than abuse of his political power. After seven hours of being elected governor and one deliberation, they found Hines guilty on all thirteen is the spirit of religious and counts of the indictment. Hines was granted leni- racial good will. I would rather ency because of his age and was sentenced to four go down to defeat than be to eight years imprisonment. Hines appealed the elected by votes based on race case until 1940, but the conviction was upheld and or religion.’’ Hines served four years in Sing Sing Prison. —Handwritten note attached to Dewey’s perseverance in the Hines prosecution letter from Thomas E. Dewey to made him a popular figure in political cartoons and Walter White, secretary of the NAACP, June 21, 1939 commentary. As the Brooklyn Dodgers drastically improved their standing in baseball in 1939, it was remarked by sports caster Fred Allen that ‘‘if the team won two more games that season, Dewey would investigate them’’ (Smith 1982). Streets were named after him and he was a prominent figure in movie newsreels. Friends remarked that he received more publicity in 1940 than Hitler. In the numerous speeches made by Dewey in closing remarks and the aftermath of successful convictions, it was not uncommon for him to draw attention and give credit to his staff, but he focused also on juries and

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witnesses. He spoke of these people as breaking the unspoken law of ‘‘Thou shalt not squeal’’ and standing up to the most dangerous men of their age. He spoke of their courage and of their perseverance, whether they themselves were members of the defendant’s criminal network or ordinary citizens. Among the stories told of Thomas E. Dewey is one of a ten-year-old girl who was disappointed over an abundance of rain. She told her father that if the rain did not stop, she was going to sue God. When her father replied that she was unlikely to win such a suit, she replied, ‘‘I could if Dewey was my lawyer’’ (Smith 1982). After his work as special prosecutor, Dewey returned to private practice and did well. He ran for governor on the Republican ticket in 1942 and won. World War II resulted in a very different role for Dewey, not only as district attorney, but also as an outspoken opponent of discrimination based on race and nationality. As governor, he was faced with petitions for leniency and pardon from some of the individuals he had sought to prosecute and had himself prosecuted during his tenure as special prosecutor. Among them was Louis Lepke Buchalter, who was prosecuted in Federal Court on narcotics charges and in Brooklyn on charges of murder, related to his mob involvement. He petitioned Dewey for clemency, but Dewey refused. Lepke was executed by electric chair in March 1944. Of him, Dewey stated ‘‘No man deserved it more’’ (Smith 1982). Dewey did pardon another mob figure from his past, however. Because of his assistance to the Allies in WWII, Dewey pardoned Charles ‘‘Lucky’’ Luciano, who was then deported to his native Italy. The Herlands Report, detailing not only Luciano’s career in crime but also his service to the allies, was instrumental in his pardon. In 1944 and 1948 Dewey ran for president on the Republican ticket. The Gallup poll for the 1948 presidential election predicted Dewey would win the presidential election, resulting in erroneous headlines of ‘‘Dewey Beats Truman.’’ However, Dewey lost, with Truman claiming 303 votes in the Electoral College and a margin of two million popular votes. In running for president, Dewey had avoided outright condemnation of communism in his political campaign for the 1948 election, a point many believe may have cost him the election. Dewey, however, was not an extremist, like Senator McCarthy and others from the heyday of the red scare. He accepted America’s role in defending the world against the threat of communism, but he did not pursue communism in the same fashion that he sought out graft and racketeers during his tenure as special prosecutor. Dewey continued to be involved in politics with the Republican Party; his assistance and support were considered vital for nominations and political primaries, and he also worked to recruit new members, especially among young voters. Yet, after his failed presidential runs, Dewey settled into a life of private law practice. He also engaged in an active friendship with FBI

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director J. Edgar Hoover. The two were voluminous correspondents, sending newspaper clippings of interest and books back and forth. When Hoover was tapped to examine racial tension and riots in the mid- to late 1960s, Dewey became the silent author of the final report. His involvement in the project was hoped, by President Johnson, to be a moderating factor, reigning in Hoover’s reputed extremist tendencies. Dewey, however, turned out to be the more radical of the two, although he had hoped his involvement would assist in creating a compromise between ideas of welfare and warfare, so much so that some have argued that his response to growing concerns held racist undertones. This would be in direct contrast with Dewey’s writings, speeches, and actions on the subject. As governor, he had enacted the first state law forbidding discrimination in employment based on race or religion. During World War II he made speeches cautioning against racial discrimination and the alienation of immigrants and citizens whose heritage stemmed from the AXIS powers. His decision not to seek a third run for president was considered by some to be a sign that he was turning his back on his civic duty to the American people; however, Thomas E. Dewey was above all else a patriot. He believed in his country. Anything that threatened the core ideals of America was suspect in his eyes, be it corrupt politicians, organized crime figures, communism, or extremist groups. The strongest defense against such factors, he believed, was the power of the American people to be actively involved in their government and in the legal process. This view was best summed up by Dewey in a state address made during his run for governor in 1942. ‘‘It is for us, in the face of a totalitarian world to declare our faith in democracy by taking the time to register and vote… Failure to perform your duty to register to vote causes your right to vote to become weaker. And never forget that when you fail to vote others who do vote are exercising your rights for you. Power residing in the people tends to wither away by so much as they do not use that power. Someone will always exercise the power of government. In America, that power must forever rest with the people. But it will be kept by the people only if they use it.’’ (Private papers of Thomas E. Dewey). Dewey died March 16, 1971, and is buried in Pawling cemetery in Duchess County, New York. FURTHER READING There are three key volumes of note on Thomas E. Dewey. Richard Norton Smith’s biography details Dewey’s political career and his influence in Republican politics. Smith, Richard Norton. 1982. Thomas E. Dewey and His Times. The First Full Scale Biography of the Maker of the Modern Republican Party. New York: Simon & Schuster.

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Thomas E. Dewey’s autobiography was a key resource in writing this chapter and contains an abundance of trial transcripts as well as Dewey’s reminiscences of his work prior to becoming governor. Dewey, Thomas E. 1974.Twenty against the Underworld. An Autobiography of a District Attorney and His Fight against Organized Crime. Edited by Rodney Campbell. New York: Doubleday. Another great source of information regarding Dewey is the following: Stohlberg, Mary. 1995. Fighting Organized Crime Politics: Justice and the Legacy of Thomas E. Dewey. Boston: Northeastern University Press. The greatest source of information about Thomas E. Dewey is the collection of private papers, case files, scrapbooks, photographs, and multimedia materials held in the Rare Books Division of the University of Rochester Library in Rochester, New York. The following were used in writing this chapter: 1. General Private Papers, unspecified; Series 1, Box 89, Folder 1. 2. Envelope attached to the letter to Lawyers Bar Association from a few tenants of 115 East 130, Series 1, Box 89, Folder 1. 3. General Private Papers, Series 1, Box 4; specifically, file 6: private law cases through 1924: Henry M. Carrere, tax returns. 4. The people of the state of New York against Edward S. Moran, Jr., Grand Jury indictment, Private Papers, Series 1, Box 4, Folder 2. 5. The people of the state of New York against Charles H. Mullens and William Solomon, Grand Jury indictment, Private Papers, Series 1, Box 4, Folder 2. 6. Letter from the Department of Justice dated December 27, 1933 to Thomas E. Dewey, Private Papers, Series 1, Box 11, Folder 1. 7. In general, Private Papers, Series 1, Box 10, Folder 6: private law cases through 1934: Irving Wexler, alias Waxey Gordon. 8. Letter from Thomas E. Dewey dated July 13, 1935, to Col. C. E. Stewart, Private Papers, Series 1, Box 11, Folder 1. 9. Letter from F. W. Adams dated July 1, 1935, to Thomas E. Dewey, Private Papers, Series 1, Box 11, Folder 1. 10. Klein letter to City Editor July 30th, 1935; B.C.L. Company v. Frank J. Taylor; BCL Company v. LaGuardia; letters between Henry Klein and John Langel, July to August 1935, Private Papers, Series 1, Box 89, Folder 12. 11. In general, statements by Thomas E. Dewey, re: discrimination in employment vs. Italians; for the Pittsburgh Courier re: African Americans; Private Papers, Series 1, Box 88, Folders 4 and 5. 12. Personal correspondence: first term X-Y Series 4, Box 203; Christmas card from Herbert O. Yardley, December 20, 1943. 13. Private Papers, J. Edgar Hoover correspondence; post-governor correspondence, Series 8, Box 21, Folder 9. The Herlands Report (1954), the official report of William Herlands, the New York State Commissioner of Investigation, detailed the agreements made between U.S. Naval Intelligence and the Mafia leaders of

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14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

22.

23.

New York. The following items in the report are from the private papers in the Dewey collection at the University of Rochester. The Herlands Report, September 17, 1954, Series 13, Box 16, Folder 2. Governor Dewey’s commutation: pp. 2, 9, and 10. Transfer to Great Meadow for Naval Intelligence: pp. 6, 7, 49, and 51–53. Luciano file for executive clemency: May 8, 1945, pp. 8 and 99. Why Naval intelligence used criminals: pp. 14, 15, and 18. Why Luciano was brought in: pp. 8 and 39. What Luciano did: p. 68, secured cooperation of others; p. 69, ‘‘all right for them to cooperate’’; p. 70, allow for introductions of naval personnel as okay, regular guys, allowing them more access and less interference; pp. 86, 87, and 90, contacts with the Mafia in Sicily. Luciano on ‘‘it’’: p. 61, ‘‘When I get out—nobody knows how this war will turn out—whatever I do, I want it kept quiet, private, so that when I get back to Italy I’m not a marked man.’’ (because a warrant of deportation was lodged against him). DA’s office wiretaps picked up naval intelligence work: p. 72, Harlem literature printing; p. 73, union cards; pp. 73 and 74, avoidance of organization of longshoremen by Harry Bridges. Findings: p. 94, ‘‘No practical purpose would be served by debating the technical scope of Luciano’s aid to the war effort. Over and beyond any precise rating of his contribution is the crystal clear fact that Luciano and his associates and contacts during a period when ‘‘the outcome of the war appeared extremely grave’’ were responsible for a wide range of services which were considered ‘‘useful to the Navy.’’

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Robert Kennedy: The Enforcer Within J. Scott Granberg-Rademacker


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In an address at the University of Georgia Law School on May 6, 1961, Robert ‘‘Bobby’’ Francis Kennedy (RFK) said: ‘‘We know that it is law which enables man to live together, that creates order out of chaos. We know that the law is the glue that holds civilization together.’’ (Guthman and Allen 1993). This simple statement summed up Kennedy’s sober belief in upholding the law. It was this sacred belief in the law that drove him to take on some of the most notorious gangsters, racketeers, and hoodlums and later drove him to take on Southern racism by enforcing civil rights legislation in the newly desegregated South. Robert Kennedy had a distinguished career as a public servant, serving as a lawyer on the staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, of which Senator Joseph McCarthy was the chair. He also served as counsel for the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, otherwise known as the ‘‘Rackets Committee,’’ and as U.S. Attorney General during the Kennedy (John) and Johnson administrations. RFK was elected to the senate in New York and was a presidential candidate during the 1968 election. The career of Robert Kennedy was in many ways like a light bulb: it burned bright and constant, it illuminated some of the darkest corners of the criminal underworld, and it burned out unexpectedly and prematurely. To fully understand Robert Kennedy the crime fighter it is helpful to understand his roots. Kennedy’s upbringing and personality contributed greatly to his effectiveness in public life. This chapter is divided into four sections. The first section expounds on RFK’s early life and how his family dynamics and upbringing forged his tenacious personality. The second section details RFK’s role on the Rackets Committee, and the third section explores Kennedy’s tenure as attorney general, with a special emphasis on civil rights and the battle against organized crime. The fourth section reflects on Bobby Kennedy’s contribution as a crime fighter.

THE YOUNG BOBBY Robert Kennedy was born on November 20, 1925, in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was the seventh of nine children born to Rose Fitzgerald and Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr. Growing up in the Kennedy house was a Darwinian experience. Joe Kennedy, Sr., was intensely competitive and constantly pushed the children to improve. With such a large family, the competition for Joe Sr.’s attention was fierce, and the older children had an advantage because of their age. Young Bobby lived in the shadow of his older siblings—not having the athleticism of his older brother Joe Jr., the wit of his older brother Jack, or the grace of his older sister Kathleen. These three older children (dubbed by the other siblings as the ‘‘golden trio’’) received the lion’s share of their father’s attention. To Joe Sr., these were

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the children most likely to be successful. He paid little attention to young Bobby, who was not very tall, athletic, or witty. At dinnertime, Joe Sr. would sit with Joe Jr., Jack, and Kathleen at one end of the table and talk politics, while Bobby would sit at the other end of the table with Rose. As Evan Thomas notes, this was the wrong end of the table to be on in the Kennedy family. Despite his mother’s affection, RFK desperately sought his father’s approval. In an effort to toughen him up, young Robert Kennedy was enrolled in boxing lessons. —Thomas, 2000

However, obtaining his approval was difficult. RFK was a mediocre student and was mercilessly teased by his older siblings. In family games or debates, young Bobby seldom won. This was difficult for him because his father’s approval and attention were usually showered on those who were ‘‘winners.’’ Joe Sr.’s own words to his children are telling: ‘‘We don’t want any losers around here. In this family we want winners…Don’t come in second or third—that doesn’t count—but win’’ (Kennedy 1974). In an effort to overcompensate for his lack of athleticism, young Bobby developed a fiery personality and a dogged determination, both of which served him well later in life. During World War II, RFK fell in love with the gallant notion of fighting for one’s country. Both of Bobby Kennedy: ‘‘What I his older brothers were in the service and fighting remember most vividly about overseas, and Bobby was anxious to join the fight. growing up was going to a lot John was stationed on a PT boat and tasted battle of different schools, always firsthand when a Japanese destroyer severed the having to make new friends, boat. The New York Times praised JFK for his and that I was very awkward. bravery in battle. Joe Jr. (not wanting to be outdone I dropped things, and fell by JFK in terms of bravery) volunteered for a high- down all the time. I had to go risk mission to fly a bomber filled with explosives to the hospital a few times for into a secret German base. The plan was to crash stitches in my head and my the bomber directly into the base, where it would explode, and Joe Jr. would parachute out before leg. And I was pretty quiet detonation. Unfortunately, the bomber exploded most of the time. And I didn’t mind being alone.’’ and killed Joe Jr. before reaching the target. —Newfield, 1969 Despite aspirations to get his wings and fly, RFK flunked his flight school exam and resigned from officer training to enlist in the Navy. To add further humiliation to his already battered ego, the destroyer that Bobby served on was named the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., after his heroic older brother (his father pulled strings at the Pentagon to get the ship named after his eldest son). Robert Kennedy finally shipped out for duty in February 1946—when the war was all but over. Disappointed by the lack of action and the boredom of life at sea, Kennedy was honorably discharged from the navy nearly four months later.

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Though young, RFK was also developing a sense of personal integrity. The death of Joe Jr. meant that Bobby had increasing importance in the family. This was especially evident as he played the role of peacemaker between his father and his brother Jack. Bobby had also learned the value of hard work: he had learned that through hard work and determination he could compensate for his own personal shortcomings. During his brother Jack’s congressional campaign for the 11th Congressional District, Bobby Kennedy was enlisted by his father to help JFK get elected. He was assigned the difficult task of campaigning in East Cambridge—an area where JFK had little support. This working-class neighborhood saw the Kennedy family as snobbish and aristocratic. To relax, Bobby used to go across the street from the campaign headquarters in East Cambridge and play softball with local kids in the park, and although JFK didn’t carry East Cambridge, a local Cambridge politician noted that Bobby Kennedy’s softball playing did more to win the hearts of the people of East Cambridge than all of the other campaigning. It was during the campaign in East Cambridge that Bobby Kennedy met his future wife Ethel Skakel. Ethel was in many ways very similar to RFK’s sisters. She was athletic, witty, and always quick with a joke or pranks. She also had a competitive spirit worthy of a Kennedy and was a devout Catholic (like Bobby). What Ethel gave to Bobby was something that he never before had in his life—unconditional love and devotion. Ethel’s love gave Bobby a stable family foundation and helped him to grow his confidence. Robert and Ethel Kennedy would frequently entertain guests at their Hickory Hill estate. Sometimes, they would bring in top academics to host seminars on various topics; other times they would host rowdy soirees where it was not uncommon for guests to be pushed into the pool. —Schlesinger, 1978

After graduating from the University of Virginia Law School in the summer of 1951, Robert Kennedy took up the task of managing his brother’s 1952 senate campaign. RFK’s strength was not his organizing ability— which was dubious during his brother’s campaign. In fact, Bobby found managing the campaign to be much more burdensome than simply doing campaign work. He was accustomed to knocking on doors and distributing leaflets, but RFK was not very good at planning effective events. Often he did not grasp the complexities of micro-managing large-scale campaign events, and it was up to the campaign staff to tell Bobby that some of his ideas simply were not feasible. RFK’s real contribution as campaign manager came from his ability to be the ‘‘bad guy.’’ He rolled up his sleeves and conducted a lot of the dirty work of the campaign behind the scenes and in doing so saved his brother from such unpleasant dealings. This allowed JFK to appear as though he were above politics, and his movie-star image


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remained intact. This was important because it was Robert Kennedy who was the one making enemies—not John Kennedy. Bobby rebuffed incumbent Governor Paul Dever and the Massachusetts Democratic party bosses by declining their help because he saw them as political dinosaurs on the verge of extinction. He also had no tolerance for loitering patronage seekers around the campaign office and frequently threw them out. The management skills that Robert Kennedy learned while running his brother’s campaign were a precursor to the way that he ran the Justice Department later on. During his brother’s run for the senate, Bobby had a vision for the campaign. He saw it not as ‘‘politics as usual’’ (the back-slapping wheeling-and-dealing One of Bobby Kennedy’s dubithat he despised), but ‘‘politics as unusual.’’ He wanted to portray his brother as a strong and ous campaign ideas during handsome candidate who was above the dirty game JFK’s Senate campaign: ‘‘Let’s of politics. To do so, he knew that he had to be the have a tea for five hundred peoenforcer and the bearer of bad news. Further com- ple tomorrow in Worchester.’’ —Thomas, 2000 plicating matters was the fact that JFK was quite sickly throughout the campaign and often relied on Bobby to help him disguise the extent of his ailments on the campaign trail (John Kennedy had been diagnosed with Addison’s disease and was receiving cortisone treatments). This kind of determination and assistance made Bobby invaluable to JFK’s senate victory. RFK was also a tremendous motivator and led by his own example. Young activists for the Kennedy senate campaign were inspired by his tireless determination and relentless work ethic. No task was too small or unimportant for Bobby. He worked long and hard hours for his brother, often going canvassing door-to-door on his own after work hours. This brand of leadership-by-example was later realized by Bobby at the Justice Department as well. After his successful bid for the senate, JFK realized that he had perhaps been wrong about Bobby in the past. His brother was no longer the awkward young boy who always got picked on by his siblings. Instead, it became obvious that when Bobby put his mind to something, he became a force to be reckoned with. Even Joe Sr. admired Bobby’s hard work and determination, once remarking to a reporter that Bobby was ‘‘the most determined person’’ he had known (Schlesinger 1978, 97). Still, while talking nice about Bobby to others, Joe Sr. gave his son a cruel reality check after the campaign, as recalled by O’Brien (1974, 41–42): ‘‘Well, what are you going to do now?’’ ‘‘What do you mean?’’ asked Bobby. ‘‘You’ve got to get to work. You haven’t been elected to anything,’’ stated Joe Sr.

In an effort to help Bobby find a job, Joe Sr. called Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) in December 1952 to inquire whether he would be able to find work in his office for RFK. In January 1953, Robert Kennedy assumed the role

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of assistant counsel on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of which McCarthy was the chair. This proved to be a useful assignment for RFK, as it taught him investigative and adversarial techniques that would be invaluable when cross-examining labor racketeers and mobsters in the future. The work of the committee also appealed to RFK’s moral code, where right and wrong were clearly distinguishable and middle ground was largely nonexistent. RFK had only drafted one report for the subcommittee on the subject of trade with communist countries, which was widely accepted to be one of the best reports produced by the committee, when a personal (and mutual) dislike for McCarthy’s lead counsel, Roy Cohn, curtailed Bobby Kennedy’s effectiveness. The situation became so bad that Bobby warned McCarthy that Roy Cohn was leading him and the subcommittee toward disaster. After only six months as assistant counsel, Kennedy quit. Joseph McCarthy was a family friend of the Kennedy’s and had even dated two of Robert Kennedy’s sisters. —Steel, 2000

Shortly thereafter, Robert went to work as an assistant to his father on a governmental reform committee that was headed up by former president Herbert Hoover. RFK found the work exceedingly dull and was glad to return to work as minority Robert Kennedy, recounting a counsel on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on conversation he had with SenaInvestigations. By this point, McCarthy had overtor McCarthy: ‘‘I told him that I played his hand and his enemies were becoming thought he was out of his mind more unified against him. Accusations of being and was going to destroy unpatriotic for opposing him no longer had suffihimself.’’ cient traction, and Democrats on the subcommittee —Hilty, 1997 had stripped McCarthy of his sole ability to appoint the staff of the subcommittee. With unifying opposition against McCarthy, the Democrats on the committee offered RFK the job as minority counsel. RFK took his role as minority counsel as a chance to get back at Roy Cohn. Bobby seemed to have no interest in making McCarthy look bad; he wanted to embarrass his old rival instead. During one exchange between McCarthy and Senator Henry Jackson (D-Washington), Jackson was asking McCarthy about a plan put forward by Cohn and another staffer. Bobby— who was well versed on the details of the plan—fed questions to Senator Jackson that completely picked the plan apart and made it almost laughable. The line of questioning was so upsetting to Cohn that he angrily stomped over to Kennedy after the hearing and took a swing at him. The two men were separated, and RFK remained calm, casting only a mocking smile at Roy Cohn. It was not long afterward that McCarthy fell from


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public grace. When the Democrats regained control of the Senate during the midterm election of 1954, Robert Kennedy went from minority counsel on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to chief counsel. The morning headline on the New York Daily News after the altercation between Robert Kennedy and Roy Cohn read: ‘‘COHN, KENNEDY NEAR BLOWS IN ‘HATE’ CLASH.’’ —Schlesinger, 1978

THE TOUGH BOBBY During his time as chief counsel on the Subcommittee on Investigations, Bobby Kennedy earned a name for himself by going after mobsters and corrupt union leaders. RFK was aware that the Committee, now in Democratic control, still needed to at least appear to be interested in rooting out communists so that they didn’t get shown up politically by Republicans on the issue. All the same, Kennedy envisioned a change of course for the committee toward its original intent: weeding out fraud and corruption in government, labor, and management. However, it was not until the summer of 1956 that Bobby got a clear idea of the direction that he wanted to take the Investigations Subcommittee. Investigative journalists began writing stories about mob infiltration and corruption in unions, and Kennedy was intrigued. As chief counsel, he was in a position to probe this issue. Going after mobsters and corrupt union leaders fed into RFK’s black-and-white sense of moralism. He also saw the chance to score some political points for his brother while pursuing his own interest. Joe Sr. advised Bobby against moving the subcommittee in that direction. He was worried that by antagonizing unions—a stalwart of Democratic support—Bobby might jeopardize JFK’s chances at the presidency in the future. Bobby didn’t see it that way though. In his mind, rooting out corrupt union leaders would actually benefit the rank-and-file union members. He had made up his mind. Bobby solicited the help of Carmine Bellino, a former FBI accountant who had experience working as a consultant on several congressional committees. In Kennedy’s own words, Bellino was an ‘‘accounting and investigative genius.’’ They took a trip to the West Coast to investigate allegations that the Teamster’s Union had been infiltrated by mobsters who wanted to get their hands on the Teamster’s $250 million pension fund. RFK was horrified by the stories of harassment and strong-arm tactics he heard while in Los Angeles. Kennedy recounts one particularly graphic and troubling occurrence (Kennedy 1960, 8): There was a union organizer from Los Angeles who traveled to San Diego to organize juke-box operators. He was told to stay out of San Diego or he would be killed. But he returned to San Diego. He was knocked unconscious.

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When he regained consciousness the next morning he was covered with blood and had terrible pains in his stomach. The pains were so intense that he was unable to drive back to his home in Los Angeles and stopped at a hospital. There was an emergency operation. The doctors removed from his backside a large cucumber. Later he was told that if he ever returned to San Diego it would be a watermelon. He never went back.

Stories like this one led Kennedy and Bellino to dig further. They began to ask union officials about instances of violence, corruption, and mob activity. Early on in the investigation, Kennedy recounted that he never suspected that Teamster president David Beck was corrupt. He suspected that the corruption— while widespread—was generally a local or regional problem. When the investigative duo began asking difficult questions to Teamster officials, they were usually less than helpful, occasionally stonewalling or providing names of rival union members as the ‘‘real bad guys.’’ While in Seattle, Kennedy met up with an anonymous tipster who provided concrete information that the corruption in the Teamster’s Union went all the way to David Beck. An associate of Beck’s named Nathan Shefferman had told RFK that he had been paid by the Teamsters for work he had done on the West Coast, though the president of the Western Conference of Teamsters, Frank Brewster, indicated that Shefferman had never done any work for the Teamsters that he was aware of and had never been an employee. This seemed to indicate a misuse of Teamster funds, because ‘‘if Beck was paying money to Nathan Shefferman from Western Conference funds, as our information indicated, it was not apparently for any legitimate work Shefferman did for the union’’ (Kennedy 1960, 13). Kennedy and Bellino also uncovered more damaging information about David Beck when they learned that a contractor had done work on Beck’s house and had been paid out of Teamster funds. The evidence seemed to be Bobby Kennedy’s address to the American Trucking Associ- mounting against Beck. However, when the Teamster vice presidents were subpoenaed before the ation in 1959: ‘‘The theft of committee, they began taking the Fifth Amendment millions of dollars of union on the grounds that the committee did not have jufunds by men like Dave Beck, risdiction. To combat this problem, a select commitJames R. Hoffa, James Cross, tee was temporarily formed with the specific charge and others is a grievous of investigating corruption in labor-management enough crime, but at best it is relations. The committee was staffed with four only a symptom of other more Democratic senators: McClellan (the chair), Kenserious and underlying probnedy (Robert’s brother), McNamara, and Ervin, and lems. A number of men in im- four Republican senators: McCarthy, Mundt, Goldportant union positions have water, and Ives. The McClellan Committee solved come to regard unions as their the jurisdictional question, but now a new problem arose: David Beck had fled the country. The commitown personal possessions.’’ —Guthman and Allen, 1993 tee had no jurisdiction to subpoena Beck while he was overseas, but in Beck’s absence RFK did manage


to get some pretty damaging testimony from Western Conference Teamster President Frank Brewster. Brewster testified that he had no knowledge about what David Beck was doing with the money he was withdrawing from the Western Conference Teamster’s account and that he was never informed by David Beck that these withdrawals were loans to Beck himself. This seemingly harmless bit of testimony laid out a subtle but snaring trap for David Beck. RFK correctly suspected that Beck was going to claim that the money taken from the Western Conference Teamsters account was a loan—a claim that could now be refuted with Brewster’s testimony. When Beck finally returned to the United States, young Bobby Kennedy was eager to get him on the stand. RFK’s sharp questioning about the misappropriation of Union funds utterly destroyed Beck on the stand, forcing him to plead the Fifth Amendment every time he was pinned down on an issue. For Bobby, the painstaking financial digging that he and Bellino had done paid large dividends. As Beck took the stand, RFK recalled: ‘‘…I looked at him [Beck], and realized that here was a major public figure about to be utterly and completely destroyed before our eyes. I knew the evidence we had uncovered would be overwhelming. It would make him an object of disgust and ridicule’’ (Kennedy 1960, 29). RFK then mercilessly chipped away at Dave Beck’s shady ‘‘loan’’ with no past misstep too small to be divulged: Mr. Kennedy: Do you feel that if you gave a truthful answer to this Committee on your taking of $320,000 of Union funds that that might tend to incriminate you? Mr. Beck: It might. Mr. Kennedy: Is that right? Mr. Beck: It might. Mr. Kennedy: You feel that yourself? Mr. Beck: It might. Mr. Kennedy: I feel the same way. Chairman: We will have order, please. Mr. Kennedy: I want to know, breaking that money down, Mr. Beck, did you use Union funds to purchase five dozen diapers for some of your friends at $9.68?

Even after Dave Beck’s memory was ‘‘refreshed’’ under oath by the associate who had made these illicit purchases for him, he still refused to answer any questions. Shortly thereafter, Dave Beck was indicted and convicted of larceny and income tax evasion. Dave Beck was pardoned by President Gerald Ford in 1975.

Dave Beck’s fall left a power vacuum at the top of the Teamster’s Union. Emerging to fill the void was a short, robust man named James ‘‘Jimmy’’

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Riddle Hoffa. Mr. Hoffa had been marketed to the Teamster rank-and-file as a reformer. Kennedy was skeptical; he had heard rumors about Hoffa’s connection with the criminal underworld. In an effort to allay RFK’s fears, Hoffa invited him to dinner at his friend Eddie Cheyfitz’s house. Six days before their scheduled dinner, Bobby received a telephone call from a lawyer in New York named John Cye Cheasty, indicating that he had ‘‘…information that will make your hair stand on end’’ (Kennedy 1960, 33). At Kennedy’s request, he came to visit RFK in Washington, D.C., the next day. He laid a large amount of money on Kennedy’s desk and promptly blurted out that this money was offered to him by Jimmy Hoffa as a ‘‘down payment’’ if he could get a job as an investigator on Kennedy’s staff and then pass committee information along to Hoffa. The total amount of the down payment was $1,000 in cash, and Hoffa also offered him $2,000 a month as retainer for this shady service. Kennedy was deeply shocked that anyone would have the audacity to try to influence the work of the committee in this way. Instead of seeing Hoffa’s bribe of Cheasty as a threat, RFK saw it as an opportunity. He decided (with Cheasty’s approval) to use Cheasty’s special ‘‘position’’ with Hoffa as a chance to spring a trap. He gave Cheasty the names of witnesses who would soon be subpoenaed before the committee— information that only those working for the committee would have known. Cheasty was to pass this information along to Jimmy Hoffa under FBI surveillance—which he did. He learned that the ‘‘handoff’’ had been made just before departing for dinner with Hoffa and Cheyfitz. At dinner, Hoffa admitted to Kennedy that he had issued Teamster charters in the state of New York to friends of a notorious character named Johnny Dio. The trouble with these charters was that they existed only on paper because the locals they were Jimmy Hoffa to Robert Kenissued to had no members—they were ‘‘paper nedy: ‘‘I do to others what they locals.’’ It was later uncovered that these paper do to me, only worse.’’ Kenlocals were issued to rig the election of the New nedy’s response: ‘‘Maybe I York Joint Council president, though that evening should have worn my bulletHoffa told RFK they were issued to protect the Teamster local membership from being co-opted by proof vest.’’ the AFL-CIO when the two unions merged. —Kennedy, 1960 As for Cheasty, he had been doing a marvelous job of laying out the trap for Jimmy Hoffa. He continued to feed information to Hoffa about the committee and then report back to RFK about what information Hoffa was interested in obtaining. The FBI had been monitoring the transactions between Cheasty and Hoffa for over three weeks. On March 13, 1957, FBI agents arrested James Riddle Hoffa at the DuPont Plaza Hotel with sensitive committee documents in his possession. Indeed they were the very documents that Bobby had supplied Cheasty to give to Hoffa.


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Before the trial, Kennedy firmly believed that Jimmy Hoffa would be convicted on bribery charges. However, the trial soon became a spectacle that highlighted the great lengths Hoffa was willing to undertake to win. Before the trial was underway, Hoffa hired Edward Bennett Williams to defend him. Ed Williams was one of the best defense attorneys of the day. Hoffa also hired the law partner of the judge’s brother and two prominent African American attorneys to join his defense team. This issue of race was an important consideration all throughout the trial. During the jury selection phase of the trial, Ed Williams used his preemptory challenges to dismiss only white jurors—so that the jury consisted of eight African Americans and four Caucasians. Williams believed that African American jurors would be more likely to sympathize with organized labor than with the government. The Teamsters also paid for the legendary former boxing champion Joe Louis (who himself was an African American) to attend the trial for two days and to embrace Hoffa publicly. Mr. Williams even suggested during cross-examination that Cheasty had once investigated the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)—a claim that Cheasty vehemently denied. The trial verdict rendered was in Hoffa’s favor. Hoffa’s acquittal was a stunning blow to Kennedy, but his time in the courtroom was far from over. When asked by a reporter Later that same year Hoffa went on trial in New what he would do if Jimmy York for wiretapping the personal telephones of Hoffa was acquitted, Kennedy some Teamster members. The jury deadlocked, and when the case was retried in 1958, Hoffa escaped retorted: ‘‘I’ll jump off the with another acquittal. Hoffa’s legal victories only Capitol.’’ —Kennedy 1960, 56 further strengthened RFK’s resolve against him. By the time Hoffa was subpoenaed before the Rackets Committee, both he and Kennedy had learned some necessary survival skills. When questioning witnesses before the committee, Kennedy was usually over-prepared. Just like his days growing up with such hotly competitive siblings, RFK’s coping mechanism was dogged determination. He collected documents and records by the bundle and would often spend long nights going over Teamster payrolls and bank accounts. Always, he was search- Jimmy Hoffa: ‘‘You never can ing for the ‘‘smoking gun’’ that would bring down tell with a jury, like shooting Jimmy Hoffa and rid the Teamsters of their under- fish in a barrel.’’ world rulers. As time went on, RFK’s basement —Kennedy, 1960 office became more and more cluttered with papers. Realizing that he was unable to keep up with the mounting documentation that was accumulating, he began taking speed-reading classes. The long nights of poring over documents continued for Bobby. One late night RFK was driving home and noticed that the lights were still on at the Teamster’s headquarters. Not to be outdone, Kennedy turned his car around and headed back to the office. When Jimmy Hoffa

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heard about this, he started leaving the lights on when he left the office for the evening. Still, the Robert Kennedy work ethic had an electric effect on his office staff. Investigators found him to be very approachable and accessible. The office culture was to call people by their first names, and it was not unusual for RFK to invite investigators out to his Hickory Hill estate to talk about cases or witnesses while tossing the football around. His informal, lead-byexample style eventually won for Bobby Kennedy the largest congressional staff at the time (over one hundred) and kept the Rackets Committee actively pursuing the agents of corruption and violence. At the beginning of the Rackets Committee hearings, Jimmy Hoffa would often playfully address RFK as ‘‘Bobby.’’ As the hearings wore on and Hoffa became less amused, he would speak to Robert Kennedy as ‘‘Mr. Kennedy.’’ Over time, Jimmy Hoffa would not address RFK at all and would address his answers to Bobby’s questions to Senator McClellan. —Kennedy, 1960

When it came to interrogating witnesses sworn in before the committee, Robert Kennedy eventually developed a hard-nosed style all his own. He learned how to read witnesses and over time became very adept at pushing their buttons. On one occasion, the notorious (but well-dressed) gangster Momo Salvatore ‘‘Sam’’ Giancana was subpoenaed before the committee. Sam Giancana was known to be the heir to Al Capone’s syndicate, and it was believed at the time that Giancana was the top boss of organized crime in Chicago. Giancana was a man who had stuffed people into the trunks of cars and hung people on meat hooks, but while Giancana was on the stand, Bobby ridiculed the Mafia Don of Chicago (Schlesinger 1978, 165; Senate Select Committee 1959, 18672–81): Mr. Kennedy: Would you tell us if you have opposition from anybody that you dispose of them by having them stuffed in a trunk? Is that what you do, Mr. Giancana? Mr. Giancana: I decline to answer because I honestly believe my answer might tend to incriminate me. Mr. Kennedy: Would you tell us anything about any of your operations or will you just giggle every time I ask you a question? Mr. Giancana: I decline to answer because I honestly believe my answer might tend to incriminate me. Mr. Kennedy: I thought only little girls giggled, Mr. Giancana.

On another occasion after a union boss swore at him under oath, Kennedy egged him on further, taunting him when the microphone was off: ‘‘You’re full of shit’’ (Thomas 2000, 83). Kennedy even wore Jimmy Hoffa down. On one occasion, Hoffa lost his cool and sneered at Bobby: ‘‘You’re sick! That’s what’s the matter with you—you are sick.’’


Despite losing his temper on a couple of occasions, Hoffa adapted his strategy as the hearings went on. At first, he was charming and friendly with the committee—even to the point of humor, but as the hearings wore on, it became clear to Hoffa that he could not charm his way off of the committee’s radar. He had always prided himself on being the underdog, and he continued to play that role out while on the stand. As RFK circled like a shark smelling blood, Jimmy Hoffa often tried to juxtapose his blue-collar background with Bobby’s affluent background in an effort to put political pressure on the committee to back off (portraying that he was being ‘‘picked on’’ by Bobby and the committee). As the hearings wore on, RFK’s withering questioning got to him. He appeared beaten and tired on the stand—but he had another strategy up his sleeve that worked very well for him (and created a great deal of frustration for Kennedy and the rest of the committee). Hoffa knew that if he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against selfincrimination on the stand, he would jeopardize his standing as the Teamster president. So instead he developed a series of tactics that essentially stonewalled the committee. One strategy when under tough questioning was to give long and rambling answers with no substance. On one occasion, Robert Kennedy asked Jimmy Hoffa about a sweetheart deal he had made with the Riss and Company trucking corporation. Specifically, the drivers employed by Riss wanted to own their own trucks. Richard Riss, the company president, wanted the Teamster drivers to purchase the trucks from the company. He met with Jimmy Hoffa and the alleged agreement that was made was that Riss would pay money into the Teamster’s pension and welfare fund (which was little more than a slush fund), and Hoffa would force the drivers to purchase the trucks from Riss. Riss ordered the trucks for about $13,000 each. They then filed a claim with General Motors that the trucks were defective and worth only about $3,500 each. General Motors settled by reimbursing Riss $3,000 for each truck. Riss then turned around and sold these ‘‘defective’’ trucks to their own drivers for $14,800—a full $1,800 more than what he originally paid for them. When the Teamster drivers began to file grievances, Jimmy Hoffa reorganized all of the drivers (regardless of where they lived) into his own Detroit-based Local 299. By placing the drivers in his own local, Hoffa could stop the drivers from filing grievances against the company. When RFK asked Hoffa about this corrupt little deal, he successfully obscured the issue before the committee with the following reply (Kennedy 1960, 153): Mr. Hoffa: No, sir, let me explain that. Riss and Company does not operate equipment. TM&E operates the equipment…Under the law when you lease a piece of equipment other than driver–owners as such, you cannot, and if you try to read our contract we specifically accepted in here, you cannot take and have two checks for drivers who are not driver–owners as such, but where you have a fleet operation and it is in here, sir, right in here— Mr. Kennedy attempts to interrupt.

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Senator McClellan: Let him finish. Mr. Hoffa: Let me read it to you, without reading it all. It starts: ‘‘owner– operator section 1,’’ at the bottom it states: ‘‘Note where the owner–driver is used in this article it means owner–operator only and nothing in this article shall apply to any equipment leased except where owner is also used as a driver.’’ This means, sir, where there is a fleet operation, and TM&E is an equipment fleet operation, it does not come within the scope of this contract where you have to do equipment checks. If we can get the employer voluntarily to do it, fine, but if we try legally to enforce the issues we have been advised that we can find ourselves in a problem, as Mr. Goldwater stated a while ago, of antitrust and monopoly. We recently went all the way to the United States Supreme Court on this particular provision and the United States Supreme Court ruled after we had lost in all the lower courts that this was a legal provision in our contract because we recognized our inability to negotiate for a profit return and rather only the basic minimum returns to operate a piece of equipment and that the drivers’ earnings were protected. This was the United States Supreme Court ruling out of Ohio, ACEF I believe is the case.

Responses such as this one were not uncommon for Jimmy Hoffa and often successfully moved the discussion of the committee away from the original question and toward trying to decipher Hoffa’s clouded responses. Another stall tactic that Jimmy Hoffa used when under pressure was to conveniently forget important facts and information. This saved him the trouble of having to plead the Fifth Amendment. Kennedy recalled one such occasion when he was asking Hoffa about his plan to have Teamster officials wear tiny recording devices called Minifons into the grand jury room so that there would be a record of the evidence (Kennedy 1960, 78–80): Mr. Hoffa: What did I do with them? Well, what did I do with them? Mr. Kennedy: What did you do with them? Mr. Hoffa: I am trying to recall. Mr. Kennedy: You could remember that. Mr. Hoffa: When were they delivered, do you know? That must have been quite a while. Mr. Kennedy: You know what you did with the Minifons and don’t ask me. Mr. Hoffa: What did I do with them? Mr. Kennedy: What did you do with them? Mr. Hoffa: Mr. Kennedy, I bought some Minifons and there is no question about it, but I cannot recall what became of them.

After going around on this issue for a while, RFK asked Hoffa if he had ever worn a Minifon, to which he replied: Mr. Hoffa: You say ‘‘wear.’’ What do you mean by ‘‘wear’’? Mr. Kennedy: I have done as much to refresh your memory as I know how to do. If you cannot recall it from that, and you want to leave the record that way, if you want to think that this committee is so stupid and that the public is so stupid that they will believe that you could not remember having done a thing like that, you leave the record that way.


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On several occasions Hoffa’s selective memory could not be refreshed despite direct evidence and testimony that made the answer painfully obvious. It was one of Hoffa’s ploys to keep from admitting anything incriminating while avoiding the stigma of pleading the Fifth, though RFK went out of his way to make Hoffa look silly for his poor memory. Hoffa also learned how to take the Fifth Amendment by proxy. His strategy was to claim that he had no knowledge regarding the issue at hand and would refer questioning to one of his henchmen. When questioned, those individuals would then plead the Fifth, saving Hoffa from having to do it himself. Jimmy Hoffa used this strategy numerous times to get himself out of trouble. Generally, his subordinates obliged Hoffa in this scheme because they knew that they had a lot to lose if Hoffa was no longer the International Teamster president. This coupled with the fact that Jimmy Hoffa never kept documentation for anything, never wrote checks, and dealt only in cash meant that the trail of money was difficult to follow and nearly impossible to ascertain when Hoffa was hiding behind his men on the stand. Despite the long nights, the frustrating witnesses, and the political maneuvering, RFK did not prevail against Jimmy Hoffa during the life of the Rackets Committee (though Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering and mail fraud later). However, Bobby’s work on the committee was valuable both to him and to the country. For Bobby Kennedy, working on the Rackets Committee gave him valuable experience supervising cases and investigators. Over time, he developed a managing style all his own—it was informal in culture but professional in task. He learned how to handle difficult personalities and political interference while managing a large staff. He learned from his position as chief counsel the importance of hard work and self-discipline. He led by example, and he expected those around him to work no less hard than he did. His clashes with Jimmy Hoffa and other shady figures forged his toughness and determination. It further crystallized his stark view of right and wrong. After thrashing some of the most feared underworld figures on the stand, he made it his mission to try to root out the dark influences of criminals and gangsters from institutions like the Teamsters. On a personal note, Robert Kennedy was a little disappointed that he was not able to unearth enough incriminating evidence against Jimmy Hoffa, but it was those clashes with Hoffa that made him stronger. It was a strength Bobby would come to rely on in his career at the Justice Department. Robert Kennedy wrote a book about his experience on the Rackets Committee entitled The Enemy Within. For a short time, it was a national bestseller. —Thomas, 2000

The work of the committee frequently grabbed headlines and was often in the spotlight. The media paid close attention when notable underworld figures or prominent union or business leaders testified. This media attention


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helped place the problem of union corruption in the public eye. Although the committee was not able to get Jimmy Hoffa, more than twenty prominent labor leaders, business managers, and mobsters were tried and convicted as a result of the work done by Bobby Kennedy and the Rackets Committee. Dave Beck was toppled, Jimmy Hoffa’s days were numbered, and the American public began to realize just how far the arms of organized crime could reach. THE JUST BOBBY After Bobby Kennedy’s resignation as chief counsel of the Senate Rackets Committee in September of 1959, he took up the duty of running his brother Jack’s 1960 presidential campaign. It was just taken for granted (even by Bobby himself) that he would be JFK’s campaign manager. The campaign was chaotic and unbalanced, but it did have a winning strategy. The plan was to win the Democratic nomination by side-stepping political bosses such as Richard Daley and David Lawrence initially and appealing to the grassroots voters. If they could win enough votes on their own, the political bosses would then have no choice but to support Kennedy for president. Shortly after resigning from the Rackets Committee, RFK took a trip to Texas to visit Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ). Johnson was a forceful Senate majority leader and was a much bigger threat to JFK’s presidential bid than Hubert Humphrey. Bobby wanted to know whether or not LBJ was going to launch his own presidential bid in 1960. He also wanted to know if Johnson would try to stop JFK from becoming president at the convention. Johnson (in his patronizing way) assured Bobby that he was not going to run and that he would not be an obstacle to JFK’s presidential bid. Bobby left LBJ’s ranch satisfied that Johnson was going to remain on the sidelines, but Johnson’s promise of neutrality was a doublecross that Robert Kennedy would always hold against LBJ as perfidious. At the Democratic convention, LBJ began doing everything he could to discredit Kennedy. His strategy was to let Kennedy and Humphrey beat each other up on the campaign trail and then to arrive at the convention as the party’s savior. Johnson incorrectly overestimated the importance of the political bosses in the 1960 election, and he didn’t realize that JFK already had enough delegates at the convention to win the nomination on the first ballot. Given the deceit by Johnson, it came as quite a shock to Bobby that Jack was considering LBJ as vice president. JFK saw past Johnson’s betrayal and examined the upside to having him on the ticket. First of all, he was well connected in the Senate, so he could help get JFK’s legislative agenda passed. More immediately it would be advantageous to have a Southern, non-Catholic on the ballot to help win Southern sympathy. Last (and most important), Jack Kennedy knew that LBJ could deliver the state of Texas on election night. Much to Bobby Kennedy’s chagrin, the general election ticket was JFK–LBJ.


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One of the defining moments of the election (and for years to come) came when JFK and RFK both made telephone calls on behalf of Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King had been thrown in jail and refused bail for a questionable misdemeanor traffic offense. He was sentenced to four months hard labor in a rural Georgia penitentiary. Coretta King was genuinely concerned that she might never see her husband again. Distressed, she telephoned the Kennedy campaign to intervene. Jack Kennedy called Coretta King back, and news of this telephone call was soon picked up by the press. RFK was cagey at first, concerned that news of JFK’s call to Mrs. King would jeopardize his electoral fortunes in southern states, but RFK was also bothered by the fact that a judge would deny bail for a measly traffic ticket. In the end, RFK decided (with his brother’s blessing) to telephone the judge and ask for King’s release. The judge agreed to release Dr. King at Bobby’s request. This single phone call, which King learned about, was the beginning of an often turbulent relationship between RFK and the famed civil rights leader. Robert Kennedy’s telephone call to Judge Mitchell in DeKalb County, Georgia, was believed by historians to have been made in the heat of moral outrage over the imprisonment of Dr. King. It was later revealed that Georgia Governor Ernest Vandiver (who was officially a segregationist) called Bobby and asked him to telephone the judge about securing King’s release. —Thomas, 2000

After John F. Kennedy had won the election, Bobby didn’t want to be a cabinet member in his brother’s administration. He was looking to strike out on his own and make a name for himself on the political scene. He briefly considered a run for the governor of Massachusetts, and he also toyed with the idea of getting into private law practice. These adventures, however, would have to wait as his father kept bending his and Jack’s ears with a request that sounded more like a demand: Jack should appoint Bobby to be attorney general. Both of the Kennedy brothers were skeptical. They knew that the press would, in Jack’s words, ‘‘kick our balls off’’, and a flurry of articles charging nepotism would follow (Thomas 2000, 110). They also knew that there were political risks to appointing Bobby to be the nation’s top lawyer when he had never practiced law before. Still Kennedy’s father was unrelenting. ‘‘Nobody is better qualified,’’ Joe Sr. told a doubtful Jack Kennedy. Eventually JFK Eunice Shriver: ‘‘Bobby we’ll yielded to his father and agreed to appoint Bobby to make Attorney General so he the top post in the Justice Department. can throw all the people Dad Public reaction in the mainstream press was doesn’t like into jail. That pretty much what was expected—cries against nepmeans we’ll have to build otism. But the newly elected JFK was able to plamore jails.’’ cate the press enough by pointing out that Bobby

— Fay, 1966

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Kennedy knew a lot about both communists and organized crime, and when asked about Bobby’s lack of experience in the courtroom Jack retorted, ‘‘The basic requirement for the job is not that at all. It is the ability to administer a great department.’’ (Schlesinger 1978, 236). When selecting his Justice Department staff, Robert Kennedy wanted heady young lawyers who were Long-time Justice Department not too political. Young, hungry talent was the basic lawyer Patricia Collins jokingly qualification for working in RFK’s Justice Department. RFK offered the job of deputy attorney general said of Bobby Kennedy: ‘‘We to Bryon White, who was a close family friend. It never had an attorney general proved to be a good selection, as Bryon White had who had that close personal connections and knew the kind of lawyers that Bobby relationship with the staff. He always said that he’d been here was looking for: assistant attorney generals like Burke Marshall (Civil Rights Division) and Nicholas himself, he’d been an attorney Katzenbach (Office of Legal Counsel). Bobby also down in the Criminal Division, recruited long-time friend John Seigenthaler and and nobody had every paid any newspaper reporter Edwin Guthman to be his admindarn attention to him, and he istrative assistant and public relations specialist, was going to fix that.’’ respectively. These two men helped shield the depart—Demaris, 1975 ment from political pressure and media criticism. As a tip of the hat to Republicans, Kennedy appointed Republican Herbert ‘‘Jack’’ Miller to head the Criminal Division. The mood at the Justice Department was one of hope and optimism. Kennedy’s management style was one of informality and team building. He encouraged everyone to call each other by their first names—something relatively uncommon at the time. He also made a number of quaint changes to the decor in his office, such as hanging up his children’s drawings. All of this was done to loosen the mood in the department. He wanted his lawyers to be happy and excited. He trusted them to handle cases and gave them lots of independence, and he didn’t want any impediments to interoffice communication. This type of environment was exciting to many of the young attorneys recruited to join the Kennedy New Frontier. In many ways, they had the best of both worlds—they could engage in work that was seen as important and meaningful, and they were part of a team that allowed them to get the job done their own way. It was not uncommon for Robert Kennedy to drop in on lawyers working in the Justice Department unannounced and quiz them on the cases they were working on. —Schlesinger, 1978

Kennedy wanted to expand the reach of the Justice Department into two important areas: organized crime and civil rights. However, the department


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relied on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for much of its intelligence information. Neither of these two areas of law enforcement was of particular interest to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover at the time. Hoover was still fixated on rooting out communists at the beginning of the Kennedy administration. To Kennedy, spending time and resources hunting communists in the country was ridiculous. To him the real menace to America was the ‘‘enemy within’’: organized crime and corruption. This infuriated Hoover who had to this point ignored and even scoffed at the idea that organized crime was widespread. This was most likely because catching mobsters was much more dangerous and time consuming than catching communists. Still, Kennedy tried—often unsuccessfully—to placate Hoover enough to get him to cooperate. Regardless of what Hoover thought about organized crime, Bobby Kennedy plunged the Justice When asked about the ComDepartment on in that direction. He vastly munist Party in the United expanded the number of lawyers investigating States, RFK responded: ‘‘It organized crime, and he urged them to be resource- couldn’t be more feeble and ful—much like his Rackets Committee staff. If they less of a threat, and besides its couldn’t get help from the FBI, they were instructed membership consists largely of to see if other federal, state, or local agencies would FBI agents.’’ lend assistance, and if help was still not forthcom—Schlesinger, 1978, 262 ing, they were instructed to investigate matters themselves. Ronald Goldfarb recounts one such instance in 1962. United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 12 was led by a man named Richard Gosser at the time. The IRS had reported to the Justice Department that it was conducting an investigation into reports of widespread gambling at the automobile manufacturing plant in Toledo, Ohio. Investigations of this sort were relatively commonplace, but they had learned through the course of the investigation that confidential files related to the investigation were being leaked to a local hoodlum who was subsequently turning them over to Gosser. This was allowing Gosser to keep tabs on the IRS investigation. The leaker of the documents turned out to be one of the IRS’ own employees. With the help of the Justice Department lawyers, Gosser was caught, convicted of conspiring to defraud the government, and sentenced to three years in prison. Further adding to the intrigue of this case was the fact that Gosser had organized northeastern Ohio for Kennedy during the 1960 election, and his conviction demolished the Democratic Party organization in that area. Despite the political pressure that RFK might have felt about going after a political ally like Gosser, he instructed his lawyers to prosecute fairly and not to pull any punches for Gosser. It was political integrity and the fair pursuit of justice such as this that endeared RFK to many of the young Justice Department lawyers.

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Bobby Kennedy’s Justice Department indicted five Democratic mayors, three Democratic judges, and two Democratic members of Congress. —Schlesinger, 1978

In fact, RFK’s Department of Justice scarcely let family connections or political loyalty get in the way of prosecution. Robert Kennedy brought bribery charges against New York state Supreme Court Judge Vincent Keogh despite the fact that Judge Keogh’s brother Eugene Keogh was instrumental in helping JFK win the presidency. Criminal Division lawyer Bobby also authorized pursuing a breach of contract Ronald Goldfarb: ‘‘The top po- case against Matt McCloskey, who was the ambassador to Ireland, and had LBJ’s close personal advilitical animals in the Kennedy sor Bobby Baker indicted and convicted on tax administration helplessly evasion and fraud charges. RFK also kept his own watched Robert Kennedy’s conscience clean when he properly recused himself organized crime drive knock from the consideration as to whether or not to bring off politician after politician tax evasion charges against close family friend James around the country.’’ Landis (who was ultimately convicted). RFK was —Goldfarb, 1974 never one to pull punches when it came to his job. Young lawyers reveled in finding new and inventive ways to prosecute notorious mobsters. Joseph ‘‘Doves’’ Aiuppe, longtime member of the Chicago Mafia and Al Capone’s personal driver, was convicted of illegally transporting mourning doves across state lines in violation of the Migratory Bird Act. Larry Gallo, brother of notorious ‘‘Crazy Joe’’ Gallo and member of the Profaci crime family, was snagged by the Justice Department for falsifying information on a Veteran’s Administration home mortgage loan application. Other members of the criminal underworld proved more elusive to RFK. Infamous Chicago mobster Sam Giancana remained untouchable throughout Kennedy’s tenure at Justice because all the evidence on him (he admitted to murder and bribery among other offenses) was obtained through illegal wiretaps. Giancana’s girlfriend, Judith Exner, had an affair with JFK during the 1960 presidential campaign, and news like this in the mainstream press would have generated an enormous headache for the President. The most satisfying prize for RFK was the conviction of Jimmy Hoffa on the charge of jury tampering. It began with an indictment of Hoffa in Nashville, Tennessee, for taking payoffs from an employer in violation of the TaftHartley Act. The trial began in October 1962, and after a few days, a Hoffa aid named Ed Partin came forward and contacted Walter Sheridan at the Justice Department. He offered to be an informant for the government, and Bobby Kennedy agreed. Partin’s job in Hoffa’s entourage was to stand guard at Jimmy Hoffa’s hotel room door. Hoffa and several others boasted to Partin that they had paid off one of the jurors and were trying to get in with several


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others. Partin relayed this information to Sheridan, who took it back to Bobby. After a lively discussion, it was decided to move ahead with the prosecution of Hoffa on the charge of jury tampering. Ed Partin was the prosecution’s star witness and provided devastating testimony against Jimmy Hoffa. Hoffa was convicted on two counts and sentenced to eight years in prison. On the heels of his jury tampering conviction, Jimmy Hoffa went on trial in Chicago for defrauding the Teamster’s pension and welfare fund. The idea was to use wire and mail fraud legislation to convict Hoffa of his scheme to load $20 million from the Central States Pension Fund so that the high finder’s fees could be diverted to Hoffa’s creditors to pay off some of his debts. Hoffa was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison on top of the eightyear conviction for jury tampering. James Riddle Hoffa began serving his sentence on March 7, 1967, in the Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, penitentiary. Robert Kennedy lived out the short remainder of his life believing that Jimmy Hoffa would remain safely behind bars. On December 23, 1971, President Richard Nixon commuted Hoffa’s sentence on the condition that he not engage in labor-related activities for ten years. By the end of Robert Kennedy’s time at the Justice Department, there had been 201 indictments against Teamster officials, and his staff had won 126 convictions. While RFK believed the Teamsters were especially corrupt, attention was paid to the illegal activities of other unions as well. Table 1 details a partial list of the pursuits of Kennedy’s Justice Department against corrupt organized labor. Table 1. Robert Kennedy’s war on corrupt labor during his time at the Justice Department Labor union Amalgamated Workers Union American Guild of Variety Artists Building Service Employees Union Independent Brotherhood of Production, Maintenance and Operating Employees Union Industrial Workers of America International Longshoremen’s Association International Union of Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers Iron Workers Union New Jersey Plumbers Union Plumbing and Pipefitting Union Seafarers’ International Union United Mine Workers Source: Goldfarb (1995, 201–202).

Corrupt activities pursued by the Kennedy Justice Department Taft-Hartley violations Kickbacks Company payoffs Embezzlement

Embezzlement Embezzlement Filing false records, embezzlement Company payoffs Company payoffs Rigging bids to fix prices Obstruction of justice Coal company kickbacks, illegal payoffs, embezzlement

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To be sure, Robert Kennedy tried to maintain the fight against organized crime and corrupt labor while at the Justice Department. With his brother as the president, it would seem that RFK had a free hand to pursue the real criminals—the real ‘‘enemy within.’’ However, his effectiveness in fighting organized crime was often hampered by those around him: FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and his very own brother Jack. Hoover’s lackadaisical approach toward organized crime slowed Bobby’s pursuit of underworld figures and was a drag on the overall prosecutorial effectiveness of the Justice Department in bringing mobsters to justice. As JFK’s presidency continued, he came to rely more often on Bobby as his most trusted advisor. Bobby was intimately involved in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis. Such weighty affairs were a distraction to RFK’s pursuit of corrupt labor officials and gangsters and required him to focus on political, diplomatic, or military affairs in ways that no previous attorney general had ever had to do. Through the late 1950s and early 1960s, the civil rights movement was coming into full bloom. The Robert Kennedy: ‘‘. . . all people historic 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board are created equal. Logically it of Education ordered the integration of public follows that integration should schools and spelled the beginning of the end of segtake place today everywhere . . . regation in the Deep South. The Montgomery bus other people have grown up boycotts in 1955–1956 instilled a sense of confiwith totally different backdence in African Americans that they could change grounds and mores, which we the status quo. The late 1950s also saw the rise of can’t change overnight.’’ a talented young Baptist minister and civil rights —Schlesinger, 1978 leader—Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1957 and 1960, Civil Rights acts were passed in an effort to ensure suffrage rights for African Americans living in the South. Unfortunately, Eisenhower’s administration enforced these laws with indifference and lassitude. By 1960, sit-ins at ‘‘whites only’’ counters were occurring in cafes and restaurants across the South; protests were becoming more common as time went on. For Bobby Kennedy, civil rights was a new policy area that he was not all that familiar with. ‘‘I won’t say that I stayed awake nights worrying about civil rights before I became attorney general,’’ Bobby told writer Peter Maas (Schlesinger 1978, 286). In many ways, his approach toward civil rights was influenced by two competing factors: his moral sense of decency and the political realities of enforcing the law. The synthesis of these two forces amounted to an incremental approach toward civil rights that made almost no one involved happy. Southern segregationists and politicians reviled any intervention by the federal government to enforce the law, and civil rights activists believed RFK’s Justice Department was stuck in low gear. Inside the civil rights division, Justice Department lawyers focused on enforcing voter registration laws. This had a positive political benefit


because most of the African Americans who were newly registered to vote were Democrats. However, civil rights activists wanted more. They strove for true racial equality and showed fearless resolve in an effort to achieve that end. On May 4, 1961, a young cadre of seven African Americans and six white protesters with high ideals, dubbed the ‘‘Freedom Riders,’’ set out on a bus ride across Dixie country to test the integration of interstate transportation facilities. Ten days later outside of Anniston, Alabama, their bus was torched and they were viciously beaten by an angry mob of white southerners. Though this kind of violence startled the young attorney general, he (and his brother) believed deep down that the Freedom Riders had brought these troubles on themselves. Still, he felt that he had a duty to protect them if possible. He sent his administrative assistant, John Seigenthaler, to Alabama to try to help them obtain safe passage and to keep trouble from finding them. However, getting the Freedom Riders out of Alabama was another problem because the Greyhound Bus Company could not find a driver willing to continue the dangerous journey. Bobby was incensed and took it upon himself to intervene by telephoning George Cruit, a Greyhound superintendent (Schlesinger 1978, 296): Mr. Cruit: Drivers refuse to drive. Mr. Kennedy: Do you know how to drive a bus? Mr. Cruit: No. Mr. Kennedy: Well, surely somebody in the damn bus company can drive a bus, can’t they?…I think you should—had better be getting in touch with Mr. Greyhound or whoever Greyhound is and somebody better give us an answer to this question. I am—the Government—is going to be very much upset if this group does not get to continue their trip.…Under the law they are entitled to transportation provided by Greyhound.…Somebody better get in the damn bus and get it going and get these people on their way. Mr. Cruit, I think that if some of your people would just sit down and think for a few minutes that somebody would be able to drive a bus 80 or 90 miles.

Greyhound eventually found a driver, and the Freedom Riders were once again on their way. However, more trouble lay ahead of them. As the bus pulled into Montgomery, Alabama, an angry mob carrying clubs and chains descended on the bus. Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Doar happened to be across the street and witnessed the entire spectacle. ‘‘It’s terrible. It’s terrible,’’ Doar exclaimed to Kennedy over the phone. ‘‘There’s not a cop in sight. People are yelling ‘Get ’em, get ’em.’ It’s awful.’’ (Guthman 1971, 170–71). John Seigenthaler had been circling the bus station in his car and tried to rescue one of the freedom riders when he was hit in the back of the head and knocked unconscious himself. All the while, FBI agents were watching and keeping careful tabs on what was happening, but were ordered by Hoover not to intervene.

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While John Seigenthaler was hospitalized after trying to rescue a Freedom Rider in Montgomery, Alabama, Bobby called him and jokingly thanked him for helping to win the black vote. Seigenthaler retorted to Bobby that he should probably give up any aspirations of being governor of Alabama. —Thomas, 2000

Shortly thereafter, Martin Luther King, Jr., arrived in Montgomery, Alabama, to speak at the First Baptist Church. RFK sent a force of five hundred federal marshals under the command of Bryon White. A large crowd of more than fifteen thousand jammed into the First Baptist Church to hear Dr. King speak. Outside of the church, trouble was brewing. A menacing mob of white southerners was gathering—evidently intent on burning the church and everyone inside. Dr. King called Bobby at the Justice Department and apprised him of the troubling situation. RFK tried to allay King’s fears by assuring him that the federal marshals were on their way. In an effort to try to lighten the mood, Bobby suggested that so long as Dr. King was in a church, he might say a prayer for the Kennedy family. King did not find the attempt at humor amusing. When the marshals arrived at the church, it was not altogether clear that they would be able to hold off the rowdy mob. Finally, reinforcements from the Alabama state patrol and the National Guard helped drive back the angry mob. Kennedy wanted to get the Freedom Riders out of Alabama and out of the South as soon as possible, but this was unacceptable to the Freedom Riders. They insisted on continuing their journey to Jackson, Mississippi, which worried Bobby immensely given the grim reception that had been rolled out for them in Alabama. Bobby called his old friend, Mississippi senator Jim Eastland for advice. Senator Eastland said that he would see to it that there was no violence, but he also added that the Freedom Riders would be promptly arrested once they reached Jackson—and they were. Still, segregation at bus terminals existed in the South. The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was the governing body with jurisdiction to issue regulations requiring the terminals be integrated, but they were an independent commission and not subject to presidential directives. As attorney general, Bobby decided to petition them to issue a new regulation ending segregation at interstate bus terminals. The ICC issued the regulation, and within a year and a half systematic segregation in interstate transportation had come to an end. Education was a second front that opened up in the battle for civil rights. A spirited and civic-minded young African American named James Meredith applied for admission to the all-white University of Mississippi (‘‘Ole Miss’’) in Oxford, Mississippi. After a series of legal battles and attempts by the university to stall, the Fifth Circuit Court ruled in 1962 that there could be no more delays in denying Meredith admission to the university. Three days later, Mississippi’s segregationist Governor Ross Barnett went on television and


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defiantly stated that Mississippi ‘‘…will not surrender to the evil and illegal forces of tyranny’’ (Lord 1965). Despite a federal ruling to the contrary, the governor delayed. RFK tried to get him to capitulate by having him held in contempt and fined $10,000 each day for defying a federal court order. Barnett continued to resist. The stage was set for a showdown between the state of Mississippi and the federal government, and Bobby expected trouble. He spoke to Governor Barnett several times in the following days, attempting to work out a peaceful way to register Meredith. Barnett proposed a far-flung solution that bordered on theatrics. Barnett would stand in the doorway to the administration building (the Lyceum) and the federal marshals escorting Meredith would draw their guns and push the governor aside. This would give Barnett the political cover he needed while still allowing Meredith to be registered. Barnett also agreed to keep law and order. RFK reluctantly agreed to this deal, but as Meredith was about to arrive on the Ole Miss campus, pickup trucks full of angry white men from the countryside, bearing rifles and coolers of beer, began arriving on the Ole Miss campus in droves. Governor Barnett called Kennedy to tell him the deal was off—there was no way for him to control the unruly mob that was gathering. Bobby Kennedy had secretly tape-recorded each conversation with Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett so that he could declare publicly that he had been double-crossed by the Governor if James Meredith was not registered at Ole Miss. —Schlesinger, 1978

Barnett proposed another idea—to sneak him onto campus. Left with few options, Bobby agreed, and it was arranged to have Meredith sneak onto the Ole Miss campus and hide out in an abandoned dormitory. A command post was set up at the Lyceum. Near nightfall, the angry rabble outside became more violent. The state troopers When he learned about the who were supposed to maintain law and order were Soviet missiles in Cuba, Bobby mysteriously ordered to withdraw from campus. The Kennedy remarked: ‘‘Can they situation became grim as university students began hit Oxford, Mississippi’’? hurling rocks, bricks, and Molotov cocktails at the —Schlesinger, 1978 federal marshals surrounding the Lyceum. The marshals fought back with tear gas. Then around dusk, gunshots rang out, hitting several of the federal marshals. The students dispersed and the men from the countryside took over the siege. RFK learned that Meredith’s dormitory was being stormed as well. Bobby was on the telephone with Ed Guthman, who was in the Lyceum, to get an update on the situation (Guthman 1971, 204–5): Mr. Guthman: Pretty rough. It’s getting like the Alamo. Mr. Kennedy: Well, you know what happened to those guys.

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Oddly enough, RFK’s gallows humor raised the morale of those in the Lyceum and got them through the long and dangerous night. The decision was finally made to bring in an overwhelming number of federal troops to lift the siege. The army began airlifting the force in from Memphis, Tennessee, at a painfully slow pace. Tense minutes ticked by on campus as federal marshals stood their ground and heroically followed orders not to return fire. Law and order were finally restored when reinforcements for federal troops arrived, though a high price had been paid— 160 federal marshals had been wounded during the night. Meredith was registered that morning and later became a graduate of Ole Miss. Despite the diversion into the areas of transportation and education, the issue of voting rights was in RFK’s mind the quintessential crux of the civil rights issue. If southern African Americans could be registered (and allowed) to vote, they could then use their votes to further political action and bring about sweeping change in other areas. Civil rights activists were reticent about this strategy. Many of them (including Martin Luther King, Jr., for a time) saw this strategy as a way to take the wind out of the sails of the civil rights movement. Still, Bobby pushed on and in February 1963, President Kennedy sent a voting rights bill that RFK largely authored to Congress for consideration. It was relatively modest in scope and was met with indifference and inaction on Capitol Hill. On May 2, Martin Luther King, Jr., organized a movement to have roughly a thousand African American children visit segregated department stores and sit at segregated lunch counters. Bobby warned Dr. King that this was a bad idea—not only was he putting children in harm’s way, but Birmingham’s police force was headed up by Sheriff Eugene ‘‘Bull’’ Connor. King rebuffed Kennedy’s caution and went ahead with the demonstration. Kennedy’s fears were well founded. Sheriff Connor pulled out all the stops, unleashing vicious attack dogs on the helpless children. He also authorized his officers to use fire hoses and had many of the children arrested and thrown into jail with the general prison population. It would take more than a week for Kennedy’s Justice Department to broker an agreement with the city of Birmingham to get the children released from prison. The tragic events in Birmingham were plastered in all of the newspapers. Horrible pictures of children recoiling from police dogs and being pinned down with fire hoses were everywhere. RFK realized that the best route to real change was a sweeping new piece of civil rights legislation, but he needed a pretext to give his brother political cover. That cover came when Alabama Governor George Wallace vowed to see to it personally that no African American students were allowed at the University of Alabama. With visions of Oxford, Mississippi, on his mind, RFK began to determine if there was a way to diffuse Governor Wallace’s racial bomb without bloodshed. Several scenarios were rehearsed, including pushing the governor aside or dragging him away—but Bobby worried that a physical


confrontation might spark violence reminiscent of Ole Miss. Instead, it was agreed that Wallace would be allowed to posture for the cameras and a general from the Alabama National Guard would order the governor to step aside. This is exactly what happened, and the students were registered without any violence. RFK’s victory at the University of Alabama gave JFK the courage to back Bobby’s sweeping civil rights bill. Unfortunately, JFK was never to see the passage of this bill. Shortly after John F. Kennedy’s death, President Lyndon Johnson sent a revised version of Kennedy’s civil rights bill to Capitol Hill, which resulted in the famous Civil Rights Act of 1964.

THE TRAGIC BOBBY After resigning as attorney general in September of 1964, Bobby Kennedy launched a successful senatorial bid in the state of New York. By this time, RFK had learned many life lessons: He had worked for the McCarthy and McClellan committees. He had gone toe-to-toe with notorious mobsters and corrupt labor leaders. He had helped his brother get elected to the presidency and had been a forceful attorney general. He had been intimately involved in the Bay of Pigs disaster, the Cuban missile crisis, and the Vietnam conflict. He had also taken on the complex issues of civil rights and racial justice at one of the most volatile times in American history. He had gone through a great deal. As a senator, RFK’s attitude had changed. No longer was he the enforcer of the laws—he now took on the role of lawmaker. Despite his frustrations in the Senate, Bobby worked to further the lives of the poor and underprivileged. He was largely responsible for orchestrating the launch of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation in New York, which was a serious attempt at revitalizing a very poor section of Brooklyn, and tirelessly worked to improve the plight of poor people in New York City. He also vigorously spoke out against the escalation of the war in Vietnam. He traveled extensively to Africa, Asia, and Central America and educated himself and others on the terrible conditions of the poor in those countries. RFK was growing tired of the Senate; he saw that his ability to do good depended too much on others. He decided to launch his presidential bid in 1968. Two feelings fueled this decision. The first was his sense of compassion and duty to the poor. He felt that he could do much more good for them in the Oval Office than on Capitol Hill. The second was his deeply rooted hatred for Lyndon Johnson. Bobby’s presidential campaign got off to a roaring start. His first speech at Kansas State University was a tidal wave of enthusiasm. With Johnson’s poll numbers slipping, Bobby’s stock rose. Still, RFK was attempting to do something nearly unheard of—unseat an incumbent president in the primaries. He knew that about half of the party

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delegates would be controlled by big labor or would come from the South— both of which seemed unlikely to support him. After it became clear to Johnson that he was going to lose in Wisconsin, he announced that he was going to discontinue the bombing in Vietnam and would not run for reelection. This threw the race wide open, but the road still looked difficult. Vice President Hubert Humphrey had the backing of LBJ, and Eugene McCarthy posed a potential challenge as well. Kennedy took his message to the people as few other candidates had ever done. He insisted on driving through the poor parts of town and gave impromptu speeches on the tops of cars. The frenzied crowds followed him like a rock star. They would mess up his hair and try to rip off his clothing. His appeal was to the poor and the young—those not necessarily plugged into the political scene. The air was electric wherever Bobby Kennedy visited, but sobriety and tragedy once again touched the nerve of America. On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot in Memphis, Tennessee. Bobby was in Indianapolis, Indiana, and he appealed to the hope and goodness of the American spirit. RFK’s own words would have been nearly as applicable at the time of his own death scarcely two months later (Guthman and Allen 1993, 356–57): …What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or black. So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that’s true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love—a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we’ve had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

Bobby Kennedy’s own life was cut short on June 6, 1968, when he was shot in the head by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. That evening should have been one of his greatest triumphs, as he had just declared victory in California. It is often tempting to look to the past and ask ‘‘what if?’’ What if Bobby Kennedy had not been killed? But that is probably not the most appropriate question—a better question might be to ask how we can help make America the place of Bobby Kennedy’s—and our—dreams.


FURTHER READING Allison, Graham, and Philip Zelikow. 1999. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Longman. Beran, Michael Knox. 1998. The Last Patrician: Bobby Kennedy and the End of American Aristocracy. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Branch, Taylor. 1988. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963. New York: Simon & Schuster. Demaris, Ovid. 1975. The Director: An Oral Biography of J. Edgar Hoover. New York: Harper’s Magazine Press. Fay, Paul B. 1966. The Pleasure of His Company. New York: Harper & Row. Goldfarb, Ronald. 1974. Politics at the Justice Department. In Conspiracy, ed. John C. Raines, New York: Harper & Row. Goldfarb, Ronald. 1995. Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes: Robert F. Kennedy’s War against Organized Crime. Sterling, VA: Capital Books. Guthman, Edwin O. 1971. We Band of Brothers. New York: Harper & Row. Guthman, Edwin O., and Richard C. Allen, eds. 1993. RFK: Collected Speeches. New York: Viking. Hersh, Seymour M. 1997. The Dark Side of Camelot. Boston: Little, Brown. Hilty, James W. 1997. Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Kennedy, John F. 1964. Profiles in Courage. New York: Harper & Row. Kennedy, Robert. 1960. The Enemy Within. New York: Harper & Brothers. Kennedy, Robert. 1967. To Seek a Newer World. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Kennedy, Robert. 1969. Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Norton. Kennedy, Rose. 1974. Times to Remember. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Lord, Walter. 1965. The Past that Would Not Die. New York: Harper & Row. Mahoney, Richard D. 1999. Sons & Brothers: The Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy. New York: Arcade. Mollenhoff, Clark, R. 1965. Tentacles of Power: The Story of Jimmy Hoffa. Cleveland, OH: World. Navasky, Victor. 1971. Kennedy Justice. New York: Atheneum. Newfield, Jack. 1969. Robert Kennedy: A Memoir. New York: Dutton. O’Brien, Lawrence F. 1974. No Final Victories: A Life in Politics—from John F. Kennedy to Watergate. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. O’Donnell, Kenneth P., and David F. Powers, with Joseph McCarthy. 1972. Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Boston, Little & Brown. Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. 1978. Robert Kennedy and His Times. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Senate Select Committee. 1959. Hearings. 86th Congress, 1st Session. Sheridan, Walter. 1972. The Rise and Fall of Jimmy Hoffa. New York: Saturday Review Press. Steel, Ronald. 2000. In Love with Night: The American Romance with Robert Kennedy. New York: Simon & Schuster. Thomas, Evan. 2000. Robert Kennedy: His Life. New York: Simon & Schuster.

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Depending on one’s age, it is possible that many people are not familiar with the colorful and controversial former district attorney of New Orleans who became both famous and infamous for his dogged conspiracy theories regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1962. Jim Garrison is both criticized and revered for his pursuit and ultimate prosecution of the one and only person tried for a role in the Kennedy assassination. Similar to the current controversy regarding former North Carolina District Attorney Mike Nifong’s relentless prosecution of some Duke lacrosse team members in an allegation of rape, Garrison stubbornly pursued the case of Clay Shaw. Shaw was ultimately found not guilty, yet Garrison remained unapologetic to his death regarding his belief that he had been correct in his pursuit of the case. There have been more than two thousand books and articles written about the Kennedy assassination, and many have been written about Jim Garrison and his pursuit of a conspiracy plot in the death of President Kennedy. Garrison added to the volume of work in this regard by penning his own books including On the Trail of the Assassins, published in 1988. He also authored The Star Spangled Contract and A Heritage of Stone. Garrison died with a mixed reputation; some found him crazy, others judged him crooked, but there were certainly those who considered him correct in his assertions. The public ultimately will decide which version to believe.

JIM GARRISON—THE PERSON Jim Garrison was born Earling Carothers Garrison in Knoxville, Iowa, on November 20, 1921, but grew up in New Orleans. Though little has been written regarding his early childhood years, Garrison wrote that height—he was 6 feet 7 inches tall—was an inherited trait in his family as was the profession of being a lawyer. His grandfather and his father were both lawyers, and his grandfather was more than 7 feet tall. Garrison became acquainted with famous trial attorney Clarence Darrow through his grandfather’s working relationship with Darrow. Garrison was so impressed with Darrow’s ability as a trial attorney and passion for justice that he named one of his own children Darrow. Garrison’s father drank heavily, thus causing a family breakup and the ultimate divorce of his parents, but not before his father kidnapped him when he was six years old. Garrison’s mother hired a private investigator who rekidnapped Jim Garrison and returned him to his mother. Jim Garrison never saw his father again. In later years, if Jane Garrison deigned to mention her husband, it was always in disparaging tones. Garrison never stopped yearning for his father, and he would become overly trusting of slightly older men, men who more often than not betrayed him. Over the course of his life, Garrison mentioned often how he missed not having had a father. Meanwhile, Jane Garrison became obsessed by this son who so came to resemble her that in later years her granddaughter Virginia would describe her as

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‘‘Daddy in drag.’’ Garrison’s mother was so obsessed with him that she moved to Oklahoma when he was stationed there while in the Army. Garrison entered the army at age nineteen, one year before Pearl Harbor. He prided himself on being a patriot and considered the Army his surrogate family. He was commissioned a second lieutenant and volunteered for training as a pilot to fly planes for observation of enemy troops. He was trained in Fort Sill, Oklahoma and subsequently flew combat missions over the front lines in France and Germany. Garrison went on to serve eighteen years as a field artillery officer in the National Guard after his five years of active duty in the Army. Following his active Army duty, Garrison followed his family tradition and went to law school at Tulane. Shortly thereafter, he joined the FBI as a special agent in Seattle and Tacoma. His career with the bureau was short, as Garrison became bored with his assignment of conducting background checks of prospective employees for a defense plant and returned to the practice of law. Garrison’s rise to district attorney in New Orleans in 1961 came as a surprise to many people, including Garrison. Although he had experience as an assistant district attorney, he threw his hat in the ring like many others dissatisfied with the services of then district attorney Richard Dowling. With very little politicking beyond television appearances, and given no chances of winning, Garrison won the election after a runoff with the sitting district attorney. It was the first time in New Orleans history that any public official had ever been elected citywide without support from any political organization. While Garrison was pursuing a professional career, he also was building a family. Garrison and his wife had five children. When Garrison lost the election to Harry Connick in 1973, he went on to become a Louisiana State District Court judge for the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals from 1978 to 1991.

GARRISON—THE PROSECUTOR Garrison took office on March 3, 1962. Because he had won election as an independent, the assistant district attorneys he hired were the top graduates from neighboring law schools, what he considered the best of the city’s bright young trial lawyers. He bragged that there was not one single political appointment, and that allowed his office to operate without obligation to outside influences. Upon entering office, Garrison brought charges in a number of highprofile cases including that of his predecessor. Garrison indicted the former district attorney Dowling and one of his assistants for criminal malfeasance. The charges were subsequently dismissed for lack of evidence. He also was proud of the almost nightly vice raids that he authorized in the French Quarter. Sometimes, it is reported, he led the raids carrying a pistol. Still, the raids failed to produce any tangible results. Soon, Garrison became

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embroiled in conflicts with local criminal court judges, with Garrison accusing the judges of racketeering and conspiring against him. The judges fired back, charging Garrison with misdemeanor criminal defamation. Garrison was convicted in January 1963. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64 (1964), overturned Garrison’s conviction, deciding that his conviction for criticizing the official conduct of public officials was unconstitutional. Garrison simultaneously indicted Judge Bernard Cocke with criminal malfeasance. In two trials personally prosecuted by Garrison, Judge Cocke was acquitted. Garrison charged nine policemen with brutality but dropped the charges two weeks later. During the same period, in a press conference he accused the state parole board of accepting bribes but failed to obtain grand jury indictments. Further, he accused the state legislature of accepting bribes and was unanimously censured by the legislature. Despite the faulty prosecutions, Garrison earned a good reputation with the people in New Orleans during the first two years of his tenure. He was equally proud to report that his office had not lost a homicide case in three years. In 1965, Garrison ran for reelection against Judge Malcolm O’Hara and won with 60 percent of the vote. Thus it appeared that he still had the confidence of the voters of New Orleans, and that Garrison was on target for a long successful career as New Orleans prosecutor, until one day in 1966. In November of 1966, Garrison told a journalist that he had important information on the assassination of President Kennedy. This began the erosion of his political career and indeed life as he had come to know it. Garrison lost the election to Harry Connick in 1973, ending his career as a prosecutor.

THE INVESTIGATION OF THE ASSASSINATION OF A PRESIDENT Many Americans remember exactly what they were doing at the moment they heard that President John F. Kennedy was killed on November 22, 1963. Jim Garrison was no different than other people and thus remembered where he was and what he was doing at that same moment. According to Garrison, he was working in his office in New Orleans when his chief assistant rushed into Garrison’s office to announce the shooting of the president. After processing the news and having subsequent in-depth discussions, it appeared to Garrison and members of his staff that there was a connection between the reported suspected assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, and David Ferrie, a New Orleans figure who had a chance encounter with Garrison shortly after he won the election. (According to Garrison, Ferrie had rushed up to him in a rather bizarre manner to congratulate him on winning the district attorney race.) Two days later Garrison met with key members of his staff. One of his assistants reported that Ferrie had made a trip to Texas forty-eight hours before—on the day of the assassination. Thus began Garrison’s probe of a conspiracy theory in the assassination of President Kennedy.

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Garrison reported the contents of his preliminary investigation to the FBI. As a former member of the bureau and as a law enforcement arm of the government, Garrison reported that he was confident that the federal government would conduct a thorough investigation. The FBI questioned and released Ferrie with such speed that it both startled and surprised Garrison, and he began to lose faith and confidence in the agency where he had previously been employed. As Garrison remarked at the time, he had mistakenly assumed both he and the federal government were on the same page. But this setback did not deter Jim Garrison from his continued inquiry into a possible conspiracy in the assassination of the president. Garrison’s investigation explored the possibility of a connection between another New Orleans figure, Clay Shaw, and Lee Harvey Oswald.

THE INVESTIGATION AND THE MEDIA After investigating the assassination, Garrison, with the assistance of his staff, was convinced that a group of right-wing activists including David Ferrie, Carlos Bringuier, and Clay Shaw were involved in a conspiracy with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to kill President Kennedy. Garrison suggested that such a plot was in retaliation for the president’s attempts to obtain a peace settlement in both Cuba and Vietnam. It was at this time that Garrison’s relationship with media outlets such as Newsweek and Life magazine took a turn for the worse. In the ordinary course of political life, in a district attorney’s office, the media is usually welcomed, because it is the vehicle by which the prosecutors inform the public of activity within the office. When Garrison shared his conspiracy theory with a Life magazine reporter, he originally was told that top management of the magazine supported him and would provide technical support that would result in a mutual exchange of information. Subsequently, Newsweek published an article critical of Garrison. In May 1967, Newsweek questioned Garrison’s connection to the mob and organized crime. (Subsequent diaries belonging to Tom Bethell confirmed that conversations had occurred.) Undaunted, Garrison continued his pursuit of the conspiracy theory. Three years after the assassination of President Kennedy, Garrison had a conversation with U.S. Senator Russell Long of Louisiana. According to Garrison, Long stated that the participants of the Warren Commission were wrong in their conclusions of how the president was killed. The Warren Commission was an investigatory body established by President Lyndon B. Johnson through executive order to investigate all circumstances concerning the assassination. After the conversation with Senator Long, Garrison ordered the entire set of the Warren Commission volumes. While waiting for the volumes to arrive, Garrison researched the biographical information of all commission members, wanting to determine who the individuals were who were making

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one of the most profound conclusions in the nation’s recent history. The commission had officially concluded that President Kennedy’s murder was accomplished by one man shooting from behind the president, but Garrison, after a review of the documents, determined that the Warren Commission report was wrong in its conclusion. Thus, the Jim Garrison controversy began.

THE TRIAL Garrison’s investigation into a possible conspiracy theory led him and those trusted members of his staff to investigate Oswald’s activities while he was in New Orleans during the summer of 1963. Garrison concluded that there was a connection between Oswald and intelligence agents, including the FBI. He authorized questioning of other persons whom he determined could have been involved in the plot. Garrison concluded that he had enough evidence to try Clay Shaw, a person who had supplied the CIA with information on numerous occasions. Garrison also concluded that there was a real substantiated connection between Oswald, Jack Ruby, and Shaw. By 1966, Garrison considered the two major suspects in the murder of President Kennedy as Clay and David Ferrie. Ferrie had been a CIA contract employee. Ferrie had made a strong anti-Kennedy speech at a meeting of the New Orleans Civic Club in 1961, and the speech was so controversial that some persons walked out. On the basis of information he had found, Garrison concluded that Shaw had connections to Lee Harvey Oswald, while the federal government concluded that Garrison was on a witch hunt, a grand jury in New Orleans had indicted Shaw. To assure the public that he had evidence to support the indictment and prosecution of Shaw, Garrison took the unusual step of holding a preliminary hearing where a judge would decide if there was sufficient evidence to move forward with a trial. The judge determined that Garrison could move forward. Prior to the trial, Garrison escaped prosecution himself when it was suggested that he had personal involvement with a known homosexual. He believed that the FBI was behind the potential set-up. Garrison also claimed that his home and office phones were ‘‘bugged.’’ Garrison was concerned that with the intensity of the federal government’s opposition to his investigation, his ability to fairly prosecute the case would be compromised. (In later years, it was determined that the federal government may have planted agents in Garrison’s office to gather information on his activities and report back.) By the time Shaw’s trial began, Garrison’s case had been weakened. Several prominent witnesses had either been killed, died mysteriously, or were relocated to states that would not honor Garrison’s extradition requests. ‘‘Circus’’ became a description of the Shaw trial. By the time Garrison went to court,

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his list of plotters and conspiracies had grown longer and wilder. They included Minutemen, oil millionaires, munitions exporters, White Russians, the Dallas police, members of the Dallas establishment, and unidentified elements of the ‘‘invisible Nazi substructure.’’ Garrison’s witnesses were weirder still. One of them showed up wearing a toga and identifying himself as ‘‘Julius Caesar.’’ The star in the state lineup admitted that the conspiratorial meeting he was supposed to have recalled under hypnosis might really have been ‘‘an inconsequential bull session.’’ The testimony of another witness, a New York businessman named Charles Speisel, who claimed he had been at a Shaw party where criticisms of the president had turned into talk of ways to kill him, disintegrated under cross-examination. Among other things, Speisel said he had been hypnotized fifty or sixty times. When asked how he knew this, Speisel replied: ‘‘When someone tries to get your attention—catch your eye. That’s a clue right off.’’ By the end of the trial, the jury took less than one hour to find Shaw not guilty. The negativity regarding Garrison continued. James Phelan of the Saturday Evening Post, among others, in an article titled, ‘‘Rush to Judgment in New Orleans,’’ suggested that Garrison’s prosecution was a rush to prosecute someone after he had created so much fanfare regarding his ability to solve the Kennedy assassination case. Moreover, it was suggested that the private side of Garrison reflected a homophobic slant in that he waged an almost obsessive vendetta against the New Orleans homosexual community. Before the trial and during the investigation Garrison had suggested that the assassination was a ‘‘homosexual thrill killing.’’ Clay Shaw had been rumored to be a homosexual, thus providing a reason Garrison antagonists suggested that he pursued the case against Clay with such vigilance.

AFTER THE TRIAL—THE MOVIE Despite the fact that several witnesses from Garrison’s office came forth and agreed to be interviewed and gave less than flattering comments regarding the prosecution of Shaw, Oliver Stone was not deterred in his efforts to produce a movie based on the Jim Garrison saga. According to some authors, there was an overwhelming sense of lunacy unleashed, which was the pervasive atmosphere in which the late Clay Shaw was wrongfully indicted and brought to trial in New Orleans by the late Jim Garrison, the district attorney for some thirty years. Stone’s movie produced even more controversy and discussion of Garrison’s pursuit of the ‘‘real’’ Kennedy assassin. Oliver Stone was accused of chasing fiction and that JFK did not reflect all of the more controversial avenues that Garrison pursued in his quest to solve the assassination case. Stone suggested that he had never paid much attention to the details of the JFK assassination at the time it occurred. Moreover,

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Stone suggested that when the media coverage was high regarding Garrison, he had been in Vietnam. The filmmaker indicated that he had a renewed interest in the case as a result of reading Garrison’s book, On the Trail of the Assassins. Stone suggested that Garrison’s book read like a ‘‘Dashiell Hammett whodunit’’ (Stone and Sklar 1972). Stone subsequently met with Garrison at the time he became a judge on the Louisiana Circuit Court of Appeals, and according to Stone’s account, he was deeply impressed. But Stone was accused of taking Garrison’s assertions at face value and failing to follow up any inconsistencies in Garrison’s version of events. Stone accepted Garrison’s version that the FBI failed to investigate fully numerous leads, including the connection between Ferrie, Oswald, Clay, and other characters alleged to have been involved in the conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. Yet official district attorney files in 1967 showed that there was no evidence that a conspiracy had ever existed in New Orleans or that any New Orleans resident was involved in a conspiracy to kill the president, and Stone was accused of ignoring facts when he directed the movie. Stone saw a different man in Garrison than others did. Stone indicated that when he read Garrison’s book, On the Trail of the Assassins, he saw the soul of a gem. He was impressed with Garrison the man, a World War II veteran who had served in Korea, a family man, a prosecutor, and someone who believed in the American way. As a prosecutor, Stone suggested that Garrison had a duty to pursue a crime if he believed that one had taken place. Stone had a difficult time understanding why there was so much opposition to Jim Garrison. Authors such as Anthony Summers later answered Stone’s questions of opposition by suggesting that serious scholars and researchers believed that Garrison’s investigation was a misdirected shambles and an abuse of the justice system. Others suggested that after months of highly publicized promises of what he would present at trial, Garrison produced no witnesses to suggest a CIA involvement in an assassination conspiracy and seemed only to be obsessed with Clay Shaw. Stone was further accused of playing loosely with the facts and choosing to make Garrison the hero of the movie. In order to make Garrison the hero in the movie, Stone had to make Clay Shaw guilty. Stone did not have to abide by the rules of evidence nor did he have to be concerned about defamation, Clay Shaw had died before the movie opened, giving Stone greater creative ability when he made the movie. Garrison was seen as the prism through which Stone viewed the entire series of investigative events. Views that seemed to confirm Garrison were embraced, and views that were different from Garrison’s were dismissed as misinformation or government propaganda. Stone did not bow to pressure. As late as 1992, in a speech before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Stone, amid much criticism, defended Garrison. He indicated that he had heard all of the criticism regarding Garrison and none held up to investigation. Further he challenged the detractors to show him evidence that Garrison had

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Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (aka ‘‘Warren Commission Report’’), September 24, 1964 Chapter 1: Summary and Conclusions The assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November 22, 1963, was a cruel and shocking act of violence directed against a man, a family, a nation, and against all mankind. A young and vigorous leader whose years of public and private life stretched before him was the victim of the fourth Presidential assassination in the history of a country dedicated to the concepts of reasoned argument and peaceful political change. This Commission was created on November 29, 1963, in recognition of the right of people everywhere to full and truthful knowledge concerning these events. This report endeavors to fulfill that right and to appraise this tragedy by the light of reason and the standard of fairness. It has been prepared with a deep awareness of the Commission’s responsibility to present to the American people an objective report of the facts relating to the assassination. Narrative of Events At 11:40 A.M.., c.s.t., on Friday, November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy, Mrs. Kennedy, and their party arrived at Love Field, Dallas, Tex. Behind them was the first day of a Texas trip planned 5 months before by the President, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, and John B. Connally, Jr., Governor of Texas. After leaving the White House on Thursday morning, the President had flown initially to San Antonio where Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson joined the party and the President dedicated new research facilities at the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine. Following a testimonial dinner in Houston for U.S. Representative Albert Thomas, the President flew to Fort Worth where he spent the night and spoke at a large breakfast gathering on Friday. Planned for later that day were a motorcade through downtown Dallas, a luncheon speech at the Trade Mart, and a flight to Austin where the President would attend a reception and speak at a Democratic fundraising dinner. From Austin he would proceed to the Texas ranch of the Vice President. Evident on this trip were the varied roles which an American President performs—Head of State, Chief Executive, party leader, and, in this instance, prospective candidate for reelection. The Dallas motorcade, it was hoped, would evoke a demonstration of the President’s personal popularity in a city which he had lost in the 1960 election. Once it had been decided that the trip to Texas would span 2 days, those responsible for planning, primarily Governor Connally and Kenneth O’Donnell, a special assistant to the President, agreed that a motorcade (continued )

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through Dallas would be desirable. The Secret Service was told on November 8 that 45 minutes had been allotted to a motorcade procession from Love Field to the site of a luncheon planned by Dallas business and civic leaders in honor of the President. After considering the facilities and security problems of several buildings, the Trade Mart was chosen as the luncheon site. Given this selection, and in accordance with the customary practice of affording the greatest number of people an opportunity to see the President, the motorcade route selected was a natural one. The route was approved by the local host committee and White House representatives on November 18 and publicized in the local papers starting on November 19. This advance publicity made it clear that the motorcade would leave Main Street and pass the intersection of Elm and Houston Streets as it proceeded to the Trade Mart by way of the Stemmons Freeway. By midmorning of November 22, clearing skies in Dallas dispelled the threat of rain and the President greeted the crowds from his open limousine without the ‘‘bubbletop,’’ which was at that time a plastic shield furnishing protection only against inclement weather. To the left of the President in the rear seat was Mrs. Kennedy. In the jump seats were Governor Connally, who was in front of the President, and Mrs. Connally at the Governor’s left. Agent William R. Greer of the Secret Service was driving, and Agent Roy H. Kellerman was sitting to his right. Directly behind the Presidential limousine was an open ‘‘follow-up’’ car with eight Secret Service agents, two in the front seat, two in the rear, and two on each running board. These agents, in accordance with normal Secret Service procedures, were instructed to scan the crowds, the roofs, and windows of buildings, overpasses, and crossings for signs of trouble. Behind the ‘‘follow-up’’ car was the Vice-Presidential car carrying the Vice President and Mrs. Johnson and Senator Ralph W. Yarborough. Next were a Vice-Presidential ‘‘follow-up’’ car and several cars and buses for additional dignitaries, press representatives, and others. The motorcade left Love Field shortly after 11:50 A.M., and proceeded through residential neighborhoods, stopping twice at the President’s request to greet well-wishers among the friendly crowds. Each time the President’s car halted, Secret Service agents from the ‘‘follow-up’’ car moved forward to assume a protective stance near the President and Mrs. Kennedy. As the motorcade reached Main Street, a principal east-west artery in downtown Dallas, the welcome became tumultuous. At the extreme west end of Main Street the motorcade turned right on Houston Street and proceeded north for one block in order to make a left turn on Elm Street, the most direct and convenient approach to the Stemmons Freeway and the Trade Mart. As the President’s car approached the intersection of Houston and Elm Streets, there loomed directly ahead on the intersection’s northwest corner a seven-story,

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orange brick warehouse and office building, the Texas School Book Depository. Riding in the Vice President’s car, Agent Rufus W. Youngblood of the Secret Service noticed that the clock atop the building indicated 12:30 P.M., the scheduled arrival time at the Trade Mart. The President’s car which had been going north made a sharp turn toward the southwest onto Elm Street. At a speed of about 11 miles per hour, it started down the gradual descent toward a railroad overpass under which the motorcade would proceed before reaching the Stemmons Freeway. The front of the Texas School Book Depository was now on the President’s right, and he waved to the crowd assembled there as he passed the building. Dealey Plaza—an open, landscaped area marking the western end of downtown Dallas—stretched out to the President’s left. A Secret Service agent riding in the motorcade radioed the Trade Mart that the President would arrive in 5 minutes. Seconds later shots resounded in rapid succession. The President’s hands moved to his neck. He appeared to stiffen momentarily and lurch slightly forward in his seat. A bullet had entered the base of the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine. It traveled downward and exited from the front of the neck, causing a nick in the left lower portion of the knot in the President’s necktie. Before the shooting started, Governor Connally had been facing toward the crowd on the right. He started to turn toward the left and suddenly felt a blow on his back. The Governor had been hit by a bullet which entered at the extreme right side of his back at a point below his right armpit. The bullet traveled through his chest in a downward and forward direction, exited below his right nipple, passed through his right wrist which had been in his lap, and then caused a wound to his left thigh. The force of the bullet’s impact appeared to spin the Governor to his right, and Mrs. Connally pulled him down into her lap. Another bullet then struck President Kennedy in the rear portion of his head, causing a massive and fatal wound. The President fell to the left into Mrs. Kennedy’s lap. Secret Service Agent Clinton J. Hill, riding on the left running board of the ‘‘follow-up’’ car, heard a noise which sounded like a firecracker and saw the President suddenly lean forward and to the left. Hill jumped off the car and raced toward the President’s limousine. In the front seat of the Vice-Presidential car, Agent Youngblood heard an explosion and noticed unusual movements in the crowd. He vaulted into the rear seat and sat on the Vice President in order to protect him. At the same time Agent Kellerman in the front seat of the Presidential limousine turned to observe the President. Seeing that the President was struck, Kellerman instructed the driver, ‘‘Let’s get out of here; we are hit.’’ He radioed ahead to the lead car, ‘‘Get us to the hospital immediately.’’ Agent Greer immediately accelerated the Presidential car. As it gained speed, Agent Hill managed to pull himself onto the back of the car where Mrs. Kennedy had

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climbed. Hill pushed her back into the rear seat and shielded the stricken President and Mrs. Kennedy as the President’s car proceeded at high speed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, 4 miles away. At Parkland, the President was immediately treated by a team of physicians who had been alerted for the President’s arrival by the Dallas Police Department as the result of a radio message from the motorcade after the shooting. The doctors noted irregular breathing movements and a possible heartbeat, although they could not detect a pulse. They observed the extensive wound in the President’s head and a small wound approximately one-fourth inch in diameter in the lower third of his neck. In an effort to facilitate breathing, the physicians performed a tracheotomy by enlarging the throat wound and inserting a tube. Totally absorbed in the immediate task of trying to preserve the President’s life, the attending doctors never turned the president over for an examination of his back. At l P.M., after all heart activity ceased and the Last Rites were administered by a priest, President Kennedy was pronounced dead. Governor Connally underwent surgery and ultimately recovered from his serious wounds. Upon learning of the President’s death, Vice President Johnson left Parkland Hospital under close guard and proceeded to the Presidential plane at Love Field. Mrs. Kennedy, accompanying her husband’s body, boarded the plane shortly thereafter. At 2:38 P.M., in the central compartment of the plane, Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the 36th President of the United States by Federal District Court Judge Sarah T. Hughes. The plane left immediately for Washington, D.C., arriving at Andrews AFB, Md., at 5:58 P.M., e.s.t.. The President’s body was taken to the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Md., where it was given a complete pathological examination. The autopsy disclosed the large head wound observed at Parkland and the wound in the front of the neck which had been enlarged by the Parkland doctors when they performed the tracheotomy. Both of these wounds were described in the autopsy report as being ‘‘presumably of exit.’’ In addition the autopsy revealed a small wound of entry in the rear of the President’s skull and another wound of entry near the base of the back of the neck. The autopsy report stated the cause of death as ‘‘Gunshot wound, head’’ and the bullets which struck the President were described as having been fired ‘‘from a point behind and somewhat above the level of the deceased.’’ At the scene of the shooting, there was evident confusion at the outset concerning the point of origin of the shots. Witnesses differed in their accounts of the direction from which the sound of the shots emanated. Within a few minutes, however, attention centered on the Texas School Book Depository Building as the source of the shots. The building was occupied by a private corporation, the Texas School Book Depository Co., which distributed school textbooks of several publishers and leased space to representatives

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of the publishers. Most of the employees in the building worked for these publishers. The balance, including a 15-man warehousing crew, were employees of the Texas School Book Depository Co. itself. Several eyewitnesses in front of the building reported that they saw a rifle being fired from the southeast corner window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. One eyewitness, Howard L. Brennan, had been watching the parade from a point on Elm Street directly opposite and facing the building. He promptly told a policeman that he had seen a slender man, about 5 feet 10 inches, in his early thirties, take deliberate aim from the sixth-floor corner window and fire a rifle in the direction of the President’s car. Brennan thought he might be able to identify the man since he had noticed him in the window a few minutes before the motorcade made the turn onto Elm Street. At 12:34 P.M., the Dallas police radio mentioned the Depository Building as a possible source of the shots, and at 12:45 P.M., the police radio broadcast a description of the suspected assassin based primarily on Brennan’s observations. When the shots were fired, a Dallas motorcycle patrolman, Marrion L. Baker, was riding in the motorcade at a point several cars behind the President. He had turned right from Main Street onto Houston Street and was about 200 feet south of Elm Street when he heard a shot. Baker, having recently returned from a week of deer hunting, was certain the shot came from a high-powered rifle. He looked up and saw pigeons scattering in the air from their perches on the Texas School Book Depository Building. He raced his motorcycle to the building, dismounted, scanned the area to the west and pushed his way through the spectators toward the entrance. There he encountered Roy Truly, the building superintendent, who offered Baker his help. They entered the building, and ran toward the two elevators in the rear. Finding that both elevators were on an upper floor, they dashed up the stairs. Not more than 2 minutes had elapsed since the shooting. When they reached the second-floor landing on their way up to the top of the building, Patrolman Baker thought he caught a glimpse of someone through the small glass window in the door separating the hall area near the stairs from the small vestibule leading into the lunchroom. Gun in hand, he rushed to the door and saw a man about 20 feet away walking toward the other end of the lunchroom. The man was empty handed. At Baker’s command, the man turned and approached him. Truly, who had started up the stairs to the third floor ahead of Baker, returned to see what had delayed the patrolman. Baker asked Truly whether he knew the man in the lunchroom. Truly replied that the man worked in the building, whereupon Baker turned from the man and proceeded, with Truly, up the stairs. The man they encountered had started working in the Texas School Book Depository Building on October 16, 1963. His fellow workers described him as very quiet—a ‘‘loner.’’ His name was Lee Harvey Oswald.

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Within about 1 minute after his encounter with Baker and Truly, Oswald was seen passing through the second-floor offices. In his hand was a full Coke bottle which he had purchased from a vending machine in the lunchroom. He was walking toward the front of the building where a passenger elevator and a short flight of stairs provided access to the main entrance of the building on the first floor. Approximately 7 minutes later, at about 12:40 P.M., Oswald boarded a bus at a point on Elm Street seven short blocks east of the Depository Building. The bus was traveling west toward the very building from which Oswald had come. Its route lay through the Oak Cliff section in southwest Dallas, where it would pass seven blocks east of the roominghouse in which Oswald was living, at 1026 North Beckley Avenue. On the bus was Mrs. Mary Bledsoe, one of Oswald’s former landladies who immediately recognized him. Oswald stayed on the bus approximately 3 or 4 minutes, during which time it proceeded only two blocks because of the traffic jam created by the motorcade and the assassination. Oswald then left the bus. A few minutes later he entered a vacant taxi four blocks away and asked the driver to take him to a point on North Beckley Avenue several blocks beyond his roominghouse. The trip required 5 or 6 minutes. At about 1 P.M. Oswald arrived at the roominghouse. The housekeeper, Mrs. Earlene Roberts, was surprised to see Oswald at midday and remarked to him that he seemed to be in quite a hurry. He made no reply. A few minutes later Oswald emerged from his room zipping up his jacket and rushed out of the house. Approximately 14 minutes later, and just 45 minutes after the assassination, another violent shooting occurred in Dallas. The victim was Patrolman J. D. Tippit of the Dallas police, an officer with a good record during his more than 11 years with the police force. He was shot near the intersection of 10th Street and Patton Avenue, about nine-tenths of a mile from Oswald’s roominghouse. At the time of the assassination, Tippit was alone in his patrol car, the routine practice for most police patrol officers at this time of day. He had been ordered by radio at 12:45 P.M. to proceed to the central Oak Cliff area as part of a concentration of patrol car activity around the center of the city following the assassination. At 12:54 Tippit radioed that he had moved as directed and would be available for any emergency. By this time the police radio had broadcast several messages alerting the police to the suspect described by Brennan at the scene of the assassination—slender white male, about 30 years old, 5 feet 10 inches and weighing about 165 pounds. At approximately 1:15 P.M., Tippit was driving slowly in an easterly direction on East 10th Street in Oak Cliff. About 100 feet past the intersection of 10th Street and Patton Avenue, Tippit pulled up alongside a man walking in the same direction. The man met the general description of the suspect wanted in connection with the assassination. He walked over to Tippit’s car, rested his arms on the door on the right-hand side of the car, and apparently

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exchanged words with Tippit through the window. Tippit opened the door on the left side and started to walk around the front of his car. As he reached the front wheel on the driver’s side, the man on the sidewalk drew a revolver and fired several shots in rapid succession, hitting Tippit four times and killing him instantly. An automobile repairman, Domingo Benavides, heard the shots and stopped his pickup truck on the opposite side of the street about 25 feet in front of Tippit’s car. He observed the gunman start back toward Patton Avenue, removing the empty cartridge cases from the gun as he went. Benavides rushed to Tippit’s side. The patrolman, apparently dead, was lying on his revolver, which was out of its holster. Benavides promptly reported the shooting to police headquarters over the radio in Tippit’s car. The message was received shortly after 1:16 P.M. As the gunman left the scene, he walked hurriedly back toward Patton Avenue and turned left, heading south. Standing on the northwest corner of 10th Street and Patton Avenue was Helen Markham, who had been walking south on Patton Avenue and had seen both the killer and Tippit cross the intersection in front of her as she waited on the curb for traffic to pass. She witnessed the shooting and then saw the man with a gun in his hand walk back toward the corner and cut across the lawn of the corner house as he started south on Patton Avenue. In the corner house itself, Mrs. Barbara Jeanette Davis and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Virginia Davis, heard the shots and rushed to the door in time to see the man walk rapidly across the lawn shaking a revolver as if he were emptying it of cartridge cases. Later that day each woman found a cartridge case near the home. As the gunman turned the corner he passed alongside a taxicab which was parked on Patton Avenue a few feet from 10th Street. The driver, William W. Scoggins, had seen the slaying and was now crouched behind his cab on the street side. As the gunman cut through the shrubbery on the lawn, Scoggins looked up and saw the man approximately 12 feet away. In his hand was a pistol and he muttered words which sounded to Scoggins like ‘‘poor dumb cop’’ or ‘‘poor damn cop.’’ After passing Scoggins, the gunman crossed to the west side of Patton Avenue and ran south toward Jefferson Boulevard, a main Oak Cliff thoroughfare. On the east side of Patton, between l0th Street and Jefferson Boulevard, Ted Callaway, a used car salesman, heard the shots and ran to the sidewalk. As the man with the gun rushed past, Callaway shouted ‘‘What’s going on?’’ The man merely shrugged, ran on to Jefferson Boulevard and turned right. On the next corner was a gas station with a parking lot in the rear. The assailant ran into the lot, discarded his jacket and then continued his flight west on Jefferson. In a shoe store a few blocks farther west on Jefferson, the manager, Johnny Calvin Brewer, heard the siren of a police car moments after the radio in his

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store announced the shooting of the police officer in Oak Cliff. Brewer saw a man step quickly into the entranceway of the store and stand there with his back toward the street. When the police car made a U-turn and headed back in the direction of the Tippit shooting, the man left and Brewer followed him. He saw the man enter the Texas Theatre, a motion picture house about 60 feet away, without buying a ticket. Brewer pointed this out to the cashier, Mrs. Julia Postal, who called the police. The time was shortly after 1:40 P.M. At 1:29 P.M., the police radio had noted the similarity in the descriptions of the suspects in the Tippit shooting and the assassination. At 1:45 P.M., in response to Mrs. Postal’s call, the police radio sounded the alarm: ‘‘Have information a suspect just went in the Texas Theatre on West Jefferson.’’ Within minutes the theater was surrounded. The house lights were then turned up. Patrolman M. N. McDonald and several other policemen approached the man, who had been pointed out to them by Brewer. McDonald ordered the man to his feet and heard him say, ‘‘Well, it’s all over now.’’ The man drew a gun from his waist with one hand and struck the officer with the other. McDonald struck out with his right hand and grabbed the gun with his left hand. After a brief struggle McDonald and several other police officers disarmed and handcuffed the suspect and drove him to police headquarters, arriving at approximately 2 P.M. Following the assassination, police cars had rushed to the Texas School Book Depository in response to the many radio messages reporting that the shots had been fired from the Depository Building. Inspector J. Herbert Sawyer of the Dallas Police Department arrived at the scene shortly after hearing the first of these police radio messages at 12:34 P.M. Some of the officers who had been assigned to the area of Elm and Houston Streets for the motorcade were talking to witnesses and watching the building when Sawyer arrived. Sawyer entered the building and rode a passenger elevator to the fourth floor, which was the top floor for this elevator. He conducted a quick search, returned to the main floor and, between approximately 12:37 and 12:40 P.M., ordered that no one be permitted to leave the building. Shortly before 1 P.M. Capt. J. Will Fritz, chief of the homicide and robbery bureau of the Dallas Police Department, arrived to take charge of the investigation. Searching the sixth floor, Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney noticed a pile of cartons in the southeast corner. He squeezed through the boxes and realized immediately that he had discovered the point from which the shots had been fired. On the floor were three empty cartridge cases. A carton had apparently been placed on the floor at the side of the window so that a person sitting on the carton could look down Elm Street toward the overpass and scarcely be noticed from the outside. Between this carton and the halfopen window were three additional cartons arranged at such an angle that a rifle resting on the top carton would be aimed directly at the motorcade as it

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moved away from the building. The high stack of boxes, which first attracted Mooney’s attention effectively screened a person at the window from the view of anyone else on the floor. Mooney’s discovery intensified the search for additional evidence on the sixth floor, and at 1:22 P.M. approximately 10 minutes after the cartridge cases were found, Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone turned his flashlight in the direction of two rows of boxes in the northwest corner near the staircase. Stuffed between the two rows was a bolt-action rifle with a telescopic sight. The rifle was not touched until it could be photographed. When Lt. J. C. Day of the police identification bureau decided that the wooden stock and the metal knob at the end of the bolt contained no prints, he held the rifle by the stock while Captain Fritz ejected a live shell by operating the bolt. Lieutenant Day promptly noted that stamped on the rifle itself was the serial number ‘‘C2766’’ as well as the markings ‘‘1940’’ ‘‘MADE ITALY’’ and ‘‘CAL. 6.5.’’ The rifle was about 40 inches long and when disassembled it could fit into a handmade paper sack which after the assassination, was found in the southeast corner of the building within a few feet of the cartridge cases. As Fritz and Day were completing their examination of this rifle on the sixth floor, Roy Truly, the building superintendent, approached with information which he felt should be brought to the attention of the police. Earlier, while the police were questioning the employees, Truly had observed that Lee Harvey Oswald, 1 of the 15 men who worked in the warehouse, was missing. After Truly provided Oswald’s name, address, and general description, Fritz left for police headquarters. He arrived at headquarters shortly after 2 P.M. and asked two detectives to pick up the employee who was missing from the Texas School Book Depository. Standing nearby were the police officers who had just arrived with the man arrested in the Texas Theatre. When Fritz mentioned the name of the missing employee, he learned that the man was already in the interrogation room. The missing School Book Depository employee and the suspect who had been apprehended in the Texas Theatre were one and the same—Lee Harvey Oswald. The suspect Fritz was about to question in connection with the assassination of the President and the murder of a policeman was born in New Orleans on October 18, 1939, 2 months after the death of his father. His mother, Marguerite Claverie Oswald, had two older children. One, John Pic, was a half-brother to Lee from an earlier marriage which had ended in divorce. The other was Robert Oswald, a full brother to Lee and 5 years older. When Lee Oswald was 3, Mrs. Oswald placed him in an orphanage where his brother and half-brother were already living, primarily because she had to work. In January 1944, when Lee was 4, he was taken out of the orphanage, and shortly thereafter his mother moved with him to Dallas, Tex., where the older boys joined them at the end of the school year. In May of 1945

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Marguerite Oswald married her third husband, Edwin A. Ekdahl. While the two older boys attended a military boarding school, Lee lived at home and developed a warm attachment to Ekdahl, occasionally accompanying his mother and stepfather on business trips around the country. Lee started school in Benbrook, Tex., but in the fall of 1946, after a separation from Ekdahl, Marguerite Oswald reentered Lee in the first grade in Covington, La. In January 1947, while Lee was still in the first grade, the family moved to Fort Worth, Tex., as the result of an attempted reconciliation between Ekdahl and Lee’s mother. A year and a half later, before Lee was 9, his mother was divorced from her third husband as the result of a divorce action instituted by Ekdahl. Lee’s school record during the next 5 and a half years in Fort Worth was average, although generally it grew poorer each year. The comments of teachers and others who knew him at that time do not reveal any unusual personality traits or characteristics. Another change for Lee Oswald occurred in August 1952, a few months after he completed the sixth grade. Marguerite Oswald and her 12-year-old son moved to New York City where Marguerite’s oldest son, John Pic, was stationed with the Coast Guard. The ensuing year and a half in New York was marked by Lee’s refusals to attend school and by emotional and psychological problems of a seemingly serious nature. Because he had become a chronic school truant, Lee underwent psychiatric study at Youth House, an institution in New York for juveniles who have had truancy problems or difficulties with the law, and who appear to require psychiatric observation or other types of guidance. The social worker assigned to his case described him as ‘‘seriously detached’’ and ‘‘withdrawn’’ and noted ‘‘a rather pleasant, appealing quality about this emotionally starved, affectionless youngster.’’ Lee expressed the feeling to the social worker that his mother did not care for him and regarded him as a burden. He experienced fantasies about being all-powerful and hurting people, but during his stay at Youth House he was apparently not a behavior problem. He appeared withdrawn and evasive, a boy who preferred to spend his time alone, reading and watching television. His tests indicated that he was above average in intelligence for his age group. The chief psychiatrist of Youth House diagnosed Lee’s problem as a ‘‘personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies.’’ He concluded that the boy was ‘‘an emotionally quite disturbed youngster’’ and recommended psychiatric treatment. In May 1953, after having been at Youth House for 3 weeks, Lee Oswald returned to school where his attendance and grades temporarily improved. By the following fall, however, the probation officer reported that virtually every teacher complained about the boy’s behavior. His mother insisted that he did not need psychiatric assistance. Although there was apparently some improvement in Lee’s behavior during the next few months, the court

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recommended further treatment. In January 1954, while Lee’s case was still pending, Marguerite and Lee left for New Orleans, the city of Lee’s birth. Upon his return to New Orleans, Lee maintained mediocre grades but had no obvious behavior problems. Neighbors and others who knew him outside of school remembered him as a quiet, solitary, and introverted boy who read a great deal and whose vocabulary made him quite articulate. About 1 month after he started the l0th grade and 11 days before his 16th birthday in October 1955, he brought to school a note purportedly written by his mother, stating that the family was moving to California. The note was written by Lee. A few days later he dropped out of school and almost immediately tried to join the Marine Corps. Because he was only 16, he was rejected. After leaving school Lee worked for the next 10 months at several jobs in New Orleans as an office messenger or clerk. It was during this period that he started to read communist literature. Occasionally, in conversations with others, he praised communism and expressed to his fellow employees a desire to join the Communist Party. At about this time, when he was not yet 17, he wrote to the Socialist Party of America, professing his belief in Marxism. Another move followed in July 1956 when Lee and his mother returned to Fort Worth. He reentered high school but again dropped out after a few weeks and enlisted in the Marine Corps on October 1956, 6 days after his 17th birthday. On December 21, 1956, during boot camp in San Diego, Oswald fired a score of 212 for record with the M-1 rifle—2 points over the minimum for a rating of ‘‘sharpshooter’’ on a marksman/sharpshooter/ expert scale. After his basic training, Oswald received training in aviation fundamentals and then in radar scanning. Most people who knew Oswald in the Marines described him as a ‘‘loner’’ who resented the exercise of authority by others. He spent much of his free time reading. He was court-martialed once for possessing an unregistered privately owned weapon and, on another occasion, for using provocative language to a noncommissioned officer. He was, however, generally able to comply with Marine discipline, even though his experiences in the Marine Corps did not live up to his expectations. Oswald served 15 months overseas until November 1958, most of it in Japan. During his final year in the Marine Corps he was stationed for the most part in Santa Ana, Calif., where he showed marked interest in the Soviet Union and sometimes expressed politically radical views with dogmatic conviction. Oswald again fired the M-1 rifle for record on May 6, 1959, and this time he shot a score of 191 on a shorter course than before, only 1 point over the minimum required to be a ‘‘marksman.’’ According to one of his fellow marines, Oswald was not particularly interested in his rifle performance, and his unit was not expected to exhibit the usual rifle proficiency. During this period he expressed strong admiration for Fidel Castro

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and an interest in joining the Cuban army. He tried to impress those around him as an intellectual, but his thinking appeared to some as shallow and rigid. Oswald’s Marine service terminated on September 11, 1959, when at his own request he was released from active service a few months ahead of his scheduled release. He offered as the reason for his release the ill health and economic plight of his mother. He returned to Fort Worth, remained with his mother only 3 days and left for New Orleans, telling his mother he planned to get work there in the shipping or import-export business. In New Orleans he booked passage on the freighter SS Marion Lykes, which sailed from New Orleans to Le Havre, France, on September 20, 1959. Lee Harvey Oswald had presumably planned this step in his life for quite some time. In March of 1959 he had applied to the Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland for admission to the Spring 1960 term. His letter of application contained many blatant falsehoods concerning his qualifications and background. A few weeks before his discharge he had applied for and obtained a passport, listing the Soviet Union as one of the countries which he planned to visit. During his service in the Marines he had saved a comparatively large sum of money, possibly as much as $1,500, which would appear to have been accomplished by considerable frugality and apparently for a specific purpose. The purpose of the accumulated fund soon became known. On October 16, 1959, Oswald arrived in Moscow by train after crossing the border from Finland, where he had secured a visa for a 6-day stay in the Soviet Union. He immediately applied for Soviet citizenship. On the afternoon of October 21, 1959, Oswald was ordered to leave the Soviet Union by 8 P.M. that evening. That same afternoon in his hotel room Oswald, in an apparent suicide attempt, slashed his left wrist. He was hospitalized immediately. On October 31, 3 days after his release from the hospital, Oswald appeared at the American Embassy, announced that he wished to renounce his U.S. citizenship and become a Russian citizen, and handed the Embassy officer a written statement he had prepared for the occasion. When asked his reasons, Oswald replied, ‘‘I am a Marxist.’’ Oswald never formally complied with the legal steps necessary to renounce his American citizenship. The Soviet Government did not grant his request for citizenship, but in January 1960 he was given permission to remain in the Soviet Union on a year-to-year basis. At the same time Oswald was sent to Minsk where he worked in radio factory as an unskilled laborer. In January 1961 his permission to remain in the Soviet Union was extended for another year. A few weeks later, in February 1961, he wrote to the American Embassy in Moscow expressing a desire to return to the United States. The following month Oswald met a 19-year-old Russian girl, Marina Nikolaevna Prusakova, a pharmacist, who had been brought up in Leningrad but was then living with an aunt and uncle in Minsk. They were married on

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April 30, 1961. Throughout the following year he carried on a correspondence with American and Soviet authorities seeking approval for the departure of himself and his wife to the United States. In the course of this effort, Oswald and his wife visited the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in July of 1961. Primarily on the basis of an interview and questionnaire completed there, the Embassy concluded that Oswald had not lost his citizenship, a decision subsequently ratified by the Department of State in Washington, D.C. Upon their return to Minsk, Oswald and his wife filed with the Soviet authorities for permission to leave together. Their formal application was made in July 1961, and on December 25, 1961, Marina Oswald was advised it would be granted. A daughter was born to the Oswalds in February 1962. In the months that followed they prepared for their return to the United States. On May 9, 1962, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, at the request of the Department of State, agreed to waive a restriction under the law which would have prevented the issuance of a United States visa to Oswald’s Russian wife until she had left the Soviet Union. They finally left Moscow on June 1, 1962, and were assisted in meeting their travel expenses by a loan of $435.71 from the U.S. Department of State. Two weeks later they arrived in Fort Worth, Tex. For a few weeks Oswald, his wife and child lived with Oswald’s brother Robert. After a similar stay with Oswald’s mother, they moved into their own apartment in early August. Oswald obtained a job on July 16 as a sheet metal worker. During this period in Fort Worth, Oswald was interviewed twice by agents of the FBI. The report of the first interview, which occurred on June 26, described him as arrogant and unwilling to discuss the reasons why he had gone to the Soviet Union. Oswald denied that he was involved in Soviet intelligence activities and promised to advise the FBI if Soviet representatives ever communicated with him. He was interviewed again on August 16, when he displayed a less belligerent attitude and once again agreed to inform the FBI of any attempt to enlist him in intelligence activities. In early October 1962 Oswald quit his job at the sheet metal plant and moved to Dallas. While living in Forth Worth, the Oswalds had been introduced to a group of Russian-speaking people in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Many of them assisted the Oswalds by providing small amounts of food, clothing, and household items. Oswald himself was disliked by almost all of this group whose help to the family was prompted primarily by sympathy for Marina Oswald and the child. Despite the fact that he had left the Soviet Union, disillusioned with its government, Oswald seemed more firmly committed than ever to his concepts of Marxism. He showed disdain for democracy, capitalism, and American society in general. He was highly critical of the Russian-speaking group because they seemed devoted to American concepts of democracy and capitalism and were ambitious to improve themselves economically.

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In February 1963 the Oswalds met Ruth Paine at a social gathering. Ruth Paine was temporarily separated from her husband and living with her two children in their home in Irving, Tex., a suburb of Dallas. Because of an interest in the Russian language and sympathy for Marina Oswald, who spoke no English and had few funds, Ruth Paine befriended Marina and, during the next 2 months, visited her on several occasions. On April 6, 1963, Oswald lost his job with a photography firm. A few days later, on April 10, he attempted to kill Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker (retired, U.S. Army), using a rifle which he had ordered by mail 1 month previously under an assumed name. Marina Oswald learned of her husband’s act when she confronted him with a note which he had left, giving her instructions in the event he did not return. That incident, and their general economic difficulties, impelled Marina Oswald to suggest that her husband leave Dallas and go to New Orleans to look for work. Oswald left for New Orleans on April 24, 1963. Ruth Paine, who knew nothing of the Walker shooting, invited Marina Oswald and the baby to stay with her in the Paines’ modest home while Oswald sought work in New Orleans. Early in May, upon receiving word from Oswald that he had found a job, Ruth Paine drove Marina Oswald and the baby to New Orleans to rejoin Oswald. During the stay in New Orleans, Oswald formed a fictitious New Orleans Chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He posed as secretary of this organization and represented that the president was A. J. Hidell. In reality, Hidell was a completely fictitious person created by Oswald, the organization’s only member. Oswald was arrested on August 9 in connection with a scuffle which occurred while he was distributing pro-Castro leaflets. The next day, while at the police station, he was interviewed by an FBI agent after Oswald requested the police to arrange such an interview. Oswald gave the agent false information about his own background and was evasive in his replies concerning Fair Play for Cuba activities. During the next 2 weeks, Oswald appeared on radio programs twice, claiming to be the spokesman for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans. On July 19, 1963, Oswald lost his job as a greaser of coffee processing machinery. In September, after an exchange of correspondence with Marina Oswald, Ruth Paine drove to New Orleans and on September 23, transported Marina, the child, and the family belongings to Irving, Tex. Ruth Paine suggested that Marina Oswald, who was expecting her second child in October, live at the Paine house until after the baby was born. Oswald remained behind, ostensibly to find work either in Houston or some other city. Instead, he departed by bus for Mexico, arriving in Mexico City on September 27, where he promptly visited the Cuban and Russian embassies. His stated objective was to obtain official permission to visit Cuba, on his way to

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the Soviet Union. The Cuban Government would not grant his visa unless the Soviet Government would also issue a visa permitting his entry into Russia. Oswald’s efforts to secure these visas failed, and he left for Dallas, where he arrived on October 3, 1963. When he saw his wife the next day, it was decided that Oswald would rent a room in Dallas and visit his family on weekends. For 1 week he rented a room from Mrs. Bledsoe, the woman who later saw him on the bus shortly after the assassination. On October 14, 1963, he rented the Beckley Avenue room and listed his name as O. H. Lee. On the same day, at the suggestion of a neighbor, Mrs. Paine phoned the Texas School Book Depository and was told that there was a job opening. She informed Oswald, who was interviewed the following day at the Depository and started to work there on October 16, 1963. On October 20 the Oswalds’ second daughter was born. During October and November Oswald established a general pattern of weekend visits to Irving, arriving on Friday afternoon and returning to Dallas Monday morning with a fellow employee, Buell Wesley Frazier, who lived near the Paines. On Friday, November 15, Oswald remained in Dallas at the suggestion of his wife who told him that the house would be crowded because of a birthday party for Ruth Paine’s daughter. On Monday, November 18, Oswald and his wife quarreled bitterly during a telephone conversation, because she learned for the first time that he was living at the rooming house under an assumed name. On Thursday, November 21, Oswald told Frazier that he would like to drive to Irving to pick up some curtain rods for an apartment in Dallas. His wife and Mrs. Paine were quite surprised to see him since it was a Thursday night. They thought he had returned to make up after Monday’s quarrel. He was conciliatory, but Marina Oswald was still angry. Later that evening, when Mrs. Paine had finished cleaning the kitchen, she went into the garage and noticed that the light was burning. She was certain that she had not left it on, although the incident appeared unimportant at the time. In the garage were most of the Oswalds’ personal possessions. The following morning Oswald left while his wife was still in bed feeding the baby. She did not see him leave the house, nor did Ruth Paine. On the dresser in their room he left his wedding ring which he had never done before. His wallet containing $170 was left intact in a dresser-drawer. Oswald walked to Frazier’s house about half a block away and placed a long bulky package, made out of wrapping paper and tape, into the rear seat of the car. He told Frazier that the package contained curtain rods. When they reached the Depository parking lot, Oswald walked quickly ahead. Frazier followed and saw Oswald enter the Depository Building carrying the long bulky package with him.

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During the morning of November 22, Marina Oswald followed President Kennedy’s activities on television. She and Ruth Paine cried when they heard that the President had been shot. Ruth Paine translated the news of the shooting to Marina Oswald as it came over the television, including the report that the shots were probably fired from the building where Oswald worked. When Marina Oswald heard this, she recalled the Walker episode and the fact that her husband still owned the rifle. She went quietly to the Paine’s garage where the rifle had been concealed in a blanket among their other belongings. It appeared to her that the rifle was still there, although she did not actually open the blanket. At about 3 P.M. the police arrived at the Paine house and asked Marina Oswald whether her husband owned a rifle. She said that he did and then led them into the garage and pointed to the rolled up blanket. As a police officer lifted it, the blanket hung limply over either side of his arm. The rifle was not there. Meanwhile, at police headquarters Captain Fritz had begun questioning Oswald. Soon after the start of the first interrogation, agents of the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service arrived and participated in the questioning. Oswald denied having anything to do with the assassination of President Kennedy or the murder of Patrolman Tippit. He claimed that he was eating lunch at the time of the assassination, and that he then spoke with his foreman for 5 to 10 minutes before going home. He denied that he owned a rifle and when confronted, in a subsequent interview, with a picture showing him holding a rifle and pistol, he claimed that his face had been superimposed on someone else’s body. He refused to answer any questions about the presence in his wallet of a selective service card with his picture and the name ‘‘Alek J. Hidell.’’ During the questioning of Oswald on the third floor of the police department, more than 100 representatives of the press, radio, and television were crowded into the hallway through which Oswald had to pass when being taken from his cell to Captain Fritz’ office for interrogation. Reporters tried to interview Oswald during these trips. Between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning he appeared in the hallway at least 16 times. The generally confused conditions outside and inside Captain Fritz’ office increased the difficulty of police questioning. Advised by the police that he could communicate with an attorney, Oswald made several telephone calls on Saturday in an effort to procure representation of his own choice and discussed the matter with the president of the local bar association, who offered to obtain counsel Oswald declined the offer, saying that he would first try to obtain counsel by himself. By Sunday morning he had not yet engaged an attorney. At 7:10 P.M. on November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald was formally advised that he had been charged with the murder of Patrolman J. D. Tippit.

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Several witnesses to the Tippit slaying and to the subsequent flight of the gunman had positively identified Oswald in police lineups. While positive firearm identification evidence was not available at the time, the revolver in Oswald’s possession at the time of his arrest was of a type which could have fired the shots that killed Tippit. The formal charge against Oswald for the assassination of President Kennedy was lodged shortly after 1:30 A.M., on Saturday, November 23. By 10 P.M. of the day of the assassination, the FBI had traced the rifle found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository to a mail order house in Chicago which had purchased it from a distributor in New York. Approximately 6 hours later, the Chicago firm advised that this rifle had been ordered in March 1963 by an A. Hidel for shipment to post office box 2915, in Dallas, Tex., a box rented by Oswald. Payment for the rifle was remitted by a money order signed by A. Hidell. By 6:45 P.M. on November 23, the FBI was able to advise the Dallas police that, as a result of handwriting analysis of the documents used to purchase the rifle, it had concluded that the rifle had been ordered by Lee Harvey Oswald. Throughout Friday and Saturday, the Dallas police released to the public many of the details concerning the alleged evidence against Oswald. Police officials discussed important aspects of the case, usually in the course of impromptu and confused press conferences in the third-floor corridor. Some of the information divulged was erroneous. Efforts by the news media representatives to reconstruct the crime and promptly report details frequently led to erroneous and often conflicting reports. At the urgings of the newsmen, Chief of Police Jesse E. Curry, brought Oswald to a press conference in the police assembly room shortly after midnight of the day Oswald was arrested. The assembly room was crowded with newsmen who had come to Dallas from all over the country. They shouted questions at Oswald and flashed cameras at him. Among this group was a 52-year-old Dallas nightclub operator—Jack Ruby. On Sunday morning, November 24, arrangements were made for Oswald’s transfer from the city jail to the Dallas County jail, about 1 mile away. The news media had been informed on Saturday night that the transfer of Oswald would not take place until after 10 A.M. on Sunday. Earlier on Sunday, between 2:30 and 3 A.M., anonymous telephone calls threatening Oswald’s life had been received by the Dallas office of the FBI and by the office of the county sheriff. Nevertheless, on Sunday morning, television, radio, and newspaper representatives crowded into the basement to record the transfer. As viewed through television cameras, Oswald would emerge from a door in front of the cameras and proceed to the transfer vehicle. To the right of the cameras was a ‘‘down’’ ramp from Main Street on the north. To the left was an ‘‘up’’ ramp leading to Commerce Street on the south.

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The armored truck in which Oswald was to be transferred arrived shortly after 11 A.M. Police officials then decided, however, that an unmarked police car would be preferable for the trip because of its greater speed and maneuverability. At approximately 11:20 A.M. Oswald emerged from the basement jail office flanked by detectives on either side and at his rear. He took a few steps toward the car and was in the glaring light of the television cameras when a man suddenly darted out from an area on the right of the cameras where newsmen had been assembled. The man was carrying a Colt .38 revolver in his right hand and, while millions watched on television, he moved quickly to within a few feet of Oswald and fired one shot into Oswald’s abdomen. Oswald groaned with pain as he fell to the ground and quickly lost consciousness. Within 7 minutes Oswald was at Parkland Hospital where, without having regained consciousness, he was pronounced dead at 1:07 P.M. The man who killed Oswald was Jack Ruby. He was instantly arrested and, minutes later, confined in a cell on the fifth floor of the Dallas police jail. Under interrogation, he denied that the killing of Oswald was in any way connected with a conspiracy involving the assassination of President Kennedy. He maintained that he had killed Oswald in a temporary fit of depression and rage over the President’s death. Ruby was transferred the following day to the county jail without notice to the press or to police officers not directly involved in the transfer. Indicted for the murder of Oswald by the State of Texas on November 26, 1963, Ruby was found guilty on March 14, 1964, and sentenced to death. As of September 1964, his case was pending on appeal. Conclusions This Commission was created to ascertain the facts relating to the preceding summary of events and to consider the important questions which they raised. The Commission has addressed itself to this task and has reached certain conclusions based on all the available evidence. No limitations have been placed on the Commission’s inquiry; it has conducted its own investigation, and all Government agencies have fully discharged their responsibility to cooperate with the Commission in its investigation. These conclusions represent the reasoned judgment of all members of the Commission and are presented after an investigation which has satisfied the Commission that it has ascertained the truth concerning the assassination of President Kennedy to the extent that a prolonged and thorough search makes this possible. 1. The shots which killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally were fired from the sixth floor window at the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository. This determination is based upon the following:

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Witnesses at the scene of the assassination saw a rifle being fired from the sixth floor window of the Depository Building, and some witnesses saw a rifle in the window immediately after the shots were fired. The nearly whole bullet found on Governor Connally’s stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital and the two bullet fragments found in the front seat of the Presidential limousine were fired from the 6.5-millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found on the sixth floor of the Depository Building to the exclusion of all other weapons. The three used cartridge cases found near the window on the sixth floor at the southeast corner of the building were fired from the same rifle which fired the above-described bullet and fragments, to the exclusion of all other weapons. The windshield in the Presidential limousine was struck by a bullet fragment on the inside surface of the glass, but was not penetrated. The nature of the bullet wounds suffered by President Kennedy and Governor Connally and the location of the car at the time of the shots establish that the bullets were fired from above and behind the Presidential limousine, striking the President and the Governor as follows: 1. President Kennedy was first struck by a bullet which entered at the back of his neck and exited through the lower front portion of his neck, causing a wound which would not necessarily have been lethal. The President was struck a second time by a bullet which entered the right-rear portion of his head, causing a massive and fatal wound. 2. Governor Connally was struck by a bullet which entered on the right side of his back and traveled downward through the right side of his chest, exiting below his right nipple. This bullet then passed through his right wrist and entered his left thigh where it caused a superficial wound. There is no credible evidence that the shots were fired from the Triple Underpass, ahead of the motorcade, or from any other location. 2. The weight of the evidence indicates that there were three shots fired. 3. Although it is not necessary to any essential findings of the Commission to determine just which shot hit Governor Connally, there

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is very persuasive evidence from the experts to indicate that the same bullet which pierced the President’s throat also caused Governor Connally’s wounds. However, Governor Connally’s testimony and certain other factors have given rise to some difference of opinion as to this probability but there is no question in the mind of any member of the Commission that all the shots which caused the President’s and Governor Connally’s wounds were fired from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. 4. The shots which killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. This conclusion is based upon the following: The Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5-millimeter Italian rifle from which the shots were fired was owned by and in the possession of Oswald. Oswald carried this rifle into the Depository Building on the morning of November 22, 1963. Oswald, at the time of the assassination, was present at the window from which the shots were fired. Shortly after the assassination, the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle belonging to Oswald was found partially hidden between some cartons on the sixth floor and the improvised paper bag in which Oswald brought the rifle to the Depository was found close by the window from which the shots were fired. Based on testimony of the experts and their analysis of films of the assassination, the Commission has concluded that a rifleman of Lee Harvey Oswald’s capabilities could have fired the shots from the rifle used in the assassination within the elapsed time of the shooting. The Commission has concluded further that Oswald possessed the capability with a rifle which enabled him to commit the assassination. Oswald lied to the police after his arrest concerning important substantive matters. Oswald had attempted to kill Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker (Retired, U.S. Army) on April 10, 1963, thereby demonstrating his disposition to take human life. 5. Oswald killed Dallas Police Patrolman J. D. Tippit approximately 45 minutes after the assassination. This conclusion upholds the finding that Oswald fired the shots which killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally and is supported by the following:

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Two eyewitnesses saw the Tippit shooting and seven eyewitnesses heard the shots and saw the gunman leave the scene with revolver in hand. These nine eyewitnesses positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the man they saw. The cartridge cases found at the scene of the shooting were fired from the revolver in the possession of Oswald at the time of his arrest to the exclusion of all other weapons. The revolver in Oswald’s possession at the time of his arrest was purchased by and belonged to Oswald. Oswald’s jacket was found along the path of flight taken by the gunman as he fled from the scene of the killing. 6. Within 80 minutes of the assassination and 35 minutes of the Tippit killing, Oswald resisted arrest at the theater by attempting to shoot another Dallas police officer. 7. The Commission has reached the following conclusions concerning Oswald’s interrogation and detention by the Dallas police: Except for the force required to effect his arrest, Oswald was not subjected to any physical coercion by any law enforcement officials. He was advised that he could not be compelled to give any information and that any statements made by him might be used against him in court. He was advised of his right to counsel. He was given the opportunity to obtain counsel of his own choice and was offered legal assistance by the Dallas Bar Association, which he rejected at that time. Newspaper, radio, and television reporters were allowed uninhibited access to the area through which Oswald had to pass when he was moved from his cell to the interrogation room and other sections of the building, thereby subjecting Oswald to harassment and creating chaotic conditions which were not conducive to orderly interrogation or the protection of the rights of the prisoner. The numerous statements, sometimes erroneous, made to the press by various local law enforcement officials during this period of confusion and disorder in the police station would have presented serious obstacles to the obtaining of a fair trial for Oswald. To the extent that the information was erroneous or misleading, it helped to create doubts, speculations, and fears in the mind of the public which might otherwise not have arisen. 8. The Commission has reached the following conclusions concerning the killing of Oswald by Jack Ruby on November 24, 1963: (continued )

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Ruby entered the basement of the Dallas Police Department shortly after 11:17 A.M. and killed Lee Harvey Oswald at 11:21 A.M. Although the evidence on Ruby’s means of entry is not conclusive, the weight of the evidence indicates that he walked down the ramp leading from Main Street to the basement of the police department. There is no evidence to support the rumor that Ruby may have been assisted by any members of the Dallas Police Department in the killing of Oswald. The Dallas Police Department’s decision to transfer Oswald to the county jail in full public view was unsound. The arrangements made by the police department on Sunday morning, only a few hours before the attempted transfer, were inadequate. Of critical importance was the fact that news media representatives and others were not excluded from the basement even after the police were notified of threats to Oswald’s life. These deficiencies contributed to the death of Lee Harvey Oswald. 9. The Commission has found no evidence that either Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to assassinate President Kennedy. The reasons for this conclusion are: The Commission has found no evidence that anyone assisted Oswald in planning or carrying out the assassination. In this connection it has thoroughly investigated, among other factors, the circumstances surrounding the planning of the motorcade route through Dallas, the hiring of Oswald by the Texas School Book Depository Co. on October 15, 1963, the method by which the rifle was brought into the building, the placing of cartons of books at the window, Oswald’s escape from the building, and the testimony of eyewitnesses to the shooting. The Commission has found no evidence that Oswald was involved with any person or group in a conspiracy to assassinate the President, although it has thoroughly investigated, in addition to other possible leads, all facets of Oswald’s associations, finances, and personal habits, particularly during the period following his return from the Soviet Union in June 1962. The Commission has found no evidence to show that Oswald was employed, persuaded, or encouraged by any foreign government to assassinate President Kennedy or that he was an

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agent of any foreign government, although the Commission has reviewed the circumstances surrounding Oswald’s defection to the Soviet Union, his life there from October of 1959 to June of 1962 so far as it can be reconstructed, his known contacts with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and his visits to the Cuban and Soviet Embassies in Mexico City during his trip to Mexico from September 26 to October 3, 1963, and his known contacts with the Soviet Embassy in the United States. The Commission has explored all attempts of Oswald to identify himself with various political groups, including the Communist Party, U.S.A., the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and the Socialist Workers Party, and has been unable to find any evidence that the contacts which he initiated were related to Oswald’s subsequent assassination of the President. All of the evidence before the Commission established that there was nothing to support the speculation that Oswald was an agent, employee, or informant of the FBI, the CIA, or any other governmental agency. It has thoroughly investigated Oswald’s relationships prior to the assassination with all agencies of the U.S. government. All contacts with Oswald by any of these agencies were made in the regular exercise of their different responsibilities. No direct or indirect relationship between Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby has been discovered by the Commission, nor has it been able to find any credible evidence that either knew the other, although a thorough investigation was made of the many rumors and speculations of such a relationship. The Commission has found no evidence that Jack Ruby acted with any other person in the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald. After careful investigation the Commission has found no credible evidence either that Ruby and Officer Tippit, who was killed by Oswald, knew each other or that Oswald and Tippit knew each other. Because of the difficulty of proving negatives to a certainty the possibility of others being involved with either Oswald or Ruby cannot be established categorically, but if there is any such evidence it has been beyond the reach of all the investigative agencies and resources of the United States and has not come to the attention of this Commission. 10. In its entire investigation the Commission has found no evidence of conspiracy, subversion, or disloyalty to the U.S. government by any federal, state, or local official. (continued )

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11. On the basis of the evidence before the Commission it concludes that Oswald acted alone. Therefore, to determine the motives for the assassination of President Kennedy, one must look to the assassin himself. Clues to Oswald’s motives can be found in his family history, his education or lack of it, his acts, his writings, and the recollections of those who had close contacts with him throughout his life. The Commission has presented with this report all of the background information bearing on motivation which it could discover. Thus, others may study Lee Oswald’s life and arrive at their own conclusions as to his possible motives.The Commission could not make any definitive determination of Oswald’s motives. It has endeavored to isolate factors which contributed to his character and which might have influenced his decision to assassinate President Kennedy. These factors were: His deep-rooted resentment of all authority which was expressed in a hostility toward every society in which he lived; His inability to enter into meaningful relationships with people, and a continuous pattern of rejecting his environment in favor of new surrounding; His urge to try to find a place in history and despair at times over failures in his various undertakings; His capacity for violence as evidenced by his attempt to kill General Walker; His avowed commitment to Marxism and communism, as he understood the terms and developed his own interpretation of them; this was expressed by his antagonism toward the United States, by his defection to the Soviet Union, by his failure to be reconciled with life in the United States even after his disenchantment with the Soviet Union, and by his efforts, though frustrated, to go to Cuba. Each of these contributed to his capacity to risk all in cruel and irresponsible actions. 12. The Commission recognizes that the varied responsibilities of the President require that he make frequent trips to all parts of the United States and abroad. Consistent with their high responsibilities Presidents can never be protected from every potential threat. The Secret Service’s difficulty in meeting its protective responsibility varies with the activities and the nature of the occupant of the office of President and his willingness to conform to plans for his safety. In appraising the performance of the Secret Service it

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should be understood that it has to do its work within such limitations. Nevertheless, the Commission believes that recommendations for improvements in Presidential protection are compelled by the facts disclosed in this investigation. The complexities of the Presidency have increased so rapidly in recent years that the Secret Service has not been able to develop or to secure adequate resources of personnel and facilities to fulfill its important assignment. This situation should be promptly remedied. The Commission has concluded that the criteria and procedures of the Secret Service designed to identify and protect against persons considered threats to the president, were not adequate prior to the assassination. 1. The Protective Research Section of the Secret Service, which is responsible for its preventive work, lacked sufficient trained personnel and the mechanical and technical assistance needed to fulfill its responsibility. 2. Prior to the assassination the Secret Service’s criteria dealt with direct threats against the President. Although the Secret Service treated the direct threats against the President adequately, it failed to recognize the necessity of identifying other potential sources of danger to his security. The Secret Service did not develop adequate and specific criteria defining those persons or groups who might present a danger to the President. In effect, the Secret Service largely relied upon other federal or state agencies to supply the information necessary for it to fulfill its preventive responsibilities, although it did ask for information about direct threats to the President. The Commission has concluded that there was insufficient liaison and coordination of information between the Secret Service and other federal agencies necessarily concerned with Presidential protection. Although the FBI, in the normal exercise of its responsibility, had secured considerable information about Lee Harvey Oswald, it had no official responsibility, under the Secret Service criteria existing at the time of the President’s trip to Dallas, to refer to the Secret Service the information it had about Oswald. The Commission has concluded, however, that the FBI took an unduly restrictive view of its role in preventive intelligence work prior to the assassination. A more carefully coordinated treatment of the Oswald case by the FBI might well have resulted in bringing Oswald’s activities to the attention of the Secret Service. (continued )


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The Commission has concluded that some of the advance preparations in Dallas made by the Secret Service, such as the detailed security measures taken at Love Field and the Trade Mart, were thorough and well executed. In other respects, however, the Commission has concluded that the advance preparations for the President’s trip were deficient. 1. Although the Secret Service is compelled to rely to a great extent on local law enforcement officials, its procedures at the time of the Dallas trip did not call for well-defined instructions as to the respective responsibilities of the police officials and others assisting in the protection of the President. 2. The procedures relied upon by the Secret Service for detecting the presence of an assassin located in a building along a motorcade route were inadequate. At the time of the trip to Dallas, the Secret Service as a matter of practice did not investigate, or cause to be checked, any building located along the motorcade route to be taken by the President. The responsibility for observing windows in these buildings during the motorcade was divided between local police personnel stationed on the streets to regulate crowds and Secret Service agents riding in the motorcade. Based on its investigation the Commission has concluded that these arrangements during the trip to Dallas were clearly not sufficient. The configuration of the Presidential car and the seating arrangements of the Secret Service agents in the car did not afford the Secret Service agents the opportunity they should have had to be of immediate assistance to the President at the first sign of danger. Within these limitations, however, the Commission finds that the agents most immediately responsible for the President’s safety reacted promptly at the time the shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository Building. Recommendations Prompted by the assassination of President Kennedy, the Secret Service has initiated a comprehensive and critical review of its total operations. As a result of studies conducted during the past several months, and in cooperation with this Commission, the Secret Service has prepared a planning document dated August 27, 1964, which recommends various programs considered necessary by the Service to improve its techniques and enlarge its resources. The Commission is encouraged by the efforts taken by the Secret Service since the assassination and suggests the following recommendations.

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1. A committee of Cabinet members including the Secretary of the Treasury and the Attorney General, or the National Security Council, should be assigned the responsibility of reviewing and overseeing the protective activities of the Secret Service and the other Federal agencies that assist in safeguarding the President. Once given this responsibility, such a committee would insure that the maximum resources of the federal government are fully engaged in the task of protecting the President, and would provide guidance in defining the general nature of domestic and foreign dangers to Presidential security. 2. Suggestions have been advanced to the Commission for the transfer of all or parts of the Presidential protective responsibilities of the Secret Service to some other department or agency. The Commission believes that if there is to be any determination of whether or not to relocate these responsibilities and functions, it ought to be made by the Executive and the Congress, perhaps upon recommendations based on studies by the previously suggested committee. 3. Meanwhile, in order to improve daily supervision of the Secret Service within the Department of the Treasury, the Commission recommends that the Secretary of the Treasury appoint a special assistant with the responsibility of supervising the Secret Service. This special assistant should have sufficient stature and experience in law enforcement, intelligence, and allied fields to provide effective continuing supervision, and to keep the Secretary fully informed regarding the performance of the Secret Service. One of the initial assignments of this special assistant should be the supervision of the current effort by the Secret Service to revise and modernize its basic operating procedures. 4. The Commission recommends that the Secret Service completely overhaul its facilities devoted to the advance detection of potential threats against the President. The Commission suggests the following measures. • The Secret Service should develop as quickly as possible more useful and precise criteria defining those potential threats to the President which should be brought to its attention by other agencies. The criteria should, among other additions, provide for prompt notice to the Secret Service of all returned defectors. • The Secret Service should expedite its current plans to utilize the most efficient data-processing techniques. • Once the Secret Service has formulated new criteria delineating the information it desires, it should enter into agreements with each federal agency to insure its receipt of such information. 5. The Commission recommends that the Secret Service improve the protective measures followed in the planning and conducting of Presidential

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motorcades. In particular, the Secret Service should continue its current efforts to increase the precautionary attention given to buildings along the motorcade route. 6. The Commission recommends that the Secret Service continue its recent efforts to improve and formalize its relationships with local police departments in areas to be visited by the President. 7. The Commission believes that when the new criteria and procedures are established, the Secret Service will not have sufficient personnel or adequate facilities. The Commission recommends that the Secret Service be provided with the personnel and resources which the Service and the Department of the Treasury may be able to demonstrate are needed to fulfill its important mission. 8. Even with an increase in Secret Service personnel, the protection of the President will continue to require the resources and cooperation of many federal agencies. The Commission recommends that these agencies, specifically the FBI, continue the practice as it has developed, particularly since the assassination, of assisting the Secret Service upon request by providing personnel or other aid, and that there be a closer association and liaison between the Secret Service and all federal agencies. 9. The Commission recommends that the President’s physician always accompany him during his travels and occupy a position near the President where he can be immediately available in case of any emergency. 10. The Commission recommends to Congress that it adopt legislation which would make the assassination of the President and Vice President a federal crime. A state of affairs where U.S. authorities have no clearly defined jurisdiction to investigate the assassination of a President is anomalous. 12. The Commission has examined the Department of State’s handling of the Oswald matters and finds that it followed the law throughout. However, the Commission believes that the Department in accordance with its own regulations should in all cases exercise great care in the return to this country of defectors who have evidenced disloyalty or hostility to this country or who have expressed a desire to renounce their American citizenship and that when such persons are so returned, procedures should be adopted for the better dissemination of information concerning them to the intelligence agencies of the government. 13. The Commission recommends that the representatives of the bar, law enforcement associations, and the news media work together to establish ethical standards concerning the collection and presentation of information to the public so that there will be no interference with pending criminal investigations, court proceedings, or the right of individuals to a fair trial. Note: The full report is available at the National Archives Web site: http:// www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/.

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been wrong in his criminal pursuit of the JFK assassination. Lambert, in her book, False Witness, attempted to do just that, refute the movie version. According to written sources, Stone has refused to read or comment on Lambert’s work. Stone’s movie was produced in the United States. It was filmed in Dallas, Texas, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Washington, D.C. When it was released in 1991, it grossed $69,741,131 from the U.S. market. There is a lack of credible information regarding the amount of money that it has made over the years in after-market sales. However a perusal of Web sites suggests that people are still watching the movie today and weighing in on the controversial Jim Garrison.

CONCLUSION Biographer Joan Mellen met New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in 1969. His relentless search for the truth about what happened to President Kennedy made a deep impression on her. In 1997, Mellen started to work on the story of Garrison’s life. Her biography turned into the story of Garrison’s investigation and then into a new investigation of the assassination itself. In 2005, Mellon published A Farewell to Justice. Mellon revisited the entire Garrison investigation, uncovered new evidence, and established the intelligence agencies’ roles in both the president’s assassination and its cover-up. Moreover, she relied on a Gallup Poll that suggested that twice as many people believed that the CIA was responsible for the assassination as believed that Oswald, a man without a known motive, acted alone. Thus the question remains today, was Garrison a misguided irrational man on a mission without substance or was he a prosecutor who truly believed that he could and did solve the case of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? Ultimately the public will decide if Garrison’s conspiracy theory was correct, even if he prosecuted the wrong individual. In either case, Jim Garrison is an icon of crime fighting. Perhaps it is fitting that since his death in New Orleans in October 1992, his headstone reads, ‘‘Let justice be done though the heavens fall.’’

FURTHER READING Brener, Milton, E. 1969. The Garrison Case. New York: Clarkson N. Potter. Davy, William. 1999, Let Justice Be Done: New Light on the Jim Garrison Investigation. Reston: Jordan Publishing. Garrison, Jim. 1988. On the Trail of the Assassins. New York: Warner Books. History Channel Special on Patricia Lambert’s book. August 16, 2000. http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/bethell1.htm (accessed on August 22, 2007). http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1800341652/details.

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http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report. http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/special/jfk/theory/garrison.html. Hurt, Henry. 1985. Reasonable Doubt. New York: Henry Holt. Lambert, Patricia. 1998. False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison’s Investigation and Oliver Stone’s Film JFK. New York: M. Evans. Lane, Mark. 1992. Fact or Fiction? The Movie-Goers Guide to the Film JFK. Rush to Judgment. New York: Thunder’s Mouth. Look. 1968. ‘‘The Persecution of Clay Shaw.’’ August 26. Marrs, Jim. 1989. Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy. New York: Carroll & Graf. Mellen, Joan. 2005. A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, and the Case That Should have Changed History. Dulles, VA: Potomac Books. Phelan, James. 1967. Rush to judgment in New Orleans. The Saturday Evening Post, May 6. Riordan, James. 1995. Stone. New York: Hyperion. Stone, Oliver, and Zackery Sklar. 1992. JFK: The Book of the Film. New York: Applause. Summers, Anthony. 1989. Conspiracy. New York: Paragon House. Washington Post. 1992. p. 12. May 19.

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In a politically correct America, criminologists have proposed that law enforcement officials should not view themselves as ‘‘crime fighters,’’ but instead, should think of themselves as ‘‘social peacekeepers’’ or ‘‘peace officers.’’ However, in a time when there is no peace to be maintained, law enforcement officials had no choice but to resort to their crime-fighting techniques. The crime-fighting model of policing was developed by few but was often recognized by many through the media. These few crime fighters include robust men such as Wyatt Earp, Frank Hamer, and of course, who can forget about the legendary sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee, Buford Hayes Pusser (1937–1974)?

Sheriff Department Facts: Reported by the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics Personnel • As of June 2003, the 3,061 sheriffs’ offices in the United States had about 330,000 full-time employees, including about 174,000 sworn personnel. This represented an increase of about 9,500 sworn and 26,900 nonsworn employees since 2000. • Racial and ethnic minorities comprised 18.8% of full-time sworn personnel in 2003, up from 13.4% in 1987. Women were 12.9% of officers in 2003, about the same as in 1987 (12.6%). • From 2000 to 2003 the number of black or African American officers increased by 1,990, or 13%; Hispanic or Latino officers by 1,960, or 20%; officers from other minority groups by 500, or 20%, and female officers by 960, or 5%. • Sixty-nine percent of sheriffs’ offices had officer separations during the 12-month period ending June 30, 2003. Overall, about 13,500 officers separated, including 7,900 resignations, 2,700 retirements, and 1,200 dismissals. • Seventy-one percent of sheriffs’ offices hired new officers during the 12-month period ending June 30, 2003. Overall, about 13,900 officers were hired, including 11,300 entry-level hires, and 2,200 lateral transfers/hires. • During the 12-month period ending June 30, 2003, 31% of sheriffs’ offices had full-time sworn personnel called up as full-time military reservists. Overall, about 2,800 officers were called up. Operations • A quarter of sheriffs’ offices, including more than half of those serving 1 million or more residents, used foot patrol routinely. An estimated

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10%, including nearly two-thirds of those serving 1 million or more residents, used bicycle patrol on a regular basis. • In 2003, 94% of sheriffs’ offices, employing 93% of all officers, participated in a 9-1-1 emergency system compared to 28% and 53% in 1987. In 2003, 71% of sheriffs’ offices, employing 83% of all officers, had enhanced 9-1-1, compared to 8% and 23% in 1987. • Thirty-six percent of sheriffs’ offices had officers assigned full time to a special unit for drug enforcement, with about 4,000 officers assigned nationwide. Nearly half of sheriffs’ offices had officers assigned to a multi-agency drug task force, with about 3,500 officers assigned full time nationwide. • Ninety-eight percent of sheriffs’ offices were responsible for serving civil process, 94% for providing court security, and 76% for operating a jail. • Fifty-two percent of sheriffs’ offices had drug asset forfeiture receipts during 2002, including more than 80% of those serving 500,000 or more residents. Nationwide, receipts totaled about $178 million, or $992 per officer. Budget and Pay • Sheriffs’ offices had total operating budgets of $22.3 billion during fiscal 2003, 18% more than in 2000 after adjusting for inflation. Expenditures in 2003 averaged $124,400 per officer, and $82 per resident. • In 2003 starting salaries for entry-level deputies ranged from an average of about $23,300 in the smallest jurisdictions to about $38,800 in the largest. Source: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/so03.pdf.

LIFE-CHANGING EXPERIENCE At the tender age of sixteen years, Buford Pusser witnessed a life-altering experience that arguably led him to a life of crime fighting. For weeks, a few of Pusser’s high school classmates had been harassing him to join them on an excursion to a notorious gambling den, located just inside Tennessee’s southern border. Deep down inside, Pusser wanted to go, especially because his curiosity grew while listening to the tales of his classmates. Stories were often told about brawls, gambling, drinking, and easy women. He also knew that just a decade earlier, men from a nearby camp found excitement and, more often, trouble in the cheap joint less than twenty miles away. One evening, in December 1953, the curiosity was more than he could

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handle; the hunger for excitement and action had taken charge. Pusser, his best friend, and several classmates journeyed to the White Irish Club. As they approached the run-down structure, Buford suddenly felt ‘‘eerie’’ about the whole situation and knew he should not have gone. Although Pusser had no business visiting a bar at sixteen, he witnessed corruption first hand. After making their way through several drunken patrons who cluttered the dance floor, Pusser and his friends found a vacant table in one corner of the establishment and tried to hide their innocence by trying to look like seasoned veterans of the joint. The environment was so loud that drunken shouts rose above the sad country music, and during brief lulls between record changes, the steady clatter of dice mingled with the tinkling of ice cubes. The boys bought several beers without once being questioned about their age. Buford felt nervous but he could not quite put his finger on why; he just felt something bad was going to happen that evening. Buford thought to himself, ‘‘What are we doing here?’’ While sipping their beers, loud shouts erupted near a back room, where a sailor wearing his neatly pressed uniform loudly accused a slender, red-faced man of cheating at dice. Pusser wondered what was going on. Suddenly, a short, stocky brunette lady, Louise Hathcock, drew a claw hammer from her apron and yelled, ‘‘What’s going on here?’’ The employee stated that the sailor had accused him of cheating. Louise Hathcock yelled, ‘‘I’ll teach this son-of-a-bitch a lesson he won’t forget!’’ From behind, Louise struck the sailor in the head with a crunching blow. The sailor stumbled backward and then fell to the floor. Louise yelled at him to get up, but the sailor was bleeding profusely and struggled to his knees as he headed for the door. Louise continued her attack, repeatedly smashing his head while screaming profanity. (Louise Hathcock and her husband, Jack, had risen from the backwash of poverty to the top of the criminal ladder. They were considered the overlords of the ‘‘State Line Mob.’’ Together they ran a restaurant and hotel, both of which were booming businesses. The couple would later divorce, and Jack was eventually killed by Louise’s new lover, Carl Douglas ‘‘Towhead’’ White.) At first Buford and his friends were paralyzed with disbelief, and then Buford ordered his friends to get out of the club as quickly as possible. The boys worked their way out of the White Irish Club while glancing through the cluster of people to see the bleeding sailor lying in his own pool of blood. However, before they could get to the door, it opened and a deputy sheriff entered. At first it was a sign of relief, but as the sheriff entered the club, he took one last draw of his cigar, ground it with his shoe, and looked at the fallen sailor. His first and only question in his thorough investigation was, ‘‘What in the world happened here, Louise?’’ The smirk on the deputy’s face was closely observed by Pusser. Louise declared, ‘‘The bastard just died of a heart attack,’’ as the crowd erupted in laughter. The sheriff only commented that if she said so, then it must have been true. He then ordered a beer as he proceeded to call an ambulance. Buford and his friends quickly ran out the door, relieved to be out of such a hostile environment and into the cool

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and refreshing air. Pusser and his friends were still in disbelief and had repeatedly exclaimed that she had beaten the sailor to death with a claw hammer. The boys knew that the deputy and Louise were in ‘‘cahoots’’ and that the sheriff and his deputies were probably getting paid off by the Hathcock’s establishment. Pusser felt disgusted, and in that moment he knew that nobody in the county was safe with those types of criminal incidents going on. This had been Pusser’s first encounter with the infamous ‘‘State Line Mob,’’ which sources indicated was affiliated with a loosely organized network of local crime syndicates called the Dixie Mafia. The Dixie Mafia was a criminal organization that operated primarily in the southern part of the United States. It was particularly well known for committing violent acts such as rape, assault, and murder. It is believed that the organization is still operating today but on a much smaller and clandestine scale. It was known by the locals that the state line was an area where major league criminals hid out between jobs. Louise and her kin were often hospitable to these criminals. This encounter would not be the first with Louise Hathcock, and Pusser’s strong sense of justice, which had been displayed from his childhood years, continued to grow.

EARLY YEARS Helen Pusser gave birth to her third child on December 12, 1937. Buford Hayes Pusser was born in Finger, Tennessee, to Carl and Helen Pusser. Carl and Helen struggled to survive as Depression-era farmers while caring for their three children. In addition to his farm work, Carl Pusser worked parttime as a barber and later in the local sawmill. As a boy Buford was strongly attached to his mother. His father, Carl, felt that he needed to outgrow the attachment if he were to ever get anywhere in life. Buford was also timid and would follow his mother around everywhere. Buford was so attached to his mother that she would often accidentally step on him while working around the house. This would upset her and she would often reprimand Buford for not playing outside with the other youngsters. Buford could not understand his mother’s point of view about playing outside or her explanation for him going to school, for that matter. Helen would often explain to her son that education was important, but Buford begged his mother not to send him, ‘‘Please, Mommy, I don’t want to go to school.’’ His first few years of school were harsh; he had to repeat the first grade because he fell behind in his studies. As big as Buford was, he was also often picked on and ridiculed for being shy. Even at the age of eleven he avoided school functions so he would not have to ride the school bus for fear of being picked on or getting lost. By the time he was twelve he had his first job at the general store in Adamsville. Buford loved to work and had already proved himself to be a hard worker.

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When work was slow, he enjoyed going to town with his mother, because his father was often working out of town. In one incident in the summer of 1951 on a Saturday afternoon, Buford and his mother decided to drive into town for a horse show that had been going on. Buford persuaded his mother to let him drive the old Hudson car that Carl had left behind because of the lack of gasoline money. As Buford approached the city limit, he was driving well over seventy miles per hour. His mother shouted for him to slow the car down and that he was going to kill them both. Buford slowed the vehicle down to about fifty miles per hour, but his mother continued to insist he was still driving way too fast. This was the first time Buford had demonstrated his love for speeding, and it was this type of recklessness that would ultimately lead to his fate. TEENAGER IN ADAMSVILLE, TENNESSEE In early 1952 the Pussers moved to Adamsville, Tennessee, when Buford was fourteen. Pusser maintained average grades in school and graduated from Adamsville Elementary School. Immediately after graduation Pusser went to work full-time at the general store. Buford enjoyed work so much that he often contemplated giving up school for work, which was bad to bring up around his mother because it would stir up the hornets’ nest at home. Consequently, he entered high school that year and for the first time he found something he really enjoyed about school: athletics. Buford quickly got the attention of the coaches as he impressed them with his athletic ability. Buford was especially keen about football; he loved the camaraderie and the rough physical contact it offered. Pusser found a new way of life in sports, and he became an instant star. He would later discover basketball as well. Sports made the first two years of high school much more tolerable. Early in his junior year, Buford was beginning to run into problems with his school work. Buford was failing two subjects, history and biology. So after a few weeks he decided to drop out of school to go work full-time at a pipeline in Wynnewood, Oklahoma. His mother was extremely disappointed, but she knew he was growing up and reluctantly gave him permission. Buford wrote his mother every day about his job and new friends, but especially about the Native Americans he had encountered. He seemed to be intrigued by the Creek Indians and took several snapshots with several Creek Indian youths. However, the venture to Oklahoma was short-lived, and Pusser returned to Adamsville High School within two months. During this time Pusser’s life grew increasingly dangerous and unwholesome, in part because of developments around the area. Phenix City, Alabama, a small town that adjoins Columbus and Fort Benning, Georgia, had long been a haven for the underworld. Phenix City had undergone a modest transformation throughout Buford’s childhood. Officials in Phenix City made efforts to rid the town of bootleggers, prostitutes, and vice crime. Much of the vice

Buford Pusser

activity and accompanying criminal element migrated northwest to McNairy County, Tennessee, and to McNairy’s bordering county, Alcorn County (Corinth), Mississippi. These counties became hotbeds for bootlegging, prostitution, and gambling. Pusser saw life in his community at its most unsavory when he was sixteen, when he witnessed the life-altering experience that some argue ultimately led him into a life of law enforcement. Buford struggled through the rest of eleventh grade, while he continued to work at the general store. By his senior year in high school he was much more focused on his studies, and despite missing his junior year of football he continued to excel. A number of college scouts came out to see him play. Buford received three scholarships in football, including a very tempting one from Florida State University, and four scholarships to play basketball. Buford, in the privacy of his room, would often admire the seven athletic scholarships he had received and dreamed of headlines about the fullback from Adamsville on sports pages. As many people know, headlines were in store for Buford, but not for sports.

A YOUNG MAN Buford Pusser was now becoming a young man. In 1956 he graduated from high school and turned down the athletic scholarships in order to join the Marines that August. However, fortuitous circumstances led him to a medical discharge after only four months because of an asthma condition. Pusser returned to Adamsville, where his father Carl had become the police chief. His father swelled with pride when Buford spoke highly of his accomplishment of being chief. During this time, in November 1956, Buford was in a horrific car accident that nearly took his life. He injured his back to the point that the pain was sometimes more than he could bear. This was the first of several car accidents Buford was involved in throughout his lifetime. In early 1957, while recovering from injuries he had received in the automobile accident, Buford decided to cross the Mississippi line to Corinth and went to the Plantation Club, which was owned by W. O. Hathcock, Louise Hathcock’s brother-in-law. Before he arrived, Buford drove around town looking for someone to accompany him. Unfortunately, everyone else had something better to do that night. When he arrived at the Plantation Club, he witnessed a man and a woman in the front seat of a vehicle having sex; Buford was disgusted by the thought and wondered why they wouldn’t go to the old hotel. As he walked into the club, a woman grabbed him and tried to pull him onto the dance floor; he refused and instead requested a table. Pusser had about seventy dollars on him that evening, and he wondered if he could double his money by gambling. He got up from his table and approached the gambling area where he decided to play dice. Early in the

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game he noticed that the dice had been changed by the handlers. Pusser immediately claimed that he was being cheated. Four good-sized men grabbed him and pulled him away from the table. They beat him repeatedly with their fists and when he was on the floor, they continued to kick him. When they were finished with him, they threw him out the back door and left him in the pouring rain. All Pusser could think about, in that very instant, was that these people were going to pay him back for every ounce of blood they spilled. He was beaten severely enough to require 192 stitches. Buford swore to get even. Pusser came to the realization that he needed to leave his small town so that he could make some real money. He felt he needed to get away and move into a big city. Pusser moved to Chicago in August 1957 to take a job with the Union Bag Company. A year later, in 1958, Pusser began wrestling professionally to supplement his pay. Before one match, he ran squarely into a petite blonde lady, Pauline Mullins. Pauline Mullins was a twenty-four-year-old divorcee with two children, and he instantly fell in love with her and her children. Pusser and Pauline married on December 5, 1959. Less than a month after their marriage, the Pusser’s newlywed period was rudely interrupted on January 4, 1960, when Pusser was arrested on a warrant from Corinth, Mississippi, and charged with the December 13, 1959, armed robbery and attempted murder of W. O. Hathcock. The arrest stemmed from the beating he had received at the Plantation Club years earlier. Hathcock alleged that Pusser had gone to the Plantation Club to get his money back and also to deliver some payback for the beating he had received. At the trial, Pusser claimed that he was in Illinois on the day of the assault. He was acquitted, in large measure because the jury placed little credence in the testimony of Pusser’s accusers, who included Hathcock and some of Corinth’s disreputable police officers. The armed robbery incident officially became Case Number 8954, and the intent to commit murder charge was tagged Case Number 8955. Pusser pleaded not guilty, and the judge allowed him to post bond. The courtroom where the trial took place was packed with people from all walks of life. Everyone listened intently as the trial progressed, and the tension could be felt across the room. Because of Pusser’s witnesses and the evidence presented by his counsel, Buford was found not guilty of armed robbery and charges were later dropped on the intent to commit murder. The happy days of making money and living a better life in Chicago were starting to look gloomy. During this time his job at Union Bag Company was beginning to irritate him, and his wrestling career was keeping him away from his family. The only thing that kept him truly happy that year was that Pauline had announced that he was going to be a father. Pusser’s only natural child, Dwana Aitoya Pusser, was born during this stage of his life, on January 9, 1961. Pusser was a natural at being a father, but was still unhappy about being in Chicago. In 1962, he decided to relocate his family back to Tennessee. Pusser resumed his wrestling career in Tennessee but traveled mostly around the South. Most of his matches were in small west Tennessee towns, and he once won $50 at a county fair for wrestling a bear.

Buford Pusser

LAW ENFORCEMENT CAREER BEGINS In 1962, Buford’s father, Carl Pusser, retired as Adamsville police chief. Carl had a bad leg that had been bothering him for a while from an accident he was involved in. Carl had enough influence to get his twenty-four-year-old son appointed as his successor. Buford was voted in unanimously by the city council. Shortly thereafter, in September 1962, Buford decided to seek his first elected office with the constables. The constable position he was seeking was a part-time job that would not interfere with his current position as police chief. Buford beat the incumbent by more than 115 votes and was elected Third District constable. Pusser worked long hours patrolling the streets of Adamsville; there were some days when he would only get three hours of sleep in a twenty-four-hour period. In November 1962, Pusser received a tip about an illegal whiskey operation in his district and immediately checked out the information. Buford went to the location alone and witnessed three men standing around a large homemade distillery along with sacks of sugar, hundreds of gallon jugs, stacks of hickory wood, and several fifty-gallon barrels. There was also a blackened steam boiler going full blast. This was Buford’s first experience in dealing with moonshiners, and he knew he couldn’t pull off the raid by himself. Pusser returned to his office and phoned two federal revenue agents. Two days later the agents arrived and went over detailed plans on how to go about the raid. Pusser and the agents completed the raid successfully, arresting three men and blowing up the boiler. Pusser, along with two federal agents, had just participated in the first of what would be many moonshine raids in Buford’s county. Under normal circumstances, Pusser would have notified the McNairy County Sheriff James Dickey, but Pusser did not trust him. Pusser suspected Sheriff Dickey of being bought by the moonshiners and the ‘‘State Line Mob,’’ and therefore Pusser did not notify him in advance of the raid. This was a public slap in Dickey’s face that further exacerbated an already existing rivalry between the two. Dickey had done nothing to slow down the criminal activity in the area, and because he was still bitter about the incident with the Hathcocks, Buford was determined to get rid of the state line criminal element. He felt that the only way he could possibly accomplish this was to acquire the top law enforcement seat in the county, that of sheriff. Buford brought the notion to his father Carl who not only approved the idea but was also very excited. Carl knew Buford could easily beat Dickey in the next election, so Carl became his campaign manager. Carl, who was an old hand at politics, quickly persuaded the mayor to raise $500 for the campaign; however, Buford was beginning to feel apprehensive about the whole thing. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the criminal element along the state line, but he was afraid that the citizens of the county would not vote for him. Either way, he felt that he had to at least try for the good citizens of McNairy County.

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Pusser ran for sheriff of McNairy County in 1964 as a Republican. Pusser’s pledge was his famous words, ‘‘If you elect me, I will clean up the corruption and violence that has made the state line notorious. I’ll make McNairy County a decent place to live and raise a family.’’ Buford campaigned day and night, determined to reach all 18,000-plus residents of McNairy County. He went to large and small towns, even those that were predominately Democratic. Most people remembered Pusser as the black bear wrestler. Because of this, they pledge to vote for him, but Buford would not take these pledges seriously. Pusser knew that talk was cheap and that only the polls could determine if his constituents were serious. Louise Hathcock had heard rumors of Pusser’s likely victory and immediately sent word that she would pledge $600 for his campaign. All he had to do was pick it up at the hotel; however, Pusser would not have anything to do with her, especially not her money. The campaign went smoothly until right before the election. His rival, Sheriff Dickey was found dead two weeks before the August 1964 election, in an automobile accident. Speculation arose that criminals of the State Line Mob were afraid that Dickey’s knowledge of their activities would be used against them, so they set up his death to make it look like an accident. The suspicions were never confirmed. The suspicious timing of Dickey’s death cast a shadow over the election. In spite of his death, a large number of voters cast ballots for Dickey. However, when the votes were tallied, Pusser won by three hundred votes. Pusser, the youngest sheriff in Tennessee history, was sworn in on September 1, 1964, at the age of twenty-six. Carl Pusser served as his son’s only deputy, tending the county jail. Buford often got bruises, cuts, and small scrapes while doing his job, but at this point he had not experienced anything too serious. However, not long after becoming sheriff, Pusser suffered his first serious injury at the hands of a law breaker, being stabbed by a hitchhiker in November 1964. Pusser picked up the hitchhiker in his unmarked police unit. As the hitchhiker stepped into the vehicle, he quickly stabbed Buford twice in the chest. Pusser drove himself to the hospital and was kept for twenty-four hours for observation. Buford thought that this was a once-in-a-lifetime incident and was not too worried about it, but his wife Pauline did not have the same sentiments. She was scared for her husband’s life. The assailant was never caught, and Buford theorized that the assailant was a wanted man and became frightened upon recognizing that Buford was a law enforcement officer. Less than two months later, Buford was called to a rural house fire. He quickly noticed a suspicious old Dodge vehicle with the back nearly touching the ground. He went over to ask the person what was in the trunk. The individual responded that there was only the usual stuff like a tire, jack, and some tools. As Buford stood in front of the vehicle to write down the license plate, the driver of the vehicle turned the ignition on and proceeded to drive the car forward, nearly running over Buford. Buford barely had enough time to jump on the trunk, spread eagle, trying to take the keys from the ignition. The driver stabbed Buford five

Buford Pusser

times on his back, and the passenger hit him over the head with a sledge hammer. Pusser fell from the car and rolled onto the rough gravel. In the background someone could be heard asking why Pusser wasn’t killed by such a vicious attack. Buford was rushed to McNairy County Memorial Hospital. The attackers’ car was found not far away, and in it was thirty-one gallons of ‘‘white whiskey.’’ The license plates of the vehicle were stolen, and the identities of the suspects were never known. Pusser recovered from his injuries at a remarkable speed and was back on the job two weeks later. Pusser’s biggest part of the job was busting up and arresting moonshiners in McNairy County. He conducted forty-two raids during his first year in office. Even though Buford was keen on shutting down the moonshiner businesses, he exhibited compassion toward some of the bootleggers; he gave several of them Christmas away from jail if they promised to return and give him no trouble later on. He knew where they all lived and would arrest them later if they failed to return. His relationship with the local underworld, however, became increasingly combative. On several occasions he arrested Louise Hathcock. Hathcock repeatedly tried to give money to Pusser to leave her alone, starting with $500 monthly payments and later increasing the offer to $1000 per month, but Pusser would not cooperate. He insisted that she was not going to buy him, and the feud continued. Pusser’s feuds were not only with the local underworld, but extended to other law enforcement agencies as well. In 1965, Pusser began receiving complaints about Tennessee state troopers who would force accident victims to use one wrecker service. According to the complaints, victims were forced to use Bob Hertz at Selmer to tow all wrecked vehicles, regardless of what the owners wanted. Pusser demanded that troopers stop the practice and use rotating wrecker services instead of giving all calls to one company. Buford wanted the wrecker companies to rotate on a weekly basis. Instead of rotating the wrecker services immediately, the troopers retaliated by setting up road blocks and arresting McNairy County citizens. During one court appearance Pusser and the trooper captain got into an argument, which led to Pusser’s grabbing the captain by the collar and pushing him up against the wall. The two argued for a bit, and Buford then wasted no time leaving the facility. A week after the public feud between Pusser and the troopers, Pusser succeeded in having most of the troopers transferred to other parts of the state. As the end of Buford Pusser’s two-year term neared, he announced his candidacy for reelection.

SECOND TERM During his second term, Pauline could no longer support him. She was too fearful that he might get hurt or even killed. After all that she had already experienced with Buford, Pauline wanted Buford to settle down and live an ordinary life. She knew, however, that his mind was set and there was

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nothing she could do to change it. Buford had pledged that he was going to clean up the state line and believed that a man was no better than his word. Buford won the sheriff’s election by a three-to-one margin, against a Democrat who had already been sheriff once. The county’s people had confidence in Buford Pusser, and he had started to put down some of the illegal activities. They knew that he would continue in his pursuits to put the hoodlums out of business or into an early grave. The long-standing feud with Louise Hathcock continued in his second term as well, and on February 1, 1966, at approximately 10:15 A.M., it came to a head. Pusser and his deputies headed to the motel where they were about to serve two warrants against Mrs. Hathcock, one for theft and the other for possession of whiskey. Upon arriving at the motel, a wiry looking man and his wife stood outside the motel and told Buford and his deputies that they were the ones who called about the theft. The Illinois couple was checking out of Hathcock’s hotel when she told the man to empty his wallet. The couple accused Hathcock of stealing $125 from them. Pusser told the man to sign the theft warrant, and he and his deputies then entered the hotel office. It was determined by Buford that Louise was drunk, and he speculated that she had not stopped drinking from the previous night. Louise denied the allegations and repeatedly called the couple ‘‘liars.’’ While searching the Hathcock residence, Pusser found a half-case of Yellow Stone whiskey. Hathcock insisted that she had an explanation for that and asked Buford to talk to her in her private quarters. As the two entered Louise’s room, she tried to shut the door, but several articles of clothing were caught between the lock and the catch. Slowly, she reached into her pocket and withdrew a .38 caliber pistol, while she held a mixed drink in her left hand. Mrs. Hathcock pulled the trigger twice; the second time was a misfire; he returned fire, shooting her once in the left shoulder and the second time striking her under the right arm. The second shot tore a hole in Louise’s heart and lung, killing her. This was the first time but certainly not the last time Buford was forced to take a human life. Investigations proved that Buford Pusser was justified in his actions. The district attorney, however, still presented it to a grand jury, which wasted no time in announcing that the killing was justified and the case was immediately closed. Shortly after Hathcock’s death, Carl Pusser received an anonymous phone call from a man who stated that the local underworld had placed a $10,000 bounty on Buford’s head and that he was going to collect it. Carl responded in an angry voice, ‘‘Go ahead and collect it, you son of a bitch, if you think you’re man enough,’’ and then slammed down the receiver. Pauline often received similar threats. She was told on several occasions that her children were going to have their heads cut off and thrown into the river to give it some color, and others said that Buford was going to die as Louise did, full of bullets. However, there was nothing the Pussers could do but wait until someone acted on the threats. It appears that someone may

Buford Pusser

have acted on the threats on January 2, 1967. Pusser stopped a speeding car. As he approached the car, he was shot twice; the suspects sped away as he struggled to his car. Buford managed to drive himself to McNairy County Hospital. Two suspects were eventually questioned but were never charged, and the case was never solved. Law enforcement authorities focused on Carl Douglas ‘‘Towhead’’ White, a close friend of Louise Hathcock. White, a well-known criminal entrepreneur in northern Mississippi and western Tennessee, was imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, at the time Pusser was shot. White was never linked to the shooting but even Pusser believed he had something to do with it. Reliable reports indicated that White was plotting to get Buford because he had dared to meddle with his kingdom and his woman. The worst was yet to come for the Pussers.

AUGUST 12, 1967 The tragedy that made Pusser famous occurred around 5:00 A.M. on August 12, 1967. Pusser received a call that trouble was brewing on the Mississippi state line and he was needed to check it out. For reasons still unclear, Pauline went along for the ride. She sensed something different about this particular phone call, and she didn’t want Buford to be alone. Little did she know what was waiting for them at the site. He drove out of Adamsville west on Highway 64 at about ninety miles per hour. He then drove off U.S. 64 onto Gilcreast-Stantonville Road, which stretched six miles onto U.S. 57. While driving to the troubled area, they talked about how excited they were about heading to Pauline’s family reunion. Buford then turned off GilcreastStantonville Road and onto U.S. 57. Buford then glanced at his automatic shotgun and instinctively felt the holstered .41 magnum pistol at his side. Pusser was so focused he did not hear a black car approaching behind him. Suddenly, while driving on Highway 57, they heard the roar of the black car’s engine. Fire then belched out of a .30 caliber carbine, and a window in Pusser’s car shattered. The shots missed him but the particles of glass entered his face. Unfortunately, the same shots managed to hit Pauline in the head. Pauline moaned and grabbed Buford by the arm as she slumped down the seat. Buford knew his only chance was to escape so he could find help for Pauline. He continued to drive two more miles down the road; thinking he had escaped the assailants, he stopped the car. Pusser gently placed his wife’s head on his lap and became frightened and enraged when he saw the gaping hole in her head. Buford prayed aloud, ‘‘Oh, God, please don’t let her die! Please, God, don’t let her die!’’ (Morris 1971, 131). The shooter then returned, shooting Pauline again and shooting Buford in the face. This second time the car was sprayed by scores of bullets at point-blank range. Pusser was hit twice in the lower jaw by slugs. His entire chin dropped to his chest held only by a flap of skin. He fell to the floorboard as another bullet ripped

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through the metal door and shattered Pauline’s skull. The ambushers sped away thinking that Pusser and Pauline were dead. Buford then gripped the steering wheel and pulled himself to the driver’s seat. He looked at Pauline and knew immediately she was dead. For the first time in his life, Buford Pusser felt helpless. At that moment he pledged to Pauline that he would avenge her death and he told her he loved her. He next drove himself to an abandoned grocery store on U.S. Highway 45. He tried repeatedly to lift the microphone, but it kept slipping because of all the blood. He finally managed to grab the microphone and pushed the transmitter, but his messages were incoherent. Buford wondered why he could not talk. When he looked at the mirror, it became clear. Buford’s effort to call for help was hampered by the rural location, by the darkness, and by his inability to speak coherently because a 30-30 slug had blown off his chin. Carl was the only dispatcher who immediately recognized his voice. The only thing Carl could understand was ‘‘45’’; he immediately thought of U.S. Highway 45 and the state line. Carl immediately sent for help on both the county and state police radios. The first officer on the scene quickly realized that Pauline was dead and that Pusser could not talk about the incident because he had been shot in the jaw, so the police on the scene made Buford as comfortable as possible. The Selmer police chief arrived shortly thereafter, followed by an army of police officers from the surrounding area. Several officers made comments about how it was pretty much over for Buford. Carl assigned the preparation of breakfast for the inmates to a ‘‘trustee’’ and quickly phoned his wife. Helen was about to call Pauline to tell her the bad news, but remembered that she had already been upset about Buford’s line of work. Helen decided that someone else could break the news. Helen had no idea Pauline was already dead. Carl was waiting at the hospital when Buford arrived; after seeing his son’s disfigured face and blood, Carl cursed himself. He did not think his son would live. As the paramedics pulled Buford into the hospital, the manager of the local funeral parlor pulled up and asked Carl what he wanted him to do with the body. Carl asked, ‘‘What body?’’ Carl did not know Pauline was dead, and when he heard the news, it felt like a giant fist had just hit him. He saw Pauline’s body and asked the funeral parlor manager to take her away. Most likely, Pauline Pusser was not a target, but was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Helen arrived shortly and asked how Buford was doing, Carl told her he did not know and that Pauline had been with him and now was dead. Helen had a chance to see Buford before they transferred him to another hospital. Pusser was transferred to Baptist Hospital in Memphis, where a team of specialists was waiting to work on him. Fearing that the criminals might strike again, he was guarded by Shelby County police officers. A few hours after the ambush, rumors spread like wildfire across the county. Rumors circulated, such as that Buford had murdered his wife and

Buford Pusser

covered it up by shooting himself. The rumors became worse in the local beer joints. However, after a thorough investigation by several law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, it was found that evidence proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Buford Pusser could not have engineered the crime. The investigators also concluded that the ambush was motivated by Pusser’s campaign to clean up the illegal activities in the area. The officers then launched a full-scale search for the assassins, and even the governor of Mississippi ordered his state’s highway patrol to aid in the investigation. The Tennessee governor, at the request of the district attorney, offered a $5,000 reward, and the owner of the local Walgreen’s drug store headed a fund drive to raise an additional $2,500. The money still sits there today. Pauline was buried shortly thereafter, and it was reported that there were approximately three hundred people at the services. Contrary to popular belief Pusser did not attend the funeral; he was still at Baptist Memorial Hospital fighting for his own life. After eighteen days and several surgeries, Buford finally went home. He underwent sixteen operations on his face. Recovering from his physical wounds was only part of the battle. Pusser was emotionally frightened. The sheriff was more than sure that Towhead White had masterminded the whole thing, even though he was not the one to pull the trigger. White was in prison at the time, but Buford speculated that he had issued a contract to kill him. Unfortunately, White was never charged. Pusser, however, did have other suspects that he was ready to hunt down even if it took him the rest of his life. He traced his first suspect, a man named Carmine Raymond Garliardi, to Boston, Massachusetts. Before Pusser could gather any evidence to arrest him, Garliardi was killed and his body was dumped in Boston harbor. Another suspect was Kirksey Nix, Jr., of Oklahoma. Nix was the head of the Dixie Mafia, a shadowy confederation of criminal organizations that had long dominated vice crime throughout the South, especially along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. At the time of the incident, Nix was also serving a life sentence for robbery and murder, but Pusser suspected Nix nonetheless. Wanting to appear less conspicuous, Buford changed his style of dress. He began wearing tailored suits, colorful ties, and immaculate white shirts. He also traded cars so often the townspeople had a hard time keeping up with the model and color of his vehicle. He did this especially to keep the criminal element guessing. Pusser also vowed to carry a gun the rest of his life; he armed himself to meet any situation. Buford replaced the automatic 12-gauge shotgun with an AR-15, retired his old .41 caliber magnum, and holstered a new .357 magnum. Buford also became suspicious to the point of obsession, taking no chances and trusting no one outside his circle. He began to live daily in the shadow of darkness and often alternated between periods of depression and obsessive fear. For example, in one incident, while getting ready to have a few drinks with a newspaper reporter, Buford became suspicious of the bottle he was about to pour his drinks from. He

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asked the reporter if the bottle had been opened and examined the seal closely. He then sniffed the bottle several times and told the reporter that ‘‘you can’t ever tell.’’ This was only one of many things that he now did differently; his lifestyle would never be the same.

THIRD TERM Pusser was reelected for a third term in 1968 by a two-to-one margin. Pusser’s efforts to rid the area of many of the dives and gambling houses also gained ground. He managed to close down or burn down many of the illegal houses and activities in McNairy County. At one point, even White was beaten severely by Pusser and left in the swamp, but he did not die at Pusser’s hands. White would be killed later on April 2, 1969, while trying to rob a hotel. The effort to silence Buford Pusser had backfired; he became more popular than ever, while many of his enemies died or were put out of business. Several events made 1969 another notable year in Pusser’s life; this time Pusser did not need a campaign speech. His actions spoke louder than words, especially in the fattened county treasury department. The new revenue had provided Pusser with a $10,000 salary, plus expenses, and a new vehicle. Buford slowly seemed to be getting back to his old self, until an incident occurred at a local apartment complex. In 1969, he received a call about a man being drunk out of his mind who was threatening to kill several people. Buford knew the perpetrator well; he was an ex-con who had already served time for killing several people, including his wife. As Buford arrived at the scene, he adjusted his weapon and knocked on the door of the apartment where the incident was taking place. A overly polite voice from inside the apartment told Buford to come in. When he opened the apartment door, bullets came flying through, one streaking across Buford’s abdomen, a second by his head, a third chipping the handle of his holstered weapon, and two more slamming into the wall next to him. Pusser reacted quickly, drawing his weapon and firing. Luckily, Buford hit the shooter between the eyes, and the bullet tore through the back of his head. Buford Pusser had killed the second and last person in his lifetime. The case was turned over to the grand jury, and they concluded that Buford Pusser killed the man in self-defense. Later that same year Pusser was in another life-threatening car accident. While driving at a speed of about one hundred miles per hour, he fell asleep at the wheel from a long thirty hours of work. The vehicle went off the shoulder of the road and the right fender struck an embankment. The car then shot in the air and flipped over as it crashed on its top. Buford was trapped in his vehicle. As he lay there almost bleeding to death, he heard a voice saying, ‘‘Not again!’’ The person at the scene had realized it was Sheriff Pusser and quickly left the scene to call for help. Buford then heard the

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sound of an ambulance approaching; the noise reminded him of that hot summer day in August. He was filled with emptiness, as when he immediately knew his wife was dead. Shortly thereafter, he heard noises around him: people talking, a wrecker unwinding cable wire, and metal being pulled apart as he felt the pressure lift off his body. He was put on a stretcher and into the ambulance. He felt the rear wheels of the ambulance spin before they caught traction, and the vehicle jumped onto the highway heading toward McNairy County Memorial Hospital. Upon arrival at the hospital, the doctor immediately realized that he had lost a lot of blood and needed to be taken to the Baptist Hospital in Memphis. As they drove to Memphis, the doctor checked Pusser’s pulse from time to time but said nothing. While Buford lay there in pain, he began to have many thoughts of his childhood, his daughter Dwana, Pauline, and even Louise Hathcock and the man he had recently killed in the apartment. He then pulled his thoughts together and suddenly heard strange hissing sounds coming from the engine. Then there was a loud piercing noise and a cloud of smoke coming from the front of the ambulance. The doctor asked the driver what was wrong. The ambulance was over-heating. The driver thought he needed to get back to the service station to get water quickly. As they arrived at the station an attendant quickly brought out a water hose. However, the attendant knew that putting water into the radiator was not going to work; it was too hot and the water pump had broken. The driver of the ambulance called the local funeral home so that they could send an ambulance. As Buford lay in the ambulance in pain, he wondered if it was really the end. At that moment he realized that life seemed to have been a stacked deck from the start. Then the second ambulance finally arrived; the doctor knew they had lost a lot of time and told the new driver to get them there fast. The driver sped off and seldom touched the brakes while weaving through traffic. Suddenly the ambulance stopped. The back door of the vehicle opened and Buford’s dark brown eyes squinted against the unwanted daylight. The sounds of the city could be heard as Memphis was beginning to awake, but for Pusser, sleep waited somewhere beyond the antiseptic walls of the emergency room. Thoughts and visions once again entered and left his mind, and at last he slept. Pusser would live to see another day, but how many more days was the question. Buford was released from the hospital and returned to work. He went about his daily duties as usual, but he had no idea that his days were finally numbered.

DEATH It had been obvious since childhood that Pusser had a history of driving fast, having had several accidents in his lifetime, but his notoriety and position as a law enforcement officer had gotten him out of several traffic tickets.

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However, they would not save his life. On August 21, 1974, Buford was returning from a press conference in Memphis, Tennessee. On his way home he decided to stop by the McNairy County Fair and Livestock show. While at the fair and show he decided to have a few beers. He left the fair and livestock show and headed for home. It was approximately six miles on Highway 64, west of his home in Adamsville, while driving more than one hundred miles per hour, that Buford’s Corvette left the highway and smashed into an embankment. On impact he was thrown from the vehicle and died at the scene. It was discovered that Pusser’s blood alcohol content was .18, almost twice the legal limit. There were often rumors about his death that brought about unscrupulous conspiracy theories, at least one of which succeeded in conning the Pusser family out of a considerable amount of money.

MEDIA AND PUBLIC PERCEPTION Buford’s wife’s murder made him one of the most famous law enforcement officers in the United States. One of the first persons to capitalize on the Pusser tragedy was Eddie Bond, an occasional country singer, disc jockey, and record company owner. Bond paid tribute to the legendary Sheriff Pusser with a song called ‘‘The Ballad of Buford Pusser,’’ which Bond cowrote with Jim Climer in 1968. The record enjoyed enormous popularity in western Tennessee and northern Mississippi. Buford’s father, Carl Pusser, sold copies of the record from the jail. Record sales were brisk. Pusser and Bond began to realize profits from their business venture. This brought them to become intimate friends. Buford even made Eddie Bond a deputy sheriff. ‘‘The Ballad of Buford Pusser’’ began opening big doors for the McNairy lawman. Also that year the Tennessee House of Representatives named Pusser an honorary sergeant-at-arms, and he was also named national police officer of the month by a New York detective magazine. Buford’s term was set to expire in 1970. He was barred by a county ordinance from seeking another term as sheriff, but he was elected Third District constable again. Pusser had also established a friendship with a fellow Tennessean and writer named W. R. Morris. Morris teamed with up with Eddie Bond in furthering the Pusser image and penned a 1971 biography about Pusser titled The Twelfth of August: The Story of Buford Pusser. Another big opportunity for Pusser came when Mort Brisken, a Hollywood scriptwriter and television producer heard the Pusser song during a thirtyminute news special over the Columbia Broadcasting System’s network. Brisken was much impressed with the song, so the writer-producer flew to Memphis, Tennessee, rented a car, and drove to Adamsville to talk to Buford Pusser. Shortly thereafter, Buford signed an agreement with Brisken giving him exclusive rights to produce a movie and television saga on his life. Brisken informed Buford that Bing Crosby Productions would film the

Buford Pusser

motion picture and the American Broadcasting Company would film the television series. Brisken then collected all of Buford’s scrapbooks and headed back to Hollywood. Part of the deal was also that Pusser would serve as a technical advisor for the movie. Three months later, Brisken mailed Buford a copy of the movie script. His first criticism of the movie was its script. Pusser complained that the violence was toned down too much and he felt that being sheriff of McNairy County was far from glamorous. However, he did not object to other inaccuracies, the most prominent of which wrongly portrayed Pusser wielding a huge stick to mete out street justice. McNairy County citizens were miffed that Walking Tall was filmed in their neighboring counties, and some officials disliked glorifying Pusser’s violent behavior. Shortly after the movie deal, while serving as constable, he encountered legal troubles of his own, again stemming from his propensity to violence. In 1972 Pusser was charged with assault with a deadly weapon for beating a man he claimed pointed a gun at him. The charges were later dismissed when the accuser mysteriously did not appear in court. For some reason there was also a growing animosity toward Pusser from the citizens of McNairy County, which seemed to be getting stronger as time went by. He was defeated in his bid for sheriff in 1972. Pusser blamed his loss on the movie, Walking Tall, which to the surprise of the producer had flopped. McNairy County citizens laughed at Pusser because of the inaccuracies in the movie, especially the portrayal of Pusser carrying a huge stick, which became the movie’s trademark. Pusser had never rammed his car into a saloon, and he never designated the courthouse bathroom as the local judge’s chambers, as was depicted in the movie. Stung by Walking Tall’s failure, Bing Crosby Productions redid the movie’s promotional trailer, and the impact this time was tremendous. It surprised everyone; Walking Tall became one of the top box office draws of 1972 and 1973. Variety called it the year’s best sleeper. Photoplay magazine named it the motion picture of the year. The movie starred Joe Don Baker in the role of Buford Pusser. Baker and Pusser became good friends, and Baker vowed to make the people of McNairy County sorry for rejecting Buford Pusser. According to Pusser, Walking Tall was about 70 percent fiction, but by this time the public did not care. Pusser’s character had become larger-than-life; he had become America’s new hero. The movie contained graphic violence (for its time), which naturally the public enjoyed immensely. Pusser was portrayed as a bold, incorruptible one-man crime-fighting machine. He unhesitatingly used his huge stick to wallop the bad guys. Buford fought judicial ineptitude and corruption, and he did his best to make the sheriff’s office representative of the population by hiring an African American deputy, which was another fiction captured on film. Buford Pusser became one of the most sought-after public figures in the nation. CBS produced a documentary about Pusser. Governor Winfield Dunn declared October 21, 1973, Buford Pusser Day in Tennessee. Pusser

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began to receive money just for his appearances. In some instances he would receive $1,000 to $2,500 for personal appearances. Pusser also lived the high life, rubbing shoulders with the elite of Nashville’s country music establishment. It was also rumored that Buford began a romantic relationship with Anne Galloway, a Miss Tennessee pageant winner. In his public appearances, Pusser would say that Walking Tall did not result in any increased public sympathy toward law enforcement. It merely reinforced existing beliefs about the proper role of law enforcement. In addition it was replete with violence—always a drawing card for American movie buffs. However, as time went on, Pusser’s fame began to experience a negative shift once more. His brashness and violent tendencies made him many enemies among some of Tennessee’s most influential people. Some individuals began to question whether Pusser was the upstanding individual portrayed in Walking Tall. There was an incident where his stepdaughter bashed him in a newspaper. In an interview with an Ohio newspaper, Pusser’s stepdaughter said Pusser was responsible for Pauline’s death; it was thought that this accusation was made more out of bitterness than fact. Another issue brought to the forefront was that it had been ironic that one of Pusser’s claims to fame was his penchant for busting moonshiners because he was a drinker himself. He found even more time for bar hopping after the release of Walking Tall. Rumors began to surface, such as the time when in a local Moose Lodge a man accused Pusser of accepting money while he was sheriff so the man and his wife could sell illegal alcohol. An argument ensued, and Pusser beat the man so severely that the man literally defecated in his pants. Pusser’s friendships with some of the people who had made him famous soured as well. He had a falling out with Republican Party officials after backing Democrat Ray Blanton in the 1974 gubernatorial race. His friendship with the actor Joe Don Baker, who starred as Pusser in Walking Tall, went south as well. Pusser, a Republican, had serious political disagreements with Baker, a Democrat. Baker called Pusser a fascist pig who would do anything to support the existing political establishment. Pusser called Baker a ‘‘conceited bastard’’ and claimed that Baker owed his career to him. Bing Crosby Productions wanted to film a sequel to Walking Tall, but after the clash between Baker and Pusser, negotiations with Baker proved fruitless. Pusser had done a screen test and was awarded the part of playing himself. Filming was scheduled to start on September 20, 1974, in Jackson, Tennessee. Obviously, Buford Pusser did not live to play himself in the movie, nor did he live to become commissioner of public safety, the promise made by Ray Blanton in exchange for his support in the governor’s race. Two more Walking Tall movies were made, but neither enjoyed the critical commercial success of the first movie. A CBS television movie was also made featuring Brian Dennehy as the legendary Buford Pusser. Dwana,

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Pusser’s daughter, maintains an Web site devoted to Buford Pusser, complete with saleable items that capitalize on Pusser’s name. Pusser’s former home has also become a museum. During the life of Buford Pusser he received as much praise as he did criticism. Either way, he is a crime-fighting icon who will not soon be forgotten. His legacy will live on because his family lives on, and he has made his mark on the American criminal justice system. TIMELINE 1937 1942 1948 1950 1951 1952 1953 1956 1957 1959 1961 1962

1964 1965 1966 1967

1968 1969 1970 1971

Born in Finger, Tennessee. Buford’s first day of school. Buford often avoids school bus rides, for fear of getting lost. Fist job at the general store in Adamsville. Demonstrates his desire for driving fast while attending a horse show. The Pusser family moves to Adamsville, Tennessee. First encounter with the infamous ‘‘State Line Mob’’ and police corruption. Buford graduates from high school with seven athletic scholarships and has his first encounter with death. Moves to Chicago to work for Union Bag Company, becomes a wrestler, and meets his future wife. Buford Pusser and Pauline Mullins get married, and Buford gets arrested for armed robbery and intent to commit murder. Buford’s first and only natural child, Dwana Aitoya Pusser, is born. Returns to Tennessee from Chicago, becomes police chief of Adamsville, is elected as constable in the Third Civil District, and along with two federal agents conducts his first moonshine raid. Runs for McNair County Sheriff for the first time at age twenty-six. Feud with Tennessee State Troopers. Buford Pusser kills Louise Hathcock while serving a search warrant. Is shot twice and left for dead in a routine traffic stop. Pauline and Buford respond to trouble at the state line, but it is a set-up to kill both of them. Pauline dies at the scene. Is elected to a third term by a two-to-one margin. Eddie Bond and Jim Climer write ‘‘The Ballad of Buford Pusser.’’ Kills the second person in his lifetime. Second car accident, ambulance overheats. Is barred from seeking reelection as sheriff, but as is reelected as Third District constable. W. R. Morris writes the biography of Buford Pusser, The Twelfth of August: The Story of Buford Pusser. Movie deal with Hollywood for Walking Tall.

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1972 Walking Tall becomes one of the top box office draws of 1972 and 1973. 1974 Dies in a car accident coming home from McNairy County Fair and Livestock Show. 2004 Third Walking Tall movie is released starring Dwayne ‘‘The Rock’’ Johnson. FURTHER READING Grigg, William Norman. 2004. ‘‘One man against the mob: A legend in the mold of Davy Crockett, Sheriff Buford Pusser reclaimed Tennessee’s McNairy County from the murderous ‘State Line Mob.’’’ The New American magazine, Appleton, WI. Jones, Mark. 2005. Criminal Justice Pioneers in U.S. History. New York, Pearson Education. Kleinig, John. 1996. The Ethics of Policing. New York, Cambridge University Press. Morris, W. R. 1971. The Twelfth of August: The Story of Buford Pusser. Nashville, TN: Aurora Publishing. Morris, W. R. 1990. The State Line Mob. Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press.

Courtesy of Photofest

Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso Ellen Leichtman


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There is a point, of course, where a man must take the isolated peak and break with all his associates for clear principle; but until that time comes he must work, if he would be of use, with men as they are. As long as the good in them overbalances the evil, let him work with them for the best that can be obtained. Theodore Roosevelt Former Police Commissioner of New York City

Every cop understands that the nature of the job is to break the law in order to protect society and then to lie about it in order to maintain society’s illusions…and also to accept the fact that if he’s caught lying, he’s going to get locked up, in order to maintain society’s illusions. David Milch Producer of NYPD Blue, Hill St. Blues, and Deadwood

In the 1960s, drugs were fast becoming a major area of national concern. As a result, the interdiction of drugs was becoming a central focus within both the New York City Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). It was also the main concern of two New York City cops, detective first-grade Edward ‘‘Eddie’’ Egan and detective second-grade Salvatore ‘‘Sonny’’ Grosso, who were assigned to the New York City Police Department’s Narcotics Bureau. Unknown to them, the case that was to make them famous was about to unfold. It was a Saturday night, and after being on duty for twenty-seven consecutive hours, Egan and Grosso decided to go to the Copacabana, a famous nightspot in Manhattan, to relax. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Fact Sheet: Heroin Overview of Heroin Heroin is an illegal, highly addictive drug. It is both the most abused and the most rapidly acting of the opiates. Heroin is processed from morphine, a naturally occurring substance extracted from the seed pod of certain varieties of poppy plants. It is typically sold as a white or brownish powder or as the black sticky substance known on the streets as ‘‘black tar heroin.’’ Although purer heroin is becoming more common, most street heroin is ‘‘cut’’ with other drugs or with substances such as sugar, starch, powdered milk, or quinine. Street heroin can also be cut with strychnine, fentanyl, or other poisons. Because heroin abusers do not know the actual strength of the drug or its true contents, they are at risk of overdose or death. Heroin also poses special problems because of the transmission of HIV and other diseases that can occur from sharing needles or other injection equipment. First synthesized from morphine in 1874, heroin was not extensively used in medicine until the early 1900s. Commercial production of the new pain remedy was first started in 1898. It initially received widespread acceptance from the medical profession, and physicians remained unaware of its addiction potential for

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years. The first comprehensive control of heroin occurred with the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914. Today, heroin is an illicit substance having no medical utility in the United States. Heroin can be injected, smoked, or sniffed/snorted. Injection is the most efficient way to administer low-purity heroin. The availability of high-purity heroin, however, and the fear of infection by sharing needles has made snorting and smoking the drug more common. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) researchers have confirmed that all forms of heroin administration are addictive. Street Names Smack, thunder, hell dust, big H, nose drops. Short-term Effects Intravenous users typically experience the rush within 7 to 8 seconds after injection, whereas intramuscular injection produces a slower onset of this euphoric feeling, taking 5 to 8 minutes. When heroin is sniffed or smoked, the peak effects of the drug are usually felt within 10 to 15 minutes. In addition to the initial feeling of euphoria, the short-term effects of heroin include a warm flushing of the skin, dry mouth, and heavy extremities. Long-term Effects Chronic users may develop collapsed veins, infection of the heart lining and valves, abscesses, cellulites, and liver disease. Pulmonary complications, including various types of pneumonia, may result from the poor health condition of the abuser, as well as from heroin’s depressing effects on respiration. In addition to the effects of the drug itself, street heroin may have additives that do not really dissolve and result in clogging the blood vessels that lead to the lungs, liver, kidneys, or brain. This can cause infection or even death of small patches of cells in vital organs. One of the most significant effects of heroin use is addiction. With regular heroin use, tolerance to the drug develops. Once this happens, the abuser must use more heroin to achieve the same intensity or effect that they are seeking. As higher doses of the drug are used over time, physical dependence and addiction to the drug develop. Withdrawal, which in regular abusers may occur as early as a few hours after the last administration, produces drug craving, restlessness, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea and vomiting, cold flashes with goose bumps (‘‘cold turkey’’), kicking movements (‘‘kicking the habit’’), and other symptoms. Major withdrawal symptoms peak between 48 and 72 hours after the last dose and subside after about a week. Sudden withdrawal by heavily dependent

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users who are in poor health is occasionally fatal, although heroin withdrawal is considered less dangerous than alcohol or barbiturate withdrawal. Trafficking Trends Four foreign source areas produce the heroin available in the United States: South America (Colombia), Mexico, Southeast Asia (principally Burma), and Southwest Asia (principally Afghanistan). However, South America and Mexico supply most of the illicit heroin marketed in the United States. South American heroin is a high-purity powder primarily distributed to metropolitan areas on the East Coast. Heroin powder may vary in color from white to dark brown because of impurities left from the manufacturing process or the presence of additives. Mexican heroin, known as ‘‘black tar,’’ is primarily available in the western United States. The color and consistency of black tar heroin result from the crude processing methods used to illicitly manufacture heroin in Mexico. Black tar heroin may be sticky like roofing tar or hard like coal, and its color may vary from dark brown to black. Pure heroin is rarely sold on the street. A ‘‘bag’’ (slang for a small unit of heroin sold on the street) currently contains about 30 to 50 milligrams of powder, only a portion of which is heroin. The remainder could be sugar, starch, acetaminophen, procaine, benzocaine, or quinine, or any of numerous cutting agents for heroin. Traditionally, the purity of heroin in a bag ranged from 1 to 10 percent. More recently, heroin purity has ranged from about 10 to 70 percent. Black tar heroin is often sold in chunks weighing about an ounce. Its purity is generally less than South American heroin and it is most frequently smoked, or dissolved, diluted, and injected. Arrests and Sentencing Between October 1, 2004, and January 11, 2005, there were 391 federal offenders sentenced for heroin-related charges in U.S. courts. Approximately 97.4 percent of the cases involved trafficking. Between January 12, 2005, and September 30, 2005, there were 1,279 federal offenders sentenced for heroin-related charges in U.S. courts. Approximately 97.8 percent of the cases involved trafficking. Source: http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/concern/heroin.html.

The two men were both good-looking six footers, although that’s where the physical likeness stopped. Egan was a thickset, florid, red-headed Irishman, while Grosso was a dark-haired, wiry, pale skinned Italian who worried. He was also a black-belt in karate. Egan was dating the hat-check girl. The two men knew the headwaiter and were shown to a table way in the back, on one of the raised terraces.


They ordered drinks and were settling in when Grosso pointed out a crowded, noisy table below them. While the two detectives watched, they saw at least two drug pushers they knew. The ‘‘host’’ at the table was called Patsy. Egan and Grosso observed them for an hour and a half, until the floor show ended, at which time Patsy and the rest of his party got up and left. Egan and Grosso decided to follow him. That was the beginning of what was later dubbed The French Connection. The 1961–1962 New York case was the largest drug bust in history up to that time, with 112 pounds of heroin, worth $32 million on the street, confiscated. Although many cops and federal agents worked on the case, Egan and Grosso were the names associated with it. The two men attained national prominence later, first from the 1969 best-seller The French Connection by Robin Moore and then from the 1971 five-time Academy Award winning movie of the same name directed by William Friedkin, starring Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider. Both Egan and Grosso played small parts in the movie, Egan as his own boss Walt Simonson and Grosso as Bill Klein, an FBI agent. The movie became a pivotal point in both of their lives as it became an entry for both men into movies and television by giving them experience in many aspects of film making, especially as advisors and actors. It may also have been instrumental in splitting them up as partners because of jealousy in the upper ranks of the New York City Police Department. Egan later went to Hollywood, where he had a successful acting career for several decades. Grosso has gone on to become an influential producer in the firm Grosso-Jacobson Productions. Some of his best known productions are the movie Trackdown: Finding the Goodbar Killer with George Segal; Out of the Darkness: Finding the Son of Sam with Martin Sheen; the TV movie and series Counterstrike with Christopher Plummer; the TV movie and series A Family for Joe with Robert Mitchum; and the TV series Cop Talk for Tribune Entertainment, which Grosso hosted. Another major television production, which got critical reviews was A Question of Honor, based on Grosso and Rosenberg’s book Point Blank. Among other accomplishments, Grosso was the technical advisor and acted in The Godfather and made such television shows such as Top Cops, Truck1, and The Big Easy, and several other made-for-television movies, such as All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story and the adaptations of several books by Mary Higgins Clark, including Moonlight Becomes You, Let Me Call You Sweetheart, and While My Pretty One Sleeps. Robin Moore’s book went into great detail about the actual surveillance and detective work Egan, Grosso, and others put in from October 7, 1961, to February 24,1962, and then described the aftermath of the case. It details the lengthy boredom and occasional excitement of police work and uses the actual names of the people involved. The movie, however, moved beyond the workings of the case. In The Poughkeepsie Shuffle, a BBC documentary

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on the making of the movie, which is included in the thirtieth anniversary DVD of the movie, director William Friedkin discusses why he took liberties with the actual events of the case. The movie needed more action than the book supplied, so he decided to include how Egan and Grosso (with their names changed to Doyle and Russo) normally worked ‘‘the street.’’ He found the two ‘‘hilarious’’ with ‘‘an approach to law enforcement [he] felt had just the right touch for the time. It was like a game for them.’’ In order to give the director, cast, and others a working understanding of what being a cop in New York was all about, Egan and Grosso took them on ridealongs and sometimes raids. The two detectives let Friedkin and the actors go with them so that the movie would have the flavor of the street. According to Grosso, ‘‘Whatever we said, somebody would write it down, and then it would show up in the movie.’’1 Thus a book about an actual police action was changed into a movie about the way Egan and Grosso worked. Many of the movie scenes that dealt with the street lives of James ‘‘Popeye’’ Doyle and Buddy ‘‘Cloudy’’ Russo came from the real-life experiences of Eddie ‘‘Popeye’’ Egan and Sonny ‘‘Cloudy’’ Grosso. THE EARLY YEARS Edward ‘‘Eddie’’ Egan was born on January 3, 1930, and grew up in the Queens neighborhoods of Woodside and Hollis where his main ambition was to be a major league baseball player. He was always independent and considered himself self-sufficient from the age of twelve, perhaps because he never knew his father and was not close with his firefighter stepfather. When his mother died, shortly before he graduated from parochial school, he moved in with his grandparents. There was a lot of friction in the house, however, possibly because of his temper, and at the age of seventeen he left high school to get away from his grandmother. He enlisted in the Marines for two years, where he became a drill instructor.2 After the Marines, Egan played service ball and was offered a small contract by the Washington Senators. He then was traded to the New York Yankees Class B Norfolk farm team, where he played center field. According to Egan, at that time the Yankees were looking for a replacement for Joe DiMaggio, who was getting on in years and he, Egan, was being considered, along with a shortstop from Oklahoma, Mickey Mantle. But while he was waiting and hoping to move from the Class-B to the Class-A team, he was recalled by the Marines. This was when Egan began to give up his dreams of playing professional ball. At the same time, the Marine doctors found that Egan had broken his arm during his enlistment period and were undecided about whether to deploy him. Instead they kept him on hold and told him to be ready to be called up again within three months.3 Egan had never considered being a cop, but during this period of uncertainty he took and passed the exam to become a member of the police


force of the Port Authority of New York. The three months went by, but there was no further word from the Marines. This meant that Egan had to make a decision, whether to try out at the Yankees’ Florida training camp or stay with the Port Authority. He decided to stay in New York, which proved fortuitous. A few months later the Yankees signed Mantle. Egan stayed with the Port Authority for four more years. The Marines never recalled him.4 By 1955, Egan was getting frustrated with the lack of available advancement at the Port Authority. He had joined when it was a new organization, which meant that senior officers were years away from retirement. After passing the sergeant’s exam twice without advancing, Egan turned to the New York City police and took their entrance exam. He placed 361st of almost 60,000.5 Egan was very ambitious, a trait he said was evident from the day he entered the Police Academy. Moore records Egan’s first day. He reported an hour early to the gym in Flushing Meadows Park, Queens, where he found and captured three girls hiding in the bushes. They turned out to be escaped prisoners with a total of thirteen felony charges against them. This impressed Police Commissioner Stephan P. Kennedy, who gave Egan the weekend off, both to acknowledge Egan’s actions and to set an example for other recruits. From that time on, Egan tried to get every weekend off. His arrest record while he was a recruit was so high, ninety-eight arrests, that he was taken out of training early and assigned to a special unit of veteran detectives who covered Times Square. He was not promoted to detective, however. Subsequently, he was returned to the academy when he refused to become a ‘‘shoofly’’ (a cop who spies on other cops). Egan always believed that cops should not spy on other cops. After he graduated, he was sent to Harlem. Within the first two weeks he made thirty-seven arrests, including that of singer Billie Daniels, which led to Daniels’s indictment and conviction in a shooting incident. In the summer of 1956, almost exactly a year after he joined the police, Egan received his gold shield.6 Egan’s personal interest was to work in narcotics. As he related to Moore, his ambition was linked to a family incident that occurred while he was a beat cop in Harlem. One day his six-year-old niece came home from school a little late and found that her friends had already gone roller-skating without her. Wanting to join them and in a hurry, she asked her mother, who was sitting on the front stoop waiting for her, if it would be all right for her to go. Her mother said yes and told her she could go upstairs by herself and get her skates. They lived on the sixth floor of a walk-up, so the little girl charged up the six flights of stairs, entered the apartment, threw her book bag on the kitchen table, and ran into her bedroom. There she found ‘‘four dark, Spanish-looking men,’’ one holding her piggy bank. Two of the men grabbed her, while a third got her skates and proceeded to beat her around the face and head with them. They then ran out with the piggy bank and left her bleeding and semiconscious on the floor. Her mother, wondering

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what was taking her daughter so long, came upstairs and found her. Nearly hysterical, she called her brother, Egan, who came rushing to Brooklyn. Enlisting the help of the local precinct, he tore through the neighborhood, rounding up anyone ever suspected of criminal or deviant behavior. He found the four within two hours. Thus, while Egan was always an ambitious man, this incident gave focus to his career. Egan worked in the Narcotics Bureau for three years before he was teamed up with Sonny Grosso.7 Salvatore ‘‘Sonny’’ Grosso was one of four children, the eldest and only son. He grew up in a warm, welcoming, ethnic Italian neighborhood in East Harlem, a place where everyone knew everyone else and everyone else’s business. It was a safe place, where families were large and kids played on the street. His mother, whom he describes as gentle and hardworking, would go out for a quart of milk and not return for two hours because she would stop and talk with everyone on the route. Grosso’s father, a truck driver, died young, at thirty-six, which thrust Sonny into the role of head of the household at the age of fourteen with his beautiful, devoted mother at thirty-three years of age trying to survive.8 The family then moved to the west side of Harlem, to an Irish neighborhood called ‘‘Vinegar Hill.’’ Sonny found his place in the new community even though, as a dark Italian, he visibly stood out from his new neighbors. Robin Moore described Grosso as introverted, withdrawn, and stern, but added that that might be partly because he has a ‘‘sad, heavy-lidded Mediterranean face.’’ Normally, according to Moore, Grosso wore his feelings on his face, except when he got angry. Then all expression left. In Murder at the Harlem Mosque, however, Grosso describes himself as having been an organizer of basketball, softball, and stickball teams. Grosso did not date much and did not have a serious relationship, unlike Egan, who rarely met a woman he didn’t like.9 After high school, at the beginning of the Korean War, Grosso was drafted into the army. He served two years, working as a radio operator. He also boxed. In 1952, however, he injured his knee and was discharged. He then got a job with the post office and drove a mail truck for two years, mainly in the midtown section of Manhattan around Times Square. He was still the main support for his mother and three sisters.10 Then, in 1954, he took the Civil Service Police Academy exam and, like Egan, scored in the top three hundred of a pool of around fifty thousand. After the Police Academy, he was assigned, by chance, to his old neighborhood of East Harlem, the 25th Precinct. What he found was a vastly changed place. Instead of the close Italian neighborhood of his early years, he now found a vicious ghetto, ruled by a minority of people through force and intimidation. The major source of trouble was the sale and use of illegal drugs. Grosso was especially repulsed by the ravages of heroin and what it was doing to the Puerto Ricans and blacks who had moved in. Although he was originally from the neighborhood, his return as a cop was often greeted


with derision and mistrust. However, it wasn’t in Sonny’s nature to respond in kind. Instead, as he told Robin Moore, he understood the situation as a response to the current plight of the city. While he believed that drugs were a major problem, he did not really comprehend the enormity of that problem. Then, after a short time in Harlem he saw how drugs destroyed lives. Joining the Narcotics Bureau, he centered his focus on drug pushers and dealers.11 Grosso rose from the uniformed division to first-grade detective in only three years. He received his promotion from second to first grade in late summer of 1963 based on his work in The French Connection. This was the fastest rise of any detective in the history of the NYPD.12 When Grosso retired in 1976, after twenty years on the force, he held the record for the most arrests made during his career.13

THEIR WORKING RELATIONSHIP Egan saw the world in opposites, black and white, right and wrong. By ‘‘right’’ he meant adhering to the morals and values of his lower-middleclass, conservative, Queens, Irish Catholic background, which were forged in the 1940s and 1950s. His sister, Maureen Massett, a Dominican nun, described him as a ‘‘passionately by-the-book moralist’’ and in many ways a ‘‘very old fashioned’’ man, ‘‘a product of his time.’’ For example, she said, he believed that nuns should always wear habits and always would almost interrogate her if he caught her not wearing one. He believed he stood for what was right and because of that, he would always win. Even at the end of his life, when he was fighting incurable colon cancer, he believed he would beat it—all he needed was his sister’s prayers. He believed that he had lived his life adhering to the correct morals and values and that, in the end, he would be taken care of.14 Those who knew Egan described him as someone who would do what he thought was right, regardless of what the law said. He was theatrical, bigger-than-life, stubborn, egocentric, moralistic, and headstrong. He would declaim in front of judges during testimony, argue with defense attorneys, and play to juries. He often testified that he witnessed drug deals going down, even though that meant he would have had to be able to see around or through buildings or extremely long distances in the dark. He loved to be on stage, whether that stage was a courtroom or a bar where he was arresting suspects.15 Egan saw himself as central to ridding the city of drugs. He knew that junkies were breaking the law and causing a drug epidemic throughout America’s inner cities. On a larger scale, he believed that mankind was inherently ‘‘dirty’’ and that everyone was guilty of something. By this Egan meant that people were inherently weak, not that all people broke the law. It may have been this self-understanding of his own failings that led him to

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be able to spot shortcomings in others and be able to exploit them, and he was the best at that game.16 Egan wanted people to fear him. One way to do that was to make people think he was crazy. This is illustrated in the Santa Claus scene in The French Connection, especially when he interrogates a man about picking his feet in Poughkeepsie. This nonsense sentence was classic Egan and one he used often during interrogations. He also liked to antagonize people. As Grosso said, Egan always did things the hard way.17 Grosso always felt that Egan was a good partner, but he was also excessively egocentric. In an interview with the BBC, Grosso said: ‘‘Nobody would fool around with us, nobody would fool with Eddie. If Eddie said ‘‘‘Hold it,’ they held it. If he said, ‘Put your hands on your head,’ they’d do it. I don’t know what would happen today, but in those days they had a lot of respect for us.’’18 But when Roy Scheider, who played Russo in the movie, asked Grosso what it was like to work with Egan, Grosso replied: ‘‘If I don’t like him, who will?’’ No one wanted to work with him. Scheider said that gave him an insight into how to handle the role of Russo (Grosso).19 Egan was not an easy person to like; even his few friends agreed. Egan worked best with a partner who would let him have his way and stand to the side. According to Grosso: ‘‘With Eddie it was all I, I, I, me, me, me. But I was a lot safer with Egan. We were. We felt a lot better about ourselves because of cops like Egan.’’ Egan liked to be the center of attention. Grosso says that Egan also had a reputation of being insensitive to all people who broke the law. Quoting Sonny Grosso, ‘‘Eddie didn’t just challenge minorities, he challenged everyone. He had to prove he was tougher and crazier than everybody else, to make people fear him.’’20 Grosso usually made excuses for Egan’s behavior, even to the point of trying to explain Egan’s behavior when Grosso took him to Grosso’s favorite New York restaurant, Rao’s, an old landmark Italian restaurant in Grosso’s old neighborhood. Egan will always be remembered for ruining the steak the restaurant prided itself on with mounds of ketchup, driving the chef nuts.21 Egan’s nickname while he was a beat cop was ‘‘Bullets.’’ He said he got it because as a beat cop he had been known to wear an extra cartridge belt.22 However, according to Grosso, ‘‘Eddie was also good with his hands, and he was good with his mouth, and back then cops had to back up what they said. We had no radios, you were out there by yourself, and to be in control you had to assume that control. But with a gun Eddie couldn’t hit that fucking car if we stood in front of it.’’ The real story about the nickname came from the number of bullets he expended, because he used so many of them in target practice on the range. Again from Grosso, ‘‘The truth of the matter, and he wore it well, is that accuracy on the range was something he did not excel in.’’23 However, Egan’s code name changed to Popeye when he joined the Narcotics Bureau because he was a womanizer. Egan liked to ‘‘popeye around,’’ eyes bulging, looking at and chasing girls.24 Possibly because of this trait,


Egan failed in relationships. Always the optimist in this department, however, he was engaged to a fourth woman at the time of his death in 1995.25 Perhaps because of his unhappy childhood, he had problems with family and commitment issues. Instead, he found his home in the comfort of male institutions like the Marines, the Yankees, and finally the New York Police Department, which everyone agreed ‘‘was the one true love of his life.’’26 In the end, however, it was not true to him. Egan always believed he was destined to be a star and went about making that dream a reality. He sought the society of reporters, writers, and people from Hollywood who were interested in cops and in telling cops’ stories. Grosso retells the story of how the book got to be written. In 1968, while he and Egan were on patrol, they were contacted by the Chief of Detectives’ office to go to Toots Shor’s restaurant and meet with author Robin Moore, who wanted to write a book about the case. Grosso’s supervisors in the NYPD were worried about how Egan would present the case to Moore and cautioned Grosso to ‘‘make sure that hole-in-the-head doesn’t say anything stupid to Moore that gets the department into trouble.’’27 At the table, sitting with Moore, Grosso saw his two idols, John Wayne and Joe DiMaggio, with Toots Shor. While Grosso sat there in shock, Egan took over, telling everyone about his exploits, how many busts he and Grosso had made, and how the two of them led the Narcotics Bureau in arrests. Egan was already picturing a movie and was deciding who would play him. He decided on Paul Newman, with Ben Gazzara playing Grosso. Moore’s book centers around Egan and Grosso with a large cast of characters.28 Egan also got director William Friedkin interested in the story and made sure he and anyone else involved in the production got firsthand experience in whatever they needed, included going on raids and, in the case of Hackman, actually arresting someone. Egan also pushed to have the movie made and then made sure Friedkin centered the movie around Detective Jimmy ‘‘Popeye’’ Doyle.29 The book and the movie made the two nationally known and kept them in the news. Their cases were given special attention, describing some of the ‘‘crazy gimmicks’’ they used to make arrests. Grosso relates one story where he and Egan had just apprehended someone for a half kilo of heroin. They brought him to the station, but before they could process him, a reporter was there asking Grosso how he felt when Egan lowered him into a sewer to get the key to the lockerbox. Grosso was taken aback, because this hadn’t happened. But holding up his end of the partnership, he looked the reporter straight in the eye and answered, deadpan, ‘‘I don’t know, let me think about that.’’ When Grosso questioned Egan about that later, Egan replied that his made-up stories were really of no consequence. The only thing that was important was that the public knew that they were bringing in the bad guys and arresting the dope dealers. Then he told Grosso that the only thing to worry about was getting the job done. The stories were just a

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little icing on the cake, for the papers, so people coming to work in the morning could read about New York’s finest.30

THE FRENCH CONNECTION The French Connection, the book, so named because several of the major characters were Frenchmen who shipped heroin into the United States from Marseilles, became a best-selling police-procedural about the investigation. It was published in 1969. Egan and Grosso were broken up as a team in 1968, after working together for a decade. Egan was assigned to the 81st Precinct in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, and Grosso was sent to the 28th Precinct in Harlem.31 Egan felt that one of the major reasons the two were reassigned was jealousy from the higher echelon in the police department over the book and the newspaper coverage. However, if he was correct in his reasoning, that jealousy only grew with the release of the movie in October 1971. The case, which already was a legend within the police department, now grew to national proportions. The movie The French Connection, which garnered five Oscars, including best picture, best actor (Gene Hackman), and best director (William Friedkin), was based less on the procedure of the case worked by Egan and Grosso than their modus operandi on the street. The second scene in the movie, which is supposed to take place in Brooklyn (the exteriors are Brooklyn), is based on the way the two partners would conduct a raid. In the movie, the two are staking out a bar. Based on an actual case, Popeye Doyle is wearing a Santa Claus suit, while Cloudy Russo is behind a pushcart. Popeye looks into to window of the bar at several black men, played by actual petty crooks, junkies, and others from the streets of Harlem. As Grosso said, ‘‘We rounded up a bunch of guys we knew, guys we had busted for using and selling and gave them a chance to be in a movie with us. And they loved it.’’32 The scene progressed the way Egan and Grosso worked. They would rush through the front door, in order to panic everyone into dumping whatever illegal substances they had or into trying to get away. Egan loved that type of action. He thrived on confrontation and confusion, as it gave him a way both to use his theatrical personality and to make people afraid of him. Grosso hated the confrontations and was uncomfortable with them, but played his role as the enforcer. ‘‘Eddie would be yelling, ‘Get up against the wall! Get over here! Do this! Do that! Hey, what the fuck did I just say? You fuck, you want me to break that arm?’ ’’33 While Egan acted like a drill sergeant, Grosso was the straight man. ‘‘All right, you heard what he said, get over here.’’ That was how they achieved their incredible numbers of narcotic arrests. They would arrest anyone in the bar who threw drugs on the floor.34


Egan and Grosso also had a substantial influence on the final characterizations of both Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider. As Grosso writes: We took them on our rounds with us, Friedkin too. We could never do all of that today. We taught them how to be cops, how to act like cops, and to some extent how to think like cops. Gene Hackman says that he was never quite so scared in his life as he was in some of those first days. I think he thought he might get killed out there. And I guess that was always a real possibility for us all. We taught him how to enter a place, how to frisk, and how to arrest. We took him to shooting galleries (where heroin deals are made and where the junkies could be found shooting up) and flophouses. Having those guys with us got to be so commonplace that when we’d enter the shooting galleries, the junkies would calmly turn around and ask if this was for real or if this was for the movies. The line between ‘‘real’’ and ‘‘reel’’ definitely got blurred.35

NEW YORK REFORM The French Connection case took place at the beginning of the 1960s, a time of great unrest, when the police became ‘‘the pigs’’ to many middleclass urban students, who became involved in the civil rights movement and then the anti-Vietnam War movement. It was a time when a generation of college students experimented with drugs and their motto was Timothy Leary’s catchy ‘‘Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.’’ It was a time when young people saw the hypocrisy of their elders, who spouted the morals and values of the 1950s but did not fulfill them. It was a time when people were beginning to see the world in shades of gray, rather than in black and white. Many grew up on television shows such as ‘‘Father Knows Best’’ and ‘‘Leave It To Beaver,’’ which depicted American life as white, middle-class, Protestant, and suburban. Urban reality was quite different, with people from different ethnicites, races, and religions living in proximity, not together, but in a patchwork-quilt type36 of urban pattern. The divorce rate was soaring, and women were entering the workforce in droves. The police themselves, like Egan and Grosso, came from these ethnic neighborhoods. On May 21, 1970, Mayor John Lindsay, who was running for president, appointed Judge Whitman Knapp to head an independent, five-person panel to investigate corruption in the New York City Police Department. This was brought about as a response to a six-month investigation by The New York Times, spearheaded by information given to reporter David Burnham by Patrolman Frank Serpico and Sergeant David Durk, when these two New York City police officers uncovered corruption in the police department. The commission’s panel consisted of five members, one of whom was New York Police Commissioner Howard Leary, who was often at loggerheads with the other members. Leary felt the police were under unfair attack and took umbrage at the charges, saying that most police officers were not

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corrupt and that he welcomed any and all investigations. However, he suddenly resigned his position effective October 1, 1970, not explaining why. His action took Lindsay by surprise, as he had not expected Leary to leave. Lindsay immediately looked for a successor and found Patrick V. Murphy, who was then the police commissioner of Detroit.37 Murphy, a major police reformer, took over the position of commissioner on October 1, 1970. Among his first projects to initiate in high-crime areas were to disband some special squads so that decision-making would shift to the local precincts; to encourage police to know the community in which they worked in order to cut down on violence against police, a strategy now called ‘‘community policing’’; to increase the number of minority police officers; and to raise education standards so that the force would become college-educated. Under Murphy, police corruption was drastically cut, but tension between those on patrol and those in administration increased dramatically. Officers were so afraid of being charged with accepting bribes that they began to refuse even a free cup of coffee. As one officer said: ‘‘The men hate him, but right now a cop would lock up his partner—with all the pressure that’s on him.’’38 This was during the time of the Knapp Commission, when Frank Serpico and Robert Leuci were working against the police, routing out police corruption. Serpico had always fought corruption in the police department. Leuci, however, had been a corrupt cop in the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) of the Narcotics Bureau, the same bureau out of which Egan and Grosso had worked, whom internal affairs and the federal government turned and used as a spy in the early 1970s to find other corrupt officers. Grosso had little fondness for those kinds of guys. In the 1960s, the reputation of the police was in shambles. Grosso felt that books and movies like Serpico (book published and movie made in 1973) and Prince of the City (book published in 1978 and movie made in 1981) were a disservice to the profession. As far as Grosso is concerned, he had, and still has, no fondness for cops who turn on other cops. In his view, it is hard enough to be a cop when you are attacked on all sides by civilians who do not understand your job and now you are concerned about the cops you are working with. Even today, decades later, he feels offended. As a producer, he has made it his life’s work to show the positive side of policing.39 The movies The French Connection (1971) and Dirty Harry (1971), both of which were released within two and a half months of each other, depicted officers fighting for what they believed was right, even if the law got in the way.

AFTER THE FRENCH CONNECTION Four weeks after the movie The French Connection was released on October 9, 1971, Egan filed for early retirement. He was later quoted in The


New York Times40 as saying, ‘‘I knew as soon as the film came out that I better get out of this job because there would be this guy sitting up there at headquarters reading his rule book and this guy would say, ‘Either the job is done this way or we go by the book. It can’t be both. We’ll have to rewrite the book or get rid of that guy.’ ’’ Of the character based on him, Popeye Doyle, he said, ‘‘A cop has to be the way he [Doyle] was depicted on the screen or we’d better go hide in the woods.’’ And about all the paperwork required by regulations, ‘‘I don’t do it. Popeye Doyle throws the book away and he fights crime.’’ As the article pointed out, Egan did fail to distinguish a difference between himself and the movie character. He had been with the force a little over fifteen years; it was a little over a year to the day that Patrick Murphy had taken over as commissioner. Unfortunately, a major problem for Egan was that the film was released at a time when New York City was under a well-known reformer, Commissioner Murphy. It was no longer business as usual. There was no place in his police department for abusive or corrupt officers. In the police subculture, from which both Egan and Grosso came, officers believed that a cop put his life (most often it was a ‘‘he’’) on the line every day, did his job, and was not questioned about how it was done. It was a subculture that espoused a closed social society, where no one but a cop understood the life (both Grosso’s and Egan’s lives were totally wrapped up in the police department): total loyalty to other cops; cynicism of all ‘‘civilians’’ (Egan believed everyone was ‘‘dirty’’); the right to arrest or punish anyone not respectful of police authority (a major factor in the 1960s was clashes of police with college students); the use of force for anyone deemed ‘‘deserving of it’’ (Egan’s and Grosso’s raids on bars); and the right to ‘‘hot pursuit’’ to apprehend criminals trying to escape arrest.41 Police reform questioned these values with its goals of objectivity, following the law at all cost (even when the law itself is biased); justice for all groups (even when justice for one group counters justice for another); fairness (this can be interpreted as everyone getting equal treatment for the same action, without taking into account circumstances); accountability (everything is aboveboard and transparent; no organization works this way); and truth (there are often several ways to interpret events). These two models were constantly in conflict, but the point for us, Grosso says, is that those criminals out there had to be contained or nobody’s safe.42 Three days later, on November 17, 1971, The New York Times reported that, according to Robert Daley, the deputy commissioner for public affairs, Egan had been charged with failing to return to the property clerk’s office evidence used in a trial, something all cops did until their trials were over, and with failing to show up in court when scheduled to appear. After this announcement, the Police Department issued a brief statement that Egan had been brought up on three separate sets of charges and that he had already come to trial on the first set of charges the previous Friday, November 12.

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It went on to say that the second set of charges was set for trial that Friday, November 19, and noted that the case against Egan had to be completed before December 2, 1971, because he had applied for early retirement.43 Two days later The New York Times reported that Egan had been reduced in rank to patrolman. Instead of December 3 being Egan’s first day of retirement, he went to his station house of record, the 23rd Precinct on East 104th Street in Harlem, turned in his shield and weapons, and quit the job he loved. He had been dismissed from the force, with no pension rights, twelve hours before he was to take retirement.44 Egan did not deny the charges. Instead, he stated that the punishment they were giving him was excessive for what he did (and all cops did it), and anyway, those weren’t the real reasons for his dismissal. He showed that he had exactly $89.71 cents in savings, which was all he had in the world except for a 1964 car and an eviction notice for not paying the rent on his Queens apartment. His argument against the charges was that he had broken the rules because he was out making arrests rather than filling up his time doing paper work. Egan said, ‘‘I don’t do it. Popeye Doyle throws the book away and he fights crime,’’ addressing himself as the movie character.45 As far as Egan was concerned, high police officials were also mixing him up with a film character. Egan knew he was the prototype for Doyle, and sometimes the two got fused in his mind, but in this instance involving alleged misconduct, he was clear about the separation. On March 1 The New York Times reported that Egan, for whom the New York Police Department was home, went to the state Supreme Court to counter the charges filed against him. His lawyer, Frank L. Miller, said that Egan had been the focus of a smear and harassment campaign and that his dismissal came at this time because he was the real protagonist of the movie, which depicted a ‘‘tough’’ cop, an image the department was trying to negate. Miller said that the department wanted the image of the New York cop to be one of compliance with civil rights, of one who did not resort to force.46 The judge ordered Commissioner Murphy and other high police officials to show cause the following Monday why Egan’s dismissal shouldn’t be revoked. On April 5, 1972, Justice George Starke quashed the dismissal. The ruling entitled Egan to an annual pension of $7,000 starting in 1976, which would be twenty years after he joined the force. It also entitled him to get his .38 caliber service revolver back. The judge noted that Egan’s prior superior officers, and other detectives, all testified to both his efficiency as an officer, as well as to his integrity. Egan, in Hollywood when he heard the result, said he was ‘‘very tickled—now I’ll get my gun back and I’ll feel much more comfortable.’’ His friends in the department agreed that the police action against Egan was taken because the ‘‘film had highlighted his informal mode of operations.’’47 Then, eight months later, on December 15, 1972, the front page of The New York Times read ‘‘$10-Million Heroin Stolen From a Police Office


Vault.’’ Commissioner Murphy announced that fifty-seven pounds of heroin, originally seized in the 1962 French Connection case, had been stolen from the property clerk’s office and that a white powder had been substituted. The following day, the headline read: ‘‘Police Say That They Lost 24 More Pounds of Heroin.’’ That meant that eighty-one of the original ninety-seven pounds were missing. Egan, who was still in Hollywood where he was working as a technical advisor/story consultant on The French Connection II,48 held an improvised news conference where he said that he attributed the loss to ‘‘slipshod’’ police practices. He said he had never seen any of the heroin after it had been seized in the Bronx and used at trial. When asked about the additional twenty-four pounds that had just been found missing, he said he didn’t know anything about that either.49 According to Grosso, 260 pounds of heroin and 137 pounds of cocaine were also discovered missing and had been replaced with a mixture of flour and cornstarch. The Property Clerk’s office was in total disarray, which only exacerbated the problem of locating the missing heroin.50 Robin Moore then published an article in Show magazine that added additional fuel to the fire. Grosso remembers that late in 1967, during the writing of the book The French Connection, Moore had invited Egan and Grosso to his home in Jamaica where they were writing the book The French Connection when this explosive story broke. Another detective named Joe Nunziata had his signature forged in several places on the Property Clerk’s sign-out sheet for the heroin, but he was cleared of the charges of stealing the narcotics. However, he was then questioned by federal authorities for taking a $4,000 bribe from a federal agent pretending to be a narcotics dealer, a man named Dandolo. It had been the plan that Dandolo would get arrested by a street cop, so that he could attempt to bribe his way through the court system. Instead he was arrested by Detective Nunziata who thought Dandolo was a wealthy narcotics dealer. Dandolo decided Nunziata was corrupt and set out to prove it. He told Nunziata he needed his passport back, which Nunziata had confiscated, and offered the detective $4,000. After talking back and forth, Nunziata took the money, which he later said was to make a bribery charge against Dandolo. Later that night both he and his partner were arrested and brought to the U.S. Attorney’s office in lower Manhattan.51 After hours of interrogation, Nunziata was given one last chance to persuade authorities of his innocence. He had to pass a test. One of Nunziata’s old cases, one he had worked on with Grosso, would be pulled. Nunziata would call Grosso and tell him that he (Nunziata) had a problem and that everyone was in trouble. If Sonny were an honest cop, according to the federal agents, he would ask what was wrong. However, if Grosso were to say that he, Egan, and Nunziata had to meet, that would prove Grosso was dirty and they would get him. Nunziata refused. According to Grosso, Nunziata told them, ‘‘Grosso and Egan never did anything dishonest.’’51

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Nunziata was found dead, on March 27, 1972, sitting in the passenger seat of his squad car, shot through the heart. His friends said he was too vain to shoot himself in the face, but there were some details that did not add up. Nunziata was left-handed. The shot entered at a steep downward angle. It is very hard, if not impossible, for a left-handed person to shoot himself in the heart that way. His death was ruled a suicide.52 Grosso’s book, Point Blank, coauthored with Philip Rosenberg, tells the story of Joe Nunziata, under the pseudonym Joe Longo. The narrative takes place during the Knapp Commission. According to Grosso, the Knapp Commission investigation did almost nothing except try to make police corruption highly visible and antagonize the public.53 Some of the names in the book have been changed for what the publishers said were ‘‘obvious reasons.’’ The character ‘‘Gil Lacey’’ is the pseudonym for Robert Leuci, the corrupt cop who was turned by federal agents into an informer and who decided to wear a wire to help uncover corruption. Grosso says that it’s difficult to know where an individual will draw the line between what he/she considers permissible and what is not. However, entrapment was something else. ‘‘Lacey’s’’ normal mode of behavior was to approach his fellow cops with illegal schemes to see if they would bite. If they didn’t, he would come back to them again and again. The rumor was that ‘‘Lacey’’ was part of the scheme to trap ‘‘Longo,’’ and no one ever forgave him for that.54 Both this book and Prince of the City, which tells Robert Leuci’s side of the story, were published in 1978. Grosso also expounds on his view of Internal Affairs (IA): It’s a sad fact that Internal Affairs scares the average cop shitless. And with good reason. In the New York City Police Department, the federal government, and the police departments of other major cities in the United States, the Internal Affairs Division, or whatever its local variants may be called, is a set-apart force of investigators whose secret police-like powers far exceed the power of any other branch of our criminal justice system. They can bring a cop up on departmental charges, get him dismissed from the Force and stripped of his pension for all sorts of things that may not stand up in a court of law. In effect, they have the power to take away a man’s job and his life savings without having to prove in a court of law that he did anything wrong, as they would with any other citizen.55

What Grosso’s book, and work in general, illustrate is the humanity of the cop against the self-serving interests and political manifestations of the police administration. However, in the late 1960s to early 1970s it was a time for reform introspection and academic interest in police corruption and abuse of power. As Grosso puts it: In the spring and summer of 1972, police corruption was a headline issue, and the so-called anticorruption agencies were being hailed as the saviors of New


York. This story would tear that myth apart. Because it showed how a good man could be callously destroyed. Because it showed the amoral viciousness of his persecutors. Because it showed that the men who were supposedly cleaning up law enforcement were sometimes more lawless than the cops they were trying to put behind bars. Maybe it has to be that way, but that doesn’t make it right.56

Grosso’s first book, The Murder at the Harlem Mosque, also follows the path of decent cops vs. politicized administrators. It details this through one of his cases, the murder of patrolman Phil Cardillo in a Harlem mosque. Grosso was getting burnt out in the job, while seeing wider horizons, as he was now also consulting on several movies shooting in New York.57 Grosso was assigned to the Major Case Squad in the 28th Precinct. It was the early 1970s, and he was investigating the ambushes and shooting deaths of several police officers in the city. Some of these officers had been killed by bogus 10–13 calls (‘‘cop in trouble’’). The detective was wary, because he was staking out an important member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA), who was known to have been involved in the death of at least three officers. The Murder at the Harlem Mosque details what happened when the police of the 28th Precinct responded to a 10–13 call at the Black Muslim Mosque, officially Muhammad Temple No. 7. It was a bogus call that turned into a near-riot, as officers entered the mosque with guns and were met with a wall of Black Muslims who would not let them pass. The mosque, located in a very populated area of Harlem, drew many people; then the sound of gunshots erupted. The two cops who had initially entered the mosque looking for an officer in trouble, responding to the call that had come over the police department radio, were beaten; one officer, Patrolman Phil Cardillo, was shot. He died six days later in the hospital. Meanwhile bedlam broke out outside, with cars overturned and set on fire and bottles and other implements thrown from the tops of buildings. The incident was followed by an investigation, headed by Grosso, that was stymied at every turn. The book shows, though maybe not intentionally, how people have different values, and thus different reactions to the same situation. In a sense, Grosso acted more as a reformer, as he sought to find the truth about the murder, while Commissioner Murphy and the other upper-echelon of the NYPD were more concerned with the politics of the situation, to keep the city from exploding racially. His solution was to try and cover up the killing. Grosso quotes from Report to the Commissioner, ‘‘Cops get killed all the time. The killing of a cop can be handled.’’58 Murphy has described this incident as ‘‘a low point’’ in his administration.59 This incident was instrumental in solidifying how cops felt about the NYPD administration. They felt personally affronted that neither the police commissioner nor the mayor came to the funeral.60

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Murphy has said that the reason he could not stand up for the police department was because a detailed agreement had been signed ten years earlier between Muslim ministers and the police commanders who had mosques in their precincts. The agreement stipulated that mosques were to be given special status as ‘‘sensitive locations’’ and that police officers would not rush into any mosque with guns. Because officers had done exactly that (with no knowledge of the agreement), he, Murphy, was put in a very uncomfortable position in his talks with the head of Mohammed Temple No. Seven, minister Louis Farrakhan, whom Murphy described as ‘‘anything but a rabble-rouser.’’61 History has proven Farrakhan to be just that. Murphy explained that he could not in good conscience uphold the actions of the original officers, Phil Cardillo and Vito Navarra, and Victor Padilla and his partner Ivan Negron, because their actions had violated the standing order of which they had never heard. He then went on to explain that this was the result of poor police administration and that had the department been better managed and the officers reminded of the special circumstances of all black mosques, the incident would not have occurred. Grosso said: ‘‘What a crock of shit.’’62 Grosso had a different understanding of what had happened. The chief of detectives, Al Seedman, resigned over the incident, saying that what they had learned from their investigations of the shootings of four cops, the BLA was trying to enrage cops so that they would attack blacks and riots would break out between blacks and the police. This came very close to happening. Some observers said that the Black Muslims were law-abiding, but that was not the issue, as Grosso saw it. Rather it was whether the BLA was infiltrating the Black Muslims. He was convinced the 10–13 was initiated by the BLA. And he was equally convinced that the administrative officers, from Murphy down, did not trust their officers, nor did they believe that beat cops and detectives could understand complex situation as well as they, the administrators, did. For Grosso, the only way to survive in Harlem was to show no fear, and unfortunately, that was often construed by administrators as having no understanding. A cop’s courage was mistaken for stupidity and bigotry.63 In April 1973, Grosso was put in charge of the Cardillo murder investigation,64 He was also contacted by Abby Mann, the producer of Kojak, who wanted him to work on the series, which was to be filmed in Hollywood, as a technical consultant. Near the end of May, Grosso got more pressure from Hollywood, when Phil D’Antoni, the producer of The French Connection called and told Grosso he had to decide now what he wanted to do. Grosso had twenty years on the job, his legs were killing him, and the police surgeon was very concerned about his knee, which he had originally injured while in the Army. He then reinjured it during his first contact with the BLA. That occurred when Grosso chased the leader of the BLA, Twymon Myers, into an abandoned building on 113th Street in Harlem. Myers ran


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up the building’s squared staircase, whose design created a shaft down to the basement. Grosso followed, tackling him on the fifth floor. The two men fought on the banister, which caused it to break. However, when it broke, the banister fell in toward the shaft and became entangled with the banister on the lower floor. This was lucky because the broken banister covered the shaft so that the two men only fell one story, to the fourth floor. However, Myers fell on top of Grosso, breaking Grosso’s leg. When the other detectives heard what had happened they said, ‘‘God must have been on your side,’’ to which Grosso replied ‘‘It must have been only a disciple, because if it had been God, he would have let me land on Myers.’’ Now, two years later, Grosso was in rehabilitation therapy for part of every day. He decided it was time to retire.65 From New York, Grosso went to Studio City, California, where Kojak was filmed at Universal Studios. Jurgensen took over the lead in the investigation, but maintained his ties with Grosso, who came to New York often on business. The Cardillo investigation went on for three more years and ended with a hung jury first and then a dismissal. Grosso is still angry about it: ‘‘What a bullshit farce.’’66 Egan and Grosso went on to have careers in film and television (see Filmographies below). In the early 1990s, Egan was diagnosed with colon cancer. He always believed, up to the very end, that he would beat it. As his sister put it, he always had his own way and could not fathom why he wouldn’t this time. He was sixty-five years old and living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he had been since 1988.67 Grosso went on to found Grosso-Jacobson Productions with Larry Jacobson. They are still in business making television shows, made-for-television movies, mini-series, and films. Grosso’s focus is on bettering the image of the police. Grosso-Jacobson Productions films mostly in Canada. FILMOGRAPHY FOR EDDIE EGAN68 Actor:

1.

True Blue (1989) (TV) Detective

2.

Cold Steel (1987)

3.

‘‘Houston Knights’’ (1 episode, 1987)

Lt. Hill

Mirrors (pilot) (1987) TV Episode 4.

Houston Knights (1987) (TV)

5.

Out of the Darkness (1985) (TV)

6.

Mike Hammer (1984) TV Series

Tom Duncan

Hennessey (unknown episodes, 1984–1985) aka Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (USA: complete title) aka The New Mike Hammer (USA: new title) (Continued)


278 7.

Murder Me, Murder You (1983) (TV) Hennessey aka Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer: Murder Me, Murder You

8.

‘‘T. J. Hooker’’ Max Silver (1 episode, 1983) ‘‘Requiem for a Cop’’ (1983) TV Episode

9.

Max Silver

Crazy Times (1981) (TV) Bartender

10. Eischied

Chief Inspector Ed Parks (9 episodes, 1979–1980)

aka Chief of Detectives (UK) ‘‘Buddy System’’ (1980) TV Episode

Chief Inspector Ed Parks

‘‘Powder Burn’’ (1980) TV Episode Chief Inspector Ed Parks ‘‘Fire for Hire’’ (1979) TV Episode Chief Inspector Ed Parks ‘‘The Dancer’’ (1979) TV Episode ‘‘The Accused’’ (1979) TV Episode

Chief Inspector Ed Parks Chief Inspector Ed Parks

(4 more) 11. Police Story: Confessions of a Lady Cop (1980) (TV) Captain Harrison aka The Other Side of Fear 12. To Kill a Cop (1978) (TV) (uncredited) 13. Police Woman

Chief Ed Palmer

Brock (3 episodes, 1975–1977)

Ambition (1977) TV Episode Captain The Hit (1975) TV Episode

Jack Ballard

The Bloody Nose (1975) TV Episode Brock 14. Police Story

Captain Mead (6 episodes, 1975–1977)

‘‘Stigma’’ (1977) TV Episode ‘‘Nightmare on a Sunday Morning’’ (1977) TV Episode Lieutenant Holtzman ‘‘Trial Board’’ (1977) TV Episode

Captain Mead

‘‘Oxford Gray’’ (1976) TV Episode Sean McLiam ‘‘Payment Deferred’’ (1976) TV Episode Sergeant Harry Volmer (1 more) 15. ‘‘Baretta’’

Thompson (1 episode, 1977)

‘‘Don’t Kill the Sparrow’’ (1977) TV Episode 16. Joe Forrester (1975) TV Series episodes, 1975–1976) 17. Cop on the Beat (1975) (TV)

Thompson

Sgt. Bernie Vincent (unknown Sgt. Malone

aka The Return of Joe Forrester 18. Badge 373 (1973)

Lt. Scanlon

19. ‘‘McCloud’’ Al Barber (1 episode, 1973) ‘‘Showdown at the End of the World’’ (1973) TV Episode Al Barber 20. Night of Terror (1972) (TV)

Lt. Costin


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21. ‘‘Mannix’’

Lt. Paul Haber (1 episode, 1972)

‘‘The Open Web’’ (1972) TV Episode Lt. Paul Haber 22. Prime Cut (1972)

Jake

23. The French Connection (1971)

Walt Simonson

Miscellaneous Crew: 1.

Popeye Doyle (1986) (TV) (technical advisor)

2.

The French Connection (1971) (technical consultant)

1.

Badge 373 (1973) (inspiration)

1.

Making the Connection: Untold Stories of ‘‘The French Connection’’ (2001) (TV) (dedicatee)

Writer: Thanks:

aka ‘‘The French Connection 30th Anniversary Special’’ (USA) Self: 1.

‘‘V.I.P.-Schaukel’’

Himself (1 episode, 1975)

Episode #5.2 (1975) TV Episode Himself 2.

‘‘The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson’’ Himself (1 episode, 1972) aka The Best of Carson (USA: rerun title) Episode dated 30 August 1972 (1972) TV Episode Himself

Archive Footage: 1.

Making the Connection: Untold Stories of ‘‘The French Connection’’ (2001) (TV) Himself

Retired NYPD Detective

FILMOGRAPHY FOR SONNY GROSSO69

Producer: 1.

Kings of South Beach (2007) (TV) (executive producer)

2.

N.Y.-70 (2005) (TV) (executive producer)

3.

Judgment Day: Should the Guilty Go Free (2003) (TV) (executive producer)

4.

All Around the Town (2002) (TV) (executive producer) aka Nous n’irons plus au bois (Canada: French title) (France) aka Mary Higgins Clark’s ‘‘All Around the Town’’ (USA: complete title) (Continued)


280 5.

Haven’t We Met Before? (2002) (TV) (executive producer) aka Mary Higgins Clark’s ‘‘Haven’t We Met Before?’’ (Canada: English title) aka Mary Higgins Clark’s Haven’t We Met Before? (Australia: DVD title) aka Mary Higgins Clark: Vous souvenez-vous? (Canada: French title)

6.

Lucky Day (2002) (TV) (executive producer) aka Mary Higgins Clark’s ‘Lucky Day’ (USA: complete title)

7.

Pretend You Don’t See Her (2002) (TV) (executive producer) aka Mary Higgins Clark’s Pretend You Don’t See Her (Canada: English title) aka Mary Higgins Clark’s Pretend You Don’t See Her (UK: complete title) aka Mary Higgins Clark: Ni vue ni connue (Canada: French title)

8.

The Red Phone: Manhunt (2001) (TV) (executive producer) aka AT13: Anti-Terror-Warfare (Europe: English title) aka Red Phone 2 (USA)

9.

Loves Music, Loves to Dance (2001) (TV) (executive producer) aka Mary Higgins Clark’s Loves Music, Loves to Dance (USA: complete title)

10. Making the Connection: Untold Stories of ‘‘The French Connection’’ (2001) (TV) (executive producer) aka The French Connection 30th Anniversary Special (USA) 11. You Belong to Me (2001) (TV) (executive producer) aka Mary Higgins Clark’s You Belong to Me (USA: complete title) aka Mary Higgins Clark: Tu m’appartiens (Canada: French title) 12. All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story (2000) (TV) (executive producer) aka Mary Kay Letourneau: All American Girl (USA: new title) 13. Moonlight Becomes You (1998) (TV) (executive producer) 14. Let Me Call You Sweetheart (1997) (TV) (executive producer) aka Let Me Call You Sweetheart (Canada: English title) aka Mary Higgins Clark’s Let Me Call You Sweetheart (USA: complete title) 15. While My Pretty One Sleeps (1997) (TV) (executive producer) aka Mary Higgins Clark’s While My Pretty One Sleeps (USA: complete title) 16. The Big Easy (1996) TV Series (executive producer) (unknown episodes)


281

17. Remember Me (1995) (TV) (executive producer) aka Mary Higgins Clark’s Remember Me (Canada: English title: complete title) aka Souviens-toi (Canada: French title) 18. Secret Service (1992) TV Series (executive producer) (unknown episodes) 19. Counterstrike (1991) TV Series (executive producer) (unknown episodes) aka Force de frappe (France) 20. A Family for Joe (1990) TV Series (producer) 21. Top Cops (1990) TV Series (producer) (unknown episodes) 22. A Family for Joe (1990) (TV) (executive producer) 23. True Blue (1989) (TV) (executive producer) 24. Juvenile Justice (1988) (TV) (producer) 25. The Gunfighters (1987) (TV) (executive producer) 26. Diamonds (1987) TV Series (executive producer) (unknown episodes) 27. Night Heat (executive producer) (10 episodes, 1985–1986) (producer) (1 episode, 1985) —‘‘Children of the Night’’ (1986) TV Episode (executive producer) —‘‘The Hit’’ (1986) TV Episode (executive producer) —‘‘Friends’’ (1986) TV Episode (executive producer) —‘‘The Fighter’’ (1986) TV Episode (executive producer) —‘‘The Legendary Eddie Shore’’ (1986) TV Episode (executive producer) (6 more) 28. Hot Shots (1986) TV Series (executive producer) (unknown episodes) 29. Pee-wee’s Playhouse (1986) TV Series (producer) (unknown episodes) 30. Out of the Darkness (1985) (TV) (producer) 31. Trackdown: Finding the Goodbar Killer (1983) (TV) (producer) aka Trackdown (USA: short title) 32. A Question of Honor (1982) (TV) (producer) 33. Baker’s Dozen (1982) TV Series (producer) 34. CBS Afternoon Playhouse (producer) (1 episode, 1981) —‘‘Portrait of a Teenage Shoplifter’’ (1981) TV Episode (producer) 35. The Dain Curse (1978) (mini) TV Series (associate producer) aka Dashiell Hammett’s The Dain Curse 36. Strike Force (1975) (TV) (associate producer) (Continued)


282 aka Crack aka Crackdown Actor - TV: 1.

Murder in Music City (1979) (TV) aka The Country Western Murders (USA: new title)

2.

To Kill a Cop (1978) (TV)

3.

The Godfather Saga (1977) (mini) TV Series (uncredited)

Mafitano Cop

aka The Godfather 1902–1959: The Complete Epic (USA: video title) aka The Godfather: The Complete Novel for Television (USA) 4.

Contract on Cherry Street (1977) (TV)

Rhodes, OCU

aka Stakeout on Cherry Street 5.

Mr. Inside/Mr. Outside (1973) (TV) Detective aka Hot Ice

Actor: 1.

Cruising (1980)

Det. Blasio

aka William Friedkin’s Cruising (USA: closing credits title) 2.

Report to the Commissioner (1975)

Detective

3.

The Seven-Ups (1973) (uncredited) Courier

Counterfeit Money

4.

The Godfather (1972) (uncredited) McCluskey outside hospital

Cop with Capt.

aka Operation Undercover (UK)

aka Mario Puzo’s The Godfather (USA: complete title) 5.

The French Connection (1971)

Bill Klein

1.

The Godfather Trilogy: 1901–1980 (1992) (V) (uncredited) Cop

Actor - video:

Miscellaneous Crew: 1.

Making the Connection: Untold Stories of ‘‘The French Connection’’ (2001) (TV) aka The French Connection 30th Anniversary Special (USA)

2.

Cruising (1980) (technical advisor) aka William Friedkin’s Cruising (USA: closing credits title)

3.

To Kill a Cop (1978) (TV) (technical advisor)

4.

Contract on Cherry Street (1977) (TV) (technical advisor) aka Stakeout on Cherry Street

5.

Report to the Commissioner (1975) (technical advisor) aka Operation Undercover (UK)

6.

The Seven-Ups (1973) (technical advisor)

Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso 7.

283

Kojak (technical advisor) (1 episode, 1973) —‘‘Siege of Terror’’ (1973) TV Episode (technical advisor)

8.

The Godfather (1972) (technical advisor) (uncredited) aka Mario Puzo’s The Godfather (USA: complete title)

9.

The French Connection (1971) (technical consultant)

1.

‘‘Night Heat’’ (1 episode, 1985)

Writer: —‘‘Obie’s Law’’ (1985) TV Episode (story) 2.

A Question of Honor (1982) (TV) (book Point Blank)

3.

Strike Force (1975) (TV) (story) aka Crack aka Crackdown

4.

The Seven-Ups (1973) (story)

1.

‘‘Inside TV Land: Cops on Camera’’ (2002) (TV)

2.

Making the Connection: Untold Stories of ‘‘The French Connection’’ (2001) (TV) Himself—Retired NYPD Detective/ Producer

Self-TV: Himself

aka The French Connection 30th Anniversary Special (USA) 3.

The Poughkeepsie Shuffle: Tracing ‘‘The French Connection’’ (2000) (TV) Himself—NYPD Narcotics Agent

1.

‘‘The Joe Spinell Story’’ (2001) (TV)

Self-video: Himself

AUTHOR NOTE Grosso graciously agreed to be interviewed for this chapter, and reviewed it, which gave the chapter greater depth and allowed the writing to reflect his personality and insights. The quotes at the beginning of the chapter are two of Grosso’s favorites. NOTES 1. Carlo Rotella, Good with Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and Other Characters from the Rust Belt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 134–35. 2. Robin Moore, The French Connection: A True Account of Cops, Narcotics, and International Conspiracy, 1969 (Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003), 15; Rotella, Good with Their Hands, 137; David M. Herszenhorn, ‘‘Edward R. Egan, Police Officer Who Inspired Movie, Dies at 65,’’ The New York Times, June 11, 1995. 3. Moore, 14. 4. That decided him on a police career. As told to Moore, Egan put himself in a category with Mickey Mantle. He believed that if Mantle hadn’t come along when

284


he did, he (Egan) would have had a chance at a major league career with the Yankees. Moore, The French Connection, 13–15; Rotella, Good with Their Hands, 137. As Rotella explains it, this was Egan’s account of himself, which permeates all the movies in which he was involved. This includes both French Connection movies, and Badge 373, described as ‘‘inspired by Eddie Egan’’ Rotella, Good with Their Hands, 164– 65. There is a scene in The French Connection II, when Popeye is in a French cell, trying to go cold turkey off the heroin that was pumped into his system by drug dealers. In a semi-coherent, drugged state, he goes on about how great a baseball player he was, only to lose out to Mickey Mantle, and yells out ‘‘Mickey Mantle sucks.’’ That line caused many headaches for the film makers, as their legal department advised them to get permission from Mantle to keep that line in the movie. In order to do that, the producer, Robert L. Rosen, had to find Mantle, and when he did, wound up flying out to Mantle’s home in Dallas with a copy of the film. It was screened for both Mantle and Mantle’s lawyer. When Gene Hackman screamed the line, Mantle roared with laughter and after watching the rest of the movie, signed the waiver and the line remained (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073018/trivia). 5. Moore, 14–15. 6. Moore, 15–16; Robert M. Fogelson, Big-City Police (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977). 7. Moore, 16–17. 8. Moore, 11–12, amended by Sonny Grosso. 9. Sonny Grosso and John Devaney, Murder at the Harlem Mosque (New York: Crown Publishers, 1977), 16–17. 10. Moore, 12; Grosso and Devaney, 17. 11. Moore, 12–13. 12. Grosso and Devaney, 17; Moore, 305. 13. In my conversation with Grosso, he stated that he retired in 1976 after twenty-two years on the force. 14. Rotella, 138. 15. Rotella, 136. 16. Rotella, 139, amended by Sonny Grosso. 17. Rotella, 136–37, amended by Sonny Grosso. 18. Rotella, 136–37, amended by Sonny Grosso. 19. Rotella, 144, amended by Sonny Grosso. 20. Rotella, 140. 21. Rotella, 139–40, amended by Sonny Grosso. 22. Moore, 3. 23. Rotella, 137–38, amended by Sonny Grosso. 24. Moore, 3. 25. Rotella, 138–39.; New York Times, November 6, 1995. 26. Rotella, 138. 27. Rotella, 140. 28. Sonny Grosso, ‘‘Afterword: Sonny Speaks.…’’ in The French Connection, by Robin Moore (Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003). 29. Rotella, 141. 30. Sonny Grosso, ‘‘Afterword: Sonny Speaks.…’’ in The French Connection, by Robin Moore. An example of this is Robert Lipsyte’s article on Egan and Grosso,


written in 1962, where Egan is described as dressed in a Santa suit, almost a decade before the Santa scene in the movie. Robert M. Lipsyte, ‘‘Cops in the World of ‘Junk,’ ’’ The New York Times, October 14, 1962. 31. The New York Times, Nov. 9, 1971. 32. Rotella, 111–12, enhanced by Sonny Grosso. 33. Rotella, 114. 34. Rotella, 114, amended by Sonny Grosso. 35. Sonny Grosso, ‘‘Afterword: Sonny Speaks.…’’ in The French Connection, by Robin Moore, 2003, enhanced by Sonny Grosso. 36. This was a term coined by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in the book he wrote with Nathan Glazer, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. 1963. Reprint. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970), as opposed to the concept of the ‘‘melting pot.’’ 37. New York (NY), The Knapp Commission Report on Police Corruption (New York: G. Braziller, 1973). Also see The New York Times, beginning June 19, 1970 through April 6, 1972; Peter Maas and Frank Serpico, Serpico, originally published 1973, in Serpico, Edition (New York: HarperPaperback, 1997). 38. Martin Arnold, ‘‘Murphy’s Drive on Graft Is Deeply Affecting Police,’’ The New York Times, September 20, 1971. The article uses the word ‘‘caught,’’ which Grosso changed to ‘‘charged with.’’ Gregory Wallance alludes to Murphy’s two idols, the god of Efficient Administration, which could wipe out police corruption, and the Cop, who walked a beat and handed out chewing gum to the kids on the block. Gregory Wallance, Papa’s Game (New York: Rawson, Wade Publishers,1981), 22, amended by Sonny Grosso. 39. Rotella, 109–10, enhanced by Sonny Grosso. 40. Joseph Lelyveld, ‘‘Detective Lays His Ouster to Movie Role,’’ The New York Times, December 4, 1971. 41. Joycelyn M Pollock, Ethical Dilemmas and Decisions in Criminal Justice, 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: Thompson/Wadsworth, 2007), 200–201. 42. Personal conversation with Sonny Grosso. For an analysis of how these two police cultures function, see Elizabeth Reuss-Ianni, Two Cultures of Policing: Street Cops and Management Cops (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1983). 43. It was department policy that all of its business was required to be completed within a 30-day period after retirement papers are submitted. David Burnham of the New York Times wrote this article. He was the newspaper man Frank Serpico worked with to uncover police corruption during this period. 44. Lelyveld. 45. Lelyveld. 46. Interestingly enough, while the public supported police reform, they cheered the cops in both The French Connection and Dirty Harry. Jurgensen reacted very negatively to the scene when ‘‘Popeye’’ Doyle shoots the Frenchman, Frog Two, who is unarmed, in the back. (This is the poster picture.) He felt that Friedkin had done a great disservice to the police department. The scene was kept in. When the movie was previewed, the audience cheered. Rotella, Good with Their Hands, 147–48. 47. Eric Pace, ‘‘‘French Connection’ Patrolman Wins a Suit to Regain Pension,’’ New York Times, April 6, 1972, enhanced by Sonny Grosso.

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286

48. While Egan’s filmography does not list his technical help on this movie, Rotella writes that in both the Connection movies and in Badge 373, Egan was given leeway to give his own fantasy account of himself. Pete Hamill, who wrote the screenplay for Badge 373 says basically the same thing as the crew of The French Connection. He hung around with him and got the cadence of his speech. Eddie, according to Hamill, ‘‘was his own fictional creation.’’ Rotella, Good with Their Hands, 164–65. 49. Alfred E. Clark, ‘‘Egan Links ‘Slipshod’ Practices in Police Office to Heroin Theft,’’ New York Times, December, 16, 1972. 50. See also Wallance, Papa’s Game, 27–28. For the full story of the disappearance of the narcotics, see Wallance, Papa’s Game. 51. David Burnham, ‘‘Detective Pleads Guilty to Taking $4,000 Bribe,’’ New York Times, May 22, 1973. Wallance, Papa’s Game, 110–14, amended by Sonny Grosso. 52. David Burnham, ‘‘Detective Pleads Guilty to Taking $4,000 Bribe,’’New York Times. Wallance, Papa’s Game, 114–15, amended by Sonny Grosso. 53. Philip Rosenberg and Sonny Grosso, Point Blank (New York: Grosset & Dunlop, 1978), 21–22. 54. Rosenberg and Grosso. 55. Rosenberg and Grosso, 279, amended by Sonny Grosso. 56. Rosenberg and Grosso, 283. In the book ‘‘ultimately’’ is used, not ‘‘sometimes.’’ For clarity here, the sentence that begins ‘‘Joe’s story’’ in the book has been changed to ‘‘This story.’’ These changes were suggested by Sonny Grosso. 57. Grosso and Devaney, 36–38. 58. Grosso and Devaney, 222. 59. Patrick V. Murphy and Thomas Gordon Plate, Commissioner: A View from the Top of American Law Enforcement (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977), 173. 60. Grosso and Devaney, 87–88. 61. Murphy and Plate, 176. 62. Murphy and Plate, 173–78, responded in person by Sonny Grosso. 63. Grosso and Devaney, 96–97. 64. Grosso and Devaney, 119–20. 65. Grosso and Devaney, 18–23; 127–28; personal conversation with Sonny Grosso. 66. Grosso and Devaney, 145–224. 67. Rotella, 138. Egan’s obituary, David Herszenhorn, The New York Times, November 6, 1995, and South Coast Today, November 6, 1995. 68. IMDb, ‘‘Eddie Egan,’’ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0250670/. 69. IMDb, ‘‘Filmography by type for Sonny Grosso,’’ http://www.imdb.com/name/ nm0343780/filmotype/.

FURTHER READING Fogelson, Robert M. 1977. Big-city Police. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grosso, Sonny, and John Devaney. 1977. Murder at the Harlem Mosque. New York: Crown Publishers. Herszenhorn, David M. Edward R. Egan, Police Officer Who Inspired Movie, Dies at 65. The New York Times. June 11, 1995.


Knapp Commission. 1973. The Knapp Commission Report on Police Corruption. New York: G. Braziller. Maas, Peter, and Frank Serpico. 1997 [originally published 1973]. Serpico. In Serpico, Edition. New York: HarperPaperback. Moore, Robin. 2003 [1969]. The French Connection: A True Account of Cops, Narcotics, and International Conspiracy, 309. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press. Murphy, Patrick V, and Thomas Gordon Plate. 1977. Commissioner: A View from the Top of American Law Enforcement. New York: Simon & Schuster. Pollock, Joycelyn M. 2007. Ethical Dilemmas and Decisions in Criminal Justice. 5th ed. Belmont, CA: Thompson/Wadsworth. Reuss-Ianni, Elizabeth. 1983. Two Cultures of Policing: Street Cops and Management Cops. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Rosenberg, Philip, and Sonny Grosso. 1978. Point Blank. New York: Grosset & Dunlop. Rotella, Carlo. 2002. Good with Their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen, and other Characters from the Rust Belt. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wallance, Gregory. 1981. Papa’s Game. New York: Rawson, Wade Publishers. This annotated list cited is only a partial representation of the literature and resources available on the topics of urban police during the 1960s and 1970s, urban drug enforcement, and the French Connection case. However, they form a solid base from which to grow.

1. The French Connection and its Aftermath Books Moore, Robin. 1969. The French Connection: A True Account of Cops, Narcotics, and International Conspiracy. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Reprinted with an additional preface by Robin Moore, and a new afterword by Sonny Grosso, Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003. The best factual step-by-step account of the police investigation. Moore, Robin, with Milt Machlin. 1975. The Set Up: The Shocking Aftermath to The French Connection. Pyramid Books. Reprinted with a preface by Robin Moore. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2004. A highly fictionalized account of what happened to the seized heroin from the French Connection case. Wallance, Gregory. 1981. Papa’s Game. New York: Rawson, Wade Publishers. The true account of what happened to the seized heroin from the French Connection case.

Film The French Connection: Collector’s Edition. DVD. 20th Century Fox, 2006. The 1971 film that won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (William Friedkin), and Best Actor (Gene Hackman). Based loosely on the

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actual case, Friedkin focused more on the way Egan and Grosso (Doyle and Russo) conducted themselves and NYC cops.

2. NYC Police Conlon, Edward. 2004. Blue Blood. New York: Riverhead Books. Daley, Robert. 1971. Prince of the City: The True Story of a Cop Who knew Too Much. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Company. Many of the books by Robert Daley focus on the NYC police department during the 1960s and 1970s. Some, like Target Blue and Prince of the City, are factual. Daley was the Deputy Commissioner of Public Information of the NYPD under Commissioner Patrick Murphy. Daley, Robert. 1971. Target Blue: An Insider’s View of the N.Y.P.D. New York: Dell Publishers. Knapp Commission. 1973. Knapp Commission Report of Police Corruption. New York: George Braziller Publishers. This commission investigated police corruption in New York and discerned between corrupted police who were grass-eaters as opposed to meat-eaters. Leuci, Robert. 2004. All the Centurions: A New York City Cop Remembers His Years on the Street, 1961–1981. New York: HarperCollins. Leuci was the protagonist in Robert Daley’s Prince of the City. In this book, he recollects his years as a NYC police officer. He has become a best-selling author himself. Murphy, Patrick V., and Plate, Thomas Gordon. 1977. Commissioner: A View from the Top of American Law Enforcement. New York: Simon & Schuster. Written by Patrick V. Murphy about his life as a police officer, it focuses on his tenure and philosophy as commissioner of the NYC police force from 1970 to 1973. He also discusses his philosophy as a police reformer, and his feelings about the FBI. Murphy was one of the major police reformers of his time. Murphy reduced Eddie Egan in rank and then had him dismissed from the force. The charges were later invalidated by the New York state supreme court.

3. Urban Police Domanick, Joe. 1995. To Protect and Serve: The LAPD’s Century of War in the City of Dreams. New York: Pocket Books. A sweeping, detailed history of the LAPD, with all its abuse of power and racism. Fogelson, Robert. 1977. Big-City Police. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. One of the best histories of urban police. Its focus is on politics and reform. Lane, Roger. 1967. Policing the City: Boston 1822–1885. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Although this book deals with the Boston police, much of what Lane discusses, with regard to the structure of the police, also applies to New York. This book gives the reader an understanding of where the police came from, and the differentiation between beat cops and detectives. Rubinstein, Jonathan. 1973. City Police. New York: Ballantine Books. A classic. Insight into urban police, focused on Philadelphia, that details the way police really think and operate.


Walker, Samuel. 1977. A Critical History of Police Reform: The Emergence of Professionalism. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Also focuses on police reform.

4. Histories of Drugs in the United States Courtwright, David T. 1982. Dark Paradise: Opiate Addiction in America before 1940. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. This book focuses on opiate addiction from before the Civil War, and explains how the majority of addicts before the 1990s were white, southern, upper-middle-class women. Musto, David F., M.D. 1987. The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control. Expanded edition. New York: Oxford University Press. Musto’s book gives detailed facts about the use and abuse of drugs in the United States. He explains the social and political forces behind drug laws and how we, as a country, have not learned from our past.

5. Noble Cause Corruption Film Dirty Harry. 1971, DVD release 1997, starring Clint Eastwood, directed by Don Siegel. The Seven-Ups: They Take Justice One Step Further. 1973, DVD release 2006, starring Roy Scheider, directed by Philip D’Antoni, story by Sonny Grosso.

Books Crank, John P., and Michael A. Caldero. 2000. Police Ethics: The Corruption of Noble Cause. Cincinnati: Anderson. Kappeler, Victor E., ed. 2006. The Police and Society: Touchstone Readings. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press. Klockars, Carl. 1991. Blue lies and police placebos: The moralities of police lying. In Thinking About Police: Contemporary Readings, ed. Carl B. Klockars and Stephen D. Mastrofski. 2nd ed. 424–32. New York: McGraw Hill. Klockars, Carl. 1991. The Dirty Harry problem. In Thinking About Police: Contemporary Readings, edited by Carl B. Klockars and Stephen D. Mastrofski. 2nd ed. 413–23. New York: McGraw Hill. Manning, Peter K., and Lawrence John Redlinger. 1991. Invitational edges. In Thinking About Police: Contemporary Readings, ed. Carl B. Klockars and Stephen D. Mastrofski. 2nd ed., 396–414. New York: McGraw Hill. Skolnick, Jerome H., and James J. Fyfe. 1993. Above the Law: Police and the Excessive Use of Force. New York: The Free Press. While this book is about abuse of power, there are several chapters (e.g. the first, the fifth, and the seventh) that deal with noble-cause issues. Sutton, Paul L. 1991. Getting around the Fourth Amendment. In Thinking About Police: Contemporary Readings, ed. Carl B. Klockars and Stephen D. Mastrofski. 2nd ed. 433–46. New York: McGraw Hill.

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Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein: Presidential Crime Fighters and Shapers of American Public Opinion Christopher Larimer

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To political pundits, journalists, political scientists, and indeed many others, the phrase ‘‘post-Watergate era’’ is a familiar and often-used phrase when discussing presidential politics. A casual observer of presidential approval ratings will often hear of such ratings couched in Watergate terms; i.e., ‘‘the approval ratings of the president are the lowest (highest) in the postWatergate era.’’ For political candidates with presidential aspirations, the effects of Watergate have also been substantial. Media events for presidential candidates have become no-holds-barred contests in which candidates relentlessly defend themselves against statements made five, ten, and twenty years earlier. But what is Watergate? Why did it have such a profound effect on American politics? Why is it often considered the worst scandal in modern political history? And, most importantly, who were the crucial figures in bringing this case to the public and creating such a powerful legacy? ‘‘Watergate’’ refers to the scene of the crime that ultimately led to the first resignation of an American president. During the early hours of June 17, 1972, a break-in was reported at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., the national headquarters of the Democratic Party. On June 19, 1972, two days after the burglary, two reporters for The Washington Post were the first to report a link between the White House and the suspects involved in the crime. Over the next two years, the two reporters would collaborate in a series of articles for The Washington Post that would serve as the basis for one of the most serious and far-reaching scandals in American political history. Although first described by the White House as a ‘‘third-rate burglary,’’ the subsequent investigation into the break-in would later result in the indictment of seven aides to President Nixon and ultimately force the president himself to resign to avoid indictment. Because of this, the journalists who broke the case, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post, are icons of political crime fighting and political accountability. As Alicia Shepard writes, Bernstein and Woodward are ‘‘two of the most celebrated journalists in the world. Their names could be Jeopardy clues.’’ (Shepard 2007). As testimony to their iconic status, Woodward and Bernstein’s handscribbled notes from the Watergate years were recently purchased by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas for $5 million. Soon after their story broke connecting the White House to the Watergate break-in in October of 1972, Woodward and Bernstein were simply known as ‘‘Woodstein’’ by their peers. In 1973, The Washington Post received a Pulitzer Prize for ‘‘Woodstein’s’’ investigative reporting of the scandal. The immediate and long-term effects of Watergate on presidential as well as congressional politics have been significant, both in terms of the relationship between the media and government and between the public and government. Most notably, in addition to instigating the investigation that led to first resignation of a sitting American president, as well as institutionalizing a new form of political reporting, Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation has shaped the public’s view of presidential administrations.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

This chapter will focus on the enduring legacy of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and their investigation into the Watergate scandal, on presidential politics and political accountability. The chapter will proceed as follows. First, there will be a brief biographical sketch of these two figures. This will be followed by a more in-depth discussion of the Watergate case itself, including a discussion of Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting from 1972 to 1974. The following section will then be split into two parts: the first examining the immediate effects of ‘‘Woodstein’s’’ reporting and the second focusing on more long-term effects. The emphasis here will be on the inverse relationship between political accountability and trust in government caused by the Watergate story. This will be followed by a discussion of Woodward’s ongoing assault on presidential accountability. Finally, the chapter will conclude with a broader discussion of Woodward and Bernstein’s roles in modern presidential politics as well the implications of their work on the relationship between the media and political figures and public attitudes toward government.

WHO ARE BOB WOODWARD AND CARL BERNSTEIN? The two figures that broke the Watergate story could not have been more different in personality and professional conduct. Prior to the Watergate scandal, the two rarely spoke to each other, let alone worked together. In fact, the duo’s first account of the Watergate investigation, All the President’s Men first published in 1974, presents a contrasting and initially distrustful relationship between the two men. Yet, despite these initial differences, the two were able to work quite well together in helping to bring down the most powerful man in American government. Moreover, despite their tenuous beginning, Woodward and Bernstein are credited with redefining the scope of political journalism. Prior to covering the break-in at the Watergate Hotel, an event that ultimately would bring down the president, Bob Woodward had served only nine months at The Washington Post and had been a reporter for only two years. In fact, before Watergate, Woodward readily admits to having covered relatively mundane stories for The Washington Post. The portrait of Woodward is that of a prim reporter, ambitious yet obedient. A Yale graduate and former communications officer in the navy, Woodward’s own description of himself in All the President’s Men presents a portrait of someone who tended to be acquiescent to authority. In terms of talent, at the time of the break-in Woodward was certainly the lesser of the two reporters. Some scholars have speculated that Woodward’s education at Yale, including his involvement in one of Yale’s secret societies, afforded Woodward access to government documents not normally available to the public. Such comments have not been substantiated by Woodward himself.

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Carl Bernstein, by contrast, was a college dropout, often challenged authority, and was incautiously ambitious. As Alicia Shepard writes, ‘‘If Woodward was strait-laced, clean-shaven, and determined to please his editors, Carl Bernstein was the opposite.’’ (Shepard 2007, 17). Bernstein began his journalistic career as a copy boy at The Washington Evening Star. In 1965, he joined The Washington Post as a full-time reporter. In their account of the Watergate investigation, Woodward and Bernstein admit that Bernstein was the better writer, and in fact, was probably the better reporter at the time of the burglary. Colleagues tended to describe Bernstein as reckless and aggressive, but very talented. In her research on the two contrasting personalities, Shepard provides Woodward’s own assessment of Bernstein following Watergate story. According to Woodward, ‘‘there is a kind of arrogance to him [Bernstein]. It’s as if he’s convinced that six hours of his work is worth twenty hours of someone else’s. And he’s probably right.’’ Bernstein’s style, because it was in direct contrast with Woodward’s, initially created a level of antagonism between the two. As recounted by the two reporters in All the President’s Men, during the initial coverage of the scandal Bernstein was incessantly harassing the editor about Woodward’s work and would often rewrite Woodward’s stories. Thus, it is safe to say that Bernstein was probably the more tenacious of the two reporters at the time of the scandal. What was remarkable about both Woodward and Bernstein in 1972 was their persistence in tracking down sources, facts, and statements, and relating them to the Watergate break-in. Given the scant attention paid by most reporters and news organizations to the initial story, the ability of Woodward and Bernstein to keep pushing is testament to their political and crime-fighting instincts. As will be discussed in the chapter, the ambition and careful attention to detail by both reporters transformed a story described by the White House as ‘‘third-rate burglary’’ into an event that forced the resignation of an American president for the first time in the history of the United States.

WHAT IS WATERGATE? The most extensive and politically in-depth discussion of the Watergate scandal comes from Woodward and Bernstein’s own account in All the President’s Men. As the authors discuss, the story began on June 17, 1972, in what was perceived as a relatively innocuous break-in at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., the national headquarters for the Democratic Party. That Woodward and Bernstein would cover the initial break-in was purely happenstance. Bernstein had been on probation and was assigned to weekend duty at The Washington Post. Woodward, who was awakened that Saturday morning and asked to cover the break-in, reluctantly made his way down to the courthouse for the initial hearing. The spark for


Woodward came when James McCord, one of the five burglars at the Watergate Hotel, admitted in the courtroom to having been a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). As Woodward and Bernstein began searching for more information on McCord, the two uncovered evidence linking the bank accounts of the burglars to the Committee for the Reelection of President, or CRP as it was commonly referred to, for President Richard Nixon. On June 19, 1972, The Washington Post ran a story by Woodward and Bernstein reporting a link between the burglars and the CRP. Woodward and Bernstein would later learn that the burglars were also connected to Howard Hunt, a political consultant in the White House. In August and September of 1972, Woodward and Bernstein reported that the burglars were in fact paid by a ‘‘secret fund’’ within the CRP that had been implemented to finance operations discrediting political opposition to President Nixon. It was at this point that the two reporters began to realize the magnitude of the case. A significant turning point in the scandal came the following month. Just four months after their initial story about the breakin, on October 10, 1972, The Washington Post published a story linking the Watergate burglary to efforts on behalf of members of President Nixon’s reelection campaign to discredit any and all political opposition. The headline read, ‘‘FBI Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged Democrats.’’ The most famous political investigation of the twentieth century had now begun. Just one month after the October 10th story in The Washington Post, President Nixon was reelected to a second term by one of the largest margins in presidential history. However, by January of 1973, indictments were already being handed out to the five burglars (including James McCord, Jr., former Nixon administration aide) and, more damaging to the White House, to Howard Hunt, counsel to the CRP, and G. Gordon Liddy, a former assistant to a top White House aide. What is remarkable is that despite the president’s enormous popularity, Woodward and Bernstein continued to question details surrounding the Watergate burglary. The press in American politics has long been considered a linkage mechanism between citizens and government. However, in the years following the Watergate investigation that responsibility shifted to a more ‘‘watchdog’’ role. Following the general election in 1972, members of the media were singing the praises of the Nixon administration. Woodward and Bernstein could have easily slipped into this role, assuming that a widely popular president would never engage in illegal activity. They remained vigilant, however, in their investigation. In the early months of 1973, pressure increasingly mounted to hold someone accountable for the Watergate break-in. The indictments of the five burglars as well as former Nixon aides were followed by resignations of H. R. Haldeman (White House Chief of Staff) and John Ehrlichman (a top assistant to President Nixon), as well as Attorney General Richard Kleindienst on April 30. That same day, John Dean, White House counsel, was also fired. The following month, the Senate Watergate Committee began holding

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public testimony regarding White House, and more specifically, President Nixon’s involvement in the scandal. That same month The Washington Post received a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting of the scandal, in large part because of the investigatory reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Testimony in June and July of 1973 revealed that not only did Richard Nixon have knowledge of and perhaps even ordered the burglary, but also that the president maintained a secret taping system in the Oval Office. It was believed that the tapes provided the ‘‘smoking gun’’ regarding the president’s involvement in the scandal. Throughout the rest of the year President Nixon battled with Congress and special prosecutors over possession of the tapes, while several more aides resigned or were fired, many of whom were indicted by Congress. In April 1974, the White House released transcripts of White House tapes to the House Judiciary Committee. The editing of the tapes, in particular an 181=2-minute gap in one of the tapes, raised suspicion among committee members, and they demanded that the actual tapes be turned over to the committee. The White House initially resisted the committee’s request, but was ultimately forced by the U.S. Supreme Court to turn over the tapes on July 24, 1974. Three days later the House Judiciary Committee passed an article of impeachment against President Nixon, charging the president with obstruction of justice. To make matters worse for the president, Woodward and Bernstein’s All the President’s Men was released in June of 1974. Moreover, in the month prior, The Washington Post ran a story by Woodward and Bernstein that indicated that President Nixon had requested ‘‘blackmail’’ payments for the burglars at the Watergate Hotel. Finally, on August 9, 1974, after a two-year public investigation led by Woodward and Bernstein, congressional hearings, and U.S. Supreme Court rulings, President Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign from office. Two years later, the movie All the President’s Men, starring Robert Redford as Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein, was released, providing an in-depth look into the difficulties faced by Woodward and Bernstein during their investigation. That same year, Final Days, by Woodward and Bernstein, was published. The book is a more focused examination of President Nixon’s last few days as president and provides a closer glimpse of his fixation on squelching any and all political opposition. From the initial break-in on June 17, 1972, until the resignation of President Nixon almost two years later, Woodward and Bernstein were unrelenting in tracking down sources, details, leads, or any information suggesting a link between the burglary and the White House. They were the first reporters to suggest White House involvement in 1972, and in 1973 and 1974 were able to reveal President Nixon’s direct involvement in the scandal. Woodward and Bernstein’s unwillingness to let the story die is their ultimate contribution. Although nobody in the summer of 1972 believed the break-in to be linked in any way to the inner workings of the executive branch, by


the summer of 1974, Woodward and Bernstein had convinced almost the entire nation that Watergate was part of a larger ploy by the Nixon White House to discredit political opponents. LEGACY OF WATERGATE The legacy of Watergate is profound. As evidenced by the discussion thus far, Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation into the break-in at the Watergate hotel led to a significant shake-up in the executive branch of American government. But did the Watergate investigation lead to more practical reforms? Iconic figures are those who have had a lasting impact on one or more facets of society. Did the Watergate investigation affect the legislative branch, i.e., the U.S. Congress? If so, what sort of legislation was enacted as a result of the investigation? How did Watergate shape public opinion regarding the power of the executive branch? Is Watergate still relevant today? The following sections will examine the short- and long-term effects of Watergate on the American political system. Short-term Effects The immediate impact of the Watergate investigation was a significant shift in the role of the media. As noted earlier, the work of Woodward and Bernstein redefined the nature of the relationship between the executive branch and the media. No longer would the media sit idly by, passively accepting White House statements. Rather, the media became increasingly skeptical of presidential administrations and government generally. Watergate’s immediate impact can in part be traced through legislative action on the part of the U.S. Congress. Following Watergate, a series of bills was passed to prevent any further abuses of power. As would be expected, the bills sought to significantly reduce presidential prerogative and presidential power. Two prominent pieces of legislation include the War Powers Act of 1973, which requires the president to obtain congressional approval prior to waging war, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which requires the president to obtain a court order prior to conducting clandestine intelligence-gathering activities on U.S. citizens. In December 2005, it was revealed that President Bush bypassed the language of this legislation by gathering information on U.S. citizens without court approval. Ironically, such overreach of power invoked comparisons to the actions of President Nixon in the Watergate scandal and significantly reduced the approval ratings of President Bush. Other pieces of legislation passed in the aftermath of Watergate were aimed more generally at presidential conduct and public accountability. The Ethics in Government Act of 1978 requires annual disclosure of all financial

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records by presidents and vice presidents, the Presidential Records Act of 1978 transferred ownership of presidential records to the federal government upon the president’s leaving office, and the Government Sunshine Act of 1976 further increased government openness by placing tight restrictions on the ability of a federal agency to hold meetings that are not open to the public. The Ethics in Government Act also created the position of special prosecutor who could be appointed by the Congress or the attorney general to investigate high ranking officials, i.e., the president. (Archibald Cox was appointed in May 1973 by the attorney general to serve as special prosecutor for the Watergate case. On October 20, 1973, President Nixon fired Cox in what became known as the ‘‘Saturday Night Massacre’’ and eliminated the office of special prosecutor.) Like the two acts described in the previous paragraph, these three pieces of legislation were all a direct result of the Watergate scandal and were all aimed at restoring faith in the federal government and creating a sense of accountability among federal officials, particularly the president. Reducing presidential power also extended to the budgetary process. The Budget Control and Impoundment Act of 1974 sought to reduce the president’s ability to withhold federal money or reprogram federal money after it had been allocated. Like the other congressional acts mentioned above, the intent was to increase congressional involvement in the legislative process while at the same time reducing the president’s. Two of a president’s most formidable powers are those relating to foreign policy and those relating to the budget. Legislation following the Watergate scandal sought to reduce the president’s authority in both areas. As Michael Genovese, a leading scholar on Watergate and the Nixon presidency, notes, all of these pieces of legislation share a common link to public attitudes surrounding the Watergate scandal—the president wielded too much power, and that power was corruptible. Watergate also contributed to a growing distrust in government. Figure 1 presented on page 299 illustrates Americans’ trust in government immediately after the Watergate investigation. Although prior to Woodward and Bernstein’s story of October 10, 1972, trust in government had been declining, the ongoing reporting of the scandal contributed to a sharp decline in trust in government. As Figure 1 shows, in 1972, 53 percent of the public trusted the federal government in the combined categories ‘‘just about always’’ or ‘‘most of the time.’’ By 1974, that percentage had dropped seventeen percentage points to 36 percent. Woodward and Bernstein’s two-year assault on White House involvement in the burglary at the Watergate Hotel significantly shaped public opinion about the federal government. No longer did a majority of the American public trust the federal government ‘‘to do what is right.’’ Rather, in large part due to Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation, only about a third of Americans trusted the federal government in 1974. In fact, the


Figure 1. Trust in the federal government, 1964–1978.

Source: National Election Studies (NES) for ‘‘Trust in Government.’’ Note: ‘‘Trust in Government’’ combines the answers ‘‘just about always’’ and ‘‘most of the time’’ from the following question: ‘‘How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right– just about always, most of the time or only some of the time?’’

seventeen percentage point shift is the largest two-year change through 2004 since the American National Election Studies began asking the question in 1958. (Data were unavailable from the National Election Studies for ‘‘Trust in Government’’ for the years between 1958 and 1964.) The Watergate investigation, as expected, also had an immediate impact on the public’s view of the presidency. Figure 2 displays the percentage of Americans who expressed a ‘‘great deal’’ of confidence in the presidency. Although the decline is not as immediate as that displayed in Figure 1, the graph in Figure 2 shows a sharp decrease in the number of Americans who were confident in the presidency following the resignation of President Nixon. What is remarkable about this question is the lack of specificity. Scholars tend to find that approval of political institutions increases when questions are framed in terms of the ‘‘institution’’ rather than a particular individual or current makeup of government. Despite asking about the institution of the presidency, rather than a single individual, approval of the institution decreased sharply after 1974. In 1974, 28 percent of Americans expressed a great deal of confidence in the presidency, and by 1976,

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Figure 2. Confidence in the presidency, 1974–1979.

Source: Harris Poll for ‘‘Confidence in Presidency.’’ Note: Data were unavailable for the year 1975. Confidence in the presidency is the percentage of respondents expressing ‘‘a great deal of confidence’’ in the White House from the following question: ‘‘As far as people in charge of running the White House are concerned, would you say you have a great deal of confidence, only some confidence, or hardly any confidence at all in them?’’

confidence had dropped by seventeen percentage points to 11 percent. It was not until after the 1976 presidential election that confidence in the presidency slowly began to increase. The resignation of President Nixon, an event that was set in motion by the investigation of Woodward and Bernstein in 1972, significantly reduced public confidence in the top elected office in the United States. As evidenced by Figures 1 and 2, Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation tended to affect perceptions of all government officials. Figure 3 shows the percentage of Americans who believed that government officials are ‘‘crooked.’’ The number of people who perceived ‘‘quite a few’’ government officials to be crooked increased dramatically between 1972 and 1974, going from 36 percent to 45 percent in just two years. In fact, the 45 percent mark is the highest mark for the entire decade of the 1970s. People tended to generalize from Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation that politicians, not just the president, were self-interested decision makers unlikely to pursue the public good. The phrasing of Woodward and Bernstein’s articles is worth


Figure 3. Perceived number of crooked government officials, 1968–1978.

Source: National Election Studies (NES) for ‘‘Are Government Officials Crooked?’’ Note: ‘‘Are Government Officials Crooked’’ uses the answer ‘‘quite a few’’ from the following question: ‘‘Do you think that quite a few of the people running the government are crooked, not very many are, or do you think hardly any of them are crooked at all?’’

noting. By writing that the White House had ‘‘sabotaged’’ Democrats and that Nixon had ‘‘blackmailed’’ the burglars, Woodward and Bernstein were able to tap into the primary reservation the public has about politicians— that they will use their power to further their own interests at the expense of the public. Thus, from Figures 1–3, it is evident that the work of Woodward and Bernstein had a profound impact on public opinion and popular support for government officials and political institutions. Finally, as expected, Watergate had a significant impact on the midterm elections of 1974 as well as the first presidential election following the scandal in 1976. In 1972, Republicans were already in the minority in both chambers of Congress. However, the results of 1974 midterm elections significantly worsened the situation for Republicans. Following the 1972 elections, Democrats held a fifty-seat advantage, 242 to 192, in the U.S. House of Representatives. After the 1974 elections, that advantage had increased to 147 seats, 291 to 144, with the president’s party losing forty-eight seats. In the U.S. Senate, the story was just as bleak. In 1972, Democrats held a fifty-six-seat majority. After the 1974 elections, that number had increased to sixty, a politically significant number because sixty concurring votes are

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required to end a filibuster as well as act on budget resolutions and reconciliation bills. It is also suggestive of the impact of Woodward and Bernstein’s claim that Democrats had been ‘‘sabotaged’’ by the White House. The immediate effect of Watergate on presidential politics came first from the short presidential tenure of Gerald Ford from 1974 to 1976, as well as the 1976 presidential campaign. On September 8, 1974, President Ford, just one month into his presidency, made perhaps the most defining decision of his presidency—the decision to pardon Richard Nixon for his involvement in the Watergate scandal. Scholars have argued that President Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon just one month after Nixon’s resignation, crippled his administration. Indeed, this is reflected in Figures 2 and 3, which show that although confidence in the presidency continued to decline after 1974 (Figure 2), fewer Americans perceive ‘‘quite a few’’ government officials to be ‘‘crooked’’ after 1974 (Figure 3). The pardon seemed to further indicate a collusion and abuse of power at the highest level of government. Moreover, the pardon connected President Ford to President Nixon. Ford’s tenure as president seemed to be a continuation of the Watergate scandal, a scandal the public had reacted negatively and vociferously to. Two years later, in 1976, the American public would have a chance to elect their first president since the scandal. Prior to the Iowa Caucus in 1976, Jimmy Carter was a relatively unknown former governor of Georgia. However, his message was simple and appealing—‘‘I’ll never lie to you. I’ll never mislead you.’’ (Woodward 1999). Coming on the heels of the Watergate investigation and President Nixon’s subsequent resignation, Carter’s message struck a chord with the American people. In their coverage of the scandal, Woodward and Bernstein repeatedly emphasized the covert and clandestine nature of the scandal— one particular headline read ‘‘Still Secret—Who Hired Spies and Why’’ (Woodward 1999, 41). The Watergate scandal had ripped a gaping hole through any preexisting perceptions that presidents are model public servants. Carter’s pledge seemed to be exactly what the American public wanted to hear more than anything else from a candidate with presidential aspirations. Thus, it seems reasonable to suggest that the work of Woodward and Bernstein not only affected public perceptions of American political figures and political institutions, but also had a significant impact on political behavior.

LONG-TERM EFFECTS One reason why Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation resonated so strongly with the American public is that it taps basic human predispositions. Public opinion polls and political behavior experiments consistently reveal a strong predisposition against leaders perceived as power hungry.


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Figure 4. Trust in the federal government and crooked government officials, 1974-2004.

Source: National Election Studies (NES) for ‘‘Trust in Government.’’ Note: ‘‘Trust in Government’’ combines the answers ‘‘just about always’’ and ‘‘most of the time’’ from the following question: ‘‘How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right– just about always, most of the time or only some of the time?’’

People tend to prefer leaders who are reluctant for power as opposed to leaders who are perceived as craving power. Watergate revealed that the public will respond very negatively and forcefully to leaders who overextend their power. The legislation cited earlier in the chapter that was enacted in the years following the Watergate scandal are testament to people’s strong aversion to leaders who overextend their rule. Although such attitudes were dormant for much of American political history, Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation ignited such suspicions, and they have yet to recede. To demonstrate the public’s sensitivity to abuses of power, Figure 4 presents the ‘‘trust in government’’ measure from the years immediately prior to the Watergate scandal through 2004, thirty years later. As Figure 4 shows, once such suspicions were aroused, faith in government was difficult to restore. Figure 4 demonstrates that the Watergate scandal marked the beginning of a significant decline in trust in government. By 1980, only 25 percent of the population could trust the government in Washington to do what is right ‘‘just about always’’ or ‘‘most of the time.’’ Although that number

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increased in the mid-1980s, the number bottomed out in 1994 at 21 percent. That year marked the GOP’s ‘‘Contract with America’’ and the Republican takeover in the U.S. House of Representatives. What is interesting, however, about Figure 4, is the relatively stability of the trust-in-government measure despite other presidential scandals. In late 1986 and early 1987 the Reagan administration was embroiled over a scandal involving illegal arms sales to Iran as a means of funneling money to Contras in Nicaragua. What is remarkable here is the fact that President Reagan went on television in November of 1986 initially to deny any wrongdoing. As the controversy continued to mount, Reagan went to the airways a week later to retract his earlier statement and in fact admitted that arms sales did take place, but that they were not in exchange for hostages. Similar to the Watergate scandal, the president of the United States initially denied any wrongdoing and then had to withdraw his statement. The integrity and honesty of the president were being questioned openly and publicly. However, the ‘‘trust’’ in government measurement in 1988, the first following what became known as the ‘‘Iran-Contra affair,’’ was at 40 percent. That is, 40 percent of the American public still expressed trust in government to do the right thing ‘‘most of the time’’ or ‘‘just about always.’’ That is four percentage points higher than the trust measurement after Watergate. Moreover, in the two-year period during the Watergate scandal the trust measurement decreased by seventeen percentage points. Before and after the Iran-Contra affair, the change in trust in government was a net increase by two percentage points. The Watergate scandal seemed to have a more dramatic effect on American public opinion, again highlighting the significance of Woodward and Bernstein’s coverage of the scandal. The other notable presidential scandal in the post-Watergate era involves the marital affair of President Clinton. In the summer and fall of 1997 reports surfaced that President Clinton engaged in sexual relations with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. Throughout the early months of 1998 President Clinton publicly and vehemently denied having any inappropriate contact with Ms. Lewinsky. Throughout the summer of 1998, an investigation by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr revealed strong evidence that an affair did in fact take place. By August of that year, President Clinton became the first sitting president to testify about his own behavior before a grand jury. During that same month President Clinton went before the American public to withdraw and apologize for his earlier statements regarding the affair. The president admitted that he did in fact engage in an affair with Ms. Lewinsky. Like Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair, one of the primary issues here is presidential honesty. President Clinton blatantly and knowingly lied to the American public about his behavior while in office. However, as shown in Figure 4, the trust-in-government was measured at 40 percent in 1998 and 44 percent in 2000, four and eight percentage points, respectively, higher than the first trust measure after the Watergate scandal. Moreover, the


net change from 1996 to 1998 in trust in government is a positive seven percentage points. Similar to the Iran-Contra affair, there is actually a net gain in trust in government following an executive scandal involving presidential integrity and honesty. This suggests one of two things: (1) that the reporting of Woodward and Bernstein numbed the American public to presidential transgressions or (2) that Watergate was a significant and unique event in presidential history. Most likely, the answer is both. What is more revealing about the scandal involving President Clinton is that in December 1998 the House Judiciary Committee passed four articles of impeachment, including obstruction of justice. In July 1974, less than one month before he resigned, President Nixon was given the same indictment. Moreover, unlike President Nixon, President Clinton was actually impeached. On December 19, 1998, the U.S. House of Representatives passed two articles of impeachment against President Clinton, including obstruction of justice, making Clinton just the second president in the history of the United States to be impeached. Although the U.S. Senate voted in February 1999 not to impeach Clinton, the vote in the U.S. House and subsequent party line vote in the Senate spoke to the seriousness of Clinton’s misconduct. Because the impeachment proceedings formally began in late December 1998 and extended through the early months of 1999, it is useful to look at the trust-in-government measure for 2000, the first assessment after the Lewinsky affair. As Figure 4 shows, trust in government actually increased between 1998 and 2000, going from 40 percent to 44 percent of the American public expressing trust in the federal government. Again, what is revealing is the lack of any substantive change in American attitudes toward the government in Washington. Unlike Watergate, which precipitated a major change in beliefs about the trustworthiness of government, the Clinton affair had little effect. This suggests that Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation was unique not only to American politics, but also to presidential scandals. The lasting effect of Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation on the presidency is also shown in Figure 5. Confidence in the presidency declined significantly following the Watergate scandal (Figure 2). Figure 5 extends the poll to 30 years after the Watergate scandal. As Figure 5 shows, not only did confidence in the presidency decline significantly following the Watergate scandal, but the scandal was a particularly low point for Americans’ perceptions of the institution of the presidency. Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation uniquely affected public attitudes toward occupants of the White House. That only 11 percent of Americans expressed a great deal of confidence in the presidency in 1976 is worth noting. Following the Iran-Contra affair, confidence ranged from 17 percent to 23 percent. During the aftermath of President Clinton’s affair and subsequent impeachment, confidence did not dip below 20 percent. Only in 1994–1995, immediately prior to the government shutdown in December 1995, did public attitudes toward the presidency approach

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Figure 5. Confidence in the presidency, 1974–2004.

Source: Harris Poll for ‘‘Confidence in Presidency.’’ Note: Data were unavailable for the year 1975. Confidence in the presidency is the percentage of respondents expressing ‘‘a great deal of confidence’’ in the White House from the following question: ‘‘As far as people in charge of running the White House are concerned, would you say you have a great deal of confidence, only some confidence, or hardly any confidence at all in them?’’

Watergate levels, bottoming out at 13 percent. Woodward and Bernstein’s coverage of the scandal in 1972 through 1974 was a direct challenge to presidential authority and revealed the problems of centralizing presidential power. And, as Figure 5 shows, their work had a profound effect on attitudes toward the institution of the presidency. Ultimately, what Figures 4 and 5 demonstrate is that Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation into the Watergate scandal was a watershed moment in American politics, particularly how the public viewed government and the president. Other presidential scandals have come and gone with relatively little change in public opinion about the federal government. This was not the case with Watergate. Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation exposed fraud, dishonesty, and abuses of power at the highest level of government, and the American public reacted strongly and negatively to such abuses—more so than they would for other presidential transgressions. Even the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, failed to produce a more significant change in trust in government than the Watergate scandal. Between 2000 and 2002, the percentage of people expressing trust in government ‘‘just about always’’ or ‘‘most of the time’’ increased by twelve percentage points; after Watergate that same percentage decreased by seventeen percentage points.


Figures 4 and 5 suggest that Watergate shaped long-term beliefs and attitudes about government, but is it possible to establish a direct connection between Watergate and American attitudes toward government ten or twenty years after the scandal? What evidence is there that people believe Watergate to be a serious and defining moment in American politics? In 1997, ‘‘All Politics’’ conducted a survey of American attitudes about the scandal as part of a twenty-fifth anniversary forum on Watergate. Participants in the survey were asked whether Watergate was ‘‘a serious matter or just politics.’’ A majority of the respondents, 52 percent, responded that Watergate was a serious matter, compared to 44 percent who said it was ‘‘just politics.’’ Although 52 percent is not an overwhelming majority, it does suggest that even after twenty-five years Watergate still resonated with the American public. Perhaps even more telling is the fact that 78 percent of the respondents agreed that Watergate was a ‘‘turning point for trust in government.’’ This provides more empirical backing to the notion that Watergate shaped American attitudes about government for a generation (Figure 4) and thus speaks to the importance of Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation. Woodward and Bernstein’s coverage of the scandal is viewed as a turning point in American politics: the relationship between the executive branch and the public was significantly altered by their reporting. To be sure, Figures 4 and 5 show that people are extraordinarily sensitive to any abuses of power. People tend to be highly sensitive to fairness norms, particularly related to those making decisions on our behalf. What Figure 4 demonstrates is that once the American public became aware of an elected official, in this case, the top elected official, engaging in an abuse of power, trust in government was lost. Louis Liebovich writes that ‘‘a palpable public mood alteration took place in the immediate post-Watergate years. Presidents were liars. Government was bad.’’ (Liebovich 2003, 119). Figure 4 demonstrates that this mood has yet to reverse course. Other scholars have also taken note of the significance of Watergate in American political history. Robert Spitzer writes that ‘‘Watergate was a transformative moment for the institution of the presidency…it altered the nature of the imperial presidency.’’ (Spitzer 1999, 541). Figures 1–5 and the ‘‘All Politics’’ survey indicate that Watergate did in fact usher in an era of reduced credibility for presidents and politicians generally. After Watergate, the public was strongly anti-politics and anti-government. Figure 4 indicates this trend had longlasting effects; in the thirty years after Watergate, the public remained convinced that politicians, and by nature, government are untrustworthy. Again, this can be attributed to Woodward and Bernstein’s coverage of the scandal—that abuses of power permeated the executive branch of government. In the book Shadow, Bob Woodward discusses the lasting effects of Watergate on presidents and presidential administrations. As discussed earlier in the chapter, the Watergate scandal had an indirect, but profound

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impact on the first president after Watergate. President Gerald Ford’s decision to pardon President Nixon is often considered by presidential scholars to not only be the defining characteristic of his presidency, but also the main reason for his failure to be reelected. The presidential election of 1976 was thus significantly affected by the legacy of Watergate, from Ford’s pardon to the campaign slogans of Jimmy Carter. As Woodward writes, President Carter’s election in 1976 was a ‘‘direct response to Watergate’’ and the election was entirely about ‘‘trustfulness and honesty’’ (Woodward 1999, 84). Although presidential elections tend to be part policy and part personality, Watergate shifted the focus to personality. Moreover, the 1976 election was not just about personality generally, but specifically about the traits of honesty and integrity. But did this trend affect future presidents? Did the effects of Watergate diminish over time? Were there any long-term effects on presidents? Consider the two most prominent presidential scandals in the two decades after Watergate: the Iran-Contra Affair in 1985–1986 and President Clinton’s marital affair in 1997–1998. It is not uncommon to see both instances placed in the context of Watergate by scholars and reporters other than Woodward and Bernstein. For example, Robert J. Spitzer, when discussing the differences between the scandals of President Nixon and those of President Clinton, writes of ‘‘Watergate vs. Monicagate’’ (Spitzer 1999, 541). A database search of political science journals reveals that the phrase ‘‘Irangate’’ appears in thirty different academic works between 1987 and 1999 in reference to the Iran-Contra affair. This suggests that the work of Woodward and Bernstein defined the nature of investigative political reporting. Presidential transgressions following the Watergate scandal tended to be couched in Watergate nomenclature. Thus, beyond shaping public attitudes toward government, Woodward and Bernstein were, in a sense, able to create a standard language for discussing presidential scandals. Finally, a more general result of ‘‘Woodstein’s’’ investigation was the effect their reporting had on presidential power. As Aaron Wildavsky notes, the Watergate scandal raised serious questions concerning the legitimacy of the institution of the presidency. Concerns over legitimacy, Wildavsky argued, are significant, because they cut across policy domains and governing institutions. The president significantly affects both domestic and foreign politics and policy. Thus, because Watergate affected fundamental attitudes regarding the scope and legitimacy of presidential power, the reverberations were felt throughout the entire political system. The after-effects of the scandal, as a result, were aimed at limiting presidential power. Genovese notes that Watergate affected both the policy activities of the president as well as presidential–congressional relations. According to Genovese, ‘‘the aftermath of Watergate led to a decline in the presidency and a rebirth of congressional power.’’ (Genovese 2003, 168). As discussed earlier in the chapter, Congress passed several pieces of legislation after Watergate


aimed at curbing presidential power, particularly budgetary and war powers. What is significant is that even thirty years after the scandal, executive branch officials contend that the power of the president has been severely diminished in light of the Watergate scandal. Indeed, scholars and pundits often noted the frustration of the Bush-Cheney administration in 2001 and 2002 in terms of increasing presidential power. As Kenneth Jost writes, ‘‘Bush entered the White House in 2001 convinced that the presidency had been weakened since Nixon was forced to resign in August 1974.’’ (Jost 2006, 173). Although President Bush, and particularly Vice President Cheney, the former chief to President Gerald Ford, favored increasing the power of the president, they were met with resistance from both the public and the Congress. Presidential scholars often talk of both a strong- and weak-presidency models. The former is one in which the president commands authority and respect and is relatively unchecked in pursuit of his agenda. The latter is just the opposite: the president is unable to wield discretionary control over his policy or political agenda. Genovese writes that, ‘‘Watergate turned out to be the final nail in the coffin of the unambiguous acceptance of the strong-presidency model.’’ (Genovese 2003, 168). In short, the investigation by Woodward and Bernstein shaped the discussion surrounding scope of presidential power. Richard Neustadt, a leading authority on presidential power, notes that the ability of presidents to influence the legislative process is not dependent so much on their formal powers, but on their informal powers, particularly their ‘‘power to persuade’’ (Neustadt 1991). Lawrence Jacobs also discusses the obsession presidents have in pushing their agenda and attempting to frame the public debate. The work of Woodward and Bernstein significantly affected the public and the Congress’s view of presidential power. Suddenly, as a result of their investigation, presidential authority was not only closely monitored, it was also questioned and often severely limited. Woodward and Bernstein single-handedly crippled the ability of presidents to persuade and push their agenda on the public and the media. Genovese notes that Watergate was significant because it represented a ‘‘systematic subversion of the political rights of American citizens’’ (Genovese 1990, 231). What Woodward and Bernstein were working on in the early 1970s represented more than just front-page news. Their investigation was critical to the functioning of a legitimate democracy. Specifically, their work was in defense of the basic rights of citizens to an open and free government. The Media and Deep Throat Without question, Watergate has had a lasting impact on American politics. Any public library will contain volume upon volume of material about Watergate and its effect on all aspects of the American political system. Woodward himself devoted an entire book to the effect of Watergate on the

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five presidential administrations immediately following Nixon’s resignation. However, one of the enduring legacies of Watergate is its effect on the media. Prior to Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation, the press maintained a relatively cordial relationship with presidents and members of presidential administrations. Like most presidents, Richard Nixon enjoyed a bit of a honeymoon period with the press following his overwhelming reelection in 1972. However, as allegations emerged linking the White House to the break-in at the Democratic headquarters, the honeymoon period quickly faded, only to be replaced by feelings of anger and contempt. As Michael Nelson writes, after Watergate, ‘‘White House reporters felt that a breach of trust occurred.’’ (Nelson 2006, 8). No longer did the press corps trust the words of presidents. The Watergate scandal created a hostile relationship between the press and presidential administrations. Nelson writes that this adversarial relationship even affected daily press briefings by presidential press secretaries. Such tension between presidents and the press can be disadvantageous to democratic debate. Jacobs documents the ability of presidents to dominate the press by ‘‘pounding’’ away at core issues. What Jacobs finds is that the more presidents and staff pound away at the press, the more likely the press are to report on the ‘‘gamesmanship’’ and strategizing of the White House rather than the details of the policy in question. And, as Jacobs notes, this tends to increase public skepticism about the executive branch and the presidency. So, how does this relate to the work of Woodward and Bernstein? Woodward and Bernstein, unlike members of the other news organizations and the Washington press corps, were able to look past presidential statements. They were unwilling to accept White House statements that didn’t confirm their own research. Woodward and Bernstein displayed an extraordinarily high level of confidence in their abilities. Although during the 1980s, 1990s, and into the twenty-first century it seemed relatively common for reporters to question, and almost interrogate, presidential press secretaries and even presidents themselves, that was not the case in the early 1970s. Woodward and Bernstein broke the mold of deference to presidential authority, and as a result, shifted the norm for presidential reporting. As Genovese writes, after Watergate, presidents were perceived as ‘‘vulnerable’’ (Genovese, 1999, 113). Although most scholars agree that the role of the media is to serve as a ‘‘watchdog’’ over government, this was not necessarily the case prior to Watergate. Woodward and Bernstein fundamentally shifted the role, as well as perceptions of the role of the media in American politics. Quoting the executive editor of The Washington Post during Watergate, E. J. Dionne, Jr., writes ‘‘The press won in Watergate.’’ (Dionne 2004, 84). Continuing in his own words, Dionne states that ‘‘Watergate encouraged an increasingly adversarial journalism, which helped undermine government’s credibility.’’ As discussed earlier in the chapter, such animosity tended to


diminish public trust. Figures 1–5 show there was a significant decline in government’s credibility as defined by the public’s willingness to trust the federal government to do what is right. As the media became more cynical toward the president, so too did the public. This resulted in a shift in public mood. No longer was the government innocent until proven guilty. Instead, most people believed the opposite—that the federal government was corrupt and untrustworthy until proven otherwise. One final lasting effect of Woodward and Bernstein on political reporting is their ability to highlight the importance of confidential sources. Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation introduced the American public to the source simply known as ‘‘Deep Throat.’’ As revealed in Woodward and Bernstein’s book All the President’s Men, Deep Throat was critical to the Watergate investigation in terms of linking the White House to the initial break-in, as well as larger attempts by the Nixon White House to quell political opposition. The importance of Deep Throat is evident by the fanfare over Deep Throat’s unveiling in 2005, thirty-three years after their initial meeting. Woodward and Bernstein’s efforts to keep their source secret for such an extended period of time resulted in what Shepard declares ‘‘the most famous confidential source in American journalism’’ (Shepard 2007, 249). In June of 2005, the American public learned that Deep Throat was W. Mark Felt, second in command at the FBI during the Watergate scandal. What is remarkable about Felt’s notoriety is the public’s enduring interest in his identity. Because of Woodward and Bernstein’s insistence that Deep Throat remain anonymous until his death, the public was exposed to the value of confidential sources in journalism. Deep Throat also symbolized the importance of nonexploitive investigative reporting. Woodward and Bernstein, following the worldwide fame they received in 1974, could just as easily have exposed their source. However, they vigilantly protected Felt’s identity despite enormous public pressure. As a result, one of the legacies of Woodward and Bernstein is their ability to maintain journalistic integrity through perhaps the most significant and turbulent period of political reporting in the history of the United States. Ultimately, Woodward and Bernstein changed the nature of political reporting. No longer did the media passively accept executive statements. Watergate ushered in what Genovese describes as ‘‘special prosecutor’’ mentality. The public and the press were now eager to seek out and investigate any suspicious wrongdoing by presidents or personnel in presidential administrations. Of course, the media are not the only ones to capitalize on the Watergate scandal. Members of Congress are also quick to exploit presidential transgressions. The public tends to be highly skeptical of ‘‘powerhungry’’ leaders. As such, attempts by members of Congress to reign in presidential power tend to play well with constituents. After Watergate, people felt it was their duty to expose any suspicious activity by presidential administrations. All of this shifted public attitudes

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toward the president: people were now distrustful of presidents and apprehensive regarding their public actions. Such wariness no doubt contributed to the sharp decline in trustworthiness toward the federal government as shown in Figures 1 and 4. Presidents now must deal with a new, aggressive style of reporting and questioning by the media. As Woodward writes, the reaction among presidents was an incessant ‘‘fear’’ of leaks, resulting in an ever-growing distrust between the media and presidential administrations. It is now a basic requirement for presidents to have a ‘‘war’’ room full of staff whose sole responsibility is to control White House leaks. Every member of the Washington press corps is fearful of being scooped on the next major presidential scandal, resulting in a media feeding frenzy every time the president steps to the microphone to deliver a speech. As Genovese writes, ‘‘the media began like a lamb but ended like a lion.’’ (Genovese 1999, 121). The lions leading the charge were two reporters from The Washington Post. Woodward’s Lasting Legacy In 1976, Carl Bernstein left The Washington Post and went on to work for various publications, including Rolling Stone, Time, and The New Republic. During the 1980s and early 1990s he worked for ABC news as a bureau chief and correspondent, before teaching at New York University. Although he went on to write more books about public officials, his role in the Watergate scandal tends to be viewed as the highlight of his journalistic career. For Bob Woodward, however, the story is a bit different. Since the Watergate days, Woodward has written extensively about many facets of the American political system. In addition to writing about the effects of Watergate on future presidents, Woodward has written books on the U.S. Federal Reserve, the U.S. Supreme Court, the CIA, the Clinton administration, and the Pentagon. During the administration of President George W. Bush, however, Woodward returned to the theme of presidential accountability, writing three books detailing President Bush’s wartime strategy. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there was enormous pressure to hold someone or some group accountable for the damage and carnage inflicted on the United States. In the fall of 2001, the United States engaged militarily with Afghanistan with the intent of removing the Taliban from power. Following the attacks of 9/11 and subsequent war in Afghanistan, questions arose as to how the United States would govern in a new ‘‘post-9/11 world.’’ In 2003, Woodward released Bush at War, describing how President George W. Bush and his cabinet dealt with the terrorist attacks and set a course of action for engaging militarily with Afghanistan. The book was widely heralded as presenting a behind-the-scenes look into crisis decision making at the highest level of government. Following military engagement in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, the United States, in the spring of 2003, engaged in a war with the nation of Iraq, which


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Presidential Scandals The Watergate scandal, uncovered by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, has changed the American political lexicon. Indeed, today nearly every political scandal on the national level invariably becomes labeled with the suffix ‘‘-gate.’’ The fact that modern scandals tend to carry a moniker from the Nixon-era scandal is a testament to just how serious Watergate was. Watergate, however, was not the only serious scandal to affect and damage an American president. Indeed, there have been several scandals before and since President Nixon was forced to resign in disgrace. Below are just a few of the serious scandals to have an impact on presidents and their administrations. The Whiskey Ring Scandal (1875): More than eighty high-level government officials, including President Ulysses S. Grant’s private secretary (Orville E. Babcock), were prosecuted for conspiring with liquor distillers to evade federal sales tax on whiskey. This scandal, along with the impeachment of Grant’s secretary of war, William Belknap, for bribery, cast a cloud over Grant’s presidency despite his never being accused of a crime. The Teapot Dome Scandal (1922): This scandal is widely thought by historians to be one of the most serious scandals in American history. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding transferred control of naval oil reserve lands to the U.S. Department of Interior and by extension, to the Secretary of Interior, Albert B. Fall. In 1922, Secretary Fall granted exclusive rights to the reserves to the Mammoth Oil Company and the Pan American Petroleum Company in exchange for cash. Secretary Fall was eventually arrested, prosecuted, and found guilty of bribery. He was sentenced to a year in prison and assessed a $100,000 fine. The Iran-Contra Scandal (1986): This scandal tarnished the otherwise popular Ronald Reagan presidency. In an effort to curb the spread of communism in Latin America, high-ranking government officials illegally sold U.S. weaponry to Iran and then diverted the proceeds of those sales to fund the pro-American Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Although the Contras set themselves against the communist Sandinista government, the Contras were notorious human rights violators themselves. Congress had banned providing support to the Contras through the Boland Amendment in 1983. President Reagan’s National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress concerning the Iran-Contra operation. McFarlane’s successor, Admiral John Poindexter, along with National Security Counsel staff member Lt. Colonel Oliver North, were convicted of multiple charges related to the scandal. However, their convictions were thrown out on appeal because they had been granted immunity by Congress during the investigation of the Iran-Contra affair. (continued )

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Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky Scandals: From the beginning of Bill Clinton’s presidency in 1993, a number of accusations of impropriety plagued the administration. One of the major scandals focused on Bill and Hillary Clinton’s connection to the failed and fraud-ridden Whitewater land scheme in Arkansas. Ultimately, the Clintons were never prosecuted for anything relating to Whitewater, but several business partners were. During an independent counsel investigation of Whitewater, other problems surfaced for President Clinton. In particular, President Clinton was found to have lied under oath about his sexual relationship with Whitehouse intern Monica Lewinsky (by saying he had never had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky) during depositions taken as a part of a sexual harassment suit against President Clinton by former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones. On December 19, 1998, President Clinton was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives for perjury and obstruction of justice. The impeachment trial took place in the U.S. Senate in January and February of 1999. He was acquitted on both counts.

the United States suspected of harboring weapons of mass destruction. The following year, Woodward wrote his second book on President Bush’s ‘‘war on terror.’’ Plan of Attack was focused on explaining the Bush administration’s reasoning and plan for the war in Iraq. In this text and Bush at War, Woodward was able to provide with incredible detail the conversations between highranking officials concerning war-time decisions. Both books, however, were aimed more at discussing, rather than criticizing the president’s war strategy. Although President Bush was quick to claim success for the war in Iraq, controversy surrounding the decision soon mounted as the conflict extended into 2004. In 2006, Woodward completed his third book on the Bush administration’s war policy, titled State of Denial. As the title suggests, it is in this third text where Woodward begins to return to his Watergate days in terms of questioning the reasoning of those in the executive branch, including the president. Throughout State of Denial, Woodward details the internal power struggles between the trio of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and the rest of the cabinet. As Woodward discusses in the book, President Bush and Vice President Cheney courted former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as another ally against what Woodward perceives to be the more rational and logical members of the Bush administration. Ultimately, in State of Denial, Bob Woodward resurrects his Watergate style by seriously and adamantly questioning the decisions and actions of the Bush administration in conducting war with Iraq. Like many of his other books since the publication of All the President’s Men and Final Days, Woodward’s analysis of President Bush as a war-time president places a strong emphasis on public accountability. Moreover, his focus on mistakes and fallacies in presidential decision making furthers his status as an icon of journalistic and political crime fighting.


Conclusion Iconic figures leave a lasting legacy in their respective fields. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have left a legacy in two fields: presidential politics and journalism. Their legacy can most aptly be summed up by one word: accountability. Michael Genovese writes that ‘‘Watergate was the most serious scandal in the history of the U.S. presidency.’’ (Genovese 2003, 165). However, this would not have been the case had it not been for the foresight and determination of Woodward and Bernstein. After Watergate, the public demanded accountability from their elected officials. And that demand tended to increase the higher up one moves in the federal government. People clamored for accountability and openness from their public officials. The public derided any government official even remotely suspected of criminal activity. More generally, however, the Watergate scandal and subsequent investigation layered the American political system with a heightened sense of skepticism. While accountability may be Woodward and Bernstein’s lasting legacy, they also ushered in an era of increasing distrust with government. It is one of the interesting paradoxes of any society, as well as a basic psychological reaction, that as trust decreases, the desire for accountability increases. Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation into the Watergate break-in removed whatever veneer had been in place over the White House, and exposed the office as one that is subject to corruptibility. As Woodward would later write, after Watergate, the presidency became a ‘‘resignable office.’’ (Woodward 1999, 12). During and immediately following their investigation, trust and confidence in government significantly declined. Statements by politicians were viewed with intense skepticism, and their motivations were constantly questioned, and, more significantly, such skepticism did not decline with the passage of time. Rather, the work of Woodward and Bernstein ushered in a new era of political reporting, and, as a byproduct, a new era of public attitudes toward government. Trust in government has rarely achieved pre-Watergate levels, and if it has, it has been only for a brief period of time. The public tends to view politicians as more likely to act in their own self-interest rather than the public interest. Such skepticism, however, is not inherently bad. To be clear, Woodward and Bernstein did not cause the public to lose faith in their government; the actions of a few elected and appointed officials did that. Rather, what Woodward and Bernstein did was expose the transgressions of those operating at the highest level of government. They revealed to the American public that even the president is not immune to illegal activity, and nor should the public expect him or her to be. As this chapter has pointed out, there were both short- and long-term effects to Woodward and Bernstein’s coverage of the break-in at the Watergate Hotel on June 17, 1972. It is important to note that these long- and

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short-term effects are a direct result of Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting of the scandal, not the scandal itself. Without their diligence in tracking down sources and persuading editors to continue to let them cover the story, there never would have been a ‘‘Watergate.’’ To be sure, it would be easy to get wrapped up in the details of the scandal or the personality of President Nixon. But it is critical to remember why the Nixon presidency is viewed as such a watershed moment in American politics. Woodward and Bernstein brought the abuse of power and corrupt nature of the Nixon presidency to the American people. Unlike many members of the media at the time, these two reporters were quite willing to challenge the status quo of presidential reporting. One measure of iconic status is an ability to affect the manner in which people approach a particular field of study. Woodward and Bernstein have had a profound impact on the study of media and politics. In 2007, a keyword search on ‘‘The Syllabi Finder’’ for college courses developed by George Mason and linked through the American Political Science Association’s Web site, the leading organization for political scientists, reveals the significance of the work of Woodward and Bernstein. Searching for ‘‘All the President’s Men’’ and ‘‘American government’’ resulted in more than ten thousand hits. This suggests that even thirty-five years after the incident, Woodward and Bernstein’s coverage of the scandal is still viewed by many scholars as fundamental to the study of American government. This is quite remarkable considering that the two reporters had never worked together prior to the Watergate investigation. Perhaps one of the more telling legacies of Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation is the interest it sparked in presidential personalities and the workings of American government. Woodward and Bernstein were able to shape public attitudes toward government, legislation crafted by Congress, the role of the media in American politics, and more generally, how people view the relationships between the president, the press, and the public. In 2007, Web sites remained devoted to the Watergate scandal. (For example, see ‘‘The Nixon Era Times,’’ Mountain State University: Nixon Era Center. http://www.watergate.com.) A simple Google search of ‘‘Bob Woodward’’ in 2007 returned 1.6 million hits, whereas the same search for ‘‘Carl Bernstein’’ returned 1.27 million hits. Perhaps even more telling is the fact that the same search for ‘‘Woodstein’’ and ‘‘Watergate’’ returned more than thirteen thousand hits. Thirty-five years after the Watergate scandal, not only do Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein remain highly celebrated journalists, but their collective nickname is also renowned not just in journalistic and political circles, but also among the general public. FURTHER READING Baker, Peter, and Charles Babington. ‘‘Bush Addresses Uproar over Spying.’’ The Washington Post. December 20, 2005. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ content/article/2005/12/19/AR2005121900211.html (accessed May 15, 2007).


Bernstein, Carl, and Bob Woodward. ‘‘Bug Suspect Got Campaign Funds.’’ The Washington Post. August 1, 1972. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ content/article/2002/06/03/AR2005111001229.html (accessed April 1, 2007). Bernstein, Carl, and Bob Woodward. ‘‘Mitchell Controlled Secret GOP Fund.’’ The Washington Post. September 29, 1972. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ content/article/2002/06/03/AR2005111001231.html (accessed April 1, 2007). Bernstein, Carl, and Bob Woodward. ‘‘FBI Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged Democrats.’’ The Washington Post. October 10, 1972. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-dyn/content/article/2002/06/03/AR2005111001232.html (accessed April 1, 2007). Bernstein, Carl, and Bob Woodward. ‘‘Still Secret—Who Hired Spies and Why.’’ The Washington Post. January 31, 1973. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ content/article/2002/05/31/AR2005112200788.html (accessed April 1, 2007). Bernstein, Carl, and Bob Woodward. All the President’s Men. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974. Dionne, E. J., Jr. 2004. Why Americans Hate Politics. New York: Simon & Schuster. Genovese, Michael A. 1990. The Nixon Presidency: Power and Politics in Turbulent Times. Westport, CT: Greenwood, Press. Genovese, Michael A. 1999. The Watergate Crisis. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Genovese, Michael A. 2003. The Power of the American Presidency, 1789–2000. New York: Oxford University Press. Harry Ransom Center. ‘‘The Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers.’’ University of Texas. http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/online/woodstein/ (accessed April 15, 2007). Havill, Adrian. 1993. Deep Truth: The Unauthorized Biography of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. New York: Carol Publishing Group. Hibbing, John R., and John R. Alford. Accepting authoritative decisions: Humans as wary cooperators. American Journal of Political Science 48 (January 2004): 62–76. Hibbing, John R., and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse. 1995. Congress as Public Enemy: Public Attitudes toward American Political Institutions. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. ‘‘Investigating the President: The Trial.’’ CNN.com/Inside Politics. http://www.cnn. com/ALLPOLITICS/resources/1998/lewinsky/ (accessed May 1, 2007). Jacobs, Lawrence R. 2006. The Presidency and the press: The paradox of the White House communications war. In The Presidency and the Political System, ed. Michael Nelson. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press. Jost, Kenneth. Presidential power: Is Bush overstepping his executive authority? The CQ Researcher 16 (February 24, 2006): 169–92. Kinder, Donald R., Mark D. Peters, Robert P. Abelson, and Susan T. Fiske. Presidential prototypes. Political Behavior 2 (1980): 315–37. Liebovich, Louis W. 2003. Richard Nixon, Watergate, and the Press. Westport, CT: Praeger. Nelson, Michael. 2006. Evaluating the presidency. In The Presidency and the Political System, ed. Michael Nelson. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press. Neustadt, Richard E. 1991. Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan. New York: Free Press.

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‘‘Serious or ‘Just Politics’?’’ All Politics: CNN Time. Public Perceptions of Watergate, June 17, 1997. http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/gen/resources/ watergate/poll/ (accessed April 15, 2007). Shepard, Alicia C. 2007. Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Smith, Kevin B., Christopher W. Larimer, Levente Littvay, and John R. Hibbing. 2007. Evolutionary theory and political leadership: Why certain people do not trust decision-makers. Journal of Politics 69 (May 2007): 285–99. Spitzer, Robert J. Clinton’s impeachment will have few consequences for the presidency. PS: Political Science and Politics 32 (September 1999): 541–45. ‘‘The ANES Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior.’’ Ann Arbor, MI: The National Election Studies, Center for Political Studies [producer and distributor], University of Michigan. http://www.umich.edu/nes/nesguide/nesguide.htm (accessed April 30, 2007). ‘‘The Nixon Era Times.’’ Mountain State University: Nixon Era Center. http:// www.watergate.com (accessed May 15, 2007). ‘‘Watergate Chronology.’’ The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-srv/onpolitics/watergate/chronology.htm (accessed April 15, 2007). Wildavsky, Aaron. 2001. The Beleaguered Presidency. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Woodward, Bob. 1999. Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate. New York: Touchstone. Woodward, Bob. 2003. Bush at War. New York: Simon & Schuster. Woodward, Bob. 2004. Plan of Attack. New York: Simon & Schuster. Woodward, Bob. 2005. The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat. New York: Simon & Schuster. Woodward, Bob. 2006. State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III. New York: Simon & Schuster. Woodward, Bob, and Carl Bernstein. ‘‘GOP Security Aide among Five Arrested in Bugging Affair.’’ The Washington Post. June 19, 1972. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2002/05/31/AR2005111001228.html (accessed April 1, 2007). Woodward, Bob, and Carl Bernstein. ‘‘Break-in Memo Sent to Ehrlichman.’’ The Washington Post. June 13, 1973. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ content/article/2002/05/31/AR2005112200793.html (accessed April 1, 2007). Woodward, Bob, and Carl Bernstein. ‘‘Nixon Debated Paying Blackmail, Clemency.’’ The Washington Post. May 1, 1974. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-dyn/content/article/2002/05/31/AR2005112200804.html (accessed April 1, 2007). Woodward, Bob, and Carl Bernstein. 1976. The Final Days. New York: Simon & Schuster.

ICONS OF CRIME FIGHTING

Recent Titles in Greenwood Icons Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares Edited by S.T. Joshi Icons of Business: An Encyclopedia of Mavericks, Movers, and Shakers Kateri Drexler Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture Edited by Mickey Hess Icons of Evolution: An Encyclopedia of People, Evidence, and Controversies Edited by Brian Regal Icons of Rock: An Encyclopedia of the Legends Who Changed Music Forever Scott Schinder and Andy Schwartz Icons of R&B and Soul: An Encyclopedia of the Artists Who Revolutionized Rhythm Bob Gulla African American Icons of Sport: Triumph, Courage, and Excellence Matthew C. Whitaker Icons of the American West: From Cowgirls to Silicon Valley Edited by Gordon Morris Bakken Icons of Latino America: Latino Contributions to American Culture Roger Bruns

ICONS OF CRIME FIGHTING Relentless Pursuers Of Justice VOLUME 2 Edited by Jeffrey B. Bumgarner

Greenwood Icons

GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut

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London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Icons of crime fighting : relentless pursuers of justice / edited by Jeffrey Bumgarner. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-313-34129-8 ((set) : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-313-34130-4 ((vol. 1) : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-313-34131-1 ((vol. 2) : alk. paper) 1. Law enforcement—United States—History. 2. Crime prevention—United States—History. 3. Criminal investigation—United States—History. 4. Criminal justice, Administration of—United States—History. 5. Personality and history. I. Bumgarner, Jeffrey B. HV8138.I36 2008 363.20920 273—dc22 2008018447 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright C 2008 by Jeffrey B. Bumgarner All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008018447 ISBN-13: 978-0-313-34129-8 (set) 978-0-313-34130-4 (vol. 1) 978-0-313-34131-1 (vol. 2) First published in 2008 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America

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Icons of Crime Fighting is dedicated to all the individuals who have made it their life’s work to fight crime and injustice in the United States and elsewhere. While this publication recounts the service of many individuals who are well known for this fight and are deserving of accolades, there are countless more men and women who work visibly in their own communities or behind the scenes in all realms of the criminal justice system—as police officers, federal agents, prosecutors, victims’ advocates, social workers, etc. They too are deserving of tribute. This book set is for them.


Contents List of Photos

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Series Foreword

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Preface

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Volume 1 Gun Fighters: U.S. Marshals of the Old West, Tusty Zohra and Jeffrey T. Walker

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Allan Pinkerton, Scott H. Belshaw and Amanda L. Belshaw

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The Texas Rangers, Ronald Burns

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August Vollmer, Willard M. Oliver

83

J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, Kilby Raptopoulos and Jeffrey T. Walker

117

Thomas Dewey, Clarrisa Breen

143

Robert Kennedy: The Enforcer Within, J. Scott Granberg-Rademacker

167

Jim Garrison, Elvira M. White

197

Buford Pusser, Jacob Rodriguez

235

Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, Ellen Leichtman

257

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein: Presidential Crime Fighters and Shapers of American Public Opinion, Christopher Larimer

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Contents

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Volume 2 Francisco Vincent Serpico, Morris A. Taylor

319

Joseph Pistone, AKA ‘‘Donnie Brasco,’’ John Dombrink

343

Vincent T. Bugliosi: Justice Purist—The Prosecutor with a Heart, Edward J. Schauer

371

For Adam: The John Walsh Story, Elizabeth Quinn DeValve

421

FBI Profilers, Richard N. Kocsis

437

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Kelli Stevens

463

Mark Fuhrman, Scott H. Belshaw

493

Rudolph ‘‘Rudy’’ Giuliani, Camille Gibson

521

Curtis Sliwa: Vigilantism, Victims’ Rights, and the Guardian Angels, Brion Sever, with Al Gorman and Greg Coram

553

Dr. Henry Lee: Leading Practitioner in Forensic Criminal Investigations, Janet E. McClellan

577

Dr. Bill Bass, Cecile Van de Voorde

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Index

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Photos Sculptured bust portrait of James Butler ‘‘Wild Bill’’ Hickock, atop C 2008 Chaiba. tombstone (page 1), Deadwood, SD. Dodge City Peace Commission, 1882 (page 2). From left to right, members are shown as follows. Back row: W. H. Harris, Luke Short and Bat Masterson. Front row: Charles Bassett, Wyatt Earp, F. McClain and Neil Brown. Courtesy AP Images. Allan Pinkerton of Antietam (page 27), MD, 1884. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Hon. James Francis Miller of Texas (page 57), ca. 1875. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Captain Samuel Hamilton Walker (page 58), ca. 1846. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. August Vollmer (page 83), 1929. C Corbis/Bettmann. J. Edgar Hoover (page 117), 1969. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey (page 143), holds up his right hand as he is sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Philip J. McCook in New York City, 1935. Courtesy AP Images. Robert Kennedy (page 167), appearing before the Platform Committee, 1964. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Jim Garrison (page 197), who stands 6-foot-6, towers over assistants James Alcock, right, and Andrew ‘‘Moo Moo’’ Sciambra as they huddle prior to the trial of Clay Shaw, Jan. 16, 1969. Courtesy AP Images. Sheriff Buford Pusser of Tennessee (page 235), shortly before he was killed in C Getty Images. a suspicious car crash, 1998.

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From the 1971 film ‘‘The French Connection’’, directed by William Friedkin. Shown from left: Sonny Grosso as Det. Phil Klein, Eddie Egan as Lt. Walter Simonson (page 257). Courtesy of Photofest. Washington Post writers Carl Bernstein, left, and Robert Woodward (page 291), who pressed the Watergate investigation, are photographed in Washington, D.C., May 7, 1973. Courtesy AP Images. New York City detective Frank Serpico (page 319), with beard, sits in front of his attorney, Ramsey Clark, at the Knapp Commission’s investigation of alleged police corruption at a hearing in New York, 1971. Courtesy AP Images/Jim Wells. Joe Pistone (page 343), the American F.B.I agent upon whom the film C Fotos International/Getty Images. ‘Donnie Brasco’ was based, 1997. Deputy District Attorneys Aaron Stovitz (left) and Vincent Bugliosi (page 371), display an aerial photograph of the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Courtesy of Photofest. The death of the prime suspect in the kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh (page 421), shown in this 1981 file photo, doesn’t close the still-unsolved case. Police believed Ottis Elwood Toole killed Adam, who disappeared from outside a Hollywood, Florida shopping mall in 1981. Courtesy AP Images. John Douglas working in his Virginia office (page 437), 2002. Larry Stone Photography. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (page 463), speaks during a news conference in Avondale, AZ. The conference was held May 10, 2006, to kick off the beginning of the sheriffs’ departments efforts to find illegal immigrants. Courtesy AP Images/Roy Dabner. Former police Detective Mark Fuhrman (page 493), shown testifying at the O. J. Simpson trial, March 10, 1995. Courtesy AP Images/John McCoy. U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani (page 521), talks to media in New York City, Dec. 13, 1984. Courtesy AP Images/Debbie Hodgson. Radio talk show personality and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, center (page 553), enters Manhattan federal court in New York surrounded by other Guardian Angel members, Feb. 27, 2006. Courtesy AP Images/Louis Lanzano. Forensic scientist Dr. Henry C. Lee (page 577), shows the court a cotton swab similar to the one he used to collect evidence from the crime scene at music producer Phil Spector’s home, during Spector’s murder trial for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, 2007. Courtesy AP Images/Paul Buck, Pool. Dr. Bill Bass (page 605), carefully cleans a skull before examining it in his laboratory at the at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Courtesy of the University of Tennessee.

Series Foreword Worshipped and cursed. Loved and loathed. Obsessed about the world over. What does it take to become an icon? Regardless of subject, culture, or era, the requisite qualifications are the same: (1) challenge the status quo, (2) influence millions, and (3) impact history. Using these criteria, Greenwood Press introduces a new reference format and approach to popular culture. Spanning a wide range of subjects, volumes in the Greenwood Icons series provide students and general readers a port of entry into the most fascinating and influential topics of the day. Every two-volume title offers an in-depth look at approximately 24 iconic figures, each of which captures the essence of a broad subject. These icons typically embody a group of values, elicit strong reactions, reflect the essence of a particular time and place, and link different traditions and periods. Among those featured are artists and activists, superheroes and spies, inventors and athletes—the legends and mythmakers of entire generations. Yet icons can also come from unexpected places: as the heroine who transcends the pages of a novel or as the revolutionary idea that shatters our previously held beliefs. Whether people, places, or things, such icons serve as a bridge between the past and the present, the canonical and the contemporary. By focusing on icons central to popular culture, this series encourages students to appreciate cultural diversity and critically analyze issues of enduring significance. Most importantly, these books are as entertaining as they are provocative. Is Disneyland a more influential icon of the American West than Las Vegas? How do ghosts and ghouls reflect our collective psyche? Is Barry Bonds an inspiring or deplorable icon of baseball? Designed to foster debate, the series serves as a unique resource that is ideal for paper writing or report purposes. Insightful, in-depth entries provide far more information than conventional reference articles but are less intimidating and more accessible than a book-length biography. The most revered and reviled icons of American and world history are brought to life with related sidebars, timelines,

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fact boxes, and quotations. Authoritative entries are accompanied by bibliographies, making these titles an ideal starting point for further research. Spanning a wide range of popular topics, including business, literature, civil rights, politics, music, and more, books in the Greenwood Icons series provide fresh insights for the student and popular reader into the power and influence of icons, a topic of as vital interest today as in any previous era.

Preface Americans have always been fascinated by the social problem of crime and society’s response to it. This fascination is easily diagnosed by the number of murder mysteries that have been published over the ages, the fictional and nonfictional police television shows peppered throughout the network and cable channels, and the innumerable cinematic productions that focus on police officers, detectives, and federal agents marching through adversity to make the case and thwart the violent criminal villain. Indeed, much of what Americans and others around the world know about crime fighting has been learned through these mediums. This often results in an incomplete, and in many cases, inaccurate, understanding of crime fighting and crime fighters. Criminal investigators and prosecutors are in wide agreement, for example, that securing a conviction in certain types of criminal cases has been hampered by popular television. The so-called ‘‘CSI effect’’ has resulted in many juries harboring an expectation that there will be significant scientific evidence in every serious case to link an alleged offender to the crime, just as on television. The fact is that most crimes continue to be solved through old-fashioned police work, eyewitness accounts, solid suspect interviews, and other circumstantial evidence. Most cases do not involve definitive forensic evidence, and certainly most cases are not resolved in the span of a sixty-minute television show (where none of the cops take notes, suspects’ rights are marginalized, search warrants materialize out of thin air, and the offenders always seem willing to talk to the police in custody without an attorney). In Icons of Crime Fighting, and in keeping with America’s fascination with criminal justice and criminal investigation, readers are introduced to different individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to general or particular realms of fighting crime. However, an emphasis is placed on historical accuracy and an accounting of how criminals are actually countered and thwarted. Most of the twenty-two chapters in this twovolume set relate to individuals who are noteworthy for their crime-fighting

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efforts and accomplishments. A few of the chapters relate to organizations that are regarded for their respective contributions to fighting crime. All of the individuals and organizations are ‘‘iconic’’ in the sense that people are aware of them, certainly in criminal justice circles, but also in popular culture. Their notoriety in popular culture, however, does not diminish their serious and significant professional contributions to the areas in which they operate or operated. The two-volume set starts off with a historical chapter: ‘‘Gunfighters: U.S. Marshals of the Old West.’’ This chapter explores the history of America’s oldest federal law enforcement agency and profiles famed federal lawmen from the nineteenth century, including Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Pat Garrett. Chapter 2 continues with a nineteenth-century American historical theme by profiling Allan Pinkerton, America’s most famous nonfictional private eye. Indeed, it was Pinkerton and his National Detective Agency that coined the term ‘‘private eye’’ to begin with. Rounding off the discussion of law enforcement in the American West and Southwest during the 1800s is Chapter 3, which focuses on the famed Texas Rangers. Texas lawmen from this organization such as W. J. McDonald (for whom the expression ‘‘one riot, one ranger’’ was coined) and Frank Hamer (who tracked down Bonnie and Clyde) are introduced. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 bring readers forward into the early twentieth century. Chapter 4 profiles the life and career of August Vollmer, the most significant of police reformers. Vollmer was an early twentieth-century police chief who is credited with many innovations and approaches to crime fighting and police professionalization that are still in place today. Chapter 5 is concerned with the famous FBI director, the late J. Edgar Hoover. There is no law enforcement leader, past or present, who possesses a legacy that can rival Hoover’s. This chapter also necessarily delves into the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which by itself readers will find to be inherently interesting. Chapter 6 explores the career of one of New York City’s most famous prosecutors, Thomas Dewey. His crime-fighting career was at its zenith during the 1930s—an accomplished career that would propel him eventually to become governor of New York and the Republican presidential candidate in 1948. Although he has been immortalized in the famous photo of President Truman holding up a Chicago Daily Tribune newspaper with the erroneous headline ‘‘Dewey Beats Truman’’ in 1948, his efforts at fighting organized crime and mobsters such as Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano were among his most significant accomplishments. Beginning with Chapter 7, Icons of Crime Fighting shifts to more recent history, particularly the last half of the twentieth century through the present day. Chapter 7 is devoted to Robert Kennedy. Although well known as President John F. Kennedy’s brother and attorney general, his service as an attorney for the U.S. Senate in the 1950s really marks the beginning of his crime-fighting career. In that capacity, he investigated the influence of organized crime in the labor unions as well as the infiltration of communists

Preface

in American public service. Of course, his life tragically ended when he was assassinated as a presidential candidate in 1968. Speaking of the Kennedys, Chapter 8 examines the career and crusade of famed prosecutor Jim Garrison. He was a very well-known district attorney in New Orleans during the 1960s and 1970s, but Garrison became iconic when he prosecuted Louisiana businessman Clay Shaw as a conspirator in the John F. Kennedy assassination. Shaw was found ‘‘not guilty’’ by a jury after less than an hour of deliberation. Nonetheless, the case raised enough doubt about President Kennedy’s death to warrant an Oliver Stone film (JFK) on the matter, with Kevin Costner playing the lead role—that of Jim Garrison. Garrison isn’t the only iconic individual profiled in this book about whom movies were made. Chapter 9 examines the life of Buford Pusser, the threeterm sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee, in the 1960s. His fight against the criminal element in his county inspired the movie Walking Tall. Pusser survived an assassination attempt in 1967, but his wife was killed in the attack. The resolve Pusser possessed to continue the fight for justice in the wake of this tragedy is truly an inspiration. Chapter 10 profiles two crime fighters: Eddie Egan and Sonnie Grosso. These two New York City police detectives were partners in the 1960s and conducted one of the most famous drug-trafficking investigations in American history. The international drugtrafficking scheme they investigated is famously known as the French Connection because of the fact that the drugs came into the United States through France. Egan and Grosso were the inspiration for the characters Jimmy ‘‘Popeye’’ Doyle and Sonny Russo, played by Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider, respectively, in the 1971 movie The French Connection. The movies keep on rolling in Chapter 11. Here, readers will learn about the story of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The movie All the President’s Men highlights the significance of their fight for justice in the political realm. These two Washington Post reporters investigated the 1972 burglary of the Democratic National Committee’s office at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. Their efforts (and others’) ultimately resulted in the convictions on conspiracy and perjury charges of several high-ranking government officials connected to President Richard Nixon. President Nixon eventually resigned over the scandal. Chapter 12, which begins Volume 2, also deals with an individual associated with a fight against government corruption—Frank Serpico. Serpico was instrumental in fighting corruption in the New York City Police Department (NYPD) during the 1960s. He exposed widespread criminal activity among NYPD officers, including routine acceptance of gratuities and kickbacks, as well as acts of bribery and extortion. Al Pacino starred in the title role of the 1973 movie Serpico. Interestingly, Al Pacino also starred in a movie about the icon profiled in Chapter 13, the 1997 film Donnie Brasco. Joe Pistone, aka ‘‘Donnie Brasco,’’ was an FBI agent who went deep undercover to infiltrate the New

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York Mafia. His six-year undercover effort resulted in more than one hundred convictions of members of organized crime. Pacino does not star as Pistone in the movie, but rather as a mobster befriended and investigated by Pistone. Johnny Depp plays Pistone in the movie. Chapter 14 is the most exhaustive chapter in the book and profiles the life of famed prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. Chapter author Ed Schauer interviewed Bugliosi extensively in preparing the chapter and brings a unique perspective on this influential and contemporary crime fighter. Bugliosi is mostly known for his successful prosecution of Charles Manson and Manson’s associates. Later, he wrote Helter Skelter, a book chronicling Manson’s crimes. Chapter 15 explores another contemporary crime fighter in the public eye: John Walsh. Walsh is best known for hosting Fox television’s longrunning show America’s Most Wanted. He is a tireless victims’ advocate. Sadly, personal tragedy propelled him into his life’s work. In 1981, Walsh’s own 6-year-old son was abducted and murdered by a child predator. He has crusaded against child predators and for victims’ rights ever since. In Chapter 16, readers have the opportunity to learn about a group of individuals that has captured the imagination of America and Hollywood for many years: the profilers of the FBI. The chapter explores the history of profiling as a criminal investigative technique and delves into the FBI’s early effort to develop profiling as a viable tool. Famous FBI profilers such as Greg McCrary, John Douglas, Robert Ressler, and Roy Hazlewood are introduced. These individuals, along with the FBI’s Behavior Analysis Unit, inspired several popular movies and books, such as Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs. Chapter 17 deals with another contemporary icon, the current and longserving sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio. Some have labeled him ‘‘America’s Toughest Sheriff.’’ He is famous for housing county prisoners in tents and subjecting them to unconventional forms of punishment. The chapter goes further to explore the efficacy of these alternate forms of punishment. The author of this chapter also had an opportunity to interview Arpaio personally and secure his unique perspective on his service as sheriff. Although Joe Arpaio is controversial in many quarters, Chapter 18 deals with probably the most controversial individual profiled in Icons of Crime Fighting: Mark Fuhrman. Detective Fuhrman first received national attention as one of the investigating officers of the O. J. Simpson case. His denial of using the ‘‘n’’ word, which later proved to be false, impeached the credibility of the entire investigating team. However, his stature as an investigator has been resurrected after privately investigating the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley. His investigation resulted in renewed official interest in the case and the conviction in 2002 of Michael Skakel, who is a relative of the Kennedy family. He has similarly investigated and written about several other high-profile crimes.

Preface

Chapter 19 explores the career of Rudy Giuliani. Most recently, he was a presidential candidate in the Republican Party who dropped out of the race after the 2008 Florida primary. However, his career before that included many high notes and accomplishments as a crime fighter. Giuliani was the mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He was affectionately dubbed ‘‘America’s mayor’’ after his handling of the tragedy on 9/11. He presided over a sharp decline in violent crime in the city and was very supportive of aggressive police tactics. He also served as a U.S. attorney and is well known for his fight against organized crime in that capacity. Another New York City icon is the subject of Chapter 20, Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels. Sliwa is the founder of the Guardian Angels, a worldwide crime prevention organization that relies on citizen patrols. The chapter explores Sliwa’s efforts in crime prevention as well as the issue of vigilantism and citizen crime prevention efforts generally. Icons of Crime Fighting ends with its final two chapters devoted to iconic forensic scientists. Chapter 21 profiles Dr. Henry Lee, who is perhaps the world’s most famous forensic scientist. He has consulted on hundreds of murder and sexual assault investigations, including many high-profile cases. He is affiliated with the University of New Haven, Connecticut, which is home to one of the most renowned forensic science degree programs in the world. Chapter 22 examines the career of Dr. Bill Bass. Dr. Bass, a professor at the University of Tennessee, is renowned for founding the ‘‘Body Farm,’’ which is an outdoor forensic laboratory where donated dead bodies are permitted to decay. As a forensic anthropologist, Dr. Bass has consulted on numerous homicide investigations involving decomposed human remains. Both Dr. Lee and Dr. Bass are counted among the most famous and highly regarded criminal investigative scientists in the world. It is hoped that readers of Icons of Crime Fighting: Relentless Pursuers of Justice will find the profiles of individuals and agencies contained therein to be interesting and informative. Certainly the chapters can serve as a springboard for further research into their respective and associated crime-fighting topics. In fact, each chapter ends with a Further Reading list, and there is an extensive Selected Bibliography at the end of Volume 2 to aid further exploration and study. Ultimately, my desire and the desire of the various chapter authors is that readers will be edified and inspired by the stories of dedication and professionalism relating to the many crime-fighting icons, past and present, who serve or have served to protect society from those who would perpetrate evil. Jeffrey B. Bumgarner, Ph.D. Minnesota State University, Mankato

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AP Images/Jim Wells

Francisco Vincent Serpico Morris A. Taylor


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Police officers represent perhaps the most visible incarnation of governmental power. They have considerable authority and ‘‘we the people’’ have delegated to them nearly unfettered discretionary power for the purpose of protecting and serving the public in an efficient, effective, and equitable manner. In fact, discretionary power is absolutely essential for police if they are to be successful in accomplishing their goals. Nevertheless, as noted by John Emmerich Edward Dalberg (Lord Acton) in a letter to Bishop Mandel Creighton in 1887, ‘‘power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you super-add the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority’’ (Dalberg 1972). Unfortunately this is too often the case in many police departments in the United States. On the one hand, police frequently accomplish great things but on the other, they have sometimes abused their power and breached the public’s trust. In these later instances they are indeed ‘‘bad men.’’ Concomitantly, police corruption and unethical behavior among these types of officers in the United States has always been a major concern of citizens, civil libertarians, scholars, police administrators, and reformers. Yet the idea of ‘‘guarding the guardians’’ and the emergence of a police officer whistle blower is particularly problematic in large, complex police organizations wherein the police essentially police themselves and where tight and protective organizational cultures often impede external oversight. FRANCISCO VINCENT SERPICO In the history of policing in the United States, there have been few people within police organizations who have addressed corruption issues directly. One person who did was Francisco Vincent Serpico, a major crime-fighting icon in the battle against police crime, repression, and corruption. Serpico, generally referred to as Frank Serpico, was a New York City police officer. It is noteworthy that he fought his battle against corruption in the largest and arguably at that time, one of the most dishonest and criminally tainted police departments in the United States. During Serpico’s tenure in this highly bureaucratized, close-knit department, there were slightly more than 38,000 officers (Rummel 1974). Yet in a very real sense, Serpico nearly singlehandedly took on the corrupt NYPD, displaying uncompromising courage and tenacity in an effort to expose corruption and rebuild public trust. In Serpico’s view, the notion of a ‘‘crooked cop’’ was an oxymoron: ‘‘You are either a cop or a crook’’ (Rummel 1974). Yet even from the inception of Frank Serpico’s career, he was confronted with egregious acts of corruption and unethical police behavior. Although at times he was discouraged in his battle against dishonesty and criminality, Serpico remained undaunted and was instrumental in elucidating widespread police malfeasance within the New York City Police Department. Serpico was born April 14, 1936, in Brooklyn, New York, to Vincenzo and Maria Giovanna Serpico. At the age of eighteen he enlisted in the U.S.

Francisco Vincent Serpico

Army, serving for two years in Korea. He later joined the New York City Police Department on September 11, 1959, and began his tour of duty as a uniformed patrol officer in the 81st Precinct on the March 5, 1960 at the age of twenty-three. He was later transferred to the Bureau of Criminal Identification for two years, but was soon reassigned as a plainclothes officer in Brooklyn and the Bronx where he was assigned to target vice and racketeering. Even though Serpico had already observed corruption within the police department, it was here that he was first exposed to pervasive corruption and significant police abuse of power. Now, for perhaps the first time in his career, he realized that corruption within the NYPD was far worse than he had imagined and that the level of criminality was systemic. In 1967, Serpico attempted to address these corrupt practices and began to provide credible evidence of such, but it was largely ignored until he and another police officer named David Durk began to go public. By 1970, Serpico exposed intractable criminal police practices and began to speak publicly about kickbacks, bribery, and other corrupt acts of fellow officers. This was unheard of within police cultures wherein the ‘‘code of silence’’ has always been honored and preserved and whistle-blowing is eschewed. As a result, both Serpico and Durk received numerous threats to their lives after they testified against a former police colleague. Serpico was always concerned that his fellow officers had knowledge of his secret meetings with police investigators and was forced to trust few, if any, of his fellow officers. On April 25, 1970, The New York Times published a front-page story validating Serpico’s allegations of police corruption within the NYPD. Shortly thereafter, Mayor John V. Lindsey appointed a five-member panel charged with investigating police corruption. The panel, chaired by Percy Whitman Knapp, became known as the Knapp Commission. Knapp was an accomplished and well-respected Wall Street attorney who once worked for New York District Attorney John Dewey during his crusade to address organized crime in New York. He had considerable experience investigating corruption starting as early as 1953–1954 as special counsel investigating waterfront corruption. In fact, Knapp would later blame New York Mayor John Lindsey as part of the problem with corrupt police officers in New York City. Although he cited no criminal issues with Lindsey, he suggested that Mayor Lindsey had not taken a proactive stand against corruption despite strong evidence that it existed. During this time Serpico was becoming increasingly more unsettled by the continued egregious corruption and lack of attention paid to it by both the NYPD Internal Affairs Division and various political leaders. He was also keenly aware of the fact that many officers were becoming increasingly more uncomfortable with his actions, when all of this appeared to reach a dramatic climax on the night of February 7, 1971, at approximately 10:42 P.M. On this night, Serpico was assigned to a stakeout at 778 Driggs Avenue located in Brooklyn, New York, in an attempt to make a heroin arrest. He

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was assisted by three officers, two of whom, Gary Roteman and Arthur Ceasre, remained in a parked car in front of the apartment building with a third officer, Paul Halley, stationed on foot in front of the building. Serpico, feeling very uneasy about this situation, began to have serious reservations about this ‘‘routine arrest.’’ In fact, he had become so frustrated with the department that he started to throw his badge and gun as far away as possible and just disappear. Yet, being a good cop, he proceeded up the fire escape and visually surveyed the area. He then proceeded out of the fire escape door, walked down some steps, and observed a heroin buy in progress. He listened for a password and followed two individuals out of the building. The two were immediately arrested by officers Roteman and Ceasre and placed in the unmarked car occupied by officer Halley. Officer Roteman instructed Serpico to attempt to make a fake drug purchase to gain entry into the third floor apartment where drugs were suspected of being sold. Both officers Roteman and Ceasre, along with Serpico, proceeded to the third floor landing of the apartment building. Serpico, who spoke Spanish, was armed with a .38 caliber revolver when he knocked on the door. When the door opened a few inches, it was still partially secured by a chain. Serpico then suddenly pushed hard on the door, snapping the chain. He was able to wedge a part of his body into the apartment while the dealers inside were trying to close it. At this point, he called for help from the two officers assisting him but they did not respond. All of a sudden, Serpico was shot point blank in the face with a .22 LR handgun. The bullet penetrated his cheek just below the eye and eventually became lodged at the top of his jaw. He subsequently lost his balance, fell to the floor, and began bleeding profusely. While all of this was happening, there was never a call placed for a code 10–13 (officer in distress needing assistance) indicating that an officer had been shot. Instead, Serpico was saved by an elderly Hispanic man residing in one of the apartments adjacent to the suspects’, who called for emergency services, reporting that a man had been shot. He then stayed with Serpico until the ambulance arrived, but a police squad car arrived before the ambulance and transported him to Greenpoint Hospital. The officers were unaware at the time that they were transporting Frank Serpico. As a result of the shooting, Serpico’s auditory nerve was severed, leaving him permanently deaf in his left ear. He continues to suffer from chronic pain from bullet fragments lodged in his brain. Yet in spite of all of these events Serpico remained focused on publicly addressing police misconduct. On May 10, 1971, Frank Serpico testified at the departmental trial of an NYPD lieutenant who had been accused of accepting bribes from gamblers. In October and December of 1971 he testified before the Knapp Commission, becoming the first police officer in the history of the United States to testify openly about pervasive police corruption within his or her department. This type of whistle-blowing was thought to be nearly impossible within most police organizations, and for the New


York City Police Department, many of its officers viewed his testimony as unconscionable. The Knapp Commission’s preliminary report was issued on August 15, 1972, and its final report on December 27, 1972. The final report found widespread evidence of corruption within the New York City Police Department. As a result of its investigation it made the following recommendations: • Commanders should be held accountable for their subordinates • Commanders should file periodic reports on key areas that would breed corruption • Field offices of the Internal Affairs Division should be created at all precincts • Undercover informants should be placed in all precincts • Improve screening and make selection methods standard • A change in police attitudes

Additionally, the Knapp Commission on Police Corruption identified and focused on two specific types of corrupt police officers: (1) ‘‘grass eaters’’ and (2) ‘‘meat eaters.’’ These classifications referred to petty corruption stemming from peer pressure (eating grass) and premeditated, aggressive major corruption (eating meat). The grass eater connotation describes those officers who ‘‘accept gratuities and solicit five, ten, twenty dollar payments from contractors, tow-truck operators, gamblers, and the like but do not peruse corruption payments’’ (Knapp Commission 1972). However, the idea of grass eating was activities participated in by a considerable number of officers, which were learned from other officers or from emulating the very criminal element, which they often investigated. In fact, the commission discerned that grass eating was even used by NYPD officers to prove their loyalty to and among their fellow officers. This type of loyalty often led to jobs on the side. Hence, the commission reasoned that a way of preventing this type of behavior was to remove the corrupt veteran officers, essentially eliminating the basis for officers to learn how to eat grass. The meat eaters, on the other hand, consisted of officers who spent considerable cerebral energy looking for criminal opportunities for financial gain. For example, it was quite common to shake down drug dealers, pimps, and others for money that was part of financially lucrative criminal activity. They often justified it by suggesting that these dregs of society somehow deserved what they got when they decided to participate in these types of behaviors. Numerous newspaper articles chronicling corrupt activities were published in The New York Times (1970–1972) as indicated by the headlines below: Graft Paid to Police Here Said to Run into Millions; Survey Links Payoffs to Gambling and Narcotics; Some on Force Accuse Officials of Failure to Act;

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Graft Payments to Policemen Here Are Reported to Run into the Millions Annually; Some Members of Force Say Officials Fail to Act. April 25, 1970. Mayor’s Committee Investigating Police Corruption Here Meets Tomorrow to Determine Procedures. April 26, 1970 Panel on Police May Be Replaced; Mayor Is Expected to Name a Larger Unit on Graft That Excludes Lear. May 9, 1970. Lindsay Appoints Corruption Unit; Subpoena Power Asked for 2d Panel to Study Police. May 22, 1970. Knapp Says Laws Spur Police Graft; Lindsay Appointee Explains Objectives of Inquiry. June 7, 1970. 41 Policemen Are Subpoenaed By Knapp Unit in Betting Inquiry. February 17, 1971. Perjury Laid to 2 in Police Inquiry; Patrolmen in Meat Incident Are First to Be Accused in Knapp Investigation; Perjury Charged to 2 Policemen In Knapp Inquiry on Corruption. June 9, 1971. Knapp Says Mayor Shares Blame for Corrupt Police; Knapp Faults Lindsay on Corruption of Police. July 2, 1971. Knapp Unit Tells of Police Bribery as Hearings Open; Reports ‘‘Extensive’’ Problem in Corruption Here; Tape Evidence Is Presented; Details of Vice Graft; 2 Patrolmen and a Lawyer Linked to Payoffs to Help an East Side Madam; Knapp Panel Tells of Police Bribery as Hearings Begin Here. October 19, 1971. Patrolman Says ‘‘All But 2’’ of Colleagues Got Bribes; Numbers Runner Tells the Knapp Panel That He Paid Off a Detective Monthly with Money from Social Security. October 23, 1971. Knapp Unit’s Head Defends Legality of Investigation; Public Attention Is Essential in Combating Corruption; Lawyer Tells Critics ‘‘Hogan Backs Hearings But Roberts Scores Actions’’; Police Bid Businessmen End Giving of Gratuities; Knapp Commission Chairman Defends Legality of Investigation. October 24, 1971. Knapp Urges a Permanent Body on Police Corruption to Succeed His Panel. October 25, 1971. Knapp Witness to Tell of Lindsay Officials’ Apathy; Witness Will Tell Knapp Panel Lindsay Officials Ignored Graft. October 30, 1971. Leary Agrees to Be Knapp Witness. December 14, 1971. Serpico’s Lonely Journey to Knapp Witness Stand. December 15, 1971. Phillips, a Knapp Witness, Indicted in Two Murders; Phillips, Knapp Witness, Is Indicted. March 21, 1972. Knapp Nominated as Federal Judge; Head of Police Inquiry Unit One of Four Named Here. June 16, 1972. Knapp Panel’s Recommendation a Touchy Problem for Mayor and Governor. August 27, 1972. Knapp Panel Says Walsh and Others Ignored Tips by U.S. on Police Crimes; Kriegel Is Scored. December 1972.

These types of articles were nearly a daily occurrence in The New York Times. Needless to say, public trust of the NYPD was severely damaged, and Frank Serpico was by now a marked man.


Although the Knapp Commission’s findings were significant, its efficacy had been impeded by several factors. When the commission was first formed it was given only six months to complete its investigation and findings and to make appropriate reform recommendations, and it appeared that the commission was going to run out of money before it could ever complete its tasks. The investigation would have ended at this point but for intervention by the U.S. Department of Justice, which provided a $215,000 grant enabling the commission to continue its efforts as part of a federally sponsored law enforcement program. Also during this time the Knapp Commission was in a real fight for survival because its legality was now being challenged in court by none other than rank-and-file NYPD officers. A lawsuit filed by the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association charged that the commission had violated a New York City charter provision that prohibited any police review board that lacked a majority of members of the department on it. It even charged that the investigation could result in ‘‘great expense, harassment, and inconvenience’’ (Mass 1973) to police officers. This was illuminated further when two deputy inspectors and their captains, who had been ordered to respond to questions concerning their personal finances, brought a later action against the commission. All five individuals lamented that to respond to the commission about their personal finances was tantamount to compelling them to waive their constitutional rights ‘‘against self-incrimination.’’ Various police personnel filed similar lawsuits against the commission’s subpoena power, but all of those actions were eventually invalidated and thrown out. As a result of Serpico’s activities he was awarded a gold shield by the police commissioner, promoted to detective, and ultimately received the New York City Police Department’s highest honor—the Medal of Honor. But according to Serpico, he received it not for battling corruption but as he put it, he ‘‘was stupid enough to have been shot in the face.’’ (Mass 1973). He then retired one month after receiving this award after twelve years of service. After his retirement he traveled and studied in Europe for a decade and recuperated from being shot. Several newspaper articles were written documenting the events of his heroism, culminating in a 1973 movie staring Al Pacino and a book written by Peter Maas. There have also been several news documentaries about his experiences that have helped expand discussions about police corruption and unethical behavior. The events of Serpico’s shooting are still being debated today. Was he set up by a person or persons within the NYPD? Why was no ‘‘10–13’’ ever issued? And what about the various officers supposedly assisting him on the drug bust? Yet arguably one of his biggest contributions could be that he reminds us of the cautionary words of Dalberg concerning power and how unchecked power may lead to insidious abuses. But police corruption and unethical behavior within many police departments in the United States has been and continues to be a major area of concern. However, in spite of

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Serpico’s significant contribution in fighting police corruption, little has changed since he left the New York City Police Department.

POLICE CORRUPTION Corruption and unethical behavior by police officers has a long and undistinguished history in the United States generally and New York City particularly. Hence, numerous reform measures have proved to be only marginally effective before, during, and after the experiences of Frank Serpico. In fact, according to Serpico, ‘‘nothing has changed.’’ A major impediment to police reform has been the strong organizational cultures that sanction officers who speak out against police criminality, and many police departments have long been bastions of police crime and repression. Concomitantly, police corruption has led to U.S. Department of Justice lawsuits being filed against departments whose officers commit constitutional torts, resulting in the issuance of consent decrees. Yet even when litigation has taken place, many departments continue to struggle with reform in spite of the law and new knowledge and insight gained through research. Various reasons are cited for this that transcend organizational culture and seem to be a function of the nature of the police work. First, police officers have significant amounts of discretion and considerable autonomy in carrying out their jobs. Second, this combined with the very closed nature of most police organizations provides a breeding ground of sorts for police malfeasance. Finally, officers often work varied shifts, and much of their work is done with little close supervision. In a very real sense they are sometimes out of sight and out of mind until a major event occurs that attracts widespread media attention. Thus, it is very difficult to provide proper oversight given their autonomy and considerable close-knit organizational relationships. This is particularly difficult in very large departments such as New York City, and was a real dilemma for Frank Serpico because of the scope of corruption that permeated nearly all aspects of the NYPD, encompassing various precincts and specialized units. Although Serpico was the first police officer in the history of the United States to testify formally on police corruption, the NYPD has a long history of being mired in police misconduct. In the early part of the 1870s the idea of corruption and politics was inextricably linked under the auspices of Tammany Hall—a political machine power supported largely by Irish immigrants who infiltrated the New York City Police Department. During this time the acceptance of bribes by police department leaders from local businessmen was the rule rather than the exception. Police often looked the other way concerning illegal liquor sales and other types of criminality. Officers also supervised polling places at the behest of political figures and would simply ignore ballot box stuffing and/or acts of fraud. By 1894 the


Lexow Committee was established to investigate police corruption. The committee ultimately made reform recommendations that included the idea of making the police department adopt a civil service system. However the NYPD seems to have cycles of corruption spanning twentyyear intervals. Although the events surrounding Serpico emerged from the late 1960s through the early 1970s, allegations of corruption surfaced again in 1992 after six NYPD officers were arrested on drug charges by the Suffolk County Police Department. What was puzzling was the length of time involved before their corruption was ultimately uncovered. The Mollen Commission’s final report published in July 1994 found pervasive corruption within the highest-crime precincts in the city. Notwithstanding Serpico’s testimony and the Knapp Commission conclusions on corruption, some of the Mollen Commission’s findings were unprecedented in the department’s more recent history. For example, it was determined that groups of officers actually were protecting and assisting drug traffickers while simultaneously conducting unlawful searches and seizures. There were widespread instances of perjury and falsifying of official records. In some cases there was evidence of direct involvement in robberies and narcotics trafficking. Part of the problem, according to the commission, was that top police officials simply failed to monitor officers’ behavior and as a practical matter, ignored it. Concomitantly, the Internal Affairs Division seemed to work at minimizing the level of corruption rather than aggressively investigating and exposing it. In fact, a former police officer Kevin Hembury, testifying before the Mollen Commission, validated this notion when he learned, while in the police academy and when serving in the 73rd Precinct, the ‘‘us against them’’ mindset, the concept of the ‘‘blue wall of silence,’’ and that ‘‘cops never rat on other cops, that ratting on corrupt cops is worse than corruption itself.’’ (Armao and Cornefield 1993) Hembury quickly learned that there was money to be made and power to be had if officers were willing to deal in drugs and corruption. Commission members were awestruck when Hembury testified that, ‘‘no commanding officer ever asked how he and his colleagues were spending their days…or how well they were serving the residents they were supposed to protect’’ (Armao and Cornefield 1993) (Note: Armano and Cornefield were chief counsel and deputy chief counsel, respectively, to the Mollen Commission.). This kind of police criminality has implications for communities. No police department can accomplish their mission without the support of the people whom they serve. When citizens lose confidence in their local police because of issues of malfeasance and brutality, the police department’s efficacy is often destroyed. It has been suggested that ‘‘when the police are subjects of complaints, the process of law enforcement begins to break down’’ (Decker and Wagner 1989). This was evident during Serpico’s tenure and is still evident today in many police departments across the United States.

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Law Enforcement Code of Ethics Given the widespread corruption of the New York Police Department and other departments around the country during the 1960s and 1970s, as is evident from the Frank Serpico story, it would be easy to conclude mistakenly that law enforcement as a profession was entirely unconcerned about its ethical obligations and responsibilities. However, the profession was aware of these responsibilities. In 1957, the International Association of Chiefs of Police adopted the following Code of Ethics at its 64th Annual Convention. The code was strongly worded and very intolerant of police graft and corruption—both minor and major. This particular Code of Ethics is still widely proclaimed by today by the law enforcement agencies around the country: ‘‘As a law enforcement officer, my fundamental duty is to serve the community; to safeguard lives and property; to protect the innocent against deception, the weak against oppression or intimidation and the peaceful against violence or disorder; and to respect the constitutional rights of all to liberty, equality and justice. ‘‘I will keep my private life unsullied as an example to all and will behave in a manner that does not bring discredit to me or to my agency. I will maintain courageous calm in the face of danger, scorn or ridicule; develop self-restraint; and be constantly mindful of the welfare of others. Honest in thought and deed both in my personal and official life, I will be exemplary in obeying the law and the regulations of my department. Whatever I see or hear of a confidential nature or that is confided to me in my official capacity will be kept ever secret unless revelation is necessary in the performance of my duty. ‘‘I will never act officiously or permit personal feelings, prejudices, political beliefs, aspirations, animosities or friendships to influence my decisions. With no compromise for crime and with relentless prosecution of criminals, I will enforce the law courteously and appropriately without fear or favor, malice or ill will, never employing unnecessary force or violence and never accepting gratuities. ‘‘I recognize the badge of my office as a symbol of public faith, and I accept it as a public trust to be held so long as I am true to the ethics of police service. I will never engage in acts of corruption or bribery, nor will I condone such acts by other police officers. I will cooperate with all legally authorized agencies and their representatives in the pursuit of justice. ‘‘I know that I alone am responsible for my own standard of professional performance and will take every reasonable opportunity to enhance and improve my level of knowledge and competence.


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POLICE ETHICS The idea of ethics is perhaps one of the most complex and least understood areas of social and ‘‘I will constantly strive philosophical inquiry. Many believe they know to achieve these objectives intuitively what it means to be ethical. However, and ideals, dedicating myself within complex organizational settings the notion before God to my chosen of what constitutes ethical behavior is not always profession . . . law so clear when there exist juxtapositions of some- enforcement.’’ times incompatible value systems. Source: http://www.theiacp.org. Van Wart provides guidance in understanding the nature and extent to which value systems may influence ethical or nonethical behavior within an organizational setting. He argues that ‘‘values are the foundations of ethical systems’’ and that ‘‘values determine what is right and wrong,’’ (1998) and, he identifies five major sources of values: (1) individual values, (2) professional values, (3) organizational values, (4) legal values, and (5) public interest values. According to Van Wart, these values convey at least five questions that must be considered when analyzing ethical dilemmas: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

What is the legal thing to do? What is best for the organization? What is best for the public at large? What best meets professional standards? What is an appropriate role for me to play and to what extent should my interests influence the decision-making process?

Yet arguably, police officers’ personal value systems affect many of their decision-making actions because of the large amounts of discretion they wield and the conditions under which they work, most notably tremendous autonomy with limited supervision or oversight. In addition, officers’ behaviors have often tended to reflect their understanding of communitybased norms wherein they justify unethical and corrupt acts as necessary to accomplish their goals and community expectations. However, the idea of an ‘‘ethical system’’ as noted by Van Wart is somewhat problematic, depending on the scope, purpose, and strength of the various cultures of a particular organization. The battles fought by Frank Serpico and others raise serious questions about police ethics and values and its implications for efficient, effective, and accountable law enforcement. In terms of accountability and oversight, police organizations typically provide a form of self-regulation wherein

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fellow officers investigate potentially corrupt activities of their colleagues. This has been largely ineffective and problematic in large complex police organizations with strong cohesive cultures and where the code of silence is predominant. Stoddard suggests that officers often become socialized to what he refers to as ‘‘blue-coat crime,’’ wherein he contends that some role ambivalence is unavoidable among police, given the nature of our democracy. He argues that officers charged with protecting and serving the public are at a stark disadvantage and thus must sometimes violate the law to accomplish their goals of service and protection. One problem associated with this type of reasoning is that over time, illegal or corrupt activities become routine; activities thought to be minor begin to escalate and become an informal police norm. Stoddard’s blue codes are described below: Mooching: Accepting free coffee, cigarettes, meals, liquor, groceries, or other items, justified as compensation either for being in an underpaid profession or for future acts of favoritism the donor may receive. Bribery: The receipt of cash or a ‘‘gift’’ in exchange for past or future assistance in avoidance of prosecution, such as a claim that the officer is unable to make a positive identification of a criminal, an officer’s agreement to be in the wrong place at a time when a crime is to occur, or any other action that may be excused as carelessness but not offered as proof of deliberate miscarriage of justice. Distinguished from mooching by the higher value of the gift and by the mutual understanding in regard to services to be performed upon the acceptance of the gift. Chiseling: Demanding price discounts, free admission to places of entertainment whether in connection with police duty or not, and the like. Extortion: A demand for placement of an advertisement in a police magazine or purchase of tickets to a police function; the practice of holding a ‘‘street court’’ where minor traffic tickets can be avoided by the payment of cash ‘‘bail’’ to the arresting officer, with no receipt given. Shopping: Picking up small items such as candy bars, gum, and cigarettes at a store where the door has been left accidentally unlocked at the close of business hours. Shakedown: The practice of appropriating expensive items for personal use during an investigation of a break-in, burglary, or unlocked door, and attributing their loss to criminal activity. Distinguished from shopping by the value of the items taken and the ease with which former ownership may be determined if the officer is caught in the act of procurement. Premeditated theft: Planned burglary, involving the use of tools, keys, or other devices to force entry, or any prearranged plan to acquire property unlawfully. Distinguished from shakedown only by the previous arrangement made in regard to the theft, not by the value of the items taken. Favoritism: The practice of issuing license tabs, window stickers, or courtesy cards that exempt users from arrest or citation for traffic offenses (sometimes extended to spouses, families, and friends of recipients).


Perjury: Lying to provide an alibi for fellow officers apprehended in unlawful activity approved by the ‘‘code.’’ Prejudice: Treatment of minority groups in a manner less than impartial, neutral, and objective, especially members of groups who are unlikely to have ‘‘influence’’ in city hall that might cause the arresting officer trouble. (Stoddard 1992)

These kinds of improper police activities taint police credibility and present confounding problems for ethical officers attempting to do their jobs. But early in many officers’ careers they are exposed to heavy-handed pressure to conform to the existing culture. In fact, prior research emerged from socialization theories of the 1960s where it was suggested that belief systems and values are shaped by the occupational and organizational experiences as opposed to learned behavior. Yet Kappeler et al. contends that ‘‘recruit and probationary officers are profoundly affected by their training and socialization’’ (Kappeler et al. 1998). However, attempting to measure the level of integrity within police organizations is problematic for reformers and researchers attempting to shed light on these issues. Attempting to study corruption within police organizations is fraught with methodological problems and is challenging when attempting to apply quantitative techniques. Reasons vary for this, but in many instances corrupt activities are never reported or even recorded by the police agency. Rather, a police department’s data on corruption typically may be classified as ‘‘anticorruption activity’’ as opposed to any measured level of corruption. However, police corruption takes various forms and police behavior has been construed differently among various agencies. For example, the issue of gratuities has not always been a major concern of some police agencies. The idea of the ‘‘freebie’’ or police discount was in some jurisdictions simply common practice that was part of the overall police tradition and culture. Some merchants actively counted on providing gratuities with the idea of having a more visible police presence. As a practical matter this could lead to differential provision of police services. The merchant that provides freebies or police discounts arguably may have a more visible police presence than those who do not. In the view of some merchants, especially those anchored in highcrime areas, the idea of having a more visible police presence is very important to their actual and perceived sense of security. Merchants not providing gratuities and not having the same type of police presence could be victims of differential policing, thereby possibly putting them at risk of increased criminality. Further, it has been argued that acceptance of gratuities is the first step down a slippery path toward corruption, and it has been suggested that gratuities never be accepted or if they are, they should be clearly minimal and that the officer must be aware of the possible consequences of such acceptance. Nevertheless, Fedberg posits that there is little empirical evidence that

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suggests that the acceptance of gratuities will ultimately lead to corruption. In fact, he posits that the ‘‘slippery slope’’ analysis is not founded in logic and is unrealistic, somewhat hypocritical, and insulting to a police officer’s intelligence. They are unrealistic because the great majority of gratuities, such as free coffee, half priced meals, and other discounts come from basically honest merchants who attach no strings or expectations to the offering. (Fedburg 1985, 268).

Although Fedburg’s insights may have common-sense application, the idea of a ‘‘freebie’’ may have much more invidious and economic implications. First and foremost police officers are public sector workers and thus are agents of the sovereign; they work at the behest of the citizens they serve. As agents of the sovereign, their actions ‘‘have the force of law and the coercive power of the government behind them.’’ Consequently, a much higher ethical standard and calling is warranted if the public trust is not to be breached. Still, as noted in Table 1 from Ruiz and Bono (2004, 44–54), there are real economic costs associated with the acceptance of gratuities. It should be noted that the gratuities in Table 1 were calculated using a fifty-week work year and eight-hour shifts from 7:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M. The calculations for coffee and soda assumed two breaks per eight-hour shift; although, based on the author’s experience as a former police officer in the department studied, they were probably considerably higher. According to Ruiz, ‘‘it was commonly held that there was no need to pay for something when it could be obtained for free; hence, it was the practice to wait until the shift began before having breakfast. Doughnuts were a natural with the morning coffee and three could easily be consumed’’ (Ruiz and Bono 2004). Ruiz and Bono (2004, 52) further demonstrate how gratuities relate to officer income, as shown in Table 2. Table 1

List of Common Gratuities Gratuities Coffee/Soda Doughnuts Lunch Cigarettes Alcohol Laundry Movie Theater

Cost $1.00 3@ .60 ¼ 1.80 $6.00 $3.85 4@ $6.00 ¼ $24.00 3/p @ $11.75 5/s @ $7.50 $8.00 2 ¼ $16.00

Total Annual Gratuities: $8,713.10 From Ruiz and Bono (2004, 52).

Frequency $1.00 494 $1.80 247 $6.00 247 $3.85 10 ¼ $38.5052 $24.00 104 $11.75 50 $ 7.50 50 $16.00 52

Annual Cost $494.00 $444.60 $1,482.00 $2,002.00 $2,496.00 $587.50 $375.00 $832.00


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Table 2

Gratuities as a Portion of an Officer’s Annual Salary Total annual gratuities Tax and benefits on total @ 30 percent Total gratuity gross income National police officer salary Percentage of annual salary Weekly gratuity take Monthly gratuity take

$8,713.10 $2,613.93 $11,327.03 $34,556.00 33 percent $217.83 $943.92

From Ruiz and Bono (2004, 52).

Ruiz and Bono go further by identifying and conceptualizing the nature of gratuities as incipient corrupters and economic corrupters. They argue that incipient corrupters are analogous to what the Drug Enforcement Administration has done with respect to marijuana being a gateway drug. They suggest the acceptance of police gratuities could also be viewed as a gateway of sorts to higher levels of police corruption. With respect to economic corruption, Riuz reasons from the perspective of a former practitioner: We argue that because of the frequency and, over time, magnitude of gratuities received, personal feelings, friendship, and indebtedness develops between police officers and the givers of gratuities. We cannot imagine how a police officer could accept gratuities from merchants and their employees that amount to thousands of dollars annually without personal feelings, friendships, and indebtedness to them being established. It was the experience of the ex-practitioner author that merchants who gave gratuities were quick to remind him of their generosity when stopped for a traffic violation or other minor infractions of the law. At the very least they expected to be given special consideration when calling for service. Police officers who claim otherwise are either less than honest or fortunate enough to work in cities with loving philanthropists. (Ruiz and Bono 2004, 46)

Although these observations may or may not be typical in other jurisdictions, it should be noted that Ruiz was a former member of the New Orleans Police Department. The salary level for New Orleans officers was quite low, and according to the author, ‘‘in fact, had it not been for gratuities in the way of food and cigarettes,’’ it essentially would have been difficult to make ends meet. Interestingly, the New Orleans Police Department has a history of corruption and police misconduct. In fact, between 1992 and 1996, forty police officers of the New Orleans Police Department had been arrested for auto theft, bank robbery, and numerous other illegal and criminal acts. Furthermore, another 200 officers ultimately were fired or reprimanded or chose to retire because of their involvement in various illegal or criminal acts. And

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more recently during the events of Hurricane Katrina, the entire nation observed police corruption, criminality, and abuse of authority in a time of crisis when citizens needed their police more than ever. Yet gratuities remain the most prevalent form of police corruption. In fact, one survey found that about half of all police departments had any written policy that mentioned free meals—but not all those policies prohibited the practice of gratuity acceptance. For example, in another survey conducted in Reno, Nevada, it was found that of those business merchants and others who offered free gifts such as coffee or meals, nearly 33 percent specifically denoted that they wanted special treatment or favors in return for the gratuity provided. This latter survey seems to validate, to some degree, Ruiz and Bono’s concern with respect to the quid pro quo established between officers and merchants when gratuities are given. This is the reason why some have argued that police officers should never be allowed to accept gratuities under any circumstance because it leads down a slippery path to further corruption. Although Ruiz suggests that low salaries within the New Orleans Police Department may have been an incentive for the acceptance of gratuities in some cases, all officers understand that police work traditionally has been a lower-paying job in many departments. There has been much progress in raising police officers’ salaries across the country, but compensation still varies substantially by jurisdiction. Consider, however, the current starting salary for a NYPD probationary patrolman, which by nearly all accounts is very low at $25,100. Once the officer completes his or her academy training, the salary increases to $32,700 and continues to increase each year to a maximum (after 51=2 years of service) of $59,588. Of course these salaries do not include average overtime and night shift differential, holiday pay, or uniform allowances. Thus on average an officer will probably earn around $77,000 per year after six years. These types of salary and working condition issues are common in many police departments in general and in the public sector in particular, and new recruits are well aware of them prior to joining their respective police agencies. Thus, although it could be argued that these factors may be an issue affecting police ethics and corruption, they are surely are not root causes of it. Ethical behavior for law enforcement officers should be something they possess long before they decide to become officers. Serpico was frequently challenged with the same types of issues in his dealing with the New York City Police Department in the latter 1960s to early 1970s, as well as others continuing into the 1990s. However, one is challenged to consider when officers actually begin to head down the unethical ‘‘slippery slope.’’ As noted by Thompson, the idea of ethics training may even have implications within the police academy training process when he points out that


Ethics training may help to shape the officers’ perception of right and wrong behavior. However, one officer recently described his police academy ethics training as several hours on where to obtain free or half price meals and product discounts, and how to obtain a free apartment or live without paying for utilities. The remainder of the block of instruction included how to maximize off-duty employment and how to get out of traffic tickets. Early in the indoctrination into policing, some officers receive the message that they are above the law. (Thompson 2001)

These types of observations lend credence to Van Wart’s elements for analyzing ethical dilemmas in terms of what the law requires, the organization’s best interest, the public interest, meeting professional standards, and the role played by each officer and his/her personal interest. Among these various interests, officers’ personal value systems seemed to predominate. This was certainly the case during Serpico’s trials and tribulations when numerous corrupt officers were involved in a myriad of not only unethical but also criminal activities. And in many of these instances, when the evidence of corruption was clear and convincing, upper management simply looked the other way. Given the increasingly dynamic and complex society today in the United States, combined with increased demands on police, the need for administrators to manage ethics and address corruption more effectively is critical. O’Malley argued three critical factors for the ongoing ethical issues in law enforcement: (1) a growing level of temptation emerging from the illicit drug trade market, (2) the decentralization of police organizations, and (3) ‘‘the potential compromising nature of the police organizational culture’’ (O’Malley 1997). In short, officers tend to be confronted with more temptations and opportunity for wrongdoing. The illegal drug industry appears to be a major factor wherein unscrupulous officers can make enormous amounts of money and profits within very short time frames. In some cases the amounts of money an officer could make by dealing in drug trafficking would more than triple his salary. The idea of decentralization inherent in the philosophy of communityoriented policing may be influencing police ethics because it requires officers to work as partners with community members. The historical quasi-military models of policing have been supplanted by a more open, flat structure where control of officer behavior has become more challenging. According to Kane, some neighborhoods may influence police officers’ deviant behavior when there exist high poverty levels, high population turnover, and high levels of racial diversity with low levels of informal social control. He contends that because police officers work in socially disorganized neighborhoods and are thus subject to essentially the same types of community maladies that lead to increases in criminality amongst residents, these factors may also explain police misconduct.

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Unfortunately the scope of police corruption extends to numerous areas such as gratuities, bribes, theft and burglary, police brutality, and homicide, and given the nature of police work and the problems confronting the various communities in the United States, the idea of control becomes even more daunting. This is especially the case considering the advent of terrorism and the additional burdens of planning for eventual disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and others. Additionally, it is sometimes difficult to ascertain exactly what citizens actually want from their police, including their behavior in certain areas. In fact, some surveys have shown that only about 5 percent of people approached by a police officer for a bribe ever report the activity. Perhaps the most egregious police corruption observed recently has been within the Los Angeles Police Department, associated with the Rampart Division. From 1998 through 1999 numerous Los Angeles Police officers were found to be engaging in ‘‘hard core’’ criminality. Many of these officers in the Rampart CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) unit, an elite unit focusing on gang activity, ultimately were found to be attacking gang members and then falsely accusing them of committing crimes, which they had not. Further investigation found that officers routinely punched, brutalized, and choked individuals simply to invoke fear and generally to intimidate them. In one instance an officer in the Rampart Division beat a hand-cuffed suspect after he was brought in for questioning. The suspect was beaten so badly in the chest and stomach that he began to vomit blood. When he was finally released, he went to a local hospital for treatment and later notified LAPD officials of his severe injuries. The suspect was eventually awarded $231,000 in a civil law suit. In another case an officer, with the assistance of his girlfriend, robbed a Los Angeles branch of Bank of America of $722,000. He was later arrested and convicted of bank robbery. There was widespread activity of planting drugs on suspects just to effect arrests, which was confounded further when corrupt supervisors (sergeants) in the Rampart Division actually provided awards for the nefarious criminal acts and even gave an award for shooting an innocent unarmed person. These types of malevolent activities clearly tend to taint the overall image of a police agency and go beyond the pale of acceptable police practices. In many respects the sensational police corruption scandals of the LAPD demonstrate how strong cultures can have devastating effects on police behavior. To their credit the Los Angeles Police Department’s own criticism of its police evaluation system is elucidating: ‘‘Our personnel evaluations have little or no credibility at any level in the organization.’’ (LAPD 2000). That was very important because it was produced and delivered by the LAPD’s internal Board of Inquiry report on the activities stemming from Rampart in 2000. Alarmingly, it highlighted numerous failures within the more than thirty policies designed to ensure integrity, but it concluded that


the systems in place had not worked as designed. Strong cultures within police organizations following a traditional notion of policing combined with the idea of a ‘‘potentially compromising nature of the police organizational culture,’’ (LAPD 2000) further add to the problem of corruption and control. Even police performance evaluations are suspect when completed by supervisory personnel. For example, in the New York City Police Department Officer Michael Dowd who served in the 75th Precinct had received numerous excellent evaluations. As noted by his supervisor, Dowd ‘‘has excellent street knowledge, relates well with his peers and is empathetic to the community, and could easily become a role model for others to emulate’’ (Mollen Commission 1994). But Officer Dowd was arguably one of the most corrupt police officers in the history of the NYPD. He was involved with drug sales or other activities, and he ultimately was convicted on several criminal charges. In fact, a major television news documentary hosted by Barbara Walters with commentary by Frank Serpico highlighted corruption during Serpico’s career and the events surrounding the activity of Michael Dowd. Even with the innovation of community-oriented policing, new technologies designed to enhance efficiency and professionalism, some police cultures have appeared to change little since Frank Serpico’s tour of duty as an NYPD officer. Thus, police corruption remains a constant problem. In many regards police agencies seem to focus largely on little more than controlling space and have not changed significantly during the last forty years. CONCLUSION The legacy of Frank Serpico will be an integral part of police reform for years to come. In fact, he is not only an icon of crime fighting but in many respects has been, and remains, the conscience of many police reformers and those interested in ensuring that our police are not corrupt and that future generations of officers live up to their oath of office and their promise to ‘‘protect and serve.’’ Part of this is due to increased standards for police, including higher education and advanced training. Yet even today at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Frank Serpico is still not convinced that much has been done to address this vitally important issue. Indeed recent newspaper articles appearing in The New York Times seem to validate his concerns: Ex-Police Chief Breaks Ranks, Testifying Against His Men. Vol. 148, Issue 51481, p. B1, Op, 1c. April 3, 1999. Panel Monitoring Police Corruption Is Revived. Vol. 152 Issue 52575, p. B4, Op. August 14, 2003. 3 Are Assigned to Desk Duty in Police-Corruption Inquiry. Vol. 153 Issue 52758, p. B1-B6, 2p, 1c. February 13, 2004.

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Former Officer in Newark Pleads Guilty to Corruption. Vol. 154 Issue 52982, p. B1-B2, Op, 1c. September 24, 2004. Detective Fired in Aftermath of New York Police Inquiry. Vol. 154 Issue 52982, p. B1-B4, Op. September 24, 2004. Time, and Time Served. Late Editions (East Coast). p. 14.1 February 25, 2007. Board Calls Police Department Lax on Cases of Misconduct. p. B. 2. Late Edition (East Coast). August 4, 2007.

Interestingly, even the mention of Serpico’s name in some police circles yields both disgust and admiration among the various officers. Some still view him as the consummate rat because he broke the code of silence, but others consider him a hero in his own right who has inspired us to look closely at the type and quality of law enforcement a free and democratic society deserves. But ethics will remain important to the field of policing not only in the United States but in many parts of our global community as police departments and others attempt to come to grips with the reality of failing to do so and the challenges that must be overcome. Yet policing in the twenty-first century in the America faces unprecedented challenges in an era of terrorism, asymmetrical war, and where large urban police department budgets are challenged to do more with less. The continued influx of drugs, gang violence, immigration issues, and the general feeling of mistrust between police and some of the communities they serve provides fertile ground for increased police temptation, which may lead to corruption. Even with the advent of community-oriented policing, in some communities nothing has changed and the old system, wherein the ‘‘code of silence’’ was traditionally invoked, is still viable. Undeniably, the police subculture is still very strong and has not been amenable to significant change in almost forty years. In fact, during Serpico’s tenure, Westley found that police officers in general took little issue with covering for their colleagues’ criminality. Astonishingly, as recently as 2000 it was found that 52.4 percent of police officers believed it was common practice and not particularly unusual to ignore misconduct by fellow officers. Further, 39 percent of officers believed officers would not even report severe or significant police criminality and misconduct. In the final analysis, Serpico’s admonitions are still accurate to some degree when he posits that ‘‘nothing has changed’’ (Village Voice 1999). FURTHER READING Armao, Joseph P., and Leslie U. Cornefeld. 1993. Why good cops turn rotten. New York Times November 1: A-12. Barker, T. and Robert W. Wells. 1982. Police administrators: Attitudes toward the definition and control of police deviance. Law Enforcement Bulletin 11. Buenker, John D. 2004. A battle for the soul of New York: Tammany Hall, police corruption, vice, and Reverend Charles Parkhurst’s crusade against them, 1892–1895. American Historical Review 109 (4): 246–47.


Bittner, E. 1971. The Functions of the Police in Modern Society. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Brown, M. K. 1981. Working the Street: Police Discretion and the Dilemmas of Reform. New York: Russell Sage Foundation Press. Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2002. Police Departments in Large Cities: 1999–2000. National Criminal Justice May 175703. Coleman, Stephen. 2005. Conflict of interest and police: An unavoidable problem. Criminal Justice Ethics 24 (2): 3–11. Conditt, John H., Jr. 2001. Institutional integrity. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 70 (11): 18–22. Conti, Norman, and James Nolan III. 2005. Policing the platonic cave: Ethics and efficacy in police training. Policing and Society 15 (2): 166–86. Crank, J., Dan Flaherty, and Andrew D. Giacomazzi. 2007. The noble cause: An empirical assessment. Journal of Criminal Justice 35 (1): 103–116. Dalberg, John E. E. 1887. Lord Acton, Letter to Mandell Creighton, April 5. In Acton, Essays on Freedom and Power, ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb, 335–36, 1972. Davis, M. 2003. Rank has no privilege. Criminal Justice Ethics 22 (2). Decker, S., and Allen Wagner. 1989. Critical Issues in Policing: Contemporary Readings, ed. Roger G. Dunham and Geoffrey P. Alpert. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Del Pozo, B. 2005. One dogma of police ethics: Gratuities and the ‘‘Democratic ethos’’ of policing. Criminal Justice Ethics 24 (2, Summer/Fall). Dewan, Shaila, and Brenda Goodman. 2007. Prosecutors say corruption in Atlanta police department is widespread. The New York Times (Late Editions, East Coast). April 27. P. A18. Fedburg, M. 1985. Gratuities, corruption, and the democratic ethos of policing: The case of the free cup of coffee. In Moral Issues in Police Work, ed. F. Elliston and M. Feldburg, 267–76. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield. Goldstein, H. 1975. Police Corruption: A Perspective on Its Nature and Control. Washington, D.C.: Police Foundation. Grant, J. Kevin. 2002. Ethics in law enforcement. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 71 (12) 11–14. Harris, R. N. 1973. The Police Academy: An Inside View. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Harrison, Bob. 1999. Noble cause corruption and the police ethic. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 68 (8). Herbert, Steve. 1997. Policing Space: Territoriality and the Los Angeles Police Department. The University of Minnesota Press. Huberts, Leo W., J. C., Terry Lamboo, and Maurice Punch. 2003. Police integrity in the Netherlands and the United States: Awareness and alertness. Police Practice & Research 4(3). Ivkovic, Sanja Kutnjak. 2003. To serve and collect: Measuring police corruption. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 93 (2/3): 593–649. Ivkovic, Sanja Kutnjak. 2004. Evaluating the seriousness of police misconduct: A cross-cultural comparison of police officer and citizen views. International Criminal Justice Review (Georgia State University). 14:25–48.

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Johnson, Roberta A. 2005. Whistle blowing and the police. Rutgers Journal of Law and Urban Policy 3(1): 74–83. Johnson, Terrance A., and Raymond W. Cox III. 2004/05. Police ethics: Organizational implications. Public Integrity 7(Winter 1). Kahan, D. M. 2005. Reciprocity, collective action, and community policing. California Law Review 90 (5): 1513. Kane, R. 2002. The social ecology of police misconduct. Criminology 40 (4). Kania, Richard. 1982. Should we tell the police to say ‘yes’ to gratuities?’’ Criminal Justice Ethics 7 (2): 37–49. Kappeler, V. K., R. D. Sluder, and G. P. Alpert. 1998. Forces of Deviance: Understanding the Dark Side of Policing. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Kelling, G. L., and R. B. Kliesmet. 1972. Resistance to the professionalization of the police. The Law Officer September 16–22. Kingshott, Brian F., Kathleen Bailey, and Suzanne E. Wolfe. 2004. Police culture, ethics, and entitlement theory. Criminal Justice Studies 17 (2): 187–202. Klockars, C., S. K. Ivkovich, Willam E. Harver, and Maria R. Haberfeld. 2000. The measure of police integrity. National Institute of Justice Research in Brief. May. Knapp Commission. 1972. Commission to Investigate Allegations of Police Corruption and the City’s Anti-Corruption Procedures. New York: George Braziller. Lexow Committee. 1895. Committee Report Official Title: Report of the Special Committee Appointed to Investigate the Police Department of the City of New York. January 18. Los Angeles Police Department. 2000. Board of Inquiry into the Rampart Area Corruption Incident (Los Angeles: LAPD March. Executive Summary, p. 7; Chapter 10, ‘‘Police Integrity Systems.’’ Lundman, R. J. 1980. Police Behavior: A Sociological Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Lyman, M. D. 1999. The Police: An Introduction. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Maas, Peter. Serpico. 1973. New York: Bantam Books. McCormack, R. 1987. An update. In Managing Police Corruption: International Perspectives, ed. R. H. Ward and R. McCormack, Chicago: Office of International Criminal Justice. Miller, Eric J. 2006. Role-based policing: Restraining police conduct ‘‘outside the legitimate investigative sphere.’’ California Law Review 94 (May, 3). Mollen Commission. 1994. The City of New York Commission to Investigate Allegations of Corruption and the Anti-Corruption Procedures of the Police Department: Commission Report. New York, NY. Morton, J. 1993. Bent Coppers: A Survey of Police Corruption. London: Little, Brown, and Company. Murano, Vincent. 1990. Cop Hunter. New York: Simon & Schuster. Newburn, T. 2003. Understanding and Preventing Police Corruption: Lessons from the Literature. Police Research Series Paper 110, Policing and Reducing Crime Unit; Research, Development and Statistics Directorate, London, UK. New York Police Department Official Website. 2007. http://www.nyc.gov./html/ nypd (accessed August 14, 2007).


O’Malley, Timothy J. 1997. Managing for ethics. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 97 (4): 20–25. PBS Frontline. L.A.P.D. Blues: The Scandal: Rampart Scandal Timeline. http:// www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/lapd/scandal/cron.html (accessed August 14, 2007). Perry, Frank L. 2001. Repairing broken windows. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, Feb 70 (2): 23–26. Punch, M. 1985. Conduct Unbecoming: The Social Construction of Police Deviance and Control. New York: Methuen. Rosenbloom, David H., and Robert S. Kravchuck. 2005. Public Administration: Understanding Management, Politics, and Law in the Public Sector. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies. Rothwell, Gary R. and Norman J. Baldwin. 2007. Ethical climate theory, whistleblowing, and the code of silence in police agencies in the state of Georgia. Journal of Business Ethics Dordrecht 70 (4). Ruiz, Jim, and Christine Bono. 2004/2005. At what price a ‘‘freebie’’? The real cost of police gratuities. Criminal Justice Ethics 23 (1, Winter/Spring): 44–54. Rummel, David. 1994. The Tarnished Shield: When Good Cops Go Bad [video recording]; New York: ABC News; Princeton, NJ Films for the Humanities, Host: Barbara Walters, Publisher Number: FFH 5298 Films for the Humanities. Senate Committee. 1895. Report and Proceedings of the Senate Committee Appointed to Investigate the Police Department of the City of New York. Vol. III: Transmitted to the Legislature January 18, 1895. Sherman, L. W. 1974. The sociology and the social reform of the American police: 1950–1973. Journal of Police Science and Administration II (2): 255–62. Sherman, L. W. 1985. Becoming bent: moral careers of corrupt policemen. In Moral Issues in Police Work, ed. F. Elliston and M. Feldberg, 250–67. Totowa, NJ; Rowman & Littlefield. Sigler, Robert, and Timothy Dees. 1988. Public perception of petty corruption in law enforcement. Journal of Police Science and Administration Vol. 14. Skolnick, Jerome H., and James J. Fyfe. 1993. Above the Law: Police and the Excessive Use of Force. New York: Free Press. Smothers, Ronald, and Jason George. 2004. Former officer in Newark pleads guilty to corruption. The New York Times, 154 (52982): B1-B2, Op, 1c. September 24. Stephens, Norman. 2006. Ethics do not begin when you pin on the badge. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 75 (11): 22–23. Stoddard, E. R. 1968. The informal ‘‘code’’ of police deviancy: A group approach to blue-coat crime. Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science 59:210–13. Sykes, Gary. 1985. The functional nature of police reform: The ‘‘myth’’ of controlling the police. Justice Quarterly 2:52–65. Taylor, Morris A. 2000. Quasi Theory, Organizational Change, and the Seduction of Raw Data. Ph.D. Dissertation, Saint Louis University. Thatvideosite. 2005. New Orleans police looting store during Katrina. http://thatvi deosite.com/video/6#CDB87 (accessed August 14, 2007). Thompson, D. 2001. Above the law? Law and Order 49 (1). United States vs. City of Pittsburg. (W.D. Pa., 1977).

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USDOJ Official Website. 2007. U.S. Department of Justice civil rights division special litigation section. http://www.usdoj.gov/.webloc (accessed August 14, 2007). Van Wart, Montgomery. 1998. Changing Public Sector Values. New York: Garland Publishing. Vartabedian, Ralph, Richard A Serrano, and Richard Marosi. 2006. The long, crooked line: Rise in bribery tests integrity of U.S. border. Los Angeles Times Main News, National Desk, Part A, August 23. The Village Voice. 1999. Serpico: ‘Nothing has changed’ cops in danger from other cops. www.villagevoice.com/news#CDD95 (accessed August 15, 2007). Weisburd, David, and Rosann Greenspan. 2000. Police Attitudes toward Abuse of Authority: Findings from a National Study. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice. Westley, W. 1970. Violence and the Police. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Westmarland, Louis. 2005. Police ethics and integrity: Breaking the blue cope of silence. Policing and Society 15 (2): 145–65.

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Joseph Pistone, AKA ‘‘Donnie Brasco’’ John Dombrink


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JOSEPH PISTONE’S UNDERCOVER CAREER—THE VIEW FROM THIRTY YEARS OUT Looking back through the horrific lens of the events of September 11, 2001, and the challenges posed to the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities since that day, it seems quaint to consider the exploits of one FBI agent, Joseph Pistone, who successfully infiltrated a New York City organized crime group in the 1970s, stayed undercover for six years, and eventually testified in 100 trials and the successful prosecution of scores of racketeers. In a country now concerned with the shadowy and elusive patterns and grouping of terrorists—a phenomenon that concerned other countries might have worried about, but not the United States in 1978: the territorial-bound ‘‘wiseguys,’’ with their local social clubs and pre-cell phone, pre-e-mail aversion to being caught in an incriminating conversation in a wiretap or bug, seem farther away than thirty years.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Fact Sheet: Organized Crime About Organized Crime When you think of organized crime, you probably picture the Italian and Sicilian Mafioso of television and the silver screen. But in recent years, the face of organized crime has changed, and the threat is broader and more complex than ever. Today, organized crime includes: • Russian mobsters who fled to the United States in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse; • Groups from African countries like Nigeria that engage in drug trafficking and financial scams; • Chinese Tongs, Japanese Boryokudan, and other Asian crime rings; and • Enterprises based in Eastern European nations like Hungary and Romania. All of these groups have a presence in the United States or are targeting our citizens from afar—using the Internet and other technologies of our global age. More and more, they are literally becoming partners in crime, realizing they have more to gain from cooperating than competing. The Impact of Organized Crime It isn’t easily measured, but we know it’s significant. Organized crime rings manipulate and monopolize financial markets, traditional institutions like

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labor unions, and legitimate industries like construction and trash hauling. They bring drugs into our cities and raise the level of violence in our communities by buying off corrupt officials and using graft, extortion, intimidation, and murder to maintain their operations. Their underground businesses— including prostitution and human trafficking—sow misery nationally and globally. They also con us out of millions each year through various stock frauds and financial scams. The economic impact alone is staggering: it’s estimated that global organized crime reaps illegal profits of around $1 trillion per year. Fighting Organized Crime To combat the ongoing threat posed by these groups, we have a longestablished—yet constantly evolving—organized crime program dedicated to eliminating the criminal enterprises that pose the greatest threat to America. Dismantling and disrupting major international and national organized criminal enterprises is a long-standing area of FBI expertise. We have the experience and training to target criminal enterprises, the broad statutory jurisdictions to bring down entire organizations rather than just individuals, and a presence throughout the nation and the world. Our Organized Crime Program is based on the following framework: • Employing a methodology that yields maximum impact with our limited resources; • Pursuing targets that have direct ties to significant national and international criminal enterprises and systematically dismantling those enterprises; • Remaining flexible enough to pursue regional organized crime groups conducting significant racketeering activity; and • Ensuring that our targets are permanently dismantled or significantly disrupted. We are also reaching out globally. Partners all over the world help us track down criminals and provide critical information during investigations. We even have agents working side-by-side with colleagues in Italy, Hungary, and elsewhere. How We’re Organized to Combat Organized Crime The Organized Crime Section at FBI Headquarters is divided into three units, devoted to La Cosa Nostra, Italian organized crime and racketeering; Eurasian/Middle Eastern organized crime; and Asian and African criminal enterprises. (continued )


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Our headquarters is tasked with the overall coordination and support of all organized crime investigations. Each of our 56 field offices investigates criminal enterprises within its own territory and relies on headquarters for additional support and help. We also participate in joint task forces with other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. These task forces allow us to pool resources of various agencies, taking advantage of the efficiencies of each of these agencies to combat organized crime. The following are among our recent successes: • In fiscal 2005, we had 651 pending investigations related to Italian organized crime and labor racketeering alone. We had another 468 cases related to Asian and African criminal enterprises, plus investigations into groups affiliated with other parts of the globe. • In the same year, nearly 1,500 individuals affiliated with organized crime were arrested and 824 were convicted. • Of the roughly 1,000 ‘‘made’’ members of Italian organized crime groups in the United States, more than 200 are in jail. Source: http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/orgcrime/aboutocs.htm/.

The view from 2008, however, shouldn’t diminish the accomplishments of Pistone, who achieved what no federal law enforcement officer—indeed, no officer of any level—had done in twentieth-century American policing. He was able to successfully act as an undercover operative within traditional organized crime circles in New York for six years, eventually providing testimony and evidence against scores of racketeers, at the time when the federal government was making inroads into the policing of racketeers. THE PISTONE CAREER Joseph Pistone was born in 1939 and joined the FBI a few years after graduating from William Paterson College in New Jersey in 1965. He worked briefly as a teacher, then was with Naval Intelligence, and passed the entry test and joined the FBI in 1969. His first FBI years were spent in Florida, where he occasionally worked as an undercover operative—as police in some sections of local and federal police departments did in the course of their duties. From there, he worked in Virginia and worked some truck hijackings, a staple of the racketeering world in certain circles. Such hijackings (or ‘‘driveaways,’’ in which the trucker was complicit with the theft) also connected the racketeers to


their working-class neighbors, as they sold the stolen merchandise or ‘‘swag’’ at steep discounts out of the back of bars or out of the trunks of cars. Pistone notes: I had an undercover assignment up and down the East Coast with a theft ring that stole high-end automobiles, trucks, a couple airplanes. I was using the name Donald Brasco at that time. When I came off that assignment, I had a supervisor…and we had this idea for an undercover operation that would infiltrate fences that were dealing with the mafia in stolen goods. (Diehl 2006, 17)

At the time Pistone entered his undercover role, it was common for local and federal police—in particular drug police—to use ‘‘buy-and-bust’’ techniques, in which the police posed as illegal drug purchasers or sellers and were exposed to violence in the main. One of the reasons Pistone has given for his ability to be so bravely effective is that he came from a similar background and milieu as the racketeers he was infiltrating: I grew up in a neighborhood in Paterson, New Jersey, which is basically a suburb of New York City…you could get your complete wardrobe in a neighborhood bar: shoes, pants, shirts, even underwear and socks. The suit I wore my first day to the FBI was swag. (Pistone and Brandt 2004).

Pistone has gained justifiable notice for his six years undercover among New York racketeers, who are variously referred to as ‘‘the Mob,’’ ‘‘wiseguys’’ (his preferred usage), ‘‘La Cosa Nostra’’ (LCN), or traditional organized crime. In a sentence, he explains: ‘‘I had the goal of gathering sufficient evidence to establish a RICO charge against the Bonnano family, as well as the other New York Mafia families by association’’ (Pistone and Brandt 2007). But at the start, he didn’t necessarily envision the impact he would have. The assignment was supposed to be for six months. Only at the nine-month mark did a bartender introduce him to some of the people he was hanging around and trying to meet. As Pistone recollects, he began his stint in New York as Donnie Brasco with the same expectations of a short-term endeavor as his previous work had been: On the day in September 1976 that I left the New York FBI office to start my 6-month undercover role, our main goal was not with the intention of infiltrating the Mafia, nor did we have any idea that it would result in my being undercover for all those years. (Diehl 2006, 16).

Posing as a jewel thief, Pistone set in motion an evolving relationship with members of the New York City-based Bonnano crime organization: I chose a jewel thief because you need a legend that’s non-violent. As an undercover FBI agent, you can’t be saying you’re going to break someone’s

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legs or shoot someone. A jewel thief is a profession where you can say you operate alone, which is key. You can come in with some jewelry and diamonds and say, ‘‘I did a score last night,’’ using stuff confiscated by U.S. Customs or whatever.

His entree into the group was ‘‘Lefty Guns’’ Ruggiero, and this cover provided enough of a ‘‘back story’’ for Pistone to hang around and eventually insinuate himself into the local crime group: … the whole idea about being a thief is to earn money illegally. I had the ability, they thought, to earn them money. I would bring around the precious gems. Plus, I had a skill that not many of them had, which was picking locks, burglar alarms, safes. That’s a skill they needed and I had from my years in Naval Intelligence and taking different FBI courses.

Mike Newell’s film Donnie Brasco necessarily makes ‘‘Lefty’’ an approachable figure, largely through the portrayal by renowned actor Al Pacino, which a New York Times movie reviewer lauded for bringing ‘‘color’’ and ‘‘pathos’’ to the role. Pistone says Lefty was a ‘‘stone-cold killer’’—but Pacino plays him with great empathy. Many times investigative agencies worry about their undercover operatives being ‘‘captured’’ by the perspective of their subjects, or ‘‘going native’’ and becoming less useful as operatives of their agency. Although Newell’s film hints at the difficulties for Pistone and his family, with his unexplained absences and conflicts as he inhabits his undercover persona, Pistone himself assured the Congress that he held no such romantic visions of those he hung out with: I think it is important to observe that law enforcement’s success in our operation should once and for all destroy the romantic illusion about the Mafia. Organized crime is neither invincible nor honorable. Combined with the series of publicized prosecutions in New York and elsewhere that the Subcommittee is reviewing in its hearings, law enforcement has shown that this secret society called the Mafia is no longer so secretive. Its ranks can be penetrated, its meetings recorded, and its hierarchy indicted, convicted, and all sent to jail. (Pistone 1988)

Although the federal effort against organized crime could conceivably have succeeded without the fruits of Pistone’s undercover work, relying primarily instead on the products of wiretaps and bugs, there also was a synergy from the undercover work and the other forms of surveillance and evidence gathering that succeeded in crippling these racketeers. As Pistone writes in a recent book: ‘‘At one time there were twenty-six wires and bugs up and running that were based on reasonable cause taken from intelligence reports of mine from the field’’ (Pistone and Brandt 2007). Pistone’s testimony was an indispensable element in cases made against the Bonnano crime family, the international Pizza Connection case, and the


path-breaking case against the group of the heads of the New York organizedcrime families, known as the Commission Case: ‘‘…my testimony in over ten trials and even more grand juries throughout the United States…resulted in more than 200 indictments and over 100 convictions of members of organized crime across the country.’’ (Jacobs 1994)

It wasn’t always easy to implement these novel strategies. FBI agent Jules Bonavolonta, who had a central role in organized-crime law enforcement, writes about how difficult it was to overcome FBI bureaucracy and intransigence. Bonavolonta also praises Pistone, in this assessment: I can honestly say that to this day, he’s still the most successful undercover agent we’ve ever had. Including the fact that he walked out of it with his head screwed on straight. You see a lot of problems undercover agents encounter. But he’s a very level-headed guy and he used his experience to benefit other undercover agents. A lot of them still call him and ask for advice. (Span 1997).

Pistone also worked with notable prosecutors of this emerging area of organized crime control: Rudolph Giuliani (later to be New York City Mayor and 2008 Republican presidential hopeful), Louis Freeh (later the Director of the FBI), and Michael Chertoff (later to be the Secretary of the Federal Department of Homeland Security). Pistone’s coauthor Charles Brandt pays tribute to the character of his friend and coauthor, when he writes at the beginning of a 2007 book exploring untold stories and the ramifications of the ‘‘Donnie Brasco’’ career. To him, Pistone had ‘‘…no rulebook to follow’’ and exhibited ‘‘…prolonged heroism, tactical brilliance, and pure mental toughness…’’ (Pistone and Brandt 2007, 10). In fact, Pistone succeeded to the extent that he was being considered for elevation into the ranks of the ‘‘made’’ gangsters, when the FBI ended his undercover career. He has also lived with an apparent contract out for his murder because his revelations and testimony led to the jailing (and death in some instances) of many who he worked with. While the global situation of today might make the accomplishment of Pistone seem from a simpler time, one comparison is apt. The likelihood today of an FBI agent penetrating Al Qaeda and shaking hands with a leading Al Qaeda operative clearly seems remote. To many, that was how impenetrable the pre-1970s traditional organized-crime groups were in the United States, having been built on decades of experience in keeping the legal apparatus from knowing much of their activities. In that context, Joseph Pistone’s accomplishments, as well as his eventual reports to us back from the ‘‘field’’ as an anthropologist of wiseguys, are notable.

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ORGANIZED CRIME AND THE FAILURE OF POLICING STRATEGIES BEFORE PISTONE’S ERA The years that Joe Pistone spent undercover coincided with a dramatic change in the approach of American federal police and prosecutors toward organized criminal enterprises and leaders, a situation in stark contrast to the ineffectiveness that had so characterized even the best-intentioned efforts before. Even as Pistone was in his first year of being undercover, the General Accounting Office (GAO) released a report that questioned the effectiveness of American organized-crime control. The GAO reported in 1977 that federal organized-crime prosecutors were ‘‘…not achieving a planned and coordinated, multiagency effort against organized crime’’ (GAO 1989). Law professor James B. Jacobs, the author of three comprehensive books on the prosecution of organized crime in the 1980s and beyond, looked back on the period and told one writer: ‘‘…as late as the late 1970s/the early 80s, organized crime was as strong as it ever was in the United States’’ (Adler 2007). In 1908, there were few federal crimes: bankruptcy fraud, antitrust crime, neutrality violations, and peonage/compulsory servitude. Now there are 271 federal crimes. The primary agency for federal efforts against organized crime has been the FBI, which, in 1991, had 22,000 employees, of which 10,000 were special agents (smaller than the police force of New York City). There were many good reasons for ‘‘federalizing’’ this function throughout the twentieth century, given the interstate nature of many organized crimes. However, for various reasons, the FBI did not choose to make organized crime a targeted federal priority. Some analysts suggest this was because of Hoover’s fear of the potentially corruptive influence of organized crime on FBI agents. Others, such as Summers, argue that personal attributes of FBI Director Hoover made him susceptible to organized-crime influence. It was Robert Kennedy who brought federal focus to control organized crime in the federal arena, often battling with Hoover, who was putatively under his control. Ever since Kennedy’s tenure as attorney general (1961–1964), there has been increased federal interest in and responsibility for organized-crime policing and prosecution. Fresh from his pursuit of Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa as counsel of the McClellan Rackets Committee in the Senate, Kennedy made organized-crime prosecution one of his top priorities. When Professor Robert Blakey moved from the Organized Crime and Racketeering section of the Justice Department, where he had been a prosecutor under Kennedy and the newly energized war on organized crime, he eventually ended up as a counsel in the U.S. Senate. With Kennedy departed from office in the wake of his brother’s assassination, Blakey became the


key drafter of the legislation that would radically change the ability of government to sanction organized criminals: the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, statute part of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. There was also a general shift from what has been termed an ‘‘attrition strategy’’ against organized crime, to an ‘‘enterprise strategy,’’ which focused on the destruction of organizations and their leadership, as well as their assets and profit bases. Blakey’s contribution to the 1967 organized-crime report of the President’s Commission on Organized Crime and to the use of asset forfeiture and other emerging strategies shaped this shift in strategy over these crucial decades, even while the federal effort against organized crime was criticized for lacking coherence and effectiveness. At the same time, these strategies have taken advantage of changes in the organized-crime groups themselves that make them more vulnerable to organized-crime control, even as their interests have become more diversified. Goldstock has credited this ‘‘synergistic effect of the sociological and law enforcement changes’’—increased aggressiveness of law enforcement, and the disenchantment of organized criminals—for the decline, when he testified before a U.S. Senate Committee in 1988: By the late 1970s, for many family members, traditional values had been replaced by simple cost-benefit analysis. When faced with prosecution, forfeiture and incarceration, they chose instead to cooperate with law enforcement. They testified not only before Senate Committees…but at trials as well. By the mid-1980s, some were even willing to wear concealable recorders to gather evidence against their colleagues. (Goldstock 1988, 675)

Goldstock further described the ‘‘mob yuppies,’’ who…sought quick monetary rewards but were unwilling to take time to develop the skills and undertake the responsibilities of their predecessors’’ (674). This transformation included many organized criminals’ being willing to break the sacred code of omerta—secrecy—and testify for the government to prevent long prison sentences, an unheard-of event in the heyday of traditional organized crime. Salvatore Gravano’s testimony against Gambino family crime boss John Gotti was the highest example—an underboss testifying against the most powerful boss of New York’s crime families. Ironically, even as this development gave police and prosecutors the upper hand in effectively sanctioning the once elusive traditional organized criminals, a similar street code against ‘‘snitching’’ or cooperating with authorities has come to trouble police in their efforts to build leads on common crime, gang crime, and drug crime in urban American high-crime areas. The ‘‘stop-snitching’’ campaign by street criminals has frustrated prosecutors who depend on victim and witness information and testimony to successfully sanction criminals.

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Goldstock described the synergy of aggressive law enforcement with new legal weapons and with this new mobster: The increased aggressiveness of law enforcement, using modern substantive and procedural law in a sophisticated way, has created new leverage against potential witnesses. And mob figures, disenchanted with the organizations of which they were a part, choose to cooperate more and more frequently. (Goldstock 1988, 675)

The strategies that the FBI deployed in sending Pistone undercover—using surveillance information and the newly devised RICO statute to implicate many racketeer bosses—were developing as he entered his undercover assignment. In the previous decade, they had been found wanting, as a national commission on crime explained in 1967.

THE 1967 REPORT ON ORGANIZED CRIME The opening paragraphs of the Task Force on Organized Crime report of the 1967 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice begins: Organized crime is a society that seeks to operate outside the control of the American people and their government. It involves thousands of criminals, working within structures as complex as those of any large corporation, subject to laws more rigidly enforced than those of legitimate governments. Its actions are not impulsive but rather the result of intricate conspiracies, carried on over many years and aimed at gaining control over whole fields of activity in order to amass huge profits. (President’s Commission 1967, 1)

In addition to listing the traditional illegal activities in which organized crime takes part—gambling, loan-sharking, narcotics, and other forms of vice—the Task Force Report emphasized the activities of organized crime in legitimate business and in labor unions. ‘‘Here,’’ the report states, ‘‘it employs illegitimate methods—monopolization, terrorism, extortion, tax evasion—to drive out or control lawful ownership and leadership and to exact profits from the public’’ In defining the world of private and violent economic and social power that organized crime occupies, the Task Force Report continued: What organized crime wants is money and power. What makes it different from law-abiding organizations and individuals with those same objectives is that the ethical and moral standards the criminals adhere to, the laws and regulations they obey, the procedures they use are private and secret ones that they devise themselves, change when they see fit, and administer summarily and invisibly…It is organized crime’s accumulation of money, not the


individual transactions by which the money is accumulated, that has a great and threatening impact on America…The purpose of organized crime is not competition with visible, legal government but nullification of it. When organized crime places an official in public office, it nullifies the political process. When it bribes a police official, it nullifies law enforcement. (1–2)

In discussing the role of law enforcement, the Task Force Report stated, ‘‘Investigation and prosecution of organized criminal groups in the twentieth century has seldom proceeded on a continuous, institutionalized basis,’’ and ‘‘Law enforcement’s way of fighting organized crime has been primitive compared to organized crime’s way of operating.’’ (10–16) (The Report then listed a number of ways in which those two statements were borne out: difficulties in obtaining proof, lack of resources, lack of coordination, failure to develop strategic intelligence, failure to use available sanctions, and the lack of public and political commitment. The 1967 Task Force Report on Organized Crime of the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice summarized the state of organized crime and the state of law enforcement’s strategies and successes against it at a time when the federal government had committed to organized-crime control as a major focus of the Justice Department. Many who had either served in investigative or prosecutorial capacities or analyzed organized crime, or both, were frustrated with the government’s inability to make inroads against criminals who were well known for their exploits. Far more than the 1950s Kefauver Committee in the U.S. Senate, the 1967 Task Force Report set out to frame a range of responses and strategies that would be implemented and have a direct effect on controlling organized crime, rather than merely identifying it and railing at its presence and power. FAILURE OF TRADITIONAL STRATEGIES Before the shift in federal prosecution strategy, the government waged a war of attrition—in effect, removing one member of an organized crime family at a time, while that member is replaced, and the organization functions relatively undisturbed. The GAO, an auditing arm of the federal government, found that the average sentence for convicted organized criminals was two years, when it issued a 1977 report. Further, it found that the government’s strategy against organized criminals was not very well organized. From that assessment to the state of organized crime policing in 1997 is a giant leap. Taken as a group, the new strategies and laws involved represent a wholesale shift in the focus of government efforts against organized criminals and drug traffickers, a development that has put traditional organized criminal groups and drug entrepreneurs on the run. Early prosecutorial efforts to

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control organized crime centered around what has been termed an ‘‘attrition’’ strategy. This involved an approach that sought to control organized crime through the prosecution and incarceration of key figures in organized criminal enterprises. As described by two organized crime scholars in the 1970s: The most commonly employed strategy is that of attrition, in which individual suspects are apprehended and prosecuted for specific alleged crimes under due process of law. The main approach has been and continues to be the apprehension of a person who is violating (or has violated) the law by means of penalties calculated to remove him from society and, using his confinement as an example, to deter others from similar activities.’’ (Smith and Salerno 1970, 101–11)

The attrition strategy, however, underestimated the flexibility of organized crime leadership and so had little impact on the organizational structure. Many of those concerned with organized crime control were frustrated by the ability of criminal groups to absorb personnel losses or disruptions, especially insofar as these organizations were designed to reduce risk and avoid detection of activity of their most important members. The strategy, in fact, may have aided the criminal succession process without damaging the organizations themselves by removing aged leaders. The shortcomings of the attrition strategy caused law enforcement officials to recognize that organized criminal groups were resilient and readily able to replace convicted members, with only the slightest disruption of their ongoing enterprises. This frustration was clearly articulated by former deputy U.S. Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan: …[w]e have learned that the incarceration of individual criminals, even those of the highest rank, is generally not sufficient to immobilize or even to reduce the incentive of entrenched criminal organizations. As long as immense criminal profits remain available as operating capital, a convicted criminal’s compatriots will be able to keep the organization functioning, and the prisoner himself may be able to resume business upon or even before his release. (GAO 1981)

The problem of resilient criminal leadership has been compounded by the impingement of organized crime onto white-collar criminal activities, the growing sophistication of organized criminals, and the inability of federal law enforcement agencies to sanction targeted organized criminal entrepreneurs in a meaningful way. To offset the limitations of the attrition strategy, federal law enforcement officials added an ‘‘enterprise’’ strategy in the mid-1970s, aimed at upsetting the financial stability of criminal groups, rather than punishing replaceable members. In testimony before the U.S. Senate in 1979, Justice Department


Criminal Division Chief Philip Heymann answered charges from a 1977 GAO report accusing the Justice Department of having no strategy against organized crime. Heymann explained that in 1977 intensive planning for this strategy shift took place. Another Justice Department official, Mark Richard, explained how that process unfolded: There was a growing frustration that was being experienced at the grass roots level of addressing the vice area. A general feeling that notwithstanding a variety of successful prosecutive actions in the area, that the impact on the total scheme of things was relatively minor, that we were not directing our resources adequately, focusing them in any meaningful fashion. A general consensus arose, if you will, throughout the organization, that a hard look was required and from a variety of sources you saw suggestions coming to the surface to where best we could utilize our resources, how we should [utilize resources] make maximum impact on these organizations and in this fashion we arrived at the position we are in now. (GAO 1981)

CHANGES IN THE FBI: FROM A FOCUS ON THE ‘‘QUANTITY’’ OF CASES TO A FOCUS ON THE ‘‘QUALITY’’ OF CASES Organized crime, one of seven sections in the Criminal Investigative Division, has 80 percent of the bureau’s agents. Former chief of that division William Baker said: ‘‘…If there’s a key to all the cases we are working out of these programs, it’s the criminal enterprise.’’ After the change in the directorship of the FBI, with the passing of J. Edgar Hoover, a leadership philosophy emerged that emphasized the development of more ‘‘quality’’ cases in complex areas such as organized crime. This shift was done with the realization that such cases might take much longer, even years to develop. This change was in marked contrast to Hoover’s earlier emphasis on the quantity of cases handled, one that may have been suited to isolated events such as bank robberies, but not to systemic and complex crimes and organizations such as organized crime groups. Former high-ranking FBI official Oliver (Buck) Revell said about the FBI changes after Hoover’s death, ‘‘…We shed almost entirely our methodologies and our almost obsessive concern with subversion. We established national priorities: organized crime, foreign counter intelligence, and whitecollar crime. Perhaps the most important thing internally was we deemphasized statistics’’ (Wilson 1978). As former FBI director Louis Freeh, who was the lead federal prosecutor in some of the 1980s ‘‘Pizza Connection’’ organized-crime cases in New York City, writes: ‘‘Clearly, the Bureau was giving American taxpayers their money’s worth. In truth, the numbers were a lot of sound and fury signifying very little’’ (Freeh 2005).

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RICO: ATTACKING THE CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE RICO (Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization) has been hailed as one of the most prominent weapons against organized crime in recent decades. It has also been critiqued as an overexpansion of government authority and an unnecessary addition to the weapons available to prosecutors. Part of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, RICO, with its novel conspiracy provisions and lengthy sentence allowances, has allowed federal prosecutors to reverse their long period of frustration and send many of the leaders of America’s traditional organized crime families to prison for many years. The broad reach of RICO has relieved the government of the previous limited focus on individual specific crimes, allowing a broader perspective encompassing patterns of criminal activity. This provides a prosecutorial weapon that reflects the organizational and expansive diverse character of organized crime. HOW RICO WORKS RICO incorporates by reference more than two dozen federal and state predicate crimes under the umbrella concept of ‘‘racketeering activity.’’ These predicate crimes are state felonies that range from the more violent such as murder, extortion, arson, and kidnapping, to some less violent federal crimes such as embezzlement, gambling, mail fraud, wire fraud, and security fraud. Racketeering activity is defined as the committing of two instances of one or more of the designated offenses within a ten-year period. RICO specifically outlaws four types of racketeering activity by any person, persons, or organization: 1. Using income derived from a pattern of racketeering activity to acquire an interest in an enterprise [18 U.S.C. Ss 1962(a)] 2. Acquiring or maintaining an interest in an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity [18 U.S.C. Ss 1962(b)] 3. Conducting the affairs of an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity [18 U.S.C. Ss 1962(c)] 4. Conspiring to commit any of these offenses [18 U.S.C. Ss 1962(d)]

Penalties include both fines and enhanced sentencing. That means defendants can be sentenced for engaging in racketeering activity, plus the penalties associated with the predicate crimes that constituted the pattern of racketeering. In addition, assets associated with the racketeering activity are subject to forfeiture upon criminal conviction. The way RICO works is this: It must be proved that the defendant (either an individual or organization) has committed two separate acts from a list


of state and federal predicate crimes. The two acts have to be separate and form a pattern within a ten-year period. These acts must also be in furtherance of a criminal enterprise. A criminal enterprise ‘‘includes any individual partnership, corporation, association or other legal entity, and any union or group of individuals associated in fact although not a legal entity’’ [18 U.S.C. Ss 1961(4)]. This concept has generally been liberally construed by the courts. One of the early problematic issues involved with this concept was whether it can be applied to an enterprise engaged in wholly illegitimate activities or restricted only to involvement in legitimate enterprises. The Supreme Court did not settle this issue until 1981 when it held that enterprises included both legitimate and illegitimate enterprises (U.S. v. Turkette, 101 S.Ct. 2524). In an entertaining wiretap, federal authorities captured conversations between Boston’s leading organized-crime figures discussing the applicability of RICO to their wholly illegitimate enterprises, as they followed the path of Turkette through the Supreme Court process: What are they gonna do with shylocking? What are they gonna do with numbers? What are they gonna do with horses? What are they gonna do with marijuana? What are they gonna do with junk? It says if they don’t prove a legitimate business was infiltrated, we’re off the hook. We can do anything we want. I wouldn’t be in a legitimate business for all the money in the world. The law says that whoever infiltrates legitimate business in interstate commerce shall be susceptible to this. Our argument is, we’re illegitimate business.’’ (Goode 1988)

RICO requires two or more predicate offenses within a ten-year period. There has been some dispute concerning the extent to which the acts have to be related or whether they can be isolated events. One court has interpreted the statute as containing an implicit requirement that the prosecutor prove the two acts are interrelated in some manner and are not isolated events. One of the major innovations of RICO concerns the doctrine of conspiracy. Under prior law, prosecution for conspiring to engage in organized criminal activity required a single agreement or common objective among defendants concerning a specific crime. For example, the prosecutor must show that defendants agreed to commit a specific crime such as arson, selling narcotics, or obstructing justice. This is often difficult to show, with the highly diverse criminal pursuits by unrelated individuals that is typical of organized criminal activity. This traditional approach does not attack the organizational structure of organized crime and cannot be used to tie in a number of different individuals all engaged in different aspects of organized criminal activity. RICO allows the prosecutor to focus on the organizational nature of the criminal activity in establishing a conspiracy. Instead of establishing a series of

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separate conspiracies between different individuals agreeing to commit different crimes, under RICO a conspiracy is established by proving that [e]ach agreed to participate, directly or indirectly, in the affairs of the enterprise by committing two or more predicate crimes. Under the statute, it is irrelevant that each defendant participated in the enterprise’s affairs through different, even unrelated crimes, so long as we may reasonably infer that each crime was intended to further the enterprise’s affairs. (Kadish, Schulhofer, and Paulsen 1983)

RICO can be applied to both those who participate directly and indirectly, as well as those who are peripherally involved. In the words of a former assistant attorney general, RICO’s concept of a racketeering ‘‘enterprise’’ to which heavy penalties are attached, begins to address the central problems of organized crime that an ‘‘enterprise’’ gives the continuity needed to conduct and maintain the activities on which organized crime depends. (GAO 1981)

Along with the criminal forfeiture provisions of that law and other laws, as well as the civil asset forfeiture laws, the Bank Secrecy Act—which is the primary law against money laundering, and the Continuing Criminal Enterprise statute (the drug kingpin statute)—these laws have been prominent in the shift of the prosecution of organized crime and corruption from one that focuses on crimes against individuals to taking the profit out of organized crime. The record from the legislative consideration of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 shows that RICO was created and imbued with a stronger mission than are many similar pieces of federal legislation: it was encouraged to be ‘‘liberally construed’’ to ‘‘effectuate its remedial purpose.’’ In drafting the statute, the Senate Judiciary Committee specifically stated the purpose of RICO was the elimination of the infiltration of organized crime and racketeering into legitimate organizations operating in interstate commerce by the fashioning of new criminal and civil remedies and investigative procedures. (Senate Judiciary Committee Report 1969, 76)

The RICO statute can be used criminally, against traditional organized crime figures, as well as against corrupt public officials or white-collar criminals—Michael Millken and securities law infractions, and Savings and Loan fraud crimes. It can also be used civilly, both by the government and by private parties—thus the term ‘‘private attorney general’’—to compensate public and private victims of organized criminal activity through the civil courts. This unique component of RICO has been the center of a vociferous debate in legislative and legal circles ever since its passage and growth in its use.


By far the biggest story of the decade was the unparalleled success of federal prosecutors against organized crime family leaders throughout the nation, using RICO and other federal criminal laws. As former FBI Director William Sessions testified before Congress: Prior investigations had resulted in the incarceration of large numbers of highlevel and influential LCN members. These investigations, as yet, had not significantly disrupted the all-pervasive control and influence which the LCN exerted over legitimate business and industries, and within the labor movement. Therefore, a strategy was formulated and developed to implement an attack upon the LCN family as a criminal enterprise, utilizing the RICO statute to prosecute the hierarchy, members, and associates of an LCN Family for all the predicate criminal violations in which they were allegedly involved. (Sessions 1988)

The year 1988 was a good year to take stock of the successes of the federal government’s organized crime control. It was a good year to mark the changes, but also from a long view to look across the twenty-five years since the federal government had penetrated enough to produce a cooperating witness in the person of Joseph Valachi. In many ways, selecting 1988 as a silver anniversary was too self-congratulatory, suggesting that there had been a continuous growth in presence and prosecutorial success since 1963. In fact, after Valachi, there had been a lot of focus, buildup, and planning, but it would be years—until about the time of Pistone’s undercover efforts—before the fruits of those efforts would appear. On the one hand, someone arguing for the linear growth from Valachi to 1988 would point to moments like the publication of the organized crime report of the President’s Commission on the Administration of Justice. One of the products of that committee was the Organized Crime Control Act, which was introduced in 1969 and eventually passed as the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, with the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations statute passed as part of that. The cases that Pistone contributed to began with his undercover assignment in 1976 and were a symbol of RICO’s reach. The second school of thought would emphasize the slow start, the small successes, and the discontinuities in this period. One primary source of reluctance was the weak commitment of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover during this period. As political scientist James Q. Wilson has argued, it took the death of Hoover to bring a shift in FBI case-making priorities from the quantity of cases it solved to the quality of criminal cases. This was an advantage in certain types of investigations that required more time to work and didn’t produce the immediate barrage of statistics that Hoover liked to trumpet in Congressional hearings as proof of his Bureau’s efficacy. It also typified FBI advances in cases involving white-collar crimes and public corruption, which, along with organized crime, formed the basis of an FBI refocused

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effort in the 1980s, with an accompanying focus on proactive policing that represented a change in the culture of the Bureau. FBI Director Clarence Kelley, who served from 1973 to 1979, was credited with causing this shift in the Bureau’s investigative priorities and operations, away from an excessive focus on the number of cases solved held out by Hoover. To former prosecutor Goldstock, RICO was the prosecutorial weapon that brought together a set of other unfolding investigative techniques in a synergy that would effectively work against the targeted organized criminals: Well, RICO was part of a whole host of tools that came together to give government the edge in the fight. Before that there was really nothing directed at organized crime. We used the same tools of conspiracy that we had used for small groups of people engaged in individual criminal activities. But syndicated criminal activity was different and there were a variety of conspiracies occurring at the same time, hierarchies within the family, and so RICO allowed you to target the entire group, the family, rather than individuals. And when used with electronic surveillance and witness protection and use immunity, it provided a whole way of rethinking about how you attacked organized crime. (Adler 2007)

These concepts were combined with a variety of weapons, or dormant weapons, that the new philosophy and personnel breathed life into. For example, the growing effectiveness of the federal witness protection program offered an option for those witnesses who figured that testifying for the government was the best alternative, but feared reprisals after they did. Vertical prosecution also grew, a concept in which local or federal police were joined in the early stages or throughout key investigations, to ensure that they proceeded in a way that would maximize the strength of the evidence they eventually collected for trial. To Robert Blakey, who worked as hard as anyone to spread the knowledge of the statute’s provisions and attractiveness for use in organized crime cases, it was a long and ultimately successful endeavor: I thought that the statute would become law and it would be used both by prosecutors and private litigators. It didn’t work that way. And it never works that way—getting law enforcement to rethink what they do and to take risks by starting to do something new is an extremely difficult task. It requires changing the most rigid thing in the world, the mind of a prosecutor. (Adler 2007)

PISTONE AS ANTHROPOLOGIST—BEING AND SEEING INSIDE THE MOB The period of Pistone’s undercover work also increasingly produced transcripts from authorized bugs and wiretaps that provide a good look inside


the racketeering world, but Pistone paints a world through its everydayness, going where researchers haven’t (beyond Francis Ianni and Elizabeth Reuss-Ianni in their heralded 1972 study). Like an anthropologist visiting an unusual culture, Pistone’s observations on the ordinariness of the wiseguy life are valuable, and we can decide the extent to which they are colored by his commitment to the policing of his newfound ‘‘friends.’’ As he says, One thing I will never forget from my 6 years with them is the daily grind of trying to make a ‘‘score’’ that they face from the time they wake up in the morning to the time they go to sleep at night. This is not the romantic life of ‘‘The Godfather’’ or television drama but, rather, is a life of treachery, violence, and, ironically, boredom.

Pistone’s Donnie Brasco (and the subsequent movie) offer a palpable sense of the rhythm and feel of the ‘‘wiseguy life.’’ To Lefty and all the rest of the people I met in the Mob, what they do is legitimate. They do not view themselves as morally reprehensible, they do not think of themselves as being criminals. Coming from a subculture where crime is acceptable, where their elders, friends, and neighbors view criminal behavior as normal, as even honorable, these men would take issue with being called criminals or gangsters. To this subculture, cooperating with the Government is morally reprehensible and criminal. That is why it is so significant when Government agents successfully convince a wiseguy or an associate to become a Government witness.

To organized crime chronicler Selwyn Raab, Pistone’s observations demystify the myths concocted by novelists and moviemakers about a benevolent, roguish side to the Mafia. ‘‘As witnessed by Pistone, daily life for the rank-and-file mobster is as dreary as toiling on an assembly line. Most of their time is devoted to endless scheming for a share of someone else’s illicit plunder and bickering over advancement. Gangster life consists mainly of looking for the score, making the weekly ‘earn,’ and kicking money ‘upstairs’’’ (Raab 1988). In this way, Raab’s observations of Pistone’s reportage fit nicely with the work of economist Peter Reuter and colleagues and sociologist Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, who stress the ‘‘blue-collarness’’ of street drug sales—no get-rich-quick schemes in their view. In his book, Donnie Brasco—and especially illuminated by the Mike Newell film Donnie Brasco, Pistone captures his ‘‘sponsor’’ Lefty Ruggiero as explaining at different times what the allure of the gangster world is for those who live in it: ‘‘When you’re a wiseguy, you can steal, you can cheat, you can lie, you can kill people—and it’s all legitimate’’ (Pistone and Brandt 2004).

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Pistone’s stories, while fashioned for the eventual prosecution of those he hung around with, provide insight into the ‘‘working personality’’ of the racketeer: The wiseguy does not see himself as a criminal or even a bad person; he sees himself as a businessman, a shrewd hustler, one step ahead of ordinary suckers. The wiseguy lives by a vastly different set of rules than those observed by regular people, rules that were fashioned by their criminal forefathers and proven to work by generations of mobsters before them. Wiseguys exist in a bizarre parallel universe, a world where avarice and violence and corruption are the norm, and where the routines that most ordinary people hold dear—working good jobs, being with family, living an honest life—are seen as the curse of the weak and the stupid. (Pistone and Brandt 2004)

ETHICAL ISSUES OF UNDERCOVER The year that Joe Pistone went undercover with the New York racketeers, national attention was being shone upon the activities of the FBI and the CIA in intelligence gathering and special operations both internally and abroad. With the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974 following the revelations of his administration’s abuse of power and investigative efforts, Americans were far more conscious of the excesses of governmental power and the necessity for accountability and the specific setting of limits. In what has been referred to as a ‘‘post-Watergate morality’’ (referring to the Nixon reelection campaign’s break-in at the National Democratic Headquarters), a U.S. committee headed by Senator Frank Church probed the actions of the CIA. The U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, and its confirmation that the FBI had also engaged in surveillance and disruptive efforts against dissident political groups, through the COINTELPRO program, also caused many to wonder whether the FBI had been reckless in its surveillance of Americans, ironically during the same years that it had shied away from intensively policing American racketeers. The Church Committee concluded: The intelligence community has employed surreptitious collection techniques— mail opening, surreptitious entries, informants, and ‘‘traditional’’ and highly sophisticated forms of electronic surveillance—to achieve its overly broad intelligence targeting and collection objectives. Although there are circumstances where these techniques, if properly controlled, are legal and appropriate, the Committee finds that their very nature makes them a threat to the personal privacy and Constitutionally protected activities of both the targets and of persons who communicate with or associate with the targets. The dangers inherent in the use of these techniques have been compounded by the lack of


adequate standards limiting their use and by the absence of review by neutral authorities outside the intelligence agencies. As a consequence, these techniques have collected enormous amounts of personal and political information serving no legitimate governmental interest. (Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations 1976)

Issues of civil liberties had already been foremost in many of the discussions of the use of state power against the organized criminal. The issue of whether Attorney General Robert Kennedy had been justified in using bugs against selected organized crime targets certainly foreshadowed today’s discussion of The Patriot Act and FISA wiretaps. The Pistone case exemplifies a number of ethical considerations that were much discussed in the era of Pistone’s work. One of the expressed bases was Director Hoover’s reluctance to use undercover operatives within the FBI for policing of organized crime (this didn’t deter him from using the technique in anticommunist ‘‘red squads,’’ however). One writer, detailing the analysis of noted sociologist Gary Marx on the rise and use of surveillance during this period notes: The most obvious change is the tremendous growth of covert and undercover operations by local and federal law enforcement agencies during the last decade: in 1977, for example, the FBI appropriated $1 million for 53 undercover operations. Seven years later, the bureau alone spent more than $12 million for nearly 400 such operations. A major impetus for the increase in undercover operations is the growth of white-collar crime and the need for law enforcement agencies to become more aggressive in anticipating, rather than just reacting to, crime. (Gelbspan 1988)

The writer further quotes from Marx, who had written: Undercover work grows easily out of an emphasis on planning, prevention and productivity. It offers a means of actively pursuing crime through direct involvement and police initiative. It fits with the notion of the modern police officer prevailing via intelligence, skill and finesse, rather than brute force and coercion. (Gelbspan 1988)

Elsewhere, Marx had reflected on the unintended social and psychological costs that undercover work can have for its practitioners. Also during Pistone’s time undercover, the experience in FBI political corruption undercover operations, including members of Congress and the selling of influence in New Jersey casino licensing, also led to consideration on the limits and ethics of undercover operations, as explored in Gerald Caplan’s ABSCAM Ethics. Ironically, it was one racketeer’s reading of a story highlighting the ABSCAM boat used by the FBI, which also was borrowed for use by Pistone with his counterparts, that nearly blew Pistone’s cover. One distinct product of the attention and the hearings to surveillance

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and undercover activities was the promulgation of new guidelines to control such activity.

CONCLUSION: THE ‘‘TWILIGHT OF THE MOB’’ AND THE RISE OF OTHER THREATS Joseph Pistone’s undercover work is justifiably celebrated for its contribution to the efforts at that time to dismantle the reach and strength of organized crime in America. The convictions and sentencing of the Commission members—heads of New York crime families convicted for their roles in coordinating and adjudicating New York’s traditional organized crime business and interrelationships—was a highlight in 1987. Anthony Salerno, Carmine Persico, and Anthony Corallo, bosses of three families, were sentenced to 100 years. The head of the Bonnano family was sentenced to twelve years that year for his part in a labor racketeering conspiracy, and the Pizza Connection trial resulted in the conviction of eighteen others and the indictment of more than 100 in Italy. In 1988, FBI Director Webster reported that since 1981, nineteen bosses, thirteen underbosses, and forty-three capos had been convicted. The GAO estimated that there were 2,500 indictments of Cosa Nostra members and associates between 1983 and 1986 alone. Jacobs lists the traditional organized crime bosses convicted between 1981 and 1992, and the list includes organized crime leaders in New York City (eight leaders), New Orleans, Denver, Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, St. Louis, Buffalo, Providence, and Newark. With the successes of the FBI, the Justice Department, and other agencies against traditional organized crime adding up, the challenges then turned to the emerging groups, for whom the successes of the 1980s would serve as models, even as the law enforcement intelligence and expertise were being constructed. The FBI and aligned agencies were not as able to deploy equal numbers of agents in the same capacity or with the same success as Pistone had, and there was always an additional tension: agents or employees with the linguistic and cultural skills that would make them suitable for undercover work were also coveted for their use in counter-intelligence (or foreign counter-intelligence) work. The racketeers whom Joe Pistone targeted in the 1970s were homebodies who rarely left the comfortable confines of their neighborhood. They were replaced increasingly as the century went on with global criminals in a fluid, rapid, borderless, and electronic world in which certain criminals thrived. At the time of his retirement, shortly before September 11, 2001, FBI Director Louis Freeh spoke proudly of the efforts during his time as director to make the FBI into a more effective organization with precisely these international aspects in mind:


We have more than doubled the FBI’s overseas presence—now in 44 critical foreign locations—in order to enhance cooperation with our foreign counterparts. These measures already have proven invaluable in the international fight against terrorism, organized crime, cyber-crimes, and trans-national crimes in the Information Age. (Freeh 2006)

By 2007, the significant successes of the FBI and federal prosecutors against traditional organized crime in the United States would serve as a model for work against other challenges, such as terrorism and global crime. The current FBI emphasizes this in their Web page: How is the FBI fighting organized crime, particularly international organized crime? The FBI uses a variety of laws, asset forfeiture statutes, and sophisticated investigative techniques in its domestic and international cases. The criminal and civil provisions of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute are particularly suited to dismantle criminal organizations. These investigations frequently utilize undercover operations, courtauthorized electronic surveillance, informants and cooperating witnesses, and consensual monitoring. Many of these are conducted with foreign and domestic police agencies. The FBI operates under an organized crime/drug strategy that focuses its investigations on major international, national, and regional groups that control large segments of the illegal activities. (FBI 2007)

Current FBI Director Robert Mueller elaborated on this, with specific detail for organized crime, in testimony before a Congressional committee in 2007: Trans-national organized crime continues to evolve with advances in globalization and technology. We are also actively investigating Eurasian, Albanian, Asian, and African organized criminal syndicates. Between 2001 and 2007, for example, pending Eurasian organized crime cases increased by 65 percent and an average of 160 individuals were indicted per year between 2002 and 2006. We are working with the Italian National Police to combat Sicilian Mafia activity in Italy and in the United States, in a partnership known as the Pantheon Project. The FBI-Hungarian National Police Organized Crime Task Force has been up and running for more than six years, working to dismantle organized crime groups, with FBI agents permanently stationed in Budapest to work with their Hungarian counterparts. The Albanian Organized Crime Task Force will commence operations this fall, with partial funding from the Department of Defense. (Mueller 2007)

At the same time, the national discussion of the Patriot Act and its intrusiveness and role of government, the issue of American detention of foreign nationals suspected of terrorism links at Guantanamo Bay without court hearings, a range of debates about the appropriateness of torture, as well as the classification of ‘‘waterboarding’’ and other interrogation techniques as

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torture (or not) reflects a world far changed from the 1976 world of racketeers on street corners. The FBI still utilizes undercover agents, and Joe Pistone has helped train them at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. He writes nonfiction accounts and observations based on his undercover years, as recently as 2007, and even pens ‘‘Donnie Brasco’’ mystery novels. What he told a reporter last year about the nature of his contribution as ‘‘Donnie Brasco’’ captures the nature of this specialized area of policing in the 1980s: ‘‘I really feel that what we did in those six years—me and all the others who worked on the case—was the beginning of the breaking of the Mafia’s stronghold on the American public’’ (Diehl 2006). As Jacobs and others have noted, this was precisely the context of Pistone’s work and career. ACKNOWLEDGMENT I thank James W. Meeker and John Song, researchers and coauthors with me on various aspects of the policing of organized crime in the traditional (Meeker) and nontraditional (Song) settings. FURTHER READING Adler, Margot. 2007. Organized Crime in the 21st Century, Radio Transcript, Justice Talking, National Public Radio, January 1. Anderson, Elijah. 2000. Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City. New York: W. W. Norton. Blakey, G. Robert, Ronald Goldstock, and Charles Rogovin. 1978. Racket Bureaus: Investigation and Prosecution of Organized Crime. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Law Enforcement. Blumenthal, Ralph. 1988. Last Days of the Sicilians At War With the Mafia: The F.B.I. Assault on the Pizza Connection. New York: Times Books. Bonavolonta, Jules, and Brian Duffy. 1996. The Good Guys: How We Turned the FBI ’Round and Finally Broke the Mob. New York: Simon & Schuster. Caplan, Gerald M., ed. 1983. Abscam Ethics: Moral Issues and Deception in Law Enforcement. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. Diehl, Christine S. 2006. WP has a ‘‘sit-down’’ with Joe Pistone/Donnie Brasco. WP, The Magazine of William Paterson University. Winter:16–20. Dombrink, John, and James W. Meeker. 1986. Beyond ‘‘buy and bust’’: Nontraditional sanctions in federal drug law enforcement. Contemporary Drug Problems: A Law Quarterly 13, (4, Winter), 711–40. Dombrink, John, and James W. Meeker. 1993. Organized crime in the ‘‘Twilight of the Mob’’: Groups, enterprise, and legal innovation from 1967–1992. In The President’s Crime Commission: 25 Years Later, ed. John A. Conley, Cincinnati: Anderson Publishing Company. Dombrink, John, and John Huey-Long Song. 1994. Of twilights and dawns: The challenges of policing emerging organized crime. In Handbook of Organized


Crime in the United States, ed. Robert J. Kelly, et al., 415–30. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group. Federal Bureau of Investigation. 2007. Frequently Asked Questions. http://www. Fbi.gov/faq. Freeh, Louis J. 2005. My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Gelbspan, Ross. 1988. Undercover work: A necessary evil? Boston Globe, Nov. 26. Geller, William A., and Norval Morris. 1992. Relations between federal and local police. In Modern Policing. Crime and Justice, Volume 15, ed. Michael Tonry and Norval Morris. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. General Accounting Office. 1977. War on Organized Crime Faltering—Federal Strike Forces Not Getting the Job Done. Washington, D.C.: United States General Accounting Office, GGD-77-17, March 17. General Accounting Office. 1981. Stronger Federal Effort Needed in Fight Against Organized Crime. Washington, D.C.: United States General Accounting Office, GGD-82-2, December 7. General Accounting Office. 1989. Issue Regarding Strikes Forces. Washington, D.C.: United States General Accounting Office, GGD-89-67, April 3. Giuliani, Rudolph. 1986. Interview with United States Attorney, Southern District of New York, New York City, March 28. Goldfarb, Ronald. 1995. Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes: Robert F. Kennedy’s War Against Organized Crime. New York: Random House. Goldstock, Ronald. 1988. Testimony of Director, State of New York Organized Crime Task Force, U.S. Senate, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Committee on Governmental Affairs, 100th Congress, April 21. Printed in committee report, S. HRG. 100-906, Organized Crime: 25 Years After Valachi. Goode, James. 1988. Wiretap: Listening In on America’s Mafia. New York: Simon & Schuster. http://stopsnitchin.com. 2007. Ianni, Francis J. and Elizabeth Reuss-Ianni. 1972. A Family Business: Kinship and Social Control in Organized Crime. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Jacobs, James B., with Christopher Panarella and Jay Worthington. 1994. Busting the Mob: United States v. Cosa Nostra. New York: New York University Press. Jacobs, James B., with Coleen Friel and Robert Radick. 1999. Gotham Unbound: How New York City Was Liberated from the Grip of Organized Crime. New York: New York University Press. Jacobs, James B. 2006. Mobsters, Unions, and Feds: The Mafia and the American Labor Movement. New York: New York University Press. Jacobs, James B. and Lauryn P. Gouldin. 1999. Cosa Nostra: The final chapter? In Crime and Justice, Vol. 25, ed. Michael Tonry, 129–89. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kadish, Sanford H., Stephen J. Schulhofer, and Monrad G. Paulsen. 1983. Criminal Law and Its Processes: Cases and Materials. 3rd ed. Boston: Little, Brown Publishers. Kahn, Jeremy. 2007. The story of a snitch. The Atlantic April: 79–92. Kallstrom, James K. 1997. Statement of FBI Assistant Director James K. Kallstrom Concerning the ‘‘Second Notice of Capacity,’’ Washington, D.C.: Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI National Press Office, January 14.

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Kelly, Robert J. 1999. The Upperworld and the Underworld: Case Studies of Racketeering and Business Infiltrations in the United States. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher. 1996. Corralling the brutes and boobs of the Mob, Review of Jules Bonavolonta and Brian Duffy, The Good Guys. New York Times, February 8. Maas, Peter. 1997. Underboss: Sammy the Bull Gravano’s Story of Life in the Mafia. New York: HarperCollins. Marx, Gary T. 1988. Undercover: Police Surveillance in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Marx, Gary T. 1995. Recent developments in undercover policing. In Punishment and Social Control: Essays in Honor of Sheldon Messinger, ed. Thomas G. Blomberg and Stanley Cohen. New York: Aldyne de Gruyter. Maslin, Janet. 1997. Donnie Brasco: Al Pacino as gangster, a guy who’s not wise. New York Times, February 28. Moore, Mark. 1977. Buy and Bust. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath. Mueller, Robert S. 2007. Testimony of FBI Director, U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, July 26. Navasky, Victor S. 1971. Kennedy Justice. New York: Atheneum. New York State Organized Crime Task Force. 1990. Corruption and Racketeering in the New York City Construction Industry. New York: New York University Press. Pistone, Joseph. 1988. Testimony of Joseph D. Pistone, Former Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation, before the U.S. Senate, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Committee on Governmental Affairs, 100th Congress, April 21. Printed in committee report, S. HRG. 100-906, Organized Crime: 25 Years After Valachi. Pistone, Joseph D. with Richard Woodley. 1987. Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia. New York: NAL Books. Pistone, Joseph D. and Charles Brandt. 2004. The Way of the Wiseguy: True Stories from the FBI’s Most Famous Undercover Agent. Philadelphia: Running Press. Pistone, Joe, and Charles Brandt. 2007. Donnie Brasco: Unfinished Business. Philadelphia: Running Press. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. Task Force on Organized Crime, 1967. Task Force Report: Organized Crime. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office. Raab, Selwyn. 1988. Donnie Brasco: My undercover life in the Mafia. Book Reviews. Washington Monthly, June. Rachal, Patricia. 1982. Federal Narcotics Enforcement: Reorganization and Reform. Boston: Auburn House Publishing. Reuter, Peter H., Robert MacCoun, Patrick Murphy, Allan Abrahamse, and B. Simon. 1990. Money From Crime: A Study of the Economics of Drug Dealing in Washington, D.C. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Rhodes, Robert P. 1984. Organized Crime: Crime Control vs. Civil Liberties. New York: Random House. Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. 1978. Robert Kennedy and His Times. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.


Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations. 1976. Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book II of the Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, U.S. Senate, April 26. Sessions, William. 1988. Testimony of Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, before the U.S. Senate, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Committee on Governmental Affairs, 100th Congress, April 21. Printed in committee report, S. HRG. 100-906, Organized Crime: 25 Years After Valachi. Shelley, Louise. 2002. The nexus of organized international criminals and terrorism. International Annals of Criminology 20 (1/2): 85–92. Smith, Dwight C., Jr., and Ralph F. Salerno. 1970. The use of strategies in organized crime control. The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 61 (1, March): 101–11. Span, Paula. 1997. The FBI’s veiled threat: Joseph Pistone spent six years inside the Mafia and lived to tell the tale. Washington Post, February 28. Summers, Anthony. 1993. Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover. New York: Pocket Books. Sykes, Gresham M., and David Matza. 1957. Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency. American Sociological Review 22:664–70. Taylor, Francis X. 2004. A Global Perspective on Terrorism and Organized Crime, Presentation by Ambassador Francis X. Taylor, Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security and Director, Office of Foreign Missions, Keynote Speech to the International Conference on Asian Organized Crime and Terrorism, Honolulu, April 12. Theoharis, Athan. 1978. Spying on Americans: Political Surveillance from Hoover to the Huston Plan. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. 1976. Final Report. Washington: D.C.: United States Senate, April 26. Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi. 2006. Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wilson, James Q. 1978. The Investigators: Managing FBI and Narcotics Agents. New York: Basic Books.

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Vincent T. Bugliosi: Justice Purist—The Prosecutor with a Heart Edward J. Schauer

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Vincent T. Bugliosi is considered by citizens, scholars, and criminal justice professionals alike to be the world’s foremost criminal trial prosecutor. Working out of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office as a deputy district attorney, he won 105 of the 106 felony trials that he prosecuted. His prosecution record is even more amazing when his murder trials are considered: He successfully prosecuted all twenty-one of his murder cases. Finally, never has one of Bugliosi’s cases been reversed upon appeal. Starling Lawrence, the person whom Vince personalizes as ‘‘my editor,’’ exclaims, ‘‘Vincent Bugliosi should be on any knowledgeable person’s short list of the great lawyers in America, but as a prosecutor he stands alone, in a class by himself’’ (Bugliosi 1996a, 11). Vincent Bugliosi is known for trying difficult cases that represented major uphill battles, three of which are chronicled in his true-crime murder mystery books. For example, Vince reports in his book Helter Skelter, that when the Tate/LaBianca trial was assigned to him, the Manson case was not yet solved; therefore, it fell upon him to lead the investigation in this complex case regarding those bizarre, bloody, and complex murders. Whether serving as a prosecutor in criminal trials, as the leading author in the true-crime murder mystery literary genre, or as a murder trial defense attorney, Vincent Bugliosi puts his whole being into the challenge. He is dedicated, focused, and precise—an advanced workaholic. Vince is never without a major project; he lives his professional life with a list of projects in various stages of completion and of planning, so that his mind is never idle. For example, after he successfully defended Jennifer Jenkins in her trial for the Palmyra murders, after February 1986, he simultaneously selectively practiced law, worked on a book on the drug problem, and was working on an in-depth book on the Kennedy assassination. Bugliosi’s courtroom style is expansive, theatrical, and thorough. He is almost obsessed with his determined and exquisite preparation. His bravery is amazing: He remained dogged throughout the prosecution of the Manson family in the face of his observation that the judge, all the witnesses, all the lawyers, and others associated with the trial were afraid for their lives. How does Vince Bugliosi view himself? He perceives himself to be primarily a criminal trial prosecutor, and only secondarily an author. When I mentioned that he is listed on the Web as an author and asked about his public speaking, he replied that he seldom speaks publicly. I asked how highly he would rank his public speaking. Vince answered, ‘‘I’m first and foremost a prosecutor; second, an author; and third, a public speaker. But the public speaking is way down the list.’’ (Schauer 2007c). Even when in private practice he defended Jenkins in the Palmyra murder trial, Vince thought of himself as a prosecutor: In determining how best to go about defending her, he concluded that he was best at trial prosecuting. So he determined to prosecute Buck Walker aggressively for the murders as his defense technique.

Vincent T. Bugliosi

THE FINAL SUMMATION: KEY OF TRIAL SUCCESS Much preparation, both before and during the trial, for the final summation is the foundation of Vincent Bugliosi’s success in the prosecution of his criminal cases. ‘‘I write everything down. It is all there on the yellow pad.’’ (Schauer 2007c). He does not turn the page until he covers everything on that page in court. He has studied his notes well enough that he looks at the page and remembers everything on that page. He usually does not have to look at that page again until he has covered that material in court and it is time to turn the page. Vince states, ‘‘I have 90 percent of the trial choreographed before the trial begins: All is on the yellow pad.’’ He knows the strengths of his case, as well as the weaknesses of the defense. He knows the law relating to the case because he has done his homework before the trial begins. He repeats, ‘‘All is on the yellow pad.’’ (Schauer 2007c). Bugliosi has called his yellow pad ‘‘my security blanket.’’ (Bugliosi 1996a, 189). He also uses the yellow pad to lead in murder investigations. He considers it to be of highest importance to have carefully written and thoroughly studied notes covering all segments of the trial. These notes must contain case law required, direct examination planned, cross-examination predicted, objections anticipated, and final summation. ‘‘In a complex trial involving many witnesses and thousands of pages of transcript, to discuss the highlights and nuances of the case and draw the necessary inferences, in the most telling sequence, always seeking simplicity and clarity of expression, requires an enormous amount of written preparation.’’ (151). Vince Bugliosi views the final summation as the choreography or blueprint in planning and directing the criminal trial. He explains: Usually, the very first thing I think about when I get on a case and begin to learn the facts is: What am I going to argue, and how can I best make the argument to obtain a favorable verdict? In other words, I work backward from my summation, the exact reverse of what is normally recommended. Since final summation has to be based on the evidence at the trial, virtually all of my questions at the trial, and most of my tactics and techniques, are aimed at enabling me to make arguments I’ve already determined I want to make. In fact, before the first witness at a trial has even been called, I’ve usually prepared my summation to the jury. As soon as I learn the strengths and weaknesses of my case I begin to work on how I’m going to argue these strengths and what I’m going to say in response to the opposition’s attacks on the weaknesses. Getting an early start on my summation, and continuing to expand and modify it during the trial, gives me ample time to develop arguments and articulations. (148–149)

In essence, Vince uses the written notes early on to try the case against himself; then he determines how the evidence will be presented, how he will deal with

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the defense motions he expects, how he will preempt the defense by bringing out the weaknesses in his own case, how he will cross-examine the defense witnesses, and finally, how he will communicate the logic and law of the trial to the jury in his final arguments. He continues, ‘‘I realize I have almost an obsession about the preparation of a final summation. For instance, in the Manson case, I put in several hundred hours working on my opening and closing arguments.’’ (149). Bugliosi feels that the critical goal of the final summation is to communicate clearly to the jury—to make bridges between the law in the judge’s instructions with the facts of the case in hand. The step-by-step logic of the state’s case must be understood by the jury so that they can make informed decisions, and it is the prosecuting attorney’s task to clearly explain to the jury the logical connections between evidence brought by the state which prove the defendant’s guilt. Vince explains, ‘‘With almost any jury, you have to spoon-feed them. That’s what I do. I never take a chance on assuming a jury is going to see something important without my help. So many times in life things are only obvious once they are pointed out.’’ (139). One of the issues that must be clearly explained to the jury is the issue of reasonable doubt. Most citizens confound this issue with the interpretation of beyond the shadow of a doubt. Citizens also confuse the state of being declared not guilty by the court with being innocent; and common communication from courts, including statements from the U.S. Supreme Court, further confuse this issue for the jurors. Bugliosi feels so strongly about this that he apparently always includes a clarification in his final summation to the jury. His expanded explanation was published under the title, ‘‘Not Guilty and Innocent—The Problem Children of Reasonable Doubt.’’ In terms of doubt, Vince explains that even the most minute doubt must be answered in the final summation because it may lead to losing the case back in the jury room, where the tiny doubt may grow to be of larger significance. Also, the prosecutor should point out weaknesses in the state’s case whether they were mentioned by the defense or not, because the jury may have caught those weaknesses and may feel that the state is hiding evidence. ‘‘Therefore cover all points.’’ (Bugliosi 1978, 331, 341). Since he strongly believes that the final argument is the most important part of the trial, Bugliosi puts hundreds of hours into his final arguments. He states, ‘‘Final argument is nothing more than a speech, and I know of no great speech in history that was not carefully prepared before it was delivered.’’ (Bugliosi 1996a, 151). Vincent Bugliosi has been challenged for his insistence on a carefully written, rewritten, contemplated, and committed-to-memory final summation, on the grounds that summations should be extemporaneous in nature for fluidity and freshness of presentation. Vince argues, ‘‘It’s simply not possible

Vincent T. Bugliosi

to powerfully articulate a great number of points, one immediately following another, extemporaneously. There is a best way to make a point, and to find it takes time and sweat on the yellow pad.’’ (151). He continues: The one advantage in arguing extemporaneously is to be able to talk to the jury eye to eye, with the candor of spontaneity. But if a trial lawyer is willing to put in the hours, he can have such a grasp of his written or outlined argument that, like an actor on a stage whose lines flow naturally, he can deliver it to the jury giving the appearance of spontaneity. If I’ve had adequate time to prepare, I only have to glance at my notes sparingly. I can look at one word on a page, and the whole page is vivid in my mind. (151)

Probably his most convincing argument for his ability to marry spontaneity and carefully prepared notes is found in his rhetorical question, ‘‘Is instant improvisation and flexibility the domain only of those who are unprepared?’’ (151).

BACKGROUND AND PERSONAL: BUGLIOSI THE MAN Much is known about the professional life of Vincent Bugliosi, the deputy district attorney who determinedly fought crime through his vigorous prosecution of criminals in the trial court, the author who writes books about true murder mysteries. But who is Vincent Bugliosi behind the scenes? How did he become the superior trial lawyer? Where does his strength of character originate? Who is his support group? So dedicated to his practice of law and his authoring of books, Vince offers little help in the attempt to discover what makes him tick, what energizes and motivates him. For example, in Helter Skelter, he stresses his professional career almost exclusively, offering little insight into his background or family life, when in 1974 he states: A conventional biographical sketch would probably have read more or less as follows: Vincent T. Bugliosi, age thirty-five, Deputy District Attorney, Los Angeles, California. Born Hibbing, Minnesota. Graduate Hollywood High School. Attended the University of Miami on a tennis scholarship, B.A. and B.B.A. degrees. Deciding on the practice of law, attended UCLA, LL.B. degree, president graduating class 1964. Joined the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office same year. Has tried a number of highly publicized murder cases—Floyd-Milton, Perveler-Cromwell, etc.—obtaining convictions in all. Has tried 104 felony jury trials, losing only one. In addition to his duties as deputy DA, Bugliosi is a professor of criminal law at Beverly School of Law, Los Angeles. Served as technical consultant and edited the scripts of two pilot films for Jack Webb’s TV series ‘‘The D.A.’’ Series star Robert Conrad patterned his part after the young prosecutor. Married. Two children. (Bugliosi 1974, 157)

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PROCESS OF ELIMINATION: OF WORDS AND TENNIS BALLS Bugliosi states that he became a lawyer through the process of elimination. He did not wish to take advantage of people, so sales were out. He simply does not like to impose on people. He does not care much for math, so that further limited his career choices. Finally, he does not like blood, so that factor closed the door for him on considering the practice of medicine as a profession. On the other hand, Vince Bugliosi is big on words. As a youth, he used to study the dictionary. He was eager to learn the meaning of words. He liked big words in order to impress people and to confuse them. Later he became sensitive to the fact that words are to be used for communication and that if you are using words with abstract meanings or words of uncommon usage, you are not communicating. So he modified his usage of words in order to improve his communication with others. When he graduated from college, Bugliosi was still unsure what profession he should begin to prepare himself for. Others, whom he respected, suggested that he should go to law school and that his love of words would be a good fit for his practicing law. While in law school, Vince Bugliosi found himself gravitating more and more toward the practice of criminal law because he was so intent upon the centrality of justice. The appeal of the criminal law for him was the trial: An arena of action, an environment in which he could use his beloved words. He says he became a DA because ‘‘I wanted to prosecute the guilty. I wanted to prosecute, because the DA has more control of justice than the defense does.’’ (Schauer 2007c). Bugliosi believes that the defense attorney defends mostly guilty people; he has to take the cases that will be prosecuted and thus has little choice in the matter. He explains that the justice system pretty well weeds out those who are innocent in a series of steps of elimination, so that when a case comes to trial, 99 of 100 are guilty. Bugliosi is pleased that he sees more liberals today wanting to become prosecutors, because they have some control of who they will not charge and prosecute as well as in who they will. Did Bugliosi have heroes in his childhood, those to whom he looked up, those whose lives and characteristics he aspired to emulate? When asked, he said that he did not consider anyone to be his hero as he was growing up: He was impressed, however, with two commonly acknowledged sports heroes. He was impressed with Joe D’Maggio, the Yankee Clipper, the American hero, for his perfection and his flawlessness in athletic performance. He was also impressed with Rocky Marciano, the only world champion boxer to complete his career undefeated, not for his style, but for his persistence. ‘‘He was a slugger!’’ Bugliosi exclaimed. (Schauer 2007c).

Vincent T. Bugliosi

When asked how he became the best known prosecutor in the world, Bugliosi replied: Well, I had this wall; there was this wall, and I kept hitting tennis balls against it. I practiced, and practiced, and practiced hitting tennis balls against the wall again and again; and I never made a point against that wall. Well, I kept hitting balls against that wall until I became the Minnesota High School Tennis Champion. That got me into college on a full tennis scholarship. (Schauer 2007c)

Bugliosi went on to explain that the average kid can play all sports with the exception of tennis. Tennis is not a natural thing. He has played tennis with Jim Brown over the years; and while Jim Brown is noted for his superior football playing skills, Bugliosi hints that Jim will never be a superior tennis player. So, love of words and devotion to tennis led Vincent Bugliosi into a successful college career. Love of words and determination led him to complete law school. Thirst for justice led him into criminal law. Love of words and logical deduction, a need for action, and determination led him to become a trial lawyer. And finally, a wish to prosecute guilty people and the desire to have some choice in charging and prosecuting, placed him in the Los Angeles district attorney’s office. IMMIGRANT PARENTS: NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE In addition to tennis and a love of words, what more can be said of the background and support that factor into the person known as Vincent T. Bugliosi? Although he was born in Hibbing, Minnesota, in 1934, of parents who immigrated to the United States from Italy, Vince never did view himself as being Italian American. Bugliosi believes that his perspective on nationality stems from the fact that there were hundreds of Italians living in the town of Hibbing during his youth—all of whom thought of themselves simply as Americans. Life for the new Italian immigrants was strenuous. Bugliosi’s dad worked hard to feed his family of seven, first as an owner of a grocery store and then as a railroad conductor. IN THE BACKGROUND: GAIL The reader of Vincent Bugliosi’s books may notice a mysterious figure in the background, a person of whom one catches glimpses now and then, but is never seen in the limelight. This person, by the name of Gail, enters the reader’s consciousness first when her name is mentioned on the dedication pages of several of Bugliosi’s books or when it is mentioned that she sits in to hear his final summations.

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This biographer wondered about Gail and pondered her part in Vince’s life; fortunately in a recent attempt to phone Vince, Gail answered and proved willing to answer questions. Vincent T. Bugliosi and Gail Talluto married in 1956, just after Bugliosi graduated from the University of Miami Florida. They have two children, Wendy and Vince Jr. They met and married in Miami. Gail laughed, then said, ‘‘I’m a high school dropout: I quit school to marry Vince. I was seventeen years old at the time.’’ (Schauer 2007b). Bugliosi finished college but did not go directly to law school. He was in the Reserves, so they spent some time at Ft. Benning, Georgia, and then at Ft. Riley, Kansas, before moving to California to begin law school. Bugliosi graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles (president of his graduating class) with his L.L.B. in 1964 and immediately went to work for the Los Angeles district attorney’s office. When asked whether she serves regularly as a sounding board for Bugliosi in his professional work, Gail exclaimed, ‘‘Yes, I’ve gotten to be a pretty good sounding board in fifty-one years!’’ As I continued to question her part in Bugliosi’s professional success, she laughingly replied, ‘‘Ha, ha, I thought up the names of most of his books. He probably doesn’t want that fact to be known.’’ (Schauer 2007b). Later, Bugliosi admitted the same but said that Gail had named ‘‘all’’ of his books, rather than ‘‘most’’ of them as she had claimed. I said, ‘‘Vince looks like a one-man show; but I suspect that the reason he is able to carry that off is because he is a part of a team, a team which includes Gail.’’ ‘‘Yes, Vince is certainly part of a team!’’ Gail replied thoughtfully. Vincent Bugliosi mentions Gail in his true-crime murder mystery books: Gail is mentioned as always being supportive of him and his work. He lauds her as being his stability, his normalcy—she who brings him back to the world of reality. Ah, Gail! Gail proofreads all his books and manuscripts. Bugliosi debates with her whether to defend a particular client and again to decide whether to pursue a risky trial tactic. Gail helps him answer his phone messages and mail and sends documents in the mail for him. Gail went down to the court to pay his fine for his using his trial tactic of calculated indignation and the resultant finding by the judge of his direct contempt of court, because Bugliosi did not have $50.00 with him. On the other hand, Bugliosi writes about his feeling that he neglects Gail. Gail is alone yet another Friday night. Bugliosi works through the Christmas recess. Bugliosi works in his yellow pad until 2 A.M. on Christmas Eve. Bugliosi’s mind is elsewhere during a family Thanksgiving meal at his sister’s house. When I asked whether Gail felt neglected by Bugliosi, she answered, ‘‘No! Well, sometimes just a little bit. I might have felt more neglected if I had not created a life outside of my life with Vince. I have many friends. I might feel deprived if I did not have my friends.’’ (Schauer 2007b).

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I interjected, ‘‘Well, you married Vince when you were quite young; you had time to get used to his ways—even developed along with him.’’ Gail replied, ‘‘Yes, I was programmed young; so I’ve never felt that I was deprived.’’ (Schauer 2007b). On another note, without prior introduction, Vincent Bugliosi is difficult to contact by phone or by mail. His private practice consists of a mail drop (which he may only check once every three months) and an answering service. When Starling Lawrence, Bugliosi’s editor with W. W. Norton, was asked if he would say that Vince lives a reclusive existence, Lawrence replied, ‘‘Yes, that’s fair enough. He works extraordinarily hard at what he does, and doesn’t have much time for amusements. How else would one master and argue the entire case of the Kennedy assassination?’’ (Schauer 2007a). Gail agrees with Starling Lawrence that Bugliosi lives a reclusive life, mainly because he is so dedicated to his work. ‘‘Oh,’’ she continued, ‘‘we do go out most Saturday nights—we call it a date. We usually go out to eat and to a movie. And once in a while we go out into the desert for a couple of days (no further than four hours from home)—usually out toward Palm Springs. But Bugliosi usually carries his work along.’’ (Schauer 2007a). Examples of Bugliosi’s reclusive lifestyle, or thinking, are illustrated in the two following examples: First, one of the reasons Bugliosi gave in explaining why he usually turns down opportunities to appear on TV is that he is so busy with his work. He is so driven to keep busy that he even forgets to pick up his mail—sometimes for three months. Sometimes his phone is turned off because he has not gone to get his mail for three months. Second, once when Johnny Carson invited Bugliosi over to play tennis in June or July after publication of one of his books, he asked for a rain check because he felt he was too busy. He kept putting Carson off—asking for three or four more rain checks—until March, seven or eight months later, when they finally had lunch together and played tennis. In Helter Skelter, Bugliosi details the mortal danger the courtroom actors faced. I mentioned the Tate/LaBianca case to Gail, emphasizing the fact that their lives were in danger at that time and mentioned the possibility that others might have it in for Vince and try to get back at him. I asked, ‘‘Do you still look over your shoulders?’’ Gail replied, No, not really. During the Manson trial we had a police officer living in our home with us; and someone picked up Vince and drove him to work, and another brought him home. I worried some because I had two small children. But we no longer think about that much. (Schauer 2007b)

Following Vincent Bugliosi’s lead, I called Vince on June 9, 2007, prepared with a list of fifteen questions to ask him that I had written in longhand on (of course) a yellow legal pad. His newest book, which Vince refers to as ‘‘The Kennedy Book,’’ (Bugliosi 2007) hit the stands at the end of May. Currently in the midst of appearing on talk shows and book signings

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to advertise Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and dealing with Tom Hanks who intends to produce a ten-hour television mini-series for HBO on the book, Vince said he only had time to respond to one question. I asked, ‘‘Can you tell me more about this special person Gail? Would we know the same Vincent T. Bugliosi if there were no Gail?’’ I also mentioned Gail’s statement that Vince was part of a team with her. Vince answered, ‘‘Gail represents strength to me; she is an anchor.’’ Bugliosi, while totally illustrious in the trial court and a superior researcher and writer when working in his study, feels confused when confronted with the cares of everyday, normal life. He is simply not sure what to do. He continued in that vein, ‘‘In normal life Gail’s feet are firmly planted. She allows me freedom so I can do my work and don’t have to worry about anything. I can focus entirely on my work. Gail has enabled me to be stronger in professional life.’’ (Schauer 2007c). UNIQUE INSIGHT Throughout his career, Vincent Bugliosi has regularly been the first to state an insight, and others have responded by saying that now that they have been enlightened the fact seems obvious. Vince, in his self-deprecating way, states: I don’t think I’m a genius, or that I’m very bright. I do seem to have the ability to see things in my public life that other people don’t see. I am not sure why. I see things in a very pristine condition without taking into consideration how I’m supposed to see them—how others have interpreted the situation before me and told me how I’m supposed to see them. (Schauer 2007c)

In Outrage, Bugliosi argued that in the Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson trial, the public (including the actors and the participants in the trial) saw what they wanted to see or what they expected to see, and their eyes were blinded by American sports-hero worship. Bugliosi was able to review the evidence and then very quickly separate the wheat from the chaff. To this superior trial prosecutor, the smoke and the mirrors set aside, it was obvious that no one except Simpson could be guilty of the double murders. ASPIRES TO PRODUCE MASTERPIECES Whether in prosecuting criminals, in writing books, or in critiquing legal or political policies or actions, Vincent Bugliosi attempts to produce his best possible product. Vince has stated that his philosophy of writing a book or of trying a murder case is that he always aspires to produce a masterpiece. One of his criticisms in fact in the Simpson trial was that the prosecution

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had so many deputy DAs involved that the state’s case was segmented and disjointed. Bugliosi wrote, ‘‘Whenever I prosecuted a murder case, I always at least aspired to a masterpiece. Whether I achieved it or not is another story. But you cannot have a prosecutorial masterpiece with so many hands in the pot.’’ (Bugliosi 2006a, 45). I asked Bugliosi’s book editor, probably the person who knows him best professionally, ‘‘If you were to write a character reference for Vince Bugliosi, what would you list as his major virtues? Another way to ask this is, ‘What are the things you can count on when dealing with Vince?’’’ Starling Lawrence responded, ‘‘I would say that Vince can be depended on to do exactly what he says he is going to do, in any situation, and to do an absolutely thorough job of it, perhaps ruthlessly thorough. That is the secret of his success both in the courtroom and on the page.’’ (Schauer 2007a). Thus we may conclude that Vince Bugliosi is ruthlessly thorough in his pursuit of each of his masterpieces, whether murder trials or the Kennedy book. AESTHETICS AND ART In the course of our first discussion, on March 5, 2007, Vincent Bugliosi claimed to be ‘‘unaesthetic: Totally.’’ He does appreciate, however, the great writers of fiction and loves a good murder mystery. That is why he had no interest in the Simpson case: There was no mystery. His editor, Starling Lawrence, hounded Bugliosi until he agreed to write Outrage, his critique of the Simpson trial. He mostly reads the things he has to read. An exception he gave was that he had read Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, but he quickly followed with the explanation, ‘‘But that was partially because I was, at that time writing And the Sea Will Tell. Bugliosi does appreciate some music, he says, because music offers some objective standards for taste. He enjoys and is attempting to collect the jazz and Latin American music from all the greatest singers and musicians. He asked, ‘‘Say Ed, did you know that I have published an album of Latin American music?’’ (Schauer 2007c). Next to tennis, Bugliosi considers his main hobby to be his collecting of music from the great artists worldwide. ‘‘With the recent compilation CD he produced, Greatest Latin Love Songs of the Century, which the incomparable Chilean, Lucho Gatica—whom many believe to be the greatest singer of boleros Latin America has ever produced—calls ‘the best album of Latin love songs I have ever heard,’ Bugliosi seems to be launching yet another career.’’ (Bugliosi 2006a, 1). In our second discussion on April 14, 2007, Bugliosi once again spoke of his lack of interest in art when he stated, ‘‘I don’t have an aesthetic bone in my body.’’ When he was in France with his family at the Louvre, he noticed that the eyes of the Mona Lisa followed him wherever he walked and stood. He asked, ‘‘Do all paintings do that?’’

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Bugliosi did acknowledge that a couple of his values possibly approach aesthetics: Symmetry and logic mean much to him. ‘‘I am big on symmetry and order,’’ he offered. I challenged Bugliosi on the low artistic/aesthetic assessment he gives himself. First, I mentioned his artistry in acting—reminding that in his books he did speak of being like an actor on a stage in presenting his final summations in trials and that cross-examination is drama in which the best techniques used are those of the theatrical dramatists. I also reminded Bugliosi that he himself writes of the choreography of and dramaturgy in the courtroom and of his explanation that trial law is an interweaving of science, logic, and art. I also mentioned his esthetic spirit and his applied art in writing orderly and artistic prose—some of which approaches the poetry of free verse as he uses his beloved words to communicate clearly. Bugliosi replied that I had opened his mind: He had never thought of himself and his products in that way before. PHILOSOPHY Professional While Vince Bugliosi has stated powerfully his personal philosophy of the components of professionalism through his words and actions, one short definition that he uses to honor a fellow trial lawyer serves to summarize his definition. Vince states, ‘‘It is said that the principal element that distinguishes a profession from a business is that in a profession, one’s primary obligation is to those he serves, not to himself.’’ (Bugliosi 1991a, 206). He goes on to explain that when so defined, Leonard Weinglass is of a dying breed. Agnosticism Bugliosi is skeptical about religion. He openly and honestly states his doubts and his struggles of faith and religion. He volunteers, ‘‘[I]n my own little mind, I, for one, can’t be sure at all there’s a God.’’ In a Playboy magazine interview, he responded to the question of whether he believed in God by replying, ‘‘If we were in court I’d object on the ground that the question assumes a fact not in evidence.’’ He continues, ‘‘I don’t disbelieve in him either. I’m an agnostic. In other words, although I’m actually from a little town in northern Minnesota, Hibbing, I’m from Missouri on the God issue.’’ (Bugliosi 1996a, 247–248). When I told Gail that what I appreciate most about Vince’s statement of agnosticism in Outrage is his complete honesty—admitting that he just does not know—Gail leapt to his defense: ‘‘But he doesn’t say that he doesn’t believe in God either. In fact, he is more quick to criticize those who say that they don’t believe in God. It is just that Vince requires proof for

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everything he believes.’’ She said later, ‘‘Sometimes I think that when Vince sees a baby, or a puppy—a sunset or a flower—he begins to think that there must be a God.’’ (Schauer 2007b). UBIQUITY OF HUMAN INCOMPETENCE AND MEDIOCRITY Vince Bugliosi believes that the twins, incompetence and mediocrity, are so common in the experience of everyday life, that thinking people ought to expect to encounter the pair regularly. He introduced the book Outrage with this thought, ‘‘Incompetence is rampant in our society, from presidents on down. It is everywhere. In fact, it is so prevalent and so bad that the only adjective I’ve ever been able to come up with in the lexicon that adequately describes it is ‘staggering.’’’ (Bugliosi 1996a, 32). He commonly observes the twins in ordinary life’s experiences (with grocery store clerk and plumber), in the courtroom (with judge, prosecution, and defense attorneys), and in the media (in local, national, or international decision making, reporting, and broadcasting personnel). Nonmaterialistic Vince Bugliosi has no desire for material things. What he desires most is peace of mind. He has no desire to own anything. Music and books are the only material things he values. He has no desire for sculpture or art. Back in his early twenties he wanted money, but he lost interest in accumulating money. In his private practice, he has been offered blank checks as encouragement to defend people. He has turned those cases down—pushed back those blank checks. Other attorneys accepted those cases, and in so doing, gained notoriety. But Vince rejected the offers because he either knew the person he was to defend was guilty or he was not convinced of the person’s innocence. On the other hand, Bugliosi hopes that his Kennedy book will produce lots of money: Not that he wishes the money for his own personal use, but he would like to have a considerable amount of money to give to the poor. A visible example of his nonmaterialistic nature can be found in the old, dilapidated car that he drove until recently. His wife, Gail, urged him to get a new car because he is a professional person. She did not want people to think less of him due to the condition of his car. He was, on the other hand, perfectly happy with the old car. NOT ARROGANT: THOUGH SOME HAVE SAID On April 14, 2007, Bugliosi was asked, ‘‘Vince, your detractors say that you are pompous, full of yourself, egoistic, conceited; how do you see yourself

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in reply to these charges?’’ Vince replied, ‘‘Concerning ego, I am arrogant on a professional level. Privately, I view myself as ‘common’—not special at all. Also, I have no ego as a writer; only as a prosecutor.’’ Self-Deprecation Bugliosi, whether in communication with the jury in his final summation or in private conversation, commonly employs self-deprecating humor. Even when asked about his strengths, he replied, ‘‘One of my greatest strengths, if I have any strengths, is that I know my limitations. For example, it is difficult to find many Americans who have fewer opinions than I do: I will not venture an opinion without sufficient evidence, without knowledge.’’ (Schauer 2007c). Common in his writing, and common in private and public communications, are Bugliosi’s statements to the effect that he does not feel that he is of above normal intelligence. He says, ‘‘I don’t think I’m very bright.’’ The ubiquity of the statement begs its purpose: This biographer postulates that Vince uses the I’m not so smart statement to emphasize the importance of determination, hard work, and long hours in the pursuit of success. Private Life Totally unpretentious, Vince Bugliosi is dedicated to the proposition that ‘‘Every one has human dignity: I treat all people as such.’’ When people call, he or his wife always gets back to them. He returns their calls because ‘‘It’s a thing of respect: I respect them.’’ Vince is not arrogant, though such some have called him so: He is happy with ‘‘a cup of coffee in Boise for a buck.’’ In fact, when people ask for his autograph, he asks, ‘‘‘Why do you want my autograph!’ I’m shocked. Then it happens again that someone wants my autograph, and I’m shocked all over again.’’ ‘‘My thinking is very literal,’’ Vince explains. ‘‘If directions are given and 95 percent of the people in a room get up and leave, I am still sitting there—confused.’’ (Schauer 2007c). Writing Bugliosi explains, ‘‘My abilities in writing are clarity of expression and the ability to use sarcasm, neither of which I feel qualifies me to be called ‘a great writer.’’’ He continues, ‘‘My ability is seeing things as extremely obvious that no one else has seen. I see things in pristine clarity, without preconceptions.’’ (Schauer 2007c). Prosecution Bugliosi states that he is more arrogant professionally: ‘‘Sloth and incompetence bothers me.’’ He is intolerant of, and gets angry about, incompetence. Why? ‘‘Because, incompetence is not benign!’’ he exclaims.

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‘‘I’d work out of court if this fellow didn’t get a fair trial because of incompetence on his lawyer’s part.’’ He sees it as a dual obligation—to give a person a fair trial. He will approach the bench to guide the defense so that the defendant gets a fair trial. He is not worried about the outcome of the trial, because he knows that he will get in his evidence. He helps the defense attorney put on a fair trial. At the bench, he has told the judge and the defense attorney, ‘‘While I have plenty of admissible evidence to meet the state’s burden of proof, if the defense continues the present line of examination, the door will be opened for me to bring in even more damaging evidence—evidence which I can not bring in at this moment. So I would urge the defense to change the line of direct examination.’’ (Schauer 2007a). Starling Lawrence puts a fitting quietus to Vince Bulgiosi’s detractors when he responds to their attacks: I have never had the privilege of being present in the courtroom with Vince, only an active bystander to the arguments in the books. I can see how his sense of himself and of the validity of his case would give the impression of an outsized ego—pompous is simply not an appropriate criticism—but you might as well criticize a tiger for eating rabbits or sheep: Vince is simply doing, and doing very well, what any prosecutor is supposed to do. Much of the criticism could be described as sour grapes. He has both a sense of fairness in his arguments—however sarcastic and dismissive they sometimes seem—and a sense of courtesy, even in the courtroom, as a glance at the YouTube segments of the docutrial of Lee Harvey Oswald in London will demonstrate to the impartial observer. I have never seen him be impolite to people he meets, or heard of his being high-handed with members of a jury. (Schauer 2007a)

PROSECUTION: OBSESSION WITH JUSTICE Vincent T. Bugliosi must be listed very high in the rankings of Icons of Crime Fighting on the basis of his superlative career record of successful criminal prosecutions alone. But in addition to his trial record, he continues as a crime fighter by making his trial tactics, his interpretation and application of the law, and his philosophy of the characteristics and action required of the successful criminal trial lawyer available to legal professionals, students of law, and true-crime murder mystery aficionados alike. Vince’s writings alone would qualify him for inclusion in any serious list of the superior crime fighters of America, whether they fought crime in time past or whether they are currently fighting crime. Total Dedication to Justice Vince Bugliosi insists that justice is done: The trial for him is not primarily about which side wins, but rather that the guilty are convicted and punished and that

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the innocent go free. Vince powerfully stated his strong feelings about justice in Outrage when he reacted to the lavish celebration party thrown by a defense lawyer at the close of the Orenthal James Simpson trial. ‘‘Picture Simpson with his sharp knife viciously stabbing Nicole and Ron to death, while imagining the festive party-goers dining on the best food, laughing and enjoying themselves. It’s so goddamn obscene there are no words for it.’’ (Bugliosi 1996a, 54). Bugliosi was able to speak so powerfully because he did his homework: He found that the Simpson prosecutors possessed a great deal of strong evidence pointing toward Simpson’s guilt and no evidence whatsoever that pointed to the guilt of anyone else. Justice had not been served; the defense was smearing their win in the face of the American courts and citizens, and the enormity of it all left Vince incredibly angry. In Till Death Us Do Part, Bugliosi argued against the defense’s motion that their client requested a court trial, in which the case is heard and decided solely by the judge. Vince felt that the defendant had a much better chance to receive justice in a jury trial, in which a jury of citizens hears the case and determines guilt. Feeling so strongly that justice must be served, Vince (the prosecutor) argued against the defense motion in behalf of the accused murderer in order to ensure a fair trial for her. In Helter Skelter, Vince helped the defense by calling the defense lawyers to give them knowledge that he was able to impeach the testimony of one of the key defense witnesses. In response, the defense chose not to call that witness and so saved effort, time, and possible harm to their case. Belief in His Own Ability in the Trial Court Bugliosi has intimate knowledge of the trial court and a strong belief in his own abilities as a prosecutor. This is not to say that he does not suffer from self-doubts now and again, but those self-doubts drive him to redouble his efforts to decipher evidence and to win cases. There is no doubt in his mind that had he been the prosecutor in the Simpson case, he would have convicted Simpson of the murders and could have gained the conviction with far less evidence than the actual prosecutors had available to them. CRITIQUE OF JUDGES Vincent Bugliosi feels that Americans rate judges far too highly. He explains that most judges begin as mediocre lawyers who are owed political favors. The illogic of the American public in their rating of judges is found in their very low ratings of lawyers and politicians, yet judges are both lawyers and politicians. Bugliosi has identified three infirmities that are commonly found in trial judges: (1) They have little or no experience as trial lawyers. (2) They are pompous, capricious, or dictatorial during trials. And, (3) they show partiality to one side in a trial. It is a worst-case scenario when a trial judge is

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characterized by all three weaknesses. He considers it a pleasure to work with a judge who displays none of these flaws. Bugliosi feels that a great injustice is done when a lawyer does not object to a judge’s show of disrespect for that lawyer in court. If the judge shows disrespect to the lawyers during the trial, Vince feels that they must approach the judge in chambers to demand respect. Vince explains the process of putting the judge on notice concerning disrespect in Outrage and explains how he dealt with Judge King for his demeaning tone and rudeness in dealing with the defense during the Palmyra murder trials. CRITIQUE OF LAWYERS High Praise Vincent T. Bugliosi is quick to praise those trial lawyers who display the highest standards of professionalism, those who are characterized by great concern for justice and equity, and concern for powerless citizens and those who produce the most stirring, theatric, and consistent products in the trial court drama. Recently Vince wrote the following evaluation of top criminal trial lawyers: F. Lee Bailey, of course, has for years, along with San Francisco lawyer Melvin Belli, been the most famous of America’s trial lawyers, and he and Edward Bennet Williams (now deceased) were considered by many to be the preeminent criminal defense attorneys in the land. Since his loss in the Hearst case, however, he hasn’t maintained the stature he once enjoyed, and the cowboy lawyer from Wyoming, Gerry Spence, is now considered the premier criminal defense attorney in the country. (Bugliosi 1996a, 244).

Bugliosi had insisted before that ‘‘great trial lawyers are about as rare as fishermen who don’t exaggerate.’’ (52). His praise must therefore be taken as studied, heartfelt, and sincere. In his books, Bugliosi highlights certain lawyers whom he obviously holds in high regard—some of whom he may have even studied to emulate: So highlighted are trial lawyers from the past like Samuel Leibowitz in Lullaby and Goodnight and Clarence Darrow in And the Sea Will Tell. More contemporary lawyers who receive praise in Vince’s books are Leonard Stein, David Golden, and Terry Callas in And the Sea Will Tell and Aaron Stovitz in Helter Skelter. Bugliosi gives Leonard Weinglass his highest praise as his cocounsel in And the Sea Will Tell. Criticism As stated previously, Vincent Bugliosi rates all the courtroom lawyers as incompetent in Outrage, including the trial judge. Earle Partington is

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damned by faint praise in And the Sea will Tell. The list could be extended, but due to the fact that Vince’s expectation is that of finding mostly incompetent lawyers in the trial courts, we may simply conclude that incompetence in trial court lawyers is what he usually observes. OBSERVATIONS ON JURIES Although Bugliosi has had some bad experiences with juries, he has confidence in the jury system: He states that he views the jury system ‘‘as the most fundamental safeguard against tyranny we have in a very real sense, the American jury is all that stands between the accused and his loss of liberty.’’ (Bugliosi 1996a, 287). He does, however, feel that juries are unpredictable and he feels less than adequate in jury selection. In fact, he feels that as a trial lawyer he is at his weakest in the jury selection process because he does not believe that he is a very good judge of character. Bugliosi insists that the trial jury must understand that it is not to interpret a grand jury’s indictment as evidence of a defendant’s guilt. Trial juries tend to overrate the grand jury’s indictment, and thus justice is not served. He feels that it is incumbent on the prosecutor to convey the information to the trial jury that the grand jury bases its indictment only at the probable cause level of proof. PROSECUTOR AS INVESTIGATOR Bugliosi feels that the district attorney should be actively involved and indeed lead in the investigation of a serious or difficult case. When the prosecutor leads the investigation, the evidence collected will prove much more effective in court because the evidence is then definitely gathered with the purpose of building a solid case. Again, here Bugliosi uses his yellow legal pad to write notes and to list questions to share with detectives. When he fills a page with questions, a meeting is called, and the questions are discussed. Investigative assignments result. After every interview, Bugliosi also converts his interview notes into tentative interrogation questions for future use, already preparing for the development of his final summation and his choreography of the trial. Bugliosi found amazing incompetence in police departments and mediocre attitudes among detectives, some of which are chronicled in Helter Skelter and Till Death Us Do Part. These examples alone should convince district attorneys of their need to lead in the investigations of serious and complex crimes. Opening Statements Bugliosi usually waives opening statements. He feels that the jury may tire of his telling them the same thing over and over. Thus, he brings the state’s

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evidence to the attention of the jury for the first time during direct and cross-examinations, and follows by clearly connecting the elements of evidence and the crime charged during his final summation. Evidence Bugliosi feels it is critical that the prosecution present all the relevant evidence it possesses. By failing to present all evidence the prosecution may have lost the state’s case against Orenthal James Simpson. Vince states this as a vital and immutable rule of prosecution. As a trial tactic, when Bugliosi believes that evidence harmful to the prosecution’s case is held by the defense, he usually presents that evidence first— in essence, preempting the defense, stealing their thunder, as it were. It softens the blow against the prosecution’s case and communicates to the jury that the prosecution has nothing to hide. One of his common trial practices, therefore, was to cross-examine his own witnesses during direct; this left little for the defense attorney to ask upon cross. Persistence: Dedication to Hard Work Whether in Vince Bugliosi’s true-crime murder mystery books or in his crime-mystery novels, the reader is struck with the intensity with which the super trial lawyer must put him- or herself totally into winning the case. Vince portrays the trial as open warfare demanding great stamina on the part of the legal participants. He speaks of working 100 hours per week in preparation for and during the trial and the full attention that the prosecutor must give toward the painstaking building of the case—often constructed from the gleanings of mere pieces and tiny bits of information. In a major murder case, as recorded in Helter Skelter, simply replying verbally and in writing to the hundreds of motions made by the defense becomes a voluminous and exhaustive task for the prosecution. In a close trial, winning may be founded simply upon the relative stamina of the adversaries. Preparation may include insightful, though not necessarily less stressful or less time-intensive, tactics. For example, we find in And the Sea Will Tell that Vince and his cocounsel, Len Weinglass, intensely observed the entire Buck Walker murder trial in order to learn from it so that they could better defend Jennifer Jenkins for the Palmyra murders. Not the least of their discoveries was the evidence possessed by the prosecution and the manner in which the evidence was presented, the trial tactics of the prosecutors, and the necessity of dealing with a judge who was disrespectful of the defense lawyers. Another time- and energy-expending, trial-winning ritual, which Bugliosi practiced religiously, was the night’s study of that day’s trial transcript. It was in the reading of the transcript that Vince found solutions to trial

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problems, and questions for the next day’s cross-examinations became clear to him. During the trial, Bugliosi often worked through his lunch hour, through Christmas recess, into the wee hours of the morning on Christmas eve and attended family holiday dinners in body, but not in mind. Motive and Intent Vincent Bugliosi carefully distinguishes motive from intent—two terms that are often used interchangeably: Motive is the emotional urge which induces a person to say or do something. It is different from intent, for a person may intend to steal property or kill someone, and will be guilty of the theft or homicide irrespective of what his motive was (e.g., need, avarice, revenge, jealousy, etc.). While intent is an element of every serious crime, motive is never an element of the corpus delicti of any crime. Therefore the prosecution never has to prove motive. However, even though the prosecution doesn’t have any legal burden to prove motive, it is always better if it can, because just as the presence of motive to commit a crime is circumstantial evidence of guilt, the absence of motive is perhaps even stronger circumstantial evidence of innocence. (Bugliosi 1996a, 167–168).

Bugliosi is convinced that the jury will expect the prosecution to show motive; therefore, although the prosecution has no legal burden to prove motive, it necessary for the prosecution to prove motive anyway—in order to satisfy the jury’s expectations. Cross-Examination Vince Bugliosi believes that the best cross-examination techniques are those used by theatrical dramatists. In fact, he states that cross-examination is drama. While most lawyers avoid the why question in cross-examination, for Bugliosi, asking ‘‘why?’’ is probably his main cross-examination technique. When he feels that a witness is lying, to expose the witness’ prevarication, Vince says, I usually employ the following technique to block off the exits. First I elicit answers from the witness on preliminary matters, answers which, when totaled up, show he would be expected to take a certain course of action, or act in a certain way. The witness having committed himself by his answers, I then ask him what course he in fact took, and follow this up with the ‘‘why’’ question. If a witness is unable to justify or explain conduct of his which is incompatible with the behavior of a normal person under the same circumstances, the jury will usually conclude that his testimony is suspect. (229).

Bugliosi puts forth a great deal of effort preparing for cross-examination, feeling that it can be critical to winning a trial. For example, believing that

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Charles Manson would take the witness stand in his defense, by the end of the trial, Vince had three notebooks of questions prepared to ask the defendant. Interviewing and Preparing Witnesses Bugliosi attempts to interview all witnesses, defense as well as prosecution. He states, ‘‘Interviewing the opposition witnesses is absolutely essential to effective cross-examination.’’ (Bugliosi 1996a, 223). When it is possible, he interviews witnesses four or five times. He goes on to explain that the more often witnesses are asked to repeat their stories, the more likely those stories will illustrate contradictions and discrepancies. Some lawyers avoid this to guard against conflicting testimony. Vince sets this worry aside by simply saying that if there are conflicts in a witness’ testimony, he wishes to know about it early in the trial process. In his true-crime, murder mystery books, Bugliosi explains the great efforts he expends in the preparation of witnesses for trial. The witness who proved to be the greatest challenge for him in her preparation as a witness was the defendant in the Palmyra murder trial. Reasonable Doubt—Not Guilty or Innocent? Vincent Bugliosi feels strongly that juries must understand that they do not have to find the defendant innocent of a crime. A jury’s charge is to simply determine whether the state proved guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Yet, judge’s directions to the jury, and language used by courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States, confuse the legal finding of not guilty with the concept of innocence. Based on his true-crime books, it may be assumed that Vince explained this distinction to each of the juries that heard his 106 felony trials. He also attempted to lead the trial judges in the cases that he prosecuted and defended to omit the commonly uttered error in their jury instructions: A finding of guilt or innocence. So strongly has he felt about this legal distinction, that he has written a professional article titled ‘‘Not Guilty and Innocent—The Problem Children of Reasonable Doubt.’’ Published in the Criminal Justice Journal, the article thoroughly discusses the issues of reasonable doubt in relationship to the struggles of juries for understanding in making their decisions. Consciousness of Guilt/Innocence Consciousness of guilt—statements and behaviors indicating guilt—can be held by the trial courts to be circumstantial evidence of guilt. Bugliosi argues that if behaviors indicating guilt can be entered into evidence, so too

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can behaviors indicating innocence. He has titled this principle, ‘‘consciousness of innocence.’’ (Bugliosi 1996a, 239). Objections Objections can hurt a trial lawyer’s case in the eyes of the jury. Vince Bugliosi always attempted to make as few objections as possible. Death Penalty Vince Bugliosi always found it difficult as a prosecutor to seek the death penalty. He actually once opposed the death penalty for a non-trigger man in a felony-murder trial. He feels so strongly about the death penalty that he included not only one, but two treatises on the death penalty in Till Death Us Do Part. He supports the death penalty for only the most serious and violent murders, although shallow or flippant motives for murder lean his support toward the death penalty. Defending Guilty Persons Vince Bugliosi has concluded that from the professional standpoint, it is easy to switch from prosecution to defense, but it is not easy from the emotional standpoint. In the courtroom he feels like an actor on a stage, and his intense preparation and theatrical performance tend to add up to winning a case. The courtroom wags over the years have repeated that Vince is frightening in the court trial—that he could convict innocent people. Likewise, it is probable that he could by defending them, get guilty people off. He has therefore concluded that he can not defend people whom he knows are guilty. He worries, ‘‘If I do defense and get a guilty person off, what if they do it again? I would feel responsible for letting another crime be committed! So, I’ve retreated into writing.’’ (Schauer 2007c). Bugliosi stated publicly before the trial that he would not have represented O. J. Simpson if he had been asked because he knew that Simpson was guilty of murdering his wife and her friend. Bugliosi believes that it is not legal ideology that drives trial lawyers to defend guilty people, but rather that in reality, most lawyers represent guilty people because there are many lawyers and all need work. He also hints, by stating that he has not taken signed checks with the denomination lines left blank, that some lawyers defend guilty persons for self-aggrandizement. He summarizes, ‘‘In a nutshell, although I have never been a law-and-order fanatic—in fact, I’m suspicious of those who are—I do believe that those who have committed serious crimes should be severely punished, and I do not want to be in a position of actively seeking to thwart this natural justice.’’ (Bugliosi 1996a, 274–275; Schauer 2007c).

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Bugliosi believes that having passed through the criminal justice screening process, the probability that the defendant in a criminal trial is guilty is about 99 percent. Therefore, most defense attorneys tend to earn their livings largely by defending guilty people. He will not defend a person whom he believes is guilty of a violent crime. He argues that he is simply not willing to put in his normal trial workweek of 100 hours to help a violent criminal escape justice. Thus, when he was asked to defend Jennifer Jenkins for the Palmyra murders (chronicled in And the Sea Will Tell), he felt that he had to be confident that she had not aided in the murders of Mac and Muff Graham. Even then, Bugliosi knew that he could never be 100 percent certain of her innocence. He continued to suffer doubts about her throughout the trial. The doubts led him to feeling that somehow his working so hard to win the case, if his client were indeed guilty, was incredibly obscene and vile. In summary, the superlative professional career of Vincent T. Bugliosi identifies and emphasizes key trial issues. In a sense, his writings constitute a more complete and more intense education in criminal trial law than is received by most students in their law school experience.

AUTHOR: TRUE-CRIME MURDER MYSTERIES ‘‘The only type of criminal case that really appeals to me is a true murder mystery, and the interest is in the mystery, not the murder.’’ (Bugliosi 1996a, 16). So states Vincent T. Bugliosi in the introduction to Outrage, his criticism of the murder trial of Orenthal James Simpson. Bugliosi is broadly read in the literature relating to his subject matter: In his writing he mentions Hemingway and quotes many authors, from humorist Will Rogers to trial lawyers F. Lee Bailey and Clarence Darrow, to old Chinese proverbs, and emphasizes his points by including statements from such novelists as Henry Roth, Gertrude Stein, and Mark Twain. While Bugliosi is best known for his nonfiction murder mystery books, he has written in other genres, including two fictional murder mysteries and several books of legal or political criticism, and he has authored several criminal law-related articles in journals and magazines. What follows is a series of reviews of his murder mystery books, both nonfiction and fiction, organized in chronological order of their publication. Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (1974) Starling Lawrence, editor of Bugliosi’s 1996 book, Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder, observes that Helter Skelter is ‘‘the book that established him (Bugliosi) as the most celebrated true-crime author in America.’’ (Bugliosi 1974). Written two years after his retirement from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, Helter

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Skelter brought the professional legal career of Bugliosi to national attention and secured international recognition of him as a serious author and a top legal expert—thus he quickly became the best-known criminal prosecutor in the world. Soon after it hit the bookstands, Helter Skelter was listed as a national best seller by the New York Times, the first of three nonfiction best sellers for Bugliosi. It won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for the best fact crime book of the year in 1975, given by the Mystery Writers of America. It also became a main selection of the Book of the Month Club. Bugliosi himself became the executive producer of the docudrama of Helter Skelter produced by CBS. Helter Skelter became a main selection of the Literary Guild and is probably the best selling true-crime book of all time. In Helter Skelter, Bugliosi documents the Tate/LaBianca murder trials in which he served as the prosecutor. The Tate/LaBianca murders, which were perpetrated in August of 1969, just four years after the Watts riot, were the most publicized murders up to that time next to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The murders themselves rate as probably the most brutal and unprovoked mass murders recorded in American history. Adding to the gruesomeness and horror of the crimes is the fact that they were carried out willingly by young followers of the reclusive Charles Manson, a self-proclaimed leader and messiah, whose charisma drew youth who had broken with their families and who felt rejected by society. Three major issues are juxtaposed in Helter Skelter: Bugliosi begins the book by introducing the victims and their murders. Second, the author guides the reader through the highly complex investigation, evidence gathering, and evidence interpretation that was necessary to tie the crimes to each other and to identify the murderers. Third, the personalities, actions, intents, and motives of the murderers are explored. These themes follow in logical sequence as first presented, but are increasingly intertwined as the author continues to explain his successful prosecution of members of the ‘‘Manson family.’’ The book is written in the language of a district attorney; that is, it is totally unemotional except in certain cases when the author writes ‘‘asides.’’ In Helter Skelter the murders themselves, the investigation, the intense work and long hours of the prosecutor in building and trying the case, the courtroom drama, and the aftermath of the trial are presented in orderly sequence. Ever building upon groundwork laid, Bugliosi gives a step-by-step development of the case. He makes the reader aware of the missing pieces of evidence or seeming illogic, how the prosecutor works to find missing evidence or ponders what logical steps might help to explain the yet unsolved. Aside from the three major issues mentioned above, Vincent Bugliosi shares information with the reader that was not reported by the media or mentioned during the Tate/LaBianca murder trial. For example, in Helter

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Skelter the public first learns about revenge killings before, during, and after the trial; the fact that Bugliosi himself was assigned a twenty-four-hour police bodyguard throughout the trial; and that an attempt was made on the life of one of the prosecution witnesses. Part of the information shared in the book is simply (1) knowledge that the prosecutor chose not to enter as evidence in the trial, (2) evidence that may have been inadmissible as trial evidence for one reason or another, or (3) information that the media did not have or chose not to report. Other information contained in Helter Skelter was discovered and gathered by the author in the process of his research leading to the writing of the book; in essence, the product contains none of the expected and proverbial unturned stones. Additional information first made public in Helter Skelter, however, was discovered due to the incredible mind and inquisitiveness of Bugliosi himself. First of all, Bugliosi is totally dedicated to the proposition that justice must be done and murderers must not go unpunished. Second, the author goes to great lengths to satisfy his intense innate curiosity. For example, Bugliosi simply was driven by his mind to understand the person, thinking, and socialization of his antagonist, Charles Manson. This intellectual quest led Bugliosi from the childhood, arrest, and prison records of Manson to inquiry into the ideologies of diverse cults; to the writings of Nietzsche; and finally, to the finding of striking similarities between the backgrounds, thinking, and leadership and recruitment styles of Charles Manson and Adolph Hitler. In Helter Skelter, Bugliosi sets the standard for his subsequent true-crime mystery books, that which makes them resources of immense value to criminal justice and legal scholars, students, and practitioners. By detailed reviews of the backgrounds of key actors of the murder mystery and the subsequent trial; through careful explanation and emphasis of the legal issues and logic terminating in successful prosecution; and by making the reader a witness to the courtroom drama (suggested by the complete ‘‘Cast of Characters’’ that begins Helter Skelter ) as it unfolds, the author communicates with a clarity and precision uncommon in both the true-crime mystery and in the legal literature. As an example, Bugliosi explains how to anticipate the motions made by and the cross-examination questions of the defense, how to interview and prepare witnesses, how to anticipate and prevent legal pitfalls, how and why to prepare a clear and powerful final summation, how to deal with a biased or unprepared judge, how to communicate with clarity and precision to the jury, and how to explain the state’s case as it is built logically—step by step and point by point. More complete citations and explanations are given in voluminous footnotes or endnotes and/or epilogue. Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders is the most universally recognized and the most acclaimed true-crime murder mystery of the twentieth century. Every serious student of crime must become personally

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and intimately familiar with the facts and criminal trial dramaturgy presented in the book. Helter Skelter should be made required reading in law schools and university criminal justice programs. Till Death Us Do Part: A True Murder Mystery (1978) Vincent T. Bugliosi introduces his second true-crime murder mystery, Till Death Us Do Part (Till Death), in a hard-hitting statement that gives the prospective reader a feeling for the mystery involved, in the following words found in the book’s frontispiece: The Los Angeles Police Department detectives did not know on December 11, 1966, the night of the first murder, that they would soon be drawn into a long, exhaustive pursuit that would lead them from the scene of a modest working-class neighborhood, circuitously but ever steadily into the fast, sporty lifestyles of Southern California, Baja, and Nevada. Nor did they know that it would take a series of unsolved, attempted murders and finally a mysterious, terribly brutal second murder before the State of California would have what they believed to be sufficient evidence to commence a prosecution. The job of that prosecution fell to me. Never before or since as a criminal lawyer have I been involved in a case that raised so many disturbing doubts as to what had actually happened. (Bugliosi 1978)

In this trial, Bugliosi was forced to build the state’s case based entirely on circumstantial evidence, with much of that evidence once or twice removed from the actual crimes. Elizabeth Peer, reviewer for Newsweek, wrote, ‘‘Neither murder would ever yield weapons, fingerprints or eyewitnesses; but dogged detective work knit the crimes together and a painstaking prosecutor constructed a probable-guilt scenario so persuasive that a California jury dealt out the death sentence based on circumstantial evidence alone—a rare courtroom feat.’’ (Dear 1995, 51). The author creates, in Till Death, a work that intrigues and excites the reader’s mind as a fictional Agatha Christie or Nero Wolfe murder mystery novel might. But in this volume, Bugliosi takes the reader beyond the typical fiction or nonfiction murder mystery tome and into the actual action and drama of the courtroom. He offers intimate introductions to both victims and murderers and paints a vivid picture of the intense work and attention to detail that goes into the thorough investigation and successful prosecution of a most difficult murder case. The subject arrangement is in the logical order that was first presented by Vince Bugliosi in Helter Skelter. First, the human actors of the subject murder are introduced. The actual murders, the experiences of witnesses, and the characteristics and life’s settings of the victims are intimately explained. The attributes, behaviors, and aspired lifestyles of the murderers follow. Second, the author expands on the investigation. Bugliosi takes an active part in investigations once the Los Angeles district attorney’s office assigns

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cases to him. These investigations are explained in detail, noting especially evidence needed and sought, strengths and weakness of that evidence, evidence lacking, and the intensity of the investigative process. Third, the trial begins. Herein lies the artistry, brilliance, and public expertise of Vincent Bugliosi, and herein lies the precise courtroom techniques, attention to legal precedent, and choreography of the courtroom, which, although exciting to the casual reader, proves invaluable to students of law and criminal justice. But the author emphasizes that the trial is not won entirely through prior preparation and courtroom presentation; the trial for Bugliosi extends to evenings, nights, weekends, holidays, and even through the courtroom lunch hour. For example, after a day in court, Bugliosi waits for a copy of that day’s trial transcript. This he reads before retiring for the night in order to bolster his impressions of that trial day, and also to discover issues he might have missed that may help in his presentation of evidence, argument, or crossexamination on the following day. During the trial, Bugliosi is concurrently leading investigations, seeking additional witnesses, preparing witnesses, doing trial-related legal research, and interviewing both prosecution and defense witnesses. Beyond these tasks, usually extending from before the trial begins, he continually works on upgrading and fine-tuning his final summation. He uses his final summation to choreograph the trial. He continuously is revising the final summation throughout the trial, and he has it committed to memory before he presents his final argument. Bugliosi feels that summarizing the trial, emphasizing key evidence, and clearly explaining how the evidence is interrelated is of utmost importance for the jury’s determinations. By having rewritten, updated, and rehearsed the final summation, he is able to be orderly and precise in his presentation while still being very able to be innovative and fresh as an actor on a stage. Deviating somewhat from Vincent Bugliosi’s other books, Till Death contains no footnotes and no epilogue. All of the materials commonly included in footnotes or epilogue are found embedded in the text. Many students of crime, the present author included, prefer this presentation style. A more intimate look at the scene begins in Los Angeles, where citizens tend to believe that they can reach out to touch a fantasy, where no one feels like a nobody. Los Angeles is described as a city of created illusions and facades. Then when the fire department is called to a fire in a working-class neighborhood, firemen find the murdered body of Henry Stockton, a humble stock clerk with few aspirations and no enemies. The police have difficulty contacting his wife Sandra, who is in another city with their four-year-old son, visiting a friend. Motive for the murder eludes the investigators, and while the murder victim had a life insurance policy and insurance on the house, it did not seem

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possible that he would be murdered for his paltry net worth of less than $25,000. Two years later, Judy Palliko, the newlywed wife of Alan Palliko, was brutally bludgeoned and shot to death as she sat in her car in the carport of their apartment complex. One of the investigators remembered questioning Alan Palliko in the course of the Henry Stockton murder investigation; he was known to have been close to Sandra Stockton at that time. Both murders were well planned and executed: There were no witnesses; no real evidence was discovered (e.g., a gun, a club, or a fingerprint); and although circumstantial evidence existed to tie the two murders together and to implicate Alan Palliko and Sandra Stockton for the murders, all circumstantial evidence was rather distanced from the actual murders and crime scenes. Vince Bugliosi had been out of law school and working for the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office for just under four years when the Palliko/Stockton case was assigned to him for prosecution. He had prosecuted eleven murder cases before this trial, and although he was not inclined toward asking for the death penalty in murder trials, he sought the death penalty for both of the defendants in this trial. He had never seen murders as reprehensible as these: The murdering of spouses for relatively small sums of money so that the defendants could live the fast lifestyle of southern California. The trial began with one of America’s most accomplished trial lawyers, Melvin Belli, defending Sandra. Later, David Golden, an able attorney from Belli’s office, took over her defense. Friends before, and friends after, Bugliosi and Golden clashed in the courtroom. At one point, Bugliosi apologized to Golden in the open court for a mis-statement that had been interpreted as a lack of respect. Items of interest in the trial follow: The chief witness for the prosecution damaged his credibility early in the trial. Evidence for Judy Palliko’s murder was dismally circumstantial. A key defense witness boldly lied to counter a major item of evidence for the prosecution. Bugliosi himself gambled on presenting an alternative murder theory late in the trial. In explaining his final summation, the author expands on the importance of words for communicating to the jury. This is one of the major themes of Vincent Bugliosi’s professional life—both as prosecuting attorney and as author of true-crime mysteries. In chambers, the judge complimented Bugliosi on his final summation, comparing his performance to that of Clarence Darrow. Vince had to smile to himself: While he appreciated the judge’s intended praise, he remembered that Darrow lost most of his cases. He hoped that the compliment was not a foreboding of the outcome of the present trial. The judge also suggested that someone should write a book about this trial. After awaiting the decision of the jury—a period of great stress for all actors in a trial—Bugliosi was elated at the jury’s verdicts. His only desire,

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after hearing the verdicts, was to go home to his family, whom he had greatly neglected during the course of this trial. Till Death Us Do Part won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for the best truecrime book of the year. Mystery and unanswered questions are myriad within the pages of this masterpiece. Legal issues and concerns are noted and thoroughly discussed. This present author recommends Till Death as a book that must be read by the true-crime, true-murder mystery aficionado and as a great legal resource for the advanced student of law or criminal justice. Shadow of Cain: A Novel (1981) Shadow of Cain is an allegory of the worst-case scenario of that which may happen when a lawyer successfully defends a guilty person against the charge of premeditated murder. Considering this a serious professional and emotional issue, Vince Bugliosi has repeated his long-held beliefs and fears concerning the defense of guilty persons in each of his true-crime mystery books. After leaving the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office in 1972, going into private practice, and beginning to author books, Vince wrestled with the question of defending the guilty. He explains, ‘‘From the professional standpoint, it is easy to switch from prosecution to defense. But it is not easy from the emotional standpoint.’’ He has explained further, ‘‘Most defense attorneys necessarily spend their careers defending guilty people.’’ Finally, Vince bares to the world the horns of his ethical and legal dilemma: ‘‘If I do defense and get a guilty person off, what if they do it again? I would feel responsible for letting another crime be committed!’’ (Schauer 2007c). In Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder, Bugliosi strongly stated his opinion that most lawyers—prosecutors, judges, and defenders—are inept, and produce, at best, a mediocre legal product. If this common mediocrity among lawyers is contrasted with the author’s dedication and skills (as explained both in print and proven by his legal track record), the likelihood of his successful defense of guilty people becomes apparent. Bugliosi emphasizes the contrast when he states, ‘‘I simply have no motivation whatsoever to knock myself out working a hundred hours a week, as I frequently do, trying to figure out a way to get some murderer off.’’ (Bugliosi 1991a, 197). In Shadow of Cain, Raymond Lomak commits premeditated multiple murders based on his ideological and socioeconomic ponderings (reminding the reader of multiple-murderer Charles Manson in Helter Skelter, 1974). Lomak, a hospital orderly, is identified by the type of shoes worn by his profession. Arrested, prosecuted, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, Ray Lomak is reprieved when the California death sentence statute is found to be unconstitutional. His sentence automatically reverts to a life sentence with possibility

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of parole in seven years. Again, the reader is reminded of the death sentences of Charles Manson in Helter Skelter and of the two murderers in Till Death Us Do Part, because those sentences were reduced to life with possibility of parole. The reader may discover characteristics of Vince Bugliosi, himself, in not only one, but in two of the characters of this novel: The first is Ray Lomak’s antagonist, Richard Pomerantz, the psychiatrist appointed by the parole board to oversee Lomak’s parole. Pomerantz, discerning Lomak’s murderous potential, fights a one-man battle to get Lomak back behind bars, and through his determination to terminate Lomak’s parole, places his own life in imminent danger. Lomak is once again arrested and tried for two murders. The prosecution’s case rests entirely on circumstantial evidence, as have many of the premeditated murder cases that the author prosecuted. The reader may tend to recognize Vincent Bugliosi in the well-prepared, insightful, and animated trial lawyer who defends Lomak in this second murder trial.

California Board of Parole Press Release Regarding Charles Manson 11th Parole Request (for Immediate Release: May 23, 2007) Parole Denied for Charles Manson Corcoran, CA: The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Board of Parole Hearings (BPH) today denied parole for convicted mass murderer Charles Manson during a hearing at Corcoran State Prison. The denial was for five years, the maximum allowed by law. Manson did not appear before the panel and will be eligible for another hearing in 2012. The BPH decision marks the eleventh time that Manson has been denied parole since 1978. In its denial, the BPH panel noted that Manson, 72 years old, ‘‘continues to pose an unreasonable danger to others and may still bring harm to anyone he would come in contact with.’’ Manson was convicted of seven counts of first degree murder as a result of separate incidents in an August 1969 crime spree in Los Angeles County, including the fatal stabbing of five people in the home of actress Sharon Tate and the murders the following day of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Manson was initially sentenced to death. That sentence, as well as those of 107 other inmates, was modified in 1977 to life in prison with the possibility of parole after a 1972 ruling by the California Supreme Court that determined the state’s death penalty statute at the time was unconstitutional. Source: http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/.

Vincent T. Bugliosi

Just as Lomak’s hot-shot defense lawyer upstaged the prosecutor’s final summation in Shadow of Cain and later in And the Sea Will Tell, Vincent Bugliosi used the same technique in his defense of Jennifer Jenkins. Bugliosi carefully studied the prosecutor’s final summations presented in former trials to discover his presentation style, similes he used, and the prosecutor’s logic in reviewing the trial evidence. Bugliosi then preempted the prosecutor’s final summation—thus weakening its impact—by telling the jury what they should be expecting from the prosecution. The reader knows that Ray Lomak is guilty of the two premeditated murders charged by the prosecution, but the defense is successful. Ray Lomak is found ‘‘not guilty;’’ and walks out of the court a free man. But the psychiatrist, Pomerantz, realizes Lomak’s murderous potential; and he works to stop Lomak at all costs. Shadow of Cain rivets the attention of the reader, causing one to wonder what may actually happen if a violent multiple murderer is successfully defended, acquitted by the trial court, and allowed to roam free. Is the defense lawyer to be held partially responsible for his brilliant defense? Is the district attorney to be held responsible for his mediocre prosecution? The thoughts, insight, and fears of Vincent T. Bugliosi are faithfully and clearly communicated to the reader through the allegory, Shadow of Cain. Lullaby and Good Night: A Novel Inspired by the True Story of Vivian Gordon (1987) This book is a novel that began as nonfiction. Vivian Gordon, the woman behind the story, was in the process of testifying before the Seabury Commission against Tammany Hall when she turned up dead. As the authors were researching the book, they realized that all of the court documents were missing. Suspicious? Yes, indeed. Tammany Hall at work? Quite possibly. An Internet search on Benita Franklin Bischoff (aka Vivian Gordon) yields only the news of her death, very little on the scapegoat who ‘‘confessed’’ to her murder, and some short statements concerning Tammany Hall’s reaction. Nothing is noted of her background except that she is called a racketeer, a procuress, and a blackmailer. So, what to do? Make the story a murder mystery, use the little information you have, refine it with your best educated guess, and write a book. There are components of this story that are very well documented. The infamous Tammany Hall, the speakeasy culture, crooked cops and gangsters, and the call-girl lifestyle—all have been recorded for history. And so begins the story of Emily Stanton. There are three areas of interest to the reviewer: The main character, Emily Stanton; Tammany Hall; and lawyer Samuel Leibowitz. Emily Stanton is at the same time a very nice girl and very believable, yet an

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unbelievably na€ıve, even stupid, woman. Many times, the reader felt like yelling, ‘‘No, don’t go there!’’ as one does at the TV or a movie. The story synopsis is that small-town Emily ran away from home (which included a cold prison-warden father, an ineffectual mother, and a convent school) and came to New York to be an actress. She met and married Warren Matthews and after being beaten and raped by him, she ran away from him, taking their six-year-old daughter with her. Matthews was heavily involved with Tammany Hall, a social club housed in a Georgian-style building that looked like many other New York gentlemen’s clubs. Many of the members arriving and departing were transported in big, black chauffeurdriven luxury cars, wearing expensive clothes with flowers in lapels that proclaimed their power and wealth. However, most of these men rose from the working class of peasant-stock Irishmen who populated New York at that time. But no matter the lineage, Tammany Hall ran New York and was a political power to be reckoned with. City Hall and Tammany Hall were one and the same, and controlling elections was the corrupt and pervasive game. Tammany Hall was compared to a tiger devouring New York, and indeed, a flag was flown in Tammany Hall right beside the Stars and Stripes depicting this tiger. The exclusive and secret rites; the Indian themed meetings; the initiations; the secret deals and contract negotiations; the alcohol, women, and money were all part of the make-up of Tammany Hall. Named after the Indian Chief Tamanend whose motto was, ‘‘Stand together and support each other and you will be a mountain,’’ the Hall borrowed liberally from the Indian culture. Members became braves, elders were called sachems, and the meeting place was the wigwam. Chants using supposed Indian words and oaths of allegiance were required of new members. City commissioners, judges, police officers, businessmen, lawyers—all made up Tammany Hall. At one point the reader eavesdrops on a conversation between Emily Stanton’s husband, Warren Matthews, and a city commissioner. Matthews is bemoaning the fact that his wife had left him and taken their daughter. The commissioner assures Matthews that if he wanted his daughter back that badly, there was a way to make it happen. Curiously enough, Matthews felt reassured after this: Indeed not too many weeks later, Emily was framed for prostitution and sent to prison for two years. She was brutalized and traumatized in prison, Matthews divorced her and remarried, and she lost all contact with her little girl. When Emily got out of prison, she had a hard time finding a job. No one would hire her because she had been in prison. After several futile tries at acting jobs, she finally became a call girl. Her only goal in life was to get her daughter back; therefore she needed money to hire a good lawyer. What so horrified her was that she had been innocent of the charge that sent her to prison, yet she had actually become what she was accused of being, a prostitute. One lesson she learned was how to make money, and she ended

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up a wealthy woman. She hired a lawyer, received visitation privileges, and finally was able to reestablish a relationship with her daughter. At this point she planned her revenge. Emily testified before the Seabury Commission, which was investigating Tammany Hall and the corruption that was so rampant in New York. She was convinced that Matthews was behind her first visit to prison; she also wanted very badly to see the police officer who framed her punished. She foolishly went to Matthew’s office and told him about this, and next thing you knew he was dead, and she framed for his murder. So, back to jail. This time, though, she had money and was able to get her friend to hire Sam Leibowitz to defend her. Sam Leibowitz was the son of Romanian immigrants who worked hard and believed in education. He was known for successfully defending people arrested for murder; in fact, according to press reports, he never lost. Leibowitz was a big man, well dressed. ‘‘Beneath his impeccable threepiece suit…was a big man with the soul of a fighter, everything held tightly in check for when the battle call sounded.’’ So after talking to Emily and insisting that she tell him the whole, bare truth about her life and the murder of Matthews, he got to work, first doing his homework. He went himself to investigate Emily’s alibi, he asked questions and saw her life. His acceptance of the case kept the headlines active. Sam Leibowitz carefully studied and selected his jury. He wanted men of detail, men who would listen, intelligent men. He wanted them to understand and appreciate irony and sarcasm. He did everything in his power to weed out Tammany Hall men. When the trial started he told Emily to dress in such a way that she could evoke sympathy. The prosecutor (a handpicked Tammany man) portrayed her as a jealous woman, a woman scorned, a failure at everything. With his opening statement, Leibowitz established himself as the calm, authoritative wise man. He was cool and adult, reasonable and nonadversarial. He told the jury that at first he didn’t want to take the case, that he was busy, and that it didn’t look like a good case; but after meeting and talking to Emily, he was honored to represent her, to get her the fair trial that she wasn’t given the last time she was in court. Then his demeanor changed and he was no longer the calm scholarly lawyer; he became the wolf, the hawk, never losing eye contact with the jury. ‘‘In one fell swoop, an innocent housewife is transformed into a prostitute. How’s that for the magic of the magistrate’s court!’’ He felt that he could prove that Emily did not kill her ex-husband. He was certain that someone in Tammany Hall, to protect Tammany Hall, killed him. He felt that the information Emily was bringing to the Seabury Commission was threatening enough to Tammany Hall to make them nervous. Leibowitz strove to make the jury partners in his search for truth. He used rhetorical questions to open their thoughts to the possibility that Emily was innocent. He wanted to leave enough doubt that they would have to

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declare her not guilty. When Emily took the stand, he told her to be completely honest about her life and her work—better for them to bring it out in the open than for the prosecutor to reveal her secret life. At one point during the trial, Leibowitz made the prosecution so uncomfortable that he (the prosecutor) called to the stand the police officer who had initially framed Emily. Leibowitz was able to point the finger of justice toward the officer by showing that he had the means, motive, and opportunity to kill Warren Matthews. One question of how the gun was planted in Emily’s room was suggested by asking the officer about his ability to pick locks and the fact that he had worked for a locksmith for two summers as a teenager. Everyone was amazed at the depth that Leibowitz had probed while preparing for the trial. At his summation, Leibowitz pointed out enough facts to be able to suggest to the jury that there was at least a reasonable doubt as to Emily’s guilt. He asked them for a verdict of not guilty. In conclusion, first, in the casting of the main character, Emily Stanton, the reviewer is reminded of Jennifer Jenkins, whom Vincent Bugliosi was defending in her trial for the Palmyra murders as this book was being written. His struggles with preparing her as a witness and his wrestling to get her to become an active partner in her defense are recorded in And the Sea Will Tell. Second, if only half of what we read here about Tammany Hall and this era in New York City are true (and there is no reason to believe that the descriptions have been embellished), then it is easy to see what motivated Vincent Bugliosi to write this critique. Of course today we are not surprised to see the same attitudes and behaviors being acted out in government at all levels: federal and state, large city or small town. After all, the politicians of today are the philosophical progeny of Tammany Hall. And third, while it may be easy to see why the authors needed to write about the era, it may be even more obvious why Vince Bugliosi wanted to write about Sam Leibowitz. Rhetorically, how much of Sam Leibowitz is Vincent Bugliosi, and how much did Sam influence Vince? Their similarities are striking: Both possess controlled kinetic energy—always keeping a reserve ready to launch into conflict. Both see the trial as a battle. So too are each noted for taking on extremely difficult cases and for being unwilling to defend guilty persons, although Bugliosi was the more successful in this regard since it is a known fact that Leibowitz defended Al Capone. Their attention to detail and their extensive investigative work are also examples of their similarities. In the courtroom, both Leibowitz and Bugliosi varied their presentations greatly for effect: Seeing themselves as actors on a stage, they whisper, they speak calmly, they shout, they make eye contact with the jury, to emphasize the purpose of the message and to insure communication. Both are concerned with educating the jury to both the facts of the case and to the intricacies of the law.

Vincent T. Bugliosi

Lullaby and Good Night brings a message of history, human nature, and legal strife. Fascinating to read; it keeps the murder mystery aficionado riveted to the story, eager to turn the page. Best of all, as in many of Vincent Bugliosi’s books, the mystery continues. And the Sea Will Tell (1991) Known primarily as a criminal trial prosecutor, and secondarily as an accomplished author of true-crime mystery books, Vince Bugliosi is found in the pages of And the Sea wearing an entirely new hat—that of murder trial defender. The book chronicles the knowledge and experiences of the author as he prepared for the trial and defended Jennifer Lynn Jenkins, who was accused of murdering a wealthy couple from California for the purpose of gaining possession of their immaculately maintained luxury yacht and the year’s supply of food it contained. The alleged murders took place at the isolated Palmyra Atoll. The Palmyra Atoll, an unincorporated territory of the United States, lies in the west-central Pacific Ocean. It is 1,000 miles southwest of Hawaii and lies far outside the regular ocean shipping lanes. Palmyra has no permanent inhabitants. Visitors to the island have over the years reported a feeling of sadness, of foreboding, while they were on Palmyra. After a short introduction to Palmyra itself, the story begins with Mac and Muff Graham in San Diego, California, and Jennifer Jenkins and her ex-convict lover, Buck Walker, at Maalaea Bay on the island of Maui in Hawaii. The Grahams determined to sail to Palmyra, where they were sure they would have privacy for their planned lengthy stay at the atoll. They prepared their racy ketch, the Sea Wind, for the trip and stocked it with groceries and supplies to last the couple a year. Unbeknownst to the Grahams, Jennifer Jenkins and Buck Walker also planned to sail to Palmyra in an old wooden sailboat, the Iola, with a fiberglass-patched hull, which Walker had worked on to make seaworthy. Jenkins and Walker were seeking escape from federal drug charges, and Walker wished to avoid imprisonment for federal parole violations. They planned to stay at Palmyra for an extended period and expected to exist by living off the land. Having little sailing experience and with their poorly maintained and equipped sailboat, it took Jenkins and Walker far longer to make the trip to Palmyra than expected. When they arrived at the atoll, they found other visitors just preparing to leave. From those departing, Jennifer and Buck received a quick tour of the island, advice for subsisting on the island, and some desired food and supplies. Expecting to find Palmyra deserted, Mac and Muff Graham were surprised to find the island inhabited. Jennifer Jenkins and Buck Walker greeted the Grahams when they arrived. Each couple was disappointed with having to share the tiny atoll with the other. Both couples had planned to remain

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on Palmyra Atoll for extended periods of time, while other travelers who stopped at the island tended to stay for only a few days rest. In October of 1974, Jennifer Jenkins and Buck Walker sailed to Hawaii, not on their boat, the Iola, but in a painted-over and poorly disguised Sea Wind—Mac and Muff Graham’s yacht. They explained that, while fishing, the Grahams had capsized their Zodiac dinghy in Palmyra’s shark-filled lagoon and were missing, presumably drowned. No evidence was found on Palmyra by U.S. investigators to indicate what had happened to the Grahams. While authorities suspected that Walker and Jenkins murdered the Grahams for their ketch and supplies, there was no evidence on which to base a trial for murder. So, Walker and Jenkins were tried in Hawaii for, and found guilty of, the theft of the Sea Wind. Not until 1981 was forensic evidence found that placed the deaths of the Grahams at Palmyra Atoll. A South African woman, Sharon Jordan, who was visiting the island with her husband, found Muff Graham’s skull and other bones washed up on the beach of the lagoon. Murder charges were filed against Walker and Jenkins, and Vincent Bugliosi was retained along with Leonard Weinglass to defend Jennifer Jenkins. Vincent Bugliosi states, ‘‘I was characteristically reluctant to defend Jennifer Jenkins.’’ (Bugliosi 1991a, 199). So before agreeing to defend Jennifer, he needed to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that she was indeed not a cold-blooded killer. The author further explains, ‘‘In a nutshell, although I’ve never been a law-and-order fanatic, I do believe that those who have committed serious crimes should be severely punished, and I do not want to be in a position of actively seeking to thwart this natural justice.’’ (189). Bugliosi knew that the case would involve a tremendously uphill legal battle for him, and he was hesitant to put his dedicated efforts along with his typical 100 hours per week of time into the cause of defending a guilty person. Even Vince’s wife, Gail, suspected that Jennifer was guilty of murder. He, however, became convinced that although Jennifer Jenkins was guilty of bad judgment and guilty of loving the wrong man, ‘‘she was one of those rare criminal defendants who is not guilty as charged’’ (205), that is, not guilty of either premeditated or felony murder. Bugliosi wrestled with what techniques he should use in defending Jenkins. He concluded in favor of doing what he is best at and aimed primarily at prosecuting Buck Walker in his defense of Jennifer Jenkins. One of the major hurdles for Vince to overcome was that there were many inconsistencies in Jennifer’s testimony. She had told detectives many things back when she and Buck were first arrested that differed greatly with what she was saying in her defense now—some of the earlier statements were outright lies. These statements compromised her as a witness, and Bugliosi felt that her testimony was critical for her defense in the murder trial. But Bugliosi was able during her trial to show that in that earlier time, Jennifer was unaware that a murder had been committed—that she was

Vincent T. Bugliosi

simply attempting to protect Walker, whom she loved, from charges stemming from his parole violations and drug infractions. Jennifer proved also to be a difficult client: She acted as if she were doing Vince a favor by agreeing to meet with him. She did nothing toward her defense—was not a partner with Bugliosi and Weinglass in her defense— until the reality of her predicament hit her very late during her murder trial. Beyond that, Vince states that he had more problems in preparing Jennifer as a witness than he had experienced before with any other witness. Because the Palmyra Murder was the most sensational crime story in Hawaii since the Massie Murder in 1931, most Hawaiians quickly became aware of the crime and the suspected murderers through the media. The unusual circumstances of the crime pointed toward the pair’s guilt. Thus, Judge King agreed for a change of venue for the trials from Honolulu to San Francisco. Vince Bugliosi was happy with his being teamed with Leonard Weinglass, a lawyer with much trial experience and expertise in defense of difficult cases. The author states that he held Weinglass in the highest regard for his professionalism. During the trial, Vince and Len interacted in ways that resulted in what could only be termed a serendipitous defense, but the defense team certainly could not rest on their laurels in this case. They faced the formidable federal prosecution team of Elliot Enoki and Walter Schroeder. Because Buck Walker’s murder trial was scheduled before Jennifer’s, Bugliosi was in attendance during that trial to gain as much insight as he could for the purpose of defending Jennifer. The jury reached a verdict in the Walker trial in less than two hours, leading Bugliosi to conclude, ‘‘The unique circumstances of the case were a substitute for evidence.’’ (Bugliosi 1991a, 299). Judge King made a practice of showing disrespect to the defense lawyers during the Buck Walker trial. At the beginning of the Jennifer Jenkins trial in the judge’s chambers, Bugliosi put the judge on notice that he would not be shown disrespect in the courtroom. As they left the judge’s chambers, Leonard Weinglass exclaimed, ‘‘In all my years of practicing law, Vince, I’ve never heard a lawyer talk to a judge like you just did!’’ (Bugliosi 1991a). Bugliosi continued to feel a sense of the lack of equilibrium throughout Jennifer’s trial. As opposed to his confidence during all his other murder cases, and after hundreds of hours of preparation, at times he simply did not feel that he had a handle on this case. Vincent Bugliosi produced a short, pithy overview for And the Sea Will Tell in the following words for his final summation to the jury: What we’re dealing with here, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is a real murder mystery, one that Agatha Christie could have conjured up only on her most inspired of days, the type of murder that rocking-chair sleuths like to ponder into the wee hours beside a crackling fire.

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The only problem is that, unlike an Agatha Christie mystery, this nightmarish story, so tragically for Mac and Muff Graham, happens to be true. Life is an endless series of inconsistencies, a bewildering mixture of contradictions, where the only thing stranger than fiction is reality. (Bugliosi 1991a, 555, 562)

Thus once again, in And the Sea Will Tell, Vincent Bugliosi has brought to the reader a compelling and engrossing true-crime murder mystery. He has excelled in making the lives of real humans manifest, in bringing to life the struggles and drama of the courtroom, in meticulous explanations of the intricacies of building a strong legal case for the defense, in clearly communicating his professional standards and stances, and in sharing the mysteries of the case—those solved, as well as those still unsolved. And the Sea Will Tell became a number one seller on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list. When one asks why, the answer may be that the mystery continues. ‘‘Even after reading, however, And the Sea Will Tell refuses to relinquish its grip on our imaginations.’’ (Dear 1995, 52). What happened to Mac Graham? What happened to the sloop Iola, Walker and Jenkin’s boat? Vincent Bugliosi answers these questions in the book’s concluding sentence, ‘‘Someday, perhaps the sea will tell.’’ Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (2007) Vincent Bugliosi began in March of 1986 with six months of intensive study of the Kennedy assassination in preparation for the murder trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. He had been asked by the London Weekend Television to serve as prosecutor for the planned docutrial. He prepared for the trial exactly as he did for all his other murder trials. Gerry Spence, who had never lost a case up to that time, served as Oswald’s defender. Since Oswald had been killed shortly after the Kennedy assassination by Jack Ruby, he was tried in absentia. A federal district court judge presided over the trial, original lay witnesses testified, and a Dallas, Texas, jury heard the case and decided on Oswald’s guilt. Reclaiming History is the twenty-year continuation and conclusion of the study Bugliosi began in preparation for the Oswald trial. The Kennedy assassination was not a murder mystery in the middle 1960s: At that time most American citizens believed that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole individual responsible for the President’s assassination. The Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations had, after intense and lengthy investigations, determined that Oswald had planned to kill and then shot President Kennedy on his own, with help from no one else. But by the mid-1980s, the minds of the public had been swayed by a myriad of speculations propounded and published as theories. Conspiracy buffs had created a demand for books on the subject, and conspiracy theorists rushed to satisfy that demand. Hundreds of conspiracy theory books had

Vincent T. Bugliosi

been published by 1985; and Americans began to doubt the Warren Commission report and the report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Today, most Americans believe that there was one or another assassination conspiracy that culminated in the death of President Kennedy. In its 1,612 pages, Reclaiming History contains first Bugliosi’s study of the facts of the Kennedy assassination and the definite conclusion that no one other than Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in the President’s murder. Second, the book contains the author’s explanation of conspiracy, history of the conspiracy movement, and the debunking of the major conspiracy theories. This latter task is amazing, for it is incredibly difficult to prove that something did not happen. Third, the book contains a book end section and a compact disk pocketed in its back cover that includes endnotes and source notes. Thus, we have a presidential assassination that began as a solved murder. This became a murder mystery over time with much convincing of the American public by conspiracy buffs. Vincent Bugliosi gives conclusive proof that the murder is solved, and while he is at it, he disproves all of the major conspiracy theories. With Reclaiming History, Bugliosi has both solved the murder mystery and brought an end to uninformed speculations about the Kennedy assassination. History stands, indeed, reclaimed. LEGAL AND POLITICAL CRITIC ‘‘No Justice, No Peace’’ (1993) Vince Bugliosi attempted to publish this article on police brutality and the effects on and reaction from the minority community in other venues, but all demanded that he shorten the article. Vince felt that, to completely cover the subject and explain his logic, the article had to remain as he had written it. Playboy magazine welcomed the police brutality article Vince had written—even telling him that it could be as long as he wished. The basic theme of ‘‘No Justice, No Peace’’ is that a small percentage of police officers regularly brutalize minority persons and there is no punishment given to the officers who do so. The behaviors of these few violent officers put all officers under suspicion in the eyes of the minority community. Even when officers are reprimanded, the worst punishment they receive is a few days off with pay—administrative leave. Vince concludes that only when district attorneys begin to prosecute brutal officers for their crimes consistently, can we hope for police brutality against minority persons to cease. Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder (1996) Initially, Vincent Bugliosi had little interest in the Simpson trial and certainly did not wish to write a critique of the same. Most of his books testify

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to his intense and almost exclusive interest in the true murder mystery. Having little interest in murders in and of themselves, ‘‘mystery’’ supplies the fuel for his creative energies. After contemplating the trial and reviewing the evidence available to the prosecution, Bugliosi concluded, ‘‘But there was no mystery in the Simpson case.’’ (Bugliosi 1996b). Dozens of books had been published before the writing of Outrage began. But since Bugliosi is a writer of true-crime books, many people urged him to write a book on the Simpson case. His answer to them was always, ‘‘No.’’ Shortly after the Simpson trial verdict, his editor, Starling Lawrence, suggested that he consider writing a book about how Bugliosi would have prosecuted the case. Mr. Lawrence was persistent and finally persuaded him to write the book, although it was not to be the intense, true-crime mystery in which the author had excelled. In Outrage, Vincent Bugliosi spares none of the key actors of the Simpson drama, but democratically applies his gifts of insight, evaluation, and critique to each and to all. The body of the book is staged between two short essays (an introduction and a conclusion) on the general, rampant, and staggering incompetence observable in our society today. The logic of Outrage is based on the assumption that actors in a courtroom are likely to be incompetent; and after careful analysis, the author finds them substantially so. Thus, the reader is not surprised when finding the charge of incompetence leveled at the defense, at Judge Ito, at the media and its ‘‘talking heads,’’ and especially at the prosecution, in the expansion of the theme and the resultant conclusions. A secondary theme, that of demythologizing or debunking many of society’s common assumptions, is interwoven throughout the book. The author, sensitive to the illogic of many conventions, first exposes them as scientifically unsupported credos. Then he explains how the convention leads to faulty conclusions and ultimately, to injustice. One of the best examples of this may be found in the author’s reaction to the Simpson supporters suggesting that God was on their side in the outcome of the trial, while Orenthal James Simpson smiled and held a Bible aloft in his hand. Infuriated by these words and action, Bugliosi responded in an Epilogue insertion titled, ‘‘God, where are you?’’ There he discusses theodicy, the questions of God’s part in good and evil in relation to the commonly stated beliefs concerning human experience. Always totally honest, here almost brutally so, he openly states his own confusion in understanding theology and defines his perspective as that of an agnostic. Outrage begins with a short and pithy editor’s note, then follows the introduction in which Bugliosi explains why he decided to write the book and how his conclusions relate to the state of American society today. The five chapter headings express the five reasons given for why the Simpson trial ended with a not guilty verdict, when in fact, Orenthal James Simpson was guilty of a horrendous double murder. A lengthy epilogue follows in which the author wraps up the narrative and shares further insight.

Vincent T. Bugliosi

The major murder evidence is given in the three appendices. This includes the police interrogation of O. J. Simpson, the suicide-note-like farewell letter of Simpson, and an explanation of the blood evidence and its presentation to the jury. Outrage concludes with copious and insightful endnotes, the hallmark of Vincent Bugliosi’s writing, and probably the most important part of the book for dedicated students of the practice of criminal law. Major issues that form the foundation on which the book is built are explained in the introduction: First, the author states that there existed abundant and clear evidence that O. J. Simpson, and O. J. Simpson alone, was guilty of the murders of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Second, the murder evidence pointed to no one else. There were no other suspects; nor was any evidence available that pointed to another suspect. Third, none of the evidence supported the innocence of Simpson. Fourth, the author states that human incompetence and mediocrity are ubiquitous in American society today and that this is indeed the case in every walk of life, in every service, and in every profession. The reader is led to consider personal experiences of the incompetence of others and then is guided to the conclusion that general incompetence and mediocre professional performance ensured the not guilty verdict in the murder trial of O. J. Simpson. The impact of media coverage of the case on the trial is explained in chapter one. While the author tends to view media coverage of the Simpson case as a mindless circus, he logically argues that the media coverage set the stage to trivialize the murders, to paint O. J. Simpson as a hero, to devalue the ability of the prosecution lawyers, and to question the strength of the prosecution’s evidence. Further, the media was responsible for elevating the estimation of the rather ordinary lawyers of the defense who had little trial experience to the level of the Dream Team or the best that money can buy, to report the defense argument—consisting largely of innuendo and supposition, totally unsupported by evidence—as insightful and brilliant. Bugliosi states that the media ‘‘attributed to the defense lawyers star-celebrity qualities, while treating the prosecutors dismissively.’’ The media effect was from the beginning to convince the American public and the jury that although there existed conclusive evidence that Simpson was guilty of committing two brutal murders, he might get off with a notguilty verdict. Bugliosi argues that this message became a self-fulfilling prophecy in the absence of a strong prosecution. In chapter two, ‘‘The Change of Venue: Garcetti Transfers the Case Downtown,’’ Bugliosi illuminates the first major error of the prosecution in terse and pithy style. With this change of venue, from an environment favorable (or at least neutral) to the prosecution’s case to an unfavorable environment, the prosecution in essence shot itself in the foot before the courtroom battle began. No satisfactory argument has been offered for this colossal lapse of prosecutorial reason. The author concludes, ‘‘It was a monumental

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blunder, one that all by itself was a reason for the miscarriage of justice in the Simpson case.’’ The third reason for why Simpson got away with murder, a major judicial error, is presented in chapter three. Many of the judicial improprieties evidenced during this trial appear to have occurred due to Judge Ito’s hiding his incompetence behind a facade of aloofness, sternness, and disrespect of others in the courtroom, but the most damaging judicial error was Ito’s allowing the defense to play the race card. The defense played the race card for all it was worth, and the prosecution proved itself inept at dealing with the judge’s ruling or with the issue once it was allowed, although race had no logical bearing on the issue of Simpson’s guilt. The pivotal issue, ‘‘the incredible incompetence of the prosecution,’’ is the subject of chapter five. Vincent Bugliosi boldly brings to the reader’s attention to incident after incident, example after example of an almost unbelievable level of prosecutorial incompetence displayed in serial episodes— before, during, and after the Simpson trial. He states, ‘‘The prosecution of O. J. Simpson was the most incompetent criminal prosecution I have ever seen. By far.’’ Already mentioned was the faulty decision to change venue. Other prosecutorial errors may be illustrated by the following examples: The use of faulty criteria for jury selection, failure of the lead prosecutor to excuse herself when learning of jury bias against her, failure to introduce a mass of very incriminating and easily presentable evidence, assuming that Simpson would testify, objecting to the defense bringing in evidence that was in effect favorable to the prosecution, bungling of the presentation of the bloody glove evidence, and at times during the trial and especially evident during the summation, totally inadequate preparation. The fifth chapter, titled, ‘‘The Weak Voice of the People,’’ considers the final summation. It concerns the district attorney’s incompetence, as did chapter four. The prosecution’s final argument is described by the author as grossly lacking in thought and preparation. The prosecution failed to counter many of the defense arguments, did little to shore up its own weaknesses, displayed several memory lapses in mid-argument, and made statements off the top of the head that favored the defense. Vincent Bugliosi illustrates his own prosecutorial skills in writing components of the final summation as he would have done it. His final summation in itself is well worth the cost of the book. Outrage probably should be mandatory reading for lawyers, specifically for those representing the people through the district attorney’s office. The book also will prove helpful to women law students desiring to become trial or criminal lawyers, for the author details an especially good example of an egregious example. Bugliosi concludes that for Prosecutor Marcia Clark, the O. J. Simpson trial represented the poorest performance of her legal career for a variety of reasons—some of which related to her gender and gender-based demeanor

Vincent T. Bugliosi

in the courtroom. Finally, all students of law, and all citizens who hold justice in high regard, will benefit greatly by the reading of Outrage; for in Outrage, Bugliosi has produced another legal masterpiece. The Phoenix Solution: Getting Serious about Winning America’s Drug War (1996) In The Phoenix Solution (Phoenix), Vince Bugliosi offers proposals, which if adopted by the U.S. Government, would allow America to win the drug war quickly. Why has the man who is the best known felony trial prosecutor and the most accomplished true-crime mystery author, chosen to write a book—a blueprint, as it were—setting forth a plan that can solve the drug problem? It is because Bugliosi considers the drug problem to be the greatest crisis America has faced since the American Civil War and that the U.S. government, through its actions and by its proven track record of failing to even slow the ever-increasing influx of illicit drugs into America, is obviously not seriously engaged in an attempt to win the drug war. The fans of popular lawyer Geoffrey Fieger have proffered a book review in a nutshell by stating, ‘‘He tackled one of the most serious threats to the American way of life, our illegal drug problem, in The Phoenix Solution. This is a no-holds-barred answer to how we can really win the drug war. He forgets the rhetoric and goes directly to supported solutions.’’ (Bugliosi 2006b). Bugliosi writes this book, an update of his earlier (1991) volume, Drugs in America: The Case for Victory: A Citizen’s Call to Action, hoping that the federal government will carry out these solutions. The book is not intended for the general reader, but rather is offered as ‘‘a legal road map for the authorities to follow’’ should they choose to do so. It appears clear that our country is unaware that it has ‘‘the legal authority to employ the recommended proposals.’’ When asked on The Today Show if he believes that the U.S. government will follow the suggestions of Phoenix, Bugliosi replied that he believed that it was ‘‘extremely unlikely’’ that the government will implement the proposals offered in the book. The question followed, ‘‘Then why did you even bother to write the book?’’ Vince responded that the problem is severe enough to warrant the effort. He goes on to say that the only reason the United States has such a serious drug problem is that America is ‘‘not serious about solving it and never has been.’’ Probably the greatest credo supporting America’s failure to stem the drug traffic is that the drug war is ‘‘perceived to be incapable of solution.’’ Bugliosi exclaims, ‘‘Nothing is more cloying and smacks more of posturing and mere symbolism than our continued use of the ‘war’ metaphor to characterize our fight against the drug menace. The fight, of course, bears no resemblance to a real war.’’

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The drug war is more of a never-ending game between the parties, with the drug traffickers remaining on top—ever winning. Their object is to get drugs into the United States, and they are accomplishing that goal exponentially. The U.S. government makes large seizures and records each as a winning point, when in reality, the seizures are evidence of the government’s defeat. For each load of cocaine seized, ten more loads go undetected and make it to the streets of American cities for sale. The illogic of the U.S. government war plan is startling: Since that which we have been doing is not working, we propose to do more of the same? This line of illogic appears to be endemic in governmental policy. Another obvious example can be found in the criminal justice system: Since it can be shown scientifically that prisons have, at best, a minute effect on crime rates and no has an effect on drug use, let us have a prison-building binge to incarcerate ever larger numbers of drug users. Thus when the U.S. government reports that it has had the best year yet, it ought to be reporting that it has had the worst year yet! In summarizing America’s willingness to fight to win the drug war, Bugliosi states: I believe the federal government will not adopt the measures recommended because for some unfathomable reason, in the area of fighting drugs, otherwise perfectly intelligent human beings have become virtual automatons who have unconsciously surrendered and forfeited their right to think in mindless obeisance to existing policies, as pathetically inept as they are. After a seventy-year fight, if the war on drugs were suspended at this very moment, the consensus of most knowledgeable observers would be that we have lost the war, badly. In fact, we’ve virtually conceded defeat by no longer even trying to win. (Bugliosi 1996b, 7)

The author explains that illicit drug use is of epidemic and extremely destructive proportions, that the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse found as many as 21.8 million used illicit drugs in 1994, and that as many as one third of American adults have used an illegal drug at least once in their lifetimes. Two realities are posited: First, that illicit drugs are the greatest scourge America faces domestically today. Second, that all efforts to curb illicit drug trafficking and use have failed. Bugliosi argues that not only are the $50 billion in drugs sold per year destroying the moral fabric of America, but in terms of deaths, murders, human suffering, illness, and lost productivity, drugs are destroying the physical fabric of America as well. In part one, the author offers a short history of the creation of drug laws and their enforcement in the United States. And while enforcement has had little effect on drug use, virtually the only recommended solution offered has been legalization. Thus Bugliosi states the predicate of the book: The drug problem is extreme, therefore it will take ‘‘revolutionary measures’’ to solve.

Vincent T. Bugliosi

Part one of the book is a review of the two means employed by the federal government to enforce federal drug laws, interdiction and eradication (and/or crop replacement). Ideally, interdiction is defined as stopping drugs from entering the country. The author gives evidence of how neither federal drug enforcement nor the American military has been able to, or can, stop the flow of drugs into this country through interdiction. Presently, with efforts of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Border Patrol, the U.S. Customs, the U.S. Coast Guard, and related enforcement agencies, ten loads of illicit drugs pass into the United States undetected for every load that is interdicted by these agencies. A policy of worldwide eradication of coca, poppy, and marijuana plants; of destroying methamphetamine labs; and of replacing drug-producing crops with food crops is shown by the author to be simply not feasible. The author points out that to make a major dent solely in South American cocaine production, all personnel of the American military would have to be stationed on that continent permanently. A policy of eradication is further handicapped by history and custom of coca-producing countries, local and international economics, government and law enforcement corruption, political sovereignty issues, and by the simple supply-and-demand business of the drug kingpins. One factor, that of cocaine (and other illicit drug) production costs, is often misunderstood because of the simple fact that black market drug prices are so high on the streets of America. The cost of cocaine production is minimal. American drug laws themselves drive the high street prices through the underground economy that results from the response to the laws themselves. When large amounts of money are to be made, huge amounts of money, in which $100 bills are often counted by weight, entrepreneurs will arise who are willing to take advantage of the situation. Thus, if the drug lords lose a load to interdiction, they will find production sources that will produce the ten loads that arrive in America—as long as the great demand continues. In ending part one, the author concludes that U.S. government efforts at interdiction and eradication have been a dismal failure. He further argues, by quoting Peter Reuter of the Rand Corporation, that both federal government programs are a ‘‘colossal waste of money.’’ In effect, with interdiction and eradication programs, the federal government can neither defeat South American farmers, nor can it defeat the drug lords. Part two includes Vincent Bugliosi’s two proposals to win the war on drugs. Proposal one is to train and deploy a special forces unit on limited military search-and-find missions against the drug kingpins. Two corollary measures are proposed: (1) to continue the death penalty for drug lords, which is presently federal law; and (2) to create a ‘‘special federal court to expedite the trials and appeals of drug lords.’’ Bugliosi gives two major arguments for this proposal: First, he argues the ‘‘advisability and lawfulness of a military search-and-find mission.’’ Second,

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he proposes that it is ‘‘the explicit constitutional duty of this nation’s chief executive to pursue this course of action.’’ In support of these arguments, the author shows that international law does not rule out this course of action. Further, the U.S. Constitution supports the president in repelling attacks and in protecting the security and welfare of the country. The federal Posse Comitatus law does prohibit using the American military for policing on foreign soil. And the U.S. military is already involved in a similar endeavor: The U.S. Coast Guard currently seizes illicit drug shipments on the high seas. There also exist historical precedents for similar presidential actions: President Wilson sent General Pershing into the country of Mexico to pursue Pancho Villa. Presidents took it on themselves to involve the American military in Grenada, Kuwait (the Gulf War) and in the war with Iraq. The American military invasion of Panama to arrest President Noriega on drugtrafficking charges was also under presidential order. With a rather tongue-in-cheek manner, Vincent Bugliosi introduces his second proposal by stating that it is ‘‘for the more faint of heart.’’ Proposal two is the interdiction of drug-profit monies. Another way to end the drug crisis in America, completely different and independent of the first proposal, is to make drug-trafficking unprofitable to the drug kingpins. At the present, the United States has no comprehensive strategy to stop money laundering. The first action suggested to implement a serious national program of drug-money interdiction would be to create two separate U.S. currencies: Currency number one would be legal tender only outside the United States. Currency number two would be legal tender only inside the United States. Domestic currency—that which is used to distribute and purchase drugs in the street marketplace—then could not be smuggled out of the country; or at least, would not be due to its worthlessness on the international market. The second action suggested is to develop an organized policy for the interdiction of drug-money wire transfers. To be laundered, drug money must find its way into the international banking system. Most drug moneys laundered are laundered through international wire transfers. The third action proposed is to place resident federal agents into banks to interdict the drug money in the laundering process. Without money laundering, cocaine trafficking would cease to be a profitable enterprise. The fourth and final component of this proposal is for the federal government to set up a computerized central command post. The author argues that if we are serious, let us stop drug trafficking. ‘‘If we are not, we should at least have the decency to stop the posturing.’’ If we are unwilling to take the special steps proposed above, then we are not really serious about winning the drug war. Finally, while Bugliosi does not formally endorse drug legalization, his exploration of the legalization theme in the last chapter of Phoenix leaves the reader questioning whether Vince intended legalization to be his third proposal—although to be given less weight than the first two.

Vincent T. Bugliosi

He explains that there is only one logical and just reason to support drug laws—that drug laws protect people from themselves. On the other hand, Bugliosi lists eleven benefits that most likely would result from the legalization of drugs in America. The author concludes with an explanation of why he believes his proposals in Phoenix probably will not be implemented by the federal government. The reader must take note of this section for it deals with the motivations of politicians and the actual (but unstated) goals and purposes of federal agencies. The Phoenix Solution leaves the reader believing that the proposals suggested, if implemented, would allow the U.S. government to win the war on drugs once and for all. As a road map for policy makers, the book is at times tedious to read, but the proposals suggested are fresh, new, and innovative. The proposals are so logical in their applications, that if implemented, they simply should work! No Island of Sanity: Paula Jones v. Bill Clinton: The Supreme Court on Trial (1998) In No Island of Sanity Vince Bugliosi bravely offers a stunning critique of the U.S. Supreme Court for its decision in Paula Jones v. Bill Clinton to allow a private citizen to bring a private lawsuit against an acting president. In a sense there was no decision on this matter, because the Supreme Court chose to ignore the question. Vince compares and contrasts the action (or inertia) of the Court regarding this lawsuit with precedence and on constitutional law. In this book, Bugliosi himself puts the Supreme Court on trial. Bugliosi concludes that the U.S. Supreme Court acted improperly in valuing Jones’s right to sue over and above the right of the American people to have a president’s undivided attention directed toward the running of the country. The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President (2001) The title of this book explains its contents in a nutshell: Vincent Bugliosi tackles the U.S. Supreme Court once again in this volume. First, Bugliosi explains the Florida state constitution and Florida state election laws. Second, the author expounds the political intrigue that held up the recounting of presidential election ballots in Florida. Third, he shows precedence for state supreme courts determining issues relating to election vote recounts. And finally, Vince argues that the U.S. Supreme Court improperly wrested the decision from the Florida Supreme Court and went against the U.S. Constitution (which clearly states that undecided presidential contests are the domain of the U.S. Senate) and went on to choose the next president of the United States. Bugliosi feels that the action of the U.S. Supreme Court is criminal.

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PRAISE: A PANEL OF HIS PEERS Respected and successful trial lawyers hold Vincent T. Bugliosi in their highest regards: F. Lee Bailey concludes that Vince is ‘‘the quintessential prosecutor.’’ (Bugliosi 2007b). Gerry Spence, after losing to Bugliosi at the docutrial of Lee Harvey Oswald for the Kennedy assassination, stated, ‘‘No other lawyer in America could have done what Vince did in this case.’’ Alan Dershowitz stated, ‘‘Bugliosi is as good a prosecutor as there ever was.’’ The veteran criminal defense attorney, Harry Weiss (who has faced Bugliosi in a criminal trial) explained, ‘‘I’ve seen all the great trial lawyers of the past thirty years and none of them are in Vince’s class.’’ And the top prosecutor for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for years, Robert Tannenbaum, puts a finish to the Bugliosi tale when he states, ‘‘There is only one Vince Bugliosi. He’s the best.’’ (Bugliosi 1996a, 12).

FURTHER READING Bugliosi, Vincent T., with Curt Gentry. 1974. Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders. New York: W. W. Norton. Bugliosi, Vincent T., with Ken Hurwitz. 1978. Till Death Us Do Part: A True Murder Mystery. New York: W. W. Norton. Bugliosi, Vincent T. 1981a. Not guilty and innocent—The problem children of reasonable doubt. Criminal Justice Journal 4:349-74. Bugliosi, Vincent T. and Ken Hurwitz. 1981b. Shadow of Cain: A Novel. New York: W. W. Norton. Bugliosi, Vincent T., with William Stadiem. 1987. Lullaby and Good Night: A Novel Inspired by the True Story of Vivian Gordon. New York: NAL Books. Bugliosi, Vincent T., with Bruce B. Henderson. 1991a. And the Sea Will Tell. New York: Ballantine. Bugliosi, Vincent T. 1991b. Drugs in America: The Case for Victory: A Citizen’s Call to Action. New York: Knightsbridge. Bugliosi, Vincent T. 1993. No justice, no peace. Playboy, 40 (2): 66–68, 156–62. Bugliosi, Vincent T. 1996a. Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder. New York: W. W. Norton. Bugliosi, Vincent T. 1996b. The Phoenix Solution: Getting Serious about Winning America’s Drug War. Beverly Hills, CA: Dove Audio. Bugliosi, Vincent T. 1998. No Island of Sanity: Paula Jones v. Bill Clinton: The Supreme Court on Trial. New York: Ballantine. Bugliosi, Vincent T. 2001a, February 5. None Dare Call It Treason. The Nation. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010205/bugliosi/ (accessed October 18, 2006). Bugliosi, Vincent T. 2001b. The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose our President. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books. Bugliosi, Vincent T. 2007. Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. New York: W. W. Norton.

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Dear, Pamela S., ed. 1995. Bugliosi, Vincent (T.) 1934-. In Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series, Vol. 46, 50–52. Detroit, MI: Gale Research. Manso, Peter. 1998. Kenneth Starr’s war against America: An interview with Vincent Bugliosi. Penthouse Magazine (Reprinted), 1–12, December. Schauer, Edward J. 2007a, May 31. Communication with Starling Lawrence. Schauer, Edward J. 2007b, May 31. Interview with Gail T. Bugliosi. Schauer, Edward J. 2007c, March 5; April 14; April 17; June 9. Interviews with Vincent T. Bugliosi. Bugliosi, Vincent. 2006a, October 18. In eBookMall. http://www.ebookmall.com/ alpha-authors/Vincent-Bugliosi.htm/ (accessed October 18, 2006). Bugliosi, Vincent. 2006b, October 18. In Fans of Fieger: Lawyer Hall of Fame. http://www.fansoffieger.com/bugliosi.htm/ (accessed October 18, 2006). Bugliosi, Vincent. 2007a, January 19. In AEI Speakers Bureau. http://www.aeispeakers. com/print.php?SpeakerID=164/ (accessed January 19, 2007). Bugliosi, Vincent. 2007b, January 19. In BookRags. http://www.bookrags.com/ printfriendly/?p=vincent-bugliosi-cri/ (accessed January 19, 2007). Bugliosi, Vincent. 2007c, January 19. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. http:// en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vincent_Bugliosi&oldid=101494954/ (accessed January 19, 2007).

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For Adam: The John Walsh Story Elizabeth Quinn DeValve


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It is likely that most people are aware of the impact John Walsh has had on crime through his work on America’s Most Wanted. It is also very likely that most people know of the kidnapping and brutal murder of his six-yearold son, Adam. What may not be as widely known is the impact he has had on crime victim legislation across the United States and his diligent advocacy for crime victims and children (victims and nonvictims). Since 1983 John Walsh has worked tirelessly, steadily, and mightily to prevent others from experiencing what he and his wife, Reve Walsh, experienced when their son was taken away from them. Education, legislation, and the establishment of centers for missing children (including the Adam Walsh Center and the National Center for Missing or Exploited Children) have all come to fruition under the watchful eye of John Walsh. One might suggest that this is not the road they would have chosen, that having Adam present in their lives is what they would have preferred. But for the millions of crime victims in the United States, and especially for the missing children and their parents or guardians, had it not been for John Walsh, their experiences may have been drastically different. This chapter introduces the reader to John Walsh and the impact he has had on crime through his various efforts.

JOHN WALSH—THE BEGINNING John Walsh is the oldest of four children, born to Irish Catholic parents on December 26, 1945, in Auburn, New York. His father started out at Notre Dame but was drafted to fight in World War II as an Air Force pilot. His mother grew up in a wealthy household and lost both of her parents when she was quite young. The business that had supported her family so well seemed to crumble, and it took years for her brothers to reinvent it. John Walsh has two younger brothers, Jimmy and Joe, and one younger sister, Jane. By his own admission, John Walsh had a happy childhood. In his book, Tears of Rage, Walsh describes his life growing up in New York. He talks about how loving his parents were to each other, to their kids, and to anyone who needed it. He states that his father taught him about values and morality, and as he grew he began to feel a sense of responsibility ‘‘[T]hat it was my job to be in charge of the world.’’ (Walsh and Schindehette 1997, 12). The role modeling of his father would certainly help him out later in life. Some people say that things happen for a reason, and they’re usually referring to bad things, not good things. To use that saying but in a different way, one might suggest that John Walsh was blessed with such a wonderful childhood and young adult life because somewhere down the line he was going to suffer immeasurably. If he didn’t have the strong foundation established in his youth, there might not be a John Walsh chapter in this volume.

For Adam: The John Walsh Story

John Walsh has been a fighter since his youth. Today he fights for legislation and programs that will aid children and crime victims; in the past he fought for honor, girls, Irish pride…anything. John Walsh attended Auburn Community College and moved on to the University of Buffalo to study English and, later, history. He was, in his terms, a big man on campus and hung out with fun-loving guys—mostly jocks who were also conscientious students. It was in Buffalo that he met Reve Drew. Reve was a bit younger than college age when she and John Walsh met at a bar called Brunner’s, in Buffalo. She, like Walsh, had a love for life and was open to trying new experiences. Early in their relationship, Reve is described by Walsh as being interested in art and horses and as smart, serene, and ‘‘game.’’ (Walsh and Schindehette 1997). The two would have what would now be called ‘‘an open relationship’’ where they dated each other and others, but even when John moved down to Florida after college they maintained contact and continued to spend time together.

GETTING OUT OF THE NORTH After graduating from the University of Buffalo, John Walsh moved to Florida and worked as a cabana boy and head cabana boy at the Diplomat Hotel in Hollywood, Florida. There he would set up the beach for sunbathing and take care of the guests. He made great money and was able to play in the ocean and enjoy the nightlife. It was at the Diplomat that John met and established a life-long personal and professional relationship with John Monahan, Sr., a top executive at the Diplomat. Walsh saved the life of Monahan’s son, Johnny, one day and that may well have cemented their relationship. At some point while in Florida, Walsh decided he wanted to marry Reve and returned to New York to ‘‘surprise’’ propose. They were married in a large ceremony in Florida on July 10, 1971, which followed with a twomonth, fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants honeymoon in Europe. They settled in Miami Shores, Florida, soon after and Walsh began working as a cabana manager at a large beach hotel. He then decided to ‘‘get a real job’’ and began working in hotel marketing for Gulf American Corporation with John Monahan. Walsh worked with Monahan to promote island resorts to prospective clients across the globe. When Monahan quit Gulf American Corporation, Walsh left too. He landed a job with Bahamian Out Island Promotion Board and worked aggressively to promote some of the Bahamian Islands that weren’t as popular as Nassau and Freeport. He worked to promote the islands, to entertain the clients, and to bring in more clients. It was a demanding job, but a lot of fun, according to Walsh.

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After a few years of married life Reve became pregnant. Adam John Walsh was born on November 14, 1974, in Miami Shores, Florida. Their lives would change forever.

ADAM No chapter about John Walsh could be complete without discussing his son, Adam. In Tears of Rage, John Walsh describes Adam as an ‘‘old soul’’; he was someone who was laid back, grateful, sophisticated (for a little boy), curious, smart, fun, and engrossing. According to John Walsh, some of Adam’s favorite things were drawing creepy crawlies, spending time in the ocean, and playing baseball. Adam was someone everyone wanted to be around. On July 27, 1981, Adam Walsh was abducted while he and his mother were at Sears in the Hollywood Mall in Hollywood, Florida. From the information provided in Tears of Rage, a possible scenario of events is that Adam was watching some kids play video games in a display area in the toys section. One witness’s account suggests that Ottis Toole approached Adam while he was watching the boys play a video game and spoke to him a bit. It was reported by a security guard that some of the boys playing the video game got rowdy, and she asked if their parents were around. Two of the boys said no and she told them to leave through the North entrance (the entrance Adam and Reve came through earlier), and one boy said his parents were in the store. It appears that the security guard may have thought Adam was with this last boy and sent them both out the West entrance. Perhaps as Adam was outside the store, maybe looking for his way back in, Ottis Toole either coaxed him into his car or pulled him by his arm into the car and drove off. Many people remember seeing the car that Ottis Toole was driving, and some people remember seeing Adam being pulled by the arm into the car. According to Reve, all these events happened in a very short period of time, maybe five to ten minutes. Reve ran around the store looking for Adam and asking people if they had seen him, to no avail. The Hollywood police were called after awhile and responded, but seemed to think that Adam had wandered off and would return shortly. What seems to be consistent is that there was no protocol for dealing with children who had gone missing, unless they were runaways. There was no protocol within the Sears store, within the mall, or within the police department. John Walsh appeared after being called by either Reve or his mother. (It is important to remember that the time period in which this all happened was the early 1980s and despite the Women’s Movement in the 1970s, it was still a man’s world and men listened to other men. Man ¼ serious.) After finding out who was the officer in charge and what they had done and would


continue to do, all parties moved across the street to the Hollywood Police Department. Over the next two weeks a command center was set up by John Walsh in the Hollywood Police Department. The tireless efforts of friends, family, and volunteers resulted in searches, posting of fliers with Adam’s picture and information, and answering phones. Walsh would learn this much later, but tips that came in to the Hollywood Police were not always recorded with the most diligence and were not always followed up on. People who should have been interviewed weren’t. On August 11, 1981, after Reve and John Walsh appeared on Good Morning America so they would be able to post Adam’s picture in a national forum, John Walsh received a phone call stating that they had found remains that belonged to Adam. Because of the lack of assistance and protocol they received when Adam was abducted, the Walshes have fought for crime victims’ and children’s rights to improve the ability of law enforcement to respond to abducted children calls. In addition, they have helped to establish a national center for missing children, state-specific centers for missing children, national and state legislation improving treatment and other services to crime victims and children, databases for the collection of information on violent offenders, and statewide informational clearinghouses. In accordance with these monumental achievements, John Walsh has received numerous awards ranging from People magazine to honors from four presidents of the United States. John Walsh’s crime-fighting efforts have taken place in the courtroom and the television screen with the production and/or hosting of ten television programs. The remainder of this chapter will focus on the achievements of John Walsh and discuss the impact of these achievements on the progression of the crime victims and children’s movements.

WRITTEN AND MEDIA PROJECTS John Walsh has been involved with the development, production, starring and/or hosting of ten television and film projects devoted to educating the public about crime and victimization in many different respects. The list of projects includes: Adam (1983), Adam: His Song Continues (1986), A Parent’s Greatest Fear (1984), America’s Most Wanted (1988–present), Manhunter, America’s Most Wanted: Final Justice, If Looks Could Kill (1995), Street Smart Kids (nominated for an Emmy 1987), and The John Walsh Show (2002–2004). Most recently John Walsh has teamed up with the creator of Baby Einstein, Julie Clark, to create two DVDs educating children about stranger and Internet safety. The DVDs are called Stranger Safety and Internet Safety, and they teach children how to be safe in situations with strangers and

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while browsing the Internet. The DVDs have won a number of awards including the following: Stranger Safety Emmy Award (2005) Parenting Mom-Tested DVD Video of the Year Award (2005) Dove Family Approved Seal (2005) Kids First! Endorsement (2005) iParenting Media Award (2005) Mom’s Choice Award (2005) Film Advisory Board Award of Excellence (2005) Awarded Best Product by Orca Communications Unlimited, LLC (2005)

Internet Safety

Dove Family Approved Seal (2006) Kids First! Endorsement (2006) iParenting Media Award (2007) Film Advisory Board Award of Excellence (2006)

John Walsh has cowritten three books, Tears of Rage (1997), No Mercy (1998), and Public Enemies (2001). Tears of Rage is both a mini-biography of John Walsh and the story of the Adam Walsh case. No Mercy and Public Enemies include chapters describing some of the most notorious criminals profiled on America’s Most Wanted.

America’s Most Wanted America’s Most Wanted is a weekly hour-long television program that profiles real crimes in an effort to capture fugitives, locate missing persons, and generally to solve crimes. The Fox Network, a new fledgling television network in the 1980s, created the show in its infancy as a TV network. The criminals profiled may have committed recent crimes or the crimes profiled may be ‘‘cold.’’ John Walsh introduces the audience to the crime, a recreation is provided, and the viewing audience is instructed on how they can provide information if they have knowledge of the incident or the fugitive. America’s Most Wanted aired its first show on February 7, 1988, and has been on the air since; it ties Good Morning America as the longest running show in television history. There was a brief period of time in which the program was cancelled and was off the air for about six weeks in 1996. September 21, 1996, was the last official show when it was originally cancelled, but it returned to the air on November 9, 1996. The Fox network picked up the show again on September 24, 1996, because of the outcry of viewers and law enforcement agencies. The first criminal profiled, David James Roberts, was caught within days. Since its first airing, America’s Most Wanted has been responsible for aiding in the capture of 944 fugitives and the recovery of fifty-three missing persons and children. Because the show received such an incredible response on


its first airing, the network executives decided to air it on all 125 Fox-affiliated stations and seven owned-and-operated stations. Domestic and international excitement surrounded America’s Most Wanted as well; the show is currently aired in multiple countries outside the United States and is responsible for the ‘‘capture of fugitives in 31 countries.’’ (http://www.amw.com/about_ amw/faw.cfm/) John Walsh only agreed to host the show if he was able to secure that local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies would not be in competition with each other for resolving cases profiled, if a toll-free hotline could be established to take calls, and if victims were treated with care. LEGISLATION AND ORGANIZATIONS John Walsh has lobbied heavily for a great deal of legislation to be enacted at the state and federal levels. On the statewide level he has testified and helped to enact legislation establishing informational clearinghouses, requiring background checks for people working in day care centers, enacting repeat-offender bills, arguing for videotaping for children’s testimony, and testifying for the improvement of victims’ rights in all fifty states. This is an immense task, given the amount of time needed to devote to getting to know the special issues faced by each state. Recently, he helped to garner support for the Anti-Murder Act in Florida, which was enacted in 2007. He and Reve Walsh founded the first center for missing children in Florida to help people in situations similar to theirs. The center they opened was named the Adam Walsh Outreach Center for Missing Children. Adam Walsh Outreach Center for Missing Children The Adam Walsh Outreach Center for Missing Children, established in 1981, was the first statewide center that provided assistance to parents who had missing children. The three goals of the center were to offer a $100,000 reward for the apprehension of Adam’s killer, to assist law enforcement agencies with finding missing children, and to work with Paula Hawkins on getting the Missing Children Act passed. The original Adam Walsh Outreach Center was based in Florida but three more Adam Walsh Outreach Centers were established in South Carolina, New York, and California. The Adam Walsh Centers have now merged with the National Center for Missing and Exploited (NCMEC) children and are branch centers of the national organization. The NCMEC Southeast location in Florida is still the center for all ‘‘child-protection education and prevention.’’ (http://www.missingkids.com). On the federal level, John Walsh is a symbol of both strength and the crime victims movement and he was integral in enacting and/or supporting the establishment of the Missing Children Act of 1982, the Missing

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Children’s Assistance Act (MCAA) of 1984, the NCMEC (through the MCAA of 1984), VI-CAP, Code Adam, Team Adam, the Amber Alert Network, the Adam Walsh Children Protection and Safety Act of 2006 and continues to fight for a Crime Victims’ Rights Constitutional Amendment. Also, he testified in Congress against the North American Man/Boy Love Association, better known as NAMBLA. To better understand the impact on crime fighting of the bills and programs listed previously, a brief description of each of the federal pieces of legislation and established programs follow. Missing Children Act of 1982 The Missing Children Act of 1982, 28 USC § 534(a), requires law enforcement to investigate thoroughly all missing children cases and input all information about the case in the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) Missing Person File. It also calls for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to assist local and state law enforcement if appropriate and confirm that the information has been placed in NCIC for the child’s parents. Missing Children’s Assistance Act (1984) The Missing Children’s Assistance Act 42 USC § 5771 et seq., enacted by Congress in 1984, directed the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to establish a national clearinghouse that would provide general information on missing and exploited children; maintain and operate a 24-hour hotline to collect information on missing and exploited children; provide technical assistance in the recovery of missing children to law enforcement, state nonprofit missing children’s organizations, and parents; create and operate training programs for how law enforcement should conduct a missing child investigation; and to conduct an awareness campaign educating the public about issues related to missing and exploited children. John Walsh was hired as the vice chairman for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and was charged with getting the center off the ground and is listed to this day, along with Reve Walsh, as the Founders of the National Center. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children The NCMEC has grown tremendously in the last twenty-three years. The mission of the NCMEC is ‘‘to help prevent child abduction and sexual exploitation; help find missing children; and assist victims of child abduction and sexual exploitation, their families, and the professionals who serve them.’’ (http://www.ncmec.org). The Center operates a clearinghouse for information on missing and exploited children, a twenty-four-hour hotline for reporting tips on current missing children, a CyberTipline that may be used to report tips on Internet-related sexual exploitation of children, offers training programs for


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law enforcement and social service personnel on how to deal with missing and exploited children cases, provides technical assistance to law enforcement and other agencies with missing child cases, distributes photographs and descriptive information about missing children worldwide, provides information on legislation related to protection of children, and works with nonprofit and private sector enterprises to manage child-protection efforts. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Fact Sheet How many children are reported missing each year? The U.S. Department of Justice reports the following: • 797,500 children (younger than eighteen) were reported missing in a one-year period of time studied, resulting in an average of 2,185 children being reported missing each day. • 203,900 children were the victims of family abductions. • 58,200 children were the victims of nonfamily abductions. • 115 children were the victims of ‘‘stereotypical’’ kidnapping. (These crimes involve someone the child does not know or someone of slight acquaintance, who holds the child overnight, transports the child 50 miles or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep the child permanently.) How many cases of missing children has NCMEC helped resolve? Since 1984, NCMEC has assisted law enforcement with more than 138,400 missing-child cases, resulting in the recovery of more than 121,500 children. How many calls does NCMEC’s hotline (1-800-THE-LOST®) handle? In the last quarter of 2007, the hotline handled an average of 258 servicerelated calls per day. Since its 1984 inception, the toll-free hotline has handled more than 2.2 million calls. How many children have been recovered through AMBER ALERTS? Since 1997, the AMBER Alert program has been credited with the safe recovery of 377 children. To date there is a network of 119 AMBER Plans across the country. How many children are victims of online sexual exploitation? According to the latest online victimization research, • Approximately one in seven youth online (ten to seventeen years old) received a sexual solicitation or approach over the Internet. (continued )


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• Four percent (4%) received an aggressive sexual solicitation: a solicitor who asked to meet them somewhere; called them on the telephone; or sent them offline mail, money, or gifts. • Thirty-four percent (34%) had an unwanted exposure to sexual material: pictures of naked people or people having sex. • Twenty-seven percent (27%) of the youth who encountered unwanted sexual material told a parent or guardian. If the encounter was defined as distressing—episodes that made them feel very or extremely upset or afraid—42 percent (42%) told a parent or guardian. How pervasive is the problem of child sexual exploitation? Research indicates that 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 10 boys will be sexually victimized before adulthood. How many reports of child exploitation have been made to CyberTipline? CyberTipline has received more than 546,600 reports since it was established in March 1998. Reports to CyberTipline involve the possession, manufacture and distribution of child pornography, the online enticement of children for sex acts, child prostitution, child sex-tourism, child molestation (not in the family), unsolicited obscene material sent to a child, and misleading domain names. How many victims of child exploitation have been identified through the Child Victim Identification (CVIP) Program? As of December 16, 2007, CVIP has information on more than 1,233 child victims from around the world seen in sexually abusive images. Through the end of November 2007, CVIP Analysts reviewed seized child pornography collections from more than 11,650 investigations across the country, through the Child Recognition and Identification System (CRIS). Source: http://www.ncmec.org/missingkids/.

The NCMEC has helped to introduce to the law enforcement community many technologies to aid in the recovery of missing children. In 1989 the NCMEC launched a new type of technology that age-progressed photos. Age-progression was a necessary tool because children develop at such a fast rate, and for those children who remained missing for years and years it


could be very difficult to identify someone from a dated picture. Other innovative developments include the following: 1997—Establishment of the Jimmy Ryce Law Enforcement Training Center, which provides training to law enforcement agencies for dealing with missing child cases. 1998—Creation of the CyberTipline: an online tool that accepts reports of sexual exploitation related to ‘‘child pornography, online enticement of children for sex acts, molestation of children outside the family, sex tourism of children, child victims of prostitution, and unsolicited obscene material sent to a child.’’ (CyberTipline link) 2002—Establishment of the Child Victim Identification Program: a program that identifies children who are victims of child pornography (which to date has resulted in the identification of more than 1,000 child pornography victims). 2004—Implementation of the Katrina Missing Persons Hotline. This hotline was created to aid in the recovery and reunification of persons gone missing as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. NCMEC was successful in finding all 5,192 children who were reported missing to them. Lost Child Alert Technology Resource (LOCATER)—a free Web-based program for law enforcement agencies that helps them to create and disseminate images and information about missing children and adults rapidly to the general public. The posters can also be used to publicize ‘‘wanted’’ information, crime alerts, and rewards for information. 2007—NetSmartz411: a resource for parents and guardians to learn about Internet safety.

The NCMEC has improved its recovery rate from 62 percent in 1990 to 96 percent in 2006. It is responsible for aiding law enforcement in the recovery of more than 112,900 missing children and assistance on 130,300 cases. Additionally, the Center has received more than 475,000 leads on child sexual exploitation on its CyberTipline. Violent Offender Criminal Apprehension Program The Violent Offender Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) is maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and is a nationwide database that houses and analyzes information about violent offenses to identify patterns of serial offenders. This database is available to all law enforcement agencies: local, state, and federal. Code Adam The Code Adam program was created by Wal-Mart in 1994 with the purpose of finding a missing child in a business establishment. The response of the establishment’s employees includes (1) receipt of a detailed description

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of the child, including the clothes he is wearing, (2) an announcement describing the child and his clothing and the coordinated effort of other employees to monitor entrances and begin the search for the child, (3) calling law enforcement after ten minutes if the child is not located, (4) reuniting a found child with the family member if he appears unscathed, (5) an attempt to delay the departure of an individual who is found to be with the child unauthorized, and (6) the cancellation of the Code Adam upon discovery of the child or the arrival of law enforcement. Team Adam: Missing Child Rapid Response System The Team Adam program is composed of retired law enforcement professionals from local, state, and federal agencies who assist law enforcement agencies with missing children cases. Starting in 2003 with a $3 million grant from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Team Adam consultants travel to agencies that may need extra assistance in a missing child or child sexual exploitation case and/or may not have the expertise necessary to handle a missing child case effectively. They assist law enforcement with searches, computer forensics, investigation and analysis, resources and equipment, and technical assistance. Additionally, the team is there to support the family and work with the media as needed. AMBER Alert Network The AMBER Alert program, supported by the Wireless Association, is an emergency alert system whereby descriptions of abducted children and suspected abductors are aired over media sources to assist in the search and recovery of serious child abduction cases. This program consists of a partnership between broadcasters, law enforcement, and transportation agencies. The program is named after Amber Hagerman, a nine-year-old girl who was abducted while riding her bike. A neighbor heard her scream as she was being pulled off of her bike and forced into a pickup. The neighbor called the police who, along with the FBI, searched for the girl and interviewed neighbors. The media covered the story in their regular newscasts. Amber was found four miles from her neighborhood in a drainage ditch. Her case remains unsolved. There are 121 AMBER Alert Plans nationwide (53 statewide, 28 regional, and 40 local). There are a number of guidelines specified for a case to be considered for an AMBER Alert Plan: • There is reasonable belief by law enforcement an abduction has occurred • The abduction is of a child age seventeen years or younger • The law enforcement agency believes the child is in imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death


• There is enough descriptive information about the victim and abduction for law enforcement to issue an AMBER Alert to assist in the recovery of the child • The child’s name and other critical data elements, including the Child Abduction flag, have been entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) computer.

Between 1996 and June 2007 there have been 333 successful recoveries resulting from AMBER Alerts. Adam Walsh Children Protection and Safety Act of 2006 The Adam Walsh Children Protection and Safety Act of 2006 is a act that protects children from sexual predators, violent criminals, and child abuse via child pornography. The bill was introduced on December 8, 2005, and signed by President George W. Bush on July 27, 2006. The law expands the effectiveness of sex offender registries by integrating information stored in statewide sex offender registries into the National Sex Offender Registry so that a sex offender cannot evade law enforcement simply by moving from state to state. Additionally, this law increases mandatory minimum penalties for the most serious sex offenses against children, increases penalties for child sex trafficking and child pornography, and assists states in creating bills that will allow for states to institutionalize those sex offenders who are not reformed and are about to leave prison. Furthermore, the law authorizes the creation of Internet Crimes against Children taskforces that will help to train and assist law enforcement in combating child exploitation through use of the Internet. Finally, the law calls for the creation of a National Child Abuse Registry and requires that background checks be conducted on individuals interested in becoming foster or adoptive parents. Crime Victims’ Rights Constitutional Amendment Discussion has existed for quite some time on amending the Constitution to add consideration for crime victims. John Walsh was a major proponent and advocate for the Crime Victims’ Rights Constitutional Amendment and includes the text of a proposed amendment in his book, Tears of Rage. The Amendment was proposed to include services for victims including the following: Protection provided for victims of violent crime without compromising the rights of defendants; Notification of public proceedings about the crime that occurred to them in a reasonable and timely manner, the right to be included in those proceedings and the right to decisions that involve the victim’s safety, delay of proceedings, and restitution by the offender;

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All rights listed in the Amendment are applicable only to the victim or victim’s representative, and thus no new trial or claim for damages will be allowed as a result of this Amendment; This Amendment will not hamper the President’s ability to grant pardons or reprieves.

The Amendment is only valid if it has been ratified by three-fourths of the states within seven years of the date of submission to Congress. It will take effect on the 180th day after ratification. It appears that the push for a Constitutional Amendment has been set aside because of the lack of support from Congress. In its place, proponents advocated for an amendment to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure titled the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, which would include the provisions listed above. The Crime Victims’ Rights Act was enacted in 2004–2005 by the 108th Congress. If one were to add the numbers presented in this section of the chapter, it appears that more than 700,000 individuals have been directly impacted by the efforts of John Walsh. The operative words in the previous sentence are ‘‘directly impacted.’’ This says nothing about those who were aided because of legislation or a program he pioneered or for which he advocated. The actual number of individuals affected by Walsh’s work is likely immeasurable. AWARDS RECEIVED John Walsh has been the recipient of numerous awards, honors, plaques, and so forth. According to both Tears of Rage and Avery Mann, Director of Media and Publications at America’s Most Wanted and publicist to John Walsh, there are fifteen boxes of such honors and awards housed at the headquarters of America’s Most Wanted (personal communication, May-June 2007). Among those fifteen boxes the following are included: Honored five times by four Presidents (Ronald Reagan [twice], George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush); National Father of the Year of 1984, Everyman category (received in 1985); in Tears of Rage, John Walsh remarks that this is the most special award he has ever received; U.S. Marshals Man of the Year (1988); Federal Bureau of Investigation Man of the Year (1990); CBS Portraits: 1 of the ‘‘100 Americans Who Changed History’’; People 1 of the ‘‘50 Most Beautiful People’’ (1996); Citizen Action Award from the National Association Citizens on Patrol; Director’s Recognition Award from the U.S. Secret Service (2002); Honorary U.S. Marshal (2003): This honor has been bestowed upon only seven other people throughout the history of the organization; among the other recipients are George Washington and Ronald Reagan.


Special Recognition Award from the U.S. Attorney General (2004); David Angell Humanitarian Award by the American Screenwriters’ Association (2005); and Honorary Life Member of the International Police Association (2006).

CONCLUSION John Walsh is first and foremost an advocate for the rights of children and crime victims. From the depths of grief, he and Reve Walsh have helped to focus society’s attention on the needs and worth of the crime victim. Mr. Walsh has accomplished many things through congressional testimony at both the state and federal levels and through his many multimedia projects: clearinghouses, educational material, and opportunities for people to get involved. Mr. Walsh is the spokesperson for the word ‘‘action’’; it’s what he is all about. Mr. Walsh is a true icon in the fight against crime. He isn’t a police officer, a district attorney, or a legislator—he is an advocate and his weapons are his words. FURTHER READING Criminal Justice Newsletter Hackensack: May 3, 2004, 1. Federal Sentencing Reporter 19(1) October 2006. Federal Sentencing Reporter 19(2) December 2006. U.S. Congress. Crime Victims’ Rights Act. 108th Congress. 18 U.S.C. Section 3771. Walsh, John, with Philip Lerman. 1998. No Mercy: The Host of America’s Most Wanted Hunts the Worst Criminals in Our Time—in Shattering True Crime Cases. New York: Pocket Books. Walsh, John, with Philip Lerman. 2001. Public Enemies: The Host of America’s Most Wanted Targets the Nation’s Most Notorious Criminals. New York: Pocket Books. Walsh, John, and Susan Schindehette. 1997. Tears of Rage: From Grieving Father to Crusader for Justice: The Untold Story of Adam Walsh. New York: Pocket Books. Washington Post. ‘‘The TV Show America Still Wants; Despite Protests by Governors, Police, Last Episode Airs Tonight.’’ September 21, 1996, A01. Washington Post. ‘‘Stay of Execution for ‘Most Wanted.’’’ September 25, 1996, B01.

Websites http://www.amw.com/about_amw/faq.cfm (accessed June 6, 2007). http://www.amw.com/safety (accessed June 6, 2007). http://www.childsearch.us/site3/codeadam.html. http://criminaljustice.state.ny.us/missing/graphics/federallawsummary.pdf (accessed June 7, 2007).

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http://www.fbi.gov/hq/isd/cirg/ncavc.htm. http://www.flgov.com/release/8709 (accessed July 25, 2007). http://www.kepplerspeakers.com/speakers/speakers.asp?1þEVþ457AboutJohnWalsh (accessed May 27, 2008). http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US& PageId=381 (accessed June 12, 2007). http://www.ncmec.org (accessed June 12, 2007). http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/aag/speeches/nmcday.htm (accessed May 31, 2007). http:///www.thesafeside.com (accessed June 6, 2007). http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060727-7.html.

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WHAT IS CRIMINAL PROFILING? Unfortunately, defining what is criminal profiling is not as easy a task as one may initially expect, principally because the word ‘‘profiling’’ has become synonymous with a variety of contextually different tasks in contemporary society and law enforcement circles. Perhaps one of the best examples is the biological technique of DNA profiling whereby DNA matter from a crime scene is examined and compared for matches with DNA matter of potential suspects. Although distinctions here may seem readily easy to discern, the term profiling nonetheless emerges in a variety of differing behaviorally based contexts. For instance, there also exists the technique of racial profiling where sets of characteristics deemed to be indicative of an individual likely to perpetrate a certain form of crime are used as a screening tool to identify potential perpetrators. An example of this type of profiling occurs with customs officers attempting to discern individuals who may be smuggling narcotics through an international airport terminal. Many law enforcement agencies also make use of what are often termed offender or intelligence profiles wherein information about an individual (often a previously apprehended criminal) is compiled to provide an informative summation of the individual’s particulars, known activities, and so on. Within the context of this chapter and the work of FBI profilers, the term criminal profiling describes what is arguably the oldest form of profiling, that is, a behaviorally based forensic technique whereby exhibited behaviors in a crime or series of crimes are examined for the purpose of developing a composite description of the characteristics of the person or persons who committed the particular crime(s) under examination. The purpose of this criminal profile is to assist police officers with their investigations via a number of possible avenues. One avenue by which a criminal profile can be used is through a process of prioritization, whereby any previously developed list of suspects can be ordered in terms of how closely the features of the identified suspects match those predicted with the profile. Thus, suspects who closely match the profile can be afforded a high degree of priority, in terms of further investigation, whereas those who do not closely resemble the profile can be relegated to a lower degree of priority. Although perhaps not commonly known, criminal investigations by law enforcement need to be undertaken in an optimal manner whereby ideal outcomes can be obtained from the minimal expenditure of resources in terms of police personnel, time, and effort. Accordingly, a criminal profile in this context can act as a valuable tool in allowing chief officers to better focus where and who their detectives spend their time and resources investigating. Beyond prioritizing any list of existing suspects, a criminal profile can also generate potential suspects for investigation. For example, a criminal profile may indicate that the probable offender responsible for the crime under investigation is likely to have a preexisting criminal record consisting

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of certain behaviors, for example, voyeurism. Equipped with this information, police personnel may check their records and investigate individuals in the vicinity of the crime who have exhibited a history of similar voyeuristic tendencies. As previously mentioned, criminal profiling as discussed in this chapter is arguably the oldest form of profiling. Although criminal profiling is sometimes incorrectly hailed as a new and revolutionary crime fighting tool, it is in fact, indicative of a long-held fascination that the human race has always held in seeking to classify and predict criminality within its societies. Although fictional examples of criminal profiling can be found in classic literature such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes, various nonfictional accounts of profiling can also be traced throughout the annals of history. Indeed, it is somewhat ironic that one of the earliest examples of criminal profiling dates back to 1888 with the police investigation into what would ultimately prove to be one of the most notorious serial killers in history: Jack the Ripper.

Profiling Jack the Ripper In 1888, the commander of the London Criminal Investigation Division (CID) consulted Dr. Thomas Bond for any insights he could offer into a series of brutal murders of young women that had occurred in the suburb of Whitechapel and had gripped the entire city with fear (Rumbelow 1988). These murders would ultimately become infamous as those committed by ‘‘Jack the Ripper.’’ As a police surgeon, Dr. Bond’s primary involvement with the matter was to undertake an autopsy of the fifth victim and provide his opinion on the murderer’s likely knowledge of medicine or more precisely, surgical procedures, given the evident mutilation that had been perpetrated on the body. However, given the intractable nature of the crimes, on this occasion Dr. Bond was also asked to hypothesize about the characteristics of the individual who could have committed such a series of abhorrent crimes. Following his examination Dr. Bond compiled a report summarizing his conclusions, which included the following information: . . .all five murders were no doubt committed by the same hand. In the first four the throats appear to have been cut from left to right, in the last case owing to the extensive mutilation it is impossible to say in what direction the fatal cut was made. All the circumstances surrounding the murders lead me to form the opinion that the women must have been lying down when murdered. (Whittington-Egan 1975, 114) (continued )

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With respect to the likely characteristics of the offender Dr. Bond made the following comments: . . .In each case the mutilation was implicated by a person who had no scientific nor anatomical knowledge. In my opinion he does not even possess the technical knowledge of a butcher or horse slaughterer or any person accustomed to cutting up dead animals. (115) . . .A man subject to periodical attacks of Homicidal and Erotic mania. The murderer in external appearance is quite likely to be a quiet inoffensive looking man, probably middle-aged and neatly and respectably dressed. He would be solitary and eccentric in his habits, also he is most likely to be a man without regular occupation, but with a small income or pension. (115) Although the perpetrator of these murders has never been conclusively identified and thus we are prevented from making any definitive assessment of Dr. Bond’s predictions, what is perhaps most remarkable is consideration of the ‘‘types’’ of predictions or information that is contained in Dr. Bond’s report. That is, Dr. Bond offered various conclusions relating to whether the murders were committed by the same or different individuals, the likely modus operandi in committing the murders, and a series of demographic features including the murderer’s likely age, gender, manner of dress, vocational history, demeanor, and even possible mental disorders. Despite these predictions having been made approximately 120 years ago, the criminal profiles that are compiled in this modern day and age essentially endeavor to offer police investigators the same insights and information about the likely offender.

Another historical example of profiling, not strictly within the field of police criminal investigation, however, occurred in the latter years of World War II. The U.S. Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency) sought the services of Dr. Walter Langer to undertake a psychological evaluation of the German leader Adolf Hitler. Pivotal to this assessment was to profile, that is, make key predictions, concerning Hitler’s likely choice of actions should the tide of the war turn against him and Germany. Some of the possibilities Dr. Langer predicted included Hitler personally leading his remaining armies into a final futile battle or ordering the total self-destruction of Germany’s resources. However, Dr. Langer’s foremost prediction was that Hitler would commit suicide to avoid the perceived humiliation of his capture by the allied forces. History would ultimately prove Dr. Langer’s prediction to be correct. From these historical examples,

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it should be apparent that although a degree of technological sophistication and terminology has certainly evolved in recent years surrounding criminal profiling, its fundamental concept is, in fact, remarkably old.

MOTIVELESS CRIMES IN AMERICA AND THE FBI BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE UNIT With the passing of prohibition and the era of McCarthyism, the frequency of a particular style of crime insidiously began to rise in America. Although violent crimes such as murder or rape were not unfamiliar to American law enforcement, the criminological patterns and interpersonal dynamics of how these crimes typically occurred had remained generally the same over the decades. For example, in a large proportion of circumstances a causal and often motivational nexus could be found to exist between murderers and their victims. However, what began to appear in growing prevalence were violent crimes, such as murder, which seemed increasingly to be perpetrated in a motiveless fashion and thus deviated from the conventional criminological patterns. This is not to suggest that such crimes had never been encountered previously, but the overall occurrence of such crimes was comparatively rare. The rise in these crimes was readily noticed by law enforcement, as the investigation and apprehension of perpetrators of these crimes was quite difficult in comparison. This rise in these apparently motiveless crimes had not gone unnoticed by J. Edgar Hoover’s premier law enforcement agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and in particular its fledgling Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) based in the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia. Intended to be one of the premier law enforcement training facilities in America (as well as the training institution for FBI agents), the FBI Academy encompassed numerous innovative dimensions to law enforcement education and training well beyond traditional methods such as the instruction of law, operational practices, and firearms training. The most relevant to this chapter was the FBI’s recognition of the contribution behavioral sciences could make to law enforcement and thus the creation of a department within the Academy faculty featuring agents who would provide instruction on various topics in this area. Criminal profiling within the FBI principally began with two agents, Howard Tetan and Patrick Mullany, who were foundational members of the BSU. Both Tetan and Mullany were keenly interested in how the disciplines of criminology and psychology could be adapted and directly applied in a practical manner to assist ongoing criminal investigations. Indeed, Tetan’s interest in this possibility led him to visit and draw some inspiration from the renowned psychiatrist, Dr. James Brussel, who had been consulted to

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apply his talents to a number of famous cases, with some remarkable results. Method in their Madness: Dr. Brussel and the Mad Bomber of New York November 1940 would mark the first incident in what would become a protracted and violent series of bombings in New York city spanning a period of two decades. An unexploded pipe bomb was discovered on the premises of the electric company Consolidated Edison, the main supplier of electricity to New York at that time. Alongside the bomb was a neatly transcribed note: ‘‘Con Edison crooks, this is for you!’’. With the luxury of hindsight it seems unfair to criticize the fact that little was made from this initial discovery. Indeed, following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the total commitment of America to the war effort, another letter was received (this time by police) from the author of the original note. This letter contained the message ‘‘I will make no more bomb units for the duration of the war—my patriotic feelings have made me decide this—I will bring Con Edison to justice later—they will pay for their dastardly deeds. F.P.’’ (Brussel 1968). For the duration of World War II and a number of years thereafter no further bombs were found (although some letters were sent to various sources such as newspapers). Unfortunately, this apparent reprieve in activities was not destined to last. On March 25, 1950 another unexploded pipe bomb was discovered, and that year marked the commencement of a destructive bombing campaign that would terrorize New Yorkers, with the destructive blast of each successive bomb growing larger. By 1956 and with no clear suspects as to who might be the bomber, New York police decided to try a new tactic in their investigation by consulting Dr. James Brussel, a respected psychiatrist based in Greenwich Village. Interestingly, Dr. Brussel did not have much experience in the investigation of crime but had spent most of his career in the clinical treatment and care of the mentally ill. Nonetheless, investigators valued Dr. Brussel’s opinions and were interested to see what different insights a man of his education and experience might make of the crimes. Presented with this request, Dr. Brussel dutifully examined all available case material concerning the bombings and compiled a description (what we would now call a criminal profile) of the type of individual he believed to be planting the bombs. Among the many features Dr. Brussel predicted was that the bomber would be a middle-aged man of foreign-born Slavic descent and most probably Catholic. Perhaps the most peculiar and seemingly esoteric prediction was Dr. Brussel’s belief that when apprehended, the bomber would be a well-dressed individual, most likely wearing a blue double-breasted suit with the jacket buttons fastened.

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After further investigation of the crimes, the bomber, George Metesky, was ultimately apprehended. Upon his arrest police noticed the remarkable similarity Metesky bore to Dr. Brussel’s profile. Metesky was a middle-aged foreign man of Polish Roman Catholic descent. When police arrested Metesky at his home, he asked if he could change into some clothes (as he was in his pajamas at the time) before going to the police station and into custody. Astonishingly, when Metesky emerged from his bedroom he was impeccably dressed, wearing a blue double-breasted suit with all buttons on his jacket done up precisely as Dr. Brussel had predicted. Because of his uncanny insight into George Metesky, police would later consult Dr. Brussel on the murders of the Boston Strangler, and his work would later serve as inspiration for members of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit and their efforts in criminal profiling.

Drawing on their own studies and theories, Tetan and Mullany informally began to discuss unsolved cases that visiting police students brought to their attention in class. These informal discussions ultimately involved the development of various predictions concerning the probable offender, which the officers followed up on their return to their active duties. The input that Tetan and Mullany provided to investigators was appreciated, and knowledge of their profiles and the assistance they potentially offered to investigators gradually spread within the American law enforcement community. Whereas Tetan and Mullany originally had considered the occasional case during the course of their classes, they soon found themselves receiving more and more requests from police inquiring whether they could offer some insight into unsolved cases. A significant proportion of these cases involved circumstances where no apparent motive was discernable. Consequently, something of a serendipitous union transpired whereby an investigative facility was emerging that seemed ready to assist police with the investigation of these motiveless violent crimes that were difficult to solve via conventional avenues. The benefit of these profiling techniques was that they did not rely entirely on typical criminalistic features of a crime such as physical evidence or witnesses. Instead, criminal profiles were derived simply through interpretations of the behavioral patterns evident in the crime. With time, the number of agents within the BSU grew. Many of these agents taught classes in behavioral sciences and explored their application to criminal investigation much in the same fashion as Tetan and Mullany had done originally. However, toward the late 1970s these profiling activities had grown to such an extent that it was decided that they should be formalized into a core function of the BSU and not merely something that

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agents undertook in an informal capacity in addition to their teaching commitments. The decision to formalize these activities effectively marked the birth of a legacy that continues to this present day in terms of the FBI’s role in providing criminal profiles to law enforcement agencies throughout the United States and the iconic status of FBI profilers. In an organizational restructure of the BSU, divisions were created not only for the traditional activities of law enforcement training but also for the dedicated provision of criminal profiles to assist police agencies as well as studying violent offenders to develop the FBI’s criminal profiling capabilities. Although changes have transpired over the decades in terms of organizational structures, these fundamental functions of providing operationally orientated support to police (e.g., criminal profiles), researching violent crimes, and the training of law enforcement personnel continues today. From quite humble and modest beginnings the provision of criminal profiles by FBI profilers now operates via a well-structured consultation process starting with trained FBI agents stationed in most U.S. states. These agents serve as an initial screening point whereby local police can submit their case and gain some feedback about whether the case is suited to profiling. Assuming the case is suitable for profiling and further analysis is desired, it is then forwarded to the operational profiling division for analysis and the development of a criminal profile that may assist the police investigators.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF FBI PROFILERS TO THE LAW ENFORCEMENT AND SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY FBI profilers have made a number of important contributions to the practice of criminal profiling. They can be credited with popularizing the practice of criminal profiling in the public’s consciousness and within the law enforcement and scientific communities throughout the world. The importance of this popularization should not be underestimated as it has had several significant effects on the development and practice of criminal profiling in assisting law enforcement agencies and in potentially reducing violent crime. First, it should be recognized that through the promotion of their activities and publication of books and articles describing their endeavors, FBI profilers have created an awareness of potential investigative capabilities for profiling the characteristics of offenders of violent crimes in ways that never used to be reported in days gone by. This public awareness arguably has promoted greater understanding of the complexities involved in identifying the perpetrator(s) of violent crimes and may have an effect on deterring some crime for fear of apprehension via the advanced investigative techniques shown on television.

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Second, owing to the popularization of criminal profiling, FBI profilers can be credited for building on investigative practices available to law enforcement personnel. By the promotion of their activities and the documentation of their research, FBI profilers have generated a broader knowledge of criminal profiling as an investigative resource that detectives can avail themselves of and thus potentially have expanded the repertoire of tools for police personnel anywhere in the world. Third, and perhaps the most significant accomplishment to arise from the popularization of profiling by FBI profilers, has been the generation of greater scholarly interest in the technique by the international scientific community. That is, FBI profilers through their activities have provided impetus for others around the globe to engage in coherent research studying violent crimes to advance profiling techniques. This is an important dimension to the scientific evolution of any technique or discipline to which FBI profilers are deserving of praise as it is debatable at what rate the technique of criminal profiling would have developed without them. It should be understood that although examples of criminal profiling can be found sprinkled throughout history (e.g., Dr. Bond with Jack the Ripper or Dr. Brussel with the Mad Bomber), they represent instances where individuals have applied their own specialized training to profile crimes on an ad hoc basis. Lacking in such instances, however, is any cohesion or conceptual approach to how these individuals attempted to construct criminal profiles. In contrast, the endeavors of FBI profilers arguably represent the first cohesive attempt to describe how crimes may be profiled. It is from the development of their own approach to profiling via the conduct of systematic research that has led others to consider possibilities in how criminal profiles may be constructed.

THE RESEARCH OF FBI PROFILERS: TO UNDERSTAND THE ARTIST YOU MUST STUDY THEIR WORK Underpinning much of the research developed by FBI profilers is one fundamental principle. Rather than studying mental disorders and their relevance to violent crimes, it was decided that for the needs of law enforcement the way to better understand and profile violent criminals would be through the study of their crimes. Thus, in metaphorical terms it was concluded that the best method to understand the artist would be the careful study of his work. From this simple principle an extensive program of research has emerged on numerous forms of violent crime that were considered amenable to the technique of criminal profiling. The common feature of many of these studies first involved the collection of case materials concerning solved cases. These materials were then studied at length by FBI profilers who subsequently visited the incarcerated offenders. These visits involved conducting

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carefully developed interviews that were designed to elicit as much information as possible about the offender and the mindset and reasoning in perpetrating the crime. The information from all of these cases was then collated and formed the data for the study. The data was then subjected to various forms of statistical analysis in an attempt to identify coherent patterns in how offenders perpetrated their crimes and what these patterns might typically suggest about the offender in terms of common characteristics that could in turn form the basis of a criminal profile. One of the most prominent studies of this type undertaken by FBI profilers was that involving a sample of thirty-six sexual murderers. The data collected from this study produced what is, arguably, one of the most renowned pieces of research relevant to criminal profiling and one of the cornerstone pieces of research relied on by FBI profilers when constructing criminal profiles. This study found that the offenders of these sexual murders could be distinguished and thus differentiated into one of two broad categories. One category was titled the Organized offender and was typically characterized by individuals who were organized in all aspects of their life in the sense that their activities are generally planned and they take great care with their personnel appearance/grooming and belongings. In direct contrast to this was the other category, the Disorganized offender, which was indicative of individuals who typically demonstrated a haphazard approach to life. Thus, the activities of disorganized offenders were often poorly planned and executed and sometimes even impetuous. The personal appearance of these Disorganized offenders also was found to often be of a disheveled, untidy nature. Incumbent to each of these two offender categories was a set of crime scene behavior patterns that were found to be indicative of the respective patterns. Accordingly, crime scenes committed by an Organized offender were indicative of planning and premeditation and could be distinguished by various attributes such as whether there were any indications that the offenders brought along weapons or tools to perpetrate the crime. Conversely, the crime scenes committed by a Disorganized offender were found to be reflective of a haphazard, unplanned, or even spontaneous crime that may have been committed simply through some impromptu initiative or opportunity. Thus, attributes within a crime scene that are said to be suggestive of a Disorganized offender would be evidence that objects located at the crime scene were used as a weapon (i.e., the offender did not have the foresight to bring a weapon with them). With the development of these behavioral categories, FBI profilers could use them to evaluate and profile the characteristics of a probable offender to a case presented to them by a police agency requesting their assistance. Thus, the principle inherent to profiling is one somewhat analogous to retro-classification. The features of an unsolved case could be examined to determine whether the evident modus operandi of the crime matched the

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The Organized/Disorganized Dichotomy to Sexual Murderers Organized offender characteristics include the following: • Good intelligence • Socially competent • Skilled work preferred • Sexually competent • A high birth-order status • Father’s work is stable • Presence of inconsistent childhood discipline • Controlled mood during crime • Use of alcohol with crime • Precipitating situational stress • Living with a partner • Mobility and with a car in good condition • Follows the crime in the news media • May change jobs or leave town Disorganized offender characteristics include the following: • Average intelligence • Socially immature • Poor work history • Sexually incompetent • A low birth-order status • Father’s work unstable • Harsh discipline in childhood • Anxious mood during the crime • Minimal use of alcohol • Minimal situational stress • Living alone • Living or working near the crime scene • Minimal interest in news media • Minimal changes in lifestyle Corresponding to the offender profiles of Organized and Disorganized sexual murderers were their crime scenes, which could also be distinguished. (continued )


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Organized crime scene features include the following: • A planned offense • Victim a targeted stranger • Victim personalized • Controlled conversations • Demands submissive victim • Restraints used • Aggressive acts prior to death • Body hidden • Weapon or other evidence absent • Transports victim or body Disorganized crime scenes features include the following: • A spontaneous offense • Victim or location known • Victim depersonalized • Minimal conversation • Crime scene random and sloppy • Sudden violence to victim • Minimal use of restraints • Sexual acts after death • Body left in view • Evidence of weapon often present • Body left at death scene

behavioral features of either an organized or disorganized offense style. Once such a determination had been made, the profiler could draw on the characteristic features that were indicative of either an Organized or Disorganized offender in the construction of a criminal profile. CONSTRUCTING A CRIMINAL PROFILE The exact process whereby FBI profilers evaluate a crime for the purpose of constructing a criminal profile is very much dependent upon the particular circumstances of the crime under examination in combination with the

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Crime Classification Manual: The ‘‘DSM’’ of Crime Perhaps one of the crowning achievements of the research undertaken into criminal profiling by the personnel of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) is the development of the Crime Classification Manual or the ‘‘CCM’’ (Douglas et al. 2006). Now into its second edition, the CCM represents a veritable cornucopia for cataloging how various forms of crime have been previously committed. The concept of the CCM was derived from the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorder, more commonly referred to as the DSM (American Psychiatric Association 1994). Within the mental health professions of psychiatry and psychology throughout the world the DSM has become recognized as one of the standard indexes by which mental disorders are classified in terms of detailed criteria for diagnosis. The creation of this index has had enormous benefits for the mental health profession in collating information on the various forms of mental disease. In an analogous context the development of the CCM was undertaken to create a standardized index whereby offenses could be evaluated and through such assessment a better understanding of the crime gained that would ultimately assist police investigators with their inquiries. Given the FBI Behavioral Science Unit’s involvement predominantly with violent crimes, the CCM is not an all-encompassing compendium of every imaginable form of crime but is instead focused on three broad categories: murder, rape, and arson. Within each of these three main areas a wide variety of motivational taxonomies are presented, detailing characteristic circumstances of specific methods employed in crimes committed before (similar to diagnostic criteria for assessing mental disorders in the DSM). Beyond simply outlining characteristic features inherent to various forms of crime, however, the CCM indexes these criteria with useful information for police personnel, such as investigative considerations of how to examine the crime scene as well as suggestions for search warrants and common forensic findings. Thus, in a sense the CCM is not only a tool for diagnosis but also represents a tentative guide for prognosis and possible cure, with the provision of factors that may assist in the investigation and apprehension of the perpetrator of the crime.

specific issues of the police investigation. Nonetheless, there is a general procedure that FBI profilers follow in constructing a criminal profile that combines much of the aforementioned research conducted by FBI Behavioral Science Unit. This procedure principally involves five steps that operate in a loop until a criminal profile has been developed and the unknown offender apprehended. The five steps in criminal profile construction are Profiling Inputs, Decision Process Models, Crime Assessment, Criminal Profile, and Investigation and are explained below.

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Step 1. Profiling Inputs As one might expect, the very first step in the FBI process of constructing a criminal profile involves the systematic collection and evaluation of all available evidence pertinent to the crime in question. Thus, this initial step can in one sense be viewed as a data collation step wherein as much information as possible is collected and examined for the purpose of subsequent steps in the process. The types of information that are evaluated in this phase can be quite extensive. First, information pertaining to the crime scene needs to be carefully considered and includes such things as the presence of any physical evidence, the specific position of the body (in the circumstance of a homicide), and the type and/or presence of any weapon involved in the crime. Next are issues related to victimology, which involves a careful consideration of the victim of the crime. Issues typically considered include the victim’s background, habits, family structure, age, and occupation. Unsurprisingly, another crucial input is the forensic information relevant to the crime. This naturally includes issues such as the circumstance of the murder, the cause of death, the wounds evident on the victim, the findings of an autopsy report, and any other relevant laboratory reports. Another important set of inputs are the various reports that the police officers investigating the crime have made. These may include reports on general background information, the time of the crime, who reported it, and the general neighborhood (such as its socioeconomic status and the prevailing crime rates). The final type of profiling input consists of any visual information that may assist in the evaluation of the crime. These inputs include such things as photos of the crime scene and the victim and even aerial shots that may give some broader impression of the overall setting in which the crime occurred. Step 2. Decision Process Models Having collected all the profile inputs relevant to the crime, the next step involves the initial interpretation of this information in terms of any meaningful patterns. Thus, the evident type and style of crime that has transpired is considered. There can potentially be any number of possible contingencies dependent on the evident number of victims (using murder as an example once again) or the setting of the crime (a home as opposed to a public area). Also taken into consideration at this point is the apparent primary intent of the crime, the level of risk the victim associated with (i.e. activities indulged in by the victim that may expose them to danger), and the degree of risk the offender may be considered to have assumed in perpetrating the crime. These risk variables are considered concomitantly with a host of other factors such as the time and location of the crime.

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Step 3. Crime Assessment The third step in the FBI profile construction process involves reconstructing the behavior of the offender, the victim, and the overall sequence of events that led to the perpetration of the crime. Thus, information from the previous stages are evaluated and judged in different terms. These include a potentially appropriate classification of the crime such as whether the crime is of an organized or disorganized type, the possible selection and method of controlling the victim, and the degree to which staging may be present in the crime. Also considered in this reconstruction step are any motivations inherent to the crime and more generally, any other factors that are pertinent to the dynamics of the crime scene.

Step 4. Criminal Profile With the crime assessment complete, the next step in the process involves the actual compilation of a profile wherein pertinent characteristics of the probable offender as well as other behavioral aspects that may prove useful to the criminal investigation are compiled. Thus, the profile ideally will contain such information as anticipated demographic features of the offender, physical characteristics, and habits. Beyond the prescriptive listing of attributes believed to describe the offender there will also be indications of the offender’s likely behavior subsequent to the commission of the crime as well as some suggestions, where appropriate, on how consulting police officers optimally may investigate the crime. It is in this phase of the construction process where the loop of reevaluation commences. Attributes of the criminal profile that are considered in the context of steps two and three are reconsidered to ascertain whether the predictions of the criminal profile logically agree with the deduced elements of the crime. For example, with all available evidence taken into account, the criminal profile is considered in terms of whether such an individual could have perpetrated the crime in the way it occurred.

Step 5. Investigation With the criminal profile developed, the process shifts to the police officers directly involved with the investigation of the crime to determine who among their established suspects demonstrates some resemblance to the profile and thus the prioritization of their inquiries accordingly. Assuming no suspects have been established, the profile may be considered in terms of how the predictions concerning the type of person who may have perpetrated the crime can be identified through various investigative avenues.

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FBI Profiling in Action On the 23rd of January 1978, Sacramento police officers entered the modest home of David Wallin to commence the investigation of a horrific crime. Inside the home was the mutilated body of his 22-year-old pregnant wife, Theresa, who had been shot through the head and her partially clad body left mutilated. Adding to the horror was the discovery of an empty bloodspattered yogurt carton at the crime scene that had evidently been used to drink blood from Theresa’s eviscerated body cavity. The investigating officers were quite unaccustomed to crimes of such heinous savagery, particularly because there was no evident motive to Theresa’s murder. However, circumstances quickly deteriorated for the Sacramento police, because no sooner had they embarked on their investigation into Theresa’s murder, when another group of brutal murders was discovered three days later in a home less than one mile away. On the 26th of January an elderly woman knocked on her neighbor’s partially ajar front door. As no response was heard from inside, she entered the home, only to make a horrific discovery similar to that of the murder of Theresa Wallin. Inside the home were the bodies of a woman in her late twenties and her middle-aged father, both of whom had been shot through the head. Akin to Theresa Wallin, the woman’s body was mutilated, with indications that cannibalistic acts had occurred. Given the abhorrent nature of these brutal murders, FBI profilers were consulted to see what insights they could derive from the murders. After carefully considering the circumstances of the crimes, a profile was developed that read in part: Killer is white, male, twenty-seven years old, living within a mile of the area. Has probably been treated in a mental institution and recently released. He is single and unemployed or working at a menial job. He has no friends. Unusual behavior includes being withdrawn and reclusive. Has a high school education or less. He is psychotic, probably schizophrenic. He and his residence are slovenly and unkempt. Evidence of his crimes will be present. He is thin and undernourished. He probably tortures animals. (DeNivi and Campbell 2004, 25) Equipped with this profile, Sacramento police continued their investigation and canvassed the local suburbs questioning residents about whether they knew of anyone who matched the profile description. Remarkably, within hours of commencing these inquiries, one resident identified an individual by the name of Richard Trenton Chase who resembled their description. Chase’s residence was placed under surveillance, and when he was observed leaving his apartment with a box under his arm, he was immediately arrested and his premises searched. With his arrest the remarkable

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similarities between Chase and the FBI criminal profile seemed evident. Chase’s apartment was located within a mile of the murders and was a complete mess. Inside the kitchen police found three dirty kitchen blenders that contained traces of human blood and tissue as well as several plates on which human body parts were being kept in the refrigerator. As for Chase himself, he was twenty-eight years old, emaciated, and slovenly as described in the profile. He had a history of treatment for schizophrenia from a psychiatric hospital and had been released into the care of his parents who provided the apartment for him (which he occupied alone) because he was unable to maintain steady employment. Chase had a history of torturing and disembowelling small animals and drinking their blood in the delusional belief that this would prevent radiation from drying his own blood and shrinking his heart (Ressler and Schactmann 1992).

CRIMES WITHOUT BORDERS Although not a form of criminal profiling, the work of the FBI BSU is also renowned for developing a crime-fighting tool known as the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP), a computer database capable of analyzing and linking crimes by the behavior patterns exhibited at the crime scene. Ironically, the initial impetus for the development of ViCAP did not originate from within the FBI BSU but rather with a retired chief of police and former homicide commander, Pierce Brooks. In the 1950s Brooks was concerned with two phenomena. First, he was concerned about the difficulty in effectively communicating the large volume of information typically generated during the investigation of violent crimes such as a murder. Second, he was concerned about the mobility of criminals to travel undetected into different police jurisdictions and commit further offenses. That is, given the difficulty in communication among different police agencies, Brooks was acutely aware that criminals potentially could elude apprehension for crimes by simply traveling to different police jurisdiction where investigators may have been oblivious to the individual’s previous offenses. This circumstance is not an issue of fault on the part of any police investigator. Rather, it is an unfortunate artifact arising from the existence of numerous independent police agencies throughout the United States and the logistical difficulties involved in adequately communicating details of all cases under investigation to all other jurisdictions. These difficulties in communication are compounded by the sheer volume of crimes that can occur and indeed accumulate in any given year. For example, in the 1950s and 60s there were on average approximately 10,000 homicides committed in America. However, by 1980 this figure had more than doubled to over 23,000. Consequently, the number of these crimes was likely to make the communication

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of their circumstances, particularly unsolved cases still under investigation, difficult between police jurisdictions. This unfortunate phenomenon of investigators being oblivious to the existence of multiple crimes committed by the same perpetrator has been termed linkage blindness. It was from this circumstance that the idea of a tracking system was developed, wherein details pertaining to unsolved crimes across many jurisdictions could be collated. Once assembled together, all cases could be systematically assessed for similarities that would indicate that any number of crimes previously thought to be separate could in fact have been perpetrated by the same offender, the idea being to alert the relevant police investigators in their respective jurisdictions to this circumstance. In the 1950s the idea of such a tracking mechanism was something more within the realm of science fiction. However, by the 1980s and the advent of relatively cheap and yet powerful computers that could analyze large amounts of data, this idea was soon to become a reality, with Brooks collaborating with the members of the FBI BSI for the development of the ViCAP tracking system. It is important to appreciate the distinction between ViCAP and the various previous criminal record indexes that continue to exist. Criminal record systems allow police officers to identify the criminal history of individuals. Consequently, these systems are essentially retrospective databases in determining any history of prior convictions recorded for a particular individual. These systems, however, do not offer investigators much in terms of assessing the circumstances (such as the modus operandi) of crimes that are

Tracking a Mad Man: The Murders of Henry Lee Lucas? In June 1983 police arrested a man named Henry Lee Lucas for illegal gun possession. While in his jail cell Lucas wrote a note pleading for help, because he believed that he suffered from some form of illness, which had compelled him to commit multiple murders over the past years. Subsequent to this note, Lucas took police officers to the locations where he had deposited the bodies of Kate Rich, an eighty-year-old woman whom Lucas had worked for as a handyman, and Frieda Powell, one of Lucas’s own nieces. With the discovery of these bodies began an extensive videotaped confession by Lucas wherein he claimed to have been killing people over the past decade and could recollect some 200 murders committed in virtually every state in America (Norris 1988). News of this homicidal odyssey quickly spread throughout the U.S. law enforcement community and detectives from differing jurisdictions wanted an opportunity to interview Lucas to establish whether any number of unsolved cases in their jurisdiction was one of the many murders Lucas was readily confessing to have committed. Unfortunately, this interest in Lucas

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quickly and quite inadvertently bestowed on him a pseudo-celebrity status and many privileges not typically accorded with incarcerated murderers (such as opportunities to leave his jail cell and be transported to distant locations across the country while being accommodated in hotels and served good meals). Naturally, this special treatment for Lucas came at great expense to the American tax-paying public. Normally, such expenditure could be justified because it was made for the valid pursuit of justice—the potential resolution of a previously unsolved murder. However, the real dilemma began when the reliability of Lucas’ forthright confessions started to come into question. On one notable occasion Lucas was questioned as to whether he was responsible for the murders committed in Guyana. Lucas readily confessed to this, although he claimed to be unsure whether Guyana was in Louisiana or Texas. In offering the confession Lucas was clearly unaware that Guyana is located in South America and the murders were those perpetrated by the cult leader Jim Jones, who persuaded his followers to drink poison (Innes 2003). The case of Henry Lee Lucas highlights that had ViCAP been in existence at the time of Lucas’ supposed killing rampage across America, law enforcement officials would have been able to verify his claims more readily and reliably. Despite claiming to have killed hundreds of persons, it now appears that Lucas may have murdered a much smaller number.

currently unsolved and under investigation. It is this task of acting not only as a database but as a proactive means of analyzing and linking multiple crimes previously thought to be separate that has made ViCAP a valuable tool for crime fighters in the United States.

HITS AND MISSES Although the efforts of FBI profilers in assisting American law enforcement agencies are well known and commendable, they have, unfortunately, not gone without incident and at times criticism. Despite the best of intentions in the provision of a forensic technique to help combat aberrant violent crimes in America, there exists, at times, strong debate about the overall value and benefit of FBI profilers. However, when appraising these criticisms, it is important to distinguish between criticisms that are specifically indicative of FBI profilers per se and those more broadly conceived as problems related to the validity of criminal profiling in general. Given the renown surrounding criminal profiling, its frequent portrayals of success in television, movies, and novels, as well as the numerous semiautobiographical accounts of how profiles have been beneficial to criminal

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investigations, it is perhaps difficult to appreciate that impartial, scientifically vetted studies that may endorse the accuracy of criminal profiles are remarkably scarce. Indeed, it is of some concern that within the limited scientific literature currently available, there are indications that the accuracy and validity of criminal profiling may be nowhere near as favorable as anticipated. Deciphering the precise reasons as to how a forensic technique has come into use without its capabilities first having been demonstrated scientifically is difficult. Two factors, however, that may account for this circumstance are the operational needs of law enforcement combined with the general perception of the value or worth of criminal profiles. As indicated at the start of this chapter, there existed an imperative for additional mechanisms to assist American law enforcement investigations into aberrant violence crimes. Consequently, from a pragmatic viewpoint, it has been suggested that it was of greater importance to expend resources in addressing operational needs in providing criminal profiles to assist police investigators than to expend these same resources in academic exercises of testing the validity of profiling. This imperative to provide criminal profiles seems to have been concomitantly buttressed with a utilitarian argument that the validity of criminal profiles can be demonstrated vicariously by their continued use. The logic behind this argument is essentially an adaptation of the old English proverb: the proof is in the pudding. That is, if the provided criminal profiles were not deemed to be accurate and thus of some use, then police investigators would not continue to request and use them to assist with their investigations. Although there is certainly very strong intuitive appeal to the logic of such an argument, a handful of recent studies have found some troubling results that highlight the unreliability of this notion. Specifically, these studies have indicated that perceptions concerning the accuracy of criminal profiles can be distorted easily, based on a variety of simple factors. If the perceptions concerning the merit of a criminal profile can be distorted easily, then these perceptions are an unreliable measure of their accuracy and all arguments supporting the validity of criminal profiles based on their continued use via such perceptions are similarly unreliable and invalid. Given the debate that surrounds the validity of criminal profiling, it is therefore unsurprising that there are instances where the input and methods for constructing criminal profiles by FBI profilers have been criticized as hindering criminal investigations. It must however again be emphasized that instances where the merit and accuracy of criminal profiles have been brought into question are not indicative of the work of FBI profilers only. Indeed, the FBI is one of the few organizations to have undertaken some focused assessment of their procedures. Although some scientific research has, over recent years, emerged

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The U.S.S. Iowa: Disaster or Murder-Suicide? On the April 19, 1989, the battleship U.S.S. Iowa was conducting routine training exercises off the coast of Puerto Rico. Part of these exercises involved the test firing of the main sixteen-inch cannons aboard the ship, each of which weighed approximately 120 tons. These cannons were housed in three large turrets aboard the ship. Two turrets were positioned at the front of the ship, with the third located at the ship’s rear. The firing procedures for these cannons involved a sophisticated set of steps involving not only the gunnery crews who operated the cannons within the turrets but also numerous sailors many decks below within the ship who handled the loading of the powder charges used to fire the cannons. As a seasoned ship in the U.S. Navy, the Iowa had used its cannons in numerous military campaigns dating as far back as the 1950s and the conflict in North Korea. Within all this time the procedures for firing the cannons had remained effectively the same and had operated without significant incident. However, on April 19, 1989, this impeccable safety record dramatically changed. After the cannons of the first turret had fired, it was the turn of the second turret to commence firing its cannons. The orders were given to load the cannons in preparation and then abruptly just before firing was meant to commence, one of the gun crew members was heard through the on-board communication system as saying, ‘‘Hold up just a minute. We’ve got a problem here’’ (DeNivi and Campbell 2004, 289). A seemingly motionless pause transpired for approximately thirty seconds. Then, abruptly, a tumultuous blast occurred as the second turret exploded, killing all forty-seven crew members within the turret and crippling the ship. In light of the Iowa’s unblemished safety record, the cause of such a catastrophe was of great concern. The Pentagon commenced an investigation into the incident to scrutinize how the guns could have possibly malfunctioned in such a dramatic manner. As the investigation progressed, suggestions began to emerge that the explosion may not have been due to a mechanical failure. At approximately the same time as this notion was beginning to emerge, a relative of one of the deceased crew members was noted as making inquiries concerning eligibility for payment on a life insurance policy. These circumstances began to arouse suspicions, and investigation shifted to exploring the possibility that the explosion was no accident but perhaps was deliberately caused by one of the crew members on board the ship. As one component of this investigation Navy investigators consulted FBI profilers to evaluate one of the crew members whom they suspected may have caused the explosion. After some consideration the profilers came to the conclusion that it was possible that the deceased crew member may have caused the explosion aboard the Iowa deliberately, and thus the incident was no accident but instead a form of murder-suicide. Unsurprisingly, (continued )

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this conclusion was an issue of immense contention by the relatives of the deceased crew man. Ultimately, the matter of the explosion aboard the Iowa was brought before a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, where the circumstances of the incident and the subsequent investigation were independently and closely scrutinized. One component of the committee’s review involved an examination of the procedures used by the FBI profilers. From this review a number of highly critical observations of the FBI profilers were made, including that their procedures were considered inadequate and unprofessional. It was further noted that, in the view of the review committee, the profilers had not sufficiently indicated the speculative basis to their analysis (U.S. House of Representatives 1999).

The 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games: An Accidental Villain Just after noon on July 27, 1996, during the summer Olympic Games hosted in Atlanta, a security guard noticed an unattended backpack in one of the venues. Suspecting that the backpack might contain a bomb, he alerted law enforcement officials of this possibility and then participated in efforts to clear the area. Unfortunately, the guard’s suspicions were not unfounded, and before the area could be properly evacuated, a pipe bomb concealed inside the backpack exploded, killing two and injuring more than 100 people in the vicinity of the blast. Initially, the security guard who had noticed the backpack received praise from the media as a hero who had attempted to avert disaster. Unfortunately, this praise was to be short-lived. Concerns began to emerge that perhaps the guard may have been involved in the bombing itself. That is, some analogy was drawn between the perceived actions of the guard and circumstances where firefighters had been found to initiate fires they themselves had lit. Investigators consulted FBI profilers about the circumstance of the bombing, and after some consideration the profilers agreed that the security guard matched the profile of the type of individual who may orchestrate a situation whereby he could engage in a heroic act. Thus, they concluded that the guard had some involvement in planting the bomb so he could participate in the evacuation and be perceived as a hero for his actions. Thereafter a deleterious cycle ensued. The public media in observing the actions of investigators questioning and searching the guard’s home increasingly focused their attention on the hapless guard as no longer a hero, but rather, the perpetrator of the crime. After enduring intense media scrutiny

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and vilification, it was found that the guard was not the bomber, no matter how well he matched the profile. Subsequently, and with tragic irony to the distress these events had on the guard and his family, the actual bomber was apprehended.

critically evaluating the technique of criminal profiling (in general), the work of the FBI remains one of the few organizations to have embarked on some assessment of their own specific techniques for criminal profiling. Although the outcomes of these studies are a far cry from the popular reputation of criminal profiling, they are nonetheless demonstrative of a willingness for self-evaluation and improvement.

CONCLUSION There can be no doubt that the FBI and its personnel have contributed greatly over the years to the development of profiling techniques aimed at identifying the perpetrators of society’s most heinous crimes. Although the FBI cannot be credited with inventing profiling per se, the institution can be credited with enhancing and popularizing the technique. This has been achieved largely by a commitment on the part of its members to explore and understand criminal behavior through studying key criminal populations and their motivations for perpetrating heinous crimes such as murder and rape. By interviewing offenders, cataloguing their responses, and examining their deeds, the FBI has developed templates that are still used today by criminal investigators in law enforcement agencies throughout the world. Although some attempts to assess the efficacy of their approach to criminal investigation using their techniques have been undertaken, there is still much work to be done in terms of developing the practice of profiling generally and its useful application. In order for criminal profiling as a technique to develop, greater scientific investigation on a global scale is warranted. As has been discussed already, a dearth of sound scientific analysis has characterized the field of criminal profiling to date. Indeed, scholarly research on the efficacy of profiling as a technique has been disappointingly limited. However, just as the FBI as an institution has been a maverick in pioneering approaches to criminal profiling and popularizing its practice the FBI may in the future be at the forefront of moving the practice of criminal profiling towards a more scientific endeavor capable of better assisting in the investigation of crime and the apprehension of its perpetrators. Only through continued, focused scientific research can the use and limitations of criminal profiling be understood.

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FURTHER READING Bullock, J. A., G. D. Haddow, D. P. Coppola, E. Ergin, L. Westerman, and S. Yeletaysi. 2005. Introduction to Homeland Security. London, UK: Elsevier. DeNevi, D., and J. E. Campbell. 2004. Into the Minds of Madmen. Amherst, NY: Prometheous Books. Douglas, J. E., and A. E. Burgess. 1986. Criminal profiling: A viable investigative tool against violent crime. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 9:32–36. Douglas, J. E., A. W. Burgess, A. G. Burgess, and R. K. Ressler. 2006. Crime Classification Manual. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Douglas, J. E., A. W. Burgess, and R. K. Ressler. 1983. Rape and rape murder: One offender and twelve victims. American Journal of Psychiatry 140:36–40. Douglas, J. E., and R. Hazelwood. 1980. The lust murderer. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 49:8–12. Douglas, J. E., and C. Munn. 1992. Violent crime scene analysis: Modus operandi, signature and staging. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 61:1–10. Douglas, J. E., and M. Olshaker. 1995. Mindhunter. New York: Scribner. Douglas, J. E., R. K. Ressler, A. W. Burgess, and C. R. Hartman. 1986. Criminal profiling from crime scene analysis. Behavioral Sciences & The Law 4: 401–421. Doyle, A. C. 1891. The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes. Secaucus, NJ: Castle. Egger, S. A. 1998. The Killers among Us: An Examination of Serial Murder and Its Investigation. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Fisher, A. J. 1993. Techniques of Crime Scene Investigation. 5th ed. New York: Elsevier. Harris, T. 1985. The Red Dragon. New York: Heinemann. Harris, T. 1986. The Silence of the Lambs. New York: Heinemann. Harris, T. 1999. Hannibal. New York: Heinemann. Hazelwood, R. R., S. Michael, and J. Warren. 1989. The serial rapist: His characteristics and victims (Part I). FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 57:11–17. Hazelwood, R. R., and S. Michaud. 1999. The Evil That Men Do. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Howlett, J. B., K. A. Hanfland, and R. K. Ressler. 1986. The violent criminal apprehension program—ViCAP: A progress report. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 14:9–11. Icove, D. J., and J. H. Estepp. 1987. Motive based offender profiles of arson and fire-related crimes. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 17:28–31. Innes, B. 2003. Profile of a Criminal Mind: How Psychological Profiling Helps Solve True Crimes. Leicester, UK: Silverdale Books. Jeffers, H. P. 1992. Profiles in Evil. London: Warner Bros. Kocsis, R. N. 2006. Criminal Profiling: Principles and Practice. Tottowa, NJ: Humana Press. Langer, W. 1972. The Mind of Adolf Hitler. New York: New American Library. Lazer, D., ed. 2004. DNA and the Criminal Justice System: The Technology of Justice. Boston: MIT Press. McCary, G., and K. Ramsland. 2003. The Unknown Darkness. New York: Morrow.

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Norris, J. 1988. Serial Killers. London: Arrow Publications. Palermo, G. B., and R. N. Kocsis. 2005. Offender Profiling: An Introduction to the Sociopsychological Analysis of Violent Crime. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Pinizzotto, A. J. 1984. Forensic psychology: Criminal personality profiling. Journal of Police Science and Administration 12 (1), 32–40. Pinizzotto, A. J., and N. J. Finkel. 1990. Criminal personality profiling: An outcome and process study. Law and Human Behavior 14:215–233. R v. Guilfoyle. 2001. 2 Cr. App. Rep. 57. Ressler, R. K., and A. W. Burgess. 1985a. Violent crime: The men who murdered. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 2:32–39. Ressler, R. K., and A. W. Burgess. 1985b. Crime scene and profile characteristics of organized and disorganized murderers. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 18: 7–15. Ressler, R. K., and T. Shachtman. 1992. Whoever Fights Monsters. London: Simon & Schuster. Risinger, D. M., and J. L. Loop. 2002. Three card Monte, Monty Hall, modus operandi and ‘‘offender profiling’’: Some lessons of modern cognitive science for the law of evidence. Cardozo Law Review 24:193–185. Rumbelow, D. 1988. The Complete Jack the Ripper. London: Penguin. Turco, R. N. 1990. Psychological profiling. International Journal of Offender Therapy & Comparative Criminology 34:147–154. Tyler, T. R., and C. J. Wakslak. 2004. Profiling and police legitimacy: Procedural justice attributions of motive and acceptance of police authority. Criminology 42 (2), 253–281. U.S. House of Representatives. 1990. U.S.S. Iowa Tragedy: An Investigative Failure. Report of the investigations subcommittee and the Defense Policy Panel of the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, 101st Congress, 2nd Session. Vorpagel, R. E., and J. Harrington. 1998. Profiles in Murder. New York: Plenum. Whittington-Egan, R. 1975. A Casebook on Jack the Ripper. London: Wiley. Wolfgang, M. E., and N. A. Weiner, eds. 1982. Criminal Violence. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Courtesy AP Images/Roy Dabner

Sheriff Joe Arpaio Kelli Stevens

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The desire to punish criminals is not a new concept. As long as there have been criminals, societies from ancient times to modern day have wanted them punished. In the United States the pendulum swings back and forth with regard to the best way to handle lawbreakers. In the 1950s and 1960s the American criminal justice system was based on a medical model that espoused the concept of rehabilitation. However, in the 1970s the pendulum began to swing toward harsher punishments for criminals, mainly because it was believed that rehabilitation did not work and that something needed to be done.1 So in the last twenty-five to thirty years, the criminal justice system has seen an increase in harsher sentencing laws to include longer prison terms, increases in executions, and punitive treatment of offenders. This shift in ideology has boded well for many Americans, including politicians. Historically, politicians capitalize on the popular sentiments held by society as they run for office, and the get-tough sentiment is no exception. For example, consider the Willie Horton incident during Vice President George H. W. Bush’s quest for the White House. Bush used to his advantage the murder of a law-abiding citizen by Horton, a convict on furlough from prison. Bush used the politicized nature of the Horton furlough effectively in his bid for the presidency, basically making his opponent Michael Dukakis appear ‘‘soft on crime’’ because he allowed this furlough to take place. Local politicians in the 1990s often used the get-tough platform in their campaigns as well. A former regional director for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and soldier in the ‘‘War on Drugs,’’ Joe Arpaio ran for sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona in 1992, at the right time—the height of the get-tough era in criminal justice. Arpaio’s campaign platform consisted of the familiar get-tough stance typical of this period, but some, especially the citizens of Maricopa County, do not consider what he said simply rhetoric, but rather promises that have been transformed into reality. His innovative, albeit controversial, reforms in the county’s jails and law enforcement practices are part of American popular culture, and he has attained the status of a crime-fighting icon and ‘‘America’s Toughest Sheriff.’’ But who is this tough lawman? Where did he come from? How did he become so popular in the desert of Arizona, as well as around the world? These questions will be answered, followed by an examination of Arpaio’s popular but controversial policies, not so widely known policies, and criticisms and problems. This chapter also seeks to give the reader a broader perspective of the changes that occurred in penal philosophy in the United States beginning in the 1980s to the present day, along with a brief discussion of popular culture and crime and how Arpaio is a significant figure in these areas.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

ONE TOUGH LAWMAN Arpaio the Man Joe Arpaio was born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1932. His parents were Italian immigrants from Naples, Italy. Sadly, his mother died while giving birth to him. So, from birth to three years, Arpaio and his father lived with one Italian family and then from three to twelve with another family. His father was busy trying to run a business and worked many long hours, so he needed help raising Arpaio.2 When Arpaio was twelve his father remarried. Arpaio attended two different high schools in Massachusetts, Classico and Commerce. While at Classico, Arpaio played sports, but was not on the ‘‘first team.’’ He switched to Commerce High his senior year. He recalls being a ‘‘C’’ student who had to study because he worked in his father’s grocery store and he was more interested in playing sports—football, basketball, and baseball—than academics. He joked about faring better in sports at Commerce because there were only about one hundred boys attending the school. There were many more girls attending the school, which for some teenaged boys would be a distraction, but Arpaio didn’t go out with girls much in high school. He said girls would call him, wanting to go out, and they would tell him they liked his legs! But he remained focused on sports and studied to make a C average, as he was not a good test taker. According to Arpaio, the most important class he took in high school was typing.3 That skill would serve him well in both the army and in his career as a law enforcement officer. In 1950, the year Arpaio graduated from high school, the Korean War began; he joined the U.S. Army. He felt it was time to move on and leave behind his not-so-happy childhood, even though his father had the money for him to attend college and wanted him to attend college. While in basic training he met a young lady named Angela from New Jersey and got engaged. His engagement didn’t work out for several reasons—Angela was an only child of a very close-knit Sicilian family. They did not want their daughter marrying someone who wanted to become a cop and move her away. After enlisting in the army, Arpaio was sent to France and spent two years there; he eventually attained the rank of sergeant. He served in an administrative capacity for a two-officer, eight-man medical detachment. Arpaio recalls having charge of quarters duty at night; servicemen would come in for shots for venereal diseases and he would give them the shots. Although he wasn’t a medic, he would tell them to bend over and then jab them in the buttocks with a needle. He found this task quite amusing. Later, Arpaio received an honorable discharge at the age of twenty-one and decided it was time to pursue his dream of becoming a federal agent. He had always

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wanted to be an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but he cannot specifically recall why other than that he had a toy gun and badge as a child. After leaving the Army, he moved to Washington, D.C. in 1954 and took the entrance tests for both the Border Patrol and the Washington, D.C. Police Department (DCPD). He did not pass the test for the Border Patrol, but did pass the test for DCPD, so his law enforcement career began. During the 1950s police officers were true ‘‘beat cops,’’ and they walked the streets, getting to know the citizens in the beat they were assigned to protect and serve. Arpaio asked his captain for a beat with some action, so he got what he asked for. He worked a tough beat in a predominantly AfricanAmerican community, armed with a nightstick and a .38 caliber handgun. He ‘‘locked everybody up.’’ A young Arpaio enjoyed his job immensely even though he obtained the unofficial status of ‘‘most assaulted cop in D.C.’’ in 1957. He said one of the reasons he obtained this title was because he wouldn’t walk around the hoodlums congregating on the sidewalks, but instead would walk right through them, and ‘‘if you didn’t move you were under arrest.’’ He gave everybody tickets: ‘‘You spit on the sidewalk, you get locked up. You urinate in public; you get locked up.’’4 With all of these arrests came reports to write; Arpaio typed his own reports. This is where his high school typing class became very useful. He was able to type his reports quickly and head back out to the streets to make more arrests, but he also made a little time for socialization. Arpaio met his wife Ava while in D.C.; she lived in the same building as he and his roommate, George. George, a fellow officer, actually had Ava’s number and said he didn’t have any luck getting through. Arpaio said, ‘‘Give me the number; I’ll take care of it.’’ So, he gave Ava a call, and they began dating. In the meantime, Arpaio’s career was about to take a different turn. While employed with DCPD, Arpaio met the sheriff of Clark County, Nevada, while working at a parade for President Eisenhower. The sheriff was impressed with Arpaio and encouraged him to move to Nevada. At first Arpaio was not keen on the idea, but he wanted to advance in his career and there seemed to be more opportunities for advancement in Nevada. Thus, he accepted the offer not long after and moved to Las Vegas where he was hired by the Las Vegas Police Department. Las Vegas certainly was not a boring place and Arpaio recalls meeting Elvis Presley while on patrol. Arpaio stopped Presley and a female companion who were riding on a motorcycle—they were driving at a high rate of speed. By the time the encounter was over Elvis was at the police station signing autographs and having a police department mechanic check out his motorcycle.5 During his stint with Las Vegas Police Department Arpaio’s attitude changed. He realized the law was not so black and white and that citing everyone for every single violation of the law, no matter how minute, was ‘‘chicken.’’6 His

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

new-found philosophy would serve him well in the future. Arpaio worked for the Las Vegas Police Department for only six months before fulfilling his dream of becoming a federal agent. In 1957, after serving as a police officer at the local level, Arpaio took a job with the Bureau of Narcotics, now known as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). His old friend, George, had gotten hired by the Bureau of Narcotics, so Arpaio had a contact on the inside. He and Ava relocated to Chicago, Illinois, where they eventually married and he began work as an undercover agent. The Bureau of Narcotics needed Italian agents to infiltrate the drug scene in Chicago and Arpaio was a perfect fit. He had never worked undercover and this was an exciting opportunity that was the beginning of a three-decade-long career as a federal agent fighting the war against crime and drugs. Arpaio was quite adept at undercover work and there was no group he could not penetrate, no criminal he could not earn the trust of, and he maintained his integrity all the while. He earned the nickname ‘‘Nickelbag Joe’’ because no deal was too small.7 His philosophy was to start out small and work his way up to the top members of the operation. He even arrested a corrupt police officer in the officer’s own police car because the officer sold him heroin. He worked long and hard and in 1961 was reassigned to undercover work in Turkey to stop the heroin and opium trade to the United States. Arpaio recounts being dropped off in Istanbul, Turkey, with no police authority, no backup, no connections, no language training, no information, and only a few hundred dollars and his Smith & Wesson firearm. Ava and his son remained in the United States and he was alone in a foreign country. This did not stop Arpaio; he quickly adapted and began making connections in the underworld of narcotics. He would make deals that took place in the mountains with armed opium farmers delivering the product by horse, mule, or whatever mode of transportation was most suited for the terrain. And, on more than one occasion, these deals did not go exactly as planned; gun battles would often erupt. Arpaio escaped death more times than he’d like to count.8 After about six months, he was working with the Turkish National Police to take down a dominant drug ring that exported phenomenal amounts of heroin to the United States. The operation was a success and went down as the largest seizure ever made in Turkish history, more than 2,000 pounds of opium. Arpaio’s exemplary undercover work in Turkey yielded a number of honors and awards, including the Exceptional Service Award from the general director of the Turkish National Police, a Special Service Award from the U.S. Treasury Department, and the Superior Performance Award from the U.S. Treasury Department.9 His career continued to flourish as he was promoted to Special Agent in Charge of the DEA San Antonio, Texas, field office to tackle the drug trade increasing along the United States-Mexico border.

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While in San Antonio, Arpaio achieved such successes as leading the raid against members of a drug operation in which more than $1 million worth of pure heroin was seized and a drug dealer was arrested right in front of the federal building. He then moved on to be the special agent in charge in Washington, D.C., where he was instrumental in the investigation and arrest of a bureau deputy director in Baltimore, Maryland, who had gone bad, which led to the uncovering of other agents inside the Bureau of Narcotics who were selling heroin. Arpaio finally landed in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1978 as the regional director of the DEA. In 1982 he retired from the DEA, after a long rewarding career in law enforcement, to help his wife run a travel agency. Their son Rocko came home from college to help run the business as well, and it was no small business. In fact, the family business took in more than $6 million one year. Arpaio says that people kept asking him during this time, ‘‘Why don’t you run for sheriff?’’ He gave little thought to it until he lost the travel account with the sheriff’s department. At this point, it would no longer be a conflict of interest, so he tossed his hat in the ring for the sheriff’s race in 1992 and won. Popular Policies After Arpaio was elected sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona in 1992, he was faced with the daunting task of operating the county jail facilities and carrying out law enforcement duties after the budget suffered a $10 million cut; although the Sheriff’s Department had an $82 million budget, it was

Arpaio Timeline 1932 1950 1953 1954 1957 1961 1964 1968 1973 1978 1982 1992

Born in Springfield, Massachusetts Graduates from high school; joins the U.S. Army Honorable discharge from U.S. Army Joins Washington, D.C., police force Most assaulted D.C. cop; joins Las Vegas Police Department; special appointment to the Bureau of Narcotics Bureau of Narcotics special assignment in Istanbul, Turkey Special Agent in Charge, San Antonio, Texas Deputy Regional Director for the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, Baltimore, Maryland; Regional Director, Mexico City, Mexico Section Chief, Office of Intelligence for the DEA, Washington, D.C. Regional Director for DEA, Phoenix, Arizona Retired from DEA Elected sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

not an easy task.10 Maricopa County had roughly 2.5 million residents at the time and covered 9,200 square miles; the county is as large as the state of New Jersey. It is the fourth most populous county in the United States. Because of tougher sentences for drug offenders and sweeping legal reforms in the criminal justice system, federal, state and local correctional institutions across the country were strapped to house inmates with little or no extra available bed spaces. Arpaio had to be creative and he succeeded. One of the first major reforms he made in office that gained worldwide attention was to create 1,000 new bed spaces to house inmates. What is so spectacular about that? one might ask. Well, the fact that the new bed spaces were located in the Arizona desert in old army tents, mainly Korean War era tents, surrounded by razor barbed wire, might have had something to do with it. Arpaio secured the old tents, which were worn and full of holes, from the government free of charge. After spending only about $80,000 to prepare the land space to secure the inmates and provide basic needs (electricity, plumbing, etc.), the Tent City Jail was ready to take on inmates in August of 1993. He had saved the taxpayers millions and succeeded in building a new facility to house inmates that would not detract from property values in a residential area. Interestingly, the Tent City Jail is located just outside of Phoenix between the city dump and the animal pound. After the Tent City Jail was constructed, the media swarmed to the desert to get a firsthand look at the innovative camp. Of course there were critics, but they were told by Arpaio, when asked about the cruelty of such a place, that if American troops can go to the Middle East and live in the desert in tents, then our inmates should not have it any better than our soldiers. This comment struck a cord with the public, as the Persian Gulf War had ended just a couple of years before. This was only just the beginning of media coverage concerning Arpaio’s policies. Another bold decision made early in office by Arpaio was to take away amenities such as coffee, tobacco products, pornographic materials— magazines and movies—and to severely limit cable television programming in all penal facilities in the county. Notably, Arpaio only allowed television channels such as the Disney Channel, the Weather Channel, ESPN, C-SPAN, and the Phoenix municipal government channel to broadcast. He also discontinued the use of salt and pepper, which saved the taxpayers around $20,000 a year.11 The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office’s (MCSO) vision statement includes terminology regarding being a leader in the field of law enforcement, and some of Arpaio’s decisions certainly led the way to getting tough on inmates. Arpaio decided to cut spending even further by reducing meals to two a day and serving only one hot meal, thereby reducing the cost to taxpayers. Inmates receive a sack lunch consisting of two sandwiches, one bologna and one peanut butter sandwich, fruit, vegetables, and Kool-Aid.12 The bologna

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Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Vision Statement The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office is a fully integrated law enforcement agency committed to being the leader in establishing the standards for providing professional quality law enforcement, detention, and support services to the citizens of Maricopa County and to other criminal justice agencies. Source: Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department, used with permission.

sandwich has received worldwide media attention because the outside press discovered that a batch of it was green. A fluke in the processing of the meat turned it green, and the Sheriff was touted as being so tough that he feeds the inmates green bologna. But Arpaio is not heartless; the evening meal is hot and there are a wide variety of foods served with adequate portions. Again, media sources from all over the world scrambled to report on how the removal of amenities was faring with inmates and to question the humaneness of Arpaio’s policies. Of course, the inmates complained about not being given what they wanted, but the Sheriff contended, and still does, that ‘‘they should not live better in jail than on the outside,’’ and ‘‘jails shouldn’t be hotels.’’ Arpaio continued to make innovative changes with much success. In November of 1993, the mall patrol posse was formed because of several highly publicized carjackings around the malls during the height of the Christmas shopping season. Arpaio decided to take action and called on his posse members to assist. It should be noted that he did not create the use of the posse in Maricopa County, as it had been in existence fifty years or so before he took office, but while in office he has greatly expanded the use of volunteers. So, more than 700 posse members rose to the occasion to make the citizens feel safe and deter crime in the malls and parking lots. They assisted deputies in making arrests, responded to calls from other law enforcement agencies, and helped shoppers and motorists.13 The money this operation saved taxpayers was phenomenal, considering the posse members do not get paid. The success of this operation led to the formation of many other special posses. Several other posse projects popular with the citizens of Maricopa County include Operation Zero Tolerance, Operation Take Away Graffiti, and the Deadbeat Parent Posse. Operation Zero Tolerance, designed to thwart prostitution in the Van Buren Street District of Phoenix, was launched in April 1994. With the help of armed posse members, the MCSO and the Phoenix Police Department inundated Van Buren Street for sixty days. Posse members patrolled on foot, on horseback, and in vehicles day and night. During this time, calls to the police department regarding prostitution decreased significantly.14 Although it was not a permanent

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

solution, the operation met with much success and support from local businesses and residents. The next successful venture was Operation Take Away Graffiti. Arpaio does not view graffiti as a legitimate form of art, but rather a blight on the city’s buildings and other structures, as well as a telltale sign of gang activity.15 Once again to save taxpayers money, he approved the formation of a posse to tackle this problem and planned Operation Take Away Graffiti. On March 24, 1995, more than 500 posse members hit the city streets armed with night-vision scopes. For three months, the posse patrolled the areas most known for graffiti and gang activity, and, as expected, calls to police regarding this problem almost ceased. Posse members donated thousands of hours to clean up buildings, bridges, and billboards. Why stop here? Arpaio, with the help of staff, has created about sixty special posses since being elected in 1992. The use of volunteers from the community empowered with law enforcement authority seemed to be unsettling for members of the press and civil rights organizations who accused Arpaio of creating a police state. However, not just anyone wanting to become a member of the sheriff’s posse is allowed. MCSO has strict guidelines for posse applicants. They must undergo a stringent background investigation, submit to urine testing for detection of illegal substances, and participate in classroom instruction on subjects such as law and first aid, and some members must undergo a psychological evaluation and weapons and firearms training. Today, there are more than 3,000 men and women serving on the posses, and they pay for all of their own equipment and uniforms. One of Arpaio’s most notable policies, aside from the Tent City Jail, was to reestablish chain gangs in 1995. He began by creating an all-male chain gang comprised of inmates who volunteered to participate. Arpaio received criticism, as one might imagine, as chain gangs historically have been associated with cruelty and prejudice. However, one of the main purposes of the chain gang, Arpaio touts, is rehabilitation. Inmates who have had disciplinary problems while incarcerated can volunteer to participate on the chain gang in order to regain entrance into the general population from lockdown or to get their jobs back that they lost because of their disciplinary problems; they are not forced to work on the chain gang. Arpaio says this is the Last Chance Program, and ‘‘the program is meant to help the inmates contribute to the community and do something productive.’’16 Inmates are chained together in groups of five and are overseen by detention officers and armed posse members while they work out in the desert heat. The chain gangs perform a multitude of meaningful tasks such as clearing brush, burying the indigent of the county, cleaning the streets in Phoenix and surrounding areas, and painting over graffiti, helping reduce costs for taxpayers. If the inmates complete the program they are awarded a graduation certificate and are allowed to participate in normal activities

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Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Posses Special Operations

Areas of the County

Air Cold Case Communications Community Services Crime Prevention Cyber Dares Divers Enforcement Support Executive Helicopter Instructor Jeep Maricopa K-9 Medical Rescue Motors Operations Pioneer Search and Rescue Ranger Search and Rescue KHOR Special Assignment Unit Special Forces Special Operations Air Special Projects Street Crime Prevention Tactical Support Tactical Vehicle

Anthem Desert Foothills Desert Search Fountain Hills Fountain Hills Mounted Gilbert Litchfield Park Mesa Mounted Mesa Southside Metro Assistance Mountain Rescue New River Search and Rescue Queen Creek Crime Prevention Queen Creek Mounted Rio Salado Mounted Scottsdale Mounted Sun City Sun City West Sun Lakes Surprise West Valley Westbrook Village Westside Mounted Whitetank Mounted Wickenburg Search and Rescue

Source: Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Web site, http://www.mcso.org/, used with permission.

within the jail such as education classes, recreation time, and religious ceremonies.17 Since Arpaio is an equal opportunity sheriff, in 1996 he created the world’s first chain gang for females. The female chain gang performs many of the same tasks as the male chain gang, and the purpose of the chain gang is also the same. Female inmates who have had disciplinary problems can apply to be on the chain gang and earn back privileges of having a job and being housed in the general population. The women clean the streets of

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Phoenix and clear brush, the same as the men. And why stop there? Arpaio is the only sheriff in history to institute a chain gang for juvenile offenders. This bold step again drew criticism from organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union. This did not stop the sheriff from establishing other controversial policies. Arpaio felt that inmates should be easily recognizable and discernable while working out in the community on the chain gangs so he replaced the scrub-like uniforms with the old black and white striped uniforms. Arpaio’s critics again sounded their trumpets, citing Arpaio as a man who enjoyed humiliating the inmates, but he stood by his decision, stating it’s a matter of security. Another change in prison garb would also prove to be a security measure, although it wasn’t originally thought of in that manner. Pink underwear. Yes, pink underwear was another popular change instituted by Arpaio in 1995 after he discovered inmates were stealing the white boxer shorts and selling them for cash. So, Arpaio had the boxers died pink because it was less likely the male inmates would insult their manhood by selling pink underwear; little did he know the pink boxers would also serve as a security measure. In February of 2000 an inmate escaped from custody while being transported from one jail facility to another.18 The inmate, Sergio VerdugoLopez, took off the black and white striped uniform, but was still wearing the pink underwear. His pink underwear was spotted by a sheriff’s deputy only thirty minutes or so after the escape, at which time he was apprehended. The pink underwear was not only popular among the jail staff, but also the public. The word spread in the community about the pink underwear, and MCSO began receiving calls from citizens wanting to purchase the pink boxer shorts. This turned into a great opportunity for the MCSO, and almost half a million dollars worth of the boxers were sold in no time. This money was poured back into the agency to purchase fuel and pay other expenses within the department. The pink boxer shorts can still be purchased today. Aside from changes in prison clothing, technology would spur other major changes within the department. With the advances in technology in our society, Arpaio and his staff decided to capitalize on this by installing a ‘‘jail cam’’ (to be broadcast via the Internet) in the booking area to capture live video of lawbreakers being processed into the jail, partly because of accusations of misconduct on behalf of jail staff. Arpaio stated he had nothing to hide and people were welcome to see what goes on in the jails. Much controversy arose from this and has now transformed into mug shots being posted for offenders arrested. Mug shots for a three-day time period are posted on the department’s Web site and then new ones are uploaded. This has become so popular that almost one million hits a day are recorded to the Web site. But there are many more programs that have received less publicity, which will be discussed in the following section.

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Not So Widely Known Policies Because of the extensive publicity on Arpaio’s controversial programs, the less debatable programs have not received much attention, but deserve their own spotlight. Arpaio’s long career in federal law enforcement brought him face to face with the plight of the human condition, and made an impact on him, as evidenced in the establishment of numerous rehabilitation-oriented classes and curriculum designed to address the treatment needs of inmates. The ALPHA program (Aware, Learn, Plan, Help, and Accept) is a substance abuse treatment program for sentenced inmates. Implemented in 1996 and led by licensed therapists and counselors, ALPHA is one of the most successful programs Arpaio has instituted. This program is offered to both male and female adult inmates, as well as juveniles, and lasts for six months. Inmates wanting to participate in the program must also agree to enroll in other adjunct programs such as anger management, job preparedness, and GED/Computer Learning Lab while keeping a perfect disciplinary record. Those inmates who fail to adhere to the program guidelines are discharged. Since its inception, the ALPHA program has had more than 4,000 successful graduates and a recidivism rate of only 14 percent.19 Many other programs aimed at successfully reintegrating the offender into the community were sanctioned by Arpaio while in office. Cognitive Restructuring is a program attended by those who graduate from the ALPHA program and is designed to change the pattern of criminal thinking and cognitive distortions that lead to law-breaking behavior. ALPHA graduates attend this class twice a week. Anger management classes are offered to inmates, especially those arrested for assaultive offenses, and incorporate a life skills component to increase inmates’ ability to be independent and responsible citizens. Another interesting program in Arpaio’s Estrella Jail is the Girl Scouts Beyond Bars program in which mothers who are incarcerated can participate in their daughters’ Girl Scout troop activities; this is the only jail in America that has such a program.20 The local Girl Scout troop sponsors the program, and those girls whose mothers are incarcerated go to see their mothers in jail and engage in various activities such as arts and crafts. The hope is to ‘‘break the cycle of crime between generations.’’ Arpaio has other programs within the walls of his jails to encourage youth, strengthen families, and hold parents accountable. Hard Knocks High is the only accredited high school inside a jail in the United States and it’s in three of the county’s jails: Madison, Towers, and Lower Buckeye. In addition to education and learning, Arpaio aims to hold parents accountable. He instituted a ‘‘Deadbeat Parent’’ posse to round up parents who fail to pay child support and take responsibility for their family. The posse obtains information through the warrants division regarding outstanding warrants for failure to pay child support, and then posse

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

members scour the community looking for deadbeat parents to arrest. This program has netted thousands of dollars in child support for children in the community. Arpaio not only has a soft spot in his heart for children, but also for animals. Arpaio had one of the jail facilities converted into an animal shelter, known as the MASH Unit (MCSO Animal Safe Hospice) to house animals that have been recovered through the department’s Animal Cruelty Investigative Unit. Ironically, the animals live in a facility with central heat and air, while thousands of inmates live in tents with neither. Inmates care for these abused and neglected animals. The hope is to instill a sense of responsibility and accomplishment, thereby rehabilitating inmates. The inmates who work in the MASH Unit feed, water, bathe, and train the animals, which can be adopted for a small donation by members of the community. The donations help to fund the operation and provide basic care for the animals. Other evidence of his soft spot for animals has come in the form of a recent increase in arrests for those suspected of animal cruelty. Several professionals have been arrested for animal cruelty, including a veterinarian and a charter school teacher. Arpaio doesn’t care who you are; if you break the law, you will be arrested. Other inventive programs instituted in Maricopa County jails since Arpaio took office include Dignity, a special program for prostitutes, designed to teach self-worth, self-esteem, and independence for women who have found themselves in the profession. Additionally, education programs such as English as a Second Language, English Learning Instruction, health education and HIV awareness, literacy tutoring, and a learning lab with computers to assist those who struggle with traditional classroom instruction have been instituted. Parenting classes, twelve-step programs, and special curricula for women—Winning Opportunities for Working and Women Healing Ever New—are also an important part of the programming. In addition to creating classes to help rehabilitate inmates, Arpaio established several other policies that are not so widely known to improve safety inside and outside of the jails. In May 2007 Arpaio no longer allowed sealed mail into his jails. Inmates are only allowed to receive postcards. Any letters or packages received are returned to the senders. Back in 2002 inmates were required to use only postcards for their outgoing personal correspondence. This move was designed to save taxpayers money by using reduced postage mail. The recent switch from postcards for incoming personal mail will also save taxpayers money, according to Arpaio. He cited security as the main reason for the switch though, because contraband is placed inside the sealed envelopes and packages. In a news release in March 2007 Arpaio stated that employees searching the mail have found illegal drugs such as methamphetamines inside envelopes, as well as handcuff keys and pornography. Because of the high volume of mail through the jails, more than two million pieces per

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year, it takes eight full-time employees to search the mail. Switching to allowing only postcards to be sent to inmates will again save the taxpayers money and reduce the amount of contraband being smuggled into the jails. Arpaio has accomplished many great things as the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, but he has also garnered much criticism.

Criticisms and Problems Not everyone is a fan of Arpaio. Because of his bold and unapologetic stance toward crime and criminals and his constant media exposure, he has had his fair share of condemnation. There are Web sites on the Internet, political action committees, and other private organizations dedicated to opposing him and ousting him from office. There are hundreds of articles criticizing Arpaio for allowing inmates in Maricopa County jails to be treated as ‘‘subhuman,’’ although he does not condone this, and there have been lawsuits filed against him on numerous occasions, including wrongful death suits. There are hundreds of Web sites on the Internet about Arpaio, but one in particular dedicated to driving him out of office in the 2004 election, www.arpaio.com, features his political opponent Dan Saban, claiming he could ‘‘improve the operation of the Sheriff’s office.’’ The Web site offers reasons to recall Joe Arpaio from office: 1. 2. 3. 4.

With Arpaio, real law enforcement takes a back seat to publicity stunts. He lives in a fantasy world of self-importance. Millions of tax dollars have been wasted on lawsuits. He is responsible for a critical and dangerous shortage of personnel in both the jails and on patrol. 5. Hundreds of current sheriff’s office employees, represented by a number of employee organizations, have expressed a vote of no confidence for Sheriff Arpaio. 6. The self-proclaimed ‘‘Toughest Sheriff in America’’ is too fearful to debate other candidates.…21

Additional criticism from the Web site relays a story about an eighteen-yearold boy accused of plotting to kill the sheriff who was entrapped by MCSO employees. The boy’s mother formed a group called Mothers Against Arpaio in hopes of getting him out of office. Mothers Against Arpaio contends that many inmates have been ‘‘injured, beaten, and even killed while in jail,’’ and that Arpaio ‘‘lacks respect for human life and dignity.’’22 Despite these criticisms, it should be noted that Arpaio has been reelected three times since taking office. Even more critics have voiced their opinions and concerns about Arpaio. Some of the most damning criticism of Arpaio has been in the form of

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

lawsuits regarding the treatment of inmates and pretrial detainees in his jails. Arpaio has been sued thousands—some sources say between 1,500 and 6,700—of times for a variety of allegations.23 The most serious suits include wrongful death suits. Brian Crenshaw, a legally blind inmate arrested for shoplifting, died after allegedly falling from his bunk. Crenshaw purportedly assaulted a detention officer and was placed in lockdown for six days. On the sixth day, he fell from his bunk, suffering a perforated intestine and a broken neck; officers found him unconscious in his cell. The family of Charles Agster, a mentally disturbed man, filed a lawsuit against the county for his death after he was restrained improperly. Phillip Wilson died after being assaulted by other inmates; Pearl Wilson, his mother, claims the staff allowed this to happen. In 1996, an inmate, Scott Norberg, allegedly was handcuffed, dragged from his cell, and placed in a restraint chair with a towel over his face. He later died from ‘‘positional asphyxia,’’ according to medical reports. Norberg had been arrested for chasing and trying to kill two young girls; he was high on methamphetamines. MCSO employees contended Norberg was combative and uncooperative, and officers were trying to restrain him after he attacked them. The Norberg family filed a civil lawsuit against MCSO and Arpaio, which led to an investigation into jail conditions by several outside agencies. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a report in March 1996 conveying that conditions at the county’s jails were unconstitutional with regard to the use of excessive force against inmates and inmates’ medical needs. A year later Amnesty International launched an investigation into jail operations by sending representatives to tour the facilities. They concluded, ‘‘Detention officers appeared to resort to levels of force out of all proportion to the threat posed by the inmate. Where cases were investigated, however, the use of force was usually found to be justified by the jail authorities, despite questionable circumstances.’’24 The report also detailed concerns about the lack of security measures in the Tent City Jail, the use of chain gangs as a form of inhumane punishment, the misuse of restraint devices, the prevalent use of stun guns as a means of controlling inmates, the lack of privacy for female inmates, and treatment of juveniles. Amnesty International recommended changes such as delineating a clear policy regarding use of force, including a zero tolerance policy for excessive force, ensuring MCSO policies conformed to international standards on the use of force, ceasing to use the Tent City Jail, ceasing the issuance of stun guns to correctional staff, revising and strictly monitoring the use of restraint chairs, providing educational and rehabilitative opportunities to juveniles, and much more. In October 1997, the DOJ released a statement saying it had reached an agreement with MCSO for steps to be taken to ‘‘ensure guards do not engage in excessive force or misuse mechanical restraints against their

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prisoners.’’ Arpaio agreed to take steps such as obtaining additional funds from the county to increase its number of staff, increasing training aimed at dealing with difficult inmates, improving conditions of the Tent City Jail, revising procedures regarding the use of restraint chairs, and revising policy related to the use of nonlethal weapons by staff.25 Eventually, the lawsuit filed by the Norberg family was settled for $8.25 million, but more complaints were forthcoming. In 1999, the DOJ filed a complaint under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 1997–1997, in United States v. Maricopa County (D. Ariz.) regarding the medical and mental health services of inmates housed in the county’s penal facilities. ‘‘Simultaneously, the parties filed a settlement agreement that provided for hiring of additional medical and mental health staff; improved medical evaluation services both for intake and routine care; additional space for the provision of medical services; an improved distribution system for medications and monitoring of possible side effects; creation of an Infection Control Committee; and improved quality assurance mechanisms to assess the quality of medical and mental health services provided at the facilities.’’26 Despite Arpaio’s commitment to improving services of his agency as any elected official would do, subsequent lawsuits were filed. Arpaio has been sued regarding MCSO’s high-speed pursuit policy that was revised after two deaths, although it was in compliance with the International Association of Chiefs of Police model pursuit policy. Interestingly, many of the department’s policies are reviewed and updated periodically to ensure high standards and compliance with changing laws. The high-speed pursuit policy was due for its review and subsequently was changed, coincidentally at the time of the aforementioned deaths. MCSO is not the only law enforcement agency sued regarding pursuit policy. A recent Supreme Court case, Scott v. Harris, addresses this issue. In Georgia, Deputy Timothy Scott attempted to end a high-speed pursuit in order to safeguard other motorists by bumping the fleeing suspect’s vehicle and forcing it off the road. The vehicle crashed, rendering its driver paralyzed. The suspect sued the deputy, claiming his fourth amendment rights were violated, but the Court held Scott’s actions reasonable.27 Most recently, in 2007, Arpaio was sued for not taking a female inmate to an abortion clinic; the results of this lawsuit are still pending. Arpaio states he doesn’t mind the lawsuits, because he has not done anything wrong, and anyone can sue another person for anything these days. Inmate lawsuits are prevalent across the country in federal, state, and local institutions. The Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 passed by the U.S. Congress was an effort to stem the tide of lawsuits filed by inmates. Inmates file thousands of lawsuits, many of them frivolous, each year. One inmate sued the state of Oklahoma because he wanted to wear women’s underwear, while others have sued claiming their religious beliefs called for

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

a diet of steak and shrimp. A federal prisoner filed suit when a sweatsuit valued at twenty-five dollars was lost in the laundry; this suit was dismissed as frivolous. A court placed restrictions on one inmate from filing suits, considering that he had previously filed forty-seven suits, all of them unsuccessful.28 The point is that inmates have nothing but time on their hands, and many spend time suing the state, sheriffs, or other law enforcement officials instead of using their time wisely to rehabilitate themselves. Not only are inmate lawsuits common, but so too are deaths of inmates while in custody. The DOJ implemented the Death in Custody Reporting Program after the passage of the Death in Custody Reporting Act in 2000 (PL-106-297). This program has improved data collection methods from state prisons and local jails regarding inmate deaths to include specific causes of deaths such as cancer, heart diseases, hepatitis C, and AIDS, as well as specific inmate characteristics. Findings from the first report published since the implementation of the Death in Custody Reporting Program indicate that homicide rates in local jails have slightly declined from five per 100,000 in 1983 to three per 100,000 in 2002.29 Suicide accounted for more deaths than did homicide, forty-seven per 100,000 in 2002. The report also explains that the nation’s fifty largest jail jurisdictions reported a total of 1,037 deaths from all causes. Critics of Arpaio would like to paint the picture that inmates dying in his jails is an unusual phenomenon, when it is not. Los Angeles, New York, and Cook County, Illinois, the top three largest jail jurisdictions in the country, aggregately reported 252 deaths between 2000 and 2002. Maricopa County, being the fourth most populous jail system in the country, reported thirty-one deaths. The death count includes suicide, homicide, and other causes such as various illnesses. Considering the problems often associated with the criminal lifestyle, inmates are an unhealthy population, and this undoubtedly contributes to a higher mortality rate for this population when compared to general society. Deaths in Maricopa county jails are not all Arpaio is being criticized for; most recently it is regarding his stance toward illegal immigrants. Arpaio has been criticized for his policies on illegal immigration, an issue viewed by many as a federal problem. He disagrees with the plan supported by the U.S. Congress to address illegal immigration, so he devised his own method of dealing with it. He created a special force called the Illegal Immigration Interdiction (Triple I) Strike Force dedicated to arresting smugglers and illegal immigrants, and deputies have been cross-trained by Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement staff. As of May 2007, 546 arrests have been made, which were allowed under state law, for human smugglers. The most recent move in which Arpaio anticipates criticism is the implementation of an inmate organ donation program, the only of its kind in the country. Arpaio wants inmates to ‘‘have a heart’’ and sign up via the ‘‘I.DO!’’ program to voluntarily donate their hearts (and other vital organs and body parts). The program goals are to increase awareness for organ

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Policy Changes and Major Events During Office 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Elected Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona Restrictions on amenities, Tent City Jail, mall patrol posse Operation Zero Tolerance, Girl Scouts Beyond Bars Operation TAG, male chain gang, pink underwear Reelected sheriff, female chain gang, ALPHA program, Scott Norberg incident Hard Knocks High Pup tents for incarcerated teens U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Arpaio can ban pornography Reelected sheriff American flags painted in 2,000 cells after the 9–11 terrorist attacks Arrests made for plot to murder Arpaio Major animal cruelty investigation Reelected sheriff Sheriff’s posse helps Gulf Coast victims of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina English Learning Instruction KJOE Radio, Inmate Idle, Triple I Strike Force

donation and to motivate inmates to do something good for others. Inmates watch educational videos via the jail’s television programming, and staff are available to answer questions. Inmates are not pressured into donating their organs, and if they choose to do so, a postcard is sent to their family notifying them of the decision. The following section of this chapter discusses changes in federal crime policies that trickled down to affect the nation on local and state levels. A brief overview of several major pieces of legislation is provided, lending insight into the development of the get-tough stance toward crime and Arpaio’s place in the movement. NATIONWIDE SHIFT IN PENOLOGY: HARSHER IS BETTER The last several decades have seen conservative crime policies in which gettough sentencing reforms were implemented throughout the country and masses of people were incarcerated. The ‘‘War on Drugs’’ was in full swing and many of the federal crime initiatives focused on increasing penalties for drug law violators. There have been many examples of get-tough legislation, one of which was the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. This act resulted in changes in increased punitiveness in various areas of crime policies to include sentencing, forfeiture of assets associated with illegal activity, penalties for drug laws, and prosecution of certain juveniles as adults. For

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

instance, the 1984 statute repealed the Youth Corrections Act, abolishing all special forms of treatment and release, and replaced indeterminate sentencing with determinate sentencing. Because Maryland passed a life-withoutparole statute in 1987 representing the just-deserts stance taken by society, other federal initiatives further increased the powers of both federal and local law enforcement agencies in the quest to win the war on drugs. The point here is that both state and federal governments exhibited a commitment to reduce crime rates with increased sanctions. Shortly after the passage of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 became law. This legislation enabled federal agencies to increase focus on the reduction of supply and demand, and moreover, many drug-related activities such as growing, manufacturing, and trafficking in drugs were criminalized. Under the Act, new crimes were identified, making it illegal to utilize juveniles in selling drugs, to sell drugs to pregnant women, to sell drugs near educational institutions, and to launder drug money. Increasingly punitive legislation continued into the 1990s. During the presidency of Bill Clinton, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 authorized mandatory life imprisonment for persons convicted of two or more felonies, serious violent felonies, and serious drug offenses. Subsequent to passage of this act, the nation saw a multitude of new laws enacted in numerous states embracing this get-tough position on repeat offenders. For instance, life-without-parole statutes were passed in some states, Minnesota sentencing guidelines incorporated a grid for determining punishment of offenders based in part on prior criminal records, and California’s governor Pete Wilson approved Assembly Bill 971 that contained three-strikes legislation. These three-strikes laws placed considerable limitations on discretion of judges and prosecutors, who before were less limited by indeterminate sentencing laws. Subsequently, some scholars postulated that penal thinking and the ensuing policies had gone through an important model change to a ‘‘new penology’’ focusing on the management of aggregates instead of emphasis on the individual offender.30 Criminologist David Shichor’s study draws a correlation between three-strikes laws and the cultural model of fast-food restaurant management philosophy, ‘‘McDonaldization.’’31 He states this philosophy is utilized in other sectors of society, such as the criminal justice system, whereby values of efficiency, consistency, and control by technology are significant factors in the operation of the criminal justice system. The system places less emphasis on individuals and more on the masses. Consequently, the three-strikes laws are not only indicative of a new penology, but also an increasing trend toward ‘‘penal harm.’’ The penal harm movement refers to harsh treatment of criminals evidenced in legislation and both institutional and community correctional policies. The three-strikes legislation, life-without-parole statutes, policy changes within the correctional institutions, and increases in probation and

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parole revocations are all presented as examples of contributing factors of the movement. Researchers in a variety of disciplines such as criminal justice, politics, and psychology, cited many policies such as elimination of television privileges, exercise equipment, hot meals, and access to grants for college, as well as reinstitution of chain gangs as evidence of the momentum of the penal harm movement. Arpaio early on had implemented programs and policies that seemingly fell into this category of penal harm, but the intentions behind these changes were not as evil as thought at first glance. Arpaio admitted openly his penal philosophy: hard work, discipline, and no frills. But at the same time, he pointed out the positive benefits of these changes for inmates: increased sense of responsibility, instillation of a work ethic, and improvements in physical and mental health of inmates. Public opinion polls conducted in 1994 and 1995 indicated support for the penal harm movement, citing crime as the main problem in the United States, and touting overwhelming support for get-tough crime legislation. As a result many states, such as California, Georgia, Florida, and Washington followed, adopting three-strikes legislation supporting the punitive trend. Public support for Arpaio was and still is based on his get-tough stance and his commitment to treating inmates as inmates. Arpaio has consistently stated that jails should not be hotels. With respect to this new legislation, California was the first state to implement a mandatory three-strikes law. In March 1994, Assembly Bill 971 was passed, and its most notable provision was a requirement that judges impose ‘‘an indeterminate sentence of a minimum of twenty-five years to life, or triple the normal sentence, whichever is greater, on offenders convicted of certain serious or violent felonies if they have two previous convictions for any felony.32 Also, Assembly Bill 971 requires consecutive prison sentences for multiple-count convictions and limits good-time credits to 20 percent after the first strike. Slogans such as ‘‘do the crime, do the time’’ became popular, and under some of these new mandatory sentences, offenders were serving 85 percent of their sentences. The trend continued with other states enacting similar statutes. The Sentence Reform Act of 1994 was passed ‘‘authorizing life imprisonment without possibility of parole, pardon, early release, leave, or any other measure designed to reduce the sentence for any person convicted of a second serious violent felony.’’33 Thus, Georgia’s law is the most restrictive, by containing the ‘‘two-strikes’’ provision, as opposed to the normal three strikes. Unlike other states, though, Georgia’s law specifically pertains to violent felonies. Similarly, the state of Washington has strict and severe laws regarding ‘‘persistent offenders.’’ Washington’s law, for instance, stipulates that the governor is discouraged from pardoning offenders until they have reached a certain age and no longer pose a serious risk. Moreover, the governor of Washington must submit a report twice a year regarding ‘‘the persistent offenders he or she released during his or her term of office and that

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

the reports continue to be made for as long as the offender lives or at least ten years after his or her release from prison.’’34 Additional expressions of harsher punishments for offenders continued to materialize in sentencing. Another manifestation of this just-deserts or determinate sentencing model can be seen via life-without-parole statutes. This model was prevalent in most states, especially the southern states. In these instances two models are prevalent: statutes designed to incapacitate career criminals and others pertaining to society’s need for revenge on serious offenders. Cheatwood maintains that the American public has become increasingly dissatisfied with crime rates and, further, perceived judicial/correctional leniency has contributed to enactment of tougher sentences for criminal offenders.35 The state of Florida passed several mandatory sentencing statutes in 1988 and 1989, making it difficult, if not impossible, for offenders to earn good time credit. Also in Florida, several highly publicized crimes that occurred in 1993 and the murder of a female police officer and the murders of several tourists in 1994 and early 1995 sparked the passing of the 1995 Crime Control Act, which increased punishments for all types of offenses including nonviolent ones. Evelyn Gort, a Miami police officer, was off duty when she was killed by Wilber Mitchell, a parolee who had served only two months and seventeen days of his one-year sentence. The ‘‘Officer Evelyn Gort and All Fallen Officers Career Criminal Act’’ was enacted during a special session of the legislature in May 1995. The adult population of offenders was not the only group to feel the effects of tougher sentences; juveniles as well were affected. The juvenile justice system began a shift from rehabilitation toward punishment as juvenile crime rates increased. More and more juveniles were committing adult crimes, such as murder, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery. Critics of the juvenile system felt that the rehabilitative stance toward juveniles was hampering law enforcement goals of retribution and deterrence and called for a shift away from rehabilitation.36 Many states, including Texas, modified their judicial waiver statutes by expanding the offenses eligible for judicial waiver. Also, the age at which a juvenile may be waived to adult court was lowered to permit the allocation of more severe sanctions. Florida enhanced punishments for juveniles after the murder of British tourist Gary Colley during a failed robbery attempt at a rest stop in rural north Florida in September 1993 in which four juveniles, including a thirteen-year-old, were arrested for the murder. Arpaio’s jails hold about two hundred juveniles charged as adults; these juveniles are either awaiting trial or have been sentenced for serious felony or misdemeanor offenses. Arpaio believes their criminal behavior should not stand in the way of obtaining an education. If juvenile inmates are disruptive or have disciplinary problems while attending Hard Knocks High, they will not be kicked out; their education will just be delivered to them in a different way. They are not allowed to quit.

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The harsher penalties for juveniles combined with get-tough legislation led to an increase in incarceration rates across the nation. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 1985 the incarceration rate for jails and prisons combined was 313 inmates per 100,000 residents. By 1996, this rate had almost doubled to 615 inmates per 100,000 residents. Mid-year in 2000, the nation’s jails and prisons housed 1,931,859 inmates, a rate of 702 inmates per 100,000 residents. The incarceration rate continued to increase, and by mid-year 2005, 2,186,230 inmates were held in jails and prisons in the United States, with an imprisonment rate of 738 inmates per 100,000 residents. Maricopa County’s jail population mirrored the increasing national trends, as did many local jail populations. In 1993, when Arpaio took office, the county jail system held 3,000 inmates and by 1996 held approximately 5,600. By the year 2000, the jail population had increased to around 7,000, and by year-end 2004 to approximately 9,148.37 Arpaio wanted his officers to be able to arrest lawbreakers without fearing that not enough space was available in the county’s jail system, so he made sure there was room to hold everyone arrested. New facilities were constructed, including Tent City Jail, to house the increasing number of law violators. Taken together, various legislation enacted over the past thirty years has become increasingly punitive, as society and politicians have demanded harsher sentences for offenders, in turn increasing the number of individuals incarcerated. It is clear that treatment, prevention, and education regarding drug abuse was not a top priority during the 1980s and 1990s, yet the rehabilitative ideal was not completely dormant. In fact, some research during those decades revealed that citizens wanted offenders not only to be punished, but also rehabilitated.38 Several reasons, ranging from the need to reduce prison crowding to cost-effectiveness, have been cited in the literature for increase in support of rehabilitative measures for offenders. Although the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 promised to put 100,000 more police officers on the streets, it also was the first bill in years to provide a substantial sum for treatment of inmates in both state and local correctional facilities. Some states such as Texas had already begun to fund community-based substance abuse treatment for probationers in need of rehabilitation. This carte blanche funding for community supervision and corrections departments across the state again revealed increasing support for rehabilitation of offenders. In addition to funding for communitybased treatment, Texas legislators expanded correctional capacity by increasing its bed space by 90,000 between 1989 and 1995. Interestingly, of the 90,000 beds, 6,000 of those were assigned as treatment bed space for the large number of incarcerated substance abusers. It had become clear that drug abuse was a significant problem which needed to be addressed. Since the war on drugs, research shows that a large percentage of offenders incarcerated have drug or alcohol problems. In 1997, a survey of inmates in state and federal correctional facilities indicated that 83 percent

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

had a history of drug use, and about one in six reported committing their current offense to obtain money for drugs. A 2002 Bureau of Justice Statistics report indicates that in the year prior to incarceration, 68 percent of jail inmates reported symptoms that met substance abuse or dependence criteria.39 Arpaio knew all too well the effects drugs could have on people and with the support of staff implemented a variety of substance abuse programs inside Maricopa County jails to address the staggering numbers of inmates with these issues. Researchers began studying both the in-prison and community-based therapeutic community model treatment programs in hopes of positive outcomes. These studies have consistently shown that defendants who successfully complete the phases of a therapeutic community program have lower recidivism rates than those who have not undergone treatment.40 In one such study, Hartmann found that of clients who received treatment, only 14 percent had been arrested or convicted during the follow-up period, while those in the control group had been arrested twice as many times as the experimental group. Another study found decreased rates of recidivism, including relapse for offenders who continued treatment after work release.41 Arpaio’s programs have similar success rates, as the ALPHA program boasts only a 14 percent recidivism rate of its graduates.

ARPAIO AND POPULAR CULTURE Arpaio has attained the status of a crime-fighting icon, and rightly so. His achievement of this status can be explained by examining the influence of popular culture on the criminal justice arena and particular factors that have given rise to his status. Surette defines popular culture as ‘‘a common shared set of world knowledge that is pervasively distributed via the mass media.’’42 Mass media outlets such as movies, television, radio, the Internet, and print are chock full of crime stories. Hollywood has produced countless crime dramas: 12 Angry Men, Along Came a Spider, Beverly Hills Cop, Dead Man Walking, The Godfather, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction, Scarface, Silence of the Lambs, The Untouchables, and U.S. Marshals to name a few. There are hundreds of crime-related television programs such as America’s Most Wanted, American Justice, Boston Legal, The Closer, Cops, CSI: Miami, Dog the Bounty Hunter, FBI Files, The First 48, Law and Order, and NYPD Blue, and the list goes on. There is even a specific television station devoted solely to crime, truTV (formerly, Court TV). Every national and local news station airs at least one crime-related story almost every single day. The World Wide Web is host to millions of sites about crime and criminal justice. Information and news are able to travel at phenomenal speeds, so a large number of people read or hear about events almost instantaneously around the world. Because of the inundation of crime stories via

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the mass media, fascination with crime has become part of popular culture and has made Arpaio an icon of crime fighting. There are many definitions of icon, but the most appropriate that comes to mind here is a definition from the art world: things or persons that are considered the most admirable or recognizable examples of something.43 Perhaps because Arpaio has fought corruption in his forty-plus years as a law enforcement officer and stood up for what is right and ethical (including arresting ‘‘dirty cops’’) or perhaps because he dared to institute changes in the jails of Maricopa County that would no doubt spark criticism, has he achieved the status of an icon of crime fighting. He seems to be the most recognizable and admirable example of a law enforcement officer fighting crime in today’s society. Arpaio has actually achieved the status of crime-fighting icon based on numerous factors including controversial policies, innovative programs, and widespread media attention. In the early 1990s news of Arpaio’s controversial changes in Maricopa County spread around the globe. He first garnered worldwide attention after the construction of the Tent City Jail in 1993. News reporters from as far away as the Netherlands came to Arizona to catch a glimpse of the tent compound. The implementation of chain gangs for men, women, and juveniles helped boost his popularity, as did the scrapping of amenities for inmates (no pornography, no tobacco, etc.) Then when he ran for reelection in 1996, Arpaio was the first Republican sheriff reelected in Maricopa County since 1919. His approval rating by citizens of the county consistently hovers around 65 percent despite negative press coverage, criticisms by civil rights organizations such as Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union, and lawsuits. And he would not be a part of popular culture unless someone had tried to kill him, right? Well, Arpaio has had his life threatened numerous times; several people have even plotted to kill him, but were arrested. Despite the death threats he continues to carry out his job in the public eye. Sheriff Arpaio has been featured in more than 2,000 national and international print sources and radio and television programs. He has been written about in such respected publications as The New York Times, Time magazine, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. In fact, he has been written about in almost every developed country in the world. He has gueststarred on television programs including The Donahue Show, Politically Incorrect, Good Morning America, and The Today Show and has been featured on other programs such as 20/20 and 60 Minutes. In 2004 Arpaio was a guest on Penn & Teller’s Bullshit show on cable television, which featured an episode about the war on the drugs and other guests such as a Harvard Medical School professor, the president of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the editor of High Times magazine, and a former drug smuggler. In May 2007, Arpaio made national news when he offered Los Angeles County Sheriff’s officials to transfer Hollywood party

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

girl Paris Hilton to his jail to serve her DUI sentence. She would not get special treatment in Arizona; Arpaio said he would put her in Tent City Jail, and she could even volunteer to work on the chain gang. His request, however, was declined by Los Angeles County officials. In addition to television appearances, Arpaio has dabbled in radio as well. In February 2007, he launched his own radio station called KJOE radio inside the county jails. Partnering with Tim and Willy of KNIX radio, KJOE radio is broadcast from the Fourth Avenue Jail four hours a day, five days a week. Arpaio said the radio station features educational programming, wholesome music, and live chat forums with local community leaders, business people, and health specialists. Arpaio has met important political figures such as President George W. Bush, Senator Bob Dole, Utah governor and 2008 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, and Senator John McCain. He has also met celebrities such as John Walsh, host of America’s Most Wanted. Walsh’s son, Adam, was abducted from a mall in Florida in 1981 and subsequently murdered. Walsh became a high-profile victim’s advocate, went on to host America’s Most Wanted, and was instrumental in the formation of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Walsh and America’s Most Wanted worked on several local stories, and Arpaio’s tough stance toward crime naturally drew their attention. Arpaio and Walsh became friends early in Arpaio’s career, and they have supported each other throughout the years. Walsh conducted the swearing-in ceremony after the last election, and recently Arpaio launched the use of facial recognition technology in a local elementary school in June 2007 in support of the efforts of many, including Walsh, with missing children. The technology is designed to identify sexual predators who attempt to enter schools and to compare children’s faces to those in the database of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Early in 2007, Arpaio met Paula Abdul, singer, choreographer, and celebrity judge on American Idol. Arpaio launched his own version of the popular television program, calling his Inmate Idle in March 2007. Inmates cast their votes for their favorites and the six final contestants showcased their singing talents in front a panel of celebrity judges, including Arpaio, rock and roll singer Alice Cooper, and an Elvis impersonator. Arpaio said this program helped to make use of inmates’ idle time, hence the name of the program. He also stated that the contest helped to build inmates’ self-esteem and promote positive interactions among inmates and did not cost the taxpayers anything. Ty Pennington, host of ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and former carpenter on TLC’s popular reality show Trading Spaces, paid a visit to Arizona and met the sheriff while in town. The television show needed manpower to help with the home for a young cancer survivor, and Arpaio called on his posse to help with the task. Additionally, Arpaio has met John W. Teets, former owner of the Dial Corporation; Steve Elman, former owner of

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the Phoenix Coyotes minor league hockey team; and local celebrity chef Eddie Matney. Despite the negative publicity and criticisms, Arpaio is still the sheriff of Maricopa County. He has been in office since 1993 and has instituted many changes and faced many challenges. He is seventy-five years old and does not have plans to retire anytime soon. He credits much of his success to the steadfast support of his wife Ava, to whom he has been married for fifty years. Despite the long work hours, the dangers of the job, and the constant moving around the country, she has stood by his side. Because he does not have any hobbies, he works twelve to fourteen hours a day. Surprisingly though, he admits to being a fan of romantic movies, so he goes to the theater with his wife. They go to the mall together and she attends many workrelated functions with him; they go everywhere together. The position as sheriff of Maricopa County is Arpaio’s favorite position of all the positions he’s held throughout his career. He truly loves being a ‘‘beat cop,’’ and Maricopa County is his beat. He takes pride in his position and would not be doing it if he could not do it his way. In fact, his cell phone ring tone is Elvis’ rendition of ‘‘My Way.’’ He is tough; he is passionate about his job, and even though he may be viewed as a politician, he does not like politicians. He said he is not going to let any politician tell him what to do because he serves the people. Consider these voter statistics: In 1992, during the primary election for the sheriff’s race, Arpaio won 52 percent (77,000 votes) of the vote while his opponent had 47 percent. In the general election that same year Arpaio received 428,575 votes while his opponent received 318,774 votes. In 1996 Arpaio ran for sheriff unopposed and received 651,073 votes; he received more votes statewide than any other candidate except President Clinton who garnered 653,288 votes. In 2000, Arpaio received 74 percent of the votes in the primary and 66 percent of the votes in the general election, defeating his opponent by a landslide. He won both the primary and general elections in 2004 with 56 percent. As long as people continue to vote for him, he will continue to implement programs to improve Maricopa County. NOTES 1. Robert Martinson, ‘‘What Works: Questions and Answers About Prison Reform,’’ The Public Interest 22 (1974). 2. Joe Arpaio (Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona), interview by Kelli D. Stevens, February 23, 2007, Phoenix, AZ (hereafter cited as Arpaio Interview). 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Len Sherman, America’s Toughest Sheriff: How to Win the War Against Crime (Arlington, TX: Summit Publishing Group, 1996), 168 (hereafter cited as America’s Toughest Sheriff ).

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

6. Arpaio Interview. 7. America’s Toughest Sheriff, 171. 8. Arpaio Interview. 9. America’s Toughest Sheriff, 186. 10. Ibid, 30. 11. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Official Biography, (Phoenix, 2006). 12. America’s Toughest Sheriff, 47. 13. America’s Toughest Sheriff, 107. 14. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, The Posse Battles an Age-Old Problem: Prostitution (Phoenix, [1996?]). 15. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, A Return to Chain Gangs (Phoenix, Arizona [1996?]). 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. Stacey Opland, Pink Underwear Reveal Prison Escapee (Coeur d’Alene, ID: The Backup Training Corporation, 2000), http://www.thebackup.com/archives_ newsdetail.asp?id=753/. 19. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, Inmate Programs: Alpha Programs (Phoenix, 2005), http://www.mcso.org/index.php?a=GetModule&mn=Inmate_Programs &page=Alpha/. 20. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, Adult Inmate Programs (Phoenix, 2005), http://www.mcso.org/index.php?a=GetModule&mn=Inmate_Programs&page= Adult/. 21. Arpaio.com: Recall Arpaio in 2005!, ‘‘Top Ten Reasons to RECALL Joe Arpaio,’’ (2004), http://www.arpaio.com/index.htm/. 22. Mothers Against Arpaio official Web site, http://www.mothersagainstarpaio. com/. 23. Linda Bentley, ‘‘Sheriff Joe Featured in ‘Torture: America’s Brutal Prisons’,’’ Sonoran News, March 2, 2005, http://www.november.org/stayinfo/breaking3/Sheriff JoeBBC.html/. 24. Amnesty International Online Library, Ill Treatment of Inmates in Maricopa County Jail, Arizona, (1997), AMR 51/051/1997, http://web.amnesty.org/library/ index/engAMR510511997?open&of=eng-2am/. 25. U.S. Department of Justice, ‘‘Jails in Maricopa County, Arizona to take steps to reduce excessive force and use of improper restraints under justice department agreement,’’ news release, October 31, 1997, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/default.stm/. 26. U.S. Department of Justice, ‘‘CRIPA Activities in FY 2000,’’ http://www.us doj.gov/crt/split/documents/cripa00.htm/. 27. Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. (2007). 28. Nagy v. FMC Butner, No. 03-6736, 2004 U.S. App. Lexis 15042 (4th Cir.). 2004 JB Sep, Sims v. Scopelitis, No. 50A03-0211-CV-399, 797 N.E.2d 348 (Ind. App. 2003). 29. Christopher J. Mumola, ‘‘Suicide and Homicide in State Prisons and Local Jails,’’ (August, 2005 NCJ 210036), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 1. 30. David Shichor, ‘‘Three Strikes as Public Policy: The Convergence of the New Penology and the McDonaldization of Punishment,’’ Crime & Delinquency 43(4)

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(1997): 470–92; Craig Haney and Philip Zimbardo, ‘‘The Past and Future of U.S. Prison Policy: Twenty-five Years after the Stanford Prison Experiment,’’ American Psychologist 53(7) (1998): 709–27. 31. David Shichor, Crime & Delinquency 470–92. 32. Peter J. Benekos and Alida V. Merlo, ‘‘Three Strikes and You’re Out!: The Political Sentencing Game,’’ Federal Probation 59(1) (1995): 5. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Derral Cheatwood, ‘‘The Life-without-Parole Sanction: Its Current Status and a Research Agenda,’’ Crime & Delinquency 34(1) (1998): 43. 36. Eric J. Fritsch, Tory J. Caeti, and C. Hemmens, ‘‘Spare the Needle But Not the Punishment: The Incarceration of Waived Youth in Texas Prisons,’’ Crime & Delinquency 42(4) (1996), 593–609. 37. Darrell K. Gilliard and Allen J. Beck, ‘‘Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 1996,’’ U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics bulletin, January, 1997, NCJ 162843, 1; Allen J. Beck and Jennifer C. Karberg, ‘‘Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2000,’’ U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics bulletin, March, 2001, NCJ 185989, 1; Paige M. Harrison and Allen J. Beck, ‘‘Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005,’’ U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics bulletin, May, 2006, NCJ 213133, 1; Paige M. Harrison and Allen J. Beck, ‘‘Prison and Jail Inmates at Yearend 2004,’’ U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics bulletin, April, 2005, NCJ 208801, 10. 38. Jody L. Sundt, Francis T. Cullen, Brandon K. Applegate, and Michael G. Turner, ‘‘The Tenacity of the Rehabilitative Ideal Revisted: Have Attitudes Toward Offender Treatment Changed?’’ Criminal Justice & Behavior 25(4) (1998): 426–42. 39. James D. Griffith, Matthew L. Hiller, Kevin Knight, and Donald D. Simpson, ‘‘A Cost-Effective Analysis of In-Prison Therapeutic Community Treatment and Risk Classification,’’ Prison Journal 79(3) (1999): 352; Christopher J. Mumola, ‘‘Substance Abuse and Treatment, State and Federal Prisoners, (1997) U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics bulletin, January, 1999, NCJ 172871, 1; Jennifer C. Karberg and Doris J. James, ‘‘Substance Dependence, Abuse, and Treatment of Jail Inmates, 2002,’’ U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics bulletin, July, 2005, NCJ 209588, 1. 40. William D. Bales, Shann Van Slyke, and Thomas G. Bloomberg, ‘‘Substance abuse treatment in prison and community reentry: Breaking the Cycle of Drugs, Crime, Incarceration, and Recidivism?’’ Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy 13(2) (2006): 1; Matthew L. Hiller, Kevin Knight, and D. Dwayne Simpson, ‘‘Recidivism following Mandated Residential Substance Abuse Treatment for Felony Probationers,’’ Prison Journal 86(2) (2006): 230; David J. Hartmann, James L. Wolk, Scott Johnston, and Corey J. Colyer, ‘‘Recidivism and Substance Abuse Outcomes in a Prison-based Therapeutic Community,’’ Federal Probation 61(4) (1997): 18–25. 41. Hartmann, Recidivism and Substance Abuse Outcomes, 25; Steven S. Martin, Clifford A. Butzin, Christine A. Saum, and James A. Inciardi, ‘‘Three-year Outcomes of Therapeutic Community Treatment for Drug-involved Offenders in Delaware: From Prison to Work Release to Aftercare,’’ Prison Journal 79(3) (1999): 294.

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42. R. Surette, Media, Crime and Criminal Justice: Images and realities (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1992). 43. Art & Framing Designs, http://www.artandframingdesigns.com/resources_ art.html/.

FURTHER READING Arpaio.com: Recall Arpaio in 2005!, Top Ten Reasons to RECALL Joe Arpaio. 2004. http://www.arpaio.com/index.htm/. Arpaio, Joe, and Len Sherman. 1996. America’s Toughest Sheriff: How to Win the War Against Crime. Arlington, TX: Summit Publishing Group. Art & Framing Designs. http://www.artandframingdesigns.com/resources_art.html/. Bales, William D., Shann Van Slyke, and Thomas G. Bloomberg. 2006. Substance abuse treatment in prison and community reentry: Breaking the cycle of drugs, crime, incarceration, and recidivism? Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy 13(2): 1. Beck, Allen J., and Jennifer C. Karberg. 2001. Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2000. U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin March, NCJ 185989, 1. Benekos, Peter J., and Alida V. Merlo. 1995. Three strikes and you’re out!: The political sentencing game. Federal Probation 59(1): 5. Cheatwood, Derral. 1998. The life-without-parole sanction: Its current status and a research agenda. Crime & Delinquency 34(1): 43. Fritsch, Eric J., Tory J. Caeti, and C. Hemmens. 1996. Spare the needle but not the punishment: The incarceration of waived youth in Texas prisons. Crime & Delinquency 42(4), 593–609. Gilliard, Darrell K., and Allen J. Beck, 1997. Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 1996. U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, January, NCJ 162843, 1. Griffith, James D., Matthew L. Hiller, Kevin Knight, and Donald D. Simpson. 1999. A cost-effective analysis of in-prison therapeutic community treatment and risk classification. Prison Journal 79(3): 352. Haney, Craig, and Philip Zimbardo. 1998. The past and future of U.S. prison policy: Twenty-five years after the Stanford Prison Experiment. American Psychologist 53(7): 709–727. Harrison, Paige M., and Allen J. Beck. 2005. Prison and Jail Inmates at Yearend 2004. U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, April, NCJ 208801, 10. Harrison, Paige M., and Allen J. Beck. 2006. Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005. U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, May, NCJ 213133, 1. Hartmann, David J., James L. Wolk, Scott Johnston, and Corey J. Colyer. 1997. Recidivism and substance abuse outcomes in a prison-based therapeutic community. Federal Probation 61(4): 18–25.

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Hiller, Matthew L., Kevin Knight, and D. Dwayne Simpson. 2006. Recidivism following mandated residential substance abuse treatment for felony probationers. Prison Journal 86(2): 230. Karberg, Jennifer C., and Doris J. James. 2005. Substance dependence, abuse, and treatment of jail inmates, 2002. U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, July, NCJ 209588, 1. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. 1996. The Posse Battles an Age-Old Problem: Prostitution. Phoenix, Arizona. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. 1996. A Return to Chain Gangs. Phoenix, Arizona. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. 2005. Adult Inmate Programs. Phoenix, Arizona. http://www.mcso.org/index.php?a=GetModule&mn=Inmate_Programs&page= Adult/. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. Inmate Programs: Alpha Programs. Phoenix, Arizona. http://www.mcso.org/index.php?a=GetModule&mn=Inmate_Programs& page=Alpha/. Martin, Steven S., Clifford A. Butzin, Christine A. Saum, and James A. Inciardi. 1999. Three-year outcomes of therapeutic community treatment for druginvolved offenders in Delaware: From prison to work release to aftercare. Prison Journal 79(3): 294. Martinson, Robert. 1974. What Works: Questions and Answers About Prison Reform. The Public Interest 22. Mumola, Christopher J. 2005. Suicide and Homicide in State Prisons and Local Jails. (August, 2005 NCJ 210036), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 1. Mumola, Christopher J. Substance Abuse and Treatment, State and Federal Prisoners. 1997. U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, January, 1999, NCJ 172871, 1. Opland, Stacey. 2000. Pink Underwear Reveal Prison Escapee. Coeur d’Alene, IH: The Backup Training Corporation. http://www.thebackup.com/archives_news detail.asp?id=753/. Shichor, David. 1997. Three strikes as public policy: The convergence of the new penology and the McDonaldization of punishment. Crime & Delinquency 43(4): 470–492. Sundt, Jody L., Francis T. Cullen, Brandon K. Applegate, and Michael G. Turner. 1998. The tenacity of the rehabilitative ideal revisited: Have attitudes toward offender treatment changed? Criminal Justice & Behavior 25(4): 426–442. Surette, R. 1992. Media, Crime and Criminal Justice: Images and Realities. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.

AP Images/John McCoy

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In the field of criminal justice there have been a lot of people who have made many contributions, both good and bad. For former Los Angeles Police detective Mark Fuhrman, his contributions to the field have been legendary. In 1995 Mark Fuhrman served as a state’s witness in the trial of former pro football player, O. J. Simpson. Mark Fuhrman was a detective assigned to the homicide division investigating a murder that took place in the upscale neighborhood of Brentwood located just inside Los Angeles, California. This detective was called to the stand to testify about the crime scene and the evidence that he found. However, this trial began to take a turn for the worse. This police detective began to be the target of the defense. Mark Furhman’s past began to catch up with him. When he made racist comments into an audio recorder, he never thought that they would come back to haunt him in a court of law. This highly decorated police officer then became the butt of every joke about racists in the United States. When detective Fuhrman was placed on the stand to testify regarding the Simpson and Goldman murders, he thought that it was going to be about his crime scene investigation techniques or how well he preserved any evidence that was obtained while investigating the murders. One of the most famous criminal defense attorneys in the country, F. Lee Bailey, began to ask detective Fuhrman questions regarding his role as the lead homicide detective. Bailey then began to ask him questions regarding his views toward African Americans and how he felt about them. Detective Fuhrman just assumed the defense attorney was fishing for something—anything that would discredit him. Fuhrman was asked if he had ever used any racist slang or words such as the ‘‘n-word’’ in describing African Americans. Mark Fuhrman adamantly stated ‘‘no.’’ Most professors of law will state that a first-year law student is taught while cross examining a witness not to ask a question to which you do not know the answer or cannot prove the answer. Detective Fuhrman was dealing with a defense attorney with impeccable credentials and experience. Mark Fuhrman underestimated F. Lee Bailey. After Detective Fuhrman adamantly denied using racial slurs toward minorities, the defense team produced tapes of Fuhrman using numerous racial slurs and demeaning remarks toward people of different races and backgrounds, particularly African Americans. The defense team was also successful at convincing the jury that Fuhrman planted the infamous bloody glove in the case. This put into serious question his credibility and motives. The defense exploited this doubt and was able to convince a jury to find O. J. Simpson not guilty of the murder of his ex-wife and Ronald Goldman. Fuhrman was subsequently charged with perjury and pled guilty, becoming a probationer. He was now on the other side of the fence within the criminal justice system. He was ordered to retire from the police department and moved to Idaho to start a new life for himself. Throughout Mark Fuhrman’s life he will be known as the ‘‘racist cop from the O. J. Simpson trial.’’

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Mark Fuhrman Plea Agreement for Perjury Committed during O. J. Simpson Trial: Dated October 2, 1996 Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles, Central District The People of the State of California, Plaintiff, v. Mark Fuhrman, Defendant Original Charge: Count I: Violation of Penal Code section 118 (a felony) Convicted Of: One Count, Count I of Information, of Penal Code sec. 118 Date of Offense: On or about March 15, 1995. Guilty by: Plea of nolo contendre. Date: 10/2/96 Judge: Ouderkirk Actual Time In Custody: 0 days 4019 P.C. Time: 0 days No. BA 109275 Personal History in Lieu of Probation Report Hearing: 10/2/96 Time: 9:00 Dept.: 109 Bail: O.R. Negotiated Plea: People v. West plea: Defendant plead no contest with an understanding: 1. no jail time; 2. three years probation; 3. probation supervision in defendant’s current state of residence; 4. the minimum restitution fine; 5. the single term of probation that defendant violate no laws; and 6. entry of a plea of nolo contendre. Defendant has entered a waiver pursuant to People v. Harvey. Co-Defendants: None Attorney: Darryl Mounger Personal History Legal Name: Mark Fuhrman A.K.A.: None Address: [REDACTED] Telephone: Age: 44 Date of Birth: February 5, 1952 Birthplace: Tacoma, Washington Race/Ethnicity: White Citizenship: United States of America (continued )


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Date Arrived in L.A. County: 1975 Date Arrived in State: 1970 Sex: M Height: 6’ 2’’ Weight: 205 Hair: Brown Eyes: Brown Driver’s License No.: [REDACTED] State of Issuance: [REDACTED] Social Security No.: [REDACTED] Education: High school and approximately 2 years college Military Service: U. S. Marine Corps: 1970–1975 Type of Discharge: Honorable Health/Handicaps: None known Alcohol/Drug Use: No drugs, non-abusive occasional alcohol consumption Father’s Name: [REDACTED] Address: [REDACTED] Mother’s Name: [REDACTED] No. of Brothers: [REDACTED]; No. of Sisters: [REDACTED] Ages: [REDACTED] Present Spouse: [REDACTED] Address: Same Former spouse(s): [REDACTED] Addresses: Unknown Defendant’s Children Name . . . . Age . . . . Custody . . . . Supported by [REDACTED] Employment Record From . . . To: 1975 . . . 1995 Employer: Los Angeles Police Department Type of Work: Law Enforcement Salary [REDACTED] 1995 Criminal History Present Requesting Agency: California Department of Justice Date: 10/2/96 Surrendered BI No.: . . .; CII No.: . . .; FBI No: . . . No Criminal Record Circumstance of the Offense Defendant was one of the two detectives originally assigned to investigate the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. He arrived at the crime scene located on Bundy Drive in Brentwood in the early morning hours of June 12, 1994. Upon arrival, Defendant began his investigation. Within an hour of his arrival, defendant was notified two more senior detectives had been assigned responsibility for the case.

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When the two senior detectives arrived, they requested defendant accompany them to the house of the deceased woman’s husband. At this second location, Rockingham Drive, defendant made several evidentiary discoveries which eventually led to the arrest of O. J. Simpson, the former husband of the deceased woman. In July 1994, defendant appeared as a witness for the prosecution in the preliminary hearing of the homicide case against Simpson. Defendant was called as a prosecution witness in the homicide trial of People v. Simpson (Los Angeles Superior Court No. BA 097211) in March 1995. Defendant was cross-examined on March 14 and 15, 1995. On March 15, 1995, defendant was asked the following questions by the cross-examiner and gave the following answers: ‘‘I will rephrase it. I want you to assume that perhaps at sometime since 1985 or 6, you addressed a member of the African American race as a nigger. Is it possible that you have forgotten that act on your part?’’ A. ‘‘No, it is not possible.’’ Q.

‘‘Are you therefore saying that you have not used that word in the past ten years, Detective Fuhrman?’’ A. ‘‘Yes, that is what I’m saying.’’ Q.

‘‘And you say under oath that you have not addressed any black person as a nigger or spoken about black people as niggers in the past ten years, Detective Fuhrman.’’ A. ‘‘That’s what I’m saying, sir.’’ Q.

‘‘So that anyone who comes to this court and quotes you as using that word in dealing with African Americans would be a liar, would they not, Detective Fuhrman?’’ A. ‘‘Yes, they would.’’ Q.

Q. ‘‘All of them, correct.’’ A. ‘‘All of them.’’

Source: People v. Simpson, Vol. 107, p. 18899. On September 5, 1995, Laura Hart McKinney testified. In her testimony she laid the foundation for two tape-recorded excerpts which, in Defendant’s own statements as recorded, impeached Defendant’s denial of any use of the racial epithet during the ten-year period. She also testified that Defendant had used the epithet in nonrecorded conversations during the ten-year time period. Three other witnesses, Kathleen Bell, Natalie Singer, and Roderick Hodge, each testified to instances of Defendant’s use of the racial epithet within the ten-year period.

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On September 6, 1995, Defendant was recalled to the witness stand as a defense witness. Out of the presence of the trial jury, Defendant asserted his constitutional right not to incriminate himself. Defendant’s Statement Through his attorney, Defendant has stated he is entering a People v. West plea because he believes it is in his best interest to do so. Defendant deeply regrets the effect his testimony has had on the general public, the Los Angeles Police Department and its employees, and his family. Sentencing Considerations Violation of Penal Code section 118 is a felony punishable by a term of two, three, or four years in prison. A person convicted of the offense is eligible for probation and may be supervised out of state pursuant to the interstate compact. Criteria Affecting Probation [Rule of Court 414] (a) Crime-related facts: (1) Seriousness as compared to other instances of the same crime. While perjury is always a serious offense, it is rare that a witness who has given testimony is prosecuted for that perjury. When there is prosecution, the usual case involves a situation in which the witness has given false testimony about an event related to the crime or provided a false alibi. Here there is no evidence that defendant gave any false testimony about his investigative efforts. The false testimony related to personal use of a racial epithet during a time period that pre-dated the criminal investigation. An argument can be made that this type of perjury is less serious than giving false testimony about the investigation. (a)(2) No weapon was involved. (a)(3) No individual victim was involved. (a)(4) No injury was inflicted on any person. (a)(5) There was no individual who suffered monetary loss. (a)(6) Defendant was an active participant in the crime. (a)(7) There are unique circumstances in the commission of the offense. (a)(8) No criminal sophistication was demonstrated. (a)(9) The Defendant did take advantage of a position of trust and confidence in the commission of the offense. (b) Defendant-related facts (b)(1) No prior criminal record. (b)(2) Not applicable because defendant has never before been placed on parole or probation.

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(b)(3) Defendant is willing to comply with the terms and conditions of probation. (b)(4) Defendant is able to comply with the terms of probation. (b)(5) Imprisonment would create financial hardship on the Defendant’s dependents. Because of his background as a police officer Defendant would be at risk in prison. There is no evidence that Defendant needs to be incarcerated to deter him from future similar criminal conduct. (b)(6) Defendant’s primary adult employment was as a peace officer. One result of this conviction is Defendant is precluded from ever again being a peace officer in California. (Government Code, Section 1029.) The high profile that resulted from the events surrounding the crime as well as the news focus that the conviction will create will make it difficult for Defendant to find employment at any professional level. (b)(7) The remarks of defendant as reported by his counsel indicate remorse. (b)(8) Defendant presents no danger to others. It would appear that defendant is an appropriate candidate for probation. Circumstances in Aggravation [Rule of Court 421] The factors which appear to be circumstances in aggravation are: Rule 421(a)(6): Defendant’s perjury illegally interfered with the judicial process. Rule 421 (a)(11): Defendant took advantage of a position of trust. Circumstances in Mitigation [Rule of Court 423] The factors which appear to be circumstances in mitigation are: Rule 423(a)(6): There was no physical harm to any persons or property. Rule 423 (b)(1): The Defendant has no prior criminal record. Rule 423(b)(3): The Defendant has voluntarily acknowledged wrongdoing at an early stage of the criminal process. Submitted by: John A. Gordnier Sr. Assistant Attorney General, Counsel For The People /s/ John A. Gordnier John A. Gordnier Darryl Mounger Counsel for Defendant /s/Darryl Mounger Darryl Mounger (continued )


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The within and foregoing history in lieu of probation report has been read and considered by me this 2nd day of October, 1996. /s/John W. Ouderkirk John W. Ouderkirk Judge of the Superior Court Source: http://www.lectlaw.com/files/case63.htm/

After this infamous trial everyone thought that Mark Fuhrman would disappear from the public light. After a few years had passed, however, Mark Fuhrman wanted to put his investigative skills to good use. He still had the training and knowledge of a homicide cop. He decided to put down all he had experienced in the O. J. Simpson case into a book titled Murder in Brentwood. In the wake of the nation’s interest in the JonBenet Ramsey case, Fuhrman was later approached by distinguished crime author Dominick Dunne to look into a murder of a young teen some thirty years before. Not too sure if he wanted to get back into the public eye, he reluctantly accepted the assignment to write a book about the murder of Martha Moxley, a teenager who lived in the upscale neighborhood of Greenwich, Connecticut. Hopefully this book would be redemption for the wrongs that he had done in the past. The book garnered national attention and led to the eventual arrest and charge of Fuhrman’s named prime suspect for the murder. After the success of Murder in Greenwich: Who Killed Martha Moxley? Mark Fuhrman found himself examining other unsolved cases, utilizing his detective skills and his newfound writing ones. Since the O. J. Simpson trial, Mark Fuhrman has authored four books on various cases with a unique analysis. In his latest book, Death and Justice, Fuhrman examines the Oklahoma death penalty system and comes to a remarkable transformation. He begins to change his view of the death penalty in the United States. In this book he notices the flaws of discretion within the Oklahoma Court and Corrections systems. He uncovers corruption within the District Attorney’s office and policing agencies. He states that, as a police officer, he always believed in the death penalty and believes that we do not use it enough. However in Death and Justice he makes a 180-degree turn on this stance. He states that the death penalty is racist and corrupted and needs serious reform. He even goes to suggest a moratorium on all death penalty cases and has become a supporter of abolishing the death penalty. From the trials and tribulations of the O. J. Simpson case to his reexamination of unsolved cases that eventually produced convictions and to his transformation from death penalty supporter to abolitionism advocate, Mark Fuhrman has become a person in search of redemption from his past

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problems. Is the public still willing, however, to give this man a second chance? This chapter gives a historical background of this infamous icon of criminal justice. It will also describe Mark Fuhrman’s role in the O. J. Simpson case, which catalyzed his professional demise, and his reinvestigation of the Martha Moxley murder, which placed Fuhrman tentatively on the path toward professional redemption. It will also address his involvement with the capital punishment system in Oklahoma, which completely reversed his view about the death penalty.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Mark Fuhrman was born February 5, 1952, in Eatonville, Washington. His parents were Ralph, a truck driver, and Billie. Mark and his younger brother were descended from a German immigrant family. In 1970, at the age of eighteen, Fuhrman enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. After rising through the ranks to that of sergeant, Fuhrman was honorably discharged in 1975. Later that year he joined the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) as a police officer. Fuhrman worked his way up from a ‘‘beat cop’’ to the role of detective and served on the force for twenty years. By 1980, Fuhrman had been married and divorced twice, before marrying Caroline Lody, the wife who saw him through most of the LAPD years and the O. J. Simpson trial. They had two children, a daughter and a son. Fuhrman earned more than fifty-five commendations in the line of duty before retiring, an act that is itself shrouded in controversy, much like the rest of Fuhrman’s career, both past and present. Fuhrman, now divorced, lives in Idaho, where he moved, and is an avid outdoorsman. Rumors abound that the area of Idaho where Fuhrman moved his family is populated by white supremacist separatists, further casting suspicion on his status as a racist in the eyes of some. Mark Fuhrman spent many months in the spotlight of the public fury surrounding the murder trial of O. J. Simpson. The detective became one of the trial’s most easily recognized players when the criminal trial’s prosecution used evidence that he collected as a key factor in their case. The evidence included blood drops on Simpson’s car and outside his guest house as well as the ‘‘bloody glove’’ that he discovered at Simpson’s estate. The contribution that this evidence made to their case eventually was outweighed by the focus of the defense on the character of Detective Fuhrman. Specifically, they implied that he may have been the lynchpin in the police frameup of Mr. Simpson by having planted evidence like the bloody glove. The defense team made claims that Fuhrman had racially motivated intentions by bringing to light statements that he had made previously in which he used racial slurs. Mr. Fuhrman had denied using such terms on the stand in front of the jury, but was proven incorrect when audio evidence was

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presented in court. In this evidence, Fuhrman was heard to use racial slurs such as the infamous ‘‘n-word.’’ THE SIMPSON-GOLDMAN MURDERS: THE DRAMA BEGINS Late on a Sunday night, a dog barked relentlessly. Neighbors first noticed the dog, a white Akita, at approximately 10:15 P.M. By 11:00 P.M., a neighbor walking his own dog encountered the obviously distressed pooch pacing back and forth on the sidewalk. The Akita followed him home, and when the neighbor attended to the poor animal, he noticed that the dog’s underbelly and paws were covered with a sticky red substance that could only be blood. Other neighbors intended to care for the dog overnight, but the Akita was so restless, they tried to walk the dog in an attempt to calm it down. The dog steered the pair directly to 875 Bundy, where it stopped and gazed into the blackness at the side of the condominium. The neighbors carefully peered in the direction where the dog was looking and thought they could make out a body lying at the foot of the steps. The couple immediately contacted police, and a story that would hold a nation spellbound as it unraveled and divide a country with its twists and turns was set in motion. THE CASE OF A LIFETIME In the wee hours of June 13, 1994, LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman received the assignment that would forever change the course of his life and people’s views of race and crime in the United States. He, along with his partner Brad Roberts, was called to investigate a double murder at a condominium located at 875 Bundy. Little did he know that the investigation of two Brentwood killings would lead him to the home of a former professional football superstar and American icon before sunrise. Fuhrman and his supervisor, Ron Phillips, arrived at the residence at 2:10 A.M. The two conducted a visual inspection of the crime scene, ‘‘eyeballing’’ it, without getting too close to the two bodies or their immediate surroundings. Roberts arrived during this time, making him the eighteenth police officer to sign in at the scene of the crime. Fuhrman dug out his notepad and began making notes of the things he saw—a bloody fingerprint on the rear gate; what he thought was a ski mask near the male victim; a blood trail that led from the back of the property down an adjacent alley, stopping abruptly; a bloodstained left-hand leather glove lying inches from Nicole Brown Simpson’s body, underneath a plant. Fuhrman’s keen attention to detail would later come to haunt him during the trial. Not long after Roberts’ arrival, approximately ten to fifteen minutes, Phillips was informed that the investigation of the case would be conducted by Homicide Special Section of the Robbery/Homicide Division of the

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LAPD, which was considered to be the foremost murder investigation team in the Los Angeles area. Fuhrman and Roberts would remain at the scene but were no longer to lead the investigation. Fuhrman wrote more details in his notebook in anticipation of being asked about them later. According to Fuhrman, when he was interviewed about his involvement with the investigation, he was never asked about many of the details he documented. Vannatter and Phillips walked the crime scene without disturbing the decedents, which could only be done by the investigators from the county coroner’s office. The officers would not be able to determine the cause of death of the victims until they arrived. Nicole Brown Simpson and her asyet-unidentified male companion lay in pools of blood outside Nicole’s home, where her two children were sleeping upstairs, oblivious to the commotion. As detectives Fuhrman, Lange, Phillips, and Vannatter discussed their next moves, they received word that the operations chief for the LAPD West Bureau, Commander Keith Bushey, wanted the four to contact O. J. Simpson personally to make arrangements for the care of his children. Fuhrman knew the location of Simpson’s home, having responded to a call at the address in 1985 while he was a patrolman. At that time, Nicole called police because Simpson reportedly had attacked her car with a baseball bat, causing body damage in a fit of anger against his then-wife. At 5:00 A.M., Fuhrman and the other investigators went to the home of Nicole’s former husband, former National Football League superstar Orenthal James ‘‘O.J.’’ Simpson. They drove in two cars, for less than five minutes, to the gated estate on Rockingham Drive. Simpson’s vehicle, a white Ford Bronco, was parked outside the gates on the narrow street. Trying the buzzer next to the gates, the detectives were unable to wake anyone inside the home. Fuhrman wandered near the edge of the property, running his flashlight’s beam over the Bronco. Packages inside the Bronco were clearly marked ‘‘Orenthal Products,’’ but the detectives ran a check on the license plate through the radio to be sure the vehicle was indeed Simpson’s. After determining that the Bronco was licensed to the Hertz Corporation, who used Simpson as a spokesperson, Fuhrman called Lange back to the Bronco. The two looked at a spot near the driver’s door handle, which appeared to be blood. The other detectives had found the phone number to the Simpson home and were calling it with their cell phones, but they were not receiving an answer. Fuhrman and the other detectives found themselves in a difficult situation. Barely two miles away, a woman and her companion lay murdered in pools of blood, and the police found themselves outside the home of the woman’s former husband, a famous sports personality, whose car had bloodstains on it. There were cars parked inside and outside the fence surrounding his home, but nobody answered the door buzzer or the telephones when the police rang. The police were allowed to enter premises without a search warrant if urgency permitted, and whether the urgency was real or

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perceived, this situation was certainly urgent. A private security officer arrived and confirmed for the detectives that Simpson and his live-in maid should have been on the premises. As nobody answered the phone or the gates at the residence, the decision was made for Fuhrman to climb the fence and unlock the gate from the inside. Entering the premises without a search warrant would cause difficult entanglements in the prosecution’s argument and it, along with the racially inflammatory statements from his past, would help contribute to Fuhrman’s professional downfall. Just before 6:00 A.M., the detectives knocked on the door and rang the doorbell of O. J. Simpson’s home. Still receiving no answer, the four walked to the side of the house, where they saw three guest cottages. The first guest house held a male guest, who identified himself as Kato Kaelin. A young woman, who identified herself as Arnelle Simpson, O.J.’s adult daughter, was in the second cottage. Fuhrman remained with Kaelin while Arnelle took the other three policemen in the home to check on any occupants. The home appeared empty, with Simpson nowhere to be found, and all four policemen took the opportunity to interview first Kaelin, then Arnelle Simpson. Arnelle contacted her father’s personal assistant and provided the detectives with Simpson’s contact information at his Chicago hotel. Arnelle then called Al Cowlings, her father’s lifelong friend, to notify him that her stepmother had been murdered. Phillips contacted Simpson, who was concerned and upset at the news, but did not ask for any details concerning his exwife’s death. He reported that he would take the next available flight back to Los Angeles. It was up to Tom Lange to contact the Brown family and notify them of the murder before the media obtained the news. Lange arrived at the Browns’ home in Orange County at approximately 6:21 A.M. and broke the devastating news to her parents and sister. Ten to fifteen minutes later, Fuhrman found Vannatter in the house and brought him to the garden behind Kaelin’s bungalow to tell him about a discovery on the property. Resting on the walkway among the leaves was a bloodstained right-handed leather glove that appeared to be the match to the left-handed one found at Nicole Brown Simpson’s condominium. Phillips and Fuhrman returned to the South Bundy address, leaving Lange and Vannatter at the Rockingham home to determine whether it was the second of two related crime scenes. After Lange left for the Bundy condominium, Vannatter discovered a trail of blood droplets connecting the two vehicles parked in Simpson’s driveway, the front door and walkway to the house, and the Ford Bronco outside the gates. Fuhrman and Brad Roberts, his partner, returned around 7:00 A.M. with a police photographer who had been taking photos at the condominium. The photographer took photos of the glove found at the Rockingham home and the numerous blood droplets found between the vehicles on the Rockingham property. It seemed apparent to all the detectives that the glove at Rockingham was a match for the glove at Bundy. Since the glove and the blood drops at Rockingham were in plain

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view of the public, they were classified as evidence that could be taken without a search warrant. The Rockingham mansion was labeled as a crime scene due to the evidence that was found. An LAPD criminalist and his assistant arrived at Rockingham at 7:10 A.M. to collect and document evidence, including the blood spots, the glove, and the Bronco, which was to be towed to the police garage for further investigation. Vannatter left the Rockingham estate to retrieve his partner, Lange, and obtain a search warrant for the Rockingham property belonging to Simpson. Fuhrman remained at the Rockingham home to maintain the security of the crime scene there. The media had heard word of the murders and began assembling across the street from the Bundy condominium around 8:00 in the morning. Officers recorded the license plate numbers of the neighborhood vehicles and searched the area, hoping to find a hidden murder weapon. At 9:10 A.M., the coroner’s investigator and her assistant arrived to examine the two bodies. An hour later, the criminalist and assistant who had been at the Simpson house arrived at the Bundy condominium. The team completed their examinations of the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman as well as the cataloguing and photographing of their surroundings. Vannatter arrived at Simpson’s Rockingham home just before 12:00 noon with a signed search warrant. He was met there by Howard Weitzman, a criminal attorney who had been contacted by Simpson, and Bert Luper, from the LAPD Homicide Special Section. As the three discussed the methods by which the house would be searched, Simpson arrived at the home. Initially, he was handcuffed and detained by Roberts, Fuhrman’s partner. After being reminded that Simpson was not under arrest, Simpson was released and taken downtown to be questioned by detectives about the murders of his ex-wife and her young friend.

THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL BEGINS After a whirlwind of events including the funeral of Nicole Brown Simpson, at which her ex-husband made an appearance, and a low-speed police chase of a reportedly suicidal Simpson and his friend, Al Cowlings, in Simpson’s Bronco, Orenthal James Simpson was arrested on June 17, 1994, for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Simpson armed himself with a team of high-profile, high-dollar attorneys, some of whom, however, had never tried murder cases, to proffer his defense. The prosecution went with three seasoned assistant district attorneys who were reputedly tough and thorough and who had lost few trials. The state’s case, the prosecution argued, was simple: a ‘‘mountain of evidence’’ showed that Simpson and his deceased ex-wife had a stormy relationship; Simpson had dropped his bloody gloves, which he had been

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wearing when he’d committed the murders, at his home and at Nicole’s; and his blood, sometimes mixed with the victims’, was at both locations. The argument for the defense was even simpler: Simpson was just another black man at the mercy of lying, corrupt police officers and law enforcement professionals and was a victim of the white-run judicial system. The judicial system began, according to Simpson’s defense team, with Detective Mark Fuhrman. An article published in The New Yorker magazine on July 25, 1994, levied some serious allegations at Fuhrman. Reporter Jeffrey Toobin had written an article titled ‘‘Annals of an incendiary defense—a surprising and dangerous defense strategy under consideration by O. J. Simpson’s legal team, led by Robert Shapiro, centers on Detective Mark Fuhrman, the police officer who jumped over Simpson’s wall—and found the bloody glove.’’ In the article, Toobin claimed to have spoken to the Simpson defense team, allegedly attorney Robert Shapiro, about strategy, which included insisting that it was Fuhrman who planted the bloody right-hand glove at the Rockingham home of Simpson. The article alleged there was ‘‘evidence of a police conspiracy,’’ and one of the defense attorneys stated to Toobin of Fuhrman: ‘‘This is a bad cop.’’ The article also referred to disturbing behavior and racist views demonstrated by Fuhrman. Simpson’s defense team insisted, repeatedly, that Fuhrman had planted the second ‘‘bloody glove’’ at Simpson’s Rockingham estate. Fuhrman, the defense argued, had collected the bloody glove at the Brentwood condominium and deposited it at the Rockingham home when he hopped the fence, without a search warrant, to gain access to the Simpson house. The other detectives involved in the investigation could not believe that Fuhrman would have been able to plant the glove. He had been the seventeenth police officer to log in at the Bundy crime scene, and none of the other officers who had examined the area had reported seeing a second glove near the bodies. In August, the defense filed a motion requesting the release of Fuhrman’s personnel records from LAPD. On September 26, the defense requested hair samples from Vannatter, Lange, and Fuhrman, as well as an examination of the clothing they had worn and the vehicles they had driven on the day of the murders. They asked to have photographs of the detectives’ shoe soles to see if one of them had left the bloody footprints at Nicole Simpson’s condominium. All this was done in an effort to prepare for the dissection of Fuhrman’s investigation as well as his personal character. A jury of twelve, with twelve alternates, was finally selected to hear the case. The jurors consisted of eight African Americans, two of mixed heritage, one Hispanic, and one white. The alternates were seven African Americans, one Hispanic, and four whites. Only six of the original jurors would still be serving in the trial. On Monday, January 23, 1995, exactly ten years to the day that O. J. Simpson had become the first Heisman Trophy winner

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to be elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Simpson’s trial for the murders of his ex-wife and her companion began. Mark Fuhrman’s involvement with the investigation and trial spiraled out of control when the defense strategy became apparent. Simpson’s lawyers— Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro, F. Lee Bailey, Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld, and Alan Dershowitz—focused on Fuhrman’s supposed racism. No facet of Fuhrman’s involvement in the case was safe from examination. Fuhrman was asked about his personal beliefs and how they affected his professionalism. Fuhrman insisted that he was an ethical officer and investigator and did not verbalize racial epithets for the ten years prior to the trial. Fuhrman took the witness stand again on March 9, 1996, to explain himself to the court outside the presence of the jury. He testified to never having met Kathleen Bell or making racist statements in her presence. He also testified regarding the 1985 incident to which he had responded as a patrol officer, when Simpson allegedly had damaged his wife’s car with a baseball bat. The following day, Fuhrman testified to the evidence found at the Rockingham home, including some items found in Simpson’s Bronco. Fuhrman also testified to his actions at Nicole Simpson’s condominium through the night, leading up to the decision to climb the fence at O. J. Simpson’s mansion. On March 13, the defense began cross-examining Fuhrman. F. Lee Bailey asked detailed questions about Fuhrman’s encounters with persons who would state that he had made racist remarks and comments about African Americans in their presence. Fuhrman denied meeting these individuals, but conceded that it was possible that he could have met them; however, he stated, it was not possible for him to have uttered racial epithets. In an attempt to demonstrate that he had ample opportunity to plant evidence, framing Simpson for the murders, Fuhrman was then asked, in great detail, about the actions he took on June 13 at both the South Bundy and Rockingham addresses. Bailey implied that Fuhrman had planted evidence because he’d lost an important case to detectives from another division. Fuhrman conceded that he was disappointed in losing what looked like an ‘‘interesting and very complex’’ case. Bailey, in return, attempted to show that Fuhrman planted evidence to further his career. Bailey and Clark battled over whether evidence could be presented in front of the jury to show that Fuhrman once called a black Marine sergeant ‘‘nigger.’’ Judge Ito did not immediately allow the defense to enter into this line of questioning with Fuhrman, but after weeks of argument, the arguments became moot, inasmuch as the jury was allowed to hear firsthand the evidence of Fuhrman’s racism. Fuhrman left the witness stand after five days of testimony. Philip Vannatter testified shortly thereafter that Fuhrman was asked to leap over the fence at Simpson’s mansion because he was the fittest and lowest-ranked of the four detectives at the scene. Vannatter also testified that it was his idea, and not Fuhrman’s, for Fuhrman to enter the property.

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A private investigator hired to assist the defense team made the discovery that contributed directly to Fuhrman’s uselessness as a prosecution witness. Laura Hart McKinney, a professor at the North Carolina School of Arts, had once been an aspiring screenwriter living in the Los Angeles area. She had interviewed—and audiotaped—Fuhrman in 1985 while working on a screenplay about female police officers. The tapes were found and, after court battles in North Carolina and Los Angeles, turned over to the Simpson defense team, who utilized the damning statements within to shred Fuhrman’s credibility. On the tapes, Fuhrman bragged about his membership in a secret LAPD organization called Men Against Women or MAW. That, however, proved to be one of the least damaging admissions on the tape. Numerous times, Fuhrman’s voice could be heard using the word, ‘‘nigger.’’ In one quote Fuhrman stated, ‘‘Yeah, we work with niggers and gangs. You can take one of these niggers, drag ’em into the alley, and beat the shit out of them and kick them. You can see them twitch. It really relieves your tension.’’ Even though only two limited portions of the tapes were admitted into the Simpson trial in front of the jury, the remainder of the tape excerpts, all sixty-one of them, were played in open court outside the presence of the jury. By playing the tapes, Judge Ito commented that he could not be accused of withholding information of ‘‘vital public interest,’’ but playing the Fuhrman tapes served only to incense the African American community. Although the statements in the tapes were horrific and inflammatory, it was difficult for many to conceive that Fuhrman’s use of the word ‘‘nigger’’ meant that he tried to frame Simpson for the murders. Why, claimed the defense, would Fuhrman be so adamant about framing Simpson for the murders? Along with Fuhrman’s reported prejudice against mixed-race couples, particularly in which the male was African American, Fuhrman had been assigned to the case of a lifetime—and then promptly unassigned, in favor of more ‘‘elite’’ police investigators, within a matter of minutes. The tapes cast immediate doubts on Detective Fuhrman’s motives. He appeared to be, as the defense argued, a racist, rogue police officer who often took the law into his own hands as he saw fit. He had investigated a murder of a white woman in which the prime suspect was her ex-husband, an African American man. People who had interacted with Fuhrman came forward with tales of Fuhrman’s repeated vocalization of his hatred of mixed-race couples in which the man was African American and the woman was white. A real estate agent named Kathleen Bell wrote a letter to Simpson’s defense lawyers describing what Fuhrman had told her in one interaction with him: ‘‘When he sees a nigger (as he called it) driving with a white woman, he would pull them over. I asked, would he if he didn’t have a reason, and he said that he would find one.’’ Fuhrman returned once again to the witness stand on September 6, 1995. When asked if he had planted or manufactured evidence or lied in his reports concerning the Simpson murder investigation, Fuhrman repeatedly

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pled, ‘‘I wish to assert my Fifth Amendment privilege.’’ The following day, the defense attempted to have Fuhrman testify again before the jury. Judge Ito ruled against this, but he did rule that the jury would be notified of Fuhrman’s unavailability to testify further. Ito advised the jury that Fuhrman was unavailable to testify further in the trial and that the jurors could consider his unavailability when deliberating. The prosecution was unhappy with the rulings, but Ito also stated that it would be inappropriate to place a witness on the stand when it was apparent that the witness would invoke the Fifth Amendment in response to each question. Judge Lance Ito denied the defense the opportunity to bring up other reported instances of alleged conduct by Fuhrman, stating, ‘‘the underlying assumption that Fuhrman planted the Rockingham glove for the purpose of incriminating Simpson in the brutal and savage murders required a leap in both logic and law too broad to be made based on the evidence before the jury.’’ The damage, however, had been done. A deadly blow had been dealt to the prosecution’s case. With Fuhrman exposed as an apparent racist and liar, much of the prosecution’s argument flew out the window. The state turned against him. Lead prosecutor Marcia Clark dubbed him ‘‘the worst LAPD has to offer’’ and later pleaded with the jury not to find Simpson ‘‘not guilty’’ based on Fuhrman’s views and practices. Defense attorney Johnnie Cochran had become renowned for successfully suing municipalities in suits involving excessive force or sexual abuse by police officers, and with the negative evidence toward Fuhrman, Cochran made a passionate argument. In closing arguments, Cochran insisted the jury take a stand against a ‘‘lying, genocidal racist cop’’ and ‘‘America’s worst nightmare.’’ Cochran compared Fuhrman to Adolf Hitler, stating that his beliefs condoned the brutal beating and burning of African Americans, particularly those involved in mixed-race marriages. Simpson further alleged that all of the most incriminating pieces of evidence against him were planted by corrupt officers or were mishandled by the LAPD. This evidence included the trail of Simpson’s blood at the Bundy address; Simpson’s blood on the back gate of the Bundy property; the blood of Simpson and the two victims in Simpson’s Ford Bronco; Simpson’s blood inside and outside of his home on Rockingham; and Simpson’s and Nicole’s blood on Simpson’s socks in his bedroom at his Rockingham home. Despite the fact that the blood at the crime scene had been collected earlier in the day than Simpson supplied a blood sample for comparison, the blood at the Bundy address matched Simpson’s blood. Although Simpson admitted that the blood matched, he took matters a step further and alleged that his own blood had been planted in place of the blood of the ‘‘real’’ killer. Further, Simpson’s defense attorneys argued that all forensic tests done on the blood and other evidence yielded questionable results because of the alleged mishandling of the evidence. The defense spent the entire month of May 1996 arguing that the DNA evidence linking Simpson to the murders was suspect.

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In response, Fuhrman reported that he never had time to plant the glove. There were too many police officers and other personnel around. He had been the seventeenth officer to sign in at the murder scene and would have had to snatch the second glove, from a secured location, in plain sight of numerous other police officers. Despite Christopher Darden’s attempt to remind the jury that the only ‘‘n-word’’ they should consider when determining their verdict was Nicole Brown Simpson, the damage had been done. The Simpson trial, and Fuhrman’s involvement in it, divided the nation. To many in the minority communities, the trial’s purpose of finding a man guilty or innocent of two murders was secondary to the question of whether an African American man could receive fairness and justice in a legal system largely created and administered by whites. In other areas, the populace wondered whether a jury comprised of mostly minorities would convict a male African American celebrity of a crime in spite of the multitude of evidence against him. To still more people, the murder victims were shoved aside in favor of their accused killer, whose famous legal team commanded such presence in the courtroom—and the media—to demonstrate that racism and bigotry were the real issues at stake, rather than resolving the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. The twelve-member jury, comprised of ten women and two men, of whom nine were African American, two were white, and one was Hispanic, acquitted O. J. Simpson of the murders of his ex-wife and her companion. THE SPIRAL CONTINUES: AFTERMATH OF THE SIMPSON TRIAL After Fuhrman retired, the LAPD intended to find out whether his claims on those infamous McKinney tapes were true. The internal affairs division of the LAPD spent half a year interviewing people who had been arrested by Fuhrman during his tenure on the police force. They also spoke with current and former prosecutors who handled those cases. Many of the interviewees were minority individuals who had nothing negative to say about the way Fuhrman had conducted himself when dealing with them. In the end, internal affairs could find nothing to substantiate the taped statements made by Fuhrman. Some speculated that he had been exaggerating to impress McKinney or, as Fuhrman had explained previously, that he was assuming a character to fit in with McKinney’s screenplay in progress. Fuhrman sued Toobin and The New Yorker magazine, citing seven total counts of libel, invasion of privacy, and infliction of emotional distress. In 1996, Fuhrman was charged with one felony count of perjury for his denial during the Simpson trial of ever having used the word ‘‘nigger.’’ Fuhrman pled no contest to the charge and was placed on probation and fined $200. As part of his plea agreement, Fuhrman also was never again allowed to be a police officer in California.

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Fuhrman wrote a memoir about his involvement in the Simpson investigation and trial titled Murder in Brentwood. In it, he first apologizes, saying he is ashamed and sorry for his past remarks and behavior. Then, in an unemotional chronology, Fuhrman brought the case back to its sordid beginning and described the crime scene, from his first impressions through the beginnings of his investigation. He describes the enormous amount of blood that flowed down the cobblestone walk at Nicole Simpson’s home. Bloody shoe prints, sometimes displaying the entire soles of the shoes, led toward the heavy gate at the rear, which was smudged with more blood. A trail of blood led into the alley next to the home and then suddenly vanished. Either the attacker had stopped bleeding, said Fuhrman, or had gotten into a vehicle. The blood trail resumed at O. J. Simpson’s home, where more bloodstains were found on his Ford Bronco in numerous places. Inside Simpson’s house, there were freshly cleaned black sweat clothes in a washing machine, and the light switch near the washing machine displayed more smears of blood. Also within Fuhrman’s notes prepared inside Nicole’s home, he had documented the appearance of a bloody fingerprint on the deadbolt lock of the heavy gate at the rear of her yard. Fuhrman continued, insisting that he never had the opportunity to plant the bloody glove at Simpson’s home. Lead detectives Vannatter and Lange overlooked crucial evidence, Fuhrman alleged, and did not read Fuhrman’s notes until much later. This is how the bloody fingerprint outside Nicole Simpson’s home was lost. Vannatter and Lange, according to Fuhrman, even gave Simpson enough information to fabricate a mild alibi during his halfhour interrogation on the day after the murders. Most of Furhman’s ire was directed at the state’s attorneys, who abandoned him and left him with little choice but to plead the Fifth Amendment when he was recalled to the stand after the release of the McKinney tapes. Fuhrman speculated that although he might have been called racist by the defense, Clark would have done better to revive him as a witness rather than to further discredit him. However, in order to do that, Clark would have had to open up questioning about all of the evidence missing from the case, including that missing fingerprint on the gate, which would have damaged the credibility of her lead detective and new star witness after Fuhrman’s disparagement, Vannatter. Clark apparently was unwilling to trade Vannatter’s credibility for Fuhrman’s evidence. The Simpson criminal trial had ended, but civil lawsuits were filed by Ron Goldman’s father and Nicole Brown’s family, citing that Simpson should be held liable for the deaths of Ron and Nicole. Although Fuhrman testified in the civil lawsuit, the presiding judge issued rulings that the civil jury would not be allowed to hear any of his testimony in the criminal trial, nor would they hear about his no-contest plea to perjury resulting from his testimony in the criminal trial. In the end, the jury unanimously determined that O. J. Simpson was to be held liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown

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Simpson and Ronald Goldman, and he was ordered to pay a total settlement of $33.5 million to the families of the victims.

A MOVE TOWARD REDEMPTION: A REINVESTIGATION OF THE MARTHA MOXLEY MURDER After the success of Murder in Brentwood, Fuhrman was contacted by truecrime author Dominick Dunne, father of murdered actress Dominique Dunne of Poltergeist movie fame. Dunne had written a book, A Season in Purgatory, based on the murder of a Greenwich, Connecticut, teenager. The murder had remained unsolved since 1975. Dunne had been impressed with Fuhrman’s work in Murder in Brentwood, and he wanted Fuhrman to investigate the unsolved Greenwich killing. On October 31, 1975, fifteen-year-old Martha Moxley was found underneath a Japanese elm tree at the rear of her Greenwich, Connecticut home. She had apparently been beaten to death the night before, on ‘‘mischief night.’’ The discovery shook the private Belle Haven community to its core, for it was perhaps only the second murder that had been committed in recent memory. The Moxleys had relocated from California the previous year and had been assimilated readily into the community. On the night of October 30, Martha and several friends were playing pranks—spraying shaving cream in neighbors’ yards and ringing doorbells—when they headed to the home of the Skakel family to continue the party. Martha reportedly left the Skakel house to return to her own home sometime between 9:30 and 11:00 P.M., but she never made it. Her body was discovered at midday, with blood everywhere and genital and buttock area exposed, her life having been cut short by a bludgeoning by her enraged attacker. Several suspects were identified by local authorities. Robert Mathers, a neighbor who lived in his mother’s home nearby, was one of the first suspects considered. One reason for suspecting him initially was that a package of condoms found in his room had one missing. Mathers was subjected to a polygraph examination and failed it, saying that the medicine he was taking affected the results. Tommy Skakel, relative of Robert F. Kennedy, was listed as the next suspect, because other youths reported that Martha was last seen alive with him. His father, Rushton Skakel, was out of town on business, but he returned home quickly and readily gave police access to his home and children. Tommy Skakel and Robert later both took polygraph examinations and passed. Rushton Skakel later forbade any further access to his children after authorities wanted access to Tommy’s school and medical records. Ken Littleton, a new tutor hired by Rushton Skakel, was also interviewed as a possible suspect. On the night of Martha’s murder, Littleton was spending his first night in Skakel home. He had taken all the Skakel children to dinner at the country club, where he allowed them to drink

Mark Fuhrman

alcohol. The family went back to the Skakel home at approximately 9:00 P.M. Littleton was made the main suspect eleven months later because of a failed polygraph exam. According to Littleton, he failed because he was nervous about having been arrested for burglary and not being entirely truthful about it. Michael Skakel, Tommy’s younger brother, was ruled out as a suspect. Michael had an alibi, as he was reportedly at a friend’s house at the time of the murder. In 1991, interest in the Moxley murder briefly sparked when a cousin of the Kennedys, William Kennedy Smith, was tried for rape in Florida. The media immediately made a connection between Smith and his rabble-rousing Skakel cousins in Connecticut, and it was rumored that Smith had actually been in the Skakel home on the night of the Moxley girl’s murder. The revelation of the common bloodline between the families renewed interest in the Moxley case and spurred another look at the murder. Many of the original players in the case were reinterviewed. Alas, the new investigation did not reveal any new information, and the allegation of Smith’s presence at the Skakel home on October 30, 1975, proved to be false. The case, although still open, once again retreated to a back burner. In 1992, weary of the speculation and repeated questioning of his family, Rushton Skakel hired Sutton Associates, a private investigations firm, to investigate the murder and determine once and for all that Tommy and Michael had had nothing to do with Moxley’s death. During the Sutton investigation, Michael and Tommy changed their alibis that substantiated their whereabouts during the time that the girl died. Again, no arrest was made by authorities. Mark Fuhrman finally entered the picture several years later. Fuhrman met with Dorothy Moxley, Martha’s mother, and became intrigued with the case. Fuhrman believed he could solve the case and get the Greenwich authorities to take another look at the murder. Fuhrman’s reinvestigation of the Moxley murder initially met opposition from the local and state law enforcement agencies. Greenwich police refused to let an ‘‘outsider’’ like Fuhrman, especially one with his tarnished reputation, have access to their records, their documents, their conclusions. The community of Belle Haven proved to be more tightly knit than most small communities. A subcommunity of the already well-to-do Greenwich, Belle Haven was comprised of approximately forty homes belonging to the richest of the rich families in the area. Belle Haven lay on a peninsula that poked into Long Island Sound. The neighborhood was protected from the outside world by two gates connected by one major street, along which the houses were built. A private security force regularly patrolled the properties each night. Dorothy Moxley wanted an independent forensic pathologist to review Martha’s autopsy records. Despite negativity from the community and the law enforcement community (Fuhrman was, after all, that ‘‘racist cop’’ from the Simpson trial), Dorothy wanted his help with solving her daughter’s murder. After much opposition, Fuhrman was able to get the state attorney’s

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office to release the autopsy report, and it was reviewed by a forensic pathologist, the same one Fuhrman had encountered in the past during the O. J. Simpson trial. With the new review of the autopsy report, Martha’s potential time of death changed significantly. Police had reported time of death as occurring between 9:30 and 10:00 P.M., when Dorothy Moxley heard a dog barking frantically outside. The forensic pathologist believed Martha’s time of death, based on her blood loss and stomach contents, could have been as late as 1:30 A.M. on Halloween. This revelation once again refocused attention on the Skakel brothers and their reported alibis for the night. On October 11, 1997, Fuhrman interviewed Millard Jones, who had been one of the first two policemen on the Moxley murder scene in 1975. Now a minister, Jones dropped a surprise on Fuhrman: when he had arrived on the scene, Jones stated, the handle of the murder weapon was still stuck in the girl’s neck. This long-believed ‘‘missing piece’’ of the murder weapon had been cited as the reason local police could not solve the murder conclusively, for they could not get the killer’s fingerprints off the handle if the handle were missing. Fuhrman couldn’t believe it. The missing piece of the murder weapon had been in Martha’s body when she was discovered, and yet the case had remained unsolved largely because the handle of the golf club, which was determined to have belonged to the Skakel brothers’ deceased mother, could not be found. Fuhrman had Dan Hickman, the second policeman to arrive at the murder scene, interviewed as well. His story corroborated Jones’ account; he, too, had seen the handle of the broken golf club stuck in the girl’s neck. Both Jones and Hickman stated that they had never been interviewed formally by the detectives investigating the murder, so they had never had a chance to confirm that crucial detail. Fuhrman contacted Dr. Richard Danehower, the Moxleys’ personal doctor, who had arrived on the scene some hours later to confirm that Martha was indeed dead. Dr. Danehower told Fuhrman that he had seen a shiny metal object on the ground next to Martha’s body when he arrived and that the object looked like the handle of a golf club. In 1998, two books were published that instantly renewed interest in the Moxley case: Fuhrman’s work and Greentown, penned by Greenwich native Timothy Dumas. Fuhrman’s book grabbed national attention not only for his reputation as the ‘‘racist cop’’ from the O. J. Simpson trial, but also because of the identity of the murderer. Fuhrman named Michael Skakel, a neighbor of the Moxleys in Belle Haven and a relative of Robert F. Kennedy, as Martha Moxley’s murderer. In Fuhrman’s opinion, Michael Skakel was the most likely candidate for the murder due in part to his anger at his brother Tommy, because Tommy had kissed Martha and Michael had harbored teenage romantic feelings for Martha. In addition, Michael had reportedly confessed to the killing while attending a therapeutic boarding school in Maine a few years after the murder.

Mark Fuhrman

The accusation seemed to light a fire under the Greenwich authorities. In June 1998, the state of Connecticut appointed a one-man grand jury to investigate the Moxley matter. With an eighteen-month deadline, Superior Court Judge George Thim was charged with the task of providing a report as to whether the Moxley murder could be prosecuted. During the investigation, several past teachers, classmates, and friends of Michael Skakel were interviewed. In January 2000, Judge Thim released his report, which concluded that there was, indeed, enough reasonable cause to believe that Michael Skakel was the murderer of Martha Moxley. In 2002, Michael Skakel was charged with the murder of Martha Moxley, a crime that had occurred twenty-seven years earlier. He flew from his home in Florida to surrender to the Connecticut authorities. Because Michael was fifteen years old when the murder occurred, the case originally was filed as a juvenile action. A judge ruled that Skakel was to be tried as an adult. On May 7, 2002, the trial began, lasting four weeks. On June 7, 2002, nearly three decades after Martha Moxley’s death, Michael Skakel was found guilty of her murder. He was sentenced to twenty years to life in prison. Fuhrman, present at the trial, was interviewed by the press and appeared on camera and in the newspapers numerous times, being cited as a driving force behind the criminal conviction, the culmination of the previously unsolved case. In some opinions, Fuhrman placed himself on the path to redemption by solving the 30-year-old murder of an all-American teenage girl.

OTHER BOOKS AND ENDEAVORS BY MARK FURHMAN Fuhrman has revitalized his career by becoming a best-selling true-crime author who still invites water-cooler discussion by writing books about controversial subjects. For his next project after the conclusion of the Moxley matter, Fuhrman tackled the unsolved deaths of sixteen women, mostly prostitutes, all located barely ninety miles from his home, in Murder in Spokane. Fuhrman blamed sloppy and delayed police work and the failure by the police to share pertinent details about the victims with the public for the continued deaths of other women. When Fuhrman attempted to help the police with their investigation, he was met, as he had been in the past, by opposition from law enforcement because of the fact that he was a convicted perjurer. In the end, Robert Yates, Jr., was tracked through his white Corvette, in which one of the victims had been spotted, and arrested for the murder of one of the victims. Through DNA evidence, Yates was linked to nine more of the deceased women. Fuhrman exposed the fact that Yates had been interviewed by police three times during the investigation, but was not considered a suspect until several years had passed.

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EVEN COPS CHANGE THEIR MINDS In 2003, Fuhrman’s book Death and Justice, an examination of the capital punishment system in the state of Oklahoma, was published. Examining one jurisdiction in particular, Oklahoma County, which includes Oklahoma City, Fuhrman discussed the death penalty process and its machine-like operation. The president of an Oklahoma defense attorneys’ organization who appeared on Fuhrman’s KXLY radio show invited Fuhrman to come to Oklahoma and check things out after calling the state ‘‘a regular death factory.’’ As a former police officer, Fuhrman believed in capital punishment and its process until he researched and wrote Death and Justice. Initially, Fuhrman stated that he believed that any problems with the capital punishment system were rare and were unintentional mistakes. He also assumed that there was a very low rate of wrongful convictions due to the higher standards to which capital murder cases are held. During his research, Fuhrman encountered numerous people whose everyday actions caused him to question his beliefs. In his dealings with the father of one executed prisoner, Fuhrman wrote: ‘‘When I was a cop, I only had compassion for the victims of crime. I could not allow myself to feel anything but contempt for those who were responsible. Jim Fowler helped me realize that it was possible to feel compassion even for criminals, which is right and necessary, yet only makes the rendering of justice more difficult.’’ Fuhrman took notice of the Oklahoma capital punishment system when Jack Pointer, a guest on his radio show, when a scandal involving a forensic chemist and manager of the Oklahoma City Police Department crime lab, Joyce Gilchrist, hit the presses. DNA testing performed by the Oklahoma Indigent Defense Service and the Innocent Project—run, ironically, by Barry Scheck, whom Fuhrman knew from the O.J. Simpson trial—proved that Gilchrist and other chemists had caused errors in some murder and rape cases in which the defendants were convicted wrongfully. Among the wrongfully convicted were three death row inmates. Fuhrman followed the family of one of the inmates, Mark Fowler, who was put to death during his work on the book. Also highlighted by Fuhrman in his book was Bob Macy, former district attorney for Oklahoma County, who bragged about the number of people sent to death row from his jurisdiction. Macy, according to Fuhrman, believed that the accidental execution of a truly innocent person was a fitting price to pay to keep the capital punishment system moving. Fuhrman disagreed with Macy and wrote that he no longer believed in the death penalty because death penalty cases are not ‘‘investigated or prosecuted at a level that can guarantee justice, or even that the accused is actually guilty.’’ Following his death penalty study, Fuhrman forayed into the civil and family law arena by producing Silent Witness: The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo’s Death. Fuhrman, with assistance and cooperation from Terri’s

Mark Fuhrman

parents, siblings, and medical and legal experts, analyzed medical records, legal documents, and case files to discuss the extraordinary case. The book drew criticism from many by being released before the final autopsy results on Schiavo were available. Fuhrman, however, took his book beyond the public division of opinion her case caused and presented an argument against Michael Schiavo, who chose to let his long-disabled wife die an unconventional death after years of life-sustaining treatment. Fuhrman’s latest book, A Simple Act of Murder, concerns the John F. Kennedy assassination. In it he advances a theory debunking the ‘‘Single Bullet Theory’’ while still maintaining that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. He claims that the Warren Commission was forced to adopt the Single Bullet Theory for political reasons. However, he says that a dent in the chrome above the windshield in the presidential limousine used that day vindicates the story told by John Connally, that a first shot at President John Kennedy did not hit him. Fuhrman opines that the death of President Kennedy itself was not a conspiracy, but that the aftermath of the killing—the hiding or destroying of evidence by those with personal or political motivations—was. Fuhrman is a frequent guest of conservative commentator Sean Hannity and a sometime contributor for FOX News. He is also the host of the Spokane, Washington, radio show ‘‘The Mark Fuhrman Show.’’ The show covers local and national topics and includes many guest callers and listeners. Fuhrman makes it clear that he doesn’t think much of the Spokane County Sheriff’s Department, regularly offering diatribes that describe them as lazy, undertrained, and inept at investigations. ‘‘You know,’’ Fuhrman says, ‘‘I love cops. Most of these guys aren’t cops. They’re not doing the job. You know a good rule of thumb is, watch ‘NYPD Blue.’ Would Andy Sipowicz tolerate this (stuff)? He’d go ballistic.’’ In response to the proposed book If I Did It written by O. J. Simpson and to be published by ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins, Fuhrman reportedly stated that he would drop HarperCollins as publisher of his own books in the future. However, Simpson’s book has since been cancelled. Most recently, the family of Ronald Goldman has been awarded the transcript of the book as part of an effort to collect their portion of the wrongful death suit settlement. Mark Fuhrman’s reputation can be pinned, in the eyes of many, directly on his professional destruction during the O. J. Simpson trial. With a few ill-spoken words from his past, Fuhrman unintentionally rocketed himself in public opinion from a detective on a celebrity murder case to a law-skirting, racist government official. His investigative skills and talents were forgotten in the resulting media madness. Disgraced, retired, and on probation, Fuhrman sought to rebuild his life quietly in another state, but he could not pass up the opportunity to explain himself and his actions, and thus his book Murder in Brentwood was born. The book caught national attention once again and directly led to his involvement with the reinvestigation of the

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Martha Moxley killing in Connecticut. The subsequent release of the resulting book, Murder in Greenwich, redeemed Fuhrman in some ways after he identified the most likely suspect to have committed the murder. Fuhrman’s involvement in the Moxley matter caused a resurgence of interest in the case and led to the eventual arrest and prosecution of Michael Skakel, the man named in Fuhrman’s book as Martha’s killer. Fuhrman’s career has been reborn as a popular and successful true-crime author. He has since penned several more books, including Murder in Spokane (2002); Death & Justice (2003); Silent Witness: The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo’s Death (2005); and A Simple Act of Murder: November 22, 1963 (2006). After years of living with controversy, Fuhrman tries to keep his private life out of the scrutiny of the mass media and the public, still living quietly in Idaho. Despite his attempts to exist outside of the spotlight, Fuhrman’s love for investigating the unknown and unsolved continues to draw him into the public eye. For his persistence and desire while solving previously unsolved crimes, Mark Fuhrman is an icon of crime fighting. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to thank my wife, Amanda, for her help with this project. I appreciate all that she has done for me with this project and in my life. I am truly lucky to have her in my life. Also I want to thank John Rodriguez for his support of this project. Lastly, I cannot forget my Dad and Mom. I want to make you proud. FURTHER READING August, Bob. The Real OJ. http://www.bobaugust.com/index.htm/. Buckley, William F., Jr. 1995. ‘‘Where does Fuhrman take us?’’ (Editorial) National Review. September 25. CBS News. 2001. 48 Hours Mystery: Mark Fuhrman Biography. http://www. cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/13/48hours/main301303.shtml/. CBS News. 2002. Murder, They Wrote: Murder in Spokane, A Serial Killer on the Loose. February 15. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/02/15/48hours/ murder/main329534.shtml/. Chua-Eoan, Howard, and Elizabeth Gleick. 1995. Making the Case. Time. October 16. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,983569,00.html/. CNN. Simpson Civil Trial Special Section. ‘‘Jury: OJ Is Liable.’’ http://www.cnn. com/US/OJ/simpson.civil.trial/index.html. Fuhrman, Mark. 1997. Murder in Brentwood. New York: Regnery. Fuhrman, Mark. 1998. Murder in Greenwich: Who Killed Martha Moxley? New York: HarperCollins. Fuhrman, Mark. 2001. Murder in Spokane: Catching a Serial Killer. New York: Avon. Fuhrman, Mark. 2003. Death and Justice: An Expose of Oklahoma’s Death Row Machine. New York: HarperCollins.

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Fuhrman, Mark. 2005. Silent Witness: The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo’s Death. New York: HarperCollins. Fuhrman, Mark. 2006. A Simple Act of Murder: November 22, 1963. New York: HarperCollins. Geringer, Joseph. The Martha Moxley Murder. http://www.crimelibrary.com/ notorious_murders/famous/moxley/index_1.html/. Gleick, Elizabeth. 1995. Headliners. Time. December 25. http://www.time.com/time/ magazine/article/0,9171,983884,00.html/. Gleick, Elizabeth. 1996. A Simpson remake. Time. September 23. http://www.time. com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,985192,00.html/. Goska, Danusha. Mark Fuhrman. http://www.codypublishing.com/goska/furman. html/. Jones, Thomas L. Notorious Murders. Most Famous. OJ Simpson. http://www. crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/famous/simpson/index_1.html/. Lafferty, Elaine. 1996. Glove story II. Time. October 21. http://www.time.com/time/ magazine/article/0,9171,985336,00.html/. ‘Lectric Law Library. Mark Fuhrman’s 10/2/96 Plea Agreement to Felony Perjury at OJ Simpson’s Criminal Trial. http://www.lectlaw.com/files/case63.htm/. http:// www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Simpson/Fuhrman.htm/. Montaldo, Charles. Profile of Michael Skakel. http://crime.about.com/od/murder/p/ michael_skakel.htm/. NewsHounds. 2006. FOX News Taps Mark Fuhrman to Analyze Duke Rape Case. How Racially Insensitive Can You Get? http://www.newshounds.us/2006/04/ 18/fox_news_taps_mark_fuhrman_to_analyze_duke_rape_case_how_racially_ insensitive_can_you_get.php/. NewsMax.Com. 2005. Mark Fuhrman Probing Schiavo Case. http://www.news max.com/archives/ic/2005/5/6/230418.shtml/. One People’s Project. Mark Fuhrman. December 2, 2006. http://www.onepeoples project.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=83&Itemid=29/. Reaves, Jessica. 2000. The murder case that just wouldn’t go away. Time. January 19. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,37804,00.html/. Revolutionary Worker Online. Fuhrman: Play the Tapes Again! Revolutionary Worker #896. March 2, 1997. Van Biema, David. 2000. A crime in the clan. Time. January 31. http://www.time. com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,995999,00.html/. Walsh, James. 1995. The lessons of the trial. Time. October 16. http://www.time. com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,983570,00.html/. Wolff, Craig. 1997. Look who’s talking: Defending himself, Mark Fuhrman returns to the scene of the crime. The New York Times. March 23. http://www.nytimes. com/books/97/03/23/reviews/970323.23wolfft.html/.

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Courtesy AP Images/Debbie Hodgson

Rudolph ‘‘Rudy’’ Giuliani Camille Gibson


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THE EARLY YEARS Wayne Barrett in his biography Rudy! An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani (2000) and Eleanor Fremont (2002) in her book America’s Mayor: Rudolph W. Giuliani have offered a thorough history of Rudolph ‘‘Rudy’’ Giuliani’s background. Indeed, it was Barrett who uncovered Giuliani’s father’s criminal past and Mafia ties. According to Fremont, these revelations were news to Giuliani himself, who reported thereafter that he had been aware of a grave family secret—but had not been told the specifics. The following details in this section on Giuliani’s background come from Barrett and Fremont’s investigative works. Rudolph ‘‘Rudy’’ Giuliani was named after his grandfather Rodolfo Giuliani, ‘‘an opera lover’’ with a ‘‘stubborn and stormy disposition’’ (Fremont 2002, 3). Rodolfo was from Montecatini, a northern Italian village. He emigrated to New York in 1880 at age seventeen. Thereafter, he married a young woman, Evangelina Giuliani, with the same surname. He and Evangelina settled on 123rd Street, which was at the time an Italian section of Harlem. Rodolfo was a tailor and his wife Evangelina a dressmaker. Evangelina worked at a garment factory, while Rodolfo worked at home. Rodolfo expected his eldest child, Harold to make deliveries for the family business. However, Harold was often distracted and consequently received regular harsh beatings from his father. Rodolfo died February 1946, shortly before his grandson Rudy would turn two years old. Giuliani’s parents Harold Giuliani and Helen D’Avanzo met at a party around 1929 in New York City. They lived a thrifty existence like many of those about them given the harshness of the Great Depression and the Prohibition era. Harold Giuliani was a large fellow, about five feet, eleven inches, rough in appearance and somewhat hot-tempered. He had four siblings, Charles, Marie, Olga, and Rudolph. He dropped out of school at age fifteen. As a juvenile he was arrested for burglary and sanctioned with juvenile probation. At a young age he tried boxing but his poor vision hindered his success. He was also a plumber’s assistant at one point. Helen was shy and ladylike and an excellent student. She had five older and rather protective brothers: one a firefighter, three police officers, and brother Leo, a bar owner. Helen’s parents, Luigi and Adelina D’Avanzo, were southern Italian immigrants from Avellino and Naples, respectively. Luigi died in 1925, leaving forty-three-year-old Adelina to raise their seven children (Vincent, Fanny, William, Helen, Leo, Edward, and Roberto) with very limited means. Harold and Helen courted for seven years. That they had a relationship appears significant because historically many Northern Italians have considered their darker-complexioned countrymen, the southern Italians, to be inferior to them. Plausibly, the fact that a northern Italian, Harold, married a southern Italian, Helen, is suggestive of the type of home in which Rudy

Rudolph ‘‘Rudy’’ Giuliani

Giuliani grew up, a home that may have communicated messages about surpassing racial bias. This may explain Rudy Giuliani’s early leanings to an apparently more inclusive Democratic party and his deep and apparently sustained hurt over what he seemed to perceive as rejection by New York City’s black community when he lost his first run for mayor in 1989 against the African-American candidate, David Dinkins. Giuliani’s father Harold was far from perfect. If he thought another fellow was being disrespectful to his wife, he would often respond with violence; hence, one of Helen’s monikers for him: ‘‘savage.’’ Indeed, Helen married Harold a year after he was released from Sing Sing Prison. Unemployed at age twenty-six, Harold Giuliani had succumbed to the lure of crime on April 2, 1934. While with a companion, he robbed a Borden Farm milkman by sticking a gun in his stomach as the milkman made rounds in a residential building. They pulled down their victim’s pants, but while they were attempting to bind the man, a police officer entered the building. Harold Giuliani was arrested, but his companion escaped. When arrested, Harold lied about his age, address, and name, stating that he was Joseph Starrett. On April 12, 1934, he was charged with assault, robbery, larceny, and receiving stolen property. Although Harold had no apparent funds, he had connections who, in a matter of days, had him out on $5,000 bail. The milkman, Harold Hall, was apparently threatened into changing his story by later claiming that it was Harold Giuliani’s accomplice who had put the gun to his stomach. Harold Giuliani then pled guilty to a single reduced charge of third-degree robbery. He refused to give up his accomplice and so on May 29, 1934, he was sentenced to two to five years at Sing Sing Prison. He began his sentence on May 31 of that year. His prison psychiatric report described him as an ‘‘aggressive, egocentric type.’’ It suggested that he had a sense of inferiority from childhood that had grown worse with ‘‘his prolonged idleness and dependence on parents.’’ (Barrett 2000, 17). Harold was released on about four years parole on September 24, 1935, having served a year and four months at Sing Sing. Thereafter, Harold worked for some time with Helen’s brother Leo, who owned a bar in Brooklyn called Vincent’s and who was associated with the mob. Harold provided protection from unruly patrons, and he did collection for Leo’s side business—loan-sharking. Rudolph William Louis Giuliani, the first and only child of his parents, was born on Sunday May 28, 1944, during wartime. The Giulianis were mature parents by the time their son was born. Helen was thirty-five years old and had been trying to conceive for six years. It was a time of lack, politics, history, and missing young males, off at war—a world where children were taught their place, which was helping the adults around them. In his earliest years, Rudy’s family lived with his grandmother Adelina, who often cared for him at 419 Hawthorne Street, Brooklyn. Typical of the time, many people had extended family nearby.

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When Rudy Giuliani turned seven, his father moved the family to Long Island. The impetus for the move was Harold’s observation of Rudy’s cousin and frequent playmate Lewis (Leo’s son). Lewis was being influenced by the mob life about him. Harold did not want this for his son. It turns out Harold’s instincts were right. Lewis later became a gangster and was dead by age thirty-six. Giuliani’s mother Helen died September 8, 2002, at age ninety-two with her son and his two children (Andrew, then sixteen, and Caroline, then thirteen) by her side. His father Harold had passed away in 1981 from cancer.

TOWARD WHO HE IS: GIULIANI’S CHARACTER Except for law school, all of Giuliani’s education occurred at Catholic schools. He attended the all-male Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn on scholarship. There he was taught by the very strict De La Salle Christian Brothers. He graduated in 1961. Then he attended Manhattan College, majoring in political science and graduating in 1965. New York University Law School followed, where he made the law review. He graduated in 1968. Giuliani biographer, Andrew Kirtzman, describes Giuliani’s sometimes rigid allegiance to the Catholic faith as part of his attraction to law, given its required rigidity. In both Catholicism and law there are clear rules and penalties. Not surprisingly then, as a young college student Giuliani considered entering the priesthood and expressed much disgust at the lies, hypocrisy, selfishness, and incompetence of local politicians. About his choice of a legal career, Giuliani has said: I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a journalist…I thought about being an Air Force pilot and I had a lot of different dreams and ambitions, and finally, toward the end of college, decided to go to law school, ended up at NYU Law School. And after a week or two of being in law school, I said to myself, ‘‘I found the profession that I like and enjoy and really feel fulfilled with.’’ And I was very lucky; I mean, I found something that…sort of fit me. (Giuliani 2002, 101)

His mentors included Brother Jack O’Leary, a high school teacher who helped to develop his interest in music and reading despite the fact that many considered those interests less than manly then. Later there was Lloyd MacMahon, chief judge of the Southern District of New York for whom he clerked after law school. MacMahon pointed out mistakes that were not to be made on a case. This same MacMahon wrote a letter to have Giuliani spared military service during the Vietnam War. Also a mentor to Giuliani while he was a young prosecutor was Carl Bogen, the New York Police Department (NYPD) detective on whom the television character Kojak was based.


His role models included John F. Kennedy, whom he admired for being a white politician who managed to have rare success at navigating both minority and white circles. From Deputy Attorney General Harold Tyler, Giuliani learned to remain calm under pressure; from Martin Luther King, Jr., he learned to expect progress, and from Joe DiMaggio that ‘‘the struggle is constant.’’ (70–71). From Ronald Reagan, for whom he worked two and a half years, he learned resoluteness in handling an office. Giuliani also admired New York archbishop John Cardinal O’Connor whom he considered brilliant both in public and in private and, New York’s 103rd mayor (from 1965 to 1973) John V. Lindsey, whom Giuliani considered an independent, outspoken reformer who managed the city well at a turbulent time. Other influences on who he has become include books like John Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage and being raised around his father’s youngest brother Rudolph, a police officer and his mother’ three police officer brothers and her fire captain brother. Apparently, Giuliani grew up hearing his uncles’ heroic stories. Courage, his father told him, was ‘‘being afraid but then doing what you have to do anyway.’’ (70). Giuliani asserted in 2002 that ‘‘I have a pretty good sense that I’m very, very human, that I make a lot of mistakes, and that I got to keep working on it. And if I don’t, my mother reminds me of it all the time.’’ (56). Nevertheless, while mayor of New York, Giuliani was not known for admitting to mistakes or for making apologies. In more recent times, under a national microscope he has. For example, when President George W. Bush solicited Giuliani’s input on a candidate to be the head of the Department of Homeland Security in 2004, Giuliani recommended his loyal friend and former New York Police Commissioner, Bernard Kerik. As it turns out, Kerik was a poor choice, given a less than stellar legal history. Later in 2007, he was indicated on federal corruption charges. Giuliani then admitted he had indeed made a mistake—but requested balance in judging him given his many other successful decisions. He has referred to himself as an independent, a reformer, a maverick, an optimist, reasonable, honest, honorable, courageous, compassionate, passionate, a good judge of people, an excitable Italian, and a hard worker who likes to be surrounded by hard workers. His work ethic came from his father, who taught him to ‘‘do the job in front of you. If you do a good job of it, you have a future, if you don’t, then you don’t have a future doing much of anything.’’ (66). Giuliani enjoys comedy, opera, music in general, baseball, golf, and life. His sense of humor is evident in his many photographs in drag and his television appearances on comedic television programs like Seinfeld, David Letterman, and Saturday Night Live. He is also infectiously passionate about New York City and about New Yorkers. After the September 11, 2001, (9/11) World Trade Center terrorist attacks, he repeatedly called them ‘‘the most wonderful people in the world.’’

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Of course, many people have offered their descriptions of Rudy Giuliani. Some of them have been positive, but many of them have been much less so. Common adjectives for Giuliani include captivating (there are at least ten books about him); charismatic, diligent, persistent, courageous, circumspect, emotional, bully, opportunist, ruthless, defiant, opinionated, intolerant, suspicious, fascist, blind, scrappy, brash, duplicitous, immoral, heartless, mean, and wrong. Edward ‘‘Ed’’ Koch, one of New York City’s longest serving mayors (1978–1989) called Giuliani ‘‘mean-spirited,’’ ‘‘traitor,’’ ‘‘vindictive,’’ and a ‘‘nasty man’’ and ‘‘villain’’ but also ‘‘mayor of America’’ and a ‘‘visionary.’’ Giuliani had played an active part in uncovering various scandals associated with the Koch administration. Many who know Giuliani personally have said that he would often argue with those who opposed him and demonize and demean his critics. To noted biographer Wayne Barrett, Giuliani ‘‘was a mesh of half-truths, double agendas and secrets, wins that had to be transformed into records, losses that had to be imagined as wins, flaws that were depicted as misunderstood strengths, opponents who could only be explained as evil’’ (Barrett 2000, 11). Significantly, although Giuliani has changed his mind on significant issues (for example, opposing school vouchers to endorsing them; opposing abortion to supporting abortion choice and his endorsement of equal rights for homosexuals), he is definitely not wishy-washy. He is capable of making and sticking with difficult decisions that he thinks are best, despite protests to the contrary. For example, as mayor he had to make sharp budget cuts, actions that drew several protests, but he remain unperturbed. Also, after 9/11 during the recovery efforts as safety concerns emerged, despite protests to the contrary, he reduced the number of workers at Ground Zero (the site of the incident). In hindsight, this turned out to have been the best thing, given health problems that have since manifested. Out of his desire to be respected and to leave a mark in history Giuliani describes himself as being ‘‘willing to make decisions…one of the ways in which I’ve helped turn the city around is I do make decisions and I’m not afraid of controversy if I believe this is the right direction for the city.’’ (Giuliani 2002, 80). So, where did he get this stubborn disposition? One insight is offered by Eleanor Fremont, who wrote that when Giuliani was a boy growing up in Brooklyn, ten minutes from the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ebbets Field, his father, an ardent Yankee fan, dressed his son in Yankee attire and sent him down the street. The neighborhood youth, incensed by this action, set upon young Rudy. He perceived himself as a martyr Yankee fan, who in the face of opposition would remain steadfast despite the cost. This love of the Yankees that he shared with his father began at age four when he saw Joe DiMaggio play. He remains a very ardent fan, and as mayor of New York had the joy of hosting parades in honor of Yankee World Series’ victories. He took his passion for the Yankees even further as


mayor by attempting to extend the city’s income tax surtax to finance a relocation of Yankee Stadium. Giuliani is clearly a man of courage, as evidenced by his early days as a federal prosecutor in both Washington, D.C. and New York. He was brave enough to take on the mob (organized crime) and the powerful but corrupt. In the aftermath of 9/11 as President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were rushed into hiding, Giuliani was the leader that the media was able to locate and to show to the world at a time when Americans in particular seemed desperately to need to see a leader in action. Nonetheless, Giuliani’s crudeness or incivility is classic. It apparently has two dimensions: a crude public persona and a more private manipulative kind of crudeness to handle opposition among his insiders. Examples of the crude public persona include the September 1992 episode of Giuliani’s joining a rowdy crowd of police officers to protest then Mayor Dinkins Civilian Complaint Review (an independent group of people who would investigate civilian complaints against the police). The officers were discontented because the board had all civilians, no officers in the membership. At the protest, Giuliani shouted epithets through a bull horn, further instigating the crowd. Another example of Giuliani’s public crudeness occurred in October 1995 when, to the shock of many, Mayor Giuliani ordered Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat to leave a United Nations function of world leaders held at Lincoln Center. Many thought Giuliani did this for his own personal gain to appeal to the many Jews in the city, given the longstanding conflicts between Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East. Another incident that cost him several approval points with the public was his May 2000 announcement to the press that he was leaving his wife and the mother of his two children for his mistress, Judith Nathan, before he told wife Donna Hanover about these plans. His crude private behaviors have involved incidents where his staff assisted him in efforts to intimidate those who opposed him into compliance. Examples of these crude private tactics have been reported by two of his education commissioners. The first, Ramon ‘‘Ray’’ Cortines felt forced to resign; the other, Rudy Crew, was terminated. First, Ray Cortines, a sixty-two-year-old from California, began his post as education commissioner the summer of 1993. Giuliani apparently considered Cortines too independent a reformer and perhaps, given Cortines’ quiet demeanor, difficult to read and subsequently to trust. The relationship between Cortines and Giuliani became particularly poor when Cortines refused to terminate 2,500 Board of Education employees, including his press aide John Beckman, who had been an ardent supporter of the Dinkins administration, and Leonard Hellenbrand, who had opposed the mayor publicly. Cortines and the mayor also disagreed about the mayor’s push to have the NYPD in charge of school security.

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Consequently, one evening in April 1994, Giuliani had Cortines summoned to Gracie Mansion late in the day. Cortines was made to wait more than an hour and then was hassled by Giuliani and staff to make the required terminations and to accept Herman Badillo as a monitor of the school system and in essence, as Cortines’ supervisor. The next day Giuliani’s best friend and deputy mayor, Peter Powers, made repeated calls to Cortines’ office to see if Beckman and Hellenbrand had been fired. When they were not, Giuliani announced to the media that Badillo would indeed be the school system’s monitor. Cortines then drafted a resignation, but on the appeal of Board of Education president Carol Gresser and Governor Mario Cuomo, he stayed. However, Giuliani called Cortines ‘‘precious,’’ ‘‘playing the little victim,’’ and ‘‘whining,’’ apparent inferences to Cortines’ sexual orientation. Cortines resigned in September 1995. His replacement was Rudy Crew. Rudy Crew, a forty-five-year-old African American from Tacoma, Washington, fast became friendly with Giuliani. He did as the mayor wanted. This included efforts to end the lifelong tenure of public school administrators and the social promotion of students (grade promotions based on age as opposed to student achievement). As some interpret things, Crew even attempted to make Giuliani appear to be a successful education reformer by excluding the low scores of the city’s non-English-speaking students from the Regents examination (New York’s test of student achievement) success statistics. However, three years into his post, Crew found himself at odds with the mayor’s new position of endorsing vouchers or efforts to divert public school education dollars to private schools. Previously, Giuliani had made a number of speeches against vouchers and according to Crew (in an interview with Wayne Barrett), he had told Crew that his novel position was ‘‘just politics.’’ Apparently, with his eyes on a statewide Senate run, Giuliani wanted to appeal to the statewide Catholic electorate and the Republican National Party. Yet, Giuliani went further than a mere verbal endorsement. He set aside millions for the voucher plan and apparently leaked confidences about Crew’s marital troubles and other matters to the press. By December 23, 1999, Giuliani had garnered the necessary Board of Education votes to terminate Crew. Thereafter, Crew spoke to Wayne Barrett about Giuliani: He had no pedagogical commitment, no education philosophy, no grounding in a belief system…When Rudy sees a need to take someone out, he has a machine, a room full of henchmen, nicking away at you, leaking crazy stories. He is not bound by truth. I have studied animal life, and their predator/prey relations are more graceful than his…There is a very powerful pathology operating inside this man…I believe he feels an anger about some piece of his life that just takes over.(Newfield 2002, 57)

Ed Koch described Giuliani this way: ‘‘Rudy Giuliani has two moral compasses. On the one hand he is an honest man, fiscally incorruptible and


fearless in the face of organized crime. On the other, he’ll say almost anything to get his way.’’ (Koch 1999, 111). Also, several persons who knew Giuliani while he was mayor said that he saw people who criticized him as his enemies. Also, when things went bad he would scapegoat others. There has also been Giuliani’s classic jealousy. For anything positive on his watch, he apparently wanted the credit. This was clearly the case with his first police commissioner, William ‘‘Bill’’ Bratton, who often has been called ‘‘a cop’s cop’’ by fellow officers, referring to his understanding and care for fellow officers. Bratton’s career in New York began with him as head of New York’s transit police. Later as New York’s Police Commissioner he merged the transit police with the NYPD, putting them in the same uniform for a omnipresent police effect. Indeed, officers could often be seen day and night on the streets, in the subways and other public places. Bratton also called his approach ‘‘community policing,’’ although the officers were not known for much community interaction besides simply being present. Bratton was instrumental in putting George Kelling’s ‘‘broken windows theory’’ approach into effect, and crime was indubitably in substantial decline. For this and more, Bratton received a lot of adulation in the press and from various groups. But he had transgressed in overshadowing his boss, the mayor, on crime fighting. Apparently jealous of Bratton, Giuliani required that Bratton fire his press secretary, John Miller. He also berated Bratton in the press for his time at the popular restaurant, Elaine’s. When Ed Koch mentioned to Giuliani that Bratton would leave his position if demeaned, Giuliani responded ‘‘I don’t care if he leaves. I run the police department.’’ (Koch 1999, 61). Bratton resigned March 1996. His replacement was Giuliani’s loyal fire commissioner, Howard Safir. Giuliani’s jealousy was coupled with a very controlling leadership style. As mayor, he micromanaged extensively. This was most evident in his efforts to terminate government employees whom he perceived to be disloyal, often because they had endorsed a Giuliani campaign rival or had disagreed with the Mayor on an issue. He had at least 300 city employees who reported to his commissioners fired for being ‘‘off agenda’’ (that is, not supportive of the Mayor’s agenda for the city). Thus, the commissioners and their people operated out of fear and resentment. Giuliani also took care to have loyalty in the ranks by insisting on approving all high-level staff hires who would be working for his deputy mayors. Noted private practice civil liberties attorney Richard Emery, who argued successfully against some of Giuliani’s attempts to curtail free speech, considered Giuliani’s micromanagement to be arrogance. Emery described Giuliani to writer Jack Newfield as thinking himself so smart that he avoided delegating, believed he was never wrong, and had a position of moral rectitude. Giuliani argued ‘‘respect for the rule of law’’ but then often attempted to change the laws for himself, for example, attempts to extend his time as mayor after 9/11 and his efforts to change city laws so that public advocate

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Mark Green, a Democrat, would not succeed him if he failed to finish his term as mayor in the event of success in a U.S. Senate race. Nevertheless, after Giuliani’s diagnosis with prostate cancer, which he revealed publicly in spring 2000, he claimed that he had changed for the better.

THE WOMEN For the most part, Giuliani has maintained that his personal life is personal. Nevertheless, since it is often said that behind every successful man there is a woman, the women in Rudy Giuliani’s life are discussed here. These women include his mother, three wives, and various rumored mistresses. His mother, Helen Giuliani, was raised by her widowed mother of seven. Helen was a bright and doting woman. She maintained well into the 1990s that her son Rudy was a liberal at heart. She was the person whom Rudy Giuliani claimed reminded him on occasion that he was not perfect. Regina, Giuliani’s first wife, was the daughter of his father’s cousin Salvatore Peruggi. They had been frequent playmates after Rudy’s family moved to Long Island when he was seven. His mother thought the union was illfated from the beginning because Giuliani and Regina had such different personalities: he, an extrovert who liked to socialize, and she, a quiet home body. But Giuliani refused to listen to his mother and got married in October 1968. In 1982, after fourteen years of marriage he was successful in getting their marriage annulled, divorce being forbidden in the Catholic Church. For the annulment Giuliani claimed that he thought Regina was his third cousin, but then found out she was his second cousin. However, many witnesses to the union claimed that Giuliani had been dishonest in his claim of ignorance. Next was second wife Donna Hanover. Giuliani met Donna in 1981 when, as a prosecutor for the Reagan administration, he made frequent trips to Miami to address the Haitian refuge crisis. Hanover was a television anchor in Miami. Unlike with Regina, Donna and Rudy’s personalities matched. They married in 1983 and became the parents of a son, Andrew, born in 1986 and a daughter, Caroline, born in 1989. Donna Hanover was an ardent supporter of her husband’s career. By 1995, that had changed after Cristyne Lategano came into Mayor Giuliani’s world. Cristyne Lategano was a young Italian in her twenties when she began working for Mayor Giuliani. She exercised considerable influence at City Hall. For this, and for her reputation as a malicious gossip, fellow staffers disliked her. She was part of the mayor’s executive committee, his communications director, responsible for constructing his image in the media. Giuliani apparently admired her diligence and her ability to discern people. In 1995 after a news story appeared with the caption ‘‘The woman behind the Mayor,’’ featuring a picture of Giuliani and Lategano, Donna Hanover


accused them of having an affair. Both Lategano and Giuliani denied having one, and there are no reports of a sexual consummation. Nevertheless, the spirit of an affair, emotional intimacy, clearly existed between them as the two spent almost all their days and late nights together, working. Thereafter, Donna and the children remained at Gracie Mansion (the Mayor’s residence), but Donna stopped making public appearances with her husband. Lategano had managed to come between Giuliani and his closest aides, and by 1999 most of Giuliani’s closest staffers had left his administration, including long-time best friend and deputy mayor Peter Powers. Then, in February 2000 Lategano herself left the administration, moving to South Carolina to be close to her mother and to marry Nicholas Stratis, a sportswriter. Promptly taking her place as a frequent companion of the mayor was Judith Nathan, a forty-five-year-old health company executive. By this time, Donna Hanover was truly off of her husband’s calendar, but evidently she did not realize just how far off. So, on April 27, 2000, Giuliani announced that he had prostate cancer; on May 6, 2000, his wife Donna announced to the media, ‘‘I will be supportive of Rudy in his fight against his illness, as this marriage and this man have been very precious to me’’ (Kirtzman 2001, 315). Four days later, to Donna’s surprise, Giuliani told the press that he was leaving his wife, clearly to be with his mistress. By this time, he had been seeing Nathan for about ten months. Biographer Wayne Barrett suspects that the timing of the announcement of the affair was an effort to preempt the release of Barrett’s investigative biography, Rudy. Giuliani and Donna were divorced in 2002. Thereafter, Giuliani married Judith Nathan on May 24, 2003. Giuliani has asserted that he values family: ‘‘The reason I am such a fortunate man is I have people that love me and I love them, and they care for me and I care for them. And that’s the greatest support that you can have in life’’ (Giuliani 2002, 55). Nevertheless, his relationship with his two children has been a strained one in recent years, so much so that son Andrew, an aspiring golfer, supported his father’s presidential campaign from a distance and daughter Caroline, a self-proclaimed liberal, supports Barack Obama for President of the United States.

POLITICS AND CAREER Giuliani has gone back and forth between working in the public and the private sector. After law school in 1968, he clerked for Judge MacMahon, U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York. Then, in 1970 he worked as one of the federal U.S. attorneys in New York. He was soon promoted to executive assistant U.S. attorney and chief of the office’s narcotics unit. Then, in 1975 he left New York to work in Washington, D.C., as an associate deputy attorney general and chief of staff to the deputy attorney

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general under Gerald Ford’s presidency. He returned to New York in 1977 to work at the private practice law firm Patterson, Belknap, Webb, and Tyler. In 1981, under the Ronald Reagan presidency, he returned to Washington, D.C. as an associate attorney general in the Department of Justice. In that capacity he supervised the U.S. Marshals, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Bureau of Corrections. His most high-profile task at this point was handling the Haitian refugee crisis, the return of thousands of refugees to Haiti. Nevertheless, much of Giuliani’s most significant crime fighting occurred in 1983 when he returned to New York after being appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. In that capacity he had 540 dismissals and more than 4,152 convictions, with only twenty-five of them overturned. These cases involved organized crime figures, drug dealers, white collar criminals, and politically corrupt persons. In 1989, amidst praise, but also considerable criticism over a few high-profile acquittals, Giuliani resigned as a federal prosecutor to prepare for a mayoral run and consequently work for the same law firm (White and Case) that defended Panamanian dictator Manual Noriega. He left White and Case in 1990 for another private law firm, Anderson, Kill, Olick, and Oshinsky, where he stayed until becoming the 107th mayor of New York in 1994, serving two terms, and leaving office at the end of 2001. He had remained unscathed by the decadence of the 1980s—the drugs, money, and nightlife—which put him at odds with many on Wall Street and in City Hall. On becoming mayor, he had inherited the remains of both the Koch and Dinkins mayoral administrations. Democrat Edward Irving Koch had been mayor for three terms (from 1977 to 1989). He left office marred by scandal involving persons in his administration, deteriorating quality of life in the city, and conflicts with minority leaders. Democrat David Norman Dinkins followed as mayor from 1989 to 1993. Dinkins was the city’s first African-American mayor. He had a narrow win over Giuliani, with less than 50,000 votes in a city of more than seven million. Giuliani had been ignorant of the workings of the New York political machine. Winning an election in New York City has often necessitated having the right endorsements in words and in funds. Andrew Kirtzman, a Giuliani biographer, characterized the loss as Giuliani’s failing to take advantage of relationships like his friendship with the very powerful Republican Senator Al D’Amato and the influence of liberal party leader Ray Harding. Instead, he was doing things his own way, with an awkward public persona, an intimidating presence, and his harsh public criticism of other public figures. This gained him an early lead in the polls. Nevertheless, the Giuliani machine was unwieldy. He had a huge campaign headquarter, numerous staff in mid-town Manhattan, and hardly any financial backers. To many observers, it was the racial unrest in the city that won Dinkins the 1989 mayoral election. The flames of racial contention became particularly hot when in August 1989, Gina Feliciano, from the predominantly


white Bensonhurst area of Brooklyn, had bragged about her black boyfriend, sixteen-year-old African American Yusef Hawkins, who was from the predominantly black Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Her ex-boyfriend, Keith Mondello, was most unhappy about this, and on the night of Gina’s eighteenth birthday Mondello stood with friends outside her party in case Hawkins showed up. Before the night was through, Hawkins was dead. In the aftermath, many criticized then-mayor Ed Koch for his mishandling of the racial unrest that followed this and previous such incidents. It was time for change. While campaigning for mayor, both David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani attempted to meet with the grieving Hawkins family. The family, perturbed by what appeared to be efforts to politicize and exploit their loss, refused to meet with the candidates. Later, with the urging of black community leaders, they reluctantly agreed to meet with David Dinkins. The meeting with Dinkins did not go well. Nevertheless, there was a boost in the polls for the Dinkins campaign. To make matters worse for Giuliani, Andrew Kirtzman reported that without consulting his campaign advisors, Giuliani named comedian Jackie Mason as his honorary campaign chair. In that capacity Mason made a number of public racially inflammatory remarks regarding Jews supporting black candidates regardless of the candidates’ competence. Mason was forced to resign from the Giuliani campaign, but the damage was done. Mason had apparently been a vain attempt by Giuliani to gain Jewish support. Dinkins eventually was victorious as mayor. Some believe that Giuliani has maintained a grudge against the black community for the Hawkins slight and his loss of the 1989 mayoral campaign. Giuliani himself told Jack Newfield, ‘‘They stole that election from me. They stole votes in the black parts of Brooklyn, and in Washington Heights. Illegal Dominican immigrants were allowed to vote in Washington Heights’’ (Newfield 2002, 65). Newfield concluded from this conversation and his observations of Giuliani that ‘‘…this twist of fate—having to run against Dinkins instead of Koch— was the turning point in Giuliani’s emotional life about race…Giuliani thought of himself as a ‘man of destiny,’ who was going to be president someday. Losing his first bid for public office to an African American he felt superior to, fractured his psyche. His ego had a hard time accepting the judgment of the people’’ (64). Two years into the Dinkins administration, racial tensions remained a major issue. Violence erupted again in the Brooklyn community of Crown Heights on August 19, 1991, and continued for three days as blacks rioted. The incident began when a car that was a part of a Jewish motorcade ran a red light, killing a seven-year-old black child, Gavin Kato. Shouts followed to ‘‘kill the Jew,’’ and twenty-nine-year-old Jewish student Yankel Rosenbaum was killed. Indubitably, by his second run for City Hall in 1993, Giuliani had learned a lot. During the Dinkins administration, while working for the law firm

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Anderson, Kill, Olick, and Oshinsky, he studied politics and policy. His advisors included a history professor and senior editor of the City Journal, Fred Siegel; Yale University president emeritus Benno Schmidt; Harvard lecturer George Kelling; long-time political maverick Ray Harding (Liberal Party Leader); and Andrew Cuomo, an expert on homelessness. He apparently also was influenced by the work of New York University professor Larry Mead, who had published about putting welfare recipients to work cleaning parks and picking up garbage. He also managed to surround himself with bricoleurs capable of smearing the competition. He was able to criticize Dinkins for his inept handling of racial conflict involving Jews, and in so doing painted Dinkins as more of the old Koch administration; he also exposed persons in the Dinkins camp who held racially intolerant views, from which it appears he harvested substantial Jewish support. Thus, although Dinkins spent much of his administration making necessary but unpopular decisions to improve the city’s economic status, curb violence, and abate racial unrest, he was not particularly media savvy about it, leaving the Giuliani administration to reap the benefits. The public blamed Dinkins for their discomforts and ignored the substantial decline in violence during the second half of the Dinkins administration. This was an error that Giuliani would be sure not to repeat as mayor, with the assistance of his close associate and communications director Cristyne Lategano. November 2, 1993, in his second election against David Dinkins, Giuliani became New York City’s 107th mayor. He won by a 2 percent margin, about as much as he had lost to Dinkins four years earlier. To some, including Giuliani, liberal dominant New Yorkers were sending a message; they wanted something new: law and order. As Kirtzman put it, it was a move ‘‘against the indignities of daily life…that the ways of vagrants and petty thieves who filled the streets would cause citizens for the first time to think of themselves as victims and the less fortunate as the victimizers’’ (Kirtzman 2001, 23). To others, Giuliani won because more Staten Island residents than usual showed up to vote on a referendum about Staten Island seceding from New York City. Whatever the story, Giuliani finally was at the helm of a very diverse city of more than 7.5 million people, with 250,000 employees and a $31 billion budget. He promised New Yorkers, ‘‘no deals for jobs, no deals for contributors, no patronage’’ (Giuliani 2002, 89). Yet his administration included several patronage appointments of close friends and their family members. These were people who Giuliani thought he could trust, those loyal to his agenda regardless of capability. His initial inner circle of advisors or his ‘‘yes’’ people included Peter Powers, Giuliani’s best friend since high school; wife Donna Hanover, a WPIX television reporter; his Justice Department friends Arnie Burns and Randy Levine (both also of Proskauer, Rose, Goetz, and Mendelsohn law firm); Ken Caruso (of Sherman and Sterling); and his U.S.


attorney office subordinate Dennison ‘‘Denny’’ Young (also of White and Case law firm). According to Giuliani biographer Fred Siegel, Giuliani surrounds himself with persons who are intelligent, loyal, and energetic. The harmony among the initial Giuliani work group was severely diminished by the presence of his young communications director Cristyne Lategano, whom the mayor seems to have placed on a special pedestal of confidence, so much so, that before the end of Giuliani’s time as mayor, most of the initial inner circle had left his administration. In his first term, Giuliani centralized administrative decisions out of his office. With this move, documents previously available to the public became functionally off limits, making it difficult to investigate the mayor’s claims of success. The positive side of this was that it put Giuliani in frequent contact with his deputy mayors, which facilitated a quicker process for getting tasks completed. Reportedly, in his 8:00 A.M. staff meetings, he could be persuaded to change his mind with the right evidence. He was also willing to cross party lines, for example, in giving his endorsement to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mario Cuomo in 1994, a miscalculation since George Pataki won the election and the new governor was not quick to forgive. Relations between the two remained clearly contentious. Yet, true to himself, if not to his political party agenda, mayor Giuliani continued to disagree with the national party on gay rights, abortion choice, and gun control. He is, after all, a New Yorker. Undeniably, the Giuliani years were times of prosperity for many. The city looked inviting and crime was significantly on the decline. There were, however, significant weaknesses in the Giuliani administration. These included his efforts to reform education, to address a housing shortage, and to reduce poverty. Nonetheless, in 1997 Giuliani won reelection to a second term as mayor (but with 172,000 fewer votes than his previous win). His primary opponent was Democrat and former Manhattan borough president Ruth Messinger. This was an unusual victory in New York, which rarely grants a Republican mayor two terms. Except for law school, all of Giuliani’s education had occurred at Catholic schools. The same was true for his closest friends. Thus, it was apparently devoid of true multicultural appreciation. The result was his later embrace of a ‘‘color-blindness’’ stance. As he described it: ‘‘I don’t care about people as minorities, or as majorities or as subgroups. I care about people as people. I think the thing wrong with this city is people cared about people as members of subgroups: Italian Americans, Irish Americans, African Americans, this American, that kind of American, some other kind of American’’ (Giuliani 2002, 78). Such colorblindness refuses to acknowledge that people’s circumstances and experiences in life can be affected by their color; this is a social effect, not a biological one. Giuliani’s narrow academic exposure proved significant later when he attempted to improve a rather unique, but dismal public school system. This

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was something that he had not experienced and evidently knew little about. His efforts included using Herman Badillo, a City University of New York graduate himself, to attempt to reform his alma mater. In the midst of student protests to the mayor’s reform efforts, Giuliani’s comments demonstrated how out of touch he was with this largely minority-serving institution. He insisted that tuition was rather low and that protestors were simply cutting class. In so doing, the mayor appeared unappreciative of the value and impact of the public university’s significant role in educating lowincome city residents and new immigrants. The situation for the city’s 1.1 million children in its 1,100 public schools was much worse. Many of them were in overcrowded classrooms, with no air conditioning on hot days (so classes were often conducted in the dark), few computers, irregular maintenance, and several very unhappy teachers. There were nonetheless, lavish facilities in pockets of the city that served predominantly white students. The statement that seemed to characterize the mayor’s stance on public education in New York was that the ‘‘whole school system should be blown up’’ (Koch, 1997). The problem, according to some, was the mayor’s management style. He was not a collaborator, and collaboration with parents, teachers, unions, administrators, and the community is necessary to accomplish most things in education. Thus, at the end of the two-term Giuliani administration, less than 30 percent of the city’s eighth graders passed the New York Standardized Test (called the ‘‘Regents’’) in reading and mathematics. There were also significant declines in the graduation rate. Then there were the mayor’s efforts at welfare reform. After President William ‘‘Bill’’ Clinton’s welfare reform bill passed in 1996, Giuliani stepped up his implementation of workfare based on the ideas of New York University professor Larry Mead. It involved moving able-bodied persons off of welfare and onto workfare, where they were required to work for the city in exchange for benefits. The work largely involved cleaning parks and city streets. The result was mixed. Workfare reduced the welfare rolls and encouraged more people to find their own employment (to avoid being relegated to cleaning the parks). However, absent real skills and education and forced to make poor choices for childcare in order to do workfare, it appears that some women turned to less desirable, illicit means of making income. Prostitution increased. Many churches and charities saw the numbers that they served surge. Yet, this was a city in the midst of a Wall Street ‘‘bull market’’ with many overnight millionaires. Corporations threatening to leave the city also got substantial tax breaks as incentives to remain. Indeed, the Giuliani years were good times for commercial real estate developers, like Donald Trump, but the city’s housing shortage remained. When on occasion the disparate life circumstances of the rich were compared to the poor, the mayor’s response was that the poor benefited perhaps the most from the reductions in crime under his administration. Yet it


appears that although crime was down overall in the city, in some pockets of the city where the poor were, crime numbers had remained high. The mayor also did not appear particularly compassionate to the poor when in 1998 he refused to meet with striking taxi drivers and ordered crackdowns on the homeless, panhandlers, and street vendors. To many, Giuliani began to look like a mayor of the rich masquerading under a cloak of ‘‘law and order.’’ His frequent efforts to curtail free speech in a rather liberal city further alienated him from many because they seemed a calculated effort to garner support beyond the city, given his broader political ambitions. The most noted free speech battle had him at odds with the publicly funded Brooklyn Museum in a move that some considered contrived to garner Catholic votes from the state’s 40 percent Catholic electorate. Giuliani threatened to evict and de-fund the Brooklyn Museum if it did not cancel an upcoming exhibit. The October 1999 exhibit was called ‘‘Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection.’’ It included a piece by African artist Chris Ofili depicting a Black Madonna with elephant dung, vaginas, and anuses suspended about her. Many high-profile persons supported the museum’s right to free speech. The mayor had called himself a ‘‘keeper of morals,’’ which was quite hypocritical to some given his rather public affair with his mistress at the time, Judith Nathan. Jack Newfield characterized the mayor’s response to the exhibit as an example of the mayor’s many failings at separating his private perspective from the requirements of his office and the law. Giuliani’s other unsuccessful free speech battles included the following: Housing Works v. Police Commissioner Howard Safir on efforts to limit the size of demonstrations. Marten v. Giuliani on holding persons overnight for minor violations during a peaceful protest. Walton v. Safir on the firing of black female officer Yvette Walton in the aftermath of the Amadou Diallo shooting by police officers. Walton had spoken out against the racial profiling practices of NYPD’s Street Crime Unit. Harmen v. City of New York on requiring child welfare workers to get city consent before speaking to the press. Latino Officers Association v. Safir on a requirement that police officers get the police commissioner’s permission before making public statements about department policies and practices. Latino Officers Association v. City of New York on not allowing a Latino officers group to march in uniform in parades as other ethnic and national groups had been able to do. Metropolitan Council on Housing v. Safir on a refusal to let protestors sleep on a sidewalk outside of Gracie Mansion (the mayor’s public residence). Tunick v. Safir over refusal to let a photographer shoot nude models on a public street. New York Magazine v. City of New York over attempts to keep New York Magazine’s satirized advertisements about the mayor off of New York City Transit buses.

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Kalke v. City of New York over the Parks Department ban of a church’s distribution of free condoms as part of a HIV prevention program. People v. Lyons, Sanchez and Schenk after members of the Socialist Workers Party received a summons for gathering signatures on a petition to be on a ballot. Million Youth March v. Safir after Nation of Islam activist Khallid Mohammed was denied a permit for a Labor Day weekend rally. Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church v. City of New York after homeless persons who had the permission of a church to sleep outside the church building and on church grounds were threatened with arrest (Newfield 2002, 21–25).

Giuliani characterized his time as mayor as a period in which accountability and leadership were emphasized. As he put it: Accountability replaces unmanageability. Accountability basically says a city is no more difficult to run than any organization. Every organization is difficult to run. Every organization has difficulties in getting to the precise goal that is intended for it, but that doesn’t make them unmanageable. It means you have to be accountable, you have to be honest, you have to lay out what you can achieve, and then try to proceed in order to accomplish that. And in doing that you rebuild people’s confidence in government (Giuliani 2002, 92).

Of leadership, he said: ‘‘ …leadership means taking unpopular positions…rejecting harmful political fads…sometimes leadership requires challenging myths’’ (92). In 2000, there was the first serious public talk of Rudy Giuliani as a possible presidential candidate. As it turns out, Giuliani had long set his sights on the presidency and had even considered whether being New York’s mayor might help or hurt his ambitions for higher office. Regarding the matter he said in a 1998 NBC interview: ‘‘No, I haven’t always wanted to be president…I think it’s a very daunting—it’s almost something that I don’t like to talk about…[T]here’s like a sacredness to it that you shouldn’t really talk about it unless at some point in your life you decide to do it, then you should do it…I don’t give it a great deal of thought. It seems like a very remote kind of thing’’ (93). Many perceive the U.S. Senate as a step that facilitates a run for the office of President of the United States. However, in May 2000, Giuliani withdrew from a Senate race where his prime contender was Hillary Clinton. His stated reason was to battle his recently diagnosed prostate cancer, a disease to which his father had succumbed in 1981. This was his second time walking away from a Senate run. The earlier occasion was in 1988, when he was a U.S. attorney. At that time he had a number of significant cases that he felt obligated to handle himself. Regardless, Giuliani served as mayor of ‘‘the capital of the world,’’ New York City, from 1994 to 2001. He left the mayor’s office as a 9/11 hero, so much so that he became the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for


president in 2007. However, Giuliani’s campaign faltered, and he withdrew from the race after finishing third in the January 29, 2008, Florida primary. He has made a fortune from public-speaking engagements and his Giuliani Partners leadership, security and investment consulting jobs, which have included the country of Mexico as a client. In 2005 he became a part of the prominent international law firm Bracewell and Patterson, which was renamed Bracewell and Giuliani in his honor. His book Leadership became a national best seller. These events have all overshadowed the racial and class discontent during his administration in New York City. Giuliani had inherited a city with a surplus, but left it with a deficit, which he blamed on 9/11 even though the deficit existed before 9/11.

CRIME FIGHTING Rudy Giuliani, crime fighter? Undeniably so, although some have challenged just how much credit is due to him, and him alone, for bringing law and order to a once very chaotic city. As a prosecutor, his aim was ‘‘to make the justice system a reality for the criminal’’ (Giuliani 2002, 101). He continued this posture as New York’s 107th mayor. Wayne Barrett, author of three books on Rudy Giuliani, described him in 2000 as the ‘‘best known law enforcement figure in America since J. Edgar Hoover’’ (2002, 1). His life as a prosecutor even inspired two classic movies, Serpico and Prince of the City. Giuliani became prominent as a crime fighter in 1974 when in Perry Mason fashion, as a young prosecutor, he conducted a grueling crossexamination of a three-term Democratic congressman Bertram Podell, who dissolved into tears on the stand, pleading guilty to conflict of interest and conspiracy to defraud the government. Thereafter, his prominence grew with further successful prosecutions of high-level organized-crime figures under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act of 1970. As an Italian himself, he battled the stereotype that all Italians are involved with the Mafia. In all, he prosecuted several Mafiosi. However, his legal colleagues have been known to disagree when Giuliani seemingly takes all of the credit for investigations and prosecutions that were already underway by the time he got involved. One such case was the Bonanno crime family prosecution, which was underway for a year before Giuliani got involved; another was the Colombo crime family prosecution. His cases also included the prosecution of the rich and famous such as Drexel Burnham and Michael Milken, financiers (on junk bonds, racketeering, and securities fraud); Imelda Marcos, wife of Philippines’ president Ferdinand Marcos (on federal corruption charges); Leona Helmsley, hotel mogul (on tax evasion); E. Robert Wallach, corporate consultant (for conspiracy and fraud); Dennis Levine, investment banker (on insider trading); and Ivan Boesky, banker (on insider trading).

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Another of Giuliani’s famous cases involved Marc Rich, billionaire financier and twenty-year fugitive from justice, who had fled to Switzerland to avoid prosecution. The allegations in this 1983 case included fraud, illegal oil dealings with Iran, and owing $48 million in U.S. taxes. To Giuliani’s astonishment, years later Bill Clinton granted Rich a presidential pardon in January 2001, to which Giuliani responded: ‘‘When I first heard about it, my reaction quite honestly was, no, no, it’s a mistake. They must be confused with somebody else. No president would pardon a fugitive. No president would pardon someone on the FBI top number one list of fugitives for a long, long time. No president would ever pardon someone where the charges are still open that he traded with Iran during the hostage crisis.’’ He emphasized however, that he did not object to pardons in general, having recommended several for people he thought had straightened themselves out (97). Giuliani did not shy away from investigating his own. His assistant attorney Daniel Perlmutter pleaded guilty in 1986 to stealing more than $41,000 and about five pounds of drug evidence, at which time Giuliani said, ‘‘We have to investigate ourselves. We have to aggressively investigate agents, police officers, assistant U.S. attorneys. We’re in a dangerous business, and that’s one of the prices you pay’’ (90). Maverick prosecutor Giuliani also targeted political corruption. While Ed Koch was mayor and Giuliani was U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of New York, many of those around Koch went down for corruption, e.g., Congressman Mario Biaggio (1969– 1988, for accepting bribes and obstructing justice); Bess Myerson, a former Miss America who was Mayor Ed Koch’s Cultural Affairs Commissioner (for conspiracy, mail fraud, and obstruction of justice); and Bronx Democrat Stanley Friedman and others (for racketeering, conspiracy, and mail fraud). As a prosecutor Giuliani thought it important to communicate with the public and is extremely proud of having a part in convicting more high-level offenders than his predecessors. Part of this joy was that he thought prosecuting such offenders had more of a deterrent effect than prosecuting street offenders for violence. A large part of the deterrence effort was prosecuting in the public eye. To this end, his tactics were harsh, including having suspects handcuffed and seized at work, such as in his efforts against some Wall Street traders, namely Robert Freeman, a Goldman Sachs investor; Timothy Tabor, a Merrill Lynch executive; and Richard Wigton, a Peabody investment executive. Of such persons Giuliani remarked, ‘‘I can understand how a young investment banker has been led astray, but do not ask me to sympathize with him’’ (106). Clearly, he delighted in prosecuting greed. He says of himself: I had this youthful conviction that all human beings were basically good. If you just turned on the right switch, goodness and rationality would flow forth. I came to realize that rationality does not necessarily rule and that some people were simply evil. There was very little you could do to change them,


and if you entertained the romantic notion that they could be changed, you would wind up endangering innocent people (56)

As a federal prosecutor in New York’s Southern District, he started Federal Day—one day a month where drug arrests in Manhattan and the Bronx went to federal as opposed to state court, which meant that a conviction was more likely followed by harsher penalties. Ed Koch believed that this had a deterrent effect even though the drug cases that went this route were few compared to those handled in state court. Later, as mayor and no longer prosecuting criminals himself, Giuliani remained as a leader to federal prosecutors. In this capacity he used his office to facilitate the prosecutions of organized-crime figures involved in criminal activities at the Fulton Fish Market, Hunts Point Market, and the city’s annual San Gennaro Italian Festival (which claimed to raise funds for charity). The latter was in fact a front for Genovese crime family operations. He also prosecuted ‘‘Fat Tony’’ Salerno and the heads of five crime families (Barrett 2000,1): the Bonanno, Colombo, Genovese, Gambino, and Lucchese crime families. His prosecutions included Sicilian Mafia leader Gaetano Badalamenti for using New York pizzerias as heroin distribution fronts. The fish market prosecutions involved price fixing on fish entering the city. Giuliani would orchestrate sweeps of arrests of fishermen and threatened on occasion to close the area totally. He also got organized crime out of the city’s garbage collection business (where the Lucchese and Gambino crime families had a stronghold on commercial garbage collection, inflating the cost as much as 40 percent). Giuliani insisted on open competition for garbage collection, and businesses benefited. He was undeterred by at least two hits put out on his life for $200,000 and for $400,000. In jest, he claimed to be insulted that the hit money was so little! Indubitably, Giuliani’s reputation as a crime fighter was substantial in getting him into City Hall. He was an antidote for disorder, riots, drug crime, violence, local government scandals, and Wall Street troubles, and possibly, for poorly performing schools, declining public service, and increasing homelessness. As a prosecutor he could empathize with the city’s police officers. He had the opportunity to see Dinkins alienate himself from members of the NYPD by instituting an all-civilian Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) and by too quickly taking the side of civilians in conflicts with the police. Giuliani was sure to do the reverse. Under his administration the CCRB did very little, and Giuliani quickly gave officers the benefit of the doubt in all conflicts with civilians. Earlier, in 1992, during the Dinkins administration, Giuliani had even joined a rowdy group of protesting officers outside of City Hall, yelling epithets about the Dinkins approach to law and order. Yet, as mayor, Giuliani was not a favorite of many New York police officers. He was often at odds with many Latino and black police officers, who perceived him to be biased

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against them. Giuliani had also refused recommendations for police salary increases and other contractual changes. Many officers were also unhappy with the low morale that seemed to come from the Compstat process. Compstat (short for Computer Statistics) refers to the NYPD initiative of having weekly meetings with NYPD precinct commanders to assess crimemapping data in areas where various crimes seemed to be increasing. Precinct commanders then were held accountable for reducing the crime statistics. The pressure on precinct commanders was passed all the way down to the patrol officers and seemingly, this impacted officer morale negatively.

Facts about Compstat Bill Bratton, the architect of Compstat and an advocate of a ‘‘Broken Windows’’ approach to policing, is the current police chief of Los Angeles, California. He has served as the police chief in Boston, Massachusetts, and New York City under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. During his tenure as the police chief of New York City under Giuliani, violent crime rates dropped precipitously. Bratton has transferred his vision of policing to the Los Angeles Police Department. Below is a summary of the principles of Compstat, which was one of Bratton’s most notable elements of police management in New York City under Giuliani. The elements of Compstat consist of the following four distinct principles. Accurate and Timely Intelligence. Accurate and timely intelligence, or information, is absolutely essential in effectively responding to any problem or crisis. Since today’s policing techniques nearly always consist of vast amounts of information, it is necessary to provide a vehicle wherein essential information can easily and effectively be shared with all levels of the organization. Often times, detectives have information on suspects or crime trends and patterns, but the actual field patrol officers who may be in contact with potential suspects have no idea of what information detective personnel possess or need to clear a case. Just as important, this principle also provides for an early warning system to identify emerging crime trends and patterns. In today’s environment of ever-shrinking resources, being able to apply the necessary resources to an identified problem area is crucial in successfully reducing crime. Historically, marked police vehicles have randomly been deployed in hopes of deterring potential criminals who see the black and white police vehicles on patrol. This principle suggests that the intelligence/information be used as a radar screen to direct police resources to the exact problem area. Effective Tactics. Traditional policing tactics have always dictated that most problems may be solved at a superficial level. In other words, take care of the suspect and don’t worry about the social or environmental situation that may be adding to or creating the problem. Compstat tactics encourage


‘‘thinking outside the box’’ and mandates that every resource, both internal and external, is considered in responding to a problem. Compstat tactics also provide for a sense of urgency in responding to problems. The old attitudes of public entities responding at slow speed are no longer acceptable. Every case or call for service is handled as the traditional ‘‘Big Case’’ and is thoroughly and rapidly investigated in a systematic manner. Rapid Deployment. For decades, police departments have been driven by calls for service and respond their limited resources in a reactive manner. With Compstat, the police department is now armed with vital intelligence regarding emerging crime trends or patterns that allows for a strategic police response. The strategic response can be in many forms, both traditional uniformed or plainclothes officer response as well as nontraditional decoys and sting operations. Relentless Follow-up and Assessment. An essential element in any crucial operation is the need to critically assess past tactics and review what was successfully employed and what just didn’t work. One of the main differences between private enterprise and the public sector is the bottom line of positive returns. The public sector and police departments have rarely been evaluated on their results. On the other hand, if a business implements an unsuccessful strategy or provides an unacceptable level of customer service, it isn’t long before bankruptcy is filed. The bottom line with Compstat is results. Everything that the police department does, whether administrative, operational or investigative in nature, is evaluated by the results achieved. Static operations that do not provide for successful results are immediately assessed for their value and necessity to the overall operation of the department. Source: Los Angeles Police Department Compstat Unit. http://www.lapdonline. org/crime_maps_and_compstat/content_basic_view/6363/.

Regardless, crime declined substantially, most notably, murder. In 1993, there were 1,927 homicides, but in 2000, there were 671. The decline had begun under the Dinkins administration with police commissioner Lee P. Brown and his assistant commissioner Jeremy Travis. Also, the declining crime numbers were occurring nationwide, so how much of the New York declines is attributable to Giuliani is hard to say. Experts have attributed New York’s reduced crime numbers to ‘‘a demographic age reduction, reduced use of crack cocaine, and mandatory, longer prison sentences…[and] better and more sophisticated use of police resources’’ (Koch 1999, 10). Jimmy Breslin, Pulitzer winning journalist, saw things this way: Giuliani named Bill Bratton the police commissioner. Bratton asked for a report on crime in the city. It was done by two working cops, Bill Gorta, a captain and John Yohe, a sergeant, whose interest was computers. Their

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report started a system that was called Compstat. It identified the places where the crimes were and had the precinct commanders held accountable. The crime was—what a shock!—almost all in poor neighborhoods. For the first time in the city’s modern years, the non-white neighborhoods had law enforcement. This brought the crime down so far and so fast that people called this normal policing a miracle’’ (Polner 2005, xvi)

Sounds simple enough, but it was a new and apparently effective approach in policing. Giuliani clearly cared about the criminal victimization of the poor. Under his administration, residents in some low-income communities, such as Washington Heights, had the opportunity to experience a taste of suburban security when drug-invested city blocks were closed by police officers such that no one could get onto the block without an identification and a clear legitimate reason to be there. Unfortunately, the cost of such efforts could not be sustained long term. But what was this new approach to crime fighting? It was the ‘‘broken windows theory’’ in action. Before becoming mayor, Giuliani had kept up on the criminology literature. In 1982 university professors James Q. Wilson and George Kelling published an article in the Atlantic Monthly, ‘‘Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety.’’ The idea of broken windows is that if a window is broken in a building and not promptly fixed, then persons going by will see the broken window and assume that those in the building and the area do not care about their space. This assumption will encourage others to treat the property with similar disregard and soon, that building will have more broken windows. The law and order implication therefore is that fixing signs of disorder promptly prevents criminals from moving into an area to commit crime. What was unique about the approach was that it required warrant checks on petty offenders since statistics indicated that petty offenders were also serious offenders. Indeed, arresting petty offenders and then running warrant checks on them paid off. Between 1990 and 1994 New York’s subway felonies fell 75 percent, and robbery fell 64 percent under transit police chief Bill Bratton, who was using the broken windows idea. Thereafter, Bratton left New York to return to Boston as Chief of Police, but months later, at the beginning of 1994, he returned to New York City to accept Giuliani’s invitation to be New York City’s police commissioner. Bill Bratton had been a transit officer in Boston, working closely with George Kelling at the Harvard School of Government on the broken windows idea. Bratton had utilized the approach to reduce crime on Boston’s trolleys. He was considered ‘‘a cop’s cop,’’ largely for walking the beat with officers and thus demonstrating an understanding of the issues that officers at all levels of the force had to address. He had tremendous success; crime decreased on the trolleys by 27 percent. Thereafter, Bratton became New York’s new transit police chief in April 1990. The subways had been


‘‘overrun with hustlers, hoodlums, and the homeless’’ (Siegel 2005, 94). By 1991, George Kelling was heralding Bratton’s success in another noteworthy article in the City Journal titled ‘‘Reclaiming the Subway.’’ Further, in the spirit of broken windows Giuliani took aim at ‘‘panhandlers, sex shop purveyors, cabbies, jaywalkers, street vendors, cop-bashers, un-reconstructed liberals, black radicals, black moderates, anti-Catholic art exhibitors, drunk drivers, methadone users, graffiti artists, public school bureaucrats, and, of course, welfare freeloaders’’ (Barrett 2000, 1–2). He barricaded certain streets to block jaywalkers, who could also find themselves with a summons. He also utilized shaming tactics to deter less than circumspect, if not illegal, activity. For example he had patrons of sex shops photographed, even though frequenting such establishments was not illegal. But did Giuliani go too far? Some think so. He encouraged his police commissioners (William ‘‘Bill’’ Bratton, 1994–1996; Howard Safir, 1996– 2000; and Bernard Kerik, 2000–2001) to tackle crime aggressively. For example, the morning of January 23, 2000, at 4:00 A.M., plainclothes officers entered Fort Washington Armory homeless shelter to arrest people who had failed to appear in court for offenses such as begging in public, public urination, and sleeping in the subway. Of the eighteen arrested, seven were schizophrenics. In the wider city, broken windows efforts at cleaning up signs of disrepair were possible from the economic vibrancy of the city that Giuliani had inherited. He saw to the replacement of many sex shops with more widely appealing retail establishments such as the placement of Disney stores in Times Square, Manhattan. However, some insiders report that many of the negotiations for the Times Square revitalization occurred prior to Giuliani, under the Dinkins administration. To further illustrate care, Giuliani tackled in rem housing (that is, real estate abandoned by the owners and thus the responsibility of government). He appointed former Dinkins administration staffer, African American Deborah Wright, to Housing Preservation and Development. She agreed with Giuliani that such properties should be unloaded from the city promptly into the hands of private enterprise, which would see to a community’s upkeep. To his credit, Giuliani appears to have been one of the few public officials to have taken threats of terrorism on United States soil seriously. He actively supported Andrew McCarthy, who led the prosecution of the blind sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman for the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, where six died and more than a thousand were injured. The sheikh was convicted but his coconspirator, Osama bin Laden, remained at large. Bin Laden threatened another attack to demolish the World Trade Center. Given this threat, in hindsight, Giuliani miscalculated in locating the city’s $13 million emergency command center on the twenty-third floor of one of the World Trade Center Towers. His reason was that the Secret Service and the Central Intelligence

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Agency were already located there. In 1998 he had City Hall reinforced with barbed wire and concrete barricades, and on occasion he had snipers on the roof of City Hall to protect it against terrorist attacks, all despite being severely criticized in the press for limiting access to a public building. On the morning of 9/11, Giuliani received word of the possible attacks while at breakfast at the Peninsula Hotel in mid-town Manhattan. He proceeded quickly to the site. That day 2,974 people were killed; of those, twenty-three were police officers and 343 were firefighters. However, an estimated 25,000 lives were spared. Giuliani’s stated that his inspiration in leading the city out of the horrific tragedy was Winston Churchill: I was trying to think, ‘‘Where can I go for some comparison to this, some lesson about how to handle it?’’ So I started thinking about Churchill, started thinking that we’re going to have to rebuild the spirit of the city, and what better example than Churchill and the people of London during the Blitz in 1940… (Giuliani 2002, 13)

In the immediate aftermath, when the people of the world needed to see a hero, the cameras had found Rudolph Giuliani. Thereafter, he worked diligently to get the tourist economy back into the city and he was successful in doing so. In December 2001, Time magazine called him ‘‘Man of the Year’’ and ‘‘Mayor of the World.’’ Queen Elizabeth selected Giuliani for knighthood, which he graciously accepted on behalf of the people of the city, and he also received Italy’s highest civilian honor, the Cavaliere di Gran Croce. But was he a hero? Apparently, many think so, but in New York City, among those who had the opportunity to observe events unfold more closely, some blame him for the deaths of hundreds of firefighters and others who died—in large part because the radios for emergency communications did not work and so commands to evacuate the towers before their collapse went unheard inside the towers. Two years earlier there had been City Council hearings about the poor condition of the radios. Nothing had been done. Giuliani’s crime-fighting efforts also included reforming New York City’s judiciary. His posture suggests that he wanted judges to operate from a more crime-control (as opposed to due process or concern for legal technicalities) posture. Ed Koch had created a merit-based judicial selection and reappointment system, which required that the mayor accept the recommendations of a new mayor’s Judiciary Committee and the New York Bar Association. But Giuliani reclaimed the mayor’s right to select and appoint judges regardless of the committee or bar association’s opinions. For example, he refused to reappoint Criminal Court Judges Eugene Schwartzwald and Jerome Kay despite their favorable recommendations. Giuliani was also insistent in the mid-1990s that Criminal Court Judge Loren Duckman retire and be investigated after his decision to release a suspect on bail resulted in


the suspect committing murder in a domestic dispute. Hence, Giuliani may have made some judges very concerned about pleasing the mayor. Although the numbers have not been thoroughly examined and the NYPD has admitted that their statistics are not infallible, crime declined drastically while Rudy Giuliani was mayor. However, the decline began before Giuliani. Dinkins had hired more officers and Giuliani hired even more; the drug wars were also on the decline, given more stringent enforcement efforts and longer sentences for offenders. Law and order had replaced chaos and drabness, for many, but not all who frequented New York City.

POLICE BRUTALITY Although Rudy Giuliani has never encouraged police misconduct, his brash no-nonsense posture may have been misinterpreted by police officers already inclined to roguery. There were a number of high-profile cases of clear police brutality on his watch to which, regrettably, he was slow to respond apologetically. In fact, he refused to meet with minority leaders (who represented the victims) during the media frenzy around most of the incidents. This created a deep rift with local African Americans, Latinos, and civil rights advocates that continued through his entire mayoral administration. Giuliani’s administration began with a rocky racial bent. On January 9, 1994, there was a hoax 911 call of a robbery at a mosque in Harlem. Responding police went charging into the mosque. Angry at the invasion into their place of worship and ignorant about the call, members of the Nation of Islam forcefully removed the officers. The scuffle was resolved peacefully, but Giuliani was most perturbed that arrests had not been made. Bratton, who was new on the job as police commissioner, was instantly at odds with the mayor who wanted a more aggressive law and order posture. The responding officers had chosen to resolve the matter with negotiations as opposed to arrests. Giuliani also tripled the size of the NYPD’s Street Crimes Unit (to almost 400) in 1997. This unit, which had existed since 1971, held the motto ‘‘We own the night.’’ Their primary focus was to get guns off of the streets and to pursue specific dangerous criminals. As a smaller group, the officers in the unit were trained and mentored carefully, which diminished when the group’s size was inflated suddenly. The result was that certain persons apparently were profiled and mistreated. Blacks, Latinos, and gay men were strip-searched and held overnight while they were checked for warrants. Bratton had characterized the problem of police brutality as a ‘‘knucklehead’’ problem. He meant that police brutality was a matter of the actions of a few who were not the city’s finest and whose presence on the force was a result of a lowered standard in police recruitment practices.

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The following are a few of the many racial and ethnic minority members who were victims of police indignities during the Giuliani administration: Alton Fitzgerald White, a 35-year-old black male and Broadway leading actor, in July 1999 was taken into custody, strip-searched, and not allowed any telephone calls for two hours after opening the door to let officers into his building. He thought that the officers were there to assist someone. The officers, who later apologized, claimed that they were looking for drug dealers. Anthony Baez, a 29-year-old Latino Bronx resident, was playing football with others in the street on December 22, 1994. After his ball hit a squad car, an officer ordered the players to go home. Instead the players moved to another area of the street to continue their sport. A scuffle between the players and the officers followed and Baez, who suffered from asthma, was choked to death. Abner Louima, a 33-year-old Haitian immigrant, on August 9, 1997, attempted to break up a fight outside a Brooklyn nightclub popular with Haitian immigrants. In the scuffle, one of the police officers arriving on the scene was punched. The officer mistakenly assumed that Louima was involved. Louima was taken to the precinct house, which had supervisors (sergeants) in the building. Therein, four officers participated in a severe beating and sodomy of Louima with a toilet plunger stick such that Louima’s intestines were punctured, his bladder was injured, and several of his teeth were knocked out. Reportedly, one of the officers involved said, ‘‘This is Giuliani time. This is not David Dinkins time anymore.’’ The officers involved then suggested that Louima’s injuries were the result of gay sex. Four officers, Justin Volpe, Charles Schwarz, Thomas Weise, and Thomas Bruder, were convicted for the attack.

After the Abner Louima attack, which clearly shocked the city’s conscience, Giuliani appointed a committee to examine police-community relations. The committee worked seven months to issue more than 100 recommendations that included better psychological screening of officers, more diversity in the police force, better pay, greater emphasis on courtesy, and requiring that new hires live in the city. Yet, instead of expressing gratitude, the mayor was largely dismissive of the work. Then there was the Amadou Diallo shooting. On February 4, 1999, Diallo, a 22-year-old African immigrant, was killed while unarmed and reaching for his keys and identification. He was fired on by police 41 times, with nineteen bullets striking him after a Street Crimes Unit plainclothes officer had yelled ‘‘gun.’’ In the aftermath, thousands protested the police actions and hundreds submitted to an arrest in protest. Yet Giuliani refused, as was his pattern then and now, to meet with black leaders. One exception was Giuliani’s friend and ardent supporter, an African-American former congressman and a pastor of a substantial African-American congregation in Queens, New York, the Reverend Floyd Flake. The meeting ostensibly ended their friendship. Flake told Giuliani about being pulled over and called ‘‘nigger’’ by a police officer.


Giuliani seemed unmoved. Thus, the meeting ended with Flake telling Giuliani, ‘‘You’ve got a mean streak in you’’ (Kirtzman 2001, 247–248). The incidents continued. On March 15, 2000, Patrick Dorismond, a 26-year-old black male security guard and father of two, was killed by police. As plainclothes officers attempted to engage Dorismond in a drug transaction, Dorismond, who had recently taken steps to become a police officer himself, refused their advances and out of his annoyance, a scuffle followed during which Dorismond was fatally shot. Thereafter, Giuliani attempted to demonize Dorismond by releasing his sealed juvenile record, which showed that at age thirteen Dorismond had been a delinquent. Giuliani went further, saying that this latest victim of alleged brutality was ‘‘no altar boy.’’ As it turns out, Dorismond had been an altar boy, but the mayor refused to apologize for the remark, claiming it was a matter of unimportant semantics. In all the above examples, the victims were racial minorities and the officers were white. Even Giuliani’s African-American Deputy Mayor Raymond Washington had negative police encounters. Giuliani’s response was to have him issued a special identification to ward off the police. The mayor appeared to have failed to understand minority concerns for their safety at the hands of police. He was, of course, capable of sympathy, but this seemed largely reserved for the police. For insight on the mayor’s thinking in minority versus police disputes, newswriter Andrew Kirtzman offered this recount of comments that Giuliani made at the dedication of a street in honor of slain Police Officer Vincent Guidice in 1996: We have a right to demand more respect from the citizens of the city for police officers of the City of New York. It’s about time to stop carrying signs pretending that they’re racist, it’s about time to stop carrying signs equating them to the KKK…They have to make decisions that I don’t know that I’d be capable of making, and they’re second guessed by some of the worst in society…the aggressive, appropriate police strategies of this department have saved thousands and thousands of lives (Kirtzman 2001, xii).

Yet, how could it be that Giuliani might appear so racially insensitive? Although his high school graduating class of 378 had only four blacks, he told writer Jack Newfield that he had a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr., in his high school room. Reportedly, while a law student in the 1960s, Giuliani sympathized with black rioters in Newark and Detroit. His friend Peter King claims he was ‘‘blacker than the blacks.’’ Yet, in a diverse city none of Giuliani’s initial aides were black. In his second term there was one, Rudy Washington, the Deputy Mayor for Community Development and Business Services (from 1996 to 2001). Giuliani even had clear racists in his inner circle while mayor. These included Deputy Mayor for Economic Development John Dyson and Parks Commissioner Henry Stern, who each made remarks that blacks were inferior.

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Overall, Giuliani himself appears to have made a point of avoiding black people. The mayor, who could make it to just about any police officer or firefighter’s funeral at a moment’s notice, often had some excuse about why he could not meet with noted black elected officials (such as U.S. Congressmen Charlie Rangel and Gregory Meeks, Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields, and State Comptroller Carl McCall). He claimed that ignoring black leaders and what he called their pandering allowed him to serve the black community more effectively. Recently, as a candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States, he refused to participate in an All American Presidential debate at Morgan State University, for a largely African-American audience, choosing instead to attend a fundraiser elsewhere.

CONCLUSION From the start to the end of his career in public service to New York City, Rudy Giuliani has exercised significant control over his public persona, at times through attacks on free speech in terms of limiting the comments of city employees to the press and pitching story angles to movie and television producers about his image. While in office, a number of public documents on his performance as mayor became unofficially unavailable, and when he left office, much of the paperwork on his administration was moved to a secure location. This being the case, the full story of Giuliani’s successes and failures is unknown. Perhaps Rudy Giuliani was a genius mayor or just a very lucky man. Jack Newfield, who knows him well, believes the latter to be the case. He calls Giuliani a ‘‘C-plus mayor of New York who became an A-plus myth in the world.’’ He is referring to the fact that as mayor, Giuliani succeeded in putting himself at odds with many in the city: ‘‘blacks, black leaders, victims of police brutality, free speech and civil liberty advocates, AIDS activists, school teachers, schools chancellors, taxi drivers, community gardeners, museum artists, [and] sidewalk artists,’’ to mention a few. Pre-9/11, Giuliani’s approval rating was less than 50 percent, damaged in part by his revelation to the media earlier that year that he was leaving Donna Hanover, his second wife and mother of his two children, for his mistress Judith Nathan— all before telling wife Donna of these plans. Newfield attributes what he calls the ‘‘great mayor myth’’ to the power of television, in that after the 9/11 attacks the public’s psyche desperately needed a hero. The President, who might have been the usual choice of hero, seemed lost and was even scuttled away into hiding. So too was the Vice President Dick Cheney, but the television cameras found and embraced Rudy Giuliani. Thus, Ground Zero became like a shrine, and Giuliani like its saint. A hero? ‘‘No,’’ says Newfield, ‘‘he did nothing heroic; he merely did his job’’ (2002, 37).


Could it be pure luck that someone so ridiculed by so many has come so far politically? Likely not. He has managed to accomplish some significant positive changes as a courageous prosecutor and a hard-nosed, controlling mayor. Clearly he was not successful at all things, being human after all. It is more likely that his style has simply been very different from all those before him. His style carries a caustic flavor, suggesting entrenched issues with trust, loyalty, and race. However, to accomplish some things that needed to be done, namely, to bring law and order to a chaotic city, he was definitely the man for that job. The success with crime numbers, however, came at a grave and costly price for many innocent young minority males and their families. Regrettably, the mayor’s sympathy for these families fell short. This remains a stain on a great legacy, but the story of Rudy Giuliani continues. FURTHER READING Barrett, Wayne. 2000. Rudy! An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani. New York: Basic Books. Breslin, Jimmy. Preface. 2005. In America’s Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani’s New York, xvi. ed. Robert Polner, New York: Soft Skull Press. Capeci, Jerry, and Tom Robbins. 2005. Prosecution. In America’s Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani’s New York, 11–12. ed. Robert Polner, New York: Soft Skull Press. Fremont, Eleanor. 2002. America’s Mayor: Rudy W. Giuliani. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks. Giuliani, Rudolph. 2002. The Mayor of America in His Own Words: The Quotable Giuliani. ed. Bill Adler and Bill Adler, Jr. New York: Pocket Books. Kelling, George. 1991. Reclaiming the subway. City Journal Winter, 17–28. Kirtzman, Andrew. 2001. Rudy Giuliani: Emperor of the City. New York: Perennial. Koch, Edward. 1999. Giuliani: Nasty Man. New York: Barricade Books. Newfield, Jack. 2002. The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books. NYC. Gov, A Biography of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. http://www.nyc.gov/html/ records/rwg/ html/bio.html/. Parrott, James, and David Dyssegaard Kallick. 2005. Economy. In America’s Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani’s New York, 75. ed. Robert Polner. New York: Soft Skull Press. Pearson, Hugh. 2005. Enforcement. In America’s Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani’s New York, 118. ed. Robert Polner. New York: Soft Skull Press. Polner, Robert. 2005. Introduction. In America’s Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani’s New York, xxxii. ed. Robert Polner. New York: Soft Skull Press. Siegel, Fred. 2005. The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York and the Genius of American Life. San Francisco: Encounter Books. Wilson, James Q., and George Kelling. 1982. Broken windows: The police and neighborhood safety. Atlantic Monthly. March. http://www.theatlantic.com/ doc/198203/broken-windows (accessed May 12, 2008)

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AP Images/Louis Lanzano

Curtis Sliwa: Vigilantism, Victims’ Rights, and the Guardian Angels Brion Sever, with Al Gorman and Greg Coram


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Curtis Sliwa is a long-time crime fighter and the founder of the Guardian Angels, an organization that is devoted to the safety of citizens. He created this organization in New York City in the late 1970s in the midst of a movement toward greater victims’ rights and vigilantism, and it has grown from a handful of friends to a thriving organization. The success of the Guardian Angels has brought considerable fame to Sliwa, and though he still remains controversial to many observers, he is undeniably an icon of crime fighting. Today, the Guardian Angels have an international presence, with groups now established in Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and so on. Sliwa’s popularity has continued to grow in congruence with the increased presence of the Guardian Angels, and through the trial of John Gotti, Jr. in connection with an assassination attempt made on his life. Sliwa regularly makes guest speaking appearances and currently hosts a radio talk show with cohost Ron Kuby. This chapter will review Curtis Sliwa’s contribution to criminal justice within a historical context of the larger social and political movements present during his rise to fame. It will explore the origins of vigilantism as well as the victims’ rights movement, particularly in the 1960s and 70s in the United States. Included in this discussion will be a focus on sensational media coverage of crimes, popular television programs and movies centering on vigilantism and justice, the Nixon administration’s movement of the criminal justice system back toward the crime control model, and vigilantes such as Bernard Goetz who have gained media attention. All of these phenomena were present during the development of the guardian angels and their influence on the rise of the Guardian Angels will be examined.

DEFINING VIGILANTISM To better understand Curtis Sliwa’s Guardian Angels’ group, it is necessary to have a wide historical view of the concept of vigilantism and its relation to victims’ rights. A historical perspective is not possible, however, without first attempting to clarify the term ‘‘vigilante.’’ According to MerriamWebster’s dictionary, vigilante can be traced back to the Spanish and its original meaning was watchman or guard. People of ancient Rome used the Latin word ‘‘vigilans’’ with regard to Rome’s own night watchmen who were assigned to keep an eye out for criminals drifting through the streets at night. Vigilante more recently has been used to describe someone who is a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily, a self-appointed doer of justice. This is consistent with traditional conceptions of vigilantes as being those who take justice into their own hands. In historical terms, vigilante has often had a judgmental connotation. This concept is underscored in Shotland’s definition, who defines vigilantes as

Curtis Sliwa: Vigilantism, Victims’ Rights, and the Guardian Angels

victims or family or friends of victims who seek revenge and overreact in their pursuing such revenge. For example, victims may use greater force than would be allowed by conventional law enforcement. This would include historic examples of blood feuds developing over harsh reactions by victims that were problematic enough to necessitate governmental authority of criminal offenses. Perhaps one of the more influential researchers on the subject has been Les Johnson, who describes vigilantism as social movements that use force, violence, corporal punishment, or the threat of such. Johnson’s definition explicates that vigilante acts are performed by groups that are not supported by the state and whose activities are in contrast to the standard norms of institutions. Accordingly, these groups attempt to impact crime or social control by providing security to members of society. As Johnson demonstrates, the complexity involved in vigilantism combined with its evolving nature make it a difficult phenomenon to describe in one single definition. It is not a phenomenon that easily allows groups to be dichotomized into vigilantes or victims’ rights advocates. There will be some overlap between the two groups, and whether a group is considered vigilantes or victims’ advocates can vary with the time period and who is classifying them. Because there is significant discord in the manner in which vigilantism is used by sociologists, criminologists, psychologists, criminal justice professionals, and political scientists, it is also difficult to conceptualize its merit. Although some sociologists tend to focus on a broad functional definition of vigilantism, viewing society’s need for vengeance as a functional aspect of a society that values justice, others have viewed it as a negative phenomenon that occurs because of the character flaws of the people undertaking the act or because of a lack of proper oversight or effectiveness of law enforcement. Criminologists and victimologists frequently have considered vigilantism within a discussion of its potential to impact crime and the criminal justice system. Some have emphasized its potential to impact crime through greater reporting practices or decrease it via deterrence. Others view vigilantism as a secondary issue or as a theoretical issue within debates over gun laws, the death penalty, neighborhood watch groups, juvenile justice, and self-defense, but have not placed as much emphasis on clarifying its definition. Another complication emerging from this discussion is in establishing the scope of vigilantism: This obviously can hinge on the definition that is used. For instance, if the Webster’s dictionary definition of vigilantism is used, whereby it is defined as a person who is a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily, then a number of groups conceivably could be included. Indeed, some who have been referred to as terrorists or hate crime groups could be classified under this definition. Many political scientists would include these groups under the definition

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because they are inclined to study vigilantism as a form of political violence, while they would include nonviolent vigilantism as part of an internal critique of state government and thus as a function of politics. Other definitions of vigilantism tend to be more case-specific, providing different types of vigilantes. Vigilantes incorporated under such typologies include social control vigilantes and crime control vigilantes. Social control vigilantes are motivated by issues that they believe impact the quality of life, values, or sense of decency in society. Under this definition, a vigilante could include those who seek equality for minorities at any cost, members of the Ku Klux Klan, or those seeking to influence special interests by ridding society of abortion, decreasing pollution, and so on. Crime control vigilantes include those people or groups who believe that justice is not being upheld and that there needs to be intervention to rectify the injustices taking place. These groups may seek to aid law enforcement in their patrols and searches for fugitives or may try to influence the punishment that a criminal has received. For instance, crime control vigilante groups may patrol the streets to protect citizens or they may attempt to influence the everyday life of a rapist who has been released from prison by tracking his whereabouts or informing neighbors of his background. The line on which these actions border on the illegal is often a very fine one, particularly in the views of many within the criminal justice system. Moreover, vigilante groups typically do not fall strictly under crime control or social control classifications, because the two are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, Curtis Sliwa’s Guardian Angels have undertaken strategies that are encompassed by both crime control and social control vigilantism. One of the factors separating the definitions across the various fields studying vigilantism is the motivation necessary for a person or group of people to be included as vigilantes. Those in criminal justice and criminology tend to hold a narrow definition that includes people whose motivations are focused on justice or social order. Although hate would not be included as a primary motivation of vigilantes, it may be true that vigilantes often hate criminals or people they perceive to be criminals. The fields of criminal justice and criminology would place hate groups and terrorists in categories separate from vigilantism, whereas sociologists and political scientists are not as concerned with the legal barriers separating groups. Although the victims’ rights movement is often identified with vigilantism, the two are separate phenomena. Under some definitions of vigilantism, it certainly could be included within the goals and functions of the victims’ rights movement. There are certain actions of vigilantes, however, that are not in line with the mainstream victims’ rights movement. The authors of this article do not use the term vigilante with the negative connotation with which it has commonly been associated. History has shown that those who were once considered vigilantes may now be


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Citizen Patrols In recent years, police departments have recognized the value in tapping into the motivation and enthusiasm of citizens desiring to volunteer in the effort against crime in their neighborhoods. In contrast to the notion of vigilantism, police departments have formed citizen patrols to work under the supervision of the police for the purpose of adding ‘‘eyes and ears’’ in the fight against crime. Below is a description of a typical citizen patrol program—in this case, from the Minneapolis (Minnesota) Police Department. A Brief Guide to Citizen Patrols Community Crime Prevention/SAFE believes that citizen patrols can be an appropriate extension of a block club. Having pairs of residents walking around the block at various times makes their watch force more visible. This is a more effective deterrent to crime. Sponsorship We advise residents to run their patrol under the auspices of their neighborhood association or some other group that will monitor the patrol’s activities and provide support. Management of the Citizen Patrol The block club(s) or other group that organizes the patrol is responsible for recruiting potential participants and screening them. CCP/SAFE encourages patrol sponsors/organizers to do criminal history checks on those interested. All patrollers should be thoroughly briefed before they begin patrolling. This should include mission, appropriate activities, limits of authority, proper reporting procedures, and personal safety information. CCP/SAFE offers a four-hour workshop that provides the basic information needed to organize and run a citizen patrol. Contact your SAFE team for more information. The organizing group is responsible for the ongoing management of the patrol. This includes setting up the patrol schedule, monitoring the conduct of the patrollers, and informing the precinct of the activities of the patrol. The Minneapolis Police Department and the City of Minneapolis do not license and are not responsible for the activity of citizen patrols or any loss or injury suffered as a part of their activities. Any liability incurred as a result of the patrol’s activities is the responsibility of the individual patroller. Role of Patrollers Patrollers create a positive, watchful presence. When they identify situations where crime is occurring or appears about to occur (suspicious activity), they (continued )


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call 911 and continue to monitor the situation until a squad arrives, updating the telecommunicator as necessary. Patrollers are not expected to physically intervene in dangerous situations, but must use their judgment to decide on appropriate action. CCP/SAFE’s citizen patrol workshop will provide guidance in assessing situations. Equipment For the safety of the patrollers, we advise them to carry either portable radios or cellular phones. This enables those on patrol to contact 911 quickly if they see an incident or need assistance. Weapons Carrying knives, guns, etc. is illegal. The only weapon patrollers can legally carry is tear gas (Mace). Screech alarms can also be carried. Source: Minneapolis Police Department. Crime Prevention Resources. http:// www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/police/crime-prevention/docs/CITIZEN-PATROLS.pdf/.

endorsed by government officials and referred to as victims’ advocates. The actions of these groups that were once considered extreme may become accepted over time, or they may tone down their strategies to gain greater government acceptance. Regardless, many groups begin as radicals but then gain greater acceptance from mainstream society over time. Thus, when we use the term vigilantism to refer to groups such as the Guardian Angels, this is a historical rather than a political or ideological interpretation. THE CAUSES OF VIGILANTISM AND VICTIMS’ ADVOCATES: MICRO AND MACRO EXPLANATIONS Before discussing the history of vigilantism and victims’ rights, we will assess some of the reasons that these phenomena occur. This analysis will review potential causes of vigilantism as well as victims’ advocacy, and compare and contrast some of the sources of these behaviors. This discussion will emphasize both the macro and micro potential causes of vigilantism and victims’ advocacy and how the impact of the time period changes these explanations. In this chapter, we will separate vigilantes from victims’ advocates via the motivations of the two groups and the strategies that they undertake. As the


discussion above demonstrated, there is a great deal of overlap between the motivations and actions of the two groups, so we will use generalities in categorizing them. In essence, we will classify victims’ advocates as those who focus strictly on issues or policies that impact the rights and lifestyles of victims, while vigilantes may include justice and retribution in their objectives. Moreover, victims’ advocates do not use violence or threat of violence to obtain their desired results, while vigilantes sometimes use whatever means is necessary. Because victims’ advocates are primarily a function of modern criminal justice systems, vigilantism has a much longer history. Indeed, the use of violence and force by private citizens arguably provides a function in society when there is a limited organized system of criminal justice in place. Private citizens formulated the original police patrols, and thus, it is odd to some observers that law enforcement and government originally viewed them as outsiders or instigators. When private citizens use their own discretion in applying the law with no overriding legal guidelines to follow, vigilantism is an almost inevitable result, and increased reports of injustice and brutality typically have coincided. Thus, vigilantism eventually became a negative term that was used to describe unjust and discretionary violence and intimidation used against criminals by those who resist conventional avenues. However, one cannot ignore the functional aspect that vigilantism sometimes provides in societies that lack a strong central government or system of criminal justice. Arguably, vigilantism is functional and even beneficial when there are increases in aggregate level perceptions of fear, victimization risks, and injustice resulting from weak criminal justice systems. Accordingly, the weaker the criminal justice system is perceived to be in protecting citizens against all victimization, the more likely vigilante behavior will originate and the more accepting society is when it does originate. In contrast, societies with strong criminal justice systems view citizen involvement with a more critical eye. For example, in the Old West of the United States, where law enforcement coverage was sometimes sparse, citizens moved to fill the gaps. The United States has, however, more macrolevel determinates of vigilantism than the mere perception of an understaffed criminal justice system, and many theorists focus on the country’s unique history. Indeed, a number of theorists believe that America has its own distinctive culture of violence: a subculture of violence per se. For instance, Brown asserts that violence has been a part of American culture since its inception and that violence has been used in several instances to preserve this nation. Accordingly, because of this initial reliance on violence, it has been relied on more in the United States than in other industrialized countries, with threats to law and order being met with a strong use of force. Brown contends that the use of force was also critical in maintaining the cultural values of America’s three-class system, particularly when rioting began after the establishment of unions.

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As with time period surrounding vigilantism, the theory used to explain macro level vigilantism differs depending on the location of the vigilantism. For instance, while undeveloped and disorganized areas with unsubstantial police presence led to much vigilantism in the West, vigilantism found in the South may have different causes. A number of additional theories may be used to explain much of the vigilante justice that existed in the Old South and many states in the North. For instance, subculture theories are instrumental explanatory tools in that small groups were typically responsible for the majority of vigilante acts occurring in the South throughout the 1800s and 1900s. Within some groups, the use of violence to control black populations become common, as seen in white citizens’ societies and the Ku Klux Klan. Such subcultures involve a cycle in which ideology and tactics are learned socially by younger generations who have differential opportunities for inclusion in such groups. At a higher level, attempts were made to alienate black members of society to maintain the distinctions that had existed before the Civil War. These actions fall closely in line with the focus of racial conflict theory, which asserts that the elite will direct attention, laws, resources, force, etc., to control minority populations. Another facet of vigilantism in America stems from the sacred right of gun ownership after the Revolutionary War. This right has led to the formation of heavily armed militia groups that are readying themselves for an overabundance of governmental intrusion or governmental indifference or inaction in a time of chaos. These groups would be on the fringe of the vigilante cultures in our definition, because they do not focus simply on crime and justice, but on governmental actions and policies. There is little doubt that the Second Amendment and its related history have an impact on vigilante justice. One of the facets of vigilante justice is arguably the overuse of force in protecting oneself or others from crime. More than 75 million Americans own guns today; 70 million of which are handguns. This high gun ownership rate allows for a higher potential of violent vigilante acts in the United States. Victim advocacy is an increasingly common phenomenon in developed societies, particularly those with a long tradition of fundamental rights provided to the accused. Victim advocates are a function of the greater focus on the victim over the past fifty years, and they typically enjoy a more legitimate role within society today, with many of these positions included within the criminal justice system. While the causes of vigilantism are more complex at the aggregate level, victims’ advocacy is mostly the result of the victims’ rights movement and the turn-back to a crime control model. The number of victims’ advocates also may increase relative to the numbers of vigilantes, as evolving societal standards dictate which behaviors denote advocacy and vigilantism. As with most phenomena, the factors impacting macro level incidence differ from the individual level explanations of those participating in the phenomena. This is no different for vigilantism and victim advocacy. There


are a number of alternative theories that could be used to explain why an individual becomes a vigilante or a victims’ advocate. For instance, the behavior could be socially learned, as is commonly seen in families of police officers or firefighters who have been influenced by the elder generations. Similarly, joining a group with a controversial objective often can lure those who are seeking an exciting self-concept or greater involvement in an objective they hold in high esteem. Indeed, the original Guardian Angels could have had much of the same appeal for its members as a gang would provide. It granted an extended family and a direction for many young and poor minority youth at the time. While the Guardian Angels may have provided for much of its original members’ need for security, friendship, purpose, and so on, members joining today may have different backgrounds and rationales. The Guardian Angels are viewed more today as victims’ advocates than they originally were, and they have more legitimate pathways to follow in accomplishing their tasks, simply because times have changed and opinions toward them have changed. Indeed, many in law enforcement and government now see the advantage of civilian groups in aiding the fight against crime. For instance, civilian agencies are cheap and can be particularly cost effective when its very members include members of society who were at risk for unconventional behavior. In this regard, these groups provide another outlet for youth besides deviance and offer a cheap resource for police. The greater the evolution between police and citizens groups like the Angels, the less they overlap with one another and understand their boundaries. This eventually leads to greater efficiency. Moreover, with the greater legitimacy of civilian groups and the greater prestige of becoming involved in the groups, recruitment ultimately becomes a more simple process. Another aspect of civilian groups is that they provide an avenue to those who are ambitious about community involvement, yet lack the background, credentials, or even stability to become a government officer. They also provide an opportunity for those who are either too young or too old for traditional law enforcement activity, tapping into a resource that has not always been utilized. With the increasing older populations expected in the United States over the next fifty years, volunteer groups have the opportunity for greater numbers of members who could serve as mentors for the youth in the group. One cannot ignore the influence of the media in a discussion of the causes of vigilantism and victims’ advocacy. As will be discussed later in this chapter, television crime shows and movies may have an impact on the attitudes of members of society surrounding the criminal justice system and even the decisions of some of the initial Guardian Angels to become involved in the group. In this regard, these shows could also impact one’s desire to be involved in the system. Indeed, the unprecedented numbers of law enforcement shows on television today have corresponded with an increasing

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number of criminal justice departments at universities across the country and those desiring to be involved in criminal justice. Although not all teens with an interest in criminal justice have the opportunity to go to college or have a desire to take out loans, they do have the opportunity to become involved in the fight against crime. Citizens groups can provide this opportunity for teens who are seeking involvement.

ORIGINS OF VIGILANTISM AND VICTIMS’ RIGHTS The term vigilante can be traced back to ancient society, although there is little documentation of organized vigilante groups that can be classified under a crime control model. This is unsurprising because of the sparse criminal justice literature remaining from the period and because vigilantism was a way of life at this time and nothing out of the ordinary. Indeed, blood feuds resulting from vigilante acts by one family against another were so common in ancient society that they contributed to the criminal justice system’s being organized into an objective third party that would handle disputes over injustice or crime. The impact of crime control vigilante acts on the current state of the criminal justice system, though largely undocumented, should not be underestimated. Although acts that were considered crime control vigilantism were common to ancient society, vigilantism with a social focus has commonly been associated with larger paradigm shifts throughout history. Slave rebellions, religious movements, and upheavals against governments can all be classified as social vigilantism and can be dated back to ancient times before the Roman Empire. Vigilantism in the United States emanates from the Deep South and Old West during the 1700s. Lacking a formal system of criminal justice, groups from small towns began forming, calling themselves vigilance committees. As these committees evolved, members began harassing, torturing, or killing people who were seen, justifiably or not, as threats to their communities. Later in the eighteenth century, vigilante justice gave rise to the notorious lynch mobs, which were known for hanging people with little or no evidence of wrongdoing and with no concern for due process. Perhaps no place or time period has molded our perceptions of vigilante justice more than the American West of the 1800s. This custom occurred in part because of the transitory nature of the West, the willingness to allow some groups such as slaves and Native Americans fewer rights than others (which translated over to suspected criminals), the historic use of violence to settle economic disputes, and the nature of the open frontier and settlements and the accompanying disorganized and sometimes nearly nonexistent criminal justice system. Vigilance committees were common within the West from the mid-1800s to the twentieth century. Vigilantism seemed to fill a need in


areas where justice was a day’s ride away. Vigilance committees were typically made up of merchants, ranchers, farmers, bankers, and other citizens who had clout in the area. They were developed as a method to protect one’s family, land, and business interests, in some ways analogous to the formulation of feudal societies in the Dark Ages. Although these groups did attempt to stay within the governing laws of the time, they shared some other common threads with justice in the Dark Ages: corruption and brutality. Perhaps the first well-known vigilance committee in the western United States was formed in 1851 in San Francisco on its waterfront district, or Barbary Coast as it was known at the time. The Barbary Coast was famous for its high crime rate, swindlers, murder, and corruption in government, although crime and corruption was found to some extent in most western cities at the time. San Francisco’s problem was amplified by the influx of 49ers seeking a quick profit, leading to further disorganization of values, morality, and trust in one’s neighbor. Vigilante committees were formed to stabilize the area and to bring justice to the large number of criminals who could not be apprehended and/or processed by the conventional system. The parallels between this environment and those found in the Bronx during the 1970s when the Guardian Angels originated provide tantalizing clues to the formulation of vigilance groups. Although much of the historical attention has focused on the corrupt and violent side of vigilance committees, San Francisco’s committee had success in cracking down on corrupt government officials and carpetbaggers. Other vigilante committees were formed in Montana and nearby settlements in the West, as well as in Southern states such as Tennessee, New Orleans, and Georgia after the Civil War. One particular group was formed in Tennessee and the members originally were hailed as vigilantes. This group originally fought against Northern Carpetbaggers during the instability in the South after the war, eventually becoming known more for their racism and brutality toward blacks: The Ku Klux Klan. Vigilantism was not limited simply to the deep South and the West in the developing United States. As Brown contends, vigilantism arose in areas that were absent of effective law enforcement, a problem common in developing areas. Accordingly, at least 326 cases of vigilante groups have been identified from the mid-1700s until 1900. The San Francisco vigilance committee was critical in that it marked a turning point whereby vigilance committees were no longer merely a phenomena found only in rural developing areas, but now were being established in the urban areas that were forming during the Industrial Revolution. During this time, there was considerable expansion in industry and immigration of the Irish and other groups into the country to assume the new jobs. These groups often moved into the low rent areas and took low salary jobs, working long hours and often having customs more accepting toward alcohol use than many of the surrounding inhabitants. When

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crime and lawlessness increased in these areas, vigilance committees were established and a new problem arose that was perceived to be beyond the control of law enforcement by themselves: the urban slum. Because of the technological and societal changes that took place in the early 1900s and because of America’s preoccupation with World War I and events leading up to it, vigilantism reemerged under a different focus in a country now considered a post-war power. A form of social control vigilantism called neovigilantism surfaced, triggering increased bounty hunting for fugitives of justice, lynching of minorities, and the formulation of neighborhood groups. This era also saw an escalation of groups that sought to decrease violence caused by alcohol as well as other social ills, particularly during federal prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s. The vigilante movement became stagnant in the late 1930s and into the 1940s, as most of the world became immersed in the Second World War. After the end of the war, however, several factors influenced the direction of vigilantism, including social and political movements, theoretical paradigm shifts, and technological advances. It was during this time that the concept of victimology began to splinter out of the field of criminology, and more attention began to be placed on victims, their roles in society, and the impact of crime on their lives. At the same time, the civil rights movement gained momentum, with focus being placed on the treatment of blacks in the South. In a sense, the civil rights movement was a form of social control vigilantism, whereby private citizens did not rely on the law or criminal justice system to correct an ill of society. This movement allowed citizens to better understand their own roles in fighting for the rights of victims and in correcting injustice. This movement also coincided with a time period in which citizens had a decreased faith in the government and saw it as a dispenser of punishment rather than a protector of justice. This perception was further solidified during the Vietnam War with the government’s reluctance to leave Vietnam despite public protest and with the corruption in the Watergate scandal. The civil rights and antiwar movements were of vital importance in the creation of the ideology that eventually underlined the victims’ rights movement. Indeed, they demonstrated some of the failures of relying on government to settle disputes or to seek justice. The dissatisfaction with the approach in which the government handled the war translated into a greater mistrust in all government-run institutions and an awareness of the absence of citizen participation in governmental decisions. Indeed, many began to view the government as a cold and faceless organization concerned more with bureaucratic rules than for the citizens it represented. Just as the women’s rights movement was able to impact temperance in the 1700s and prohibition in the 1800 and 1900s, their impact on the victims’ rights movement was just as profound. Although the movement had


been in place and made linear strides since the inception of the United States, it experienced a revival of sorts in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Highly publicized events such as Billie Jean King’s victory over Bobbie Riggs in tennis in 1973 simply provided fuel to a movement that had already gained momentum through the progress made in the civil rights movement, women’s greater inclusion in the workplace, their involvement in legal debates surrounding abortion, and the strength of their voice in the antiwar movement. The goals of the women’s rights movement had evolved throughout history, but its impact on the victims’ rights movement was strikingly similar to its impact in past movements surrounding alcohol. One of the primary motivations in those prior movements had been the perceived impact of alcohol on violence by men against women and on the family union. Similarly, this new movement centered on violence of men against women and what they viewed as the government’s indifference to such domestic matters. Thus, many of the goals of the women’s rights movement were congruent with the emerging focus on the neglect of victims by the government-run criminal justice system and the increasing crime control and social control vigilante movement.

THE CLIMATE OF THE 1960S AND 1970S AND ITS IMPACT ON VIGILANTISM AND THE VICTIMS’ RIGHTS MOVEMENT The organized movements that had formed by the 1960s were not the result of the victims’ rights movement, nor were they the sole cause. These reforms did have a significant impact on the speed and efficiency with which the victims’ rights movement was able to impact policy, however, and there may have never been an organized ‘‘movement’’ if it were not for the work of these groups. For instance, the civil rights and women’s rights movements were already established and organized when victims’ rights came into focus, allowing their knowledge and structure to be utilized more effectively in the victims’ right movement. Could Mothers against Drunk Driving (MADD) have made such a powerful impact against drinking and driving without members who knew how to impact special interests? Moreover, could protections against police brutality and civilian review boards have developed as quickly without the use of the existing resources and connections with the civil rights movement? The climate that existed in the 1960s and 70s brought together the right ingredients to increase concerns about the treatment of victims to the point that groups with opposing political ideologies took up the cause. While the civil rights and women’s movement were placing greater focus on victims, the due-process model that had been popular in the 1960s was beginning to create a backlash and bring more conservative groups into the victims’ rights

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movement. Fourth Amendment procedures such as the exclusionary rule were resulting in defendants’ having cases dismissed because of what many perceived as technicalities unrelated to their guilt or innocence. This outrage was further amplified by sensational murder cases of the late 1960s and early 70s, a perception that not enough was being done to counteract crime, particularly drug crime, and a change in political ideology in the country. In the early 1970s, the United States turned back toward what is now referred to as a crime control model. Under this model, more resources were devoted to building prisons, longer sentences were employed against criminals, and a number of agencies were created in an effort to counteract the growing drug problem. Anger was also brewing because of the number of rights defendants were receiving in relation to those granted to victims. The media further fueled this outrage by covering stories of sensational crimes that were disproportionate to their actual incidence, and sensationalizing cases where defendants had charges dismissed because of procedural issues. Media sensationalism, particularly that which is focused on crime, has by no means decreased over the years. Its impact during the 1970s, however, may have produced a greater impact on viewer perceptions and criminal justice policy because of the novelty of this type of media exposure. Americans were becoming acquainted with the new expanding media market and the over-saturation of contemporary issues. They were not privy to the knowledge of the blurry line that sometimes exists between fiction and the facts provided by the media, particularly from a media that had become revered through its coverage of the war and role in uncovering the Watergate scandal. Although vigilantism can be seen throughout the history of storytelling in works such as Robin Hood, the topic may have reached its apex in the 1970s and 80s. The entertainment industry of the 1960s and 70s seemed to be fixated on crime and justice. Books such as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, and Vincent Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter rehashed mass murders in real life, and they were later developed into motion pictures. A number of motion pictures centered on vigilantism, including the Dirty Harry and Death Wish series. Some theorists contend that the Dirty Harry and Death Wish movies were not an influence on society during the 1970s, but rather a symptom of the perceptions about law and order that were gaining momentum. Lenz asserts that these films demonstrate that the concepts of law and order do not always coincide and are at times at odds with one another. Accordingly, these two movies portray a system that has become too law oriented, which necessitates unconventional approaches to achieve order. Such movies have come under criticism as glorifying tactics of vigilante violence, the potential impact on viewer perceptions being difficult to measure. Some movies such as Magnum Force and The Star Chamber even countered the growing movement in Hollywood toward vigilantism and victims’ rights ideology by dramatizing some of the potential dangers of these ideologies.


The movement toward victim frustration in Hollywood was not limited to movies, and it began to gain momentum in television in the late 1970s. Television shows such as The Rockford Files and Hill Street Blues emphasized frustrations with law enforcement and criminal justice and their tendency to overemphasize red tape while ignoring victims. Theorists have contended that crime dramas can impact viewer perception of justice and stimulate moral deliberation about the criminal justice system and its legitimacy. With the growing civil rights movement, feminist movement, a heightened media attention on crime, a turn to the crime control model, and vigilantism taking the forefront in entertainment, the victims’ rights movement began to organize and make progress. Along with the creation of the field of victimology, there were a number of enhancements to the fate of victims in the criminal justice system in the 1960s and 70s. For instance, victims’ compensation programs began in the 1960s, marking an initial attempt to compensate all victims of crime, not simply those who could afford crime insurance. The establishment of restitution programs that had become popular in Europe, with its greater use of fines and monetary penalties, coincided with the use of compensation to bring the victim back into the punishment process. The attention to crime victims spread to crime data in the early 1970s with the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Until this time, crime statistics such as the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) had focused primarily on reported crime and arrests, without recording many details about the attributes of the crime victim. The NCVS changed this by surveying a national sample of households about their victimization rather than their crime. The survey’s rationale was to provide a better understanding of crime victimization and to assess the dark side of crime, the amount of crime occurring that was not reported to police. The women’s rights movement has had much impact on victims’ rights, particularly through increased attention to domestic violence and rape. Feminists, victims of rape, and others in the victims’ rights movement were instrumental in the formation of the first rape and battered women’s shelters, as well as educating the public about these supposed taboo crimes. Since these programs began in the 1970s, police departments have established special rape units to process rape victims and have seen a significant increase in the number of women who feel comfortable enough to come forward and report rape. Police reaction to domestic violence also has been scrutinized since the 1970s, with a number of studies focusing on the effectiveness of the different police responses of arrest and warnings. Moreover, the right of victims to fight back against their attackers became a popular issue, with the battered-women’s syndrome coming to the forefront as a self-defense strategy for many battered wives who injured or killed their husbands.

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The 1980s brought greater victim involvement in the criminal justice system. As previously mentioned, MADD was successful in changing perceptions about drinking and driving and achieving tougher penalties against offenders. Attention to hate-based crimes also came to the forefront in the 1980s, with particular emphasis on crimes that are motivated by hatred of race and gender. Finally, the 1980s saw more attention devoted to victims’ rights within the court process, with victim-witness programs developed that acted as a liaison between victims and the prosecution. These programs concentrated on bringing victim awareness and impact back into the system. Now victims were kept up to date routinely on the progress of their cases and were even asked for their input in some cases. New York City was a worldwide leader in the vigilante movement, stemming from the media publicity of its crime, a high fear of crime, and a police force that had been hampered by cutbacks. Famous cases of vigilantism also occurred, such as Bernhard Goetz, who shot four black youths on a subway train in 1984. The Goetz case polarized views on the subject and brought vigilantism into the spotlight in America, as Goetz was hailed as a subway vigilante by some and a criminal by others. Goetz was eventually acquitted of any illegality surrounding the shootings of the youths, but did serve time in prison for carrying illegal weapons. CURTIS SLIWA AND THE ORIGINS OF THE GUARDIAN ANGELS The Bernhard Goetz case highlighted frustrations about crime that had been brewing for a number of years in New York in 1970s. Drug dealing was common in New York City in the 70s, and the crack cocaine panic was on the horizon. Cases like ‘‘Son of Sam’’ had kept New York in fear for months at a time, and more citizens began to have supportive views toward vigilante behavior. It was under these circumstances that Curtis Sliwa originated the Guardian Angels in the late 1970s. Curtis ‘‘The Rock’’ Sliwa founded what would become known as the Guardian Angels in 1979, when he was a manager at a McDonalds in the Bronx (www.guardianangels.org). The Guardian Angels were not the first community watch group created in New York, nor were they a group that was created simply on a whim by a man who was fed up with crime as many commonly perceive. Rather, the Angels were part of a process toward citizen involvement in law enforcement that was fledging, and they were an extension of other community groups that Sliwa had begun several years earlier. Sliwa became known as ‘‘The Rock’’ in high school in the early 1970s, because of his fighting and tenacious personality and also his sense of community activism. He was known for a strong sense of justice and being opinionated about crime and civic duty, eventually forming a neighborhood clean-up group called the ‘‘Rock Brigade’’ in 1977.


Sliwa remained close to many in the Rock Brigade in the late 1970s, even working alongside some of them at McDonalds. Partly because of his outrage over crime and its role in the deterioration of his neighborhood, Sliwa turned to the members of his Rock Brigade to help achieve his vision of a new group that would focus its attention more closely on crime, originally named the ‘‘Magnificent 13’’ in 1979. On February 13, 1979, the thirteen members officially began patrolling subways in the Bronx. At this time, these members were mostly a collection of minority teens who were trained to make citizen’s arrests and patrol the subways, alleys, and neighborhood streets. They soon created uniforms, donning berets, red jackets, and white t-shirts. When they began to grow in numbers, they changed their name to the Guardian Angels, after the name given to angels who watch over people and deliver them from danger. Some of the original Guardian Angels had been gang members in the past, a factor that Sliwa did not view as an inhibitor to inclusion into his group. Many of the Angels admitted that they had been inspired by the 1979 movie The Warriors, which centered on gang members who had a plan to take over the streets of New York. However, these Angels differed in that they desired to take back the streets for the law-abiding citizens of New York. To be included into the Guardian Angels, prospects had to maintain a job or be a registered student and have no desire for revenge against criminals. Sliwa wanted the members to serve as protectors of society, rather than appear to fight crime. Although some of the original group carried knives as protection, none of them carried walkie-talkie radios because they did not want to be perceived as extensions of the police force. The Angels received training in martial arts and self-defense, and Sliwa also readied them for the harassment that they would encounter from citizens, by harassing them during training to ensure that they would not lose their temper under duress. Because of citizen anger over crime at the time of the Angels’ creation, particularly in New York City, the reaction to the Angels was sometimes positive. Many saw them as a much overdue aid to local law enforcement and welcomed them into their communities. Some were not as receptive, however, with claims made that they were overly aggressive and with thenmayor Koch describing them as ‘‘vigilantes’’ in a negative connotation. He has since reversed his stance against the group. This initial negative reaction was not surprising, because it had occurred throughout the 1960s when the first crime watch patrols in Brooklyn were dubbed vigilante groups. Sliwa did not help heal the divide when he openly criticized the procedures of police in some cities. Despite their detractors, the group did enjoy some immediate success, being credited with helping create safer environments for subway users. Part of the resistance encountered by the original Guardian Angels was due to a perception of those in government about crime and other governmental issues. Some in government and law enforcement believed that

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vigilante and other neighborhood advocate groups decrease the overall authority of law enforcement. The neighborhood and multicultural community restoration projects that that exist today were not as common, and citizen involvement in what were perceived as government issues was not as encouraged. Moreover, the monopoly that government agencies had on law enforcement was economically beneficial in that it reduces duplication of enforcement efforts, which could potentially be more efficient for society if correctly allocated. This was similar to the arguments made surrounding the efficiency of centralized agencies compared to more personal, decentralized agencies that compete against and often overlap one another’s efforts. The Guardian Angels were not viewed by most in government and law enforcement as beneficial groups, but rather as novices who were overstretching their boundaries as citizens and whose potential negatives outweighed their positives. Thus, a factor existing today that was missing during the origins of the Guardian Angels is the increased governmental acceptance of community groups and a functioning relationship with law enforcement. As Johnson contends (1996), one of the key factors establishing whether groups are viewed as victim advocates or vigilantes is the support they receive from state and federal agencies.

GROWTH AND LEGITIMACY OF THE GUARDIAN ANGELS Sliwa’s Angels gained popularity despite their criticism, and they grew from thirteen members to forty-eight in the first year. Sliwa did not only encounter resistance from law enforcement and government officials, but gang members as well. He had to clarify to local gangs that the Guardian Angels were not attempting to take over their territory, but just make it safe for citizens. Although many, even some of its original members, believed that the Guardian Angels would be a short-lived phenomenon, the organization has expanded to more than 5,000 members and fifty national offices and even international bases. According to Sliwa, by 1996 the Angels had made more than 4,000 citizen’s arrests, on cases ranging from theft to murder. Typically, the Angels hold a suspect until police arrive or escort the suspect to a police precinct. The journey of the Guardian Angels has included some bumps in the road, with the organization encountering friction when they attempted to open chapters in cities outside of New York. The doubts that haunted their original formation still exist in some areas today, as witnessed in Boston where government officials and law enforcement have not endorsed the group. But such resistance has turned to welcome in most cities, and now the Angels enjoy a more legitimized status in the United States. Indeed, the police chief and mayor of Minneapolis have been enthused by their recent coordination with the Angels.


The international growth of the Guardian Angels now has expanded to a number of countries including Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Africa, and some Scandinavian countries. These international bases have generally coincided with increases in the crime rate in these countries. Not surprisingly, the Angels encountered struggles in their expansion into other countries, just as they had across the United States. They have made greater strides in Japan than in England and Canada. The organization has failed a few times in Canada in the past and has only a handful of members in England. The Guardian Angels typically come to the attention of the general public when they are involved in high profile criminal cases, such as their shaming of the preppie murderer Robert Chambers or their volunteer efforts to pump gas in Washington, D.C., during the sniper shootings. In fact, one of the simultaneous criticisms by some and acknowledgements by others of the Angels has been their tendency to force involvement in high-profile issues. This could include their recent patrol of Mardi Gras after Hurricane Katrina and patrol of the borders near Mexico in search of illegal immigrants, but the Guardian Angels have a number of objectives today that are not in the public eye and do not involve street crime. While the objectives of the Angels may differ depending on the city in which they exist, the general goals of the group include safety patrol, education, and cyber security. Because the Angels are well known for their safety patrol, their efforts in education and cyber security are less well known. They offer a number of professional development seminars to police as well as seminars to students and teachers. Some of the subjects of their programs include school violence prevention, classroom management techniques, bullying in schools, gang recognition, Internet safety, and diversity awareness. The Guardian Angels was one of the leading victims’ advocate groups that recognized the crime problem existing over the Internet. After Curtis Sliwa had discussed cyber crime with some Internet experts on his radio show in 1995, he became convinced that the Internet was nearly an anarchist society that received little oversight or law enforcement. Although he knew very little about computers or the Internet, Sliwa decided that the Angels should begin patrolling the net much as they had the city streets in 1979. Sliwa established the CyberAngels in 1995, referring to it as the first cyber neighborhood watch. The CyberAngels have worked with local law enforcement as well as the FBI and now have established connections with law enforcement in more than thirty countries in their attempt to patrol the Internet. The main focus of the group today is on online fraud, hacking, identity theft, cyber stalking, and tracking pedophiles. Similar to the Angel’s safety patrol wing, the CyberAngels also provide classes and workshops. In fact, the Angels received a $200,000 state grant in 2006 to teach children around the state about the dangers of surfing the Internet and the existence of online predators. The grant is also being used to help train teachers about the warning signs of online bullying.

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CURTIS SLIWA AND THE FUTURE OF THE GUARDIAN ANGELS AND VICTIMS’ RIGHTS Curtis Sliwa has achieved fame through means other than the Guardian Angels over the past twenty years, hosting radio shows and himself being a victim in a publicized criminal case. Sliwa was cohost of a talk show with Lisa Evers (his wife at the time) on WABC-AM radio in the early 1990s. He had been critical of the Mafia on his talk show, particularly the Gotti and Gambino families, when he was attacked by two men in 1992 and shot multiple times. The shooting was just four days before John Gotti was sentenced to prison and occurred when Sliwa was picked up outside his home in the East Village by two men who had stolen a taxi. One man was crouching down in the front seat of the car and sat up and began firing just seconds after Sliwa had sat down in the cab. He was shot in the legs and back while attempting to escape through the window. The doors to the taxi had been wired shut to impede any escape. The two men involved in the attack were later linked back to John Gotti, Jr., and he was tried three times for attempted murder in the failed assassination attempt. The first two trials resulted in hung juries and Gotti, Jr. was acquitted in the third trial. Sliwa’s radio program was cancelled after his assassination attempt, but he continued his work with the Guardian Angels in the 1990s, helping their transition to a global organization. Sliwa currently cohosts the ‘‘Curtis and Kuby in the Morning’’ program on WABC-AM radio and occasionally serves as guest host on the Sean Hannity Show. With the Guardian Angels now well entrenched as a victims’ advocate group, it is likely that they will continue to confront crime over the next twenty years. During the Angels’ existence, there have been great strides in victims’ rights, with some of the more notable programs including the establishment of victim witness programs, various forms of neighborhood watch programs, victim impact statements, extended victim compensation and restitution programs, protection from sex offenders, and a number of other initiatives. As technological changes generate new forms of crime, victims’ advocates will continue to be called on to counter these criminals and protect their victims. In this regard, the victims’ rights movement may not be a simple movement at all, but rather a natural and functional part of the criminal justice system that aids victims and protects potential victims. What exact role the Guardian Angels will have in this response to crime and victims is yet to be determined. FURTHER READING Abrahams, Ray. 1998. Vigilant Citizens: Vigilantism and the State. Oxford: Polity Press. Anonymous. 2006. Guardian Angels Partnering With New York State to Keep Kids Safe on the Internet. Associated Press. http://222.wcbs880.com/pages/101038. php?contentType=4&contentID=219665.


Austern, D. 1987. The Crime Victim’s Handbook. New York: Penguin Publishing. Barker, Joshua. 2006. Vigilantes and the state. Social Analysis 50:203–207. Brown, Richard. 1975. Strain of Violence. NY: Oxford University Press. Brown, Richard. 2002. Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Buckler, K., and L. Travis. 2005. Assessing the news-worthiness of homicide events. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 12:1–25. Capeci, Jerry. 2003. Junior Don Behind Curtis Sliwa Shooting. Gang Land News June 26. http://www.ganglandnews.com/column336.htm. Carrigan, William. 2004. The Making of a Lynching Culture: Violence and Vigilantism in Central Texas, 1836–1916. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Cloward, Richard. 1994. Illegitimate means, anomie, and deviant behavior. In Theories of Deviance. 4th ed. ed. Stuart Traub and Craig Little. Itasca, IL: F. E. Peacock Publishers. Cole, George, and Christopher Smith. 2005. Criminal Justice in America. Tampa, FL: Thompson Publishing. Culberson, William. 1990. Vigilantism: Political History of Private Power in America. (Contributions in Criminology and Penology, Vol. 28). Westport, CT: Greenwood/Praeger. Dignan, J. 2005. Understanding Victims and Restorative Justice. New York: Open University Press/McGraw Hill. Doerner, William, and Steven Lab. 2005. Victimology. 4th ed. Bethesda, MD: Lexis Nexis. Educom Review Staff. 1996. Cyber-Cops: Angels on the Net. Educom Review http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/review/reviewArticles/31134.html/. Escott, Paul. 1989. White Republicanism and Ku Klux Klan terror: The North Carolina Piedmont during reconstruction. In Race, Class and Politics in Southern History: Essays in Honor of Robert Durden, ed. Jeffrey Crow, Paul Escott, and Charles Flynn, 3–34. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press. Fletcher, George. 1988. A Crime of Self Defense: Bernhard Goetz and the Law on Trial. New York: The Free Press. French, P. 2001. The Virtues of Vengeance. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. George-Kosh, David. 2006. Toronto: Broke Guardian Angels may quit streets. National Post September 7. http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/toronto/ story.html?id=88d8e9e5-ae53-4ec9-b50c-ff6462274ca7/. Guardian Angels: Keeping It Safe. The Alliance of the Guardian Angels. www. guardianangels.org/. Hil, Richard. 1998. Juvenile crime and autonomous citizen action. Youth Studies Australia 17:35–41. Horwitz, Allan. 1990. The Logic of Social Control. New York: Springer. Johnson, Les. 2001. Crime, fear and civil policing. Urban Studies 38:5–6. Johnson, Les. 1996. What is vigilantism. The British Journal of Criminology 36:220–221. Kenney, Dennis. 1987. Crime, Fear, and the New York City Subways: The Role of Citizen Action. Oxford, UK: Praeger. Karmen, Andrew. 2007. Crime Victims: An Introduction to Victimology. 6th ed. Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth.

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Kleck, Gary. 1991. Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Kohn, A. 2005. Straight Shooting on Gun Control. Reason 37:20–25. Lamborn, Leroy. 1987. Victim Participation in the Criminal Justice Process: The Proposals for a Constitutional Amendment. Wayne Law Review 34:125–220. Largen, M. 1981. Grassroots Centers and National Task Forces: A History of AntiRape Movement. Aegis 32:46–52. Lenz, Timothy. 2005. Conservatism in American crime films. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 12(2): 116–134. http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/ vol12is2/lenz.pdf/. Lott, J. 1998. More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lunardini, Christine. 1995. Women’s Rights (Social Issues in American History Series). Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press. Marx, G., and D. Archer. 1976. Community police patrols and vigilantism. In Vigilante Politics, ed. J. Rosenbaum and P. Sederberg, 129–157. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. McGrath, Roger. 1987. Gunfighters, Highwaymen and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Merriam-Webster. 2007. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster. http://www.m-w.com. Messner, Steven, Eric Baurner, and Richard Rosenfeld. 2006. Distrust of government, the vigilante tradition, and support for capital punishment. Law and Society Review 40:559–590. Newton, Michael. 2006. The Ku Klux Klan: History, Organization, Language, Influence and Activities of America’s Most Notorious Secret Society. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company. Pedahzur, Ami, and Arie Perliger. 2003. The causes of vigilante political violence: The case of Jewish settlers. Civil Wars 6:9–30. Pennell, Susan, Christine Curtis, Joel Henderson, and Jeff Taxman. 1989. Guardian Angels: A unique approach to crime prevention. Crime and Delinquency 35:378–400. Raney, Arthur, and Bryant Jennings. 2002. Moral judgment and crime drama: An integrated theory of enjoyment. Journal of Communication 52:402–415. Roach, Kent. 1999. Due Process and Victim’s Rights: The New Law and Politics of Criminal Justice. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Rosenbaum, Dennis. 1987. The theory and research behind Neighborhood Watch: Is it a sound fear and crime reduction strategy? Crime and Delinquency 33:103–124. Royce, Josiah. 1948. California, from the Conquest in 1846 to the Second Vigilance Committee in San Francisco: A Study of American Character. Boston, MA: Houghton. Savage, Kerry. 2004. At 25, the Guardian Angels are now on Global Patrol. Columbia News Service. http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/cns/2004-02-16/ 392.asp/. Sherman, Lawrence. 1991. From initial deterrence to long term escalation: Short custody arrest for poverty ghetto domestic violence. Criminology 29: 821–850.


Shotland, L. 1976. Spontaneous vigilantism: A bystander response to criminal behavior. In Vigilante Politics, ed. J. Rosenbaum and P. Sederberg, 30–44. Philadephia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Smalley, Suzanne. 2007. Guardian Angels launch city patrol, expand across U.S. The Boston Globe, March 31. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachussetts/ articles/2007/03/31/guardian_angels/. Stokes, P. 1996. Organized against crime: The work of communities organised for a greater Bristol (COGB) 1990–1994. In Preventing Crime and Disorder: Targeting Strategies and Responsibilities (Cambridge Cropwood Series), ed. T. Bennett. Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge, Institute of Criminology. Stubbs, J. 1991. Battered women’s syndrome: An advance for women or further evidence of the legal system’s inability to comprehend women’s experience? Current Issues in Criminal Justice 3:267–270. Weisburd, David. 1988. Vigilantism as community social control: Developing a quantitative criminological model. Journal of Quantitative Criminology 4:137–153. Wilde, James. 1979. In New York: The magnificent thirteen. Time May 7. http:// www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,920294-1,00.html/. Williams, Kate. 2005. Caught between a rock and a hard place: Police experiences with the legitimacy of street watch partnerships. The Howard Journal 44: 527–537. Young, Andrew. 1996. An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America. Oxford, UK: HarperCollins Publishers.

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Dr. Henry Lee: Leading Practitioner in Forensic Criminal Investigations Janet E. McClellan


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Dr. Henry Chang-Yu Lee, popularly known to crime investigation and forensic investigations aficionados as Dr. Henry Lee, rose to national and international attention when he was hired by the O. J. Simpson defense team to examine the forensic evidence in the brutal double murder investigation. Dr. Lee’s unpretentious and unassuming pragmatic presentation of the blunders and misrepresentations committed by the Los Angeles California Police Department and crime scene technicians during the months-long media fascination with the details of the trial in 1995 became the cornerstone of the defense. However, Dr. Lee’s involvement in and dedication to the examination of investigative practices combined with careful scientific examination of forensic evidence had a long history of professional commitment and enthusiasm for meticulousness decades before he was thrust into the spotlight of public attention. Dr. Henry Lee began his odyssey to become a leading proponent of conscientiously applied best investigative practices and rigorous scientific examination of the physical evidence discoverable at crime scenes in the late 1950s as a young police officer in Taiwan, to 1998 with the dedication of the Henry Lee Institute of Forensic Science at the University of New Haven. Dr. Lee’s consultations in cases from around the world and his tireless efforts to advance the use of scientific investigative practices guarantee his place among the iconic crime fighters of the twentieth century.

LIFE IN CHINA Dr. Henry Lee was born Henry Chang-Yu Lee in the Chinese province of Jiangsu in the city of Rugao on November 22, 1938. Rugao, China, historically has enjoyed a reputation as a major seaport city located on the Yangtze River where the Shanghai metropolitan area has had a significant history of cultural and economic prominence. Henry C. Lee was born in the middle of what became known as the Chinese Civil War, during which factions in China waged war among themselves while simultaneously waging the Sino-Japanese War during World War II. The Chinese Civil War, involving decades of fighting between rival governmental entities, was to shape the future of the Chinese people and play a significant role in life of Henry Lee. The Chinese Civil War had erupted in 1927 between the Chinese Nationalist Party led by General Chaing Kai-shek and members of the Chinese Communist Party and ultimately fomented the civil war. The war continued throughout World War II as China fought against the Japanese military invasion and lasted until after the end of World War II in 1950. In 1950, the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Nationalist Party ceased hostilities, leaving the Chinese Communist Party and its regime in control of mainland China.

Dr. Henry Lee

In the midst of the turmoil in 1942, six-year-old Henry Chang-Yu Lee, his twelve siblings, and their mother fled China by escaping to Taiwan. Lee’s father had been killed by the communists prior to the family’s flight from mainland China. The death of Lee’s father appears to have provoked the flight to Taiwan, where his mother later worked to provide for and raise her children alone. The courage of his parents and the enormous work ethic and effort of his mother may well have had significant and lasting affects on the focus and exceptional motivation he would begin to reveal as a young police candidate and officer in Taiwan.

EDUCATION AND TRAINING In Taiwan as a young man, Lee attended what became known as the Central Police University in Taoyuan, Taiwan. Originally, the Central Police University had been created through the combining of a police high school and advanced police officer training in 1936. The school, as then established, provided for standardization of training for law enforcement administrative ranked officers throughout the various provinces. Most significantly, in its earliest history, the school supplied the training of future supervisory ranked law enforcement officers by providing for high school and some college level programs. By the time Henry Lee entered the school at the age of eighteen, the college was renamed the Central Police College and had added a number of courses including some basic course work in the forensic sciences. The college traditionally offered a free education to those who passed its entrance criteria, which made it possible for Henry C. Lee, one of thirteen children, to advance professionally. During a reformation in 1957, the school was renamed and became the Central Police University and additionally established two primary educational departments that focused on police administration and criminal investigation. Henry Lee graduated from the university with a degree in criminal investigation and spent the next several years as a lieutenant, rising to the rank of captain in 1960. In 2002, in an interview with John Miller of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Dr. Lee stated that his first homicide investigation as a police officer involved the dismembered body of a male victim that he found so disturbing that he almost became a confirmed vegetarian. Lee and his wife, Margret Song, immigrated to the United States in 1965 to pursue his education. Upon arriving, Lee discovered that his college degree from Taiwan was not accepted by U.S. institutions, so his dream of pursuing a medical degree was postponed. From 1965 to 1968, Lee worked as a waiter, stock boy, and groundskeeper while earning his associate degree from the City College of New York (Hewitt and Harms 1996). In 1968, Lee found employment as a research technician in the biochemistry department

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at the New York Medical Center and served in that capacity until 1974. With his expanding interest in criminal investigation and forensic science and after receiving a small scholarship from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, he enrolled in the Forensic Science program and later received his B.S. in 1972. Lee continued his studies, earning a master’s degree in science in 1974 and a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1975 at New York University in New York City. During his master’s and doctoral studies, Lee worked as a research scientist in the biochemistry department at the New York Medical Center, thereby enhancing his academic training with practical skills applications. Upon completing the Ph.D. in biochemistry from New York University, Lee received his first academic appointment with the University of New Haven in West Haven, Connecticut, in 1975. Dr. Lee was hired as an assistant professor in the criminal justice division and additionally as the director of the university’s forensic science laboratory. Dr. Lee taught a wide variety of courses during his tenure at the university. Although too numerous to list completely, the courses Dr. Lee taught at the University of New Haven and at a myriad of other academic institutions include criminal investigation, criminalistics, crime scene reconstruction, fingerprints, forensic analysis, forensic science in the administration of criminal justice, DNA applications in forensic science, homicide investigation, medicolegal death investigation, serology, and methods of teaching math and science. At the University of New Haven, Dr. Lee quickly rose through the academic ranks, from associate professor in 1977 to full professor in 1978 and the distinguished chair in of the Forensic Science division in 2000. From 1990 to 2006, Lee received nine honorary doctorates from a variety of academic institutions in Connecticut and Maryland.

CRIMINAL AND FORENSIC INVESTIGATIONS: FROM HUMBLE BEGINNINGS In 1978, while at the University of New Haven, Dr. Lee began work with the Connecticut Crime Laboratory, although at the time the lab was operating in the only space provided by the State Police and that was in the men’s restroom in the State Police Troop barracks at Bethany, Connecticut. It amounted to ‘‘little more than a polygraph machine, a fingerprint kit, and a microscope in a stripped-down men’s room’’ (Herszenhorn 2000). Although the facilities and equipment were at best humble, the laboratory provided eight forensic services to the State Police and other law enforcement agencies, including fingerprints, firearms/toolmarks, polygraph, voiceprints, documents, serology, trace evidence, and photography. In 1979, the lab was renamed the Connecticut State Police Forensic Science Laboratory, and after working there for almost a year, Dr. Lee was appointed its first

Dr. Henry Lee

chief criminalist. With an expanded budget, Dr. Lee began purchasing stateof-the-art equipment and the techniques and forensic procedures. Eventually, as the value and the importance of the services provided by Dr. Lee and others gained recognition and stature from their work on criminal investigation cases, the lab expanded services and was moved to Meriden, Connecticut, in 1984. Their new home was the converted building of the Meriden School for Boys, a facility that once had housed male delinquents. In 1994, Dr. Lee and his team were moved to a new 24,000 square foot facility that became the home of the Connecticut Division of Scientific Services. By 2007, the Division of Scientific Services facility was expanded an additional 50,000 square feet to house the variety of services for the state of Connecticut’s investigation needs. The variety of investigative and forensic scientific applications and examinations offered through the units and divisions of the lab in 2007 included those in criminalistics (DNA, trace evidence, forensic biology, etc.), identification (fingerprints, documents, firearms and tools), controlled substance and toxicology lab, and the computer crimes and electronic evidence lab.

NOTORIETY AND NOTORIOUS CASES Dr. Lee taught at the University of New Haven in Connecticut for twentyfive years, and was the director and chief criminalist for the Connecticut State Police for twenty-three of those years. With prodigious energy, Dr. Lee served as an educator of hundreds of students and forensic investigator in thousands of cases for the citizens of Connecticut. However, Dr. Lee’s energies and enthusiasm for criminalistics in and out of the classroom expanded his reputation among criminal justice professionals and resulted in his involvement in notorious homicide cases within and beyond Connecticut. Three of the more significant notorious cases in which he was involved and his contributions to the findings of evidentiary facts follow.

Helen Crafts: The Wood Chipper Case 1986 (Connecticut) In a 2005 interview in Great Britain with a show host, Dr. Lee discussed his involvement in a case in 1986 that pursued the possibility of a murder without the availability of the victim’s body. In the beginning of the interview, Dr. Lee stated that criminal investigators use deductive and inductive logic while forensic scientists apply scientific techniques and facts to piece together the facts and implications of the available evidence. Dr. Lee acknowledged that both sets of skills are necessary in successful investigation conclusions. More than merely acknowledge the necessary combined skills of investigative practices and forensic facts assessments processes and techniques,

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Dr. Lee practiced his habit of being involved intimately in the examination, identification, collection, and assessment of crime scene analysis and evidence assembly. On the morning of November 19, 1986, in the midst of a heavy winter storm in Newton, Connecticut, long-time resident, wife, and mother Helen Crafts disappeared. The last person believed to have seen her alive was her husband, Richard Crafts. Richard told the family’s au pair that Helen had decided to drive to her sister’s, more than 120 miles away, during the near blizzard conditions. Under his directions, the au pair readied the Crafts’s children and herself to be taken to Helen Crafts’s sister’s home in Newport, Rhode Island. Upon arriving in Newport the au pair learned that Helen had not yet arrived. Richard Crafts returned alone to his residence in Newton. After interviewing the au pair in December, Newton, Connecticut, detectives requested that Richard Crafts take a polygraph. He agreed and on December 4, 1986, Richard Crafts passed the first of three polygraphs he would take over the next several weeks. The Newton Police Department was stymied. Although Richard had passed his polygraph examinations, he had given a variety of conflicting stories accounting for his wife’s absence to friends, family members, and the police. However, suspicious though these stories were, they did not rise to the levels of proof needed to secure search warrants. The Newport police needed substantive proofs to move the case forward. The regional newspapers discussed the mystery and the lack of information available to the local police. Based on the lack of results and through a request from Helen Crafts’s relative in mid-December 1986, Connecticut State Police investigators became involved in the investigation. As part of their initial examination of the case, the detectives examined Richard Crafts’s recent credit card purchases and discovered a number of interesting items that later became significant in the solution to the case. Richard Crafts’s credit card purchases and rentals revealed that in November, he had purchased a large capacity freezer and a Stihl1 chainsaw, and he had rented a U-Haulä truck and a Model 150XP Brush Bandit1 wood chipper. The wood chipper is equipped with three twelve-inch steel high-speed rotating grinders and has an opening capacity through which to feed materials and a thirty-five-inch feeder tray. The chipper was designed to reduce matter introduced into the feeder tray by pulling, compressing, and grinding material into minutely shredded particles. The U-Haulä truck and the wood chipper had been rented the day Helen disappeared. With an extensive list of conflicting stories provided by their chief suspect, sworn statements from persons who had heard additional conflicting accounts of the whereabouts of Helen Crafts from Richard Crafts, and on the basis of the investigator’s experience in working violent crimes investigation, the detectives requested a search warrant from a local magistrate. The

Dr. Henry Lee

state investigators contended appropriately that in the commission of a violent offense against another person and in the course of that physical violence, detectable forensic evidence would have been distributed during a violent contact. The resulting violence would have resulted in the dispersal of blood, bodily fluids, tool or instrumentality marks, fibers, fingerprints, and a myriad of other evidence substances, indicating the likely commission of that violent encounter. They received the search warrant. On December 25 of that year, while Richard Crafts was out of town on Christmas vacation, the Connecticut State Police investigators accompanied by Dr. Henry Lee entered the Crafts’s home where Helen and Richard had lived since 1975. Of the hundreds of pieces and items of potential evidence located and seized that day, Dr. Lee and his staff discovered minute spots of blood on the mattress in marital bedroom. Once returned to the lab, the blood splatters tested proved positive for human blood and a later DNA test confirmed that blood had belonged to the missing Helen Crafts. Another stroke of luck occurred for the investigators on December 30 when a Newport municipal worker came forward and provided information when his memory was spurred after reading one of the newspaper accounts of the circumstances and dates surrounding Helen Crafts’s disappearance. The municipal service worker had been putting sand on the icy roads during the storm on November 19, 1986, when he observed a U-Haul truck towing a wood chipper at 3:30 A.M. The worker was incredulous that anyone would be out at that hour in an ice storm chipping wood. The municipal worker also was able to tell investigators that he saw the vehicle and chipper heading toward a road that would take it to Lake Zoar near Newton, Connecticut. Most importantly, the municipal service worker took the investigators to the area near Lake Zoar where he had last seen the U-Haul and wood chipper. The investigators combed the region and found a large area containing a variety of shredded materials and intact items. The shredded materials consisted of paper substances, wood chips, cloth, and matter that would later be revealed to be flesh, bone, and other human remains. From the materials on the banks of Lake Zoar, crime scene technicians and Dr. Lee searched through the debris to collect fifty bone chips, more than 2,600 pieces of hair, one tooth, a part of a fingernail, one-half a toe, and bone from the inner skull region of a human head. The bits and pieces of recovered crime scene evidence were identified through exhaustive examination and DNA analysis as the total of the remains of Helen Crafts. During the next several days in early January 1987, divers searched the cold December waters of Lake Zoar for additional items of evidence and located a Stihl chainsaw with serial numbers that had been filed away. In his laboratory, Dr. Lee was able to restore the filed numbers to reveal that the saw was number E592626. Ultimately, Stihl was contacted and it was

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learned that E592626 had been purchased by Richard Crafts for $499.00. Back at the Connecticut State Police crime lab, Dr. Lee examined the muddied and befouled chainsaw, locating human flesh, clothing fabric, and bone chips on the chain links. Subsequent examination revealed that the flesh and bones were those of Helen Crafts. The items of forensic evidence, which were comprised of those minute items, provided additional definitive linkages in the violent death and disposal of Helen Crafts by her husband Richard. On November 21, 1989, Richard Crafts was found guilty of murder and in January of the following year, the court sentenced him to 99 years in a Connecticut state prison. Dr. Lee’s habit of direct participation in and support of the investigative aspects of crime scene assessment, analysis, and evidence collection marked him as unique among his peers. His experience and training as a law enforcement officer, criminal investigator, and forensic scientist were part of his active practice. Not satisfied to wait for the arrival of evidence from the field, Dr. Lee engaged in actively supporting, conferring, and assessing crime scenes with the other state investigators. The culmination of those skills and unique enthusiasms for discovering the facts surrounding a criminal event no doubt were tied to his ability to have provided significant key evidence in all of the more than 8,000 cases in which he had been involved and were why he was to become the recipient of more than 800 awards and honors from academia, law enforcement agencies, and professional associations in his lifetime. O. J. Simpson Trial 1995 (California) O. J. Simpson, a former football player who had gained media notoriety as an actor and entertainment personality, was arrested and charged with the June 12, 1994, brutal murders of Nicole Brown Simpson (his ex-wife) and her friend Ronald Goldman. The charges against Simpson accused him of being responsible for the homicides that had taken place near the entrance of the condominium on Bundy Drive in Los Angeles, California. As the attacker, O. J. Simpson stood accused of viciously slashing Nicole Brown Simpson with a sharp-edged weapon, resulting in her head being nearly severed her body, and stabbing Ronald Goldman in excess of thirty times with the same instrument. In 1995, the American and world television-viewing public was able to witness the courtroom proceedings and testimony of the double-murder trial for the entirety of its 133 days of broadcast. Moreover, the forensic experts retained by the prosecution and defense presented to the viewing public the leading forensic science experts and authors in the United States in the person of such notables as forensic consultant Richard Saferstein, the published research works of James E. MacDonald, and testimony from Dr. Henry Lee.

Dr. Henry Lee

During the lengthy trial, as part of the presentation and examination of physical evidence collected and scientifically scrutinized from the crime scenes of the attack and other locations, prosecution and defense attorneys examined, reexamined, and cross-examined the forensic expert witnesses retained by the state and the defense. Days and frequently weeks of testimony involving the intricacies of crime scene procedures, detectives, criminalistics technicians, the coroner, and forensic experts were probed by both sides. The minute examination of the processes and procedures followed, and errors committed by the Los Angeles law enforcement and investigative officials were revealed. Through the presentation of evidence and procedural best practices as presented through the testimony and discussions of researchers and practitioners like forensic consultant Richard Saferstein, the published research works of James E. MacDonald, and testimony from Dr. Henry Lee, the viewing public became novice students in the processes and applications of forensic science applications and consideration in criminal investigations. Additionally, the emerging refinements of standards of practices associated with crime scene investigation procedures to include evidence recognition, collection, and handling by law enforcement agencies and forensic laboratory examinations would emerge henceforth as central and critical considerations in future criminal cases. As Dr. Lee stated during his testimony during the O. J. Simpson trial, Any investigation involves four important elements. One is the scene; the crime scene itself has to be in fact preserved. Anytime have a crime, have a victim, so victim itself become a crime scene. For example, a hit and run case involving a pedestrian, the pedestrian’s body becomes a crime scene… Of course the suspect who person or persons commit the crime become a crime scene itself. In addition, physical evidence such as guns, shoeprint, hair, sometime earring can become a piece of physical evidence, tire track…To link you need the four-way linkage. You can link the suspect to the scene if you find certain crucial physical evidence. In addition, you can link the physical evidence back to the suspect or suspects. Also, you can link the physical evidence to the victim. So this four-way linkage is rather important (CourtTV.com 2007).

In a broadcast by the CCTV in 2005 wherein Dr. Lee discussed his involvement in the O. J. Simpson trial, he stated, You don’t need a doctor degree, you need logic. Devotion is so important. What we do is not a job, it is a profession…we do not make up things—the physical evidence tells us everything (CCTV 2005).

Dr. Lee was hired by the team of defense attorneys representing O. J. Simpson and was questioned extensively by the state’s prosecutor Hank Goldberg regarding several points of evidentiary contention that had been

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raised by the defense. In his five days of testimony during the trial, Dr. Lee testified that he had examined the official records and reports submitted by the investigative personnel, photographs of the crime scene, and the state’s evidentiary forensic reports. He specifically testified regarding impression evidence on the belongings of victim Goldman, footprints and impression on the sidewalk where the murders took place, blood splatters from the scene and Nicole Brown Simpson residence, and other trace evidence and compression bloodstains on a sock belonging to O. J. Simpson taken by police from Mr. Simpson’s residence. Key elements of his testimony included a discussion of the proper procedures for cloth or similar materials containing probable biological fluids, the transfer of biological evidentiary artifacts on objects, the difference between swipes and compression of liquid substances onto the surfaces of materials, and the results of improper handling of biological evidence as it might cause or create degradation of DNA. Dr. Lee patiently and carefully replied to all of the prosecutor’s questions, refusing to be lead, make assumptions, or waver from the precision of his presentation of facts as he knew them as based on his examination of the evidence. One of the more interesting exchanges between prosecuting attorney Goldberg and Dr. Lee occurred when Goldberg attempted to use a text written by Dr. Richard Saferstein, a renowned forensic scientist, as the definitive explanation of the complications associated with the drying of crime scene materials containing biological substances, particularly blood. During the exchange, Goldberg appeared to attempt to maneuver Dr. Lee into either accepting in total the explanation of processes and complications of drying wet crime scene artifacts or contradicting the testimony previously offered by Dr. Richard Saferstein. Dr. Lee resisted both efforts and instead explained that as he had not written or contributed to the Saferstein text that the generalities discussed by Dr. Saferstein were precisely that, generalities and not specific to the case under examination. Additionally, when the prosecution attempted to suggest that a forensic laboratory manual developed by Labor and Epstein (1983) contained the definitive analysis of the complications associated with the drying of biological fluids as based on their controlled experiments with blood and other biological fluids, Dr. Lee countered that controlled experiments are not comparable to field or actual lab conditions. Furthermore, Dr. Lee pointed out that the assessments made in the manual and tables representing drying times were presented as general guidelines rather than the pronouncements of strict rules associated with the conduct of forensic processes. Throughout the examination and cross-examination by prosecution and defense attorney maneuverings, Dr. Lee presented the very picture of steady, thought-out, and considered scientific opinion, seemingly unassailable by even the most skilled attempts to set him to counter his considered findings and opinions.

Dr. Henry Lee

However, although his testimony was impregnable and without apparent bias or prejudice, he disclosed many of his concerns regarding the integrity of the investigation and the procedural errors committed by the Los Angeles investigators and the state’s forensic examinations during an interview on a Chinese talk show that subsequently was broadcast by the CCTV program English Channel Close Up in 2005. During the broadcast video interview, Dr. Lee revealed that although he did not believe the Los Angeles police had attempted to railroad O. J. Simpson, that a number of evidentiary artifacts could not be explained without considering that they had been planted by persons involved in the investigation to assist in the establishing of O. J. Simpson’s guilt in the death of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Dr. Lee specifically stated during the interview that he believed that the Los Angeles police investigators, crime scene, and forensic personnel had committed numerous errors associated with the recognition, identification, recovery, and examination of evidence associated with the case. He particularly cited an instance in which a technician who had collected a vial of blood from the scene had placed the vial in his pocket and forgot it was there for several days; the amount of preservative in vials of blood collected from the scene, which complicated the analysis and identification of the blood; that two cubic centimeters of blood mysteriously disappeared from a vial; and the compression of blood on the sock belonging to O. J. Simpson, which would have required its placement and pressing into the material rather than as a result of splatters from an attack. Although criticized by some for his unflattering critique of the Los Angeles Police Department, the department’s crime scene technicians, and subsequent laboratory examinations of evidence presented at the O. J. Simpson trial, Dr. Lee remained convinced that the failure to follow procedure, lack of protocol, and apparent attempts to cover those errors are a violation of principled law enforcement practices. Those convictions and respect for the considerations of due process are underscored by his statement that, ‘‘Our job is not to please someone; only the facts are pleasing’’ (CCTV 2005). JonBenet Ramsey Homicide Investigation 1996 (Colorado) In an interview in 2005, Dr. Lee was asked what lessons he would want law enforcement managers to learn regarding the investigations, practices, and procedures required in contemporary criminal justice. Dr. Lee replied there were a number of crucial issues that could not be ignored to secure the facts and arrive at the truth in investigations, specifically, Every year departments should look at how to train forensic scientists and crime scene investigators…Education is important…crime scene experts in the

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field and the forensic lab experts should work together…[I]nstead of living in an ivory tower [forensic experts] should understand the crime scene and realize that searching a crime scene is not an easy job. The two groups should have total cooperation and communication…[B]adge or no badge [they] should work as a team instead of having a traditional turf war (Kanable 2005).

Strong opinions arising from years of experience, training, and observations as a law enforcement officer and forensic scientist combined with his involvement in controversial and noncontroversial cases has led Dr. Lee to his conclusions that The integrity and security of the crime scene are crucial. We absolutely have to meet the scientific and legal requirements…You cannot just do whatever you as an individual please (CourtTV.com 2001).

The importance of Dr. Lee’s contentions regarding the integrity and security of the crime scene were particularly relevant to the investigation of the sexual assault and murder of a six-year-old Colorado girl named JonBenet Ramsey in 1996. The circumstances, processes, errors, and mismanagement of the investigation should serve as a reminder to law enforcement investigators everywhere that process and procedural errors are fatal flaws that ultimately prevent the successful closure of homicide investigations. Dr. Lee joined the special prosecutor’s team to aid the state of Colorado in the ongoing investigation of the murder and sexual violation of JonBenet Ramsey in 1999, three years after the child’s death. Subsequently Dr. Lee wrote in his book Cracking More Cases (2004), a lengthy assessment and analysis of the investigation of the murder and sexual assault committed against the six-year-old victim, JonBenet Ramsey. Dr. Lee’s book is an unapologetic analysis of a myriad of fatal flaws and missteps in the investigation into the murder of JonBenet Ramsey that culminated in the inability of law enforcement and prosecutors to identify the perpetrator or perpetrators of the child’s murder. The story of the sexual assault and homicide of JonBenet Ramsey began the morning of December 25, 1996, with the Boulder, Colorado, police department receiving a call from a frantic woman stating that her child had been kidnapped. What followed in the investigation processes conducted, ignored, or mismanaged by the Boulder Colorado Police department during the first twenty-four hours after the call from Patsy Ramsey could be described only as an instance in which ‘‘everything serves, if only as a bad example.’’ A proliferation of missteps, miscalculations, lack of procedure, failure to follow procedure as it existed, resistive support from commanding law enforcement officials, and the abandonment or willful discounting of investigative officer’s needs by command personnel hampered the preliminary

Dr. Henry Lee

investigation. The loss of control of the scene to potential suspect interference, deference to wealthy and political connected suspects, and the conflagration of media attention combined to render the case unsolvable. After a patrol officer arrived at the Ramsey house and read the purported ransom note that Patsy Ramsey said had been left by persons claiming to have kidnapped JonBenet, he called for backup. During the next two hours while the initial responding patrol officers searched the exterior of the premises, several of Patsy Ramsey’s friends whom she had called began arriving at the house and wandering through it without being challenged by the patrol officers. By the time two detectives arrived, two hours had passed, while the Ramseys, their son, and seven other persons meandered throughout the unsecured crime scene. Other police officers arrived, including FBI agents who were attempting to set up telephone line taps and traps to record any phone calls from the kidnappers, who had communicated through the note found by Patsy Ramsey that they wanted $118,000 for the safe return of her daughter. A detective decided that there were too many people in the house and ordered all nonessential personnel to leave. After giving the order, he and the other law enforcement officials left the Ramsey residence, leaving one detective to ride herd over the remaining Ramsey family members, their friends and pastor, and the city victims’ advocates who had arrived at Patsy Ramsey’s urgings. The uncontrolled crime scene was reduced to the responsibility of a lone detective, while the investigator and other officers went to the police department to confer about additional investigative processes during the two hours that followed. The detective called for assistance, but the requests were refused by senior personnel. A friend of the family, Stanford Lucas, and John Ramsey, father of JonBenet, searched the basement of the large fifteen-bedroom house. At approximately 12:55 P.M., nearly seven hours after Patsy Ramsey called the police informing them that her daughter had been kidnapped, John Ramsey discovered JonBenet’s body in one of the several basement rooms in the house. John Ramsey covered his daughter’s body in a blanket that had been on the floor of the basement and carried his daughter by her waist up the stairs and into the living room of the house. On the main floor of the house, after placing the child’s body in the front hallway, Mrs. Ramsey threw herself over the body. The child’s body was removed from the front hallway and carried into the living room, placed near the family’s Christmas tree, and covered again with a large jacket believed to have been worn by John Ramsey. Between approximately 1:15 P.M. and 1:30 P.M., two additional uniformed officers, Stanford Lucas, an FBI agent, and two Boulder, Colorado, detectives entered the basement at the Ramsey house and reportedly looked around the basement and examined the room in which JonBenet’s body was found. It was not until 1:50 P.M. that investigators secured the house, sequestered the persons present, and

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began preparing information by which to obtain a search warrant. The search warrant was executed on the morning of December 26, 1996, and was concluded ten days later. The coroners report concluded that JonBenet had been sexually assaulted, strangled, and bludgeoned. Manner of death was listed as strangulation, and cause of death was determined to be murder. Throughout the course of the next several months, Patsy and John Ramsey refused to talk to police or provide samples for DNA swap analysis, although Patsy Ramsey did provide handwriting samples for comparisons of her writing with the ransom note she had found. The writing comparison was deemed inconclusive. In June of 1997, the remaining Ramsey family moved from Boulder, Colorado, to Atlanta, Georgia. A grand jury investigation in Colorado into the death of the child beauty pageant winner ended without charges in 1999. Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer June 24, 2004. As of late 2007, John Ramsey was residing in Atlanta, Georgia. The murder of JonBenet Ramsey has remained unsolved. In Crime Scene Handbook, authors Dr. Lee, Timothy Palmback, and Margaret Miller point out the central crucial theme of sound investigative practices, particularly, The foundation of all investigative practices is based on the ability of the crime scene investigator to recognize the potential importance of physical evidence, large and small, at the crime scene. The subsequent identification of the physical evidence…source or origin…[and] individualization, are the next steps in investigation…[P]roper crime scene investigation is the initiation of crime scene reconstruction…[C]areful processing, documentation, and collection of physical evidence are integral parts to…crime scene investigation (Lee, Palmbeck, and Miller 2001, 1–2).

Although the recitation of the investigation of the JonBenet Ramsey murder case is exceptionally brief, a majority of persons in 2007 would likely recognize or suspect many of the process and investigative errors and missteps that occurred early in the investigation. A brief recitation of investigative failures and missteps could include the fact that 1. The bare-handed handling of the ransom note by the initial responding officer would have complicated what opportunities may have existed to lift potential suspect fingerprints from the document. 2. While waiting for backup, the officer failed to control the premises and persons residing in the house. 3. The Ramseys were left alone while the officers searched the exterior of the house.

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4. The searching officers failed to search the immediate premises for items of evidence and the then-presumed-missing child. 5. The Boulder Police Department policy precluded the ability of the responding detectives to arrive on the scene equipped with investigative equipment until after they had obtained their vehicles from the department lot, thereby delaying the arrival of the detectives. 6. While waiting for detectives to arrive, the first responding patrol officers allowed the friends of Patsy Ramsey to arrive unchallenged and to wander freely throughout the crime scene. 7. Other police officers arrived and began wandering throughout the premises without plan or purpose. 8. After detectives arrived, one of the detectives ordered all nonessential personnel to be removed from the crime scene and left one detective to manage seven civilians who continued to meander about the house. 9. The detective who remained at the Ramsey residence was rebuffed when she requested assistance to secure and control the crime scene. 10. The remaining detective used civilian personnel, including a potential suspect, to search the premises. 11. When JonBenet’s father found her body and moved it from where it was found, he contaminated the evidence in the room and on the body. 12. The contamination of evidence continued when the body was placed on the hallway floor and then subsequently was moved to the living room. 13. The body was held, moved, and touched by several persons. 14. The body was wrapped and rewrapped in blankets and jackets worn by other persons in the household. 15. Numerous law enforcement officials entered and exited areas of the residence after the body was found, potentially destroying evidence where the body had been discovered.

If, as Dr. Lee indicates, the first and most significant activity of investigation is the ability of officers to recognize the probable importance of physical evidence, regardless of its size, then that essential element was absent throughout the investigation into the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. The most telling aspect of Dr. Lee’s admonishments is the fact that without that primary recognition of the potentiality of evidence, there is little opportunity to recover from those mistakes. Although the investigation into the murder of JonBenet Ramsey was replete with substantive processing and procedural errors, it became a contest of wills between competing investigative agencies (Boulder Police, FBI, county district attorney’s office, and Colorado Bureau of Investigation), further reducing the opportunities for success. Dr. Lee’s comments over the course of his career regarding the professional practices of criminal investigators and forensic scientist require, as he stated,

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We always work as a team (investigators and forensic scientists)…Movies have to have their hero but in real life we don’t…[A] team, including the first officers to arrive, are responsible for the outcome of an investigation…[T]he whole team gets the credit or blame (CCTV 2005).

To his great credit, it should be noted that the fees for consultation received by Dr. Lee in the various cases arising outside his former Connecticut jurisdiction were donated to various charities. Therefore, regardless which side of the trial system hired Dr. Lee, the profits that he might have pocketed were given to worthy causes. Regarding the notoriety of the cases and resultant near-celebrity status he was accorded following his involvement in those cases and his generally successful involvement in more than 8,000 investigations, Dr. Lee remarked, I don’t want to be famous…[W]hat I like to do is to talk to young people because some will become judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, scientists, and other professionals…[T]hey are the future of criminal investigation and forensic science (CCTV 2005).

ADVANCING SCIENTIFIC FORENSIC INVESTIGATION METHODOLOGIES The list of articles coauthored by Dr. Lee beginning in 1976 and continuing through 1987 reflect his many interests in the use of scientific analysis as an investigative aid. A quick read of the titles of the articles clearly indicates Dr. Lee’s significant and timely research in the emergent fields of bloodstain pattern analysis. The articles listed below are reflective of his contributions to the field of forensic science and criminal investigation practices and were obtained from Dr. Lee’s 2006 curriculum vitae as available through the Crime Laboratory Digest of that same year: Lee, H. C., and P. DeForest. 1976. Precipitin-inhibition test for determination of the human origin of the denatured bloodstain. Journal of Forensic Science 21(4):804–809. Lee, H. C., and P. DeForest. 1977. The use of anti-human HB serum for bloodstain identification. AAFS Abstract 67. Lee, H. C., and P. DeForest. 1978. Determination of age of bloodstains by G/ A ratio. IAFS Abstract 184. DeForest, P., H. C. Lee, and V. Crispino. 1978. Considerations and recommendations regarding the collection and handling of fresh bloodstains. IAFS Abstract 154. Lee, H. C., R. E. Gaensslen, and P. DeForest. 1979. Estimation of age of bloodstains by G/A ratio. AAFS Abstract.

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Lee, H. C., and P. DeForest. 1979. Identification of human bloodstains by anti-human HB serum. Police Science 9(34): 110 (Trans. by M. H. Lin). Lee, H. C. et al. 1982. Various methods of concentrating dilute blood evidence for subsequent analysis. AAFS Abstract B9. Lee, H. C. 1984. A review of bloodstain pattern interpretation. Journal of Forensic Science, January 29(1). Lee, H. C., and R. E. Gaensslen. 1984. Multiple analysis of bloodstains. IAFS Abstract, September. Gaensslen, Desio, and H. C. Lee. 1986. Genetic marker system for the individualization of blood and body fluids in forensic serology. In G. Davies, ed., Forensic Science, 2nd ed., Washington, DC: American Chemical Society. Lee, H. C. et al. 1985. Multiple analysis of bloodstains. AAFS Abstract, February: 130–149. Lee, H. C. et al. 1985. Forensic serology and genetic markers. Proceedings of the Symposium on Forensic Evidence. Peking, China. Lee, H. C., R. E. Gaensslen, E. M. Pagliaro, and M. B. Guman. 1986. Effects of reagents for presumptive blood and body fluid testing, latent fingerprint enhancement and histological stains on subsequent serological tests. AAFS Abstract, New Orleans, Louisiana. Lee, H. C. 1986. Estimation of original volume of bloodstains. Identification News, July. Lee, H. C. 1986. Identification and grouping of bloodstains. Forensic Science (China) 21:34. Lee, H. C. et al. 1987. Estimation of original volume of bloodstains. International Association of Blood Pattern Analysis News.

Bloodstain patterns and pattern analysis is an essential investigation process in any criminal investigation response to violent interactions between the victim(s) and the offender(s). Bloodstain pattern analysis provides an opportunity for the trained and experienced investigator to determine within the crime scene the location and classification of the bloodstains, blood impact angles, points of origin of blood splatters, positioning of the victim and the attacker during the assault, and the probable sequence of events. Furthermore, the research articles indicate Dr. Lee’s interest in and discovery of techniques and applications of bloodstain and blood splatter investigative processes for law enforcement officials. The dual concerns expressed in Dr. Lee’s formidable research publications consistently reflected his scientific interests and pragmatic investigative applications of evidence-based research in criminal investigations. Because of his dual interests, Dr. Lee was able not only to advance and contribute to the growing field of forensic science, but he also contributed to the improvement in the application of processes and techniques by investigative personnel.

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Although the history of DNA research rightfully includes the works of Gregor Mendel (1866) and the groundbreaking studies of Dr. Barbara McClintock (1983), DNA testing (also known as typing or profiling) was first described by Dr. Alec Jeffreys in 1989, who coined the term DNA testing and based his discovery on the fact that certain regions of DNA contained sequences (repeating sets) of markers and that those sequences varied from individual to individual. On the basis of his discovery, Dr. Jeffreys developed early techniques to examine the length variations of the repeated DNA sequences and therefore the ability to perform tests to determine human identity through those tests. Of significance are two articles of research results in which Dr. Lee was involved in the late 1980s that clearly demonstrate his involvement on the leading edge of the early scientific relevance for criminal investigative processes (DNA Genetic Topics 2007): Gaensslen, R. E., S. C. Bell, and H. C. Lee. 1987. Distribution of genetic markers in United States population: I. Blood group and secretor system. Journal of Forensic Science 32 (4, July). Gaensslen, R. E., S. C. Bell, and H. C. Lee. 1987. Distribution of genetic markers in United States population: II. Isoenzyme system. Journal of Forensic Science 32 (5, September).

ADVANCING CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION METHODOLOGIES Not content simply to research issues central to forensic criminal investigative practices and publish in leading juried journals in the United States and internationally, Dr. Lee also dedicated his career to the furtherance of investigative practices and the improvements in the reliability of those practices. The following partial list of articles, manuals, and texts developed for the consideration and application by law enforcement investigative professionals provides substantive verification of career dual interests in forensic science and criminal investigation procedure: Lee, H. C., et al. 1981. Scientific evidence and homicide investigation. AAFS Abstract. Lee, H. C., et al. 1982. Trace evidence and arson investigation. AAFS Abstract B42. Lee, H. C., et al. 1983. The role of physical evidence in homicide investigation. AAFS Abstract B50. Lee, H. C., and R. E. Gaensslen. 1984. Analytical techniques used in homicide investigation. Eastern Analytical Symposium Abstract. DeForest, P. R., R. E. Gaensslen, and H. C. Lee. 1983. Forensic Science—An Introduction to Criminalistics. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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Lee, H. C., S. Kelley, and E. Pagliaro. 1983. Physical Evidence and Crime Scene Investigation. Connecticut Police Training Academy. Lee, H. C., et al. 1985. Physical Evidence and Forensic Science. Connecticut State Police Forensic Science Laboratory Connecticut Insurance Placement Facility, Hartford, Connecticut. Lee, H. C., P. J. Desio, and R. E. Gaensslen. 1986. Methods for the recovery of accelerants from arson debris. In Forensic Science. 2nd ed., ed. G. Davies. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society. Lee, H. C., R. E. Gaensslen, E. M. Pagliaro, R. J. Mills, and K. B. Zercie. 1991. Physical Evidence in Criminal Investigation. Westbrook, CT: Narcotic Officers Association. Gaensslen, R. E., and H. C. Lee. 1996. Sexual Assault Evidence: National Assessment and Guidebook. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, March 1996. Lee, H. C., T. Palmbach, and M. T. Miller. 2001. Henry Lee’s Crime Scene Handbook. London: Academic Press.

ADDITIONAL TEACHING POSTS (PARTIAL LIST) Not one to sit on his laurels or engage in the narrowed sharing of his time, interests, and passions, Dr. Lee actively participated in a wide-ranging series of opportunities to share his knowledge with others. The list of academic posts that he held simultaneously while teaching at the University of New Haven include the following: Adjunct Professor, Department of Sociology, Central Connecticut State University, 1993 Adjunct Professor, University of Connecticut Law School, 1992 Adjunct Professor, Forensic Science Program, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York Visiting Professor, School of Law, People’s University, Peking, China, Summer 1985 Adjunct Professor, Biology Department, Biology Program, Graduate Program, Bridgeport University, Bridgeport, Connecticut Adjunct Professor, Department of Administration of Justice, Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, Connecticut, 1984

CONTINUING EDUCATION ATTENDED (PARTIAL LIST) While pursuing his teaching career, forensic science investigations research, and duties as the chief forensic scientists with the Connecticut Crime Laboratory, Dr. Lee pursued the continuing advancement and understanding within the areas of his interests through participation in a wide-ranging

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series of continuing education and training opportunities. Some of the hundreds of seminars he attended included the following: Forensic Medicine and Science, Post Graduate Medical School, New York University Environmental Pathology Seminar, American Academy of Forensic Science Gas Chromatography School, Perkin-Elmer Company Forensic Microscopy Workshop, University of Connecticut Bloodstain Pattern Workshop, Northeastern Association of Forensic Scientists Analysis of Sexual Assault Evidence Symposium, FBI Academy Forensic Applications of Electrophoresis Symposium, FBI Academy Forensic Examination of Hair Evidence Symposium, FBI Academy Crime Scene Photography Workshop, Eastman Kodak Company Infrared Analysis School, Perkin-Elmer Company Infrared Spectroscopy Applications, Bowdoin College, Maine Infrared Data Station Analysis Course, Perkin-Elmer Company Advanced Laser Latent Fingerprint Symposium, FBI Academy

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS (PARTIAL LIST) A person of prodigious energies, awareness of responsibilities, recognizing the necessity for membership in the community of scientists, and possessing a keen sense of collegiality, Dr. Lee throughout his career has met the rigorous criteria of professional associations and has maintained those memberships to participate and learn. It would appear that Dr. Lee recognized that membership in professional societies and organizations provides an opportunity to meet with other persons of like minds, influence future inquiries, and participate in the conversations and controversies affecting the fields of his interest and occupations. The various organizations listed below ensured that throughout his career he would come into contact with law enforcement officials, criminal investigators, academicians representing a wide range of criminological and criminal justice interests, researchers engaged in significant applied research efforts, theoretical implications of investigation and court decisions, and students focusing on their own emerging careers in criminal justice, criminology, and forensic science: American Academy of Forensic Science, Distinguished Fellow, 1990 The Forensic Science Society, England, Member, 1978 American Academy of Criminal Justice, Member, 1978 New York Academy of Science, Member, 1979 American Association for the Advancement of Science, Member, 1979 American Society for Testing and Materials, Member, 1980 International Association of Forensic Science, Member, 1980 Association of Official Analytical Chemists, Member, Referee, 1980

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The Fingerprint Society, England, Fellow, 1984 International Association of Bloodpattern Analysis, Regional Vice President, 1987

CHANCE FAVORS THE PREPARED Dr. Henry Lee has been favored in his life by a combination of personal, professional, occupational, opportunistic, and historic alignments. In reality the events and what transpires in life are not merely our simple understanding of luck. Louis Pasteur (1822–1895), the famous French biologist/chemist who is best known for discovering the pasteurization process for milk and other food stuffs because he was convinced that the causes of most medical illness and death in the nineteenth century were related to germs (microscopic organisms detrimental the to health of healthy organisms, particularly humans), once remarked about his view regarding human luck, fate, or chance. Louis Pasteur believed as Seneca (5 B.C.-65 B.C.), the Roman philosopher, who stated, ‘‘Luck is where opportunity and preparation meet’’ (Holland 1920). If Seneca and Pasteur are correct, then surely, when one reviews the early education and training received by Dr. Henry Lee, his impressive energies and endeavors in teaching, forensic research, publications, and associations prepared him to meet the challenges of and involvement in the notorious cases that brought him to the public’s attention. Moreover, by 1998 Dr. Henry parlayed his reputation, energies, and skills into the creation and development of educational and training institutes that would secure not only his legacy but continue to contribute to the advancement of evidence-based investigative practices and support new generations of investigators and forensic scientists. THE LEGACY Dr. Henry Lee was the founder of the Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Science (affiliated with the University of New Haven) in 1998. The Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science marks the state of Connecticut as a world leader in the arena of public safety and forensic science. The institute specializes in interdisciplinary research, training, testing, consulting, and education in forensic science. The goal of the Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Science is to provide an atmosphere in which scholars, students, forensic scientists, and others in the criminal justice community are linked for the purpose of addressing the scientific and social issues challenging forensic science and the criminal justice system nationally and internationally. The institute, through its various agencies offering training, consultation, and research, endeavors to make the various arenas of systems within the

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Becoming a Forensic Scientist Qualifications for a Career in Forensic Science Introduction Forensic science plays a crucial role in the criminal justice system. As an applied science, it requires a strong foundation in the natural sciences and the development of practical skills in the application of these sciences to a particular discipline. A forensic scientist must be capable of integrating knowledge and skills in the examination, analysis, interpretation, reporting, and testimonial support of physical evidence. A properly designed forensic science program should address these needs and strengthen the student’s knowledge, skills, and abilities in these areas. A combination of education and practical training can prepare an individual for a career in forensic science. Most of the nation’s practicing forensic scientists are employed in crime laboratories associated with law enforcement or other government agencies. Forensic scientists come to the profession with diverse undergraduate science degrees. They also may go on to earn graduate degrees. This document contains suggestions for model programs in forensic science at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. A combination of personal, professional, and academic criteria will influence a prospective forensic science examiner’s suitability for employment. Government entities’ hiring processes are driven by civil service regulations or collective bargaining agreements that are specific to the branch of government, state, or locality. Private laboratories have their own hiring processes. The hiring process may include written and practical tests, phone interviews, and one-on-one personal interviews or interviews conducted by a panel. New employees may be hired provisionally or go through a probationary period. Provisional employment offers may be revoked either before or after reporting for duty. Model Candidate A model candidate for all forensic science practices possesses personal integrity, holds a baccalaureate degree (at a minimum) in the natural sciences, and has additional KSAs that fulfill the recommendations set forth in this Guide. Personal characteristics Because forensic science is part of the criminal justice system, personal honesty, integrity, and scientific objectivity are paramount. Those seeking careers

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in this field should be aware that background checks similar to those required for law enforcement officers are likely to be a condition of employment. The following may be conducted and/or reviewed before an employment offer is made and may remain as ongoing conditions of employment (this list is not all-inclusive): • Drug tests. • History of drug use. • Criminal history. • Personal associations. • Polygraph examination. • Driving record. • Past work performance. • Credit history. • Medical or physical examination. Personal candor in these areas is critical. An individual’s history of community service and outside activities may also be considered. Academic qualifications Forensic scientists need to have a strong fundamental background in the natural sciences. For example, new hires who analyze drugs, DNA, trace, and toxicological evidence in forensic science laboratories typically have a degree in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, or forensic science from an accredited institution. Although forensic scientists involved in the recognition and comparison of patterns (such as latent prints, firearms, and questioned documents) historically may not have been required to have a degree, the trend in the field is to strengthen the academic requirements for these disciplines and require a baccalaureate degree, preferably in a science. The academic qualifications required for some of the emerging disciplines, such as digital evidence, currently are being defined and will be published by the appropriate groups. Copies of diplomas and formal academic transcripts generally are required as proof of academic qualification. Awards, publications, internships, and student activities may be used to differentiate applicants. Claims in this regard are subject to verification through the background investigation process. Professional skills A variety of skills are essential to an individual’s effectiveness as a forensic science professional, including: (continued )


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• Critical thinking (quantitative reasoning and problem solving). • Decision-making. • Good laboratory practices. • Awareness of laboratory safety. • Observation and attention to detail. • Computer proficiency. • Interpersonal skills. • Public speaking. • Oral and written communication. • Time management. • Prioritization of tasks. For some of these skills, systematic tools are available that may be used to measure skill or proficiency at or after the time of hire. Model Curriculum: Undergraduate Degree in Forensic Science [Below are] minimum recommendations for a model undergraduate degree in forensic science. Such a degree provides an educational foundation that meets the current hiring requirements of forensic science laboratories. This curriculum emphasizes the strong natural science foundation that is essential to prepare a student for a successful career in forensic science. This curriculum is not designed to produce case-ready forensic scientists. Laboratory managers, educators, and students may realize that prior to beginning casework, additional on-the-job training, and possible postgraduate studies may be necessary to meet the specific needs of the individual employer. University general education General education courses are courses that the university requires the student to take. They may include language, humanities, social sciences, mathematics, technical writing, computer science, and public speaking. The actual number of credit hours required may vary from university to university but generally ranges from 36 to 40. Some forensic degree coursework may count toward fulfilling this requirement. Carefully selected general education courses can complement the student’s main program of study. Natural science core Certain natural science courses are required for any student in forensic science. Unlike other criminal justice professionals, a forensic scientist requires a foundation in chemistry, biology, physics, and mathematics.

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The minimum general core requirements recommended for undergraduate forensic science programs (34–38 total credit hours) include: • General chemistry I and II and lab for science majors (8 credit hours). • Organic chemistry I and II and lab (8 credit hours). • Biology I and II for science majors (4–8 credit hours). • Physics I and II for science majors and lab (8 credit hours). • Calculus (3 credit hours). • Statistics for science majors (3 credit hours). Specialized science courses An undergraduate degree in forensic science is expected to be an interdisciplinary degree that includes substantial laboratory work and an emphasis on advanced (i.e., upper level) coursework in chemistry or biology. Students can use these additional courses to begin to specialize along a forensic science discipline track, such as forensic biology or forensic chemistry. Specialized science courses may be selected from any of the following (minimum 12 credit hours and minimum of 2 laboratory courses): • Biochemistry. • Molecular biology. • Genetics. • Population genetics. • Inorganic chemistry. • Analytical/quantitative chemistry. • Physical chemistry. • Instrumental analysis. • Cell biology. • Pharmacology. • Calculus II. • Microbiology. Forensic science core It is essential to cover certain forensic science topics in specific courses or as portions of courses that combine several topics. Include the following topics as core elements in the forensic science curriculum: (continued )


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• Introduction to law/justice system. • Ethics/professional practice. • Forensic science specialty overview (survey course). Total Credit Hours • 36–40 hours of general university requirements. • 46–50 hours of natural and specified science courses. • 15 hours of forensic science courses (nine of which should include laboratory work). • 19 hours of additional courses. Total: 120 credit hours [Also] . . . • Evidence identification, collection, and processing. • Quality assurance. • Courtroom testimony. • Technical or scientific writing. Forensic science laboratory courses In addition to a strong foundation in the natural sciences, forensic science professionals are expected to recognize concepts integral to forensic science, such as individualization, reconstruction, association, and chain of custody of evidence. Because the work product of a forensic scientist is used by the justice system, it is expected to meet legal as well as scientific standards. The following courses are designed to give the student an understanding of the application of scientific analysis to the legal system (a minimum of 15 credit hours, for which a minimum of nine credit hours are expected to be laboratory science courses): • Forensic chemistry and lab (3). • Forensic biology and lab (3). • Physical methods in forensic science and lab (3). • Internship (up to 6) or independent study/research (up to 6). • Microscopy and lab (3). Source: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice Report of Forensic Science Training and Careers. June 2004. http://www.aafs.org/pdf/ NIJReport.pdf.

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criminal justice system more effective through more rigorous, cost-efficient investigation applications and through its research to increase the effectiveness of crime prevention programs and activities. Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences is housed at the University of New Haven, a private comprehensive university with an eighty-seven-year history of strong professional programs. The Henry C. Lee College offers Bachelor of Science degrees in criminal justice, fire science, fire protection engineering, forensic science, and legal studies and Masters of Science degrees in criminal justice, fire science, forensic science, and national security and public safety. Plans for a Ph.D. program were under development in 2007. The Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences boasted more than thirty full-time faculty serving more than 1,300 undergraduate majors and more than 350 graduate students in 2007.

FURTHER READING ABC.com. April 2, 2002. 20/20: Forensic scientist Henry Lee talks about his work in crime scene investigations (transcript) http://www.lexisnexis.com. ezproxy.canton.edu:2048/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?risb=21_ T2119451411&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&results UrlKey=29_T2119451415&cisb=22_T2119451414&treeMax=true&treeWidth= 275&selRCNodeID=54&nodeStateId=411en_US,1,53,7&docsInCategory=5&csi= 8277&docNo=2 (accessed September 21, 2007). Brush Bandit Industries. 2007. Model 150XP (Brush Bandit). http://www.banditchippers. com/index.php?option=com_models&task=view&itemId=15&lineId=2&modelId= 2 (accessed September 15, 2007). CCTV. English Channel Close Up. 2005. Dr. Henry Lee: Modern Sherlock Holmes (video transcript). http://www.cctv.com/program/UpClose/20050422/101645. shtml (accessed September 20, 2007). Central Police University. 2007. History of School. http://cpuweb.cpu.edu.tw/ e-index.asp (accessed August 15, 2007). Connecticut Department of Public Safety. 2007. Scientific Services: Division History. http://www.ct.gov/dps/cwp/view.asp?a=2155&q=317236 (accessed August 15, 2007). CourtTV.com. http://www.courttv.com/onair/shows/trace_evidence/who_is_lee.html (accessed September 15, 2007). CourtTV.com. 2001. In-Depth Specials: The JonBenet Ramsey Case. http://courttv. com/trials/caruuth/lee2.html (accessed September 15, 2007). CourtTV.com. 2007. Los Angeles County Court. OJ Simpson Trial Transcript: Dr. Lee Testimony. http://www.courttv.com/casefiles/simpson/new_docs/lee_testimony. html (accessed August 15, 2007). CNN.com 2007. http://www.cnn.com/US/9703/ramsey.case/index.html (accessed September 12, 2007). Debre, P. 1994. Louis Pasteur. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.

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DNA Genetic Topics. 2007. http://www.d230.org/stagg/LiskaLinks/dna.htm (accessed September 12, 2007). Encyclopedia Britannica Online. China: The Sino-Japanese War. http://www.britannica. com/eb/article-71823/China (accessed September 22, 2007). Gado, M. 2007. The Wood Chipper Murder Case. Crime Library.com. http://www. crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/family/woodchipper_murder/html (accessed September 15, 2007). Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Science. 2007. http:// www.newhaven.edu/show.asp?durki=9 (accessed August 15, 2007). Henry Lee Institute. 2007. Institute website. http://www.henryleeinstitute.com/ about/ (accessed August 15, 2007). Herszenhorn, D. 2000. Dr. Lee, the man with all the clues. New York Times, Connecticut Weekly Desk. April 23. Lexis-Nexus Academic database (accessed August 15, 2007). Hewitt, B., and J. Harmes. 1996. Post Mortem 45 (3, January 22): 38–42 Holland, F. C. 1969. Seneca (reprint of the 1920 edition). Manchester, NH: Ayer Company Publishers. Kanable, R. 2005. Modern forensic science today and tomorrow: An interview with Dr. Henry Lee. Law Enforcement Technology 32(7), 8–18. Laber, T. L., and B. P. Epstein. 1983. Experiments and Practical Exercises in Blood Stain Pattern Analysis: Laboratory Manual. Minneapolis, MN: Callin Publishing. Ladd, C., M. S. Adamowicz, M. T. Bourke, C. A. Scherczinger, and H. C. Lee. 1999. A systematic analysis of secondary DNA transfer. Journal of Forensic Science 44 (6): 1270–1272. Lee, H. C., T. Palmback, and M. T. Miller. 2001. Henry Lee’s Crime Scene Handbook. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Lee, H. C. 2004. Cracking More Cases. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Lee, H. C. 2006. Curriculum Vitae: Henry C. Lee (PhD). Crime Laboratory Digest, from Federal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory in cooperation with The American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors Web site. http://www.drhenrylee. com/about/dr_lee_cv_resume.pdf (accessed August 15, 2007). Linder, D. 2007. The Trial of O. J. Simpson. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ ftrials/Simpson/simpson.htm (accessed August 16, 2007). Wikipedia. 2007. Chiang Kai-shek. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shek (accessed August 15, 2007). Wikipedia. 2007. Chinese Civil War. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_ War (accessed August 15, 2007). Wikipedia. 2007. Henry Lee (forensic scientist). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_ Lee_(forensic_scientist) (accessed August 15, 2007).

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I can’t give people back their loved ones. I can’t restore their happiness or innocence, can’t give back their lives the way they were. But I can give them the truth. Then they will be free to grieve for the dead, and then free to start living again. Truth like that can be a humbling and sacred gift for a scientist to give. —Bill Bass

Dr. William M. Bass III (Bill Bass) is one of the foremost scientists in the history of forensic anthropology. His revolutionary work on human decomposition and human osteology has left an invaluable legacy to the world of forensic science. A dedicated (now retired) professor of forensic anthropology and a passionate researcher, Dr. Bass has been a Diplomate of the American Board of Forensic Anthropology (ABFA) since 1977 (when he became the sixth certified Diplomate in the history of the ABFA). He has assisted local, state, federal, and international law enforcement agencies with hundreds of death investigations and helped solve many baffling cases, from historic burials to homicides to natural or human-made disasters. He has also gained worldwide fame by founding the Forensic Anthropology Facility at the University of Tennessee, otherwise known as the Body Farm. As such, he has become a truly iconic figure of crime fighting. UNIVERSITY AND EARLY CAREER YEARS A student of Clifford Evans at the University of Virginia, Bill Bass initially majored in psychology. As he explained in his 2003 memoir, ‘‘Virginia didn’t actually have an anthropology department—just one lone professor, Clifford Evans, who was lumped into the Sociology Department. But Evans was an adventurous field researcher and an inspiring teacher…I took every class [he] taught’’ (Bass and Jefferson 2003, 18). In 1954, after a stint in the military, Bill Bass joined the master’s program within the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky. In April 1955, under the direction of his mentor, Dr. Charles E. Snow, he became involved in his first forensic case. The investigation into the case of a missing Kentucky woman led to the exhumation of a woman’s ‘‘burned, rotten, and waterlogged’’ body that remains seared in Bass’s memory. More importantly, the experience convinced Bass he had found his calling. He earned his master’s degree in 1956 and proceeded to work with Clifford Evans, by then a curator of archaeology at the Smithsonian Institute, to study massive amounts of Native American skeletal remains from the Great Plains. The ‘‘old bones hidden in the earth’’ quickly taught him many valuable lessons. As he later emphasized, ‘‘[e]very one of these lessons would serve me well in the years ahead as I began applying the secrets I learned from the long-dead to understanding the stories of the recently murdered’’ (21). His first summer of intensive bone cataloging was followed in 1957 by extensive fieldwork in

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archeological digs in South Dakota. In 1961, Bass earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania, where he had studied under the illustrious William M. Krogan, popularly known as the ‘‘bone detective.’’ Dr. Bass later referred to him as ‘‘the Socrates of ‘bone men’’’ (279). At the University of Kansas in the sixties, Bass was ‘‘known throughout the university as a wonderful teacher’’ who inspired future forensic experts such as Douglas Ubelaker. The consensus today is that he belongs to a ‘‘generation of giants,’’ along with famed forensic anthropologists Ellis Kerley, William R. Maples, and Clyde Snow. He has since worked on many high-profile cases that have contributed to his status as a living legend of forensic science.

Summary of Three Major Cases from Death’s Acre Among the cases depicted by Dr. Bass in Death’s Acre (2003) are the following: A Mass Murder in Mississippi In December of 1993, ‘‘Big Mike’’ Rubenstein called 911 to report the deaths of his relatives in a cabin. Investigators responded and found the decomposing bodies of a man, a woman, and a four-year-old child. Rubenstein claimed to have visited the cabin in mid- and late-November, but found it empty. Then he’d come again in December and saw the bodies. It appeared to be the case of a shocked relative stumbling by accident into a crime scene, but when Rubenstein quickly applied to collect the insurance money, investigators grew suspicious. The accumulated mail and spoiled food also put Rubenstein’s tale into doubt, so Bass was asked to help construct a timeline for when the deaths actually had occurred. Based on knowledge of insect development cycles and rate of decomposition in certain temperatures, he and his staff placed the deaths in mid-November—exactly when Rubenstein had admitted visiting the cabin. Ultimately he was convicted. Serial Killer in Knox County, Tennessee The 1999 murder trial of 38-year-old Thomas D. Huskey, accused killer of four women, was the first for a documented serial killer in Knox County, Tennessee, and prosecutors were seeking the death penalty. The two sides focused not only on the issue of his mental state at the time of the offenses, but also used insect analysis to evaluate the time since the deaths of two of the victims. Prostitutes had dubbed Huskey the ‘‘Zoo Man’’ because he once had worked at the Knoxville Zoo and he liked to take women close by for rough sex. Bass was called in after three of the victims had been discovered (continued )


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in a wooded area. His job was not only to estimate time since death but to determine if the victims had been killed where they lay or if the death scene was in fact elsewhere. He used his knowledge about what happens to bodies in the woods—specifically, the biomarkers in the vegetation and soil—to make the all-important determinations. Tri-State Crematory Scandal In 2002 more than three hundred decaying human bodies sent to the TriState Crematory for cremation were discovered left out in the open, buried in shallow pits, or crowded into vaults. Countless families were horrified to learn that the ‘‘ashes’’ of their loved ones were not human remains but possibly cardboard or wood ashes and that the deceased could be among those left in an undignified position. Tri-State’s operator, Ray Brent Marsh, was arrested and charged with multiple counts of fraud and abuse of a body. The long process of identifying the remains began, and in many cases relatives filed lawsuits against Marsh and his business. Bill Bass assisted by analyzing the remains and letting people know exactly what they had. Source: K. Ramsland. 2007b. Profile of Dr. Bill Bass, Founder of the Body Farm. http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/forensics/bill_bass/.

DEVELOPMENT OF FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY AND OSTEOLOGY Forensic anthropology is the discipline that applies the scientific knowledge of physical anthropology and archaeology to the collection and analysis of legal evidence. Although it was originally a subfield of physical anthropology, forensic anthropology has now grown into a distinct body of knowledge sharing common characteristics with other fields, most notably anthropology, biology, and the physical sciences. ‘‘The science of forensic anthropology includes archeological excavation; examination of hair, insects, plant materials and footprints, determination of elapsed time since death; facial reproduction; photographic superimposition; detection of anatomical variants; and analysis of past injury and medical treatment’’ (Genge 2001). According to William R. Maples, ‘‘[T]he science of forensic anthropology, properly wielded, can resolve historical riddles and chase away bugbears that have bedeviled scholars for centuries’’ (Maples 1994, 3). Forensic anthropology is a young discipline with a long developmental history over the past 150 years. Thomas Dwight, the author of a seminal 1878 essay on human skeleton identification, may be credited as the ‘‘Father of Forensic Anthropology in the United States.’’ (Burns 2007, 4).

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On the other hand, Wilton M. Krogan, whom Bill Bass studied under as a doctoral student, is often described as ‘‘the founder of modern forensic anthropology since most of his research and writing were directed towards assisting medicolegal personnel’’ (Nafte 2000, 25). The evolution of forensic anthropology into a recognizable discipline dates back to the 1970s and the work of T. Dale Stewart and Bill Bass. In 1971, Bass’s landmark publication, Human Osteology: A Laboratory and Field Manual of the Human Skeleton, was the first practical textbook for physical anthropologists. The first textbook to explicitly include the phrase ‘‘forensic anthropology’’ in its title was Stewart’s Essentials of Forensic Anthropology. Moreover, although ‘‘‘Forensic Anthropology’ degree titles are a phenomenon of the late 1980s and 1990s…today, forensic anthropologists are employed by state, national, and international agencies around the world’’ (Burns 2007, 5). ‘‘Recovery, description, and identification of human skeletal remains are the standard work of forensic anthropologists. The condition of the evidence varies greatly, including decomposing, burned, cremated, fragmented, or disarticulated remains’’ (5). According to Dr. Bass himself, ‘‘the ultimate goal [of a forensic investigation] is to make a positive identification’’ (Bass and Jefferson 2003, 35). If possible, one may also determine the cause of death (medical determination of the condition(s) that led or contributed to death) or the manner of death (legal determination based on evidence and opinion). Indeed, [T]he objectives of anthropological investigation are the same as those of a medical-legal investigation of a recently deceased person: identification, determination of cause and manner of death, estimation of time of death, and collection of any physical evidence supporting the conclusions or leading to further information (Burns 2007, 6).

However, ‘‘before you can tell who someone was and how they died—and you won’t always be able to tell—you start with the Big Four: sex, race, age, and stature’’ (Bass and Jefferson 2003, 35). Osteology is the study of bones. More specifically, human osteology is the scientific study of the physical growth, development, structure, function, and variation of the human skeleton. Most of the extant research is based on ‘‘information gathered from human skeletal populations of the past and present’’ (Nafte 2000, 25). Studies in human osteology focus on the effects of genetic origin, age, sex, diet, trauma, pathologies, anomalies, cultural influences, and decomposition. Within the human body are 206 bones…Together, they form a remarkable and, to the trained eye, informative framework of the body they once supported. They can show how the person lived; any debilitating illnesses the person had, such as rickets or polio; healed fractures; whether the person was right- or lefthanded; and even possible clues as to occupation (Evans 2007, 144).

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Hence, studying skeletal remains has important practical application inasmuch as it enables osteologists not only to describe a living person and identify a deceased person, but also evaluate the health of the person, recognize their habitual activities, determine the approximate time since death, and provide information about postmortem events. As Bass himself explains, [A]s a forensic anthropologist, I tend to see bodies that are long past their prime—bodies that are bloated, blasted, burned, buggy, rotted, sawed, gnawed, liquefied, mummified, or dismembered. Some are even skeletonized, reduced to bare bones—bare but brimming with data. Flesh decays; bone endures. Flesh forgets and forgives ancient injuries; bone heals, but it always remembers: a childhood fall, a barroom brawl; the smash of a pistol butt to the temple, the quick sting of a blade between the ribs. The bones capture such moments, preserve a record of them, and reveal them to anyone with eyes trained to see the rich visual record, to hear the faint whispers rising from the dead (Bass and Jefferson 2003, 34).

THE BODY FARM The Forensic Anthropology facility at the University of Tennessee, otherwise known as the Body Farm, was founded by Dr. Bass in the early 1980s in order to study the decomposition of human bodies. Located a few miles away from downtown Knoxville, off of Alcoa Highway, it is nestled behind the University of Tennessee Medical Center. ‘‘The three-acre site, surrounded by chain-link fence topped with razor-edged concertina wire, is an outdoor forensic research laboratory designed to foster knowledge of what happens to a body once life expires’’ (Ricciuti 2007, 78). It was originally called the Anthropological Research Facility (ARF) and was developed concurrently with the Forensic Anthropology program, the focus of which ‘‘is the application of skeletal biological techniques to the identification of decomposing and skeletal remains for law enforcement and medicolegal agencies and investigations’’ (Genge 2002, 285). Research at the facility focuses on decomposition of the human body, such as how fast it decays under different conditions and the processes involved, such as amino-acid breakdown, and levels of gas in the tissue. Researchers study both how the natural processes of the body itself impact its rate of decomposition and how external agents, such as weather or insect activity, affect it (Ricciuti 2007, 79).

In 1981, Corpse 1-81 became the first resident of the Body Farm. Dr. Bass was at that time working with Bill Rodriguez, whose research on flies was about to ‘‘help spur a revolution in forensic science’’ (Bass and Jefferson 2003, 98). As Ramsland explains,

Dr. Bill Bass

Bass laid out the first body, an unclaimed cadaver. He meticulously documented the conditions for its decomposition, and as he acquired more specimens, he placed them in other contexts: submerged in water, buried in earth, left inside buildings, locked in the trunks of cars.… From insect analysis to the nuances in odor at different points during the death process to death-related bacteriology, there seemed to be no end to the types of experiments that could be done to assist law enforcement. These researchers expanded in number and specialization, and the Body Farm became a center for training and consultation in difficult cases, including for the FBI (Ramsland 2007a, 238–39).

Although he had seen about 5,000 bodies before he even moved to Knoxville in 1971, Dr. Bass quickly realized that he had ‘‘a lot yet to learn about bodies and bugs’’ (Bass and Jefferson 2003, 99). Flies and maggots became part of his daily routine and helped him conduct landmark studies that truly revolutionized forensic science. In fact, ‘‘no other insect has aided more in determining the time of death than the blowfly or, more precisely, the maggots that hatch from the eggs that blowflies lay on dead bodies’’ (Ricciuti 2007, 79). Thus, Dr. Bass’s research on human decomposition has made remarkable contributions to forensic entomology, which requires analyzing insect activity on human remains in order to estimate time and location of death. Ironically, Dr. Bass has an aversion for flies. Indeed, he once wrote, I’ve had a strange, symbiotic relationship with flies ever since I was a small child. Shortly after my father’s death, my mother and I moved in with her parents. We lived on a farm, and where there are farm animals, there are flies. My mother, who hated flies, made me a business proposition: for every ten dead flies I brought her, she’d pay me a bounty of one cent…The fly carcasses piled up, and so did my pennies. Ever since, tough—and as a scientist, I’m embarrassed to admit this—I have despised flies. I hate rattlesnakes more, but rattlesnakes are a lot less common, a lot more shy, and a lot easier to kill (Bass and Jefferson 2003, 99–100).

Dr. Bass’s efforts to create a facility specifically designed for forensic anthropology research were spurred by the lack of opportunities for controlled research experiments on human decomposition. He viewed such experiments as necessary for more accurate recording and a deeper, more reliable understanding of what happens to a decaying body after death. The earliest experimental work in this field was done on arthropods, mainly fly larvae, observing the patterns associated with their feeding on dead pigs, which were either buried or placed above the ground in various situations. The insects that came to feed on the pig flesh were monitored carefully, and a documentary record was kept of the order in which they arrived, how long they stayed, what happened to them while they were there, and the stages they went through. These patterns were then applied to observations of arthropod and insect activity on human remains; as a result,

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inferences could be made on how long the bodies had been where they were found and sometimes what had happened to them during and since death. The problem with those experiments was that pigs were pigs; the need persisted for controlled observations of these same patterns in humans. Bill Bass had recognized this need for a long time, and after his transfer to the University of Tennessee he began to work on it in earnest. In the late 1970s he organized the Anthropological Research Facility (ARF) at Knoxville and commenced studies of decay rates under carefully monitored conditions with bodies donated from the Medical Examiner’s Office that were either unidentified or unclaimed at the time of death. The skeletons later became part of a reference collection for the future recovery of data as the need arose. Thus, ARF was essentially a decay rate facility or, as Ubelaker and Scammell called it, an ‘‘al fresco mortuary’’ (when local lawyers and forensic specialists added Bass’s name to the facility acronym, it quickly became referred to as BARF). The facility still processes up to fifty bodies per year in its open-air morgue, as well as numerous dogs obtained from the city pound; more than 300 bodies have been donated by members of the general public. Remains are typically placed on concrete slabs or on the ground, or they may be wrapped in plastic or buried in shallow pits. They are ‘‘in their natural condition, usually without embalming. The only artificial aspect of the environment is its security; the fence precludes carnivore activity’’ (Ubelaker and Scammell 2006, 108). Often described as ‘‘the mayor of the Body Farm,’’ Dr. Bass has relentlessly battled to reconstruct identities, unravel mysterious deaths, and provide welcome answers for the ones who stay behind. ‘‘Uncertainty and dread are almost always harder to bear than the finality of certain loss’’ (Bass and Jefferson 2003, 275). Dr. Bass candidly explains that he used to believe in an afterlife. Following his father’s suicide and the deaths of his first two wives, however, he shifted away from religion as he realized, ‘‘[w]e’re organisms; we’re conceived, we’re born, we live, we die, and we decay. But as we decay we feed the world of the living: plants and bugs and bacteria’’ (279). He subsequently began to concentrate his fieldwork and intellectual efforts on the legacy each of us leaves behind when we die. Today, the Forensic Anthropology Center (FAC) within the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville (UTK) officially represents the culmination of Dr. Bass’s work since the early 1970s, both on and beyond the UTK campus. Dr. Bass has created a facility where scientists and law enforcement officials can ‘‘educate themselves in the science beyond the art of investigation’’ (Evans 2006, x). He has inspired and continues to rouse scores of budding or accomplished researchers and the legacy of his Body Farm is inestimable. In his memoir, he poignantly wrote, I still beam with pride, after all these years, when I spot something Krogman might have overlooked if he had been on the case. And so it will be, perhaps,

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with my students. For some of them, I hope, I will always be looking over their shoulder at the shattered skull, the burned bones, the telltale insects; always questioning them, always challenging them, sometimes even inspiring them. There’s a part of me that will live on, too, at the Body Farm, my proudest scientific creation. Looking back over the past quarter century, I’m amazed at the wealth of pioneering research that has emerged from such humble beginnings—it began in an abandoned sow barn—and even today the Anthropology Research Facility remains a simple metal shed and a patch of trees and honeysuckle vines, tucked behind a high wooden fence (recently enlarged and rebuilt with the help of Patricia Cornwell). That, plus a generation of bright, inquisitive minds eager to unlock the secrets of death. I certainly didn’t set out to create something famous there. I just set out to find some answers to questions that were nagging me. As in life, so in science: One thing leads to another, and before you know it, you find yourself someplace you never imagined going’’ (Bass and Jefferson 2003, 279–80).

POSTMORTEM INTERVAL AND FORENSIC TAPHONOMY When a body is found in unexpected circumstances, one of the first questions is, ‘‘How long has this person been dead?’’ This is called the postmortem interval or time since death. The information is important to both the identification process and the death investigation itself. Forensic taphonomy can be defined as the multidisciplinary study of the postmortem interval. Forensic scientists specifically use the term taphonomy to refer to the process of decomposition. Thus, ‘‘taphonomy is the study of the fate of the remains of organisms after they die’’ (Burns 2007, 49). Taphonomic research for forensic purposes initially used case studies and comparative animal studies, mostly using pigs as models for human decomposition. The forensic community initially was appalled by Dr. Bass’s avant-garde, anticonformist research on human decomposition. However, they eventually acknowledged the significance of his work. ‘‘By the 1980s, research articles were appearing regularly in scientific publications. Forensic taphonomy is now a standard subject in the forensic sciences…Specialists include anthropologists, entomologists, botanists, and a variety of other experts, including soil scientists and preservation specialists’’ (49). The work pioneered by Dr. Bass has shed light on the process of decomposition as well as the environmental and cultural factors that affect the decomposition rate and consequently the estimation of time since death. Dr. Bass’s research has provided a deeper understanding of the overall process of decomposition. ‘‘From a biological perspective, death is not a definitive event but a continuous process that occurs over a period of time’’ (Nafte 2000, 39). Following somatic death, the process of death is characterized by cellular death or autolysis (‘‘self-digestion’’), whereby metabolism

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ceases and enzymes destroy cells from within and tissues break down and soften. Dr. Bass has studied the various stages of decomposition, from initial decay (stemming from internal microorganism activity) to putrefaction (bloating due to metabolic gas buildup and subsequent collapse through fluid purge) to butyric fermentation (flesh fermentation and molding), dry decay (flesh hardening), and finally skeletonization. ‘‘Immediate postmortem change may be viewed essentially as a competition between decomposition (decay and putrefaction) and desiccation’’ (Burns 2007, 250). Immediate postmortem changes have been scrutinized carefully at the Body Farm, including algor mortis (the cooling of the body within the first two hours after death), livor mortis (the purple skin coloration that develops under the body as blood gravitates one to four hours after death), and rigor mortis (stiffening of the muscles caused by chemical changes in the tissue two to four hours after death). In addition, ARF research has focused on environmental factors in order to assess the impact of climate on human decomposition. Warm humid climates are typically good for decomposition, whereas cool and dry climates are favorable to preservation. Bass conducted a study on decomposition rates in different climates and seasons, including the moist, warm conditions of a Knoxville summer. His research, although later complemented by other studies on different conditions, does not offer standards to rely on because ‘‘decomposition is multifactorial and continuous, grave types differ, and investigators tend to define and delineate the stages of decomposition slightly differently’’ (250). Nevertheless, Dr. Bass’s Tennessee summer decomposition information has been used as a model for the study of environmental conditions incorporating variations based on local conditions and grave type. The model shows that ‘‘[a]s long as moisture and temperature are constant, the decomposition rate can be relatively constant’’ (251). In addition, ‘‘the early decomposition of a body in a warm, arid environment is about the same as that of a body in a warm, moist environment’’ and ‘‘[r]apid desiccation results in mummification,’’ while ‘‘[s]low desiccation results in more thorough decomposition’’ (251). The Bass study used remains that were fully exposed (i.e., naked bodies and surface burials). In order for it to be applicable to other conditions, one must take into consideration shade, clothing, protective covering or burial technique, which can all result in an increase or decrease of the decomposition rate depending on moisture, temperature, and predatory activity. Subsequent studies have established for instance that exposed remains decompose faster than shaded ones or that temperature differential is the primary factor of decomposition or that maggots are typically more active in warmer places and will slow down in the shade. Rodriguez and Bass studied the level of protection provided by burial. They buried six unembalmed cadavers one, two, and four feet deep. ‘‘The cadavers were exhumed and examined at intervals up to one year. It was demonstrated that the rate of decomposition is much slower in

Dr. Bill Bass

buried remains [because of the] lack (or reduction) of carrion-eating insects and lower temperatures’’ (252). Dr. Bass’s work additionally has highlighted the significant role carrion (dead-flesh-eating) insects play in the decomposition process. These insects will scavenge and reproduce in many of the soft tissues and natural body openings, as well as in areas of flesh exposed by cuts or wounds. Insect activity accelerates decomposition and in certain environments, notably hot and humid ones, can reduce a body to bones within weeks. The major carrion feeders are flies and beetles. Other arthropods, such as spiders, mites, centipedes, and scorpions, are attracted to carrion for the mere opportunity it presents for them to prey on the carrion-feeding insects. The information provided by these feeders goes beyond the postmortem interval: they can be used ‘‘to test for drugs and poisons ingested with the tissues of the dead body’’ (252). Larger carrion feeders can be classified as either specialists (e.g., vultures) or opportunists (e.g., raccoons). It is particularly important to study bone damage, so as to determine what type of scavengers have preyed on the remains. ‘‘Bird scavengers usually do little to damage bone. Small mammals, such as rodents, carry small bones off and gnaw on them long after the flesh is gone. Larger mammals, such as dogs, disarticulate the body, carry parts to different locations, and break or pulverize the bones’’ (252). Research at the Body Farm continually improves our understanding of the interaction between body decomposition and plants. A dead body will release volatile fatty acids at the beginning of the decomposition process. As a result, plants in the surrounding area are destroyed, but they return as the acids dissipate. The body then serves as a natural fertilizing source, which may cause an abnormal plant growth. As Burns points out, ‘‘[I]t is a lot easier to use this plant growth to locate a grave than to estimate postmortem interval, but professional forensic botanists can squeeze a lot of information out of the plants’’ (252). Such specialists focus on plant variety, as well as analyses of roots, stems, leaves, branches, and flowers (including pollen). Cultural factors can also have an effect on the rate of decomposition and may therefore adversely impact postmortem interval estimates. Dr. Bass’s extensive work with Native American skeletal remains has made him especially sensitive to the significance of cultural dynamics. In particular, funerary practices have been studied meticulously over the past three decades in order to determine how they can slow down or even stop the progress of decomposition. For instance, embalming, which is designed to preserve anatomical specimens in dead bodies, has become a widespread practice across the globe. The fluid used for embalming purposes is a powerful antibacterial agent that is injected into a body through the vascular system while blood is drained out, injected into organs, and pumped into the body cavity. ‘‘The main ingredient of embalming fluid is formalin, an aqueous solution of the gas formaldehyde. Other ingredients may include alcohol, silicone, lanolin, coloring, fragrances, and more’’ (253).

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Regardless of the formula, all of its ingredients must be accounted for when studying decomposition, especially since ‘‘different components decay at different rates’’ and ‘‘the residual is difficult to identify in skeletal remains unless it contains a detectable ingredient such as a heavy metal’’ (253). Heavy metals, such as arsenic, lead or mercury, are poisonous; they are therefore regulated by federal agencies and their use for embalming purposes is now illegal. The way a body is encased is also important to consider. Decomposition will differ depending on whether a burial shroud was used versus a wooden or metal casket or depending on the presence of a grave liner or concrete vault. Other preservation factors come into play, such as nontoxic methods (preservation by ice, smoke, salt, etc.), as does further evidence of funerary practices (e.g., plastic eye caps, metal jaw nails, wax, and clay).

THE BASS LEGACY BEYOND THE BODY FARM Dr. Bass’s facility is used as a teaching center where scientists not only conduct cutting-edge research but also offer demonstrations to law enforcement officials. For instance, the FBI has had agents take courses on clandestine grave discovery and excavation. Several technological advances that have now become key investigative tools were made by researchers who have worked with Dr. Bass at the Body Farm. This includes the concept of degree-days, whereby temperatures and decomposition rate are measured over several days in order to compare various geographical areas and climatic conditions. ‘‘Through a chemical analysis of soil samples from beneath a decomposing corpse, scientists can estimate how many degree days the found body has accumulated. Combining that with weather data from the geographic area over the course of the estimated decomposition, they can better determine time since death’’ (Ramsland 2007b). In addition, the collection of bones from cadavers that have decomposed fully has proven a major and fruitful enterprise: Dr. Bass has gathered a collection of more than 400 twentieth-century skeletons—the largest in the United States, and he has made them available to anthropologists for analyses of skeletal dimensions. Tests with ground-penetrating radars have also been instrumental in the development of forensic death investigation in recent years. ‘‘One project [places] bodies under different thicknesses of concrete, buried at different depths. The researchers can then assess, from what they know about those bodies, the kinds of patterns the machine registers when it hits on one of them’’ (Ramsland 2007b). This method has been used to find remains of victims killed by political violence in Bosnia, Croatia, and Panama, especially where mass graves had to be located. One of the significant tools recently developed at the Body Farm is ‘‘a large and ever-expanding Forensic Data Bank, which helps determine the

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racial or ethnic origin of an unknown victim by allowing comparisons with measurements from thousands of other, known skeletons from around the world’’ (Bass and Jefferson 2007, 253). Additionally, Dr. Richard Jantz has developed an innovative, sophisticated computer program known as forensic discrimination software, or ForDisc, which is ‘‘based on measurements from various areas of the bones, along with information about the person’s race, height, age, and illnesses’’ (Ramsland 2007b). ForDisc essentially ‘‘automates the tedious, time-consuming comparison of skeletal measurements’’ (Bass and Jefferson 2007, 253) by making estimates ‘‘from a skeleton of unknown identity the gender, race, and stature, and the database is continually updated. This software also can be utilized by international tribunals for war crime and human rights investigations.’’ (Ramsland 2007b). Moreover, Dr. Arpad Vass is developing a detector that will respond to the same scents that attract cadaver dogs (dogs will detect airborne decomposition biomarkers). The ‘‘artificial nose…pulls air through a tube into a spectrometer chamber’’ and ‘‘will isolate the specific chemicals…to pinpoint single molecules and make the unit portable for police use’’ (Ramsland 2007b). Finally, another area of investigation that has produced important results is what happens to a body in a fire, whether as a result of house fire, arson, or murder or as a means of faking a death. However invaluable his work may have been, Dr. Bass is well aware that his observations are still a long way from setting a universal standard for the patterns followed by all human remains after death. ‘‘So many forces influence decomposition that even the most careful calculations estimating the time of death may be off target. Information gleaned from those bodies scattered about the Tennessee countryside are helping refine those techniques. And the success of William M. Bass’s groundbreaking farm may spawn similar research centers in other parts of the United States’’ (Ricciuti 2007, 79). As Ubelaker and Scammell point out, ‘‘[B]ecause of the success of his work…Bass’s pioneering efforts contributed in large measure to the development of other research facilities for that same purpose in the Southwest, including California and Texas, and other areas. Through all of these programs, anthropologists continue to build up our understanding of the processes of decay, disarticulation, and disintegration, and how it works in different environments’’ (Ubelaker and Scammell 2006, 113). Indeed, forensic anthropologists increasingly have been endeavoring to develop facilities similar to the Body Farm. For instance, the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State (FACTS) in San Marcos, founded in 2007, provides ‘‘exceptional graduate level training in all facets of forensic anthropology, including methods and applications of forensic techniques, advanced human osteology, innovative decomposition research, and the opportunity for students to assist with actual forensic casework.’’ Furthermore, FACTS provides ‘‘forensic anthropological recovery and identification services to Texas law

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enforcement agencies, and [hosts] yearly workshops and short courses designed for law enforcement members to better understand the role of forensic anthropology in medicolegal investigations’’ (FACTS). Likewise, in 2006, the Forensic Anthropology program at Western Carolina University created the Western Carolina Human Identification Laboratory (WCHIL), ‘‘a fully equipped facility dedicated to the recovery, storage, and analysis of human remains. The main WCHIL facility covers 1,100 square feet. This laboratory has a single body morgue refrigerator and freezer for the handling and maintenance of fresh and decomposing human remains.’’ The WCHIL director, John Williams, is a board-certified forensic anthropologist and a Fellow of the American of Forensic Sciences with more than twentyfive years of experience working with the human skeleton and human remains. There have also been talks regarding the opening of a comparable facility in India. Dr. Bass’s work has had a substantial impact on popular culture, too, and the legacy of his work can be felt in forensics fiction today, from trendy crime novels to overly popular television crime dramas. Most notably, award-winning crime author Patricia Cornwell has published several bestsellers detailing the forensic sleuthing of fictional chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Cornwell based The Body Farm on the legendary forensics research facility, thus contributing to its worldwide fame. Dr. Bass credits Cornwell for coining the ‘‘body farm’’ phrase that has since been used to describe his forensic lab, whereas she claims to have overheard it at a seminar in the 1980s. Salon columnist Mary Roach visited the Body Farm and wrote about the experience in a chapter of her nonfiction book about the use and handling of corpses, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. The facility also was featured in various television shows, including The Dead Zone and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, while a similar forensic research center has appeared in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Dr. Bass himself has produced both forensic fiction and nonfictional work. He first teamed up with Jon Jefferson, a documentary filmmaker and veteran journalist, in 2002 when, in association with the National Geographic Society, Jefferson wrote and produced a two-part documentary, Death’s Acre, with sections titled ‘‘Biography of a Corpse’’ and ‘‘Anatomy of a Corpse.’’ In part one, he shows what happens to a single body from the moment it arrives at the facility to the final boxing of the bones. Then in ‘‘Anatomy of a Corpse,’’ he features several professionals who have studied with Bass or have used the Body Farm’s facilities for carrying on their own area of expertise. Steve Symes, for example, was an anthropologist on staff for the Memphis, Tennessee, Medical Examiner’s Office at the time of the filming, who received his training under Bass’s direction. A top bone trauma specialist, he can tell from a ‘‘signature’’ left on bone what kind of sharp-bladed implement might have been used, from knives to tree saws to chainsaws.

Dr. Bill Bass

Dr. Bass cowrote his memoir with Jefferson, titled Death’s Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab, the Body Farm, Where the Dead Do Tell Tales. In late 2006, under the pen name Jefferson Bass, they published Carved in Bone: A Body Farm Novel, a particularly realistic and thorough fictional account featuring forensic expert Dr. Bill Brockton, a palpable portrayal of Dr. Bass; a year later, they published Flesh and Bone: A Body Farm Novel. In 2007, they also published Beyond the Body Farm: A Legendary Bone Detective Explores Murders, Mysteries, and the Revolution in Forensic Science. Dr. Bass additionally contributed to Bodies We’ve Buried: Inside the National Forensic Academy, the World’s Top CSI Training School, which could be criticized—along, in fact, with his fictional work—as an obvious marketing ploy devoid of scientific value and aimed at capitalizing on the general public’s fixation with television shows such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Cold Case, or Forensic Files. According to crime author Patricia Cornwell, ‘‘[Y]ears come and go, as do the dead who have been reduced to ashes and bone, and all of Dr. Bass’s patient translation adds to the fluency of a secret language that helps condemn the wicked and free those who have done no wrong’’ (Bass and Jefferson 2007, xii). Over the past four decades, Dr. Bass’s influential work has shaped forensic anthropology and helped mold it into the acclaimed scientific field it is today. His contributions to our understanding of both human decomposition and osteology are invaluable. By devising efficient scientific tools to help solve crimes and constantly striving to refine forensic investigative techniques, Dr. Bass initiated a radical transformation of the forensic world—a revolution whose legacy he believes will be carried on after he is gone ‘‘by the research and the scientists emerging from a small, smelly, but forensically fertile patch of East Tennessee woods known as the Body Farm’’ (Bass and Jefferson 2007, 254). Viewed by many as a paragon in his field, Dr. Bass is a driven yet humble man who does not fail to notice his own limitations, a symbol of virtue, professional ethics, and integrity whose passion shall hopefully continue to inspire generations of forensic anthropologists, crime analysts, and amateur sleuths alike. FURTHER READING Bass, B., and J. Jefferson. 2003. Death’s Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab, the Body Farm, Where the Dead Do Tell Tales. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Bass, B., and J. Jefferson. 2007. Beyond the Body Farm: A Legendary Bone Detective Explores Murders, Mysteries, and the Revolution in Forensic Science. New York: William Morrow. Bass, J. 2006. Carved in Bone: A Body Farm Novel. New York: HarperCollins. Bass, J. 2007. Flesh and Bone: A Body Farm Novel. New York: HarperCollins. Bass, W. M. 1971. Human Osteology: A Laboratory and Field Manual of the Human Skeleton. Columbia, MO: Missouri Archaeological Society.

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Bass, W. M. 1995. Human Osteology: A Laboratory and Field Manual of the Human Skeleton. 4th ed. Columbia, MO: Missouri Archaeological Society. Bass, W. M. 1997. Outdoor decomposition rates in Tennessee. In Forensic Taphonomy: The Postmortem Fate of Human Remains, ed. W. D. Haglund and M. H. Sorg, 181–186. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Bass, W. M. 2005. Human osteology: A Laboratory and field Manual (5th edition). Columbia, MO: Missouri Archaeological Society. Bass, W. M., and W. H. Birkby. 1978. Exhumation: The method could make the difference. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 47 (7): 6–11. Burns, K. R. 2007. The forensic anthropology training Manual (2nd edition). New York: Prentice Hall. Cornwell, P. 1994. The Body Farm. New York: Berkley Books. El-Najjar, M. Y., and K. R. McWilliams. 1978. Forensic Anthropology: The Structure, Morphology and Variation of Human Bone and Dentition. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Evans, C. 2006. The Father of Forensics: The Groundbreaking Cases of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, and the Beginnings of Modern CSI. New York: Berkley Books. Evans, C. 2007. The Casebook of Forensic Detection: How Science Solved 100 of the World’s Most Baffling Crimes. 2nd ed. New York: Berkley Books. Genge, N. E. 2002. The Forensic Casebook. New York: Ballantine Books. Haglund, W. D., A. Galloway, and T. Simmons. 1999. Practical Forensic Anthropology of Human Skeletal Remains: Recovery, Analysis, and Resolution. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Hallcox, J., A. Welch, and B. Bass. 2006. Bodies We’ve Buried: Inside the National Forensic Academy, the World’s Top CSI Training School. New York: Berkley Books. Innes, B. 2000. Bodies of Evidence: The Fascinating World of Forensic Science and How It Helped Solve more than 100 True Crimes. London: Amber Books. Jackson, D. M. 2001. The Bone Detectives: How Forensic Anthropologists Solve Crimes and Uncover Mysteries of the Dead. Boston: Little & Brown. Mann, R. W., W. M. Bass, and L. Meadows. 1990. Time since death and decomposition of the human body: Variables and observations in case and experimental field studies. Journal of Forensic Sciences 35:103–111. Maples, W. R. 1994. Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist. New York: Broadway Books. Moore, P. 2004. The Forensics Handbook: The Secrets of Crime Scene Investigation. New York: Barnes & Noble. Nafte, M. 2000. Flesh and Bone: An Introduction to Forensic Anthropology. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Owen, D. 2000. Hidden Evidence: Forty True Crimes and How Forensic Science Helped Solve Them. Willowdale, Ontario: Firefly Books. Ramsland, K. 2007a. Beating the Devil’s Game: A History of Forensic Science and Criminal Investigation. New York: Berkley Books. Ramsland, K. 2007b. Profile of Dr. Bill Bass, Founder of the Body Farm. http://www. crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/forensics/bill_bass/ (accessed August 15, 2007). Reichs, K. J., and W. M. Bass. 1998. Forensic Osteology: Advances in the Identification of Human Remains. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

Dr. Bill Bass

Ricciuti, E. 2007. Forensics. New York: Collins. Roach, M. 2003. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Rodriguez, W. C., and W. M. Bass. 1983. Insect activity and its relationship to decay rates of human cadavers in East Tennessee. Journal of Forensic Sciences 28:423–32. Rodriguez, W. C., and W. M. Bass. 1985. Decomposition of buried bodies and methods that may aid in their location. Journal of Forensic Sciences 30:836– 852. Shean, B. S., L. Messinger, and M. Papworth. 1993. Observations of differential decomposition on sun exposed vs. shaded pig carrion in coastal Washington State. Journal of Forensic Sciences 38:938–949. Stewart, T. D. 1979. Essentials of Forensic Anthropology. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Texas State University. 2007. Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State (FACTS). http://www.txstate.edu/anthropology/facts/ (accessed September 23, 2007). Thomas, P. 1995. Talking Bones: The Science of Forensic Anthropology. New York: Facts on File. Ubelaker, D., and H. Scammell. 2006. Bones: A Forensic Detective’s Casebook. Lanham, MD: M. Evans. Western Carolina University. 2007. Western Carolina Human Identification Laboratory (WCHIL). http://www.wcu.edu/ (accessed September 23, 2007).

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About the Editor and the Contributors THE EDITOR Jeffrey B. Bumgarner, PhD, is an associate professor of Political Science and Law Enforcement at Minnesota State University, Mankato, MN. He earned a BA in political science from the University of Illinois (ChampaignUrbana), an MAPA in public administration from Northern Illinois University, and a PhD in training and organization development from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Bumgarner has several years of experience in federal and local law enforcement, as well as in academe. He is the author of Profiling and Criminal Justice in America (2004), Federal Agents: The Growth of Federal Law Enforcement in America (2006), Emergency Management: A Reference Handbook (2008), and several articles and book chapters relating to public safety and homeland security.

CONTRIBUTORS Amanda L. Belshaw is a co-owner of Belshaw & Associates Investigations in Houston, Texas. A native Texan, Amanda received her BA degree from University of Houston. Ms. Belshaw has extensive experience in the area of child abuse investigations and has consulted on numerous criminal and civil cases involving child physical and sexual abuse. Scott H. Belshaw is currently a PhD student at Prairie View A&M University pursuing a PhD in Juvenile Justice (The only program of its kind in the country). Mr. Belshaw has served as a probation officer and gang intelligence officer for the Harris County Probation Department. For the past ten years, Mr. Belshaw has owned and operated Belshaw & Associates Investigations and Consulting, a private investigations firm specializing in criminal

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defense investigations. His research interests include juvenile delinquency and prevention, death penalty and sentencing related matters. Mr. Belshaw has published articles on juvenile mentoring and gender issues in various education and criminal justice journals. Clairissa Breen earned her BA degree in political science from St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York, and her Master’s degree in criminal justice at Buffalo State College, New York. She is completing her PhD at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Ronald Burns is an Associate Professor and Director of the Criminal Justice Program at Texas Christian University. He is the author or editor of five books and over thirty-five journal articles and book chapters. His research interests include criminal case processing, corporate deviance, environmental crimes, and policing issues. Recent publications include articles in the Journal of Criminal Justice Education, the Journal of Criminal Justice, and Crime and Delinquency. Elizabeth Quinn DeValve is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Fayetteville State University. Her research interests include crime victims and the criminal justice system, repeat victimization, and females and criminal justice. She has published articles and book chapters on victimization experiences, female wardens, drug-facilitated sexual assault, and police satisfaction with case handling. Her publications can be found in journals including Applied Psychology in Criminal Justice and The Prison Journal. John Dombrink is a professor in the Department of Criminology, Law & Society in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine. He has authored several articles on policing strategies and the use of RICO prosecution strategies against organized crime, as well as articles on nontraditional and global organized crime. He is the author of several articles on gambling in America and the co-author of a book about gambling legalization, The Last Resort: Success and Failure in Campaigns for Casinos (1990, with William N. Thompson). With Daniel Hillyard, he is the author of Dying Right: The Death With Dignity Movement (2001) and Sin No More: From Abortion to Stem Cells–-Crime, Law, and Morality in America. (NYU Press, 2007). Camille Gibson is a nationally certified psychotherapist. She has been a faculty member at Prairie View A & M University in the College of Juvenile Justice and Psychology since 2000. Her research interests include schools and delinquency, Jamaican organized crime, juvenile sex offending, child abuse, law enforcement and juvenile interactions. She is the author of the


book Being Real: Student-Teacher Interactions and African American Male Delinquency (2002) and co-author of a soon to be released book with Donna Vandiver, Juvenile Sex Offenders: What the Public Needs to Know. Dr. Gibson is a recent past president of the Southwestern Association of Criminal Justice in which capacity she represented several criminal justice educators and researchers in Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Colorado. She worked and studied in New York City during the Giuliani years at City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice from 1994 to 2000. J. Scott Granberg-Rademacker is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Minnesota State University, Mankato. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His research interests include Bayesian methodology, missing data problems, and neural network theory. His recently published articles have appeared in Political Research Quarterly, State Politics and Policy Quarterly, The Philippine Statistician, and The Southwest Journal of Criminal Justice. Richard N. Kocsis, PhD, is a forensic psychologist and the author, co-author, or editor of dozens of books, articles, and book chapters relating to criminal profiling, serial violent offenders, and the criminal investigation of serial violent crime. He has also held numerous academic positions in the areas of forensic psychology and criminology. In 2000, he was awarded the Australian Museum’s Eureka prize for critical thinking in recognition of his scholarly research in the area of criminal profiling. Christopher Larimer is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Northern Iowa. He teaches and researches in the areas of public administration, state politics, and political behavior. Ellen Leichtman is an Asstistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Eastern Kentucky University. She has a PhD from Brown University in Music (Ethnomusicology), and is ABD and has an MA from Temple University in Criminal Justice. She has published in Critical Criminology, Postmodern Criminology, The Critical Criminologist, and The Latin American Music Review. She is the editor of and contributor to To the Four Corners: A Festschrift in Honor of Rose Brandel. Janet E. McClellan received her PhD from Northcentral University, in Prescott, AZ. She received her Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the University of Dayton (OH) and her Bachelors Degree from Park University, Parkville, MO. Her research focuses on sexualized violence, in particular lust murder. Among her publications are the following: ‘‘Sexual (Lust) Homicide: Definitional Constructs, Dynamics, and Investigative

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Considerations’’ in Serial Murder and the Psychology of Violent Crimes (Chapter 13); ‘‘Delivery Drivers and Long-Haul Truckers: Traveling Serial Murderers’’ in the Journal of Applied Security Research; ‘‘Childhood Animal Abuse and Future Interpersonal Violence: A Review of Linkages’’ in the Journal of Applied Security Research; and ‘‘Urban Homicide: An Analysis of Verbal Models and Current Research’’ in Transactions. McClellan has over 20 years of criminal justice agency experience and joined the University of Alaska—Fairbanks (UAF) Justice Department faculty in the fall of 2007. Willard M. Oliver is an associate professor of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas. He is currently working on a biography of August Vollmer. Kilby Raptopoulos is a former probation officer who is now a graduate assistant in the Criminal Justice Department at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. She has since taught Introduction to Criminal Justice at the undergraduate level and presented several professional presentations at the meetings of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. She also recently served on the Student Affairs Committee of ACJS. Following her graduate assistantship, Kilby will be taking over as Project Coordinator for a joint Juvenile Justice Center/Arkansas Division of Youth Services Grant that provides serious and violent juvenile offenders with college mentors. Publications include a forthcoming article in Journal of Criminal Justice Education (with Jeff Walker) and a book review in Criminal Justice Review. Jacob Rodriguez is an assistant professor with the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. He received his PhD in Juvenile Justice from Prairie View A&M University in 2007. John’s research interests include transnationalism, gangs, and Latinos in the criminal justice system. Brion Sever is an associate professor of criminal justice at Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey. He earned his Master’s and PhD in criminology and criminal justice from Florida State University. His research interests include criminal justice public policy, race and the criminal justice system, and criminal justice ethics. Edward J. Schauer was instrumental in the recent development of the Texas Juvenile Crime Prevention Center, the College of Juvenile Justice and Psychology, and the first doctoral program in juvenile justice, all at Prairie View A&M University. His research interests lie in the areas of homicide investigation, sex trafficking and prostitution, minority student academic success, and applied theatre. He received his PhD from Sam Houston State University and teaches criminology, ethics, women and criminal justice, and critical thinking.


Kelli Stevens has a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Master’s in Criminology and Criminal Justice. She has thirteen years experience in the field of criminal justice, ten of those serving as an adult probation officer in Texas. Mrs. Stevens has been a Court Officer, Specialized Substance Abuse Officer, Academy Training Officer, and a Specialized Sex Offender Officer. She is now the supervisor for the Tarrant County CSCD Training Academy and formerly the supervisor over the Sex Offender Unit. She is a member of the Tarrant County CSCD Search & Seizure team and serves as a Team Leader. Mrs. Stevens also has seven years experience teaching at the University level and has several publications including numerous on-line articles and a Criminal Investigations Interactive CD-ROM. She is a member of the Tarrant County Council Sexual Abuse Advisory Council and has served as site coordinator for the Council on Sex Offender Treatment in the state of Texas in collecting data for a legislative-mandated study to review the validity of risk levels in relation to community notification and sex offender registration. Morris A. Taylor is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy Analysis at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville Illinois. He received his PhD in Public Policy Analysis from Saint Louis University. He currently teaches courses in Public Law, Policy Analysis, Public Safety Administration and Pro-seminar in Public Administration. His research focuses on social jurisprudence, police organizations, and ethics. During 2004-2005, he served as the Ira Glasser Racial Justice Fellow for the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri investigating issues of racial profiling and police misconduct. He also served as a patrol officer with both the City of St. Louis, Missouri and St. Louis County Police departments. Cecile Van De Voorde, LL.M., Ph.D. is an assistant professor of criminal justice at John Jay College, City University of New York. She holds a Master’s in criminology from Indiana State University, a PhD in criminology from the University of South Florida, and an LL.M. from the Grenoble School of Law, Universite Pierre Mendes France, Grenoble, France. She has conducted research and published extensively in the area of political violence—especially terrorism and genocide. Jeffery T. Walker is a professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. Dr. Walker also holds joint appointments with the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas Medical School. Dr. Walker has written six books, over thirty journal articles and book chapters, seventeen technical reports, and delivered over seventy professional papers and presentations. He has obtained over $9 million in grants from the Department of

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Justice, National Institute of Drug Abuse, and others. His areas of interest are social/environmental factors of crime and the study of non-linear dynamics as they relate to crime. He is the immediate past president of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. Editorial experience includes service as Editor of the Journal of Criminal Justice Education, Editor in Chief of Journal of Critical Criminology, and Editor of Crime Patterns and Analysis. Previous publications include articles in Justice Quarterly, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, and Journal of Criminal Justice Education, and the books Leading Cases in Law Enforcement (7th Edition), Statistics in Criminal Justice and Criminology: Analysis and Interpretation (3nd Edition) and Myths in Crime and Justice. Elvira M White, JD/PhD, is an assistant professor in criminal justice at Fayetteville State University. She practiced criminal law for twenty years before entering university teaching full-time in 1999. White is the author of several book chapters including co-authoring ‘‘African American PhD women in criminal justice higher education: equal impact or the myth of equality,’’ in It’s a Crime: Women & Justice. She more recently authored Youth Gangs and The W. Haywood Burns Institute for the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime. White is currently the first and only person in the nation with a JD in conjunction with a PhD in juvenile justice. Her research includes juvenile justice issues, criminological theory, sentencing and dispositional outcome, ethical and theoretical orientations in sentencing, disproportionate minority confinement, and criminal justice education. Tusty Zohra is a PhD student at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She has a Bachelors of Arts in Criminal Justice and Philosophy from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She received Master’s degree in Criminal justice also from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Her areas of interest consist of theory, statistics, drugs, gangs, and international studies. Zohra has been in involved in various research projects such as incarcerated parents and their children, hazing in universities, Weber’s Rational-Formal Law, and Stigmata. Zohra plans to finish her education and become a professor, where her goal is to excel in her teaching and research abilities.

Index Abilene, Kansas: first city marshal, Thomas J. Smith, 1870, 8–10; second city marshal, Wild Bill Hickok, 1871, 10–13 ABSCAM Ethics (Caplan), 363 Academy of Science, Public Welfare Medal, August Vollmer, 105 Adam: His Son Continues (Walsh, 1986), 425 Adams Express case, Pinkerton Detective Agency, 39 Adamsville, TN: Elementary School, Buford Pusser, 240; High School, Buford Pusser, 240; Police Chief, Buford Pusser, 1962, 243–45 Adam (Walsh, 1983), 425 Adam Walsh Children Protection and Safety Act of 2006, 433 Adam Walsh Outreach Center for Missing Children, 422, 427–28 Allred, James V., Texas Governor, restoring the Texas Ranger reputation, 72 All the President’s Men (Woodward & Bernstein), 293–97, 311 ALPHA Program (substance abuse treatment), Sheriff Joe Arpaio, 474 Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers union, Pinkerton as strikebreakers, 50–51 Amber Alert Network, John Walsh and, 428, 432–33

American Board of Forensic Anthropology (ABFA), Dr. Bill Bass, 606 American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, August Vollmer as member, 98 American Outlaws (film), references to Pinkertons, 54 American Police Systems (Fosdick), praise for August Vollmer, 100 American Society of Criminology (ASC), August Vollmer Award, 112 America’s Mayor: Rudolph W. Giuliani (Fremont, 2002), 522 America’s Most Wanted, John Walsh story, 421, 426–27 And the Sea will Tell (Bugliosi, 1991), 387, 389, 393, 405–8 Anthropological Research Facility (ARF), first name of The Body Farm, 610–12 Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, 481 Antiwar movements, a form of vigilantism, 564 Arpaio, Ava, wife of Joe Arpaio, 466 Arpaio, Joe, Sheriff: criticisms and problems, 476–80; not so widely known policies, 474–76; policy changes and major events during office, 480; popular culture and, 485–88; popular policies, 468–73; timeline, 468 Arpaio, Rocko, son of Joe Arpaio, 468

Index

652

Atcherly, L. W., modus operandi file system, 94 Atlanta Olympic Games, 1996, profilers and an accidental victim, 458–59 Auburn Community College, John Walsh, 423 Austin, Moses, colonizing Texas with American settlers, 59–60 Bad Girls (film), references to Pinkertons, 54 Baez, Anthony, victim of NYPD police brutality, 548 Bailey, F. Lee: attorney of O. J. Simpson, 507; praise for Bugliosi, 418; praise from Bugliosi, 387 Baker, Elizabeth, Pinkerton operative, 42–43 Baker, Joe Don, portrays Buford Pusser in Walking Tall, 253 Ballad of a Well-Known Gun, balled by Sir Elton John referencing Pinkertons, 53 Bangs, William, trusted employee of Pinkerton Agency, 45 Bank Secrecy Act, 358 Barbary Coast, San Francisco Vigilance Committee, 563 Barnet, Ross, Mississippi Governor, civil rights at University of Mississippi, 1962, 191–92 Bass, Bill, Dr. (William M.), 605–21, 605f; The Body Farm, 610–13; development of forensic anthropology and osteology, 608–10; legacy beyond The Body Farm, 616–19; postmortem interval and forensic taphonomy, 613–16 Battle of Antelope Hills, Texas Rangers versus Comanches, 64 Battle of Walker Creek, Texas Rangers versus Comanches, 62 Beck, David, Teamster president, 174–75 Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, RFK and, 193 Behavioral Science Unit (BSU), FBI, 137, 441–44

Belli, Melvin: defending Sandra Stockton, 398; praise from Bugliosi, 387 Bellino, Carmine, investigating the mob with RFK, 173–82 Benjamin Ide Wheeler ‘‘Distinguished Citizen of Berkeley’’ award, August Vollmer, 105 Berkeley Volunteer Fire Department, organized by August Vollmer, 88 Berkman, Alexander, Hoover participates in prosecution, 122 Bernstein, Carl, 291–318, 291f; biographical sketch, 294 The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President (Bugliosi, 2001), 417 Beverly School of Law, Los Angeles, Vincent Bugliosi, 375 Biaggio, Mario, Congressman, prosecution by Rudy Giuliani, 540 Bicycles, August Vollmer’s innovative use in policy work, 93 Biddle, Clement, U.S. Marshall, Pennsylvania, 7 Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, Rudy Giuliani, 524 Black Hand (Sicilian gang), 86 Blakey, Robert, Professor, work against organized crime, 350–51 Blaylock, Cecilia Ann Mattie, common law wife of Wyatt Earp, 18 Blue-coat crime, 330–31 The Body Farm: featured on TV shows, 618–19; Forensic Anthropology facility at University of Tennessee, 610–13; legacy, 616–19 The Body Farm (Cornwell), 618 Boesky, Ivan, prosecution by Rudy Giuliani, 539 Bogen, Carl (Kojak), mentor of Rudy Giuliani, 524 Bonaparte, Charles, Attorney General, creation of the FBI, 134–35 Bonnano crime organization, Joseph Pistone and, 347–49 Bonnie and Clyde, Texas Rangers and, 71

Index

Bradley, Phillip, U.S. Marshall, Connecticut, 7 Brandt, Charles, Pistone’s coauthor, 347–49 Brasco, Donnie. see Pistone, Joseph Bratton, Bill, NYC police commissioner, interaction with Rudy Giuliani, 529, 543–44 Brent Public School, J. Edgar Hoover, 119 Bribery, blue-coat crime, 330 Broken Windows, article in Atlantic Monthly about police and neighborhood safety, 544–45 Brussel, James, Dr., beginning of criminal profiling in the FBI, 441–43 Buchalter, Louis Lepke, racketeering investigation by Dewey, 156 Budgetary Control and Impoundment Act, 1974, 298 Bugliosi, Vincent, Jr., son of Vincent Bugliosi, 378 Bugliosi, Vincent T., 371–419, 371f; aesthetics an art, 381–82; agnosticism, 382–83; aspires to produce masterpieces, 380–81; author of true-crime mysteries, 393–409; background and personal, 375; childhood heroes, 376; choice of law as a career, 376; critique of judges, 386–87; critique of lawyers, 387–88; on defending guilty persons, 392–93; final summation: key to trial success, 373–76; immigrant parents: national perspective, 377; incompetence and mediocrity, 383; legal and political critic, 409–17; love of music, 381; observation on juries, 388; obsession with justice, 385–86; persistence: dedication to hard work, 389; praise: a panel of his peers, 418; professional arrogance, 383–85; professional philosophy, 382; prosecutor as investigator, 388–93; self-deprecation, 384; tennis, 377; unique insight, 380; University of Miami, Florida, 378 Bugliosi, Wendy, daughter of Vincent Bugliosi, 378 Bureau of Investigation, pre-FBI, 122

653

Burnham, David, reporter, New York City police corruption investigation, 269–70 Burnham, Drexel, prosecution by Rudy Giuliani, 539 Bush at War (Woodward), 312 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, pursuit by Pinkerton agents, 47–48 California Police Chiefs Association, president August Vollmer, 95 Callahan, James H., Texas Rangers, direction of response to Apache raids, 1855 Callas, Terry, praise from Bugliosi, 387 Capital punishment. see Death penalty Carfrae, Joan, wife of Allan Pinkerton, 28 Carrington, Edward, U.S. Marshall, Virginia, 7 Carter, Eunice, female, African-American attorney in Dewey’s office, 158 Carter, Jimmy, Watergate effects, 302 Carved in Bone: A Body Farm Novel (Bass), Bass and Jefferson, 619 Castalado, Joseph, indictment by Thomas Dewey, 149–50 Central High School, J. Edgar Hoover, 120 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 126–27 Central Police University, Taoyuan, Taiwan, Dr. Henry Lee, 579 Chain gangs, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, 471 Charles C Thomas Publishing Company, book series on law enforcement, 110–11 Chartists, Allan Pinkerton, 28 Chase, Richard Trenton, FBI profiling in action, 452–53 Cheasty, John Cye, entrapment of Jimmy Hoffa, 1957, 176 Chertoff, Michael, Joseph Pistone and, 349 Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney, Thomas Dewey, 146–47 Chiseling, blue-coat crime, 330 Church Committee, study of governmental operations with respect to intelligence, 362 Citizen patrols, 557–58

Index

654

City College of New York, Dr. Henry Lee, 579–80 Civil Rights Movement, a form of vigilantism, 564 Civil rights violations: education, 190–92; FBI and, 130; RFK’s approach, 188 Civil War, impact on Texas Rangers, 65 Clark, Marcia, Lead Prosecutor, People v. Simpson, 509–10 Classico High School, Massachusetts, Joe Arpaio, 465 Clinton, William J., extramarital affair scandal (Monica Lewinsky), 304–5, 306f, 314 Cochran, Johnnie, attorney of O. J. Simpson, 507 Code Adam, John Walsh and, 428, 431–32 Code and code writing, Thomas Dewey, 150 Cognitive Restructuring program, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, 474 Colt, Samuel, Texas Rangers adoption of revolvers, 62 Columbia Law School, Thomas Dewey, 144 Commerce High School, Massachusetts, Joe Arpaio, 465 Commerford, Patrick, prosecution by Thomas Dewey, 149 Committee for the Reelection of the President (CRP), Watergate and, 295 Committee of Criminal Courts Law and Procedure, New York City Bar Association, Thomas Dewey, Chairman, 152 Communist Labor Party, Palmer Raids on, 122 Communist Party in the U.S., RFK’s opinions, 185 Community Coordinating Council for Prevention of Delinquency, created by August Vollmer, 98 Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, 480 Compstat (NYPD computer statistics initiative), Rudy Giuliani and, 542–43 Computer forensic investigators, 31

Comstock, Anthony, Hoover’s study of, 120 Connecticut Crime Laboratory, Dr. Henry Lee, 580 Connecticut Division of Scientific Services, Dr. Henry Lee, 581 Consciousness of guilt/innocence, Bugliosi, 391–92 Continuing Criminal Enterprise statute, RICO, 358 Cooper, Courtney Ryley, publicist of the FBI, 125–26 Copacabana, New York City, 258–60 Coplon, Judith, Soviet spy, 127–28 Corporate investigators, 31 Corpse 1-81, first resident of The Body Farm, 610 Cortines, Ray, NYC Education Commissioner, interaction with Rudy Giuliani, 527–28 Cowlings, Al, friend of O. J. Simpson, 504–5 Cox, Archibald, Special Prosecutor, Watergate case, 298 Cracking More Cases (Lee), 588 Crew, Rudy, NYC Education Commissioner, interaction with Rudy Giuliani, 527–28 Crime and the State Police (Vollmer & Parker), 108 Crime assessment, FBI profiles, 451 Crime Classification Manual (CCM), FBI BSU development of, 449 Crime control model, early 1970s U.S., 566 Crime Laboratory Digest, Dr. Henry Lee, 592 Crime Scene Handbook (Lee, Palmback, and Miller), 590 Crime Victims’ Rights Constitutional Amendment, John Walsh and, 433–34 Criminal enterprise, definition in RICO, 356–57 Criminal investigation laboratory, August Vollmer, 1916, 96 Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS), FBI, 139–40

Index

Criminal Justice Journal, article by Bugliosi, 391 Criminal profiling, 437–61, 437f; Adolph Hitler, 440–41; categories of offenders, 446–48; compilation of the profile, 451; construction of a profile, 449–53; contribution to law enforcement and scientific community, 444–45; crime assessment, 451; decision process models, 450–51; definition, 438; hits and misses, 455–59; inputs, 450; investigation, 451–52; Jack the Ripper, 439–40; research, 445–49 The Criminal (Vollmer), 112 Cross-examination, Bugliosi, 390–91 Crowder, R. A., Captain, Texas Rangers, Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally insane, 72–73 Cupid of City Hall case, Thomas Dewey, 149 Custer, Tom, Captain, U.S. Army, Wild Bill Hickok and, 11 CyberAngels, 571 The Dain Curse (Hammett), 53 Darden, Christopher, Prosecutor, People v. Simpson, 510 Darrow, Clarence, praise from Bugliosi, 387 D’Avanzo, Helen, mother of Rudy Giuliani, 522–23, 530 Deadbeat Parent Posse, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, 470, 474 Deadwood (TV), references to Pinkertons, 53 Dean, John, White House counsel, Watergate and, 295–96 Dearborn, Henry, U.S. Marshall, Maine, 7 Death and Justice (Fuhrman), 500, 516–17 Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2000, 479 Death penalty: Bugliosi’s thoughts, 392; Mark Fuhrman’s examination and opinion, 500 Death’s Acre (Bass): Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab, the Body Farm, Where

655

the Dead Do Tell Tales, 618–19; summary of three cases from, 607–8 Death Wish series of films, vigilantism and, 566 Decision process models, FBI profiles, 450–51 Deep Throat, Watergate and impact on American politics, 309–12 Deger, Lawrence E., first city marshal of Dodge City, 14 Dellbeck, Helen, testimony against Gordon and his mob, 151 Dershowitz, Alan: attorney of O. J. Simpson, 507; praise for Bugliosi, 418 Dewey, Annie Thomas, mother of Thomas Dewey, 144 Dewey, George Martin, father of Thomas Dewey, 144 Dewey, Thomas, 143–65, 143f; beginnings in politics, 145; bill allowing for joinder of felonies in New York, 155; death threats, 156; elected governor of New York in 1942, 162; friendship with J. Edgar Hoover, 162–63; loan-sharking investigations, 155; prohibition and, 148; prosecutions of organized crime, 153–63; running for president in 1944 and 1948, 162; Special Prosecutor for the County of New York, 1935, 153; views on racism, 163 Dewey, Thomas E., Jr., son of Thomas Dewey, 149 Diallo, Amadou, victim of NYPD police brutality, 548–49 Diamond, Jack ‘‘Legs,’’ investigation by Thomas Dewey, 147–49 Dignity program, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, 475 Dillinger, John, Hoover versus, 124 Dinkins, David Norman, Giuliani’s first opponent in mayoral race, 532 Dirty Harry (film), vigilantism and, 566 Disorganized offender, category of criminal profile, 446–48 Dixie Mafia, 239 Dodge City, Kansas: first city marshal, Lawrence E. Deger, 14; second city marshal, Edward Masterson, 14

Index

656

Domestic violence, victims’ rights, 567 Donnie Brasco (Pistone’s book and Mike Newell’s film), 348–49, 361–62 Dora Hand legend, Dodge City, 15–16 Dorismond, Patrick, victim of NYPD police brutality, 549 Dowd, Michael, corrupt NYC police officer, 337 Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA): Fact sheet: heroin, 258–60; Joe Arpaio, 464, 467; work with the U.S. Marshals, 22 Durk, David, Sergeant, New York City police corruption investigation, 269–70, 321 Dwight, Thomas, Father of Forensic Anthropology in the U.S., 608 Dyer Act, 134 E. H. Driggs, first stenographer job of August Vollmer, 87 Earp, Wyatt, 3, 10; deputy city marshal, Wichita, Kansas, 18; in Dodge City, 15, 18; reality of the man, 17–21; town constable, Lamar, Missouri, 1870, 18 Education programs for inmates, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, 475 Egan, Eddie, 257–90, 257f; after The French Connection, 270–77; baseball years, 262; early years, 262–64; film and television careers, 277–79; The French Connection, 268–69; legal problems, 271–72; Marines, 262; New York reform, 269–70; working relationship with Grosso, 265–68 Ehrlichman, John, assistant to President Nixon, Watergate and, 295 Emery, Robert, interaction with Rudy Giuliani, 529–30 Enemy Alien Registration Section, U.S. Justice Department, J. Edgar Hoover and, 121 Essentials of Forensic Anthropology (Stewart), 609 Ethics in Government Act, 1973, 298 Evans, Clifford, professor of Dr. Bill Bass, 606

Evers, Lisa, wife of Curtis Sliwa, 572 Evidence, Bugliosi, 389 The Expressman and the Detective (Pinkerton), 49 Extortion, blue-coat crime, 330 False Witness (Lambert), about Oliver Stone’s JFK, 233 A Farewell to Justice (Mellen), Jim Garrison’s story, 233 Father of American Policing, August Vollmer, 84 Favoritism, blue-coat crime, 331 FBI Laboratory, 138 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 132 FBI National Academy, 137–38 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI): Behavioral Science Unit (BSU), 441–44; changes: quality versus quantity of cases, 355; civil rights violations, 130; COINTELPRO program, 362; corruption in, 123–24; creation, 134–35; Crime Records Division, 132; crimes investigated, 135–36; Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS), 139–40; ethical issues of undercover, 362–64; failure of policing strategies before Pistone’s era, 350–52; fingerprint initiative, 109; Hoover as Director, 123–26; Inspection Division, 131; J. Edgar Hoover and, 117–41, 117f; Jim Garrison and, 199; Joseph Pistone, 343–69; National Security Branch, 140; Pinkerton role in evolution of, 54; priorities, 135; profilers, 437–61, 437f; qualifications for agents, 136; Strategic Information and Operations Center, 140; training program, 136–37; work with the U.S. Marshals, 22 Federal Day, started by Rudy Giuliani, 541 Federation of the Union of Russian Workers, Palmer Raids on, 122 Fell, Pat, second wife of August Vollmer, 100 Felt, W. Mark, Deep Throat, 311 Ferrie, David, Garrison’s investigation of the JFK assassination, 200–202

Index

Final Days (Woodward), 296, 314 Final summation, Vincent Bugliosi’s key to trial success, 373–76 Financial investigators, 31–32 Flegenheimer, Arthur ‘‘Dutch Schultz,’’ investigation by Thomas Dewey, 147, 150 Floyd, Charles Arthur ‘‘Pretty Boy,’’ Hoover versus, 124 Ford, Gerald, Watergate effects, 302 Ford, John Salmon ‘‘Rip,’’ Captain, Texas Rangers, 63–65 Forensic anthropology: big four: sex, race, age, and stature, 609; development, 608–10; Dr. Bill Bass, 606–21 Forensic science, qualifications for career in, 598–602 Forensic Science Research and Training Center at Quantico, 138 Forensic taphonomy, definition, 613 Forsyth, Robert, U.S. Marshall, Georgia, 7 Freedom Riders, RFK and, 189–92 Freeh, Louis: on changes in FBI, 355; the FBI today, 364; Joseph Pistone and, 349 The French Connection (book and film), 261–62, 268–69 The French Connection case, 261–62 Friedkin, William, director of The French Connection, 261–62, 267–69 Friedman, Stanley, prosecution by Rudy Giuliani, 540 Frontier Battalion, Texas Rangers, 66–68 Fugitive Slave Act, 1980, U.S. Marshals enforcement of, 7 Fuhrman, Billie, mother of Mark Fuhrman, 501 Fuhrman, Mark, 493–519; aftermath of O. J. Simpson trial, 510–12; change of mind on capital punishment, 516–17; charged with felony perjury, pleads no contest, 510; civil lawsuits against Simpson, 511–12; historical background, 501–2; move toward redemption, 512–15; other books and endeavors, 515; plea agreement for perjury, 495–500; racist behavior, 506– 10; Simpson-Goldman murders, 502

657

Fuhrman, Ralph, father of Mark Fuhrman, 501 Garrison, Jane, mother of Jim Garrison, 198–99 Garrison, Jim, 197–234, 197f; investigation of the assassination of a president, 200–202; Louisiana State District Court Judge, 1978–1991, 199; media relations, 201–2; New Orleans District Attorney, 199; the person, 198–99; the prosecutor, 199–200; Shaw trial, 202–3 Garrison v. Louisiana, U.S. Supreme Court, 200 General Accounting Office (GAO), report on American organized-crime control, 350, 353 General Intelligence Division, J. Edgar Hoover appointed head, 122 George Washington University, J. Edgar Hoover, 120 Girl Scouts Beyond Bars program, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, 474 Giuliani, Evangeline, grandmother of Rudy Giuliani, 522 Giuliani, Harold, father of Rudy Giuliani, 522–23 Giuliani, Regina, first wife of Rudy Giuliani, 530 Giuliani, Rudolfo, grandfather of Rudy Giuliani, 522 Giuliani, Rudolph ‘‘Rudy,’’ 521–51, 521t; character, 524–30; crime fighting, 539–47; early years, 522–24; education and the school system, 536; free speech battles, 537–38; Joseph Pistone and, 349; judicial reform, 546–47; Man of the Year and Mayor of the World, 546; NYPD Street Crimes Unit, 547–48; police brutality, 547–50; political advisors, 534; politics and career, 531–39; presidential aspirations, 538–39; racial insensitivity, 547–50; role models, 525; terrorism and, 545–47; women in his life, 530–31; workfare, 536 Goetz, Bernhard, vigilantism and, 568

Index

658

Golden, David: defending Sandra Stockton, 398; praise from Bugliosi, 387 Goldman, Emma, Hoover participates in prosecution, 122 Gotti, John, Jr., links to assassination attempt on Curtis Sliwa, 572 Government Sunshine Act, 1976, 298 Grass eaters, corrupt police officers, 323 Gratuities: police ethics and, 331–35, 332–33t; salary and working condition issues, 334 Great Depression: modern day (1935present), 72–74; Texas Rangers, 71 Greenhow, Rose O’Neal, Confederate spy, 43 Grosso, Sonny, 257–90, 257f; after The French Connection, 270–77; early years, 264–65; film and television careers, 279–83; The French Connection, 268–69; Korean Conflict, 264; legal problems, 271–72; New York reform, 269–70; working relationship with Egan, 265–68 Guardian Angels, 553–75, 553f; cyber crime and, 571; future, 572; gas pumping during sniper shootings, 571; growth and legitimacy, 570–71; law enforcement perception of, 569–70; origins, 568–70; shaming of Robert Chambers, 571 Gun ownership vigilantism and, 560 Haldeman, H. R., White House Chief of Staff, Watergate and, 295 Hamer, Frank. H., Captain, Texas Rangers, 71 Hammett, Samuel Dashiell, Pinkerton agent, 53 Hanover, Donna, second wife of Rudy Giuliani, 530 Harmon Foundation Medal, August Vollmer, 105 Hathcock, Louise: killed by Buford Pusser in 1966, 246; State Line Mob, 238–39 Hathcock, W. O, 241 Hauptmann, Bruno, Hoover and, 124

Havana Police Department, August Vollmer, 103–4 Hawthorne School study, prevention of delinquency, 98 Hays, John Coffee, Captain, Texas Rangers, 62 Helen Crafts: The Wood Chipper Case, 1986, Dr. Henry Lee, 581–84 Helmsley, Leona, prosecution by Rudy Giuliani, 539 Helter Skelter: True Story of the Manson Murders (Bugliosi, 1974), 372, 375, 379, 386, 388–89, 393–96; vigilantism and, 566 Hennessey, David, his murder’s influence on August Vollmer, 86–87 Henry Lee Institute of Forensic Science, University of New Haven, 578 A Heritage of Stone (Garrison), 198 Herlands Report, 157 Heroin, DEA fact sheet, 258–60 Hickok, James Butler (Wild Bill), 3, 10; Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, 10; second city marshal of Abilene, 10–13; sheriff of Ellis County, Kansas, 10–12; U.S. Marshal, Ellsworth, Kansas, 12 Hickory Hill estate, home of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, 170, 178 Hill Street Blues, victims’ frustrations with law enforcement, 567 Hines, James J., indictment by Dewey, 160–62 Hoffa, James ‘‘Jimmy’’ Riddle: conviction on jury tampering, 186–87; President, Teamster Union, 175–82; pursuit by Robert F. Kennedy, 173–82, 186, 350; subpoenaed before Rackets Committee, 177–82; trial on bribery charges, 177; trial on wiretapping charges, 177 Holliday, Doc, friend of Wyatt Earp, 19–21 Hollywood, Florida Police Department, investigation of Adam Walsh abduction, 424–25 Hollywood High School, Vincent Bugliosi, 375 Hoover, Annie, mother of J. Edgar Hoover, 118

Index

659

Hoover, Dickerson, father of J. Edgar Hoover, 118 Hoover, J. Edgar: assassination of JFK and, 127; August Vollmer and, 103; early career, 120–23; early life, 118–20; espionage and, 126–28; FBI and, 117–41, 117f; FBI changes after his death, 355; friendship with Thomas Dewey, 162–63; Kennedy brothers and, 128–30; law enforcement improvements credited to, 133; profile of special agents, 130–32; relationship with RFK, 185, 188; Richard Nixon and, 118 Houston, Sam, first president, Republic of Texas, 61, 62 Huger, Isaac, U.S. Marshall, South Carolina, 7 Human Osteology: A Laboratory and Field Manual of the Human Skeleton (Bass), 609 Hunt, Howard, political consultant, Watergate and, 295 Hutt, Frances (Eileen Hoyt), wife of Thomas Dewey, 144, 146

James, Frank and Jesse, pursuit by Pinkerton agents, 47 Jays, Jack, Texas Rangers, Ranger involvement in Mexican-American War, 63 Jefferson, Jon, writer and producer of Death’s Acre, 618–19 John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Dr. Henry Lee, 580 Johnson, Les, on vigilantism, 555 Johnson, Lyndon Baines (LBJ), relations with RFK, 182 The John Walsh Show (2002–2004), 425 JonBenet Ramsey homicide investigation 1996 (CO), Dr. Henry Lee, 587–92 Jones, John B., Major, Texas Rangers, Frontier Battalion, 66–68 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, August Vollmer, 97, 107–8 Judiciary Act of 1789: establishment of U.S. Marshals, 5–6; Section 27 and 28, 6–7 Justice and retribution, vigilantism, 559 Juvenile Justice System, shifts toward punishment, 483

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), work with the U.S. Marshals, 22 In Cold Blood (Capote), vigilantism and, 566 Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), 139–40 International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), August Vollmer as president, 100–101 Internet Safety (DVD, John Walsh), 425–26 Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), RFK petitions to end segregation in bus terminals, 190 Interviewing and preparing witnesses, Bugliosi, 391 Ito, Lance, Judge, People v. Simpson, 508–10

Kaelin, Kato, guest of O. J. Simpson, 503 Kansas City Police Department, August Vollmer, 104 Kelly, Machine Gun, Hoover versus, 124 Kennedy, John F.: book by Mark Fuhrman, 517; conflicts with Hoover, 128–30; Garrison’s investigation of assassination, 201–2; Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Bugliosi, 2007), 379–80, 408–9; RFK appointed Attorney General, 183–84; RFK manages congressional campaign, 170; RFK manages presidential campaign, 182–83; RFK manages Senate campaign, 172; role model for Rudy Giuliani, 525 Kennedy, Joseph Patrick, Sr., father of Robert F. Kennedy, 168 Kennedy, Robert F., 167–95, 167f; appointed Attorney General under JFK, 183–84; civil rights legislation, 193; civil rights work, 189–92;

Jackson, Jonathan, U.S. Marshall, Massachusetts, 7 Jail cam, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, 471

Index

660

Kennedy, Robert F., (continued) conflicts with Hoover, 128–30, 188; the just Bobby, 182–93; LBJ and, 182; managing JFK’s presidential campaign, 182–83; managing JFK’s senate campaign, 170–71; Martin Luther King, Jr. and, 182; pursuit of Jimmy Hoffa, 173–82, 186; senatorial campaign and election in New York, 193; speech on assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., 194; tough Bobby, 173–82; vendetta against organized crime, 185–89, 350, 363; victory at University of Alabama, 192–93; war on corrupt labor, 187t; working on JFK’s congressional campaign, 170; working on Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, 172–73; young Bobby, 168–73 Kennedy, Rose Fitzgerald, mother of Robert F. Kennedy, 168 King, Martin Luther, Jr., relationship with RFK and JFK, 183, 190–92 Kirtzman, Giuliana biographer, 524, 532–35, 549 Kleindienst, Richard, Attorney General, Watergate and, 295 Knapp Commission, New York City police corruption investigation, 270, 321–26 Knights of the Golden Circle, Confederate supporters, 43 Koch, Ed: mayor of New York City, 532; views on Rudy Giuliani, 526, 528–29 Korean Conflict: Joe Arpaio, 465; Sonny Grosso, 264 Krogan, W. M.: bone detective, 607; founder of modern forensic anthropology, 609 Ku Klux Klan, vigilantism and, 563 Labor unions, investigation by the Pinkerton Agency, 48–49 Lamar, Mirabeau, second president, Republic of Texas, 61 Lange, Detective, Simpson-Goldman murders, 503

Larkin, Rathbone, and Perry, first employer of Thomas Dewey, 144–45 Las Vegas Police Department, Joe Arpaio, 466 Lategano, Cristyne, Rudy Giuliani and, 530–31 Law enforcement code of ethics, 328–29; undercover work, 362–64 Lawrence, Lawrence (W. W. Norton), Vincent Bugliosi’s editor, 379, 381 Leary, Howard, New York City police commissioner, 269–70 Lee, Henry, Dr. (Dr. Henry Chang-Yu Lee), 577–604, 577f; additional teaching posts, 595; advancing criminal investigation methodologies, 594–95; advancing forensic investigation methodologies, 592–94; beginnings of criminal and forensic investigations, 580–81; continuing education attended, 595–96; defense team of O. J. Simpson, 578, 584–87; education and training, 579–80; Helen Crafts: The Wood Chipper Case, 1986, 581–84; JonBenet Ramsey homicide investigation 1996 (CO), 587–92; legacy, 597, 603; life in China, 578–79; notoriety and notorious cases, 581–92; professional memberships, 596–97 Legal investigators, 31 Leibowitz, Sam: in Lullaby and Good Night (Bugliosi), 403–5; praise from Bugliosi, 387 Lewis, Aubrey C., first African American special agent, FBI, 130 Liddy, G. Gordon, White House assistant, Watergate and, 295 Lie detector machine, innovation from August Vollmer, 99 Life Magazine, Jim Garrison and, 201–2 Life-without-parole statutes, 483 Lincoln, Abraham, Allan Pinkerton and, 37–45 Lindbergh kidnapping, Hoover and, 124 Lindsay, John, Mayor of New York, police corruption investigation, 269–70, 321

Index

Linkage blindness, ViCAP effects, 453–54 Littleton, Ken, suspects in Martha Moxley murder, 512–15 Loan-sharking investigations, Thomas Dewey, 155 Lody, Caroline, wife of Mark Fuhrman, 501 The Lone Ranger (TV), recognition of Texas Rangers, 80 Lonesome Dove (McMurtry), recognition of Texas Rangers, 80 Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers (Utley), 69 Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, Vincent Bugliosi, 372–75 Los Angeles Police Department: Mark Fuhrman, 501; Rampart Division, corruption, 336; Robbery/Homicide Division, Homicide Special Section, 502 Los Diablos Tejanos (Texas Devils), Mexican name for the Texas Rangers, 63 Louima, Abner, victim of NYPD police brutality, 548 Lowry, Thomas, U.S. Marshall, New Jersey, 7 Lucas, Henry Lee, tracking a mad man, 454–55 Luciano, Charles ‘‘Lucky’’: Eunice Carter’s work for conviction, 158; pardoned by Governor Dewey, 162; racketeering investigation by Dewey, 156–60; World War II and, 157 Lullaby and Goodnight: A Novel inspired by the true story of Vivian Gordon (Bugliosi, 1987), 387, 401–5 Lyons, John, Acting Deputy Chief Inspector, working with Dewey, 154 MacMahon, Lloyd, mentor of Rudy Giuliani, 524 Macy, Bob, former DA, Oklahoma County, 516 Mad Bomber of New York, Dr. Brussel and, 441–43 Mafia. see Organized crime

661

Magnum Force (film), vigilantism and, 566 Mall patrol posse, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, 470 The Maltese Falcon (Hammett), 53 Manhattan College, Rudy Giuliani, 524 Manhunter, America’s Most Wanted: Final Justice, If Looks Could Kill (Walsh, 1995), 425 Manson, Charles, California Board of Parole press release, 400; see also Helter Skelter Marcus, Josephine, wife of Wyatt Earp, 20–21 Maricopa, Arizona Sheriff’s Department: MASN (animal safe hospice), 475; posse projects, 470–72; Sheriff Joe Arpaio, 464, 468–73; spending cuts, 469–70; vision statement, 469–70 The Mark Fuhrman Show, Spokane, WA radio, 517 MASH Unit (MCSO Animal Safe House), Sheriff Joe Arpaio, 475 Mason, Jackie, honorary campaign chair for Giuliani, 533 Masterson, Bat, 3, 10; deputy U.S. Marshal, lower New York City, 17; sheriff of Ford County, Kansas, 15–17; sportswriter for the Telegraph, 17; U.S. Marshal, Trinidad, Colorado, 17 Masterson, Edward, 3; second city marshal of Dodge City, 14–15; third city marshal, Charley Bassett, 14–15 Mathers, Robert, suspect in Martha Moxley murder McCarthy, Joseph, Senator, Bobby Kennedy works for Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, 172–73 McClellan, George, Lincoln’s commander-in-chief of the army, 41–42 McCord, James, former CIA employee, Watergate and, 295 McDowell, Samuel, U.S. Marshall, Kentucky, 7

Index

662

McFarlane, Robert, National Security Advisor, 313 McKellar, Kenneth D., Senator, disputes Hoover’s requests for funding, 125 McKinney, Laura Hart, interview and audiotape of Fuhrman in 1985, 508 McLane, Allan, U.S. Marshall, Delaware, 7 McNairy County Sheriff, Buford Pusser, 244–52 McNelly, Leander H., Captain, Texas Rangers, Special Force, 66–68 McParlan, James, infiltration of Molly Maguires, 48–49 Meat eaters, corrupt police officers, 323 Medaille, George Z., mentor of Thomas Dewey, 146–49 Media: Deep Throat and, 309–12; Watergate effects, 297 Mexican-American War, Texas Rangers and, 63 Mexican government, Texas independence and, 61 Military Intelligence Hall of Fame, Allan Pinkerton, 49 Milken, Michael, prosecution by Rudy Giuliani, 539 Missing Children Act of 1982, 427–28 Missing Children’s Assistance Act of 1984 (MCAA), 428 Mob. see Organized crime Molly Maguires, labor organization pursued by the Pinkerton Agency, 48–49 Monahan, John, friend and mentor of John Walsh, 423 Mooching, blue-coat crime, 330 Moonshiners, Buford Pusser, 1962, 243 Moore, Robin, author of The French Connection, 261–65, 267 Moran, Edward S., Jr., indicted by Dewey for accepting bribes, 155 Morris, Lewis, U.S. Marshall, Vermont, 7 Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), victims’ rights and, 565, 568 Motive and Intent, Bugliosi, 390 Motiveless crimes, FBI BSU and, 441–44

Mounger, Darryl, attorney for Mark Fuhrman, 495–500 Moxley, Dorothy, mother of Martha Moxley, 513 Moxley, Martha, murder victim in Greenwich, CT, 512–15 Mullany, Patrick, beginning of criminal profiling in the FBI, 441–43 Mullins, Pauline, wife of Buford Pusser, 242 The Murder at the Harlem Mosque (Grosso), 275 Murder in Brentwood (Fuhrman), 500, 511 Murder in Greenwich: Who Killed Martha Moxley? (Fuhrman), 500, 512–15 Murder in Spokane (Fuhrman), 515 Murphy, Patrick V., new police commission of New York City, 270–71 Myerson, Bess, prosecution by Rudy Giuliani, 540 Nash, Frank, Hoover versus, 124 Nathan, Judith, third wife of Rudy Giuliani, 531 National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), 422, 427–31 National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), 140 National Crime Information Center (NCIC), 139–40 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), 567 National Guard, Jim Garrison, 199 National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), 139–40 National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), 139–40 National Law Observance and Enforcement Commission (Wickersham Commission), Vollmer and, 104 National Security Act of 1947, 127 Native Americans, vigilantism and, 562–65 Neovigilantism, 564

Index

663

Neufeld, Peter, attorney of O. J. Simpson, 507 New Orleans Academy, August Vollmer, 86 Newsweek Magazine, Jim Garrison and, 201–2 New York City Police Department, Narcotics Bureau: corruption investigation, 269–70; Eddie Egan, 263–64; Sonny Grosso, 263–64 The New Yorker magazine: allegations against Fuhrman, 506; lawsuit by Fuhrman for libel, invasion of privacy and infliction of emotional distress, 510 New York Medical Center, Dr. Henry Lee, 580 New York Times, articles chronicling police corruption, 1970–72, 323–24 New York University Law School, Rudy Giuliani, 524 Nixon, Richard M.: J. Edgar Hoover and, 118; Watergate effects, 295–302 No Island of Sanity: Paula Jones v. Bill Clinton: The Supreme Court on Trial (Bugliosi, 1998), 417 No Justice, No Peace (Bugliosi article, 1993), 409 No Mercy (Walsh), 426 North, Oliver, Lt. Colonel, 313 North-Western Policy Agency (later the Pinkerton Agency), 37–39 Nunziata, Joe, NYC Detective, links to Egan and Grosso, 273–74

One and Original Cooperage of Dundee, Allan Pinkerton, 28 On the Trail of the Assassins (Garrison), 198, 204 Opening statements, Bugliosi, 388 Operation Take Away Graffiti Posse, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, 470–71 Operation Zero Tolerance Posse, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, 470 Organized crime: Bobby Kennedy’s pursuit of, 173–92; failure of policing strategies, 350–52; failure of traditional strategies, 353–55; FBI fact sheet, 344–45; Hoover’s lack of investigation, 128–29; Pistone, Joseph (AKA Donnie Brasco), 343–69, 343f; prosecutions by Rudy Giuliani, 539; 1967 Task Force on Organized Crime report, 352; Thomas Dewey’s investigations, 144–63; twilight of the mob, 364–66 Organized Crime Control Act, 1970, RICO statute, 351, 356–60 Organized offender, category of criminal profile, 446 Osteology, 608–10 Oswald, Lee Harvey: activities in New Orleans, 202; Bugliosi and the docutrail, 408–9; Garrison’s investigation of the JFK assassination, 201–2 Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O. J. Simpson Got Away with Murder (Bugliosi, 1996), 380, 382–83, 386, 399, 409–13

O. K. Corral, Tombstone, Earp family and half-bloods, 18–21 Objections, Bugliosi, 392 Office of Strategic Services (OSS), 126 Officer Evelyn Gort and All Fallen Officers Career Criminal Act, 483 Oklahoma Court and Corrections systems, flaws in death penalty cases, 500, 516–17 Old Pinks Association, 53 O’Leary, Jack, Brother, mentor of Rudy Giuliani, 524

Pacific Coast Committee on American Principles and Fair Play, August Vollmer, 111 Palliko/Stockton case, Vincent Bugliosi, 386, 388, 392, 396–99 Palmer Raids, 122–23 Palmyra Atoll, Bugliosi defends Jennifer Lynn Jenkins, 387, 389, 393, 405–8 A Parent’s Greatest Fear (Walsh, 1984), 425 Parker, John, U.S. Marshall, New Hampshire, 7

Index

664

Patterson, Ted, partner of August Vollmer, 88 Peck, William, U.S. Marshall, Rhode Island, 7 Penology, nationwide shift, 480–85 People v. Simpson, 495–500 Perjury, blue-coat crime, 331 Perlmutter, Daniel, prosecution by Rudy Giuliani, 540 Persistence, Bugliosi, 389 Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad, Pinkerton hired by, 40 Phillips, Ron, supervisor of Mark Fuhrman, 502 The Phoenix Solution: Getting Solutions about Winning America’s Drug War (Bugliosi, 1996), 413–17 Pinkerton, Allan, 27–55, 27f; author of 17 books, 49; Chicago police, 37; death in 1884, 49; early years, 28–29; new career, 36–37; North-Western Policy Agency (later the Pinkerton Agency), 37–39; postwar ventures, 45–46; protecting Abraham Lincoln, 40–41; strikebreaking, 48–49; wartime ‘‘profit’’eering, 39–45 Pinkerton, Isabel, mother of Allan Pinkerton, 28 Pinkerton, Joan, daughter of Allan Pinkerton, 29 Pinkerton, Robert: son of Allan Pinkerton, 29, 45; taking charge after Allan Pinkerton’s death, 49–52 Pinkerton, Robert II, final descendant to run the business, 52 Pinkerton, William: apprehension of Wild West band men, 46–48; new recruit of Pinkerton Agency, 42, 45; son of Allan Pinkerton, 29; taking charge after Allan Pinkerton’s death, 49–52 Pinkerton, William, Sr., father of Allan Pinkerton, 28 Pinkerton Foundation, 53 Pinkerton National Detective Agency: assisting the Carnegie Steel Company, 50–51; beginnings, 37–39; examples

in modern popular culture, 53–54; first female investigator, Kate Warne, 38–38, 41–42, 46; postwar ventures, 45–46; remaining a family-run business, 52; secret service for Lincoln, 41–42; as strikebreakers, 48–49; wartime ‘‘profit"eering, 39–45; western expansion, 46–48 Pipetown, home of J. Edgar Hoover, 118 Pistone, Joseph (AKA Donnie Brasco), 343–69, 343f; as an anthropologist, 360–62; career, 346–49; failure of previous policing strategies, 350–52 Plan of Attack (Woodward), 314 Poindexter, John, Admiral, 313 Point Blank (Grosso and Rosenberg), store of Joe Nunziata, 274 The Police and Modern Society (Vollmer), 109, 112 Police corruption, 326–26; salary and working condition issues, 334 Police ethics, 329–37; critical factors in, 335–36; law enforcement code of ethics, 328–29; undercover work, 362–64 Police radio communication system, innovation from August Vollmer, 99–100 Popeye, code name of Eddie Egan, 266 Port Authority of New York, Eddie Egan, 263 Postmortem interval and forensic taphonomy, Dr. Bill Bass, 613–16 Post-Watergate era, 292–316 The Poughkeepsie Shuffle (documentary on The French Connection), 261–62 Prejudice, blue-coat crime, 331 Premeditated theft, blue-coat crime, 330 Presidential Records Act, 1978, 298 Presidential scandals, 304–5, 313–14 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, 1967, 352 Prince of the City (film), Giuliani as inspiration, 539

Index

Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995, 478–79 Private eye, Pinkerton and the birth of the term, 38, 54 Private investigation: careers in, 30–36; certification and advancement, 35; employment and earnings, 35–36; licensure, 33–34; training and qualifications, 32–33; work environment, 32 Prohibition, how a beer empire operated, 148 Prostitution rings, investigations by Dewey, 156–60 Public Enemies (Walsh, 2001), 426 Public opinion (Watergate legacy): confidence in the President, 299, 300f, 306f; distrust in government, 298, 299f; long-term decline in trust, 303–9, 303f; perceived crooked government officials, 301f Pusser, Buford, 235–56, 235f; death, 251–52; early years, 239–40; injuries on the job, 244–45; law enforcement career begins, 243–45; life-changing experience, 237–39; McNairy County Sheriff, 244–52; media and public perception, 252–55; sports scholarships, 241; teenager in Adamsville, TN, 240–41; threats against his family, 246–47; tragedy of August 12, 1967, 247–49; as a young man, 241–42 Pusser, Carl, Father of Buford Pusser, 239 Pusser, Dwana Aitoya, daughter of Buford Pusser, 242 Pusser, Helen, Mother of Buford Pusser, 239 Quantico, Virginia: FBI academy, 136–37, 366; other entities, 137–38 Quinlivan, James, Seabury investigation and Thomas Dewey, 146–47 Racial unrest: Dinkins versus Giuliani, 532–33; during Giuliani administration, 547–50

665

Racketeer Influenced Control Organizations (RICO) statute, 351, 356; how it works, 356; prosecutions by Rudy Giuliani, 539 Racketeering activity, 356 Rackets Committee, Hoffa subpoenaed before, 177–82 Ramsay, Nathanial, U.S. Marshall, Maryland, 7 Rape, victims’ rights, 567 Reagan, Ronald, Iran-contra affair, 304, 313 Reasonable doubt, Bugliosi, 391 Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Bugliosi, 2007), 379–80, 408–9 Reconstruction (1865–1873), effects on Texas Rangers, 65 Red Harvest (Hammett), 53 Red menace, Hoover’s fascination with, 128 Red River War, 1874, 66 Reno Brothers, criminals busted by Pinkerton agents, 46 Republic of Texas, 61; annexation into the United States, 63 Rich, Marc, prosecution by Rudy Giuliani, 540 Roberts, Brad, partner of Mark Fuhrman, 502 Rock Brigade, Curtis Sliwa, 568–69 Rockefeller Foundation grant, administration of criminal justice, 106 The Rockford Files (TV), victims’ frustrations with law enforcement, 567 Rockingham mansion, home of O. J. Simpson and crime scene, 504–5 Rodriguez, Bill, research on flies in forensic science, 610–11 Roosevelt, Franklin D., placed Hoover in charge of counterespionage, 126 Ruby, Jack, Garrison’s investigation of the JFK assassination, 202 Rucker, Edward, partner of Allan Pinkerton, 37–39 Rudy! An Investigative Biography of Rudolph Giuliani (Barrett, 2000), 522

Index

666

Ruggiero, ‘‘Lefty Guns,’’ Joseph Pistone and, 348 Runnels, Hardin Richard, Texas Governor, 1857, 64 San Francisco earthquake and fire, August Vollmer, 94–95 San Francisco Vigilance Committee, 563–64 San Jose State College Police School, Vollmer develops college-level training, 106–7 Saturday Evening Post Magazine, Jim Garrison and, 203 Saturday Night Massacre, President Nixon, 298 Scheck, Barry, attorney of O. J. Simpson, 507 Schneider, Albert, Dr., first criminologist under August Vollmer, 96 School Boy Patrol, organized by August Vollmer, 98 Schultz, Dutch: plan to assassinate Dewey, 156; racketeering investigation by Dewey, 156 Seabury Commission: Thomas Dewey, 147; Vivian Gordon and Lullaby and Good Night (Bugliosi), 401–5 Secret Service: established in 1865, 8; Pinkerton role in evolution of, 54 Securitas AB, Pinkerton agency merged with, 52–53 Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Bobby Kennedy works for Joe McCarthy, 172–73 Senate Watergate Committee, 295–96 Sentence Reform Act of 1994, 482–83 Serpico, Francisco Vincent (Frank), 319–42, 319f; Medal of Honor and retirement, 325; near-fatal injury, 322; New York City police corruption investigation, 269–70, 320–26; police corruption, 326–26 Serpico, Maria Giovanna, mother of Frank Serpico, 320 Serpico (film), 269–70, 320–26; Giuliani as inspiration, 539

Serpico,Vincenzo, father of Frank Serpico, 320 Sexual murderers, FBI profiles, 446–48 Shadow of Cain: A Novel (Bugliosi, 1981), 399–401 Shadow (Woodward), lasting effects of Watergate, 307–8 Shakedown, blue-coat crime, 330 Shapiro, Robert, attorney of O. J. Simpson, 506–7 Shaw, Clay, Garrison’s investigation of the JFK assassination, 201–2 Sheriff Department facts, 236–37 Shopping, blue-coat crime, 330 Silent Witness: The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo’s Death (Fuhrman), 516–17 A Simple Act of Murder (Fuhrman), 517 Simpson, Arnelle, daughter of O. J. Simpson, 503 Simpson, Nicole Brown, 502, 578, 584–87 Simpson, Orenthal James ‘‘O. J.’’, 503; defense team and Dr. Henry Lee, 578, 584–87 Six-shooter pistols, on the Wild West, 4–5 Skakel, Ethel, wife of Robert F. Kennedy, 170 Skakel, Michael, convicted murdered of Martha Moxley, 514–15 Skakel family, suspects in Martha Moxley murder, 512–15 Skinner, John, U.S. Marshall, North Carolina, 7 Slaves, vigilantism and, 562–65 Sliwa, Curtis, 553–75, 553f; assassination attempt, 572; CyberAngels, 571; future of Guardian Angels and victims’ rights, 572; growth and legitimacy of the Guardian Angels, 570–71; origins of the Guardian Angels, 568–70 Smith, Thomas J. (Bear River Tom), first city marshall of Abilene, Kansas, 8–10

Index

Smith, William, U.S. Marshall, New York, 7 Song, Margaret, wife of Dr. Henry Lee, 579 Song of Myself (Whitman), recognition of Texas Rangers, 80 Special Force, Texas Rangers, 66–68 Special Intelligence Service (SIS), creation of Hoover, 126 Spence, Gerry: defending Oswald in absentia, 405; praise for Bugliosi, 418 The Star Chamber (film), vigilantism and, 566 The Star Spangled Contract (Garrison), 198 State Line Mob, Buford Pusser and, 238–39, 243 State of Denial (Woodward), 314 Stein, Leonard, praise from Bugliosi, 387 Stewart, T. Dale, Dr. Bill Bass and, 609 Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Roach), 618 Stone, Oliver, production of Jim Garrison saga, 203–4, 233 Store detectives, 32 Stovitz, Aaron, praise from Bugliosi, 387 Stranger Safety (DVD, John Walsh), 425–26 Strategic Information and Operations Center, FBI, 140 Street Smart Kids (Walsh, 1987), 425 Sturdevant, Lydia, wife of August Vollmer, 96 Sutton-Taylor feud, Texas Rangers and, 67 Talluto, Gail, wife of Vincent Bugliosi, 378–80 Tammany Hall, 145–50; Vivian Gordon and Lullaby and Good Night (Bugliosi), 401–5 Tannenbaum, Robert, praise for Bugliosi, 418 Task Force on Organized Crime, 352

667

Tate/LaBianca murder trials, documented by Vincent Bugliosi, 372, 375, 379, 386, 388–89, 393–96 Team Adam: Missing Child Rapid Response System, John Walsh and, 428, 432 Teamsters Union, organized crime and, 173–82 Teapot Dome Scandal, Warren G. Harding, 313 Tears of Rage (Walsh), 422, 424, 426 Technology Service Unit, FBI, 138 Telegraph system, effect on law and order, 4 Tent City Jail, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, 469 Ten Thousand Public Enemies (Cooper), 125 Tetan, Howard, beginning of criminal profiling in the FBI, 441–43 Texas Government Code, 73 Texas Penal Code, 73 Texas Rangers, 57–58f, 57–82; Apache raids, 1855, 64; the badge, 77–78; Battle of Walker Creek, 62; change and political patronage (1900–1935), 69–72; Civil War, 65; Civil War and, 65; confronting social issues and problems, 70–71; duties, 73–74; during the Great Depression, 71; headquarters and division locales, 75; historical descriptions of, 79; history of hiring females, 76–77; history of racial and ethnic diversity, 76–77; Juan Cortina and Brownsville raid, 64–65; legend continues (1874– 1900), 66–69; local-level law enforcement, 5; media portrayals, 80; organization and personnel, 74–77; origins, 59–65; protecting the frontier, 62; requirements for employment, 75–76; role in Texas Revolution, 61; Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally insane, 72–73; during World War II, 72 Texas Revolution, independence from Mexico, 61 The Thin Man (Hammett), 53

Index

668

Thirty Years a Detective (Pinkerton), 49 Thompson, Ben: city marshal, Austin, Texas, 14; gunman or lawman, 13–14 Three-strikes legislation, 481–82 Till Death Us Do Part: A True Murder Mystery (Bugliosi, 1978), 386, 388, 392, 396–99 Tolson, Clyde, long-time best friend of Hoover, 132–33 Tombstone, film about O.K. Corral, 21 Tombstone, Arizona, Wyatt Earp and family, 18–21 Tonkawa and Karankawa Indians, Texas Rangers origins, 60–61 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, end of Mexican-American War, 63 Tulane University, Jim Garrison, 199 The Twelfth of August: The Story of Buford Pusser (Morris and Bond), 252 U.S. Attorney for Southern District, New York, Rudy Giuliani, 532 U.S. Congress, Watergate effects, 297–98 U.S. Justice Department: civil rights division and RFK, 188–92; Death in Custody Reporting Program, 479; Hoover’s early career, 121; report on Sheriff Joe Arpaio, 477–78; RFK’s staff and administration, 184–93; Rudy Giuliani as associate attorney general, 532 U.S. Marine Corps, Mark Fuhrman, 501 U.S. Marshals, 1–2f, 1–26; asset repossessions, 22; beginning, 5–8; enforcement of Fugitive Slave Act, 1980, 7; first sixteen, 7; fugitive responsibilities, 22; guarding home front during World War I, 7; judiciary responsibilities, 22; major duties, 23; qualification requirements, 23–25; today, 21–25; western heroes portrayed as, 8; Wild West, 3–5; witness protection program, 22 U.S.S. Iowa, disaster or murder-suicide, profilers and, 457–58 Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR), 139–40

United States v. Maricopa County, 478 United We Stand, history of this motto, 156 University of Buffalo, John Walsh, 423 University of California at Berkeley: policing and criminology courses, 97; School of Criminology, 1951, 112; Vollmer as Professor of Police Administration, 104, 106–10 University of Chicago, August Vollmer as Professor of Police Administration, 104 University of Kentucky, Dr. Bill Bass, 606 University of Michigan, Thomas Dewey, 144 University of New Haven, West Haven, CT, Dr. Henry Lee, 580 University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Bill Bass, 607 University of Virginia, Dr. Bill Bass, 606 University of Virginia Law School, Robert F. Kennedy, 170 Unsolved Crimes Investigation Team (UCIT), Texas Rangers, 74 U.S. v. Turkette, 357 The Valley of Fear (Doyle), references to Pinkertons, 54 Vannatter, Detective LAPD, SimpsonGoldman murders, 503 Victimology, 567 Victims’ compensation programs, 567 Victims’ rights, 553–75, 553f; causes, 558–62; civilian groups for community involvement, 560; climate of 1960s and 1970s, 565–68; definition, 559; Guardian Angels as, 560; origins, 562–65 Vigilantism, 553–75, 553f; causes, 558–62; civilian groups for community involvement, 560; climate of 1960s and 1970s, 565–68; definition, 554–58; origins, 562–65 Violence culture, United States, 559 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, 481, 484

Index

Violent Offender Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP): FBI BSU and, 453–54; John Walsh and, 428, 431 Vollmer, August, 83–115, 83f; Berkeley Volunteer Fire Department, 88; career in academia, 106–10; career in policing, 91–105; Chief of Los Angeles Police Department, 101–2; coauthor of article in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 97; creation of police school at UC Berkeley, 96–97; David Hennessey’s murder in New Orleans, 86–87; development of lie detector machine, 99; development of radio communication system, 99; early years, 84–91; establishment of a police school, 95–96; hiring collegeeducated policemen, 96–97; innovations timeline, 105; J. Edgar Hoover and, 103; job as mail carrier, 90–91; marshal of Berkeley, 91–93; police survey in Havana, Cuba, 103–4; police survey in Kansas City, Missouri, 104; Professor of Police Administration, University of Chicago, 104; response to San Francisco earthquake and fire, 94–95; retirement, 110–15; science of policing, 95; serves Hoover’s National Law Observance and Enforcement commission, 104; Spanish-American war, 88–89; speeches on police work, 100; study of criminal behavior, 93–94; Ted Patterson, partner in feed store, 88; time in Manila, 88–90; use of bicycles in policing, 93; use of cars in policing, 96; use of full-time criminologist, 96; Warren, Earl and, 103; work in preventing juvenile delinquency, 98–99 Vollmer, Edward, brother of August Vollmer, 85 Vollmer, John, father of August Vollmer, 84–85 Vollmer, Josie, sister of August Vollmer, 85 Vollmer, Philippine, mother of August Vollmer, 84–85

669

W. and J. Sloane and Company, first job of August Vollmer, 87 Walker, Mayor of New York City, resignation during Seabury investigation, 147 Walker, Samuel H., Texas Ranger: Ranger adoption of Colt revolver, 62; Ranger involvement in MexicanAmerican War, 63 Walker, Texas Ranger (TV), recognition of Texas Rangers, 80 Walking Tall, story of Buford Pusser, 252–54 Wallach, E. Robert, prosecution by Rudy Giuliani, 539 Walsh, Adam John, son of John Walsh, 421–36 Walsh, John, 421–36; awards received, 434; legislation and organizations, 427– 34; written and media projects, 425–27 Walsh, Reve Drew, wife of John Walsh, 422–23 Warne, Kate, first female investigator at the Pinkerton Agency, 38–38, 41–42, 46 Warner, Francis, trusted employee of Pinkerton Agency, 45 Warren, Earl, August Vollmer and, 103 Warren Commission: Jim Garrison theory and, 201–2; reproduction of report, 205–32 The Warriors (film), inspiration for the Guardian Angels, 569 Washington, D. C. Police Department (DCPD), Joe Arpaio, 466 The Washington Post, Watergate and, 292–97 Watergate, 292–318; definitions, 294– 97; legacy: long-term, 302–9; legacy: short term, 297–302; the media and Deep Throat, 309–12 Webster, Timothy, agent of the Pinkerton Agency, 40, 42, 44 Weekly Review, created by J. Edgar Hoover, 119 Weinglass, Leonard, praise from Bugliosi, 387

Index

670

Weiss, Harry, praise for Bugliosi, 418 Weitzman, Howard, attorney of O. J. Simpson, 505 Wexler, Irving ‘‘Waxy Gordon,’’ investigation by Thomas Dewey, 147–48, 150–52 Whiskey Ring Scandal, Ulysses S. Grant, 313 White, Alton Fitzgerald, victim of NYPD police brutality, 548 White Slave Traffic Act (Mann Act), 134 Whitewater Scandal, 314 Wild Bunch, pursuit by Pinkerton agents, 47–48 Wild West, 3–5; Indian conflicts, 3–4; six-shooter pistols, 4–5; telegraph system, 4 William Paterson College, Joseph Pistone, 346 Williams, Edward Bennett: defense of Hoffa on bribery charges, 177; praise from Bugliosi, 387 Wilson, O. W., one of Vollmer’s college cops, 97 Witness protection program, U.S. Marshals in charge of, 22

Women’s rights movement, victims’ rights and, 564–65, 567 Woodward, Bob, 291–318, 291f; biographical sketch, 293; lasting legacy, 312–16 World War I: J. Edgar Hoover and, 121; U.S. Marshals role in, 7 World War II: Bobby Kennedy and, 169; Charles ‘‘Lucky’’ Luciano and, 157; Jim Garrison, 199; Texas Rangers and, 72; U.S. Office of Strategic Services, profiling Hitler, 440–41 Worth, Adam, criminal pursued by Pinkerton Agency, 50, 52 Wyatt Earp: Frontier marshal (Lake), biography, 21 Yardley, Herbert, Black Chamber case and Thomas Dewey, 150 Yates, Robert, Jr., convicted murderer in Spokane, 515 Young Republicans, Thomas Dewey, 145 Youth Corrections Act, 481

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