Tag: True Crime

  • Book of the Day: Evidence of Love – A True Story

    Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the SuburbsEvidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs by John Bloom, Jim Atkinson

    Edgar Award Finalist: The “sensational” true story of two desperate housewives and the killing that shocked a Texas community (LA Times Book Review).

    Candy Montgomery and Betty Gore had a lot in common: They sang together in the Methodist church choir, their daughters were best friends, and their husbands had good jobs working for technology companies in the north Dallas suburbs known as Silicon Prairie. But beneath the placid surface of their seemingly perfect lives, both women simmered with unspoken frustrations and unanswered desires.
     
    On a hot summer day in 1980, the secret passions and jealousies that linked Candy and Betty exploded into murderous rage. What happened next is usually the stuff of fiction. But the bizarre and terrible act of violence that occurred in Betty’s utility room that morning was all too real.
     
    Based on exclusive interviews with the Gore and Montgomery families, Evidence of Love is the “superbly written” account of a gruesome tragedy and the trial that made national headlines when the defendant entered the most unexpected of pleas: not guilty by reason of self-defense…

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  • AUDIBLE Deal of the Day 🎧 Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal

    A new deal every day from Audible. Today’s deal ends 08/20/2017 @ 11:59PM PT.

    Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar CriminalWhy They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal by Eugene Soltes

    Rarely does a week go by without a well-known executive being indicted for engaging in a white-collar crime. Perplexed as to what drives successful, wealthy people to risk it all, Harvard Business School professor Eugene Soltes spent seven years in the company of the men behind the largest corporate crimes in history – from the financial fraudsters of Enron, to the embezzlers at Tyco, to the Ponzi schemers Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford.

    Soltes refutes popular explanations of why seemingly successful executives engage in crime. White-collar criminals, he shows, are not merely driven by excessive greed or hubris, nor do they usually carefully calculate the costs and benefits before breaking the law. Instead, he shows that most of these executives make decisions the way we all do – on the basis of their intuitions and gut feelings.

    Based on extensive interaction with nearly 50 former executives, Soltes provides insights into why some saw the immediate effects of misconduct as positive, why executives often don’t feel the emotions most people would expect, and how acceptable norms in the business community can differ from those of the broader society.

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  • AUDIBLE Deal of the Day 🎧 Scores

    A new deal every day from Audible. Today’s deal ends 07/30/2017 @ 11:59PM PT.

    Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City, Was Extorted out of Millions by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in FBI HistoryScores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City, Was Extorted out of Millions by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in FBI History by Michael D. Blutrich

    Meet Michael Blutrich, mild-mannered New York lawyer and founder of Scores, the hottest strip club in New York City history, funded by the proceeds of an insurance embezzlement scheme…

    All Blutrich wanted was to lay low, make the club a success, and put his criminal acts behind him. But the Mafia got involved, and soon the FBI came knocking.

    Scores became wildly popular, in part thanks to Blutrich’s ability to successfully bend the rules of adult entertainment. It was the first club in Manhattan to feature lap dancing by ignoring existing requirements. He also sidestepped statutes requiring topless dancers to wear pasties. His formula worked, and Scores grew into the hottest club in Manhattan, frequented by sports superstars, Oscar-winning actors, television icons, Grammy-winning singers, and political notables alike.

    Unfortunately for Blutrich, it would all soon implode.

    Scores was located in a neighborhood controlled by the Gambino crime family, and it became a hotbed for illicit mob activity, culminating in a double murder of two of his employees. When federal prosecutors started sniffing around for potential crimes, he went from carefree club owner to undercover spy in a heartbeat.

    To obtain maximum leniency for his insurance fraud, Blutrich became an unlikely but highly successful undercover FBI informant. He wore body wires and placed ceiling cameras in his offices, and he was eventually credited with more than 30 Mafia convictions, including a crime-family head and associates from multiple international families.

    For his cooperation, the Department of Justice and the FBI assured him he would avoid any significant jail time – or so they said.

    Here, Blutrich tells it all: recording armed gangsters in the act of committing felonies, stealthily evading discovery, living with death threats, revealing long-covered-up celebrity doings, enduring a psychotic break from the pressures, and losing everything in his life in the name of earning redemption.

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