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  Italy’s Most Powerful Mafias:...

  Charles River Editors

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  The word “mafia,” Sicilian in origin, is synonymous with Italy, but Italy is home to several different mafias, with three being particularly notorious. While the Cosa Nostra of western Sicily is the most infamous, other powerful groups include the ferocious ‘Ndrangheta of Calabria and the Camorra, the third-largest mafia, which is active in Naples and the Campania region. A “mafia” is loosely defined as a criminal organization that is interested in social, economic and political power, combining elements of a traditional secret society with those of a business, but further levels of nuance are necessary in order to understand these groups. In a general sense, this is because each mafia creates a myth about the development of the organization, which becomes like an unquestionable truth. In essence, part of what makes its members so completely loyal to it is also what makes outsiders so utterly afraid of it. 
  While all three mafias have initiation rituals dating to the 19th century, the oldest of the three belongs to the Camorra. The rituals date back to 1850, as the Camorra was taking shape in the prisons of southern Italy. In this simple but profound ritual, the new member was told to take an oath over crossed knives and then made to have a dagger fight with another man (either another possible initiate or a current member). However, the blades would be wrapped leaving just the point exposed, so that the only objective would be to draw a faint trace of blood, after which the fight would end. This ritual ceased in 1912, around the time that the Neapolitan Honored Society dissolved itself, and as it reconstituted itself in various formations over the course of the century, it never again returned to those more antiquated rituals. Instead, the group began to exist more as a loose network of criminals, all working for their own enrichment.

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  Cries in the Desert - The...

  John Glatt

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  In the fall of 1999, a twenty-two-year-old woman was discovered naked and bleeding on the streets of a small New Mexico town south of Albuquerque. She was chained to a padlocked metal collar. The tale she told authorities—of being beaten, raped, and tortured with electric shock—was unthinkable. Until she led them to fifty-nine-year-old David Ray Parker, his thirty-nine-year-old fiancée Cindy Hendy, and the lakeside trailer they called their "toy box." What the FBI uncovered was unprecedented in the annals of serial crime: restraining devices, elaborate implements of torture, books on human anatomy, medical equipment, scalpels, and a gynecologist's examination table. But these horrors were only part of the shocking story that would unfold in a stunning trial . . .

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  Francisco Pizarro: His Heart on...

  Morton Fine, David Friedkin

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  The New World has everything a gold-crazy Spaniard could ask for, including murder.Hosted by: David Warner.

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  The Fence - A Police Cover-up...

  Dick Lehr

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  “A monumental account of an urban travesty….[It] has all the earmarks of a classic.”—Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Mystic River and Shutter IslandDick Lehr’s The Fence, subtitled, “A Police Cover-up Along Boston’s Racial Divide,” is a shocking true story of racism, brutality, official lies and negligence, when the truth about the savage beating of black plainclothes policeman by white officers was hidden behind a “blue wall of silence.”  Respected journalist Lehr, winner of the Hancock Award, the Loeb Award, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and bestselling author of Black Mass and Judgment Ridge, sheds a brilliant light on all aspects of this powerful, disturbing event and its aftermath.

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  The Murders That Made Us - How...

  Bob Calhoun

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  The 170-year history of the San Francisco Bay Area told through its crimes and how they intertwine with the city’s art, music, and politics
  		 
  In The Murders That Made Us, the story of the San Francisco Bay Area unfolds through its most violent and depraved acts. From its earliest days when vigilantes hung perps from downtown buildings to the Zodiac Killer and the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, murder and mayhem have shaped the city into the political and economic force that she is today.
  		 
  The Great 1906 Earthquake shook a city that was already teetering on the brink of a massive prostitution scandal. The Summer of Love ended with a pair of ghastly drug dealer slayings that sent Charles Manson packing for Los Angeles. The 1970s come crashing down with the double tragedy of Jonestown and the assassination of Gay icon Harvey Milk by an ex-cop. And the 21st Century rise of California Governor Gavin Newsom, Trump insider Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Vice President Kamala Harris is told through a brutal dog-mauling case and the absurdity called Fajitagate. It’s a 170-year saga of madness, corruption, and death revealed here one crime at a time.

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  Duped - Why Innocent People...

  Ph. D. Saul Kassin

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  “As you read this blurb, you know you would never confess to a crime you didn’t commit. Read this compelling study and you’ll change your mind. Dr. Kassin lays bare the dirty tricks used by police to make innocents confess. And he describes, convincingly, what should be done to stop them.”– John Grisham, #1 New York Times-bestselling authorWritten by the world's leading expert on false confessions, this landmark book reveals the psychology behind why innocent men, women, and children, intensely stressed and befuddled by the promises, threats, trickery, and deception of a police interrogation, are duped into confession, no matter how horrific the crime. Featuring riveting case studies, highly original research, work done in tandem with the Innocence Project, and quotes from individuals who confessed to crimes they did not commit, Duped tells the story of how this happens, how the system turns a blind eye, and how to make it stop.Why do people confess to crimes they did not commit? And, surely, those cases must be rare? In fact, it happens all the time—in police stations, workplaces, public schools, and the military. Psychologist Saul Kassin, the world’s leading expert on false confessions, explains how interrogators trick innocent people into confessing, and then how the criminal justice system deludes us into believing these confessions.Duped reveals how innocent men, women, and children, intensely stressed and befuddled by lawful weapons of psychological interrogation, are induced into confession, no matter how horrific the crime. By featuring riveting case studies, highly original research, work by the Innocence Project, and quotes from real-life exonerees, Kassin tells the story of how false confessions happen, and how they corrupt forensics, witnesses, and other evidence, force guilty pleas, and follow defendants for their entire lives— even after they are exonerated by DNA.Starting in the 1980’s, Dr. Kassin pioneered the scientific study of interrogations and confessions. Since then, he has been on the forefront of research and advocacy for those wrongfully convicted by police-induced false confessions. Examining famous cases like the Central Park jogger case and Amanda Knox case, as well as stories of ordinary innocent people trapped into confession, Dr. Kassin exposes just how widespread this problem is. Concluding with actionable solutions and proposals for legislative reform, Duped shows why the stigma of confession persists and how we can reform the criminal justice system to make it stop.

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