The Mayfair Mafia PDF Download

Author: Dick Kirby
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1526742624
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
This true crime history reveals the shocking career of the London mafia family that ran a thriving prostitution empire for decades. From the mid-1930s into the 1950s, one immigrant Italian family ran London’s thriving vice trade. The five Messina brothers imported prostitutes from the Continent on an industrial scale, acquiring British citizenship for the women by phony marriages. Taking 80% of these women’s earnings, the Messina family became fabulously wealthy, purchasing expensive properties, cars and influence. As this revealing and absorbing account describes, the brothers ruled with a ruthless combination of charm, blackmail and threats of disfigurement and death that were all too credible. It took a sensational Sunday newspaper exposé to get the authorities to put an end to their criminal reign. A series of dramatic arrests and trials followed, as one by one the brothers were imprisoned and deported for crimes including immoral earnings, attempted bribery and firearms offenses. Such was their fortune that numerous potential beneficiaries came forward, most recently in 2012. Dick Kirby, an author and former Metropolitan police officer, presents a vividly detailed and thoroughly researched narrative of the five Messina brothers in this revealing and riveting read.

Author: Frank Dimatteo
Publisher: Citadel Press
ISBN: 0806541091
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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WHO REALLY KILLED “CRAZY JOE” GALLO? AT LAST, THE TRUTH CAN BE TOLD. AND IT WASN’T FRANK “THE IRISHMAN” SHEERAN AS HE CLAIMED. This is the shocking and brutal story of Carmine DiBiase—aka Sonny Pinto—the elusive Mafia killer who went from small-time street punk to FBI’s Most Wanted list to Death Row—only to be released on the streets to kill and kill again . . . among those who died by his gun was Joey Gallo. “Sober, he was nothing, but drunk he would blow your head off.” That’s how Pete the Greek described Carmine “Sonny” DiBiase, the Colombo crime family hitman who’d been terrorizing Manhattan’s Little Italy since he was a kid. After beating and robbing a local tailor and doing time in reformatory, Sonny set up operations at The Mayfair Boys Civic and Social Club, an illegal poolroom where he shot and killed his best friend on Christmas day . . . A prime suspect of this and other crimes, Sonny went on the lam and off the grid for seven years. He then surrendered himself to police, was tried for murder and sentenced to death. But after a second trial, he walked away a free man—free to kill again. Joey “Crazy Joe” Gallo and his President Street mob waged a deadly Mafia civil war with the Colombo crime family, and in particular, Carmine “the Snake” Persico. A contract was put out for Gallo and his gang. And on that fateful night of April 7, 1972, in a Little Italy restaurant, Gallo was assassinated . . . by Carmine “Sonny” DiBiasi.. This is the true story of who really whacked Crazy Joey Gallo on that fateful night of April 7, 1972.

Author: Dick Kirby
Publisher: Pen and Sword True Crime
ISBN: 1526765349
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Get a behind-the-scenes look at fourteen historic cases from the Murder Squad of Scotland Yard in this collection perfect for true crime fans. In 1906 the Metropolitan Police Commissioner was asked by the Home Office to make available skilled investigators for murder inquiries nationwide as few constabularies had sufficiently skilled—or indeed, any—detectives. Thus was born the Reserve Squad, or Murder Squad, as it later became known. Despite a reluctance by some forces to call upon The Met, the Murder Squad has proved its effectiveness on countless occasions with its remit extended to British territories overseas. A particularly sensitive case was the murder of a local superintendent on St. Kitts and Nevis. A former Scotland Yard detective, the author uses his contacts and experiences to get the inside track on a gruesome collection of infamous cases. Child murderers, a Peer’s butler, a King’s housekeeper, gangsters, jealous spouses and the notorious mass murderer Dr. Bodkin Adams compete for space in this spine-chilling and gripping book which is testament to the Murder Squad’s skills and ingenuity—and the evil of the perpetrators. Brimming with gruesome killings, this highly readable book proves that there is no substitute for old fashioned footwork and instinct.

Author: Dick Kirby
Publisher: Pen and Sword True Crime
ISBN: 1399093452
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
A former Scotland Yard detective examines real cases of murder in which accused criminals were convicted without a body found. Murders in any form, and the more gruesome the better, hold a morbid fascination to the British public but never more so than when the bodies of the victims are never found. Aside from the lack of closure for relatives and friends, this factor creates problems for police and prosecutors and has macabre appeal for the public. Muriel McKay, wife of a senior News of the World Executive was kidnapped in 1969. Although her body, believed to have been fed to pigs, was never found, the perpetrators were convicted. The same fate was suffered by the business partner of a Polish farmer. James Camb murdered a glamorous actress feeding her to sharks but this did not stop women flocking to see him in court. John Haigh confessed to disposing of his nine victims in acid. Again, his trial was a sell-out. Dick Kirby, former Scotland Yard detective turned best-selling crime writer has ‘unearthed’ a fascinating collection of disappearances such as the dismemberment of a gay man’s wife who had threatened to expose him in the 1950s. Later, when a woman’s head was discovered near his home, he confessed only to find that it dated from Roman times. These and numerous other cases make Missing, Presumed Murdered a riveting, if grisly, read.

Author: Dick Kirby
Publisher: Pen and Sword True Crime
ISBN: 1526786435
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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It is little known today that, in January 1939, the IRA launched a bombing campaign, codenamed The S - or Sabotage - Plan on mainland England. With cynical self-justification, they announced that it was not their intention to harm human life but in just over a year, more than 300 explosive devices resulted in 10 deaths, 96 injuries and widespread devastation. London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and many other towns and cities were targeted. On 25 August 1939, detectives in London defused three devices set to detonate that afternoon at 2.30 and arrested four terrorists. At the same time an identical bomb exploded in Coventry city centre killing five civilians and injuring 50, the highest body count of the campaign. Numerous arrests were made nationwide but ill-trained personnel and additional national security resulting from the threat of Nazi invasion caused the campaign to falter and fade away in early 1940. The author, a former detective, is well qualified to write this book, having spent 18 months in Northern Ireland combatting terrorism, for which he was commended by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Lord Imbert, for displaying ‘courage, dedication and detective ability’.

Author: Ken LaZebnik
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496223209
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Buzzie and the Bull chronicles a baseball year in the lives of two lifelong friends who couldn't be more different: Buzzie Bavasi, the legendary general manager of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers, and Al "the Bull" Ferrara, bon vivant, fountain of joy, and bench player. Their 1965 baseball journey encompassed a thrilling pennant race settled on the final day of the season, a city engulfed in flames, a perfect game, and a GM who extolled his friend the Bull as a hero in May and then banished him from the team to the depths of public purgatory in July. The partnership of these two characters--the general manager who valued fearlessness above all else and the crazy player who loved living on the edge--became the embodiment of champions who never choked in the clutch. Over seventeen years, Bavasi's teams won eight pennants and four World Series titles. His approach deserves review, and his friendship with Ferrara illustrates the ground on which he staked his baseball career. The summer of 1965 proved Bavasi's thesis that champions are built on players with one core characteristic: nerves of steel. Buzzie and the Bull offers a counterpoint to today's focus on advanced statistical analysis that may be crowding out the important work of discovering a player's unique human qualities: the intangibles. Gauge those intangibles correctly and you get an edge--and edges help win championships.

Author: Dick Kirby
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 152675214X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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A history of the famed London police unit, by a former member and author who “knows how to bring his coppers to life on each page” (Joseph Wambaugh, New York Times–bestselling author of The Onion Field). Since 1919, Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad has been in the forefront of the war against crime. From patrolling London’s streets in horse-drawn wagons, it has progressed to the use of the most sophisticated surveillance and crime-fighting equipment. The Squad targeted protection gangs who infested British racecourses and greyhound tracks, and later the highly effective Ghost Squad was formed to tackle black-marketeering in the aftermath of the Second World War. As crime soared in the 1950s and ’60s the Flying Squad, or C8 Department as it was now known, became involved in the most serious cases nationwide—The Great Train Robbery, the Brink’s-Mat robbery, The Millennium Dome and Hatton Garden heists. Today the ruthless drug and people trafficking gangs that seek rich pickings in London and elsewhere are in their sights. Despite many high-profile successes, allegations of corruption have haunted the Flying Squad, and after the conviction of officers in 2001 there was a very real possibility of disbandment. Yet this most famous of police units survived—and today continues to fight and be feared by the hardest of criminals. This book draws on firsthand accounts to tell the Flying Squad’s thrilling story, and includes a foreword by John O’Connor, a former commander. “A book that true crime aficionados will want to read.” —Washington Times

Author: Dick Kirby
Publisher: Pen and Sword True Crime
ISBN: 1399017292
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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“A welcome, detailed account of the background to the prosecution of Brighton police officers around 1957 and their Chief Constable.” —History by the Yard In the late 1950s the reputation of Brighton as a popular seaside resort took a sinister and notorious turn. After a series of drunken disturbances, suspicions were raised that the owner of the Astor Club, which became known globally as “The Bucket of Blood,” was bribing members of the town’s CID to ignore licensing hours. The situation escalated to the point where Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad was called in. Their investigation soon revealed that these bribes were the tip of a police corruption iceberg. Criminality among crooked cops had been going on for years. Provided money was paid, charges were dropped, previous convictions overlooked and evidence disappeared. Others were “fitted up” unless they paid up. Police were party to burglaries, assisting in the “fencing” of stolen property and protection payments from bookmakers, clubs and bars. During the scandal filled trial of the Chief Constable and CID ringleaders there was perjury, violent witness intimidation with one having his premises burnt to the ground. All this and more is described in this meticulously researched account of one of Britain’s most publicized police corruption scandals written with insider knowledge. “Another excellent book from an established writer on the history of police and crime . . . He does not pull any punches in considering what is good and not good policing.” —The Law Society Gazette

Author: M. J. Trow
Publisher: Pen and Sword True Crime
ISBN: 1399066498
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Astonishingly, The Hagley Wood Murder is the first book solely on the subject (other than a selection of privately printed/self published offerings) ever written on this murder, which too place eighty years ago. In April 1943, four teenaged boys discovered a corpse stuffed into the bole of a wych elm in a wood in the industrial Midlands. The body was merely bones and had been in the tree for up to two years. The pathologist determined that she was female, probably in her thirties, had given birth and was just under five feet tall. The cause of death was probably suffocation. Six months after the discovery, mysterious messages began to appear on walls in the area, variants of ‘Who Put Bella Down the Wych Elm – Hagley Wood’. And the name Bella has stuck ever since. Local newspapers, then the national press, took up the story and ran with it, but not until 1968 was there a book on the case – Donald McCormick’s Murder by Witchcraft – and that, like others that followed, tied Bella in with another supposedly occult murder, that of Charles Walton on Meon Hill in 1945. Any unsolved murder brings out the oddballs – the police files, only recently released, are full of them – and the nonsense still continues. The online versions are woeful – inaccuracy piled on supposition, laced with fiction. It did not help that a professional occultist, Dr Margaret Murray, expressed her belief, as early as 1953, that witchcraft was involved in Bella’s murder. And ill-informed nonsense has been cobbled together to ‘prove’ that Dr Murray was right. McCormick’s own involvement was in espionage and his book, slavishly copied by later privately printed efforts, have followed this tack too. It was wartime, so the anonymous woman in the wych elm had to be a spy, parachuted in by the Abwehr, the Nazi secret service. The Hagley Wood Murder is the first book to unravel the fiction of McCormick and others. It names Bella and her probable murderer. And if the conclusion is less over-the-top than the fabrications referred to above, it is still an intriguing tale of the world’s oldest profession and the world’s oldest crime!

Author: Marco Pierre White
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1596919329
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
An exhilirating memoir from the legendary Godfather of Bad Boy cookimg and a thrilling look behind the doors of a 3-star kitchen. Without question, the original rock-star chef is Marco Pierre White. Anyone with even a passing interest in the food world knows White is a legend. The first British chef (and the youngest chef anywhere) to win three Michelin stars - and also the only chef ever to give them all back - is a chain-smoking, pot-throwing multiply- married culinary genius whose fierce devotion to food and restaurants has been the only constant in a life of tabloid-ready turmoil. In The Devil in the Kitchen White tells the story behind his ascent from working-class roots to culinary greatness, leaving no dish unserved as he relays raucus and revealing tales featuring some of the biggest names in the food world and beyond, including: Mario Batali, Gordon Ramsay, Albert Roux, Raymond Blanc, Michael Caine, Damien Hirst, and even Prince Charles. With candid honesty and wicked humor, he gives us insight into what it takes to become a great chef, what it's like to run a 3-star kitchen, and why sometimes you really do need to throw a cheese plate at the wall.