Doing Life: Reflections of Men and Women Doing Life Sentences (True Crime) (Biography)

by Howard Zehr 

Publisher: Good Books; Original ed. edition (December 31, 1996)

Softcover, 124 pages

Amazon Listing

“The men and women in this book are serving life sentences in Pennsylvania prisons. All have been convicted of homicide. Many have already served long sentences in prison. Most will die there. Pennsylvania is one of only a handful of states that mandates life imprisonment without possibility of parole for anyone convicted of first or second degree murder. For a lifer, the only possibility of release is commutation by the governor, an exceedingly rare event. Life sentences in Pennsylvania are real life sentences.”

In this book, fifty eight lifers from the Pennsylvania correctional system give their perspective on living at the government’s pleasure for the rest of their natural existences. A page sized photo of the inmate is provided, along with a quote from them, or a short essay. Their words deal little with the day-to-day reality of living in a prison system, but more on their philosophy of life now.

A lot of it is repetitious. Many have “found God”. All talk about the struggle to keep going and not fall into a black hole of despair. The sincerity of each is nearly impossible to ascertain. Where they putting on a front in hopes of bettering their chances for commutation? Maybe. Some seemed very self-involved, which may be a by-product of the prison environment. The stories I found most believable are the ones which discussed why they were in prison in the first place. Others were just sob stories.

The photographs are somewhat candid. Prisoners are not in prison fatigues nor are they shown in prison facilities. They are deliberately placed in street clothes in order to humanize them as, the author states, many people cannot see beyond the prison fatigues. And it works. If you randomly flip through the book, you would not automatically think you were gazing at a collection of killers.

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Looking Outward: The Federal Prison System from the Inside (History) (True Crime)

by Robert F. Stroud  
Publisher: Recipe Publishers; First edition (November 19, 2013)
Softcover, 286 pages
Amazon Listing


“It is impossible to consider the problems involved in prison management without having some knowledge of the various elements entering into the prison population, and the population of Federal prisons has always borne a distinct relationship to the peculiar nature of Federal offences. Back at the turn of the century the principal Federal crimes were: counterfeiting; smuggling cloth, chinamen, and opium: robbery of Post Offices and mails in different forms, such as train robbery, Post Office burglary, and various forms of pilfering from the mails; mail fraud; violation of the National Banking Laws; dereliction in office, principally of postal employees; and violations of the liquor laws.”

This is the prison memoir of Robert F. Stroud, the famous Birdman of Alcatraz - probably the most famous prisoner in the history of the United States. Considering that Stroud died in 1963, this publication is long overdue.

For those who are unaware (and Stroud glosses over certain unflattering facts in his biography). Originally from Seattle, Stroud ran away from his abusive father at the age of 13, and by the time he was 18, he had become a pimp in the Alaska Territory. In January 1909, he shot and killed a bartender who attacked his mistress, a crime for which he was sentenced to 12 years. He gained a reputation as a dangerous inmate who frequently had confrontations with fellow inmates and staff, and in 1916, he stabbed and killed a guard. Sentenced to be executed, the verdict was commuted to life imprisonment by Woodrow Wilson.





Original Script for the novel in longhand

Imprisoned at Leavenworth, he began raising pigeons in order to keep his sanity. The prison was under the congregate system where prisoners worked during the day in groups and were kept in solitary confinement at night, with enforced silence at all times. He became famous for writing a book on the various diseases he discovered in birds and various cures he uncovered.

This book, however, is on the Federal prison system in the United States, its history and development, focusing specifically on his first two places of incarceration: Leavenworth and McNeil Island. He gives detailed accounts of their history, their policies, the type of men who ran them, food, work, and other daily routines. He also gives various anecdotes of things he witnessed while imprisoned. Violence and homosexuality are discussed in a matter of fact notion. His views on it are that if a man in confined to a place where there are nothing but men, it is a natural occurrence. He also mentions the practice was common enough in rural Alaska where the ratio of men to women was 25 to 1. All in all, it is an interesting first hand read of a prison system that has become defunct.

Author Robert F. Stroud

While many of the facts check out, Stroud himself is quite an unreliable narrator. First, as he readily admits, most of the information comes from memory, but he also admits when he cannot remember a fact or might be misremembering it. Secondly, he often recounts conversations to which he himself was not privy and relies on hearsay to fill in the gaps. Third, as many people around him have pointed out, Stroud was something of a sociopath and narcissist. He constantly refers to himself in the third person as “The Writer” and never admits to making a mistake. He doesn’t dispute his crimes, but only talks about them in flat factual statements. “This is what I did. I have no opinion on it.” In short, he comes across as one of those people who could only thrive in a heavily ordered and structured system like prison.

This was meant to be book one of four on the Federal penal system, however only this one has been published and since it came out in 2013, I don’t think the rest will be forthcoming. The only way to see them, as far as I know, is where they are warehoused- The Missouri State Special Collections archives. The reasons for why no more books have been forthcoming may be legal, but possibly financial.

The men who produced this book, obviously don’t have much experience in formatting, and didn’t bother to learn or correct their errors as this is one of the most inept book formatting jobs I’ve seen- even for independent publishers. There are numerous typos (but only in the first 20 pages to be fair), the type face is small, printed in single space with a blank line between paragraphs (almost military style) and often paragraphs would break up mid-sentence. Very poorly put together.

 For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Robert Stroud when he first interred into Federal Prison

Jack the Ripper Suspect Dr. Francis Tumblety (True Crime) (History)

By Michael J. Hawley

Publisher: Sunbury Press (May 3, 2018)

Softcover, 296 pages

“Scotland Yard was convinced they had a single killer who murdered two or more victims in separate events in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts in late 1888, thus Jack the Ripper fits the modern definition of a serial killer. What was not a consensus in Scotland Yard was which victims were killed by one offender. All told, there were well over a dozen victims of violent crime in the East End in the period in question. As in any research discipline, there are groupers and splitters. Some see the slightest similarities as justification to group together, while others focus on differences and split the groups apart. There are even modern researchers who are convinced there was no Jack the Ripper, and all of the casual prostitutes were murdered by separate offenders. Most experts agree, however, that the number of Jack the Ripper victims is in the middle, between four and six.”

This is an academic book and assumes that the reader already has a certain amount of knowledge about the Jack the Ripper case, its victims, and the investigation around it. It is not for someone who is new to the case.

Perhaps it makes too much of an assumption of pre-knowledge from the reader, because very little of it deals with the infamous Dr Tumblety in London, except for the fact that he was there. The book is more of a justification as to why Tumbletly should be considered as a serious suspect, rather than hard facts around Jack the Ripper. In fact, it is more interesting if you forget about the Ripper at all and view it as a character study of a habitual, mentally ill, but very successful criminal.

"Doctor" Francis Tumbletly

Tumblety was an “herb doctor”, ie quack and abortionist in the 19th century with peripheral ties to the Lincoln and Garfield assassinations. He was a narcissist and we'll known woman hater- especially towards prostitutes. Many times he is quoted in official documents as having stated that all such women “should be disemboweled”, and he owned the surgical tools to do this. Many at Scotland Yard considered him a likely suspect, even going so far as to send detectives after him to New York when Tumbletly absconded from London.

The main reason he has been discounted by many as a credible Ripper suspect is due to his homosexuality. All homosexual serial killers in the past have mostly preyed upon young boys. However, the author points out that the Ripper victims (however many there actually were) are not the victims of a sexual crime. They were not raped and most of the damage to the bodies was post mortem. Usually the first thing done to them was to have their throats slit. This indicates there were not killed for a sexual thrill, but for some other purpose.

Author Michael J. Hawley

However, bizarre murder was not the standard for Tumblety actions and the author justifies his assertions with the following points. 1. Tumblety's lifelong hatred for prostitutes, whom he saw as his sexual rivals for young men.

2. Tumblety's behavior changed dramatically in the late 1880s. He began to dress like a homeless drifter and not bathe, despite being the olde-time equivalent to a millionaire. As his health later deteriorates, with visible facial lesions, the author speculates that Tumbletly suffered from tertiary stage syphilis. Violent actions are commonplace for those suffering from it. Look at some of the actions of Caesar Borgia.

3. The point of the murders may have been to harvest the organs of the woman in order to attempt to create the supposed “elixir of life”. There were many purported magical societies popping up at the time who were attempting to find this version of the philosopher's stone. As life comes from the vaginal organs, it was believed that said organs could prolong life.

Obviously Tumblety failed, his disease grew worse and eventually leading to his death in 1903, but he may have been desperate enough to try. He had the tools, it was towards a class of person he despised, and was non-sexual in nature. This is a fascinating book for someone already familiar with the multitude of details in the Jack the Ripper case.

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Junky: The Definitive Text of "Junk" (William Burroughs)

By William S. Burroughs (with the 1952 & 1977 introductions by Alan Ginseburg) (and the 1953 & 1964 forwards by Carl Solomon)

Publisher: Grove Press (November 13, 2012) (originally published by Ace Books in 1953)

Softcover 256 pages

          “The questions of course could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in any other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a matter of curiosity. I drifted along taking shots when I could score. I ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a similar experience. They did not start using any reason they can remember. They just drifted along until they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict’s special need. You don’t decide to be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you’re an addict.”

          Thus begins William S. Burroughs’s first published book, dedicated to his one true love, drugs. This work is unlike any of his other writings (except for a few selected essays) in that it maintains a coherent focus and timeline. It does not devolve into hallucinogenic insanity as does his later texts. Though we do see a few precursor snippets of Naked Lunch within the story. The pusher Bill Gains and the narco cop Hauser appear, both the same brutal caricatures. The Mexican drug queen Lupita is a prominent figure in the later parts of Junky. Never seen, she is constantly lurking in the background, controlling his supply of morphine. The police detective trailing someone in a white trenchcoat, making him easy for others to spot, occurs here as well. These are all small, but memorable parts, of what will be his seminal work.

Author William S. Burroughs

            Junky came out at a time when a series of lurid tell-all books appeared on the subject- H is for Heroin and The Man with the Golden Arm. This book differed significantly because the tone is so flat, almost amoral. The heavy handed morality play or exploitation luridness is nonexistent. “Here are the facts,” Burroughs writes and he gives them, without social comment and without emotion.

          In a sense this is not an autobiographical work, as you do not get a sense of eh man behind the pen. He is in fact a dead slate. It comes as a surprise later in the work when it is revealed that he has a wife. And you would never guess that, except in one throwaway line, that there were two children dragged along into the gays bars and shooting galleries of New York, New Orleans, and Mexico City. A line near the end of the text, “My wife and I were separated,” is the only cryptic indicator of the infamous William Tell incident, where he drunkenly shot her in the head. This separation is permanent. All that is presented is one man and his junk.

          This is not uncommon for old school autobiographies, the fifties were just beginning to tilt that narrative. Despite his rejection of it, the Victorian values of upper crust educated WASP society had left an indelible mark on Burrough’s style. Simply put, you do not air your family laundry in public. Being gay and a drug user was one thing, that was him, but the rest of the family was out of bounds. 

Original cover, title, and nom de plume from the 1953 Ace publication.

          Burroughs loves his drug habit. “Junk does not cause addiction,” he writes, “exposure does.” A very thin hair there. The only emotion he displays here is anger towards those who prevent him from scoring and the psychiatrists who regularly ask him why he feels he needs it. “I need it to get up in the morning,” is part of the standard reply. As I have said previously in my review of his other book and that of his son's, had no one prevented him from getting drugs, Burroughs would almost have no opinions on anything at all.

          His views on homosexuals are interesting. He seems to have an absolute dislike for them, despite being gay himself. “A room full of fags gives me the horrors. They jerk around like puppets on invisible strings, galvanized into hideous activity that is the negation of everything living and spontaneous.” He reports on this several times, only seeming to go to such places when drunk and horny, but otherwise abjuring them in preference to dark junk filled holes and bars on the outskirts of poor areas. His disregard for women is also well know. Even his common law wife. “We give them too much power. It’s some left over Southern chivalry that we need to jettison.”

          Included is the glossary that was part of the original edition. Nowadays it’s rather laughable because all of the hip slang terms of the time are now so ingrained in our common vocabulary that an explanation isn’t needed. Idioms like “cold turkey”, “kick a habit”, “coke”, “weed” are all spelled out for the 1950’s “square”.  

Cover the 1977 edition

        Two additional chapters written for the original version have been included. One detailing a stop Burroughs makes between New Orleans and Mexico City, the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. He goes on for some length detailing its decay over the years and its cultural stagnation. The tone is totally different from the rest of the text. In the second he details the idiot ideas of Wilhelm Reich and how the orgone accumulator could cure cancer, as well as number of other illnesses. These assertions of Reich eventually lead to the death of several children and the burning of all of his works, ordered by the FDA. He describes building an orgone accumulator and curing a junk habit with its use. It also was removed due to its tonal shift from the rest of the text and for repetition, as parts of what he states in the chapter has distributed elsewhere in the book.

          In becoming the “definitive” edition the book has ironically left something out. In the original edition there were copious editors notes placed in the text, which clarified or disagreed with the facts that Burroughs put forth. These were omitted as they were not the author’s words. I still would have liked an appendix which stated what these editorial blurbs stated.

                For more readings, try my collection of books. 

Speed * Kentucky Ham (William Burroughs)

By: William S. Burroughs Jr. (with an introduction by Ann Chamber, afterword by William S. Burroughs Sr.)

Publisher:  The Overlook Press (October 1, 1993)

Softcover 363 pages

          “So, we stood around in the parking lot being sized up, nightsticks tapping palms as if the two of us were going to take on six cops, Joe Frazier’s brother, and a pharmacist, even though I would have liked a crack at the latter. I was paying him, wasn’t I? And he was pinkly proud like he’d just lost his virginity.”

William S. Burroughs Sr.

          Written by the son of the illustrious author of Naked Lunch, this is a foray into his personal experiences in speed addiction and various other criminal activities. His father, Burroughs Sr., famously shot his wife in the head in Mexico, during the drunken game of William Tell. The author, four at the time, was in the room. This is a collection of two book, written in the 60s and 70s, repackaged here after his death in 1981 from liver failure, caused by (surprise surprise) drug and alcohol abuse.  They are not bad reads, but you have to ask yourself if you want to commit to 363 straight pages of drug talk.

In Speed we see him trying to follow in his father’s footsteps style wise. It is reminiscent of Burroughs’s own drug autobiography Junkie, however he might have been too influenced by the book as he hasn’t quite found his own voice here. He attempts to create a speed-freak atmosphere about the entire novel. It is very fast, with the world a whirlwind of drugs, being busted, shooting up, half remembered people, shooting galleries, not eating, not sleeping for weeks, filth everywhere and brutal cops.

Original cover of Speed 1973

With this last one I relate to the police having spent too much of my personal life around chronic alcoholics and junkies, I can certainly understand any cop’s no-bullshit attitude towards them.  The author doesn’t take my view. Writing about a narcotic detective, he states about the cop’s attitude “does this sound like the kind of man who is dedicating his life to alleviating the self-destruction of others?” This is wracked with irony, considering how he died and I couldn’t help but reflect, “Junkie alleviate thyself.”

          The story revolves around his trip from Florida to New York to visit some friends and explore the drug scene which was thriving in the late 1960s at the time. Unlike his father, who tended to shy away from personal autobiographical accounts, Burroughs Jr. seems to be one of those writers who can only talk about themselves. Nothing wrong with that as long as it’s done well. He doesn’t talk himself up, occasionally castigates himself, but shrugs it off with a “this is how is was” attitude.

          Alan Ginsberg shows up in here, simply referred to as Alan, to bail him out of prison several times (3 arrests, no convictions). He didn’t seem to make much of an impression on the author. Appearing in the periphery, chastising the author on his decisions (not unwisely), and offering much unheeded advice on life, politics, and philosophy- which the writer promptly forgot.  One odd snippet dealing with Ginsburg is apparently he offered to show the author a morgue picture of his mother with the bullet hole prominently showing. The author declined.

         With Kentucky Ham he tries to take on a more hipster tone (60s hipster that is) constantly throwing in old slang terms that severely dates the work. The only times you see similar things nowadays is when someone is mocking that decade and its youthful generation. “Look out here you young cats.” It hampered my taking the book seriously.

          We see more of his immortal father in this tome. He goes to Tangier to live with him at the age of thirteen and delves deep into the drug lifestyle, beginning with hashish. In the afterword by Burroughs senior, he says as if he is confused by them not becoming closer. From the text that’s because the senior was stoned all of the time. You can be a parent or a junkie, but not both.

William S. Burroughs Sr.

          It then flashes forward to Burroughs Jr. getting arrested for forging prescriptions and his internment in a federal narcotics hospital, him juking the system, and then going to work on a fishing boat in Alaska. Bringing him back to the points that you can’t make a junkie give up the habit if they don’t want to.

          What I liked about these books is that the author doesn’t glamourize the 60s drug scene. The bad living conditions, the thieves, diseases, and the degradation is put on full display. It also apparent that he loved the drug lifestyle. He may lament a few decisions, but it’s clear that he had the time of his life. Many people fretted over him, but he blew them all off.

Willaim S. Buroughs Jr.

           On the other hand he often makes half-assed rote counter-culture blurbs about American society and the police, which is mostly cribbed from his father’s opinions. Boiled down it is mostly him complaining that he couldn’t get high all of the time, get all the drugs he wanted for free, and was arrested when he did something illegal. No matter where and when he might’ve grown up, it seems that he would have been biologically destined to be a substance abuser and bottom out on life.

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Memoirs of Vidocq: Master of Crime (Autobiography) (True Crime)

By: Francois Eugene Vidocq

Publisher: Nabat Books; Nabat ed. edition (May 1st, 2003) (originally published 1871)

Softcover 382 pages


          “It is rarely that a convict escapes from prison with the intention of reforming; most often he proposes to gain the capital to practice the fatal skill which he has been able to acquire in the convict prisons, which, as are most of the prisons, are schools where they are perfected in the art of appropriating someone else’s goods. Nearly all the great robbers have become experts only after a more or less long sojourn in the galleys.”

Portrait of Francois Eugene Vidocq 

          An abridged version of the original written in French in 1832, it is actually the first of four novels by the author. The others being Thieves: A Physiology of their Customs and Habits; The True Mysteries of Paris; and The Rural Bandits of the North.

1946 film based off the Memoirs

          Seemingly forgotten, the name of Vidocq carried great weight in post-revolutionary France and England. In a sense, he was the original police detective and inspired the entire genre of fiction. Hugo, who was aquainted with them man, took him as inspiration for both Jan Valjean and Inspector Javert in Les Misérables, the first character being on Vidocq the criminal, and the later when he switched teams. Balzac’s Valtean is openly based on the man, as is Gaboriau’s Lecoq. Charles Dickens consulted with him when writing Great Expectations. Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle were both influenced by the memoirs when creating their famous detectives and the man is mentioned by name in Moby Dick.

         Several films have been based off of his memoirs. The first was in 1939 a French production simply called Vidocq, which I cannot find a copy of. Then in 1946 A Scandal in Paris, starring George Sanders, was made. It took some wild liberties with the text, but is still a passable film from the time. Vidocq in 2001, starring Gérard Depardieu, is loosely based on several of cases the author describes in his memoirs. In addition there was a short lived French TV Series from 1967 based around the character, it lasted only 13 episodes. And a further  French TV movie called Vidocq was made in 2010.

          Some notable real life lawmen took inspiration and copied techniques described by Vidocq in the Memoirs. Both Allan Pinkerton, founder of the famous (or infamous, depending on your political bent) Pinkerton Detective Agency, and J. Edgar Hoover of FBI fame, praised the work and read it religiously.

2001 film based off of the Memoirs

          He refers to himself as the Master of Crime, I assume due to his ability to root out criminals, as his career as a felon seems to mostly consist of womanizing, petty thievery, drunken brawls, desertion of duty, and escapes from prison- rather than big scores. And while he did break out of a number of prisons, he kept getting caught.

          The book doesn’t get interesting until halfway through when he begins his vocation as a professional snitch (or police spy, as he calls it). Already familiar with French criminal underworld and its argot, he launched into his he job with a hungry appetite. Soon he became too well known to operate effectively, so he began to master the art of disguise and affecting different accents. This lead him to eventually be inducted into the police as an inspector and then be given his own semi-autonomous squad. There he help to pioneer or champion various techniques to cut down on counterfeiting (a large problem at the time), crime scene investigations, and rudimentary ballistic testing.

          His success brought on many enemies both inside the police and out. Jealousy of his achievements caused many on his side of the fence to view him as a threat. At least according to him. In his writing he doesn’t fail at every opportunity to demonstrate or comment on his own brilliance and acumen. So I have no doubt that this arrogance helped to garner him a vast number of professional detractors.

From The Vidocq Society

          Several critics have attacked them, claiming that they were “spurious”, or at least exaggerated, that he had them ghost written, and so on. But I have to point out here that most of the cases he discusses as a police detective were well known at the time and the facts could easily be checked up on, even if now they have wallowed into obscurity. And in a sense the accuracy of the memoirs is unimportant. Like those who argue about the historical existence of King Arthur, the stories themselves have shaped our culture much more than any truth could have. Look at the list above again and see what it inspired, then think on how much else was inspired by those works and you will see, exaggerated or not, the Memoirs of Vidocq are extremely culturally valuable.

           For more readings, try my collection of books. 

"Yellow Kid" Weil: The Autobiography of America's Master Swindler (Autobiography) (True Crime)

By: J. R. "Yellow Kid" Weil & W.T. Brannon 

Publisher: Nabat Books; Nabat ed. edition (February 22, 2011) (originally published 1958)

Softcover 352 pages 

          “In those days, the police was not like the police of today. The force was not so large, and the Detective Bureau had not yet been organized. The Municipal Court was not a big organization. Most of the courts were operated by justices of the peace. We called them “Justice Shops”. Each justice had his own constables, who were the detectives of that period…. Both civil and criminal cases were tried in the Justice Shops. I knew one of the magistrates quite well- Judge Aldo. He used to send me out to select jurors. Juries were composed of six men. When I was assigned to get a jury, I was first of all, told which way the case was decided.”  

          The autobiography of one of America’s most well-known confidence men. His life of constant crime and cons spanned decades and raked in millions of dollars. According to him, he pioneered or perfected several techniques which were copied to death over the years, forcing him to continuously innovate his scams.  

           Beginning with selling snake oil in the days of horse and buggies, he moved onto pulling the fake stock swindle, staging fake illegal fights, staging fake fixed horse races, and the fake casino scam. For a lifetime of crime, he spent a total of six years in prison on three separate charges (two of which he claims he was the victim of circumstance), dying penniless in a nursing home at age 100 in 1976. 

          Like most cons of this era, Weil found it more expedient to rope his victims into a scheme where they thought they were getting something in an illegal activity. This was to prevent the victim from going to the police after they had been swindled, because then they’d have to admit their own intent on breaking the law. And in many cases this style protected Weil from prosecution. Such as in the when he worked a scam at the race track revolving around fixing a race. After he absconded with the money freely given to him what could he be charged with? Not fixing a race?

          His moniker, the “Yellow Kid” comes from his love of a comic of the same name about a bald Asian child wearing a yellow smock that bore out his internal thoughts, which appeared in Hearst run newspapers at that time (and gave rise to the phrase “yellow journalism”). There have been many other reasons given by people and biographers, but this is the one Weil sticks by. The story he gives around it is odd, but he claims it is true. 

          An easy read, the most interesting parts are the bits and pieces of how the justice system was set up in the past and the technology of the past. The last decade of the 19^th century and the first two of the 20^th were called the golden age of the con man. This was because the criminal codes had yet to catch up with the technology. The wire services ran all across the country, sending messages in Morse code from San Francisco to New York. Thus it was simple to tap a line to send a fake message or to simply have dummy apparatus around that appeared to be receiving a message. Thus you could claim something was happening in another part of the country and it was very difficult for the victim to check.

Original cover of the 1958 edition

          What sets Weil apart from the others, besides his innovations, was his attention to detail. He stole the identity of a mining engineer who was somewhat well known and had written several books. He had several books rebound with his picture in place of the author to prove his identity. Sometimes he would have fake articles about himself rebound into magazines, then a stooge would replace the local library’s copy with the forgery. It would slip out that he had an article about himself published and the victim would find it on their own. To Weil, the props of his scam was as important as the pitch itself.

          Weil shows no remorse for his cons. His opinion was that those who were fooled thought they were getting something through crooked means, thus they had no moral standing to be outraged. The mentality was that you cannot cheat an honest man. But he applied this mentality to himself after he was taken for 10,000 dollars by a pair of female con artists. He was even amused by the fact that he had been taken using the same techniques that he had practiced for four decades.

          His own downfall came from two parts, his spendthrift habits. He states that “money was like water in my hands.” He would turn most of his cash over to his wife who would save it. But when she died, he blew through everything. The other part is his own fame. He became too well known as a con man and his several attempts to go legitimate always ended up backfiring due to his past criminal acquaintances or police interference. Of course, had he gone legit then he wouldn’t be remembered today.

W.T. Brannon and Joseph Weil (aged 75)  

           For more readings, try my collection of books. 
         

Panzram: A Journal of Murder (Crime, Autobiography) (True Crime)

Author: Thomas E. Gaddis & James O. Long (with additional  material written by Carl Panzram)

Publisher: Amok Books (November 1, 2002) (original published as Killer 1970 by Macmillan Company)

Paperback 312 pages.

         

“In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings. I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons, and last but not least I have committed sodomy on more than a thousand male human beings. For all these things I am not the least bit sorry. I have no conscience so that does not worry me. I don’t believe in man, God nor Devil. I hate the whole damned human race including myself.”- Carl Panzram

Mass Murderer Carl Panzram

          An incredibly brutal, partial autobiography of Carl Panzram, amass murderer and serial sodomist. His confession was written in prison and given to a guard, Henry Lesser, that he had befriended. Due to its very shocking content and roaringly immoral tenor (even more appalling in 1930 when Panzram was executed) it was not published for 40 years.

          The author’s back up Panzram’s account with official files and information as available, occasionally making corrections in the chronology or adding details that he was not aware of. Included is also much of the correspondence (written independently of his confessional autobiography) between Lesser and Panzram, which gives a much rounder view of the killer’s character. The letters show intelligence and a jaundiced affection towards the only person Panzram “didn’t wish ill upon.”

          Gaddis and Long do a very detailed and interesting background account of the various prison’s Panzram is interred within. From Dannemora to Levenworth, the display the commonplace brutality and punishments, the inedible food, and the overcrowding of a system bent completely towards punishment, rather than rehabilitation.

Cover of the original edition

          Panzram’s case story takes a strange turn during his murder trial, he crushed a foreman’s head in with an iron bar while imprisoned at Levenworth. He decided to represent himself and plead not guilty, but openly stated his intent was to gain the death penalty and be executed. Similar to Gary Gilmore in the 1970’s this caused quite a stir at the time and questions of sanity were brought into play.

          The popular perception is that state executions happened every other day back in the old times and were almost a routine matter. Kansas, where the prison was located, had abolished capital punishment as had seven other states. Even then implementing a death sentence was much rarer than it is today.  Panzram had killed a federal employee however so his trail went before a federal judge. As such he is eventually executed in a state that had no death penalty.

          Several attempts are made by various anti-death penalty groups to appeal to the president to have Panzram’s sentence commuted to life imprisonment. These attempts angered the inmate and he wrote several letters threatening them, claiming his motto was, “Rob ‘em all, rape ‘em all, and kill ‘em all.” He even sent a letter to then President Hoover informing him that he would reject any amnesty or commutation of sentence, stating that it was his constitutional right to be executed.

          Also of interest is the large number of historical individuals that Panzram seems to have run across over his life. Beginning with him burglarizing the apartment of former president William Howard Taft. He also indirectly crosses paths with Henry F. Sinclair, the richest man in American history to go to prison. He was given one year for contempt of Congress due to his refusal to answer questions about the Teapot Dome Scandal. Lesser was his guard and mentions Panzram to him. Apparently he worked for Sinclair's company, Sinclair Oil, in Guatemala and when fired, burned the rig down. Finally, Panzram was also locked up in Levenworth with Robert F. Stroud, the famous Birdman of Alcatraz. Stroud mentions Panzram in his book and unsuccessfully tried to get him a razor so Panzram could commit suicide, rather than be hanged by the state.

         While the material is fascinating, Panzram often follows into patterns of self-aggrandizement typical of many prison and criminal memoirs. He hates all of society, blames it for being who he is, blames his upbringing (which is believable), and in the end hates himself most of all. He yearns for his death because he could never not be who he is.

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 

Beggars of Life: A Hobo Autobiography (True Crime)

Author: Jim Tully

Publisher: AK Press; 1st Nabat Ed edition (November 1, 2003) (original printing 1924)

Paperback 256 pages.

          “The imaginative young vagabond quickly loses the social instincts that help to make life bearable for other men. Always he hears voices calling in the night from far-away places where blue waters lap strange shores. He hears birds singing and crickets chirping a luring roundelay. He sees the moon, yellow ghost of a dead planet, haunting the earth.” – Jim Tully

          An autobiographical romp of the nearly forgotten writer Jim Tully who started his formative years as a tramp riding the rails, dodging railroad detectives, and begging for food on every stop. Tully is considered the co-father, along with Dashiell Hammet, of hard boiled literature. He writes with a blunt, brutal style, occasionally mixing in similes to offset the amoral attitude of the author and his companions. This is the first in the author’s five volume autobiographical underworld collection.

Jim Tully

          It is in itself a slice of life of a long dead slice of Americana. An underground society that no longer really exists. Showing the inner workings of the transient hobo society pre-WWI. Its vagaries, brief friendships, and the often violent encounters between hobos and regular society and amongst themselves.

           He describes the three different strata of the drifter class in those days. The hobos who were poorly paid workers, field hands, who drifted from one poorly paid harvesting season to the next, and who rode the rails clandestinely to save money. The bums who were pure beggars, inclined to do as little work as possible (which describes the author). And the yeggs, the criminals, who went about breaking safes and robbing at every stop. The yegg were at the top of the pecking order, as they usually had the most money and were the most willing to beat down anyone who opposed them.

Cover of the 1928 edition

          It has no true plot and is strung together as a series of vignettes of the author’s remembrances from the road. This is presumably because he did very little but beg, hop trains, and read books stolen from public libraries. There are several other characters whose background he describes in detail, but only a few. The author didn’t seem particularly friendly to others.

          The book, a smash hit in 1924, was made into the film Beggars of Life in 1928 starring Louise Brooks and Wallace Berry. It is a very loose adaptation of the book, stringing together several of the vignettes into a tale of a girl who, after killing her abusive step-father, tries to escape the country with a young vagabond. She dresses as a boy, they hop freight trains, quarrel with a group of hobos, and steal a car in their attempt to escape the police, and reach Canada.  It is notable mainly for being Paramount’s first feature film with spoken words.

Film Poster for 1928's Beggars of Life

          This may not be for everyone’s taste. It has very little detail and a short abrasive style. Not at all nostalgic and extremely open about the criminality and evilness lurking beneath the surface of society, the book is well presented and rightly considered to be a classic.

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.