The Private Lives of Public Enemies By Hank Messick, 1974, PB, FE Dell

Description: Thank you for looking at our listing. A purchase is supporting Friends of Spanish Peaks Library District! These books are all donated from different sources. This book is in very good condition, typical yellowing of pages, see photos for details. I will combine shipping for each additional item purchased. Please do not pay for books until you are done bidding/shopping, and I will create a new Invoice with the reduced shipping charges. Please, please, I cannot issue refunds due to penalties that EBay assesses. Feel free to submit any questions you have. Thanks! Myron ("Bub") Marrs, a sergeant on the Jefferson County, Kentucky, police force until he was suspended for providing me with evidence of internal corrup-tion, had a colorful vocabulary. One word he used often in those days was "skinny." By it he meant the naked, sometimes ugly, truth, as contrasted with the combination of whitewash and animal manure supplied to the public about activities outside the law. For a long time I assumed the term was Bub's creation, but one day in Las Vegas I heard it used again. For reasons having no relevancy here, a rather prominent individual announced he would give me the skinny about casino skimming operations. When I asked where he learned the word, he shrugged. It had just come naturally, as part of his education-like learning to shoot craps and bribe cops. Since Vegas I've heard the word used sparingly by solid citizens on both sides of the law. In my mind, sit lease the a come to be the palach a profes only one p. It therefore seems appropriate to use it in introducing a book that tells the hard, sometimes ugly, truth-the skinny-about the private lives of assorted killers, gamblers, prostitutes, and philan-thropists. Crime is a subject about which many know a little but few know a lot. Even the experts seldom possess enough insight and information to recognize the skinny should they be fortunate enough to encounter it. For legends persist. Myths achieve an independent life by dint of easy repetition. Fads come and go as policemen and sociologists conceal the lack of research by blaming a decline in private morality, social and economic injustice, or even the genes of Ital. ian-Americans. Cycles of public indignation are fol. lowed by periods of apathy, and politicians have proved equally adept at exploiting fear and indiffer. ence. The same kind of confusion surrounds the individ-ma nett. At one him he may be conside o a hero. A love-hate relationship exists that makes it virtually impossible for the average citizen to achieve perspective where the outlaw is concerned. As late as 1948, sociologist and author Robert Warshow saw the gangster as a "tragic figure" because "he is under the obligation to succeed" but cannot be permitted to do so-in the movies at least-"because the means he employs are unlawful." People could iden tify with this frustrated fellow, reasoned Warshow, because like him they too were doomed to fail. Implicit in his reasoning was the cynicism born of the Great Depression. Today the prevailing theory suggests we identify with gangsters because of a different kind of cynicism. We believe, and with reason, that society is corrupt. The gangster serves as living proof that nice guys finish last. We envy him his freedom from conventional morality and we tell ourselves that his success could easily be our own. Many people make the attempt when need or op. portunity arises, and so the ranks of criminals in. creases faster than the general population. The busi. ness of crime is becoming so much like any other busi. ness that we are in danger of losing our heroes, be cause the gangster becomes increasingly hard to iden tify. No longer, as in the days of Al Capone and Longie Zwillman, does he stand out in a crowd. This explains why it has been necessary in recent years to turn back the clock and invent La Cosa Nostra. The fact that all the mumbo-jumbo about blood oaths, kisses of death, and codes of omerta is ancient history made little difference. With the FBI sponsoring it, the press and public accepted it uncritically, even avidly, and those law-enforcement officials who had some inkling of the skinny told themselves that the increase in public interest was worth a little decep-tion. The deception is encouraged whenever the dying Mafia indulges itself in one of its never-ending series of vendettas. A series of killings, such as in Boston in 1965-66 and in New York in 1972, makes glaring headlines and permits writers to speculate about the next "boss of all the bosses." Obviously, if there was any boss of all the bosses, any real authority within the Mafia, the killings wouldn't happen, but this apparently doesn't occur to many readers. The history of the Mafia is one of senseless vendetta and civil war, but the violence has permitted the real leaders of crime to build an empire while the press and law-enforcement officials build a legend. Behind the myths, however, the gangster of today is real enough. He remains a man who bleeds when cut, who laughs when happy, who dies when his heart stops. He comes in all sizes and shapes, and from all national and ethnic backgrounds. He varies greatly in intelligence, courage, and personality. Life for him isn't always sweet, even when successful. The fleas come with the dog and the ulcers with wealth and worry. In the last analysis, the gangster survives and prospers not because of his strength but because of society's weakness. In the pages that follow you will meet the gangster as a human being: ambitious, vain, cunning, he-roic, and sometimes absurd. The material was collected over a fifteen-year period during which I worked as an investigative reporter, researcher under Ford Foundation grants, and consultant to newspapers, governors, and crime committees. Much of it is based on personal experience; the rest comes from official court records, wiretaps, files of federal, state, and local agencies, and people, such as Joseph L. Nellis, who for one reason or another have provided me with their versions of the skinny. As an "observer of the seamy side of life"-to quote a Louisville Courier-Journal editorial of some years back-I've met many interesting characters and won the confidence of a number of them. Thus, this book. In it the reader can range from the white-slave traffic of yesteryear to the new force that tomorrow may dominate the narcotics racket. One episode begins in a cemetery in Israel, and another ends in a cemetery near Chicago. There is a hog-killing party for moonshiners in Kentucky and a fire dance for bootleggers in Nassau, a bugged office in Miami Beach and a bugged bedroom in Toronto. The family lives of big-shot gangsters and junior executives of crime are explored. You will meet call girls who aspire to become a gangster's mistress, and mistresses who want to become wives. Action moves from the executive suites of Las Vegas to the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Hopefully, the facts given here will dispel some legends and will inform as well as entertain. But, as Bub Marrs learned long ago, it is one thing to get the skinny and another to use it effectively for re-form. He was indicted for taking it, and I was indicted for receiving and publishing it. We beat the rap eventually, but nothing basic changed in Louisville.

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End Time: 2024-09-16T05:31:28.000Z

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