Say hello to his little friend! Al Pacino was once arrested for carrying a concealed weapon.
EXTRAS
• A 2008 report by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said that gang members involved in international drug smuggling had infiltrated airports in major cities around the country. Most were working as baggage handlers.
• More than 130 gangs are based in Vancouver alone, vying for a drug business estimated to be worth more than $6 billion per year.
• In the late 1990s, Toronto police arrested four members of the Spadina Girls, a short-lived, all-female gang led by a 16-year-old girl. The gang consisted entirely of high schoolers, who, among other things, charged other students for protection. The arrests came after gang members brutally assaulted a fellow student at a billiard hall.
• A much more dangerous all-female gang has formed in recent years: the Indian Posse Girls, an offshoot of Indian Posse. They’re believed to be in control of the sex trade in Winnipeg and Edmonton.
• Canada’s Criminal Intelligence Service estimates that more than 11,000 Canadians are members of street gangs.
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NOW YOU SEE HIM...
“In a Miami courtroom, while the lawyer for defendant Raymond Jessi Snyder was vociferously protesting a prosecutor’s demand that Snyder be locked up pending trial because he was a ‘flight risk,’ the sly defendant slowly eased from his seat and bolted out the door. (He didn’t get far.)”
—Miami Herald
NYPD lingo: A “cheese eater” is a cop who rats on other cops.
NAME THAT SLEUTH
It took us a while, but using time-tested sleuthing techniques, we finally solved...the mystery of the fictional detective names.
PERRY MASON (1933)
As a youngster, author Erle Stanley Gardner subscribed to a boy’s fiction magazine, The Youth’s Companion, and learned a lot about writing from the stories he read. The Youth’s Companion was published by Perry Mason and Company.
SPENSER: FOR HIRE (1973)
Robert B. Parker first introduced his streetwise, Chaucer-quoting, beer-drinking, gourmet-cooking, Bostonian, ex-boxer private investigator in The Godwulf Manuscript. Parker saw Spenser as a tough guy but also as a knight in shining armor and named him after the English poet (and Shakespeare contemporary) Edmund Spenser.
MIKE HAMMER (1947)
Writer Mickey Spillane had been in and out of the comic book business for years when he tried to sell a new detective strip to some New York publishers in 1946. The character’s name was Mike Danger. When no one would buy, he decided to turn it into a novel and changed the name to Mike Hammer, after one of his favorite haunts, Hammer’s Bar and Grill.
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND DR. JOHN WATSON (1887)
Dr. Watson is believed to have been inspired by author Arthur Conan Doyle’s friend Dr. James Watson. It’s less clear how he named the famous sleuth whom he originally named Sherringford Holmes. Most experts say Doyle took “Holmes” from American Supreme Court justice, physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, well-known for his probing intellect and attention to detail. Sherringford was changed to Sherlock, Doyle enthusiasts say, for a famous violinist of the time, Alfred Sherlock. Fittingly, Doyle made his detective an amateur violinist.
There were 46 U.S. executions in 2010: 1 by firing squad, 44 by lethal injection, 1 by electric chair.
INSPECTOR MORSE (1975)
Morse’s creator, Colin Dexter, was once a Morse Code operator in the English army—but that’s not where he got the name for his character. Sir Jeremy Morse, the chairman of Lloyd’s Bank, was a champion crossword-solver in England. Dexter, once a national crossword champion himself, named his melancholy inspector after Sir Jeremy.
HERCULE POIROT (1920)
Some say the meticulous Belgian detective was named after a vegetable—poireau means “leek” in French. But it’s more likely that Poirot’s creator, Agatha Christie, took the name from the stories of another female author of the time, Marie Belloc Lowndes. Her character: a French detective named Hercules Popeau.
TRAVIS MCGEE (1964)
John D. MacDonald began working on his Florida boat-bum character in 1962, calling him Dallas McGee. The next year, President John Kennedy was shot—in Dallas—and MacDonald changed the name to Travis.
KINSEY MILLHONE (1982)
Sue Grafton spent 15 years as a Hollywood scriptwriter before the birth of her first Kinsey Millhone novel, A Is for Alibi. Where’d she get the name? From the birth announcements page of her local newspaper.
JOHN SHAFT (1970)
Ernest Tidyman was trying to sell the idea of a bad-ass black detective to his publisher, but was stymied when the publisher asked the character’s name—he didn’t have one ready. Tidyman absent-mindedly looked out the window and saw a sign that said “Fire shaft.” He looked back at the publisher and said, “Shaft. John Shaft.”
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“Police arrested two kids yesterday—one was drinking battery acid, the other was eating fireworks. They charged one and let the other off.”
—Tommy Cooper
Russian astronauts are allowed to carry guns.
THE HATFIELDS VS.
THE MCCOYS
The facts about one of the most famous feuds in U.S. history.
The Contestants: Neighboring clans living on opposite sides of a stream that marked the border between West Virginia and Kentucky. The Hatfields, headed by Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield, lived on the West Virginia side. The McCoys, whose patriarch was Randolph “Ole Ran’l” McCoy, lived on the Kentucky side.
How the Feud Started: There was already animosity between the two clans by 1878. For one thing, during the Civil War, the Hatfields sided with the Confederacy, and the McCoys sided with the Union. But in 1878 Ole Ran’l sued Floyd Hatfield for stealing a hog—a serious offense in a farm-based economy—and McCoy lost. In 1880 relations worsened when McCoy’s daughter Rose Anne became pregnant by Devil Anse’s son Johnse and went across the river to live—unmarried—with the Hatfields.
Then on August 7, 1882, Randolph’s son Tolbert stabbed Devil Anse’s brother Ellison multiple times in a brawl that started during an election day picnic; when Ellison died a few days later, the Hatfields retaliated by tying three of the McCoy brothers to some bushes and executing them.
The feud continued for six more years. It ended after a nighttime raid on the McCoys on January 1, 1888. That night, a group of Hatfields surrounded Ole Ran’l McCoy’s house (he was away) and ordered the occupants to come out and surrender. When no one did they set the house on fire. Ole Ran’l’s daughter Allifair finally ran out and was gunned down; so was her brother Calvin. The house burned to the ground.
And the Winner Is: No one. This last attack was so brutal that officials in both Kentucky and West Virginia finally felt compelled to intervene. One Hatfield who participated in the raid was convicted and hanged for the crime. Several others were sentenced to long prison terms. With most violent offenders behind bars and the rest of the clan members weary of years of killing, the feud petered out.
About 1 out of every 30 Americans is either in jail, on probation, or on parole.
JOHNNY CASH’S
CAPTIVE AUDIENCE
Johnny Cash was one of country music’s first “outlaws,” but the music industry was still surprised in 1957 when he played a concert at Huntsville State Prison in Texas. Over the next decade, Cash performed 30 prison shows and recorded albums during at least three of them. (The shows at California’s Folsom Prison and San Quentin became the most famous.) Here are 10 little-known facts about the Man in Black’s prison concerts.
1. Columbia Records repeatedly rejected Cash’s request to record a prison concert.
Cash started playing at prisons in response to fan mail from inmates who identified with his songs (especially “Folsom Prison Blues”). Soon he discovered that “prisoners are the greatest audience that an entertainer can perform for. We bring them a ray of sunshine into their dungeon, and
they’re not ashamed to respond and show their appreciation.” He suspected that their excitement and gratitude combined with the thrill of performing in a dangerous venue would create the perfect setting for an album. His record company disagreed—they thought the concerts would kill Cash’s career and hurt the label’s image. But when Columbia brought on producer Bob Johnston—known for being a bit wild himself and for bucking authority (as well as for producing Bob Dylan)—that stance changed. Johnston readily approved the country star’s idea. Columbia remained tight-lipped about the performance and the release of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison in 1968, still believing the album would never sell. But it did...an incredible 500,000 copies in one year. Sales were boosted by Cash’s tough-guy image (he wore solid black clothing, used profane language, had a gravelly voice, and fought an on-again, off-again addiction to drugs). To help the cause along, Columbia released exaggerated ads claiming Cash was no stranger to prison. Which brings us to...
2. Cash never served time at Folsom, or any other prison.
He did seven short stints in jail, though, for drug- and alcohol-related charges. His song “Folsom Prison Blues” was instead inspired by the 1951 movie Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison. According to biographer Michael Streissguth, another influence was Gordon Jenkins’s song “Crescent City Blues,” from which Cash “borrowed” so heavily that when his version was recorded on the Folsom album, the original artist demanded—and received—royalties.
First nationally televised court trial: Ted Bundy’s, in 1979.
3. Cash inspired future country star Merle Haggard.
Haggard was serving three years at San Quentin Prison for armed robbery and escaping from jail when Johnny Cash took the stage there in 1958. When Haggard later told Cash that he’d been at the concert, Cash said he didn’t remember Haggard performing that day; Haggard replied, “I was in the audience, Johnny.” In fact, he was sitting in the front row and was mesmerized by Cash. He and his fellow inmates identified with Cash’s lyrics about loss and imprisonment. Haggard reminisced: “This was somebody singing a song about your personal life. Even the people who weren’t fans of Johnny Cash—it was a mixture of people, all races were fans by the end of the show.” Haggard also soon realized that he shared Cash’s talent for making music and for speaking to the struggles of the working class. He joined the prison’s country band shortly after Cash’s concert and penned songs about being locked up. After his release in 1960, Haggard sang at clubs until he eventually became a country superstar himself.
4. The live “Folsom Prison Blues” was too grisly for radio play.
Cash’s declaration “I shot a man in Reno/Just to watch him die,” followed by an inmate’s shriek of joy, was edited by radio stations. But the hollering wasn’t real. It had been dubbed in by Columbia Records since the prisoners had been too enthralled by Cash’s performance to whoop it up during songs.
5. Cash’s band smuggled a gun into Folsom.
Johnny Cash and his bassist, Marshall Grant, often performed a comedy skit with an antique cap-and-ball gun that made smoke. It was a prop—but it was a real gun. Grant accidentally brought the weapon inside his bass guitar case to the 1968 show. A prison guard spotted it and politely
6. Folsom Prison inmate Glen Sherley wrote the song “Greystone Chapel” and credited Cash with changing his life.
Glen Sherley was in Folsom for armed robbery, but he also loved music. Before Cash arrived for the 1968 show, Sherley recorded the song “Greystone Chapel” at the prison chapel. Appropriately, it was about a man whose body is imprisoned but his soul is freed by religion. Cash’s pastor, who also counseled inmates, smuggled the tape out to Cash, who learned to play the song the night before the show. After seeing Cash perform his song, Sherley vowed to make a mark with the musician. Once he was released from Folsom, he went to work for Johnny Cash’s publishing company, House of Cash. Sherley later remarked, “I was a three-time loser when John reached out his hand to me in 1968, and since then I sincerely believe that I have become a worthwhile person and can contribute to society.”
True crime writer Ann Rule was Ted Bundy’s co-worker while she was researching the murders later found to be committed by him.
7. Cash’s concert at Folsom landed him his own musical variety show: The Johnny Cash Show.
Cash noted, “I’ve always thought it ironic that it was a prison concert, with me and the convicts getting along just as fellow rebels, outsiders, and miscreants should, that pumped up my marketability to the point where ABC thought I was respectable enough to have a weekly network TV show.”
8. When Johnny Cash recorded At San Quentin in 1969, he didn’t know the lyrics to one of his most famous songs.
It was the first time Cash had performed “A Boy Named Sue,” written by poet Shel Silverstein, so he had to read the lyrics from a sheet he’d stained with coffee. And before playing “Starkville City Jail,” Cash explained that he was thrown in the slammer for picking daisies and dandelions at two in the morning. (By other accounts, he was breaking curfew, drunk in public, and trespassing.)
9. Cash brushed up on his Swedish for a show overseas.
In 1972 Cash went to Stockholm, Sweden, where he recorded the album Pa Osteraker at a Swedish prison. Between songs, he impressed and thrilled the inmates by introducing some of his songs in their language.
10. At the 1969 show, Cash’s song “San Quentin” nearly incited a riot there.
He’d just written the song the night before, and its inflammatory lyrics like, “San Quentin, may you rot and burn in hell,” clearly struck a chord with the audience. The prisoners clamored and stomped until he repeated the song. Shrieking and jumping up on tabletops, they were so close to rioting that the guards drew and cocked their guns and the camera crew backed up toward the exit doors. According to producer Bob Johnston, Cash later said of that hair-raising moment, “I knew that if I wanted to let those people go all I had to do was say, ‘The time is now.’ And all of those prisoners would’ve broken...I was tempted.” (But of course, he didn’t.)
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CON LETTER
An old man lived alone in the country. He wanted to plant a tomato garden, but it was difficult work, and his only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man described the predicament in a letter to his son.
Dear Vincent,
I’m feeling bad. It looks like I won’t be able to put in my tomatoes this year. I’m just too old to be digging up a garden. I wish you were here to dig it for me.
Love, Dad
A few days later he received a letter from his son.
Dear Dad,
Sorry I’m not there to help, but whatever you do, don’t dig up that garden. That’s where I buried the BODIES.
Love, Vincent
At 4:00 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son.
Dear Dad,
Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That’s the best I could do under the circumstances.
Love, Vinnie
Odds that a burglary in the United States will be solved: 1 in 7.
NICE CROOKS
If they were really nice, they probably wouldn’t be crooks to begin with. But what else would you call a thief who apologizes?
GIMME TEN
At 5:00 a.m. on November 17, 2003, a man walked into a 7-Eleven in Santee, California, pulled out a gun, and told the clerk to give him $10. The clerk gave the man the money, and the man ran off. At 10:00 a.m. the same man returned to the store, put $10 on the counter, and apologized for the robbery. The clerk didn’t wait for the apology—he immediately pressed the “panic” button under the counter. The police arrived and arrested the thief, who explained that he had stolen the money to buy gas for his car.
BEER NUT
Twenty-one-year-old Nicholas Larson stole a cash register from the Bonnema Brew
ing Co. in the town of Atascadero, California. Apparently he couldn’t stand the guilt, because the next day he called the brewery to apologize. The kicker: He turned himself in for the theft—even though the register had been empty.
SHOOTING BLANKS
A man walked into a Kansas liquor store, pulled out a gun, and told the clerk, “Give me everything in the register.” The clerk told him that it was empty—there was no money. “That’s okay,” the robber responded. “There aren’t any bullets in the gun. I was just kidding.”
CHANGE OF HEART
In January 2002, Ronald Van Allen went into the Savings Bank of Manchester in Manchester, Connecticut, and handed the teller a note. “This is a robbery!!” it read. “All I want is the money from the cash drawer. No one has to get hurt or shot but me. Sorry for your inconvenience.” Van Allen left with $2,000, but four days later, he walked into the Manchester police department with a bag full of the money, apologized, and turned himself in. “I wish all of our cases were solved like this,” said Detective Joseph Morrissey.
American crime rates have been falling steadily since 1980.
WAS IT...MURDER?
A mysterious death reveals a deep, dark secret. Lives are changed forever; the community is shocked. Mrs. Uncle John finds her husband in the arms of—no, wait! That’s not part of the story.
LAST NIGHT
On the evening of March 18, 2003, a 75-year-old Tampa, Florida, socialite named Jean Ann Cone drove to the home of friends to help plan the annual benefit gala for the Tampa Museum of Art. She had a few drinks while she was there, and when it came time to leave, another woman, Bobbie Williams, followed behind Cone’s Rolls Royce to make sure she got home safely. Cone’s husband, Douglas, was away on business, so she appreciated the offer.
Uncle John’s True Crime Page 7