Midway


Book Description




Carnival Games: $10,000,000,000 Hoodwink Racket


Book Description

Chances are you have been ripped off at a friendly traveling carnival, set up at your local fair or festival, because you had been left unprotected by police. The intention of this book is not just to tell readers about the games which keep ripping them off, but most importantly to explain the clandestine behind the scenes workings of a not so friendly, well organized, criminal element. From the innocent looking and usually rigged, two to five dollars per play "Duck Pond," to the $10,000 contribution by the itinerant carnival owner to the state or national political action committee or candidate, the author, a retired police officer, specializing in carnival midway game enforcement, has been able to associate a portion of illegally obtained cash proceeds from anonymous transient weekend midway scammers to carnival owners, to public servants, and also to distinguished politicians. This 100-year-old entrenched system of confidence crime and public corruption still operates relatively unrestricted at weekend fairs and festivals in America. Police simply do not arrest carnival thugs or their politician pals. No one cares about duped children or teenagers since many civic leaders ultimately get a cut of the midway loot in some way, shape, or form. Because this traditional chicanery is actually endorsed by wink & nod carnival security (dubbed "carny-cops") and public officials, trusting carnival patrons have a high likelihood of being either swindled, pick-pocketed, or short-changed on American midways by anonymous serial criminals. Unfortunately for unprotected American children, all but a few police agents nation-wide are either untrained, dont care, or are on the take, and refuse to address fraud (theft by deception) and gambling violations on their anything-goes, hit & run, carnival turf. While crooked carnival owners operate these drifting mobile crime syndicates under the radar of federal law enforcement, few citizens know the full extent of the systemic immunity and corruption involved. Thus, victims of this multibillion-dollar racket continue to remain unprotected on 21st century carnival lots. The authors exclusive investigation describes, for the first time, evidence of facilitation of free-wheeling criminal acts combined with the curious contributions/payoffs which enable this annual crime spree. The author also uncovers crafty "payments" from culpable carnival owners and lists renowned U.S. politicians associated with the perpetuation of this ten to forty-billion-dollar per year, largely unregulated, rolling racketeer industry. For more information, please visit www.carnivalcongames.com You may email the author at [email protected]




Pizza Bomber


Book Description

The bizarre, true story of a robbery gone wrong and the explosive murder that shocked the nation—as seen on Netflix’s docuseries Evil Genius. For the first time, two of the people who followed the story from the beginning—Jerry Clark, the lead FBI Special Agent who cracked what became known as the Pizza Bomber case, and investigative reporter Ed Palattella—tell the complete story of what happened on August 28, 2003. In the suburbs of Erie, Pennsylvania, a pizza delivery man named Brian Wells was accosted by several men who locked a time bomb around his neck. They then ordered him to rob a bank. After delivering the money, he would receive clues to help him disarm the bomb. It was one of the most ingenious bank robbery schemes in history, known as Collarbomb by the FBI. It did not go according to plan. Wells, picked up by police shortly after the robbery, never found the clues he needed. Investigating the crime after his grisly death, the FBI soon discovered that Wells was not, in fact, an innocent victim. He was merely the first co-conspirator to fall in a bizarre trail of death following the crime... INCLUDES PHOTOS







True Crime and Punishment: Heists


Book Description

A collection of eighteen of the world's most audacious robberies - tales of ransom, revenge and old fashioned stick-ups.




Secrets of the Sideshows


Book Description

The carnival sideshows of the past have left behind a fascinating legacy of mystery and intrigue. The secrets behind such daring feats as fire-eating and sword swallowing and bizarre exhibitions of human oddities as "Alligator Boys" and "Gorilla Girls" still remain, only grudgingly if ever given up by performers and carnival professionals. Working alongside the performers, Joe Nickell blows the lid off these mysteries of the midway. The author reveals the structure of the shows, specific methods behind the performances, and the showmen's tactics for recruiting performers and attracting crowds. He also traces the history of such spectacles, from ancient Egyptian magic and street fairs to the golden age of P.T. Barnum's sideshows. With revealing insight into the personal lives of the men and women billed as freaks, Nickell unfolds the captivating story of the midway show.




Carnival Games: the Perfect Crimes


Book Description

This book, written primarily as a training guide for law enforcement personnel, demonstrates how easily police officers can get sucked in by professional con artists. Secondly, the book was written to alert potential victims of the lack of police protection. Thought of by many as just "nickel and dime," the reality is that most midway games, which start with $2 or $5 per play, sometimes builds to more than $100 in losses. It was evident these openly brazen career criminals, who primarily target children these days, account for several million dollars annually in Michigan alone, while they proclaim that their good-natured fraud and gambling enterprises are not crimes at all, but merely "games of skill." For more information, please visit www.carnivalcongames.com You may email the author at [email protected] You may visit http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/money/consumer/call_for_action/before-you-head-out-to-a-summer-carnival,-we-tell-you-why-you-need-to-beware-of-some-carnival-games to view the WXYZ-TV exposure of rigged Carnival Games.




Patty's Got a Gun


Book Description

It was a story so bizarre it defied belief: in April 1974, twenty-year-old newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst robbed a San Francisco bank in the company of members of the Symbionese Liberation Army—who had kidnapped her a mere nine weeks earlier. But the robbery—and the spectacular 1976 trial that ended with Hearst’s criminal conviction—seemed oddly appropriate to the troubled mood of the nation, an instant exemplar of a turbulent era. With Patty’s Got a Gun, the first substantial reconsideration of Patty Hearst’s story in more than twenty-five years, William Graebner vividly re-creates the atmosphere of uncertainty and frustration of mid-1970s America. Drawing on copious media accounts of the robbery and trial—as well as cultural artifacts from glam rock to Invasion of the Body Snatchers—Graebner paints a compelling portrait of a nation confused and frightened by the upheavals of 1960s liberalism and beginning to tip over into what would become Reagan-era conservatism, with its invocations of individual responsibility and the heroic. Trapped in the middle of that shift, the affectless, zombielike, “brainwashed” Patty Hearst was a ready-made symbol of all that seemed to have gone wrong with the sixties—the inevitable result, some said, of rampant permissiveness, feckless elitism, the loss of moral clarity, and feminism run amok. By offering a fresh look at Patty Hearst and her trial—for the first time free from the agendas of the day, yet set fully in their cultural context—Patty’s Got a Gun delivers a nuanced portrait of both an unforgettable moment and an entire era, one whose repercussions continue to be felt today.




Blue Ribbon


Book Description

Covers everything from prize animals to fair architecture to speeches to Pronto Pups.




Wells, Fargo & Co. Stagecoach and Train Robberies, 1870-1884


Book Description

In January 1, 1885, Wells, Fargo & Company's chief detective James B. Hume and special agent John N. Thacker published a report summarizing the company's losses during the previous 14 years. It listed 313 stagecoach robberies, 23 burglaries, and four train robberies but included little or no details of the events themselves, focusing instead on physical descriptions of the robbers. Widely circulated, the report was intended to assist law enforcement in identifying and apprehending the criminals believed still to present a danger to the company. The present volume revisits each crime, updating Hume and Thacker's original report with rich new details culled from local newspapers, personal diary entries, and court records.