 | This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification .(November 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) |
George Wensley Clarkson (born September 1956) is an English true crime writer, biographer, novelist, and television writer and producer. [1] [2]
Contract killing is a form of murder in which one party hires another party to kill a targeted person or multiple people. It involves an illegal agreement between two or more parties in which one party agrees to kill the target in exchange for some form of payment, monetary or otherwise. Either party may be a person, group, or organization. Contract killing has been associated with organized crime, government conspiracies, and vendettas. For example, in the United States, the gang Murder, Inc. committed hundreds of murders on behalf of the National Crime Syndicate during the 1930s and 1940s.
John Dennis Arthur Bindon was an English actor and bodyguard who had close links with the London underworld. The son of a London cab driver, Bindon was frequently in trouble as a youth for getting into fights, and spent two periods in borstal. He was spotted in a London pub by Ken Loach, who asked him to star in his film Poor Cow (1967).
Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria was an early Italian-American Mafia boss in New York City. He was boss of what is now called the Genovese crime family, one of the New York City Mafia's Five Families, from 1922 to 1931. In 1930, he battled in the Castellammarese War to take over the criminal activities in New York City. The war ended with his murder on April 15, 1931, in a hit ordered by his own lieutenant, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, in an agreement with rival faction head, Salvatore Maranzano.
Francesco Ioele, known as Frankie Yale or Frankie Uale, was an Italian-American gangster based in Brooklyn and second employer of Al Capone.
Hammerhead is a fictional supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character is usually depicted as an adversary of the superhero Spider-Man. He is a temperamental mobster who often dresses and acts in the 1920s style, and a prominent member of the Maggia, a fictional organized crime syndicate. Following an accident, he had most of his skull replaced with an inflexible steel alloy by Jonas Harrow, giving his head a flattened shape and near indestructibility, hence his nickname. The Hammerhead crime family, of which he is a high-ranking member and occasional leader, is named after the character.
Kate Barker, better known as Ma Barker and sometimes known as Arizona Barker and Arrie Barker, was the mother of several American criminals who ran the Barker-Karpis gang during the "public enemy era" when the exploits of gangs of criminals in the Midwest gripped the American people and press. She traveled with her sons during their criminal careers.
Richard Leonard Kuklinski was an American criminal. In 1988, he was sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of killing two members of his burglary gang and two other associates. In 2003, he received an additional 30-year sentence after confessing to the murder of a mob-connected police officer. He was given the nickname The Iceman by authorities after they discovered that he had frozen the body of one of his victims in an attempt to disguise the time of death. Among his associates, Kuklinski was known as "the one-man army" or "the Devil himself".
Martin Dillon is an Irish author, journalist, and broadcaster. He has won international acclaim for his investigative reporting and non-fiction works on the Northern Ireland conflict. Dillon’s bestselling trilogy, The Shankill Butchers, The Dirty War & God and the Gun, is considered the definitive account of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Dr. Conor Cruise O’Brien, the renowned historian and scholar, described him as "our Virgil to that Inferno". The Irish Times hailed him as "one of the most creative writers of our time".
The Winter Hill Gang is a structured confederation of organized crime figures in the Boston, Massachusetts, area. The gang members are predominantly of Irish American and Italian American descent. It derives its name from the Winter Hill neighborhood of Somerville, Massachusetts, north of Boston. Its members have included the notorious Boston gangsters Buddy McLean, Whitey Bulger, Howie Winter, Joseph McDonald, Johnny Martorano, Patrick Nee and Stephen Flemmi. They were most influential from 1965, under the rule of McLean and Winter, to the 1979 takeover led by Bulger.
The Irish Mob is an organized crime syndicate in Ireland, and the United States which has been in existence since the early 19th century. Originating in Irish American street gangs—depicted in Herbert Asbury's 1927 book The Gangs of New York—the Irish Mob has appeared in most major U.S. cities, especially on the east coast, including Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
The West End Gang is one of Canada's most influential organized crime groups. Active since the early 1900s and still active today, their rise to notoriety did not begin until the 1960s when they were known simply as the "Irish gang". Their criminal activities were focused on, but not restricted to, the west side of Montreal, Quebec. Most of the gang's earnings in the early days were derived from truck hijackings, home invasions, kidnapping, protection rackets, drug trafficking, extortion, and armed robbery.
Christopher Dale Flannery, nicknamed "Mr. Rent-a-Kill" is alleged to have been an Australian contract killer.
The Arifs are a South East London-based Turkish Cypriot criminal organization heavily involved in armed robbery, contract killing, drug trafficking and other racketeering-related activities within London's underworld since the late 1960s. Following the downfall of the Kray brothers, the Arifs were one of several criminal organizations who took control of the London underworld including the Clerkenwell crime syndicate and the Brindle family with whom they were engaged in a highly publicized gangland war during the 1990s.
Raymond Loreda Salvatore Patriarca was an Italian-American mobster from Providence, Rhode Island, who became the longtime boss of the Patriarca crime family, whose control extended throughout New England for more than three decades. Patriarca died on July 11, 1984.
James Alfred "Jimmy" Moody was an English gangster and hitman whose career spanned more than four decades and included run-ins with Jack Spot, Billy Hill, "Mad" Frankie Fraser, the Krays, the Richardsons and the Provisional IRA. Described by police detectives as "extremely professional" and "extremely intimidating", Moody's speciality was robbing armoured trucks and he used a chainsaw to saw through the side of security vehicles.
Carmine Sessa, alias Carmine Marletta is an Italian-American mobster, chef and hitman who became the consigliere of the Brooklyn-based Colombo crime family and played a key role in the family from 1991 to 1993. Sessa later became a government witness.
Gerard Pappa (also known as "Gerry" and "Pappa Bear", was a former Colombo crime family associate and eventually a Genovese crime family soldier and known hitman who was widely feared for his violent tendencies, which directly contributed to his own murder in 1980.
The CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction is a British literary award established in 1978 by the Crime Writers' Association, who have awarded the Gold Dagger fiction award since 1955.
Nothing Personal is a television show that airs on Investigation Discovery in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, hosted by actor Steve Schirripa.
The Rough Guide to True Crime is a non-fiction paperback reference guide to national and international true crime cases by American crime writer Cathy Scott. It was released in the UK and US in August 2009 by Penguin Books through its Rough Guides imprint.
 | This article about an English writer, poet or playwright is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
