By Allan Lengel For AOl News WASHINGTON — Plastic surgery is not just for the vain at heart. Recent cases show that criminals still use flesh-altering procedures to try to dodge the law. But it doesn’t always help. Just in the past two weeks, drug traffickers from Detroit and Phoenix whose fingerprints had been surgically…
By Allan Lengel For AOL News WASHINGTON — The Inept Criminal is by now a well-established and extensively chronicled archetype, with whole Web sites devoted to the misadventures of dumb, stupid and just plain crazy law-breakers. But law enforcement has its own share of bunglers, and Sphere believes they deserve attention, too. Herewith, a sampling…
DENVER— Inside the cavernous Colorado Convention Center here at the recent International Chiefs of Police Annual Conference, veteran agent James M. Cavanaugh, an affable and personable man, who heads the ATF’s Nashville Division, took time out to talk to ticklethewire.com editor Allan Lengel. Cavanaugh, whose territory includes Tennessee and Alabama, touched on such subjects as hate…
George Torres/la city beat photo By Jeffrey Anderson For ticklethewire.com The defense lawyer for accused racketeer George Torres smelled blood. Torres, a self-made grocery store magnate and suspected drug kingpin, who was both feared and revered in the barrios of South Los Angeles, was on trial in federal court. Prosecution witnesses were lined up waiting…
By Allan Lengel and Rachel Leven ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON – As Mark T. Rossini sat at the defendant’s table in the D.C. federal courthouse in May awaiting his fate, you couldn’t help but wonder, if only for a moment, if he saw himself as a tragic figure in a fabled Hollywood film: Dapper, veteran FBI agent…
The snazzy black 1971 black Cadillac recently posted on eBay was a sweet acquisition regardless. But the fact that the ad said it belonged to the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made it all the more appealing. Reporter Allan Lengel spoke to the person involved in the sale of the car. And Rex Tomb, a former FBI spokesman, offers some interesting and amusing insights into the car and J. Edgar Hoover himself.
Back in the day high-profile criminal defendants and their supporters had to rely on the mainstream media to vent and spin their story. Not anymore. Now there are Facebook pages for defendants or their fans for such notables as Barry Bonds, Bernie Kerik, Rod Blagojevich and Jack Abramoff. Some defendants like Kerik are even tweeting on Twitter. Reporter Rachel Leven examines this phenomenon.
Hollywood has brought the legendary bank robber John Dillinger back to life in an entertaining movie “Public Enemies”. But Retired FBI Man Rex Tomb thinks Hollywood took too many liberties and presented some “fictional details” as fact about the FBI and may have done a disservice to history and the public. Here’s his take on it all.
