By Allan Lengel Deadline Detroit DETROIT — Like old Tiger Stadium and the Vernors plant, Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone was a fixture in Detroit, one of the city’s best known mobsters — a Tony Soprano type whose mug occasionally graced the 6 p.m. news. He was a suspect in the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance. He was known…
Ross Parker was chief of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit for 8 years and worked as an AUSA for 28 in that office. This is the second in a two-part series. To read the first part, click here. By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com Part one of this report discussed the…
By Allan Lengel Deadline Detroit DETROIT — Daryl McCrary is no stranger to the world of violence. Having spent 21 years with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) he’s worked in places like Los Angeles and Baltimore. He’s gone undercover, he’s bought guns on the street and investigated gangs and violent…
By Theodoric Meyer and Christie Thompson ProPublica In 1991, an unemployed printer named David Ranta was convicted of killing a Hasidic rabbi in Brooklyn. Last week, Ranta was released from the maximum-security prison in which he’d spent nearly 22 years, after almost every piece of evidence used to convict him fell away. The New York…
Ross Parker was chief of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit for 8 years and worked as an AUSA for 28 in that office. By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com Cyber information is not the only thing the Chinese are stealing from the United States. A new generation of synthetic designer drugs is…
Prologue By Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy He sat in the back of a black SUV wearing blue jeans, handcuffs, and a scowl. After sixteen years on the run, Whitey Bulger had returned to the South Boston waterfront, to a town that had changed so much that he stared uncomprehendingly out the window. He…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com John G. Perren, assistant director of WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) Directorate, who has been at the forefront of the FBI war on terrorism, has been named ticklethewire.com’s Fed Of The Year for 2012. Perren, whose tenure has been extended beyond the FBI’s mandatory retirement age, has been with the bureau…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Everyday, people in federal law enforcement head to work, grab a coffee, maybe a donut or a bagel, comb through their emails, read a newspaper or website and go about fighting crime, protecting the public from violent drug dealers, public corruption, gun-related crimes, healthcare fraud and terrorism. But on occasion,…
