Greg Stejskal served as an FBI agent for 31 years and retired as resident agent in charge of the Ann Arbor office.
Mississippi Burning 50 Years Later
By Greg Stejskal ticklethewire.com The 60s were a tumultuous decade, and 1964 was emblematic of that decade. Arthur Ashe won the US Open, and Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Prize for peace. The Beatles came to America and established a beachhead for the “British invasion.” Lyndon Johnson, a Southern Democrat,…
The History of April 19th: American Revolution, Waco, Oklahoma Bombing
This column was originally posted on April 14, 2010. Because I thought it continued to be relevant, it was re-posted last year (2013) on April 2. (I had no idea how relevant it would become.) The subject of the column, “April 19th,” first became significant when some New England citizens confronted a unit of the…
Leagues Can Learn from Major League Baseball’s Hardball Tactics
Greg Stejskal served as an FBI agent for 31 years and retired as resident agent in charge of the Ann Arbor office. His column first appeared in the New York Daily News. By Greg Stejskal ticklethewire.com By moving to drop his civil lawsuits in federal court, Alex Rodriguez has waved the white flag and…
“Mark From Michigan”: Dumb and Dumber
By Greg Stejskal ticklethewire.com Mark and I never really hit it off. I first met Mark Koernke in the late ‘80s. Gene Ward, a fellow FBI agent, had asked me to accompany him on an interview of Koernke. We met with Koernke in his basement office at Alice Lloyd Hall, a University of Michigan dormitory,…
Santa’s Helper, a Giant Elf, a Cuban Inmate Uprising and the Salvation Army
A note from Greg Stejskal: “Despite not having sold the screen rights & in an effort to make this story a Holiday classic, we’re running this story again. Happy Holidays!” By Greg Stejskal ticklethewire.com This is a Christmas story, but it really began just before Thanksgiving in 1987, at the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta….
The Hole-in-the-Truck Gang
By Greg Stejskal ticklethewire.com It was a cold early spring Saturday morning, and I was following a lead in a rural part of Michigan. I had received a call on Friday afternoon that there was a unique piece of evidence on a farm near the Michigan/Ohio border. When I got to the farm, I made…
The Annual Talk With U-M Football Team About Gambling
By Greg Stejskal ticklethewire.com In 1982, legendary Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler asked the Ann Arbor, Mich., FBI office to talk to his team about the perils of illegal sports gambling. The senior resident agent, Tom Love, agreed to make the presentation. Love, knowing I had played college football at Nebraska (read: mostly practiced),…
MLB May Never Eliminate Steroid Problem, But It Has Come a Long Way to Substantially Reducing It
This column first appeared in the New York Daily News on June 22. By Greg Stejskal ticklethewire.com In August 1994, I was attending an FBI sports presentation conference. The bureau has a program where trained agents make presentations to college and professional sports teams regarding illegal sports gambling and other topics. Representatives from the NFL,…
The History of April 19th: American Revolution, Waco, Oklahoma Bombing
By Greg Stejskal ticklethewire.com Listen my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy Five…. Longfellow’s poem forever immortalized Paul Revere’s ride. What the poem does not say is that Revere’s mission that night was to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British…
The FBI, Some Gay Murders and a Fingerprint Examiner Named Thurman Williams
By Greg Stejskal ticklethewire.com I was seated, facing Michael Lee Sprague as I interviewed him. We were on the same side of the table. As an FBI agent on the fugitive squad in the Detroit Division, I never liked having anything between me and the person I was interviewing. It was easier to observe body…