This horrific story of American injustice needed more than one program --so here is part two this Saturday.
A penetrating look into the controversy that enshrouds one of the most complex criminal cases in US history: a former Green Beret’s murder of his wife.
It was a dreary winter afternoon in Ayer, Massachusetts, a quintessential New England town, the type which is romanticized in Robert Frost’s poems. But on January 30, 1979, a woman’s scream was heard piercing the northeast tempest wind.
In an unassuming apartment building on Washington Street, Elaine Tyree, a mother, wife, and US Army soldier, had her life brutally ripped from her. Her husband, William Tyree, a Special Forces soldier, was convicted of this heinous murder, which he has always vehemently denied.
Some elements of this case seem to be chilling echoes of the Jeffrey MacDonald case, made famous in the book and film Fatal Vision. A military doctor and US Army Captain, MacDonald was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and two daughters but always maintained his innocence. As in the MacDonald case, the case against William Tyree raises questions as to whether the government and military suppressed evidence that could prove his innocence.
The Tyree case sent a shockwave through the idyllic community of Ayer, the United States Army, and the judicial system of Massachusetts. This case provoked suspicions of judicial misconduct, government cover-up, clandestine Black Ops by the military, and various conspiracy theories ultimately implicating “Deep State” involvement.
The events that took place that fateful day, the subsequent courtroom showdown, and the ongoing legal battles raise provocative questions that continue to revolve around this case to this day.
Author William J. Craig joins Burl Barer and Mark Boyer for another fascinating hour of true crime
When writer / director Seth Ferranti received a twenty-five year LSD kingpin conviction, after faking his suicide and landing on the US Marshals Top-15 Most Wanted list, he thought his life was over. As a first time, non-violent offender, the lengthy sentence attracted media attention from The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, The Washington Times, and others.
As a drug dealing teen Ferranti sold LSD and marijuana at 15 East Coast colleges, crisscrossing across five states- Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Maryland- a wanna-be rock star and Hunter S. Thompson-style outlaw whose hero’s were Henry Rollins, Axl Rose, and Jim Morrison. He followed the Grateful Dead and considered himself a counter culture rebel, not a criminal, as he was breaking laws which he thought were wrong.
He stands by those convictions today and see’s himself more as an activist who was a little ahead of the times. A trailblazer of the legal cannabis and psychedelic movements. As a twenty-two year old from the suburbs, who basically grew up as a military brat in California and overseas, the prison sentence Ferranti received due to the War on Drugs was longer than he’d lived to that point.
But despite the unjust sentence, Seth decided to rise above his past and focus on his future. He began building a writing and journalism career from inside the belly of the beast. With unlimited access to criminals and their stories Ferranti started crafting raw portrayals of prison life and crack era gangsters. Discovering a passion and talent for writing Ferranti also studied the trade earning an associates, bachelors, and masters degree while in prison.
With hope for his future renewed Ferranti started penning prison and gangster stories for Vice, Don Diva, FEDS, Hoopshype and others. He took it one step further and established his brand, Gorilla Convict, from prison. Ferranti became a true-crime publisher and built a website documenting stories that the mainstream media was not willing to share.
These stories reside in his books- Prison Stories, Supreme Team, and Street Legends, among others, and his 500 blog entries written by him and other prisoners. Along with the hundreds, if not thousands of pieces Ferranti wrote for other publications and websites, he became the most prolific prison writer of the War on Drugs era. In February 2015, after serving 21 years, he was released from the Bureau of Prison, to seek his fortune.
Back in the world Ferranti continued his writing career as a journalist penning pieces for Vice, Ozy, The Daily Beast, Dazed, Merry Jane, and features for Penthouse and Real Crime Magazines, among others. He also started writing and publishing comic books under his imprint GR1ND Studios and embarked on his true passion, filmmaking.
Fresh out of prison Ferranti wrote and directed a web-series, Easter Bunny Assassin, played the antagonist in an indie feature, Dog Days, wrote and played the lead in The Precious and the Damned, and joined forces with Shawn Rech and Transitions Studios to make White Boy, a feature documentary on Richard Wershe Jr. that aired on STARZ and became a Top Ten hit on NETFLIX.
Ferranti starred in the Season One Finale of Vice TV’s I was a Teenage Felon. Has appeared on Fox News, Inside Edition, and News Nation as a subject matter expert, and is currently directing several documentary projects- Nightlife, Dope Men, Tangled Roots, The Secret History of The LSD Trade, and Generation ECSTASY- which are in various stages of production. He also has numerous scripted and television projects in development. It appears there is no stopping him.
Seth Ferranti is an American journalist and writer.
In 1993, after two years on the United States Marshals Service's 15 Most Wanted Fugitives list, he was arrested for drug trafficking; At the start of his run, in 1991, he had organized his mock suicide by leaving his car, his clothes, an empty bottle of Vodka, and a letter on the banks of the Potomac River.
Sentenced to 304 months in prison for trafficking LSD, Seth Ferranti began his career as a journalist in prison and wrote for VICE and The Daily Beast, among others. In 2005, he opened a blog, Gorilla Convict , dealing with prison life and gangs.
He was released in 2014 after 21 years of prison. Obviously, a bright and promising young man, Ferranti evolved into an excellent journalist, documentary filmmaker, author, and advocate for the evidence based therapeutic use of psychedelics,
LISTEN LIVE SATURDAY MARCH 19TH 2pm PT/3pm Mtn/4pm Central/ 5pm Eastern/10pm UK by clicking this link!
On June 25, 1973, a seven-year-old girl went missing from the Montana where her family was vacationing. Somebody had slit open the back of her tent and snatched her from under her family’s noses. None of them saw or heard anything. Susie Jaeger had vanished into thin air, plucked by a shadow. That single chilling disappearance mobilized Montana’s largest-ever manhunt and energized FBI agents, all searching for … a shadow. When the investigation later turned cold, agents were frustrated and ready to hear any idea that might help them close their grim case.
AUTHOR RON FRANSCELL RETURNS THIS SATURDAY!
SHADOWMAN tells the entangled tales of a harrowing crime and the introduction of sophisticated criminal profiling at the FBI.
LISTEN LIVE SATURDAY 2 pm West coast time/5 pm East coast time by clicking THIS LINK!
Our favorite ex-Heroin addict, bon vivant, and brilliant author, Daniel Genis, returns with his long-awaited literary debut.
In 2003, fresh out of NYU, Daniel Genis was working in publishing as his writer father had always expected. But he was also hiding a serious heroin addiction that led him into debt and burglary. After he was arrested for robbing people at knifepoint in 2003, Daniel Genis was nicknamed the "apologetic bandit" in the press, given his habit of apologizing to his victims as he took their cash.
He was sentenced to 12 years (10 with good behavior), surviving the decade by reading 1,046 books, weightlifting, having philosophical discussions with various inmates, encountering violence on a daily basis, working at a series of prison jobs, and in general observing an existence for which nothing in his life had prepared him.
Sentence is one of the most striking prison memoirs - and memoirs in general - in recent years - written with intelligence, wit, empathy, and remarkable style.
(Daniel Genis & Burl Barer)
Genis is the son of a famous Soviet émigré writer, broadcaster, and culture critic in Russia. He grew up in a home whose visitors included Mikhail Baryshnikov; Russian nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov; authors Kurt Vonnegut, Umberto Eco, and Norman Mailer; and Czech film director Miloš Forman. The education and culture so prized by his family were his lifelines during his decade in prison, and he describes in unsparing and vivid detail the realities of daily life in the New York penal system, from Rikers Island through a series of upstate institutions.
Daniel Genis' debut has the potential to be both a critical and popular success, for few books have portrayed prison so vividly or with such insight.
Drawing on media reports, interviews and court records, this book recounts the stories of women bank robbers in the United States, from the time of the Revolutionary War to the present. Ranging from sensational to poignant to comical, the heists of frontier outlaws, gun molls, insurrectionists, housewives, grandmas and young mothers "literally robbing for Pampers" are narrated as part of the social history of women in America.
If National Lampoon published a hysterically funny and mildly offensive parody of recovery memoirs, it couldn’t be as funny and mildly offensive as this autobiography of Leonard Lee Buschel, co-founder of Writers in Treatment, producers of the internationally acclaimed Reel Recovery Film Festivals, the Experience Strength and Hope Awards, and publishers of the Addiction/Recovery e-Bulletin.
BRIGHT KID CHOOSES DARK CAREER
Despite being born with two life-threatening conditions, three if you count being Jewish, teenage Leonard Buschel chose a potentially problematic career: drug dealer.
For twenty-three years, life was a Sativa saturated, a star-studded, live-action adventure featuring highbrow humor, send-up satire and Indica infused X-rated escapades free from any legal indictments. The only thing arrested was Leonard’s maturation from adolescence.
23 YEARS LATER
When Leonard checked into Betty Ford’s famed treatment center, he wasn’t seriously seeking recovery; he was hiding out to avoid a drug bust. 36 hours later, Leonard experienced an unexpected epiphany, drinking and drugging were relegated to the dust bin of his personal history, the real fun began, and the great adventure commenced.
27 YEARS AFTER THAT
The world, with all its beauty and banality, cruelty, and comfort, continues sunrise to sunset, one day at a time. Today, Leonard Lee Buschel is more Leonard Lee Buschel than ever before: mildly eccentric, slightly neurotic, occasionally erotic, and always charmingly, contagiously enthusiastic.
High is far more than a vastly entertaining recovery memoir. It is an open emotional summons, a sincere invitation to a life lived awake and alert, a life vibrating at a higher frequency of increased creativity and joy, and if you so desire, social inclusion, fun, fellowship, and plenty of free coffee.
Yes, Kevin M. Sullivan returns Saturday 2pm pt. Listen live by clicking THIS LINK
A writer of history and true crime, Kevin M. Sullivan is the author of sixteen books, a former investigative journalist for both print and online media, and is a recognized authority on serial sex killer, Ted Bundy. Indeed, his "break out" book, The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History, published by McFarland in 2009, was the catalyst that brought him much attention in the true crime world, leading to appearances on numerous radio programs and contacts from documentarians both here in the United States and the United Kingdom. Portions of his biography of Ted Bundy also appear in the college textbook, Abnormal Psychology: Clinical Perspectives on Psychological Disorders, published by McGraw-Hill in November 2012. And while Sullivan has authored crime books on others killers, both the well-known and the obscure, his interest in Ted Bundy and this voluminous multi-state murder case, has continued and produced five additional works on Bundy, each featuring new and never before published information on the killer and the case; including new interviews from those who knew Bundy, or hunted him, or escaped his clutches as he was attempting to abduct and murder them.
Now the six-volume set is about to become a seven-volume set, without question, the most substantial work ever produced on Theodore Robert Bundy.
In the biography, The Last Jewish Gangster, follow the life of Michael J. Hardy, a chubby Jewish boy from the Brownsville streets in Brooklyn to the world's most dangerous prison in Mexico. Michael wants nothing more than to prove to his "Queen of NYC crime" mother that he deserves her love and is tougher than the famous gangsters she dates (Bugsy Siegel is Michael's godfather). Coming from a mixed heritage of Southern Baptists and Ashkenazic Ukrainian Jews, without a father, and rejected by his mother at birth, Michael becomes a fearless and lawless gangster over the next five decades.
When he finally reaches his goal, his mother is on her death bed, he's been shot 11 times, robbed hundreds of people, spent 16 years in prisons and jails (with more to come), committed multiple kidnappings, and killed 19 times. Now he struggles with forgiveness, within himself, those he harmed, and those who harmed him.
What's unique about this mob/gangster/true crime biography is the first-person look inside the psyche of a fearless gangster as he tells his life's story to his lawyer in 1990 and his therapist in 2014. Sometimes humorous, often times you have to look away – but you'll find yourself rooting for Michael J. Hardy, The Last Jewish Gangster.
THE REAL MR. BIG: How A Refugee Became The UK’s Most Notorious Cocaine Kingpin
Born in 1960, Jesus Ruiz Henao grew up poor, but wanted to be rich like the drug dealers he saw growing up in the cocaine-producing region of Colombia’s Valle of the Cauca. To realize his ambition, Ruiz Henao moved to London, United Kingdom, in 1985. There he and his wife settled in the quiet suburb of Hendon, where he held down mundane but respectable cleaning and bus driving jobs. At least to outward appearances …
Actually, Ruiz Henao kept a low profile while he built a wide-ranging drug distribution network that extended from Colombia to Spain and Europe to the United Kingdom. For years, he stayed one step ahead of law enforcement, making more than a billion pounds over a ten-year period.
However, it was a riskybusiness with law enforcement on one side and ruthless competitors on the other. By the summer of 2003, Ruiz Henao decided to get out of the drug business. But he finally made the one mistake that would get him caught. It cost him a 17-year prison sentence, with more tacked on when he tried to make one last deal from behind prison walls.
THE REAL MR. BIG, co-written by Ruiz Henao with bestselling author Ron Chepesiuk, is the story of how an ambitious Colombian immigrant set up a sophisticated drug trafficking enterprise that earned him law enforcement’s description as “the Pablo Escobar of British drug trafficking.”
From the Book:
Ruiz Henao: “After reflecting a long time, I decided to get out of the business. The police were on to me. I spoke to my boss Sergio in Colombia and my friends there, telling them that I was getting out because of the heat that was on me.”
He paid off his closest associates and thanked them for working for him. He took a nice holiday in the Caribbean, and when he returned, he hoped to relax and enjoy his retirement.
“I made millions of pounds in the drug trade, but money had become less important to me. I had worked hard to make the money, but now the most important thing in my life was to spend time with my wife, son, and daughter. My pursuit of money cost me a good part of my life. Money can make you crazy and do stupid things. When I first started in the drug business, my goal was to make a million pounds, and I did. So l said to myself: ‘I am going to carry on until I make ten million pounds.’ I made that amount. At that point, I could buy a mansion, a yacht, pretty well anything, but I said to myself: ‘Why stop now?’ I then made fifty million pounds.
“At that point, I wanted to say to myself: ‘Enough.’ I had more money than I could ever possibly spend, and it was becoming a headache handling it. I could get out of the drug trade easily. I didn’t have real enemies, so I could leave the drug trade and not be an easy target for anybody.
“I had no idea that Fernando Carranza Reyes had become a police informant, but I kept noticing that I was being followed by different cars. The next day, I called my brother-in-law Mario to meet me in a park near Baker Street. As we normally did when we traveled to a meeting point, we used public transportation.
”As Mario got off at the bus stop, a female brushed him and planted a microphone in his jacket. When we met, we started to walk around the park and talk about many things, unaware that the British police were watching and listening to everything we were doing. I said to Mario: ‘Listen, Mario, at the end of the day, I don’t worry about the millions of pounds we have lost. That’s easy to recover. But the last thing I want to do is to go to prison.’ Information from that conversation became one of the strongest pieces of evidence against me in court.
“After we were done talking, we went to a car dealership to buy a car. That’s when we noticed a van with a lot of antennas following us. We immediately knew it was the police, so we went back to our homes.
“My boss and friends accepted my leaving the drug business, but some of my contacts in Spain started to put pressure on me, telling me that it was an excuse because I didn’t want to work with them anymore. Some of them started threatening me, saying that they would do whatever necessary to get me killed. They warned me never to change telephone numbers or to leave them without any contact. They called me every day. The police managed to identify my numbers and intercept and record all the calls they made to me.
“I told Beto, Wilmar, and Tito that I was out of the business and to lose all contact with me because I was under police radar. Beto and Wilmar listened to me and stayed out of the cocaine business, but Tito continued in the business with a Spanish contact. One day, while he was meeting the Spaniard and unloading fifty kilos of cocaine from a lorry into his car, Tito was arrested. He was sentenced to fourteen years in prison. I was totally unaware of Tito’s drug business at the time, but later it was all linked and used as evidence in my court case.”
Jesus had stopped drug dealing. He felt he had exited at the right time. But then he made a stupid mistake.
What Others Are Saying About THE REAL MR. BIG:
“Crime writer Ron Chepesiuk delivers a thrilling page-turner in this incredible first-person account of Jesus Ruiz Henao, his co-author. Ruiz Henao, dubbed the “Pablo Escobar of British drug trafficking” by Scotland Yard, takes the reader along for a front row seat for his wild ride from his poor Colombian family to his rise to become England’s first billion pound cocaine kingpin. “The Real Mr. Big” is a high speed train trip through the modern cocaine trade and is ultimately the story of redemption in a man who discovers that money and power fades in comparison to the importance of family and love.” –Gerald Posner, Pulitzer Prize finalist and Author of Pharma: Greed, Lies and the Poisoning of America
“Ron Chepesiuk in the crime underworld is what Stephen King is to horror novels. Mr Big is a must read filled with twists and turns.” –Markuann Smith, The Creator and Executive Producer of the Emmy Award winning show, GODFATHER OF HARLEM
“A compelling, hypnotic story, full of twists and surprises, told from inside a world few of us are exposed to outside crime fiction. A good part of the book’s pleasure is in how the engaging Mr. Big subverts stereotypes and expectations of what an international drug lord might be like.” — Jerome Clark, author of Hidden Realms
Ron Chepesiuk (left) and Jesus Ruiz Henao (right)
“Reading this telling, well-written account about the menacing cancer of illicit drug manufacture and soliciting has had and continues to have a major impact on crippling world economies and their population. I can tell you; it is a real eye-opener and vividly scares me to no end. Jesus Ruiz Henao easily manipulated the desire for cocaine and those that joined him for a lifestyle of excessive riches gained at the expense and ruination of so many people and families. I highly recommend that everyone read this true story, and I am sure that you will view this arcane business just like me. It’s an amazing, must read.” –Ron Fino, former mob associate, noted FBI and CIA undercover operative and author of the Triangle Exit
“Ron Chepsiuk and Jesus Anibal Ruiz-Henao tell the amazing story of the first billion pound cocaine pipeline from Colombia to the United Kingdom. The beginnings to the new beginning in Jesus Anibal Ruiz-Henao’s life start’s with a phone call by Jesus’ daughter to Ron, that would change both of their lives. So get the book sit back with a double expresso and enjoy the ride without worrying about snitches and sicarios (contract killers).” –Dan Pearson, Author of “Last Don Standing, The Secret Life Of Mob Boss Ralph Natale”
“The Real Mr. Big by Ron Chepesiuk and Jesus Ruiz Henao is an epic tale. One of the largest drug kingpins in modern history, Henao tells his story in vibrant detail, revealing the deep secrets of the billion dollar drug empire he built. Fast-paced and highly engaging, The Real Mr. Big will delight readers who want to know the inner workings of the criminal underworld.” –Bob Batchelor, historian and author of The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition’s Evil Genius
“Over the last ten 10 years I’ve always been one of the first people to read Ron’s latest book. Whether it Sergeant Smack, Gangsters of Harlem or Black Caesar. His books always deliver a great story and move at a swift pace. With his latest, “Mr. Big” delivers a cinematic story about a kingpin I’ve never heard about. Once you start reading, you won’t put it down until you reach the last page. Great job, Ron.” — Jason Brooks, Crime Producer/Podcaster , CrooksnCrimes.com
“What a fun read!!!! The story of Jesus Henao is mind blowing, and the way Ron and Jesus were able to capture the event in this book makes you dive in and be part of all the intricacies and dangers of this complex trade.” –Rodrigo Galavis, Executive Producer, With Sugar, Please LLC
It has been many years since Gregg Olsen joined us on True Crime Uncensored, and we are thrilled that he's taken time from his busy schedule of being one of the world's best true crime authors, novelists, and media commentators to join us this Saturday 2pm Pacific Time/5pm Eastern Time.
Glamorous messiah or charlatan? A mask of beauty hides deadly secrets in #1 New York Times and Amazon Charts bestselling author Gregg Olsen’s mesmerizing novel of suspense.
In the Pacific Northwest, detective Lindsay Jackman is investigating the murder of a young journalist found at the bottom of a ravine. Lindsay soon learns that the victim was writing an exposé. Her subject: a charismatic wellness guru who’s pulled millions into her euphoric orbit…
To hear Marnie Spellman tell it, when she was a child, a swarm of bees lifted her off the ground and toward the sunlight, illuming her spiritual connection with nature—an uncanny event on which Marnie built a cosmetics empire and became a legend, a healer, and the queen of holistic health and eternal beauty. In her inner circle is an intimate band of devotees called the Hive. They share Marnie’s secrets of success—including one cloaked in darkness for twenty years.
Determined to uncover the possibly deadly mysteries of the group, Lindsay focuses her investigation on Marnie and the former members of the Hive, who are just as determined to keep Lindsay from their secrets as they are to maintain their status.
