Murder, mayhem, and the facts of the case

One London reviewer has already described this compilation as "entertainment disguised as information", without meaning to be…

One London reviewer has already described this compilation as "entertainment disguised as information", without meaning to be negative or snide. Just how reliable and well researched are its sources I cannot judge, but it certainly is self confident and knowing bin its approach, and it takes little of the popular mythology on crime for granted. For instance, about Marilyn Monroe's death forget any alleged links with Bobby Kennedy, the Mafia and the CIA, etc. She and Bobby only met four times, each occasion being a crowded dinner party, and much more questionable was the role played by her narcissistic, power hungry psychoanalyst, Dr Ralph Greenson.

That it was suicide at all is doubtful too - Marilyn at the time of her death, it seems, was planning to remarry Joe di Maggio. The statements of three women excluded from the Mike Tyson trial might well have saved him from a conviction - one of them overheard his alleged victim, Desiree Washington, say about her hotel date with him: "Of course I'm going. This is Mike Tyson. He's got a lot of money. He's dumb. You see what Robin Givens got out of him. James Hanratty, the slightly retarded petty criminal hanged for the A6 murder, was convicted on evidence so slight - that it scarcely justified a preliminary hearing let alone a death sentence. Bonnie and Clyde, though virtually folk heroes during their short career, seem in fact to have been a nasty pair by contrast, the alleged gangster Dillinger - gunned down by Chicago police outside a cinema probably never shot anyone and his worst crime was making Hoover of the FBI look foolish. The Moors Murderers, Jack the Ripper, Al Capone - and the Valentine's Day Massacre, the terrible Charles Manson and his following of homicidal zombies, are all here in a macabre Rogues' Gallery. There are also numerous photographs, including one of George Joseph Smith, the brides in the bath murderer, posing in tails and topper with his first victim, Beatrice Mundy.