Tombstone Territorial Rendezvous
Interested in the Old West? In meeting dozens of fellow Old West buffs? In learning what really happened (or didn’t) in the Gunfight at the OK Corral? In learning about Doc Holliday’s youth in Georgia? In day trips to locate ghost towns, long lost rustler ranches, sites of stagecoach holdups, or the spot where Wyatt Earp did (or didn’t) kill Curly Bill? Have a taste for Byronic Heroes of the Old West? Interested in how facts become legends, and legends myth? Would you like to ask the historians, biographers, and researchers who continue to dig out the facts just what they’re working on next? Talk it up with writers and fellow buffs of both genders and all ages over a beer or Bourbon at the original Crystal Palace Saloon? Come to the next Tombstone Territorial Rendezvous in historic Tombstone,...
Read MoreA reading list for the well-read FBI G-man, 1936 (or so)
The early 20th century saw a rising tide of criticism against certain traditional methods used by police to catch killers and crooks, especially the too-easy reliance by unprofessional local law enforcers on unconstitutional and often barbaric third degree interrogations. In response, enlightened police administrators and policemen joined lawyers, scientists, and others in pushing for adoption of “scientific policing,” the contemporary term for what we now generically call CSI. FBI histories and biographies of J. Edgar Hoover uniformly credit the Bureau’s longtime Director with an early and sustained commitment to “scientific policing.” In 1924, he established a nationwide fingerprint clearinghouse (the Fingerprint Division) to assist state and local police catch criminals who ranged across jurisdictional lines. Eight years later, he authorized Charles A. Appel to set up the Bureau’s first criminal forensics laboratory. While scientific expertise and the responsibility for...
Read MoreBert Rovere’s Paris Inn & the lighter side of FBI undercover work – 1936
This was in the first draft of The Girl in the Iron Box. As much as I love the story, it had to go. Enjoy! If an undercover special agent wanted to show his “date” a good time, impress her with his life style, spill a few drinks, and trick her into spilling what she knew about the kidnapping of June Robles, he could do worse than take her to Bert Rovere’s Paris Inn. A favorite with the Hollywood crowd, the restaurant stood out in a city dotted with flashy and garish night spots. The exterior Paris Inn resembled a Norman castle, complete with turret, while the interior looked like a street café. The satisfied clientele was treated to French and Italian fare, singing waiters, and an orchestra playing opera and jazz, accompanied at times by the burly baritone-voiced...
Read MoreWriting grassroots history
I think it was C.L. Sonnichsen who coined the title “grassroots historian.” Certainly, he wrote about and defined such non-academic (and often non-academically trained) historians in an article of the same name appearing in a 1970 issue of Southwestern Historical Quarterly (Vol. 73, No. 3, January, 1970, pp. 381-392). You can find the article at http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/30238074?uid=3739960&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21100835322691 . I can’t speak for other fields of history, but in the niche of Old West lawmen/outlaws/gunfighters/armed & dangerous sodbusters, the grassroots historian probably has been responsible for much, if not most of the discoveries of the past 35 or more years concerning the details of the lives, acts of violence, and deaths of such men (and occasional women), and of the many men and women who were witness to or wrapped up in their stories. The Journal of the Wild West History Association...
Read MoreLooking for family papers of former FBI Special Agents
While I have personnel files for most the of FBI Special Agents who are the leading characters in my book-in-progress on the FBI’s investigation into the 1934 kidnapping of 6-year-old June Robles, I would like to flesh out this material with family photos, letters, and other papers dealing with the following agents (referred to only by initials in many documents): Harold Edward Andersen / H.E. Andersen Orville C. Dewey / O.C. Dewey Joseph Edward Patrick Dunn / J.E.P. Dunn Carlton J. Endres / C.J. Endres Chapmon Fletcher James Malcolm O’Leary / J.M. O’Leary Enos Sandberg Manuel Sorola Lewis Charles Taylor / L.C. Taylor Clarence D. White / C.D. White The personnel files of Andersen and Dewey were severely gutted by the Bureau for unknown reasons, and so family papers would be especially helpful in their...
Read MorePaulCoolBooks.com Redesigned!
Welcome to my new website. Here you’ll find all the news about my writings, past, current, and planned. I may not blog the recommended 3x a week (or is it 3x a day?), but I will from time to time take you on side trips flowing from my research into the FBI’s investigation into the 1934 kidnapping of June Robles, my thoughts about the craft of writing and the business of publishing history, and anything else I want to draw your attention to. And the first thing on that list is my thanks to Jerry and Michelle Dorris of AuthorSupport.com for creating this...
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