Matt Birkbeck                  

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DECONSTRUCTING SAMMY 

 Money, Music, Madness, and the Mob (Amistad/Harper Collins 2008)

 

Sammy Davis Jr. lived a storied life. Adored by millions over a six decade career he was considered an icon and a national treasure. But despite lifetime earnings that topped $50 million, Sammy died in 1990 near bankruptcy. His estate was declared insolvent, and there was no possibility of ever using Sammy’s name or likeness again. It was if Sammy never existed.  Years later his widow, Altovise, was living in poverty in Pennsylvania. With nowhere else to go she turned to Albert “Sonny” Murray , a former federal prosecutor,   to make one last attempt to resolve Sammy’s debts, restore his estate, and revive his legacy.

Sonny, heir to another great but struggling black legacy, spent seven years probing into Sammy’s life to understand how someone of great celebrity and wealth could have lost everything. This serious work of investigative journalism tells the extraordinary and explosive story of an international celebrity at the center of a confluence of entertainment, politics and organized crime and shows how Sammy’s  outsized talent couldn’t save him from him self.

   

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A BEAUTIFUL CHILD

 A True Story of Hope, Horror, and an Enduring Human Spirit (Berkley/Penguin Hardcover 2004, Paperback 2005)

 

Sharon Marshall was brilliant.

As a student at Forest Park High School near Atlanta, Georgia, Sharon was at the top of her class. She had a personality that radiated, and the blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty to match, making her one of the more popular, and respected, students.  She was the girl next door, her future filled with so much hope and promise. She was an American dream. 

But Sharon had secrets. Deep, disturbing secrets so shocking and complex, and so unique, they took more than a decade to unravel.

A Beautiful Child explores one of the most baffling, and chilling, cases in the annals of American law enforcement. It tells the gripping true story of a gifted, yet mysterious young woman trapped in the violent world of the murderous felon and fugitive she called her father.  What unfolds is a heartrending testament to the profound courage and perseverance of one woman trapped in the grip of extreme evil.

 

   

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A DEADLY SECRET

The Strange Disappearance of Kathie Durst

(Berkley/Penguin Hardcover 2002, Paperback 2003)

 

In 1982, Kathie Durst’s disappearance made front page headlines. A medical student, Kathie was the wife of Robert Durst, son of one of New York’s most powerful real estate magnates. Durst was a suspect in his wife’s disappearance but never charged and the case faded away, until 2001,  when a disheveled drifter was arrested for shoplifting at a Pennsylvania supermarket. It was Durst, in disguise and on the run for the grisly dismemberment of an elderly neighbor in Texas.  What transpired between Kathie’s disappearance in 1982 and his arrest nearly 20 years later was a cross country mystery of stolen IDs and multiple identities that raised some baffling questions about one of the country’s most prominent men and his family. 

   

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TILL DEATH DO US PART

Love, Marriage, and the Mind of the Killer Spouse, with Dr. Robi Ludwig,

(Atria/Simon & Schuster Hardcover 2006, Paperback 2007)

 

Every day six people in the U.S. are murdered by spouses or intimate partners. The stories of killer spouses captivate us, as they beg the questions of how so many seemingly normal and happy people manage to go over the edge.  Till Death Do Us Part presents the psychological profiles of notorious killer spouses – from Scott Peterson and Clara Harris to Rabbi Fred Neulander  and Betty Broderick. With gripping stories and probing insight, Till Death Do Us Part explores a phenomenon that many spouses can’t help but think about at some point in their relationships – which sheds light on the very notion of “happily ever after.”