Summary :
The idea for this book came from a good source: singer/songwriter Willie Nelson. Several years ago, I was attending a seminar in Austin, Texas, when my old friend and fellow prosecutor, James Tucker, said, “Meet me at the back door of the hotel at precisely 6:00 p.m., and don’t tell anyone where we’re going.” The second part was easy—I had no idea where we were going. At the appointed hour, James ushered me into his rental car with two other old friends: Lee Radek, chief of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, and Marshall Jarrett, head of the Office of Professional Responsibility, the dreaded ethics watchdog of DOJ. Was I in trouble? Somehow I didn’t think so. James said, “We’re headed to Willie Nelson’s ranch for a barbecue. My daughter married Willie’s nephew.” It was a memorable evening. Willie and his nephew played speed chess on a lighted board while we ate barbecue under the stars and his sister and his wife and their two little boys kept things lively. One thing did worry me at first: How would Willie Nelson feel about being surrounded by Feds after his well-publicized troubles with the IRS? Turns out it was no problem. We began swapping courtroom war stories. Willie liked my stories about incompetent bank robbers like the one whose getaway car wouldn’t start and the one who wrote his demand note on the back of his personal check. The next day, as we were leaving, Willie told James, “That fellow from Mississippi who tells those stories. Bring him back. He should write a book.” That comment got me started. I began to keep records of our more interesting cases—not only the bank robbers, but the scam artists, hit men, protected witnesses, colorful informants, defendants with funny nicknames, over-the-top investigators, and those defendants who had a certain roguish charm. Civic clubs and book clubs began to invite me to tell them war stories. By the time I retired in 2007, I had more than thirty-five boxes of files full of trial stories—some funny, some tragic, all unique in a Faulknerian way. Several of the characters have since had whole books written about them like Dickie Scruggs, Emmett Till, Chicago gang leader Jeff Fort and Paddy Mitchell, leader of the most successful bank robbery gang of the twentieth century, the guys who wore rubber masks of ex-presidents like Mitchell in the Nixon mask proclaiming during a robbery, “I am not a crook.” That part of their act was portrayed in the movie Point Break with Patrick Swayze.