Illinois Authors

St. Martin's Griffin 2022

This true story is the basis for the hit APPLE TV series, BLACK BIRD, starring Taron Edgerton, Paul Walter Hauser, Greg Kinnear, and Ray Liotta. Jimmy Keene was offered an impossible mission: Coax a confession out of a fellow inmate, a serial killer, and walk free. James Keene grew up outside of Chicago. Although he was the son of a policeman and rubbed shoulders with the city's elite, he ended up on the wrong side of the law and was sentenced to ten years with no chance of parole. Just a few months into his sentence, Keene was approached by the prosecutor who put him behind bars. He had convicted a man named Larry Hall for abducting and killing a fifteen-year-old. Although Hall was suspected of killing nineteen other young women, there was a chance he could still be released on appeal. If Keene could get him to confess to two murders, there would be no doubt about Hall's guilt. In return, Keene would get an unconditional release from prison. But he could also get killed. A story that gained national notoriety, Black Bird is Keene's powerful tale of peril, violence, and redemption.

Independently published 2018

With a new AFTERWORD about the extreme measures DeLorean took to stop this book—as featured in the Netflix documentary, Myth & Mogul: John DeLorean. WHEN IN OCTOBER 1982 THE FLAMBOYANT AUTO EXECUTIVE JOHN DELOREAN was arrested for possession of over sixteen million dollars’ worth of cocaine, the world was aghast and fascinated. FEW STARS HAD SHONE MORE BRIGHTLY THAN HIS: he was an “A” student who didn’t need to crack a book, a brilliant engineer renowned for saving Pontiac, a visionary entrepreneur who shot to the top of GM and then left it behind, a reputed Hollywood swinger, and a charismatic millionaire who seemed to care about the little people who worked for him. But there was a darker side to the DeLorean story, a side that more and more clouded his life until he was forced into what most believe was a last desperate attempt to save the two-year-old auto factory in Northern Ireland and its startling gull-winged stainless steel cars. FROM THE SHATTERED FRAGMENTS OF DELOREAN'S ACTS AND DREAMS, investigative journalist Hillel Levin—who began to look closely at the truth behind the image a year before anyone else did—has pieced together a fascinating picture of the man behind this contemporary myth. From the beginning, DeLorean's flight was fueled by a remarkable talent for financial legerdemain and corporate intrigue. Through meticulous research and interviews with the players in DeLorean's inner circle, Levin tracks the court cases and the lawsuits that accompanied his ascent, disentangles his convoluted and bizarre business schemes, explores the labyrinth of holding companies and paper corporations that channeled huge sums of other people's money into his personal control, and reconstructs the saga of the gull-winged car that, until the last, De Lorean believed would rise, Phoenix-like, from the ashes. AUTHORITATIVELY RESEARCHED FROM DETROIT TO BELFAST, packed with new information, GRAND DELUSIONS is a riveting, uniquely American story, and a cautionary tale of genius misapplied in the service of a runaway ego.

St. Martin's Griffin 2011

This true story is the basis for the hit APPLE TV series, BLACK BIRD, starring Taron Edgerton, Paul Walter Hauser, Greg Kinnear, and Ray Liotta. Jimmy Keene was offered an impossible mission: Coax a confession out of a fellow inmate, a serial killer, and walk free. Jimmy Keene grew up outside of Chicago. Although he was the son of a policeman and rubbed shoulders with the city's elite, he ended up on the wrong side of the law and was sentenced to ten years with no chance of parole. Just a few months into his sentence, Keene was approached by the prosecutor who put him behind bars. He had convicted a man named Larry Hall for abducting and killing a fifteen-year-old. Although Hall was suspected of killing nineteen other young women, there was a chance he could still be released on appeal. If Keene could get him to confess to two murders, there would be no doubt about Hall's guilt. In return, Keene would get an unconditional release from prison. But he could also get killed. A story that gained national notoriety, this is Keene's powerful tale of peril, violence, and redemption.

Crime Ink [S.l.] : 2024

An explosive work of investigative journalism revealing the travesty of justice that sent an innocent man to prison and let the real murderer of a teenage girl go free For most families that have suffered the unsolved murder of a loved one, a successful cold case investigation can finally bring closure to their tragedy and, ideally, bring the perpetrator to justice. But in 2013, when LaPorte, Indiana, police detectives arrested Jason Tibbs for the murder of sixteen-year-old Rayna Rison twenty years before, they sent an innocent man to prison, and they also removed a cloud over the victim's brother-in-law, Ray McCarty, who had previously been indicted for killing her. Three years before that, he pleaded guilty to molesting and impregnating her at the age of thirteen. Today, Tibbs sits in an Indiana prison serving a forty-year sentence for killing Rayna Rison. His conviction in 2014 was partly due to failures in his defense and evidence that the judge would not permit in the trial. But the fact that charges were dropped against McCarty and then filed against Tibbs speaks to the remarkable influence of politics on the criminal justice system in northwestern Indiana. It also shows how notorious cold cases can be used to concoct murder charges against an innocent man. Submerged is the first book to fully examine the Rayna Rison murder in meticulous detail, fully solving the crime through clues the police overlooked. Drawing on countless interviews and a deep examination of the legal record, Hillel Levin tells the tragic story of a girl whose family and justice system failed to protect her. It also reveals the prosecutorial and police misconduct used to convict Jason Tibbs.

Independently Published 2022

Bob Cooley was the Chicago Mafia’s fixer of court cases. During the 1970s and ‘80s, Cooley bribed judges, juries, and cops to keep his Mob clients out of jail. Paid handsomely for his services, he lived fast and enjoyed the protection of the men he served. Yet, by the end of the ‘90s, without a pending conviction, he became the star witness in nine federal trials that took down the most powerful Mafia family in the history of organized crime. When Corruption Was King is the story of a Mob lawyer turned mole with a million-dollar contract on his head who went back and forth between sin and sainthood—a turbulent youth, a stint on Chicago’s police force, law school, and then the inner sanctum of Chicago’s wiseguys. He dined with Mob bosses and shared “last suppers” with friends before their gangland executions. In a startling act of conscience, Cooley walked into the office of the U.S. Organized Crime Strike Force and agreed to wear a wire on the very same Mafia overlords who had made him a player. This book reveals the personal story behind the federal investigation that finally ended the dominance of organized crime in a great American city.