A Birthday Present or The Case That Brought Me to True Crime
A stickied megathread on the r/TrueCrime subreddit got me thinking. What was the case that brought me to true crime?
From Crimes In Progress editorial: I probably should have taken this approach with a previous piece, “An A.M. Murder” but it felt, and still feels, disingenuous to do so. Crimes intrigued me from a narrative perspective, for reasons I’ll explain in the following words, from a young age. It wasn’t until much later that I realized the importance of crime in our literature and society. In any case, this is more of a birthday gift to myself (February 6th, in case you’re wondering) than a genuine piece of true crime. To any objection, I blow raspberries in your general direction. Hope you enjoy nonetheless.
“He’s into James Bond, spy stuff… and detectives, just get him something like that.”
- My mother while talking to my grandmother about my eleventh birthday. The second she got off the phone, I remember whining that I only liked spy stuff. Not detectives. By that point, I had read most of the original Ian Fleming James Bond books and a few of the newer ones. One of my most cherished positions as a kid was “The Ultimate Spy Book” by H. Keith Melton, published by D.K. She told me not to worry, she had mentioned the spy thing. You can guess what happened but I’ll tell you anyway.
In the late 1990s, Barnes & Noble published a cheap edition of the complete works of Sherlock Holmes. I received my copy from my grandparents, Yuya and Pato, on my eleventh birthday with fake enthusiasm. They had gotten me tickets to the right ballpark but on a night when the wrong sport was playing.
Growing up as an Army brat, tales of daring do were common around the house. It wasn’t that my dad or his friends were bragging, they were simply sharing stories from the office, as unique as it was. Most were college educated and long practiced in the kind of euphemisms that makes such work seem romantic. I never had much interest in being a soldier, an apathy that my mom and dad encouraged. But I was fascinated by spies. The liars, the assassins, the thieves, the forgotten that operate with a purpose no one else understands.
So it was to my great annoyance that I received the complete Sherlock Holmes as birthday gift. Earlier that year, I had been asked to read “The Red-Headed League” in school and quite enjoyed it, as far as school reading assignments go. (The best school reading assignment from that time was “The Most Dangerous Game”, especially because I finally realized the context of that one Ice-T movie that constantly ran on TNT.) But my first Doyle experience wasn’t enough to follow up. I didn’t read a single other Sherlock story until they were all dropped into my lap.
I acted grateful and appreciative though I did point out the price tag, I think it was less than $5, when my mom and I were in a Barnes & Noble later that week. But now I sit here, on my 31st birthday, managing a website called Crimes In Progress with one crime novel under my belt and another on the way.
It was the best mistaken birthday present an ungrateful asshole, or average eleven year old, could have received.
“Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing,” answered Holmes thoughtfully. “It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.”
- From The Boscombe Valley Mystery, a Doyle short story written during the original, i.e. before his “death”, run of Sherlock Holmes.
Drawing a straight line from my love of Sherlock Holmes to writing about crime misses a big point. As noted in previous articles, Doyle rarely ventured into true crime. It goes back to espionage.
Spies are very well trained criminals. When operating under diplomatic cover, they’re given trials. The others just disappear. They have a code and purpose. In the real world, spies and criminals can be one in the same.
Enrique “Ricky” Prado is a distinguished veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Prado fled Cuba with his family after Castro took power and attended high school in Miami. He joined the Air Force but didn’t see combat during Vietnam. After returning to Miami to become a firefighter, he attempted to join the Agency but failed the background check over family concerns. When the Reagan Administration began pursuing covert wars in Latin America, Prado suddenly became a major commodity. So much so that various agencies ignored the fact he was likely a hitman for a dangerous Miami drug smuggler.
“In protecting Prado, the CIA arguably allowed a new type of mole — an agent not of a foreign government but of American criminal interests — to penetrate command.”
- Evan Wright, author of How to Get Away With Murder in America, an in depth investigation into the career of Ricky Prado. Wright, who also wrote Generation Kill, also accused Prado of organizing a non operational, government approved, assassination team that later found a home at private mercenary outfit Blackwater, now Academi, formerly XE Services.
The exact trail of evidence linking Prado to a life of crime is difficult to parse and leaves room for doubt. It is worth considering that the traits that make for a successful hitman would also make for a successful spy. Care, consideration, and planning are necessary for both.
Prado was accused by one known Miami criminal of having participated in the contract killing of Richard Schwartz, stepson to mobster Meyer Lansky, in 1977. The Miami-Dade Police Department would investigate Prado for at least seven murders, according to Wright’s research. Perhaps because of his CIA connections or perhaps because the information was unfounded, the investigations yielded nothing. Today, Prado is a celebrated veteran of one of America’s most elite agencies. Regardless of his past, that will always remain true.
Fans of true crime find their way to it. True crime is a funnel for certain interests, from death and weapons to deception and law. If all literary roads in Western literature lead to Rome, true crime is definitely a stop along the way. What is the death of Julius Caesar if not an epic true crime story?
Writers spend a lot of time looking for ways to add weight to their words. Some find new takes on universal themes or craft immaculate sentences filled with ten dollar words. A few of us just focus on crime. Every aspect of crime speaks to the society that allowed it, investigated it, judged it, and penalized it.
Crime stories can be plainspoken because they’re inherently important. If not for a misguided but wonderful birthday present, I might not know that.
Andrew Egan is writer and editor of Crimes In Progress. His work has appeared in Forbes Magazine, ABC News, Atlas Obscura, Tedium, and more. You can read his article, “Any Which Way but Down or A Fair Amount of Male Nudity in the American West” in the December 2016 issue of Blue Skies Magazine. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. His novel, Nothing Too Original, is available now for Kindle and paperback.
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