Kingpin: Prisoner of the War on Drugs (Cannabis Americanan: Remembrance of the War on Plants, Book 2)
5/5
()
About this ebook
Captured in the lobby of the Sheraton Senator Hotel at LAX following a fifteen-year run smuggling marijuana and hashish as part of the hippie mafia, Richard Stratton began a new journey. Kingpin tells the story of the eight years that followed, through two federal trials and the underworld of the federal prison system, at a time when it was undergoing unprecedented expansion due to the War on Drugs. Stratton was shipped by bus from LA's notorious Glass House to jails and prisons across the country, a softening process known as diesel therapy. Resisting pressure to falsely implicate his friend and mentor, Norman Mailer, he was convicted in his second trial under the kingpin statute and sentenced to twenty-five years without the possibility of parole.
While doing time in prisons from Manhattan's Criminal Hilton to rural Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, and New York, he witnessed brutality as well as camaraderie, rampant trafficking of contraband, and crimes by both guards and convicts. He first learned the lessons of survival. Then he learned to prevail, becoming a jailhouse lawyer and winning the reversal of his kingpin sentence and eventual release.
Kingpin includes cameos by Norman Mailer, Muhammad Ali, and John Gotti, and an account of the author's friendship with mafia don Joe Stassi, a legendary hitman from the early days of the mob who knew gangsters Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Abe Zwillman and has insights into the killing of Dutch Schultz and the Kennedy assassination.
Kingpin is the second volume in Richard Stratton's trilogy, Remembrance of the War on Plants.
Richard Stratton
Richard Stratton is an award-winning writer and filmmaker. He wrote and produced the feature film Slam, which won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance and the Camera d'Or at Cannes, and Whiteboyz. He is the author of the Cannabis America trilogy—Smuggler's Blues: A True Story of the Hippie Mafia; Kingpin: Prisoner of The War on Drugs; and In the World: From the Big House to Hollywood—as well as Altered States of America: Outlaws and Icons, Hitmakers and Hitmen. His fiction and journalism have appeared in numerous outlets, including GQ, Esquire, Details, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Spin, Playboy, and Story Magazine. Stratton resides in New York City with his wife Antoinette and is the father of five children.
Read more from Richard Stratton
Smuggler's Blues: A True Story of the Hippie Mafia (Cannabis Americana: Remembrance of the War on Plants, Volume 1) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In the World: From the Big House to Hollywood (Cannabis Americana: Remembrance of the War on Plants, Book 3) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Kingpin
Related ebooks
From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Observer: The Prison People; The Prison Experience Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCha-Cha in the Hood Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSmuggler’s Blues: The Saga of a Marijuana Importer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gladiator: A Shocking View into the Most Notorious Super-Max Prison:: Drug War & Prison Stories BEFORE CHRIST book 1, #5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMurder for Hire: My Life As the Country's Most Successful Undercover Agent Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lock Up Diaries: An Inside Look at Drug Wars in Prison: Drug War & Prison Stories BEFORE CHRIST book 1, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Real Mr. Big: How a Colombian Refugee Became the United Kingdom’s Most Notorious Cocaine Kingpin Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsConversations Through The Vent Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCorruption Officer: From Jail Guard to Perpetrator Inside Rikers Island Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hard Time: Life with Sheriff Joe Arpaio in America's Toughest Jail Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Strung Out: A Novella Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Whole Other World "Life in the Shadows of Prison" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMemoirs of a Bad Bitch Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lifer and the Lawyer: A Story of Punishment, Penitence, and Privilege Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Serving Life 25-One Guard's Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings3 Decades Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBARS AND PENS: The Biography of a Prison Writer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKilling For Love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Beat: Life on the Streets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCell-Shocked: I Crash-Landed into a Maximum Security Prison Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNext Stop: Growing Up Wild-Style in the Bronx Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Con Man: The Making of a Monster Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Chronicles of Mob Wives: Salvatore Gravano AKA Sammy The Bull Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDoughboy: Memoirs of the Streets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Crackhead Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStone City: Life In The Penitentiary Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Hard Cell: My Incarceration And The Prison Conditions That Almost Ended My Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStraight Dope: A 360 degree look into American drug culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSick Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5
Crime & Violence For You
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil You Know: Encounters in Forensic Psychiatry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chasing the Scream: The Inspiration for the Feature Film "The United States vs. Billie Holiday" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bloodbath Nation Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence | Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Stone Unturned: The True Story of the World's Premier Forensic Investigators Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight (2nd Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEvidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Murder at McDonald's: The Killers Next Door Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5And The Mountains Echoed Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Violent Abuse of Women: In 17th and 18th Century Britain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letter to a Bigot: Dead But Not Forgotten Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Death Row, Texas: Inside the Execution Chamber Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Regarding the Pain of Others Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Best New True Crime Stories: Small Towns Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sleep, My Child, Forever: The Riveting True Story of a Mother Who Murdered Her Own Children Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lost Girls: The Unsolved American Mystery of the Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Murders Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5400 Things Cops Know: Street-Smart Lessons from a Veteran Patrolman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Enigma of Ted Bundy: The Questions and Controversies Surrounding America's Most Infamous Serial Killer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Kingpin
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Kingpin is a chronicle of the author's time spent incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of Prisons for trafficking in marijuana in the 1980's. As a retired official in that agency, I fully expected this book to be another "hit-job" on some con's prejudices against the BOP, as well as how he was an innocent bystander who never committed the crime. I was very pleasantly surprised. While Stratton (the author) does not pull punches over what he thinks was a bad organization (the Bureau of Punishment), he also doesn't deny his crimes. On the contrary, he admits them, is totally unrepentant, and is what we would have called a "real convict" (that's actually a compliment among officers). Stratton "does his own time", and never rats on anyone else. Even when the forces of the federal government are stacked against him to get him to roll over on his higher-ups, Stratton sucks it up and takes his lumps, receiving a much harsher sentence than if he had cooperated. As far as his description of life in the BOP, I question some of his experiences with "dirty staff", but am not naive enough to not admit they may be true. In my over 20 years of service, I ran into dirty staff. And many, many staff like his "Smurf". Furthermore, his chronicling of the "diesel therapy", the life in the units, and his knowledge of (and exploiting) of the rules is pretty much spot-on. And, this may surprise Stratton, but even former BOP employees are dismayed at the way "the war on drugs" was handled. There are times that I think Stratton overplays his sense of importance in prison. One example was "given my elevated status as the jailhouse lawyer par excellence in the joint". Yes, it was admirable that he self-taught himself law while locked up. But, F Lee Bailey he is not. And his claims of running units for the officers was overdone. But, and this is the part I most enjoyed about the book. Stratton has an amazing gift of insight into himself. Time and time again in the book I found parts where he let down his guard and laid bare his soul. In the very beginning, he states "prison is an unreasonable place, for we live in a world of damaged men where all that matters is how one carries oneself". That describes prison to a T! Your life in prison, as an inmate or BOP employee, is all dependent upon how you carry yourself. Treat others with respect, be a man of your word, and do what you say you will, are the secrets to survival in prison. Another quote: "Maybe my life here is not so bad, but it is still prison. The worst thing about prison, as I've said before, and I'll say it again, is that it's lonely. It is so fucking lonely. Brutally lonely, especially for a man who loves the company of women. Yes, you make friends.....And I've learned a lot about men from all strata of society. But at the end of the day, life in prison is as lonely as the tomb. You are cut off from the people you love, cut off from the real world and real life; and that is the punishment". So true. I wish he could speak to young people and express that to them. Towards the end of the book, Stratton sums up his experiences well. "Criminal, inmate, convict, prisoner, kingpin, drug smuggler; these are the words the authorities use to describe me. But there is something to be said for having taken responsibility for my actions and having served the time. Whatever else they may call me, they can never say rat; that's a name I would have had to take to the grave". Bravo, Stratton. Believe it or not, even an old hack can give you props for that! An excellent book. Very well written. Very well told. I'm looking forward to going back and reading some of his earlier work. Highly recommend!