
The King of Diamonds
The Search for the Elusive Texas Jewel Thief
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Narrated by:
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Erin Dion
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By:
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Rena Pederson
About this listen
As a string of high-profile jewel thefts went unsolved during the Swinging Sixties, the press dubbed the elusive thief the King of Diamonds. Like Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, the King was so bold that he tip-toed into the homes of millionaires while they were home, hiding in their closets and daring to smoke while they were sleeping.
Rena Pederson, then a young reporter with UPI, started following the elusive thief while she managed the night desk. With gymnastic skill, he climbed trees and crawled across rooftops to take jewels from heiresses, oil kings, corporate CEOs—some of the richest people of their time. Scotland Yard and Interpol were on the look-out, but the thief was never caught nor the jewels recovered.
To follow the tracks of the thief, Rena has interviewed more than two hundred people, from cops to strippers. She went to pawn shops, Las Vegas casinos, and a Mafia hangout—and discovered that beneath the glittering façade of Dallas debutante parties was a world of sex trafficking, illegal gambling, and political graft. When one of the leading suspects was found dead in highly unusual circumstances, the story darkened. High society crashed head-first into Mickey Spillane.
The odd psychological aspects of the The King of Diamonds give us a different kind of crime story. Detectives were stumped: Why did the thief break into houses when his targets were inside, increasing the risk of being captured? As one socialite put it, “It was a very peculiar business.”
©2024 Rena Pederson (P)2024 Dreamscape MediaListeners also enjoyed...
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Red Hook
- Brooklyn Mafia, Ground Zero
- By: Frank Dimatteo, Michael Benson
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Packed with jaw-dropping stories of public violence and personal vengeance, vivid insights into the Mafia's way of life, and shocking portraits of America's most wanted crime families, Red Hook is a must-listen for anyone fascinated by the history of organized crime in America.
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Nothing
- By Keith Michel on 05-19-25
By: Frank Dimatteo, and others
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Handsome Johnny
- The Life and Death of Johnny Rosselli: Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Assassin
- By: Lee Server
- Narrated by: B. J. Harrison
- Length: 18 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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A rich biography of the legendary figure at the center of the century’s darkest secrets: an untold story of Golden Age Hollywood, modern Las Vegas, JFK-era scandal, and international intrigue from Lee Server, the New York Times best-selling author of Ava Gardner: Love Is Nothing....
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Great Story
- By A. Holmes on 03-25-19
By: Lee Server
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A Fatal Inheritance
- How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery
- By: Lawrence Ingrassia
- Narrated by: Roger Wayne
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Ingrassia lost his mother, two sisters, brother, and nephew to cancer—different cancers developing at different points throughout their lives. And while highly unusual, his family is not the only one to wonder whether their heartbreak is the result of unbelievable bad luck, or if there might be another explanation. Through meticulous research and riveting storytelling, Ingrassia takes us from the 1960s—when Dr. Frederick Pei Li and Dr. Joseph Fraumeni Jr. first met, not yet knowing that they would help make a groundbreaking discovery that would affect cancer patients for decades to come.
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Touching story with powerful lessons in hope.
- By Patricia Elizondo on 07-05-24
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Crossing the Borders of Time
- A True Story of War, Exile, and Love Reclaimed
- By: Leslie Maitland
- Narrated by: Leslie Maitland
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Leslie Maitland is an award-winning former New York Times investigative reporter whose mother and grandparents fled Germany in 1938 for France, where, as Jews, they spent four years as refugees—the last two under risk of Nazi deportation. In 1942 they made it onto the last boat to escape France before the Germans sealed the harbors. Then, barred from entering the United States, they lived in Cuba for almost two years before immigrating to New York.
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I didn't want it to end..absolutely wonderful!
- By Ellen on 05-07-12
By: Leslie Maitland
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Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them
- A Cosmic Quest from Zero to Infinity
- By: Antonio Padilla
- Narrated by: Antonio Padilla
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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For particularly brilliant theoretical physicists like James Clerk Maxwell, Paul Dirac, or Albert Einstein, the search for mathematical truths led to strange new understandings of the ultimate nature of reality. But what are these truths? What are the mysterious numbers that explain the universe? In Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them, the leading theoretical physicist and YouTube star Antonio Padilla takes us on an irreverent cosmic tour of nine of the most extraordinary numbers in physics, offering a startling picture of how the universe works.
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Exciting, Strange, Difficult = Meh
- By Michael on 05-23-23
By: Antonio Padilla
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American Exception
- Empire and the Deep State
- By: Aaron Good
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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To trace the evolution of the American state, Aaron Good takes a deep-politics approach. The term “deep state” was badly misappropriated during the Trump era. In the simplest sense, it here refers to all those institutions that collectively exercise undemocratic power over state and society. To trace how we arrived at this point, American Exception explores various deep state institutions and history-making interventions.
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I buy the premises, but not the conclusions...
- By Clark on 01-05-23
By: Aaron Good
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The Craft
- How the Freemasons Made the Modern World
- By: John Dickie
- Narrated by: Simon Slater
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Founded in London in 1717 as a way of binding men in fellowship, Freemasonry proved so addictive that within two decades it had spread across the globe. Masonic influence became pervasive. Under George Washington, the Craft became a creed for the new American nation. Masonic networks held the British empire together. Under Napoleon, the Craft became a tool of authoritarianism and then a cover for revolutionary conspiracy. Both the Mormon Church and the Sicilian mafia owe their origins to Freemasonry.
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The best book about Freemasonry out there.
- By Isaac Pea on 02-19-21
By: John Dickie
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The Human Tide
- How Population Shaped the Modern World
- By: Paul Morland
- Narrated by: Zeb Soanes
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The rise and fall of the British Empire; the emergence of America as a superpower; the ebb and flow of global challenges from Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Soviet Russia. These are the headlines of history, but they cannot be properly grasped without understanding the role that population has played. The Human Tide shows how periods of rapid population transition - a phenomenon that first emerged in the British Isles but gradually spread across the globe - shaped the course of world history.
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dry
- By Ralph C. on 05-02-19
By: Paul Morland
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The Ravenmaster
- My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London
- By: Christopher Skaife
- Narrated by: Christopher Skaife
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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The title of Ravenmaster is a serious title indeed, and after decades of serving the Queen, Yeoman Warder Christopher Skaife took on the added responsibility of caring for the infamous ravens. In The Ravenmaster, he lets listeners in on his life as he feeds his birds raw meat and biscuits soaked in blood, buys their food at Smithfield Market, and ensures that these unusual, misunderstood, and utterly brilliant corvids are healthy, happy, and ready to captivate the four million tourists who flock to the Tower every year.
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A Classic, I Was Spellbound! Master Story Telling!
- By A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. on 10-08-18
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The Field of Blood
- Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War
- By: Joanne B. Freeman
- Narrated by: Joanne B. Freeman
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the US Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative even killed another in a duel. Many were beaten and bullied in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance, particularly on the issue of slavery.
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fascinating look at an untold aspect of US.history
- By P. Cardella on 09-27-18
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The Burning Shore
- How Hitler's U-Boats Brought World War II to America
- By: Ed Offley
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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On June 15, 1942, as thousands of vacationers lounged in the sun on Virginia Beach, a massive fireball erupted from a convoy of oil tankers steaming into Chesapeake Bay. By the next day, three ships lay at the bottom of the channel, victims of Lieutenant-Commander Horst Degen and his crew on the German submarine U-701. In The Burning Shore, acclaimed military reporter Ed Offley presents a thrilling account of Degen's rampage along the American coast and of US Lieutenant Harry J. Kane's quest to bring him down.
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Ugh, Perhaps a Second Listen is Required?
- By Matthew on 09-05-15
By: Ed Offley
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T
- The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone That Dominates and Divides Us
- By: Carole Hooven
- Narrated by: Rachel Perry
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Through riveting personal stories and the latest research, Harvard evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven shows how testosterone drives the behavior of the sexes apart and how understanding the science behind this hormone is empowering for all.
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I wanted more science
- By L on 09-04-21
By: Carole Hooven
Fantastic Read!
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Erin Dion delivers the narrative with charm and brings a lot of character to the story.
Completely Engaging
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TMZ from 1950’s Dallas
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Great read
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Interesting history of Dallas
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Won’t read a better book
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Interesting look back into jewel thefts and detailed dive into histories of many Dallas figures
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No plot.
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Back to the book...although interesting, it rambles quite a bit, going back and forth among the various society celebrities. Just when I thought Ms. Pederson was about to reveal the identity of the jewel thief, back she would go to follow another rich person's story. The narrator is just fair, and should have researched some pronunciations. She calls the famous Four Sixes Ranch, the six-six-six-six ranch, and seriously butchers the Terpsichorean Club as Terpsi-KOREAN. No crime here, just wishing she had learned something about Texas that would lead to correct pronunciation. In fact, a narratator with a strong Texas accent would have been perfect.
Mystery Unsolved
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The is book is somewhat interesting.
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