The Snatch Racket: The Kidnapping Epidemic That Terrorized 1930s America
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Narrated by:
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Jacob Pinter
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By:
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Carolyn Cox
About this listen
Although the 1932 kidnapping of aviator Charles Lindbergh’s baby was a worldwide sensation, it was only one of an estimated 3,000 ransom kidnappings that occurred in the United States that year. The epidemic hit America during the Great Depression and the last days of Prohibition as criminal gangs turned kidnapping into the highly lucrative “snatch racket".
Wealthy families and celebrities purchased kidnap insurance, hired armed chauffeurs and bodyguards, and carried loaded handguns. Some sent their children to school or summer camp in Europe to get them out of harm’s way. “Recent Kidnappings in America” was a regular feature in the New York Times, while Time magazine included kidnappings in its weekly list of notable births, deaths, and other milestones.
The Snatch Racket is the story of a crime epidemic that so frightened families that it undermined confidence in law enforcement and government in general. In response, President Franklin D. Roosevelt waged a three-year war against kidnappers with J. Edgar Hoover and his G-men (newly empowered to carry weapons and make arrests) on the front lines. This first US war against terrorism revolutionized and modernized law enforcement in the United States, dramatically expanding the powers of the federal government in the fight against not only kidnapping but many new types of interstate crime.
At the heart of the narrative are some of the most iconic names of the 20th century: Rockefeller, Ford, Lindbergh, Roosevelt, Hoover, Capone, Schwarzkopf, and Hearst, all caught up in the kidnapping frenzy. The Snatch Racket is a spellbinding account of terrifying abductions of prominent citizens, gangsters invading homes with machine guns, the struggles of law enforcement, and the courage of families doing whatever it took to bring home the ransomed.
©2021 Carolyn Cox (P)2022 Carolyn CoxListeners also enjoyed...
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A good (but a little corny) history of LA
- By Jimmy on 10-23-12
By: John Buntin
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Oklahoma City
- What the Investigation Missed - and Why It Still Matters
- By: Andrew Gumbel, Roger G. Charles
- Narrated by: Todd Waring
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In Oklahoma City, veteran investigative journalists Andrew Gumbel and Roger G. Charles puncture the myth about what happened on that day - one that has persisted in the minds of the American public for nearly two decades. Working with unprecedented access to government documents, a voluminous correspondence with Terry Nichols, and more than 150 interviews with those immediately involved, Gumbel and Charles demonstrate how much was missed in the official investigation.
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A Catalog
- By Lynn on 07-31-12
By: Andrew Gumbel, and others
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The Plot to Kill King
- The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
- By: Dr. William F. Pepper Esq.
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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William Pepper was James Earl Ray's lawyer in the trial for the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., and even after Ray's conviction and death, Pepper continues to adamantly argue Ray's innocence. This myth-shattering expose is a revised, updated, and heavily expanded volume of Pepper's original best-selling and critically-acclaimed book of the same name, with 26 years of additional research included. The result reveals dramatic new details of the night of the murder, the trial, and why Ray was chosen to take the fall for an evil conspiracy.
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Required listening
- By MJ in LA on 07-20-17
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The Corporation
- An Epic Story of the Cuban American Underworld
- By: T. J. English
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 19 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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By the mid 1980s, the criminal underworld in the United States had become an ethnic polyglot; one of the most powerful illicit organizations was none other than the Cuban mob. Known on both sides of the law as "the Corporation", the Cuban mob's power stemmed from a criminal culture embedded in south Florida's exile community - those who had been chased from the island by Castro's revolution and planned to overthrow the Marxist dictator and reclaim their nation.
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uncle joey approved
- By Anonymous User on 04-14-18
By: T. J. English
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Crime Beat
- A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers
- By: Michael Connelly
- Narrated by: Len Cariou, Nancy McKeon, Carl Franklin
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Abridged
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Before he became a novelist, Michael Connelly was a crime reporter, covering the detectives who worked the homicide beat in Florida and Los Angeles. In vivid, hard-hitting articles, Connelly leads the reader past the yellow police tape as he follows the investigators, the victims, their families and friends, and, of course, the killers, to tell the real stories of murder and its aftermath.
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Disappointment
- By Traci on 11-07-11
By: Michael Connelly
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Animal
- The Bloody Rise and Fall of the Mob's Most Feared Assassin
- By: Casey Sherman
- Narrated by: Jim Goad
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Joe Barboza knew that there were two requirements for getting inducted into the Mafia. You had to be Sicilian. And you had to commit a contract killing. The New Bedford-born mobster was a proud Portuguese, not Sicilian, but his dream to be part of La Cosa Nostra proved so strong that he thought he could create a loophole. Barboza’s legacy, buried for years thanks to the murders or deaths of its participants, is finally coming to light and being told in its unvarnished brutality by one of America’s most respected true crime writers.
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Well done. 5 stars.
- By robert price on 03-03-19
By: Casey Sherman
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Get Capone
- The Secret Plot That Captured America's Most Wanted Gangster
- By: Jonathan Eig
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 17 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed journalist and bestselling author Jonathan Eig blows the lid off the Al Capone story. Based on never-before-seen government documents and newly discovered letters written by Al Capone himself, Get Capone presents America's greatest gangster as you’ve never seen him before.
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Get this book
- By Jonathan on 05-13-10
By: Jonathan Eig
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Revolution’s End
- The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control, and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA
- By: Brad Schreiber
- Narrated by: Brad Schreiber
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Revolution's End fully explains the most famous kidnapping in US history, detailing Patty Hearst's relationship with Donald DeFreeze, known as Cinque, the head of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Not only did the heiress have a sexual relationship with DeFreeze while he was imprisoned, she didn't know he was an informant and a victim of prison behavior modification.
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Interesting spin
- By jay rollins on 08-29-20
By: Brad Schreiber
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American Mafia
- A History of Its Rise to Power
- By: Thomas Reppetto
- Narrated by: Paul Costanzo
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Organized crime - the Italian American kind - has long been a source of popular entertainment and legend. Now Thomas Reppetto provides a balanced history of the Mafia's rise - from the 1880s to the post-World War II era - that is as exciting as it is authoritative. Structuring his narrative around a series of case histories featuring such infamous characters as Lucky Luciano and Al Capone, Reppetto draws on a lifetime of field experience and access to unseen documents to show us a locally grown Mafia.
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Mob at its best
- By Thomas on 02-14-23
By: Thomas Reppetto
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Reclaiming History
- The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
- By: Vincent Bugliosi
- Narrated by: Edward Herrmann
- Length: 18 hrs and 6 mins
- Abridged
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Polls reveal that 85 percent of Americans believe there was a conspiracy behind Lee Harvey Oswald. Some even believe Oswald was entirely innocent. In this encyclopedic, absorbing audiobook, Vincent Bugliosi shows how the public has come to believe such lies about the day that changed the course of history. Bugliosi has devoted almost 20 years of his life to this project, and is determined to show that, despite the overwhelming popular perception, Oswald killed Kennedy and acted alone.
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Exceptional Detailed Account
- By Lindsay on 06-20-07
By: Vincent Bugliosi
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The Quiet Don
- The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino
- By: Matt Birkbeck
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Secretive - even reclusive - Russell Bufalino quietly built his organized crime empire in the decades between Prohibition and the Carter presidency. His reach extended far beyond the coal country of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and quaint Amish farms near Lancaster. Bufalino had a hand in global, national, and local politics of the largest American cities, many of its major industries, and controlled the powerful Teamsters Union. His influence also reached the highest levels of Pennsylvania government and halls of Congress, and his legacy left a culture of corruption that continues to this day.
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Important But Edited By Lawyers?
- By Ted on 04-03-14
By: Matt Birkbeck
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Satan's Circus
- Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century
- By: Mike Dash
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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They called it Satan's Circus, a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway. At the turn of the 20th century, murder was so common in the vice district that few people were surprised when the loudmouthed owner of a shabby casino was gunned down on the steps of its best hotel.
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New York, N.Y
- By Robert on 07-11-07
By: Mike Dash
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The First Family
- Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia
- By: Mike Dash
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Before the Five Families who so notoriously dominated U.S. organized crime for a bloody half-century, there was the one-fingered, surpassingly cunning Giuseppe Morello and his murderous coterie of brothers. Born into a life of poverty in rural Sicily, Morello became an American nightmare, pioneering the bizarre initiation rituals, imaginative protection rackets, influential underworld reigns, and Mafia wars later popularized by countless books, television shows, and movies.
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The truth about the origins of the American mafia
- By J. Sovar on 01-09-13
By: Mike Dash
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Case Closed
- Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK
- By: Gerald Posner
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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The assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, continues to inspire interest ranging from well-meaning speculation to bizarre conspiracy theories and controversial filmmaking. But in this landmark audiobook, reissued with a new afterword for the 40th anniversary of the assassination, Gerald Posner examines all of the available evidence and reaches the only possible conclusion: Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
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Giving the truth - with some attitude
- By Amazon Customer on 06-13-15
By: Gerald Posner
What listeners say about The Snatch Racket: The Kidnapping Epidemic That Terrorized 1930s America
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- RB Vancouver
- 05-22-22
First Rate
Interesting story, very well written, gripping, perfectly narrated. Author has a fine, lucid style and paces the narrative well. True crime as it should be. I could only wish it were longer.
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