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My interest in the True Crime genre in general and vintage gangsters in particular stems from one source: a simultaneous love of history and mystery. That double-faceted fascination has resulted in two books to date: Guns and Roses, the Untold Story of Dean O'Banion, Chicago's Big Shot Before Al Capone and The Man Who Got Away, the Bugs Moran Story(Cumberland House Publishing, 2004 and 2005 respectively). I'm currently working on a third project, The Starker, which is both a biography of Manhattan crime lord Big Jack Zelig and an examination of his mysterious role in the Becker-Rosenthal case of 1912.

So why write about O'Banion and Moran? To begin with, I find the Prohibition era fascinating because it was a national knee-jerk reaction to a restrictive law that no one save its sponsors really wanted. It was a carnival atmosphere, and the gangsters manned the refreshment stands, so to speak. Some were ugly figures with no redeeming qualities, like psychotic gunman Frank McErlane or the 'murder twins' Scalise and Anselmi, but others, such as Dean O'Banion and George Moran, had enough personality and humanity show through their tough exteriors to suggest that had circumstances and opportunities been different earlier in their lives, they might have become something else. Others noticed it: Chicago reporter Edward Dean Sullivan described O'Banion as "a whale of a fellow" and "as valorous a person as I had ever encountered." Judge John H. Lyle, who delighted in tormenting gangsters with a succession of vagrancy warrants, had enough private admiration for George Moran to make liberal mention of him in his memoir The Dry and Lawless Years.

I was intrigued because little was known about both men personally, despite the volumes of newsprint devoted to their exploits. Enter the 'mystery' aspect of their appeal as biography subjects. Researching their lives did nothing to tarnish their legend: if anything, talking to the O'Banion and Moran families, examining official documents, and interviewing those who knew them personally just resulted in some major myths being debunked and more intriguing aspects of their characters emerging. Judging from the volume of correspondence I have been receiving since both books came out, fans of the Prohibition gangster literature have appreciated the new slants on old, popular subjects.

Big Jack Zelig, whose life story I am presently tackling, is also proving to be a complex and colorful research subject. History has tagged him as a bloodthirsty street rat who supplied Lieutenant Charles Becker with the gunmen to kill Herman Rosenthal: material dragged out of various archives and correspondence with Zelig's descendants are altering that picture significantly.

Although I write about gangsters, I am not an apologist for criminals. Nor am I fascinated with violent crime: no amount of money could ever convince me to write a manuscript about Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, or the BTK killer. I won't even read the current books on such subjects, however much I might admire the biographers. Serial killers might be worthy of study in some scientific or medical journal, but it's my personal belief that reconstructing in print the stalking, terrorizing, and torture they indulged in serves no other purpose than to cater to the same ghoulish fascination that draws the curious to fatal car crash sites or cordoned-off murder scenes.

Those who see things strictly in terms of black and white might suggest that Dean O'Banion, Bugs Moran, and Jack Zelig (not to mention John Dillinger, Al Capone, and Arnold Rothstein, all subject matter on my bookshelf) are merely lesser degrees of the same malevolent force that spawned the Boston Strangler, Jack the Ripper, and the Ax Man of New Orleans. I'll leave such opinions to the tunnel vision that inspired them. Without excusing the violence that my biography subjects were capable of, I can safely say that not one of them was motivated by bloodlust or a delight in causing suffering. In fact, O'Banion, Moran, and Zelig expended tremendous amounts of time and money in alleviating poverty and despair in their respective territories, and without exception stayed true to Bugsy Siegel's often-quoted assurance that "We only kill each other."

-Rose Keefe