You Just Thought Your Home Was Safe
By Robert Riggs
You lock your doors at night. You check on your kids.
But what if the real threat is already inside—hiding in your phone, your smart TV, or your child's video game chat?
In this episode of True Crime Reporter®, former federal probation officer Art Bowker takes us into the digital battlefield unfolding inside your home.
Bowker’s book Surviving a Cyberattack: Securing Social Media and Protecting Your Home warns how predators groom teenagers with flattery, how romance scammers bleed retirees dry, and how artificial intelligence is being weaponized to impersonate loved ones.
Bowker and his coauthor Todd Shipley call themselves “The Cyber Safety Guys”.
This is the story about how cybercriminals not only bleed their victims but leave them emotionally devastated, isolated, and too ashamed to ask for help.
FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center - (IC3.gov)
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34:46
Why Do Women Love True Crime?
A Former 48 Hours Producer Reveals the Psychology and Power Behind the Genre
By Robert Riggs
When the curtain drops on everyday life, true crime shows like this podcast and especially those on television expose the darkest side of humanity.
Television relentlessly chases the latest trending crimes on police blotters and court dockets.
Claire St. Amant pursued those stories in the cutthroat world of prime-time television as a producer for CBS 48 Hours. She also produced segments for 60 Minutes.
She’s written a memoir about her experiences, Killer Story: The Truth Behind True Crime Televison.
Television executives have known for decades that the audience is overwhelmingly female.
We’re talking 70-80 percent, sometimes more. Mothers and daughters. Best friends.
Women of all ages coming together for what amounts to a girls’ night out… centered on murder.
You may want to go back and listen to my episode with Journalist Mike Cox.
He wrote a satire, Getting Away With Murder, Learning From Dateline and Other True Crime Shows.
So what’s going on here? Why are women so drawn to true crime?
Claire St Amant, now a fellow true crime podcaster, shares her insights.
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35:34
This Is Not The Godfather – It’s the Brutal Truth About the Mob
By Robert Riggs
The Godfather. Goodfellas. The Sopranos.
Hollywood entertained us with polished fiction—honor among thieves, loyalty bound by blood, men of principle wrapped in tailored suits.
But the real mob? It was darker. Colder. Predatory. The smile came first. The knife came after.
This is the true story of how FBI Special Agent Mike Campi helped dismantle the Genovese crime family—the oldest, largest, and most insidious of New York’s five Mafia Families.
Founded by Charles “Lucky” Luciano in 1931. Consolidated under Vito Genovese in the late 1950s. The family once ruled Manhattan’s west side piers and the Fulton Fish Market on the East River with quiet brutality. Everything moved through their hands—money, muscle, silence.
Campi joined the FBI’s Organized Crime Squad in 1985, stepping into the heart of a sweeping federal assault on the American Mafia. Over the next two decades, he led investigations that exposed the rot behind the façade.
His new book, Mafia Takedown, pulls back the curtain on what really happened.
Not the Hollywood version. The truth.
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27:10
CIA Mafia Spies Plot To Kill Castro Hidden From JFK Probe
Mobsters Hit Tony Soprano Style Before They Can Testify
By Robert Riggs
The JFK assassination files recently released by President Trump shed more light on the secret plot by the CIA to use Mafia gangsters to kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
Investigative reporter Thomas Maier, the author of Mafia Spies, his book about the unlikely alliance between the CIA and mobsters, is back to discuss the latest revelations.
This is the second part of my True Crime Reporter® series about the Mafia Spies.
Two Chicago gangsters, Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli, were central to a Congressional investigation by Senator Frank Church in the mid-1970s
Both were murdered shortly before they could testify.
I was an investigator for another committee working on a related inquiry at the time.
The mob-style hit sent a chill through Senators digging into CIA abuses.
Speculation continues about whether the CIA or a Mafia kingpin silenced the mobsters.
Maier and I discuss the murders and revelations from his new book, “The Invisible Spy.”
His dogged investigation uncovered how former CIA Director Allen Dulles steered the Warren Commission’s investigation of President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas away from the plot to kill Castro.
Here's a link to the cast of characters.
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33:19
The James Bondesque Mafia Spies Plot To Kill Castro With A Poison Cigar
The story sounds like something straight out of a spy thriller.
A plot by America’s most feared criminal syndicate and its most secretive intelligence agency to assassinate a foreign leader using poison cigars and other James Bond-inspired schemes.
But this isn’t fiction. This is the true story of how the CIA joined forces with Mafia hitmen to assassinate Fidel Castro.
The revelations with ties to the Watergate scandal in the 1970s have fueled conspiracy theories about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
In this episode of True Crime Reporter®, I sit down with fellow investigative reporter Thomas Maier, whose book Mafia Spies pulls back the curtain on a chilling chapter of American history.
Together, we trace how the mob lost its Cuban gambling empire after Castro’s revolution and how, in Cold War fear, U.S. intelligence agents turned its gangsters to eliminate Castro.
Maier says the challenge of his investigation was figuring how out to tell a story in which everyone lies.
Here's a link to the cast of characters in the episode.
Ireland