After a beaten Japan surrendered to the United States and its World War II allies in 1945, a little-known peninsula, home to 30 million Korean people, was dangling leaderless from the Asian continent into the Yellow Sea. Treated as an afterthought in negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States, it was halved at the 38th parallel. That line still separates hostile armies on each side. Do Americans remember that nearly 75 years ago the US and the Soviet Union intended for the peninsula to prosper peacefully as a single country? That was before the Iron Curtain descended upon the world. After that supporters of democracy entered a harsh rivalry with advocates for communism. Each side offered contrasting visions about how governments should work. The first big military test of strength between the two rival factions occurred at Korea’s 38th parallel. The result was a standoff that consumed people, […]
As the sun rises over the quiet city of Kingston, New York on July 12, 1988, a local transient discovers the remains of 19-year-old Anna Kithcart. The pretty, black teen-ager had been strangled and beaten to death, with the letters “KKK” carved into her thighs. While her heartbroken family mourns, and the police work around the clock to uncover the truth, the investigation is complicated by the entrance of the Reverend Al Sharpton who insists that a racist killer is responsible. As investigators struggle to find evidence, Sharpton and his supporters denounce the entire area as a “Klan den” and make public pronouncements that a “racist cult” is operating throughout the area. Then, as if things can’t get any worse, the transient who found the body confesses to an unspeakable sexual act against the corpse. Almost immediately after the media reports his alleged depravity, he changes his story and accuses the police […]
An incredible true story that reads like an international crime thriller peopled with assassins, political activists, shady FBI informants, murdered witnesses, a tenacious attorney, and a murderous foreign dictator. On June 1, 1981, two young activists, Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes, were murdered in Seattle in what was made to appear like a gang slaying. But the victims’ families and friends suspected they were considered a threat to the dictatorship of Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his regime’s relationship to the United States. But how could they prove it up against such powerful, and ruthless, adversaries? In SUMMARY EXECUTION attorney and author Michael Withey describes his ten-year battle for justice for Domingo and Viernes that he fought because “They killed my friends.” Follow along as he embarks on a long and dangerous investigation and into the courtroom to obtain convictions of three hitmen, and then prove in U.S. federal court […]
