Imagine yourself if Sing Sing prison, convicted of a murder you did not commit. How do you survive? How do you keep hope alive that your life will ever again be anything but terror and pain? Then it gets worse.you begin to suspect that the Manhattan prosecutor who tried your case knew you were actually innocent.
I became an author during the latter part of a long career in management. My three novels tell the stories of injustices perpetrated by people in power - the Catholic Church, prosecutors who abuse their power, and the FBI.
In my first novel, THE HERETIC, I tell the story of a family of secret Jews seeking to survive the persecution of the Church, in 15th century Spain on the eve of the Inquisition. I explore the horror of Christian anti-Judaism as two generations of Jews struggle to preserve their family and their Jewish heritage. I did over 70 appearances at Jewish book fairs and synagogues, and still do book clubs, sometimes by phone from France.
My second novel, A GOOD CONVICTION, is about a young man who wakes up in Sing Sing prison, convicted of a murder in New York's Central Park which he did not commit. It gets even worse when he begins to understand that the prosecutor knew he was innocent. Prosecutorial abuse, which happens all too often, is a continuing plague on the American justice system. If it happens to you, and it well could, how do you survive in prison? How do you maintain hope that you can someday get back the life that has been stolen from you? Who will help you?
My third novel, CASE CLOSED, happened almost by accident.
In 2001, just after 9-11, letters laced with lethal anthrax were mailed across America; 5 people died, the country was thrown into panic. In 2008, the FBI finally announced that Dr. Bruce Ivins, a government scientist working at USAMRIID, was the sole perpetrator of the anthrax attacks. Dr. Ivins, however, was conveniently dead, allegedly of suicide, just 8 days before the FBI announcement, thus relieving the FBI of the obligation of having to prove its case in court, under oath.
The FBI said it was closing the case. I said they weren't, and I imagined in CASE CLOSED a fictional scenario to explain why the FBI had failed to solve the case. I asked two fundamental questions which are, at this writing, still unanswered ...
1. Who benefited from the FBI's failure to solve the case?
2. Who had the power to divert the FBI from the truth?
CASE CLOSED's answers to those questions leads into terrifying corruption at the very highest levels of the U.S. government.
I started a blog to promote CASE CLOSED, and as soon as I began posting material about the real anthrax case, the blog was flooded by many people who share my view that the FBI did not solve the case and by a few who support the FBI. If you're interested in this case, you will find the discussion fascinating ... (www.caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com)
At the time of the FBI's 2008 announcement, I was well into a sequel to THE HERETIC, set in the Renaissance Florence of Lorenzo de Medici. I am now getting back to that work, which I hope to have completed sometime in 2010.
Background information ...
Education: Princeton University and Harvard Business School
Career: most recently, CEO of a biomedical research institute focused on infectious disease research; previously President of Kinney System, the nationwide parking company; Township Manager of Cherry Hill, NJ; and a candidate for U.S. Congress (1980).
Personal: Married; live in Key West in the winter and Collioure, France in the summer. Travel extensively (see our travel blog at www.patandlewtravel.wordpress.com). Between us, we have 6 children and 6 grandchildren, with another on the way as this is written.
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