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Mr Untouchable
By Leroy 'Nicky' Barnes
and Tom Folsom
On Sale: March 6, 2007
ISBN 1-59071-041-x
$24.95
From inside the Federal Witness Protection Program,
the 'Black Godfather' chronicles the
1970s New York City underworld and
the most devastating urban crime wave in history.
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1962 LEROY 'NICKY' BARNES walks out of Green Haven State Prison.
There are an estimated 153,000 heroin abusers in the United States.
1977 Two million junkies score $100 million worth of Barnes's smack
a year. Sporting flashy suits, riding in a Citroen with a Maserati
engine and satisfying a wife while pleasuring a harem of mistresses,
Barnes presides over a staggering multinational dealership that pushes
dope and launders money with the efficiency of a Fortune 500 company.
Despite President Nixon's creation of the Drug Enforcement Agency
and New York State's adoption of the no tolerance Rockefeller drug
laws, Barnes's operation seems impregnable.
How does a small-time hustler and heroin addict end up on the cover
of
the New York Times Magazine as MR. UNTOUCHABLE, the one gangster the
Feds can't touch? With Machiavellian pragmatism matched with biblical
fury, Barnes lays bare his life's remarkable trajectory:rise, fall
and resurrection defined by brutality, brotherhood and betrayal.
About the Authors:
LEROY 'NICKY' BARNES was convicted of narcotics conspiracy in 1977
by the nation's first anonymous jury. Released in 1998 with a recommendation
for parole from U.S. attorney Rudolph Giuliani in his file, Barnes's
landmark cooperation with the U.S. Government served to indict over
fifty major drug traffickers. An inspiration for a hit song ('Bad,
Bad, Leroy Brown'), a slew of films (Live and Let Die, New Jack City
and Pulp Fiction) and a generation of hip-hop artists, he is currently
in the Federal Witness Protection Program.
TOM FOLSOM is a producer and director of documentary films. His work
has appeared on A&E, MSNBC and Showtime. He lives in New York
City.
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