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The CBS Murders: A True Account of Greed and Violence in New York's Diamond District
Winner of the Edgar The gripping account of a gruesome mass murder in gritty 1980s New York and the relentless hunt for a coldblooded killer.
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On a warm spring evening in 1982, thirty-seven-year-old accountant Margaret Barbera left work in New York City and walked to the West Side parking lot where she kept her BMW. Finding the lock on the driver’s side door jammed, she went to the passenger’s side and inserted her key. A man leaned through the open window of a van parked in the next spot, pressed a silenced pistol to the back of Margaret’s head, and fired. She was dead before she hit the pavement.
Ìý
It was a professional hit, meticulously planned—but the killer didn’t expect three employees of the nearby CBS television studios to stumble onto the scene of the crime. “You didn’t see nothin�, did you?� he demanded, before shooting the first eyewitness in the head. After chasing down and executing the other two men, the murderer sped out of the parking lot with Margaret’s lifeless body in the back of his van.
Ìý
Thirty minutes later, the first detectives arrived on the scene. Veterans of Midtown North, a sprawling precinct stretching from the exclusive shops of Fifth Avenue to the flophouses of Hell’s Kitchen, they thought they’d seen it all. But a bloodbath in the heart of Manhattan was a shocking new level of depravity, and the investigation would unfold under intense media coverage. Setting out on the trail of an assassin, the NYPD uncovered one of the most diabolical criminal conspiracies in the city’s history.
Ìý
Richard Hammer’s blow-by-blow account of “the CBS Murders� is a thrilling tale of greed, violence, and betrayal, and a fascinating portrait of how a big-city police department solved the toughest of cases.
Ìý
Ìý
On a warm spring evening in 1982, thirty-seven-year-old accountant Margaret Barbera left work in New York City and walked to the West Side parking lot where she kept her BMW. Finding the lock on the driver’s side door jammed, she went to the passenger’s side and inserted her key. A man leaned through the open window of a van parked in the next spot, pressed a silenced pistol to the back of Margaret’s head, and fired. She was dead before she hit the pavement.
Ìý
It was a professional hit, meticulously planned—but the killer didn’t expect three employees of the nearby CBS television studios to stumble onto the scene of the crime. “You didn’t see nothin�, did you?� he demanded, before shooting the first eyewitness in the head. After chasing down and executing the other two men, the murderer sped out of the parking lot with Margaret’s lifeless body in the back of his van.
Ìý
Thirty minutes later, the first detectives arrived on the scene. Veterans of Midtown North, a sprawling precinct stretching from the exclusive shops of Fifth Avenue to the flophouses of Hell’s Kitchen, they thought they’d seen it all. But a bloodbath in the heart of Manhattan was a shocking new level of depravity, and the investigation would unfold under intense media coverage. Setting out on the trail of an assassin, the NYPD uncovered one of the most diabolical criminal conspiracies in the city’s history.
Ìý
Richard Hammer’s blow-by-blow account of “the CBS Murders� is a thrilling tale of greed, violence, and betrayal, and a fascinating portrait of how a big-city police department solved the toughest of cases.
Ìý
252 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews
September 17, 2017
To my surprise this was a very good read. Perhaps I should have known because it is an oldie (I still think the best tc was written a few decades ago. Jack Olsen, Thomas Thompson are 2 authors that come to mind.)
Beforehand I did not know anything about the story so it was a surprise. The book begins with the murders which is not the way I prefer my true crime books to be but in this case it worked best. Very interesting although I would have had a different outcome . More severe of course.
Margeret Barbera
The lovely Donald Nash
source:
Irwin Margolies
Madeleine Margolies
Beforehand I did not know anything about the story so it was a surprise. The book begins with the murders which is not the way I prefer my true crime books to be but in this case it worked best. Very interesting although I would have had a different outcome . More severe of course.
Margeret Barbera
The lovely Donald Nash source:
Irwin Margolies
Madeleine Margolies
December 17, 2016
What a rat!
A fast read of fine police/FBI work. A testimonial of absolute greed, with no remorse. I feel bad for all of the victims families, and all of the innocent people who's lives were left in shambles and shame. A thoroughly investigated and reported book that was very readable by Hammer.
A fast read of fine police/FBI work. A testimonial of absolute greed, with no remorse. I feel bad for all of the victims families, and all of the innocent people who's lives were left in shambles and shame. A thoroughly investigated and reported book that was very readable by Hammer.
February 22, 2010
A well written description of a very sad event. I saw it on a crime show and wanted to read the book. Irwin Margolies is one fucked up asshole.
September 4, 2018
New York City in 1982 had over 2,000 murders. This is the story of four of them. This is a sordid true-crime tale of fraud and deception. A story that has many characters involved, each trying to cover their own behind.
The book is a crime procedural, played out in a joint investigation between the NYPD and the FBI. It covers everything from crime to investigation to trial. Some of the New York City grit of the times comes through the pages. Well thought out and described, The CBS Murders is a quick read and recommended for those who enjoy the genre.
The book is a crime procedural, played out in a joint investigation between the NYPD and the FBI. It covers everything from crime to investigation to trial. Some of the New York City grit of the times comes through the pages. Well thought out and described, The CBS Murders is a quick read and recommended for those who enjoy the genre.
January 8, 2019
The CBS Murders deals with a story that is almost too dramatic to be believed. At the heart of it is Irwin Margolies, a jeweller who had a business in New York’s Diamond District during the 1970s. Realising he could commit fraud by taking advantage of a factoring corporation, he made millions of dollars in the the early 1980s without turning any significant profits, in what was tantamount to a Ponzi Scheme. In order to help him and his wife Madeline run the scheme, Irwin hired Margaret Barbera, a woman with bookkeeping experience to help him fabricate his records, and then a second woman, Jenny Soo Chin, on Barbera’s recommendation.
Initially, Margolies intended for Barbera and Soo Chin to take the fall if he was ever investigated by the FBI. When it became clear that Barbera and Soo Chin had kept records of the fixed books, however, he hired an associate, Donald Nash, to assassinate them. First, Nash murdered Soo Chin outside Barbera’s home, although the location of her body was never found. Then, he shot Barbera in a Manhattan parking lot on the Hudson River, as well as shooting and killing three other witnesses, all of whom worked at CBS, which was nearby � Leo Kuranuki, a studio maintenance manager, Robert Schulze, a videotape maintenance manager, and Edward Benford, a broadcast technician.
Richard Hammer’s book follows the police and FBI effort to convict Nash and Margolies, both in terms of the financial fraud and the five murders that followed. Part of what makes the case so unusual is that it took a great deal of time for the police to follow up on Margolies� involvement. Even after Soo Chin had disappeared, and when Barbera was contacting them daily to raise questions about her disappearance, and her own (accurate) sense of being watched, they didn’t do anything rapid � a lapse even more dramatic for the fact that by this stage Margolies himself was under surveillance and on the verge of prosecution.
As Hammer frames it, that’s because the CBS Murders radically reconceptualised what white-collar crime entailed. Time and again, the possibility of Margolies� involvement in the murders was dismissed � even when there was compelling circumstantial evidence � because white-collar crime and murder were considered to be two separate categories of crime. As both police and FBI agents insisted, brutal murder didn’t fit the profile of a white-collar criminal, even one whose actions demonstrated that he was prepared to throw anyone and everyone under the bus to make money.
The CBS Murders is therefore a bit different to many other true crime writing in that the main antagonist is not a psychopath � or at least is not presented first and foremost as a psychopath. Instead, Margolies is characterized as being driven by greed, as well as by spite, especially in the first part of his prison sentence, when he tried to arrange hits on people who had crossed him during the investigation. One of these apparently came quite close to fruition � the assassination of David Blewjas, one of the key officers on the case, who Margolies was prepared to have killed in front of his children, and along with his children, if necessary.
Obviously, those actions reflect some of the psychopathic traits that are such a fixation of true crime writing. Yet The CBS Murders takes these traits away from the abandoned highways, brief encounters and dysfunctional families where they are typically presented, and instead situates them within the American corporate sector, and the wholesome American ideals of upward mobility and property acquisition. When the investigators weren’t able to conceptualise Margolies as a murderer, it wasn’t simply because he was a white-collar criminal, but because psychopathy, in the popular imagination, was a quite distinct mindset from the world he inhabited.
Almost forty years down the track, and after the GFC, the psychopathy of the free market economy feels less novel. In Hammer’s hands, however, it feels fresh again, as you sense investigators making their way through the connections between the upper echelons of American business life and the underbellies that are more common in criminal investigations. For that reason, connectivity is a prominent motif throughout the book, especially connections between unexpected or improbable experiences and professions.
That sense of connectivity is especially clear in the opening chapter, which outlines three quite distinct institutions � the Diamond District, the New York Police, and CBS � and then situates them all in the Midtown district that forms the main backdrop to the action. Time and again, Midtown is used as a cipher for the unexpected connections that the case exposed, as well as the departure or dropoff point for a series of driving sequences, and trailing sequences, that weave their way in and out of the narrative, on and off Manhattan.
So improbable was the idea of white-collar crime as entailing brutal murder that many of the main breaks in the case came from coincidences, which adds to this sense of looming connectivity. Of course, contingencies are always a big part of true crime, but they’re especially foregrounded here, in a case that often seems to involve nothing but contingencies. The three CBS technicians were only shot, for example, because the space that was always empty next to Barbera’s car � Nash had spent days scoping out the lot � was full on the day of the murder, meaning he had to pull her body around her car and out into plain view.
Other equally unsettling contingencies come to the surface over the course of the book. Before taking the assassination contract on Barbera and Soo Chin, Nash was working with a cloned taxi, and was only forced to cease business after the very taxi driver whose number plate he had cloned recognized the number plate in the middle of a crowded street. At another point, a car is retained as crucial evidence after it survives vandalism after being dumped in a neighbourhood in the Bronx that is renowned for car vandals. Most remarkably, the FBI are only able to place Nash outside Barbera’s apartment because they were doing a completely separate drug sweep of the surrounding blocks, and keeping a note of any cars that drove in and out on a regular basis.
Both the murders and the detection are also driven by contingencies of time that are considerably tighter than those in most true crime. Despite the unexpected car parked next to Barbera’s car, Nash was forced to do the hit that day because he was about to serve a short prison sentence, which he considered would put him beneath notice. Similarly, the FBI only traced Nash to Newark Airport fifteen minutes before he headed south, resulting in yet another trailing sequence.
These contingencies all amount to more than mere narrative embellishment, since they reflect an establishment so unwilling to accept the full violence of white-collar crime that they discarded it as an option even when one lucky break after another was staring them in the face. Eventually, they did recognise it, and gave Margolies the longest sentence ever handed down at that time for a white-collar infraction, but there’s still a slight incredulity, in Hammer’s manner, that the crime was ever capable of being reconstructed as meticulously as it was, so drastically did it challenge both police and FBI assumptions.
And reconstruction is very much the approach of The CBS Murders, which refrains from a dramatic prose style in favour of a clipped, journalistic approach that made this one of the shorter true crime reads I’ve experienced. In some ways, the deftness of the book lies more in the structure, as Hammer starts by recreating the minutiae of the CBS slayings, and then moving to a police investigation so dissociated from Margolies� intentions that you constantly wonder how this reconstruction could ever have occurred � and indeed, it does often feel like fiction at times, so improbable is the amount of detail it finally yielded.
That improbability made me a bit surprised that The CBS Murders was never turned into a film, since these kinds of cases � cases that force investigators to challenge their own assumptions � are often the most powerful on the big screen, as are cases where the fact of reconstructing the crime is a kind of miracle of ingenuity and inventiveness in itself. I must admit I was also fascinated by Barbera and Soo Chin, who were eventually discovered to have been carrying on a lesbian affair, despite the fact that Soo Chin was married.
This affair proved critical to their survival for so long, since their discretion around it meant that, while Soo Chin often stayed over at Barbera’s house, the two rarely left the house together at night, or went out together at night at all � a fact that meant that Nash was unable to execute the hit on them as quickly as Margolies demanded. That delay was arguably the reason why the CBS executives were caught in the crossfire, as well as the reason that the police and FBI had enough time to mount a case against Margolies.
In other words, a closet epistemology lurks beneath the surface of the case, shrouding Barbera and Soo Chin � the two intended targets � in a privacy that no amount of forensic reconstruction seems capable of exhuming, especially since Soo Chin’s body was never found. In these kinds of cases, cinema tends to conceal as much as it reveals, augmenting the closet outlook as much as traversing it, which is perhaps why I felt as if a film adaptation would have been remarkably true to this haunting case, which was itself stranger than fiction.
Initially, Margolies intended for Barbera and Soo Chin to take the fall if he was ever investigated by the FBI. When it became clear that Barbera and Soo Chin had kept records of the fixed books, however, he hired an associate, Donald Nash, to assassinate them. First, Nash murdered Soo Chin outside Barbera’s home, although the location of her body was never found. Then, he shot Barbera in a Manhattan parking lot on the Hudson River, as well as shooting and killing three other witnesses, all of whom worked at CBS, which was nearby � Leo Kuranuki, a studio maintenance manager, Robert Schulze, a videotape maintenance manager, and Edward Benford, a broadcast technician.
Richard Hammer’s book follows the police and FBI effort to convict Nash and Margolies, both in terms of the financial fraud and the five murders that followed. Part of what makes the case so unusual is that it took a great deal of time for the police to follow up on Margolies� involvement. Even after Soo Chin had disappeared, and when Barbera was contacting them daily to raise questions about her disappearance, and her own (accurate) sense of being watched, they didn’t do anything rapid � a lapse even more dramatic for the fact that by this stage Margolies himself was under surveillance and on the verge of prosecution.
As Hammer frames it, that’s because the CBS Murders radically reconceptualised what white-collar crime entailed. Time and again, the possibility of Margolies� involvement in the murders was dismissed � even when there was compelling circumstantial evidence � because white-collar crime and murder were considered to be two separate categories of crime. As both police and FBI agents insisted, brutal murder didn’t fit the profile of a white-collar criminal, even one whose actions demonstrated that he was prepared to throw anyone and everyone under the bus to make money.
The CBS Murders is therefore a bit different to many other true crime writing in that the main antagonist is not a psychopath � or at least is not presented first and foremost as a psychopath. Instead, Margolies is characterized as being driven by greed, as well as by spite, especially in the first part of his prison sentence, when he tried to arrange hits on people who had crossed him during the investigation. One of these apparently came quite close to fruition � the assassination of David Blewjas, one of the key officers on the case, who Margolies was prepared to have killed in front of his children, and along with his children, if necessary.
Obviously, those actions reflect some of the psychopathic traits that are such a fixation of true crime writing. Yet The CBS Murders takes these traits away from the abandoned highways, brief encounters and dysfunctional families where they are typically presented, and instead situates them within the American corporate sector, and the wholesome American ideals of upward mobility and property acquisition. When the investigators weren’t able to conceptualise Margolies as a murderer, it wasn’t simply because he was a white-collar criminal, but because psychopathy, in the popular imagination, was a quite distinct mindset from the world he inhabited.
Almost forty years down the track, and after the GFC, the psychopathy of the free market economy feels less novel. In Hammer’s hands, however, it feels fresh again, as you sense investigators making their way through the connections between the upper echelons of American business life and the underbellies that are more common in criminal investigations. For that reason, connectivity is a prominent motif throughout the book, especially connections between unexpected or improbable experiences and professions.
That sense of connectivity is especially clear in the opening chapter, which outlines three quite distinct institutions � the Diamond District, the New York Police, and CBS � and then situates them all in the Midtown district that forms the main backdrop to the action. Time and again, Midtown is used as a cipher for the unexpected connections that the case exposed, as well as the departure or dropoff point for a series of driving sequences, and trailing sequences, that weave their way in and out of the narrative, on and off Manhattan.
So improbable was the idea of white-collar crime as entailing brutal murder that many of the main breaks in the case came from coincidences, which adds to this sense of looming connectivity. Of course, contingencies are always a big part of true crime, but they’re especially foregrounded here, in a case that often seems to involve nothing but contingencies. The three CBS technicians were only shot, for example, because the space that was always empty next to Barbera’s car � Nash had spent days scoping out the lot � was full on the day of the murder, meaning he had to pull her body around her car and out into plain view.
Other equally unsettling contingencies come to the surface over the course of the book. Before taking the assassination contract on Barbera and Soo Chin, Nash was working with a cloned taxi, and was only forced to cease business after the very taxi driver whose number plate he had cloned recognized the number plate in the middle of a crowded street. At another point, a car is retained as crucial evidence after it survives vandalism after being dumped in a neighbourhood in the Bronx that is renowned for car vandals. Most remarkably, the FBI are only able to place Nash outside Barbera’s apartment because they were doing a completely separate drug sweep of the surrounding blocks, and keeping a note of any cars that drove in and out on a regular basis.
Both the murders and the detection are also driven by contingencies of time that are considerably tighter than those in most true crime. Despite the unexpected car parked next to Barbera’s car, Nash was forced to do the hit that day because he was about to serve a short prison sentence, which he considered would put him beneath notice. Similarly, the FBI only traced Nash to Newark Airport fifteen minutes before he headed south, resulting in yet another trailing sequence.
These contingencies all amount to more than mere narrative embellishment, since they reflect an establishment so unwilling to accept the full violence of white-collar crime that they discarded it as an option even when one lucky break after another was staring them in the face. Eventually, they did recognise it, and gave Margolies the longest sentence ever handed down at that time for a white-collar infraction, but there’s still a slight incredulity, in Hammer’s manner, that the crime was ever capable of being reconstructed as meticulously as it was, so drastically did it challenge both police and FBI assumptions.
And reconstruction is very much the approach of The CBS Murders, which refrains from a dramatic prose style in favour of a clipped, journalistic approach that made this one of the shorter true crime reads I’ve experienced. In some ways, the deftness of the book lies more in the structure, as Hammer starts by recreating the minutiae of the CBS slayings, and then moving to a police investigation so dissociated from Margolies� intentions that you constantly wonder how this reconstruction could ever have occurred � and indeed, it does often feel like fiction at times, so improbable is the amount of detail it finally yielded.
That improbability made me a bit surprised that The CBS Murders was never turned into a film, since these kinds of cases � cases that force investigators to challenge their own assumptions � are often the most powerful on the big screen, as are cases where the fact of reconstructing the crime is a kind of miracle of ingenuity and inventiveness in itself. I must admit I was also fascinated by Barbera and Soo Chin, who were eventually discovered to have been carrying on a lesbian affair, despite the fact that Soo Chin was married.
This affair proved critical to their survival for so long, since their discretion around it meant that, while Soo Chin often stayed over at Barbera’s house, the two rarely left the house together at night, or went out together at night at all � a fact that meant that Nash was unable to execute the hit on them as quickly as Margolies demanded. That delay was arguably the reason why the CBS executives were caught in the crossfire, as well as the reason that the police and FBI had enough time to mount a case against Margolies.
In other words, a closet epistemology lurks beneath the surface of the case, shrouding Barbera and Soo Chin � the two intended targets � in a privacy that no amount of forensic reconstruction seems capable of exhuming, especially since Soo Chin’s body was never found. In these kinds of cases, cinema tends to conceal as much as it reveals, augmenting the closet outlook as much as traversing it, which is perhaps why I felt as if a film adaptation would have been remarkably true to this haunting case, which was itself stranger than fiction.
December 14, 2017
Interesting story
This book was a nice change-of-pace for me. It was a very detailed crime. My only complaint was the awkward phrasing the author used in much of his sentence construction. He had several awkwardly phrased plu perfect tense sentences that were strange.
This book was a nice change-of-pace for me. It was a very detailed crime. My only complaint was the awkward phrasing the author used in much of his sentence construction. He had several awkwardly phrased plu perfect tense sentences that were strange.
December 5, 2011
A factual and interesting true life murder story.
April 24, 2019
Found this book after seeing a Law and Order episode that was based on it.
January 17, 2018
Richard Hammer closes his well-documented chronicle of greed gone wild with this apt quote from the poet-philosopher Lao Tzu:
"There is no calamity greater than lavish desires,
There is no greater guilt than discontentment,
And there is no greater disaster than greed.
Irwin Margolies, the book's subject, could have been the model for the poet's observation. His behavior mirrors the traits the poet deplores: lavish desires, chronic discontentment, and unbridled greed that brought disaster to many people. among them the three innocent CBS employees who had the great misfortune of being in the parking lot when Margolies' hired gun bungled the murder he was paid for and chose to end the lives of three men on their way home.
Margolies is a involved in the jewelry making business where he has close contact with one of his most sought after riches, diamonds. The author describes Margolies as a man always reaching for the gold ring on the merry go round of life, but even when he apparently has a good grasp on the ring, his greed drives him to pursue greater and greater riches. Obtaining wealth legally is not productive enough of the big payoffs Margolies seeks, so he comes up with scheme after scheme to take what is not his, all the while posing as an honest businessman.
When some of the fraud he has perpetuated starts to come to light, Margolies resorts to murder to protect himself--murder of his bookkeeper who was a co-conspirator and murder by the same hired gun of her friend and co-worker.
Eventually the scheming and murderous plots are unraveled and finally prosecuted by some hard working NYPD detectives and the FBI. The fraud nets him 28 years in jail but when the proof of his involvement in the murders is laid out before a jury, he is sentenced to jail for life.
Naturally, Margolies did not pull this off on his own--his luxury loving wife willingly did her part (she served some jail time), his lawyer was a great facilitator (who was eventually disbarred) and various and sundry others were given immunity for their damning testimony, stemming from their close involvement as they well knew some aspects of the scam and resultant murders. The hired gun received concurrent sentences which will equal life for the five murders he committed.
All in all, a deplorable cast of characters counteracted by sharp, hard working law enforcement people determined to put an end to this "one man" crime spree. The ordinary reader who goes to work, pays his bills, and tries to treat others fairly will be both appalled and perhaps even disgusted by the unbridled greed of one man and those willing to help him.
"There is no calamity greater than lavish desires,
There is no greater guilt than discontentment,
And there is no greater disaster than greed.
Irwin Margolies, the book's subject, could have been the model for the poet's observation. His behavior mirrors the traits the poet deplores: lavish desires, chronic discontentment, and unbridled greed that brought disaster to many people. among them the three innocent CBS employees who had the great misfortune of being in the parking lot when Margolies' hired gun bungled the murder he was paid for and chose to end the lives of three men on their way home.
Margolies is a involved in the jewelry making business where he has close contact with one of his most sought after riches, diamonds. The author describes Margolies as a man always reaching for the gold ring on the merry go round of life, but even when he apparently has a good grasp on the ring, his greed drives him to pursue greater and greater riches. Obtaining wealth legally is not productive enough of the big payoffs Margolies seeks, so he comes up with scheme after scheme to take what is not his, all the while posing as an honest businessman.
When some of the fraud he has perpetuated starts to come to light, Margolies resorts to murder to protect himself--murder of his bookkeeper who was a co-conspirator and murder by the same hired gun of her friend and co-worker.
Eventually the scheming and murderous plots are unraveled and finally prosecuted by some hard working NYPD detectives and the FBI. The fraud nets him 28 years in jail but when the proof of his involvement in the murders is laid out before a jury, he is sentenced to jail for life.
Naturally, Margolies did not pull this off on his own--his luxury loving wife willingly did her part (she served some jail time), his lawyer was a great facilitator (who was eventually disbarred) and various and sundry others were given immunity for their damning testimony, stemming from their close involvement as they well knew some aspects of the scam and resultant murders. The hired gun received concurrent sentences which will equal life for the five murders he committed.
All in all, a deplorable cast of characters counteracted by sharp, hard working law enforcement people determined to put an end to this "one man" crime spree. The ordinary reader who goes to work, pays his bills, and tries to treat others fairly will be both appalled and perhaps even disgusted by the unbridled greed of one man and those willing to help him.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 13, 2022
To call this set of killings the "CBS Murders" is to call Ted Bundy's serial offences "The Man with the Boat". Of course, 3 CBS technicians lost their lives in 1982 Manhattan for being witnesses to a hired murder. However, little time is spent with these victims, as they were not the targets.
When the reader cracks open the book they will find a sordid tale of one woman who cooked the books for a crooked diamond seller. As they reach the end, the reader may wonder at the title, at the fates of the families who lost their brothers and fathers, but such closure will not be clearly given.
As a true crime tale, this is a decent book covering efforts by the local Manhattan police working in tandem with the FBI after the murder of a chief informant. If you approach this book with the simple desire of being titillated by scandalous corruption, you will come away happy.
If you desire a deep scope into the relation of these murders to the CBS conglomerate, a victims' picture of the men who suffered, or anything deeper than a true crime itch, you will be disappointed.
The title and overall content suggests the author wanted to make money from the high-value name of the incident. It reflects a sadly common trend in true crime to try and profit off the backs of the deceased.
A technically solid book soured by the author's approach to a delicate subject.
When the reader cracks open the book they will find a sordid tale of one woman who cooked the books for a crooked diamond seller. As they reach the end, the reader may wonder at the title, at the fates of the families who lost their brothers and fathers, but such closure will not be clearly given.
As a true crime tale, this is a decent book covering efforts by the local Manhattan police working in tandem with the FBI after the murder of a chief informant. If you approach this book with the simple desire of being titillated by scandalous corruption, you will come away happy.
If you desire a deep scope into the relation of these murders to the CBS conglomerate, a victims' picture of the men who suffered, or anything deeper than a true crime itch, you will be disappointed.
The title and overall content suggests the author wanted to make money from the high-value name of the incident. It reflects a sadly common trend in true crime to try and profit off the backs of the deceased.
A technically solid book soured by the author's approach to a delicate subject.
April 25, 2024
I don't read a lot of true crime, but when I do read true crime, I want it to be written like this. Richard Hammer doesn't waste the reader's time with unnecessarily flowery language. He doesn't try to hype up the events with a lot of baroque verbiage. He knows he's got a compelling story here, and it will be best told by keeping to the facts.
While I've been reading this I've been watching the HBO series "I'll Be Gone in the Dark" about the Golden State Killer. Now, I realize that I'm comparing a book and a documentary series, but I vastly prefer the style of this book to the style of that series, which gets bogged down in boring details about the life of a true crime blogger who died. The HBO series derails itself repeatedly. Hammer never derails his story.
And it's an interesting story. After reading the description of the murder I found myself thinking, "Wow, the killer was really a pro. . ." Boy was I wrong. He was good at the actual physical violence, but the man really blazed a broad trail that the cops could easily follow. This book is short, sharp, and well written. I liked it.
It is kind of hilarious that it's called "The CBS Murders" when, in fact, the three employees of CBS who were killed were not the targets of the attack, and are hardly discussed at all.
While I've been reading this I've been watching the HBO series "I'll Be Gone in the Dark" about the Golden State Killer. Now, I realize that I'm comparing a book and a documentary series, but I vastly prefer the style of this book to the style of that series, which gets bogged down in boring details about the life of a true crime blogger who died. The HBO series derails itself repeatedly. Hammer never derails his story.
And it's an interesting story. After reading the description of the murder I found myself thinking, "Wow, the killer was really a pro. . ." Boy was I wrong. He was good at the actual physical violence, but the man really blazed a broad trail that the cops could easily follow. This book is short, sharp, and well written. I liked it.
It is kind of hilarious that it's called "The CBS Murders" when, in fact, the three employees of CBS who were killed were not the targets of the attack, and are hardly discussed at all.
January 10, 2025
It was on audible. Interesting. A woman named Barbera (I forgot her first name) comes out of work at a new job at a camera shop, goes to her car at Pier 92 and gets shot. Three CBS employees are also on their way to their cars and get shot. Two are killed and one is wounded but able to get out of the parking lot and able to yell to the attendant that there was a problem on whatever level he had been on. Attendant thought maybe there was an accident. The first man there had seen someone being dragged around a car and thrown in a van.
Apparently she was a former employee of one Irwin Margolies, a jeweller who had a desire to make money and more than he was making. No matter how much he was making it wasn't enough. He's quite greedy, as is his wife. Ms. Barbera was a bookkeeper for him and his company.
Unfortunately for her, Margolies doesn't want his bookkeeper knowing too much about the workings of his office, and decides the only way out is to hire a hit man. He also wants to bump off other people who he thinks have done him dirt.
Interesting story of greed and murder and police chase.
I have to confess that I dozed off during part of the description of how his company screwed one partner and the factor providers.
But it was interesting.
Apparently she was a former employee of one Irwin Margolies, a jeweller who had a desire to make money and more than he was making. No matter how much he was making it wasn't enough. He's quite greedy, as is his wife. Ms. Barbera was a bookkeeper for him and his company.
Unfortunately for her, Margolies doesn't want his bookkeeper knowing too much about the workings of his office, and decides the only way out is to hire a hit man. He also wants to bump off other people who he thinks have done him dirt.
Interesting story of greed and murder and police chase.
I have to confess that I dozed off during part of the description of how his company screwed one partner and the factor providers.
But it was interesting.
September 30, 2021
This was a horrific crime. Five innocent people lost their lives because of one greedy bastard and those around him who hoped to gain from his greed. I had not heard of this crime which occurred in 1982. I was learning to be a doctor then and unless you watched television you didn’t know what was going on in the rest of the world. But this was a big story in New York City. The story of the fraud itself is mind boggling and then the botched up contract hits! I am very glad they continued to go after Margolies until they got him where they wanted him. The book was very well researched but the last half encompassing the investigation and trial was sort of rushed as the author basically seemed to want to wrap things up in a hurry. Short run on sentences really irritate me. That is why I did not give this book 4 stars. I also would have liked to have known a little bit more about the victims, even the poor innocent CBS bystanders who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Overall a good TC book!
October 24, 2017
I had not heard of “The CBS Murders� so I was curious as to the events surrounding this incident. did a very good job of laying out the events and the characters involved. It was a quick read.
True crime books are not my favorite because they highlight the monsters among us. The murder of Margaret Barbera wasn’t a surprise since she knowingly swam with the sharks. The murder of her friend Jenny Soo Chin and the three innocent bystanders (CBS employees) makes this a heinous crime.
The ease to find a hit-man to kill and to protect one’s lavish lifestyle did not surprise me. I was somewhat surprised that so many other people were aware and participated in the swindle and murders; and stayed silent until their cooperation against Irwin Margolies became their “get out of jail card.� Irwin Marolies may not have been a Don or a Godfather as we know it in a criminal family organization, but he ran a complex criminal enterprise.
This incident happened in 1982. The thing that never ceases to amaze me is that swindles similar to those committed by Irwin Margolies continue to happen. There was greed by Margolies, but there was also greed by the victims (not the innocent murder victims). The last two lines in the book summarizes everything: “There is no greater guilt than discontentment. And there is no greater disaster than greed.�
True crime books are not my favorite because they highlight the monsters among us. The murder of Margaret Barbera wasn’t a surprise since she knowingly swam with the sharks. The murder of her friend Jenny Soo Chin and the three innocent bystanders (CBS employees) makes this a heinous crime.
The ease to find a hit-man to kill and to protect one’s lavish lifestyle did not surprise me. I was somewhat surprised that so many other people were aware and participated in the swindle and murders; and stayed silent until their cooperation against Irwin Margolies became their “get out of jail card.� Irwin Marolies may not have been a Don or a Godfather as we know it in a criminal family organization, but he ran a complex criminal enterprise.
This incident happened in 1982. The thing that never ceases to amaze me is that swindles similar to those committed by Irwin Margolies continue to happen. There was greed by Margolies, but there was also greed by the victims (not the innocent murder victims). The last two lines in the book summarizes everything: “There is no greater guilt than discontentment. And there is no greater disaster than greed.�
August 27, 2019
A Very Interesting Read
This books slightly different than your average True Crime book, if there’s any such thing. The CBS Murders reads like the latest bestselling thriller with its involved and amazingly creative attempt to defraud millions of dollars in the diamond and financial trade in New York City. It’s near impossible to believe that this actually happened, which makes it all that much harder to close the book and get any sleep. It’s also very sad that the greed of a few people would cost the lives of others who had no part at all to do with it, except to walk by at the wrong moment. This is my second book by this author & I’ve enjoyed it just as much as the first one and I’d have no hesitation in recommending his books to anyone who likes the True Crime Genre.
This books slightly different than your average True Crime book, if there’s any such thing. The CBS Murders reads like the latest bestselling thriller with its involved and amazingly creative attempt to defraud millions of dollars in the diamond and financial trade in New York City. It’s near impossible to believe that this actually happened, which makes it all that much harder to close the book and get any sleep. It’s also very sad that the greed of a few people would cost the lives of others who had no part at all to do with it, except to walk by at the wrong moment. This is my second book by this author & I’ve enjoyed it just as much as the first one and I’d have no hesitation in recommending his books to anyone who likes the True Crime Genre.
August 25, 2020
There were over 2000 murders in New York in 1982. Somehow I missed the five discussed in this story. Perhaps it was because I was commuting to work full-time and attending University . More likely, it was because I was aware of so many other murders directly related to the crack epidemic. This is the story of a greedy con artist working in NYC's Diamond District, his wife, his crooked attorney and their other associates. When their financial crimes began to come to light, this jeweler thought he could keep his ill-gotten gains and stay out of jail by having two potential witnesses murdered. Sadly, three CBS employees who saw one of the women being hurt and tried to help her were gunned down. This is a good read which kept my interest. Full disclosure: I listened to the audiobook.
June 13, 2017
If you like true crime this is an interesting book. This takes place back in the early 80s. I really don't remember this happening but it must have been a big story at the time. But my children were young then and maybe I was too tired to watch much news. While three employees of CBS news were murdered that crime was incidental to the murder of two women involved in a financial crime. When you read this you may ask yourself as I did as to how the "mastermind" of the financial crime could get away with as much as he did and just how cruel and uncaring he was as a person. No spoilers as the murders take place right at the beginning of the book.
April 12, 2022
Greed and Murder
This was a thorough account of fraud, greed and murder in the early 1980s. I had not heard of this case before. When I saw the book on sale, I had to pick up a copy. Author Richard Hammer expertly recounts the tale of a gifted con man who got greedy. That greed ruined lives, companies and cost the lives of five people. It took several years, but the mastermind was caught and ultimately convicted. Find out what happened in this thrilling account. The audio book version is straightforward. A great read.
This was a thorough account of fraud, greed and murder in the early 1980s. I had not heard of this case before. When I saw the book on sale, I had to pick up a copy. Author Richard Hammer expertly recounts the tale of a gifted con man who got greedy. That greed ruined lives, companies and cost the lives of five people. It took several years, but the mastermind was caught and ultimately convicted. Find out what happened in this thrilling account. The audio book version is straightforward. A great read.
May 28, 2019
I am shocked I have never heard of the CBS murders, though it obviously was a big deal in the 1980s when the murders were committed. I like reading true-crime, though I was especially taken with this book probably because I didn't get enough on methods the police and FBI used to crack the case open nor were certain parts of the crimes explained so that the author would know them without doing independent research.
March 9, 2023
I had heard a podcast on the subject of these murders and I think the hosts commented about it being reminiscent of a Cohen Brothers movie, but in real life. The sequence of screw-ups that escalates until it is completely out of control would fit right in among Fargo and maybe Burn After Reading. It is hard to believe this was a true story, but it happened. This was much more interesting and engrossing than I’d have thought.
July 15, 2017
Money is the root of all evil
This is a compelling account of how money dominates this family's life. Most of their income comes from cheating, lying, and fraud. This leads to the deaths of 5 people, three innocent CBS employees who try to save a woman from being harmed. I would recommend this book to any true crime reader.
This is a compelling account of how money dominates this family's life. Most of their income comes from cheating, lying, and fraud. This leads to the deaths of 5 people, three innocent CBS employees who try to save a woman from being harmed. I would recommend this book to any true crime reader.
July 19, 2017
Good read
This is a great true crime read. It kept moving and the people were always interesting. The guy behind the murders was just disgusting. It's a wonder how he got so many others to do his bidding. All this happened in the early 80s. I wonder if he and the guy he got to do the actual shooting are still alive in prison.
This is a great true crime read. It kept moving and the people were always interesting. The guy behind the murders was just disgusting. It's a wonder how he got so many others to do his bidding. All this happened in the early 80s. I wonder if he and the guy he got to do the actual shooting are still alive in prison.
July 17, 2018
The story is very interesting and I loved reading it, however the author had so many commas put in random places. It seemed like every other sentence had 3 commas. There were a ton of incomplete sentences too. It felt like I was reading a classmates� rough draft in high school. I had to reread sentences multiple times just to figure out what the author was trying to say.
April 13, 2020
It was an ok read. I was a little bored with all the details, but it still kept me willing to read it r to the end. I was really surprised at the lengths one will go to cover their crimes and how people can be so extremely mean to others. They only think about their own needs and bring in others to take the fall for their devious doings.
January 12, 2022
Finally a 5 star true crime book. I read about this crime a few years back so I was excited when I saw someone wrote about it. Mr Hammer is a fine true crime writer. He covers so much detail, down to weather outside. I can close my eyes while listening to the audiobook and I feel like I’m right on that pier. I loved it. Thank you
June 15, 2022
When 3 CBS employees were gunned down in a Manhattan parking lot, the ensuing investigation revealed how a small-time diamond merchant running a multimillion-dollar swindle would kill to Iprotect his ill-gotten gains. The NYPD. the FBI & joined forces with bank insurance investigators to capture him & prove their case against him. Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime (1988).
January 31, 2025
Boring
Overall I found this book boring and hard to follow. Writer constantly threw around numbers and amounts of money and transactions, which is okay but it could’ve been designed better. To save you the read, Nash was hired by the Margolieses to kill two employees that knew too much about their fraud. The murder went sideways and more people were killed as a result.
Overall I found this book boring and hard to follow. Writer constantly threw around numbers and amounts of money and transactions, which is okay but it could’ve been designed better. To save you the read, Nash was hired by the Margolieses to kill two employees that knew too much about their fraud. The murder went sideways and more people were killed as a result.
August 1, 2017
A fast-paced, well- written quick read about the senseless real life murders of four innocent people in NYC in the 80s by a diabolical sociopath with no remorse. A great tale of police and FBI work to solve the crime. What some people will do for money is mind blowing.
May 23, 2018
Greed personified
While we all have our own wants and needs. Unfortunately there are many who will use any means without regard to the cost to others to obtain them. This is a well written, easy read that tells the story without getting bogged down in too much detail.
While we all have our own wants and needs. Unfortunately there are many who will use any means without regard to the cost to others to obtain them. This is a well written, easy read that tells the story without getting bogged down in too much detail.
August 22, 2019
Not great, but not awful. It's kind of strange to call it the CBS Murders when the CBS guys were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The story really is about a ponzi scheme and diamonds and greed and covering it up.
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