Crime

Biographer Laurence Bergreen has just written a biography of Al Capone, called "Capone: The Man and the Era," which challenges many of America's popular beliefs about the famous gangster. Bergreen reveals the complexity of Capone's life by focusing on the personal details of his life -- his marriage, his role as a loving father, and generous giver. Bergreen has also written biographies of James Agee and Irving Berlin.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead substitutes for Stephen Schiff and reviews the new movie "The Client," based on John Grisham's bestselling legal thriller.

Frank Smyth is a freelance journalist who has written on Rwanda for "The Village Voice," "The Nation," and "The New Republic," and an investigative consultant for Human Rights Watch/Africa. He wrote a report for Human Rights Watch/Africa based on his visit to Rwanda in May and June of 1993. The report, "Arming Rwanda," is about the arms trade and the human rights violations in that country.

Film Critic Stephen Schiff reviews the new Arnold Schwarzenegger/Jamie Lee Curtis film. Schiff says it features small-scale wit and large-scale pyrotechnics -- though it never manages to blend the two.

Josephine Humpreys and Ruthie Bolton. Humpreys is a fiction writer who won the Pen/Hemingway award in 1985 for "Dreams of Sleep." She recently transcribed and edited the life story of Bolton, who grew up in the same area of Charleston, South Carolina as Humphreys. The novel is called "Gal," and details Bolton's experiences growing up with an abusive grandfather in 1960's South Carolina.

Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews the new movie starring Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte. Schiff says it never manages to get beyond kind of cute.

Roger Connor is founder and Executive Director of the American Alliance for Rights and Responsibilities (AARR), a legal organization aimed at making individuals more responsible for their communities. Connor and the AARR have been active in helping communities enact anti-panhandling laws. His group recently drafted a law making it illegal for panhandlers to step in someone's path, or to panhandle in subway stations or at ATM machines.

Doug Honig works for the ACLU in Washington State. They recently challenged a Seattle ruling which makes it a crime to panhandle aggressively, and to sit on sidewalks in the downtown district.

Maria Foscarinis is founder and executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Foscarinis has been active in legal issues affecting the homeless since 1983. In 1985, she established the office of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington. She calls anti-panhandling laws inhumane and possibly unconstitutional, and works to prevent cities from passing laws which attempt to sweep people off the streets. She has litigated several federal laws which enforce the individual rights of homeless people.

New York City transit police officer Brendan McGarry. He's been at the job for 21 years. McGarry wrote (also in a recent New York Times article, 10 Apr 94) about the homeless and the panhandlers on the subways, "for a transit cop, they are a tough, unpleasant, sometimes dangerous part of a sometimes thankless job." McGarry complains the public misunderstands them and accuses them of mistreatment. But he says they've worked hard at finding shelter and services for the subway's homeless, setting up a homeless outreach unit.

Mary Previte, superintendent of the Camden County (NJ) Youth Center. Previte, the great granddaughter of missionary pioneer Hudson Taylor, grew up in China with her missionary parents. During World War II, she and her fellow students and teachers spent three years in a Japanese concentration camp. Previte credits the structure her teachers' created with making the horrific experience bearable. For the past twenty years, Previte has run the youth center, a holding center for boys and girls charged with serious crimes.

Writer Mikal Gilmore, youngest brother of executed killer Gary Gilmore. Gilmore's 1977 death --at his own request-- by firing squad in Utah, was the first American execution in ten years. Brother Mikal finds seeds of his brother's two murders sown far back in Gilmore family history, and its Mormon roots.

Journalist and author Lawrence Wright. Wright's latest book is "Remembering Satan: A Case of Recovered Memory and the Shattering of an American Family" (Knopf) Wright explores the nature of memory and the notions of recovered memory and repression. "Remembering Satan" is the story of Paul Ingram and his family. Ingram was a Washington state deputy sheriff. His two grown daughters accused him of sexually abusing them. They said that Ingram and other members of the sheriff's department had committed Satanic ritual atrocities.

Colombian journalist Maria Jimena Duzan helped expose the connection between Colombia's drug traffickers and the nation's military in 1988. Duzan and her paper, El Espectador, were the targets of death threats and attacks. By 1990 all of the members of the paper's former investigative unit were either dead or in exile. Duzan went into exile, but her sister, a documentary film maker, was murdered. Duzan returned to Columbia in 1992. She has a new book, "Death Beat: A Colombian Journalist's Life Inside the Cocaine Wars." (HarperCollins)

Lionel Dahmer is the father of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who committed some of the most ghastly crimes imaginable. Lionel has written a new memoir about his life with his son, "A Father's Story." (William Morrow), in which he tries to understand what happened to his son, and how he could turn into such a monster.

Author and museum director James Cameron. Sixty four years ago, an organized mob of more than 10,000 white men and women dragged Cameron and two other black teenage men from a jail cell in Marion, Indiana. The mob mercilessly beat the three young men. They lynched two. Cameron was spared. In 1984, he recounted this experience in his memoir "A Time of Terror" (Available now from Black Classic Press). Then in 1988, Cameron founded the Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee.

Journalist Erik Larson of the Wall Street Journal. Larson has been on the show before to talk about polling, privacy and direct marketing and about how a gun goes from the manufacturer to the hands of a teenager. In fact he's written a new book, "Lethal Passage: How the Travels of a Single Handgun Expose the Roots of America's Gun Crisis," (Crown Publishers). Today Terry will talk again with Larson about guns, about gun control laws, the NRA, etc. Larson is also the author of "The Naked Consumer: How Our Private Lives Become Public Commodities."

Terry talks with a young man who has been through the program at the Camden County Youth Center, a juvenile detention center in Camden, New Jersey: Derrek Penny.

Mary Previte. She's the administrator of the Camden County Youth Center. Over the 19 years she's been at the CCYC, Previte has witnessed the increase of violence in our society, and the effects on among America's young. Previte says that most of the kids she sees live in terror, knowing violence as the only way to express their emotions. Fourteen years ago Previte started a student newspaper called "What's Happening", establishing a dialogue between herself, the kids, and the community.

Terry talks with two young men who've been through the program at the Camden County Youth Center, a juvenile detention center in Camden, New Jersey: Eddie Budah and Derrek Penny. Budah will read some of his poetry that has appeared in the Center's newsletter, "What's Happening."