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Prisoners who’ve penned books

Prisoners who’ve penned books

Convicted serial killer Paul Bernardo is back in the news, following reports that he has released an e-book on Amazon.

“A MAD World Order” is a 631-page thriller, which can be downloaded onto a Kindle for $7.77.

On Friday morning, the majority of the book’s 262 reviews expressed outrage that the online retailer would allow the work to be sold, with many vowing to boycott the company.

Bernardo is serving a life sentence for raping and killing teenagers Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French in St. Catharines, Ont. He has no chance of parole for 25 years.

In 2002, Ontario passed the Prohibiting Profiting from Recounting Crimes Act, which makes it illegal for killers to earn revenue from books about their crimes. It does not forbid them from writing works of fiction, though.

The 50-year-old is not the first convicted criminal to write or release a book while behind bars, an outlet that’s proven to be lucrative for some offenders.

Name: Jack Abbott
Crime: Forgery, manslaughter and bank robbery
The seasoned criminal was familiar with the ways of prison life, which he chronicled in his book, In the Belly of the Beast, released in 1981. In 1966, while serving a five-year term for forgery, he was handed a concurrent sentence of three to 20 years for fatally stabbing an inmate. During an escape in 1971, he robbed a saving and loan association in Denver, and was arrested a month later, where he was given a 19-year sentence. In that time, he began a mail correspondence with Norman Mailer, who was impressed with his writing. After the New York Review of Books published some of their letters, Abbott secured an agent and went on to publish his book. It received favourable reviews and established Abbott a place in the literary community. In June 1981, he was released on parole, but went on to stab a man six weeks later. In 1982, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison, during which time he wrote another book, My Return, which wasn’t as successful as his first. Abbott committed suicide in prison in 2002.

Name: Stephen Reid
Crime: Bank robbery
Reid was a member of the Stopwatch Gang Stop, a group of men who held up banks in Canada and the U.S. during the 70s and 80s, accumulating $15 million in total. While serving his first sentence in 1984, he penned Jack Rabbit Parole, a semi-autobiographical novel. It was released in 1986, a year before his sentence ended. He was arrested again for a 1999 bank robbery in Victoria. During his second sentence he wrote A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden: Writing from Prison, which won the 2013 Victoria Book Award.

Name: David Berkowitz
Crime: Murder
Over a 13-month period in the mid-70s, Berkowitz went on a shooting spree that terrorized New York and left seven people dead and six wounded. Dubbed “Son of Sam,” Berkowitz was handed six 25-years-to-life sentences in 1978. In that time, he became a born-again Christian and penned a book, Son of Hope: The Prison Journals of David Berkowitz, Volume 1, which is a collection of his prison journals. It was published in 2006.

Name: Piper Kerman
Crime: Felony money-laundering
While a student at an upscale college, Kerman got involved in running money for an international heroin smuggling operation. Though her crimes took place in the early 90s, she wasn’t indicted until 1998 and then served out 13 of a 15-month sentence in 2004. Her book Orange Is The New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison went on to be a bestseller and inspired the wildly popular Netflix series.