Hell To Pay: Hells Angels vs. The Million-Dollar Rat

BROOKLYN, MAY 5, 1981

"We were in the closet. We all had our weapons loaded. We sat there and waited for the doorbell to ring," said Salvatore Vitale, a slender New York mobster known as Good-Looking Sal. "We left the door open a smidge to look out."

The ringing of the bell at the private social club’s entrance signaled the arrival of the first of the invited guests. Vito Rizzuto crouched low, peeking out from his vantage point. Through the swelling crowd and loud chatter from tough men all accustomed to having their say, Vito kept his eyes on one man, Gerlando Sciascia, a fellow Sicilian who was a long-time Rizzuto family friend.

Breathing deeply beneath his mask, Vito watched for the secret signal that would draw him from the closet, a signal that came when Sciascia slowly ran the fingers of his lean, right hand through the silver hair on the side of his head. That simple act of preening brought mayhem to the social club and radically changed the balance of power.

A major breakdown in society has descended, and everything is spiralling out of control on council ghettos across the city. The police don’t have the ability to deal with it and are demoralised. The streets are lawless. Marauding gangs are committing the vilest acts imaginable: rapes, violence against old people, arson attacks on family homes and gun crime. Unfortunately, decent hard working people live amongst it all. It is an unbearable existence for them. Until John Christian; who was born and bred on the council estate many years before, came up with a solution to the problem. After recruiting and forming his own crew, their belief was that the low-life scum who terrorise the women, kids, old and infirm should be terrorised themselves in a more frightening manner than they could ever imagine. Their presence on the streets becomes a constant challenge to the lowlife and when the team happen to capture any of these vile yobs, the justice they inflict on the scum is swift, brutal and brilliantly organised.

They become known as vigilantes who sheriff their own community.

This book contains violence in the most graphic detail.

‘I was in constant pain. My back had been bitten and torn by one of those crazy animals. Boiling water had been slowly poured over parts of my body and the skin was blistering and peeling off. I was screaming in agony and cursing them at the same time. I thought they had finished torturing me – then they strapped me tightly to a chair. The blood running down my face from the knife wound which they had threatened to follow by cutting my eyes out. Nearly two days had passed since that perverted, sick bastard, Lea, had mutilated my body.

“Charlie, we respect you as a man.” said one of them ominously. “but you know who we are.” I immediately knew this was the end, they were ready to kill me...”

The stories I heard about these people were sickening. I thought I had seen them at their worst, but they just made me more and more determined to get these dogs and kill them if I had to...’

Charlie Seiga was one of the most dangerous faces of the criminal underworld.
There were many unsolved killings which were swift brutal and brilliantly
organised. The victims - liberty takers and sadists - were all hard bastards
who dealt in the most vicious kind of violence. Many times the police marked
him out as the vicious contract killer.

He was also one of the most successful villains of his time. Police believed
that he was the brains behind major rms involved in robberies on banks,
security vans, lorry hijacking, safe breaking and many other serious crimes.
He lost track of the times he was arrested and questioned about various jobs,
but he always had an alibi - a witness to say he wasn't guilty of the crime. He
was the Houdini of the criminal underworld.

His story is a shocking tale of violence and crime; but it is also a story
about one man's ght against the scum who break his deadly code of honour.
He hates women beaters and child molesters. His presence was a constant
challenge to the low life that preyed on those who could not defend
themselves. It is an incredible autobiography of one of the most notorious
gures in the history of British crime.

‘...LIKE WALKING INTO A SCENE FROM THE GOODFELLAS'
- LOADED

'CHILLING AND COMPLETELY ABSORBING’
- SUNDAY PEOPLE

Barely able to make it into the heavyweight division and almost always the smaller fighter in the ring, Holyfield spent his professional career proving the naysayers wrong. Along the way he provided some of the twentieth century's most thrilling sports moments, not all of them on purpose. In Becoming Holyfield, he gives us the exciting inside story of defeating Mike Tyson, the self-proclaimed "Baddest Man on Earth," and then getting a piece of his ear bitten off in the rematch. We learn how it felt to become the undisputed champion of the world by knocking out the man who knocked out Tyson, and we find out what it was really like to be in the middle of a title fight and see a motorized parachute fly right into the ring.

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