Darrell Steffensmeier
I do know I am not going to make it [Doc] gave it to me plain, very Goddamn plain: “Sam, there ain’t time for that Get your house in order, with your grandchildren, with Wanda. I says, “How long?” He tells me, “Give or take a little, six weeks, three months. Maybe sooner. “ That hit home like a ton of bricks fell on my nuts.
—Sam Goodman
Sam Goodman—long-time thief, fence, and quasi-legitimate businessman-died following a four month bout with lung cancer. Sam’s criminal career spanned fifty years, beginning in his midteens and ending with his death when Sam was in his midsixties. I had known Sam for roughly twenty years and had written about him in The Fence: In the Shadow of Two Worlds (1986). The Fence described Sam’s criminal career as a burglar, his eventual drift into fencing, and the circumstances that led to his incarceration for receiving stolen property in the 1970s.
Confessions of a Dying Thief offers an updated and greatly expanded case study of Sam Goodman based on continuous contact with him for many years, on multiple interviews with his network associates in crime and business, and on a series of interviews with him shortly before he died. 1 stayed in regular contact with Sam from the time he was incarcerated in the 1970s up until he died in the 1990s. Toward the end, the contact became more intense, as I visited him frequently during his four month bout with cancer. I also interviewed Sam at length on a Friday-Sunday weekend, five days before he slipped into a coma and eleven days before he died.
A few weeks after Sam’s death, I gave Jeffery Ulmer a partial transcript of the deathbed interviews and asked for his reactions. Jeff was a graduate student working with me during the time Sam was alive and sometimes visited Penn.State. Jeff had met Sam, heard him speak to criminology classes, and occasionally “hung ouf’ with Sam and me during these visits. Jeff also talked frequently with me during Sam’s illness and death, and served as a sounding board for my ideas and emotions.
These discussions eventually led to my asking Jeff to collaborate in producing Confessions. I brought him into the project for several reasons. First, Jeff is very familiar with The Fence and the material behind it (more familiar with it than anyone except myself), he had met Sam several times, and he had read through parts of Sam’s last interviews. Second, Jeff serves as an added check on my objectivity, since I sometimes was concerned with how my friendship with Sam might influence my interpretation of the material. Third, I wanted Ulmer to help with the writing, rewriting, and organization of Confessions—in particular to help organize and analyze the massive amount of material collected from in-depth interviews, observations, and other sources. Fourth, Jeff is well-versed in both criminological theory and ethnographic research, and therefore brought additional ideas to the methodological framing and theoretical arguments of Confessions.
It was on Thanksgiving day, about five months prior to Sam’s death, that I ‘got a telephone call from Sam canceling our plans to attend an out-of-state auction. As recorded in my field notes at the time, Sam complained of “feeling rougher than hell and coughing like a son of a bitch.” Sam’s tone and the unusualness of this sort of cancellation added to an already strong premonition of mine (never shared with Sam) that he had cancer. A heavy smoker, he had seemed short of breath lately and lacked his usual pep. Roughly six weeks later, Sam was hospitalized for “fluid on his lungs” and subsequently was diagnosed as having advanced-stage lung cancer.
The deathbed interviews were wide ranging—an assessment of Sam’s life as a whole and of a criminal career that spanned fifty years; a recollection of criminal and quasi-legitimate associates, of good times and not-so-good times, a reflection on crime and the criminal justice system, on “straight” society, on human relationships, a revelation of Sam’s sentiments toward me, “the professor” (moniker often used by Sam and his colleagues), and an intimate disclosure of Sam’s showdown with death.
Sam’s illness and death are a sobering backdrop throughout the whole book. However, what follows this prologue is not just a dying thief’s intimate confessions; rather, it is a rare and penetrating journey into the dynamics of criminal careers and the social organization of criminal enterprise. The journey begins with Part I, which farther introduces Sam and Confessions, and spells out the book’s contributions to sociology and criminology. Part II frames the book theoretically and focuses on the life trajectory of Sam’s career in burglary and fencing. Part III focuses on the social organization of criminal enterprise and criminal careers. Finally, Part IV takes stock of Sam’s life, and of his confrontation with death. Let the journey begin.