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Frame-up: The Incredible Case of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings
One of the most infamous, calculated miscarriages of justice in American history - the Tom Mooney-Warren Billings case told in full for the first time.
- GenresHistory
497 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1967
33 people want to read
About the author
Curt Gentry
42 books31 followersCurt Gentry was an American writer. He served in the Air Force during the Korean War, mostly as a writer on the Pacific Stars and Stripes newspaper in Tokyo.
He is best known for co-writing the book Helter Skelter with Vincent Bugliosi (1974), which detailed the Charles Manson murders. Frame-Up was a nominee for the 1968 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Fact Crime book.
Helter Skelter won a 1975 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Fact Crime book.
J.Edgar Hoover won the 1992 PEN Center West Literary Award for Non-Fiction.
Gentry lived in San Francisco, California. He was 83 at the time of his death.
He is best known for co-writing the book Helter Skelter with Vincent Bugliosi (1974), which detailed the Charles Manson murders. Frame-Up was a nominee for the 1968 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Fact Crime book.
Helter Skelter won a 1975 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Fact Crime book.
J.Edgar Hoover won the 1992 PEN Center West Literary Award for Non-Fiction.
Gentry lived in San Francisco, California. He was 83 at the time of his death.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 21, 2016
July 22, 2016 is the centennial of the attack and the start of this incredible case. A terrorist bomb explodes in a parade in San Francisco, and a runaway DA and the local press blame local radical labor leaders.
This is a fascinating story, timely again because it involves a wartime terrorist attack, foreign espionage, major issues of habeas corpus, and uneasiness about national security in general. It's also a warning about how runaway hysteria about national security can wreck lives, empower charlatans like the DA who prosecuted (framed) this case, and, in the end, fail to gain any security.
(There's even electronic surveillance in this story: seems that Federal agents had a dictaphone in the DA's office. In 1918.)
This book's appendix is particularly valuable. Having told the story of how two innocent men served 23 years for a bombing they never committed, Gentry asks, Whose Bomb? He reviews a number of theories (various -- and doubtful -- confessions, accusations about Mexican insurgents or the DA himself, labor activists, &c.) One finger points at the Imperial German consulate, and German espionage was a very real threat during that war.
I recommend Richard Frost's Mooney Case because it goes into more detail on the legal intricacies of this case. Gentry and Frost complement each other because Gentry pursues the trial-by-press and multiple-suspects parts; Frost the law history. Both are useful.
This is a fascinating story, timely again because it involves a wartime terrorist attack, foreign espionage, major issues of habeas corpus, and uneasiness about national security in general. It's also a warning about how runaway hysteria about national security can wreck lives, empower charlatans like the DA who prosecuted (framed) this case, and, in the end, fail to gain any security.
(There's even electronic surveillance in this story: seems that Federal agents had a dictaphone in the DA's office. In 1918.)
This book's appendix is particularly valuable. Having told the story of how two innocent men served 23 years for a bombing they never committed, Gentry asks, Whose Bomb? He reviews a number of theories (various -- and doubtful -- confessions, accusations about Mexican insurgents or the DA himself, labor activists, &c.) One finger points at the Imperial German consulate, and German espionage was a very real threat during that war.
I recommend Richard Frost's Mooney Case because it goes into more detail on the legal intricacies of this case. Gentry and Frost complement each other because Gentry pursues the trial-by-press and multiple-suspects parts; Frost the law history. Both are useful.
May 16, 2018
Curt Gentry's Frame-Up looks at a forgotten terrorist attack (the Preparedness Day bombing in 1916 San Francisco) and the rigged case against Tom Mooney, a Wobbly organizer who spent decades in prison for a crime he almost certainly didn't commit. Gentry's to be commended for his detailed recreation of the bombing, WWI-era hysteria against radicals and subversives, and his sketches of the era's radical personalities, from Mooney to Emma Goldman and Luigi Galleani. Sadly, unlike other Gentry works (Helter Skelter, his J. Edgar Hoover biography) the book is often dry and tedious; it's certainly meticulous, but he struggles to make endless accounts of appeals, legal wrangles and Free Mooney campaigns interesting. It's a fascinating story and it's a shame it didn't receive better treatment from a usually on-point author.
November 4, 2025
Anyone who has read Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders or J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets knows that Curt Gentry is a fine writer who gets to the bottom of things, or at least tries his darndest to. This 1967 book gives a thorough analysis of the frame-up of these two labor and socialist militants, who were convicted not only without any evidence, but with a photo that cleared them in the possession of the prosecution.
The crime was the bombing of a Preparedness Parade in 1916. While Billings and Mooney were opponents of the US drive toward war, they knew that actions like this only help the imperialist war lords. While Gentry has a final chapter on "whose bomb?" he doesn't claim to have discovered who did it; he just relates the possibilities and the evidence. No more is necessary.
I did a search in the index of the 'Militant' newspaper, established by James P. Cannon, previously the founding leader of the International Labor Defense (ILD) and of the early Communist Party. I found in the September 22, 1972 issue an obituary of Warren K. Billings, with the following last paragraphs:
"In February 1970 Billings spoke at a San Francisco memorial meeting for Vincent R. Dunne, the
veteran Trotskyist leader who had helped lead the 1934 Minneapolis Teamster strikes and later went to jail as one of the Minneapolis 18. In the same year, Billings traveled to Cleveland to speak at a Socialist Workers Party election campaign rally on May Day where he endorsed the SWP's Ohio campaign.
"During the 1960s Billings collaborated with author Curt Gentry in writing Frame-Up, which recorded the facts of the Mooney-Billing case."
James P. Cannon's book Notebook of an Agitator: From the Wobblies to the Fight against the Korean War and McCarthyism relates his visits to both Mooney and Billings in 1928.
People who think that frameups like this don't take place anymore should remember the Central Park Five, who were convicted only on coerced confessions, with no other evidence. And the liberal press howled just as loudly as the conservatives.
The crime was the bombing of a Preparedness Parade in 1916. While Billings and Mooney were opponents of the US drive toward war, they knew that actions like this only help the imperialist war lords. While Gentry has a final chapter on "whose bomb?" he doesn't claim to have discovered who did it; he just relates the possibilities and the evidence. No more is necessary.
I did a search in the index of the 'Militant' newspaper, established by James P. Cannon, previously the founding leader of the International Labor Defense (ILD) and of the early Communist Party. I found in the September 22, 1972 issue an obituary of Warren K. Billings, with the following last paragraphs:
"In February 1970 Billings spoke at a San Francisco memorial meeting for Vincent R. Dunne, the
veteran Trotskyist leader who had helped lead the 1934 Minneapolis Teamster strikes and later went to jail as one of the Minneapolis 18. In the same year, Billings traveled to Cleveland to speak at a Socialist Workers Party election campaign rally on May Day where he endorsed the SWP's Ohio campaign.
"During the 1960s Billings collaborated with author Curt Gentry in writing Frame-Up, which recorded the facts of the Mooney-Billing case."
James P. Cannon's book Notebook of an Agitator: From the Wobblies to the Fight against the Korean War and McCarthyism relates his visits to both Mooney and Billings in 1928.
People who think that frameups like this don't take place anymore should remember the Central Park Five, who were convicted only on coerced confessions, with no other evidence. And the liberal press howled just as loudly as the conservatives.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews