Thrilling Chronicle of U.S. Attorney’s Career Battling Murderers, Drug Lords & More

Justice Never Rests by William Kolibash, with Jon Land and Shariane Kolibash Taylor

This book grabs you from the very first page.

If you like John Grisham-like thrillers and legal TV shows and movies, you’re going to love Justice Never Rests: A U.S, Attorney’s Battle Against Murders, Drug Lords, Mob Kingpins & Cults. It’s full of the same kind of crime stories except for one big difference. Everything in this book is true.

Longtime federal prosecutor William Kolibash — along with two co-authors, his daughter, Shariane Kolibash Taylor, and best-selling novelist/writer Jon Land — weaves a gripping tale filled with colorful stories and characters about his legendary 20-year crimefighting career in the Northern District of West Virginia.

Edge-of-Your-Seat Suspense

This book grabs you from the very first page when Kolibash tells the shocking story of how one of the men he prosecuted sent him a letter bomb that could have ended his career and his life right then.

“As soon as I slid the contents from the envelope, I knew it was a bomb. Small, jagged pieces of steel spilled out with the yellow legal pad I had eased partway from the envelope. In that moment, I didn’t know the only thing saving me from being swallowed by an explosive fireball was that the accelerant, believed to have been lip balm, had failed to trigger the blast.

“The sender was an inmate named Rodney Curtis Hamrick, and my life had been saved by the fact that he was unable to find an accelerant better than lip balm that would have left my wife a widow and my children fatherless. Believe it or not, Hamrick had managed to obtain all the items with which he’d rigged the bomb from the jail commissary that had, fortunately for me, lacked a better accelerant in its inventory. If he had opted for hamburger grease from the cafeteria, I would not be here today.”

20-Year Career Battling Pure Evil

Kolibash then talks about the chilling face-to-face confrontation he had with the man when he testified against him in a trial for attempted murder and mailing of the bomb, calling him “pure evil and one of the scariest criminals I’ve ever encountered.” He was convicted and given a long prison sentence.

After that dramatic opening, the pages just fly by as Kolibash recounts his battles to see justice done against mob kingpins, major drug dealers, violent gangs, smugglers, sex traffickers, illegal gambling and corrupt public officials. 

He talks about — and gives plenty of examples of — how prostitution, drugs and gambling are not “victimless” crimes as some people believe.

And he accomplishes this in many cases by using references and comparisons to popular culture such as TV shows and music.

The Good and the “Breaking Bad”

In terms of dealing with drug dealers, he brings up the hit TV show Breaking Bad and how the main character Walter White “introduced millions of viewers to all things crystal meth, often romanticizing both the process and the colorful thugs with whom Walter White interacted. 

“When meth came to West Virginia in 1979, there was nothing romantic about it. And of all the drug scourges I witnessed and battled, this ranked with the worst. In large part, that’s because meth is often addicting from the very first time a user tries it. Over time, the brain develops tolerance to the drug, and the user needs to take higher and higher doses to achieve the same pleasurable effects. That leads to more crime, and one thing that Breaking Bad got right was the violence that pervades meth at all levels of usage and distribution.”

At another point, he begins a chapter with the line “almost heaven, West Virginia” from the hit John Denver song — before telling the story of one violent crime-ridden part of the state that “was anything but heaven. In fact, it resembled something much closer to hell.”

And, despite all the bad guys he chronicles that he helped put away for their crimes, he spends a great deal of time in the book praising the “good guys” too — dedicated heroic law enforcement officials from the FBI, West Virginia State Police, local police, the IRS and many others who he worked with during his years as a crime fighter.

A Lifetime of Distinguished Work

Kolibash’s time as U.S. Attorney there ended when the Republicans who had appointed him lost the White House to Bill Clinton in 1992, and the Democrats replaced him in the job with someone else. 

But, after a lifetime of legal work, he still looks back on those days with pride, writing in the book. “The only regret I have is that I couldn’t save the victims whose lives were destroyed or ended by the likes of the drug dealers, killers, kingpins, and cultists I prosecuted.”

Oh, as a final footnote to his long, distinguished time in the U.S. Attorney’s job, he tells the story of how he came out of a dinner honoring him on his retirement to find one of the tires flat on his car. It turned out someone had shot a bullet into the tire. To this day, Kolibash says he has no idea who did it or why.

Fortunately, he survived that — along with the mail bomb and many other dangerous moments on the job — to write this fascinating book about it all.