Ghost Burglar: The True Story of Bernard Welch: Master Thief, Ruthless Con Man, and Cold-Blooded Killer

Sociopath, murderer, thief...Bernard C. Welch was all these yet he passed himself off as normal. One of his favorite aliases, of the 11 known he used, was Norm. How did this One Man Crime Wave; manage to escape from two prisons, elude police for years and amass a huge personal fortune to become America's Most Wanted burglar? Reporter Jack Burch and Detective Jim King (who was the first to finger Welch) peel back the layers of the criminal career of the single individual that most Washington D.C. enforcement agencies thought was a gang of roving of thieves. The night of December 5, 1980 when Washington's most beloved cardiologist, Michael Halberstam and his wife Eliot Jones-Halberstam returned home to feed the dogs, Bernard C. Welch was doing his fifth burglary of the night in the Halberstam home. Halberstam fought back and Welch shot him twice in the chest. As Welch fled on foot, Halberstam, driving himself to Sibley Hospital, spotted the criminal and ran him down with his 1977 Monte Carlo. Halberstam died that night, but Welch--AKA Norm Hamilton--lived and the resulting trial became a media circus. This is the fascinating story of a criminal mind and life that wreaked havoc in the lives of thousands and thousands from New York to Washington to Duluth, Minnesota.