--- title: True Crime Author Maureen Hughes on Spotting a Rehearsed Answer and Staying Safe While Investigating the Mob description: Maureen Hughes, a former police officer and bodyguard, on how she reads people and stays safe while investigating the mob for her true crime books. author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-10-11T11:00:16.755Z updated: 2026-10-11T11:00:51.347Z canonical: https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/true-crime-author-maureen-hughes image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/hughes-hero-v1.webp categories: Authors & Writers, Non-Fiction content_type: Profile region: United States publication: Rich Books schema_type: Article about: - type: Person name: Maureen Hughes description: Maureen Hughes is a true crime author who spent 21 years in police work and has worked as a bodyguard and private investigator. Her books include The Countess and the Mob, River of Shame and Sins of the South, and the historical crime novel The Skin Game. url: https://countessmaureen.com/ jobTitle: True crime author sameAs: - https://www.amazon.com/Maureen-Hughes/e/B001K91L4O --- Maureen Hughes, a former police officer and bodyguard who has spent 26 years writing [true crime](https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/why-ethical-true-crime-sets-the-standard-for-sophisticated-audiences), decides whether to believe someone by watching what they do while they answer. > "It wasn't formal training. It's experience, dealing with people day after day. You learn to watch their actions: are they fidgeting, avoiding eye contact, pacing? Those things make me question whether an answer is a programmed response or the truth." > — Maureen Hughes She learned to read people over 21 years of police work in southern Illinois counties and at the University of Illinois, and as a bodyguard and private investigator, and she credits two early supervisors with the discipline behind her reporting. As a true crime author she has conducted hundreds of interviews, she says, some used in later books and others kept for reference. Among them were 10 strong cases she felt she could solve. All five of her books are about people or events in Illinois, and she discussed them with Jim Masters on Close Up Radio on September 30. ### Book: The Countess and the Mob *The Untold Story of Marajen Stevick Chinigo and Mafia Lord Johnny Rosselli* By Maureen Hughes Maureen Hughes first met Countess Marajen Stevick Chinigo in a hospital room in Champaign, Illinois, where she was assigned to protect her. After three years of research and conversations with the Countess's friends, she tells the story of the newspaper heiress who mixed with Frank Sinatra, Joan Crawford and Lucky Luciano, her marriage to Johnny Rosselli and her ties to the Mafia. [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1450207502) ## The Countess and Johnny Roselli Maureen first met the woman she calls the Countess, Marajen Stevick Chinigo, the longtime owner of The News-Gazette in Champaign, in a hospital room where she had been assigned to guard her. Years later she saw her again at an art museum, gowned and gracious, greeting university presidents by name. Watching her hold court, Maureen sensed there was something underneath the performance. Later, a stranger sat down beside her on a park bench and told her there was more to the story than she knew. The conversation turned into a two-hour dinner, where the stranger told her the Countess had once been married to Johnny Roselli, who represented the Chicago mob in Las Vegas. The research that followed took three years, much of it spent talking to the Countess's friends. Maureen came to believe the Countess had her own husband killed in Rome, and that fear and guilt led her to spend the rest of her life recording every room in her house. Maureen published the story as The Countess and the Mob in 2010. ## Her Books on James Earl Ray, the Slave House and a Chicago Private Investigator In River of Shame, Maureen writes that Ted Crowley, a mob figure in Quincy, Illinois, recruited a young, poor and uneducated James Earl Ray to run errands for his gambling operation, long before Ray was convicted of killing Martin Luther King Jr. The book asks whether Ray was a patsy for the real killer. An Angry Fire Still Burns tells the story of the so-called Slave House in southern Illinois, which was promised to enslaved people as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Those who trusted it were sent back south instead. Maureen toured the building's third floor herself and later found a woman whose great-great-aunt had been sold there, sale bill and all. After reading the book, a state superintendent of schools wrote to tell her he had cried on a flight while finishing it. The Skin Game, her only work of historical fiction, draws on her police work. Its Chicago private investigator, Samantha O'Malley, is about 95 percent her, Maureen says, down to a mission in which she posed as a decoy at a mafia sit-down dinner staffed entirely by undercover FBI agents. ## Staying Safe While Investigating Organized Crime Throughout her career, Maureen has never stayed in the same motel two nights running. "While investigating, I'm always watching small things: where I park, where I eat, where I sit in a restaurant, details that seem minor but can keep you from getting hurt," she says. "I rarely kept documents myself, since many couldn't be copied, but sources were willing to show them to me, often at their own expense, risking exposure and punishment so the truth could get out." Her most dangerous reporting was in Cairo, Illinois, where a former state representative, the son of a local nightclub owner, asked her to reopen his father's case, which had been ruled a suicide in 1956. Maureen says she proved he was murdered. She traced a second weapon through a source in Florida, and the next morning watched a news report showing the building where that gun was supposedly hidden on fire. The case is at the center of Sins of the South, her book on mafia links in small southern Illinois towns. After she testified in a high-profile mob case, people who wanted her silenced found her, and she had to leave Illinois for her own safety. She keeps a photograph of Frank Serpico, the former New York police officer whose whistleblowing nearly got him killed. "He was only trying to be a good, decent cop. But he found out some things, very much like I did. And his life was threatened. He had to leave the country," she says. "Thank God I haven't had to leave the country, yet." Maureen raised two sons and a daughter while keeping her investigative life apart from her family, a line she says was never easy to hold. Asked whether she wishes she could forget what she has learned, she says no, because it gave her a clear picture of how power works and what silence protects. ### More Books by Maureen Hughes - [River of Shame](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1979626979) by Maureen Hughes - [Sins of the South](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1469907798) by Maureen Hughes - [The Skin Game](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3WDL5YY) by Maureen Hughes **About Maureen Hughes** True crime author Maureen Hughes is a true crime author who spent 21 years in police work and has worked as a bodyguard and private investigator. Her books include The Countess and the Mob, River of Shame and Sins of the South, and the historical crime novel The Skin Game. [Website](https://countessmaureen.com/) ## FAQ **Q: What is the easiest way to tell if someone is lying?** Maureen Hughes watches what people do while they answer. Fidgeting, avoiding eye contact and pacing make her question whether an answer is a programmed response or the truth. She learned to read those signs over years of police work and hundreds of interviews, not through formal training. **Q: What are the risks associated with investigative journalism?** For Maureen, the risks have been personal. After testifying in a high-profile mob case she was found by people who wanted her silenced, and she had to leave Illinois for her own safety. She never stays in the same motel two nights running, and the sources who showed her documents often did so at the risk of exposure and punishment. **Q: How do investigative journalists get their information?** Maureen works mainly from interviews, hundreds of them over her career by her own count, and from documents that sources let her see but not copy. She also goes to the places involved, as she did at the Slave House in southern Illinois, and tracks down the families of the people in her stories. **Q: What happened to Johnny Roselli?** Johnny Roselli, who represented the Chicago mob in Las Vegas, disappeared in July 1976, and his body was found in a steel drum in a bay near Miami in August that year. Maureen's book The Countess and the Mob tells the story of the Champaign newspaper owner she was told had once been married to him.