Up in Smoke

De: Cynthia Hickey

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

CHRISTMAS EVE, 1945. FIVE CHILDREN VANISHED. THE OFFICIAL STORY WAS A LIE.
When private investigators Pressley Taylor and Jackson Hudson take on a cold case documentary about a devastating house fire in Fayetteville, Arkansas, they expect another tragic accident lost to history. Instead, they uncover one of America's most shocking conspiracies—a kidnapping plot orchestrated by Mussolini loyalists that the FBI deliberately buried.

THE FIRE WAS ARSON. THE CHILDREN DIDN'T DIE. THEY WERE STOLEN.
George and Jennie Simpson spent forty-four years searching for their missing children, dismissed as delusional by authorities who knew the truth. Cut phone lines. Sabotaged trucks. A missing ladder. Every rescue attempt was systematically blocked. Five children were trafficked to New York, given forged identities, and placed with Italian-American families as rewards for loyalty to fascist networks.

SEVENTY-NINE YEARS LATER, ONE CHILD IS STILL ALIVE—AND SHE DOESN'T KNOW WHO SHE REALLY IS.
Racing against time and a powerful family determined to keep their crimes buried, Pressley and Jackson follow a trail of:

• FBI cover-ups and political interference that protected organized crime networks
• Hidden documents revealing a post-WWII child trafficking operation
• Eyewitness testimony from a 94-year-old waitress who saw the children alive
• DNA evidence proving five stolen identities
• Forensic analysis of forged birth certificates and a mysterious photograph
• Deathbed confessions from mobsters who participated in the conspiracy

From the Ozark hills of Arkansas to the streets of Brooklyn, from classified FBI files to a family's heartbreaking journals, this investigation exposes how Italian fascist sympathizers used kidnapping as retaliation, how the U.S. government chose Cold War intelligence over justice, and how one mother's certainty was vindicated eight decades too late.

A TRUE CRIME INVESTIGATION. A HISTORICAL CONSPIRACY. A FAMILY DESTROYED BY IDEOLOGY AND POWER.
Perfect for fans of Killers of the Flower Moon, The Devil in the White City, and I'll Be Gone in the Dark—a meticulously researched thriller about identity theft, organized crime, government corruption, and the investigators who refused to let a seventy-nine-year-old mystery stay buried.

Based on a true unsolved case that haunted America for generations.
"A mother knows. Everyone calls me crazy, but I am not wrong."
—Jennie Simpson, 1946