WHEELING – A book by a former U.S. Attorney for Northern West Virginia recounts some of the biggest cases he handled during his time in office.
William Kolibash’s book “Justice Never Rests” was published January 28 by Post Hill Press. It is subtitled “A U.S. Attorney’s Battle Against Murderers, Drug Lords, Mob Kingpins and Cults.” He co-wrote the book with bestselling thriller writer Jon Land along with his daughter Shariane Kolibash Taylor, a corporate attorney in Pittsburgh.
The 320-page first-person memoir tells the stories of his time as an assistant U.S. Attorney and as the U.S. Attorney. He shares how he and his associates took down crime bosses, drug dealers, murderers, corrupt jurists and a Hare Krishna swami.
Kolibash's book
| Courtesy photo
“Most of the cases were pretty major cases and received a lot of media coverage,” Kolibash said in a recent interview with The West Virginia Record. “A lot of people would say, ‘You ought to write a book about this. We never really got anything off of the ground until now.”
And, Kolibash says that sort of happened by accident when he was introduced to Land through a mutual Brown University contact. Land also attended Brown.
“He (Land) had written about 60 books, and he’s really interested in true crime,” Kolibash said. “I sent him a summary of my cases, and he said it was great. We got together, and we used that summary as an outline for the book. We would have Zoom meetings every week. We talked about different cases, and he’d do research on them. Of course, there were a lot of court records involved.”
During his time as a U.S. Attorney, Kolibash sought new and different means to put away criminals. He pioneered the use of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute to bring criminals to justice and became the first U.S Attorney ever to make use of multi-jurisdictional task forces and investigative grand juries.
Still, Kolibash says he doesn’t think organized crime has a presence in West Virginia now.
“The state has taken over the money with the legalization of gambling,” he said. “The state has going from horse racing to a small lottery to table games to casino gambling.
“The major source now is drug trafficking, and that’s sort of a different animal. A lot of the organized crime groups stayed away from that until they saw the money. But there is no one kingpin. There are a lot of groups run by people outside of the State of West Virginia.”
Kolibash said the feedback he’s received about the book has been outstanding.
“Sales have been really high,” he said. “It’s been sold out in all of the Book-A-Million locations with very positive feedback. There’s been a lot of interest locally and nationally. I did a podcast with Newt Gingrich, and I’ve talked to major radio stations, such as one in Chicago. We’ve been talking to someone in Los Angeles about possibly a TV or movie production. It also received a great review from The Los Angeles Times.”
Kolibash was born in 1944, in Wheeling. He went to the Linsly School and was awarded a scholarship to Brown University from which he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966. He then attended the West Virginia University College of Law and received his law degree in 1969.
He then was commissioned as a captain in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corp before he began his civilian legal career as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of West Virginia, during which he prosecuted several high-profile corruption cases and as a result received the Department of Justice’s Special Commendation Award for outstanding services in 1980. After serving several months as the court-appointed U.S. Attorney, he was nominated by President Ronald Reagan and approved by the U.S. Senate as the presidentially appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of West Virginia in 1982.
Kolibash received many awards during his service as U.S. Attorney, including Federal Executive of the Year in 1991. That’s the same year he was awarded the Distinguished West Virginian by Gov. Gaston Caperton.
When he left the U.S. Attorney’s office in July 1993, Kolibash entered private practice until his retirement last year. He is married to the former Rita Scanlon with whom he has three children and six grandchildren.
“Justice Never Rests” is available at Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Amazon.com and other book retailers.Top of Form