Typed Letter Signed

This huge corruption investigation of the 1980s involved the FBI, IRS, USPS, Chicago Police Department and other law enforcement agencies and resulted in a large number of indictments and convictions of judges, lawyers, sheriffs, police officers and court officials -- among the top of which was this federal judge, convicted of extorting $200,000 in "loans" from those under him; his 18-year sentence was later reduced to 13 years and he was released in 1990. TLS, 5pp (rectos only), 8½" X 11", Oxford, WI, 1987 December 29. Addressed to a Chicago publisher. Very good. Two faint original fold lines and 3/4" edge tear at right margin. Writing from prison, Holzer congratulates this Chicago publisher on his success, then boldly states: ".allow me to introduce myself. I am a prisoner at the Federal Prison Camp, Oxford, Wisconsin." Interestingly, when Holzer was sentenced for his crimes, he remarked, 'I stand before you a convicted felon, exhausted, disrobed and defeated. . I have committed crimes. Those crimes have destroyed me. They have wounded my family beyond measure and confused my friends. . There are no words to express my loss, my remorse, my grief.'' But in this letter he recaps his career, then paints Operation Greylord in a different light: "I became, in 1985, one of more than seventy judges, lawyers and court personnel to find himself the target of a wide-ranging investigation, tagged 'Operation Greylord' by the prosecutors and press, followed by the inevitable indictment. after a newsy, six-week trial, I was, of course, found guilty on most counts. In the media-hyped atmosphere of the day, a finding of innocent would have been impossible." The remainder of this lengthy letters is not a legal expose ("but I'm ready to take on that assignment next"), but rather a description of his novel "Leviticus 18" -- "the story of a Jewish family who lived in the town of Oswiecim, Polish Austria-Hungary, nestled in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, about thirty-five miles west of Krakow. The action occurs roughly between 1880 and 1910." Interesting and unusual, with direct reference to the scandal that ruined his career.…