J. Patrick O'Connor

J. Patrick O'Connor was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1944. He graduated from the Univeristy of Missouri - Columbia in 1967 with a degree in English Literature. He was a reporter for United Press Internation in Portland, Oregon and Kansas City and he was UPI bureau manager in Topeka, Kansas.

He was the editor of Cincinnati Magazine, an associate editor of TV Guide, and the editor and publisher on the Kansas City New Times, an alternative weekly. In 1998, he and J.J. Maloney founded the Internet site Crime Magazine (www.crimemagazine.com).

In 2008, Lawrence Hill Books, an imprint of Chicago Review Press, published his book, The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal. In 2012, Strategic Media Books published his second book, Scapegoat: The Chino Hills Murders and the Framing of Kevin Cooper. In 2013, Scapegoat won silver in the Independent Publisher's book awards in the true crime category, and the bronze in the ForeWord Reviews' Book of the Year competition in the true crime category.

Since 1997, he has been working to establish the innocence of five innocent people convicted and sentenced to life without parole in the 1988 deaths of six Kansas City firefighters and is currently at work on a book about that case.

He has been a guest speaker on the subject of our broken justice system at

Santa Clara University School of Law, Southwestern School of Law - Los Angeles,

Golden State University School of Law - San Francisco, Merritt College - Oakland, California, University of Pacifica McGeorge School of Law - Sacramento, Baruch College - City University of New York, City University of New York Graduate School, Trinity College - Hartford Connecticut, Central Connecticut State University - New Britain, Connecticut, and Wesleyan University - Middletown, Connecticut.

He has lived in Naples, Florida since 2001.