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Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite
The Rio Grande Sniper Killings by John Primomo is a true crime book that chronicles the events surrounding the summer of 1980 in South Texas. The book focuses on an amateur assassin's failed attempt to kill a federal witness, resulting in the accidental deaths of two innocent bystanders at a popular bar called Pepe's On the River. The intended target, Jimmy, survived the assassination attempt and cooperated with authorities, leading to the conviction of Lloyd Chris Walker, the hired assassin. The book explores the drug conspiracy known as the Loop 360 Deal, which motivated the assassination attempt, and the subsequent investigation that implicated various individuals in the conspiracy. It delves into the legal consequences faced by those involved, the lasting impact on the families of the victims, and the tragic loss experienced by Charlotte and Kevin's loved ones. The book emphasizes the profound loss suffered by the families and the need to remember and honor the lives of the victims.
John Primomo's The Rio Grande Sniper Killings is an exhaustively researched and straightforward analysis of a time and a crime that most today are likely to know little, if anything, about. At a macro level, the entirety of the Loop 360 Deal operation shows us how drug-crime investigations of the period were handled, for better or worse, by the DEA and TDPS, roles in this book that are specifically represented by investigators like Richard Braziel and Robert Nesteroff. On a much more personal scale, Primomo's sensitive portrayal of the victims' families adds a powerful emotional dimension and humanizes the broader crime discussion. As a reader who is deeply entrenched in advocating for the disenfranchised, Primomo's extension of the crimes' impact into socio-cultural aspects, like the brunt domino effect on the community surrounding Pepe's on the River, which was implicated in the crime, connects the individual incidents to larger societal contexts. The diversity of strengths the book and Primomo's writing have are the cornerstone of solid crime analysis and non-fiction, making The Rio Grande Sniper Killings a solid and substantive read.
