THE GEORDIE GODFATHER by JOHN “MARIO” CUNNINGHAM > Foreword by Patrick Lavelle | Order the book | Contact the Publisher
I have no fear and some people say I have no heart, or at least, if I did have
a heart it would be made of stone. I don’t react to anything on a human
level in an emotional way. I have never flinched in the face of danger, never
felt my heart race when confronted by violence or the threat of it and I can
never remember ever shedding a tear, even when told of the deaths of family
members or ‘close’ friends. I am not proud of being devoid of any
human emotion, in fact I am slightly ashamed of it. I would have liked to have
felt, at least a few times, the normal type of human response to fear, stress,
the grief of loss, the sadness of bereavement.
Most human feelings, apart from hatred, I was born with and which should have
evolved and matured were beaten out of me at an early age in the most brutal,
even sadistic, environment, any child could be forced to grow up in. There was
a lot more than me who endured the brutality and the never ending psychological
torture of being abandoned by parents and, at the most vulnerable and raw age,
being thrown into a Roman Catholic run orphanage in County Durham, England.
Within the closeted walls of St Mary’s Home in Tudhoe Village, the violence
meted out to the boys by those who were supposed to be caring for the youngsters,
was relentless and the indoctrination of their fertile young minds top priority.
The institution would shape the boys of the future.
There is an old Jesuit saying: “Give me a boy until he is seven and I’ll
show you the man.” That philosophy is something that the Roman Catholic
religion has fostered and encouraged for centuries in all its institutions.
It is a philosophy based on the belief that nurture, rather than nature, makes
a person who they are.
In my research for this book I have met up with many of the St Mary’s old
boys who are now men, like me, in their late 60s and early 70s. Virtually all
had turned to crime after leaving the orphanage, many serving time at Her Majesty’s
Pleasure in later life. One or two have lived their lives like recluses, frightened
to even leave their homes. There were one or two old boys whose addresses I
tracked down whom I couldn’t speak to. They had committed suicide.
JOHN “MARIO” CUNNINGHAM
I first met John “Mario” Cunningham through a friend of mine, George Craig, who told me that he had been asked by John to ask me if I would carry out some research for the book he was writing, The Geordie Godfather and the Boy from Barnardo’s. Over several months I looked through newspaper archives and website articles, mainly on the orphanage Mario grew up in, St Mary’s Home in Tudhoe, County Durham, and provided them to Mario for his writings. Mario has always struck me as a personable and affable character with a dry wit and a good sense of humour; he’s the type that would help a friend, no questions asked. He also struck me as the kind of man who could be, if necessary, quite ruthless. He had certainly seen his fair share of carve-ups or fights with some of the biggest names in the criminal underworld from the 1960s right up to the 1990s when he retired from the crime game. But his story wasn’t one of the usual type of true crime tales, focusing on hard cases and anecdotes on crime capers, it was a much more human story and one that goes to the very core of who a man is and how he got where he is. His story, all his own words, tells what shaped him into the man he is and was and the biggest influence on his life, by far, was his treatment in the orphanage he lived in from the age of four. Like all good stories, there’s a twist to his tale. Some details on Mario’s life of crime do feature in this book, but because his time in the crime game was spread over so many years, that will be the subject of a second book which Mario is now working on. Some profits from this book will go to the Barnardo’s charity and after you read it you will understand why. John ‘Mario’ Cunningham was a true professional in the crime business, he was one of the few who understood the psychology of crime and the law. But when you read his story you will understand that his life could have been very, very, different.
Patrick Lavelle
July 2009
Buy the book using PayPal
| Price: UK £12.99 (inc P & P)
|
|
| Price: US $22.00 (inc P & P)
|
|
| Price: EURO 17.50 (inc P & P)
|
|
| The following cards are accepted |      |
ISBN: 978-1-871131-18-5
198pages
Paperback
Please complete the following form and press the submit button.
Book printed and bound and this page maintained by TandemPress.com