Matt Birkbeck

He also wrote the critically acclaimed Deconstructing Sammy (2008) about the life of Sammy Davis Jr. and efforts to resolve his debts and his legacy following his death in 1990, The Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino (2013), about the influential Mafia boss Russell Bufalino, and he also authored A Deadly Secret (2002/2015), about New York real estate scion Robert Durst, who was accused of murdering his wife Kathie Durst and two others.

Birkbeck has written magazine pieces and features for a variety of publications, covering the aftermath of the 2004 Super Bowl riots for Boston Magazine, the cross-country pursuit of a civil rights worker by white supremacists for the Philadelphia Inquirer, features for The New York Times, the Robert Durst investigation for Reader's Digest, the U.S. Secret Service prosecution of baseball legend Denny McLain and the Mafia forPlayboy, and others.

Birkbeck worked as a newspaper reporter first at the Pocono Record and then at The Morning Call, and also served as a correspondent for People magazine from 1998 to 2004 covering mostly crime and human interest stories including the 1999 death of John F. Kennedy Jr.,and the Robert Durst investigation.

[7] Birkbeck's reporting on the case served as the basis of his bestselling book The Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino, which was published in 2013 by Berkley/Penguin.

[10] Birkbeck received an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award in San Francisco in 2002 for his groundbreaking stories on mortgage fraud in the U.S.[11] He wrote a multi-part investigative series A Price Too High in 2001 that exposed how home builders, appraisers, mortgage companies and major banks conspired to defraud thousands of homebuyers, mostly minorities from the New York area, and forced them into bankruptcy and foreclosure.