Groundbreaking U.S. Attorney William Kolibash's battle against organized crime, drug kingpins, cults, and more across his twenty-year career in the Northern District of West Virginia.
As soon as I slid the contents from the envelope, I knew it was a bomb. So opens
Justice Never Rests, the story of U.S. Attorney William Kolibash's relentless fight against organized crime in the foothills of West Virginia and beyond.
Not content with only the investigative and prosecutorial tools at his disposal, Kolibash sought new and different means to put away kingpins who'd successfully skirted the law. Toward that end, he pioneered the use of the RICO statute to bring criminals to justice and became the first U.S Attorney ever to make use of multi-jurisdictional task forces and investigative grand juries.
In his twenty years in the Northern District of West Virginia, first as an assistant and then as the sitting U.S. Attorney, Kolibash prosecuted all manner of crimes and criminals, ranging from old-school moonshiners who operated a massive marijuana ring, to sex traffickers, to violent Jamaican posses, to major drug dealers at the forefront of the cocaine wave. He also convicted the notorious "Godfather" of midwestern crime, Paul Hankish, and finished his career by bringing down the murderous and corrupt swami of the Hare Krishna movement.
Hardly adverse to ruffling feathers within the judicial system itself, Kolibash assembled his own
Untouchables-like team of local, state, and federal crime fighters as comfortable with numbers as they were with guns. Even when his own life was threatened, Bill Kolibash wasn't about to rest.
Because justice never rests either.
Kolibash, William: - William A. Kolibash was born on February 12, 1944, in Wheeling, West Virginia. He spent his high school years at Wheeling's own The Linsly School and was awarded a scholarship to Brown University from which he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966.
Following his graduation from Brown, Bill attended West Virginia University College of Law and received his Juris Doctorate degree in 1969. Following his graduation from law school, he was commissioned as a captain in the United States Army Judge Advocate General's Corp. Upon being honorably discharged, he began his civilian legal career as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of West Virginia, during which he prosecuted several high-profile corruption cases and as a result received the Department of Justice's Special Commendation Award for outstanding services in 1980. After serving several months as the court-appointed U.S. Attorney, he was nominated by President Ronald Reagan and approved by the United States Senate as the presidentially appointed United States Attorney for the Northern District of West Virginia in 1982.
The many awards he received during his service as U.S. Attorney include Federal Executive of the Year in 1991, the same year he was awarded the Distinguished West Virginian by Governor Gaston Caperton. Bill's tenure as a United States Attorney ended in July of 1993, after which he entered private practice until his retirement in 2024. He is married to the former Rita Scanlon with whom he has three children, including the coauthor of this book, and six grandchildren.
