Charles Peter Brandt was born in the Staten Island borough of New York City on March 13, 1942, and grew up there and in Queens.[2] After attending Stuyvesant High School, was educated at the University of Delaware as an undergraduate before going on to earn a law degree from Brooklyn Law School.[2][3] During law school, he also worked as a welfare investigator in East Harlem, which he said was heavy with organized crime activity at the time.[2] In 1969, he began his legal career in the office of the attorney general of Delaware, prosecuting homicides, before becoming a defense lawyer.[2]
Writing
Brandt's first book, the novel The Right to Remain Silent, was published in 1988.[2] Shortly thereafter, he was hired as a lawyer for Frank Sheeran, and they had early conversations developing the project that would one day become I Heard You Paint Houses.[2] However, they did not undertake serious work on it for years, as they did not want the book to be released while many of its subjects were still alive.[2] The book was not published until 2004, one year after Sheeran himself had died.[2]
Afterward, Brandt published three more books, the last of which was Suppressing the Truth in Dallas: Conspiracy, Cover-Up, and International Complications in the JFK Assassination Case (2022), which forwards the conspiracy theory that the mafia was involved with the assassination of John F. Kennedy.[2]
Personal life and death
In 1963, Brandt married Kathleen McGaw; they later divorced.[2] In 1976, he married Nancy Poole; they had a daughter, and he became a stepfather to two children.[2] He lived in the cities of Wilmington and Lewes in Delaware, and in Sun Valley, Idaho.[3]
Brandt died at a hospice in Wilmington on October 22, 2024, at the age of 82.[4]
