I met Joe only twice, both times at Ocean Springs High School reunions. He and my husband had played football together and Joe could remember every play my husband had made during their high school careers.
My memories and impressions from those evenings, that we didn't want to end, was that Joe was a force of nature, he made others feel that they were important to him personally. To put it plainly, Joe was special and he made people around him feel special.
Joe was survived by his former wife, Linda Powajbo Bosco; son, Joseph Bosco II and his sister, Sylvia Bosco.
2004 Article from The Mississippi Writers Page:
Born August 30, 1948, in Biloxi, Mississippi, Joseph Bosco’s family moved across the bay to Ocean Springs in time for him to begin the second grade. With his sister Sylvia, his mother Wilma, and his father Frank, he grew up on the beach: his front yard sloped into the Gulf of Mexico, and his back yard dipped into a semi-tropical rain forest. At Ocean Springs High School, Bosco was a star athlete — during his three years as a starter, the Ocean Springs Greyhounds lost only one football game — and a popular class officer while also being the singular “avant-garde” poet/intellectual committed to the civil rights movement within a totally segregated society. After graduating in 1966, he took his lumps and his victories as they came during those strange and wonderful days called the ’60s; he was a father, husband and published poet at 19.
After initially going to Jackson County Junior College (sandwiched between several “sabbaticals” lived to the hilt in Greenwich Village, New York), Bosco received a BFA in Theatre Arts from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1972. He then returned to New York where he met with success as an actor. Scared that he might eventually be called upon to display real talent, not just stage presence and pluck, he returned to the Deep South, settling in New Orleans to write and support a family any way he could.
Bosco’s jobs over the years include stints as an actor, a roustabout on off-shore drilling rigs, a cab driver and “radical poet” in New York City, a restaurant and/or bar manager or owner, a car salesman, a bonded wine consultant, a columnist for a suburban newspaper in the greater New Orleans area, a scout for the Chicago Cubs, and a managing partner of a successful independent film and video production company in New Orleans, where his responsibilities were writing, producing and directing commercials and assorted documentaries.
Bosco went totally freelance as an author and journalist in 1984. Consequently, he found himself living in Los Angeles for most of the last decade of the 20th Century, where he taught at the UCLA Writer’s Program. Bosco ended up being a witness in the O. J. Simpson criminal trial.
While Bosco has written across the literary spectrum, he has particular expertise in chronicling criminal justice cases and issues. Having had the privilege of working with the distinguished Dr. Henry Lee over a number of years, he is one of the most forensically-experienced journalists in America. He has appeared frequently on every major national TV newscast, news talk show, or news tabloid in the industry as an expert criminal trial commentator.
In late August, 2002, Mr. Bosco landed in Xiamen, a beautiful semi-tropical island just off the mainland of the People’s Republic of China, where he is a Visiting Professor of Literature at Xiamen University, one of the Key universities directly under the Ministry of Education in the amazingly dynamic new China.
Bosco has published several nonfiction books and shorter pieces in magazines such as Time, Penthouse, The New York Times Book Review, Writer’s Digest, Buzz, Prevailing Winds, and Coast. He has two fictional works in progress: The Scotch and Marijuana Papers, Book One: Crazy Sorrows, and The Scotch and Marijuana Papers, Book Two: A Sunflower for You.
Los Angeles Times Obituary by Claire Noland
Joseph Bosco, a freelance crime writer who secured one of the few permanent seats at the O.J. Simpson criminal trial and turned his observations into a nonfiction book about the murder case, has died. He was 61.
Bosco died of natural causes July 8 in Beijing, where he had been living and working for the last several years, according to his son, Joe Bosco. He had been in poor health, his son said.
"A Problem of Evidence: How the Prosecution Freed O.J. Simpson" (William Morrow) was Bosco's account of the 1995 trial of the former football star accused of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman.
The writer became a familiar courtroom character during the televised proceedings in downtown Los Angeles, which ended after nine months with Simpson's acquittal on Oct. 3, 1995. Along with other book authors Dominick Dunne and Jeffrey Toobin, Bosco often could be seen near the front of the courtroom audience, wearing a brace after he broke his neck diving into the shallow end of a swimming pool.
In August 1995, Bosco, who was covering the trial for Penthouse magazine while gathering material for the book, became a minor participant when he was subpoenaed by the Simpson defense to reveal the source for a magazine article. Threatened with jail, Bosco took the stand and invoked the California journalists' shield law. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito eventually ruled that Bosco did not have to give up his source.
It was not the first time Bosco had sought protection from a shield law. After writing "Blood Will Tell: A True Story of Deadly Lust in New Orleans," a 1993 nonfiction account of a Louisiana murder case, he received a subpoena to give up tapes of confidential interviews. He successfully challenged that order after a long battle.
Among his other books was 1990's "The Boys Who Would Be Cubs: A Year in the Heart of Baseball's Minor Leagues," a behind-the scenes chronicle of the Peoria Chiefs, one of the Chicago Cubs' farm teams that was managed by future big league skipper Jim Tracy.
Bosco was born Aug. 30, 1948, in Biloxi, Miss., and lived much of his life in New Orleans. He earned a bachelor's degree in fine arts at the University of Southern Mississippi in 1972 and a master's in fine arts at the University of New Orleans in 1976. He held a string of odd jobs before becoming a full-time writer in 1984.
Bosco had moved to China in 2002 to teach at Xiamen University and later was a journalism professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University.
In addition to his son, Bosco is survived by a sister, Sylvia Bosco of Ocean Springs, Miss.
My memories and impressions from those evenings, that we didn't want to end, was that Joe was a force of nature, he made others feel that they were important to him personally. To put it plainly, Joe was special and he made people around him feel special.
Joe was survived by his former wife, Linda Powajbo Bosco; son, Joseph Bosco II and his sister, Sylvia Bosco.
2004 Article from The Mississippi Writers Page:
Born August 30, 1948, in Biloxi, Mississippi, Joseph Bosco’s family moved across the bay to Ocean Springs in time for him to begin the second grade. With his sister Sylvia, his mother Wilma, and his father Frank, he grew up on the beach: his front yard sloped into the Gulf of Mexico, and his back yard dipped into a semi-tropical rain forest. At Ocean Springs High School, Bosco was a star athlete — during his three years as a starter, the Ocean Springs Greyhounds lost only one football game — and a popular class officer while also being the singular “avant-garde” poet/intellectual committed to the civil rights movement within a totally segregated society. After graduating in 1966, he took his lumps and his victories as they came during those strange and wonderful days called the ’60s; he was a father, husband and published poet at 19.
After initially going to Jackson County Junior College (sandwiched between several “sabbaticals” lived to the hilt in Greenwich Village, New York), Bosco received a BFA in Theatre Arts from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1972. He then returned to New York where he met with success as an actor. Scared that he might eventually be called upon to display real talent, not just stage presence and pluck, he returned to the Deep South, settling in New Orleans to write and support a family any way he could.
Bosco’s jobs over the years include stints as an actor, a roustabout on off-shore drilling rigs, a cab driver and “radical poet” in New York City, a restaurant and/or bar manager or owner, a car salesman, a bonded wine consultant, a columnist for a suburban newspaper in the greater New Orleans area, a scout for the Chicago Cubs, and a managing partner of a successful independent film and video production company in New Orleans, where his responsibilities were writing, producing and directing commercials and assorted documentaries.
Bosco went totally freelance as an author and journalist in 1984. Consequently, he found himself living in Los Angeles for most of the last decade of the 20th Century, where he taught at the UCLA Writer’s Program. Bosco ended up being a witness in the O. J. Simpson criminal trial.
While Bosco has written across the literary spectrum, he has particular expertise in chronicling criminal justice cases and issues. Having had the privilege of working with the distinguished Dr. Henry Lee over a number of years, he is one of the most forensically-experienced journalists in America. He has appeared frequently on every major national TV newscast, news talk show, or news tabloid in the industry as an expert criminal trial commentator.
In late August, 2002, Mr. Bosco landed in Xiamen, a beautiful semi-tropical island just off the mainland of the People’s Republic of China, where he is a Visiting Professor of Literature at Xiamen University, one of the Key universities directly under the Ministry of Education in the amazingly dynamic new China.
Bosco has published several nonfiction books and shorter pieces in magazines such as Time, Penthouse, The New York Times Book Review, Writer’s Digest, Buzz, Prevailing Winds, and Coast. He has two fictional works in progress: The Scotch and Marijuana Papers, Book One: Crazy Sorrows, and The Scotch and Marijuana Papers, Book Two: A Sunflower for You.
Los Angeles Times Obituary by Claire Noland
Joseph Bosco, a freelance crime writer who secured one of the few permanent seats at the O.J. Simpson criminal trial and turned his observations into a nonfiction book about the murder case, has died. He was 61.
Bosco died of natural causes July 8 in Beijing, where he had been living and working for the last several years, according to his son, Joe Bosco. He had been in poor health, his son said.
"A Problem of Evidence: How the Prosecution Freed O.J. Simpson" (William Morrow) was Bosco's account of the 1995 trial of the former football star accused of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman.
The writer became a familiar courtroom character during the televised proceedings in downtown Los Angeles, which ended after nine months with Simpson's acquittal on Oct. 3, 1995. Along with other book authors Dominick Dunne and Jeffrey Toobin, Bosco often could be seen near the front of the courtroom audience, wearing a brace after he broke his neck diving into the shallow end of a swimming pool.
In August 1995, Bosco, who was covering the trial for Penthouse magazine while gathering material for the book, became a minor participant when he was subpoenaed by the Simpson defense to reveal the source for a magazine article. Threatened with jail, Bosco took the stand and invoked the California journalists' shield law. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito eventually ruled that Bosco did not have to give up his source.
It was not the first time Bosco had sought protection from a shield law. After writing "Blood Will Tell: A True Story of Deadly Lust in New Orleans," a 1993 nonfiction account of a Louisiana murder case, he received a subpoena to give up tapes of confidential interviews. He successfully challenged that order after a long battle.
Among his other books was 1990's "The Boys Who Would Be Cubs: A Year in the Heart of Baseball's Minor Leagues," a behind-the scenes chronicle of the Peoria Chiefs, one of the Chicago Cubs' farm teams that was managed by future big league skipper Jim Tracy.
Bosco was born Aug. 30, 1948, in Biloxi, Miss., and lived much of his life in New Orleans. He earned a bachelor's degree in fine arts at the University of Southern Mississippi in 1972 and a master's in fine arts at the University of New Orleans in 1976. He held a string of odd jobs before becoming a full-time writer in 1984.
Bosco had moved to China in 2002 to teach at Xiamen University and later was a journalism professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University.
In addition to his son, Bosco is survived by a sister, Sylvia Bosco of Ocean Springs, Miss.
I met Joe only twice, both times at Ocean Springs High School reunions. He and my husband had played football together and Joe could remember every play my husband had made during their high school careers.
My memories and impressions from those evenings, that we didn't want to end, was that Joe was a force of nature, he made others feel that they were important to him personally. To put it plainly, Joe was special and he made people around him feel special.
Joe was survived by his former wife, Linda Powajbo Bosco; son, Joseph Bosco II and his sister, Sylvia Bosco.
2004 Article from The Mississippi Writers Page:
Born August 30, 1948, in Biloxi, Mississippi, Joseph Bosco’s family moved across the bay to Ocean Springs in time for him to begin the second grade. With his sister Sylvia, his mother Wilma, and his father Frank, he grew up on the beach: his front yard sloped into the Gulf of Mexico, and his back yard dipped into a semi-tropical rain forest. At Ocean Springs High School, Bosco was a star athlete — during his three years as a starter, the Ocean Springs Greyhounds lost only one football game — and a popular class officer while also being the singular “avant-garde” poet/intellectual committed to the civil rights movement within a totally segregated society. After graduating in 1966, he took his lumps and his victories as they came during those strange and wonderful days called the ’60s; he was a father, husband and published poet at 19.
After initially going to Jackson County Junior College (sandwiched between several “sabbaticals” lived to the hilt in Greenwich Village, New York), Bosco received a BFA in Theatre Arts from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1972. He then returned to New York where he met with success as an actor. Scared that he might eventually be called upon to display real talent, not just stage presence and pluck, he returned to the Deep South, settling in New Orleans to write and support a family any way he could.
Bosco’s jobs over the years include stints as an actor, a roustabout on off-shore drilling rigs, a cab driver and “radical poet” in New York City, a restaurant and/or bar manager or owner, a car salesman, a bonded wine consultant, a columnist for a suburban newspaper in the greater New Orleans area, a scout for the Chicago Cubs, and a managing partner of a successful independent film and video production company in New Orleans, where his responsibilities were writing, producing and directing commercials and assorted documentaries.
Bosco went totally freelance as an author and journalist in 1984. Consequently, he found himself living in Los Angeles for most of the last decade of the 20th Century, where he taught at the UCLA Writer’s Program. Bosco ended up being a witness in the O. J. Simpson criminal trial.
While Bosco has written across the literary spectrum, he has particular expertise in chronicling criminal justice cases and issues. Having had the privilege of working with the distinguished Dr. Henry Lee over a number of years, he is one of the most forensically-experienced journalists in America. He has appeared frequently on every major national TV newscast, news talk show, or news tabloid in the industry as an expert criminal trial commentator.
In late August, 2002, Mr. Bosco landed in Xiamen, a beautiful semi-tropical island just off the mainland of the People’s Republic of China, where he is a Visiting Professor of Literature at Xiamen University, one of the Key universities directly under the Ministry of Education in the amazingly dynamic new China.
Bosco has published several nonfiction books and shorter pieces in magazines such as Time, Penthouse, The New York Times Book Review, Writer’s Digest, Buzz, Prevailing Winds, and Coast. He has two fictional works in progress: The Scotch and Marijuana Papers, Book One: Crazy Sorrows, and The Scotch and Marijuana Papers, Book Two: A Sunflower for You.
Los Angeles Times Obituary by Claire Noland
Joseph Bosco, a freelance crime writer who secured one of the few permanent seats at the O.J. Simpson criminal trial and turned his observations into a nonfiction book about the murder case, has died. He was 61.
Bosco died of natural causes July 8 in Beijing, where he had been living and working for the last several years, according to his son, Joe Bosco. He had been in poor health, his son said.
"A Problem of Evidence: How the Prosecution Freed O.J. Simpson" (William Morrow) was Bosco's account of the 1995 trial of the former football star accused of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman.
The writer became a familiar courtroom character during the televised proceedings in downtown Los Angeles, which ended after nine months with Simpson's acquittal on Oct. 3, 1995. Along with other book authors Dominick Dunne and Jeffrey Toobin, Bosco often could be seen near the front of the courtroom audience, wearing a brace after he broke his neck diving into the shallow end of a swimming pool.
In August 1995, Bosco, who was covering the trial for Penthouse magazine while gathering material for the book, became a minor participant when he was subpoenaed by the Simpson defense to reveal the source for a magazine article. Threatened with jail, Bosco took the stand and invoked the California journalists' shield law. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito eventually ruled that Bosco did not have to give up his source.
It was not the first time Bosco had sought protection from a shield law. After writing "Blood Will Tell: A True Story of Deadly Lust in New Orleans," a 1993 nonfiction account of a Louisiana murder case, he received a subpoena to give up tapes of confidential interviews. He successfully challenged that order after a long battle.
Among his other books was 1990's "The Boys Who Would Be Cubs: A Year in the Heart of Baseball's Minor Leagues," a behind-the scenes chronicle of the Peoria Chiefs, one of the Chicago Cubs' farm teams that was managed by future big league skipper Jim Tracy.
Bosco was born Aug. 30, 1948, in Biloxi, Miss., and lived much of his life in New Orleans. He earned a bachelor's degree in fine arts at the University of Southern Mississippi in 1972 and a master's in fine arts at the University of New Orleans in 1976. He held a string of odd jobs before becoming a full-time writer in 1984.
Bosco had moved to China in 2002 to teach at Xiamen University and later was a journalism professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University.
In addition to his son, Bosco is survived by a sister, Sylvia Bosco of Ocean Springs, Miss.
My memories and impressions from those evenings, that we didn't want to end, was that Joe was a force of nature, he made others feel that they were important to him personally. To put it plainly, Joe was special and he made people around him feel special.
Joe was survived by his former wife, Linda Powajbo Bosco; son, Joseph Bosco II and his sister, Sylvia Bosco.
2004 Article from The Mississippi Writers Page:
Born August 30, 1948, in Biloxi, Mississippi, Joseph Bosco’s family moved across the bay to Ocean Springs in time for him to begin the second grade. With his sister Sylvia, his mother Wilma, and his father Frank, he grew up on the beach: his front yard sloped into the Gulf of Mexico, and his back yard dipped into a semi-tropical rain forest. At Ocean Springs High School, Bosco was a star athlete — during his three years as a starter, the Ocean Springs Greyhounds lost only one football game — and a popular class officer while also being the singular “avant-garde” poet/intellectual committed to the civil rights movement within a totally segregated society. After graduating in 1966, he took his lumps and his victories as they came during those strange and wonderful days called the ’60s; he was a father, husband and published poet at 19.
After initially going to Jackson County Junior College (sandwiched between several “sabbaticals” lived to the hilt in Greenwich Village, New York), Bosco received a BFA in Theatre Arts from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1972. He then returned to New York where he met with success as an actor. Scared that he might eventually be called upon to display real talent, not just stage presence and pluck, he returned to the Deep South, settling in New Orleans to write and support a family any way he could.
Bosco’s jobs over the years include stints as an actor, a roustabout on off-shore drilling rigs, a cab driver and “radical poet” in New York City, a restaurant and/or bar manager or owner, a car salesman, a bonded wine consultant, a columnist for a suburban newspaper in the greater New Orleans area, a scout for the Chicago Cubs, and a managing partner of a successful independent film and video production company in New Orleans, where his responsibilities were writing, producing and directing commercials and assorted documentaries.
Bosco went totally freelance as an author and journalist in 1984. Consequently, he found himself living in Los Angeles for most of the last decade of the 20th Century, where he taught at the UCLA Writer’s Program. Bosco ended up being a witness in the O. J. Simpson criminal trial.
While Bosco has written across the literary spectrum, he has particular expertise in chronicling criminal justice cases and issues. Having had the privilege of working with the distinguished Dr. Henry Lee over a number of years, he is one of the most forensically-experienced journalists in America. He has appeared frequently on every major national TV newscast, news talk show, or news tabloid in the industry as an expert criminal trial commentator.
In late August, 2002, Mr. Bosco landed in Xiamen, a beautiful semi-tropical island just off the mainland of the People’s Republic of China, where he is a Visiting Professor of Literature at Xiamen University, one of the Key universities directly under the Ministry of Education in the amazingly dynamic new China.
Bosco has published several nonfiction books and shorter pieces in magazines such as Time, Penthouse, The New York Times Book Review, Writer’s Digest, Buzz, Prevailing Winds, and Coast. He has two fictional works in progress: The Scotch and Marijuana Papers, Book One: Crazy Sorrows, and The Scotch and Marijuana Papers, Book Two: A Sunflower for You.
Los Angeles Times Obituary by Claire Noland
Joseph Bosco, a freelance crime writer who secured one of the few permanent seats at the O.J. Simpson criminal trial and turned his observations into a nonfiction book about the murder case, has died. He was 61.
Bosco died of natural causes July 8 in Beijing, where he had been living and working for the last several years, according to his son, Joe Bosco. He had been in poor health, his son said.
"A Problem of Evidence: How the Prosecution Freed O.J. Simpson" (William Morrow) was Bosco's account of the 1995 trial of the former football star accused of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman.
The writer became a familiar courtroom character during the televised proceedings in downtown Los Angeles, which ended after nine months with Simpson's acquittal on Oct. 3, 1995. Along with other book authors Dominick Dunne and Jeffrey Toobin, Bosco often could be seen near the front of the courtroom audience, wearing a brace after he broke his neck diving into the shallow end of a swimming pool.
In August 1995, Bosco, who was covering the trial for Penthouse magazine while gathering material for the book, became a minor participant when he was subpoenaed by the Simpson defense to reveal the source for a magazine article. Threatened with jail, Bosco took the stand and invoked the California journalists' shield law. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito eventually ruled that Bosco did not have to give up his source.
It was not the first time Bosco had sought protection from a shield law. After writing "Blood Will Tell: A True Story of Deadly Lust in New Orleans," a 1993 nonfiction account of a Louisiana murder case, he received a subpoena to give up tapes of confidential interviews. He successfully challenged that order after a long battle.
Among his other books was 1990's "The Boys Who Would Be Cubs: A Year in the Heart of Baseball's Minor Leagues," a behind-the scenes chronicle of the Peoria Chiefs, one of the Chicago Cubs' farm teams that was managed by future big league skipper Jim Tracy.
Bosco was born Aug. 30, 1948, in Biloxi, Miss., and lived much of his life in New Orleans. He earned a bachelor's degree in fine arts at the University of Southern Mississippi in 1972 and a master's in fine arts at the University of New Orleans in 1976. He held a string of odd jobs before becoming a full-time writer in 1984.
Bosco had moved to China in 2002 to teach at Xiamen University and later was a journalism professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University.
In addition to his son, Bosco is survived by a sister, Sylvia Bosco of Ocean Springs, Miss.
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