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.
