© Ozier Muhammad, New York Times

Matthew Bogdanos has been an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan since 1988—where New York tabloids call him “pit bull" for his relentless prosecution of criminals such as the 15-year-old “Baby-Faced Butchers” for their 1997 grisly Central Park murder and rappers Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and Jamal “Shyne” Barrows for their 1999 shootout.  A colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, middleweight boxer, and native New Yorker, he was raised waiting tables in his family’s Greek restaurant in lower Manhattan and holds a classics degree from Bucknell University, a law degree and a master's degree in classics from Columbia University, and a master's degree in Strategic Studies from the Army War College.  Commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Marines in 1980, he served as a Judge Advocate until he left active duty to join the District Attorney’s Office, rising to Senior Homicide Trial Counsel in 1996. 

Recalled to active duty after losing his apartment near the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, he joined a multi-agency task force in Afghanistan and received a Bronze Star for counterterrorist operations against al-Qaeda.  He then served in Iraq and the Horn of Africa as the head of that task force and received a 2005 National Humanities Medal from President George Bush for his work recovering Iraq’s priceless treasures.  He has returned to the DA’s Office where he still boxes for the New York City Police Department Widows & Orphans Charity and continues the hunt for stolen antiquities.  He has delivered speeches in more than fifty cities in nine countries—including to both houses of British Parliament—and royalties from his book, Thieves of Baghdad, go to the Iraq Museum.