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7 July 2002
[crime] Shadow of doubt? — Is Barry George innocent of the murder of Jill Dando? … ‘Ever the fantasist, Barry George may now be adapting to his notoriety (two tabloid newspapers have advertised tapes of prison “confessions”), but he should be a footnote in this story. Apart from that invisible speck of explosives residue found on his coat, the police found no evidence that he had possessed guns or ammunition in the past 15 years. He had neither expertise in weapons, nor the resources to modify them. He had no car, no money. There was no forensic evidence found in his flat: remarkably, police found no explosives residue there, even though it was assumed that he’d gone home to change straight after the shooting. The two squads of officers, 50 in all, who surveilled his movements for more than three weeks before his arrest gleaned no evidence to assist their case. Dando’s neighbours, the only two eyewitnesses, failed to pick out George in an identity parade.’
9 May 2002
[destroy] Delete, Baby, Delete — on the difficulty of destroying evidence … ‘On the eve of the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Iran, in 1979, American officials desperately fed secret documents into the embassy’s paper shredders. Over the next several years, while waiting for satellite dishes and Baywatch to arrive, the Iranians painstakingly stitched the documents back together. They ultimately published the reconstituted intelligence files in some sixty volumes, under the overarching title Documents From the U.S. Espionage Den.’ [via Sore Eyes]
[net] Me and my Net Stalker — interesting article on stalking over the internet … ‘…last year Gobion Rowlands logged on as usual to check his email. There was a message from an unusual Hotmail address. Its title was Gob on Rowlands. Its text – not for sensitive eyes – read: “You probably don’t remember me, but I haven’t forgotten you. So you’re still into your wanky dungeons and dragons shit… Clearly you have lived up to your full potential: a self-obsessed arsehole with bad kidneys. Oh yes Rowlands, I fucking know who you are… So why am I emailing you? Just to let you know that you can’t leave your past behind…”‘
20 April 2002
[books] McVicar’s crime against Jill Dando — review of John McVicar’s new book about the murder of Jill Dando … ‘[McVicar] believes that George did commit the murder – under, according to the theory he and Pell construct, the combined influence of Queen lyrics, Zoroastrianism, Ninjutsu, born-again Baptism and Highlander.’
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6 December 2001
[columbine] I’m Full of Hate and I Love It — The Secret Diary of Eric Harris… ‘Right now I’m trying to get fucked and trying to finish off these time bombs. Why the fuck can’t I get any? I mean, I’m nice and considerate and all that shit, but nooooo… […] I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things. And no, don’t fucking say, ‘Well, that’s your fault’ because it isn’t, you people had my phone #, and I asked and all, but no no no no no don’t let the weird looking Eric kid come along, oooh fucking nooo.” That is how the journal ends — not with the howl of the wolf-god, but the whine of the pathetic geek who can’t land a prom date. And decides everybody deserves to die.’ [via Metafilter]
19 August 2001
[wtf?] A Child Molester’s Choice — Creative Loafing looks at Chemical Castration … ‘Roys is not an advocate of the treatment. She prefers intensive, confrontational counseling and medications such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft. Roys also says that even when taken properly, the female hormones can have little effect. “We had one offender that we had on Depo[-Provera] for a very long time,” Roys says. “His [male] hormone levels were way down. And he still was having intercourse with his dog.”‘
15 August 2001
[distraction] Prison Inmate Population Information Search — find out if you have a namesake locked up in New York State… ‘NO INMATE ON FILE BEARING THE NAME SHRUBXXXX’ [thanks, Andy]
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3 June 2001
[crime] WMOB — The Wiretap Network. FBI Wiretaps of Mafia gangsters… Frank and Fritzy. Life imitates the Sopranos. ‘FRITZY: I eat yogurt about 10 o’clock, ’cause I didn’t eat all day from 2 o’clock. So I says, “I’ll have a little yogurt.” Then it had raisins and nuts. FRANK: I thought you don’t eat raisins. FRITZY: It was inside the damn yogurt. FRANK: What’d ya tell me about raisins? FRITZY: Yeah, what I tell you? They were in there, alright? So anyhow, so I, I downed it and five minutes after, I started fucking itching around the balls, you know?’ [via Follow Me Here]
22 May 2001
[goodfellas] Henry Hill: The Return of the Goodfella — profile of Henry Hill and new website Good Fella Henry… ‘No longer in the witness protection programme, Hill none the less has to lie low. This means giving his address only to close friends, keeping Rottweilers, and staying away from the old neighbourhoods, especially Brooklyn. Occasionally, he will try a disguise. “If I go to the racetrack, I put a hat and glasses on, and I take my teeth out. You can’t recognise me, trust me.”‘
6 May 2001
[crime] He’s been getting away with it all his life Ronnie Biggs — A Sunday Times Profile. ‘How did a small-time crook come to occupy such a prominent place in the criminal iconography? Partly it is because many people saw the robbery as a bit of a “caper”. Although Jack Mills, the train driver who was hit over the head with an iron bar, never fully recovered from his injuries and died of leukaemia seven years later, the heist was amateurish by today’s standards. No guns were carried, for example. Then there was the classic battle of wits between Biggs and Superintendent Jack Slipper of Scotland Yard, in which Slipper, now 77 but suffering from cancer, always failed at the last minute to get his man.’ [ Related: Ronnie Biggs Official Site]
5 May 2001
[nwo] Conspirators — Jon Ronson on Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing. ‘April 19 is holy day for anti-government activists and conspiracy theorists. On April 19, 1993, Federal agents ended the siege at Waco. David Koresh’s Branch Davidian church went up in flames. On April 19, 1775, 400 British government troops attempted to disarm the citizens of Lexington, Massachusetts. A hundred colonists shot back, the first shots of the American Revolution, the “shots heard around the world”. (When I visit American militias and patriots and neo-Nazis, they often ask me what I, a Brit, thinks of the Lexington uprising. I explain that I’m not au fait with the ins and outs. They are scandalised that our syllabus doesn’t teach this pivotal moment in British history.)’
22 April 2001
[news] The Observer profiles Timothy McVeigh’s last days… ‘It has always puzzled investigators why McVeigh would leave such a trail behind him, including using his own name at a motel the night before the blast and using the same card when ordering the fertiliser and fuel. “I have never caught Tim out on a lie,” insists Michel. “Strange as that may sound, he is very proud of what he has done. Talking of it, he has the enthusiasm of a high-school kid describing a science project he has just completed.” Michel quotes McVeigh as telling him: “Because the truth is, I blew up the Murrah building and isn’t it kind of scary that one man could reap this kind of hell?”‘
9 April 2001
[murder] Interesting profile of Jeremy Bamber from a few weeks back…. ‘Jeremy Bamber was sentenced to life in 1986 for the murder of five family members in their Essex farmhouse – his adopted parents, his adoptive sister and her six-year-old twins. Last week his case was referred back to the Court of Appeal by the criminal cases review commission. If the three appeal judges are more impressed by new evidence concerning a bloodstained gun silencer than they are by Bamber’s audacious website, the man who was accused of coolly plotting “the perfect crime” could be free before Christmas.’ [ Related Link: Bamber’s Website via the power of Google’s Cache]
7 April 2001
[crime] Only in America… Henry Hill has his own website — Henry is the gangster Ray Liotta played in Good Fellas. Unsurprisingly, his website includes a Threat of the Week section… ‘How does it feel to be a stool pigeon, you rat bastard?’
4 April 2001
[urban myth] Pickled Penis — Is John Dillinger’s 23 inch penis stored at a museum in Washington? ‘The bulge in the center of the photo (Dillinger’s arm) was supposedly mistaken by contemporary viewers of fuzzy newspaper photos for his penis, thus starting the tale of an incredibly well-endowed John Dillinger. (How he managed to die in a fully erect state was a question the public either didn’t ponder or else attributed to some rather strange misunderstandings about the process of rigor mortis.)’ [kinda via Blogadoon]
3 April 2001
[rail] The Guardian studies the story behind the cracked rail which caused the Hatfield train disaster…. ‘The public mood, so far as one can tell, would like big fish in the net and a charge of corporate manslaughter. That is unlikely; as someone close to the Hatfield investigation said to me, you would need to find a piece of paper with such improbable words written on it as “Do not repair this track, we can’t afford it. Yrs sincerely, The Fat Controller.” More likely is a charge of manslaughter – culpable homicide – against individuals lower down the ladder, or their prosecution for a breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act.’
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26 February 2001
[crime] Blood Money — more proof that life is vastly weirder than any Guy Ritchie movie… ‘Well, somebody tipped off The Sweeney – Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad – that at least some of the 6,800 gold ingots stolen from the Brink’s-Mat high security warehouse in Heathrow on 26 November 1983, had been hidden underneath farm buildings or a cabbage patch in a Sussex village called Ore. Would Ore be the place where Kenny stashed his gold ingots? Bit obvious, eh? Not if you know that whenever you walked into Kenny Noye’s old mansion in Kent, Shirley Bassey’s rendition of ‘Goldfinger’ blasted out of the stereo.’
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13 February 2001
[internet] Disturbing report on the BBC’s Panorama about an internet community of paedophiles called Wonderland… Here’s a transcript of the TV programme. ‘The first thing anyone does when they get online is go looking for the porn, it’s just one of those things. And I found that fairly easily and within 24 hours I’d found the child porn as well. I didn’t expect to find it at first, I thought well it’s an urban myth, it’s just something you hear about on the news and there it was, it was sitting in front of me. I had people I could talk to. I had people that I could trade images with as well. But I had friends. I’d never had so many friends. I had friends all over the world.’ [ Related Links: Register – Paedophile says why he loves the Net, BBC News – Paedophiles’ vast ‘lending library’]
4 February 2001
[fraud] A reckoning at the Russia house, SW16. Fascinating look at a massive credit card fraud operation run by a Russian in London… ‘Confident they now had enough information, officers carried out dawn raids on addresses across London, including those of the two main suspects, but even they were surprised by what was found at Tanov’s home. The 33-year-old Russian had turned a small bedroom into a credit card factory, at a cost of no more than £3,000, complete with computers, embossers and hologram making equipment, capable of producing near perfect replicas of Visa, Amex and Master Card.’ [via Beesley]
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10 January 2001
[final request] The final meal requests and last statements of prisoners on death row in Texas. ‘1 jar of dill pickles’ — Stacey Lawton. [thanks to Micky]
8 January 2001
[shipman] The true evil of this killer doctor. Interesting comments from Nicci Gerrard in the Observer on the Shipman Murders… ‘The Wests were murderous sexual sadists, performing unimaginable acts of torture on their young victims. But while there has never been a case quite like it, most of us have some understanding of sex as potentially dark and perverse and scarily powerful. The couple gave us a collective wince of terror, as if their monstrous actions offered a glimpse into a hidden side of our psyche. We called them evil and unnatural to comfort ourselves, because we feared they were human, like us – though it was a humanity taken to extremes and unravelled before our eyes. Harold Shipman does not do this. He offers us no glimpse into ourselves. He will not become a symbol of anything; his story spreads few ripples. His voice is dry, neutral. His face is blank. His eyes are polite and empty. His lips are closed. His heart is a mystery.’
6 January 2001
[murder] The Guardian speculates on Harold Shipman’s state of mind… ‘David Canter, director of the Centre for Investigative Psychology in Liverpool, raised the chilling possibility that it could be a forerunner of cases to come. The theory is that as the human race in the 21st century thinks of itself increasingly as nothing more than a collection of physical bodies in an evermore materialistic society, then there will be individuals on the extremes who come to believe they are dealing not with people but with objects. He said: “This is one of the arguments for the increase of serial killers.” Is it possible Shipman came to see his patients as nothing but objects, no more valuable than his lists?’ [Related Links: The Shipman Murders from BBC News]
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1 December 2000
[crime] The Jigsaw Man — Interesting profile of the man who inspired Robbie Coltrane’s Cracker… ‘The hearing will concentrate on the role of Britton in the investigation into the killing of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common in London. One allegation is that he offered support and advice to the police not backed by accepted scientific practice as they prepared a “honeytrap” for the prime suspect; he is also accused of having exaggerated claims about the effectiveness of his methods.’
15 November 2000
[distractions] UK Gangsters and Hardmen Webring. Dave Courtney: ‘I drove to Woolwick station and said to the geezer behind the counter, “can I have a return ticket, please?” “Where to, guv?” he chirped cheerily, so I shot back with my best puzzled look… “back here, you daft bastard,” I said and marched out, chuckling my nuts off.’
30 October 2000
[news] Guardian Unlimited has an interesting overview of the whole Jamie Bulger case. From An ugly tabloid threat: ‘”The idea that the two boys – now almost men – could soon be free will horrify every parent,” says the Sun, before asking: “Where is the justice for James’s parents?” Then, in a scandalous aside after noting that the lord chief justice, Lord Woolf, had remarked that the boys were “making progress”, the Sun said: “Who cares? After what they did, the idea that they will be corrupted if they aren’t freed is laughable.” In other words, the paper believes that the boys who committed a foul murder aged 10, and who eight years later have shown extreme remorse for their crime and no propensity to violence ever since, should go to an adult jail. It doesn’t matter what happens to them there. The Sun doesn’t care. Let them suffer.’
29 October 2000
[news] The Sunday Times profiles “The Bulger Killers” — Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. ‘The cost of keeping a young offender in such a unit has been estimated at £100,000 a year, and both youths have improved educationally. Thompson passed five GCSEs and has developed talents for design, painting, textiles, computer studies and catering. As a project to create an “object of beauty”, he once designed and cut a wedding dress, sewing and beading it himself.’
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10 October 2000
[yugoslavia] Guardian Unlimited looks at the corruption surrounding Slobodan Milosevic’s family… ‘Three days ago Marko and his family left Pozarevac, the Milosevics’ home town, in three black jeeps. As he did, rioters looted his internet cafe and destroyed advertising for his disco Madonna. His nearby lurid Disney-esque theme park, Bambiland, has been closed since the summer, thanks to a popular boycott.’
3 October 2000
[mugshots] The G-Files present a Celebrity Mug Shot Gallery… ‘Like anyone else charged with a crime, celebrities must be photographed by police after being arrested, and those images then become a matter of public record.’
18 September 2000
[books] Crime Magazine asks if In Cold Blood is a dishonest book. Interesting look at the story behind the creation of the book — but be warned… the page contains some disturbing images. ‘However, early on I’d like to raise the question of Capote’s basic honesty in writing this book. He set out to write a masterpiece, yet he took no notes. He recounts lengthy, complex conversations – sans notes. Capote told Plimpton that he had trained himself to do this – that, for a year and a half prior to embarking on the book, he had a friend read passages from a book to him, for an hour or two a day, then he would write down what he had heard – and in his estimation he had a unique facility for accurately remembering interviews, with an accuracy quotient of 95 percent. Which any newspaper reporter can tell you is horse feathers.’
7 September 2000
[lone nut] Following on from an earlier post… Guardian Unlimited’s Netnotes covers Mark Chapman. More from the John Lennon’s Murder Site: ‘Two days later, he is watching television, when the picture goes blank and “Thou Shalt Not Kill” appears across the screen. It is the sixth Commandment, as written in The Gospel of St. Mark – his Gospel, and Mark Chapman is shocked at the intensity of the experience, and sees it as an example of synchronicity, giving him a message to go back to reading the Bible.’
5 September 2000
[murder] GuardianUnlimited profiles Tony Martin. ‘He described his thrombosis (responsible for the limp), his run-down farm, his closest companions (three rottweilers), his love of travel, farming at night, his love of solitude. This disconnected rambling ranging across his life often returned to the first thing he had said that day; what was happening to him was surreal, beyond his control, not his responsibility.’
[lennon] Guardian Unlimited reports that John Lennon’s murderer is about to apply for parole. ‘Chapman has said that he killed Lennon to be famous. “I had to usurp someone else’s importance, someone else’s success,” he said. “I was Mr Nobody until I killed the biggest somebody on earth.”‘ [ Related Link: Lennon/Chapman website covering ‘the parallels, coincidences and strange synchronicities that brought together John Lennon and Mark Chapman on December 8th 1980.’]
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11 August 2000
[Mr Blue] Excellent Edward Bunker retrospective in Crime Time ‘But apart from his friendship with Louise Wallis, Bunker continued to hang-out with low lifes: pimps, whores, dope-addicts and boosters. He tried heroin and then began selling crudely-harvested marijuana. While out on a delivery a police pulled up alongside him, indicating him to stop. Bunker drove off but crashed into a car and a mail truck. Apprehended by the law, he was sent to LA county jail.’ [via Beesley]
19 July 2000
[children] A father talks about his daughter’s reaction to the muder of Sarah Payne. ‘When I arrive home my daughter has more news about Sarah. “She’s dead,” she says. “It’s really sad isn’t it Daddy?” she says. Yes, I say, it’s horrible, and prepare for one of those painful conversations about why anyone could do this. But she walks off. A couple of minutes later she calls me back. “Daddy, have you seen the fairy house I made?” she asks.’
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3 July 2000
[murder] BBC News reports that murder suspect put plan to kill wife on Psion palmtop. ‘Prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw told the jury at Inner London Crown Court Mr Debruin wrote what looked like a macabre checklist for the killing on his Psion organiser which read: “Rubber gloves. Throat. Take telephone off hook. Purse out with contents spread about.”‘
22 June 2000
[unabomber] Nice article on the Unabomber at Harvard — where he was psychologically tested (to destruction?). “When, soon after, Kaczynski began to worry about the possibility of mind control, he was not giving vent to paranoid delusions. In view of Murray’s experiment, he was not only rational but right. The university and the psychiatric establishment had been willing accomplices in an experiment that had treated human beings as guinea pigs, and had treated them brutally. Here is a powerful logical foundation for Kaczynski’s latterly expressed conviction that academics, in particular scientists, were thoroughly compromised servants of “the system”, employed in the development of techniques for the behavioral control of populations.”
21 June 2000
[violence] Jeremy Paxman on football violence in This is London. “Perhaps he is as blameless as many of those arrested have claimed. But what seems to have shocked the British authorities is that so many of those accused by the Belgians do not fit the stereotype. “Some of those who have been sent back,” the Home Secretary gulped in a radio interview, “are barristers and engineers.” The shock with which Mr Straw – himself a barrister, as, of course, is our Prime Minister – had received this intelligence was audible in his voice.”
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19 June 2000
[crime] newsUnlimited on Identity Theft. “You, meanwhile, know nothing of this until – several months later – debt collection agencies begin to harass you. Life becomes Kafkaesque. You inform the police – but they can’t see that you are the victim of any crime. The law holds you liable only for the first $50 on the phoney credit cards and nothing on the other bills. The cops can’t get involved with working out who is the real you. There are drug dealers and paedophiles out there. Take it to Mr Visa and Mr AT&T, they say.”
4 June 2000
[murder] newsUnlimited covers a nasty murder on a bridge in London last year. “‘We’ll never know what happened that night,’ she said. ‘It seems inexplicable. I believe there was a group dynamic which forced them to do what they did. Peer pressure and a boy shouting “throw them in the river” was enough to create an atmosphere in which there was no going back. It will have been one person who started it and the others would have followed like sheep.'”
27 May 2000
[only in america] Texas prisoner attempts to sell seats to his own execution on ebay reports newsUnlimited. “Years ago Bob Dylan wrote in his song Desolation Row that “they’re selling postcards of the hanging”. Toney might concede that that still has more of a ring to it than “they’re selling tickets to the lethal injection”. “
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17 May 2000
[nasty] BBC News reports that anthrax has been linked to a spate of deaths in Europe of heroin addicts.
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13 April 2000
Two murders that won’t go away : Sam Sheppard is still a fugitive. Jeffrey MacDonald still protests his innocence… MacDonald’s pregnant wife and two children were murdered in Feb 1970 a month before I was born… over thirty years ago. Murders cast long shadows, I guess.
12 March 2000
The Sunday Times has a profile of Ian Brady. Why bother?
9 March 2000
A life in Crime — Ian Rankin on crime novels. “Here’s the scoop: crime writing is sexy.”
8 March 2000
Watching the Detective – interview with the detective leading the murder hunt for Jill Dando.
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