Les Jones

The Monster of Florence

There's a new development in the case of the The Monster of Florence

The men are accused of belonging to a satanist coven that masterminded Italy's most notorious serial killings - 16 murders carried out between 1968 and 1985, and blamed on a "Monster of Florence".

Four people have been cautioned as suspects and, on Monday, the home of one of those formally placed under investigation was raided by police at dawn.

Extracts from the search warrant issued were published yesterday by the newspaper Corriere della Sera. In it, the prosecutors state that the Monster of Florence murders were the work of a "split-level" conspiracy. The killing was done by an semi-literate farmer, Pietro Pacciani, and two other men who were convicted and sentenced in the late 1990s. "But a group of people who celebrated black masses and magical rites put the weapons into their hands", the warrant added.

Via Siflay Hraka.

Green River Murderer Footage on DVD

The King County prosecutor's office is releasing a DVD of videotaped confessions and testimony from Green River serial killer Gary Leon Ridgway.

Many of the well-known cases involving serial killers are never solved. Not only is this one solved, but the killer is alive and talking, with video.

Does Anthony Pellicano Have Incriminating Tapes of Michael Jackson?

Fox News is reporting that LA prosecutors may have incriminating tapes of Michael Jackson.

Frankly, the story is a little sketchy, but the interesting angle is Anthony Pellicano, a character I wasn't familiar with. He's variously described as a private investigator to the stars, an audiotape expert, an intimidator, and a Hollywood thug for hire. This profile by Luke Ford makes for good background material.

When Jackson was facing a molestation lawsuit in 1993, he hired Hollywood attorney to the stars Bert Fields. Fields in turn hired his favorite private investigator, Anthony Pellicano.

CNN reporter Diane Dimond covered the Jackson molestation case. She has said that her phone was bugged, and documents relating to the Jackson investigation were stolen from her car.

Wiretapping and audiotaping were Pellicano's specialty. Among the notable accomplishments in his ersatz career is his research into the investigation of JFK's assassination. He analyzed the Dictabelt tapes of the open mike on the police motorcade, and concluded that they were from well after the shooting, and did not provide evidence of a conspiracy or multiple shooters.

During Sylvester Stallone's lawsuit against his former manager Kenneth Starr, Starr hired Bert Fields, who in turn hired Pellicano. The FBI has questioned Fields about Pellicano's alleged wiretapping in that case.

Things started going bad for Pellicano when he worked for actor Steven Seagal. LA Times reporter Anita Busch was investigating Seagal's mob ties. Someone left a fish, a rose, and a note with the word "Stop" on Busch's car. His alleged accomplice has fingered Pellicano for hiring him to do the job.

Pellicano was arrested following a Federal raid on his offices that uncovered illegal weapons, including hand grenades and plastic explosive. He subsequently plead guilty and is currently serving a 30 month sentence. He has publicly stated that he refused to cooperate with authorities in exchange for leniency.

Which brings us back to Michael Jackson. Police raided Neverland Ranch two days after Pellicano began his jail sentence. Given Pellicano's penchant for tapping phones and recording audio, did he tape Jackson? And if he did, what's in the tapes.

It's all speculation at this point, which is why I think Pellicano is more important than this one facet of the story. If Pellicano did tape his client in this case, how many other clients did he tape? The American Thinker is giddy over the idea that Pellicano may one day trade information from his most powerful client, Bill Clinton. Clinton reportedly hired Pellicano to discredit audio tapes of conversations between Clinton and Geniffer Flowers.

The BTK Strangler Returns

The BTK Strangler seems to have turned up again in Wichita, Kansas:

A letter sent last week to The Wichita Eagle (search) contained information on a 1986 killing and included photos that appeared to be of the victim's body. Police are examining the letter for DNA and other evidence.

"The photographs appear to be authentic," said Lt. Ken Landwehr (search), who has been working the BTK case for 20 years. "I'm 100 percent sure it's BTK."

CrimeLibrary has a (poorly edited) BTK Strangler profile. The Fox News story linked above says that the new letter includes photos of the crime scene. One investigator suspected that the killer had taken photos:

FBI Profiler John Douglas in the book Obsession has a chapter on the BTK strangler. It is the chapter called "Motivation X". Within the book, Douglas states that there were no defensive wounds found on any of the victims, assuming that the killer used a gun to control them. He further stated that the killer's letters to the police had so much detail that he is convinced that the perpetrator had taken his own crime scene photos in order to have a keepsake of the crime to fantasize about later.

Life Imitates Art, Heat-Style, in Norway

Yesterday a gang of six robbers hit NOKAS, Norway's regional cash service, using body armor, gas masks, automatic weapons, and tear gas. They used a truck filled with gas containers to block exits, and burned cars as they left with the loot. The gang wounded and killed a number of police, and fired indiscriminately at bystanders. Link.

Heat is the Robert De Niro/Al Pacino/Val Kilmer movie about an LA gang that robs a bank in broad daylight and shoots it out with the police. It inspired the Bank of America robbery in North Hollywood in which robbers wore body armor and used fully automatic weapons against police who were badly outgunned.

I read an article in either Esquire or GQ by a guy who had been a customer in a bank during an armed robbery. He eventually interviewed the guy who robbed his bank that day. It turned out that the bank robber and his gang always watched Heat the day before the robbery to get psyched up, which is kind of odd, considering that the gang in the movie loses the gunfight.

Sao Paulo Zoo Killings

Seventy animals are now dead in the case. Link.

Columbine Anniversary

Today is the five year anniversary of Columbine. Dave Cullen has a great Columbine feature in Slate. He dismisses some popular notions about the killings, and goes into some detail about Harris and Kleybold's personalities. Cullen's blog has lots of Columbine-related links.

Arrest in Kansas City

Kansas City authorities have arrested a man believed to be responsible for the murder of 12 women between 1977 and 1993. The man is a DNA match for the killer.

CSI:Alabama

Phil Williams on 100.3 The River just explained why CBS hasn't set CSI in a small Alabama town: everyone has the same DNA and there are no dental records.

New Suspect in Anthrax Letters Case

Powerline Blog points to investigation of Dr. Kenneth M. Berry, a physician and bioterrorism expert. Berry patented a device to analyze chemical and biological agents. The patent was submitted in the time between 9/11 and the anthrax letters. Berry has been investigated for other crimes in the past. The FBI recently searched two of his homes.

Most people naturally assumed that the anthrax letters were politically motivated. If Berry is responsible, it means the letters were financially motivated (he wanted to profit from his invention), or psychologically motivated (he wanted his expertise and invention to come to the rescue).

That Old Staple, Bank Robbery

Washington Post feature article on bank robbery. It's well-written and matches up with other things I've read on the subject. One thing that surprises people is how frequently bank robbers strike their targets. The money - typically a few thousand per heist - goes quickly, because the people who rob banks are usually desperate for money.

Deathbed Confessions

From Yahoo! News:

A woman dying of cancer confessed to her daughter that she killed her husband years earlier and hid the body, authorities said this week after finding the remains inside a storage unit.

Authorities did not release the names, but a sister identified the woman as Geraldine DiMarzio Kelley, who died Nov. 12 at 54.

I've always been curious why some people confess on their deathbeds and some don't. As someone curious about famous murder cases, it's frustrating that more people don't confess. It's also understandable, I think. Even in death they're trying to protect their reputation or loved ones. And no doubt some of them are in denial about their guilt.

In this case, I think the woman confessed for a prosaic reason. She had hidden the body in a rented storage space, and it doubtless would have been discovered after her death.

Offhand, I can't think of any famous murders that were confessed out of the blue, or at least truthfully confessed. A number of people have confessed to the JFK assassination, but all of their stories had holes, and several of them were inmates who had nothing to lose and everything to gain with a bogus confession.

One confession that does come to mind is that of Christian Spurling. On his deathbed at age 93 he confessed his role in faking the most famous photo of the Loch Ness Monster, the so-called surgeon's photo that shows the monster in profile.

Renewed Interest in the BTK Serial Killer

Police this week released personal information about BTK, hoping that the description of his life details will prompt new leads.

In the early 1950s, BTK built and operated a ham radio. He participated in outdoor activities such as fishing and hunting, attended church and went to a military school. He served in an unspecified branch of the military and was discharged in 1966.

BTK has shown a basic knowledge of photography, including the ability to develop and print pictures. Police said that according to his messages, his first job was as an electro-mechanic, and after more schooling he repaired business equipment.

BTK was active in the 1980s, then went dormant. He surfaced again earlier this year, sending letters to a Wichita newspaper.

Sirhan's Lawyer Wants to Preserve Hotel

From Reuters via Best of the Web:

The lawyer for Robert Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, has gone to court to stop the demolition of the hotel where the late senator was shot dead, saying that there is evidence in its walls that can prove his client innocent.

Attorney Lawrence Teeter claims the 60-year-old Sirhan was set up as a dupe in the 1968 assassination, despite shooting at Kennedy in front of witnesses.

Saturday Morning Mystery: Who is Zodiac Suspect Mr. X

Melissa and her mom are out Christmas shopping while I stay home with the baby. I've got some time on my hands, so I'm going to try to solve a little mystery: who is Mr. X, the new suspect in the Zodiac Killer mystery? Last year, I wrote a little about Mike Rodelli's new suspect, and the novel way he found him:

He knew that Zodiac liked sending letters to newspapers. He surmised that Zodiac might have written letters to the editors of California newspapers using his real name prior to committing any murders. Rodelli found a letter to the editor that matched Zodiac's writing style, researched its author... and found a picture of him in a magazine that matched the police composite sketch of Zodiac. The 81 year old suspect is still living.

For background on the theory, read this San Francisco Chronicle article. Now, some people have since thrown cold water on Rodelli's theory. ZodiacKiller.com Webmaster Tom Voight has interviewed Mr. X, and doesn't believe he's Zodiac. Mr. X also volunteerily provided a DNA sample to compare against the Zodiac letters, and the test came back negative.

Rodelli isn't doing himself any favors with some of his behavior, either - he's so intolerant of any criticism of his theory that he wound up removing the message board from his Web site. When pressed, he often asserts that he has evidence to counter the criticism, but claims he can't reveal what it is.

Still, I'm curious who the guy is, and I'm curious to see if I can figure it out. Here are the clues I have about Mr. X:

• He was a pilot in the Navy.
• He's a multi-millionaire.
• He owns "a high-end, image oriented retail business in the San Francisco market."
• He's a member of the Bohemian Club.
• In April, 1970 he bought a company that has the same name as the surname of one of Zodiac's victims. ZodiacKiller.com lists the confirmed victims's surnames are Faraday, Jensen, Farrin, Mageau, Shepard, Hartnell, and Stine. The contested victims' surnames are Domingos, Edwards, Bates, Johns, Lass.
• He still owns the same Pacific Heights home he owned in the 1960s during the Zodiac's reign. The home is near the site where Zodiac victim Paul Stine was murdered. Some of the Zodiac's victims are disputed, but not Stine. Zodiac removed part of Stine's bloody shirt and mailed a piece with his letter to the San Francisco Chronicle.
• He's approximately 85 years old, which means he was born around 1919.

If I do figure out who X is, I won't post it. In part, that's out of respect for his privacy, and in part that's because he's made it clear that he's willing to pursue a case of libel in court.

UPDATES

Found a band called The Zodiac Killers. Scroll to the bottom of the page for the odd tie-ins they've had to the killer.

OK, I think I found him. The guy I think is Mr. X owns a San Francisco-based retail chain and is a member of the Bohemian Club (or was). He's seven to eight years younger than reported, but that could have been an error or deliberate obfuscation in my source. I'll check the other facts tomorrow. This only took about an hour and a half of Googling to find.

UPDATES December 12

I told Melissa who I thought Mr. X was. She did a little searching and found a biography. My guy was never in the Navy. So between that and the age difference, I think I had the wrong guy. I'm back to square one.

The Bohemian Club article I linked above was pretty neutral, but there are some way-out, conspiracy-oriented views of the club. This one, from the Knoxville Greens, is typical of the conspiracy flavor.

LATER: Who is Zodiac Suspect Mr. X, Part 2

Possible New Zodiac Movie

Chris Range emailed this article about a new Zodiac killer movie Warner and Paramount are considering. It would be produced by David Fincher and based on the Robert Graysmith books about Zodiac.

Suspect Arrested in BTK Serial Killing

Via Fox News:

Police arrested Dennis Rader, a 59-year-old animal control officer, after his daughter, Kerri Rader, alerted authorities two weeks ago of her suspicion that her father was the BTK killer — a self-coined nickname that stands for "Bind, Torture, Kill."

A blood sample from his daughter was used to confirm DNA tests that linked Rader to to eight killings committed between 1974 and 1986, sources told FOX News.

More BTK News

BTK was posting to a Web site devoted to catching him. That is some futuristic stuff. Here's an archive of his daughter's Web site. (His daugher went to the police to report her suspicions.)

Crimelibrary.com has a BTK page that tracks news and has their background on BTK from the time before he was captured.

Blogcritics offers this BTK satire.

You Find the Metric System in the Strangest Places

Here's one place I would never have expected to see the metric system: in the booking room of a Texas sheriff's office. From The Smoking Gun:

Wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin (real name: Steve Williams) pleaded no contest in November 2002 to a misdemeanor charge of assaulting his wife during a domestic dispute. The numbers on the wall apparently indicate the metric system used by the Bexar County (Texas) Sheriff's office. Austin is about 6' 3", or 1.93 meters.

"Y'all, this is Dispatch. Be on the lookout for a caucasian male wrassler. Subject is approximately 1.9 meters tall, weight 95 kilos, and was last seen heading west on Reservoir Road at 100 kilometers per hour. Stone Cold knows the sleeper hold and should be taken down with a turnbuckle maneuver. Ten four."

Man Admits Stealing 118 Documents from National Archive

Bastard.

A Virginia man who had research access to the National Archives pleaded guilty yesterday to stealing more than 100 Civil War-era documents from the historic records depository, including letters from Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, William Tecumseh Sherman and George Armstrong Custer.

In his plea agreement, Howard W. Harner Jr., 68, of Staunton, Va., said that he received more than $47,000 from the illegal sale of many of the documents. About 40 items have been recovered, according to an Archives official.

Real Life Imitates Law &Order SVU?

SPOILER ALERT: If you TiVo'ed tonights' Law and Order SVU but haven't watched it, stop reading now.

On tonight's episode a man distraught by events in the courtroom takes a cop's gun and kills a boy in the hallway outside the courtroom.

At first I thought the producers might have changed the ending to reflect what happened in Atlanta last week. Could the producers have changed things that quickly?

Robert Blake Found Not Guilty

Not guilty verdict. If I had to bet, I'd bet he did it, but there was no credible physical evidence and no eyewitness who saw him pulling the trigger.

The Man in the Attic

Last week in Nashville there was a strange murder case. A man heard a noise in his bedroom closet. When he investigated he found a man who turned out to be his wife's boyfriend. The sounds he heard were snoring. The boyfriend had been sleeping in the closet for a month. The husband ordered his wife to get rid of the man, and left the house to cool off. When he returned, the boyfriend beat him to death.

Strange as that is, it's been done before. In the comments at Michael Silence's blog Doxigrafix posted a link to the case of Otto Sanhuber, the original Man in the Attic. He lived in the attic of his married lover Walburga “Dolly” Oesterreich for almost 20 years before being discovered. When Dolly's husband Fred heard noises she'd convince him he was tired, drunk, or crazy. The Oesterreichs moved several times during those 20 years, and each time Dolly would make sure the new house had an attic.

UPDATE April 19: More on the Nashville case.

Saturday Morning Mystery: Who is Zodiac Suspect Mr. X, Part 2

Sorry for being so slow in writing up part 2. In Part 1, I explained Mike Rodelli's theory that a Mr. X was the Zodiac Killer. I'm not convinced he's right, but I wanted to see if I could at least figure out who Mr. X was.

A day or two after I started someone emailed me a big clue - Mr. X's first name. At first I was disappointed - that was going to make it too easy, particularly since he had an unusual first name. Sure enough, thanks to that clue and Google I found Mr. X in a few minutes.

Once I found him, however, I realized I probably wouldn't have found him without the extra clue. I confirmed my guess with someone else who emailed me.

Below are the original clues I was working with. The comments in parentheses are observations about the clues based on knowing Mr. X's identity.

• He was a pilot in the Navy. (True. He also had an unusual experience as a pilot.)
• He's a multi-millionaire. (True.)
• He owns "a high-end, image oriented retail business in the San Francisco market." (True, but misleading. This clue tends to send people to one particular guy who owns retail clothing chains throughout the country. Mr. X owns a business in San Francisco, but it's not what most people would think of when they think of a retail business.)
• He's a member of the Bohemian Club. (True.)
• In April, 1970 he bought a company that has the same name as the surname of one of Zodiac's victims. ZodiacKiller.com lists the confirmed victims's surnames as Faraday, Jensen, Farrin, Mageau, Shepard, Hartnell, and Stine. The contested victims' surnames are Domingos, Edwards, Bates, Johns, Lass. (True.)
• He still owns the same Pacific Heights home he owned in the 1960s during the Zodiac's reign. The home is near the site where Zodiac victim Paul Stine was murdered. Some of the Zodiac's victims are disputed, but not Stine. Zodiac removed part of Stine's bloody shirt and mailed a piece with his letter to the San Francisco Chronicle. (I didn't confirm this part.)
• He's approximately 85 years old, which means he was born around 1919. (That's about right.)

Now that I know who Mr. X is, I tend to think he's not Zodiac. There wasn't much reason to believe he was, anyway, but based on his age and accomplishments he doesn't seem like the type.

More Zodiac blogging on Wednesday.

Babe Simpson, the Bank Robber in the Family Tree

Last week Melissa's mother Virginia gave her some of aunt Marg's old family photos and the stories to go with them. The man in this picture is Babe Simpson. Melissa's mom knew that he was Melissa's grandfather's cousin, and was a gangster of some sort.

The picture was apparently taken in Knoxville. The back of the picture is an advertisement for "The Askins Stores, 506 S. Gay St., Knoxville, Tenn."

Virginia knew that Babe had been a gangster, and had met him a long time ago when she was very young, but didn't know the whole story. Melissa called her grandmother Geneva, who said Babe had been in the Bunch Gang. We had never heard of them, so we went looking.

At Geneaology.com someone had once asked about the Bunch Gang and gotten an answer from Harry Till:

My cousin, Clarence was the leader. He was shot in Knoxville in 1934.

After escaping from the Cocke County jail at Newport Tn on May 15, 1934, Clarence and his gang rampaged through Claiborne, Grainger and Knox Counties. They killed Sheriff Hutchinson of Union County. They stole cars and robbed travellers until they were finally trapped at the home of C T Epperson, described as a bootlegger and a first cousin of Clarence's mother. Clarence was killed in a hail of machine gun fire as he tried to shoot Sherriff Brewer of Knoxville.

The Knox County Sheriff's Web site mentions that Wesley Brewer, in his term from 1932-1936, "was Sheriff in an era when the Roger Toughy Gang was headquartered here and Clarence Bunch was killed in a shoot-out with police."

I emailed Till to see if he had more information, and he responded:

The Bunch of the Bunch Gang was my cousin Clarence. They were primarily bank robbers. They operated mostly in Northeast Tennessee. I know Clarence escaped once while awaiting trial for a bank robbery in Virginia. He was killed in Knoxville in August 1935 [I think he meant 1934 - LJ]. Almost the entire front page of the Knoxville paper was devoted to the shooting, including a morgue picture.

According to this message board post, the front page story was in the August 23, 1934 edition of the Knoxville Journal. The Journal went into a long decline and was sold to its current owners as a shadow of its former self in 1995. I called their offices, and they said I'd need to go to the library to find back issues, so that's a project for a rainy day.

I'm not sure if Babe was present at the gunfight, but if so he survived. During Father's Day dinner Melissa and I quizzed her family. They say he did a long stretch in the penitentiary. After he got out he visited his relatives in Knoxville. I assume that's when Melissa's mother and grandmother met him. He was still handsome enough to make Melissa's grandmother "weak in the knees."

His brother Walt Simpson told them that the gang had hidden some of their loot on the banks of the Tennessee River. When the gang tried to retrieve it they couldn't locate the hiding place. If the story's true, there could still be a Bunch Gang treasure somewhere along the river.

After he got out of the pen, Babe apparently quit the outlaw life. He married, moved to Virginia, and had three children. This is a picture of him with two of his kids.

Just last night someone on RootsWeb answered Melissa's post with more information, including Babe's real name - Jesse Edward Simpson. He was born in 1909 in Petros, Tennessee. He died in 1978 and is buried in Fries cemetery in Grayson County, Virginia. Walt Simpson passed away just last year.

Searching for Johnia Hope Berry's Killer

Chris Range emails this story about the ongoing investigation into the death of Johnia Hope Berry.

More than six months ago, someone stabbed Johnia Hope Berry to death in her apartment.

The 21-year-old Bristol native, a former cheerleader for Tennessee High School, would have graduated in less than two weeks from East Tennessee State University and married in the spring.

The killer still hasn�t been found.

Now Berry�s family has put up a billboard along Interstate 40 seeking information. The sign bears her photo, the date of her death � Dec. 6, 2004 � and a plea for help.

UPDATE: From a comment to another post, I found out there's a police sketch of the suspect in Johnia Hope Berry's murder. Click on the pictures for a larger version.

There's a $10,000 reward for information leading the arrest and conviction of Berry's killer. You can email anonymous tips to homicide@knoxsheriff.org.

Former Worldcom CEO Gets 25 Years

CNN/Money:

Ex-WorldCom chief executive Bernard Ebbers was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years in prison for his role in orchestrating the biggest corporate fraud in the nation's history.

Legal experts said the sentence, effectively a life term for the 63-year-old, appears to be the longest ever for a CEO found guilty of committing corporate crimes while running a Fortune 500 company.

Ebbers was convicted in March for his part in the $11 billion accounting fraud at WorldCom that was the biggest in a wave of corporate scandals at Enron, Adelphia and other companies.

Good. The financial markets only work if they're honest. Crooks need to be punished, and Ebbers was the biggest crook in financial history.

Will OJ Be Able to Find the Real Pirate?

From Newsday:

A federal judge has ordered former football star O.J. Simpson to pay $25,000 in damages for pirating satellite television signals from DirecTV.

Successful football player parlays athletic talents into a string of product endorsements and movie roles, then murders his ex-wife and her boyfriend, runs from police in a low-speed chase, gets off scot-free despite massive evidence in one of the "crimes of the century", then gets nabbed for stealing satellite TV. The future is weirder than I expected.

Here Be Monsters

James Rummel recalls a real life monster he encountered during his days with the police.

After I got the prints and he was being cuffed, one cop on each arm and another fitting the bracelets on, he looked over at me and gave me a wink and a smile. "You know what people are? They’re nothing but bags of meat with screams inside."

Yikes.

CIA Refuses to Release JFK-related Records on Joannides

There's a petition from a wide swath of pro-conspiracy and anti-conspiracy JFK researches to get the CIA to release records related to George Joannides. (I had never heard of him, FWIW.)

New Johnia Berry Article, Web Site

Metro Pulse has an outstanding article about Johnia Berry, her murder, and the ongoing effort to find her killer. Reporter Ellen Mallernee did the hard work of interviewing the people surrounding the story and putting it all into a comprehensive narrative that also conveys the terrible loss for Berry's friends and family.

The article also points to a Web site, JohniaBerry.org, that's been established to seek tips in the case.

Previous posts:
- Composite Sketch of Johnia Hope Berry's Killer
- Johnia Hope Berry Candlelight Vigil
- Knox Sheriff Declines "America's Most Wanted" Help in Berry Murder
- Johnia Hope Berry Memorial Service
- Searching for Johnia Hope Berry's Killer

Re-thinking the Death Penalty

The Birmingham News explains why it is reversing its long-standing support of the death penalty.

It's a matter of law that deeply troubles The News' editorial board. After decades of supporting the death penalty, the editorial board no longer can do so. Today and over the next five days, we will explain our change of mind and heart.

We know that many of our readers, including families and friends of murder victims, will disagree. We acknowledge we cannot grasp the profound grief experienced by those who lose loved ones in senseless, savage killings. We well understand some crimes are so great that those who commit them don't deserve to live in the free world ever again, and that some don't deserve to live at all. Yet we can no longer in good conscience continue to advocate the death penalty in Alabama.

I have no objection to the death penalty in principle, but as currently practiced the system has tremendous flaws. Via Facing South via Michael Silence.

The LAPD Biggie Smalls Case

Fantastic Randall Sullivan article in Rolling Stone about the murder of Biggie Smalls (the Notorious B.I.G.) and the possible involvement of some corrupt LAPD officers. One in particular, David Mack, is currently in prison for robbing the Bank of America. Among the evidence pointing to Mack is the fact that his car matches the description of the car that that was used in Biggie's murder, he's a long-time friend with another suspect in the case, he took family days off on the day of the bank robbery and the day of the murder, and he was employed by Suge Knight and Death Row Records even while serving on the LAPD.

There are also disturbing allegations that an LA Times reporter, Chuck Philips, wrote intentionally misleading articles that pointed attention away from Suge Knight. The stories relied heavily on anonymous sources that the LAT won't reveal. They did print the street name of a witness in a then-upcoming civil trial surrounding the case. The witness was subsequently beaten and couldn't testify. The article suggests that Philips, like Mack, may have been on the Death Row payroll. Via Patterico.

Thomas "Zoo Man" Huskey's Conviction Overturned

So this is old news (the link below is from November 1), but somehow I totally missed it and just discovered it today when Ace of Spades linked it. The Tennessee Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision that threw out almost all of the evidence against alleged serial killer Thomas "Zoo Man" Huskey. One of the key questions was whether a confession was admissable because it came from "Kyle," one of Huskey's alleged multiple personalities.

Purported Upton Sinclair Letter Claims Sacco and Vanzetti Guilty

From LA Times via Megan McCardle"

The story was "Boston," Sinclair's 1920s novelized condemnation of the trial and execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian immigrants accused of killing two men in the robbery of a Massachusetts shoe factory.

Prosecutors characterized the anarchists as ruthless killers who had used the money to bankroll antigovernment bombings and deserved to die. Sinclair thought the pair were innocent and being railroaded because of their political views.

Soon Sinclair would learn something that filled him with doubt. During his research for "Boston," Sinclair met with Fred Moore, the men's attorney, in a Denver motel room. Moore "sent me into a panic," Sinclair wrote in the typed letter that Hegness found at the auction a decade ago.

"Alone in a hotel room with Fred, I begged him to tell me the full truth," Sinclair wrote. " … He then told me that the men were guilty, and he told me in every detail how he had framed a set of alibis for them."

Here's a Crimelibrary.com article on Sacco and Vanzetti. The two were anarchists, and their cause was embraced by socialists of the era.

"My wife is absolutely certain that if I tell what I believe, I will be called a traitor to the movement and may not live to finish the book," Sinclair wrote Robert Minor, a confidant at the Socialist Daily Worker in New York, in 1927.

"Of course," he added, "the next big case may be a frame-up, and my telling the truth about the Sacco-Vanzetti case will make things harder for the victims."

He also worried that revealing what he had been told would cost him readers. "It is much better copy as a naïve defense of Sacco and Vanzetti because this is what all my foreign readers expect, and they are 90% of my public," he wrote to Minor.

Study: Men Enjoy Bad Guys' Pain

From Yahoo News via Bruce at mAss Backwards.

Bill Clinton said he felt others' pain. But a new brain-scanning study suggests that when guys see a cheater get a mild electric shock, they don't feel his pain much at all. In fact, they rather enjoy it.

In contrast, women's brains showed they do empathize with the cheater's pain and don't get a kick out it.

It's not clear whether this difference in schadenfreude — enjoyment of another's misfortune — results from basic biology or sex roles learned during life, researchers say. But it could help explain why men have historically taken charge of punishing criminals and others who violate societal rules, said researcher Dr. Klaas Stephan.

Duke Lacrosse Story

Bouncer-blogger The Doorman, no stranger to drunk college kids, weighs in on the Duke lacrosse rape case. Via Tiny Cat Pants. Dirty words after the jump.

ATM Photo of Accused Duke Lacrosse Player

Time-stamped ATM photo shows Seligmann at 12:24:

The attorney for Reade Seligmann, one of two Duke lacrosse players charged with raping a stripper, has filed these time-stamped photographs showing Seligmann arriving at an ATM machine at 12:24 a.m. on March 14. The attorney says this confirms his client's alibi during the alleged attack, which defense says occurred between midnight and 12:30.

Videotape shows her dancing in front of th party at 12:03. The cab driver's cell phone records show that he received Seligmann's call at 12:14. Yet she claimed she was raped for half an hour. Even assuming her recollection of time is a little off, her story doesn't fit, at least for Seligmann.

See also:
- Duke Lacrosse archives at TalkLeft

LA's "10 Percenter" Program

Los Angeles has a plan to aggressively prosecute the 10% of criminals who are reputed to cause 50% of crime. Patterico, an LA district attorney, sees a problem with the plan.

In the end, without a radical redistribution of crime-fighting resources throughout the county, I suspect that you’ll end up with something of a mishmash. It will be the criminal law equivalent of what some states force their public universities to do: accept the top 10% of students from each school in the state. You won’t get the top 10% of students in the state. But you’ll get diversity. Same with this program. You’ll put away the worst 10% of criminals in Pomona, the worst 10% in Van Nuys, the worst 10% in Long Beach, and the worst 10% in Compton. (Probably pretty close to what we’re already doing anyway.) But you won’t put away the worst 10% in the county, because those 10% are concentrated in the worst areas.

If you really want to get the worst 10% in the county, you’ll have to radically redistribute law enforcement resources to target the most problematic areas. Somehow, I don’t think we’re ready to do what’s necessary. I’d like to think I’m wrong. But somehow, I don’t think I am.

Duke Case: Vaginal DNA Belonged to Boyfriend

District attorney Mike Nifong has indicted a third member of the Duke lacrosse team, team captain David Evans. There is DNA evidence linking him to the alleged victim's false fingernail, but the evidence is somewhat mixed, and is not blood.

From ABC News:

ABC News' Law &Justice Unit was given exclusive details about the latest DNA report in the Duke lacrosse rape investigation and was shown and reviewed parts of the 10-page document.

According to the DNA report, tests specifically designed to look for semen found none on swabs of the alleged victim's mouth or genital areas. This is noteworthy, defense lawyers said, because in at least one affidavit and in the transcript of the photo identification lineup, the alleged victim said she was raped orally, vaginally and anally by three members of the Duke men's lacrosse team.

...

One of the three men has told ABC News that he spoke to the alleged victim the night of the March 13 party. Another man is the alleged victim's boyfriend, and defense attorneys identified him in a news conference as the "single source" of DNA found to date in vaginal swabs of the accuser.

TalkLeft's is unimpressed with the latest charges and evidence:

The fingernail DNA is bogus. Not just because it isn't conclusive but because of transference from other items in the trash can that contained Evan's DNA.

The accuser's story is a bunch of lies. The only DNA on her came from someone not a Duke player.

See also:
- Duke Lacrosse Story
- ATM Photo of Accused Duke Lacrosse Player

More Doubts About the Alleged Duke Rape

From The Herald Sun via TalkLeft, more questions about the accuser's story in the Duke Lacrosse rape case.

- The alleged victim says the rapists didn't use condoms.
- The alleged victim says the second woman was in the bathroom, but the second woman contradicts her.
- The alleged victim says she had sex with three other men - her boyfriend and two drivers for the escort service - just prior to the alleged rape.

According to reports the only seminal DNA found during the medical exam belonged to the alleged victim's boyfriend, yet she claims she was raped orally, vaginally, and anally for 30 minutes by three men who didn't use condoms. Since I don't believe that's possible without leaving seminal DNA, I don't find her story believable.

Second Dancer was with Duke AV for all but Five Minutes

Filing: Second dancer called allegations a 'crock':

The second dancer in the Duke lacrosse case told police early on that allegations of rape were a "crock" and that she was with the accuser the entire evening except for a period of less than five minutes.

The second dancer, Kim Roberts, made that statement when she was first contacted by Durham police one week after the party where the first escort service dancer said she was gang raped by three men.

Roberts' statements and notes of the detectives in the case were made public today in a court filing by lawyers for one of the defendants, Reade Seligmann, 20, of Essex Falls, N.J.

This case gets weaker all the time.

Press Questioning DA in Duke Rape Case

Big media outlets are expressing doubts about Durham County DA Michael Nifong's case, as well as his conduct in the alleged Duke Lacrosse rape.

The New York Times:

DNA samples from the woman and 46 players, which Mr. Nifong had said would identify the suspects, turned up no matches. Other DNA evidence proved inconclusive. Defense lawyers provided time-stamped photographs from the party to rebut the woman's assertion of a 30-minute rape.

Just this week, defense lawyers introduced records of interviews of a dancer hired to perform with the woman; the second dancer said they had been together at the party for all but five minutes and that any claim of rape was nonsense. [The second dancer has more recently said she is not so sure, and her lawyer, Mark Simeon, said on Saturday that her earlier comments were an off-the-cuff reaction to a question from the police.]

Newsweek:

Nifong is described by some lawyers as an adversary who gets dug in—and won't budge. But Nifong's motives may have been political as well. He was six weeks away from an election when the Duke case came up. Durham voters are almost evenly divided between black and white. One of Nifong's opponents was black and the other was white, but the white lawyer was much better known in the community, thanks to winning a high-profile murder case. (That opponent, former assistant D.A. Freda Black, became a bitter enemy of Nifong's after, she claims, Nifong fired her.) Nifong promised black voters that he would not let the Duke case drop. He indicted two of the players two weeks before the election. He won narrowly, taking a larger share of the black vote than the other white candidate.

Arrest in Jon-Benet Ramsey Murder

Via Brittney. "The suspect has confessed to certain elements of the crime that are unknown to the general public." The full story is here, but it's brief. Expect more later tonight and tomorrow.

UPDATE: More from CNN:

A suspect was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday "for the December 26, 1996, murder of JonBenet Ramsey," the district attorney in Boulder, Colorado, said Wednesday.

A law enforcement source identified the suspect as 41-year-old John Mark Karr, a one-time schoolteacher and American citizen who has lived in Conyers, Georgia.

Karr has confessed to some elements of the crime, law enforcement sources told CNN. A warrant for his arrest was issued Tuesday night.

TBI Makes Arrest in 1985 Dyersburg Murder

From the Knoxville News-Sentinel via Wolf Pack Ledger posting in comments at Find Johnia Berry's Killer.

A Dyersburg man was indicted for a 21-year-old murder based on genetic evidence that linked him to the crime. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation charged Harold Bernard Schaffer, 42, with the 1985 stabbing death of William "Junior" Pierce at his Dyersburg hardware shop. Schaffer, who is currently serving time on cocaine and forgery charges, was indicted Monday by a Dyer County grand jury on a first-degree murder charge.

John Mehr was TBI's local agent when Pierce's body was found by a customer on May 17, 1985. Mehr, who is now TBI's regional supervisor in Jackson, continued pursuing the case using DNA evidence found at the scene.

"It was long time in coming," Mehr said. "Hopefully, this will start the conclusion. I never gave up hope that this case would be solved."

I'm constantly amazed at how long it can take to solve murders.

Halloween Costume Prediction

My prediction for the 2006 Topical Halloween Costume is a turquoise polo shirt buttoned to the top with unbelted tan pants pulled above the navel, with slicked-down hair parted on the side.

False Confessions

There are questions about John Mark Karr's confession and whether it's truthful. Slate has a piece about false confessions in famous murders. According to the article two other people have confessed to JonBenet's murder. (And I'm agnostic on whether Karr is or isn't guilty, though I'm leaning slightly towards saying he did it, based on his unique history. Time will tell.)

The case I know the most about, the JFK assassination, had its share of confessors. One of the more interesting stories was from Rick White, who claimed his father, Roscoe White, helped Lee Harvey Oswald kill Kennedy.

What made the story compelling was that Roscoe White worked for the Dallas police department, had been a Marine like Oswald, and that he and Oswald both served in Marine Air Wing 1 in Yokosuka, Japan at the same time, and had sailed to Yokosuka together on the same voyage. Ricky even had a photograph that he claimed showed Oswald and Roscoe White together. You can read more about it in I Was Mandarin and Who Speaks for Roscoe White?

P.S. For anything related to the JFK assassination I recommend John McAdams' JFK assassination page.

Karr Handwriting Comparison

This Rocky Mountain News article plays up some questions about handwriting expert Curtis Badgett's qualifications, but reading between the lines there seems to be an indication from people in the field that John Mark Karr wrote the ransom note found in the Ramsey's house.

Several other document examiners have said they are strongly leaning toward Baggett's conclusion based on a comparison of Karr's writing in a high school yearbook with the three-page note left on the Ramsey family stairway on the day JonBenet was reported missing.

In 2004, a federal magistrate in Maine also challenged Baggett's credentials and excluded his testimony in a civil case there.

Baggett said he was staking a large part of his reputation on his judgment that Karr wrote the ransom note. He said there were at least 12 points of similarity between the ransom note and the yearbook entry.

Texas document examiner Linda James, however, said that while there are similarities between the yearbook writing and the ransom note, more evidence is needed. "There are too many other things to consider," she said. She also said Baggett had considered similarities, but not dissimilarities.

Another Halloween Costume Prediction

The Boulder DA dropped charges against John Mark Karr. I still think this will be a popular costume for skinny people with brown hair. For everyone else, the hot Halloween costume will be a shirt and tie worn under a black judicial robe from which emanates a mysterious pumping sound.

Stuart Taylor on the NY Times Duke Rape Coverage

Stuart Taylor recounts the NY Times misleading coverage in the Duke lacrosse rape case.

With all or almost all of the key prosecution evidence now public, the answer to that latter question is no. What we have here is an alleged 30-minute gang rape, plus brutal beating, taking place in a small bathroom by three men without condoms, at least two of whom supposedly ejaculated; a rape in which police found none of the defendants' DNA on the supposed victim and none of hers in the bathroom. While the Times asserts that "experts say it is possible for a rapist to leave no DNA evidence," it's hard to imagine the crime alleged to have happened here leaving none.

I'm inclined to agree, since I said the same thing in May. One item from the August 25 NY Times piece drew my attention:

One suspect, Reade Seligmann, has what appears to be a powerful alibi, based on a cellphone log and other records that show he left the party early.

That's quite the understatement. Besides the cellphone company's logs of his calls, we have his friend's statements, the statements of the cab driver who picked them up, the logs of the cab company that was called, and the time-stamped videotape of the ATM where they withdrew money showing Seligman's face proves beyond any doubt he wasn't at the party when the accuser alleged he was. "Powerful alibi" doesn't begin to cover it.

Bonus! Taylor points to Durham in Wonderland, which describes itself as "Comments and Analysis about the Duke/Nifong Case."

That Den of Crime, the Mall

Tennessee Values Authority has a different take on the unfortunate attack on Natalie Haslam at West Town Mall.

This is why nobody goes downtown anymore...er, wait...

Seriously, not to make light of Natalie's experience, but this is the kind of story that Simon usually tries real hard to keep out of the news and usually does, until someone of this stature is the victim. I recall too many conversations with people who talked about how unsafe downtown was even though crime statistics for the West Town Mall parking lot far outperformed anything that was believed to be happening in downtown.

Since the mall doesn't have graffiti, steaming sidewalks, and homeless people everyone assumes it's safe, but criminals go where victims are.

Easily-hacked ATMs

A combination of online manuals and default passwords make it easy to defraud some ATMs.

UPDATE: The hack enables thieves to defraud the ATM, but I haven't seen any indication it could be used to hack into a customer's account.

Gizmondo's Wreck

Earlier this year a man destroyed a million dollar Ferrari Enzo in a 199 mph wreck. That wreck marked the end of the car and the end of a company called Gizmondo that had burned through hundreds of millions of dollars in investments. It would soon lead to the capture of the car's driver, a Swedish criminal named Stefan Eriksson. Randall Sullivan has the bizarre story in Wired.

The Enzo has less than 6 inches of ground clearance, and at that speed, it took only a slight scrape under the front bumper to launch the vehicle. The airborne Ferrari landed in a skid that in a blink became a sidelong drift. Tires shredding, the car bounced over the shoulder onto a grassy slope wet with dew. All Eriksson could do was hold on as the slithering, swiveling Enzo again achieved liftoff, then slammed broadside into a wooden power pole.

It might have ended there, another high-flying company with big ambitions and a lousy product. But the crash put a spotlight on Eriksson and raised a series of questions: Who is he? What kind of person drives nearly 200 mph on a coastal highway? The answers led to even more puzzles. In just a few years, it seems, Eriksson went from languishing in a European jail cell to making millions as a tech executive to, even more improbably, becoming deputy commissioner of antiterrorism for an obscure Southern California transit police force. Before ­Eriksson lost control of his Ferrari in Malibu, no one in the US really cared about his strange story. But after the supercar came apart, Eriksson would find every inch of his life under scrutiny by the LA County Sheriff's Department, federal law-enforcement officers, and the media. That's when Eriksson and a tangle of cohorts would find out just how large a little bump could loom.

If you like that story, read Sullivan's even more amazing account of the murder of rapper Biggie Smalls. Sullivan makes a compelling case that David Mack was one of the people involved in the murder. Mack was by day an LAPD officer in the Rampart division, by night a private security guard for Death Row Records mogul Suge Knight, and by raising a Bloods gangmember. Mack is currently in prison for the armed robbery of the Bank of America.

Hung Jury in Ferrari Enzo Crash Trial

The jury hung 10-2 in favor of conviction.

As covered previously, the 199 mph wreck of the $1.5 million sportscar was the tip of the iceberg in this bizarre, fascinating story of an international criminal and dot-com buster.

Bad News on Election Night

Durham DA Mike Nifong - he of the bogus Duke rape case - has been re-elected.

New Twist in Lambert Incident: Suspect Facing Murder Charge

The guy who drew a gun on Greg "Lumpy" Lambert may soon be facing murder charges. Lambert outdrew Kane Stackhouse when he tried to steal a car. Stackhouse left, and the Sheriff tracked him down based on his driver's license, which Lumpy had.

Now the sheriff has announced a grand jury is preparing to hear an indictment against Stackhouse for the murder of David Lindsay behind a Walgreen's 10 hours prior to the incident with Lumpy.

As #9 noted, this makes last week's Metro Pulse editorial even more stupid and embarassing.

First he put himself at risk by drawing his weapon when he says he saw a gun come out of the young man’s pocket. ...

The whole scenario is somehow suspect, especially since the Sheriff’s Department is notably uncooperative in providing details to the news media.

It will be up to the young man and his lawyer to plead his case, but the entire incident would be better digested and put behind us if it were taken before a Knox County Grand Jury for review. The grand jury could put Lambert under oath to get his story straight and decide whether and what crimes may have been committed.

Advice to Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale and members of his administration, toward whom Lambert has shown animosity: Steer clear of Lumpy Lambert unless you have armed security handy and have plenty of witnesses around.

Now it looks like Lambert not only stopped a car thief, he stopped what could have turned into another murder, and helped bring a murderer to justice in the process. Metro Pulse needs to start preparing an apology.

Ted "Unabomber" Kaczynski's Homemade Gun

From CBS5 via The High Road.

Local Crime News: Raynella Dossett Leath Murder Indictment

Betty Bean has the odd story:

For newbies, Raynella Dossett Leath was once the wife of Ed Dossett, Randy Nichols' predecessor as attorney general. Ed, who was dying of cancer, met a very strange end when it was reported that he died after being stomped to death by milk cows. The story, IIRC, was that he'd asked to be wheeled out to the barn to see his cows and somehow ended up beneath their hooves. The whole thing always sounded more than a little strange to me, but it was accepted by tptb. The medical examiner -- Randy Pedigo -- ruled it an accidental death and word was that the widow collected triple indemnity.

Next thing we heard about Raynella, some guy who (and this is sketchy) had to do with the legally recognized father of a baby that Raynella thought was fathered by her late husband. Raynella wanted that baby, and called the guy to come down to her farm to discuss the issue. The guy said she took him down to the barn (hereafter to be known as the Barn of Doom), pulled out a gun and a legal document and ordered him to sign the kid over to her or get shot. He claimed that she took a shot at him; she denied it. She wasn't charged with anything.

And then there's the guy she's actually charged with murdering. Read the whole thing.

Ethics Charges Filed Against Raleigh DA Mike Nifong

Good. From the AP:

In a statement, the bar said it opened a case against Nifong on March 30, a little more than two weeks after a 28-year-old woman hired to perform as a stripper at a lacrosse team party said she was gang-raped.

The ethics charges will be heard by an independent body called the Disciplinary Hearing Commission, made up of both la