The recent leak of this Charles Manson mugshot got Microkhan thinking about his youthful obsession with Helter Skelter, still a classic of the true-crime genre. The way that Vincent Bugliosi slowly reveals the paranoia at the Family’s core, as well as the crazy Beatles link, taught us a lot about narrative pacing—not to mention the […]
Tags:1960s·Charles Manson·crime·cults·history
Contrary to what Law & Order reruns have taught a generation of armchair lawyers, the so-called insanity plea is the rarest of legal birds. According to one New York study, which looked at a decades’ worth of court data, psychiatric defenses were attempted in roughly 0.16 percent of criminal cases. Yet even when both sides […]
Tags:crime·law·psychology·schizophrenia
In response to yesterday’s post on trench art, one of Microkhan’s treasured Aussie readers turned us on to convict love tokens. These engraved coins were made by English convicts as they awaited deportation to Australia, during the island continent’s 19th-century turn as a massive penal colony. The token to the right was produced by an […]
One of the best magazine stories I’ve ever read is James B. Stewart’s “Professional Courtesy,” which first appeared in The New Yorker nearly a dozen years ago. The piece recounts the sordid tale of Michael Swango, a health-care worker whose favorite pastime was injecting elderly patients with lethal drug cocktails. Stewart tracked Swango’s whole career, […]
The full story’s yet to be told on why David Yen Lee, a longtime employee of Valspar Paint and Coatings, allegedly decided to betray a whole bunch of trade secrets to a Chinese competitor. Perhaps he’s suffering through a messy divorce, or he’s saddled with gambling debts. Or perhaps he’s just a greedy so-and-so who […]
Tags:China·crime·David Yen Lee·espionage·social networks·Valspar
After at least 70 fires since the start of 2008, the Coatesville cops have a seventh suspected arsonist in custody. This time, it’s one of the city’s firefighters. A cause for relief? Hardly—the arsons have continued despite previous arrests, as well as the best efforts of the Chester County Arson Task Force. Why are some […]
Our nation’s turtle farming industry recently received some rather unwanted attention, courtesy of Operation Shellshock. The multistate investigation uncovered a clandestine network of reptile smugglers, whose dastardly deeds included the peddling of rare turtles to both collectors and Chinese diners. The scheme was allegedly abetted with “the help of a corrupt Louisiana turtle farm,” which […]
Tags:agriculture·China·crime·Louisiana·Operation Shellshock·turtles
In the early part of this decade, the fair city of Melbourne, Australia was embroiled in a violent gangland war, pitting a speed trafficker named Carl Williams against the notorious Moran clan. The spat, which started when one of the Morans shot Williams in the belly, ended up claiming at least 34 lives; it also […]
…be sure to refrain from using the F-word. Particularly if you’ll be dining at Salsa’s Mexican and Seafood Restaurant on Seawall Boulevard.
A daring grain theft in a town with a population of 51. I wonder how the robbers planned to fence the stuff—not like you can walk into just any old pawn shop with 168,000 pounds of sorghum. Indispensible tips on stopping grain thieves here. Illuminate your bins!
Tags:agriculture·crime
Earlier this year, I read The Lives of the Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, an occasionally entertaining account of the Roman Empire’s formative years. (Capsule review: The crazy emperors were fun to read about; the technocrats, not so much.) The thing that stays with me the most is not Caligula’s excess, or Augustus’s judiciousness, but rather […]
Another day, another gobsmacking tale of police impersonation, this time involving a 14-year-old Chicagoan who managed to make his way onto patrol thanks to the laziness of commanders. The kid even got to twist a suspect’s arm—surely every rage-filled teenager’s dream. The Chicago case provides an excellent opportunity to call out another athlete with a […]
The most troubling part about this story is not that Nigerian e-scammers were likely able to wheedle a few pounds out of Jack Straw’s pals and constituents (who really should have known better, given the con artists’ straight-out-of-Lagos grammar and syntax). No, what’ll keep me up tonight is that fact that Britain’s former Foreign Secretary, […]
Tags:Britain·crime·information technology·Jack Straw·Nigeria
That’s how many children have gone missing in Delhi since 2006, and have yet to be found. For comparison’s sake, a Department of Justice study (PDF) found that about 2,500 American kids who went missing in 1999 had not been located by the turn of the millennium. The population of the United States at that […]
An excellent New York Times piece on the murder of Oakland newspaper editor Chauncey Bailey is today’s must-read, at least if you (like me) are something of a journalism geek. The article’s one flaw is an all-too-brief namecheck of The Arizona Project, a multi-paper investigation into the 1976 assassination (via car bomb) of Arizona Republic […]
Tags:Arizona·crime·journalism
It doesn’t take a fancy head-shrinking degree to guess why some folks like to imitate cops. But we’ll let an expert break it down for you nonetheless. “The ordinary person who impersonates a police officer is likely to feel powerless in some way in their life,” says Dr. Phillip Resnick, director of forensic psychiatry at […]
Urban theorist Mike Davis is usually credited with coining the phrase “bum proofing,” back in his 1990 classic City of Quartz. The target of Davis’s ire back then was a redesigned bus bench, turned cylindrical so as to discourage sleeping. Countless seating areas have since been retrofitted to prevent the incursions of bums; the most […]
Tags:crime·urban design
It comes as no surprise that the FBI is swamped with financial fraud cases nowadays. I knew this day of reckoning would someday come while watching The Real Housewives of Orange County on JetBlue a few years back. No financial system that could support such in-your-face opulence could possibly be on the up-and-up. (I remember […]
I was researching the arms trade the other day when I came across this amazing tale from Nigeria. It involves a fisherman-turned-arms-smuggler, who was ensnared not by the police, but rather by a celebrated vigilante named Alhaji Ali Kwara. Turns out that Mr. Kwara has been a rather busy man of late, personally arresting ten […]
