Because it happened during the frenetic final throes of the Cold War, the 1983 abduction of 66 Czechoslovaks by Angolan rebels didn’t get much coverage on these shores. Were a similar event to occur today, though, it would receive immense attention, primarily because of the kidnappers’ rough tactics: In addition to taking children as well […]
Tags:Angola·Cold War·Czech Republic·Jonas Savimbi·kidnapping
When Nigerian soccer star Christian Obodo was briefly kidnapped earlier this month, I was struck not only by the boldness of the crime, but also by the crooks’ obvious sensitivity to economic realities. For as this early account of the caper makes clear, the kidnappers and Obodo’s family started the negotiations on more-or-less the same […]
Tags:Christian Obodo·economics·kidnapping·Papua New Guinea·soccer·sports
The recent kidnapping of two Assamese forestry officials may have been peacefully resolved, but the caper hints at a deepening problem in India’s long troubled North-East. No, not the continued prevalence of insurgent groups that double as organized-crime outfits, but rather the bulldozing of woodlands that are the region’s foremost natural resource. The forestry officials […]
Tags:animal attacks·Assam·corruption·environment·India·kidnapping·leopards·North-East India
The section of the book I’m working on today is basically a brief history of terrible kidnapping plots. They’re not all necessarily dumb crimes from the get-go—many of the cases I cover involved months of careful planning by above-average crooks. But they inevitably make one key error that unspools the entire enterprise. And more often […]
Tags:crime·kidnapping
Mere hours to go before the first draft of my latest Wired yarn is due, and I’m struggling to come up with an ending that amounts to more than just a variation on “Only time will tell.” I reckon it’ll somehow have to incorporate the information offered here, but how to pull off that neat […]
Tags:CHiPs·kidnapping·Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs·Satan's Angels·television
For fairly obvious reasons, we find it unable to resist scholarly examinations of North Korea’s currency weirdness. Why would Dear Leader’s regime see fit to instantly vaporize what little wealth the Hermit Kingdom’s poor citizens have managed to scrape together? (We suspect the answer has something to do with the abuse of Hennessy, which has […]
Tags:East Germany·Hennessy·kidnapping·Kim Jong-il·North Korea·prisoner exchanges
We generally suspect that few fake kidnappings go off without a hitch. And that’s especially true when the perpetrators of the crime don’t understand the basics of cell-phone technology: At about 6am Friday morning Bangor Police received information that Mr. Daniel Chute was being held captive in an automobile in the Bangor Mall Cinema’s parking […]
The peaceful resolution of a Mexican kidnapping saga brings to mind a strange bit of American religious history: The Mormons’ 19th-century trek south of the border to establish a series of colonies. Those colonies were far more numerous before Pancho Villa came on the scene, but some hardy souls stuck out the conflict (PDF). Among […]
Tags:crime·kidnapping·Mexico·Mitt Romney·Mormons·Pancho Villa
