Special Area
Crime & Justice
o What is a crime, and who decides how serious a crime is? Who should?
o Are there countries in which those accused of crimes are guilty until proven innocent?
o How can someone be proven guilty of a crime?
o What acts are considered crimes in some countries but not in others?
o To what degree should citizens be involved in law enforcement?
o Should a person be held responsible for breaking laws he or she doesn’t know about?
o Should non-citizens be tried differently for crimes than citizens?
o Should judges or juries be the ultimate arbiters of guilt or innocence?
o What is the purpose of sending someone to prison?
o Is it ever just to try one person for another person’s crime?
o Is there a difference between a crime and a crime against humanity?
o Is crime more common in certain societies or among certain groups of people?
o Can a criminal be a hero?
o Is there such a thing as “honor among thieves”?
o What is the line, if any, between justice and the law?
o Should the government be allowed to prosecute someone for a crime even if the victim says not to pursue charges?
o What is the difference between terrorism and crime?
o Can something be a crime even if it has no victims?
o Is anyone who breaks the law a criminal?
o What type of acts justify trying someone as a war criminal?
o How should countries address crime that occurs across borders?
o Should all countries follow the same legal code?
o A History of Crime: From Pirates to Phishermen
o The Criminal Mind: Insights from Psychology
o The Criminal in Society: Insights from Anthropology and Sociology
o Crime as Spectacle: Postmodern Perspectives on Criminology
o Hammurabi, Draco, and Other Early Approaches
o Modern Legal Systems: Common | Civil | Religious | Statutory
o Classifications of Crime: Personal | Property | Inchoate | Statutory | Other
o Crime Investigation and Criminal Apprehension
o Courthouse Party: The Judicial Process Around the World
o Types of Punishment: Deterrence | Retribution | Rehabilitation | Incapacitation
o The International Criminal Court: Crime in a Globalized World
o Fingerprints | Genetic Testing | Blood Spatter | Autopsies
o Scene Recognition & Examination | Sketches | Evidence Collection
o Forensic Entomology | Trace Evidence | Serology | Simulations
o DNA Profiling | Offender Profiling | Forensics
Types of Crime to Research (Examples)
o Felonies vs. Misdemeanors | White Collar vs. Blue Collar
o Assault | Laundering | Extortion | Blackmail | Embezzlement
o Caper | Heist | Conspiracy | Fraud | Larceny | Hate Crimes
o Trafficking | Kidnapping | Classic & Digital Piracy | 419
o The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist | The Agricultural Bank of China Robbery
o Fortaleza Banco Central Robbery | KLM Diamond Heist | Lufthansa Heist
o Salish Sea Foot Mystery | Great Train Robbery
o Billy the Kid | Robin Hood | Bonnie & Clyde | Al Capone | DB Cooper
o Charles Manson | Charles Ponzi | Frank Abagnale | James Hogue
o Barefoot Bandit | Los Zetas | Zodiac Killer | Postcard Bandit
o Griselda Blanco | Jacques Mesrine | El Chapo | Vassilis Paleokostas
o Jonathan Tokeley-Parry | Philippe Jamin | Patty Hearst | Unabomber
o Moriarty | Hannibal Lecter | Walter White | Dexter | the Joker
o Cartels | Mafia | Syndicate | Extradition
o Jury | Reasonable Doubt | Attorneys | Bail | Witnesses
o Types of Pleas | Eyewitnesses | Arraignment | Sentencing
o Alibi | Corrections | Corporeal & Capital Punishment
o Parole | Rehabilitation | Probation | Appeals | Double Jeopardy
o Study the Yakuza as an example of criminal organizations around the world. How does this so-called "Japanese mafia" differ from its counterparts in other countries? Is there a role for such organizations in civilized society?
o When and how should technology be used to enable citizens to assist police in solving crimes? Are there ways in which inviting citizen participation could be counterproductive?
o Learn more about the debate over "amber alerts". Some find them to be effective; others believe they only increase public anxiety. How could they be improved?
o Research the death penalty. Is it legal in your country? Does it help reduce crime rates? When, if ever, is it appropriate for the state to execute a person, and, if so, by what means?
o Consider the phenomenally successful Serial podcast (season 1). Is it ever appropriate for the media to sensationalize a crime—or to reopen a seemingly closed investigation?
o Research vigilante justice, including this ongoing Facebook-driven movement in Peru. Is it ever appropriate for citizens to take the law into their own hands?
o Some studies show that women are committing more crimes than in the past. What might explain this, and is there a difference in the crimes that men and women commit?
o Do you think crime is getting worse in your country? Why do so many Americans believe crime rates are increasing in the United States even though they are lower than ever?
Introductory Questions
Q1. What is a crime, and who decides how serious a crime is? Who should?
Ans. an action or omission which constitutes an offence and is punishable by law.
whomever is empowered by your government to write the laws decides how serious a crime is. In the western world, all criminal laws must include a penalty clause (or link to a related statute that provides a penalty). A crime without a penalty is a nullity.
The seriousness of an offense is usually also determined by the same legislative body or ruling heads which determine what behaviours should be crimes.
Q2. Are there countries in which those accused of crimes are guilty until proven innocent?
Ans. Quite a few. North Korea for instance, if you are accused you are guilty. A lot of countries in Africa and of course Muslim countries. France, and many of its former colonies, have a legal system whereas the person is guilty until they prove their innocence.
Q3. How can someone be proven guilty of a crime?
Ans. People are proven guilty of a crime by using evidence. The evidence is gathered through police department efforts. People are also proved guilty through confessions or other statements against interest that they make. Those statements can often be used at trial.
Evidence is direct or it will be circumstantial. Direct evidence is something that, if believed, would prove the asserted fact. A witness stating, I saw person X shoot the victim, would be direct evidence. Circumstantial evidence requires an inference to reach a conclusion. I.e. person X stated that he had never been at the victim's house, but person X's DNA was found on and around the victim's body in his house. You have to infer this means that person X was in the house and near the victim at the time he died.
A prosecutor puts together a story of what he believes happened based on the various evidence, both direct and circumstantial, that he has at hand. He presents this evidence through use of witnesses at trial. This is how someone is proved guilty of a crime.
Q4. What acts are considered crimes in some countries but not in others?
Ans. Murder. Honour killings are not prosecuted in some countries but in places that are civilized, it's still called murder.
Holocaust denial is illegal and prosecuted in many places but not in the USA which prizes free speech.
Homosexuality is punishable by death in some countries and openly embraced in many others such as Canada, the Netherlands, the USA.
Women leaving the house without being fully covered is a crime in some countries but in others like the USA, it is not only not a crime but in some municipalities, being fully covered is a crime
Child abuse is against the law in many countries while other countries have no such laws on the books. Some countries may have a law against child abuse but ignore the law making it null and void.
Adultery is a crime punishable by death in some countries and not a crime in others. Some countries have laws against it but do not prosecute adulterers. Here is the clenched on this one. A married woman who has been raped is considered an adulterer in some countries and can be executed.
Q5. Should a person be held responsible for breaking laws he or she doesn't know about?
Ans. The U.S. Supreme Court has answered this question with a resounding "yes!" For instance, in U.S. v. Park, the court upheld the criminal conviction of the president of a food chain due to rodent contamination in some of the chain's warehouses. There was no evidence that the defendant actually knew about the contamination, and the company had 12 warehouses, only one of which was contaminated. The Supreme Court found that the defendant could be held criminally liable as a "responsible corporate official [] who ... [had] the power to prevent or correct violations," even though he had no personal knowledge of the violations. The corporation was also liable, and it pled guilty.
Q6. Should non-citizens be tried differently for crimes than citizens?
Ans. In terms of the actual criminal trial, there is no reason for that being different. A non-citizen committing a crime can, and should, impact on their immigration status, though. A foreign country has no duty to try to reform you and help you rehabilitate - they can just deport you.
deportation should be available even if you are acquitted if it can be proven on the balance of probabilities (even though it can't be proven beyond reasonable doubt) that you are guilty. Living in a foreign country is a privilege, not a right. The burden of proof to remove a privilege can legitimately be pretty low.
deportation should be available even if you are acquitted if it can be proven on the balance of probabilities (even though it can't be proven beyond reasonable doubt) that you are guilty. Living in a foreign country is a privilege, not a right. The burden of proof to remove a privilege can legitimately be pretty low.
Q7. Should judges or juries be the ultimate arbiters of guilt or innocence?
Ans. It's a common misconception that juries and judges find people "innocent" of crimes that they are accused of committing. They don't. They find them "not guilty" of any such crimes, because the burden is on the state to prove every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
Theoretically, one could petition a court for a declaratory judgment that the petitioner is entirely innocent of any specific wrongdoing, which would shift the burden of proof onto the petitioner and away from the state. Even then the ruling would be based on the standard of proof and not in any way be a "truth" but rather that the evidence weighs to one side or another of the claim.
Notable Criminals to Research (Examples)
Billy the Kid: - Synopsis
Billy the Kid was born William Henry McCarty Jr. on November 23, 1859 in New York City. Little is known of his youth, but early on he entered a life of thievery, eventually heading west and joining a violent gang. Billy was captured and sentenced to death for the murder of a sheriff, but escaped after killing guards. The legend of Billy the Kid was created by his killer, Sheriff Garrett. His first arrest was for stealing food in late 1875, and five months later he was arrested for stealing clothing and firearms. His escape from jail two days later and flight from New Mexico Territory into Arizona Territory made him both an outlaw and a federal fugitive.
Early Life
Billy the Kid was born William Henry McCarty Jr. on November 23, 1859, in New York City. Little is known about the early life of William McCarty (also known as Henry Antrim and William H. Bonney, an alias), but it is believed that his father died or left the family when Billy was very young, and he was orphaned at 15 when his mother died of tuberculosis. Shortly after, he and his brother got involved in petty theft.
McCarty had a slim physique, sandy blond hair and blue eyes and wore a signature sugar-loaf sombrero hat with a wide decorative band. He could be charming and polite one moment, then outraged and violent the next, a quixotic nature he used to great effect during his heists and robberies. According to legend, he killed 21 men during his days as an outlaw, one for each year of his life, though he likely killed far fewer than that number.
Outlaw
On the run from the authorities, McCarty moved to Arizona briefly before joining up with a gang of gunfighters called The Boys to fight in the Lincoln County War. Known as "The Kid," McCarty switched to the opposition to fight with John Tunstall under the name "the Regulators."
Barely escaping with his life, McCarty became an outlaw and a fugitive. He stole horse and cattle until his arrest in 1880 for the killing of Sheriff Brady during the Lincoln County War. After being sentenced to death, he killed his two guards and escaped in 1881. He was hunted down and shot dead by Sheriff Patrick Garrett on July 14, 1881 in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
Shortly after the shooting, Sheriff Garrett wrote a biography of McCarty, the hugely sensationalized The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid. The book was the first of many accounts that would turn the young outlaw into a legend of the American frontier.
Robin Hood: - Robin Hood Biography
Robin Hood is part myth and part legend – a romantic figure who has evolved over the centuries since Robin Hood first appeared in popular ballads. The traditional view of Robin Hood suggests he was an outlaw who fought injustice and helped the poor. In later versions, he was seen as loyal to the rightful king – King Richard III.
Short Biography of Robin Hood
It is hard to ascertain any exact biographical information because the legend of Robin Hood has been evolving ever since it first appeared in oral tales and the written word. To write a biographical account of the historical Robin Hood would be difficult, because so little primary evidence exists. Most of the early sources tend to be ballads which were later written down. Ballads were often about real historical fact, but it is hard to be certain what is true and what is legend.
Birthplace of Robin Hood
Popular legend associates Robin Hood with Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire. However, earlier ballads and sources suggest that he was based in Barnsdale, South Yorkshire on the borders of Nottinghamshire. Another tradition places Robin Hood in Loxley, Sheffield in South Yorkshire.
In an Eighteenth Century version of Robin Hood’s death, he is said to have been buried in Kirkless Priory near Leeds in West Yorkshire, though this is likely to be wishful thinking.
Evolution of Robin Hood
In early ballads about Robin Hood, Robin Hood is depicted as a yeoman / commoner who fights the injustice of the ruling aristocrats. He is depicted as a fearless leader, who seeks to right wrongs and, in particular, stand up for women. Interestingly, he is depicted as being hostile to the ruling Church hierarchy but with devotion to the Virgin Mary and the Mother aspect of God. In early tales, there is no mention of his partner wife / Maid Marian. In one of the earliest written tales of Robin Hood, Scotichronicon, there is a story of how Robin refused to flee from the sheriff’s men because he was attending mass in the forest. However, he was still able to defeat the Sheriff’s men – an apparent reward for his piety.
However, in some of these early ballads, Robin is portrayed as a more fallible man, with a quick temper. For example, assaulting Little John, after he beat him in a archery competition.
The setting of these early ballads such as Piers Plowman (c.1362 – 1386) place Robin Hood in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. This wouldn’t make him a supporter of the ‘rightful king’ – the absent Richard the Lionheart (in twelfth century). Though they do mention his long standing antipathy to the Sheriff of Nottingham, who wielded much power over the people.
In the 16th Century, plays by Anthony Munday, presented Robin Hood as a noble who had been wrongfully dispossessed from his land. This may have been to make Robin Hood more attractive to the aristocrats who were viewing the play. This view of Robin as a real aristocrat, has become established in recent media depiction’s of Robin Hood.
Over the centuries, other characters have also been woven into the Robin Hood legend. This has included the romance of Robin and Marian. The ‘jolly friar’ Friar Tuck and Will Scarlett.
In the Nineteenth century, an influential work was Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. This emphasised Robin Hood’s role as a philanthropist who robbed from the rich and unjust, and gave to the poor. Perhaps a role model for the Victorian philanthropist. In these accounts, there is passing mention of Robin Hood’s loyalty to King Richard.
In the 1938 film, The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn, portrayed Robin as a hero leading the Saxons in revolt against their Norman landlords. This film played a key role in cementing a certain idea of Robin Hood for a considerable time.
In recent film versions such as Russell Crowe’s Robin Hood (2010), Robin Hood was portrayed as noble unfairly cheated of his lands. He returns to England after fighting in France to find he is actually the rightful heir.
Bonnie and Clyde: -
Clyde Champion Barrow and his companion, Bonnie Parker, were shot to death by officers in an ambush near Sailes, Bienville Parish, Louisiana on May 23, 1934, after one of the most colorful and spectacular manhunts the nation had seen up to that time.
Barrow was suspected of numerous killings and was wanted for murder, robbery, and state charges of kidnapping.
The FBI, then called the Bureau of Investigation, became interested in Barrow and his paramour late in December 1932 through a singular bit of evidence. A Ford automobile, which had been stolen in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, was found abandoned near Jackson, Michigan in September of that year. At Pawhuska, it was learned another Ford car had been abandoned there which had been stolen in Illinois. A search of this car revealed it had been occupied by a man and a woman, indicated by abandoned articles therein. In this car was found a prescription bottle, which led special agents to a drug store in Nacogdoches, Texas, where investigation disclosed the woman for whom the prescription had been filled was Clyde Barrow’s aunt.
Further investigation revealed that the woman who obtained the prescription had been visited recently by Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, and Clyde’s brother, L. C. Barrow. It also was learned that these three were driving a Ford car, identified as the one stolen in Illinois. It was further shown that L. C. Barrow had secured the empty prescription bottle from a son of the woman who had originally obtained it.
On May 20, 1933, the United States Commissioner at Dallas, Texas, issued a warrant against Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, charging them with the interstate transportation, from Dallas to Oklahoma, of the automobile stolen in Illinois. The FBI then started its hunt for this elusive pair.
Background
Bonnie and Clyde met in Texas in January, 1930. At the time, Bonnie was 19 and married to an imprisoned murderer; Clyde was 21 and unmarried. Soon after, he was arrested for a burglary and sent to jail. He escaped, using a gun Bonnie had smuggled to him, was recaptured and was sent back to prison. Clyde was paroled in February 1932, rejoined Bonnie, and resumed a life of crime.
In addition to the automobile theft charge, Bonnie and Clyde were suspects in other crimes. At the time they were killed in 1934, they were believed to have committed 13 murders and several robberies and burglaries. Barrow, for example, was suspected of murdering two police officers at Joplin, Missouri and kidnapping a man and a woman in rural Louisiana. He released them near Waldo, Texas. Numerous sightings followed, linking this pair with bank robberies and automobile thefts. Clyde allegedly murdered a man at Hillsboro, Texas; committed robberies at Lufkin and Dallas, Texas; murdered one sheriff and wounded another at Stringtown, Oklahoma; kidnaped a deputy at Carlsbad, New Mexico; stole an automobile at Victoria, Texas; attempted to murder a deputy at Wharton, Texas; committed murder and robbery at Abilene and Sherman, Texas; committed murder at Dallas, Texas; abducted a sheriff and the chief of police at Wellington, Texas; and committed murder at Joplin and Columbia, Missouri.
The Crime Spree Begins
Later in 1932, Bonnie and Clyde began traveling with Raymond Hamilton, a young gunman. Hamilton left them several months later and was replaced by William Daniel Jones in November 1932.
Ivan M. “Buck” Barrow, brother of Clyde, was released from the Texas State Prison on March 23, 1933, having been granted a full pardon by the governor. He quickly joined Clyde, bringing his wife, Blanche, so the group now numbered five persons. This gang embarked upon a series of bold robberies which made headlines across the country. They escaped capture in various encounters with the law. However, their activities made law enforcement efforts to apprehend them even more intense. During a shootout with police in Iowa on July 29, 1933, Buck Barrow was fatally wounded and Blanche was captured. Jones, who was frequently mistaken for “Pretty Boy” Floyd, was captured in November 1933 in Houston, Texas by the sheriff’s office. Bonnie and Clyde went on together.
On November 22, 1933, a trap was set by the Dallas, Texas sheriff and his deputies in an attempt to capture Bonnie and Clyde near Grand Prairie, Texas, but the couple escaped the officer’s gunfire. They held up an attorney on the highway and took his car, which they abandoned at Miami, Oklahoma. On December 21, 1933, Bonnie and Clyde held up and robbed a citizen at Shreveport, Louisiana.
On January 16, 1934, five prisoners, including Raymond Hamilton (who was serving sentences totaling more than 200 years), were liberated from the Eastham State Prison Farm at Waldo, Texas by Clyde Barrow, accompanied by Bonnie Parker. Two guards were shot by the escaping prisoners with automatic pistols, which had been previously concealed in a ditch by Barrow. As the prisoners ran, Barrow covered their retreat with bursts of machine-gun fire. Among the escapees was Henry Methvin of Louisiana.
The Last Months
On April 1, 1934, Bonnie and Clyde encountered two young highway patrolmen near Grapevine, Texas. Before the officers could draw their guns, they were shot. On April 6, 1934, a constable at Miami, Oklahoma fell mortally wounded by Bonnie and Clyde, who also abducted a police chief, whom they wounded.
The FBI had jurisdiction solely on the charge of transporting a stolen automobile, although the activities of the Bureau agents were vigorous and ceaseless. Every clue was followed. “Wanted notices” furnishing fingerprints, photograph, description, criminal record, and other data were distributed to all officers. The agents followed the trail through many states and into various haunts of the Barrow gang, particularly Louisiana. The association with Henry Methvin and the Methvin family of Louisiana was discovered by FBI agents, and they found that Bonnie and Clyde had been driving a car stolen in New Orleans.
On April 13, 1934, an FBI agent, through investigation in the vicinity of Ruston, Louisiana, obtained information which definitely placed Bonnie and Clyde in a remote section southwest of that community. The home of the Methvins was not far away, and the agent learned of visits there by Bonnie and Clyde. Special agents in Texas had learned that Clyde and his companion had been traveling from Texas to Louisiana, sometimes accompanied by Henry Methvin.
The FBI and local law enforcement authorities in Louisiana and Texas concentrated on apprehending Bonnie and Clyde, whom they strongly believed to be in the area. It was learned that Bonnie and Clyde, with some of the Methvins, had staged a party at Black Lake, Louisiana on the night of May 21, 1934 and were due to return to the area two days later.
Before dawn on May 23, 1934, a posse composed of police officers from Louisiana and Texas, including Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, concealed themselves in bushes along the highway near Sailes, Louisiana. In the early daylight, Bonnie and Clyde appeared in an automobile and when they attempted to drive away, the officers opened fire. Bonnie and Clyde were killed instantly.
Al Capone: - Al Capone, byname of Alphonse Capone, also called Scarface (born January 17, 1899, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died January 25, 1947, Palm Island, Florida) the most famous American gangster, who dominated organized crime in Chicago from 1925 to 1931.
Capone’s parents immigrated to the United States from Naples in 1893; Al, the fourth of nine children, quit school in Brooklyn after the sixth grade and joined Johnny Torrio’s James Street Boys gang, rising eventually to the Five Points Gang. In a youthful scrape in a brothel-saloon, a young hoodlum slashed Capone with a knife or razor across his left cheek, prompting the later nickname “Scarface.”
Torrio moved from New York to Chicago in 1909 to help run the giant brothel business there, and in 1919 he sent for Capone. It was either Capone or Frankie who allegedly assassinated Torrio’s boss, Big Jim Colosimo, in 1920, making way for Torrio’s rule. As Prohibition began, new bootlegging operations opened up and drew in immense wealth. In 1924 Capone was responsible for the murder of Joe Howard in retribution for Howard’s earlier assault of one of Capone’s friends. William McSwiggin, an aggressive prosecutor, attempted but failed to indict Capone when the eyewitnesses to the killing, fearing harm, lost their nerve and their memories of the incident. Later that year Torrio and Capone were behind the murder of gang leader Dion O’Bannon, whose associates Hymie Weiss and George (“Bugs”) Moran then were unsuccessful in their attempt to kill Torrio in early 1925.
After a stint in prison, Torrio retired to Italy, and Capone became crime czar of Chicago, running gambling, prostitution, and bootlegging rackets and expanding his territories by gunning down rivals and rival gangs. In 1927 Capone went into hiding for three months after he and some of his gunmen inadvertently killed McSwiggin while attacking other rivals. Again, Capone went unpunished. His wealth in 1927 was estimated at close to $100 million. The most notorious of the bloodlettings was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, in which members of Bugs Moran’s gang were machine-gunned in a garage on Chicago’s North Side on February 14, 1929. Also in 1929, Capone served some 10 months in a jail in Philadelphia after being convicted of possessing a concealed handgun. Many Americans were fascinated by the larger-than-life image of Capone. Indeed, the motion picture Scarface: The Shame of a Nation (1932), directed by Howard Hawks, starred Paul Muni in the role of a gangster loosely based on Capone, who reputedly obtained a copy of the film for private screenings.
BRITANNICA STORIES
In June 1931 Capone was indicted for federal income-tax evasion and in October was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to 11 years in prison and $80,000 in fines and court costs. He entered Atlanta penitentiary in May 1932 but was transferred to the new Alcatraz prison in August 1934. In November 1939, suffering from the general deterioration of paresis (a late stage of syphilis), he was released and entered a Baltimore hospital. Later he retired to his Florida estate, where he died in 1947, a powerless recluse.
DB Cooper: - One afternoon a day before Thanksgiving in 1971, a guy calling himself Dan Cooper (the media mistakenly called him D.B. Cooper) boarded Northwest Airlines flight #305 in Portland bound for Seattle. He was wearing a dark suit and a black tie and was described as a business-executive type. While in the air, he opened his brief case showing a bomb to the flight attendant and hijacked the plane. The plane landed in Seattle where he demanded 200K in cash, four parachutes and food for the crew before releasing all the passengers. With only three pilots and one flight attendant left on board, they took off from Seattle with the marked bills heading south while it was dark and lightly raining. In the 45 minutes after takeoff, Cooper sent the flight attendant to the cockpit while donning the parachute, tied the bank bag full of twenty dollar bills to himself, lowered the rear stairs and somewhere north of Portland jumped into the night. When the plane landed with the stairs down, they found the two remaining parachutes and on the seat Cooper was sitting in, a black tie.
Jets, a helicopter and a C-130 aircraft had been scrambled from the closest air force base to follow Cooper's plane. The military was called in days after the hijacking and approximately 1,000 troops searched the suspected jump zone on foot and in helicopters. The Boeing 727 used in the hijacking was flown out over the ocean and the stairs lowered and weights dropped in an attempt to determine when Cooper jumped. The SR-71 super-secret spy plane was sent in to photograph the entire flight path but no sign of D.B. Cooper was ever discovered.
Nine years later in 1980 just north of Portland on the Columbia River, a young boy named Brian Ingram was digging a fire pit in the sand at a place called Tena Bar. He uncovered three bundles of cash a couple inches below the surface, with rubber bands still intact. There was a total of $5800, the Cooper serial numbers matched, and the first evidence since 1971 came to light. The FBI searched and analyzed the beach, the river was dredged by Cooper Hunters and the theories on how the money got there supercharged the Legend of D.B. Cooper.
Decades passed, D.B. Cooper became famous in book, movie and song. In 2007, Special Agent Larry Carr took on his favorite case with the restriction not to waste government time or money pursuing it. Agent Carr brilliantly decided the way around the problem was to treat the hijacking like one of his bank robbery cases - to get as much information out to the public as possible. He released previously unknown facts about the case and the D.B. Cooper frenzy started anew. In 2008 the Cooper Research Team came together to take up the challenge and was given special access to investigate the case. This website is the result of that three year investigation.
The Public Debates You Should Know About Before Reading this Website
The D.B. Cooper case continues to be debated in forums and chat rooms around the world. Most of the conversation (and arguments) center around a few ideas outlined below. The 'Debate Factor' is the level of interest for that theory among Cooper followers.
Did Cooper die in the jump? It is a huge public debate if Cooper died in the jump or not. Experienced skydivers say he would have died if it was his first jump but if he was an expert, no problem. One experience parachutist believed that anyone who had six or seven practice jumps could accomplished the jump. The cold weather may or may not have killed him in the woods even if he landed ok. No body or parachute was ever found. Debate factor* = 9 of 10
Was Cooper an experienced skydiver? He requested "front and back parachutes" = novice. He turned down instructions on how to use the parachute = experienced. He picked the non-steerable military parachute = novice. The military chute could better withstand the exit speed of the plane = experienced. He put the parachute on like he knew what he was doing = experienced. He took the reserve chute that was sewn closed and non-functional = novice. Debate factor = 7 of 10
The Tena Bar money find is problematic because it is 20 miles away from the town of Ariel, Washington where the drop zone analysis completed in 1971 said he jumped. In order to get the money on to Tena Bar, several theories are in play. First is the Washougal Washdown Theory, based on the idea that the money had to wash first down smaller rivers, then into the Columbia River in order to end up on Tena Bar. Second is that the FBI flight path was incorrect and Cooper actually landed on Tena Bar and buried the money. Third is that Cooper or someone else buried the money on Tena Bar to throw off the FBI. Debate factor = 10 of 10
The "Palmer Report" stemmed from the FBI bringing in Portland State University geologist Dr. Leonard Palmer to analyze the sand bar where the money was found. In between the 1971 hijacking and the 1980 money find, the Columbia River was dredged and sand was deposited on Tena Bar in 1974. Palmer's report determined that the money was in a layer of top sand laid down by the dredging. This implied that the money was somewhere else upstream for years before coming to rest on Tena Bar. The counterpoint was that the delicate rubber bands were still intact on the bundles when found. The bands pointed to an earlier time frame for the money coming to rest on Tena. Debate factor = 9 of 10
Where was the real flight path? The flight path map in the FBI archive has no information on who drew the flight path or when it was created. The flight path as drawn is thought to be from the detailed analysis of radar data and flight recorder discussed in the FBI transcripts. The FBI path does NOT fly over Tena Bar or the Washougal area. The money found on Tena Bar forces the flight path debate because it would be much easier to explain the money find if Cooper flew over Tena Bar and jumped, or flight #305 flew over the Washougal River and Cooper's ransom money ended up washing down stream. Debate factor = 7 of 10
How did three loose bundles of money stay together for years and then get buried together? Several possibilities have been put forth. The bank bag protected them for years in the river and then rotted away before the bills did. Cooper lost the money when he landed on Tena Bar in the dark. Someone else buried the money there. Debate factor = 5 of 10
Was Cooper from the area? He recognized Tacoma from the air = local. He would be an idiot to hijack an airplane where he could possibly be recognized = not local. He made the very unusual request for "negotiable American currency" unlike most Americans = not from this country. Debate factor = 3 of 10
How did the money degrade around the edges and get holes in them? Roots, tumbling downstream, dredging? Debate factor = 3 of 10
Are any of the current crop of suspects the real D.B. Cooper? Debate factor = 13+ of 10
Charles Manson: - Who Was Charles Manson?
Charles Manson is a convicted serial killer who has become an icon of evil. In the late 1960s, Manson founded a hippie cult group known as "the Family" whom he manipulated into brutally killing others on his behalf.
Born: November 12, 1934 -- still alive and serving life sentence
Also Known As: Charles Milles Maddox, Charles Milles Manson
Childhood of Charles Manson
Charles Manson was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to 16-year-old Kathleen Maddox. Kathleen had run away from home at the age of 15 and spent the next few decades drinking too much, with periods of time spent in jail.
Since his mother couldn't take care of him, Charles spent his youth at the homes of various relatives and often at special reform schools and boys homes. By age nine, Charles Manson had already started stealing and soon added burglary and stealing cars to his repertoire.
Manson Gets Married
In 1954, at age nineteen, he was released on parole after an unusual bout of good behavior.
Manson Family Murders
The next year, he married Rosalie Willis, a waitress, and they had a son together, Charles Manson Jr. (born March 1956). Even while married, Manson had continued making extra money by stealing cars. In April 1956, he was again sent to prison. After Manson had been in prison for a year, his wife found someone new and divorced Manson in June 1957.
Manson the Con Man
In 1958, Manson was released from prison. While out, Manson began pimping, stealing checks from mailboxes, and conned a young woman out of money. He also married again, to a prostitute named Candy Stevens (real name Leona), and fathered a second son, Charles Luther Manson. Manson was again arrested on June 1, 1960 and sent to the McNeil Island Penitentiary off the coast of Washington. His wife soon divorced him.
Music in Prison
Manson spent the next six years in prison. It was during this time that he befriended the infamous Alvin "Creepy" Karpis, former member of Ma Barker's gang. After Karpis taught Charles Manson to play the steel guitar, Manson became obsessed with making music. He practiced all the time, wrote dozens of original songs, and started singing. He believed that when he got out of prison, he could be a famous musician.
Manson Gets a Following
On March 21, 1967, Manson was once again released from prison. This time he headed to San Francisco where, with a guitar and drugs, he began to get a following. In 1968, he and several followers drove to Southern California.
Manson was still hoping for a music career. Through an acquaintance, Manson met and hung out with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. The Beach Boys did record one of Manson's songs, which appeared as "Never Learn Not to Love" on the B-side of their 20/20 album.
Through Wilson, Manson met Terry Melcher, Doris Day's son. Manson believed Melcher was going to advance his music career but when nothing happened, Manson was very upset.
During this time, Charles Manson and some of his followers moved into the Spahn Ranch. Located northwest of San Fernando Valley the Spahn Ranch had been a popular location to film westerns in the 1940s and 1950s. Once Manson and his followers moved in, it became a cult compound for "the Family."
Helter Skelter
Charles Manson was good at manipulating people. He took pieces from various religions to form his own philosophy. When the Beatles released their White Album in 1968, Manson believed their song "Helter Skelter" predicted an upcoming race war.
"Helter skelter," Manson believed, was going to occur in the summer of 1969 when blacks were going to rise up and slaughter all the white people. He told his followers that they would be saved because they would go underground, literally, by traveling to an underground city of gold located in Death Valley.
However, when the Armageddon that Manson had predicted did not occur, he said he and his followers must show the blacks how to do it.
Manson Orders the Murders
Manson told four of his followers to go to 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles and kill the people inside. This house once belonged to Terry Melcher, the man who had not helped Manson with his music career. However, Melcher no longer lived there; actress Sharon Tate and her husband, director Roman Polanski, had rented the house.
On August 9, 1969, four of Manson's followers brutally murdered Tate, her unborn baby, and four others who were visiting her (Polanski was in Europe for work). The following night, Manson's followers brutally killed Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in their home.
Manson's Trial
It took the police several months to determine who was responsible. In December 1969, Manson and several of his followers were arrested. The trial began on July 24, 1970. On January 25, Manson was found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. On March 29, 1971, Manson was sentenced to death.
Life in Prison
Manson was reprieved from the death penalty in 1972 when the California Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty. Charles Manson now serves a lifetime sentence and periodically comes up for parole.
Though he's been in prison for over three decades, Charles Manson has received more mail than any other prisoner in the U.S. Charles Manson is currently being held in California's Corcoran Prison.
Charles Ponzi: - Synopsis
Born in 1882 in Parma, Italy, Charles Ponzi was the infamous swindler who payed out returns with other investors' money. The "Ponzi scheme" is named after him. After running a highly profitable and expansive investment scheme, Ponzi was arrested on August 12, 1920, and charged with 86 counts of mail fraud. Owing an estimated $7 million, he pleaded guilty to mail fraud, and subsequently spent 14 years in prison. He died on January 18, 1949, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Coming to America
The details of the infamous swindler Charles Ponzi's early life are difficult to verify. It is believed, however, that he was born Carlo Ponzi in Parma, Italy, and attended the University of Rome La Sapienza.
Ponzi arrived in Boston in November 1903 aboard the S.S. Vancouver. He later told the New York Times that he gambled away most of his money on the voyage to America. "I landed in this country with $2.50 in cash and $1 million in hopes, and those hopes never left me." The young immigrant’s charisma and confidence would help him pull off one of the greatest financial schemes in history.
Early Scams
Ponzi started out working odd jobs, including as a dishwasher in a restaurant. In 1907, he moved to Montreal, where he found a job as a teller at Bank Zarossi. The bank was formed to cater to the new Italian immigrant population, charging high interest rates.
When Bank Zarossi went bankrupt because of bad loans, Ponzi was left penniless. He was sentenced to three years in a Quebec prison after he was caught forging a bad check. Rather than tell his mother in Italy that he was in prison, he wrote to her in a letter that he was working at a Canadian prison.
When he was released from jail, Ponzi got involved in yet another criminal venture, smuggling Italian immigrants across the border into the United States. This too landed him in jail—he spent two years behind bars in Atlanta.
Ponzi Scheme
Ponzi returned to Boston, where he married stenographer Rose Gnecco in 1918. He worked various jobs, including at his father-in-law's grocery store, but none of those positions lasted long.
It was during this time that Ponzi got the idea for the great scheme that would earn his name a place in history. He received a letter in the mail from a company in Spain that contained in it an international reply coupon (a coupon that can be exchanged for a number of priority airmail postage stamps from another country). Ponzi realized that he could turn a profit by buying IRCs in one country, and exchanging them for more expensive stamps in another country.
Ponzi's racket worked like this: He would send money to agents working for him in other countries, who would buy IRCs and send them back to the United States. Ponzi would then exchange the IRC for stamps worth more than he paid for them, and sell the stamps. Ponzi reportedly made more than 400 percent on some of these sales.
Not satisfied with running the profitable scheme on his own, Ponzi began to seek investors to turn even higher profits. He promised investors outrageous returns of 50 percent in 45 days, or 100 percent in 90 days. Ponzi paid these investors using money from other investors, rather than with actual profit—as in the criminal scheme of Bernie Madoff.
Ponzi's manipulation made him very rich—he bought a mansion in Lexington, Massachusetts, with air conditioning and a heated swimming pool. He reportedly made $250,000 a day.
Downfall
Ponzi's scheme began to unravel in August 1920, when The Boston Postbegan to investigate his returns. The investigation set off a run on Ponzi's company, with investors trying to pull their money out of it.
Charles Ponzi was arrested on August 12, 1920, and charged with 86 counts of mail fraud. Owing an estimated $7 million, he pleaded guilty to mail fraud, and subsequently spent 14 years in prison. Rose divorced him in 1937, and Ponzi died penniless in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on January 18, 1949.
Frank Abagnale: - Synopsis
Born on April 27, 1948 as the son of a stationery business owner, Frank Abagnale entered the world of crime as a youngster with credit card and check schemes. He later impersonated various white collar professionals, creating an overseas trail, and was arrested at 21 by the French police. Abagnale was eventually hired by the FBI as a consultant and then started his own agency, educating corporations, financial institutions and government organizations on how to detect and handle fraudulence. A portion of his life was the subject of the popular 2002 film Catch Me If You Can.
Background and Early Life
Frank Abagnale Jr. was born on April 27, 1948, in Bronxville, New York. Much of the information known to the public about his personal history was shared in his 1980 memoir Catch Me If You Can. Abagnale would later say via his website that some of the details in the book were exaggerated, with the preface also stating that certain details of the story were altered to protect other parties.
According to the memoir, Abagnale was the third of four children born to parents Paulette Abagnale and Frank Abagnale Sr. The couple met in Algiers during World War II, while Frank Sr. was stationed in Oran, with Paulette still only in her teens when they wed. After the war, the two moved to New York, where Frank started his own business.
Abagnale would later state that he had a stable childhood and was especially close to his father, who traveled often and became deeply involved in Republican local politics. When his mother decided to leave Frank Sr. due to her husband's absences, the younger Frank's life was turned upside-down. Not only were his siblings devastated, but so was his father, who was still in love with his wife. As his mother worked towards her independence, Frank Jr. decided to live with his father after the divorce, and he often tagged along on business dealings. It was during this time that Frank Jr. learned about white collar transactions.
Credit Card Schemes
As a teenager, Frank Jr. got caught up in petty crimes, including shoplifting. He soon grew tired of these practices, though, and decided to move into more sophisticated forms of burglary. Specifically, Abagnale began using his father's gas credit card to make a tidy profit. Frank Jr. convinced gas station attendants to give him a portion of his sale back in cash and allowed them to pocket a portion of the proceeds. The scam fell apart, though, when Frank's father got the credit card bill, which added up to thousands of dollars. Unbeknownst to Abagnale, his father was struggling financially.
Dismayed over her son's delinquency, Abagnale's mother sent him to a school for wayward boys. Undone by his father's newfound circumstances and caught between his parents' tensions, Abagnale reportedly left home at 16 years old.
Abagnale had little in his bank account and no formal education. Frank altered his driver’s license to make himself 10 years older than he was and exaggerated his education. This helped him get better-paying jobs, but he still barely made ends meet.
Frank decided to quit working and write bad checks to support himself. Before long, Abagnale had written hundreds of bad checks and overdrawn his account by thousands of dollars. Knowing that he would eventually be caught, he went into hiding.
Impersonations Meant to Impress
Frank realized that he could cash more bad checks if he dazzled bank tellers with a new, more impressive personality. He decided pilots were highly respected professionals, so he schemed his way into getting a pilot's uniform. Abagnale called Pan American Airlines' headquarters and told them that he had lost his uniform while traveling. HQ told him where to go to pick up a new one, which he did—and charged it to the company using a fake employee ID.
Abagnale then learned all he could about flying—once, by pretending he was a high schooler doing a student newspaper article on Pan Am— and cleverly forged his own pilot's ID and FAA license. His ruse earned him valuable information about how to impersonate a pilot, which he did allegedly in order to hitch rides on planes all across the world.
Once Pan Am and police began catching on to Abagnale's lies, he decided to change identities again, this time becoming an out-of-town doctor in Georgia. When a local doctor came visiting, Abagnale thought his identity was blown—but instead he was invited to visit the local hospital, where he became a regular visitor and purportedly landed a temporary job. Frank eventually gave up the gig and left town.
Over the next two years, Abagnale was said to have bounced from job to job. But eventually, Abagnale's past caught up with him when he settled down in Montpelier, France. He had decided to live a straight life for a while after having reputedly cashed $2.5 million in bad checks over the years. When a former girlfriend recognized his face on a wanted poster, she turned him in to authorities.
Jail Time and Consultancy
Abagnale served time in France (reputedly in the harsh confines of Perpignan, where he became seriously ill), Sweden and the United States for his crimes, during which time his father died. Frank was eventually granted parole after several years from a Petersburg, Virginia prison. He eventually found lecturing work as a white-collar crime specialist, providing information to bank employees about ways to avoid fraud and theft.
In exchange for his freedom, the government told Abagnale that he had to educate them about his methods in order to prevent others from defrauding authorities. Frank worked with the FBI for more than 30 years as one of the world’s foremost experts on document fraud, check swindling, forgery and embezzlement. He also started his own company, Abagnale & Associates, which educates others on how to avoid becoming fraud victims. And Abagnale wrote the books The Art of the Steal (2001) and Stealing Your Life(2007), both about fraud prevention.
In 2002, Steven Spielberg made a film about Abagnale's life, Catch Me If You Can, based on the aforementioned memoir. Leonardo DiCaprio starred as the famous impostor, with Christopher Walken portraying Frank Abagnale Sr. and receiving an Oscar nod for the role. The movie later inspired a Broadway musical version which ran for several months in 2011 at the Neil Simon Theatre.
Upon the film's release, more questions were raised about what parts of Abagnale's story are true and can be verified. Abagnale has later said that he regrets that the film was made, preferring to have left that part of his life behind.
James Hogue: - James Arthur Hogue (born October 22, 1959) is a US impostor who most famously entered Princeton University by posing as a self-taught orphan. A Princeton sophomore in 1991, Alexi Indris-Santana had all the makings of a big man on campus. His tales of growing up as a self-taught ranch hand in Utah and sleeping under the stars with his horse, Good Enough, won over admissions officials. He was taking six or seven courses a semester and earning mostly A's. A talented runner, he had earned glowing local coverage before even arriving on campus, and the Daily Princetonian had asked three times for an interview so they could profile him as an up-and-coming track star. But running would also be Indris-Santana's undoing: at the Harvard-Yale-Princeton meet in 1991, a Yale senior recognized him from Palo Alto — where he had been caught masquerading as a high school student at age 26.
The promising academic and athletic star, as it turned out, was actually James Hogue, 31, an ex-con from Kansas City, Kansas. He was arrested and charged with forgery, wrongful impersonation and falsifying records. He spent nine months behind bars and had to pay back nearly $22,000 in financial aid. But the Princeton hoax was not Hogue's last: in 1992, he turned up as a guard in one of Harvard's museums, and was arrested after just a few months on the job, charged with grand larceny for stealing gemstones worth $50,000. Violating his probation, Hogue returned to Princeton, posing as a graduate student though he was never enrolled in classes. He made headlines as recently as 2007, when he pleaded guilty to felony theft, having stolen about 7,000 items worth some $100,000 from Colorado homes over several years. He is currently serving a 10-year sentence in prison.
Barefoot Bandit: - Synopsis
Colton Harris-Moore, also known as the "Barefoot Bandit," committed his first crime at age 12, and by the time he was 19, he had broken into banks, stolen a powerboat and crash-landed a stolen plane in the Bahamas, where he was apprehended in 2010.
Troubled Childhood
Colton Harris-Moore was born in Washington State on March 22, 1991, where he was subsequently raised on Camano Island. He had a volatile childhood, often clashing with his mother in a generally combative relationship. Child protection officers had been referred to the family a dozen times by the time Harris-Moore was a teenager, and his father appears to have left the family after a violent incident in 2003. Around this same time, when Harris-Moore was about 12 years old (the age at which he was first arrested, for burglary), he was diagnosed with several psychiatric conditions, including depression, ADD and intermittent explosive disorder. He was prescribed antidepressant and antipsychotic medications, and dropped out of school after completing the ninth grade.
At age 15, Harris-Moore was sentenced to 30 days in a youth detention center, his fourth juvenile jail term, and his fugitive life began shortly after, when he escaped from the Griffin Home halfway house in Renton, Washington, in April 2008. Dubbed a "survivalist," at first, he only seemed to steal what he needed for life in the woods, such as blankets and food. However, his thefts grew more lucrative and frequent. After allegedly using a victim's computer and credit card information to order bear mace and $6,500 night-vision goggles, Harris-Moore was sought-after by the police.
'Barefoot Bandit'
Once on the run, Harris-Moore was dubbed the "Barefoot Bandit" because he committed a few of his crimes shoeless, and left behind chalk footprints at the scene of one. He was soon accused of stealing speedboats to travel to nearby islands to rob empty homes. In November 2008, Harris-Moore hot-wired a Cessna and crash-landed it 300 miles away, on an Indian reservation. Though it is uncertain how or where he learned to fly, Harris-Moore is thought to have stolen at least five planes and crash-landed all of them, unscathed.
During his two years on the run across multiple states, Harris-Moore is suspected of committing more than 100 burglaries, stealing everything from powerboats to cash to cars. He also inspired Facebook tribute pages and pro-"Barefoot Bandit" T-shirts for his stunning ability to elude police, and became a bona fide anti-hero sensation.
Harris-Moore's life on the run came to an end shortly after he again crash-landed a stolen plane, this time in the Bahamas; he was captured on a stolen motorboat in the Bahamas, on July 11, 2010. When police fired shots at the boat's engine, Harris-Moore threw a laptop into the water and held a gun to his head. Police officers talked him out of pulling the trigger.
Sentencing
In January 2012, Harris-Moore was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for his crimes. The film rights for a biopic of Harris-Moore have sold for more than $1 million, and as of 2012, two books had been written about his life and years on the run.
Zodiac Killer: - Synopsis
The self-proclaimed Zodiac Killer was directly linked to at least five murders in Northern California in 1968 and 1969 and may have been responsible for more. After he taunted police and made threats through letters sent to area newspapers from 1969 to 1974, further communication from him abruptly stopped. Despite an intensive search for the killer and the investigation into numerous suspects, no one was ever arrested for the crimes and the case remains open. The mystery surrounding it has been the subject of countless books and even more theories and has been the inspiration for several movies.
Two Attacks
At present, four separate attacks have been definitively attributed to the Zodiac Killer. The first confirmed incident took place on the night of December 20, 1968, when 17-year-old David Faraday and his 16-year-old girlfriend Betty Lou Jensen were shot to death near their car at a remote spot on Lake Herman Road, on the outskirts of Vallejo, California. Police were left baffled, unable to determine the motive for the crime or a suspect.
Then, on the early morning of July 5, 1969, Darlene Ferrin, age 22, and her boyfriend, Mike Mageau, age 19, were sitting in parked car in a similarly remote Vallejo location when they were approached by a man with a flashlight who fired multiple shots at them, killing Ferrin and seriously wounding Mageau. Within an hour of the incident, a man called the Vallejo Police Department, giving them the location of the crime scene and claiming responsibility for both that attack and the 1968 murders of Faraday and Jensen. Despite this confession and Mageau’s description of the assailant, little progress was made in the case.
The Zodiac Emerges
On August 1, 1969, the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Chronicleand Vallejo Times-Herald each received an identical handwritten letter in an envelope without a return address. Beginning “Dear Editor: I am the killer of the 2 teenagers last Christmas at Lake Herman . . .” the letters contained details from the murders that only the killer could have known. The killer went on to threaten further attacks if the letters weren’t printed on the front page of the papers. Each closed with a symbol consisting of a circle with a cross through it and was accompanied by one part of a three-part cipher that he claimed contained his identity.
While Bay Area police departments, with the support of the FBI, worked feverishly to track down the killer, several days later he sent another letter to the San Francisco Examiner. Beginning “Dear Editor: This is the Zodiac speaking . . .” it also described the murders in detail and taunted police for not having been able to crack his code or catch him. However, several days later, high school teacher Donald Harden and his wife Bettye were able to solve the cipher, revealing the killer’s rant, which began “I like killing people because it is so much fun.”
The Most Dangerous Animal
Despite evidence including fingerprints, Mageau’s description, the decoded cipher and a wave of tips and leads, police were unable to track down the Zodiac Killer. On the evening of September 27, 1969, he struck again, approaching young couple Cecelia Shepard and Bryan Hartnell as they relaxed on an isolated part of the shore of Lake Berryessa in Napa County. Wearing a hood and a shirt bearing a circle-cross symbol, he tied them up before brutally stabbing them, scrawling a message for police on their car door and leaving the scene. He then called the Napa Police Department to claim responsibility. Shepard and Hartnell were both in critical condition but alive when emergency services arrived, but Shepard died of her wounds shortly thereafter.
Two weeks later, on October 11, 1969, the Zodiac claimed another life, shooting 29-year-old taxi driver Paul Stine in San Francisco’s Presidio Heights neighborhood. As the murder did not seem to fit the Zodiac’s pattern, it was initially deemed a robbery, but three days later a letter received by theSan Francisco Chronicle proved otherwise. Written in the same erratic print as his previous letters, it gave the details of Stine’s murder and was accompanied by a bloody scrap of Stine’s shirt. At the end of the letter, the killer stated his intention to murder a school bus full of children.
An Open Case
With descriptions from witnesses who had seen a man leaving the scene of Stine’s murder, police were able to create and circulate a composite sketch of the killer. But despite mounting evidence and the investigation of numerous suspects, he remained at large, continuing his taunting correspondence with Bay Area papers, in which he included more ciphers, claimed to have committed several more murders and mocked the police for their inability to catch him.
Then, in 1974, the letters stopped. The investigation, however, has not, and in the nearly five decades since the Faraday-Jensen murders, the inability to identify the Zodiac Killer has continued to frustrate law enforcement. At least five other murders have been tentatively linked to the Zodiac, including the 1963 shooting of Robert Domingos and Linda Edwards near Santa Barbara, California, and the 1966 stabbing death of college student Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside, California. However, in both these and the known Zodiac murders, no suspect has ever been arrested.
Fact and Fiction
The mystery and unanswered questions surrounding the Zodiac case also continues to fascinate the public and has inspired more than its fair share of theories regarding the killer’s identity. Ranging from plausible to crackpot, these include the claim that he was Unabomber Ted Kacznyski or convicted murderer Charles Manson or that he eventually moved to Scotland and committed more murders there before finding happiness and giving up his wicked ways.
True-crime author and former San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist Robert Graysmith wrote two separate works on the Zodiac (1986’s Zodiac and 2002’s Zodiac Unmasked), ultimately identifying a man named Arthur Leigh Allen as the most likely suspect. Allen died in 1992, however, and was never conclusively connected to any of the murders. Most recently, in 2014 HarperCollins published The Most Dangerous Animal of All by author Gary Stewart, who claims to have uncovered that his father, Earl Van Best Jr.—who bears a strong resemblance to the man pictured in the police sketch—was the Zodiac Killer. As with Allen, however, there is no conclusive proof to connect Van Best to the murders.
In film, the Zodiac Killer was the inspiration for the psychopath in the 1971Clint Eastwood classic Dirty Harry, which includes a scene involving a school bus full of children being hijacked. In 2007, the David Fincher film Zodiac was released. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr., it is based on Robert Graysmith’s books about the case.
Griselda Blanco: - Synopsis
Born in Colombia on February 15, 1943, Griselda Blanco, also known as "The Godmother," is suspected of committing more than 200 murders while transporting cocaine from Colombia to New York, Miami and Southern California. On the run from the law for more than 10 years, Blanco was captured in 1985 in Irvine, California. Her trial ended in scandal, and she was eventually deported back to Colombia. On September 3, 2012, at age 69, Blanco was murdered in her hometown of Medellin, Colombia. According to reports, two gunmen on motorcycles shot Blanco after she exited a butcher shop.
Life in the Medellin Cartel
Griselda Blanco Restrepo was born in Cartagena, Colombia on February 15, 1943. Raised by an abusive mother, Blanco turned to a life of crime and prostitution at a young age. Not long after, she became involved with Colombia's infamous Medellin Cartel, helping to push Colombian cocaine throughout the United States, specifically to New York, Miami and Southern California. Members of the cartel were able to smuggle large quantities of cocaine into the United States using special undergarments that Blanco had presumably designed and manufactured.
In the mid-1970s, Blanco left Colombia for New York. By this time, the infamous drug trafficker, now in her early 30s, was running a massive narcotics ring. But U.S. detectives were soon hot on Blanco's trail: After authorities intercepted a shipment of 150 kilos cocaine in 1975—the biggest cocaine case in history at the time—Blanco and more than 30 of her partners were indicted on federal drug conspiracy charges. The investigation was dubbed "Operation Banshee," and became known to law enforcement officers nationwide. Fearing capture, Blanco fled the country, returning to Colombia. It wasn't long before she returned, this time settling in Miami.
Throughout her time in the United States, Blanco's continued involvement in the Colombian drug trade led to her participation in several other crimes, including driveby shootings and other murders motivated by drugs, money and power. By the late 1970s, detectives had linked her to dozens of murders. Possibly most notably, she was named a suspect in a drug-rival shooting that took place inside of a Miami liquor store. Blanco would manage to escape authorities, however, until nearly a decade later.
In the 1980s, Blanco was livingly comfortably in a newly purchased home in Miami. By this time, the infamous drug trafficker had become a millionaire, and had taken on various nicknames, including "The Godmother," "Queen of Cocaine" and "Black Widow."
Blanco's luck finally ran out in 1985, when she was captured by detectives in Irvine, California.
Trial and Later Years
Blanco's trial took place in New York, and ended with a conviction: She was found guilty of a drug conspiracy charge but escaped murder charges, despite being accused of several Florida slayings. She received the maximum sentence, according to drug laws at the time: 15 years.
In 1994, Blanco, now a federal prison inmate, was transported back to Miami on three murder charges (She had been named a suspect, however, in more than 200 murders). In a strange turn of events, however, the case was thrown out: The star witness in the case, a hitman named Jorge "Rivi" Ayala who had worked for Blanco, had become romantically involved with a secretary in the Florida State Attorney's Office, causing prosecutors to worry about the credibility of Ayala's testimony on the stand. Some speculated that Ayala botched the case on purpose, fearing that he could be killed by members of Blanco's cartel if he testified.
Blanco ended up pleading guilty to the three murder charges, and following a deal with prosecutors, she received a 10-year sentence. In June 2004, she was released from prison and deported back to Colombia.
On September 3, 2012, at age 69, Blanco was murdered in her hometown of Medellin, Colombia. According to reports, two gunmen on motorcycles shot Blanco after she exited a butcher shop
El Chapo: - Synopsis
Born in Badiraguato, Mexico, Joaquín Guzmán Loera entered the drug trade as a teenager. Nicknamed "El Chapo," he founded the Sinaloa cartel in 1989, over time building it into an immensely profitable global drug-trafficking operation. Known for his violent actions and powerful influence, Guzmán has successfully orchestrated daring escapes from maximum-security prisons in his home country. One such escape came in July 2015, although he was recaptured the following January in the Mexican city of Los Mochis.
Early Years
Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera was born in the rural Mexican town of Badiraguato. The date of his birth is believed to be April 4, 1957, according to Time magazine, although other outlets list December 25, 1954, as his birthday. Guzmán’s childhood was shaped by his family’s poverty and his abusive father, a violent man who was in the drug trade.
By his teens, Guzmán had been kicked out of the family home and was forced to make his own way. With little schooling in his background, he eventually found himself following his father's path, growing marijuana for small amounts of cash.
Rise to Power
By the late 1970s, Guzmán had proven his value in the narcotics business and begun working with another rising young dealer named Héctor Luis Palma Salazar. Guzmán oversaw the movement of drugs from his home district of Sinaloa, a crucial drug trafficking area on the western end of Mexico where narcotics flowed north to coastal cities and into the United States.
By his late 20s, the quiet but savvy Guzmán, whose 5'6" frame had earned him the nickname, “El Chapo” ("Shorty"), was supervising logistics for another drug kingpin, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, founder of the Guadalajara cartel. Guzmán kept a low profile, but when his boss was eventually arrested for the 1985 murder of an American Drug Enforcement Agency agent, he quickly emerged as one of the new faces of the Mexican drug world.
Drug Kingpin
Inheriting some of his former boss’s territory, Guzmán founded his own cartel, known as Sinaloa, in 1989. By the early 1990s, Guzmán was on the radar of the DEA and FBI and considered one of Mexico's most powerful and dangerous drug traffickers.
As the power of the Colombian drug cartels like Medellin and Cali began to wane, Sinaloa was among the Mexican organizations filling the void. Under Guzmán’s direction, it took control of the cocaine trade extending from South America to the United States.
Part of the success stemmed from Sinaloa’s creative smuggling methods, most notably a series of air-conditioned tunnels that ran under the Mexican-U.S. border. Another method involved hiding cocaine powder inside fire extinguishers and cans that were labeled “chili peppers.”
In addition to cocaine, Sinaloa trafficked heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine into the U.S. and beyond. Eventually, the cartel’s tentacles touched five continents and grew to be the biggest drug operation in the world.
Guzmán coupled that success with serious muscle. He established gangs with names such as “Los Chachos,” "Los Texas,” “Los Lobos” and “Los Negros” to protect his empire. Over the years, Guzmán’s men have been accused of committing more than 1,000 murders throughout Mexico, the casualties including both incompetent henchmen and rival bosses.
Arrests and Escapes
In 1993, Guatemalan authorities arrested Guzmán and extradited him to Mexico, where he was convicted and sentenced to a maximum-security prison for 20 years.
Even behind bars, however, Guzmán maintained his power. Through bribes he arranged for conjugal visits and was largely allowed to run his drug operation. With his near-mythical lore already established in Mexico — many villages in his home district saw Guzmán as a Robin Hood-like figure — his legend grew in 2001 when, with the help of bribed prison guards, he escaped prison via a laundry cart. A federal investigation led to the arrest of 71 prison employees, including the warden.
On the lam but not out of the drug business, Guzmán only tightened his control and expanded his fortunes over the next decade and a half. In 2009, Sinaloa was reportedly pulling in $3 billion annually, putting Guzmán’s net worth at around $1 billion. That earned him the No. 701 ranking on the Forbes list of the world's richest people.
Guzmán quickly became the No. 1 drug target of the U.S. government, which offered a $5 million reward for information that led to his arrest. In 2012, the U.S. authorities froze the American assets of his family members.
An aggressive assault on drug cartels started by the Mexican government in 2006 failed to uncover Guzmán, who moved freely around his country. He even got married during that time period, celebrating the event with a large party that included police officers and local politicians among the guests. In all, it is believed Guzmán has married at least three times and is the father of nine children.
In February 2014, Guzmán was finally apprehended in a hotel in the Pacific beach town of Mazatlán, Mexico. Declining requests by American officials to have Guzmán extradited to the United States, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto vowed that Guzmán wouldn’t escape again.
“[It] would be more than regrettable,” Nieto said at the time, “It would be unforgivable for the government not to take the precautions to ensure that what happened last time would not be repeated.”
Yet, less than 18 months later, Guzmán orchestrated a second daring flight from prison in July 2015. For this escape, Guzmán slipped through an opening in his cell’s shower section, made his way down a 30-foot ladder, and then traveled through a tunnel network that connected his cell to a house that was still under construction about a mile away.
On October 17, 2015, Guzmán was reportedly injured on his face and leg when escaping a failed military manhunt to capture him in the mountains of northwest Mexico. Around that same time, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, he conducted a secret interview with American actor Sean Penn. Guzmán wanted to make a movie about his life, and managed to connect to Penn via Mexican actress Kate del Castillo.
Recaptured
On January 8, 2016, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced on Twitter that Mexican authorities had recaptured Guzmán after a shootout earlier that morning in the city of Los Mochis.
"Mission Accomplished," the President wrote. "We have him."
The drug lord's apprehension came one day before his interview with Penn was published on Rolling Stone's website. It was unclear whether his communication with the actor contributed to his capture, although Mexican authorities cited the monitoring of his electronic exchanges as helpful to the process.
Guzmán was returned to the same prison from which he escaped the previous summer, and faced the possibility of being extradited to the U.S. to face drug trafficking charges.
Patty Hearst: - Synopsis
Born in 1954 in Los Angeles, California, Patty Hearst is the granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, founder of the Hearst media empire. On February 4, 1974, at age 19, Patty Hearst was kidnapped by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Not long after, she announced that she had joined the SLA and began participating in criminal activity with the group, including robbery and extortion. Hearst was captured by the FBI in September 1975, and the following year, she was convicted of bank robbery and sentenced to 35 years in prison. She was released early, in 1979, after President Jimmy Carter commuted her prison term.
Early Life
Patty Hearst was born Patricia Campbell Hearst on February 20, 1954, in Los Angeles, California. She is the granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, the famous 19th century newspaper mogul and founder of the Hearst media empire, and the third of five daughters born to Randolph A. Hearst, William Hearst's fourth and youngest son. Following her high school graduation, Hearst attended Menlo College and the University of California at Berkeley.
Kidnapped by the SLA
On February 4, 1974, at the age of 19, Patty Hearst was taken hostage by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, who aimed to garner a hefty ransom from her wealthy father. In a strange turn of events, two months after she was taken captive, Hearst recorded an audiotape that would soon be heard around the world, announcing that she had become part of the SLA. In the months that followed, more tapes with Hearst speaking were released by the group, and the young woman had begun actively participating in SLA-led criminal activity in California, including robbery and extortion—including an estimated $2 million from Hearst's father during her months in captivity.
On September 18, 1975, after more than 19 months with the SLA, Hearst was captured by the FBI. In the spring of 1976, she was convicted of bank robbery and sentenced to 35 years in prison. Hearst would serve less than two years, however; she was released in 1979, after President Jimmy Carter commuted her prison term.
Societal Impact and Stockholm Syndrome
Hearst's experience with the SLA, particularly the details of her transition from victim to supporter, has sparked interest for the past several years, including countless psychological studies both inspired and bolstered by her story. The shift in Hearst's behavior with the SLA has been widely attributed to a psychological phenomenon called Stockholm syndrome, in which hostages begin to develop positive feelings toward their captors, an effect thought to occur when victims' initially frightening experiences with their kidnappers are later countered with acts of compassion or comradery by those same individuals.
Unabomber: - ynopsis
Ted Kaczynski, also known as the “Unabomber,” was born on May 22, 1942, in Illinois. A mathematics prodigy, Kaczynski taught at the University of California at Berkeley before retreating to a survivalist lifestyle in the Montana woods. Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski mailed bombs to universities and airlines, killing three people and injuring 23 more. FBI agents arrested Kaczynski in 1996, and two years later he was sentenced to life in prison.
Early Years
Ted Kaczynski was born on May 22, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois, the oldest child of a Polish American couple, Wanda and Theodore. As a baby, Kaczynski had an allergic reaction to some medication and spent time in isolation while recovering. Some reports indicate that he had a noticeable change in personality after being hospitalized. The arrival of his younger brother, David, also allegedly had a strong effect on him.
When he was a child, the family moved out of the city to Evergreen Park, a suburb of Chicago. Kaczynski's parents pushed him hard to achieve academic success. A bright child, Kaczynski skipped two grades during his early education. However, he was smaller than the other kids and regarded as "different" because of his intelligence. Still Kaczynski was active in school groups, including the German-language and chess clubs. In 1958, at the age of 16, Kaczynski entered Harvard University on a scholarship. There, he studied mathematics and participated in a psychological experiment conducted by professor Henry A. Murray. This experiment, too, is thought to have been a factor in Kaczynski's later activities.
College Education
After graduating Harvard in 1962, Kaczynski continued his studies at the University of Michigan. While there, he taught classes and worked on his dissertation, which was widely praised. Kaczynski earned his doctoral degree from the university in 1967, then moved west to teach at the University of California, Berkeley.
Kaczynski struggled at Berkeley, having a hard time delivering his lectures and often avoiding contact with his students. He resigned his assistant professorship in 1969, and by the early 1970s had given up his old life and settled in Montana. He built himself a small cabin near Lincoln, where he lived in near-total isolation, hunting rabbits, growing vegetables, and spending much of his time reading. While living this remote, survivalist lifestyle, Kaczynski developed his own anti-government and anti-technology philosophy.
The 'Unabomber'
In 1978, Kaczynski moved back to Chicago to work in the same factory as his brother. While there, he had a relationship with a female supervisor, but it eventually turned sour. In retaliation, Kaczynski wrote crude limericks about her, which got him fired. His brother David, a supervisor himself, was the one that actually had to break the news to Ted.
That same year, Kaczynski made his first homemade bomb, which he sent to a Northwestern University professor. The letter was opened by a campus security officer, who sustained minor injuries when the bomb exploded. Another bomb was sent to the same university the following year, but by this time Kaczynski had returned to Montana.
Kaczynski then targeted American airline companies with two bombs—one in 1979 that failed to detonate on an American Airlines flight, and one in 1980 that was sent to the president of United Airlines, who sustained minor injuries after it exploded. Working with the U.S. Postal Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Federal Bureau of Investigation started up a task force to look into these mysterious attacks. The case was known by the acronym UNABOM, which stood for UNiversity and Airline BOMbing. Eventually, the unknown assailant came to be known as the "Unabomber."
National Threat
By 1982, Kaczynski's bombs became more destructive. A secretary at Vanderbilt University and a professor at the University of California at Berkeley both sustained serious injuries from Kaczynski's explosive packages. After a pause of several years, Kaczynski resumed his bombing campaign. His first fatality occurred in December 1985, when a computer store owner was killed by a device placed outside his shop. Over the next decade, Kaczynski would send numerous other bombs, resulting in two more deaths and many more injuries.
The big break in the case finally came in 1995, when Kaczynski sent out a 35,000-word essay on the problems of modern society. He even threatened media outlets, such as The New York Times, to publish his so-called "Unabomber Manifesto," telling them he would blow up a plane if they failed to do so.
The manifesto was eventually published in September 1995, and shortly thereafter was read by Kaczynski's sister-in-law, Linda Patrik, who thought it could have been written by Ted and encouraged her husband to read it. Although he and Ted had become estranged over the years, David recognized the writing style and some of the ideas expressed as his brother's. After much deliberation and hiring a private detective to confirm his suspicions, in early 1996 David shared his suspicions with the FBI.
Arrest
On April 3, 1996, federal investigators arrested Ted Kaczynski at his cabin in Montana. News outlets carried images of the bearded and disheveled Kaczynski, giving the country and the world its first glimpse of the infamous Unabomber. At his cabin, they found one completed bomb, other bomb parts and about 40,000 pages of his journals, in which he described his crimes in detail.
In January 1998, Kaczynski attempted suicide as he prepared to go on trial. He was insistent that his lawyers not use any type of insanity defense, and he rejected any implication that he was mentally ill. However, after a failed bid to represent himself in court, Kaczynski decided to plead guilty to 13 federal bombing-related charges. It has been thought that he made the deal to avoid the death penalty. He received four life sentences plus another 30 years for his actions.
Kaczynski is currently an inmate at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative-Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado. For a time, he was housed in the same unit as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Ahmed Yousef
Los Zetas: It is a Mexican criminal syndicate, considered by the US government to be "the most technologically advanced, sophisticated, and dangerous cartel operating in Mexico." The origins of Los Zetas date back to the late 1990s when commandos of the Mexican Army deserted their ranks and began working as the enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel. In February 2010, Los Zetas broke away from their former employer and formed their own criminal organization.
Unlike other traditional criminal organizations in Mexico, drug trafficking makes up only around 50% of the revenue of Los Zetas, while a large portion of their income comes from other activities directed against rival drug cartels and civilians. Their brutal tactics, which include beheadings to terrorize their rivals and intimidate them, torture, and indiscriminate slaughter, show that they often prefer brutality over bribery. Los Zetas are Mexico's largest drug cartel in terms of geographical presence, overtaking their rivals, the Sinaloa Cartel. Los Zetas also operate through protection rackets, assassinations, extortion, kidnappings and other activities. The organization is based in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, directly across the border from Laredo, Texas.
The group's name Los Zetas is given after its first commander, Arturo Guzmán Decena, whose Federal Judicial Police radio code was "Z1",a code given to high-ranking officers.The radio code for Commanding Federal Judicial Police Officers in México was "Y" and are nicknamed Yankees, for Federal Judicial Police in charge of a city the radio code was "Z", and thus they were nicknamed as the letter in Spanish, "Zetas".
After Osiel Cárdenas Guillén took full control of the Gulf Cartel in 1999, he found himself in a violent turf war. In order to keep his organization and leadership, Cárdenas sought out Ruben Salinas alias el Chato, a retired Army lieutenant who lured more than 30 army deserters of the Mexican Army's elite Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE) to become his personal bodyguards, and later, as his mercenary wing. These Army deserters were enticed with salaries much higher than those of the Mexican Army.Cárdenas' goal was to protect himself from rival drug cartels and from the Mexican military. Some of the original members, who had come from the GAFE unit, had during the 1990s reportedly received training in commando and urban warfare from Israeli Special Forces Units and American Special Forces units, which included training in rapid deployment, marksmanship, ambushes, counter-surveillance and intimidation.
It is unclear which of the two – the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas – started the conflict that led to their break up. It is clear, however, that after the capture and extradition of Cárdenas, Los Zetas had become so powerful that they outnumbered and outclassed the Gulf Cartel in revenue, membership, and influence. Some sources reveal that as a result of the supremacy of Los Zetas, the cartel felt threatened by its own enforcers and decided to curtail their influence, but ended up instigating a civil war.
Los Zetas have also carried out multiple massacres and attacks on civilians and rival cartels, such as:
· the 2008 Morelia grenade attacks (15 September), where 8 were killed and over 100 were injured;
· the 2010 San Fernando massacre (24 August), where 72 migrants were found dead;
· the 2011 San Fernando massacre (6 April – 7 June), where 193 people were killed;
· the massacre of 27 farmers in Guatemala (discovered on 15 May 2011);
· the 2011 Monterrey casino attack (25 August), where 52 people were killed;
· the Altamira prison brawl (4 January 2012), where 31 Gulf cartel inmates were killed;
· the Apodaca prison riot (19 February 2012), where 44 Gulf cartel inmates were killed and 37 Zetas escaped from prison;
In addition, sources reveal that Los Zetas may also be responsible for:
· the 2010 Puebla oil pipeline explosion, which killed 28 people, injured 52, and damaged over 115 homes.
· the 2011 massacre at Allende, Coahuila where an estimated 300-500 civilians were killed after the Zetas accused two local men of betraying the organization.
By 2011 only 10 of the original 34 zetas remained fugitives. And to this day most of them have either been killed or captured by the Mexican law enforcement and military forces.
As of 2012, Los Zetas had control over 11 states in Mexico, making it the drug cartel with the largest territory in the country. Their rivals, the Sinaloa Cartel, have lost some territories to Los Zetas, and went down from 23 states in dominion to 16.
By the beginning of 2012, Mexico's government escalated its offensive against the Zetas with the announcement that five new military bases will be installed in the group's primary areas of operation.
Postcard Bandit (or Brenden Abbot): is a convicted Australian bank robber. He is reported to have stolen and hidden millions of dollars, and was dubbed "the postcard bandit" by police seeking media coverage. Abbott has been imprisoned in Woodford Correctional Centre and Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre, and held in both mainstream and Supermax conditions. He was moved to Brisbane Correctional Centre in August 2011, and is detained under severe Supermax-style conditions. Though scheduled for release in 2020, he faces further charges in two other states.
He has tried many times to escape prison. He had been part of armed robberies as well.
Vassilis Palaiokostas: He is a Greek fugitive(who was born in 1966 in the Trikala Region of greece ) who escaped by helicopter twice from the Greek high-security Korydallos prison while serving a 25-year sentence for kidnapping and robbery. He is believed to have been the mastermind of the kidnapping of Giorgos Mylonas, a Greek industrialist, as the ransom paid was traced back to him. In 2000 he was convicted for the 1995 kidnapping of Alexander Haitoglou, the CEO of Haitoglou Bros, a food company in Northern Greece and sentenced to 25 years in prison. His brother, Nikos Palaiokostas, is in prison for 16 bank robberies.
The government of Greece faced intense criticism after his second escape from the same facility, and the government responded by firing three justice ministry officials and arresting three prison guards.
What makes him famous in his hometown is the fact that it is said that he has given most of the stolen money to poor families, making him a local "Robin of the Poor", reminiscent of the famous tale of Robin Hood. His actions have also garnered him the title "uncatchable".
In his 2006 Escape from Prison, Two accomplices hired a trip on a sight-seeing helicopter from Agios Kosmas, a coastal suburb of Athens. They hijacked the helicopter using a pistol and hand grenade, and forced the pilot to fly to the prison. When the helicopter arrived, guards believed the helicopter was a visit from prison inspectors. The helicopter flew the prisoners to a cemetery nearby, where they transferred to motorcycles and fled from there.
He was then recaptured in August, 2008.
But then again in 2009, On the afternoon of Sunday 22 February, Palaiokostas again escaped from Athens' Korydallos Prison by helicopter. He and his accomplice Alket Rizai, 34, climbed a rope ladder thrown to them by a female passenger in the helicopter as it flew over the prison courtyard.
Guards on the ground opened fire and the woman fired back with an automatic rifle. No injuries were reported due to the short gun fight, although one prison guard injured himself while trying to pull out his gun.
Jonathan Tokeley- Parry: He is a British restorer and who is notable for smuggling more than 3000 pieces of Egyptian antiquities out of Egypt by disguising them as reproductions.
It has been reported that Tokeley-Parry changed his name from Jonathan Foreman.
Philippe Jamin: He was a guy who while in a prison in France with two other guys planned to steal paintings from the Musée Marmottan Monet in 1985.
Moriarty: is a fictional character in some of the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Moriarty is a criminal mastermind whom Holmes describes as the "Napoleon of crime". Doyle lifted the phrase from a Scotland Yard inspector who was referring to Adam Worth, a real-life criminal mastermind and one of the individuals upon whom the character of Moriarty was based. The character was introduced primarily as a narrative device to enable Conan Doyle to kill off Sherlock Holmes, and only featured directly in two of the Sherlock Holmes stories. However, in more recent derivative work he has been given a greater prominence and treated as Holmes's archenemy.
His personality was heavily based on Admas Worth who was worth becoming a bounty jumper; enlisting into various regiments with assumed names, receiving his pay, and then deserting. When the Pinkerton Detective Agency began to track him, like many others using similar methods, he fled to New York City and went to Portsmouth.
After the war, Worth became a pickpocket in New York. In time, he founded his own gang of pickpockets, and then began to organise robberies and heists. When he was caught stealing the cash box of an Adams Express wagon, he was sentenced to three years imprisonment in Sing Sing; he soon escaped and resumed his criminal career.
Worth began to work for the prominent fence and criminal organiser Fredericka "Marm" Mandelbaum. With her help he expanded into bank and store robberies around 1866 and eventually began to plan his own heists. In 1869 he helped Mandelbaum to break out safecracker Charley Bullard from the White Plains Jail through a tunnel.
With Bullard, Worth robbed the vault of the Boylston National Bank in Boston on 20 November 1869, again through a tunnel, this time from a neighbouring shop. The bank alerted the Pinkertons who tracked the shipment of trunks worth and Bullard had used to ship the loot to New York. Worth decided to move to Europe with Bullard.
Hannibal Lecter: He was a character in a series of Fictional novels written by Thomas Harris. He was introduced in the 1981 thriller novel Red Dragon as a forensic psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer. The novel and its sequel, The Silence of the Lambs, feature Lecter as one of the primary antagonists after the two serial killers in both novels. In the third novel, Hannibal, Lecter becomes a protagonist. His role as the antihero occurs in the fourth novel, Hannibal Rising, which explores his childhood and development into a serial killer.
Red Dragon firmly states that Lecter does not fit any known psychological profile. In The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter's keeper, Dr. Frederick Chilton, claims that Lecter is a "pure sociopath" ("pure psychopath" in the film adaptation). In the novelRed Dragon, protagonist Will Graham says that Lecter has no conscience and tortured animals as a child, but does not exhibit any other of the criteria traditionally associated with psychopathy. Graham explains that psychiatrists refer to Lecter as a sociopath because "they don't know what else to call him". In the film adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs, protagonistClarice Starling says of Lecter, "There's no word for what he is."
Lecter's pathology is explored in greater detail in Hannibal and Hannibal Rising, which explain that he was traumatized as a child in Lithuania in 1944 when he witnessed the murder and cannibalism of his beloved sister, Mischa, by a group of deserting Lithuanian Hilfswillige, one of whom claimed that Lecter unwittingly ate his sister as well.
All media in which Lecter appears portray him as intellectually brilliant, cultured and sophisticated, with refined tastes in art, music and cuisine. He is frequently depicted preparing gourmet meals from his victims' flesh, the most famous example being his admission that he once ate a census takers liver "with some fava beans and a nice Chianti" (a "bigAmarone" in the novel). He is well-educated and speaks several languages, including Italian, German, Russian, Polish, French, Spanish, and, to some extent, Japanese. He is deeply offended by rudeness, and frequently kills people who have bad manners. Prior to his capture and imprisonment, he was a member of Baltimore, Maryland's social elite, and a sitting member of the Baltimore Philharmonic Orchestra's board of directors.
In The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter is described through Starling's eyes: "small, sleek, and in his hands and arms she saw wiry strength like her own". The novel also reveals that Lecter's left hand has a condition called mid ray duplication polydactyl, i.e. a duplicated middle finger. In Hannibal, he performs plastic surgery on his own face on several occasions, and removes his extra digit. Lecter's eyes are a shade of maroon, and reflect the light in "pinpoints of red". He has small white teeth and dark, slicked-back hair with a widow's peak. He also has a keen sense of smell; in The Silence of the Lambs, he is able to identify through a plate glass window the brand of perfume that Starling wore the day before. He has an eidetic memory and a fondness for the method of loci: he has constructed in his mind an elaborate "memory palace" with which he relives memories and sensations in rich detail.
Walter White: He is the main protagonist in Breaking Bad TV Episode. Walter White was born on September 7, 1959, as seen on some of his personal papers. Walt studied chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, where he conducted research on proton radiography that helped a team win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1985. After graduate school, Walt founded the firm Gray Matter Technologies with Elliott Schwartz (Adam Godley), his former classmate and close friend. Around this time, Walt dated his lab assistant, Gretchen (Jessica Hecht). However, he abruptly left both Gretchen and Gray Matter Technologies, selling his financial interest in the company for $5,000. Gretchen and Elliott later married and made a fortune, much of it from Walt's research. Though they remain friendly, Walt secretly resents both Gretchen and Elliott for profiting from his work.
At the age of 50, Walt works as a high school chemistry teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico, providing instruction to uninterested and disrespectful students. The job pays so poorly that Walt is forced to take up another job at a local car wash to supplement his income, which proves to be particularly humiliating when he has to clean the cars of his own students. Walt and his wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) have a teenage son named Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte), who has cerebral palsy. Skyler is also pregnant with their second child, Holly, who is born at the end of season two. Walt's other family includes Skyler's sister, Marie Schrader (Betsy Brandt); her husband, Hank (Dean Norris), who is a DEA agent; and his mother, who is never seen.
Dexter: Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), a blood for the fictional Miami Metro Police Department who also leads a secret life as a vigilante serial killer, hunting down murderers who have slipped through the cracks of the justice system. The show's first season was derived from the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter (2004), the first of the Dexter series novels by Jeff Lindsay. It was adapted for television by screenwriter James Manos, Jr., who wrote the first episode. Subsequent seasons evolved independently of Lindsay's works. Orphaned at age three when his mother is brutally murdered in a shipping container, and harboring a traumatic secret, Dexter (Michael C. Hall) was adopted by Miami policeman Harry Morgan (James Remar) who recognized his homicidal tendencies and taught him to channel his gruesome passion for killing in a "constructive" way—by killing only heinous criminals (such as child molesters, mob assassins, rapists, serial killers of the innocent etc.) who have slipped through the justice system. To satisfy his interest in blood and to facilitate his own crimes, Dexter works as a blood spatter analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department (based on the real-life Miami-Dade Police Department). Although his drive to kill is unflinching, he is able to affect normal emotions and keep up his appearance as a socially-responsible human being. He is extremely cautious in his kills – using plastic-wrapped clean rooms and carefully cleaning up afterward – to reduce the chances of detection.
The Joker: He is a super villain and the archenemy of Batman. He was first introduced in Batman #1 (Spring 1940) and has remained consistently popular. The Joker is a master criminal with a clown-like appearance. Initially portrayed as a violent sociopath who murders people for his own amusement, the Joker later in the 1940s began to be written as a goofy trickster-thief. That characterization continued through the late-1950s and 1960s before the character became again depicted as a vicious, calculating, psychopathic killer. The Joker has been responsible for numerous tragedies in Batman's life, including the paralysis of Barbara Gordon(Batgirl/Oracle) and the murders of Jason Todd (the second Robin) and Jim Gordon's second wife Sarah Essen.
Interpretations of the Joker's appearance in other media include Cesar Romero's in the 1960s Batman television series, Jack Nicholson's in Tim Burton's Batman, and Mark Hamill's in Batman: The Animated Series, other DC Animated Universe shows and the Batman: Arkham games. Wizard magazine listed him the #1 villain of all time in 2006. As played by Nicholson, The Joker ranks #45 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 50 film villains of all time.Heath Ledger signed to play the Joker in July 2006, for director Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight and won a posthumous Oscar for his performance. He was also ranked 8th on the Greatest Comic Book Character of All Time list, which was released by Empire (notably being the highest ranked villain character on the list), as well as being the fifth Greatest Comic Book Character Ever in Wizard Magazine's 200 Greatest Comic Book Characters of all Time list, once again being the highest ranked villain on the list.
Additional Terms to Learn (Examples)
· Cartel: - A cartel is an organization created from a formal agreement between a group of producers of a good or service to regulate supply in an effort to regulate or manipulate prices. Drug trafficking organizations, especially in South America, are often referred to as "drug cartels." These organizations do meet the technical definition of being cartels.
· Mafia: -A secret criminal organization operating mainly in the United States and Italy and engaged in illegalactivities such as gambling, drug-dealing, protection, and prostitution.
· Syndicate: - A syndicate is a temporary professional financial services group formed for the purpose of handling a large transaction that would be hard or impossible for the entities involved to handle individually. Syndicates are often used in the insurance industry to spread insurance risk between several different firms.
· Extradition: - The surrender of an individual by one nation or state to another nation or state where that individual is sought for trialor punishment for the commission of a crime.
· Jury: - a group of persons sworn to render a verdict or true answer on aquestion or questions officially submitted to them.
· Reasonable Doubt: - Lack of proof that prevents a judge or jury to convict a defendant for the charged crime. The prosecution must provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt to establish the defendant's guilt otherwise he or she is entitled to an acquittal.
· Attorney: - A person who is legally qualified and licensed to represent a person in a legal matter, such as a transaction or lawsuit.
· Bail: - the temporary release of an accused person awaiting trial, sometimes on condition that a sum of money is lodged to guarantee their appearance in court.
· Witnesses: - a person who sees an event, typically a crime or accident, take place.
· Eyewitnesses: - a person who has seen something happen and can give a first-hand description of it.
· Arraignment: Law to call (an accused person) before a criminal court to hear and answer the charge made against him or her.
· Sentencing: - declare the punishment decided for (an offender).
· Correction: - the action or process of correcting something.
· Parole: - the temporary or permanent release of a prisoner before the expiry of a sentence, on the promise of good behaviour.
· Probation: - the release of an offender from detention, subject to a period of good behaviour under supervision.
· Appeal: - apply to a higher court for a reversal of the decision of a lower court.
· Double Jeopardy: - the prosecution or punishment of a person twice for the same offence.
· Rehabilitation: - Rehabilitation is the act of restoring something to its original state, like the rehabilitation of the forest that had once been cleared for use as an amusement park. The noun rehabilitation comes from the Latin prefix re-, meaning “again” and habitare, meaning “make fit.”
· Type of Pleas: A plea is a defendant's answer to a factual matter. In criminal law, a plea is a defendant's formal response of guilty, not guilty or nolo contendere to a criminal charge.
· The tpes of Pleas include:
· 1) Guilty - A plea by a defendant admitting that he committed the offense or crime charged. A guilty plea is a complete admission of guilt to the charge and a waiver of all rights. A guilty plea must be made with the consent of the court.
· 2) Not Guilty - A plea where the defendant denies the charges against him. The burden remains on the city, state, or federal government to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
· 3) Nolo Contendere (no contest) - A plea entered by a defendant that does not admit guilt, but that subjects the defendant to punishment, while allowing the defendant to deny the alleged facts in other proceedings. For purposes of sentencing a defendant, a plea of no contest is equivalent to a plea of guilty. However, a no contest plea differs from a guilty plea because it cannot be used against the defendant in other proceedings. For example, a plea of no contest by a defendant to a criminal assault charge will result in the defendant being convicted and sentenced for the criminal assault. But the no contest plea cannot be used in a civil suit against the defendant. A no contest plea must be made with the consent of the court.
· 4) Failure to enter a plea - If the defendant refuses to enter a plea or does not appear, the court must enter a plea of not guilty.
· Alibi: It is a form of defense used in criminal procedure wherein the accused attempts to prove that he or she was in some other place at the time the alleged offense was committed. The Criminal Law Deskbook of Criminal Procedure states: "Alibi is different from all of the other defenses; it is based upon the premise that the defendant is truly innocent." In the Latin language alibī means "somewhere else."
· Corporal Punishment: It is the punishment intended to cause physical pain, including physical chastisement such as spanking, paddling, or caning of minors by parents, guardians, or school or other officials.
· Capital Punishment: is government sanctioned punishment by death. The sentence is referred to as a death sentence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences, such as first degree murder, terrorism, and espionage. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally "regarding the head" (referring to execution by beheading). There are many execution methods; one widely practiced form historically that is the most common modern method used in jurisdictions with capital punishment is hanging.
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