Crime Books and Films

July 5, 2012 Special to Crime Magazine

An excerpt from The Case of the Drowning Men: Investigating the Smiley Face Serial Murder Theory by Eponymous Rox.

The police are calling them accidents. They say young men are simply drinking too much and meeting a tragic end in icy lakes and rivers. But, with sinister graffiti frequently found near where the victims died, the public thinks something else has been going on in America's northland since 1997. They're calling the sudden disappearances of hundreds of college-age men mysterious. They're calling the drownings murder.

 by Eponymous Rox

Chapter 1: Dead Certain

Since the mid 1990’s, in the northernmost district of the United States where Interstates 90 and 94 merge to cut a scenic route toward the west, crossing nearly a dozen states along the way and skirting the border with Canada, scores of young men are vanishing every year without a trace. Only to turn up days, weeks, or months later in nearby bodies of water, dead.

Occurring mainly between the months of September to April, it’s the same story repeating itself every time, with little variation: A young man goes out for the evening with his friends, gets separated from them some time after midnight, and, despite massive search efforts by his loved ones to find out what became of him, is never seen alive again.

For local law enforcement officials the hunt for lost men over the past 15 years has become an all too familiar tale of woe as well, not the least because it’s costly and disruptive. But as far as police are concerned, even before they launch an investigation, even before a body’s been recovered from the water and an autopsy performed, it’s always a cut-and-dry case: “No signs of foul play.”

Young people are simply drinking too much, the authorities claim. Young people will do crazy and stupid things when they’re inebriated. They’ll even throw themselves into an icy river or lake and drown.

Seems a reasonable enough explanation on its face, if only one or two fatalities occurring every once in awhile, and a scenario that’s not totally impossible to imagine either. But by the hundreds?

And why only males then? All matching the same description? Washing up in places thoroughly searched before…?

July 3, 2012

An edited extract from Cold Case Files: Past crimes solved by new forensic science – available for Kindle in the United States on amazon.com. Hard copies available at www.panmacillan.com.au

by Liz Porter

Mark Chrystie relished the challenge of hunting criminals with some ability. But as an armed robbery squad detective in the Australian state of Victoria, his day-to-day work involved the investigation of jobs carried out by lummoxes with no idea of planning, beyond the purchase of balaclavas and overalls. They would then barge through banks’ front doors waving shotguns and escape in stolen cars.

So he enjoyed tracking down the crew that had planned its arrival at a bank in Melbourne’s posh Toorak to the second.  Arriving one minute after a cash van delivered $250,000, they walked out of the bank with the cash in cardboard boxes on their shoulders, strolling down the street with the insouciance of men carrying a wealthy customer’s bulk order of groceries to her Mercedes.

The detective also happily matched wits with the men who held up a cash van by hiding in a car boot equipped with a spy hole in its panel work, and then leaping out to surprise a driver who thought he was pulling up in an empty car park.

June 26, 2012 Special to Crime Magazine

An excerpt from The Charmer: The True Story of Robert Reldan – Rapist, Murderer, and Millionaire – and the Women who Fell Victim to his Allure

(Title Town Publishing, 2012, available in soft cover at major book stores and in Kindle at Amazon.com.)

by Richard Muti and Charles Buckley

Preface

Bob sports that collegiate look.

It is not a monster's face that looks up at the reader, there on page 31 of the Fort Lee, New Jersey, high school yearbook, class of 1958; rather, the young man appears as carefree as any 17-year-old should be. Yet, at the time this photo was taken, Robert Reldan already had a troubling juvenile record, including the assault and robbery of a woman in New York City, and he had done time in a reformatory. His classmates surely knew his history, yet whoever wrote Reldan’s yearbook entry was kind.

"Bob sports that collegiate look," the blurb below his picture reads, a reference to what a later generation would call “preppy.” He is an amateur pilot, it says, and intends a stint in the Air Force. The only glimpse into future reality is a remark about Reldan's "acid sense of humor." Although young Robert had athletic ability, especially in basketball, school activities are sparse. Understandable, when the youth's extracurricular interests lay elsewhere.

It is a handsome face with an engaging smile—a smile that promises a charming personality and inspires trust. A smile that would, over the next 20 years, cause unsuspecting women to drop their guard and place themselves under the power of one of New Jersey's most ruthless criminals.

June 18, 2012 Special to Crime Magazine

An excerpt from The Millionaire’s Wife: The True Story of a Real Estate Tycoon, his Beautiful Mistress, and a Marriage that Ended in Murder by Cathy Scott. (St. Martin’s Press True Crime Library, March, 2012.)

by Cathy Scott

Chapter 1: A Cool Manhattan Morning  

A light rain fell over Manhattan on a weekday morning like any other. But life can change on a dime, and that’s exactly what happened as middle-aged business tycoon George Kogan hurried back to his ultra-chic Upper East Side apartment with a bag of groceries on each arm in anticipation of breakfasting at home with his young lover. The late morning of Tuesday, October 23, 1990, turned out to be anything but a typical day in the city.

On the busy sidewalk, George, who’d recently celebrated his 49^th birthday, turned the corner onto East Sixty-ninth Street and headed toward his mid-­block building, between Second and Third. As he hurried down the tree-lined street, he didn't notice anything unusual other than the cool morning temperature.

He continued walking toward the canopied entrance to the co-op where he’d lived for the last two years with Mary-Louise Hawkins, a 28-year-old rising star in the public relations world. Across the street, carpenters noisily worked on the new Trump Palace high-rise apartment building. A few blocks away, Central Park was alive with pedestrians, bicyclists, and joggers as they coursed through the park's major arteries to their destinations in New York City, where the drone of urban traffic awaited them. George enjoyed walking the neighborhood. He’d lose himself in the bustling sights and sounds of the city. And this day was no different.

Walking from the neighborhood Food Emporium, he looked forward to spending the late morning with Mary-Louise. Quiet breakfasts were how their relationship had moved from platonic to romantic, and they especially appreciated those moments. Plus, George was anxious to prepare for an afternoon meeting with his son, William, who was acting as mediator to nail down an agreeable divorce settlement with George’s estranged wife, Barbara, and bring to a conclusion the marriage that in essence had ended two years earlier.

May 24, 2012 Special to Crime Magazine

An excerpt from Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman by John Morris. No case in criminal history has spurred more theories as to the identity of the killer than the one known as Jack the Ripper.  Up until now the identity of the murderer and the motive for the crimes have remained insoluble mysteries.

by John Morris

Prologue

I clearly remember my first eureka moment, that split second when everything became crystal clear, and the previously obscure was now bindingly obvious.

I was born in the early 1950s and grew up in rural Northamptonshire during an era when young children were expected to listen to what their elders had to say. Usually, I found their talk to be dull, but occasionally the conversation would become more interesting. At such times, I would listen eagerly and the hours would fly.

It was on one of these occasions that I heard about a mysterious character called Jack the Ripper. He captured my imagination and has continued to haunt my life ever since. He was said to have murdered his unfortunate victims, all “fallen women,” in London’s East End district of Whitechapel during the autumn of 1888. The killings were all brutal, bloody and carried out using a scalpel-sharp knife. One of the reasons for his notoriety was that he was never caught.

May 21, 2012

by Evan Whitton

The lawyer-run adversary system used in Britain and its former colonies, including the United States, India, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia does not try to find the truth. It is the only system which conceals evidence. Our Corrupt Legal System explains why trial lawyers, famously economical with the truth, control evidence; civil hearings take weeks, months or years; in serious criminal cases, 24 anti-truth devices allow more than 50 percent of guilty accused to escape justice. By contrast, in the investigative system used in Europe and other countries, including Japan, trained judges control evidence and seek the truth; civil hearings take a few hours; 95 percent of guilty accused are convicted. It is the most widespread, accurate and cost-effective system. Russell Fox, an Australian judge who researched the law for 11 years, concluded: “The public estimation must be correct, that justice marches with the truth.”

Evan Whitton began researching the two legal systems in 1991 after observing at first hand how each system dealt with the same criminal, Police Chief Sir Terence Lewis.

Whitton was chief reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald, and Reader in Journalism at the University of Queensland. He received the Walkley Award for National Journalism five times, and was Journalist of the Year 1983 for “courage and innovation” in reporting an inquiry into judicial corruption. He is now a columnist on a legal journal, Justinian.

Dr George Miller, director of Happy Feet (Academy Award), said Whitton is “a dazzling writer, incisive and addictive.”

Phillip Knightley, twice British Journalist of the Year, called it “a masterpiece.”

Dr. Robert Moles, LLB Hons Belfast, PhD Edinburgh, says Our Corrupt Legal System “is one of the most important books I have ever read on the common law legal system”.

The book is available at bookdepository.com (free shipping worldwide), Amazon, etc. Six of his other non-fiction books are free online at www.netk.net.au/WhittonHome.asp

May 14, 2012 Special to Crime Magazine

This is an excerpt from The Kalinka Affair by Joshua Hammer. The full ebook single is available for sale from The Atavist, through Kindle Singles, iBooks, The Atavist app,and other outlets via The Atavist website. When André Bamberski’s daughter died 30 years ago, he was helpless to save her. Suspicions of murder began to surround her stepfather, a German doctor named Dieter Krombach, but Bamberski could only hope the truth would prevail. But when the authorities gave up their pursuit, he knew he had to act. So against the odds, Bamberski embarked on an obsessive quest to capture and punish his daughter’s killer.

by Joshua Hammer

The abduction of Dr. Dieter Krombach began in the village of Scheidegg, in southern Germany. His three kidnappers punched him in the face, tied him up, gagged him, and threw him in the back of their car. They drove 150 miles, crossing the border into the Alsace region of France, with Krombach stretched out on the floor between the seats. The car stopped in the town of Mulhouse. An accomplice called the local police and stayed on the line just long enough to deliver a bizarre instruction: “Go to the rue de Tilleul, across from the customs office,” the anonymous caller said. “You’ll find a man tied up.” 

A few minutes later, two police cars arrived at the scene, their red and blue patrol lights illuminating the street. Behind an iron gate, in a dingy courtyard between two four-story buildings, Krombach lay on the ground. His hands and feet were bound and his mouth was gagged. He was roughed up but very much alive. When the police removed the covering from his mouth, the first thing he said was “Bamberski is behind it.”