Nov. 23, 2012

The John Carlos Story, with Dave Zirin, Haymarket Books, 2011
Veronica & the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal as told to Valerie Jones, Xlibris, 2012

Two books – very different and yet with a common thread of courage. If the names do not immediately resonate with you, it is only because time and political circumstances are always changing.

by Lynne Stewart

John Carlos is the man and track star who electrified us when he and Tommie Smith and Peter Norman registered their protest to the USA’s denial of black equality from the winners' podium at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Veronica Jones (now deceased) is the witness to the shooting that Mumia Abu Jamal was convicted of, who came forward after lying at his trial, to clear her conscience and the record in 1995. I was struck by the fact that the two subjects, both African Americans, of these books were so different in outlook and upbringing but who in the crunch elected to stand up. Both suffered afterward for their acts of courage and that is an important part of these stories as well.

Nov. 19, 2012

Stephen Farrow

In early 2012 two sadistic, purposeless murders shocked Great Britain like few others have in terms of public revulsion.

by Ben Johnson

The sentencing of a British man who perpetrated two of the most sadistic murders the UK has ever seen took place in Bristol on November 2, 2012. .

At a 10-day trial, the jury heard how a sickening chain of events that led to a vicar being found callously murdered, with pornography and condoms being placed on and around the body.

Stephen Farrow, described as a “psychopath with an intense hatred for religion” was sentenced to whole life imprisonment, the harshest sentence available in the UK for the murders of a retired teacher and the vicar, Reverend John Suddards, during which he arranged their bodies into grotesque and humiliating poses.

This whole life sentence ranks Farrow among such killers as Dennis Nilsen, Steven Griffiths “the Crossbow Cannibal” and “Moors Murderer” Ian Brady in the annals of British crime history.

Nov. 15, 2012

by Denise Noe

Like any other phenomenon, crime does not exist in a vacuum. It is often a kind of warped, mangled shadow of the era and culture in which it arises. Both the forms that crime takes and the manner in which the general population responds to criminal acts shed light – often an unwanted and unflattering light – on the greater society. One book reviewed here deals with crimes peculiar to the American culture devastated by the Great Depression while another deals with the organized crime culture specific to the Mafia. A book about the infamous Lindbergh baby kidnapping shows how a nation reacted to an especially heinous crime committed against a culture hero by a marginalized immigrant. A final book demonstrates how the wildly differing cultures of Great Britain and Japan were thrown together by both crime and the need to deal with it.

Nov. 13, 2012

 Joyce "Winsie" Hau

 In January of 2012, a 14-year-old “hit man” stabbed to death a 15-year-old girl in her home in Arnhem, Holland for comments she made about her best friend and her boyfriend on Facebook.

by Marie Kusters-McCarthy

The Netherlands, also called Holland, is a country less than twice the size of New Jersey with a multi racial population of 16,696,000. It is a country of tolerance, steeped in culture, and has produced some of the world’s most well known, and admired, Old Masters such as Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Frans Hals and Vermeer.

With a population of over 16 million, Holland has its share of crime. But nothing prepared the Dutch people for the stabbing death of a 15 year old girl by a 14-year-old hit man in January 2012. Because of his age the killer is known only as “Jinhua K,” and was hired by the victim’s former best friend known as “Polly W” (16) and her boyfriend “Wesley C” (17).  The amount promised for the killing varies between $50 and $180.

The victim, Joyce “Winsie” Hau, of the Chinese-Dutch community in Arnhem, had a falling out with her best friend Polly and her boyfriend Wesley. What started as an online tiff escalated, over several weeks, as Polly had accused Winsie of posting some derogatory comments about them on Facebook. This tiff led Polly and Wesley to hire Jinhua K. to murder Winsie.

Jinhua K. was an acquaintance of Polly and Wesley and in late 2011 the three met up, on several occasions, to discuss the murder of Winsie. Polly provided the erstwhile hit man with the victim’s address and movements and suggested the best time to find her at home. The blood money was agreed upon and the promise of drinks once the victim was dead.

Jinhua K. seemed excited at the prospect of murdering an innocent 15-year-old girl and told several of his friends what he intended to do. Unfortunately, nobody took him seriously as he was known for telling tall stories and was considered a bit strange.

Nov. 12, 2012

George Kaufman

The first criminal investigation in Australia – and one of the first in the world – to use DNA to solve a case.

by Liz Porter

The affluent middle-class suburb of North Caulfield, in the southern Australian city of Melbourne, is the kind of area that sends real estate brokers into rhapsodies about “lifestyle” and “leafy outlooks.” Narong Road is located in the very heart of this safe and conservative area. Quiet, respectable and offering a mix of low-rise apartment blocks and spacious houses, it’s a popular address for religious Jewish families because of the short walk to the nearby Caulfield synagogue on the Sabbath.

Yet, over four years in the early to mid-1980s, this pleasant little street became the favorite hunting ground of a brutal and coolly efficient rapist.

The attacks, which began in March 1982 and continued until September 1986, were on women aged from their 20s to 55 and living in the southeastern Melbourne suburbs of Caulfield, Armadale, St. Kilda or areas adjacent to them. There were odd patterns in their occurrence, with intense bursts of activity followed by periods of quiet. Five rapes took place between March and July 1982, the first in Narong Road. Then, between September 1984 and January 1985, there were five more – beginning, again, in Narong Road. A hiatus of almost 18 months followed. Then the rapist resurfaced in July 1986. Once again, his first victim lived in a flat in Narong Road.

With his face masked by a balaclava or clothing and with gloves or socks on his hands to avoid depositing fingerprints, the rapist left so little in the way of traces that the 1988 police operation set up to trap him was dubbed “Operation Shadow.”

Nov. 7, 2012

Facing the U.S. Prison Problem 2.3 Million Strong is a massive, thoughtful book written by someone from inside "the belly of the beast," who knows from years of personal experience what works and what doesn't. Ironically, most prisons today are not set up to rehabilitate prisoners but to do the opposite – simply to warehouse ever-increasing numbers of them until their eventual release with little or no practical training to succeed on the outside. Shawn Griffith, who spent almost 24 years in Florida prisons until his release in 2012 at age 41, advocates mightily that the real purpose of prison, in addition to punishment, should be to enable the 90 percent who will eventually be released to cope on the outside and not return to prison within the first three years, as now just under half of all released prisoners do. 

Shawn Griffith shows how tough-on-crime politicians, supported by guard unions and private prison corporations, have a vested interest in keeping the recidivism rate high. Instead of fostering in-prison drug rehab, job training, impulse control, and close family ties, prisons continually slash these critical programs to hire more guards and build more prisons. In California, 70 percent of the prison budget goes to pay the 31,000 guards it employs and only 5 percent to vocational programs to reduce recidivism. Until taxpayers grasp how counterproductive this approach truly is in providing public safety, there will be no chance for meaningful prison reform.

by Shawn R. Griffith

Preface

This book isn’t just a commentary on correctional problems and solutions.  Although my main goal is to present the mistakes that I believe U.S. policy makers have been making, it is also to share the human side of the story.  By integrating my own personal experiences with statistics and examples from different corrections systems around the nation, I am attempting to discredit the general perception that the system is designed to enforce and protect justice for everyone.  The U.S. criminal justice system is an economically and politically profitable enterprise for special interest groups in this country.  The general taxpayer needs to understand how the abusive policies fostered by these groups worsen the U.S. prison problem and the debt crisis through wasted corrections expenditures.

 Unfortunately, the system commonly attracts a darker side of people’s personalities, making compassion for those incarcerated a rare trait among many corrections officials.  As a consequence, hidden behind the walls, huge numbers of human beings have their spirits broken daily.  Secretly, many suffer false disciplinary reports, illegitimate confiscation or destruction of personal property, physical beatings, rape, and sometimes fraudulent criminal penalties.  Substandard nutrition, indifference to serious medical needs, and policies that encourage laziness have also become common.  These practices help to sustain rates of recidivism, which is defined as a return to prison within three years of release.

Nov. 5, 2012

In 1983, over 100 antique clocks – worth millions of dollars – were stolen from the L.A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem. It took 25 years for the clocks to find their way back home. Sometimes it just takes time to solve a crime.

by Deborah Rubin Fields

Have you ever been stumped by a puzzle? Admittedly, some puzzles take a long time to solve. I think you’ll agree, however, it does seem to be “stretching it” to plug away at a puzzle for 25 years.

Yet, Jews are known as a “stiff-necked people (Exodus 32:9).”  So perhaps this explains why Israeli police struggled for a quarter of a century to solve the puzzle of 102 (a number of media reports had stated 106) missing clocks. One spring night in 1983, these time pieces disappeared from Jerusalem’s L.A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art.  

You’ve probably figured out that these museum clocks were not your utilitarian house or office clocks. They weren’t meant to hang on your kitchen wall or to sit on your nightstand. They were classy antiques. Some were inlaid with jewels. Many had been cast from gold. One had even belonged to Queen Marie Antoinette.

Altogether, they were worth millions of dollars. So you see why the police wanted to crack the clock mystery. Given the magnitude of the theft, a special task force within the Israeli police (which is a national service) was set up to work on this case. Reportedly, Interpol was contacted and the company which had insured the collection hired private investigators.

Oct. 29, 2012

Jack the Ripper's "From Hell" Letter

From Jack the Ripper through B.T.K. in Wichita, Kansas, certain serial killers crave media attention to chronicle their infamous deeds.

by Ben Johnson

The relationship between serial killers and the media is one that has spanned centuries and divided opinion.

From the panic-inciting Penny Dreadfuls published in the fog-filled squalor of Victorian London slums, to the online, on demand, news consumed in the high-tech offices of today, there can be no doubt about one thing: Serial killers sell newspapers, and nobody exploits this fact more than a killer with a desire to be acknowledged.

Some killers are merely happy to collect the cuttings telling of their foul deeds, clipped from the pages of lurid tabloid newspapers. Some use these stories to relive their terrible crimes and some take things a step further. They write their own news.

These infamous few are unique in the world of crime, taunting police with their boastful claims, causing panic amidst communities around the world, and puzzling the minds of right thinking members of society with their cryptic clues and ciphers.

Whether we like it or not, these killers become celebrities. Dark-hearted stars who cause revulsion and fascination in equal measure.