Sept. 24 2012

An excerpt from Seth Ferranti’s upcoming book on street gangs, Street Legends Vol. 3. The book chronicles the story of the Supreme Team from its inception to its fall to its rise again. This legendary crew was organized in the early 1980s in Baisley Park Houses in Jamaica, Queens, New York, by a group of teenagers who were members of a quasi-religious sect known as the Five Percenters. Under the leadership of Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff and Gerald “Prince” Miller, his nephew, as second in command, the gang concentrated its criminal efforts on wide spread drug distribution. 

The Supreme Team was instrumental in the birth of hip-hop and it ushered in the crack era in New York City with devastating brutality. Its influence on hip-hop has lasted 25 years and is still going strong. This book is their story, in their words and the words of others who were there. It’s brought to you straight out of the penitentiary by Gorilla Convict Publications.

by Seth Ferranti

Just like Hollywood catapulted the Italian Mafia into the mainstream with the Godfather movies, New Jack City documented the devastating crack epidemic and the drug crews that terrorized and held court in the city’s projects. Nino Brown was a fictional character, as was his crew, but you didn't have to look far to find their real life counterparts who dominated the headlines of New York City’s tabloid newspapers. Characters and cliques that seemed to evolve straight out of the pages of a Donald Goines novel rose to prominence, becoming larger than life figures and ghetto stars in their respective hoods.           

Street tales, real life crimes, newspaper headlines, Hollywood sensationalism, and rapper’s rhymes have perpetrated, promoted and created a legend of mythical proportions that has grown exponentially over the last 20 years, keeping the Supreme Team, the most infamous crew out of the Southside of Jamaica Queens, ringing bells from coast to coast. As one of the most notorious crews from a deadly era, the team towers above its contemporaries in stature, notoriety and infamy. But it’s not all convoluted hype. Infamy has its price.

Sept. 17, 2012

Handwriting analysis example from the University of Kent

 The School Stalker is an extract from Written On The Skin– an Australian Forensic Casebook by Liz Porter, joint winner of the 2007 Ned Kelly Prize for best true crime book.  This book is available in a Kindle edition. Hard copies from the author: trager@netspace.net.au

by Liz Porter 

The attractive young female teacher had been delighted to get a job on the staff of an inner-suburban boys-only high school in the Australian city of Melbourne. But in late 1996, within months of her arrival, she began receiving offensive handwritten notes, accusing her of having sex with some of her 15 and 16-year-old year students. A letter from an anonymous parent was also sent to the school principal.

The opening of the 1997 school year triggered a resumption of the notes, including a second letter to the principal, and the targeted teacher became increasingly distraught. The letter suggested that the young woman had been behaving in an improper way towards some of her male students and threatened to “seek legal advice” about it.

“On many occasions,” this “concerned parent” wrote, “my son has mentioned that this lady uses inappropriate and suggestive comments to year 10 boys in class.” The “parent” also drew attention to the teacher’s appearance – her ‘very short dresses which leave little to the imagination.”

When the teacher turned to the police, Detective Tony Warren, then based at a station near the school, was assigned to the case.

Although the teacher had destroyed some of the early notes she had been sent, dismissing them as pranks, she had soon begun keeping them, and had collected a considerable number to give to the detective. One note described her as “a big slut who roots boys in year 9 and 10.”

Sept. 10, 2012

Although some radicals have championed the dissolution of the family, it is, in varying forms, an institution deeply ingrained into every human society. It survives because it is necessary for the upbringing of children and because humans of both genders crave intimate, stable partnerships. The family, like any other institution, has it own set of troubles that can often lead to crime. Something that inevitably causes problems is that monogamy is not a natural state for humans of either gender. Jealousy, on the other hand, comes naturally to humans of both genders and that is one of the reasons monogamy evolved as an ideal in the West (and some other cultures). The human male appears to be biologically programmed to be sexually attracted to women of childbearing age. For this reason, many people will identify with the situation portrayed in The Millionaire’s Wife in which middle-aged George Kogan left his equally middle-aged wife Barbara to take up with a younger woman. It is also true that many people will find themselves disillusioned with a spouse as the wife does in A Socialite Scorned and the husband in One Last Kiss. As these three books demonstrate, all-too-often, the words “until death do us part” can take on a tragic and homicidal meaning.

by Denise Noe

Sept. 3, 2012

Joan Webster

On Saturday November 28, 1981, Joan Webster, a 25-year-old Harvard graduate student, landed at Logan Airport in Boston aboard Eastern flight #960. Shortly after retrieving a suitcase from the luggage carousel, she disappeared.

by Eve Carson

Joan Webster, a 25-year-old, second-year student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, had everything going for her as she flew back to Boston after spending Thanksgiving with her parents in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. Just before she took the holiday break, her presentation of an 11-week auditorium project had been rewarded with high accolades from her teacher and classmates.

At Harvard, she was the dorm proctor at Perkins Hall. Smart, popular, attractive, she was available to anyone who needed her help and friendship. A quote tacked on her dorm room wall read, “It costs so much to be a full human being.”

Her flight aboard Eastern # 960 and several other flights arrived at Logan Airport around 10 p.m. on Saturday, November 28, 1981. As Joan went to retrieve her one stowed suitcase, many passengers crowded around the only luggage carousel in use that night. Shortly after retrieving her suitcase, Joan Webster disappeared.

Aug. 29, 2012

Pat Tillman

Pat Tillman was an incredible recruiting asset for the military in the wake of the terrorist attacks on America on September 11, 2001.  The popular Californian was an academic and athletic standout in high school and at Arizona State University.  Motivated by intense patriotism, Tillman gave up a lucrative professional football career and joined the Army Rangers.
by Don Fulsom

A Sports Illustrated All-Pro safety for the Arizona Cardinals in 2000, Tillman enlisted in the elite military squadron at the end of the 2001 season.  Just wed to his high school sweetheart, he turned down a three-year $3.6 million contract with the Cardinals to help avenge the surprise air assaults on his homeland.

On April 22,  2004, at age 27, Cpl. Tillman was killed in action in a canyon in eastern Afghanistan.  Apparently, his death was a not-uncommon “fog of war” tragedy caused by “friendly fire.” The entire rear of Tillman’s movie-star handsome head was blown out by a burst of three tightly placed bullets to his forehead from an M-16-type rifle.  The fatal shots were fired from a scant 10 yards away.

Initially, however, Pentagon officials refused to disclose that U.S. bullets had killed the Army’s No. 1 “poster boy.” The story the Army put out claimed Tillman was fatally wounded during an ambush by as many as one-dozen Taliban insurgents. 

They knew better.  Documents obtained by The Washington Post in 2005 say the first Army investigator on the scene determined “within days” that his fellow Rangers killed Tillman in an act of “gross negligence.”  The documents also show that top Army officials—including the theater commander, General John Abizaid—were almost immediately informed that Tillman’s death was fratricide.

Aug. 20, 2012

A simple “road rage” incident led to the shooting deaths of four rookie California Highway patrol officers in the Newhall section of Santa Clarita on April 5, 1970. The officers’ deaths led to major changes in how the California Highway Patrol and other police departments train their officers.

by Mark Pulham

Santa Clarita, in Southern California, is the fourth largest city in Los Angeles County. It is known as the home of Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park, though the park is actually just outside the city limits.

The city, just 35 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, was, in 2006, ranked as number 18 in the top 100 places to live by Money Magazine. On a list of cities that have at least 100,000 inhabitants, it is ranked as the sixth safest in the United States, according to the FBI.

The southernmost, and the oldest, district in Santa Clarita is Newhall, a location for many television shows and movies, such as the 1954 suspense film Suddenly in which Frank Sinatra’s character attempts to assassinate the President of the United States as he passes through town.

But to many, the name of Newhall is synonymous with one thing, an incident that occurred in April, 1970. At the time, Newhall was more rural than it is now, some may even have described it as a “sleepy town.” In one night, that image would change.

It began with a small event, a minor occurrence that should have blown over a moment after it had happened, and then forgotten. Instead, what happened snowballed into a major tragedy.

Aug. 13, 2012

Skulls on the beach of Punuk Island Alaska

by Liz Porter

The science

Many experts start their forensic science timeline in 1810, when a German scientist did a chemical test for a particular ink dye on a document. Three years later, Spaniard Mathieu Orfila published his Toxicologie Générale, as a result of which he is usually regarded as the father of modern toxicology.

In 1835, Londoner Henry Goddard, a member of the Bow Street Runners, the unofficial police force set up by the writer and magistrate Henry Fielding, initiated the use of bullet comparison when investigating a burglary. He spotted a flaw in a bullet lodged in a bed’s backboard, matching it both to other bullets in the suspect’s gun and to the mould from which the bullets had been made. This enabled him to solve the crime. The butler did it, then invented a story about a masked intruder to cover up his own “inside job.”

In the following year, English chemist James Marsh, inventor of a method to measure small amounts of arsenic ingested or absorbed by a human body, used the technique in the trial of a man accused of poisoning his grandfather. But the jury, confused by the complexity of Marsh’s testimony, acquitted the man. As a result, the scientist improved and simplified his method into a technique that was easier to explain to lay people, devising a test for arsenic in dead bodies which became known as the Marsh Test.

In 1850, French physician Marcel Bergeret was able to exonerate a couple accused of killing a baby whose mummified remains had been unearthed while they were renovating their apartment. Workmen removing brickwork behind the mantelpiece had discovered the remains. Bergeret carried out an autopsy on the body, finding some moths and larvae from a flesh fly on it. Using his knowledge of the succession of insects that visit dead bodies, he calculated that the moths had grown from eggs laid in 1849, meaning that the flies must have laid their eggs on the newly dead body in 1848, when it was walled in, before the current occupants had moved into the apartment. Suspicion was then directed at previous occupants, specifically a young woman who had appeared at one point to be pregnant but had never been seen with a baby. She was arrested and tried for murder but was acquitted because the cause of her baby’s death could not be established.