Foreign Crimes

Feb. 7, 2013

Over a 10-year-year period, from 1972 to 1982, the Shankill Butchers gang, led by psychopath Lenny Murphy, terrorized Northern Ireland Catholics, becoming the most prolific group of serial killers in British history.

by Robert Walsh

“A lasting monument to blind sectarian bigotry.” – The Shankill Butchers, as described by their trial judge, Lord Justice O’Donnel.

Ireland in general (and Northern Ireland in particular) has long had a troubled, violent and dark history. Invasions, rebellions, famine, revolution, civil war and what are generally described as “The Troubles” have cast a long shadow over the Emerald Isle and its neighbor (and former colonial ruler) Great Britain. In recent years, especially after the peace talks and ceasefire of the early 1990’s, both the British and Irish people have begun to bury their differences and to explore their common history, dark and uncomfortable though it often is. One of the darkest episodes was that of the Shankill Butchers.

Dec. 3, 2012

Rachel Nickell, Andre Hanscombe and their son Alex in the park

Not even Scotland Yard’s famed Murder Squad is immune from locking in on one suspect to the exclusion of all others and allowing its conceit to permit a serial rapist and murderer to stay at large for years after the evidence to convict him was in the police’s hands.

by Mark Pulham

In the photograph, her smile is wide and bright. A blue sky is behind her and she squints slightly from the sun as a wisp of blonde hair drifts across her face in a breeze. She seems incredibly happy. In another photograph, she and her boyfriend smile at the camera, bundled up against the chill. Between them is the buggy holding their young son.

Some people just radiate happiness, people who are attractive and put a smile on the face of those who saw them, even if they didn’t know the person.

Rachel Nickell was one of those people. Bright, attractive, and with boundless generosity, she was instantly likeable, and was capable of achieving anything that she set out to do.

Rachel Jane Nickell was born on November 23, 1968 to Andrew Nickell, an officer in the army, and his wife Monica, and brought up in Great Totham, a village near Colchester in Essex.  From a very young age, Rachel was naturally charitable, helping out with the elderly and with the disabled children in the area.

When she turned 11, Rachel went to the Colchester High School for Girls, and in her spare time, she joined the Essex Dance Theatre and took up singing, dancing, and acting. She could have pursued this course, but instead, decided to study and get a degree in History and English.

Rachel Nickell

Rachel got a job at a Richmond swimming pool as a lifeguard, and it is there, in 1988, that she met a young motorcycle courier named Andre Hanscombe. The couple fell in love, and a year later, Rachel gave birth to her son, Alexander Louis. Rachel and Andre never married, and there is no indication that they were even thinking about it.

Rachel decided to stop working, at least for then, and devoted herself to being a full-time mother, even though she had been offered work as a photographic model. Maybe when Alex was old enough, she would pursue her ambition to be a children’s television presenter, an ambition in which she no doubt would have excelled.

The young family moved to Balham, in South London, and life seemed perfect. Wimbledon is also in South London. Known throughout the world for hosting the world’s most prestigious tennis tournament, people flock there in the summer to watch the matches and eat strawberry cream tarts at the afternoon teas in the pavilions.

But tennis is not the only thing the area is known for.

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. 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. 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.