Crime Library

Brain Box

2010-12-12T02:58:00.000-08:00

I just watched a documentary on National Geographic. It was about a troupe of American soldiers posted in Afghanistan. The film captured their last few days there. While watching the film, I couldn't help but feel for the locals that were caught in the cross fire between the Americans and the Taliban. These villagers are often accused of harboring weapons and ammunition for the rebellious militia in the area. The Americans came off as being fairly aggressive towards them; understandable when you consider the extreme conditions.

Its all part of a vicious cycle as that aggression may easily be used as fuel for the propaganda served up by the Taliban.

It would just be unfortunate for all their efforts to have been in vain at the back of some unwarranted aggression...

Public Molestation/Grope of CNN Reporter in Mumbai (Bombay) India

2010-10-20T06:56:00.000-07:00

Women face such crimes in India everyday...the situation is fast becoming hopeless. The sexual frustration exhibited by these people obviously knows no bounds. God help the women of India....

Fanatical India

2010-09-28T06:56:00.000-07:00

The link below will take you to a documentary detailing the Gujrat riots. Religious extremism still plays a huge art in mainland India. Politicians continue to prey on lesser minded Indians and polarize the nation on a regular basis. The tragic events that happened should act as an omen of what might materialize if these fanatics remain unchecked....

Click here

A simple Google search will reveal more information.

Remembering The Joker...

2010-09-28T06:49:00.000-07:00

The pencil scene. Click on the link for video

Celebrity Infatuation

2010-01-13T00:52:00.000-08:00

Celebrities are just people being broadcasted into our lives via the media. Let's try and not hang on every little word they say. I mean come on, all the stuff they come up with is scripted anyway. Do not try and draw parallels with characters on television shows. There, I've said my bit....

Movie Villians--Chapter 3--Castor Troy

2009-12-26T19:27:00.000-08:00

This international criminal mastermind was, ahem... faced with a bone-chilling scenario one dark night. He awoke in a medical clinic after spending days in a coma following a dramatic gunfight with Sean Archer (John Travolta) and dozens of his fellow federal agents. Kept alive by the government, Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) discovered something that makes the "kidney removal" urban legends pale in comparison: someone had taken his face... off. *insert face removing gesture here*

In Face/Off, the truth was that Castor and his brother Pollux had planted a bomb somewhere in L.A. and only they knew its location and how to disarm it. With Castor seemingly a vegetable, Sean Archer entered a top-secret prison posing as Castor Troy, complete with surgical alterations and Castor's own face in place of his own. As soon as Archer uncovered the bomb's location from Pollux, his mission was complete. But that's when Castor Troy unexpectantly woke up...

Castor would undergo the same procedure Archer did, this time taking Archer's face and assuming his identity. As a top federal agent, "Sean Archer" would be unstoppable and hold significant power, taunting the real Archer and leading raids against his terrorist rivals; at one point, he even slept with Archer's own wife. As a notorious terrorist, "Castor Troy" would be locked away in prison forever. Until he breaks out, of course.

With murder, kidnapping, and many other forms of terrorism under his belt, Castor Troy was already a very clever and extremely aggressive sociopath, but having his face stolen truly put him over the edge. Castor had once tried to assassinate Archer, but accidentally killed Archer's son in the process. Castor couldn't understand why Archer would take things so personally, but he would when Archer dropped Castor's own brother from the top of a building to his death. Castor's ability to withstand pain and improvise in many deadly ways certainly makes him a vile entry on the Mofo scoreboard. But oddly enough, some people will only remember some of his most evil deeds... committed by Sean Archer.

Bill the Butcher--A Few Potraits

2009-10-28T06:55:00.000-07:00

Movie Villians--Chapter 2--Bill the Butcher

2009-10-28T06:51:00.001-07:00

For many outside the United States, the shores of America represent opportunity and freedom. For William "Bill the Butcher" Cutting, seeing foreigners enter this land is right on par with cockroaches scurrying across your kitchen floor: they are unwelcome guests and ought to be exterminated by the rightful owner of the place. As a hardcore "Nativist," Cutting - portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis in an Oscar nominated performance - controlled the Five Points section of New York with an iron fist, and personally led a number of New York's worst gangs into battle against their Irish counterparts, led by Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson). Fighting by the rules of the streets, the Priest would die and the Natives would win.

Every year on the anniversary of the battle, The Butcher would celebrate this victory and invite a select few. Many years later, the tradition would continue, and one mysterious young man would appear and hope for an invitation of his own. His name is Amsterdam (Leonardo DiCaprio) and he is the Preist's son, hell-bent on revenge. His plan is to get close to The Butcher and gain his trust, then kill him in front of everyone at the annual celebration. In the meantime, however, Amsterdam would begin to understand why so many support the Natives and their shrewd practices. In the streets, many things do not come easily, but they come easier when you're on the right side.

For Bill the Butcher, he was a businessman with political ties, and he was a merciless fighter and leader of his own giant gang. He did have some sense of honor and his growing admiration for Amsterdam would show his softer side. Indeed, Amsterdam's personal vendetta would become vastly more complicated. The Butcher is still the Butcher, though, and his viciousness is undeniable and unrelenting when challenged. In the end, Amsterdam's victory is somewhat hollow because of how deep the Butcher cut psychologically. For a young man who saw his father cut down when he was a boy, to kill the only other man to treat you like his son seems, well, foreign.

Source:movievillains.com

Movie Villians--Chapter 1--Agent Smith

2009-10-28T06:44:00.000-07:00

After having free reign over The Matrix, Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) finally met his match in a savior also known as Mister Anderson (Keanu Reeves). The Matrix is a construct of our world created only to harvest human beings and their energy - essentially, to make batteries out of people. But a few humans were able to escape the hold of the elaborate computer program keeping them "asleep" from the real world. Before escaping, they had to get by the agents - counteractive programming, if you will - who were led by Smith.

Once awakened, humans were able to build up a resistance against the machines while also evening the odds against them back in the Matrix. No longer shackled by the chains of the harvesting machines, humans could check in and out of the Matrix, fighting agents and hoping to free more minds. One such mind was Neo, a.k.a. Mr. Anderson. He had the ability to move and fight like the agents, and for some reason, was able to destroy Agent Smith at one point. Or so he thought.

Smith became a rogue program, resurfacing in various spots all over the Matrix without being under the control of the machines. Just as Neo did, Smith began to learn that the boundaries of his programming could be broken and discovered new powers, including being able to clone himself, copying his self on top of another program, i.e. another person in the Matrix. This led to the frightening paradox of Smith finding himself in the real world, having taken control of a mind and sabatoging a rebel ship, leading to a showdown with Neo.

As his numbers grew, so did Smith's superiority complex. He already felt he was a supreme being, above humans and all other life forms, but his hold of the Matrix expanded once he took over the Oracle's program. With seemingly boundless knowledge and abilities, Smith once again found himself facing Neo, this time for control of the Matrix. In the end, the Smith program was terminated, obliterated by Neo and the machines in a rare union between humans and their sworn enemies. But we all know, if Smith rose before, he can certainly rise again.

Source: movievillains.com

The Ripper's Victims

2009-08-08T03:53:00.001-07:00

The Ripper

2009-08-08T03:38:00.000-07:00

Jack the Ripper! Few names in history are as instantly recognizable. Fewer still evoke such vivid images: noisome courts and alleys, hansom cabs and gaslights, swirling fog, prostitutes decked out in the tawdriest of finery, the shrill cry of newsboys - and silent, cruel death personified in the cape-shrouded figure of a faceless prowler of the night, armed with a long knife and carrying a black Gladstone bag.

—Philip Sugden, The Complete History of Jack the Ripper

India Guilty of Discrimination

2009-06-19T04:11:00.000-07:00

People in India discriminate against each other all the time. A large portion of India is not even recognized as part of mainland India's interpretation of what India stands off. Cautionary note: Hate fuels HATE. The media is to blame for leaving a worrying majority of people ignorant. The idea of mainstream India is what the Aussies seemingly despise. What goes around comes around indeed. India is more than just Bollywood. Spare us that wretchedness. Remember India's North East. The beauty of the people in that region cannot be matched. Period.

New Orleans--America's Murder Capital

2009-04-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

I decided to write this after watching a documentary on the television. It was about these 3 kids and their bids to survive the hell that is modern day New Orleans. We're talking about a reality in which kids live with the uncertainty of whether they're gonna make it through to see themselves graduate high school. The reasons discounting the possibility vary from the more obvious ones of being uninspired to the more extreme ones of death and pregnancies.

Imagine being made to go through a metal detector topped with a thorough frisking just to get into your own school. Constant surveillance is a mandate here. Most of the kids attending schools have some sort of gang affiliation. Its a world where a minor scuffle can get you killed. "Guns are easier to find than books"...a direct quote from the Doc.

What do you do faced with such a monstrosity?

Death, it seems is all too familiar. Memorial services held in celebration of the ones slain are all too frequent. Kids killing other kids. What kind of a world are we offering them? The United States we believe has to look internally and address this issue; if they are to set any kind of legitimate example to the rest of the world.

New Orleans lies in a state of bedlam. The world watches...

Acid Attacks

2009-02-20T20:31:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Court Monday had asked the Indian government to examine the feasibility of having a stringent penal law akin to the one in Bangladesh to deal with cases of women and young girls being attacked with acid. It has also asked the government to examine the feasibility of regulating the sale of acid on the lines of provisions in Bangladesh. India's neighbouring country has an Acid Control Order, which regulates the sale of the material. But in India it is available for sale across the counter and proves to be a lethal weapon in the hands of people with a criminal bent of mind.

This was way back in April, 2008 and as always the government has failed to act with any sort of urgency. The matter is still caught up in bureaucratic red tape and in all probability will not see the light of day anytime soon.

Meanwhile, countless women across the country bear the brunt of these barbaric cowardly attacks most commonly at the hands of shunned "lovers".

What fine people are running this country....

The Indian Hate Sena (Army)

2009-02-14T04:23:00.000-08:00

Self proclaimed protectors of what they think is Indian culture have taken it upon themselves to launch various types of protests against Valentine's day celebrations across a few states in India. These Hindu extremists groups often christen themselves after Hindu gods as if to suggest that they are performing God's work. When all these sanity deprived, frustrated attention seeking hooligans really do is terrorize innocent people on the premise of very flimsy grounds. In response to the now infamous Mangalore incident the union minister for women and child development, Renuka Choudhary termed it a Talabanizaiton of India by to put it quite bluntly hordes of sexually frustrated men. And this to me is fact. As one victim of the incident recounted, "we were groped and molested in the name of God."

The names of these groups are not worth a mention right now. All the while its leader, a notorious thug with numerous criminal cases pending against him, claimed and still continues to do so blatanly adamant as ever, that they carried out the act i.e. the assualt on helpless young women, in the interest of protecting Indian culture.

White Collar Crime--India's ENRON

2009-01-10T10:09:00.000-08:00

On 7 January 2009, Satyam Computer Services Ltd. Chairman Ramalinga Raju resigned after notifying its board members and the SEBI that he had falsified accounts.

He stated that:

"What started as a marginal gap between actual operating profit and the one reflected in the books of accounts continued to grow over the years. It has attained unmanageable proportions as the size of company operations grew significantly (annualised revenue run rate of Rs 11,276 crore in the September quarter of 2008 and official reserves of Rs 8,392 crore). As the promoters held a small percentage of equity, the concern was that poor performance would result in a takeover, thereby exposing the gap. The aborted Maytas acquisition deal was the last attempt to fill the fictitious assets with real ones. It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten.”

Analysts in India have termed the Satyam scandal as India's own Enron scandal. Immediately following the news, Merrill Lynch (Now with Bank of America) terminated its engagement with the company as Credit Suisse suspended its coverage of Satyam. It was also reported that Satyam's auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers will be scrutinized for complicity in this scandal. Satyam was the 2008 winner of the coveted Golden Peacock Award for Corporate Governance under Risk Management and Compliance Issues, which was stripped from them in the aftermath of the scandal.

The New York Stock Exchange has halted trading in Satyam stock as of 7 January 2009. India's National Stock Exchange has announced that it will remove Satyam from its S&P CNX Nifty 50-share index from January 12. The founder of Satyam has been arrested two days after he admitted falsifying the firm's accounts. Ramalinga Raju is charged with offences including criminal conspiracy,breach of trust and forgery. Satyam's shares fell to 11.50 rupees on 10/01/2009, their lowest level since March 1998. Last year they hit a high of 544 rupees.

Escalating Tensions--India and Pakistan

2008-12-27T00:10:00.000-08:00

Tensions continue to soar on both sides of the border amid reports of troop movements. Both countries are apprehensive and wary towards each other. India has taken strides to garner support for its cause--its most recent ally being Saudi Arabia. Pakistan under tremendous international pressure is being pushed to act against the extremist groups operating within the country. The Indians still feel that Pakistan isn't doing quite enough. They have accused Pakistan of promoting War Hysteria in a bid to divert attention. Pakistan, meanwhile has accused India of attacking its sovereignty. Their premiers have made numerous statements to the same declaring how the country stands united against any external aggression.

The apparent boiling tensions simply cannot be disregarded by the international community for quite obvious reasons.

In Memory of Mumbai 26/11

2008-12-26T23:40:00.000-08:00

Let those who perished be remembered eternally.

"An American Crime" II

2008-12-04T13:08:00.000-08:00

On October 26, 1965, Indianapolis police answered a call saying that a girl had died. The call came from a pay telephone in front of a Shell station in a poor section of the city. The caller was a teenaged boy whose voice had not finished changing into that of an adult man. He sounded very nervous and directed the police to the address, 3850 East New York Street, at which they would find the dead female.

When the cops got to the dingy, rundown, clapboard home to which the anonymous caller had directed them, they found the emaciated dead body of 16-year-old Sylvia Marie Likens. She was covered with bruises and small wounds, later revealed to be cigarette and match burns that numbered over 100. There were also large areas where the outer layer of skin had peeled off. Likens also had a large letter "3" branded on her chest.

However, the most remarkable injuries, by far, were the words in block letters that had been burned directly onto her stomach: "I'M A PROSTITUTE AND PROUD OF IT!"

The Room where Sylvia's body was found.

Thus ended one of the most horrible crimes ever committed against a single victim.

source: trutv.com

"An American Crime" -- The tragic life of Sylvia Marie Likens

2008-12-04T12:53:00.000-08:00

Sylvia
R.I.P

Sylvia Marie Likens (January 3, 1949 - October 26, 1965) was an American murder victim from Indiana. She was tortured to death by Gertrude Baniszewski (née Van Fossan), Gertrude's children, and other young people from their neighborhood. Her parents, carnival workers, had left Likens and her sister Jenny in the care of the Baniszewski family three months before her death in exchange for twenty dollars a week. Baniszewski, two of her children, Paula and John, and two neighbor youths, Coy Hubbard and Richard Hobbs, were charged and convicted of the crime. Her torture and murder were described by the prosecutor in Baniszewski's trial as "the most terrible crime ever committed in the state of Indiana."

Orissa--Religious Politics

2008-09-08T12:17:00.000-07:00

The chief minister of Orissa must step up to restore normality in the wake of the grim series of events in his state. What is happening there is quite frankly disgraceful. All communities must come together to strongly resist the grotesque decadence prevalent in Orissa; to save secular India from ravenous communal forces.

With the violence against Christians in Orissa creating widespread condemnation across the country, a prominent religious leader said on Friday that the attacks on the minority community were "very similar" to the 2002 Gujarat riots.

"The killing of Swami Laxmanananda is being used as an excuse to target minorities in Orissa like the Godhra incident was used in Gujarat to fan the communal cauldron," Swami Agnivesh, President, World Council of Arya Samaj, told reporters in New Delhi.

The killing should be properly investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) so that the real culprits are apprehended, he added.

"The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrag Dal are getting tacit support from the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) which is part of the ruling coalition in the state to instigate violence in the state," he alleged.

A fact-finding team of Swami Agnivesh, Shabnam Hashmi and Vimal Thorat recently visited the state to enquire about recent violence in Kandhamal.

"To some extend, the repeat 2002 Gujarat riots are taking place in Orissa. With the same preparedness and planning," claimed social activist Shabnam Hashmi.

"We heard reports there that the attackers had lists with them while targeting the victims," she alleged.

"It is very surprising that while we were not allowed to go into area, but were asked to wait till September fourth. VHP leader Pravin Togadia was allowed into the region with full police protection," Agnivesh said.

"What is more strange is that the Union Home Minister for State Sri Prakash Jaiswal was turned back as state refused to give him any security to the troubled area," he added.

source: NDTV

The BMW case--A Background

2008-08-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

Sanjeev Nanda, the main accused in the case (born 1978) is the grandson of an ex-Chief of Naval Staff-turned businessman from New Delhi who is the prime accused to have run over and killed six people, including three policemen, in a drunken state when he drove his BMW car at high speed through a police checkpoint. The incident occurred at 4:50 AM early morning of January 10, 1999. After running through the policemen, he allegedly stopped the car to check the damage, saw people under the car, and according to the prosecution, at this point co-passenger Manik Kapoor said: ‘‘Let’s go,’’ and they quickly drove away. The car was later cleaned up by servants at a friend's house.

Sanjeev Nanda's father, Lt. Commander Suresh Nanda (ex-Indian Navy), heads the arms supply firm Crown Corporation. His grandfather S.M. Nanda, was once India's Chief of Naval Staff; after retirement he joined the arms trading business. Sanjeev Nanda is a management graduate from INSEAD and Wharton.

Subsequently Sanjeev and five others were tried in a high profile court case that dragged on for many years. Ultimately the court did not find any of the witnesses reliable and the defense was able to make the case that it was perhaps a truck and not the BMW that had caused the deaths. All the accused were released, resulting in a sharp drop in public confidence in the legal system, since it was widely believed that the witnesses had been bought off.

Sunil Kulkarni is a witness that didn't turn hostile in a Delhi Additional sessions court. The case is continuing in Delhi at present.

The Joker--Why so serious? (a repost)

2008-08-21T11:53:00.000-07:00

The Joker is a fictional character and super villain that appears in the comic books published by DC Comics. Created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, with contributions by artist Jerry Robinson, the Joker is the archenemy of the superhero Batman and first appeared in Batman #1 (Spring 1940). The Joker is a master criminal with a clown-like appearance, including bleached white skin, red lips, and green hair. Initially portrayed as a violent sociopath who murders people and commits crimes 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 killer.

He 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.

In 2006, Wizard magazine rated Joker as the greatest villain of all time.

The Dark Knight Wallpapers

2008-08-21T11:41:00.000-07:00

A must see film!!!
More to come...

Disclaimer

2008-08-01T11:25:00.000-07:00

Most information/data on this site is the result of other information/data naturally available over the internet. If any of its Original Publishers recognizes his or her work and wishes to have it removed from this site, please feel free to contact us.

Capital Punishment--Error in Judgement

2008-08-01T11:08:00.000-07:00

Like other forms of punishment, application of the death penalty is subject to human fallibility. However, unlike other forms of punishment, the death penalty is irrevocable. These two factors make the outcome intolerable.

Former Supreme Court Chief Justice P N Bhagwati wrote: "The possibility of error in judgement cannot therefore be ruled out on any theoretical considerations. It is indeed a very live possibility and it is not at all unlikely that so long as [the] death penalty remains a constitutionally valid alternative, the court or the State acting through the instrumentality of the court may have on its conscience the blood of an innocent man".

Consider for example the case of Kehar Singh, who was executed for taking part in the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. It is now widely recognized that Kehar Singh's sentence was based on weak, circumstantial evidence. Today, even the judge who passed his sentence questions the accuracy of the judgement.

Capital Punishment under the Indian Penal Code--An Introduction

2008-08-01T11:03:00.000-07:00

The only method of Capital Punishment in India is death by hanging, a practice which violates the universally recognized right to be free from torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. In August 1983, the then-Attorney-General of India described hanging as the best method of execution based on the theory that the vascular, nervous and respiratory systems are extinguished in a single moment. However, experience shows that hanging can be a brutal and long ordeal. For example, Nathuram Godse, the man convicted of murdering Mahatma Gandhi, was suspended for fifteen minutes from the scaffold before finally dying.

Notably, Mahatma Gandhi would have likely opposed his killer's fate: "I cannot in all conscience agree to anyone being sent to the gallows. God alone can take life because he alone gives it".

Accused Father Released

2008-07-13T02:33:00.000-07:00

Rajesh Talwar, the father of Aarushi Talwar and the prime accused in her murder and the one of man servant Hemraj was granted bail yesterday. The premise being that the CBI had failed to gather any conclusive evidence against him. The investigation has now been diverted towards other leads, namely a group of other man servants.

The drama it seems never ceases in this "whodunnit" kind of mystery...watch this space for more.

Female Foeticide

2008-06-28T11:44:00.000-07:00

Female foeticide is undoubtedly the most heinous crime being committed in so called modern India today. The tragedy is that people of higher economic stature are the ones driving this demonic practice within the country. So much for well afforded education. It obviously hasn't done much to correct the perversions of the Indian mentality. It reeks of decadence; of cowardice. So much for Indian values and principles. A country with so many female deities slaughtering the very forms they worship. Talk about religious sacrilege.

The oh so hallowed state of Punjab makes a fine example. It has for a while now been conferred the undisputed title of having the lowest sex ratio in the country. In fact, a local newspaper article revealed a recent study carried out by a Canadian University where they estimate that there are now only 300 girls to every 1000 boys. Incidentally, Punjab is also allegedly one of the most economically prosperous states in India. We can certainly make our own quite obvious interpretations from these facts. Chaos is the only realistic aftermath that will sooner more than later erupt from such a state of bedlam.

The authorities all the while play silent spectator. They will of course occasionally hold seminars, conferences and other circus acts to discuss the issue but who the hell really cares. Let's just play pretend for a while and subsequently pass the buck right guys...

When millions of our Indian women are being mercilessly slaughtered; denied the right to existence; surely it amounts to some form of genocide. If only our law-makers and more importantly law-enforcers would see it that way. If only they would gather up the nerve to actually perform no more than there goddamn ed duties. No amounts of profanity can accurately define the animosity I feel for the culprits.

We now live in a country where girls are no longer wanted. Staunchly done away with. A little Q n A for all you self righteous cowardice reeking pathetic excuses for men--Who in the hell gave birth to you demonic minions?

Ghaziabad--The land of Lost Children

2008-06-08T00:10:00.000-07:00

The near idyllic scene of boisterous children playing on the streets, hides Ghaziabad's deepest tragedy and fear: of children vanishing mysteriously, never to return. Approximately 300 have gone missing from this Uttar Pradesh district's village since January 2007--and astonishingly one a day this year.

The police are characteristically dismissive.

In the absence of leads the parents' fearful imagination runs wild--perhaps it is a pornographic ring?Or cannibalism?Maybe an organ racket?Or perhaps they are kidnapped to have their blood extracted and sold?

Either way people in this region are ever apprehensive of the impending dangers aimed at their offspring.

Noida Developments

2008-06-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

The CBI or the Central Bureau of Investigation have stepped in and taken over proceedings in the case. This comes as the result of numerous lapses in the investigation carried out by the local police. Most recent being the dwelling on the alleged dubious character of Aarushi, the deceased girl. Hypocrisy, narrow minded, mentally disturbed, characteristically flawed, etc. are only a few of the words one can think of to describe the people of the hallowed police force. It is indeed difficult to fathom the perverted mindsets of our self righteous law enforcers. Talk about character assassination; and that to of a little adolescent girl who can no longer defend herself. The police should be ashamed. Period.

Noida Developments

2008-05-27T04:18:00.000-07:00

Rajesh Talwar, the main accused in the murder of his daughter and servant, has said that he never confessed to the murders as was earlier projected by the police.

The police's version of events revolves around a poor father-daughter relationship which eventually pen ultimated into murder. His bail plea based on failing health grounds has been rejected and he has been sent to a three-day police remand. Meanwhile, Nupur Talwar has publicly defended her husband proclaiming his innocence in the matter.

A fortnight has gone by with little or no insight into the core of the matter. The most relevant issues being motive, the weapon used and the people involved. Police competency is indeed being tested and the results are rather disappointing thus far. Enough time has passed for petty speculation to continue and a clearer picture should have been presented by now.

Noida Decadence

2008-05-24T10:38:00.000-07:00

The following is a sequence of events from that fateful night:

Dr and Mrs Talwar returned home just before 10 pm and had dinner with their daughter by 10:30 pm.
After dinner, a surprise gift for Aarushi from her parents, a camera arrived by courier.
After giving Aarushi the gift in her room, the Talwars went to their own room.
Mrs Talwar last saw their daughter when she went to their room at 11:15 pm to get some help with fixing the home Internet connection.
But from this point details become unclear as the parents remained in their room.
Police are not clear as to how and why Hemraj went to the terrace. Did he go there to collect clothes or was he called there?
At 6 am in the morning when Hemraj was not found at home, the Talwars called his mobile.
It rang but the call was cut. Police say they have identified the area to where the call was made.

Meanwhile, in a dramatic development on Friday May 23, Aarushi's father Rajesh Talwar was arrested as the prime accused behind the murder of his daughter and servant.

Noida Twin Homicide

2008-05-22T00:24:00.000-07:00

In a bid to lay hands on the real culprit of the mysterious twin-murder of Arushi (14) on May 15 and Hemraj (45), servant of her house, hours later; Noida police have taken the dentist parents of Arushi, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar to a secluded place for questioning. The contradicting and fluctuating statements given by Arushi's parents to police have brought them under the scanner.

The most intriguing part of the episode is the contradicting claims and revelations made by the NOIDA Police itself. Within no time after the killing of Arushi came to light, the police announced a cash reward for nabbing Hemraj, who was instantaneously projected as the main accused in the murder of the girl. Here, police did not even fulfil the basics of investigation. The police did not bother doing a routine search of Talwar's house. Nor did the police quiz the Talwar couple as to how they concluded that Hemraj was the culprit behind the murder.

Again, when the body of Hemraj was recovered, police threw up the name of Vishnu Thapa, the erstwhile servant of the Talwar family and a relative of Hemraj as the main accused. Subsequently, they arrested a person whose identity is yet to be established.

Jaipur Developments

2008-05-18T12:36:00.000-07:00

The police have released several sketches of possible suspects based on eye witness accounts. Meanwhile, the attack has been linked to a Bangladesh based group. Consequently, illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in the state of Rajasthan are in for a trying time as the local Government has vowed deportation.

Further, the tourism industry of the state has quite naturally taken a beating as most hotels and resorts in the state have reported below average occupancy in the days following the attacks. The Government will have to act fast to restore the image of the state in the wake of these attacks.

Terror at the Pink City

2008-05-14T01:35:00.000-07:00

Terror struck Jaipur (the Pink City) for the first time on Tuesday evening, May 13, as serial blasts killed at least 60 people and injured more than 150. Starting around 7.30 p.m. there were nine or 10 blasts within 15 minutes at six crowded places, including in the vicinity of two Hanuman temples, in the Walled City area.

Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria confirmed 60 dead and 150 injured though unofficial sources said the casualties could be higher.

Eyewitnesses said they could count 60 bodies in the overflowing mortuary of the City’s leading hospital, Sawai Man Singh. Some bodies were reportedly kept in the satellite hospital, Kanwatia, and a private hospital, Santokbha Durlabhji Memorial.

The blasts caused panic in the entire city while the authorities sealed off the Walled City. No traffic was allowed through its historic gates. The communication system also was jammed with mobiles not giving out signals.

Director-General Police A.S. Gill told this correspondent that forensic experts were still verifying the nature of the explosives. He did not confirm the use of RDX but said high intensity explosives were used in the bombs.

The blasts outside the temples targeted the devotees who gather in large numbers on Tuesdays. One temple is at Sanganeri Gate, while the other is at Chandpole.

The Chandpole blast was said to be of less intensity while the explosion on Maniharon ka Rasta near the victory tower, Sargasuli at Tripolia, was the most powerful.

The explosions at Bari Chauper near the world famous Hawa Mahal claimed at least three lives.

One of the bombs went off near a popular eating-place, Laxmi Mishtan Bhandar, in the crowded Johari Bazar area. Another exploded near the Kothwali police station at Choti Chauper. There are also reports that at least one live bomb was recovered near Chandpole.

Initial reports suggested that the terrorists used vehicles, including a car, cyclerickshaws and autorickshaws to plant the bombs, which were detonated with remote-controlled devices.

Incest Horror

2008-05-08T05:37:00.000-07:00

wretched father...

The Fritzl incest case came to light in late April 2008 when a 42-year-old Austrian woman, Elisabeth Fritzl, told police that she had been sexually abused, raped, and physically assaulted by her father, Josef Fritzl, since 1977 and had been imprisoned by him since 1984. Austrian police say her father kept her for 24 years in a small soundproofed cellar with four beds and a bathroom. It extended beneath the family house in a village near the town of Amstetten in Lower Austria. In that cellar, she gave birth to a total of seven children (including twins, one of whom died) all of whom had been fathered by Josef. Three of them had been imprisoned with their mother their whole lives when they were found—daughter Kerstin and sons Stefan and Felix, who were aged 19, 18, and 5, respectively. The other three (Lisa, Monika, and Alexander) were cared for by Josef and his wife Rosemarie, and lived in the house upstairs.

Delhi's Soaring Crime Stats

2008-05-03T00:01:00.000-07:00

Four murders that took place in Delhi on Thursday (May 1) are the latest in a series of crimes that have earned Delhi the dubious distinction as nation's crime capital.

Among the 35 major cities in India, Delhi tops the list of number of reported crime cases for five years in a row. Delhi leads in almost all violent crimes including murder, dowry deaths, rape, molestation and abduction.

According to official figures, Delhi witnessed 134 murders and 119 attempts on life during the first three months of the year. At least 20 murders were registered in the city in April. This is in addition to the number of cases that go unreported.

The annual crime statistics compiled by the Delhi police reveals that 467 murders, 499 attempted murders, 581 rapes and 1764 dacoities were registered in the city during 2007.There was a 200 percent increase in cyber crimes, including credit card frauds, in 2007.

Linked to this trend of crimes against women was an overwhelming sense of individualisation, manifested in a culture of non-intervention. Therefore, we have a society which is totally silent and non-interventionist. Why is it that in Delhi young girls in buses don't find any support when they are harassed? People get emboldened when they see such social silence around them.

There is almost a voyeuristic element in the passivity of the denizens of Delhi and it is here that the role of the Delhi Police becomes vital. University students feel that often the police themselves were found to be indulging in mild forms of ogling or eve-teasing or appeared completely non-serious about their responsibilities.

India--Capital Shame II

2008-04-26T00:45:00.000-07:00

The policeman accused of raping the twelve year old girl in a moving car in Delhi has confessed to the crime according to reports. He has also been sacked from the police force.

This however would not subdue angry mobs in the capital as they set the alleged vehicle--in which the incident had apparently taken place--on fire. The incident could prove to do more harm than good as vital evidence may have been destroyed in the inferno.

We shall have to wait and watch for further developments in the case.

India--Capital Shame

2008-04-24T23:40:00.000-07:00

A 12 year old girl has been raped in Delhi, bringing to light how unsafe women are in the Indian capital. What's more appalling is that of the two men accused of the rape, one is a traffic constable. A classic case of law keepers turning into law breakers.

The two men abducted the girl in the dead of the night and raped her in a moving car before dumping her off . A medical examination has confirmed the rape. Further, the victim's father has revealed he was offered money to hush up the matter by the police force.

It certainly looks very ominous for a country where even little girls are no longer safe from the decadence of men. Earlier, in the very same city Delhi a two and a half year old girl was raped by a rickshaw puller.

It seems God has indeed forsaken this land.

Goa Calling--Update

2008-04-15T03:46:00.000-07:00

Scarlett Keeling's body has been flown back to her native England. A medical examination conducted there has revealed that some vital organs are missing suggesting a possible cover up. Earlier in India, the Goan authorities had conducted two separate postmortems with conflicting results. This latest revelation by the English authorities have only added fire to the conspiracy claims by Scarlett's mother, Fiona.

Her lawyer in India will approach the Goan police for some much needed explanations.

Aruba Evanesce

2008-04-12T00:15:00.000-07:00

Natalee Ann Holloway (born October 21, 1986) disappeared on May 30, 2005 during a high school graduation trip in Aruba. An American student born in Clinton, Mississippi and most recently from Mountain Brook, Alabama, Holloway had graduated from Mountain Brook High School on May 24, just before the trip to Aruba. The disappearance generated a media sensation in the United States, Aruba, and the Netherlands.

Holloway failed to show up at the airport for her return flight, and her packed bags were found in her room. Holloway was last known to have been seen outside of Carlos'n Charlie's, a Oranjestad nightclub, with locals Joran van der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe, but the three men denied knowing what became of her. Van der Sloot was arrested twice on suspicion of involvement in her disappearance and the Kalpoes were arrested three times each, but each was released each time due to lack of evidence.

Aruban investigators conducted an extensive search of the island for Holloway, with the help of thousands of volunteers. FBI agents also participated in the search, as did fifty Dutch soldiers and specially equipped Dutch F-16s. Divers examined the ocean floor. The searches were without result, and Holloway remains officially missing to this day, although according to Aruban authorities she is most likely dead.

Throughout the search, Aruban investigators were criticized by Holloway's family for a perceived lack of progress. Holloway's family even called for a boycott of Aruba, which gained the support of Alabama Governor Bob Riley, but which failed to gain national backing. In addition to criticism of the investigation, many accused media outlets of using the story to boost ratings, and have pointed to the coverage as an example of missing white woman syndrome.

On December 18, 2007, Aruban prosecutors announced that the case would be closed without any charges brought against any of the then-suspects, whose status as such was thus ended under Aruban law.

According to a February 1, 2008, statement by the prosecutor's office, the case has been reopened.

American Gangster

2008-04-08T05:19:00.000-07:00

Frank Lucas (born September 9, 1930 in La Grange, North Carolina and raised in Greensboro, North Carolina) is a former heroin dealer, murderer, and organized crime boss in Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was particularly known for cutting out middlemen in the drug trade and buying heroin directly from his source in Southeast Asia. Frank Lucas is popularly known for smuggling heroin from Thailand using the coffins of dead American servicemen, a claim his South Asian associate, Leslie "Ike" Atkinson denies.

He is the subject of the 2007 film "American Gangster", starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.

Joker Wallpapers

2008-04-03T12:53:00.000-07:00

Hope you appreciate these Joker walls. The first one is dedicated to Heath Ledger. Leave a comment letting us know what you think.

The Joker--Why So Serious?

2008-03-29T11:09:00.000-07:00

In 2006, Wizard magazine rated Joker as the greatest villain of all time.

The Joker has been portrayed by various actors in other media. He was portrayed by Cesar Romero in the 1960s Batman television series; Jack Nicholson in the 1989 film Batman (Nicholson's version of the Joker ranks #45 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 50 film villains); and voice actor Mark Hamill in TV's Batman: The Animated Series.

The late Heath Ledger portrays the character for director Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight.

In memory of Scarlett...

2008-03-24T17:10:00.000-07:00

oh can't you see cruel world
the source of her hurt
the fuel to her flames
suffering, her suffering
explicit words, brutal advances
nasty stares, pornographic proposals
how her flesh has suffered
how time has left her scarred
and the ways of men nulled her soul
tears of joy escape her
memory holds no consolations
tears of shame, hurt and pain are all she knows
frozen at the curtains of her sight
she pleads for death..
a dramatic conclusion, an end, no more

Goa--The saga ensues

2008-03-24T16:49:00.000-07:00

The saga around Scarlett Keeling's rape and murder continues with reports of a possible CBI inquiry into the entire affair. This at the behest of Fiona Mckeown, Scarlett's mother. She has repeatedly voiced her distrust over the investigation conducted by the Goan police. Let us hope that this brings to light the truth behind the tragic death of the teenager.

Meanwhile, the Goan chief minister has briefed the Indian prime minister over the entire matter. The former is after all under immense pressure to ensure that justice be served; as the entire world is indeed watching.

Goa--Homicidal Drowning

2008-03-23T02:31:00.000-07:00

Scarlett Keeling, the British teenager found dead in Goa, was murdered by having her head held under the sea for up to 10 minutes, her mother’s lawyer has claimed.

Vikram Varma, who is acting for Fiona MacKeown, Scarlett's mother, cited a new postmortem report from Goa’s chief pathologist, which also revealed that the alcohol and drugs in her body were not sufficient to kill her.

The new report, prepared in Goa’s state capital Panjim by forensic scientist Dr Silvano Sapeco, is partly based on the results of a stomach analysis.

It said: “The findings in this case are consistent with exact (text book) picture for homicidal drowning in shallow water.”

The report also said cuts and bruises on the body showed she had fought against her killers.

The new claims directly contradict the police account of the events leading up to the death of Scarlett, 15.

Goa police initially tried to convince Ms MacKeown that her daughter’s death last month was due to accidental drowning.

After a vigorous campaign by Ms MacKeown, a second autopsy was ordered which confirmed her belief that Scarlett had been raped and murdered.

“The reports show that Scarlett fought back,” said Mr Varma. “It is also clear that her head was held under shallow water for five to 10 minutes.

"This is consistent with a forensic description of homicidal drowning. This shows that we have been lied to all along.”

Ms MacKeown said she had been "proved right" by the latest findings and accused the Goan police of a "cover-up".

"This is something I’ve been saying from the beginning," she said.

"I’ve said there’s been a cover-up from the start. I haven’t been contacted by the police once. I want the police brought to justice."

She reiterated her calls for a full independent investigation by the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation (ICBI) into the way the case has been handled.

Goa--Key witness steps up

2008-03-19T01:30:00.000-07:00

Michael Mannion, also known as Mike Masala, claimed that on the night Scarlett died he saw his friend Samson D’Souza with the teenager outside the beach bar where they had all spent the evening.

He also claims he had earlier warned Mr D’Souza to stay away from her as she was clearly a minor.

In a statement given to the murdered girl’s mother Fiona MacKeown and her lawyer, Mr Mannion, who had been staying with Mr D’Souza and his French wife Cecile, says Scarlett arrived at Lui’s bar on Anjuna beach at about 3am and was already inebriated and fell over on the steps outside.

He said she came over to talk to him and told him she was 15 years old and had no money for a taxi home.

Mr Mannion saw her leave the bar at about 5am with a man named Murli who he believed was giving her a lift home.

Five minutes later Mr Mannion noticed Mr D’Souza too had left.

When Mr Mannion went outside he allegedly saw Mr Murli driving away and Mr D’Souza with Scarlett.

The girl’s body was found by locals near to Lui’s bar at about 6.30am.

According to Mr Mannion, he left immediately because he was afraid to intervene.

“I was in a complete state of panic, shock. I got on my bike and rode off,” he said.

During the alleged assault, according to police, Miss Keeling began to lose consciousness. They suspect Mr D’Souza then tried to revive her by splashing water on her face.

When he saw a man with a torch approaching, he panicked and left her to die.

Asked for his reaction when he heard a young girl had been found dead, Mr Mannion said “Initially I said nothing, I did nothing. Then two of the people working in the shack were called in for questioning. I was told then by another local to stay away and not to say anything.”

Mr Mannion said he left Anjuna on the 23 February and had been travelling around India, scared for his life. Last week Indian authorities put its ports and airports on alert to stop Mr Mannion from leaving the country, saying he was crucial to their investigation, and gave assurances of his safety.

When Mr Mannion heard the police were anxious to talk to him, he approached the British High Commission in Mumbai but was told it could not interfere in Indian judicial proceedings.

He said he had now come forward after the police promised he would be safe.

“It is important for me to be here,” he said. “A 15 year old girl has been raped and murdered. Justice needs to be done.”

Goa--The Scarlett Diaries

2008-03-16T23:03:00.000-07:00

A tabloid in London has reported excerpts from Scarlett Keeling's Diary. Its reveals that Scarlett was living a hedonistic life of sex, drugs and alcohol in the days prior to her death.

In her final entry before leaving england in November she described a farewell party where she "got drunk stoned and was trippin' on mushies (hallucinogenic mushrooms)".

The entries, mostly undated, are written in a schoolbook. In her penultimate entry she wrote: "I want to go home".

She signed some of them with her nickname, Skaz. There are pages of childish drawings--a heart, two saxophones and unhappy cartoon faces, one of which has tears gushing from its eyes. The final page shows a stick figure hanging from the gallows. Underneath was the name, address and telephone number of Julio Lobo, her boyfriend.

According to her diary, Scarlett met Julio at a "full moon party" which would put their first meeting and first sexual encounter as early as November 24, just days after her arrival in India. Goa police have now hinted at arresting Julio Lobo, 21, under the Goa Children's Act.

Investigations so far have revealed that he played no role in her rape and murder. However, he could be booked for statutory rape as the IPC and the Goa Act considers consensual sex with a minor "rape".

Goa--Paradise Lost III

2008-03-14T09:55:00.000-07:00

Police in India have arrested and charged a man with the rape and murder of Scarlett Keeling, who was found dead on a beach in Goa. Placido Carvalho, who was arrested last night, is said to have been one of the men seen with the 15-year-old the night before she died.

He appeared in court in Mapusa today on charges of raping and murdering the Devon teenager, according to senior police official Bosco George.

In a statement, Mr Carvalho claimed he had seen Scarlett arriving at Lui's bar at about 3.30am on Feb 18 - the night she was killed - in a state of "total inebriation".At about 4.40am he says he saw her leave with a man named Murli and that they were followed five minutes later by Samson D'Souza.

Mr D'Souza, 28, was arrested earlier this week and detained on suspicion of the statutory rape of Scarlett.

A third suspect, who has not yet been identified, was apparently arrested earlier today according to Vikram Varma, a lawyer who is acting for Scarlett's mother Fiona MacKeown. But there has been no official confirmation of this.

Miss MacKeown has been critical of the police investigation which last night saw a senior police officer suspended for "serious lapses" in the case.

She has written to the Indian prime minister claiming that police attempted to cover up the crime as an accidental drowning.

Goan police only started to treat Scarlett's death as murder after a second post mortem, carried out following pressure from Miss MacKeown, showed her daughter was covered in bruises.

Detectives are also hoping to question Scarlett's boyfriend, Julio Lobo, a 25-year-old Goan tour guide with whom the teenager had been staying.

According to Mr Carvalho's statement, Michael Manyon, a British tourist also known as Masala Mike, was also present in the hours leading up to Scarlett's death.

Police issued a ports and airports alert for Mr Manyon yesterday.

Scarlett's mother and siblings were touring a neighbouring state when the teenager's half-naked body was found in the resort of Anjuna.

The 43-year-old, a mother of nine, from Bideford, Devon, said the police were not giving her any information.

Meanwhile Kishan Kumar, a senior police officer, has said Miss MacKeown could still be investigated for negligence because she left her daughter at the resort.

Goa--Paradise Lost II

2008-03-04T01:05:00.000-08:00

The mother of Scarlett keeling has urged a Briton who fled the Indian state to get in touch.

Fiona MacKeown believes that the man witnessed the rape of her daughter, Scarlett Keeling, 15.

He had apparently confided in another foreign resident of Goa, who then contacted her, but the man had since left in fear of his own life. “We urge him to come forward because this information could be vital to this case,” she said.

Her appeal came as the authorities in Goa agreed to allow a second post-mortem examination of Scarlett's body and to decide whether to open a criminal case within the next few days. Police also revealed that they had questioned an employee of a beach-front bar who they said was seen leaving the bar with Scarlett at about 4am on February 18, the last time she was seen alive.

The case has thrown a fresh spotlight on the issue of foreign women's safety in India after a series of sexual assaults on tourists, including several Britons, in the past three months. It also highlights the darker side of Goa, where palm-fringed beaches, a laid-back atmosphere and plentiful drugs have made it a favourite destination for young backpackers.

Scarlett had been staying with Julio, a 25-year-old local tour guide, while the rest of her family travelled in the state of Karnataka. The guide said he last saw Scarlett at 8.30pm on February 18 when he drove her to a restaurant to meet a Spanish friend called Ruby. Witnesses say that Scarlett and Ruby went out and returned drunk to the restaurant at 1am. Scarlett then left alone, they say.

Police said that Scarlett was seen arriving at Lui's, one of about two dozen beach “shacks” that line Anjuna beach, at about 4am, and leaving with one of the barmen soon afterwards. Locals found her half-naked body at about 6.30am close to the bar. Her shorts and underpants had been removed and her bra-top pushed up around her neck.

Police sources declined to say if either Lui, the owner, or Samson Da Souza, another employee, was the man seen leaving with Scarlett.

Goa--Paradise Lost

2008-03-04T00:40:00.000-08:00

Authorities in India are investigating whether a British girl, Scarlet Keeling could have been raped and killed in Goa last month(February) after the victim's parents demanded a more thorough look at the case.

Two weeks ago in February, police found the body of Scarlet Keeling, a 15-year-old British tourist, with bruises all over her body on a deserted Goa beach. Police initially said she had possibly drowned.

It is the latest case to highlight the safety of tourists in India. Tourism officials met this year to discuss attacks on tourists after at least seven foreign women and girls said they had been raped or molested.

Keeling's parents said Scarlet was raped and murdered and demanded immediate action, police said.

"We have recorded her death as an unnatural one and now trying to find out whether she was indeed raped and murdered," Bosco Jorge, a senior police officer probing the case, said from Goa.

An autopsy report has revealed her mouth was stuffed with sand and she did not have enough salt water in her lungs to suggest drowning, but police said it was too early to come to conclusions.

On Sunday, authorities in Goa said they had asked the police to look deeper into the case after Keeling's parents demanded a second autopsy.
"We are looking into this case very seriously," said J.P. Singh, the chief secretary of Goa state.

Tourist industry officials remain worried.

"If we can't protect our tourists, the word will spread and people will be scared to come to India," Sunil Kohli, chairman of the Travel Agents Federation of India said in New Delhi.

Engineering Terror

2008-03-01T08:17:00.000-08:00

Feb 21 2007, India: The Bangalore police arrest a suspected terrorist Mohammad Yahya Kammakutty, an electrical engineer in Bangalore, belonging to the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). He was suspected of being connected to the attacks on the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISC) , Bangalore. His three companions, however, managed to escape.

Yahya was arrested from the Gurranpannapalya area on Bannerghatta Road in the city by a team of Corps of Detectives (CoD) of Bangalore police on Thursday. He was arrested on the basis of information disclosed during the interrogation of a terrorist who was recently arrested in Uttar Pradesh.

The 32-year-old suspect is a native of a village near Kozhikode in Kerala and has worked with General Electric (GE) Software in the past.

According to the police he had been living in Banglaore for the last eight years and was unemployed for the past few months after the firm GE sacked him last year for his rather suspicious activities.

Mission Safer India

2008-02-21T01:16:00.000-08:00

Kiran Bedi, now retired, was India's first and highest ranked woman police officer. She has now launched a new website to cater to the needs of every man and woman in terms of seeking proper redressal of their complaints at the hands of the police in India.

This could prove remarkably groundbreaking in helping to counter the innumerable cases of police indifference towards the complaints of common citizens. One can only hope that enough people choose to equip themselves with this wonderful tool for it to become effective.

Please visit www.saferindia.com

And let us all hope that Ms.Kiran Bedi's initiative proves successful in helping to carve an indeed SAFER INDIA.

EDMUND KEMPER INTERVIEW

2008-01-10T00:33:00.000-08:00

An interview with Edmund Kemper can be found at http://www.truecrime.net/kemper/

The interview was conducted just a few hours after he, 24 at the time, was convicted on eight counts of first degree murder...

The Aftermath--Edmund Kemper

2008-01-10T00:19:00.000-08:00

Kemper worked a series of odd jobs before securing work with the State of California's Department of Public Works/Division of Highways in District 4 (now known as Department of Transportation or Caltrans). By that time, his height had reached 6 feet, 9 inches, and he weighed more than 300 pounds (136 kg).

Between May 1972 and February 1973, Kemper embarked on a spree of murders, picking up female students hitchhiking, taking them to isolated rural areas and killing them. He would stab, shoot or smother the victims and afterwards take the bodies back to his apartment where he would have sex with them and then dissect them. He would often dump the bodies in ravines or bury them in fields, although on one occasion he buried the severed head of a 15-year-old girl in his mother's garden as a kind of sick joke, later remarking that his mother "always wanted people to look up to her." He killed six college girls (including two students from UC Santa Cruz, where his mother worked, and one from Cabrillo College). He would often go hunting for victims after arguing with his mother.

In April 1973, Kemper battered his mother to death with a pick hammer while she slept. He decapitated her, raped her headless body and used her head as a dartboard, after putting her vocal cords in the garbage disposal, but the machine could not break the tough tissue down and regurgitated it back into the sink. "That seemed appropriate," Ed said after his arrest, "as much as she'd bitched and screamed and yelled at me over so many years." His murderous urges not yet satiated, he then invited his mother's best friend over and killed her too, by strangulation. He then drove eastward, but when no word of his crimes hit the radio airwaves he became discouraged, stopped the car, called the police and confessed to being the Co-ed Killer. He told them what he had done and waited for them to pick him up, seemingly unashamed as he confessed to necrophilia and cannibalism. At his trial he pleaded insanity, but he was found guilty of eight counts of murder. He asked for the death penalty, but with capital punishment suspended at that time, he instead received life imprisonment.

The Kemper Influence on Popular Culture...

2008-01-02T06:32:00.000-08:00

American death-grind metal band Macabre wrote a song about Edmund Kemper on their 1993 album Sinister Slaughter entitled "Edmund Kemper Had a Horrible Temper."

He was once quoted in an interview: "What do you think, now, when you see a pretty girl walking down the street?" and answering himself: "One side of me says, 'Wow, what an attractive chick. I'd like to talk to her, date her.' The other side of me says, 'I wonder how her head would look on a stick.'" In Bret Easton Ellis' book American Psycho, main character Patrick Bateman, himself a serial killer, paraphrases this quote when asked about women, although he mistakenly attributes it to Ed Gein.

The Kemper Influence on Popular Culture--The Berzerker

2008-01-02T06:20:00.000-08:00

The Berzerker's song "Forever" from the self titled album contains samples from Ed Kemper's testament, including "As I'm sitting there with a severed head in my hand, talking to it, or looking at it, and I'm about to go crazy, literally I'm about to go completely... Flywheel loose and just fall apart". It also contains samples such as "At the age of 24, he murdered his mother, then called police and confessed to having dismembered college co-eds for two years, as well as cannibalizing and raping their headless bodies" and "put her vocal cords in a garbage disposal, then threw darts at her severed head". These are all references to Kemper's murders...

A Mental Case--Edmund Kemper

2007-12-25T23:08:00.000-08:00

Kemper was committed to Atascadero State Hospital where he befriended his psychologist and even became his assistant. He was intelligent enough to gain the trust of the doctor to the extent of being allowed access to prisoners' tests. With the knowledge he gained from his "apprenticeship" he eventually was able to impress his doctor at the hospital enough to let him go. He was released into his mother's care in Santa Cruz, California, against the wishes of several doctors at the hospital. Kemper later demonstrated further to the psychologists that he was well—and not only managed to convince the doctors he was reformed, but to have his juvenile records sealed forever as well.

A killer at 15--Edmund Kemper

2007-12-15T09:12:00.000-08:00

Kemper was born in Burbank, California, to Clarnell Stage and Edmund Emil Kemper Jr. He was extremely intelligent with an IQ of 136, however, he displayed sociopathic behavior from a young age: he tortured and killed animals, acted out bizarre sexual rituals with his sisters' dolls and once said that, in order to kiss a teacher he had a crush on, he would have to kill her. He even described himself as a "walking time bomb". Worsening the situation was Kemper's mother, who constantly berated and humiliated her son and often made him sleep in a locked basement due to a fear that he would molest his sisters.

(pics above: his grandparents in their youth; they would later become Edmund Kemp's first victims)

On August 27, 1964, Kemper shot his grandmother while she sat at the kitchen table putting the finishing touches on her latest children's book. When his grandfather came home from grocery shopping, Kemper shot him as well. Then he called his mother, who urged him to call the police. When questioned, he said that he "just wanted to see what it felt like to kill Grandma", and that he killed his grandfather because he knew he would be angry at him for what he had done to his grandmother. Kemper was just 15 at the time.

Madness--The Edmund Kemper Story

2007-12-15T08:53:00.000-08:00

Edmund Emil Kemper III (born December 18, 1948), also known as The Co-ed Killer, is an American serial killer who was active in the early 1970s. He started his criminal life as a teenager by shooting both his grandparents while staying on their 17-acre ranch in North Fork, California, a crime for which he was incarcerated. Kemper later killed and dismembered six female hitchhikers in the Santa Cruz, California, area. He then murdered his mother and one of her friends before turning himself in to the authorities.

Scarface--Tony Montana--Background Info:

2007-11-21T03:39:00.000-08:00

Date of birth 1940 Havana, Cuba
Date of death November 8, 1983 (aged 43), Miami, Florida
Occupation Drug Lord
Family Sister (Gina Montana), Mother
Spouse(s) Elvira Hancock
Children None
Relatives He had an American father who took him to movies

Scarface--Antonia "Tony" Montana

2007-11-11T00:47:00.000-08:00

Antonio "Tony" Montana is a fictional character in the Brian DePalma film Scarface, portrayed by Al Pacino. Oliver Stone came up with the name by combining the last name of his then-favourite football player (Joe Montana) and the first name from the main character of the 1932 film Scarface: The Shame of a Nation, played by Paul Muni.

Rober Ford's Letter--Jesse James

2007-10-27T01:45:00.000-07:00

Jesse James' home in St.Joseph where he was shot and killed by Robert Ford

Ford's letter to Governor Thomas Crittenden giving his version of how he killed Jesse James (April, 1882)

"On the morning of April 3, Jess and I went downtown, as usual, before breakfast, for the papers. We got to the house about eight o'clock and sat down in the front room. Jess was sitting with his back to me, reading the St. Louis Republican. I picked up the Times, and the first thing I saw in big headlines was the story about Dick Liddil's surrender. Just then Mrs. James came in and said breakfast was ready. Beside me was a chair with a shawl on it, and as quick as a flash I lifted it and shoved the paper under. Jess couldn't have seen me, but he got up, walked over to the chair, picked up the shawl and threw it on the bed, and taking the paper, went out to the kitchen. I felt that the jig was up, but I followed and sat down at the table opposite Jess.

Mrs. James poured out the coffee and then sat down at one end of the table. Jesse spread the paper on the table in front of him and began to look over the headlines. All at once Jess said: "Hello, here. The surrender of Dick Liddil." And he looked across at me with a glare in his eyes.

"Young man, I thought you told me you didn't know that Dick Liddil had surrendered," he said.

I told him I didn't know it.

"'Well," he said, "it's very strange. He surrendered three weeks ago and you was right there in the neighborhood. It looks fishy."

He continued to glare at me, and I got up and went into the front room. In a minute I heard Jess push his chair back and walk to the door. He came in smiling, and said pleasantly: "Well, Bob, it's all right, anyway."

Instantly his real purpose flashed upon my mind. I knew I had not fooled him. He was too sharp for that. He knew at that moment as well as I did that I was there to betray him. But he was not going to kill me in the presence of his wife and children. He walked over to the bed, and deliberately unbuckled his belt, with four revolvers in it, and threw it on the bed. It was the first time in my life I had seen him without that belt on, and I knew that he threw it off to further quiet any suspicions I might have. He seemed to want to busy himself with something to make an impression on my mind that he had forgotten the incident at the breakfast table, and said: "That picture is awful dusty." There wasn't a speck of dust that I could see on the picture, but he stood a chair beneath it and then got upon it and began to dust the picture on the wall.

As he stood there, unarmed, with his back to me, it came to me suddenly, 'Now or never is your chance. If you don't get him now he'll get you tonight.' Without further thought or a moment's delay I pulled my revolver and leveled it as I sat. He heard the hammer click as I cocked it with my thumb and started to turn as I pulled the trigger. The ball struck him just behind the ear and he fell like a log, dead."

Assassination--Jesse James

2007-10-27T01:26:00.000-07:00

With his gang depleted by arrests, deaths, and defections, Jesse thought he had only two men left whom he could trust: brothers Bob and Charley Ford. Charley had been out on raids with Jesse before, but Bob was an eager new recruit. To better protect himself, Jesse asked the Ford brothers to move in with him and his family. Little did he know that Bob Ford had been conducting secret negotiations with Thomas T. Crittenden, the Missouri governor, to bring in Jesse James. Crittenden had made the capture of the James brothers his top priority; in his inaugural address he declared that no political motives could be allowed to keep them from justice. Barred by law from offering a sufficiently large reward, he had turned to the railroad and express corporations to put up a $10,000 bounty for each of them.

Robert Ford with the gun he used to kill Jesse James

On April 3, 1882, after eating breakfast, the Fords and James went into the living room. Before sitting down, James noticed a crooked picture on the wall and stood on a chair to straighten it. James was not wearing his guns and Bob Ford took advantage of the opportunity and shot James in the back of the head.

Robert Ford wired the governor to claim his reward. He then turned himself in to the law, but was dismayed to find he was charged with first degree murder. The Ford brothers were tried and convicted. They were sentenced to death by hanging, but within two hours were granted a full pardon by the Governor of Missouri. Ford then received a portion of the reward money.

Fall--Jesse James

2007-10-26T06:21:00.000-07:00

Jesse and his first cousin, Zerelda "Zee" Mimms (pic right) married on April 24, 1874, and had four children: Jesse James, Jr. (b. 1875), Gould James (b. 1878), Montgomery James (b. 1878), and Mary Susan James (b. 1879). Twins Gould and Montgomery died in infancy. His surviving son was raised by his mother to become a lawyer, and he spent his career as a respected member of the Kansas City, Missouri, bar.

On September 7, 1876, the James-Younger gang attempted their most daring raid to date, on the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota (pic left). Cole and Bob Younger later stated that they selected the bank because of its connection to two Union generals and Radical Republican politicians: Adelbert Ames, the governor of Mississippi during Reconstruction, and Benjamin Butler, Ames's father-in-law and the stern Union commander in occupied New Orleans. However, the gang had been casing other locations in the area, as well.

The robbery was thwarted when Assistant Cashier Joseph Lee Heywood, left in charge while the bank officers attended the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, refused to open the safe, falsely claiming that it was secured by a time lock even as they held a bowie knife to his throat and cracked his skull with a pistol butt. The vault was in fact unprotected at the time of the robbery, the inner door closed but unlocked. Meanwhile, the citizens of Northfield had taken notice of the robbery and were arriving with guns. Before leaving the bank, Jesse James shot the unarmed Heywood in the head. When the bandits exited the bank, they found the rest of their gang dead or wounded amid a hail of gunfire. Suspicious townsmen had confronted the bandits, ran to get their arms, and fired from under the cover of windows and the corners of buildings. The gang barely escaped, leaving two of their number and two unarmed townspeople (Heywood and a Swedish immigrant named Nicholas Gustafson) dead in Northfield. A massive manhunt ensued. The James brothers eventually split from the others and escaped to Missouri. The Youngers and one other bandit, Charlie Pitts, were soon discovered. A brisk gunfight left Pitts dead and the Youngers all prisoners. Except for Frank and Jesse James, the James-Younger Gang was destroyed.

Jesse and Frank went to the Nashville, Tennessee area, where they went by the names of Thomas Howard and B. J. Woodson, respectively. Frank seemed to settle down, but Jesse remained restless. He recruited a new gang in 1879 and returned to crime, holding up a train at Glendale, Missouri, on October 8, 1879. The robbery began a spree of crimes, including the hold-up of the federal paymaster of a canal project in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and two more train robberies. But the new gang did not consist of old, battle-hardened guerrillas; they soon turned against each other or were captured, while James grew paranoid, killing one gang member and frightening away another. The authorities grew suspicious, and by 1881 the brothers were forced to return to Missouri. In December, Jesse rented a house in Saint Joseph, Missouri, not far from where he had been born and raised. Frank, however, decided to move to safer territory, heading east to Virginia.

The Pinkertons--Jesse James

2007-10-26T05:21:00.000-07:00

Express companies turned to the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in 1874 to stop the James-Younger Gang. The Chicago-based agency worked primarily against urban professional criminals as well as targeting unions and breaking strikes. The former guerrillas, supported by many old Confederates in Missouri, proved to be too much for them. One agent (Joseph Whicher) was dispatched to infiltrate Zerelda Samuel's farm and turned up dead shortly afterward, with all but his hands eaten by the hogs that freely roamed the area. Two others, Louis J. Lull and John Boyle, were sent after the Youngers; Lull was killed by two of the Youngers in a roadside gunfight on March 17, 1874, though he killed John Younger before he died (an event depicted in the film The Long Riders (1980)). Allan Pinkerton, the agency's founder and leader, took on the case as a personal vendetta. Working with old Unionists around Jesse James's family's farm, he staged a raid on the homestead on the night of January 25, 1875. An incendiary device thrown inside by the detectives exploded, killing James's young half-brother and blowing off one of James's mother's arms. Afterward, Pinkerton denied that the raid's intent was to burn the house down.

However, a 1994 book written by Robert Dyer entitled Jesse James and the Civil War in Missouri (ISBN-13: 978-0826209597) contains the following:

"In early 1991, a Jesse James researcher named Ted Yeatman found an interesting letter among the papers of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The letter was written by Allan Pinkerton to a lawyer working for him in Liberty, Missouri, named Samuel Hardwicke. In the letter Pinkerton tells Hardwicke that when the men go to the James home to look for Jesse they should find some way to 'burn the house down.' He suggests they use some type of firebomb."

This letter illustrates just how far Pinkerton was willing to go in his vendetta against the James brothers, but the move backfired. The bloody fiasco did more than all of Edwards's columns to turn Jesse James into a sympathetic figure for much of the public. A bill that lavishly praised the James and Younger brothers and offered them amnesty was only narrowly defeated in the state legislature. Former Confederates, allowed to vote and hold office again, voted a limit on reward offers the governor could make for fugitives.

A Folk Hero is Born--Jesse James

2007-10-25T03:14:00.000-07:00

The robbery marked James' emergence as the most famous of the former guerrillas turned outlaw, and it started an alliance with John Newman Edwards, a Kansas City Times editor who was campaigning to return the old Confederates to power in Missouri. Edwards published Jesse's letters and made him into a symbol of Rebel defiance of Reconstruction through his elaborate editorials and supportive reporting. Jesse James' own role in creating his rising public profile is debated by historians and biographers, though politics certainly surrounded his outlaw career and enhanced his notoriety. However it is known that John Newman Edwards was a notorious liar and drunkard whose claims and writings were entirely false about Jesse's career as a guerrilla as well as Edwards' relationships with other guerrillas.

Meanwhile, the James brothers, along with Cole Younger and his brothers, Bob and Jim, Clell Miller and other former Confederates—now constituting the James-Younger Gang—continued a remarkable string of robberies from Iowa to Texas, and from Kansas to West Virginia. They robbed banks, stagecoaches and a fair in Kansas City, often in front of large crowds, even hamming it up for the bystanders. In 1873, they turned to train robbery, derailing the Rock Island train in Adair, Iowa. Their later train robberies had a lighter touch—in fact only twice in all of Jesse James's train hold-ups did he rob passengers, because he typically limited himself to the express safe in the baggage car. Such techniques fostered the Robin Hood image that Edwards was creating in his newspapers. Jesse James is thought to have shot 15 people during his bandit career.

Headlines for the First Time--Jesse James

2007-10-24T05:52:00.000-07:00

In 1868, Frank and Jesse James joined Cole Younger in robbing a bank at Russellville, Kentucky. Jesse did not become famous, however, until December 1869, when he and Frank (most likely) robbed the Daviess County Savings Association in Gallatin, Missouri. The robbery netted little, but James (it appears) shot and killed the cashier, mistakenly believing the man to be Samuel P. Cox, the militia officer who killed "Bloody Bill" Anderson during the Civil War. James's self-proclaimed attempt at revenge, and the daring escape he and Frank made through the middle of a posse shortly afterwards, put his name in the newspapers for the first time.

A First--Jesse James

2007-10-22T05:49:00.000-07:00

The end of the Civil War left Missouri in shambles. The pro-Union Republicans took control of the state government, keeping the Democrats from voting or holding public office. Jesse James was shot by Union militia when he attempted to surrender in Lexington, Missouri a few months after the war's end, leaving him badly wounded. His first cousin, Zerelda "Zee" Mimms (named after his mother), nursed him back to health, and he started a nine-year courtship with her. She eventually became his wife. Meanwhile, some of Jesse's old war comrades, led by Archie Clement, another of the bushwhacker leaders once allied with Quantrill, refused to return to a peaceful life. In 1866, this group conducted the first armed robbery of a US bank in post-Civil War times, holding up the Clay County Savings Association in the town of Liberty (pic top right). During this raid, Jesse deliberately shot a bystander student of William Jewell College (see Wellman, 1961). James claimed the reason he robbed the bank was to get back the deed to his land. The gang robbed the Alexander Mitchell Bank in Lexington shortly thereafter, and staged several more robberies over the next few years, though state authorities (and local lynch mobs) had decimated the ranks of the older bushwhackers.

The Begining...--Jesse James

2007-10-12T00:12:00.000-07:00

Jesse Woodson James was born on September 5, 1847 in Clay County Missouri, near the site of present day Kearney. As an adult Jesse was of medium height, of slender but solid build, with a bearded, narrow face, and prominent blue eyes. Until his later years, when he became abnormally suspicious and moody, he was good-natured and jocular, though quick-tempered. He always justified his criminal activities by the claim that he had been driven into it by persecution.

His father, Robert James was a farmer and Baptist minister from Kentucky who helped found William Jewel College in Liberty, Missouri. Robert James traveled to California to prospect for gold and died there when Jesse was three years old. After his father's death, his mother Zerelda (pic left) remarried, first to Benjamin Simms, and then to a doctor named Reuben Samuel. After their marriage in 1855, Samuel moved into the James home.

In the tumultuous years leading up to the American Civil War, Zerelda and Reuben acquired a total of seven slaves and had them grow tobacco on their well-appointed farm. In addition to Jesse's older brother, Alexander Franklin "Frank" James and younger sister Susan Lavenia James, Jesse had four half-siblings: Sarah Louisa Samuel (sometimes Sarah Ellen), John Thomas Samuel, Fannie Quantrill Samuel, and Archie Peyton Samuel. Sarah married a man named John C. Harmon.

The James farm was supposedly visited in 1863 by Federal troops looking for information regarding Confederate guerrilla groups. James claimed the soldiers beat him and hanged his stepfather (who survived). Shortly after that, in 1864, Jesse joined a guerrilla unit led by Bloody Bill Anderson, who led the Centralia Massacre. Jesse joined at about the same time Anderson's group split from Quantrill's Raiders, so there is some uncertainty regarding whether Jesse James ever served under Quantrill.

Who was Jesse James?

2007-10-05T05:21:00.000-07:00

Of Jesse Woodson James, crime historian Jay Robert Nash asserts, "Millions of words would be written about this handsome, dashing and utterly ruthless bank and train robber. To many of his peers, he would appear a folklore hero who took vengeance in their name upon an industrial society that was grinding the old agrarian lifestyle to ashes. To others, Jesse James and his band represented the last vestiges of the Old South and its lost cause of secession...He was at large for sixteen years. He committed dozens of daring robberies and killed at least a half-dozen or more men. He died at the age of thirty-four."

Every century brings its heroes and its villains. Every now and then, however, a character lurches forth with a combination of the two; maybe because the world doesn't know whether to love or hate him or her, he or she becomes a milestone in the study of complex mankind. Nitty, gritty, but with the spirit of a conquering warrior. In short, a legend is born.

Such is the legend of Jesse James...

The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford--More Wallpapers

2007-10-04T03:51:00.000-07:00

The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford--Wallpapers

2007-10-04T03:10:00.000-07:00

Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford trl 2

2007-10-04T00:45:00.001-07:00

The Assassination of Jesse James (Trailer)

2007-10-04T00:37:00.001-07:00

Belligerent till the end 3--The Carl Panzram Story

2007-09-29T06:44:00.000-07:00

On the cold and dusty morning of Friday, September 5, 1930, Panzram was taken from his cell for the last time at 5:55 a.m. and escorted to the gallows. A handful of newspapermen and a dozen guards acted as witnesses.

“Here they come!” yelled someone in the crowd.

Carl’s demeanor was rebellious as always. He cursed his own mother for bringing him into this world and the “whole damned human race!” Escorted by two U.S. Marshals, he walked briskly to the wooden scaffold “with teeth clenched, defiantly facing the crowd of officials, newspaper men and guards gathered in the enclosure.” He climbed the 13 steps to the platform and stood erect as the Marshals attempted to place a black hood over his head.

Before they completed their task, Panzram spat in the executioner’s face and snarled: “Hurry up you bastard, I could kill 10 men while you’re fooling around!” After the hood was secured, the Marshals stepped back without delay, and at exactly 6:03 a.m. the trap doors sprung open with a crash. Carl dropped five and a half feet down. His large body jerked repeatedly and swung from side to side in the sudden silence. He was pronounced dead by Dr.Justin K. Fuller at 6:18 a.m.

After Panzram was removed from the gallows, an autopsy was performed at the prison hospital. His body remained unclaimed and later that same day, he was carted over to the prison cemetery in a wheelbarrow. The only identification on his tombstone is the number “31614”.

Belligerent till the end 2--The Carl Panzram Story

2007-09-29T06:36:00.000-07:00

For Carl, the death sentence was a relief and he resisted all attempts to have a stay of execution. “I look forward to a seat in the electric chair or dance at the end of a rope just like some folks do for their wedding night,” he said.

Even during the 1930s, there were several national organizations who strenuously objected to the death penalty on moral and ethical grounds. One of these groups, called the Society for the Abolishment of Capital Punishment petitioned the governor’s office for a pardon or a commutation of sentence, a fact that infuriated Panzram.

On May 23, he wrote to the society and said: “The only thanks you and your kind will ever get from me for your efforts on my behalf is that I wish you all had one neck and that I had my hands on it… I have no desire whatever to reform myself. My only desire is to reform people who try to reform me, and I believe that the only way to reform people is to kill ‘em!”

On May 30, Panzram wrote another letter to President Herbert Hoover expressing his concerns over a possible change in sentencing. He said that he was “perfectly satisfied with my trial and the sentence. I do not want another trial…I absolutely refuse to accept either a pardon or a commutation should either or the other be offered to me.”

Belligerent till the end--The Carl Panzram Story

2007-09-29T06:15:00.000-07:00

By the time his trial began, Carl Panzram's story had already appeared in dozens of newspapers, including the Topeka Times, The Boston Globe and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

When the trial began on April 14, 1930, for Warnke’s murder, Panzram was defiant and uncooperative. He limped into the courtroom at 9:30 a.m. His awkward gait was the life-long reminder of his “medical treatment” years before in the dungeons of Dannemora.

“Have you an attorney?” asked Judge Hopkins on the morning of opening testimony.

“No, and I don’t want one!” answered Panzram. Hopkins went on to advise the defendant that he had a constitutional right to representation and should use the services of an attorney, who would be appointed to him for free. Carl replied by cursing the judge loudly. When asked for a plea, he stood and sneered at the court.

“I plead not guilty! Now you go ahead and prove me guilty, understand?” he said. The prosecutor called a parade of witnesses . Appearing were Warden T.B. White, who also brought the murder weapon to court, five Leavenworth guards and 10 prisoners. Several prisoners testified they saw Panzram smash the skull of his helpless victim with an iron bar repeatedly while Warnke lay unconscious on the prison floor. Throughout the testimony, Panzram sat in his chair smiling at the witnesses. The jury took just 45 minutes to arrive at a verdict. To the surprise of no one, Panzram was found guilty of murder with no recommendation for mercy.

Hopkins remanded him back to Leavenworth until “the fifth day of September, nineteen thirty, when between the hours of six to nine o’clock in the morning you shall be taken to some suitable place within the confines of the penitentiary and hanged by the neck until dead.” Carl seemed relieved, almost happy. A huge grin came across his face as he slowly rose up from his chair.

“I certainly want to thank you, judge, just let me get my fingers around your neck for 60 seconds and you’ll never sit on another bench as judge!” he said to a shocked audience.

Panzram stood erect, his shirt unbuttoned from the collar down, partially exposing the massive tattoo on his broad chest, his powerful arms strained against the iron handcuffs as his face contorted into a twisted sneer. U. S. Marshals surrounded Panzram, while he cursed the jury, and dragged him out of the courtroom. When the jury filed out of the box, they could hear his maniacal laughter reverberating off the sterile walls.

IF--The Carl Panzram Story

2007-09-29T06:06:00.000-07:00

When he arrived at Leavenworth, he figured he would be beaten and abused anyway so he decided that he wouldn’t be beaten for nothing. He immediately tried to escape and was caught. He became hostile and uncooperative to the guards. However, this time, there were no beatings. “No one lays a hand on me. No one abuses me in any way…I have been trying to figure it out and I have come to the conclusion that, if in the beginning I had been treated as I am now, then there wouldn’t have been quite so many people…that have been robbed, raped and killed,” he wrote.

Backlash 2--The Carl Panzram Story

2007-09-29T01:18:00.000-07:00

On June 20, 1929, Carl was working in the laundry at his usual detail. Leaning against the door was a four-foot long iron bar used as a support for the wooden transport crates. Without a word, he picked up the heavy bar and approached Warnke, who was preparing paperwork. Panzram raised the bar high over his broad shoulders and brought it down squarely on the man’s head. Warnke’s skull broke instantly. “Here’s another one for you, you son of a bitch!” he screamed. As the victim fell to the ground, Panzram smashed the bar continuously on the man’s head sending blood and bone matter all over the room. There were other inmates in the laundry that day, and they stood back and watched in horror as Panzram beat Warnke. The men tried to escape, but Panzram decided that since he killed one man, he should kill the others as well. He attacked one of the inmates in the corner of the room and managed to break the man’s arm before he could run away. The other inmates tried desperately to get out of the room but the doors were locked. All the men began to scream for help as Panzram chased them around the room, shouting, cursing, swinging the huge iron bar, smashing bones, desks, lights, breaking up the furniture into pieces and sending the terrified inmates crawling up the walls to get away from the raging madman.

A general alarm sounded in the prison and dozens of guards armed with submachine guns and high-powered rifles came running to the laundry. The guards looked through the bars into the room and saw the maniacal Carl Panzram, holding the 20-pound steel bar like a baseball bat, his clothes shredded and covered from head to toe with fresh blood.

“I just killed Warnke,” he said to the guards calmly. “Let me in!” They refused until he dropped the bar. “Oh,” he said oddly, “I guess this is my lucky day!” The bar fell noisily to the ground and the guards carefully opened the door. Panzram walked quietly to his cell without saying a word and sat down on his bunk.

Backlash--The Carl Panzram Story

2007-09-29T01:14:00.000-07:00

Carl was assigned to the laundry room where he could work all day alone, sorting and washing inmate clothes. There he could withdraw into himself and have little contact with humans. His supervisor was Robert Warnke, a small, balding man who was notorious for writing up prisoners for minor infractions. Transgressions against the rules were a serious matter at Leavenworth. Punishment included solitary, revocation of concession and library privileges and sometimes torture. Warnke, a civilian employee, and therefore not under the same pressures as the inmates, used his supervisory position to wield power.

From the beginning, Carl had trouble with Warnke. On several occasions, Panzram was written up for infractions, which caused him to be sent to solitary for a time. When he was finally released from the hole, Panzram told other prisoners to stay away from Warnke because he was going to die soon...

Contentious 2--The Carl Panzram Story

2007-09-29T00:46:00.000-07:00

On the day he arrived at Leavenworth, February 1, 1929, Panzram was brought in to see Warden T. B. White. Bound in chains, his bulging muscles apparent even under his prison shirt, Panzram was still an impressive physical specimen. He had a brooding presence; an aura of evil that warned people to stay away from him.

When the warden finished reading him the rules of the institution, Carl looked him squarely in the eye and said, “I’ll kill the first man that bothers me.”

Panzram was considered too psychotic to mix with the general prison population. In a letter to the warden dated March 26, 1929, he asked for a different work detail and wrote: “I want that job because I am doing a long time and I am an old crank and I want to be by myself. I am a cripple and the job I have now I don’t like, standing on my broken ankles bothers me. I am very truly, Carl Panzram #31614”.

Contentious--The Carl Panzram Story

2007-09-29T00:29:00.000-07:00

His trial for the burglary and house breaking charges opened on November 12, 1928. Carl foolishly acted as his own attorney and frequently terrified the nine-man, three-female jury with his unpredictable, combative behavior. When a witness, Joseph Czerwinksi of Baltimore testified against him, Panzram rose to ask a question.

“Do you know me?” he said as he moved to within inches of the man’s face. “Take a good look at me!” he whispered. As the frightened witness looked into those steel gray eyes, Carl dragged his fingers across his neck giving the sign of a slit throat. The message was clear: “This is what will happen to you!”

At the end of the trial, Panzram took the stand and not only admitted to the burglary but told the court that he intentionally remained in the house for several hours hoping the owners would come home so he could kill them. On November 12, 1928, he was found guilty on all counts. Judge McCoy sentenced him to 15 years on the first count and 10 years on the second to run consecutively.Carl would have to serve 25 years back at the Federal Prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. When he heard the sentence, Panzram’s face broke into a wide, evil grin.

“Visit me!” he said to the judge.

Accountability--The Carl Panzram Story

2007-09-27T06:14:00.000-07:00

On October 29, an arrest warrant for Carl arrived at the D.C. jail. It was a murder indictment (pic left) from Philadelphia charging Panzram “with homicide on an Alexander Uszacke, by strangling and choking on July 26, 1928, at Point House Road.”

Salem Police Department in the State of Massachusetts also learned about Panzram’s arrest and his extensive confession. During his stay at the Washington, D.C., jail, Salem police brought the two witnesses from the George Henry McMahon killing in 1922 to look at Panzram. Both witnesses positively identified Panzram as the person they saw on the night 12-year-old McMahon was killed. Oregon State Penitentiary contacted Washington police and asked that Panzram be held as an escapee who still owed 14 years on his original sentence at their prison.

By early 1929, Panzram must have finally realized that he would never get out of jail this time. He wrote a letter to District Attorney Clark in Salem, Massachusetts, about the McMahon killing. In this shocking letter Panzram repeated his admissions regarding the murder: “I made a full confession of this murder of McMahon…You sent a number of witnesses from Salem to identify me, which they done. I do not change my former confession in any way. I committed that murder. I alone am guilty… I not only committed that murder but 21 besides and I assure you here and now that if I ever get free and have the opportunity I shall sure knock off another 22!”

An Interlude--Belligerent F***ers

2007-09-27T03:08:00.000-07:00

soft caress a manic angel
lust struck hate struck
crouches against the wall
that velvet fever
the familiar, she is sick
she is dormant
lying in a pool of discharge
her fluid interior escapes again
her lurid lips--torn, battered
tales of monstrous lust
belligerent f***ers
wandering, stumbling, thrusting
knifing inside her
belligerent f***ers
exploding inside her
left her broken, bleeding
raped her flesh
charred her soul...
crouched against a wall
a solitary tear escapes
our manic angel
it is all she will allow,
this godforsaken world!

The Confession--The Carl Panzram Story

2007-09-26T05:56:00.000-07:00

From the time he was sent to the Minnesota State Training School at Red Wing in 1903 until the time he arrived at the Washington, D.C., jail, there were thousands of crimes, dozens of murders and a life spent in single-minded pursuit of destruction.

“All my associates, all of my surroundings, the atmosphere of deceit, treachery, brutality, degeneracy, hypocrisy, and everything that is bad and nothing that is good. Why am I what I am? I’ll tell you why. I did not make myself what I am. Others had the making of me.”

In this extraordinary 20,000-word confession, to which renowned psychologist Dr. Karl Menninger commented “No one can read this manuscript in its entirety without an emotional thrill.” Panzram gave details of his murders, which were later confirmed with local authorities. He supplied dates, times and the places where the crimes occurred as well as his arrest history, which was extensive. Of course, during the period 1900-1930, communications between law enforcement agencies were not as sophisticated as they are today. Criminals were frequently able to avoid arrest warrants by simply changing names and keeping their mouths shut. Carl learned this trick early in his career and was arrested under several names including, Jefferson Baldwin (1915), Jeffrey Rhodes (1919), John King (1920) and John O’Leary (1923).

Carl Panzram had some opinions on the criminal justice system and the power of society over the individual. “All of your police, judges, lawyers, wardens, doctors, National Crime Commissions and writers have combined to find out and remedy the cause and effect of crime,” he said. “With all this knowledge and power at their command, they have accomplished nothing except to make conditions worse instead of better.”

He blamed crime on society, which he said perpetuates itself by producing more criminals. “I am 36 years old and have been a criminal all my life,” he wrote, “I have 11 felony convictions against me. I have served 20 years of my life in jails, reform schools and prisons. I know why I am a criminal.” He laid the blame for his violent life on those who tortured and punished him. “Might makes right” was the only rule he ever learned and he carried that belief with him wherever he went. “In my lifetime I have broken every law that was ever made by both man and God,” he said, “If either had made any more, I should very cheerfully have broken them also.”

In page after page, Panzram described his odyssey of killing and rape, which spanned several continents. For none of it was he ever sorry. Panzram was never inhibited by feelings of guilt or remorse. He saw crime and violence as a way of getting back at the world. It didn’t matter that the people he victimized had not caused his own pain. Someone, anyone, had to pay...

Belligerent Monster 2--The Carl Panzram Story

2007-09-26T04:33:00.000-07:00

On the night of August 9, 1923, as he searched the New London area for a mugging victim, Panzram saw a young boy begging for money. He pulled a knife on the terrified youth and dragged him into the nearby woods. Panzram sodomized the boy as he put the blade to his throat.

“This boy’s name I don’t know but he was a Jew and he told me that his home was in Brooklyn, New York,” Panzram said, “where his uncle was a policeman at that time.” He held the youth prisoner while he taunted him with the knife. As the child pleaded and sobbed for mercy, he sodomized the boy again. Panzram later wrote that of all his murders, he enjoyed this one the most. Then he took the belt from the victim’s pants and strangled him with his powerful arms.

“I committed a little more sodomy on him also,” he later wrote. “On the right hand side of that road I left the body of the murdered boy with his own belt still tied around his neck.” He then tossed the body into the bushes and walked back out onto the street.
The boy, who has never been conclusively identified, lay in the bushes undiscovered for two days. On August 11, a local resident walking to work noticed torn clothing lying in the grass just off the road. When he investigated, he found the corpse of the boy, already decomposing and partially destroyed by animals.

On October 6, 1928, Panzram confessed to this murder and wrote a letter to the chief of police of New London, Connecticut, in which he wrote, “If there is anything more that you want to know about this case that I can tell you, I will.” At the bottom of this letter, Panzram apologized for lack of detail about some of his murders. “I have killed a number of people in different places and some of the facts escape my memory,” he explained.

Belligerent Monster--The Carl Panzram Story

2007-09-26T04:12:00.000-07:00

After he was released from Leavenworth in 1910, Panzram had nowhere to go. Though he was only 19, he had already spent a substantial portion of his young life in reform schools and prison. At Leavenworth, any semblance of hope that he may have had to grow into a mature, productive adult citizen was effectively destroyed. Years of abuse and physical torture had taken their toll. There was no family who cared about him, no real home and no prospects for the future. He had probably never known a woman’s touch in his life to that point and never evolved as a man in natural way. “All that I had on mind at that time was a strong determination to raise plenty of hell with anyone and everybody in every way I could,” he said. The years that followed saw Carl drift across the U.S. raising hell wherever he went. He was arrested several times under various aliases.

The different names he used were enough to cover up his tracks as law and enforcement wasn't as efficient and organized in those days. “I burned down old barns, sheds, fences, snow sheds or anything I could, and when I couldn’t burn anything else I would set fire to the grass on the prairies, or the woods, anything and everything.” When he burglarized homes, he looked for guns first. “I would spend all my spare change on bullets. I would take potshots at farmers’ houses, at the windows. If I saw cows or horses in the fields, I would cut loose at them. I burned down old barns, sheds, fences, snow sheds or anything I could, and when I couldn’t burn anything else I would set fire to the grass on the prairies, or the woods, anything and everything.” When he burglarized homes, he looked for guns first. “I would spend all my spare change on bullets. I would take potshots at farmers’ houses, at the windows. If I saw cows or horses in the fields, I would cut loose at them,” he wrote. He raped without mercy, rarely passing up an opportunity to take on a new victim. “Whenever I met one that wasn’t too rusty looking I would make him raise his hands and drop his pants. I wasn’t very particular either. I rode them old and young, tall and short, white and black. It made no difference to me at all except that they were human beings,” he said years later.

Tempered by years of drinking, beatings, imprisonment and living on the road like an animal, Panzram evolved into a hardened criminal. He was also physically big, square shouldered and muscular. His dark hair and good looks attracted women, but Panzram never displayed any interest in the opposite sex. And his eyes had a strange, sullen appearance that unnerved people, made them wonder what was behind that cold, barren stare.

Leavenworth--The Carl Panzram Story

2007-09-26T03:30:00.000-07:00

In May 1908, his hands shackled and leg irons firmly attached, Panzram entered into the gloomy confines of Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary for the first time. Prison authorities did not know that he was just 16 years old, so he was treated like any other man. Prisoners had to stand in formation every morning regardless of weather. Guards invoked a regimen of strict discipline and mandatory obedience. Like many other institutions of its day, a strict code of silence was enforced and if an inmate was caught speaking out of turn, he was whipped and thrown into solitary. This code of silence maintained by a legion of penology reformers for decades, was a powerful tool of control used by the nation’s prisons during that era. Any infraction was punished without delay. Guards thought nothing of torturing prisoners since it was the only way they could think of to keep control. A convict could not remain unpunished for breaking the rules. To do so would encourage more violations and ultimately, anarchy. Prisoners and guards lived under a fragile pact of restraint and fear. Every guard knew that, if a revolt occurred, they had little chance of getting out alive.

Carl suffered numerous beatings and soon became desperate to break out. “I wasn’t there long before I tried to escape but luck was against me,” he said. Instead, he decided to burn down one of the prison workshops, causing more than $100,000 worth of damage. Though he was never charged with this crime, Panzram was constantly in trouble for breaking a multitude of other prison rules.
Panzram was chained to a 50-pound metal ball. He had to carry the weight no matter where he went, even when he slept at night. He was assigned to break rocks in a quarry, which he did for 10 hours a day seven days a week. But he grew strong and muscular all the while, planning for the time when he would get out. Day by day, he grew bitter and angry, consumed by vengeance, waiting for the day when he would roam free again.

“I was discharged from that prison in 1910. I was the spirit of meanness personified…Well, I was a pretty rotten egg before I went there,” he wrote years later, “but when I left there, all the good that may have been in me had been kicked and beaten out of me.” He was released in August that year convinced he would never see Leavenworth and its hated walls again. But he was wrong. Twenty years later, he would be confined at Leavenworth again. But this time on death row.

Uncle Sam--The Carl Panzram Story

2007-09-26T03:03:00.000-07:00

In December 1907, Panzram arrived in the city of Helena, Montana, a town where there was little law enforcement and people still wore pistols on their belts. One night in a local tavern, Carl was drinking alone at the bar and heard a speech given by a local Army recruiter.
Later that same night, he lied about his age and enlisted in the U.S. Army. Panzram left for boot camp, which at that time was held in Fort William Henry Harrison, a distant post in western Montana. He was assigned as a private to Company A in the 6th Infantry. On his first day in uniform, Panzram was brought up on charges of insubordination for refusing a work detail. Over the next month, he was jailed several times for various petty offenses. Constantly drunk and impossible to control, Panzram was unable to conform to military discipline.

In April 1908, he broke into the quartermaster’s building and stole a quantity of clothes worth $88.24. As he attempted to get away with the stolen items, he was arrested by the military police and thrown in the stockade. He received a general court martial on April 20, 1908, before a military tribunal of nine junior and senior officers who had no tolerance for criminal activity from men in uniform. Panzram pleaded guilty to three counts of larceny. According to court transcripts, he was sentenced “to be dishonorably discharged from the service of the United States, forfeiting all pay and allowances due him, and to be confined at hard labor at such place as the reviewing authority may direct for three years.”

Federal prisoners at that time typically were sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Future President William Howard Taft (pic right) who, at that time, was the Secretary of War, approved the prison sentence. It would not be the last time their paths crossed.

A Troubled Teen--The Carl Panzram Story

2007-09-26T02:49:00.000-07:00

A short time later, Panzram got locked up in Butte, Montana, for burglary and received a sentence of one year in the Montana State Reform School at Miles City.

In the spring of 1906 Carl Panzram, age 14, arrived at the reform institution. He had the body of a man and weighed nearly 180 pounds. In a few weeks, he developed a reputation as a born criminal and the prison staff paid special attention to the defiant teenager. One guard made it his business to make life miserable for Panzram. “He kept on nagging at me until finally I decided to murder him,” he later wrote. He found a heavy wood plank outside one of the workshops and, one night when the guard turned his back, Panzram bludgeoned the man over the top of his head.

“For this I got several beatings and was locked up and watched closer than before,” he said years later.

In 1907, Panzram and another inmate, Jimmie Benson, escaped from the Montana State Reform School. They managed to steal several handguns in a nearby town and headed toward the town of Terry. “I stayed with him for about a month, hoboing our way east, stealing and burning everything we could,” said Carl. They traveled along the road to the state line, passing through the towns of Glendive, Crane and Sidney, robbing people and homes along the way. When they finally arrived in western Minnesota, they were armed with two handguns each and hundreds of dollars in stolen money. They decided to split up in the city of Fargo and go their separate ways.

Nature and Nurture 2--The Carl Panzram Story

2007-09-25T05:34:00.000-07:00

On his return from Minnesota State Training School Carl had changed forever. Never an outgoing child even at home, he became more withdrawn, quiet and brooding. But his mother had too many other things to worry about. One of Carl’s brothers had recently died in a drowning accident and her health was fragile. She had no time for a rebellious child who had a habit of getting into trouble. Even at this early age, he felt deep resentment toward his mother.
“Mother was too dumb to know anything good to teach me,” he said years later, “there was little love lost. I first liked her and respected her. My feelings gradually turned from that to distrust, dislike, disgust and from there it was very simple for my feelings to turn to into positive hatred towards her.”

He knew nothing else in his brief life except suffering, beatings and torture. His youthful mind dwelt on things most children his age knew little of. “I fully decided when I left there just how I would live my life. I made up my mind that I would rob, burn, destroy and kill everywhere I went and everybody I could as long as I lived, “ he wrote years later. By the age of 14, Carl was relegated to working the fields on his mother’s farm. Envisioning a dismal future of backbreaking labour with no reward, he convinced his mother to send him to another school. There, he soon became involved in a dispute with a teacher who beat him on several occasions with a whip. Carl managed to get a handgun and brought it to school so he could kill the teacher in front of the class. But the plot failed when, during a hand-to-hand struggle, the weapon fell out of his pants and onto the floor of the classroom. He was thrown out of school and returned to the farm. Two weeks later, he hopped a freight train and left the Minnesota farm forever.

Shortly after, Carl rode a freight train heading west out of Montana. He came upon four men who were camping in a lumber car. They said they could buy him nice clothes and give him a warm place to sleep. “But first they wanted me to do a little something for them,” Panzram wrote years later. He was gang-raped by all four men. “I cried, begged and pleaded for mercy, pity and sympathy, but nothing I could say or do could sway them from their purpose!”

He escaped with his life but the incident may have destroyed whatever feelings of compassion he had left.

Nature and Nurture 1--The Carl Panzram Story

2007-09-24T05:10:00.000-07:00

“His brains were coming out of his ears when I left him. I am not sorry. My conscious doesn’t bother me. I sleep sound and have sweet dreams.”recalled Carl Panzram after the brutal rape and murder of a 12 year old boy in 1922.

He was a remorseless, vicious killer, a child rapist, a man with no soul. Born in rural Minnesota on June 28 1891, he began a life-long odyssey of crime and murder at the age of eight. Having spent most of his chaotic life in prisons where archaic methods of repression included physical tortures that were reminiscent of medieval times; Panzram evolved into a man who was meanness personified. He hated everyone, including himself. “I was so full of hate that there was no room in me for such feelings as love, pity, kindness or honor or decency,” he said, “my only regret is that I wasn’t born dead or not at all.” He lived a nomadic existence, committing crimes in Europe, Scotland, the United States, South America and once killed six men in a day in Africa and fed their bodies to hungry crocodiles. Cursed with a misanthropic nature; the flames of which were fueled by lurid acts committed on a young Carl in his era's reformatory institutions. He made no apologies for what he was and placed the blame for his deviance squarely on the doorstep of society’s institutions. He was born on a desolate farm in northern Minnesota. His parents were of German descent, hard-working, stern and like most other immigrants of that era, dirt poor. Carl eventually had five brothers and one sister. He later said that his siblings were honest and dedicated farmers, though the same traits were not passed on to him. “I have been a human animal ever since I was born…I was a thief and a liar,” he said. “The older I got the meaner I got.” When Carl reached the age of 7, his parents ended their marriage. His father simply left the farm one day and never returned. As a result, the family faced a bleak future. They worked the farm the whole day with very little to show for their labours. During these early years, Carl was beaten by his brothers continuously for any reason however insignificant. “Everybody thought it was all right to deceive me, lie to me and kick me around whenever they felt like it, and they felt like it pretty regular,” he later wrote.

At age 11, Carl broke into a neighbour’s home and stole anything he could get his hands on, including a handgun. He was quickly found out by his brothers, who beat him unconscious. Carl was later arrested for the crime and in 1903 sent to the Minnesota State Training School (pic right), a reform institution for juveniles. The Minnesota State Training School contained about 300 boys whose ages varied from 10 to 20. They were all at the mercy of the jailers who were under little or no outside supervision, a condition that promoted or at least allowed a level of abuse that cannot be imagined today.

When Carl arrived at the school he was brought into a reception office where a male staff member examined him. The frightened boy was stripped naked and questioned about his sexual practices. “He examined my penis and my rectum, asking me if I had ever committed fornication or sodomy or had ever had sodomy committed on me or if I had ever masturbated,” he later wrote. Carl had received little formal education growing up on a farm and was unable to read very well. For this he was also beaten regularly. “I may not have accomplished much in a scholarly way while there but I learned how to become a first class liar…and the beginnings of degeneracy,” he said. . The more beatings he endured, the more hateful he became. He was hit with wooden planks, thick leather straps, whips and heavy paddles. But during all that time, Carl was planning revenge. On the night of July 7, 1905, he prepared a simple device that started a fire after he left the building. The fire quickly consumed the workshop at the school and it burnt to the ground while Carl lay in his bed laughing at the spectacle of sweet revenge.

In late 1905, Carl was on his way out of the horrors of the Minnesota State Training School. He learned to say the things the staff wanted to hear and when he appeared before the parole board, he convinced them that he was a changed boy and had been “reformed” by the school. “I was reformed all right…I had been taught how to be a hypocrite and I had learned more about stealing, lying, hating, burning and killing,” he said, “I had learned that a boy’s penis could be used for something besides to urinate with and that a rectum could be used for other purposes…”

The Descent of Man into Mayhem and Madness

2007-09-24T04:05:00.000-07:00

Michelangelo's "David"! The epitome of man in all his splendid glory.

Crime library will venture to deliver an insight into, as Charles Darwin put it, "The descent of man..." not into some splendid deity; but rather into a godforsaken fiend, a deplorable being, a misanthrope whose inner cage fails to hold back the monsters within.