“Before me as I write lies an inch-square bit of brown leather --- not, you would think, an inspiring subject for a tale. But perpend. This fragment of human skin, for such it is, has been since 1829 in the possession of three persons only: The original owner, my grandfather, and myself. Inconsiderable in size and unimpressive of aspect, it was nevertheless potent to influence the direction of my future studies…
While yet a small boy, my grandfather would often show me by request this singular relic and I never wearied of hearing how he came by it. As a matter of history, its first proprietor, the late Mr. William Burke of Edinburgh, in the circumstances hereafter to be related, was publicly anatomized, his carcass thereafter flayed, his hide tanned, and his skeleton by order of Court preserved in the Anatomical Museum of Edinburgh University, where it remains as a memorial of his infamy even unto this day. Mr. Burke’s integument being cut up into sortable parcels to suit buyer’s tastes and exposed for sale by private bargain, my grandfather, who was then but a young man, invested a modest shilling’s worth. Wealthier purchasers bought larger lots --- I have heard that the late Professor Chiene had a tobacco pouch made of this unique material. Personally, despite my predilection for crime, I prefer India-rubber.” ---
"The Wolves of the West Port" [more inside]
posted by Diablevert
on Aug 24, 2011 -
12 comments
Having previously put together a
post with links to stories from the 2009 edition of Best of American Crime Reporting, I decided to go to earlier editions to gather together what is available on the web. Starting in 2007 with
The Tainted Kidney: Charles Graeber, New York. A serial killer who chooses to donate his kidney has his motives questioned.
[more inside]
posted by dances_with_sneetches
on Oct 17, 2009 -
18 comments
Then, in November 2007, exactly three years after the disappearance of Simjanoska, another woman from Kičevo went missing. Fifty-six-year-old Lubica Ličoska was, like Simjanoska, a custodian, and she also lived in the same section of town. When the similarities were noted, locals suddenly remembered Gorica Pavelska. She was seventy-three, a retired custodian who went missing in May 2003. No one had thought much of it at the time. She might have suffered a stroke in some remote place, they had speculated, or gone to work in Skopje. No trace of her was ever found and the whole business had been forgotten. But now it appeared that little Kičevo was home to a serial killer, and Vlado Taneski’s editors smelled a big story.
-
The Mask of Sanity: On the Trail of a Serial Killer in Macedonia by Dimiter Kenarov. An account of the Kičevo Monster and the killer's surprising identity.
[Warning: Descriptions of the murders include graphic details]
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 5, 2009 -
20 comments
Real L.A. Noir. (Video/audio auto-plays).
Los Angeles Times reporter Paul Lieberman has been chronicling the era of the LAPD Gangster Squad, a secret division of the department that tried to combat the mobs of Jack Dragna and Mickey Cohen in the 1940s and '50s. (Keep the cast of characters straight with
this handy chart.)
posted by Bookhouse
on Nov 1, 2008 -
9 comments
The North Hollywood Bank Job. part two part three part four .
Inspired by
this famous (and NSFW) scene from Heat, on Feb. 28, 1997, Larry Eugene Phillips, Jr. and Emil Matasareanu attempted to rob a Bank of America in North Hollywood, CA using body armor, automatic weapons and barbiturates. This documentary uses news footage, recreations, interviews, computer animation and a cheesy narrator to explain the chaotic hour that followed. There are some violent images.
[more inside]
posted by Bookhouse
on Sep 5, 2008 -
33 comments
Dying Speeches & Bloody Murders digitizes over five hundred broadsides owned by the Harvard Law Library, all of them devoted to "last dying speeches"--that is, sensational accounts of crime, punishment, and (fictional) confession, intended to be
sold at public executions. The New York State Historical Association has an
online exhibition devoted to nineteenth-century American murder pamphlets. You can find a couple of seventeenth-century examples at the
Early Modern Web and the
Folger Library.
Old Bailey Online briefly puts this literature into context. (Main link via C18-L.)
posted by thomas j wise
on Jan 4, 2008 -
11 comments
Stop Snitchin' may be the hidden link between
hip hop and the 1980s alternative rock group,
House of Freaks. According to the New York Post, journalist
Ethan Brown has accomplished
"making the Stop Snitching movement seem reasonable" in his new book
Snitch: Informants, Cooperators, and the Corruption of Justice. Brown argues that harsh
mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses have created a "cottage industry of cooperators" and
informants who fabricate evidence, because
Provision 5K1.1 of federal sentencing guidelines gives leniency in exchange for "substantial assistance to authorities." According to Brown, two of these
criminal cooperators included
Ray Dandridge and
Ricky Gray, the perpetrators of the
Richmond spree murders that ended the life of
Brian Harvey of House of Freaks, his wife, and his two children. On the other hand,
Mark Kleiman argues that the Stop Snitchin' movement has driven
homicide clearance rates so low that, in some cities, "you have a better than even chance of literally getting away with murder."
[more inside]
posted by jonp72
on Dec 11, 2007 -
61 comments
On October 26, 1965, a sixteen-year-old girl named
Sylvia Marie Likens was reported dead to Indianapolis police. It was soon discovered that
her death was the culmination of weeks of torture at the hands of an adult caretaker and several neighborhood children; when the case went to trial, the prosecutor declared it
"the most terrible crime ever committed in the state of Indiana." In 2007, not one but two films inspired by the case make their debut:
The Girl Next Door (
trailer), based on a
fictionalized version of the events, and the docudrama
An American Crime (
trailer). One person, at least, will probably be skipping both -- the victim's sister, who says of the latter film,
"No one ever even asked us about it. It's their gain, our pain."
posted by kittens for breakfast
on Jul 26, 2007 -
118 comments
On July 6th, 1988 Dennis Dechaine of Bowdinham, Maine came home from work (transporting frozen chickens from a slaughterhouse) and planned to work on constructing a greenhouse. However, that project hit a glitch and sometime that afternoon he decided instead to take some amphetamines and go exploring in the woods near his home. When he emerged from the woods, lost and looking for his truck, about 8:30 pm that night he was questioned by the police who were looking for a missing 12 year old girl named Sarah Cherry. Two days later, Sarah's body was found and Dennis Dechainewas charged with the girl's murder. He was convicted in March of 1989 to life in prison without parole and an entire generation of Maine girls were told to 'remember Sarah Cherry' as a caution to not talk to strangers.
The question before us now, is, of course,
did he do it?
posted by anastasiav
on Aug 6, 2004 -
19 comments
Meet Vernon Blake. Vernon Blake was a Systems Admin for the Alabama Department of Transportation, and it was 'well known' in his office that a certain supervisor spent far more time playing solitare on his computer than he did doing anything else. Inspired by a campaign to
stop waste in Alabama government, Vernon installed a screen capture utility which took
717 screenshots (.pdf) over 7 months, documenting a clear pattern of non-work related use of the computer. The results? The supervisor was given a
written repremand. Vernon Blake was
fired.
posted by anastasiav
on Jul 31, 2004 -
38 comments
