Crimes of the Century - No. 22 - Columbine Massacre, 1999

COLUMBINE MASSACRE, 1999

Just when you think it couldn't get any worse.  Today's crime of the century is another horrific nightmare.  And if any of you have ever watched the movie, "We Need To Talk About Kevin," you would understand where I'm coming from.  Most of you reading this probably recall the incident, because it was only 14 years ago.  What is so sad about this whole thing is that the massacres continue until this day.  Need I remind you of Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook?  And there's countless others I'm sure.  But its just people killing people, not guns killing people, right?  I think both issues need to be addressed, not just one.

While the article by TIME (below) gives insight into the crime, you can also go here to read the drama as it unfolded on that terrible day in 1999.

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School shootings were already a problem before April 20, 1999. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris knew that theirs had to stand out. So they planned to make every previous incident look podunk, and they videotaped their boast so the world would know what they had set out to do. And so they turned Columbine High School into an abattoir: murdering 12 schoolmates and a teacher, wounding 24 other people and then, finally, killing themselves in a drama seen live on television. It was not quite the 250 they had hoped to kill, but it was enough to make the incident the worst school shooting in American history. This sudden eruption of violence in the middle of one of the most solidly upper middle class communities in America set off months of soul searching. Parents and school officials discussed the prevalence of violent music and video games; a similar concern arose over school sociology -- bullies, outsiders and teen goth culture. Parents asked: what are the warning signs that our children are turning out to be their own enemies? On their tapes, Klebold and Harris talk about anger management but not the expected kind. Rather, they were learning to ratchet up their anger and yet keep it secret from everyone else -- until the day they had to turn it on full blast.

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TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes that I have been posting and will continue to post every Saturday on my blog.  Hope you enjoy.

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Crimes of the Century - No. 21 - The Versace Killing Spree, 1997

The Versace Killing Spree, 1997

Today's crime of the century was just horrible.  It was all over the news - one, because the killer was gay, two, because the victim was a famous fashion designer and three, because he started killing everyone in his path.  Can you imagine if someone tried killing Christian Dior, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein or Giorgio Armani today. 

While the article by TIME (below) gives insight into the crime, you can also  go here to read the drama as it unfolded during those awful three months in 1997.

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Dismissed by his mother as a "high class male prostitute" and defended by his father as an "altar boy," Andrew Cunanan is indelibly cast in popular memory as the drug-using gay spree killer with AIDS, even though no one is certain what drugs he was on, if any, during his murderous three month rampage in 1997 or even if he had been properly tested for HIV before or after his death. Starting out in California, he would kill five people in all: two former lovers, both in Minnesota; a rich man in Chicago from whom he stole a Lexus; a cemetery caretaker in New Jersey, from whom he took a pick-up truck, fearing that police were on to the Lexus; and, most infamously, he killed the glitzy fashion designer Gianni Versace in Miami. Cunanan, 27, finally killed himself in an unoccupied houseboat not two miles away from the scene of his last crime. From what is known of him, he liked to embellish his biography, loved to spend money he did not have and learned to deal drugs. He was fueled by envy, obsessed with status and fame. That, combined with the realization that his looks were failing — and thus his marketability to rich gay men — may have led to a panic. But only Cunanan knew for certain what his motives were. The high life can produce very low forms of existence.

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TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes that I have been posting and will continue to post every Saturday on my blog.  Hope you enjoy.

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Crimes of the Century - No. 20 - The Murder of JonBenet Ramsey, 1996

The Murder of JonBenet Ramsey, 1996

Wow, I remember this as if it were yesterday.  The headlines, the investigations, the intrigue of it all.  And I still think the Ramsey's did it.  The child's mother, Patsy died ten years later, and the father unsuccessfully campaigned for a seat in Michigan's House of Representatives.  While the article by TIME (below) gives insight into the crime, you may want to go here to read the drama as it unfolded on that awful day after Christmas.

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Two corollary developments distinguish this terrible unsolved killing of a beautiful six-year-old girl in Boulder, Colo. The first was the suddenly widespread revelation of the existence of children's beauty pageants — in which JonBenet was entered time and again by her former beauty queen mother, Patsy. Public fascination and repulsion over the makeup, costumes and prepubescent swimsuit competitions at times overshadowed the crime of child murder itself. The second development was the tenacity with which observers and large segments of the public held on to suspicions that JonBenet's wealthy family had something to do with her death. The murder was discovered the day after Christmas 1996 and to this day no credible suspect has been arrested, despite the high-profile false confession of teacher John Mark Karr. In the meantime, Patsy Ramsey has died of cancer. But those who view her with suspicion have not relented.

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TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes that I have been posting and will continue to post every Saturday on my blog.  Hope you enjoy.

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To read the previous 19 crimes - click my logo below.

 

Crimes of the Century - No. 19 - The Unabomber, 1996

The Unabomber, 1996

Ted Kaczynski, PhD, killed three people and wounded 22 with his mailbombs, but it could have been much worse. He managed to sneak a bomb onto American Airlines Flight 444 from Chicago to Washington D.C. It exploded but only caused a small fire. Otherwise, a Boeing 747 passenger jet might have fallen out of the sky on Nov. 15, 1979. As it is, the mad genius, whom investigators tagged as the University and Airline Bomber, would terrorize the country for nearly two decades. 

From his cabin in the woods in Montana, the reclusive mathematician would send out bomb after bomb, and letter after letter haranguing victims who had survived his attacks and taunting the media. No one was able to figure out who he was. And then, in 1995, in a blast of egotistical rage, he sent out a 35,000-word manifesto against technology and industrialization, which the Washington Post and the New York Times published in order to prevent the Unabomber from carrying out his threat to blow up a plane over Los Angeles. Someone recognized his ideas in that manifesto. It was his brother, David. And so, the brutal chess game between bomber and government came to an end as a family drama between two brothers, very much alike and yet different enough for one to give the other up for the public good.

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One of the FBI's costliest investigations, Kaczynski was accepted into Harvard at the age of 16; 25 when he started teaching as a professor at U.C. Berkley.  When the FBI took over the investigation from the U.S Postal Service, they code named the incidend UNABOM (UNiversity and Airline BOMber).  To read more about this idiot and how he terrorized a nation, go here.  Sources: Time, Wikipedia

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TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes that I have been posting and will continue to post every Saturday on my blog.  Hope you enjoy.

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Crimes of the Century - No. 18 - The Collapse of Barings Bank, 1995

THE COLLAPSE OF BARINGS BANK, 1995

 

Barings was the oldest investment bank in Britain, listing among its clients the Queen herself. 

Indeed, the bank's pedigree was so distinguished that it did not have a logo, it had a crest. And yet, in order to survive in the late 20th century, Barings called on young, not necessarily upper-class go-getters who knew how to work the new instruments of global finance like derivatives. Among these hungry young climbers was Nick Leeson, the son of a council estates plasterer.

Starting in Barings' back office, he proved himself adept at understanding the derivatives market and soon found himself stationed in Singapore, betting on market shifts around the world. At one point, his speculations accounted for 10% of Barings profits. He was a star. But he also knew how to manipulate the internal system and created a secret Barings account whose losses the bank automatically covered. He started risking huge amounts of money on the Nikkei, betting that the Japanese stock market would go up. Instead it went crashing down with a gigantic earthquake in Kobe on Jan. 17, 1995. Leeson's losses mounted quickly until he realized they would swamp not only him but all of Barings. And indeed it did. They came to more than $1 billion, an amount the bank could not cover. It collapsed that March and was bought by the Dutch financial company ING for one British pound. Leeson fled but was extradited to Singapore where he served six and a half years for fraud. He is now the manager of a soccer team in Scotland.

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It's crazy to go back and read about something like this.  Especially knowing that none of the banks who had a part in our financial crisis a few years ago will ever be prosecuted.  The statute of limitations for fraud or federal offenses is only 5 years.  This means they'll be getting away from their money laundering, securities fraud and interest-rate rigging schemes.  To read more about Barings Bank, go here. Or to read more about our financial crisis, go here.  Sources: Time, NYT, Wikipedia

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TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes that I have been posting and will continue to post every Saturday on my blog.  Hope you enjoy.

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To read the previous 17 crimes - click my logo below.

 

Crimes of the Century - No. 17 - The O.J. Simpson Case

THE O.J. SIMPSON CASE, 1994

 

So ingrained are the details of the saga in living memory that it is, perhaps, pointless to summarize them. The impression is of a hydra-headed debauch: it was a classic Hollywood celebrity legal melodrama; a race-relations story; a marriage-gone-acrid; a foray into detective work and into genetics; a primer on the jury system; proof of the overwhelming profits to be made from tabloid TV; a domestic tragedy with feuding families; a comedy of errors with irritating consequences. If the Crime of the Century has to be a congeries of issues and emotions, then this is the contemporary champion. Indeed, it was done twice because much of the public needed an alternative ending: the first jury acquitting; the second jury finding civil wrong. And the saga is relived again and again whenever Simpson decides it is time to get more attention (as he did at the end of 2006 with a proposed but unpublished book that speculated on what he might have done if he were indeed the murderer). The only tragic thing is that no one has seen prison for the horrendous murder of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman on the night of June 12, 1994.

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I remember watching everything unfold as I sat at home glued to my television set.  Like everyone else at the time, I wanted to know what would happen to the pro-football player, turned actor, turned sportscaster, who I assumed was the killer.  And still do.  Simpson eventually got arrested, but not for this; He got arrested for stealing items that once belonged to him.  Unfortunately for him, he went about it the wrong way - he did it Mafioso style. LOL.  For those who were not born at the time, or want to read about this dramatic story, go here.

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TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes that I have been posting and will continue to post every Saturday on my blog.  Hope you enjoy.

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What a Hot Mess: Colorado Mass Murderer James Holmes Is Hot

According to the girls below anyway.  

As soon as the videos and pictures of James Holmes appeared on our television sets, the Colorado mass murderer became an instant American idol for the twittering teenage girls you see below.  What a Hot Mess!

And these were just a few of them.

Crimes of the Century - No. 16 - Jeffrey Dahmer

 
JEFFREY DAHMER, 1991

 

His surname is now synonymous with "monster." Yet at least 17 times, Jeffrey Dahmer was able to get young men and boys to come home with him. In one incident, on the night of May 27, 1991 in Milwaukee, a 14-year-old managed to escape and wandered into the streets with Dahmer in pursuit. When the cops started asking questions, Dahmer was able to convince the police that it was merely a lovers' quarrel. The police conclusion: "Intoxicated Asian, naked male. Was returned to his sober boyfriend." 

 

Like the dozen before him and four after, the young man was eventually strangled and dismembered. Dahmer kept his skull as a souvenir. He stored parts of his victims in vats. He ate them. Dahmer's crimes raised several inchoate fears and revulsions: cannibalism, sexuality, class and race -- most of his victims were poor, African-American, Asian or Latino, while Dahmer was white. After his arrest on July 22, 1991, Dahmer was sentenced to nearly a thousand years in jail. He was killed by an inmate in November 1994.

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While the article above was just a short bio on a man known for all these heinous crimes, I recommend reading more about him here.  He truly was an evil human being. 

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TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes that I have been posting and will continue to post every Saturday on my blog.  Hope you enjoy.

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To read the previous 15 crimes - click my logo below.

 

What a Hot Fucking Mess! Real-Life Hannibal Lecter Shot Dead Over The Weekend

I'm sorry, I tried to refrain from using inappropriate language, but this is just absolutely horrendous! 

Yes, it sounds like a story meant only for the theater, but it's true.  A man's face was eaten by another human being in what is called one of the most bizarre stories in a very long time. 80 percent of the victim's face was completely gone, including his nose and eyeballs.  The victim is currently in a local hospital in Miami.  Honestly, I don't know if I would want to be alive after this.

According to the Courthouse News Service "A naked man eating another man's face "growled like a wild animal" before he was shot dead by Miami police, a police officer said, telling Courthouse News, "I think this is the craziest thing anyone's ever heard of." The dead man, possibly in the throes of a drug-induced psychosis, allegedly ignored the officers demand to stop eating the other man.

The story broke late last week and has been making the rounds over Facebook like wildfire. I failed to mention it until now, because I was enjoying my Memorial Day weekend.

Sad thing is, I think this will be made into a movie within a year or so.

Crimes of the Century - No. 15 - America's Biggest Art Heist

AMERICA'S BIGGEST ART HEIST, 1990

 

This is the second time I have mentioned art as one of the "Crimes of the Century," and rightly so.  While the second issue of the series focused on the most famous art heist in the world, the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911.  Today we look at the largest, most expensive art heist in the world.  And it happened on American soil, only 22 years ago.

In the coming weeks, as you read through the 25 crimes Time Magazine has selected, you will wonder which of them will remain in the popular, perhaps even the artistic imagination in the years to come? How will they be retold and with what kinds of lessons and cautions in mind? Here's the 15th issue of Time's infamous list of 24 notorious crimes.  How do you think they will fare?

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Isabella Stewart Gardner was an heiress andthe wife of a rich man. And so she went shopping, buying an eclectic but extravagant collection of artwork on sprees through Europe in the early 20th century. Among her treasures were a Vermeer ("The Concert") and a Rembrandt ("Storm on the Sea of Galilee"), two certified masterpieces. When she died in 1924, Gardner stipulated that the small but exquisite museum in Boston she had built to house her treasures should have nothing new added to it; nor should any of the art be repositioned. Both rules were violated on March 18, 1990, when two men dressed as Boston cops waltzed into the museum after 1 a.m., tied up the guards, shut off the alarm system and took off with the Vermeer, the Rembrandt and several less valuable pieces. The police at one point estimated the value of the stolen goods at $300 million. It is still listed as the biggest American art robbery on the FBI's website. That's because nothing has been recovered. 

 

In the 17 years since the theft, there may have been one tantalizing glimpse of the Rembrandt when unknown men brought a Boston Herald reporter to a warehouse where he saw what he believed was the "Sea of Galilee." But otherwise, the fear is that the thieves grabbed what they could, sometimes crudely, and may now not know what to do with their haul. The Vermeer, one of only 32 known works by the artist in existence, may be worth at least $70 million, and so beautifully famous that it is unsellable on the open market. So the greatest art heist in American history may have been a botch, a tragedy so terrible that the thieves may have to destroy the very treasures they stole in order to conceal their guilt.

TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes that I have been posting and will continue to post every Saturday on my blog.  Hope you enjoy.

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Crimes of the Century - No. 13 - John Wayne Gacy

JOHN WAYNE GACY, 1978

The warning signs were there: the arrest for sodomy with a minor; another sexual offense with a child; the strange smell, like dead things, in his house. But John Wayne Gacy was also an upstanding citizen: he helped out the neighbors, he was the chaplain of the Jaycees, he dressed up as roly-poly Pogo the Clown to entertain children. But when police came asking questions in December 1978, Gacy started confessing. And so the cops looked in the house's 40-ft. crawl space, beneath the garage and under the house. They found the bodies and remains of 28 young men and boys; Gacy said there were four others that he had thrown into the river. 

By the end of the year, police had practically torn the house down in their search. There was no question that Gacy would be found guilty; and a jury took barely an hour to come to that decision. He was sentenced to death, under new guidelines that would make sure the penalty was not "cruel and unusual" and therefore within constitutional bounds. But Gacy's execution by lethal injection in 1994 would reopen that question; instead of a five-minute procedure, the process took 18 and Gacy was clearly struggling as he perished. The critics asked: Was this cruel and unusual? His victims' families were unanimous: so was Gacy.

TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes that I have been posting and will continue to post every Saturday on my blog.  Hope you enjoy.

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You can learn more about this notorious killer here, and how he became an embarassment to the Secret Service when he was photographed with the First Lady, Rosalynn Carter in 1978.  Gacy was an organizer of a Polish parade that was held in Chicago every year.  In the photo, Gacy is wearing a pin with an "S" on it - meaning he received some special clearance by the Secret Service.  Geez, it's amazing what you can learn by taking the time to read.

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Crimes of the Century - No. 12 - The Son of Sam

THE SON OF SAM, 1977

New York seemed to be going to hell in the summer of 1977. Already in perpetual fiscal crisis the city was plunged into a 25-hour blackout on July 13 that saw massive looting and arson. And the Son of Sam killer was still out there after more than a year, waiting to kill again, sending his perverse missives to the police and to New York Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin. The killer had called himself the Son of Sam in his letters, which spoke of Papa Sam as a drinker of blood and master of Satanic mayhem. And on July 31, the Son of Sam struck again, shooting a young woman, who was killed, and her male companion, who would be blinded. But it would be the last attack. 

A witness on the night of that shooting saw a man in the neighborhood remove a parking ticket from a Ford Galaxie. The police tracked their records and found 24-year-old David Berkowitz, a dweeby, pudgy employee of the U.S. Postal Service. Trained as a sharpshooter with the M16 rifle in the U.S. Army, he had used a .44 pistol in all the shootings, killing six and wounding seven. Who was Sam? Sam, said Berkowitz, was a cantankerous former neighbor. But Berkowitz said he was the devil and that he transmitted his orders through the infernal and incessant barkings of his dog, Harvey.

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You can learn more about this notorious killer here, and yes the maniac is still alive.  He is currently serving time at a correctional facility in Fallsburg, New York with his next parole hearing due in May of this year.  He has been denied the previous 5 times so it is unlikely he will be granted one.

TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes that I have been posting and will continue to post every Saturday on my blog.  Hope you enjoy.

Go back and read the previous 11 crimes here.

Crimes of the Century - No. 11 - The Patty Hearst Kidnapping

THE PATTY HEARST KIDNAPPING, 1974

The kidnapping of Patty Hearst in the 1970s is pretty much the equivalent of someone today kidnapping Rupert Murdoch, Brian Williams or Donald Trump's daughter for ransom.  So you can pretty much imagine how big of a story this was back then. - Peter aka Blade7184

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Her family is a storied one, albeit the kind of stories that involved yellow journalism, character assassination, political manipulation and gossip mongering. Who knew that Patricia Hearst, granddaughter of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, the inspiration for Orson Well's biting film Citizen Kane, would herself become the central character of one of the biggest news stories of the turbulent 1970s? It was shocking enough on Feb. 4, 1974 when the 19-year-old heiress was kidnapped by a ratty band of Bay Area urban revolutionaries, the Symbionese National Liberation Army, who demanded as ransom that her father feed all the hungry in California. But then, just over two months later, she was seen on camera assisting them in a bank robbery. Soon enough, the kidnap victim had an arrest warrant of her own. 

It would be nearly a year and a half before she was captured. Despite the defense's strategy of brainwashing, her two-month trial in 1976 led to a seven-year sentence. It was later commuted by then-President Jimmy Carter and she served only 22 months. President Bill Clinton granted her a full pardon on the day he left office. Nowadays, Hearst is a socialite, not a guerrilla, though she appears in a number of director John Waters' subversive, sly and crude comedies.

TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes that I have been posting and will continue to post every Saturday on my blog.  Hope you enjoy.

Go back and read the previous 10 crimes here.

Crimes of the Century - No. 10 - The Tate-Labianca Murders

THE TATE-LABIANCA MURDERS, 1969

On Aug. 9 and 10, 1969, two sets of grisly murders took place in Los Angeles. On the 9th, a gang of four people brutally killed the actress Sharon Tate, who was married to director Roman Polanski and eight and a half months pregnant, four of Tate's friends and the son of her gardener. Tate begged for the life of her unborn child but was told by one of the female assailants, "Look bitch, I don't care about you. I don't care if you are having a baby. You are going to die and I don't feel a thing about it." Tate's blood was used to write the word PIG on the home's front door. 

The next day supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife were killed in a similar fashion, a fork used to carve the word WAR on his belly left sticking out of his corpse. This time, the leader of the gang took part in the slaughter.

Authorities would take nearly five months to track down Charles Manson and his so-called Family. And when they did, America discovered a terrifying mix of a libertine counter-culture and stupefying mind-control. Manson sent out his mostly female agents like the Furies of Greek mythology, to take down those whom he saw as his enemies. His trial ended in 1971 with a death sentence which was vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court's declaration of the penalty's unconstitutionality. He is up for parole this year but is unlikely to receive it.

TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes. I will be posting these crimes every Saturday on my blog, hope you enjoy.

Go back and read the previous 9 crimes here.

Crimes of the Century - No. 9 - Richard Speck

RICHARD SPECK, 1966

It sounds like a recurring nightmare: an armed male intruder breaks into a women's dorm and with a gun and a butcher's knife, binds and gags all the residents. Then one by one, he kills them cruelly and with great brutality. All of that happened in Chicago on the night of July 14, 1966, in a dormitory that housed eight nurses who worked at the South Chicago Community Hospital.

The perpetrator was Richard Speck, then 24, a drifter born in Illinois, raised in Texas, wandering from petty crime to petty crime and bar to bar. At the age of 19, he had the words "Born to Raise Hell" tattooed on his arm. His victims were all eulogized as saints, people who had committed their lives to helping others. He would be positively identified by one of his intended targets, Corazon Amurao, who survived the attack by hiding under a bed. Speck knew there were eight women in the dorm; he did not know that a friend was also staying over that night. So Amurao survived as the guest was led to slaughter.

The jury found Speck guilty after a mere 49 minutes of deliberation and he was sentenced to the electric chair. In 1972, however, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death sentence unconstitutional. Resentenced to hundreds of years in prison, Speck died in 1991. No one claimed his body, which was cremated and the ashes scattered to the wind. 

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Visit my blog every Saturday as a new crime will be posted each week.

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Go back and read the previous 7 crimes here.

You can actually watch a great A&E Biography on this monstrous man after the jump.

Crimes of the Century - No. 7 - The Lana Turner Affair

THE LANA TURNER AFFAIR, 1958

Lana Turner reigned as one of Hollywood's box-office queens for more than two decades. Real life was much trampier. Her father, a miner in Idaho, was murdered after winning a craps game. She loved to hang out with men of ill repute and would eventually marry seven times. One marriage, to the actor Lex Barker, would end in 1957 after she accused him of molesting her daughter by a previous marriage, Cheryl Crane. 

True to her failings, she began a torrid and tumultuous affair with Johnny Stompanato, a man suspected of mob ties. When she tried to break it off, he grew violent. And on the night of April 4, 1958, Stompanato and Turner engaged in a ferocious argument at her Beverly Hills home, so violent in fact that 14-year old Cheryl ran for a knife and ended up stabbing Stompanato to death. 

The papers loved the story and the coroner's inquest was one of the most sensational legal hearings Hollywood has ever seen. Turner's tale on the stand was riveting: a wayward mother in distress and the faithful daughter who comes to her rescue. "I walked toward the bedroom door," Turner testified. "He was right behind me. And I opened it and my daughter came in. I swear it was so fast, I truthfully thought she had hit him in the stomach ... I never saw a blade." A Stompanato friend's outburst in court implied that it was Lana who wielded the knife, but the coroner declared the whole thing justifiable homicide. Turner's career flourished into the 1980s.

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As you read through the 25 crimes Time Magazine has selected, you will wonder which of them will remain in the popular, perhaps even the artistic imagination in the years to come? How will they be retold and with what kinds of lessons and cautions in mind?  Visit my blog every Saturday as a new crime will be posted each week.

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Go back and read the previous 6 crimes here.

Crimes of the Century - No. 6 - The Brinks Job

THE BRINKS JOB, 1950

A gang of 11 men set out on a meticulous 18-month quest to rob the Brinks headquarters in Boston, the home-base of the legendary private security firm. The planning and practice had a military intensity to them; the attention to detail -- including the close approximation of the uniform of the Brinks' guards -- was near genius. It all came off without a hitch: the perfect crime of the century. And the haul was astonishing: more than $1.2 million in cash and $1.5 million in checks and securities, the biggest heist at that time in American history. But while the plan was perfect, the participants proved to be all too human. Even as the authorities spent years trying to figure out who was behind the "great Brinks robbery," the 11 were falling out among themselves. 

Eventually, someone associated with the mob allegedly hired a hit man to kill Joseph "Specs" O'Keefe, a gangmember who had been grousing that he had been cheated of his proper share of the robbery. At that point, O'Keefe -- wounded in the attempted rub-out -- decided to talk to the FBI. By 1957, most of the gang had been sentenced to life in prison, except for O'Keefe who got four years. None would account for the bulk of the stolen funds. To this day, no one has found the money.

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According to investigators the heist took place like this:

On January 17, 1950, after six aborted attempts, the robbers decided that the situation was favorable. They donned clothing outwardly similar to that of a Brink's uniform with Navy pea coats and chauffeur's caps, along with rubber Halloween masks, gloves, and rubber-soled shoes. While Pino and driver Banfield remained in the getaway car, seven other men entered the building at 6:55 PM.

With their copied keys, they came to the second floor through the locked doors and surprised, bound, and gagged five Brinks employees who were storing and counting money. They failed to open a box of the payroll of the General Electric Company but scooped up everything else.

The robbers walked out at 7:30 PM. In addition to money, they had taken four revolvers from the employees. Afterwards, the gang rapidly counted the loot, gave some of the members their cut, and agreed not to touch the loot for six years, after which the statute of limitations would have expired. The robbers scattered to establish their alibis. [Wikipedia]

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In the coming weeks, as you read through the 25 crimes Time Magazine has selected, you will wonder which of them will remain in the popular, perhaps even the artistic imagination in the years to come? How will they be retold and with what kinds of lessons and cautions in mind?  Visit my blog every Saturday as a new crime will be posted each week.

Crimes of the Century - No. 4 - The Fatty Arbuckle Scandal

THE FATTY ARBUCKLE SCANDAL, 1920

When the world first read about the events of Sept. 3, 1920 in the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, the plotline appeared to be tabloid-headline loud and clear: during a wild party, an obese Hollywood comedy star takes advantage of a naive young actress, puncturing her bladder during forced sex (with a beer bottle!); she dies a painful death of peritonitis. The star was Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, perhaps the first film actor to be paid an annual salary of $1 million, an amazing sum in the silent film industry.

Insisting he had done nothing wrong, Arbuckle nevertheless went through three trials, hounded by newspapers and morality groups each time. His movies were banned in both America and Britain. Some people even called for him to be executed. But the woman who brought the charges -- a friend of the dead starlet -- never testified in court because of a past record of extortion, racketeering and bigamy. Neither was the woman an eyewitness to the alleged crime. Arbuckle's first two trials thus ended in hung juries. And the third acquitted him of all crimes. That jury even issued him an apology. But his career was over.

The media pall over his reputation was impossible to overcome. The public and much of Hollywood would never forgive him; all his comeback attempts failed. Indeed, as a result of the scandal, the White House established the Hays Office as the movie industry's moral arbiter and censor. Arbuckle died in 1933, after falling into alcoholism and a lurid obscurity.

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According to Wikipedia: After British actor Charlie Chaplin joined Keystone Studios in 1914, Arbuckle mentored him. Chaplin's most famous character, "the Tramp", was created after Chaplin adopted Arbuckle's trademark "balloon" baggy pants, boots and undersized hat.  Arbuckle also gave Buster Keaton his first film-making work in the 1917 short, The Butcher Boy. They soon became screen partners, with a deadpan Buster soberly assisting the wacky Roscoe during his adventures. And he also gave Bob Hope his break in show business. In 1927, Arbuckle allowed Hope to be the opening act in his comedy show in Cleveland. Roscoe then gave Hope the names and numbers of his friends in Hollywood, telling him to "go west".

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In the coming weeks, as you read through the 25 crimes Time Magazine has selected, you will wonder which of them will remain in the popular, perhaps even the artistic imagination in the years to come? How will they be retold and with what kinds of lessons and cautions in mind?  Visit my blog every Saturday as a new crime will be posted each week.

Crimes of the Century - No. 3 - The Fake Ape Man

THE FAKE APE-MAN, 1912

 

Eoanthropus dawsoni was the scientific name of this alleged missing link, and it would have been an extremely early example of a creature showing both human and apelike qualities.

At 375,000 years old, it put England in contention for a cradle of humankind, being found in the Sussex town of Piltdown. The "first Englishman" he was proudly called when the anthropologist Charles Dawson found him in 1911.

For decades, Piltdown Man was cited along with Neanderthal man and Heidelberg man as an example of early hominid life in Europe.

Then in 1953, the fragments, including a jawbone, were tested: they did not contain enough fluorine to be the age that Dawson claimed; worse, the jawbone was that of a 10-year-old orangutan, its teeth ground down to simulate age, and a crude chemical wash applied to the bone to make it appear ancient.

No one knows who perpetrated the hoax: Dawson had died in 1916. Very quickly, however, Piltdown became a synonym for phony; and England's claim to antiquity was cut short by several hundred thousand years.  

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According to Wikipedia: The Piltdown hoax is perhaps the most famous paleontological hoax ever. It has been prominent for two reasons: the attention paid to the issue of human evolution, and the length of time (more than 40 years) that elapsed from its discovery to its full exposure as a forgery.

 

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In the coming weeks, as you read through the 25 crimes Time Magazine has selected, you will wonder which of them will remain in the popular, perhaps even the artistic imagination in the years to come? How will they be retold and with what kinds of lessons and cautions in mind?  Visit my blog every Saturday as a new crime will be posted each week.

 

Crimes of the Century - No. 2 - Stealing The Mona Lisa

STEALING THE MONA LISA, 1911

As I continue my series, "Crimes of the Century," it boggles my mind that people would go above and beyond to steal precious art.  But it happened to the Mona Lisa in 1911.

In the coming weeks, as you read through the 25 crimes Time Magazine has selected, you will wonder which of them will remain in the popular, perhaps even the artistic imagination in the years to come? How will they be retold and with what kinds of lessons and cautions in mind? Here's the second issue, the second crime on Time's infamous list.  How do you think they will fare?  Visit my blog every Saturday as a new crime will be posted each week.

 

She had been the chattel of French monarchs. Francois I bought her. Louis XIV set her up in Versailles. Napoleon moved her into his bedroom. She was Italian, created by Leonardo da Vinci over four years' labor in Florence, but France was her home and there she stayed for four centuries. Then on Aug. 20, 1911, the space she occupied on the walls of the Louvre was discovered bare. The theft shook France: the country's borders were closed, administrators at the museum were dismissed, enemies of traditional art were suspected of evil intentions. (The avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire was arrested as a suspect; he implicated Pablo Picasso. Both were eventually dropped as possible culprits). As the months went by, the fears grew that the Mona Lisa had been destroyed. Then the Louvre received word from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The Italian officials said they had arrested a man named Vincenzo Perugia, who had brought the Mona Lisa to a local antiques dealer in order to sell it and restore it to Italy. (Perugia, who had single-handedly stolen the masterpiece, may or may not have been part of a plot to inflate the prices of forged Mona Lisas; he had lost contact with his co-conspirators and decided to sell the original wood panel painting himself.) On Jan. 4, 1914, the painting was returned to the Louvre. Hailed as a patriot in Italy, Perugia, while found guilty, served only a few months in jail. Patriotism is also a refuge for art thieves.