After watching the excellent 1995 film, Citizen X, with Stephen Rea, Donald Sutherland, Max von Sydow, and Jeffrey DeMunn, I became interested in the case of Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo.
I hope going back to December isn’t considered resurrecting a zombie, because this is my topic. I had boxes of True Crime books and newspaper clippings I inherited from my grandfather, because he was a reporter, and covered crime for years, then became the chief editor of the crime beat, or something like that, for the Wichita Eagle.
He first became a cub reporter just before the Depression, so being able to write crime articles that were interesting without being overwrought, and that used police terms correctly, and being a reporter with contacts on both sides of law and order.
If you could write articles about crime that sold papers, you could afford an nice living for your family, Depression or not.
Anyway, I’ve followed so many stories, and learned about others, but there are some that stand out, mainly because of the time that they entered my life developmentally.
The very first news story I followed from day to day was the kidnapping of Patty Hearst. It scared me a little, because I always thought of kidnap victims as small children-- I didn’t know an adult could be kidnapped.
Anyway, I’d actually get excited-- I’m about 4 years old-- when the news came on and rushed to settle on the couch with my parents in case there was news of Patty Hearst.
When I moved to Indiana, I found out that the junior high most of my
friends had gone to was the one that Emily Harris has taught at just before she moved to California and joined the SLA. My high school Economics teacher taught at the junior high with her, and said her only oddness she remembered was that she rode a bicycle to school every day, in the days when woman teachers had to wear skirts or dresses, so she biked in wearing jeans, changed, changed again at the end of school, and biked home.
We lived in the Soviet Union for just short of a year, returning in August of 1977. We had a house in Queens that we had rented, but we didn’t return to it right away. My mother told me that our renters wanted to stay until the end of the summer. So we stayed crowded into my grandmother’s house in Westchester.
The news was full of stories of The Son of Sam, and I never put the two things together, but I found out years later that my parents didn’t want to go back to New York until Son of Sam was caught, unless the school year was starting.
I could be naive about a lot of things. The news was also full of the Atlanta Child Murders, and they were called just that. Child Murders. My brain never noticed that only black children were being targeted-- or if it did, it went on to think “Yes, but that doesn’t mean white kids aren’t next.” I kept opening the atlas from the car to reassure myself that Atlanta was a very long way away.
The news was scary in the summer of 1977.
The next crime to enter my consciousness was an historic one: in one of my grandfather’s old books, I read about the first ransom kidnapping in the US, on July 1, 1874. He was 4 years old, and was never recovered. The only witness to the crime was his 5 year old brother.
They got into a carriage with strangers who promised to buy them candy and fireworks. Stranger Danger began on July 2, 1874.
On December 13, two habitual criminals were shot attempting a burglary. One of them died immediately, but the other lived for a couple of hours, and confessed to kidnapping Charley Ross. There were several witnesses, who told different versions of the story, which they may have heard at different time. One reported that Charley was dead, and another that he would be returned that night.
Walter was brought to identify the bodies, and said that yes, they were the men who had been in the carriage.
The last case that still pops into my consciousness sometimes was one that I first read about in junior high school, in a paper for kids ages 12-14.
It was about a teenager named Mary Vincent, who had undergone a most horrible experience after being kidnapped, raped, and beaten by a driver who’d picked her up when she was hitchhiking. Gonna spoiler it. If you are feeling sensitive or easily triggered this afternoon, don’t look at it. He then hacked off her forearms with a hatchet, and threw her hands some place else, so she could not be identified (or so he thought)
So I read that little blurb, and was pretty upset by it. I never forgot her name. About 7 years later, in college, a friend of mine had a copy of People and there was an article about her. She wasn’t doing great, because the guy who had assaulted her had been released from prison. He was like, 78, and the prison was overcrowded.
Couple years later, he raped and killed a prostitute. Back to prison, and that time he died there.
I’ve read more about Mary Vincent since, though, and she has built a marvelous new life for herself. She’s an artist, and advocate, and a mother. She keeps kind of a low profile in regards to her case, though, which is why you haven’t seen The Mary Vincent Story on TV.
I think that’s it. Not much poetry, because I’ve tried to be brief.
With that many stories to tell, being brief is difficult, though.
I remember reading about the Mary Vincent encounter of wiki several years. I remember being impressed with her ingenuity as to how to stop the bleeding until she could get medical attention.
There’s a kidnapping story from several years ago where the police botched the rescue because they forgot to bring the search warrant from the car, and when they went to retrieve it, the kidnapper killed himself, so there was no way to ever find the victim.
I can’t remember more details than that , but this crowd probably knows the case I’m thinking of.
Jon Bonet for sure. What happened to that sweet little kid was horrid in the last few moments of her life.
The behaviour of the police and press was execrable.
If there were not so many wrongful convictions I’d almost back the death penalty for the guy that hurt and killed her.
In the docu they showed her Xmas morning just quivering with delight when she saw the battery powered jeep under the tree.
That authorities and public just battered the family is inexusable given they knew there was foreign DNA on her panties FFS.
Similar anger at “Unbeleivable”
I thought the current theory was that it was a family friend who did it, which is why the family acted super weird around the police and lied to them multiple times on who had access to her room.
Not my understanding. Authorities went all the way to China to find a source for the “stranger” DNA they found on her panties.
Her death was very cruel.
There were a few good suspects and DNA cleared them all so I’m unaware of any “family friend” theory. Got any info on that?
Heer mum dying without resolution was cruel as well and her dad was a pillar of strength that comes across in the docu.
Big time indictment of the press and police.
The murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986. That the prime minister of a country could be walking around without any security guards, be gunned down, and no official, lasting solution to the crime has been given is quite surprising.
Famous writer Steig Larsson was investigating the case at the time of his death. A documentary series based on his findings plus further work was made: The Man Who Played With Fire. That says the apartheid South Africans did it. While it’s a good suggesttion, they still don’t have the hard proof.
The people in charge of the investigation did an amazingly poor job. They pretty much framed a guy for it. (The conviction was later overturned.) There is good reason to believe that they were actually not trying to solve it for political reasons.
Given that this was almost 40 years ago, I don’t expect it will ever be truly solved.
Conventional sordid disposal of a prostitute or inconvenient girlfriend? Or spy mystery?
Oh! I forgot about this one!
Only learned of it recently, and it didn’t happen that long ago, relative to most of the other crimes on my list.
However, it has a weird “TV/movie”-type twist, in that the victim appeared to have written a message accusing her killer in her own blood.
A French woman named Ghislaine Marchal was not answering her phone, and had missed some appointments with no notice, which was out of character for her, so a friend initiated what in the US would be called a “wellness check.” She was nowhere in her home, albeit, it appeared that she had gotten up and started her day.
The police finally found the basement door locked from the inside, and then blocked and barred, so it took a few hours to create a break in the barricade and get in, where they found her body.
They also found a message written on the wall in blood: “Omar m’a tuer,” which, if read aloud, sounds exactly like “Omar m’a tuée.” The phrase as written, sort of contains a double past tense (Omar did killed me, eg), and is a sound-alike error, similar to a native English speaker writing “he should of done it” (but making no judgments about the level of education of someone making the mistake in English vs. the one in French.) Although, Ghislaine Marchal had no education past the equivalent of US high school.
Marchal employed a gardener named Omar, who was arrested for her murder, based on the message. Omar Raddad did not speak French at all, only Arabic, and did not write either language, and could not be the source of the note, although why he would be suspected of that isn’t clear.
Those close to Marchal said “m’a tuer” was not a mistake she would have made, nor would any native speaker. Linguists counter that it is exactly native speakers who would make that mistake. The blood was identified as hers. Other DNA evidence in the basement in ambiguous. Raddad’s is there, but not in a way that implicates him, and he did work there. There is the DNA of two other unidentified males.
There have been several trials and appeals, which are on wiki, so I won’t go into them here. The family wants answers that stick, and Raddad wants his name cleared. There is none of that now, and getting there doesn’t seem a priority of the government.
Nitpicking but it’s not a double past. As written, it is meaningless, akin to “Omar did to kill me” but…
It definitely is a mistake that many people make, and one that drives me batty. The -é / -er / -ez confusion is the French equivalent of there / their / they’re.
Anyway, the case is very famous and controversial, for the reasons you’ve described.
You are right, of course, and if I had stopped and looked at it for a minute, I would have said that, because I studied French in college, and can identify infinitives-- but I was in a hurry, and momentarily criss-crossed which one was the error.
But when I first read about the case, and all the people saying “A native speaker would not make that error,” I couldn’t help thinking it was exactly the error a only a native speaker would make. My mother had a PhD in linguistics, and my father spoke several languages, traveled a lot, and had more than a passing interest, while my degree is in English literature and language, so we talked about stuff like the ALL the time.
On the other hand, who actually writes a message in their own blood? that happens in books and movies all the time, but has it ever happened in real life? it just doesn’t seem like something a person would really do.
“People called Romanes, they go the house”?
And, the obscure reference award goes to…
I can confirm that it is an error that native speakers do make infuriatingly often, even in reputable newpapers these days. Surely, non-native speakers can also make the mistake but at least they have a valid excuse.
Someone who has watched movies and read books where it happens all the time, perhaps.
Linguistics aside, what about this part of it? Is there any theory as to how she was killed and then barricaded in from the inside?
That’s easy-- she didn’t die right away-- she lived about a 1/2 hour after being attacked, and probably barricaded the door herself against the attacker returning.
Not so obscure for geeks of a certain age.
It was the first Monty Python movie I ever saw that had an actual ending.
Makes perfect sense - thanks!
This case overshadowed one that was all over the tabloids for years before that : the Grégory Case.
4-year old Grégory was abducted from his parents’ front yard and found dead, hands and feet bound, in a nearby river just a few hours later.
Then, those tragic events took a turn for the bizarre.
It was revealed that for a couple of years, the family had been receiving threatening letters from an anonymous figure whom the press soon dubbed Le Corbeau (The Crow). What ensued was a rollercoaster of events involving handwriting experts who designated the mother as the author of the letters, a hunger strike, a miscarriage, and culminating in Grégory’s father shooting down his own cousin, who was once suspected of the kid’s murder but was likely innocent.
Over 40 years later, the case is still unsolved.