Jan. 28, 2013

Krystian Bala

A reporter emerges from obscurity by writing exclusive articles about the serial-murder victims he killed; an aspiring crime writer murders for a good plot.

by Ben Johnson

Murder and the media have always gone hand in hand. Some of the greatest and most provocative journalism and greatest books ever written come from the dark and disturbing world of violent crime.

One of the greatest breaks a reporter can wish for in his or her career is stumbling upon an exclusive involving serial murder. It is the kind of topic that can propel a journalist into the limelight. An example of this phenomenon is the aspiring political cartoonist Robert Graysmith who was a member of the San Francisco Chronicle's junior staff before his tenacity in the still unsolved Zodiac murders propelled him to international fame, culminating in book deals and a major Hollywood movie.

The thirst for this kind of fame and recognition can, however, be dangerously addictive to some, resulting in risk-taking and ethically questionable behavior. Perhaps the most notable example of this is Phil Stanford, who corresponded with Keith Hunter Jesperson (the Happy Face Killer) and defied the wishes of local law enforcement by publishing a series of articles which proved that two innocent people were serving time for Jesperson's first murder. Although Stanford took huge risks and could be said to have acted unethically due to publishing his series of articles against the wishes of the police, nobody could argue that his actions were not in the public interest, and therefore in this case, the risk paid off.

Jan. 24, 2013

“Il Monstro” or “The Monster of Florence” killed and mutilated eight couples in the Italian countryside between 1968 and 1985. Although the crimes took place sporadically over 17 years, there were many distinctive elements, enough to provide a profile of the serial killer who was never caught.

by Dr. Nicola J. Davies

It is one of the most perplexing and fascinating crime sprees in the annals of unsolved murders. “Il Monstro” or “The Monster of Florence” killed and mutilated eight couples in the Italian countryside between 1968 and 1985. Despite numerous arrests and convictions, the true killer or killers remain undiscovered. Various books, films and investigators have theorized on the perpetrator of these brutal crimes, but with no physical evidence being left at the murder scenes, there is little to link the crimes to a perpetrator. However, while the perpetrator/s has never been apprehended, a psychological profile of “The Monster of Florence” can be assembled, providing insight into this killer and his motivations.

Jan. 21, 2013 Revised April 8, 2013

Newtown students

A month after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, President Obama called for sweeping legislation to stem “the epidemic of violence” confronting the United States. The next day, the National Rifle Association called the President’s proposal to rein in gun violence “the fight of the century.”

by J. Patrick O’Connor

In 2012, the Newtown, Connecticut massacre capped the worst year in U.S. history for mass murderers using high-capacity ammunition clips in assault weapons. Fifty innocent people were gunned down in public places.  In April, seven people at Oikos University in Oakland, California were shot to death; in July, 12 people, including a 6-year-old girl, were murdered at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado where another 58 people sustained gunshot wounds; in August, five men and one woman were shot to death at a Sikh Temple outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Three others, including a police officer, suffered gunshot wounds.

All the children murdered at the Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, were first graders. Seventeen of them were 6 years old and three had recently turned 7. If police and other first responders had not arrived as swiftly as they had, dozens if not scores more of children would have been shot to death.  The shooter, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, had several hundred unspent bullets in additional ammunition clips.  Instead of committing the second deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history – second only to the 32 people shot to death at Virginia Tech in 2007 – he would have committed the worst.  The Hartford Courant reported that Lanza had several news articles in his bedroom about Andres Behring Breivik murdering 77 people, most of whom were teenagers, in Norway in 2011. It is likely his intent was to top that body count.

Jan. 17, 2013 Special to Crime Magazine

An excerpt from Seth Ferranti’s new book, Gorilla Convict: The Prison Writings of Seth Ferranti. To buy the book or for more information, go to www.strategicmediabooks.com or Amazon

by Seth Ferranti

I don't know why I became a drug dealer. Free drugs I suppose. It wasn't something I planned. It just happened. I used to buy quarter ounces of weed or hits of acid from my godbrother and his friends. They had a party house by Springfield Mall. I was always cruising over to score. I was like 17 and these dudes were all 21 or so. I idolized them. They didn't work or nothing. Just hung out, partied, got laid, and sold drugs.

I was bringing them crazy business. Finally I said fuck it. I can do this myself. But I needed some contacts. I asked my godbrother to hook me up and he took me down to Kentucky. It was a long trip but worth it. My godbrother introduced me to country boy Scott, who became my contact. He had a tobacco farm down in Monticello and grew a little weed on the side. He didn't fuck around though. He and his partners had it down to a science. These guys were straight-up country. I'm talking shotguns, moonshine, cockfights, muscle cars, and pit bulls. They planted and cultivated their weed to perfection. They showed me a patch once, way out in the deep forest. I thought they might try to kill and rob me and leave me buried out there. But they didn't. Their marijuana plants were like trees, easily 15-feet tall, with tree size trucks, and an IV-bag mainlined into the roots pumping in plant vitamins. It was some crazy fucking shit.

I still needed an LSD source though, my godbrother said, "Go on tour dude."

The first Grateful Dead show I went to was in Deer Park, Indiana. I drove there from Fairfax with some deadhead wanna-be's. I wasn't really into The Dead, music wise, but I needed an LSD connect. Dead shows were filled with LSD peddlers. The parking lot scene was a carnival, half circus, half flea market, with drugs, tie-dyes, hippies everywhere. I met this kid, Drummer Al, a hardcore Deadhead who was at all the Dead shows. They called him Drummer Al because he was always in the drum pit banging on the congas. This dude was skinny and really burnt out, with natty dreadlocks to his waist. He wore cut-off fatigues and Birkenstocks, but never wore a shirt. He sold me 2,000 hits of triple-set, blotter acid and gave me a number to call in Frisco to order more whenever I needed it. Mail-order LSD was only a phone call away. What an awesome connection, I thought. I figured that, with the Kentucky bud contact and the new mail order acid, my fortune was made.

Jan. 14, 2013

How do so many illegal drugs get smuggled into prisons all over the United States? The author spent 20 years in various Florida prisons and tells how.

by Shawn R. Griffith

There is a drug epidemic inside America’s corrections system.

While serving 20 years in Florida’s prison system from 1992 to 2012 for an armed robbery, I saw every drug imaginable. Although I rehabilitated myself and quit using drugs altogether in the 1990s, that’s not the case for many prisoners. At least 60 percent of the estimated 20,000 prisoners I met inside frequently used drugs. After serving time in 18 different Florida prisons, never once did I witness an institution free of narcotics. Moreover, I met hundreds of men on transfer from other state prisons, and most said that the prisons from which they had come had more drugs than Florida’s institutions.

While doing research for my book, Facing the U.S. Prison Problem 2.3 Million Strong, I unearthed a number of disturbing statistics related to drug addiction of U.S. prisoners. These stats have supported my own observations in Florida. Experts in one study found that 50 to 60 percent of prisoners had drug addictions severe enough to warrant intensive drug treatment. In addition, according to the Department of Justice, a study conducted in 2004 showed that 17 percent of all state prisoners and 19 percent of all federal prisoners admitted to committing their crimes to buy drugs. Of these drug-related offenses, 9.8 percent committed by state prisoners were violent crimes. In 2007, 3.8 percent of the 14,038 homicides were known to be narcotics-related. That’s equal to 533 victims of drug-related murder.

After considering these statistics, I would say that having so many prisons in the U.S. with a dynamic drug culture is a serious problem. What I wonder is just how many addicted prisoners today will commit a new murder of some unsuspecting victim tomorrow. It will occur. And it will occur partly because the system fails to adequately address the drug problem when officials have addicts inside prison. Something to think about when the question of funding prison drug programs invariably arises for public debate.

Jan. 7, 2012

Trayvon Martin

If George Zimmerman had obeyed the police dispatcher’s directive to remain in his car and to wait for patrol officers to arrive to question the person in the “hoodie,” Trayvon Martin would not have been shot to death.

by Don Fulsom and Alisha Dingus

When George Zimmerman goes on trial in the sensational Trayvon Martin murder case so will the“Stand Your Ground” laws and racial profiling.

Twenty-eight-years-old at the time he shot and killed 17-year-old Martin, Zimmerman now wears a monitoring device on his ankle and hides in near-seclusion at a secret Florida location. Fearful for his life, Zimmerman dons bulletproof apparel for his rare forays into public places, according to his lawyer.

Free on $1 million bail, Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder in the February 26, 2012 shooting of Martin.  His trial is set for June 10, 2013.

The nighttime slaying took place in a middle-class, gated subdivision called “The Retreat at Twin Lakes” in the central Florida town of Sanford.  Martin, as he had several times previously, was there with his father visiting his father’s financee and her son. He had the free time to be there due to being suspended from his high school at the time. That evening Martin had gone out alone to buy some Skittles and ice tea and was returning from the store when his fatal encounter with Zimmerman took place.

Jan. 3, 2013 

Editor’s Note: The first Al Qaeda attack on the American homeland was the February 26, 1993 bombing at The World Trade Center, a complex owned and operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. This attack killed six people and injured more than a thousand. It also traumatized millions of people in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area.

Even though this was the most destructive bomb attack suffered by American civilians in a time of peace, it took more than 10 years for authorities at all levels of government to admit that America had been attacked by terrorists who were encouraged and protected by foreign nations. It took just as long to admit that the organization that was responsible for 9/11 was also responsible for the 1993 attack.

Patrick Campbell was in the lobby of the North Tower when the bomb exploded in the basement 20 feet below him. A marketing manager for the Port Authority, Campbell describes the chaos that enveloped the Trade Center in the aftermath of the explosion and the many questions that still haunt him about this terrible day.  

by Patrick Campbell

At approximately 11:30 a.m., a Ryder van rolled at a leisurely pace northwards on West Street in Lower Manhattan towards the underground parking garage at the World Trade Center, located on West and Vesey streets. Eyad Ismoil was at the wheel and Ramzi Yousef, the terrorist leader, sat beside him. Following the van in a red getaway car was Mohammed Salameh and Mahmud Abouhalima, with Abouhalima at the wheel.

The four men were part of an Al Qaeda terrorist cell based in Jersey City, New Jersey, and they were now completing a mission that they had been working on for the previous five months. Yousef is a nephew of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the Al Qaeda leader who planned the 9/11 attack.

The van entered the World Trade Center parking garage and Abouhalima continued to drive the red getaway car for half a block and then turned right into Vesey Street, which is the northern boundary of the World Trade Center site. Vesey Street is a very wide street and Abouhalima had no problem double parking while he waited for Yousef and Ismoil to emerge from the garage.

The garage seemed empty as the van arrived on the second level below the street [the Basement 2 level], but for a moment Yousef thought they had a problem when he saw a Port Authority van, the same size and color as the Ryder van, parked in the  spot previously selected by Yousef  to park the Ryder van.  However, the Port Authority van suddenly started up and headed off towards the exit, and Ismoil swung the Ryder van in and took its place.

While Ismoil kept an eye out, Yousef lit four fuses, three of which were back-ups in case the first one failed, and then he closed and locked the back of the van, while Ismoil locked the front doors, and both then strolled  across the garage to the elevators servicing the North Tower lobby. When they arrived in the lobby they exited through the West Street entrance and within four minute of lighting the fuse they were in Abouhalima’s getaway car and were speeding away from the World Trade Center. The fuse would burn for another seven minutes and then the bomb would explode. By this time, the terrorists were in the Holland Tunnel on their way to Jersey City.