Foreign Crimes

Jan. 20, 2010

Tony Musulin

 It’s always about the money – but was it this time? No one had heard of security van driver Tony Musulin until he drove off with $16.7 million – France’s biggest robbery ever – without having even uttered one threatening word.

by Marilyn Z. Tomlins

Nov. 19, 2009

André Bamberski

For 27 years the heartbroken André Bamberski kept an eye on the fugitive serial rapist who murdered his 14-year-old daughter. Then he arranged a vigilante kidnapping to deliver the murderer to the police.

By Marilyn Z. Tomlins

Oct. 26, 2009 Updated March 9, 2010

Treiber Police Photo

Awaiting trial for murder, Frenchman Jean-Pierre Treiber goes on the run and makes the police look like idiots.

by Marilyn Z. Tomlins

March 8, 2009

The Durban Castle Steamship

by Marilyn Z. Tomlins

At noon, shining Chevrolets and Fords began pulling up beside the large white steamship with the lavender hull and the black and red funnel anchored along the quayside.

From the automobiles stepped middle-aged ladies in frumpy summer frocks, comfortable shoes and small feathered hats, all clutching purses in which were the medication they were certain they would need for seasickness on the 14-day voyage that lay ahead.

At the ladies' sides were their husbands; men who were also no longer in their prime wearing their double-breasted suits cut by London or New York's best tailors and their fedoras bought in Paris or Rome.

February 9, 2009

Courtroom sketch of Elisabeth Cons-Boutboul

by Anthony Davis

As the murder trial of 70-year-old Elisabeth Cons-Boutboul opened in Paris on March 2, 1994, the question on everyone's lips was not, "Is she guilty?" but, "Which role is she going to play?"

January 25, 2009

Céline Jourdan, age 6, went missing from her home in the tiny village of La-Motte-du-Caire.

by Anthony Davis

December 02, 2007

Daisy de Melker, mugshot 1932

by Marilyn Z. Tomlins

No one present at the birth of Daisy Louisa Hancorn-Smith had reason to believe that she would one day be famous or, for that matter, infamous. A generation would grow up before a baby girl born in South Africa would again be named Daisy – such was the unpleasant odor that clung to the name.

It was Thursday, June 1, 1886. The place was Seven Fountains, 25 miles from the town of Grahamstown, in the British Cape Colony. The city of Cape Town was 550 miles further south.