Sex Crimes

April 29, 2013

Screenshot from the motion picture Black Hawk Down

Specialist 4 John “Stebby” Stebbins won the Silver Star for his heroics at the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993. Since 2000 he’s been serving a 30-year sentence for raping his 6-year-old daughter.

by David Robb

You may have seen the movie Black Hawk Down. It was one of the biggest box office hits of 2001, and earned its director an Oscar nomination. The film, based on Mark Bowden’s nonfiction book of the same name, told the story of the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu. One of the real life Army heroes of the battle was Specialist 4 John ‘Stebby’ Stebbins, who was shot three different times – and thought dead each time – but recovered from his wounds and received the Silver Star, the third-highest military honor.

A former baker from upstate New York, Stebbins served as the company clerk for an elite unit of Army Rangers. His fellow soldiers referred to him as “chief coffee maker” and “paper pusher.” But when thrown into battle, his heroics surprised everyone.

“He was a changed man, a wild animal, dancing around, shooting like a madman,” Bowden wrote in his book.

March 11, 2013

Cardinal Donald Wuerl (Photo: World Tribune)

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of the Washington, D.C. Diocese, has an undeserved reputation as a “zero-tolerance” prelate when it comes to dealing with pedophile priests.

By Michael Volpe

As cardinals from around the world filed into the Sistine Chapel on Tuesday, March 12, 2013, to elect the successor to Saint Peter, a great deal of pre-conclave speculation focused on the possibility of the election of the first American pope in history. The names of three U.S. cardinals were mentioned in a report on NPR’s “Morning Edition” by political reporter Cokie Roberts: Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, and Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. Roberts cited Dolan for his telegenic, charismatic personality, O’Malley, a Capuchin Franciscan friar, for his down-to-earth humility, and Wuerl for his “management” expertise. There is a notion that the Vatican needs to undergo a sea change to regain its role as a moral authority, thus the focus on out-of-the-box thinking that might open the door at St. Peter’s to an American prelate. The odds against that happening are extremely long, but having Cardinal Wuerl in the mix may be a reflection of his “zero-tolerance” for pedophile priests that won him public acclaim during his years as a bishop. 

The new Pope will also have to face the charges of mismanagement at the Vatican bank and somehow find a way to move beyond the devastating revelations about the bitter infighting in the Vatican’s central administration known as the Curia. This embarrassing episode was set off in early 2012 when the Pope’s butler leaked an enormous stash of papal documents to an Italian reporter that provided an unprecedented inside look at the dysfunctional workings of the Vatican. Known as VatiLeaks, the expose was, no doubt, among the factors that led to Pope Benedict’s stunning announcement in February that he would end his eight-year reign and become the first pope to resign in nearly 600 years.

But no matter what else the new Pope does, he must be able to move the Catholic Church beyond the priest sex-abuse scandals that have engulfed the church for the last three decades. Other issues are also important, but cleansing the clergy of pedophiles is the most basic challenge the new Pope must meet.

Dec. 3, 2012

Rachel Nickell, Andre Hanscombe and their son Alex in the park

Not even Scotland Yard’s famed Murder Squad is immune from locking in on one suspect to the exclusion of all others and allowing its conceit to permit a serial rapist and murderer to stay at large for years after the evidence to convict him was in the police’s hands.

by Mark Pulham

In the photograph, her smile is wide and bright. A blue sky is behind her and she squints slightly from the sun as a wisp of blonde hair drifts across her face in a breeze. She seems incredibly happy. In another photograph, she and her boyfriend smile at the camera, bundled up against the chill. Between them is the buggy holding their young son.

Some people just radiate happiness, people who are attractive and put a smile on the face of those who saw them, even if they didn’t know the person.

Rachel Nickell was one of those people. Bright, attractive, and with boundless generosity, she was instantly likeable, and was capable of achieving anything that she set out to do.

Rachel Jane Nickell was born on November 23, 1968 to Andrew Nickell, an officer in the army, and his wife Monica, and brought up in Great Totham, a village near Colchester in Essex.  From a very young age, Rachel was naturally charitable, helping out with the elderly and with the disabled children in the area.

When she turned 11, Rachel went to the Colchester High School for Girls, and in her spare time, she joined the Essex Dance Theatre and took up singing, dancing, and acting. She could have pursued this course, but instead, decided to study and get a degree in History and English.

Rachel Nickell

Rachel got a job at a Richmond swimming pool as a lifeguard, and it is there, in 1988, that she met a young motorcycle courier named Andre Hanscombe. The couple fell in love, and a year later, Rachel gave birth to her son, Alexander Louis. Rachel and Andre never married, and there is no indication that they were even thinking about it.

Rachel decided to stop working, at least for then, and devoted herself to being a full-time mother, even though she had been offered work as a photographic model. Maybe when Alex was old enough, she would pursue her ambition to be a children’s television presenter, an ambition in which she no doubt would have excelled.

The young family moved to Balham, in South London, and life seemed perfect. Wimbledon is also in South London. Known throughout the world for hosting the world’s most prestigious tennis tournament, people flock there in the summer to watch the matches and eat strawberry cream tarts at the afternoon teas in the pavilions.

But tennis is not the only thing the area is known for.

Nov. 12, 2012

George Kaufman

The first criminal investigation in Australia – and one of the first in the world – to use DNA to solve a case.

by Liz Porter

The affluent middle-class suburb of North Caulfield, in the southern Australian city of Melbourne, is the kind of area that sends real estate brokers into rhapsodies about “lifestyle” and “leafy outlooks.” Narong Road is located in the very heart of this safe and conservative area. Quiet, respectable and offering a mix of low-rise apartment blocks and spacious houses, it’s a popular address for religious Jewish families because of the short walk to the nearby Caulfield synagogue on the Sabbath.

Yet, over four years in the early to mid-1980s, this pleasant little street became the favorite hunting ground of a brutal and coolly efficient rapist.

The attacks, which began in March 1982 and continued until September 1986, were on women aged from their 20s to 55 and living in the southeastern Melbourne suburbs of Caulfield, Armadale, St. Kilda or areas adjacent to them. There were odd patterns in their occurrence, with intense bursts of activity followed by periods of quiet. Five rapes took place between March and July 1982, the first in Narong Road. Then, between September 1984 and January 1985, there were five more – beginning, again, in Narong Road. A hiatus of almost 18 months followed. Then the rapist resurfaced in July 1986. Once again, his first victim lived in a flat in Narong Road.

With his face masked by a balaclava or clothing and with gloves or socks on his hands to avoid depositing fingerprints, the rapist left so little in the way of traces that the 1988 police operation set up to trap him was dubbed “Operation Shadow.”

Sept. 17, 2012

Handwriting analysis example from the University of Kent

 The School Stalker is an extract from Written On The Skin– an Australian Forensic Casebook by Liz Porter, joint winner of the 2007 Ned Kelly Prize for best true crime book.  This book is available in a Kindle edition. Hard copies from the author: trager@netspace.net.au

by Liz Porter 

The attractive young female teacher had been delighted to get a job on the staff of an inner-suburban boys-only high school in the Australian city of Melbourne. But in late 1996, within months of her arrival, she began receiving offensive handwritten notes, accusing her of having sex with some of her 15 and 16-year-old year students. A letter from an anonymous parent was also sent to the school principal.

The opening of the 1997 school year triggered a resumption of the notes, including a second letter to the principal, and the targeted teacher became increasingly distraught. The letter suggested that the young woman had been behaving in an improper way towards some of her male students and threatened to “seek legal advice” about it.

“On many occasions,” this “concerned parent” wrote, “my son has mentioned that this lady uses inappropriate and suggestive comments to year 10 boys in class.” The “parent” also drew attention to the teacher’s appearance – her ‘very short dresses which leave little to the imagination.”

When the teacher turned to the police, Detective Tony Warren, then based at a station near the school, was assigned to the case.

Although the teacher had destroyed some of the early notes she had been sent, dismissing them as pranks, she had soon begun keeping them, and had collected a considerable number to give to the detective. One note described her as “a big slut who roots boys in year 9 and 10.”