Crime and Punishment; they go together like
pen and paper, like summer and barbeques, and like bacon andâŚwell⌠bacon goes with
everything. But sometimes you get crime without punishment and society feels like itâs been
hard done by. We all love a good bit of justice and thereâs nothing quite like a great detective
unravelling a criminalâs evil scheme, although itâs not always possible; a vital clue is
missing, witnesses disappear or a bloody fingerprint turns out to be ketchup from a hungry detectiveâs
lunch. So letâs get together Sherlock Holmes, Poirot,
Columbo and that guy from CSI Miami who was always taking off his sunglasses, and investigate
some of the worldâs greatest unsolved crimes. Elizabeth Short was a lot shorter when they
found her since somebody had cut her right in half. She remains one of Los Angeles longest
unsolved cases and The Black Dahlia, as she is commonly known, inspired many a good book,
movie and TV show through the years. The nickname is likely linked to the 1946 film The Blue
Dahlia, a crime thriller written by one of the greatest detective novelists of all time;
Raymond Chandler. Elizabeth had a difficult life before her
ugly death. She grew up in Massachusetts and when she was just six years old, her fatherâs
car was found parked on a bridge and it was assumed that he had committed suicide after
losing everything in the 1929 stock market crash. But a letter arrived from California,
years later, with her father apologising and telling her he lived in California. He couldnât
find the âsorry I faked my death and ran awayâ apology card at the gas station.
Elizabeth eventually moved to join her father in California and they lived together in LA
for a while but she moved towns after they had an argument and she flitted around various
California locations. Until she was found dead in Leimert Park, California.
Right, I guess you want the grizzly details now, donât you? Maybe load up a video of
puppies, you know, as back up. So, when Betty Bersinger and her three-year old daughter
found Elizabeth Short on 15th January 1947, they thought she was a shop mannequin since
the top and bottom halves of her were over a foot apart and she was posed with her hands
above her head. She had whole pieces of flesh removed and was largely drained of blood,
some of which was found in a cement sack nearby. She also had a Glasgow Smile, where the corners
of her mouth were sliced up to her ears. There have been many suspects over the years,
including Walter Bayley, a surgeon; Norman Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times;
Mark Hansen, a Hollywood nightclub owner and the most compelling suspect Dr George Hill
Hodel. You can see why they made movies out of the story, canât you?
There are so many rumours about The Black Dahlia, such as her being a sex worker, and
even the opposite, that she was unable to have sex due to a birth defect, none of which
have ever been substantiated. Our next pair of murders involved a whole
lot of beef. But itâs okay vegetarians, no cows were harmed, just two of the worldâs
greatest rappers; Biggie and Tupac. In 1994, Tupac survived a shooting outside
New York's Quad Studios and he managed to get into an elevator and get back upstairs
to where Biggie and some of his crew were. Tupac and Biggie were friends at this point
but Tupac accused Biggie of knowing that the shooting was going to take place. Biggie denied
it but soon after released the song âWho Shot Ya?â and, although probably just a
taunt, Tupac took it to heart. Things escalated quickly into a full east coast - west coast
rivalry. Rap beefs are pretty common, and they give
the industry a lot of entertainment value, often becoming a sort of x-rated soap opera.
But whereas these days, it probably ends with Azealia Banks being banned from twitter, Tupac
and Biggie had a much more final ending when both were gunned down, 6 months apart in â96
and â97. No killer has been brought to justice for either murder, there are just rumours
of various gangsters and even the FBI being responsible.
Letâs have a break from murder, shall we? No one died for this crime but, it could be
said it actually represented a far more dangerous threat than everything else on this list.
On Christmas Eve, 2000, a hacker named âLeafâ accessed a Navy computer in Washington and
stole most of the source code for Exigent's OS/COMET software, which is used to guide
satellites and missiles. Some geeks have a very weird idea of what makes a good present;
what is wrong with reindeer print socks? The FBIâs Chris Murray played down the importance
of the hack, saying it wasnât an intelligence disaster since the data was unclassified.
But itâs still pretty worrying that you could potentially have some thirteen-year-old
kid sitting on classified military information. Although, to be fair, we did let George W
Bush have the nuke codes, and he choked on a pretzel.
Leafâs identity has never been discovered. The hack was traced back to the University
of Kaiserslautern in Germany but the trail went dead.
This is not the only time an unknown hacker has messed with the US government. In 1989
a digital worm was created, called WANK, which stood for Worms Against Nuclear Killers. It
infected NASA computers and cost half a million dollars of time and resources to fix. Computers
infected with the virus were presented with a message onscreen that said âYour system
has been officially WANKedâ. Itâs rumoured that one of the hackers, could have been Wikileaks
founder, Julian Assange. A heist now, one of the biggest unsolved hauls
in history. On February 25th 2005, men disguised in KLM uniforms, thatâs the major Dutch
airline, tricked their way out on to the tarmac of Amsterdamâs airport, Schiphol. They had
a stolen KLM cargo vehicle and they managed to stop an armoured truck which was transporting
uncut diamonds. They took the diamonds at gun point, although no shots were fired, and
then made off. The truck was found abandoned but the identities
of the robbers remains a mystery. Itâs hard to estimate how much their haul was worth,
since the diamonds were uncut and the cutting determines a lot of their value. But, itâs
thought to haven been well over $100 million so thatâs not bad for an afternoonâs work.
Itâs been noted that this heist bares a lot of similarities to the 2013 one in Antwerp,
where men in security uniforms, driving the vehicles of Belgian security forces, raced
out on to the runway and took 120 boxes full of diamonds that were being loaded onto a
plane bound for Zurich. In both cases; no guns were fired, they knew the exact time
and location of the diamonds and the diamonds were uncut, which also makes them harder to
track. This one was only a haul of a meagre $50 million though, hardly seems worth the
bother, doesnât it? If there is one man you donât want to mess
with, itâs Vladimir Putin; he runs one of the worldâs most powerful countries, and
he rides a horse without his shirt on, heâs the manliest of men. But Alexander Litvinenko
decided it would be a good idea to poke the angry bear, and, rather than ripping him in
half, the great bear knocked him off with a sneaky bit of radioactive poisoning. This
is all conjecture, of course. Alexander Litvinenko was a former Russian
FSB officer, who ended up living in London. The Russian FSB are the successors of the
infamous KGB. He left Russia under controversial circumstances, having been investigated when
he publically accused his superiors of ordering the assassination of Russian tycoon Boris
Berezovsky. Berezovsky had been a friend of Putinâs from the early 90s but their relationship
deteriorated soon after Putin left his position as head of the FSB and became president in
2000. Litvinenko was acquitted twice, in â99 and
2000 and subsequently fled to London, where he worked with British intelligence and wrote
two books, accusing the FSB of some shady behaviour which helped Putin claim power.
On 1st November 2006, he fell ill and was hospitalised, quickly diagnosed as being poisoned
by radioactive polonium-210, which is one of the most toxic substances known to mankind.
Obviously, access to the substance is strictly controlled and thereâs also the small fact
that you need access to a nuclear reactor to actually obtain it. So if you happen to
be at a business meeting with two other Russians and drink tea containing a lethal dose of
polonium-210, just like Litvinenko did, then itâs probably no accident. He died on 23rd
November. A British investigation pointed to Andrey
Lugovoy, a Russian government agent, but nothing could be proven since Russia refused to extradite
him, so the case remains open. The only thing we know for sure is if a Russian man offers
you a glowing sandwich, politely tell him youâre not hungry.
Okay, letâs play a quick game of odd one out. Which of these sounds like something
you shouldnât find at the beach; crabs, sand, seagulls, disembodied human feet, ice
cream. If you said âice creamâ, you had a very depressing childhood.
Along the coast of the Salish Sea, in British Columbia, Canada some 20 human feet have been
found on the shore in the last 10 years. Almost all have been right feet. Also, almost all
of the washed-up feet were wearing running shoes.
Whatâs happening then? A serial killer? Fussy sharks? A really strong ankle high current?
Well, a body can remain in the water for up to three decades and feet can easily become
detached through natural decomposition. So the feet could have just washed up from bodies
of people who have drowned at sea, but why British Columbia? Nowhere else in the world
have feet washed up on beaches in one location with such frequency. Does British Columbia
have its very own Dexter-style murderer on the loose?
One of the biggest problems in identifying the source of the lost limbs is that the feet
themselves become difficult to analyse, since they produce a lot of adipocere. Adipocere
is known as corpse wax and itâs an organic substance produced by bacteria during the
decomposition of body fat. It causes difficulties in forensics because itâs very temperature
dependant so unless you know the exact environment the body was in during decomposition, it makes
age estimation very difficult. Some feet are from people believed to have
committed suicide. Thereâs was also a case of a missing fisherman in the area. Itâs
been suggested that some could have come from the 2004 Asian tsunami, which would match
some of the running shoeâs production locations and the direction of the currents. Or perhaps
itâs all the work of a serial killer who has a grave dislike for those blasted runners
who keep treading up his front yard every morning. He did warn them!
Thereâs a surprisingly large crime industry around our next topic; after drugs, money
laundering and arms dealing, itâs one of the biggest illegal businesses in the game.
What do you think it is? Carjacking? Armed Robbery? Really awful parking?
Itâs actually, the romantic world of art theft, which clocks in at about $6 billion
annually. And the greatest art heist of all time was from The Isabella Stewart Gardner
Museum, in Boston, USA. In the early hours of 18th March 1990, two men dressed as local
police arrived at the museum and told the security theyâd been called for a disturbance
in the yard. They then proceeded to truss up the guards and walked off with an incredible
collection of work from master painters such as Degas, Rembrandt and Manet. Itâs hard
to put a price on it but some say it was almost half a billion dollars of classic art. There
were no real leads and none of the art has resurfaced.
The museum director Anne Hawley saw the bigger picture and went as far as to release details
for the thieves as to how best to store the paintings, thinking itâs better that they
at least survive intact, even if they are hanging in some shady billionaireâs pool
room. It seems like itâs surprisingly easy to
pick up a Picasso or steal a Schiele. In 2010, a lone thief just broke a window and cut a
padlock, and thatâs all it took to get into the Paris Museum of Modern Art and dance off
with a Matisse and a Picasso, among others. Not exactly what I would call state-of-the-art
security. But rather than cashing in on his millions, one of his accomplices claimed,
while being questioned by the police, that he had panicked and just thrown the paintings
into a rubbish truck, rather than paint himself into a corner and have a nasty brush with
the law. Weâre staying with art for our last crime
but now, rather than stealing, the creating is the crime.
Itâs the worldâs favourite graffiti artist, the mysterious Banksy. Heâs a British artist
that grew out of the underground scene in Bristol and his work, often highly political
in nature, has appeared everywhere from London to Disneyland to the Gaza strip. Pieces of
his work have sold for over $1 million and heâs even made an Oscar nominated documentary
called Exit Through The Gift Shop. But he, or she or them, has never revealed
their true identity, perhaps to enjoy the anonymity but probably due to the illegality
of his work. Itâs not just graffiti since heâs also done things like produce fake
British bank notes with Princess Dianna replacing the Queen and âBanksy of Englandâ written
on them. He also messed with Paris Hiltonâs album launch in 2006 by switching out her
CDs and replacing them with his own remixed version, including tracks like Why am I Famous?,
What Have I Done? and What Am I For? A UK newspaper The Mail on Sunday claims to
have proven that Banksy is actually a man called Robin Gunningham, using geographic
profiling to match his locations and his activity, a process normally reserved for serious crime
and tracking viral outbreaks. So maybe the writing is on the wall for his anonymity but,
until heâs caught red handed, the mystery of this world-famous criminal-slash-artist
will remain.
Hah, I thought it was Frankie Muniz at first.
I only got through the top three... but so far none of these are 'crimes'.
Also, the bizarre de-sync of the guys voice with the video threw me off
I've watched most of his videos and his accent is pretty weird! I always hear 42 instead of thoughty2