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kottke.org posts about crime

Senator Moynihan’s bullet tax

In an editorial for the NY Times in 1993 called Guns Don’t Kill People. Bullets Do., US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan described a bill he introduced in the Senate which would have levied a 10,000% tax on hollow-point bullets.

“So far this year, 342 New Yorkers have been killed by stray bullets. And in the past few days, two young women were shot in their pregnant bellies.” A. M. Rosenthal wrote that on this page last Tuesday, the day of the Long Island shooting. By Thursday there were 11 more homicides. If we are to stop it, or come anywhere close, we have to get hold of the ammunition.

On Nov. 3, I introduced a bill that would levy a 10,000 percent tax on Winchester hollow-tipped “Black Talon” bullets, specifically designed to rip flesh. (Colin Ferguson, the suspect in the Long Island shootings, had some 40 of them.)

The tax would effectively raise the price of Black Talons from $20 a box to $2,000. On Nov. 22, 19 days after my bill was introduced, Winchester announced that it would cease sale of Black Talons to the public. Which suggests that the munitions manufacturers are more responsive than the automobile companies were a generation ago. It is also important to note that in 1986 Congress banned the Teflon-coated “cop killer” bullet, which penetrates police body armor. The Swedes are now making a new kind of armor-piercing round. We got that banned in the Senate version of this year’s crime bill without a murmur.

The Long Island shootings Moynihan refers to resulted in the deaths of six people and the injury of nineteen more. (via @Rebeccamead_NYC)


Gun trends explain US gun culture

Emily Badger highlights some trends in gun ownership, gun violence, and public opinion related to gun control over the past several decades.

A handful of charts paint a remarkable picture of some key shifts over the past 30 or 40 years. During that time, gun violence nationally has declined significantly even as aberrant mass shootings have grown less so; public sentiment for regulating the weapons has fallen steeply, too. Mother Jones has estimated that we’re approaching a demographic reality where our population of firearms will outpace our population of people. But hard data on the total number of civilian-owned guns in America is hard to come by, and so much of what we know on the topic is based upon what gun owners themselves say in surveys.


Gun violence in the US since Friday

This morning at 11am, Ken Layne collected a number of incidents of gun violence that have occurred in the US since the Newtown shootings on Friday. They include:

In Mississippi, one man is dead and two are injured (including the dead man’s father) “after an argument over a man ‘doing donuts’ — or spinning his truck in circles — in a field.”

Two police officers were shot dead in Kansas on Sunday morning. They were investigating a “suspicious vehicle.”

A 42-year-old destitute maniac fired 50 rounds at the Fashion Island luxury mall in Newport Beach, California, on Saturday evening. No one was injured.

Layne also noted “this is not a comprehensive list of the U.S. gun violence over the past 48 hours”.


The results of tougher gun laws in Australia

A 2006 paper that appeared in Injury Prevention analyzed the possible results of the 1996 gun law reforms in Australia. The most striking result: in the 18 years before tougher laws were passed, there were 13 mass shootings in Australia…and none in the 10.5 years afterwards.

Results: In the 18 years before the gun law reforms, there were 13 mass shootings in Australia, and none in the 10.5 years afterwards. Declines in firearm-related deaths before the law reforms accelerated after the reforms for total firearm deaths (p = 0.04), firearm suicides (p = 0.007) and firearm homicides (p = 0.15), but not for the smallest category of unintentional firearm deaths, which increased. No evidence of substitution effect for suicides or homicides was observed. The rates per 100 000 of total firearm deaths, firearm homicides and firearm suicides all at least doubled their existing rates of decline after the revised gun laws.

Conclusions: Australia’s 1996 gun law reforms were followed by more than a decade free of fatal mass shootings, and accelerated declines in firearm deaths, particularly suicides. Total homicide rates followed the same pattern. Removing large numbers of rapid-firing firearms from civilians may be an effective way of reducing mass shootings, firearm homicides and firearm suicides.


The blueprint for media coverage of mass killings

From a few years ago, Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe takes on the media’s reaction to mass killings, similar to what Roger Ebert was getting at.

(thx, daniel)


Remnick to Obama: take action on gun control

The New Yorker’s editor in chief David Remnick strongly urges President Obama to take decisive action on gun control.

Barack Obama has been in our field of vision for a long time now, and, more than any major politician of recent memory, he hides in plain sight. He is who he is. He may strike the unsympathetic as curiously remote or arrogant or removed; he certainly strikes his admirers as a man of real intelligence and dignity. But he is who he is. He is no phony. And so there is absolutely no reason to believe that his deep, raw emotion today following the horrific slaughter in Connecticut-his tears, the prolonged catch in his voice-was anything but genuine. But this was a slaughter-a slaughter like so many before it-and emotion is hardly all that is needed. What is needed is gun control-strict, comprehensive gun control that places the values of public safety and security before the values of deer hunting and a perverse ahistorical reading of the Second Amendment. Obama told the nation that he reacted to the shootings in Newtown “as a parent,” and that is understandable, but what we need most is for him to act as a President, liberated at last from the constraints of elections and their dirty compromises-a President who dares to change the national debate and the legislative agenda on guns.


The Onion, often the most emotionally honest media source

The Onion takes on the CT school shootings in a series of articles. First, there’s Fuck Everything, Nation Reports:

Following the fatal shooting this morning at a Connecticut elementary school that left at least 27 dead, including 20 small children, sources across the nation shook their heads, stifled a sob in their voices, and reported fuck everything. Just fuck it all to hell.

All of it, sources added.

“I’m sorry, but fuck it, I can’t handle this-I just can’t handle it anymore,” said Deborah McEllis, who added that “no, no, no, no, no, this isn’t happening, this can’t be real.” “Seriously, what the hell is this? What’s even going on anymore? Why do things like this keep happening?”

From Right To Own Handheld Device That Shoots Deadly Metal Pellets At High Speed Worth All Of This:

“It’s my God-given right and a founding principle of this country that I be able to own a [piece of metal that launches other smaller pieces of metal great distances, one after the other], and if a few deaths here and there is the price we have to pay for that freedom, then so be it,” said Lawrence Crane of nearby Danbury, CT, who is such a staunch advocate of the portable deadly-pellet-flinging apparatuses that he keeps multiple versions of such mechanisms in his home, often carries one with him, and is a member of a club whose sole purpose is to celebrate these assembled steel things and the small bits of metal they send flying.

And Report: It Okay To Spend Rest Of Day Curled In Fetal Position Under Desk:

Following reports of a mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school that left 20 children dead, sources just confirmed that it is totally fine to spend the entire rest of today curled up in the fetal position underneath your desk. Early reports also indicated that sitting on the floor while holding your knees to your chest and slowly rocking back and forth is not only acceptable, but, sources said, absolutely understandable.


Kids and guns in the USA

Back in 2007, Gary Younge wrote an article for the Guardian about nine children who were killed with guns in one day in the US.

In many respects, then, Gerardo’s death set the scene for just another day in America. Over the following 24 hours, on this day picked at random, another eight children would lose their lives. Gerardo was the eldest; the youngest was two. Eight were black and one was Hispanic. They died in housing estates, suburbs and malls, at parties and on porches, in areas of average income and of above-average poverty. They were shot by a relative, friend, unknown assassin, a pizza delivery man, an off-duty police officer and by accident. It was Thanksgiving, the biggest travelling weekend of the year, when people are returning home after joining their families for the holiday. By the time the day was over, nine families were one member short.


The NRA is winning the war on guns

And it’s not because they have guns. They’ve got money and political influence.

While the NRA wins court fights, laws allowing more guns in more public places continue to spread, often for reasons that defy logic. For example, take the reasoning offered by Alabama state Sen. Roger Bedford, a Democrat, when explaining to Bloomberg earlier this week why he introduced a bill that would allow people to keep their guns in their cars in the workplace parking lot. “This provides safety and protection for workers who oftentimes travel 20 to 50 miles to their jobs,” Bedford said. What does this mean? If there’s a workplace shooting, people need to be able to have their guns in the parking lot to turn the place into a true shootout? Or does he just mean that maybe people need to be able to shoot to kill while driving down the highway on the way to work?


Facts about guns and mass shootings in the US

More facts about guns in America from Ezra Klein, beginning with the sad fact that “shooting sprees are not rare in the United States”.

If roads were collapsing all across the United States, killing dozens of drivers, we would surely see that as a moment to talk about what we could do to keep roads from collapsing. If terrorists were detonating bombs in port after port, you can be sure Congress would be working to upgrade the nation’s security measures. If a plague was ripping through communities, public-health officials would be working feverishly to contain it.

Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. But that’s unacceptable. As others have observed, talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn’t “too soon.” It’s much too late.


How do we prevent school massacres?

Josh Marshall at TPM asks: how do we fix this?

I don’t want to hear about these tragedies being rooted in evil or the human heart. We know the human heart is a substandard product. The brain frequently malfunctions. It’s offensive to put this forward as part of a discussion about policy as opposed to theodicy and meditation. We know that the vast, vast proportion of gun owners use them legally and safely. We also know that gun deaths are rare in many other countries quite similar to the USA for the simple reason they don’t have so many friggin’ guns all over the place. This is obvious. And guns just make it easy to kill a lot of people really quickly. Freely available body armor helps too.


The United States of Guns

From the New Yorker back in April, Jill Lepore wrote about the history of guns in America.

There are nearly three hundred million privately owned firearms in the United States: a hundred and six million handguns, a hundred and five million rifles, and eighty-three million shotguns. That works out to about one gun for every American. The gun that T. J. Lane brought to Chardon High School belonged to his uncle, who had bought it in 2010, at a gun shop. Both of Lane’s parents had been arrested on charges of domestic violence over the years. Lane found the gun in his grandfather’s barn.

The United States is the country with the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world. (The second highest is Yemen, where the rate is nevertheless only half that of the U.S.) No civilian population is more powerfully armed. Most Americans do not, however, own guns, because three-quarters of people with guns own two or more. According to the General Social Survey, conducted by the National Policy Opinion Center at the University of Chicago, the prevalence of gun ownership has declined steadily in the past few decades. In 1973, there were guns in roughly one in two households in the United States; in 2010, one in three. In 1980, nearly one in three Americans owned a gun; in 2010, that figure had dropped to one in five.


The right day to talk about guns

Writing for the New Yorker, Alex Koppelman says that today is the right day to talk about guns.

Carney’s response was a predictable one. This is the way that we deal with such incidents in the U.S.-we acknowledge them; we are briefly shocked by them; then we term it impolite to discuss their implications, and to argue about them. At some point, we will have to stop putting it off, stop pretending that doing so is the proper, respectful thing. It’s not either. It’s cowardice.

It is cowardice, too, the way that Carney and President Obama and their fellow-Democrats talk about gun control, when they finally decide the time is right. They avoid the issue as much as possible, then mouth platitudes, or promise to pass only the most popular of measures, like the assault-weapons ban. And then they do nothing to follow through.


Japan is a land without guns (and shooting deaths)

Max Fisher on firearm ownership in Japan.

But what about the country at the other end of the spectrum? What is the role of guns in Japan, the developed world’s least firearm-filled nation and perhaps its strictest controller? In 2008, the U.S. had over 12 thousand firearm-related homicides. All of Japan experienced only 11, fewer than were killed at the Aurora shooting alone. And that was a big year: 2006 saw an astounding two, and when that number jumped to 22 in 2007, it became a national scandal. By comparison, also in 2008, 587 Americans were killed just by guns that had discharged accidentally.

Almost no one in Japan owns a gun. Most kinds are illegal, with onerous restrictions on buying and maintaining the few that are allowed. Even the country’s infamous, mafia-like Yakuza tend to forgo guns; the few exceptions tend to become big national news stories.


Six facts about guns and gun control

In the aftermath of the Aurora, CO shootings, Ezra Klein wrote six facts about guns, violence, and gun control.

1. America is an unusually violent country. But we’re not as violent as we used to be.

5. States with stricter gun control laws have fewer deaths from gun-related violence.


Studies: more guns, more homicide

The Harvard Injury Control Research Center has reviewed the literature and the results are clear: more guns = more homicide.

Our review of the academic literature found that a broad array of evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for homicide, both in the United States and across high-income countries. Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the US, where there are more guns, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide.


Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s FBI file

Earlier in the year, Rich Jones at Gun.io filed a Freedom of Information request for Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s FBI file. It appears Wu-Tang may not actually be for the children. Here are the parts Jones noted.

“The WTC is heavily involved in the sale of drugs, illegal guns, weapons possession, murder, carjacking and other types of violent crime.” [p5]
Connections to the murder of Robert “Pooh” Johnson and Jerome “Boo Boo” Estrella. [p6]
Connection to murder of Ishamael “Hoody” Kourma. [p13]
A shoot-out with the NYPD. [p15]
Arrest for felony possession of body armour. [p16]
Connections to the Bloods Gang. [p17]
Found in possession of large bags full of paper currency. [p40]
Details of his being robbed and shot while staying in the Kingston projects. [p45]

But also, Wu-Tang Flan, creator unknown.

wu-tang-flan.jpg


A day without violent crime in NYC

According to the NYPD, not single violent crime (shooting, stabbing, murder, etc.) was reported in NYC on Monday, “the first time in recent memory” that has happened.

The rare day occurred on Monday, near the end of a year when the city’s murder rate is on target to hit its lowest point since 1960, according to New York Police Department chief spokesman Paul Browne.

Browne said it was “first time in memory” the city’s police force had experienced such a peaceful day.

While crime is up 3 percent overall, including a 9 percent surge in grand larceny police attribute to a rash of smart phone thefts, murder is down 23 percent over last year, the NYPD said.

Unfortunately, some are crediting the crappy NYPD stop-and-frisk policy with the drop in violent crime. (via marginal revolution)


Uncapturing the Friedmans

Since Capturing the Friedmans came out in 2003, the filmmakers have been quietly working to prove the innocence of one of the films subjects, interviewing the sexual abuse victims of then 18-year-old Jesse Friedman. What they have found may point to Friedman’s innocence.

One of those affected by the case was Arline Epstein, the mother of a child who had attended group therapy along with children who had testified against Jesse. Earlier this year, Arline’s son Michael told her that, as a young boy, he had lied to his therapist about being sexually abused. In her testimony, which was featured at Sunday’s event, Arline talks about revisiting a file of notes she had kept during the case and finding one that mentioned that during the first round of questioning of the children by police, none of them said they had been abused.

Arline and Michael Epstein are two of the witnesses featured in the video reel of new testimony compiled by Jarecki and Smerling, and both were at Sunday’s event. Friedman was overwhelmed by the warm welcome he received from someone, who, as he put it, “for 25 years thought that I’d raped her son.”

The evidence the filmmakers have compiled is available on a web site they have set up. (via @DavidGrann)


The Man Who Charged Himself With Murder

“The man stepped toward him, caught [Trevell] Coleman’s eye, and grabbed for the gun. Startled, Coleman squeezed off three shots. The man winced, but didn’t make a sound.” That was seventeen years ago. Trevell Coleman never knew what happened to the person he shot, but he wanted to find out. From NY Mag: The Man Who Charged Himself with Murder.


Riding with the Truck Stop Killer

In 1985, Vanessa Veselka was a teenaged hitchhiker who was picked up by a man who would come to be known as the Truck Stop Killer. Nearly three decades later, she returns to the scene of that experience and writes about it for GQ: “I said I wouldn’t go to the cops if nothing happened to me, but it was his choice — until he looked at me and I went still. There was going to be no more talking. I knew in my body that it was over.”


Anton Kusters’ Photos of the Yakuza

For his Yakuza project, photographer Anton Kusters spent two years documenting some members of the Japanese mafia.

Yakuza Anton Kusters

A limited edition of a book containing the photos is available. Steward Mag recently did an interview with Kusters:

The values were almost comparable to general Japanese workplace values, actually. Most yakuza gangs actually have neighborhood offices, and the plaques they have on the door state core values like “respect your superiors,” “keep the office clean,” and so on.

One thing I noticed early on with gang life was how subtle everything was. Everything was unspoken, and will was expressed through group pressure. A pressure was constantly there. There was this innate understanding of form — if someone did something wrong, no one would say anything; he would simply be expected to apologize. And the fact everyone would be so silent about it made the pressure really intense.

(thx, david)


The Chickens and the Bulls

Writing for Slate, William McGowan tells the story of the Chickens and the Bulls, an extensive and brazen extortion ring that targetting prominent homosexuals (admirals, Congressmen, entertainers, etc.) and the NYPD & FBI investigators and prosecutors who put the kibosh on the whole thing with minimal exposure to the victims.

Though now almost forgotten, the case of “the Chickens and the Bulls” as the NYPD called it (or “Operation Homex,” to the FBI), still stands as the most far-flung, most organized, and most brazen example of homosexual extortion in the nation’s history. And while the Stonewall riot in June 1969 is considered by many to be the pivotal moment in gay civil rights, this case represents an important crux too, marking the first time that the law enforcement establishment actually worked on behalf of victimized gay men, instead of locking them up or shrugging.

The coda of the case is surprising…one of the members of the extortion ring became one of the gay movement’s most powerful leaders.


Pineapple under OC

This story involve: ninjas, Orange County, and SpongeBob SquarePants. Depending on who you ask, artist Todd White, lead character designer of SpongeBob SquarePants, either hired a gang of ninjas to hold hostage a gallery owner for several hours while they stole all his work from the gallery or sent his manager, his lawyer, and an off duty LAPD officer to take his art back from a gallery owner who fraudulently reproduced and signed his work.

Claiming that she had been assaulted and imprisoned, Howell told the cops that she only agreed to be recorded by the men because she was scared. “She was extremely afraid for her life,” the officer noted. Terrified for her safety, according to the report she gave the police, she told Eddy and the others what they wanted to hear and signed the settlement only because she had been coerced. She suspected that the caper was designed to eliminate her from White’s life and allow him — and Lavoie, who now worked as White’s office manager — to take over her lucrative gallery themselves. Later that month, she filed a lawsuit against White seeking $7.5 million for physical and emotional trauma. The settlement she had signed that night had no merit as far as she was concerned, and she would continue her business at the Hyatt as normal.

And to round out the art theft beat, a Salvador Dali drawing was stolen out of a NYC gallery in broad daylight last week.

The man who stole a drawing by the Surrealist painter Salvador Dalí on Tuesday wore only the most basic of disguises: that of an everyday gallery visitor, walking past the Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst works on display. And he brought only the most basic of tools for his heist: a black shopping bag.

What a wascally wabbit.

Update:
The drawing mentioned above has been returned.


Cold murder case solved after 23 years

In 1986, Sherri Rasmussen was murdered in the apartment that she shared with her husband. The police eliminated the husband and ex-lovers as suspects and the case remained unsolved for 20+ years until a pair of detectives pulled it from the cold case files and looked at the evidence with fresh eyes. Mark Bowden has the story in the latest issue of Vanity Fair.

Soon after the murder, [Sherri’s father] Nels was shown sketches of two Latin male suspects, and the burglary theory was explained. There was no way for him to recognize the drawings, and the whole scenario did not make sense to him. He had to wonder about the competence of these detectives. The apartment showed signs of a protracted fight. Mayer estimated that the struggle may have lasted for an hour and a half. How could his daughter have fought off two men for that long?, Nels asked. There was the bite mark on her forearm, which led Mayer’s partner, Steve Hooks, to conjecture that the suspect may have been a woman, on the theory that women are biters. But the notion was dismissed. Women don’t typically engage in breaking and entering, and fighting men have been known to use their teeth. There was also the bullet wound in the center of Sherri’s chest, and the hole and powder burns on the blanket. Mayer told Nels that his daughter had not simply been shot and killed; she had been assassinated. Why would a burglar do that?

Nels asked if they had checked to see if the lady cop had been working that day. Had they examined her, taken pictures of her? The answers were no. No one ever checked up on Lazarus. Mayer or Hooks or someone apparently did talk to her on the phone eventually, and the conversation was enough to close that line of inquiry. There is only one brief entry in the case file that mentions her, recorded on November 19, 1986, more than eight months after the murder. It reads, “John Ruetten called. Verified Stephanie Lazarus, PO [police officer], was former girlfriend.”

No arrests were ever made. The evidence of Sherri Rasmussen’s murder was packed away in commercial storage.

Update: I forgot to include this with the original post…it’s a video of the hour-long interrogation of Stephanie Lazarus, the “lady cop” Nels is referring to.

Also, The Atlantic ran a story about the Rasmussen case last year. (thx, dewayne)


Business lessons from a Mexican drug cartel

The Sinaloa drug cartel is headed by a man who goes by El Chapo. That Chapo is 55 years old and still around tells you something about well he runs his business.

The drug war in Mexico has claimed more than 50,000 lives since 2006. But what tends to get lost amid coverage of this epic bloodletting is just how effective the drug business has become. A close study of the Sinaloa cartel, based on thousands of pages of trial records and dozens of interviews with convicted drug traffickers and current and former officials in Mexico and the United States, reveals an operation that is global (it is active in more than a dozen countries) yet also very nimble and, above all, staggeringly complex. Sinaloa didn’t merely survive the recession — it has thrived in recent years. And after prevailing in some recent mass-casualty clashes, it now controls more territory along the border than ever.

“Chapo always talks about the drug business, wherever he is,” one erstwhile confidant told a jury several years ago, describing a driven, even obsessive entrepreneur with a proclivity for micromanagement. From the remote mountain redoubt where he is believed to be hiding, surrounded at all times by a battery of gunmen, Chapo oversees a logistical network that is as sophisticated, in some ways, as that of Amazon or U.P.S. — doubly sophisticated, when you think about it, because traffickers must move both their product and their profits in secret, and constantly maneuver to avoid death or arrest. As a mirror image of a legal commodities business, the Sinaloa cartel brings to mind that old line about Ginger Rogers doing all the same moves as Fred Astaire, only backward and in heels. In its longevity, profitability and scope, it might be the most successful criminal enterprise in history.


The Impostor

The Nicholas Barclay/Frédéric Bourdin case, which David Grann covered in a 2008 article for the New Yorker, has now inspired a documentary film coming out in July.

As I wrote about Grann’s piece:

At some point, Bourdin’s story gets intertwined with that of Nicholas Barclay, a teen who went missing in Texas in 1994. After that, the story proceeds like the craziest episode of Law and Order you’ve ever seen.

(via @aaroncoleman0)


Texas executed an innocent man

Antonin Scalia once said that no one had ever been executed in the US for a crime they didn’t commit. Well, the Columbia Human Rights Law Review is devoting its entire spring issue to the case of Carlos DeLuna, who was executed by the state of Texas in 1989 for the murder of Wanda Lopez. Their investigation reveals that another Carlos, Carlos Hernandez, actually committed the murder.

Many other glaring discrepancies also stand out in the DeLuna case. He was put on death row largely on the eyewitness testimony of one man, Kevan Baker, who had seen the fight inside the Shamrock and watched the attacker flee the scene.

Yet when Baker was interviewed 20 years later, he said that he hadn’t been that sure about the identification as he had trouble telling one Hispanic person apart from another.

Then there was the crime-scene investigation. Detectives failed to carry out or bungled basic forensic procedures that might have revealed information about the killer. No blood samples were collected and tested for the culprit’s blood type.

Fingerprinting was so badly handled that no useable fingerprints were taken. None of the items found on the floor of the Shamrock - a cigarette stub, chewing gum, a button, comb and beer cans - were forensically examined for saliva or blood.

There was no scraping of the victim’s fingernails for traces of the attacker’s skin. When Liebman and his students studied digitally enhanced copies of crime scene photographs, they were amazed to find the footprint from a man’s shoe imprinted in a pool of Lopez’s blood on the floor - yet no effort was made to measure it.

“There it was,” says Liebman. “The murderer had left his calling card at the scene, but it was never used.”

Even the murder weapon, the knife, was not properly examined, though it was covered in blood and flesh.

Other photographs show Lopez’s blood splattered up to three feet high on the walls of the Shamrock counter. Yet when DeLuna’s clothes and shoes were tested for traces of blood, not a single microscopic drop was found. The prosecution said it must have been washed away by the rain.

Awful. See also Cameron Todd Willingham.


George Wright, arrested after 40 years on the run

On the Friday after Thanksgiving in 1962, George Wright and another man walked into a gas station in NJ with the intention of robbing its owner, Walter Patterson. After a scuffle, Wright’s associate shot Patterson, wounding him severely enough he would die two days later. Ten years later, after escaping from jail, Wright helped hijack an airplane with 86 passengers, ransomed the passengers for $1 million, flew to Algeria, and disappeared for 40 years. Last year he was arrested in Portugal.

This profile in GQ by Michael Finkel is sympathetic, but fascinating. Wright is described as a positive member of the community, a man rehabilitated, which is supposed to be the purpose of prison. And yet, he’s never paid for his crimes. If pressed, I’d have to say I agree with how it ended up playing out.

During my flight back from Portugal, I try to sort out how I feel about Wright. I’m troubled, of course, by the gas-station crime—even if it wasn’t his gun that fired, he still let an innocent man die. He never called for help. Still, he was a teenager at the time. You can no longer use youthful rashness as an excuse when you’re 29, brandishing a loaded weapon on an airplane and holding more than ninety people hostage. That incident could’ve easily ended in disaster. Wright is fortunate it did not. And I am not entirely sure there aren’t other crimes—crimes for which Wright wasn’t caught. He may still have secrets inside him. We’ll never know.

(via Long Reads)


Mugshots from the 1920s

A collection of vintage mugshots from the 1920s. Crime used to be a lot more civilized.

1920s mugshot

(thx, david)