* In January this year Hamas leader Mahmoud al Mabhouh was assassinated in a hotel room in Dubai, allegedly by agents from the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Police believe 25 agents were involved, all using fake British, Irish German and Australian passports. Israel has refused to confirm or deny Mossad’s involvement but has suffered severe diplomatic fallout in the affair.
* In 2006 former Russian security officer Alexander Litvinenko died in hospital after apparently being poisoned with polonium-210 at a London sushi bar. Litvinenko was a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the pair are said to have fallen out when Putin was head of the FSB intelligence agency in the 1990s. Litvinenko fled to London in 2000 and was granted asylum. It has been alleged that his murder was linked to a corruption investigation being researched by journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was murdered just a month earlier. Anglo-Russian relations have been strained ever since.
* In 2003, four months after the US invaded Iraq the identity of former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife was revealed. Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA operative, and the public disclosure of that secret information led to a federal investigation and the trial and conviction of Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff Scooter Libby. Plame is believed to have worked on projects such as monitoring Iran’s nuclear proliferation and Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction among others. She is said to have received training in the spying arts, including stenography (writing hidden messages), pursuit-driving, blowing up cars, and using an AK-47 rifle. It has been suggested she was unmasked in order to seek political revenge on her husband for telling the truth about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
* In 2009 a former US State Department official and his wife were charged with spying for Fidel Castro’s government – using shopping trolleys. Walter Kendall Myers and his wife Gwendolyn are alleged to have used shortwave radio to pass diplomatic information to their Cuban contacts. Court papers showed they spent years sending encrypted Morse code messages from their home, and later sent messages to Havana by email. But the FBI claims their favourite way to pass information to their contacts was to swap shopping trolleys in supermarkets, with Mrs Myers allegedly boasting that it was “easy enough to do”. Their alleged exploits were nicknamed “trolleygate”. The couple pleaded not guilty but could face 35 years in prison if convicted of conspiracy to act as agents of the Cuban government.

According to Fidel Castro’s former protection agent Fabian Escalante there have been no fewer than 638 attempts on the Cuban leader’s life. The most famous involved exploding cigars constructed by the CIA in the early 1960s.

* Also in 2009 Estonia’s former head of security was convicted of selling Nato secrets to Russia and sentenced to 12 and a half years in jail. The court did not reveal which country Herman Simm was working for, but said he had passes nearly 3,000 documents to Russia. Investigators said Mr Simm (who used to be the country’s police chief) had been working for the Russian intelligence service since 1995, when he joined the Estonian defence ministry. He became head of security at the ministry in 2000, handling classified information regarding Nato’s communications and surveillance systems. It is not the first time spying is alleged to have taken place within the corridors of powerful international bodies. In 2004 former British MP Clare Short alleged that Britain has bugged the offices of then UN Secretary Kofi Annan.
* In one of the more bizarre stories, in 2006 Russia’s FSB intelligence agency accused Britain of spying on Russia using- a rock. The “fake rock” was found in a Moscow park. Russian television broadcast footage allegedly showing British agents downloading information from a computer stowed inside it. The FSB claimed it had decided to blow their cover after an unofficial complaint to MI6 was rebuffed. The rock saga led to allegations that NGOs were somehow involved and led to tighter restrictions on charitable organisations.
* Possibly the most famous and James Bond-esque tale is the as-yet unsolved case of the murder of Cold War dissident Georgi Markov in 1978. Markov, 49, had worked for the BBC and had lived in London since defecting to the West in 1969. He was waiting for a bus on Waterloo Bridge in September 1978 when he felt a pain and turned to see a man pick up an umbrella and walk off. He died in hospital four days later and a post mortem found a tiny metal pellet laced with ricin in his leg. The prime suspect has always been Francesco Gullino, a Dane of Italian origin codenamed Agent Piccadilly. He left Denmark in 1993 but is thought to be still alive.
* One of the earliest and most popular stories in British spying history was the trial and hanging of a monkey.
During the Napoleonic wars in 1805 when the British were in fear of invasions by the French, a ship was wrecked off the coast of Hartlepool. The sole survivor was a monkey, dressed in military uniform for the crew’s amusement. After questioning the animal, fishermen concluded that having never seen a Frenchman, this creature must be a French spy. He was sentenced to death by hanging. Of course the truth of this tale remains a source of much debate.

Technorati Tags: cloak and dagger murders, fantasypi, most famous cloak and dagger murders, most famous spy murders, spy murders

The settlements, announced Monday, resolve civil suits against Washington’s Department of Corrections over its failure to supervise Michael “Cowboy” Braae, a transient who sang country music at bars and has been linked to the rape, deaths and disappearances of at least six women in Washington and Oregon.

“Braae had a history of extreme violence towards women,” said Blaine Tamaki, the attorney for the four families. “Once on parole, he was ignored.”

The settlements do not include relatives of Velina Marie Larson, a homeless woman from the Gladstone area, whose death in 1997 remains unsolved. Larson sometimes stayed with Braae, investigators said, and disappeared sometime in October or November 1997. Her body was found the following January in a marshy field in unincorporated Clackamas County close to a storage-locker facility that Braae used.

Investigators focused on Braae, who is now 50, but did not arrest him.

Braae had escaped from prison in Washington earlier that year where he was being held on a conviction for possessing cocaine. He was arrested in California on a domestic-violence accusation and extradited to Washington in 2000, Tamaki said. A judge then ordered a year of state-supervised parole, but the corrections department lost the court order and mistakenly designated Braae as a low-level offender, Tamaki said. The department failed to track him as required and did not discover the mistake until after attacks on four women in June and July 2001, he said.

The settlements, two of which were previously announced, include:

– $3 million for the family of Lori Jones. Jones, 44, of Lacey, was raped and murdered in July 2001 and was last seen leaving a bar with Braae. Braae was convicted in 2008 and sentenced to nearly 48 years in prison.

– $2.4 million for Marchelle Morgan and her son. Morgan, who was 50 at the time, was shot in the head and left for dead near Union Gap, Wash., in July 2001. She had dated Braae, who was charged with attempted murder in the case. The jury deadlocked 11-1 in favor of conviction and the case was not retried.

– $750,000 for the family of Susan Ault. Ault, 39, vanished from her Rosburg, Wash., home in June 2001. She had dated Braae and was last seen arguing with him. He was not charged in her disappearance.

— $250,000 for a Yakima woman and her daughter. The woman who met Braae at a local bar, was sexually assaulted and choked in July 2001. Braae was not charged in the case.

“It took seven years for this ordeal to come to conclusion,” Tamaki said. “The families wish that DOC had just done their jobs years ago. No amount of money can erase the pain of tragedy.”

Another former girlfriend, Deb VanLuven, 45, of Lacey, also disappeared in 1997.

“It’s a miscarriage of justice that those women never had the peace of having the person who killed them prosecuted,” Tamaki said, referring to VanLuven and Larson.

Braae is in prison in Idaho serving a sentence in connection with his efforts to elude police in 2001. During that incident, he led police on a car chase, engaged in a shootout and then leapt into the Snake River to try to swim away. A police dog was sent in after him and he was caught.

The Washington Attorney General’s office did not comment.

Technorati Tags: Braae, fantasypi, Michael Braae, Washington State Setlement

The Devils Rooming House is the first book about the life, times, and crimes of Americas most prolific female serial killer. In telling this fascinating story, M. William Phelps also paints a vivid portrait of early-twentieth-century New England.

Technorati Tags: Amy Archer-Gilligan, fantasypi, serial killers

Jayanandan alias Ripper Jayan who was convicted for seven murders and several burglaries, and Riyas, sentenced in 35 cases of burglary, broke the windows of their cell and escaped on Sunday night.

Guys. Am I the only one that sees something wrong with that last statement?

The duo was last seen in their room in the Central Jail in Kannur around midnight. They left two dummies covered under their bed sheets. The recently installed surveillance cameras of the high security block were turned off due to thundershowers, the police said.

We have launched a search and hope to catch them soon, District Superintendent of Police K P Philip said. We dont see any possibility of them leaving the state.

Jayanandan, 41, a native of Mala in Thrissur district, was sentenced to death for a double murder by a court. The sentence was reduced to life imprisonment by the Kerala High Court. He was also convicted in five other murders and several burglaries.

Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan has asked Additional Director General of Police Alexander Jacob to launch an inquiry. A special police team has already launched a manhunt for the duo. Six officials at the prison have been placed under suspension.

The police do not rule out the two getting logistical support from outside while a former chief of jails said it was impossible for them to escape without help from within.

Technorati Tags: fantasypi, Jayan, Jayanandan, kannur, serial killer, serial killers

Answers:
No, but with one exception, if the killer is targeting republicans, i say let him go until he gets them all… In my humble opnion, instead of having fancy court rooms they need to just replace it with a washable floor… when the guilty verdict comes back and he’s sentenced to death, the bailiff walks over and puts a bullet in the back of his head… then they hose down the area… Next!

No more appeals, no more spending 20 years on death row sucking up the taxpayer’s money… quick, fast, done. no Only for long enough for the cops to determine how MANY murders he/she committed, and briefly for some shrink to examine them for data-collection…

Then strap them down and rid the world of them.

We should do the SAME with serial rapists and child-molesters nope No, they and other violent criminals should be killed by their victims, in self-defense, preferably during or immediately prior to committing their crimes, or else executed as soon as they can be found and identified. No way. He didn’t let the people kill leave, therefor, they should live. All they are going to do is waste the tax payers money to provide him free food and shelter for killing people.

Good call on the republicans. I feel strongly that they should be put to death. I feel that they should be shot to death by a victims capable family member, if they should choose so. If the family does not want that death on their conscience, then a volunteer should be used as proxy. High powered rifle at 25 yards, in the head, 3 shots.

Technorati Tags: fantasypi, serial killers, serial murders

Technorati Tags: fantasypi, Rodney James Alcala, serial killers

Armed police held back an angry crowd trying to attack the 32-year-old Philippe Onyancha as he took investigators to a district in south Nairobi, where the bodies of two prostitutes he killed in April 2009 were located.

The ex-security guard who was arrested last week then took police to Nairobis Ngong forest, and a north suburb, where he had buried two other of his female victims.

Onyancha, who claimed he wanted to commit a total of one hundred murders, said he never raped his victims, who were exclusively women and children, but did drink their blood as part of a ritual. (AFP)

I can not say I knew any of my victims, because whenever I developed that urge of drinking blood, I went straight for my target, Onyancha told media. (AFP)

Technorati Tags: fantasypi, kenya, onyancha, serial killers

Nolan Ray George, then in his mid-20s and working for the City of Pontiac, eventually confessed to three strangulations, two of them fatal, and went to prison for one. Through plea deals with police and prosecutors, and fortuitous appellate court decisions, he served only 12 years in a Michigan prison.

Once released, he fatally strangled another woman in Ohio and was the prime suspect in a second strangulation. He served only 10 years there.

But now a task force of law enforcement officials in three states — including Michigan — is reviewing several other cold murder cases to determine whether George, 67 and living in Ohio, may have killed other women and gotten away with it.

The Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office also is reviewing how George’s plea deal was handled more than 40 years ago.

“We’re trying to put all the pieces together here and figure out what happened,” Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper said.

Pontiac police detectives faced a dilemma that October afternoon in 1969. They had a killer sitting before them, and quite possibly a serial killer.

George, 26, had admitted strangling a young, pregnant woman outside a Lake Orion bar seven months before, choking her with her panties as they had sex in a car.

George, who just had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for that killing, was looking at 40-60 years in prison. The slaying was remarkably similar to two open cases Pontiac police were trying to solve: the near-strangulation death of a Pontiac woman in 1967, and the murder of a second woman in 1968. The latter, a store cashier, also had been strangled with her underwear during an apparent sexual assault.

Should they offer him immunity in those cases — to finally solve them — since he was going to spend most of life behind bars anyway?

“We knew he was the guy,” recalled retired Pontiac Police Detective Orville Johnston, now 81 and living in Florida. “And we knew he was going away for a long time.”
“I did it,” he told police in that interview room at the Oakland County Jail on the afternoon of Oct. 7, 1969, according to court records. He went on to describe how he met Gwendolyn Perry, 36, a cashier at a Pontiac drugstore, on the night of Dec. 6, 1968, and then bought beer.

Perry, he told police, had a reputation as an “easy lay,” and he said that he drove her onto a dark, dirt road and parked. The two, he said, began to neck. But then he became angry and hit her on the side of the head, then choked her to death, throwing her body in weeds.

He also confessed to attacking another woman, Beverly Taylor, who had sought a ride from him the year before, choking her with nylons and leaving her for dead. She survived.

Satisfied, the police closed the files. Prosecutors, too, were satisfied justice had been done. L. Brooks Patterson, currently the Oakland County executive, was the young prosecutor assigned the case. In a recent interview, said he remembered George. Though he couldn’t recall all the details surrounding the case, Patterson said allowing George to confess to unsolved crimes, knowing George was facing decades in prison, was likely a good idea.

“I can see why that decision might have been made at that time,” he said.

And the judge was confident, too, that a dangerous man would be off the street for many years. Noting the two women he had killed, and the one he had tried to kill, former Oakland County Circuit Judge Clark Adams sentenced George to 40-60 years on Nov. 5, 1969.

“In your case, and with your background,” the judge said then, “this court has concluded that you are not a safe person to have in society.”

The Michigan Court of Appeals, though, set George’s guilty plea aside in 1973, ruling that the judge had failed to advise George of his right to confront witnesses and his right against self-incrimination.

Oakland County prosecutors promptly charged him again. A jury hung in 1973, and a mistrial was declared. Prosecutors charged him again, this time introducing evidence that he had pleaded guilty earlier. A jury again convicted him of second-degree murder in 1974.

Judge Robert Webster, now retired, again sentenced George to 40-60 years. “I remember that he was a very evil man,” Webster told the Free Press in a recent interview. “Even now, I remember that.”

But the court of appeals again reversed his conviction, ruling that jurors should not have heard statements about George’s earlier confession.
Prison time cut short

By 1977, George, who had spent eight years in jail or prison, was willing to plead guilty again to second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 17-25 years and given credit for the time he’d already served. He was released just seven years later in 1982, his prison time cut short because of good time served.

Michigan’s tough truth-in-sentencing laws, requiring prisoners to serve their full minimum term, had not yet been enacted.

Court records do not show whether the parole board knew of his confessions in the killing of Perry or the attack on Taylor.

Within 10 months, George killed again, this time in the southwest Ohio city of Hamilton, snatching Cindy Garland Rose, 22, and choking her into unconsciousness. He left her for dead in nearby woods in October 1982. Police would find a beer can near the body, with George’s fingerprints on it.

Rose eventually died, but an autopsy said it was because of hypothermia because she was left outside seminude. Under Ohio law, George could be charged only with manslaughter. A jury convicted him, and he was sentenced to 10 years.

Three weeks after Rose was strangled, Tammy King, 21, of nearby Cincinnati was found strangled and partially nude in fields nearby. Police say George was a suspect in that killing, and remains so today.

George was released from prison in 1992. Now 67, he lived in Hamilton, near extended family, doing odd jobs before recently moving to Amelia, southeast of Cincinnati.
Multistate task force

“I believe he is another Ted Bundy,” Detective Frank Smith of the Butler County (Ohio) Sheriff’s Department told the Free Press last month. Smith is part of a multistate task force created in January 2009 to look at cold cases to see whether they are connected to George. Smith cited similarities in the young victims, and in the manner in which they were killed by strangulation, as well as studies showing serial killers will murder until they are caught.
“I don’t think somebody like that can stop killing,” Smith said of George.

Oakland County prosecutors are looking at George, and re-interviewing witnesses from 40 years ago.

Cindy Garland Rose’s family wishes Michigan had found a way to keep him behind bars for life. If that had happened, they contend, Rose, the mother of a 3-year-old daughter at the time of her murder, would still be here.

“We have so much anger and so much hurt,” said Annette Preston, 50, of Hamilton, Rose’s first cousin. The two grew up together in the small town. “How can the United States of America allow such things like this to go on and destroy families?”

George, meanwhile, got into an altercation with his landlord in May after a TV news crew reported on his criminal past and the task force investigation. He now is serving 30 days after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of intimidating behavior.

He is to be released back on the streets Monday.

Contact L.L. BRASIER: 248-858-2262 or brasier@freepress.com.

Technorati Tags: fantasypi, Nolan Ray George, Okland County Crimes, serial killers

If killers are motivated by statistics, the best Central Valley county to murder someone is Madera County if you dont want to get caught. Fewer than half the murders in that county are solved. But dont kill in Stanislaus County, as theres an 83 percent chance there that youll be apprehended.

The figures are from an extensive, year-long analysis of data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation done by journalists with the Scripps Howard News Service.

The Scripps Howard News Service report discovers that at least 6,000 murders a year in the U.S. go unsolved. Solution rates tend to go up when more resources manpower, money and motivation are devoted to tracking down the killers, says the report.

Nationally, 63 percent of the murders since 1980 have been solved, the analysis says.

Here are statistics for Central Valley counties, as compiled by Scripps Howard News Service. Please see the link at the end of the story to go to the database. The figures are from all homicide clearances from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. Clearances reports from 1980 through 2008.

Butte: 75 percent solved (233 homicides/177 solved)

Fresno: 63 percent solved (2,260 homicides/1,430 solved)

Kern: 62 percent solved (1,672 homicides/1,041 solved)

Kings: 77 percent solved (149 homicides/115 solved)

Madera: 47 percent solved (268 homicides/128 solved)

Merced: 58 percent solved (370 homicides/218 solved)

Sacramento: 76 percent solved (2,655 homicides/2,028 solved)

San Joaquin: 58 percent solved (1,661 homicides/965 solved)

Stanislaus: 83 percent solved (713 homicides/592 solved)

Tulare: 65 percent solved (913 homicides/596 solved)

Yolo: 61 percent solved (211 homicides/130 solved)

Yuba: 71 percent solved (140 homicides/100 solved)

Among the nations largest cities, the murder closure rate is lowest in Detroit 21 percent and highest in San Diego 94 percent, the Scripps Howard analysis says

Technorati Tags: Central Valley County, fantasypi, murder statistics, national murder statistics

Hookers befriended by the 40-year-old student – accused of three murders – have told detectives he was a regular visitor to the red-light district in Sheffield and others in South Yorkshire.

One, aged 35, said she was stunned when Griffiths gave his name in court as “The Crossbow Cannibal”.

She said: “He was like a brother to me for years.

“He fed me, washed my clothes and took me in when I had nowhere to go.

“He even offered to protect me while I was out on the streets.

“He told me I’d do much better business if I went with him to Sheffield, Barnsley and Doncaster.

“He said he went regularly to red-light districts down there and there was more cash to be made than in Bradford.

“He offered to take me there and keep an eye on me while I was with punters.

“The girls he’s accused of killing were all friends.”

Dawn, 19, who had a son, now 17, was murdered in 1994.

She was stripped, strangled and dumped in a shallow grave in the Peak District.

Griffiths, who disowned his family at 18, was 24 at the time and had just graduated in psychology at Leeds University.

Last night Dawn’s mum Margaret, 58, said: “Since I heard about the arrest I have thought: ‘Could it have been him?’

“All this has brought it rushing back to me.

“It’s like being trapped on a long journey that you never know when it is going to end.”

Michaela, 25, was butchered in a car park used by prostitutes on Bonfire Night 2001 after being picked up by a punter in a blue Ford Sierra.

Another prostitute found her on the ground in Sheffield, where Bradford-based Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, now 64, was finally arrested. Michaela had been stabbed 19 times in the neck and back.

Griffiths was 32 at the time and had just come out of a volatile relationship with an ex-prison warder girlfriend.

Michaela’s mum Jackie, 53, a council worker, said that her daughter looked just like Shelley Armitage, one of Griffiths’ alleged victims.

She said: “When I heard about the arrest my heart started beating.

“You ask yourself, ‘Is this him, is this him?’

“When my husband and I saw the girl Shelley on TV I was so shocked. She is the spitting image of my Michaela and she was a stunning girl.”

A police source said: “Our colleagues in South Yorkshire have been in contact regarding these unsolved crimes.

“We will obviously be liaising with them and other forces with unsolved similar crimes.”

Police who had recovered bones from a river said they were from an animal. They are still probing claims that part of alleged victim Suzanne Blamires, 36, were eaten.

Police are still searching for the remains of Shelley, 31, and Susan Rushworth, 45, another alleged victim of Griffiths.

Griffiiths was arrested last Monday after a caretaker at his block of flats looked back through CCTV and apparently saw footage of Suzanne being shot with a crossbow.

Her dismembered body was recovered from the River Aire four miles away along with a suitcase containing knives and hacksaws.

Forensic experts now plan to tear Griffiths’s flat apart.

Technorati Tags: crossbow cannibal, fantasypi, unsolved, unsolved murders