True Crime

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“If you ever have occasion to chop a body up in the bath,
never saw the arms off first, otherwise the torso will keep
spinning as you cut the rest. It makes it awkward.”
GRENDON UNDERWOOD PRISON INMATE

“I’m tired of gang wars and gang shootings … You fear
death and worse than death … Three of my friends were
killed in Chicago last week. That certainly doesn’t give
you peace of mind. I haven’t had peace of mind in years.
Even on a peace errand you’re taking a chance on the
light suddenly going out.”
AL CAPONE

“Society wants to believe it can identify evil people,
or bad or harmful people, but it’s not practical.
There are no stereotypes.”
TED BUNDY

“To have once been a criminal is no disgrace.
To remain a criminal is the disgrace.”
MALCOLM X

“No man in the wrong can stand up to a man in the right who just a keeps on a coming”

THE GREAT GOLD ROBBERY

THE MOST CLEVERLY PLANNED CRIME of the 19th century was the Great Gold Robbery of May 15, 1855. It was the work of a professional thief called Edward Agar. He learned from William Pierce, a former railway employee, that the London to Folkestone train regularly carried gold bullion, to be shipped to Paris. In 1854, Agar recruited William George Tester—a railway clerk, who supplied him with a wax impression of one of the two keys to the safe—and James Burgess, a railway guard.

To get the second key he needed, Agar sent his own shipment, of £200 in gold to Folkestone. When he went to collect it, he saw where the clerk kept the key. He then watched the office until the clerk briefly left, when he hurriedly made a wax impression of the key.

Agar waited to rob the train until Burgess told him that it would be carrying a particularly large shipment of £14,000 in gold sovereigns. Dressed as gentlemen, Agar and Pierce bought first class tickets at London Bridge Station, and boarded the train, carrying bags loaded with lead weights. Helped by Burgess, Agar opened the safe, and emptied the boxes of gold sovereigns, replacing an equal weight of lead. It was only when the boxes were opened in Paris, that the theft was finally discovered.

In August 1855, Agar was arrested for passing a forged cheque. In prison, he learned that Pierce had betrayed him, by keeping Agar’s share of the gold. He then confessed to the gold robbery.

Edward Agar died in a penal colony in Australia. Towards the end of his life, a newly arrived convict told him he had become a legend among the London criminal underworld. Agar replied, “That means nothing, nothing at all!” The heist was made into a book and film, The First Great Train Robbery, written and directed by Michael Crichton, and starring Sean Connery as Pierce and Donald Sutherland as Agar.

ELIZABETHAN CRIMINAL SLANG

THE EARLIEST GLOSSARIES OF CRIMINAL slang date from the Elizabethan age. Many relate to swindling and begging—then a crime punishable with a whipping.

ABRAM-MAN: a beggar who feigns madness

ANGLER: a thief who uses a pole fitted with a hook, to steal from windows; also called a curber and a hooker

BEAK: a magistrate

BUDGE A BEAK: flee from the law

BUNG: a purse

CLY THE JERK: to be whipped

CONY: a dupe or victim (the word means a tame rabbit)

CONY-CATCHING: theft through trickery

COUNTERFEIT CRANK: a beggar who feigns epilepsy

CUTTLE-BUNG: cutpurse’s knife

DIVER: a thief who uses a small boy to wriggle into rooms through narrow spaces

DOMMERAR: a beggar who feigns dumbness

FIGGING LAW: cutpurse’s art

FULLAMS: weighted dice

FOISTER: a pickpocket

LIFT: to rob a shop or private room

MARKER: accomplice of one who steals from shops

MORT: a woman

NIPPER: a cutpurse; “nipping a bung” means stealing a purse

PRIGGER OF PRANCERS: a horse thief

QUEER KEN: prison

SETTER: first of a group of tricksters to strike acquaintance with the prospective victim

SHAVE: to steal a small article, such as a spoon

TRINING CHEATS: gallows

UPRIGHT MAN: leader of a gang of beggars

WARP: a lookout man

JOACHIM KROLL (1933-1991)

GERMAN SERIAL KILLER AND CANNIBAL, Kroll, AKA “The Ruhr Cannibal” and “The Duisburg Man-Eater” was convicted of eight murders, but confessed to a total of 14 between 1955 and 1976. Kroll only killed in the same place on a few occasions, but years apart. This, and the unnerving fact that there were a number of other serial killers also operating in the area at the time, helped him to elude capture. Kroll would surprise his victims and strangle them quickly. He was arrested on July 3, 1976 for kidnapping and killing a four-year old girl, Marion Ketter. He was charged with eight murders and one attempted murder and given nine life sentences. He died of a heart attack in Rheinbach Prison in 1991.

’NDRANGHETA

CALABRIA, THE TOE OF ITALY, is the homeland of “’Ndrangheta.” Though less well known than the Sicilian Mafia or Neapolitan Camorra, the ’Ndrangheta is bigger than either. It has around 10,000 members worldwide, with branches in the USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Argentina, and Columbia.

’Ndrangheta, pronounced “en-drang-ay-ta,” is a Calabrian dialect word, from the Ancient Greek andragathos, meaning a “courageous man.” Calabrians also use a verb, ’ndranghitiari, meaning, “to show bravery and defiance.”

Although founded in the 19th century, the organization first attracted media attention in the late 1970s, when it began to kidnap wealthy northern Italian businessmen, keeping them in remote Calabrian caves until their families had paid a ransom.

’Ndrangheta is notorious for its violent internal disputes. From 1985–1991, a bloody war between two ’Ndrangheta factions in the city of Reggio Calabria cost more than 700 lives.

In the 1990s, ’Ndrangheta moved into the international drugs trade, importing cocaine from Columbia. Today, it is estimated that 80% of the cocaine entering Europe arrives from Columbia through the Calabrian port of Gioia Tauro.

Unlike the Mafia or Camorra, ’Ndrangheta clans are held together by real ties of blood. Clans, called ’ndrine, are extended families, linked by marriage with other clans. In 2006, Nicola Gratteri, an Italian prosecutor, said, “’Ndrangheta families have often arranged weddings to solder the links between them. There are families that have intermarried as many as four times in the 20th century.” As a result, it is almost impossible to get members to become informers. According to Gratteri, “A Calabrian mobster considering turning state’s evidence has to come to terms with betraying maybe 200 of his relatives.”

ACRONYMS: A

A/O: Often used in case reporting, abbreviation for Arresting Officer.

ABH: Actual Bodily Harm.

ADW: Assault with a Deadly Weapon.

ATF: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. An American Federal department.

MOHOCKS

IN EARLY 1712, THE STREETS of London were terrorized by a group of upper-class young men who called themselves Mohocks, after the American Mohawk tribe. According to The Spectator of March 1712, “The President is styled Emperor of the Mohocks and his Arms are a Turkish Crescent, which his Imperial Majesty bears at present in a very extraordinary manner engraven on his forehead.”

The Mohocks would get drunk, and then take to the streets, attacking watchmen and members of the public, whose faces they would cut. The poet and playwright John Gay wrote a farce about them, in which he said that they put women in barrels and rolled them down the street:

Who has not trembled at the Mohock’s name?

Was there a watchman took his hourly rounds

Safe from their blows, or new-invented wounds?

I pass their desperate deeds and mischiefs, done

Where from Snowhill black steepy torrents run;

How matrons, hooped within the hogshead’s womb,

Were tumbled furious thence; the rolling tomb.

O’er the stones thunders, bounds from side to side.

NED KELLY ON THE POLICE

IN FEBRUARY 1879, THE AUSTRALIAN BUSHRANGER Ned Kelly robbed the bank of Jerilderie in New South Wales. Before leaving town, Kelly handed a 7,379 word letter to the local newspaper, explaining, “I want to say a few words about why I’m an outlaw.” This is how he described the police in his letter:

“Is my brothers and sisters and my mother not to be pitied also who has no alternative only to put up with the brutal and cowardly behavior of a parcel of big, ugly, fat-necked, wombat-headed, big-bellied, magpie-legged, narrow-hipped, splay-footed sons of Irish bailiffs or English landlords, which is better known as officers of Justice, or Victorian Police, who some calls honest gentlemen. But I would like to know what business an honest man would have in the Police, as it is an old saying, It takes a rogue to catch a rogue … A Policeman is a disgrace to his country, not alone to the mother that suckled him. In the first place he is a rogue in his heart, but too cowardly to follow it up without having the Force to disguise it.”

PIERREPOINT THE HANGMAN

ALBERT PIERREPOINT WAS A BRITISH public hangman, who executed at least 400 people between 1944 and 1956. In his memoirs, Executioner: Pierrepoint (1974), he described his attitude to the death penalty, “I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge, which takes the easy way and hands over the responsibility for revenge to other people. I have seen prison officers faint on the scaffold, strong men weep, and women officers sobbing helplessly. I have known prison doctors who could not examine the body after execution, because the beat of their own heart was obliterating anything they could distinguish.”

18^TH CENTURY PRISON

18^TH CENTURY PRISONS were not designed to punish or reform criminals. They were places to hold them while they awaited trial or punishment. In prison, men, women, and children mixed freely together, and debtors mixed with murderers and lunatics. In The State of Prisons, 1775, John Howard, the penal reformer, wrote, “In some Gaols you may see (and who can see it without pain?) boys of 12 or 14 eagerly listening to the stories told by practiced and experienced criminals, of their adventures, successes, stratagems, and escapes.”

The keepers, who were unpaid, lived by extorting money from the prisoners, who had to pay for food, drink, straw for bedding, and even fresh air. Every prisoner was fitted with leg irons and other fetters, which were removed for a fee for “easement of irons.”

The greatest danger was gaol fever (typhus) spread by lice. It was estimated that each year a quarter of English prisoners died from typhus, which also spread from prisons to the free population. There was a particularly bad outbreak in 1750, when an epidemic, which began in Newgate Prison, struck the Court of the Old Bailey. Among the dead were lawyers, jurymen, the Under Sheriff, and the Lord Mayor. As a result, the prison, and all the prisoners, were sterilized by being washed down with vinegar.

TONI MANCINI (1908-1976)

MANCINI HAD MOVED TO BRIGHTON, England, with his girlfriend Violette Kaye in 1933. Their tempestuous relationship ended with the petty criminal beating the former dancer and prostitute to death with a hammer. He hid her body in a trunk in his lodgings at 52 Kemp Street, using it as a table. Police discovered the body and Mancini panicked and went on the run, being arrested in South East London. He was found not guilty by a jury but confessed to the murder in an interview with the News of the World newspaper just before his death. This was the second “Brighton Trunk Murder” in 1934, and, although both were unrelated, it led to the seaside resort of Brighton being dubbed, “The Queen of Slaughtering Places.”

ACRONYMS: B

BFT: Blunt Force Trauma. Trauma caused to a body part, either by impact, injury, or physical attack.

THE COUNTERFEIT ROCKEFELLER

POSSIBLY ONE OF THE MOST successful modern day con men was Christophe Thierry Rocancourt (AKA Christopher Rocancourt). The Frenchman allegedly pulled his first scam in Paris, faking the deed to a property he didn’t own, then “selling” the property for an impressive $1.4 million. Buoyed by this success he moved to America, convincing a whole slew of wealthy and famous “marks” that he was a French member of the Rockefeller family, and getting them to invest millions of dollars in a variety of schemes. He operated at least a dozen aliases, making out that Sophia Loren was his auntie and his “uncles” were fashion designer Oscar de la Renta and producer Dino De Laurentiis. In L.A. he pretended to be an ex-boxer and movie producer, shared a house with Mickey Rourke, managed to convince Jean-Claude Van Damme to produce his next movie, and married Playboy model Pia Reyes.

He was busted in 1998 for being involved in a shootout. He jumped bail and was arrested again in 2000 in the Hamptons for not paying his hotel bill. He escaped over the border, but on April 27, 2001, he, and the unsuspecting Reyes, were arrested in Canada, and extradited to the USA in 2002. In New York he pleaded to charges of theft, grand larceny,

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