I am way out of the loop, this is the first I had heard of any of these...of course, my only exposure to world news is facebook, The Mirror, The Post-Telegraph, & Kevin's Yahoo homepage...
Top Ten Crimes 2009
1.
The story of Jaycee Dugard raised disturbing questions about both Stockholm syndrome and California's parole system, but it also rekindled hope that other long-missing children may be found alive. Dugard was 11 years old when she was abducted as she was walking to her school bus in South Lake Tahoe, Calif. When she was finally found 18 years later, in Antioch, Calif., she was the mother of two girls, the first born to her when she was 14, the second when she was 18. Dugard had been living with Phillip Garrido, a registered sex offender who had somehow gotten his parole status terminated in 1999, eight years after he allegedly kidnapped the girl. Garrido and his wife Nancy, who kept Dugard and her children in a makeshift hut in their backyard, face charges of kidnapping, false imprisonment and rape. They pleaded not guilty. Dugard, who kept her silence, readjusted to her new existence with her mother and half sister. Her children apparently were doing well in their first days in school.
2.
If the charges against him are proved, Anthony Sowell is the perpetrator of one of the most gruesome series of crimes in recent history. A convicted rapist, Sowell was arrested after police came to his duplex apartment in Cleveland to check on a woman's allegation that he had sexually assaulted her and nearly choked her to death. He wasn't home, but the cops quickly smelled that something was wrong in the house. They found two decomposing bodies in his living room and four more bodies in a shallow grave in the basement and in crawl spaces. The backyard was dug up to discover the remains of four more bodies, and a human skull was found in a bucket, bringing the total to 11. Neighbors said Sowell used to stink so badly that their eyes would water when he approached but that no one investigated his house, despite the terrible odors emanating from it. The former Marine pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to five counts of aggravated murder.
3.
Friends were quick to come to the defense of Philip Markoff, 22, a burly, baby-faced Boston University medical student who was arrested for the killing of a masseuse. "He could not hurt a fly," his fiancée, Megan McAllister, initially said. "All I have to say is, Philip is a beautiful person, inside and out." But it was an ugly crime. Julissa Brisman, who advertised her services on Craigslist, apparently struggled with her killer in a room at an expensive Boston hotel. She was struck on the head and then shot three times, once in the heart. Markoff was also accused of robbing another woman, who also advertised on Craigslist. She accused Markoff, reportedly a compulsive gambler, of stealing $600 from her. Police found a gun and duct tape at the second-year medical student's Quincy, Mass., home. Markoff's attorney said his client was not guilty of murder, robbery and kidnapping charges.
4.
For Muslims around the world, this was the crime of the century. On July 1, Marwa el-Sherbini, 31 — a devout Egyptian-born pharmacist — appeared in a court in Dresden, Germany, to testify against Alex Wien, an unemployed Russian émigré who was appealing an earlier conviction of defaming el-Sherbini by calling her an "Islamist" and a "terrorist" on a playground. Prosecutors said that after el-Sherbini's testimony, Wien lunged at her with a 7-in. kitchen knife he had smuggled into court and stabbed her at least 16 times. Her husband Elwy Okaz, 32, was also repeatedly stabbed before being shot by a police officer who mistook him for el-Sherbini's attacker. He survived. El-Sherbini, who was three months pregnant at the time, bled to death in front of the couple's 3-year-old son. Wien was tried in the same courtroom where el-Sherbini was killed. He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. El-Sherbini's husband filed lawsuits against the judge and regional court overseeing the original trial.
5.
William Sparkman's body was found on Sept. 12 near a small family cemetery in a remote patch of the Daniel Boone National Forest in Clay County, Kentucky, about 18 miles south of the county seat of Manchester. The alleged details of the death of the U.S. Census Bureau worker were chilling: he was reported to have been found hanging from a tree, with the word "Fed" scrawled on his chest. That description rippled through the national consciousness more than other crimes from rural, tucked-away corners might have, coming at a time when conservative media, tea parties and white-hot town-hall meetings were fanning anti-government sentiment. But no one was ever arrested. And in November, local authorities declared that it was a suicide staged to look like a lynching, perhaps in order to qualify the lymphoma survivor's heirs for insurance payouts totaling $600,000.
6.
As the country's best-known provider of late-term abortions, Dr. George Tiller was not unused to being attacked, both verbally and physically. His clinic was bombed in 1986. In 1993 he was shot in both arms. He received death threats regularly, wore body armor and traveled with a guard dog. But on May 31, while serving as an usher at his Lutheran church in Wichita, Kans., Tiller was shot in the head and killed, allegedly by Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion activist. After the murder, both sides of the abortion debate braced for battle. Supporters called Tiller a martyr; critics called him a murderer. Both groups deplored his killing: abortion-rights activists warned that it could signal a fresh wave of clinic violence; abortion opponents warned that it would lead to the demonizing of their movement. Roeder has pleaded not guilty and will not change that plea even though he reportedly told the Los Angeles Times that he did kill Tiller.
7.
Maurice Clemmons was 16 when he was sentenced to, among other things, two 30-year terms in prison for burglary and a violent, armed purse-snatching in Little Rock, Ark. But in May 2000, after 11 years behind bars, he wrote an impassioned letter to then Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, an ordained pastor. "I have never done anything good for God," Clemmons wrote, asking for clemency. "Now, I'm humbly appealing to you for a brand new start." Huckabee commuted the sentence, and Clemmons got out on parole. But Clemmons never went on to do anything good for God. Instead, he almost immediately violated his parole and returned to jail. In and out of prison on various degrees of parole and clemency, he lived a life of crime. He moved west to Seattle, where he had grown up, to try to start a lawn-care business. But in May, he began acting and speaking erratically, telling people he could fly and that his role as the Messiah would be acknowledged by President Obama. He attacked his neighbors. He sexually assaulted two young girls. Arrested in July, he posted $40,000 bail on Nov. 23. Then, on the morning of Nov. 29, he walked into a suburban Tacoma coffee shop and shot four police officers while they were working on their laptop computers. An intense two-day manhunt ended with Clemmons' being shot to death in the early hours of Dec. 1. But his life raised many questions about the management of the country's criminal underclass — issues that will reverberate for a long time.
8.
At first, many thought she was another runaway bride, but Annie Le's disappearance turned out to be a horrible tragedy. After being reported missing for days, the 24-year-old Yale pharmacology graduate student was found dead in a research lab on Sept. 13 — the day she was supposed to be married. Almost immediately, suspicion centered around Raymond Clark, 24, a technician with access to Le's lab who had reportedly entered the building as many as 10 times the day she disappeared and bore suspicious wounds on his chest, arms and back. Clark was arrested on Sept. 17 and charged with murder. He has not entered a plea.
9.
The details of the murder of the wealthy Pensacola, Fla., couple that had adopted many disabled children were so shocking, they recalled Truman Capote's In Cold Blood: after their home was invaded by men in black ninja-style clothing, Byrd Billings, 66, was shot three times in the head and once in the leg, and his wife, 43, was shot twice in the head and twice in the chest — all in front of their nine young children. (In all, the Billingses had 17 kids, 13 of them adopted and most with disabilities like Down Syndrome.) The alleged killer was Leonard Patrick Gonzalez Jr., a failed karate instructor, who the local sheriff said may have been part of a conspiracy to get rid of Byrd Billings, who ran a loan company. Six other men were also charged with capital murder. Like Gonzalez, they pleaded not guilty. Investigators said Gonzalez's accomplices fingered him as the sole gunman.
10.
In Andean popular legend, the Pishtaco is a vampire-like figure who attacks wayfarers and slices off their fat, a terrifying fate in a culture that traditionally celebrates rotundity. The Pishtacos became 21st century news when Peruvian police arrested a gang of men who allegedly murdered people for their fat, supposedly selling the substance to European perfumeries. While police displayed evidence of the gang's alleged subcutaneous devilry, international perfume makers were skeptical because the market for the material is small. Most humans who use fat for cosmetic reasons — as an anti-wrinkle treatment — use their own. By the end of November, local journalists began questioning the official account, alleging that it may have been a way to distract public attention from more-sinister crimes, including the existence of police death squads in other parts of the country. On Dec. 1, the head of the national police who announced the existence of the fat-stealing gang was put on administrative leave.
