True Crime – Page 8 – education and deconstruction.com

Murder in the Stacks

The Book of the Week is “Murder in the Stacks” by David DeKok, published in 2014. This book describes the November 1969 murder of Betsy Aardsma– Penn State University graduate student– and provides extensive biographical information on the prime suspect in the case.

In 1969, Penn State was Pennsylvania’s largest public university, with almost 26,000 students. The library where Aardsma died contained the resources required for completing research papers for English classes. It was a sprawling, dark place where anyone off the street could engage in illicit activities involving sex or drugs, and often did. There was no security like there would be nowadays.

Aardsma made serious sacrifices to be somewhat geographically close to her then-boyfriend, a doctor in training. She turned down a Peace Corps tour in Sierra Leone, and applying to medical school, before she decided to become an English teacher instead. She was counseled by her family to get her master’s degree at Penn State because at that time, ironically, there was a serial killer of female students on the loose at the University of Michigan, the school she would have attended.

The murder investigation was a cluster screw-up. The police interviewed thousands of students and professors. The person thought to have committed the crime escaped notice due to the circumstances. If the investigators had done a better job, they would have learned that as a pedophile, he had a history of trouble with the law. However, with regard to past incidents, he got off because the victims or their families failed to call the police, so he had no arrest record for a long time. Additionally, the 1960’s perception of his monstrous behavior was simply a matter of indecency. There was insensitivity with regard to the victims– little thought was given to the traumatic toll of sex crimes on the psyches of the victims.

Read the book to learn many details of the life of the suspect– about whom much more was known than those of the victim– and the outcome of the case.

Butterfly in the Rain

The Book of the Week is “Butterfly in the Rain, The 1927 Abduction and Murder of Marion Parker” by James L. Neibaur, published in 2016. This short ebook recounts a gruesome crime and the aftermath, that occurred in late 1927 in Los Angeles, California.

The fame of this sensational case was comparable to that of O.J. Simpson’s. However, the newspaper, rather than television, was the medium through which the nation was riveted by the unfolding story. The case involved a child and plenty of controversy. Read the book to learn the details.

Digital Gold

The Book of the Week is “Digital Gold– Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money” by Nathaniel Popper, published in 2015.

This ebook is about Bitcoin, a bookkeeping system used on various websites that distributes, records and stores the value of units called Bitcoins.

The system was created in 2009 by a computer geek who called himself Satoshi Nakamoto. His vision was to create a worldwide means-of-exchange to be used online that would be:

a decentralized network of users so that no one central authority has the majority of power over the system– unlike the current situations in the world; in other words, place power in the hands of the users, rather than the economic royalists. (Nevertheless, the irony is that Bitcoin has largely stayed in the realm of the wealthy computer geeks- so there has basically been redistribution of wealth among the wealthy);
created and maintained by users of the system on a consensus basis rather than by the powers-that-be, whose political campaigns are funded by financial institutions, and who stay in power by doing their will;
anonymous (like cash– no third parties acquire the information of buyers and sellers);
secure (no one point of failure would mean vulnerability for the whole system, plus have protections against identity theft, malware, counterfeiting etc.); and
offered at a lesser cost than the current system (avoiding financial institutions with their fees).

However, no utopian vision is perfect. Various tech-startups around the world have been created to store and exchange Bitcoins. That is all well and good. In the last seven years or so, a “remarkably engaged online community” has sprung up to discuss the ideology and all the different issues attendant to the new system. Even the major American financial institutions, fearing competition, have begun to rethink the security of their online dealings, and so have assembled task forces to research how to harness Bitcoin’s loss-prevention technology.

Bitcoins are acquired by computer users who log on to a specific site on the Internet. The users get the virtual “coins” for free, but might have to pay to store them elsewhere to keep them secure.

Bitcoins are more like a security than a means of exchange like cash because:

The system distributing Bitcoins is like a combination slot machine and a financial market where instruments are bought and sold, and the value of Bitcoins fluctuates.
There’s an inherent unfairness in the system in that– technologically astute users of the system have banded together to create devices that mine Bitcoins at a significantly faster rate than individual users.
People can acquire a national currency such as the American dollar in many more ways than they can Bitcoins, most of them honestly– earning, borrowing, begging or stealing.

Anyway, the purpose of Bitcoins as a means of exchange has yet to catch on among mainstream consumers of industrialized countries. There is no sufficiently compelling reason for consumers to start to buy things online with Bitcoins rather than credit cards. “Why should they trust a digital code that had nothing backing it but the computers of some libertarian nerds?”

Argentina is one country where Bitcoins have been useful. The super-speedy inflation of the peso there has meant people must spend their Argentinian money the minute they acquire it or risk the inability to buy anything because they wouldn’t be able to afford it– even food. In China, Bitcoin is popular because the government regulates the yuan exchange rate in order to stem “capital flight” and sell more of its own goods to the world.

As with all human-created systems that rely on the honor system, ALL users must act ethically. One American Bitcoin-processor in particular created a drug-distribution entity called Silk Road that was deemed illegal according to U.S. law.

Another bad actor hacked into a company called Mt. Gox in Japan. All users of that service suffered. “Bitcoin users eventually went to government authorities that Bitcoin had been designed, at least partly, to obviate.”

Besides, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has been examining the legal aspects of Bitcoin as a virtual currency. Homeland Security is concerned about the fact that Bitcoins could be anonymously sent to terrorist cells overseas.

Read the book to learn much more about the good and bad consequences of the creation of Bitcoin.

The Rabbi and the Hitman

The Book of the Week is “The Rabbi and the Hitman” by Arthur J. Magida, published in 2003. This is the true story of a murder that occurred in Cherry Hill (southern) New Jersey in autumn 1994.

What made the case tabloid fodder is that the crime scene’s neighborhood is a posh suburb, the chief suspect was a prominent rabbi in the community, and the victim was his wife– who had standing in her own right as a small business owner.

The Reformed rabbi, Fred Neulander, co-founded the large temple where he conducted services and taught classes. It is typical for rabbis to experience burnout about twenty years into their careers, and the suspect was no exception. However, Neulander’s hubris syndrome led him to behave in ways that made him the world’s biggest hypocrite. Read the book to learn what transpired when his double life was revealed, and whether the mystery of his wife’s murder was solved.

Skyway

The Book of the Week is “Skyway” by Bill DeYoung, published in 2013. This volume describes the Sunshine Skyway disaster that occurred in May 1980. The Skyway (whose name has since been changed) is a bridge across Tampa Bay that links Pinellas and Manatee counties in Florida.

A large boat was buffeted about by unexpected stormy weather on the fateful day, and the boat’s pilot was unable to negotiate a safe passage to a shipping lane under the bridge.

Read the book to learn exactly what happened, and whose lives were changed forever by the tragedy.

The Broader Way

The Book of the Week is “The Broader Way” by Sumie Seo Mishima, published in 1953. This is a depressing personal account of the Japanese author’s experiences during and after WWII.

The author studied in the United States at a university in the mid-1920’s. She returned to Japan before the war, married a divorced professor who already had four children. A feminist of sorts, she worked near Tokyo as a teacher and tutor, and could afford to hire a maid. Still, a major strike against her included her gender, especially in the workplace. Women had traditionally held the roles of wife, mother and household maintainer in Japan’s economically feudal system– of inheritance and property ownership by males only.

Toward late 1940, in preparing its people for war, the Japanese government politically divided the country into neighborhood associations on a very local level. This imposed egalitarianism on everyone, as all walks of life were lumped together. During the war, civilians were forced to cooperate in distributing rationed food, as, of course, there were severe shortages, reducing some to subsist on only a cornmeal-like substance for the war’s duration. Black markets sprung up everywhere. Teens were sent to work for the war effort– munitions factories and airfield construction sites for the boys, and quarries and opticals for the girls.

American warplanes flew over Tokyo starting in late 1944, and the destruction of the city reached its peak in March 1945. The homes of many people, including eventually, the author, were hit by bombs. The Japanese people had been miserably deceived by the military leaders. They had been told that the imperial armed forces were superior to the enemy. After the war, the Occupation authorities (i.e., the United States, in Japan’s case– for five years) allowed free discussion of different political views, even Communism. A new National Constitution was drafted, that supposedly was to afford equal rights for men and women. This was a radical change from Japan’s previous political system, whereby males had all the power.

Postwar Japan suffered not only starvation, but skyrocketing inflation. Luxuries included beef, chicken, eggs and apples. The Occupation forces supplied canned ham, bacon, sausage and butter in summer 1946. DDT was sprayed liberally on all buildings and gardens, in an attempt to head off pestilence and epidemics. The year 1947 saw entrepreneurial Japanese civilians become street vendors, which quickly fell victim to organized crime. Many women were forced into prostitution to survive, and they protected their territory through cooperating.

In the summer of 1946, the author worked as a translator at the International Military Tribunal, commuting by tramcar, which was stuffed to the gills all the time. After every ride, her clothes were “… ripped and stained with grimy handmarks… The Japanese people had lost all class distinctions and sunk into practically uniform poverty and sordidness.” Young boys sold newspapers and peanuts on the street and bartering for school supplies was not uncommon, for the lucky few who could afford a basic education. Young girls worked as seamstresses. The author’s family was comparatively wealthy, residing in a house, but even they became a multi-generational household when the kids married.

The concept of Communism was in the air, as its propagandists pointed to the Russians as an example of where the political system was working. Impressionable youths traumatized by the war and deprivation were easily persuaded of its benefits.

Read the book to learn a wealth of additional details on the political, cultural and social changes wrought by WWII in Japan.

Mr. Smith Goes to Prison

The Book of the Week is “Mr. Smith Goes to Prison” by Jeff Smith, published in 2015. This is the personal account of a white, middle-class politician from Missouri who commits a minor white-collar crime, but due to a vengeful, powerful political opponent, gets jail time at a facility housing some violent criminals.

The author writes about how greed and power hunger in the U.S. prison system are perpetuating the poverty cycle. Two issues in particular, among others– jailing fathers delinquent with their child support payments, and the burgeoning of solitary confinement cells–involve a colossal waste of taxpayer money, take a devastating psychological toll on the direct victims and their families, and have a negative ripple effect on society as a whole.

Punishing struggling family men in a way that worsens their problems, does not make sense. For example, if they are released from work through no fault of their own and can’t send money to their families– jailing them only hinders their finding work again in the future, and the effects of this and the toll on their families makes recidivism more likely. Taxpayers assume the financial burden of supporting them and their families.

One hand has washed the other among the courts, politicians, prison personnel and contractors with the significant increase in solitary confinement cells in prisons in recent decades. The argument used was that they cost less because fewer employees were required to guard the prisoners. However, this was a lie. The financial costs to society as a whole have multiplied with the trauma that has been thrust upon isolated prisoners. Their recidivism rate has skyrocketed. This has had adverse consequences not only for their families but for taxpayers, who are paying for the resulting repeated corrections proceedings and possibly avoidable incarceration. Prison personnel and contractors have taken full advantage of the bonanza. Some of the former become drunk on power, and treat the prisoners cruelly because they can, thus increasing the likelihood of recidivism and their own job security.

Authorities have been slow to act on prison reform because the prison industry is so lucrative for them. Read the book to learn of Smith’s experience with, and proposed solutions to the above problems, which he says would save everyone lots of money and benefit society in incalculable ways.

Haiti, The Duvaliers and Their Legacy

The Book of the Week is “Haiti (The First Inside Account), The Duvaliers and Their Legacy” by Elizabeth Abbott, published in 1988.

The nation of Haiti is on the western third of the island of Hispaniola, with neighbor Dominican Republic. Since the territory was named Haiti in 1804, the dark-skinned citizens there have rebelled against their enslavement by dictatorial rulers every few decades with little to show for it.

In the 1850’s, although blacks dominated militarily, the mulattoes led the country, owned the land, and controlled the economy. In the nineteen teens, when the United States occupied Haiti, it practiced segregation of the people by skin color. In the Dominican Republic and Cuba, slave labor was in demand for sugar cane harvesting. Haiti’s leaders through the decades sold their own dark-skinned citizens into lives of hard manual labor and extreme abuse because the citizens were tricked into believing their lives would improve if they left Haiti.

In the early 1920’s, “Papa Doc” Duvalier attended medical school in Haiti. During WWII, he generated goodwill among his people by saving the lives of countless yaws patients. During the war, when a black leader finally did come to power, he proved himself to be just as corrupt and greedy as the mulattoes, and was deposed.

Interesting Side Note: In 1947, Haiti’s United Nations vote tipped the balance in favor of establishing the State of Israel. As tokens of its appreciation, Israel sold Uzis to Duvalier’s government and translated his political writing, “The Class Problem Throughout the History of Haiti” into Hebrew.

In September 1957, the presidential election in Haiti was the opposite of free and fair. There was rampant cheating on both sides, with “… [ballot] boxes stuffed, stolen and miscounted.” Polling stations closed early, and numerous voters cast their ballots multiple times. Duvalier was the better cheater, so he was elected “president” of Haiti.

Duvalier and his successor– his son– were able to cajole economic aid from presidential administrations from Johnson through Reagan because “… the Americans were prepared to overlook torture, murder, and disappearances and listen with eager ears to reassuring speeches about democracy, human rights, and unmitigated anticommunism.” Duvalier used that last platform to his best advantage; he knew that the United States was phobic that Fidel Castro’s Cuba– Haiti’s Caribbean neighbor– would exert its evil political influence on Haiti.

The Tonton Macoutes were armed thugs responsible for violence under orders from Duvalier. They were like Mao Tse Tung’s “Red Guard” who killed people at their whim and kept Duvalier in power. To add insult to injury, the dictator named himself “President-For-Life” of Haiti. Additionally, he switched from being a medical doctor to a witch doctor– practicing voodoo to appeal to the Haitians of his generation.

In the spring of 1970, Duvalier died of various, serious health problems. His nineteen-year-old son, Jean-Claude, filled his position, but his widow and daughter were the true controllers of the new regime. His legacy consisted of a nation of “… millions of illiterate peasants on the edge of starvation and desperation.”

By the late 1970’s, the government’s economic policies had actually eased sufficiently to allow American businesses to physically locate factories in Haiti and exploit Haitian slave labor. Despite the continuing unspeakable human rights abuses in Haiti, loss of money and the Communist threat prompted even the Carter administration to provide financial assistance to the Duvaliers, anyway. For, all along, the money was lining the pockets of the first family, not the common people. The first family was treating the government treasury as their personal piggy bank. The leader called his political philosophy “Jeanclaudism.”

By 1980, Jeanclaudism had been shown to be an abject failure. The dictator “… presided over a nation of hopeless millions who tilled eroded soil, relied on capricious gods, and struggled against corruption, injustice and incompetence.” That same year, the dark-skinned Jean-Claude married a mulatto named Michele. Unsurprisingly, rebellion was on the horizon.

The author would have the reader believe that by 1986, the regime had devolved into the Jerry Springer Show: “…Michele was already in France, in New York, in Miami. Jean-Claude was going to divorce her for ruining his government, had only used her to cover up his homosexuality. But Michele didn’t care, the rumor-mongers declared, because she was a lesbian, smoked marijuana and had her eyes on…” someone else.

Read the book to learn more of the gruesome details of both father-and-son-Duvaliers’ leadership histories.

Red Notice

The Book of the Week is “Red Notice, A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man’s Fight For Justice” by Bill Browder, published in 2015. This suspenseful, emotional saga should be made into a motion picture, as it is not only entertaining and engaging, but is a comprehensive picture of the extremes of human nature.

Rebelling against his left wing intellectual family, Browder became a capitalist. During his career, he worked under two big bosses who died under mysterious, suspicious circumstances– Bob Maxwell and Edmond Safra. As a young whippersnapper, he longed to do investment consulting in Eastern Europe, but had to settle for London. Browder got in on the ground floor when the Russian securities industry was in its infancy in the early 1990’s.

In early 2000, the power of Russian Federation president Vladimir Putin, was actually held by “… oligarchs, regional governors, and organized-crime groups.” Browder started a hedge fund called Hermitage. What with complex economic and political goings-on, his hedge fund became the victim of the Russian mentality. In 2006, Hermitage had to “… sell billions of dollars worth of Russian securities without anyone knowing.” That was just one of many traumatic episodes in Browder’s career.

The author had the brains and skills to become not only a successful financial consultant and investor, but a muckraker; however, this made him a “Darwin Award” candidate. He became involved in a true thriller with intrigue, greed, power hunger, human rights abuses and karma. Russia struck at his attorney, Sergei Magnitsky. Numerous Russians in positions of authority– in the government, prisons, the police– all lied to the world about what happened to Magnitsky. Under Putin’s rule, Russia had reverted to the Stalinism of the 1920’s, with thousands of dissidents tortured and killed.

The few people whose eyes were open, who were raising the alarm– were risking their own lives. The rest of the world didn’t want to get involved because they were of the mentality that the violence was confined to Russia, and it wouldn’t spread to them. And they might end up like those dissidents if they rocked the boat. Besides, in the 2000’s, people have become desensitized to human rights abuses due to the widespread, propagandized publicizing of them (like video clips arousing viewers’ morbid curiosity, of the alleged beheadings of journalists by Middle Easterners on YouTube).

(Please excuse the legalese in this paragraph- but it is the briefest way of explanation) Some people would say that Browder had “unclean hands” and there was “contributory negligence” on his part, so his story should not have deserved the special attention it got. Admittedly, he was out for revenge, not because he truly wanted to stem uncivil behavior in the world. He made his living in an industry full of greedy people whose scruples are less than stellar– securities. He made a ton of money by engaging in “self-dealing” and insider trading, which would be considered violations of American securities laws. He was from America, the country that gave rise to the corrupt economic system in Russia in the first place. It might be recalled that Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs gave bad advice to Boris Yeltsin (to put it generously), convincing him to adopt “shock capitalism” — a ruinous financial plan. Lastly, Browder had “constructive knowledge” that doing business in Russia was especially risky (not just financially), compared to other countries. Arguably, he was trying to apply American morals and laws to get justice in a situation in which he had profited from Russian morals and lawlessness. Some people would say, “Pox on everyone’s house.”

Browder wrote, “There was something almost biblical about Sergei’s story, and even though I am not a religious man, as I sat there watching history unfold, I couldn’t help but feel that God had intervened in this case.” This blogger thinks that, but for Browder’s powerful professional and political contacts who intervened in this case, it would be just another infuriating, depressing, suppressed, and eventually forgotten human rights abuse story.

Read the book to learn the details of the story, including the actions taken against the morally bankrupt, brazen Russian criminals, and learn whether justice was done.