Category: True Homicide Story (not including war crime)

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.

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.

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.

Simon Says

The Book of the Week is “Simon Says” by Kathryn Eastburn, published in 2007. This is the true story of a triple murder that occurred in the small town of Guffey in Colorado in early 2001.

The mastermind behind the criminal act was a teenager, Simon Sue, who convinced others that he was part of an anti-governmental group in Guyana. He and his father collected guns for their investment value. They had a humongous collection. The younger Sue believed that theft of firearms from other households in the neighborhood was acceptable if their owners were racist or dealt illegal drugs.

Sue ran a terrorist training camp of sorts for three other high schoolers he had befriended. Read the book to learn the details of the heinous atrocities committed by them, how they got caught, and their fates.

 

The CBS Murders

The Book of the Week is “The CBS Murders” by Richard Hammer, published in 1987. This is the true story of the murders of two women, and three men who were by-standing CBS employees– in a parking lot in midtown Manhattan’s far west side in April 1982.

The ugly crime was the culmination of a white-collar crime spree committed over a number of years by a family named Margolies, in the jewelry business. The major perpetrator of the crimes, Irwin, schemed to blame the company bookkeeper, but complications arose.

The case was unusual in that criminals like Irwin generally do not hire a hitman, but only hire fancy attorneys to weasel out of legal trouble. Irwin and his wife Madeleine behaved like a dictatorial couple, like the Perons, Caucescus or the Marcoses. Read the book to learn the details of this suspenseful business story.

Judgment Ridge

The Book of the Week is “Judgment Ridge” by Dick Lehr and Mitchell Zuckoff, published in 2003.  This is the shocking, true, suspenseful story of the murder of two Dartmouth professors in early 2001.

The perpetrators had a history of petty criminal behaviors but there were no serious consequences for them. One of the killers was a controlling psychopath, and his unnaturally close friend’s blind obedience engendered a dangerous combination. The reason the murders were hard to foresee was that the killers revealed only small pieces of themselves to different people in their lives. No one knew them well, not even their parents. Thus, no one individual saw the big picture– that the sons were going to commit the gruesome act that they did.

The killers’ parents– the would-be authority figures in their lives, had no knowledge of their whereabouts, and neither checked up on their activities, nor took an interest in them. Arguably, the parents allowed their sons too much freedom, and not enough supervision. The killers’ families lived in an unconventional surburban community. The school system accommodated their bids for attention, rather than punishing them for their disruptiveness.

Read the book to learn of other factors that allowed the deaths to occur and the details of the aftermath.

You Might Remember Me

The Book of the Week is “You Might Remember Me, The Life and Times of Phil Hartman” by Mike Thomas, published in 2014. This biography has a spoiler in the introduction that ruins the suspense of the ending, if the reader is unfamiliar with Hartman’s life.

Hartman was a multi-talented actor. He did eight seasons on Saturday Night Live, voiced various characters on the animated TV show “The Simpsons” and appeared in various movies. A middle child with seven siblings, he had a difficult childhood.  He thought that people are filled with rage, but many do not know how to express it in healthy ways. As an aside (unrelated to Hartman), if the truth makes one angry, one is living a lie.

Read the book to learn of a major incident involving Hartman in the spring of 1998. His brother John kept a hounding press away from the family. His brother Paul explained why “If it bleeds, it leads”: “People are miserable, and when they see more misery than they’re experiencing [themselves], it makes them feel good.”

The Strange Case of the Mad Professor

The Book of the Week is “The Strange Case of the Mad Professor” by Peter Kobel, published in 2013. This ebook recounts the sordid story of a petty, vengeful university professor who was passionate about his field of study, lemurs.

Professor John Buettner-Janusch (aka “B-J”), of German and Austrian descent, was born in 1924. He grew up in the United States, but went to jail for evading the draft during WWII. “His desire for attention was enormous, and he never seemed to care much whether that notice was admiration, disdain, or loathing.”

B-J eventually rose through the ranks of higher education while collecting a menagerie of lemurs that were subjected to primate research. People either loved him or hated him. He was like a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. It became apparent that he was also a sociopath.

Starting in the late 1970’s, he was charged with serious crimes. “…But much of B-J’s pretrial testimony formed a farrago of lies and half-truths, of the incredible or incomprehensible.”

Read the book to learn what became of this colorful character.

House of Versace

The Book of the Week is “House of Versace” by Deborah Ball, published in 2010. This is the story of how a family and its business recovered from a tragedy.

The two brothers, Santo and Gianni, and a sister, Donatella, started running a high-end clothing design business in the 1970’s. Gianni became the indispensable partner. His talent lay in creating trend-setting clothing and changing the culture of the fashion industry. Donatella recruited celebrities to wear the Versace brand by sending them free products and inviting them to lavish parties.

Around 1990, Versace began to woo female models whose faces appeared on the covers of fashion magazines, rather than women whose whole bodies– supermodels– appeared in photos. The former had to learn how to strut down the runway, however, and convince Versace to pay them big bucks. Appearances in the tabloids, rather than appearances in fashion shows, had previously been their major publicity vehicle. Donatella spared no expense in recruiting them, treating them to luxury travel and clothes. Versace’s competitors had to follow suit.

Read the book to learn how, by 2004, the company had become nearly bankrupt. There were a number of causes; the major one, however, was the aforementioned tragedy.