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| The Azaria
Chamberlain Case
On the 17th August 1980, the Chamberlain
family was camping at Uluru in Australia's Northern
Territory, when at around eight o'clock at night,
they heard a cry from the tent where their ten week
old baby girl and four year old son were sleeping.
Rushing to the tent, the mother of the child, Lindy
saw a dingo near the tent's entrance and upon entering,
realised with horror that her baby daughter Azaria,
was missing and all that remained was a pool of blood
on the floor. The police arrived and a search was
organized but no traces of the baby were found.
The Chamberlains were interviewed
the next morning and only some of the bloodstained
items were removed from the tent, with many being
left behind. The family was interviewed again later
on that same day, by a different officer who thought
the Chamberlains' recounts of the previous night were
suspicious. A week passed and no new evidence was
found, that is, until a tourist found Azaria's vest
and jumpsuit. But despite this new piece of evidence,
the crime scene was not sealed off and a full examination
of the clothing was never conducted. This lack of
proper crime scene and evidence analysis led the police
to believe that Lindy Chamberlain was lying about
her story. The lack of dingo bite marks and saliva
on Azaria's jumpsuit and the fact that the baby's
shoes were still tied inside the jumpsuit while the
vest was inside out, heightened the police's suspicion
even further. In 1981, it was however, concluded that
Azaria was indeed taken by a dingo, allowing Lindy
and Michael Chamberlain to at last get over the accusations
after the tragic loss of their child and move on with
everyday life.
This was however, not to be the
case, because after a later analysis of the baby's
clothing, it was found that there was a bloody handprint
in the shape of a women's hand, reopening the case
in 1982. Analysis of the Chamberlains' car also revealed
a pair of scissors, baby's blood and some experts
claimed that the rip marks on the baby's clothing
were actually scissor stab marks. And so it was with
this new evidence that another court case was held
on the 2nd February, 1982. The case concluded for
what was thought to be the last time, when Lindy was
convicted with murder of her daughter and sentenced
to life in prison. After serving six years in prison,
there was a turn in the case when baby Azaria's jacket
was unbelievably, found partly buried at Uluru. Just
five days later, Lindy was immediately released from
prison, but to this day, nobody knows the exact truth
and we'll probably never know.
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Jack the Ripper
In England, 1888, it was no longer safe to be walking
the streets of London's Whitechapel. A killer, given
the nickname of 'Jack the Ripper', was stalking and
murdering prostitutes in the area - five to begin
with, between late August and early November, 1888,
but would eventually kill a total number of seven
women. 'Jack the Ripper' would murder the women, before
partially dissecting them and leaving their bodies
to be found by passing people. This case was the first
case that psychological profiling was used in an attempt
to catch a serial killer. A police surgeon by the
name of George B. Phillips first noticed that each
of the murdered victims had their organs removed with
precision that could only be achieved by someone with
training in the medical or butchery industry. Despite
following these observations and the fact that the
police received several taunting notes signed 'Jack
the Ripper', the killer was never caught. Some notable
suspects that later investigations led to included
Walter Sickert, an Impressionist painter who released
paintings of murdered prostitutes 20 years later,
Robert Stephenson, the army surgeon/occultist/magician
and another man by the name of Thomas Cutbush. But
to this day, the identity of Jack remains a mystery.
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The Love Bug
One of the most destructive viruses ever created
was known as 'The Love Bug' and appeared in email
inboxes with the subject line - 'I Love You' just
several years back. Created by a Philippino man by
the name of Onel de Guzman, 'The Love Bug' attached
itself to every contact in the computer's address
books and therefore was sent all over the world in
a very short period of time, spreading through a chain
reaction. Investigators were eventually able to trace
the virus back to its original creator through dissecting
the virus and discovering its code word, 'Barok'.
At the time, Guzman was attending AMACC, a computer
college in the Philippines and it was one of the professors
that recognised the code word as being the same one
used in a program Guzman had created and submitted
as a term assignment. When police searched his apartment,
they discovered disks that proved he had helped create
the virus. At the time, May 2000, there was no law
in the Philippines against computer hacking, but by
June, a new law had been introduced, though by that
stage, it was too late to apply it to the 'Love Bug'
case. The creator of the most destructive virus in
history got away with his crime completely unpunished.
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The Shirley McKie Story
In February 1997, a British policewoman, Shirley
McKie, was accused of perjury after testifying at
a murder trial, stating that she hadn't been in the
murder victim's house, where her fingerprints were
later supposedly found. Shirley's house was searched
and she was taken back to the police station where
she herself was strip-searched and detained because
of a controversial fingerprint that was found at the
victim's house. The Scottish Criminal Records Office,
responsible for the detection of Shirley's thumbprint
at the crime scene, had 4 experts who certified the
authenticity of the fingerprints that they certified,
definitely belonged to Shirley. However, Shirley persisted
her innocence with the matter and was acquitted during
her trial, saved from a potential 8 years imprisonment
after two American fingerprinting experts endorsed
that the fingerprint did not belong to Shirley. After
much media activity, legal action and controversy,
Michael Russell, a member of Scottish parliament,
successfully requested different fingerprinting experts
from around the world to verify the ownership of this
fingerprint and have had to date, 171 certifications
from 18 different countries that the fingerprint did
not belong to Shirley. The main concern with the entire
issue was not only its affect on Shirley's career,
but also because it concerns the accuracy of the Scottish
Criminal Record Office's earlier assertions. A civil
trial, expected to be 5 weeks long, is yet to be held
on the 7th February 2006, almost ten years after the
beginnings of the perjury case. The death of Marion
Ross, the murder for which Shirley originally testified
against, remains however, yet a mystery.
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OJ Simpson
On the night of the 12th of June 1994, Orenthal James
Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole and her friend, Ronald Goldman,
were discovered murdered at Nicole's Beverly Hills
abode by her next door neighbour. The police were
notified and arrived immediately at the horrific scene
to find Nicole's severed body almost decapitated and
her friend's body, evidently fallen victim to a hysterical
stabbing attack. Upon further investigation of the
scene, a bloodstained left-hand glove was discovered
and her two sons were still inside the house, asleep
in spite of the night's events.
Homicide experts were called in and other officers
made their way to Simpson's house, a five minute drive
away, where they then discovered that he had taken
a night flight to Chicago. The police noticed blood
all over Simpson's
car, which was parked outside the house. They also
saw a trail of blood drops leading from Simpson's
car to the front door of the house, where they discovered
another bloodstained glove identical to the one found
near Nicole's body. Simpson was contacted by police
at his hotel in Chicago and although he sounded distraught
about his ex-wife's death, he didn't sound curious
to find out what happened. He caught the next plane
home and the police interviewed him on the same day.
He had a bandaged hand which he claimed was cut some
time ago and the wound had reopened when he accidentally
cut it on some glass. His hand was photographed, blood
samples taken and fingerprints recorded, then after
all of this, he was free to go. The search of his
house was videotaped and by the afternoon of the same
day, all of the evidence needed was removed, recorded
and taken to a laboratory along with evidence taken
from Simpson himself.
Simpson was put on trial, one of the most highly
publicised trials in history, and all of the evidence
seemed to point to him being responsible for the murder.
He had no alibi, DNA analysis showed his blood was
present on a sock found in Nicole's room, both gloves
were stained with blood from both his victims and
the trail of blood leading from the car to his house
seemed to heighten all suspicions. The case, however,
was turned around with Simpson's expert lawyers claiming
that a certain police officer present at the initial
scene, was racist against black people and that the
officer had plenty of time to 'set' the scene up while
Simpson was in Chicago. The recorded tape of the investigation
of Simpson's house also revealed a large number of
mistakes such as unsterile swabbing methods and unnoticed
vital
clues. Because of these claims from Simpsons laywers,
the jury was convinced that Simpson was innocent and
after a nine-month trial, Simpson was cleared of murder
charges and that was that.
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| Jon Benet Ramsey
On the morning of the 27th December 1996, Patsy Ramsey
called the police to report her 5-year-old daughter,
Jon Benet Ramsey, missing. The little girl had disappeared
from her bedroom and a ransom note demanding one hundred
and eighty thousand dollars (exactly the amount John
Ramsay, her father, had received as a bonus at work
just days before), had been left behind. It was only
hours later, that Mr Ramsey found his daughter's strangled
and battered body in the basement of their home in
Boulder, Colorado. Immediately after the accidental
discovery of Jon Benet's body, the parents fell under
the suspicion of the police, because a lack evidence
was found that an intruder had entered and killed
the little girl. In fact, no proper search was conducted
when the Ramseys first reported the case and friends
were allowed to freely enter and leave the house.
The Ramseys hired an attorney, publicist and investigators
to defend their case, when they and their son, Burke
(9 at the time of Jon Benet's death), were interviewed
by the police. In separate rooms, all three members
of the Ramsey family were interviewed. After the interview,
it was suspected that Patsy Ramsey wrote the ransom
note herself, as the note was written from pen and
paper found in Patsy's own writing corner. The evidence
found in the basement however, bore all the classic
signs of a murder by an intruder, including an open
basement window, an unidentified boot print outside
the house, a hand made strangling device and a possible
sexual assault on the child.
At the time, police were confident that the case
would be successfully solved using the DNA as evidence,
but almost nine years later, the police have still
not solved the case, no new leads have been found
and none of the members of the Ramsey family have
admitted to the murder. To this day, police are still
attempting to find the person responsible for the
murder of Jon Benet and the case remains unsolved.
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| Hitler's Diaries
At the end of world war two, the plane carrying Hitler's
private archives crashed, apparently destroying the
archives for good. However, it was never proven that
all the archives were destroyed and that some may
have miraculously survived. It was this fact that
lured Gerd Heidemann to purchase the first volume
of Hitler's diary from a man who claimed he acquired
them from an East German general trying to smuggle
the scripts over the border dividing the then, East
and West Germany. Heidemann's boss then offered to
buy the volumes from him for the equivalent of what
would now be $3.7 million. The diary entries were
then published in a magazine and named as a 'historic
sensation', without even being checked for authenticity.
Debates began to arise between historians all over
the world before the diaries were finally analysed
for their validity. Handwriting analysis and a careful
examination of the paper, ink and diaries itself were
undertaken. After the investigation, it was found
that the diaries had to be forged, as some of the
entries were very close to a book, written in 1962,
called "Hitler's Speeches and Proclamations"
and curiously, the diary contained entries only for
the dates in the book. The labels on the diary, supposedly
meant to have been typed in 1943, were dated only
to have been written 9 years earlier. The diary's
binding contained polyester threads which were not
first manufactured until 1953 and the paper also contained
a type of fluorescent brightener that was not introduced
until 1954. The forger of the diary and Gerd Heidemann
were both sentenced to four and a half years in jail
for their part in the illegal creation of a diary
to one of history's most infamous figures, Adolf Hitler.
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