Elizabeth Smart, A Survivor's Story...

      On June 5 of  2002, a 14 year girl, named Elizabeth Smart, was abducted from her bedroom by a man with a knife. The man's name is Brian Mitchell and his wife's name is Wanda Barzee.


Elizabeth Smart at age 14

     She was gone for nine months before anyone had ever found her. She was forced to walk the heels behind her house up to Mitchell's camp, where his wife was waiting. Barzee forced her to remove her pajamas and put on a robe. Then Mitchell had performed a marriage ceremony, according to http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_13461174 . After that was all done, he had proceeded to rape her time and time again. Smart said that He was obsessed with this and would do it about four times a day, according to that same article.
     Mitchell had claimed to be a prophet of god and then he had claimed religious rights to everything that he was doing. In the earlier days of her kidnapping, she had to have her leg bolted to a tree or table so that she wouldn't escape. She was forced to consume drugs and alcohol to lessen her resistance of the sexual crimes.     
     He would show her pornography and tell her that this meant she had to be humble to him.
She said Mitchell once forced her to drink too much alcohol and she became sick. He made her lie face down in her vomit for the entire night so Smart would understand "the true state" she was in, she testified, according to http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_13461174.
When he had broken into her room, he had held a knife to her throat and told her that if she did not go with him that he would kill her and her family. He had told her that he was taking her for ransom.
     Smart had said that Barzee had started to get jealous of the sexual contact between Mitchell and Smart and she had asked Mitchell if he could switch between them every other day. He had started to do that, although he would still sometimes rape Smart even if he wasn't scheduled with her that day. He was also singing hymns all the time during those days. She was rescued on March 12, 2003. Smart was found walking along the sides of the road with her abductors. Mitchell and Barzee have undergone many mental procedures after they were caught and arrested, however now they are facing up to life in prison for kidnapping and sexual abuse towards a minor.
      This story is just so sad to read. I had never heard of this young woman until today and i just can't help but want to just hug her and tell her how blessed her life is. Not to maIy people ever make it back from things like that but I am so happy that she survived. Just one thing i was thinking about, how long were they going to keep her???


Smarts Kidnapper, Brian Mitchell

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_13461174.
abcnews.go.com › US
www.trutv.com ›

The very FIRST hanging...

      It may not be known as an extraordinary event, but according to http://www.sharlot.org/archives/history/dayspast/controversies-surround-yavapai-countys-1875-first-hanging/, the hanging of Manuel Abiles is the very first legal hanging of all time. This occured in 1875 around Yavapai County.  A man was getting married in April of 1875, during the time of the wedding, one of the guests had gotten drunk and was disturbing the wedding. When one of the other men tried to stop him, he threw a stone at his head trying to get him away. However, doing so had made him unconscious. The next day the groom had found the intoxicated man dead on the ground.
     Three men had identified Manuel Abiles, saying that the night before they had seen Manuel chasing the man from his own house. The county had pressed charges and had took him into custody. At this time, death row meant to be hanged, not how it is now with the injections.
     The court had ruled in the favor of the victim and had decided to sentence Manuel to death row. He had his one last meal and then was hung in the streets for all to see. Before he had died he had said that he was there for the murder but his friend was the one who did it. This did not matter because nothing was ever said about a friend. Manuel was to be the only one who chased anybody that night, and was the last one seen with the man. This was the very first and official hanging by law. 
     I feel bad for the intoxicated man. We all make mistakes but that doesn't mean we deserve to lose our lives over them. Otherwise we would all be dead. I do not agree with the death sentence. Prison, i feel, is punishment enough.

A random hanging to show what it is like.

http://www.sharlot.org/archives/history/dayspast/controversies-surround-yavapai-countys-1875-first-hanging/

  

Who Was The Boy In The Box???

     It is such a hard crime to read about, a young child, lay dead in a box found in Philadelphia. How could someone do such a thing? In February of 1957, this unknown boy was found in a box along the side of an unpaved road. The boy appeared to be about 4 years old and his face was bruised and his hair was all chopped off. Still, to this day, not a single person has ever come forward with knowing who this young boy was. According to, http://www.vidocq.org/northeast/boybox.html, Over the years, the investigation has been taken on by both local and federal agencies that have dedicated thousands of man-hours pursuing dozens of promising leads, none of which has come to fruition. The investigation died and was reborn several times.
    

A 26 year old college student is the one who had found the box with the boy inside it, he had fund it when he snuck out one night to spy on some of the girls in a private dorm. Some investigators had tried their whole careers trying to figure out who this boy was and try and solve his heartless murder.
     Months later, the  police had decided to bury the child in the Potter Field Cemetery. This grave was the only grave in the whole place that had been marked with a tombstone. On the tombstone, it read " Heavenly Father, Bless This Unknown Boy". Some investigators spent over 35 years on this case, and they never got anywhere. However, that never stopped them from trying. Some had believed that the boy's death was accidental, and that the people didn't come forward because it was ruled as a homicide.
They had pictures of this boy everywhere and anywhere and no one had ever come forward and said anything about knowing the child. To this day the police thought they had so many leads but every single one of them turned out to just be a big bust. No one knew anything about this boy in a box. It has been like that since the day that he was found.

The Boy's Tombstone

    In my opinion, this is so sad. An innocent young child had his life taken away, and then was just thrown in a box and dumped along the street. "It takes all kinds of people to make up this world", that is something my grandmother always tells me, and i feel that this is very true. Especially when you are reading a sad story like this and just wish like crazy that you could just do one thing that would have put his parents at ease.

http://americasunknownchild.net/

http://www.vidocq.org/northeast/boybox.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/06/48hours/main627825.shtml

A Picture Of The Child



John Allen Muhammad...The Trunk Snyper....

John Muhammad

This is a man that you could look into the eyes of and never be able to see right through. He was a man that made a snyper nest out of his trunk. In 2009, he was executed for the killing of ten people. As well as injuring three others. Born John Allen Williams on December 31, 1960, in Louisiana. John Allen Muhammad became an infamous figure American culture as part of a sniper team that terrorized the Washington, D.C. area for several weeks in October 2002. He was raised by an aunt in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after his mother died when he was 4.
In October 2002, in D.C, he had decided to go in for the kill, literally. He actually was a divorcee, and in the miltaryy, after all that he converted himself to Islam. He had three children. He took off with his three children out of the country. Later the police came and took him and his children back into the U.S. and his ex-wife got the custody of the children. After all that happend John went mad and started trying to control other's while he lived among the different homeless shelters.
A skilled mechanic, Muhammad put his talents to evil use, making a sniper nest out of the trunk of his car. He and Malvo worked as team in the shooting with one man firing the rifle while the other watched the victims. They often targeted people doing simple, everyday tasks, such as pumping their gas or leaving a store. In total, they killed 10 people and injured three others in the D.C. area.
After several killings, Muhammad and Malvo began to taunt the police.
He had demanded ten million dollars in order to stop the shootings.
On October 24, more than 20 days after the rampage began, the authorities surrounded the vehicle in which Muhammad and Malvo. They were taken into custody and arrested. Since they committed their crimes in several states, the authorities had to decide where the pair should be tried first. Muhammad and Malvo had separate trials. In his defense, his lawyers pointed to Malvo as the sole triggerman. Still a 2003 jury for the murder of Dean Harold Meyers recommended that he be sentenced to death. And he was convicted on six counts of murder in another trial in Maryland in 2006. Malvo testified against Muhammad during this trial, saying that Muhammad had pulled the trigger on the first six shootings.


the snyper that was used

http://www.biography.com/people/john-allen-muhammad-236029?page=2

A Family, A Cult, A Secret Within...

 Have you ever heard of a cannibal? It is a human that consumes... another human. It is against the law of course, but this post is about a family. A family that was part of a cult, and not just any cult, it was a cannabalistic cult.
This is the Mauerova family, very disturbingly, they locked their eight year old son in the basement for a long period of time. He was tortured annd sexually abused over and over again. But even worse, he was partially skinned and consumed. They had made him eat some of his own raw flesh.
The horrific acts were finally revealed when a neighbour of the house, in Brno in the Czech Republic, installed an identical wireless video baby monitor to the one Klara Mauerova had installed so she could watch her children suffer from the comfort of the sitting room.
When the neighbour switched on his baby monitor shocking images of the boys naked, bound and gagged in their cellar appeared on the screen. The unnamed neighbour immediately informed the police and they broke down the door of the house to investigate.They chained up their nine year old son and he was forced to cut himself with a knife.
Klara Mauerova and her sister Katerina, and Barbora Skrlova were all members of a sinister religious cult called the Grail movement. They were caught and put in jail in 2007 -2008. The boys'were placed in special care and they were never reunited with their mother.


mother after being arrested

I feel that this is extremely sad and disturbing. I feel so sorry for those two young boys'. i can't even begin to understand what their feelings and thoughts were while all that was going on. I hope so much that this doesn't have major effects on them as they get older.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1027962/Boy-skinned-eaten-cannibal-cult-family.html

The Lindbergh baby...still alive?

On March 1, 1932, from the home of aviator Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, their baby went missing. The baby had curly blond hair and blue eyes.
Two months and 11 days later a truck driver discovered a baby's body in a shallow grave in a wooded area on the other side of Hopewell, within miles of the Lindbergh's East Amwell Township home.
The autopsy report couldn't identify the baby because of it being so decomposed. So therefore it couldn't help them. The parent's were asked to identify the baby, soon they did and right aways it was cremated. But was it really the Lindbergh baby? Many people have came up and said many times that they were the missing baby, Charles Lindbergh.
A German immigrant from New York City, Bruno Hauptmann, was convicted of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and murder in Flemington in 1935, in a trial that drew worldwide attention. People still debate hotly the fairness of that "Trial of the Century" and the evidence introduced in it. Bruno Hauptmann was executed in New Jersey's electric chair in 1936.
After many years, everyone was sure that an innocent man was executed.
 To this day no one for sure knows if the baby is really alive or not. Some police investigators say that it's alive and some say that it isn't. However, they all seem to say that they can prove it.

the wanted sign for the baby

Is the baby really alive? What do you think? I feel that this is a very confusing story, and that i hope it all gets solved some day. 
http://www.nj.com/lindbergh/hunterdon/index.ssf?/lindbergh/stories/linbabes.html

Irena Sendler...to many people a criminal, and to others, a hero ....

I never heard of this woman until not long ago. But what i have heard of her, she seems to be one amazing woman. I know that this is a blog about a crime, and this woman hasn't really committed a crime, however, it was a crime that she was trying to stop that makes her such a wonderful and amazing woman. So i figured that this was a great post anyways that needed to be heard.
Irena Sendler, otherwise known as Irena Sendlerowa, was a Polish Catholic social worker and served in the Polish Underground. She also worked for the Zegota resistance organization in the German Warsaw during World War ll. Irena had saved over 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling out of the Warsaw Ghetto.
She was born as Irena Kryzanowska in 1910. The poor children were tortured because of their race and if they were just different. They were raped, murdered and even tortured. All this happened to those poor innocent children. all because they weren't all the same. And finally, a brave woman decided to do whatever possible to try and save those poor children and give them a real chance to see what life can really be like.



Irena

  During the time of the second World War, people were still very harsh about how other's appeared. And this is a crime as well. You don't need a crime of murder or anything for it to be considered a crime. It is very sad but all we can ever do is try to help them in any way possible.
It was said back then that anyone who helped a Jewish person would be killed. Irena didn't care, she would risk her life a million times over again to rescue those children, and that is exactly what she did. The children were placed in convents, polish homes or anywhere that she knew that they would be safe. The children were assured that when the war was over, they would be reunited with their Jewish families.
She and her co-workers buried lists of the hidden children in jars in order to keep track of their original and new identities.


Sendler was arrested in 1943, she was severely tortured and she was put on death row. She was rescued and she stayed in hiding until the end of the war. I feel that this is all a crime. She was going to be killed for saving children. She had risked her life so many times to give other's theirs.

www.irenasendler.com/
www.snopes.com/politics/war/sendler

J.F.K....the wonderous assassination...

We have all heard of the one and only John F. Kennedy. We also know of why he is no longer with us. Well, how many of you know any of the facts about his assassination?


JFK


On November 22, 1963, he was warmly welcomed in Dallas, Texas. He was in a motorcade going through town. Right when the car with the president in it was turning and going past the Stemmons Freeway sign, There was a gun shot. Kennedy had been shot i the throat. Then Governor Connaly, who was in a car behind the president, felt his back ache, here he was shot in the back. The next shot had been in Kennedy's head. He was now dead from the fatal head shot. The secret service agents had been pretty slow that day because the night before they had been having a good time at a bar. 45 minutes later, Lee Harvey Oswald had been arrested for the murder of a police officer. After hours of interrogation, it turned into that Lee was being accused of the murder of J.F.K as well. 

          On November 24, 1963, a Sunday morning, he was supposed to be handed over to the State Prison. In the garage of the police building, he was shot by Jack Ruby in front of hundreds of journalists and millions of TV watchers.



 Years later it was admitted that they couldn't ever place Oswald in the building with a gun in his hand. Oswald had told the police that he was eating lunch at that time and that there was some evidence to back up his statement. Have you ever heard of the magic bullet theory?
        This bullet was supposed to cause the seven wounds of Kennedy and Conally. This Commission Exhibit #399 was found later in an almost pristine condition(!) at Parkland Memorial.
One of the most known evidences is the film which Abraham Zapruder took directly next from the Grassy Knoll that day. It shows the assassination in full length. There, one can also see the opened umbrella of the Umbrella Man despite the shining sun and cloudless sky.
More photos show two suspicious men behind the fence at the Grassy Knoll - one with a rifle - who have been called "Black Dog Man" and "Badge Man" because of the unknown identity. The Warren Commission never mentioned these men and never made any effort to find them.


Lee Oswald


In a three year period after the assination, 18 material witnesses were dead. All killed by mysterious accidents. To this day no one is for sure who actually did the assassination of the president and Governor. Will they ever know?
I think this story is very mysterious and exciting. No one knows for sure who did it. there are many theories but none have been proven. It remains a mystery. Will we ever know who did it? Or maybe even why they did it? I don't know the answer to this but maybe someday evidence will show up.


If you want to read more go to:

http://www.jfk-assassination.de/articles/index.php

Dr. Jefferey MacDonald...a life unplanned...

In February of 1970, things seemed wonderful for Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, as well as for his family, his beautiful wife Colette and their two young daughters. Dr. MacDonald was in the Army as a Green Beret, and his wife seemed so sure that he would never be sent off to war.
The plan was that someday they would live on a farm with five children and horses and rabbits and all kinds of pets.  First came the delicate and feminine little Kimberly who was five years old.  Then came independent-minded Kristen who was two. Then finally a little boy was on the way.
Jeffrey was known as one of the most successful people around. Even in high school he was one of the most popular and successful people. Everybody just loved him. He had married the attractive and smart Colette Stevenson, his high school sweetheart.

Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald

This was a true fairy tail for his wife. She always dreamed of all this to happen. However, the fairy tail ended on the day of February 17, 1970. Around 3:30 that morning, an operator in NC, got a call from someone who identified himself as Captain MacDonald. He gave them an address and asked her to get the military police because there had been a stabbing. She got off the phone and called the military police at once and told them what the man had said.
No one was sure yet one what was happening or what had already happened. His wife was found on the bed with her head bashed in and was dead, the one cop had ran to the other rooms in the house where he had found both of the little girls dead from stabbing to the throat/neck area and were hit very hard in the head. The man stated that he had been sick in his stomach from the site. There was also Jeffry as well. however, he was still alive. He was wounded and unconscious beside his wife. He was revived by mouth to mouth. MacDonald was taken to a hospital and there he was told that he was a top prime suspect for the murder of his family. In 1979 MacDonald was sentenced to prison. Jeffrey, now 62 years old, still to this day says that he is innocent of killing his family.
"My gut told me that what he told the investigators and what he told the military police, could not possibly have happened in that house," says Bill Ivory, who was a criminal investigator for the Army and in charge of the crime scene. Ivory says MacDonald told his agents at the hospital that he had been attacked by some hippies. It is a story that MacDonald has told again and again, for the past 35 years.
MacDonald says he remembers seeing four people, including two white men, a black man and what he thinks was a blond woman wearing a floppy hat.


Collete MacDonald with her two children

 MacDonald had been stabbed in the chest by an ice pick and his wife had suffered two broken arms, a fractured skull and she was stabbed more than thirty times. One of their daughters, had a bashed in skull, the jaw and nose was badly broken and her throat was badly cut. Their other daughter was stabbed several times in the chest in back.
That wasn't all that had been found out, after the murder's had occurred, an autopsy report revealed that Colette was five months pregnant with a son. MacDonald, has never done anything but say he was innocent, however, the crime labs say that the evidence in the apartment from that night say differently.
The word "PIG" was written in blood on the headboard right above MacDonald's wife.
The evidence showed no sign of a struggle to match of with MacDonald's story.
To this day the cops believe that MacDonald is guilty of the murdering of his wife and two children. Did he do it or did he not? Evidence says one thing when the convicted murderer says another.
I feel that this is a very compelling, very sad, and sickening story. I can not say one way or another that he had killed his family, however, i feel sad enough that  they had to lose their lives for no reason at all. These types of stories grab me and pull me in. I feel some of their pain and just cant help but wonder what was going threw that little girl's mind when all that was happening.


http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18559_162-1002954.html?pageNum=2&tag=contentMain;contentBody
http://www.themacdonaldcase.org/

The One and Only Unabomber....

There are so many ways to be on a wanted list by the FBI, however, there are also different ways that you can earn your very own name as well. For example, The Unabomber. He is known as the perfect, anonymous killer. He was someone that built untraceable bombs and delivered them to random people/ targets. He left false clues to try and trow off the police departments. The FBI spent nearly two decades trying to track down and catch this bomber.
The man that the world would eventually know as Theodore Kaczynski came to our attention in 1978 with the explosion of his first, primitive homemade bomb at a Chicago university. Over the next 17 years, he mailed or hand delivered a series of increasingly sophisticated bombs that killed three Americans and injured 24 more. Along the way, he sowed fear and panic, even threatening to blow up airliners in flight.
However, for so long there was never enough, if any evidence to point the police in the right direction towards the Unabomber. This man had chosen his victims by randomly doing a library search on local people, then he just mailed them the bombs or he just dropped it off on their door steps. 
Kaczynski, had been raised in Chicago and then later moved to Salt Lake City. His main career was a aircraft mechanic and later on became a scientist. The gender of the bomber was never certain but the police believed it to be a male. However they had also investigated many females as well.
The bang in the case happened in 1995. Kaczynski had sent a 35,000 word essay on why he liked doing what he did. The government questioned for a long time on what they wanted to do with this essay but they later decided to publish it in hopes that someone may be able to identify the author.

The Unabomber

Most importantly, David provided letters and documents written by his brother. Our linguistic analysis determined that the author of those papers and the manifesto were almost certainly the same. When combined with facts gleaned from the bombings and Kaczynski’s life, that analysis provided the basis for a search warrant.
On April 3, 1996—a dozen years ago this month—investigators arrested Kaczynski and combed his cabin. There, they found a wealth of bomb components; 40,000 handwritten journal pages that included bomb-making experiments and descriptions of Unabomber crimes; and one live bomb, ready for mailing.His new home is a "Supermax" prison in Colorado and in January 1998, he did plead guilty.
I feel that this is very interesting. i would love to be able to ask him what pushed him to his choices of doing that. I don't know about you but i feel it is pretty fascinating and horrible all at the same time. WOW!

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2008/april/unabomber_042408