Robert Wiles: 2008
On April 3, 2008, millionaire business owner and family man Tom Wiles opened this e-mail demanding $750,000 for the safe return of his 26-year-old son, Robert. The note was signed, "Group X."
Robert had been working at the Wiles' family business, National Flight Services. Robert was a rising star, working in the Lakeland, Florida branch. He was last seen in his office before he vanished.
Despite being warned not to contact authorities, the Wiles family brought in the FBI immediately. Against FBI advice, the family wanted to pay the ransom - a significant amount that meant something to the family. So the FBI set a trap for "Group X."
JonBenet Ramsey: 1996 (page 1 of 3)
AP
This was the note left behind with the body of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey, who was found murdered in her parents' Boulder, Colorado, on Christmas Day in 1996. The case was sensational - a beautiful child, wealthy parents, a picture-perfect town and that mysterious ransom note. The ransom note was a lie.
Whoever signed the note - and it was signed S.B.T.C. - said that JonBenet was safe and sound when in fact she had already been murdered and her body was in the house's basement. And then there was that demand for $118,000, an odd figure that happened to be the amount of the bonus received that year by JonBenet's father, John.
The handwriting on the Ramsey note was examined and discussed over and over by "experts" who claimed Patsy, JonBenet's mother, wrote it, therefore she was the killer. Both Patsy and John Ramsey lived under a cloud of suspicion for years but eventually they were cleared of having any involvement in their daughter's murder, a crime that remains unsolved.
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Peter Weinberger kidnapping: 1956
FBI.gov
On July 4, 1956, 20-month-old Peter Weinberger was
kidnapped from the front patio of his parents' home in Westbury, Long
Island. His mother had placed the baby in his carriage while he slept.
The kidnapping terrified Americans because, unlike the Lindberghs, the
Weinbergers were not well known and not wealthy. They were a typical
middle-class couple living in a supposedly safe suburban community. Left
in little Peter's place in the carriage was a ransom demand for $2,000.
When the Weinbergers did not pay off the reward the following day, the
kidnapper sent a second letter.
In those days, by law, the FBI had to wait seven days before getting
involved in a kidnapping case. After the Weinberger case, President
Eisenhower signed a revised law reducing the waiting time to 24 hours
and today, there is no waiting period for child kidnappings. Following
the seven-day waiting period, the FBI gathered dozens of agents and
trained them in handwriting analysis. They then began inspecting two
million handwriting samples from the New York State Department of Motor
Vehicles, federal and state probation offices, schools and other
officially filed documents.
Incredibly, after a month of inspection, agents came up with a match -
Angelo LaMarca who was on probation and lived near the Weinbergers. He
was arrested and confessed and then told agents the location of the baby
who'd been killed. Like Bruno Hauptman, LaMarca was executed.
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Charles Lindbergh Jr. kidnapping: 1932
FBI.gov
In 1932, the 20-month-old son of living legend and pilot
Charles Lindbergh was taken from his parents' home in Hopewell, New
Jersey. Over the next few months, the kidnapper left an astonishing 13
handwritten notes! Those notes helped convict Bruno Hauptman who
eventually was executed for the baby's murder. The FBI lifted the
letters in Hauptman's name and cut out the letters to form a signature.
When compared to his actual signature, it was nearly an identical match.
Interestingly, that handwriting comparison was the first major test for
the FBI's newly-created crime lab.
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Artificial Skin Made From Spider Silk
by
Nic
Halverson
In her new project, 2.6g 329m/s, Dutch artist Jalila Essaidi, along with Forensic Genomics Consortium Netherlands, created a swatch of nearly bulletproof skin made from spider silk and human skin cells. The project takes its name from the maximum weight and velocity a Type 1 bulletproof vest can withstand from a .22 calibre Long Rifle bullet.
By grafting spider silk between the epidermis and dermis, the skin was able to stop a bullet that was fired at a reduced speed. However, it failed to repel a bullet that was fired at normal speed from a .22 calibre rifle.
But that's fine with Essaidi. She's more interested in the conversation that her project will generate.
"With this work I want to show that safety in its broadest sense is a relative concept, and hence the term bulletproof," Essaidi said in a press release. "The work did stop some partially slowed bullets but not the one at full speed."
"But even with the skin pierced by the bullet the experiment is still a success. It leads to the conversation about how which form of safety would benefit society."
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Chicago-area detectives are using DNA evidence to determine the identities of eight young men murdered decades ago.
The eight were victims of John Wayne Gacy, who was convicted of murdering 33 boys and young men between 1972 and 1978. He was known as the “Killer Clown” because he would dress as one for charity events. Gacy was executed in Illinois in 1994.
Although 25 of his victims were identified, eight have remained anonymous until today. Now the Cook County Sheriff’s Department wants to use DNA techniques unavailable in the 1970s to identify them.
When the murders originally occurred, the only way to identify a body was via fingerprints or dental records. The unidentified bodies were all of men in their late teens and early 20s, but officials had no dental or fingerprint records and so it was impossible to say who the men were.
Just in case dental records came to light, the pathologists at the time removed the upper and lower jawbones of the unidentified victims. Those bones were buried in 2009. Last week, investigators obtained a court order to exhume the jawbones and analyze the DNA. Of the eight remains, four contained enough material that could be successfully analyzed, but the other four could not. So detectives had to locate the graves where the bodies had been buried and exhume more remains, in those cases femurs and vertebrae.
The DNA used to identify the bodies is nuclear DNA, which is contributed by both parents. That means a match can be made with even a relatively distant relative, such as a cousin. But it still means a relative has to offer a sample to compare. The sherrif's office is asking anyone who reported a relative missing in the 1970s to come forward in the hopes that they get a match.
Some victims may not have been reported missing. One reason is that 30 years ago, the stigma against young gay men was stronger. (Gacy’s murders often involved luring young men back to his home for sex). And in other cases, the young men could have been wards of the state or had already left home before meeting Gacy. They wouldn't have been reported missing. At the same, other people had insisted their son had been a victim of Gacy, but had no evidence to back.
Now, for at least some, that question can be answered.
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by
Jesse
Emspak
Via
Associated Press
Image: Bettmann/Corbis
