Forensic Science True Crime Investigation: True Crimes

Jerry Pacek was sometimes saddened, but never consumed by bitterness, for the 10 years he wrongfully spent in a state prison.
As a 13-year-old, he unintentionally got wrapped up in one of the Valley's most mysterious murders, one that is still unsolved today. If he had just taken a different route home from his girlfriend's house in Tarentum, he might not have stumbled into a murder scene in Brackenridge on Nov. 17, 1958.

This news story details the case, including evidence used to convict and exonerate Mr. Pacek.

Book by Jim Fisher, former FBI agent who reopened the case and provided evidence that led to the exoneration of Jerry Pacek. The book tells Pacek's story as well as that of another child who falsely confessed to murder. Read the book on Google Books.

From the National Registry of Exonerations at the University of Michigan

"For a few years in the early and mid 1930s there were several outlaws, and outlaw gangs, running wild in the American Midwest. Memories of the Wild West were vivid enough to frequently refer to them as desperadoes. Some of these Depression-day criminals became infamous nationwide through both media and law enforcement attention to their crimes. It was the era of the Public Enemies; they robbed banks with machine guns, kidnapped rich people for ransom , engaged in furious shootouts with lawmen, and when apprehended, often made spectacular jail breaks. Everything they did was considered newsworthy by prominent publications like the New York Times down to pulp magazines such as Startling Detective. It was exciting, escapist cops & robbers entertainment for the public of the grim 1930s - unless the innocent people being shot, robbed, and killed were friends or family members. A few are still known today by their colorful names: Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, the Baker-Karpis Gang."

"On September 6, 1933—almost precisely 70 years ago--and using a then state-of-the-art technology, now called 'Latent Fingerprint Identification,' it raised incriminating fingerprints from surfaces that couldn't be dusted for prints. Alvin Karpis, "Doc" Barker, Charles Fitzgerald, and the other members of the gang had gotten away, but they'd left their fingerprints behind—all over the ransom notes."

This 1935 Miami News article, on Google News archive, details how a house used in one of Karpis' kidnappings was identified, and it's impact on Karpis' sentencing.

From an exhibit by the National Archives at Kansas City: "It was a frosty cold January morning in 1934 when Edward Bremer dropped his 8-year-old daughter Betty off at school.
President of the Commercial State Bank in St. Paul,
Minnesota, Bremer was headed off to work when his car was suddenly boxed in at a stoplight. As two men jumped into his car, Bremer attempted to escape out the passenger door, but was cracked across the forehead with a pistol. He was being kidnapped by the Barker-Karpis Gang."

The trial of Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam for the murder of Till shook the conscience of a nation and helped spark the movement for civil rights for black Americans.

The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi
By William Bradford Huie

Editors Note: In the long history of man's inhumanity to man, racial conflict has produced some of the most horrible examples of brutality. The recent slaying of Emmett Till in Mississippi is a case in point. The editors of Look are convinced that they are presenting here, for the first time, the real story of that killing -- the story no jury heard and no newspaper reader saw.

2005 article from The New York Times: "The F.B.I. said yesterday that it had obtained a copy of the long-lost transcript from the 1955 trial of two men in the murder of Emmett Till, the black teenager whose killing galvanized the civil rights movement and is the subject of a new inquiry."

"Even as the U.S. Department of Justice was announcing a fresh look at unsolved civil rights-era killings around the South, a Mississippi Delta prosecutor was closing the books on perhaps the most notorious of those cold cases -- the brutal 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till.

To some, the Leflore County grand jury's decision not to return an indictment in the case following an exhaustive three-year federal investigation was a sign that not much has changed in Mississippi in the last 52 years.

But others, including the prosecutor herself, felt it showed the opposite -- a maturing of racial justice in this part of the South."

Fifty years after the black teen's brutal murder in Mississippi for allegedly whistling at a white woman, Till's remains were exhumed in 2005 at south suburban Burr Oak Cemetery. Because of how much time had elapsed, Seccombe, an FBI agent who specializes in forensic evidence, figured Till's body would be skeletonized. But the remains were remarkably well preserved.

"By 1955, African Americans across the country, including in the segregated South, had begun the struggle for justice. Emmett Till's murder was a spark in the upsurge of activism and resistance that became known as the civil rights movement. The sight of his brutalized body pushed many who had been content to stay on the sidelines directly into the fight."

"A 464-page FBI report released Friday contains gruesome details from the autopsy of Emmett Till, but it is so highly redacted that it doesn't shed much light on the teen's killing, which helped galvanize the civil rights movement..."

An in-depth online exhibit from New York University about the Alger Hiss case.

"No criminal case had a more far-reaching effects on modern American politics than the Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers spy case. The case catapulted an obscure California congressman named Richard Nixon to national fame, set the stage for Senator Joseph McCarthy's notorious Communist-hunting, and marked the beginning of a conservative intellectual and political movement that would one day put Ronald Reagan in the White House."

"Formed in May 1938 the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigated disloyalty among American citizens. It became extremely powerful during the Cold War years and focused its investigations on left-wing political activities, especially on individuals accused of Communist sympathies. Whittaker Chambers accused Alger Hiss of being involved in espionage. Hiss immediately denied the charges and asked the committee if he could testify before them to clear his name."

"Alger Hiss, the erudite diplomat and Harvard-trained government lawyer who was convicted of perjury in an espionage case that became one of the great riddles of the Cold War, died Friday in New York City. He was 92.

In a case that catapulted Richard M. Nixon to national attention and helped lay the groundwork for McCarthyism, Hiss was accused in 1948 of having been a Communist spy while working in the State Department in the 1930s. He denied the accusations in a sensational series of congressional hearings and two trials that mesmerized the public, pitting the slender, self-possessed patrician against his portly, rumpled accuser, Whittaker Chambers, a Time magazine editor and onetime Soviet agent. The evidence was strange and dramatic: microfilm hidden in a hollowed-out pumpkin, the telltale tracks of an old Woodstock typewriter, a birdwatcher's excited recollection of a rare sighting of a prothonotary warbler. Hiss was convicted of perjury in 1950 and served 44 months in pri

ELIZABETH BENTLY TESTIFIES. WHITTAKER CHAMBERS
ACCUSES ALGER HISS OF BEING A SPY. ALGER HISS
RESPONDS.

Dec. 2, 2011 marks the 10-year anniversary of the Enron Corporation's filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a New York court, a move that sparked one of the largest and most complex bankruptcies in U.S. history. Headquartered in Houston, Enron was an energy, commodities and services company that had employed close to 22,000 people and had revenues of nearly $101 billion in 2000, shortly before its downfall.

USA Today article, Feb 18, 2002.

An article by a college professor and a financial executive outlining irregularities in Enron's financial reporting that were "red flags" of financial wrongdoing.

When Enron declared bankruptcy in December 2001 and took with it the nest eggs of thousands of employees and stockholders, the FBI field office in Houston assigned two agents to investigate. Within weeks, the number of agents and support staff assigned to the case grew to 45, many hand-picked from field offices around the country for their expertise in traversing even the most circuitous paper trails.

A dictionary that defines words and concepts related to finance, investing, business and the economy.

See Section 3 for details on the Enron case.

Paper by Yuhao Li, Huntsman School of Business, Utah State University

Oct 2, 2002 Press Release from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, provides details on charges against Fastow.

May 1, 2003 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission press release

September 29, 2003

October 23, 2006 USA Today

"Ken Lay's rise to the top of the business world came to an abrupt halt with the collapse of Enron, the energy trading giant he helped to create."

Article from The Houston Chronicle, November 27, 2011

"On the night of March 18, 1990, a pair of thieves disguised as Boston police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and roamed the museum’s galleries, stealing thirteen works of art.
What happened?
They gained entry into the museum by posing as Boston police officers and stating that they were responding to a call. The guard on duty broke protocol and allowed them entry through the museum’s security door. Once inside, the thieves asked that the guard come around from behind the desk, claiming that they recognized him and that there was a warrant out for his arrest. The guard walked away from the desk and away from the only alarm button...."

Program Description
In the aftermath of his 1927 solo transatlantic flight, Colonel Charles Augustus Lindbergh–the Lone Eagle–became the most famous human being on earth. And when he and his lovely wife Anne produced an adorable baby son, Charlie, an eager press quickly dubbed him Little Lindy or sometimes just the Eaglet. But on the evening of March 1, 1932 Lucky Lindy's luck ran out. Bold kidnappers snatched his baby from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey, while everyone in the house was awake. Negotiations with the kidnappers stretched out for weeks. But Little Charlie never came back. His body was discovered not five miles from Hopewell. Now, NOVA is reopening one of the most intriguing, grisly, and confounding crime mysteries of all time as a team of expert investigators employ state-of-the-art forensic and behavioral science techniques in an effort to determine what really happened to Lindbergh's baby and why.

From FBI.gov: "Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., 20-month-old son of the famous aviator and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was kidnapped about 9:00 p.m., on March 1, 1932, from the nursery on the second floor of the Lindbergh home near Hopewell, New Jersey. The child's absence was discovered and reported to his parents, who were then at home, at approximately 10:00 p.m. by the child's nurse, Betty Gow. A search of the premises was immediately made and a ransom note demanding $50,000 was found on the nursery window sill. After the Hopewell police were notified, the report was telephoned to the New Jersey State Police, who assumed charge of the investigation...."

Detailed summary of the investigation into the kidnapping of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh's toddler.

From a PBS American Experience special on Charles Lindbergh, this page explores the kidnapping of Lindbergh's son in 1932.

Details on the trial of Richard Hauptmann, accused of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby. Includes ransom notes, photos, incriminating evidence used at trial, media coverage, and more.

From Columbia Journalism School: "As a young reporter with the New York Evening Journal, John Hohenberg covered the controversial “trial of the century” in which Bruno Richard Hauptmann was tried and sentenced to death for the murder of Charles Lindbergh’s son. Hohenberg later returned to the Journalism School, where he became a legendary professor and an administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes."

"New Jersey's Lindbergh Kidnapping and Trial" by Mark W. Falzini and James Davidson, Images of America, 2012

This is an article written for the Hopewell Valley Historical Society in New Jersey; Hopewell is the area where Charles Lindbergh and his family were living at the time of his son's kidnapping. The author was a child at the time of crime and has ties to people involved in the case. His article provides recollections of local townspeople who were involved in the investigation, prosecution, and aftermath of the trial. The media attention was so great that the town was overcome with reporters and curiosity seekers.

History was made when this case resulted in the first American murder trial to admit fingerprint testimony.

This blog is hosted by former FBI agent Jim Fisher, who has a law degree and has taught college courses in forensics and law. " In Chicago, Illinois, On September 19, 1910, a noise at two in the morning coming from her 15-year-old's bedroom, awoke Mary Hiller. She slipped into her robe and ventured into the hall where she noticed that the gaslight outside her daughter's room had been turned off. Fearing that an intruder had entered the house, Mrs. Hiller returned to the master bedroom and shook her husband awake...."

"Fingerprints are the oldest and most accurate method of identifying individuals. No two people (not even identical twins) have the same fingerprints, and it is extremely easy for even the most accomplished criminals to leave incriminating fingerprints at the scene of a crime."

From the National Criminal Justice Reference Service. A history and timeline of fingerprinting. See page 1-17 for the specific section on Thomas Jennings.

"On August 17, 1980, at a campsite near Australia's famous Ayer's Rock, a mother's cry came out of the dark: "My God, my God, the dingo's got my baby!" Soon the people of an entire continent would be choosing sides in a debate over whether the cry heard that night marked an astonishing and rare human fatality caused by Australia's wild dogs or was, rather, in the words of the man who would eventually prosecute her for murder, "a calculated, fanciful lie." A jury of nine men and three women came to believe the latter story and convicted Lindy Chamberlain for the murder of her ten-week-old daughter, Azaria. "

From The Australian News.

Thirty-two years after Azaria Chamberlain, 9 weeks old, disappeared from a campsite in Australia, the coroner in the fourth inquest into her death announced on Tuesday that the baby died as a result of being taken by a dingo, an Australian wild dog.

The ruling signified the end of three decades of struggle for the Chamberlain family. At first, Azaria’s mother, Lindy Chamberlain, was convicted of murdering her daughter and was sent to prison.

Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton holds the death certificate of her and Michael Chamberlain's daughter, Azaria, outside the Darwin Magistrates Court after the fourth coronial inquest into the disappearance of Azaria, June 12, 2012. The death certificate now reads that the cause of death was due to 'being attacked and taken by a dingo'.

It sounded too improbable, too loony, that a dingo had made off with her baby.

But that was Lindy Chamberlain’s defense when she was charged with the throat-slashing murder of her 9-week-old daughter, Azaria, during a 1980 outback camping trip at Uluru, then known as Ayers Rock. Azaria’s body was never found.

In October 1982, Mrs. Chamberlain was found guilty of killing Azaria. Pregnant at the time, she was sentenced to life in prison at hard labor. Her husband, Michael Chamberlain, a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, received an 18-month suspended sentence for being an accessory after the fact.

Their convictions were overturned several years later and they received some government compensation for legal fees, but the cause of death was never legally established. On Tuesday, however, an inquest by the Northern Territory coroner Elizabeth Morris fully exonerated the Chamberlains, saying that Azaria “died at Uluru on 17th August 1980 as a result of being atta

"It is the dress that fuelled a thousand ugly rumours - the simple black outfit, decorated with red ribbons and buttons, which falsely convinced so many Australians 25 years ago that Lindy Chamberlain had killed her baby, Azaria."

"When Azaria disappeared, dingoes were thought to be shy of people, and with no known attacks on humans, it was hard to believe one had been aggressive enough to come into a campground and take a baby from a tent.

But in the past decade or so, there have been a number of reported attacks, some disputed, and one unarguable fatality. Adrian Peace, an honorary associate professor of anthropology at the University of Queensland, who has studied the change in attitude toward dingoes, said, “The demonization of Mrs. Chamberlain has been replaced by the demonization of the dingo.”"

Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton recounts events since her daughter Azaria was taken from a tent in Australia’s Northern Territory in 1980. She speaks about the National Museum’s Chamberlain collection and the public’s fascination with the case.

"They tell of the night time search for Azaria Chamberlain, and the aftermath when the public decided they were guilty.
Max says they and their fellow campers were accused of collusion, despite the fact that they had never met the Chamberlains before that evening."

From The Age, December 19, 1980. ""Fresh Trail Seen Near Tent: Black Tracker."

In April 1983, the popular West German magazine Stern�made a shocking announcement that sparked passionate debates throughout the world and temporarily challenged historical views concerning Germanys most notorious ex-chancellor. The periodical claimed that 62 handwritten volumes of secret diaries allegedly written by the founder of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler, had been discovered in East Germany. According to Charles Hamiltons book, The Hitler Diaries, the volumes were reported to be one of the most-significant, historical discoveries in recent history. However, time proved the manuscripts instead were one of the biggest hoaxes of the century.

"Konrad Kujau, a German collector of memorabilia, claimed to be in possession of sixty-two volumes of the secret "diaries" of Adolf Hitler. The diaries included details from Hitler's life between 1932 and days before his suicide on April 30, 1945. Kujau said he found the diaries in Börnersdorf, near Dresden, in the possession of farmers who discovered them in the wreckage of a Nazi SS plane that had crashed on April 21, 1945."

"In 1979, Gerd Heidemann, a journalist from Der Stern magazine was approached by a man named Dr. Fischer, who claimed to possess Adolf Hitler’s secret diaries written between 1932 and 1945. Dr. Fischer said that the diaries were retrieved from an airplane carrying Hitler’s personal effects that crashed near Dresden. Local farmers retrieved them from the wreckage and they came into the possession of an East German general who hid them until the early 80’s where they were secretly transported out of East Germany by Dr. Fischer, one at a time, hidden inside pianos."

A reprint of a BBC news story about publication of the Hitler Diaries in 1983. A timeline also provides the full details about how this case developed into a crime.

April 26, 1983, Observer-Reporter, Washington, PA.

"A quarter of a century ago, German reporter Gerd Heidemann stunned the world by claiming he had unearthed Hitler's diaries. Within two weeks, his career was in tatters after it emerged they had been forged by an antique dealer. He never recovered from the scandal."

"Although the 1995 criminal trial of O. J. Simpson for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman has been called a "a great trash novel come to life," no one can deny the pull it had on the American public. If the early reports of the murder of the wife of the ex--NFL football star (turned-NBC-sports-announcer) hadn't caught people's full attention, Simpson's surreal Bronco ride on the day of his arrest certainly did--ninety-five million television viewers witnessed the slow police chase live. The 133 days of televised courtroom testimony turned countless viewers into Simpson trial junkies. When, at 10 A.M. PST on October 3, Judge Ito's clerk read the jury's verdict of "Not Guilty," 91% of all persons viewing television were glued to the unfolding scene in the Los Angeles courtroom."

"In the beginning it was a double murder, and then it was a criminal trial that dominated public attention as the law tried its hardest to convict a man.

A man who became perhaps the most famous criminal defendant in American history and so easily recognizable that people referred to him by his initials only. It went on for nine months. There were 11 lawyers representing the man in the dock and 25 working around the clock for the largest prosecutor's office in the country"

From the National Museum of Crime and Punishment

PROVING THE CASE: THE SCIENCE OF DNA: DNA EVIDENCE IN THE O.J. SIMPSON TRIAL

William C. Thompson, Professor, Department of Criminology, Law & Society, University of California, Irvine, California

The author was a member of O.J. Simpson's defense team. "To draw appropriate lessons from the O.J. Simpson case, one must have an accurate appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of the DNA evidence against Simpson. Much of the public discourse about the case begins with the premise that the DNA evidence proved Simpson's guilt conclusively and proceeds quickly to an analysis of factors that might explain why the jury nevertheless voted to acquit. This line of analysis generally leads to unflattering conclusions about the fairness or intelligence of the Simpson jury and, more broadly, to cynical conclusions about the capacity of the criminal justice system, as currently constituted, to produce just results. The first section of this essay challenges the underlying prem

"On October 3, 1995, an estimated 150 million people stopped what they were doing to witness the televised verdict of the O.J. Simpson trial. For more than a year, the O.J. saga transfixed the nation and dominated the public imagination. Ten years later, veteran FRONTLINE producer Ofra Bikel revisits the "perfect storm" that was the O.J. Simpson trial. Through extensive interviews with the defense, prosecution and journalists, FRONTLINE explores the verdict -- which, more than any other in recent history, measured the difference between being white and black in America."

"What went wrong? Was it the government's case to lose, or was the prosecution team handicapped from the start?"

"At its core the defense's victory came from focusing on the evidence found by Detective Mark Fuhrman -- and from Johnnie Cochran's courtroom "magic.""

Defense and prosecution lawyers, journalists, and close observers of the trial

"The media's scrutiny of the story was relentless. There was nothing that wasn't recorded, analyzed or discussed on television and in print concerning "O.J." However, in the end, many experts not only fault the coverage, but say the Simpson case had a lasting negative impact on the media."

"Close observers say the O.J. Simpson trial was a watershed in Americans' perception of the law. Some say they could teach a semester's course on American culture, race and the legal system using just the Simpson trial. "

See video, main individuals involved, and highlights of the O.J. Simpson trial.

Lengthy report from The New Yorker.

"She has no visible halo, but the stocky, uneducated Chinese woman is a saint to thousands. For 13 years Cheng Chui-ping sold clothes and cheap eats along East Broadway in New York City's Chinatown...But to many she was a veritable goddess, dispensing both mercy and fortune. Her devotees called her Dajie Ping--Big Sister Ping.
To the U.S. government, however, Big Sister Ping is a big-time crook and people smuggler...federal investigators say she also ran a global crime network that netted her more than $40 million, made her a major competitor of China's central bank, helped her corrupt foreign government officials and changed the face of New York City...."

"Over the past 15 years, “trafficking in persons” and “human trafficking” have been used as umbrella terms for activities involved when someone obtains or holds a person in compelled service.

The United States government considers trafficking in persons to include all of the criminal conduct involved in forced labor and sex trafficking, essentially the conduct involved in reducing or holding someone in compelled service. "

2008 Slate Magazine Article that discusses the Sister Ping case and how human smuggling in China has changed since the economic boom there.

May 23, 2005 "The Chinese businesswoman called Sister Ping was known around Chinatown as the person to go to for
smuggling immigrants. But according to testimony last week in her federal trial in Manhattan,
smuggling was but a sideline for her - a small part of a multinational underground empire that she
oversaw from a humble-looking Chinatown storefront. "

"During the trial, the government said that Ms. Cheng, who ran a multimillion-dollar underground banking network that stretched from New York throughout the Far East, entered the human smuggling trade in the mid-1980's. Ms. Brown said the business began as a hands-on family enterprise in which Ms. Cheng's sister made fake travel documents and her brother picked up immigrants en route to the United States in Guatemala but increased in scope and sophistication. By 1992, she said, "Business was booming.""

New York Times, March 17, 2006

"Chinese gangs are smuggling illegal immigrants by the thousands into America of ten forcing them into a life of servitude

Terrible as the past four months had been, nothing could have prepared the 281 Chinese passengers on the freighter Golden Venture for their landfall in America. It was 2 a.m. and their ship, a dismal rust bucket never intended for human cargo, had just run aground off Rockaway Peninsula in New York. Pandemonium reigned on deck. Buffeted by six-foot ocean swells, the Golden Venture creaked and rolled as the frightened travelers peered toward the distant lights onshore. Then, urged on by shouting crewmen, scores of would-be immigrants abandoned their meager possessions and clambered down the vessel's sides for the dangerous, 200-yard swim to what they knew as Meiguo, "the beautiful country"in this case, Queens."

Accompanies a review about a book on the Sister Ping case.

"At just about dawn, more than a year ago, the smugglers' van left her on East Broadway in Chinatown and sped off. A.W. Chen, 20, an illegal immigrant from Fuzhou, China, had made it, she believed, and the anxious weeks that she had spent aboard the rusty freighter that delivered her to America's shores soon would be a fading memory.

Although Chen hadn't slept for two days, her eyes widened as cars zoomed by. She soon would own a car, she thought, and be rich beyond her dreams.
But since her arrival in May 1992, Chen's dreams have met reality. She is a prostitute in a massage parlor in Chinatown, slowly paying off an enormous debt to the smugglers who arranged her passage."

"On July 4, 1954, the wife of a handsome young doctor, Sam Sheppard, was brutally murdered in the bedroom of their home in Bay Village, Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie. Sheppard denied any involvement in the murder and described his own battle with the killer he described as "bushy-haired."

Did Sam do it? It's rare for a murder mystery to endure for over half a century. Almost always, if the the mystery is not fully resolved at the trial, subsequent admissions, previously uncovered clues, or more sophisticated forensic tests reveal what the trial did not. Not so with the Sam Sheppard case. Facing two different juries, twelve years apart, Sam Sheppard was found guilty by one jury, not guilty by the next. Even over the past few years, partisans continue the debate."