HOME |
RSS | 
The planned expedition led by Norwegian Jarle Andhoy was already shady, and now there’s an unwilling member along for the ride. The yacht took off in a hurry as immigration officials arrived to investigate Andhoy at an Auckland harbor, while a mechanic was on board repairing an anchor on the 52-foot boat Nilaya.
Mr Andhoy and three crew members have embarked on an unpermitted voyage to Antarctica’s Ross Sea, in defiance of both the Norwegian and New Zealand governments.
A previous trip he made to Antarctica almost a year ago ended in disaster when his yacht Berserk sank in a fierce storm and three men died.
Declaring himself “a Viking”, the Norwegian adventurer says he is seeking the wreckage of the Berserk, which was serving as a supply ship for an attempt to reach the South Pole on quad bikes.
New Zealand authorities, who co-ordinated an extensive search and rescue operation last year in which Mr Andhoy and a companion were airlifted to safety, are furious about his return voyage.
Authorities are looking for the Nilaya, which Andhoy has said does not have a locator beacon. It is assumed to not have adequate provisions for an extra expedition member, either. Link -via Arbroath
In 2009, Jesse Dimmick entered the home of Jared and Lindsay Rowley and held them at knifepoint for a couple of hours. The three watched the movie Patch Adams and had snacks. When Dimmick fell asleep, the couple escaped and police, who had been in pursuit of Dimmick over a murder and a car theft, arrested him. Dimmick was shot during the arrest.
Various lawsuits followed. Dimmick sued the city of Topeka over the shooting, and (possibly because of the prospect that he might get money from that suit) the Rowleys sued Dimmick last September for trespass, intrusion and negligent infliction of emotional distress. That seems to have given Dimmick the idea to sue the Rowleys, and he brought a counterclaim against them for breach of contract.
You see, Dimmick alleges that, after breaking into the Rowleys’ home with a knife and gun, they all then sat down and hashed out a deal under which they would hide him from police (the police who were right outside) for an unspecified amount of money. “Later,” he complained, “the Rowleys reneged on said oral contract, resulting in my being shot in the back by authorities.” Ergo, breach of contract.
An attorney for the Rowleys says, of course, that any contract with Dimmick is not valid. Link -via Boing Boing
Anonymous is getting ready for the biggest fight of their group’s history, ramping up to take on a Mexican drug cartel after one of their own was kidnapped by the drug lords.
The Zetas are one of the biggest players in Mexico’s drug war, which has resulted in about 40,000 deaths since 2006. Earlier this month, a YouTube video showed a man in a Guy Fawkes mask who claimed to speak for Anonymous warning the Zetas that the collective would reveal the names of people who had aided the cartel, including taxi drivers, police officers and journalists, if a kidnapped member of Anonymous weren’t released.
Now that’s a cause we can all get behind.
In 1976, three young men kidnapped a school bus full of children in Chowchillla, California. The 26 children and the driver were forced at gunpoint into a truck that was buried at a rock quarry. The bus driver, Ed Ray, and some of the older boys dug back through the hole through which they entered the underground chamber. It took them 16 hours to escape. Meanwhile, the kidnappers planned to demand $5 million in ransom, but the police phone lines were busy. Before the plan could be carried out, the victims had escaped. Richard Schoenfeld, James Schoenfeld, and Fred Woods received life sentences for the crime. They have served 35 years in prison. Some people believe that’s enough, including their prosecutor David Minier.
Since then, each has been denied parole dozens of times. Supporters say their continued imprisonment makes a mockery of the idea of rehabilitation. Minier, now a retired judge, favors parole for all three kidnappers.
“Quite frankly, I am simply amazed that Richard Schoenfeld, given his record as a model prisoner, was not paroled years ago,” Minier wrote the parole board in 2006.
At the Feb. 23 news conference in San Francisco, Dale Fore, one of the lead investigators in the case, said: “They were just dumb rich kids, and they paid a hell of a price for what they did.”
After retiring from the Madera County Sheriff’s Department, Fore worked as a private investigator for the Woods family’s attorneys, tracking down kidnapping victims to see if any would write letters of support for parole. None has.
“I might not be the most popular guy when I get back home,” Fore said. “But right is right. How much time do you want out of these guys?”
If you ask the people of Chowchilla, the answer is life without parole. On one hand, the crime as planned was horrific. On the other hand, no one was seriously hurt in the end. Many people convicted of murder receive lighter sentences. On the other hand, this crime could have ended as a mass murder. What do you think? Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Associated Press)
Spanish police have arrested an unnamed woman who faked her own kidnapping. She sent a photograph of herself with her hands and feet tied, along with a ransom demand of 20,000 euros.
The ransom request was repeated in later text messages as well as warnings that the man not go to police, which he ignored.
Police launched a search and spotted her car, which they followed to a shopping mall in the town of Gandia on the Mediterranean coast.
“The woman, who was travelling alone and was in perfect health, was the supposed victim of the kidnapping,” the police statement said.
At first she told police that she had been released that morning but later confessed to faking her abduction “to find out what her husband would be willing to do for her”.
There’s no word on whether the perpetrator found her husband’s response acceptable. Link -via Arbroath
(Image created with Ransom Note Generator)
In 1964, British PM Alec Douglas-Home was staying overnight at the home of Lord Hailsham in Scotland. In an astonishing security lapse, his bodyguards did not guard the door to the house. Left-wing college students, on a whim, decided to kidnap him and met the PM, alone, at the door. That’s when our hero, beer, stepped in to save the day:
Faced with a determined group of militants, the resourceful prime minister decided that there was only one option.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the liquid refreshment did the trick and defused any of the group’s lingering desire to kidnap their genial host, along with assurances they would guarantee his party a landslide victory if they went through with their plan.
This otherwise unverified incident was discovered in the recently-discovered diaries of the late Lord Hailsham, which included this passage:
“He asked and received permission to pack a few things and was given 10 minutes’ grace.
“After that they were offered and accepted beer. John and Priscilla returned and the kidnap project abandoned.
Link via Hell in a Handbasket | Photo: The Daily Mail
What would you do if someone killed your child, and authorities refused to extradite the suspect? Here’s what one father allegedly did:
A retired accountant whose daughter was killed 27 years ago was facing charges last night over the alleged abduction of the man he always blamed for her death. The man was left bound, gagged and injured outside a French courtroom.
André Bamberski, 72, is suspected of taking justice into his own hands over the German authorities’ failure to act against Dieter Krombach, a German cardiologist, after a French court convicted him of manslaughter in his absence.
Mr Krombach, 74, was found trussed up with head injuries in a lane near the criminal court in the eastern city of Mulhouse on Sunday after an anonymous caller with an Eastern European accent tipped off police. Mr Bamberski, who is of Polish origin and lives near Toulouse, was in Mulhouse at the weekend and is suspected of making the call, police said.
Link (Photo: Remy Gabalda/AFP/Getty Images)
Do two wrongs make a right or is Bamberski – if he did do it – justified in kidnapping the alleged (Update 10/26/09: alleged/convicted – there’s controversy about this) killer? What would YOU do if it were your child?
Holding a person for ransom makes big headlines, but years later or in another placec, you may not be familiar with these stories that gripped the public in their time.
The kidnapping and murder of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., son of aviator Charles Lindbergh occurred in 1932 and was one of the most horrific crimes of its time, prompting the “Lindbergh Law”, which made kidnapping a federal crime. (Prior to, it was classified as a local crime.)
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by smellslikepurple.
