The Reid Scale: Classic Unsolved Murder Cases

[sdreid]

It's just a general way to categorize cases as a sort of exercise and to do so without being too complex. I was not trying to set up something like an unsolved crimes version of the Periodic Table. If someone had such an idea before, I was not, and still am not, aware of it but feel free to build on it. It was not an attempt to force some dictate or to even be overly serious.

[RivkahChaya]

Oops, I meant to write Oswald AND Hauptmann.

*Sigh*

There was no conspiracy to kill Pres. Kennedy. Oswald, and Oswald acting alone, killed him.

And, in regards to him, you need to add something like a level 0.5 "Cases where the #1 suspect was apprehended, and there was little doubt as to how a trial would have gone, but but there was a hitch." There a few hitches like Oswald's, but suspects do commit suicide, and other people are tried for just one crime, with other crimes "in reserve," just in case the jury hangs or acquits, or the maximum punishment isn't given, or sometimes the crimes (in the US) are in different states, and after one state imposes life without parole, or the death penalty, the other state(s) declines to extradite and try the person on other charges.

Ted Bundy, for example, was never tried for some of the murders he confessed to, and which were clearly his MO, because once he had the death sentence in Florida, and a record of escaping, it seemed imprudent to attempt an extradition for a trial in another state.

what's the current thinking in the USA?

It depends on who you ask, but there is a definite pattern. People who see a conspiracy in the Lindbergh kidnapping are the same people who think that there was a 9/11 conspiracy, and the mafia killed Marilyn Monroe.

I don't think Hauptmann was a stupid man but I do agree that he wasn't likely the mastermind it would take to pull this sort of crime off alone and almost get away with it.

What do you mean by "this sort of crime"? Lindbergh did not have great security. There was no alarm, and no guards. They had something like a pet Cocker Spaniel, but no watch dogs. Someone drove up to a house that pretty much everyone in the US knew the Lindbergh's owned, and which was located in a remote place, put a homemade ladder, with unusually widely spaced rungs, against the house, up to the baby's window, which was already open, on purpose, to let in fresh air. While climbing up or down, but probably down, a rung broke. Later, when the body was found, the timing of the death seemed to be "the night of the kidnapping."

That suggests that someone without much idea of what he was in for tried to carry a toddler (this wasn't a tiny baby, it was a toddler who was a year and a half, and big for his age), no doubt squirming, in one arm, while descending a wide-rung ladder one-handed. If someone gave you even odds that he'd fall, you should take the bet.

Then, when he tried to collect the ransom, he had three false starts, and clearly did not have a well-thought out plan, but was just sort of making it up as he went along.

He mostly got lucky. He got lucky first, that the Lindberghs were at the house, since they had initially planned to go back to the city, he got lucky that the police had little experience investigating kidnappings, and he got lucky that Lindbergh had enough machismo to be doing a lot of side investigating of his own, along with this character Dr. Condon whom he chose out of the 1,000s of people clamoring to help out. Why Lindbergh chose Condon, I don't know. Lindbergh had an ego, and not much impressed him, but maybe doctors did. Or maybe Condon's "can-do" attitude was like Lindbergh's. Lindbergh was at cross-purposes with the official investigation sometimes, which is why the ransom drop was so screwy.

I have a problem with your #3 & #4 example.

For 3, I would say cases where the crime is clearly delineated, and we know a lot about the suspect, including descriptions, and in the modern world, sometimes even security photographs, and DNA profiles, but still can't put a name to the person. I would use Dan Cooper, the ransom skyjacker for this, but the original Nightstalker is a good example, too. We have a voice recording of him. The Zodiac is probably a good example, even though we are not entirely sure exactly which crimes to credit to him, he left living victims, so we are certain about a core group, and we are certain that the letters written to the police are authentic, because the handwriting is consistent, they reference one another, and reference crime details not in the newspaper.

For 4, I would put cases that were closed upon the arrest of a person for some other crime, but the reasoning is shaky. Wayne Williams definitely dumped bodies off a bridge, so it's pretty certain he killed you young male adults, and those are the murders he was convicted of. Carpet fibers on those bodies matched fibers on the Atlanta child murder victims, so those cases were closed, but Williams claims to be innocent of those. The Boston Strangler murders were closed when Albert DeSalvo confessed to them as part of a plea bargain, but that has always looked like a police force desperate to close a case the public was anxious to see someone in prison for.

I'd put JTR at 5, and that would be "serial killers" who exist based on cases linked by MO, but not by forensics, and may actually represent crimes by more than one person. The true "Boston Strangler" may be this sort of chimera, which explain why the killings stopped with DeSalvo's arrest. Maybe DeSalvo was responsible for some of the killings, probably one of the other people responsible had stopped a long time before DeSalvo was arrested.

Another problem with you scale is terminology. Are you going to deal with every crime separately, or are you going to call serial killings a single crime, and risk a serious error, if an unknown serial killer turns out not to exist, and the killings are by different people? I realize that sometimes it is inevitable to speak of two separate murders as a single crime, like the murders of Andrew and Abby Borden, but since it's surely at some point, the reverse of over-generalizing happens, and two or three crimes by one person are not attributed to one person, I suggest that except when there is one crime scene and one weapon, you not speak of separate murders as being one crime.

[sdreid]

I believe is wasn't until 1976 that Mancini gave it up; so 42 years after the fact.

I have been informed that Mancini didn't actually die until 1987 so it wasn't shortly before his death as some reports indicate.

[sdreid]

I believe is wasn't until 1976 that Mancini gave it up; so 42 years after the fact.

[sdreid]

Tony Mancini was found not guilty but later confessed to the murder knowing that he could not be prosecuted a second time. His admission may have been for pay or to get attention but it was also probably the truth.

[sdreid]

1-Nicola Sacco

In 1977 Governor Dukakis issued a proclamation doubting that the trial of Nicola Sacco and his partner Bartolomeo Vanzetti was conducted fairly. This was not even a pardon let alone a reversal of conviction. Even this resulted in an attempt by the Massachusetts Senate to censure the governor.

[sdreid]

Derek Bentley was pardoned first then his conviction was later quashed which is a reversal of conviction.

It didn't make much difference since he'd already been hanged.

[sdreid]

Additional examples:

0-Jeffrey Dahmer
1-Nicola Sacco
2-Toni Mancini
3-Great Hartford Circus Fire
4-Jack the Stripper
5-Charles Mattson Kidnapping/Murder

[sdreid]

Not that a pardon is the same as a reversal of conviction.

Derek Bentley was pardoned first then his conviction was later quashed which is a reversal of conviction.

[sdreid]

That's my view.

[Magpie]

Although Carter's conviction was thrown out, if I remember correctly, he was never pardoned or declared innocent.

That's because pretty much everyone knows that he did it.

[sdreid]

Not that a pardon is the same as a reversal of conviction.

[sdreid]

Although Carter's conviction was thrown out, if I remember correctly, he was never pardoned or declared innocent.

[Magpie]

A 3 probably Magpie.

Ah, right. Sorry, I missed the "standing" part. Good call.

[sdreid]

A 3 probably Magpie.