The Reid Scale: Classic Unsolved Murder Cases

[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.

[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]

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.

[Roy Corduroy]

Stan I have read the brand new book 'Cemetery John' and I think author Robert Zorn has in fact identified the mastermind behind the Lindbergh kidnapping, to bring the case full circle.

Roy

[RivkahChaya]

Stan I have read the brand new book 'Cemetery John' and I think author Robert Zorn has in fact identified the mastermind behind the Lindbergh kidnapping, to bring the case full circle.

Roy

So, what, are you getting a commission, or are you just going to tell us who it is?

And, FWIW, even if Hauptmann didn't act alone, I'm still not sure I'd call the person ultimately responsible a "mastermind."

ETA: I checked on this book; you're aware that it's published by a vanity press, right?

[Roy Corduroy]

So, what, are you getting a commission

Hot dog! that's what I wanna hear Send your certified check or money order payable to

Roy Corduroy
14 Mud Island Cutoff
Trailer D
c/o the Flora-Bama Lounge

[RavenDarkendale]

Perhaps another scale category would be: Serial Killers Created By Police Too Lazy to Investigate All the Crimes

Wayne Williams almost certainly was saddled with the crimes of others.

A lot of Bundy's crimes just went away, he probably was guilty, no need to investigate, seemed to be the attitude.

Here in our small area of Southwest VA, Upper Northeast TN, Northwest NC we had a serial killer. I had been in high school with the guy, a man named Reeves, who as I recall him would be far down on the list of people I would suspect. He dumped his final victim, who survived and testified at his trial, about six miles from my house on a forest service road crossed by the AT.

One of his "victims" who was slightly related to me, had all of the evidence of her murder vanish mysteriously. He was saddled with the crime, it was his MO, but he was never tried for the murder. He was convicted in both VA and NC, not sure about TN

He wasn't even a nationally known suspect and police dropped the investigation into local murders that fit his MO.

Sad. Truly sad

[RivkahChaya]

Well, it's also sad, but true that police need to allocate resources wisely, and spending a lot of time and money on very cold cases is not the best way to do that, especially on ones that are so old the chances of the culprit still being alive and criminally active are not good.

It's also probably true that most people in prison have committed more crimes than just the ones they have been convicted of, and sentenced for.

I'm less concerned about police closing old cases because So-and-so who is now in prison for life in another state probably did it, than I am with the media hounding police over high-profile cases, so that they in turn hound truly innocent suspects, and occasionally even extract false confessions from them (the Central Park jogger case), or just provide a feedback loop for the media (John and Patsy Ramsey).

The police never arrested anyone for any of the Whitechapel murders probably mostly due to the shortcomings of police knowledge and forensic resources in 1888. But the incompetence of the police in the JonBenet Ramsey case was at least partly due to the interference of the media, I think, and I also think that the media frenzy over Casey Anthony caused the District Attorney to charge her with 1st Degree Murder, which was inappropriate, and then when he couldn't prove planning, and prior malice, didn't get a conviction. If he'd charged her with only manslaughter, I think he would have gotten a conviction, but the press would have assassinated him. Don't even get me started on what the New York city police did to the teenagers in the Central Park jogger case, and that was the media, too. People in the city wanted an arrest before the day was over.

[RivkahChaya]

If you want to amuse yourself for about ten minutes, here's the website of some loon who claims he is the real Lindbergh baby. I heard a radio interview with him once, and he rants like someone who forgot his medication that morning, going from one topic to another, without fully finishing a thought. He says that the Lindbergh's other children refuse to acknowledge him, because they think he wants money, despite the fact that they have acknowledged their father's illegitimate children by a mistress he had while married to their mother.

The family has been harassed by hundreds of false claimants over the years, and apparently they have paid a little more attention to this guy, to the point of having a private detective check him out. On his website, he says "Why do you think the Lindbergh family has paid so much attention to me for so long and yet refuses to engage in any dialogue to sort out the facts of my life?"

Maybe because you are a crazy stalker?

The body of the baby found in the woods shortly after the kidnapping was cremated, so it can't be exhumed and tested, and Lindbergh's children have refused to satisfy every crazy person who comes out of the woodwork with a DNA test. Aside from the trouble and expense, people like that don't usually stop when they hear "No," they just move the goalposts. When the non-matching DNA test comes back, Crazy Guy is likely to come back with something like "Then Anne Morrow must have cheated on her husband, and none of her other children are really Charles Lindbergh's kids." They just don't give up that easily.

[sdreid]

Stan I have read the brand new book 'Cemetery John' and I think author Robert Zorn has in fact identified the mastermind behind the Lindbergh kidnapping, to bring the case full circle.

Roy

No Roy - I guess I will have to keep an eye open for it.

[sdreid]

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

Lord only knows how Mancini was found not guilty.

[Cogidubnus]

Kemp Street

I was born a Brighton boy Stan, and as a youngster (circa 1962) was shown the house (or what he reckoned was the one) by my grandfather who always reckoned Mancini was guilty as sin...

Here it is:-

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?oe=ut...ed=0CCAQ8gEwAA

All the best

Dave

[sdreid]

Thanks Dave. I've seen a pic of the inside of the place but I don't believe I've seen the outside.

[Graham]

I too was showed (back in the 1960's) the 'murder house' in Kemp Town, Brighton. I'd never heard of Tony Mancini at the time, but have read what I've been able to find about the case. He was a lad, wasn't he?

Colin Wilson says that Mancini was found not guilty by reason of the brilliant defence put up by his lawyer Norman Birkett, and also by Mancini's not-inconsiderable skills as an actor during his trial. He confessed to the murder (in fact to Stephen Knight) in 1976 but made it appear that although he had much ill-will towards Violette, her death was unplanned and that he lost control of himself.

Mancini in earlier years was tied in with London gangs, notably Harry Sabini, and once chopped off the hand of someone the gang didn't much like. It's also said he turned the handle of a mincing-machine while someone's hand was forced into it. But he luvved his mum....

G

[sdreid]

Yeah, Hitler also loved his mom and his dog and cried when his parakeet died.