J. Gunnar Grey's Posts - CrimeSpace2024-03-29T12:43:41ZJ. Gunnar Greyhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JGunnarGreyhttps://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/60997206?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1https://crimespace.ning.com/profiles/blog/feed?user=1day1f5de8bus&xn_auth=noThe Dingo Baby case, Part Onetag:crimespace.ning.com,2011-05-07:537324:BlogPost:2879302011-05-07T16:52:45.000ZJ. Gunnar Greyhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JGunnarGrey
<p>One of the most common complaints about mystery novels is that they’re unrealistic. It’s just not believable, the nay-sayers say, for an amateur sleuth to solve a crime that baffles the experts. But a 1980s case from the Australian Outback shows the assumptions upon which that claim is based, and disproves them.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/70756475?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-right" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/70756475?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a> Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, is a huge sandstone…</p>
<p>One of the most common complaints about mystery novels is that they’re unrealistic. It’s just not believable, the nay-sayers say, for an amateur sleuth to solve a crime that baffles the experts. But a 1980s case from the Australian Outback shows the assumptions upon which that claim is based, and disproves them.</p>
<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/70756475?profile=original"><img width="300" class="align-right" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/70756475?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"/></a>Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, is a huge sandstone formation in the southern part of the Northern Territory, not far from the geographical center of Australia. An island of rock jutting above (and below) the desert floor, this red iceberg is almost six miles around and over a thousand feet high. It’s dotted with springs, waterholes, caves, and petroglyphs, and has long been sacred to the Aboriginals. Popular as a campground, Uluru is protected within a national park.</p>
<p>On 17 August 1980, Michael and Lindy Chamberlain from the mining town of Mount Isa, Queensland, were camping with their three children, six-year-old Aidan, four-year-old Reagen, and the infant Azaria, born nine weeks previously. At eight o’clock that evening, the two youngest were sleeping in the family tent, exhausted from exploring all day. The young couple and Aidan were a few yards away, supper on the barbie.</p>
<p>There was a sudden cry from the tent. Lindy ran for her children. She claimed she saw a dingo, a wild dog, crawling backward out of the tent. The dingo shook its head, as if it carried something in its mouth, something struggling. Then it ran into the night and vanished.</p>
<p>Inside the tent, Lindy found Reagen still sleeping. But Azaria’s bassinette had been tipped over. Dark liquid was sprayed over one tent wall, near the ground. The infant was gone.</p>
<p>“The dingo has got my baby!” Lindy screamed.</p>
<p>Every camper at the site scrambled for the search and the park rangers joined in. Many reported having seen dingoes near the campsite during the day, and some remarked on the dingo tracks around the Chamberlains’ tent. Although the search lasted all night, no trace of the baby was found. The family returned home to Mount Isa and its mines to grieve.</p>
<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/70756439?profile=original"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/70756439?profile=original" width="340"/></a>It’s an ugly tragedy, but at this point it took an even uglier twist. Eight days later, Michael and Lindsay were watching the evening news when the reporter announced a pile of baby clothing had been found two and a half miles from the Uluru campsite. It was Azaria’s—jumpsuit, undershirt, bootees, all torn, bloody, and dirty. Missing was her short coat edged with lemon yellow, called a matinee jacket. The local policeman, holding the items in his bare hands and displaying them for the camera, stated they’d been “neatly folded” when found.</p>
<p>The ominous insinuation wasn’t lost on the press nor the general public and overnight, Lindy Chamberlain was branded a baby-killing monster. It was soon widely claimed that a wild dog couldn’t possibly have carried off a ten-pound infant. The rumor mill took an even more grotesque turn when it surfaced the family was deeply religious and Michael a Seventh-Day Adventist pastor. Discussions of cult sacrifices and dingoes made of thin air were given some credence by the public if not the press.</p>
<p>The police had their own questions. The infant clothing was torn and bloody; but was it bloody enough to support the claim of an animal attack? Wouldn’t the clothing have been ripped to shreds? Where was the little jacket, if it existed anywhere except in Lindy’s story? And why hadn’t any bones or remains been found with the clothing?</p>
<p>The press outcry and public cynicism weren’t helped by Lindy’s personality. Strong and somewhat abrasive, she refused to cry on camera nor behave as a grieving mother was expected to. Public sentiment solidified against the family with Lindy the crux of the storm.</p>
<p>The inquest for Azaria was held 15 December 1980. From the first, it demonstrated a police mismanagement fiasco of embarrassing proportions. No photographs had been taken of the bloodstained tent, even though it had been impounded at the time, and the dingo tracks had been thoroughly scuffled underfoot during the frantic search for the baby. By handling the clothing with bare hands, the police had tainted any possible forensic clues or destroyed them entirely.</p>
<p>The only evidence presented by the police was an opinion registered by Dr. Kenneth Brown, a forensic odontologist, that the holes in Azaria’s clothing hadn’t been made by canine teeth but by something sharper, such as scissors or a knife. He’d reached this conclusion by wrapping chunks of meat in a baby’s jumpsuit and tossing it into the dingo cage at the Adelaide Zoo, then examining what was left. The marks left on the test jumpsuits were poorly defined, not sharp and clear as were those on the suit Azaria had worn.</p>
<p>Against this and the public opinion, experts testified that a full-grown dingo could tote a twenty-five pound wallaby, and so a ten-pound infant was no stretch. As well, dingoes tend to eat all of a kill, even the bones, the skin and fur of animals and the feathers of birds, leaving nothing to be found. And even though no dingo attacks on humans had been previously recorded, nor was there any documentation there hadn’t been any.</p>
<p>The coroner, Denis Barritt, was having none of it. In a televised verdict, a rare occurrence, he called the criminal case no more than “months of innuendoes” and a national disgrace. Azaria’s disappearance and presumed death were attributed to the dingoes and the case was closed.</p>
<p>Except that it wasn’t.</p>
<p>For Part Two, <a href="http://the1940mysterywriter.wordpress.com/blog/the-dingo-baby-case-part-two/" target="_blank">click here.</a></p>Six Sentence Sunday 05/01/11tag:crimespace.ning.com,2011-04-30:537324:BlogPost:2869062011-04-30T21:48:02.000ZJ. Gunnar Greyhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JGunnarGrey
<p>My uniform pocket, meanwhile, felt rather heavy. And increasingly hot.</p>
<p>That midnight, while Greentree and those who couldn’t escape continued the search, I rappelled down the outside wall of his apartment building, let myself into his bedroom, and planted the ruddy things in the trouser pocket of the uniform he’d worn the previous day. It seemed a decent enough plan at the time, and my skills weren’t so rusty that I left any fingerprints that would incriminate me. And I must admit to…</p>
<p>My uniform pocket, meanwhile, felt rather heavy. And increasingly hot.</p>
<p>That midnight, while Greentree and those who couldn’t escape continued the search, I rappelled down the outside wall of his apartment building, let myself into his bedroom, and planted the ruddy things in the trouser pocket of the uniform he’d worn the previous day. It seemed a decent enough plan at the time, and my skills weren’t so rusty that I left any fingerprints that would incriminate me. And I must admit to a sensation of sopping-wet-rag relief as well as giddy satisfaction as I let myself out of the building at the end of the operation, carrying my tools camouflaged in a gym bag and crossing the parking lot to my own housing at around one in the morning.</p>
<p>But at the edge of the lot, a soft slow drawl spoke out of the impenetrable shadows at the foot of the boundary wall. “You know, I generally mind my own business.”</p>
<p><em>from</em> Trophies, <em>Archive Fifteen</em></p>
<p>#</p>
<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/70756224?profile=original"><img class="align-right" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/70756224?profile=original" width="200"/></a>Okay, it's seven sentences. So shoot me.</p>
<p>If you missed the earlier episodes in the Saga of Greentree's Keys, click <a href="http://the1940mysterywriter.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/six-sentence-sunday-041711/">here</a> for the start.</p>
<p>Six Sentence Sunday is the best legal fun a writer can have. Don't believe me? Click <a href="http://sixsunday.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">here</a> and try it next week for yourself.</p>
<p>For those who have been awaiting this announcement, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Format Your eBook the Free and Easy Way</span> is now live on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Format-Your-eBook-Free-ebook/dp/B004YLOGWO/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1304183819&sr=8-2-fkmr0" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a>. Oh, and I've received confirmation that ebooks prepared with this system pass the international validation standards for libraries and OverDrive.com.</p>
<p>Gunnar</p>When the victim’s fingerprints count the mosttag:crimespace.ning.com,2011-04-19:537324:BlogPost:2849462011-04-19T23:58:26.000ZJ. Gunnar Greyhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JGunnarGrey
<p>Most commonly, it’s the perpetrator’s fingerprints that land him or her in jail. But in the kidnapping of Charles Urschel, it was the victim’s fingerprints that lead to the capture of a notorious Prohibition era gangster.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>The crime</strong></p>
<p>Charles F. Urschel, oil millionaire and philanthropist, and his wife Berenice were entertaining their friends, the Jarretts, at the Urschels’ Oklahoma City home with a game of bridge on July 22, 1933, when two bandits armed…</p>
<p>Most commonly, it’s the perpetrator’s fingerprints that land him or her in jail. But in the kidnapping of Charles Urschel, it was the victim’s fingerprints that lead to the capture of a notorious Prohibition era gangster.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>The crime</strong></p>
<p>Charles F. Urschel, oil millionaire and philanthropist, and his wife Berenice were entertaining their friends, the Jarretts, at the Urschels’ Oklahoma City home with a game of bridge on July 22, 1933, when two bandits armed with machine guns interrupted. Both Urschel and Jarrett were taken when neither would admit their identity, and despite warnings from the gunmen, Berenice immediately rang the police and FBI.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Once the gunmen decided who was who, Jarrett was robbed and released. Four days later, Berenice received a ransom note, in her husband’s handwriting, demanding $200,000 for his safe return. Raising the money wasn’t an issue for one of the wealthiest couples in the region, and the marked bills were delivered by another family friend, E. E. Kirkpatrick, in Kansas City. Unfortunately, Kirkpatrick was only able to describe his contact as a tall man “in a natty summer suit with a turned-down Panama hat,” leaving the FBI with no more clues than when they started the interstate investigation.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But the next day Urschel returned home. And that clever, observant man had a detailed story to tell.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>The victim</strong></p>
<p>Urschel, it seems, had an encyclopedic memory and he’d made note of every incident that occurred during his captivity:</p>
<ul>
<li>When stopping to fuel their large car, which Urschel guessed to be either a Cadillac or Buick, the kidnappers asked the station attendant about the local weather. She replied the crops were “all burned up.”</li>
<li>The farmhouse where he was finally held, at the end of the two-day trip, was home to cows, pigs, and chickens. The water was drawn from a well northwest of the house, with a creaking windlass and had a strong mineral flavor.</li>
<li>Urschel was able to loosen his blindfold enough to glimpse his watch. Twice a day an aircraft passed overhead, at 9:45 AM and 5:45 PM. But on Sunday, there was a torrential rainstorm and the morning plane didn’t show.</li>
</ul>
<p>But Urschel managed his crowning achievement when forced to write the ransom note. Deliberately, he left his fingerprints on every surface within reach.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>The investigation</strong></p>
<p>The tragic Lindbergh kidnapping had occurred just over a year ago and the FBI still smarted from their failures to recover that victim alive and to capture or even discover Bruno Hauptmann’s confederates. Seeing an opportunity to bolster his agency’s waning reputation, J. Edgar Hoover took a personal interest in the Urschel case and assigned Gus Jones, one of his top agents, to the investigation.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jones concentrated on the trip’s duration, which suggested a hideout no more than six hundred miles from Oklahoma City. He contacted every airline that flew in the catchment area, asking for details of every schedule interrupted by a thunderstorm on Sunday, as well as all the meteorological stations, seeking an area where an ugly draught had been relieved.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The first clue was provided by American Airways, which flew from Fort Worth, Texas, to Amarillo at 9:15 each morning, with the return trip departing at 3:30 in the afternoon. But on Sunday, July 30, the morning flight was delayed and then forced far north of Paradise, Texas because of a drenching rainstorm that reduced visibility below the airline’s accepted levels. This was confirmed by the U.S. Weather Bureau in Dallas, which also stated that the little farming town of Paradise had seen its driest growing season in years before that storm.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>FBI agents descended upon the town, checking each neighboring farm for the details noted by Urschel during his ordeal. But only when they reached the ranch owned by Mr. and Mrs. R. G. Shannon did all the pieces fall into place, and only then did they remember that the Shannons’ daughter, Kathryn Thorne Kelly, was married to the gangster known as Machine Gun Kelly.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Jones sent for Urschel, who recognized the chair where he had been handcuffed, the cup he drank from, the creaking windlass, the barnyard sounds, and the taste of that lousy water. The investigation turned into a court case with the fingerprint evidence: Urschel’s prints covered nearly every surface around the chair. Mrs. Shannon hadn’t cleaned.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>The criminal</strong></p>
<p>George Kelly never fired his machine gun while committing a crime. It had been purchased by his wife, Kathryn, who’d done her best to transform her bumbling spouse into a criminal legend. Sentenced to life imprisonment for her efforts, he died of a heart attack in Leavenworth on his 59th birthday in 1954. Four years later, Kathryn was released from her own life sentence, which she served in Cincinnati, through her mother’s tirelessness.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Machine Gun Kelly, known as “Pop Gun” in Leavenworth, never lived up to his wife’s mythomaniacal standards. It’s ironical, and somehow fitting, that this henpecked husband should select such an observant and intelligent victim as Charles Urschel for his single attempt at the ultimate Prohibition crime of kidnapping.</p>Formatting your ms for Kindle uploadtag:crimespace.ning.com,2011-04-15:537324:BlogPost:2841572011-04-15T18:35:30.000ZJ. Gunnar Greyhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JGunnarGrey
Yes, you get some formatting errors when you upload your usual word processing doc to Kindle Direct Publishing. And yes, there’s a free and relatively easy way around this problem. I’m preparing a short how-to manual, teaching self-pubbing authors how to format their work for a seamless Amazon.com upload without formatting errors, in four steps. But honestly, the most important part of the process is detailed in the instructions listed on my…
Yes, you get some formatting errors when you upload your usual word processing doc to Kindle Direct Publishing. And yes, there’s a free and relatively easy way around this problem. I’m preparing a short how-to manual, teaching self-pubbing authors how to format their work for a seamless Amazon.com upload without formatting errors, in four steps. But honestly, the most important part of the process is detailed in the instructions listed on my <a href="http://the1940mysterywriter.wordpress.com/in-their-own-words/j-gunnar-grey-formatting-your-ms-for-kindle-upload/" target="_blank">blog post, here.</a><br/>Six Sentence Sunday 04/03/11tag:crimespace.ning.com,2011-04-03:537324:BlogPost:2815912011-04-03T00:00:00.000ZJ. Gunnar Greyhttps://crimespace.ning.com/profile/JGunnarGrey
<p>“Okay, we’ll take this systematically,” Sherlock said. “Caren, if you’ll help me go through the writing desk? Patricia, will you glance through the armoire, make certain these two didn’t miss anything important? And Robbie my Robber, see if you can’t get that old trunk open. It looks like it’s been rusted shut for ages.” He finally paused. “Unless, of course, anyone minds interfering with a police investigation?”</p>
<p><em>from</em> Trophies, <em>chapter…</em></p>
<p>“Okay, we’ll take this systematically,” Sherlock said. “Caren, if you’ll help me go through the writing desk? Patricia, will you glance through the armoire, make certain these two didn’t miss anything important? And Robbie my Robber, see if you can’t get that old trunk open. It looks like it’s been rusted shut for ages.” He finally paused. “Unless, of course, anyone minds interfering with a police investigation?”</p>
<p><em>from</em> Trophies, <em>chapter ten</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Trophies</em> is a polished ms currently off with an editor, a mystery with an amateur sleuth that falls within the grey region between a warm cozy and a blistering thriller. Feel free to read the first chapter <a href="http://the1940mysterywriter.wordpress.com/factional-times-fictional-stories/trophies/">here.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://sixsunday.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Six Sentence Sunday</a> remains good, legal fun and writers are encouraged to join in with six sentences selected from their current work in progress, polished ms making the rounds, or published masterpiece. Yes, I admit I snuck an extra sentence in there.</p>
<p>J. Gunnar Grey, the 1940 mystery writer</p>