Taking a Bite Out of Crime

 

 

David Stoddard and his buddies apparently thought that home invasion robberies were a slick and low risk way of making a living. After all, who would say no to three armed men?

Turns out the family’s pit bull did.

 

 

As the thieves fled, the dog attacked and bit Stoddard on his leg and arm. Tragically, the dog was shot and killed. But the investigators realized that the dog had bitten one of the intruders and swabbed the deceased dog’s mouth for DNA.

Very clever.

The profile matched stellar citizen Stoddard who had been arrested for another crime–the shooting of two women, one a pregnant teenager who died. Didn’t I say he was a stellar citizen?

Of course Stoddard has pled not guilty and his defense, as voiced by his attorney John Sinn, seems to be: “My client indicates that he doesn’t have a recollection of those events.”

Really? I guess we would all forget shooting a 16-year-old mother to be and getting bitten by a pit bull. I mean, really, it could happen, don’t you think?

 

Drug Smuggling Gets Creative

Criminals are for the most part not all that bright but sometimes their creativity is amazing. Drug traffickers notoriously go to great lengths to slip their product past inspectors and detection devices at airports and border crossings. Last year I posted about diamond and drug smugglers swallowing their booty in an often misguided attempt to avoid detection. Condoms filled with cocaine are one trick that can result in death if one of the condoms breaks.

 

X-ray of swallowed cocaine-filled balloons

 

Now two other clever methods have popped up:

A Panamanian woman was recently arrested in Barcelona, Spain as she attempted to smuggle 3 pounds of cocaine secreted inside her breast implants. I wonder if she got the idea from watching re-runs of NIP/TUCK, where this was one of the story lines in the quirky series.

 

Breast Implants

 

The other is a very unique pneumatic-powered canon that fires barrels packed with marijuana over the border near Yuma, AZ. It didn’t work, at least this time, but you have to give them an A for creativity.

 

Barrels of marijuana scattered like unexploded mortar shells

 

Be Careful What You Eat

People eat some fairly odd things. There’s even a medical term for some of these foreign-substance ingestions: Pica. Some people eat their own hair (hair pica) and rarely this leads to hair ball formation–just like your cat. People eat coins, starch, paint flecks, and even dirt. In the South there is a long tradition of chalk pica and clay pica (the eating of the red clay dirt that is so common in that region). The belief, passed down generation to generation, is that the red clay offers minerals that the body needs. It doesn’t. In truth, the clay can bind iron and remove it from the body and lead to iron deficiency anemia.

 

 

In two odd cases the ingestion of foreign substances has lead to serious health consequences and even death.

Apparently a new fad is to drink cocktails that contain Liquid Nitrogen (N). Sounds delicious I know but the problem is that Liquid N hovers between -196 degrees F. (its boiling point–the temp at which it converts to its gaseous form) and -346 degrees F. (its freezing point–the temp at which it becomes solid). This can literally freeze the stomach and lead to tissue death.

This is what happened to Gaby Scanlon. She ingested the drink as part of her 18th birthday celebration at a local bar only to end up in the hospital with her stomach surgically removed after it perforated. Not the best of birthdays, I imagine, and definitely not what she expected. Her story should be a cautionary tale for others.

Then there is 32-year-old Edward Archbold. He entered a “roach and worm” eating contest run by a local pet store. The grand prize? A python. Afterwards he became ill (you think?), vomited, and died.

It is unclear what exactly killed him. Was it a toxin in the roaches and worms? Was it a rip or rupture of the esophagus from his vomiting? Tearing of the esophagus with vomiting is called Mallory-Weiss Syndrome while esophageal rupture in this circumstance is termed Boerhaave’s Syndrome. Hopefully the medical examiner’s determination will sort this out.

 

Please Say It Ain’t So

Sociopaths do some very bizarre things. Things that make you scratch your head and say, “What?” And sometimes they do things that absolutely proves their sociopathy. Like selling the weapon you used to murder your ex-wife and an innocent bystander.

Were it not for the fact that OJ is a sociopath–in my opinion–I might dismiss this story as just another crazy report. But, this just might be true. I hope not, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

The article poses the question: “How could he possibly have hidden it from police then and held onto it for this long?”

How did he hide it? Some feel it was in OJ’s small black duffle bag. Others point to the hang up bag Kardashian carried for OJ, who was returning from Chicago the day after the murders. It was likely in one of these two bags, along with OJ’s bloody jump suit and those ugly-ass Bruno Magli shoes. Remember, this was pre-911. It was easy to carry knives and bloody clothes on and off a plane. We might never know what actually happened but none of these items were ever seen again and Kardashian, not a criminal defense attorney, was placed on OJ’s defense team. Makes a subpoena directed at him impossible. That attorney-client privilege thing.

 

Robert Kardashian and OJ

 

I hope this story isn’t true but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

 

Colin Ireland’s Career Path: He Just Wanted To Be a Serial Killer

There are many career choices available. Some make sense, others less so. Colin Ireland is a case in point. He wanted to commit the perfect murder but he also wanted to be a famous serial killer. Difficult to be both. The perfect murder means the case is never solved while to be famous everyone must know what you did. A real problem for Colin.

Here is a great article from Dr. Katherine Ramsland on Colin’s dilemma.

 

Maggot DNA Identifies Corpse

Corpse identification is as much art as science. Sometimes no ID is possible and at other times creativity is required. In a recent case, where a badly charred body could not be identified due to the damage, DNA was extracted from the GI tracks of the fly maggots that had populated the corpse. Using the STR technique, DNA from the maggots was compared with DNA from the suspected victim’s father and a paternity-type match was made, proving the ID of the corpse to an accuracy of 99.685% according to the authors of the study.

This is the first time this technique has been used in this manner.

 

 

Smiles: Not the Good Kind

The recent murder of an elderly woman and the possible suicide of actor Johnny Lewis (Sons of Anarchy) smacked of mental illness, drug abuse, or more likely both. Lewis apparently beat his landlady, 82-year-old Catherine Davis, to death, attacked a neighbor, and then fell or jumped from a roof to his own death. The insanity and violence of attacks such as this always raises the possibility of drugs and mental illness.

 

On first look it seemed to be classic for PCP (Phencyclidine or Angel Dust) or Methamphetamine. Both if these drugs can cause acute psychotic breaks and violent behavior. But maybe something else was involved. Something fairly new.

Smiles.

 

Smiles can be gotten as a white powder or compressed into pills

Sound so innocent doesn’t it. It is actually 2C-1, a form of hallucinogenic amphetamine that can be very destructive. Another gift from the infamous Alexander Shulgin.

Why the cute name? To attract young users of course.

 

Nightmare Sperm Donation

It seems that a Danish sperm donation facility failed to determine that one of its donors had an uncommon genetic disorder and might have passed it along to several of his “offspring.” The usual screening apparently failed to uncover the genetic markers for the disorder and as many as five children might have “inherited” the abnormal genes.

The disease in question is called Neurofibromatosis Type 1, or Von Recklinghausen’s Disease. It is characterized by multiple types of neurological tumors and cafe-au-lait spots–patches of light brown pigmentation whose color is reminiscent of coffee with milk.

 

Severe Neurofibromatosis

Severe Neurofibromatosis

 

Cafe au lait spots (black arrows) and a Neurofibroma (white arrow)

 

Though controversial, and over the years other diagnoses have been entertained, this might be the disorder that afflicted Joseph Merrick, The Elephant Man.

 

Joseph Merrick, The Elephant Man

 

A medical nightmare for these children and their families.

 

 

A Few Final Words From Death Row

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has posted 30-years of the final words uttered by executed criminals. An interesting read. They also posted each former inmate’s Offender Information—a good thing since many do protesteth too much.

An example: Steven Michael Woods, Jr., who along with his buddy and stellar citizen Marcus Rhodes, shot and cut the throats of a young couple and then stole their car keys, cell phone, and other items. He closed his final rant with, “…go ahead and do it. Pull the trigger. It’s coming. I can feel it coming. Goodbye.”

Somehow I doubt his victim’s had the opportunity to say anything similar.

Adios, Stevie.

 

Marilyn: Suicide, Accident, or Murder?

 

In yet another great article titled “Marilyn’s Forensic Legacy” by Dr. Katherine Ramsland in Psychology Today, she addresses the death of Marilyn Monroe, a death that has remained controversial for half a century. Here Katherine addresses the psychological autopsy, an often useful tool in cases like this.