Today in History - 2 April

Today in History - 2 April 1992

A jury in New York finds mobster John Gotti, nicknamed the Teflon Don for his ability to elude conviction, guilty on 13 counts, including murder and racketeering. In the wake of the conviction, the assistant director of the FBI’s New York office, James Fox, was quoted as saying, “The don is covered in Velcro, and every charge stuck.” On June 23 of that year, Gotti was sentenced to life in prison, dealing a significant blow to organized crime.

John Joseph Gotti, Jr., was born in the Bronx, New York, on October 27, 1940. He rose through the ranks of the Gambino crime family and seized power after ordering the December 1985 murder of then-boss Paul Castellano outside a Manhattan steakhouse. Behind closed doors, Gotti was a ruthless, controlling figure. Publicly, he became a tabloid celebrity, famous for his swagger and expensive suits, which earned him another nickname, the Dapper Don.

During the 1980s, Gotti’s lawyer Bruce Cutler won him acquittals three times. A jury member in one of those trials was later convicted of accepting a bribe to acquit the mob boss. In December 1990, Gotti was arrested at the Ravenite Social Club, his headquarters in New York City’s Little Italy neighborhood. The ensuing trial, which started in January 1992, created a media frenzy. Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, one of Gotti’s top soldiers, made a deal with the government and testified in court against his boss. Gravano admitted to committing 19 murders, 10 of them sanctioned by Gotti. In addition, prosecutors presented secret taped conversations that incriminated Gotti. After deliberating for 13 hours, the jury, which had been kept anonymous and sequestered during the trial, came back with a verdict on April 2, 1992, finding Gotti guilty on all counts. The mob boss was sent to the U.S. Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, where he was held in virtual solitary confinement. On June 10, 2002, Gotti died of throat cancer at age 61 at a Springfield, Missouri, medical center for federal prisoners.



John Travolta to play Mafioso John Gotti in biopic

John Travolta

Nick Cassavetes, who worked with Travolta in the thriller "Face/Off," is set to direct the Fiore Films project, which will shoot primarily in New York.

We smell a "Godfather"-like classic in the making! It'll be fun to again see Travolta as a villain. The Leo Rossi screenplay is supposed to explore the father-son relationship in the Mafia family, specifically Gotti's relationship with his son John Gotti Jr. who last told his father  that he'd be leaving the business before his father died in prison.
The real Gotti Jr. has signed off on the project, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Producer Marc Fiore announced it in the fall when he secured the rightes to Gotti's story.
On April 12, Travolta, Cassavetes, Gotti Jr. and producer Marc Fiore will give a news conference about the project at the Sheraton New York Hotel.
We can be certain -- or at least hope -- that this film will probably go over much better than the A&E reality series "Growing Up Gotti," which followed Gotti's daughter Victoria and her three sons.is revving up to play John Gotti Sr., the mobster who headed the Gambino crime family, in the biopic "Gotti: Three Generations."

Today in History - 21 March 1963

Alcatraz closes its doors

Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay closes down and transfers its last prisoners. At it's peak period of use in 1950s, "The Rock, or ""America's Devil Island" housed over 200 inmates at the maximum-security facility. Alcatraz remains an icon of American prisons for its harsh conditions and record for being inescapable.

The twelve-acre rocky island, one and a half miles from San Francisco, featured the most advanced security of the time. Some of the first metal detectors were used at Alcatraz. Strict rules were enforced against the unfortunate inmates who had to do time at Alcatraz. Nearly complete silence was mandated at all times.

Alcatraz was first explored by Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775, who called it Isla de los Alcatraces (Pelicans) because of all the birds that lived there. It was sold in 1849 to the U.S. government. The first lighthouse in California was on Alcatraz. It became a Civil War fort and then a military prison in 1907.

The end of its prison days did not end the Alcatraz saga. In March 1964, a group of Sioux claimed that the island belonged to them due to a 100-year-old treaty. Their claims were ignored until November 1969 when a group of eighty-nine Native Americans representing the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied the island. They stayed there until 1971 when AIM was finally forced off the island by federal authorities.

The following year, Alcatraz was added to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It is now open for tourism.

Q&A with Thomas Amo - The Zodiac Killer

The wonderful author of An apple for Zoe, Thomas Amo, has agreed to do another great Q&A with me, this time about the unsolved case of the Zodiac Killer... trust me, this could give you chills.

The Killer has never been caught, so lock your doors friends.

There might be a follow up on this one as Thomas has lots of info about him... please ask questions and tell us what you know about it?

Tell me a bit more about the Zodiac Killer?

One of the most famous unsolved cases in American Criminal History. This case ranks with, Lizzie Borden, Jack The Ripper and Black Dahlia.

The Zodiac was like Jack The Ripper and BTK because he openly communicated with police. What started out as what appeared to be attacks on lovers lanes, turned into full scale terror when he talked about killing a school bus full of children. 7 murders are positively attributed to him, but he claimed to kill over 30. Zodiac proved that serial killers weren't these slobbering maniacal monsters, like a Charles Manson. They were calculating and intelligent.

How long was his killing spree?

Known killings began December 1968 last known official victim was October 1969, less than a year. Although a murder in southern California in 1966 has been long considered what may have been his first, but there is no solid proof, only circumstances that are similar to later killings. His letters to the police do go as far 1978, however those later letters are thought to be forgeries or hoaxes.

Was he really a male?

We can say, yes to that answer as he was witnessed by two survivors of his attacks. Both survivors were able to give very accurate details about his height, body build, voice.

How sure are we that he acted alone?

 I would say in full confidence Zodiac did work alone. These are the types of murders where I don't believe a second killer or an accomplice would have been able to stay loyal. Once the pressure was on by the police the accomplice would have most likely turned himself in, therefore tipping police off to the real identity of the killer. Even the closest of killers who murder as a team will turn against their partner in order to save themselves.

Zodiac killings are very similar to BTK killings. They are motivated by ego and the power to scare. Keep communities terrified. The difference about Zodiac's killings, they weren't sexually motivated. He never makes any attempt to do anything with the victims other than kill them.

First victims: Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday: Teens out on a first date. Park on Lake Herman Road in Benicia,CA. Zodiac parks behind them and fires into the car from the drivers side, which causes the two teens to try to escape from the passenger side. Instantly he kills the boy, reducing the threat of a fight and allows Betty Lou to run.  However she never has a chance, because he has a sight on his gun that can pinpoint his target. He shoots her no less than 5 times in the back.

Seven months later: Darlene Ferrin and Mike Mageau 4th of July 1969 park alone when again Zodiac parks behind them walks up to the passenger side this time and shoot the boy first then the girl. He goes back to his car, perhaps to reload, returns shoots the boy some more,  rounds the car to the driver’s side to the girl and shoots her several more times. Quietly walks away and drives off never being seen by anyone, except the boy who amazingly survives after being shot in the face, knee, and body. After the attack, the Zodiac goes to a payphone and calls the police and tells them where they can find the two victims and relates he's also the killer of the two kids at Christmas. (BTK would do this same thing with victim Nancy Fox) about 5 years later.

September 1969, Brian Hartnell and Cecilia Ann Shepard take an afternoon at Lake Berryessa,CA where alone by the water a man approaches them wearing a black hood in the shape of a box

and a black cover of his torso with the Zodiac cross symbol emblazoned across it. He pulls a gun and this time takes his time. He forces the girl to tie up the boy and then Zodiac ties up the girl. They then have a long conversation according to Robert Graysmith author of Zodiac. Zodiac relates to the couple he needs their car to go to Mexico. He escaped prison from Montana. (Interesting side note  Unabomber Ted Kazinsky was considered a Zodiac suspect and planned his bombings from a shack in Montana). Brian Hartnell relates the man was calm and in control the entire time he had them tied up and talked with them. After the long conversation Zodiac said plainly, I'm going to have to stab you now. Hartnell asked to be stabbed first because he couldn't bear to see Cecilia stabbed. Zodiac agreed and stabbed him and then the girl. He then quietly walked away. Later police got a call telling them of the killings at Lake Berryessa, only Hartnell had survived. On the door of Hartnell's car was a note that gave the dates of the previous two attacks with the date of the current attack and the addition of saying "by knife” This time he changed his attack from just shooting to stabbing. This is curious because, to murder with a gun, it's not personal. Not to say that it doesn't affect you, but to kill with a knife...that is very personal, not only are you involved in the killing but you feel the knife stabbing. This seems to be something he needed to experience. Shooting wasn't enough; he needed to feel the terror all the way.

One month later October 1969, he shoots cab driver Paul Stine in San Francisco. Again he walks away without any worry of being caught. He is seen by a little girl from a house across the street of the attack but she never sees his face clearly. He tears off a piece of Paul Stine's shirt that he cuts into swatches to include in his communications with police as proof he is the killer. BTK did this with the driver’s license of a victim when he contacted KAKE TV all those years later to prove it really was BTK.

Zodiac sent coded ciphers to newspapers that purported to reveal who he was. FBI, CIA, NAVY were unable to crack these codes. Ironically it was a high school teacher and his wife who managed to break the first Zodiac cipher. It didn't give his name but it gave a small insight to his ego and his showing off of his brilliant mind. How his ego must have increased when he learned FBI, CIA and Navy were unable to break his codes.

Summation: All in all, The Zodiac seemed outside of wanting to prove his was smarter than anyone and couldn't be caught, displayed some very telling signs. In all the attacks but the last one he focuses his attack on the girls. He quickly disarms the threat of the males but his overkill frenzy is focused on the women. This sounds like revenge for rejection. Rejection most likely from what he feels all women. He's not a homosexual, he's an alpha male, strong sex drive and as I said these killings weren't sexually motivated, by that I mean there was no rape, he seems to want to kill the kind of women he feels he can't have, or might have been rejected by in past attempts to date. I think he saw the kind of women he killed as women he wished would be his girlfriend, someone he would have wanted to have a relationship with, but maybe girls of this type may have made fun of him, growing up, he may have been an overweight kid in school and was awkward with girls. Most likely if this is the case then I would say there was ONE GIRL in particular that made him feel this way. So his focus goes from blowing off immature high school behaviour to taking it so personally he feels he has to make her pay for what she did. So if indeed the girl killed in 1966 was the catalyst of this...then it becomes his mission to keep killing her over and over or girls he thinks are like her. Also the letter writing is to prove to her, he's not dumb, he's not just some fat ugly kid...he's so smart even the FBI, CIA and Navy can't break his codes... And so Zodiac slips off into the darkness as quietly as he emerged into the lives of the bay area of 1968, keeping central California terrified over the next ten years. Never to be caught.

Today in History - 17 March

The Night Stalker terrorises Los Angeles

On this day in 1985, Richard Ramirez, the infamous Night Stalker, buys a gun and then kills two women in separate attacks in Los Angeles. These murders started an incredible spree that panicked the entire city during the summer of 1985. Ramirez, who swore allegiance to Satan, killed over a dozen people.

Ramirez, dressed in all black and wearing an AC/DC cap, cruised the freeways of East Los Angeles looking for a victim on March 17. As he drove, he listened to AC/DC's Highway to Hell album over and over again; his favorite song was "Night Prowler." Finally, he spotted Maria Hernandez and followed her as she drove home. As she was opening her door from the garage, Ramirez walked straight at her, pointed the gun at her head and fired.

Remarkably, Hernandez put up her hand in front of her face and the bullet deflected off her keys. In the dark, Hernandez played dead while Ramirez entered her home. Unfortunately, roommate Dayle Okazaki was not so lucky. Ramirez shot her in the head and killed her. He left behind two clues: his AC/DC cap and a footprint from a size 11.5 Avia sneaker.

That same night, Ramirez began to follow law student Veronica Yu as she drove home. Yu realized that she was being followed and confronted Ramirez, but he jumped into her car and shot her to death with the .22 caliber gun.

On March 26, Ramirez began to establish a pattern. He burst into homes in the middle of the night, immediately shooting the men and then tying up the women for rape. He made his victims swear to Satan and carved pentagrams on walls. Though the press initially called the killer the Valley Intruder, the Night Stalker name stuck.

In early August, Ramirez decided to go to San Francisco to continue his killing in a less security-conscious environment. However, after he hit his first home, detectives discovered size 11.5 Avia footprints. Amazingly enough, Ramirez was the only one on the entire West Coast who had a pair of those exact sneakers. When San Francisco's mayor announced that the Night Stalker was responsible for this attack because of the shoe evidence, Ramirez threw the shoes off a bridge and returned to Los Angeles, where he was captured on August 31.

On September 20, 1989, Ramirez was found guilty of forty-three crimes, including thirteen counts of murder, five attempted murders and eleven sexual assaults. As of 2011, he was still awaiting execution in California's San Quentin State Prison.

True or Not... what do you think? (Ted Bundy)

So recently I came across these pictures on the Internet.


Do you think their the actual photos taken after his (Ted Bundy) execution? Or are they fake?

Today in History - 12 March 2003: Police recover Elizabeth Smart

Police recover Elizabeth Smart and arrest her abductors

On this day in 2003, 15-year-old Elizabeth Smart is finally found in Sandy, Utah, nine months after being abducted from her family s home. Her alleged kidnappers, Brian David Mitchell, a drifter who the Smarts had briefly employed at their house, and his wife, Wanda Barzee, were charged with the kidnapping, as well as burglary and sexual assault.

In the middle of the night on June 5, 2002, Elizabeth Smart, then 14 years old, was taken at knifepoint from her bedroom in her parents house in the upscale Federal Heights neighborhood of Salt Lake City. Her captor slid into the house undetected after cutting open the screen of an open window. Elizabeth s younger sister, Mary Katherine, with whom she shared her bedroom, was the only witness to the kidnapping. Mary Katherine did not inform her parents until two hours after the incident, frightened that the man might return for her if she called out to alert them. She was initially unable to identify her sister s attacker.

Elizabeth was taken to a crude campsite in the woods just three miles from her family s home--close enough that she could actually hear the voices of searchers calling for her in the days following her abduction. There, it is alleged that Mitchell, who calls himself Emmanuel and professes to be a prophet with his own Mormon sect, sexually assaulted her.

After two months, Smart?who was forced to wear a wig and dress in a robe and veil?was taken to Salt Lake City and appeared in public, but was not recognized. From there, Mitchell and Barzee took Smart to San Diego, where they lived in a series of campsites and under bridges. Finally, the group returned to the Salt Lake City area and, just a couple of hours later, several people recognized Elizabeth. They reported their sightings to police, who immediately followed up on the lead and pulled over a car carrying Mitchell, Barzee and Smart.

Most of the early police investigation into Elizabeth s disappearance had focused on another suspect, Richard Ricci, who had also once worked as a handyman in the Smart home. Serving time in prison for a parole violation during the investigation, Ricci denied having any involvement in the kidnapping. The trail grew cold after Ricci died in prison of a brain hemorrhage on August 30. Finally in early February 2003, Mary Katherine Smart told her parents she believed another former worker at the Smart home, who called himself "Emmanuel," might be Elizabeth s captor and the Smarts relayed the information to authorities. On February 3, believing that the police were not taking Mary Katherine s tip seriously, the Smart family called their own press conference to release a sketch of Emmanuel. Several days later, a man contacted police to inform them that Emmanuel was his disturbed stepfather, Brian David Mitchell, and that he believed him to indeed be capable of kidnapping. In the days before finding Elizabeth, the Smarts continued to criticize police for failing to devote enough energy to following up on the lead.

When found, Smart, who called herself "Augustine" most likely at the behest of Mitchell, initially denied to police that she was in fact Elizabeth Smart. Undeterred, police took her and her captors in separate cars to the Salt Lake City Police Department, where she was reunited with her family. On March 18, 2003, after Mitchell and Barzee were formally charged, Mitchell s attorney announced that his client considered taking Elizabeth "a call from God." It has since been reported that Mitchell believed Smart was his wife and that the young girl may have suffered from Stockholm syndrome during the nine-month ordeal, answering questions as to why she did not try to escape even though it seemed she had been presented with several opportunities.

Police later discovered that Mitchell had also attempted to kidnap Smarts cousin several weeks after taking Elizabeth and added that crime to the list of charges against him. Both Barzee, who filed for divorce from Mitchell in December 2004, and Mitchell were declared mentally unfit to stand trial in January 2004 and July 2005 respectively.

Today in History - 9 March 1997: Rapper B.I.G is killed

Rapper Notorious B.I.G. is killed in Los Angeles

Christopher Wallace, a.k.a Biggie Smalls, a.k.a. the Notorious B.I.G., is shot to death at a stoplight in Los Angeles. The murder was thought to be the culmination of an ongoing feud between rap music artists from the East and West coasts. Just six months earlier, rapper Tupac Shakur was killed when he was shot while in his car in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. Ironically, Wallace's death came only weeks before his new album, titled Life After Death, was scheduled to be released.

Wallace was the most prominent East Coast practictioner of "gangsta rap," peppering his song with profane, violent and misogynistic lyrics. His 1994 record Ready to Die sold millions. That same year, Shakur, the West Coast's leading rapper, was shot several times in a robbery at a recording studio in New York.

Shakur claimed that Wallace was partially responsible and later taunted Wallace on one of his songs. He claimed to have slept with Wallace's ex-wife, singer Faith Evans, and insulted the overweight rapper for his ample girth.

Wallace's raps about violent street life were not completely fiction. He grew up in a poor section of Brooklyn and had many run-ins with the law growing up. Even after he reached stardom in the music world, his legal woes continued. In the summer of 1996 he was arrested when police found marijuana and firearms at his New Jersey home. He also gave a new meaning to fan appreciation when he assaulted a pair of admirers with a baseball bat.

The murder of Wallace has never been solved, though it has been suggested that either Marion "Suge" Knight, the former head of Death Row Records, Shakur's label, or the Crips gang may be be responsible. Knight was also shot (but not wounded seriously) in the fatal Las Vegas attack on Shakur and is rumored to have engineered a retaliatory strike against Wallace, whom he held responsible for the Las Vegas shooting. Since Wallace's death, Knight had been in and out of court and prison on a variety of charges.