67-year-old Vernon Madison has been on death row for over three decades and was supposed to be executed in 2016, but after a series of strokes allegedly wiped out his memories of fatally shooting a police officer, his lawyers have been trying to suspend his death sentence. The U.S. Supreme Court will now have to decide if it is lawful to execute a murderer who does not remember his crime. Madison was supposed to receive the death penalty in May of 2016, for the 1985 murder of a police officer. Shortly before the sentence could be carried out, his lawyers intervened, arguing that as a result of several strokes, the inmate had suffered neurological damage and could no longer remember his crime. A previous ruling of the Supreme Court stated that mentally incompetent prisoners cannot be executed, but also that some of them may be ruled competent to be executed as long as he or she understands their punishment and why they are receiving it. This leaves a lot of room for interpretation by state courts, so Vernon Madison’s execution has been scheduled and postponed several times in the last two years. It is now up to the Supreme Court to rule if it is lawful to have a man executed for a crime he doesn’t remember. Read More »

A 22-year-old man from Sochi, Russia, was recently busted by police after his parents help prove he tried to have them assassinated by posing for photos of their fake bloody murders. The shocking story of a young man who tried to have his parents and sister killed so he could inherit their wealth first appeared in Russian media earlier this month, with even more disturbing details surfacing later, as the criminal confessed to police. Apparently, police learned of the man’s diabolical plan from a friend of his, to whom he had confided in. To make sure he was serious about killing his family, police set up a meeting between the man and an undercover policeman posing as a professional hitman. Their worst fears were confirmed when the man gave the “assassin” all the details he needed to get into his parents’ house, like the location of the security cameras and of their guard dog, as well as a plan of the home. He allegedly offered the “killer” 3 million rubles ($54,000), one for each of his murdered family members. Read More »

Alexander Jheferson Delgado, a convicted sex offender and burglar from Peru, was captured by police a year after successfully escaping prison by drugging his identical twin bother, who had come to visit him, and putting on his clothes. On January 10th, 2017 Alexander Jheferson Delgado pulled off one of the most incredible prison escapes in history, and the first from from Piedras Gordas, one of Peru’s most secure penitentiaries, in over 12 years. That day, Delgado’s twin brother Giancarlo came to visit him, and deliver food and letters from his friends and. After meeting him in the common area of the prison, the two 28-year-old brothers went to Alexander’s cell, where the inmate allegedly offered Giancarlo a soda laced with sedatives. He passed out shortly after and woke up to the sight of concerned guards standing over him. Read More »

Police in the Dutch city of Rotterdam is rolling out a new and highly controversial pilot program aimed at reducing crime. The program will target young men wearing designer clothing or expensive jewellery who supposedly look like they’re too poor to afford the items in question. If they’re unable to adequately prove to the police how they were able to purchase their clothes and/or accessories, the items will potentially be confiscated on the spot, with suspects expected to strip down in the street. The controversial program will run for a limited time, to test its effectiveness, and the Rotterdam police department will be collaborating with the public prosecution department to help them determine what items they can legally confiscate. The main idea behind this endeavour  is to deter theft by sending a signal that perpetrators will not be able to keep their stolen goods. Read More »

A former Japanese yakuza boss who had been on the run for more than fourteen years was finally arrested in Thailand this month, after photos of his impressive tattoos began circulating online. Thai police arrested 74-year-old Shigeharu Shirai last Wednesday in a province north of Bangkok, where he had been hiding for more than ten years to escape murder charges in Japan. Shirai was apprehended while out shopping in the central market town of Lopburi. Japanese authorities had been seeking to arrest Shirai over his alleged role in the shooting of rival gang member Kashihiko Otobe, the deputy leader of rival Kamiya gang, back in 2003. He fled to Thailand before they could apprehend him, where he married a local woman and enjoyed a peaceful retirement. Shirai’s Japanese associates visited him in Thailand two to three times a year bringing him cash gifts to help sustain his life of leisure. Read More »

A resourceful pickpocket managed to steal 53 smartphones at a concert in Birmingham, England, by using a very unusual accessory – a women’s swimming suit. This allowed him to conceal all the stolen phones as he tried to get his hands on even more. Romanian national Alin Marin, 22, attended a Royal Blood concert at Arena Birmingham on 18 November wearing the black and pink compression suit and a pair of skinny jeans. He made his way to the mosh pit where he was able to relieve dozens of revelers of their phones without them noticing. The pickpocket would stash each of them inside the swimsuit, and move on to the next target. He was kind of like a living, breathing deposit box. At one point, he had 53 phones stashed close to his body. Read More »

They say that love brings out the best in people, but there are times when it just makes them commit unspeakable acts, murder included. This was the route taken by two Indian lovers, who hatched a plot worthy of a crime thriller. Swathi, 27, and her lover Rajesh murdered her husband and disposed of his body by throwing it away in a forest. In order to be together and claim the assets of the victim, they took another drastic step: Swathi used acid on Rajesh’s face to disfigure him and pass him off as her murdered husband. The evil deed was comitted on November 27, when the lovers injected Swathi’s husband, 32-year-old Sudhakar Reddy of Nagarkurnool, with an anesthetic and then killed him with an iron rod. They later transported the body in a car trunk and dumped it in a Nawabpet forest area in the Mahbubnagar district. Read More »

A 70-year-old widowed grandmother from Devon, England, was left homeless after thieves stole her 40-foot, £30,000 static caravan by lifting it from its base, putting it on a low loader trailer and just driving off with it.  They broke into the yard s. The victim, Sonia McColl, believes that the unusual theft is somehow connected to her activity as the founder of the Park Home Owners Justice Campaign. She had been tirelessly campaigning to protect homeowner rights, an effort that didn’t sit very well with  unscrupulous mobile home site owners. McColl told reporters that she was in the process of moving from Dorset to Devon after suffering multiple death threats for her campaigning. She had recently bought a static caravan in Willand, near Cullompton, but never imagined it could get stolen. She now has nothing left but the curtains that she had intended to fit in her new home. The static caravan was unfortunately not insured, leaving McColl penniless. Read More »

Hotel owners, beware: sometimes respectable-looking, well-behaved guests are after your room fixtures! An Indian man actually made a career of it, taking off with more than 120 TV sets from hotels over a period of four months. Vasudev Nanaiah, 37, was arrested last month and charged with 21 counts of theft after wreaking havoc among budget hotels in southern India by stealing an impressive number of TV sets from the rooms he booked. The TV pilferer would reserve the rooms by telephone and always make a small advance payment, informing the staff that he would be staying there for several days, in order to avoid suspicion. Nanaiah always arrived with bulky suitcases in tow, and in case they proved too small for the targeted TVs, he would simply go out and buy new ones. Read More »

Jimmy Sabatino, one of Florida’s most notorious and prolific conmen, was recently convicted to 20 years of solitary confinement, after pleading guilty to running a $10.4 million (USD) fraud. He was already in prison at the time, but managed to run a successful racketeering operation with the help of associates on the outside. During his trial, Sabatino told the judge that he cannot stop himself from committing crimes, and requested that he be sentenced to solitary confinement at Supermax, one of the toughest prisons in the US. He claims that the lack of human contact is the only thing that can stop him from conning people. Sabatino, who has spent most of his life since age 19 behind bars, was serving a sentence at the Federal Detention Center in Miami for violating the terms of his supervised release, in 2014, when he came up with an idea of another con, from inside the prison. He somehow convinced two correction officers at the detention center to smuggle 5 mobile phones for him, which he used to call victims and associates on the outside. Both officers lost their jobs, but neither of them faced criminal prosecution. Read More »

A boxing coach in Houston staged his own death after discovering his wife had hired a hit man to kill him. Ramon Sosa, 50, began working with the FBI and Houston detectives to prove that Maria “Lulu” Sosa, 43, attempted to have him killed. She unknowingly exposed her intentions by attempting to hire a hitman, who, coincidentally, turned out to be a friend and former boxing student of Ramon’s. In order to prove without the shadow of a doubt that his wife had actually paid someone to have him killed, Sosa had to make himself dead, using makeup, and lying in a shallow grave in the desert with what appears to be a gunshot to his right temple and fake blood dripping on his face and naked torso. He then had to lay low until the police nailed his wife, who apparently laughed when she saw the photo of her dead husband. Read More »

Sexual assault against women is a really big problem in India, as hardly a day goes by without a case being reported in the media. Until authorities decide to take it seriously and adopt a proactive approach, a 18-year-old teenage boy is trying to help women fight back against aggressors by literally giving them the shock of their life.   After witnessing multiple instances of disturbing and life-changing acts of violence against women, as well as attending many protests with his mother demanding change, Siddharth Mandala, a student from Telengana, India decided he needed to do something himself. He spent years working on the “ElectroShoe”, a unique type of anti-sexual assault footwear that electrocutes attackers by inflicting 0.1 Ampere of electricity while also alerting police and family members that the wearer is in danger. All the wearer has to do is kick the perpetrator. Read More »

A jealous woman was somehow able to control her ex-boyfriend’s life – forbidding him from seeing other women and even going to certain bars – for two years, by posing as police officers and convincing him that he was part of an investigation. 21-year-old Lauren Adderley and Mitchell Lloyd, 22, both from Shrewsbury, UK, were in a romantic relationship for only two months, in 2014, but even though Lloyd made it clear he wanted nothing more to do with her after that, the young woman spent the next two years making his life a living hell. She put together a sophisticated blackmail plan that was put into motion right after the breakup. Lauren told her ex that she had been the victim of a crime and asked him to provide a statement to the police. He accepted, and was soon contacted by a certain Robert Hay, supposedly a police officer and a friend of Adderley’s family, asking for the statement by email. Little did Mitchell know that Robert Hay was actually an online alias of Lauren’s, and that he would become his biggest nightmare. Read More »

People are always looking for legal loopholes to help them get away with various crimes, but when it comes to murder, the chances of avoiding a criminal trial are pretty slim. Unless they commit the heinous act in the “Zone of Death”, a remote area of Yellowstone National Park where one can apparently kill someone, openly admit to it, and not face legal consequences. Brian Kalt, a law professor at Michigan State University, discovered the judicial no-man’s land in 2004, while looking for interesting material for an article. He was researching legal gray areas when he stumbled upon a reference to the unusual jurisdiction of Yellowstone National Park, and red flags went up in his head. He quickly realized that that because of the way that the vast park geographically covers three US states, but only one of them has legal jurisdiction over all of it, getting a murderer on trial would be virtually impossible. Read More »

For years now, international media has been reporting on the physical and psychological abuse suffered by migrant workers from poor Asian countries at the hands of rich Middle-Eastern employers, but organ theft has never been mentioned. Until now, anyway, as an Indonesian woman recently revealed that one of her kidneys had been removed without her knowledge three years ago, while she was working in Qatar. 25-year-old Sri Rabitah, from Lombok, in Indonesia, claims that in June 2014 she reached out to a local employment agency to help her find a job in the Middle East. She was originally told that she would be sent to work for a family in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, but somehow ended up in the home of a Palestinian family, in Doha, Qatar. As soon as she arrived, her employers told Sri that she first had to go through a medical checkup to make sure that she didn’t have any infectious diseases and was healthy enough to work. The young Indonesian never suspected that their reasonably-sounding request was actually just a pretext to get her near an operating table. Sri Rabitah recalls that things got really weird when she arrived at the hospital – the name of which she cannot remember – on her third day of employment. A doctor told her that she was looking weak, and that he was going to give her an injection to help her relax. “Without permission, I received an injection. How come a medical needed an injection?” Sri told Indonesian newspaper Detik. “The doctor said I was feeling weak, so I was told to relax.” Read More »