The Alexander Hilton St. Andrews Poison Case

     In 2011, Alexander D. Hilton, a 20-year-old rich kid from Princeton, Massachusetts attended St. Andrews University in Fife, Scotland. The sophomore prep school graduate (St. Johns) had moved to the United Kingdom to study economics at this ancient and prestigious institution of higher learning.

     On March 5, 2011 on the eve of the annual St. Andrews ball, Alexander Hilton and a group of his fellow students were participating in a dormitory drinking game. One of the drinkers, Robert Forbes, an American from Virginia, after gulping down a bottle of red wine given to him by Hilton, became seriously ill. The 19-year-old suffered loss of balance, severe nausea, had trouble breathing and temporarily lost his eyesight. He spent a week in the hospital. Doctors said that had Robert Forbes not received medical treatment he could have died.

     A few days after the dormitory drinking game, local investigators questioned Alexander Hilton about the incident. The authorities suspected that Hilton, known around the school as an anti-social oddball, had intentionally poisoned Robert Forbes. Hilton denied mixing anything into the wine. The Scottish authorities didn't have enough evidence to charge the American with a crime, but urged him to leave the country. He was also kicked out of St. Andrews. On March 18, 2011 Alexander Hilton returned to his parents' home in Princeton, Massachusetts.

     Back in Scotland, toxicological tests revealed that the red wine that made Robert Forbes so sick had been spiked with methanol, an ingredient found in antifreeze. The sweet-smelling liquid, also known as wood alcohol, is colorless, highly flammable and deadly. A search of Hilton's computer determined that he had investigated the toxicological effects of combining red wine and methanol. In Hilton's dormitory room investigators found a funnel.

     After Alexander Hilton returned to the United States he enrolled in a college in New Mexico. About a year after the St. Andrews drinking party he learned the authorities in Scotland planned to charge him with the attempted murder of Robert Forbes. Upon learning this Hilton dropped out of the college in New Mexico and returned to his parents' house in Princeton, Massachusetts. Seven months later, in the fall of 2012, the prosecutor in charge of the case in Scotland charged Alexander Hilton with attempted murder.

     On February 4, 2013, under an extradition treaty the United States had with the United Kingdom, United States Marshals took Alexander Hilton into custody. The federal authorities hauled the former St. Andrews student to the Central Falls, Rhode Island Detention Center where he was placed under suicide watch.

     Hilton, on February 21, 2013, appeared at his bail hearing in federal court in Boston before a U. S. magistrate judge. Assistant United States Attorney David J. D'Addio, in arguing against bail for this defendant, said, "This is an attempted murder case, a serious case, and we can't lose sight of that. The evidence before us is that Mr. Hilton deliberately poisoned a student at St. Andrews."

     Hilton's defense attorney, Norman S. Zalkind, argued that because his client was seriously mentally ill bail should be granted in order that the defendant could continue taking his medication and not be denied psychiatric therapy. According to the defense attorney, if Alexander Hilton remained in custody he was "...going to get sicker and sicker and sicker." Mr. Zalkind described Hilton as an extremely intelligent person with the socialization skills of a 14-year-old. The defense lawyer wondered why someone at the university didn't notice Hilton's mental problem after he started flunking his classes. 

     The U.S. magistrate judge withheld Hilton's bail decision pending the outcome of his extradition hearing scheduled for March 7, 2013.

      On March 7, 2013, the federal judge certified Hilton's extradition to Scotland. Following that ruling the U.S. magistrate judge allowed the suspect to post bail. Hilton's attorneys immediately appealed the extradition certification to a federal court of appeals.

     Robert Forbes, in March 2013, filed a personal injury suit against Alexander Hilton in federal court. A federal judge later dismissed the civil lawsuit. (It may have been settled.)

     The federal court of appeals, in February 2014, granted Alexander Hilton a stay of extradition on grounds he was mentally incompetent to stand trial in Scotland.

     Alexander Hilton, in May 2015, was extradited to Scotland to stand trial in the attempted murder case. In July 2015 the defendant pleaded guilty as charged pursuant to the claim that, at the time of the poisoning he had been mentally ill. Judge Lord Burns of the High Court in Edinburgh sentenced Mr. Hilton to three years in prison. 

A Police Officer's Unlawful Requests

     In 2014, 27-year-old Patrick Quinn worked as a uniformed patrol officer for the Cypress-Fairbanks School District in suburban Houston, Texas. On August 11 of that year, while driving his patrol vehicle, officer Quinn pulled over a motorist in northwest Harris County. Following the stop, the officer examined the female driver's insurance card and found that her car insurance had expired. Quinn also informed the driver that he detected the odor of marijuana in the vehicle.

     Officer Quinn, after he secured the stopped driver's permission to search her car, placed the suspect in the backseat of his patrol vehicle. A search of the motorist's car resulted in the discovery of a marijuana grinder. Officer Quinn advised the detainee that he could arrest her for possession of drug paraphernalia. At that point the patrol officer stunned the woman with the revelation that he had a foot fetish. If she allowed him to sniff and lick her bare feet he wouldn't take her into custody.

     Not wanting to be arrested, the motorist removed her boots and socks. But instead of availing himself of the woman's feet, officer Quinn asked her to remove and give him her underwear. Before the woman could comply with that request, the patrol officer changed his mind and let her go.

     The day following her harrowing encounter with the disturbed cop, the woman reported the bizarre and frightening incident to the authorities. Detectives with the Harris County District Attorney's Office launched an investigation.

     Police officers arrested Patrick Quinn after detectives identified him through his latent fingerprints on the victim's insurance card.

     The Cypress-Fairbanks School District fired Mr. Quinn after a Harris County prosecutor charged him with two counts of official oppression. In the course of the investigation leading up to the arrest, detectives found three other women who had been victims of the officer's deviant propositions.

     On October 22, 2015, in a Houston Courtroom, Patrick Quinn pleaded guilty to one count of official oppression. The judge sentenced him to a year in the Harris County Jail.

Journalistic Ethics in The Naemm Davis Subway Murder

     At 12:30 PM on Monday, December 3, 2012, 58-year-old Ki-Suck Han stood with other New Yorkers waiting for their trains at the Times Square subway station at 49th Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. Mr. Han, who was currently unemployed, had once owned a midtown dry cleaning business. He had come into Manhattan from his home in Queens to renew his Korean passport. That day, Naemm Davis, a 30-year-old homeless man wandered about the platform above the tracks mumbling to himself and alarming some of the subway travelers. Mr. Han (who reportedly had been drinking) asked Naemm Davis to stop bothering the other people. The two men exchanged angry words, and following a brief scuffle, Davis threw Mr. Han off the subway platform onto the tracks below.

     Dozens of subway patron looked on as Mr. Han struggled to pull himself off the tracks and back up to the armpit-high platform. He couldn't make it, and after being on the tracks for about a minute was hit by a southbound train that did not have time to stop. A medical student from the Beth Israel Medical Center went to Mr. Han who was face down on the tracks and still alive. The student rolled him over and tried to save him by beating on his chest. Some of the people standing on the subway platform used  their cellphones to video Mr. Han as he lay on the tracks below. A short time later Ki-Suck Han died at Saint Luke's Hospital.

     The next day police officers arrested Naemm Davis in midtown Manhattan. While being questioned by detectives he said, "He [Han] wouldn't leave me alone, so I pushed him. I saw him get hit by the train. I said to him, '[expletive], get out of my face.'"

     On Tuesday, December 4, 2012, the day of Naemn Davis' arrest, the New York Post on its front page published a large photograph of Mr. Han standing between the tracks and the platform wall with the back of his head to the camera as he looked toward the oncoming train. The oddly tranquil photograph, taken just moments before impact, featured the headline "DOOMED" and the caption: "Pushed on the subway track, this man is about to die." The photograph had been taken by R. Umar Abbasi, a freelance photo-journalist who just happened to be on the train platform that day. Mr. Umar sold the image to the New York Post for an undisclosed amount.

     The subway station murder, a homicide that in its own right would have created widespread fear and anger, sparked public outrage over the fact no one on the train station platform reached down and pulled Mr. Han to safety. People also wondered why Mr. Abbasi, instead of getting a dramatic and newsworthy photograph, hadn't dropped his camera to save this man. And editors at the New York Post were under fire for simply publishing Abbasi's picture.

     R. Umar Abbasi, against a tidal wave of criticism, tried to defend his behavior on the New York Post website. The photographer wrote that he flashed his camera 49 times with the intent of catching the attention of the subway motorman. "I wanted to help the man," he wrote, "but I couldn't figure out how to help. It all happened so fast. I had no idea what I was shooting. I'm not even sure it was registering with me what was happening. I was just looking at that train coming." Mr. Abbasi said he didn't understand why others who were closer to the tracks didn't try to save Mr. Han.

     Some media critics took issue with the New York Post for what they considered the unethical journalistic act of buying and publishing Mr. Abbasi's photograph of the doomed Mr. Han. A pundit named Lauren Ashburn called the act "profit-motive journalism at its worst."

     Howard Kurtz, the host of CNN's "Reliable Sources," a weekly TV talk show about the media, in recognizing that Mr. Han's murder comprised every subway traveler's nightmare, was less critical of The New York Post. Mr. Kutz did "wonder why the photographer's first instinct was to take pictures." The answer to that question was perhaps this: Mr. Abbasi was a photo-journalist. He was not a police officer, firefighter or paramedic. Mr. Abbasi was not in the business of saving lives but in the business of taking pictures.

     On Wednesday, December 5, 2012, Charen Kim, a lawyer representing Ki-Suck Han's wife Serim told reporters the family had been shocked by the New York Post photograph. The family didn't understand why no one helped Mr. Han. During the press conference the lawyer didn't mention Naemm Davis, the man responsible for Mr. Han's death.

     Naemm Davis was held without bail on the charge of second-degree murder. He had a history of drug related arrests in Pennsylvania and New York.

     In a December 7, 2012 jailhouse interview with a reporter with the New York Post, Naeem Davis said he had been coaxed into shoving Mr. Han off the platform by voices in his head that he couldn't control.

     At his January 15, 2013 arraignment hearing Mr. Davis pleaded not guilty to the murder charge. According to police documents he told investigators that the victim had "rolled like a bowling ball" when he fell onto the subway tracks. Because Naemm Davis was seething over a comment an acquaintance made two days earlier about his Timberland boots, his "head wasn't where it was supposed to be that day. He [Ki-Suck Han] came at the wrong time."

     At the arraignment hearing Defense attorney Stephen Pokart argued that  Mr. Han, who started the fight, was pursuing his client. Prosecutor James Lin countered by pointing out how the defendant's statements revealed that he did not feel threatened and had acted out of anger and malice.

     In 2013 the victim's daughter, Ashley Han, sued the New York City Transit Authority for $30 million.

     In March 2016 Naemm Davis pleaded guilty to the reduced charge of manslaughter. The judge sentenced him to 22 years in prison.

The Case Of The Stray Bullet

     On Friday night, December 16, 2011, a 15-year-old Amish girl named Rachel Yoder, while on her way home in a horse-drawn buggy from a Christmas party at an Amish produce farm, fell dead out of the rig with a bullet in her head. She died not far from her central Ohio home in Wayne County. The girl's brother found her when he saw the horse walking around her body. The Summit County medical examiner, without the benefit of an investigation, ruled the death a homicide. This manner of death ruling caused speculation the girl was murdered at the behest of Bishop Sam Mullet, the cult-like leader of the band of renegade Amish outlaws who had been recently charged with a series of Ohio home invasions. (See: "Bishop Sam Mullet: Amish Outlaw")

     A few days after Rachel Yoder's death the local sheriff announced she had been killed by a stray bullet fired a half mile away by a young Amish man cleaning his muzzle-loading rifle. (A rifle loaded through the muzzle end of the barrel. I don't know if this gun was a modern replica or an antique.) The Amish girl's death, according to the gun cleaning theory, was simply a freak accident. The sheriff said he had not ruled out a negligent homicide charge. 

     One could drive around the most violent neighborhoods in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Miami and Detroit 24 hours a day for twenty years and never catch a stray bullet. While Rachel Yoder rode inside a buggy in the middle of nowhere, a single bullet fired from a half mile away not only found her, it killed her. Such bad luck is hard to believe. After traveling that far, a bullet, particularly one fired from a muzzle-loader, loses its velocity and the force to become deadly. This theory of Rachel Yoder's death was so farfetched a writer who put such a scene into a mystery novel would be laughed out of the business. 

     One of Rachel Yoder's Amish neighbors was quoted as follows: "We can't understand how it could happen, but I guess it was the Lord, maybe. Her time was up is what we think." 

   On September 11, 2012, 28-year-old Marion Yoder pleaded guilty to negligent homicide. The Holmes County judge sentenced the Amish man to six months in the county jail but suspended all but 30 days of the term. Since it's hard to imagine a jury convicting this man of negligent homicide, the guilty plea didn't make sense. The level of negligence in this case barely supported a civil wrongful death action, and certainly did not rise to criminal recklessness, the basis of a manslaughter charge. Putting a man in jail for a freak fatal accident is not criminal justice. 

The Red Sash Murder Case

     In September 1995 the daughter-in-law of Josephine Galbraith found the 76-year-old woman dead in the guest bedroom of her Palo Alto, California home. Josephine Galbraith's husband, 79-year-old Nelson Galbraith, a retired music school owner and insurance salesman, said he was watching TV in another room when she passed away. A detective from the Palo Alto Police Department and an investigator from the Santa Clara Coroner's Office arrived at the scene to find Josephine lying face-up on the bed with three superficial cuts on her left wrist and a red bathrobe sash tied around her neck. Next to her body investigators found a bloody eight-inch knife, a razor blade with some blood on it and a white 5-gallon bucket containing a small quantity of blood.

     The bathrobe sash, 62 inches in length, was tightly wrapped around Josephine Galbraith's neck three times. After each wrap the sash had been tied with a double-knot. The three cuts on her wrist, referred to as "hesitation marks," were typical of the half-hearted attempt of a suicidal person who couldn't bring herself to make the deeper more painful slashes necessary to cause death by bleeding. There was no suicide note. The coroner's investigator, a man who had been on the job 28 years recognized the scene as a suicide. The Palo Alto detective, based on the evidence at the scene, agreed with this assessment.

     The investigators figured that if Josephine Galbraith had been murdered the killer would not have made the hesitation cuts. Moreover, the pattern of blood spatter did not suggest a struggle. And the presence of the bucket intended to make the scene less messy was not consistent with a murder scene. Both investigators also knew that while people cannot manually strangle themselves (they pass out before they die) people can strangle themselves to death by ligature--the use of a rope, electrical wire, necktie or other length of cloth such as a bathrobe sash. They also knew that Josephine Galbraith's death would have been slow enough to allow her to wrap and tie the sash three times. Given the nature of the people involved and the physical evidence at the scene, the investigators had no doubt that this woman had taken her own life.

     Two days after the death Dr. Angelo Ozoa, the Santa Clara County Coroner, performed the autopsy, a procedure that took him only 45 minutes. Dr. Ozoa found the cause of death to be "asphyxiation by ligature." This did not surprise anyone. What did shock a lot of people, including the investigators, was his manner of death ruling: "strangled by assailant." Dr. Ozoa based this finding on two assumptions: Josephine Galbraith was too old and frail to have tied the three knots so tightly; and even if she did have the strength, she wouldn't have remained conscious long enough to complete the task. Since Nelson Galbraith was the only other person in the house at the time of his wife's death, if she had been murdered he must have been the assailant.

     Just days before her death Josephine Galbraith was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, an illness that five years earlier had caused the slow and painful death of her sister. Even before the diagnosis she told friends and relatives that she wanted to kill herself. She informed one of her sons that she would like to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge and asked another son, a physician, to provide her with the drugs to end her life. He refused.

     Nelson Galbraith, the man implicitly incriminated by Dr. Ozoa's manner of death ruling, had severe arthritis of the hands which would have made it difficult, in not impossible, for him to have tied the knots around his wife's neck. Moreover, there was nothing in Mr. Galbraith's background or in his relationship with his wife that made him a likely murderer. Investigators, urged on by the county prosecutor's office, nevertheless pushed forward with the case against him, albeit at a snail's pace. In the meantime Mr. Galbraith's life became a living hell. He complained to a journalist about being referred to in the media as the "Red Sash Murderer" and was spending thousands of dollars on his defense. (Ultimately his defense costs would reach more than $300,000.)

     Palo Alto Police, guns drawn, stormed Mr. Galbraith's house in January 1997 and hauled the 81-year-old suspect away on the charge of first-degree murder. In August 1998, almost three years after his wife's death, Nelson Galbraith, who had been allowed to make bail, went on trial for murder. The prosecution's key witness, Dr. Ozoa, told the jury that in all his years as a forensic pathologist he had never heard of a woman killing herself by ligature. (Suicide by ligature, however, was a well-recognized method of death that was well documented in textbooks and scientific journals.)

     The defense called to the stand forensic pathologists who disagreed with Dr. Ozoa and argued that the defendant could not have physically committed the crime. Following two and a half weeks of testimony, the jury deliberated for one day and returned a verdict of not guilty. Following the acquittal the prosecutor's office sought the opinion of a forensic pathologist in the Santa Clara County Coroner's Office regarding the manner of Josephine Galbraith's death. The pathologist agreed with the defense experts: the poor woman had killed herself.

     Nelson Galbraith, convinced he had been maliciously prosecuted, sued Dr. Ozoa for $10 million. To bolster his case Mr Galbraith spent $10,000 to have his wife's body exhumed and sent to Salt Lake City to be examined by Dr. Todd Grey, the medical examiner for the state of Utah. According to Dr. Grey, Dr. Ozoa's incorrect finding of homicide was predicated on an incomplete autopsy. Dr. Ozoa had, among other things, neglected to dissect the dead woman's neck, a procedure that could have helped determine how long it had taken her to die. He had also failed to interpret the swelling in her brain and the broken blood vessels in her face and eyes as evidence of a slow death. Dr. Ozoa, when confronted with Dr Grey's opinion of his work in the Galbraith case, insisted he had performed a complete autopsy and that the woman had been murdered.

     In 2002, almost seven years after Dr. Ozoa's autopsy in the Galbraith case, the Medical Board of California, citing Dr Ozoa's work in that case, voted to suspend the 77-year-old's license to practice medicine in the state. Two months later Nelson Galbraith died. Two of his sons kept the civil case alive, and in 2008, Santa Clara County settled the matter for $400,000. 

From A Mother's Arms: The Verna McClain Kidnap Murder Case

     The kidnapping of infants (birth to six months) is not a common crime. From 1983 through 2011, 282 infants were abducted by strangers. Most of these babies were taken from their homes. Seventeen were taken from pediatric clinics. In 2011 there were eight infant abductions. All of these children were recovered unharmed.

     As vocational nurse, 30-year-old Verna McClain provided basic nursing services under the direction of registered nurses and doctors. Employed at a contract staffing agency, she lived in Houston, Texas. Her estranged husband, Theo McClain, resided in San Diego, California. The couple's three children were being raised by a relative in Houston.

     Engaged to be married, Verna had recently suffered a miscarriage and was desperate to have a baby. On Tuesday, April 17, at 3:40 in the afternoon, Verna, in search of a baby to abduct, drove her blue Lexus to the Northwoods Pediatric Center in the Houston suburb of Spring. She told her sister, Corina Jackson, that she was going to adopt a child.

     Kala Golden, a 28-year-old mother of four children, pulled her red pickup truck in to the Northwoods Pediatric Center's parking lot with her 3-day-old son, Keegan. Kala was there for the baby's first checkup. Verna watched Kala park her truck, then pulled up next to her. As Kala alighted from her vehicle and leaned in to lift Keegan and his infant carrier out of the truck, Verna pulled out a pistol and shot Kala eight times.

     As Verna McClain placed the baby into her Lexus, the dying mother, yelling, "My baby! My baby!" lurched at the car. As Verna pulled away with the baby she hit Kala Golden with the Lexus, knocking the severely wounded woman to the ground. A witness picked up the cellphone lying next to the bleeding woman's body and called the victim's mother.

     Linda Golden, who was babysitting one of her daughter Kala's children, rushed to the clinic where she saw paramedics trying to save Kala. A few minutes later the bullet-ridden mother was on her way to the hospital in an ambulance. She died shortly thereafter. In the meantime police officers were looking for a black woman with a white baby in a blue Lexus.

     Not long after the fatal shooting and abduction, Verna McClain called her sister Corina and told her that she had adopted the baby and was bringing the infant to her house. After leaving Keegan with her sister Verna drove off in her blood-splattered car.

     Later that evening, after police officers spotted Verna's blue Lexus parked in front of her Houston apartment, they called in the SWAT team. Verna was not home, but before the officers left the scene she returned to the apartment on foot and spoke to detectives. About this time an anonymous tip came in directing the police to Corina Jackson's house.

     At 9:40 that evening police officers recovered Baby Keegan, unharmed. At the police station Verna confessed fully to the murder and the abduction. The next morning the prosecutor charged her with capital murder. If convicted she could be sent to death row.

     The baby was being cared for by his father, Keith Schuchardt.  

     In October 2012 the Montgomery County District Attorney announced he would be asking for the death penalty at the upcoming Verna McClain trial.

     Verna McClain in November 2013 pleaded guilty to First Degree Murder to avoid the death penalty. A few months later the judge sentenced her to life in prison without the chance of parole.

Volga Adams: New York City's Infamous Psychic Swindler

     Mrs. Frances Friedman of Manhattan's Upper West Side had been a widow for eight years. In September 1956 she visited a psychic parlor on Madison Avenue run by Volga Adams, a self-appointed gypsy princess. Adams advertised her services in the form of a large drawing painted on her storefront window of a hand, palm facing out. Mrs. Friedman hoped the psychic--"Madam Lillian"--would read her horoscope and identify the source of her depression.

     Volga Adams, a gypsy psychic well known to detectives on the NYPD Pickpocket and Confidence Squad, quickly diagnosed Mrs. Friedman's problem. "There is evil in you," she proclaimed with great authority. Adams instructed her client to go home and wrap an egg in a handkerchief that had belonged to her dead husband then put these two items into a shoe made for a left foot. The psychic instructed Mrs. Friedman to return to the parlor the next day with the handkerchief and the egg. At this point Mrs. Friedman should have had the good sense to walk out of the shop and not return.

     As instructed, the prospective mark returned to the gypsy psychic's place of fraud. Adams cracked an egg she had switched with the one brought to her. The phony egg contained a small plastic head. The greenish-yellow head featured a pair of horns, pointed eyebrows and a black goatee. According to the psychic the presence of the devil's head in the egg was an ominous sign. It meant that Mrs. Friedman was cursed. But why?

     Phase two of Volga Adam's psychic confidence game involved handing the victim a dollar bill that had a rip in it. Friedman was told to take the currency home, put it in a handkerchief and wear it near her breast for two days.

     Upon her return to Volga Adam's scam parlor, Madam Lillian, following a prayer in a foreign tongue, opened the handkerchief to find a mended dollar bill. This "miracle" supposedly revealed the source of Mrs. Friedman's curse. The money her husband left her upon his death was the problem. Money, the root of all evil, had cursed the widow. If Mrs. Friedman wanted to rid herself of the monetary curse she would have to give Madam Lillian all of that money, cash she would ritualistically burn. Once that was done the widow's happiness would return. Divesting herself of the filthy money would also clear up her troublesome skin rash. Who would have guessed this gypsy princess was also a dermatologist.

     A few days after the miracle of the mended dollar bill Mrs. Friedman withdrew money from six bank accounts and cashed in all of her government bonds. She delivered the $108,273, stuffed in a paper bag, to the Madison Avenue psychic parlor. 

     Volga Adams suggested that Mrs. Friedman, having rid herself of the evil money, leave the city for a few days to enjoy some "clean air." This ploy in confidence game terminology is called "cooling the mark." The next day, as Madam Lillian left town herself, her mark headed for the Catskill Mountains in eastern Pennsylvania. A perfect score.

     For a period of a year after Volga Adams bilked Mrs. Friedman out of her life's savings she continued "cooling the mark" with regular phone calls, made collect, from various places around the country. Back in Manhattan in the fall of 1957, Adams informed Mrs. Friedman that she needed another $10,000 to remove traces of the lingering evil underlying the victim's curse. Mrs. Friedman, obviously unaware that she had been swindled, gave Adams the cash. She turned over the money on the condition that the psychic not destroy it and later return it to her. After she had given the swindler $108, 273, Mrs. Friedman barely had enough money to support herself. A couple months after walking off with the $10,000, Volga Adams called the victim and announced that she could only return $2,000 of the $10,000. The psychic said she was in Florida and would be returning to New York City soon.

     The con game had run its course. Volga Adams did not return to Manhattan and she quit calling the mark. Thanks to Madam Lillian, Mrs. Friedman not only remained cursed with depression, she was now broke. Finally, she picked up the telephone and called the police. When detectives with the Pickpocket and Confidence Squad heard Mrs. Friedman's story they recognized the M.O. and knew that Madam Lillian was Volga Adams, one of the city's most notorious con artists.

     Following her indictment in New York City for grand larceny, the 42-year-old defendant went on trial in February 1962. Five weeks later the jury of five women and seven men informed the judge they were deadlocked and could not reach an unanimous verdict. The judge had no choice but to declare a mistrial.

     The Manhattan prosecutor scheduled a second trial for May 1963. Volga Adams avoided that proceeding by pleading guilty to a lesser theft charge. After the judge handed the defendant a suspended sentence she left the city. But before she departed for Florida Volga Adams placed a curse on the prosecutor. "No woman will ever love him," she predicted.

     Volga Adams continued preying on vulnerable women. A few years after Madam Lillian left Manhattan, Frances Friedman died. At the time of her death she was lonely, humiliated and depressed. Thanks to the gypsy princess, Mrs. Friedman died broke.

The Jerome Isaac Arson-Murder Case

     Arson-murder cases fall into three categories. It becomes arson-murder when the victim, for example, is shot to death and the killer sets a fire to cover the crime. A fire-setter who burns down a building for the insurance money and in the process kills an occupant no one knew was in the structure has also committed  arson-murder. And finally, using fire as the agent of death comprises arson-murder. The latter form of arson is the most unusual of the three.

     On Saturday December 17, 2011 in Brooklyn New York a crime took place that fell into the third arson-murder category. It involved the cruel, cold-blooded and sadistic murder of 73-year-old Doris Gillespie.

     Shortly after four in the afternoon as the victim returned from grocery shopping and was about to exit the elevator that stopped at her apartment floor, she encountered a man dressed like an exterminator who wore surgical gloves and a white dust mask perched atop his head the way Jackie Kennedy used to wear her sunglasses. The thin middle-aged man held a canister with a nozzle, a Molotov cocktail and a barbecue-style lighter. He methodically sprayed the victim and her grocery bags with a fine mist of gasoline then ignited the rag sticking out of the flammable liquid filled bottle. As he backed out of the elevator he tossed in the fuse-lit Molotov cocktail. The compartment filled with smoke and the victim, engulfed in flames, burned to death as she crouched against the rear wall of the elevator. Two video cameras recorded the murder.

     The following morning 47-year-old Jerome Isaac, with burns on the left side of his face, turned himself in to the New York City Police. He said he had been hired by the victim to clean out clutter from her apartment. He said she had fired him after accusing him of theft. After Mr. Isaac harassed this woman for the $2,000 he thought she owed him he set fire to her in the elevator.

     At Isaac's arraignment the magistrate denied him bail. The police, other than the fact Isaac didn't have a criminal record and had been seen around the neighborhood collecting bottles and cans, didn't know much about him except he'd been treated for mental illness.

     On January 11, 2013 Brooklyn Judge Del Giduice sentenced Jerome Issac to fifty years in prison. The judge called the crime the most brutal he had seen in his judicial career. "That is not something one can take from one's mind," he said.

     What makes this case so disturbing, beyond the nature of the crime itself, is that everywhere we go we are surrounded by people like Mr. Isaac who look and act harmless until something sets them off. There is nothing the police can do to protect us from people like this. All they can do is react, and by then it's too late.

Don't Bring Your Guns to Gonzaga

     In the fall of 2013 Gonzaga University students Erik Fagan and Daniel McIntosh resided in a university owned off-campus apartment complex in Spokane, Washington. The seniors at this Jesuit institution were good students who had never been in trouble with the law or the school. But thanks to an uninvited and unwelcome visit to their apartment by a total stranger that all changed.

     On the night of October 24, 2013 John M. Taylor, a 29-year-old man with six felony convictions that included drug possession, unlawful imprisonment and riot with a deadly weapon, knocked on roommates' apartment door. When Erik Fagan answered the knock he encountered a black man who boldly asked for $15. Not feeling comfortable giving a stranger money simply because he asked for it, Fagan offered Taylor canned food and a blanket.

     Rather than accept the gifts and walk away, Mr. Taylor entered the apartment and demanded the money. At this point, with an intruder in the dwelling who wanted cash, Erik called out for Daniel McIntosh.

     Fagan's roommate entered the room carrying a loaded 10 mm Glock pistol. The sight of the firearm was enough to prompt the intruder's prompt retreat from the apartment.

     While running a potential robber out of their apartment by exhibiting a gun was the right thing to do, reporting the incident to the campus police department turned out to be a mistake.

     The roommates were visited that night by officers with the Spokane Police Department accompanied by Gonzaga security personnel. After receiving a description of the intruder, police officers took John Taylor in for questioning a short time later.

     If Fagan and McIntosh thought they acted responsibly and could move on with their lives, they were wrong. Gonzaga administrators, now aware that two of their off-campus students were living under the same roof with a firearm were horrified. Possessing that weapon violated the school's zero-tolerant policy of no guns on campus owned property.

     Rather than wait for daybreak, several campus police officers at two that morning rousted Fagan and McIntosh out of bed.

     Gonzaga officers not only confiscated Daniel McIntosh's pistol, they seized Erik Fagan's shotgun.

     McIntosh's firearm was given to him by his grandfather. The student, in complying with the law, had acquired a state-issued permit to carry a concealed weapon. Fagan possessed the shotgun because he liked to hunt.

     On November 8, 2013 a panel of university personnel at a disciplinary hearing found Fagan and McIntosh guilty of possessing guns on school property and putting others in danger.

     The guilty students, due to public outrage over the university's handling of this case, were placed on probation. The boys probably would have been expelled.

     As for John Taylor, he was not charged. In the weird world of academia, John Taylor, the criminal, was considered the victim.

The Nicholas Helman Ricin Case: Beware of the Jilted Nerd

     In 2013, 19-year-old Nicholas Helman lived with his mother in Hatboro, Pennsylvania, a town of 8,000 in Montgomery County within the Philadelphia metropolitan area. One of the young man's neighbors in the Eleanor Courts apartment complex described him as the kid you went to school with for twelve years but don't remember.

     Helman, a quiet, unassuming Eagle Scout, worked at the Target store in Warrington, Pennsylvania. He also spent a lot of time searching for geocaches--objects that were hidden and could be found through GPS coordinates posted on the Internet. Casual acquaintances thought that he was much younger than nineteen.

     In the summer of 2013 Nicholas Helman met a young woman his age at an Eagle Scout picnic. They began dating and he fell in love. When she left him for another man in November 2013 the devastated Helman began sending threatening emails to the new boyfriend. When the object of his wrath brushed off his threats, Helman decided kill his competitor with poison. This was not behavior befitting an Eagle Scout.

     On March 7, 2014 Helman confided to a fellow Target employee that he just placed an envelope in his rival's mailbox that contained a scratch-and-sniff birthday card laced with ricin, a deadly poison. (Ricin is a protein found in the caster oil plant. The pulp from just eight caster beans can kill an adult. As little as 500 micrograms of the poison, an amount that would fit on the head of a pin, can be fatal.) Helman bragged to his confidant that anyone who came into contact with his ricin would be dead in a few days.

     Helman identified his poison target as his ex-girlfriend's boyfriend, a man who lived in Warminster, a Bucks County town 40 miles north of Philadelphia. The shocked employee wasted no time in calling the police.

     Police officers, on the day Helman confided in his fellow worker, went to the Eleanor Courts apartment complex to question the suspect. Upon their arrival they arrested him as he tried to sneak off carrying a backpack and a piece of luggage.

     Under police questioning Mr. Helman admitted that he placed an envelope containing a birthday card in his rival's mailbox. He said his intent was to scare his ex-girlfriend's boyfriend, not to hurt him. He was motivated by the desire to get the girl back. Helman claimed that the birthday card was harmless.

     Police officers found, in Helman's backpack, a white bottle labeled "sodium hydroxide" that contained a crystal-like powder. The suspect also possessed a recipe in a notebook that listed ingredients such as caster beans, sodium hydroxide, mixing materials and other substances.

     Investigators telephoned the poison target's residence and spoke to his mother who said her daughter had just left the house to fetch the mail. The police caller instructed the mother to put the mail back into the box and wait for the police.

     Nicholas Helman was taken into custody and booked into the Montgomery County Jail on the charge of harassment. Shortly after the hazardous materials team retrieved the plain white envelope without a stamp, address or return address, Helman posted his $50,000 bond and was released from custody.

     After toxicological testing confirmed that the birthday card contained ricin, a Bucks County prosecutor charged Nicholas Helman with attempted first-degree murder. On March 19, 2014 FBI agents and local police officers, backed up by a SWAT team, surrounded the Helman apartment. Following a two-hour standoff the suspect surrendered to the authorities. A judge denied Helman bail pending a psychiatric evaluation.

     The next day police officers found a stash of ricin tucked under a gas manhole cover in Hatboro not far from Helman's apartment.

     In November 2014 Nicholas Helman pleaded guilty to the attempted murder charge as well as the offenses of attempted aggravated assault and risking a catastrophe. In July 2015 Judge Alan Rubenstein sentenced the 21-year-old to twenty to forty years in prison. The judge called Helman's crime "extraordinary" and compared his behavior to that of a terrorist. "You are bright. You are articulate. You are responsive," said the judge. "But I don't think you appreciate the damage you have caused people very close to you."

     As deputies led Helman out of the courtroom in handcuffs the prisoner wept as he said goodbye to family members. It was doubtful that in prison Mr. Helman would encounter many other Eagle Scouts.