Tag Archives: Crime

Facebook post nabs Boston bong thief

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Good glass will cost you. Photo: Igor Bespamyatnov/Flickr CC

From UH (link below), a short while ago:

Wicked Local Allston/Brighton reports the owner of a Comm. Ave. shop that sells high-quality bongs nailed one of the men who allegedly stole several of them by posting photos on Facebook – which resulted in tips leading to a Saugus man – with tattoos showing on his own Facebook page that matched those seen on surveillance video.

via Bing bong: Facebook helps head-shop owner catch a thief | Universal Hub.

Plot sickens: Bishop a suspected bomber, too

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Targeted; Paul Rosenberg received a bomb in the mail from, police at the time suspected, Amy Bishop. Photo: Children's Hospital.

UAH alleged shooter Amy Bishop may have had a singular  way of settling scores — by the bullet, or the bomb.

The Globe reports today that the nutty professor was suspected, too, of sending pipe bombs to a supervisor at Children’s Hospital.

Many great quotes in this story, such as this one:

“We knew she had a beef with Paul Rosenberg. And we really thought it was a really unbelievable coincidence that he would get those bombs.”

via Alleged Ala. killer was suspect in attempted bombing of Harvard professor – Local News Updates – The Boston Globe.

Amy Bishop joins rogues' gallery of killer eggheads

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In a story about the last time Amy Bishop killed someone, the Times touches on tenure, the “publish or perish” model:

The shootings on the university campus opened a window into the pressure-cooker world of biotechnology start-ups, where scientists often depend on their association with academia for a leg up.

The piece is a reminder of the brutal ways in which senior faculty can treat junior faculty, and their graduate assistants.

While reporting for the Village Voice some years ago, I interviewed Noam Chomsky and the author Jeff Schmidt about the ruthlessness of scientific academia.

Schmidt, in his book, Disciplined Minds, describes some of the sometime deadly clashes that can occur between arrogant professors and their oddball underlings.

Macs' "Custer" brought low by Capitol Hill foes

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Ngozi Pole told me in 2002 (less than a year before he started pilfering from Kennedy’s office, the government alleges) that he had enemies — “trying to ruin (his) reputation” on the Hill.

As the sole Apple fan in the Senate, he seemed all cool-like to me, ’cause he was, like, “thinking different.” And everyone in at the Sergeant at Arms Office hated him.

I even called Ngozi a rebel (from a piece I wrote for Wired earlier this century):

The rebel’s name is Ngozi Pole. He is the office and systems administer at Kennedy’s Boston and Washington offices. He got Dungan and the other staffers their iBooks during the anthrax scare. And for years, Pole has been locking horns with anti-Mac administrators at the Senate Office of the Sergeant at Arms.

“Instead of seriously considering my suggestions, (the SAA has) tried to ruin my reputation,” Pole complained.

via Macs’ Last Stand on Capitol Hill.

GSN loved him, too.

He may have merely been a charmer. But I look forward to hearing his defense.

Is this the prof police questioned in Annie Le's murder?

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bennett

Update: I’ve checked all of the other faculty member and lab web pages at Yale Medical School’s Department of Pharmacology. The lab link from Anton Bennett’s faculty page is dead. None of the available pages list Annie Le as a graduate student in their labs.

The Daily News reports one of Annie Le’s profs canceled class around the time she was reported missing.

While many of Yale’s links pertaining to Le appear to have been moved or removed, I have found in Google caches mentions of Le working in this lab:

Welcome to the Bennett Lab

Research interests

The focus of the research in this laboratory is to understand how protein tyrosine phosphatases function in the control of normal cellular physiology.

The ultimate goal of our research on protein tyrosine phosphatases is to establish whether these enzymes participate in disease processes such as cancer, diabetes and muscular dystrophy.

via Bennett Lab Home Page.

And here’s a link to the faculty page for an associate professor, Anton Bennett, who teaches in the pharmacology school at Yale, where Le was studying.

More Bennett.

No kidding: punks school others to be punks

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152316__bad_lStudy describes the failed interventions that bring bad boys together:

“For boys who had been through the juvenile justice system, compared to boys with similar histories without judicial involvement, the odds of adult judicial interventions increased almost seven-fold,” says study co-author Richard E. Tremblay, a professor of psychology, pediatrics and psychiatry at the Université de Montréal and a researcher at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center.

via Delinquent Behavior Among Boys ‘Contagious,’ Study Finds.

Intruder alert: Milton

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My fellow Miltonians: Lock your doors, draw your blinds. Scam artists, or worse, are about.

From an e-mail, yesterday:

Public Service Announcement
Town of Milton

There have been recent episodes on the south shore of individuals claiming to be Public Works employees in an attempt to gain access to homes.  If someone comes to your door claiming to be a Public Works employee and does not have identification, please do not grant them access.  Call Kathy Bowen at 617.898.4974 to confirm that they are in fact a Public Works employee.

Could be the Travelers, or local druggies.

Milton has hired some shady characters to install updated meters in homes, so it could be those guys, as well, coming around to loot what they consider to be the softer targets in town.

Alas, the town provides no description of the scam artists in the e-mail.

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Pervy pen for upskirt/downblouse filmmakers

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That’s not how Swann is pitching its camera-pen, of course. But the company does say the new PenCam DVR will be great for making YouTube videos.

If you don’t like having your picture taken on the street, at least Boston’s orb-shaped Big Brother cameras (think John Carpenter’s “They Live”) are easy enough to dodge. Just remember to grab your baseball cap as you head out the door.

But not every spy camera pointed your way is hanging from a light pole. Swann Communications’ new PenCam DVR is going make it harder than ever to keep your personal business personal. It’s a working pen with a hidden camera pointed outward, so you can record while you appear to be writing. It is the latest digital spy gadget to be disguised as something innocuous.

via Smile, that pen may be recording your actions – The Boston Globe.

WWJD (What would a journalist do)?

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CC/Al Bar

Illustration: CC/Al Bar

A New York social worker tells a tall tale, and NPR gives him a pass. (To deny this unlikely Good Samaritan bit would be a crime, apparently.)

The story (an oldie, from last spring), about a robbery victim exchanging his coat and a hot meal for his would-be mugger’s knife, sounds preposterous enough. It might also be true. But nowhere have I seen any indication that a reporter talked to a waitress, or a third party to the story.

I’ll be heading back into the classroom in a few weeks. This is the kind of feel-good story I hope my students will learn to treat skeptically.

Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.

But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.

via A Victim Treats His Mugger Right : NPR.

Christmas fright

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CC/Tamara Del Valle

Photo: CC/Tamara Del Valle

A Milton woman is reportedly wielding a knife, and threatening to hurt herself. Hubby says she’s in her car, heading north to New Hampshire.

Milton police and the husband are trying to talk the woman into returning home, on Woodland Road.

My wife asks, “Is the woman home for a week with a bunch of kids, who aren’t in school?”