Exercise 39. Solve the crossword
ACROSS
3. (n.) The legal dissolution of a marriage.
6. (n.) A person who takes away people by force and demands money for their return.
8. (adj.) Not guilty.
9. (n.) A police officer or a private investigator whose function is to obtain information and evidence of illegal activity.
11. (v.) To take the property of another or others without permission or right.
14. (n.) A thing or things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment; in law, the documentary or oral statements and the material objects admissible as testimony in court.
16. (v.) To seize by the authority of the law; to make someone a prisoner.
17. (n.) A claim by an accused person of having been elsewhere when an offense was committed.
DOWN
1. (n.) A correctional institution meant for punishment and/or rehabilitation of offenders.
2. (n.) A public official who hears and decides cases in a law court.
4. (n.) A person who suffers injury, loss, or death as a result of criminal activities or other circumstances.
5. (adj.) Prohibited by law or by official rules.
7. (n.) A penalty inflicted for an offence.
10. (adj.) Relating to the rights of private individuals and legal proceedings concerning these rights as distinguished from criminal proceedings.
12. (n.) The act of putting someone to death as a lawful penalty.
13 (n.) The illegitimate use of force and violence to create fear in order to gain a political or some other objective when innocent people suffer.
15. (v.) To take or receive (property, a right, a title, etc.) by succession or will
Unit 4. A Famous criminal.
Exercise 40. Read and translate the texts.
Jack the Ripper
“Jack the Ripper” is an alias given to an unidentified serial killer who killed a number of prostitutes in the East End of London in 1888. The name originates from a letter written by someone who claimed to be the killer published at the time of the murders. The killings took place within a mile area and involved the districts of Whitechapel, Spitalfields, Aldgate, and the City of London proper. He was also called the Whitechapel Murderer and “Leather Apron”. The lack of a confirmed identity for the killer has allowed Ripperologists – the term used within the field for the authors, historians and amateur detectives who study the case – to accuse a wide variety of individuals of being the Ripper.
It is unclear just how many women the Ripper killed. It is generally accepted that he killed five, though some have written that he murdered only four while others say seven or more. Attacks ascribed to the Ripper typically involved female prostitutes from the slums whose throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations. The autopsies constantly revealed clear indications that the victims had been strangled. Usually he took a piece of the victim’s viscera. The removal of internal organs from at least three of the victims led to proposals that their killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge. Rumours that the murders were connected intensified in September and October 1888, and letters from a writer or writers purporting to be the murderer were received by media outlets and Scotland Yard. The “From Hell” letter included half of a preserved human kidney, supposedly from one of the victims. Mainly because of the extraordinarily brutal character of the murders, and because of media treatment of the events, the public came increasingly to believe in a single serial killer known as “Jack the Ripper”.
Butchers, slaughterers, surgeons and physicians were suspected because of the manner of the mutilations. The Ripper was never caught and the mysteries surrounding this killer create an intellectual puzzle that people still want to solve.
At the time of the murders and for the next few years, a lot was written about the murders. The FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit did a criminal profile of the Ripper and aspects of the murders were discussed in various professional journals. After more than a hundred years the case is still fascinating, and results are still being gotten through research. The future may or may not reveal the Ripper’s name.
Andrei Chikatilo, 1936 – 1994 (The Rostov Ripper)
Andrei Chikatilo, one of the world’s worst serial killers, murdered up to 53 young girls and boys in Russia starting in 1982 and ending in 1990, when he was captured. Starting from June 1982 the bodies of his victims were found in the Ukraine. They contained a numerous amount of stab wounds, and their eyes were ripped off. The fact that the information about the series of crimes was not published for fear of panic and embarrassment made it difficult to catch the killer. But the detectives managed to link the cases and realized that the killer lured his victims at the train station in town. The stations were then monitored by plain-clothes detectives, looking for any suspicious behaviour. Chikatilo was discovered in the train station trying to pick up children. The police apprehended him and searched his bag. They found a rope, dirty towels and a kitchen knife. But the blood tests seemed to indicate that he was not involved in the series of crimes. Chikatilo was then released.
A profile of the killer was compiled by a leading Russian psychologist. He called the killer “Citizen X” and concluded that X possibly had a wife and children (which was later confirmed). He called the killer a sadist, and mutilating his victims was some form of dominance.
Years later Chikatilo was detained again. He admitted to at least 53 murders and also led police to some undiscovered victims. Chikatilo’s reasons for gouging at his victims eyes was that he believed that the victims eyes kept an image of the killer in them after. Chikatilo spent his 6-months trial in a steel cage. He was found legally sane and sentenced to death. He was executed by a gunshot to the head in 1994.
Osama Bin Laden (b. 1957)
Osama Bin Muhammed bin Awad bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia in 1957 – the 17th of 52 children, born into Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest construction family. In 1979 Bin Laden graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering and in the same year his violent terrorist roots were formed when he joined the mujahadeen movement in Afghanistan.
During 1986 –1989, Bin Laden established the now notorious “Al Quaeda” network – an organization of ex-mujahadeen, with a murderous mission to provide fighters and funds for the Afghan armed struggle. As a result of the increasingly violent policies, allegedly dictated by Bin Laden, there followed a series of terrorist actions across the globe. The first was an explosion in a hotel in Aden and then the New York World Trade Centre bombing in 2001. Bin Laden is now on a mission to promote his terrorist ideas in the name of Islam, driven by his belief that violence is the only policy. His fanatical terrorist views include the concept of suicide attacks.
Bin Laden’s Jihad (holy war) reached a peak in 2001, resulting in the world’s most devastating terrorist outrage – destruction of the New York World Trade Centre and an attack on the Pentagon in Washington on Sept 11th, where 3,500 souls perished.
Bin Laden has enormous personal wealth and he could spend his life in tranquil luxury, but he has chosen to support violent terrorist groups. It could be argued he has symptoms of a control freak. It is interesting to observe that although he is only in his fifties, he looks much older and walks with a curved back and with a walking stick. This may be a classic example of somebody who is physically inferior but seeks power and violence as a substitute.
From Russia, With Love
A Moscow jury found Alexander Pichushkin – chessboard killer – guilty of 48 murders.
A supermarket worker suspected of being the most prolific serial killer in post-Soviet Russia went on trial, glaring from a cage and dismissing a defense lawyer; relatives of victims called for his death.
The accused, Aleksandr Y. Pichushkin, 33, is charged with 49 counts of murder, part of what the authorities describe as a macabre and sustained scheme to kill one person for every square on a chessboard.
Mr. Pichushkin appeared in Moscow City Court – pale, scarred and coldly defiant – and paced slowly in a cage. When the judge asked him to sit, one of the victims’ relatives shouted, “On the needles!”
He was originally known as the Bitsevsky Maniac, a nickname derived from the park where he is accused of luring people into drinking sessions that ended with their being drowned in a sewer or pounded to death with a hammer or other blunt object.
After his arrest, investigators said he claimed to have marked off a square on a chessboard for every victim, with a goal of filling all 64. The Russian news media promptly assigned him a new name: the Chessboard Killer.
Pichushkin was arrested in Bitsa Park on June 16, 2006. In an interview on the national NTV station after his arrest, Mr. Pichushkin spoke of killing as if it was both ordinary and required. “For me, a life without murder is like a life without food for you,” he said. “One’s first murder, like first love, is impossible to forget,” Pichushkin told the court. “I was always killing for one reason, because I liked life so much. As soon as you kill, you want to live more”.
One of his main deceptions was to befriend pensioners and alcoholics, and tell them that he was grieving over the death of his dog. Then, he would invite them for a drink in the woods at what he said was the dog’s grave. After drinking vodka with them he would pounce.
Relatives of victims wept and vented their hatred for him outside the court.
The authorities also say that Mr. Pichushkin claimed to have killed at least 61 people, yet they have found evidence only for 49 murders and three attempted murders.
One of Mr. Pichushkin’s goals, prosecutors said, was to kill at least 53 people, one more than the number of victims of Andrei Chikatilo, the so-called Rostov Ripper. Mr. Chikatilo was convicted of 52 murders in 1992 and executed by firing squad in 1994.
Pichushkin was found guilty of 48 murders and three attempted murders. Pichushkin’s life sentence is the maximum possible under the Russian Criminal Code. The country imposed a moratorium on capital punishment in 1996. But one of the victim’s relative proposed a harsher fate. “I would chop off his limbs myself, limb by limb, and do it publicly,” she said. “He does not deserve to walk on this earth.”