Recently in True Crime Category

That's the $105,000 question right now in Seattle. A little after 10pm on Halloween night, Brenton -- a Seattle cop -- was shot to death while working his beat with a trainee. Chief Detective Jim Pugel described the murder as an assassination; they seem to think the killer staked out his victim and planned the murder fairly well.

If I may play Armchair Sherlock for a moment, here's a glimpse at the psych profile the cops have released:

[Investigators] say [the killer's] skills with weapons suggests some prior training, such as previous employment or hobbies involving firearms. The gunman may have practiced for the shooting...

It's probable that the gunman had been outspoken about a deep personal grievance, perhaps involving his employment or position in life. And even though he shot a police officer, he may admire or act like them, investigators said.

This says to me that Seattle investigators believe they're looking for a sociopath who will probably kill again. In other words, they're thinking this is the work of a person who could become a serial killer.

[Statistically, serial killers] are [...] fascinated with the police and authority in general. They have either attempted to become police themselves but were rejected, worked as security guards, or served in the military. Many, including John Gacy, the Hillside Stranglers, and Ted Bundy, have disguised themselves as law enforcement officials to gain access to their victims.

In a serial murder, the killer is usually unconnected to the victim; the murder asserts the killer's power over the victim; the murder is not done for profit; and the victim often has some kind of symbolic value for the killer. Oh, and, of course, there's gotta be three or four deaths, with a "cooling off" period in between.

I have no idea what's really going on, but it seems likely from the Seattle PD profile that they're looking for someone that they think will strike again in the coming weeks.

That's right, this article about Amanda Knox will focus entirely on her innocence, and not on the fact that I'm completely hot for her, because that's the right thing to do.

For those of you who don't know, Amanda Knox is a local student, abroad in Italy last year when her also-quite-lovely-but-that's-neither-here-nor-there flatmate Meredith Kercher was murdered in a particularly slow, painful, bloody way -- her throat was slashed, but her carotid artery was intact. Italian prosecutors came to the amazing conclusion that two men held Meredith down while Amanda did the cutting, either because Meredith refused to participate in or because Meredith was actively participating in some kind of really messed up sex act.

American student in Italy? Excessively bloody murder? Cops way out of their league? That's right, giallo fans: Amanda is actually living in a Sergio Martino film. That is not a place anyone wants to live, my friend.

OK, so, unless you actually watch a lot of giallo movies -- which, by the way, you totally should -- it's hard for me to explain just how perfectly Amanda Knox embodies the giallo protagonist. The connection occurred to me immediately when I saw the first video of her, when she kissed her Harry Potter lookalike boyfriend and then looked off in the distance apprehensively, as if she was thinking, "wait, didn't they say the killer owns a yellow scarf?"

See what I mean? She actually looks like an inexpensive Italian actress in the 1970s. How is that even possible?

The case against Amanda (and ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, Gryffindor House) is, in a word, bonkers. For a while, the evidence was reinterpreted on a weekly basis, and some of it is circumstantial enough to be laughable. My god, Amanda's fingerprints were found on a knife! A kitchen knife! In her home! Of course, the actual murder weapon is still missing. But wait: Amanda did laundry at some point! CASE CLOSED.

The international press really, REALLY wants Amanda to have done it, and they've jumped on every sleazy item they could. My favorite example: Amanda was told by a prison doctor (falsely, as it turns out) that she was HIV positive. Shocked and terrified, Amanda listed in her diary all the men she'd ever had sexual contact with, in an attempt to figure out how this could have happened. Somehow the tabloids not only got a hold of this information, but even distorted the facts, claiming she had sex with seven men in two months in Italy. Wow, international press. Nice one.

And all of this overseas anti-Amanda fervor of course makes for a fair trial in Italy, where apparently it's totally okay to detain a suspect for up to one year before even bringing them to trial. Un, fucking, believable.

Now, I'm kind of a true crime fan. I've read up a bit on the subject. Outside of Charles Manson's followers, I can't think of any scenario where three people would get together and decide to murder a girl for not having weird sex with them. Really, I'm trying to make that work in my head right now, and I just don't see it. Because these would have to be three completely ruthlessly evil bastards, if they were willing to hold Meredith down, cut her, and watch her slowly bleed to death. You're lucky to find one bastard that ruthlessly evil, but three in the same place? Preposterous.

What really happened? Hopefully, the third suspect -- one Rudy Hermann Guede, convicted of the murder in October and sentenced to thirty years -- actually did commit the crime, maybe while robbing Meredith. (His story -- that he was in the bathroom listening to his iPod when the murderer, an unidentified Italian man, entered and killed Meredith, prompting Guede to flee to Germany for some reason -- is almost as far-fetched as the prosecution's.) Unfortunately, with the state of Italian detective work as it is, there's absolutely no way to be sure.

Amanda, Furdell.com officially hopes that you're aquitted in a speedy trial and that you get back to Seattle safely, and not just because you are smoking hot.

My god, how her eyes pierce my soul. And say what you will about the Italian justice system, but installing a wind machine for more attractive defendants was a good call.

Oh, and lest you think my belief in Foxy Knoxy's innocence is in some way connected to her extreme hotness, consider this: it has long been the position of Furdell.com that the only thing sexier than a blood orgy, is a blood orgy that goes way too far. If anything, by finding her innocent, I'm condemning Ms. Knox to be not quite as hot as she otherwise would have been.

I know what you're thinking: Batman lives in Gotham City! Why would he decapitate a kid in Atlanta? Well, obviously I'm not talking about Batman: The Person, but rather Batman: The Ride.

Sorry James, I don't have any news insider secret sexy details on this one. But I do have this:

Convicted hedge fund manager and movie-trivia lover Samuel Israel III (Sammy 3 to his friends) may have faked his suicide by parking his car near the Hudson River and then writing in the dust on his car the heartbreaking message, "Theme from MASH".

It turns out Joe Lieberman was right all along: entertainment is evil.

We start in Lakewood, Washington, where the Captain Jack Sparrow Bandit has turned himself in to police...excuse me, but I think I just ended a clause with a preposition there, so I'm going to rephrase that.

In Lakewood, Washington we start, where in the Captain Jack Sparrow Bandit has turned himself...to police. Yes, that's better.

Apparently Captain Jack turned himself in after a night of local news coverage and rising YouTube popularity. He really banged up his leg, and he claims he didn't know what was going on because he was drunk. Uh, yeah. (That last sentence was ambiguous, but understand that I was trying to convey skepticism. Geez, I'm really self-conscious today.)

In other news, Jose Espinosa (Tim Robbins) was captured by police this week, while his fellow prison-breaker Otis Blunt (Morgan Freeman) is still on the loose. (They hid their escape routes behind pictures of women in bikinis, you see. Also, they learned a lot about themselves.)

And in Furdell.com news, we will not be remodeling this site into a Seattle chicken wing review blog, as this has already been done. Sorry, wing enthusiasts.

Jerry Seinfeld's dentist has lost his license after going too far this time, over-medicating and then removing the pants of a female patient. Note that while his name is Dr. Wodja, it is disappointingly not at all pronounced "Wouldja?"

No word yet on whether the victim was an anti-Dentite.

Here's a fun story about a group of Venice citizens who patrol the streets looking for pickpockets. This appeals to me for some reason. I'll bet James will like this story too...it kind of reminds me of the red-jacketed samaritan who saved the citizens of Washington, D.C. from unwarranted stabbings.

Who was that red-jacketed man? And, did he move to Venice to raise a non-violent vigilante army? And perhaps to learn some sort of Italian martial arts?

Conditions in New Orleans are more post-apocalyptic than I had realized.

The Superdome, where upward of 25,000 people had sweltered in conditions described as unfit for animals, was mostly emptied, though 1,500 were still there late Friday. They had renamed the place, rife with overflowing toilets and reports of murder and rape, the Sewerdome.

...

An estimated 20,000 were said to be at the four-story convention center, which at some points apparently attracted as many refugees as the Superdome but was ignored much longer by rescue operations. Conditions there were even worse than at the Superdome, with armed thugs seizing control and, the authorities said, repulsing squads of police officers sent to retake it.

On Friday morning, people huddled in small groups inside the center or sat on orange folding chairs outside, a gruesome mockery of an actual convention. Amid overflowing toilets, an elderly women and a teenage boy were having seizures in the arms of relatives.

Evacuees said that seven dead bodies littered the third floor. They said a 14-year-old girl had been raped.

Yeesh. I guess this isn't one of those crises where people come together and get patriotic.

So what I want to know is...will there still be a New Orleans? Or is it just gone now? Hey, about 2/3s of our readers have PhDs in history, so tell me: when was the last time a city was destroyed and didn't come back?

Julia points out that Tulane's new temporary website, which includes an interesting blog-like list of messages from the school's president, indicates that there will be no Fall semester. We have at least one friend at Tulane, who of course can't be reached by Tulane's email system -- all of their on-campus servers must have been destroyed, hence the temporary website and their need to "obtain new contact information for each and every employee." It looks like Tulane's students will be transferred to other schools.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)

Six alleged gang members ran a drug den in the apartment of a senile elderly woman, even eating her free senior-citizen meals, police said."

...

"The woman, who has since been moved to another home by social workers, once managed the building and befriended the gang several years ago, owner Marino Sandoval said.

"They turned her into one of them ? they literally made her like a gang member," he said.

We'll call it Granny's Posse. I see Dame Judi Dench as the old lady. Call Vince Vaughn and Jeremy Piven. And I'm assuming Rob Schneider. And we're going to need Method Man and Redman, so we can capitalize off the How High DVD sales, which I assume are excellent.

I was, in fact, not called for jury duty. So my silence this week has nothing to do with the high-profile triple-murder trial that started on Monday in Jacksonville. And, of course, if I was involved in that trial, I certainly couldn't tell you about it. So I could be lying.

Actually I didn't even have to show up; they didn't need my jury group. (Lucky them -- I was planning on instituting a strict "not guilty" policy.) I do have a nice new speeding ticket to show for my efforts, though. And, after about six hours of uninterrupted talk radio, I can say with some authority that liberals want to starve your wife to death next. I thought about it, and...it's true! I want your wife to starve to death. Whoever you are.

I'll be in Jacksonville next week to, for the first time ever, appear for jury duty. Yup, that's what I get for voting. What was I thinking?

I know what you're thinking, because it's exactly what everyone says: "Why don't you just tell them you don't live there anymore? They'll let you off the hook." Well, smartass, I didn't tell them that because I wanted them to believe I was still a Florida resident, in the hopes that FSU, upon accepting me to their film school, would charge me a smaller tuition. Of course, hindsight was 20/20 on Saturday when I received the FSU rejection letter.

So jury duty, here I come. I may have no future, but at least I can make sure someone else suffers, too.

In New York City?s war on crime, the worst criminal offenders are pursued by the detectives of the Major Case squad. These are their stories.

DMMM DMMM.

The wife of a Marine who pleaded guilty to conspiring to have her husband killed while he was stationed in Kuwait has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison.

...

She acknowledged an affair with another Marine, Larry Framness, from November 2001 to May 2003, and admitted she and Framness conspired to kill her husband, James Houston Glass.

James Glass and Framness were deployed from Marine Corps Air Station-Yuma and sent to Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait in early 2003. While there, Framness tried to kill Glass with a grenade after luring him to a guard shack, prosecutors said.

Life insurance pays off double if you get killed by a grenade. (I assume.)

Who is Nathan Sproul?

He's the former head of the Arizona Republican Party and the Arizona Christian Coalition. His GOP-funded organization appears to have masterminded a multi-state anti-Democrat voter registration fraud conspiracy.

But has anyone seen his face?

Furdell.com is asking anyone who knows where Mr. Sproul hangs out or something to take a picture of him with your camera phone. Or something. Because we really want to know what the hell he looks like.

Below is an artist's rendition of what Mr. Sproul would probably look like in shadows from the side while symbolically looming over his conglomoration of would-be tyrannical world conquerors.

Hottest Pussycat Rosario Dawson was arrested yesterday "about a block from the site of the Republican National Convention in Madison Square Garden" after she and a Director You've Never Heard Of refused to leave the road.

When asked by reporters, Dawson refused to comment on whether she plans to have my babies. We will bring you updates as they come in.

Ok, armchair detectives! It's time to put on your goofy hunting cap and light up your pipe, because we've got a mystery on our hands!

They were young adults from America's heartland with a passion for the wild outdoors, backpacking, sailing and camping when they could, working together as counselors at a Christian retreat and dreaming that they would someday open one of their own.

Then, just weeks before their Sept. 11 wedding date, they were killed in their sleep ? perhaps after taking in one last Pacific sunset under the open sky they loved.

They died instantly, each shot in the head as they lay in sleeping bags on a wild shoreline 2,500 miles from their homes and families, Sonoma County authorities said Friday.

No, no, the Sept. 11 wedding date is a red herring. That's just an easy time to book weddings these days. But what's this...camp counselors? Camp counselors in love? Senselessly killed? Ohh, I totally know this one!!!

Hey, wait a second. That's terrible! Jason is completely unstoppable! He'll cut us all to ribbons!! We're all going to die!!!!

Until next time...we're completely doomed!

If you're reading this, you're bored, and that means you need to check out these phone transcripts between Scott Peterson and Amber Frey. It's a lot of reading -- I've been working on it for a couple of weeks -- but it's well worth it.

If you don't already know, Scott Peterson is the guy whose 8-month pregnant wife, Laci, went missing over a year and a half ago. There were candlelight vigils and the like, until her body washed up on the shore.

Well, as it turns out, on the side Scott was pretending to be a romantic bachelor, wooing single mom Amber Frey. He went all out: roses, expensive dinners, caramel apples. Very smooth. (Check out this detailed timeline for a fuller picture of the story.)

What I love about these transcripts is that they remind me of every conversation I've ever had in a relationship. Peterson and Frey talk about their feelings for each other, about how they feel about relationships in general, about where they think this one is going; they talk about their favorite movies and what they did the previous day. It's all extremely banal, except that underneath it all he's murdered his wife and she's pretending not to know while she tapes his calls. In a favorite key moment, Scott calls Amber on New Years Eve, pretending to be in Paris -- when he's actually at his wife's own candlelight vigil. Ha! Now that's good evil!

If you're still not convinced that you need to waste hours of your life reading these transcripts, allow me to present an excerpt. Um, I believe this will be Exhibit 'Q'. In this excerpt from a January 4, 2003 conversation, Scott and Amber are discussing their role models.

SCOTT
It's like, five years later, and I'm still making changes in myself to be more like Hugh.

AMBER
To be more like who?

SCOTT
Hugh.

AMBER
Hugh?

SCOTT
Hugh, yeah, that was his name.

AMBER
Okay.

SCOTT
That's a tough one to say on a mobile phone, isn't it?

AMBER
I know. It sounds like you're saying 'you,' and I'm like, 'What?'

SCOTT
Hugh.

AMBER
Me?

I love vaudeville! I hope Peterson gets aquitted just so we can get more great routines like this one.

Bad news for people about to go to Vegas...apparently, evidence of Al Qaeda activity in the tourist mecca (hee hee) has been largely ignored in favor of delicious, green money.

Hey, wait a minute -- I'm a people about to go to Vegas! We're all going to die!!!!

Well, maybe not. Casinos are pretty secure, after all. You know...cameras and the like. Best case scenario: due to a horrible terrorist attack, we're heavily comped by casinos that hope to keep our terrified business. Hey, there's a gamble I'm willing to take!

Well, apparently the King of Pop has been indicted for all the whole little-boy-sex thing. After a cursory examination of the internet I am prepared to declare myself the only person in the world who thinks he's probably not guilty.

Or, perhaps more probably, a lot of people don't particularly think he's guilty, but can't resist an easy joke at the expense of a complete weirdo. Just in case I'm right about that, I hereby promise not to make any joke in this post that refers by name to an MJ song or album. That's my pledge to you: the reader.

Putting aside for the moment that fact that we're all afraid of what Jackson has become, when you think about it, isn't he just regressing? After all, he was a child star, and VH1 tells me this means he probably didn't have a "normal" childhood. So he obsesses over his button nose to the point of destroying it; he names his ranch Neverland (umm, don't click on that); and hangs out almost exclusively with little kids. Come on people, it's a cry for help. Michael Jackson is telling you to stop making him write song about centipedes and just let him pretend to be 12. And as Dan Savage tells us this week, just because you want to be a small child does not mean you want to fondle a small child.

Think about it in terms of probability. Which of the following scenarios is more likely?
1.) Extremely wealthy celebrity invites cancer-stricken bald 12-year-old boy into his home -- along with several other cancer-stricken baldies -- in order to ply him with wine and hustle him for a handjob.
OR
2.) Extremely wealthy celebrity, in an attempt to reclaim his own childhood, makes himself vulnerable to people who realize both that he is extremely wealthy and that he is so bizarre that everyone pretty much assumes he's a child molester anyway.

Personally, if I was richer than God and into little boys, they wouldn't be bald and I wouldn't get caught. Furthermore, if I was richer than god and merely eccentric, I'd give cancer-kids as much goddamned wine as they asked for. I'd probably have a bottle myself, too. Depressing bastards.