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February 13, 2012
Binyamin Rose: Back to the Bunker: How a life-risking act by a Christian family during the Holocaust saved a family and built a thriving community a world away
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Warren Richey: Why momentous Prop. 8 ruling might not satisfy gay-rights groups
Menachem Wecker: Though Controversial, LL.M.'s Can Lead to Specialized Legal Jobs
The Kosher Gourmet byDana Velden: Going to the bother of making soup? You know it better be good. This CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP certainly is! And it's a cinch to make, too (Includes techinques and serving secrets)
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Suzanne Bohan: Leaping lizards! Tiny reptiles advancing robot design
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Jonathan Tobin: Iran Threatens Israel With Destruction, But the New York Times Doesn't Hear It
Jeffrey Fleishman: In newly democratic Egypt, tens of democracy activists jailed, to stand trial; their groups are 'threatening the stability of the homeland'
Julie Deardorff : Researchers say antioxidants may not be that effective and could do more harm than good
Mark Clayton: How did Anonymous hackers eavesdrop on FBI and Scotland Yard?
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Edmund Sanders : Israeli official says Iran is creating missile that could reach East Coast of US
Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
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Reza Kahlili : Ex-CIA spy in Iran's Revolutionary Guard: What Obama doesn't grasp about striking deals with Tehran
Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
February 1, 2012
Brian Bennett: US officials see increasing threat of domestic attack from Iran
Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
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January 30, 2012
Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim: Misreading Teheran's limits -- deadly and economically devastating as they may be -- is a risk administration, Europe seem willing to take
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Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
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Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
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Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
Richard Simon: House passes two bills endorsing the use of religious symbols at military memorials
Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
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Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
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Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
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Frank J. Gaffney Jr.: No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be
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January 13, 2012
Ben Lynfield: Israeli lawmakers move to annex Jewish Judea, one museum at a time
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January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
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January 11, 2012
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Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
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January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
June 8, 2009
/ 16 Sivan 5769
Believability is key in crime-hoax villains
By
Michael Smerconish
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Memo to hoaxers: You've overplayed the race card. Better to blame the Vietnamese than the blacks. Maybe the Mexicans. Perhaps be daring and say your attacker looked like a guy from the Philadelphia suburbs. Whatever your story, come up with a new rap because the old tale about a couple of black guys just isn't working. Ask Bonnie Sweeten, the Bucks County, Pa., woman whose abduction hoax ended when she was found in Disney World with her daughter Julia Rakoczy, 9, last week.
The first of many red flags came when Sweeten said she'd been rear-ended by a black duo who threw her in the trunk of their Caddy with her daughter. Anyone who has ever driven through Upper Southampton, Pa., knows that four such disparate individuals could never have an interaction in broad daylight without being noticed.
And so her name gets added to a list that includes Charles Stuart, Samuel Asbell, Susan Smith, Jennifer Wilbanks and Ashley Todd.
Remember Stuart? In October 1989, he claimed that a black man shot and killed his pregnant wife (Charles also sustained a gunshot wound) in an apparent robbery gone wrong. A man named Willie Bennett became a prime suspect, though he was later cleared after Stuart's brother implicated Stuart himself, who committed suicide in January 1990.
Days later, and closer to home, Samuel Asbell, the gaudy former New Jersey prosecutor, resigned after holding a news conference to describe a high-speed chase through Camden during which he exchanged gunshots with two black assailants he suspected were drug dealers, terrorists, or Ku Klux Klan members. Within days, investigators had debunked the account including Asbell's assertion that his shotgun blast made one assailant's head "explode."
Susan Smith claimed a black man carjacked her and abducted her 3-year-old and 14-month-old sons in October 1994. Nine days later, Smith confessed to strapping them into their car seats and rolling the car into a South Carolina lake.
And in 2005, Jennifer Wilbanks, the so-called Runaway Bride, skipped town just days before her wedding. On the morning she was to be married, she called her husband and claimed she'd been abducted by a Hispanic man and a white woman. Turns out she'd planned the trip on her own.
Then there's Ashley Todd, the woman who reported last year that a black supporter of Barack Obama robbed her, and when he saw a John McCain bumper sticker on her car beat her and carved a "B" onto her cheek. The problem? The "B" was in reverse like she'd drawn it herself while looking in a mirror. Todd later admitted her wounds were self-inflicted.
Why in each of these cases did the real perpetrator conjure up a racially tinged alibi?
That's a question for criminal profiler Pat Brown, author of "Killing for Sport: Inside the Minds of Serial Killers." Brown told me that racism isn't a factor in implicating a nonexistent black perpetrator. Rather, it's a question of believability. "When people stage crimes, they often try to come up with what they think is a plausible scenario, the most believable scenario, the most sympathetic scenario," she explained.
The perception they cultivate, Brown said, can be driven by prevailing news storylines of the day. Brown noted that Jeffrey MacDonald, convicted in 1979 of killing his pregnant wife and two daughters in Fort Bragg, N.C., has claimed for years that drugged hippies broke into his home, slaughtered his family, and left him unconscious and bleeding.
Behind that story, Brown surmised, was the fact that "Charles Manson and his hippie gang made their way into the minds of the public" before the MacDonald family murders in 1970. Indeed, an issue of Esquire magazine detailing murders perpetrated by Manson followers just six months beforehand was found in MacDonald's home after the killings.
Brown continued: "Then, violent inner-city African-American crime became a popular news item and so those staging crimes moved to claiming black men were responsible for what happened. As the Hispanic population grows in the United States as an underclass, they will become the new 'offenders' in fabricated scenarios."
Whatever the window of believability, Brown told me that a common trait among these imaginative perpetrators is psychopathy. Many are "manipulative, arrogant, tend toward grandiose thinking, and refuse to take responsibility for their actions," she said.
Brown suggested that in some cases, the true perpetrators are looking to eliminate the people or parts of their lives preventing them from moving on to something newer or more exciting. Others are attempting to extricate themselves from trouble. Or it could be a way of seeking notoriety a way of making the desire to "be someone special" a reality.
In Sweeten's bid to make herself the victim of black abductors, she actually undercut her own credibility. Forget the undamaged car, parking ticket, and cell phone tower. Two black guys in an altercation with a 38-year-old white woman and her 9-year-old daughter attracts attention in Lower Bucks County. So where were the 911 calls from rubbernecking drivers? Maybe Sweeten was too busy booking the Grand Floridian to plan that.
Perps like Charles Stuart and Susan Smith think they can dupe the multitudes of investigators, reporters and onlookers their fantastic cases will surely attract. "They are arrogant and think they are smarter than everyone else," Brown told me.
Not smart enough, apparently.
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Comment by clicking here.
Previously:
05/14/09 Did Hollywood inspire the meltdown men?
04/20/09 Let's give killers their due: Anonymity
03/12/09 Uninsured who can't afford medical care lose a lot more
02/06/09 My debate with Musharraf on hunt for bin Laden
01/29/09 Torture must remain an option
01/15/09 Making a case for suing Madoff
12/22/08 A difficult but rational chat about plans
12/17/08 Facebook epidemic: More than 120 million have joined, many too old for this nonsense
12/01/08 The high price of downsizing the news biz
11/14/08 Prescience on greed, arrogance of a system
09/29/08 Closer look at party lines
08/26/08 Obama's pick creates GOP opportunity
08/21/08 Fishing with the Angry Everyman
07/31/08 The perils of e-mail: Ponder, then click
05/22/08 Two very different sides of the Internet
02/12/08 Sublimely ridiculous suits
11/28/08 Cell phones cut out secondary circle of kinship
09/26/07 What do we owe those who have died in Iraq?
08/30/07 A Navy SEAL's gut-wrenching tale of survival
07/30/07 First it was a faux pas, now it's a new word
© 2008, The Philadelphia Inquirer Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
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