Murder Investigation Research Articles

Sexual Crime, Religion and Masculinity in Fin-de-siècle France: The Flamidien Affair by Timothy Verhoeven

Reviewed by: Sexual Crime, Religion and Masculinity in Fin-de-siècle France: The Flamidien Affair by Timothy Verhoeven Aaron Freundschuh Timothy Verhoeven, Sexual Crime, Religion and Masculinity in Fin-de-siècle France: The Flamidien Affair. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. In February 1899, Gaston Foveaux, age 12, was abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered at Lille’s Notre Dame de Treille school, where he regularly participated in a youth club. After more than two days, his body was found on the school grounds, a space supervised by the Lasallian Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes. Gaston’s belongings, including a coat and cap, turned up elsewhere in the school. When questioned by investigators, the concierge (who had been situated near the walled entrance) said that he had been been paying especially close attention to all comings and goings during the likely timeframe of Gaston’s disappearance, and that the boy had not left the school. The culprit, in a ploy to throw investigators off the scent, left a faux apology next to Gaston Foveaux’s body, signed “an ardent socialist” (2). Soon enough, one of the members of the teaching congregation of Christian brothers at the school, Frère Flamidien, age 35, was named the prime suspect. Placed under arrest, Flamidien was questioned for several weeks. Swift and awful was his public humiliation, yet he stood his ground. The so-called Flamidien affair ended abruptly when the case against him was thrown out on procedural grounds. Frère Flamidien was released, and the Foveaux case went cold. In this slim volume, Timothy Verhoeven, Senior Lecturer at Monash University, takes the view that the Flamidien affair was a “key moment in driving even deeper the wedge between republicans and Catholics” in finde-siècle France (6). Over the course of seven brisk chapters, Verhoeven sustains a discussion of the major contextual elements of the scandal. These include the ideological battle over public education, and the competing norms of masculinity that set the celibacy of the Christian brothers against the republican ideal based on marriage and procreation. When he was forced to stand before the corpse of Gaston Foveaux in a common mise-en-scène known as la confrontation, Flamidien was overcome with tearful emotion, a reaction that set him apart from his brethren within the school’s teaching congregation. To investigators, who typically relied on [End Page 201] pseudo-scientific techniques to decipher guilt on the faces of the accused, Flamidien had given himself away. Another flimsy investigative method, graphology, was used to pressure Flamidien into confessing. According to Verhoeven, Flamidien’s steadfastness inspired his defenders to refashion the retiring brother as the “Catholic vision of masculinity” and a “Christian model of heroism” (69). It is on these themes, especially as they are explored in connection with the disputed practice of celibacy, that this microhistory stakes its strongest claim for the historical relevance of the Flamidien affair. The local Catholic press organ, La Croix du Nord, rejected republicanism’s insistence on narrowly prescribed norms of gender, and since the teaching congregants took vows of celibacy, this point of contention could not be kept separate from the “school wars” that divided republicans and Catholics in the early decades of the Third Republic. Having watched the Church stand in reactionary opposition to the very idea of democracy in the century after the Great Revolution, republicans in Lille were irate to find the city’s Catholics uncooperative in this murder investigation. Crowds assembled in the public square after Flamidien was apprehended. A Lille street poster denounced Flamidien as a “product of his milieu” and cautioned those who mistook clerics for the moral guides they pretended to be (81). At certain points in this study, the long-simmering inter-generational conflicts between Catholics and republicans completely eclipse the specific evidence presented by the Foveaux crime scene, and along with it the individuals who participated in the investigation. The result is an uncritical emphasis on the themes of anticlericalism and Catholic victimhood. The author supposes, for example, that the “anticlerical mind” (35), haunted by visions of clerical pedophilia, drove investigators to suspect the Christian brothers at Foveaux’s school. But the material clues detected at...

Affair and Betrayal in The Murder Investigation as Seen in Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on The Train

This research is focused on revealing the character that has an affair that appears in novel The Girl on the Train. The purpose of this study is to (1) To describe the cause of affair and betrayal in the story the Girl on the Train (2) To explain the affair and betrayal in the story the Girl on the Train (3) To reveals the murder investigation that expose the characters’ affair and betrayal in the story the Girl on the Train.This research analyzes about the main character, they are Rachel, Anna, Megan, and Tom. The theory used is psychology theory by Sigmund Freud which explains that the life of the human soul has three levels of consciousness namely; id, ego and superego. The method used in this research is a descriptive qualitative method in which this research does not require statistical data to obtain reality or phenomena that occur in the community.The writer found that the protagonist character in this research was Rachel. In the beginning the story, Rachel is not like the protagonist in general, at the beginning of the character's story Rachel is an alcoholic, has severe depression because she has problems with her fertility so she cannot have children, unemployment, often lost consciousness (black out). But at the end of the story, Rachel's character changes where Rachel is involved in a murder case, when she realizes, she relentlessly tries to uncover the truth of Megan's murderous night, turning her into an unusual detective hunting for clues in her blurred memories. Finally facing the truth of her abusive marriage to Tom, she overcomes her emotional dependence, finally rejects victimization, and resumes control over her life, revealing herself to be the strongest female character in the novel. Despite her flaws, she is guided by a strong moral compass and empathy.

How Bizarre: The Glitch of the Nineties as a Fantasy of New Authorship

How Bizarre: The Glitch of the Nineties as a Fantasy of New Authorship

Особливисті планування досудового розслідування вбивств: теоретичні та прикладні аспекти

Особливисті планування досудового розслідування вбивств: теоретичні та прикладні аспекти

Broadway Beckons With Musicals, Dramas, Bruce Springsteen

Broadway Beckons With Musicals, Dramas, Bruce Springsteen

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

266 CLA JOURNAL Book Reviews Thomas, Angie. The Hate U Give. New York: Balzer & Bray--Harper Collins Publishers, 2017. 464 pp. ISBN: 978-0062498533. $18.99 Hardcover. Angie Thomas’s debut novel, released in February 2017, is a timely and wellexecuted book for young adult audiences. The strengths of Thomas’s novel are evidenced in her contemplation of culturally relevant themes like activism, police brutality, and code-switching, which unfold in a first-person, fast-paced narrative. The novel offers readers an engaging story that examines violence against black bodies, micro-aggressions, racism and non-violent protest movements like Black Lives Matter. The novel balances hard hitting moments with familiar cultural references that result in an authentic and genuine portrayal of the challenges of navigating two opposing worlds: white, elite private school, suburban life and an urban, black, close-knit but economically challenged community. The novel’s protagonist, Starr Carter, straddles two lives, her poor, black, and gang riddled neighborhood and the suburban, mostly wealthy, white prep school she attends. Starr keeps her two lives strictly divided, her school friends, including her white boyfriend, don’t meet her neighborhood friends and, likewise, her Garden Heights friends never meet her at the suburban Williamson Prep. All of that changes, however, when Starr witnesses the brutal murder of her childhood friend Khalil by a local police officer. The national news coverage, following real life trends, paints Khalil as a thug and drug dealer.While she grieves with the members of her community, her relationships with her Williamson Prep friends suffer. The local police force rallies around the officer, and the members of the Garden Heights community, angered by the lack of progress in Khalil’s murder investigation, take to the streets in protest. Through all of this, Starr struggles with her anger, fear, guilt and grief as the novel progresses, and she decides whether or not to come forward to testify before the grand jury on Khalil’s behalf. When discussed within the larger discourse of African-American popular culture texts, The Hate U Give would have benefitted most significantly from greater character development. There is a reliance on cliché and all too familiar tropes among the novel’s secondary characters. Other challenges include Thomas’ approach, which reflects moments of 90s nostalgia that many of today’s teens may dismiss as dated. Additionally, The Hate U Give mirrors the code-switching Starr frequently enacts at Williamson Prep, black-splaining rather than smoothly transitioningintocomplexdiscussionsof race.Whenexaminedbesideatextsuchas Jason Reynold’s Long Way Down, a novel in verse that successfully navigates topics of race and gun violence, Thomas’ novel could expand important discussions. Ibi Zoboi’s novel American Street, a National Book Award Finalist for youth literature, likewise tackles issues of race, police violence, and identity through strong and nuanced characters. CLA JOURNAL 267 Book Reviews At the same time, Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give has been widely accepted, leading to the 2018 Morris Award for a debut author. The novel was on the National Book Award long list for youth literature and was a Coretta Scott-King and Michael L. Printz honor book. Timelessness is among the criteria for most of the Youth Media Awards, and given the novel’s first-person narrative voice, accessible language and subject matter, the reasons for the book’s accolades are clear. Ultimately, readers will find The Hate U Give an enjoyable introduction to conversations about police brutality and, arguably more importantly, how teens can become their own advocates and speak out against institutional oppression. Latrice Ferguson is a Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania where she studies Children’s Literature. She holds masters degrees in Library Science and Children’s Literature and is former librarian for the Chicago Public Library. ...

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ РОЗСЛІДУВАННЯ ВБИВСТВА НА ЗАМОВЛЕННЯ

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ РОЗСЛІДУВАННЯ ВБИВСТВА НА ЗАМОВЛЕННЯ

Praxis in the City: Care and (Re)Injury in Belfast and Orumiyeh

This article builds on the geographic literature of nonviolence with the feminist literature of care ethics and positive security to explore the potential for a praxis that promotes relational urban social justice. We examine two cities—Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Orumiyeh, Iran—that have historically endured political struggles that continue to undermine the quality of urban life. We analyze vulnerability to political, environmental, and infrastructural violence in these two urban landscapes with an eye toward “just praxis” and “positive security,” as we outline the ways in which Belfast and Orumiyeh are reinjured by institutional practices that purportedly seek urban social justice. First, we argue for the importance of care praxis in the light of the entanglement of a murder investigation with the Boston College oral history program “The Belfast Project,” which recorded testimony from former and current members of paramilitary groups. Second, we examine an environmental justice movement in Orumiyeh, where activists navigate a contested political terrain shaped by state violence toward ethnic minorities and punitive economic sanctions from the international community. From this perspective, a just praxis acknowledges the ubiquity of violent conflict while it distinguishes global readings that occur from a distance to the intimate and interminable experiences of violence that take place in urban places. We argue that a more critical engagement with the relationship between care and vulnerability reveals the enormous potential of imagining geographies of existing and evolving relationalities of care rather than global assumptions from afar about vulnerable communities.

Two Plays about Israel/Palestine: Masada/Facts

Two Plays about Israel/Palestine: Masada/Facts

You Don't Know Me by N. Bush & N. Kelly

Bush, Nancy, and Nancy Kelly. You Don't Know Me. New York, NY : Zebra Books, Kensington Publishing Corp., 2016. Print.This book is all about the years after he disappeared, Thomas Daniels's remains have been found and a murder investigation is underway. All three sisters- Dinah, a respected Journalist, acclaimed actress Denise, and Hayley, hungry for her own chance at Stardom. They find their lives intersecting and unraveling again and piece by piece, they'll confront the truth about that deadly night –and dark secrets that could turn one of them into a killer. This book has some thrilling and exciting turns and twists. It’s fun to read and sometimes I can’t put it down. I love this book, because it has a lot of drama. I give this book a 5 out of 5.Highly Recommended: 5 out of 5 starsReviewer: CieanneMy name is Cieanne and I am in Grade 6. My favorite color is blue and I have a cat whose name is Meow. I love cats and dogs. I like to read horror and true stories. I like to read when I am relaxed.

Tactical Social Network Analysis: Using Affiliation Networks to Aid Serial Homicide Investigation

Integrating crime pattern theory with tenets of social network theory, we argue that linking people who frequent the same places reveals intersecting behavioral patterns illustrative of case connectivity. Using the Green River serial murder investigation as a case study, we demonstrate that structural statistics may be useful in focusing investigative efforts. Significant shifts in the centrality of suspects emerge when we track the evolution of this case at 6-month increments, suggesting that the initial working case hypothesis misled investigators. Continued exploration into the utility of social network analysis (SNA) for tactical purposes will help advance applied criminology.

Einum by Froon Akker (pseudonym for Koos Tiemersma)

Fiction Froon Akker (pseudonym for Koos Tiemersma). Einum. Ljouwert, Netherlands. Elikser Uitgeverij. 2015. 311 pages. In 2010 Koos Tiemersma intimated that Under Water would be his last published novel. Fortunately, and to the delight of his appreciative readers, he changed his mind. Each of his novels has been distinctively different from the previous one, and Einum follows the pattern. In fact, it is more a collection of stories than a traditional novel, though all eighteen stories interconnect through place and persons. Remarkably, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The reader enters a nearly forgotten and mostly disregarded dump of a town, Einum, its neglected old dwellings ready to be razed. But by the time the reader exits and closes the book, the dilapidated neighborhood with its motley assortment of residents has memorably entered the mind and imagination as if the scenes and events had been projected on a screen. Here we have not just the life of a family but of eighteen individuals, connected closely or remotely but memorably rendered. None of the main characters is forgettable . Not Walburg, the old widowed farmer who’s been deprived of sex too long and savors the chance to satisfy his lust. Not Lidy, the greedy conniver who offers sex to Walburg as a means of gaining his property . Not Casper, the pedophile who’s trying to escape his past and finally succeeds through suicide. Not Jente, the teenage birder who discovers the North American thrush that winged its way across lands and ocean all the way from Newfoundland to Einum, an event that suddenly thrusts forsaken Einum into the glaring spotlight of fellow birders and the media. Not Jan and Alie, the aging couple who can barely hold on, the burden of Alie’s dementia slowly but surely depleting Jan’s ability and will to take care of her. These are among the Einum neighborhood residents whose interrelated stories weave together into the tapestry that provides the book with a unique reading experience. Unique not only because these simple, ordinary-seeming people come so vividly and multidimensionally alive but also because of the author’s decision to cast much of his prose in an unusual style of minimal punctuation. At first somewhat confusing, the reader quickly adjusts to the cascading thoughts and observations and details that flow into the verbal stream and carry the reader along toward a more participatory and intimate experience of character and action. The book comes to a most satisfying expression in the poignant concluding story, where Jan, at Alie’s insistence, drives her to the water’s edge to meet that rare visitor from Newfoundland. He embraces and kisses her, as his internal battle rages. Then he lets her go, Alie striding in the dark toward the water. But she comes back; “she looks up at him and true heartedly says the little bird is gone Jan.” The wondrous little thrush from a faraway land that anchored these stories has gone, but Einum lives on, for the reader has come to realize that its people are all around us. The author was awarded Friesland’s most prestigious literary honor for this book, the Gysbert Japicx Prize. Henry J. Baron Calvin College Laurent Binet. La septième fonction du langage. Paris. Grasset. 2015. 494 pages. In 2010 Laurent Binet published a very promising first novel, HHhH, which recounted the 1942 assassination of Nazi general Reinhard Heydrich by Czech resistance fighters. While Binet’s new novel is very different in terms of content and tone, it also reflects the author’s preoccupation with the interaction between narrative fiction and historical events. A learned exercise in satire, the “Seventh Function of Language” turns Roland Barthes’s accidental death in 1980 into a mind-boggling murder investigation that uncovers a vast conspiracy, set against the backdrop of Parisian literary life, during World Literature in Review 82 WLT MAY–AUGUST 2016 ...

Tout ce qu'on ne te dira pas, Mongo by Dany Laferrière

of Ukrainians when the Soviets confiscated their crops; and wholesale murders of Ukrainians by their fellow countrymen who were co-opted by the German-controlled local police force. Khemlin’s story allows us to feel the ways in which these tragedies cast a permanent shadow on the place and reverberate in the psyche of its people. Misha is a midlevel police officer in the town of Chernigov (also Khemlin’s hometown ) investigating the apparent murder of Lilia V., a single woman in her mid-thirties. Lilia’s murder and the later suicide of Misha’s best friend turn out to be linked, and Misha shuttles back and forth between Chernigov and its neighboring villages in search of clues and a cache of gold that seems somehow connected to the murder. All the while a nosy neighbor of Lilia V.’s, Laevskaya, manages to constantly be in Misha’s way and even finds the presumed murder weapon, exposing Misha to her relentless ridicule of his shoddy investigative work. The novel’s irrational tone and twisty plot owe a debt to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karmazov in featuring a cast of high-strung villagers whose absurd actions and exaggerated reactions obfuscate resolution of the murder. Khemlin’s Misha is a memorable character, distasteful in his anti-Semitism, sexism, and misplaced arrogance but playfully drawn to reveal aspects of his humanity and warmth. In fact, the majority of characters in The Investigator are imbued with moral ambiguity not only regarding possible connections to Lilia V.’s murder but also their families’ roles in Ukraine’s recent past, a blurring of the distinctions between perpetrators and victims . Misha gives his account of the murder investigation in a resigned voice punctuated with sardonic wit. It is a sensibility that feels authentically Ukrainian, and we all are poorer for prematurely losing such a fun and gifted storyteller as Khemlin. Lori Feathers Dallas, Texas Dany Laferrière. Tout ce qu’on ne te dira pas, Mongo. Montreal. Mémoire d’encrier. 2015. 299 pages. Tout ce qu’on ne te dira pas, Mongo (Everything they won’t tell you, Mongo) is Dany Laferrière’s first new book since his induction into the Académie Française. An immigrant to Montreal born in Haiti, Laferrière is the only writer in history from either of these countries to have joined the Immortals. In keeping with his now-consecrated place in francophone literature and with the tone of his last two books, Laferrière’s alter-ego narrator in Mongo is no longer the enfant terrible of his earlier works but a jaded sage dispensing advice to the younger generation. Here the narrator (which in classic Laferrière style both is and is not the author himself) bestows his knowledge and experience upon the fictitious Mongo, a recent immigrant to Montreal from Cameroon. Hodgepodge in structure, the first half of Mongo intersperses observations from the narrator’s notebook, transcripts from his Sunday-morning cultural commentary radio program, and scenes from café life in which he chats with Mongo and his Li Ang The Lost Garden Trans. Sylvia Li-chun Lin & Howard Goldblatt Columbia University Press Spanning generations of political struggles in Taiwan, a place that has seen much strife and political uncertainty, The Lost Garden recounts this history as related to one family and the complicated love story between Zhu Yingyong from an old, established family and Lin Xigeng, who has made his own fortune. The lush, descriptive narrative immerses the reader in the humid garden of the title that sits at the core of the novel, standing for history, desire, and family. Jonathan Levi Septimania The Overlook Press Jonathan Levi takes us on a rollicking journey through European and Near Eastern culture with this dizzying story of an organ tuner who discovers an unexpected heritage while searching for his lost love. This novel, Levi’s second in nearly twenty-five years, stretches the boundaries of the possible while never losing its focus on the frailties and triumphs of the human heart. Nota Bene WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 95 white Quebecoise girlfriend. While the café scenes bring Laferrière closer to the fiction he used to write, the majority...

La septième fonction du langage by Laurent Binet

Fiction Froon Akker (pseudonym for Koos Tiemersma). Einum. Ljouwert, Netherlands. Elikser Uitgeverij. 2015. 311 pages. In 2010 Koos Tiemersma intimated that Under Water would be his last published novel. Fortunately, and to the delight of his appreciative readers, he changed his mind. Each of his novels has been distinctively different from the previous one, and Einum follows the pattern. In fact, it is more a collection of stories than a traditional novel, though all eighteen stories interconnect through place and persons. Remarkably, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The reader enters a nearly forgotten and mostly disregarded dump of a town, Einum, its neglected old dwellings ready to be razed. But by the time the reader exits and closes the book, the dilapidated neighborhood with its motley assortment of residents has memorably entered the mind and imagination as if the scenes and events had been projected on a screen. Here we have not just the life of a family but of eighteen individuals, connected closely or remotely but memorably rendered. None of the main characters is forgettable . Not Walburg, the old widowed farmer who’s been deprived of sex too long and savors the chance to satisfy his lust. Not Lidy, the greedy conniver who offers sex to Walburg as a means of gaining his property . Not Casper, the pedophile who’s trying to escape his past and finally succeeds through suicide. Not Jente, the teenage birder who discovers the North American thrush that winged its way across lands and ocean all the way from Newfoundland to Einum, an event that suddenly thrusts forsaken Einum into the glaring spotlight of fellow birders and the media. Not Jan and Alie, the aging couple who can barely hold on, the burden of Alie’s dementia slowly but surely depleting Jan’s ability and will to take care of her. These are among the Einum neighborhood residents whose interrelated stories weave together into the tapestry that provides the book with a unique reading experience. Unique not only because these simple, ordinary-seeming people come so vividly and multidimensionally alive but also because of the author’s decision to cast much of his prose in an unusual style of minimal punctuation. At first somewhat confusing, the reader quickly adjusts to the cascading thoughts and observations and details that flow into the verbal stream and carry the reader along toward a more participatory and intimate experience of character and action. The book comes to a most satisfying expression in the poignant concluding story, where Jan, at Alie’s insistence, drives her to the water’s edge to meet that rare visitor from Newfoundland. He embraces and kisses her, as his internal battle rages. Then he lets her go, Alie striding in the dark toward the water. But she comes back; “she looks up at him and true heartedly says the little bird is gone Jan.” The wondrous little thrush from a faraway land that anchored these stories has gone, but Einum lives on, for the reader has come to realize that its people are all around us. The author was awarded Friesland’s most prestigious literary honor for this book, the Gysbert Japicx Prize. Henry J. Baron Calvin College Laurent Binet. La septième fonction du langage. Paris. Grasset. 2015. 494 pages. In 2010 Laurent Binet published a very promising first novel, HHhH, which recounted the 1942 assassination of Nazi general Reinhard Heydrich by Czech resistance fighters. While Binet’s new novel is very different in terms of content and tone, it also reflects the author’s preoccupation with the interaction between narrative fiction and historical events. A learned exercise in satire, the “Seventh Function of Language” turns Roland Barthes’s accidental death in 1980 into a mind-boggling murder investigation that uncovers a vast conspiracy, set against the backdrop of Parisian literary life, during World Literature in Review 82 WLT MAY–AUGUST 2016 the heyday of what came to be known in the United States as “French Theory.” Since the seasoned detective assigned to the case is less than familiar with postmodernist jargon, he recruits a young professor to guide him through a maze of literary as well as investigative...

Systematic analysis of decadactylar subungueal genetic traces in murder cases

Foreign biological material under the fingernails of a murder victim and/or suspect can be valuable evidence in a criminal investigation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of foreign DNA under each fingernail of victims of violent deaths, including fatal struggle or rape cases.Fingernail swabs or, alternatively clipping nails, were taken from all fingers of both right and left hands from 46 victims (13 females and 33 males) and treated separately. Semi-automated DNA extraction was performed and 21 markers were genotyped.We detected reliable profiles in all the studied samples (n=460). The majority of results produced a single profile that matched the donor. Foreign DNA was detected in 15/46 victims, 61.5% positive detection in females vs 21.2% in males. A total of 38/390 DNA mixtures were detected in biological material under the fingernails being 19 from right hand (50%) and 19 from left hand (50%). The finger-like distribution was similar in right and left hands where the index, middle and ring fingers showed the 86.8% of the positive results; being these findings in line with the strength and shape of hand's fingers.The sample treatment optimization increased the possibilities of obtaining biological material from the perpetrator being a powerful tool in a murder investigation. Processing strategy including the penta-dactylar analysis of each hand for independent subungueal recovery of informative exogenous genetic material by fingernail clipping or swabbing and the use of optimized extraction and purification protocols might increase the rate of success in identifying criminal felons.

Identification of a jawless skull by superimposing post-mortem and ante-mortem CT

Abstract A jawless skull was found in a mountain area during a murder investigation. The skull was thought to belong to a missing male person who had been killed and buried in the area 2 years before. The body could not be identified from fingerprints or dental records since the offenders amputated both his hands and destroyed his jaws. We tried to identify the skull based on antemortem (AM) computed tomography (CT) images of the missing person and the postmortem (PM) CT data of the skull by superimposing the two data sets using imaging software both in two dimension (2D) and three dimension (3D). The results suggested that the two data sets were significantly identical in shape and size by both multi-planar reconstruction (MPR) and 3D volume rendering (VR). We succeeded in identifying the subject using PM CT data of the skull without the jaws and comparing those data with AM CT data of the head. This method is very easy to apply, and its results are far more compelling than other anthropological methods when shown in court to medical non-professionals.

RO/ENG

RO/ENG

Abolishing the Excited Utterance Exception to the Rule Against Hearsay

Seconds after witnessing Rick Blaine shoot and kill a Nazi officer, Captain Louis Renault utters a lie that absolves Blaine of guilt and sends the murder investigation in another direction. And, in Blaine’s trial for the murder of Major Strasser, Captain Renault’s excited utterance that someone other than Blaine was the killer would be admitted—pursuant to the Federal Rules of Evidence—as proof that Blaine did not shoot Major Strasser, regardless whether Captain Renault testified at trial. Renowned Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner recently questioned the efficacy of the excited utterance exception to the rule against hearsay, and called for changes to the manner in which the excited utterance exception and other hearsay exceptions are applied.

Construing a “Perfect Knight”: A Personal Construct Investigation of Mass Murder

On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik emailed a compendium entitled, “2083: A Declaration of European Independence,” to more than 1,000 addresses before bombing government buildings in Oslo and attacking a Labor Party youth camp, killing 77 people. This article adopts a credulous attitude and analyzes a personal section of his compendium from a personal construct psychology perspective, as if it were a self-characterization. Its aim is to understand further the construing processes of individuals who become “radicalized” or engage in acts of extreme violence, on the assumption that such understanding is a prerequisite for preventative and restorative strategies. The personal construct formulation of Breivik's construing and actions is compared with the analysis of terrorism by an historian, Roger Griffin.

Unclean Truth

The Metropolitan Police’s Crime Museum, famously known as the Black Museum, exhibits evidence from some of the most appalling crimes committed within English society from the late-Victorian era into modernity. Public admittance to this museum is strictly prohibited, preventing all but police staff from viewing the macabre exhibitions held within. The physical objects on display may vary, but whether the viewer is confronted with household items, weaponry or human remains, the evidence before them is undeniably associated with the immorality surrounding the performance of a socially bad death, of murder. These items have an object biography, they are both contextualized and contextualize the environment in which they reside. But one must question the purpose of such a museum, does it merely act as a Chamber of Horrors evoking the anomie of English society in physical form, or do these exhibits have an educational intent, restricted to their liminal space inside New Scotland Yard, to be used as a pedagogical tool in the development of new methods of murder investigation.