Lots of possible explanations have been suggested — ranging from serial killers, to hallucinogenic beach drinks, to overuse of banned insecticides in hotel rooms. But, so far, none of the specific poisons proposed as the culprit totally makes sense in relation to the deaths. And, to make things worse, it seems like Thai authorities are doing their best to make it difficult to actually investigate what has happened in individual cases, and figure out whether the cases are linked or not. At this point, it's hard to even know whether all the people who have died exhibited the same symptoms.

Deborah Blum, a Pulitzer-winning journalist who has done a lot of reporting on poisons and true crime has been following this story and just published another piece on the still-unfolding mess.

Your daughter died.

Your daughter died thousands of miles from home. In a hotel where no one came to help. In a hospital where she struggled to keep breathing and just couldn’t. In a room where her heart – and somehow you still don’t really believe this – just stuttered to a stop. In a country, where authorities have failed for months, years even, to tell you how or why your daughter died.

Your daughter, you’ve come to realize, died in a pattern that links too many other young women, a chain of suspected poisonings over the last few years. Jill St. Onge, 27, of Seattle, Washington, and Julie Bergheim, 22, of Drammen, Norway, who both died in May 2009 on the southern island of Koh Phi Phi. Sherifa Khalid, 24, of Kuwait, who died 12 hours she spent a day on the same island in July of the same year.

Read the rest of the story at Deborah Blum's blog, Elemental

Check out two previous stories that she's written on the same subject.

Two of the three children of CNBC Digital senior vice president Kevin Krim and Marina Krim, a mom who maintained a blog about their family life, were apparently stabbed to death by their nanny last night in NYC.

Nanny Yoselyn Ortega (50) is accused of attacking Lulu (6) and Leo Krim (2), shown in the family photo at left; then trying to kill herself.

The details of how the mother (38) encountered her children are in the NYT story, CNN, and the tabloids. A third child was with Mrs. Krim when the attack happened at their home, and did not witness it.

From posts on the family blog [update: which is now offline] the nanny appears to have worked with the family for more than a year.

The Krim family visited Ms. Ortega's home and family in the Dominican Republic with her on a 9-day vacation this February.

The family LiveJournal contains thousands of photographs of the children, whose lives were chronicled there in loving detail by their mom. Marina Krim published an entry about her son just three hours before the attack.

Leo speaks in the most adorable way possible. Firstly, he speaks super clearly, so you can understand every word is he is saying. And he does things like, "(I) want a fresh bagel" and "Dito (what he calls himself) wants cold milk" and most adorable of all, "No thank you" - he never uses "No" alone, it's always paired with "thank you".

Overnight, the post filled with about a thousand comments from strangers who'd read the news.

Mr. Krim held positions formerly with Yahoo, Bloomberg, and LiveJournal. The family relocated from SF to NY 3 years ago.

He was flying home to his family from a business trip to San Francisco when the killings happened. He was met at the gate by police, who escorted him to the hospital where paramedics tried to revive his children.

It makes no sense.

The shock and horror of this news hit close to home for young, NYC-based professionals whose lifestyles require them to entrust their kids to the care of a helper sometimes, like the Krims did.

The Krim family are known and loved by various Boing Boing readers who work in the technology industry in New York and San Francisco, some of whom pinged me when this story broke last night.

Tweets from some friends of the family, below.

lulu krim

— Scott Heiferman (@heif) October 26, 2012

@heif just tears in my eyes. Remember Kevin proudly showing off his newborn like it was yesterday.

— Anil Dash (@anildash) October 26, 2012

@xeni Xeni, Kevin is an old friend—I'm in shock, so many are in shock right now. Good people. Darling child I'd met, murdered.

— nina alter (@ninavizz) October 26, 2012

@xeni They really are that nice and good, though. No airs, no pretension, the exact opposite. Everything described in the news—just, numbing

— nina alter (@ninavizz) October 26, 2012

The story is familiar to us today: Somebody, usually a young man, walks into a public place, kills a bunch of people seemingly at random, and (usually) ends the murder spree with a suicide-by-cop.

But this story—at least, in Western culture—is startlingly new, relatively speaking. In fact, Paul Mullen, a forensic psychologist, says we can pin a date and place on the first time it happened. On September 4, 1913, in the German towns of Degerloch and Mühlhausen an der Enz, Ernst August Wagner killed his wife, his children, and at least nine strangers. He shot more than 20 people and set several fires during his killing spree. He ended up spending the rest of his life in an insane asylum.

But when we try to pin killings like these on mental illness, Mullen says, we're not quite hitting the right point. The people who go on killing sprees are mad, sure. But that's not the same thing as diagnosable, objective, physical mental illness. Only about 10% of the people ever arrested for crimes like this had actual mental illnesses. In fact, Mullen thinks these killings have more to do with culture than brain chemistry. His argument is interesting. And it might sound a little similar to the old "angry music made him do it!" trope. But what Mullen is talking about is different than that. Science journalist David Dobbs tries to explain the distinction:

I’m not saying the movies made Holmes crazy or psychopathic or some such. But the movies are a enormous, constant, heavily influential part of an American culture that fetishizes violence and glamorizes, to the point of ten-year wars, a militarized, let-it-rain approach to conflict resolution. And culture shapes the expression of mental dysfunction — just as it does other traits. This is why, say, relatively ‘simple’ schizophrenia — not the paranoid sort — takes very different forms in Western and some Eastern cultures. On an even simpler level, this is why competitive athleticism is more likely to express itself as football (the real kind) in Britain but as basketball in the U.S. Culture shapes the expression of behavioral traits.

This is an interesting argument and an interesting thing to think about.

Read the rest of David Dobbs' post about the difference between blaming movies for violence and talking about the consequences of violence in culture.

Watch the video of Paul Mullen discussing cultural violence, mental illness, and spree killings

Read a very good post at the Neuroanthropology blog that expands on Paul Mullen's ideas and provides more interesting links

The Toronto Sun today reports that "politicians and their aides in Ottawa have been shocked by the gruesome killing" attributed to Luka Magnotta. But not too shocked to exploit it for their own political gain! Buried in a story about how the missing accused murderer will face charges of "Criminal harassment" for sending dead body parts to lawmakers, in addition to all the murder and ass-cheek-eating and corpse-sexing stuff:

On Friday, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said his so-called Internet snooping bill would help police investigate the shocking murder and dismemberment of a man in Montreal.

"Certainly, that's what the police have told me - that the powers in Bill C-30 are very relevant to this type of investigation in terms of either determining who the individual is, or determining the whereabouts of an individual," said Toews on Friday in Winnipeg.

Bill C-30 would force Internet service providers and cellphone companies to give police information about customers' online activity on request, creating a storm of privacy concerns that have left the bill stalled in the Commons.

As Cory wrote recently, the C-30 bill was a very very bad thing, and it appears to be dead.

Maybe police should reach out to Encyclopedia Dramatica for assistance.

Just FYI Luka Magnotta is still editing his own ED article to this day. He corrected the date of the murder this morning.

— Encyc Dramatica æ (@ED_Updates) June 1, 2012

using a proxy obviously.

— Encyc Dramatica æ (@ED_Updates) June 1, 2012

Why, sure, Toews' argument that unprecedented warrantless surveillance would help us catch Awful Bad Guys makes perfect sense. BB commenter TMWaH says it perfectly:

Except that Magnotta made all of his sociopathic tendencies very, very public. He posted videos of animal torture, journals about necrophilia, and how-to guides for "vanishing" from police. He wore his evil on his sleeve, and yet, nobody tried to investigate him BEFORE he killed anyone.

Vic Toews is deluded if he thinks that a spying bill would stop people like Magnotta. What law enforcement needs is a better method for analyzing data and putting it to use, not terabytes of stolen e-mails to comb through.

And, while I refuse to link to über-exploitative rag The Sun, the tabloid reports that its reporters contacted police about Magnotta, after interacting with him and hearing him confess to having killed people, and vowing to kill more of them.

So, let me get this straight: publishing all sorts of material online documenting crime and confessing to crimes and promising to commit more crime isn't enough, and reporters contacting police about the same is not enough—we need pervasive, endless surveillance of non-criminals in order to catch criminals.

Got it.

Profile pic Alex Kinyua, aka COREeye67, used for his "WARRIOR SYNDICATE RADIO (WSR-366)" podcast.

Maryland resident Alexander Kinyua reportedly confessed to police that he killed his a man who lived with his family for months by cutting him up with a knife, then eating his heart and parts of his brain.

The Baltimore Sun reports about the online life of Kinyua, an electrical engineering major at Morgan State University and long-time member of its ROTC program. He was "always in his own little world, preaching everywhere he went and talking about how he was writing a book," said one acquaintance.

Kinyua's online life included a self-published podcast, motivational videos on YouTube, lots of Facebook posts, a manic stream of internet comments directed at media figures and celebrities, and plans to self-publish an e-book.

[He] was obsessed with the military, according to the online postings, and left behind scrawls referencing cosmic teachings, feelings of oppression and end times. In recent months, he appeared to post across various platforms using the screen name "COREeye67," according to various web sites reviewed by The Baltimore Sun.

(...)In the two most recent posts, Kinyua uploaded "QR Codes," bar code images that, when scanned with a smartphone, lead to a Web page. They both led to a message about something called "Project Crack the Code," promising "more information on survival of the human family."

More in this Baltimore Sun story about his "disturbing online trail," which also notes that his Facebook profile picture "is an image of Richard Ansdell's 1861 painting, 'The Hunted Slaves,' showing two runaway slaves facing dogs that have been set on them." Screengrab below. The painting now sits in the International Slavery Museum, in the UK.

This is Kinyua's Twitter account. His YouTube account is now unavailable, and a Scribd link his accounts pointed to as the location of a forthcoming e-book is also now offline.

Kinyua was of Kenyan descent; his victim Ghanaian. Ghanaians in Maryland are holding a vigil for the victim this weekend.

Below, the QR codes Kinyua recently posted to Facebook before the murder(s?), and screenshots of some of his online presences.

]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/06/01/accused-maryland-cannibal-murd.html/feed 20 http://boingboing.net/2012/05/30/gay-porn-actor-in-canada-wante.html http://boingboing.net/2012/05/30/gay-porn-actor-in-canada-wante.html#comments Thu, 31 May 2012 00:57:29 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=163749

Authorities in Canada are searching for 29-year-old Luka Rocco Magnotta, an adult film actor who appears on various websites featuring hardcore gay male porn. Magnotta is beleived to be the man responsible for killing a friend, videotaping and then publishing online video of the man's dismemberment, then mailing body parts to various addresses in Ottawa, including the ruling Conservative party's headquarters.

A human torso recently discovered in Montreal, and a human hand and foot mailed from Montreal to Ottawa, are all presumed to be connected to the killing.

In 2009, Magnotta (or someone using his name) published a blog post on "how to disappear completely and never be found."

From the Montreal Gazette:

In December of 2010, he appears to have posted his first (really, really horrible) kitten video, followed by another one a year later. In March of this year, he appears to have launched a blog, entitled Necrophiliac Serial Killer Luka Magnotta, in which he confesses to a sexual desire for corpses.

Encyclopedia Dramatica has more on the kitten-killing videos.

Separately, the Gazette reports that police say Magnotta once dated lesbian serial sex killer Karla Homolka. Magnotta once denied this, long before he himself became a murder suspect.

A blog authored by "Luka Magnotta" on the erotic joys of cannibalism is right here (for as long as it lasts), and contains images and content that most people will find upsetting. An excerpt follows.

When I was a young child, I used to spend much of my time alone, either in the woods or in the local cemetery, where there was the grave of a 19 year old boy who died in the early half of last century. I felt close to that boy, and would pick flowers in the woods and take them to his grave.

In 2003, I discovered a mummified corpse of a young man in a vault, in a church where I was doing restoration work for a friend. I fell in love with him, and it broke my heart to seal him in there. I wanted to take him home and look after him.

I day dream about having him here with me. Silly ordinary things like watching TV together, listening to music, taking him out for picnics, watching a DVD late at night before taking him up to bed with me. All very ordinary things, apart from the fact that I want to do them with a desiccated or mummified corpse.

I don't have a problem attracting living men. I'm just naturally attracted to the dead. Some people never realize until its too late that excepting their feelings and not acting anymore is true freedom.

It's not cool to the world being a necrophiliac. It's bloody lonely. But I dont really care, I have never cared what people thought of me, most people are judgemental idiots. I'm unable to talk to anybody about it and there's always the knowledge that 99% of people would be repulsed by me if they found out about my feelings. Some people would even want to harm me.

Do I feel ashamed? never, but there's nothing but love in my heart for that man in the grave and the guy in the vault. I don't see myself as some creepy pervert. I'm just somebody who has feelings, real feelings, for dead men.

Trayvon Martin, 17 (above), was shot to death on February 26 while walking to his dad's girlfriend's house from a convenience store just north of Orlando, Florida. He was unarmed, wearing a hoodie, and carrying some Skittles and iced tea he purchased at the mini-mart.

George Zimmerman, 28 (inset), is the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot Trayvon. Zimmerman told police he shot the young man in self-defense. As more information about the incident emerges, this explanation sounds increasingly less plausible.

The case has sparked widespread interest and outrage online, in part because Zimmerman remains free, and Trayvon was an innocent kid doing nothing wrong, who cried out for help as he was attacked. His only threat, it seems, was being a black male.

A roundup of links for further reading and following, as the case evolves:

• Mother Jones has an excellent explainer piece here, and ongoing coverage.
• A New York Times item today: US Grand Jury opens an investigation into the killing. Related news about FBI involvement at the Miami Herald.
• A phone call from Trayvon to a 16-year-old female friend sparks new demands for Zimmerman's arrest.
• "How we can leverage the anger over individual incidents into a larger restructuring of perceptions and justice," asks journalist Farai Chideya. "It’s easy to work up ire about individual cases, but harder to work on systemic change." She's on Twitter here.
• Charles Blow at the New York Times has been on the story. One item is here, but his Twitter feed is well worth a follow for ongoing (and paywall-free) updates.
• Ta-Nehisi Coates, senior editor for The Atlantic, has been reporting on the case as well. He's updating on Twitter, too.
• The blog for MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry show is a good source of updates, and the show itself has been covering the case as well.
• Think Progress has a "what everyone should know" post here.
• Zimmerman has been variously identified as "White," and "White Hispanic." An NPR opinion piece asks, What if he were black?
• At the Huffington Post, Trymaine Lee has been on the story for weeks, with strong reporting. Worth a Twitter follow. • Farai Chideya points to this Trendsmap of where in the US the #trayvon hashtag is currently trending.

(Thanks to all of my Twitter followers who shared suggestions for good sources of coverage.)]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/03/20/the-murder-of-trayvon-martin.html/feed 82