One of the most remarkable things about the Saudis' torture and execution of dissident Jamal Khashoggi and their attempted cover-up is the end-to-end full-spectrum incompetence of every aspect of it. They had a body double on hand to be seen on security camera leaving the embassy in Khashoggi's clothes, but he forgot the shoes, thereby making any footage useless.

For weeks, the Saudi government had denied that it killed Khashoggi and said he walked out of the consulate after his Oct. 2 visit. The body double appeared to be an attempt to substantiate that denial, but the cover story fell apart, according to a diplomat familiar with the deliberations, because the video footage clearly reveals the body double’s flaws, mainly that he is wearing different shoes than Khashoggi wore when he entered the consulate.

Note the layers of ineptitude: they apparently held off releasing footage because of the clothing discrepancies, according to Turkish sources, but they would have been caught anyway had they got the shoes right, because the guy doesn't look much like Jamal Khashoggi.

A member of the 15-man team suspected in the death of Jamal Khashoggi dressed up in his clothes and was captured on surveillance cameras around Istanbul on the day the journalist was killed, a senior Turkish official has told CNN. CNN has obtained exclusive law enforcement surveillance footage, part of the Turkish government's investigation, that appears to show the man leaving the Saudi consulate by the back door, wearing Khashoggi's clothes, a fake beard, and glasses.

Charles Manson, the infamous cult leader whose followers killed 9 people in 1969, died today at age 83.

Read the rest

Transgender teen Ally Lee Steinfeld was stabbed in the genitals, had her eyes gouged out, and was burned to a charred crisp. But she was not the victim of a hate crime, say the police and prosecutor.

Steinfeld, 17, was allegedly attacked by her girlfriend and two teenagers in an assault in Cabool, Texas Country, Missouri which left her with her eyes gouged out, court records said.

Steinfeld, who was born as Joseph Matthew Steinfeld, had been missing for a month before investigators found her charred remains in a bag dumped in a chicken coop.

It came weeks after a post on social media site Instagram where she described herself as "mtf", or male-to-female, later adding: “I am proud to be me I am proud to be trans.”

But the authorities insisted Steinfeld’s murder was not motivated by her sexuality or gender.

Prosecutor Parke Stevens Jr told news agency AP: "I would say murder in the first-degree is all that matters. That is a hate crime in itself."

If all murders are hate crimes, none of them are. If you can thank the Internet for one thing this summer, it's the fact it might force at least a perfunctory prosecution out of this gentleman. Read the rest

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump ended a rally in South Carolina Friday by recalling, approvingly, the probably-apocryphal tale of General Pershing's execution of Muslims.

… an apparent myth about how General John Pershing summarily executed dozens of Muslim prisoners in the Philippines with tainted ammunition during a guerilla war against the occupying United States.

“He took fifty bullets, and he dipped them in pig’s blood,” Trump said. “And he had his men load his rifles and he lined up the fifty people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the fiftieth person he said ‘You go back to your people and you tell them what happened.’ And for 25 years there wasn’t a problem, okay?”

The story appears to be a hoax spread via e-mail forwards, according to rumor tracker Snopes.com, with no evidence it occurred.

The moral of the tale, according to Trump: “We better start getting tough and we better start getting vigilant, and we better start using our heads or we’re not gonna have a country, folks.”

A lifetime of glory; a cup of sake. Read the rest

AP reports that "packages containing a human foot and hand were discovered at two schools in Vancouver on Tuesday, in what could be the latest gruesome twist in the case of a Canadian porn actor suspected of dismembering and eating his former lover." As noted in a previous BB post, murder suspect Rocco Luka Magnotta, also known as Eric Clinton Newman, has been arrested in Berlin. Read the rest

Rocco Luka Magnotta, also known as Eric Clinton Newman, was arrested this morning in Berlin. The Canadian porn actor is a suspect in the murder of Lin Jun, a 33-year-old student from China, whose body parts were subsequently mailed to political parties. Megan Gibson writes:

Though the discovery of the body parts already made for grim headlines, the unearthing of a “snuff film” — a video of the murder taking place — on a Canadian website added another layer of horror. Called “1 Lunatic 1 Ice-Pick”, the 11-minute video depicts the murder, sexual assault and dismemberment of Lin. Canadian police say they believe the video is authentic.

Magnotta, who has also been known by the names Eric Clinton Newman and Vladimir Romanov, had a disturbing online presence and promptly became a suspect. News stories revealed that he had once been thought to have once dated a notorious Canadian serial killer, had blogged about necrophilia and posted a video online showing him suffocating kittens.

They found him in an internet café. I guess he just couldn't make the break.

Previously.

‘Canadian Psycho’: Porn Star Mail Murderer Arrested in Germany [Time] Read the rest

Suxamethonium chloride is a common hospital anesthetic that has, off and on, moonlighted as murder weapon.

Used to paralyze patients so that doctors can more easily put insert a breathing tube, the drug can kill very easily if the person who gets a dose of it doesn't have access to things like respirators, or a medical team. And when somebody is killed by "sux", the death can look conveniently like a simple heart attack. More importantly, writes professional chemist and anonymous science blogger Dr. Rubidium, for many years, there was no way to test for sux in a dead person's bloodstream.

Since the early 1950s, sux has been used in a clinical setting mainly by anesthesiologists. It’s a mystery when it was first used in a homicide, but the first high-profile killings came in the 1966 and 1967. This salacious tale of murder involves anesthesiologist Dr. Carl Coppolino, his mistress, his mistress’ husband dying suddenly in ’66, Coppolino’s wife dying suddenly in ’67, a quick remarriage by Dr. Coppolino (not to that mistress), two trials in different states leading to different verdicts.

Coppolino’s first trial in New Jersey involved a shaky witness (that jilted mistress) and a tricky toxicology problem. ...

Back in the mid-to-late sixties, sux was likely considered a “perfect poison” as no tried-and-true method for detecting it in tissues was developed until the 1980s. Previous analysis had holes – including the analysis presented in both of Coppolino’s trials. It wasn’t sux that was detected, but the metabolites succinic acid and choline.