Murder investigations have become more popular over the past hundred million years or so. Even very old unsolved murder cases sometimes arouse public interest. Here is a newly reported very old case: “Death by ammonite: fatal ingestion of an ammonoid shell by an Early Jurassic bony fish,” Samuel L. A. Cooper and Erin E. Maxwell, […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has three segments. Here are bits of each of them: Double Jeopardy — … Jane Ridley assesses a tough legal problem in an Insider.com article with an extremely long headline: “Identical college twins were accused of cheating in an exam by signaling. They won $1.5 million […]
Perfect murders are more common in actual life than in crime fiction—and also more highly approved, suggests this forensic study: “How to Commit a Perfect Murder,” Mark Cooney, International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, vol. 43, 2015, pp. 295-309. The author, at the University of Georgia, explains: Curiously, social science has ignored the problem […]
If you (yup, you) use a fake weapon to brutally beat a stranger, and then slit his throat, and then shoot him in the face, and then you assault a little baby, will your heart and blood pump like mad — even if you know that it’s all a trick and the man will suffer […]
The number of murders on British television murder shows is to die for, if you are the sort that lives for that variety of entertainment. This study takes a narrow, sharp plunge into the relevant facts: “Misrepresentation of UK homicide characteristics in popular culture,” J. Brown, N.S. Hughes, M.C. McGlen, and J.H.M. Crichton, Journal of […]
Scholarly fans of British hitmen have managed to rank the members of that profession. Hitmen in Britain, according to this study, essentially come in four varieties: Novice, Dilettente, Journeyman, and Master. Details are published in: “The British Hitman: 1974–2013,” Donal MacIntyre, David Wilson, Elizabeth Yardley [pictured here], Liam Brolan, The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, […]
Citation databases contain some items that contain some degree of mystery. Here’s one such item from the Pubmed database: Dtsch Z Gesamte Gerichtl Med. 1952;41(3):240-2. [Murder with animal hair]. [Article in Undetermined Language] PROKOP O.
There may be more meat-eating plants out there than we previously thought: It’s all about defining your terms. “Murderous plants: Victorian Gothic, Darwin and modern insights into vegetable carnivory,” Mark W. Chase, Maarten J. M. Christenhusz, Dawn Sanders, Michael F. Fay, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 161 (4), December 2009, pp. 329-356. DOI: 10.1111/j.1095-8339.2009.01014.x. The authors […]
Two subjects we’ve written about will come together in London on November 30. John Troyer, the man behind this (The Ghoulish State of Necrophilia Law) and this (Corpse case arises anew, again) will talk at a showing of the documentary film about this (The First Lady of Miniature CSI). It will happen at a venue […]
John E duPont, the multimillionaire (heir to the DuPont chemical fortune), the trained ornithologist who discovered and officially named more than a dozen new (sub)species of birds, collector of stamps, birds and shells, founder of the Delaware Museum of Natural History, the paranoid schizophrenic who was jailed after murdering an Olympic wrestler in 1996, died […]