Uncle John’s True Crime (42 page)

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• In 1849 a man named William Thompson would walk up to strangers in New York City and, after making friends with them, ask, “Have you confidence in me to trust me with your watch until tomorrow?” If they said yes, Thompson would gratefully borrow the watch...and then keep it. When he was caught, the prosecutors referred to him as a “confidence man.” That didn’t fit on headlines, so newspapers shortened it to “con man.”

• Another trickster in 1840s New York was Alec Hoag. He used prostitutes to lure men into hotel rooms. When the men’s clothes were on the floor, Hoag lifted money from the pockets via a hole in the wall. He was known for his ability to stay one step ahead of the police...and brag about it all over the city. The nickname the cops gave to Hoag survives as a slang term used to describe an intelligent, cocky person: “smart alec.”

That’s teetotaling: In the 1820s, a temperance movement tried to ban coffee and nearly succeeded
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Uncle John loves those clever spy gadgets in the James Bond movies devised by Q. It turns out that some of them are real. Here are a few actual spy tools
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I
T LOOKS LIKE:
A cigarette

BUT IT’S REALLY:
A .22-caliber gun

DESCRIPTION:
This brand of cigarette packs a powerful puff. Intended as an escape tool, the weapon only carries a single round, but with good aim it can inflict a lethal wound from close range. To fire the cigarette, the operator must twist the filtered end counterclockwise, then squeeze the same end between the thumb and forefinger. Warning: Don’t shoot the weapon in front of your face or body—it has a nasty recoil.

IT LOOKS LIKE:
A pencil

BUT IT’S REALLY:
A .22-caliber pistol

DESCRIPTION:
Like the cigarette gun, this camouflaged .22 comes preloaded with a single shot. The weapon is fired in the same manner as the cigarette: simply turn the pencil’s eraser counterclockwise and squeeze. The only difference between the weapons is that the pencil has a greater firing distance—up to 30 feet.

IT LOOKS LIKE:
A belt buckle

BUT IT’S REALLY:
A hacksaw

DESCRIPTION:
Fitted inside a hollow belt buckle is a miniature hacksaw. When the buckle is opened, a small amount of pressure is released from the saw’s frame, exerting tension on the blade. This makes the saw a more efficient cutting machine, keeping the blade taut when sawing through, for example, handcuffs. The belt buckle saw will cut through anything from steel to concrete in about 15 minutes and will tear through rope and nylon. Don’t wear belts? Buckles can be put on coats and luggage, too.

IT LOOKS LIKE:
Eyeglasses

BUT IT’S REALLY:
A dagger

DESCRIPTION:
Concealed in the temple arms of these CIA glasses are
two sharp blades. Disguised as the reinforcing wire found in most eyeglass frames, the daggers are designed to be used once and broken off at the hilt, inside the victim. The lenses are cutting tools, too. The lower edges are ground to razor sharpness and can be removed by heating or breaking the frames.

Don’t bet on it: 76% of Americans say they have never participated in illegal gambling
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IT LOOKS LIKE:
A felt-tip marker

BUT IT’S REALLY:
A blister-causing weapon

DESCRIPTION:
Don’t mistake this pen for your Sharpie, and be careful: you wouldn’t want it leaking in your pocket. A little over three inches long, the marker distributes an ointment that creates blisters on the skin. In order to activate the applicator, press the tip down on a surface for one minute—then simply apply a thin coating of the colorless oil over any area, such as a keyboard or door handle. The ointment will penetrate clothing and even shoes, and will cause temporary blindness if it comes in contact with the eyes. Blisters will cover the skin wherever contact is made within 24 hours and will last for about a week.

IT LOOKS LIKE:
Dentures

BUT IT’S REALLY:
A concealment device (and much more)

DESCRIPTION:
What could possibly fit inside a dental plate? A lot more than you’d think. Items such as a cutting wire or a compass can be placed in a small concealment tube and hidden under a false tooth. A rubber-coated poison pill can be carried in the same manner. The poison can either be ingested to avoid capture or poured into an enemy’s food and utilized as a weapon. Radio transceivers can be placed in dental plates, with audio being transmitted through bone conduction. The CIA has even created a dental plate that alters the sound of one’s voice. If all of these gadgets prove ineffective, then the dental plate itself can be removed and its sharp scalloped edge used for digging, cutting, or engaging in hand-to-hand combat.

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James Bond:
“They always said, ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’”
Q:
“Thanks to me, they were right.”

—
Goldeneye

About 200 thefts of nuclear material are reported each year. Most of it is never recovered
.

A young woman is murdered on her wedding night. Her lover is charged with the crime, and the people and newspapers of New York convict him before the trial even begins. Here’s a murder mystery that’s ripped from the headlines...of 1799
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A
SENSATIONAL MURDER

On the evening of December 22, 1799, Gulielma “Elma” Sands got dressed up and left her home—a boarding house at 208 Greenwich Avenue, owned by Elias and Catherine Ring. She was never seen alive again. According to Catherine Ring, Elma’s cousin, the young woman was planning to get married that night. Instead, 11 days later, her body was pulled out of the Manhattan Well, which stood near the intersections of Greene and Spring Streets in what is now SoHo, just a short carriage ride from the boarding house.

Elma’s tragic death was the talk of New York. It was the city’s first big murder mystery, and the press and public speculated over who might have killed her. Soon, suspicion fell on a young carpenter named Levi Weeks, who worked for his brother Ezra Weeks, a prominent, wealthy builder. Levi lived in the same boarding house as Elma and had been courting her for some time; the two were said to be lovers, a scandalous situation in the 18th century. After Catherine Ring claimed that Levi was the man Elma had planned to elope with on the night she disappeared, an inquest was held—and Levi Weeks was indicted for murder.

The newspapers, of course, weighed in with their own version of the story, speculating that Levi had seduced an innocent girl and murdered her because he didn’t want to get married. Then fellow boarder Richard Croucher publicly declared that Weeks had an accomplice in New Jersey who’d confessed to the murder. By the time the trial began in 1800, the public already considered Weeks a guilty man. Elma’s sympathizers packed the courtroom, and those who couldn’t get in milled around outside, yelling, “Crucify him!”

LEVI’S LAWYERS

The U.S. legal system was only 11 years old when the Levi Weeks trial
began, and the idea that anyone accused of murder deserved more than torture or a quick hanging was still new. Trials ran all day—sometimes until well after midnight. Requests for breaks from exhausted lawyers on either side were frowned upon and often denied. Fortunately for Levi, his wealthy brother Ezra rounded up the most brilliant lawyers of the day—Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and Henry Brockholst Livingston—to defend him.

Jesse James once wrote a press release about a train robbery, which he handed to the engineer
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Hamilton, America’s first Secretary of the Treasury, was one of the Founding Fathers and had been a trusted advisor to President George Washington. Burr was a hero of the Revolutionary War and former New York Senator who would go on to become the third vice president of the United States. Livingston was one of the nation’s most prominent attorneys, and in 1802, he would become a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

LOOKING BAD FOR LEVI

The trial began at 10 a.m. on March 31, 1800.
New York Evening Post
editor William Coleman wrote a transcript of the proceedings, making the Weeks spectacle America’s first recorded murder trial. After the jury was chosen, the prosecutor presented his case: Weeks had come to live at the Greenwich boarding house in July 1799 and seduced Elma Sands. He became secretly engaged to her sometime in the fall, promising to elope with her on December 22. On that evening, however, Weeks actually took his fiancée to the Manhattan Well, where he killed her. To back up his argument, the prosecutor presented testimony from a long string of witnesses.

Boarders at the Rings’ home testified that Levi had been in Elma’s room overnight several times, and that they appeared to be lovers. Catherine Ring testified that on December 22, Elma believed she was eloping with Weeks, and the two had exited the house within a short time of one another—Catherine heard them talking on the porch before they left. More witnesses said they’d seen a horse and sleigh near the crime scene that resembled one belonging to Levi’s brother Ezra. There was even testimony from a witness who’d seen Levi measuring the Manhattan Well about a week before Elma disappeared. A medical expert testified that Elma’s body showed signs of being badly beaten and strangled, and Levi was said to have returned to the boarding house looking “pale and nervous” the night Elma disappeared.

By the time the prosecution rested, things didn’t look good for Levi.
Many in the courtroom believed that even the great triad of Hamilton, Burr, and Livingston wouldn’t be able to save his life.

Hello Kitty has appeared on more than 15,000 different products, including an AR-15 assault rifle
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THE DEFENSE TO THE RESCUE

Hamilton and Burr did most of the defense work for the trial. Burr gave a stirring speech, asking the jury to set aside their anger toward Weeks and portraying the carpenter as “an injured and innocent young man” who’d never treated Elma badly. Then the defense brought in its own string of witnesses.

First, the defense established that Levi had an alibi—several people had seen him at Ezra’s house on the evening of December 22, placing him far from the Manhattan Well area at the time Elma disappeared. Other witnesses asserted that Ezra’s horse and sleigh never left the barn. Character witnesses spoke of Levi’s “goodness.” Defense medical experts declared that the marks on Elma’s body could have come from her autopsy rather than from a deadly beating. (The autopsy had been carried out to determine whether Elma was pregnant; she wasn’t.)

The defense also brought in boarders from the Rings’ house on Greenwich Street. But these people contradicted the prosecution’s version of Elma as a happy innocent girl until Levi seduced her. They claimed that Elma used a drug called laudanum—a powerful opiate—and that she’d talked of killing herself with an overdose. One man, who lived in the room next to Elma, said Levi Weeks wasn’t her lover at all. According to him, Elias Ring, the owner of the boarding house, sometimes spent the night with Elma when his wife was away. Levi’s defense team painted the Ring boarding house as a place of sexual intrigue—a kind of 18th-century Peyton Place with Elma as a key player. And as for the prosecution’s star witness, boarder Richard Croucher, the defense showed that he hated Weeks and implied that he might have lied on the witness stand.

A VERDICT AND A CURSE

The trial of Levi Weeks lasted two days—longer than most criminal trials of the time. It broke for recess at 1:00 a.m. the first night, after some jurors nodded off. The next night, it ended after 2 a.m. At that point, the judge bluntly informed the jury that the prosecution’s collection of circumstantial evidence was a flimsy basis for conviction. Five minutes later, the jury returned its verdict: not guilty.

Elvis once volunteered to be an FBI drug informant. (His services were refused.)

As the defense team congratulated each other, it’s said that a furious Catherine Ring—whose dead cousin, marriage, and boarding house had all been dragged through the mud—cursed Alexander Hamilton. She supposedly shouted, “If thee dies a natural death, I shall think there is no justice in heaven!” And eerily, her curse came true five years later, when Hamilton and Burr, by then bitter political enemies, met on the dueling grounds at Weehawken, New Jersey, and Burr shot and killed Hamilton. Burr was eventually acquitted of murder, but his political career was over.

As for Levi Weeks, most New Yorkers disagreed with the jury’s verdict and the young carpenter was run out of town. Sentiments eventually began to change when, less than a year after the trial, Richard Croucher was found guilty of raping a young girl in the Ring boarding house. Levi finally settled in Natchez, Mississippi, where he became a successful architect, married, and had a family.

Today, the Manhattan Well where Elma Sands met her end still exists—it’s in the basement of Manhattan Bistro in Soho. From time to time, employees say, an eerie vapor rises in the kitchen, and Elma’s ghost causes glasses and wine bottles to go flying.

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“Falco,” at the County Sheriff’s Office, Knoxville, Tennessee

In August 2000, David and Pamela Stonebreaker were driving through Knoxville in their recreational vehicle when sheriff’s deputies pulled them over for running a red light. The cops were suspicious and called for backup: a drug-sniffer named Falco. The dog sniffed outside the vehicle and signaled “positive,” so deputies immediately searched the inside of the RV...and found more than a
quarter ton
of marijuana.

But in court, the Stonebreakers’ attorney challenged the search—the dog couldn’t be trusted. It turned out that between 1998 and 2000 Falco had signaled “positive” 225 times and the cops found drugs only 80 times. In other words, the dog was wrong nearly 70% of the time. Falco, the defense argued, was too incompetent to justify searching vehicles based on his “word” alone. The judge agreed and the Stonebreakers (their real name) went free.