Uncle John’s True Crime (26 page)

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The term “M.O.” from the Latin
modus operandi
(“mode of operating”) was first applied to catching crooks based on their habits in the 1880s. The theory was developed by English constable Major L. W. Atcherley.

Police dogs are sometimes trained in a foreign language so that criminals can’t command them
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Here’s a swashbuckling article from
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into Canada
about pirates and privateers. Both occupations require the same skills: looting, murdering, plundering, and kidnapping. The only real difference is sponsorship—a pirate works for himself and his crew, but a privateer is sanctioned by his own government as long as he pays a portion of his loot and attacks (mostly) its enemies’ ships. Here are some of the most legendary Canadian criminals to ever hit the high seas
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R
OBERT CHEVALIER DE BEAUCHÊNE

How he lived:
Even before Robert Chevalier de Beauchêne became a privateer, he lived a storied life. Whether the stories were true is another matter—Chevalier had a reputation of exaggerating. In 1693, at the age of seven, Chevalier ran away from his home near Montreal (or maybe was kidnapped...no one knows for sure) and was adopted by an Iroquois tribe. His parents retrieved him a year or two later, but Chevalier had already gotten a taste of adventure. He soon ran away again, this time attaching himself to a band of Algonquins who had sided with French colonists fighting British invaders. While helping to defend the settlement of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, Chevalier met up with a group of Acadian privateers. He was so dazzled by their tales of life on the high seas that he joined their crew. After an apprenticeship spent pillaging English colonies along the North American coast, he got a ship and crew and struck out on his own.

What became of him:
Canada remained his home port, but Chevalier died in France in 1731 while dueling for a woman’s affections.

PETER EASTON

How he lived:
Not all pirates start out bad. Peter Easton was a naval officer from a distinguished military family. In 1602, Queen Elizabeth I gave him three warships and sent him to Newfoundland to protect its fishing fleet from pirates and the encroachments of the Spanish. Easton had a great year in Newfoundland piloting his ship, the
Happy Adventure
, through a series of lucrative encounters. Unfortunately, the next year something terrible happened: peace broke out. When James I succeeded
Elizabeth, he promptly negotiated a treaty with Spain and canceled all privateer commissions. Easton, suddenly out of a job, decided to ignore his new orders. Over the next few years, he bought more ships and “recruited” large crews. (Actually, he press-ganged Newfoundland fishermen to work on his ships.) He continued to attack Spanish vessels, but also decided to diversify, demanding protection money from English ships as well. He even blockaded the busy Bristol Channel in southwestern England, demanding tolls from any ship that wanted to pass through. Eventually, Easton became one of the most successful pirates of the 17th century.

FBI’s first “Public Enemy #1”: Al Capone
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What became of him:
Sometimes crime
does
pay. Around 1610, after several years of pirating, Easton retired to Savoy in southern France with about 2 million pounds’ worth of gold. There, he married a noblewoman, attained the title of Marquis of Savoy, and lived for at least another 10 years before apparently dying peacefully.

JOHN NUTT

How he lived:
John Nutt became a pirate without going through the legal pretense of first being a privateer. Born in England, Nutt visited Newfoundland as a gunner on a ship in 1620. He loved the town of Torbay and resettled his family there before embarking on a life of piracy in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the Irish Sea. Nutt was an equal-opportunist who offered protection to English and French settlements alike...for a price. He also recruited sailors by offering regular wages and commissions, a pay and benefit package that lured many men away from the Royal Navy.

What became of him:
We don’t know. He almost died by hanging in 1623, but George Calvert, an English politician who had been one of Nutt’s protection clients, intervened and had him released. Nutt was still pirating as of 1632, but after that, he disappeared.

PIERRE LE MOYNE D’IBERVILLE

How he lived:
He was born in Montreal, but had family ties to France. As a sailor and privateer, d’Iberville became renowned for siding with the French to drive English settlers out of Newfoundland. Despite a 1687 “live-and-let-fish” treaty, which allowed the English and French to coexist and fish in the Grand Banks, d’Iberville led raiding parties that
terrorized towns along the coast. Over four months in the winter of 1696–97, d’Iberville and his men destroyed 36 settlements. For his splendid work, the French government sent him to the area that’s now Louisiana so he could set up a garrison to ward off English ships. Then in 1706, d’Iberville captured the English-held Caribbean island of Nevis and made plans to attack the Carolina colony on the North American mainland. He traveled to Havana, Cuba, to recruit Spanish aid for that venture.

Duh! A hijacker once took over a public bus in Argentina—and insisted on being driven to Cuba
.

What became of him:
In Havana, he caught yellow fever and died. Colonists up and down the North American coast breathed a sigh of relief.

JOSEPH BAKER

How he lived:
Some pirates weren’t worthy of waving the Jolly Roger. Take Canadian-born Joseph Baker. In 1800, he signed on to the merchant schooner
Eliza
. With two other crewman he’d recruited for his plot, Baker attacked the first mate during a night watch and tossed him overboard. Then the men went after the captain, William Wheland, wounding him in a brief skirmish and taking him hostage. But during a discussion of where to sell the ship’s cargo, the mutineers realized that none of them actually knew how to navigate the ship. Sensing an opportunity, Wheland offered to sail them anywhere they wanted...if they spared his life. Baker agreed, but he wasn’t an honorable man. When Wheland learned that Baker intended to murder him as soon as they sighted land, he locked the other conspirators in the hold, caught Baker by surprise, and chased him up the mainmast.

What became of him:
Wheland kept Baker up there, lashed to the mast, until they landed on St. Kitts in the West Indies, and then turned him over to the authorities. After a four-day trial in April 1800, Baker and his pals were hanged.

HONORABLE MENTION: THE SALADIN MUTINEERS

How they lived:
During the mid-1800s, Peruvian guano (excrement from seabirds) was a valuable commodity for manufacturing fertilizer and gunpowder. In 1844, the
Saladin
, a three-masted British ship, sailed from the coast of Peru carrying a huge load of guano and a small fortune in silver. Onboard were a man named George Fielding and his 12-year-old son.
The elder Fielding, it turned out, was a guano smuggler on the run from Peruvian authorities. He convinced a half-dozen crewmen to take control of the ship and kill the captain and five others. Later, though, the mutineers became suspicious of Fielding and threw both him and his son overboard. Near Country Harbour in Nova Scotia, they decided to run the ship aground and make off with the cargo.

Handwriting analysis was used to detect forgery in ancient Rome
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What became of them:
Soon after, Canadian authorities caught the six men and put them on trial. Four were found guilty and hanged, but two others were acquitted—the jury believed they’d only joined the mutiny out of fear that they’d be killed.

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The prisoner who spent the most time in the notorious prison on San Francisco’s Alcatraz Island was Canadian. Alvin “Old Creepy” Karpis was born (without the nickname and with Karpowicz as his last name) in Montreal in 1908. By his 10th birthday, he’d fallen in with a bad crowd that corrupted his morals and shortened his last name. First arrested for burglary in 1926, Old Creepy got hired into an entry-level position in the murderous Barker Gang and quickly worked his way up the ladder to an upper management position, increasing gang profits by innovating a successful strategy of kidnapping industrialists for ransom. Victims included William Hamm Jr. of the Hamm’s Brewing Company (netting $100,000, the equivalent of $1.5 million in modern money) and Edward Bremer, president of a Minnesota bank ($200,000/$3 million). As proof of his commitment to the organization, Karpis had his fingerprints surgically removed so he couldn’t be traced easily.

Unfortunately, United States bureaucrats caught him anyway and arrested him in 1936, sending him briefly to Leavenworth prison in Kansas, and finally to Alcatraz. When Alcatraz closed in 1962, Karpis was transferred to McNeil Island Penitentiary in Washington where he taught a young Charles Manson (whom Karpis called “lazy and shifless”) how to play guitar. In 1969 he was deported to Canada. He died in 1979.

America’s last train robbery took place in the BRI’s home town of Ashland, Oregon (1923)
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The Somali pirates that we see on the news are a far cry from the peg-legged, parrot-shouldered, arrrr-sayin’ marauders of yesteryear. Instead of swords and periscopes, these new pirates carry assault rifles and satellite phones. And, as twisted as it may seem, they’ve become folk heroes to a nation in turmoil
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T
HE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE ON EARTH

Few countries are more unstable and chaotic than Somalia. Located on the Horn of Africa, the continent’s eastern-most point, Somalia lies right next to the Gulf of Aden and its busy shipping lanes, carrying passengers and cargo from all over the world.

In 1991 Somalia’s government collapsed, leaving its nine million citizens to endure two decades of insurgencies, civil war, genocide, famine, drought, corruption, and crime. In 2008 more than 1,800 civilians were killed in violent clashes, and by the next year, more than 1.3 million people were displaced within Somalia and another 330,000 had fled to neighboring countries. Thousands more died from starvation and disease. Although there’s now a U.N.-backed government in power, it’s spending most of its resources fighting a fringe Islamic insurgency. And with no navy patrolling Somalia’s waters, other nations have taken the opportunity to overfish the waters and dump their toxic waste there. But it’s in those same waters that many Somalis see their salvation.

SEEKING NEW OPPORTUNITIES

With little hope at home and few prospects if they flee, some young Somali men have taken to a life of piracy. It’s not much more dangerous than trying to survive on the war-torn streets, and the pay is a lot better: A pirate can make $10,000 for a successful raid. (Somalia’s average wage is below $650 per year.)

Attacking from speedboats and armed with AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, pirates stop ships and rob them of cash and equipment. The real prize, however, comes from taking hostages and collecting ransom for their release. The practice has become so profitable that at any given time, there are at least 200 hostages being held in the
Gulf of Aden by Somali pirates. “They have a great business model,” according to Admiral Rick Gurnon, head of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. “See ships, take ransom, and make millions.” Says one young pirate, “Foreign navies can do nothing to stop piracy.”

$127 billion per year of Italy’s GDP (about 7%) is attributed to organized crime
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DAVID VS. GOLIATH

Just how brash
are
Somali pirates? No ship is too big to take on, and no ransom demand is too high. But that doesn’t mean they don’t sometimes bite off more than they can chew:

• In 2005 the U.S. cruise ship
Seabourn Spirit
was carrying 311 crew and passengers through the Gulf of Aden. Two speedboats carrying 10 pirates raced up and started firing machine guns and grenades at the liner. The
Spirit’s
security team blasted the pirates with a high-pressure water cannon and then pierced their eardrums with an LRAD, or Long Range Acoustic Device, which emits a debilitating sound wave. The confrontation ended when the massive cruise ship simply ran over one of the speedboats.

• In 2006 two U.S. Navy warships spotted a suspicious vessel towing two fishing boats 25 miles off Somalia’s coast. This is a standard tactic for pirates: One medium-size “mothership” tows two smaller boats, which carry out the raids. The warships tailed the pirates through the night, and at dawn the Navy sent two boats to investigate. The pirates opened fire on the boarding party. It was the first attack on a U.S. Navy ship in the 21st century. The destroyers easily disabled the fishing boats.

• Seven Somali pirates spotted what appeared to be a commercial tanker on the horizon in March 2009. They approached it and started firing at its hull. But it wasn’t a commercial ship...and it wasn’t alone. Belonging to the German navy, the heavily armed tanker was participating in “Operation Atalanta”—a military operation designed to combat piracy. The pirates turned around and fled, but by then they’d attracted the attention of an international fleet that included two Greek warships, a Dutch frigate, a Spanish warship, a U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship, several Spanish fighter planes, and two U.S. Marine Cobra helicopters. The armada easily captured the pirates.

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On November 29, 2009, about 800 miles off Somalia’s coast, pirates closed in on the
Maran Centaurus
, a Greek vessel carrying a crew of 28
people...and two million barrels of crude oil, worth $150 million. The pirates boarded the ship and captured the crew—who didn’t dare fight back because a single shot could have ignited the oil and blown up the ship. What followed was a month-and-a-half-long standoff, which lasted until the ship’s owner agreed to the ransom demands on January 18, 2010. But shortly before delivery, a rival group of pirates sped up to the ship, firing their weapons, determined to grab the ransom for themselves. The pirates onboard the
Maran Centaurus
, knowing how combustible the cargo was, actually radioed an anti-piracy task force for help. A nearby warship dispatched two helicopters to protect the ship
and
the pirates. A short time later, a plane flew over and dropped a package containing $9 million—the largest haul in the history of Somali piracy. The hostages, all unharmed, were released. And the pirates took their loot back home.