342
error account that was never
checked or spotted by a senior
compliance officer, and the
numbers continued to build.
Leeson suffered disastrous losses
after the Kobe earthquake in Japan,
and fled the country. He was
arrested in Frankfurt later that year
and sentenced to six and a half
years in prison for fraud and forgery.
See also: Bernie Madoff 116–21
■ Jérôme Kerviel 124–25JEAN-CLAUDE ROMAND
10 January 1993French imposter Romand crashed
out of his medical course after
failing his exams, but spent 18
years pretending to be a qualified
doctor and researcher, albeit
without any actual position. He
convinced his wife that he was an
expert in arteriosclerosis, and was
investing his earnings in hedge
funds while he lived off her money.
Believing that he was about to be
exposed, Romand snapped in 1993,
and murdered his wife, children,
parents, and mistress to ensure
that his secret was safe. He then
attempted suicide, taking pills and
setting his house alight – however,
the pills were ineffective and the
fire poorly timed. Romand was
rescued but arrested when the
bodies were discovered. He was
sentenced to life in jail.
See also: The Crawford Inheritance
66–67 ■ Harry Domela 70–73PAUL BERNARDO AND
KARLA HOMOLKA
1990–92This Canadian couple raped
and murdered teenage girls in
Scarborough, Ontario – startingwith Homolka’s younger sister,
Tammy, in 1990. Homolka had
apparently promised Bernardo her
sister’s virginity as a Christmas
present. Sedated, Tammy Homolka
choked on her own vomit midway
through the assault, and died. In
1991, the pair struck again, killing
14-year-old Leslie Mahaffy. In 1992,
they raped and killed 15-year-old
Kristen French. The spree ended
in 1993, when police investigated
a series of rapes, and found that
Bernardo’s DNA matched the
perpetrator’s. Homolka, meanwhile,
had moved in with her family after
being severely beaten by Bernardo.
She confessed to their crimes,
and was sentenced to 12 years.
Homolka was released in 2005, but
Bernardo remains behind bars.
See also: Ian Brady and Myra
Hindley 284–85THE CARLTON HOTEL
JEWELLERY HEIST
11 August 1994The setting for the Cary Grant–
Grace Kelly film To Catch a Thief
(1955), the Intercontinental Carlton
in Cannes, France, became the
scene for possibly the most
audacious real-life jewel heist of all
time. Three gunmen burst into the
hotel’s jewellery store with machine
guns blazing, and escaped with
jewellery worth around £47.5
million. Police later discovered that
the guns were firing blanks. The
robbers were never found. In 2013,
the hotel was targeted once again,
when an armed robber walked into
a jewellery exhibition in a salon off
the lobby, and stole items worth
over £79 million.
See also: The Antwerp Diamond
Heist 54–55 ■ The Hatton Garden
Heist 58–59RAINER KÖRPPEN
1 October 1996With his son Sven acting as an
accomplice, house painter Rainer
Körppen took millionaire German
businessman Jakub Fiszman from
his Eschborn office and held him
for ransom. Nine days later, the
demand was met, but when police
entered the kidnappers’ mountain
hideout a few weeks later, they
found Fiszman’s body. He had been
dead for some time. The Körppens
had abducted Fiszman’s six-year-
old nephew six years earlier. Unlike
his uncle, the boy was released
once the ransom was paid.
See also: The Lindbergh Baby
Kidnapping 178–85THE WEST MESA MURDERS
2001–05In 2009, the remains of 11 women
and a foetus were found in open
country west of Albuquerque. They
had been buried in shallow graves
a few years before. All of the
victims were prostitutes and all
had been reported missing. While
forensic evidence offered little
insight into how the victims were
killed – or by whom – their similar
ages, lifestyles, and burials have led
investigators to think that a single
serial killer killed them all.
See also: Craig Jacobsen 252–53
■ Ted Bundy 276–83THE MURDER OF
MEREDITH KERCHER
1 November 2007The body of this British exchange
student – who had been raped,
stabbed, and suffocated – wasDIRECTORY
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343
OSCAR PISTORIUS
14 February 2013The South African paralympic
sprinter fired four shots through a
closed bathroom door at his house
in Pretoria, and killed his girlfriend,
Reeva Steenkamp. Pistorius
claimed that he thought there was
an intruder and acted to defend
himself and Steenkamp. The
prosecution appealed a conviction
of “culpable homicide”, and he
was found guilty of murder in 2015.
The brevity of Pistorius’s six-year
sentence shocked both prosecutors
and women’s rights activists – the
minimum for murder is normally
15 years in South Africa. In August
2016, a plea to increase the length
of the sentence was rejected.
See also: Dr Crippen 216
■ O.J. Simpson 246–51DEREK WHITE
2014–16A Canadian driver on the NASCAR- National Association for Stock
Car Auto Racing – circuit, White
was part of a £396 million tobacco
smuggling ring. White, of Mohawk
descent, lived in Kahnawake,
Montreal, and much of the tobacco
brought from North Carolina was
sold on this and other Indian
Reserves, to avoid the high taxes
that the Canadian government
placed on tobacco sales. White
was also involved in transporting
tobacco over the border. Several
other members of the smuggling
ring were arrested, and White gave
himself up in March 2016. He was
suspended by NASCAR that April.
See also: The Theft of the World
Cup 37 ■ “Freeway” Rick Ross
168–71
BOKO HARAM
14 April 2014This militant Islamist group
abducted 276 schoolgirls from a
secondary school in the town of
Chibok, northeast Nigeria. The girls
were taken to insurgent territory
farther north. Around 70 of the girls
escaped or were released, but more
than 200 remain captive as
negotiations continue. Twenty-one
girls were released in a deal
brokered by the Red Cross and the
Swiss government, but conflicting
reports – all denied by officials –
claim that girls were either
exchanged for the release of Boko
Haram commanders held by the
government, or a large ransom.
See also: The Kidnapping of Patty
Hearst 188–89 ■ The Chowchilla
Kidnapping 190–95BANGLADESH CENTRAL
BANK HEIST
5 January 2016Founded in 1973, SWIFT – the
Society for Worldwide Interbank
Financial Telecommunication –
runs a closed computer network for
many of the world’s major banks to
transfer funds. In 2016, a group of
unknown hackers used the
identities of employees from
Bangladesh Central Bank (a SWIFT
member) to send dozens of illegal
transfer requests – totalling almost
£673 million – to foreign banks.
Many of the transfers were blocked
or recovered, but £64 million
vanished. Whether it was an inside
job or the work of ingenious hackers
remains unknown.
See also: The Société Générale
Bank Heist 44 ■ The Hatton
Garden Heist 58–59found locked inside her room in
Perugia, Italy. Amanda Knox, her
American roommate, called the
police when she returned home and
found the door locked. Knox was
soon implicated in the murder – as
was her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele
Sollecito, and local criminal Rudy
Guede, whose bloody handprint
was discovered at the scene. All
three were convicted, but there
was little evidence linking Knox or
Sollecito to the murder. Knox also
claimed that she was manipulated
and physically intimidated by the
Italian police when they questioned
her. Knox spent close to four years
in an Italian jail. After a media
circus that lasted several years,
both Knox and Sollectio were
cleared. Guede remains in prison.
See also: Kirk Bloodsworth
242–43 ■ The Dreyfus Affair
310 –11DIANA, HUNTRESS OF
BUS DRIVERS
August 2013Clad in black, and wearing a blonde
wig, a middle-aged woman shot
and killed two bus drivers on two
consecutive days in Mexico’s
Ciudad Juàrez. An E-mail to a local
news agency, purportedly from
“Diana, Huntress of Bus Drivers”,
claimed responsibility for the
attacks. More than 100 women had
been raped, murdered, and left in
car parks or the desert after
boarding the city’s buses. “Diana”,
herself a victim, held the drivers
responsible, and saw the shootings
as a way to bring the killers to
justice. Despite searches, police in
Juàrez were unable to discover the
vigilante’s true identity.
See also: Phoolan Devi 46–47
■ Lizzie Borden 208–11DIRECTORY
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