Crime Roundup

Mahmoud Maawad, a 29 year old Egyptian who has been here “illegally since 1999, when his visitor’s visa expired" has pled guilty in Federal Court in Memphis to fraud for buying “merchandise from a company that sells aviation-related training materials” using a “depleted bank account.” The case sounds more serious than your average internet shopping faux pas: A search of Maawad’s apartment turned up “charts on the layout of the Memphis airport and DVDs on pilot training, including one titled ‘How an Airline Captain Should Look and Act.’”

In Santa Ana, two more defendants were added to the case of an apparent family of spies. In what could be another case of undercharging, the five family members are all charged with making false statements and being an unregistered agent of China. One of the original defendants, Chi Mak, is alleged to have purloined information from the "Anaheim defense contractor where he was lead engineer on a sensitive research project involving propulsion systems for Navy warships" with the intent to send it to China.

Chi's brother Tai Wang Mak apparently encrypted some of the data for storage in a hard drive. The evidence includes “lists in Chinese asking [Chi] Mak to get documents about submarine torpedo technology, electromagnetic artillery systems, weapon standardization, early warning technology used to detect incoming missiles, and defenses used against nuclear attack.” Chi Mack’s wife Rebecca Laiwah Chiu, his brother Tai Wang’s wife Fuk Heung Li, and Li’s 26 year old son Billy Mack are also charged

Jerry Buck Inman

1888's Jack the Ripper may have been the first serial killer, and the question of why this kind of violence came into being is an interesting one. The most likely offenders seem to be the heightened anonymity of the new urban landscapes, the lack of fixed social norms and gender roles, and the end of thousands of years of both 1) male ownership of women, and 2) the existence of a social role for the sociopathically or violently inclined man. For most of human history, brutal and personal combat was normal for at least some members of society. So it doesn’t seem that surprising that our recent move in the West to a more remote kind of killing, by closing off a path to controlled violence, could inadvertently make monsters.

In South Carolina Jerry Buck Inman, 35 has confessed to the murder of a 20-year old Clemson University student and at least two other crimes. Murder victim Tiffany Marie Souers had been “found wearing only a bra on the bedroom floor of her apartment. She was strangled with [a] bikini top and her wrists and ankles were bound.” Inman also confessed to a “May 23 incident in which authorities said he broke into a home and tried to attack a 24-year-old woman after she came home for lunch.” Authorities expect to charge him with a May 24 rape. Inman is a registered sex offender, having been released in 2005 after serving a 16-year Florida prison term. Inman’s lawyer said that Inman “is overwhelmed by the attention this case has received so far," and that "I think he's a little shell-shocked by everything that has gone on so far."

Lastly, in Houston, the evidence that we have a dysfunctional society continues to mount: “About two dozen gang members armed with baseball bats and tire irons attacked a 14-year-old in a city park, and a teenage girl in the group stabbed him to death, police said.” There have been no arrests.