Vintage photo of Ex-detective Rodney Whitchelo

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He extorted SoftCo through a letter he sent to them, and kept in touch with the company through personal ads where he signed himself as "Arthur Francis Grayson", which he said stood for "AntiFreeze Guy". He had spent some years in advertising and marketing with a small company in Greenwich, which had taught him that he should always market whatever he was involved with in a distinctive way. From Home Entertainment magazine he chose the image that was to appear beneath the logo of Welcome to the Mardi Gra Experience. A fluent French speaker, he chose Mardi because his first hit was on a Tuesday and the Gra, minus the final s, so that his quarry would always know that it was him.

Turns out what he was actually doing was smuggling immense amounts of coke. He refused to say a word to cops or in his own trial. Just pled out, and went to jail. Turns out the guy was smuggling for Pablo Escobar and would have been killed if he talked.”

Product tampering

They would put tape on one of the scanners so when the associate tried to scan their badge, it wouldn’t work. The workers had to input their four-digit ID into the computer to put up the assistance menu. And from there they would cancel the item. What he wanted was the completion of the grand plan,' she said. 'The object of the exercise was some form of mental stimulation.' The fact that he killed people before requesting a ransom suggests a personal motive, even though it involves enriching himself. It can't be excluded that he is a disgruntled and/or former employee of SoftCo, though it is more likely that his rage was directed at society in general. Likewise, his choice of the product could be relevant or not. In all likelihood, he wrote letters to people in positions of power and, feeling ignored by them, he escalated to the poisonings. Also, the offender probably keeps a journal of some kind, detailing his activities and talking about his frustrations.

Devoted to each other – Helena Kennedy teased them that she would write a sitcom about them – outside the law the couple were avid theatregoers, travellers and visitors to art galleries. Throughout her life Lowry was a voracious reader, particularly of biographies and novels. After receiving the third letter, the police attempted to communicate with "Sally" by covertly taking out a classified advert in the Bournemouth Daily Echo to buy more time. After receiving no response in three weeks, the senior investigating officer, Detective Superintendent Phil James, convened a meeting with other senior officers from across the United Kingdom to assess the threat posed. [1] Bombings [ edit ] A Tesco store in Bournemouth The police investigation into the campaign, codenamed Operation Hornbill, was one of the most secretive ever undertaken by Dorset Police [1] and one of the largest in British policing history. [3] After receiving the second letter, which had been damaged by fire, police made enquiries with the Royal Mail and discovered that a fire had been reported in a postbox on Bradpole Road, Bournemouth, leading to speculation that "Sally"—the alias by which all the letters were signed—had changed his mind and attempted to destroy the letter. They received a third letter on 29 August 2000, in which "Sally" claimed to have prepared letter bombs to send to Tesco's customers. [1] Detective Sergeant Rodney Whitchelo either read the document or independently decided to act on the methodology we had outlined. He threatened a major supermarket chain that he would poison baby food if he was not paid off. The piece told the story of Rodney Witchelo who mounted a campaign against a supermarket and food manufacturers in 1988.

Antisocial weaponry

She retired from the bench in 1995 and became a member of the criminal injuries compensation board until 2000. In 1996 she was a member of the criminal law revision committee. She was made a Freeman of the City of London in 1985. It was years later, we found out he had traveled south. There he got into some gambling stuff. And eventually opened a bank out of his hotel room, which was not a real bank. Then, when he or his mules would hit the tables, the money changers would call the bank to confirm the players had enough money to cover. Of course, they did.

Possibly the smartest was former Metropolitan Police Detective Sergeant Rodney Whitchelo who was sentenced to 17 years imprisonment in the late 1980s.

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The event that had changed Edgar Pearce from a reasonably successful and social character into an unstable extortionist had occurred in 1992 when he had collapsed in the street, the court was told. He had suffered a stroke and epileptic fits. The threats were taken so seriously by Tesco that the company manufactured 100,000 special reward cards to be used in cash machines.

Removing products from shelves and lost sales revenues went into the millions of dollars. Consumers lost faith in the product and retailers, and shopped out of town to buy alternate products. No one was ever charged or convicted of the poisonings, though one New York resident was convicted of extortion for sending a letter to Johnson & Johnson that took responsibility for the deaths and demanded a financial sum to make them stop. But there wasn’t any evidence tying him to the actual poisoning. However, she possessed immense charm and made people feel they wanted to help her. One day, as she was telling the Gray’s Inn librarian that she had not been successful in finding a pupillage, she was overheard by the great criminal advocate of his day, CGL Du Cann, father of Richard and Edward, who took her on. Later she joined the set of Edward Cussen, then senior Treasury counsel at the Old Bailey.

Surprisingly, not all criminals are idiots. Just ask these law enforcers. They reveal the criminals that outsmarted them. Content has been edited for clarity purposes. His Victims Were The Elders I detained him without conflict, but he failed to have any form of ID or provide his name. Our unit rolled him to the nearest station to have him processed. This time was when she got the closest to being caught, a customer was trying to make a return for something she bought, but it wasn’t on her receipt. There were several items at the top of her receipt that she didn’t buy. Now it was like one am, and there wasn’t any senior staff up right now. The watch sergeant didn’t want to accept the patient until a medical professional cleared him. Problem was, the suspect denied being seen by the ambulance crew. When that happened, we brought him to a local emergency room. The suspect refused treatment. Now what?