Das Criminal
Aamer and Erin bring you weekly true crime with a political twist. Assassinations, terrorism, war crimes, and revolutions—nothing is off-limits! New episodes drop Tuesdays with bonus content available on our Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/dascriminal
Episodes
In 2015, Hitchbot — a hitchhiking robot made from pool noodles and a bucket by the eager students of Canada’s Ryerson University-slash-Toronto Metropolitan University — was dismembered by unidentified assailants on the streets of Philadelphia. Its decapitated cake-container of a head has never been recovered.
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In 1932, the Menzel family purchased Marc Chagall’s painting, Jacob’s Ladder, and hung it in their apartment in Brussels, Belgium. But as the Nazi regime advanced, the Menzels, fearing for their own safety, fled Brussels for the United States, leaving their Chagall painting behind.
A...
On Sunday September 27th, 2015 Marco Muzzo landed at Toronto Pearson International Airport. He was returning on a private jet from a trip to Miami. He got into his SUV and drove off, reaching 85 kilometers per hour (or ~53 mph).
At around 4:10 PM, Muzzo’s SUV sped past a stop sign in Vaughan (a city in Ontario, north of Toronto and within the GTA), smashing a fa...
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On July 21st, 1999, the girls at the Plankinton juvenile detention boot camp in South Dakota were forced to do a 2.7 mile — or 4.3 kilometer — run. Fourteen-year-old Gina Score was having trouble. Gina had not even finished a week at the boot camp, and she almost immediately fell behind the other girls.
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On August 10th, 2021, the Dandong City court found Michael Spavor guilty of espionage and sentenced him to 11 years in prison and the payment of a fine and deportation following the sentence. Spavor was arrested alongside another Canadian, Michael Kovrig, on charges of espionage in December of 2018. The “Two Michaels,” as the cases are commonly known, have caused a stir in Canadian politics and strai...
On June 4th, 2008, Jodi Arias murdered Travis Alexander — her ex, her on-again/off-again boyfriend, her friend-with-benefits, her stalking victim, or her fuck buddy, depending on how you view their relationship. Media pundits like Nancy Grace saw this as a case of a beautiful, narcissistic psychopath slaughtering her ex-boyfriend in cold blood. Arias’s defense team painted her as a woman abused.
In the early hours of December 28, 2015, Lynn Witteveen was woken up in her Haggis Drive, Peterborough home by a commotion in the kitchen. She made her way to the source of the noise just in time to see her partner, Dr. Andrew Chan, plead with his son Thomas as Thomas stabbed him to death.
Thomas then turned his attention to Lynn. He stabs her multiple times, bu...
When details emerged abo...
At his inaugural address in 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace infamously declared, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” An avowed racist, he opposed the Civil Rights Movement and its mission to end legalized racial discrimination in the United States. To label him a “controversial” figure would be an injustice to the people he hated and devoted his political career to opp...
On November 8th, 2010, three intruders entered the Pan family household in Markham, Ontario near Toronto. After stealing the cash in the home, they tied up the family's 24-year-old daughter, Jennifer, and shot her parents. Her mother, Bich, died instantly, but her father, Han, miraculously survived.
When York Regional arrived at the scene, they quickly realized that not everything was as it seemed. They turned their attention towar...
On May 28th, 2014, a group of five adults and one child attempted to proselytize people in a McDonald's in Zhaoyuan, China. When a woman name Wu Shuoyan refused to give them her contact information, they beat her to death inside the restaurant.
Join us for a deep dive into cults and new religious movements in China, Mao's stance on religion, the so-called Eastern Lightning sect and its female Jesus, and a family whose collective de...
Between February 13 and February 15, 1945, RAF and USAAF bombers flew over the German city of Dresden, dropping hundreds of tons of incendiary and high explosive bombs over the densely populated city. Incendiary bombs caused a widespread fire that ravaged the city. All in all, the attack resulted in around 25,000 Germans killed and many more injured.
In the weeks and years that followed, the attack on Dresden would occupy a centra...
This episode is upcycled from our Patreon page; it was originally published in April for our Connolly Collective. We will be back next week with a brand new episode!
It is April 15th, 1989. Your club, Liverpool FC, have reached the semi-finals of the oldest club competition in the world - the FA Cup. They are due to face Nottingham Forest in the neutral venue of Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield.
Somehow, you manage to snag a coupl...
If you search for biographies of Marie Antoinette, most of them focus on her fashion sense, her romantic relationships, and even how some of the French tabloids published misleading stories about her, such as the infamous “Let them eat cake” line and the Diamond Necklace Affair. It’s almost as though — nearly 230 years after her execution — we’re meant to believe that Marie Antoinette was a victim of...
In this episode, we continue our discussion on the death of Frank Olson ― the U.S. Army biochemist who mysteriously fell out a New York City hotel window in 1953.
Content warning: This episode includes discussions of drug use and possible suicide. If you feel suicidal and need to talk, Wikipedia has a list of crisis lines around the world.
Please check out decolonizepalestine.com to learn more about things like greenwashing!
In the early hours of November 28th, 1953, U.S. Army biochemist Frank Olson plummeted out the window of room 1018A at the Statler Hotel in New York City. Though his colleagues first reported this as a jump or fall, details about Frank Olson's opposition to the use of bioweapons in the Korean War, his connections to the CIA's Project MKUltra, and a recent unwitting LSD trip would eventually come to light.
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On Thursday, former reality TV star and right-wing lobbyist Josh Duggar was arrested by U.S. Marshals; Friday, news broke that Duggar is charged with receiving and possessing child sexual abuse images.
These aren’t the first allegations of sex crimes against children for Josh Duggar; in 2015, In Touch Weekly reported that b...
On February 17th, 2015, three teenage girls from Bethnal Green, London, boarded a flight at Gatwick Airport for Istanbul, Turkey. The schoolgirls — Amira Abase, Shamima Begum, and Kadiza Sultana — weren’t headed for a Mediterranean holiday; they were en route to Syria to join the Islamic State — otherwise known as ISIS or Daesh.
The news shocked the British publ...
This week, we’re going to break down who is involved in Syria’s Civil War, which groups are allied with which, and clear up some common misconceptions or repetitive misinformation about the conflict. We’re mostly going to focus on the major players — namely the government forces, opposition forces, autonomous administration...
On June 6th, Syrian-American blogger Amina Abdallah Arraf al Omari — known for her web page about being a lesbian in Syria titled, A Gay Girl in Damascus — was reported to have been abducted by men who appeared to be Syrian government forces. International media outlets like The Guar...
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