Two really weird crime stories from the past few days.
1. Four bicyclists went missing in Oklahoma last week.
Later in the week, police pulled human remains out of a river.
…
“We believe the men planned to commit some kind of criminal act when they left the resident on West 6th Street,” Prentice told reporters.
“That belief is based on information supplied by a witness who reports they were invited to go with the men to ‘hit a lick’ big enough for all of them,” he said, using slang for obtaining money illegally.
It is a shame that Big Don Westlake is dead, as this sounds like something out of a Parker novel.
2. The Mad Midnight Bomber What Bombed at Midnight was a cosplayer. And a sex offender.
…
The victim, identified in court documents as NK, suffered serious injuries. He and his girlfriend, identified as SB, were members of the “Dagorhir” gaming community along with McCoy.
The game is described as “a live-action roleplaying (LARP) battle game” involving medieval costumes and mock combat with prop weapons.
McCoy approached SB over Discord and confessed his romantic feelings for her. She turned him down, reminding him she was dating NK. So McCoy built a homemade bomb, gift-wrapped it and dropped it off at NK’s doorstep, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland.
He researched how to build it, bought materials in cash from multiple stores to conceal his efforts, and ultimately built a package bomb that he placed inside a shipping box, which he drove to the victim’s house himself, according to prosecutors.
The bomber seems fairly clever. But not clever enough: they got DNA, they got location data from his cellphone, and they got video from a neighbor’s doorbell camera.