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Waldschattenspiel
‘Today we look at something very special. It’s a German family game called “Waldschattenspiel”, sold here as “Shadows In The Woods”. It’s a game designed for children and an adult, but I think any group would happily play this wonderful little thing. There is nothing else like it, and certainly nothing else that looks like it. Let me explain how the game plays. A board. Wooden trees of different sizes. Little wooden pawns. A candle. The child player takes one of the little wooden pawns (the dwarves) and hides it in the forest, in a patch of shadow. Once all the children have hidden their dwarves. The adult player, a giant with a bright lantern represented by a tea-light, rolls a die and moves that many paces through the trees. As the light source moves, the shadows dance and stretch. Any dwarf caught in the light is frozen, unable to move, until another dwarf can come to touch it and break the spell. The dwarves win the game by coming together in the same patch of shadow, under the same tree. The light-bringer wins if it freezes all the dwarves.’
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Haunted Ruins
‘I think it would be hard for any gamer with kids, especially one who appreciates the Ameritrash side of gaming, to look at a game like Haunted Ruins and not think, where was this game when I was growing up?? I mean, just look at the thing… It’s a 3D pop-up board of a haunted graveyard, with moving obstacles and passageways, and you’re being chased around by a ghost and a zombie. I saw this at a Toys R Us when it first came out a couple years ago, along with its Egyptian pyramid/mummy themed counterpart, Treasure of the Lost Pyramid, and it took all of my willpower to not just buy them both right then and there. But they were both about $25 and I couldn’t really justify the purchase at the time. Well, fast forward to last week when I was bored and stopped into a Barnes & Noble in California… I had totally spaced the whole “Barnes & Noble game dumping sale” that happens every year around this time and so it was a pleasant surprise to see several copies of Haunted Ruins sitting there for 75% off. It was also kind of sad to see that, because really, this is a great game and a great production that deserves to be in the homes of many kids who will surely love it.’
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The Settlers of Catan 3D Edition
‘The Catan 3D Edition is a special treat indeed. In the big wooden chest you will find 19 3D terrain hexes, an illustrated, sturdy wooden frame andover 170 game pieces that have been painstakingly modeled in exquisite detail. All pieces have been hand painted. All the pieces are included for you to play The Settlers of Catan in 3D. Note: the 3D version of The Settlers of Catan was a limited production of 5,000 copies. It may be difficult to find an authentic set online, however, many merchants have come up with an ingenious way to bring the Catan 3D experience to everyone. Blank terrain pieces are often available, which can then be painted. Use your imagination and get yours today!’
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Aapep 3D
‘In Aapep you play either the demon Aapep, trying to swallow the sun, or the god Ra, fighting to escape the dark seas of the underworld. Players take turns placing pyramid tiles onto the board—Aapep swallows the sun if from any edge of the board he can “see” dark sides on the first pyramid tile that is visible from that direction while Ra escapes if from any edge of the board he can “see” light sides on the first pyramid tile visible from that direction.’
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Just William Game
‘The first part of the game consists of constructing William’s house and garden fence as per the diagram on the rules. Players are then given jobs to do around the built house & surrounds. There are two packs of cards – job cards and excuse cards. The object of the game is to get rid of all of your jobs, climb over the garden fence and land on the “William” spot. Designer (Uncredited). Artist: Thomas Henry Fisher. Publisher: Palitoy Ltd. Year Published: 1976. # of Players: 2 − 6.’
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Clue Premiere Edition
‘After a steady decline after the video game boom, board games are regaining popularity, but only because the companies behind them are innovating. One such way is by upgrading from 2-Dimensional boards to 3D, pop-up ones. The Clue Premier Edition, retailing at $150, has a game board that is literally like a doll house. The board has nine sunken 3D rooms, each with detailed furnishing. The only thing that differentiates it from a doll house is that it has a non-removable, tempered glass lid placed on top, preventing tampering inside.’
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3D Labyrinth
‘Part of the Ravensburger Labyrinth Games series, This is a super-simplified version of The aMAZEing Labyrinth for the really younger set. Instead of the shifting tiles of the other versions, in this game, entire sections of the maze shift, as the modular 3-D board has a sliding center piece, which allows for different pathways through the maze. Players attempt to reach the items shown on their treasure cards by shifting the maze and moving through the corridors.’
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Fireball Island
‘Here it is folks, the newly finished Fireball Island! What a trip it’s been. What’s been keeping me going is a guy out in CA who is going to be the proud owner of this piece. He’s very worried about the shipment being damaged but I’m very confident in the strength of the object as well as my packing skills. Alain, the new owner, has really kept me interested in the project with his enthusiasm and excitement. We are both really into this whole thing and hope more comes from it. We talked the other night about Torpedo Run!, a very awesome game that puts Battleship to shame. I might be looking into recreating that game in the future, we’ll have to see. But at the very least I am confident that I can make more Fireball Islands, and am taking offers to anyone who is interested in one. So check out the pics and stay on the look out for more boards to come.’
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Harry Potter: Adventures Through Hogwarts Electronic 3-D
‘Adventures Through Hogwarts is a complex game that will test the problem-solving skills of the players as they navigate the Hogwarts castle in a quest to locate the ever elusive Sorcerer’s Stone. Like no other Harry Potter board games that have been released, this is played on a 3D Hogwarts replica. The set is completely designed with its well-detailed rooms to give the kids a fun re-enactment of the entire Sorcerer’s Stone adventure. The game itself is a relatively simple move through the fictional school, but it’s livened up by the electronic gizmos, sounds and lights, which make it fun to play.’
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Cranium Balloon Lagoon
‘Spin the musical merry-go-round and start the timer, then race around the board trying to complete 4 fun-filled carnival games before the music ends. The 4 games utilize the same skills needed in the traditional Cranium categories: Word Worm, Star Performer, Data Head, and Creative Cat. Only this time, you’re playing carnival games! In Letter Lake, you’ll fish for letters to spell a word. In Frog Pong, you must hop the frogs from the lily pads back into their pond. In Snack Hut, try to collect 4 matching snacks, and in Tumble Tides, spin the picture wheels and try to match all 4 sections of the picture. It’s based on the original Cranium game, but given a fun carnival twist that kids will love! Collect balloons as you play the 4 carnival games, and the first player to collect 15 balloons, wins.’
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Necromunda: Underhive
‘Necromunda is a skirmish tabletop war game produced by Games Workshop. In Necromunda, players control rival gangs battling each other in the Underhive, a place of anarchy and violence in the depths below the Hive City. As in its parent game Warhammer 40,000, play uses 28 mm miniatures (approximately 1:56) and terrain (in this case, the Underhive – a heavily polluted, underground industrial environment). Being a skirmish game, gangs are usually limited to around nine models, but as a result game play can become more detailed. Unlike Warhammer 40,000, Necromunda also allows players to develop their gangs between battles, gaining experience, gaining and losing new members or equipment, according to a set of rules. Gangs which frequently win games acquire more credits (money) and fewer injuries and so are able to grow throughout a campaign. Necromunda also stands out from most other games by Games Workshop by having a more 3-dimensional table layout, with buildings generally having multiple floors, interconnecting walkways and bridges. The terrain is constructed to simulate a hive city on the planet Necromunda, a dystopian futuristic city resembling a termite mound many miles high.’
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Shogun 9
‘I’ve recently completed designing and building my first game board. Here are some pics.’
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Smurfs, The Game
‘The 3-D Smurf Game. Pick a Smurf character and play the 3D Smurf game! The 3-dimensional game takes place in the Smurf village. Each player has to follow the tricky Smurf path by climbing over bridges and traveling behind Smurf houses! Watch out for the spinning baddie cat, Azrael! Your goal is to be the first Smurf player to reach home with 4 different food baskets of apples, acorns, grapes and strawberries. “The Smurf Game”. From 1981. Made by Milton Bradley.’
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Halo Interactive Strategy Game
‘Featuring the same premise and characters as the video game – including Master Chief, A.I. and Covenant – the ‘Halo Interactive Strategy Game’ offers a modular board that can be re-configured to create a virtually limitless game play experience. In recreating the video game’s signature three dimension graphic design, the game pulls fan-favorite elements from Halo 1, 2, and 3 along with music from the video game’s award-winning soundtrack and features unseen exclusive DVD content to enhance game play. In the game, players will command armies of three-dimensional collectible character pieces for two different levels of play: Heroic for faster, more casual game play and Legendary for more strategic advanced gamers. Fans can follow story lines that expand the Halo experience in Campaign mode or go head-to-head in interactive battle sequences with Slayer or Capture the Flag modes. The battle options are endless with future add-ons of new adventures, vehicles, characters and weapons to expand the experience.’
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The Scooby-Doo Haunted House Game
‘The Scooby-Doo Haunted House 3D Board Game is action-packed! Move around the haunted house and try to make your way to the top. There are secret booby traps waiting to get you – a moving ghost knight, a creaky staircase, a haunted moose head, and more. There are seven traps in all, but if you make it past and you are the first to the top – uncover the villain and you win!’
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The Lost World Jurassic Park Game
‘Based on the second movie, of course. This tri-lingual (English, Spanish, French) crowded MB box contains a whole bunch of thin cardboard 3D buildings; stand up cardboard pieces for the 12 humans and the helicopter, and a bunch of plastic miniatures of the dinosaurs (a T-Rex and some Velociraptors). This is played in teams, the human team trying to get 3 humans off the board via the chopper, and the dinosaur team trying to prevent this. When 3 play, the third player alternates teams. The humans can jump between building roofs or can run between them. Unfortunately, the dinosaurs move a lot faster on the ground than the humans (the humans move between marked spaces, the dinosaurs between zones). Buildings have several entry/exit points for the humans but only one for the raptors. Dice indicate how to move humans and dinosaurs; one of the dice has Stop/Go markings which control whether you may roll again or not — making movement harder to predict. Jumping (for humans) and entering buildings (for dinosaurs) is also dice controlled. The T-Rex is confined to a single board edge area; its function is to flush the humans from the starting building — once he reaches it, all remaining humans are devoured! Yes, unlike the first movie game, in this one there is death aplenty.’
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Heroscape
‘Heroscape is turn-based miniature wargaming system played using miniature figures on a board made from interlocking hexagonal tiles that allow for construction of a large variety of 3D playing boards. It is a game of hit points, numerous dice, and attacking. It plays like a fantastic version of chess. Only instead of rooks and pawns, you have all manner of orcs, dragons, robots, assassins, etc. The board and character selection is vast if the host has enough expansion packs, and this was certainly the case over the weekend. The three playing boards sprawled out in full 3d upon a long banquet table and were surrounded by plastic containers full of various character pieces. The five other people playing for the most part knew the characters’ stats without looking at the cards. It was a little intimidating, so I picked a pre-configured, defensive style army. After six hours of 45 minute long games, I had won two and lost the rest.’
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Scream Inn
‘Bet you never knew there was a Scream Inn board game?! Well, neither did I? Released in the 1970s by Fisher Price, it’s currently on eBay for about £70 or thereabouts. Below I’ve snagged a few photos to give you an idea of the look and feel of the game. A standard board game with some cut-outs to give a 3d effect and a internal turntable for I presume turning various bits and bobs around? Comes with markers both of the ghost and human variety plus a die and rule book. Strange that no obvious characters from the strip appear aside from a generic ghost. Maybe the comic gave rights only to use the name of the strip. Still, a slice of forgotten comics history which probably went unnoticed by fans back in the day.’
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Mordheim: City of the Damned
‘Mordheim does to Warhammer Fantasy what Necromunda does to Warhammer 40k. The game mechanics work in classic Games Workshop fashion. Instead of playing with hundreds of miniatures, you pick a warband of 1-20 models(Most average at 10-12 or so), and fight a skirmish with other warbands. If you play well, your warband gains money, levels, size, and new powers, but play badly and your warband slowly deteriorates as people die or otherwise get dismembered. Games actually play very similar to Necromunda but due to the fantasy setting you should see fewer long distance shots, and a lot more hand to hand fighting.’
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Mountaineers
‘Mountaineers is a strategic board game in which 1-6 players compete against each other and AI climbers to earn climbing points (victory points) as they maneuver around a 18 in./45 cm tall rotating 3D modular game board. The theme of Mountaineers is lighthearted and fun, primarily focused on competitive route finding, resource management, character building and upgrades, while challenging players to react to various exciting (and sometimes comical) events that occur on the mountain. Strategy during both set-up and game play is important. At the beginning of a game, players need to choose four climbing routes, one character, and a starting position that work well together, in order to earn the maximum amount of points possible. However, as the game progresses, the mountain terrains fill up, making it more difficult to complete certain climbing routes. Additionally, various mountain conditions change (once per player), and event cards (drawn on each turn) require players to adapt their strategy, change their climbing routes, and purchase various combinations of gear upgrades to continue climbing.’
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p.s. Hey. Some of you might remember that Mrs. Santa Claus popped into the blog around this time last year to give us a post-shaped holiday treat. And she’s back, this time with some last minute Xmas gift suggestions. And since 3D board games just happen to be one of ‘God’s’ greatest hits, there’s that aspect too. Joyfulness galore, in other words. Please shop or enjoy accordingly, and spare a thoughtful thought for her in the commenting arena if you wish, and all my thanks to Mrs. Santa Claus for letting DC’s be her generosity’s venue. ** Ferdinand, Hey, Ferdinand. Good to see you, man. How’s stuff? Merry Xmas! I’m not on Spotify but maybe I can bootleg a listen. Everyone, Ferdinand says, ‘Happy holiday season and here is a song for the xmass playlist for those on the spotify : Christmass is cancelled – the long blondes.’ ** Misanthrope, I have not counted them, no. But, let’s see, I’ve been doing the blog since 2004 and posting 6 days a week — and 7 days a week for the first several years — with the occasional rerun, so … I’m bad at math. A lot of posts. Enough of them that even with my fairly dedicated attempt to restore the murdered ones, I’ll never be able to resuscitate the entire oeuvre. The relief package’s total internal corruption and short sightedness is a given. Sad. Next. Keep your current doctor close then, for sure. My favorite thing about French doctors is that, on the rare occasions when I’ve had to use one, when it gets to pay up time and I tell them I don’t have insurance, that so flummoxes them that they usually don’t even charge me. ** David Ehrenstein, Yes, indeed. Everyone, If you missed the link to David Ehrenstein’s fine LARB piece about Warren Sonbert in the Further section yesterday, you can take a short cut to it by clicking this. And, just as importantly, Mr. E has a brand spanking new piece up on LARB about Martin Scorcese and Jean-Pierre Melville that has just launched and is available for your reading delectation right here.’ Look forward to it! ** Bill, my pleasure, of course. Ooh … Actually, that ‘Atarayo’ cake could compete with and maybe even trump anything Paris has on offer this year. Want. thanks, B! ** _Black_Acrylic, Happy you dug it, man. Ha ha, crazy about the mysterious calendar. Yes, someone has your number, that’s for sure. ** Brendan, Hi, Brendy. Well, in your defence, they’re not exactly easy to see. Even in the post, seeing them involves a bit of maze-like negotiating. Conner/Kubelka/Frampton: the gods. Frampton especially for me. That’s good to hear about ‘The Pale King’. It’s the only DFW I haven’t read, and it would be nice to have a complete set in my memory banks. I’ll take a deep breath and score it. Hope you’re making it through the hellifying situation there in beloved LA, and Happy Xmas whatever the hell that even means this year. ** Steve Erickson, Ah, shit, about your computer. Smoothest, least meddlesome sailing possible, I hope. Everyone, Steve Erickson’s 10 best films of 2020 are yours to read and be enlightened by or agree or disagree with here. I’ve only seen one of yours, and I’ll rectify that as best I can. Thanks! ** Brian O’Connell, Hi, Brian. Very happy you dug the work, man. Ditto on your Haneke thought. Ha ha, the Pope’s discourse is precisely what I was remembering, or rather not remembering, when I recalled my skimming. Sade does have a magical ability to be totally boring and totally enthralling at the same. Not an easy accomplishment. The hollowness of ‘IaGC’ makes total sense to me in my memory of it. All I really remember is the erotic/disturbing bits. Hm, well, a lot of people I know enter DFW through his wonderful non-fiction, in which case ‘A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again’ is a must. Fiction-wise, why not just take the deep plunge and read ‘Infinite Jest’, although it is lengthy. ‘Girl With Curious Hair’ is an earlier and more quickly digestible entrance. But, yeah, he’s always great as far as I’m concerned. I miss giving and receiving gifts, sitting around the Xmas tree on Xmas morning with one’s family opening the things we gave to each other. Yeah, that was some sweet stuff. Oh, well. On my end, I need to buy whatever I’m going to buy today because there are already long, long lines to get into almost any store and by tomorrow there’ll be shopping riots and shit. So, I’ll do that. Enjoy today’s part of the countdown, sir. ** Okay. You know what you have or had in store today. Be its buddy, won’t you? See you tomorrow.
Sculptor 
But as they stood outside the courtroom and watched the elevator doors close, the mother and sister of the victim, Ana Mendieta, called him a murderer. ”I know he killed my daughter,” the mother, Raquel Oti Mendieta of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said. The sister, Raquel Harrington, said: ”He might be getting away with murder now. But he’ll get his just rewards. Just wait and see.”
In prosecuting second-degree murder charges, an assistant district attorney, Elizabeth Lederer, said the defendant’s calling the 911 emergency telephone line was an incriminating factor. A tape of the call showed Mr. Andre saying: ”My wife is an artist, and I’m an artist, and we had a quarrel about the fact that I was more, eh, exposed to the public than she was. And she went to the bedroom, and I went after her, and she went out the window.”
Evidence at the trial showed that Ms. Mendieta had consumed a considerable amount of alcohol before her death. There was a fight, Ms. Lederer said, and it escalated in the bedroom, and ”he caused her to fall out the window” at 300 Mercer Street. Mr Andre later told the police that he and his wife had been watching television before she went to bed alone. He said when he went to bed, he found that she was not there and that the bedroom window was open. A doorman working nearby testified that he had heard cries of: ”No! No! No!” just before the body hit the ground. Mr. Hofffinger said any seeming inconsistency between what Mr. Andre told the 911 operator and later said was a result of Mr. Andre’s ”eclipsing” events the night of the death.
In November 2002, 
Boham had the right look but not the right attitude for modeling work. He didn’t like people telling him what to do. He seemed like an angry person. His opportunities were tapering off. Lara Holland, who lived in a Denver mansion on High Street in an apartment a floor below Boham, gave an interview. “Boham has an explosive temper and owned a large collection of guns, including a rifle with a silencer and a scope”, Holland said. Boham, who has a 5-year-old daughter, also picked fights over petty disputes with friends, she said[citation needed]. “He got into bloody fistfights,” Holland said. “He just had anger issues.” Boham told Lara Holland, that he “sanitized” his apartment by thoroughly scrubbing it because a gay man had lived there previously, she said. “He hated (gays),” she said. “He hated their lifestyle.”
A housekeeper found Kelso, 43, shot to death in the bathtub of his upscale Congress Park home on November 13. The police named Boham as a suspect in the slaying. Kelso, reportedly often hired the services of male dancers/escorts. Boham was arrested on November 16 at the U.S.-Mexico border in Lukeville, Arizona. He was extradited to Colorado and is being held without bond. According to the Denver Post, Boham told his family that he killed Kelso because he believed that Kelso kept $100,000 to $400,000 in his household safe.
One of France’s biggest rock stars was released from prison recenty after serving half of an eight-year sentence for killing his actress girlfriend in a jealous rage over a text message. 
Cantat became the centre of a lurid drama in July 2003 when he punched and slapped Marie Trintignant, 41, in an hotel room in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. They had quarrelled over a text message that Ms Trintignant, a mother of four and the daughter of Jean-Louis Trintignant, a 1960s film idol, had received from her former husband. She struck her head on a radiator and died in a Paris hospital a week later.
Tom Melford entered Columbia in 1995. His major was visual arts, and his freshman year seemed to go well enough. With little money for winter clothes, he could be seen trudging through snow in sandals, jeans and a T-shirt as if he were strolling through warm California beach sand. He formed a band called Couchcase and recorded a few songs featuring his frenetic guitar playing and scruffy voice. He also had several cartoons published in the student newspaper, The Columbia Spectator. His cartooning revealed a mordant, Mad magazine sense of humor about many subjects — designer drugs, Internet sex, infomercials. In one cartoon, a man and woman trade a series of insults and ugly confessions, culminating with the man saying, ”The voices told me to kill you in your sleep.” The woman then screams, ”April Fool’s!” The man replies, ”That’s today?”
In the fall, Mr. Nelford underwent an abrupt transformation as he began to date Kathleen Roskot, the first serious girlfriend his Columbia friends had ever seen him with. He cleaned himself up, got a crew cut and took a job selling jeans. Some of Mr. Nelford’s more bohemian friends did not understand the attraction. She seemed preppy, standoffish. Once, when Mr. Nelford introduced her to a friend whose bedroom walls were plastered with photographs of marijuana buds, it was clear that she wanted to get out of the room fast. But the two had things in common — athletics, contemplative natures and a passion for the music and literature of the 1960’s. Ms. Roskot decorated her room with posters of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. She stuck up favorite Kerouac quotes. Before long, Mr. Nelford was spending many of his nights in her suite on the fifth floor of Ruggles Hall. After she failed to show up for lacrosse practice one Saturday, her room was checked and her nude body was discovered. Were it not for the fact that Mr. Nelford subsequently threw himself in front of a subway train, dying instantly, his friends said, they would have found it impossible to even imagine that he had slashed her throat. Did he or didn’t he? That’s the ongoing assumption, but the truth will never be known for sure.
Three days after 
Burroughs was held in custody on murder charges for two weeks before being released on bail after his brother arrived from St. Louis to dispense thousands of dollars in a variety of legal costs, which may have included bribes to Mexican jailors. Vollmer was buried in Mexico City and her two children were taken back to the United States. Her daughter Julie was raised by her father, Paul Adams, and his family; her son was raised by her in-laws. For a year, Burroughs reported every Monday morning to the jail in Mexico City while his prominent attorney worked to resolve the case. However, when Jurado fled the country after accidentally shooting and killing a trespasser on his property — a child of a government official — Burroughs re-entered the United States, where he was fortunate that Louisiana had not issued a warrant for his arrest on the previous narcotic charge. In absentia, Burroughs was convicted of manslaughter in Vollmer’s death. He received a two year suspended sentence. In essence, the Mexican justice system effected a penalty of two weeks incarceration for Vollmer’s death.
Richard Dadd was born August 1, 1817 in Chatham, Kent, England. At age 13 the family moved to London, and in 1837, Dadd, age 20, was admitted to the Royal Academy of Art. Dadd showed talent at the Academy and gathered a number of painterly friends, known collectively as ‘The Clique’. He won several awards while at the Academy, and began exhibiting his work during his first year. Overall, his style was not particularly remarkable, no more so than any other moderately gifted painter in Victorian England during the stylistic phase now referred to as “The Fairy School”.
In June 1842, Dadd and his patron, Sir Thomas Phillips, left England to travel extensively in the Middle East and Europe. Things were going well until Dadd, in Egypt, encountered a group of old Arab men smoking a “hubbly-bubbly”, an arabic style waterpipe. Dadd joined them, and according to his later claims, spent five continuous days and nights smoking. Though the men never spoke, Dadd became convinced that the sound of the bubbling pipe was actually a form of communication. By the fifth day, he had deciphered a message, which he claimed was from the Ancient Egyptian god Osiris.
Dadd left Phillips and returned to England, where his family had a physician specializing in mental illness examine him. The doctor found him to be “non compos mentis”, legally not of sound mind. Unfortunately, instead of being institutionalized, Dadd convinced his father that all he needed was a rest, and together they travelled to a country village called Cobham, where Dadd claimed that he would “disburden his mind” to his father. It was on August 28th, 1843, at a chalk pit called Paddock Hole, a forested area just outside of Cobham, that his life changed forever. Rather than disburden his mind, Richard Dadd chose to brutally murder and dismember his father with a knife and a razor. 
While traveling with friends and a relative named Will Stafford in 1917, the great blues and folk musician 
While Leadbelly was serving time at Shaw State Farm, his father died. Just before his death, Wes Ledbetter had tried to bribe prison officials into releasing Leadbelly. But in 1925, Leadbelly won a full pardon on his own. Oddly, the pardon came after the governor of Texas went on record as opposing pardons. The governor had visited the prison several times to hear Leadbelly sing, and Leadbelly later maintained that he won over the governor with his song “Please Pardon Me.”
In 1930, Leadbelly was sentenced to ten years at the Louisiana state prison in Angola. After the authorities discovered Leadbelly’s prior conviction, he was disqualified from any chance at early release. n 1933, a Harvard-trained expert on American folk music, John Lomax, was making his way through Southern prisons and recording musicians when he stopped at Angola and heard Leadbelly sing. Lomax made some preliminary recordings of Leadbelly’s songs. Although Leadbelly later maintained that he was pardoned because the Louisiana governor had been moved by his prison song, records indicate that he was released as a cost-saving measure.
One of the greatest murder mysteries in the history of art appears to have been solved with new evidence that 
Mr Graham-Dixon said, however, that a report written by the barber surgeon who examined Tomassoni’s dead body provided evidence that Caravaggio was, at least on one occasion, aggressively heterosexual. “Sure, he had an eye for male beauty, but he probably swung both ways,” said Mr Graham-Dixon, who is also a columnist for The Sunday Telegraph Magazine.
The Richardson family murders involved the murder of three members of the family in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada. The bodies of Marc Richardson (age 42), his wife Debra (age 48), and their son Jacob (age 8) were found by a friend of Jacob on April 23, 2006 at 1 p.m. Absent from the home at the time of the discovery was 
According to friends of Steinke, he told them he thought he was a 300-year-old werewolf. He allegedly told his friends that he liked the taste of blood, and wore a small vial of blood around his neck. He also had a user account at the VampireFreaks.com web site. Jasmine also had a page at the same site, leading to speculation they met there. However, later, an acquaintance of Steinke said the couple actually met at a punk rock show in early 2006.
The couple were also found to be communicating at Nexopia, a popular web site for young Canadians. Various messages they sent to each were available to the public, before the accounts were removed by Nexopia staff. Jasmine’s user page, under the name “runawaydevil”, included pictures of her in dark Goth make up, falsely said she was 15 and ended with the text “Welcome to my tragic end.”.
While the goth lifestyle can involve trappings of the occult — with followers preferring black clothes, white makeup, and underground music — a founder of a popular goth website says the movement does not condone or inspire violence. “It’s silly to assume that all we do is sit around in circles and talk about death and killing each other and stuff like that,” said Steven Vardy, founder of Toronto-goth.com. “I mean, what do you talk about with your friends? It’s the same thing.”
After the murders, the local school in Medicine Hat pulled a children’s book called Running from the curriculum. A concerned parent pointed out that the goth character might have been inappropriate material for the school at that time. One of the features of the book is having students take a black and white picture of themselves and to draw themselves in as a goth character. The school substituted the classic The Outsiders for the goth book.
A Polish pulp fiction writer was sentenced to 25 years in jail on September 5, 2007 for his role in a grisly case of abduction, torture and murder, a crime that he then used for the plot of a bestselling thriller. In a remarkable case that has gripped Poland for months, 
The killing of Janiszewski was one of the most gruesome cases to come before a Polish court in years, with the “Murder, He Wrote” sub-plot unfolding in the district court in Wroclaw and keeping the country spellbound. Janiszewski, said to have been having an affair with Bala’s ex-wife, was scooped out of the river Oder near Wroclaw in south-west Poland by fishermen in December 2000, four weeks after going missing. The police tests revealed that he was stripped almost naked and tortured. His wrists had been bound behind his back and tied to a noose around his neck before he was dumped in the river.
The police had little to go on. Within six months, Commissar Jacek Wroblewski, leading the investigation, dropped the case. It remained closed for five years despite the publication in 2003 of the potboiler Amok, by Bala, a gory tale about a bunch of bored sadists, with the narrator, Chris, recounting the murder of a young woman. The details of the murder matched those of Janiszewski almost exactly. Bala, who used the first name Chris on his frequent jaunts abroad, was arrested in 2005 after Commissar Wroblewski received a tip-off about the “perfect crime” and was advised to read the thriller.
But Bala was released after three days for insufficient evidence, despite the commissar’s conviction that he had his villain. When further evidence came to light, Bala was re-arrested. The case against him, however, remained circumstantial. Police uncovered evidence that Bala had known the dead man, had telephoned him around the time of his disappearance and had then sold the dead man’s mobile phone on the internet within days of the murder.
All along, Bala protested his innocence, insisting that he derived the details for the Amok thriller from media reports of the Janiszewski murder. The court heard expert and witness evidence that Bala was a control freak, eager to show off his intelligence, “pathologically jealous” and inclined to sadism. “He was pathologically jealous of his wife,” said Judge Hojenska. “He could not allow his estranged wife to have ties with another man.”
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