Odkryć

Eryk. 24. Michigan.

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Génova, Quindío, Colombia was the birthplace Luis Garavito, also known as La Bestia (The Beast), El Loco (The Crazy One), and El Cura (The Priest). He was the oldest of seven brothers and was both physically and emotionally abused by his father. He also stated in his testimony that he was sexually abused by an unnamed perpetrator. 

Most, if not all, of his victims were boys aged eight to sixteen years old and came from poor families. Usually disguised as a monk or a street vendor, he would kidnap children by getting them to trust him by offering them things such as food or money. After having them follow him to a secluded area of overgrown plants, he would then bind, torture, molest and rape them, and eventually kill them by slashing their throat or completely decapitating them. 

In 1997, police discovered a graveyard of 36 boys near Pereira and a nationwide manhunt ensued. Garavito was apprehended April 22, 1999 in Villavicencio on the suspicion of attempting to rape a twelve year old boy. After being confronted with evidence against him for murder, he confessed to 147 counts. He was charged for 172 deaths, but was found guilty for killing 138 kids. Even though the maximum murder sentence multiplied by 138 equals about 1,853 years, Colombian law prohibited imprisonments longer than 30 years at the time of his arrest. Since he helped authorities find some of the bodies, his sentence was reduced down to 22 years and will possibly be released earlier for further good behaviour. 

Based on the locations on the maps drawn by Garavito, the murder count could eventually exceed 300 children. Garavito has been labelled as “The World’s Worst Serial Killer” because of the large number of victims he had.

In 2006, he had an interview with a television host, Pirry. During the interview, Garavito expressed intent to start a political career intended to help abused children upon release.

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The head crusher was a widely used device during the Middle Ages. It was made of metal and featured a bar on the bottom that was connected to a cap by a frame. The victim would place their head between the cap and bar. As the torturer twisted the handle at the top, cap would slowly move down, eventually crushing the victim’s head. If the victim happened to survive, they would suffer permanent damage in their face.

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Pangolins are solitary, nocturnal, scaly mammals. When confronted by a potential predator, they will cover their heads with their front legs. If touched, they will completely roll up in a ball, using the sharp scales on their tail to lash at the predator.

Like anteaters, pangolins are insectivores. Their diet mainly consists of ants, termites, and larvae. Though there may be many different species of insects available, they tend to only consume one or two species. Due to their poor sense of vision, they heavily rely on smell and hearing to find prey. After locating, they will use their front claws to tear open anthills or termite mounds. After tearing open their prey’s home, they will use their long tongue to retrieve the insects out of the tunnels after lubricating their tongue with sticky saliva from glands in their chest. Since they lack teeth, they lack the ability to chew. However, while foraging for prey they ingest small stones. These small stones accumulate in their stomach and help grind up insects.

There are eight different species; four living in Africa while the other half resides in Asia. Though all eight species are considered endangered due to the poaching being done for their meat and scales, there are two species that are listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species; the Chinese pagolin and the Malayan pagolin. All eight species are protected under national and international laws.

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Harold Shipman was born in Nottingham, England on January 14, 1946. He was a doctor who murdered at least 215 patients by overdosing them.

Middle child of three, his mother favoured him over the others and instilled him with an early sign of superiority. Shipman was caring for his mother after she was diagnosed with lung cancer, fascinated by the positive effects morphine had on her suffering. After she succumbed to the disease on June 21, 1963, he was determined to go to medical school. In 1965, he started training at Leeds University.

There he met his future wife, Primrose, and had married when she was five months pregnant. By 1974, he was a father of two and had started medical practice in Todmorden, Yorkshire. While there, he had also acquired an addiction to pethidine. To feed this addiction, he would forge prescriptions and was forced to leave in 1975 after being caught by his colleagues. That same year, he entered a drug rehab program.

A few years later, he was accepted as staff at the Donneybrook Medical Centre in Hyde. The local undertaker noticed that Shipman’s patients seemed to be dying at an unusually high rate in similar poses; most were fully clothed and they were usually sitting up or relining a settee. Concerned, the undertaker confronted Shipman about it directly, but Shipman reassured him there was nothing to be concerned about. One of his colleagues, Dr. Susan Booth, was also disturbed by the similar deaths between Shipman’s patients. She had informed the local coroner’s office, who then in turn contacted police.

An investigation followed, but was Shipman was cleared as the inquiry failed to contact the General Medical Council or check his criminal records. Later, a more thorough investigation revealed that Shipman altered the medical records of his patients. Due to his façade as a caring family doctor, it’s nearly impossible to determine when he began killing or exactly how many had died by his hands. Kathleen Grundy, a wealthy 81 year old widow and Shipman’s last patient, was found dead in her home June 24, 1998 shortly after a house visit. His killing spree was brought to an end by the determination of Grundy’s daughter, Angela Woodruff, who refused to accept the explanations given to her for her mother’s death. 

Woodruff was a lawyer and was in charge of all her mother’s affairs. She became concerned when a solicitor informed her that a will had been made by her mother. The will excluded Woodruff and her children, but left £386,000 (equivalent to £590,000 or $930,724 today) to Shipman. Questioning the will’s authenticity, Woodruff reported it to the police and another investigation followed. Authorities exhumed Grundy’s body and found traces of diamorphine, a pain medication that’s often used by terminal cancer patients, after examination. 

Shipman’s home was raided, yielding medical records, an abnormal jewellery collection, and an old typewriter, which he had used to forge Grundy’s will. From the records seized, the police were able to create a list of 15 different cases. They discovered a pattern of him administering lethal doses of diamorphine, signing patients’ death certificates, and falsifying medical records to indicate they had been in poor health.

On September 7, 1998 he was charged on 15 counts of murder and one count of forgery. January 13, 2004 he committed suicide by hanging himself in HMP Wakefield.

You can read his obituary here.

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HD 189733b was discovered October 5, 2005 when French astronomers observed it passing across the face of it’s parent star in the Vulpecula constellation. It has a mass that is 13% higher than Jupiter's and orbits it’s host once every 2.2 days with an orbital speed of 152.5 km/s (341,000 mph). This hot Jupiter is 63 light years away from our solar system, making it the closest hot Jupiter to Earth. Researchers believe the deep blue atmosphere is caused by the rain of molten glass, which makes the planet unable to sustain life as we know it. Due to it’s close proximity to it’s sun, daytime temperatures can be as high as 930° C (1,700° F). The above image is an artist’s conception following Hubble’s confirmation of it’s deep blue colour in 2013.

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Saloth Sar, or better known as Pol Pot, was a communist leader of Cambodia. May 19, 1925, he was born to a relatively affluent family of farmers in Prek Sbauv. He moved to Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, in 1934 staying in a Buddhist monastery before attending a French Catholic school. He continued his education in Cambodia until he obtained a scholarship to study radio technology in Paris in 1949. While there, he became absorbed in Marxism, causing him to neglect his studies and lose his scholarship in 1953. After having returned to Cambodia, he joined a underground communist movement. 

Pol Pot had become the leader of the Cambodian Communist Party by 1962 and had escaped the wrath of the then Cambodian leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, by fleeing into the jungle. There, he had formed an armed resistance movement that went by Khmer Rouge and waged a war against Prince Sihanouk’s government. But due to a U.S.-backed military coup, Prince Sihanouk was driven out of his position in 1970. Resentful, the Prince retaliated by joining the Khmer Rouge, opposing the new military government. The U.S. invasion caused economic and military destabilisation, resulting in a surge of popular support for Pol Pot. After the U.S. withdrew its troops in 1975, Pol Pot took advantage of Cambodia’s poor state and took control.

Partially inspired by Mao Zedong, Pol Pot began an experiment to create an agrarian utopia. He was going to “purify” Cambodia by extinguishing religion, capitalism, city life, and all foreign influences and replace it with an extreme form of peasant communism. All embassies were closed, any foreign assistance was refused, he banned foreign languages, TV stations and newspapers were shut down, radios and bikes were confiscated, and a restriction was placed on phone usage and mail. Money became taboo, businesses were closed, religion was banned. He halted education and eliminated health care. He completely cut off Cambodia from the outside world.

Citizens were forced to evacuate into the countryside. Around 20,000 were killed by gunfire on the way. They were forced into slave labour in his “killing fields” and were put on a diet of one tin of rice every two days. Soon, they began dying from malnutrition, disease, and being overworked. They had to work 18 hours a day, starting at 4 am and ending at 10 pm under the supervision of Khmer Rouge soldiers that would kill anyone for the slightest infraction.

Pol Pot would sometimes conduct purges,meant to eliminate the remnants of the way society used to be. Anyone who was educated, the religious, the wealthy, police, teachers, doctors, and former government officials were all killed along with anyone who was suspected to be disloyal to Pol Pot.

After Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia on December 25, 1978, Pol Pot retreated to Thailand along with however many of his Khmer Rouge army remained. Over the next 17 years, he launched a guerrila war against the Cambodian government, eventually losing control over the Khmer Rouge after a series of internal power struggles.