A new study, dated and analyzed the DNA from the bones of 37 individuals found at Roopkund. The majority of the deceased indeed died 1000 or so years ago, but not simultaneously. And a few died much more recently, likely in the early 1800s. Stranger still, the skeletons’ genetic makeup is more typical of Mediterranean heritage than South Asian.
“It may be even more of a mystery than before. It was unbelievable, because the type of ancestry we find in 33% of the individuals is so unusual for this part of the world.”
Tag: crime
Dine-and-Dash Dater
Cass thought a ‘dine and dash’ was a fitting crime for a food-lover’s city like Pasadena. It is the birthplace of chef Julia Child, home to 500 restaurants, and one of America’s few Le Cordon Bleu culinary schools. Pasadena is known as the “City of Roses,” and it is Cass who cleans up its quirkier criminal cases. “They’re what we call the ‘X-Files’”. Recently, he captured the ‘Glass Man Burglar,’ a thief who skillfully removed window panes, and the ‘Guitar Bandit’ who delighted newspapermen by pulling off a “string” of thefts. When the detective typed “dine and dash” into Google, to brush up on the law, he was surprised to find 100s of news reports about 1 local man named Paul Gonzales. “He had, like, fans, and they were like, ‘hey, he’s not doing anything wrong. Some websites called Gonzales “scummy” and “Douchebag of the Week.” “This guy was not on any police department’s radar, yet he was one of the most wanted men in America.”
Bounty Hunting
Within the world of law enforcement, bounty hunting is something of an aberration. An accident arising from the combination of common law, frontier justice, chattel slavery, and capitalism. No other job is more American. Bounty hunting’s legality is a mishmash of confusing requirements, regulations, and certifications that vary widely by state.
Fake Politician
A well-respected local politician is elevated to one of the most powerful positions in France, but keeps his head down and gets on with the job instead of making an international media personality of himself. The perfect target for a most audacious identity theft.
“Everything about the story is exceptional. They dared to take on the identity of a serving French minister. Then they called up CEOs and heads of government round the world and asked for vast amounts of money. The nerve of it!”
US Black Site
In a supermax facility on US soil, inmates are force-fed and barred from sharing their stories.
Sahara smuggling
The story of a young man from rural Ghana who bought a pair of secret camera glasses and got himself smuggled across the Sahara, to film crime and exploitation along the way.
500kg of Cocaine
Quinci’s arrival on São Miguel had changed the island in surprising ways. A number of locals had become rich thanks to the Italian’s cocaine, then started legitimate businesses, such as coffee shops, many of which still exist today. But the drugs also had more damaging long-term effects. Quinci’s cocaine was so potent that they started taking other drugs to lessen the symptoms of withdrawal. They became addicted to heroin, which was shipped in from the continent, often via the postal service. The arrival of Quinci’s cocaine increased consumption of other illicit substances, and young people and adults from poorer parts of the island were the ones most affected. “It completely ruined my life. I’m still living with consequences to this day.”
Postmortem recovery
An unforgettable iPhone data recovery
In 2017, Jessa Jones, a smartphone logic board repair expert, received a particularly difficult case. Earlier that year, a brutal hate crime (NY Times) had ended the life of Srinivas Kuchibhotla. Hoping to recover as many memories as she could, his widow, Sunayana Dumala, contacted Jones’s business to determine if the data from Kuchibhotla’s ruined phone could be recovered. Jones documented the painstaking repair (YouTube; video includes close-ups of dried blood), ultimately restoring the phone and recovering all his data for Dumala.
Investigatory Datasheds
the notion of a “crime scene” has thus been digitally expanded, taking on a kind of data shadow, as someone simply driving down a street or sitting in a park one day with their phone out is now within the official dataprint of an investigation
SS7 Bank Account Attacks
while the attacks were originally only surmised to be within the reach of intelligence operators (perhaps part of the reason intelligence-tied telcos have been so slow to address the issue), hackers have increasingly been using the flaw to siphon money out of targets’ bank accounts, thus far predominately in Europe
Gregor J. Rothfuss 