1984 - Crime

Crime

Colombian drug lords escalate their terrorist activities at Bogotá, Medéllin, and Calí: two men riding motorcycles use machine guns April 30 to assassinate Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara Bonilla as he is being driven to Bogotá in his limousine, his bodyguards kill one of the assassins and capture the other; he says he has been paid about $20,000 to shoot Lara Bonilla, who has charged that drug traffickers are financing the political campaigns of some congressmen and control six professional football (soccer) teams. President Belisario Betancur Cuartas declares a state of siege May 1, saying that the "national dignity" has been "trampled by drug traffickers" and "We are not going allow ourselves to be annihilated by cowardice and crime." Lara Bonilla had supported extradition of 18 Colombian drug smugglers wanted in the United States, and although Betancur says May 2 that military courts will try all drug-related cases, with no bail permitted, he announces later in the day that he will approve extradition. Colombian troops destroy a major cocaine laboratory May 6 in the Amazon jungle near Aracuara, but other laboratories continue to process coca leaves brought in from Peru and Bolivia, and the Aracuara lab's estimated monthly output of as much as 10,000 kilograms represents a small percentage of total Colombian cocaine and heroin exports, most of them to the United States. Attorney General Carlos Jimenez Gomez meets secretly at Panama in May with seven major drug dealers; they reportedly include Pablo Escobar Gaviria, Gonzalo Rodriguez Garcia, and Jorge Luis Ochoa, and together claim to control 80 percent of Colombia's drug trade and have a combined annual income of $2 billion. Jimenez announces July 5 that the government has rejected an offer by the drug dealers that they cease their operations in return for a virtual amnesty such as that being offered to guerrilla groups (church groups, politicians, and the media have opposed any such deal).

Four gunmen get away with $21.8 million at Rome March 24.

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that evidence obtained "in good faith" is admissible even if a search warrant is later ruled invalid, thereby weakening the exclusionary rule that dates to 1949 (see Mapp v. Ohio, 1961). The 6-to-3 decision handed down July 5 in the case of United States v. Leon is based on the argument that excluding such evidence creates a social cost that is unacceptable (Justices Brennan, Marshall, and Stevens dissent).

DNA fingerprinting gets its name from British geneticist Alec Jeffries at the University of Leicester, who announces September 15 that his research team has found that DNA sequencing is specific to individuals (see 1987).

New York's "Mayflower Madam" makes headlines following an October 11 raid by officers of the Manhattan North Public Morals District on a small, first-story apartment at 307 West 74th Street and, 1 hour later, the arrest of a young woman in a $300-per-night room at the Parker Meridien Hotel, where she has been entertaining a "John" (actually an undercover cop). Three young women at the West 74th Street apartment have been shredding documents, but police find records linking them to a $1 million-per-year ring of 20 or 30 call girls working for one "Sheila Devlin." She turns out to be Sidney Biddle Barrows, 32, who surrenders October 16 to the Manhattan district attorney. The landlord of her West 80th Street apartment has been trying to evict her for alleged "business use" offenses and excessive "traffic," but Barrows is listed in the Social Register and is a descendant (on the Barrows side) of two Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth in 1620 (she attended the annual party of the Mayflower Society in March). After plea bargaining, Barrows gets off with a $5,000 fine; she is permitted to keep more than $150,000 in profits, and her list of 3,000 clients (said to include company presidents, lawyers, physicians, and Arab sheiks who paid $200 to $400 per hour or $1,150 for the night) is not made public. Women Against Pornography estimates that the city has some 25,000 prostitutes.

Japan has a candy scare as extortionists announce that confectionery in retail outlets has been poisoned.

Unemployed security guard Oliver Huberty, 41, of San Ysidro, Calif., walks into the local McDonald's July 18 with a semiautomatic rifle, shotgun, and pistol, begins firing at anything that moves, and kills 20, wounds 16, before police sharpshooters kill him.

Three men with revolvers seize two Merrill Lynch Canada couriers December 21 at Montreal and escape with $51.3 million in securities.

A New York "subway vigilante" shoots four black youths December 22, climbs off the train, and disappears into a tunnel after telling a motorman that the teenagers had tried to rob him. Crime has been rampant in the subways and public support rallies at first behind the unknown gunman, especially when his victims all turn out to have criminal records. Engineer Bernhard Hugo Goetz, 37, will turn himself in to New Hampshire police early in January and confess to the shootings, which have left one youth paralyzed from the waist down. A Manhattan grand jury will indict Goetz only on charges of illegal weapon possession (he will be convicted and serve 8 months). A second grand jury will indict Goetz for attempted murder but he will be acquitted.