The Disappearance of Cleashindra Hall

 

Cleashindra Denise Hall (born March 30, 1976) is an American woman who has been missing since May 9, 1994. Hall was also known as Clea.

At the time of her disappearance, Cleashindra was two weeks away from graduating high school. She was an honor student, had landed a summer internship at a Boston pediatrician's office, and had been accepted into the pre-med program at Tennessee State University.

Background

Cleashindra Hall was an honors student at her high school. In May 1994, Hall attended her senior prom. She was expected to graduate later that month. Hall disappeared two weeks before her expected graduation and never attended the ceremony.

Hall intended to pursue a career as a pediatrician. She was expected to enroll in pre-medical courses at Tennessee State University.

Hall held an after-school job at the home office of Dr. Larry Amos. The office was located in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. After finishing her work hours, she typically called one of her parents to ask for a ride home.

Hall had no previous history of leaving without telling anyone. She was reportedly not a "troubled teen" and had no known reason to voluntarily escape her life. Hall did not have a boyfriend at the time of her disappearance.

Disappearance

Hall disappeared sometime after 8:30 PM on Monday, May 9, 1994. She was last seen walking into her after-school job at the home office of 43-year-old Dr. Larry Amos in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

Hall last called her mother just after 8:00 PM, but she was not ready to return yet. She told her mother to expect a second phone call when the time came for her ride home. The second phone call never took place.

Dr. Amos told the police that Hall had gotten into a car with an unknown individual after she had finished work at his office. Hall was last seen wearing a white shirt and short set with a navy blue polka dot pattern on the shorts and blue stripes on the shirt, with white socks and white athletic shoes.

Laurell Hall, Hall's mother, fell asleep while waiting for her daughter to call. She awoke around 1:00 AM on May 10, 1994. She soon realized that Hall had never called for her ride, and had yet to return home. Hall's parents reported her missing on May 10, but they were told that since Clea was legally an adult, they would have to wait 24 hours until they were allowed to file a missing person’s report.

Investigation and aftermath

The police rebuffed Hall's mother's initial attempt to report her missing, claiming that she would have to be missing for 24 hours before her disappearance could be reported.

Theories regarding Hall's fate range from her attempting to walk home and being abducted to leaving voluntarily.

Two weeks following Hall's disappearance, the police searched the home of Dr. Amos, which also served as his office, since that was the last place where Hall had been seen. According to Laurell Hall, there was no sign of a struggle there. However, Hall's mother believed that Dr. Amos had enough time to discard any evidence potentially left from such a struggle. In her opinion, the police should not have waited weeks to examine a potential crime scene. Lt. Terry Hopson of the Pine Bluff Police Department has reported that their search of the Amos home failed to turn up any evidence that Hall was either injured or attacked there.

Dr. Larry Amos' property has been searched under a warrant. Larry Amos is considered a person of interest.

Police believe Hall left with someone she knew. Her disappearance was featured in an episode of Find Our Missing.

According to Terry Hopson, the local police "have spent many hours and manpower on this case over the years", and the investigation was still ongoing in 2009.

The local police consider the Hall case likely to involve kidnapping but reportedly had no clues to the identity of any potential kidnappers. Dr. Amos reported seeing Hall entering someone's car but did not see who was driving and could offer no description of the vehicle. Hall did not have a mobile phone with her, and the case predates the mobile phone tracking methods used by police in other missing person cases.

An early suspect in the case was a local boy, whose name was not given to the press. Hall reportedly liked him and acted friendly with him. The boy was subjected to police interrogation and his vehicle was searched, but the police could not connect him to the disappearance and he did not provide any leads. The boy was also subjected to a polygraph test, but the results were inconclusive.

Physical description

Hall was Black. Her reported height was 5'8" (1.73 meters). She weighed 120 pounds (54.55 kilograms). She had "dark eyes" and "dark hair". She had short hair at the time of her disappearance and wore it in a ponytail when last seen. Her only other distinctive feature was a surgical scar on her left knee.

Sydney River McDonald's Murders

 

The Sydney River McDonald's murders were a shooting spree and armed robbery that occurred on May 7, 1992, at a McDonald's restaurant in Sydney River, Nova Scotia, Canada.

The shooting and robbery left three people dead, and one person survived with life-altering injuries that left them permanently disabled. The deceased victims were Neil Burroughs Jr., Jimmy Fagen, and Donna Warren. Arlene MacNeil survived her head wounds. The shooters stole just over CAD 2,000 from the restaurant's safe.

That early morning robbery and shooting was committed by three young men, with one of them, Derek Wood, working for that McDonald's restaurant. They were arrested about a week later and all were convicted by the end of 1993 in separate trials. Today both Freeman Daniel MacNeil and Darren Muise are out on parole while Wood remains incarcerated. It was one of the highest-profile murder cases in Canada at the time.

Background

Victims

Neil Burroughs Jr., aged 29, was a maintenance worker who served at McDonald's restaurants in Industrial Cape Breton. He lived in Glace Bay with his wife and son. He was originally from the Cape Breton town of Dominion.

James “Jimmy” Fagan, aged 27, was a janitor from Sydney. He was arriving for his 1:00 a.m. shift when he was shot.

Donna Warren, aged 22, from North Sydney. She was the swing manager that night. She was a law student. She was the only one working that night who knew the combination of the safe where the money was stored.

Robbery and murders

Derek Wood, 18, an employee of the restaurant along with two friends, Freeman Daniel MacNeil, 23, and Darren Muise, 18, broke into the restaurant after closing, planning to rob the establishment. They murdered their victims with a .22 caliber pistol, several knives, and a shovel. One victim survived after being shot in the face but was left permanently disabled. Forcing an employee to open the restaurant's safe, they made off with $2,017.

Community response

The murders put Sydney into the spotlight as this became a national news story. The restaurant was in the shopping district of Sydney River on Kings Road. It reopened on May 14, 1992, after RCMP officers and psychologists accompanied staff through a walk-through of the restaurant. The building was demolished in 2000 and moved down the road to a more accessible location.

Trial and sentence

MacNeil and Wood were sentenced to life imprisonment with 25 years before parole eligibility. Muise received 20 years before parole eligibility.

Parole dispositions

On March 29, 2011, the National Parole Board announced their decision to grant Muise Day parole. A member stated: "Given the significant and real progress you have made over the years, your case management team thinks that the probability that you commit a crime after your release is low." He received full parole on November 22, 2012.

On December 29, 2022, McNeil was granted day parole. The National Parole Board had rejected an application for parole by Wood earlier that year, claiming he was "too high a risk to re-offend". On March 28, 2024, McNeil was granted full parole based on a "low to moderate" risk of reoffending, under the condition that he is prohibited from re-entering Nova Scotia unless permitted.

William Colby

 

William Egan Colby (January 4, 1920 – May 6, 1996) was an American intelligence officer who served as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from September 1973 to January 1976.

During World War II, Colby served with the Office of Strategic Services. After the war, he joined the newly created Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Before and during the Vietnam War, Colby served as chief of the station in Saigon, chief of the CIA's Far East Division, and head of the Civil Operations and Rural Development effort and oversaw the Phoenix Program. After the war, Colby became Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and during his tenure, under intense pressure from Congress and the media, adopted a policy of relative openness about U.S. intelligence activities to the Senate Church Committee and the House Pike Committee. Colby served as DCI under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford until January 30, 1976, and was succeeded at the CIA by George H. W. Bush.

Early life and family

Colby was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1920. His father, Elbridge Colby, who came from a New England family with a history of military and public service, was a professor of English, an author, and a military officer who served in the U.S. Army and university positions in Tianjin, China; Georgia; Vermont; and Washington, D.C. Though a career officer, Elbridge Colby's professional pursuits focused less on strictly military activities and more on intellectual and scholarly contributions to military and literary subjects. Elbridge's father, Charles Colby, had been a professor of chemistry at Columbia University but had died prematurely and left his family largely without money.

Colby's mother, Margaret Egan, was from an Irish family in St. Paul active in business and Democratic politics. With his Army father, William Colby had a peripatetic upbringing before attending public high school in Burlington, Vermont. He then attended Princeton University and graduated with an A.B. in politics in 1940 after completing a 196-page long senior thesis, "Surrender – French Policy toward the Spanish Civil War," in which he sharply criticized France for failing to support for Second Spanish Republic in the civil war. He then studied at Columbia Law School the following year. Colby recounted that he took from his parents a desire to serve and a commitment to liberal politics, Catholicism, and independence, exemplified by his father's career-damaging protest in The Nation magazine regarding the lenient treatment of a white Georgian who had murdered a black U.S. soldier who was also based at Fort Benning.

Colby was for his entire life a staunch Roman Catholic. He was often referred to as "the warrior–priest." The Catholic Church played a "central role" in his family's life, with Colby's two daughters receiving their First Communion at St. Peter's Basilica.

He married Barbara Heinzen (1920–2015) in 1945 and they had five children. His daughter, Christine, was presented as a debutante to high society in 1978 at the International Debutante Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. In 1984, he divorced Barbara and married the Democratic diplomat Sally Shelton-Colby.

Career

Office of Strategic Services

Following his first year at Columbia, in 1941 Colby volunteered for active duty with the United States Army and served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as a "Jedburgh," or special operator, who was trained to work with resistance forces in occupied Europe to harass German and other Axis forces. During World War II, he parachuted behind enemy lines twice and earned the Silver Star as well as commendations from Norway, France, and Great Britain. In his first mission, he deployed to France as a Jedburgh commanding Team BRUCE, in mid-August 1944, and operated with the Maquis until he joined up with Allied forces later that fall. In April 1945, he led the NORSO Group Operasjon Rype into Norway on a sabotage mission to destroy railway lines to hinder German forces in Norway from reinforcing the final defense of Germany.

After the war, Colby graduated from Columbia Law School and then briefly practiced law in William J. Donovan's New York firm, Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine. Bored by the practice of law and inspired by his liberal beliefs, he moved to Washington to work for the National Labor Relations Board.

Central Intelligence Agency

Post-war Europe

Director of Central Intelligence William Colby discusses the situation in Vietnam with Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and Deputy Assistant For National Security Affairs Brent Scowcroft during a break in a meeting of the National Security Council, 04/24/1975

Then, an OSS friend offered him a job at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and he accepted. Colby spent the next 12 years in the field, first in Stockholm, Sweden. There, he helped set up the stay-behind networks of Operation Gladio, a covert paramilitary organization organized by the CIA to make any Soviet occupation more difficult, as he later described in his memoirs.

Colby then spent much of the 1950s based in Rome under the cover as a State Department officer, where he led the Agency's covert political operations campaign to support anti-communist parties in their electoral contests against left-wing Soviet–associated parties. The Christian Democrats and allied parties won several key elections in the 1950s, preventing a takeover by the Communist Party. Colby was a vocal advocate within the CIA and the United States government for engaging the non-Communist left-wing parties to create broader non-Communist coalitions capable of governing fractious Italy. That position first brought him into conflict with James J. Angleton.

Southeast Asia

In 1959 Colby became the CIA's deputy chief and then chief of station in Saigon, South Vietnam, where he served until 1962. Tasked by the CIA with supporting the government of South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm, Colby established a relationship with Diem's family and with Ngô Đình Nhu, the president's brother, with whom Colby became close. While in Vietnam, Colby focused intensively on building up Vietnamese capabilities to combat the Viet Cong insurgency in the countryside. He argued that "the key to the war in Vietnam was the war in the villages." In 1962, he returned to Washington to become the deputy and then chief of CIA's Far East Division, succeeding Desmond Fitzgerald, who had been tapped to lead the Agency's efforts against Fidel Castro's Cuba. During those years, Colby was deeply involved in Washington's policies in East Asia, particularly concerning Vietnam, as well as Indonesia, Japan, Korea, and China. He was deeply critical of the decision to abandon support for Diem, and he believed that played a material part in the weakening of the South Vietnamese position in the following years.

In 1968, while Colby was preparing to take up the post of chief of the Soviet Bloc Division of the Agency, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson instead sent Colby back to Vietnam as deputy to Robert Komer, who had been charged with streamlining the civilian side of the American and South Vietnamese efforts against the Communists. Shortly after arriving, Colby succeeded Komer as head of the U.S./South Vietnamese rural pacification effort named CORDS. Part of the effort was the controversial Phoenix Program, an initiative designed to identify and attack the "Viet Cong Infrastructure." There is considerable debate about the merits of the program, which was subject to allegations that it relied on or was complicit in assassination and torture. Colby, however, consistently insisted that such tactics were not authorized by or permitted in the program.

More broadly, along with Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) commander General Creighton Abrams, Colby was part of a leadership group that worked to apply a new approach to the war designed to focus more on pacification (winning hearts and minds) and securing the countryside, as opposed to the "search and destroy" approach that had characterized General William Westmoreland's tenure as MACV commander. Some, including Colby later in life, argue that the approach succeeded in reducing the Communist insurgency in South Vietnam, but that South Vietnam, without air and ground support by the United States after the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, was ultimately overwhelmed by a conventional North Vietnamese assault in 1975. The CORDS model and its approach influenced U.S. strategy and thinking on counterinsurgency in the 2000s in Iraq and Afghanistan.

CIA HQ: Director

Colby returned to Washington in July 1971 and became executive director of the CIA. After long-time DCI Richard Helms was dismissed by President Nixon in 1973, James Schlesinger assumed the helm at the Agency. A strong believer in reform of the CIA and the intelligence community more broadly, Schlesinger had written a 1971 Bureau of the Budget report outlining his views on the subject. Colby, who had had a somewhat unorthodox career in the CIA focused on political action and counterinsurgency, agreed with Schlesinger's reformist approach. Schlesinger appointed him head of the clandestine branch in early 1973. When Nixon reshuffled his agency heads and made Schlesinger secretary of defense, Colby emerged as a natural candidate for DCI, apparently based on the recommendation that he was a professional who would not make waves. Colby was known as a media-friendly CIA director. His tenure as DCI, which lasted two-and-a-half tumultuous years, was overshadowed by the Church and Pike congressional investigations into alleged US intelligence malfeasance over the preceding 25 years, including 1975, the so-called Year of Intelligence.

Colby's time as DCI was also eventful on the world stage. Shortly after he assumed leadership, the Yom Kippur War broke out, an event that surprised not only the American intelligence agencies but also those of Israelis. The intelligence surprise reportedly affected Colby's credibility with the Nixon administration. Colby participated in the National Security Council meetings that responded to apparent Soviet intentions to intervene in the war by raising the alert level of U.S. forces to DEFCON 3 and defusing the crisis. In 1975, after many years of involvement, South Vietnam fell to Communist forces in April 1975, a particularly difficult blow for Colby, who had dedicated so much of his life and career to the American effort there. Events in the arms-control field, Angola, Australia, the Middle East, and elsewhere also demanded attention.

Colby also focused on internal reforms within the CIA and the intelligence community. He attempted to modernize what he believed to be some out-of-date structures and practices by disbanding the Board of National Estimates and replacing it with the National Intelligence Council. In a speech from 1973 addressed to NSA employees, he emphasized the role of free speech in the U.S. and the moral role of the CIA as a defender, not a preventer, of civil rights, an attempt to rebut the then-emerging revelations of CIA and NSA domestic spying. He also mentioned several reforms intended to limit the excessive classification of governmental information.

President Gerald Ford, advised by Henry Kissinger and others concerned by Colby's controversial openness to Congress and distance from the White House, replaced Colby late in 1975 with George H. W. Bush during the so-called Halloween Massacre in which Secretary of Defense Schlesinger was also replaced (by Donald Rumsfeld). Colby was offered the position of United States Permanent Representative to NATO but turned it down.

Later career

In 1977 Colby founded a D.C. law firm, Colby, Miller & Hanes, with Marshall Miller, David Hanes, and associated lawyers, and worked on public policy issues. In consonance with his long-held liberal views, Colby became a supporter of the nuclear freeze and of reductions in military spending. He practiced law and advised various bodies on intelligence matters.

During that period, he also wrote two books, both of which were memoirs of his professional life, combined with discussions of history and policy. One was titled Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA; the other, on Vietnam and his long involvement with American policy there, was called Lost Victory. In the latter book, Colby argued that the U.S.–South Vietnamese counterinsurgency campaign in Vietnam had succeeded by the early 1970s and that South Vietnam could have survived if the U.S. had continued to provide support after the Paris Accords. The topic remains open and controversial, but some recent scholarship, including by Lewis "Bob" Sorley, supports Colby's arguments.

Colby also lent his expertise and knowledge, along with Oleg Kalugin, to the Activision game Spycraft: The Great Game, which was released shortly before his death. Both Colby and Kalugin played themselves in the game.

Colby was a member of the National Coalition to Ban Handguns. His name appears on a note to Senator John Heinz dated July 5, 1989, as a "National Sponsor."

At the time of the Senate hearings to confirm his appointment, Colby was relentlessly grilled about The Family Jewels, a secret 693-page report ordered by Schlesinger, directed by Colby, and compiled by CIA's own Inspector General's Office. It dealt with what Colby calls "some mistakes," specifically CIA abuses ranging from assassination plans to dosing people with mind-control drugs to domestic spying.

Death

On April 27, 1996, Colby set out from his weekend home in Rock Point, Maryland, on a solo canoe trip. His canoe was found the following day on a sandbar in the Wicomico River, a tributary of the Potomac, about 0.25 miles (0.40 km) from his home. On May 6, Colby's body was found in a marshy riverbank lying face down not far from where his canoe was found. After an autopsy, Maryland's Chief Medical Examiner John E. Smialek ruled his death to be accidental. Smialek's report said that Colby was predisposed to having a heart attack or stroke from "severe calcified atherosclerosis" and that Colby likely "suffered a complication of this atherosclerosis which precipitated him into the cold water in a debilitated state and he succumbed to the effects of hypothermia and drowned."

Colby's death triggered conspiracy theories that his death had been caused by foul play.

In his 2011 documentary, The Man Nobody Knew, Colby's son Carl suggested that his father suffered from guilt over his failings as a father to one of his daughters and so committed suicide. Carl's stepmother and siblings, as well as Colby's biographer Randall Woods, criticized Carl's portrayal of Colby and rejected the allegation that the former CIA director killed himself and said that it was inconsistent with his character.

Legacy

Colby was the subject of a biography, Lost Crusader, by John Prados, published in 2003. His son, Carl Colby, released a documentary on his father's professional and personal life, The Man Nobody Knew, in 2011. In May 2013, Randall B. Woods, Distinguished Professor of History at the J. William Fulbright School at the University of Arkansas, published his biography of Colby, titled Shadow Warrior: William Egan Colby and the CIA. Norwich University hosts an annual writer’s symposium named in his honor.

His grandson, Elbridge A. Colby, served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Planning from 2017 to 2018 and is a co-founder of the Marathon Institute.

Quotes

"We disbanded our intelligence [after both world wars] and then found we needed it. Let's not go through that again. Redirect it, reduce the amount of money spent, but let's not destroy it. Because you don't know 10 years out what you're going to face."

"The more we know about each other the safer we all are." — Colby to Leonid Brezhnev.

On walking alone unfollowed through Red Square in 1989 during the end of the Cold War: "That was my victory parade."

The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist

 

The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist (French: vol de sirop d'érable du siècle, lit. 'maple syrup heist of the century') was the theft over several months in 2011 and 2012 of nearly 3,000 tons (3,000 long tons; 3,300 short tons) of maple syrup, valued at C$18.7 million (equivalent to C$24.1 million in 2023) from a storage facility in Quebec. The facility was operated by the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers (French: Fédération des producteurs acéricoles du Québec, FPAQ) which represents 77 percent of the global maple syrup supply.

Adjusted for inflation, the heist is the most valuable in Canadian history.

Origins

In 1966, a group of maple syrup producers in Quebec participated in a joint plan to collectively market maple syrup. This effort inspired the formation of a larger agreement all across Quebec which became known as the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers.

The FPAQ maintains a strategic reserve of maple syrup, officially known as the International Strategic Reserve (ISR) across multiple warehouses in rural Quebec towns.

Theft

Over several months between 2011 and 2012, the contents of 9,571 barrels, valued at $18.7M, were stolen in a suspected insider job from a FPAQ facility in Saint-Louis-de-Blandford, Quebec. The syrup was stored in unmarked white metal barrels inspected only once a year. Thieves used trucks to transport barrels to a remote sugar shack, where they siphoned off the maple syrup, refilled the barrels with water, and then returned them to the facility. As the operation progressed, the thieves started siphoning syrup directly off barrels in the reserve without refilling them. The stolen syrup was trucked to the south (Vermont) and east (New Brunswick), where it was trafficked in many small batches to reduce suspicion. It was typically sold to legitimate syrup distributors who were unaware of its origin.

Discovery and investigation

In July 2012, the FPAQ took its annual inventory of syrup barrels. Inspector Michel Gauvreau started climbing up the barrels and nearly fell, expecting 600-pound (270 kg) barrels but finding them to be empty. Police later recovered hundreds of barrels of the syrup from an exporter based in Kedgwick, New Brunswick.

Between 18 and 20 December 2012, police arrested 17 men related to the theft.

Perpetrators

Richard Vallières (b. 1978), the accused ringleader, was sentenced in April 2017 to eight years in prison plus a $9.4 million fine, with an extension to fourteen years if the fine is not paid. In 2016, the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled that was excessive and lowered the fine to $1 million. The Supreme Court of Canada reversed that decision in 2022 and reinstated the original fine.

Raymond Vallières (b. 1954), father of Richard, was convicted of possession and was sentenced to two years in jail minus one day, followed by 3 years of probation.

Étienne St-Pierre (b. 1943), a New Brunswick-based syrup reseller, was sentenced to two years in jail minus one day, 3 years of probation, and an $850,000+ fine.

Avik Caron (b. 1974), the insider whose spouse owned the FPAQ warehouse, was sentenced to five years in prison plus a $1.2 million fine.

Sébastien Jutras, a trucker involved in the transport of stolen syrup, served eight months in prison.

In popular culture

The theft was featured in the Netflix documentary series Dirty Money in season 1, episode 5, "The Maple Syrup Heist".

In 2022, Amazon announced it was developing The Sticky, a half-hour comedy series based on the heist.

The Obelisk of Axum

 

The Obelisk of Axum (Tigrinya: ሓወልቲ ኣኽሱም, romanized: ḥawelti Akhsum; Amharic: የአክሱም ሐውልት, romanized: Ye’Åksum ḥāwelt) is a 4th-century CE, 24-meter (79 ft) tall phonolite stele, weighing 160 tons (160 long tons; 180 short tons), in the city of Axum in Ethiopia. It is ornamented with two false doors at the base and features decorations resembling windows on all sides. The obelisk ends in a semi-circular top, which used to be enclosed by metal frames.

History

Overview

The 'obelisk'—properly termed a stele or, in the local languages, Tigrinya: hawelt; and church Ge'ez: hawelti—is found along with many other stelae in the city of Axum in modern-day Ethiopia. The stelae were probably carved and erected during the 4th century CE by subjects of the Kingdom of Aksum, an ancient Ethiopian civilization. Erection of stelae in Axum was a very old practice. Their function is supposed to be as "markers" for underground burial chambers. The largest of the grave markers were for royal burial chambers and were decorated with multi-story false windows and false doors, while lesser nobility would have smaller, less decorated ones. While there are only a few large ones standing, there are hundreds of smaller ones in various "stelae fields". It is still possible to see primitive, roughly carved stelae near more elaborate "obelisks". The last stele erected in Axum was probably the so-called King Ezana's Stele, in the 4th century CE.

King Ezana (c. 321 – c. 360), influenced by his childhood tutor Frumentius, introduced Christianity to Axum, precluding the pagan practice of erecting burial stelae (it seems that at the feet of each obelisk, together with the grave, there was also a sacrificial altar.

Over the course of time, many of these stelae fell over due to several reasons: structural collapse (as, probably, in the case of the Great Stele, measuring 33 m), possibly immediately after their erection; earthquakes (Axum is in a seismic zone); or the military incursions of the Imam Ahmad Gragn during the Ethiopian-Adal War from 1529 to 1543. In the 19th century, of the three major "royal" stelae, only King Ezana's Stele remained erect, shown in the print "The Obelisk at Axum" of Henry Salt (1780–1827) and in the photograph taken by Mabel Bent in 1893. Salt travelled back to England with Captain Thomas Fremantle, and the design of the Obelisk of Axum influenced that of the Nelson Monument, Portsdown Hill, near Portsmouth Harbor, for which Fremantle raised the funds.

The Italian occupation of Ethiopia ended in 1937 with looting, in which King Ezana's obelisk of Axum was taken to Italy as war spoil. The monolith was cut into three pieces and transported by truck along the tortuous route between Axum and the port of Massawa, taking five trips over a period of two months. It travelled by the ship, Adwa, arriving in Naples on March 27, 1937. It was then transported to Rome, where it was restored, reassembled and erected on Porta Capena square in front of the Ministry for Italian Africa. This square would later become the headquarters of the United Nations's Food and Agriculture Organization and the Circus Maximus. The obelisk was officially unveiled on October 28, 1937 to commemorate the fifteenth anniversary of the March on Rome. The operation was coordinated by Ugo Monneret de Villard.

A bronze statue of the Lion of Judah, symbol of the Ethiopian monarchy, was taken along with the obelisk and displayed in front of Termini railway station.

Repatriation

In a 1947 UN agreement, Italy agreed to return the stele to Ethiopia, along with the other looted piece, the Monument to the Lion of Judah. While the latter was returned in 1967 following the 1961 visit of emperor Haile Selassie to Italy, little action was taken to return the stele for more than 50 years, partly as a consequence of the considerable technical difficulties related to its transportation.

One source also suggests that emperor Haile Sellassie, after hearing of these technical difficulties (and of the enormous costs necessary to overcome them), decided to grant the stele to the city of Rome, as a gift for the "renewed friendship" between Italy and Ethiopia. This assertion, however, remains controversial and was not recognized by successive authorities. Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, who overthrew the emperor in 1974, asked the Italian government to return the stele to Ethiopia. Another controversial arrangement, according to some sources, seems to be that Italy could keep the stele in exchange for the construction of a hospital in Addis Ababa (Saint Paul's Hospital) and for the cancellation of debts owed by Ethiopia. In any case, after the fall of the Mengistu regime, the new Ethiopian government asked for the return of the stele, finding a positive answer from the then president of the Italian republic Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, in April 1997.

The first steps in dismantling the structure were taken in November 2003, under the supervision of Giorgio Croci, Professor of Structural Problems of Monuments and Historical Buildings at Sapienza University of Rome. The intent was to ship the stele back to Ethiopia in March 2004, but the repatriation project encountered a series of obstacles: The runway at Axum Airport was considered too short for a cargo plane carrying even one of the thirds into which the stele had been cut; the roads and bridges between Addis Ababa and Axum were thought to be not up to the task of road transport; and access through the nearby Eritrean port of Massawa—which was how the stele originally left Africa—was impossible due to the strained state of relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Inauguration Ceremony for the reinstallation of the Aksum Obelisk

The runway at Axum airport was then upgraded specifically to facilitate the return of the stele. The dismantled stele remained sitting in a warehouse near Rome's Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport, until 19 April 2005 when the middle piece was repatriated by use of an Antonov An-124, amidst much local celebration. It has been described as the largest and heaviest piece of air freight ever carried. The second piece was returned on 22 April 2005, with the final piece returned on 25 April 2005. The operation cost Italy $7.7 million.

The stele remained in storage while Ethiopia decided how to reconstruct it without disturbing other ancient treasures still in the area (especially King Ezana's Stele). By March 2007 the foundation had been poured for the re-erection of the stele near King Ezana's Stele, structurally consolidated in this occasion. Reassembly began in June 2008, with a team chosen by UNESCO and led by Giorgio Croci, and the monument was re-erected in its original home and unveiled on 4 September 2008.

When it was reassembled in Rome in 1937, three steel bars were inserted per section. When the obelisk was hit by lightning during a violent thunderstorm over Rome on 27 May 2002, this caused "considerable" damage. In the new reconstruction the three sections are fixed together by a total of eight aramid fiber (Kevlar) bars: four between the first and second and four between the second and third sections. This arrangement guarantees structural resistance during earthquakes and avoids the use of steel, so as not to again make the stele a magnet for lightning and to avoid rust.

Several other similar stelae/obelisks exist in Ethiopia and Eritrea, such as the Hawulti in Metera. Like the Obelisk of Axum, the other stelae have a rectangular base with a false door carved on one side.

3-D laser scanning

The Zamani Project documents cultural heritage sites in 3D based on terrestrial laser-scanning to create a historical record. The 3D documentation of parts of the Axum Stelae Field was carried out in 2006.

The Hammersmith Nude Murders

 

The Hammersmith nude murders are the name of a series of six murders in West London, England, in 1964 and 1965. The victims, all prostitutes, were found undressed in or near the River Thames, leading the press to nickname the killer Jack the Stripper (a reference to Jack the Ripper). Two earlier murders, committed in West London in 1959 and 1963, have also been linked by some investigators to the same perpetrator.

Despite "intense media interest and one of the biggest manhunts in Scotland Yard's history" the case is unsolved. Forensic evidence gathered at the time is believed to have been destroyed or lost.

Victims

Elizabeth Figg

Elizabeth Figg was found dead at 5:10 am on 17 June 1959 by police officers on routine patrol in Duke's Meadows, Chiswick, on the north bank of the River Thames. The park had a reputation as a lovers' lane, and prostitutes were known to take their clients there.

Figg's body was found on scrubland between Dan Mason Drive and the river's towpath, approximately 200 yards (180 m) west of Barnes Bridge. Her dress was torn at the waist and opened to reveal her breasts; marks around the neck were consistent with strangulation. Figg's underwear and shoes were missing, and no identification or personal possessions were found. A pathologist concluded that death had occurred between midnight and 2:00 a.m. on 17 June.

A post-mortem photograph of Figg's face distributed to the press was independently recognized by her roommate and her mother.

Extensive searches of the area – including the river bed – failed to find Figg's underwear, black stiletto shoes, or white handbag. A police official theorized that a client had murdered her in his car, after removing her shoes and underwear, and that these and her handbag had then remained in the car after the body was disposed of at Duke's Meadows. The proprietor at The Ship public house, on the opposite side of the river to where Figg was found, said that on the night of the murder he and his wife had seen a car's headlights as it parked in that area at 12:05 a.m. Shortly after the lights were switched off, they heard a woman's scream.

Gwynneth Rees

The body of Welsh-born Gwynneth Rees was found on 8 November 1963 at the Barnes Borough Council household refuse disposal site on Townmead Road, Mortlake. The dump was situated 40 yards (37 m) from the Thames towpath, and approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) from Duke's Meadows.

Rees was naked except for a single stocking on her right leg, extending no further up than the ankle. She had been accidentally decapitated by a shovel that workmen had been using to level the refuse.

Hannah Tailford

HannahTailford was found dead on 2 February 1964 on the Thames foreshore below Linden House – the clubhouse of the London Corinthian Sailing Club – west of Hammersmith Bridge. She had been strangled, several of her teeth were missing, and her underwear had been stuffed into her mouth.

Irene Lockwood

Irene Lockwood was found dead on 8 April 1964 on the foreshore of the Thames at Corney Reach, Chiswick, not far from where Tailford had been found. With the discovery of this victim, police surmised that a serial murderer was at large. Lockwood was pregnant at the time of her death.

Helen Barthelemy

East Lothian-born Helen Barthelemy was found dead on 24 April 1964 in an alleyway at the rear of 199 Boston Manor Road, Brentford. Barthelemy's death gave investigators their first solid piece of evidence in the case: flecks of paint used in car manufacturing. Police felt that the paint had probably come from the killer's workplace; they, therefore, focused on tracing it to a business nearby.

Mary Fleming

Scottish-born Mary Fleming was found dead on 14 July 1964 outside 48 Berrymede Road, Chiswick. Once again, paint spots were found on the body; many neighbors had also heard a car reversing down the street just before the body was discovered.

Frances Brown

Frances Brown, a native of Edinburgh, was last seen alive on 23 October 1964 by a colleague who saw her get into a client's car; on 25 November her body was found in a car park on Hornton Street, Kensington. She had been strangled. The colleague was able to provide police with an identikit picture and a description of the car, thought to be a grey Ford Zephyr. Brown had testified as a witness for the defense, along with Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, at the trial of Stephen Ward in July 1963.

Bridget O'Hara

Irish immigrant Bridget "Bridie" O'Hara was found dead on 16 February 1965 near a storage shed behind the Heron Trading Estate, Acton. She had been missing since 11 January. Once again, O'Hara's body turned up flecks of industrial paint which were traced to an electrical transformer near where she was discovered. Her body also showed signs of having been stored in a warm environment. The transformer was a good fit for both the paint and the heating.

Investigation

Chief Superintendent John Du Rose of Scotland Yard, the detective put in charge of the case, interviewed almost 7,000 suspects.

In the spring of 1965, the investigation into the murders encountered a major breakthrough when a sample of paint which perfectly matched that recovered from several victims' bodies was found beneath a concealed transformer at the rear of a building on the Heron Factory Estate in Acton. This factory estate faced a paint spraying shop. Shortly thereafter, Du Rose held a news conference in which he falsely announced that the police had narrowed the suspect pool down to 20 men and that, by a process of elimination; these suspects were being eliminated from the investigation. After a short time, he announced that the suspect pool contained only 10 members, and then three. There were no further known Stripper killings following the initial news conference.

According to the writer Anthony Summers, Hannah Tailford, and Frances Brown, the Stripper's third and seventh victims, were peripherally connected to the 1963 Profumo affair. Some victims were also known to engage in the underground party scene in addition to appearing in pornographic movies. Several writers have postulated that the victims may have known each other and that the killer may have been connected to this scene as well.

Suspects

Kenneth Archibald

On 27 April 1964, Kenneth Archibald, a 57-year-old caretaker at the Holland Park Lawn Tennis Club, walked into Notting Hill police station and voluntarily confessed to the killing of Irene Lockwood. Archibald was charged with the murder and stood trial at the Old Bailey in June 1964. When asked to plead, he retracted his confession and pleaded not guilty. There was no other evidence to link him to the crime and on 23 June 1964, he was found not guilty by a jury and acquitted by the judge, Mr Justice Neild.

Mungo Ireland

For Du Rose, the most likely suspect was a Scottish security guard called Mungo Ireland, whom Du Rose first identified in a BBC television interview in 1970 as a respectable married man in his forties whom he codenamed "Big John". Ireland had been identified as a suspect shortly after Bridget O'Hara's murder when flecks of industrial paint were traced to the Heron Trading Estate, where he had worked as a security guard.

Shortly after this connection was made, Ireland committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, leaving a note for his wife that read: "I can't stick it any longer", and finished, "To save you and the police looking for me I'll be in the garage". Whilst seen by many as a strong suspect in the killings, recent research suggests that Ireland was in Scotland when O'Hara was murdered, and therefore could not have been the Stripper. Crime author Neil Milkins said the killings stopped after Ireland's death and the police task force set up to catch the killer was reduced and finally disbanded. Milkins, who wrote the book Who Was Jack the Stripper? Was an investigative consultant for the BBC documentary Dark Son: The Hunt for a Serial Killer? "On the morning that Ireland’s body was found, he had been due to appear before Acton Magistrates Court to face a charge of failing to stop his car after being involved in a road traffic accident," said Milkins. "Did Ireland commit suicide to save facing Acton magistrates over a trifling motoring charge or did John Du Rose push him over the edge with his press statements?" The Scotland Yard Serious Crime Review Group re-investigated the Hammersmith murders between 2006 and 2007 and this resulted in a new conclusion. A statement read: "The circumstantial evidence against Mungo Ireland is very strong and it was the view of the officers conducting the most recent review of this case that he was most likely to be responsible." Although Ireland's work records indicated he was in Scotland on the night of O’Hara's disappearance, Scotland Yard believes these may have been falsified.

Freddie Mills

In 2001, reformed gangster Jimmy Tippett Jr. claimed that, during research for his book about London's gangland, he had uncovered information suggesting that British light heavyweight boxing champion Freddie Mills was responsible for the murders. According to Tippett, Kray-era gangsters, including Charlie Richardson and Frankie Fraser, had long suspected Mills of being the murderer.

Mills had previously been linked with the murders by Peter Neale, a freelance journalist from Balham, south London, who told police in July 1972 that he had received information, in confidence, from a serving chief inspector that Mills "killed the nude prostitutes". He also said that this was "common knowledge in the West End. Many people would say, 'Oh, Freddie did them in...'"

Mills was found shot dead in his car, apparently by suicide, in July 1965.

The suggestion that Mills was the Hammersmith nude murderer originated with gangster Frankie Fraser, who told it to policeman Bob Berry, who told The Sun crime reporter Michael Litchfield. Fraser claimed that the story was confessed by Mills, to Scotland Yard Chief Superintendent John Du Rose, and told by Du Rose to him; but when Du Rose published his autobiography which touched on the 'Hammersmith Nude Murders', there was no mention of Freddie Mills about this case. The claims have since been dismissed. Peter McInnes put the allegations to the investigating officer, who stated that Mills had never been a suspect during the investigation.

Metropolitan Police officer

David Seabrook, in his book Jack of Jumps (2006), wrote that a former Metropolitan Police detective was a suspect in the opinion of several senior detectives investigating the case. Owen Summers, a journalist for The Sun newspaper, had previously raised suspicion about the unnamed officer's involvement in a series of articles published by the newspaper in 1972, and Daily Mirror journalist Brian McConnell followed a similar line of inquiry in his book Found Naked and Dead in 1974. He was also considered by Dick Kirby, a former Metropolitan Police detective, in his book Laid Bare: The Nude Murders and the Hunt for 'Jack the Stripper' (2016), in which Kirby referred to him only as "the Cop".

Tommy Butler

In their book The Survivor (2002), Jimmy Evans and Martin Short allege the culprit was Superintendent Tommy Butler of the Metropolitan Police's Flying Squad. Butler died in 1970.

Harold Jones

The Crime & Investigation channel's Fred Dinenage: Murder Casebook put forward the theory in 2011 that the killer could have been Harold Jones, a convicted murderer from Wales. Jones killed two girls in 1921 in his home town of Abertillery. Because he was 15 at the time, he was not liable for the death penalty and instead received a life sentence. He was released from Wandsworth prison in 1941, at the age of 35, for exemplary behavior. He is believed to have then returned to Abertillery, and visited the graves of his victims. By 1947, Jones was living in Fulham, London. All the Stripper murders had similar features to his early murders, with no sexual assault, but extreme violence inflicted on the victims. Due to poor record-keeping, he was never considered a possible suspect by the police. Jones died in Hammersmith in 1971.

The Welsh writer Neil Milkins, in Who Was Jack the Stripper? (2011) also concluded that Jones was the perpetrator. While researching Jones for his book Every Mother's Nightmare, Milkins had traced the murderer's movements: "[H]e turned up in Fulham in the late 1940s calling himself Harry Stevens, and stayed at that address in Hestercombe Avenue until 1962, at which point he disappeared again. I came across the Jack the Stripper case on the internet and realized that in the same three years, Jones' whereabouts remained unknown – 1962 to 1965 – several prostitutes had been murdered in the same west London area."

In January 2019 the possible involvement of Jones was re-examined in the 90-minute documentary Dark Son: The Hunt for a Serial Killer broadcast on BBC Two. Criminologist Professor David Wilson and an investigative team, including former detective Jackie Malton and forensic psychologist Professor Mike Berry, use contemporary policing techniques such as geographic profiling and offender profiling to see if the crimes of Jones the boy can be measured against those of the London killer. There are many similarities.

In the media

The murders have been the subject of several television documentaries:

Great Crimes and Trials documentary series – "The Hammersmith Murders" episode, first broadcast in the UK by BBC in 1993.

Fred Dinenage: Murder Casebook documentary series – "Murders That Shocked a Nation: The Welsh Child Killer", first broadcast in the UK by CI in 2011.

Dark Son: The Hunt for a Serial Killer (2018) – BBC documentary. This was filmed in both London and Abertillery, and contributors include criminologist David Wilson and writer Robin Jarossi, author of The Hunt for the '60s Ripper.

In fiction

The crime novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square (1969), written by Arthur La Bern, is loosely based on the case. The book was adapted for the Alfred Hitchcock movie Frenzy (1972). The case also inspired The Fiend (1972), in which a misogynistic serial killer leaves his naked victims across London.

The crime novel Bad Penny Blues (2009) by Cathi Unsworth is closely based on the case.