Intriguing crimes across the nation, notable for the type of crime, the celebrity of the criminal, or both.
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American Tourists, Crime, and Investigations
And so we hear about another m issing American Tourist, this time from a cruise ship.
Let's see, there's Natalee Holloway, missing from Aruba, having disappeared the night before she was scheduled to fly home and after taking off with three boys from an Aruban nightclub.
I wrote about the case of honeymooner George Smith IV earlier this year. This fellow ended up missing but left behind a large bloody body print on a ship canopy. A bloody print later scrubbed clean by the cruise ship personnel.
By Alva James-Johnson Sun-Sentinel Posted December 12 2005 A 59-year-old Canadian woman traveling with her husband on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship was reported missing, heightening safety concerns in an industry already being scrutinized by U.S. legislators. Jill Begora's husband reported her missing Saturday morning as the Royal Caribbean cruise line ship Jewel of the Seas pulled into Nassau, the Bahamas, according to Coast Guard spokesman Dana Warr. The ship's crew searched the vessel for Begora before filing a report with the Coast Guard on Saturday night. "They did a full ship search, and there was no evidence that she had left the ship in Nassau," leading authorities to think she may have fallen overboard, Warr said. Begora's disappearance occurred three days before the U.S. Congressional Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations and another subcommittee are scheduled to conduct hearings on cruise ship disappearances and crimes. There have been about a dozen disappearances on cruise ships in recent years, according to The Associated Press. Prior to Begora's disappearance, the most recent case involved George Allen Smith IV of Greenwich, Conn., who vanished July 5 while honeymooning on the Royal Caribbean ship Brilliance of the Seas in the Mediterranean Sea, between Greece and Turkey. The FBI has been investigating the case, but no body has been recovered and no one has been charged. Smith's family was expected to attend the congressional hearings and has called for legislation to protect passengers and their families. |
In the above case, who knows. Jill Begora's husband could have, boom, tossed her overboard his own self.
Which brings up the problem yet again of how to deal with crimes committed on, or by, American tourists while on cruise ships or in foreign countries.
Article comments
1 - Bliffle
I don't know if McDonald is guilty, just like I don't know if OJ is guilty (I can have suspicions but I can't prove it) because the police seem to abandon all other efforts once they have a plausible reason to suspect a spouse. They bailout on pursueing other leads and other suspects. I guess they're just lazy. Plus very judgemental. Plus they REALLY think they know more about human nature than they really do. We know they make a lot of mistakes and that they fight hard to make wrongful convictions.
2 - charlie
I dont know for sure if Macdonald is guilty or not either.
I do beleive 100% in Jimmy Britt's statement though. When you take the fact that Helena confessed numerous times (and even went on the record in a 60 minutes interview), and the fact that Blackburn spent 3 months in prison for forgery, extortion, and falsifying documents in an unrelated case, it seems very plausible that this threat reall did occur.