Zesty Lemon

It’s not immediately obvious but as a nation and indeed a race, we’ve always had an infatuation with crime. Think about it, crime is one of best selling fiction genres, it’s a popular choice for television dramas and it generally receives critical acclaim when it graces the big screen. This got me thinking; which is always a dangerous thing. Is there such a thing as a great crime?

Well I would argue that there is, and before I am chased out of my house by a hoard of petty crime victims with an applied determination to jump the moral boundaries into vigilante justice, I’d like to clarify what I mean by ‘great’. It doesn’t mean it has to be good, liked or even moral – after all, I can imagine that there were some seriously pissed off people about the Plague of the 1600′s and the Fire of London but it didn’t deprive these events of their inflated prefix in history. So when I imply ‘great’, I mean worthy of a subtle respect at the execution and not necessarily at the consequences.

For a symbolic example of a ‘great’ crime or; in this event, a syndicate, you do much worse than looking at the pre-war depression period in America where the likes of John Dillinger, Charles Arthur Floyd and Baby Faced Nelson were merrily making enforced withdrawals from a number of banks in the east of the US. It has to be accepted that these people were troubled characters but that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t something great about them. In fact, Mr Dillinger famously never stole from innocent people directly during his heists and he only took from the ‘institution’ that he believed could have afforded it. That strikes me as “stealing from the rich to feed the poor”. The latter bit is questionable, but if you ask me, the likeness to Robin Hood can’t be dismissed and the crime of wearing green tights as a grown man far outweighs Dillinger’s misguided antics.  Alas, they all met their fate however, at the hands of a crack team lead by Melvin Pervis, who; despite the unfortunate surname,was known for his heavy handed approach to lawbreakers and was able to demonstrate his unique ability to shatter the latter with the former on all three occasions.

Another notable example of someone making a ‘great’ career out of defrauding companies and governments was the youthful period in the life of Frank William Abagnale. Popularised by the 2002 film Catch Me if you Can, the young Abagnale Junior was portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio and in his fraudulent five years from age 16 to 21 he really got around. Somehow; and quite brilliantly, he got away with forging over $2.5 million worth of cheques and successfully impersonated a Harvard educated lawyer, a pediatrician, a sociology teacher and a Pan Am pilot which implies the interest paradox that he is a more convincing actor that his on-screen counterpart – a mean feat indeed! This story has a slightly happier ending. Although he was eventually caught by the tenacious efforts of the FBI, after some obfuscated diplomacy with France in order to secure his extradition, he was offered the dynamite opportunity of being an indentured servant to the US governments fraud detection agency, of which he committed a productive five years catching similarly minded fraudsters. After his eventual release, he prospered with his own security consultancy firm and ironically amassed a legitimate personal fortune comfortably in the millions.

I called this post ‘The Good, the Bad and the Lowlife’ so I guess I better discuss some atrocities as well! Setting aside mass genocides and ethnically motivated  crimes, it’s hard to imagine worse sins than that of a serial killer. The problem with dictating the worst ‘killer’ of all time is the lack of distinction when it comes to quantifying it. This aside, the most prolific proven serial killer was a British GP named Harold Shipman. He is confirmed to have murdered 215 people but the true figure may be much higher than that. For me, this case is particularly chilling due to the position of trust that he held in his role as a practitioner. After all, is not seeing a doctor really an option? I could easily make a quip here about it being some sort of conspiracy in order to facilitate local authority waiting time targets but somehow it doesn’t seem appropriate. As you would expect, this debacle attracted copious media interest at the time but curiously it divided opinion when he committed suicide in his cell in 2004. Many tabloids ran with elation at his effort to dismiss himself from the gene pool. Eloquent as always, The Sun newspaper actually printed the headline “Ship, ship horray!” However, the opposing arguement predominantly came from the families of the victims who felt ‘cheated’ of justice in that he was still able to control his death -  a common trait among serial killers apparently.

Whilst I’ve contrasted two different sides of criminal intent, they each have a legacy in their own right. I think we can safely establish that there is no crime that is entirely good but there are some that are entirely bad! It’ll be interesting to remember this when we next watch a prison drama. Remember the real world isn’t The Shawshank Redemption. In reality, it’s a lot more tunneling through shit and distinct lack of redemption.

Tags: Baby Faced Nelson, bad, Catch me if you Can, Charles Arthur Floyd, crime, crime fiction, drama, evil, Frank Abagnale, good, Harold Shipman, John Dillinger, lowlife, Melvin Pervis, Robin Hood, serial killer, Shawshank Redemption