True crime stories - where writer's start

Crime behind the stories: True Crimes 

MICHAEL GOTTSCHALK

A police officer on a motorbike drives past the main entrance to Berlin's iconic Kaufhaus des Westens department store

Perfect crimes are crimes that are undetected, unattributed to an identifiable perpetrator, or otherwise unsolved or unsolvable as a kind of technical achievement on the part of the perpetrator. The term is used colloquially in law and fiction (especially crime fiction). In certain contexts, the concept of perfect crime is limited to just undetected crimes; if an event is ever identified as a crime, some investigators say it cannot be called "perfect".

Many of the perfect crimes have involved identical twins.There have been several cases all over the world where no convictions could be obtained because they could not prove which twin was involved.

“It's an idea beloved by screenwriters: the perfect crime. But in Hollywood movies, even the cleverest plot is usually derailed by an unforeseen hitch. Now a real-life heist in Germany seems to have flouted that rule along with its moral subtext that crime doesn't pay. In January, $6.8 million worth of jewellery was snatched from the cases of Kaufhaus des Westens, a luxurious seven-story department store universally known as KaDeWe and as much a Berlin landmark as the Victory Column and the Brandenburg Gate. Three masked, gloved thieves were caught on surveillance cameras sliding down ropes from the store's skylights, outsmarting its sophisticated security system. “

“That night they got away, but they did leave evidence: DNA, found in a drop of sweat on a latex glove discarded next to a rope ladder used to reach the ground floor. Police ran the material through the German crime database. And they got a hit — two in fact.“

“The computer identified 27-year-old identical twins Hassan and Abbas O. (under German law they cannot be named in full). The unemployed and Lebanese-born brothers have lived in the northern German state of Lower Saxony since age 1 but still have not been granted permanent residency. They have criminal records for theft and fraud.“

“Police arrested the brothers on Feb. 11 in a gambling arcade and charged both with burglary, an offence that carries a potential 10-year prison sentence. But on March 18, before the case went to trial, they were released. The twins — who have made no comment on the charges — "are laughing at the rule of law in this country," opinion Germany's mass-market daily Bild.De.“

“Here's the joke: the authorities had no choice, as the court ruling made clear: "From the evidence we have, we can deduce that at least one of the brothers took part in the crime, but it has not been possible to determine which one." Identical twins share 99.99% of their genetic information, and the tiny differences are impossible to isolate because of their nature; they tend to be spontaneous mutations limited to certain organs or tissues. "Identifying those [differences] would amount to dissecting the suspects," says Peter M. Schneider, a University of Cologne forensic expert. "Our hands are tied in a case like this," says criminal-law expert Hans-Ullrich Paeffgen of Bonn University. "The law doesn't allow us to detain someone indefinitely just because he is suspected of a crime. This may be different elsewhere. But I'd rather live in a country where someone guilty is not convicted for lack of conclusive evidence than in a place where innocent people are locked up."

“This isn't the first time an identical twin has proved impossible to pin down. The genetic material can thwart paternity tests if both twins claim — or deny — fathering a child. In the U.S., a jury in a rape trial in Houston deadlocked in 2005 when the DNA recovered at the crime scene matched identical twins who had kidnapped their victim together. A year earlier in Boston, a suspected rapist blamed his identical twin when confronted with the matching DNA. Although he was already serving a sentence for a rape conviction, the jury could not agree on a verdict, and the judge declared a mistrial. Earlier this year, an identical twin suspected of drug-smuggling and sentenced to death in Malaysia was set free when the court could not prove beyond doubt whether he or his brother had committed the crime.“

“If fresh evidence emerges, a new arrest warrant can be issued against Hassan and Abbas O. anytime within the next 10 years, the statute of limitations for burglary cases. Police will continue to keep an eye on them, hoping to be led to the loot. But with the brothers' arrest warrants suspended, they are free to travel, and the authorities cannot tap their phone lines or keep tabs on their bank accounts.“

"The mills of justice grind slowly, and sometimes not very finely," says Paeffgen dryly. The twins disagree. "We are proud of the German legal system and grateful," they told Berlin's daily Der Tagesspiegel through a family member after their release.“

What does it mean for a crime novel to be beautifully crafted? Peter Swanson; Crime Novelist, 

The image that comes to my mind is a piece of furniture. A piece of furniture can be beautiful. It can be ornate. It can be modern and challenging. But, ultimately, a piece of furniture also needs to function. If it’s a chair you need to be able to sit on it. That chair should also be comfortable. And it shouldn’t break.

Crime novels are like this. They can be beautiful, poetic, and mysterious, but if the plot doesn’t hold together, if the pieces don’t fit, then all that beauty is for nothing. In fact, I would argue that the most beautifully crafted crime novels are the ones in which the pieces fit together seamlessly, the ones in which their very craft is the most beautiful things about them.

The name that comes to my mind when I think of beautiful crafted works is by Agatha Christie. Some people claim that Agatha Christie’s writing style was merely adequate and that her characters bordered on cardboard (I’m not one of those people), but no one will claim that she wasn’t the master of plotting. Her whodunits are ingeniously structured, their solutions often jaw-dropping brilliant. And everything fits together like a great piece of furniture.

Here are my favourite Christie novels worth reading and analysing if you plan to write crime fiction: And Then There Were None, Crooked House, The Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and Sleeping Murder.

What they all have in common is Christie’s impeccable craft, along with highly surprising endings. And she didn’t just write twists for the sake of having twists. Her twists are not just surprising, they are inevitable.

The reader doesn’t think: I never saw that coming.

They think: I should have seen that coming.

If Christie novels were chairs, I picture something beautiful in its seeming simplicity, modern but elegant, not ornate. And the closer you look at this chair, the more you realise how well it’s put together, how long it will last.

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