- Bank robbery to buy a ring
- Partners strangled in a tree
- Paralympian shoots girlfriend, claims mistaken identity
- Valentine's vanishing
- The great lingerie heist
- Roleplay gone wrong
 |
| Robbing a bank may not be a good way to impress a partner... especially if they work there! (Barta4) |
Bank Robbery to Buy a Ring
Valentine's is a time to make overblown romantic gestures - but Ramsey Fakhouri picked the wrong one when he attempted to strengthen a long-distance relationship in 2014.Fakhouri had decided to get a diamond engagement ring for his beloved... but needed $13,000 to get the one he wanted. Searching for a solution, he settled upon committing an armed robbery at the bank his girlfriend worked at.
Fakhouri and an accomplice made the long drive to Illinois from Michigan, armed themselves with pellet guns (styled to resemble real guns) and raided the bank ATM... all while his girlfriend was on shift. They took around $26,000 and made off, only for Fakhouri to admit to his girlfriend that it was him on the surveillance footage... though he claimed he had nothing to do with the robbery itself.
He was driven to the police station so he could "explain himself" but they didn't believe his story either - a situation not helped by the wad of cash in his pockets.
Partners Strangled in a Tree
In 1971, Jesse McBane and Patricia Mann went missing after attending a Valentine's dance in Durham, North Carolina. Their asphyxiated corpses were found nearly two weeks later, tied to a tree in the woods. Chillingly, the rope seemed to have been repeatedly tightened and loosened to prolong the experience of being strangled to death. They also bore puncture wounds to the chest, likely inflicted post-mortem.The case has never been resolved, though some still hold out hope that viable DNA evidence can be recovered from the rope used in the killings. Investigators using an M-VAC device claim to have identified a living "person of interest" though they didn't elaborate further. The local rumor at the time was that a doctor at the local hospital may have been responsible - certainly, the killer was familiar with the area.
Paralympian Shoots Girlfriend, Claims Mistaken Identity
Oscar Pistorius was a Paralympic champion famous for his prosthetic blade-legs. In 2012 London he made history as the first amputee sprinter to compete in the Olympics. Nike even took him on, featuring him in an advert that stated "I am the bullet in the chamber" as he sprang from the starting blocks. This would turn out to be a terrible choice of words in hindsight.In 2013 Pistorius fired four shots through a locked toilet cubicle door in his home. The Paralympian claimed to have believed that the person in the toilet was an intruder... and that he only found out afterward that he had fatally wounded his partner Reeva Steenkamp.
His story did little to impress prosecutors - a judge did initially accept the story put forward by Pistorius and enter a verdict of manslaughter, but South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal overturned it in favor of murder.
 |
| If your Valentine's plan merits a nine-car police response, it may be a bad idea... (BruceEmmerling) |
Valentine's Vanishing
On the Valentine's of 2015, Californian Erica Alonso vanished without a trace. She, her boyfriend and another couple they'd met at the Sutra Lounge in Costa Mesa had spent most of the night at her date's apartment. Just shy of 4 o'clock in the morning, Alonso and her boyfriend got into an argument, culminating in her driving off into the night.
So far, so normal - but here's where things take a dark turn. When Alonso didn't show up at work, alarm bells started to go off and law enforcement were called. She was found dead a few weeks later.
Toxicology reports indicate that Alonso had lethal levels of alcohol and GHB in her system, with the cause of death being deemed an overdose. She had no obvious injuries, though the exact nature of how those substances got into her blood are unknown - did she take them, or did she fall victim to spiked drinks?
The Great Lingerie Heist
You don't really expect criminals to theme their crimes, but the lingerie looters of St. Petersburg in Florida did just that in 2015.
Security footage taken just shy of Valentine's shows a team of thieves taking up positions throughout a Victoria's Secret shop. Some acted as lookouts and others caused a distraction as an accomplice swiped the merchandise.
The heist seems to have been both well planned and lucrative - apparently they made off with around $7,500 in undergarments. It seems that the group repeatedly targeted stores in the area, with police suspecting that they may have been part of a larger organization operating throughout Florida.
Roleplay Gone Wrong
Some things should be kept to the privacy of your home - that's the message after nine police cars charged to the rescue of a naked and duct-tape bound woman in the back of a car, only to find out that it was consensual (if unconventional) Valentine's roleplay.
Police had received a tip-off from a concerned witness who saw Stephanie Pelzner in the back of a car as it drove out of a parking lot. Given that driver Nikolas Harbar stated how they "were just having some fun" when challenged, it wouldn't have seemed far-fetched to believe it was a kidnapping.
Both the man and woman involved got hit with disorderly conduct charges, to which their neighbors were unsympathetic - after all, it's not really the kind of thing you should be doing on public roads!