bill bickel's crimeweek

Polish crime novelist Krystian Bala has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 2000 abduction, torture and murder of a man he believed was having an affair with his estranged wife. A key piece of the prosecution's case: Bala's 2003 novel in which a character abducts, tortures and murders his victim in almost an identical manner.

The novel was not, by the way, titled If I Did It.

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Police in Hampshire, England, probably won't have much trouble convicting the man who tried to burglarize a builder's yard: It's useful when a thief leaves behind a fingerprint - thanks to a razor wire fence, this guy left behind a whole finger.

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This isn't really a crime item, but Gabriele Pauli, a member of Germany's parliament, has announced a proposal she says would cut down the number of divorces: change the law so that marriages would be valid for seven years rather than for life, giving couples the option of renewing the vows for additional seven-year terms.

Of course, calling this a means of reducing divorces is a semantical argument at best...

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The last week of August, in Queenstown, New Zealand, a burglar broke into a house twice in one day: The first time he smashed a window and stole a laptop computer, a camera, and a wallet containing an American Express credit card.

Later in the day he returned to leave behind the computer, the camera, the wallet, the credit card, a basketball and two pair of gloves he'd bought with the card, and a full-page handwritten note apologizing for the theft and promising to pay for the broken window.

Then broke in a third time on September 10, leaving behind $150 and another hand-written apology.

The homeowners, while appreciating the apologies and return of the return of the items, confess to feeling a bit uneasy that this man keeps breaking into their home.

(Based on surveillance footage from the store in which the burglar bought the basketball, police hope to arrest him shortly)

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In Hungary, where prostitution has been legal since 1999 -- and is part of an underground "sex industry" that generates the equivalent of about a billion US dollars a year - the government has decided to cut itself in for a piece of the action: They're allowing prostitutes and other sex workers to obtain entrepreneur's permits, adding them to the tax rolls and making them part of Hungary's social security system.

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"Sweetie" and "Prince of Joy," two Bosnians who struck up a close online friendship while discussing their respective bad marriages, finally decided to meet.

Surely you know where this is going.

Divorce proceedings are underway.

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"The mere fact that the judge was asleep for periods of the trial does not demonstrate that the trial had been unfair or that there had been a miscarriage of justice. [There is] no relevant distinction to be made between a judge who is asleep and one who is awake but inattentive." - the New South Wales (Australia) Court of Criminal Appeal, refusing to overturn the conviction of two drug dealers