January 28, 2003
does crime, in fact, pay?
oddly, i have had real cause to contemplate this question today.
first, there is the case of the still-missing durham cellist who disappeared a few nights ago. from various news reports, you get the impression of a stable person, loved by her many friends and collegues. the conductor of the symphony was clearly distraught during a news interview last night; in fact her colleagues in the symphony have been trying to raise money to reward information about the case.
a somewhat surprising fact came to light in a news article yesterday, though, right after emails circulated asking for reward money. she had been laid off (at age 57, that's gotta be devastating) and friends said she was depressed. they thought she might have just taken off for a while (without her car? leaving her precious cello behind?).
but last night there was a strange twist to the case. her husband of a year or so was arrested on charges of fraud-- writing bad checks to himself from a Charles Schwaub account. A durham police leiutenant was quoted as saying that the charges are connected to the case of the missing woman. a friend of mine told me that on another local news channel, they had a shot of "cadaver dogs" indicating toward the husband's car. freaky-- scary. but actually not as scary as the idea that women were being randomly abducted from a parking garage that we all use regularly when we visit the Carolina Theater or the Arts Council.
but c. made an interesting suggestion to me today-- what if the wife and husband are in cahoots over this fraud thing, and the abduction was staged for some reason? maybe she's alive and well and sunning herself with stolen money in the Caymans. all things considered, that's a much more appealing thought than that of her new husband committing fraud and murder, which seems to be the other likely option at this point.
all of this made me think of another woman i know who seemed like a pretty normal, stable person until it was discovered that she had been embezzling from the company she was managing. i believe she was convicted of at least some of what she was charged with so it's ok for me to say that she was, in fact, embezzling. she maintains her innocence still and has adopted a strange policy of total denial when dealing with the people she knew during the time she was committing these illegal acts, though of course they pretty much have nothing to do with her now.
but here's the big difference between these two women-- if in fact it turns out that the first is alive and well and it's all a big scam-- the embezzler did all of this during the dot.com boom, motivated apparently by greed and in a sort of ethical fugue state. the cellist was laid off during one of the worst economic downturns of our lifetimes, less than ten years away from retirement. fraud ain't right-- but it's a lot harder to understand the second woman's motivation than the first's.
c. told me another interesting thing today. i knew there had been an armored car robbery in raleigh; he said it was the bank branch right across from where he works in downtown. he said that branch gets robbed all the time. i asked him how often the robbers get away with it, and he said at least three or four times a year.
Posted by lisa at January 28, 2003 08:53 PM
ok, so a) your comment won't post right away because i have to approve it first and b) you might get a server error but your comment probably posted anyway and c) previewing doesn't work so i've removed the preview button.