I saw a really interesting special on the Discovery Channel that I thought I'd share with everyone. It was on FBI Files, and I figure a lot of CJ students will think this is as cool as I did. The Washington D.C. police were investigating a gang and drug related triple homicide. One of the three gang members involved had gotten scared and vomited as they left the murder scene. The D.C. police were able to use the DNA from that and track down one of the guys to interview him. He did not tell them anything, but his fellow gang members suspected him of ratting them out, and were extremely mad at him. This guy hated snitches, and decided to go to extreme lengths to prove he wasn't one. He went into the D.C. Metro police building with the intent of shooting the investigators who had questioned him, but he took a wrong turn, entered the FBI section of the building, and killed 2 FBI agents and a Metro cop, then himself. The FBI then became involved in this case, and together with the D.C. police decided to bust the entire gang that the shooter was in because they knew the gang was crucial in both triple homicides. They interregated low people in the gang first, getting many of them to become informants. They arrested one of the top guys on drug and weapons charges, and held him on those charges until they could get him for the murders. The top guy, though, was a bit harder to catch. They raided his house and arrested him on minor drug charges, but had to release him because his fingerprints were not on the bag of pot found in his house. When the agents finally had enough evidence to bring him back into custody, he had fled the country. The FBI knew this because they found a printout in his house of confirmation of his ticket to Moscow. They were able to track him to Moscow, and through various tips found out that he had continued on to Liberia. The FBI worked closely with the local police in these countries. In Liberia, the police found a hotel owner who recognized the fugitive, and who was able to provide a phone number that the fugitive had called while staying at the hotel. When the police called the number, it turned out to belong to a friend of the fugitive’s mother, a professor who was on sabatical in Tanzania. The FBI had the Tanzanian police question this friend, who finally led the police to the fugitive’s hideout, a tent in the middle of a commune in Tanzania. He was temporarily arrested on marijuana charges again, but the punishment for his charge was ten years in prison or a $100 fine. Being a prominent D.C. drug dealer, he had plenty of cash, and paid the fine. He could only be held for a limited amount of time, so the FBI had to work very fast. They traveled to Tanzania, and extradited the guy back to the U.S., and charged him with something like 52 different counts, including three counts of first degree murder. He went to prison for quite some time, and many other gang members were so freaked out that the FBI was able to find their leader in a tent in the middle of Tanzania that they pled guilty themselves. I thought this story was great not only because it was exciting, but also because the police and FBI were able to arrest an entire gang of dangerous criminals, all completely within the confines of the law.