Gay-porn twins charged in burglary (or, the Mid-Atlantic states lead the way)

I don't mean to make this a true-crime blog, but this story was too good to pass up. Its first words are "Taleon Goffney made a name for himself in two disparate professions," and the headline, reproduced as the first part of this post's title, tells the reader exactly what those professions are.

The brothers, the story tells us, "are suspects in 45 burglaries – stretching across New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware – in which intruders hacked through the rooftops of businesses."

The real action came after the arrests, though, and I don't mean in "the gay-porn industry, where the brothers were known as Teyon and Keyon, the twins who shared an infamous sex scene with porn superstar Marc Williams."

Rather:

"Clementon officers doing surveillance work admired Taleon's athletic ability in 2006 when they saw him running up the walls of an apartment building and doing backflips. Then they saw him make an open-air drug deal.

"They arrested him, loaded him in a cruiser, and drove off.

"`The officer heard a loud bang and saw Goffney jettison out the side rear window, head first,' Clementon Police Chief Dave Kunkel said. `He landed on his face, but within seconds he was already on his feet and running. The officer hadn't even had time to put the car into park.'

"Taleon had broken out the glass with his head. He then jumped into a lake while still handcuffed.

"`He was using flipper action with his feet. And when he got to the other side, he taunted the officers, saying, "You'll never catch me,"' Kunkel said."

Someone, somewhere, has to be writing a comic crime novel inspired by these guys. And you can help. Pick a good title for a story based on the exploits of this light-footed and -fingered pair.

Starting tomorrow, crime fiction returns, with posts in the pipeline about Giles Blunt and Fred Vargas – unless anything really weird happens in Philadelphia, that is.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Crime in Ireland and elsewhere

A few weeks ago, my newspaper published the following small item under the headline "Murders reach record in Ireland":

DUBLIN – Homicides in Ireland rose to a record last year, increasing 25 percent and prompting calls for tougher sentences for murder and gang crime. Murders and manslaughters rose to 84 from 67 in 2006, while drug offenses rose 22 percent to 4,423, according to the Cork-based Central Statistics Office.

"While the rise in headline crime has to be seen against the background of the unprecedented rise which is taking place in our population, the fact is that each crime is a crime too many," Justice Minister Brian Lenihan said. Ireland's population has risen almost 17 percent in the last decade, to 4.2 million.

"The cheapening of human life evident in the crime figures demands an urgent response," said Charlie Flanagan, justice spokesman for the opposition Fine Gael party. – AP

Philadelphia, on the other hand, has averaged about 400 killings a year the past two years.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008