This is a demand to Pedigree Pet Foods to pay £ 100,000 per year in order to prevent their products being contaminated with toxic substances. The accompanying.

Exercise in Profiling

In August 1988 a typewritten letter arrived at the head office of Pedigree Pet Foods Ltd. in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, addressed to Mr. John Simmens, the managing director. It was attached to a tin of dog food, which outwardly looked no different from any of those regularly stacked in all supermarket shelves…

This is a demand to Pedigree Pet Foods to pay £ 100,000 per year in order to prevent their products being contaminated with toxic substances. The accompanying tin of Pedigree Chum has had its contents mixed with toxic chemicals. The chemicals were selected because they are colourless, odourless and highly toxic. They are virtually undetectable to a pet owner before feeding. If payment is not forthcoming from Pedigree Pet Foods of Mars Limited a large number of similarly contaminated tins will appear on retailer shelves throughout Great Britain.

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Initially, only Pedigree Chum dog food will be poisoned. When sales of that product have slumped another will be sabotaged if payment has not been received. The process will be repeated until payment is finally made or your company dissolves. Its fate will then be an example to other pet food manufacturers…

The blackmail letter warned that five contaminations would be made daily at supermarkets throughout the country, with the media informed by coded telephone calls. In total £ 500,000 was to be paid in installments of £ 100, 000 into various credit union accounts to be nominated….

“When your company agrees to pay, it will place an announcement in the personal columns of the Daily Telegraph which will read: ‘Sandra, happy birthday darling. Love, John’.”

An Inspector of the Mounties comes to you, the top forensic experts of the Province, and asks three questions:

1) Is it serious? 2) What can you tell us about the

person behind this? 3)What options have we got?

1) “Is it a crank or a nutter? Should we take it seriously?”

Let us look at the letter again~ written by a nutter? Style? Rhythm? Tenor? Structure? Paper?

~common paper; photocopy Amount requested reasonable? Inference(s)? 1. The blackmailer is aware of the investigative process 2. And he has done his homework (add. to Simmens)

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The tin: the product had been purchased and then adulterated by someone who knew how to use soldering iron and to soak or steam off a label.

Is he serious?

Start Profi ling: 1) level of intelligence 2) Education level 3)Degree of Tenacity (key psycho-

sociological component) 4) One or many (committee)? 5) Age 6) Motivation

You are dealing with the Police AND the Corporation, which means…

Juggle commercial interests and safety, so…

Aim: stop from carrying out and the threat and draw him into the open ~ how?

Strategy: pay him a limited amount of money, just enough to keep him playing the game, and then stop him…

Strategy

Gambit: Message in the papers ~with a dedicated phone line; who should deal, Corp. or police?

New letter listing a n. of credit union accts. Untraceable (all through mail and PO boxes) ~ thousands of ATMs

Pros and cons? Pros: small withdrawals Cons: Very hard to track

There had been a precedent in using this blackmailing method (vs. a turkey farmer)…Same M.O.

Was caught: tended to use the same machine…Now in prison—Trial Judge kept the case secret to avoid copycats

Set up: blocked most accts., and had the ATM slow down when withdrawing from the two allowed…

After 11 pm each evening, withdrawals were recorded, one ATM at a time, in locations spread over a wide area: from Reading (S. London) to Glasgow by way of Bristol, Aberystwyth and Dalston ~where does he live?

What more have we learnt about him from this?

That he has the freedom to travel overnight…Thus…

Retired and lives alone

How do you predict he is going to react to this ongoing tug-of-war (small payments and delays…)?

Calls a supermarket, warning that a tin had been contaminated…

Spiked w/broken razor blades and marked ‘contaminated’…Two more such incidents before Xmas…

What is going on?

Battle for control ~ and he isn’t going away…

So long as the Co. does not withdraw the product and go public, he believes he still is on top of the game…

Meanwhile the withdrawals continue, as does Operation Roach, which is costing an extravagant amount…

Yet he seems always one step ahead: quite remarkably, he never makes withdrawals from ATMs under surveillance…

So far the biggest, most expensive surveillance operation ever carried out in Britain is failing to produce a single clue…

So far a Suboptimal Equilibrium: blackmailer kept at bay with little cash, the Co. shielded ~ the man’s at large…

Now, the team reckons, he has only two choices: Give up or Choose another target

Then a ‘leakage’ changes the game and bears on his actions: a natl. newspaper reveals a conspiracy against an unnamed pet food Co.; details of the massive undercover op. are also spilled…

The cops are furious {who squealed?}…What is going to happen?

The undercover op. is dead and…the blackmailer indeed moves to a new target…Guesses? (hint: Escalation)

Baby food H. J. Heinz Co Ltd

Meantime, the threats are made good: a mother burns face and fi ngers while opening a jar; baby spoon-fed shavings from razor blade ~all contaminations had been fl agged…

Heinz plays tough: “no negotiations with food terrorists”

Daily Mail titles “TERROR OF BABY FOOD BLACKMAIL”…

The number of reported contaminations rises fast ~hundreds

The threat snowballs as copycats frantically join the fray, for extortion, fame…

Retailers, all the while, withdraw Heinz jars from their shelves

Heinz stands fi rm and replaces, at enormous costs, each recalled piece with another one featuring a new tamper-resistant containers

By now the psychiatrist is confident to surmise that the blackmailer is a…

(Retired) Police offi cer…What kind? What could have him come to this pass?

Too skilled in investigative techniques; insider knowledge (ATMs)…

Why play this kind of game and what for?

Leaves no clues; seems to know which ATMs are closely monitored; most importantly, seems to know of the blackmail precedent kept secret by the assigned magistrate…

Tenacious but not “successful” ~not risen high enough, blames superiors; this maneuver is a revengeful display of once under-appreciated skill

He does not plan on getting caught and his superiors will forever talk of this Moriarty, of this master criminal who defied world corporations without leaving the hint of a trace…

Rodney Whitchelo was a freshly retired detective of 43…

Man of uncommon ability; he had joined the Metropolitan Police Force at 29 (electronics engineer) ~impressive recruit, top of his class

After a flying start he reaches the Regional Crime Squad in East London, and thereafter things begin to stagnate ~he feels he is being held back for not been a Freemason

In 1986 he attends a training course in advanced techniques for surveillance works: he then finds out about the case of blackmail vs. the turkey farmer, which he’ll refine

He did indeed live in East London, in the district of Hornchurch, Essex.

All the while he drank and hung out at the pubs frequented by the agents assigned to case, in order to be apprised of the progression of the inquest

Something deeply pathetic about all this; he had requested a total of £ 3.75 m, and cashed in a mere £32,000

Linked to 17 contaminations: spent 8 years in jail ~has gone snow white; freed in 1998, greatly repented…