# 968 Morbid & Murder

In Auckland - Body In Suitcase !!!

A body said to be an 5' 5" asian male in his 20's has been found stuffed in a suitcase, which was floating in the Auckland, Waitemata harbour yesterday. The people who found the "floating suitcase" alerted the police, when they could not pull it on board their boat. The suitcase was black vinyl with soft sides and wheels on the bottom. The body was in one piece but with multiple injuries said to have been inflicated with 24 hours of the body been found.

In Auckland - Conviction Overturned.

A Korean preacher, Yong Bum Lee (I kid you not) found guilty of the manslaughter of a parishioner, Keum Ok Lee - no relation - during an exorcism has had his conviction overturned. Ms. Lee was a member of Mr.Lee's Lord Of All's church, died after been strangled during a deliverance service on December 10th, 2000, in Lee's Mt.Roskill home. Other parishioners spent 6 days with the body, awaiting Ms Lee's resurrection. After a high court hearing, Mr Lee was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 6 years jail. He was removed from NZ in 2005.
The case has a wide range of ramifications for a whole range of people. It is said that the finding that adults could consent to things that might hurt them was an important one.

In Canada - Cleansing !!!

Police arrested five people on murder charges in one of Canada's worst mass killings. The deaths of eight men found on an isolated farm were part of an "internal cleansing" of a motorcycle gang. The gangland-style killings are the biggest mass murder in Canada since Mark Chahal went on a rampage in 1996 in Vernon, British Columbia, shooting nine people and himself.

Transylvania, Romanian - Dracula's Castle.

The castle that inspired the Dracula legend is to be returned to Romanian royalty, decades after the Romanian communists confiscated it. The Romanain Government is giving owership of the Bran castle to Dominic von Habsburg. The New York architect, a grandson of Princess Ileana of Romanian, will be given formal title of the castle worth an estimated US$50 million in a few weeks time. The castle was built in 1212, by German knights and later used by Prince Vlad Tepes of Wallachia. It was stories about Vlad, that inspired Brm Stoker to write Dracula, taking the name from a different Romanian family

Dublin, Ireland - Wakes At An End ???

The strange mixture of joy and grief that marks a traditional Irish funeral, with its week-long wake is under threat from a European directive. The Irish custom that sees corpses kept for a week in an open coffin, so that the deceased person can be viewed during the wake has been endangered by an edict issued by Stavros Dimas, the EU environment commissioner.He wants chemicals used by embalmerswithdraw under a new biocides directive. Such a move would see the end of age-old ritual of "laying out" the body while games are played and food and drink are consumed to the accompaniment of dancing and fiddle music. Typically, the body is bathed, dressed in a white garment and then "layed out" on a bed or table. From that time on, it is not to be left alone, until the funeral, while relatives celebrate a life well lived !!!

Auckland, New Zealand - Body Parts !!!

More than 1300 organs, mainly hearts, from dead children were collected by the Greenlane hospital for teaching purposes, between 1950 and 2002. Consent had been obtained from some parents in some cases but for many, the first notification came in 2002, when Green Lane hospital started owning up to parents. However noble, the reasons for creating a "museum of body parts" were it seems impossible, in these consultative times, to image parents were not asked for their dead childrens hearts were filed away for future study purposes. But for 50 years, our much-lauded pioneering surgeons did it. Parents of 45 of the children are fighting the Greenlane hospital, with claims of $90,000 apiece.

A short note to end on.........the maori tangi for a deceased person held on a marae, usually lasts 3 days. The coffin is open for family & friends to view the body and to "rub noses with the deceased".

There is black in our rainbow !!!