A sick and senseless London murder finally comes to trial (thanks, Chiraag):
A fan of US rapper Eminem has admitted murdering the woman who idolised him and stuffing her in a suitcase. Christopher Duncan, 21, had the same tattoos as the rap star and had been performing his songs at a karaoke bar in London on the night of 13 May 2004.
Law student Jagdip Najran, 26, who had met him only two weeks before, left the bar with him, only to be battered over the head with an iron bat at his flat… Najran was in her final year at London Metropolitan University… [Link]… Najran… told a friend her heart was “aflutter” at seeing him at a karaoke night. [Link]
… the couple slept together before Duncan, high on a cocktail of LSD, ecstasy and cocaine, set about her with a metal baseball bat, shattering her skull. He then stuffed her body into a suitcase because he “could not bear to look at her”… Duncan said he flipped after the “beautiful and clever” law student smiled at him…
Detectives who searched the killer’s flat in Bethnal Green discovered violent videos, knives, samurai swords and ninja weapons. A martial arts expert, Duncan also wrote his own songs…
Jagdip, 26, had seen Duncan performing at a pub a few weeks earlier and had gone back to the bar a second time on May 13 last year… Duncan… was born in Glasgow but moved to London at a young age… [Link]
He then forced the body of 5’2″ tall Ms Najran, who he had known for a month, into a large suitcase before fleeing his east London flat to his mother’s flat nearby. Dumping the body in a suitcase resembles the video of Eminem’s greatest hit ‘Stan’, who stuffs his girlfriend into the boot of a car after murdering her. Ms Najran, 26, was still alive although unconscious when he hid the body and would have taken more than an hour to bleed to death…“One neighbour who lived above the flat said she was awoken by four or five loud banging noises. She described the banging as extreme but did not hear any shouting or screaming. It sounded to her as if someone had been throw against the wall…”
After the killing fled to his mother’s flat, where he confessed. Mr Laidlaw said: “He said ‘I think I have killed a girl…’ His mother agreed to stand by him and hid his blood soaked clothes, but changed her mind when her son returned to his flat in the same street…. his family arranged for Duncan to hand himself in and he was arrested on May 17, two days after his twentieth birthday.
Police found violent videos, knives, a plank of wood with a spike in it and rice threshers when they searched his home. Duncan was convicted of possessing a samurai sword in 2001 and has four theft convictions and one burglary conviction. [Link]… Ms Najran, who hoped to become a professional singer and had met Duncan at a karaoke night weeks before, told a friend she was excited at the thought of seeing him perform… “One of the tragic features of this case is the terrible misjudgement she made of him.” In fact Duncan was a petty criminal who drank and took drugs, and was said by doctors to have a personality disorder. [Link]
Attacking a 5’2″ woman from behind, unprovoked. After all those pathetic martial arts fantasies, how utterly manly.
Eminem, that nasal Detroit export:
B– I’ma kill you!
You don’t wanna f– with me
Girls leave — you ain’t nuttin’ but a slut to me
B– I’ma kill you…
— ‘Kill You’Don’t you get it b–, no one can hear you?
Now shut the f– up and get what’s comin’ to you…
Now bleed! B– bleed!
Bleed! B– bleed! Bleed!
— ‘Kim’[Link]
Wow, this innocent woman’s only crime was bad taste in guys.
sick, sick, sick. what evil. what a tragedy.
Just further confirms to me the kind of loser who idolizes Eminem. I hope he gets what he deserves in prison. Though being the UK he might be out ina few years.
Not to sound like an uncle or anything, but there’s a sad fact here – it’s dangerous for a girl to go home with a guy who she doesn’t know. I’m not saying that this is a justification for something horrible happening, it’s not. The guy should fry for what he did. I’m trying to point out that we should all remember that this isn’t just a matter of “romance” it’s a matter of safety. Get to know somebody well enough to know whether they’re a violent drug addict before you put yourself into a vulnerable position with them.
I’d love to ditch this trenchcoat and just chase frisbees all day people, so …
Very very sad.
Coming from an Indian background, I can’t imagine the humiliation the family is facing from the community. The whole affair of an Indian girl getting involved with a white boy, and then this tragedy happening.
Its only going to make our parents say,”I TOLD U SO!”
It is unfortunate that he happened to be an eminem fan. I for one think eminem is phenomenal, …maybe was phenomenal during his detroit “infinite” days. But anyway. That dude looks wack, seriously what was she thinking? I dont think trying to map a general pattern of social deviances and attaching it to eminem lyrics or persona however subtle is really realistis or fair. There are millions upon millions of eminem fans, how many of them take a baseball bat to a girls head? I would say that this guy would have been a nut even if he was an elton john fan.
Actually the thing that’s sad is that their daughter is dead and the ‘sad’ thing is that they are embarrased in the community?
First off, fuck eminem, he may have talent but he’s a fucking ass clown. His lyrics have always been controversial, but the truth is that the majority of listeners are complete fucking morons who believe some of what he says, such as this dickass in England.
Second off, what the fuck was this girl thinking 1)he wants to be eminem???? he copied his tattoos, what kind of fucking retard does that? 2) he was on LSD, coke and E– How the hell do you not know if someone is on any ONE of these drugs? Seriously it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this shit out.
Didn’t Eminem write a song about this — a fan who idolizes him and ends up murdering his girlfriend? Weird.
McUnt, I know you say you don’t want to sound like an aunty, so why don’t you shut the hell up. Of course, it’s SM’s fault for posting on stories using the rigorous criteria of “Skin Shady”, but try to resist your proclivity to spin cautionary tales and not be so fucking obvious. Have a sense of propriety (a moot point for a shame-mongerer). But as I said, SM, seriously, don’t you cats use discretion. This really must be a brown blog, fundamental tenet: judge others mercilessly whilst appearing to be sanctimonious. If I wanted morbid titillation, I would read the newspaper.
Yes, people like Eminem and Marilyn Manson are “phenomenal” in that they are smart enough to rope in gullible idiots who deify them while they laugh all the way to the bank. Of course they are all “artistes” :-\
That’s actually the official blogger credo: the Hypocritic Oath.
I just read the comments.
Then officially rename the site from Sepia Mutiny to “Dead Brown C**ts”
.
Yeah. The name of that song is “Stan”. That is exactly what I thought of when I first read this story.
The girl is dead. That is the saddest part. If the Indian community chooses to humiliate the parents rather than symphatize with them, shame on the community.
An Eminem fan, I see.
biz-marc, 3 six mafia, are u fucking serious… Gangsta Boo is now doing gospel and christian rap. get the fuck out of here.
Hmm.. is it relevant that the murderer is an Eminem fan? I think, its ridiculous to sensenalize the issue by bringing freaking Eminen into it.
Girl goes home with a guy in a bar, and has her head splattered. End of.
They should also probably say that he was wearing Nike or something, as if it was pertinent to the issue, perhaps to insinuate that since Nike may have unfair labor practices (= treat cruelly) in third world countries, its somehow portends the murder of a girl descending from one of the third world countries being murdered.
You can find patterns wherever you look. Dont insinuate Eminem. Blame the idiot who did it.
Moral: Bitch gonna die if she pick the wrong guy.
But again, aint we all bitches?
Wow, that’s deep… and to think I was going to stop reading after “I think, its ridiculous to sensenalize the issue “
Brown:
I am a crime dog after all, I have to be obvious.
And honestly, I fail to see why you’re taking offense. It’s possible to both discuss ways to avoid crime and still not blame the victim at the same time.
This isn’t about sexual morality, it’s about safety – people forget that hooking up with a stranger in their apartment is dangerous.
If you’re going to sleep with somebody you’ve just met, do so in a hotel, and use a condom. These are both forms of safe(r) sex, and neither involves blaming the victim.
BTW, watch your use of the c**t word or I’ll ask the moderators to ban you. I’ll assume that you misunderstood me, and acted out of a desire to protect the victim for now. However, if you continue, I’ll decide that you’re a misogynistic idiot who can’t express themselves without using slurs against half of humanity.
see a guy in a pub. mess around with him right away and get killed. Sex is a good thing. I am not going to come out and talk against a girl having sex. But when you commit yourself to that extent to anyone, whether you are a guy or a girl immaterial, ya gotta make sure you know the person. High risk behavior will put you at risk for AIDS or as in this case get your brain splattered in someones wall. This should give us an opportunity to educate our children about strangers(or reaffirm periodicaly). Lets not blame Emenem, lets blame the guy who did it and the gal who put herself in a position to get killed.
Cut that sentence off after “it.”
Bashing someone’s head in with a bat is not normal behavior under any circumstances.
true bashing someone’s head with a bat is not normal behavior. but i guess this dude wasn’t normal. And she went home withsome dude and fucked him not really knowing whether he is normal or not. Don’t we teach our children to stay away from strangers? That rule applies even when you get older. She should have done better homework on that guy before going with him. My sentence stands as is.
On a tangent – As I look at their pics – the girl is so beautiful and had a bright future as a lawyer if nothing else – and the guy looks like a loser. Why would she choose him? Are there self-esteem issues involved here?
…That is, I’m looking at how this case might illustrate a wider problem among young US-UK-etc born/raised women of South Asian heritage.
Sorry…I missed the bit where it said she “fucked” him. How do you know what they did? Seriously, how the fuck can you say “blame the girl”?
There has been an amazing chasm between the comments in response to this article on here and on other websites. Several people here seem more angry with the victim for having done something foolish than the psychopathic killer. You’re jumping over yourselves to indict her behaviour, why? Does it scandalise your conservative desi views or something? Yeah she could’ve avoided going home with him. Who says he wouldn’t have tried to kill her in the carpark? When someone’s mugged, do you tell them it’s their fault for walking down the wrong street?
Errmm…don’t get too carried away on the weight of one case Deepa. I don’t think it represents anything more than an error in judgement on the part of a young woman. I doubt her race has anything to do with it.
BB:
… the couple slept together…
Maybe bongbreaker thinks that she just needed a place to sleep in? I’m not just blaming the girl. But everyone in modern society is responsible for themselves. Her being a desi is immaterial nor does it STRIKE my desi conservative views. What she did was just plain stupid. And thats a pure and simple fact. Even if she didn’t get killed, it would have been a stupid thing to do. There is nothing wrong with recognizing it.
“who says he wouldn’t have tried to kill her in the carpark? When someone’s mugged, do you tell them it’s their fault for walking down the wrong street??”
Yes bb i agree, but he didn’t. The girl actively put herself in harms way(even if she didn’t know). Like i said earlier, her actions were so stupd a 5 yo kid knows not to do it. I’m not talking about sex, but about ignoring safety. The girl was stupid, didn’t deserve to be killed, but actively took the risk.
I myself called her actions foolish above – but I was objecting to you saying “blame him AND blame her“.
If someone smokes and gets lung cancer, would you just blame Phillip Morris? If someone drives while under the influence and gets killed in an accident, would you just blame alcohol? ignorance is not bliss. Its easy to say its the guys fault(which is ABSOLUTELY is). But its also the girls fault for being ignorant and stupid. A final year law student should know better than that. And that has been my point all along
Faulty analogies – philip morris and alcohol are not individuals with agency.
deepa you are right… but i think you get my point. even if you don’t agree.
I am so disturbed to see so much of this discussion blaming the victim. The guy was psychotic. And while Eminem isn’t directly responsible for what people do with his song lyrics and messages, there has to be some accountability.
I hold a society that makes Eminem so successful accountable. We need change. Although so much racism still exists in America today, we would never have a racist song advocating hate crimes become so popular. Those songs remain in subcultures of neonazi skinhead freaks. Why is it perfectly acceptable for countless songs perpetuating negative stereotypes and advocating hate crimes against women?
We have created a culture where it’s normal for women to be abused; the statistics show it as do many of the responses on this post that blame the victim. It seems acceptable to some to put the blame her for not being careful rather than to be outraged at the fact that women still have to feel unsafe.
Indian girl from a small Midlands town called Walsall moves to London in her mid twenties to do a law degree at University. Brought up sheltered, protected by the family, surrounded by the close-knit Indian community and small town provincial life, discovers the freedom of the Big City, the Bright Lights of London, meets a guy who is rough and seems ‘dangerous’, so different from the world she knows, wants to experiment and live a little before settling down and going back to the world she knew and came from. Innocent, thrilled at the attention, the difference between them, made a mistake.
He started attacking her when she smiled at him – she smiled, her sweet smile of innocence and hope and essential sweetness at this time of transgression and rebellion – Jagdip, may you Rest In Peace and be Blessed in Heaven.
oh, it warms my heart to know that if i got raped or killed, i could count on people from my community to ponder over what precautions i was dumb enough not to have taken. there are about three dozen precautions women consciously or subliminally take every day to avoid getting raped; if any man went around keeping so many items cluttered in his head and that stifled his mobility and social interaction, it would probably only be because he had post-traumatic stress disorder as a war veteran or something of the sort.
this is strange considering that men comprise the majority of VICTIMS (as well as perpetrators) of violent crime, except in sexual crimes. and those, of course, are the only ones where you’ll see the victim getting blamed. some of you here are so anti-male that you would mitigate a man’s violent criminal offense by saying, of course he’s gonna pull some insane murderous bullshit on her, if she agrees to kick it with him. would any of the men here or your fathers or brothers do that, regardless of how trusting a woman was with him? if no decent man you can think of would do that, why would you place ANY blame on the woman?
and, are you aware that more than 80% of sexual violence occurs between people who know each other? the vast majority is between intimate partners, spouses, and family members. you can pick out these incidents where in hindsight is seems like the guy was clearly shady and she didn’t know him too well, but that doesn’t take away from the responsibility our whole society has to question how men are being socialized and why so many people blame the victim.
in tort law, there is an affirmative defense known as “assumption of the risk.” it usually applies to a person participating in extreme sports or something of the sort, where the party holding the event has less liability because the participating person knew of the risks that the activity entailed. should heterosexual dating be compared with an extreme sport? do MEN HAVE NO AGENCY in their behavior?
and to think those of you who think that would would call me a man-hater.
leena
He was a psychopath. People just commented that it was a big mistake to go home with a drug addicted skinhead psychopath who she had only met once before. It was just a comment. None of it implies what you deem it to imply. That statement can be made, without blaming the victims of domestic violence.
Qwerty, people did specifically say the blame lies at her door as well.
Leena you make good points but kind of spoil it by saying that men live some sort of carefree lifestyle unless we’re Gulf War vets. We also spend time thinking about how to avoid getting mugged/beaten up and many of us have girlfriends/wives/daughters/sisters who we worry about in the same way you mention.
I see no point in this discussion continuing that much further. I’ve heard a lot of crazy talk, like how the family must be humiliated, how Eminem’s responsible and to be honest, things like Prem’s speech above disturb me as much as someone who says Najran was to blame. Unless you know her personally Prem. But otherwise, that’s some weird stuff.
I’m sure we’re all united in our horror at this very sad story. Let’s leave it at that and hope that the killer spends the rest of his days incarcerated.
qwerty,
and how was she supposed to know that he would fucking kill her? i don’t know what world you live in, but from what i know of my peers in their mid-20s, it is quite common to meet people at bars and have a desire to hook up with them. it is quite common to carry out said activity in in either party’s residence. it is quite UNcommon for such a situation to result in murder.
again, does heterosexual dating = assumption of the risk for women? cuz then i’ll have to examine the way you really think about MEN. can you imagine if the situation were reversed, and a guy went home with a woman that ended up killing him? somehow i don’t see people debating how dumb he was to go home with a woman he barely knew; then the analysis would fully focus on how women are psycho and she was probably some sort of avenging man-hater, and how all he wanted was ass and look what the poor guy got.
and of course you wouldn’t blame a victim of domestic violence, assuming she met your expected helpless victim profile. but a woman who trangresses your expected moral boundaries and willingly goes home with a guy? i guess she’s just asking for anything that might come her way, right? and you’ll take these instances, which are but a small subset of sexual violence overall, and use them to illustrate the ludicrous point that women ask to be brutalized. if you looked at what type of men actually committed sexual violence and murder of women in the majority of situations, you would find a lot of normal-seeming husbands and boyfriends. should women be blamed for going home with them too?
in any case, i find it revolting that you would sit here and discuss the culpability of a woman from your community who was just brutally murdered.
An interesting parallel to this story about “blaming the victim” is how Japanese society treated the Japanese hostages who were freed in Iraq last year, when they returned home.
Traditional societies (especially Asian) take a very dim of their members doing anything “different”. “They asked for it” is the usual response.
Japanese are Cold to Freed Hostages
I think people who blame the victim want to feel like the world is totally under their control, that freak acts of violence only happen to people who are “foolish” enough to put themselves into that situation. It’s not the raving lunatic’s (who they can’t control) fault, it’s hers.
Realistically, violence can happen to anyone at anytime.
I narrowly escaped a sexual assault by a seemingly “normal” man who didn’t radiate any warning signs like the moron above. Thankfully I was alright but was quite shaken by the experience and wanted to talk to my friends and family about it. Boy, do peoples’ true colors come out when you share something like this. Many of the responses I got (mainly from women) were much like some of the judgemental comments above. At the time this really hurt; it really wasn’t my fault at all. To see that people blamed me for such a horrible thing happening was just another blow to deal with. In time, however, I stepped back and gained some perspective on WHY they were doing this. They weren’t lashing out at ME, they were lashing out at a world where things like this can happen to the innocent. These people are scared something like this could happen to someone like themselves, by someone they trust, so blaming me is their defense mechanism (described by my last post #41).
Thanks for sharing that with us yourbloodyvalentine. That’s a powerful reminder of the importance of not mixing up compassion with one’s own anger or frustration. I’m glad you’re okay.
That said, I don’t think MacGruff was out of line. If you catch a cold, it’s not your fault, but you can still drink your orange juice and wash your hands. That doesn’t mean it will always work. And that doesn’t mean that if one day you forget to drink your OJ, you deserve to die from TB. Add to that the fact that we’re not talking about germs doing the harm here, but free-will wielding human beings, and you get the picture. It’s horrible and illogical to blame the victim, but not so helpful to skip the opportunity to remind everyone to try and be a little safer. Drink your OJ, don’t go home with strangers.
Leena, I agree with your basic points, but like Bong_Breaker I have to disagree with a couple of tangential implications. Guys worry about this stuff all the time. They worry about it for themselves, and they worry about it for their female friends. I have an army of really, really wonderful guy friends who function as proxy brothers and bend over backwards to make sure I’m safe. It’s also not true that no one ever blames a guy for being incautious if he gets beaten up in an unsafe neighborhood.
somehow, when south asian men go around in ethnic attire or with beards/turbans and they become victims of hate crime — hell, even if it’s just a matter of someone calling them a degrading name — our community responds with shock and awe: omg, how racist and intolerable! write letters, spread media alerts, and let it be known that we will not tolerate white racism and such gross racist backlash on our communities!!
i don’t hear people saying, “let this be a lesson to all south asian men not to be stupid and walk around in ethnic clothing. be careful; i mean, you know there are racist people out there who will think you’re a terrorist!”
why is that? well, among other things: 1. racial hate crimes exist because ignorant, monstrous, racist individuals exist. 2. these monstrous individuals, though quite numerous, are uninamously regarded by our community as deplorable aberrations, and only the people committing the crimes and overarching white racism are responsible for the heinous crimes they commit. 3. it would be silly and irresponsible to think and spread the notion that the people who wear ethnic clothing are the only ones who get victimized in such crimes. 4. it is especially infuriating when such incidents do happen to people dressed that way, because it’s telling of how the media and american society do fuel more racism and hatred against individuals who look a certain way. 4. it would be a gross violation of south asian men’s civil liberties and right to perform their identity in the way they choose if we told them not to wear certain things.
so why the difference in the way we approach gendered hate crimes? why can’t we finally acknowledge that they exist only because misogyny exists? that the people who commit them deplorable? that there are women who do take all precautions possible and still have such things happen to them (this would be the vast majority of cases), and it is thus silly and irresponsible even to suggest that women should bear the burden of preventing such incidents? and isn’t it a gross violation of women’s sexual freedom to insist they should stop behaving in the manner that they feel expresses their identity and their desires? why shouldn’t a woman be able to go home with a guy and sleep with him if that’s what she wants to do? just as why shouldn’t a south asian man be able to dress ethnic if he wants to? why would the fact that it ended up unsafe not open up a discourse on how outraged we are about misogyny and male violence against women?
men may take general precautions, but women have to take those in addition to precautions specifically to avoid getting raped, thanks to widely held victim-blaming perceptions such as the ones above. do men feel unsafe dating? do they worry about going home with someone because she might rape them? do they worry about someone raping them in a parking lot? do they factor in the risks of getting raped when they go out drinking, or they go to a party, of they choose their wardrobe? sure, many think about these things on behalf of the women in their lives, and i’m grateful for that, but they will never know what it’s like to be a woman and have all of these things subliminally in the back of your head all the time. we will all be much better off if we quit it with this “be careful” bullshit and do something to change a society that permits such things to happen. worth reading.
heh, the second “4” should be “5.” 😛
Is that not a comment that warrants deletion?
I’m sorry to have heard that yourbloodyvalentine, but glad you did escape. Someone very close to me was attacked in Croydon, south of London, last week at 3pm. 3 in the afternoon. But nevertheless some friends told her she “shouldn’t have been waiting at the bus stop” or “should’ve travelled with someone”. At 3 o’clock? This mentality will never die.
Leena, your anagogies bite. you are comparing this to men who are attacked by strangers while minding their own business. This girl actively went home to the jaws of death. And all this talk about girl from my own community is non sense. If she is my own community, maybe she should go to a MOTEL with a guy from my own community. If a guy got his brains splattered in similar situation, i would feel the same way about it. It is her fault also… even if not equally.
Hear hear vanishing mammal.
Raga all I can say is I hope that you never have to experience a sister or girlfriend getting attacked or even worse killed by a guy she and her friends know, for then you will be given no choice but to “blame her equally” for her own demise. And we don’t have motels in London.
Oh and you’re famous.
I don’t think many are aunties and uncles.
Hands up anyone who never made a bad decision when they were young. Liars.
The rest of you are lucky to be alive. Not virtuous or wise, just dumb luck.