Fri
Oct 6 2006
09:33 pm

Earlier this year a man destroyed a million dollar Ferrari Enzo in a 199 mph wreck. That wreck marked the end of the car and the end of a company called Gizmondo that had burned through hundreds of millions of dollars in investments. It would soon lead to the arrest of the car's driver, a Swedish criminal named Stefan Eriksson. Randall Sullivan has the bizarre story in Wired.

The Enzo has less than 6 inches of ground clearance, and at that speed, it took only a slight scrape under the front bumper to launch the vehicle. The airborne Ferrari landed in a skid that in a blink became a sidelong drift. Tires shredding, the car bounced over the shoulder onto a grassy slope wet with dew. All Eriksson could do was hold on as the slithering, swiveling Enzo again achieved liftoff, then slammed broadside into a wooden power pole.

It might have ended there, another high-flying company with big ambitions and a lousy product. But the crash put a spotlight on Eriksson and raised a series of questions: Who is he? What kind of person drives nearly 200 mph on a coastal highway? The answers led to even more puzzles. In just a few years, it seems, Eriksson went from languishing in a European jail cell to making millions as a tech executive to, even more improbably, becoming deputy commissioner of antiterrorism for an obscure Southern California transit police force. Before ­Eriksson lost control of his Ferrari in Malibu, no one in the US really cared about his strange story. But after the supercar came apart, Eriksson would find every inch of his life under scrutiny by the LA County Sheriff's Department, federal law-enforcement officers, and the media. That's when Eriksson and a tangle of cohorts would find out just how large a little bump could loom.

If you like that story, read Sullivan's even more amazing account of the murder of rapper Biggie Smalls. Sullivan makes a compelling case that David Mack was one of the people involved in the murder. Mack was by day a police officer in the LAPD's Rampart division, by night a private security guard for Death Row Records mogul Suge Knight, and by raising a Bloods gangmember. Mack is currently in prison for the armed robbery of the Bank of America.

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redmondkr's picture

Thanks, LesI just "squirted"

Thanks, Les

I just "squirted" the Biggie Smalls article into my Palm Tungsten for a bit of light reading.

Stormare Mackee's picture

"Swiss criminal named Stefan

"Swiss criminal named Stefan Eriksson"

Stefan Eriksson is a native of Sweden, not Switzerland.

Les Jones's picture

redmondkr: I think you'll

redmondkr: I think you'll enjoy it. Sullivan has a real knack for handling complex stories.

Stormare: Bad on my part. Fixed.  


Hey, Les, why don't we just call each other assholes and get it over with. - Somebody on the old Southknoxbubba.net (if that was you, claim your quote and win net.fame!)

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