Is Phillip Markoff Jewish?

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

April 27, 2009 | 6:30 am
Is Phillip Markoff Jewish?

(I'm sure if he broke an Olympic Diving Record, we would certainly know at this point. -- The CSR)

The arrest last week of Phillip Markoff reminded me a bit of Bernard Madoff's arrest back in December. The circumstances are far different, of course. While Madoff had admitted to running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, Markoff is accused of being the "Craigslist killer." The similarity, though, comes from a question often asked when someone with a Jewish-sounding surname gets unsavory attention.

In this case: Is Phillip Markoff Jewish?

"The answer is I don't know," a colleague told me. "Did some research online and can't find anything other than that I've never met a non-Jewish Markoff.  Then again I'd never met a non-Jewish Greenberg before, so one can't leap to conclusion."

Similarly, last week when David Kellerman, the Freddie Mac CFO, was found dead in a suspected suicide, the Jew-or-not question came up several times at a staff meeting. Then after the meeting I got a text from a colleague who missed the conversation. Same question.

I replied that I wasn't sure. But what I was really wondering was why we care. So I e-mailed Tzvee Zahavy, a rabbi and Talmudic scholar who often asks Jew-or-not on his blog.

"I speculate that Jews do it to be proud of other Jews of accomplishment or, when it involves scoundrels, to be prepared to defend the tribe if confronted with the facts," he wrote back. "Non-Jews do it to confirm their suspicions about Jewish conspiracies or just more innocently to clear up why someone has a funny name."

Some do it, I suspect, because they don't know how not too. They hear a Jewish sounding name or see someone with curly hair and poor eyesight and their Jewdar goes nuts. As Jon Carroll wrote last month for the San Francisco Chronicle:

    I have known people who had an overexcited Jewdar sense, and they were always willing to share. "Meryl Streep? Jewish. Of course. Clint Eastwood? Jewish. Flipper? Jewish dolphin. Everyone knows that." They want the world to be Jewish, or at least everyone in the world who can boast of any skills, awards or surgical competence.

Indeed, this overactive Jewdar has led to a bit of wishful thinking: Rex Grossman, Lance Berkman, Norman Jewison. (The High Rabbinical Court of Israel could be forgiven for mistaking the "Fiddler on the Roof" director for an MOT.) And in the case of suspected scoundrels and charlatans—and worse—Jews can only hope that the person is not one of their own.

The pathos is understandable.

Jews account for about 0.02 percent of the world's population—two of every 10,000 humans on earth—and those 13 million people live under the hottest heat lamp in history. Jews have often been judged by the actions of their co-coreligionists. Diaspora Jews still see this today whenever Israel is at war.

Whether out of pride or necessity, Jews have learned to highlight the admired MOT and to distance themselves from those who bring ignominy on the community. Albert Einstein, Sandy Koufax, Seth Rogen good. Bernard Madoff, Jack Abramoff, Pauly Shore bad.

Meyer Lansky? That's a tougher question to answer. Lansky was a Mafia innovator, a godfather of the kosher nostra and a founder of Murder Inc. But he also ran arms to Israel in its War of Independence and helped defy the stereotype of Jewish weakness, even if he wasn't as tough as Kayo Konigsberg.

And what about Phillip Markoff?

There is no mention of a Jewish upbringing in this Sunday profile from the Boston Globe. What is painted, though, is a portrait of an intense young medical student, loved by friends, overwhelmed by the pressure to succeed and consumed by a gambling debt. Here's an excerpt:

    At the state university in Albany, Philip Markoff was known for the same discipline and intensity that had made him an academic star in high school. He logged long hours in labs and the library and carried a heavy course load that allowed him to graduate with honors a year early.

    Amid the pressure, friends said, he had just one true release: Poker. All-night games, every weekend, that he took very seriously, indeed.

    Markoff looked forward to the gatherings all week and talked about them a lot, according to several college friends interviewed by the Globe. The sessions were meant to be casual, but to Markoff they seemed more than that. While others joked or talked about sports, he insisted on concentrating on the cards and turned easygoing games into intense competitions.

    He won often, but when he lost, he could be bitter, the friends said. Though the games were low-stakes, he hit losing streaks that cost him hundreds.

    "He was wound pretty tight," said one college friend who sometimes took part in the weekly gambling sessions and who spoke on the condition his name not be published. "We'd want to take a break, to talk and hang out, or maybe go out for a while. But he'd just want to keep playing."

    Markoff's intensity showed itself not only at the poker table and in his studies, the friends said, but also at parties, where he drank hard and went out of his way to debate politics, aggressively asserting his support for the Iraq war and gun rights with his more liberal classmates.

    His friends wrote off his intensity at the time as the chaff of an unusually driven personality, one that put the goal of succeeding above most everything else.

    But now - as Markoff, a 23-year-old medical student, stands accused of seeking out women who advertised erotic services on Craigslist, robbing them, and fatally shooting 25-year-old Julissa Brisman - some of them wonder if their classmate's occasionally off-putting behavior is a piece with the portrait that authorities are now painting.

    But when they cast through their recollections for other clues, they don't come up with much.

    "If there were any clues, he hid them well," said a college friend who asked to remain anonymous out of sensitivity to Markoff and his family.

    With details turned up in the investigation, like Markoff's possible gambling problem, a gun found hidden in his apartment in a hollowed out copy of Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body, and panties allegedly collected from his victims as mementos, police have depicted Markoff as leading a seedy alternate life.

    Markoff pleaded not guilty in court. And the crimes of which he is accused could hardly contrast more with the life he showed the world, with his future as a doctor, and with plans for a picture-perfect marriage in August.

You can read the rest here or test your Jewdar at Jew or Not Jew.

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg in 24 Comments — Leave your comment

http://www.jewishjournal.com/thegodblog ... _20090426/

---

Over $100,000 in School Debt:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/region ... id=1168450

[Rockclimber]

Last time I read wikipedia it said so. Let's see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Markoff

Yep, still reads that way under BIOGRAPHY

Judicial Biz, who is often wrong said so, so I checked wiki, which is often wrong but so far the entry still stands.

I say yes, of course.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Sept. 19, 2009
Seven Days of Rage: The Craigslist Killer
Explosive New Details; More Shocking Than the Crimes Is the Person Accused

In spring 2009, Boston was a city at peace.


But then, on April 10, everything changed. The "Craigslist Killer" began his seven-day crime spree.

His first victim was a woman from Las Vegas who was fleeing that city's crackdown on vice.

"I just picked a city and went to it. I've been doing it for the past two years," Leffler said of choosing Boston. Her line of work? "I was escorting."

In this case, a traveling escort. Trisha Leffler, 29, checked herself into the Westin Copley Place Hotel. No surprise, she went right to where the money is - the Back Bay area of the city, known for its fancy hotels, exclusive boutiques and hip restaurants.

When asked how much money she can make in this field, Tricia told "48 Hours Mystery" correspondent Peter Van Sant that being an escort is quite lucrative - she can make thousands of dollar a week.

Tricia said she immediately went online to Craigslist, the Web bulletin board, and placed an ad in the erotic services section. She said after submitting her ad with the headline "Sweet Blonde," she started getting phone calls right away.

"What Craigslist does is basically provide services and these prostitutes have been providing services for years. And if it's not the Yellow Pages, it's gonna be Craigslist. They find a means to advertise their services," according to Joe Moura, a Boston-based private investigator and "48 Hours" consultant.

Moura said that by acting as her own boss, Tricia was increasing her risk.

"If there's a street prostitute, she's gonna have a pimp down the street or across the street on the corner who's protecting her. Somebody using Craigslist getting a fancy hotel in Boston, she's on her own."

But that April night, when Tricia saw the man who answered her ad, she said she felt perfectly safe. "He looked nice, he looked young. Good looking, obviously."

Once the door was closed, this good-looking young man pulled out a very dangerous-looking gun.

"I backed up a little bit. He just said, 'If you do everything you're asked, no harm's gonna come to you.' He said, 'Lay down, put your hands behind your back.' When he started to walk towards me, he put the gun back in his pocket."

The man put on some black leather gloves and took out some plastic zip ties.

In an exclusive interview with "48 Hours Mystery," Tricia explained, "He knelt down with one knee in between my legs. I'm thinking like what does he want? I'm shaking. I'm scared. It dawned on me later that he could have very well killed me."

Tricia's attacker wanted money. "I had about $800 in cash, he grabbed that, put that in his pocket," she said.

As he took her credit and debit cards, Tricia said he made no attempt to disguise his face. But he was intent on getting his phone number off her cell phone.

"Was he wearing his gloves when he did that?" Van Sant asked Tricia.
"No," she replied.
"Well, how dumb is that?"
"Dumb."

Dumb, and, as it turned out, he was more than a little weird.

He picked up a pair of Tricia's underwear from the floor and put them in his pocket. "If he would've looked at my face, it would've been, like, "What the hell are you doing?"

At that point, she explained, the gunman began walking around the hotel room looking for something.

"And he said, 'Come here.' And I went in to the bathroom and he basically tied me to the doorknob. I got really scared. He took a knife out of his pocket and cut the phone lines. He came back over to me and taped my mouth. He put three pieces of tape over my mouth."

Tricia noticed that he had yet to put the gloves back on, meaning that his fingerprints were all over that tape.

After he left the room, she quickly broke free from the zip ties, but worried that he may still be nearby.

"I'm worried he's listening through the door. I look out the peephole. There's nothing - there's nobody out there. I open the door very slowly, stuck my head out, looked both ways. Nobody was in the hallway. I crept down the hall to see if he was maybe standing by the elevator. [There's] nobody by the elevator.

"I'm still shaking. I'm still nervous," she continued. "So I went back to the room, grabbed my room key, shut the door and went and knocked on the next-door neighbor's door.'Can I call security? I've just been robbed at gunpoint.'"

From the start, Boston police took Tricia Leffler seriously.

"They didn't say, 'You're not supposed to be doing this' - anything like that. They were very respectful towards me. They wanted to catch the guy," she told Van Sant. "The next day, when I went down to the police station to look through some photos, they had a surveillance photo of the man that I described."

Stills taken from a hotel security camera were the first shots of the man who became known as the Craigslist Killer.

View Surveillance Photos

Van Sant asked Joe Moura, a private investigator, "Wasn't he aware that there were security cameras that people could track him down if something did go wrong?"

"Sometimes, because there's security cameras everywhere, it's almost like they're not there. He figured the crime was so bold, he was gonna walk out, she's not reporting it, nobody's gonna be checking video if he was here or not. He figures it's a clear-cut case. He's outta here," Moura explained. "The thing about this young lady is that she did come forward and actually helped in the investigation."

Tricia remained in Boston, waiting for the police to release her cell phone. On April 15, they called. "We need to talk to you. It's really important," she recalled. "Five minutes later, [there's] a knock at the door. And then they handed me a photograph. And I said, 'Wow, this is a really good picture of him. Where did you get it from?' And they just stopped and looked at me and they were, like, 'Is that him?' I said, 'Yeah, this is him. Was this before he came up to my room?'

"They said, 'No, this is taking from a different hotel.' And they said.' He murdered another girl last night.'"

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Link to story:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/ ... 3194.shtml

[§N9sh2bj]

know them by what they do, not by what they say (or their last name).

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

The weird stories about murders, sex slaverly and tortures that were found common in Weimer Germany among the Jews seems to be occuring today in the US.

This is likely just one case of many.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Looks like he was a Half-Jew from his father's side according to this blog:

His father is Jewish dentist Richard Markoff and his Gentile mom Susan Hayes, have visisted him at the jail after he was properly classified.

This is the man every woman fears she may be attracted to: the lady killer doctor. Yes, doctors are attractive as both dates and mates, I know, I've dated more than I can count when I worked in hospitals. But none of them were Jewish, even though I was attracted to a couple who were, and at least one was latently homosexual, I discovered years later.

http://heloise8.wordpress.com/2009/05/0 ... p-markoff/