Michael Thomas Barry's blog

George Harrison & Pattie Boyd

by Michael Thomas Barry

On March 12, 1969, London police appear at house of George Harrison and Pattie Boyd with a warrant and drug-sniffing canines. Boyd immediately used the direct hotline to Beatles headquarters and George returned to find his home turned upside down. He is reported to have told the officers "You needn't have turned the whole bloody place upside down. All you had to do was ask me and I would have shown you where I keep everything."

by Michael Thomas Barry

On March 11, 2004, 191 people are killed and nearly 2,000 are injured when terrorists detonate 10 bombs on four trains in three Madrid-area train stations. Investigators believe that all of the blasts were caused by improvised explosive devices that were packed in backpacks and brought aboard the trains.

Michael Griffin

by Michael Thomas Barry

On March 10, 1993, Dr. David Gunn is shot and killed during an anti-abortion protest at the Pensacola Women's Medical Services clinic. Dr. Gunn was getting out of his car in the clinic's parking lot when Michael Griffin shouted, "Don't kill any more babies!" and shot the doctor three times in the back.

Barbara Graham

by Michael Thomas Barry

On March 9, 1953, Barbara Graham, along with three other men robbed and murder elderly widow Mabel Monohan in her Burbank, California home. Graham was born Barbara Elaine Ford in Oakland, California on February 23, 1925. When Barbara was two, her mother, who was in her late teens, was sent to reform school. Barbara was raised by strangers and extended family, and, although intelligent, had a limited education.

Martha Beck & Raymond Martinez

by Michael Thomas Barry

On March 8, 1951, the Lonely Hearts Killers, Martha Beck and Raymond Martinez Fernandez, are executed at Sing Sing Prison in New York. They had schemed to seduce, rob and murder women who placed personal ads in newspapers. Beck and Fernandez boasted to killing as many as seventeen women in this manner, but evidence suggests that there may have been only four victims.

Andrea Yates

by Michael Thomas Barry

On March 7, 2002, the defense rests in the trial of Andrea Yates, a 37-year-old Texas woman who confessed to killing her five young children by drowning them in a bathtub. Less than a week later, on March 13, Yates was convicted and sentenced to life in prison; however, her conviction was later reversed.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

by Michael Thomas Barry

On March 6, 1951, the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins in New York. Judge Irving R. Kaufman presides over the espionage prosecution of the couple accused of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians (treason could not be charged because the U.S. was not at war with the Soviet Union).

Jim Morrison

by Michael Thomas Barry

On March 5, 1969, the Dade County Sheriff's Office issues an arrest warrant for Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors. He is charged with a single felony count and three misdemeanors for his stage antics at a Miami concert a few days earlier.