Thomas Hamilton
On March 13, 1996, Thomas Hamilton bursts into the gymnasium of the Dunblane Primary School In Dunblane, Scotland and opens fire on a kindergarten class. Sixteen children and their teacher, Gwenne Mayor, were fatally shot before Hamilton turned the gun on himself.
George Harrison & Pattie Boyd
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."
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
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
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
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
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.
On the night of November 29, 1988, near the impoverished Marlborough neighborhood in south Kansas City, an explosion at a construction site killed six of the city’s firefighters. It was a clear case of arson, and five people from Marlborough were duly convicted of the crime. But for veteran crime writer and crusading editor J. Patrick O’Connor, the facts—or a lack of them—didn’t add up. Justice on Fire is OConnor’s detailed account of the terrible explosion that led to the firefighters’ deaths and the terrible injustice that followed. Also available from Amazon
