Michael Thomas Barry's blog

Shoko Asahara

by Michael Thomas Barry

On March 20, 1995, at the height of the morning rush hour in Tokyo, Japan, terrorist teams from the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult, riding on separate subway trains, converge at the Kasumigaseki station and secretly release lethal sarin gas into the air. The terrorists then took a sarin antidote and escaped while the commuters, blinded and gasping for air, rushed to the exits. Twelve people died, and 5,500 were treated in hospitals, some in a comatose state.

John Robert Hill and Joan Robinson-Hill

by Michael Thomas Barry

On March 19, 1969, Joan Robinson-Hill the daughter of wealthy Texas oilman Ash Robinson dies of an apparent heart attack in Houston, Texas. She and her plastic surgeon husband John Robert Hill had married in 1957. They led separate lives – he was busy with his practice and she was a keen equestrian. However, leading separate lives did not mean that Mrs. Hill wanted her husband to share the beds of other ladies. On December 3, 1968 Dr. Hill filed for divorce but back down when his wife contested the petition. In March 15, 1969 he again instigated divorce proceedings.

Cary Stayner

by Michael Thomas Barry

On March 18, 1999, the bodies of Carole Sund and Silvina Pelosso are found in a charred rental car in a remote wooded area of Long Barn, California. The women, along with Sund's daughter Juli, had been missing since February when they were last seen alive at the Cedar Lodge near Yosemite National Park.

Raymond Clark III and Annie Le

by Michael Thomas Barry

On March 17, 2011, Raymond Clark III, a former animal research assistant at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, pleads guilty to the murder and attempted sexual assault of 24-year-old Yale graduate student Annie Le. On September 13, 2009, Le’s partially decomposed body was found stuffed behind a wall in the university research building where she was last seen five days earlier.

Francisco "Chico" Forster

by Michael Thomas Barry

On March 16, 1881, Francisco "Chico" Forster is shot to death on a downtown Los Angeles street by his jilted lover, eighteen-year old Lastania Abarta. The forty-year old Forster was the son of a wealthy Los Angeles land developer and considered one of the city's most eligible bachelors despite his reputation for womanizing and poorly treating women. Abarta worked in her parent's pool hall, where she sang, played the guitar, and met frequent customer Forster.

Julius Caesar is assassinated

by Michael Thomas Barry

On March 15, 44 B.C. Julius Caesar, the "dictator for life" of the Roman Empire is murdered by his own senators at a meeting hall next to Pompey's Theatre. The conspiracy against Caesar encompassed as many as sixty noblemen, including Caesar's own protégé, Marcus Brutus.

Jack Ruby

by Michael Thomas Barry

On March 14, 1964, Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald (the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy) is found guilty and sentenced to die in the electric chair. It was the first courtroom verdict to be televised in U.S. history.