Reno Bros. Gang
On December 6, 1868, a guard, who had been shot by brothers Frank, William, and Simeon Reno during a train robbery in May, dies of his wounds. His death so infuriated the public that a group of vigilantes yanked the three brothers from their Indiana jail cell five days later and hanged them. Although the Reno gang had a short reign of criminal terror, they are credited with pulling off the first train robbery in American history and are believed to be the inspiration for criminal copycats like Jesse James and others.
Warren Avenue Baptist Church - Boston
On December 5, 1873, Bridget Landregan is found beaten and strangled to death in the Boston suburb of Dorchester. According to witnesses, a man in black clothes and a flowing cape attempted to sexually assault the dead girl before running away.
DECEMBER 4--In the wake of prisoner claims of mistreatment and humiliation at the hands of guards, a North Carolina warden has been suspended while state officials investigate the troubling allegations.
Lafayette Hall, who runs the Sampson Correctional Institution, has been placed on paid administrative leave while the State Bureau of Investigation probes the prisoner accusations, which are contained in a “To whom it may concern” letter sent several months ago to a federal magistrate judge in Greensboro. A second corrections worker has been reassigned.
The July 23 letter carries the name of six inmates at Sampson, a medium security facility. The missive carried the return address of Gary Parker, a 34-year-old habitual felon who is serving a 105-month sentence (and is due for release in August 2015). The inmate letter sought help in finding a lawyer to help file a class action lawsuit against the state prison system.
Danny "Dapper Dan" Hogan
Danny "Dapper Dan" Hogan was a charismatic Irish mob boss in St. Paul, Minnesota during Prohibition. Due to his close relationships with the officers of the deeply corrupt St. Paul Police Department, Hogan was able to act as a go between. Known as the "Smiling Peacemaker" to local police officials, Police Chief John "The Big Fellow" O'Connor of Saint Paul allowed criminals and fugitives to operate in the city as long as they checked in with police, paid a small bribe and promised not to kill, kidnap, or rob within city limits.
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — A man who killed his father in front of a computer science class at a Wyoming community college was a "borderline genius" upset by the belief he had inherited Asperger's Syndrome from his dad, an aunt of the killer said Monday.
Christopher Krumm, 25, blamed Asperger's for his trouble keeping jobs after he got a master's degree in electrical engineering from Colorado School of Mines in 2009, said Barbara Nichols, of Bakersfield, Calif.
"Nice to be around. Never caused any trouble of any kind," said Nichols, who'd briefly lived with her sister's family in Casper in the early 1990s.
Asperger's is a mild form of autism. Asperger's is associated with difficulty making social connections but is not normally associated with predilection to violent behavior.
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
The New Yorker 