Murder

Feb. 25, 2013

Five months after the author’s grandfather was sentenced to only 10 years for the shooting death of his father in Fall River, Massachusetts, Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts. Was Lizzie inspired by the public sympathy and light sentence meted out to her townsman?

by Thomas D. McDougall

When I retired in March of 2011, I finally had the opportunity to complete several projects that I had put aside for many years.  The first and most important to me personally was the completion of a family history that I had started in the 1980’s.  The advancement of genealogy information and its availability on the Internet afforded me an opportunity that I had never been able to utilize in my earlier search for information.

My parents had both been born and raised in Fall River, Massachusetts, a city rich in history that had been a magnet for immigrants from the British Isles and Europe during the mid and late 1800’s. They flocked to the area in search of employment in one of the city’s many mills and supporting industries.  Consequently I was familiar with the city and the story of Lizzie Borden.  What I never knew and was probably never known by family members was our own peripheral connection to the Lizzie Borden case. 

My mother’s family had emigrated from England in 1910 and there was a wealth of information available from personal recollection and subsequent research t hat filled in the gaps.  I began to think that my family history project could be finalized in short order.  As I turned to my father’s side of the family I realized just how little I knew and how wrong I was with respect to my projected finish date.  The other fact that began to emerge from my research was the wealth of surprises and skeletons that come out in the open during an in-depth genealogy project.  In my case, it was the murder of my great–grandfather, James McDougall, by the hand of my grandfather, James McDougall Jr.

Jan. 7, 2012

Trayvon Martin

If George Zimmerman had obeyed the police dispatcher’s directive to remain in his car and to wait for patrol officers to arrive to question the person in the “hoodie,” Trayvon Martin would not have been shot to death.

by Don Fulsom and Alisha Dingus

When George Zimmerman goes on trial in the sensational Trayvon Martin murder case so will the“Stand Your Ground” laws and racial profiling.

Twenty-eight-years-old at the time he shot and killed 17-year-old Martin, Zimmerman now wears a monitoring device on his ankle and hides in near-seclusion at a secret Florida location. Fearful for his life, Zimmerman dons bulletproof apparel for his rare forays into public places, according to his lawyer.

Free on $1 million bail, Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder in the February 26, 2012 shooting of Martin.  His trial is set for June 10, 2013.

The nighttime slaying took place in a middle-class, gated subdivision called “The Retreat at Twin Lakes” in the central Florida town of Sanford.  Martin, as he had several times previously, was there with his father visiting his father’s financee and her son. He had the free time to be there due to being suspended from his high school at the time. That evening Martin had gone out alone to buy some Skittles and ice tea and was returning from the store when his fatal encounter with Zimmerman took place.

Dec. 3, 2012

Rachel Nickell, Andre Hanscombe and their son Alex in the park

Not even Scotland Yard’s famed Murder Squad is immune from locking in on one suspect to the exclusion of all others and allowing its conceit to permit a serial rapist and murderer to stay at large for years after the evidence to convict him was in the police’s hands.

by Mark Pulham

In the photograph, her smile is wide and bright. A blue sky is behind her and she squints slightly from the sun as a wisp of blonde hair drifts across her face in a breeze. She seems incredibly happy. In another photograph, she and her boyfriend smile at the camera, bundled up against the chill. Between them is the buggy holding their young son.

Some people just radiate happiness, people who are attractive and put a smile on the face of those who saw them, even if they didn’t know the person.

Rachel Nickell was one of those people. Bright, attractive, and with boundless generosity, she was instantly likeable, and was capable of achieving anything that she set out to do.

Rachel Jane Nickell was born on November 23, 1968 to Andrew Nickell, an officer in the army, and his wife Monica, and brought up in Great Totham, a village near Colchester in Essex.  From a very young age, Rachel was naturally charitable, helping out with the elderly and with the disabled children in the area.

When she turned 11, Rachel went to the Colchester High School for Girls, and in her spare time, she joined the Essex Dance Theatre and took up singing, dancing, and acting. She could have pursued this course, but instead, decided to study and get a degree in History and English.

Rachel Nickell

Rachel got a job at a Richmond swimming pool as a lifeguard, and it is there, in 1988, that she met a young motorcycle courier named Andre Hanscombe. The couple fell in love, and a year later, Rachel gave birth to her son, Alexander Louis. Rachel and Andre never married, and there is no indication that they were even thinking about it.

Rachel decided to stop working, at least for then, and devoted herself to being a full-time mother, even though she had been offered work as a photographic model. Maybe when Alex was old enough, she would pursue her ambition to be a children’s television presenter, an ambition in which she no doubt would have excelled.

The young family moved to Balham, in South London, and life seemed perfect. Wimbledon is also in South London. Known throughout the world for hosting the world’s most prestigious tennis tournament, people flock there in the summer to watch the matches and eat strawberry cream tarts at the afternoon teas in the pavilions.

But tennis is not the only thing the area is known for.

Nov. 19, 2012

Stephen Farrow

In early 2012 two sadistic, purposeless murders shocked Great Britain like few others have in terms of public revulsion.

by Ben Johnson

The sentencing of a British man who perpetrated two of the most sadistic murders the UK has ever seen took place in Bristol on November 2, 2012. .

At a 10-day trial, the jury heard how a sickening chain of events that led to a vicar being found callously murdered, with pornography and condoms being placed on and around the body.

Stephen Farrow, described as a “psychopath with an intense hatred for religion” was sentenced to whole life imprisonment, the harshest sentence available in the UK for the murders of a retired teacher and the vicar, Reverend John Suddards, during which he arranged their bodies into grotesque and humiliating poses.

This whole life sentence ranks Farrow among such killers as Dennis Nilsen, Steven Griffiths “the Crossbow Cannibal” and “Moors Murderer” Ian Brady in the annals of British crime history.

Nov. 13, 2012

 Joyce "Winsie" Hau

 In January of 2012, a 14-year-old “hit man” stabbed to death a 15-year-old girl in her home in Arnhem, Holland for comments she made about her best friend and her boyfriend on Facebook.

by Marie Kusters-McCarthy

The Netherlands, also called Holland, is a country less than twice the size of New Jersey with a multi racial population of 16,696,000. It is a country of tolerance, steeped in culture, and has produced some of the world’s most well known, and admired, Old Masters such as Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Frans Hals and Vermeer.

With a population of over 16 million, Holland has its share of crime. But nothing prepared the Dutch people for the stabbing death of a 15 year old girl by a 14-year-old hit man in January 2012. Because of his age the killer is known only as “Jinhua K,” and was hired by the victim’s former best friend known as “Polly W” (16) and her boyfriend “Wesley C” (17).  The amount promised for the killing varies between $50 and $180.

The victim, Joyce “Winsie” Hau, of the Chinese-Dutch community in Arnhem, had a falling out with her best friend Polly and her boyfriend Wesley. What started as an online tiff escalated, over several weeks, as Polly had accused Winsie of posting some derogatory comments about them on Facebook. This tiff led Polly and Wesley to hire Jinhua K. to murder Winsie.

Jinhua K. was an acquaintance of Polly and Wesley and in late 2011 the three met up, on several occasions, to discuss the murder of Winsie. Polly provided the erstwhile hit man with the victim’s address and movements and suggested the best time to find her at home. The blood money was agreed upon and the promise of drinks once the victim was dead.

Jinhua K. seemed excited at the prospect of murdering an innocent 15-year-old girl and told several of his friends what he intended to do. Unfortunately, nobody took him seriously as he was known for telling tall stories and was considered a bit strange.

July 23, 2012

While conspiracy theories abound, the murders of two of rap’s biggest stars go unsolved.

by Cathy Scott

Just before 3 p.m. on a spring afternoon in May 1998, a car drove up to a crowded car wash on a street corner in Compton, California. An argument broke out between two groups of men and, a minute later, the sound of gunfire erupted. When the smoke cleared, four men were sprawled out, bleeding on the ground. Two were already dead. And a third died early the next morning.

This a nation long hardened to the idea of black-on-black crime. Although a shooting in a white suburban school is cause for a national outcry, a gun battle in a black ghetto barely raises an eyebrow – at least from authorities.

The slaughter at the car wash would have been quickly forgotten but for the notoriety of one of the dead – 23-year-old Orlando “Little Lando” Anderson. A member of a Los Angeles gang known as the Southside Crips, Anderson was the man widely suspected in the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur.

The killing of Anderson was the latest in a string of murders in the 1990s that blighted the reputation of rap culture and the image of young African-American men. Among the most famous victims were two of the biggest names in rap music: Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls.