Historical Crimes

June 25, 2010

Dick Turpin

Dick Turpin’s romanticized image as the famed “Highwayman” of English lore was built on the big lie about his one-night ride from York to London on his faithful steed, Black Bess. Nor was he in any way a latter-day Robin Hood.

by Mark Pulham

June 19, 2010

the Papin sisters

The strange case of the Papin sisters is notable not only for its shocking violence but because the gender of both the perpetrators and victims was female. The case became a media sensation in France with its lurid undertones of lesbianism and incest; the motive for the crime was never quite clarified – was it simply raving madness or was it the calculated (and some would say righteous) revenge of two working-class girls against their oblivious employers?

by Jessica Mason

Dec 14, 2009

Bryan de la Beckwith

It would take 31-years to bring white supremacist Bryan de la Beckwith to justice for the assassination of Medgar Evers.

by Randy Radic

December 12, 2004

by Denise Noe

Charles Manson is the most famous common criminal in the world, his name a synonym for evil. Thirty-five years after the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders, he continues to be regarded as one of the most devilish cult figures in U.S. history, the possessor of a charisma and sexual magnetism so extraordinary that he ruled a "Family" of fanatically devoted followers willing to kill at his command. This is the Charles Manson that prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, popularized in the best-selling true-crime book of all time, Helter Skelter.

by J.J. Maloney

On January 17, 1950, at 7:30 p.m., a group of armed robbers walked away from the Brinks Building, at 165 Prince Street in Boston, with $1,218,211.19 in cash and more than $1.5-million in checks, money orders and other securities.

It was a textbook robbery – the largest in U.S. history at the time. There had been seven robbers – all wearing Navy P-coats, gloves and caps, and Halloween masks. They wore rubbers and crepe-soled shoes.

The robbers said little and knew exactly what they were doing. They'd come through a series of locked doors to reach the second floor, where Brinks employees were counting and storing money.

The only evidence was a chauffeur's cap one of the robbers left behind, and the tape and rope they'd used to gag and tie up the employees. They also took four revolvers from the employees.

December 02, 2007

Daisy de Melker, mugshot 1932

by Marilyn Z. Tomlins

No one present at the birth of Daisy Louisa Hancorn-Smith had reason to believe that she would one day be famous or, for that matter, infamous. A generation would grow up before a baby girl born in South Africa would again be named Daisy – such was the unpleasant odor that clung to the name.

It was Thursday, June 1, 1886. The place was Seven Fountains, 25 miles from the town of Grahamstown, in the British Cape Colony. The city of Cape Town was 550 miles further south.

October 07, 2007

Main street, village of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne.

It was here that Dr. Petiot murdered for the first time.

by Marilyn Z. Tomlins

"Gentlemen, don't look, this won't be very pretty." It was one minute before five on a spring morning in Paris. Marcel Petiot, a physician by profession, was living his last few minutes on earth. The men he had addressed those words to gave no indication that they had heard him. They had come to watch, to witness the guillotine make him pay for his crimes. They were wishing that they were elsewhere, anywhere, but not there in the front courtyard – the cour d'honneur or ceremonial courtyard, as it was known - of La Santè prison on Paris's Left Bank.

January 15, 2006

Photo credit: New York World-Telegram and Sun archives, Library of Congress.

by Lona Manning

Prologue

February 29, 2004

Richard Loeb with his arm around Nathan Leopold.

by Denise Noe

Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold were as unlikely a pair of cold-blooded murderers as ever appeared in U.S. history. Privileged, brilliant, and coddled, they conjured up the perfect crime – just for the hell of it – and then executed it quite imperfectly. Only Clarence Darrow's virtuoso courtroom performance saved these remorseless, self-styled "supermen" from being hanged.