Barbara Baekeland
On November 17, 1972, wealthy socialite Barbara Baekeland is stabbed to death with a kitchen knife by her 25-year-old son, Antony, in her London penthouse. When police arrived at the scene, Antony was calmly placing a telephone order for Chinese food. Antony's great-grandfather, Leo Baekeland, acquired his family's fortune with the creation of Bakelite, an early plastic product.
Edward Gein
On November 16, 1957, serial killer Edward Gein murders his last victim, Bernice Worden of Plainfield, Wisconsin. His grave robbing, necrophilia, and cannibalism gained national attention, and may have provided inspiration for the characters of Norman Bates in Psycho and serial killer Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs.
Richard Hickock & Perry Smith
On November 15, 1959, four members of the Clutter family were bound, gagged, and shot to death in their isolated farm home in Holcomb, Kansas. On the morning after the murders, the bodies of four members of the Clutter family: Herbert, his wife Bonnie Jean, daughter Nancy, and son Kenyan, were discovered by a friend of Nancy's after efforts to rouse them for church had failed.
Frank "Buckskin" Leslie
On November 14, 1882, gunslinger Franklin "Buckskin" Leslie shoots and kills Billy "The Kid" Claiborne in the streets of Tombstone, Arizona. The town of Tombstone is best known today as the site of the infamous shootout at the O.K. Corral. In the 1880s, however, Tombstone was home to many gunmen who never achieved the enduring fame of Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday.
United Flight 629
On November 13, 1955, FBI agents search the home of John Graham, a chief suspect in the bombing of United Airlines 629 that killed 44 people on November 1, 1955 over Longmont, Colorado. The flight had originated at New York’s La Guardia Airport and made a scheduled stop in Chicago before continuing on to Denver, where there was a crew change. The flight took off at 6:52 p.m. and eleven minutes later, air traffic controllers saw two bright lights suddenly appear in the sky north-northwest of the airport.
Scott Peterson
On November 12, 2004, Scott Peterson is convicted of murdering his wife Laci and their unborn son. When initially questioned about his wife's whereabouts, Peterson claimed that Laci had disappeared on Christmas Eve 2002, sometime after leaving the house to walk their dog and after he left on a fishing trip to nearby San Francisco Bay.
Dorthea Puente
On November 11, 1988, police unearth a corpse buried in the lawn of Dorothea Puente's home in Sacramento, California. Puente operated a residential home for elderly people, and an investigation led to the discovery of six more bodies buried on her property.
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
