Centenaries - whole and half

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100 years ago - 1910 March 25 - In Manhattan, Ruth Wheeler answers an employment ad and is murdered by Albert W. Wolter. She was raped and strangled then cremated in his fireplace. He will be executed for the crime before the year is out.

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100 years ago - 1910 March 26 - An Jung-guen is executed by hanging in China for the assassination of Hirobumi Ito, a former Prime Minister of Japan. The victim was visiting the country at the time.

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50 years ago - 1960 April 22 - Mississippi Sheriff J. V. Polk is gunned down. Hillary Thornhill and Willie McClain both got life terms for the murder.

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50 years ago - 1960 April 26 - Stabbed multiple times, Inez Ringgenberg is found in an Iowa ditch. Russell Shafer, the man she'd been out with the previous evening, received fifty years for the slaying.

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50 years ago - 1960 May 2 - Although he had not been convicted of murder, Caryl Chessman is executed in a California gas chamber.

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50 years ago - 1960 May 17 - Joseph Taborsky is executed in Connecticut. He'd murdered seven people from 1951-1955.

[Mayerling]

The theory that Dickman was "framed" by powerful enemies led by Home Secretary Churchill works out like this.

These men knew Dickman was responsible for Caroline Luard's murder, but it could not be brought home against him by the police (the motive was she had been cheated by him by giving him a sum of money for charity sake, and finding he lied - she threatened to reveal it and he decided to silence her). As her husband, General Charles Luard, was blamed in a poison pen campaign for being her killer, and committed suicide as a result, his social friends (supposedly the men led by Churchill) decided to take matters into their hands if an opportunity arose. The opportunity was the murder of John NIsbet.

Nisbet was killed on a train and certain circumstances (too many to go into here) pointed to Dickman as the killer. Nisbet was carrying a bag full of coin money for the payment of wages at a mine. This bag was missing. Supposedly Dickman carried the money off the train at the next station he left at, and hid it in an abandoned mine coming back to it when he needed cash.

The problem with the Dickman-Nisbet case is that the circumstantial evidence while curious is not all that strong. In short, using the measurements of the evidence being "beyond a reasonable doubt", Dickman's defense was actually quite competent (better than those of his predecessors Franz Muller and Percy Lefroy). But a jury could still decide to go against him if they chose to. And they did.

Hence the idea of Churchill and his pals keeping the government from issuing any reduction of the sentence to life imprisonment (which was merited here).

The theory of Churchill and his friends doing this first appeared in an appendix to the volume on the Dickman case in the Notable British Trial series, and was written by a jurist from the Caribbean. However, there may be a serious error in the theory: in every biography of Churchill he is not linked to Charles Luard. Instead, Churchill was a close friend of African explorer-military man-governor Frederick Lugard. I suspect that is how this story got started.

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50 years ago - 1960 May 26 - Patricia Jones, a romantic rival, is murdered by Sharon Kinne. The killer is still a fugitive today if she's still living

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Kinne did this murder in Kansas City but it was only one of three she committed.

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50 years ago - 1960 June 4 - Three teenagers on an outing are brutally murdered at Lake Bodom in Finland. A fourth survived despite severe injuries. The case was never solved.

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50 years ago - 1960 June 12 - William Elliott is found beaten to death beside an English road. He was a victim of serial killer Michael Copeland who was condemned to death in 1965. Copeland was one of the last people sentenced to execution in Britain although the judgment was not carried out.

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50 years ago - 1960 June 25 - Alan Jee, 23, is returning from visiting his girlfriend when he is attacked, kicked and stomped in an alley by a group of young males. He will die in two days. Later this year, Francis Forsyth, 18, and Norman Harris, 23, will hang for the murder. A lesser participant, Christopher Darby, 23, was sentenced to life in prison. Due to his age of 17, Terrence Lutt was sent to approved school. Forsyth was the last teenager hanged in England.

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150 years ago - 1860 June 29 - An English boy, Francis Savile Kent, 3, is last seen alive. His remains, with stab wounds and a cut throat, are found the next day in an outdoor latrine. Suspicion falls on a nursemaid and his half-sister Constance Kent, 16, when a partially burned bloody nightdress is discovered next to a basement boiler. The case lay dormant for five years until Constance confessed to a priest who turned her in. She went to prison until 1881 when she was quietly released, changed her name and lived into the mid-1940s. The motive was said to be revenge against her stepmother for breaking up her original family. There is some doubt as to he guilt.

[KatBradshaw]

150 years ago - 1860 June 29 - An English boy, Francis Savile Kent, 3, is last seen alive. His remains, with stab wounds and a cut throat, are found the next day in an outdoor latrine. Suspicion falls on a nursemaid and his half-sister Constance Kent, 16, when a partially burned bloody nightdress is discovered next to a basement boiler. The case lay dormant for five years until Constance confessed to a priest who turned her in. She went to prison until 1881 when she was quietly released, changed her name and lived into the mid-1940s. The motive was said to be revenge against her stepmother for breaking up her original family. There is some doubt as to he guilt.

I love the book 'The Suspicions of Mr Witcher' about this case. Very good and with an excellent hypothesis over the motive and guilty parties.

[The Grave Maurice]

'The Suspicions of Mr Witcher'...[is v]ery good...with an excellent hypothesis over the motive and guilty parties.

Agreed. I very much enjoyed this book. If anyone knows if there is an equally good treatment of this case, I'd appreciate knowing about it.