Centenaries - whole and half

[apricot]

[QUOTE=The Grave Maurice;138465]Agreed. I very much enjoyed this book. If anyone knows if there is an equally good treatment of this case, I'd knowing about it.[/QUOTe

There is a book by Bernard Taylor - Cruelly Murdered, that is a very in depth study of the case, I read it many years ago and found it rivetting, I have just checked my copy of Kate Summerskills book and she thanks hin in the acknowledgements.

KR Angie

[apricot]

[QUOTE=sdreid;137747]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.[/QU

There was a film made the following year called The Boys, which though not acknowledged, I believe was based on the case, leastways there are many similarities. Dreadful waste of three young lives.

KR Angie

[The Grave Maurice]

There is a book by Bernard Taylor - Cruelly Murdered, that is a very in depth study of the case....

Thanks very much for the tip, apricot.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1960 July 7 - Eight-year-old Graeme Thorne is kidnapped and murdered. His parents had recently won a big prize in the Sydney lottery. Young Graeme's body will be found next month. He'd been beaten and suffocated. Stephen Leslie Bradley received a life term for the crimes.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1910 July 10 - As his father John had in the previous year, Peter Sparling dies of a mysterious illness. Likewise, two more brothers will succumb next year. Finally, someone made a test for arsenic poisoning and it was affirmative. By that time, the attending physician Dr. John MacGregor, who'd been collecting life insurance payouts resulting from the deaths, was a strong suspect and was arrested. Only one sibling and Mrs. Carrie Sparling survived from the family and she was also seriously suspected but never went to trial. The doctor was convicted of the murders and sentenced to life in prison but even serial killers can be pardoned. He pulled strings and was released after only four years by Michigan Governor Woodbridge Ferris.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1960 July 16 - Mohammed Abdullah fatally shoots, his former girlfriend, Sonja Hoff in the head. He immediately tries to kill himself but was stopped and sent to a California prison for a term of life without parole. The killer was born Joseph Howk Jr. but changed his name after a religious conversion. He was previously a proponent of Nazi beliefs, surprisingly because his mother was black and his father was white.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1910 July 16 - A London actor, named Weldon Atherstone, is found shot to death outside of a empty basement flat. He was carrying a cosh in his pocket and wearing house slippers even though he was far from home. His boots were actually found inside the vacant apartment. What was he doing there? As it turned out, his mistress lived on one of the upper floors and was dining that evening with Atherstone's son. A dark stocky figure was seen bounding away from the scene of the crime but the murder was never solved. One popular theory is that Atherstone was there to spy on his mistress and, by chance, encountered a would-be burglar or voyeur who panicked and killed him. This case is truly a puzzle.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1960 July 26 - In South Africa, Detective Constable Phillipus Johannes Jordaan is shot and killed when he interrupts a burglary. Alfred Wanka is arrested and convicted of the murder. He'd also killed a man in 1953 under similar circumstances. After a failed prison escape attempt, he was was hanged in 1961.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1960 July 29 - John Rogers enters an English cab with an intent to rob the driver, William Tripp. He shoots Tripp who dies instantly. Rogers was given a life sentence.

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50 years ago - 1960 July 29 - Fourteen-year-old Richard Delage murders Carole Segretta, 28, in Poughkeepsie, New York. He will kill another women in 1969 and attempt to murder a third in 1975 before he is captured then sent to prison.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1910 August 10 - John Alexander Dickman is hanged in England for the railway murder of John Innes Nisbet. Dickman is also a suspect in the unsolved 1908 murder of Caroline Luard.

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50 years ago - 1960 August 10 - In his Moroccan home, Dr. Heinz, aka Henri, Urich is found a suicide. The bodies of his wife, daughter and adult stepdaughter are discovered buried under the floor of his garage. Urich had apparently fallen in love with his stepdaughter and issues with this are believed to have led to the rampage. The shooter was a former member of both the German SS and the French Foreign Legion.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1960 August 16 - The body of 8-year-old Graeme Thorne is found, rolled up in a carpet, in a field. He'd been kidnapped and held for ransom because his parents had just won a lot of money in a Sydney lottery. By all indications, he was killed shortly after he was taken from a corner while waiting for a ride to school. A man named Stephen Leslie Bradley was convicted of the crime and sent to prison for life. He died there of natural causes in 1968.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1960 August 18 - Peter Harold Poole is hanged for the murder of Kamawe Musunge. Poole was the first white in Kenya executed for killing a black. He'd become angered and shot the victim for throwing rocks at his dogs.

[sdreid]

150 years ago - 1860 August 19 - In Edinburgh, eleven-year-old Elizabeth Slater is found beaten and strangled. She had secretly left the home of her parents in the middle of the night carrying a parcel of clothing. A short time later, she was seen with three soldiers. Police are baffled by the murder.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1960 August 21 - Duncan Moodie, a chronically abusive husband, guns down his wife, Anita, at a "peace meeting". A South African jury found him guilty of murder but that verdict was thrown out when some irregularities were discovered. He was convicted again at a second trial and hanged in 1962.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1960 August 23 - British car salesman Jack Day shoots and kills Keith Arthur when he catches the man with Mrs. Day. The killer was guilty of having affairs himself but wasn't able to handle the reverse. Mr. Day claimed that the gun had discharged accidentally but jurors didn't buy it and he was hanged in 1961.