Centenaries - whole and half

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1960 November 10 - Francis Forsyth, 18, and Norman Harris, 23, are hanged for the murder of Alan Jee. Forsyth was the last teenager executed in England.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1960 November 14 - In California, 25-year-old Ann Tracy shoots and kills her lover, Amos Stricker, as they lie together in the conjugal bed. The motive was his infidelity. She received a life sentence.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1960 November 22 - Linda Jeffs kills her baby daughter Doreen and then fakes a kidnapping. When the little girl's body is located, Ms. Jeffs confesses. She was found to be of diminished responsibility and sent to an English mental institution. After a short stay, she was released and committed suicide in 1965.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1910 November 23 - Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen is hanged for the murder of his wife Kunigunde/Belle/Cora Crippen. He'd been arrested with his mistress in New York after a trans-Atlantic chase and returned to England to stand trial.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1910 November 24 - In England, William Broome is hanged for the murder of Isabella Wilson, an elderly woman who lived next to his father's shop. The motive for the crime was robbery.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1960 December 11 - Near her Heston, England home, the remains of 12-year-old Brenda Nash are discovered. She'd disappeared several weeks previous and had been raped then strangled. A prisoner serving time for another sexual assault, named Arthur Albert Jones, later admitted the murder to a fellow inmate and got his sentence extended to life.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1910 December 12 - Dorothy Arnold, the unmarried daughter of a wealthy perfume importer, vanishes and is presumed slain while out shopping in New York City. She is in her middle 20s and is last seen at a book store by a friend who says that Dorothy told her that she planned to walk home through Central Park. No one after that admitted to seeing Miss Arnold either alive or dead. A month before, she had run off with a man for a fling but he was thoroughly checked out and eliminated as a suspect. Today, this disappearance and probable murder remains unsolved.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1910 December 16 - In London, three policeman are shot and killed when they interrupt a jewelry store robbery. George Gardstein, the leader the anarchist burglary ring is accidentally shot by one of his own men and expires later in the gang's hideout. Two other members of the band were killed in a subsequent shootout several days later. All but one of the remaining members of the group were eventually captured but none received a conviction that stood up.

[Mayerling]

100 years ago - 1910 November 24 - In England, William Broome is hanged for the murder of Isabella Wilson, an elderly woman who lived next to his father's shop. The motive for the crime was robbery.

Although the evidence against Broome was really sparse (it included a half used bank roll of coins, similar to one that Ms Wilson had in her store when robbed), it was sufficient to allow a verdict of guilty. But it was questionable at best. The executioner of Broome always questioned his guilt. Broome, himself, made a grisly joke about "Being senior to Crippen in the next world."

Jeff

[Mayerling]

100 years ago - 1910 December 12 - Dorothy Arnold, the unmarried daughter of a wealthy perfume importer, vanishes and is presumed slain while out shopping in New York City. She is in her middle 20s and is last seen at a book store by a friend who says that Dorothy told her that she planned to walk home through Central Park. No one after that admitted to seeing Miss Arnold either alive or dead. A month before, she had run off with a man for a fling but he was thoroughly checked out and eliminated as a suspect. Today, this disappearance and probable murder remains unsolved.

I have been working for some time on the Arnold mystery. It is not murder as much as suicide or possibly death by a criminal abortion.

Jeff

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1960 December 22 - Anthony Joseph Miller, 19, is executed in Scotland for the beating murder of John Cremin. Miller was the last teenager hanged in the U.K. He had an underage male partner who would lure gay men to a secluded area on the pretext of sex where Miller would appear and rob the person.

[Mayerling]

100 years ago - 1910 December 16 - In London, three policeman are shot and killed when they interrupt a jewelry store robbery. George Gardstein, the leader the anarchist burglary ring is accidentally shot by one of his own men and expires later in the gang's hideout. Two other members of the band were killed in a subsequent shootout several days later. All but one of the remaining members of the group were eventually captured but none received a conviction that stood up.

This reminds me - in a week or so it will be the centennial of the Siege of Sidney Street (the follow-up with the murder of the three policemen), and the curious mystery of the murder of Leon Beron. Was he killed by only one man, the handsome burglar Steinie Morrison (a.k.a. Morris Stein) or was Stein involved as a lure for at least another perpetrator, or was Stein an innocent victim of a brutal coincidence? Was Beron killed in a robbery (he always carried large sums of money on him) or was he the Victim of revenge - was he a spy who helped lead the British forces to the anarchists at Sidney Street?

Donald Rumbelow's study of the siege (published in the U.S. as THE SIEGE OF SIDNEY STREET) dismissed the connection as unproven.

By the way, the siege was famous for two reason:

1) Home Secretary Winston Churchill ordered artillery out to level the house the anarchists were firing from - there are photos of him peering from the ranks looking at the destruction.

2) The incident was used by Alfred Hitchcock in the conclusion of his first version of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934) with Peter Lorre and Leslie Banks.

Jeff

[sdreid]

Thanks Jeff. Yes, I had those two cases lined up for the next week or two.

[Mayerling]

Hi Stan, sorry to steal a march on you with Sidney Street (not Greenstreet, chortle, chortle!!) and Steinie's peculiar case. He probably was involved, but there are so many holes in the full story (much of it due to the peculiar detective work of the usually thorough and professional Frederick Wensley) that we cannot be fully certain of his guilt.

Another centenial coming up is the murder of Avis Linnell in Massachusetts by Reverend Clarence Richeson. Gruesome in some of it's details (Richeson mutilated himself at one point). The case was best discussed in an old volume entitled "The Manner of Man Who Kills". Richeson apparently did this crime to throw aside Linnell, now an impediment to his ambitions, to marry a wealthier woman. Before settling on the Chester Gillette Case for his AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY, Theodore Dreiser thought of basing his story of murder and social climbing on Richeson's case.

Jeff

[sdreid]

Yes as I recall Jeff, Richeson either tried to castrate or emasculate himself with the lid of a tin can. I don't remember if he totally seceded.