Centenaries - whole and half

[Zodiac]

I know, this is not a centenary, but it just struck me right between the eyes when I realised the date!!!

October 3rd 1995. O. J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

October 3rd 2011. Amanda Knox is acquitted of the Murder of Meredith Kercher a British student she shared a flat with.

Best wishes,
Zodiac.

[sdreid]

It always amazes me how soon these peoples' most ardent supporters usually desert them after they are turned loose. No matter what they say, I doubt that many will be hiring her as babysitter. That's past experience at least.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1911 October 7 - Joseph Wilson, 60, is shot on killed on his walk home from Lintz Green Railway Station in England. He was the stationmaster there and often carried large amounts of cash back to his residence after closing the office. This evening, however, he had made the deposit transaction earlier. Suspicion is that the killer didn't know this and planned to rob Mr. Wilson. The murderer was never captured or identified.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1911 October 14 - Avis Linnell is discovered in grave condition in a bathtub at the Boston Y.W.C.A. and will soon die. She had been given potassium cyanide by the Reverend Clarence V. T. Richeson who told her it was to effect an abortion. Reverend Richeson was concerned that a baby would ruin his reputation and relationships with other women. In a fit of insane guilt, while in his jail cell, he emasculated himself with the lid of a tin can. A jury agreed with his own feeling of guilt and sent him to a 1912 execution in the electric chair.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1911 October 15 - An Ellsworth, Kansas couple, Pauline and William Showman are axed to death in their bed. The family massacre was completed with the slayings of the couple's young son and little daughters in a similar fashion. Henry Lee Moore has been mentioned as a possible suspect but the crime is officially unsolved.

[Mayerling]

100 years ago - 1911 October 14 - Avis Linnell is discovered in grave condition in a bathtub at the Boston Y.W.C.A. and will soon die. She had been given potassium cyanide by the Reverend Clarence V. T. Richeson who told her it was to effect an abortion. Reverend Richeson was concerned that a baby would ruin his reputation and relationships with other women. In a fit of insane guilt, while in his jail cell, he emasculated himself with the lid of a tin can. A jury agreed with his own feeling of guilt and sent him to a 1912 execution in the electric chair.

Interesting forgotten case (big in it's day for ther rarity of a minister being the killer. There is an old book called THE MANNER OF MAN WHO KILLS that deals in part with Richeson. He had made a name for himself earlier in a midwestern strike (I think it was a steetcar strike) in St. Louis, as a supporter of the strikers, and hoped to build his reputation up by marrying the wealthy woman and getting a larger pulpit in the East. When planning to write his classic AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY, Theodore Dreiser looked for famous recent homicides that showed the habit of American males to try to socially and economically better themselves going out of control. He looked closely at the Richeson case as a possible basis for the novel, before settling instead on the case of Chester Gillette in 1906.

Jeff

[sdreid]

Thanks for the fleshing out Jeff.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1911 October 19 - In colonial India, Edward Fullum succumbs after being given an injection of poison by Dr. Henry Clark. The murderer was having an affair with Fullum's wife, Augusta. In the following month, Clark's wife, Louisa, will be slashed to death by four hired killers. The two unfaithful spouses will eventually be convicted of the slayings. Dr. Clark was executed on the gallows in 1913. Mrs. Fullum gave birth to the doctor's child in prison and died there of heatstroke in 1914.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1911 November 2 - Inside his Chicago home, John Quinn is shot and killed. Jane Quinn, his wife claimed that he'd been murdered by a burglar who then fled. Police had an issue with this account because it was similar to another she gave when her husband who immediately preceded John was slain in their residence. She was convicted of murder and given a life sentence. Jane is also suspected of killing her mother and her first husband with poison.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1961 November 5 - Three Welsh fishermen find a dismembered skeleton in a disused mine. These remains are soon identified as those of Mamie Stuart who'd vanished in 1919. Authorities quickly initiate a manhunt for her husband, Edward George Shotton, who they'd long suspected of being her killer. Around the time of the disappearance, a mailman had seen Shotton carrying a sack in the area. He had gotten away with murder however; having died from natural causes in 1958.

[Mayerling]

50 years ago - 1961 November 5 - Three Welsh fishermen find a dismembered skeleton in a disused mine. These remains are soon identified as those of Mamie Stuart who'd vanished in 1919. Authorities quickly initiate a manhunt for her husband, Edward George Shotton, who they'd long suspected of being her killer. Around the time of the disappearance, a mailman had seen Shotton carrying a sack in the area. He had gotten away with murder however; having died from natural causes in 1958.

Hi Stan,

Alas, where is a good, useful time machine when you need it to confront and arrest a villain?

Jeff

[sdreid]

Yes, Jeff - indeed!

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1961 November 12 - While aboard his yacht Bluebelle and off the coast of Florida, Julian Harvey kills his wife Mary and passengers, Arthur Duperrault, his wife Jean and two of their children, Brian and Renee. There was a third child, Terry, that Harvey expected to drown below deck when he scuttled the vessel and rowed off in a dinghy. When he was picked up, the murderer claimed that the boat had sunk after an accident. His story went out the window because the young girl had gotten to a flotation device and was rescued after drifting for four days. Harvey got word of the girl's recovery then checked into a motel and committed suicide by slashing himself with a razor. The supposed motive for the carnage was to collect on Mary's life insurance with the remainder of the slayings just to eliminate witnesses.

[Mayerling]

50 years ago - 1961 November 12 - While aboard his yacht Bluebelle and off the coast of Florida, Julian Harvey kills his wife Mary and passengers, Arthur Duperrault, his wife Jean and two of their children, Brian and Renee. There was a third child, Terry, that Harvey expected to drown below deck when he scuttled the vessel and rowed off in a dinghy. When he was picked up, the murderer claimed that the boat had sunk after an accident. His story went out the window because the young girl had gotten to a flotation device and was rescued after drifting for four days. Harvey got word of the girl's recovery then checked into a motel and committed suicide by slashing himself with a razor. The supposed motive for the carnage was to collect on Mary's life insurance with the remainder of the slayings just to eliminate witnesses.

Hi Stan,

This horrific sea massacre happened when I was only seven, and I don't remember hearing of it. However, I have an interesting account of it in a book about suicides entitled SUDDEN ENDINGS written by M. J. Meaker in 1964. It ws fairly up-to-date, as there were chapters on Hemingway and Marilyn Monroe (the issue of whether Monroe's death was murder not being an issue in 1964 with the public), as well as Hart Crane, Virginia Woolf, James Forrestal, and Joseph Goebbels. It is somewhat instructive to see who was considered a famous person who committed suicide in 1964. Besides those I named and Ivar Kreuger, some are fairly forgotten (railroad tycoon Robert Young, psychiatrist Dr. Wilhelm Stekel, and Drew Barrymore's unfortnate aunt Diana). Harvey got included because his suicide was forced on him by the odd chance of the youngest of his victims surviving and destroying his carefully thought out plot. But for that he probably would have continued killing people for insurance money until some police officer noticed the former events were too weird to be a coincidence. It is interesting too that it was one of two murder plots in that period we know of where victims were taken out by boat off Florida, killed, and dumped overboard (the other being the murder of a judge and his wife by Judge Joseph Peel a few years earlier).

Jeff

[sdreid]

Thanks Jeff.

Yes and there's some suspicion that Harvey may have already killed another of his wives as well as the woman's mother and passing it off as a traffic accident.