Centenaries - whole and half

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1912 October 5 - On a NYC trolley, gangster "Big Jack" Zelig is shot and killed. Although never proven, the word was that the slaying was a hit to prevent him from testifying in the trial for the murder of Herman Rosenthal. Phil "Boston Red" Davidson was convicted of Zelig's killing and sent to prison for 20 years. Davidson only served 12 years and was then released.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1912 October 9 - An English policeman named Arthur Walls is gunned down when he interrupts a burglary. His killer, John Williams aka George McKay was captured and executed in 1913.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1962 October 11 - Near London, Edward Donald Garlick sexually assaults Carol Ann White, 16, then stabs her to death. Police became suspicious when he "discovered" her remains the next day. Garlick was found guilty and sent to prison for life. In an earlier year, it was also revealed that he'd gone to trial for killing his first wife with gas but, in that case, the Crown was unable to convince a jury.

[sdreid]

150 years ago - 1862 October 20 - A nurse, Catherine Wilson is publicly hanged in London. She had been convicted of one murder but she was strongly suspected of killing at least seven. Wilson's victims all died from poison soon after she convinced them to include her in their wills.

[Mayerling]

100 years ago - 1912 September 24 - Chester Jordan is executed in a Massachusetts electric chair for the 1908 murder of his wife Honora. Both were vaudeville actors and Mr. Jordan had killed her by first beating Honora and then throwing her down some stairs. He then tried to cover the crime by hacking the body to pieces and then burning it but this was thwarted when Honora's torso was discovered in a trunk.

Hi Stan,

My computer has been broken on and off for the last three months. Hence little contact from me.

The reason for the delay in the execution of Jordan was one of the jurors went insane a day or so after the trial verdict. It gave some wiggle room to the defense. Fortunately for Jordan his brother - in - law was the noted stock exchange plunger Jessie Livermore, so they were able to pay for a real defense fight. However, I believe they only delayed the inevitable - there no reversal.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

150 years ago - 1862 October 20 - A nurse, Catherine Wilson is publicly hanged in London. She had been convicted of one murder but she was strongly suspected of killing at least seven. Wilson's victims all died from poison soon after she convinced them to include her in their wills.

Hi Stan,

The interesting thing about this case was that Wilson had just been acquitted in an earlier poisoning case.

The situation is similar to the mystery novel by Francis Iles, MALICE AFORTHOUGHT where Dr. Bickle is acquitten of the poisoning murder of his wife (which he did) but the authorities immediately rearrest him for the murder of a young love rival and he is convicted (except he did not do it - and he realizes it was a toxic illness due to poorly maintained drains).

Supposedly had Dr. William Palmer been acquitted for the killing of John Parsons Cook, he'd have been tried for either his wife's or his brother's murders.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

100 years ago - 1912 October 5 - On a NYC trolley, gangster "Big Jack" Zelig is shot and killed. Although never proven, the word was that the slaying was a hit to prevent him from testifying in the trial for the murder of Herman Rosenthal. Phil "Boston Red" Davidson was convicted of Zelig's killing and sent to prison for 20 years. Davidson only served 12 years and was then released.

Hi Stan,

I guess that for Zelig it was not "a jolly hour on the trolly", and he lost his life instead.

Jeff

[sdreid]

Hi Jeff:

Thanks for the thoughts and additional information.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1912 November 3 - The bound and battered body on Miss Jean Milne is found in the home of her British estate. Jean, a 65-year-old spinster who'd also been tortured with the jabs of a fork, was thought to have died about two weeks earlier. A motive was never determined since her valuables remained untouched. It was believed that she was romantically involved with a young man at the time but he was found and was able to prove to the satisfaction of police that he'd been in Belgium at the time of the killing. The murderer of Miss Milne was never captured or identified.

[Mayerling]

October 14, 1912 - An Attempted Assassination

This was overlooked but should be noted - some bloodletting, but no murder.

On October 14, 1912, former President Theodore Roosevelt was leaving his hotel in Milwaukee to go to make a political speech, He was shot as he was about to enter a car to take him to the speech, by one John F. Schrank, a former bar owner in Manhattan, who had been tailing Roosevelt for a few days from New Orleans to Milwaukee.

Roosevelt had helped get his friend William Howard Taft elected President in 1908, but by 1912 found Taft was not as committed to reforms as Roosevelt had been. This led to a split between the men, and the end of their friendship. Roosevelt tried to take the Republican Presidential nomination of 1912 back from the incumbent Taft, but the Conservative wing of the Republican Party (known as "Stand Patters") made sure only Taft delegates got seated in some of the state delgations at the convention. This led Roosevelt and his supporters to bolt the Party and hold a convention that nominated him for the Presidency as the Progressive Party or Bull Moose Party (Roosevelt made a comment that he felt as fit as a Bull Moose, and the name stuck). The Democrats also nominated a reformer, Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey. And the Socialist Party nominated the labor leader Eugene V. Debs. It was a rarity that four first callibre candidates were running against each other for President.

Although he wanted to humiliate Taft, Roosevelt knew he had to beat Wilson on reform issues, and came up with a platform calling for nationalization of the railroads and direct recall for Federal Judges that the public felt were doing a poor job. Wilson likewise suggested further improvement on anti-trust laws and on the banking system. Taft wanted to prevent Roosevelt from returning to the White House, and kept warning the public that his ex-friend was power hungry. Taft did not like (as a lawyer and former judge) the direct recall platform idea. Debs called for more socialization that Roosevelt suggested.

Taft and the Stand Patters pointed out that Roosevelt had served two terms as President, and he was now breaking that tradition. Schrank latched onto that thought. He had a sad life - his girlfriend drowned in the General Slocum disaster of 1904 in New York City's East River. He may have also had a personal grudge against Roosevelt, who had been harsh on bars and closing hours when he had been Police Commissioner in the 1890s. Finally Schrank had a dream in which former President William McKinley (assassinated in 1901) sat up in a coffin and told Schrank to avenge his death against his usurper - and pointed to a monk who looked like Roosevelt.

Schrank fired his revolver into Roosevelt's chest on 10/14/1912, but Roosevelt's folded speech and eyeglass case saved his life. The bullet got deflected. After Roosevelt coughed to make sure his lung was not bleeding (i.e. - the lungs were not injured), he insisted on going to the hall and making his speech. At the end of the speech he was rushed to the hospital.

The doctors there found the bullet was in the chest, but not in any particularly dangerous spot. However they decided not to remove it (it remained in Roosevelt until his death in 1919). The doctors also marvelled at the physical specimen that was former President Roosevelt. His regimen of exercise and the "strenuous life" gave him the physique of a 35 year old man (he was actually 54 at the time).

Wilson and Debs stopped campaigning out of respect for the former President. They did not resume their campaigning until the end of October when Roosevelt resumed his. Taft did not do any real campaigning that fall. In the November election, Wilson won, as the Repblican vote was spit. Roosevelt came in second with the highest total of electoral votes a third party in history. Taft carried only 8 electoral votes from Vermont and Utah, but he was satisfied that he defeated Roosevelt. Debs got 900,000 plus votes, one of the highest totals ever won by the Socialist Party.

Schrank was sent to a mental institution, where he died on pneumonia in 1943. He later said that had he been released and been out in 1940 he would have tried to shoot Franklin Roosevelt for running for a third term.

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Stan

For some reason or another the Miss Jean Milne case rang faint bells with me, so I chased it a little.

It's not at all what I was looking for, but it appears that back in 2007 this case was the subject of a Freedom of Information request, which was initially rejected on the familiar grounds of the deterrent effect on witnesses in future cases coming forward to testify. It would appear that the Scottish Information Commissioner is made of stouter stuff than some of his counterparts:-

http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/A.../200600769.asp

All the best

Dave

[sdreid]

Thanks Dave. Yes, they are still trying to catch a killer who would have to be at least 116.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1912 December 1 - In France, Louis Pernotte, an insurance broker, dies after receiving an injection from Henri Girard, his business partner. The killer had been administering typhoid germs to Pernotte for several days with the intent of collecting a large insurance settlement. Girard succeeded and tried the scheme again when he later killed a woman by feeding her poison mushrooms. The insurance company finally figured out what was going on and Girard was arrested. While awaiting trial in 1921, Girard killed himself by drinking a lethal cocktail of bacteria.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1912 December 3 - In the Argentinian countryside, Cayetano Santos Godino, 16, entices three-year-old Jesualdo Giordano into an empty house and begins to choke and beat him. The serial killer then murders the little boy by hammering a nail into his brain. This is the fourth and last child that Godino has killed, including three when he was 15 or younger. He had been seen in the area where Jesualdo's body was found and was quickly arrested. Godino confessed, was declared insane and sent to incarceration where he died in 1944 under mysterious circumstances. Officially his cause of death was listed as natural but the rumor was that he'd been killed by fellow inmates.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1962 December 5 - The Boston Strangler has returned to kill Sophie Clark, that's if she was a victim of the same unknown killer. She was much younger and of a different race than the previous victims.