Centenaries - whole and half

[GUT]

G'day Stan

I hope they checked out that lead C4.

Was that lead as in a lead to follow up OR

Lead as in a lead [pb] pencil or lead in paint. ....

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1964 May 2 - Two African American gentlemen, Henry Dee, 19, and Charles Moore, 20, are abducted by a gang of white men while hitchhiking in Mississippi. They were severely beaten then forced into a car trunk and driven to Louisiana where they were tied to pieces of scrap iron and thrown into the river where they drowned. It was suspected that the abductors were Klansmen but no arrest was made until 2005. Based on the testimony of a man who had been granted immunity, James Ford Seale was convicted of his involvement and given three life terms. He died in prison in 2011.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1964 May 7 - Passenger Francisco Gonzales bursts into the cockpit of Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 and shoots both pilots then himself. The plane then went out of control and crashed in California; leaving all 44 aboard dead. Gonzales was suffering from depression exacerbated by financial difficulties. Before the killer boarded the airliner in Reno, he took a large life insurance policy out on himself with his wife named as beneficiary.

[Mayerling]

100 years ago - 1914 March 16 - Gaston Calmette is gunned down in his office at Le Figaro by Henriette Caillaux, the wife of a French government minister. Madame Caillaux was upset about the newspaperman's criticism of her husband. She was put on trial for the killing but was acquitted for reason of, to effect, temporary insanity.

The Calmette-Caillaux affair had a dismal affect on history in two ways Since Madame Caillaux's husband Joseph Caillaux (she was his second wife) was the French Minister of Finance, and a leader of the Socialist Party, he had to resign from that post - which was unfortunate because he was one of the few important French politicians (he'd been Premier two years before) who tried to cooperate with the Wilhelmine German Empire rather than confront it. Secondly France was more interested in the killing of Calmette (editor of Le Figaro, a right wing politician, and enemy of the Socialist Caillaux) and the trial of Madame Caillaux (which occupied their attention through the months of June, July,and August) than on what was going on at Sarajevo and in Vienna and Berlin. Had Caillaux still been active France might not have gone to war for Serbia.

Jeff

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1964 May 16 - During a Miami evening, Lola Cotton, 44, is last seen alive with Lloyd Donald Greeson Jr. Unseen for nine days, her nude body is found in her residence. It was determined that the cause of her death was barbiturate poisoning. After a similar killing in Pennsylvania, a month later, Greeson was put on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list and eventually arrested. In the resulting legal proceedings, Greeson pled guilty to second degree murder, in the case of Lola's killing, and was sent to prison for 20 years.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1914 May 18 - In her Paris apartment, actress Marcelle Tiriard is shot and killed by her lover Francesco Bonano. The murderer then shot and killed himself. It is believed that the events were triggered when Marcelle made it known that she wanted to end the relationship.

[sdreid]

150 years ago - 1864 May 24 - Edward Struck, a former New York policeman, dies from arsenic poisoning administered by his wife, the future Lydia Sherman. She then went on to kill 2 more husbands, 7 of her children and perhaps dozens more. The murderess was eventually sent to prison for life and died there in 1878.

50 years ago - 1964 May 24 - In Sacramento, Robert Nicolaus murders his three children, ages 2, 5, and 7, with a gun. He was originally sentenced to death but that was reduced and he was paroled in 1977. A few years after that, he then murdered an ex-wife and went back to prison where he died in 2003.

[GUT]

I've always thought Lydia was pure sexism, I'm sure a man would have swung for the same crimes.

[sdreid]

I've always thought Lydia was pure sexism, I'm sure a man would have swung for the same crimes.

I agree. She was a serial killer who murdered between 10 and 42 people - no way a similar guy wouldn't have been executed unless it was a non death penalty state which this wasn't.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1964 May 29 - Anthony Spenser, 17, rapes and kills Charlotte Lipstick in her Brooklyn home. He went on to murder another woman three months later then was sent to prison for life.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1964 May 31 - Charles Schmid, "The Pied Piper of Tucson", rapes and beats Alleen Rowe, 15, to death. The murderer said he just wanted to kill someone to see what it felt like. In the year following, he also murdered two teenage sisters. Schmid eventually got a life sentence and escaped for a short time in 1972. In 1975, he was stabbed to death by two fellow inmates.

[Mayerling]

50 years ago - 1964 May 31 - Charles Schmid, "The Pied Piper of Tucson", rapes and beats Alleen Rowe, 15, to death. The murderer said he just wanted to kill someone to see what it felt like.

In 1975, he was stabbed to death by two fellow inmates.

I hope they weren't too hard on the two inmates. They probaly just wanted to see what it felt like to stab a scuzz ball to death.

Jeff

[sdreid]

150 years ago - 1864 June 9 - French doctor Edmond de la Pommerias is executed on the guillotine for the poisoning murders of his mother-in-law and a former mistress. He gave the women digitalis in 1862 and 1863 respectively.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1964 June 11 - Walter Seifert, 42, enters a Cologne, Germany elementary school then begins beating and stabbing students and teachers before setting them on fire with a homemade flamethrower. At the end of the mayhem, the former policeman had murdered 10 and wounded 22. He then killed himself by drinking insecticide.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1964 June 13 - In Pennsylvania, Margaret Ayoub, 37, vanishes. Her remains were found in ditch two days later. The cause of death was barbiturate poisoning and Lloyd Donald Greeson Jr. was indicted for the murder although he was never brought to trial. Greeson was convicted of another murder in Florida and sentenced to prison there.