Centenaries - whole and half

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50 years ago - 1964 December 10 - The business of Louisiana shop owner Frank Morris is set on fire with his inside. Mr. Morris, who was African-American, died from his burns four days later. The FBI investigated the murder and had numerous suspects including several Klansman and a local law enforcement officer but no arrests were ever made. All the men on the FBI's suspect list are now deceased.

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50 years ago - 1964 December 11 - Popular singer Sam Cooke is shot and killed when he allegedly breaks in to an LA motel office. Justifiable homicide was the official finding but some close to Cooke claimed that it was murder.

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100 years ago - 1914 December 14 - Jacob Groh dies when his scaffold collapses while he is doing some painting at a New York elder care facility. The suspicion was that the rig was sabotaged by a fellow employee named Carl Menarik, aka Frederick Mors, because Groh may have known about his serial killing of patients. Menarik did eventually confess to murdering eight inmates but never took responsibility for the death of his coworker. He was found to be insane and was sent to a mental hospital. In 1916, Menarik escaped from the asylum and was never recaptured.

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100 years ago - 1914 December 18 - In England, Margaret Lofty is drowned in the tub shortly after marrying George Joseph Smith, the Brides in the Bath Killer. Smith's motive was to collect on inheritance and life insurance benefits. She was the third woman Smith had married and killed in this manner and people who remembered reading about a similar death in the newspapers a year earlier put two and two together. The killer was then hunted down, arrested and put on trial. In 1915, he was convicted of the murders and hanged.

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100 years ago - 1914 December 24 - Josef Fourie is executed by a firing squad in South Africa. He had been charged with treason because, during the Maritz Rebellion, he had gone over to the rebel side without first resigning his commission the country's military.

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50 years ago - 1964 December 26 - An English girl, Lesley Ann Downey, 10, is abducted from a fairground by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, the Moors Murderers. After they get her to their home, she is molested, tortured and killed as the events are recorded in photographs and on audio tape. Brady was the main assailant but Myra can be heard on the audio tape cheering him on in the background. Lesley was buried naked on Saddleworth Moor where her remains were found the following year. After one more murder, the killers were captured and sent to prison for life. Hindley died in 2002 while still imprisoned but Brady is still living and incarcerated.

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100 years ago - 1914 December 27 - In New Zealand, Arthur Rottman, 21, is under sequester because WWI is on and he's a German citizen. He murders his employer, Joseph McCann, with and ax when the man criticizes him for drunkenness. The killer then proceeded to wipe out the McCann family by slaying Mary McCann and their little boy. Rottmman went on the run but was captured soon after the murders were discovered. He was found guilty of the multiple murder and hanged in 1915.

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150 years ago - 1865 January 3 - Bernard Friery, a New York City gang leader, stabs saloon owner Harry Lazarus in the throat, apparently only because the victim refused to shake his hand. In 1866, Friery was hanged for the murder.

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100 years ago - 1915 January 4 - Ferdinand Scholz, a resident of a New York eldercare facility, is suffocated with chloroform. His killer is an employee at the home named Carl Menarik aka Frederick Mors. Four weeks later, Mors turned himself in and admitted to at least eight murders over the past several months. The serial killer was sent to an insane asylum but escaped in 1916 and was never recaptured.

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50 years ago - 1965 January 11 - In front of London's Shepherd's Bush Hotel, Bridie O'Hara vanishes. She was the last known victim of Jack the Stripper; a serial killer who was never captured or identified. Her partially mummified remains were found five weeks later and bore signs that she had been kept for purposes of necrophilia.

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50 years ago - 1965 January 17 - Serial killer Lucian Staniak murders Aniuta Kaliniak, 16, in Praga, Poland. Staniak, who became known as the Red Spider due to the letters he wrote to police, ambushed Anuita, his second victim, as she walked home, strangling her with a wire garrote and jamming a 6" spike into her vagina. After four additional slayings, the killer was captured in 1967 and sent to an insane asylum where he still resides as per some reports.

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50 years ago - 1965 January 22 - Iranian Prime Minister Hassan Ali Mansur is gunned down by Mohammad Bokharaei, 17. Mansur lingered for 5 days the succumbed. Later, Bokharaei and three associates were executed for the assassination.

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50 years ago - 1965 January 26 - In New York, four-month-old Eric Hoyt dies under mysterious circumstances. He may have been the first victim of serial baby killer Waneta Hoyt, his mother. Mrs. Hoyt later confessed to killing five of her children because they were crying. She died incarcerated in 1998.

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450 years ago - 1565 January 27 - Benedetto Accolti and his fellow conspirators are executed by knife in Rome. They were found guilty of plotting to assassinate Pope Pious IV.

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450 years ago - 1565 January 27 - Benedetto Accolti and his fellow conspirators are executed by knife in Rome. They were found guilty of plotting to assassinate Pope Pious IV.

That should have been Pius IV-Sorry.