Centenaries - whole and half

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1959 November 22 - The body of Mary Tardy is found in a California mobile home. She'd been raped and strangled. Fingerprints in the residence matched those left at another murder scene, eighteen months earlier. After about a week, a man named Donald Kinsman walked into a police station and confessed to Tardy's slaying. He eventually admitted to both murders and was convicted.

[sdreid]

200 years ago - 1809 November 25 - British diplomat, Benjamin Bathurst vanishes while traveling west of Berlin. The French are immediately suspected and Napoleon Bonaparte takes time to personally deny the charges. In 1852, a skeleton is found near where Bathurst was last reported. The victim had apparently been murdered by a blow to the head. It was conjectured that these might be the remains of Bathurst but that could never be definitely determined. The case was never solved.

[sdreid]

150 years ago - 1859 December 2 - Saint and savior or terrorist serial killer, fanatical abolitionist John Brown is hanged for treason in Charleston, (now West) Virginia.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1959 December 15 - The mutilated body of Ethel Little is found tied to the bed in her Miami apartment. It was an unsolved murder until 1972 when Vernon Edwards Jr. turned himself in to police, confessing this and a 1961 slaying. He got a life sentence. At the time of the killing, due to the nature of the crime, it was conjectured that the perpetrator might be the same as the murderer of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia. That theory went out the window with Edwards because he was only 9-years-old when Short was slain.

[Limehouse]

YWCA Murder, Birmingham

It will soon be the 50th anniversary of the death of Stephanie Baird, who was horribly murdered in a hostel in Birmingham on 23 December, 1959. Her killer was Patrick Byrne who was found guilty but was not hanged due to diminished responsibility.

Does anyone know whether he was eventually released, is he still alove (he'd be nearly 80 now) or did he die in an institution?

[sdreid]

Thanks Limehouse! Yes, I had that one in the pipe. As per my copy of The Encyclopedia of 20th Century Murder, Byrne was born in 1932. According to that book he was alive in 1989 when it came out but I don't know 20 years hence.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1959 December 16 - Gangster, Roger "Terrible" Touhy is gunned down on a Chicago street. The murder was never solved but a faction of the old Capone mob was suspected.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1959 December 20 - Jillian Brewster is found slain in the bedroom of her Perth home. A murderer had used a knife and a hatchet to perpetrate the homicide. The 22-year-old woman is another victim of serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke. He was hanged in 1964.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1959 December 23 - In Birmingham, England, Sidney Baird is battered to death in her YWCA room. The killer then proceeded to decapitate and sexually abuse the corpse. A man named Patrick Byrne was eventually convicted of the murder. In a later appeal, he was found to be insane.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1909 December 31 - Anna Lloyd is murdered shortly after leaving her secretarial job at a lumber yard. Her skull was smashed and throat cut after she was gagged with a scarf. It appears that the Cincinnati Streetcar Killer has awakened from his 5+ year estivation (none of the murders occurred in the Summer). There will be one last slaying, the fifth in the series, ten months hence. The case was never solved, although some thought that the killer might be an insane conductor when a note was found in his room that made reference to "the act of December 31." This writing was not specific, however.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1960 January 2 - George Carter comes home to "discover" his pregnant wife, Ruby, beaten to death in the bedroom. The couple's six-year-old son is also maimed in the attack. Mr. Carter's story quickly unravels when blood is found on his sleeve and he's eventually sent to a U.K. prison for life.

[Mayerling]

100 years ago - 1909 November 18 - Twelve Austrian Army officers receive pills in the mail that the sender asserts will enhance their sexual performance. Only Captain Richard Mader tests the claim and promptly dies of cyanide poisoning. All the intended victims had been classmates at a Military Academy with Adolph Hofrichter who was having a less successful career in the service. He was eventually convicted of the crime and sent to prison.

According to an article in the New York Times (which I can't find currently) Hofrichter was eventually released from prison in the 1920s, and was still alive in 1931 94 so.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

I missed a few because I couldn't get in here. They're on that other site.

100 years ago - 1909 November 1 - English entrepreneur, George Storrs is stabbed to death in his home by an invader. He apparently knew that he was going to be murdered in advance but never told who or why. The case is still unsolved.

This was the infamous "Gorse Hall" Murder Mystery, which resulted (for the only time in British jurisprudence - at least in modern times) lf two men getting seperate trials for the same crime. George Storrs, a factory owner, was attacked in his home before his servants and wife and daughter by a man. They all saw the attacker. Storrs had been nervous for a number of weeks, and had actually set up a special bell on his mansion to be rung for police help (this happened after someone fired a bullet at him through a ground floor window). The bell was tested, and the police showed up within ten minutes.

But it was not rung the night that Storrs was killed. His servants were tied up, and nobody was able to ring it.

Police infestigation found that Storrs had been at odds with a relative named Cornelius Howard, and he was arrested. He had a fairly shaky alibi, and should have been convicted, but he got a spirited barrister who knocked the equally shaky policy case to bits. Howard was acquitted. Looking foolish, the police went over their evidence and found that Storrs had been instrumental in getting a young man named Mark Wilde fired. Wilde was checked out too, and he was found to be a person with a shaky alibi. He was arrested and put on trial. But Wilde hired the same barrister that got Howard acquitted, and again he shook apart the feeble chain of evidence against Wilde. On top of that an angry Howard attended the Wilde trial and sat near the defense table. Wilde too was acquitted! At the end of the trial, Howard approached Wilde and loudly congradulated him on his acquittal. Wilde just as loudly thanked Howard and loudly congradulated him on his acquittal (possible the only time such a scene happened in a British law court!!).

In his study on the case, THE STABBING OF GEORGE HARRY STORRS, Jonathan Goodman went over the cases against both Howard and Wilde. While only one of them could have done it, Goodman felt that better police preperation might have brought the charges home against either one of them, especially as they both had bad alibis.

But Jonathan also found out that Storrs was not what he seemed - he had an affair with a young woman who committed suicide. She had a brother. There is a chance that the young woman's brother was the actual killer.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

According to an article in the New York Times (which I can't find currently) Hofrichter was eventually released from prison in the 1920s, and was still alive in 1931 94 so.

Jeff

I attempted to type out the entire article from the New York Times of December 12, 1929 (not 1931, sorry) about Hofrichter, who had been released from prison during a revolution in post 1918 Austria, and became a commercial traveller. He was on trial for perjury, and no details are given. The 1910 crime is discussed. He had changed his name to Adolf Richter. The article was on Page 11, column 2-3. I'm I could not get the full article on, but again, this cite does have some unfortunate time limit (an unfair one) on typing a long desecription or passage from a source. Something should be done about it to make stop doing this.

Jeff

[sdreid]

Thanks Jeff. As I recall, his original sentence was surprisingly light - something like 20 years. I don't know why he got off so easy.