Regional Murder Mysteries

[GUT]

You and me both! Although I occasionally go into another room and forget what I'm in there for!

Ley may have always suffered from one undiagnosed mental condition or another. However, when he was sentenced to death for the Chalk Pit Murder, they quickly found two doctors who certified that he was of unsound mind and he ended up in Broadmoor.

It's been ages since I read of the case but I am sure that it was said that Ley's obsessive and groundless jealousy of his elderly girlfriend was caused by the onset of dementia. I have known a couple of unfortunate people who were diagnosed with this tragic condition when they were in their late fifties.

Yes jealousy seems to be part of it.

One of mums friends developed it in her 40s. It was so sad to watch.

[Rosella]

You and me both! Although I occasionally go into another room and forget what I'm in there for!

Ley may have always suffered from one undiagnosed mental condition or another. However, when he was sentenced to death for the Chalk Pit Murder, they quickly found two doctors who certified that he was of unsound mind and he ended up in Broadmoor.

It's been ages since I read of the case but I am sure that it was said that Ley's obsessive and groundless jealousy of his elderly girlfriend was caused by the onset of dementia. I have known a couple of unfortunate people who were diagnosed with this tragic condition when they were in their late fifties.

[sdreid]

As an Australian I know more about Ley, who was extraordinarily corrupt and a great liar. He was involved, I believe, in ordering people killed in Australia who had become an inconvenience to him. I don't think he himself sullied his lily-white paws in any of it.

By the time he was arrested for the Chalk Pit murder in England after the war, he was apparently suffering from senile dementia, hence his extreme jealousy about his elderly girl friend!

Ley was only 66. That seems quite early for senile dementia. I'll be 69 in just a few weeks and I'm still keeping it together-I think.

[sdreid]

Sickles got remarried in 1871 so he didn't grieve too long.

[sdreid]

Sickles apparently forgave his wife, although to my way of thinking, hers was the greater betrayal. He must have thought that Key II was just too irresistible.

Teresa only lived until 1867 though so he didn't really have to stick with her that long.

[sdreid]

I don't think that Sickels was a sociopath but, in my view, he was an extremely odd individual.

Sickles apparently forgave his wife, although to my way of thinking, hers was the greater betrayal. He must have thought that Keys was just too irresistible.

[Mayerling]

As an Australian I know more about Ley, who was extraordinarily corrupt and a great liar. He was involved, I believe, in ordering people killed in Australia who had become an inconvenience to him. I don't think he himself sullied his lily-white paws in any of it.

By the time he was arrested for the Chalk Pit murder in England after the war, he was apparently suffering from senile dementia, hence his extreme jealousy about his elderly girl friend!

Aside from a volume in the Notable British Trials series on him (why not, he is the only high ranking politician put on trial for murder in modern Britain), the only book on Ley I know of is one called "The Minister of Murder".*

As for Sickles (who is the subject of two biographies I know of) Nat Brand (a writer on American Civil War subjects) wrote a good account on the murder of Philip Barton Keys called "The Congressman Who Got Away With Murder", which I think is a wonderful title.

[*I might add that since 1947 another highly regarded British politician (not an Australian transplant) was on trial for attempted murder: Jeremy Thorpe. He got acquitted, but many people feel he shouldn't have been.]

Jeff

[Rosella]

As an Australian I know more about Ley, who was extraordinarily corrupt and a great liar. He was involved, I believe, in ordering people killed in Australia who had become an inconvenience to him. I don't think he himself sullied his lily-white paws in any of it.

By the time he was arrested for the Chalk Pit murder in England after the war, he was apparently suffering from senile dementia, hence his extreme jealousy about his elderly girl friend!

[Ginger]

Sickles was certainly one of a kind, but I do think a solid argument can be made that he kept the Union left from being turned that second day at Gettysburg, when he disobeyed orders and moved III Corps forward to an advanced position on Sherfy's ridge.

[sdreid]

I don't think that Sickels was a sociopath but, in my view, he was an extremely odd individual.

[Mayerling]

See, I think politicians are more narcissistic premeditated liars…sure some are sociopaths as well but I don’t think true sociopaths are as premeditating … just my opinion

Steadmund Brand

I only can think of two politicians who were murderers but I'm not sure if they can both be sociopaths and total liars.

The first was General Daniel Sickels, who as a New York State Congressman shot and killed Philip Barton Keys, the District Attorney of Washington, D.C., in 1859, and was tried for it. But Keys had been having an affair with Sickels' first wife, and the General would win acquittal for the murder in a noted trial which tested the "unwritten law" about killing adulterers. Although there were controversies throughout the career of Sickels (as a General, a businessman, and a diplomat - our Minister to Spain in the early 1870s) he rarely demonstrated any outlandish lying behavior nor did he go about planning to kill people in secret (in fact, he shot Keys out in the open in Washington's Jackson Square Park near the White House).

The other is a darker (far darker) figure - the Australian politician, Thomas Ley. Ley probably could be considered a sociopath, and he did die in an asylum prison (Broadmoor) for his role in organizing the murder of a man he thought was playing around with his mistress. Ley had been (of all things) Minister of Justice in one of the states of Australia, and had been noted for his strict, "by the rules" decisions, especially about executions. But in his career as a businessman and up-and-coming politician, several opponents of his died under murky circumstances (disappearing off ferry boats; being found dead near cliffs). He may have killed four men in Australia. He was also involved in shady business deals in Australia and Britain (where he moved to) as well as black marketeering in Britain in World War II. Lying was second nature to the man known as "Lemonade" Ley for his support of prohibition in Australia in the 1920s (tempered somewhat, it was later learned, by his getting money from the brewery interests!).

Jeff

[sdreid]

I suppose premeditated is worse since it implies a choice rather than a trait.

[sdreid]

See, I think politicians are more narcissistic premeditated liars…sure some are sociopaths as well but I don’t think true sociopaths are as premeditating … just my opinion

Steadmund Brand

That may be true and I'm not sure which is worse.

[Steadmund Brand]

I wonder if inveterate sociopathic liars aren't the norm anymore. They certainly are in politics.

See, I think politicians are more narcissistic premeditated liars…sure some are sociopaths as well but I don’t think true sociopaths are as premeditating … just my opinion

Steadmund Brand

[sdreid]

I wonder if inveterate sociopathic liars aren't the norm anymore. They certainly are in politics.