Lawmakers, laws and those who break them.
Category: True Crime
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Joel Singer and Jack Franck, the original Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.
If you're a fan of Clint Eastwood then 1974's 'Thunderbolt and Lightfoot' distributed by United Artists, is probably in your DVD collection. Not one of his better-known movies and perhaps not one of his best, but well worth watching all the same. The movie, made largely because Eastwood felt like doing a road movie, ...
On This Day in 1963: New York State’s Last Execution, Eddie Lee Mays.
August 15, 1963 was an historic day in New York's penal history, although nobody involved knew it at the time. New York's lawmakers didn't know it. the Warden of New York's infamous Sing Sing Prison (now the Ossining Correctional Facility) didn't know. Dow Hover, New York's last 'State Electrician', didn't know it. Eddie Lee Mays ...
On This Day in 1964 – The Last Executions In Britain.
As regular readers are aware, I cover true crime here and the death penalty is a regular feature. Being an abolitionist, it's with some small satisfaction that we're going to look at Britain's last executions. To the minute, if you happen to be reading this at 8am. On August 13, 1964 Gwynne Evans and Peter ...
On This Day in 1934; Alcatraz officially opens.
b "We are looking forward to great things from Alcatraz." - Attorney-General Homer Cummings at the official opening in 1934. "Alcatraz was never no good for nobody." - Convict Frank Weatherman, Number AZ1576, the last convict admitted to The Rock, on its closure in 1963. Alcatraz is 85 years old today. At least it's 85 ...
Newgate Prison: Ask not for whom the Bell tolls…
Now here's a real criminal curiosity, the infamous Execution Bell from London's notorious Newgate Prison. Accounts of executions, themselves a grim British tradition until the 1960's, often relate stories of a black flag being raised and a prison bell tolling to announce a prisoner's death. These are true, at least after public executions ended with ...
On This Day in 1890; William Kemmler – The World’s First Legal Electrocution.
August 6, 1890 saw the dawn of a new age for criminal history. At Auburn Prison in upstate New York there was the execution.of one William Kemmler, condemned for murdering girlfriend Matilda Ziegler with a hatchet. There was nothing remarkable about Kemmler (an alcoholic vegetable hawker with a vicious temper) or about his crime. There ...
On This Day in 1928: Very unlucky for some…
Today it's Friday July 13, 2018. July 13, 1928 was also a Friday, a Friday delivering the ultimate in bad luck to 11 men in three different States... In Mississippi's Yazoo County murderer Will Burdo nervously awaited his date with the hangman. While Burdo pondered his fate in Yazoo County Jail, over in Smith ...
