Criminal Curiosities.
Considering the time of year, it seemed appropriate to remember those who went to war but never came back. That and this isn't yet another extended plug for my new book. During the First World War the British Army passed over 3000 death sentences and carried out over 300 executions by firing squad. Around 10% …
Sutton, one of America’s most successful bank robbers, also ranked as one of its most remarkable. The robber of over 100 banks and taking at least a million dollars, Sutton did it without ever firing a shot. While robbers like John Dillinger would kill whenever they thought necessary and ‘Baby Face’ Nelson killed for the …
Continue reading "On This Day in 1980: Willie ‘The Actor’ Sutton, Master Bank Robber, Dies."
1952 was a quiet year for the Sing Sing death house. Only three prisoners walked their last mile, Edward Kelly and Wallace Ford, Jr on October 30 and before them Bernard Stein on March 6. That was pretty quiet considering 1951 saw eight inmates die including Lonely Hearts Killers Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck on March 8 of that year.
True to notoriety’s pecking order in which the most notorious inmates drew most attention, few people remember John King and Joseph Powers, killers of Detective Joseph Miccio and who died on the same night as Beck and Fernandez. When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg died on June 19, 1953 few people remembered that they were only two of six to die that year, although he Rosenbergs alone more than kept Sing Sing in the news.
Neither Ford or Kelly’s crimes were especially unusual which probably leaves you wondering why they appear…
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When disturbed loner and some-time Anarchist Leon Czolgosz was convicted for assassinating President William McKinley, Judge Truman White’s sentencing was brief. The crime had been committed on Septmber 6 1901, President McKinley dying of infection from Czolgosz’s bullet on September 9. Now, on September 23 only two weeks after the President’s death, his assassin was …
Continue reading "On This Day in 1901: Leon Czolgosz, Presidential Assassin."
Anastasia, murdered while getting a shave at New York’s Park Sheraton Hotel, was and remains one of the most callous and murderous criminals in American history. An illegal immigrant who jumped ship in 1919, he also jumped into New York’s underworld. Born into poverty in Parghelia, Italy in 1920 he would die in 1957, rich …
“The only law in Sing Sing is Lawes.” – Lawes on his tough-but-fair prison regime. Lewis Lawes occupies a contradictory place in American penal history. His detractors often accused him of coddling prisoners, of being too soft when a hard-line approach was considered the best (and often only) way to handle New York State’s toughest …
Robert Greene Elliott, State Electrician for New York and five other states, is often listed as making his official debut in January 1926 when he executed Emil Klatt and Luigi Rapito. They’re often said to be the first of the 387 state and Federal prisoners Elliott executed during his thirteen-year tenure as executioner. They were …
Continue reading "A Deadly Debut, Robert Elliott’s First Execution."
