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Arizona successfully executes Frank Rascon ~(and almost his widow).
Rascon’s death was deliberate and lawful, planned to the last minute and detail. That of his newly-widowed wife Ramona was not, but she nearly died all the same. The reason? Cyanide residue had condensed on Frank’s still-warm corpse.
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Earl Gardner, last to hang in Arizona.
Arizona, long a part of the old and wild West, has a somewhat chequered history for both law-breaking and law-enforcement. Home to Tombstone, the OK Corral, Bisbee, Prescott and a few other Wild West landmarks, it immeditely conjures images of rattlesnakes, arid deserts, epic shoot-outs and outlaws twisting at the end of a rope. Earl…
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Alphonse Brengard. Justice delayed, but not denied.
When New York cop-killer Alphonse Brengard walked his last mile at Sing Sing on September 6, 1934 it may have been with a firm sense of time and his crimes having finally caught up with him. Brengard died for a murder effectively committed years before, but he was not to wait in Sing Sing’s infamous…
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John ‘Babbacombe’ Lee – The Man They Couldn’t Hang.
It is February 23, 1885 in the coach house of Exeter Prison, Devon, England. The time is 8 a.m. Outside the prison, a large crowd has gathered to await the hanging of convicted murderer John Lee, condemned for the brutal murder of his employer, Miss Emma Keyes, the previous year. When the execution has been successfully completed…
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Jean Lee, Australia’s last woman to hang.
The name of Jean Lee or (to use her real name) Marjorie Jean Maude Wright, is largely forgotten today, as are hey numerous aliases. Depending on who Wright talked to she was Marjorie Jean Brees, Mrs H. Pearce, Jean Deacon, Jean White, Marie Williams, Marjorie Lee, Jean Duncan, Jean Brown, Jean Smith, Mesha Vetos or…
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Juliet-Stuart Poyntz. Free will? Abduction? Or murder?
When a private citizen suddenly disappears it could be for a number of reasons. Debts, trauma, fear or perhaps a simple desire to start over. If they can’t become somebody else, they can at least be somewhere else. Of course, there could be other reason. Perhaps they didn’t vanish by their own choosing, but somebody…
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The non-capital execution of James Coburn. No, not that one.
Executing Americans for crimes other than murder was once standard practice. Robbery, armed robbery, house-breaking, burglary and rape could all earn a death sentence in a number of States. Under Federal law, bank robbery was once a capital crime even without a shot being fired. The death penalty for rape, particularly in the South, was…
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Dark River : The Bloody Reign Of The Ohio River Pirates
Dark River tells a fascinating, and not well known, story of an age of the Western frontier (1770-1850). Social pressures spurred on by rapid western expansion and years of warfare became the breeding ground for violence. This atmosphere brought about the creation of a unique type of person. Those who would use the Ohio River…
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Books, books, beautiful books.
The following are available from bookstores and online: Murders, Mysteries and Misdemeanors in New York. Murders, Mysteries and Misdemeanors in Northern California. Murders, Mysteries and Misdemeanors in Southern California. Criminal Curiosities: Twelve Remarkable Reprobates you’ve Probably Never Heard Of. And my latest: Dark River: The Bloody Reign of the Ohio River Pirates.
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Criminal curiosities, one-offs and rarities from the chronicles of crime and punishment.
Murder, Capital Punishment, Organised Crime, Robbery, Jailbreaks and more.