Tag: cyanide
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Where South Carolina goes, Arizona follows. The gas chamber is back.
Not long ago the State of South Carolina chose to take a giant step backwards on the death penalty, reinstating the electric chair as a method and adding the firing squad as another alternative. A boycott on supplying drugs for lethal injection has seen several States try different drugs and different protocols to administer them.…
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Graham Young – The Teacup Poisoner.
Crowthorne, Bovingdon, Sheerness, St. Albans, Hemel Hempstead, Newport on the Isle of Wight. All small English towns in leafy, quiet places, all forever linked by the dark legacy of one man; Graham Young. One of the most notorious serial poisoners in English history and feared even by other convicts, Young’s trail of terror links them…
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On This Day in 1917 – Dr. Arthur Warren Waite, the ‘Playboy Poisoner.’
To mark the release of my third book ‘Murders, Mysteries and Misdemeanors in Southern California,’ here’s a criminal classic from my files. Look at the photograph and ask yourself ‘What kind of man was he?’ Handsome? Attractive? Smartly dressed? Perhaps very plausible to anyone who didn’t know him very well? Maybe he looks superficially charming…
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On This Day in 1993 – David Mason, the last to enter California’s gas chamber.
The gas chamber has long been America’s most controversial, debatable, complicated and expensive way to execute its condemned. Since the world’s first judicial gassing (Gee Jon in Nevada in 1924) it has been used by eleven states to execute hundreds of convicts. Serial killer David Mason was the 196th convict to enter California’s chamber and…
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Frank Rimieri, Adolph Koenig and Doctor Allan Mclane Hamilton – A dark day that cast a very long shadow…
When Frank Rimieri and Adolph Koenig rode the lightning at Sing Sing on 20 February 1905 that was nothing unusual in itself. First used on William Kemmler on 6 August 1890, New York’s electric chair was already seeing regular use. Single and double executions like this one were standard practice and New York, already enthralled…
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On This Day in 1921, George Bailey -Convicted by Britain’s first female jurors in a capital case.
In today’s more enlightened times there is nothing unusual about women serving on juries, but it wasn’t always so. British courts didn’t permit female jurors until 1920. They were still a novelty on 13 January 1921 when three women joined a jury at Aylesbury. The defendant was one George Bailey. The charge was capital murder.…
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I wrote a book.
It’s been quite some time since I last posted ere, but I have been extremely busy with paid work and earning a living. Part of that has been writing my first book. Criminal Curiosities is a collection of crooks, all with something about their crime, trial or punishment that is singular to them. The…
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