Tag: murder
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Paul Jawarski – Pennsylvania’s Phantom Dynamiter.
Meet Paul Poluszynski, alias ‘Paul Jawarski’, known throughout Pennsylvania as ‘The Phantom.’ Before the end of his extremely violent (and, some might say, mercifully brief) criminal career he claimed to have killed twenty-six people including four police officers and a payroll security guard. His gang, the ‘Flatheads’, also committed the first-ever robbery using a landmine. […]
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True Crime Blogs And Websites: Some Top Picks.
So, as you’re no doubt aware, I have an interest in true crime and I ted to cover the more unusual bits and pieces. If you’re interested in the subject generally then it’s hard to avoid the plethora of websites and blogs out there that deal with it, although the tone and style of some […]
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Trial Watchers – A Strange Breed.
“Prisoner at the Bar, the sentence of this court is that you be taken from this place to a lawful prison and thence to a place of execution where you shall be hanged by the neck until you are dead. And that afterwards your body shall be cut down and buried within the precincts of […]
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On This Day in 1960 – Henry ‘Snow’ Flakes. Out For The Count.
Meet Henry Flakes. Chances are that even if you’re a boxing fan you’ve probably never heard of him, but you might have done if things had gone differently. Henry was a young up-and-coming heavyweight during the late 1940’s, tipped by many in boxing and the press as a future champion and the best young heavyweight […]
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Herbert Rowse Armstrong – A Poisonous Plymothian
Herbert Rowse Armstrong, the only British lawyer to be hanged for murder, Next up in a parade of deliberately-forgotten Plymouth folk is Major Herbert Rowse Armstrong. Retired Army Major, former MP for Plymouth, respectable small-town lawyer, embezzler, fraudster, repeat poisoner and one of Britain’s most notorious murderers. His case isn’t especially memorable in […]
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Oklahoma: The Botched Execution of Clayton Lockett
Here’s an interesting link for the inside track on this debacle. It’s a preliminary summary from Robert Patton (Director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections) to Mary Fallin (Oklahoma State Governor): https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8bT8f-N8gQvT0liN0I3d1NIRlU/edit?pli=1 Here’s the text in full. Further comment by me is probably unnecessary:
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On This Day in 1865: The Last Stand of John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln. John Wilkes Booth was born into one of America’s most distinguished acting dynasties. He died one of America’s most notorious figures and its first Presidential assassin. On the evening of April 14, 1865, not long after the final surrender of Confederate forces that effectively ended the […]
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‘Doctor’ Crippen, Hanged Today In 1910. Innocent? Or Hanged For The Wrong Murder..?
Most people know the name. Most who know the name, know the story. ‘Doctor’ Hawley Harvey Crippen (actually a salesman of quack remedies) unwittingly became one of criminal history’s most infamous names. His wife Cora disappeared. Her remains were found beneath the coal cellar of their home, 39 Hilldrop Crescent. Crippen flees to Canada with […]
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Joseph Paul Franklin Will Die Tonight
This is Joseph Paul Franklin. He’s reportedly confessed to 22 murders, at least 16 bank robberies, several non-fatal shootings and a number of other crimes. Most famously, Franklin was the man who shot porn magnate Larry Flynt (leaving him permanently paralysed) and civil rights leader Vernon Jordan. Jr. (who also survived). Franklin, barring any last-minute […]
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Hitmen, Hangmen And Hypocrisy.
‘I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge which takes the easy way and hands over the responsibility for revenge to other people.’ Britain’s former chief public executioner Albert Pierrepoint in his 1974 memoir ‘Executioner: Pierrepoint.’ I know, I […]
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