Tag: Ohio
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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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Professor James Howard Snook, Ohio’s ‘Gold Medal Murderer.’
This is a particularly rare case, singular in fact. The case itself, a philandering husband murdering his illicit lover to protect his reputation, isn’t that unusual, unfortunately. An outwardly-respectable married man deciding to end an illicit affair, and then killing his mistress when she threatens to expose hit, is sadly all-too-common. It shouldn’t be, of…
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Nitrogen Hypoxia – The Death Penalty’s Future?
It’s never been done before and might never be used, but Alabama has announced its near-completion of a nitrogen gas chamber if it should prove impossible to obtain drugs for lethal injections. Far from dusting off its electric chair, (the notorious ‘Yellow Mama’) like Tennessee and South Carolina or offering firing squads as South Carolina…
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On This Day in 1936 – George ‘Diamond King’ Barrett, first to die for murdering a Federal agent.
Barrett is certainly a criminal curiosity. His life was one of crime and allegedly several murders. The murder for which he finally died gave him an unwilling place in the chronicles of American crime, though he was hardly appreciated becoming one of history’s footnotes. So why did he hang in a state which had long…
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Rufus ‘Whitey’ Franklin, the incorrigible’s incorrigible.
Today, Rufus Franklin (‘Whitey’ to his friends) is a name largely forgotten. In the South during the 1930’s Franklin was a crook well-known the South’s law enforcement and penal system alike. Born in Alabama in 1916 Franklin was the incorrigible’s incorrigible, a crook so dedicated he would likely have never gone straight even if pardoned…
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On This Day in 1962: Illinois bids farewell to Old Sparky (and James Dukes).
When 25 witnesses, mostly reporters, gathered in the basement death chamber at Illinois’s Cook County Jail, they couldn’t have known they were gathering there for the last time. Decades down the line Illinois hacks would gather again for the same reason, but in a different place and to see someone killed by a different method.…
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Sparky’s Revenge; South Carolina considers reinstating the electric chair.
So, the State of South Carolina (previously responsible for executing then exonerating 14-year old George Stinney) is considering dusting off Old Sparky. Difficulties in obtaining lethal injection drugs have caused a backlog on Death Row. South Carolina has numerous condemned inmates, wants to start executing them, but can’t obtain the legally-approved means to do it.…
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