Tyler Hadley was described by neighbors and friends as having a close relationship with his parents growing up. Tyler and his father were often seen playing basketball together in their Port St. Lucie driveway until late in the night or tossing a football around in the yard. Nothing about the family or Tyler seemed atypical. That would all change when Tyler entered high school.

Tyler Hadley. A former boy scout turned murderer.

Something had happened to the boy who neighbors once described as a polite young man. Tyler began acting out in school and getting into drugs. The sort of trouble many suburban teens are prone to become involved in. Of course the Hadley’s were concerned with their son’s behavior, but after Tyler had a couple run-ins with the law – once for burglary and once for setting a wildlife preserve on fire – it was clear that something needed to be done.

The Hadleys had Tyler regularly attending meetings with a psychologist and believed that they had Tyler back on the right track. It wouldn’t be long before Tyler fell back into his out of control behavior. The Hadleys were at the end of their rope. Even after getting Tyler help he continued to come home drunk and had been arrested for battery after getting into a brawl at a friend’s home.

Doing what any responsible parents would do in that situation, the Hadleys took away Tyler’s phone and electronics while he served out his court ordered house arrest for the fight. Tyler’s behavior only became more erratic and in June of 2011 the Hadleys were forced to commit their son to a mental health facility. Though often at odds with his parents, Tyler seemed to have a Jekyll and Hyde personality. After the explosive fights with The Hadleys, Tyler would sometimes feel bad about the incidents. He confided in a number of friends that he was suicidal. On other occasions he mentioned wanting to kill his parents. No one took his threats seriously, in their minds he was just a troubled kid blowing off steam.

On July 15, 2011 the Hadley’s all went out to a family dinner. Tyler’s stay in the mental health facility and his daily counselor visits seemed to have made a big impact on the teen. Mrs. Hadley had told friends weeks prior that she felt as if she finally had the old Tyler back and that she was happy to see her son was making such an improvement.

The following day Tyler contacted several Facebook friends. He told them that his parents had went out of town and he was going to throw a big party that evening. That night nearly 60 teenagers showed up to the Hadley residence, many of which Tyler didn’t even know personally. Among the friends there that evening was Tyler’s best friend, Michael Mandell.

As dozens of teenagers swarmed the Hadleys’ Port Lucie home, drinking, smoking pot and generally trashing the place, Tyler became more pensive. He had to let his secret out to someone. He pulled Michael aside and decided to come clean. His parents weren’t in Orlando, as he had originally told Michael. They were dead and the bodies were still in their bedroom as the party raged on throughout the rest of the home.

A selfie Michael snapped with Tyler after Tyler told him that he murdered his own parents.

Tyler told Michael everything. How he had swallowed three ecstasy pills, hid his parents cellphones, and then waited with a hammer. Tyler’s mother, Mary Jo, was the first to be struck. As he savagely beat Mary Jo in the head with the hammer, Tyler’s father, Blake, heard the commotion. When he walked into the room to find Tyler beating Mary Jo all he could scream was “Why?” Tyler looked at his father blankly and replied “Why the fuck not?”, before swigging the hammer at Blake. He then detailed how he cleaned up the blood before the party. Tyler then left both the Hadleys, the hammer, and the towels he had used to clean up the mess in the master bedroom.

Initially Michael believed that Tyler was joking and told him to show him the bodies. Tyler agreed and led Michael to the Hadley’s bedroom. Outside of the master bedroom door were streaks of blood. Tyler opened the door just enough for Michael to catch a glimpse of Mr. Hadley’s leg on the bedroom floor. It was that moment that Michael realized Tyler had been telling the truth.

Tyler also told Michael that he was planning to kill himself. Shocked at what his friend had told him, Michael stayed at the party for a few more hours, even taking the time to pose for a few selfies. During the party, Tyler told other partygoers how he had planned on killing himself and that he was probably going to be going away for a while. Many found Tyler’s statements to be bizarre, but laughed them off and continued to party on at the residence, unaware that the bodies of the Hadley’s were just feet away from them.

At around 2:30am the neighbors had called the police to bust up the party. Most of the teens had left, but there were still at least 20 kids at the house when officers knocked on the door. Tyler answered the door as the rest of the party was ordered to keep quiet in a back bedroom. Tyler spoke with the police and they left without an incident. Michael left the party, but not before hiding the 10 tablets of percocet Tyler planned to use to kill himself with on his way out.

Once Michael made it home he immediately phoned Crimestoppers in order to report the murder. Meanwhile, Tyler logged into Facebook and notified his friends that there would be another party at his house the following night. The visit from the police about the noise complaint earlier had caused Tyler to become paranoid and the lingering few partiers said that Tyler began acting strangely. He turned off the lights in the home and checked all the blinds, as if the police were outside watching his every move. Tyler was right to be afraid.

Tyler Hadley is now serving two consecutive life sentences for murdering both his parents with a hammer.

Tyler was witnessed by officers pacing the living room while talking to himself and frantically moving stacks of books as they ascended the driveway at 4:23am. Investigators rang the bell and several minutes later Tyler answered the door. He knew he was caught. Police took Tyler into custody and left him in the driveway as they forced opened the master bedroom door. Inside the room laid the Hadleys. Both bludgeoned to death with a hammer by their own son.

Tyler pleaded no contest for the murder of both his parents. He claimed that he had been hearing voices and had spoken with the devil. In a letter to his best friend Michael, Tyler blames his psychotic break on a prescription medication he had been taking at the time. Though Tyler was only 17-years-old at the time he savagely murdered his own parents, the judge showed no leniency. Tyler Hadley was handed two life sentences.

Issei Sagawa

For as long as he can remember, Issei Sagawa claims he has had the desire to eat attractive Western looking women. A fantasy, Sagawa says, that spiraled out of control and eventually found himself no longer able to suppress.

Sagawa had been studying at a Tokyo university when he encountered his first attempted victim. She was a leggy blonde German woman, and he was certain she had lived in the same apartment complex as his grandmother. Sagawa broke into the woman’s second story apartment window and found the woman asleep in the nude. He grabbed an umbrella and intended to knock the woman unconscious, then use a knife from her kitchen to slice off pieces of her flesh and consume it.

The plan did not go as well as Sagawa had hoped. Feeling Sagawa climb on top of her, the startled woman screamed for help. Sagawa fled the scene, but was later identified and charged with attempted rape. Sagawa was forced to undergo a mental evaluation, but at no time did Sagawa mention his cannibalistic desires. His father was able to pay the woman a settlement and Sagawa never saw any jail time for the offense.

In 1977 Sagawa began attending graduate courses at the Sorbonne University in Paris. His obsession with cannibalism was beginning to become out of control during this time, later describing the consumption of female flesh as an “obligation.” While still attending the Parisian university, Sagawa took a brief cruise to Greece where he met a butcher and his wife. The man was able to describe to Sagawa step-by-step procedures on butchering animals, a lesson Sagawa wouldn’t soon forget.

A Dutch student by the name of Renee Hartevelt had attended classes with Sagawa. He found himself often fantasizing about Renee and how her milky white thigh meat would feel like heaven between his teeth. Unlike his last attempt, however, Sagawa developed a foolproof plan.

He told Renee that one of his Professors had asked him for a recording of a German poem. Sagawa wanted Renee to recite the poem for him and he would record it. Renee agreed and met Sagawa at his apartment. She began to read a poem Sagawa had picked out, unaware that he was pointing a rifle at her back. He shot Renee in the neck, killing her instantly.

Sagawa immediately went for the right side of her buttocks, but had difficulty chewing off her flesh. Sagawa attempted to use a kitchen knife, but still found it difficult to cut through the fat in order to get to the muscle tissue. Sagawa went to a store and purchased a large, curved meat knife and reflected on the conversation he had with the butcher he had met on his Greek cruise. Sagawa claims he later sent a thank you letter to the butcher for imparting his knowledge on him, but says he never received a response.

Dutch student, Renee Hartevelt was killed and eaten by Sagawa.

Sagawa placed Renee’s corpse in his bed where he continued to consume and have sex with her for several days, before placing favorable leftovers in his refrigerator. It was the hottest month of the year in Paris and it didn’t take long for Renee’s body to begin the decomposition process. Flies began to gather in Sagawa’s apartment and he realized that he needed to dispose of the body.

Sagawa purchased two suitcases to place what was left of Renee’s body. He dismembered the woman, wrapped her body parts in sheets and placed them into the bags. He then called a cab to take him to a nearby lake at Bois de Boulogne. The driver arrived and offered to help with Sagawa’s bags, jokingly asking him if he had a body in the bags due to the weight. Sagawa nervously laughed off the driver’s question and told him they contained books.

Having arrived at the beach, though it was 8PM it was still light out and the beach still hosted a number of sunbathers. Sagawa felt as if everyone was staring as he lugged his heavy bags containing parts of Renee’s body to an area isolated from the rest of the beach. He pushed the bags down a slope and momentarily stared at the sunset before hearing a scream. A man had Sagawa’s bag and asked if it belonged to him. Sagawa said it wasn’t, prompting the man to peek inside the suitcase. The bloody sheet inside was all he needed to see. The man cried, “murderer!” to Sagawa as he calmly walked away from the scene. He was arrested four days later.

A page from Sagawa’s graphic novel detailing Renee’s murder.

In spite of the serious charges Sagawa had been facing, he says he felt a great deal of relief at the time of his arrest. He said he felt like for the first time in his life he could finally tell everyone the truth about his dark fantasies.

Sagawa was ordered to undergo evaluations from three different psychiatrists before he could stand trial for the murder of Renee Hartevelt. He was determined to be criminally insane and sentenced to a psychiatric ward for criminal offenders. The French public had expressed outraged over the fact that Sagawa would be housed and treated for his mental disturbances at their own expense and demanded he be deported back to his native Japan.

Once Sagawa had been extradited to Japan, psychiatrists there determined that he was not insane, as the French doctors who diagnosed his condition had suggested, but had been suffering from a personality disorder. The Japanese psychiatric hospital insisted that Sagawa stand trial, but the officials in France refused to cooperate with the Japanese courts. They considered the matter closed and denied Japanese officials access to any materials necessary to establish a case against Sagawa. The hospital had no choice but to allow the murderer and cannibal to sign for his own release.

Sagawa is now 65-years-old. Through the years he has made considerable profit from his crime, writing over 20 books, including a graphic novel, and a number of articles and essays on the subject. Additionally, Sagawa regularly makes television appearances and has even starred in pornographic videos.

Thanks to the digital collections available online through New York Public Library, users and historians alike can access thousands of historical photos. It should come to no surprise that within this treasury of thousands of digital images include pictures related to real crimes. Using this excellent free public resource I was able to uncover five real crimes that have historical significance, but have mostly been lost within public consciousness in the sands of time.

The Lynching of Rubin Stacey

When President Roosevelt took office, the NAACP assisted him in winning the election and many were hopeful to put an end to lynch mobs. An important anti-lynching bill had been proposed to Congress, but Roosevelt, fearing he would anger Southern supporters, refused to back the bill.

That same year, the story of an African American man who had been a victim of a white lynch mob had been making headlines. The man, Rubin Stacey, had been employed as a tenant farmer. Stacey was out of work and decided to go to a woman’s home in hopes she had some food to spare. Stacey knocked on the door, but when the woman answered the door she screamed at the sight of Stacey.

Six sheriffs deputies arrived to take Stacey to Miami’s Dade County Jail, but before they could take him into custody, Stacey was overtaken by a lynch mob and hung. The photo showing Stacey being hung as young children look on was used as a powerful media tool to pressure President Roosevelt into supporting the anti-lynching bill. The story did little to sway Roosevelt’s opinion on the matter.

Mrs. McDougal

The demand for cadavers for University medical programs were on the rise due to advances in medical science. Two men, Burke and Hare, capitalized on this demand by stealing corpses. Eventually simple grave robbery turned into a murder for profit scheme and the rest is history. Aside from Burke and Hare, themselves, there was a third member of the pair’s operations who is often overlooked, but played a key role in their crimes.

William Burke had left his wife to live with a woman whom had also been married named Mrs. McDougal. Taking up residency near William Hare and his wife, Burke and Hare formed a close friendship and it wasn’t long before the two began selling off bodies to local medical schools.

The pair’s plan came to a screeching halt after a couple had visited Burke’s lodging house the night prior to their discovery. The couple returned to the lodging house the next day to retrieve some items left there, but were refused entry near a bed a pair of stockings had been left. When the couple looked under the bed the body of a woman seen at the lodging house the previous night was discovered. On their way to the police station McDougal stopped them and offered to pay them £10 a week in exchange for the couple’s silence. The couple refused.

Burke and McDougal were both charged with three murders, with the Hares offered a plea deal in exchange for their testimony against Burke. Burke was found guilty of one of the murder charges, McDougal was released on the grounds that there was not enough evidence against her.

After her release McDougal was instantly recognized in any city she went to and was often forced to be taken into police custody for her own protection.

The Red Barn Murder

Maria Marten and William Corder agreed to meet at Suffolk landmark, the Red Barn. The couple had planned to elope, but Marten was never heard from again. Corder left town, but continued to send the Marten family letters claiming to be from Maria. Her body was later recovered from underneath the barn.

Corder was eventually found to be living in London. He was tried and convicted for Maria’s murder, and later put to death in 1828 in front of a large crowd. The murder has since been the inspiration for a number of plays and other literary works.

The Murder of Mr. Bird

Mr. Bird, a long time Greenwich resident, had lived alone with his housekeeper after his wife’s passing two years prior. Mr. Bird had a considerable amount of wealth accumulated through his business as tallow-chandler. Bird had retired comfortably and was rarely seen in public except for Sunday church services, which he and his housekeeper both attended every week.

When neither Mr. Bird nor his housekeeper were seen at one Sunday’s church services, the congregation became alarmed and several members decided to go to Bird’s home to check on him. When their knocks and yells went unanswered, the group began to fear that something terrible had happened. They decided to force their way into the home.

Inside of the residence, both the bodies of Mr. Bird and his housekeeper were discovered, appearing to have sustained injuries from a blunt object. The scene appeared to have been the result of a home invasion gone bad. The case has never been solved.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre

In the early days of Mormonism, John D. Lee was one of the founding members of the Latter Day Saint Movement. Lee and other church members were initially in charge of traveling to the territory we now know as Utah in order to establish Mormon communities.

Lee worked closely with the Native American groups in the area and had established a good rapport between the local tribes and the Mormon colonists. When a group from Arkansas attempted to camp at Mountain Meadows – a staging area for groups crossing the Mohave desert en route to California – Native Americans, along with Mormon militias dressed as Native Americans, ambushed the group. The only survivors left from the ambush were 17 children.

Lee’s plan was to blame the massacre on the Native Americans, but was later arrested in 1874 for leading the massacre. Lee underwent two trials before he was sentenced to death for masterminding the plot. He left behind 19 wives and 56 children.

Have you ever wanted to have a murderer as a penpal? If your answer to that question is, “yes,” then you’re in luck. Several websites have been set up in order to connect people on the outside with convicted felons inside prison walls. Here are five real convicted murderers who are seeking out new friends.

DeMarcus Sears

DeMarcus Sears, along with accomplice Phillip Williams, had been experiencing car trouble and walked to a Georgia Waffle House. The men told patrons that their car had broken down and they needed money to get back home to Ohio. DeMarcus opened a black briefcase he had been carrying and attempted to sell a set of brass knuckles, a set of handcuffs and knives to customers. A few people gave the men a little money to catch a bus and sent them on their way. The men were last spotted loitering outside of a Kroger grocery store nearby.

Also at the grocery store that evening was Gloria Wilbur. Wilbur had been placing her groceries into the trunk of her car when Sears and Williams approached her. She was beaten with brass knuckles and forced into her backseat where she was handcuffed.

As Williams drove the car through Tennessee, Gloria was raped in the backseat. Once they reached the Kentucky boarder, it was Gloria’s last stop. Williams pulled the car over and the men forced the woman out. She was dragged into the bushes and stabbed to death. Sears plead guilty to all of his charges, which included kidnapping, rape and murder. Williams testified against Sears and is serving two life sentences for his involvement in the crime.

Jeff Sheldon

Over a three-day period, Jeff Sheldon went on a crime spree. His first stop was to a pizza restaurant where he robbed employees at gunpoint and kidnapped the restaurant’s owner. The owner was released later that evening, unharmed. The following day, Sheldon asked his wife if she knew of any wealthy individuals. The only person who came to mind was Norris Neblett.

The couple drove to Neblett’s home. There, Sheldon robbed the 60-year-old man at gunpoint. Neblett was forced into the car and the couple took him to a hotel where all three spent the night. The next morning Sheldon drove Neblett to his bank and forced him to withdraw $10,000. Sheldon also forced Neblett to give checks to an associate of his totaling $11,000.

Firefighters were called to Neblett’s residence after Sheldon’s associate was unable to cash some of the checks stolen from Neblett. His 1980 BMW was on fire in his driveway. Inside of the vehicle, Neblett’s body was recovered.

Sheldon and his wife fled to Michigan, taking along Neblett’s camera and stamp collection. While in Michigan the couple went on a spending spree before being apprehended. Sheldon is now on San Quentin’s death row awaiting execution.

Richard McCoy

On the morning of June 13, 2000, a liquor store clerk was found dead in a store room. $415 was found to be missing from two safes within the store. Investigators offered a $10,000 reward for information related to the case. McCoy’s girlfriend spoke with police and told them that she believed the perpetrator to be her boyfriend, Richard McCoy A/K/A Jamil Rashid.

Fingerprints found on the store’s deposit pouch. Other prints left in areas of the store inaccessible to customers matched McCoy. McCoy also had features similar to the suspect caught on store surveillance. McCoy was found guilty of per-meditated murder and sentenced to death.

Donnie Hulett

On the morning of July 22, 2002, the brothers Phelps went to volunteer at The Mountaintop Boys’ Home – a home for trouble youth who have been involved in the criminal justice system. After they brothers completed their work at the home for the day, the men headed towards the post office, when they encountered a disabled motorist by the side of the road.

The car had been a white Chevy Cavalier, the same model that had been stolen the weekend prior to the driver’s encounter with the Phelps brothers. Along with the car, the driver had been under investigation for jewelry and a high-powered rifle taken from the same residence.

The men saw Hulett on the side of the road and pulled over. Approximately 20-30 minutes later, the assistant director and other employees of the boys home passed by a nearby construction site and noticed the Phelps’ red pickup truck pulling out of the area, but neither of the brothers were driving it. Later, some of the men drove into the construction site and located both the Phelps brothers dead from apparent gunshot wounds.

Hulett was identified as the driver of the Phelps brothers’ truck by witnesses and he was sentenced to two life sentences for their murder.

Refugio Cardenas

According to investigators, on October 9, 2003, Refugio “Cisco” Cardenas was visiting family when he suspected a rival gang member had spotted him. Cardenas produced a sawed-off shotgun and shot at the man, Gerardo Cortez. Cortez was struck in the head and died instantly. Another man was also wounded in the incident.

Cardenas is now serving a death sentence at San Quentin, but there are some who maintain that Cardenas’ case was a setup. Another man, Luis Rebolledo, had initially been arrested in connection to the shooting, but was released on grounds of insufficient evidence. Some believe that since Cardenas was also in the area at the time he was forced to take the rap in the case.

9-year-old Amber Hagerman disappeared while riding her bike.

It’s a parent’s worst nightmare. 9-year-old Amber Hagerman had just gotten out of school for the day and wanted to go ride her bike around an abandoned grocery store parking lot near her grandparents’ home in Arlington, TX. Amber and her brother Ricky rode their bikes around the lot for a while. Ricky decided he wanted to go home, but Amber insisted on staying behind to ride around a little more. It was still broad daylight when a black pickup truck pulled up to the girl. She kicked and screamed as the driver dragged her into the vehicle before speeding off. That was the last time Amber Hagerman was ever seen alive.

It began to get late and Amber’s grandfather drove up to the parking lot to take Amber home. There was no trace of the little girl.

Four days later a security guard stumbled upon the nude body of a child in a creek behind an apartment complex. The apartment complex was less than five miles from the abandoned grocery store parking lot Amber was last seen riding her bike at.

An autopsy revealed that Amber’s kidnapper had kept her alive for two days. She had been beaten and sexually assaulted before her throat was slashed and her body was dumped behind the apartment complex. In spite of the work of nearly 50 police officers and federal agents, as well as 8,000 caller tips her case remains unsolved.

A memorial at the site Amber Hagerman was abducted in her hometown of Arlington, TX.

January 12, 2016 marks the 20-year anniversary of Amber Hagerman’s murder and it would seem that investigators are no closer to cracking the case today as they were 20 years ago. There was only one witness to ever provide any information on the abduction. Thousands of man hours were spent on the case and dozens of leads were followed, but still investigators come up short.

The unsolved murder of Amber Hagerman may not be a story you know, but her case has resulted in saving the lives of nearly 700 children. After her death in 1996, talks of setting up an alert system to notify the public of missing children was in the works. First implemented in her home state of Texas, as well as Georgia, Arkansas and Hawaii, the AMBER alert system eventually caught on and became a nationwide service which broadcasts child abductions on radio networks, television stations, internet, and more recently social media, lottery machines and cellphones.

Amber’s family still holds out hope that someone will be able to provide information on solving Amber’s murder.

Amber’s parents also fought for tougher laws on sex offenders. With the help of other members of the community, Amber’s parents were able to organize People Against Sex Offenders – P.A.S.O. – which later pushed Congress to pass the Amber Hagerman Child Protection Act. Bill Clinton signed the bill and as a result the national sex offender registry was born. Anyone convicted of a sex crime must now be registered within this database.

Investigators are still holding out hope that someone out there has valuable information pertinent to the case. Even though it’s been 20 years since Amber’s death, Arlington police still receive a handful of tips related to the case monthly and they are certain that eventually one of them will lead them on the right track to cracking this case once and for all.

In March of 2010, Ari Liggett was arrested at a UPS store in Arapahoe County, Colorado, on a warrant for possession of an illegal silencer. While in police custody, he mentioned having stayed at the Boulder Homeless Shelter and leaving a suitcase there that he said contained materials that could be dangerous to anyone who didn’t know how to handle them properly.

Fearing the worst, authorities evacuated the shelter premises and brought in a hazmat team and even the bomb squad. The suitcase was X-rayed and then opened. A jar containing potassium ferrocyanide was found and removed, and the shelter was reopened after a seven-hour delay.

The 22-year-old Liggett was charged with reckless endangerment and given a four-year deferred sentence plus one year of probation.
Two years later, he popped up on law enforcement radar again – this time as a missing person. Family members had become concerned about his absence and that of his mother Beverly, age 56.

Using a record of credit card transactions, police traced their location and soon spotted Beverly’s vehicle driving through a nearby neighborhood. Their first attempt to stop it failed, but twenty minutes later Liggett crashed into another car and then tried to escape on foot. He was quickly apprehended.

And that’s when they discovered the dismembered remains of his mother in the back seat.

Liggett told police that he had found her dead in the living room of the home and thought she had killed herself. He said he then panicked and put her in the freezer. But then he added that he had recently learned he wasn’t listed in his mother’s will.

Believing they had the motive, prosecutors charged that Liggett poisoned the victim and then spent 24 hours or so trying to dispose of the evidence. They cited evidence of him having dismembered the body in a bathtub, placing the parts in plastic tubs full of olive oil, scrubbing down the house and cleaning a handsaw in the dishwasher. Liquid potassium cyanide was found on the premises as well.

Liggett pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in July 2013. Prosecutors acknowledged Liggett’s long history of mental health issues but argued he maintained a “method to his madness” as he spent years buying chemicals and practicing his mixtures in the home he shared with his mother.

“Mental illness does not equal insanity,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Brian Sugioka told jurors in closing arguments.

A January 2010 court filing was found to reveal that Beverly had been afraid for her life because of her son’s actions at that time. She had found a modified rifle, two containers of potassium ferrocyanide and a gas mask – and he had announced his intention to “get rid of the family,” including his mother and his younger sister.

Liggett had repeatedly told officers they could not prove he was sane. He said he believed people were demons, and that he didn’t know the difference between right and wrong.

But Sugioka said Liggett’s actions and comments were calculated and manipulative. A court-ordered mental health evaluation also found him sane.

“His mental illness is used by him. To his advantage. When he wants it,” Sugioka said.

The jury convicted Ari Liggett of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to life in prison.

The ‘Human Tiger’ Jacob Oppenheimer

“The sooner I can cash in my chips, the better, as it will save me a lot of trouble and unhappiness.”

-Jacob Oppenheimer after being condemned to death.

Just like tigers are predatory animals, constantly pacing their zoo enclosures and capable of horrific violence in a split-second, so was Jake Oppenheimer. From 1892 until his execution at Folsom Prison in 1913, Oppenheimer’s life was a never-ending saga of violence and rebellion, as though he’d declared a one-man war on society and its institutions.

His reputation for brutality grew to the extent that the California legislature passed Section 4500 and added it to the California Penal Code, purely for Oppenheimer and, later, inmates like him. Under Section 4500 any prisoner serving a life sentence who assaulted another inmate or a guard was now committing a capital crime. Oppenheimer would be the only one of Folsom’s 93 executed inmates to die for assault and one of very few in the entire State of California. The law lasted decades longer than Oppenheimer himself and was used sparingly but, as we shall see, its very existence was down to California’s ‘Human Tiger.’ Which, incidentally, was a nickname Oppenheimer himself hated.

As former Folsom warden James Johnston (later to become the first Warden at Alcatraz) put it:

“He made many murderous attacks on prison officers and fellow inmates. His killings and assaults terrorized. His keepers were puzzled he had demonstrated uncanny ability to improvise weapons and get at his victims despite confinement, surveillance and restraint.”

And yet, despite his penchant for assault and murder, he was also a highly intelligent, reflective and intellectual man. His writings while under sentence of death such as ‘Thoughts of a Condemned Man’ are interesting reading and indicate considerable brain-power and capacity for rational thought. It was rare at the time, long before Carl Panzram, Caryl Chessman and Mumia Abu-Jamal, for inmates of any stripe to write much, although some of literature’s best efforts were produced by people serving time. Dostoyevsky being one of them.

So, with all that in mind, let’s go back to the year 1892 and where the ‘Human Tiger’ started earning his stripes.

Oppenheimer drew his first prison sentence in 1892 for shooting his work supervisor. A work colleague at the messenger firm employing him had made a crude remark about the cashier, who also happened to be the supervisor’s sister. The cashier, blaming Oppenheimer, complained to her brother and, when Oppenheimer refused to apologize, fired him. On checking his final paycheck Oppenheimer noticed some deductions. Acquiring a revolver, he confronted his former boss and fired three shots, slightly wounding him and earning 18 months in the House of Corrections in the process.

On his release Oppenheimer started doing small-time robberies with two sets of brothers, John and Berry Holland and Charles and Walter Ross. Ironically, it was when the Holland brothers were arrested for a drugstore robbery in which Oppenheimer had declined to participate that disaster beckoned. John Holland copped a reduced sentence in return for naming Oppenheimer and, while Holland drew 35 years for a robbery he had committed, Oppenheimer drew fifty for a crime he didn’t commit.

Folsom, one of America’s most feared prisons.

It probably didn’t help that both men were sent to Folsom Prison, an  institution as terrifying then as it is today. Holland spent his time watching his back while Oppenheimer looked for ways to stick a shank in it. On September 29, Holland unwittingly gifted Oppenheimer the chance.

Tired of constantly watching his back, Holland tried to shank Oppenheimer in the prison yard and Oppenheimer, himself carrying a shank, stabbed him repeatedly until he died. Oppenheimer went to Folsom’s dreaded solitary confinement cells, while Holland went to the prison morgue. At his trial the jury, considering that Holland had started the fight, showed mercy and voted for a life sentence on top of Oppenheimer’s existing 50 years. He was shipped to San Quentin immediately.

In May of 1899, Oppenheimer was working in San Quentin’s hated jute mill where he repeatedly stabbed Guard James McDonald, who was lucky enough to have survived the attack. It was then that a journalist gave him the nickname he hated. No longer was he merely Inmate Oppenheimer. He was now the ‘Human Tiger.’ Again the jury, unusually for attempting to murder a guard, showed mercy. He drew another life sentence. He also caused the addition of Section 4500 to the California Penal Code. The ‘Human Tiger had got off to a roaring start.

Oppenheimer was cruelly treated in solitary as was the custom at that time. He was hung by his wrists, endured long periods in a straitjacket (110 hours on one occasion) and exposed to quicklime fumes that burned his eyes. He was issued clean clothes only once every three weeks, given only two meals a day, 30 minutes indoor exercise daily and his cell was perpetually cold, always kept only a few degrees above freezing.

Even in solitary he continued to make trouble. He set fire to his mattress, later admitting that he did so in hopes of forcing the solitary inmates to be unlocked from their cells, giving them the opportunity to kill a guard. He devised his ‘tap code’ akin to Morse code to get around the ban on inmates talking in solitary. He obtained a file and was caught using it to cut through the metal roof of his solitary cell. In 1903 he threw black pepper in a guard’s eyes. He was violently subdued while trying to strangle another guard. He was also repeatedly punished. His books, magazines, mattress and blankets were confiscated and he was repeatedly chained to the wall of a darkened cell.

Oppenheimer then attempted another escape by using needles to chip away at the brittle iron bars of his cell. Fellow solitary inmate Jack O’Neill didn’t know what Oppenheimer was doing, but certainly told the guards that something was amiss. The guards didn’t discover the damaged bars, but they did start moving him randomly from cell to cell. Which might have worked until, in April 1907, he was back in the cell with the still-undiscovered weakened bars. And an undiminished desire for revenge on Jack O’Neill.

Nine months later the bars were forced aside and Oppenheimer headed for the kitchen to pick up a knife. Vengeance would be his. At least until trusty inmate John Wilson saw him go for a knife and grappled with, knowing it was intended for O’Neill. Other inmates and guards, alerted by the struggle helped restrain Oppenheimer.

Now Section 4500 came into play. Oppenheimer was facing Folsom’s gallows not for a killing, but for assault. At initial hearings Oppenheimer defended himself, doing so with unusual eloquence and ability. He blamed the years of solitary and harsh treatment that he claimed had brutalized him. The prosecution countered with his previous record, citing it as proof that he was a brute already. They also used his writings to prove that he was legally sane and so fit to be tried, condemned and hanged. He was convicted in October 1907, a death sentence was passed.

The gallows at Folsom Prison, replaced by San Quentin’s gas chamber in 1937.

Oppenheimer’s new pro-bono lawyer, Gus Ringolsky, appealed. The appeal was denied in January 1909. Oppenheimer’s execution was scheduled for February. In February his execution was stayed by US Supreme Court Justice Warren H Beatty to allow Ringolsky time for another appeal. Oppenheimer then sealed his own fate in grisly fashion.

While in Folsom’s ‘Condemned Cells’ Oppenheimer used his ‘tap code’ to arrange an escape attempt with two other condemned inmates. The attempt failed. Accomplice Francisco Quijada blamed Oppenheimer and assaulted him. Oppenheimer responded by fatally stabbing Quijada through the heart with a length of wire.

Not surprisingly, the US Supreme Court denied his appeal. In June of 1913 his last hope vanished when the State Governor declined to intervene. The execution date was set for July 12.

On the day itself Oppenheimer walked firmly from his cell to the gallows at the end of his tier of cells. There was no hope of any final stay or reprieve. Society was done with Oppenheimer and, according to his last words, he was done with society:

“You know, this is no punishment for me. This is nothin’. I have suffered a thousand deaths in the prisons. This is just nothin’.”

With that he mounted the scaffold, steadily climbing the 13 steps toward the hangman. He took a large swig from a flask of whisky, the hangman positioned the noose and then he was gone.

The ‘Human Tiger’ would roar no more.

Prisons are home to the most notorious scourges of society. They’re cold, bleak and uncomfortable places, and it should not be too terribly surprising that many of those who are sentenced to live out their days in this environment often make plans to escape. Most are unsuccessful, and even those who are successful are often apprehended and taken back fairly quickly. Then there are those who escape and manage to evade justice. These are five of their stories.

JoAnne Chesimard/Assata Shakur

JoAnne Chesimard A/K/A Assata Shakur was a prominent member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. In 1973, Shakur and her accomplice, another Black Liberation Party member named Zayd Malik Shakur, robbed a bank. This resulted in a high speed chase, which later escalated into a shootout with highway patrolmen. Zayd Malik Shakur was shot and killed after shooting New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster and severely injuring another. Shakur was also badly injured in the melee.

In 1977 Shakur was found guilty of two murder counts and an additional six counts of assault. She was handed a mandatory life sentence for her role in the shootout. In 1979, the Black Liberation Army stormed the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women, held two guards hostage and helped Shakur escape in a stolen prison van. She lived in exile for several years before seeking political asylum in Cuba. In 2014 she was the first woman to ever be placed on the FBI’s most wanted list and there is a $2 million reward for her capture.

Glen Stark Chambers

Glen Stark Chambers was initially charged with the battery of his girlfriend, Connie Weeks. Weeks met Chambers up at a bowling alley, where things got heated between the couple. Chambers pulled Weeks from her vehicle and began assaulting her in the parking lot. An off-duty police officer witnessed the fight and went over to diffuse the situation. Chambers began fighting with the officer and he was taken into the station. Weeks bailed Chambers out that night. Hours later Chambers beat her to death.

15 years later, Chambers was at the Polk Correctional Institute serving out his sentence for first-degree murder. Concealing himself in a truck leaving the prison, Chambers made his way outside of prison walls. He was then able to break free from the truck without the driver noticing he was even there. Chambers has since been reported as possibly living in several states including Alabama and Minnesota.

Escape from Alcatraz

June 1962 Clarence Anglin, John Anglin and Frank Morris placed paper mache dummies resembling themselves into their beds, snuck through a rarely used corridor within the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, and made their way to freedom via a homemade inflatable raft.

Their escape is the first and only successful escape from the prison. Many agencies, including the FBI, have officially concluded that the men probably perished on their voyage, but the U.S. Marshals still maintain an open case on the trio. Researchers into the case have discovered that footprints were found to be leading from the raft washed up on Angel Island and a car had been stolen on the night of the men’s escape, leading some to speculate that all three men may still be very much alive and living in exile.

Billy Hayes

In 1970 Billy Hayes attempted to board a flight from Turkey with a four pounds of hash strapped to his legs. Hayes was promptly escorted to a Turkish prison and was forced to spend four years of his life being beaten and tortured by Turkish guards. As Billy’s sentence was coming to an end the judge re-evaluated his case and determined that instead he must serve a life sentence. Rather than stick around, Billy snuck out a back door as another inmate killed a guard. He was able to take a rowboat and escape to Greece. There he blended in with locals until he was able to be deported Germany and offer German military information he had on the Turkish government.

After his ordeal, Hayes was able to live freely and published his popular novel Midnight Express, based on his experiences. Oliver Stone later made a movie based on Billy’s novel.

Glen Stewart Godwin

Sentenced to serve 26 years for his hand in a murder, Glen Stewart Godwin was only in Folsom Prison five months before he broke loose. In June of 1987, Godwin was able to slip into a storm drain and wouldn’t be seen again until later in 1987 when he was picked up on a drug trafficking charge in Mexico. Godwin remained in the Mexican prison until 1991, accused of killing another inmate, Godwin decided to escape again.

U.S. Officials believe Godwin may have been able to make friends with certain cartel members while in Mexico and they may have assisted in his escape. Little else is known about what happened to Godwin. In 1996 he was placed on the FBI’s most wanted list.

Eugene Gorenman

On March 29, 2004, the body of Eugene Gorenman, a 26-year-old Russian immigrant, was found on a walking path near a gun battery at San Francisco’s Fort Funston National Park. He had been robbed and shot in the head.

The victim’s silver Mustang had been abandoned in the Bayview neighborhood. And police determined that his credit card was being used at gas stations, a cell phone store, and a nail salon.

The purchases sparked a wide-ranging investigation that stretched over the entire Bay Area, filling dozens of notebooks and requiring hundreds of interviews. Taking two years to complete, it eventually involved the U.S. National Park Service, the South San Francisco police, and the FBI, who speculated that the execution-style killing was the work of the Russian Mafia.

But the real culprits turned out to be considerably less glamorous than that. They were a trio of young women, all from broken families and drawn close to one another by their common struggle to survive and support a lifestyle marked by drug use. One was white, one was Latina and the other was multi-facial. They shared everything. And on that fateful night, they all became responsible for the death of someone they hardly knew.

As they sat in court, the three could not have been less friendly. They stared coldly at one another.

It was time for them to be sentenced and sent to state prison, but before that, the victim’s parents had something they wanted to say.

Eugene Gorenman had grown up in Walnut Creek, graduated from UC Berkeley and worked as a computer engineer with Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

“For a mere 20 dollars he was murdered without the slightest regard for his life, promise of future, his family and friends,” they had written in a statement read aloud by Police Inspector Holly Pera.

“The killers not only took away our son, but they destroyed our entire family,” Because had been their only male child, the family name would end with him. Their poignant words alternately eulogized the fallen heir and excoriated the defendants, to whom it referred as “vicious animals” and “human filth.”

“They belong in hell,” Pera read. “They don’t deserve any pity regardless of their age or socioeconomic status.” In closing, the parents told the girls to “remember that as long as you live, God will punish you wherever you are.”

Kimberly Gutierrez, 16, who had pulled the trigger, according to a statement made by one of the others, was charged as an adult with murder and robbery but pleaded guilty to a charge of voluntary manslaughter and personal use of a firearm in the commission of the crime. Under the plea agreement, she received a sentence of 11 years in prison for the manslaughter and a consecutive 10 years for use of the gun.

Felicia Mehrara, also 16 at the time of the killing, was also charged as an adult. She was sentenced to eight years in prison for voluntary manslaughter.

And Jillian McIlvenna, three years older, was given 11 years. Police homicide investigators had traced the use of one of Gorenman’s credit cards to her.

Gutierrez later contested her voluntary manslaughter conviction and 21-year sentence, contending that she hadn’t made the guilty plea knowingly because her trial lawyer was incompetent. But a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeal rejected that argument.

“Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?!” – A remark allegedly uttered by England’s King Henry II, said to have unwittingly incited the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Canterbury Cathedral is probably one of England’s most well-known and popular historic buildings. Still the base the Church of England even today, it has played host to many important religious events and individuals and innumerable tourists from all over the world.

Not everybody, however, remembers it as one of history’s most notorious crime scenes.

Yes, it was the scene of medieval England’s most notorious murders, a tale involving Church, State, international politics, personal and political rivalries and betrayals, the Archbishop of Canterbury (still head of the Church of England today) as victim and no less a figure than King Henry II as allegedly having ordered his murder. Not a tale you’d usually associate with a place of religious worship.

So, with the scene set, let’s take a trip back to Merrie Old England in the year 1170.

Henry II and Thomas Becket had known each other for many years. Indeed, in their younger days Henry had come to regard Thomas as a tutor, mentor and friend until they fell out over their official duties. Henry was of noble birth, born to be a King and to rule a nation. Thomas, on the other hand, arrived considerably lower down medieval England’s pecking order. He was the son of a Gilbert Beket who was either a landowner or a lower-level knight. Not a peasant, by any means, but barely a nobleman by the standards of his time and place.

Thomas entered the priesthood and, through connection, talent and strong religious fervour, rose through the ranks until finally securing the most important post in the English Church. In 1162 he became Archbishop of Canterbury and, as such, began to believe firmly that his loyalty to God outranked his loyalty to Henry II, a mere mortal. Unfortunately for both of them, especially Thomas, Henry saw things differently. Kings of the time believed themselves to have been chosen by God and so were only answerable to God. Thomas, being Archbishop of Canterbury, believed that he best served God by serving the Church and, if the King disapproved then so be it.

The battle lines between Church and Crown were already drawn when Thomas was appointed Archbishop. Both Church and Crown were powerful landowners, had the right to collect taxes and tithes and various other rights that made both very powerful and, as such, not always trusting of each other. The problem came when the Crown effectively demanded that all institutions and citizens place themselves under its absolute authority and the Church, believing that God’s laws trumped those of mortals (even royal ones) began increasingly trying to protect and improve its own powerbase at the expense of the Crown.

Henry, having initially been delighted at Thomas taking over as Archbishop (possibly because he thought an old friend of far lower social standing would be easily-manipulated into obedience) was equally appalled when Thomas, a religious devotee of immense conviction) began responding to the demands of the Church and the Pope (then an extremely important political as well as religious figure in medieval Europe) far more willingly than to his old friend and King, Henry II.

Becket and Henry II, former friends turned bitter enemies.

Friction between the two former friends steadily grew into open feuding. Henry felt Thomas had betrayed him as a friend, affronted him as a mere subject presuming to defy his King and that his greater loyalty to the Church made him a potential threat to Henry’s own powerbase and the social order in general. In the ever-widening rift between the Church and the Crown, something had to give. Whether Henry deliberately decided it would be Thomas Becket’s life (Becket became a saint of both the Catholic Church and the Church of England after his murder) remained open to question for centuries afterward.

By 1170 the rift between Henry and Thomas and, by extension, between Church and State, had widened to seemingly unbridgeable dimensions. Henry’s demands had grown increasingly insistent and his anger increasingly hard to control. Thomas, on the other hand, responded to his former friend’s increasingly heavy-handed approach by defying him with increasing flagrancy. The feud between them had developed to the point where even the Pope himself had been forced to take notice and intervene.

The final straw came in 1170 when Thomas, by now exiled to France but still holding the post of Archbishop, took offence at two senior noblemen deciding to crown an heir-apparent to replace Henry if he were to die. Crowning an heir-apparent was the job of the Archbishop, not of the nobility. Thomas responded by excommunicating the two nobles and the heir-apparent, expelling them from the Church and so ensuring their eternal residence in Hell when they died. Henry was apoplectic with rage and it was during a discussion of his former friend that he was said to have uttered the immortal words:

“Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?!”

Well, four of Henry’s knights, believing that it was a Royal command rather than a simple expression of fury, chose to do exactly that. They would also desecrate part of Canterbury Cathedral itself in doing so. Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy and Richard le Breton promptly rode for Canterbury Cathedral where Thomas, now grudgingly allowed to return from exile by Henry after the Pope’s intervention, had no idea that he was about to be brutally murdered. Nor, almost certainly, did Henry, but that didn’t stop many from believing that he’d finally lost patience and had the Archbishop killed.

Canterbury Cathedral, home of today’s Church of England and site of Becket’s brutal murder.

Finding Thomas at the Cathedral they confronted him, demanding that he come with them to Winchester to account for his actions. Thomas, perhaps realising that he might not reach Winchester alive and being well aware that the law allowed him to use holy places as a sanctuary, refused to leave the Cathedral and go anywhere with them. This didn’t stop the knights from fulfilling their self-appointed mission. Instead they simply cast off the robes hiding their armour, collected their weapons and chased Becket through his own Cathedral, hacking away at him as they went. Finally, in the Cathedral quire and in front of the monks as they were chanting prayers, they finished the job. Becket was brutally hacked to death and eyewitness Edward Grim (himself wounded during the murder) gave the best account of exactly what happened:

“The wicked knight leapt suddenly upon him, cutting off the top of the crown which the unction of sacred chrism had dedicated to God. Next he received a second blow on the head, but still he stood firm and immovable. At the third blow he fell to his knees and elbows, offering himself a living sacrifice, and saying in a low voice ‘For the name of Jesus and the protection of the Church, I am ready to embrace death.’”

“But the third knight inflicted a terrible wound as he lay prostrate. By this stroke, the crown of his head was separated from the head in such a way that the blood white with the brain, and the brain no less red from the blood, dyed the floor of the Cathedral. The same clerk who had entered with the knights placed his foot on the neck of the holy priest and religious martyr, and, horrible to relate, scattered the brains and blood about the pavements, crying to the others ‘Let us away, knights, this fellow will rise no more.’”

An artist’s impression of the murder scene.

Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, lay hacked to pieces in his own cathedral. He suffered most, but he wasn’t alone. The four knights were promptly excommunicated by the Pope and, as such, lived as fugitives in fear of eternal damnation for their crime. Henry II, who probably never intended to incite the murder of his former friend and Archbishop, suffered greatly from detractors who were vocal in suggesting his having done exactly that. Becket himself earned a posthumous sainthood, considered a martyr by the Catholic Church and later (after Henry VIII dissolved the Catholic Church in England) by the Protestant Church of England.

Becket himself, given his religious devotion was strong enough that he defied a King who could have had him executed or assassinated with a simple command, might have considered his death as the highest form of service to his Church and his calling. Which only goes to show one thing – be careful what you wish for.

In 2013, Warren Watson had a plan.

For reasons known only to him, he decided to act out his fantasy of killing a female attorney, with a twisted scenario that included sexual assault and robbery.

After months of plotting and targeting other victims, he settled on Claudia Miller, a veteran litigator who specialized in family law.

At the time, Watson was well known to law enforcement, having four pages of charges on his Colorado Bureau of Investigation rap sheet, including forgery, burglary and vehicle theft charges during the 1990s and a couple of escape attempts in the 2000s. He had an active warrant in his name at the time and was considered to be armed and dangerous.

It was about 8:15 p.m. on March 5, 2013, when local police officers in Lakewood responded to a call from an office complex. A cleaning crew in one of the buildings had come upon a woman’s body. Crime scene reports mentioned signs of sexual abuse. Her shirt and bra were pulled up over her chest, her pants were unbuttoned and had been lowered, and her underwear was gone.

In addition, the wrists showed evidence of ligature marks, and there were postmortem abrasions on her stomach. An autopsy later determined that she’d been strangled to death.

Once identification had been confirmed, investigators made contact with Miller’s secretary and learned that the victim had credit cards through Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Capital One and US Bank, plus a debit card with Mutual of Omaha. It was soon determined that many of those had been used between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. on the day of the murder. They subsequently obtained surveillance footage from WalMart and another store with still photos showing a man using Miller’s cards. Resolution in some of the video was quite good.

Miller’s phone was found in a dumpster, and a nearby camera captured video of Watson driving up in a 2012 black Honda Accord like the one she owned and depositing a black trash bag that contained blood-stained panties and zip ties of the kind that could cause the ligature marks.

A woman called in a tip, saying she had been staying with Watson at a Best Inn and Suites. She also gave police a cell phone number for him that showed up on Miller’s call logs.

Investigators later found and impounded Miller’s car at a truck stop. They discovered that he had boarded a flight to Idaho on March 7. He was captured there the next day.

By the end of the month, a grand jury had indicted Watson, and their documents reveal chilling details regarding the circumstances of Miller’s death:

“Warren Watson admitted to pulling out, what he described as, a fake gun and telling Claudia Miller to get down on the floor. He admitted to tying her up, going through her purse, and taking her money and her credit cards. He admitted that he strangled her. He admitted touching her labia and running his hands on the outside of her vagina. He stated that he took a Kleenex to wipe her and his hand went inside her. He said that the napkin fell apart and he used water to flush it out. Warren Watson admitted to being sexually aroused and intended to have sex with Claudia Miller at some point. He also admitted to killing her.”

He allegedly “called other female attorneys, who had declined to meet with him on such short notice, before he called Ms. Miller.” He identified himself as a doctor and used a false name when asking for an appointment – and he scheduled it for 4:30 p.m. Calling back to tell her he would be late, he thereby set up a scenario in which she would be alone in the office.

Watson was found guilty on multiple charges, including one count apiece of first degree murder after deliberation, felony murder/sexual assault, felony murder/robbery, sexual assault by force and tampering with evidence, as well as two counts of aggravated robbery and seven counts of identity theft. Because he had seven prior felony convictions, he was tried as a habitual criminal.

On September 29, 2015, Warren Watson was sentenced to life in prison plus 334 years.

On May 27, 1980, 32-year-old Dorothy Jane Scott offered to drive a co-worker to the hospital after he suffered a spider bite. Dorothy and another co-worker escorted the man in, and upon his release she went to pull her car up so he wouldn’t have far to walk.

Dorothy Jane Scott

The man and Dorothy’s other co-worker waited outside the hospital doors for Dorothy to return with the car. As they looked over they spotted the car, but they noticed it pulling out of the hospital parking lot in a hurry. The pair waited for Dorothy to return to the hospital, but after several hours they contacted her family and the police in order to report her missing.

Prior to her disappearance from the hospital, Dorothy had been receiving strange phone calls at work. Sometimes the man would profess his love for her, other times he would discuss far more sinister plans. Dorothy was shaken by the phone calls. So much so that she had taken up karate, in the event that she had to fight off an attacker. He knew where she lived, he knew where she worked, and it was only a matter of time before the caller would reveal himself.

Dorothy was never seen again after that day, but the phone calls never stopped. Every Wednesday the man would wait until Dorothy’s mother Vera was alone and ask for Dorothy. When Very would reply the man would yell “I got her!” into the phone and hang up. These calls went on for nearly four years, but eventually the man stopped.

No one would know what became of Dorothy until 1984. Her car was found burning in an alley and her skeletal remains were discovered near Santa Ana Canyon Rd. in Anaheim Hills, CA. That’s when the calls began again. The caller would call and ask for Dorothy, when her mother would respond the caller would often shriek “I killed her!”

Dorothy’s killer has never been apprehended and some have speculated that the man who killed Dorothy Jane Scott could have been the East Area Rapist, otherwise known as the Original Night Stalker.

The only other known case around the same time-frame was the disappearance of a Riverside-area cocktail waitress named Patricia Jean Schneider. Two years prior to Dorothy’s disappearance, a Circle K shop clerk witnessed the woman use a payphone. Two males were also seen sitting in the parking lot as Patricia made the calls. Hours later her car was located burning in the middle of an intersection.

Dorothy’s parents were never able to find closure on what happened to their daughter that night at the hospital. Like many cases, the leads fell flat and her case was put on the back burner. With little family left, it’s unlikely that there is anyone pushing investigators to pursue new leads and even less likely that her disappearance will ever be solved.

“I know I’m going to die. I don’t mind now. There never was any real hope.” – Anna Antonio, hours before her execution.

The case of Anna Antonio is interesting not for her crime (which was a fairly squalid affair) but for what the law and society made her endure thereafter. Married to railroad worker and suspected drug dealer Salvatore Antonio, her marriage wasn’t, according to her, love’s young dream. She claimed he was violent and abusive which he may well have been but, according to witnesses, in their many domestic arguments she had a tendency to give as good as she got. Witnesses hearing her express a fervent desire to see him dead probably didn’t help her case much, either.

It was in the early hours of March 27, 1932 that her final chapter began. New York law students driving between Castleton and Albany discovered Salvatore’s body crumpled in the middle of the road. They put him in their car, still alive although seriously injured, and rushed him to Albany Memorial Hospital. He died minutes after arriving but, with five .38-calibre bullet wounds and fifteen stab wounds, it was a minor miracle that he’d lasted as long as he had.

This was clearly a murder and, within a month, New York detectives had trawled through his rather dubious friends and acquaintances looking for likely suspects. Sam Feraci and Vincent Saetta were certainly likely suspects as they too were suspected of being in the drug trade. They became prime suspects when it emerged that they’d taken the victim on a drinking spree and were the last people to have seen him alive. After being grilled by detectives for less than a day they admitted Antonio’s murder. They also pointed the finger firmly at his wife Anna as having paid them to kill him.

Anna initially denied any knowledge of their actions, at least for a while. Then she changed her story, admitting that she’d ordered his murder as her only way out of an abusive, violent marriage. Then she changed her story again, claiming that she’d only ordered them to deliver a severe beating. If they’d killed him, then the blame was theirs, not hers, according to her latest version of events as they piled up in front of investigators.

In early-May of 1932 the trio were charged with first-degree murder, a capital crime in New York at that time. Saetta and Feraci were facing execution for actually committing the crime. Anna was facing the chair for ordering it. They went to trial and, on April 15, 1933, were convicted and sentenced to death. All three were transferred to Sing Sing Prison’s infamous death house to file appeals, tick days off the calendar and watch the clock tick, their fates now entirely in the hands of others. Saetta and Feraci were confined in the regular death house cells while Anna ended up in the death house Women’s Wing, six cells set aside solely for the female condemned. In theory they wouldn’t have long to wait, their execution date was set for May 29, only a few weeks after their arrival. It would take rather longer in practice for justice to be served.

Anna Antonio hearing her own death sentence.

The appeals were quickly filed and, just as quickly, denied. The first delay pushed their date back to June 28. Technically New York’s death warrant specified the week beginning June 24 but part of the execution ritual at Sing Sing saw executions carried out on a Thursday. ‘Black Thursday’ as it was known. On June 17 Anna had her mandatory sanity hearing before the State Lunacy Commission. The Commission passed her as legally sane, closing yet another door to avoiding the chair.

Her fight, however, wasn’t over but just beginning. A strong media campaign was mounted and quickly gathered steam. On June 20 attorney Daniel Prior went before Governor Herbert Lehman, not a Governor with any love for executions, to argue for clemency. The request was denied. On June 27 Warden Lewis Lawes, in charge at Sing Sing and an implacable enemy of the death penalty, personally visited Lehman to make his own plea for clemency. Lehman still refused, deciding that he couldn’t set the precedent of reprieving Anna because she was female while letting her male assassins go to the electric chair for a murder she’d personally ordered.

June 28 dawned. ‘Black Thursday’ had arrived. By early evening all preparations were in place for the triple execution scheduled for 11pm. ‘State Electrician’ Robert Elliott was in place testing his equipment. Warden Lawes was briefing the official witnesses. The prison was on lockdown as members of the public gathered outside the prison. Anna had refused her last meal, sinking ever deeper into psychological numbness, fear and despair as the minutes ticked by relentlessly towards 11pm.

Warden Lewis Lawes, who personally asked Governor Lehman for clemency.

Just after 10pm Saetta made an urgent request to see Warden Lawes. He wanted to make a statement that had vital information on the case, he claimed. Lawes hurried to see him and, hearing Saetta’s new claims, called Governor Lehman. The clock ticked well past 11pm before Lawes went to speak to the official witnesses in the death chamber. He explained to them that Lehman had granted the trio 24 hours while Saetta’s statement was checked. Anna was finally informed at 3:15am, having collapsed at 1am from the strain.

Saetta’s statement was simple. Salvatore Antonio owed him a $75 drug debt and had threatened to kill him rather than pay the money. Saetta believed him and enlisted Sam Feraci to help him deal with Antonio permanently. According to Saetta, Anna knew nothing about it and hadn’t promised the pair $800 from her husband’s life insurance.

Unfortunately, Saetta’s ploy was rather less noble or honest than it at first appeared. The next day Anna’s lawyer Daniel Prior went to discuss clemency with Lehman and the prosecuting attorney. The prosecutor was blunt, describing Saetta’s statements as:

“An absolute fabrication of lies.”

It probably didn’t help the trio that a prison clerk revealed that, on admission to the death house, Saetta had said:

“We’ll beat this case yet. If not, I’ll make a statement at the last minute.”

New York Governor Herbert Lehman.

Lehman, however, proved more sympathetic. He granted a ten-day reprieve for Anna and her two hitmen in order to allow Prior to argue for a retrial before Judge Earl Gallup, who had presided over the original trial. Gallup denied the appeal on July 5, but another reprieve was granted allowing Prior to argue before the Court of Appeals. They denied the appeal on July 16, but granted another reprieve so Prior could argue before Supreme Court Justice Bryon Brewster on August 2, 1934. Unfortunately for the killers Brewster wasn’t convinced, stating in his ruling on August 8:

“I am painfully aware of the gravity of my decision. But I cannot find that the new evidence is ground for a new trial, or that it would have changed the rendered verdict.”

The trio’s latest date was August 12, only four days away. Time was rapidly running out and doors were closing to the three condemned nervously awaiting either damnation or deliverance. Three times they had come within minutes of dying. Three times Fate had stayed Robert Elliott’s hand. It wouldn’t be a case of ‘Fourth time lucky.’

On August 12 Lehman was at his desk reviewing Prior’s latest clemency request on Anna’s behalf. Lawes was making the customary pre-execution preparations. In the afternoon Anna, veering wildly between hope, panic, bitterness and apathy, was sat listening to the death house radio. Governor Lehman’s decision was relayed to her by a brutally brief newsflash:

“Latest flash from Albany! The Governor has refused a further reprieve for Mrs. Antonio. She must die in the electric chair tonight.”

All hope was gone for them. With Anna irrevocably doomed so too were Saetta and Feraci, both of whom took the news in sullen, resigned silence. Anna didn’t do so well. Nor did she enjoy the final visit of her brother, sister-in-law, nephew and a friend who she had turned away rather than see them. It probably didn’t help that it was her daughter Marie’s seventh birthday, either, although Marie didn’t see her mother on her final day. Anna’s son, 3-year-old Frankie, did come to see her having been brought by Anna’s brother. With that distressing event over, it was time for Anna herself to make some preparations.

The death house barber, an old convict named Jimmy ‘The Shiv’ DeStefano came by to shave her head and right leg for a smooth, clean contact when the electrodes were placed. Anna declined a final meal and dressed for the occasion, choosing a blue dress she’d made in her cell.

At 11pm the ritual began. Anna, escorted by prison Chaplain McCafferty and several guards, walked around 100 paces from the death house Women’s Wing, past the pre-execution cells known as the ‘Dance Hall’ where inmates usually spent their final hours. On the way through the ‘Dance Hall’ she passed the cells of Saetta and Feraci, walking by without acknowledging either of them. They would follow her immediately after her death.

The trio’s final destination.

She walked into the death chamber and was swiftly seated, strapped and the electrodes secured. A line composed of two female matrons and a male guard formed in front of the chair to forestall any secret pictures being snapped on hidden cameras, as had happened when Ruth Snyder was executed in the same chair in January, 1928. With their backs to the official witnesses and blocking their view, these three officers ensured she died without too large an audience. At 11:11pm on Black Thursday’ the switch was thrown and her story was over. During the next 15 minutes first Feraci and then Saetta walked through the door, were seated, shocked and wheeled after her into the adjoining autopsy room.

Immediately after the executions Governor Lehman stated:

“Appeals have been made to me to grant executive clemency to Anna Antonio on account of her sex, but the law makes no distinction of sex in the punishment of crime; nor would my own conscience or the duty imposed upon me by my oath of office permit me to do so. Each of the defendants is guilty. The crime and manner of its execution are abhorrent. I have found no just and sound reason for the exercise of executive clemency.”

“Goodbye, Marshall.” – Gerhard Puff to a witness at his electrocution.

Thief, bank robber, murderer, Joe Strummer lookalike, the last Federal prisoner executed in New York. Puff may have looked like the frontman of legendary punk band The Clash, but his career was more rebellious than his doppelganger’s ever could have been. Where Strummer’s instruments were a Telecaster and a voice, Puff’s were a gun and cold-blooded willingness to kill. Ironically, Puff’s willingness to kill saw him take a place in criminal history that lent him immortality.

A German immigrant, he was born in Dresden on February 2, 1914 and lived with his family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Wisconsin was once a State boasting what it called ‘lightning justice’ when convicts could be tried, convicted and be sent to prison in a single day. Gerhard Puff would face Wisconsin justice on several occasions, but not its death penalty as it didn’t have one. New York, however, did have one, used it frequently and Puff would be one of 614 inmates to die in Sing Sing Prison’s most notorious resident, what inmates and guards alike called ‘Old Sparky.’

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves a little. Puff’s criminal career began long before he walked his last mile in August, 1954. It began in Wisconsin 20 years earlier in 1934 with a charge of disorderly conduct. In 1935 he had his first taste of jail, being handed three concurrent terms of 1-5 years for stealing domestic animals. Several months into his sentence he was transferred to the State Reformatory. The move went sour when he drew an extra 1-10 years for assaulting a guard, to start after serving his existing sentences. He was returned to the State Penitentiary in February, 1937 and not released until May, 1939.

He was back at the penitentiary in December, 1942 serving 1-9 years for assault with intent to commit armed robbery. The small-time thug and animal thief had definitely moved up the criminal ladder and wasn’t going to stop there. In September, 1945 he escaped. Recaptured while in a stolen car, Puff was returned to the penitentiary and wouldn’t leave again until November, 1947.

In June, 1948 he was convicted again, this time of breaking and entering. He was also tried for the 1945 escape, drawing concurrent sentences of 1-4 years and 12-17 months and was returned to the penitentiary yet again until his release in April, 1951.

Between his jail terms Puff could and did seek honest work. At various times as a truck driver, farmhand, labourer, machinist’s mate and in the printing trade. His problem was his expensive lifestyle constantly demanding more money than honest work could provide. Fast cars, fancy clothes, drinking, gambling and sports were his fixations. Crime was his means to feed those tastes and, ultimately, his downfall. In the end Puff would pay early for his pleasures, but perhaps less dearly than the wife and three children of FBI Special Agent Joseph Brock, nor as dearly as Brock himself. But that’s for later.

In May, 1951 Puff was in jail again, this time for armed robbery. His bail was $3,000 and he didn’t have it, but a young prison friend named George Heroux did. Released in August, 1951, Heroux promptly posted Puff’s bail. Puff equally promptly jumped bail, hooking up with Heroux to start robbing banks again.

They started Prairie Springs, Kansas on October 25, 1951 by taking $62,000 from the Johnson County National Bank and Trust Company. Puff was charged in absentia on December 3 and the FBI added Puff and Heroux to their legendary ‘Ten Most Wanted’ list. Heroux was then arrested in Miami, Florida on July 25, 1952 and gave the FBI a lead on where to find Puff. They found him at the Congress Hotel in New York City and put Puff, registered under the alias ‘J. Burns,’ under 24-hour surveillance awaiting their chance to move in.

Around 9am on July 26 their chance came. The day shift of FBI agents led by Special Agent Joseph Brock positioned themselves in and around the hotel. All was going well until Puff spotted Brock waiting in a stairwell. A pistol duel left Brock dying, shot twice through the chest. Puff took the fallen agent’s gun and, with pistols in both hands, shot his way through the lobby and onto the sidewalk. He briefly exchanged shots with agents stationed outside and, this time, their aim was better than his. Puff was rushed to the prison ward of Bellevue Hospital and survived his wounds. Special Agent Brock, husband to one and father of three, wasn’t as lucky. He died shortly after arriving at the hospital. Puff was now facing a charge of capital murder and almost-certain electrocution.

FBI Special Agent Joseph J. Brock, the married father of three murdered by Puff.

Recovered from his wounds, Puff went on trial in the US District Court of the Southern District of New York with Judge Sylvester Ryan presiding. The result was already in no doubt. Judges and juries don’t like career felons. They dislike even more career felons who murder Federal agents, especially felons who murder agents with a young family. What really clinched a guilty verdict was Puff making a ludicrous plea of self-defense.

Puff, as expected, was convicted of first-degree murder on May 15, 1953. With Puff’s conviction assured it only remained for Judge Sylvester Ryan to pass sentence and that sentence was equally predictable. Death.

Federal authorities lacked their own execution facilities, so when Federal death sentences were passed they were carried out by the methods mandated in the States where sentence was passed. For Gerhard Puff, now Inmate Puff, death house number 113-970, that meant being shipped to Sing Sing where the Federal Government would pay a fee to the State of New York to cover the costs of Puff’s confinement and electrocution in Sing Sing’s purpose-built and notorious ‘death house’ set aside exclusively for the condemned. Puff was brought through the death house door on May 20. He would remain, guarded night and day under maximum security, until he sentence was carried out or commuted. In the meantime Puff’s lawyers would file a mandatory appeal and Warden Wilfred Denno would make the necessary arrangements for his execution.

Sing Sing Warden Wilfred Denno, who supervised executions until abolition.

They included a formal letter to New York State’s last ‘State Electrician’ Dow Hover. Hover, a qualified electrician and deputy Sheriff with his own business (ironically in pest control) had taken over from Joseph Francel when Francel resigned in August, 1953. Francel had electrocuted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in June, 1953 and carried out his 137th execution, that of murderer Donald Snyder, in July before resigning in August, complaining bitterly about low pay and bad publicity. Puff would be Hover’s eighth execution since Francel’s departure having by coincidence started his career with a triple execution just like his predecessor.  Puff would be Hover’s first and only Federal execution. He would also be New York State’s last Federal execution. Puff’s date was set for August 12, 1954.

Joseph Francel, Dow Hover’s predecessor who quit over bad pay and bad press.

Puff’s appeals failed and his lawyers told him there was no hope. They’d done all they could. Early on August 12 he was taken from his regular death house cell to one of the six pre-execution cells only 20 yards from the chair in an area known to inmates as the ‘Dance Hall.’ He was given a bath, his head and right leg were shaved, and he was given his execution clothes. He ate a huge last meal of fried chicken, asparagus tips, Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, salad and strawberry shortcake. Warden Denno assembled the witnesses and oversaw the final preparations. Hover arrived at 9:30pm to test the equipment. At 11pm the execution began.

Puff walked his last mile steadily and without flinching. He sat down quickly, even helping to secure the straps before turning his head to one of the official witnesses and giving his last words:

“Goodbye, Marshall.”

Dow Hover, Francel’s replacement and New York’s last ‘State Electrician.’

With that done, Hover carefully placed the head and leg electrodes. All was ready and with nothing left to chance. All Hover needed was Warden Denno’s signal. It came quickly. Hover pulled the switch and for two full minutes applied different voltages to his latest inmate. Puff surged in the chair as the voltage rose and fell. At 11:08pm the prison doctor stepped forward to make the official check. Gerhard Puff was dead.

By 11:30pm Hover was already in his car and headed back on the 80-mile trip home to Germantown in upstate New York with another job done. A coldly professional executioner, Hover now had eight executions to his credit and would execute many more prisoners before New York’s last execution, that of Eddie Lee Mays on August 15, 1963. By 1:30am he was in his garage, replacing the false license plates on his car, used only for executions to throw off inquisitive reporters. Gerhard Puff, meanwhile, was in the death house morgue, his State-required autopsy having already been completed.

His fee for the night’s work? Just $150 for the electrocution and $12.83 for his eight cents per mile gas allowance. Exactly the same as Joseph Francel had resigned over, the same as every New York ‘State Electrician’ had received since the chair was first installed.

Not much for a human life, when you think about it.

Jennifer Reali, 48, has once again been denied parole. The notorious “Fatal Attraction Killer” remains held under strict supervision at a halfway house in El Paso County, Colorado, for at least another year.

In September of 1990, Reali dressed herself in camouflage fatigues and a ski mask to attack and kill Dianne Hood, a 32-year-old mother of three. Her plan was to make it look like a robbery, but when she grabbed for Hood’s purse, the victim threw it at her. Reali fired once with a .45 revolver, wounding Hood. Then, as the woman lay on the ground begging for her life, she shot her again in the chest.

Reali and Hood’s husband Brian had been having an affair. And he supposedly had used biblical interpretations to convince her that God wanted his wife dead. At least that was her excuse when police, not buying the story that a panicked mugger had committed the killing, arrested Reali two days later. Under interrogation, she admitted her part in the plot.

Brian Hood quickly came to his own defense, denying any involvement and painting himself as the innocent victim of a “fatal attraction”. But that story got him nowhere, and he was convicted of second-degree murder in 1991 and sentenced to 37 years in prison. He briefly escaped in 1997 with another inmate but was quickly recaptured.

Reali, an Army officer’s wife, spent 22 years in prison before receiving the very controversial sentence commutation from Governor Bill Ritter that allows her to be considered each year for release. She wasn’t supposed to be eligible for parole for 40 years.

There is little if any sympathy in the community for showing any mercy toward Reali.

“This was premeditated, planned and carried out. That is the definition of first degree murder,” says retired Colorado Springs Police Lieutenant Joe Kenda, who worked on the case. “Along comes a group of people, talking about how we should forgive, and how we should forget. I’m not into forgiveness. And I’m not into forgetting, either.”

The supposedly contrite killer had this conversation in 2014 with the judge presiding over her parole hearing:

Reali: “In 1990, I got involved with someone who was not my husband. It was an unhealthy relationship, so of course it would be.”
Judge: “Do you think your sentence was appropriate?”
Reali: “Yes.”
Judge: “If a life sentence was appropriate, then why should we let you out early?”
Reali: “That’s a really good question.”

Then, starting to cry, she announced, “I’ve been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which nobody was expecting.”

Health experts consider the condition to be virtually incurable.

To Kenda, the freedom granted by parole is a privilege the real victim – Diana Hood – will not and cannot ever experience.

“Who could I speak to, to arrange for Diana Lynn Hood an early release from her grave?” he asked.

And the victim’s brother, Texas attorney David Moore, called the Governor a “gutless coward,” for taking action without consulting with her relatives or asking their opinion.

“I think it is ludicrous when someone is murdered in cold blood that the governor takes it upon himself to commute the sentence of a cold-blooded murderer,” Moore said. “How would the governor feel if one of his family members was shot dead and the killer’s sentence was commuted?”

In the meantime, Reali has styled herself as a Christian songwriter, having released two albums she recorded while in prison. Sample lyrics:

Would you find me acceptable if you knew where I’d been?
Would you cringe in horror at the stories I could tell?
Would you judge and condemn me? Sentence me to hell?
Oh-oh, straight to hell….
If you knew my dark side would you sense the hands of Christ?
I broke every commandment, I’ve hidden special sins
Are you willing to hold me when I’m poison through and through?
Can you see past my number to see a child of God?

As regular readers know, I do like to bring Sword and Scale some of criminal history’s more unusual cases. Toni Jo Henry was Louisiana’s only female electrocution. Martha Place and William Kemmler were the first woman and man to suffer legal electrocution. James Snook remains the only Olympic gold medallist ever to walk the last mile. And so on.

The only priest executed for murder in US history.

Today I’ll be recounting the singular story of Hans Schmidt, the only priest in American history to pay the ultimate penalty. Schmidt’s case was a media sensation at the time, both in New York and further afield. An outwardly respectable man of the cloth embroiled in an illicit affair that culminated in murder, a hung jury, a retrial and finally execution, Schmidt’s case was enlivened still further by speculation that it might not have been the first time he’d committed murder. So, with that in mind, let’s journey back to New York in the year 1913 and rediscover one of America’s most unusual murder cases.

Hans Schmidt was German by birth, born in Asschaffenberg in 1881. He was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1906 and immigrated to the US in 1909, being assigned to St. John’s Parish in Louisville, Kentucky. He didn’t stay there long. A rift with another minister saw him reassigned to St. Boniface’s Parish in New York (more on the possible reason for his reassignment later) and it wasn’t long before the rectory’s housekeeper, a recent immigrant from Austria named Anna Aumuller, began to catch his eye.

Anna Aumuller, possibly not Schmidt’s first victim.

Soon she caught more than that, as Schmidt and Aumuller embarked on an affair, an illicit affair given his calling as a Catholic priest and especially when the pair weren’t actually married. Father Schmidt would soon fix the marriage issue, albeit in unconventional, sinful and quite possibly illegal fashion. There’s nothing unusual about Catholic priests performing a marriage service, but there is when they perform their own and do so in secret. Schmidt was already deviating somewhat from conventional religious practise. Soon, he would deviate much further (assuming he hadn’t done so at least twice before, but we’ll come to that later).

Schmidt, possibly as a result of his church’s desire to avoid scandal, soon found himself reassigned elsewhere in New York. That didn’t spell the end of his affair with Aumuller. Despite the obvious risk of discovery, the twosome carried on their assignations with more fervor than discretion. Sooner or late they would be discovered and something had to give. When Schmidt discovered Aumuller was not only pregnant, but had also given premature birth to his child, he decided that what had to give would be Anna Aumuller’s life.

On September 2, 1913 he murdered her. He slit her throat while she lay sleeping, then dismembered her body with a saw and dumped the body parts into the East River. So far, so standard for a murderer. At least it might have worked if some of the parts hadn’t been found. Now that they had been, New York detectives started making inquiries into whether Anna Aumuller had any enemies or anyone who might want her dead. It wasn’t long before they arrived at the church of Father Hans Schmidt. The initial visit was to question him about her disappearance. That soon turned into a charge of first-degree murder. An all-out media frenzy was about to begin.

The case was perfect tabloid-fodder. A disgraced priest, an unmarried mother, an illegitimate baby and illicit affair all topped off with a brutal murder that may or may not lead to a truly singular execution. Then as now the press loved it. New York’s papers vied with each other to produce the most sensational coverage of the case and they and their readers weren’t to be disappointed.

Schmidt’s trial began on December 7, 1913 with Judge Warren Foster presiding. Prosecutors James Delahanty and deacon Murphy squared off against a defense team composed of W.M.K Olcott, Terence McManus and Alphonse Koelble. The public gallery and press box were jam-packed. Olcott and his team didn’t deny that Schmidt had committed the killing. They couldn’t as it could be proved that the apartment where Aumuller had been murdered and dismembered had been rented only weeks before the murder by Hans Schmidt. They couldn’t disprove that Schmidt had a motive, means and opportunity, either. What they could focus on was a defense of insanity. Portraying their client as a madman rather than a cold-blooded murderer, showing him to be mad but not bad, might tip the jury towards either deadlock or an acquittal resulting in Schmidt heading for a cell in Bellevue psychiatric hospital rather than the Sing Sing death house. It was an almighty gamble, given that New York prescribed a mandatory death sentence of those convicted of first-degree murder but, with the array of prosecution evidence, it was probably Schmidt’s best and maybe only shot at avoiding a seat in Old Sparky.

And, almost unbelievably, it worked.

The jury deliberated for 34 hours before declaring themselves unable to reach a verdict on December 30, 1913. They knew that Schmidt had committed the crime but, and this was what the defense had been shooting for, they were unable to agree on whether or not he was legally sane at the time. This was not quite as good as it sounded, however. A hung jury isn’t an acquittal and, without an acquittal, New York was free to begin a retrial for Schmidt on the same charge. Schmidt’s lawyers couldn’t claim double jeopardy as the jury hadn’t declared him innocent, merely found themselves unable to agree on the extent of his guilt. With that in mind, the prosecution angrily declared their intent to hold a second trial within hours of the first one having ended. Schmidt would have to go through the same process again, with no guarantee that his lawyers wold be able to convince another jury in the same way. The death house door still loomed halfway-open in Schmidt’s mind.

The retrial began on January 19, 1914 and would end amid sensational banner headlines on February 5. Either the defense weren’t as effective or the jury weren’t as easily-convinced but, on February 5 the verdict was in. Guilty as charged, with no recommendation for mercy. That may have been partly down to the summing up of trial judge Vernon Davis, whose appeal to the more practically-minded ran thus:

“If you are satisfied that the defendant purchased the knife and saw with which he cut up the body, thinking of using them as he did, and if you are satisfied that in the middle of the night he went to the flat, took off his coat and cut her throat, and then cut up her body, what conclusion do you come to? Use your common sense… your experience with men. Bear in mind, it isn’t every form of mental unsoundness that excuses a crime.”

The jury weren’t of a mind to excuse Schmidt’s crime and nor were New York’s appellate judges. Appeals were repeatedly filed and just as repeatedly denied. The death house door, once merely ajar, opened wider with every ruling by the courts. Finally, on February 18, 1916, Schmidt’s time and appeals ran out. The Governor didn’t call, either.

Where Schmidt’s story ended, the original Sing Sing death house.

At 11pm that night Schmidt walked his last mile. He was escorted the few yards between his cell in Sing Sing’s death house, seated in the chair and the straps and electrodes were applied. ‘State Electrician’ John Hurlbut, new to the job and who would retire in 1926 after suffering a breakdown from performing 140 executions, awaited the Warden’s signal. The signal came. Father Hans Schmidt was certified dead moments later, remaining to this day the only Catholic priest executed for murder in the United States.

But it may well not have been his first or only murder. Aside from their discovering he’d rented a second apartment that he used as a counterfeiting workshop, police in Kentucky also suspected him of murdering a nine-year old girl whose death was similar to that of Anna Aumuller. Furthermore, German police in Aschaffenberg strongly suspected him for a murder committed there before Schmidt had left for the United States.

Was Hans Schmidt a multiple murderer? We’ll probably never know. And was he sent from Kentucky to New York in the hope of his avoiding further police attention? If so, it didn’t work. It certainly didn’t work for Kentucky janitor Joseph Wendling, who was convicted for the girl’s murder based on circumstantial evidence and bloodstained clothing. Wendling was the janitor of the building where the girl’s remains had been discovered, a building Schmidt was known to have easy access to at the time of the crime.

Vermont court records show Richard Darling had quite a criminal history. Between 1999 and 2009, he was charged with 27 misdemeanors and two felonies. He also underwent at least two mental evaluations in the state.

But it was in Colorado where Darling really made his mark, on Halloween night in 2015.

Around 10:35 p.m., according to the Aurora Police Department, officers responded to a reported homicide in a field along Toll Gate Creek, site of a homeless encampment.

On arrival, they found both a dead body and an adult male who was taken into custody on an outstanding warrant. That was Richard Darling, and he soon became a person of interest in the case.

Several days later, he was arrested and charged with killing Rey Pesina, then dismembering and “filleting” his body before putting it in a barrel and setting it ablaze.

The call to the police had come from Candace Chamberlain, who told them she’d had sexual relationships with both men. She led officers to the underpass where the murder occurred. There, they found a burning 55-gallon drum and another woman, Lenora Cole, who said she was Darling’s wife and claimed to have witnessed what happened.

Cole said that after Darling learned of Pesina’s involvement with Chamberlain, the two men started fighting. Things escalated to a point at which Darling shot his rival in the head.

The arrest report gives details of what happened next: “Ms. Cole advised she then observed Richard Alan Darling repeatedly striking the neck of Rey Pesina’s torso, which was missing the arms and legs, severing his head from his torso. Ms. Cole described Richard Alan Darling as ‘filleting’ the body, and striking the head with a hatchet after it was severed from the torso.”

Next, Darling told Cole to dispose of the victim’s head, but she said she refused to do so.

For whatever reason, the head wasn’t among the body parts recovered at the site. Investigators found a variety of bones in the barrel, including a scapula and part of a spinal column. Officers at the grisly scene also discovered chunks of tissue and “a piece of tattooed skin floating in the water.” Later, they were able to connect Darling to a .22-caliber rifle and other items of evidence found where he stayed.

Several other witnesses recounted seeing Pesina shot and/or attacked with a hatchet.

Darling had told others living at the camp that Pesina was “disrespecting him,” and on more than one occasion, had threatened to return to the camp with “friends” and “guns.” He also claimed that the victim had punched Chamberlain, Pesina’s ex, in the face earlier that day.

Richard Darling is in jail without bond, awaiting trial on a charge of first degree murder.

“They would have done better using an ax.” – George Westinghouse on the world’s first judicial electrocution, that of William Kemmler.

Auburn Prison, nowadays the Auburn Correctional Facility.

Had convict William Taylor survived the events of July 27, 1893 he might well have agreed. Unfortunately for him he didn’t, but that was the object of the exercise, after all.

Taylor wasn’t one of Auburn’s lovable rogues. Thick-necked, barrel-chested and possessed of enormous muscles, he was to pay his debt to society after having decapitated another inmate with a carving knife. This after previously striking down a guard with a hatchet during an escape attempt.

At noon that day he was to walk his last mile to sit in the same chair as the world’s first electrocute William Kemmler. He would die at the hands of the same executioner, Edwin Davis, in the same prison and the chair (already known as ‘Old Sparky’) would be powered by the same second-hand generator fraudulently purchased and shipped to Auburn via Brazil after George Westinghouse had refused to sell any of his generators for use in electrocutions.

The chair was several years old. The generator was several years older. This would prove somewhat troublesome for all concerned.

Davis wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary. Taylor was one of 203 people he electrocuted including Martha Place, the first woman to die by electrocution. Well, it was 202 if you discount the execution of Albert Koepping at Sing Sing in June 1904. Under Davis’s supervision the switch was thrown that day by Robert Greene Elliot, himself later to electrocute 387 convicts including, on January 6, 1927 three in Massachusetts and three in New York on the same day. Davis tested the chair using a board of light bulbs. If all the bulbs glowed bright as the then-standard voltage of 1260 volts was fed through them then all was well. The light board glowed brightly and all was indeed well.

It wouldn’t remain so for very much longer.

Warden James Stout was in charge, having replaced Warden Durston who’d supervised the Kemmler atrocity. Durston had transferred to Sing Sing to replace Warden Brown who, in the fragrant words of the New York Times:

“Will be required to walk into the secluded shades of private life.”

Which is a polite way of saying he’d been fired. Brown’s walk into the secluded shades of private life would prove infinitely easier than Taylor’s walking his last mile.

This was no sinecure for Warden Stout. It was the first of five electrocutions during his tenure at Auburn and the 4^th including the Kemmler disaster. Aside from Warden Stout, ‘State Electrician’ Davis and the prison Chaplain and two guards escorting Taylor the ten yards between his cell and Old Sparky, there were four doctors in attendance, none of whom expected to do anything other than certify Taylor’s death. In the end they would have to do far more and so would Edwin Davis.

Dr. Brown was the senior doctor, assisted by Doctors Conway, Mooney and Wright. They would play a far greater role in proceedings than was normally the case and were about to find out just how gruesome a business electrocutions can be.

At 12:15 Taylor walked his last mile accompanied by the two guards and the Chaplain. He was swiftly seated and, while guards applied the heavy leather restraining straps, Davis applied the electrodes. In less than five minutes Taylor was strapped, capped and ready to ride the lightning. All was ready.

Warden Stout, standing behind the chair, gave the signal. Davis threw the switch.

And it all went horrifically wrong from there.

Auburn’s electric chair, the original incarnation of ‘Old Sparky.’

The then-standard jolt of 1260 volts surged through Taylor’s body. To the monotonous hum of the flowing current Taylor violently arched his back and every muscle in his body strained against the heavy leather straps. The straps held tight.

The front section of the chair didn’t.

With a rending crack Taylor’s legs shot straight out in front of him, trembling manically as the current still surged through his body. Davis, with one eye on Warden Stout and the other on the voltmeter, kept it flowing. After the then-mandatory minute Davis reduced and then cut the power entirely.

The doctors moved toward the smoking figure in the wrecked chair, intending to make their formal checks and certify Taylor dead. There was only one small problem. He was still very much alive. As they approached the chair Taylor gasped and started twitching. Obviously he wasn’t actually dead. Equally obviously, he would have to have another jolt to finish the job.

Cue another small problem. The old, second-hand generator had died before William Taylor. The dynamo had broken down and, until a solution could be improvised, the doctors were now forced to keep Taylor alive until he could be electrocuted according to the law.

This they did. Dr. Brown ordered two guards to carry Taylor into the adjoining autopsy room (autopsies were conducted immediately after executions in New York to ensure the inmate was actually dead. Heaven help those who the doctors merely thought were dead, but we digress). Taylor was laid out on a cot while Davis hurriedly improvized a solution to the problem.

While Davis was hurriedly trying to think of what to do, the doctors were appalled to see that Taylor was not only still alive, but was also beginning to regain consciousness. Acting under Dr. Brown’s instructions, Dr. Conway prepared a syringe of morphine which he hurriedly shot into Taylor’s arm. The doctors waited to see what effect it would have and the short answer was none at all. Taylor, still waking up, was probably in too much pain to be kept under with a mere painkiller. But, if a painkiller didn’t work there was always anesthesia.

The morphine didn’t work. Fifteen minutes passed while Davis arranged for cables to be strung over the prison wall and tapped directly into upstate New York’s power grid. Meanwhile, the doctors were becoming progressively more disturbed by Taylor’s progressive return to consciousness and the total failure of Conway’s morphine shot. Something more was definitely required. And Dr. Brown had something more in his black bag.

A gauze mask and a bottle of ether.

Brown quickly soaked the inside of the mask with neat ether and. Taking a firm grip on Taylor, muzzled him with it. Taylor, by now considerably more lively than he was supposed to be by this point in proceedings, began to struggle harder, even opening his eyes as the choking fumes were sucked into his lungs. Taylor’s struggles were surprisingly strong, all things considered, but Dr. Brown’s grip was stronger and it’s fairly hard to resist anybody when you’ve just been partially electrocuted and are breathing pure ether. Taylor soon drifted, perhaps mercifully under the circumstances, into unconsciousness.

Meanwhile, Davis had been busy supervising the improvised (and probably illegal) tapping of upstate New York’s power grid. High-tension cables had been strung over the prison wall and linked up to electrical poles running along the street outside. With semi-normal service having been resumed, Taylor was carried back to be seated and re-strapped into the wreckage of Old Sparky. Replacing the legpiece was a wooden box to try and keep him steady.

Warden Stout looked on as Davis re-applied the electrodes and, presumably wishing the whole affair to be over for everybody’s benefit including Taylor’s, gave the signal as soon as all was ready. Davis threw the lever.

1260 volts surged once more through the already-lifeless body of William Taylor. Whether he was actually still alive by that point is open to question. But the law was the law, and the law said that Taylor had to suffer electrocution until he was certified dead. After a full forty seconds of the 1260 volts flowing through Taylor, Davis finally cut the power and the doctors moved in to make their checks. Taylor was finally dead. Although his electrocution, which should only have taken a matter of a few minutes, had in fact taken almost two hours.

Taylor was only one of dozens who died in Auburn’s chair.

Further food for  thought can be taken from the words of local County Sheriff Jerry Collins, whose county jail sometimes lodged prisoners awaiting their fate:

“The reformatory prisons do not seem to be the place for executions. It has been found that each approaching event… is the cause of perturbation and depression among the prison population. It is something antagonistic to the disciplinary methods of these institutions and is so obnoxious that the officers do not hesitate to condemn the practise of having such executions in the prisons.”

A name long forgotten, even by anybody that heard of him in the first place. Largely forgotten for his crime, anyway, but not for the manner of his punishment. Riley was nothing special as a criminal, just another bottom-feeding stick-up artist. He was virtually deaf, had lost an eye, could barely read, was only five feet tall and weighed only eighty pounds. His sanity was highly debatable as well. But, like so many little men, he became bigger, taller and scarier with a gun in his hand and could take what he wanted without asking or paying for it. And, like so many low-rent crooks of his kind, eventually he turned from brandishing a gun to using one which turn put him in line for a death far worse than shooting.

The last thing Leanderess Riley ever saw.

Riley’s second-rate thieving finally caught up with him in Sacramento, California in 1949. After committing armed robbery of a Sacramento restaurant he ran into a laundryman named Walter Hill. Not wanting to face a long stretch for armed robbery Riley came up with a simple solution. He grabbed Hill and shot him dead before running away and later being arrested. With Hill in his grave Riley, albeit not the most intellectually-minded felon, didn’t have to spend much cell time thinking too hard about his future. The reason was very simple.

He didn’t have one.

Murder was (and with ‘special circumstances’ still is) a capital offence in California. In 1940’s California, the authorities very much liked using the San Quentin gas chamber known to inmates as the ‘coughing box,’ the ‘little green room,’ ‘the big sleep’ and the ‘time machine.’ Built in 1937 to replace the gallows, the octagonal green-painted, airtight cell averaged around a dozen inmates a year, sometimes more, when the quivering wreck named Leanderess Riley arrived at San Quentin’s infamous ‘Condemned Row’ in 1949. He was arriving during the busiest period in the chamber’s history. Not a good time to be a condemned prisoner.

Riley knew it and so did the staff at San Quentin. Chaplain Byron Eshelman wrote best-selling memoir ‘Death Row Chaplain’ after over 20 years ministering to prisoners, condemned and lesser inmates alike. Eshelman took a particular interest in condemned inmates and Riley he found especially concerning. To be exact, Eshelman thought Riley was insane and wrote as much to then-Warden Clinton Duffy. Duffy and his successor Harley Teets, were both known for their compassion for the condemned and their dislike of having to supervise executions. When Duffy left San Quentin in late-1951 Teets took charge and Riley’s impending death became his personal responsibility.

San Quentin Warden Harley Teets, known for his compassion for condemned inmates

There was nothing either Eshelman or Teets could do for Riley. He sat on Condemned Row until December 20, 1953 when his final execution date rolled round. On the afternoon of December 19 he was taken from Condemned Row, down in the elevator to the ground floor of North Block and lodged in the Holding Cell’ or ‘Ready Room.’ He spent his last afternoon and night in the cell, only steps from the gas chamber, while his lawyers fought for a reprieve and prepared last-ditch appeals. In the death chamber the execution team were making some preparations of their own.

Gas chambers are notoriously the most complicated execution devices to operate and also the most dangerous. Gas chambers have complicated operating procedures and have been known to leak hydrocyanic gas even while an inmate is slumped inside them literally gasping their last. The clean-up procedure after a gassing is complicated and messy, but not as messy as a gassing gone wrong. At 10am the next morning Leanderess Riley would prove this in abundant and appalling detail.

The San Quentin chamber had a nine-page operating manual detailing the procedure from preparation to clean-up and it was followed to the letter. Cheesecloth bags containing cyanide briquettes were suspended on hooks below the twin chairs marked ‘A’ and ‘B.’ Below the perforated steel chairs were small vats into which a precise mix of sulfuric acid and distilled water would flow at the turning of two valves. With the valves turned and the vats full, the executioner would remove a safety pin and push a lever lowering the bags into the diluted acid and a thin cloud of lethal hydrocyanic gas would fill the airtight chamber. Death, once claimed by the chamber’s manufacturers to be within fifteen seconds, usually took nearer fifteen minutes although, to be fair, the inmate was usually choked unconscious within four or five minutes.

A special stethoscope was fixed to the inmate’s chest before they were strapped into the chair and was monitored by the prison doctor. With the inmate restrained they were given the traditional San Quentin goodbye, a pat on the shoulder accompanied by the words:

“When the pellets drop count ten, breathe deep and don’t fight the gas. Good luck…” When the heartbeat slowed, faltered and finally stopped, the inmate was finally dead.

Leanderess Riley would meet that fate, but not without an enormous struggle and definitely without a friendly parting gesture. I’ll let Chaplain Eshelman describe the scene, his words being better than mine:

“A guard unlocked his cell. He gripped the bars with both hands and began a long, shrieking cry. It was a bone-chilling, wordless cry. The guards grabbed him, wrested him violently away from the bars. The old shirt and trousers were stripped off. His flailing arms and legs were forced into the new white shirt and fresh blue denims. The guards needed all their strength to hold him while the doctor taped the end of the stethoscope in place.”

“The deep-throated cry, alternately moaning and shrieking, continued. Leanderess had to be carried to the gas chamber, fighting, writhing all the way. As the witnesses watched in horror, the guards stuffed him into a chair. One guard threw his weight against the struggling little Negro while the other jerked the straps tight. They backed out, slammed the door on him.”

“Leanderess didn’t stop screaming or struggling. Associate Warden Rigg was about to signal for the dropping of the gas pellets when we all saw Riley’s small hands break free from the straps. He pulled at the other buckles, was about to free himself.”

“The Associate Warden withheld his signal. San Quentin had never executed a man raging wildly around the gas chamber. He ordered the guards to go in again and re-strap the frenzied man. One of the guards said later he had to cinch the straps down so tightly the second time that ‘he was ashamed of himself.’

“Again the door was closed. Again Leanderess managed to free his small, thin-wristed right hand from the straps. Rigg gave the order to drop the pellets. Working furiously, Leanderess freed his left hand. The chest strap came off next. Still shrieking and moaning, he was working on the waist strap when the gas hit him. He put both hands over his face to hold it away. Then his hands fell, his head arched back. His eyes remained open. His heartbeat continued to register for two minutes, but his shrieking stopped and his head slowly dropped.”

This horrendous display made no difference whatever to the State of California. Leanderess Riley was one of 196 inmates gassed there between the chamber’s installation in 1937 and the final gassing, that of multiple murderer David Mason on August 24, 1993.  Of those gassed 192 were men and four were women.

The ‘coughing box’ was later refitted for lethal injection.

On October 5, 1994 Federal District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled the gas chamber unconstitutional. No more would San Quentin’s inmates ride the elevator down from ‘Condemned Row’, while away their final hours in the ‘Ready Room’, walk their last mile and sit in the dreaded ‘coughing box.’ But that wasn’t the end of the story for the chamber itself. Instead, the chairs were removed and replaced by a gurney and lethal injection equipment. 11 inmates have since been executed within its cold steel walls, still painted apple green and still with the viewing windows for witnesses to watch them die. But none has fought like Leanderess Riley and no witnesses have fainted or vomited at the sight.

In the words of former death  watch guard Joseph Ferretti, himself a veteran of 126 executions, the death of Leanderess Riley was:

“The nastiest execution we ever had.”

It’s hard to see how it could have been anything else and, frankly, I’m not inclined to dwell on how exactly it could have been.

Stan Stanisclasse, 23, came to David Lewter’s West Palm Beach boxing gym in 2008, wanting to pick up some fighting techniques. Lewter was a boxing and kickboxing coach, and soon he began to see that the young man had real potential for success.

“He trained hard, he worked hard,” Lewter said. “He did what was asked of him, no questions asked.”

It wasn’t long before Stanisclasse had progressed to winning fights and entering competitions.

Just four years after first walking through the door, he was the 2012 State Golden Gloves Tournament champion for his weight class. The same year, he attempted to qualify for the Olympics but was eliminated by another fighter. Stanisclasse also trained himself in wrestling and mixed martial arts.

But Darrell Telisme’s career wasn’t going as well. He, too, had chosen Lewter’s gym as a launching pad and arrived there in 2010. His first mistake was bragging about how strong he was.

Lewter had him step into the ring with Stanisclasse, one of the best fighters there.

“Stan put a beating on him,” recalls the coach.

Undaunted, the 24-year-old Telisme kept coming back for more. The two had quite a few friendly matches, and the fact that he always lost only made Telisme more obsessed with challenging the champ to yet another encounter. Their growing rivalry intensified when the vastly more talented boxer refused to allow him a chance to fight for one of the titles he held.

Sensing that the feud between them was getting out of hand, Stanisclasse began to feel unsafe. He even asked a friend to lend him a firearm to protect himself from Telisme, whom he knew to be armed much of the time, and said he was considering buying one of his own.

On November 25, 2015, the two of them and a friend went out for pizza in West Palm Beach. After a few drinks, Telisme and Stanisclasse got into a heated argument about which of them was stronger. Stanisclasse said he could beat Telisme and agreed to a friendly fight.

They took it outside, where once again Stanisclasse got the better of him. Afterward, everything seemed fine. The group moved on to the Roof Top Lounge, where they drank some more, and the two boxers continued commenting back and forth about who was the better fighter. The three men said their goodbyes early Thanksgiving morning at Stanisclasse’s Palm Beach Shores apartment, and Telisme left.

But he wasn’t over it yet. At about four o’clock in the morning, he returned with another man and knocked on Stanisclasse’s door. His rival responded from inside, “The fight is over. It’s squashed.”

Telisme insisted that he come out. When Stanisclasse did so, fearfully insisting that Telisme first lift his shirt, he killed him with one shot to the head from a Colt .45 automatic pistol.

He then fled from the home and called a friend, telling him, “I didn’t mean to do it, I’m sorry.” After giving that person his home address, he said he would wait there for police.

Investigators found the murder weapon in his bedroom and took Telisme into custody. He told them that part of the evening was a “blur” because he had too much to drink.

Telisme was charged with first degree murder and carrying a concealed firearm.

“Mr. Stanisclasse held several championship titles but refused to accept a challenge from Mr. Telisme,” Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office investigators wrote in an affidavit. “Mr. Telisme felt he was missing his opportunity to advance in the boxing community.”

According to an arrest report, Telisme was angry that Stanisclasse was stronger than he was and wanted revenge after Stanisclasse had beaten him in a friendly fight that Wednesday evening.

“It’s really pretty pathetic and silly,” Lewter said of the shooting. “I can’t imagine what it was in his mind that made him think this was a better option than just letting it go. Because what’s the win here? Going to prison for the rest of your life?”