Michael Manning was the last prisoner executed in the Republic of Ireland, ending a centuries-old tradition of executions in the Emerald Isle and another tradition of their being performed almost entirely by British executioners.

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Dublin’s legendary Mountjoy Prison.

Michael Manning’s case was the last time a group of officials would assemble at Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison at 8am in the morning. Although number of other inmates received death sentences after he was hanged, none of them saw the inside of Mountjoy’s execution chamber. Staff and inmates alike had a quaint nickname for it. Inmates at Wandsworth in London crudely nicknamed it the ‘cold meat shed.’ Pentonville’s inmates still refer to the former site of theirs as ‘Crippen’s Grass’ (the shed itself no longer exists). Mountjoy folk still call it the ‘hanghouse.’

Michael Manning would Ireland’s last inmate to walk in and be carried out.

Ireland, not surprisingly given its history, has a strong tradition of abolitionism. The fact that many Irish folk met their ends standing on a gallows or facing a firing squad in the cause of Irish independence still weighs heavy with many Irish people, the symbol of State retribution was and is, to many Irish folk, a symbol of oppression. So strong was their distaste for it that, both before and after Irish independence, the Irish authorities were still obliged to use British executioners as Irishmen seldom applied for the job. Knowing the strength of feeling against them and their reason for visiting Ireland, both Thomas Pierrepoint and his nephew Albert made a point of taking precautions. Whenever they went across the Irish Sea on business, both men habitually went carrying guns. The execution of Michael Manning would be the last time a Pierrepoint, or any British executioner, would cross the Irish Sea on business.

Manning’s crime was brutal, the rape and murder of 65-year old nurse Catherine Copper in the city of Limerick on November 18, 1953. It’s fair to say that there was scant sympathy for him personally. There was no doubt that he’d committed the crime, after all. He was arrested after leaving a very distinctive hat at the crime scene.

At his trial, beginning on February 15, 1954 the defence attempted to plead insanity. They pointed out that Manning’s family had a history of mental illness and argued that the charge should therefore be reduced to manslaughter, a non-capital crime, and claimed there was no evidence of premeditation.

The prosecution, however, begged to differ. Granted, Manning (who blamed the crime on his being extremely drunk) could be proved to have been on a lengthy tour of Limerick’s pubs and bars on the day of the crime, even being refused service at one of them on account of his drunken state. But, they argued, he could also be proved to have altered his  routine on that day (in their view to allow himself more time to commit the crime) while his having stuffed clods of grass and earth into the victim’s mouth proved that he knew what he was doing was a crime and had deliberately tied to silence his victim. If he knew what he was doing and he knew that it was wrong, they argued, then the insanity plea didn’t hold water.

The judge sided with the prosecution. Manning would be tried for murder, an offence with a mandatory death sentence at the time.

The outcome was never really in any doubt. The jury were out for only three hours before rendering their verdict;

Guilty as charged.

The judge promptly donned the ‘Black Cap’ and passed the only sentence open to him;

Death by hanging.

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Chief Executioner Albert Pierrepoint.

This was something of an event. There hadn’t been a hanging in Ireland since that of William Gambon at Mountjoy on November 24, 1948. Gambon had been hanged by Albert Pierrepoint, the Pierrepoint family having a private deal with the Irish authorities dating back to when Albert’s uncle Thomas had worked for them. Thomas’s deal meant he could work either without any assistant at all (which he often did) or could bring along anyone who wanted to try their hand as an assistant executioner and who Thomas felt was up to actually doing the job. Albert’s very first hanging on December 29, 1932 (that of murderer Patrick McDermott) was at Mountjoy assisting Thomas.

Ireland had been the site of Albert’s first execution. Now Albert would carry out Ireland’s last.

As previously mentioned there was little sympathy for Manning. There was, however, immense sympathy for his young wife who was also expecting their first child. The baby was due, in fact, only weeks after Manning’s scheduled execution on April 20, 1954. Manning himself was keenly aware of that fact. With his appeal denied his only hope was a personal appeal to Irish President Eamon de Valera, de Valera being the only person with the authority to commute his sentence. His letter contained a poignant (if manipulative-sounding) passage;

‘I am not afraid to die as I am fully prepared to go before my God, but it is on behalf of my wife as she is so near the birth of our baby. Instead of one life being taken there could be three as it would be a big shock to my wife if the execution will be carried out on the date mentioned. So I would be grateful to you if you showed your mercy toward my wife and me.’

There was no mercy and no reprieve.

At 8am on April 20, 1954 the official party assembled at the ‘hanghouse’ for, unknowingly, the last time in Irish history. With Robert Leslie Stewart (known as ‘Jock’ or ‘the Edinburgh hangman’ for his Scottish roots) assisting, Pierrepoint did his job with his usual efficiency. For the last time in Ireland’s history a hooded, roped figure plunged through the floor as the trapdoors dropped with a deafening crash.

Michael Manning (and Ireland’s death penalty) had passed into history.

Manning’s widow showed immense dignity, fortitude and courage. She even wrote to the Governor of Mountjoy thanking him for the kindness with which he’d treated her husband before his execution. Part of her letter read;

‘We really adored each other and will until I join him in Heaven someday. I can assure you that Michael is also praying for you and he will return his thanks to you in some other way.’

It would be the last time a prisoner was carried out of the ‘hanghouse.’ No more would the lights in Mountjoy’s ‘Condemned Cell’ 24 hours a day until a hanging was carried out. Judges still occasionally donned the ‘Black Cap.’ Prisoners still occasionally heard what reporters once called the ‘dread sentence.’ Letters were still sent inviting Pierrepoint and his successors to perform their duties. Prisoners still sat in Mountjoy’s ‘Condemned Cell’ under 24-hour guard, what was known to prison staff as the ‘deathwatch.’ But none kept their date with the hangman.

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Robert Leslie ‘Jock’ Stewart, involved in the last hangings in both the UK and Ireland.

For Albert Pierrepoint, there was a certain symmetry to it. Mountjoy had been where his career began with the death of Patrick McDermott and he was there again when Ireland’s death penalty died too. In a sense the wheel had turned full circle. For ‘Jock’ Stewart too, there was a certain symmetry. In 1956 Pierrepoint would resign in a dispute over fees and expenses so new Chief Executioners were needed. Having been an assistant at Ireland’s last execution, Stewart would himself perform one of Britain’s two simultaneous last hangings. At 8am on August 13, 1964 he pulled the lever on Peter Anthony Allen at Walton Prison in Liverpool. At Strangeways Prison in Manchester, Harry Allen dropped John Robson Walby (alias Gwynne Owen Evans) at exactly the same time.

It wasn’t, however, the last time a section of the Irish population showed their depth of feeling toward capital punishment. Long before it was formally abolished in Ireland in 1990 there was a violent riot at Mountjoy in 1973 when executions were still technically a possibility. One of the first things rioting inmates did was to head straight for the end of D Wing to destroy a particular room.

Their target?

The ‘hanghouse.’

It was the day of The Derby when a peculiar smell alerted railway officials to a wooden trunk left at the Brighton Railway Station. An employee at the station quickly notified the police about the odd smell coming from the plywood trunk. When investigators arrived and pried open the trunk, the torso of a young woman was found stuffed inside. Her legs would turn up the following day at London’s Kings Cross Railway Station. As for the unidentified woman’s head and arms, neither were ever to be found.

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The Brighton Railway Station.

Several clues, including a special edition of The Daily Mail, printed specially for the London-area and dated May 31 and June 2, 1934, had been found inside the cheap trunk. A porter had also recalled assisting a man load up a trunk on the day of The Derby and said he had traveled from Dartford. Unfortunately, neither the man, nor the victim were ever identified.

Though investigators had no leads in the first victim’s case, the unsolved murder did lead investigators to an unrelated case of a second woman murdered and stuffed into a trunk. This discovery earned Brighton, known as “The Queen of Watering Places,” to become known by locals as “The Queen of Slaughtering Places.”

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Violette Kaye, the second woman to be found in a trunk.

The second victim was identified as Violette Kaye, a known prostitute and exotic dancer. Kaye had met a man named Toni Mancini. Mancini was no angel himself and had a long rap sheet for various petty crimes including theft and loitering.

The couple quickly moved in together in 1933, but their partnership was anything but perfect. The couple fought often. Mancini later admitted that on May 10, 1934, Kaye showed up drunk to the cafe he worked at and accused him of cheating on her with a teenage waitress. It was the last time anyone had reported spotting Kaye again until painters complained of an awful odor coming from a home Mancini had purchased on Kemp Street, close to the Brighton train station.

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Toni Mancini

Mancini had told friends that Kaye had traveled to Paris, and even police became concerned with their lack of run-ins with Violette Kaye and questioned Mancini extensively on her whereabouts. In a panic, Mancini sent a telegram to her sister-in-law, claiming it was from Kaye in order to report that she had found employment abroad. It was later found that the telegram had been sent from Brighton the day Kaye had been murdered.

By the time Mancini had packed up and moved to Kemp Street, Kaye’s body had begun to decompose horribly. He wheeled the trunk by handcart into his home and visitors often complained of the fluids and smells coming from the place. Fearing that the law was catching up to him, Mancini went on the run. He was later arrested in South East London.

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A police photo from Mancini’s bedroom.

Mancini’s trial lasted for five days, during which the validity of the forensic evidence against Mancini had been called into question. It was believed that Kaye’s cause of death had been a blow to the head, but Mancini’s defense focused heavily on Kaye’s taboo career choices and the high amount of morphine found in her bloodstream at the time of her death.

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The inside of the trunk, which doubled as Mancini’s coffee table when guests came to visit.

Mancini was found not guilty. He later admitted that he and Kaye had gotten into a heated argument that evening. Kaye attempted to attack Mancini with a hammer. Mancini managed to wrestle the hammer away from Kaye and threw it across the room, hitting her in the right temple. Mancini, fearing he would be sent to jail, shoved Kaye’s body into a trunk and used it as a table when entertaining guests until the time of the trunk’s discovery by investigators.

A strange case, this one. It’s unlikely that she would have got away with it in any case, so inept was her plan to murder her employer and inherit her property. That said, she sealed her fate well before the murder was even committed, becoming the third-from last woman in Britain to have a date with the hangman.

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Louisa Merrifield, the ‘Blackpool Poisoner.’

Born in 1906, Mrs. Merrifield (later to be known as ‘The Blackpool Poisoner’) wasn’t it seemed, the most likeable, competent or honest person you could wish to meet. By the time she and her third husband Alfred were employed as live-in domestic helpers by Sarah Ricketts in 1953, Merrifield had already held and lost over 20 jobs within the previous three years and served a prison sentence for fraud. That said, Ricketts was well known as being cantankerous, awkward and difficult to handle so she might have been pleased to secure any domestic help at all.

It wouldn’t be long before her pleasure proved entirely misplaced…

The Merrifields entered her service in March, 1953 and it didn’t take long for friction to develop. According to Ricketts the Merrifields seldom fed her well enough and, despite Ricketts being wealthy enough to own a home worth some £3000 (serious money in 1953) they also spent more of it on rum than on her upkeep.

Louisa, however, wasn’t too bothered. In fact, not only was she convinced that Ricketts liked her enough to leave her everything in her will, Merrifield also thought that the will would be read before too long as well. She also said as much, telling a number of people that Ricketts had died and left her the property even while Ricketts herself was still alive. Anyone pointing this out was met with what would later seem a most sinister (and incriminating) response:

“She’s not dead yet, but she soon will be…”

Merrifield was right because, unknown to Ricketts, her live-in housekeeper had bought something else with Ricketts’ money besides not enough food and too much rum…

Rodine.

The brand-name for this particular rodent poison is still in use today, your local supermarket may well have some on its shelves, in fact. But the recipe has changed considerably since 1953. For a start, it no longer contains copious amounts of white phosphorous. White phosphorous (known in the military as ‘Willy Pete’) is highly toxic, causing severe or even fatal liver damage if ingested, accidentally or otherwise. It makes a corpse glow in the dark and has a distinctive odour of garlic. Just strike a standard safety match and sniff, you’ll spot it immediately.

The Merrifields entered her service on March 12, 1953. It was only on April 10^th that Louisa called a Doctor Yule to visit and certify that Ricketts was mentally competent to make and sign a new will. So far, so normal (if a little speedy for some people’s liking).

Only days later on April 13^th a Doctor Wood was called out. He was more than slightly irritated to find he’d been called out for a patient who, aside from a mild case of bronchitis, was otherwise pretty healthy for somebody in their eighties.

The next day Sarah Ricketts was dead.

Doctor Yule was immediately suspicious. He was suspicious of an apparently healthy person dying for no particular reason. He was very suspicious when Merrifield admitted that Ricketts had been taken ill and died the day before, but she’d waited until the next day to avoid disturbing him. He was immensely suspicious when Merrifield told him that Ricketts last wish was to be cremated and interred as soon as possible.

Nothing doing, he said. British doctors have not only a right, but an obligation to refuse to issue a death certificate if they have any suspicions regarding an unexpected death. They also have to inform the Coroner and request an autopsy. Doctor Yule did all of those things by the book. It wasn’t long before the cause of death was uncovered; Phosphorous poisoning.

An investigation began immediately. It was soon discovered that Merrifield had repeatedly predicted the death of her new employer and had gone as far as claiming she was dead even while she was still alive. That was strong circumstantial evidence, more solid evidence came when the new will was examined and named Louisa Merrifield as beneficiary. Her having recently bought a tin of Rodine didn’t help her case much, either.

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339 Devonshire Road, Blackpool, the scene of the crime.

Both Louisa and Alfred were arrested. A search of their home didn’t uncover any Rodine, but it seemed sinister that an entire tin of it had vanished so soon after being bought. That form of Rodine (long since discontinued) was so toxic that a whole tin was unlikely to be emptied and thrown away in only a couple of weeks. Police suspicion about the Rodine wasn’t based on finding it, it was based on the fact that they hadn’t found it.

The autopsy report was the clincher. When confronted with internal organs and stomach contents that glowed in the dark and smelt of garlic, it was barely necessary to test for which poison detectives were looking for but, with a potential murder trial and a then-mandatory death sentence for murder, it was essential to have absolute confirmation. The confirmation came with some simple toxicology tests and examination of Sarah Ricketts’ liver.

Severe phosphorous poisoning.

The Merrifields were in serious trouble. The circumstantial scientific evidence were against them, especially against Louisa. Alfred, on the other hand, faced only a suggestion that he might have been involved. It was Louisa’s past record for fraud, her buying Rodine which then vanished and her repeated predictions of her employer’s imminent death that would doom her.

They were tried in July, 1953. It wasn’t long before Louisa had trapped herself in a web of dubious testimony, although without fully incriminating herself. But her seemingly-clairvoyant ability to predict her alleged victim’s death, her buying the poison believed to have killed Sarah Ricketts and her getting Ricketts to make a new will in Louisa’s favour weighed heavily with the jury. The timeline of events also caused them to think less than kindly toward her. So did Alfred’s seemingly lacking any knowledge of the plan, which saw the jury unable to agree whether he was innocent or guilty.

They didn’t take long to render their verdicts. Alfred found himself released without charge, the jury unable to decide whether he was guilty or innocent. Louisa, on the other hand, caused them no such disagreement. As far as they were concerned there was only one verdict and they quickly gave it.

Guilty, without any recommendation for mercy.

Barring a successful appeal or clemency from the Home Secretary (nowadays the Minister of Justice) Louisa Merrifield now had a date with the hangman. The hangman in question was Albert Pierrepoint who promptly received an official letter inviting him to perform her execution. A similar letter found its way to Robert Leslie Stewart, known as ‘Jock,’ inviting him to be Assistant Executioner on the day.

The day was September 18, 1953, only around six months between the crime and the execution. That wasn’t unusual, British law only allowed a minimum of three Sundays between sentencing and execution, time enough for a case to be argued before a three-judge panel at the Court of Criminal Appeal and, if that failed, for a prisoner’s lawyer to make a last-ditch appeal to the Home Secretary. There was, allegedly, an unwritten rule that Home Secretaries didn’t grant executive clemency to poisoners. If that rule did exist then it was adhered to. Neither appeal was granted.

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Chief Executioner Albert Pierrepoint.

For Pierrepoint, executing women was no different to his usual approach. He simply prepared in the usual way and did the job as he normally would. When once asked by a journalist how it felt to hang Ruth Ellis in 1955 (Britain’s last woman to go to the gallows) he responded by reminding the reporter that he’d hanged Styllou Christofi in 1954, asking “Wasn’t she a woman too..?”

The fact that Ellis’s case aroused vehement debate and strong public sympathy (Christofi’s didn’t) seemed somewhat lost on the reporter concerned.

In fact, Merrifield was only one of many women who died quickly, cleanly and efficiently at Pierrepoint’s very experienced hands. ‘Jock’ Stewart’s opinion isn’t a matter of record, but he did the job perfectly well. With Louisa Merrifield buried in quicklime inside the walls of Strangeways Prison the job was done.

Pierrepoint would quit in 1956 in a dispute over fees and expenses. Stewart would rise to be a Senior Executioner who conducted one of Britain’s simultaneous final executions, that of Peter Anthony Allen at Strangeways Prison in Manchester on August 13, 1964.

In the meantime, according to the terms of Sarah Ricketts’ new will, Alfred Merrifield had done rather well out of her death and that of his loose-lipped wife. Shortly after Alfred became a widower, courtesy of Albert Pierrepoint and his late wife’s loose lips, he inherited a half-share of Louisa Ricketts’ bungalow.

To the naked eye, Charles Whitman seemed like any other student attending the University of Texas. As a former Marine, Whitman took full advantage of the paid scholarship opportunity the military offered him and quickly applied to a mechanical engineering program. The university graciously accepted Whitman with open arms. The following year Whitman would meet his wife, Kathleen Frances Leissner, and after only five months of courtship she would agree to marry him.

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Whitman poses with his wife Kathleen.

On the outside it would seem that Whitman was on his way to great things. A new bride and a fast track on to a great career, but as we know all too well here, looks can be very deceiving. Whitman’s grades were unimpressive at best and he found himself in hot water over a “prank” where he shot down a deer and skinned it in a dorm shower. The university had been fed up with Whitman and by 1963, just two years into his program, the USMC revoked his scholarship and ordered him to serve out the rest of his five-year enlistment.

Whitman was stationed to Camp Lejeune in February of 1963. Though he was an exemplary Marine, Whitman had developed somewhat of a gambling problem through the years and even the threat of a court marshal wasn’t enough for him to kick his habit. That November, in addition to gambling, Whitman had finally been court marshaled for a number of infractions including carrying a personal firearm on base and threats made to another Marine over a small loan. He was sentenced to 30 days imprisonment and an additional 90 days of hard labor. He was also demoted from lance corporal to private.

By 1965, Whitman had been writing regularly in a journal on his frustrations regarding the Marines, his family and his love for his wife. He began seeking out psychological consultations from a number of doctors through the University of Texas Heath Center. One doctor described Whitman as having violent outbursts with little to no provocation and his heavy abuse of amphetamines more than likely did little to help the underlining issue.

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Whitman’s Journal

A year later Whitman would begin his preparations for one of the most bloodiest massacres in recent Texas history.

It was just after midnight on August 1^st, 1966 when Whitman drove to his mother’s apartment. He stabbed her in the heart as she slept. Next to her body he placed a note:

“To Whom It May Concern:

I have just taken my mother’s life. I am very upset over having done it. However, I feel that if there is a heaven she is definitely there now […] I am truly sorry […] Let there be no doubt in your mind that I loved this woman with all my heart.”

Whitman then returned to his home and stabbed his wife Kathleen three times as she slept. There he left a suicide note, which included a partial explanation for the murders. Portions of it read:

“I do not quite understand what it is that compels me to type this letter. Perhaps it is to leave some vague reason for the actions I have recently performed. I do not really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately (I cannot recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts.”

and

“I imagine it appears that I brutally killed both of my loved ones. I was only trying to do a quick thorough job […] If my life insurance policy is valid please pay off my debts […] donate the rest anonymously to a mental health foundation. Maybe research can prevent further tragedies of this type […] Give our dog to my in-laws. Tell them Kathy loved “Schocie” very much […] If you can find in yourselves to grant my last wish, cremate me after the autopsy.”

Whitman did not elude to the rest of his plan. Those who have studied Whitman’s crimes speculate that the murder of both his wife and mother were to save them the shame and embarrassment of his actions.

At approximately 5:45 AM Whitman phoned Kathleen’s employer and told them that she was feeling ill and would not be into work that morning. He also took the time to place a similar phone call to his mother’s place of employment.

Later that morning Whitman would report to the Austin Rental Company where he rented a hand truck, then went to the bank where he cashed $250 worth of bogus checks. Whitman took the money and immediately went to a hardware store where he purchased eight boxes of ammunition, a couple extra magazines and a Universal M1 carbine. He explained to the cashier that he was going on a hunting trip.

From there Whitman went to Chuck’s Gun Shop in order to purchase four more carbine magazines, six more boxes of ammo and gun cleaning solvent. One would think that he had purchased everything necessary to follow through with his plan at this point, but Whitman wasn’t finished.

Driving to a local Sears store, Whitman purchased one more item. A Sears model 12-gauge shotgun.

Whitman took all of his weapons home and got to work. He sawed off the barrel and the butt stock of the shotgun, then loaded it along with five other guns, 700 rounds of ammunition, food, coffee, vitamins, earplugs, Dexedrine, water, matches, rope, binoculars, lighter fluid, a machete, several other knives, a transistor radio, a razor and some deodorant into a footlocker. He packed this all up into his car and started heading towards the University of Texas campus at around 11 AM that morning.

Arriving on campus, Whitman provided a security guard with false identification as a research assistant in order to obtain free 40-minute parking. He then loaded his personal arsenal onto the hand truck he had rented and pushed it towards the observation tower. When he arrived to the campus’ main building he became frustrated by the fact that the elevator had not been operational. A kindly employee switched it on for him.

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The clock tower on the University of Texas campus.

From there Whitman road the elevator up to the 27^th floor, then dragged the dolly up the last flight of stairs necessary to reach the observation tower. On the last floor he encountered a receptionist. He hit 51-year-old Edna Townsley in the head with the butt of his rifle twice before dragging her body behind a couch. A young couple came in from the observation deck and saw the blood on the floor, but assumed that the stain had been from some sort of varnish and that Whitman was there to shoot pigeons. They exchanged pleasantries before the couple went on their way.

Whitman had just finished barricading the stairway as two families attempted to access the them, believing that they were in place to clean the reception area and that Whitman had been the janitor. Whitman began firing at the families. Mark and Mike Garbor were the first to be shot, their mother Mary Garbor was also shot in the head, but survived.

Also in the reception area was Marguerite Lamport. Whitman shot her in the chest before shooting and finishing the job on Edna Townsley.

With his plan in motion, Whitman stepped onto the observation deck. There he began shooting at passerbys indiscriminately. After 20 minutes 13 people would be shot dead, two would later die of their injuries sustained, and an additional 31 people would be wounded.

Civilian responders returned fire with Whitman, forcing him to seek shelter while waiting for police, Texas Rangers and the Texas Department of Public Safety to arrive. Police attempted to use a small airplane to shoot at Whitman, but Whitman was quick to return fire and the mission was aborted for safety reasons.

Three police deputies and a civilian were tasked with entering into the tower. At 1:24 PM, Officer Ramiro Martinez entered into the South entrance, while the other officers and civilian Alan Crum circled around to the other entrance in order to trap Whitman. Whitman was crouched in a corner, shielded by the lights on the deck tower. As the officers began making their move, Alan Crum’s rifle accidentally discharged, momentarily distracting Whitman. It was in that instant that the officers, along with Crum, began firing at Whitman.

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Martinez later credited the many civilian responders that day with assisting in saving the lives of many people, by forcing Whitman to take shelter. The incident later led to the creation of the S.W.A.T. Team in states across the country.

The tower would remain closed for the better part of the 25 years following the shooting. It reopened in 1999, but visitors are only allowed access through guided tours.

It was on the morning of July 7, 1992, when two teenagers went to explore Gourd Creek Cave, a little-known secluded spot in Phelps County, Missouri. The teens parked at the head of the trail and started their hike towards the cave, but their hike had ended abruptly. In the middle of the trail was a pool of blood. As their eyes scanned the area they spotted a body halfway in the creek.

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Gourd Creek Cave

Blood was streaming from the gunshot wound in the man’s head and, in spite of the flies that had been gathering around the ghastly sight, the body looked relatively fresh. The teens sprinted back to their grandfather’s home and called the police. It was less than an hour later that the Phelps County sheriff’s department and State Highway patrol officials arrived on the scene.

Investigators were able to find a few pieces of evidence around the scene including a piece of carpet, a cigarette butt, a plastic laundry basket near the body and a muddy shoe print. These items were photographed before being bagged and tagged accordingly and taken back to headquarters.

Using phone numbers found in the man’s wallet, police were able to identify the man as 26-year-old sawmill worker Jerry Wayne King. Investigators began tracing his final movements and it would be less than 24-hours later that they would have a suspect in custody.

Bill Harrison had been a long-time drinking buddy of King’s. Both were known to run in a crowd who believed in the philosophy of working hard and partying even harder, and that Independence Day weekend in 1992 was no exception. The party lasted through the weekend and spilled over into the week. Harrison was one of the last people known to have seen King alive.

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Bill Harrison

According to Harrison, a mobile home repairman, King had placed a $100 deposit down on a trailer Harrison was intending to rent out. The deal ended up falling through and Harrison told King that he would be forced to keep King’s deposit since he lost two months of rent on the trailer holding it for him. Harrison claims that there were no hard feelings over the deal, but some say Harrison was angry over the situation.

It was that Monday that Harrison would drive to King’s home in Cuba, Missouri where King was hosting a party of his own. According to witnesses, Harrison told King that night that he would give King his deposit back if he agreed to drive back to his place with him to get the money. The pair arrived at Harrison’s home in Rolla at around 1 AM. Harrison’s stepdaughter was still awake watching TV and he spoke with his wife briefly, telling her that he had to “take care of business” before leaving again with King.

Harrison says that after that King wanted to keep drinking and Harrison, plenty drunk himself at that point, was done for the night. He dropped King off at a local bar and the pair went their separate ways. Harrison drove to another man house named John Lister and convinced him to drive him back to his cabin in Gasconade where the men had spent the weekend partying. There, Harrison says that he and Lister drank a couple beers and ate some barbecue before calling it a night.

Two days later the men would learn that not only had their friend been murdered, but that Bill Harrison was the primary suspect.

Prosecutors say that Harrison had changed his story. Initially they were told that Harrison had last seen King at 10:30 PM that night when he dropped him off at the bar, then he spent the rest of the evening party hopping with friends. It wasn’t until Harrison’s wife claimed seeing the men together at 1 AM that Harrison quickly changed his story in order to reflect the changes in the timeline.

In spite of what may have appeared as an open and shut case, investigators had little evidence to pin the crime to Harrison. No possible murder weapons were found in Harrison’s possession and there were no eyewitnesses to the crime. The only piece of evidence they could match to Harrison was the imprint of a Reebok athletic shoe found in the mud, and even that was flimsy at best, since rain had washed away some of the impression. A few witnesses were able to offer testimony on Harrison’s character and a possible motive, but the case fell apart in the three months Harrison spent behind bars awaiting trial.

The prosecution had no choice but to set Harrison free without prejudice.

Harrison had spent the better part of 23 years picking up the pieces of his life. He had lost friends and had lost his job, but he was getting by. He found a job working at a Walmart distribution center and led a quiet life with his wife, helping to raise his grandchild. Bill Harrison had no idea that his life would be turned upside down again when the former prosecutor decided to pick up where he had left off and assembled a team to help him reopen the cold case.

Focusing on Harrison, John Lister and another man they had been partying with that weekend named Henry Faulkner, investigators believed that all three had a hand in King’s murder and knew a lot more than they had been letting on.

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Mugshot of Bill Harrison from his second arrest for the murder of Jerry King.

One witness claimed to have seen a maroon sedan, similar to the car Lister drove at the time entering the head of the trail. The witness claimed to have spoken with the driver, who matched Lister’s description, and had been told he was waiting for someone to speak to about a Jeep engine on the night King was last known to be alive.

The prosecution obtained a warrant and all three men were forced to submit a DNA sample. Though they still had no physical evidence or eyewitnesses to the murder, they were confident that they were on the right track and would be able to put together a solid timeline that would be convincing enough to bring the case to trial.

Harrison was at work when two detectives came and wanted to ask him questions. Harrison never returned to work that day. Instead he was arrested and spent another two months in jail, later ordered to home confinement, as investigators scrambled to put together a convincing case against him.

Like the first time, getting a conviction against Harrison was a slippery slope. The second trial was ruled a mistrial after evidence for the prosecution fell into the hands of the defense. The third time around, after careful review, it was determined that there wasn’t enough evidence for the state to convict Harrison, nor Lister or Faulkner. They had no choice but to allow Harrison to walk, again without prejudice.

Harrison was disappointed that he never got to see his day in court. He wanted to hear for himself the jury say “not guilty” and vindicate him of the crime, he claims, he’s been falsely accused of. Prosecutors say that Harrison was able to get away with murder. As for the King family, they may never see the day that justice has been served for their fallen loved one.

Not a name many readers will be familiar with, I know, but this otherwise unexceptional killer made Oklahoma history on December 10, 1915. He wasn’t just Oklahoma’s first convict to take a seat in Oklahoma State Penitentiary’s newly-built ‘Old Sparky,’ but the first of 82 in Oklahoma and the very first inmate electrocuted West of the Mississippi. Unlike back East in States like New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, Old Sparky never caught on as much in the West. Texas didn’t adopt it until 1924. New Mexico seldom used it, either. Western and South-Western States, particularly Nevada, Arizona and California, were far more fond of the gas chamber known to America’s condemned as the ‘Big Sleep,’ the ‘Coughing box’ or, in California, the ‘Little Green Room.’

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Oklahoma State Penitentiary near McAlester, AKA ‘Big Mac.’

Prior to Bookman the Oklahoma counties were in charge of executing their own inmates and they tended toward the traditional method of hanging. A prisoner was sentenced, the gallows was built, their appeals were filed and frequently denied (especially if they were black) and locals would take the day off work, stop by the county jail and see Oklahoma law take its course. At least they did until Governor Lee Cruce (a noted death penalty opponent) took office.

During his administration 22 out of 23 condemned prisoners received clemency. The exception occurred only days into Cruce’s tenure and he swore there wouldn’t be another execution on his watch. His replacement in 1915, R.L. Williams, wasn’t nearly as obliging. Williams wasn’t a butcher by any means, but he didn’t feel a need to offer blanket clemency to any condemned criminal who wanted it, either.

Williams having taken over on January 1, 1915, Henry Bookman’s timing was way off. If he’d murdered local farmer Rich Hardin with a shotgun on April 2, 1914 then he’d have almost certainly avoided an unwilling place in Oklahoma history. He didn’t. Bookman committed his murder on April 2, 1915 and so was squarely in the firing line.

Oklahoma hadn’t had a hanging since the earliest days of Cruce’s tenure. They wouldn’t have a hanging under Williams, either. But there would be executions, just by a different method and under a different authority. No longer would Oklahoma’s condemned perform the hangman’s hornpipe outside the county jail. Instead they would do the hot squat at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary under the supervision of State, not county, officialdom. Henry Bookman was about to become the first.

On April 2 Rich Hardin had stopped by thee farm worked by George Booth near the ton of Fame in McIntosh County looking to buy a buggy wheel. Bookman, a farmhand, had arrived shortly after him. According to Bookman he’d exchanged harsh words with Hardin who had threatened to kill him and grabbed a double-barrelled shotgun. Bookman claimed to have wrestled the shotgun from him and shot him in self-defence. George Booth’s wife Lizzie, however, remembered very differently.

According to her Bookman had arrived, stated he felt unwell and asked her to mix him a tonic. She went to her kitchen to do so, hearing no sound of a confrontation. What she did hear were two shotgun blasts. Hurrying back outside she also saw Bookman pounding Hardin’s head with the butt of the shotgun. Intending to leave, Bookman was persuaded to stay, possibly with the same shotgun he’d used on Hardin.

Bookman was arrested at the scene. On April 3 the Sheriff had him spirited away to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary at McAlester after two lynch mobs had tried to take him from the county jail. There he would remain for the rest of his life except for court appearances. Old Sparky, meanwhile, had been installed in a basement building under Warden R.W. Dick’s office in H Block. Witnesses would be separated from the chair by only a chain-link fence bearing a bluntly-worded notice:

‘Crime Does Not Pay.’

It wouldn’t be long before Sparky was called into action…

Oklahoma justice moved a great deal faster in 1915, especially when prison officials were looking to try something new. Old Sparky, of course, wasn’t new in many places but had never been used West of the Mississippi. Bookman might have been an unexceptional criminal, but his demise was considered anything but unexceptional. Warden Dick would have his hands full making the arrangements from finding an executioner to choosing the guest list. The regulations provided for no more than twelve witnesses, but Dick was well aware that, this time, there would be a particularly large number of applications.

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Sparky’s lair, the basement death chamber at McAlester.

Bookman, meanwhile, was either shamming insanity or slowly going insane depending on whose opinion you asked for. According to a report in the Tulsa World (which gave plenty of column inches to the impending debut of Old Sparky):

‘He heeds no remarks addressed to him, but keeps in a continuous death chant which, in its weird execution, grates on the nerves. Prison officials are loath to admit that he (Bookman) is crazy.’

Whether he was or wasn’t going mad is open to debate. Granted, he did make two suicide attempts while waiting to ride the lightning. That said, he also retained a surprising degree of awareness of his impending fate for somebody whose mind was allegedly disintegrating around him. In the period before his execution he took great pleasure in sending requests to the prison orchestra, mainly asking to hear spirituals and old classics, especially ‘Mama Don’t Know Where I’m At.’

His first date was set for August 6, only weeks after his conviction and only four months after the murder of Rich Hardin. This was stayed until October 6 to hear his appeal. On October 6, the courts needing a little more time to hear his case, he received another stay until October 11. This time the Oklahoma courts were ready and waiting with a denial of his appeal and a new death warrant. Barring any additional court action (highly unlikely, given that Bookman couldn’t afford a lawyer) or Governor’s clemency (equally unlikely for the black killer of a popular white victim in 1915 Oklahoma) he was slated to die on December 10.

As expected there was no further court action. Governor Williams was equally unforthcoming, stating on December 3 that he wouldn’t interfere in the court’s decision. Preparations at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, already well advanced, picked up speed.

An executioner was found. According to Rich Owens (who replaced him) the original executioner came from Arkansas and was fired after turning up drunk to his first couple of executions. It’s just possible that it might have been the same one who so terribly botched the March, 1922 electrocution of Arkansas murderer and escapee James Wells. Owens, however, had no qualms whatsoever about throwing the switch, nor did he lack the technical skill. The chair was repeatedly tested, a set of lightbulbs attached to a wooden board were used to test both the connection and the flow of current. When all the bulbs glowed brightly the current was right for the job. Warden Dick finally whittled down the witness applications, although the twelve witnesses required under State law had increased to 68 people turning out to watch Henry Bookman die.

Bookman, meanwhile was still either going mad or pretending to. In his last days he made a few requests, most of which were granted. Where possible, prison staff often grant requests from condemned inmates that would be refused to other inmates, especially when their date is near and time is clearly running out. Warden Dick was no exception. Bookman asked, having been in a basement cell since his arrival, for one last view of daylight before he died. Dick agreed. When Bookman asked for the prison orchestra to play some of his favourite songs during his final couple of days, Dick agreed. Dick couldn’t provide the black suit Bookman asked to wear to his death, but a suit was provided albeit of a brown and blue jacket and trousers.

Just after midnight on December 10 the grim ritual began. Bookman met reporters as they stood outside his cell. Talking with them, he shook their hands through the cell bars, saying:

“I’m going to walk right in and walk right through t like a man. Ain’t that the way to do it..?”

He kept his promise to within a few steps of the chair when, his nerve faltering, he was supported by Chaplain A.B. Johnson and Night Sergeant Charles Campbell. As the straps and electrodes were fixed he said:

“Be good, boys. Oh Lord, have mercy on my soul.”

The switch was thrown. Before the 68 witnesses including E.H. Hardin, son of Bookman’s victim, 2400 volts seared through Bookman’s body for ten seconds. The prison doctor waited for Bookman’s body to cool before examining him, only to find he was still alive. Another jolt of 2400 volts was needed, this time for 17 seconds. This time the doctor was satisfied.

Henry Bookman was dead.

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In 1915 Henry Bookman was Oklahoma’s first electrocution. In 1966, James French was its last.

They kept his body for several days as he’d asked them to send him to his mother’s home in Chico, Texas. With no word from her, her son was instead interred within McAlester’s grim stone walls where he still remains. Old Sparky long outlived Bookman. He was only the first of 82 inmates to walk into that basement room and be wheeled out. The last was murderer James French in 1966 whose suggestion to reporter Bob Gregory (covering his execution) has also entered penal history:

“If I were covering my execution, do you know what I’d say in the newspaper headline..?”

“’French Fries.’ See ya.”

Henry Bookman, on December 10, 1915, was the first convict in Oklahoma to die in the electric chair. Fast forward to 1966, 51 years and 80 convicts later, and James French was the last. French was also an unusual character. He was the last in Oklahoma to face electrocution. His was the penultimate execution before an unofficial moratorium on executions in the USA, Luis Monge (in Colorado’s gas chamber on June 2, 1967) being the last American executed before the Supreme Court’s historic ruling in Furman vs Georgia in 1972. He was also the only Death Row inmate who was actually executed in 1966 throughout the entire country.

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James French, Oklahoma’s last convict to ride the lightning.

What particularly sets him apart, though, is that he turns the death penalty’s usefulness as a deterrent on its head. French actually wanted to die despite being too afraid to take his own life. The State of Oklahoma, however, wasn’t as concerned about the logic of killing somebody who already wanted to die in the hope of discouraging further killing. French had killed once already and escaped a death sentence. With French’s second murder conviction, Oklahoma seems to have adopted the old carpenter’s principle of ‘Measure twice, cut once.’

Born in 1936, French was a career crook, having been in jail more than once already. While hitch-hiking through the Texas Panhandle in 1958 he was lucky enough to get a ride from Frank Boone. Boone, however, wasn’t lucky in picking up James French. French let Boone take him as far as Oklahoma before shooting him, robbing his body and stealing his car. It wasn’t long before Oklahoma cops caught him driving Boone’s car and he drew a life sentence for Boone’s murder. French confessed to the murder, stating:

“Why not? I was guilty as Hell.”

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Oklahoma State Penitentiary near McAlester, AKA ‘Big Mac.’

Locked up for life in the much-feared Oklahoma State Penitentiary, French conceived a plan. Apparently he wanted to die and, if he couldn’t summon the nerve to destroy himself, he knew that with a second murder conviction the State of Oklahoma would willingly do it for him. A second murder conviction meant a quick trial, an equally quick conviction and French being shipped from McAlester’s general population to the Death Row cells in the basement near to where Old Sparky awaited Oklahoma’s condemned.

Enter (and just as abruptly exit) French’s cell-mate Eddie Lee Shelton…

French disliked Shelton intensely which, as you can probably appreciate, is a bit of a problem when the gruesome twosome spent most of their lives sharing a cell the size of a parking space. Shelton, though, did have one redeeming feature in French’s eyes. He was within arm’s length, not overly popular among other inmates and, if French strangled him, French would get his wish. On October 27, 1961 French did exactly that.

He also described Shelton as a rotten tomato that, left alive, would ruin the other tomatoes in society’s barrel. Warming to his theme of being Shelton’s self-appointed executioner, he also admitted to letting Shelton breakfast with him before the murder as a condemned prisoner is traditionally entitled to a last meal. Not behaviour likely to convince an Oklahoma judge and jury that he was deserving of a second life sentence when Old Sparky was waiting in the wings.

As French himself later described Shelton:

“He deserved to die. And now because of what I’ve done, I deserve to die too.”

Score another one for Old Sparky.

Die James French certainly would, but not as quickly as he’d hoped. Granted, Oklahoma isn’t in the habit of allowing murderers to commit the same crime twice and expect to get away with a second life sentence. It didn’t then and it doesn’t now. But Oklahoma wasn’t (and isn’t) New York in the 1920’s and 30’s or California in the 1940’s when judges handed out death sentences as though they were giving out Christmas presents. For French, though, the resulting death sentence was a gift. The only thing he really minded was how long they were taking to give it to him.

French was as keen to die as the State were to kill him. A curious character of above-average intelligence, his IQ being 117, French had a record as long as McAlester’s razor wire fence. He’d completed high school and two years of a college degree while serving time in a Federal prison on unrelated charges. He was, all things considered, a very odd and seemingly very troubled young man.

Despite his self-professed desire to die and his claims to be unafraid of a seat in Old Sparky, Oklahoma authorities seemed, in his view, annoyingly reluctant to get it over and done with. Between his crime in 1961 and his walking the Last Mile in 1966 French’s conviction was overturned and his case retried twice, along with numerous stays of execution. After his third conviction he even begged his family not to intervene, to simply let his case and the law take their course and just let him die.

As French put it to reporters:

“I killed him, right? Now they kill me. Simple.”

‘Suicide by cop’ where a person forces police to use lethal force is well-known and widely reported. ‘Suicide by executioner’ however, isn’t. It’s not nearly as rare as people might think, even if you separate those who kill in the hope of being executed from the ‘volunteers’ who give up their appeals and want to end their lives rather than spend the rest of them in a cell. California serial killer Harvey Glatman was convicted in 1958 and gassed in 1959, largely because he refused any attempt to secure a commutation or reprieve.

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Harvey Glatman

Glatman walked into San Quentin’s ‘Condemned Row’ in January, 1959 and was carried out of its gas chamber on September 18, 1959. Largely because Glatman decided he wanted to die. He still holds the record for the shortest time spent by any condemned inmate in 20^th century California between sentencing and execution. James French seemed to be of a similarly impatient disposition, although reluctant to comprehend that the Oklahoma justice system wasn’t being run for his personal convenience.

Still, as the days passed into months, French’s wait within H Block before his dates with death and destiny grew ever shorter. The courts were tired of French. Prison staff were tired of French. French was tired of life and, especially, people he viewed as making entirely unwanted efforts to prolong his even when he’d made it abundantly clear he didn’t actually want them to. With that in mind, by August, 1966 practically everybody concerned just wanted the James French Show to finish its run.

It would do just after midnight on August 10. But, like all good Death Row dramas, it would have one final, particularly memorable twist in the tale. It wouldn’t be last-minute proof of innocence, the Governor wouldn’t call just as the executioner’s hand grasped the switch, it would come in the form of French’s, shall we say, rather unique sense of humour.

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Sparky’s lair, the basement death chamber at McAlester.

Bob Gregory was one of many reporters with an interest in the French case. He visited French at McAlester more than once to talk with him about his crimes and his bizarre motive for committing them. After French’s death sentence was confirmed for the last time he interviewed French and came away with a scoop that still appears in Internet list articles and memes even today, fifty years after French died.

French asked him:

“If I were covering my execution, do you know what I’d say in the newspaper headline?”

Gregory said to him:

“‘French Fries.’ See ya…”

Fry he would. The saga finally ended on August 10, 1966. French was prepared for execution, his head and leg shaved for the electrodes. He walked firmly from his cell to the grim basement room in H Block below the Warden’s office where, 51 years before, Henry Bookman had inaugurated Old Sparky. While Bookman was there at the beginning, James French would be there at the end. He stood before the chair as the Warden asked him for any final words, stating simply:

“Everything’s already been said.”

With that he sat down to be strapped and capped. At a silent signal from the Warden 2400 volts ripped through his body for 45 seconds. A second, similar jolt was delivered to be certain that French had indeed finally got his wish. He had. It would be the last time an Oklahoma convict rode the lightning.

Like so many people who find themselves taking a notable place in the annals of crime, Texas native Charles Brooks was an otherwise unexceptional individual. The interesting part of his case lies not in what he did, but in how he was punished for it. Born in Fort Worth on January 9, 1942, before his final incarceration he’d served time in Texas, Louisiana and the feared Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. He would die for his crime at the notorious Huntsville Unit in Texas on December 7, 1982. Like New York’s William Kemmler in 1890 and Nevada’s Gee Jon in 1924, Brooks would share the dubious distinction of being the first American executed by a brand new method;

Lethal injection.

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Contrary to what some might think Texas wasn’t the first State to adopt it. That was, in fact, Oklahoma which had retired ‘Old Sparky’ after the execution of James French in 1966. Unfortunately for French, newspaper didn’t use the headline he suggested (‘French Fries.’), but French’s loss has been many an internet humorist’s gain. Shocking, when you think about it.

Brooks, later to convert to Islam while on Death Row and name himself Shareef Ahmad Abdul-Rahim, committed the murder of mechanic David Gregory on December 14, 1976. While Brooks drew the death penalty, co-defendant Woody Lourdes received forty years. The fact that neither Lourdes or Brooks would admit who fired the shot caused the prosecutor to seek the death penalty for both of them. Later, during Brooks’s final days on Death Row, even the prosecutor himself would join Brooks’s lawyers to argue that to execute one rather than both was unjust. His opinion failed to influence anyone who could have stayed the executioner’s hand, fair though his point might have been.

Both were convicted of abducting Gregory from the used car lot he worked by taking one of the cars for a test drive. So far, so normal. The normality ended with Gregory tied to a chair in a seedy motel room, gagged and shot once in the head. Initially, both men were condemned, but Lourdes won a hearing for a new sentence and, unusually for a cold-blooded murder in Texas, found himself resentenced. Brooks, on the other hand, languished in the notoriously tough confines of the Texas death house.

The crime had been both brutal and unnecessary. The trial, it seemed, had been fair and Texan justice (usually pretty tough-minded) had been served. Charlie Brooks would pay for his crime like so many other Texan killers. Only not quite…

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Prior to 1924, individual counties executed their condemned by hanging. In 1924 the decision was made for the State to take over and centralise executions at the newly-built death house at Huntsville. Not everybody liked the idea. Huntsville’s then-Warden, viewing prison as a place to reform and rehabilitate offender and not kill them, immediately resigned in protest. Someone else was needed to throw the switch on the ‘Texas Thunderbolt’ and a replacement Warden was duly found. Between 1924 and 1964, Huntsville oversaw the departure of no less than 364 ‘thunderbolt jockeys.’ Oddly, both the first and last men electrocuted in Texas were named Johnson. Even more oddly it wasn’t the first time the name Charles Brooks had adorned a Death Row nametag, his namesake having sat ridden the thunderbolt for murder on May 31, 1938. Another curious custom, apparently, was that, unlike in other States where a prisoner walking their last mile might be greeted with the brutally blunt words ‘Dead man walking.’ In Texas they started their final walk with an almost-childlike remark;

“We’re going to see Old Sparky.”

But that was then. Now the needle awaited its grand debut, Charles Brooks wanted to avoid assisting in it and, this method never having been used before, prisons in other States and the American media were watching very closely.

They were not to be disappointed. First the Texas Court of Criminal Appeal washed their hands of him. Then the US Supreme Court voted 6-3 against allowing another stay of execution. Finally the Texas State Board of Pardons and Paroles, as a rule seldom keen to grant either pardons or paroles to murderers, decided by a 2-1 vote not to give him a pardon, parole or stay, either. As the Texas State Governor is bared under State law from commuting a death sentence without the Board’s recommendation, it seemed that criminal history was about to be made.

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The authorities were hoping it wouldn’t be similar history to that of Kemmler and Jon. Both making their debuts, officials New York’s Auburn Prison bungled Kemmler’s execution so terribly that witnesses collapsed and the world’s first electrocution was almost its last. As George Westinghouse bluntly put it:

“They would have done better with an axe.”

Gee Jon’s death in a hastily improvised gas chamber went slightly better. Granted, he died far more quickly than Kemmler, but if somebody hadn’t noticed a strong smell of bitter almonds the leaking chamber might well have despatched all the official witnesses as well. Nobody wanted Charlie Brooks to be another Kemmler or Jon.

Brooks had arrived for his second stay in a Texas prison as inmate ‘EX-592’ on April 25, 1978. In Texas Death Row inmates are numbered in order of their death sentence, so Brooks was 592^nd condemned inmate to wear the ‘EX’ prefix (short for ‘executee’) on his mugshot. Conditions were better than his first visit as ‘Inmate 214019,’ but security was tighter. With the needle’s debut in mind the authorities took every possible precaution to keep him alive until the big day.

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This time, the prayers of all involved (except possibly Charles Brooks himself) were answered. After a huge last meal (a tradition Texas has since discontinued) of T-bone steak, French fries, ketchup, biscuits, Worcestershire sauce, peach cobbler and ide tea, Brooks was strapped securely to a stretcher and wheeled into Huntsville’s death chamber. There he spoke his final words, a brief prayer to Allah. At 12:09am on December 7, 1982 an anonymous ‘technician’ started to administer a three-drug sequence of sodium pentathol, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride.  At 12:16am it was over according to plan and criminal history had been made.

Charles Brooks was dead.

Just as the electric chair and gas chamber had caught on, swiftly replacing the gallows almost everywhere in the United States, the seemingly quick end of Charles Brooks had a similar effect. State after State discarded ‘Old Sparky’ and the ‘Coughing Box’ in favour of the new technology. Today, a few States offer inmates a choice, but lethal injection has almost entirely consigned its predecessors to history. But not quite…

With the European Union ordering its resident drug companies not to provide the drugs used in lethal injection, increasing difficulties in obtaining them lawfully elsewhere and the American public increasingly doubting the death penalty’s usefulness, some States have gone back in time. Missouri has considered building another gas chamber. Oklahoma is considering a brand-new gas chamber using the (apparently) more humane nitrogen gas instead of cyanide. Tennessee has dusted off its electric chair and Florida has threatened to do likewise.

A series of botched executions using different and untested drugs to replace those often unavailable hasn’t helped the needle’s case, either. It seems perhaps that some American legislators, resenting what they see as foreigners interfering in American justice and internal affairs, have adopted the defiant attitude of ‘If you don’t let us do something unpleasant we’ll just bring back something worse.’

John Dillinger is a name familiar to everybody. Leader of the ‘Terror Gang,’ bank robber, escape artist, thief, killer, media darling and criminal icon. The very name represents lawlessness, violence, thievery and celebrity.

Except that he wasn’t quite the criminal colossus that many seem to think he was. Even the 1973 movie ‘Dillinger’ and the more recent ‘Public Enemies’ take liberties with the facts in favour of telling an entertaining story.

Dillinger’s fame was spectacular, but he wasn’t really the leader of the his first gang, known as the ‘Terror Gang.’ That dubious distinction goes to one of its members, the more-experienced and less celebrity-minded Harry Pierpont. Known as ‘Handsome Harry’ or simply ‘Pete,’ Pierpont was born in Muncie, Indiana on October 13, 1902.

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Initially there was nothing marking him out as a potential thief and killer. He was noted as a natural leader, softly-spoken but with a keen mind and a fierce loyalty to his friends. During his criminal career he was smart enough to realise that publicity meant increased police attention and, in his line of work, a shortened life expectancy.

It was in 1921 that Pierpont suffered a serious head injury in an accident. For the remainder of his life he would complain of dizzy spells, insomnia, eye problems and headaches. His personality also changed. He became moody and unpredictable, developing an obsession with guns and a nasty temper that could easily be roused, especially when he was unwell.

It was also in 1921 that he began breaking the law on a regular basis. He took his first arrest that year for carrying a concealed gun. Held for ten days on the charge he was then committed to the Central Indiana Hospital, suspected of being criminally insane. He was later diagnosed as suffering from hebephrenic dementia praecox, a severe disorder in which a person’s mind and personality progressively disintegrate.

Released, Pierpont demonstrated his passion for guns by robbing the Cook’s Hardware Store in Greencastle, Indiana of nine pistols. He was then arrested in Indianapolis for attempted car theft and, when surprised by the car’s owner, battery with intent to kill. Held in jail at Terre Haute, he was involved in a failed escape attempt.

He drew 2-14 years for the Indianapolis fracas, to be served at the notoriously tough Indiana State Reformatory at Pendleton. Constantly in trouble there for violence, disobedience and numerous escape attempts, he was described the Reformatory’s Superintendent as being as:

“Wild as a March hare.”

Pierpont was paroled on March 3, 1924 and headed straight back into crime. Hooking up with a group of crooks around Kokomo, Indiana, he spent the rest of 1924 into early 1925 on a string of bank robberies. Indiana’s banks were hit in Marion, Noblesville, Lebanon, Upland, New Harmony, Kokomo and Laketon before the gang were rounded up. Most of them were picked up in Indiana while Pierpont was caught in Detroit on April 2, 1925.

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On May 6 he began a 10-21 year stretch back at Pendleton, again causing endless trouble. This time his misconduct saw him shipped to the Indiana State Penitentiary at Michigan City, but not before getting acquainted with a young first-offender by the name of John Dillinger and Dillinger’s friend Homer van Meter. Pierpont and van Meter weren’t too fond of each other, but Pierpont had to accept them as a package.

Harry Pierpont had a plan…

First, he encouraged both men to gain transfers to Michigan City. Then he encouraged Dillinger to start behaving well enough to earn a parole. Once paroled, Dillinger would rob a string of targets from a list provided by Pierpont and experienced bank bandit Charles Makley. The money raised would fund a mass escape by Pierpont and nine other inmates. In turn, several of these veteran crooks would teach Dillinger the methods of the astounding bank robber Herman ‘Baron’ Lamm, one of the most successful armed robbers of his era and join what would become the ‘Terror Gang.’

Simple. And very, very crooked.

The gang’s first attempt on December 29, 1930, failed miserably. Dillinger ensured that their second on September  26, 1933 wasn’t only successful. It was a big enough embarrassment to Indiana authorities that the press took more interest in the break-out than in the arrest of gangster and kidnapper George ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly in Memphis the same day. The entire line-up of the ‘Terror Gang’ were among the ten hard-timers who broke out.

Unfortunately for Dillinger, he wasn’t there to greet them…

While committing the string of robberies to fund the escape Dillinger had been recognised and arrested in Dayton, Ohio several days before the escape. Pierpont being loyal to his friends, there was only one thing on his mind. He had to head for the Allen County Jail in Lima, Ohio and free Dillinger.

By any means necessary.

With Charles Makley and Russell ‘Boobie’ Clark, Pierpont hit Lima on the night of October 10, 1933. The trio left shortly afterward with Dillinger in tow and Sheriff Jess Sarber lying on the jail floor, mortally injured. Pierpont had shot him and then, with Makley, severely beaten the dying man. If any of them were caught, including Dillinger, they now faced a seat on Ohio’s electric chair.

Pierpont’s dislike of publicity helped build the Dillinger legend. It also defeated a crafty attempt by law enforcement to destroy the gang from within. Indiana police officer Matt Leach thought, given Pierpont’s quick temper, that trumpeting Dillinger’s leadership while making Pierpont look like a hired hand might sow dissension within the gang, hopefully causing them to feud or go their separate ways. It failed dismally. Pierpont was too smart not to see the ploy for what it was and he was perfectly happy for Dillinger to be the latest poster boy for Depression-era crime. It meant the police and FBI focused more on Dillinger than on him.

From October, 1933 until January, 1944 the ‘Terror Gang’ lived up to their name. A string of police stations were robbed of weapons, ammunition and bulletproof vests. A string of banks were held up across Indiana, Wisconsin and Illinois. It was in Illinois, while robbing the First National Bank in East Chicago on January 15, 1934, that Dillinger committed his first murder, that of police officer William O’Malley. With things far too hot to remain in the Mid-West the ‘Terror Gang’ headed for Tucson, Arizona to hide out and get some sun.

That wasn’t quite how things turned out.

Before long the gang had attracted first the attention and then the suspicions of the Tucson police. A strange group of flashy molls accompanied by sharply-dressed men, driving flashy cars and throwing a lot of money around tended to attract attention in Depression-hit Arizona. A fire at their hotel saw them pay far too much for firefighters to recover the group’s suspiciously heavy luggage, causing the firefighters to call on the local police chief and ask him to check these strangers out.

A simple check soon revealed that the owners of those bags were far heavier than their contents. On January 25 the Tucson police made their move. With the hotel unusable, the gang had rented local apartments and were picked up one-by-one as they went about their business. Within a couple of hours the Tucson cops had done what the police of seven States and the FBI hadn’t been able too. The entire ‘Terror Gang’ were safely under lock and key.

Dillinger was extradited to Indiana over the murder of William O’Malley while Pierpont, Makley and Clark were sent back to Ohio over Sheriff Sarber’s murder. Geography didn’t make any difference to them. Whether in Ohio or Indiana, a seat in the electric chair was a seat in the electric chair.  Whether they fried in Indiana or Ohio, they’d be just as dead.

Dillinger didn’t like the idea of being done to a crisp. Reaching out to old acquaintances for help, he promptly escaped from the jail at Crown Point, Indiana, further adding to his media profile and creating huge embarrassment for the forces of law and order. His escape, partly accomplished using a fake pistol whittled from a piece of wood and covered in black boot polish, was a media sensation. Pierpont and Makley would attempt something similar, that desperate move being their only chance to remain alive.

Pierpont, Makley and Clark were convicted of murdering Sheriff Sarber, Clark received a recommendation for mercy from the jury, that probably saved his life. Charlie Makley and Harry Pierpont, however, weren’t as lucky. They were both condemned to die. With Dillinger’s death outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater on the night of July 22, both knew that there could be no outside help if they wanted to escape Ohio State Penitentiary’s death house. Using fake guns made out of soap, boot polish and tinfoil, on the night of September 22, 1934 they tried to do at Columbus what Dillinger had done at Crown Point.

They failed.

Overpowering a death house guard and getting to the door wasn’t a problem. Somebody setting off the alarm and their being caught trying to smash that door open certainly was. Especially when those doing the catching let fly with a barrage of live rounds. Makley was immediately killed and Pierpont took a volley of rounds including shots to his head and spine. Prompt emergency treatment kept him alive, but he would never walk again.

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He didn’t have long in which to learn, either. Crippled by gunshot wounds on September 22, on the night of October 17 he was carried from his cell to a small building in the South-East corner of the Penitentiary’s yard. There he was placed in the electric chair and strapped in. He would have noticed the large collection of mugshots adorning the walls, images of long-dead predecessors on this his final journey. Asked if he had anything to say, he said nothing.

Minutes later, Harry Pierpont, the real founder and leader of the ‘Terror Gang,’ was dead. He was later interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Indianapolis.

Since the early days of the internet a certain series of shock photos have made their rounds on various user groups, message boards and other sites devoted to graphic images. I had always been curious on the story behind the horrific photo series, but with little information on the persons involved I was never quite sure if the photos were legitimate or stills from a horror movie set. Never the less, the photos had always stuck with me and it was a story I’ve wanted to cover for the site since I began writing for Sword and Scale.

It wasn’t until recently that I came across one of the photos in a reddit thread that I finally had a name to start really digging into the story. I discovered that not only were the pictures from a real crime scene, taken by the perpetrators themselves, but the true story behind the photos was just as shocking.

Disclaimer: Please be advised that all source links going forward are extremely graphic and NSFW.

It was the night of July 18, 1982. David Beckowitz and his girlfriend, Jeannine “Charlie” Clark, had been sitting in his living room watching The Benny Hill Show when Beckowitz’s friend James Glover came into the room and shot Beckowitz in the back of the head.

That single act is what began a three-day drug-fueled, necrophelic orgy.

Glover and Clark stripped Beckowitz and took took turns stabbing and chopping him up with a hacksaw, stopping only to pose for some photos. The pair had also been nude throughout the photo series, smiling ear-to-ear as they hacked up the corpse.

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They took the time to pose Beckowitz in various demeaning ways, one photo showing Beckowitz’s head posed on a chair with a finger from his severed hand shoved in his nose. Another picture shows Glover shoving Beckowitz’s own penis into his mouth. By day three of the ordeal, very little of Beckowitz remained intact. He had been stabbed 84 times and sliced into 14 pieces, which the couple placed into trash bags after performing various sex acts with the remains.

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Though rumor had it that the pair had been caught when they took the film to be developed, the truth is that Clark cracked. She went to the police and told them what had happened. It was at Beckowitz and Clark’s Detroit home that they found the dismembered remains of Beckowitz, along with the film roll containing photographs of the crime.

According to Clark, after Glover shot Beckowitz in the head he took her captive. He fed her drugs and forced her to emasculate Beckowitz, which she reluctantly complied with. The photographs of Clark and Glover told a different story to investigators. Neighbors told the local newspapers that they had also witnessed Clark leave the residence several times on her own, including once where she allegedly went to the store to purchase more film for the camera.

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Neighbors also witnessed both Clark and Glover checking out a garage sale. They went to the sale twice. One of these times it was noted that Clark had been heard screaming for Glover to let her back into the house after she had been locked out.

Glover was charged with second-degree murder, using a firearm while committing a felony and mutilation of a corpse. Clark was originally held on parole violation charges connected to bank robbery she had been involved in while the investigation was still underway. Later she was charged with mutilation of a corpse.

After Glover underwent a psychological evaluation and was deemed fit to stand trial he pleaded not guilty. Later he admitted that he had held Clark captive. He was able to get a plea deal and was sentenced to 30 to 50 years in prison. As for Clark, she was found guilty of mutilation of a corpse. She was sentenced to serve only 10 years.

Glover’s motive behind the horrific murder of Robert Beckowitz has never been made public.

It was December of 2007 when Edward Shutov and his common law wife Oxana Domanskaya invited their neighbor, Alexander Novikov, over for an evening of drinking and partying. Things seemed to have been going well until a dispute between Shutov and Novikov broke out. Shutov came after him with a hammer, Domanskaya with a knife, minutes later Novikov would be dead.

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Oxana Domanskaya

The couple stood dumbfounded, arguing between themselves as to what they should do with Novikov’s body. Shutov suggested they take the body and dump it elsewhere, but Domanskaya had other plans.

She began to hack up Novikov’s body bit by bit, wrapping the usable portions in cling wrap. The portioned out pieces of their former neighbor made their way into their refrigerator for safekeeping and what remained of Novikov was dumped into a nearby storm drain.

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Novikov’s remains inside of Domanskaya and Shutov’s freezer.

It was the morning of December 18^th when a group of children had been walking to school. As they made their way down Repina Street they saw what appeared to be part of a human leg sticking up out of the storm drain. Horrified by their findings, they ran to a nearby shop and the clerk contacted police immediately.

Police knocked on the door of the Shutov/Domanskaya residence hopping to get some information about the body found near their home believed to have been the remains of their former neighbor. Traces of blood were seen around the home. The couple was immediately taken in for questioning.

As the investigation continued throughout the home, a pan of oil was found on the stove and bits of human remains had been fried up inside. Near the kitchen trash, a bag of entrails and flesh had been found.

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Charred human flesh found frying on top of the couple’s stove.

Domanskaya [NSFW] denied that she had been cooking and eating human meat, but her husband confessed. Shutov said that after butchering their former neighbor, his wife decided to taste some of the flesh. Domanskaya allegedly offered Shutov to taste some as well, but he declined.

Shockingly enough, police say it wasn’t the first case of cannibalism they had encountered in the area. In 2004, two young women murdered another young man and feasted on his liver. If you’ve been making arrangements to visit the Ukraine, it may be a good time to rethink your vacation plans.

On October 13, 2011 the body of a young woman was found hacked up and shoved into a black Nike duffle bag as well as a laundry bag and placed behind a Bethany, Oklahoma grocery store. According to her autopsy report she had been completely dismembered with her hands and feet missing. There was evidence of duct tape having been wrapped around her thighs, as well as evidence that the perpetrators attempted to cut off her tattoo in order to conceal her identity. It is not clear whether she was dismembered before or after her death.

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Using her dental records, investigators were able to positively identify the young woman’s remains as 19-year-old Carina Saunders. Investigators used this information to quickly build a case. It was believed that Saunders may have been involved in a human trafficking ring and her grizzly murder may have been to intimidate witnesses and to force the women to cooperate with the ring’s demands.

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The following year two men were arrested. Jimmy Massey and Luis Ruiz, who were both suspected to be heavily involved in the drug trade, were brought in after a female witness claimed she had witnessed both Massey and Ruiz torture Saunders to death.

According to the witness, the two men had Saunders strapped to a table. They cut off Saunders’ left foot with a hacksaw and attempted to cut off her right foot until the saw broke. The woman claimed that she jumped out of the window in order to escape the ordeal.

A second witness came forward and claimed she had viewed a video on Ruiz’s phone of him torturing and murdering Carina Saunders. She also claimed that she had recognized Ruiz as the person who had been seen sawing off Saunders’ left foot.

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Police were unable to obtain this video. Both men had their murder charges dismissed without prejudice due to a lack of evidence. Ruiz was able to walk free, while Massey was held on unrelated drug charges.

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation has since taken over the Saunders murder case, but no arrests have been made. Any information on the case can be forwarded to their tipline at 1-800-522-8017 or by email Tips@osbi.ok.gov

On October 22, 1989, Jacob Wetterling, Jacob’s younger brother Trevor and their friend Aaron Larson had been riding their bikes home from a St. Joseph, Minnesota convenience store. As they turned down a rural road, the boys were confronted by a masked man with a gun. The boys were ordered to throw down their bikes, lie on the ground and asked their ages. The man told Trevor and Aaron to run to the nearby woods and never look back or else they would be shot. That was the last time anyone saw Jacob Wetterling.

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Search parties were sent out four days later, but nothing turned up. Throughout the years many suspects had been interviewed, including a man named Danny Heinrich, but there was not enough evidence to convict any of them. The case remained a mystery for the better part of 27 years.

In October of 2015, authorities were certain they were on the right track with Heinrich. Back in 1990 Heinrich had been taken into custody to be questioned about the case and had a DNA sample taken. That sample was later linked to another kidnapping in Cold Spring believed to have been linked to the Wetterling abduction. Though the statue of limitations were up in the Cold Spring case, investigators were able to obtain a search warrant. Heinrich was arrested on child pornography charges found as a result of that search.

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On September 1, 2016, Heinrich agreed to cooperate with authorities as part of a plea deal. Heinrich admitted that he had kidnapped the boy, handcuffed him, molested him, shot him and then buried him in the gravel. Heinrich also admitted returning to the site later after he noticed Jacob’s jacket had been exposed.

Later Heinrich would led investigators to the farm he had buried Jacob’s remains, 30 miles away from the abduction site. Investigators found clothing and human remains later confirmed to have been Jacob’s through dental records. Days later Jacob’s mother held a press conference and confirmed that the 27-year-old mystery was finally over, and that she could finally lay Jacob to rest for good.

As part of the deal, Heinrich will not officially be charged with Jacob’s murder and he will receive a maximum of 20 years for the 25 counts of child pornography he was charged with.

The same company that brought us Making a Murderer has a new true crime documentary series available to stream September 30, 2016. The new Netflix series will cover the Amanda Knox story.

On November 1, 2007 Amanda Knox had been an American living in Italy. She shared a communal flat with three other women, two of which were Italian and another a British woman named Meredith Kercher. November 1^st was a national holiday and her two Italian flatmates had went to see their families while Knox and Kercher had stayed at the apartment. Knox had returned to the apartment at approximately 7AM that day after spending the night with her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.

Amanda claims she entered into the open door of the apartment she shared and saw blood on the bathroom floor. She attempted to call Kercher but received no answer. When Amanda checked Meredith’s bedroom she saw the door was locked and she panicked. She contacted her Italian roommates and told them that she believed something bad had happened to Meredith. Knox called Sollecito and the pair attempted to break into Kercher’s bedroom unsuccessfully. Knox then called her mother in the United States and was told to contact the police.

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Meredith Kercher

Sollecito contacted police, who went to the apartment and wrote a report of the scene. When police found Meredith’s phone that she had always kept on her, one of Amanda’s other roommates demanded that officers broke into the bedroom, but they said they did not think the matter was worth damaging private property over. Instead, they relied on a heavier built friend of one of Knox’s Italian roommate’s who was able to successfully open the door. Kercher was found on the floor and appeared to have been stabbed to death.

Knox and Sollecito were eventually found guilty of Kercher’s murder, though there had been evidence of another man being at the scene at the time of Kercher’s murder. Media had a field day with the case, with some sources claiming that both Knox and Sollecito were sexual deviants who had killed Kercher either accidentally or purposely during some sort of bizarre sexual ritual.

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A collection of tabloid headlines about Knox.

After numerous appeals and the intervention of United States forensic experts, Knox and Sollecito were allowed to go free after serving just four of their 30 year prison terms. They were formally acquitted by the Supreme Courts of Cassation (the highest court in Italy) in 2015. Another man is now serving a 16-year sentence in connection to the murder.

Netflix promises to offer never before seen evidence and interviews with key witnesses and trial lawyers involved in the case. One of the trailers for the series invites the viewer to ask themselves the hard hitting question, in Amanda’s own words: is she “a psychopath in sheep’s clothing” or is she you?

If you’ve been following the news the past couple years, then you know that people love committing crimes and bragging about it – or in some cases broadcasting it live – on social media, and Earl Valentine is the latest case of this phenomena.

At the beginning of 2016, Keisha Valentine and her son, also named Earl, fled Valentine and settled in the little town of Norlina, South Carolina. Keisha was able to get a year-long protection order against Valentine on grounds of domestic violence. Police are unsure what may have sparked Valentine, who had been living in the Richmond, Virginia area, to drive to his former wife’s new residence and open fire.

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Valentine’s son and former wife.

According to Valentine’s son, who was caught in the crossfire protecting his mom, Valentine had kicked in the door and fired several rounds. Young Earl was shot in the chest, and Keisha was shot at point-blank range. The boy used his dying breaths to tell a 911 operator that he had been shot by his own father. Keisha was able to survive the attack, but has last been reported to be in critical condition.

As Valentine left the scene, he turned on his phone and began to stream live on Facebook. He callously admitted to shooting his wife and said that he felt no remorse over what he had done, though admitted that he had been, “sick for months,” and that it was something he, “could not help.” He later spoke with police, who told local news sources that Valentine was armed, dangerous and en route to murder his former in-laws in Virginia. His former in-laws were placed in protective custody as the manhunt was underway.

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Police were able to track Valentine to this South Carolina Days Inn.

Police were able to track the signal on Valentine’s cellphone. Valentine first traveled back to the Richmond area, allegedly to visit his father’s grave. From there, pings from cellphone towers indicated that Valentine was heading back to South Carolina. Two days later police were led to a motel in Columbia, South Carolina, where investigators say that Valentine was found dead from an apparent gunshot wound to the head.

It was the early hours of October 4, 2009 when Milford, New Hampshire Police Sgt. Kevin Furlong was called to the scene of a Mont Vernon home where a possible robbery and assault was believed to have occurred. What he found there that night that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Breaking through the front door of the home, he found young Jamie Cates suffering from multiple stab wounds, including to the face. She looked up at him and said, “They killed my mommy.” Jamie, who had narrowly escaped her own tragic fate by playing dead on the floor, was carried out by Furlong before he returned to the residence to search for other victims and possible perpetrators.

It didn’t take long for Furlong to find Kimberly Cates dead in her bedroom. Like Jamie, she had multiple stab wounds on her body. That afternoon, police would receive a phone call and began narrowing in on possible suspects behind the heinous murder scene.

Four teenage boys: Steven Spader, Christopher Gribble, Quinn Glover and William Marks were named by another teen who claimed Spader and Glover had visited his home and told him fully detailed accounts of what had occurred at the Cates’ home. The teen also claimed that the boys had shown him two knives, which may have been the murder weapons.

Police caught up with both Spader and Gribble that evening at Spader’s home. Another boy, Autumn Savoy had been with the boys at Spader’s house as well. Savoy initially claimed that both Spader and Gribble had been with him that night, but later recanted his story. He admitted that he had assisted the boys in discarding evidence taken from the scene.

The following day the boys were questioned by a school police officer after receiving reports that the teens had threatened another boy at school. Glover admitted to being at the house the night prior, but refused to answer any other questions until he had an attorney present.

Marks agreed to answer the police’s questions. He described how the boys were able to gain entry to the home through the basement window. Believing the home was empty, they proceeded to steal things from the home when they heard a woman’s voice call out. Moments later Marks claimed that he heard the woman again, saying something to the effect of, “You don’t have to do this.” Marks said he entered into the bedroom several minutes later and saw both the young girl and the woman, who both appeared to have been slashed and stabbed multiple times.

All four boys and Savoy were arrested in connection to the attack on October 6. Gribble later told investigators that if he would have known that young Jamie Cates had survived the attack he would have killed her. He also told officers coldly that he had wanted to kill someone for a long time.

Though Gribble described Spader as the ring leader, he took great pride in describing the crime when it was time for him to take the stand. He described his expertise in stabbing and attacking his victims, ensuring that Kimberly Cates met a swift, but grizzly end. He later described himself as a sociopath.

Gribble and Spader were sentenced to life in prison, while their three other accomplices including the teen who assisted them in disposing of evidence after the attack also received sentences.

Since Gribble and Spader were both minors at the time of their sentencing, both were granted sentence rehearings. Spader told the courts that he did not wish to receive a reduction in his sentencing, describing himself as, “the most sick and twisted person you will ever meet.”

In 2008, Chinese health officials declared that internet addiction will officially be classified as a clinical disorder and claimed that it was among the leading health threats plaguing the nation’s teenagers, according to an eyeopening documentary created by The New York Times. In order to curb the “electronic heroin” problem, special “boot camps” have been created for parents to take their internet addicted teens for rehabilitation.

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For three to four months children and young adults ranging from 8 to 30-years-old are housed in a facility where they receive a rigorous schedule of military drills in order to combat their internet or gaming addiction. While some may think that the intensive physical activity is a beneficial part of the rehabilitation process, the corporal punishments and mental torment being inflicted upon the patients have some wondering if these methods are at all an effective treatment for this disorder, if it even, indeed, is one.

In 2012, the news program 16:9 reported that one of these facilities had been responsible for the death of a teenage boy. Like many of the parents who commit their children to these rehab centers, the boy’s father noticed his son spending an alarming amount of time online and believed that the boot camp would give the young man the structure and discipline necessary to overcome his disorder.

Just 12 hours after admitting his son, the father received a phone call every parent dreads. It was the camp to tell the father that his son had died tragically. It was later learned that the boy had been beaten to death by the boot camp’s staff. When he said goodbye to his son, the boy’s father believed that the boy would come out a man. Instead, the man’s son came out in a body bag.

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Though some journalists have attempted to draw awareness to the growing problems within these facilities, it wasn’t until a recent incident where a 16-year-old girl from the northern region of the Heilongjiang province was driven to exact revenge on her parents for sending her to one of these boot camps, that the problem went viral.

The Chinese publication The Paper reports that the trouble began when the 16-year-old stabbed her father after an argument about the girl’s decision to drop out of school and work at a nightclub instead. After the incident, the girl’s aunt suggested to the teen’s parents that they send her to one of the internet addiction boot camps that have been sprouting up around the nation.

The family agreed and weeks later the teen was abducted by two men who brought her to the Shandong Institute of Science and Technology Defense Training. There she was subjected to regular beatings. Students who refused to behave were forced to eat in front of a latrine pit. After four months the teen was released, labeled as a “problem juvenile.”

After her release the girl took to her blog to describe her terrible experience at the institute and to vent about her anger with her parents. In one post she wrote,

“I will use their money to practice boxing and martial arts, and ambush them later. I will make them disabled, if not die.”

In September of 2016, the girl would finally exact her revenge. She tied her mother to a chair in order to allow her to starve to death. She then sent a letter to the aunt who suggested she attend the school. In the letter the girl demanded that she send money so she could move to a new town and attend a school to study physics.

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The aunt complied, but it was already too late. By the time the girl had received the money and contacted emergency dispatch her mother was dead. She is now facing manslaughter charges, and her case is now shedding light on the treatment of students sent to these rehabilitation centers. Many former students are stepping forward about the abuse at the school now that the story has gone viral, including a wife who was sent to the school by her husband.

Chinese press have attempted to discuss the allegations with school officials, but have not been welcomed with open arms. When The Paper tracked down the school’s principal a reporter was threatened and police had to diffuse the situation. Just taking pictures of the school has caused some reporters to have their phones confiscated by school officials. Though the school may not wish to answer any questions, evidence points to severe abuse going on within the facility.

Mark and Debby Constantino had devoted their lives to investigating the supernatural. Making several appearances on the Travel Channel series “Ghost Adventures,” on the camera the couple worked diligently as EVP specialists attempting to decode messages sent from the dead, but behind the scenes the couple may have had some skeletons of their own.

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In the final years of their marriage Mark and Debby’s relationship could be described as rocky at best. Debby was arrested in July of 2012, when an argument between the couple turned violent. Debby pulled out a knife and had attempted to stab Mark. The following day Mark filed for a temporary protection order against Debby, fearing that she would return to the home they shared in Reno to finish the job.

The couple reconciled the following day, but the relationship escalated from bad to worse. Three years later, in July of 2015, a concerned neighbor heard the couple in the midst of a heated argument about credit card debit. When the police arrived Debby had stabbed Mark after she claimed Mark had attempted to rape her.

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Debby left the home and moved in with a friend following the incident. Mark had filed a TPO against Debby and Debby retaliated by filing one against him, as well as filing divorce papers. In Debby’s complaint against Mark she claimed that both he and the couple’s 23-year-old daughter Raquel had beaten her and strangled her to the point of passing out.

A month later Debby claimed that Mark had repeatedly texted her, asking her to come back home and pleading with her to reconcile, but Debby was through with the relationship. She had found happiness living with a friend and rumor had it that she even had a new love interest. Mark and Raquel would hear none of it.

After Mark’s pleas for Debby to come back home didn’t work, Mark claimed that the family dog had gotten loose.

With her friend Summer Myers in tow, Debby Constantino agreed to go to Raquel’s Sparks apartment complex. Summer was in the driver’s seat when they arrived at the apartment, where Mark and Debby got into a heated argument. According to the statement Debby made to police,

“Mark ripped me out of the car and dragged me into the house like a rag doll…”

Raquel began beating Myers as Mark dragged Debby into Raquel’s apartment. After assaulting Myers, Raquel joined her father inside where they allegedly took turns beating Debby for nearly an hour as Myers attempted to get help from police. Within Debby’s police report she claimed that Mark had told her,

“I am the devil and I’m going to slit your throat.”

If police hadn’t arrived in time, Debby believed she would have been dead. Mark and Raquel were both placed under arrest and charged with kidnapping, domestic battery and several other charges related to the incident.

A month later, on September 22, 2015, police received a phone call from Myers. Myers said that she came home to find her roommate and Debby’s alleged boyfriend, James “Jimmy” Anderson, dead inside her Reno apartment. Also missing from the scene was Myer’s other roommate, Debby Constantino.

Police used cell phone signals to track Debby to Raquel’s apartment in Sparks where Debby had been assaulted the month prior. Police knocked on the door, but received no answer. After knocking several more times in an attempt to reach any occupants inside the apartment, police broke down the door. A man’s voice was heard telling officers to, “Go away!” before gunshots rang out. Police returned fire, but by then it was already too late. Mark and Debby Constantino were both dead in a murder-suicide orchestrated by Mark.

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Two days later Raquel took to Facebook to say that her mother was, “… burning in hell where she belongs.” She faced trial on March 14, 2016 for the charges she racked up related to the attack on her mother and Myers prior to her parents’ death. Constantino agreed to enter a guilty plea in exchange for prosecutors to drop burglary charges related to the case. Constantino was sentenced to 175 day suspended sentence and was ordered to attend anger management, as well as an alcohol treatment program.

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Since her death, some of the Constantios’ fellow paranormal investigators have attempted to contact Debby from beyond the grave. Did they successfully reach her? Judge for yourself below.

If you were fortunate enough to grow up in the 1990s, then the opening sequence to “Unsolved Mysteries,” hosted by Robert Stack, probably still sends shivers running down your spine. Covering everything from paranormal phenomena to unsolved murders, it was the place you could trust to cover anything encompassing the strange and unusual.

The original series ran on network television from 1988-1999, later picked up for limited runs by cable networks. Over the years some of the show’s featured true crime cases have come to a resolve, while others have not been as fortunate. Here are five of the creepiest murders featured on “Unsolved Mysteries” that remain unsolved.

Arnold Archambeau and Ruby Bruguier

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The story of Arnold Achambeau and Ruby Bruguier originally aired in a segment on April 14, 1995.

On December 12, 1982, Arnold Archambeau, Ruby Bruguier and Ruby’s cousin Tracy Dio were at a party drinking with friends. On their way home from the party near their home in Lake Andes, South Dakota, Arnold had steered their car into a frozen ditch. The car had flipped, leaving Tracy trapped inside. Paramedics arrived shortly after the accident occurred to free Tracy, but both Arnold and Ruby where nowhere to be found.

That following Spring a passing motorist had noticed Ruby’s decomposed body poking out of the thawing ditch where the trio had crashed. Her clothes appeared intact but her glasses and shoes were missing. Arnold’s body was discovered submerged in water approximately 15 feet away. His body didn’t appear nearly as decomposed as Ruby’s. Investigators wondered why the bodies appeared to have been in different states of decomposition, in spite of the fact that they were both presumed to have died of exposure around the same time.

A witness had stepped forward to claim that Arnold had attended a New Years Eve party weeks after the accident was presumed to have killed him. Police issued a polygraph test to the witness and the results confirmed that she was not lying about the incident.

Ruby’s father believes that both Ruby and Arnold had been murdered when they attempted to flee the accident, then the killer placed them back in the ditch to make it appear that the couple had died in the accident. No potential suspects have been apprehended and the case was officially closed by the FBI in 1999.

The Black Dahlia

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The show also featured one of the most famous unsolved murder cases on December 9, 1992.

On January 15, 1947, the nude body of Elizabeth Short was found in a vacant lot. “The Black Dahlia,” as she was latter dubbed by the media, had been nearly severed in half and severely mutilated. Weeks later the killer began taunting the police with letters and other personal items of Elizabeth Short’s, but the killer soaked the items in gasoline prior to sending them so no fingerprints could be found. There have been a number of suspects throughout the years, including Cleveland’s version of Jack the Ripper, but the case remains one of L.A.’s oldest cold cases.

Connecticut River Valley Killer

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Beginning in the late 1970s and continuing on throughout the mid-80s, the Connecticut River Valley Killer is one of a number of serial killer cases that continue to perplex investigators and unsolved crime enthusiasts alike.

Featured on “Unsolved Mysteries” on October 9, 1991, seven cases have been conclusively linked to the unknown killer. The murders came to an apparent end on August 6, 1988, when a pregnant woman named Jane Boroski was attacked and managed to escape. She was treated at a local hospital where doctors determined both she and the baby where fine, though her daughter was later diagnosed with mild cerebral palsy believed to have been a result of the attack.

Even with the police sketches created from Jane’s memory of the attack and other details she was able to provide about the killer, the case remained cold. Three suspects have been linked to the case including a convicted sex offender named Delbert Tallman, an Army vet with a history of violent behavior named Michael Nicholaou, and paraplegic Gary Westover who admitted to the killings prior to his death. None of the men have been conclusively tied to any of the murder cases.

Thomas Burkett

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Thomas “Tommy” Burkett had been studying at Marymont College while working as an undercover narcotics agent for the DEA. It seemed that Tommy had everything going for him when tragedy struck over Thanksgiving weekend 1991.

Tommy had returned to his parents’ home to enjoy the holiday when he was found dead in his bedroom. Police ruled Tommy’s death a suicide, but his parents suspected foul play.

Aired on “Unsolved Mysteries” on November 11, 1994, it would seem that there was more to Tommy’s death than the run-of-the-mill suicide case.

Some believe that Tommy’s alleged suicide may have been staged after he made a shocking discovery about the origin of the drugs being sold throughout the Marymont campus. Though Tommy’s cause of death was determined to have been a gunshot wound, his dad reported that his son’s body was covered in bruises.

When the Burketts called to report their son’s death, two ambulances arrived to the scene as well as police officers. Officers immediately ruled Tommy’s death an apparent suicide before taking or attempting to preserve any evidence from the scene, including footprints leading to a ravine behind the home.

It was only after Tommy’s death that the Burketts learned that for months their son had suffered abuse and harassment by other students on campus, one of which happened to be the son of a police officer. The Burketts requested records from local police, the college and other agencies their son was believed to have been working with, but those requests were denied.

The Burketts believe that their son’s death was part of a cover-up staged by Marymont College administrators, local police and the DEA, but to date no one is certain if Tommy gave into the pressure and had, in fact, killed himself or if his death occurred under more sinister circumstances.

The St. Croix Voodoo Murders

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Our final case was featured on the show on February 18,1988.

In the mid-1980s a series of bizarre murders rocked the island of St. Croix. At least five victims, including Krishnadath and Radha Maharaj, had been discovered covered in seawater with cyanide in their systems. All were believed to have taken out small loans, and police suspected that the perpetrator may have been a practitioner of black magic, known as an Obiaman.

After interviewing family of the victims, it came to light that they all may have fallen victim to a scam. An alleged Obiaman had approached his victims and told them that he knew of a secret location where priceless coins had been buried on the island, but they were guarded by spirits. In order to remove the spirits so the Obiaman’s victims could retrieve the treasure they needed to purchase a special potion, which happened to be in the amount of the small business loans the victims had taken out. All of the victims agreed and handed over their money.

The unsuspecting victims not only lost their money, but had also lost their lives. The potion the Obiaman had sold them was nothing but cyanide. Though suspects exist, the mysterious Shaman disappeared as quickly as he appeared.

It was 6 PM on the night of Halloween 1973, when 9-year-old Lisa French stepped off her front porch for what would be her last time trick or treating. On her way to meet up with a friend, Lisa stopped at a few neighboring houses hoping grab a some extra chocolate bars along the way. That’s when little Lisa encountered the man who would become her killer.

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Lisa knocked on the door of Gerald Turner, peaking into the front doorway that had been left partially ajar. Lisa called out sweetly, “Trick or treat!” as Turner stepped into the room. Turner invited Lisa in and lured her into his bedroom. There he raped and strangled the child to death, before scooping her lifeless body and her clothing into several trash bags.

For four days after Lisa’s disappearance a search party of 1,500 volunteers had gathered. Police also assisted in the search efforts by knocking on every door in the neighborhood, hoping that neighbors had witnessed something that may offer a clue into the whereabouts of Lisa French. It was during these door-to-door neighborhood interviews that investigators came across Gerald Turner.

Turner, who had a pending case involving the sexual assault of a young babysitter, provided police with information on what he had been doing Halloween night. Turner’s story didn’t sit right with investigators and they felt that there were certain discrepancies within the details that immediately set off red flags.

On November 4, 1973, the search for Lisa French came to an end. A farmer had found trash bags containing the nude body of a child on his property and instantly alerted the police.

Though investigators already had Turner pegged as a possible suspect he wouldn’t officially be taken in for questioning until March of 1974. Again, police asked Turner what he was doing Halloween night around the time Lisa French had disappeared. Turner’s story contradicted some of the details within the original story he had told police days after Lisa’s disappearance.

The following month, investigators requested that Turner came down to the police station for a formal interview. Again, some of the details Turner told police about that Halloween night contradicted details he had given in earlier interviews. Turner also agreed to provide investigators samples of his hair, as well as fibers from a bedspread he had in his home.

Investigators were able to have the hairs and fibers compared to those pulled off of Lisa’s body and they were found to have been a match. Police returned to Turner’s residence after the tests were concluded in the fall of 1974 in order to be interviewed again on the case. Turner was asked to take a polygraph regarding his recollection of events that transpired that evening. Turner refused.

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After pressure from law enforcement, Turner reluctantly agreed to take the test. After analyzing the results, investigators were not completely satisfied, with many of the questions returning inconclusive results. Turner was asked to participate in a second polygraph, but he refused.

It was during this time that Turner suggested to investigators that Lisa’s death may have been an accident. This suggestion turned into a two-hour conversation where Turner admitted to seeing Lisa in the doorway, taking her into his bedroom and brutally raping her. Turner claimed that he had not strangled the girl, rather that her death had been the result of shock brought on by the rape. Turner said he then dumped the girl’s body and provided investigators with a map to indicate the approximate location he had left her, the same field Lisa’s body had been recovered.

The case that had left the Wisconsin town of Fond du Lac, as well as a nation, in a state of fear and disbelief was finally solved. Turner was sentenced to only 38 and a half years in prison for second degree murder, sexual perversion, enticing a child for immoral purposes, and indecent behavior with a child. He was paroled in 1992.

During this time Turner had violated his parole. Within his possession were hardcore pornographic materials and a letter he had written to his victim.

Dear Lisa
I doubt that I could ever fully realize the terror you experienced at my
hands. For that night of the children to have started out so joyous for you
only to end so tragically will haunt me forever. I can still see you standing
in the doorway with that felt hat beaming at having recognized me. . . . Then I
see the delight in your eyes turn to fear as I close the door behind you. . . .
The rest of my life I will have to live with what I did to you. On that night I
became a monster. . . . I do swear to you on forfeiture of my life I will never
harm another child.

Turner was paroled again in 1998, after a jury had determined that they didn’t consider Turner to be sexually violent. After another parole violation for possessing and viewing hardcore pornography in the halfway house he was living in 2003, Turner was sent back to prison where he was ordered to remain for 15 years.

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In addition to the city of Fond du Lac restricting trick or treat to daylight hours, the Lisa French case inspired lawmakers to require sex offenders to remain in jail until they are no longer considered to be a danger. Turner remains behind bars where he occasionally receives letters from Lisa French’s mother. She says she has forgiven Turner for the brutal crime committed against her daughter, but will never forgive his sin.