Prisoners in Taunton Prison were paraded on the morning of Wednesday, April 23rd, 1851, and ordered to watch a double hanging immediately outside the wall, as a deterrent. On the scaffold were John Smith, 32, and John Wiles, 56, who attacked Mr. and Mrs. William Wilkins, septuagenarian owners of a general store in Nempnett village,
After shooting dead his mother and brother and two farm labourers on their farm in Mannville, Alberta, in July 1928, Vernon Booher, 22, reported the killings to the police. They called in an Austrian psychiatrist, Dr. Adolph Langsner, who claimed to be able to read peoples brainwaves. Reading Boohers, he deduced that Booher was the
The naked body of 12-year-old Alma Tirtschke was found lying on a drain grating in Gun Alley, Melbourne, on New Years Eve, 1921, just 100 yards from a wine bar owned by Colin Campbell Ross. A local woman, Ivy Matthews, who had just been sacked as a barmaid by Ross, pointed a finger at him
The Great Depression was biting into Canada when three unemployed men hatched a plot to hold up a small grocery store in Philip Street, a poorly lit cul-de-sac in London, Ontario, run by 65-year-old Samuel Weinstein. Walter Ramesbottom, 18, was the hold-up man, Henry Quinn, 36, the look-out, and Henry Traxler waited in the comfort
When his brother and companion in crime was shot dead by a posse in 1899, Thomas Ketchum, known as Black Jack, decided to make one final heist on his own. His target was a mail train; his plan was to disconnect the mail section from the rest of the train. He forced the driver, Frank
On a cold January night at the end of his beat Constable William Davey, 43, heard muffled voices, went to investigate and recognised the thieves at once. They were two brothers, Joseph and Isaac Brooks, both well known to the police, and they were stealing timber from a building site. The culprits fled before Davey
One of the largest crowds ever for a hanging assembled to watch Charles Daines, 50, hanged outside Norwich Prison on Saturday, April 27th, 1839. The drop fell at noon, and Daines, a Methodist lay preacher and farm labourer, died hard, his body convulsing in agony. He had been found guilty of attempting to murder his
A bizarre religious group was the centre of degraded sex and murder in a suburb of Port of Spain, capital of Trinidad. Run by black power activist Michael de Freitas, calling himself Michael X, and his assistant, Stanley Abbott, it was also home to Gale Benson, 27, daughter of an English Tory MP. On January
When James de la Rue, 27, seduced a girl known only as Caroline and made her pregnant, he reckoned without her lover, Thomas Hocker, 21. Vowing vengeance, Hocker sent him a letter, purporting to come from Caroline, suggesting a midnight assignation in Belsize Park, Hampstead. When de la Rue arrived Hocker was waiting for him.
Two Frenchmen who served as mercenaries in the old Rhodesian army turned to crime after the 1980 war that created Zimbabwe. In 1981 they shot dead a caf? owner, Erhard Kraft. For this Gervaise Boutanquoi and Simon Chemouth were sentenced to death and despite appeals for clemency from France they were hanged at dawn on