Like Joni Mitchell in her song “Big Yellow Taxi,” Tara Pakanich was woken late one night when the screen door slammed. She got up to investigate. Downstairs she went to the basement where her son, Shad Thyrion, shared his bedroom with his girlfriend, Taylor Schabusiness. But when Tara investigated, she couldn’t see anyone. The light
When an impoverished tribe of American Indians struck it rich, predators swept in from far and wide, setting the stage for thieving, fraud...and mass-murder The racism was not confined to Oklahomans. The US Congress enacted a law that required the indigenous Osage to produce a “certificate of competency” before picking up their royalties. The biggest
Finally, Tracie Andrews stepped into the glass-screened dock in Court Nine at Birmingham Crown Court on July 1st, 1997, to plead not guilty to murder of her partner Lee Harvey. Smartly dressed, her long blonde hair carefully waved, the 27-year-old listened impassively to Mr. David Crigman QC, prosecuting, as he made his opening speech to
It was difficult to find anyone who would shed a tear for the missing Leon Prieur; he was a hard-drinking brute whose job was on the line due to his love of alcohol. He had once been stopped from jumping off a bridge in a bid to end his miserable life, but now he was
It was a good-looking young man who sat on the edge of the bath. He was more than six feet tall, his dark hair was tousled, and he was looking down into the bath at the mutilated face of his latest victim. Father Anthony Crean, a 64-year-old Roman Catholic priest, was still alive. But only
The case began on September 8th, 1965, when six-year-old Margaret Reynolds disappeared from near her home in Aston, Birmingham. Then on December 30th, five-year-old Diane Tift vanished from a street in Bloxwich on the outskirts of Walsall. Two weeks later their bodies were found on Cannock Chase. More than 20 months went by and no
Officers shifted the search to a building site near Sevenoaks where Mark Brown was working, and discovered he’d asked permission to dump a burned-out oil drum on a skip there. In the bottom of it, they found fragments of incinerated bone, teeth, hair straighteners, jewellery and a handbag. Forensic odontologists used dental records to confirm
Fired up and loaded with ammunition, 35-year-old Juan David Ortiz, a former US Navy Marine Corps trauma specialist, regular churchgoer, and husband with two young children, picked up 35-year-old Guiselda Cantu from San Bernardo Avenue, Laredo's red-light strip, drove her to an underpass half an hour away, and told her to get out of the
When she died, the Ballroom world mourned the passing of Dorian Corey. Then a body was discovered in the closet at her apartment and suspicion grew that she’d been a killer... In October 1993, Lois Taylor was still coming to terms with the death of her close friend and ally, Dorian Corey, the famous drag
John Vickers was among the many people in Britain who were convinced he wouldn’t hang. Many Tory MPs – the Conservatives were in office – had voted to retain hanging in the belief that it would be imposed only in exceptional circumstances and that it would fall into abeyance. To the astonishment of many people