Major Crimes and True Crime

Alice Sebold is an acclaimed American author who has written several notable works, including the novels The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon, as well as a memoir titled Lucky. The Lovely Bones achieved significant success, reaching the New York Times Best Seller list and inspiring a film adaptation in 2010. Meanwhile, Lucky, which chronicled Sebold's experience of being raped during her first year at Syracuse University, sold over a million copies. Alice is a successful writer Unfortunately, Sebold's identification of Anthony Broadwater as her attacker led to his wrongful imprisonment for 16 years. However, the original conviction was overturned by a judge in 2021. The Rape Of Alice Sebold During her freshman year at Syracuse University, in the early hours of May 8, 1981, Alice Sebold was walking home along a path that passed a tunnel to an amphitheater near campus when she was assaulted and raped. The attack happened in Syracuse She reported the i...

Angela Hammond was a 20-year-old pregnant woman who disappeared from a payphone in Clinton, Missouri, on the night of April 4, 1991. She was talking to her fiancé, Rob Shafer, when she told him that a suspicious man in a pickup truck was circling the parking lot. She described the truck as having a mural of a fish jumping out of water on the back window. Then, Shafer heard Hammond scream and the phone went dead. He immediately drove to the payphone, but on his way, he passed by the truck and heard Hammond call his name. He tried to chase the truck, but his transmission failed and he had to stop. He never saw Hammond again. Angela Hammond The police launched a massive search for Hammond and the truck, but they found no trace of them. They also had no suspects or motives for the abduction. Hammond had no enemies and was looking forward to getting married and having her baby. She was four months pregnant at the time of her disappearance. The Theory of Mistaken...

Ralph Wald claimed he acted to protect his home and wife A 70-year-old man killed his 41-year-old wife's ex-roommate after catching her having sexual intercourse with him in their living room. Flores is the fifth wife of Wald. Before their wedding, the couple was next-door neighbors. Ralph Lewis Wald and Johnna Flores, who had been married for less than five months, shared a residence at 515 Clara Drive in Brandon. On the fateful day, Wald awoke just before midnight and proceeded to the kitchen for a drink. On his way there, he discovered Flores having sexual relations with her old roommate, Walter Lee Conley, 32, in the living room. Conley Flores was arrested for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for shooting at Conley about two weeks before the wedding. Records show that Flores shot at Conley around 3 a.m. on October 19, 2013, Conley had been staying at Flores' house on Clara Drive for about two weeks. An affidavit shows that she said she had asked him to l...

Is $5.5 million enough? On the early morning of May 8, 1981, while Alice Sebold was walking home during her freshman year at Syracuse University in New York, she was violently attacked and r-aped. She reported the incident to the authorities, but investigators had no positive leads for months. Five months after the attack, Sebold came across Anthony Broadwater, and somehow she became convinced that he was her attacker. With her testimony, Broadwater was tried, and sentenced to to prison. After 16 years he was released in 1998. Once he was out of prison, he was compelled to register as a s-ex offender, and for the next 23 years, he lived a life of shame and worked odd jobs because few people wanted to employ him. In November 2021, Broadwater was exonerated after a combined effort of the FBI and the Innocence Project proved beyond every doubt that he was innocent. In February 2023, the state of New York paid him $5.5 million as compensation for all the t...

Stephanie Spurgeon ran a daycare facility from her home in Pinellas, Florida, for 15 years. On August 21, 2008, a 1-year-old baby, Maria Harris, fell ill after staying in her care. Maria was taken to the hospital, where she died after 10 days. An autopsy showed that the baby had bleeding inside her brain, which means she must have been abused physically. However, there was no sign of physical abuse like skull fractures or anything else. The case was taken to court, where the prosecution argued the defendant had thrown the baby onto a soft surface, such as a mattress. And with that, Spurgeon was sentenced to 15 years in 2012. After serving nine years, a new team of pathologists discovered the brain bleed had happened about 10 days before the baby was admitted to the hospital. Not only that, they also discovered the baby had an unusual level of blood glucose in her system. The baby had died of complications from undiagnosed diabetes. A Florida woman, Steph...