Major Crimes and True Crime

BORN 🐣 : 1957 Convicted El Paso serial killer David Leonard Wood is scheduled to be executed in March 2025. This is nearly 40 years after he was accused of murdering young women and dumping their bodies in a Northeast desert. Wood known as the "Desert Killer," is scheduled to be executed Thursday, March 13, at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Huntsville Unit prison, court documents state. The execution will take place after 5 p.m. MST. The 67-year-old Wood continues to claim he is innocent and is appealing his death penalty conviction. Wood will be executed by being injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital. He has been on Texas death row since Nov. 10, 1992, when he was sentenced to death. Wood was convicted of capital murder in the deaths of one of the girls and indicted on capital murder for five other girls whose bodies were found in a Northeast desert. The young girls were in their teens and early 20s. ...

David and Catherine Birnie: The macabre and sadistic Moorhouse murderers A decade before the Claremont serial killings, a series of murders by the Birnies were among the most macabre and sadistic crimes in history. As the mammoth trial today of the man police allege is the notorious Claremont serial killer, it is worth remembering a deadlier case in the Perth suburbs. It was about 10 years earlier than Claremont, with at least five victims, and an added factor that meant the victims didn’t really have a chance. Stalking the Perth suburbs in 1986 was not only a dangerous sexual psychopath but also his de facto wife, luring women with her falsely reassuring presence into the couple’s car. Once the victim was back at their house of horrors, chained to a bed, Catherine Birnie would cheer on, photograph or record David Birnie in his rape, torture and murder. The killings would become known as the Moorhouse murders after the address of that house where they took place. The Bi...