Major Crimes and True Crime

Ewa Paradies (17 December 1920 – 4 July 1946) was a Nazi concentration camp overseer. In August 1944, Paradies arrived at the Stutthof SK-III camp for training as an Aufseherin, or overseer. She soon finished training and became a wardress. In October 1944, she was reassigned to Stutthof's Bromberg-Ost subcamp, and in January 1945, back to the main Stutthof camp. In April 1945, Paradies accompanied one of the last transports of women prisoners to the Lauenburg subcamp and fled. After she was captured, she was a defendant in the Stutthof trial. One witness testified: She ordered a group of female prisoners to undress in the freezing cold of winter, and then doused them with ice cold water. When the women moved, Paradies beat them For this and other brutalities, including causing the deaths of some prisoners[citation needed], Paradies was sentenced to death. She was publicly executed by short-drop hanging on 4 July 1946 with 10 other Stutthof guards and kapos (five wo...

An African-American teenager who was convicted and sentenced to death in Pennsylvania on false charges that he had murdered a white woman has been exonerated, 91 years after he was executed. On June 13, 2022, Delaware County Court of Common Pleas Judge Kevin Kelly granted a motion filed jointly by lawyers for Alexander McClay Williams and the Delaware County District Attorney’s office to posthumously overturn Williams’ conviction and death sentence. (Williams is pictured with then-District Attorney William J. McCarter displaying the murder weapon.) District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer then filed a motion to “nol pros” the case, dismissing the charges against Williams and formally exonerating him. Williams, who was sixteen years old when he was put to death in the electric chair, was the youngest person ever executed in Pennsylvania. The court action was the culmination of years of effort by Williams’ family and Sam Lemon, the great-grandson of his trial lawyer, to clea...

Benito Mussolini and Clara Petacci executed and hung for the public On April 28, 1945, disgraced fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was brutally executed by Italian partisans in the village of Giulino di Mezzegra. When Benito Mussolini, the tyrannical ruler of Fascist Italy before and during World War II, was executed on April 28, 1945, it was only the beginning. Angry crowds strung up his corpse, spat on it, stoned it, and otherwise desecrated it before finally laying it to rest. And to understand why Mussolini’s death and its aftermath were so brutal, we must first understand the brutality that fueled his life and reign. Inside Benito Mussolini’s Rise To Power Benito Mussolini took control of Italy thanks to the pen just as much as the sword. Born July 29, 1883, in Dovia di Predappio, Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was intelligent and inquisitive from an early age. In fact, he first set out to be a teacher but soon decided that career wasn’t for him. Still, he voraci...

The decapitated woman who was the last person in Arizona to be executed by hanging Eva Dugan gained notoriety by being the only woman executed and the last person in Arizona to be executed by hanging. She was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death for the murder of an elderly chicken rancher, Andrew J. Mathis, and was ordered to be hung for the killing. Eva claimed innocence until her time ran out but accepted her fate nonetheless. She seemed composed as she mounted the steps towards the gallows, telling the guards, "Don't hold my arms so tight, the people will think I'm afraid." She swayed slightly as the noose was placed around her neck and tightened. As the trapdoor below her feet gave way, her head was decapitated from her body. It rolled to a corner of the platform by spectators' feet. The crowd that gathered gasped. The gas chamber replaced the gallows after that incident. Here is the story in detail Mrs. Eva Dugan, the first woman to b...

Lindsay Ann Hawker's terrible ending Lindsay Ann Hawker was a 22-year-old British teacher who was killed in Japan in early 2007 by a man she met on the train, Tatsuya Ichihashi. On the day of the heinous crime, on March 24, 2007, Hawker and Ichihashi had stayed in a cafeteria to give a short English class. She had no idea of his intentions. After the brief meeting, he forced her to follow him to his apartment. Days later, Hawker's lifeless body was found in a bathtub filled with a mixture of fertilized earth on the floor balcony; her body had been sprayed with a substance used to compact and decompose waste. Ichihashi had strangled Lindsay to rape her. Tatsuya Ichihashi fled and tried everything to erase his trail. He paid for a facial reconstruction operation to dramatically change his appearance. In November 2009, he was detained in Osaka while waiting to board a ferry to Okinawa. A passenger had contacted the port authorities after recogni...

This murder mystery is breathtaking. Miss Dorothy Kilgallen was a distinguished journalist for The New York Journal-American and a panelist on the TV show "What is My Line?" Miss Kilgallen died in her Manhattan townhouse on November 8th, 1965. Her death was ruled an accidental overdose of barbiturates and alcohol. However, her death has raised many questions and very little answers. In the days leading up to her death, Kilgallen exhibited signs of nervousness and became unusually withdrawn, confiding in friends that she believed her phone was being tapped and that she was being followed Miss Kilgallen was a select few to interview Jack Ruby, the man who shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald. Miss Kilgallen had reportedly uncovered information from the interview. All of her notes and files from the JFK assassination, the interview with Jack Ruby, which she had been investigating, had reportedly disappeared at her townhouse. Miss Kilgallen was reportedly obsessive abou...

The untold story of Churchill's heroine: Female British secret agent who parachuted behind enemy lines and took out 30 German trains during Second World War before being executed in Dachau aged just 26 The incredible heroism of a British agent who parachuted behind enemy lines into  France  and who took out 30 German trains during the Second World War will be retold in a new book. Eliane Plewman, who belonged to Winston Churchill's elite Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War, was involved in a number of highly successful sabotage missions. During one daring operation in 1944, the diminutive 5ft agent, together with her brother Albert Browne-Bartroli, evaded German patrols to lay explosives under the Marseille-Toulon railway line.   When they exploded, 30 locomotives were put out of service, hampering the enemy's attempts to move troops and supplies by rail.  The explosion caused so much damage that it ...

Transitioned in prison. Now is set to be executed. The first openly transgender woman on death row is set to be executed on Tuesday for raping and murdering her ex-girlfriend whose body she dumped by a Missouri river. Amber McLaughlin, 49, who transitioned in prison, will die by lethal injection 19 years after she killed Beverly Guenther, 45, who had taken out a restraining order and regularly had police officers walk her to her car out of fear for her life. The execution is set to be the first death of a transgender person in the U.S. Before transitioning in 2019, she went by the name Scott McLaughlin. It comes less than a month after the inmate asked Missouri Governor Mike Parson to spare her from death due to 'mental health issues.' The execution is set to be the first death of a transgender person in the U.S. Before transitioning in 2019, she went by the name Scott McLaughlin. It comes less than a month after the inmate asked Missouri Governor Mike Parson t...

'He ripped the child from his mother's arms': Father who 'slaughtered' his three sons, 3, 4 and 7, is indicted for murder as court hears he 'put a bullet in the head' of the youngest - as prosecutor vows to 'have him executed' A father accused of gunning down his three young sons 'ripped' his three-year-old boy from his mother's arms, a court heard today as he was indicted for murder Chad Doerman, 32, denied murdering his sons Clayton, 7, Hunter, 4, and Chase, 3, at the Clermont County courthouse in Ohio on Friday. Prosecutor Mark Tekulve told reporters outside the courtroom how Doerman 'slaughtered his three children in the most brutal fashion you can imagine' with a rifle at their home in Monroe Township on June 15. 'My goal is to have this man executed for slaughtering these three little boys,' he said. 'It is an incomprehensible act of horror that he perpetrated on this family.' Tekulve earlier ...