Major Crimes and True Crime

While her husband was away, probably serving in the Royal Navy, she became pregnant with a child out of wedlock, and she sadly drowned the baby soon after it was born. When people found out, she was sentenced to death and hanged at the Grassmarket in August 1724 by the hangman, John Dalgliesh. About 30 minutes after she was hanged, a doctor said she was dead, and her body was put on a cart to be taken to Musselburgh. On the way, her family, who were going to the wake, heard strange sounds coming from the coffin and found that she was still alive. There is a story that while she was in Tolbooth Prison, Maggie had charmed the hangman, and he loosened the rope so she could survive. Because Scottish law said her punishment was done once she was hanged, she could not be hanged again for the same crime (at that time, the words “until dead” were not part of the sentence). Her "coming back to life" was seen by some as a sign from God, so she was allowed to go ...

isis burned 19 yuzidi girls to death in mosul for refusing to convert and have sex with IS members. The girs were burn to death in iron cages while hundreds of people were watching  ISIS terrorists executed 19 Yazidi girls who refused to be sex slaves by burning them alive inside iron cages, news site ARA News reported. The victims were set ablaze in the centre of Mosul on Thursday in front of a large crowd, ARA News reported, citing activists and witnesses. "They were punished for refusing to have sex with ISIS terrorists," media activist Abdullah al-Malla was quoted as telling ARA News. "The 19 girls were burned to death while hundreds of people were watching. Nobody could do anything to save them from the brutal punishment," a witness said. ISIS terrorists took over 3,000 Yazidi girls as sex slaves after they overran Sinjar in northwest Iraq in August 2014, causing a mass displacement of nearly 400,000 people to Duhok and Erbil in ...

One of the most painful chapters in Southeast Texas history moved closer to resolution on Friday when a judge in Jasper County signed the execution warrant for the last of three white men convicted in the dragging death of a black man on a country road there 20 years ago. John William King, whose latest round of appeals was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court in late October, now faces execution by injection on April 24. State District Judge Craig Mixson signed the order. The execution warrant must be delivered to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice by Jasper County Sheriff Mitchel Newman before the date is officially scheduled. King, a 44-year-old Georgia native, was convicted of capital murder for the racist slaying of of James Byrd Jr. in June 1998. He has been on death row at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston since Feb. 25, 1999. Two other men, Shawn Berry and Lawrence Russell Brewer, were convicted in the case. Berry is serving a life sentence; Brewer was executed in 201...

The body of Maximilian I of Mexico after his execution by firing squad in 1867 Maximilian was the only Emperor of the short lived Second Mexican Empire from 1864 - 1867. He was captured and executed by the Mexican Republican government headed by Benito Juárez.  Also of note he was the younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. On June 19, 1867, Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico was executed by firing squad on the Cerro de las Campanas (Hill of the Bells) in Querétaro City, Mexico. Maximilian was born in Vienna on July 6, 1832, the second son of Archduke Franz Karl of Austria and Princess Sophie of Bavaria. His elder brother was Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. Following a strict education in the Austrian court, Maximilian began his military training, and quickly distinguished himself in the Austrian Navy and serving as Commander. In july 1857 Maximilian married princess charlottee of Belgium, his second cousin. The couple had no children. Two years la...

Inside The Chilling Crimes Of John Joubert, The Eagle Scout Who Became A Serial Killer When John Joubert was just 16 years old, he stabbed a 6-year-old girl with a pencil while on his paper route. The next month, he stabbed a 27-year-old woman in the side with a knife. Two months after that, he slashed a 9-year-old boy's throat with a utility blade. These utterly horrific yet seemingly random crimes terrified Joubert's small neighborhood in Portland, Maine, but no one ever suspected him. After all, John Joubert seemed like a perfectly normal boy, an Eagle Scout who ran track and liked to build model airplanes. But from there, his crimes only escalated. In August 1982, when Joubert was 19, he kidnapped an 11-year-old boy in Portland who had gone jogging. Joubert then dragged him into the woods, bit him on the leg, stabbed him repeatedly, and eventually strangled him to death. He would go on to kill two more young boys before he was finally caught. ⁠ ⁠ Visit the l...

Serial killer Eugen Weidmann is walked to the guillotine in Paris, 1939. This was the last public execution in France. One of the people who witnessed the execution was a 17-year-old Christopher Lee, who went on to become a famous actor. On 17 June 1939, convicted serial killer Eugen Weidmann was publicly executed by guillotine in Versailles, France after murdering and robbing six people. When police tried to arrest Weidmann, he opened fire on them and was only apprehended after wounded officers wrestled him to the ground and knocked him unconscious with a hammer. Three months after his trial he was beheaded outside the Saint-Pierre prison in Versailles, but 'hysterical behaviour' by spectators led to France banning public executions. One of the people in the crowd who witnessed the last public execution by guillotine was a then 17-year-old Christopher Lee, who was stopping briefly in Paris on his way to the French Riviera. In his autobiography, he described a ...

South Carolina death row inmate dies by state’s first lethal injection in 13 years This man only brutally murdered two people  1. The mother of three he shot in the face so he could steal $40  2. And the guy he beat to death his first night in jail in front of 10 other people   Owens, 46, was sentenced to death in 1999 for killing a convenience store clerk Irene Graves during a robbery in Greenville, South Carolina, when he was 19 years old. Owens was pronounced dead at 6:55 p.m. ET, state officials said at a news conference Friday evening. He made no final statement. South Carolina’s Supreme Court declined on Thursday to halt his execution and Gov. Henry McMaster chose not to grant Owens the requested clemency. Fair enough. Does he deserve to be killed? A pre-fetus may present a situation in which that mass of cells may develop into an individual that is nothing but a strain on society. At what point do you question where your hard earned ...

Pouring Molten Gold Down the Throat: The TV show Game of Thrones had a scene where Viserys Targaryen was killed by pouring model gold over his head. However, in real life, the execution technique didn’t involve pouring molten gold over the condemned, but inside them through their mouth. The earliest record of this happening is from around 90 BC, and the person to suffer this fate was a Roman consul named Manius Aquillius. He was defeated in the First Mithridatic War and then captured by Mithridates VI Eupator, who ten ordered his execution by pouring molten gold down his throat.  This wasn’t the only time this happened, though. In 1599, a Spanish governor in the colonial settlement of Logroño was executed this way by the native Jivaro tribe. The governor had been cheating the natives in their gold trade, which led to a revolt. Around 25,000 Spaniards were massacred, and the governor was captured, and then executed by pouring gold down his throat. There is also a ru...

On this date in History: February 13, 1542 Execution of Catherine Howard, 5th wife of King Henry VIII of England and Ireland The night before her execution, Catherine is believed to have spent many hours practising how to lay her head upon the block, which had been brought to her at her request. She made a speech describing her punishment as "worthy and just" and asked for mercy for her family and prayers for her soul. According to popular folklore, her final words were, "I die a Queen, but I would rather have died the wife of Culpeper" although this is widely discredited. Catherine was beheaded with a single stroke, as was Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, immediately thereafter. Both their bodies were buried in an unmarked grave in the nearby chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, where the bodies of Catherine's cousins, Anne and George Boleyn, also lay. Lynne Frederick as Catherine Howard in Henry VIII and his Six Wives (1972) Now the story in full On this...

The French Ripper Joseph Vacher was a French serial killer known as "The French Ripper" owing to comparisons to the infamous Jack the Ripper murderer of London, England, in 1888 Born in 1869, Joseph was the fifteenth child of illiterate peasants. He spent much of his childhood in a strict Catholic school where he was taught to fear and obey God. In 1892 a 23 year old Vacher would join the army and become infatuated with a with a young servant girl called Louise.  Louise did not reciprocate the soldiers affection and openly mocked his proposal. Vacher did not take this well, returning with a pistol he shot the servant girl four times and attempted suicide, neither of these attempts were successful though and Vacher would be forever paralyzed on one side of his face.  Following this incident Vacher was placed into a mental institution though was deemed to be cured within a year of entering. He would start his killing spree not long after, his first victim being ...

The Hi-Fi Murders The Hi-Fi Murders in 1974 still shock today. Three men—Dale Selby, William Andrews, and Keith Roberts—entered the Hi-Fi Shop in Ogden just before closing time. They then held store workers 20-year-old Stanley Walker and 18-year-old Michelle Ansley hostage in the basement before robbing the store. Later, 16-year-old Byron Naisbitt entered the store as he was running errands and was also taken hostage. Both Bryon’s mother, Carol Peterson Naisbitt, and Stanley’s father, Orren Walker, arrived at the store to look for their children where they suffered the same fate. What happened next is unimaginable and involved the hostages being forced to drink a corrosive liquid that caused their lips, tongues and throats to burn and the flesh to peel away from their skin. The hours of torture also included the use of a ballpoint pen as a weapon and three of the hostages were shot dead. The two surviving victims—Orren Walker and Byron Naisbitt—sustained permanent life-changing injurie...

Notorious Ukrainian cannibalistic serial killer Andrei Chikatilo was arrested on November 20, 1990.  Chikatilo was convicted of sexually molesting and killing 52 women and children. His final words were, "Don’t blow my brains out! The Japanese want to buy them!" ⁠ Over the following 12 years, Chikatilo committed over 50 known murders. Because reports of crimes like serial murder and rape were greatly suppressed by Soviet authorities in the state-controlled media, stories began taking a life of their own; among the rumors that circulated was that the victims were killed and mutilated by a werewolf. The murders weren’t publicized until August 1984, by which time Chikatilo had killed at least 30 people. He was suspected of killing Yelena Zabotnova and had been seen with her, but because another man confessed to the murder under torture and was consequently executed, Chikatilo was able to continue killing. In September 1984, he was arrested after soliciting a pr...

Ramadan Abdel Rehim Mansour, also known as "al-Tourbini", was a street gang leader and serial killer who raped and murdered at least 32 children in the course of seven years, throughout several locations in Egypt including Cairo, Alexandria, Qalyoubeya and Beni Sueif. All of his victims were 10 to 14 years old, most of them boys. Mansour was arrested in 2006 along with his six accomplices, and subsequently sentenced to death. Mansour left his home in Tanta, a town north of Cairo, and joined a street gang at an early age. Gang leaders taught him skills of survival, allegedly cutting him with razors when he made any mistakes. According to his confession, Mansour soon learned the method of getting back at those who crossed him by raping them, and murdered anyone who threatened to go to the police afterwards. One of the victims, 12-year-old boy Ahmed Nagui, had been a member of Mansour's gang. When Mansour tried to sexually assault him, Nagui reported him to t...

Serial Killer John Wayne Gacy As An Infant Before American serial killer John Wayne Gacy was finally caught in 1978, he raped, tortured, and murdered at least 33 teenage boys and men in his Illinois home. But long before his murderous reign, during which he worked as a clown at children's birthday parties, John Wayne Gacy was just a normal boy. This is undeniably one of the most creepiest babies ever. John Wayne Gacy was convicted of the torture, rape, and murder of 33 males between 1972 until his arrest in 1978. He was dubbed the "Killer Clown" because he entertained children at parties and hospitals as "Pogo the Clown." On May 10, 1994, Gacy was executed by lethal injection. Gacy's Childhood Years John Gacy was born on March 17, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois. He was the second of three children and the only son born to John Stanley Gacy and Marion Robinson. From age 4, Gacy was verbally and physically abused by his alcoholic father. Despite t...

The True Story of Gianni Versace's Murder On this day in 1997, fashion icon Gianni Versace was murdered. This murder was a string of murders committed by Andrew Cunanan in the spring of 1997. Despite the murderer being recognized in Miami Beach by a fast food employee 4 days prior to the murder of Versace, the police could not come in time to catch him.  Versace’s death lead to a nationwide manhunt. Cunanan was not found until days after the murder of Versace, where he was found dead 40 blocks away from Versace’s mansion. Today, there is a lot of speculation as to why Cunanan targeted Versace, as there is no reported evidence that they have met. However, they were both openly gay and were in similar circles. to early risers. It was a beach-cavorting, nightclub-dancing, hedonistic scene ruled by a fashion crowd of models, musicians, actors, and bohemians—so long as said bohemian looked good on Rollerblades wearing a G-string. But within this indolent world ...