February 2010
January 2010
Serial Killer of the Day: William Lester Suff,...
First tried and convicted of killing his then-wife and 2-month-old daughter. He only served 10 years before being released and killing 13 prostitutes.
In 1974, a Texas jury convicted Suff and his then-wife, Teryl, of beating their two-month-old daughter to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals later reversed Teryl’s conviction but upheld Suff’s in Suff v. State, finding insufficient...
Wartime Wool
As US forces headed “over there” during WWI, President Woodrow Wilson and his wife looked for visible ways to demonstrate their support for the troops. One of the ideas they decided to put into effect:
Sheep on the Whit House lawn.
The Wilsons brought in a flock of prize sheep to graze on the grounds at the White House. The idea was that the sheep would save the manpower required...
Serial Killer of the Day: Robert Yates
Robert Yates had 5 children, a wife, a house, and a mortgage. He quoted biblical scriptures as he murdered 13 women in the Spokane region.
He came from a solid, loving home with encouraging Support , a moral upbringing and Christian teaching from the time he could walk. He was an obedient child, a dedicated student, and a team player on the ...
Full text of the State of the Union Address →
(via squashed)
Serial Killer of the Day: Jürgen Bartsch
Jurgen Bartsch killed five boys in Germany between 1962 and 1966. He was fifteen when he started to kill.
Bartsch’s adoptive mother, who suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, was fixated on cleanliness. He was not permitted to play with other children, lest he became dirty. This continued into adulthood; his mother personally bathed him until he was 19.
His first victim was Klaus...
A Piece of Tape
Security guard Frank Wills was making his nightly rounds when he found a piece of tape covering a latch on a basement door. He assumed some worker in the office complex had left it there to make it easier to get in and out. Shaking his head, he removed it.
An hour or so later, he found the latch retaped. This time, he called the police. They locked all the doors, shut off the elevators, and...
Serial Killer of the Day: Mary Bell, the youngest...
In England, Mary Bell murdered and mutilated two boys on separate occasions when she was only 11 years old, known as the youngest serial killer on record, if you accept the definition of serial murder as more than one murder (for the sake of killing) on separate occasions.
Independent accounts from family members suggest strongly that her mother had attempted to kill Mary and make her death...
Night Writing
Imagine being a frontline soldier and getting a message at night. There’s no way to read that message without lighting a lamp that will expose you to enemy fire. In the early 1800s this dilemma inspired a French artillery officer, Captain Charles Barbier, to create “night writing.” It was a code consisting of raised dots poked onto a piece of paper. The code used combination of...
“Somebody’s terrorist is somebody else’s freedom fighter.”
– Quote from Suzy Kim, the professor of my History class
Beer and the Mayflower
The Mayflower was headed for Virginia when storms blew it off course. It ended up hitting the short of Massachusetts. Rather than heading south to find a better location for their colony, the Pilgrims put ashore at Plymouth Rock.
One Pilgrim’s journal explains why: “We could not take time for further search or consideration, our victuals being much spent, especially our...
Serial Killer of the Day: Carroll Edward Cole
Carroll Edward Cole in the United States was ten when he deliberately drowned a boy, and would go on to commit nine more homicides in his adult life - of women.
After scraping through school with a D+ average, even with an I.Q. of 152, Cole became a drifter, doing menial jobs, drinking heavily and serving frequent prison sentences for crime such as burglary, vagrancy, arson and car theft. He...
The Actor and the Son
One of America’s most famous actors stood on a train platform in Jersey City. He was among a crowd of people about to get on board a train. As the crowd pressed forward to enter one of the coaches, the train unexpectedly started with a jolt, rolling a few feet before it stopped. The actor saw a young man lose his balance, and begin to fall helplessly between the platform and the moving car.
...
Serial Killer of the Day: Gary Ridgeway, "Green...
In November 2003, 54-year-old Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty to the murder of 48 prostitutes in Washington State in the 1980s. His plea spared the death penalty, however, he now holds the record in the United States for killing the most victims - and perhaps evading authorities the longest.
As a child, Ridgway was a slow learner, failed twice in school, committed acts of arson, suffocated a cat,...
