All in Murder History 101
For over 65 years, the identity of a murdered boy has remained unknown. The Ivy Hill Cemetery in Cedarbrook, Philadelphia, has the body of the boy with a headstone engraved “America’s Unknown Child.” To this day, people continue to cover the child’s headstone with flowers and stuffed animals.
From a nobleman’s child in Transylvania to the commander and impaler of tens of thousands, Vlad III made his mark on Wallachian history in blood.
In 1660, Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston, Massachusetts for her protests against Puritan anti-Quaker laws. Her civil disobedience laid a path for the religious tolerance that the American government was founded on a century later.
Giulia Tofana began her ‘cosmetics line’ in 1633, shortly after her mother, Thofania d’Amado, was executed for murdering her husband. Aqua Tofana was the best-selling product, an odorless poison, or as the label said, a face cream that preserved a woman’s youth.
Shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, Senator and presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy was shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Kennedy was pronounced dead the next day at the age of 42.
A man “named” Roland T. Owens checked into the Hilton President hotel, on January 2, 1935 at 1:20 p.m. Two days later, on January 4, 1935, a bellboy would walk into a gruesome sight that led to the investigation of what could be considered the perfect crime in all of Kansas.
Forty years after the Frostburg State University student’s brutal abduction and death, the non-profit founded by her family and supporters still works to bring justice to victims of violent crime across Maryland.
What does Yellowstone National Park have to do with solving crime? The history of DNA samples and PCR testing, which has been crucial to forensic scientists and detectives in identifying suspects, has a curious link to the beautiful Yellowstone National Park.
For Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, Manchester was their hunting grounds, and the moors -- a vast stretch of barren landscape -- was their dumping grounds. Britain's most reviled killers preyed on children, abducting and violently murdering their victims before leaving their bodies in shallow graves.
40 years ago, Dorothea Puente had everyone fooled into thinking she was a kindly grandmother. Friends, tenants at her boarding house, social workers and the police all bought her act. In reality, she was much younger than she appeared, and far from kind. Preying upon the elderly, unhoused people and alcoholics, Dorothea assumed no one would search very hard for her victims.
In 1876, Stephen Dee Richards left his home and his family in Ohio to go west in hopes of finding wealth. Within two weeks of arriving in Nebraska, he would commit his first murder, with eight more to follow. This would go on to give him the title as the first serial killer in Nebraska.
From 1987 until 2003, nurse Charles Cullen reigned terror at the hospitals he worked at throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Admitting to have killed around 40 patients, 29 have been confirmed. Who exactly is Charles Cullen, and what led him to kill so many of his patients?
The Ides of March is only a few days away. Although the term ‘Ides of March’ wasn’t coined until William’s Shakespeare’s play titled Julius Caesar, it has become synonymous with not only Caesar’s death, but the deaths of countless political figures. Here is a list of five political figures who had their lives cut short by assassination.
Over the past eleven years, American Horror Story has become a favorite amongst fans of all things spooky. With each season providing a new story for our viewing pleasures, the source material pulls heavily on real life to inspire their characters and settings.
A family murdered in cold blood in the middle of the night, two missing and one becomes one of the most well-known princesses of all time.
The historic Skid Row landmark, featured in the chilling Netflix true-crime docuseries, will house up to 600 low-income residents.
Peterson's resentencing came after California's Supreme Court last year overturned his death sentence for the improper screening of jurors for bias and later said a lower court should determine whether he gets a new trial. The court, however, did not overturn his conviction and said considerable circumstantial evidence incriminated Peterson.
Forty-three years ago this week, over 900 people lost their lives in the Jonestown Massacre. The mass-murder-suicide took place just a year and a half after Jim Jones moved hundreds of his followers from California to a large plot of land outside Georgetown, Guyana.
It was on Halloween of 1979 that Shirley Ledford was hitchhiking home from a party. She was offered a ride by two men in a van. Those men became known as the "Tool box Killers" due to their use of household tools against their victims.
The so-called "Golden Age of Serial Murder" lasted from 1970 to 1999. About 80% of all known serial killers operated during that period. Which makes Antone Charles Costa, usually known as Tony, ahead of his time: He killed at least two and probably eight women between 1966 and 1969. The circumstances of their deaths were strange, and fake news generated around his arrest made those circumstances seem even worse than they were. As a result he earned several colorful nicknames, like "Chop Chop" or "The Cape Cod Casanova." But the name that really stuck was most horrifying of all: "The Cape Cod Vampire."
