Tag: murder

The princes in the Tower of London: one of the great mysteries of English history

Leo S

In the White Tower, the old keep at the Tower of London, there is a small staircase tucked away near the entrance. Called the Two Princes Staircase, it’s where the skeletons of two young boys, one aged about 10 and the other 13 were found during renovations in 1674. It’s widely believed the skeletons are of the two princes who disappeared at the site in the late 15th century. And this is one of the great mysteries of English history. Though there has yet to be any scientific evidence to…

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The Last Resort Bar: here serial killer Aileen Wuornos drank her last beer~

Leo S

On January 9, 1991, police arrested Aileen Wuornos while she was drinking a beer at The Last Resort biker bar in Port Orange, Florida. Even though she was arrested for an outstanding warrant, a decade later she would be put to death for the murder of six men, and executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002. In any case, she murdered seven men within a period of 12 months. Her first victim was Richard Charles Mallory (51) on November 30, 1989, an electronics store owner. He was a convicted…

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Friar’s Bush Graveyard: the big (and grisly) history of the oldest Christian burial ground in Belfast ~

Leo S

The sense of ancient mystery enshrouding the old walled cemetery in south Belfast has long fascinated historians and local people alike. Though it’s only two acres in size, the oldest Christian burial ground in Belfast, Ireland, has seen more than its fair share of murder, body-snatching, and disease. Even the cemetery’s name, Friar’s Bush, came out of its bloodshed. With the foundation of Belfast in 1610, the site became a graveyard for people of all denominations, but especially for the increasing Catholic population drawn to the rising industrial city from…

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The haunted Fox Tower at Dongbianmen – China

Ivan

We are in Beijing, China. The Fox Tower at Dongbianmen (chinese 东便门 ) has been said to be haunted from pretty much the moment it was founded in 1564. Initially the tower was said to be inhabited by deadly fox spirits, but by the 20th century the historic fortification was haunted by the very real specter of a grim murder. Built by meanie isolationist emperor Jiajing, a man so cruel his own concubines tried to strangle him en masse, Dongbianmen’s probably seen more than one murder, and It’s one of…

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#March 26, 1726: one of the most grisly murder cases in English criminal history

Robin

A report on this day, March 26 1726 that a dismembered body had been discovered in London led to what was one of the most grisly murder cases in the annals of English criminal history. In short, a wife had arranged her husband’s death. Born in 1690, Catherine Hall married carpenter John Hayes when she was 16. They set up home in West London where, in 1725, Thomas Wood, a butcher, and Thomas Billings, a tailor, came to live with the couple. The promiscuous Mrs Hayes, by then the mother…

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#March 25, 1887: The Rahway murder of the “Unknown Woman”.

Nathan

March 25th, 1887 was a day that changed the town of Rahway, New Jersey, forever. In the cold hours of the early morning, a group of four brothers were walking to work at the local felt mill by Bloodgood’s Pond in Clark. As they passed the Rahway River, they found a woman lying on the ground a few hundred meters from the Central Avenue Bridge. She was well dressed and had been carrying a basket of eggs. The woman appeared to be in her early 20s, and was described as…

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Lee Chapel Cemetery – Virginia, and the county’s grisliest murder

Nathan

The Lee Chapel was a Methodist Episcopalian church that sat at the intersection of the former Pohick Road and Mill Road (now Fairfax County Parkway and Lee Chapel Road). It was built in 1871 to replace Mt. Carmel Methodist Church, which had stood about a block to the south and was burned during the Civil War. Property for the church was donated by John Mahon, a prominent landowner of the day, and it is surrounded by a cemetery where the oldest grave is reported to date from 1887. The church,…

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The curious grave of Sevilla Jones that names her murderer at New Boston Cemetery – New Hampshire

Leo S

In 1756, when there were only 59 residents in New Boston, New Hampshire, a committee was appointed “to fix a proper place in or near the centre of the town for the public worship of God; and also for a public burying place, as they shall think most suitable for the whole community.” The resulted cemetery is the same still today and sits at the top of a hill, what was once the center of town. The oldest gravestone which can be found in the cemetery today is that of…

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The body on the beach: the mystery of Taman Shud case

Nathan

On 1 December 1948 at 6:30 am, the body of an unidentified man was man was discovered on Somerton beach near Glenelg, about 11 kilometres southwest of Adelaide, South Australia. The man was found lying in the sand, with his head resting against the seawall, with his legs extended and his feet crossed. He dead from unknown causes, and as investigators delved deeper into the corpse’s demise they came up with more questions than answers, leaving an unsolved case involving poetry and Cold War codes that remains a mystery until…

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Greenbrier Ghost: the deceased who had her husband condemned for murder

Danijel90

It was July 1897, when Edward Stribbling “Trout” Shue was convicted of first-degree murder for strangling and to have broken his wife’s neck. His trial, which was held in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, was based entirely on circumstantial evidence that demonstrated man’s guilt, beyond any reasonable doubt, in an unusual way: evidence was presented to the jurors come from beyond the grave! The facts that led to the conviction of Shue included some “post-mortem” statements of his deceased wife, Zona Heaster Shue, who appeared to her mother four weeks after…

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The murder of Julia Thomas: the dismembered and boiled widow who shocked Victorian London.

Pavel

The murder of Julia Martha Thomas, know as the “Barnes Mystery” or the “Richmond Murder” by the press, was one of the most notorious crimes in late 19th-century Britain. Julia Martha Thomas was a former schoolteacher who had been twice widowed. Since the death of her second husband in 1873, she had lived on her own at 2 Mayfield Cottages (also known as 2 Vine Cottages) in Park Road in Richmond, a villa built in grey stone with a garden at the front and back. When Julia assumed Kate Webster…

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