Tag: murders

The unsolved mystery of Draga Mitrićević’s death

Danijel90

Draga Mitrićević was a daughter of a well-to-do entrepreneur and Privy Councilor. She was educated abroad and spoke several languages and the vast family fortune and reputation was further strengthened by close connection to the Royal Court through Draga’s marriage with the young officer who served as royal household administrator. It seems a perfect story…until she found out about her husband’s infidelity. She made a scandal confronting him in public and throwing out all of his personal possessions into the street and, with heart broken, she moved to her own…

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Bored? Take a virtual murder tour of medieval London!

Leo S

On the Wednesday September 14, 1337 the Coroner and Sheriffs were informed that Juliana Prickfield, a washerwoman, had been found dead at the Hospital of St Katherine. The jurors found that at midnight on the preceding Tuesday, Thomas Long of Sandwich, a skinner, had broken into Juliana’s house near the Hospital of St Katherine and attacked her with an ‘Irish knife’, inflicting wounds under the left breast and on her throat, from which she died immediately. The assailant stole a strongbox containing money and jewels and then fled, but the…

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May 14, 1948: the three-year-old’s brutal murder that begins an unusual investigation.

Robin

Three-year-old June Devaney, recovering from pneumonia at Queen’s Park Hospital in Blackburn, England, is kidnapped from her bed on this day, May 14 1948. Nurses discovered her missing at 1:20 a.m. the next day, and police were immediately summoned to investigate. Two hours later, her corpse was found with multiple skull fractures, and medical examiner determined that June had been raped and then swung headfirst into a wall. Luckily, two significant clues were found in the children’s ward that would prove helpful in catching the killer: footprints on the freshly…

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#May 5, 2004: Human remains found in suitcase near Virginia Beach.

Robin

On this day, a suitcase holding what is later identified as the partial remains of William McGuire, a 39-year-old Navy veteran and computer analyst is pulled from the water near Virginia Beach. But it was only the beginning: a second suitcase of body parts was found nearby on May 11, and a third washed up near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge on May 15. The victim was last seen alive on April 28, 2004, shortly after leaving a house in New Jersey’s scenic Warren County where he lived with his wife…

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Burke & Hare Murder Dolls: the mystery of the dolls in miniature coffins

Pavel

William Burke and William Hare were two serial killers who lived and operated in Edinburgh, Scotland, from November 1827 to October 1828. The duo, with the complicity of their companions, lured in and murdered their lodgers in a scheme to provide fresh bodies to the local anatomy school. Here Dr. Robert Knox, a brilliant and well-known local anatomy teacher, purchased the human remains and most likely knew that something was a bit suspicious about his “supply chain”. They killed 17 people and the crimes were exposed when another lodger discovered…

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Joe Metheny: the serial killer who made his victims into hamburgers.

Leo S

Ironically known in the 90s as “Tiny”, as he was tall and overweight, Joe Metheny’ story began with the search for his runaway wife and son, but ended up on a revenge-driven killing spree and turning his victims into burgers. He held a steady job as a forklift driver and was universally described as intelligent, well-spoken, and very well-mannered, even if he murdered Cathy Ann Magaziner in 1994, a 39-year-old prostitute, and buried her body in a shallow grave on the site of the factory where he worked. The body…

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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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The last execution in Iceland: a mysterious murder case that’s intrigued a country for nearly 200 years

Nathan

For centuries, some small farms near the water on Iceland’s Vatnsnes peninsula are scattered among the grassy fields and rocky hills, more or less content to be living at the edge of the world. Cherry on the cake, the peninsula is known for a black basalt rock formation that’s said to be a petrified troll, and for the colonies of seals that come to sun themselves on the beach. On current days, this surreal zone is still almost as peaceful—and lonely—as it was the night in March 1828 when a…

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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 almost forgotten story of Timber Ridge Road, Illinois and its murders~

Leo S

If many people have heard the stories of the ghost at the curve in Timber Ridge Road, most are unaware of the details about what happened there. As usual, every time the tale has been told, the details were altered until the fact that a woman murdered her children became the only piece of truth. However, this horrible story is all too real. Less than 2 kilometers outside of Cambridge, Illinois sits Timber Ridge Road. As motorists travel west along Timber Ridge, they drive through a sharp curve marked by…

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