To the naked eye, it was nothing more than a case of simple prostitution: When the police officer burst into Vivian Gordon’s New York hotel room in 1923, he found her in bed with a man who wasn’t her husband. Believing her lover had paid her for sex, the police officer hauled her ...read more
On the morning of August 23, 1973, an escaped convict crossed the streets of Sweden’s capital city and entered a bustling bank, the Sveriges Kreditbanken, on Stockholm’s upscale Norrmalmstorg square. From underneath the folded jacket he carried in his arms, Jan-Erik Olsson pulled ...read more
Just before 5:30 on a December evening in 1985, mob boss Paul Castellano stepped out of a limo in front of Sparks Steakhouse in midtown Manhattan and was shot to death. The four assassins who gunned him down were conspicuously dressed in trench coats and Russian fur hats. John ...read more
Draped in lush trees and surrounded by stately buildings, Buenos Aires’ Plaza de Mayo might look like a place to check out monuments or stop for a relaxing rest. But each Thursday, one of Argentina’s most famous public squares fills with women wearing white scarves and holding ...read more
In retrospect, it seems odd that Henry Woodhouse got away with as much as he did for more than half a century. After all, it wasn’t every day that a paroled murderer with no discernible education became a darling of America’s burgeoning aviation elite—heralded as a renowned ...read more
It was a double celebration: Christmas, and the Moores’ 25th anniversary. Harry T. and Harriette Moore celebrated the way they had 25 years before, cutting the cake together like newlyweds. They had no idea that the tender moment would be among their last. As they settled in to ...read more
On this day in 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Adam Lanza killed 20 first graders and six school employees before turning a gun on himself. Earlier that day, he killed his mother at the home they shared. The Sandy Hook shooting was, at the time, the ...read more
“There’s no way we can survive.” It was November 18, 1978, and cult leader Jim Jones needed to convince over 900 of his followers that they needed to die. As he pressured members of the Peoples Temple to drink cyanide-laced punch, they screamed, wept and argued. Slowly, they ...read more
A striking portrait hung on the wall of the campaign headquarters for George H.W. Bush’s 1988 presidential run. It wasn’t a slick painting of the vice-president, who hoped to become the next Republican in the White House. Rather, it was a mug shot, a grainy photo of a black man ...read more
The Great Depression was a time of great economic and social change that affected many parts of American life—including Halloween. Parents, concerned about their sons running amok on All Hallows' Eve, organized “haunted houses” or “trails” to keep them off the streets. Halloween ...read more
One September morning in 1976, a bomb blew up a car as it was driving up Embassy Row in Washington, D.C. When police arrived at the scene, they found a human foot in the road, and a man lying on the pavement who was missing half his legs. Minutes later, he was dead. That man was ...read more
Nearly as long as people have been recording history, they have documented sexual assaults. From the writings of ancient Greece to the Bible to the letters of early explorers, sexual violence has long been a brutal part of the human story. Some assaults have even changed the ...read more
A housewife and salesman have an affair, then hatch a plot to kill her husband and claim insurance money on his death. If this sounds like a film noir plot, that’s because it is; it’s the plot of James Cain’s 1943 hardboiled crime novella Double Indemnity and the 1944 film ...read more
In July 1931, the Danish freighter Pennsylvania wrecked on the coast of the island of Swona, in the North Sea of Scotland. The captain, wary for good reason, refused a local lifeboat’s assistance and waited to have his crew rescued by a Copenhagen boat. Once the crew left, ...read more
In the aftermath of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker’s bloody two-year crime spree, the U.S. government put more than a dozen of their family members and friends on trial for helping the couple out. During his closing argument, prosecutor Clyde O. Eastus made a surprising ...read more
It’s a scene worthy of any Nordic Noir: On a quiet Tuesday morning this week, thieves made off with a selection of Swedish crown jewels, housed in an ancient cathedral—then made their getaway on bicycles and a speedboat. Strängnäs is a small town west of the country’s capital. ...read more
One night in October 1983, two white men waited outside a local dance club near Sunny Side, Georgia for a black man, Timothy Coggins. Coggins was young, exuberant, loved to dance—and was known to date white women. When Coggins emerged, according to court testimony, they lured him ...read more
For the White Bronco—perhaps the most infamous vehicle of the late 20th century—it’s been a long, strange trip since the freeway chase that riveted the world. It was midday on Friday June 17, 1994, and Los Angeles police authorities were waiting for Orenthal James “O.J.” Simpson ...read more
When the jury acquitted Lorena Bobbitt of all criminal charges in a Virginia courtroom on January 21, 1994, even her supporters couldn’t help but gasp aloud. Seven months earlier, she had severed her husband’s penis with a knife as he slept. Now, after seven hours of ...read more
Growing up in the 1930s in segregated coal mining country in West Virginia, Doris Payne played a game she called “Miss Lady.” She’d don a hat and purse, and imagine herself living a life far from her own impoverished circumstances. This ability to cast herself as someone else ...read more
Even by today’s standards, The State of Illinois v. “Peachy” Quinn Harrison would be considered newsworthy. The prerequisite elements for a “high-profile” trial were all there: a well-liked and promising young man stabbed to death by a neighbor with whom he had grown up; a ...read more
The Great Depression (1929-1939) was the worst economic downturn in modern history. The preceding decade, known as the “Roaring Twenties,” was a time of relative affluence for many middle- and working-class families. As the economy boomed, new innovations allowed for more leisure ...read more
During the Great Depression, with much of the United States mired in grinding poverty and unemployment, some Americans found increased opportunities in criminal activities like bootlegging, robbing banks, loan-sharking—even murder. Organized Crime in the Prohibition Era The ...read more
