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True Crime Literature
True Crime is a popular literary genre that details actual criminals and crime, most often murder.
426 Questions
Did aileen wuornos have a pet?
Yes, Aileen Wuornos had a pet dog named Boo. She was known to be quite attached to Boo, and her bond with the dog provided her with some comfort during her troubled life. Wuornos's love for her pet was evident, as she often expressed her desire to care for Boo even during her time in prison.
How much money did OJ Simpson have to pay?
Eight and one half million for compensation and another 12 million for punitive damages.
Was there more than one assissination attempt on President Ford?
Most people are familar with the September 5, 1975 attempt by Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme in Sacramento CA. Fromme pointed a gun at Ford but was grabbed by the Secret Service. She got a life sentence for that stunt.
The second occured 17 days later in San Francisco. On September 22, Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at Ford but this time an onlooker shoved the gun off target. Moore received a life sentence also. Ford must not have been very popular in California.
Interesting fact:Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme was a member of the notorious Manson Family, and was in fact one of the first members. She met Charles Manson during the "summer of love" in the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco in the 1960s.
Why are women called black widow women?
In the mating ritual of the black widow spider, the female kills the male after he has fulfilled his duty of mating with her. When refering to a woman 'black widow', it is meant that she has killed her spouse/significant other.
The black widow is common among female serial killers, which usually kill family members or people to whom they are caregivers such as nurses, ect. This is one of the major differences between male and female serial killers.
Where would Maddleine McCann be now?
Maddie would be 8 years old now, doing things that 8 year olds do. Looking forward to summer vacation from school, playing with friends and siblings.
Could Joanne Lees be Mary Bell's daughter?
The court protected her daughter with anonymity until she was 18. After some incident she was granted anonymity permanently so her name remains a secret. If you read the maniscripts the name Mary Bell order is the name of her daughter but she uses some other name in real life.
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Yes what you have said is correct. The incident your referring to is when the press located Mary and her daughter and after that Marys daughter was told about her mums past. It was then that Mary sought anonymity for her daughter and was granted life long anonymity for herself and her daughter by the courts..However that has nothing to do with Joanne Lees. Joanne has a mother, knows who her father is and has a birth certificate to prove where she was born and who her mother is. Enough said.
Why did the double jeopardy law not apply to the Jeffrey McDonald case?
Dr. McDonald did not qualify for double jeopardy for the fact that he actually had only one trial. When McDonald killed his wife and two small daughters on February 16, 1970, he was a Captain in the Army, stationed at Fort Bragg, NC. The murders occured on the base and was subject to a military investigation. The case was kicked around for several years and it was decided that due to a compromised crime scene and negligent handling of evidence, a sucessful military prosecution would be slim at best. The charges were dropped and Dr. McDonald resumed his life minus his wife and children.
When the DOJ (department of justice) ordered a grand jury inquiry in 1975 it was felt at that time that there wasenough evidence to prosecute. However, due to appeals filed by McDonald's attorney, the case was again delayed and did not begin until 1979. The doctor was convicted on one count of first degree murder for his youngest daughter Kristy, and two counts of second degree murder for his wife Colete and older daughter Kimberly. Although his wife was pregnant at the time of her murder he was not charged with the death of the fetus.
Has anyone ever considered if Lizzie Bordens sister Emma may have been the killer?
In his book "Lizzie" author Frank Spiering claimed that Lizzie's sister Emma was not where everyone thought she was, and was indeed the killer. Lizzie and Emma were furious over a family dispute over a piece of real estate that Andrew Borden had given to his wife's side of the family. Abby Borden was Emma and Lizzie's stepmother, so to see some of their property going to someone 'outside' the immediate family caused a rift that could not be overcome.
Did Cassie Bernall really say yes?
Both Cassie Bernall and Valerie Schnurr were asked by the killer if they believed in God. Both girls, the former from West Bowles Community Church, the latter from St. Frances Cabrini Parish, answered, "Yes." Then the killer pulled the trigger. Cassie "died a martyr's death," said her pastor, the Rev. George Kirsten. Valerie, though fired on at point-blank range, miraculously escaped injury to any vital organs, and lived.
Apparently not. See the Related Link below.
Why are there so many serial killers in the United States?
Answer
Most experts on criminal behavior agree with this one basic concept: After the second world war there was a shift in family dynamics. People that once lived in small communities were now relocating to larger urban areas. Gone was the tight circle of neighbors and neighborhoods. People were surrounded by strangers. The old saying 'it takes a village to raise a child' sums it up well.
For the first time in the history of mankind, humans had little support. With the added burden of working women, children were being raised by a care-giver that had no emotional investment in the child, and latchkey children that spent a good deal of their time alone. In other words, we were working without a net.
Without that sense of family and community to keep behavior in check, we should not be surprised with an increase in crime and especially murder.
Answer
The first answer is only half of the story. A factor to keep in mind is, that today, many more criminals can be identified more readily through better investigative techniques, forensic sciences, and a greater body of knowledge accessible to investigators. Another factor is modern communication systems; systems that give investigators information from all over the country and all over the world. and systems that put the information about crimes and criminals into the hands of anyone looking for it. The public is much better informed.
In days gone by, many serial killers were not identified when they moved from one place to another. Even cases in a neighboring country, much less state, were not connected up but were investigated as stand alone incidents. In centuries gone by, it is my opinion that the legends of werewolves, zombies, and vampires were simpler explanations for people than to believe that "Uncle Joe" may have grotesquely murdered a series of their townsfolk.
This is not to say that many investigators of the past were not very good detectives, but today's detectives have so many more tools and are able to acquire information so quickly. I once heard a detective say about an arrogant serial killer, "He thought that he was smarter than me, but he wasn't smarter than all of us".
Was there a Swedish Jack the Ripper in the 1890s?
I could find no Ripper-like murderers from that time. There was however a French serial killer in the late 1890s. Joseph Vacher (1869-1898), also known as the 'French Ripper', murdered 7 women and 4 men and was executed by guillotine on December 31, 1898. As his execution drew nearer, he tried to convince the judge that he was insane due to being bitten by a rabid dog. The judge didn't buy it and the execution went on as planned.
Who was the serial killer that fed his victims to alligators?
In the 1930's, a nightclub owner and amateur herpetologist killed at least a dozen women and fed their remains to the alligators. I have heard of this several times. If you live in the southern U.S. the gators do a fine job of eating the evidence, manly murder victim's bodies.
The killer, Joe Ball, committed the almost perfect crime. But the key word here is almost, and Ball was finally caught.
What happened in Napa on Halloween?
On the evening of Halloween 2003, in the small Northern California town of Napa, 2 young women were murdered in their own home while a 3rd roommate hid in the backyard as she watched the assailent flee through the back yard, a mere few feet from where Lauren was hiding. After the suspect left through the back gate, Lauren felt safe enough to go back into the house to the 2nd floor. Lauren found first one roommate, Adriane Insogna and then the other, Leslie Mazzara, on the upstairs floor. Both were just barely alive. By the time the EMT's arrived both had died. After a year of going nowhere and the case getting colder by the minute, detectives finally got a break. The murderer was in fact the newlywed husband of one of Adriane's closest friends, Lily Prudhomme. Her husband's name was Erik Copple and he and Lily were married 4 months after the murders. He was angry at Adriane because he felt she had been encouraging Lily to break it off with him.
The many different police departments that were involved in the Zodiak case were as follows: Napa Sheriff's Dept., Solano County Sheriff's Dept., San Francisco Police, Sonoma County Sheriff's Dept. Riverside County Police, Modesto Police, Santa Rosa Police. There were several others indirectly involved with this case. It is harder to decide which department worked the most on the case. Certainly Napa and Solano worked very hard to catch the Zodiak as did San Francisco detectives Dave Toschi and Bill Armstrong. To a much lessor degree Riverside County in Southern California and Sonoma County where suspect Arthur Lee Allen lived for several years while completing his degree at Sonoma State University near Santa Rosa.
And although not a detective in any formal fashion, SF Chronical cartoonist turned author Robert Graysmith who stayed with the case for two decades, despite the personal price he paid.
What is the significance of the purple pencil in the book Jack The Ripper Case Closed?
The author, Patricia Cornwell, puts significance on the purple pencil because many of the 'fake' letters and notes that the police and press received were written in a special purple pencil used by artists. It is also a well-known fact that Cornwell's suspect, artist Walter R. Sickert loved to use his purple artist's pencil and was never far from it.
Did a serial killer ever work with the police?
One of the more memorable collaborations was serial killer Ted Bundy and Robert Keppel, a member of the Green River Task Force in Washington State. Bundy offered his unique 'take' on the serial killer known as the Green River Killer. Although it is doubtful how much help he really was, police would have tried anything to catch the killer. And Bundy drummed up some publicity for himself, which of course made it worth his while.
Added: The key word in the question is "work WITH" the police - it does not imply they worked for the police
Is the Boston Strangler case considered an open case?
Whether it was ever closed I have not been able to verify, but the files have been dusted off and are being reworked by cold case detectives after DNA testing has eliminated Albert DeSolvo as the murderer of Mary Sullivan, the last victim in the series of murders known as the Boston Strangler killings.
What many people are not aware of is DeSolvo was never charged with the Strangler crimes and was in fact serving time for other crimes when he was stabbed to death in his prison cell. After his arrest, DeSolvo confessed to the Strangler crimes and while he knew far too much about certain murders, others, he didn't have a clue, giving weight to the theory that there was more than one killer at large in the Boston area.
Whatever the case, it will be very interesting to see what cold case investigators will turn up in one of the the most facinating crimes in American history.
Yes, a murder victim can be buried before an arrest is made. When it is determined that a person was murdered, medical examiners, usually do a very thorough examination of the body before releasing it for burial; they also know what samples to keep from the body for further or future testing such as tissue sample, hair samples, samples of body fluids, etc. A problem arises when someone is buried before murder is suspected. When that is the case, authorities get a court order to have the body exhumed and a forensic examination is done. It's not as ideal as doing it before burial but the sciences are getting much better at finding information even from this source.
Woman killed husband by shooting him?
Although we hear a lot about men killing their wives and girlfriends, there are also far too many wives who kill husbands. They are a very long list, but wives less frequently kill them by shooting them themselves, women tend to use more subtle means or get someone else to do the dirty work. That being said, some of the more notorious cases that come to mind are:
Betty Broderick in 1989 shoots her ex-husband and his new wife while they slept in their bed in their own home near San Diego, CA. She claimed that she "jumped and the gun went off" (Betty just happened to be in their bedroom in the middle of the night with a loaded gun). After two notorious trials, the first ended with a hung jury, she was finally convicted.
Dante Sutorius in 1996 shot her her husband in Cincinnati, OH trying to make it look like suicide. She was a charmer who went from man to man, marrying "up", spending his money and moving on.
Terri Gilbert in 1996 shot her husband in Albuquerque, NM claiming she thought her was a burglar. The same woman had been cleared of killing her ex-husband in 1974, claiming self defence.
Piper Rountree in 2004 shot her ex-husband in Richmond, VA. She claimed she was at home in Texas, but her cell phone records gave her away. She had traveled by air from Texas wearing a wig in order to confuse authorities into thinking it could have been her twin sister.
Anne Marie Stout in 2004 shot her husband several times as he sat on the sofa in her living room. When she was unable to load his body into their truck, she called her sister for help, who in turn called the authorities.
Barbara Ford, a recent widow with two sons, marries Russell Stager, a popular HS coach. Nine years later she is once again a widow. She claims to have accidently shot her husband with a pistol he kept under his pillow after hearing a noise in the night. She may well have gotten away with the "accident" story if Russell's ex-wife, who had remained friends with Russell, had not advised police that Barbara's first husband had also died in bed of a gunshot wound which Barbara had explained as an accident. Her pattern, it turned out, was to marry, spend all the money, run up the debts, kill the husband, collect the insurance, and move on happily ever after.
For a list of more infamous women who kill, see the link below.
What serial killer had a birthday every four years?
Aileen Carol Wuornos was a leap year baby, born February 29, 1956.
Where were most of the Green River killers victims found?
The first victims were found in or within mere feet of the Green River, which is where the moniker Green River came from. After that the killer began to diversify his dump sites to wooded areas on Seattle's urban fringes. There were also some bodies dumped over the state line into Oregon. Some bodies were buried while others left out to the elements.
When was the execution of the Kansas murders In Cold Blood?
They both were executed (hanged) on April 14, 1965 in Lansing State Prison, they are buried in nearby Mount Muncie Cemetery. The headstones were purchased by Capote and were stolen, last I knew they are in evidence at the Allen County Sheriff's Department in Iola Kansas. The last executions in Kansas were George York and James Latham just over two months after Smith and Hickock on June 22, 1965.
