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| Author | Murderers Gangsters and Madness |
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This thread will explore famous and not so famous crimes of the past. The criminals will be from random nations and races and both sexes.
I will add to this each day. Do not flood this thread. I will open another thread for those who wish to talk about it or add to a particular crime. If you have a crime story you would like to see posted here, send me the link of your research and I will post it with your name.
Example: Atlas sent me this link to a most butal killing...
Mods, please keep the thread clean of comments or additions from any other player. That is what the other thread will be for. Thank you. | Who knows what lies in the hearts of men(and women) and drives them to commit the most awful acts upon the innocent or not so innocent in some cases? Some killers came from great wealth with no excuse for their actions other than they were evil. Others acted upon greed or jealousy along with many of the usual motives.
Today's sordid tale recalls a cult of female killers in Nagyrev, Hungary in the early 1900's WW1 era. They came to be known as " The Angel Makers of Nagyrev."
Nagyrev is a farming village on the River Tisza in Hungary, about sixty miles southeast of Budapest, near another town called Tiszakurt. For a time, a community of killers flourished in these two places... thanks to the midwives. Known as the "wise women", they inspired and assisted in the murders of an estimated three hundred people over a span of fifteen years.
It started during World War I, and since there was no hospital in Nagyrev, the prominent midwife, Julius Fazekas, took care of people's medical needs. She'd only been in town for three years, but in that time had gained a reputation for helping women get rid of unwanted babies. Her cohort in crime, reputed to be a witch, was Susanna Olah, a.k.a., "Auntie Susi". | Most of the men had gone to war in 1914, but soon there were other men around---the Allied prisoners of war in camps outside town. They apparently had limited freedoms, because a number of women got involved with these men, and when spouses returned, the wives were unhappy. They'd gotten used to their sexual freedom, it seems, and did not wish to have it curtailed. Talk got back to the midwives about the general discontent. Apparently they saw a way to capitalize.
Fazekas and Olah began boiling arsenic off strips of flypaper to sell to these women. They dispensed poison to whoever wanted it, and there were plenty of takers. It's estimated that around fifty poisoners went into action, calling themselves" The Angel Makers of Nagyrev," and because of the high death rate, the area eventually became known as "The Murder District".
In fact, some women decided to be rid of more than just an inconvenient spouse and began to poison other annoying relatives and even their own children. Occasionally they poisoned one another. Marie Kardos murdered her husband, her lover, and her twenty-three-year-old son. Just before he died, she got him to sing for her. Knowing he was poisoned, she listened to his sweet voice. In the midst of his song, he clutched his stomach and was soon dead. Giving testimony years later, she seemed to think this event rather delightful. Maria Varga killed seven members of her family, considering the death of her husband in particular a Christmas present to herself. | Because Fazekas' cousin filed the death certificates, when officials poked their noses in to check on the sudden rise in the death rate, she showed them that everything was in order. This one was a drowning (a poisoned woman tossed in the river), and that one was an illness. There were no doctors around to make examinations, so who was to say differently?
The first death was Peter Hegedus in 1914, and by some accounts, the poisonings stopped in 1929 only after a medical student from another town found high levels of arsenic in a body washed up on the riverbanks. This event inspired officials to exhume two other bodies in the Nagyrev cemetery, and finding poison, arrested suspects.
By another account, the killings stopped because one woman, Mrs. Szabo, who was acting as a nurse, got caught poisoning a man's wine. Then another patient complained of the same thing. Under questioning, Szabo implicated a friend, who admitted that she'd poisoned her mother. She also told on the midwife, and Fazekas was brought in for questioning.
She denied it and said they could prove nothing. However, the authorities set a trap. They let her go and she went about warning her customers that their game was over. Her arsenic factory was closing down, and no one had better tell. However, as she went from house to house, she all but pointed out to the police who the poisoners were. | That day, they made thirty-eight arrests, with more to follow, and twenty-six women actually went to trial. Eight received the death sentence, seven got life, and the others spent some time in jail. Among those who died was "Auntie Susi," because it was she who had gone about town distributing the poison to various customers. Her sister was also sentenced to death. One account says that Fazekas was one of those hanged, but another describes her suicide by poison in her own home, surrounded by pots of boiled flypaper. At any rate, the woman who'd come in to offer her "medical" services had inspired a shocking murder spree, and the final tally will never be known.
Their story is the subject of the documentary film The Angelmakers. | Grave Robbers:
From ancient times the practice of grave robbing saw the highest rulers in the world( Egyptian Pharoahs, Cyrus the Great of Persia) for their gold and jewels, to the unmarked pauper's grave(for cadavar study by doctors) desecrated. Not too many years ago we see this evil act done once more and this is the tale;
On Christmas Day 1977, Charlie Chaplin died at the age of 88 at his estate in Vevey, Switzerland, making his widow at that time the richest in the world. He was buried in a local cemetery. Sixty-eight days later, on March 3, 1978, Chaplin's coffin was disinterred by grave robbers. Shortly thereafter Chaplin's family began receiving calls from a man demanding $600,000 for the return of Chaplin's remains. Mrs. Chaplin had no intention of paying any ransom, but she kept in contact with the criminals so the police could hunt them down. Eventually they were nabbed 11 weeks after the crime. The culprits had reburied Chaplin's coffin in a corn field. Chaplin's coffin was reinterred in its original burial place--under six feet of concrete to deter further grave-robbing attempts. The criminals, recent refugees from eastern Europe, were convicted of 'disturbing the peace of the dead.' The sentence was four and one half years hard labor.
Lucky for these guys they were not living in days of kings for they would have been sentenced to death. | Revenge:
Setting: Just before WW1 in France
"On 16 March 1914 at 6 o'clock in the evening Henriette Caillaux was ushered into the office of Gaston Calmette, editor of Le Figaro. . . . Mme. Caillaux wore a fur coat over a gown strangely formal for a late afternoon business call. Her hat was modest, and a large furry muff linked the two sleeves of her coat. Henriette's hands were hidden inside the muff.
"Before Calmette could speak she asked, 'You know why I have come?' 'Not at all, Madame,' responded the editor, charming to the end. Without another word, Henriette pulled her right hand from the mass of fur protecting it. In her fist was a small weapon, a Browning automatic. Six shots went off in rapid succession, and Calmette fell to the floor clutching his abdomen. Figaro workers from the surrounding offices rushed in and seized Mme. Caillaux. . . . 'Do not touch me,' she ordered her captors. 'Je suis une dame!' "
Here was no case that might have required the sleuthing services of Hercule Poirot or Inspector Maigret. The society woman held a smoking gun in her hand and never denied that she had committed the deed. It was a murder in cold blood, punishable under French law by life imprisonment or even death. | Henriette Caillaux shot the editor because he had conducted a campaign of vilification against her husband, Joseph, a wealthy former prime minister affiliated with the center-left Radical Party. Or was her motive more a familiar affair of the heart? She had been one of Joseph Caillaux's mistresses; it was a second marriage for both. The Figaro editor, a rightist political enemy, had broken an unwritten Parisian rule by publishing a love letter written to a gentleman's mistress. Joseph Caillaux, a notorious boulevardier, had sent the letter 13 years before the trial to another woman, who later became his first wife, and it had been leaked to Figaro.
Political and social mores, the Napoleonic Code that discriminated against women legally and the venality of the press all came together in the affaire Caillaux.
Her celebrated lawyer, Fernand Labori, had represented Emile Zola and successfully defended Capt. Alfred Dreyfus against false charges of treason in the notorious, anti-Semitic Dreyfus affair. In her clever defense on the witness stand, Henriette Caillaux made two points. She evoked the romantic and idealized notion that women were ruled by their passions; hers was simply a "crime passionnel." She also used new scientific language that stressed the nervous system and the unconscious mind. | Henriette Caillaux's testimony shifted back and forth between literary and scientific images. It was intended to make her appear a heroine of uncontrollable emotions to the jury, and a victim of deterministic laws to the experts. Literature made a woman of ungovernable passions sympathetic, even attractive; criminal psychology placed her beyond the law.
After a seven-day trial in the Cour d'Assises in Paris, Henriette Caillaux walked out free. In less than an hour of deliberations, the all-male jury decided the homicide was committed without premeditation or criminal intent. The jurors accepted her testimony that when she pulled the trigger, she was a temporary victim of (as her lawyer put it) "unbridled female passions." | | [Post deleted by moderator Takesister // If you have a crime story you would like to see posted here, send Modi the link of your research and] | for Pentagon:
I appreciate your interest in this thread but please follow the instructions and send me the link if you want something posted here. I want to keep it spam free and controlled or it could be shut down. Thank you. | Topic: Gunslingers
Subject: John Wesley Hardin
Setting: Wild West USA late 1800's
Old West outlaw and gunslinger John Wesley Hardin was born May 26, 1853, in Bonham, Texas. Rumored to be so mean he once shot a man for snoring, Hardin was shot to death in El Paso on August 19, 1895, by a man he had hired to kill someone else.
John's father, James G. Hardin, was a Methodist preacher, lawyer, schoolteacher and circuit rider. His mother was Elizabeth Hardin. At age fourteen, John stabbed a schoolmate. At age fifteen, he shot a black man to death in Polk County. While fleeing from the law following that murder, he killed at least one, and possibly four Union soldiers who were attempting to apprehend him.
As a cowboy on the Chisolm Trail in 1871, Hardin killed seven people. He killed three more upon arriving in Abilene, Kansas. Back in Texas, following a run-in with the State Police back in Gonzales County, Hardin got married, settled down and had three children. But he soon resumed his murder spree, killing 4 more times before surrendering to the Cherokee County sheriff in September 1872. He broke out of jail after a couple of weeks, however. | Hardin next killed Jack Helm, a former State Police captain, who led the fight against the anti-Reconstructionist forces of Jim Taylor in the Sutton-Taylor Feud. Hardin had become a supporter of Taylor's from 1873 to 1874.
In May 1874, Hardin killed a deputy sheriff in Brown County while visiting the town of Comanche. Fleeing to Florida with his family, Hardin was captured by Texas Rangers in Pensacola on July 23, 1877. During that flight, he killed at least one, and perhaps as many as five more victims.
On September 28, 1878, Hardin was sentenced to twenty-five years for the Brown County deputy's murder. He was pardoned on March 16, 1894. Having studied law while in prison, Hardin was admitted to the Texas bar soon after his release.
In 1895, Hardin went to El Paso to testify for the defense in a murder trial. Following the trial, he stayed and established a law practice. Just when he seemed to finally be going straight, Hardin began an affair with one of his married female clients. Her husband found out about the affair and Hardin hired some law officials to kill him. One of the hired gunmen, however, Constable John Selman, shot Hardin instead.
Legend has it that his last words were, "Four sixes to beat, Henry." When killed, Hardin was shooting dice with local furniture dealer Henry Brown at the Acme saloon in El Paso. Thus ended the life and career of one of Texas deadliest gunslingers. Despite his killing of over thirty people, Hardin had a reputation as a gentleman among those who knew him, and he always claimed he never killed anyone who didn't need killing. | [Post deleted by moderator Takesister // Indirect insult given the topic of the thread.]
[Player banned by moderator Takesister until 2009-09-16 03:18:25 // Indirect insult given topic. Ban 1 hour] | | [Post deleted by moderator Takesister // Be nice to Modi. Don't spam] | | No ban? Really? | | Keep it up. More. I am reading it. Nice work. ^^. | [Post deleted by moderator Takesister // Blatant spam]
[Player banned by moderator Takesister until 2009-09-30 02:52:00 // Do not post with multis and do not spam so blatantly.] | Topic: Duels
Subject: Alexander Hamilton vs Aaron Burr
Setting: 1804 New Jersey USA
Vice President Aaron Burr was replaced on the Republican ticket in 1804 with George Clinton, the New York political boss. Burr's power base rested in a delicate balancing act between the parties. Since he was neither a confirmed Republican nor completely opposed to all Federalist policies, Burr never built the kind of following he needed in either party to assure further success.
Because the influential politician Alexander Hamilton failed to oust Burr through his influence with the Federalists, he was thrown into despair. "What can I do better than withdraw from the scene?" Hamilton pouted, "Every day proves to me more and more that this American world was not made for me." For Hamilton, Burr was a modern Caesar, whose defects cut him off from the principles of the Republic as Hamilton understood them. The truth was that both men had lost their credibility through political machinations not in step with the reigning political etiquette of the day. John Adams described Hamilton as the "most restless, impatient, artful, indefatigable and unprincipled intriguer in the United States." Many also felt the same about Burr. Burr's behavior antagonized both parties. | Burr ran for governor of New York in 1804 with some Federalist support, as well as that of Tammany Hall, but nevertheless lost the campaign, primarily due to the Clinton and Livingston factions. Burr's loss sealed his political doom. At a political dinner for the Federalist Party held in New York, Alexander Hamilton voiced a despicable slur upon the name and reputation of Aaron Burr. What Hamilton exactly said was not printed at the time, but rumors and newspaper reports reached Burr, who wrote Hamilton and demanded an apology. Hamilton waffled in his response, Burr protested in another letter, and after receiving no satisfaction challenged Hamilton to a duel. When Burr and Hamilton met on the dueling grounds of Weehawken, New Jersey on July 11, 1804 Burr shot Hamilton, who fired into the air either as a reflex after being shot or purposely to avoid shooting Burr. Hamilton was rowed back across the river to New York City, where he lingered until the next day and died in great pain. Burr was indicted for murder in New York State, but never prosecuted. After completing his duties as Vice President in 1805, Burr entered into a conspiracy to wrest the lands west of the Mississippi River from Spain; these intrigues included the Louisiana Purchase.
Jefferson saw Burr as a clear and present danger, and began a campaign to ruin his reputation, noting that "I never thought him an honest, frank-dealing man, but considered him as a crooked gun, or other perverted machine, whose aim or shot you could never be sure of." Jefferson penned perhaps the most devastating comment of all when he added that "A great man in little things, he is really small in great ones." |
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