Centenaries - whole and half

[Stan Reid]

50 years ago - 1962 June 22 - Paula Lepro, 57, is found dead in her apartment. She had been strangled with her stockings and sexually assaulted with a foreign object. Although she was left off some earlier lists, she is now often considered the second victim in the officially unsolved Boston Strangler serial killer case.

50 years ago - 1962 June 22 - In an Atlanta prison, Joseph Valachi beats Joe Saupp to death with a pipe. Valachi mistook Saupp for a Mafia hit man sent to kill him. The next year, Valachi became a prominent Mafia informer and died incarcerated in 1971.

[Stan Reid]

50 years ago - 1962 June 27 - In South Africa, Duncan Moodie is hanged for the murder of his wife Anita. He had been found guilty twice because his first conviction was thrown out.

[Stan Reid]

50 years ago - 1962 June 28 - Mary Mullen, 85, dies from a heart attack. She was not originally on the Boston Strangler victim list but Albert DeSalvo, in his questionable confession, said that the death was caused when he startled Mullen in her apartment.

[Stan Reid]

50 years ago - 1962 June 30 - Nina Nichols, 68, and Helen Blake, 65, are found slain as a result of separate events. Both women had been sexually interfered with and strangled with their own nylon stockings. They are victims on the list in the officially still unsolved Boston Strangler serial killer case.

[Stan Reid]

150 years ago - 1862 July 7 - Jessie M'Pherson, a servant, is found axed to death on the bed in her quarters. A fellow servant named Jessie M'Lachlan was charged with the murder and found guilty by a Scottish jury. She was sentenced to execution but this was later commuted to life in prison. The two women were supposedly friends and the exact cause of the flare-up has not adequately been explained.

[Stan Reid]

100 years ago - 1912 July 13 - Bessie Mundy is found dead by drowning in a bathtub. She was a recent bride of George Joseph Smith aka the Brides In the Bath Killer and is believed to be the first of his three known victims. The motive was to gain financially from inheritance and life insurance settlements. Smith was eventually found guilty in an English court and hanged in 1915.

[Nemo]

I always found the "Brides in the bath" case intriguing Stan

Mainly because the method of dispatch of the victims seems quite sophisticated and efficient - as shown by a subsequent demonstration for the court case

I always wondered if Smith put a lot of thought into the initial attack, looking to design and commit a perfect murder, or that the method used was successful by happenstance

[Stan Reid]

Yes Nemo, to me it is very creepy like a crime novel. Smith was a diabolical sociopath who probably got a thrill out of the killings in addition to the more mundane stated motive. Glad he swung.

I read somewhere that Agatha Christie might have used the case as an inspiration for her short story Philomel Cottage in 1923. It was later adapted to film in 1937 as Love From a Stranger starring Basil Rathbone as the groom and killer.

[Stan Reid]

100 years ago - 1912 July 15 - Dora Grey, an eighteen-year-old girl in service, is found strangled on a Yarmouth beach. Although she had a bit of reputation, the autopsy indicated that she was virgin. There was no sign of a struggle at the scene so she had apparently been left there after being murdered elsewhere. Dora was last seen with a sandy haired man in a straw hat who appeared to be in his late 30s but he was never identified and her murder was never solved.

[Stan Reid]

100 years ago - 1912 July 16 - A New York gangster named Herman "Beansie" Rosenthal is gunned down by a four man hit squad affiliated with the Jacob Zelig gang to keep him from turning rat. Lieutenant Charles Becker, a crooked cop, had set up the rubout. The gunmen were Harry "Gyp the Blood" Horowitz, "Lefty" Louis Rosenberg, "Dago" Frank Cirofici and Jacob Seidenschmer aka Whitey Lewis. All four were executed the following year. Becker didn't go to the electric chair until 1915.