Crimes of the Century - No. 23 - The Sad Saga of Andrea Yates, 2001

The Sad Saga of Andrea Yates, 2001

For those of us living in Houston, we vividly remember this story, the trial and the events leading to the verdict; Only to be exonerated several years later for this heinous and vicious act.  Everyone blamed the Husband (I was one of them), and felt he should have gone to prison just as she did.

While the article by TIME (below) gives insight into the crime, you can also go here to read the drama as it unfolded on that terrible day in 2001.

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The prosecution in the trial of Andrea Yates argued that she may have drowned her four young sons and infant daughter in the family bathtub as a kind of symbolic revenge for the emptiness of her life with their father, Randy. However, as shocking as the June 20, 2001 drownings were, much of the speculation was over Yates' mental condition. Did the fact that she had five children, each spaced about two years apart, have anything to do with mental illness, brought on perhaps by repetitive post-partum depression? And what of her conservative Christian husband and the home-schooling of the children? How much time did the young mother have to herself? Absent from Yates was the viciousness of Susan Smith, who had locked her two young sons in a car on Oct. 25, 1994, let them slide into a lake, all in order to be free to run off with a wealthy lover. Instead, the focus was the insidiousness of mental illness. Yates confessed to the murders and would undergo two trials. The first rejected insanity as a defense and sent her to prison for life. An appeal gave her a second trial in which she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. She has since been committed to a mental health facility. Her husband has remarried.

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TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes that I have been posting and will continue to post every Saturday on my blog.  Hope you enjoy.

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To read the previous 22 crimes - click my logo below.

 

Crimes of the Century - No. 22 - Columbine Massacre, 1999

COLUMBINE MASSACRE, 1999

Just when you think it couldn't get any worse.  Today's crime of the century is another horrific nightmare.  And if any of you have ever watched the movie, "We Need To Talk About Kevin," you would understand where I'm coming from.  Most of you reading this probably recall the incident, because it was only 14 years ago.  What is so sad about this whole thing is that the massacres continue until this day.  Need I remind you of Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook?  And there's countless others I'm sure.  But its just people killing people, not guns killing people, right?  I think both issues need to be addressed, not just one.

While the article by TIME (below) gives insight into the crime, you can also go here to read the drama as it unfolded on that terrible day in 1999.

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School shootings were already a problem before April 20, 1999. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris knew that theirs had to stand out. So they planned to make every previous incident look podunk, and they videotaped their boast so the world would know what they had set out to do. And so they turned Columbine High School into an abattoir: murdering 12 schoolmates and a teacher, wounding 24 other people and then, finally, killing themselves in a drama seen live on television. It was not quite the 250 they had hoped to kill, but it was enough to make the incident the worst school shooting in American history. This sudden eruption of violence in the middle of one of the most solidly upper middle class communities in America set off months of soul searching. Parents and school officials discussed the prevalence of violent music and video games; a similar concern arose over school sociology -- bullies, outsiders and teen goth culture. Parents asked: what are the warning signs that our children are turning out to be their own enemies? On their tapes, Klebold and Harris talk about anger management but not the expected kind. Rather, they were learning to ratchet up their anger and yet keep it secret from everyone else -- until the day they had to turn it on full blast.

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TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes that I have been posting and will continue to post every Saturday on my blog.  Hope you enjoy.

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To read the previous 21 crimes - click my logo below.

 

Famous Last Meals of the Green Mile

So what did all those famous notorious murderers have as their final meal?  One only wanted an olive with the pit in it. But another wanted 12 fried shrimp, a bucket of original recipe KFC, French Fries and a pound of strawberries.  Pretty darn interesting.

Victor Feguer

-28 yrs

-Florida

-Kidnap and Murder

-Lethal injection

-Single olive with the

pit in it

Angel Nieves Diaz

-55 yrs

-Florida

-Murder, kidnapping,

armed robbery

-Lethal injection

- Declined a meal*

*Was served the regular

prison meal instead,

but declined this also

Timothy McVeigh

-33 yrs

-Indiana

-168 counts of murder

-Lethal injection

-2 pints of mint and

chocolate chip ice

cream

Ricky Ray Rector

-42 yrs

-Arkansa

-2 counts of murder

-Lethal injection

-Steak

-Fried Chicken

-Cherry Kool-Aid

-Pecan pie*

*he left the pecan pie, telling a guard he was 'saving it for later.'

John Wayne Gacy

-52 yers

-Illinois

-Rape, 33 counts of

murder

-Lethal injection

-12 fried shrimp

-Bucket of original

recipe KFC*

-French Fries

-1 lb of Strawberries

*prior to being convicted Gacy had had managed 3 KFC restaurants

Ted Bundy

-43 yrs

-Florida

-Rape, Necrophilia,

prison escape, 35+

counts of murder

-Electric chair

-Declined a 'special' meal, so was given the traditional last meal

-Steak (medium rare)

-eggs (over easy)

-hash browns

-toast with butter and

jelly

-milk

-juice

Ronnie Lee Gardner

-49 yrs

-Utah

-Burglary, Robbery, 2

counts of murder

-Firing Squad

-Lobster tail

-Steak

-Apple pie

-Vanilla ice cream

-Eat while watching the

Lord of the Rings trilogy

Personally, I don't think any of them deserved last meals, they didn't give their victims last meals, why should they?

Crimes of the Century - No. 13 - John Wayne Gacy

JOHN WAYNE GACY, 1978

The warning signs were there: the arrest for sodomy with a minor; another sexual offense with a child; the strange smell, like dead things, in his house. But John Wayne Gacy was also an upstanding citizen: he helped out the neighbors, he was the chaplain of the Jaycees, he dressed up as roly-poly Pogo the Clown to entertain children. But when police came asking questions in December 1978, Gacy started confessing. And so the cops looked in the house's 40-ft. crawl space, beneath the garage and under the house. They found the bodies and remains of 28 young men and boys; Gacy said there were four others that he had thrown into the river. 

By the end of the year, police had practically torn the house down in their search. There was no question that Gacy would be found guilty; and a jury took barely an hour to come to that decision. He was sentenced to death, under new guidelines that would make sure the penalty was not "cruel and unusual" and therefore within constitutional bounds. But Gacy's execution by lethal injection in 1994 would reopen that question; instead of a five-minute procedure, the process took 18 and Gacy was clearly struggling as he perished. The critics asked: Was this cruel and unusual? His victims' families were unanimous: so was Gacy.

TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes that I have been posting and will continue to post every Saturday on my blog.  Hope you enjoy.

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You can learn more about this notorious killer here, and how he became an embarassment to the Secret Service when he was photographed with the First Lady, Rosalynn Carter in 1978.  Gacy was an organizer of a Polish parade that was held in Chicago every year.  In the photo, Gacy is wearing a pin with an "S" on it - meaning he received some special clearance by the Secret Service.  Geez, it's amazing what you can learn by taking the time to read.

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To read the previous 12 crimes - click the logo.

Crimes of the Century - No. 12 - The Son of Sam

THE SON OF SAM, 1977

New York seemed to be going to hell in the summer of 1977. Already in perpetual fiscal crisis the city was plunged into a 25-hour blackout on July 13 that saw massive looting and arson. And the Son of Sam killer was still out there after more than a year, waiting to kill again, sending his perverse missives to the police and to New York Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin. The killer had called himself the Son of Sam in his letters, which spoke of Papa Sam as a drinker of blood and master of Satanic mayhem. And on July 31, the Son of Sam struck again, shooting a young woman, who was killed, and her male companion, who would be blinded. But it would be the last attack. 

A witness on the night of that shooting saw a man in the neighborhood remove a parking ticket from a Ford Galaxie. The police tracked their records and found 24-year-old David Berkowitz, a dweeby, pudgy employee of the U.S. Postal Service. Trained as a sharpshooter with the M16 rifle in the U.S. Army, he had used a .44 pistol in all the shootings, killing six and wounding seven. Who was Sam? Sam, said Berkowitz, was a cantankerous former neighbor. But Berkowitz said he was the devil and that he transmitted his orders through the infernal and incessant barkings of his dog, Harvey.

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You can learn more about this notorious killer here, and yes the maniac is still alive.  He is currently serving time at a correctional facility in Fallsburg, New York with his next parole hearing due in May of this year.  He has been denied the previous 5 times so it is unlikely he will be granted one.

TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes that I have been posting and will continue to post every Saturday on my blog.  Hope you enjoy.

Go back and read the previous 11 crimes here.

Crimes of the Century - No. 10 - The Tate-Labianca Murders

THE TATE-LABIANCA MURDERS, 1969

On Aug. 9 and 10, 1969, two sets of grisly murders took place in Los Angeles. On the 9th, a gang of four people brutally killed the actress Sharon Tate, who was married to director Roman Polanski and eight and a half months pregnant, four of Tate's friends and the son of her gardener. Tate begged for the life of her unborn child but was told by one of the female assailants, "Look bitch, I don't care about you. I don't care if you are having a baby. You are going to die and I don't feel a thing about it." Tate's blood was used to write the word PIG on the home's front door. 

The next day supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife were killed in a similar fashion, a fork used to carve the word WAR on his belly left sticking out of his corpse. This time, the leader of the gang took part in the slaughter.

Authorities would take nearly five months to track down Charles Manson and his so-called Family. And when they did, America discovered a terrifying mix of a libertine counter-culture and stupefying mind-control. Manson sent out his mostly female agents like the Furies of Greek mythology, to take down those whom he saw as his enemies. His trial ended in 1971 with a death sentence which was vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court's declaration of the penalty's unconstitutionality. He is up for parole this year but is unlikely to receive it.

TIME Magazine posted this article online several years ago, along with a list of 24 additional notorious crimes. I will be posting these crimes every Saturday on my blog, hope you enjoy.

Go back and read the previous 9 crimes here.

Crimes of the Century - No. 9 - Richard Speck

RICHARD SPECK, 1966

It sounds like a recurring nightmare: an armed male intruder breaks into a women's dorm and with a gun and a butcher's knife, binds and gags all the residents. Then one by one, he kills them cruelly and with great brutality. All of that happened in Chicago on the night of July 14, 1966, in a dormitory that housed eight nurses who worked at the South Chicago Community Hospital.

The perpetrator was Richard Speck, then 24, a drifter born in Illinois, raised in Texas, wandering from petty crime to petty crime and bar to bar. At the age of 19, he had the words "Born to Raise Hell" tattooed on his arm. His victims were all eulogized as saints, people who had committed their lives to helping others. He would be positively identified by one of his intended targets, Corazon Amurao, who survived the attack by hiding under a bed. Speck knew there were eight women in the dorm; he did not know that a friend was also staying over that night. So Amurao survived as the guest was led to slaughter.

The jury found Speck guilty after a mere 49 minutes of deliberation and he was sentenced to the electric chair. In 1972, however, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death sentence unconstitutional. Resentenced to hundreds of years in prison, Speck died in 1991. No one claimed his body, which was cremated and the ashes scattered to the wind. 

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Visit my blog every Saturday as a new crime will be posted each week.

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Go back and read the previous 7 crimes here.

You can actually watch a great A&E Biography on this monstrous man after the jump.

Crimes of the Century - No. 1 - The Lindbergh Kidnapping

THE LINDBERGH KIDNAPPING

On a winter's night 75 years ago, a child was stolen out of a house in New Jersey. He was no ordinary infant but the "Eaglet," the 20-month-old son of the aviator Charles Lindbergh, America's great hero who, just five years before, had become the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. For the next two and a half months, America and much of the world were riveted by daily updates and speculation from the police search for Baby Charles. Suspicion spared no one -- not even the Lindberghs. In April, news spread that a ransom had been paid but still no child was recovered. 

Finally, in May, a battered, mutilated little corpse was found by the side of the road, not far from the Lindberghs' home. Baby Charles had been bludgeoned to death not long after he had been kidnapped. The resulting trial, sentencing and execution of German carpenter and ex-convict Bruno Richard Hauptmann for the crime would extend the infamy of the case four more years. But the Lindbergh kidnapping had become more than just a particularly heinous act. It had become the Crime of the Century. Many other crimes have earned the distinction -- but what makes an infamous event deserving of the title Crime of the Century?

TIME Magazine has put together a list of notorious crimes that might vie for that distinction. I will be blogging about these crimes throughout the next few weeks as I continue with my blogging adventures.

You may notice in the coming weeks, that there are no political assassinations on the list. Nor mass suicides or genocide. All of those are certainly terrible crimes and possibly even graver sins. But there is a degree of conscious orchestration to those acts. The Crime of the Century must strike at the most undefined and thus most vulnerable part of the soul: it must touch the messy unconscious, where all kinds of emotions meld into each other. Pity and envy are involved; desire and revulsion; fear and sometimes schadenfreude (glee). And while each person has his or her own brew of emotions, we all recognize them. So our fascination with the crime becomes a populist mania: an obsession with the wreckage of the rich and famous, comeuppance for hubris, a communal grasping for a moral to a sordid tale. These horrible disruptions of ordinary life must be able to function as a way to order our most frightening thoughts, becoming cautions and lessons for the future.
 
As you read through the 25 crimes Time Magazine has selected, they will make you wonder which of them will remain in the popular, perhaps even the artistic imagination in the years to come? How will they be retold and with what kinds of lessons and cautions in mind? Here's the first issue, the first crime on Time's infamous list.  How do you think they will fare?  Visit my blog every Saturday as a new crime will be posted each week.