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.

 

Cyanide and Happiness: Show

Crimes of the Century - No. 21 - The Versace Killing Spree, 1997

The Versace Killing Spree, 1997

Today's crime of the century was just horrible.  It was all over the news - one, because the killer was gay, two, because the victim was a famous fashion designer and three, because he started killing everyone in his path.  Can you imagine if someone tried killing Christian Dior, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein or Giorgio Armani today. 

While the article by TIME (below) gives insight into the crime, you can also  go here to read the drama as it unfolded during those awful three months in 1997.

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Dismissed by his mother as a "high class male prostitute" and defended by his father as an "altar boy," Andrew Cunanan is indelibly cast in popular memory as the drug-using gay spree killer with AIDS, even though no one is certain what drugs he was on, if any, during his murderous three month rampage in 1997 or even if he had been properly tested for HIV before or after his death. Starting out in California, he would kill five people in all: two former lovers, both in Minnesota; a rich man in Chicago from whom he stole a Lexus; a cemetery caretaker in New Jersey, from whom he took a pick-up truck, fearing that police were on to the Lexus; and, most infamously, he killed the glitzy fashion designer Gianni Versace in Miami. Cunanan, 27, finally killed himself in an unoccupied houseboat not two miles away from the scene of his last crime. From what is known of him, he liked to embellish his biography, loved to spend money he did not have and learned to deal drugs. He was fueled by envy, obsessed with status and fame. That, combined with the realization that his looks were failing — and thus his marketability to rich gay men — may have led to a panic. But only Cunanan knew for certain what his motives were. The high life can produce very low forms of existence.

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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 20 crimes - click my logo below.

 

Dexter's Excuses Supercut (NSFW)

Showtime released a video of Dexter's excuses over the last 7 seasons.  Can you beat them all?  Probably not, but one thing I'll definitely miss about this show is Deb's crazy cuss words.  And yes, the video is NSFW, because of the explicit language - so put some headphones or something.

Then End Begins - Sundays at 8 PM on June 30

Crimes of the Century - No. 20 - The Murder of JonBenet Ramsey, 1996

The Murder of JonBenet Ramsey, 1996

Wow, I remember this as if it were yesterday.  The headlines, the investigations, the intrigue of it all.  And I still think the Ramsey's did it.  The child's mother, Patsy died ten years later, and the father unsuccessfully campaigned for a seat in Michigan's House of Representatives.  While the article by TIME (below) gives insight into the crime, you may want to go here to read the drama as it unfolded on that awful day after Christmas.

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Two corollary developments distinguish this terrible unsolved killing of a beautiful six-year-old girl in Boulder, Colo. The first was the suddenly widespread revelation of the existence of children's beauty pageants — in which JonBenet was entered time and again by her former beauty queen mother, Patsy. Public fascination and repulsion over the makeup, costumes and prepubescent swimsuit competitions at times overshadowed the crime of child murder itself. The second development was the tenacity with which observers and large segments of the public held on to suspicions that JonBenet's wealthy family had something to do with her death. The murder was discovered the day after Christmas 1996 and to this day no credible suspect has been arrested, despite the high-profile false confession of teacher John Mark Karr. In the meantime, Patsy Ramsey has died of cancer. But those who view her with suspicion have not relented.

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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 19 crimes - click my logo below.

 

Crimes of the Century - No. 17 - The O.J. Simpson Case

THE O.J. SIMPSON CASE, 1994

 

So ingrained are the details of the saga in living memory that it is, perhaps, pointless to summarize them. The impression is of a hydra-headed debauch: it was a classic Hollywood celebrity legal melodrama; a race-relations story; a marriage-gone-acrid; a foray into detective work and into genetics; a primer on the jury system; proof of the overwhelming profits to be made from tabloid TV; a domestic tragedy with feuding families; a comedy of errors with irritating consequences. If the Crime of the Century has to be a congeries of issues and emotions, then this is the contemporary champion. Indeed, it was done twice because much of the public needed an alternative ending: the first jury acquitting; the second jury finding civil wrong. And the saga is relived again and again whenever Simpson decides it is time to get more attention (as he did at the end of 2006 with a proposed but unpublished book that speculated on what he might have done if he were indeed the murderer). The only tragic thing is that no one has seen prison for the horrendous murder of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman on the night of June 12, 1994.

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I remember watching everything unfold as I sat at home glued to my television set.  Like everyone else at the time, I wanted to know what would happen to the pro-football player, turned actor, turned sportscaster, who I assumed was the killer.  And still do.  Simpson eventually got arrested, but not for this; He got arrested for stealing items that once belonged to him.  Unfortunately for him, he went about it the wrong way - he did it Mafioso style. LOL.  For those who were not born at the time, or want to read about this dramatic story, go here.

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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 16 crimes - click my logo below.

 

Crimes of the Century - No. 16 - Jeffrey Dahmer

 
JEFFREY DAHMER, 1991

 

His surname is now synonymous with "monster." Yet at least 17 times, Jeffrey Dahmer was able to get young men and boys to come home with him. In one incident, on the night of May 27, 1991 in Milwaukee, a 14-year-old managed to escape and wandered into the streets with Dahmer in pursuit. When the cops started asking questions, Dahmer was able to convince the police that it was merely a lovers' quarrel. The police conclusion: "Intoxicated Asian, naked male. Was returned to his sober boyfriend." 

 

Like the dozen before him and four after, the young man was eventually strangled and dismembered. Dahmer kept his skull as a souvenir. He stored parts of his victims in vats. He ate them. Dahmer's crimes raised several inchoate fears and revulsions: cannibalism, sexuality, class and race -- most of his victims were poor, African-American, Asian or Latino, while Dahmer was white. After his arrest on July 22, 1991, Dahmer was sentenced to nearly a thousand years in jail. He was killed by an inmate in November 1994.

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While the article above was just a short bio on a man known for all these heinous crimes, I recommend reading more about him here.  He truly was an evil human being. 

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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 15 crimes - click my logo below.

 

Cyanide and Happiness: Car

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. 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. 7 - The Lana Turner Affair

THE LANA TURNER AFFAIR, 1958

Lana Turner reigned as one of Hollywood's box-office queens for more than two decades. Real life was much trampier. Her father, a miner in Idaho, was murdered after winning a craps game. She loved to hang out with men of ill repute and would eventually marry seven times. One marriage, to the actor Lex Barker, would end in 1957 after she accused him of molesting her daughter by a previous marriage, Cheryl Crane. 

True to her failings, she began a torrid and tumultuous affair with Johnny Stompanato, a man suspected of mob ties. When she tried to break it off, he grew violent. And on the night of April 4, 1958, Stompanato and Turner engaged in a ferocious argument at her Beverly Hills home, so violent in fact that 14-year old Cheryl ran for a knife and ended up stabbing Stompanato to death. 

The papers loved the story and the coroner's inquest was one of the most sensational legal hearings Hollywood has ever seen. Turner's tale on the stand was riveting: a wayward mother in distress and the faithful daughter who comes to her rescue. "I walked toward the bedroom door," Turner testified. "He was right behind me. And I opened it and my daughter came in. I swear it was so fast, I truthfully thought she had hit him in the stomach ... I never saw a blade." A Stompanato friend's outburst in court implied that it was Lana who wielded the knife, but the coroner declared the whole thing justifiable homicide. Turner's career flourished into the 1980s.

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As you read through the 25 crimes Time Magazine has selected, you will 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?  Visit my blog every Saturday as a new crime will be posted each week.

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Go back and read the previous 6 crimes here.

What a Hot F**king Mess: HIV Positive Man Purposely Infects 3,000 Men and Women

I'm sorry, but I couldn't just title this "What a Hot Mess".  This kind of thing just irks the hell out of me.  Why would someone do such a horrible and inhumane kind of thing to another human being?  I can't fathom ever finding out that I slept with someone who was dishonest with me, much less have unprotected sex with them.

David Dean Smith casually walked into a Michigan police station 3 weeks ago, and admitted sleeping with 3,000 men and women over several years.  He doesn't remember when he was diagnosed with the disease, but that he says, he "intentionally attempted to spread the disease to kill people."

So far only two people have come forward, and one of them went so far as to say that she immediately knew it was Smith who infected her.  After speaking with MSNBC, she called him a "sociopath" and a "predator".  

What else would you call him? He's a fucking monster!

OMG Hilarious! - Play Dead

The Hitchhiker's Guide To Murder

If you want something to make your day, the following video is it. OMG, it's absolutely hilarious! 

Back when I was in college, I remember driving around with a group of my friends, dropping them off at their houses after a party, and heading back to my place. It was a long way from home after my last stop. 

I am about 10 miles from a town called Orangedale with woods for miles on end, when I run out of gas. I know, I know, it sounds like a scary movie, and no my brick cell phone wouldn't work!! LOL.

Well, I had to hitchhike. A nice guy picked me up, took me to a gas station, and I got home safely that night. 

Of course, I tell myself that this would never happen again, but it does...

A few months later I am driving home for the holidays when I run out of gas. A sweet old couple pick me up, take me to the nearest gas station, where I proceed to call my parents for help. 

These days it isn't like that.  According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, 99.9% of hitchhikers are murderers, and 99.9% of people who pick up hitchhikers are ALSO murderers.  Then there's this video.... sure to make you laugh.

Facebook's Farmville, Café World, Mafia Wars - Are They To Blame For Their Deaths?

You know what I find quite interesting? I don't see many people on Farmville or the Mafia Wars games anymore.  Do you still have it coming up on your end?  Sorry, I don't mean to ridicule those who play these addictive games, but after reading the story I'm about to share with you, I could care even less about them.


Has anyone ever heard of Bejeweled?  Well, in one week, two mothers murdered their children over games like these.  On the first one, the mother let her 14 month old baby drown in the bathtub while she played Café World.  Her reason? The baby wanted alone time.  Stupid bitch, babies don't need alone time. In the second one, the mother hit her baby in the head with her computer, thus killing her 9-14 week old infant, all because she was crying. How 'bout somebody poke this bitch's eyes out for playing on the computer instead of holding her child?

While I know that most people wouldn't do stupid shit like that, it boggles my mind how parents could be so careless.  It's like leaving your child in the back seat of your car, in 200 degree weather, because you forgot to drop her off at school not realizing she was in the back seat.  And it's not so much that Facebook or these games are too blame, but people get so addicted to them, that they tend to overlook what they're doing. What are your thoughts on this crazy story?

Giffords @ Houston's Medical Center

I just learned a short while ago that Congress- woman Gabrielle Giffords was brought in to Houston to undergo rehabilitation. She will be at Memorial Hermann, one of the nation's best hospitals.  I think it's amazing that she is doing so well after the horrible tragedy in Tuscon, Arizona three weeks ago. I read on CNN that she was having excellent movement on the left side of her body, but that her right


side was weak and parylitic in nature.

We send prayers to her and family as she recovers in our hometown and our state.

Read the article here: CNN