On February 7, 1968, Bernard Josephs returns to his home in Bromley, England, and finds his wife Claire dead under the bed. Her throat had been slashed and wounds to her hands appeared to be caused by a serrated knife. No weapon was found at the scene, and police had no other clues to go on.
On February 6, 1891, the Dalton Gang attempted their first train robbery near Alila, California. Bob, Emmett, and Grat Dalton were only three of Lewis and Adeleine Dalton's 10 sons. The brothers grew up on a succession of Oklahoma and Kansas homesteads during the post-Civil War period, when the region was awash in violence lingering from the war and notorious outlaw bands like the James-Younger Gang. Still, the majority of the Dalton boys became law-abiding citizens, and one of the older brothers, Frank, served as a deputy U.S. marshal.
On February 5, 1988, federal grand juries in Florida announce indictments of Panama military strongman General Manuel Noriega and 16 associates on drug smuggling and money laundering charges. Noriega, the de facto dictator of Panama since 1983, was charged with smuggling marijuana into the United States, laundering millions of U.S. dollars, and assisting Colombia's Medellin drug cartel in trafficking cocaine to America. The Panamanian leader denied the charges and threatened expulsion of the 10,000 U.S. service personnel and their families stationed around the Panama Canal.
On February 4, 1974, Patricia Hearst, the 19-year-old granddaughter of publishing icon William Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped from her Berkeley, California apartment. Stephen Weed, Hearst's fiancé, was beaten unconscious by the two abductors. Soon, a ransom demand came from the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a radical activist group led by Donald DeFreeze.
On February 3, 1889, outlaw Belle Starr is killed when an unknown assailant fatally shoots the infamous "Bandit Queen" with two shotgun blasts from behind. As with the lives of other famous outlaws like Billy the Kid and Jesse James, fanciful accounts printed in newspapers and dime novels made Belle Starr's harsh and violent life appear far more romantic than it actually was.
On February 1, 1908, King Carlos I of Portugal and his eldest son, Luis Filipe, are assassinated by revolutionaries while riding in an open carriage through the streets of Lisbon. Carlos ascended to the Portuguese throne in 1889 after the death of his father, King Louis I.
On January 31, 1606, Guy Fawkes, a chief conspirator in the plot to blow up the British Parliament building, jumps to his death moments before his execution for treason in London. On the eve of a general parliamentary session scheduled for November 5, 1605, Sir Thomas Knyvet, a justice of the peace, found Guy Fawkes lurking in a cellar of the Parliament building.
On the night of November 29, 1988, near the impoverished Marlborough neighborhood in south Kansas City, an explosion at a construction site killed six of the city’s firefighters. It was a clear case of arson, and five people from Marlborough were duly convicted of the crime. But for veteran crime writer and crusading editor J. Patrick O’Connor, the facts—or a lack of them—didn’t add up. Justice on Fire is OConnor’s detailed account of the terrible explosion that led to the firefighters’ deaths and the terrible injustice that followed. Also available from Amazon
