Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox and Regent of Scotland
On September 4, 1571, Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox and Regent of Scotland was assassinated. Stewart was the leader of the Catholic nobility in Scotland and was the grandson of James VI of Scotland. He spent most of his youth in exile in England, but returned to Scotland to assert his claims to the line of succession when James V died in 1542. At the time of the king's death in 1542, Lennox possessed a strong claim to the throne of Scotland should Mary, Queen of Scots, an infant, pass away childless.
Sept. 3, 2013 The Independent
In Holland he is nicknamed the “Beast of Appingdam” – but white-haired, frail and aged 92, Siert Bruins hardly looked the brutal Nazi war criminal as he shuffled into a German courtroom on Monday to face charges of murdering a Dutch resistance fighter at the end of the Second World War.
In 1949, Holland sentenced the Dutch-born former Nazi SS officer to death in absentia for killing resistance fighter Aldert Klaas Dijkema in September 1944. Bruins is accused of shooting his victim four times in the back after he was captured by an SS squad near the town of Appingdam.
Yesterday, nearly 70 years after the murder, Bruins appeared for the first time in court in the town of Hagen to answer for the killing. But although he admitted joining the Waffen SS as a volunteer in 1941, he maintained a stony silence as judges read out the charges against him. Read More
Sept. 3, 2013 CNN
A California principal, accused of murdering her husband, is due in court Tuesday -- the same day that her husband is laid to rest.
Leslie Jenea Chance, who led a California elementary school, shot her husband to death, police say, and left his car some 20 miles away from his bullet-riddled body.
The accusation left parents shocked. They remember Chance as a jovial woman, a hardworking professional, and an involved mom.
"It was hard to believe," Ken Chichester, a school district spokesman told CNN affiliate KGET. "Several of the people I talked to, their first response was they got the wrong person this time. It was out of character and very hard to believe."
Todd Chance's body was found August 25, in an almond orchard in Bakersfield, a city about 100 miles north of Los Angeles. Later that day, his black Ford Mustang was found abandoned in a residential area in the city. Read More
Beslan school massacre
On September 3, 2004, a three-day hostage crisis at a Russian school comes to a violent conclusion after a gun battle erupts between the hostage-takers and Russian security forces. In the end, over 300 people died, many of them children, while hundreds more were injured.
Mathias Rust flys his plane into Red Square
On September 2, 1987, the trial of Mathias Rust begins. The 19-year-old Rust was accused of flying his Cessna plane into Moscow’s Red Square in May 1987. Rust had become an international celebrity following his daring intrusion of Soviet airspace and landing in the center of Moscow, but the Soviet government condemned his actions.
Richard Ramirez
On August 31, 1985, Richard Ramirez, the notorious "Night Stalker," is captured and nearly killed by a mob in East Los Angeles, California, after being recognized from a photograph shown both on television and in newspapers. Recently identified as the serial killer, Ramirez was saved from the enraged mob by police officers.
Cynthia Coffman and James Marlow
On August 30, 1989, Cynthia Coffman and James Marlow are sentenced to death in California for the 1986 murder of Corinna Novis. Coffman was the first woman to receive a death sentence in the state since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977.
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
