Abraham Lincoln
On May 25, 1861, John Merryman, a state legislator from Maryland is arrested for attempting to hinder Union troops from moving from Baltimore to Washington during the Civil War and is held at Fort McHenry by Union military officials. His attorney immediately sought a writ of habeas corpus so that a federal court could examine the charges. However, President Abraham Lincoln decided to suspend the right of habeas corpus, and the general in command of Fort McHenry refused to turn Merryman over to the authorities.
Henry Plummer
On May 24, 1863, the good citizens of Bannack, Montana, elect Henry Plummer as their new sheriff, not realizing he is a hardened outlaw who will use his office to rob and murder.
May 23, 2013 Associated Press
YORK, Pa. – A couple face charges after police in York County say they stabbed each other during an argument over which contestant should win ‘American Idol.’
The York Dispatch reports 48-year-old Karen Elaine Harrelson and 57-year-old Gregory Stambaugh had been watching the show at Stambaugh’s West Manchester Township home on May 15.
Police say they got into a drunken argument over which contestant – Candice Glover or Kree Harrison – should win the season’s title.
Investigators say one went to the kitchen, grabbed a knife and stabbed the other.
Investigators say each told police the other stabbed first.
Bonnie Parker & Clyde Barrow
On May 23, 1934, famed fugitives Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker are killed in a police ambush near Sailes, Louisiana. A contingent of officers from Texas and Louisiana set up along the highway, waiting for the fugitives to appear, and then unloaded a two-minute fusillade of 167 bullets at their car, killing them both.
Chandra Levy
On May 22, 2002, the remains of former Federal Bureau of Prisons intern Chandra Levy are found, over a year after the 24-year-old was last seen at a health club. The skeletal remains, discovered by a man walking through Washington D.C.'s Rock Creek Park, were identified through dental records. A sweatshirt, sneakers and a Sony Walkman cassette player were also found in the vicinity.
May 22, 2013 Yahoo News
An unidentified FBI agent shot and killed a man in Orlando, Fla., early Wednesday after questioning him about his link to one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects.
Dave Couvertier, a special agent and spokesman for the FBI's Tampa field office, told Yahoo News the shooting is under investigation. He identified the man as Ibragim Todashev, a 27-year-old Chechen-born Orlando resident and apparent acquaintance of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the brothers suspected of planning and carrying out the terror attack at last month's Boston Marathon.
Law enforcement officials told the Associated Press that Todashev lunged at the FBI agent with a knife.
The shooting occurred just after midnight at an apartment complex in Orlando. The agent, along with two Massachusetts State Police troopers and other law enforcement personnel, were interviewing Todashev "in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing investigation when a violent confrontation was initiated by the individual," Couvertier said. "An FBI post-shooting incident review team has been dispatched from Washington, D.C., and expected to arrive in Orlando within 24 hours."
The agent, Couvertier added, "sustained non-life threatening injuries."
Leopold & Loeb
On May 21, 1924, fourteen-year-old Bobbie Franks is abducted from a Chicago, Illinois, street and killed in what later proves to be one of the most fascinating murders in American history. The killers, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, were extremely wealthy and intelligent teenagers whose sole motive for killing Franks was the desire to commit the "perfect crime."
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
