Alderson Federal Prison
On April 30, 1927, the Federal Industrial Institution for Women, the first women's federal prison, opens in Alderson, West Virginia. All women serving federal sentences of more than a year were to be brought here. Run by Dr. Mary B. Harris, the prison's buildings, each named after social reformers, sat atop 500 acres.
April 28, 2013 Good Morning America
The disappearance of a Michigan mother who was last seen working the late shift at a gas station was reclassified today as an abduction, as the woman's family pleaded for her safe return.
Jessica Heeringa, 25, made her last sale at the Exxon gas station in Norton Shores, Mich., at 11 p.m. Friday, police said. She was preparing to close the store for the night, but 15 minutes later authorities said they received a call from a concerned customer reporting that there was no employee at the open gas station.
"She was going to get out in 15 minutes," Shelly Heeringa, Jessica's mother, told ABC News. "In 15 minutes that store would've been closed and she would've been on her way home."
Heeringa's purse and keys were left behind and the cleaning supplies she always took out at closing time were on the counter, her mother said.
Rodney King
On April 29, 1992, four police officers who were accused of beating Rodney King are acquitted. The announcement of the verdict, which enraged the black community, prompted widespread rioting throughout much of Los Angeles. It wasn't until three days later that the arson and looting finally ended.
Phillip and Nancy Garrido
On April 28, 2011, Phillip Garrido and his wife Nancy plead guilty to the kidnapping of 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard. The Garrido’s held Dugard captive at their Northern California property for 18 years, during which time Phillip Garrido fathered two children with her. The 29-year-old Dugard was rescued, along with her daughters, then ages 11 and 15, in 2009.
In solving a youth’s odd disappearance and the mystery at Tupper Lake, is dead serial killer Israel Keyes the key, or something even more nefarious?
The sprawling Adirondack mountain region of upstate New York is a dense world of water and woods. Sometimes serene, sometimes sinister, it remains a sparsely populated and unspoiled wildlife habitat, peppered with small, historic hamlets and connected by a network of mostly nameless footpaths, dirt roads, winding county routes, and, here and there, slicing through the countryside like a machete, a superhighway that seems to go on and on and on…to nowhere.
Major, minor, or backwoods, in spring, summer, autumn or winter, none of these passageways ever sees any significant amount of traffic. Not one, regardless of length or width, maintenance or neglect, is ever congested.
That peace and quiet is part of the appeal of this northern U.S. territory, for both year-round residents and the thousands of visitors who annually hike or vacation in these pristine hills during the hot, humid, and much too brief summertime.
Summer is when this tranquil place fully comes to life, when it is at its most peopled and inviting. In wintertime, though, the same idyllic landscape becomes a great deal more stark and forbidding. Deadly even, if one disrespects it.
Andrew Cunanan
On April 27, 1997, Andrew Cunanan kills Jeffrey Trail by beating him to death with a claw hammer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Trail's murder set Cunanan off on a killing spree that ended in July when he killed himself on a houseboat in Miami Beach.
Mary Phagan
On April 26, 1913, thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan is found sexually molested and murdered in the basement of an Atlanta pencil factory where she worked. Her murder later led to one of the most disgraceful episodes of bigotry, injustice, and mob violence in American history.
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
