Billy the Kid
Eric Rudolph
On April 8, 2005, Eric Rudolph agrees to plead guilty to a series of bombings, including the fatal bombing at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, in order to avoid the death penalty. He later cited his anti-abortion and anti-homosexual views as motivation for the bombings.
On April 7, 1994, Rwandan armed forces kill 10 Belgian peacekeeping officers in a successful effort to discourage international intervention in their genocide that had begun only hours earlier. In less than three months, Hutu extremists who controlled Rwanda murdered an estimated 800,000 innocent civilian in the worst episode of genocide since World War II.
Dr. Sam Sheppard
On April 6, 1970, Sam Sheppard, a doctor convicted of murdering his pregnant wife in a trial that caused a media frenzy in the 1950s, dies of liver failure. After a decade in prison, Sheppard was released following a re-trial. His story is rumored to have loosely inspired the television series and movie "The Fugitive."
As happens in most deeply researched stories, I found interesting connections that did not make their way into my Dirty Laundry crime story. Two involved Angela DeDear, the Liberty, Texas title company officer and step-daughter of murder victim Joe Floyd Collins.
Authorities have a video from a police interrogation room that shows a murder suspect shooting a detective to death before killing himself with the officer's gun, a person with knowledge of the investigation said Saturday.
The suspect, Jeremy Powell, was not handcuffed during questioning at the Jackson Police Department on Thursday, the person said on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the ongoing investigation.
Powell overpowered Det. Eric Smith and took his gun, shooting the veteran detective four times before shooting himself in the head inside a third-floor room of the department's headquarters, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said. Other officers heard the shots ring out and rushed to the interview room, but both men were dead.
The AP has asked for the video to be released under open records laws, but authorities have not responded to the request.
Powell, 23, was being questioned about the stabbing death of a man whose body was found Monday near a Jackson street.
Ken Winter, executive director of the Mississippi Association of Chiefs of Police, said it's not unusual for a suspect to be unrestrained during questioning.
April 6, 2013 Reuters
JOHANNESBURG - Thieves have made off with 66 rhino horns worth some $2.75 million in one of the biggest horn heists South Africa has seen after breaking into the safe of a game farm owner.
The horns had been removed from rhinos at the Leshoka Thabang Game Reserve in northern Limpopo province to protect the animals from poachers who supply them illegally to international crime syndicates.
Demand has also been growing for rhino horn in Vietnam, where a newly affluent class has been buying it to treat ailments ranging from hangovers to cancer. The treatments have no basis in science but demand has pushed the price up to $65,000 a kg, making it more expensive than gold.
"In my hands it is worth nothing, but in the hands of the guys who have it now, the horns are worth a lot of money," Johan van Zyl, owner of the game farm, told Reuters by telephone.
He said about 42 kg of horn had been stolen, which, according to prices of Vietnamese traditional medicine deals, would sell for about $2.75 million on the streets of Hanoi.
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
