- Mrs. Delia Budd waved goodbye to her daughter from the kitchen window and watched the happy little girl walk away clutching the hand of their new family friend. It would be the last time she'd see her little Gracie alive.
- Marc, 42, and Debra Richardson never had a chance to assess Jasmine’s new beau’s character points. Their daughter never brought him home to meet the parents.
- Nearly 50 elected judges denied the chance to remain on the bench are suing the New York State court system for age discrimination — and claim the layoffs come when their judgeship is needed more than ever.
- Even for a city already shaken by a rash of senseless and mostly unsolved murders in the mid-1950s, the savage rape-slay of 14-year-old Dorothy Westwater was a particularly shocking crime to New Yorkers.
- Spouses are usually on the top of the list when a person goes missing or dies violently. In Larissa Schuster's case, though, there were many reasons to think she might have something to do with his disappearance.
- The cause of death was strangulation; there was no signs of sexual assault. But as word spread quickly of the dastardly deed, everyone had the same question: What kind of fiend would do that to a destitute, defenseless old widow?
- On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Nov. 28, 1976, police pulled over a car that sped through a stop sign in Montvale, N.J. Patrolman Carl Olsen later recalled that the young driver screamed, “They’re dead. They’re all dead,” and roared off.
- The unbearable smell emanating from the empty apartment of a missing woman could only mean one thing, and cops wasted little time finding a body.
- Charles Cullen’s weapons were medicines usually used to save lives, mostly the heart drug digoxin and diabetes treatment insulin. He confessed to at least 40 murders; some believe he left a trail of 400 corpses.
- Victim Margaret Grob, 39, didn't put up a struggle. The petite woman with the handicapped arm was unable to fend off the sex fiend — and probably too terrified to scream. Neighbors said they didn’t hear a thing that night.
- The seeds of this crime were planted on July 8, 1895, when Lyons, 37, stepped into the Smile Saloon. There he spotted an acquaintance — Daniel Carroll — who was already pretty tipsy.
- A quiet day in a serene Long Island town suddenly became a macabre murder mystery from another time when a homeowner found a woman's mummified body stuffed in a drum.
- It was impossible to say how they died. The bodies had been in the water so long that the remains could not be identified. Still others bore unmistakable signs of foul play.
- The depraved delinquents embarked on a sadistic, summer-long spree that left two men dead, another set on fire, several more battered and hospitalized, and two teenaged girls traumatized after being set upon by the hoods and horsewhipped like animals.
- Ella Maud Cropsey disappeared forever from her family’s mansion in Elizabeth City, N.C., in 1901, but some swear she is still there, a restless spirit rattling around the grounds overlooking the Pasquotank River.
- The victim had been shot twice in the torso at point-blank range, and homicide dicks figured she’d been killed in a car and dumped on the side of the road in the dark, wee hours. There was no purse, but her jacket pocket held an odd clue: six lumps of sugar in a little paper bag.
- On election eve, Nov. 5, 1934, a political feud in a coal mining town erupted into violence. Five died, and dozens were injured in an event remembered as the “Kelayres Massacre.”
- It seemed an open and shut case, but there were more twists to come in the strange saga of the miniature murderer driven to homicidal madness by the green-eyed monster.
- A six-page letter to The Oregonian described the murders of five women and the locations of their bodies. Like the writing on the bathroom wall, it had a smiley for a signature.
- The victim was Maxwell Bodenheim, 63, the lecherous literary lion and unapologetic debaucher infamous for writing dark poems and scandalous novels deemed too risqué even for the Roaring Twenties.
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JUSTICE STORY: The killer who charmed his way out of prison to go on a transcontinental murder spree
The barely literate convict made good use of inmate rehabilitation services. He learned to read, then to write, and discovered a surprising talent for putting words together. - The woman had been strangled with a leather dog leash — but there were no bruises or signs of sexual assault.
- Mary Moonen went to Dr. Axilrod for a toothache. During treatment, she told another physician, the dentist knocked her out with sleeping pills and raped her.
- Rubinstein, 46, was found dead on the bedroom floor of his Fifth Ave. mansion, his wrists and ankles bound with cord and his mouth covered with tape. The cause of death was manual strangulation, and whoever squeezed the life out of the notorious bon vivant had choked him hard enough to break two bones in his throat.
- On March 8, 1954, Carl Fisher returned from his job to a home that was disturbingly dark and silent, considering that there were three children inside—Richard, almost 7, Daniel, 5, and Deborah Kay, not yet a year old.
- The savage murder of Ann Deidre Curtis, who left behind a beautiful baby girl and a husband with a bright future stunned New York, already in the throes of an alarming rise in crime amid reports of rampant corruption in the NYPD.
- The crime became known as the “Broomstick Murders,” so-called because of the weapon McDuff used to crush the girl’s throat after raping her.
- The men were short and swarthy, the brims of their fedoras pulled low over their hard faces, and Albert Langford immediately realized he’d made a mistake opening the door.
- The deadly daddy abandoned his quest to see his boys and turned his attention to his next target, mother-in-law Pearl, 41. But she was gone, she took off when the shooting started. Of all his wife’s relatives, he hated Pearl the most. The feeling was mutual.
- One glance around Virginia Domenech’s tidy Manhattan apartment, and Det. Romolo Imundi felt that familiar pinch in his gut. He knew right off this was going to be one of those missing person cases that ended in tragedy and tears.