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.

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.