Recent content by Gruffin

Consider the April 4, 1958, fatal stabbing of Johnny Stompanato by actress Lana Turner's 14 y/o daughter. He purportedly was threatening to kill Lana Turner and Lana's daughter and mother, and so the homicide was ruled justifiable. Perhaps the anniversary was part of what encouraged the likely...

It's curious that Michelle Kasperek lived on St. Florian Street and that she is believed to have been murdered on May 4, the Catholic feast day for St. Florian. St. Florian is the patron saint of, most prominently, firefighters. The Florian cross so often used as an emblem for the firefighting...

Link to the article from 14 Jan 1963 Toronto Star concerning Cantelon arrest and nine charges against him, via newspapers.com.

Looking at other people being killed about the same time as an assassination does seem a reasonable thing to do. And since assassins more-or-less by definition attack famous people, it does I suppose make sense to more look at celebrities killed at about the same time. Anyway, I got to thinking...

I doubt the murder of Kupcinet has anything to do with the phone call from the Oxnard area. Oxnard is almost 1.5 hours from LA by car, and it's not all that suggestive that Kupcinet's father had known Jack Ruby, since the acquaintance was many years before and since Ruby was the sort of person...

How horrible. John Allore was an excellent crime journalist whose attention to important detail in his web posts is so rare and useful in figuring out crimes. The book Wish You Were Here with Patricia Pearson too is useful, but it is better than a useful book, it is a beautiful book. His...

When Richard Paul Pavlick was trying to blow up JFK in December 1960, it was special agent John Marshall (head of the Miami secret service) who was the first secret service agent to take seriously the suspicions originating from Belmont, NH, postmaster Thomas Murphy. Marshall it was who issued...

The city of Toronto has online aerial photographs of the city from 1973. Clicking on map 193 or 158 yields an aerial map containing crime scene area, and map 159 shows Yorkdale Mall. The 1971 maps show that near where the bodies were found there was in 1971 what looks like a covered...

It's also interesting that there is a Sultana Avenue whose western end is about a quarter mile east of Yorkdale Mall. The 1865 Sultana steamboat explosion (~1400 dead) also happened in the early hours (the explosion was about 2 a.m. local time ) of an April 27, the day after Shakespearean actor...

Er, meant to say "Thomas Francis Edwards" rather than "John Francis Edwards". Too late to edit.

That's less than half a mile from Kenwood Golf Course, where Steven Johnston, 9, was looking for golf balls on Mother's Day, 8 May 1966, presumably right before he was taken and murdered. His body was found the next day about 150 feet from where Little Falls Parkway crosses the Capital Crescent...

Someone posted earlier that the old high school was where the middle school is now. But from what I've seen online, I believe the high school has moved twice since he was murdered (with the junior high or middle school moving into where the high school used to be). At the time of Bedard's death...

It could be just a robbery attempt gone worse, but the Hindenburg connection is the sort of thing that may have caused Trimble to be murdered for bizarre reasons. South Trimble lived on the 30oo block of Tilden Street, which I believe is across from Hazen Park. Since the 1904 General Slocum...

I suppose it would be difficult and unusual for a killer to carry a victim up a hill while she is alive and likely resisting, say with kicks or screams, but I would be hesitant to discount it, because it is also unusual for a killer to carry a body up a hill. Perhaps the killer was trying to...

Today, the day of the shooting at the streetcar facility, is the 125th anniversary of what is still North America's deadliest streetcar disaster. A section of the Point Ellice Bridge in Victoria, BC, gave way under a streetcar loaded with belated celebrants of Queen Victoria's birthday (55...