Births

Ronald Poppo

1682 – Bartholomew Roberts – Roberts, also known as Black Bart, was a Welsh pirate who operated in the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean during the early 18th century. He was born in 1682 in Pembrokeshire, Wales, and went to sea as a merchant sailor at a young age. Roberts became a pirate in 1719 after his ship was captured by the notorious pirate Howell Davis. He quickly rose through the ranks and was elected as captain of his own pirate ship, the Royal Fortune, in 1720. Under Roberts’ leadership, the Royal Fortune became one of the most successful pirate ships of its time, capturing over 400 vessels in the course of its career. Roberts was known for his boldness and his ability to outmaneuver and outfight larger naval vessels. In addition to his success as a pirate, Roberts was also known for his strict adherence to a code of conduct, which he based on the Articles of Agreement used by other pirates. His code included provisions for fair treatment of prisoners, strict discipline on board ship, and democratic decision-making. Roberts’ career as a pirate was cut short in 1722 when he was killed in a battle with the British Navy off the coast of Africa. Despite his short career, Bartholomew Roberts is remembered as one of the most successful and iconic pirates of the Golden Age of Piracy.

1931 – Marshall Applewhite – was an American cult leader who gained notoriety in the 1990s as the co-founder of the Heaven’s Gate cult, which gained international attention after its members committed mass suicide in 1997. Applewhite was born in 1931 in Texas and grew up in a devoutly religious family. He studied music at several universities but never completed a degree. He later claimed to have had a series of mystical experiences in the 1970s that convinced him he was a prophet of God. In 1974, Applewhite met Bonnie Nettles, a nurse who shared his interest in spirituality and who became his co-leader of Heaven’s Gate. Together, they developed a set of beliefs that blended Christian and New Age teachings, and they began recruiting followers. The members of Heaven’s Gate believed that they were extraterrestrial beings who had come to Earth to complete a mission. They believed that a spaceship would soon arrive to take them to a higher plane of existence. In March 1997, Applewhite and 38 of his followers committed suicide in a rented mansion in San Diego, California, believing that their souls would be transported to the spaceship. Applewhite’s beliefs and the Heaven’s Gate cult have been widely criticized as a dangerous and destructive form of manipulation. However, some have also viewed him as a tragic figure who was a victim of his own delusions.

1944 – James Boyle – is a Scottish former gangster and convicted murderer who became a sculptor and novelist after his release from prison. In 1967, Boyle was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of another gangland figure, William “Babs” Rooney. He served fourteen years before his release in 1980. Boyle has always denied killing Rooney but has acknowledged having been a violent and sometimes ruthless moneylender from the Gorbals, one of the roughest and most deprived areas of Glasgow. During his incarceration in the special unit of Barlinnie Prison, Riddrie, he turned to art, with the help of the special unit’s art therapist, Joyce Laing. He wrote an autobiography, A Sense of Freedom (1977), which was later turned into a film of the same name. In 1980, while still in prison, Boyle married psychiatrist Sara Trevelyan. In 2017, Trevelyan wrote Freedom Found, a book about her twenty-year marriage to Boyle. Upon his release from prison on 26 October 1981, he moved to Edinburgh to continue his artistic career. He designed the largest concrete sculpture in Europe called “Gulliver” for the Craigmillar Festival Society in 1976. In 1983, Boyle set up the Gateway Exchange with Trevelyan and artist Evlynn Smith; a charitable organization offering art therapy workshops to recovering drug addicts and ex-convicts. In 1994, his son James, a drug addict, was murdered in the Oatlands neighborhood of Glasgow. Boyle has published Pain of Confinement: Prison Diaries (1984), and a novel, Hero of the Underworld (1999). He divides his time between France and Morocco with his second wife, Kate Fenwick, a British actress. They married at a ceremony in Marrakech, Morocco on 27 October 2007.

1944 – Dieter Reichmann – Reichmann had lived with his partner Kersten Kischnick in Germany for 13 years and they were visiting Florida between 1978 and 1985 Reichmann took several life insurance policies in Germany against Kischnick’s life including a clause in the policy which would allow a payout even if she died via homicide. On the 25th of October 1987, Kischnick was murdered in Reichmann’s rental car, Reichmann claimed a stranger had carried out the murder when they had stopped for directions, when the police started to investigate they happened to search the motel room that Reichmann & Kischnick shared and they found several firearms and ammunition, testing revealed that the ammunition was the same type that had killed Kischnick, Reichmann was arrested.

1947 – Ronald Poppo – Poppo was an American man who gained national attention in 2012 when he was the victim of a brutal attack in Miami, Florida. Poppo was a homeless man who was living under a highway ramp when he was attacked by Rudy Eugene, who was under the influence of drugs and believed to be in a state of psychosis. During the attack, Eugene chewed off Poppo’s face, leaving him with severe injuries to his face, eyes, and brain. Poppo was rushed to the hospital, where he underwent multiple surgeries and months of treatment and rehabilitation. Despite the horrific nature of his injuries, Poppo remained upbeat throughout his recovery. He expressed gratitude to the doctors and nurses who treated him, and even made jokes about his situation. In the years following the attack, Poppo remained out of the public eye and lived a quiet life. He was cared for by a team of medical professionals and was able to regain some degree of independence, including the ability to speak and walk with assistance. Poppo passed away in 2016 due to complications from heart disease. Despite the tragedy of his attack, he was remembered by many for his resilience and positive attitude in the face of immense adversity.

1954 – Beoria Abraham Simmons III – is an American serial killer who was active in Jefferson County, Kentucky, between 1981 and 1983. He was convicted of three counts of murder and rape, and four counts of kidnapping. Simmons would abduct white females at gunpoint, rape them, and then shoot them. His victims were Robin Barnes, 15, Shannon House, 29, and Nancy Bettman, 39. A fourth victim, a 16-year-old girl, managed to escape as Simmons tried to rape her in 1983, and she subsequently identified him to the police. Simmons was sentenced to death on May 13, 1985. However, his sentence was commuted to life in prison without parole on March 3, 2010. Despite the heinous nature of his crimes, Simmons was considered an upstanding young man by his peers before his arrest. He had graduated from Louisville’s Spalding College with a bachelor’s degree in social work and was working as a halfway-house counselor at the time of his arrest.

1956 – Terry D. Clark – His childhood was described as ordinary until his junior year in high school when he began drinking and smoking marijuana. He was suspended from Roswell High School for truancy before dropping out altogether. Around that same time, he began taking methamphetamine, LSD, heroin, and cocaine. He later earned a GED and went to work for a bus building company, but was fired from the job within a year. He then went to work for a construction company before joining the Navy at the age of twenty. In 1986, Clark was convicted of kidnapping and raping a six-year-old girl from Roswell, New Mexico, and sentenced to 24 years in prison. Pending appeals in that case, he was released on bond. While he was out on bond in that case, nine-year-old Dena Lynn Gore of Artesia, New Mexico was raped and killed on July 17, 1986. Gore’s bound and decomposing body was found partially buried on a nearby ranch on July 22, 1986. Gore had been shot three times in the back of her head. A few days later, Clark was taken into custody and he confessed to a minister while in jail. In 1986, public defenders Sheila Lewis and Steve Aarons were assigned to represent Clark. In a rare legal maneuver, Clark pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in hopes of being sentenced before Governor Toney Anaya completed his term of office. However, District Judge Stanley F. Frost refused to hold a sentencing hearing before Anaya’s last day in office. As a result, Clark was not among the five men on death row whose death sentences were commuted by Anaya to life in prison. The following year, a jury in Tucumcari, New Mexico returned with a death sentence against Clark. In 1994, the New Mexico Supreme Court overturned that sentence, found reversible errors related to the first jury’s understanding of the meaning of life in prison, and mandated a new sentencing hearing. Terry Douglas Clark was executed by the state of New Mexico utilizing lethal injection on November 6, 2001. He was the first and only person to be executed in New Mexico between the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 and its subsequent abolition in New Mexico in 2009.

1961 – Kevin Lee Zimmerman – Zimmerman and his friends George Weber and Kay Gonzales were staying at Motel 6 in Beaumont, Texas, they met 33-year-old Leslie Hooks Jr and they all went to the fair together, when they got back and for unknown reasons an argument ensued, Weber and Zimmerman then attacked Hooks and he ended up being stabbed over 30 times killing him instantly, both men were arrested and Weber ended up with an 85-year sentence and Zimmerman received the death penalty.

1965 – Richard Baumhammers – A former immigration attorney who was believed to be mentally unstable and had been in and out of treatment centers since 1993, after a trip to Europe Baumhammers became completely paranoid that people were listening to his conversations and that everyone was after him. On the 28th of April 2000, Baumhammers finally flipped, he went to the home of his neighbor 63-year-old Anita Gordon, a Jewish woman, and shot her, killing her instantly, he then went to a synagogue, shot through the windows and spray painted swastikas on the building. After this, he drove his Jeep Cherokee around town and shot and killed another 4 people over 2 hours and through 15 miles. He was convicted of 5 counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. 

1968 – Levi Bellfield – Bellfield is a British convicted serial killer and rapist. He was born on May 17, 1968, in London, England. Bellfield was convicted of the murders of three women: Marsha McDonnell, Amélie Delagrange, and Milly Dowler. He was also found guilty of attempting to murder Kate Sheedy. Bellfield was known to be a violent and abusive individual who had a history of criminal behavior. He had previously been convicted of assaulting his former partner and her mother. He also had a record of theft and burglary. In 2008, Bellfield was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he should never be released and in 2011 he was given a further whole life order making him the only British prisoner to receive two whole life orders meaning he will die in prison.

1988 – Robert A. Hawkins – Hawkins was a 19-year-old mass murderer who carried out the Westroads Mall shooting in Omaha, Nebraska, he went into the Von Maur department store in the mall and shot and killed eight people and injured a further four before taking his own life.

Deaths

John Thanos

1960 – Joseph Taborsky – best known by the chilling moniker “Mad Dog,” was an American serial killer who terrorized Connecticut in the 1950s. His reign of violence earned him a place in the state’s grim historical tapestry, not only for the brutality of his crimes but also for his unique distinction as the only convict to land on death row twice, for separate offenses. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1924, Taborsky’s life was marked by instability and petty crime from a young age. Run-ins with the law for theft and robbery became commonplace, foreshadowing the darkness that would unfold later. In 1950, Taborsky’s criminal career took a horrifying turn. On his 25th birthday, fueled by alcohol and a thirst for notoriety, he and his brother Albert embarked on a robbery spree. Their target: a West Hartford liquor store. The encounter turned deadly, with Taborsky shooting and killing the store owner, Louis Wolfson. Apprehended and brought to trial, Taborsky was sentenced to death, facing the electric chair at Connecticut State Prison. While awaiting execution, a twist of fate intervened. Taborsky’s brother, wracked by guilt and mental illness, confessed to his role in the murder. This new evidence led to a retrial and ultimately, a commuted sentence of life imprisonment. Taborsky, seemingly spared, resurfaced in society in 1955. But freedom proved fleeting for Taborsky. Within two years, he resumed his violent ways, partnering with Arthur “Meatball” Culombe in a series of robberies and murders that would forever scar Connecticut. The spree, known as the “Mad Dog Killings,” lasted only ten weeks but left a trail of six innocent lives extinguished and multiple others maimed and traumatized. Taborsky’s savagery during these attacks earned him his infamous nickname, a testament to the ferocity he displayed. In 1957, Taborsky and Culombe were captured. The evidence against them was overwhelming, and both were convicted of multiple murders. This time, there would be no escape. Taborsky was once again sentenced to death, returning to the very prison cell he had once left behind. On May 17, 1960, Joseph “Mad Dog” Taborsky met his end in the electric chair at Connecticut State Prison. His execution marked the last in the state for 45 years, and his story remains a chilling reminder of the darkest corners of human nature. Taborsky’s legacy extends beyond the body count and gruesome details of his crimes. He represents a cautionary tale of how unchecked violence can spiral out of control and the lasting impact it leaves on communities and families. His two stints on death row stand as a unique anomaly in legal history, serving as a stark reminder of the complexities and finality of capital punishment.

1960 – Wladyslaw Baczynski – born in 1918 and died on May 17, 1960, was a Polish serial killer who killed 4 people in Wrocław and Bytom from 1946 to 1957. His first victim was Anna S., who was killed in 1946 in Bytom. The next victims were killed in Wrocław ten years later, all of them gunned down. Baczyński explained that he felt an aversion towards people who, due to their character, tended to hurt their colleagues. In his opinion, such people were his victims, who were his subordinates for a long time. Baczyński confessed to three out of the four murders, noting that he would’ve killed even more people. At the time of his trial, he initially tried to simulate a mental illness but later dropped the act, showing no remorse for his actions. His trial resulted in a death sentence, which Baczyński tried to appeal in the Council of State, but his request was rejected. On May 17, 1960, he was executed by hanging.

1977 – John Nardi – born Giovanni Narcchione on January 21, 1916, was an influential associate of the Cleveland crime family who was involved in labor racketeering in Cleveland, Ohio. He began his mob work as an enforcer for the local vending machine workers union. He is the cousin of Anthony Delsanter, brother of Nicholas Nardi, and father of John Nardi Jr. and Carol Nardi. Nardi would become a representative of his uncle Anthony Milano, a retired consigliere from the Cleveland crime family. He earned his first police record entry in 1939 at the age of twenty-three, while employed by a vending workers union to sell the services of their repair technicians. When Nardi threatened a bar owner with bodily harm, Safety Director Eliot Ness ordered him to be arrested. Eventually, the charges were dropped. Nardi soon became business partners with Ohio Teamsters official William Presser, a mob associate, and father of future Teamsters president Jackie Presser in several Jukebox companies. By the 1940s, Nardi had become a member of the Vending Machine Service Employees Local 410, part of the Teamsters Union. He soon became secretary-treasurer of the Local. Nardi also formed ties with “Jimmy the Weasel” Fratianno, a future boss with the Los Angeles crime family, with whom he also ran a bookmaking operation in Cleveland’s Little Italy. Nardi soon built numerous street rackets such as drug trafficking, extortion, labor racketeering, arms trafficking, illegal gambling, and loan sharking. Nardi could have enjoyed a bright future with the Cleveland family, but he was too independent and ambitious to accept its structure. Not content to wait years to become a made man, or full member, of the organization, Nardi eventually stopped paying tribute to the family. By the late 1960s, the Cleveland family was losing patience with Nardi due to his independence and his ties with Danny Greene, the boss of Cleveland’s Irish mob. In 1976, Nardi returned from Florida where he successfully defended himself against federal narcotics and gun-running charges. His uncle, Anthony Milano, was hoping to have his son, Peter, return from the West Coast to work with Nardi. At the end of his criminal career, Nardi turned against his crime family in a bloody gang war. He died on May 17, 1977, at the age of 61 in Cleveland, Ohio, due to a car bomb.

1990 – Leonard Marvin Laws – Laws lived in a trailer with his two best friends, brothers George & Norman Gilmore, all three men were unemployed and poverty-stricken and had come up with a plan to rob old people of their money and to save them from getting caught for the robbery they would just kill them. In late October 1980, they went to the home of Clarence & Lottie Williams, after gaining entry, they tied the old couple up and assembled their valuables, before they left Laws shot both of them with a 12 gauge shotgun.

1994 – John Frederick Thanos – was an American spree killer who was convicted in 1992 of the murders of three teenagers: Gregory Taylor, Billy Winebrenner, and Melody Pistorio. He was executed for the murders in 1994, becoming the first person to be executed in Maryland since 1961. Thanos was born in Dundalk, Maryland to John Steven and Patty Thanos. Steven was described as a mentally ill WW2 veteran who severely abused John Thanos and even drugged his wife. Thanos was expelled from school and spent many years in and out of prison for various crimes he committed. In October 1969, Thanos assaulted and raped a woman in Rosedale, Maryland. He was charged with the offense and was sentenced to twenty-one years in prison. At his trial, he threatened the judge and later attempted to break out of prison in 1971. He succeeded in escaping but was recaptured shortly afterward. Thanos was released from prison in April 1986, however, he returned only a month later after he committed an armed robbery at a convenience store. He was sentenced to a further eight years in prison. On April 15, 1990, Thanos was accidentally released early due to a mistake by a prison official who was later fired. On August 29, 1990, Thanos quit his job and purchased a .22 caliber semi-automatic rifle. He sawed the barrel down so he could fit the weapon in a black doctor’s bag which he carried around with him. That same night, he robbed a cab driver at gunpoint and forced him into the trunk of the vehicle, threatening to kill him if he refused to comply with his demands. On August 31, Thanos encountered 18-year-old Greg Taylor while hitchhiking. Holding him at gunpoint while in his car, Thanos ordered Taylor to drive to a wooded area along a deserted logging road, where he intended to tie him to a tree. When Taylor refused to comply with his demands, Thanos laid Taylor down and murdered him by shooting him in the head three times. He then stole Taylor’s car and altered his appearance to look more like him. John Frederick Thanos was put to death early on May 17, 1994, at the Maryland Penitentiary. His execution was the first in Maryland in 33 years.

2006 – Jermaine Herron – was born on January 13, 1979. He was a native of San Patricio, Texas, and had worked as a ranch helper, painter, and laborer. Herron had a limited education, having completed only up to the 10th grade. On June 25, 1997, when Herron was 18 years old, he and Derrick Frazier, 20, visited a ranch owned by Ron Lucich, located ten miles north of Refugio. Herron and his father had lived on the ranch many years earlier when Herron’s father was Lucich’s foreman. That day, Herron and Frazier made plans to burglarize the ranch. The following day, Herron and Frazier committed a double murder during the burglary of the Lucich’s home. The victims were Betsy Nutt, 41, and her 15-year-old son, Cody. They were shot twice in the head with a 9mm pistol. Herron and Frazier then drove away in Nutt’s truck. Herron was convicted of these crimes and received a death sentence. He was executed by lethal injection on May 17, 2006, in Huntsville, Texas.

2013 – Albert Seedman – was an American law enforcement officer who served as the chief of detectives of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) during the 1960s. He was born on June 16, 1918, in Brooklyn, New York. Seedman joined the NYPD in 1941 and rose through the ranks to become the chief of detectives in 1965. He was known for his tough, no-nonsense approach to law enforcement and for his expertise in investigating organized crime. During his tenure as chief of detectives, Seedman oversaw several high-profile cases, including the “Career Girls Murders” in 1963 and the “Boston Strangler” case in 1964. He also played a key role in the investigation of the infamous “Son of Sam” serial killer in the late 1970s. Seedman retired from the NYPD in 1973 and went on to work as a private investigator and security consultant. He authored two books, “Chief!” and “Seedman,” which chronicled his experiences in law enforcement. Seedman passed away on May 17, 2013, at the age of 94.

Events

Larry Nassar

1916 – The birdman of Alcatraz, Robert Stroud is sentenced to death.

1973 – Televised hearings regarding the Watergate scandal began in the US

1974 – The Symbionese Liberation Army has a shootout with the LAPD killing 6 SLA members in the gunfight and resulting fire. It became one of the largest police shootouts in history with more than 1200 rounds fired.

1990 – Actor Kelsey Grammer is sentenced to jail for 30 days for a DWI

1995 – Shawn Nelson steals an M60 tank from the California Army National Guard armory in San Diego and proceeds to go on a rampage.

2015 – A gunfight between rival biker gangs and police in Waco, Texas left 9 dead and 18 injured. 170 people are later arrested for organized crime.

2018 – Michigan State University agrees to pay $500 million in claims to 300 survivors of sexual abuse involving coach Larry Nassar in what became the largest sex abuse case in sports history.