Births

Dwight Dwayne Adanandus

1941 – Arthur Hutchinson – is an English convicted triple murderer. He gained notoriety in 1984 when he was convicted of three murders committed in Dore, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, on 23 October 1983.  Before these crimes, Hutchinson had already spent more than five years in prison for the attempted murder of his half-brother, Dino. On 28 September 1983, he was arrested on suspicion of theft, burglary, and rape. While in custody, he escaped from Selby Police Station by jumping out of a window.  After three and a half weeks on the run, late on the night of 23 October 1983, Hutchinson broke into the home of Basil Laitner, his wife Avril, and their son Richard, and stabbed all three of them to death. He then raped their 18-year-old daughter Nicola at knife-point before fleeing. The family had hosted the wedding reception of their other daughter Suzanne at the house just hours earlier. It is believed that Hutchinson was planning to commit an armed robbery.  His identity was established by the description given by Nicola Laitner, and by a palm-print left on a champagne glass. After spending another two weeks on the run, moving from place to place in Barnsley, Nottinghamshire, Manchester, York, and Scarborough, he was finally caught on a farm in Hartlepool on 5 November 1983.  During his trial, on 11 September 1984, Hutchinson accused Mike Barron, then a reporter with the Sunday Mirror, of committing the murders. However, Hutchinson was found guilty of all three murders and the rape on 14 September 1984 after a four-hour deliberation, and sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommended minimum term of 18 years. After the conviction, the then Home Secretary, Leon Brittan issued Hutchinson with a whole-life tariff.  Hutchinson later appealed against the Home Secretary’s ruling. His case was heard on 16 May 2008 at the High Court, nearly six years after the final say on minimum terms for life sentence prisoners was transferred from the Home Secretary to the High Court. His solicitors argued that a whole-life tariff was a breach of his human rights. However, his appeal was rejected and the High Court agreed with the Home Secretary’s ruling, upholding the life sentence. Hutchinson lodged a second appeal against his sentence shortly afterward, his case returning to the High Court on 6 October 2008, but again was rejected.

1951 – Stephen Peter Morin – He is known as an American serial killer who was suspected of being responsible for at least forty murders of young girls and women and 7 men in the period from 1969 to 1981.  Morin led a transient lifestyle and constantly moved around the country, which made the exact number of his victims uncertain. He is suspected of a total of 48 violent crimes across the United States. In the early 1980s, he was pursued by the federal authorities. Morin had created multiple aliases. These names included Rich Clark, Robert Fred Generoso, Thomas David Hones, Ray Constantino, and Constantine.  Little is known about Morin’s childhood. He was born into a poor family. He dropped out of school early, and in his teenage years, Morin began to use narcotics and delved into the criminal lifestyle. In the mid-1960s, Morin was arrested in Florida for car theft. He was convicted and spent some time in an institution for juvenile delinquents. Freed in 1968, Morin left Florida and wandered around the country. For the majority of the 1970s, he resided in Northern California, specifically in the San Francisco Bay Area, constantly changing his places of residence and using various pseudonyms while committing crimes. For some time, he lived in San Francisco, where he worked as a car mechanic and builder.  Morin withdrew all appeals after pleading guilty to the 1981 capital murder of Carrie Marie Scott. Morin was later convicted of the killings of Janna Bruce in Corpus Christi and Shelia Whalen in Golden, Colorado. Because of Morin’s heavy drug use, medical technicians searched for nearly 40 minutes to find a usable vein for the injection. Morin was pronounced dead at 12:55 a.m. on March 13, 1985, by lethal injection, becoming the sixth man to be executed in Texas since the state began using lethal injections in 1982.

1952 – Thomas “Tam” McGraw – also known as “The Licensee” or “Wan-Baw McGraw”, was born on 19 February 1952 in Lennoxtown, Stirlingshire, to the north of Glasgow. He was a notorious gangster involved in organized crime, including extortion and drug trafficking in Glasgow, Scotland.  In his early life, he was involved in criminal activities such as shoplifting and burglary during the early 1960s. Despite being in and out of approved schools and Borstals during his teenage years, he was involved in setting up the small Bar-L team, based around the Barlanark area of Glasgow, specialising in armed robbery. He participated in the gang’s post office raids throughout Scotland, eventually becoming one of the most wanted criminals in the country.  During the early 1980s, he began expanding his criminal operations, becoming involved in narcotics such as heroin as he began purchasing nightclubs and pubs. He was also identified as a figure involved in the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars in 1984, attempting to expand his own ice cream van business, and had been known to use violence and intimidation to secure the most lucrative rounds for himself.  McGraw was one of the wealthiest businessmen in Glasgow, owning numerous businesses including security companies and taxi firms as well as properties throughout Scotland and Ireland with an estimated worth of £10 million. His drug trafficking activities were worth an estimated £14 million.  In 1998, he was arrested for drug smuggling. While several of his associates were convicted, McGraw was once again acquitted. In 2002, he was attacked by unidentified assailants less than a mile from his East End home and stabbed several times, suffering wounds to his arms, wrists, and buttocks. Protected by a bulletproof vest, he received only minor injuries.  Thomas “Tam” McGraw passed away on 30 July 2007.

1952 – William L. Thompson – Convicted and sentenced to death for the heinous crimes on 03/30/76, William Thompson orchestrated a nightmarish ordeal involving Sally Ivester, Rocco Surace, and Barbara Savage in a Dade County motel room. Angry over insufficient ransom money, Thompson and Surace subjected Sally to unspeakable torment—vicious beatings, sexual assault with objects, and sadistic acts like burning her with cigarettes. Despite Barbara Savage’s witness testimony, fear paralyzed her, preventing escape during the brutal assault. Tragically, Sally succumbed to the injuries inflicted, leaving behind a harrowing tale of cruelty and violence.

1956 – Dwight Dwayne Adanandus – gained notoriety as an American bank robber and murderer, leaving an indelible mark on the criminal landscape. Born in 1956, Adanandus’s criminal exploits came to a tragic climax when he killed a bank customer during a daring escape. Operating in the realm of high-stakes crime, Adanandus became a symbol of audacity and ruthlessness within the criminal underworld. His life story is characterized by a perilous journey through the realms of illicit activities, culminating in a violent encounter that sealed his place in the annals of true crime.

1958 – Kayle Barrington Bates – is a convicted criminal known for his involvement in a heinous crime that took place on June 14, 1982, in Bay County, Florida, USA. Bates kidnapped and attempted to rape a victim before stabbing her to death and robbing her. He was convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, and attempted sexual battery.  The jury, by a vote of 11 to 1, recommended the death sentence for the murder conviction. Bates was sentenced to death on March 11, 1983. He was also sentenced to life for kidnapping and armed robbery and received a 15-year sentence for attempted sexual battery.  Bates appealed his sentence, leading to a series of resentencing trials. The first resentencing took place on July 22, 1985, when he was again sentenced to death. A second resentencing occurred on July 25, 1995, where the jury, by a vote of 9 to 3, recommended the death sentence.  Throughout his trials and appeals, Bates was represented by various attorneys, including Theodore R. Bowers, David A. Davis, Thomas H. Dunn, and Harold Richman. Despite the efforts of his defense team, Bates’ appeals were unsuccessful, and his death sentence was affirmed.

1962 – Gerald J. Bordelon – was an American convicted murderer and sex offender who was executed in Louisiana for murder. Bordelon was sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of Courtney LeBlanc, his 12-year-old stepdaughter.  Bordelon was born on February 19, 1962, and grew up in Louisiana. He attended schools in the Baton Rouge area and was considered impaired. As a result, he was put in a special resource class, before his mother took him out of school altogether after the principal advised her to. Doctors believed Bordelon suffered from antisocial personality disorder and sexual sadism disorder but had an IQ in the normal range.  On March 17, 1982, Bordelon offered an 18-year-old girl a ride home in his car. After she got in, he pulled out a knife, took her to a house, and forced oral sex on her. In 1982, he pleaded guilty to sexual battery and was sentenced to ten years in prison. On June 14, 1990, he kidnapped another woman at knifepoint and took her to an abandoned building where he forced oral sex on her and raped her. In 1990, Bordelon was convicted of forcible rape and two counts of aggravated crime against nature and sentenced to 20 years in prison.  In 2000, Bordelon was released on parole and began working at Delta Concrete. In late 2000, he began communicating over the Internet with a woman named Jennifer Kocke. Despite knowing about his criminal history as a sex offender, Kocke married Bordelon in July 2001. The family then moved to Gloster, Mississippi, in October 2001, living in a trailer on land owned by Bordelon’s parents. During the Christmas period in 2001, Kocke’s daughters, one of whom was Courtney LeBlanc, told her that Bordelon had molested them. Kocke alerted child protective services in Mississippi and Bordelon was forced to leave. The couple then separated and Kocke returned to Louisiana with her family. Despite this, she remained in contact with Bordelon.  On November 15, 2002, 12-year-old Courtney LeBlanc disappeared from her home in Denham Springs, Louisiana. Kocke discovered she was missing when she returned home and immediately called the police. Bordelon was sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of Courtney LeBlanc, his 12-year-old stepdaughter. Bordelon waived his appeals and asked to be executed, saying he would commit a similar crime again if he was ever given the opportunity. Bordelon was executed at Louisiana State Penitentiary on January 7, 2010, becoming the first person executed in Louisiana since 2002 and the state’s first voluntary execution.

1962 – Dale Carter Shackelford – is a convicted criminal known for his involvement in a double murder that took place on May 29, 1999, in Latah County, Idaho, USA. Shackelford was found guilty of the murders of his ex-wife, Donna Fontaine, 44, and her boyfriend, Fred Palahniuk, 59. The victims were shot and their bodies were found in a building that had been set on fire.  Shackelford was arrested as the prime suspect on February 11, 2000. The charges pressed against him included first-degree murder, first-degree arson, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit arson, and preparing false evidence. It took the sequestered jurors nearly two days of deliberation to find that Shackelford, 38 at the time, planned and executed the murders.  On October 25, 2001, Shackelford was sentenced to death for both first-degree murders. However, after filing for post-conviction relief with the district court, the court granted Shackelford a sentencing relief on April 8, 2019, lifting the death sentence. He was instead sentenced to two consecutive life imprisonments.

1965 – Mary Beth Harshbarger – is an American woman who gained media attention when she shot her husband, Mark Harshbarger, during a hunting trip in Newfoundland, Canada, mistaking him for a black bear.  Harshbarger lived in Meshoppen, Pennsylvania with her husband Mark, whom she married on June 23, 2001, and their two children. On September 14, 2006, Mary Beth, her husband Mark, their two young children, and Mark’s brother Barry Harshbarger, were on a hunting trip outside of Buchans Junction in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.  The facts of the case state that Mary Beth was sitting in the back of a Chevy pickup truck with her children, armed with a rifle, on a logging road late in the day. She waited with her children while Mark and a local hunting guide walked through the nearby spruce woods in the hopes of flushing out a black bear. Barry was at a hunting blind elsewhere in the woods.  Mark began to walk back toward the truck with the guide, the guide stopping to urinate in the woods. At this point, Mark walked towards the van, ahead of the guide, in dark clothing without an orange hunting hat or vest to improve his visibility. At 7:55 pm (NT) As he emerged from the woods, Mary Beth told police that she saw a dark shape that she believed was a black bear, and fired using her armed rifle. What she shot was not a black bear, however, but was instead her husband Mark.  When he was shot, Mark Harshbarger was approximately 200 feet from the truck in which his wife Mary Beth, and two children were seated. In recounting the incident to RCMP officers at the lodge where they were staying immediately after the shooting, Mary Beth said she had looked through the scope twice to make sure what she was seeing really was a bear. She insisted that she had not seen the blue of Mark Harshbarger’s pants, but instead seen the black of a bear.  She was charged with “criminal negligence causing death” and found not guilty.

1983 – Reynhard Sinaga – is an Indonesian serial rapist who was convicted of 159 sex offenses, including 136 rapes of young men committed in Manchester, England, between 2015 and 2017. Sinaga was a PhD student from Indonesia who was living in Manchester as a mature student. He picked up his victims outside clubs in Manchester and lured them to his flat, where he drugged and assaulted them while filming the attacks.  Sinaga was prosecuted in four trials between 2018 and 2020 and was given concurrent life sentences with a minimum term of 30 years; raised to 40 years in December 2020 by the Court of Appeal. The Crown Prosecution Service described Sinaga as being the most prolific rapist in British legal history. Sinaga is believed by police to have raped or assaulted at least 206 men since 2015, which includes the two years before his arrival in the UK.  In Manchester, he waited for potential victims outside nightclubs, pubs, and similar venues in the early hours. He then offered them a stay at his flat, subsequently drugging and raping his victims. After some of the assaults, he boasted about his actions on WhatsApp. Sinaga was born in 1983 in the city of Jambi in Jambi, Indonesia, and grew up in Depok, West Java. Growing up in an affluent conservative Catholic family, he is ethnically from the Batak people. After completing a degree in Architecture at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Indonesia in Depok in 2006, he moved to the UK on a student visa and began to study in August 2007 at the University of Manchester, where he completed an MSc in urban planning in 2009 and an MA in sociology in 2011. Remaining in Manchester, in 2012 he began to study for a PhD at the University of Leeds which he did not complete. His thesis, entitled Sexuality and everyday transnationalism among South Asian gay and bisexual men in Manchester, was submitted in August 2016 and was assessed as a “fail”, but he was permitted to amend and resubmit it. He was rewriting his thesis at the time of his arrest. He was financially supported by his father, a banker who moved into the palm oil sector. Sinaga’s mother came to the first pre-trial hearing but was not present for any of the four trials. While in Manchester, Sinaga lived openly as a gay man, living not far from Manchester’s gay village, and reportedly had many boyfriends.

Deaths

Jean Lee

1841 – Diogo Alves – born in 1810, was a notorious serial killer and robber from Portugal. Originally from Galicia, Spain, he moved to Lisbon, Portugal, when he was young. His criminal career spanned from 1836 to 1840, during which he is believed to have killed over 70 people.  Alves committed his crimes in the area of the Águas Livres Aqueduct, which led to him being known as the “Aqueduct Murderer”. He would rob unsuspecting commuters, many of whom were humble farmers, along the Aqueduct at nightfall. After robbing them, he would throw them over the edge of the 213-foot-tall structure, causing their deaths. These deaths were initially thought to be copycat suicides, which led to a temporary closure of the bridge.  Later in his life, Alves formed a gang that targeted wealthier residents of the city. They were caught while killing four people inside the home of a local doctor. Alves was arrested and sentenced to death by hanging.  After his execution, his head was severed and preserved for scientific purposes, but it appears that the intended studies never took place. His preserved head is currently on display in a glass vessel at the University of Lisbon’s Faculty of Medicine.

1942 – Frank Abbandando – also known as “The Dasher”, was a notorious contract killer and mobster in New York City. Born on July 11, 1910, he was part of the infamous Murder, Inc. gang and was known for his brutal method of killing his victims by stabbing them through the heart with an ice pick.  Abbandando’s parents, Lorenzo Abbondandolo and Rosaria Famighetti, were immigrants from Avellino, Italy. He was one of twelve children, six of whom did not survive childhood. Born and raised in New York City, Abbandando began his criminal career as a teenager, extorting money from shop owners by threatening to set their shops on fire.  In his twenties, he joined a street gang in the Ocean Hill section of Brooklyn and quickly rose to the rank of lieutenant under Harry “Happy” Maione. Abbandando organized gambling, loan sharking, and extortion rackets for the gang, and was also known for committing murders. In 1928, he was convicted of assaulting a New York police officer and was sent to a reform school in Elmira, New York. It was here that he demonstrated his skill at baseball and earned the nickname “The Dasher”.  Despite his taste for fine clothes and fancy cars, Abbandando was also a habitual sexual predator. The prosecutor at his murder trial stated that Abbandando had all but admitted to one rape, to which Abbandando replied, “Well, that one doesn’t count really—I married the girl later.”  In the early 1930s, New York’s Five Families began using gangs to commit their murders to keep a low public profile and protect themselves from public and law enforcement scrutiny. Abbandando became a contract killer for this cause, working under Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, the leader of the Jewish gang known as the “Gorilla Boys”. This group of killers, which included members of various ethnicities, was later labeled by the New York Press as “Murder, Inc.”  Abbandando was found guilty of murder after several of the Murder, Inc. bosses were arrested. He was sentenced to death and executed by electric chair at Sing Sing Prison, Ossining, New York, on February 19, 1942.

1942 – Harry “Happy” Maione – born on October 7, 1908, was a notorious mobster and hitman for Murder, Inc., the enforcement arm of the National Crime Syndicate, during the 1930s. Despite his nickname “Happy”, Maione was known for his perpetual scowl.  In his early years, Maione led the Ocean Hill Hooligans, an Italian street gang in the Ocean Hill section of Brooklyn, New York. His protégé in this gang was Frank “The Dasher” Abbandando. Maione had a son, Albert Maione, who eventually became an associate with the Gambino crime family.  In 1931, Maione and Abbandando assisted Abe “Kid Twist” Reles and Martin Goldstein in eliminating their gangster rivals, the Shapiro Brothers. The Shapiros had previously attempted to murder Reles and Goldstein and had abducted and assaulted Reles’ girlfriend. In retaliation, Irving Shapiro was gunned down near his apartment, and Meyer Shapiro was found shot to death in the basement of a tenement building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.  Following these events, Maione, Abbandando, Reles, and Goldstein banded together and were soon joined by other notorious criminals. The gang began picking up murder contracts from the National Crime Syndicate and quickly became the official murder-for-hire squad of the Syndicate, earning the moniker “Murder, Inc.” from the press. Maione acted as the Italian liaison to the Jewish members of Murder, Inc., with Reles serving as his counterpart on the Jewish side.  Maione reportedly killed at least 12 men himself while working for Murder, Inc. In the mid-1930s, when New York District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey targeted Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, a member of the Syndicate board, for prosecution, Buchalter began eliminating all potential witnesses. Maione, along with Abbandando and others, carried out these killings.  In 1940, Reles became an informant for the State of New York and implicated Maione and Abbandando in several murders. As a result, Maione was executed by electrocution at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, on February 19, 1942.

1951 – Jean Lee – born Marjorie Jean Maude Wright on December 10, 1919, in Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia, was the last woman to be executed in Australia. She was the youngest child of Charles Wright, a railway worker, and his wife Florence. In 1927, the family moved to Sydney, where Jean attended Chatswood Public School, a convent in North Sydney, and Willoughby Central Domestic High School. She worked various jobs, including as a milliner, waitress, stenographer, and laborer in a canned-goods factory.  At the age of 18, she married Raymond Thomas Brees, a house painter, and they had a daughter in April 1939. The marriage was strained by financial difficulties and heavy drinking by Brees, leading to their separation and eventual divorce in April 1949. As a single mother, Jean struggled to provide for herself and her daughter, leading her into a cycle of poverty, petty crime, and prostitution in Sydney and Brisbane.  In 1943, she began an association with Morris Dias, a criminal who managed her earnings from prostitution. Three years later, she met Robert David Clayton, a con man and gambler, with whom she formed a violent but enduring relationship. Between May 1945 and July 1948, she appeared twenty-three times at Sydney’s Central Police Court, mostly on charges of offensive behavior.  In October 1949, Lee traveled to Melbourne with Clayton, who had just been released from jail. There they teamed up with another criminal, Norman Andrews. The trio committed minor offences which brought them into further conflict with the law. On November 7, a 73-year-old part-time bookmaker named William ‘Pop’ Kent was found murdered in his house in Carlton, Melbourne.  Jean Lee, along with her lover Robert Clayton and accomplice Norman Andrews, was convicted for the 1949 killing of William ‘Pop’ Kent. The victim was bound to a chair, tortured with the aim of finding hidden money, and finally strangled. All three were convicted and sentenced to death in March 1950. They were hanged eleven months later at Pentridge Gaol. Jean Lee was the last woman to be executed in Australia.

1974 – Carla Jan Walker – was a 17-year-old American girl who was tragically murdered. She was kidnapped from a bowling alley parking lot in Fort Worth, Texas on February 17, 1974, and her body was discovered three days later in a drainage ditch not far from Fort Worth.  On the night of her kidnapping, Walker was with her boyfriend, Rodney McCoy, in his car in the parking lot of Brunswick Ridglea Bowl after attending a school dance. An unknown person attacked the two, assaulted McCoy with a pistol, and kidnapped Walker.  Walker’s body was found on February 20, 1974, in a culvert in Lake Benbrook. The autopsy showed that Walker had been alive for 2 days after her abduction, and she had been beaten, tortured, raped, and strangled to death. Toxicology reports also indicated she had been injected with morphine.  The case remained unsolved for 46 years until September 2020, when DNA evidence found on Walker’s clothing led to the identification of 77-year-old Glen Samuel McCurley as a suspect. McCurley had been interviewed by police shortly after the murder, as he had bought a .22 Ruger pistol that used the same magazine as the one found in the parking lot of Brunswick Ridglea Bowl, but he claimed the gun had been stolen from his truck. He agreed to take a polygraph test, and after he passed it, he was ruled out as a suspect. In 2020, police obtained DNA samples from the trash outside his home.

1977 – Christopher Robin Worrell – was born on January 17, 1954, and died on February 19, 1977, at the age of 23. He is infamously known as one of the perpetrators of the Truro murders, a series of crimes that took place in South Australia between December 1976 and February 1977.  Worrell, described as young, charismatic, and sociopathic, along with James Miller, a 38-year-old laborer, is believed to have committed the murders. The two met when they were in prison together, Miller for breaking and entering, and Worrell for rape and breaching a two-year suspended sentence for armed robbery.  Over a seven-week period in the summer of 1976-77, the bodies of seven young women, aged between 15 and 26 years, were discovered near Adelaide. Miller and Worrell, who had just been released from prison, picked up the victims, most of whom were hitchhikers, raped, and murdered them. It appears that all had been strangled, often using a nylon cord, though there was a suspicion that the last of the victims had been buried alive.  Worrell’s life ended abruptly in a car accident on February 19, 1977. His criminal activities and the horrific nature of his crimes have left a lasting impact, making him a notorious figure in Australian criminal history.

1984 – David Hollis – One night, Hollis sought out his estranged wife, Debbie, and discovered her at an apartment in Hammond, accompanied by a neighbor named Kim Mezei and her two-year-old son. In a tragic turn of events, Hollis viciously attacked Debbie and Kim, repeatedly stabbing them and strangling all three victims. The following day, Hollis armed himself with a shotgun and went to the residence of an acquaintance, Donald K. White, in Griffith. When White mentioned that the police suspected Hollis of killing his wife, a neighbor, and a baby, Hollis chillingly admitted to the crimes. He expressed regret for taking the lives of the neighbor and child, attributing it to them getting in the way. Hollis then proceeded to bind White and his roommate, forcing White into a horrifying act of sexual assault.

1991 – Damaso Rodriguez Martin – known by the aliases El Brujo (The Warlock) or Maso, born on December 11, 1944, and passing away on February 19, 1991, gained notoriety as a Spanish serial killer and rapist. In 1991, he committed three murders in the Anaga mountain area in Tenerife, taking refuge there after escaping from Tenerife II Prison, where he was serving a sentence for a violation and one of his previous killings.  Following the murder of a German couple, “El Brujo” became the most sought-after fugitive by Spain’s security forces. The gravity of his crimes and the extensive media coverage have etched Dámaso’s name into infamy, solidifying his position as the most infamous killer in the Canary Islands.

Events

Apodaca Prison Riot

1881 – Kansas becomes the first state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages and the creation of such

1992 – Pornographic film producer & entrepreneur Jim Mitchell is found guilty of killing his brother Artie

1997 – Student Evan Ramsey commits the Bethel Regional High School shooting killing fellow student Josh Palacios before killing the principal Ron Edwards

2012 – At least 44 people are killed at the Apodaca prison riot in Mexico, and a further 12 are injured, unverified reports state that more than 70 people lost their lives

2020 – A German gunman, later identified as Tobias Rathjen entered two shisha bars in Hanau, Germany killing 10 people, and injuring 5 before taking his own life