Births

Mart Ringmaa

1936 – James Adams – On May 10, 1984, James Adams, aged 47, marked a grim milestone as the first black man to be executed in Florida since 1964. His execution by electrocution was the culmination of his conviction for the brutal beating death of millionaire Fort Pierce rancher Edgar Brown. The tragic incident occurred in 1973 during a robbery, where Brown met his demise at the hands of Adams, who wielded a fireplace poker in the assault. The aftermath revealed Adams’ connection to the crime, as his Rambler was identified leaving the crime scene. Subsequently, items from Brown’s residence were discovered in a vehicle belonging to Adams’ wife. Adding complexity to the case, Adams was already a fugitive from a Tennessee prison where he had been serving a 99-year sentence for rape. Despite his legal battles, Adams’ appeals based on issues of racism and claims of innocence proved unsuccessful.

1938 – Mart Ringmaa – was an Estonian engineer and serial bomber who was active in Tallinn, Estonia, from 1998 to 2005. He was responsible for 11 explosions that killed seven people and injured six. Ringmaa was born in Tallinn in 1938. He studied electrical engineering at the Tallinn Polytechnic Institute and graduated in 1968. After graduation, he worked as an engineer for various companies in Estonia. In 1998, Ringmaa began planting bombs in public places in Tallinn. The first explosion occurred on May 18, 1998, at a bus stop in the city center. The explosion killed one person and injured three others. Over the next seven years, Ringmaa planted bombs at various locations in Tallinn, including bus stops, kiosks, and apartment buildings. The explosions killed a total of seven people, including two children, and injured six others. In November 2005, Ringmaa was arrested after police found a bomb that he had planted in a building in Tallinn. He was convicted of murder, attempted murder, and fraud and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Ringmaa served his sentence in the Harku prison in Estonia. He was released in 2020 but died of cancer in June 2021.

1957 – Marilyn Lemak – She was previously married to David Lemak, and they had three children together. Their marriage lasted from September 7, 1985, to October 7, 1999. Lemak was a registered nurse. However, she is currently serving a life sentence for the murders of her three children, Nicholas, Emily, and Thomas, on March 4, 1999. The prosecutors alleged that she drugged and suffocated the children. It was speculated that her motive was to “get back” at her estranged husband. In 2001, David Lemak filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against his ex-wife, blaming her for the children’s murders and asking for more than $50,000 for the loss of each child. Lemak is serving her sentence at the Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln, Illinois. In an interview in 2012, she attributed the murders to depression and divorce from her husband.

1963 – Steven Joseph Hayes – also known as Linda Hayes, is a notable figure due to her involvement in the Cheshire home invasion murders that occurred on July 23, 2007. Born on May 30, 1963, Hayes was first convicted for an offense as an adult in 1980 at age 16. She was paroled in 1982 but violated her parole conditions seven weeks later. During the Cheshire home invasion, Hayes and her accomplice, Joshua Komisarjevsky, invaded the residence of the Petit family in Cheshire, Connecticut. Initially planning only to rob the house, the invasion escalated to the murder of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters, 17-year-old Hayley Petit and 11-year-old Michaela Petit. Their father, Dr. William Petit, escaped with severe injuries. Hayes was found guilty on 16 out of 17 counts related to the home invasion murders. Her sentence includes six consecutive death sentences, one for each capital felony conviction, plus an additional 106 years for the remaining charges. However, her sentences were vacated in August 2015, when the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional and retroactively commuted all death sentences to life imprisonment.

1968 – Zacarias Moussaoui – is a French member of al-Qaeda. He is often referred to as the “20th hijacker” associated with the 9/11 attacks. Moussaoui lived in England during the 1990s, where he earned a graduate degree in business and associated with radical Islamists. He was arrested in Minnesota by the FBI on August 16, 2001, for an immigration violation. His arrest was triggered by suspicions aroused while he was taking flight training courses in Eagan, Minnesota. On December 11, 2001, Moussaoui was indicted by a federal grand jury on six felony charges, including conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy, conspiracy to destroy aircraft, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy to murder United States employees, and conspiracy to destroy property. He pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court to conspiring to kill citizens of the United States as part of the 9/11 attacks. Moussaoui is currently serving six consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole at the Federal ADX Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. He is the only person ever convicted in a U.S. court in connection with the 9/11 attacks. In May 2020, Moussaoui made a statement renouncing terrorism, al-Qaida, and the Islamic State. He also expressed his opposition to any terrorist action or attack against the U.S.

1980 – Benjamin Donnie Ritchie – is a convicted murderer. He was sentenced to death on October 15, 2002, by Marion Superior Judge Patricia J. Gifford. Ritchie is known for the murder of Beech Grove Police Officer William Toney. On September 29, 2000, Ritchie, a car theft suspect, fled after crashing a stolen van in a residential neighborhood. During a foot pursuit, Officer Toney was shot five times with a .9 mm Glock handgun. One of the bullets missed Officer Toney’s bulletproof vest by an inch, cut through an artery, punctured his lung, and lodged itself in his vertebrae. Ritchie was arrested the next morning. Ritchie is currently the only offender on Indiana’s death row for the murder of a law enforcement officer. He has appeared in a documentary that aired in the United Kingdom. Despite his claims of remorse and assertions that he did not fire the fatal shot, Ritchie’s behavior during sentencing was marked by interruptions and disrespectful comments.

Deaths

Frank Lucas

1922 – Hyram Thompson – was born in 1870 and lived in Bamber Bridge, Lancashire, England. He was a laborer from Preston. Thompson was known for his violent temper and abusive behavior towards his wife, Ellen Thompson, and their three children. Despite multiple attempts by Ellen to apply for a separation order, Thompson managed to persuade her to change her mind each time. On April 25, 1922, Thompson came home from work and demanded his tea. When Ellen asked him to prepare it himself as she was looking after a neighbor’s baby, Thompson flew into a rage. He knocked Ellen to the floor and kicked her to death. Then, still, in a fury, he fetched his razor from the bathroom and cut her throat. Thompson was arrested on the same day. His son testified at the trial, describing Thompson as an idle, wicked drunkard and stating that the whole family had lived in fear of him. The jury found Hyram Thompson guilty as soon as the judge finished summing up. He was executed by hanging in Manchester on May 30, 1922.

2006 – Metod Trobec – born on 6 June 1948 in the village of Planina nad Horjulom, was a Slovene serial killer. He had a twin sister, Cirila, and they were raised by their mother, Marija Trobec, on a farm without running water. Trobec had learning difficulties and was unable to finish primary school. He had a criminal record dating back to 1967 and gained notoriety for murdering five women in a homestead in Dolenja Vas pri Polhovem Gradcu from 1976 to 1978. The remains of his victims were burned inside a stove. Trobec was the last convict to be sentenced to death in Slovenia. His sentence was later commuted to 20 years in prison for the murders and an additional 15 years for prison assaults. He spent the rest of his life in prison. On May 30, 2006, Trobec committed suicide at the Dob pri Mirni Correctional Facility.

2019 – Frank Lucas – was an American drug lord who operated in Harlem, New York City, during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was known for cutting out middlemen in the drug trade and buying heroin directly from his source in the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia. Lucas was born and raised in La Grange, North Carolina, a suburb of Goldsboro, North Carolina, to Fred and Mahalee (née Jones) Lucas. He was motivated to embark on a life of crime after witnessing his 12-year-old cousin’s murder at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, for looking flirtatiously at a white woman. After a fight with a former employer, Lucas fled to New York City. Once in Harlem, he began indulging in petty crime and pool hustling before he was taken under the wing of gangster Bumpy Johnson. After Johnson’s death, Lucas traveled around and realized that to be successful, he would have to break the monopoly that the Mafia held in New York. In 1976, Lucas was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 70 years in prison, but after becoming an informant, he and his family were placed in the Witness Protection Program. In 1981, his federal and state prison sentences were reduced to time served plus lifetime parole. In 1984 he was convicted on drug charges and was released from prison in 1991. In 2012, he pled guilty to attempting to cash a $17,000 federal disability benefit check twice, and because of his age and poor health, received a sentence of five years’ probation.

Events

Pearl Hart

1842 – John Francis attempts to murder Queen Victoria as she drives down Constitution Hill in London with Prince Albert

1899 – Pearl Hart, a female outlaw of the old west robs a stagecoach 30 miles southeast of Globe, Arizona

1925 – May Thirtieth Movement: The Shanghai municipal police force shot and kill 13 protesting workers

1937 – Memorial Day massacre: Chicago police shoot and kill ten labor demonstrators

1972 – The Angry Brigade goes on trial over a series of 25 bombings throughout the United Kingdom

1989 – Margaret Ray pleads guilty to breaking into David Letterman’s house

2012 – Former Liberian president Charles Taylor is sentenced to 50 years.

2012 – Ian Lee Stawicki went on a deadly shooting rampage, killing five people before shooting himself

2019 – Singer R Kelly is charged with 11 new counts of sexual assault and abuse in Chicago