THE ANATOMY MURDERS OF BURKE AND HARE (1828)

LOCATION: Edinburgh

PERPETRATORS: William Burke and William Hare

MOTIVATION: Murder

BACKGROUND: Ober the course of a ten-month period, from February to November 1828, William Burke and William Hare murdered 16 people in Edinburgh, Scotland, in a case that would become known as the Anatomy Murders.

Up until 1832, when the law was changed, partly in response to the Barke and Hare murders, there were few ways for doctors to obtain human bodies for the purpose of medical research. At the same time, a rapid rise in the population of Britain was occurring, which meant that more doctors were needed and medical schools were expanding.

Resurrectionists were certainly at work in Edinburgh during the 1820's and it was not unusual for the relatives of a recently deceased person to mount vigil over their grave to prevent the body being stolen.

On November 29, 1827, an elderly tenant with no known relatives died of natural causes in the lodging house run but Hare and one way for Hare to recoup the money was to sell the body to the medical school.

The next opportunity to make easy money presented itself to Burke and Hare the following February when another of Hare's lodgers fell ill, when the man began to recover, Burke and Hare took matter into their own hands, plying him with whiskey until he became unconscious, at which point one of them smothered him with a pillow while the other lay across his chest.

Once they had crossed the line into murder, they began to kill regularly, mostly targeting people who had come to stay in the lodging house or those they met elsewhere.

The murderers went with the porter so that they could collect the money they were owed from Knox´s assistants. Over the course of the spring and summer, they sold a succession of bodies to Knox in this way, with no questions being asked.

In October they murdered 18-year-old James Wilson, who suffered from some form of mental disability and was a well-known character on the streets.

The murder of James Wilson should have raised suspicions about Burke and Hare, but it was actually their next murder, the sixteenth, that finally led to their arrest.

The trial began on Christmas Eve  and considered the Docherty case first, with both William and Margaret Hare taking the stand to testify against Burke and MacDougal. Burke was sentenced to death and on January 28, 1829, he was hanged at a public execution in Edinburgh, the other three defendants were released from custody and forced to leave the city.

OUTCOME: A law passed in 1832, which allowed medical school to acquire bodies for anatomical research by legal means.

THE OUTLAW JESSE JAMES (1860-1882)

LOCATION: Western Missouri

PERPETRATORS: Jesse and Frank James, the Younger brothers

MOTIVATION: Murder and robbery

BACKGROUND: 

In May 1864, the 16-year-old Jesse James joined his older brother Frank in a band of Confederate guerilla fighters.

The guerilla was in Missouri was a brutal and dirty affair in which neither side observed the usual rules of war and the murder of civilians and unarmed soldier was a common occurrence.

In 1850, when Jesse was three years old, his father went to California to find his fortune in the Gold Rush but contracted cholera shortly after arriving there and died, leaving his family in serious financial trouble.

During this period, many migrants were settling in Missouri, some of whom, like James family, came from the southern states of America and brought their slaves with them. Others came from the north and from Europe, principally Ireland and Germany, and of these arrivals were opposed to the institution of slavery.

After the civil war started in 1861, Missouri remained in the Union, but many people in the sate supported the secessionist Confederacy in the South, including the James family, who, at the start of the war, owned six slaves.

By the summer of 1864, Frank and Jesse had joined the bushwhacker band led by William T. Anderson, who had a murderous reputation and was known as Bloody Bill.

Jesse James was shot in the chest during an encounter with Union soldiers in May 1865 and spent time convalescing under the care of his cousin Zee Mimms, who he would later marry.

Jesse James appears to have rejoined his former comrades at some pint during the summer of 1866, but did not begin to emerge as a prominent figure until December 7, 1869, when he and his brother robbed the bank in Gallatin, Missouri.

One newspaperman who would become closely associated with the James brothers was John Newman Edwards and began with what we might now call a publicity campaign in their favor.

 In 1879 Jesse recruited a new gang, including the brothers Charley and Bob Ford, and set up on a crime spree.

In December 1881, Jesse and Zee James rented a house in the town of St. Joseph. It was here that, on April 3 1882, he was killed at the age of 34, shot in the back of the head by Bob Ford, who had apparently agreed with his brother Charley to kill Jesse so they could collect the reward.

OUTCOME: The civil war finally ended for James when he was shot dead by Bob Ford.

THE ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1865)

LOCATION: Washington, D.C.

PERPETRATORs: John Wilkes Booth and his fellow conspirators.

MOTIVATION: Assassination

BACKGROUND: 

On Good Friday, April 14, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by the well-known actor John Wilkes Booth shortly after 10 o´ clock in the evening as he was attending a performance in Washington.

Lincoln was attended by two doctors in the audience that night. He had not been killed instantly by the gunshot, but the doctors quickly determined from the nature of his head wound that he would not survive.

The investigation into the assassination of Lincoln focused on known associates of Booth and resulted in numerous arrests, although most of the people held were later released without charge. But the police also discovered a connection to the Washington boarding house run by Mary Surrat, who was arrested there along with Lewis Powell.

The boarding house had been used by the conspirators as a meeting place to discuss what had originally been a plan to abduct Lincoln with the intentions of exchanging it him for Confederate prisoners.

By the time of those arrests Booth was hiding out in an are of dense forest and wetland in southern Maryland known as Zekiah Swamp.

In total eight people were charged with being involved in the conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln. President Andrew Johnson, who had been sworn into office within hours of Lincoln´s death, ordered that the trial of the conspirators be heard by a military tribunal.

Even if it is not possible to say for certain whether Booth was acting on orders from the Confederate government, he was the driving force behind the conspiracy as it developed from a plot to kidnap a Lincoln into one of assassination. His motivation appears to have been what he saw as an attempt by the North to destroy the culture of the South and, in particular, the institution of slavery. He came to regard Lincoln as the man responsible for this, the embodiment of all that he hated.

OUTCOME: The conspirators succeeded in killing Lincoln but not in their long-term aim of prolonging the Civil War.

DICK TURPIN: THE HIGHWAYMAN (1730)

LOCATION: England

PERPETRATORs: Turpin and his criminal associates

MOTIVATION: Murder, robbery

BACKGROUND: 

The criminal career of Dick Turpin spanned about seven or eight years, beginning in the early 1730's and ending on April 7, 1739, when he was hanged in the English city of York after being convicted of horse theft.

He would become much more famous after his death as a consequence of the publication of numerous accounts of his life, beginning within days of his execution when Richard Bayes, elaborating some details and inventing others to present Turpin as a heroic figure, in the process establishing the character of the dashing highwayman.

Turpin began as a petty criminal in the English county of Essex before graduating to more serious crimes, including burglary, armed robbery, and murder, with little to suggest that he bore any resemblance to a later depictions of him as being a "knight of the road".

He followed his father as a butcher and it would appear that this line of business first brought him into contact with the criminal gang he would later join.

Over the course of 1734, the gang became more ambitious staging raids against isolated farms in Essex and in other places  around London.

A reward of £50 was issued for information, leading to the arrest of three members of the gang.

By the summer of 1735, all of them, with the exception of Turpin and one other, Thomas Rowden, had been caught, put on trial, and either executed or transported to the American colonies.

The robberies continued over the course of the following months until Rowden was arrested towards the end of 1735.

After losing his partner, Turpin disappeared from the view for more than a year, perhaps laying low to avoid arrest himself or living under an assumed name without committing any crimes that could be traced back to him. In February 1738 he remerged in the company of another man sometimes identified as the well-known highwayman Tom King and sometimes as his younger brother Matthew King.

Rather than being taken to either Essex or London to face charges of murden and highway robbery, Turpin remained in York to stand trial for horse theft. The trial occurred on March 22, 1739, at the York Assizes.

The sentence was carried out on April 7 in front of a large crowd at York racecourse. The account goes on to say that it took five minutes for him to die and then his body left hanging for several hours to make sure he was dead.

OUTCOME: The death of the highway man and the birth of a legend.

THE MURDERER OF JOHN NEWCOMER (1630)

LOCATION: Plymouth Colony

PERPETRATOR: John Billington

MOTIVATION: Murder

ANTECEDENTS: Little is known of the life of John Newcomer beyond the fact that in early September 1630 he was shot and killed.

He was a newcomer to the Plymouth Colony, the settlement established ten years previously by the group now known as the Pilgrim Fathers, arrived on board the Mayflower in December 1620.

John Billington was one of these  originals settlers and a signatory to the Mayflower Compact, the document written during the Atlantic passage setting out regulations to govern the new colony.

Billington may have sailed on the Mayflower, but he was not one of the group of religious separatists who would later become known as the Pilgrim Fathers. They were followers of the Protestant cleric Robert Brown, who, along with other Puritans did not think the Reformation had gone far enough in England so had moved to Holland in an attempt to find a place to live where they could practice their religion.

The original intention had been to settle in Virginia, where they had purchased a lease from the London Virginia Company and where an English colony had previously been established at Jamestown.

 The first winter proved to be extremely hard in the new colony. Half of the settlers died from disease and a lack of food.

After that terrible experience, the settlers held what is now called the "First Thanksgiving" after the success of the harvest in the following year.

Even before they had founded their first settlement, tensions existed between Billington and William Bradford, the leader of the separatists on board the Mayflower and the future governor of Plymouth Colony.

It is impossible to know the extent to which Billington deserved his reputation as a troublemaker; the only details we have come from Bradford´s writing and may have been a result of some unknown personal animosity between the two.

The murder of John Newcomen by Billington in the summer of 1630 provided Bradford with the opportunity he may have been looking for to take action against a man who had threatened his position as governor of the colony.

According to Bradford´s report account Billington had previously been involved in an argument with Newcomen over an unspecified subject and this disagreement, whatever its nature, led to Billington shooting Newcomen.

OUTCOME: On September 30, 1630, John Billington was hanged, becoming the first, but by no means the last, American to be executed for murder.

THE BABINGTON PLOT (1586)

LOCATION: England

PERPETRATORS: Anthony Babington and Mary, Queen of Scots; Sir Francis Walsingham

MOTIVATION: Treason and espionage

BACKGROUND: The beginning of the Protestant Reformation is conventionally dated to the moment in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed a list of criticisms of the Catholic Church to the door of a church in the city of Wittenberg, Saxony.

In England, King Henry VIII split from Rome for political and personal reasons rather than religious ones. He wanted to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in order to marry his mistress Anne Boleyn, in part because the only child to survive infancy in his first marriage was a daughter, Mary and he wanted a male heir.

During the subsequent marriage to Anne, however, the only surviving child was also a daughter, who was named Elizabeth.

In 1553, Mary ascended to the throne of England after the death of King Edward VI, Henry's only surviving son.

Unlike both Henry and Edward, Mary was a committed Catholic, earning the soubriquet "Bloody Mary" because of the brutal nature of the repression of the Protestant faith.

After Elizabeth gained the throne in 1558, she reversed the anti-protestant legislation introduced during Mary's reign, returning to the Protestant reforms begun by Henry and continued by Edward.

Those who chose to remain Catholic were known as recusants.

A number of conspiracies developed involving both recusants in England and exiles in northern France aimed at overthrowing Elizabeth and replacing her with a Catholic monarch. The most obvious candidate was Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth's cousin.

The plot was named for Anthony Babington because he was one of its main organizers in England. He had met Mary personally on a number of occasions and appears to have become infatuated with her and with the idea of installing her in the English Throne. What Babington and the Catholic friends did not know was that Walsingham's spies had infiltrated it right from the start.

Once it had become clear that Babington was involved, one of the Walsingham's agents, Robert Poley, managed to gain his confidence and become his close companion. As well as having these two spies shadowing the principal players in the plot.

 The breakthrough came on June 28, when Babington wrote to Mary to tell her that a plot was being planned in which Elizabeth was going to be assassinated.

Walsingham did not wait for Babington's reply to reach Mary, considering it too risky to wait any longer when the plot was so far advanced.

Over the course of the next few weeks, all were caught and Mary was arrested along with two of her secretaries.

On February 8, 1587, she was beheaded in the great hall of the castle after Elizabeth had personally signed her death warrant.

THE ASSASSINATION OF JULIUS CAESAR (March 15, 44 BCE)

LOCATION: The Theater of Pompey in Rome

PERPETRATORS: Cassius, Brutus and a group of 60 other Roman senators

ANTECEDENTS: The expansion of the Roman Republic had generated huge wealth. Caesar appears to have judged that he could restore his family's wealth by entering the political arena.

After the conquest of Gaul in 51 BCE, Caesar became the governor of the three Roman provinces to the north of Italia, thus oiwer base was considered a threat by a group of senator known as the Optimates. Pompeius Magnus agreed with the Optimates.

By the time, March, 45 BCE, Caesar was well established as the most powerful man in Rome.

The senators resolved to act before Caesar left Rome toward a military campaign. It is thought that as many as 60 senators were involved.

As Caesar arrived to the meeting hall a crowd of senators gathered around him to present him a petition. While Caesar was dealing with the petitioner, one of the senators struck Caesar from behind

OUTCOME: In his will, Caesar named his 18-year-old great-nephew Gaius Octavian as his heir. At first Antony, Octavian and other close associates of Caesar came together to fight a civil war against the forces loyal to Cassius, Brutus and other Liberators.

Once those forces were defeated, fighting continued between the former members of the alliance in a series of encounters. Octavian finally defeated Antony, opening up the way for him to become the sole ruler. The assassination of Julius Caesar had exactly the opposite to what had been intended by the assassins.

CAPTAIN KIDD: PIRATE OR PRIVATEER?

LOCATION: The Indian Ocean

PERPETRATORS: Captain William Kidd and his crew

MOTIVATION: Robbery, murder, Hijacking

BACKGROUND: The notoriety of Captain William Kidd, who was hanged in London on May 23, 1701, for piracy and murder, arose as much from the publicity surrounding the possibility of a royal and political scandal as it did from the nature of the crimes for which he was convicted.

Little is known of Kidd's early life, beyond the fact that he was born in the Scottish city ov Dundee. The first reliable records concerning him date to 1689, at which time we was about 35 years old and the captain of a ship arriving at the Caribbean island of Nevis, a British colony. He had been sent there on commission by the island's governor to provide protection against possible French attack.

Kidd led raids on islands held by the French in the Caribbean and captured French ships as prizes before moving further north to operate against the French along the coast of New England, sailing out of ports in the English colonies of New York and Massachusetts.

By the 1690's, some pirates from the Caribbean and western Alan tick had begun to look further afield, sailing round the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of the African continent and into the Indian Ocean in order to arrack merchant shipping that was carrying precious cargos from the Far East, leading to the company lobbying the English parliament to take action against the pirates.

The investment allowed Kidd to purchase a brand new ship, the Adventure Galley. In September 1696, alongside a French ship captured previously, he embarked on the voyage to the Indian Ocean.

Over the course of the following year, he had failed to find any pirates and therefore had not taken any prizes, leading to discontent among the remaining crew and raising the threat of mutiny.

It was about this time that rumors began to reach London and New York the Kidd had abandoned privateering for piracy.

Kidd was hoping to negotiate a deal with Lord Bellemont, one of his backers who was also the governor of the English colonies on New York and Massachusetts. When Kidd traveled to see Bellemont, who was in Boston, he was arrested and thrown into jail, where he would remain for over a year before being extradited back to England.

In March 1701, Kidd appeared before the members of parliament in the House of Commons. It remains the only occasion in which a man accused of piracy has been summoned in this manner.

On May 23, 1701, Kidd was hanged at Execution Dock on the bank of the River Thames.

OUTCOME: Kidd was hanged and gibbeted.

THE MAN WHO SOLD THE EIFFEL TOWER (1925)

LOCATION: Paris

PERPETRATOR: Robert Miller, aka Count Victor Lusting

MOTIVATION: Fraud

BACKGROUND: In May 1925, an article appeared in a French newspaper on the declining state of the Eiffel Tower. The iconic landmark had been in public ownership since 1909 and had been neglected for years by the Ministry of Post and Telegraph, so that it had become and an embarrassment to the city of Paris.

Lusting was in New York when he read the article about the Eiffel Tower. He traveled to Paris and took a suite luxurious Hotel de Crillon on the Place de la Concorde in the center of the city, near many of the ministries of the French Government. The next step was to send letter out on the headed paper to invite six of the largest scrap metal merchants in Paris to meeting in his suit. Once the merchants were assembled, he told them that the government had decided that it was too expensive to refurbish the Eiffel Tower and intended to sell it off to the highest bidder for scrap.

Lusting had picked his mark, a man called Andre Poisson, who took the bait, perhaps thinking that the payment of backhanders was a necessary expense in order to secure governments contracts.

Lusting cashed the check immediately and left Paris for Vienna with a suitcase full of money.

Lusting waited in Vienna spectating to hear that Poisson had reported him to the police.

Lusting went back to America, where he continued his criminal career for another ten years, branching out into counterfeiting before being arrested by the FBI in 1935.

OUTCOME: The Eiffel Tower is still standing.

THE BOSTON STRANGLER (1962-1964) 

LOCATION: Boston

PERPETRATOR: Albert DeSalvo 

BACKGROUND: At some point in late February or early March 1965, Albert DeSalvo told George Nassar that he was the Boston Strangler, the man who had terrorized the city for 18 months between June 1962 and January 1964 by murdering 13 single women in their apartments. Both were inmates of Bridgewater State Hospital at the time, a secure mental institution in Massachusetts, Nassar as a convicted murderer and DeSalvo having been sent there for psychiatric assessment following his arrest for a sexual assault. Nassar contacted his attorney, F. Lee Bailey, who interviewed DeSalvo and then took his case when he made a confession to the police in which he provided them with details of the murders. Not everybody was convinced by DeSalvo's confession. Some people suspected that he had conspired with Nassar so that Nassar could claim the reward. Many of his rape victims had positively identified him, leading to the apparent decision by prosecutors that he was certain to be convicted on those charges. To avoid prosecution for 13 murders that he had confessed to having committed still appears to have been an extraordinary decision. After being arrested in October 1964, his picture was published in newspaper to identify him has the man who had raped the women, however, the connection to the Boston strangler was made after DeSalvo's confession. DeSalvo was found guilty, sentenced to life imprisonment, at which time he returned to Bridgewater Hospital. In February 1967, DeSalvo escaped from Bridgewater, leaving a note to say that he had done so as a protest against the conditions there. He surrendered to his attorney the following day and was then sent to a maxim security prison near Walpole, Massachusetts, where remained until he was stabbed to death during the night of November 27 1973, by an unknown assailant. In 2013, semen that had been found on a blanket at the scene of the murder of Mary Sullivan was DNA tested and, when compared to a DNA sample from a living relative from DeSalvo, was found to be a close match, proving beyond reasonable doubt that he could be placed at the scene of the murder. 

OUTCOME: Thanks to modern technologies the identity of the killer was confirmed.