In 2012, the NYPD uncovered some old pictures of crime scenes. We have no idea what cases are connected to any of the photos, so for our purposes they’re unsolved. I write historical true crime so I’m especially interested in these pictures.

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I tried to find the crime by searching the newspaper database but it was a lost cause. Even when I confined my search to New York City in the 1910s and searched “murdered man found behind the bar,” over 1,500 results came up. Yikes!

With only the picture to go on, what do we know about this place? It was pre-Prohibition New York City. A large poster on the back wall for the U.S. Navy begins with Your Country Needs You! and a second poster is visible in the mirror. so I’m guessing this was after we entered the Great War between 1917-1919. The murdered man may have been the bartender or someone could have dragged his body behind the bar. He’s got light hair and looks to have been shot on the right side of the head.

I’d guess the bar was open and operating at the time of the murder because of the used glasses on the bar and several washcloths lying around. Interestingly, the cash register is visible and is closed. The only other clue I see is the the note stuck on the mirror behind the bar. It looks out of place in this neat establishment and may have been left by the killer. It features a giant pocket watch that obscures some of the text. The bottom line plainly reads TRUST NO MORE.

I enlarged the part of the picture with the note. I couldn’t make out all of the words, but here’s what I think it says:

My Friend Did Come

__ Did Trust Him

My Friend and L___

His Customs, to Lose My Friend

I ____ My S___ so I’ve Resolved to

TRUST NO MORE.

Visit OldSpirituals.com to see the enlarged picture and read the clever reader comments!

The woman known as the Veiled Murderess died in the madhouse in May 1905. There was no question she killed Timothy Lanigan, a grocer, by putting arsenic in his beer 50 years earlier. The only question was about her identity. During her trial, she refused to give her name and insisted on keeping her beautiful face veiled.

Upon her death some half century later, the Evening World ran an incredible story, claiming the Veiled Murderess was none other than Lady Elliot. Read more of her story on Old Spirituals!

I've recently been doing research on the case on Bridget Deignan (incorrectly spelled Durgan,) an orderly who was convicted of murdering her Mistress, Mary Ellen Coriell, on the 25th of February in 1867. I was initially interested in the case after noticing a lot of glaring inconsistencies with how the murder scene is described, versus the state of the alleged murderer, Bridget, (in that, the crime was extremely gruesome but there was only a spot of blood found on her and she is prone to frequent epileptic seizures, fainting, and over all frailness, that makes you question how she could have pulled something like that off and then run to go get help in the middle of the night while carrying a child, in the snow.) But it's very difficult to find information on the actual trial itself. A lot of the printed articles I've found have been newspaper clippings that are highly sensationalized and often dehumanize Bridget, who was an illiterate, Catholic, Irish immigrant- or her 'supposedly' penned confessions, despite not being able to read or write.

Mostly, I'm looking to learn more about Bridgets early life and how she came to America and about the trial itself (without the media hoopla) where would I go to locate these sources and is there a way to get access to them over the web without booking a ticket to New Jersey?

Any help would be appreciated!

Besides the shock of the anonymous letter writer's identity--for she was a well-known and prominent woman--the cruel deliberateness of her letters shocked the people.

"The woman spared no one. Among her victims were the best-known people of the town, against whom there had been no suggestion of wrongdoing until her evil work created it."

Check it out on Old Spirituals: The Wickedness Harriet Wrought

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I just finished “Blood&Ink” by Joe Pompeo,which introduced me to the Hall-Mills murder, a 1921 case from New Brunswick NJ, which combines the murder of two adulterous lovers, one a prominent minister, with two wronged spouses, one wealthy, and massive tabloid coverage. Not only does the case have too many interesting elements to list here, the book is really well structured and keeps a complicated story with a large cast of characters clear and lively.

In Ireland 1895, Bridget Cleary was diagnosed with bronchitis and was in failing health. Her condition worsened, and one of the remedies administered was throwing urine on her and placing her in front of the fireplace to remove any unwanted faeries.

That March, Bridget had gone missing, and according to her husband faeries had taken her. She was found less than a week later in a shallow grave, her body clearly burnt.

During trial, her husband attested that he had continued to try burning the faeries out of her, but her dress had caught fire. At this point, he threw kerosine on her and held back witnesses as she burned. He insisted that his wife had been a faerie changeling for over a week.

And, it became a nursery rhyme line:

"Are you a witch, or are you a fairy/Or are you the wife of Michael Cleary?"

Book here: The Burning of Bridget Cleary

Something upset Frank Richardson. He was at his store on the night of Dec 24, 1900. Apparently happy, Richardson's demeanor changed when his 9-year-old son, Frank Jr., mentioned casually that his mother had not been at church, as per her plan.

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Frank Richardson, murder victim

Frank ran out of his store and tore through the streets of Savannah, Missouri until he reached his home, which was quiet and dark. His wife Addie was inside. She heard her husband come in and his angry demand, "Has it come to this?" before the crack of a pistol silenced his voice forever.

But who wanted Frank dead? More than one person, that was for sure!

Discover what led up to all of this: Frank Richardson Plants the Seeds of Disaster in his Life

There was a user who went to various different paranormal-related forums for several years. He said his name was Edward McCleary. Each iteration of his posts included stories about how when he was a teenager, the character Cecil from Cecil and Beany somehow manifested in reality, chased him and his friends, and killed them one by one. A newspaper search for the name 'Edward McCleary' mainly reveals Pensacola-based news articles of an incident occurring March 24, 1962, 200 yards off the coast of Pensacola. One body washed ashore, while the other three were not recovered. An 'Edward Brian McCleary' was interviewed by the newspapers, in which he stated that their raft got swept off-course by currents, forcing them to swim back. He was 16 years old at the time.

An 'Edward McCleary' subsequently appeared in an issue of Fate Magazine in May 1965, titled 'Strange Fates'. The show 'Beany and Cecil' began airing on ABC in January, 1962. This McCleary went into great detail, describing an entity in such a way that it perfectly matched the character Cecil from Beany and Cecil. It is also documented that he sent letters to numerous paranormal investigators at around the same time. He explained that the reason the story in the newspapers was different is because the reporters tried to cover it up, and the reporters warned him that the entity was (quote) ''better left unmentioned for all concerned.''

McCleary was known for making telephone calls where he spoke about how he saw his friends be killed by the character. Many people pointed out the resemblance between his sketch of the entity and the character, at which point McCleary stated that the entity he saw was the character and speculated that the character had appeared out of some kind of parallel dimension. He also said he kept having nervous breakdowns over the incident when people did not believe him. He said after the incident in 1962, he suffered a constant nervous breakdown and only recovered when Beany and Cecil stopped airing, which was in June of that year.

One of the comments to his obituary page says he was a big fan of the show Beany and Cecil. He died in 2017 in Jacksonville, Florida. He was a worker at Mental Health Resource Center. He was reportedly a recovering alcoholic and drug addict (allegedly, to cope with the memory of a cartoon character murdering his friends) and lived as a recluse. Some people tried to contact him via mail but got no reply.

All Homicide Cases - YouTube

There are currently 34 cases dating 1900 to 1917.

They are UK cases.

Enjoy the first chapter of The Poisoned Glass, which was an Amazon category best-seller in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and India.

Free first chapter of The Poisoned Glass

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Jennie Bosschieter left her home in Paterson, NJ one evening in October 1900 to run an errand and she never came home.

The next morning, the body of the 17-year-old Dutch immigrant was discovered on a riverbank. Sorrow turned to shock when four prominent, wealthy men were charged with her murder.

Even as the sordid details emerged, the men remained confident their wealth and influence would save them. In January 1901, all eyes turned to Paterson, where the men would stand trial, with their own lives now hanging in the balance.

On 30 March 1896, a fisherman boating down the river Thames fished out a carpetbag from the river.

Inside the bag, wrapped in layers of linen, newspaper, and brown paper, was the partially decomposed body of baby Helena Fry. There was white tape bound around the baby’s neck with a knot tightly wound around the left ear. It was a gruesome discovery that shook the Thames police to the bones.

Luckily, an observant policeman noticed a name, almost faded, written on a corner of the paper — ‘Mrs. Thomas’ — along with an address.

The police raided the place, and the sickly smell of decomposed bodies almost overpowered them upon entering. No bodies were found, but they found mountains of evidence against Mrs. Thomas. The authorities estimated that Mrs. Thomas managed at least twenty babies in the last few months, and further investigations revealed that the total number of babies killed by her in the last 30 years of her profession might be as high as 300 babies from places as far as Liverpool to Plymouth.

It was a horrifying discovery that would lead detectives to unravel the crimes of one of the 19th Century's most notorious child killers.

Read more...

https://thehiddenhistory.substack.com/p/the-most-notorious-baby-killer-in?r=3u9zf&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

‘Thug’ has been always a loaded word simply because it evokes within us a plethora of unpleasant emotions. This four-letter word paints of picture of brutal malevolence, an utter lack of empathy, and violence and destruction going beyond the limits of barbarism. And the word has been liberally splashed across the media from time to time.

However, thug is not an American word. In fact, it is not even an English word. The word has a twisted saga of barbarism, based on religious practices associated with it that goes back to 13th century India. ‘Thug’ finds its origins in the Hindi word ‘thag’ which translates into ‘thief’ and the Sanskrit word ‘sthagati’ which means to conceal. And the Thugs or Thuggees were history’s most notorious and deadly criminal cult, who preyed upon travelers along the highways until the end of 19th century India.

Read more about these cult killers.....

https://discover.hubpages.com/education/The-Most-Notorious-Cult-Killers-in-History