 |
    |
| Home Our Shop Subscriptions FAQs About Us Links |
 
|
Practically every day of the year is a landmark of some sort in the annals of crime. Here’s where you can find out what happened this week in years gone by... Stories from the week beginning January 28th. After The Romance Was OverOn a trip to Jamaica business consultant Timothy Franklin, 43, met sophisticated Tina Strauss and fell head over heels in love with her. He brought her back to North Otterington in Yorkshire but within months their whirlwind romance was all over. She quickly tired of small village life, and he was fed up with her constant complaints and vicious temper. On JANUARY 28th, 1970, one more threat by her to move back to Jamaica proved more than he could stand. Goaded beyond endurance, he smashed in her face, crushing her skull, nose, cheekbone, jaw and voice box, and then wrapped a rope around her throat. When she was finally dead he buried her under the wind shelter in his garden. Franklin told friends that Tina had left him for another man, and then he even flew to Jamaica to send telegrams in her name to her mother and lawyer saying all was fine on her holiday there. Rumours, though, led detectives to question Franklin, and the date stamps on his passport, coinciding with the dates on the telegrams, told their own story. At York Assizes on March 3rd, 1971, he tearfully told the court that he was devoted to Tina, that he “loved her, cherished her and cared for her.” He was jailed for life. He Was Quite Prepared to KillDisaster struck when Kitty Lyon and her best friend, Violet Richards, went out for a walk along a track on the outskirts of Walsall. Approaching a cattle arch they noticed a soldier standing nearby. As they walked past, the soldier raised a revolver and fired. Violet fell to the ground as Kitty ran off. The soldier gave chase, another shot rang out, and Kitty fell too. Violet, badly wounded, saw the soldier walk up to Kitty, hold his gun close to her face, and fire again. He then walked over to Violet and, using the gun as a bludgeon, battered her until she lost consciousness. Kitty was dead, but Violet eventually made a full recovery. The soldier was soon traced - he was Private Arthur Peach, 23, and his motive seemed to be theft, for which he was quite prepared to kill. He was hanged at Birmingham on Friday, JANUARY 30th, 1942. A Man With A Perfect AlibiPatients at Westwood Hospital, on the outskirts of Bradford, were surprised when a former patient, Lance Corporal Arthur Thompson, walked back into one of the wards at 2 a.m. and started handing out money. Thompson, who came from Bootle, explained that he was paying the gambling debts incurred just before his hospital discharge the previous week. What was more surprising was that neither of the two recipients was owed money by Thompson. They surmised that as he had obviously been drinking heavily he must be confused. They would have had second thoughts about his apparent generosity, though, if they had known how he had acquired the cash. An hour earlier he had broken in through the kitchen door of the Nag’s Head pub in Clayton Heights and strangled the frail, 69-year-old landlady, widow Jane Coulton, before rifling through her purse. It wasn’t difficult for the police to trace him, because he had gone absent from his army unit on the night of the murder in September, 1944. Even so, when they caught up with him at Overton, near Morecambe, he denied he was Thompson and declared, “I will sue you for unlawful arrest.” But the police were convinced they had the murderer when they searched him and found he had some of Mrs. Coulton’s jewellery. Since all the evidence against him at Leeds Assizes on December 6th, 1944, was circumstantial, though, Thompson needed only a perfect alibi to save himself. And he almost had one. He claimed that on September 20th, the night of the murder, he went to Horton Bank Top and met an old friend named Buck, who gave him Mrs. Coulton’s three rings, two brooches and £5 in notes. “Buck had a bloodstained hand,” he declared. “He will come forward if I am found guilty.” Thompson was found guilty, and sentenced to hang. There was still no word from Buck when the execution took place at Armley Prison on JANUARY 31st, 1945. Buck was very much alive, though. On the night of the murder he was in jail for burglary. In his search for an alibi, Thompson had sought to shift responsibility on to a man who already had a perfect one. |
|
.jpg)
Website by www.catfishcommerce.com
True Crime Home | Buy Crime Books Online | True Crime Magazines | True Crime Library | Victorian Hangings | True Crime Series | True Crime Murders | True Crime DVDs | Worldwide Hangings | True Crime Stories | Crime Publications | True Crime FAQ | About True Crime Library |
sitemap