Three months from today, Gaile [Part I] Owens [Part 2] will be dead in Tennessee after 25 years on death row. The mother of two boys went to the rough side of Nashville to find a hitman to kill her abusive and cheating husband. Due to a series of events, the jury never heard of or believed the abuse. She pleaded guilty in exchange for a life sentence, but will die on September 28. [more inside]
posted by daninnj on Jun 28, 2010 - 38 comments

UC Irvine neuroscientist James Fallon gives talks about the biological traits of psychopathic killers using brain scans and genetics. When his mother suggested he should look into his own biological traits, Dr. Fallon discovered that he has an inactive orbital cortex -- a common trait for psychopaths (pdf). He also found that he has all five gene variants linked to aggression, and is related to two infamous murderers. So, why isn't he a killer? He attributes it to nuture.
posted by jabberjaw on Mar 18, 2010 - 52 comments

Karla Homolka is due to be released today. For those of you who don't keep up with this story, Homolka and her husband Paul Bernardo kidnapped, raped and killed two teenaged girls in the St. Catherines (Ontario) area a few years ago, with one of the women being Homolka's own little sister. Homolka is getting away pretty lightly because of sheer stupidity on the part of the then-prosecutor. Well she's about to get out now. While the official Karla Internet Death Pool no longer exists, one does wonder how long she will last, assuming she's still planning on moving to Montreal's NDG district.
posted by clevershark on Jul 4, 2005 - 123 comments

Television thief (64) still in jail after 33 years , parole denied 25 times while same board releases murderer after 10 years. Justice?
posted by omidius on Feb 1, 2004 - 28 comments

The Fairy Feller's Masterstroke (FFM) (in the Tate collection) Richard Dadd, a Victorian gentleman, a convicted murderer and patient at the famous Bedlam asylum, spent nine years carefully crafting his masterpiece. He wrote a guidebook for it and insisted that each of the hundred characters in the painting is assigned a special task. What does he mean? Well, Neil Gaiman, among others, was inspired by this painting (it influenced the Sandman) and considers it a life-long obsession. He also wrote the introduction to a new book being published about the painting as a gateway to the supernatural world.

A bit of background: Dadd was a painter of Victorian Fairy Art. The obsession with fairies was like a fever that overtook the Victorian Mind. Another painter of note was Richard Doyle, the uncle of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes). A.C. Doyle himself was involved in a fascinating controversy that raged at the time. the Cottingley fairies, in which two young girls circulated photos of themselves with fairies. Doyle proclaimed that the photos "represent either the most elaborate and ingenious hoax ever played upon the public or else they constitute an event in human history which may in the future appear to have been epoch-making in its character" Unfortunately for Doyle, it was the former though the hoax was hardly ingenious, relying on cardboard cutouts and the will to believe.
posted by vacapinta on Jul 18, 2002 - 18 comments

So you read the "Madman and the Professor" and thought it interesting. Edward Ruloff is another murdering philologist with the extra cachet that his 1871 trial for killing a dry-goods clerk was one of the first to test the admissability of photographs as evidence. The Supreme Court agreed with lower rulings that they could be allowed; Ruloff was hanged. In 1845, he had been accused of murdering his wife and child and was imprisoned for ten years for the abduction of his wife, but without a corpus delecti, he could not be convicted for the murder of his child. This man is writing a biography of Ruloff; a publisher could do a lot worse.
posted by Mo Nickels on Sep 26, 2001 - 3 comments

"High-profile P.I. Bill Dear believes he knows who killed Nicole Simpson. It's not who you think."

Fascinating read, whether or not you have a strong opinion on the case or just a slight interest. Dear initially thought O.J. did it, but now believes the police department came to a conclusion too quickly and as a result completely missed his prime suspect. [ via Alt-log ]
posted by lia on Apr 18, 2001 - 29 comments