The Hope Chest: Bad News from the Past is a new blog of old newspaper clippings, mostly from Detroit and Chicago in the 1930s, with true crime and other bizarre stories. Examples include Tries To Shoot A Cat And Hits Automobilist, Driver Loses His Arm Giving Traffic Signal, and Pastor Writes Spicy Book. Other highlights are a phony cop attacking a pornographer with acid and the teenage girl who became a tattooed atheist bandit.
posted by jonp72 on Mar 26, 2009 - 10 comments

"The best man was Kirk "Spanky" Smyth, who had recently been caught passing through the metal detectors with Buck knives in his rectum. Today he was loaded on smack and rubbing his face red." A Los Angeles Times series examines a woman's quarter-century of marrige to a man behind bars. Part Two. Part Three.
posted by Bookhouse on Dec 4, 2008 - 23 comments

Real L.A. Noir. (Video/audio auto-plays). Los Angeles Times reporter Paul Lieberman has been chronicling the era of the LAPD Gangster Squad, a secret division of the department that tried to combat the mobs of Jack Dragna and Mickey Cohen in the 1940s and '50s. (Keep the cast of characters straight with this handy chart.)
posted by Bookhouse on Nov 1, 2008 - 9 comments

The North Hollywood Bank Job. part two part three part four . Inspired by this famous (and NSFW) scene from Heat, on Feb. 28, 1997, Larry Eugene Phillips, Jr. and Emil Matasareanu attempted to rob a Bank of America in North Hollywood, CA using body armor, automatic weapons and barbiturates. This documentary uses news footage, recreations, interviews, computer animation and a cheesy narrator to explain the chaotic hour that followed. There are some violent images. [more inside]
posted by Bookhouse on Sep 5, 2008 - 33 comments

The music of the People's Temple. Five years before Jim Jones coerced 900 of his church members to commit suicide in Guyana, the People's Temple cut an album. [more inside]
posted by Bookhouse on Aug 7, 2008 - 24 comments

It's a cause célèbre jamboree, starting with Mumia Abu-Jamal: Guilty! Innocent! Guilty! Innocent! [more inside]
posted by Bookhouse on Feb 21, 2008 - 14 comments

Dying Speeches & Bloody Murders digitizes over five hundred broadsides owned by the Harvard Law Library, all of them devoted to "last dying speeches"--that is, sensational accounts of crime, punishment, and (fictional) confession, intended to be sold at public executions. The New York State Historical Association has an online exhibition devoted to nineteenth-century American murder pamphlets. You can find a couple of seventeenth-century examples at the Early Modern Web and the Folger Library. Old Bailey Online briefly puts this literature into context. (Main link via C18-L.)
posted by thomas j wise on Jan 4, 2008 - 11 comments

A guide to prison slang. Texas prison guards' guide to prison slang. Jim Goad's guide to prison slang.(He should know). More prison slang. [more inside]
posted by Bookhouse on Jan 2, 2008 - 22 comments

Stop Snitchin' may be the hidden link between hip hop and the 1980s alternative rock group, House of Freaks. According to the New York Post, journalist Ethan Brown has accomplished "making the Stop Snitching movement seem reasonable" in his new book Snitch: Informants, Cooperators, and the Corruption of Justice. Brown argues that harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses have created a "cottage industry of cooperators" and informants who fabricate evidence, because Provision 5K1.1 of federal sentencing guidelines gives leniency in exchange for "substantial assistance to authorities." According to Brown, two of these criminal cooperators included Ray Dandridge and Ricky Gray, the perpetrators of the Richmond spree murders that ended the life of Brian Harvey of House of Freaks, his wife, and his two children. On the other hand, Mark Kleiman argues that the Stop Snitchin' movement has driven homicide clearance rates so low that, in some cities, "you have a better than even chance of literally getting away with murder." [more inside]
posted by jonp72 on Dec 11, 2007 - 61 comments

"The ‘Ndrangheta cannot be beheaded.” Organized crime is Italy's biggest industry. Most people are more familiar with the Sicilian Mafia or maybe even the Neopolitan Camorra, but it's the Calabrian 'Ndranghta (very in-depth article) that has police around the world worried now, especially after they were blamed for a six-person murder in Germany this summer. [more inside]
posted by Bookhouse on Nov 17, 2007 - 24 comments

On October 26, 1965, a sixteen-year-old girl named Sylvia Marie Likens was reported dead to Indianapolis police. It was soon discovered that her death was the culmination of weeks of torture at the hands of an adult caretaker and several neighborhood children; when the case went to trial, the prosecutor declared it "the most terrible crime ever committed in the state of Indiana." In 2007, not one but two films inspired by the case make their debut: The Girl Next Door (trailer), based on a fictionalized version of the events, and the docudrama An American Crime (trailer). One person, at least, will probably be skipping both -- the victim's sister, who says of the latter film, "No one ever even asked us about it. It's their gain, our pain."
posted by kittens for breakfast on Jul 26, 2007 - 118 comments

Crimeboss: Crime Comic Books of the 1940s and 1950s - Galleries: Crime Does Not Pay 1, 2; Crime Reporter; Crimes by Women; Famous Crimes; Teen-Age Dope Slaves; Reform School Girl! (via)
posted by otio on Jul 12, 2007 - 3 comments

Diagnosis or job description? UK tabloids sometimes lead people to believe that all journalists are the scum of the earth. That's obviously not true, but one journalist who actually fits the bill seems to be ex-Woman's Wear Daily staffer, Peter Braunstein. On halloween, he dressed up as a fireman, called around at the apartment of a friend of his ex-wife and repeatedly drugged and raped her. Normally, this would just be another tawdry true crime, but like most writers, he's ended up leaving his mark all over the net.
posted by PeterMcDermott on Nov 9, 2005 - 22 comments

Homosexuality in 18th Century England :: an amazing compilation of primary source material from newspaper reports and other sources.
posted by anastasiav on Mar 3, 2005 - 13 comments

Nineteen Faces :: Nik adds some thoughtful commentary to photos found on US Sex Offender Registry websites. I find Number Six to be most interesting.
posted by anastasiav on Dec 18, 2004 - 34 comments

On July 6th, 1988 Dennis Dechaine of Bowdinham, Maine came home from work (transporting frozen chickens from a slaughterhouse) and planned to work on constructing a greenhouse. However, that project hit a glitch and sometime that afternoon he decided instead to take some amphetamines and go exploring in the woods near his home. When he emerged from the woods, lost and looking for his truck, about 8:30 pm that night he was questioned by the police who were looking for a missing 12 year old girl named Sarah Cherry. Two days later, Sarah's body was found and Dennis Dechainewas charged with the girl's murder. He was convicted in March of 1989 to life in prison without parole and an entire generation of Maine girls were told to 'remember Sarah Cherry' as a caution to not talk to strangers.
The question before us now, is, of course, did he do it?
posted by anastasiav on Aug 6, 2004 - 19 comments

Meet Vernon Blake. Vernon Blake was a Systems Admin for the Alabama Department of Transportation, and it was 'well known' in his office that a certain supervisor spent far more time playing solitare on his computer than he did doing anything else. Inspired by a campaign to stop waste in Alabama government, Vernon installed a screen capture utility which took 717 screenshots (.pdf) over 7 months, documenting a clear pattern of non-work related use of the computer. The results? The supervisor was given a written repremand. Vernon Blake was fired.
posted by anastasiav on Jul 31, 2004 - 38 comments