Eric Nance (1960 - 2005)

On October 11, 1993, 18-year-old Julie Heath was driving on U.S. Highway 270 between Malvern and Hot Springs, Arkansas to visit her boyfriend in Hot Springs. Nance stated that he stopped to help Heath after her car broke down and offered her a ride to Malvern. The prosecution said that Nance then raped and murdered […]

Sara Dougherty Carter (1898 - 1979)

Sara Dougherty Carter The most influential group in country music history, the Carter Family switched the emphasis from hillbilly instrumentals to vocals, made scores of their songs part of the standard country music canon, and made a style of guitar playing, “Carter picking,” the dominant technique for decades. Along with Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family […]

Jay Wesley Neill (1965 - 2002)

In 1983, Neill joined the United States Army. He met Robert Grady Johnson in February 1984 at a bar and became romantically involved. Neill was discharged in the summer of 1984 after disclosing that he was homosexual and quickly began having financial difficulties.  Neill and Johnson shared an apartment in Lawton, Oklahoma and a joint […]

Rose Maddox (1925 - 1998)

Rose Maddox  April 15, 1998 –  Ashland, Or.   Rose Maddox, a flamboyant country music pioneer who earned a Grammy nomination late in life for her autobiographical “$35 and a Dream,” has died at 71. Maddox was born Roselea Arbana Maddox, December 15,  1925, near Boaz, Alabama and died of kidney failure Wednesday April 15, 1998 […]

Uncle Dave Macon (1870 - 1952)

Uncle Dave Macon Born David Harrison Macon in Smartt Station in middle Tennessee’s Warren County, he was the son of a Confederate officer who owned a large farm. Macon heard the folk music of the area when he was young, but he was also a product of the urban South: after the family moved to […]

Max Duane Barnes (1936 - 2004)

Max Duane Barnes Max D. Barnes, the co-writer of such hits as “Chiseled in Stone,” “Look at Us” and “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes,” died early Sunday (Jan. 11) of pneumonia at Baptist Hospital in Nashville. He was 67. During his nearly 40 years as a professional writer, Barnes saw his songs recorded by George […]

Dusty Rhodes (1945 - 2015)

Dusty Rhodes Known worldwide as “The American Dream,” Rhodes (real name Virgil Runnels Jr.) spent several decades as a main-event attraction in pro wrestling, becoming a major influence in terms of his charisma and his ability to give captivating and entertaining interviews. Rhodes was also a major influence as a booker and had recently spent […]

Jim Ed Brown (1934 - 2015)

Jim Ed Brown Jim Ed Brown, a longtime Grand Ole Opry member who had solo and group hits and was a prominent figure on country music television shows, died Thursday. He was 81. Brown died of cancer at Williamson Medical Center in Franklin, Tennessee, according to a news release from Webster Public Relations. He will […]

William Dillard Powell (1946 - 2005)

Mary Black Gladden was an employee of The Pantry on Charles Road in Shelby, North Carolina. She was killed on October 31, 1991, while on duty at The Pantry. On that day between 3:15 a.m. and 3:30 a.m., Scott Truelove bought $5 worth of gasoline at The Pantry. Later he would state that while paying […]

Michael Wayne Richard (1959 - 2007)

Michael Wayne Richard (August 24, 1959 – September 25, 2007) was convicted of rape and murder whose execution gained notoriety due to controversies regarding procedural problems related to the timing of the execution. Richard admitted he was involved in the murder and offered to help find the murder weapon. Police found the weapon and testing […]

Johnny Leartice Robinson (1952 - 2004)

Johnny Leartice Robinson (25 July 1952 – 4 February 2004) was executed by the State of Florida for the 1985 murder of Beverly St. George.  Robinson had faced several criminal charges before being arrested for murder; he was convicted of several previous rapes and was on parole for a rape conviction in Maryland at the […]

Danny Rolling (1954 - 2006)

Rolling was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. He had a difficult upbringing and the idea that he was an unwanted child was reinforced by his father, James Rolling, from birth. James was a Shreveport police officer who abused him; his mother, Claudia; and later, his brother, Kevin. In one incident, Danny’s mother went to the hospital […]

Michael Bruce Ross (1959 - 2005)

Ross was born in Putnam, Connecticut on July 26, 1959 to Patricia Hilda Laine and Dan Graeme Ross. The oldest of four children, having two younger sisters and a younger brother, he grew up on a chicken farm in Brooklyn, Connecticut. Ross’s home life was extremely dysfunctional; his mother, who had abandoned the family at […]

Mark Dean Schwab (1968 - 2008)

Schwab was released from prison on March 4, 1991, after serving three years of an eight-year sentence for the aggravated rape of a 13-year-old boy committed in 1987. The rest of his sentence was commuted and he was placed on 15 years of probation.  A month later, Cocoa resident Junny Rios-Martinez, Jr., went missing. Schwab […]

Jay D. Scott (1952 - 2001)

Jay D. Scott (August 21, 1952 – June 14, 2001) was executed by the U.S. state of Ohio for the 1983 murder of a delicatessen owner in Cleveland. He was the second man put to death by Ohio since it reinstated the death penalty in 1981.  On May 6, 1983, Vinnie M. Price, owner and […]

Tommy Lynn Sells (1964 - 2014)

Sells and his twin sister, Tammy Jean, contracted meningitis when they were 18 months old; Tammy died from the illness. Shortly thereafter, Sells was sent to live with his aunt, Bonnie Woodall, in Holcomb, Missouri, where he lived until he was five years old. When Sells was eight, he began spending time with a man […]

Brian Steckel (1968 - 2005)

On September 2, 1994, Steckel knocked on Long’s door and asked if he could use her telephone. He then unplugged the telephone and demanded sex from her. After she refused, he threw her onto a couch and attempted to strangle her with some pantyhose. The pantyhose broke, so he continued his attack with a sock. […]

Shannon Thomas (1971 - 2005)

Thomas and Keith Bernard Clay’s intention on Christmas Eve was to rob the two children’s father, Roberto Rios, a small-time marijuana and cocaine dealer, of his drugs and money. In the early afternoon Rios was duct taped to a chair, severely beaten, tortured with a pair of shears and shot twice in the head and […]

Stephen Vrabel (1956 - 2004)

Vrabel and Susan Clemente were an unmarried couple living together with their daughter, Lisa Clemente, in a Struthers, Ohio apartment that the family rented from Susan’s sister and brother-in-law. On March 3, 1989, Vrabel went into the Miller Rod and Gun Store in Youngstown to purchase a gun. He selected a gun but when asked […]

Donald Ray Wallace (1957 - 2005)

On January 14, 1980, Indiana State Trooper Thomas Snyder was called to the Evansville home of Ralph Hendricks as it had been reportedly burglarized. Snyder went to the home of Patrick and Theresa Gilligan, which was next door to Hendricks’s house, to inquire whether the Gilligans might have seen or heard anything unusual. Snyder, discovering […]

Stanley Williams (1953 - 2005)

Stanley Williams was born December 29, 1953 in Shreveport, Louisiana to a 17-year old mother. His father abandoned the family when Williams was just a year old. In 1959, at the age of six, Williams moved with his mother from Rayville, Louisiana to Los Angeles, California by a Greyhound Lines bus. His mother moved into […]

Willie Williams (1956 - 2005)

William James “Flip” Williams, Jr. (November 9, 1956 – October 25, 2005) was a mass murderer executed by lethal injection. He was convicted of the September 2, 1991 murders of three rival drug dealers and a visitor to their Youngstown, Ohio home.  Williams had returned to the neighborhood after a long absence to find that […]

Marvin Wilson (1958 - 2012)

Marvin Wilson American murderer who was executed by the State of Texas on August 7, 2012. He entered death row on May 9, 1992, for the murder of a police drug informant. Wilson abducted and shot 21-year-old Jerry Robert Williams following a physical confrontation between the two in the 1500 block of Verone in Beaumont. […]

Hastings Arthur Wise (1954 - 2005)

Hastings Wise was an ex-convict who had served prison time for bank robbery and receipt of stolen goods before obtaining a technical degree and, eventually, finding employment at R.E. Phelon. He had no criminal convictions for the approximately fifteen years between his release from prison and the murders of 1997. According to his pastor, in […]

Bobby Woods (1965 - 2009)

A seventh-grade dropout, Woods was so illiterate that he had to refer to a spelling list just to write simple notes to his family. He had IQ scores of 80 and 78 during elementary school. His IQ score right before his murder trial was 70, and another in 2002 returned 68. Woods also worked as […]

Matthew Wrinkles (1960 - 2009)

Matthew Wrinkles A convicted multiple murderer, sentenced to death. He served 14 years at Indiana State Prison located in Michigan City, Indiana, where he was also executed on December 11, 2009.  On July 21, 1994, Wrinkles murdered his wife, Debra Jean Wrinkles, his brother-in-law Tony Fulkerson, and Fulkerson’s wife, Natalie Fulkerson, at their residence in […]

Lillian Gish (1893 - 1993)

Gish was born in Springfield, Ohio, to Mary Robinson McConnell (1875-1948) (an Episcopalian) and James Leigh Gish (1872-1912) (who was of German Lutheran descent). She had a younger sister, Dorothy.  The first several generations of Gishes were Dunkard ministers. Her great-great-great-grandfather came to America on the ship Pennsylvania Merchant in 1733 and received a land […]

Marion Davies (1897 - 1961)

Davies was born Marion Cecilia Douras on January 3, 1897, in Brooklyn, the youngest of five children born to Bernard J. Douras (1857–1935), a lawyer and judge in New York City; and Rose Reilly (1867–1928). Her father performed the civil marriage of Gloria Gould Bishop. Her elder siblings included Rose, Reine, and Ethel. A brother, […]

Carmen Miranda (1909 - 1955)

Carmen Miranda was born Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha in Várzea da Ovelha e Aliviada, a village in the northern Portuguese municipality of Marco de Canaveses. She was the second daughter of José Maria Pinto da Cunha (17 February 1887 – 21 June 1938) and Maria Emília Miranda (10 March 1886 – Rio de […]

Romy Schneider (1938 - 1982)

Romy Schneider’s first film, made when she was 15, was Wenn der weiße Flieder wieder blüht (When the White Lilacs Bloom Again) in 1953, credited as Romy Schneider-Albach. In 1954, Schneider for the first time portrayed a royal, playing a young Queen Victoria in the Austrian film Mädchenjahre einer Königin (known in the U.S. as […]