John Brown (1800 - 1859)

John Brown (May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859) was an American abolitionist who believed armed insurrection was the only way to overthrow the institution of slavery in the United States. During the 1856 conflict in Kansas, Brown commanded forces at the Battle of Black Jack and the Battle of Osawatomie. Brown’s followers killed five slavery […]

Robert Ford (1861 - 1892)

Robert Ford was born in 1861, in Ray County, Missouri. He was the youngest child of James Thomas Ford and his wife, the former Mary Bruin. As a young man, Robert became an admirer of Jesse James for his Civil War record and criminal exploits. In 1880, at the age of 19, he finally met […]

Zerelda James (1825 - 1911)

Born as Zerelda Elizabeth Cole in Woodford County, Kentucky her parents were James and Sarah Lindsay Cole; she had one younger brother, Jesse Richard Cole. One year younger than she, her brother committed suicide in 1895 for undisclosed reasons. When Zerelda James was a small child, her father broke his neck in a riding accident leaving […]

William T. Anderson (1840 - 1864)

William T. Anderson (1840 – October 26, 1864), better known as Bloody Bill, was one of the deadliest and most brutal pro-Confederate guerrilla leaders in the American Civil War. Anderson led a band that targeted Union loyalists and Federal soldiers in Missouri and Kansas. Raised by a family of Southerners in Kansas, William Anderson began supporting […]

Cole Younger (1844 - 1916)

Thomas Coleman “Cole” Younger, was born on January 15, 1844 on the Younger family farm. He was a son of Henry Washington Younger, a prosperous farmer from Greenwood, Missouri and Bersheba Leighton Fristoe, daughter of a prominent Jackson County farmer. Cole was the seventh of fourteen children. During the American Civil War, savage guerrilla warfare wracked […]

Jim Younger (1848 - 1902)

James Hardin Younger (January 15, 1848 – October 19, 1902) was a notable American outlaw and member of the James–Younger Gang. He was the brother of Cole, John and Bob Younger. Born in Missouri on January 15, 1848. He was the ninth of fourteen children born to Henry Washington Younger and Bersheba Leighton Fristoe. Jim Younger […]

Bob Younger (1853 - 1889)

Robert Ewing “Bob” Younger (October 29, 1853 – September 16, 1889) was an American criminal and outlaw, the younger brother of Cole, Jim and John Younger. He was a member of the James–Younger Gang. Born in Missouri on October 29, 1853, Robert was the thirteenth of fourteen children born to Henry Washington Younger and Bersheba Leighton […]

Blanche Barrow (1911 - 1988)

Blanche Iva Barrow (née Caldwell) (January 1, 1911 – December 24, 1988) was a fringe member of the Bonnie and Clyde gang and the wife of Clyde Barrow’s brother Buck. Brought up by her father, she had a poor relationship with her mother, who arranged for Blanche Barrow to be married to an older man. […]

Ted Hinton (1904 - 1977)

Ted Hinton, then twenty-nine, was assigned to accompany Deputy Sheriff Bob Alcorn on the premise that Hinton knew Clyde Barrow and could identify him. Hinton and Alcorn were assigned by Dallas County Sheriff Richard A. “Smoot” Schmid to assist Frank Hamer and his assistant Benjamin Gault in a shoot-to-kill order against Bonnie and Clyde that […]

Ralph Fults (1911 - 1993)

Born to a U.S. postal worker in Anna, Texas, Ralph Fults was arrested in Aspermont, Texas after police found him carrying a suitcase full of stolen goods. The 14-year-old Fults escaped from the town’s jail a week later after making a key from an old tobacco can. With the town sheriff attending the county fair, […]

Raymond Hamilton (1913 - 1935)

Little is known about Raymond Hamilton’s childhood. He was born in Oklahoma and raised in Dallas, Texas, where he received his minor public education. He met Clyde Barrow who lived in the same neighborhood as Hamilton when both men were youths, and later he would join the “Barrow Gang”. Hamilton participated in the killing of […]

Henry Methvin (1912 - 1948)

Henry Methvin was born in Louisiana on April 8, 1912, to Ivan “Ivy” T. Methvin and Avie Stephens. He was serving a 10-year prison sentence at the Eastham prison farm in Huntsville, Texas when Bonnie and Clyde came to break out Raymond Hamilton on January 16, 1934; one guard was killed and another wounded in […]

Charles Stuart (1959 - 1990)

In 1989, Charles ‘Chuck’ Stuart was serving as the general manager for Edward F. Kakas & Sons, furriers on Newbury Street. Stuart’s wife, Carol (née DiMaiti, born March 26, 1959, in Boston), was a tax attorney, and pregnant with the couple’s first child. On October 23, the couple were driving through the Roxbury neighborhood after […]

Reeva Steenkamp (1983 - 2013)

Reeva Steenkamp was born in Cape Town, to parents Barry Steenkamp, a horse trainer, and his wife, June (née Marshall, previously Cowburn), who was born in Blackburn, England. She had two older siblings, Adam and Simone. The family later moved to Port Elizabeth, where she attended St Dominic’s Priory School. After school she studied law […]

William Sloper (1883 - 1955)

William Thomson Sloper (December 13, 1883 − May 1, 1955) was an American stockbroker and survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Sloper, who was 28 when the Titanic sank, traveled as a first-class passenger and was saved after boarding lifeboat #7, the first to be launched from the vessel. William Sloper was born in […]

Matthew Shepard (1976 - 1998)

Matthew Wayne “Matt” Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998) was an American student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten, tortured, and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming on the night of October 6, 1998. Matthew Shepard died six days later at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, on October 12, […]

Kayla Rolland (1993 - 2000)

The death of Kayla Rolland occurred at Buell Elementary School in Mount Morris Township, Michigan, United States on February 29, 2000. Six-year-old Dedrick Darnell Owens fatally shot classmate Kayla Renee Rolland (May 12, 1993 – February 29, 2000) in a stairwell before he was taken into police custody. Buell Elementary School closed in 2002. It […]

Medgar Evers (1925 - 1963)

Medgar Wiley Evers (July 2, 1925 – June 12, 1963) was an American civil rights activist from Mississippi who worked to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi and to enact social justice and voting rights. He is remembered for saying “You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.” A World War II […]

James Chaney (1943 - 1964)

James Earl Chaney was born in Meridian, Mississippi, the elder son of Fannie Lee and Ben Chaney, Sr. His brother Ben was nine years younger, born in 1952, and he had three sisters, Barbara, Janice, and Julia. His parents separated for a time when James was young. James attended Catholic school for the first nine grades. […]

Helen Brach (1911 - 1977)

Helen Brach was born on November 10, 1911 on a small farm in Unionport, Ohio. Helen married her high school sweetheart in 1928; the couple had divorced by the time she was 21. Brach found work at a country club in Palm Beach, where she met and married millionaire, Frank Brach. The couple built a […]

Nick Berg (1978 - 2004)

Nick Berg grew up in West Whiteland Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. He was referred to as a “religious Jew.” Berg graduated from Henderson High School in West Chester in 1996. In 1996, he was a student at Cornell University but later dropped out. He took classes at Drexel University in 1998, and in […]

Judith Barsi (1978 - 1988)

Judith Eva Barsi (June 6, 1978 – July 25, 1988) was an American child actress in the mid- to late 1980s. She began her career in television, making appearances in commercials and television shows, and later appeared in the films Jaws: The Revenge, The Land Before Time, and All Dogs Go to Heaven, supplying the […]

Travis Alexander (1977 - 2008)

On June 4, 2008, salesman Travis Victor Alexander (July 28, 1977 – June 4, 2008) was killed by his ex-girlfriend, Jodi Ann Arias (born July 9, 1980), in Alexander’s house in Mesa, Arizona. Arias was convicted of first-degree murder on May 8, 2013 and sentenced to natural life in state prison on April 13, 2015. At […]

Meredith Kercher (1985 - 2007)

Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher (born 28 December 1985 in Southwark, South London), known to her friends as “Mez”, lived in Coulsdon, South London. She had two older brothers, John and Lyle, and an older sister, Stephanie. Her father, also named John, is a freelance journalist, and her mother, Arline, is a housewife. Kercher attended the […]

Martha Needle (1864 - 1894)

Martha Needle was born near Morgan, South Australia in 1863. An attractive woman with a kindly disposition, she grew up in a violent and abusive household, and she showed signs of mental instability from an early age. At 17 she married Henry Needle at North Adelaide and in 1882 gave birth to a daughter, Mabel, […]

Tillie Klimek (1876 - 1936)

Ottilie “Tillie” Klimek (or Tillie Gburek) (1876 – 1936) was a Polish American serial killer, active in Chicago. According to legend, she pretended to have precognitive dreams, accurately predicting the dates of death of her victims, when in reality she was merely scheduling their deaths. Actually, while contemporary accounts tell her cheerfully telling her husbands […]

Lyda Southard (1892 - 1958)

Lyda Southard was born on October 16, 1892 in Keytesville, Missouri, sixty miles northeast of Kansas City and in the central flatlands of Missouri. Lyda Southard married Robert Dooley on March 17, 1912. The couple settled with his brother Ed Dooley on a ranch in Twin Falls, Idaho and had a daughter, Lorraine, in 1914. In […]

Nannie Doss (1904 - 1965)

Nannie Doss was born on November 4, 1905 in Blue Mountain, Alabama, now part of Anniston, as Nancy Hazel to Louisa “Lou” (née Holder) and James F. Hazel. Doss was one of five children; she had one brother and three sisters. Both Doss and her mother hated James, who was a controlling father and husband […]

Amy Archer-Gilligan (1868 - 1962)

Amy Archer-Gilligan was born in October 1873 to James Duggan and Mary Kennedy in Milton, Connecticut, the eighth of ten children. She was taught at the Milton School and went to the New Britain Normal School in 1890. Amy married James Archer in 1897. A daughter, Mary J. Archer, was born in December 1897. The Archers […]

Martha Wise (1882 - 1971)

Martha Wise was born in 1884 to Sophie Hasel and her husband, farmers in Hardscrabble, a town in Medina County, Ohio. Three brothers and a sister were also born to the family, although contemporary sources name only one, a brother named Fred. In 1906, Martha Hasel met the substantially older Albert Wise at a box […]