TODAY IN CRIME: April 20

photo credit: The Canadian Encyclopedia

1769: An unnamed Peoria warrior stabbed Ottawa chief Pontiac to death near Cahokia, Illinois, in retaliation for Pontiac killing the assassin’s uncle, Peoria chief Black Dog. Pontiac’s avengers nearly wiped out the Illinois group in return.

1818: The case of Ashford v Thornton ended. After Abraham Thornton was acquitted of the murder of Mary Ashford in Warwickshire, Ashford’s brother William launched a private appeal against Thornton and Thornton was rearrested. Thornton claimed the right to trial by battle, and the court upheld his demand. When Ashford refused to fight, Thornton was freed. Parliament abolished “trial by battle” the next year.

1871: U.S. President Grant signed the Enforcement Act of 1871, a civil rights act designed to protect African Americans from violent attacks by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups. It empowered the president to suspend habeas corpus and declare martial law in rebellious areas.

1914: Colorado National Guard troops, accompanied by a private force from the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, fired machine guns into a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado, killing 21 men, women, and children. No shooter was ever charged with any crime.

1945: With Allied forces approaching, the SS killed 20 Jewish children used in medical experiments at Neuengamme in the basement of the Bullenhuser Damm school.

1948: An unknown assailant wounded Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers Union, with a shotgun blast through the kitchen window of his Detroit home as he prepared a late-night snack. The shooter was never caught.

1971: The U.S Supreme Court ruled unanimously to uphold the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation.

1973: “Co-ed Killer” Ed Kemper claimed his ninth victim: his mother. He bludgeoned her to death with a claw hammer, slit her throat and decapitated her, violated her head before using it as a dartboard, and tried to destroy her tongue and vocal cords in the garbage disposal. He then lured her best friend to the house and killed her and stole her car, but soon after called police and made a full confession. A jury found him sane and guilty of eight counts of murder, and he received eight concurrent life sentences. (He’d already spent 5 years at Atascadero for killing his grandparents at age 15.)

1977: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that New Hampshire motorists may cover up "Live Free or Die" on their license plates.

1980: The Algerian military arrested hundreds of Berber political activists, students, and doctors seeking political and cultural rights. The arrests triggered a series of violent confrontations between youth and police and sparked a general strike.

1987: The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by Karl Linnas to stop his deportation to the Soviet Union. Linnas, a concentration camp commandant in WWII who was convicted in absentia and sentenced to capital punishment during the Holocaust trials, lied about his Nazi status to gain entry to the U.S. and become a U.S. citizen. He died in a Russian prison before he could be executed.

1990: Former Cincinnati Red star and manager Pete Rose pled guilty to failing to report $354,968 in income to the IRS. He was sentenced to five months in prison and three months in a halfway house, fined $50,000, told to serve 1,000 hours of community service, and ordered to pay back taxes and interest. He could have received a three-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine.

1994: A Florida judge sentenced Danny Harold Rolling to death for killing five Gainesville students in 1990. He was executed in 2006.

1999: In the deadliest school shooting in the U.S. at that time, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people and injured 24 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado. Homemade bombs in the cafeteria and in their cars failed to detonate or hundreds more would have been killed.

2007: William Phillips, a NASA contractor with 25 years of service, entered NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas with a handgun and barricaded himself in before killing a man he believed was going to give him a poor performance review. A woman he duct taped to a chair freed herself and escaped. Phillips killed himself after a stand-off.

2010: In the largest oil spill to ever occur in U.S. waters, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, killing 11 and causing the rig to sink, causing a massive oil discharge into the Gulf of Mexico and an environmental disaster. Transocean, British Petroleum, and Halliburton paid billions of dollars in environmental fines and victim’s compensations.

2012: One hundred fifty-two people were killed when Bhoja Air Flight 213 crashed in a residential area near the Benazir Bhutto International Airport near Islamabad, Pakistan. An investigation found Bhoja committed a series of violations: the company did not possess “requisite infrastructure” (and is now defunct), the plane did not have an Airworthiness Certificate, it was not supposed carry passengers, the crew was not trained to handle emergencies such as rough weather, nor was the pilot sufficiently trained or experienced to fly a commercial carrier. Bhoja is required by law to compensate each victim’s family $65,300.

2015: Al-Shabaab militants detonated a bomb lodged under the seat of a UNICEF van carrying food supplies to a U.N. compound in Garowe, Somalia, killing seven and injuring eight. Puntland police apprehended more than a dozen men in connection with the attack.

2018: New York police arrested actress Allison Mack on charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit forced labor in relation to the sex cult NXIVM. She pleaded guilty to two racketeering charges a year later and faces as much as 20 years per count.

2018: A Mexican court barred the sale of the controversial Frida Kahlo Barbie doll in Mexico, citing improper use of brand. Members of the Kahlo family dispute the claim that the Frida Kahlo Corporation owns the rights to her image.