TODAY IN CRIME: May 11

photo credit: Hulton archives

1310 King Philip IV of France ordered 54 members of the Knights Templar burned at the stake on charges of heresy.

1625 Lutheran peasants besieged the Frankenburg estate in Upper-Austria, in resistance to Catholic rule. The Bavarian assizes sentenced to death the 36 men who had led the revolt but allowed half of them to go free: two men would step forward and one would hang, determined by a roll of the dice.

1812 Disgruntled businessman John Bellingham shot and killed British PM Spencer Perceval in the lobby of the House of Commons. He blamed the prime minister for not coming to his aid when he was imprisoned in Russia on debt charges. Bellingham was tried, found guilty, and hanged within a week.

1857 Indian troops (sepoys) employed by the East India Company seized Delhi from the British in an attempt to topple British rule. The mutiny spread throughout northern India, but Britain eventually quashed the rebellion.

1880 Seven people were killed in a gun battle near Hanford, California, in a dispute over land titles between settlers and the Southern Pacific Railroad. The “Muscle Slough Tragedy” became a rallying point for anti-railroad sentiment.

1889 U.S. Army Paymaster Major Joseph Washington Wham and a contingent of Buffalo Soldiers were stopping at various forts in the Arizona territory with a payroll of $28,000 in gold and silver coins when 12 men attacked the entourage. A shootout ensued: eight soldiers were wounded but, amazingly, no one was killed. 11 suspects were caught, 7 stood trial, and all were found not guilty. Unsurprisingly, with all suspects freed, the payroll was never found.

1891 While on a state visit to Japan, Prince Nicholas (later Tsar Nicholas II) of Russia survived an assassination attempt by one of his police escorts. Tsuda Sanzō jumped onto the prince’s rickshaw and swung his sabre at the prince’s head, but Nicholas turned, receiving a glancing blow that left a 3 ½-inch scar. He was spared further injury when his cousin, the crown Prince George of Greece and Denmark, whacked the assailant with his stick. Sanzō was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to life in prison but died of self-imposed starvation within months. He thought the Tsesarevich was a Russian spy.

1894 Workers at the Pullman Palace Car Co. in Illinois started a strike when company owner George Pullman refused to listen to employee grievances. Pullman created a town for his employees, but when company profits dipped, he reduced wages and refused to lower rent and other charges. Rail service was crippled nationwide as the strike spread.

1944 The National Organization for Help to People in Hiding, one of the most successful underground resistance organizations in Europe, freed co-founder Frits Slomp, a Dutch Reformed pastor and prominent anti-Nazi activist, during an armed raid at Dome Prison in Arnhem, Netherlands. A group of 8-10 men, two disguised as Dutch policemen, led a handcuffed "prisoner" into the facility and abducted Slomp and fellow resistance fighter Henk Kruithof.

1960 Israeli agents captured Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. The SS leader was in charge of the logistics of sending millions of Jews to extermination camps in WWII. The Mossad agents smuggled him back to Israel, where he was found guilty after an eight-month trial and hanged.

1963 The day after city leaders and the non-violent Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights campaign announced the "Birmingham Truce Agreement” in Birmingham, Alabama, a bomb exploded at the home of the Rev. A.D. King, brother of civil rights activist Martin Luther King. King and his wife and children escaped unharmed. About an hour later, assailants bombed the Gaston Motel, where MLK often stayed. When thousands of blacks rioted over the next two days, President Kennedy sent in federal troops.

1970 In Oxford, North Carolina, three white men shot and killed Henry Marrow, an unarmed black man, in a racially-motivated assault. An all-white jury found the three not guilty of all charges, incensing the black community, which organized a boycott of white businesses. After 18 months, the town agreed to end the segregation of public facilities.

1972 John Lennon announced on the The Dick Cavett Show that the FBI put a tap on his phone.

1973 Citing government misconduct, a California District Court judge dismissed charges of espionage, theft, and conspiracy against Daniel Ellsberg for his role in the Pentagon Papers case. He released the report about the Viet Nam War to The New York Times.

1985 The Bradford City stadium fire during a football match in west Yorkshire killed 56 and injured at least 265. The dilapidated stadium was officially condemned and due to be replaced after what would have been the final match of the season. The Bradford City Association Football Club was deemed responsible and ordered to pay as much as £20 million to the 154 claimants, with the payouts covered by insurance.

1987 The trial of Klaus Barbie for war crimes during WWII began in Lyon. 730 witnesses attested to his guilt: the murder of 4,000 people and the exportation of another 7,000 Jews, most to certain death at Auschwitz. The “Butcher of Lyon” was sentenced to life in prison.

1989 Kenya announced a worldwide ban on ivory to preserve its elephant herds.

1996 A ValuJet DC-9 caught fire shortly after takeoff from Miami and crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people on board, when improperly stored chemical oxygen generators in the cargo hold ignited. A federal grand jury fined SabreTech, the airline’s maintenance contractor, $2 million and ordered it to pay $9 million in restitution for its handling of hazardous materials. Two workmen in charge of the oxygen canisters were acquitted of charges and one who failed to appear is still a fugitive. The FAA grounded ValuJet for three months.

1998 In violation of a global ban on nuclear testing, India conducted three underground nuclear tests, its first in 24 years. The United Nations unanimously condemned the tests and demanded that both India and Pakistan halt their nuclear programs.

2001 Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh received a 30-day stay of execution. The FBI had failed to disclose thousands of documents to his defense team.

2009 Upset at being forced into treatment at the counseling center at Camp Liberty in Bagdhad, Iraq, Army Sergeant John M. Russell assaulted his escort on the way back to his unit, seized the escort's M-16 rifle, and drove back to the clinic where he opened fire on unarmed personnel. He killed five and wounded three U.S. soldiers. Russell plead guilty and received a life sentence.

2013 Egypt conducted a retrial of its former President Hosni Mubarak on charges of complicity in the deaths of protestors during the 2011 Egyptian revolution. He was ultimately acquitted.

2018 In the worst shooting incident in Australia since the Port Arthur massacre of 1996, a grandfather in Margaret River, Australia, shot six members of his family and himself. Peter Miles first shot his daughter and her four children, then his wife, alerted police to the shootings, then killed himself. Miles’s daughter and son-in-law were engaged in a costly and lengthy custody dispute; the children lived with their mother at her parent’s property, “Forever Dreaming Farm.” Aaron Cockman, the estranged son-in-law, speculated Miles wanted to end his own suffering and did not want his family to grieve his death.