TODAY IN CRIME: October 5

 

610 Heraclius arrived at Constantinople, killed Byzantine Emperor Phocas—beheading him on the spot—and declared himself emperor.

1607 Venetian statesman and scientist Paolo Sarpi survived an attack by stiletto-wielding assassins sent by Pope Paul V. Sarpi retired to his cloister and the would-be assassins received pensions from the viceroy of Naples.

1838 A band of Cherokee Native Americans killed or kidnapped 18 Texan settlers in East Texas in response to a broken treaty.

1877 Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indians surrendered to the U.S. Army in Montana after trekking 1,000 miles attempting to reach political asylum in Canada.

1892 The Dalton gang tried to rob two banks simultaneously in Coffeyville, Kansas. The townspeople recognized them, however, and ran to nearby hardware stores for weapons. When the gang left the banks, the people were ready. In the ensuing gun battle, two Dalton brothers and two other gang members were killed; four citizens defending their town were killed and three more wounded. A third Dalton was captured and sentenced to life in prison.

1910 The Portuguese Republican Party overthrew King Manuel II in a revolution and Portugal became a republic. The exiled king fled to England.

1985 Egyptian soldier Suleiman Khater machine-gunned seven Israeli tourists—three adults and four children—for trespassing on a prohibited area at a Sinai beach. He also shot an Egyptian police officer who attempted to arrest him and wounded four Israeli civilians. Two weeks into a life sentence, Khater died of an apparent suicide.

1989 A jury in Charlotte, N.C., convicted former PTL evangelist Jim Bakker of using his TV show to defraud followers. Bakker served nearly five years in prison.

1990 A Cincinnati jury acquitted Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center and its director Dennis Barrie of obscenity charges for exhibiting Robert Mapplethorpe's controversial photographs.

2000 Huge mobs rampaged through Belgrade and ousted Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. He had been defeated in a presidential election but refused to step down. He finally resigned on October 7.

2005 Defying the White House, the U.S. Senate voted 90-9 to approve the Detainee Treatment Act that would prohibit the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" against any prisoner of the U.S. Government, including those in custody at Guantanamo Bay.

2010 A New York federal judge sentenced Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani immigrant who'd tried to detonate a car bomb in Times Square, to life in prison.

2011 Eight members of a Myanmar drug-trafficking ring hijacked two Chinese cargo ships on the Mekong River and shot or stabbed thirteen crew members before throwing them in the river. River police recovered 900,000 amphetamine pills on the ships. Drug lord Naw Kham and three accomplices were executed in China while members of an elite Thai anti-drug task force suspected of being involved in the massacre "disappeared from the justice system."