TODAY IN CRIME: December 21

 

1837 The U.S. House of Representatives renewed a "gag rule" prohibiting any discussion of abolition issues. Vermont representative William Slade's anti-slavery speech the previous day prompted Congress to resolve “that all petitions, memorials, and papers, touching the abolition of slavery, or the buying, selling, or transferring of slaves, in any State, District, or Territory, of the United States, be laid on the table, without being debated, printed, read, or referred, and that no further action whatever shall be had thereon." Congress reinstated the rule every year until 1844.

1866 In Wyoming, a confederation of Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes killed 80 U.S. Army soldiers under the command of Captain William Fetterman in the worst military disaster on the Great Plains up to that time. The Fort Phil Kearny soldiers were assigned to protect settlers on the Bozeman Trail to the Montana gold fields; the Native Americans, including Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, attacked in retaliation for trespassing on treaty lands.

1906 British Parliament passed the Trades Disputes Bill, an act which declared unions could not be sued for damages incurred during a strike, and the Workingmen's Compensation Act, legislation which broadened employers' liability for accidents.

1907 The Chilean Army opened fire with machine guns on striking miners occupying the Santa María school in Iquique, Chile, killing at least 2,000 Chilean, Bolivian, Peruvian, and Argentine miners and their wives and children. The miners were demanding better working conditions; Chile did not start implementing minimum labor standards until 1920.

1919 America’s Bureau of Investigation deported anarchist/feminist Emma Goldman and 248 other radical "aliens" to the Soviet Union on the USS Buford. The Immigration Act of 1918 allowed for the expulsion of any foreign nationals found to be an anarchist, although most of the deportees were U.S. citizens.

1942 In Williams v. North Carolina, the U.S. Supreme ruled that a divorce obtained in Nevada must be recognized by other states.

1956 The day after the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order for Montgomery, Alabama, to integrate its buses, the city’s Black citizens resumed riding the now-integrated buses after a boycott of more than a year. Local Black leaders Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rev. Glenn Smiley were among the first passengers.

1959 Citizens of Deerfield, Illinois, successfully blocked a proposed integrated housing project. After the developer built two model luxury homes on the site, the village board learned 20 percent of the homes were to be set aside for African Americans and set up a referendum. Deerfield residents voted overwhelmingly to condemn the property and turn it over to the Parks Department.

1961 Profaci crime family mobster Joe Gallo—kingpin of the New York rackets—was sentenced to 7 to 14 years in prison for conspiracy and extortion. He'd tried to extort payments from a cafe owner, who immediately went to the police.

1963 "Bloody Christmas" began in Cyprus when Greek Cypriot “special constables” shot dead two Turkish Cypriots who refused to show their identity cards. The next day, after the funerals, shooting broke out between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, ultimately resulting in the displacement of 25,000–30,000 Turkish Cypriots and the destruction of more than 100 villages. On December 30, Greece, Great Britain, and Turkey signed an agreement on the division of the area into Turkish and Greek enclaves.

1970 In Oregon v. Mitchell, the U. S. Supreme court ruled that the federal government could set a voting age for federal elections, ban literacy tests, and allow non-state residents to vote in federal elections, but left the voting age for state and local elections to the discretion of individual states.

1970 Elvis Presley met U.S. President Nixon in the Oval Office to discuss the war on drugs. The “King of Rock and Roll” presented Nixon with a chrome-plated Colt .45 and the president gave Presley a Narcotics Bureau badge. A photo of their meeting is the most requested picture in the National Archives.

1971 Belfast bar owner John Lavery, 60, was killed when he picked up and attempted to remove a bomb the IRA planted in his pub on the Lisburn Road. Lavery was a Catholic.

1978 Police in Des Plaines, Ill., already suspicious of John W. Gacy Jr. in the disappearances of several young men, arrested the friendly contractor on a marijuana charge. The “Killer Clown” confessed to killing more than two dozen boys and young men and burying their bodies in his crawlspace. An Illinois jury convicted him of 33 counts of murder and sentenced him to death.

1988 A terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. The bombing remains to date the deadliest air disaster to occur on British soil.

1994 A bomb exploded on the #4 subway car packed with holiday shoppers as it pulled into the Fulton Street station in New York City, injuring 43 people. Police found Edward Leary of Scotch Plains, N.J., badly burned and wandering around a Brooklyn subway station shortly after the blast and suspected he was holding the bomb in his lap when it exploded prematurely. The unemployed computer analyst planned to extort the NYC Transit Authority with his homemade bomb. He was sentenced to 94 years in prison.

1996 After two years of denials, House Speaker Newt Gingrich admitted he violated House ethics rules when he disregarded federal tax law and lied to the ethics panel investigating the case. The House ethics committee recommended a reprimand and an unprecedented $300,000 financial penalty. A censure would have stripped Gingrich of his Speaker’s job.

1998 A Chinese court sentenced high-profile dissidents Xu Wenli and Wang Youcai to lengthy prison terms on subversion charges after they attempted to officially register the China Democracy Party (CDP), the country's first opposition party under communist rule. A third veteran dissident, Qin Yongmin, was sentenced to 12 years in prison the next day. All defendants were effectively denied legal representation and forced to present their own defense.

1999 The Spanish Civil Guard intercepted a van loaded with 950 kg of explosives driven by members of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), a Basque separatist terrorist organization. The next day, the Guard found another van loaded with 750 kg of explosives in the same area. After 9/11, ETA confirmed it intended to blow up Madrid’s Torre Picasso, the tallest building in Spain at the time. (ETA consistently targets Spain's tourist attractions.) The incident is sometimes called la caravana de la muerte—the caravan of death.

2002 Larry Mayes became the 100th person in the U.S. to be released from prison after DNA tests exonerated him. Mayes spent 21 years in prison for a 1980 rape and robbery that he maintained that he never committed.

2005 Singer Elton John and David Furnish registered their civil partnership at Windsor Town Hall, on the first day the Civil Partnership Act came into effect in England and Wales.

2012 Clashes over access to grazing, farmland, and water between the Orma and Pokomo peoples of Kenya's Tana River District resulted in the deaths of 39 people when 150 Pokomo raiders attacked the Ormo village of Kipao, setting fire to houses and cutting down residents with spears and machetes. The deadly incident was the latest in a series of flareups in the coastal region that began in August between the Orma, who are a mostly cattle-herding nomadic people, and the Pokomo, who are mainly farmers. President Mwai Kibaki set up a Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the attacks.