TODAY IN CRIME: November 16

1491 Spanish civil authorities publicly executed nine people accused by the Spanish Inquisition of killing a little boy. The three Jews and six conversos (Jews converted to Catholicism) were burned at the stake in the Brasero de la Dehesa outside of Ávila. Despite there being no evidence of any boy being killed, and disputed evidence that such a child even existed, locals still celebrate the cult of the Holy Infant. Jews were often accused of killing Christian children and using their blood in their religious rituals.

1581 After Tsar Ivan the Terrible of Russia assaulted his pregnant daughter-in-law and caused her to miscarry, his son Ivan Ivanovich rushed in to confront his father. The enraged tsar struck him on the head with his scepter but immediately regretted it. Despite his father's prayers, Ivan died three days later.

1793 Considering the guillotine too slow a death for those suspected of activities counter to the French Revolution, Committee for Public Safety member Jean-Baptiste Carrier ordered the drowning of ninety dissident Roman Catholic priests in the Loire River at Nantes. Carrier continued the mass drownings through February.

1849 A Russian court sentenced writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group. Facing a firing squad, Dostoyevsky received a last-minute reprieve from the Tsar and spent four years in a labor camp.

1885 Canada executed rebel leader of the Métis and "Father of Manitoba" Louis Riel for high treason. Riel's work to preserve the rights, culture, and even lands of native peoples lead to armed confrontation with the newly formed confederation government. The Royal North-West Mounted Police put down the rebellion and captured Riel, and he was tried, convicted, and hanged. Riel’s execution permanently alienated Francophones and is controversial to this day.

1940 "Mad Bomber" George Metesky left his first bomb on a window sill at the Consolidated Edison power plant at 170 West 64th Street in Manhattan. He went on to plant at least 32 more bombs in New York City over the next 16 years.

1966 An Ohio jury acquitted Dr. Samuel H. Sheppard in his second trial on charges of bludgeoning to death his pregnant wife, Marilyn Reese Sheppard, in 1954. Noting the "carnival atmosphere" and a biased judge of his first trial, the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down the original 1954 conviction and allowed the retrial.

1976 Scottish homemaker Renee MacRae and her son Andrew disappeared from Inverness, Scotland. Their bodies have never been found; the disappearance is currently Britain's longest-running missing persons case. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service charged MacRae’s lover, William MacDowell, with their murders in 2019.

1988 A Los Angeles Superior Court judge sentenced Stephen Love, former Beach Boys manager and the brother of lead singer Mike Love, to 5 years’ probation and ordered him to pay $86,000 restitution for embezzling more than $900,000 from the band.

1989 In San Salvador, El Salvadoran army troops dragged six Jesuit priests and two others in residence at the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas from their beds and shot them in the head. The Jesuits advocated a negotiated settlement between the Salvadoran government and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition of left-wing groups that had battled the government for a decade.

1997 The People’s Republic of China released pro-democracy dissident Wei Jingsheng for medical reasons. He had been incarcerated for nearly 18 years. Wei settled in the United States, where he remains active in the democratization of China.

1998 In Wright v. Universal Maritime Service Corp. et al., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that union members could file discrimination lawsuits against employers even when labor contracts require arbitration.

1999 A hitman hired by NFL wide receiver Rae Carruth shot Carruth’s pregnant girlfriend, Cherica Adams, four times in her car. Adams managed to call 911 and rescuers were able to save her baby. Adams died after a month in the hospital. A North Carolina jury convicted Carruth of conspiracy to commit murder but acquitted him of first-degree murder; he served 18 years in prison. Prosecutors believed Carruth arranged the hit so he wouldn’t have to pay child support to another girlfriend.

2001 In the midst of the anthrax scare, hazardous materials experts sifting through 280 barrels of mail addressed to the U.S. Capitol found a letter addressed to Senator Tom Leahy (D-Vt.) laced with the deadly bacterium. Investigators sent the suspicious mail through a sensor machine that could detect the presence of biological agents. The FBI concluded microbiologist Bruce Ivins was responsible for the attacks that killed five people.

2010 The U.S. House Ethics Committee found 80-year-old Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY) guilty of 11 of 13 charges related to financial misconduct: for improperly fundraising for a community center in his name, failing to disclose more than $500,000 in assets on financial disclosure forms, and failing to disclose financial arrangements for a villa at a yacht club in the Dominican Republic. Although his fellow congressmen censured him, Rangel stayed in office until 2017.

TODAY IN CRIME: November 9

 

694 Believing all Jews were conspiring with Muslims to extinguish Christianity, Visigoth king Egica, ruler of Hispania and Septimania in southwestern Europe, ordered all Jews into slavery. The crown would confiscate their property and remove any children over the age of seven from their homes to be raised as Christians.

1456 Agents of László, son of Hungarian governor János Hunyadi, assassinated Ulrich II, Count of Celje. Because Ulrich was captain general and de facto regent of Hungary, governor of Slavonia, Croatia and Dalmatia, feudal lord of vast lands across central Europe, and claimant to the Bosnian throne, his death plunged Hungary into civil unrest.

1520 In an attempt to secure his control of the Swedish throne, Danish king Christian II ordered 82 nobles executed for heresy in the Stockholm Bloodbath, but the massacre only caused Sweden to secede from the Kolmar Union of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Hostility between Sweden and Denmark as they clashed for control of Scandinavia and northern Germany continued for almost 300 years.

1720 In Jerusalem, Arab creditors broke into the synagogue of Judah HeHasid and burned it down, leading to the expulsion of the Ashkenazim from Jerusalem.

1799 Napoleon Bonaparte lead the Coup de 18 Brumaire, ending the Directory government of the French Revolution and replacing it with the French Consulate.

1851 Marshals from Kentucky abducted abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Jeffersonville, Indiana, and took him back to Kentucky to stand trial for aiding a slave named Tamar escape to Indiana. Fairbank served 19 years in the Kentucky State Penitentiary for his work on the Underground Railroad.

1923 In Munich, German troops loyal to the democratic government crushed the Beer Hall Putsch in Bavaria. Sixteen Nazis and four Bavarian State Police officers died in a gunfight between the Nazis and the police. The evening before, Adolf Hitler had taken control of a beer hall full of Bavarian government leaders at gunpoint in an attempted coup against the Weimar Republic. The future chancellor went to prison for eight months for high treason.

1938 Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath died from gunshot wounds inflicted Nov. 7 by Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish teenager bent on avenging atrocities already committed against the Jewish people. The night of Nov. 9, the Nazis used the shooting as an excuse to instigate Kristallnacht: SA paramilitary forces and Nazi sympathizers burned and looted Jewish-owned stores and houses throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudenland.

1953 The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a 1922 ruling that major league baseball is outside the scope of federal antitrust laws. The 1922 Court that found that baseball, as an exhibition, is not subject to the Constitution’s Commerce Clause (Federal Baseball Club v. National League).

1965 Catholic Worker Movement member Roger Allen LaPorte set himself on fire in front of the United Nations building in New York to protest U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He died the next day.

1970 Citing lack of jurisdiction, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6–3 against hearing a case testing the legality of the Vietnam War. Massachusetts passed a state law granting residents the right to refuse military service in an undeclared war, and the state attorney general asked the Supreme Court to consider the case.

1976 The United Nations General Assembly approved 10 resolutions condemning apartheid in South Africa.

1998 In the largest civil settlement in American history, a federal judge in New York ordered 37 U.S. brokerage houses to pay $1.03 billion to investors who were overcharged for NASDAQ-listed stocks from 1989-1994. The federal government issued a consent decree in 1996 forcing permanent changes in NASDAQ's operation to prevent future price-rigging.

1998 The United Kingdom abolished capital punishment—already abolished for murder—for all remaining capital offences.

1998 Michael Jackson settled a lawsuit over stories and pictures in the London Daily Mirror that reported his face had been disfigured by cosmetic surgery.

2005 Suicide bombers attacked the U.S.-based Grand Hyatt, Days Inn, and Radisson SAS hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing at least 60 people and wounding hundreds. Two bombers strapped devices to their bodies and the third used a car bomb. The government of Jordan, unused to terror attacks in its country, instituted new anti-terror measures.

2007 The German Bundestag passed a controversial data retention bill that mandated storing citizens' telecommunications traffic data for six months without probable cause. In 2010 the German Constitutional Court ruled the bill violated Article 10 of the German Basic Law protecting the privacy of correspondence, posts, and telecommunications.

2011 Penn State University fired longtime head football coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier over their handling of child sex abuse allegations against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. Paterno was never charged with any wrongdoing and Spanier's conviction of child endangerment was overturned, but Sandusky was ultimately sentenced to 30-60 years in state prison after his conviction on 45 counts of abuse involving ten boys, including attacks that occurred on campus property.

TODAY IN CRIME: November 2

619 Emperor Gaozu, founder of the Tang dynasty of China, allowed an envoy of the Eastern Turk Khaganate to assassinate a qaghan (emperor) of the Western Turkic Khaganate after a banquet in Gaozu's palace. When everyone was replete with food and drink, Gaozu lured the emperor to an empty office where he was set upon by assassins. The powerful Eastern Turks made better friends than enemies, and this way Gaozu could repay them for their help during his march on Chang'an.

1859 A Charles Town, Virginia, jury sentenced abolitionist John Brown to death by hanging. On October 31 the jury had found him guilty of murder, conspiring slaves to revolt, and treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia for his raid at Harper's Ferry October 16-18.

1959 Twenty-One game show contestant Charles Van Doren admitted to the U.S. Congress that he had been given questions and answers in advance.

1960 In London, a jury of nine men and three women found Penguin Books not guilty of obscenity by publishing the novel Lady Chatterley's Lover.

1963 Army of the Republic of Vietnam Majors Nguyễn Văn Nhung and Dương Hiếu Nghĩa assassinated South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm and his brother, political advisor Ngô Đình Nhu, on the orders of RVN General Dương Văn Minh in a coup d'état. With the brothers tied up in the back of an armored personnel carrier, Nhung lunged at Nhu with a bayonet and stabbed him 15-20 times, shot Diem in the head with a semi-automatic, then turned and shot Nhu. No one was ever charged in the killings but Nhung was later executed. His cohort Nghĩa survived the Fall of Saigon. Junta leader Minh was himself deposed in a bloodless coup three months later.

1964 Saudi Arabia formally deposed King Saud and replaced him with his half-brother Faisal.

1965 Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker, doused himself with kerosene and set himself on fire outside the Pentagon office of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to protest U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war.

1966 The Cuban Adjustment Act took effect, allowing Cuban refugees the opportunity to apply for permanent residence in the U.S.

1979 Black militant Assata Olugbala Shakur escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey, where she'd been serving a life sentence for the 1973 murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster. She fled to Pittsburgh; eventually Cuba granted her political asylum. In 2013 she became the first woman added to the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list; there is a two-million-dollar reward for her return.

1984 Convicted murderer Velma Margie Barfield became the first woman to be executed since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976. No woman had been executed in the U.S. since 1962. Barfield confessed to killing at least five people, although she was tried and executed for only one homicide—poisoning boyfriend Rowland Stuart Taylor with arsenic.

1985 The South African government imposed strict rules of censorship on all media coverage of unrest by both local and foreign journalists. The press of South Africa is still considered only partly free.

1986 Shiite Muslims released American kidnap victim David Jacobsen after holding him in Lebanon for 17 months.

1988 Cornell graduate student Robert Morris launched the Morris worm, the first highly publicized Internet-distributed computer worm, from the computer systems at MIT. In 1990, Morris was the first person convicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for penetrating and crippling 6,000 "federal interest" computers nationwide. The U.S. District Court of NDNY sentenced him to three years' probation, 400 hours of community service, a $10,050 fine, and costs of his supervision.

1993 The U.S. Senate voted 94-6 to demand full disclosure of Senator Bob Packwood's diaries in a sexual harassment probe. Packwood resigned from the Senate the previous month under threat of expulsion after 19 women came forward alleging sexual harassment, abuse, and assaults. His diaries confirmed the allegations.

1995 Eleven former senior military officers, including former South African defense minister General Magnus Malan, were arrested and charged with the murders of 13 people in the KwaMakhutha apartheid massacre in 1987. All were eventually acquitted.

1995 The U.S. banned Daiwa Bank Ltd. from operating in the United States for allegedly covering up $1.1 billion in trading losses incurred by New York bond trader Toshihide Iguchi over a 12-year period. Daiwa paid a record $340-million fine to settle the fraud case and Iguchi spent four years in prison.

1999 In the worst mass murder in the history of Hawaii, Xerox service technician Byran Koju Uyesugi shot eight people with a Glock 17 handgun at the Xerox building in Honolulu, killing his supervisor and six coworkers. Uyesugi was facing dismissal for refusing to take training on new machines and "decided to give them a reason to fire me."

2010 California voters rejected a statewide ballot measure that would have made the Golden State the first to legalize marijuana for recreational use. The Adult Use of Marijuana Act did succeed in 2016.

TODAY IN CRIME: October 26

1881 Wyatt Earp, his two brothers, and "Doc" Holliday confronted Ike Clanton's gang in a gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Ariz. Three members of Clanton's gang were killed; Earp's brothers were wounded.

1892 Ida B. Wells published Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. In 2020 the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded Wells a special citation "[f]or her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching."

1909 Korean nationalist and independence activist An Jung-geun assassinated Itō Hirobumi, President of the Privy Council of Japan, who forced the Emperor of Korea to sign the Eulsa Treaty, an agreement that stripped Korea of its diplomatic sovereignty and placed all Korean affairs under Imperial Japanese control. After six trials, An was hanged.

1956 During the Hungarian Revolution, Hungarian secret police forces massacred more than 100 students, workers, and townspeople of the town of Mosonmagyaróvár who had gathered to peacefully demonstrate against Soviet occupation. Fighting spread throughout the country.

1970 In Atlanta, Muhammad Ali faced off against Jerry Quarry in his first boxing match after a three-year hiatus, still awaiting the appeal of his conviction for draft evasion. He knocked out Quarry in the third round. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1971.

1979 Kim Jae-kyu, the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, shot and killed South Korean President Park Chung-hee at a KCIA safe house in Seoul after a banquet. Kim and his associates also killed four bodyguards and a presidential chauffeur before being captured, tortured, and executed. It is still unclear whether the attack was unplanned and impulsive or deliberate and premeditated, whether Kim was motivated by jealousy of Park's chief bodyguard, a loyalist who had gained too much favor with the dictator, whether Kim was attempting to seize power himself or to restore democracy with the help of the American CIA, or suffering temporary insanity due to hepatic encephalopathy.

1991 Former Washington Mayor Marion Barry arrived at the Federal Correctional Complex in Petersburg, VA, to begin serving a six-month sentence for cocaine possession. He was released in April 1992 and went on to win re-election in 1994.

1993 A Washington, D.C., circuit court convicted Deborah Gore Dean, a central figure in the Reagan-era HUD scandal, of twelve felony counts of defrauding the U.S. government and lying to the U.S. Congress.

1995 Mossad agents assassinated Fathi Shaqaqi, co-founder and Secretary-General of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, in his hotel in Malta, a stopover on his way home to Damascus after securing the promise of funding from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The assassination and a crackdown by Israel and the Palestinian National Authority left the PIJ considerably weakened.

1995 A Texas jury sentenced Yolanda Saldivar to life in prison for the murder of popular singer Selena, her former employer. Saldivar shot and killed the “Queen of Tejano music” March 31, 1995, after being fired for embezzlement.

1996 Federal prosecutors cleared security guard Richard Jewell as a suspect in the Olympic park bombing. Because leaks in the investigation lead to his being identified as a suspect, Jewell filed defamation suits against the FBI, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ABC, NBC, CNN, the New York Post, two radio stations, and Piedmont College. He reached monetary settlements with most.

1998 The Recording Industry Association of America lost its case against the sale of MP3 players when a U.S. federal judge refused to issue an injunction against the devices. MP3 players are used to play music downloaded from the Internet.

1999 Britain's House of Lords voted to end the right of hereditary peers to vote in Britain's upper chamber of Parliament.

2000 A wave of protests in the Ivory Coast forced Robert Guéï to step down as president after the presidential election. He fled the country while the duly elected Laurent Gbagbo took office. Gbagbo in turn refused to step down after his defeat in the presidential election ten years later.

2001 U.S. President George W. Bush signed the USA Patriot Act into law, giving authorities unprecedented ability to search, seize, detain, or eavesdrop in their pursuit of possible terrorists.

2002 A three-day hostage siege by Chechen rebels at a Moscow theater ended when Russian special forces pumped a knockout gas into the building, killing 129 of the 800-plus captives. All 50 hostage-takers were killed by the gas or gunshot wounds.

TODAY IN CRIME: October 19

1765 Nine American colonies united to draw up a “Declaration of Rights and Grievances” opposing the Stamp Act, which ordered colonists to pay yet more taxes—without representation. Eventually all thirteen colonies adopted the Declaration.

1864 21 Confederate soldiers based in Canada robbed three banks in St. Albans, Vermont, killed a local man, then escaped back across the border. Their goal, in addition to raising funds, was to convince Union generals the northern border posed a significant threat and troops were needed there. A U.S. posse captured several raiders but Canadian authorities ordered their release.

1921 Radical members of the Portuguese Army, Navy, and National Republican Guard set up artillery in Lisbon and forced the government of Portuguese Prime Minister António Granjo to step down. When President António José de Almeida refused to allow the rebels to take over, Corporal Abel Olímpio drove a "ghost van" through the streets of Lisbon looking for National Republican Party politicians on a hit list and led the radicals in the assassination of P.M. Granjo and several cabinet members. The perpetrators were judged and condemned in court.

1943 Allied aircraft bombed and sank the cargo vessel Sinfra at Crete, drowing 2,098 Italian prisoners of war crammed in the cargo hold.

1944 The "October Revolution" of Guatemala started when a small group of army officers launched a coup against the military junta of Juan Federico Ponce Vaides that was set up by U.S.-backed dictator Jorge Ubico after he was forced to resign. Oppressed citizens across the country joined the pro-democracy movement and replaced the junta with one that promised free and open elections.

1960 Police arrested Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and 51 others after they refused to leave their seats at a segregated lunch counter in an Atlanta department store. Judges dismissed charges against 16 of the protesters at their first court appearance but Dr. King was held on a charge of violating his probation and sentenced to six months’ hard labor. Presidential candidate JFK helped secure Dr. King's release.

1970 "Killer Prophet" John Frazier, convinced he was obeying the word of God, invaded the home of California ophthalmologist Victor Ohta and bound Ohta, his wife, two sons and a secretary, shot them all dead, threw their corpses in the swimming pool, then wrote a note on Ohta's typewriter declaring the start of WWIII and left it on Ohta's Rolls Royce. Deputies staked out Frazier's shack and arrested him October 23. Tried and sentenced to death, he received a commutation to life imprisonment; he hanged himself in his cell in 2009.

1973 U.S. President Nixon rejected an Appeals Court decision that he turn over the Watergate tapes.

1976 U.S. President Gerald Ford signed the Copyright Act of 1976, the first major revision of American copyright law since 1909. It extended federal copyright protection to all works, both published and unpublished, once they are fixed in a tangible form.

1977 French authorities found the body of kidnap victim Hanns-Martin Schleyer in the trunk of an Audi 100 on the rue Charles Péguy in Mulhouse. The Red Army Faction, a West German far-left militant organization, kidnapped the industrialist and former SS officer in September and demanded the release of four RAF members being held at Stammheim Prison in Stuttgart. The German government refused to negotiate and even prevented Schleyer's family from offering 15 million Deutschmarks as a ransom. After three of the RAF fanatics were found dead in their cells October 18, the kidnappers shot and killed Schleyer.

1982 Police arrested automaker John DeLorean on charges of conspiracy to obtain and distribute 55 pounds of cocaine worth $24 million. He was acquitted two years later.

1984 Three agents of the Polish Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs kidnapped Roman Catholic priest Jerzy Popiełuszko, chaplain of the Polish “Solidarity” trade union, on his way home from a prayer service. His captors tortured and hog-tied him, then bound him up, attached rocks to his body, and threw him over a dam to drown. The intelligence agents were tried and convicted of the murder.

1986 Mozambique President Samora Machel, leader of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) who led the Mozambican people in their fight for independence from Portugal, along with 33 others, died when their aircraft crashed into the Lebombo Mountains in South Africa. Some observers believe the apartheid regime of South Africa set up a false beacon to lure the plane off-course.

1988 The British government imposed a broadcasting ban on television and radio interviews with members of Sinn Féin and eleven Irish republican and Ulster loyalist paramilitary groups.

1989 The Court of Appeal of England and Wales quashed the convictions of the Guildford Four after they had spent 15 years in prison for the pub bombings in 1974 Surrey that killed four soldiers and one civilian and wounded 65 others. The Met forced false confessions out of Paul Hill, Gerry Conlon, Paddy Armstrong, and Carole Richardson and they were wrongly convicted; the Balcombe Street Gang of the Provisional Irish Republican Army later claimed responsibility.

1989 The U.S. Senate rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have banned the desecration of the American flag, with 51 Senators voting in favor of the amendment and 48 voting in opposition. Congress passed the Flag Protection Act nine days later, but in June 1990 the Supreme Court ruled (United States v. Eichman) the Act violated the right of free speech under the First Amendment.

1998 Rock music fan Mark Nieto filed a lawsuit against the rock group Aerosmith for alleged hearing loss after he attended a “Nine Lives” concert at the Concord Pavilion amphitheater in Concord, California, the year before. Nieto claimed he was not made aware of possible hearing loss before the show.

1998 Members of the Earth Liberation Front set fire to several lifts and buildings at Vail Ski Resort in Colorado, claiming expansion of the resort was causing irreparable harm to area wildlife. The eco-terrorists caused $12 million in damages. Two members pleaded guilty, one suspect was finally captured 20 years later, and another remains at large.

2004 Thai officials announced the State Peace and Development Council ousted Myanmar prime minister Khin Nyunt and placed him under house arrest on charges of corruption. He was released in 2012.

2005 A defiant Saddam Hussein pleaded innocent to charges of pre-meditated murder and torture and argued with the Iraqi Special Tribunal on the opening day of his trial in Baghdad. He was sentenced to death by hanging a year later.

TODAY IN CRIME: October 12

 

1692 Massachusetts Bay Governor William Phips halted the Salem witch trials. His letter to the Privy Council of King William and Queen Mary cited “what danger some of their innocent subjects might be exposed to…if the evidence of the afflicted persons only did prevaile." Phips disallowed such "spectral evidence"—descriptions of abuses committed by the accused's spirit in witnesses' visions and dreams—in the new court he established.

1871 The British in India enacted the Criminal Tribes Act, naming many local communities "Criminal Tribes." The legislation was ostensibly enacted to combat thugees but declared everyone belonging to certain castes to be born with criminal tendencies and required adult males of the named tribes to report weekly to local police.

1915 In WWI, a German firing squad executed British nurse Edith Cavell for helping 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium.

1933 The Pierpont Bunch broke John Dillinger out of the Lima, Ohio, city jail to pay him back for his help in planning their jailbreak a few weeks before. Disguised as Indiana State Police officers, the three men claimed they had come to extradite Dillinger to Indiana. When Sheriff Jesse Sarber requested their credentials, Pierpont shot him dead, then released Dillinger from his cell.

1960 Seventeen-year-old Japanese ultranationalist Otoya Yamaguchi stabbed to death Japan Socialist Party leader Inejiro Asanuma during a televised political debate. Photographer Yasushi Nagao won a Pulitzer Prize for his picture of the assassin attempting to thrust the sword a second time. Police captured Yamaguchi at the scene and he hanged himself in his cell at a juvenile detention center less than three weeks later.

1963 The Soviet Union released Jesuit priest Reverend Walter Ciszek after imprisoning him for nearly 23 years. Ciszek had conducted clandestine missionary work in the Soviet Union for more than twenty years before he was arrested by the Soviet secret police.

1972 During the Vietnam War, a brawl between Black and white sailors broke out aboard the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk off the coast of North Vietnam. Nearly 50 sailors were injured. The Navy charged 26 Black sailors with assault and rioting and ordered a court-martial in San Diego, where four were convicted of rioting, fourteen of assault, and four found not guilty of all charges; the rest had the charges dropped. Most were demoted in rank. In the aftermath, the Navy instituted reforms to address racial inequality in the ranks.

1978 Police arrested rocker Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols for the murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, the same day Spungen bled to death on the bathroom floor of their room in the Chelsea Hotel in New York. The twenty-year-old died from a single fatal stab wound to the abdomen. Vicious died of a heroin overdose before his murder trial began.

1983 Japanese former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka was found guilty of taking a $2 million bribe from the Lockheed Corporation, sentenced to four years in jail, and fined 400m yen. His sentence remained under appellate review until he died ten years later.

1984 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet escaped an assassination attempt by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. A bomb planted by the group at a hotel in Brighton, England, exploded, killing five people and wounding 31.

1988 Members of the Melbourne underworld gunned down two officers of the Victoria Police execution-style in Melbourne, Australia. The perpetrators were responding to local police fatally shooting an armed robbery suspect the day before.

1995 New York state released rapper Tupac Shakur from prison on $1.4 million bail pending an appeal of his conviction for sexual assault. Suge Knight of Death Row Records posted the bail in exchange for Shakur releasing three albums under the Death Row label.

1998 Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, died five days after he was beaten, robbed, and left tied to a wooden fence post outside of Laramie. His two attackers were found guilty of murder.

1999 General Pervez Musharraf overthrew the democratically elected government of Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup.

2000 Two al-Qaeda suicide bombers exploded a small craft next to the US Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen, killing 17 sailors and wounding at least 39.

2002 A bomb exploded in the Sari Club, a nightclub on the Indonesian island of Bali, killing 202 people and wounding more than 300. Authorities blamed Islamic militants linked to al-Qaida.

2011 Nigerian al-Qaida operative Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab pleaded guilty to trying to bring down a jetliner with a bomb in his underwear minutes before the plane landed in Detroit, Michigan, on Christmas Day, 2009. Charges against him included the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and the attempted murder of the 289 people on the plane. A federal court judge sentenced him to four consecutive life sentences plus 50 years.

2019 The partially constructed Hard Rock Hotel, a luxury complex on Canal Street in New Orleans, collapsed, killing three and injuring 20. Local news media uncovered evidence of improper structural work and negligent city inspectors as factors leading to the tragedy; OSHA is still investigating the incident.

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."