Butchered and Burned.

National Police Gazette, January 28, 1882

Mrs. J.W. Gibbons was away from her home in Ashland, Kentucky, on December 23, 1881. She left behind her 18-year-old son Robert, her 14-year-old daughter Fannie, and 17-year-old Emma Thomas (aka Carico), who was staying with them. Mrs. Gibbons returned the following day to find her home burned to the ground and all three inhabitants dead.

Read the full story here: The Ashland Outrage.

Maggie Crowley, Found Strangled.

Maggie Crowley
(New York American, March 16, 1898)

Robert Hoey, coming home from work in the early hours of March 15, 1898, literally tripped over the body of a dead woman in the courtyard of his New York City tenement. The woman had been strangled to death and dragged to the courtyard known in the neighborhood as “Hogan’s Alley.” Four days later, she was identified as Maggie Crowley, a young woman with a drinking problem. Four men were suspected, two were indicted, but no one was convicted.

Read the full story here: Murder Told in Pictures.

Frederick F. Streeter.

About half past three, the morning of July 2, 1863, a young man on his way to work in Medina, Ohio, saw the home of Shubal Coy in flames. He alerted the neighbors, who came out to douse the flames with water. When the fire was under control, they went inside to look for the Coy family. They found Shubal lying in bed with nine stab wounds in his throat and breast, any one of them capable of producing death. His wife lay on the floor, with her throat cut. She had fought with her attacker and had twenty-four cuts on her head and body. Their seven-year-old son Ferdinand lay in bed with his throat cut. Mercifully, it appeared he was murdered in his sleep.

Medford's Murder Mystery.

(Boston Post, March 29, 1897,)

Walter R. Debbins was shot twice in the back, in broad daylight, on Highland Street in Medford, Massachusetts, on the afternoon of Saturday, March 27, 1897. Though no one saw the murder or heard the gunshots, there was enough traffic on Highland Street that afternoon for the police to precisely pinpoint the time of the shooting to between 1:00 and 1:05. But that was all they could pinpoint; everything else about the crime was shrouded in mystery that grew more dense with each new revelation.

 

Read the full story here: The Medford Mystery.