“A Romance of Crime.”

Jimmy Logue was a professional thief whose life of crime spanned more than forty years. He was born in Philadelphia in 1835 and was arrested there for larceny at age 10. After his release became an apprentice to Joe Keyser, a noted Baltimore pickpocket. He eventually graduated to bank robbery and became quite accomplished at it, when he wasn't caught. Logue spent much of his time living a life of prosperity, the rest he spent behind bars.

His personal life was just as erratic. At age 23 he married Mary Jane Andres and left her after two years. Without the formality of a divorce, he married Mary Gahan soon after. She already had an illegitimate son who took his father’s name, Alphonse F. Cutaiar. Logue mistreated Mary, so she left him, went home to her father and died in 1869. Before Mary Gahan left him, Logue had taken up with her sister Johanna. Jimmy Logue and Johanna Gahan were married in the dock of the Central Police Station in 1871 as Logue was preparing to serve a seven-year sentence at Cherry Hill Prison for burglary. 

Crime and Criminals.

Little Murders

 

(A bad weekend in the Midwest -
From Daily Inter Ocean , Chicago, Illinois, January 30, 1877)
 

Crime and Criminals.

Another Horrible Chapter of Murder and Murderous Affrays.

Another Whisky Murder—Fatal Stabbing.

Special Telegram to the Inter Ocean.

Decatur, Ill. Jan. 29.—On Saturday night Joab Wilkinson took from Decatur to Niantic a jug of whisky, which he distributed to some of his friends. A riot grew out of it, in which three Connihan brothers attacked a Mr. Carson, one of them striking him with a grubbing hoe, breaking his skull. The doctors have trepanned it, and he may recover. Today the parties were committed to await the result.

Last night Mr. McCall got into an altercation with Douglas Morris, at the house of the latter, in Decatur, and stabbed him twice, it is feared, fatally. McCall was at once arrested and lodged in jail.

Still Another Terrible Example

Special Telegram to the Inter Ocean.
Huntington, Ind., Jan. 29.—A house of Ill-fame at this place on Sunday afternoon was the scene of a bloody and fatal fight. Thomas E. Billings, the keeper, attempted to eject Delatus Shaffer, the clerk of the Hubbell House. Shaffer was intoxicated, and was very noisy, and was abusing the inmates. Finally Billings drew a revolver and shot his assailant, the ball entering the right side and inflicting a wound which will probably prove fatal. Billings was arrested a short time after and taken to Fort Wayne for safe keeping. He has kept a house of ill-fame at that place for several years.

The Bloody Benders

In the early 1870s the counties of Labette and Montgomery in Kansas were experiencing an alarming number of missing persons. The investigation passed several times through the cabin of the Benders, a family of German immigrants who ran a small grocery store and restaurant outside of Cherryvale, Kansas, but the Benders appeared completely innocent. When authorities found the cabin abandoned one day the picture changed. A closer look revealed nine murdered corpses, the handiwork of the Bloody Benders.

H. H. Holmes - "I was born with the devil in me."

Visitors enjoying the color and light of the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago had no idea that not far away Dr. Henry Howard Holmes had set up his own dark, private exhibition of death and torture on a scale comparable to that of the fair itself. Though sometimes mistakenly called America's first serial killer, he could very well be its most prodigious. Though convicted of only one murder, Holmes confessed to 27 and the actual total could have been as high as 230.