A Heavy Question
At the end of a day’s work in 1974, workers for the Dowling Construction Company of Indianapolis left a 2½ -ton wrecking ball hanging from a crane 200 feet above the ground. When they came back the next morning, the ball was gone. Police and all concerned were baffled, and the ball was never found.
Source: Mysteries of the Unexplained – Reader’s Digest
The Man Who Wouldn’t Hang
In Sydney, Australia, in 1803, Joseph Samuels was arrested for robbery and murder. He confessed to the robbery but insisted that the murder was committed by his accomplice Isaac Simmonds. Samuels was allowed to address the crowd gathered at his hanging and he again insisted that he was innocent. The crowd began to clamour for his release when a guard jabbed the horse Samuels was sitting on with his neck in a noose. The horse dashed off, leaving Samuels swinging - but then the rope broke.
A second rope was placed around Samuels’ neck and he was loaded, semi-conscious, back up on the gallows cart. The cart was pulled away and the rope began to unravel - letting Samuels’ feet touch the ground enough to keep him from being strangled.
A third rope was then placed around his neck. This one broke just above his head. The provost marshal finally rode off to report the incidents to the governor who immediately reprieved the condemned man. The rope used was tested and found capable of holding 400 pounds. Isaac Simmonds was eventually brought to trial and hanged for the murder.
Source: many & varied
Legal Complications or Urban Legend?
At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science, AAFS president Dr. Don Harper Mills astounded his audience with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story:
On March 23, 1994 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. The decedent had jumped from the top of a ten story building intending to commit suicide. He left a note to that effect indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window, which killed him instantly.
Neither the shooter not the decedent were aware that a safety net had been installed just below at the eighth floor level to protect some building workers, and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.
“Ordinarily,” Dr. Mills continued, “a person who sets out to commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended, is still defined as committing suicide. Mr. Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below but his suicide attempt probably would not have been successful because of the safety net.”
This caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands.
The room on the ninth floor from whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously, and he was threatening her with a shotgun. The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window, striking Mr. Opus.
When one intends to kill subject A, but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. When confronted with the murder charge, the old man and his wife were both adamant. They both said they thought the shotgun was unloaded. The old man said it was his long standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her. Therefore the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident, that is, the gun had been accidentally loaded.
The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple’s son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son’s financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.
Now comes the exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed that the son was in fact Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over both the loss of his financial support and the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother’s murder. This led him to jump off the ten story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window. The son actually murdered himself - so the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.
Source: one of those emails that show up from time to time
Psychic Detective, Arthur Roberts, Saves City
In January 1940, Arthur Price Roberts, a seventy-three year old in excellent health, fulfilled a prediction he had made two months previous: he died, after a lifetime of foretelling disasters and catching crooks.
Since childhood, Roberts had the skill to see and find things others could not. He stayed illiterate all his life, afraid that education would destroy his ability. Among his many achievements: Roberts saved a wrongly convicted murderer from execution; intuited the body of a missing man was in the river snagged by sunken logs; located the killer in a two year old murder case by picking the killer’s picture out of police mug shots and announcing where he was working in another country; and he tracked down a stolen taxi, while it was being driven, twenty four hours after the theft.
In Milwaukee, in 1935, Roberts warned police: “Going to be lots of bombings - dynamitings! I see two banks blown up and perhaps the city hall. Going to blow up police stations. Then there’s going to be a big blowup south of the Menomonee river and it’ll be all over.”
As Roberts was known for his predictions, extra precautions were taken. Eight days later the village hall was blasted to bits. Two people died and others were injured. The next day the dynamiters blew up two Milwaukee banks and two police stations. In spite of extra patrols, a sixth explosion took place. It was heard up to eight miles away. The garage where it had been centered was obliterated. Two young men, Hugh Rotkowski, and Paul Chovaonee, were inside when the fifty pounds of dynamite for their sixth bomb accidentally detonated. Roberts had correctly predicted the entire series of explosions, including the final blast, which was accidental.
Source: Frank Edward’s Strange People
Caught by Coincidence
- In Irvington, New Jersey, a female thief unknowingly tried to pay for her purchases with a credit card that had been stolen from the cashier who was working there. Diane Klos and her boss chased the woman from the store and into the arms of two policemen. Diane was happy to get her credit card back.
- In the late 1970s, a crook broke into the home of Nancy Hart in Austin, Texas and stole a couple of television sets and her checkbook. He later tried to cash a cheque at the bank, however when he presented it to the teller – Nancy Hart – he was arrested.
- In California in 1989, two young men were committing a burglary when they were interrupted by the home owner who flagged down a passing police car. The cops gave pursuit but when the crooks scaled a chain link fence and dropped down on the other side, the chase was over. The two bunglers had climbed into the grounds of San Quentin State Prison.
Source: Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Time-Life A World of Luck
Dream Foils Perfect Crime
The moon was down and the lonely buttes along the Clearwater were faintly silhouetted against the sky. …his companions were rolled in their blankets around the embers of the campfire a hundred yards from him … one exception was a border ruffian named DC Lowry … his fellow conspirators, James Romaine and David Howard, and Lowry sneaked, axe in hand, toward their unsuspecting victim.
As Lloyd Magruder, on his way home with a lot of money and livestock, stood there in the darkness Lowry inched up within striking distance and swung his ax with terrible force. The impact embedded the weapon so deeply, in fact, the killer had to place his boot on the victim’s chest and tug with all his might to free the heavy blade. Silence was imperative, for four others in the little party around the campfire were also marked for murder. Lowry and his accomplices set about their bloody business and in a matter of seconds they had hacked to death two young miners, etc. The killers left their victims wrapped in their blankets and threw the bodies into a deep canyon nearby. They had search the bodies and taken a total of about $35,000 in gold.
Far away, in Lewiston Idaho, the owner of the Luna Hotel, Hill Beachy, saw it all in a dream and was determined to bring the killers to justice. The night of the crime, Hill watched in his sleep as his friend, Lloyd Magruder, was struck with an axe and the killer put his foot on Magruder’s body to wrench the axe out. He saw the killer’s face.
Magruder was a merchant who had just made a fortune selling his wares to the gold miners at Alder Gulch. He headed home in the company of some young miners and four men he had employed. Unbeknownst to him, those men were escaped convicts.
Near the Bitter Root Mountains, the bandits wrapped the bodies in blankets, and sent them, along with the herd and other evidence, over the edge of a canyon. A hundred miles from anyone, the bandits made off with the gold and seven horses. It began to snow. They thought it was the perfect crime and headed towards Lewiston.
Leaving their horses at a nearby ranch, the gang checked into the Luna Hotel. Hill Beachy was at the desk and he recognized the killer from his dream. The Walla Walla stage coach was due that day and when Lowry went into the Luna Hotel to buy tickets for the trio, Hill Beachy had the disquieting feeling that this was the man he had seen in the nightmare – the wielder of the axe that killed his good friend Magruder. But he was powerless to take action, for dreams make poor evidence in court and at that time there was no certainty that Magruder was not alive and well.
After Lowry and his companions had left on the Walla Walla stage, Beachy heard about the pack animals thay had abandoned at the ranch on the Clearwater. He and the sheriff hurried out there and discovered that in their haste, or carelessness, the killers had left Magruder’s personal saddle and other items, including his revolver, among the gear. Beachy had himself deputized, swore out warrants for the arrest of Howard, Romaine and Lowry and got the necessary requisitions from the governors of Oregon, Washington and California.
He trailed the guilty trio to San Francisco and caught them while they were waiting for their stolen gold dust to be minted into coins. Brought back to the Idaho Territory, they were defendants in the first session of the District court ever held in the Territory, a trial which began on January 5, 1865.
The chief witness against them was a fourth member of the gang, Bill Page, who had taken no part in the murder. After being scared by a theatrical performance from Beachy, which included a room with four nooses hanging from the ceiling, Page showed the officers where the bodies had been dumped into a canyon. Examination showed that Magruder had been killed by one terrible blow from an axe, just as Beachy had seen it in his dream, even to the bloody footprint on the victim’s chest as he pried the axe from Magruder’s body. The accused were found guilty and Judge Samuel C. Parks sentenced them to death. Lowry, Howard and Roamine went to the gallows on March 4, 1865.
They had been captured and brought to justice because Hill Beachy recognized one of the trio as the killer he had seen in his dream.
Source: Frank Edward’s Strange People
The Last Wish of Barbara Graham
On June 3, 1955, Barbara Graham was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin. Convicted of taking part in the murder of Mabel Monahan, Barbara swore her innocence up to the end. Along with four men she had gained entry to Mabel's house in search of a fortune belonging to a gambler that was hidden there. No fortune was found and when they left, Mabel was dead. The victim’s purse contained $500 and $10,000 worth of jewellery was untouched.
Barbara maintained her innocence. As the misbegotten mother of three children, she might have stood a good chance for a commutation, a pardon, or even a new trial. But while in prison, Barbara was offered an alibi for $25,000 by a fellow inmate. The main evidence against her was that she tried to bribe a fellow prisoner who turned out to be an undercover policewoman tape-recording their conversations. The tapes were played in court. Barbara tearfully explained, "Oh, have you ever been desperate? Do you know what it means not to know what to do?"
Knowing she was going to die, Barbara swore that the men connected with her conviction would die prematurely also.
One of Barbara's accomplices had disappeared and was presumed murdered before the trial. Two were executed on the same day as herself. The man who had turned prosecution witness was killed on the Mississippi River when, in a fog, a Dutch freighter rammed the small craft he was riding on. A man who was in on the plan, and gave evidence but backed out at the last minute, died when he drove into a road obstruction.
The District Attorney in charge of her prosecution died unexpectedly from cancer, the warden of the San Quentin prison was struck dead by heart failure and the judge who sentenced her died abruptly, also from cancer.
Source: Colin Wilson’s Unsolved Mysteries Past & Present, Clark Howard’s The TRUE Story of Barbara Graham, www.poeforward.com/mrperfumery/deadgirls/historical/executed/graham
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