An Almanac of Infamy

Joseph Harris in Court On this day in 1991, former postal worker Joseph Harris murdered two of his co-workers at the Ridgewood, New Jersey, post office. His crimes were detected when another postal worker, Marcello Collado, drove up to the facility for a scheduled delivery and saw that the bay doors were closed and the two workers who were usually stationed there for the 3 A.M. shift were missing. Collado entered the building and saw a man all in black, wearing a bullet-proof vest, gas mask, and a Ninja headdress. He fled the building when the man shot at him, but missed, and alerted the police. Two police officers tried to enter the building but were attacked by a pipe bomb tossed by the assailant. It soon became obvious that the SWAT team and hostage negotiators were needed on the scene. At dawn, Joseph Harris finally surrendered. When investigators entered the building they found the bodies of two mail handlers, Joseph VanderPaauw, 59, and Donald McNaught, 63. They had both be...

Cynthia Coffman and James Marlow at the moment they learned they had received the death penalty. On this day in 1989, Cynthia Coffman and James Marlow were sentenced to death in San Bernardino, California, for the 1986 murder of Corinna Novis. Coffman had the dubious distinction of being the first woman sentenced to death since capital punishment had been reinstated in 1977. Marlow was no stranger to the criminal justice system. In fact, it was a stint in jail that led him to meet Cynthia Coffman. Cynthia Coffman was born in 1962 in St. Louis and by the time she was four years old, her parents had divorced. At seventeen, she ran away from home, got pregnant and married her child's father, Roy Coffman. Within two years, she had walked out on her husband and their baby and met a man by the name of Doug Huntley in Arizona. In April 1986, they were arrested on drug charges in Barstow, California, where Huntley ended up sharing a cell with James Marlow. Marlow was born in 1956 i...

Phillip Powers, of Dixon, CA , believes that his grandfather was the Zodiac Killer and has provided the Solano County Sherriff's Office with photos, writing samples and other items that he hopes can help solve the case. He and his mother have also provided DNA samples. Detective Sgt. Dax West says the items will be shared with the Vallejo police department so they can compare the DNA to samples that they believe belong to the killer. Powers believes his grandfather, Kenneth Lester German, is Zodiac based on a confession German made to his youngest daughter Kay, who took it as a joke. Powers, however, takes the confession seriously and is motivated in part by his own diagnosis of bipolar disorder. “I want to know if I got it from him” Powers says. Sgt. Dax West says that Powers is not the only one who believes that he has the key to the Zodiac Killer's identity. The Solano County Sherriff's Office receives calls every week from people claiming to have solved the case. Me...

On this day in 1934, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow died in a shootout with Texas and Louisiana police outside of Sailes, Louisiana. Parker had met Barrow four years earlier and when Barrow was paroled for robbery in 1932, they began a crime spree that spanned Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, New Mexico, and Louisiana. Related Reading: 5 things you many not have know about Bonnie and Clyde Read a Chilling Letter From Bonnie and Clyde 50 Years Later: How Bonnie and Clyde Violently Divided Film Critics The Ongoing Quest to Reunite Bonnie and Clyde