An Almanac of Infamy

On this day in 1984, the body of nine-year-old Dawn Hamilton was found in a wooded area of Rosedale, Maryland, not far from her home. She had been raped and beaten to death with a rock. Police received witness reports of a suspicious man in the area of the crime scene and soon after released a sketch on the local news and in the local newspapers. Two weeks later, an anonymous caller identified the man in the sketches as 23-year-old ex-marine Kirk Bloodsworth. Police discovered that Bloodsworth had been in Baltimore (not too far from Rosedale) and also learned that he had told his friends that he had done something that would destroy his marriage. With very little evidence but the phone call and his friends' anecdote, Bloodsworth was convicted of Dawn Hamilton's murder. During his 1985 trial, the prosecution presented five witnesses who claimed to have seen Bloodsworth with Hamilton. Two of these witnesses, however, could not identify Bloodsworth in a lineup and had only iden...