An Almanac of Infamy

Vernon Booher's Mugshot On this day in 1928, police were called to the Booher family farm in Mannville, Alberta, Canada at the behest of Dr. Harley Heaslip. Upon arriving at the property, they found Rose Booher, who had been shot in the back of the head, slumped over on the dining room table. Her son, Fred, laid dead on the kitchen floor. He had been shot in the face multiple times. After searching the rest of the farmhouse, investigators moved on to the bunkhouse and barn, where they found two more bodies. The bodies belonged to two farmhands who, police surmised, had heard the shots that killed Rose Booher and her son Fred. The killer had most likely shot them to eliminate witnesses. Rose Booher's husband Henry was working on the farm when he heard the gunshots but thought nothing of it because gunshots were a common occurrence in the rural area where the farm was located. Rose's younger son, Vernon, had also been working on the farm, though in a different area from w...

Martha Ann Johnson's Mugshot Content Note: This case involves violence against children. On this day in 1989, Georgia resident Martha Ann Johnson was arrested and confessed to the murder of two of her four children. All four children had died under mysterious circumstances, which the Atlanta Journal-Constitution questioned in an article about the case. The article prompted investigators to reopen an investigation into Johnson and they discovered that each death came after Johnson had experienced marital strife with her husband, Earl Bowen. Martha Ann Johnson was born in Georgia in 1955. In 1971 she gave birth to her first daughter, Jenny Ann Wright. By 1975 she had divorced her first husband, married her second husband, and had her second child, James William Taylor. In 1977, she married her third husband, Earl Bowen. Together they had two children, Earl Wayne Bowen (b. 1979) and Tabitha Jenelle Bowen (b. 1980). On September 23, 1977, Martha Ann Johnson rushed her son J...

Annie and James Richardson On this day in 1989, James Joseph Richardson was released from a Florida prison after serving 21 years for the murders of his seven children, for which he was wrongfully convicted. His ordeal started on the afternoon of October 25, 1967. While Richardson and his wife Annie were working as fruit pickers in Arcadia, Florida, their neighbor, Betsy Reese, came over to heat up a pot of rice and beans that Annie had prepared the night before for the children's lunch. After the four oldest Richardson students returned to school they began to fall ill, foaming at the mouth and exhibiting other disturbing symptoms. When a teacher arrived at the Richardson house to check on the younger children, she found that they had fallen ill as well. All seven children were rushed to the hospital. By the time James and Annie Richardson were made aware of the situation, six of their children had already passed away. After Joseph H. Minoughan of the Arcadia Police Departme...

Nancy Titterton John Fiorenza Reenacting the Murder for Police On the morning of April 10, 1936, the body of novelist Nancy Titterton was found in a bathtub in her home on Beekman Place, an upscale street on the east side of Manhattan. Previous to her untimely death, she had shared the home with her husband Lewis Titterton, an executive at NBC. Titterton had been raped and strangled to death with her own pajamas. The only evidence at the scene was a foot-long cord tied around Titterton's hands and a single horsehair on her bedspread. The detective in charge of the case set out immediately to find the source of the cord used to bind Nancy Titterton. Every rope and twine manufacturer in the Northeast was contacted until police determined that the distinctive cord was produced by Hanover Cordage Company in York, Pennsylvania. Company records showed that the same type of cord had been sold to an upholstery shop in New York owned by a man by the name of Theodore Krueger. It jus...

Josefina Rivera, Agnes Adams, Sandra Lindsay, Jacqueline Askins, Deborah Dudley, Lisa Thomas On March 24, 1987, Philadelphia police received a call from a young woman named Josefina Rivera. Rivera claimed that she had been held captive in a cellar for several months and her captor was sitting just a block away at a gas station. When officers arrived to question Rivera they noticed what appeared to be chain marks on her legs and proceeded to arrest the man responsible, Gary M. Heidnik. Heidnik's arrest would unveil a real-life horror story, one of the most gruesome crimes in the history of Philadelphia. Gary Michael Heidnik was born on November 22, 1943, in Eastlake, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. His parents, Michael and Ellen divorced three years later. When his father remarried in 1950, Michael and his younger brother Terry went to live with Michael Heidnik and his new wife. After Heidnik's arrest, he claimed that his father was abusive. Whenever young Gary would wet the ...

Mark Kilroy Sara Aldrete and Adolfo Constanzo In the early hours of March 14, 1989, American college student Mark Kilroy was kidnapped while celebrating Spring Break at a bar in Matamoros, Mexico. Kilroy, who grew up in the town of Santa Fe, Texas, was a pre-med student at the University of Texas at Austin. He had crossed over the U.S.-Mexican border by foot with Bradley Moore, Bill Huddleston, and Brent Martin. He and his friends were among the 15,000 spring tourists crowding Álvaro Obregón, the main street of Matamoros. One of the group's stops was the London Pub, a bar popular with spring breakers. It was two in the morning when Bill suggested the group head back to their hotel on South Padre Island, Texas. As the group left the London Pub, they spotted Mark Kilroy leaning against a car while talking to a girl. Bradley and Brent separated from the group and ended up at a restaurant while Mark stopped by a house on Álvaro Obregón to say goodnight to the girl he had been tal...

On this day in 1951, Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, aka The Lonely Hearts Killers, were executed by electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in New York. Before their demise, the killer couple had bragged about seducing, robbing, and murdering seventeen women. While evidence suggests that there may have only been four victims, the strange couple is still notorious among male-female serial killer pairs. Raymond Martinez Fernandez was born on December 17, 1914, in Hawaii, to parents who had immigrated there from Spain. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Connecticut, and as an adult, Raymond Fernandez moved to Spain. There he married and fathered four children. He would abandon this family later in life. During World War II Fernandez served in the Spanish Merchant Marine and in the British Intelligence Service and at the end of the war decided to return to the United States. It was during this return trip, by boat, that a steel hatch fell on his head, causing a skull fracture a...

Thomas Edward Luther Survivor Heather Smith Callahan On this day in 1982, a 21-year-old woman named Mary Brown accepted a ride from a man in the ski town of Breckenridge, Colorado. Upon entering the man's vehicle, she was raped and severely beaten with a claw hammer. Her attacker, Thomas Edward Luther, was traced through his truck and arrested. Thomas Edward Luther was born June 23, 1957, in Hardwick, Vermont, the eldest of five children. According to Luther, he was subjected to extreme verbal and physical abuse at the hands of his mother. By age 9, he had started drinking and by age 12, he was using drugs. It was also at age 12, Luther claimed, that he began having sex with an aunt. After his arrest for the assault on Mary Brown, he told psychiatrists that he attacked her because she resembled his abusive mother. He told a fellow inmate that "the next girl won't live. They'll never find her body." Thomas Edward Luther was released from prison in 199...

On this day in 1989, 5-year-old Melissa Brannen disappeared from a Christmas party for residents of the Fairfax, Virginia, apartment complex where she lived with her mother Tammy. The two were leaving the party when Melissa went to grab a handful of potato chips and never came back. Over 300 people immediately started searching for her but found no trace of the child. It was then that foul play was suspected and the apartment complex's groundskeeper, Caleb Hughes, became the main focus of investigators. Witnesses told police that he had left the party at around the same time that Melissa had gone missing. Several female attendees also claimed that the married Hughes had propositioned them sexually and that he was paying an unusual amount of attention to the children at the party, including Melissa. When investigators arrived at the home of Caleb Hughes, they found him washing his clothes, shoes, and belt. This was at one in the morning. Hughes' wife Carol told the detectives...

Tom Horn braiding rope in the Cheyenne County jail  On November 20, 1903, Tom Horn was hanged in Wyoming for the murder of 14-year-old Willie Nickell, a crime that many historians believe that the infamous hired killer did not actually commit. While Horn certainly was responsible for many deaths in the Old West, whether or not he murdered the sheep rancher's son and his possible motive are still a subject of debate and speculation. Thomas Horn, Jr., known as "Tom" was born in 1860 in Memphis, Missouri. He was the fifth of twelve children and suffered at the hands of an abusive father. His only companion as a child, a dog named Shedrick, was killed by two boys who Tom had gotten into a fist fight with. By the time he reached his teen years, it was clear that Tom Horn was a very skilled hunter and marksman. Legend has it that, at the age of sixteen, he shot and killed another man in a duel over a sex worker. After heading out west in the mid-1870s, he held various j...

Mary Woodson/Al Green On this day in 1974, famed soul and gospel singer Al Green was attacked by Mary Woodson, a woman who he had been in an on-again-off-again relationship with for a year. Woodson threw a boiling pot of grits on Green's back while he was undressing to take a bath in his Memphis, Tennesee, home. Mary Woodson then shot and killed herself with a gun belonging to Green. By the time of the attack, Al Green was at the height of his fame having sung such hits as "Tired Of Being Alone" (1971), "Let's Stay Together" (1971) and "I'm Still In Love With You" (1972). In 1973, after becoming a born-again Christian, Green began performing charity concerts at hospitals and prisons. It was at one of these concerts, held in the New York State Correctional Facility, that he first met Mary Woodson, who told Green that she was there to visit a friend. In reality, she had left behind her husband and their children in New Jersey to specificall...

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...

On this day in 1988, Roch Thériault, leader of a cult known as the Ant Hill Kids, murdered one of his followers by performing "surgery" on her intestines. Thériault, who was obsessed with anatomy and medicine but had no medical training, sliced open the abdomen of cult member Solange Boilard and ripped out a piece of her intestines with his bare hands. He then had another cult member, Gabrielle Lavallée, stitch her up with a needle and thread. All of this was done to Boilard without any anesthesia and she also had a plastic tube filled with molasses and olive oil stuck up her rectum to act as an enema. Another tube was shoved down her throat and cult members were instructed to blow into it. All of this was done because Boilard had complained of an upset stomach and Roch Thériault saw himself as a healer. After Solange Boilard died from her injuries, Roch Thériault, claiming that he could resurrect her, proceeded to drill a hole in her head in which he and other male cult m...

Neil LaFave On this day in 1971, Wisconsin game warden Neil LaFave failed to show up for his own birthday party. His absence prompted his wife Peggy to notify the police, who found his truck in a remote swampy area along with a pool of blood and two .22-caliber shells. His headless body was found in a shallow grave. When authorities found his head, they saw that it had two bullet wounds caused by a .22 shotgun. While serving as a game warden for Wisconsin's Sensiba Wildlife Area, Neil LaFave had earned a reputation for being tough on poachers. Every poacher that he had ever arrested was questioned and anyone who didn't have a solid alibi was asked to take a polygraph test. Only one person refused, 21-year-old Brian Hussong. LaFave had arrested Hussong for poaching multiple times. After authorities obtained a warrant for a wiretap of Hussong's phones, they overheard a conversation between Brian Hussong and his grandmother Agnes, in which she assured Brian that his guns...