On August 19, 1928, Atlanta Police Department Patrolman John McDaniel responded to a disturbance between two acquaintances. When Officer McDaniel attempted to arrest Frederick D. Fair, the principal instigator, Fair shot the forty-nine-year-old lawman in the chest. McDaniel was transported to the hospital, but died three days later of his wound. Fair was later apprehended, […]

Rich Owens was the executioner for the state of Oklahoma from 1915 to 1947. In addition to being a guard, his took the position as executioner because the state paid him $100-150 for every man he executed. During his life, he killed a total of 75 men: sixty-six of those were by execution, and the […]

The 1977 murders of three girl scouts at Camp Scott near Locust Grove, Oklahoma, is, in my opinion, one of the most horrific and fear inducing unsolved cases in American history. There have been three books written about that summer night in 1977, a documentary has been made, and there is a website just for […]

Joe Crowe’s Prison Mug Shot Oklahoma State Penitentiary convict Joe Crowe is a great example of the laxness with which prisons once guarded their inmates. In 1938, Crowe was a prison trustee on a dam project near Fort Towson, Oklahoma, where state convicts provided a large portion of the labor force. That November, Crowe left […]

When railroad section hand George Darnell was fired from his job on August 17, 1929, he set his mind on revenge. The following day, Darnell tampered with a track switch near Henryetta, Oklahoma, which later caused a passenger train to jump the track. Thirteen people, eleven of them passengers, were killed and ten more were […]

William Tyson Horton was a serial rapist and child molester from Oklahoma City who operated between 1970 and 2010. The unique aspects of his life of crime is that between 1970 and 1983, Horton repeatedly was able to wiggle out of many serious rape and molestation charges against him by lenient judges and high priced […]

  This unfortunate face belongs to Nathan Jerry Ellis, killer and rapist. In 1956, Ellis and another man were convicted for the murder of Victor Quick in Custer County, Oklahoma. He was sentenced to life in prison for first degree murder. He appealed, received a new trial, and was re-sentenced to serve sixty-years for manslaughter. […]

. WJ Edwards 2-15-39, Convicted of Murder Story 1: “Two Are Held in City Death, Shots Blamed on Robbery Fear” Two men were held in the city jail Monday and funeral arrangements completed for a third as the aftermath of a shooting Sunday night in a one-room house at 129 West Chickasaw Avenue, Services for […]

This is Rex Brinlee Jr. He was a Tahlequah, Oklahoma plumber and operator of a night club, called “The Library Club,” in 1971 when he was the chief suspect in the theft of a pick-up truck from a used car-lot. A witness in that case, Don Bolding, of Bristow, was set to testify against him. […]

. Today’s mug shot belongs to Tulsa bank robber Coney Coffey. Coffey robbed a bank in Tulsa in 1924 and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. While in prison, he contracted tuberculosis. He escaped twice in 1934 by tunneling underneath the tuberculosis wing of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary hospital with 7(?) other prisoners. During […]