True Crime Books by Jason Lucky Morrow

Welcome to HistoricalCrimeDetective.com [Est. 2013], where you will discover forgotten crimes and criminals lost to history. This blog is the official website for true crime writer Jason Lucky Morrow, author of four books including the popular series: Famous Crimes the World Forgot, Volume I and Volume II. Please follow us on Facebook, for updates. Contact me here.


Archive for 'Mug Shot Monday'

Mug Shot Monday! Torturer-Murderer Donald Fearn, 1942

New Mug Shot for an old blog post. Obtaining vintage mug shots from original sources is never easy. It takes time, money, and effort to coax these old photographs from state archives. This one below of Colorado inmate Donald Fearn, executed in 1942 for the torture murder of sixteen-year-old Alice Porter, took several weeks and […]

Mug Shot Monday! Adolph Smetak, 1925

  In August 1925, neighbors of Prague, Nebraska, farmer John Smetak grew suspicious when they hadn’t seen him since March. His son, Adolph, told neighbors he had gone back to the “old country” (Bohemia) to visit relatives. Their suspicions led them to report the missing man to county deputies who began their search on the […]

Mug Shot Monday! Doyle Edward Skillern, 1974

  During the month of October 1974, Patrick Randel, an undercover narcotics agent with the Texas Department of Public Safety, was working a drug buy/sting operation against two underworld figures from Austin. With $850 in “buy money,” Randel agreed to purchase Quaaludes from the two men. On October 23, the three met in a room […]

Mug Shot Monday! James Dupree Henry, 1973

On March 23, 1973, James Dupree Henry broke into the home of eighty-one-year-old Orlando civil rights leader, Zellie Riley, with the intention of robbing him. After finding just $64 and some credit cards, Henry bound Riley, who was his next door neighbor, to a chair beat him with a pistol, slit his throat with a […]

Mug Shot Monday! Thomas Barefoot, 1978

. On August 7, 1978, Harker Heights Police Officer Carl Levin located an arson suspect entering a vacant house in the small community located southeast of Killeen, Texas. When Officer Levin stopped the individual and asked for identification, the man pulled out a .25 caliber pistol and shot the thirty-one-year-old Levin in the head, killing […]

Mug Shot Monday! Jake Vohland, Chicken Rustler, Poultry Pilferer, 1931

Since this is the week of thanksgiving, I wanted to work in a thanksgiving type crime. The best I could do was this poultry pilferer from 1931. Credit: Nebraska State Historical Society   In 1931, during the depths of the Great Depression, Jake Vohland attempted to steal chickens from Mr. and Mrs. Dale E. Stubblefield […]

Mug Shot Monday! Ronald O’Bryan: ‘The Candy Man,’ & ‘The Man Who Ruined Halloween,’ 1974

On Halloween night, 1974, Ronald O’Bryan took his eight-year-old-son, Timothy, and his daughter, trick-or-treating with some other neighborhood friends near their home in the Deer Park suburb of Houston. Since there was a light rain falling, they only collected candy in a two-block area for half-an-hour before returning home. As he went to bed, Ronald […]

Mug Shot Monday! Cop Killer Frederick D. Fair

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, […]

Mug Shot Monday! Serial Killer Herbert Mullin

Herbert William Mullin is a serial-killer who murdered thirteen people in California between 1972 and 1973. After he was voted most likely to succeed when he graduated from a Santa Cruz high school in 1965, Mullin begins to exhibit bizarre behavior that would have him in and out of mental hospitals several times over the […]

Mug Shot Monday! The George Tisdale Case, 1911-1925

The George Tisdale Case The case of George Tisdale, convicted in 1911 for second degree murder and sentenced to 10 to 15 years in federal prison, reveals a deplorable side to the prison justice system at that time. The story below  comes from the August 1926 edition of the publication, The O.E. Library Critic. The […]