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.


Execution Stories of Vintage Criminals

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Mug Shot Monday! Jay Kelly Pinkerton, 1979

Jay Kelly Pinkerton Warning: This story contains graphic content. Jay Kelly Pinkerton was executed by the state of Texas on May 15, 1986, for the rape and murder of two women while they slept in their home. On October 26, 1979, Pinkerton entered the Amarillo home of David and Sarah Lawrence between the hours of […]

Mug Shot Monday! Charles ‘Chucky’ Rumbaugh, 1975

Charles Rumbaugh’s minor notoriety as a killer and criminal only came after he committed the murder that put him on Texas death row. On April 4, 1975, Rumbaugh shot and killed an Amarillo jewelry store owner, fifty-eight-year-old Michael Fiorillo, during a robbery. When he was arrested the next day, he pulled a gun on the […]

Mug Shot Monday: Timothy Palmes & Ronald Straight, 1976

Executed for the Robbery/Torture/Murder of a Jacksonville, Florida, furniture store owner in 1976. On July 30, 1976, Ronald Straight received a mandatory conditional parole from the Florida Parole and Probation Commission. By early September, he had drifted to Jacksonville, where he moved into an apartment occupied by Timothy Palmes, Palme’s girlfriend Jane Albert, and Albert’s […]

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 […]

The 1935 Delaware Execution of a Mother & Son

Story by Jason Lucky Morrow Posted: December 9, 2015 On November 9, 1927, twenty-year-old Howard Hitchens of Georgetown, Delaware, was growing concerned for his uncle, Robert, whom he had not seen in several days. When he went to the man’s home in nearby Frankford, he found him “beaten to death in a blood splattered 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! 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 […]

Oklahoma Executioner Rich Owens Discusses His Long Career in 1948 Article

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 Torture Murder of Alice Porter, 1942

During the early part of April, 1942, Donald Fearn, a twenty-three-year-old railway mechanic living in Pueblo, Colorado, sat in his tan colored Ford Sedan and watch night after night as a bevy of pretty young girls departed from a nursing class. Beautiful sixteen-year-old Alice Porter, a high school student taking night classes, caught his attention […]

Triple-Slayer Curtis Shedd, 1950

On August 3, 1950, Curtis Shedd stopped by the Walhalla, South Carolina, home of his trade school pal, John Boyter, to pick-up Boyter’s two daughters for an afternoon of cruising around the countryside. Earlier that day, Boyter was seen in Shedd’s car as the two drove around town. He was never seen alive after that […]

Serial Killer Anna Marie Hahn, 1933-1938

Anna Marie Hahn was a female serial killer who became the first woman ever to be executed in Ohio after it was confirmed that she poisoned five old men to death in order to gain their estates through fraudulently produced wills or by raiding their bank accounts. In 1927, Anna emigrated from Germany and settled […]

Mug Shot Monday! Arthur Eggers, 1946

  Today’s mug shot is taken from “Famous Crimes the World Forgot.” This is Arthur Eggers. In 1946, he was a cuckold who got tired of his younger, dominant wife running around on him. He was coming home late one night when he caught sight of his wife’s lover leaving the house. When he went […]

Savage Killer Timothy McCorquodale, 1974

By Jason Lucky Morrow Want to Read this Story Later on Your Tablet or other Device? Download PDF File of “Savage Killer Timothy McCorquodale, 1974″ January 17, 1974, Clayton County, Georgia, outskirts of Atlanta TO THE CLAYTON COUNTY police officer on routine patrol, the white object near the shoulder of Slate Road and Highway 42[1] […]

Inside a 1939 Execution

. Originally Published as: “Want to See an Execution?” by Allen Rankin, Front Page Detective, April, 1956. It was a bright moonlight night. I was 22, and, as I cruised out the Wetumpka Highway in the new family car, I clicked on the radio. Kay Kyser was playing Stardust. I had a heavy date—to see […]

Mug Shot Monday! Lloyd Sampsell, Famous California Criminal, 1920s-1952,

  I am really proud [because of its rarity] of today’s mugshot of Lloyd Sampsell, a career bank robber whose amazing escapades spanned three decades. This is the only known mugshot of him to exist on the internet, outside of a FBI wanted circular. From the early 1920s to 1952 Lloyd Sampsell was one of […]

Mug Shot: Child Killer Fred Stroble, 1949

. Story #1: Child Brutally Slain in LA, Suspect is Hunted LOS ANGELES, CA, Nov. 15, 1949: The gashed and mutilated body of six year-old Linda Glucoft was found today in a rubbish heap, wrapped in a brightly colored Indian blanket. Police Sgt. Bill Brennan said he definitely had established that the blanket came from […]

The Execution of Eva Dugan

The following article might explain why the first woman executed in Arizona also became the last woman executed in Arizona. Let’s just say, it did not go as planned. She was sentenced to hang for the murder of a rancher she was employed with after his buried body was miraculously discovered 11 months after the […]

Mug Shot: President McKinley Assassin Leon Czologz, 1901

Forgotten President, Forgotten Assassin In the 1890s, Leon Czologz joined the growing American anarchist movement because of what he perceived as a great injustice to the common man by the wealthy who exploited the poor to enrich themselves. He blamed government for this inequality and after reading about the assassination of Italian King Umberto I […]

Father Poisons Family, Oklahoma, 1934

After my last post (The Andrea Yates Epidemic of 1901) I remembered reading this filicide story (a parent who kills their children) and decided to post it because it has subtle differences to it compared to the mothers in the 1901 story. The father’s excuses and story in this post seem a little “hinky.” Isn’t […]