New York Vintage True Crime Stories

These New York true crime stories appear on the Historical Crime Detective blog.

Serial Killer James Turner, Active 1954-1975, New York & Florida

Serial Killer James Turner James Turner is a previously unrecognized serial killer linked to the murders and accidental deaths of ten friends, coworkers, and family members in which he was the beneficiary of their life insurance policies. He was active for a twenty-one year period between 1954 and 1975, when he was arrested on January […]

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The Cupcake Killer, 1942, Queens, New York

This story was written by NYPD detective Captain Henry Flattery, Retired, for Front Page Detective magazine, November, 1955. It was part of a collection of stories called, “Dumbells I have Known.” which poked fun at some stupid criminals. He was with the NYPD for thirty years and worked on many important cases from that […]

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The Famous Henry Thaw & Stanford White Case of 1906

. The Henry Thaw & Stanford White case of 1906 is perhaps one of the most famous cases of the 20th Century in terms of newspaper coverage and books written about it. The case had all the elements a lasting true crime story requires: high society, famous people, sex, jealousy, and cocaine. The following story […]

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Mug Shot Monday! Armando Cossentino, 1962

In 1962, Queens County, New Yorker Armando Cossentino, 19, and his 36 year-old lover, Jean Difede, murdered her physician husband, Dr. Joseph Defede in order to collect on his $72,000 life insurance policy. They were arrested not long after and went on trial early that summer. Armando was sentenced to die in the electric chair […]

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Med Students use Fresh Grave for Anatomy Lab

Like many of the stories I run across, I cringe when I read them because they just seem too ghoulish or graphic. But then I think, ‘well, this is the way it was and it’s better to be honest with this history than hide it.’ That’s how I came to decide to post this story. […]

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The Confessions of Serial-Killer “Texas Jim”

Author’s Note: “Texas Jim” Baker was a serial killer who used poison and pistols to murder nine men around the world between 1924 and 1929. After he was captured in February, 1930, for the murder of a chemical laboratory employee, Baker bragged about these murders “with lip-smacking gusto” during several confessions to investigators and newspaper reporters. He thrived on the attention he received and often embellished his life story and the murders by describing them with overtly gruesome details meant to shock his listeners into thinking he was a special kind of monster. By doing so, Baker also hoped to increase his celebrity criminal status and gain more attention for himself. Several months after he was sentenced for one of his murders, International Features Syndicate paid him to write his autobiography. The story they published was filled with lies, half-truths, self-pity and Baker’s trademark overstated joy he felt while poisoning his victims. Through my research of New York newspapers, and five true crime magazine articles published after his trial, I believe I have separated fact from fiction as well as anyone could. Below, Baker’s “autobiography” is followed by facts gleaned from investigation and his incarceration as reported by New York newspapers. –

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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 […]

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