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, […]

  Sunday, October 22, 1933, 8:30 p.m. Goldsboro, North Carolina Herbert Grice was in the middle of untying his shoes when he was stopped by the frantic barking of his dogs. They often barked at everything and anything they didn’t approve of, and Grice quickly dismissed their clamor as insignificant. But before he could get […]

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 […]

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 […]