Today’s Negative Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
When asked if he had any last words, Cherokee Bill, a hoodlum hanged in 1896, replied, “No. I came here to die, not make a speech.”
Culled from: Death: A History Of Man’s Obsessions and Fears
Today’s Burnt Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Joseph Strutt, in his Manners and Customs of the Inhabitants of England (1775), described the execution of Catherine Hayes at Tyburn in 1726 – which didn’t quite go as planned:
“The letter of the law to this very day, I believe, condemns a woman, who doth murder her husband, to be burnt alive… In the case of Catherine Hayes (who, for the murder of her husband, some few years ago, was adjudged to suffer death at the stake), the intention was first to strangle her; but as they used at that time to draw a rope which was fastened round the culprit’s neck, and came through a staple of the stake, but at the very moment that the fire was put to the wood which was set around, the flames sometimes reached the offenders before they were quite strangled – just so it happened to her; for the fire taking quick hold of the wood, and the wind being brisk, blew the smoke and blaze so full in the faces of the executioners, who were pulling at the rope, that they were obliged to let go their hold before they had quite strangled her; so that, as I have been informed by some there present, she suffered much torment before she died. But now they are first hanged at the stake until they are quite dead, and then the fire is kindled round, and the body burnt to ashes.”
Culled from: The History Of Torture
Today’s Yellow And Blue Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
In 1991, artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude put up an environmental installation art of thousands of giant yellow and blue umbrellas in California and Japan. The giant umbrellas, which measured about 20 foot (6 m) in height, 28 foot (8.7 m) in diameter and weighed about 500 lb, became a huge tourist attraction. Less than two months after the installation opened, Lori Rae Keevil-Mathews, a 33-year-old woman drove out to see the umbrellas in California. A wind gust uprooted one of the umbrellas and blew it straight at her, crushing her against a boulder and killing her. Christo immediately ordered all of the umbrellas taken down. The umbrellas, however, took another life – this time in Japan. Crane operator Masaaki Nakamura was electrocuted when the machine’s arm touched a 65,000-volt high-tension line when removing the umbrellas.
Culled from: Neatorama
Generously submitted by: Bex
Today’s Blood-Curdling Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The body of a 16-year-old girl who police say was buried alive by relatives in an “honor” killing carried out as punishment for talking to boys has been discovered in Kahta, Turkey. Turkish police discovered the body after acting on an anonymous tip. The tipster told police that the girl was killed after a family council meeting, and had been buried under a chicken pen. Police say that the girl had complained two months earlier that her grandfather beat her for talking to boys. The girl, identified by police only by her initials M.M., was said to have a large amount of soil in her stomach and lungs, indicating she had been buried alive. “The autopsy result is blood-curdling. According to our findings, the girl – who had no bruises on her body and no sign of narcotics or poison in her blood – was alive and fully conscious when she was buried,” one anonymous expert said. The girl had been reported as missing by her family. Police have arrested her father, mother and grandfather. Her mother has been released but her father and grandfather are awaiting trial. The case is expected to bring further attention to the issue of “honor” killings in Turkey. Official figures indicate that more than 200 “honor” killings take place each year – almost half of all murders in Turkey.
Culled from: Huffington Post
At times like this I really wish I could rent a room in an Eastern European hostel and have this lovely family over for a “visit”.
Today’s Ragged Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
It is August 1854, and London is a city of scavengers. Just the names alone read now like some kind of exotic zoological catalogue: bone-pickers, rag-gatherers, pure-finders, dredgermen, mud-larks, sewer-hunters, dustmen, night-soil men, bunters, toshers, shoremen. These were the London underclasses, at least 100,000 strong. So immense were their numbers that had the scavengers broken off and formed their own city, it would have been the fifth-largest in all of England. But the diversity and precision of their routines were more remarkable than their sheer numbers. Early risers strolling along the Thames would see the toshers wading through the muck of low tide, dressed almost comically in flowing velveteen coats, their oversized pockets filled with stray bits of copper recovered from the water’s edge. The toshers walked with a lantern strapped to their chest to help them see in the predawn gloom, and carried an eight-foot-long pole that they used to test the ground in front of them, and to pull themselves out when they stumbled into a quagmire. The pole and the eerie glow of the lantern through the robes gave them the look of ragged wizards, scouring the foul river’s edge for magic coins. Beside them fluttered the mud-larks, often children, dressed in tatters and content to scavenge all the waste that the toshers rejected as below their standards: lumps of coal, old wood, scraps of rope.
Above the river, in the streets of the city, the pure-finders eked out a living by collecting dog shit (colloquially called “pure”) while the bone-pickers foraged for carcasses of any stripe. Below ground, in the cramped but growing network of tunnels beneath London’s streets, the sewer-hunters slogged through the flowing waste of the metropolis. Every few months, an unusually dense pocket of methane gas would be ignited by one of their kerosene lamps and the hapless soul would be incinerated twenty feet below ground, in a river of raw sewage.
Culled from: The Ghost Map
Today’s Excrutiating Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Where sheer physical brutality was concerned, there was little in Victorian society that rivaled the professional medical act of surgery. Lacking any form of anesthesia beyond opium or alcohol – both of which could only be applied in moderation, given their side effects – surgical procedures were functionality indistinguishable from the most grievous forms of torture. Surgeons prided themselves on their speed above all else, since extended procedures were unbearable for both doctor and patient. Procedures that would now take hours to complete were executed in three minutes or less, to minimize the agony. One surgeon boasted that he could “amputate a shoulder in the time it took to take a pinch of snuff.”
In 1811, the British author Fanny Burney underwent a mastectomy in Paris. She described the experience in a letter to her sister a year later. After drinking a wine cordial as her sole form of painkiller, she settled into the ominous closet that had been assembled by the team of seven doctors in her home, lined with compresses and bandages and gruesome surgical tools. She lay down on the makeshift bed, and the doctors covered her face with a light handkerchief. “When the dreadful steel was plunged into the breast, cutting through veins, arteries, flesh, nerves, I needed no injunction not to restrain my cries. I began a scream that lasted unintermittingly during the whole time of the incision, and I almost marvel that it rings not in my ears still! So excruciating was the agony… I then felt the knife tackling against the breastbone, scraping it! This performed, while I remained in utterly speechless torture.” Before passing out in near shock after the procedure, she caught a glimpse of her primary doctor – “pale nearly as myself, his face streaked with blood and its expression depicting grief, apprehension, and almost horror.”
Culled from: The Ghost Map
Today’s Grand Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
After his first grisly crime, Harvey Louis Carignan (the “Want-Ad Killer”) beat a death sentence and continued to manipulate, rape, and bludgeon women to death using want ads to lure his young female victims. His weapon of choice was a claw hammer which he used to rape and bludgeon his victims earning him the nickname of “Harv the Hammer.” He described himself as: “An instrument of God, one who was acting under His personal instructions. Murder, rape and mutilation are all part of a Grand Plan. God is a figure with a large hood and you can’t see his face.” Under so-called orders from God, he killed at least 5 and maybe as many as 18 women. A catalogue of some of his crimes:
On July 31, 1949 while stationed at Fort Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, Carignan raped and killed 57-year-old Laura Showatler. She died from several blows to the head. (He was convicted of this crime and sentenced to death, but due to a legal technicality his sentence was overturned and he was paroled on April 2, 1960.)
On October 15, 1972, ninteen-year-old Leslie Laura Brock of Bellingham, Washington was found dead. She died from several blows to the head. Witnesses claimed that they saw her get into Carignan’s silver truck.
On May 1, 1973, Kathy Sue Miller, age fifteen, answered Carignan’s want ad for employees at a service station that he was leasing. When the girl showed up in response to the ad, he sexually assaulted and killed her. Her body was found months later by two boys hiking on the Indian reservation north of Everett, Washington. She was naked, bundled in a sheet of plastic, and had been beaten with a hammer which left nickel-size holes in her skull.
By May of 1974, Carignan started dating and living with Eileen Hunley, whom he picked up hitchhiking, after moving to Minnesota. In August Eileen broke off her relationship with him. She disappeared on August 10, 1974. Her rotting corpse was found five weeks later in Shelbourne County. Her skull was imploded by the force of savage hammer blows and she had been raped with a tree branch.
On September 14, 1974, Carignan picked up Gwen Burton from a Sears parking lot. He ripped her clothing, choked her into semi-consciousness and sexually assaulted her with a hammer. He dumped her body in a near by field but she survived and was able to craw to the road side for help. Four days later, he picked up Versoi and Diane Flynn. He forced them to perform oral sex and would beat them if they didn’t follow his commands. The two girls were able to escape when Carignan stopped for fuel. Two days later, Kathy Shultz did not show up at her classes. Her body was found the next day by hunters in a cornfield forty miles form Minneapolis. As in the other cases, Kathy’s skull had been destroyed by crushing hammer blows.
In February of 1975, Carignan was tried on the attempted murder and aggravated sodomy in Gwen Burton’s case. He pled not guilty by reason of insanity claiming that God told him to kill those women. The jury was not convinced by the insanity plea and found him guilty. He was sentenced to a maximum of forty years in prison. Since no criminal in Minnesota may be sentenced to a term exceeding forty years, the other trials and sentences, 30 years for the assault on Jewry Billings; 40 years for Eileen Hunley’s murder; and 40 years for killing Kathy Schultz, were mere formalities. Out of the one hundred fifty years, the convicted killer will have to serve no more than forty, with the usual time off for “good behavior.”
Culled from: Mystery Crime Scene
Based on the true crime book The Want-Ad Killer by Ann Rule.
Hmmmm… no more than 40 years can be served in Minnesota? In which case, he would be released in 2015 or earlier (for “good behavior”). Hopefully he’ll die behind bars before that happens… Elderly and infirm or not, I wouldn’t want this guy loosed upon the world again!
Which brings me to an exciting announcement! In my partnership with Jen of Juror2.Com, we have the latest installation of the Morbid Fact Du Jour Serial Killer Quotes T-Shirts: The Want Ad Killer Shirt!
“I’m not dangerous now…
… but I won’t say that I
wouldn’t be tomorrow.”
- Harvey Carignan
(The Want-Ad Killer)
Get yours now and impress your friends with your Serial Killer panache!
More Serial Killer Quote shirts are also available at the Morbid Fact Du Jour Etsy Store. Tell your friends and foes!
Today’s Fiery Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
A woman out for jog while listening to her iPod had her legs severed by a freight train because she may not have heard it coming. Cheryl Ann Risse, 32, was recovering at a hospital Friday, July 6, 2007. Authorities did not know how she ended up in the path of the train Thursday morning, but rescue workers speculated she did not hear the locomotive coming because she was listening to her iPod. Risse often jogged across the tracks on her way to a nearby park. The train engineer didn’t know he had struck Risse until he returned along the same tracks minutes later. A passing sheriff’s deputy noticed her waving her arms. “My feet are on fire,” she told Tony Long, a battalion chief for Pompano Beach Fire-Rescue, who responded to the scene. “Do you think you can put the fire out? They’re really hurting.” The woman was expected to survive.
Culled from: WFTV.Com
Generously submitted by: Dark Paradox
Of course, anyone who jogs on railroad tracks with headphones on is an automatic Darwin Award Winner. And that’s a fire that no amount of water will extinguish! But on the bright side – she doesn’t need to get up early to go jogging anymore. That must be a relief!
Oh, and speaking of people falling in front of public transit, video of a man falling under a Chicago Transit Authority bus was released the other day. (The family is suing the CTA for negligence in running him over.) Take a look and tell me – is the CTA to blame here, or the man himself?
Today’s Extraordinary And Bizarre Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
A 41-year-old Melvindale man, whose body was discovered Monday, September 10, 2007, went to extraordinary and bizarre lengths to kill himself by constructing a 7-foot-tall guillotine in a wooded area near Fairlane Green shopping center. “It was the most deliberate suicide I’ve seen in my 28 years (as a police officer),” said Dale Covert, deputy chief of Allen Park Police. “It was one of those things where when you saw it, you couldn’t help asking yourself, ‘What the heck?’” Groundskeepers from the shopping center, at Outer and Fairlane drives, discovered the device and the body in a thickly wooded area shortly after 11 a.m. Monday. About a third of the 243 acre former Ford Motor Company landfill is being developed for retail shopping while the remainder is undeveloped green space crisscrossed with trails. Police, who believe the man had been dead two days, declined to release his name. Covert said the man had lived within walking distance of the spot where he died. Investigators believe the man made numerous trips to carry the wooden and metal parts of his contraption into the woods where he assembled it. Covert said the man didn’t leave a note. “He spent some time doing this,” Covert said. “This wasn’t a spur of the moment plan.” The machine utilized a “swing arm-type blade,” according to police, instead of the more famous falling blade of guillotines used by executioners in France from that nation’s revolution in 1792, until the death penalty was outlawed there in 1981. The device had a lever that allowed the man to trigger it himself, Covert said. Allen Park police and firefighters disassembled the machine after photographing it at the scene. Some of the metal parts, including the blade, were kept as evidence while the wooden parts were to be disposed of because they were soaked in blood and considered a biohazard, Covert said. Although the device didn’t completely decapitate the victim, Covert said he believes the man died instantly from his injuries. “It’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Covert said. “It probably didn’t quite work the way he planned, but it succeeded in taking his life, probably instantly. I don’t believe he suffered.”
Culled from: Detnews.Com
Generously submitted by: Jacqui
Today’s Slamming Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
On August 24, 1987, during the final moments of a pro wrestling match, Shirley “Big Daddy” Crabtree delivered his signature “Belly-Splash” move (basically jumping up and down, slamming his belly onto his opponent) on Mal “King Kong” Kirk, who suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 50. Crabtree was cleared after it was revealed that Kirk had a serious heart condition prior to the match. However, Crabtree blamed himself for Kirk’s death and retired from pro wrestling. Before the match, Kirk had prophetically told his friends: “If I have to go, I hope it is in the ring.”
Culled from: Neatorama
Generously submitted by: Bex
