Murder

Severin Klosowski was born near Warsaw in Poland in December of 1865. His father was a carpenter who earned enough to give his son a good education - Severin attended a boy’s school until the age of 14, and was then apprenticed to a…

In November 1973 country music was rocked by the murders of two of its stars in Nashville. Banjo supremo David Akeman and guitar slinger James Phillip Widener died in similar violent circumstances just weeks apart and it put a whole new…

The popular history of Tudor England is all about the royal family - the dour tight-fisted Henry VII, the laughing murderous Henry VIII, the boy-king Edward, the bloody-handed Mary, the glorious asexual Elizabeth. Of course, that’s barely…

Dear Me, First off, hi! I’m you, if a little thicker round the middle, and a little, well, a lot less hair! I thought I’d impart some life lessons to you, to help you on your way through this crazy, confusing, defining moment of your…

Note: This edition of Terrible People from History covers sexual exploitation, and gets more than a little gory as well. Consider yourself forewarned. Abe Sada was born in Tokyo in May 1905 to a relatively respectable middle class…

Belle Gunness was an immigrant who came to America in 1881. She took the name of Belle Storseth when she came over from Norway. She was born in 1859 as Brynhild, and her original surname was probably Paulsdatter Størseth. Details on her…

Berrima in New South Wales was never a large town. Today its population is around six hundred people, and in the nineteenth century it was half that. One morning in February 1842 the citizens of Berrima made the discovery that it was now…

Bugsy Siegel, as he hated being called, was born Benjamin Siegel in New York in 1906. His parents were Jewish immigrants, though where they had immigrated from is debatable. Some sources say Austria, but most point to Letychiv, a small…

Charlie Peace was born in Sheffield in 1832. His father, John Peace, was a shoemaker by trade, though that was not his first profession. John had originally been a coal-hauler, but he lost a leg in a workplace accident. One story is that…

Part 1 | Part 2 She stormed into the room and continued shooting. I peered around the corner and saw three bodies lying on the floor. One person was hiding behind a huge desk holding their gun over the desk and firing wildly. I heard…