Recent content by Gruffin

I had forgotten about the weapon that supposedly accidentally discharged when it fell out of his locker on October 27, 1957, the bullet wounding his elbow. I see Warren report indicates the pistol was a .22 made by Derringer. Booth shot Lincoln with a Derringer, and so I suppose it could have...

Before Lee H. Oswald turned 17, he was purportedly in possession of a first-model double-acting Iver Johnson five-shot safety automatic top-break hammered revolver that according to the auction site used .38 S&W (short) rounds. It was basically already an antique, made probably in the last...

Probably has something to do with December 5, 1976 (when she was last seen alive) being the centennial of the Conway Theater fire in Brooklyn. Guess the '76 bicentennial celebrations didn't do for the killer(s) what he wanted. The night of November 1, 1974, Lisa White, Kim Benoit, and Kathy...

Something that didn't occur to me until a few weeks ago is that Kupcinet's death is most often listed as having taken place on November 28, which is the anniversary of the 1942 Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire in Massachusetts that killed 492 after starting about 10:15 pm Boston time. JFK and RFK...

The intersection of South Shore and Allen was in my opinion intentionally chosen to relate to the South Shore Line train wreck (7 dead) of January 18, 1993, (MLK day) in Gary Indiana. According to a Northwest Indiana Times Article, the 10-year-old boy killed in the wreck, traveling to Chicago...

According to the Minneapolis Star of September 3, 1974 (available from newspapers.com) the Minnesota State Fair closed September 2, 1974, the same day the Reker sisters were last seen alive. From same article by Minneapolis Star Staff Writer Randy Furst: The fair is officially ranked third...

Consider the April 4, 1958, fatal stabbing of Johnny Stompanato by actress Lana Turner's 14 y/o daughter. He purportedly was threatening to kill Lana Turner and Lana's daughter and mother, and so the homicide was ruled justifiable. Perhaps the anniversary was part of what encouraged the likely...

It's curious that Michelle Kasperek lived on St. Florian Street and that she is believed to have been murdered on May 4, the Catholic feast day for St. Florian. St. Florian is the patron saint of, most prominently, firefighters. The Florian cross so often used as an emblem for the firefighting...

Link to the article from 14 Jan 1963 Toronto Star concerning Cantelon arrest and nine charges against him, via newspapers.com.

Looking at other people being killed about the same time as an assassination does seem a reasonable thing to do. And since assassins more-or-less by definition attack famous people, it does I suppose make sense to more look at celebrities killed at about the same time. Anyway, I got to thinking...

I doubt the murder of Kupcinet has anything to do with the phone call from the Oxnard area. Oxnard is almost 1.5 hours from LA by car, and it's not all that suggestive that Kupcinet's father had known Jack Ruby, since the acquaintance was many years before and since Ruby was the sort of person...

How horrible. John Allore was an excellent crime journalist whose attention to important detail in his web posts is so rare and useful in figuring out crimes. The book Wish You Were Here with Patricia Pearson too is useful, but it is better than a useful book, it is a beautiful book. His...

When Richard Paul Pavlick was trying to blow up JFK in December 1960, it was special agent John Marshall (head of the Miami secret service) who was the first secret service agent to take seriously the suspicions originating from Belmont, NH, postmaster Thomas Murphy. Marshall it was who issued...

The city of Toronto has online aerial photographs of the city from 1973. Clicking on map 193 or 158 yields an aerial map containing crime scene area, and map 159 shows Yorkdale Mall. The 1971 maps show that near where the bodies were found there was in 1971 what looks like a covered...

It's also interesting that there is a Sultana Avenue whose western end is about a quarter mile east of Yorkdale Mall. The 1865 Sultana steamboat explosion (~1400 dead) also happened in the early hours (the explosion was about 2 a.m. local time ) of an April 27, the day after Shakespearean actor...