Bonnie and Clyde, together through it all...

Did you ever hear of the daring crimes of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow? They went on their famous two-year crime spree starting in 1932 and ending in 1934.
The general attitude in the country at the time was against government, and Bonnie and Clyde used that to their advantage. Bonnie and Clyde were a madly in love couple that were escaping the big, bad law together. Although they had killed people (they committed 13 murders), they were better known for kidnapping policemen who had caught up with them. They would drive them around for hours, and then they would release them hundreds of miles away, unharmed.  Bonnie and Clyde lived in their car, but they never cared about that as long as they were together. They robbed many banks but never seemed to walk away with very much money. What they feared the most was dying without being in each other's arms, in a field of bullets from the police.








  




  Bonnie dropped out of school at age 16 and married Roy Thornton. The marriage wasn't very good, and Roy began to spend most of his time away from home not long after they got married. Two years later, Roy was caught for robbery and sentenced to five years in prison. They never got a divorce, however they remained separated, without contact. While Roy was away, Bonnie worked as a waitress; however, she had no job just as the Great Depression was beginning. At that time, West Dallas was a very rough and hard neighborhood that helped Clyde fit right in. Clyde and his older brother, Marvin "Buck" Barrow, were often in trouble with the law for they were frequently stealing things like turkeys and cars. He had two serious girlfriends before he met Bonnie, but he was never married.
In January 1930, Bonnie and Clyde met at a mutual friend's house. The attraction was instantaneous. A few weeks after they met, Clyde was sentenced to two years in prison for past crimes. Bonnie was devastated at his arrest. On March 11, 1930, Clyde escaped from jail, using the gun Bonnie had snuck in to him. A week later he was recaptured and was then to serve a 14-year sentence in the Eastham Prison Farm near Weldon, Texas. On April 21, 1930, Clyde arrived at the prison farm. He hoped that if he was physically ill, he might get away from the farm, so he asked a prisoner to chop off some of his toes with an axe. This didn't help him to get transferred, but Clyde was granted an early parole. After Clyde was released on February 2, 1932, he vowed that he would rather die than ever go back to that prison. On one of Clyde's first robberies after he was released, Bonnie went with her new love. The plan was for the Barrow Gang to rob a hardware store. The members of the Barrow Gang changed often, but at different times included Bonnie and Clyde, Ray Hamilton, W.D. Jones, Buck Barrow, Blanche Barrow, and Henry Methvin. Even though she stayed in the car during the robbery, Bonnie was caught and put in the Kaufman, Texas jail. She was released for not having enough evidence. Even after she got out of jail, Bonnie still had a chance to leave Clyde, but she loved him.. She knew that they would be caught and killed very soon, but she felt she was destined to be with Clyde.
At one time they were in a bad car accident. They went to a farm house because Bonnie was burned and injured very badly. But then the police showed up.
Buck and Clyde started opening fire at the cops. Buck, unable to move far, kept shooting. Buck was hit several times while Blanche stayed by his side. Clyde hopped into one of their two cars, but he was then shot in the arm and crashed the car into a tree. Bonnie, Clyde, and Jones ended up running and then swimming across a river. As soon as he could, Clyde stole another car from a farm and drove them away.
Buck died from his wounds a few days after the shootout. Blanche was captured while  at Buck's side. Clyde had been shot four times, and Bonnie had been hit by numerous buckshot pellets. Jones had also received a head wound. After the shootout, Jones took off from the group, never to return.
Bonnie and Clyde took several months to heal, but by November of 1933, they were back out doing what they did best. They now had to be extra careful because they now realized that locals might recognize them and turn them in.
Soon to come was their final shootout. They never thought that it would be their last moments together. The police had used one of Clyde's friend's trucks to bring Clyde in because they knew that when Clyde saw it that he'd stop. Well, Clyde stopped when he saw the tan Ford, and when he did, the police opened fire. Bonnie and Clyde died almost instantly from 130 bullets flying at their bodies. When the shooting ended, the policemen found the back of Clyde's head in piece's and part of Bonnie's right hand shot off.
I think that this has to be one of the most true love stories you could find. That doesn't make it right, of course. But this is an emotional, yet exciting story to read. They have romance, as well as crime, and adventure. All that combined = total excitement!



http://history1900s.about.com/od/1930s/a/bonnieandclyde.htm
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/bonnie-and-clyde

Abraham Lincoln, History within itself...

We all know of Abe Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States of America. Most people know of the assassination that occurred in 1865. However, not everyone knows everything that happened or who even killed him.

On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth, a confederate sympathizer killed President Lincoln by shooting him while he was attending a play at Ford's Theatre in D.C. This was only five days after the ending of the American Civil War.

Abe Lincoln

The original plot was to actually kidnap the President and take him to Richmond, the confederate capital. On March 20, 1865, the day that they had planned the kidnapping, Lincoln failed to show up where Booth and his six fellow helpers were waiting for him.

Two weeks after that, Richmond fell to Union Forces. After all this happening, John Booth, came up with an idea to help some of the confederates. He was going to kill the President of the United States.

John Booth

Booth had learned that Lincoln was to attend the play the evening of April 14. His plan was to assassinate Lincoln, Vice President, Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of the State, William H. Seward. He figured, if they were all gone, that the their government would have no choice, but to surrender.

Lincoln was in a private box above the stage with his wife Mary, an army officer named Henry Rathbone and Rathbone’s fiancé, Clara Harris, the daughter of New York Senator Ira Harris. At 10:15 Booth slipped into the box and fired his .44 caliber single-shot derringer into the back of Lincoln's head. Then he had stabbed Rathbone in the shoulder as he was going toward to check on Lincoln after hearing the horrid shot. Booth jumped to the stage from the box, breaking his leg and yelled, "Sic semper tyrannis!"

Everyone, at first, thought it was all part of the act until they heard the scream of the first lady. Then they knew that it was all very real. Booth escaped the theater on horseback. A doctor arrived immediately. Lincoln was paralyzed and having a hard time breathing. Soldiers came and moved him into a house across the street. There, a surgeon came and stated that he would not be able to make it through the night even with surgery. Lincoln was pronounced dead at 7:22am.

On April 26, Union troops surrounded a Virginia farmhouse where Booth was hiding out and set fire to it, hoping to flush the fugitive out. This did not work,  Booth remained inside. As the blaze intensified, a sergeant shot Booth in the neck, allegedly because the assassin had raised his gun as if to shoot. Carried out of the building alive, he barley lived for three hours, then gazing at his hands he uttered his last words, "Useless, useless.”
Four of Booth’s co-conspirators were convicted for their part in the assassination and executed by hanging on July 7, 1865. They included David Herold and Mary Surratt, the first woman put to death by the federal government.

The Lincoln Memorial stands at the west end of the National Mall as a neoclassical monument to the 16th President. The memorial, designed by Henry Bacon, after ancient Greek temples, stands 190 feet long, 119 feet wide, and almost 100 feet high. It is surrounded by a peristyle of 38 fluted Doric columns, one for each of the thirty six states in the Union at the time of Lincoln's death, and two columns in-antis at the entrance behind the colonnade.
I love listening to this story, Abe Lincoln was one of my favorite presidents and i feel very sad but yet interested in his life story. And even John Booth, sometimes i would just like to ask him, what was going through his mind when he did it.
The president’s corpse was taken to the White House, and on April 18 it was carried to the Capitol rotunda to lay in state on a catafalque. On April 21, Lincoln's body was boarded onto a train that conveyed it to Springfield, Illinois, where he had lived before becoming president. Tens of thousands of Americans lined the railroad route and paid their respects to their fallen leader during the trains solemn progression through the North. Lincoln and his son, Willie, who died in the White House of typhoid fever in 1862, were interred on May 4, 1865, at Oak Ridge Cemetery, near Springfield.

Lincoln Memorial

http://www.history.com/topics/abraham-lincoln-assassination

Robbery, Should We Still Worry?

November 5, 1870. Verdi, Nebraska. Crime history was about to be made.

The Central Pacific Passenger Train was due to be at Verdi at 1:00 that morning. It showed up on time. However, when it was leaving, three masked jumped into the express car. Behind them, five more masked men hurried to their aid.

Six stayed on the express car while the others went back to the west end of the train. The six men on the express car detached the car by breaking the ropes that held it to the main train. Two of the men jumped to the engine, pointed pistols at the driver's head and commanded him to move on. He did as they said. Two brakemen tried to stop the robbers but backed off when the pistols were held to their heads.

The robbers then placed the mailmen and the brakemen in a small car and locked them in a little room inside the car. When they came within six miles of the trains destination, they stopped the train and robbed it of $41,600 in gold coins. This robbery became known as "The Great Robbery".  It was well planned and well executed.

So that they had a better chance of getting away, the robbers had cut all the telegraph wires at Reno, Nevada, (the trains destination).

Robber's being arrested
(they only found two at first)

This was one of the very first big train robberies in the world! When it was put into the paper, it generated a lot of excitement.

There was a reward of $30,000 for the arrests of the men who had robbed the train. In a few short  hours after the reward was announced, many men joined in the hunt for the robbers. 

The Sheriff in charge of the investigation, Charley Pegg, and his undersherrif immediately saddled up and struck for the mountains by a shortcut. They had been given a tip that the robbers had gone that way, but they later learned that it was a false tip.

The next day they went to the crime scene and saw a footprint with an unusually small heel that they knew was the one of the robber's. They then followed up that trail, hoping that they would catch them off guard.  They traveled all night long and didn't find anything. The officer then went to a nearby hotel to see if the robbers had gone there. The owner of the hotel said that some strangely acting men had shown up a few hours before and that they were in a room.

The officer asked to look at the room, and when he opened the door, no one was there. They were gone again!

The sheriff and his partner decided to check out the rest of the rooms to see if the robbers may have been playing a trick or something. When they got to the third room, they found eight men asleep in the room, and they all had a boot with a little heel on it. The officer and his co-officer quietly shut the door and drew their guns.

They woke the men up, and none of them put up no resistance (because of not wanting to be shot). They were arrested and tried for robbing the train. The names of the men were Parsons, Lie Squires, john Chapman, Sol Jones, Chat Roberts, and Fill Cockerell. They were convicted and confined in Nevada State Prison on Christmas Day of the same year. They were never heard from again.


Stories differ about what happened to them. Some people say that they had been out of prison a few years before they died, but others say that they never made it out of prison. No one actually knows.

central Pacific Railroad

I don't know if we are always going to have to worry about robbery. A lot of people say that back then you didn't have to worry about it as much as you do now. I think that there is crime everywhere; no one knows when it will stop or if it ever will.


I am happy the the officer caught the thieves and that no one was physically harmed in this crime. Hopefully, the crime rate does go down....but who knows what will happen.

http://cprr.org/Museum/Robbery.html

D.B. Cooper.... The Flying Robber

A skyjacker in disguise.  D.B. Cooper. A man who jumped out of an airplane while taking money with him. This isn't your everyday robber. 


People have been trying to figure this crime out for over three decades now. In 1971, in the American Northwest, Cooper hijacked and threatened to blow up an airplane. He took $200,000.00 from the plane and then leaped from the plane while in the air with twenty- one pounds of twenty dollar bills strapped to his chest. After he jumped out of the plane, Cooper was never seen again, dead nor alive. No one knows this man's real name. He may be the most recognized criminal since Jack the Ripper.

Sketch of DB Cooper

People from all over the country have tried everything they could have thought of to try and figure out what ever happened to this mysterious man. Thirty years later, not one known person knows anything. Officer's say that this crime was different than most. Most of the times the crime's are where the person injured at least one person, when it came to this one, no one was ever hurt, the only thing that happened was, they were put at risk. No one was injured in the slightest way, and at the same time, he helped us because after he committed this crime, the air ports finally started making security more extensive. There are many books all over the place published about the mysterious D.B. Cooper, everyone around wanted to know more, or get their hands on one little piece of evidence to try and be the one person who helped capture this man.

 
D. B. Cooper’s wardrobe was a dark suit and tie and a white shirt with a pearl tie tack.  He carried a brief case along his side the whole time. He had brown eyes, short, brown hair. Cooper handed a note to Flo Schaffner right after the plane was in the air. The next time Schaffner passed, Cooper gestured for her to lean close. He said, “You’d better read that. I have a bomb.” Schaffner went to the galley and she read the note. She hurried to the cockpit, where Capt. Scott took a look. He immediately radioed Sea-Tac air traffic control,  who in turn alerted the FBI. The feds placed an urgent call to Northwest Orient’s president, Donald Nyrop, who ordered full cooperation with Cooper’s demands.

The actual plane that Cooper hijacked.

No body knows if this man is alive or dead. Will anyone ever know?

 I think that it is always going to be a mystery of what happened. This is one of the most curious and most amazing crimes that i have ever read about. I am happy that no one was hurt, but this man was really a daredevil. I wonder if we will ever know what ever happened to him. I liked how they said that Cooper may have been the most recognized criminal since Jack the Ripper. The reason i say this is because, until now, i never heard of either one of them. I just thought that was a little comical, that i never heard of them before.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/scams/DB_Cooper/index.html

La Cosa Nostra

Did you ever hear of Charles "Lucky" Luciano? Up until he died in 1962, he was leader of a big Italian name was Salvatore Lucania. He was born on November 24, 1897, and his birth name was Salvatore Lucania.



Charles Luciano

His family moved to the lower east side of New York in 1906, where he was first arrested in 1907. By 1915, he trained in the Five Points Gang, a crew under John Torrio. In this gang he became friends with Al Copone and started his prostitution with Joe Adonis in the early 1920's and was in total control of prostitution in Manhattan by 1925. In 1929 Luciano was kidnapped, beaten and stabbed repeatedly with an ice pick. He survived but maintained "Omerta." Omerta is a vow that is to never reveal any secrets or members under penalty of death or torture. He got involved with some high people that only had crime on their minds. One day when he was at a restaurant with a couple of his boss's, he went to the bathroom and a couple men came in and had killed them. When "Lucky" came back out, they were dead. Later he had become the new boss. He went years without ever being caught, although the police were aware of what was going on. They just never had enough evidence to prove anything. Then one year, they ended up actually getting pictures, and that was all that they had needed. Charles was sentenced to lie in prison however he got a deal and was let out. The police kept their eyes on him but that didn’t stop him from doing what he did best. On January 26, 1962, he passed away after having a severe heart attack. 
 The major threats to American society posed by these groups are drug trafficking and money laundering. They have been involved in heroin trafficking for decades. Two major investigations that targeted Italian organized crime drug trafficking in the 1980s are known as the “French Connection” and the “Pizza Connection.” Mafia crime families don't limit themselves to drugs and money laundering, though; they are also involved in illegal gambling, kidnapping, fraud, murders, bombings, and the selling of illegal weapons. Their crimes generate about $100 billion every day. "Lucky" is credited with making the Mafia what it is today. He was known to be one of the most dangerous and most out-of-control crime leaders the world has ever known. Most of the people in the Mafia here in the United States came here illegally. "Lucky" structured the La Cosa Nostra when he was deported back to Italy in 1946 for operating a major prostitution ring. In Italy the word "mafia" usually means, "manly". The Sicilian Mafia specializes in heroin trafficking, political corruption, and military arms trafficking—and is also known to engage in arson, frauds, counterfeiting, and other racketeering crimes. With an estimated 2,500 Sicilian Mafia affiliates it is the most powerful and most active Italian organized crime group in the U.S.La Cosa Nostra is the foremost organized criminal threat to American society. Literally translated into English it means “this thing of ours.” It is a nationwide gang of criminals, linked by blood ties, dedicated to committing crime and protecting its members. To this day the mafia is all over the world, they are conducted of all sorts of races. Many people are dead set against the mafia, however, there are a few people that think it is a great thing that people want to take the world into their own hands, their own way. I feel that this is very disappointing, because the world is chaotic by itself, but when people decide to take their own lives and try to "make the world better by getting even" it just makes thing's worse. It saddens me and scares me at the same time. It only takes one mistake to get into the mafia, and a lot of the times, when you get in, you can’t get back out.  Mafia that first appeared in the 1800's. They are some of the most notorious and widespread of all criminal societies. 


Some men in the Itailian Mafia.

 http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/luckyluciano.html
http://www.gambino.com/bio/charlesluciano.htm



Kathy Shea, Never Found, Never Forgotten...

 Kathy Shea, at 6 years old, in 1965 was kidnapped in Tyrone, PA. She was on her way to kindergarten at the time. On her way to school, she stopped to say hello to her neighbor. Then she continued on her way. Somewhere within the next block and a half, she vanished. Kathy Shea was never seen again.

Kathy Shae, 6 years old.

The day she disappeared. she was wearing a brown hat, beige coat with a fur collar, red gloves, red knit sweater,  brown jumper; red tights, and yellow boots with black soles.  She had brown hair and bright blue eyes.  Police brought in bloodhounds and conducted a very large manhunt, searching the nearby river and the ridges surrounding the community; however, they  lost her trail  in an alleyway. This led the police to believe that she had been taken in a car. The search for Kathy continued for many years, with police sending notice after notice to every state hoping for a lead.  By September 1996, police had logged over 1,300 hours searching for Kathy, vowing to continue.  Kathy's mother died in the years following Kathy's disappearance; however, her father continued searching for any possible clue  to her whereabouts up until his own death. 


Below is an artist's rendition of what Kathy would look like at age 43.

Kathy Shae's progressed picture at age 43

This is a crime that had touched the lives of Tyrone locals for many years. Kathy will always be in the heart of her loved ones and in the minds of those who followed her case.


I feel that this is a very sad case.  If I were around then and old enough, I would have volunteered to help search for her.

http://sites.google.com/site/utinker/shea-1