On 24 April 1889, William Henry Bury became the last person to be hanged in Dundee, Scotland. I thought you might be interested because Bury has been named as a Jack the Ripper suspect. He strangled his wife, then stabbed the body. It's known he lived in Bow, London, at the time of the Whitechapel murders. But Bury does not seem to be a strong suspect. He did not mutilate his wife's body. The murder seems to have been a 'domestic' murder, sadly, all too common but different from the sadistic murders of strangers. It seems to have been a coincidence that he was living in London in 1888.
Mary Ann Cotton was one of Britain’s worst serial killers. It’s not certain how many people she killed. She may have poisoned up to 21 people.
Mary Ann was born in Durham County in 1832. Her father was a miner, but he died in an accident when Mary Ann was 10. When she was 16, Mary Ann became a domestic servant. In 1852 she married William Mowbray. The couple moved to Cornwall, where William had a job on a railway. The couple had 4 or 5 children in Cornwall but only one of them lived (unfortunately, due to a lack of documentation many of the details of Mary Ann’s life are uncertain). Infant mortality was very high in the 19th century, and the loss of several children was not unusual.
In 1857 Mr and Mrs Mowbray returned to County Durham with one surviving child. The couple soon had more children. However, the only surviving child from their years in Cornwall died in 1860.
Mary Ann persuaded her husband, William, to take out a life insurance policy. Soon afterward, another of their children died. William himself followed in 1865. His death was ascribed to an infectious disease and Mary Ann Cotton gained £35 (a large sum of money at that time). Mary Ann was left with two daughters. Sadly, one of them died, apparently of an infectious disease. Mary Ann then sent her only surviving child, a girl named Isabella, to live with her mother, leaving her free of children and with no husband.
Mary Ann soon remarried. She met a man called George Ward and they soon married. The unfortunate man died in 1866, once again seemingly of an infectious illness. Mary Ann then became the housekeeper of a man called John Robinson, a widower. Shortly after she moved in one of Robinson’s children died.
In 1867 Mary Ann went to visit her mother, who died shortly afterward.
Mary Ann then moved in with Robinson. Her daughter with William Mowbray, Isabella, also moved in. Sadly, Isabella died in 1868.
In 1867 Mary Ann married Robinson and they had two children, but only one survived. Fortunately, Mr Robinson discovered that Mary Ann had stolen money from his building society account.
He also reportedly became suspicious when Mary Ann kept trying to persuade him to take out life insurance. Robinson threw Mary Ann out of the house.
However, in 1870, she met a widower called Frederick Cotton. Soon afterward, Cotton’s sister and one of his children died.
Yet, he married Mary Ann in September 1870. By the end of 1871, Frederick Cotton and two of his children had died. Once again, Mary Ann benefited handsomely from a life insurance policy. But she was left with a stepson, Frederick’s child.
Like so many murderers Mary Ann became foolishly overconfident. Having got away with murder several times she seems to have started feeling that she was invincible and she would never be caught. In 1872 Mary Ann took a lover named Joseph Natrass. However, he soon died, leaving his possessions to Mary Ann. Meanwhile, she became pregnant by a man named John Quick-Manning.
Mary Ann then tried to send her stepson Charles Edward Cotton to a workhouse. She told a workhouse official that she could not marry because of her stepson. Unwisely, she also told him ‘I won’t be troubled long. He’ll go like all the rest of the Cottons.’ Soon afterward the boy died and the official went to the police.
The body was exhumed and was found to contain arsenic. The bodies of Frederick Cotton and two of his other children were also exhumed and were found to contain arsenic. So was the body of Mary Ann was charged with the murder of the boy, Charles Edward Cotton. However, her trial had to be delayed because she was pregnant again. It did not begin until she had given birth for a final time in January 1873.
She went on trial on 5 March 1873. Not surprisingly, the jury found her guilty. Mary Ann Cotton was hanged in Durham jail on 24 March 1873. However, her neck was not broken, and she took about three minutes to be strangled to death.
It will never be known exactly how many people Mary Ann Cotton poisoned.
The Bloody Benders were a family of murderers in Kansas in the 1870s. Little is known about them; unfortunately, there are different versions of what happened. No doubt myths and legends have grown up.
It’s known for certain that the Benders were a family of four. They were German immigrants. Pa Bender was described as being about 60 years old in 1873. Ma Bender was said to be about 50. John Bender was about 27. Kate Bender was about 24.
The Homestead Act of 1862 gave settlers the right to free land if they farmed it for five years. After the Civil War, the Osage Indians were moved to a reservation in Oklahoma, and their land was then given to homesteaders.
At the end of 1870, the Benders claimed land in Kansas. They built a cabin about 2 miles from the town of Cherry Vale, next to the Osage Trail. In the 1870s, many people traveled along the trail by horse or wagon. The Benders let travelers stay the night. They also sold groceries to their neighbors. In the 1870s, Spiritualism was popular in the USA. Kate Bender claimed to be a spiritual healer. She even called herself ‘Professor Kate Bender’.
The Benders’ ‘inn’ was divided into two rooms by a canvas curtain. Nobody witnessed their murders, but the victims all had the back of their heads caved in and their throats cut. It’s believed the Benders would ask guests to sit with their backs to the curtain. Standing behind it was a man holding a hammer. At the right moment, he would smash the back of the guest’s head with the hammer. The Benders would then cut his throat and rob him. Under the Bender’s hut was a small ‘cellar’.
It’s thought the dead body was hidden there until it could be disposed of. The Benders also sold the victims’ horses and wagons.
The Benders killed at least 11 people. The first definite victim was a man named Jones who was murdered at the beginning of 1871. His body was found dumped in Drum Creek. His head had been smashed in, and his throat was cut.
Shortly after, two unidentified men were found dumped on the prairie, both of them had been killed in the same way as Mr Jones. The Benders then began burying their victims near their cabin rather than dumping them in the open.
The last victim of the Bloody Benders was Dr William H. York. Dr York had been an assistant surgeon in the Unionist army during the Civil War. He was in his early 30s at the time of his death.
In March 1873, Dr. York set out on horseback from Fort Scott, Kansas, for Independence. He told someone that he planned to stay at the Benders’ place.
He was never seen alive again. His brother, Colonel Alexander York, grew alarmed when he did not return, and he set out with a party of men to look for him. The Benders admitted Dr York had stayed at their ‘inn’, but they claimed he had left normally. Colonel York and his men moved on, but the trail went cold. When the Colonel returned to the Benders’ place, he found it abandoned. The Benders had realized the game was up, and they had fled.
On 6 May 1873, Colonel York’s men discovered a trapdoor in the Bender’s ‘inn’ with a ‘cellar’ below. They found it had dried blood in it. Then someone noticed a depression in the ground near the shack. On digging, they found the body of Dr York. His head was smashed in, and his throat was cut.
Several other victims were found buried near the Benders’ inn. Altogether, seven graves were found. One of them contained two bodies.
Among the victims was Henry F. McKenzie from Indiana, who was relocating to Independence. He was about 29 at the time of his death. The body of William F. McCrotty from Cedar Vale was also found.
Two victims were buried in the same grave. One of them was George Newton Longcor. Mr Longcor served in the American Civil War. He was 30 years old at the time of his death.
The other body was his infant daughter, Mary Ann Longcor. She was only about 19 months old when she died. The child was either strangled or buried alive. A victim, Benjamin M. Brown, was identified by his silver ring.
The bodies of two other men were never identified. Sadly, the bodies were too decomposed to allow identification. Altogether, the bodies of 7 men and a baby were found buried by the Benders’ shack, but it seems almost certain that the Benders also killed the three men found dumped in 1871.
Meanwhile, the Benders had fled with their wagon to the town of Thayer. They then escaped by train. What happened to them afterward is a mystery. A party of men pursued the Benders, but the trail went cold. For years afterward, there were rumors that vigilantes had caught the Benders and killed them, but no evidence was ever found to prove this.
The governor of Kansas offered a reward of $ 2,000 (a large sum of money at the time) to anyone who could provide information leading to the arrest of the Benders, but no one ever claimed it. The Benders’ shack was then broken up. People took pieces of it as souvenirs, and it soon disappeared.
Although Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in Britain the last woman to be sentenced to death was Mary Wilson in 1958.
Mary was born on 11 June 1889. She married a chimney sweep named John Knowles in 1912 He died in August 1955. Early in 1956 she married a painter and decorator named John Russell but he died early in 1957. At first, the two men were believed to have died from natural causes but later they were found to have been poisoned.
In June 1957 Mary married Oliver Leonard. He soon fell ill and died on 3 October.
A doctor ascribed his death to heart failure, although the truth is Mary poisoned him. On 28 October 1957 she married a fourth man, Ernest Wilson but he lived for only a short time after the wedding. He too, was poisoned. He died on 12 November 1957. At first his death was ascribed to natural causes.
However, people who knew Mary were suspicious. It was not just that her husbands kept dying; it was also the cheerful way she dealt with the deaths. It’s said that at her last wedding reception, Mary was asked what to do with the leftover sandwiches she said they would still be fresh for his funeral. (Such brazenness is common among multiple murderers. They often seem to think they will never be caught). Police began investigating and they exhumed the bodies of Oliver and Ernest.
She was convicted of poisoning two of her husbands, Oliver Leonard and Ernest Wilson with phosphorus, which was found in rat and beetle poison. She was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment because of her old age (She was 68). The remains of her two other husbands, John Knowles and John Russell were exhumed and found to contain poison but it was felt there was no point in having another trial.
Mary Wilson, the merry widow of Windy Nook died in prison in 1963.
Nathan Leopold, aged 19, and Richard Loeb, aged 18, killed a 14-year-old boy in Chicago in 1924. Both were from rich families, and both were very intelligent. They excelled academically. Loeb graduated from the University of Michigan at age 17. Leopold was studying law at the University of Chicago and planned to study at Harvard Law School. Both seemed to believe they were superior beings, above ethics and the law. The two committed petty theft just for thrills before progressing to murder. They planned to commit the perfect murder. They didn’t. In fact, it was an incompetent crime, and they were easily caught.
The unfortunate victim was Bobby Franks, aged 14. On 21 May 1924, Leopold and Loeb hired a car. They chose a victim at random. Driving along, they saw a boy walking home from an after-school baseball game. Bobby didn’t know Leopold, but he knew the Loeb family. The murderers lured him into the car. They gagged him then hit him, repeatedly over the head with a chisel. Bobby suffocated on the gag.
They threw the chisel out of the car. It was found and handed in to the police. Leopold and Loeb then stripped the body and hid it in a culvert by a railroad. They poured acid over his face to make identification harder.
They sent a letter to the family of Bobby Franks saying he had been kidnapped and demanding a ransom of $10,000. In fact, Bobby was already dead.
The body of Bobby Franks was discovered the next day, 22 May. Nearby, the police found a pair of glasses. They had an unusual hinge which allowed them to be traced to a certain optometrist. He had only made three prescriptions for that type of glasses. One of them was Nathan Leopold. He claimed he must have dropped them from his jacket pocket in the area when he was bird watching some days before. But it had been raining for days before the body was found and the glasses were dry. The police asked Leopold to demonstrate how the glasses could have fallen from his jacket pocket, but no matter how he bent over the glasses did not fall out.
At first Leopold claimed he had driven with his friend Loeb to Lincoln Park, Chicago. Loeb confirmed his alibi. However, Leopold had typed notes for students at his law school. One still had the notes and the typeface was found to match the type on the ransom note sent to Bobby Franks’ family. Also, the Leopold family chauffeur made a statement that the car the murderers claimed they had driven around all day on 21 May had not left the garage that day.
Faced with the evidence, Loeb broke down and confessed. When he was told that Loeb had confessed, Leopold confessed too. They both blamed each other for the actual killing. Both denied any sexual assault took place.
The two were interviewed by ‘alienists’ as psychiatrists were then called. Neither showed any remorse for the crime.
The trial began on 21 July 1924. The killers were defended by the famous lawyer Clarence Darrow. They pleaded guilty, but Darrow pleaded with the judge not to impose the death penalty.
He made a speech lasting two days. In the end, the judge did not sentence the two to death on the grounds of their youth. Instead, he sentenced them to life imprisonment plus 99 years for the kidnapping.
Richard Loeb was killed by another inmate in 1936. Leopold was paroled in 1958. He died of a heart attack in 1971, aged 66.
Styllou Christofi was the second-to-last woman to be hanged in Britain. She was born in Cyprus about 1900. In 1925 she was accused of murdering her mother-in-law by shoving a burning piece of wood down her throat. However, she was acquitted.
Her son Stavros moved to Britain. He worked as a wine waiter. He married a German girl called Hella and they lived in Hampstead, London. The couple had three children. In 1953 her Styllou went to live with her son and daughter-in-law.
However, the two women did not get on at all. They argued constantly. Matters came to a head in 1954. Hella announced that she was going to take her three children on a holiday in Germany. She made it clear to Styllou that she wanted her gone by the time she returned to Britain.
But Styllou had other plans. In the evening of 29 July 1954 she walked up to Hella and hit her over the head with a heavy ash pan from a boiler. She then strangled Hella with a scarf. Christofi removed Hella’s wedding ring. She then dragged the dead body into the back garden. In a futile attempt to destroy the evidence, she poured paraffin over it and set it on fire.
A neighbour saw Christofi standing by the fire but he thought it must be a mannequin. Later, Christofi ran into the street and approached a couple in a parked car. She said ‘Please come. Fire burning. Children sleeping’. The couple found the fire. The fire brigade were called and when they saw the burning body they called the police.
Christofi claimed she was woken by male voices and had seen a man in the garden by the fire. She claimed she attempted to douse the fire with water. Not surprisingly, police did not believe her and they arrested her for murder.
While she was awaiting trial a doctor examined her and stated that in his opinion, she was insane. The defence team urged Christofi to plead not guilty because of insanity but she refused. Perhaps she was too proud.
Christofi went on trial on 25 October 1954. She was found guilty and she was sentenced to death. Styllou Christofi was hanged on 15 December 1954.
