336
fund a lavish lifestyle. Banks were
assured that she was due a large
inheritance and would be able to
pay the loans back. Her ruse was
discovered, however, and when her
scam fell apart in 1904, Carnegie
denied all knowledge of her.
See also: The Crawford Inheritance
66–67 ■ Harry Domela 70–73
■ The Tichborne Claimant 177VINCENZO PERUGGIA
21 August 1911Both the poet Guillaume
Apollinaire and the painter Pablo
Picasso came under suspicion
when da Vinci’s great masterpiece,
the Mona Lisa, disappeared from
the Louvre, Paris. Two years later,
Louvre employee Vincenzo
Peruggia tried to sell the painting
to galleries in Florence, in his
native Italy. He was turned over to
the police by gallery owner Alfredo
Geri and Giovanni Poggi, the
director of the Uffizi Gallery. Tried
in Florence, Peruggia received a
lenient jail sentence when he
claimed that the theft had been
motivated by patriotism. The
painting was exhibited in Florence
before it was returned to Paris.
See also: The Theft of the Cellini
Salt Cellar 56HENRI DÉSIRÉ LANDRU
1915–19Landru enticed wealthy widows to
his home through lonely hearts ads
in the Paris press. He is sometimes
called the “Bluebeard of Paris” for
the similarity between his actions
and those of the folktale character.
Landry seduced the women and
secured their assets, then killed
them, cut up their bodies, andincinerated them to destroy the
evidence. His crime was discovered
when the sister of one of the
victims tracked him down. The
police found paperwork in his home
that named his missing victims.
Convicted of 11 murders, he was
executed by guillotine in 1922.
See also: Harvey Glatman 274 –75
■ John Edward Robinson 298–99NATHAN LEOPOLD AND
RICHARD LOEB
21 May 1924Friends since adolescence, Richard
Loeb and Nathan Leopold came
from wealthy Chicago families
and graduated from prestigious
colleges. Loeb had long toyed with
the idea of the perfect crime as an
intellectual game, and his
obsession rubbed off on Leopold.
In May 1924, the pair kidnapped
14-year-old Bobby Franks on his
way home from school. Loeb
bludgeoned him to death, and
the pair disposed of the body in
marshland, dousing it in acid to
obscure Franks’s identity. A pair of
Leopold’s spectacles found near the
body led police to the killers. Their
trial became a media circus, and
culminated in a passionate plea
against capital punishment by
their defence lawyer, Clarence
Darrow. The duo were sentenced
instead to life imprisonment.
See also: The Murder of James
Bulger 244–45 ■ Ian Brady and
Myra Hindley 284–85GEORGE C. PARKER
1928A succession of confidence-
tricksters are said to have sold
New York’s Brooklyn Bridge (or,more accurately, its toll-raising
rights) since it opened in the 1880s.
In 1928, George C. Parker was
caught and sent to Sing Sing for
life. He claimed to have conned
naïve immigrants twice a week for
30 years. Considered by some to be
the greatest conman in American
history, Parker also notably “sold”
famous New York landmarks, such
as the Statue of Liberty and
Madison Square Gardens.
See also: The Sale of the Eiffel
Tower 68–69 ■ Konrad Kujau 90–93CHISSO CORPORATION
1932–68Thousands died and many more
became gravely ill after toxins
containing mercury accumulated
in the flesh of fish found in Japan’s
Minamata Bay, Kyushu. The toxins
had come from the nearby Chisso
Corporation’s chemical plant, which
had dumped the mercury into the
water. Minamata Disease, as the
illness was initially called, caused
neurological and physical
symptoms – including damage
to the nervous system, visual
impairment, and hearing loss.
The corporation was ordered to
clean up the bay, and was forced
to pay millions in compensation to
the victims and their families.
See also: The Bhopal Disaster
110 –13 ■ The Volkswagen
Emissions Scandal 130–31JOHN DILLINGER
22 July 1934One of a series of celebrity bank
robbers to come to prominence
during the Great Depression,
Indianapolis-born John Dillinger
pulled off over 20 successful bankDIRECTORY
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DIRECTORY 337
thousands called for her death
penalty to be suspended. However,
on 13 July 1955, as crowds lobbied
for her life, Ellis became the last
woman to be executed in Britain.
Her case was a landmark in the
movement to abolish capital
punishment in the UK. In 2003, her
family appealed to posthumously
reduce her offence to manslaughter,
due to the abuse Ellis had endured.
The request was denied on the
grounds that this distinction did
not exist at the time Ellis
committed the crime.
See also: Madame Caillaux 217
■ O.J. Simpson 246–51CHARLES STARKWEATHER
AND CARIL ANN FUGATE
December 1957–January 1958After Starkweather, aged 18, killed
14-year-old Fugate’s mother,
stepfather, and half-sister, the
couple ran off together. Over the
next two months, they carried out
another eight murders before they
were captured. Starkweather was
executed in the electric chair in
1959, furious that Fugate did not
meet the same fate. The youngest
person in the US to be tried for
first-degree murder, Fugate served
17 years in jail. Doubt remains over
whether Fugate was a willing
participant in the killing spree, or
a captive of her abusive boyfriend.
See also: Ian Brady and Myra
Hindley 284–85DICK HICKOCK AND
PERRY SMITH
14 November 1959Convicts Dick Hickock and Perry
Smith met in jail. After they were
released, the pair decided to robthe home of the Clutter family, in
the rural city of Holcomb, Kansas.
Smith and Hickock had been told
by a fellow inmate that the Clutter
home had a safe containing $10,000
(£8,000). When the pair discovered
this was not true, they murdered
Herbert and Bonnie Clutter, as well
as their two youngest children.
Smith and Hickock were captured
after a six-week manhunt, and
executed on 14 April 1965. Inspired
by an article about the murders in
The New York Times, fiction writer
Truman Capote visited Holcomb
with fellow writer Harper Lee. He
amassed thousands of pages of
notes on the victims, the suspects,
and the community. His work was
published in September 1965 as
“nonfiction novel” In Cold Blood- the first and most celebrated work
in the true crime genre.
See also: The Stratton Brothers
212–15
FRANK LUCAS
1960s–early 1970sA native of North Carolina, Lucas
came to New York City in the
1960s. His great innovation was
to import drugs directly from the
Golden Triangle (Myanmar, Laos,
Thailand), rather than buying from
Asian gangs. Lucas used military
contacts to smuggle heroin from
southeast Asia via military planes
and bases. Legend has it that he
even smuggled drugs in the coffins
of dead servicemen. After a long
investigation, Lucas was sentenced
to 70 years in jail in 1976. His
sentence was drastically reduced
after he gave up the names of his
accomplices – family members, the
Mafia, and even corrupt members
of New York’s police department
and Drug Enforcement Agency.raids and escaped from prison
twice before he was shot dead by
FBI agents. The shooting of such
a high-profile figure was an early
triumph for J. Edgar Hoover’s
reformed investigative bureau.
See also: Bonnie and Clyde 26–29
■ Escape from Alcatraz 80–85HAN VAN MEEGEREN
1937A failed artist who became an
extremely successful forger, van
Meegeren specialized in the
“Golden Age” art of his native
Netherlands. Forgeries of works by
Franz Hals, Pieter de Hooch, and
other greats were well-received,
but his triumph was a “Vermeer”,
acclaimed as the 17th-century
master’s finest work. This painting
proved to be van Meegeren’s
undoing, when it was discovered
among the possessions of Nazi
Hermann Goering. To avoid
prosecution for selling Dutch
property to the enemy, van
Meegeren confessed to the lesser
crime of forgery, but died of a heart
attack about a month into his one-
year prison sentence.
See also: Theft of the Cellini Salt
Cellar 56 ■ Elmyr de Hory 74–77RUTH ELLIS
10 April 1955A 28-year-old former model and
London nightclub hostess, Ellis
achieved infamy when she shot and
killed her lover, David Blakely. Her
trial lasted for just 14 minutes and
returned a guilty verdict. Ellis did
not appeal the conviction, and she
received the death penalty. Stories
soon surfaced about Blakely’s
violent behaviour towards Ellis, and332-343_Directory.indd 337 13/01/2017 15:20