On October 14, 1975, the murder trial of Ronald DeFeo Jr. began. Defoe was accused of killings his parents and four siblings in their Amityville, New York home. The family’s house was later said to be haunted and served as the inspiration for the Amityville Horror book and movies. On the evening of November 13, 1974, Ronald “Butch” DeFeo Jr. entered an Amityville bar and told people his parents had been shot inside their home. Several bar patrons accompanied DeFeo back to his family’s home, at 112 Ocean Avenue, where a man named Joe Yeswit called Suffolk Country police to report the crime. When officers arrived, they found the bodies of Ronald DeFeo Sr., his wife Louise, and their four children. The victims had been shot in their beds. Ronald DeFeo Jr., initially claimed the murders were a mob hit; however, by the next day he had confessed that he committed the crimes.

Police investigators were at first puzzled by the fact that all six victims appeared to have died in their sleep, without struggle, and neighbors didn’t hear any gunshots, despite the fact that the rifle DeFeo used didn’t have a silencer. When DeFeo’s trial began, his attorney argued for an insanity defense; however, the jury did not believe this and he was found guilty of six counts of second-degree murder and later sentenced to six consecutive sentences of 25 years to life in prison. DeFeo, who gave conflicting accounts of these events, later claimed his sister Dawn and two other accomplices were involved in the murders. In December 1975, the DeFeo house was sold to George Lutz, who moved in with his wife and three children. The new owners resided in the house for 28 days, before they fled, claiming it was haunted. Skeptics accused Lutz of concocting the story to make money, but he maintained he was telling the truth. In 1977, Jay Anson published a novel titled The Amityville Horror. The book became a best-seller and inspired a 1979 movie of the same name, as well as a 2005 remake.

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for CrimeMagazine.com and is the author of Murder and Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California, 1849-1949.

On October 9, 1942, notorious Chicago area bootlegger Roger “The Terrible” Touhy escapes from Statesville Prison by climbing the guard’s tower. Touhy, who had been framed for kidnapping by his bootlegging rivals, was serving a 99-year sentence for a crime he did not commit. The son of a police officer, Touhy had served in the Navy during World War I and later set up a trucking business in the Chicago suburbs. When business slowed during Prohibition, Touhy realized he could earn a better living through bootlegging. Along with his partner, Matt Kolb, Touhy began brewing his own beer and shipping it to speakeasies all over the state. His beer was widely considered the finest available at the time. When mob boss Al Capone heard about Touhy’s operation, he wanted to get in on the action, but since Capone was not really familiar with the environment outside of the city, Touhy had an advantage. After a meeting with Touhy, Capone’s henchmen reported back that he wasn’t someone to mess with. Undeterred, Capone had Matt Kolb kidnapped and then forced Touhy to pay $50,000 in ransom for his release. When Kolb was murdered in 1931, the feud escalated. Capone was instrumental in orchestrating the fake kidnapping plot of Jake Factor, which was pinned on Touhy. He was convicted of the crime and sent to prison. Shortly after his escape in 1942, Touhy was returned to prison but his conviction was eventually overturned upon appeal in 1959. Three weeks after his release from prison, Touhy was gunned down at his sister’s home. Before he died, he was reported to have said, “I’ve been expecting it. The bastards never forget.” No arrests were made in Touhy’s murder.

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for CrimeMagazine.com and is the author of Murder & Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California 1849-1949.

British author and poet Radclyffe Hall died on October 7, 1943 in London, England. She is best known for her controversial novel The Well of Loneliness (1928), which created a scandal and was banned for a time in Britain for its discussion of lesbianism. She was born Marguerite Radclyffe Hall on August 12, 1880 in Bournemouth, Hampshire, England. She was educated at King’s College, London, and then attended school in Germany. She began her literary career by writing verses, which were later collected into five volumes of poetry. The Blind Ploughman, one of her best-known poems, was set to music by Conigsby Clarke. By 1924 she had written her first two novels, The Forge and The Unlit Lamp. The latter was her first to treat lesbian love. Hall’s fame turned to notoriety with the publication of The Well of Loneliness, in which she explored in detail the romance between a young girl and an older woman. The book was banned by London magistrate, Sir Chartres Biron, who judged the book as being an “obscene libel” and ordered all copies of it destroyed. Later, a decree handed down in a U.S. court disagreed with Biron, finding that discussion of homosexuality was not in itself obscene. The British ban on The Well of Loneliness was eventually overturned on appeal after Hall’s death. Although Hall was vindicated by the American verdict, she did not write any other controversial novels. Among her following works are Twixt Earth and Stars: Poems (1906), Songs of Three Counties and Other Poems (1913), The Master of the House (1932), and The Sixth Beatitude (1936). A novel on which she was working in her declining years was destroyed, at her request, after her death.

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of Literary Legends of the British Isles.

Mary of Modena was born on October 5, 1658 in Modena, Italy. She was the second wife of James II of England. Born a princess of the Italian Duchy of Modena, Mary is primarily remembered for the controversial birth of James Francis Edward, her only surviving son. His birth was a contributing factor to the Glorious Revolution. The revolution deposed James II and replaced him with his daughter from his first marriage Mary and her husband, William of Orange. Exiled to France, Mary was popular among Louis XIV’s courtiers; however, James was considered a bore. In widowhood, Mary spent much time with the nuns at the Convent of Chaillot, where she and her daughter spent their summers. In 1701, when James II died, James Francis Edward became king in the eyes of the Jacobites. Being too young to assume the nominal reins of government, Mary acted as regent until he reached the age of 16. When James Francis Edward was asked to leave France as part of the Treaty of Utrecht, Mary stayed, despite having no family there. Mary died from breast cancer on May 7, 1718 in Paris.

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of Great Britain’s Royal Tombs.

On October 4, 1988, televangelist Jim Bakker was indicted on federal charges of mail and wire fraud and of conspiring to defraud the public. The case against the founder of Praise the Lord (PTL) Ministries and three of his aides exploded in the media when it was revealed that Bakker had sex with former church secretary Jessica Hahn.

On December 6, 1980, Bakker and Hahn had a sexual encounter in a Florida hotel room. Although they each told different stories of what had happened, Bakker eventually paid Hahn over $350,000 to remain silent. When the arrangement became public, the scandal helped to bring down the entire PTL ministry. Hahn, who claimed that she didn’t want to be in the spotlight, became an overnight celebrity. Bakker and his wife, Tammy Faye, were enormously successful at raising money for their televised religious programs, and after its 1974 debut, their cable show became the highest rated religious show in the country. The Bakkers then added talk-show elements to standard preaching, often featuring celebrities, music, and comedy. With all of the money they made from their programming, they built a 2,200-acre resort, Heritage USA. When the sex scandal was leaked, other televangelists were outraged. Jimmy Swaggart, in particular, went out of his way to condemn Bakker. Tammy Faye responded to their critics by singing “The Ballad of Jim and Tammy Faye” to the tune of “Harper Valley PTA” on their show. Still, Tammy Faye could not defend the ministry against federal charges that the funding for Heritage USA had been acquired by defrauding their viewers and donors. Although the evidence was not particularly strong, Jim Bakker was convicted in 1989 and sentenced to 45 years in prison. The sentence was later reduced to eight years, and he was released in 1994. Tammy Faye divorced Jim while he was in prison; she died in 2007.

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for CrimeMagazine.com and is the author of Murder & Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California 1849-1949.

On October 3, 2011, an Italian appeals court overturns the murder conviction of Amanda Knox, an American exchange student who two years earlier was found guilty in the 2007 murder of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher. At the time of her 2009 conviction, Knox received a 26-year prison sentence, while her ex-boyfriend, Italian college student Raffaelle Sollecito, who also was convicted in the slaying, was sentenced to 25 years behind bars. The sensational, high-profile case raised questions in the United States about the Italian justice system and whether Knox, who always maintained her innocence, was unfairly convicted.

On November 2, 2007, the 21-year-old Kercher of Coulsdon, England, was found fatally stabbed in the bedroom of the home she shared with Knox and two other women in Perugia, the capital city of the Umbria region in central Italy. Investigators said the British exchange student had been slain the previous night. After questioning by police, Knox, a Seattle native and University of Washington student doing her junior year abroad in Italy, was arrested. She denied any wrongdoing, saying she was at another student’s house the night of the murder. Police claimed Knox later gave them conflicting statements about her whereabouts at the time of the crime. She said that police had coerced her into making incriminating statements.

During the nearly yearlong trial that followed, prosecutors charged that Knox, along with Sollecito and another man, Rudy Guede, had viciously attacked Kercher in a sex game gone wrong. (Guede was convicted for his role in Kercher’s death in a separate, fast-track trial in 2008. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison, which was reduced to 16 years on appeal.) The prosecution’s main evidence against Knox included tiny traces of her DNA and that of Kercher’s on a knife discovered at Sollecito’s home. Traces of Knox’s DNA were also found on a bra clasp belonging to Kercher. Knox’s attorneys argued the bra clasp was found over a month after the murder at a contaminated crime scene, and that the knife blade couldn’t have made the wounds on the victim.

Knox and Sollecito appealed their convictions, and at their subsequent trial court-appointed experts testified the original DNA evidence was unreliable and did not definitively link the young American and her former boyfriend to the crime. On October 3, 2011, an appellate court jury of two judges and six civilians in Perugia acquitted the two defendants of murder. (The court upheld Knox’s conviction on a charge of defamation for accusing her former boss at the bar of murdering Kercher. Knox was given time served along with a fine.) The 24-year-old Knox, who had been jailed in Italy since her 2007, flew home to the United States the following day. In March 2013, in a new twist in the case, Italy’s highest court overturned the acquittals of Knox and Sollecito and ordered that they be retried. The retrial is expected to take place sometime in 2014.

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for CrimeMagazine.com and is the author of Murder and Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California 1849-1949.

Henry III of England was born on October 1, 1207 at Winchester, England. He ruled England from 1216 to 1272. He succeeded his father King John at age nine, but his royal powers were controlled by regency until he reached maturity in 1234. His financial commitments to the papacy and his foreign favorites antagonized the barons who issued the Provisions of Oxford in 1258, limiting the king’s power. Henry’s refusal to accept the provisions led to the second Barons’ War in 1264, a revolt of nobles led by his brother-in-law Simon de Montfort. Henry was defeated at Lewes, Sussex, and imprisoned, but restored to the throne after the royalist victory at Evesham in 1265. On his release Henry was weak and senile and his eldest son, the future Edward I, took charge of the government. Henry III died on November 16, 1272 and was buried at Westminster Abbey.

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of Great Britain’s Royal Tombs.

On the early morning hours of September 30, 1888, serial killer Jack the Ripper claimed two victims in one night, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes. Jack the Ripper is the name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the Whitechapel district of London in 1888.

The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer that was disseminated in the media. The letter is widely believed to have been a hoax, and may have been written by a journalist in a deliberate attempt to heighten interest in the story. Attacks ascribed to the Ripper typically involved female prostitutes who lived and worked in the slums of London and whose throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations. Extensive newspaper coverage bestowed widespread and enduring international notoriety on the Ripper.

Stride’s body was discovered at about 1 a.m., in Dutfield’s Yard, off Berner Street in Whitechapel. The cause of death was one clear-cut incision which severed the main artery on the left side of the neck. Witnesses who thought they saw Stride with a man earlier that night gave differing descriptions. Eddowes’ body was found in Mitre Square, in the City of London, three-quarters of an hour after Stride’s. The throat was severed, and the abdomen was ripped open by a long, deep, jagged wound. The left kidney and the major part of the uterus had been removed. These murders were later called the “double event.” Part of Eddowes’ bloodied apron was found at the entrance to a tenement in Goulston Street, Whitechapel. Some writing on the wall above the apron piece, seemed to implicate a Jew or Jews, but it was unclear whether the graffiti was written by the murderer as he dropped the apron piece, or merely incidental. Police Commissioner Charles Warren feared the graffiti might spark anti-Semitic riots, and ordered it washed away before dawn.

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for CrimeMagazine.com and is the author of Murder & Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California 1849-1949.

On the early morning hours of September 27, 1869, then lawman Wild Bill Hickok (and future gunslinger) responded to a report of men brawling at a saloon in Hays, Kansas. A local ruffian named Samuel Strawhun and several friends were tearing up John Bitter’s Beer Saloon when Hickok arrived and ordered the men to stop, Strawhun turned to attack him, and Hickok shot him killing him instantly.

Famous for his skill with a pistol and steely-calm under fire, James Butler Hickok initially seemed to be the ideal man for the sheriff of Ellis County, Kansas. The good citizens of Hays City, the county seat, were tired of the wild brawls and destructiveness of the hard-drinking buffalo hunters and soldiers who took over their town every night. They hoped the famous “Wild Bill” could restore peace and order, and in the late summer of 1869, elected him as interim county sheriff. Hickok had a reputation as a deadly shot and this keep many potential lawbreakers on the straight and narrow. But when Hickok applied more aggressive methods of enforcing the peace, some Hays City citizens began to wonder about their decision. Shortly after becoming sheriff, Hickok shot a belligerent soldier who resisted arrest, and the man died the next day. A few weeks later Hickok killed Strawhun. While his brutal ways were indisputably effective, many Hays City citizens were less than impressed that after only five weeks in office he had already found it necessary to kill two men in the name of preserving peace. During the regular November election later that year, the people expressed their displeasure by not reelecting Hickok. Though Wild Bill Hickok would later go on to hold other law enforcement positions in the West, his first attempt at being a sheriff had lasted only three months.

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for CrimeMagazine.com and the author of Murder & Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California 1849-1949.

Join me at the 16th annual historical cemetery tour at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California on Saturday, October 19, 2013. I will be selling and signing copies of all of my books. This years theme is “Creative Genius: Artists and Inventors in Orange County History.”

Visit the Santa Ana Historical Preservation website for more information and to buy tickets

www.santaanahistory.com