On September 10, 1977, Charlene Williams meets Gerald Gallego at a poker club in Sacramento, California, resulting in one of the most infamous serial killing teams in American history. Before they were finally caught, the Gallegos killed and sexually assaulted at least 10 people over a two-year period. Within a week of their first encounter, Charlene moved in with Gerald. The son of the first man to be executed in Mississippi’s gas chamber, Gerald had amassed seven felony convictions by the age of 32. By the time Charlene met Gerald; she had already gone through two marriages and had acquired a hard-drug habit. Gerald often brought home teenage runaways, so that he could indulge in threesome’s with Charlene. However, he became extremely angry when he found out that Charlene and the girl were engaging in sex without him. The couple soon decided to find victims that could keep Gerald sexually satisfied. After two months of planning, they abducted their first victims in September 1978: two teenage girls, whom they sexually assaulted, beat with a tire iron, and then shot in the head. The couple, now married, waited until the following June before striking again, grabbing two young girls in Reno, Nevada. However, Charlene became angry when Gerald started raping the girls without her, while she was driving the van. When she began firing shots at him, he quickly killed the victims. The pace of the couple’s killings quickened in 1980. In April, they kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and murdered two girls from a mall near Sacramento. Two months later, they found another victim during a vacation in Oregon. This time they buried their victim alive. In July, the Gallegos kidnapped and killed a couple as they were leaving a fraternity party. However, partygoers got the license plate of their car, and a manhunt was instituted. The Gallegos managed to elude authorities for a few months but were finally caught in November in Omaha, Nebraska. While awaiting trial, Charlene agreed to testify against Gerald to save her own life. Gerald Gallego was tried in both Nevada and California and received death sentences in both states. Charlene was sentenced to 16 years and 8 months in jail and was released in July 1997.

On September 9, 1971, prisoners riot and seize control of the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo, New York. Later that day, state police retook most of the prison, but 1,281 convicts occupied an exercise field called D Yard, where they held 39 prison guards and employees hostage for four days. After negotiations stalled, state police and prison officers launched a disastrous raid on September 13th, in which 10 hostages and 29 inmates were killed in an indiscriminate hail of gunfire. Eighty-nine others were seriously injured.

By the summer of 1971, the state prison in Attica, New York, was ready to explode. Inmates were frustrated with chronic overcrowding, censorship of letters, and living conditions that limited them to one shower per week and one roll of toilet paper each month. Some Attica prisoners, adopting the radical spirit of the times, began to perceive themselves as political prisoners rather than convicted criminals. On the morning of September 9,1971 the eruption came when inmates on the way to breakfast overpowered their guards and stormed down a prison gallery in a spontaneous riot. They broke through a faulty gate and into a central area known as Times Square, which gave them access to all the cellblocks. Many of the prison’s 2,200 inmates then joined in the rioting, and prisoners rampaged through the facility beating guards, acquiring makeshift weapons, and burning down the prison chapel. One guard, William Quinn, was severely beaten and thrown out a second-story window. Two days later, he died in a hospital from his injuries.

Using tear gas and submachine guns, state police regained control of three of the four cellblocks held by the rioters without loss of life. By 10:30 a.m., the inmates were only in control of D Yard, a large, open exercise field surrounded by 35-foot walls and overlooked by gun towers. Thirty-nine hostages, mostly guards and a few other prison employees were blindfolded and held in a tight circle. Inmates armed with clubs and knives guarded the hostages closely. Riot leaders put together a list of demands, including improved living conditions, more religious freedom, an end to mail censorship, and expanded phone privileges. They also called for specific individuals, such as U.S. Representative Herman Badillo and New York Times columnist Tom Wicker, to serve as negotiators and civilian observers. Meanwhile, hundreds of state troopers arrived at Attica, and New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller called in the National Guard.

In tense negotiations, New York Correction Commissioner Russell Oswald agreed to honor the inmates’ demands for improved living conditions. However, talks bogged down when the prisoners called for amnesty for everyone in D Yard, along with safe passage to a “non-imperialist country” for anyone who desired it. Observers pleaded with Governor Rockefeller to come to Attica as a show of good faith, but he refused and instead ordered the prison to be retaken by force.

On the rainy Monday morning of September 13th, an ultimatum was read to the inmates, calling on them to surrender. They responded by putting knives against the hostages’ throats. At 9:46 a.m., helicopters flew over the yard, dropping tear gas as state police and correction officers stormed in with guns blazing. The police fired 3,000 rounds into the tear gas haze, killing 29 inmates and 10 of the hostages and wounding 89. Most were shot in the initial indiscriminate barrage of gunfire, but other prisoners were shot or killed after they surrendered. An emergency medical technician recalled seeing a wounded prisoner, lying on the ground, shot several times in the head by a state trooper. Another prisoner was shot seven times and then ordered to crawl along the ground. When he didn’t move fast enough, an officer kicked him. Many others were savagely beaten.

In the aftermath of the bloody raid, authorities said the inmates had killed the slain hostages by slitting their throats. One hostage was said to have been castrated. However, autopsies showed that these charges were false and that all 10 hostages had been shot to death by police. The attempted cover-up increased public condemnation of the raid and prompted a Congressional investigation. The Attica riot was the worst prison riot in U.S. history. A total of 43 people were killed, including the 39 killed in the raid, guard William Quinn, and three inmates killed by other prisoners early in the riot. In the week after its conclusion, police engaged in brutal reprisals against the prisoners, forcing them to run a gauntlet of nightsticks and crawl naked across broken glass, among other tortures. The many injured inmates received substandard medical treatment, if any.
In 1974, lawyers representing the 1,281 inmates filed a $2.8 billion class-action lawsuit against prison and state officials. It took 18 years before the suit came to trial, and five more years to reach the damages phase, delays that were the fault of a lower-court judge opposed to the case. In January 2000, New York State and the former and current inmates settled for $8 million, which was divided unevenly among about 500 inmates, depending on the severity of their suffering during the raid and the weeks following. Families of the slain correction officers lost their right to sue by accepting the modest death-benefit checks sent to them by the state. The hostages who survived likewise lost their right to sue by cashing their paychecks. Both groups attest that no state officials apprised them of their legal rights, and they were denied compensation that New York should have paid to them.

September 1, 2013 For Immediate Release –

The results of the 2013 Readers Favorite International Book Awards were just announced and Great Britain’s Royal Tombs was awarded an “Honorable Mention” in the Non-fiction Historical category.

On August 31, 1985, Richard Ramirez, the notorious “Night Stalker,” is captured and nearly killed by a mob in East Los Angeles, California, after being recognized from a photograph shown both on television and in newspapers. Recently identified as the serial killer, Ramirez was saved from the enraged mob by police officers. During the summer of 1985, the city of Los Angeles was panic-stricken by a killer who crept into his victims’ homes at night. The Night Stalker, as the press dubbed the murderer, would first turned his attention on the men in the house, usually shooting them with a .22 caliber handgun before raping, stabbing, and mutilating his female victims. By August, the Night Stalker has murdered at least a dozen people, and law enforcement officials were desperate to stop him. One witness, who managed to note the license plate of the car in which Ramirez fled, led police to a single, partial fingerprint left in the vehicle. Apparently, the task force looking for the Night Stalker had already received information that someone named Ramirez was involved, so only criminal records for men with that name were checked against the fingerprint. When Ramirez was identified as the chief suspect, authorities debated whether to release his name and picture to the public, fearing that it might give him the chance to escape. Nonetheless, they decided to take the risk, and Ramirez, who was actually traveling back to Los Angeles at the time, arrived to find his face and name on the front of every newspaper. Ramirez turned his trial into a circus by drawing pentagrams on his palms and making devil’s horns with his fingers. When he was convicted, he shouted at the jury, “You make me sick. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells within all of us.” After the judge imposed a death sentence, Ramirez said, “Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland.” Ramirez died in prison on June 7, 2013.

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for CrimeMagazine.com where he pens the daily column “On this date in crime history.” He is also the author of numerous books that include Murder & Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California 1849-1949.

Academy Award winning actress Ingrid Bergman was born on August 29, 1915 in Stockholm, Sweden and died on the same date in 1982. Educated at the Royal Dramatic Theatre School in Stockholm, she made her film debut in Branningar (1935). Bergman established herself as one of Sweden’s leading stars during the middle 1930s. American producer, David O. Selznick was so impressed with her talent that he brought her to Hollywood. The Hollywood version of Intermezzo was a great success and Bergman followed this with other popular films such as Adam had Four Sons (1941), Rage in Heaven (1941), Casablanca (1942), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946) and Joan of Arc (1948). In August, 1949, Bergman became the center of a major scandal when it was revealed by her husband, that she had abandoned their ten year old daughter, to live with Italian film director, Roberto Rossellini. Politicians became involved in the case and one senator, Edwin Johnson of Colorado, denounced her behavior as “an assault upon the institution of marriage” and described her as a “powerful influence of evil.” Bergman was unable to work in Hollywood for seven years but made a triumphant return in Anastasia (1956) for which she won an Academy Award. Other successes were to follow that included Murder on the Orient Express (1974). Ingrid Bergman died on August 29, 1982 from breast cancer in London. Most of her cremated remains were scattered at sea off the west coast of Sweden and the rest were placed next to her parents’ ashes at the Northern Cemetery, Stockholm, Sweden.

On August 27, 1979, Lord Louis Mountbatten is killed when Irish Republican Army terrorists who detonate a bomb hidden on his fishing vessel Shadow V. Mountbatten, a war hero, elder statesman, and second cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, was spending the day with his family in Donegal Bay off Ireland’s northwest coast when the bomb exploded. Three others were killed in the attack, including Mountbatten’s 14-year-old grandson, Nicholas. Later that day, an IRA bombing attack on land killed 18 British paratroopers in County Down, Northern Ireland. The assassination of Mountbatten was the first blow struck against the British royal family by the IRA during its long terrorist campaign to drive the British out of Northern Ireland and unite it with the Republic of Ireland to the south. The attack convinced Margaret Thatcher’s government to take a hard-line stance against the terrorist organization.

Louis Mountbatten, the son of Prince Louis of Battenberg and a great-grandson of Queen Victoria, entered the Royal Navy in 1913, when he was in his early teens. He saw service during World War I and World War II. In 1947, he was appointed the last viceroy of India, and he conducted the negotiations that led to independence for India and Pakistan later that year. He held various high naval posts in the 1950s and served as chief of the United Kingdom Defense Staff and chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. Meanwhile, he was made Viscount Mountbatten of Burma and a first earl. He was the uncle of Philip Mountbatten and introduced Philip to the future Queen Elizabeth. He later encouraged the marriage of the two distant cousins and became godfather and mentor to their first born, Charles, Prince of Wales.

Made governor and then lord lieutenant of the Isle of Wight in his retirement, Lord Mountbatten was a respected and beloved member of the royal family. His assassination was perhaps the most shocking of all horrors inflicted by the IRA against the United Kingdom. The IRA immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it detonated the bomb by remote control from the coast. IRA member Thomas McMahon was later arrested and convicted of preparing and planting the bomb that destroyed Mountbatten’s boat. He was a leader of the IRA’s notorious South Armagh Brigade, which killed more than 100 British soldiers. He was one of the first IRA members to be sent to Libya to train with detonators and timing devices and was an expert in explosives. Authorities believe the Mountbatten assassination was the work of many people, but McMahon was the only individual convicted. Sentenced to life in prison, he was released in 1998 along with other IRA and Unionist terrorists under a controversial provision of the Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland’s peace deal.

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for CrimeMagazine.com and pens the daily column “On this date in crime history. He is also the author of Murder & Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California (2012) and Great Britain’s Royal Tombs (2012).

The first murder victim of Jack the Ripper, Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols was born on August 26, 1845 in London. Her death has been attributed to the notorious unidentified serial killer, who is believed to have killed and mutilated five women in the Whitechapel area of London from late August to early November 1888. She was found lying on the ground in front of a gated stable entrance in Buck’s Row, Whitechapel, around 3:40 am on August 31st, about 150 yards from the London Hospital by cart driver named Charles Cross. No one had reported hearing or seeing anything suspicious before the discovery of the body.

Doctor Henry Llewellyn, who arrived on the scene around 4:00 am, determined that she had been dead for about 30 minutes. Her throat had been slit twice from left to right and her abdomen mutilated with one deep jagged wound, several incisions across the abdomen, and three or four similar cuts on the right side caused by the same knife. He expressed surprise at the small amount of blood at the crime scene, “about enough to fill two large wine glasses, or half a pint at the most.” His comment led to the supposition that Nichols was not killed where her body was found, but the blood from her wounds had soaked into her clothes and hair, and there was little doubt that she had been killed at the crime scene by a swift slash to the throat. Death would have been instantaneous, and the abdominal injuries, which would have taken less than five minutes to perform, were made by the murderer after she was dead. Nichols was buried at the City of London Cemetery, in a public grave numbered 210752 (on the edge of the current Memorial Garden). In late 1996, the cemetery authorities decided to mark her grave with a plaque.

On August 17, 1877, Billy the Kid shoots an Arizona blacksmith who dies the next day. He would be the infamous outlaw’s first victim. Just how many men Billy the Kid killed is uncertain. Billy himself reportedly once claimed he had killed 21 men-“one for every year of my life.” A reliable contemporary authority estimated the actual total was between four and nine on his own and five with the aid of others. Other western outlaws of the day were far more deadly. John Wesley Hardin, for example, killed well over 20 men and perhaps as many as 40.

William Bonney (at various times he also used the surnames Antrim and McCarty) is better remembered today than Hardin and other killers, perhaps because he appeared to be such an unlikely killer. He seemed to have been a decent young man who was dragged into a life of crime by circumstances beyond his control. Such seems to have been the case for his first murder. Having fled from his home in New Mexico after being jailed for a theft he may not have committed, Billy became an itinerant ranch hand and sheepherder in Arizona. In 1877, he was hired on as a teamster at the Camp Grant Army Post, where he attracted the enmity of a burly civilian blacksmith named Frank “Windy” Cahill. Perhaps because Billy was well liked by others in the camp, Cahill enjoyed demeaning the scrawny youngster.

On this day in 1877, Cahill apparently went too far when he called Billy a “pimp.” Billy responded by calling Cahill a “son of a bitch,” and the big blacksmith jumped him and easily threw him to the ground. Pinned to the floor by the stronger man, Billy apparently panicked. He pulled his pistol and shot Cahill, who died the next day. According to one witness, “[Billy] had no choice; he had to use his equalizer.” However, the rough laws of the West might have found Billy guilty of unjustified murder because Cahill had not pulled his own gun. Fearing imprisonment, Billy returned to New Mexico where he soon became involved in the bloody Lincoln County War. In the next four years, he became a practiced and cold-blooded killer, increasingly infatuated with his own public image as an unstoppable outlaw. Sheriff Pat Garrett finally ended Billy’s bloody career by killing him on July 14, 1881.

Michael Thomas Barry is the author of Murder & Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California.

On July 30, 1818, novelist Emily Bronte becomes the fifth-born of the six Bronte children, three of whom will grow up to write fiction. The Bronte family lived in the remote village of Haworth on the Yorkshire moors and were largely left to their own devices after the death of their mother in 1820. A shy, reclusive child, Emily suffered severe homesickness whenever she left the parsonage. She along with her sisters Charlotte, Anne and brother Branwell, read voraciously and created their own elaborate stories about mythical lands. Many of Emily’s poems were written about these imaginary realms. Bronte was well educated at home and worked several short, unhappy stints as a governess and schoolteacher. In 1842, Emily and Charlotte went to Brussels to study school administration, hoping to open their own school in Haworth one day, which they never accomplished. In 1845, Charlotte came across some poems Emily had written and revealed that she too had secretly been writing verse. They also learned that Anne had also been secretly writing. Charlotte published their joint work, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, in 1846. Although the book sold only two copies, the sisters continued writing. In 1847 all three sisters published novels, Charlotte Jane Eyre, Emily Wuthering Heights and Anne Agnes Grey. Emily died of tuberculosis on December 19, 1848, a year after her novel was published.

Author Aldous Huxley was born on July 26, 1894 in Godalming, Surrey, England. He is best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel writing, film stories and scripts. He spent the later part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. Huxley later became interested in spiritual subjects such as parapsychology, mysticism, and Universalism. He is also well known for his use of psychedelic drugs. By the end of his life Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent intellectuals of his time. He died on November 22, 1963 in Los Angeles, California, and his death was overshadowed by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.