On December 1, 1135, Henry I of England died. He was King of England from 1100 to 1135, he was the youngest son of William the Conqueror, and succeeded his brother William II. He won the support of the Saxons by granting them a charter and marrying a Saxon princess, Edith, daughter of Malcolm III of Scotland. She was known as Matilda after her marriage, a name more acceptable to the Norman Barons than her Saxon name Edith. Henry’s daughter was also called Matilda. He was nicknamed “Beauclerc” (fine scholar) for his above average education. During his reign, the differences between English and Norman society began to slowly evaporate. The stability Henry afforded the throne was offset by problems in succession: his only surviving son, William, was lost in the wreck of the White Ship in November 1120.

The first years of Henry’s reign were concerned with subduing Normandy. He was also drawn into controversy with a rapidly expanding Church. By 1106, both the quarrels with the church and the conquest of Normandy were settled and Henry concentrated on expanding royal power. He mixed generosity with violence in motivating allegiance to the crown and appointing loyal and gifted men to administrative positions. By raising men out of obscurity for such appointments, Henry began to rely less on landed barons as ministers and created a loyal bureaucracy. He was deeply involved in continental affairs and therefore spent almost half of his time in Normandy, prompting him to create the position of justiciar – the most trusted of all the king’s officials, the justiciar literally ruled in the king’s stead. Roger of Salisbury, the first justiciar, was instrumental in organizing an efficient department for collection of royal revenues, the Exchequer. The Exchequer held sessions twice a year for sheriffs and other revenue-collecting officials; these officials appeared before the justiciar, the chancellor, and several clerks and rendered an account of their finances. The Exchequer was an ingenious device for balancing amounts owed versus amounts paid. Henry gained notoriety for sending out court officials to judge local financial disputes (weakening the feudal courts controlled by local lords) and curb errant sheriffs (weakening the power bestowed upon the sheriffs by his father).

The final years of his reign were consumed in war with France and difficulties ensuring the succession. The succession became a concern upon the death of his son William in 1120: Henry’s marriage to Adelaide was fruitless, leaving his daughter Matilda as the only surviving legitimate heir. She was recalled to Henry’s court in 1125 after the death of her husband, Emperor Henry V of Germany. Henry forced his barons to swear an oath of allegiance to Matilda in 1127 after he arranged her marriage to the sixteen-year-old Geoffrey of Anjou to cement an Angevin alliance on the continent. The marriage, unpopular with the Norman barons, produced a male heir in 1133, which prompted yet another reluctant oath of loyalty from the aggravated barons. In the summer of 1135, Geoffrey demanded custody of certain key Norman castles as a show of good will from Henry; Henry refused and the pair entered into war. Henry’s life ended in this sorry state of affairs – war with his son-in-law and rebellion on the horizon – in December 1135. Henry died on December 1, 1135 in Normandy of food poisoning according to legend from eating a ‘surfeit of Lampreys’ (an eel type fish). His remains were sewn into the hide of a bull to preserve them, and then taken back to England and buried at Reading Abbey. The Abbey was destroyed during the Protestant Reformation and no trace of his tomb has survived, the probable site being covered by St. James’ School.

On November 30, 1989, Richard Mallory, a storeowner in Palm Harbor, Florida, is last seen taking a ride with Aileen Wuornos. The following day, his car was found abandoned in a remote area of Ormond Beach. Nearly two weeks later, his body turned up in a Daytona Beach junkyard with three bullets in his chest. Mallory’s murder was the first of seven committed by Aileen Wuornos over the next year. Perhaps because she was one of the few women killers to gain widespread fame and notoriety, she was inaccurately dubbed “America’s first female serial killer.” Her case was heavily publicized through television talk show appearances and a documentary, The Selling of a Serial Killer.

Wuornos’ parents split before she was born and her father, who had been arrested for child molesting, killed himself while awaiting trial in a mental institution. When her mother abandoned her at a young age, Aileen was sent to live with grandparents. She was kicked out of their home when she got pregnant at age 14. From 1974 to 1976, Wuornos operated under several aliases and amassed an arrest record for offenses including drunken driving, assault, and armed robbery. In 1986, she became romantically and criminally involved with a woman named Tyria Moore. In late 1989, Wuornos began her infamous killing spree. Five months after Richard Mallory was killed, David Spears was found dead, shot six times with a .22 caliber gun in the woods near Tampa. At around the same time, another male body turned up nearby that appeared to have been killed with the same type of gun. Three additional men met the same demise during the summer of 1990. When the seventh victim was found in November, the media was alerted to the possibility of a serial killer. After receiving several tips, detectives caught Wuornos in a seedy biker bar in January 1991. With Moore assisting police, Wuornos confessed to the killings but claimed that they had all been done in self-defense. When a jury found Wuornos guilty on January 27, 1992 and was sentenced to death. She was executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002.

On November 29, 1934, Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark marries Prince George, Duke of Kent, the fourth son of King George V and Mary of Teck. Their nuptials at Westminster Abbey are the first live radio broadcast of a royal wedding. The Duke of Kent was killed on 25 August 1942, in a plane in Scotland, while on active service with the Royal Air Force. After her husband’s death, the Duchess of Kent continued to be an active member of the British Royal Family, carrying out a wide-range of royal and official engagements. She died on August 27, 1968 at Kensington Palace from a brain tumor and was buried at the Royal Burial Ground in Frogmore.

On November 28, 1994, convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is beaten to death by a fellow inmate while performing cleaning duty in a bathroom at the Columbia Correctional Institute gymnasium in Portage, Wisconsin. During a 13-year period, Dahmer, who lived primarily in the Midwest, murdered at least 17 men. Most of these men were young, gay African Americans who Dahmer lured back to his home, promising to pay them money to pose nude for photographs. Dahmer would then drug and strangle them to death, generally mutilating, and occasionally cannibalizing, their bodies. Dahmer was finally arrested on July 22, 1991, and entered a plea of guilty but insane in 15 of the 17 murders he confessed to committing. In February 1992, the jury found him sane in each murder, and he was sentenced to 15 consecutive life sentences. Two years later, Dahmer was killed at the age of 34 by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver, who also fatally beat the third man on their work detail, inmate Jesse Anderson. Scarver’s motive in killing the two men is not entirely clear; however, in his subsequent criminal trial he maintained that God told him to kill Dahmer and the other inmate. Scarver, already serving a life term for murder, was sentenced to additional life terms and transferred to a federal prison.

On November 27, 1975, Ross McWhirter was assassinated by two IRA terrorists. He was shot outside of his home in north London. His killers Harry Duggan and Hugh Doherty, both of whom were members of what became known as the Balcombe Street Gang were captured and charged with his and nine other murders. They were sentenced to life imprisonment but freed in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. McWhirter was a sports journalist who helped co-found the Guinness Book of Records. In the early 1960s, he became a Conservative Party activist. In 1975, McWhirter co-founded the ultra right wing political organization National Association for Freedom. The organization initiated legal challenges against the trade union movement in the United Kingdom. He also advocated restrictions on the Irish community in Britain such as making it compulsory for all Irish people in Great Britain to register with the local police and to provide signed photographs of themselves when renting flats or booking into hotels and hostels. In doing so, McWhirter recognized that he could then be a target himself. In addition, McWhirter offered a £50,000 reward for information leading to a conviction for several recent high-profile bombings in England that were publicly claimed by the IRA. This was considered a ‘bounty’ by the IRA, a view that led directly to his assassination on November 27, 1975.

On November 26, 1983, six robbers break into the Brink’s-MAT warehouse at Heathrow Airport, London and steal millions in gold, diamonds and cash. At the time, it was described as “the crime of the century.” The robbers gained entry to the warehouse from security guard Anthony Black, who was in on the heist. Once inside, they poured gasoline over staff and threatened them with a lit match if they did not reveal the combination numbers of the vault. The robbers thought they were going to steal £3 million in cash. However, when they arrived, they found three tones of gold bullion and stole £26 million worth of gold, diamonds, and cash.

In December, one of the robbers, Micky McAvoy, was arrested after security guard insider Black, his brother-in-law, gave his name to investigating officers. Scotland Yard quickly discovered the family connection and Black confessed to aiding and abetting the robbers, providing them with a key to the main door, and details of security at the facility. McAvoy was eventually found guilty and sentenced to twenty-five years imprisonment for armed robbery, and Black was sentenced to six years. Before his conviction, McAvoy had entrusted part of his share to associates Brian Perry, George Francis, and Kenneth Noye. The gold was melted down and recast for sale. However, the sudden movements of large amounts of money came to the notice of the Treasury Department, who informed law enforcement of the unusual activity. Noye was placed under police surveillance. In January 1985 he killed an undercover police officer but at the resulting trial, a jury found him not guilty on the grounds of self-defense. In 1986, he was found guilty of conspiracy with regards to the Brink’s-MAT heist, fined £700,000 and sentenced to 14 years in prison. He served seven years before being released in 1994. Attempts by McAvoy to strike a deal to give back his share of the money in exchange for a reduction in his sentence failed. In January 1995, the British High Court ordered McAvoy to pay £27,488,299, making him responsible for the entire sum of the heist. In 2000, he was released from prison. Most of the stolen gold has never been recovered and the other four robbers were never convicted.

On November 24, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy is shot to death by Jack Ruby in the basement of the Dallas Police Department. On November 22, President Kennedy was fatally shot while riding in an open-car motorcade through the streets of downtown Dallas. Less than an hour after the shooting, Lee Harvey Oswald killed a policeman who questioned him on the street. Thirty minutes after that, he was arrested in a movie theater by police. Oswald was formally arraigned on November 23 for the murders of President Kennedy and Officer J.D. Tippit. On November 24, Oswald was brought to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters on his way to a more secure county jail. A crowd of police and press with live television cameras rolling gathered to witness his departure. As Oswald came into the room, Jack Ruby emerged from the crowd and fatally wounded him with a single shot from a concealed .38 revolver. Ruby, who was immediately detained, claimed that rage at Kennedy’s murder was the motive for his action. Some called him a hero, but he was nonetheless charged with first-degree murder. Jack Ruby operated strip clubs in Dallas and had minor connections to organized crime. He also had a relationship with a number of Dallas policemen, which amounted to various favors in exchange for leniency in their monitoring of his establishments. He features prominently in Kennedy-assassination theories, and many believe he killed Oswald to keep him from revealing a larger conspiracy. In his trial, Ruby denied the allegation and pleaded innocent on the grounds that his great grief over Kennedy’s murder had caused him to suffer “psychomotor epilepsy” and shoot Oswald unconsciously. The jury found him guilty of the “murder with malice” of Oswald and sentenced him to death. In October 1966, the Texas Court of Appeals reversed the decision on the grounds of improper admission of testimony and the fact that Ruby could not have received a fair trial in Dallas at the time. In January 1967, while awaiting a new trial, Ruby died of lung cancer in a Dallas hospital. The official Warren Commission report of 1964 concluded that neither Oswald nor Ruby were part of a larger conspiracy, either domestic or international, to assassinate President Kennedy. Despite its seemingly firm conclusions, the report failed to silence conspiracy theories surrounding the event, and in 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in a preliminary report that Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy” that may have involved multiple shooters and organized crime. The committee’s findings, as with those of the Warren Commission, continue to be widely disputed.

On November 23, 1979, Thomas McMahon, a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), is sentenced to life imprisonment for preparing and planting the bomb that killed Lord Louis Mountbatten and three others. On August 27, 1979, Lord Mountbatten was killed when McMahon and other IRA terrorists detonated a 50-pound bomb hidden on his fishing vessel Shadow V. Mountbatten, a World War II 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 hardened the hearts of many Britons against the IRA and convinced Margaret Thatcher’s government to take a hard-line stance against the terrorist organization. The IRA immediately claimed responsibility for the Mountbatten attack, saying it detonated the bomb by remote control from the coast. It also took responsibility for the same-day bombing attack against British troops in County Down, which claimed 18 lives. IRA member Thomas McMahon was later arrested and convicted for his role in the Mountbatten bombing. 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 study 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. McMahon claimed he had turned his back on the IRA and was becoming a carpenter.

Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa was born on November 21, 1840 at Buckingham Palace and was the eldest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. She was created Princess Royal of the United Kingdom in 1841. She became German Empress and Queen of Prussia by marriage to German Emperor Fredrick III in 1858. After her husband’s death in 1888, she became widely known as Empress Frederick. Their eldest child Wilhelm II was the last emperor of Germany and launched the country into World War One. Empress Victoria was diagnosed with inoperable breast cancer in 1899 and by the autumn of 1900, the cancer spread to her spine and after much suffering, she died at Castle Friedrichshof on August 5, 1901, less than seven months after the death of her mother, Queen Victoria.

November 16, 2012 – Murder & Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California 1849-1949 was honored as a “Finalist” in the 2012 USA Book News Best Book Awards, true crime category.

http://www.usabooknews.com/2013usabestbookawards/2012usabestbookawards.html