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The Mysterious Death of James Gray Lowe
It was Friday August 20th 1886, and James Gray Lowe was in London. He was a businessman from Manchester, and according to friends had travelled to the capital to collect a part payment of a debt that was due to him. He received £1200 of £2000 that was owed, paid in cash and went to the station to buy a first class ticket home on the 12.01am London-Edinburgh Express. He paid for the ticket in cash and had change to the sum of around 15 shillings in return. Lowe was known to have debts of his own, but nothing that he was being pressured to pay or had fallen behind…
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St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
In what is now a parking lot in North Chicago, Illinois was once a garage that became infamous for the bloodiest day in mob history.A bit of back story to set the scene.1920s Chicago was a place filled to the brim with gangsters, violence, murder, prostitution, bootlegging and police corruption. The city was split up into two factions, one in South Chicago, the other in North Chicago, and these two gangster factions had a history of rivalry. Of course, the bosses of these gangs chang [...]
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Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr.
On March 1st 1932, firstborn son of Aviator and American hero, Charles Lindbergh was discovered missing from his crib by his Nanny, at approximately 10pm. His Mother and Father were in the house, and heard nothing save for the sound of what seemed to be a wooden crate falling, a short while earlier. When Betty Gow raised the alarm, firstly going to Anne Morrow Lindbergh, who was in an upstairs room, and finding her alone, down to the father in the library, Lindbergh followed her upstairs and entered the room. He saw the bedclothes, still pinned to the mattress of the crib, where they fastened the baby to prevent his…
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The Unknown Bairn
Nothing strikes a body like the tragic loss of a child. But when that child is never identified nor claimed it seems particularly sad. On 23rd May 1971, local postman John Robertson, ‘Ian the Postie’ was walking along the beach in the small village of Tayport, which butts up to one side of the Tay Estuary facing onto Dundee across the river. He had his young son with him. Up front, he saw something laying still on the sand and on approach found it to be a young boy aged two to four years of age. Sadly the little chap had no signs of life. Examination revealed the boy appeared…
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The Black Museum
The Central Prisoners’ Property Store was introduced in 1869 as a method of teaching the Police about the criminal psyche. Using items belonging to criminals, and associated paraphernalia, death masks of executed murderers and so forth, photos of crime scenes, bits of evidence, the police felt it would help them study the thought processes of the criminal mind, and what drove them to kill. By 1874, the collection had become somewhat of an unofficial museum and was housed at Old Scotland Yard, behind the Commissioner’s Office on Whitehall Place. Inspector Neame with the help of Constable Randall, was tasked with the collation and management of the collection and by 1875…
