True Crime

Christmas is the season of goodwill. But in Birmingham in 1959 it was marked by a gruesome attack on a helpless girl by a homicidal maniac. On 23 December 1959, 20-year-old Margaret Brown's thoughts were of Christmas, which she was spending at her parent’s home in Edinburgh. It was late afternoon and she was getting the last bits of her washing and ironing done in the laundry room before leaving on Christmas Eve. Her lodgings were at the YWCA Hostel known as 'Edencroft', a large Georgian-style house in Wheeley Road, Edgbaston, one of Birmingham's more select districts. In common with the other girls there she had her own room with the annex off the main building, but ironing and washing facilities were shared. This annex was a single storey block, so each room was on the ground floor. Most of her fellow lodgers had left the hostel and gone their various ways for the Christmas holidays, but a few were still in the common room watching television. Margaret's priori...

Men were dying in Florida. Truck drivers were warned: don't stop for a certain hitch-hiker. Richard Mallory cruised his Cadillac down Interstate 4 through the warm Florida night, on his way to Daytona from Tampa. He was in no real hurry; he felt too apathetic and depressed. His electronics business was going badly, he was heavily in debt, and he had just broken up with his girlfriend. He had been drinking, and was about to light up a 'reefer' of marijuana. Suddenly, a figure appeared in his headlights, thumbing a lift. Mallory slowed down. He saw that it was a woman of medium build, carelessly dressed in cut-off jeans, T-shirt and baseball cap, and carrying a shoulder bag. Mallory felt the need of company. If it was a woman, so much the better. Drinking and driving The woman drawled that if he was on his way to Daytona, that was fine. As they moved off, Mallory asked her if she minded him smoking the reefer. She laughed and told him he could do what he liked. She accep...

It was supposed to be the perfect crime. But the two arrogant rich kids who murdered a 14-year-old boy were not as clever as they thought, and police were on their trail within hours. Just after 5 p.m. on 21 May 1924, 14-year-old Bobby Franks was walking home down Ellis Avenue in the wealthy district of Kenwood, Chicago, when a large blue sedan pulled up beside him. To his surprise, his distant cousin and best friend’s elder brother, 18-year-old Richard Loeb, leaned out and called to him, offering him a lift home. Franks accepted, enthusiastic at the prospect of a free ride. Since Loeb, curiously, was sitting in the back of the large car, the boy hopped in beside the driver, whom he recognised as Loeb’s inseparable companion, Nathan Leopold. Apparently safe in the company of a cousin he admired for cleverness, good looks and athleticism, and with noting to fear from his quiet, scholarly friend, Franks had not the least suspicion that he would shortly become the victim of one of thi...