This is one of my favourite local stories told to me by my father. It always intrigued me so I searched through the old newspaper articles in my local library to find this amazing story which occurred in the early 1960s Ireland. I always imagined it as “The Goonies” meets “Into The West” or “Flight of the Doves” in some odd way. Somehow or another, I feel there...
The act of murder can be a barbaric one. Some obvious cases of murder go on to become infamous in the annals of criminal history — whether the police solve them or not. One unsolved death took place in the first week of January 1935. A tall man with a facial scar and a cauliflower ear entered the Hotel President in Kansas City, Missouri and asked for a single room several floors up for one night...
In 1982, six adults and one 12-year-old girl died of cyanide poisoning in Chicago after taking capsules of Extra Strength Tylenol. The person responsible has never been found. Here’s how this terrifying crime changed the pharmaceutical industry. I opened them up and looked inside. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. However, as I was pouring them out of the bottles, I could tell there was a...
He was the all-American boy. Handsome. Smart. Charming. In fact, Theodore Robert Bundy was the stereotype of what every American boy ought to be like and what every American parent wanted their sons to aspire to. Above all, Ted Bundy was charming; he had a winsome way that could entrance people. Yet, this same college wunderkind snuffed out the lives of scores of beautiful young women. He was a...
Before 1982 Gary Ridgway was a normal husband and father. At the age of 20 he was enlisted in the US Navy. Once he was discharged from the navy he began a truck painting business for 30 years. Towards the end of 1982 Gary began to get violent and it cause the death of just under 100 woman under the age of 22 years. The Green River killer notably impacted mainstream American culture. This is one...
The mystery of Bobby Dunbar is one that is almost more terrifying than a murder mystery. It is the story of a child lost and another likely taken from his mother and guardian to replace a lost boy. In that way, it is the story of two boys lost, one seemingly gone forever and one taken and raised as another child. The story begins on August 23, 1912, when Percy and Lessie Dunbar took their sons...
There was a time when teaching was a highly desirable job which my grandparent’s generation would have aspired to on behalf of their children; teachers would have been thought of along with doctors, lawyers, and clergymen as pillars of the community, as is still the case in many societies, particularly across south-east Asia. The decline in esteem afford to teaching as a job has coincided with a...
The Resurrection of the Flyy Girl A Fly girl is a girl who wants you to see, her name her game and her ability. Two gold teeth and cold cash money. The guys are on her strap she tends to act funny. She’s got Gazelle and a b-bag too, Fly Girl, I want to be with you. Boogie Boys, 1985 “…don’t give them nothin’ unless they got something to give you… what you do is get a nice-looking nut dude with...
“Walking at random through the streets, we came by chance upon the Cathedral of Notre Dame. I shall long remember my first impression of the scene within. The lofty gothic ceiling arched far above my head and through the stained windows the light came but dimly – it was all still, solemn and religious.” These are the words by American poet Bayard Taylor, and in them they describe what many...
by Fannie LeFlore Black women have long been considered “mules of the world,” as described in a novel by Zora Neale Hurston, in summing up the plight and stereotype of the “strong black woman.” In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston’s imagery of the mule emerges in different contexts, remaining consistent as a symbol of victimization and bondage for black women, figuratively akin to being...