Monthly Archives: February 2014

Today’s Vengeance-Seeking Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

In olde England, it was common for the Church to deny an individual who committed suicide burial in consecrated ground, and the custom grew up of interment at night at a crossroads with a stake driven through the heart.  The last person to suffer such degradation was a man named Griffiths who was buried at the junction of Grosvenor Place and the King’s Road, Chelsea, in 1823.  Such bizarre practices are thought by some to have had their origins in primitive beliefs and taboos, and to have been aimed at pre-empting the vengeance of the suicide’s ghost – because it was assumed that, since society had driven a man to suicide, his ghost would return to seek retribution and punishment for those responsible for his death.   This need for society to protect itself explains many of the diverse indignities perpetrated upon the corpse: the complete annihilation of the body in order to render the ghost harmless; the amputation of a suicide’s hand, on the assumption that one-handed ghosts were less formidable; the stake driven through the heart to prevent the ghost from ‘walking’; and burial at a crossroads to confuse the ghost about direction.

Culled from: Death: A History of Man’s Obsessions and Fears

Today’s Dishonorable Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Boiling was a commonly used method of execution in 15th century Europe that drew large crowds.  Not every boiling went well, as the records of the French town of Tours show:

On Monday 11 February 1488, a coiner of bad money, named Loys Secretain, was condemned by the Bailif of Touraine to be boiled, drawn and hanged in the Place-le-Roy.  The executioner, one Denis, took the said Loys on a scaffold to the cauldron and bound his legs and his body with cords, made him say his “in manus,” pushed him along and threw him head first into the cauldron to be boiled; as soon as he was thrown in, the cords became so loose that he twice rose to the surface of the water, crying for mercy.  Which seeing, the provost and some of the inhabitants began to attack the executioner, saying, “Ah, you wretch, you are making that poor sinner suffer and bringing great dishonor on the town of Tours!”

The executioner, seeing the anger of the people, tried two or three times to sink the malefactor with a great iron hook; and forthwith several person, believing that the cords had been broken by a miracle, became excited and cried out loudly, and seeing that the said false coiner was suffering no harm, they approached the executioner as he lay with his face upon the ground, and gave him so many blows that he died where he lay.

Charles VIII pardoned the inhabitants who were accused of killing the executioner.  As for the coiner of false money, he was taken to the church of the Jacobins, where he hid himself so completely that he never dared to show his face again.

Culled from: The Book Of Execution

Today’s Calculated Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Duane Earl Pope was born in Roxbury, Kansas in 1943, and was a well-behaved, athletic and hard-working youth. He attended McPherson College in Kansas and graduated in 1965 with a degree in industrial education; however, he had not taken the teaching courses he would have needed to be able to obtain employment in that field. He thought he would like to start an excavation business and had purchased several tractors and bulldozers, but needed money for a trailer.

Sometime in May of 1965, Pope began making plans to rob the bank in Big Springs, Nebraska. He fashioned a protective breastplate out of a bulldozer blade and made silencers for his pistols. Just a few days after graduating from college, Pope drove to the bank, waited till there were no customers and then entered. He spoke first with Andreas Kjeldgaard, 77, the bank’s president, posing as a landowner wanting a land-development loan. Kjeldgaard told him his bank didn’t make those kinds of loans and went to find a phone book and the number of a bank that might. Pope then walked around the end of a counter into the employees’ area of the bank and drew his silencer-equipped Ruger, ordering Kjeldgaard to fill a briefcase with money.

Kjeldgaard, assisted by his nephew Franklin, 25, complied. Pope then ordered the bookkeeper, Lois Holthan, to bring more money from the vault. She too complied. Afterwards, Pope ordered the Kjeldgaards, Holthan and teller Glenn Hendrickson to lie facedown on the floor, which they did. He then shot all of them execution-style in the back and head. Franklin Kjeldgaard was left permanently paralyzed; his uncle, Hendrickson and Holthan were killed instantly.

Pope had netted about $1600, and he fled first to Tijuana and then to Las Vegas, where he saw an appeal in the newspaper from the president of McPherson College, asking that he turn himself in. One week after the robbery and quadruple homicide, Duane Pope traveled to Kansas City, Missouri and surrendered to police and the FBI. He had spent one day on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

Pope was tried twice and sentenced to death both times. His federal death sentence was commuted to life in prison after capital punishment was abolished in 1972. In the unlikely event he is ever granted a federal parole, he will immediately begin serving three life sentences on state charges.

Culled From: Murderpedia
Submitted by: Aimee

So much for healthy Midwestern values. – Aimee

Today’s Bloody Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The classic witch-hunting manual Malleus Maleficarum (1486) stated, “all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable.”  This summed up the widespread belief that women were by nature oversexed, and therefore dangerous to men.  It is not surprising that many demonologists stressed the witch’s ability to render a man impotent, even to cause his genitals to disappear, for the witchcraze took place during a period when women were perceived as sexually omnivorous.  In these proscriptions we find that the most disgusting part of women’s disgusting bodies was there menstrual blood.  When Stevenote de Audebert showed the witch hunter Pierre de Lancre her pact with Satan written in menstrual blood, he was horrified to look at it.  But not too horrified; his fascination overcame his disgust.  One must ask why she showed it to the man who boasted he had tortured some six hundred persons, and who put to death eighty, in a brief four-month tour of southwestern France.  It is likely that Stevenote was proud of this document.  At any rate, showing it to de Lancre was her undoing, for she was burned at the stake.

Culled from: Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts

Today’s Flag-Waving Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Account of the death of Sergeant Major Asa W. Blanchard, 19th Indiana Infantry, 1st Brigade, 1st Division, 1st Corps, Union Army, during the American Civil War:

In a memoir written many years after the Civil War, a hospital steward of the 19th Indiana relived the bravery and death of one of its color guards during the hard fighting which occurred on July 1, 1861 just in front of the Lutheran Theological Seminary slightly northwest of Gettysburg.  This soldier, Henry Marsh, said that his regiment, “held its position for a long time, [but] it was several times driven back through the groves and fields down to the base of Seminary ridge.”  During one of those retreats, Marsh recollected:

When the Regiment was ordered to fall back, someone said to Capt. W. W. Macy, “The flag is down.” He answered, “Go and get it.”  The reply, with an oath was, “I won’t do it.” Captain Macy then ran back, [was] assisted by 2nd Lieutenant Crockett East, of Co. K., in putting the flag in the shuck, when Lieutenant East was shot dead, bearing it to the earth.  Captain Macy was carrying the flag from the field, when Sergeant Major Asa Blanchard came up and demanded it.  Macy said, thinking that Blanchard would act rashly, “No, there’s been enough men shot with it.” Blanchard then appealed to the Colonel, who said to Macy, “Let him have it.” As soon as Blanchard received it, he tied the shuck around his body, unfurled the flag, and began waving it at the rebels crying out, “Rally, boys.” At once he was shot in the groin, an artery being cut.  W. M. Jackson, who was next to him, said the blood came in a gush.  Blanchard said, “Don’t stop for me.  Tell mother that I never faltered.” Capt. Wm. H. Murray took the shuck from Blanchard’s body, sheathed the flag again and started to carry it off, knowing that to do so was almost certain death.  Just then Burr M. Clifford, of Co. F, came up and took the flag.

Sergeant Major Blanchard’s life must have ebbed quickly.  He surely bled to death in minutes, and his corpse may have been buried by the Confederates between July 1 and July 4.  Or, it could have decomposed quickly in the heat waiting for Union burial squads to find it days after the Southern army left Adams County.  Many eyewitnesses stated that a large number of the dead who were left in rebel hands, including their own, were not interred until the Federal army began its cleanup of the battlefield.  Blanchard’s present grave site is not known.

Culled from: Killed In Action: Eyewitness Accounts of the Last Moments of 100 Union Soldiers Who Died at Gettysburg

Today’s Devil-Inspired Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Nowhere in the New Testament is suicide explicitly condemned.  It was not until the fourth century and the invective of St. Augustine that the Christian Church began to denounce suicide as sinful and inspired by the Devil.  The suicide’s crime was to have destroyed God’s creation.  Indeed, Judas Iscariot’s more heinous sin was not to betray Christ but to hang himself afterwards.  Early in its history, the Church’s opprobrium towards suicides was compromised by its need to excuse the ‘voluntary’ suicides of the martyrs, of those devout Christians who accelerated their death by self-deprivation and asceticism, and of women who killed themselves to protect their virginity or chastity.  By the end of the fifth century the attitude of the Christian Church had hardened to such an extent that not even the martyr, ascetic or virgin could claim absolution.  At the Council of Braga in 563 it was decided that all suicides were to be punished, unless they were proven insane.  Such punishment took two forms: indignities perpetrated on the corpse itself, and forfeiture of the deceased’s property.  The indignities varied from place to place, each community having its local customs set down for the burial of suicides.  In Danzig, for instance, the corpse was not allowed to leave the room through the door but through the window; in some parts of England the body was not allowed to enter the churchyard through the gate but over the wall.

Culled from: Death: A History of Man’s Obsessions and Fears

Today’s Capitalist Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

There’s a good chance you have tantalum or niobium in your pocket right now.   Both are dense, heat-resistant, noncorrosive metals that hold a charge well – qualities that make them vital for compact cell phones.  In the mid-1990s cell phone designers started demanding both metals, especially tantalum, from the world’s largest supplier, the Democratic Republic of Congo, then called Zaire.  Congo sits next to Rwanda in central Africa, and most of us probably remember the Rwandan butchery in the 1990s.  But none of us likely remembers the day in 1996 when the ousted Rwandan government of ethnic Hutus spilled into Congo seeking refuge.  At the time it seemed just to extend the Rwandan conflict a few miles west, but in retrospect it was a brush fire blown right into a decade of accumulated racial kindling.  Eventually, nine countries and two hundred ethnic tribes, each with its own ancient alliances and unsettled grudges, were warring in the dense jungles.

Nonetheless, if only major armies had been involved, the Congo conflict likely would have petered out.  Larger than Alaska and dense as Brazil, Congo is even less accessible than either by roads, meaning it’s not ideal for waging a protracted war.  Plus, poor villagers can’t afford to go off and fight unless there’s money at stake.  Enter tantalum, niobium, and cellular technology.  Congo has 60% of the world’s supply of the two metals, which blend together in the ground in a mineral called coltan.  Once cell phones caught on – sales rose from virtually zero in 1991 to more than a billion by 2001 – coltan’s price grew tenfold.  People purchasing ore for cell phone makers didn’t ask and didn’t care where the coltan came from, and Congolese miners had no idea what the mineral was used for, knowing only that white people paid for it and that they could use the profits to support their favorite militias.

Oddly, tantalum and niobium proved so noxious because coltan was so democratic.  Unlike the days when crooked Belgians ran Congo’s diamond and gold mines, no conglomerates controlled coltan, and no backhoes and dump trucks were necessary to mine it.  Any commoner with a shovel and a good back could dig up whole pounds of the stuff in creek beds (it looks like thick mud).  In just hours, a farmer could earn twenty times what his neighbor did all year, and as profits swelled, men abandoned their farms for prospecting.  This upset Congo’s already shaky food supply, and people began hunting gorillas for meat, virtually wiping them out, as if they were so many buffalo.  But gorilla  deaths were nothing compared to the human atrocities.  It’s not a good thing when money pours into a country with no government.  A brutal form of capitalism took over in which all things, including lives, were for sale.  Huge fenced-in “camps” with enslaved prostitutes sprang up, and innumerable bounties were put out for blood killings.  Gruesome stories have circulated about proud victors humiliating their victims’ bodies by draping themselves with entrails and dancing in celebration.

The fires burned hottest in Congo between 1998 and 2001, at which point cell phone makers realized they were funding anarchy.  To their credit, they began to buy tantalum and niobium from Australia, even though it cost more, and Congo cooled down a bit.  Nevertheless, despite an official truce ending the war in 2003, things never really calmed down in the eastern half of the country, near Rwanda.  And lately another element, tin, has begun to fund the fighting.  In 2006, the European Union outlawed lead solder in consumer goods, and most manufacturers have replaced it with tin – a metal Congo also happens to have in huge supply.  Joseph Conrad once called Congo “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience,” and there’s little reason to revise that notion today.

Overall, more than five million people have died in Congo since the mid-1990s, making it the biggest waste of life since World War II.

Culled from: The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements

Today’s Miscarried Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

A woman accused of killing her pregnant friend three months after her own miscarriage was convicted Wednesday, February 12, 2014 of beating and strangling her, then cutting the baby from her womb and passing the child off as her daughter.  Julie Corey sobbed as a Worcester Superior Court jury found her guilty of the 2009 murder of 23-year-old Darlene Haynes. Sentencing was scheduled for Tuesday.  Prosecutors said Haynes was eight months pregnant when Corey attacked her and cut the baby out of her body. They told the jury that Corey had been pregnant, too, but had a miscarriage three months earlier and told her boyfriend and family that Haynes’ baby was her own.  Corey’s lawyers contended that police failed to follow up on leads that could have implicated other potential suspects in the killing, including Haynes’ ex-boyfriend. They also suggested that Haynes’ ex-boyfriend had given Corey and her boyfriend, Alex Dion, the baby. Dion denied that on the witness stand.  Corey, 39, did not testify during the trial.

Haynes’ body was found in a closet in her apartment on July 27, 2009. She had been beaten in the head and strangled with an electrical cord. Her abdomen had been cut open, and her baby was gone.  Corey, Dion and Haynes’ baby were found two days later at a homeless shelter in Plymouth, N.H. Her lawyers acknowledged that she was found with the baby but said she played no role in Haynes’ slaying.  Dion testified that Corey, whom he believed was pregnant at the time, called him on July 23, 2009, and told him she was giving Haynes a ride to a store. Later that night, Corey called him to say her water had broken and a friend was taking her to the hospital to give birth, Dion said.  A couple of hours later, Corey called him again and said, “We had a baby,” Dion testified. Dion said Corey arrived home the next morning with a baby girl he believed was his daughter. He said he and Corey introduced the baby to family and friends over the next couple of days.  The girl, now 4, lives with her biological father.

Culled from: WHDH.Com
Generously submitted by: Katchaya

Today’s Disabled Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

A 7-year-old boy with cerebral palsy and other disabilities including not being able to speak was decapitated, and his biological father has confessed to the killing, police in Thibodaux, Louisiana said Monday, August 15, 2011.  The child’s head was found Sunday by the side of a city street, detective Ricky Ross said.  “We received the call about 12:14 p.m. on Sunday from a volunteer firefighter who was driving by and found a head by itself on the side of the city street,” Ross said. When officers arrived, they were not sure whether the head was real.  “When police arrived, 30-year-old Jeremiah Lee Wright was standing on the porch and told police it was a CPR dummy and it was just a joke.  After additional officers arrived, Wright was taken into custody for questioning and during the questioning he confessed to the crime,” Ross said.  He added that investigators found a white garbage bag nearby with the child’s body inside. While police were on the scene, the child’s mother, who said she had been running errands, arrived to find her house surrounded by yellow crime-scene tape. The mother identified the child from pictures as her son, 7-year-old Jori Liritte, Thibodaux Police Chief Scott Silverii said.

Jeremiah Lee Wright and (inset) Jori Liritte.

“The child had cerebral palsy and was bound to a wheelchair (and also had) additional disabilities,” Silverii said. “He also required a feeding tube and he wasn’t able to speak verbally.”  The chief said Wright confessed to decapitating the child and was charged with first-degree murder, and investigators recovered a hacksaw that they believe was the murder weapon.  “During the interview Wright said he was taking care of (the child) for so many years and he just started to look at him as no longer his son, just an inanimate object,” Silverii said. “He and the child’s mother had some issues. And he purposely put the child’s head in a position for her to see it.”  Silverii said police had responded to at least one other recent call at the house.  “Last month, our officers were dispatched for a verbal confrontation over money,” he said. There were no other domestic calls the chief could recall.

The gruesome nature of the crime horrified the small community about 65 miles southwest of New Orleans, the chief said.  Jori Liritte was in the second grade at South Thibodaux Elementary School, Silverii said.  “It’s really a somber mood around town especially around the school system where the child has been known for years,” Silverii said.  Jori’s mother, Jesslyn Lirette, spoke to reporters Monday at a news conference where she appeared with the police chief.  Choking back tears, she said, “He was a very important person in my life. Maybe the best thing that ever happened to me.”  Jesslyn Lirette asked for “the respect of privacy” in the aftermath of her son’s death.  “He has touched so many people in this community — in school, my friends and my family … we all love Jori very, very much,” she said. “He was a very friendly child, not shy of strangers, he was happy in life. He will be missed sadly and deeply by all his friends and all my friends.”

Culled from: CNN

Just a couple days ago, the murderer was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a mental hospital.