True Crime Stories

I have mentioned many times in the past that when cases make it to my list of cases to research they often fall in groups with related topics or places. I do not always do them obviously in any sort of order. It depends on my mood at the moment but sometimes, like now, you will notice the trend because my last two blogs were about men who were sentenced to death in Kentucky, and here we are with another one. This is a case that going into it I thought was probably pretty cut and dry but then the more I dug, the more issues I saw. We all know that court cases come down to who the jury believes in the end. This was a case that pitted father against son inside the courtroom. It is seemingly a case that continued to pit father against son until the father died in prison in 2018. Before I want to start telling the story I want to clear up something that I was confused about at first. The first thing that I came across was a Murderpedia page that took the facts of the crime fr...

There are certain things that are so commonly heard in murder cases that they sometimes seem so routine and mundane. One of the biggest things you will hear is the argument about “ineffective counsel.” I have actually read an appeal in which a judge discusses his disdain for this phrase as that seems to be a “given” in an appeal after a conviction. He is not wrong but the sadder part about that is that there are cases in which ineffective counsel is very valid but it can get lost in the shuffle because so many make this claim. Now, let me be clear that while Bowling would basically make this claim after his conviction, personally to the judge and not necessarily through an appeal, I have to say I agreed with the judge on this point, one of the very few it seems, when it was denied. Another thing you hear a lot, if not more than the claim of ineffective counsel, is that the defendant is innocent. More often than not state prosecutors (or federal attorney generals if it applies)...

Once again I have chosen to talk about a death penalty case. I know there are fierce people on both sides of this subject, I just do not happen to be one of them. I have often said that I am neither for, nor against the death penalty. I do believe there are cases that warrant it, but only those in which there is no question in whether the person is not only guilty, but that that conclusion was come to fairly. I also believe that in decades past that courts were too fast to carry out the death penalty. We have found too many, and one is too many in my opinion, of people who were executed only to discover later were innocent. Well.... you cannot ever fix that wrong! With that being said, I feel as if we do not do them fast enough today. There are those who are very pro-death penalty who will argue that as a tax payer they do not feel as if we should house inmates on life sentences and should speed up the process. First, let me point out that Texas used to execute so often t...

  You have often heard me speak of very old cases, such as my last blog, and how difficult determining facts are. I run into a few things that are confusing on more modern cases, and I also state those things, but I am unsure that I have ever come across such a case that has taken place in the last twenty years which so many conflicting facts and information! Everything from what day Susan was killed, when she was found, to even the relationship between the fathers of her children seem to be at odds. What I can tell you is that in February 2005 twenty-six year old Long Island New York resident Susan Ambrosino went missing and her brother made the report to law enforcement. Her purse was found in Queens and law enforcement decided to make a perimeter to search for Susan's car, that was also missing. The car was soon found. The front passenger seat had been covered up with a sheet or a towel but was found to be covered in blood. The body of Susan was found in the trunk of...

I mentioned this case in my last blog. In fact, I had just learned of this case when I was doing research for the last. I love these sorts of cases but they prove very difficult to research. This case took place in 1901, execution were conducted in 1903 but the story started many, many years before that in the 1800's which makes things harder to confirm and separate fact from fiction. The core story, the execution of three brothers within just a few minutes of each other, is the one thing that cannot be disputed so please bare with me as I attempt to tell you the story that led up to this event. I can tell you that these events all occurred in the state of New York but I cannot necessarily tell you exactly where as nothing seemed to be consistent. The three brothers were named Willis, Burton and Frederick Van Wormer. The first dispute not just how old they were but in what order they were born. The one thing that does seem to remain consistent is that Burton was the mi...

  These two brothers were listed, one after another, in my list of cases and I decided to go ahead and do both of their cases, even though their crimes are not related to each other. The fact that brothers, or relatives at all, can spend time in prison for separate crimes is not all that unusual but what is unusual and said to be unique is that they were both executed in two different states for two different crimes, several miles and years apart. My research stated that there have only been three sets of brothers executed in history but they were the only ones involved in different crimes. That being said I did a little research to see if I could determine if this was true. I did find three other cases of brothers. One of those cases, that of Jonathon and Reginald Carr from Wichita Kansas I have already blogged about. But, those brothers are still sitting on death row. I should point out that in January of 2022 the state affirmed their death sentences but it is unclear i...

I have put together over 800 blogs here. Most, although admittedly, not all involve murder. I have read countless appeals in cases and have almost exclusively true crime books for decades. I am in many true crime groups and even “death hag” groups on social media. I hear stories all the time. I read about them; I see pictures; I study them. It takes a lot to surprise when it comes to brutality; it takes even more to have gasp when I am reading about how a crime took place. This is one of those cases. I often talk about how I come across cases and how they make it to a list I have compiled. Initially I removed the cases from the list when I blogged about them but I found that that hindered me from realizing I may have already done a case. That being said, not every case I have blogged about is on it. I generally have a sub-list started that I add to the bigger list later and when I do that sometimes I will work off that list first and not add them to the larger one. When I...