True Crime Stories

  This is one of those cases that as I sit down to write I am unsure exactly what I think about the case. Sometimes when this happens by the time I am done I have leaned a little more in one direction. Currently I am unsure with the information that I have researched that this will be one of those cases. By the time I am done, I may still be on the fence. In December 2011 twenty-five year old Brittany Eldridge was murdered in her Knoxville Tennessee apartment. Investigators believe she was preparing for a shower when she was attacked from the back.. She was choked and suffocated and then stabbed in the neck two times with what was believed to be scissors. Brittany was nine month pregnant with a son she planned to name Ezekiel. He would die in womb. The father of Brittany's baby was a co-worker named Norman Eugene Clark. When Brittany had not shown up at work Clark called her mother and asked her to check on her because he could not reach her. Brittany's moth...

In 1992 the state of Virginia executed Roger Keith Coleman. Coleman had proclaimed his innocence right up to the end and there were many who believed after his execution that an innocent man had been killed by the state. There had been DNA testing done prior to his execution but through his defense attorney's Coleman had fought the results. Now of course at the time of his execution DNA was not what it is today so the results were not as conclusive as they could have been many years later. There was a push by those who believed he was innocent to have more modern DNA testing done after his execution, mainly to show the flaws in the death penalty. A decade later the Governor of Virginia allowed those tests to be done and it left absolutely no question that Coleman was guilty. There were many in high places left to “eat crow.” Coleman's case proved that no matter how staunchly someone claims their innocence it proves nothing. While the case of Wayne Kubsch is not as drama...

This is a perplexing case for me. I am sure like so many other cases there are those who are convinced Michael Blagg is guilty, just as two juries have found, and there are those who are just as convinced that he is innocent. For me I cannot be completely sure one way or another. I have seen several different television shows on this case over the years and between that and my research it feels as if every time I would begin to lean one way I would find something that would have me lean the opposite way. On November 13, 2001 Michael Blagg called 9-1-1 in Grand Junction Colorado. He reported that he had come home from work and that the back door was open, the house was empty but there was a pool of blood in the master bedroom of the home. Michael's wife, Jennifer and their six year old daughter Abby were missing. Law enforcement would arrive and would state that with the amount of blood they found in the master bedroom that they believed someone was killed in that room. ...

Once again I have dug down deep into history to find a case. I like doing these for many reasons. One is that there is generally not a lot out there about them as they have been lost in history. While often the crimes are similar to what we see today in modern times, the forensics and the laws are generally what we see today. I do admit that while in our modern death penalty cases it sometimes leaves me irritated that they can drag for decades in the appeals process, let alone at the point in which we are now where there are so many arguments in the states regarding not just the practice itself but the “medications” used. But, in the same respect the “swift” justice that was handed out in the 1800's and well into the mid-1900's sometimes also bothers me. So often there would be a simple matter of just a few months between the crime and the death of the accused. In my opinion, not to mention time has shown us this to be true, there is no doubt innocent people were p...