True Crime Stories

If you know anything about the John List case then you will see that this case is almost a copycat version of that one, just five years later and a few states away. It is believed that on March 1, 1976 William Bradford Bishop Jr. murdered his wife, mother and three sons in their Bethesda Maryland home. It was not until March 10 th that the police were notified when neighbors realized they had not seen the family in quite some time. Without realizing it, the bodies of Annette, Lobelia, William, Brenton and Geoffrey Bishop had already been found. The one person not found, then or even today over forty years later was William Bradford Bishop Jr. Some would say that no one could simply disappear and never be found and there have been alleged sightings of Bishop over the years but the reality of it is, if anyone would have been able to pull this off it would have been William Bradford Bishop Jr. Bishop was once a member of the United States Army, he had multiple col...

This is such a tragic and yet odd case. It is one of those cases in which I am sure that the right person is behind bars for murder, but I found the behavior of some of the other characters in the story a little “off.” Emily Branch was thirteen years old in 2000. It was said that she lived with an aunt on her father's side but she apparently visited with both of her parents, who all lived in Memphis Tennessee. It is not completely clear how close she lived with her aunt but both of her parents, living separately, lived within walking distance. Emily's mother, Tracie, was married to a man named Charles Rice but the relationship seemed to rather volatile. It appears that the couple lived with Charles' stepfather. On June 6 th the couple had separated and Tracie had moved in with her brother. They had separated many times during their short relationship. Tracie would claim that Charles used drugs, specifically crack cocaine and after this separat...

In 2011 Jack Black and Shirley MacClaine starred in a movie called Bernie , directed by Richard Linklater. I admit that while I am a bit of a movie buff I have not seen this, nor do I plan to. It has been described as a “dark comedy” which just does not seem to be appropriate in any way when you are discussing the murder of someone. To be fair, I have to say that now days I tend to try to stay away from movies based on true stories, especially theatrical movies. In my opinion too many liberties are taken and facts are changed and yet because of that people become uninformed. I think the fact of the matter is that this movie had an influence, although thankfully, shortly, on the legal matters of this case. Bernie Tiede worked as an assistant director at a funeral home in Cathage Texas and was there when Marjorie Nugent buried her husband in March of 1990. It was soon said that the two, became inseparable. This was not a sexual relationship but a companion relatio...

I almost exclusively watch the Investigation Discovery (ID) channel on television. In fact, currently my DVR has ten shows on it with more ready to record in the next few days. There has been a lot of advertising on the channel for an upcoming special on the Pamela Smart case to air this weekend. Normally I would wait until that show aired before I would have put this case together but to be fair I do not expect for it to reveal very much. I am actually surprised that I had not done this case already. It was a rather “sensational” case back in 1992. In fact, it was dubbed Trial of the Century at the time until the O.J. Simpson case knocked it down the line a bit. It has been twenty-seven years since this case came into the national spotlight and in my opinion the same spiel is being said by Pamela Smart, her family and her supporters. Every few years there seems to be a special made about the case and I admit that I watch most of them, although I have to say I am not su...

Sadly today it seems that mass shootings are everywhere, especially in schools. Most of us think of Columbine as the first of these incidents but that is far from the truth. One of the earliest recorded was the Bath School Massacre in 1927. However, in 1979 Brenda Sue Spencer perpetrated what many consider to be the first modern day school shooting. In January of 1979 sixteen year old Brenda Sue Spencer lived across the street from Grove Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego California. As the children were arriving at school that day she opened fire using a rifle her father had bought her for Christmas just a month earlier. She sat in her window using a telescopic scope and having 500 rounds of ammo next to her. By the time she was done, two adults were dead with eight children and a police officer injured. The two men who died were fifty-three year old Burton Wragg, the principal and fifty-six year old custodian Mike Suchar. They were both attempting to sh...

No matter how you look at this case it looks pretty cut and dry and yet it has already seen three trials. I would like to sit here and say that it has finally been settled, and yes, Dalia Dippolito's appeal of her last conviction was denied, but courts can sometimes be unpredictable, and that could never be more true than in this case. This case made headlines, not just in Boynton Beach Florida where it took place, but all over the world when nearly the entire case was captured on video. First there was the video of Dalia talking to who she thought was a hit man about murdering her husband of only six months. Then there was the video captured by the television show Cops that showed officers telling Dalia that her husband, Michael had been found dead in their home. It has been said that Dalia put on what people have called “An Academy Award” winning performance when she cried. Her home was surrounded by crime scene tape and she was “wailing” in the middle of the ...

I recently watched a television show called Bad Blood on the ID channel and came across this case. I was not very familiar with the series myself so if you have not seen it, it is a show that examines relationships of relatives in connection with crimes. They attempt to show both sides of things and then bring the parties together to see if they can work out their differences. In this particular episode the two daughters of James and Kelly Robarge were featured. The two girls, Gabrielle and Ciera are at odd as to the guilt of their father in the murder of their mother. However, it does appear that both girls testified for the prosecution at his trial. James Robarge met his future wife Kelly when they were twelve years old. It makes you think of the line in the movie Sweet Home Alabama, “Nobody finds their soulmate when they're ten.” But, many thought that was the case with James and Kelly. I found it interesting however that unlike so many others who think t...