True Crime Stories

I am a little disappointed in my research on this case. This was another case that I saw on the television show Fear Thy Neighbor. Even if I did not write a blog this was a case I wanted to know more about. As I have often said I know that everything in these types of television shows are completely true. First of course they are always bias in one form or another. I have also often said that I like appeal papers because this is where I feel I can best find the truth. The problem here is not that I found more than one appeal paper, the problem is that they told different stories as to what happened. This is something I have never seen before although the answer to that may have been that there was a re-trial in this case and one appeal was written after the first trial and the second appeal was written after the second trial. Robert Hayes had been the chief of police in St. Joseph Missouri for about a decade. He had started at the police department in the 1960's and fo...

Lately I have been watching the latest season of Fear Thy Neighbor . I have always liked this show despite the fact that they do embellish some facts and even change some names sometimes. That being said I have never used any one source when I am researching a case. What I will say about this show in particular is that it will tell the story of how things lead to the ultimate crime. When you research these cases most of the time you will only hear about the last thing that happened between the neighbors. You may see it say that there had been feuding between the neighbors for years and that the police were familiar with the area because they had been called many times. Beyond that however most things simply revolve around the incident that more often than not ended in a murder. Before I start getting into this story I want to point out something that remained confusing in my research. The television show showed the victims surname as Robins. When doing my research sometimes th...

  I have lived in Indiana my entire life. I admit that it is not completely unusual for me to come across a case that I am not familiar with. What is less unusual is to come across an Indiana town that I have not at least heard about. This case qualified in both areas of unknown for me. I am unsure which I am more surprised about, the fact that this was a pretty gruesome crime in my state that I had never heard about or that I had never heard of the area in which it took place. In 2002 Ray and Maggie Green seemed to have a pretty good life. The couple had been married for decades and had raised a daughter together. They also owned their own horse breeding and training business which they ran from their San Antonio Texas home. And then tragedy struck. On the morning of May 26, 2002 Maggie was on her way back from a show, carting her horses when a barge hit the bridge she was crossing on Interstate 40 in Oklahoma. When it was all said and done eight cars and three semi-truck...

This may be the shortest blog you will ever see from me and I have to be fair in saying that I am irritated about that. I say this because this was a sensational crime and beyond finding a single article based on Shana Whitmore's arrest I found nothing more than really more blogs from other people. I am amazed at this. This was a double murder case and even if the perpetrator pleaded guilty there should have been news and yet I can find nothing. I came across this case on an episode of Deadly Women and it made it to my list to be researched. I do not and will not base a crime or my opinion of such simply based on a television show, or even the sole opinion of other people. That being said, while I attempt to have as many facts of a case as possible, I try to say when things are not clear or I found a report here that said this or that but it was not something that was resounding so I cannot say the information is completely valid. I could sit here and tell you that Shana...

  This next case was another in which I saw on Deadly Women. It is another unusual case for me to blog about because the crime actually took place in a country other than the United States. In general, and for the most part, I do not do a lot of these types of cases because different countries have different rules when it comes to evidence and justice in general. But, this case was a very tragic case for one, and for two, it involved American citizens. That being said, and again I do not want to take away from the tragedy of this event, I must admit that while watching the story on the television show I actually snickered a bit. The perpetrator here, Theresa Riggi, made several attempts to take her own life and each of them failed which resulted in her being brought to justice through the courts. Theresa and her husband, Pasquale were married in 1989 in and lived a few years in California where Theresa was raised. Pasquale worked for the Shell Oil company and after a few year...

  This case is interesting in many ways to me. First it is the case of a woman who would eventually be executed. In fact, in 2001 when Lois Nadean Smith was executed by the state of Oklahoma she was the third woman executed by that state that year. At that time, and maybe still, her execution was notable, not just for the execution itself, or the fact that she was a woman, but also because after being the third woman that year Oklahoma got a “record” for executing the most women in a single year in any state since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. I also find it interesting because prior to this crime she had no criminal record, although I will admit that it seems she was not the most pleasant person. Maybe she had done some other things we do not know about. Lois Nadean Smith earned the nickname “Mean Nadean” when she was in high school. I found nothing specific that she did to earn this name or anything specific about her personality at all prior to the murd...

  This is a case that I came across while watching Deadly Women . Once again it is a case that I am surprised I had not heard of before that point, not just because it occurred in my state of Indiana, but also because in 2007 Linda Darby was captured after thirty-five years on the lam. I know you hear me say this often, but this blog is going to be a little bit different than most, if any, that I have done. This is not a case in which I have a lot of details, or shall we say, true facts. All that I have been able to gather have solely come from television shows and news articles, all but one of which would be written nearly forty years after the crime. That being said I was still intrigued with the case, not just because Linda Darby escaped and eluded capture for so long but also by legal decisions that have been made since that time. Charles Darby was from the area of Ashland Kentucky. How he made his way from there to the area of Hammond Indiana is unknown. But, by 1970 ...