True Crime Stories

I often come across cases in which research is difficult as I keep finding conflicting information. Much of the time that seems to be because the case is extremely old. When I do cases dating back to the early 1900s or further a lot of “lore” can be found. I have often talked when doing such cases about the issue of “yellow journalism” and how things were exaggerated and embellished through the newspapers for nothing more than sensationalism. When it comes to more modern cases (although I am not sure this case technically qualifies as “modern”) the misinformation found is largely due to one person repeating something that someone else reported. This case took place in 1960 with much of the information about Emmett Hashfield taking place decades before. Appeals were not published in the same manner as they are today, or at least that was the case in this particular case. I am used to appeals being the place to get the “play by play” story of what occurred in the crime, as wel...

  While researching this case I often thought about the case of Sylvia Likens. If you do not know about Sylvia's case I have blogged about it here (it was one of my very first ones in 2012) and there is a lot on the Internet. In short Sylvia Likens and her sister had been left in the care of a woman in Indianapolis while their parents worked the carnival tours. Sylvia was beaten and tortured not just by the woman, but by her children and children in the neighborhood. She would be found dead in the home in 1965. At the time neighbors had seen things that today we would expect to be reports. I have often been put in the position of explaining to people when this case is discussed on the Internet how I defend these people a bit because of the time period and how people reacted to things. Of course I have never believed that Sylvia's death was justified and there were people in position that should have done more. What I never expected was to see a someone similar situatio...

  When I sit down to compose a blog I like to try to do that in one sitting with things quiet all around me. Currently I live with two small toddlers and by the time I have time for quiet I am usually too exhausted to think! Let me say, doing this at almost fifty is quite different than doing it in my twenties. At any rate I had finished researching a blog today and I thought I would just spend the rest of the day researching cases and over the next few days, when I may have some down time, I would put them together. But, then I came across this case and I wanted to go ahead and pull it all together. This case has been on my list for a very long time and I have never just really had a desire to dive deep into it. To be fair I think that is because on the surface all of the little information that I found all basically said the same things. This would have a lot to do with the fact that this case took place back in the early 1950's. Today I dug a bit deeper if for no other r...

This is one of the more odd cases that I have come across. Of course we have all heard about cases that have been prosecuted without a body being found and this is one of them but I am not sure that I have seen very many in which there is little proof that there was an actual murder. Now, that does not mean that I do not think that there were suspicious things in the case against Anita Vega and that she should not have been charged with anything. Another thing I found interesting was the fact that it is alleged to be one of the most gruesome crimes and yet little can be or has been verified. Details are sketchy and disputed by some. And, when I say sketchy I mean it seems no one can agree when the crime even happened. I have lived in Indiana my entire life and so I found it interesting that I had never heard of this case. In 1994 when this case went to trial I was living in Indianapolis, just less than an hour south of Frankfort where the alleged crime took plac...

There has been an upswing of executions in 2017 after a lull of them in many states. In some, if not most cases, it had to do with first a medication used in executions being difficult to obtain and after a few what some called “botched” executions. A lot of this causes many states to halt executions. Arkansas was one of those states. After obtaining another medication to replace the one that could not longer be shipped to the United States for use in executions, they executed four men in the last week of April. Even Florida had an execution just this past week, their first in over eighteen months, after being one of the most active states when it comes to executions. Ronald Phillips became the first in Ohio on July 26 th in over three years. By all accounts it seems that all seventeen executions that have taken place in 2017 have been conducted without issue and it seems that many of these states intend to move forward in executions. Regardless of your position on the deat...

I have compiled nearly 450 blogs on this site at this point. Without a doubt the most difficult have involved the deaths of children, which I have done many. It is even more difficult, emotionally, in cases such as this one. Any death of a child, criminal or not, is sad. We will never see what that child could have done in life; we will never see if those who had horrible childhoods could overcome things. I have a relative who lived the life of having an addict for a parent and while none of us are perfect in any way, the one thing that I admire most about her is the fact that she overcame her childhood; she learned lessons and broke the cycle. She has gone on to have a productive life and has been the parent to her children she did not have. That being said, not every child has that opportunity and in the worse cases one has to wonder which situation is worse, death or the continued abuse that they suffered when it seemed clear no one was saving this child. On June 2...