H. H. Holmes was America’s first serial killer in the late 1800s. More famously, he is known for designing and building a murder castle where he killed many women.

Although he confessed to a kill count of twenty-seven people, it is thought he could have killed as many as two hundred. He also admitted to killings that were found to be untrue. One victim was found alive and well. It has also been suggested that he might be responsible for the Jack the Ripper killings.

Many believe that if it had not been for the fraud he committed, he would never have been caught.

The judge at the time refused to hear the information about all the victims. This meant that many of the facts were not committed to record, and became lost. Many of them were not even identified.

Did the women simply go missing or were they murdered is a question many families must have asked at the time.

Sadistic Tendencies

Holmes was always fascinated with death. As a young child, he would mutilate animals and corpses. In 1884, he married his first wife and was violent towards her. He held various jobs across the country and would always be moving. In 1886, he would marry his second wife, Marta Belknap, never having divorced his first.

His early moves were a result of unexplained deaths occurring in close vicinity to where he lived. He pursued several professions, including an early attempt to become a doctor.

As he got older, this fascination developed into murdering women. It was clear his sadistic tendencies were evolving.

Holmes evaded capture because there were never any bodies. He stripped the bodies at death. With the help of a professional, he turned the skeletons into resources for the local medical hospitals. It is possible that in a dusty cupboard sits a skeleton of a Holmes victim.

Murder Castle

Through a clever system of property purchases and using a range of contractors, Holmes turned his hotel into a murder castle. In a scene that would be at home in a horror film, Henry Howard Holmes, as he became known, would trap and murder women looking for shelter in Chicago.

During construction, Holmes would use cons and misdirection with contractors. They never realised what they were building. He would constantly be hiring and firing crews. The architectural plans were kept in only his possession. He released small portions, as needed, to specific contractors. None of these ever received the full picture, so suspicion was never raised.

When finished, Holmes could pass through the house unseen. He could lock doors from the outside and control dangerous gas chambers from his closet. The elaborate system of mazes, trapdoors and gas chambers meant Holmes could move anywhere in the hotel, unobserved. Using these passageways, he could move undetected to murder his victims.

The hotel had vaults, chambers and acid pits built into some of the rooms. The human-size furnace in the basement was used to dispose of the bodies without a trace; it was this furnace that would lead to his downfall when he seduced a lady called Emeline Cigrand.

Cigrand and Pitezel

Cigrand was born in 1868 in Lafayette, Tippecanoe, Indiana; it is thought she was murdered in December 1892. She was discovered by Benjamin Pitezel, who was a companion of Holmes and ultimately one of his last victims.

Pitezel was a known alcoholic; during his work with Holmes, he was sent to Dwight, Illinois, for alcoholism treatment. At the time, a doctor was stating that they had an elixir that would cure him. It is unclear whether he was sent there for the cure or to steal the idea for Holmes. Months later Holmes did produce his own ‘cure’ for alcoholism.

Whilst there, Pitezel met Cigrand, as she was the personal assistant to the doctor. He returned to Holmes with tales of how beautiful this young woman was and how she dazzled. Holmes knew he had to have her for himself.

Cigrand and Holmes

Holmes wrote to Cigrand offering her a job as his private secretary and stenographer. To lure her, he offered her twice her salary. She accepted; the pay was favourable, and she had long wanted to live in the glamour and excitement of Chicago.

As soon as she arrived, Holmes started to court her. He used his soothing voice, amazing blue eyes and gentle touch to enchant her. It was said that he brought her flowers and expensive gifts, including a bicycle, a new invention. Frequently they were observed riding together through Chicago.

Despite several people warning Cigrand about Holmes, it was no good. When his creditors came to his office, Holmes always had a tale to ease her mind. Often he told her that people were jealous of his success.

When Holmes started renting his apartments out in 1892, Dr Lawrence and his wife moved in. They became friends with Cigrand.

She was one of the prettiest and most pleasant young women I ever met - Dr Lawrence

It was clear to see that Cigrand was infatuated with Holmes, who had now convinced her that he was the son of a British Lord.

Throughout her time with Holmes, Cigrand wrote often to her family about the amazing man she had met and how wonderful her life in Chicago was. When the family visited, although they had concerns about the design of the ‘Murder Castle,’ they failed to convince Cigrand.

After one visit, where a cousin questioned the dead space in the apartments, Holmes proposed.

Cigrand Disappears

Everything seemed to be progressing well with the young couple. Until December 1892, when Cigrand visited the Lawrences with a handmade gift. Mrs Lawrence commented that she could have left such a present until Christmas. Cigrand explained she was going home to Indiana for Christmas. She implied this would be a final move and that she was not returning.

It is impossible to know what had changed her opinion on Holmes. Could he have stolen the £800 savings she had arrived with, or had his mask slipped?

The Lawrences never saw her again. She never said goodbye for her trip and vanished. Mrs Lawrence asked Holmes several times where she was; he always had a different explanation. Finally, he told her that Cigrand had married Robert Phelps. He even went as far as forging the wedding notices and delivering them to some of her family and friends.

Arrest

Holmes had committed several cases of fraud and insurance theft. In 1894, he was pursued on a charge of arson. He left Chicago. His next location was Fort Worth. Here he inherited property and started to build his second murder castle.

Holmes constructed a plan where Pitezel would fake his death for the insurance money.

Instead of faking Pitezel’s death, Holmes murdered him. He then blackmailed his wife to allow him to travel with three of their children, two girls and a boy.

Following the children’s disappearance, a police detective, Frank Geyer, was assigned to find them. Geyer followed the movements of Holmes, where he discovered the bodies of two girls in a cellar. Following the path further, he found the remains of a boy in a cottage Holmes had rented.

Holmes was arrested and claimed several murders within the hotel. The mystery into Cigrand also started to unravel. What was unknown at the time of her death was that Phelps was a well-known alias that Pitezel had used in the past. This became evident as the police searched for evidence.

On the first inspection of the Murder Castle, police found a large kiln in the basement. When they opened the door, they found a lady’s footprint etched there. It was believed to be Cigrand’s footprint, made in her attempt to escape the tomb. Even stranger was the fact that the footprint was etched into the door and could not be removed.

The best guess that scientists have for the footprint is that Holmes lured the woman into the vault shoeless. As she walked through the room, she stood on acid that Holmes used to increase the temperature in the vault. The mixture of the chemical and burning etched the footprint permanently into the metal door.

A few weeks after Cigrand’s disappearance, LaSalle Medical College received a female skeleton from their associate, HH Holmes, for their courses. Mysteriously, the murder castle, as it had become known, was gutted by fire in 1895.

Trial

On arrest, Holmes claimed that his first victim was a former medical student, Robert Leacock, in 1886. He stated this was so he could claim his insurance money. However, it was later discovered that Leacock died in 1889 in Canada.

This was one of many murders that Holmes claimed to have committed, which were later found to be untrue.

Holmes went on trial for the murder of Benjamin Pitezel and his children; he was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was hanged on 7 May 1896. Even this, though, was not a straightforward affair. His neck failed to snap as the trap door opened; instead, it took him fifteen minutes to die of strangulation.

The Jack the Ripper Connection

Over the last decade, Holmes’ great-great-great-grandson has come forward to say his relative was Jack the Ripper. He claims he found two diaries, in which Holmes writes about killing and mutilating prostitutes in London.

The time frame for the murders and the travel would fit in with this claim. It is also clear to see from studying the cases that both Holmes and the Ripper had similar psychopathy.

His grandson also stated that Holmes actually escaped the hangman’s noose. Instead of hanging Holmes, they hanged a stranger that Holmes tricked to take his place. Holmes was exhumed years later for DNA evidence to prove he was the person killed.

If you consider the lies, even if the diary is authentic, which I doubt, Holmes could have lied about being Jack the Ripper.

Given the fact that Holmes was a compulsive liar, and that his great-great-great-grandson had a book to sell, I would deny the claim that Holmes was Jack the Ripper. Further evidence of the false claim is found when you consider the hangman story.

This lie was proven scientifically. Although a horrific killer and famous as the USA’s first recorded serial killer, we cannot add Jack the Ripper to these accolades.

I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing. - HH Holmes

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It was 31st May 1902 when a torrential thunderstorm battered the quiet Suffolk village of Peasenhall. Under cover of a violent storm, a killer struck. The result was two trials which left no one convicted of the crime.

Many historians believe that the murderer was fortunate to escape prosecution; others have offered an alternative theory that exonerates William Gardiner. If not guilty, Gardiner lived with the stigma of a murder he had nothing to do with. If guilty, we can only hope Gardiner was haunted by his actions.

Whatever the truth, an innocent woman died, and this case remains one of the most sensational unsolved crimes in Edwardian England.

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For nearly four decades, a dark cloud has hung over Phillip Island, Australia. What was originally recorded as a murder-suicide has faced growing scrutiny, with many asking whether it was, in fact, a double murder.

On the morning of September 23, 1986, 23-year-old Penguin Parade worker Elizabeth “Beth” Barnard was found savagely stabbed to death in her home in Rhyll. The letter A, an unmistakable reference to the mark of adultery in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, was carved into her chest.

It was an open secret in the close-knit community that Beth was having an affair with her married boss, Fergus Cameron.

Vivienne Cameron

That same morning, Fergus’s wife, Vivienne Cameron, vanished. The family’s Land Cruiser was later found near the San Remo bridge, leading authorities to a swift conclusion: a jealous wife had murdered her husband’s mistress in a rage and jumped into the water.

By November 1987, a coronial inquest backed this official narrative, closing the case with Vivienne presumed dead. But beneath the surface of this “open-and-shut” story lies a web of glaring discrepancies, ignored leads, and a silence that has blanketed the island for forty years.

The Flaws in the Official Narrative

From the beginning, the theory that Vivienne committed murder before taking her own life was riddled with holes. The knife found next to Beth’s body bore no fingerprints. Would a woman who was going to kill and then take her own life wear gloves or wipe her prints away? It seems unlikely.

In addition, a significant amount of Vivienne’s blood was found inside the Cameron home, including a drag mark across the bathroom floor that was never properly analysed. This heavily suggested she had suffered a severe, debilitating injury

For a severely wounded woman to then drive to Rhyll, commit a brutal murder, and take her own life seems improbable.

Despite extensive searches beneath the San Remo bridge, Vivienne’s body was never recovered. The only physical trace placing her near the bridge was her vehicle, which could easily have been driven there by someone else.

Witnesses and Unanswered Questions

After the inquest was closed, a key witness came forward stating he was actually with Vivienne on the night of Beth’s murder. His timeline matched statements from Fergus’s sister, Marnie, who said she was waiting with Vivienne for Fergus to return home.

Another witness reported seeing Fergus’s brother, Donald, along with his brother-in-law, Ian (the two men who discovered Beth’s body), digging a deep hole on Donald’s property the day Vivienne disappeared. Police never searched Donald’s property. Having settled on a conclusion early, investigators failed to look for evidence that might dispute it.

Police refused to consider alternative suspects, even though the physical evidence and blood spatter pointed toward a scenario far more complex than a straightforward murder-suicide.

Decades of Silence on the Island

The fallout from the crime created a heavy culture of silence on Phillip Island. The Cameron family rarely spoke of it, local media coverage was minimal, and mentioning the case publicly carried heavy social consequences.

Even decades later, the silence persists. Several local women recalled workplace bans on discussing the case, with one island business owner even losing customers after bringing it up to the wrong person.

Tragically, key figures in the case, including Donald, Marnie, and Ian, passed away without ever being formally interviewed by police. Fergus, who went on to remarry and build a life after the tragedy, remains in failing health.

Though a 2014 cold-case review maintained the original ruling, investigative work by journalists and authors has continued to challenge the official narrative.

Remembering the Women Behind the Headlines

Whatever the ultimate truth, it is essential to remember the two women behind the headlines, who have too often been reduced to one-dimensional figures: the ‘adulterer’ and the ‘murderer.’

Friends described Vivienne as a devoted mother of two young sons, a passionate equestrian who gave riding lessons, and a loyal friend who stood by loved ones in their darkest moments. Beth was remembered as a joyful, vibrant 23-year-old who brought her friends together and cared deeply for the island’s famous penguin colony.

It is entirely possible that both women were victims, and that Vivienne’s children were robbed of the truth about their mother. The hope remains that the full truth will eventually surface, bringing peace to the memory of two women lost to a tragedy far more complex than the world was led to believe.

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The 1994 World Cup was not without its controversy and heartbreak. Wednesday, we looked at the massacre in County Down which occurred; today we look at another death that was a result of the 1994 tournament. This time, it was a player.

Andrés Escobar was a Colombian player who made his debut for the national team in 1988. He was a defender who was described as a team player, one who always gave his best. Like many defenders, he was a player the rest of the team relied on heavily.

He was twenty-seven when he was selected as part of Colombia’s World Cup squad in the USA.

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World Cup Fever has hit us all. England have made the semi-final and tonight will play for a chance in the final against Argentina. I will keep my prediction on this to myself, to save upsetting anyone.

But as current excitement builds, we cannot forget the darkest times when football and violence collided.

The World Cup has been filled with its fair share of tragedy, and I am not talking about your national team getting knocked out. I am talking about murder in two distinct cases, one today, one Monday, where the World Cup became the catalyst for murder.

Italy v Ireland

It was the 18th June 1994 when Ireland faced Italy in the group stages. Against the odds, Ireland went on to win the match 1-0, and Irish pride was bursting. One of the areas where the historic match had been watched was a small, rural pub in Loughinisland, County Down. The euphoria was soon to turn to horror.

The pub was not in a controversial area. The pub boasted a clientele of both religions, and the atmosphere was generally welcoming and calm.

The second half of the game was underway when two gunmen from the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) burst into the pub. One was armed with an AK-47, the other a Czech-made rifle; they opened fire on the unsuspecting fans.

The gunmen killed six people before laughing as they left. One of the victims, Barney Green (87), was the oldest person killed in the conflict. Five other people sustained gunshot wounds but survived. All the victims were Catholic.

Background

The violence appeared random, but soon the full picture was revealed. This was a revenge killing. Two days before the match, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) had killed three UVF members in Belfast.

The day before the match, a Catholic taxi driver and one Protestant had also been shot in retaliation by the UVF. The UVF made a mistake, thinking that all the victims were Catholic.

The mass murder was investigated, but no one was ever arrested for the killings in the pub. The families of the victims started to suspect that the police had colluded with the UVF in the attack.

This became more believable when a Special Branch member was linked to the getaway car, and intelligence warned the suspects of arrest. The police then destroyed the getaway car just ten months after the attack.

Justice

In 2006, after much campaigning by the families, the court ruled that there was a “severe failing” of the police. They stated that the police had not investigated the shooting properly and to the full extent of the law, although they never cited any direct collusion.

Shortly after, the High Court quashed the report and ordered a new investigation.

The 2014 investigation was widely rejected by the victims’ families and branded a “whitewash”. The ombudsman then investigated again in 2016. Dr Maguire started from scratch, taking a broader strategic look at the local loyalist paramilitary unit and the importation of the weapons used.

2016 Report

The landmark 2016 report delivered a damning verdict, officially concluding that collusion was a “significant feature” before, during, and after the murders.

It found the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Special Branch possessed reliable intelligence regarding the local Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) unit but failed to pass it to the active detectives. They actively prioritised protecting state informers over bringing the killers to justice.

Special Branch identified the primary suspects within 24 hours. However, delays meant arrests weren’t made for a month. Intelligence later revealed that a police officer had leaked information to the suspects, warning them of the impending arrests.

It further found that key evidence, including the red Triumph Acclaim getaway car, was prematurely destroyed by police, ruining future forensic opportunities.

Following the publication of the 2016 report, retired police officers launched a high-profile legal challenge attempting to have the report quashed, arguing that the Ombudsman had overstepped his powers by explicitly accusing officers of “collusion”. However, the report stood firm after senior judges ultimately rejected the challenge.

Today

The case remains highly relevant in the Northern Ireland Assembly. In political debates, representatives continue to cite the Loughinisland report as the textbook template of “collusion, concealment, and protecting agents.”

To this day, despite the extensive exposure of institutional cover-ups, no one has ever been successfully charged or convicted for the murders.

A monument to the victims sits outside Macartans Church.

The Grand Canyon crash was one of the deadliest aviation disasters in US history and was largely caused by legislation and technology not keeping up with invention.

In 1956, when air traffic control and commercial flights were still developing, two planes collided at 21,000 feet above the canyon. One hundred and twenty-eight people died.

The disaster led to the creation of the Federal Aviation Administration, but it’s unclear why it wasn’t foreseen and prevented before it happened.

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Just before Christmas in 1988, the United Kingdom became the target of one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in history. A bomb planted aboard Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over the small town of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing everyone on board and several residents on the ground.

The explosion scattered 300 tons of aircraft debris across an 845-square-mile area. Because the flight carried passengers from 21 nations, the majority of whom were American, the disaster triggered a massive, joint investigation between Scottish authorities and the FBI. Decades later, this cross-border case remains active, carrying far-reaching geopolitical implications.

The Fate of Pan Am Flight 103

The Boeing 747 took off from London Heathrow, bound for New York City. Just 38 minutes into the flight, as the aircraft reached its cruising altitude at 31,000 feet, the onboard explosive detonated. All 243 passengers and 16 crew members were killed instantly or during the descent, while the falling debris claimed another 11 lives on the ground.

Initial reports speculated a tragic accident, but forensic evidence quickly pointed to sabotage. Investigators determined that the blast caused the forward fuselage to disintegrate, tearing the nose section from the aircraft. The sudden decompression plunged the cabin into darkness and sub-zero temperatures.

Tragically, some passengers were caught in the engines or thrown clear during the breakup. However, the majority remained trapped within two large sections of the fuselage that plummeted to Earth. Experts believe up to 60 per cent of those on board survived the initial explosion, though it remains unknown how many remained conscious during the descent.

Devastation in Lockerbie

On the ground, the residents of Lockerbie were celebrating the festive season when a deafening roar shook the town. The impact of the main fuselage registered 1.6 on the Richter scale as aircraft remnants and victims rained from the sky.

The most catastrophic damage occurred on Sherwood Crescent, where the wings and mid-fuselage crashed into 21 homes, causing an explosion that left a 150-foot crater and killed 11 townspeople. First responders arrived at a scene of total devastation: fires burned across the town, and local senior policeman George Stubbs noted that the intense heat was powerful enough to melt wrought-iron gates.

Unravelling the Terrorist Plot

Piecing together the tragedy required Scottish and FBI investigators to analyse more than 10,000 pieces of evidence strewn across hundreds of miles. By July 1990, authorities officially confirmed that a Semtex bomb had destroyed the aircraft.

Forensics traced the blast to the forward cargo hold, where an explosive device had been concealed inside a radio cassette player packed into a brown Samsonite suitcase. Surrounding the blast site, investigators recovered scraps of clothing containing explosive residue, which were traced back to the Malta Trading Company.

Further investigation revealed that the suitcase had been routed from Luqa Airport in Malta onto Pan Am Flight 103. Investigators located the Maltese shopkeeper who sold the clothing; he vividly recalled a Libyan customer who purchased the items without checking their size or price.

The Libyan Connection

The suspect was identified as Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi. He had conspired with Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah.

Interrogations later revealed that Megrahi instructed Mas’ud to set the bomb’s timer for 11 hours. After placing the rigged cassette player into the suitcase, they checked it onto a conveyor belt at Luqa Airport. Mas’ud then boarded a flight to Tripoli, where the co-conspirators later met with senior Libyan intelligence officials to brief them on the operation. Three months later, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi personally met with Mas’ud and Fhimah, praising them for completing a “national duty” against the United States.

In 1991, Megrahi and Fhimah were indicted on 270 counts of murder and conspiracy, alongside violations of Britain’s 1982 Aviation Security Act. After years of diplomatic talks, the suspects were finally extradited to the Netherlands in 1999 to face trial in Scotland.

Trial, Justice, and Geopolitical Revenge

The trial commenced on May 3, 2000. Megrahi was found guilty and sentenced to 27 years in prison, while Fhimah was acquitted. Neither man ever admitted a role in the bombing.

Investigators concluded the attack was a state-sponsored act of retaliation. Libya sought revenge for a 1986 U.S. airstrike on Tripoli that killed Qaddafi’s young daughter. Analysts also suggest it may have been tied to retaliation for the U.S. Navy’s accidental downing of Iran Air Flight 655 earlier in 1988, which killed 290 civilians.

In 2009, Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds following a terminal prostate cancer diagnosis, a decision that drew sharp criticism from U.S. officials and victims’ families. He died in Libya three years later, in 2012.

The Pursuit of Justice Continues

The Lockerbie case did not close with Megrahi’s death. On December 21, 2020, the 32nd anniversary of the attack, the U.S. Department of Justice announced criminal charges against the bomb-maker, Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi.

In 2022, Mas’ud was taken into U.S. custody to stand trial, where he faces a potential life sentence. For the families of the 270 victims, the pursuit of full accountability continues. The court case is due to be heard this year, and preliminary proceedings took place in May 2026.

Today, the victims of Pan Am Flight 103 are memorialised at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C., by a traditional Scottish cairn constructed from 270 individual Scottish stones. The monument stands as a permanent reminder of the lives lost in this tragedy, bearing an inscription that ensures their memory will never be forgotten:

On 21 December 1988, a terrorist bomb destroyed Pan American Airlines Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all on board and 11 on the ground. The 270 Scottish stones which compose this memorial cairn commemorate those who lost their lives in this attack against America.

Few crimes cause more disgust than a mother who kills her own children. Initially, that is what the Esher Murders seem to be: a mother who brutally murdered her six children whilst their father was away.

However, when you study the case, you realise that the murder was not as simple as you first thought. You may even find yourself empathising with the mother and understanding her situation.

The last shock that this case will produce is why you have never heard of it. It is due to the cover-up instigated at the highest level that no one heard the name of Mary Ann Brough.

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When Queen Victoria came to the throne, she was a naive girl. Her mother had shielded her entirely from the harsh realities of life. Her first Prime Minister was Lord Melbourne, a man with whom she quickly developed an incredibly close relationship.

The bond they shared bears a great resemblance to the later pairing of Queen Elizabeth II and Winston Churchill. Melbourne was Victoria’s friend, confidant, and trusted advisor. Both young queens relied heavily on their first Prime Ministers to navigate the pressures of the crown.

Lord Melbourne helped shape the monarch that Victoria would eventually become. Naturally, this intrigued me. I wanted to look deeper into his past. I already knew from various biographies of the young queen that Melbourne was a widower who had tragically lost his son.

What I did not expect to find as I dug into his domestic life was a story completely dominated by his wife. She was arguably even more fascinating than he was. Furthermore, she possessed a strange, tentative connection to one of my absolute favourite books: Frankenstein.

This is the story of Lady Caroline Lamb, the woman who would marry into the Melbourne title; a soul never content with life.

Lady Caroline

Caroline was born on 13th November 1785. She was the only child of Frederick Ponsonby, the 3rd Earl of Bessborough, and Henrietta Spencer. Their marriage was notoriously unhappy. This fractured domestic environment probably shaped Caroline’s unique, unpredictable personality.

From her earliest years, Caroline refused to be conventional. Peers described her as volatile, intense, and deeply temperamental. She defied the strict gender boundaries of her era, routinely wearing trousers and riding horses bareback across open fields.

In 1802, she debuted to high society’s prospective bachelors. The elite nicknamed her the “Fairy Queen”. It was during this season that she caught the eye of William Lamb, the man we know today as Lord Melbourne. Unfortunately, William was only a second son at the time. Lacking status and fortune, he was not permitted to propose. Then, fate intervened.

William Lamb

When William’s elder brother, Peniston, died unexpectedly, William’s financial and social stature increased overnight. He was now the heir. At the end of the traditional period of mourning, he proposed to Caroline, and the couple were wed on 3rd June 1805.

Their marriage was never destined to be smooth sailing. The chaos began at the wedding itself. Caroline threw a violent temper tantrum at the reception, forcing staff to escort her away from her own guests.

The couple would go on to have one son, Augustus, who survived infancy. Augustus was born with severe learning difficulties; mentally, he never progressed past the age of a seven-year-old. He passed away in 1836 at the age of twenty-nine.

Long before his death, however, the marriage had eroded. Records show the couple were living largely separate lives as early as 1810.

Lord Byron

For those who know the history of Gothic literature, Lord Byron was the infamous poet staying near Mary Shelley in Switzerland when she conceived Frankenstein. Byron was a man who cared nothing for the sanctity of marriage. He found it incredibly easy to draw the restless Caroline into a passionate affair.

Byron was not Caroline’s first extramarital indiscretion. That title belonged to Sir Godfrey Webster, though that brief liaison lacked the consuming fire of her next relationship. During her time with Byron, the couple went so far as to perform a mock marriage ceremony. Caroline completely committed herself to the poet, conveniently ignoring the fact that she already had a husband.

When Caroline first met Byron, he had just become an overnight celebrity following the publication of Childe Harold in 1812. She pursued him relentlessly. While Byron initially revelled in the intense attention, he quickly grew exhausted by her obsessive, public behaviour. The advice of an unusual confidante compounded his exhaustion.

The End of the Affair

In a strange twist of history, Byron was intimate friends with William’s mother, Elizabeth, the Lady Melbourne of that era. Operating with a distinctly cynical view of marriage during the late Georgian period, Elizabeth’s own life was scandalous; rumours persist regarding the true paternity of her children. Regardless of her own morals, she conspired directly with Byron to end his affair with her daughter-in-law.

You might assume she did this to protect her son William, who had chosen to wait out the scandal. You would be wrong. Many historians believe she broke up the affair purely so she could take Caroline’s place in Byron’s bed.

Whatever the ultimate truth, the rejection devastated Caroline. Her mental health spiralled into a dangerous decline. She became utterly consumed by Byron, tracking him down at his London rooms and bombarding him with frantic letters.

On 5th July 1813, she encountered Byron at a high-society ball for the first time since the breakup. Overwrought with emotion, she picked up a broken glass bottle and publicly slashed her own arms. Polite society was horrified by the display and promptly shunned her.

Novelist

Following this highly public breakdown, family members suggested she be sent away to the countryside to recover. Instead, Caroline played one final, dramatic card: she wrote a scandalous novel based entirely on her affair with Byron, titled Glenarvon.

Published anonymously in 1816, Glenarvon became an immediate bestseller.

It did not take long for high society to decode the characters and identify the author. Outraged by the exposure, the aristocracy completely cast her out. No one would associate with her, except for William. Remarkably, her husband stood faithfully by her through the entire social ruin.

Till Death Us Do Part

When news reached Caroline in 1824 that Byron had died in Greece, she collapsed into a hysterical fever. She smashed furniture in her grief and galloped wildly on horseback through the family park. Doctors resorted to heavy doses of laudanum and brandy to quiet her frayed nerves. Through it all, William remained at her side, caring for her.

Ultimately, her volatile behaviour took an unsustainable toll on William’s peace and his rising political career. The couple officially separated in 1825. William left Caroline behind at the country estate while he relocated to London to focus on parliament.

As the years advanced, Caroline grew noticeably calmer. Observers noted that she finally seemed to develop a genuine, quiet fondness for her husband. In October 1827, her health failed as she developed severe dropsy.

In January 1828, realising the end was near, she sent for William. He rushed to her side, and she passed away with him present on the 26th of January. Her official cause of death was severe oedema, brought on by years of heavy self-medication and chronic alcoholism.

William Lamb went on to inherit the title of Lord Melbourne, eventually becoming Prime Minister and the young Queen Victoria’s closest mentor. He died on 24th November 1848 at his family home, following a painful physical decline after a major stroke.

He spent his final years isolated at Brocket Hall, largely forgotten by the political world and cut off from Queen Victoria; a lonely retirement that deeply saddened him.

Subscribe today: I spend hours digging through archives, old testimony, and forgotten files to bring these cases to life. Free posts are just the beginning, paid subscribers keep this work possible and get access to my full vault of articles.

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Howard Hughes: eccentric, rich, and unconventional. Think Elon Musk in flares; he was a man who truly liked to explore life. So, when he announced in 1972 that he was building a state-of-the-art ship to mine for manganese on the ocean floor, no one was very surprised.

The ship, known as the Hughes Glomar Explorer, was 618 feet long and featured state-of-the-art technology, including a massive grab claw that lowered from the vessel’s bottom to pick up manganese. It cost the equivalent of $4 billion to build in today’s money.

As the project progressed, actor Richard Anderson, famous for The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, became involved, publicly showing off the ship’s technology.

Except that everything I have told you about the reason for building this ship was an elaborate lie constructed by the CIA.

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The race was on to map the world. The Victorian era saw the British Empire expand, and much of the world was mapped. One area remained undiscovered, though. That was the North West Passage.

The Franklin Expedition hoped to map this passage along the top of North America. They wanted to find a way to travel directly from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. Many expeditions had failed. But the trip backed by the British government and led by Sir John Franklin would be different. Or would it?

HMS Erebus and Terror

Sir John Barrow, Second Secretary of the Admiralty, conceived the mission. He took two of the finest ships, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. Both had been Navy bomb vessels converted for this type of exploration. He kept their full sailing rigs but also equipped both with coal-powered steam engines and screw propellers for extra power.

Both ships had iron sheeting reinforcing their hulls, a propeller that retracted in the ice, and steam engines. They also had futuristic technology. This included a water purification unit, one of the first cameras, and an insulated diving suit. Lastly, they carried two inventions to improve the lives of the crew exponentially: internal heating and canned food.

The task was then to find someone to lead the mission. Several applied. Two who were deemed unfit to lead the mission were given individual Captain roles on the ships. The group eventually settled on Sir John Franklin to lead both vessels. Franklin was a veteran of two previous Arctic expeditions. He had his critics, but overall, public opinion was high for a successful mission.

Lastly, fully equipped with 134 recruited crew members, the two ships set sail on 19th May 1845.

Stromness

The two ships were flanked by two tugs to carry additional coal and an additional supply ship. As they entered the North Sea, the challenge of the voyage was realised. They hit a horrendous storm. Franklin would not turn back. The tugs turned back, but the Erebus, the Terror, and the supply ship reached Stromness on 31st May.

The ships needed supplies. However, the town did not trade until Monday, so the ships sat in port. The sailors enjoyed some downtime, although Franklin banned drinking.

The weather eventually died down. On 3rd June, the two ships and the supply ship sailed into the Atlantic. Once the convoy reached Disko Bay in Greenland, the support vessel left the two large ships. A couple of the men who had fallen ill returned with it, reducing the total crew to 129.

Towards the end of July, two separate whaling ships saw and interacted with the two vessels. This was the last time either of the ships or any of the crew would be seen, sparking a mystery of what happened to the Franklin Expedition that has endured for centuries.

Missing

Most in England expected to hear from the expedition in one to two years. None more so than Lady Franklin, a close friend of Charles Dickens, who was waiting for news of her husband.

When the expedition failed to report, most in Parliament presumed the crews had perished. Lady Franklin would not take this as an answer. Along with Dickens, who wrote many articles, she lobbied to have a search mission sent for the two ships.

In 1859, Sir Leopold McClintock sailed out to search for the Franklin expedition. McClintock had been a favourite to lead the original voyage but had been persuaded by his wife that the mission was too dangerous. However, he could not say no to rescuing his friend John Franklin.

There was no sign of either ship. However, the search team found two stone-built cairns on King William Island. In them, they found two handwritten notes.

What Happened to the Franklin

From the notes they found and subsequent exploration, it appears that the two ships became stuck in the ice. The year they travelled, the North West Passage was particularly cold and the ice floes larger than average. The year also boasted a cold summer, causing few of the ice floes to melt. The two ships became stuck and then waited for a summer thaw that never came.

In the spring of 1847, the party travelled across the ice to Point Victory and deposited the written record into the cairns. They then returned later to the notes to add to their story, stating that John Franklin had died in June 1847.

Trapped in ice and drifting south, Captain Crozier abandoned ship on 22nd April 1848.

Weakened from starvation and scurvy, 105 surviving men had fled across the land to find civilisation, dying en route. Very few bodies have ever been recovered from the expedition. However, those who have, with modern technology, may tell a different story as to the decline of the men.

Modern Exploration

Few bodies have ever been found of the crew; however, those that have have been the subject of speculation in modern exploration. Testing the bodies, scientists found that all had a high level of lead in their blood. Further investigation pointed to the revolutionary tinned food that had been stored on the ships.

The Franklin Expedition was one of the first to carry tinned food. However, these had been made at speed, and the solder that had been used to produce the tins leaked into the food, causing many of the crew to become ill with lead poisoning.

Following this conclusion, the team looking into the exhibition discovered the ships almost perfectly intact in the ice. HMS Erebus was discovered in 2014, and HMS Terror in 2016. It is hoped that the ships will contain more answers to what happened to the Franklin Expedition and the men who set sail over 150 years ago.

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Christiana Edmunds was one of the first famous killers to walk the corridors of Broadmoor. She was called the Chocolate Cream Poisoner, but she never considered herself one of the Broadmoor prisoners. Despite this, she remained a patient until her death, some thirty-five years after her incarceration.

Christiana Edmunds was described as a tall, handsome woman with a highly prepossessing demeanour. Unlike many of the poor women at Broadmoor, Edmunds came from an educated, middle-class background.

Some will argue that Edmunds was not mad but rather a cold, sadistic killer. This marks a sharp contrast with earlier historical poisoners like Mary Bateman, the notorious “Yorkshire Witch” who used arsenic to systematically defraud and murder vulnerable clients under the guise of magic.

While Bateman operated out of crude, calculated financial greed, Edmunds was driven by an altogether different force: an unhinged, obsessive romantic delusion. Whatever the truth, Edmunds’s criminal career started because of a man, a married man to be more precise, who was also her neighbour in Brighton.

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For more than a century, Mary Ann Cotton was the most prolific serial killer in UK history, until Harold Shipman surpassed her victim count in 2000. She was described as beautiful, charming, and ultimately deadly, earning her the nickname “Black Widow” after the deadly spider.

It has been suggested that Cotton killed at least 21 people. Many of these were her children or husbands. Records show that she had at least 13 children during her life, yet only 2 of these outlived her. Similar to Mary Ann Bateman, a serial killer 100 years before, her weapon of choice was arsenic poisoning. Her main motive for the murders was to collect the insurance money that each death provided her with.

Early Life

Cotton was born into a mining community in Sunderland. Her father, Michael Robson, was a collier sinker. She had two siblings, but only her younger brother survived. When Cotton was eight, the family moved to County Durham. Like many families of the time, they travelled where the work was. She was a good student and a friendly girl. Her Sunday school superintendent would describe her as: “a most exemplary and regular attender, a girl of innocent disposition and average intelligence.”

In 1842, Cotton’s father was killed after he fell down a 150ft mine shaft. The times were very harsh. His body was delivered to the family in a sack, along with the news that they would need to vacate the mining property they were living in. This situation did not last long, as Cotton’s mother remarried in 1843 to another miner.

At sixteen, Cotton left her home to become the nursemaid to the manager of Murton Colliery, where she cared for his children. When the children grew up, she returned to her stepfather’s home for a short period whilst she trained to be a dressmaker. It would not be long before she would start working her way through her husband’s.

The Life of a Married Woman

Cotton married her first husband when she was 20. Like her father, he was a colliery labourer called William Mowbray. During her time with Mowbray, she would go on to mother many children; estimates suggested nine. Only one would survive. No records exist of these deaths, even though registration was compulsory at the time. It is hard to establish what they died of or the exact numbers. In January 1865, Mowbray died of what was noted as intestinal problems. Cotton collected £35 on his death, which was the equivalent of six months’ wages.

Cotton went on to start working in a local infirmary after Mowbray’s death. It was during this time that she met husband number two. George Ward was an engineer and a patient at the time. Entranced by his nurse, he married her in August 1865. His health was poor at the time, and was about to become worse. Cotton, who did not want a child living with them, sent her daughter to live with her mother. It is unclear why she chose this course of action, rather than killing her. Ward would die in October 1866 of intestinal problems, leaving Cotton to collect the insurance money.

The next man on Cotton’s radar was James Robinson, who was a shipwright. He hired Cotton as a housekeeper shortly after his wife died. When his son died one month later of gastric fever, he turned to his housekeeper for comfort. Whilst helping Robinson deal with his grief, Cotton fell pregnant.

At this point in her life, Cotton received notification that her mother was ill, so she went to look after her. Her mother made good progress and started recovering, only to fall ill with stomach pains. She died nine days after Cotton arrived, at the age of 54. Cotton returned to Robinson with her daughter, who had been staying with her mother. Shortly after returning to Robinson, her daughter became ill with a stomach complaint and died. Two of Robinson’s children suffered the same fate. Cotton went on to collect the insurance money.

After these events, and with a child on the way, Robinson married Cotton, and the happy couple went on to have two children. Only one of these children would survive. Cotton was eager after these unfortunate events to get her husband insured. It is this insistence that raised the suspicion of Robinson. Whilst checking his bank, he found that Cotton had run up a huge debt in his name and had pawned many of the family’s valuables. He threw her out, keeping custody of their son.

After this, Cotton was forced to live on the streets. When her friend, Margaret Cotton, introduced her to her brother, a pitman and recent widower, Cotton was only too happy to help. Margaret had been acting as a surrogate mother to her brother’s children. When Margaret died in March 1870 from stomach problems, Cotton was there to comfort Frederick. Shortly after this, she found out that she was pregnant with her twelfth child.

The marriage to Cotton was not to be a faithful one. Cotton heard that a previous love, Joseph Nattrass, was living close and rekindled her romance with him. In December the same year, Frederick died from gastric fever and Cotton collected still more insurance money. After the death of Frederick, both his sons also died of gastric fever, and then Cotton’s son would suffer the same fate. The last person to die of gastric problems was Nattrass.

The Black Widow Uncovered

After these latest deaths, Cotton went to work for Thomas Riley, a parish official. She complained to him about her son being a problem and asked if she could have him committed to the workhouse. When Riley informed her this would only be possible if she accompanied him, she replied: “I won’t be troubled long. He’ll go like the rest of the Cottons.”

Five days later, Charles Edward died, and Riley went straight to the police. The boy was examined and showed clear evidence of arsenic poisoning. The decision was then made to exhume both Nattrass and some of Cotton’s children. They all showed signs of arsenic poisoning.

The papers latched onto the story of the Black Widow. During their research, they discovered how much Cotton had moved around the country. They also noted the number of people she had lost to stomach fever. Dr William Byers Kilburn, who was Charles’ doctor, had kept samples from his patient. When these were tested, they showed arsenic poisoning.

The End of a Serial Killer

Cotton stood trial on 5th March 1873, the trial having to be delayed so that she could give birth to her final child. After deliberating for 90 minutes, the jury found her guilty on all charges. Out of the 13 children she was believed to have had, only two went on to survive: the son that Robinson claimed custody of and the daughter, Margaret Edith, born in jail.

Cotton was hanged in Durham jail on 24th March 1873. In a strange twist, she didn’t die of a broken neck, but rather strangulation. The executioner had rigged the rope too short, so a broken neck did not happen. Whether this was on purpose or not was never established.

In the 1990s, Durham jail was modernised, and Cotton’s remains were removed, amongst others. Her bones were found with a pair of her shoes; they were later cremated and rest in an undisclosed location.

Subscribe today: I spend hours digging through archives, old testimony, and forgotten files to bring these cases to life. Free posts are just the beginning, paid subscribers keep this work possible and get access to my full vault of articles.

If you’ve enjoyed this story and want to see more, please consider upgrading. It’s readers like you who keep Murder Mayhem UK alive.

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When human body parts were found wrapped in plastic in the secluded woodland of Kersal Dale, Salford, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) immediately launched a massive operation, pulling together hundreds of officers, detectives, crime scene investigators, and specialist operations staff.

The complex and harrowing investigation began on April 4, 2024, when a member of the public found a human torso in the Salford woodland. From the outset, the Major Incident Team faced an uphill battle. They were dealing with partial remains, no immediate identity for the victim, and a race against time.

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We have all heard of Jigsaw, the popular protagonist in the Saw franchise movies. However, the UK has a real-life Jigsaw killer.

Stephen Marshall earned the nickname from the media when he stabbed his landlord, Jeffrey Howe, and scattered his dismembered body across two counties.

Jeffrey Howe had taken pity on Marshall when he needed somewhere to stay, letting him live with his girlfriend, Sarah Bush, in his flat. Jeffrey had met Marshall through his work as a kitchen salesman; they were also drinking buddies.

The couple took advantage of the kind gesture. Marshall (38) and Bush (21) took over the property and sold Jeffrey’s possessions online. They then went further, emptying Jeffrey’s bank account.

Marshall planned to kill Jeffrey and then take over his identity.

Stephen Marshall

Born in 1971, Marshall was a British bodybuilder, personal trainer, and former nightclub doorman.

He grew up in the UK and developed his initial career around fitness and security. At one point, he even owned his own gym in Hertfordshire.

During the 1990s, he worked as a doorman in London. It was during this time that he established links to London’s criminal underworld, specifically one notorious crime family.

He had a history of violent offences, including assault and battery, criminal damage, possession of drugs, and possession of a firearm.

He was described as highly volatile and prone to severe mood swings. This behaviour escalated as his cocaine addiction did.

Body Parts

With a deteriorating financial and personal life in 2008, Marshall had nowhere to stay. That is when Jeffrey offered to let him live rent-free in his flat.

On 8th or 9th March 2009, Marshall stabbed Jeffrey to death. The couple then straight away started accessing his bank account and selling his possessions, even selling his car on eBay.

The murder was discovered when members of the public found body parts. His left leg was found in a lay-by in Hertfordshire.

A week later, an arm was discovered forty minutes away on a grass verge. Two days after that, a farmer found his head, one hundred miles away. The head had been mutilated to make identification harder.

Finally, his torso and arm were discovered in a suitcase in a ditch in Hertfordshire.

The scattered remains initially made it difficult to identify the victim. The police started by releasing certain physical details to the public.

After Jeffrey’s friends and family reported him missing, dental records led to the remains being identified.

Investigation

Having identified Jeffrey, the police went to his flat and discovered Marshall living there. The couple claimed that Howe had just packed up and left. Officers, however, noticed that Marshall appeared nervous during questioning.

It was not long after the identification that detectives discovered Marshall had previously lived close to where some of the body parts were discovered.

A forensic team was sent to the flat. Despite the attempted clean-up, they discovered traces of Jeffrey’s blood in the bedroom, bathroom, and beneath the carpets.

Microscopic green fibres from a T-shirt found in Marshall’s bedroom matched fibres that had come from the duct tape wrapped around some of the body parts.

Marshall’s digital footprint was the next thing to raise suspicion. CCTV caught the couple selling Jeffrey’s possessions, and their eBay sales were linked to them. The police then spent time tracing the vehicle journeys the couple had taken to dispose of the body.

Conviction

Marshall had boasted to friends of his skill at butchering corpses, saying he had similarly disposed of four other men during the 1990s. Bush had also admitted to her friends when drunk that Marshall had killed Jeffrey.

Faced with the mounting evidence, Marshall admitted to dismembering the body and disposing of it but denied murder. He later changed his plea to guilty.

The judge who sentenced Marshall told him he would serve a minimum of thirty-six years in prison.

Bush was acquitted of murder but was given two concurrent sentences for helping dispose of the body parts and giving false information to the police during the investigation. She was sentenced to three years and nine months. Her lawyer still maintains that she acted under pressure from Marshall, scared of what might happen to her if she did not help him cover his tracks. The judge noted Bush received a relatively lenient sentence due to her background, having spent most of her life in care before falling into prostitution, alongside the loss of her first child at just 10 days old.

Marshall and Bush took the generosity of Jeffrey to offer them a place to stay and murdered him for financial gain. Marshall will not be eligible for parole until 2046.

Bush served 45 months (just under four years) of her sentence before being released from prison.

It was the early hours of the morning on 23rd March 2015. Aaron Quinn and his girlfriend were woken by a strange man telling them he was going to rob them but that they should stay calm.

He had broken into their house in Vallejo, California, he said, with a group of others, although the couple only ever interacted with him. Even stranger, the man was wearing a wetsuit and the couple never saw his face.

Kidnap

When Denise opened her eyes, she could see a flashing white light and red laser spots scanning the walls. The man instructed her to tie her boyfriend up with zip ties which he presented to her.

Aaron, then tied up, was told to get into his closet. As he hopped there, he said he could hear others downstairs going through the cupboards and what he thought was a drill running.

Next, Denise was told to join her boyfriend in the closet. The man then demanded they both drink a sedative. For all purposes, this seemed like a robbery. But, then Denise was told she would be taken for forty-eight hours whilst Aaron completed some tasks for the men.

One of his tasks was to go to the bank and collect ransom money. Aaron was then taken downstairs where he noticed a security camera had been mounted on the wall to monitor him. He was told that if he contacted the police, he would never see Denise again. He then heard her being put into the trunk of their car.

At this point, the sedative took effect and Aaron passed out. He woke later and found that his laptop had been taken but his mobile phone was still there.

Wriggling free of the zip ties, he wondered who he could call for help. Aaron, fearful of being surveilled if he called the police, called his older brother, who worked as an FBI agent. His brother instructed him to immediately call 911. Aaron followed his directions. The Vallejo Police Department responded and he started to tell them what had happened.

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It was the 15th November 2010, when an unidentified driver discovered a body in the middle of a residential street in the Boston suburb Milton. The body was that of a mutilated Black youth. He wore no shoes, socks or shirt.

Investigations in the area discovered multiple cars with blood splatter on them. Investigators quickly ruled out a hit-and-run. The body had no ID on it, except for a plastic card found near the body.

Trauma to the victim’s head was extensive. His mutilated torso was covered in what looked like road rash, which suggested the victim had been dragged along the street. Witnesses who lived near the scene recalled hearing a very loud bang before the body was found.

It was then that Milton police started to suspect the body had been killed elsewhere and dumped. Not even they could have guessed that the young man had lived 900 miles away.

Delvonte Safon Tisdale

Delvonte was a 16-year-old student who lived in Greensboro, North Carolina, He grew up in a loving family with his mother, father and siblings. Described as a bright and athletic young man, Delvonte had dreams of joining the military and was a member of the Air Force JROTC program at North Mecklenburg High School.

He had recently faced challenges in his personal life, including his parents’ divorce. However, Delvonte was known for his positive attitude and friendly demeanour. His mother, Jonet Washington, and father, Anthony Tisdale, were both active and supportive figures in his life, and Delvonte enjoyed spending time with his siblings and friends.

Just before he died, he moved to Charlotte to live with his father. Attending a new school, he began to build a circle of friends. Despite this, he appeared to be happy. So, what caused him to make such a stupid decision that would end his life?

Charlotte Douglas International Airport

On the evening of 14th November 2010, Delvonte sneaked onto the grounds of Charlotte Douglas International Airport. Out of the twenty major airports, it was the least secure. He entered through a hole in the perimeter of the fence and entered the tarmac undetected.

He approached a US Airways jet that had been idling for thirty-seven minutes and climbed into the wheel well of the aircraft. His handprint was discovered inside. He had no motive for attempting such a perilous journey and the reason for his decision remains unclear.

The plane took off going from Charlotte to Boston. The odds for survival were very small as temperatures plummeted and oxygen levels decreased. Tragically, as the plane began to descend into Boston and the landing gear lowered, Delvonte fell from the aircraft into the residential street in Milton.

Solving the Case

This conclusion did not happen instantly, and the story above took much investigation to piece together. A card was found deep in Delvonte’s pocket with his name on it, and missing persons reports had been filed.

On 23rd November, investigators received a tip from North Carolina from a witness who remembered seeing someone who matched Delvonte’s description walking on Route 85.

So, how could he have travelled the 900 miles to Milton in that timeline? The logical conclusion was that he must have flown.

Then, one investigator made the flippant remark, “He didn’t just fall out of the sky.”

A fall from the sky would certainly explain the wounds he had suffered and the loud bang the witness had heard previous to his body being discovered.

Based on departure times, flight paths, and travel time, investigators focused on US Airways Flight 1176, bound for Boston. It was the only possible flight Delvonte could have stowed away on. The reassembled plastic card found near his body was from a hotel in Charlotte, North Carolina, that had a shuttle to the airport.

As investigators worked the case, they walked the path the plane would have taken as it approached Logan Airport in Boston. The search took teams into densely wooded areas, where Delvonte’s shirt and sneakers were found.

Grease on the recovered shirt, along with a handprint and fingerprints inside the US Airways plane’s wheel well, supported the stowaway theory.

Investigations

In the aftermath of his death, multiple agencies launched investigations into how he managed to access the plane and why he took such drastic action. A security breach was discovered at Charlotte Douglas Airport, revealing a hole in the fence. It was assumed that he entered through this gap.

They also discovered the airport’s security force numbered just 42 police officers, the smallest among the nation’s top 20 airports. The lack of surveillance footage capturing Delvonte’s entry onto the tarmac and his boarding of the aircraft raised further questions about the airport’s security measures.

Delvonte’s family, too, struggled to find answers. They sought to understand why their son had made the dangerous decision to stow away on a flight and what factors may have contributed to his actions.

Gaining access to Delvonte’s friends and school records proved difficult, as Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools refused to cooperate with the family’s requests. In an attempt to hold those responsible for their son’s death accountable, the Tisdale family filed a lawsuit against the city of Charlotte. It was quickly dismissed, leaving the family with little to no information.

Despite the efforts of the family in several appeals, they never got the answers as to why their son sneaked into the wheel well of US Airways Flight 1176. Whether he was running away or it was a dare gone wrong may never be known.

It would be an understatement to say that the British love tea. This was as true in Victorian London as it was during the Second World War, when Winston Churchill had severe reservations about rationing it.

The problem the Victorian government had with this tea drinking was the money it was costing them to buy it. Tea was a Chinese import and, along with silk and porcelain, could only be purchased from the Chinese government who would accept nothing but silver as payment.

Vast amounts of British silver were leaving the country, and very little would return, as China had much of what it needed to sustain itself. Diplomatic missions failed. The Qing Dynasty maintained that they needed nothing the British were selling.

The British needed a solution quickly. What could they possibly sell that the Chinese wanted more than anything? The solution was easy, but horrific: the British Empire became drug lords.

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The Irish Potato Famine was the worst in Europe during the 19th century. Had the British government acted differently, it is without question that they could have saved lives.

The famine not only expl…

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America has been unlucky enough to have four Presidents assassinated, each with its own traumatic story. There have also been several attempts on others. When I wrote the story of James A. Garfield’s assassination for my article last Wednesday, the thought struck me that I could not think of a British Prime Minister who had been assassinated.

History books show that although we have several famous Prime Ministers who have had attempts on their lives, only one has ever been killed. His name is largely forgotten in history. This is the story of Spencer Perceval.

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