Allan Pinkerton

popular name: Nicole Brown Simpson

date_of_death: June 12, 1994

age: 35

cause_of_death: Stabbed seven times in the neck and scalp; 5.5 inch slit across her throat which severed both carotid arteries and breached her jugular veins

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Nicole Brown Simpson was the ex-wife of former professional football player and occasional actor O. J. Simpson, to whom she was married from 1985 to 1992, and the mother of their two children, Sydney and Justin. She was killed in front of her condo in Los Angeles, California, on June 12, 1994, along with her friend, restaurant waiter Ron Goldman. Simpson, who had a legal history of physically abusing, stalking and making death threats toward Brown, was arrested and charged with both killings. Despite a controversial and highly publicized criminal trial with both circumstantial and physical evidence that linked Simpson to the killings, Simpson was acquitted of all charges, though he was later found liable for both deaths in a civil lawsuit in 1997.

popular name: John Wilkes Booth

date_of_death: April 26, 1865

age: 26

cause_of_death: Gunshot wound

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: John Wilkes Booth was an American stage actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865.

popular name: H. H. Holmes

date_of_death: May 7, 1896

age: 34

cause_of_death: Execution by hanging

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: The country’s first serial killer was a smooth-talking doctor who ran a murder hotel in Chicago. The tale of H. H. Holmes and his Murder Castle is perhaps one of the most fascinating cases in American criminal history. Born Herman Webster Mudgett, he was a bright young doctor who had graduated from high school at sixteen and always had a penchant for anything to do with death. While enrolled in the University of Michigan’s Department of Medicine and Surgery, he worked under Professor William James Herdman in the university’s anatomy lab. The pair were said to have aided body snatching to supply bodies as medical cadavers, which Mudgett then burned or disfigured with acid, then planted to it look as if they had been killed in an accident. Mudgett began taking out insurance policies on these people—before he stole, disfigured, and planted them—and would later collect the insurance money once the bodies were discovered. After graduation, Mudgett started a new job working at a Philadelphia drugstore. When a child died after taking medicine purchased from the drugstore Mudgett was employed at, the young doctor denied any involvement and immediately left the city. Before he moved to Chicago, he changed his name to avoid any connection to his previous scams. Herman Webster Mudgett, M.D., donned the name Henry Howard Holmes. In 1893, the bustling city of Chicago won the honor of hosting the World’s Columbian Exposition. While the World’s Fair brought millions of visitors from all over the world, nearby, a clever killer hid in plain sight, capitalizing off of the slaughter of naive tourists. For the next two years Holmes either killed or is suspected of killing around two dozen people using his murder mansion residences to facility cruel and diabolical murder of men, women, and even children. He was finally caught and convicted of murder in 1894 and executed in 1985. Until the moment of his death, Holmes remained calm and amiable, showing very few signs of fear, anxiety, or depression. Despite this, he asked for his coffin to be contained in concrete and buried ten feet deep, because he was concerned grave robbers would steal his body and use it for dissection. Despite popular belief, Holmes's neck did not break; he instead strangled to death slowly, twitching for over fifteen minutes before being pronounced dead. He was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, Pennsylvania.