Elena Semander

popular name: Ernesto Miranda

date_of_death: January 31, 1976

age: 34

cause_of_death: Stabbing

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: If you have ever been on the wrong side of a conversation with local police and were read your rights (You have the right to remain silent ...) then you have Ernesto Miranda (actually his attorney) to thank. Ernesto Miranda was a violent, predatory American criminal and day laborer whose conviction on kidnapping, rape, and armed robbery charges based on his confession under police interrogation was set aside in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona, which ruled that criminal suspects must be informed of their right against self-incrimination and their right to consult with an attorney before being questioned by police. This warning is known as a Miranda warning.

popular name: Frank Palermo

date_of_death: May 12, 1996

age: 91

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Boxing has a dark history of gangsters, crooked fights and mysterious murders. In the world of boxing at the time, Frank “Blinky” Palermo, a member of the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra crime family, was indeed royalty. Along with his partner, Frankie Carbo, a New York Lucchese crime family member, Palermo managed and controlled many of the professional boxers around the country. Although this Philly hustler was only five feet tall, he was a giant at assault and battery, big at bootlegging, jobbing, racketeering, numbers runner, petty thief, shakedown artist, wiseguy - Blinky was a man of many talents. Palermo's partner was Mafioso Frankie Carbo, a soldier in New York's Lucchese family who had been a gunman with Murder, Inc. During the 1940s, Frankie Carbo became a boxing promoter, working along with Ettore "Eddie" Coco, James "Jimmy Doyle" Plumeri, Frank "Blinky" Palermo, Harry "Champ" Segal, & Felix Bocchicchio. The group was known as "The Combination", together they were highly successful in fixing high-profile boxing matches. Even worse Palermo would cheat his stable of fighters out of their share of the purses of their fights. In 1961, the Feds zeroed in on Carbo and Palermo and were charged, tried and convicted of committing a dozens of crimes. Blinky Palermo was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Upon his death, he was laid to rest at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, PA.

popular name: Dr. Sam Sheppard

date_of_death: April 6, 1970

age: 46

cause_of_death: Wernicke's encephalopathy and liver failure

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Dr. Sam Sheppard was an attractive and well-liked doctor who tended to hundreds of patients throughout his career at Bay View Hospital in Ohio. In the early morning hours of July 4, 1954 the nightmare began for the Sheppard family when Sam's wife, Marilyn, was discovered brutally murdered. Mrs. Sheppard was found lying on her bed in their master bedroom in a provocative manner. She had been “chopped 25 times in the head and chest.” There was never any hard evidence found that directly tied Dr. Sam Sheppard to the death of his wife, Marilyn. Nonetheless he was found guilty of second degree murder at his first trial. After over a decade in prison the murder conviction was overturned on June 6, 1966 due to a lack of evidence. Dr. Sam Sheppard was a free man from that time until he passed away in 1970. His experience inspired the hit TV show and movie The Fugitive.