Elena Semander

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: Velma Barfield

date_of_death: November 2, 1984

age: 52

cause_of_death: Execution by lethal injection

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Velma Barfield was an American female serial killer and is remembered for being one of the first women to be executed in the United States after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Barfield was 1 of 9 children born in South Carolina into abject poverty. As the eldest girl, she was expected at a young age to cook, clean and mend clothes for the entire family (no easy task in a house with no electricity, no running water and no toilet facilities). A childhood marked by abuse and a difficult relationship with her family, she met and married Thomas Burke in 1949 and had two children. It was during her marriage to Burke that she developed a debilitating addiction to narcotics to treat depression and pain from several surgeries. Over a period of 16 years, Velma Barfield poisoned several victims when they discovered she was forging checks to fund her drug habit. Those victims include her own mother, her fiancé, and her mother-in-law, among others. She used arsenic to kill them, often claiming they had died from natural causes. After the death of Stuart Taylor (Barfield's boyfriend and a relative of victim #6 Dollie Edwards) the local police were tipped-off by Barfield's sister in 1976, thus investigators were able to link the deaths to her through forensic evidence. Upon her arrest and without a lawyer present, she confessed initially to 3 of the murders. In 1978 she was convicted of the death of her fiancé, Stuart Taylor, and sentenced to death. After 2 appeals and 6 years on death row, the "Death Row Granny" Velma Barfield was executed on November 2, 1984, by lethal injection in North Carolina. Her execution was notable because she was the first woman to be executed in the U.S. since 1962 and one of the few women executed in the 20th century. She was buried next to her first husband in a grave that remains unmarked in Parkton Cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina.

popular name: Peter Limone

date_of_death: June 19, 2017

age: 82

cause_of_death: Cancer

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Peter Limone was an active member in the Patriarca crime family as a bookie and was an up-and-coming mobster in the Boston crime family who, prior to his arrest, was only arrested once for running a dice game. In 1965, Edward "Teddy" Deegan was found murdered in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Limone was arrested and in 1968 Limone, Joseph Salvati, Henry Tameleo and Louis Greco were found guilty of murder after FBI informant Joseph "The Animal" Barboza and fellow hitman Vincent "Jimmy the Bear" Flemmi fingered them as the killers of Deegan. Only problem was that Barboza and Flemmi (along with two associates) murdered Deegan and the FBI was doing Whitey Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi a favor by falsifying evidence and testimony against Limone and his associates. In 2001, Limone was released from prison after serving 33 years for a murder that he didn't commit and was awarded a $26 million judgment for his wrongful conviction. Upon his release Limone operated from Boston and served as the Patriarca family's consigliere before he was promoted to boss of the crime family.