Lizzie Borden

popular name: Al Capone

date_of_death: January 25, 1947

age: 48

cause_of_death: Suffering from late-stage syphilis he died as a result of a stroke, bronchopneumonia and cardiac arrest.

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Al "Scarface" Capone was a notorious mobster who was head of the powerful Chicago Outfit during the 1920s and 30s. Making a vast fortune from alcohol bootlegging, prostitution, and illegal gambling he was responsible for over 30 deaths including 7 from the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

popular name: John Patrick St. John

date_of_death: May 3, 1995

age: 77

cause_of_death: Pneumonia and pancreatic cancer

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: John Patrick St. John, better known as "Jigsaw John", was a Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective, renowned for his investigations of many of Los Angeles's highest-profile murder cases. St. John served 43 years as a homicide detective, beginning in 1949, when he was assigned to the Department's Homicide Division. One of his first assignments was the notorious Black Dahlia murder, a case he worked on-and-off until his retirement. The portly, slow-moving sleuth with one good eye and a gray fedora never fired his gun while investigating about 1,500 murder cases. Upon his retirement in 1993, St. John held the highest seniority on the LAPD with 51 years of service, a distinction that earned him the privilege of carrying LAPD Detective badge No. 1.

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.