Elena Semander

popular name: Ernest Haywood

date_of_death: December 14, 1946

age: 86

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: The Haywood family was a politically and socially influential white family in Raleigh, North Carolina during with 1800s through the early 1900s with plantations dependent on slave labor in North Carolina as well as Alabama. Ernest Haywood was an attorney practicing in Raleigh where he specialized in commercial, insurance, corporation, and real estate law. On February 21, 1903, Saturday afternoon, the young lawyer Haywood met Ludlow Skinner, his mistress's brother-in-law, on the steps of the Fayetteville Street Post Office. After a brief argument Haywood pulled out a pistol and shot at Skinner one time and missed. He then chased Skinner briefly and shot him dead in the street with 100 witness. The murder and subsequent trial achieved nationwide attention and rocked the foundations of turn-of-the-century Raleigh society. As a lawyer and founding member of the Raleigh Bar Association, he was found innocent by a jury of his peers after only 15 minutes of deliberation.

popular name: Joseph Colombo

date_of_death: May 22, 1978

age: 54

cause_of_death: Cardiac arrest related to shooting

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Joseph Colombo Sr. became the boss of the Colombo crime family, one of five families associated with the American Mafia in New York City. Joseph Colombo’s father Anthony was an early member of the Profaci crime family, forerunner of the family that would eventually bear his name. After Anthony Colombo was found strangled to death in a car with his mistress, a young Joe dropped out to of high school to join the U.S. Coast Guard. He was diagnosed with neurosis and discharged from the service and resumed a normal lifestyle with jobs that included ten years as a longshoreman and six years as a meat salesman. Eventually Joe Columbo drifted back into the life of organized crime and Colombo followed his father into the Profaci family becoming an enforcer and quickly promoted to Caporegime. Separate from his crime family, Colombo went on to create the Italian-American Civil Rights League in 1970, hosting the first Italian Unity Day rally in Columbus Circle later that year. On June 28, 1971, Colombo was shot three times at the second annual rally by Jerome A. Johnson. The shooting left Colombo paralyzed and he died seven years later of cardiac arrest. Many members of the Colombo family claim Joe Gallo, mobster of the Profaci crime family, was to blame for the shooting due to his falling out with Colombo.

popular name: Judd Gray

date_of_death: January 12, 1928

age: 35

cause_of_death: Executed by electrocution

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Judd Gray was a corset salesman and Ruth Brown Snyder's lover and accomplice in the badly planned murder of her husband, Albert Snyder. The bored housewife from Queens, New York who, after 7 or so unsuccessful attempts, finally succeeded in killing her husband Albert Snyder with the assistance of her lover Henry Judd Gray using a combination dumb bell beat-down and strangulation. Although found guilt and executed in Sing Sing Prison, that is not what made this pathetic couple famous. During the execution photographer Tom Howard of the Chicago Tribune, with a small plate camera strapped to his ankle, took the infamous picture just as the electricity was running through Ruth Snyder's body that was published the next day in the New York Daily News. As one crime reporter said during the trial, the Snyder-Gray murder was a "cheap crime involving cheap people".