Ernesto Miranda

popular name: Donald McGonagle

date_of_death: November 18, 1969

age: 32

cause_of_death: Homicide - gunshot wounds

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Donnie McGonagle was a member of the South Boston McGonagle Family, but not a member of the Mullen Gang run by his twin brother Paulie McGonagle. He had the misfortune of looking so much like his brother when Winter Hill member Whitey Bulger killed Donnie in broad daylight in front of Paulie's house. Years later Bulger also killed Paulie as he consolidated his power and took over the gangs that ran South Boston.

popular name: J. Edgar Hoover

date_of_death: May 2, 1972

age: 77

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: J. Edgar Hoover was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the fifth and final director of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) and the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). President Calvin Coolidge first appointed Hoover as director of the BOI, the predecessor to the FBI, in 1924. After 11 years in the post, Hoover became instrumental in founding the FBI in June 1935, where he remained as director for an additional 37 years – serving a total of 48 years leading both the BOI and the FBI under eight presidents. In the years before his death, he was seventy-six and showing his age, napping for hours in his office in the afternoons. He was also showing increasing levels of vitriol and instability, informing the White House, for instance, that the four student demonstrators shot to death by National Guardsmen at Kent State had “invited and got what they deserved.” Upon his passing only then did it come to light that Hoover was a horrible choice as the nations top law enforcement officer. Under his direction, the FBI relentlessly harassed Martin Luther King Jr., which included wiretapping his hotel rooms and sending him an anonymous letter urging him to commit suicide. Hoover viewed King and the civil rights movement as a communist-inspired threat to the social order. Hoover was also known for his personal bigotry. He actively pushed LGBTQ+ individuals out of government service (despite persistent rumors about his own sexuality and close relationship with Deputy Director Clyde Tolson) and initially refused to hire Black agents. And for decades, Hoover publicly denied the existence of the Mafia, likely to avoid diverting FBI resources from his anti-communist crusades or because he lacked the legal tools to effectively combat them until much later in his career.

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.