Silas Jayne

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: Vincent Flemmi

date_of_death: October 16, 1979

age: 44

cause_of_death: Drug overdose - heroin

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: There's only one Boston mob hitman and psychopath more vicious that Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi (long time associate of Whitey Bulger) and that was his brother Vincent "Jimmy the Bear" Flemmi. Suspected or convicted of dozens of murders throughout the greater Boston area, Vincent, along with mob associates Joe "The Animal" Barboza and Johnny “The Butcher” Martorano (whom has over 50 confirmed kills under his belt), was a free-lance hitman, bank robber and muscle for the Winter Hill Gang and the Patriarca crime family. He was also a long-time rat and informant for the FBI and helped pin the murder of Edward "Teddy" Deegan on four rival members of the Patriarca family when, in fact, it was Barboza and Flemmi who murdered Deegan. Shortly after the murder of Deegan he told another associate, "all I want to do now is kill people ... it's better than hitting (robbing) banks." In 1975, while serving an 8-to-18-year sentence for assault with intent to commit murder, Flemmi received one of the state's first weekend furloughs from prison. Vincent had immediately fled, and was not apprehended until three years later in Maryland, Maine. A year later Vincent died of a drug overdose in his prison cell.

popular name: Bobby Franks

date_of_death: May 21, 1924

age: 14

cause_of_death: Homicide - beaten and asphyxiated

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Bobby Franks was the son of the very wealthy Chicago real estate speculator and developer Jacob Franks. On May 22, 1924, the body of 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks was found murdered on Chicago’s South Side. The murder would launch the infamous Leopold and Loeb trial. The criminal trial that followed — “the trial of the century” — would go on to captivate the nation and catapult defense attorney Clarence Darrow to fame.