Timothy O'Bryan

popular name: Mary Lily Flagler Bingham

date_of_death: July 27, 1917

age: 50

cause_of_death: Edema with myocarditis along with high levels of morphine, arsenic and mercury

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Mary Lily Kenan Flagler Bingham was an American philanthropist and heiress who became notorious when she married one of the richest men of the Gilded Age - Henry Flagler - a founder of Standard Oil with John Rockefeller. Growing up in an affluent household, she soon moved with her family to Wilmington in the late 1870s. Her affluence afforded her education, uncommon for a woman on the cusp of the twentieth century. She first met Henry Flagler in 1891 at a party in Newport, Rhode Island. Kenan was only twenty-three years old; Flagler was sixty-one, and still married to Ida Alice. As they became more romantically involved, Mary Lily’s family grew suspicious of Flagler’s intentions, at least until the tycoon gifted her two million dollars’ worth of jewelry and stock in Standard Oil, along with a mansion in Palm Beach that would come to be known as Whitehall. Flagler also set about divorcing Ida Alice, which resulted in him paying Florida state legislators off in order to have insanity declared a viable reason for initiating divorce proceedings. Two months after the law was passed, Flagler divorced her, and he married Mary Lily, a woman nearly half his age, on the Kenans’ family plantation ten days later in 1901. Henry Flagler and Mary Lily Kenan Flagler by most accounts had a comfortable and loving marriage. Their marriage lasted until May of 1913, as after a fall down the stairs at Whitehall, the 83-year-old Flagler passed away, leaving his massive fortune to her. Mary Lily Kenan thus became the world’s richest woman. Three years later she became reaquinted with and married Robert Worth Bingham. A seemly healthy and active socialite, she slowly succumbed to a mysterious illness and died just 8 months later after her marriage to Bingham.

popular name: Henry N. Sargent

date_of_death: January 13, 1854

age: 23

cause_of_death: Suicide - Gunshot wound

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Sevilla Jones was 17-year-old girl who was shot dead by Henry Sargent one morning as she was walking to school with her younger brother. Henry loved Sevilla, and he believed that she had “given him encouragement.” However, he had a rival in another young man, named Ebenezer Bartlett. Henry used a revolver to shoot Sevilla four times, killing her instantly. He then shot himself, but with less immediate success. It has been said that a doctor was fetched, but this doctor was so angry that he refused to treat Henry’s wound. Henry died hours later. Sevilla's headstone is unusual in that it names her murderer.

popular name: Sam Battaglia

date_of_death: September 7, 1973

age: 64

cause_of_death: Natural Causes

claim_to_fame: Crime and their Victims

best_know_for: Sam "Teets" Battaglia joined the Torrio-Capone gang at the age of 16, right at the beginning of the Beer Wars of the 1920s. As a high-level member of the Chicago Outfit criminal organization, Sam Battaglia quickly rose in the ranks of the gang, and was known as a brutal loan shark. He became head of the Chicago Outfit in 1966 but was convicted and sent to federal prison that same year and died at his home shortly after his release.