women on death row

Women On Death Row.

It is indeed rare for a woman to be given the death sentence in the United States. Of the 3,487 persons on death row in the U.S. as of June 2004, only 49 of them, or 1.3 percent, were women.

Of the 49 women who were on death row in 2004, 55 percent (27) of them were convicted of killing their children, their husbands and/or boyfriends or both, according to Victor L. Streib’s research in “Death Penalty For Female Offenders, January 1, 1973 through June 30, 2004.” Seven of those 27 women who killed family members killed more than one victim.

Few Women on Death Row

There are approximately 50,000 women in prisons in the United States, only 0.1 percent of them are on death row. In comparison to men, death sentencing rates remain very low, with only 566 total executions carried out against women since the first recorded execution in 1632 — or less than 3 percent of the total executions.

Very few women enter the capital murder system, and fewer still are ever actually executed, according to the Death Penalty Information Center:

• Women account for only 1 in 10 murder arrests.
• Women account for only 1 in 50 death sentences imposed at the trial level.
• Women account for only 1 in 71 persons presently on death row.
• Women account for only 1 in 92 persons actually executed in the modern era (since 1976).

Some Female Executions:

• Velma Barfield in North Carolina, November 2, 1984
• Karla Faye Tucker in Texas, February 3, 1998
• Judy Buenoano in Florida, March 30, 1998
• Betty Lou Beets in Texas, February 24, 2000
• Christina Riggs in Arkansas, May 2, 2000
• Wanda Jean Allen in Oklahoma, January 11, 2001
• Marilyn Plantz in Oklahoma, May 1, 2001
• Lois Nadean Smith in Oklahoma, December 4, 2001
• Lynda Lyon Block in Alabama, May 10, 2002
• Aileen Wuornos in Florida, October 9, 2002.
• Frances Newton in Texas, Sept. 15, 2005.

Source

blue lagoon murder

A gang of sadists who tortured a ‘naive and vulnerable’ man for ten years before dumping his decapitated body into a lake were convicted of his murder.

Michael Gilbert, 26, was used as a ‘dogsbody and slave’, shackled to a bed and attacked by the group’s pet pit bulls. In one bizarre incident, he was even made to goad a large exotic lizard until it attacked him. The appalling beatings - often recorded on mobile phones - included being stabbed, hit with a baseball bat, forced to stand in boiling water and shot at with an air pistol. His main tormentor’s girlfriend even invented a ‘game show’ where individuals were paid to assault him.

Although Mr Gilbert did escape occasionally, the gang would contact the Department for Work and Pensions and quote his national insurance number to discover where he was signing on before snatching him back.

Astonishingly, police were aware he was in trouble but he didn’t want to pursue a complaint because the victim had said ‘it would make it worse for me in the long run’.

Mr Gilbert finally died after a new form of torture was devised, involving members of the family jumping on his stomach. They then hacked his corpse into pieces at their home in Luton, Bedfordshire, before throwing it into a lake known as the Blue Lagoon in nearby Arlesey.
Some parts of his body, including the torso, hands and feet, were found by two dog walkers last year, while others, including his head, were only recovered in February.

Ringleader James Watt, 27, his girlfriend Natasha Oldfield, 29, and his brother Richard’s girlfriend Nichola Roberts, 21, were convicted of murder.
Watt will serve a minimum of 36 years. He was heard to say “cheers” to the judge as he was sent down.

Guilty: Richard Watt and Jennifer Smith-Dennis.

Facing jail: James Watt and his girlfriend Natasha Oldfield.

Robert Watt and Nichola Roberts were found guilty at Luton Crown Court.

Officers pull a bag containing Michael Gilbert’s body from the lagoon.

Michael Gilbert’s body parts were found in a prison bag which had been thrown into a lake.

Mr Gilbert’s torso was found by two anglers. His head, knee joints and elbow were discovered in a separate bag.

Mr Gilbert’s brother Chrissy, 31, said that although his brother had had a happy childhood, his ‘naive’ personality made him easy prey for the Watt family. His habit of ‘taking off to do his own thing’ for long periods of time meant he eventually became estranged from his own family and ended up in a children’s home aged 15 where he met James Watt.

The court heard evidence from witnesses including Philip Budd, a regular visitor to the Watts’ home, who said Mr Gilbert had locking pliers attached to his genitals which were used to lead him around ‘like a dog on a lead’.

Zoe Smith, 23, described how Mr Gilbert was shackled with silver handcuffs to the bottom of a bunk bed she slept in with her boyfriend Colin Watt, who was not charged with any offence. During the three-year relationship, she admitted to visiting the home on around 150 occasions and seeing Mr Gilbert assaulted ‘nearly every time’.

The abuse continued as the Watts moved into a succession of different houses in the town.

Mr Budd said that by 2008 Mr Gilbert was only allowed to wear boxer shorts to prevent him escaping.

Another visitor described watching him being shot in the lower back with an air rifle. A postmortem examination would later reveal pellets still embedded in his body.

Two anglers found Mr Gilbert’s decapitated body in the Blue Lagoon in Arlesey, Bedfordshire

Oldfield was found to have written an entry in her diary entitled ‘Game Show Ideas’. Underneath, she suggested ‘various sums of money linked to different assaults on Michael’.
One line said: ‘£5 slap, £10 punch, £15 kick, £25 head butt.’ Another read: ‘Gilbert ends up dead.’
As well as ‘entertainment’, the family also saw Mr Gilbert as a ‘cash cow’ and would often take his benefits.

By the end of 2008, they were doing sit ups while leaning on a piece of wood across his mouth and jumping on his stomach. One of those was Robert Watt, who weighed 21st at the time.

Family that revelled in crime

Long before the Watt family were arrested for the murder of Michael Gilbert they had developed a reputation as Luton’s most notorious antisocial neighbours.
Residents revealed how they would typically arrive in an area late at night, shattering its peace within a matter of days. Calm only returned when the family moved on or were forced out.
The Watts also kept a large number of animals including pit bull-type dogs to enhance their stature in their neighbourhood, and exotic giant lizards, one of which was used to attack Mr Gilbert

Crime scene: The house where the torture took place.

James Watt’s bedroom where Mr Gilbert’s body was butchered.

At one property, RSPCA vans and police in riot gear were drafted in when the family was evicted.

None of Watts worked except the father, Antonio, now 70, who was employed at a local building firm.

In court, it emerged that the brothers’ ‘ringleader’, James Watt, 27, had 14 previous convictions for 22 different offences, including affray and shooting someone with an airgun. His brother Robert, 20, had two convictions, including battery and theft.
Even the women in their lives had criminal records. James’s girlfriend, mother-oftwo Natasha Oldfield, 29, had been cautioned for affray.
Richard Watt’s girlfriend Nichola Roberts, 21, had four convictions and a caution, all for leaving a petrol station without paying for fuel.

Only the matriarch of the family, diminutive Jennifer Smith-Dennis, 58, had an unblemished record - in the eyes of the law, at least - until her conviction for familial homicide.

Victim: Michael Gilbert

Via

elizabeth báthory

Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed (7 August 1560 – 21 August 1614) was a countess from the renowned Báthory family. Although in modern times she has been labelled the most prolific female serial killer in history, evidence of her alleged crimes is scant and her guilt is debated. She is nevertheless remembered as the “Blood Countess” or “Bloody Lady of Čachtice”, after the castle near Trenčín in Slovakia (formerly the Kingdom of Hungary) where she spent most of her adult life.

After her husband’s death, she and four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls and young women, with one witness attributing to them over 600 victims, though the number for which they were convicted was 80. Elizabeth herself was neither tried nor convicted. In 1610, however, she was imprisoned in the Čachtice Castle, where she remained bricked in a set of rooms until her death four years later.

Later writings about the case have led to legendary accounts of the Countess bathing in the blood of virgins in order to retain her youth and subsequently also to comparisons with Vlad III the Impaler of Wallachia, on whom the fictional Count Dracula is partly based, and to modern nicknames of the Blood Countess and Countess Dracula.

The descriptions of torture that emerged during the trials were often based on hearsay. The atrocities described most consistently included:

• severe beatings over extended periods of time, often leading to death
• burning or mutilation of hands, sometimes also of faces and genitalia
• biting the flesh off the faces, arms and other bodily parts
• freezing to death
• surgery on victims, often fatal
• starving of victims
• sexual abuse

The use of needles was also mentioned by the collaborators in court.

Read more here, Wikipedia is your friend.

dead is the new alive

2001, texas

"It was 2001, around 10:00am in Texas. While most mothers would be taking their young ones to daycare or preparing fun activities for the kids, Andrea Yates was making a calm call to her husband. She told her husband, “you need to come home.”

Her frantic husband rushed to their Houston, Texas home to find police officers and ambulances on the scene. His wife had also called 911. She let them in the house and calmly told them that she had killed her five kids. She had drowned them in a bathtub. Four corpses, including her youngest, were laid out on the double bed in the master bedroom, each one with eyes still open, fully clothed and soaking wet.

In the bathtub was her eldest, submerged in the murky water filled with feces and vomit, already dead.

Andrea Yates was suffering from postpartum depression during the time of the killings."

Via

electric chair execution

murder of james bulger

(Footage from the mall that convicted Venables and Thompson).

Born: James Patrick Bulger
16 March 1990
Liverpool, Merseyside
England.
Died: 12 February 1993 (aged 2)
Walton, Liverpool, England.
Cause of death: Beating.
Known for: Murder victim.

Two 10-year old boys known as Jon Venables and his friend Robert Thompson abducted 2-year old James Bulger from a mall. Even though 38 people saw them nobody did anything since they thought Bulger was a younger brother. After walking 4 kilometers Venables and Thompson started to beat Bulger with ironbars and bricks. To cover up what they've done they left Bulger on a trainrail so it would look like the train killed him, and so did the train indeed do. Bulger was cut in half when he was found.

What killed Bulger was the beating from the ironbars and bricks but the kiddos also threw blue paint in his left eye, put batteries in his mouth but also manipulated Bulger's foreskin which Venables and Thompson haven't answerd why.

This crime did put rage in England, and both (what I know) Venables & Thompson are still in prison.

Source (<-Read way more here). We do all change techinally, like on Venables and Thompson you can't find one single molecule from the day the crime was comitted. But that's just my theory, all though you can change in many ways.

mary flora bell born 26 may 1957

On 25 May 1968, the day before her 11th birthday, Mary Flora Bell strangled Martin Brown. She was believed to have committed this crime alone. Between that time and the second killing, she and her friend Norma Joyce Bell (no relation), age thirteen, broke into and vandalised a nursery in Scotswood, leaving notes that claimed responsibility for the Brown killing. The Newcastle police dismissed this incident as a prank.

On 31 July 1968, the two took part in the death, again by strangulation, of three-year-old Brian Howe. Police reports concluded that Mary Bell had gone back after killing him to carve an “N” into his stomach with a razor; this was then changed using the same razor but with a different hand to an “M”. Mary Bell also used a pair of scissors to cut off bits of Brian Howe’s hair and to mutilate his genitals. As the girls were so young and their testimonies contradicted each other, what happened has never been entirely clear. Martin Brown’s death was initially ruled an accident as there was no evidence of foul play. Eventually, his death was linked with Brian Howe’s killing and in August, the two girls were charged with two counts of manslaughter.

Source

child's play

Killers, but everybody changes. So what now?