Alice Crimmins | |
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Born | |
Spouses |
Tony Grace (m. 1977;died 1998) |
Children | Alice Marie Crimmins Eddie Crimmins Jr. |
Alice Crimmins (born March 9, 1939, in the Bronx, New York City) is an American woman who was charged with killing her two children, 5-year-old Eddie Jr. and 4-year-old Alice Marie (known as Missy), both of whom went missing on July 14, 1965. [1] [2] [3] Alice Marie's body was found that day, and Eddie Jr.'s was found five days later. [1] After numerous criminal trials and appeals, Crimmins was convicted of manslaughter for Missy's death. [1]
Crimmins' children, Eddie Jr., age 5, and Missy, age 4, disappeared from their garden apartment in Kew Gardens Hills in the Queens borough of New York City on July 14, 1965. She reported the missing children to the police. Later that day, Missy's strangled body was found. Five days later, Eddie's body was discovered, but authorities were unable to identify the cause of his death. [1]
No evidence could be found tying anyone to the deaths. Crimmins was followed and covertly recorded by the New York Police Department for three years, before finally being charged and going to trial in 1968. [1] She was found guilty of the manslaughter of Missy and sentenced to five to twenty years' imprisonment. [1] This conviction was overturned on appeal, and in 1971 a second trial resulted in Crimmins being convicted of the first-degree murder of Eddie Jr. and the manslaughter of Missy. [1] In 1973 both convictions were overturned, before Crimmins was re-convicted of the manslaughter of Missy in 1973. [1] She was paroled in 1977. [4]
The Casey Anthony trial has been compared by some in the media to the Crimmins trial. [5] [6] Under her married name of Alice Grace she lives in Northwest Florida. [7]
Diane Alexis Whipple was an American lacrosse player and college coach. She was killed in a dog attack in San Francisco on January 26, 2001. The dogs involved were two Presa Canarios. Paul Schneider, the dogs' owner, is a high-ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood and is serving three life sentences in state prison. The dogs were looked after by Schneider's attorneys, Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, a husband and wife who lived in the same apartment building as Whipple. After the fatal attack, the state brought criminal charges against the attorneys. Noel, who was not present during the attack, was convicted of manslaughter. Knoller, who was present, was charged with implied-malice second-degree murder and convicted by the jury. Knoller's murder conviction, an unusual result for an unintended dog attack, was rejected by the trial judge but ultimately upheld. The case clarified the meaning of implied malice murder.
Malice Green was an American resident of Detroit, Michigan who died after being assaulted by Detroit police officers Walter Budzyn and Larry Nevers on November 5, 1992. The official cause of death was ruled to be due to blunt force trauma to his head.
A miscarriage of justice occurs when an unfair outcome occurs in a criminal or civil proceeding, such as the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. Miscarriages are also known as wrongful convictions. Innocent people have sometimes ended up in prison for years before their conviction has eventually been overturned. They may be exonerated if new evidence comes to light or it is determined that the police or prosecutor committed some kind of misconduct at the original trial. In some jurisdictions this leads to the payment of compensation.
Michael Iver Peterson is an American novelist who was convicted in 2003 of murdering his second wife, Kathleen Peterson, on December 9, 2001. After eight years, Peterson was granted a new trial after the judge ruled a critical prosecution witness gave misleading testimony. In 2017, Peterson submitted an Alford plea to the reduced charge of manslaughter. He was sentenced to time already served and freed.
In the United States on May 11, 2006, retired Roman Catholic priest Gerald Robinson was convicted of the murder of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl (1908–1980), a Sister of Mercy, a Catholic religious order of women on Holy Saturday, April 5, 1980. Robinson repeatedly appealed, but without success. On July 4, 2014, Robinson died in prison.
Shirley Winters is a convicted murderer, arsonist, and suspected serial killer from upstate New York. In 1980, she smothered her five-month-old son, Ronald Winters III. In 2007, she drowned 23-month-old Ryan Rivers. She is also suspected of killing three siblings in childhood, setting a fire which killed two of her older children in 1979, and on the day prior to that killed a friend's three children. Per a plea bargain, she cannot be prosecuted for those.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
The murder of 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe took place in her bedroom inside her home at Escondido, California, sometime between late night January 20, 1998, to early morning January 21, 1998. Stephanie's parents and grandmother found her body on the floor of her bedroom on the morning of January 21, 1998. She had been stabbed eight times. There was no sign of forced entry. Stephanie's window was found unlocked, but a screen was in place and there was no disturbance of accumulated grime and insect traces. A sliding glass door in her parents' bedroom was also unlocked. No knives were found at the scene that seemed consistent with the murder weapon, and no bloody clothing was found despite an exhaustive search.
It is possible to convict someone of murder without the purported victim's body in evidence. However, cases of this type have historically been hard to prove, often forcing the prosecution to rely on circumstantial evidence, and in England there was for centuries a mistaken view that in the absence of a body a killer could not be tried for murder. Developments in forensic science in recent decades have made it more likely that a murder conviction can be obtained even if a body has not been found.
Philadelphia consistently ranks above the national average in terms of crime, especially violent offenses. It has the highest violent crime rate of the Top 10 American cities with a population greater than 1 million residents as well as the highest poverty rate among these cities. It has been included in real estate analytics company NeighborhoodScout's "Top 100 Most Dangerous Cities in America" list every year since it has been compiled. Much of the crime is concentrated in the North, West, and Southwest sections of the city. The deadliest year in Philadelphia was 2021 with 562 murders.
Caylee Marie Anthony was an American toddler who lived in Orlando, Florida, with her mother, Casey Marie Anthony, and her maternal grandparents, George and Cindy Anthony. On July 15, 2008, Caylee was reported missing in a 9-1-1 call made by Cindy, who said she had not seen the child for thirty-one days. According to what Cindy told police dispatchers, Casey had given varied explanations as to Caylee's whereabouts before eventually saying she had not seen her daughter for weeks. Casey later called police and falsely told a dispatcher that Caylee had been kidnapped by a nanny on June 9. Casey was charged with first-degree murder in October 2008 and pleaded not guilty.
Anthony Edward Sowell was an American serial killer and rapist known as The Cleveland Strangler. He was convicted in 2011 of murdering 11 women whose bodies were discovered at his Cleveland, Ohio, home in 2009. After being sentenced to death for the murders, Sowell died in prison from a terminal illness.
Jose Angel Baez is an American criminal defense lawyer and author. He is known for representing high-profile defendants such as Casey Anthony, Aaron Hernandez, Mark Nordlicht, and Harvey Weinstein.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in Canada.
Linda Drane Burdick was the Chief Assistant State Attorney at the Orange and Osceola County State Attorney's Office in Orlando, Florida. She was the lead prosecutor on the State of Florida vs. Casey Anthony case.
Marvin Charles Gabrion is an American murderer, rapist, and suspected serial killer convicted of the 1997 kidnapping and murder of 19-year-old Rachel Timmerman, of Cedar Springs, Michigan. Timmerman and her 11-month-old daughter, Shannon, disappeared two days before Gabrion was set to stand trial on rape charges filed by Rachel the previous summer. Rachel's body was found in Oxford Lake, weighted down by cinder blocks. Shannon remains missing, but is presumed deceased. Although Gabrion was not tried for killing Shannon, court documents describe her murder as “virtually undisputed.”
Investigating Innocence is a nonprofit wrongful conviction advocacy organization that provides criminal defense investigations for inmates in the United States. Investigating Innocence was founded in 2013 by private investigator Bill Clutter to assist nationwide Innocence Project groups in investigating innocence claims. "Once we have a case that meets our criteria, we'll put private investigators to work on it. A lot of these cases need investigators," said Kelly Thompson, executive director of Investigating Innocence. Prior to his work on Investigating Innocence, Clutter was one of the founders of the Illinois Innocence Project. Investigating Innocence also has a board composed of exonerees that reviews incoming cases.
Juan A. Rivera Jr. is an American man who was wrongfully convicted three times for the 1992 rape and murder of 11-year-old Holly Staker in Waukegan, Illinois. He was convicted twice on the basis of a confession that he said was coerced. No physical evidence linked him to the crime scene. In 2015 he received a $20 million settlement from Lake County, Illinois for wrongful conviction, formerly the largest settlement of its kind in United States history.
James Ray Cable was an American serial killer. Originally convicted in 1990 for kidnapping and torturing a teenage girl, he was later linked via DNA to the murders of three women in across Kentucky between 1982 and 1989. He was subsequently charged with these crimes, but died while awaiting trial in 2013.