Leo Max Frank was an American lynching victim convicted in 1913 of the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan, an employee in a factory in Atlanta, Georgia where he was the superintendent. Frank's trial, conviction, and unsuccessful appeals attracted national attention. His kidnapping from prison and lynching became the focus of social, regional, political, and racial concerns, particularly regarding antisemitism. Modern researchers generally agree that Frank was wrongly convicted.
Margie Velma Barfield was an American serial killer who was convicted of one murder but eventually confessed to six murders in total. Barfield was the first woman in the United States to be executed after the 1976 resumption of capital punishment and the first since 1962. She was also the first woman to be executed by lethal injection.
The Greensboro massacre was a deadly confrontation which occurred on November 3, 1979, in Greensboro, North Carolina, US, when members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party (ANP) shot and killed five participants in a "Death to the Klan" march which was organized by the Communist Workers Party (CWP).
Anita Lorraine Cobby was a 26-year-old Australian woman from Blacktown, New South Wales, who was kidnapped while walking home from Blacktown railway station just before 10:00 p.m. on 2 February 1986, and subsequently sexually assaulted and murdered.
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.
Susie Marshall Sharp was an American jurist who served as the first female chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. She was not the first woman to head the highest court in a U.S. state, but is believed to be the first woman elected to such a post in a state, like North Carolina, in which the position is elected by the people separately from that of Associate Justice. In 1965, Lorna E. Lockwood became the first female chief justice of a state supreme court, but in Arizona, the Supreme Court justices elect their chief justice.
The FBI Files is an American television docudrama series that originally ran from 1998 to 2006 on the Discovery Channel and produced by New Dominion Pictures. The show was cancelled in 2006. However, Court TV Mystery, Discovery, and its sister network, Investigation Discovery, aired re-runs until October 2012. Investigation Discovery only showed episodes from seasons 5,6, and 7. As of October 2012, the network now airs episodes from the earlier seasons, with updated information about the cases at the end of most episodes. Up to late September 2012, WE tv showed episodes from seasons 1-4, but the network had removed the episode introductions by Jim Kallstrom. In the UK on Quest Red, The FBI Files airs every weeknight. It has also been shown on TV Denmark, Discovery Australia, and Netflix in Canada.
Lieth Peter Von Stein was an American businessman whose murder launched a high-profile trial in North Carolina. The case became the subject of two books and two television films.
Channon Gail Christian, aged 21, and Hugh Christopher Newsom Jr., aged 23, were from Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. They were kidnapped on the evening of January 6, 2007, when Christian's vehicle was carjacked. The couple were taken to a rental house. Both of them were raped, tortured, and murdered. Four males and one female were arrested, charged, and convicted in the case. In 2007, a grand jury indicted Letalvis Darnell Cobbins, Lemaricus Devall Davidson, George Geovonni Thomas, and Vanessa Lynn Coleman on counts of kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder. Also in 2007, Eric DeWayne Boyd was indicted by a federal grand jury of being an accessory to a carjacking, resulting in serious bodily injury to another person and misprision of a felony. In 2018, Boyd was indicted on state-level charges of kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder.
Jerry Bledsoe is an American author and journalist known for several true crime titles based on murders in his native state of North Carolina.
The Keddie murders are an unsolved quadruple homicide that occurred over the night of April 11–12, 1981 in Keddie, California, United States. The victims were Glenna Susan "Sue" Sharp, daughter Tina Louise Sharp, son John Steven Sharp and John's friend Dana Hall Wingate.
A racial hoax occurs when a person falsely claims that a crime was committed by member of a specific race. The crime may be fictitious, or may be an actual crime.
Stolen Voices, Buried Secrets is an American true crime television series on the Investigation Discovery Network. The program is different from other true-crime series because the murders are portrayed from the omniscient point-of-view of the victim using "fictionalized dialogue". While the all-seeing narrator knows who was responsible, the series allows viewers to piece together who is the culprit based on clues from investigators, family and friends as each story unfolds. Stolen Voices, Buried Secrets has been compared to the 2009 film The Lovely Bones in which a 13-year-old girl is murdered and views from heaven as her family copes with the tragedy. The program is known as I Was Murdered in the United Kingdom, and at the beginning of the third season, which began airing in 2013, the show adopted that title.
Susie's Law is a 2010 North Carolina state law which authorizes up to two years in jail for convicted perpetrators of cruelty to animals.
The lynching of Willie Earle took place in Greenville, South Carolina on February 16, 1947, when Earle, a 24-year-old black man, was arrested, taken from his jail cell and murdered. It is considered the last racially motivated lynching to occur in South Carolina. The subsequent trial gained much media attention, and was covered by Rebecca West for The New Yorker. The trial resulted in the acquittal of 31 white men who had been charged with Earle's murder.
The Fultz sisters were a set of American quadruplets who gained notoriety for being the first identical African American quadruplets on record. They made promotional appearances for Pet Milk in a deal that provided their family land, a house, and a full-time nurse. The sisters were later adopted by the nurse. Throughout their childhood, they received attention in the media, where they were also termed the Fultz quads.
William "Froggie" James, an African-American man, was lynched and his dead body mutilated on November 11, 1909 by a mob in Cairo, Illinois, after he was charged with the rape and murder of 23-year-old shop clerk Anna Pelley.
Artyom Viktorovich Grabovoi, known as The Knyaze–Volkonskoye Maniac, was a Russian military officer, serial killer and rapist responsible for the murders of two women and one girl in the village of Knyaze–Volkonskoye, Khabarovsk Krai between January and February 2014. He was never arrested for the crimes, as he hanged himself upon learning that he was being investigated, with his guilt definitely proven post-mortem and the case officially closed.
In the Best of Families: Marriage, Pride & Madness is a two-part American television miniseries directed by Jeff Bleckner and written by Robert L. Freedman, based on the 1988 non-fiction book Bitter Blood by Jerry Bledsoe. The true crime story stars Kelly McGillis and Harry Hamlin as Susie and Fritz, a couple who, as a result of a custody battle between Susie and her ex-husband Tom, carry out a series of murders across North Carolina and Kentucky in the 1980s.
Robert Sylvester Alston is an American serial killer who raped and murdered at least four women in Greensboro, North Carolina from 1991 to 1993, whose bodies he then dismembered and buried in various locations. He made anonymous phone calls to investigators about the crimes in an attempt to confuse them and gain media attention. He pleaded guilty to all charges in 1998 and received multiple life terms.
