 |
The murder of Bonnie Garland took place on July 7, 1977, in Scarsdale, New York.
| |
The murder of Bonnie Garland took place on July 7, 1977, in Scarsdale, New York.
 |
In the early-morning hours of July 7, 1977, around 2 a.m. Yale graduate Richard Herrin bludgeoned his ex-girlfriend, Yale college senior Bonnie Garland, to death with a hammer as she lay sleeping in her parents' Scarsdale, New York, home because she wanted to end their relationship. The two college students had been dating for approximately two years at the time that Herrin graduated and moved to Texas to attend a graduate program. Over the next year Garland and Herrin grew apart. Garland wanted to date other people. Concerned about it, Herrin arranged, with Garland's knowledge, to come to Scarsdale to discuss their relationship. Her parents, not knowing there was trouble in the relationship, allowed him to stay at their home. Garland told Herrin on July 6, 1977, she wanted to break off their relationship. He was to leave the next day. He was staying in a guest room on the opposite end of the home.
During the early morning hours of July 7, 1977, Herrin went down to the basement and found a hammer. He wrapped it in a towel to conceal it. He then went up three flights of stairs to Garland's room. As stated in the testimony, he left the hammer outside the door and went in to confirm she was asleep. He then went back out into the hallway, unwrapped the hammer, went back into the room and used the claw end of the hammer to smash her skull. After attacking Garland, Herrin stole the Garland family car and drove around for hours ending up in Coxsackie, 100 miles to the north of Scarsdale. He found a church and told the priest inside, "I just killed my girlfriend." In fact, Bonnie was still alive though critically injured. The priest called the Scarsdale police, who knocked on the Garlands' door early in the morning. They entered her bedroom to find her horribly injured; she later died.
Herrin was arrested. A group led by members of the clergy of Yale's Catholic Church campaigned to have Herrin released on bail. They raised bail money and wrote letters attesting to Herrin's "good character" to the trial judge. Impressed by the campaign, the judge released Herrin into the care of the Christian Brothers in Albany. While he was awaiting trial, he attended classes at the State University of New York under an alias. [1] Judge Richard J. Daronco presided over the highly publicized trial at the Westchester County Courthouse in White Plains. Richard Herrin was convicted of first-degree manslaughter, rather than second degree murder and was sentenced to the maximum penalty under the law. He served 17 years in state prison at the Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, New York, and was released on January 12, 1995. [ citation needed ]
Herrin was born to an Irish father and a Mexican mother in an ethnic minority community in Los Angeles. [2] [3] It was assumed that he was admitted to Yale through affirmative action, leading to the media designation of his trial as the "affirmative action murder trial". [4]
Critics charged that the sentence was the result of the Yale community and, in particular, the Catholic chaplaincy uniting to support Herrin by portraying him as the victim of his upbringing in a minority neighborhood barrio in Los Angeles. [5]
After his release, Herrin moved to Socorro, New Mexico, where he was hired by a mental health foundation. [6]
This was the last murder case in Scarsdale until the murder of 58-year-old pediatric doctor Robin Goldman on January 20, 2016. [7]
Michael DeVinko Jr., known as Mickey Deans, was an American musician and entrepreneur. He is best known as the fifth husband and widower of actress and singer Judy Garland.
In Cold Blood is a non-fiction novel by the American author Truman Capote, first published in 1966. It details the 1959 Clutter family murders in the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas.
Aileen Carol Wuornos was an American serial killer. In 1989–1990, while engaging in street prostitution along highways in Florida, she shot dead and robbed seven of her male clients. Wuornos claimed that her clients had either raped or attempted to rape her, and that the homicides of the men were committed in self-defense. Wuornos was sentenced to death for six of the murders. She was executed on October 9, 2002, by lethal injection after spending more than 10 years on Florida's death row.
Ronald Lyle Goldman was an American restaurant waiter and aspiring actor. A volunteer working with children suffering from cerebral palsy, Goldman appeared as a contestant on the short-lived game show Studs in early 1992. Goldman lived independently from his family and supported himself as an employment headhunter, tennis instructor, and waiter, and worked occasionally as a model. Not long before his death, Goldman earned an emergency medical technician license, but he decided not to pursue that as a career.
Rebecca Lucile Schaeffer was an American actress and model. She began her career as a teen model before moving on to acting. In 1986, she landed the role of Patricia "Patti" Russell in the CBS comedy My Sister Sam. The series was canceled in 1988, and she appeared in several films, including the black comedy Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills. At the age of 21, she was shot and killed by Robert John Bardo, a 19-year-old obsessed fan who had been stalking her. Schaeffer's death helped lead to the passage in California of legislation aimed at preventing stalking.
Tanya Roberts was an American actress. Some of her credits include playing Julie Rogers in the final season of the television series Charlie's Angels (1980–1981), Stacey Sutton in the James Bond film A View to a Kill (1985), Kiri in The Beastmaster (1982), Sheena in Sheena: Queen of the Jungle (1984), and Midge Pinciotti on That '70s Show (1998–2004).
Robert Emmet Chambers Jr. is an American criminal. Dubbed the Preppy Killer and the Central Park Strangler, Chambers gained notoriety for the August 26, 1986, strangulation death of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin in New York City's Central Park, for which he was originally charged with second degree murder. Chambers changed his story several times during the course of the ensuing investigation, ultimately claiming that Levin's death was the accidental result of him pushing her off of him as she purportedly sexually assaulted him, an account that was characterized by media accounts as one of "rough sex". Chambers later pleaded guilty to manslaughter after a jury failed to reach a verdict after nine days of deliberation.
Ronald Joseph DeFeo Jr. was an American mass murderer who was tried and convicted for the 1974 killings of his father, mother, two brothers, and two sisters in Amityville, New York. Sentenced to six counts of 25 years to life, DeFeo died in prison on March 12, 2021. The case inspired the book and film versions of The Amityville Horror.
Christopher Cornelius Culkin is an American former stage actor. He is the father of actors Macaulay Culkin, Rory Culkin and Kieran Culkin, and the older brother of actress Bonnie Bedelia.
The People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson was a criminal trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court, in which former NFL player and actor O. J. Simpson was tried and acquitted for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, who were stabbed to death outside Brown's condominium in Los Angeles on June 12, 1994. The trial spanned eight months, from January 24 to October 3, 1995.
Jean Struven Harris was the headmistress of The Madeira School for girls in McLean, Virginia, who made national news in the early 1980s when she was tried and convicted of the murder of her ex-lover, Herman Tarnower, a well-known cardiologist and author of the best-selling book The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet. The case is featured on the TV show Murder Made Me Famous.
Ellen Ash Peters was an American lawyer and judge. She was appointed to the Connecticut Supreme Court in 1978. She was the first woman appointed to that court.
Herman Tarnower was an American cardiologist and co-author of the bestselling diet book The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet (1978), which promoted a high-protein low-carbohydrate fad diet known as the Scarsdale diet. On March 10, 1980, just eight days before his 70th birthday, Tarnower was shot dead by Jean Harris. Harris was convicted of his murder at trial in White Plains, New York, in 1981.
Texas v. Cobb, 532 U.S. 162 (2001), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is offense-specific and does not always extend to offenses that are closely related to those where the right has been attached. This decision reaffirmed the Court's holding in McNeil v. Wisconsin (1991) by concluding that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel attaches at the onset of adversarial proceedings.
Patterson v. New York, 432 U.S. 197 (1977), was a legal case heard by the Supreme Court of the United States that stated that the Due Process Clause Fourteenth Amendment did not prevent the burdening of a defendant to prove the affirmative defense of extreme emotional disturbance as defined by law in the state of New York.
Mike Gilbert is a retired sports agent for athletes including former NFL players Marcus Allen and O. J. Simpson. Following Simpson's trial and acquittal for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, Gilbert wrote How I Helped O. J. Get Away with Murder: The Shocking Inside Story of Violence, Loyalty, Regret and Remorse. The book was published by Regnery Publishing in May 2008, and discusses Gilbert's 18-year-long relationship with Simpson, including the influence of their personal and professional relationship in the lead up to, during, and following the trial. Gilbert claims that the gloves did not fit because, on his advice, Simpson stopped taking his arthritis medicine, which made his hands swell. This is disputed by records of the trial when it was noted Simpson "has arthritis and we looked at the medication he takes and some of it is anti-inflammatory and we are told he has not taken the stuff for a day and it caused swelling in the joints and inflammation in his hands". The Los Angeles County Jail doctor confirmed Simpson was taking his arthritis medication every day and that the jail's medical records verified this. Gilbert's book also details Simpson confessing to the killings. Gilbert describes how Simpson, having smoked marijuana, taken a sleeping pill, and while drinking beer, confided to him at his Brentwood home weeks after his trial what happened the night of the murders. Simpson said, "If she hadn't opened that door with a knife in her hand... she'd still be alive." Gilbert said that this confirmed his belief that Simpson had confessed.
Devin Moore is a convicted murderer from Alabama who sparked a controversy over the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City when he committed three acts of first-degree murder in the Fayette, Alabama police station in 2003. Moore killed two policemen and a dispatcher after being booked on suspicion of stealing a car. He then fled in a highway patrol vehicle.
Elaine O'Hara was an Irish childcare worker who was murdered in August 2012 by architect Graham Dwyer. She was last seen alive at a public park in Shanganagh, Dublin, Ireland, on 22 August. The remains of her body were discovered on Killakee Mountain, south of Dublin, in September 2013. The investigation of her disappearance and later of her death was widely reported.
The barbecue murders, also known as the BBQ murders, refers to a 1975 double murder in Marin County, California, United States. Business consultant James "Jim" Olive and his wife Naomi were murdered in their home by their 16-year-old adopted daughter Marlene and her 20-year-old boyfriend Charles "Chuck" Riley, who then attempted to dispose of the bodies by burning them in a barbecue pit at a nearby campground. Riley was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and received a sentence of death, which was later changed to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. Marlene, tried as a juvenile, received a sentence of three to six years in a California Youth Authority juvenile facility, from which she was released at age 21 having served a little over four years.