George Joseph Cvek was an American murderer and serial rapist. He was executed for killing 29-year-old[lower-alpha 1] Catherine "Kitty" Pappas, the wife of a coffee importer, in the Bronx, New York City on February 5, 1941.[1]
Bronx detectives, working with an unprecedented number of city, state and federal authorities from Maine to New Orleans, Louisiana, as well as the surviving victims of Cvek's sexual assaults, traced at least 81 robberies and rapes during a nine-month span from mid-1940 to February 1941 to Cvek's unique modus operandi of asking for a glass of water and aspirin that earned him the moniker "The Aspirin Bandit," and "The Gentleman Killer" following the Pappas murder. After his arrest on the Pappas murder charge, Cvek admitted to the rapes of 14 other women in the New York City area.
The jury found Cvek guilty of murdering Pappas on May 19, 1941, and only took twenty minutes of deliberation to sentence him to death.[2] He was executed on February 26, 1942, in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in New York.[3]
Murder, Inc. was an organized crime group active from 1929 to 1941 that acted as the enforcement arm of the National Crime Syndicate – a closely connected criminal organization that included and was started by the Irish Mob, and included Italian-American Mafia, the Jewish Mob, and other criminal organizations in New York City and elsewhere. Murder, Inc. was composed of Irish, Jewish, and Italian-American gangsters, and members were mainly recruited from poor and working-class Irish, Jewish, and Italian neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn. It was initially headed by Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and later by Albert "Mad Hatter" Anastasia.
Frank Abbandando, nicknamed "The Dasher", was a New York City contract killer and mobster who committed many murders as part of the infamous Murder, Inc. enforcement arm of the National Crime Syndicate. His preferred killing method was to stab his victims through the heart with an ice pick. After a trial and conviction for murdering a Brooklyn loan shark, he was executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing on February 19, 1942.
Louis Buchalter, known as Louis Lepke or Lepke Buchalter, was a Jewish-American organized crime figure and head of the Mafia hit squad Murder, Inc., during the 1930s. Buchalter was one of the premier labor union racketeers in New York City during that era.
Sing Sing Correctional Facility is a maximum-security prison operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision in the village of Ossining, New York, United States. It is about 30 miles (48 km) north of Midtown Manhattan on the east bank of the Hudson River. It holds about 1,700 inmates and housed the execution chamber for the State of New York until the abolition of capital punishment in New York in 2007.
San Quentin Rehabilitation Center (SQ), formerly known as San Quentin State Prison, is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated place of San Quentin in Marin County.
Florida State Prison (FSP), otherwise known as Raiford Prison, is a correctional institution located in unincorporated Bradford County, Florida, with a Raiford postal address. It was formerly known as the "Florida State Prison-East Unit" as it was originally part of Florida State Prison near Raiford. The facility, a part of the Florida Department of Corrections, is located on State Road 16 right across the border from Union County. The institution opened in 1961, even though construction was not completed until 1968. With a maximum population of over 1,400 inmates, FSP is one of the largest prisons in the state. FSP houses Florida's one of two male death row cell blocks and the State of Florida execution chamber. Union Correctional Institution also houses male death row inmates while Lowell Annex houses female death row inmates.
Gary Michael Heidnik was an American murderer and serial rapist who kidnapped, tortured and raped six women, murdering two of them, while holding them captive in a self-dug pit in his basement floor in Philadelphia between 1986 and 1987. He was sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection in July 1999, currently the last person to be executed in the state of Pennsylvania. Heidnik was one of the inspirations for the character of Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb in The Silence of the Lambs.
Washington State Penitentiary is a Washington State Department of Corrections men's prison located in Walla Walla, Washington. With an operating capacity of 2,200, it is the largest prison in the state and is surrounded by wheat fields. It opened in 1886, three years before statehood.
Harvey Murray Glatman was an American serial killer and rapist during the late 1950s. He was known in the media as the Lonely Hearts Killer and the Glamour Girl Slayer. He would use several pseudonyms, posing as a professional photographer to lure his victims with the promise of a modeling career.
John Francis Duffy and David Mulcahy are two British serial rapists and serial killers who together attacked numerous women and children at railway stations in southern England during the 1980s.
Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. is an American serial killer, serial rapist, burglar, peeping tom, former police officer and mechanic who committed at least 13 murders, 51 rapes, and 120 burglaries across California between 1974 and 1986. He is responsible for three known separate crime sprees throughout the state, each of which spawned a different nickname in the press, before it became evident that they were committed by the same person.
The Ripper Crew or the Chicago Rippers was an organized crime group of serial killers, cannibals, rapists, and necrophiles. The group was composed of Robin Gecht and three associates: Edward Spreitzer, and brothers Andrew and Thomas Kokoraleis. They were suspected in the murders of 17 women in Illinois in 1981 and 1982, as well as the unrelated fatal shooting of a man in a random drive-by shooting. According to one of the detectives who investigated the case, Gecht "made Manson look like a Boy Scout."
A Crime to Remember is an American documentary television series that airs on Investigation Discovery and premiered on November 12, 2013. It tells the stories of notorious crimes that captivated attention of the media and the public when they occurred, such as the United Airlines Flight 629 bombing from 1955. As of the 2018 season, the series has aired 38 episodes over five seasons. All 30 episodes from the first four seasons are currently streaming on Hulu. The complete season 4 and 5 episodes are currently available on Amazon Prime Video. All episodes of the series are available through the ID GO app and the Discovery+ streaming service.
I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer is a true crime book by the American writer Michelle McNamara about the investigation of the Golden State Killer. The book was released on February 27, 2018, nearly two years after McNamara's death and two months before an arrest would be made in the case.
Oen Bo-Hyun was a South Korean spree killer and rapist who attacked six women in Seoul in September 1994, killing two. Convicted of the murders, he was subsequently executed in 1995.
John Francis "Jack" Roche was an American serial killer, burglar, and rapist who murdered at least four people in the Yorkville neighborhood of Eastern Manhattan between 1953 and 1954. Following his arrest, Roche admitted responsibility in two additional murders that other people had already been convicted of, resulting in one of those convictions being overturned. For the murder of 14-year-old Dorothy Westwater, Roche was convicted, sentenced to death, and subsequently executed at Sing Sing in 1956.
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