The Wah Mee massacre was a mass shooting that occurred during the night of February 18–19, 1983, in the Wah Mee gambling club at the Louisa Hotel in Seattle, Washington, United States. Fourteen people were bound, robbed and shot by three gunmen, 22-year-old Kwan Fai "Willie" Mak, 20-year old Keung Kin "Benjamin" Ng and 25-year-old Wai Chiu "Tony" Ng. Thirteen of the victims died, but 61-year-old Wai Yok Chin, a former U.S. Navy sailor and Pai Gow dealer at the Wah Mee, survived to testify against the three in the separate high-profile trials held between 1983 and 1985.
A thrill killing is premeditated or random murder that is motivated by the sheer excitement of the act. While there have been attempts to categorize multiple murders, such as identifying "thrill killing" as a type of "hedonistic mass killing", actual details of events frequently overlap category definitions making attempts at such distinctions problematic.
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.
Roderick Justin "Rod" Ferrell is an American murderer and cult leader. He was a member of a loose-knit gang of teenagers from Murray, Kentucky, known as the "Vampire Clan". Ferrell claimed to be a 500-year-old vampire named Vesago, a character he created for himself after becoming obsessed with the role playing game Vampire: The Masquerade. It was his mother, Sondra Gibson, who first introduced this game to Rod. In 1998, Ferrell pleaded guilty to the double slaying of a couple from Eustis, Florida, becoming the youngest person in Florida on Death Row at that time. Originally sentenced to death, Ferrell's penalty has since been reduced to life imprisonment. In 2023, he married Stephanie Ferrell.
Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782 (1982), is a United States Supreme Court case. It was a 5–4 decision in which the United States Supreme Court applied its capital proportionality principle, to set aside the death penalty for the driver of a getaway car, in a robbery-murder of an elderly Floridian couple. The court ruled that the imposition of the death penalty under the felony murder rule when the defendant did not intentionally kill the victim constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment of the United States constitution.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
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.
Bobby Joe Long was an American serial killer and rapist who was executed by the state of Florida for the murder of Michelle Denise Simms. Long abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered at least eight women in the Tampa Bay area in Florida during an eight-month period in 1984.
Lowell Correctional Institution is a women's prison in unincorporated Marion County, Florida, north of Ocala, in the unincorporated area of Lowell. A part of the Florida Department of Corrections, it serves as the primary prison for women in the state. Almost 3,000 women are incarcerated in the complex, which includes the Lowell Annex. As of 2015 2,696 women are in the main Lowell CI, making it the largest prison for women in the United States; its prison population became larger than that of the Central California Women's Facility that year.
Jennifer Lee Daugherty was an American woman who was torture-murdered in Greensburg, Pennsylvania as an act of revenge in February 2010. Daugherty, who was mentally disabled, was tortured and murdered before being wrapped in Christmas decorations, put inside a garbage can, and dumped in the parking lot of Greensburg-Salem Middle School.
On July 23, 2007, two home intruders entered the home of the Petit family in Cheshire, Connecticut, United States. The perpetrators, Linda Hayes and Joshua Andrew Komisarjevsky, initially planned only to burgle the house, but went on to murder Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters, 17-year-old Hayley Petit and 11-year-old Michaela Petit. Their father, Dr. William Petit, managed to escape despite sustaining severe injuries.
The Babes in the Wood Murders were the murders of two nine-year-old girls, Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway, on 9 October 1986, by a 20-year-old local roofer, Russell Bishop in Wild Park, Moulsecoomb, Brighton, Sussex, England. Bishop was tried and acquitted in 1987. The case remained open until 10 December 2018, when Bishop was found guilty of the murders in a second trial. The investigation into the two girls' murders is the largest and longest-running inquiry ever conducted by Sussex Police.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in Canada.
Glen Edward Rogers, is an American convicted serial killer. He was also convicted of related crimes in Florida and California, such as armed robbery, grand theft auto, and arson.
Anthony Kirkland is an American serial killer. Between 2006 and 2009, Kirkland murdered two women and two girls in the Cincinnati area, following a 16-year prison term for the 1987 killing of his girlfriend.
On November 23, 2012, Jordan Davis, a black American 17-year-old boy, was murdered at a Gate Petroleum gas station in Jacksonville, Florida, United States, by Michael David Dunn, a white 45-year-old software developer, following an argument over loud music played by Davis and his three friends, in what was believed to be a racially motivated shooting.
Killer Women with Piers Morgan is a British television documentary series, broadcast on ITV and consisting of interviews by Piers Morgan with convicted American women murderers. The first series, of two episodes, was broadcast in May 2016, and the second series began its run in June 2017.
The "Baby Lollipops" murder was the murder in 1990 of three-year-old Lazaro Figueroa by his mother Ana Maria Cardona in Florida. The body of Lazaro was found abandoned, and identified through house-to-house inquiries. The case was widely covered in US media, who called the initially unidentified boy "Baby Lollipops", after the design on the T-shirt he was wearing when found.
Jorge Avila-Torrez is an American serial killer and rapist. A resident of Zion, Illinois, Avila-Torrez murdered two girls who lived in his neighborhood in 2005 and later murdered a female Naval officer in 2009 at Joint Base Myer–Henderson Hall. He was sentenced to death by the federal government for that crime as well as receiving a 100-year sentence for the Illinois murders.
