USA - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1982: A Death Row Killer for Hire: Bomb in the Radio Speaker

Serial killer Donald Gaskins, already condemned to die at Central Correctional Institution, murdered fellow death row inmate Rudolph Tyner using a homemade bomb built from C4 plastic explosive concealed inside a device disguised as a portable radio speaker. The device was passed to Tyner and detonated, killing him instantly.

Gaskins carried out the killing as a paid hit, hired for 2,000 dollars by Tony Cimo, the son of a couple Tyner had murdered years earlier. Cimo wanted revenge on his parents’ killer and used Gaskins, already notorious as one of South Carolina’s most prolific murderers, to get it from inside the prison itself.

Mobster planting a time bomb in a car engine compartment

⬅ See all events from 12 September

Murder Organised Crime Prison Serial Killer South Carolina USA

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1990: Her Fifth Victim Found

Aileen Wuornos had already established a deadly pattern along Florida’s highways, targeting men she encountered while working as a sex worker and hitchhiking around the state. Her fifth known victim was a 56-year-old retired police chief. After disappearing, his body was found on September 12 in an isolated area of Marion County. He had been shot seven times in the head and torso with Wuornos’s .22-calibre revolver.

By this stage, Wuornos’s killings had moved well beyond the disputed circumstances surrounding her first victim, Richard Mallory, whose death she maintained had been in self-defence. This latest killing formed part of an escalating pattern that would claim one more victim before police arrested her in January 1991, bringing to an end one of America’s most notorious female serial killing sprees.

Prisoner handcuffed during lethal injection with syringe and vial

⬅ See all events from 12 September

Florida Murder Serial Killer Trial USA

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1931: Stabbed Like His Hero Julius Caesar: the Assassination of a Mafia Boss

Salvatore Maranzano, nicknamed Little Caesar for his fascination with Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire, had built a criminal empire in Brooklyn behind the front of a real estate brokerage, running bootlegging, prostitution and narcotics rackets. Born in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, and married to Elisabetta Minore, he was sent to New York to seize control of Mafia operations for his Sicilian backers.

In 1930, he went to war with rival boss Joe Masseria, sparking the Castellammarese War. Maranzano secretly convinced Masseria’s own lieutenant, Lucky Luciano, to betray him, and after a lunch at a Coney Island restaurant on April 15, 1931, Masseria was gunned down.

Maranzano emerged as capo di tutti capi, the boss of all bosses, and reorganised New York’s underworld into the Five Families. His triumph lasted only five months. After plotting to have Luciano killed, Maranzano discovered too late that Luciano had moved first. On September 10, 1931, four gunmen posing as government agents entered Maranzano’s Manhattan office and shot and stabbed him to death, dying in a manner fittingly similar to the fate of his idol, Julius Caesar.

Angry mobsters firing a submachine gun near an antique car

⬅ See all events from 10 September

Assassination Mafia Murder New York Organised Crime USA

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

1996: The Menendez Brothers Split Up: Sent to Separate Maximum-Security Prisons

After their conviction for the 1989 shotgun murders of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in the family’s Beverly Hills home, the California Department of Corrections classified Lyle and Erik as maximum-security inmates and separated them, ending years of the brothers being held together. Lyle was sent to the California Correctional Institution near Tehachapi, while Erik was sent to California State Prison near Sacramento.

The brothers had initially told police that intruders, possibly connected to organised crime, were responsible for the killings. Suspicion grew after investigators noted their lavish spending in the months following the murders and discovered they had hired a computer expert to delete their father’s recently updated will. Erik ultimately confessed to the killings during sessions with his psychologist, describing a desire to escape a controlling father’s demanding expectations, a disclosure that led to both brothers’ arrests.

Beverly Hills sign in Hollywood, Los Angeles against a blue cloudy sky | ID 1216184 © Stephen Coburn | Dreamstime.com — ID 1216184 © Stephen Coburn | Dreamstime.com

⬅ See all events from 10 September

California Murder Prison Trial USA

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Spread the word on your favourite platform!

Subscribe to Dark Stories