In September 1939, New York bookmaker Irving Feinstein was strangled to death by members of Murder Inc., the enforcement arm of the American organised crime syndicate. His body was set alight and dumped in a vacant lot, a signature disposal method of the organisation.
The killing was ordered after Feinstein was accused of doublecrossing a criminal associate. He was one of dozens of victims claimed by Murder Inc. during its brutal reign as a contract killing operation for the mob.
On September 4, 1946, William Heirens stood before a Chicago court with his parents and the victims' families watching, and admitted guilt on burglary and murder charges spanning three killings. The prosecution had already staged a public reenactment of the Degnan murder in August, ensuring the case was tried in the press long before sentencing.
That night, Heirens attempted to hang himself in his cell, timing the attempt to coincide with a guard shift change. He was discovered before he died. He later said: 'Everyone believed I was guilty ... If I weren't alive, I felt I could avoid being adjudged guilty by the law and thereby gain some victory. Before I walked into the courtroom my counsel told me to just enter a plea of guilty and keep my mouth shut afterward. I didn't even have a trial.'
For months in 1985, Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, terrorised California, breaking into homes while families slept to assault, mutilate, and murder. His reign of terror ended not with a police operation but with a newspaper front page: once his mugshot was published across California media, his anonymity was gone.
On 31 August 1985, Ramirez attempted to carjack vehicles in the Boyle Heights neighbourhood of East Los Angeles. Residents recognised him, chased him down the sreet, and beat him to the ground before police arrived to take him into custody. Facing the mob, Ramirez reportedly confessed to officers, preferring arrest to the alternative.
In March 1981, John Hinckley Jr. fired six shots at President Ronald Reagan outside a Washington D.C. hotel, wounding Reagan and three others. The attack was later revealed to be motivated by an obsession with actress Jodie Foster.
On 28 August 1981, Hinckley entered a plea of not guilty to charges of attempted assassination. He was ultimately found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1982 and was committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Washington D.C.
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