2002: The Steamer Trunk in the Closet: Ira Einhorn Convicted of Murdering Holly Maddux

In 1979, Philadelphia police searching Ira Einhorn's apartment found a locked steamer trunk shoved into a closet; inside were the mummified remains of his former girlfriend, Holly Maddux, missing for more than a year. Einhorn, a charismatic countercultural figure known as the Unicorn Killer, fled the country before trial and spent nearly two decades hiding in Europe before he was finally captured in France.

Extradited to the United States, Einhorn stood trial in 2002 and took the stand in his own defense, insisting CIA agents had killed Maddux and framed him. The jury took just two hours to convict him of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced the following day to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Vintage steamer trunk with secrets locked up tight.
Vintage steamer trunk with secrets locked up tight.

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1912: It Takes More Than That to Kill a Bull Moose: the Shooting of Theodore Roosevelt in Milwaukee

Theodore Roosevelt was climbing into his car in Milwaukee on 14 October 1912, campaigning for a third term as president, when a former saloonkeeper named John Schrank stepped from the crowd and shot him in the chest. The bullet had already been slowed by a folded steel glasses case and a fifty page speech manuscript in his breast pocket before it lodged in his chest muscle.

With the crowd turning on the gunman, Roosevelt shouted for Schrank to be left unharmed and handed to police. Then, bleeding and reasoning from his own hunting experience that he was not coughing blood and so his lung was untouched, he refused hospital treatment and walked onto the stage. He opened his address with the line that followed him ever after: "It takes more than that to kill a bull moose." He spoke for roughly ninety minutes before finally agreeing to see a doctor. Surgeons judged the bullet too close to vital organs to remove, and Roosevelt carried it in his chest for the rest of his life.

Theodore Roosevelt speaking from a car shortly before being shot in 1912.
Theodore Roosevelt speaking from a car shortly before being shot in 1912.

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1969: A Bloodstained Scrap of Shirt: the Zodiac Killer Mails Proof to a San Francisco Newsroom

Two days after shooting cabdriver Paul Stine dead in San Francisco, the Zodiac Killer sent the San Francisco Chronicle a taunting letter dated October 13, 1969. Inside was a torn piece of Stine's bloodstained shirt, offered as proof the killer was the same man terrorising the Bay Area, not a copycat.

The letter mocked police for failing to catch him despite patrols flooding the area that night, and promised more killings to come. It remains one of several pieces of physical evidence tied to an identity that, more than fifty years on, has never been conclusively proven.

Symbolism
Symbolism

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1933: The Rock Becomes a Fortress: the U.S. Government Claims Alcatraz Island

The U.S. Department of Justice announced the acquisition of the military facility on Alcatraz Island on this day in 1933, marking the start of its transformation into a federal maximum-security penitentiary. It would be nearly a year before the island was formally designated a federal prison and the first inmates arrived.

Alcatraz was built for one purpose: to hold prisoners who had proven too disruptive, too dangerous, or too likely to escape from every other federal institution. Surrounded by cold currents and strict discipline, it would soon house names like Al Capone and Robert Stroud, cementing its reputation as America's most feared prison.

Coloried view of Alcatraz Island circa 1902-1905 (unknown author)
Coloried view of Alcatraz Island circa 1902-1905 (unknown author)

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On This Day in True Crime History

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