Nally, William, 1943- , U.S. It was dark when attorney Timothy McNamee, thirty-four, came out of his Carpentersville, Ill., office on June 8, 1987. Lying in wait in a small wooded area next to the law office’s parking lot was William Nally with a 70-year-old, WWI-vintage military rifle. The gun’s age did not stop it from accurately sending a bullet into McNamee’s abdomen as he came out of his office. The attorney bled to death in the driveway.
Although police continually sought a drug motive in the case, investigations into the law partnership’s clients gradually narrowed suspicion down to Nadine Walter, twenty-five, and her quest to keep custody of her son. McNamee’s partner, Timothy Mahoney, was the attorney of Walter’s ex-husband, Rolando Rodriguez, who had been granted temporary custody. The day before McNamee was shot, Rodriguez had abducted the boy from Tennessee where he had been living with his grandfather, his mother, and her former boyfriend, Nally. Walter, hoping to scare her husband into giving back her son, suggested to Nally that they go after the law partners, whom they blamed for Rodriguez being granted custody.
On Nov. 9, 1988, seventeen months after the killing, Walter agreed to help police convict Nally in exchange for immunity for her role in the murder and an unrelated credit-card fraud. Wearing a concealed tape recorder, she met Nally at O’Hare International Airport. As they walked through the busy airport, Nally’s conversation with Walter contained incriminating statements about the murder. Among the things he said was: “I killed him. I shot him dead….Honey, we’re killers.” He was arrested before leaving the airport.
The tape recording was played in court, and William Nally was found Guilty. On Apr. 27, 1989, Nally was sentenced to life in prison with no opportunity for parole.
Narvaiz, Leo, Jr., 1968- , U.S. Because Leo Narvaiz, Jr., twenty, had been rejected by his girlfriend, Shannon Mann, he savagely murdered her, her two sisters, and her brother. At 3:27 a.m. on Apr. 16, 1988, a young girl called the 911 emergency number and said, “One of my sister’s boyfriends is beating us up and has killed my sister.” When police traced the call to the Manns’ San Antonio, Texas, mobile home, they found the bodies of the four children. They were stabbed to death with steak knives, some of which had broken off in their necks. Dead were Shannon Mann, seventeen, Martha Mann, fifteen, Jennifer Mann, nineteen, and Ernest Mann, Jr., eleven. Leo Narvaiz, charged with four counts of capital murder, was held in lieu of a $4.05 million bond. He had used five knives in the vicious slayings, attacking the children as they slept in their five-bedroom trailer. Becky Mann, their mother, was at work. She had recently separated from the children’s father, Ernest Mann, Sr., who had filed two complaints against Narvaiz.
Narvaiz was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Several months after the slayings, Mann heard on the radio for the first time that his son had been virtually dismembered. Explaining later that “something snapped inside,” Ernest Mann, thirty-six, began stealing garden hoses and lawn chairs from front yards, apparently to be jailed in order to confront Narvaiz. Police said Mann seemed “happy and relieved” when caught. He was taken to the Bexar County Jail where, he later told officer Don Marguis, he had hoped to “see the creep face to face.” Unknown to Mann, Narvaiz had been transferred to Death Row at Huntsville Prison. Mann was fined $50 on a misdemeanor charge and released.
Nathaniel, Cathy, 1946- , U.S. “I question whether you have any morals at all,” said the judge to prostitute Cathy Nathaniel when he sentenced her to thirty-five years in prison for the murder of a man she picked up in a Chicago bar. On May 3, 1979, Nathaniel and her roommate, Bernice Albright, met attorney Steven Ticho, who invited the two back to his apartment in the John Hancock Building on Michigan Avenue. Albright soon left, but Nathaniel stayed on, and shot Ticho in the back of the head. She then returned to her apartment and got Albright to return with her to the Hancock Building to loot the apartment.
Nathaniel was caught after using Ticho’s credit cards. On Oct. 25, 1979, she was convicted of murder in the courtroom of Criminal Court Judge James M. Bailey, who saw no sign of remorse in the murderous prostitute.
Naumoff, Nicolas, and Tarnowska, Marie Nicolaievna, and Prilukoff, Donat, prom. 1907-10, Italy. From cold Russia to the warmth of Italy came the aristocrats, bringing their passions, hates, and intrigues with them. One of them, young Nicolas Naumoff, had the misfortune to be totally infatuated with Countess Marie Tarnowska. Strange things happened around the countess. First her brother-in-law, and later a doctor, committed suicide over their love for her. Then her husband, who had first taught her the ways of dalliance, simultaneously filed for divorce and shot her current lover, Alexis Borzewski; the court found that homicide to have been justifiable.
The countess’ divorce lawyer, Donat Prilukoff, quickly came under her control and soon was digging deeply into his wealth to pay for her whims. Even when she became involved with a certain Count Kamarovski, he was unable to break away. Whether it was the countess’ idea or Prilukoff’s, the two persuaded Kamarovski to take out life insurance with Tarnowska as the beneficiary. Tarnowska and Prilukoff then inveigled 21-year-old Naumoff into their scheme after the countess seduced the gullible young man.
The infatuated young man listened intently as, time after time, his love whispered of horrible things the count did to her. He thought to rescue the beautiful woman from the grotesque count. In Venice, she pleaded with him to rid her of Kamarovski. On the morning of Sept. 3, 1907, Naumoff went to the count’s villa. Taken to the older man’s bedroom, Naumoff gave him no chance to speak. He fired a number of bullets, then left the room by the balcony. Prilukoff, who had arranged to have detectives on hand to take the killer into custody, had left to have coffee, so Naumoff escaped. Actually, Naumoff’s badly aimed bullets failed to kill the count; but the doctors, unable to decide what medical treatment to apply, managed to let him die.
All the figures in the plot were quickly arrested and charged, but it was almost three years before they were brought to trial in March 1910. Prilukoff and Naumoff both blamed their problems on their love of the countess. Then the countess herself took the stand. For twelve long weeks she relayed the amorous story of her life. Finally, the jury found Naumoff Guilty of murder, mitigated by the fact that “he was suffering from a partial mental collapse.” They found both the countess and Prilukoff Guilty of helping him. The jury said, “We reject the theory that she was mad, but we find that her mental faculties were partially destroyed.” Prilukoff, they said, was not impaired, thus the court gave him the strongest sentence, ten years of solitary confinement. Countess Tarnowska was sentenced to eight years and four months. Nicolas Naumoff, the actual killer, received the lightest sentence, three years and four months in prison.
Neal, Tom, 1913-72, U.S. Tom Neal, “The King of the B Pictures,” was a violent and often jealous man. A boxer of some note, Neal first appeared as a bit actor in a number of Hollywood films in the early 1940s. His name was listed in the credits along with John Wayne in the war epic Flying Tigers. Neal acted in over 180 films, few of them of lasting importance. His first wife, Vicky Lane, divorced him in 1949 because of his obsessive jealousy. He then became involved with Barbara Payton, an aspiring actress of modest talents, who was later arrested for intoxication, passing bad checks, and prostitution. Her biggest role was that of James Cagney’s girlfriend in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, a 1950 film remembered chiefly for its excessive violence. Payton reappeared in Neal’s life at regular intervals. At one time she tried to get him jealous enough to marry her by dating matinee idol Franchot Tone.
On Sept. 14, 1951, Neal cornered Tone outside his residence and beat him badly enough to cause a brain concussion. Franchot Tone went on to marry the sympathetic, adoring Barbara Payton in her Minnesota hometown, a union she said she sought due to the beating he had taken solely because he loved her, but the marriage ended disastrously after only seven weeks. The Tone episode effectively destroyed Tom Neal’s film career—as lackluster as it was—so he turned to landscaping, which he had learned from his Japanese gardeners during his more successful days, in order to earn a living. The business he started prospered, and within a few years Tom Neal, the man with the extremely short temper and quick fists, was attending to the lawns and gardens of the Palm Springs elite.
Neal remarried, but his second wife Patricia died of cancer in 1958. That marriage produced a son. He married for a third time in June 1961, this time to a petite brunette named Gail who worked as a receptionist at the Palm Springs Tennis Club. The one-time Hollywood bad boy dutifully attended to his wife and his successful gardening business for the next four years. He managed to keep his name out of the papers until Apr. 2, 1965, when he fired a bullet into his wife’s head behind the right ear while she reclined on the couch. During the next several hours he wandered aimlessly around the city, visiting his most intimate friends, to whom he admitted that he had killed his wife.
Neal told a different story to Palm Springs Police. He said that he was making love to Gail when she pulled a gun on him, and during the struggle to take it from her, the weapon accidentally discharged. She had obtained the weapon recently for protection, as she had developed emotional problems and believed she was being followed, but the quarrel had stemmed from Neal’s own paranoic jealousy. He had accused his wife of sleeping with other men—a story he later told to the judge and jury. Robert Lawrence Balzer, part owner of the Tyrol Restaurant in Pine Grove and a close friend of Neal’s, substantiated these statements by recounting his confession the night of the murder. While visiting Balzer hours after the shooting, Neal complained that Gail “had become my whole life and I could not live without her.” Tom Neal had sought out Balzer, a Buddhist monk, the day before for spiritual advice. The two men had discussed Buddhist philosophy for hours, with Balzer advising his friend, “The problems of life are as a tiger at the door,” to which he said Neal answered, “I am the tiger, and the walls are all around me.”
Some time before Neal reported the murder the gun mysteriously disappeared and was never found. According to police lieutenant Richard Harries, the house was in a shambles when he arrived. Items of clothing belonging to a Steven Peck were found strewn about the rooms. Peck’s address was listed as 2481 Cardillo Street, which was Neal’s residence, but Peck was never called to testify. The police found the fatal bullet nestled in a plush pillow. Neal was taken into custody and held without bail for four days before being arraigned on a murder charge. No explanation was given for another peculiarity: the fact that all the windows in an adjacent apartment building had been shattered.
Although the prosecution lined up thirty prospective witnesses, they rested their case after calling only eight. No reason was ever given. The nine-woman, three-man jury spent a full day deliberating the evidence before returning their verdict on Nov. 18, 1965. Perhaps more intrigued by the mysteries than by the testimony of the witnesses, the jury found Neal Guilty only of involuntary manslaughter. Tom Neal was sentenced to one to fifteen years at the California Institution for Men at Chino. The courts repeatedly denied Neal’s appeals, but he still served less than seven years before being paroled in December 1971. Neal attempted a show business comeback following his release from prison. He produced a morning television show called the Apartment Hunters, but it was short lived. The King of the B Pictures died a forgotten man on Aug. 7, 1972.
Nelson, Dale Merle, 1939- , Can. Dale Nelson, thirty-one, was a society dropout who kept his wife and three little children in a small shack at the edge of the wilderness near West Creston, British Columbia. He worked occasionally at hard labor in the nearby logging camps, but frequently he sank into bouts of depression that kept him drinking and alone. On the night of Sept. 5, 1970, he had been feeding that depression all day, but instead of going home, he went to the house of his aunt, Shirley Wasyk. She was home alone with her three daughters while her husband was away at a logging camp. He battered the woman to death and strangled her 7-year-old daughter, Tracey Wasyk. Debbie Wasyk, twelve, managed to escape and went running for help. However, a neighbor had already called the police, and Nelson fled as he heard sirens approaching.
Nelson did not get far, racing to a remote house. Ray Phipps opened his front door to a gunshot blast. Nelson stepped over the body and systematically shot Phipps’s common-law wife, Isabelle St. Amand, and their four children. He took Cathy St. Amand, eight, with him, and sometime in the next few hours, when the police had left the Wasyk house to search the neighborhood, Nelson crept back in and removed Tracey Wasyk’s body. Going farther into the wilderness, Nelson mutilated the bodies of the two young girls.
A day and a half later, after hiding in the woods, Dale Nelson gave himself up. The first thing he said to the police was, “Must have been the LSD.” Nelson was tried at Cranbrook Assizes in March 1971, for the murders of Tracey Wasyk and Cathy St. Amand. The defense admitted all facts, letting them add up to a plea of insanity. The hallucinogen LSD was never introduced as a major factor. The jury found Nelson Guilty, and he was sent to prison for life.
Nelson, Earle Leonard (AKA: Roger Wilson; The Gorilla Murderer), 1897-1928, U.S.-Can. Earle Leonard Nelson was one of the strangest and most evasive mass killers in U.S. history. He killed from coast to coast, selecting only women, and even here, his distinction was that he murdered first and then attacked his victims sexually. Nelson’s victims were almost always middle-aged landladies, matronly, motherly figures who probably represented the mother he lost early in life, a fantasy figure whom he loved and hated, and an overbearing religious aunt whom he simply hated. Born in Philadelphia, Nelson was orphaned before the age of five and was taken in by his aunt, Mrs. Lillian Fabian. She was kindly, but insisted that Earle follow her each and every dictate, especially when it came to his reading the Bible at least one hour a day. She constantly crowed to friends that Earle “will be a minister some day.”
At the age of seven, Nelson was playing on a Philadelphia street with another child and ran into the street to chase a ball. A passing trolley car snared him in its cowcatcher and bounced him fifty feet. His head repeatedly struck the cobblestones. Nelson survived but he developed excruciating headaches, which, he claimed, were so severe, that they made him blind. Although Nelson’s brain had not been physically injured, the terrible accident most certainly altered the boy’s thinking. He began to conjure one image of horror after another, dwelling upon the crucifixions, suicides, and mass slayings recorded in the Bible. He also became obsessed about the Biblical sirens of the Holy Scripture: Bathsheba, Salome, the Queen of Sheba.
He began to manifest his hatred for females by attacking little girls, including his small cousin. When his aunt scolded him for this behavior, Nelson, clever enough to use Mrs. Fabian’s obsession for religion, would drop to his knees and beg his aunt’s forgiveness, babbling Biblical phrases, crying and pleading so that Mrs. Fabian only sent him to his room. In his room Nelson passed the time searching his Bible for profiles of evil, of murder, and the darkest deeds of man. He grew up a solitary, sullen youth, graduating from high school without a single friend.
Nelson was a powerful young man with broad shoulders and huge, muscular hands with webbed fingers. He could break solid boards with those hands and also perform amazing feats, like walking on his hands for several blocks without losing his balance. He practiced scaling the sides of buildings and claimed that he could actually use his webbed fingers as suction cups in climbing into second-storywindows. On his twenty-first birthday, Nelson dragged a neighbor girl into his basement where he tried to rape her. Her screams brought help and Nelson was arrested.
Mrs. Fabian begged police to release her nephew. He was a misunderstood youth, she said, a recluse who meant no harm. Authorities disagreed. Nelson was convicted of rape and sentenced to two years in a penal farm. He escaped but was recaptured. He escaped again, but police found him a short time later, standing outside a window of his aunt’s house in a heavy downpour, watching his cousin Rachel undress for bed. This time Nelson was sent to the penitentiary to serve out his sentence, but on Dec. 4, 1918, he escaped again. Using the alias Roger Wilson, Nelson moved to San Francisco where he met a schoolteacher whom he married on Aug. 12, 1919.
This young woman’s life was soon turned into a living nightmare. Whenever they went out together, Nelson accused his wife of flirting with other men. He openly chastised her on public streets and screamed out that she was a slut and a whore. She finally had a nervous breakdown, and while she was recovering in a hospital, Nelson entered her hospital room and raped her. It took several interns and male hospital attendants to drag Nelson from his wife. Nelson ran from the hospital cursing his wife and the hospital staff and vanished for seven years.
On Feb. 20, 1926, Nelson appeared on the doorstep of a boarding house owned by Clara Newman in San Francisco. He told the landlady he was a college student and that he was looking for a nice clean room where he could study in peace. As Mrs. Newman showed Nelson into a third floor room, he attacked her and strangled her to death, and then sexually attacked the dead body. He fled, leaving Newman’s naked body on the floor. Richard Newman, Mrs. Newman’s nephew, found his aunt’s ravaged body a few hours later and called the police, telling detectives that his aunt had last been with a man about five-foot-six with a heavy torso, piercing blue eyes, and ape-like arms.
On Mar. 2, 1926, Nelson struck again, this time strangling Mrs. Laura Beale, another landlady. He raped the dead body repeatedly before fleeing. On June 10, Mrs. Lillian St. Mary was found strangled and ravished, her body hidden under a bed in her rooming house. On June 26, Nelson arrived in Santa Barbara and strangled and raped Mrs. George Russell. By then the press was blaring headlines about a strangler it dubbed “The Gorilla Murderer” because of his long arms and monkey-like face with penetrating blue eyes. On Aug. 16, after strangling and raping Mrs. Mary Nesbit in Oakland, Calif., Nelson was inactive for several months. Police believed he was momentarily seized by an irresistible urge to murder, followed by the sordid acts of necrophilia, but had no clues to the killer’s identity or his whereabouts. Warnings were issued that a killer was loose and that unescorted women were in danger.
On Oct. 19, 1926, in Portland, Ore., Nelson tried to rent a room from landlady Beta Withers and strangled and raped her. On Oct. 20, Nelson strangled and raped another Portland landlady, Mrs. Mabel Fluke. A few days later in the same city, he strangled and raped landlady Virginia Grant. He then traveled back to San Francisco, and on Nov. 11, 1926, strangled and raped Mrs. William Edmons. Nelson then took the train back to Portland where he strangled and raped Blanche Myers on Nov. 15, 1926. As the manhunt for the Gorilla Murderer intensified, Nelson began traveling east. On Dec. 23, 1926, he strangled and raped Mrs. John Berard in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He then moved southwest and in Kansas City, Mo., Nelson strangled and raped Mrs. Germania Harpin, another landlady. Before leaving Mrs. Harpin’s house, Nelson also strangled her eight-month-old daughter.
Back in his home town of Philadelphia, Nelson strangled and raped Mary McConnell on Apr. 27, 1927. On May 1, he strangled and raped Jennie Randolph in Buffalo, N.Y. By June 1, 1927, Nelson was in Detroit. Here he strangled two sisters at the same time, Minnie May and Mrs. M.C. Atorthy, raping both corpses. Nelson then moved to Chicago where, on June 3, he strangled and raped Mary Sietsome, his last victim in the U.S. All of Nelson’s victims in the U.S., with the exception of Mrs. Harpin, had been landladies. With the entire nation looking for him, Nelson crossed into Canada and took a room in Winnipeg, renting from Mrs. August Hill. He said he was a Bible student. That night, June 8, 1927, Lola Cowan, who supported her family by selling artificial flowers made by her crippled sister, vanished from the streets of Winnipeg.
On June 9, 1927, when William Patterson of Winnipeg returned home, his wife was missing and his small children told him that they had not seen her in hours. Patterson, who knew that a strangler was loose in the city, went into the bedroom where he saw his wife’s hand protruding from beneath the bed. When he looked beneath the bed, he saw his wife’s naked body. She had been strangled and raped.
A short time later, George Smith, Winnipeg’s chief of detectives, gathered his best men and told them: “I think that we must operate on the assumption that the madman who has been killing all those landladies in the States has crossed over into Canada. Mrs. Patterson had been strangled by a man with extremely powerful hands, and then, after death, she had been sexually molested. It is the same pattern.”
“But Mrs. Patterson was not a landlady,” one of the detectives said.
“The killer has altered his modus operandi. But the method of killing and the ravishing of the corpse is in the same manner as that occurring in the States. This time he has stolen things, about $70, Mrs. Patterson’s ring and a Bible.” Smith also pointed out that the killer left behind his old clothes, and took a shirt, pants, and an old coat from the Patterson house. Detectives began to search every rooming house and hotel in the city, interviewing every boarder and guest. Two detectives arrived at Mrs. Hill’s rooming house and she admitted that she had taken in a new boarder, describing him as a serious young man with piercing blue eyes, a dark complexion, and a powerful build.
The officers were shown to the boarder’s room, but he was gone. They began to search the place. One of the officers leaned down and looked beneath the bed: “Good God, man!” he shouted to his partner. “Look here!” It was the body of Lola Cowan, the flower girl. She, like the other victims, had been strangled and raped. Nelson had taken her body back to his room and hidden it. He later admitted that he made love to the corpse for two days.
By that time Nelson was heading west, hitching rides and walking. In Regina, 200 miles west of Winnipeg, he rented a room. Only minutes after occupying it, he spotted an attractive female boarder in the hall. He shoved her into his room and began to strip her but she screamed and the landlady and male boarders ran upstairs. Nelson leaped out the window, slid down a drainpipe, and escaped. Police were on his trail within minutes. Nelson headed for the U.S. border but two constables stopped him only a few miles outside of the border town of Kilarney. Nelson stood in the road and talked casually with the officers who sat in their car, studying him.
“My name is Wilson,” he told them. “I work as a stock hand on a ranch near here.”
Constable Grey then thought to shock the young man into blurting a confession by saying: “We’re looking for a man who is responsible for the deaths of twenty women.”
Nelson gave him a little grin that was more like a sneer and said: “I only do my lady killing on Saturday night, fellas.”
Said Grey: “I think you’d better ride along with us back to Killarney until we can check on your story.”
“Fair enough,” Nelson said, climbing easily into the back seat of the car. “I guess you fellows have to play it safe when there’s a killer on the loose.”
In Killarney, Nelson was placed in a small jail and Constables Grey and Sewell went down the street to call Chief Smith in Winnipeg. They described their captive. Smith told them that the killer had used the same name, Roger Wilson, in Winnipeg. Smith then asked where the man was being kept. When he heard that Nelson had been left handcuffed to a cell bar and that his shoes had been taken away, he still cried out: “What! Don’t let that man out of your sight! I want one of you with him at all times!” He then said that he and a dozen officers were on their way to Killarney by the next train. When Grey and Sewell returned to the jail fifteen minutes later they found the cell door open and the handcuffs dangling from the bar. Nelson had picked the lock on the handcuffs and the cell door and had fled.
Panic gripped the tiny town of Killarney. All the women and children were taken to the local church where they were guarded by dozens of gun-carrying men. More than 500 men formed a huge posse and they began a desperate search for the mass murderer, going house to house, field by field, through the night, their burning torches sending up eerie shoots of light. Meanwhile, Nelson was sound asleep in the loft of William Allen’s barn, which was only a block from the jail. The next morning, wearing a pair of worn-out boots he had found in the barn, Nelson walked to the train station and sat in the waiting room for the next train. When the train pulled into the station, Nelson moved toward it, but suddenly dozens of armed detectives leaped from the cars, Chief Smith in the lead. With two dozen revolvers pointed at him, Nelson surrendered. He was led away handcuffed.
Taken to Winnipeg, Nelson was tried and convicted of Mrs. Patterson’s murder. He said very little in his defense, except to claim insanity. This plea was not accepted. It was pointed out that because he had changed his clothes and addresses constantly and had made intelligent escapes from dozens of cities in the U.S. and in Canada, he was sane. On Nov. 14, 1927, Nelson was convicted and sentenced to death. He was visited in prison by his aunt and ex-wife on the day of his execution, Jan. 13, 1928. He showed no remorse for his many murders and refused to explain his actions to an alienist who probed the reasons for his sexual attacks on the bodies of his victims.
A few minutes later, wearing a strange smile, Earle Leonard Nelson mounted the thirteen steps to the gallows and stood on the scaffold, saying in a clear voice: “I am innocent. I stand innocent before God and man. I forgive those who have wronged me and ask forgiveness of those I have injured.” Just before the black hood was placed about his head, Nelson cried out: “God have mercy!” Five seconds later, one of the worst killers of the twentieth century was sent downward through the trap door, the rope instantly snapping his neck, killing him.
Neilson, Ruth, See: Ellis, Ruth.
Nemechek, Francis Donald, prom. 1974-76, U.S. Francis Nemechek was out on bail awaiting trial for firing shots at a car on the highway near Ogallah, Kan. At that time, he also became a suspect in the August 1976 abduction and death of Paula Fabrizius, a 16-year-old girl who was working for the summer as a ranger. She disappeared while on duty at the Cedar Bluff Reservoir. She was not found until the next day when two motorcyclists found her nude body. She had been killed by a knife wound to the heart. In a separate case, the body of 20-year-old Carla Baker of Hays, Kan., was also found dead near the reservoir.
After an FBI investigation, police arrested Nemechek, of Wa Keeney, Kan., for the murder of Fabrizius, and later also charged him with three murders that had puzzled authorities since January 1975 when 3-year-old Guy William Young was found dead of exposure near an abandoned house at Hill City, Kan. In the house were the bodies of two women from Fort Madison, Iowa. Twenty-one-year-old Cheryl Lynn Young, the child’s mother, had been shot twice, and 19-year-old Diane Lynn Lovette had been raped and shot once.
Nemechek confessed to the killings but pleaded innocent by reason of insanity. Public outcry forced a change of venue for the trial, which was held at Salina, Kan. Found Guilty, Nemechek was sentenced by Judge Steven Flood to five consecutive life terms for the five murders.
Nesbitt, Elbert, prom. 1903, U.S. Elbert “Eb” Nesbitt of Trundle County in Kentucky was believed to be part of a continuing inter-family mountain feud when he killed his brother-in-law Thurgood Talbot in the spring of 1903, because he was himself killed soon thereafter. Talbot was sitting in the sun playing with his baby daughter when Nesbitt, sighting Talbot from a clearing some distance away, killed him with a single shot from a powerful Winchester .32-.20-caliber rifle. No one knows why. Then he escaped into the hidden valleys of Brake County.
The family quarrel continued when Thurgood’s brother Acie Talbot, traveling with Otis Beary, who may have had some official standing with the local sheriff, began to hunt for Nesbitt. Along Hemp Creek they came across him walking in the woods. He tried to escape by climbing a tree, but their rifles were quicker. Who killed him is uncertain. Acie Talbot went to prison for the deed, but Beary disappeared from the area and was never heard of again.
Nesset, Arnfinn, prom. 1977-80, Nor. “I’ve kiled so many I’m unable to remember them all,” said Arnfinn Nesset of Orkdal, Nor., when he finally confessed to killing at least twenty-two, and possibly up to 155, patients in the nursing homes where he had worked. An illegitimate child, he had been raised in a small rural community where he felt isolated and ostracized.
Between May 1977 and November 1980, Nesset obtained large quantities of a derivative of the nerve poison curare by forging prescriptions already signed by the doctors for patients at the home. Although none of the 150 witnesses actually saw Nesset inject a patient, several saw him holding a hypodermic syringe near patients who died minutes later. When a local news reporter heard that the nursing home director was buying curacit, she checked into the story and then notified the police. On Mar. 9, 1981, Nesset was arrested. On different occasions he said that the patients’ deaths were mercy killings, that he did it for the pleasure it gave him, that he had an insane need to kill, and that he was driven to it by schizophrenia. His defense attorney, Alf Nordhus, claimed that Nesset felt a god-like power over the elderly patients.
Although investigations were made into the deaths of all patients at the three nursing homes where Nesset had worked, he was actually charged with only twenty-five murders and embezzling funds from patients. He claimed the money was for the use of the Salvation Army. On Mar. 11, 1983, Nesset was found Guilty of murdering twenty-two patients. He was sentenced to twenty-one years in prison, the most allowed under Norwegian law, plus up to ten years of preventive detention.
Neu, Kenneth (AKA: Louis), 1910-35, U.S. “I’m Fit As A Fiddle, and Ready To Hang,” Kenneth Neu chortled, seconds before the executioner’s noose was slipped around his neck. The aspiring nightclub singer performed his last virtuoso performance for assembled reporters and photographers and then went to his death seemingly happier than he had been in many years. Like other unemployed young men during the Depression, Neu dreamed of striking it big. Advertising himself as a singer and dancer, 25-year-old Neu pestered Manhattan’s top nightclub owners for a job. He could do it all, he explained, but the few gigs he lined up for himself were barely enough to pay for food or lodging. Worse yet was Neu’s history of mental illness. He had been confined to the Georgia State Mental Home at one point in his life.
On Sept. 2, 1933, Neu’s fortunes were at a low ebb. He was broke and wandering Times Square when he met a middle-aged man named Lawrence Shead, who introduced himself as the owner of a string of theatres in Paterson, N.J. Shead invited Neu up to his room for drinks, and the implied promise of a job in show business. But Neu soon realized that Shead had deceived him, and tried to entice him into a homosexual tryst.
Realizing that he had been duped, the unemployed crooner knocked Shead to the floor and hit him over the head with an iron and strangled him. Afterward he cleaned himself up in the shower and put on one of Shead’s best suits. There was enough money in his wallet to get him to New Orleans, and a new start in life. A week later Neu was pounding the pavement looking for a job as a singer. Always popular with women, he had used his charms to seduce a waitress named Eunice Hotte, promising to take her to New York. “We’ll have a big time in the big town,” he promised. Only one thing was missing—a fresh bankroll to finance the journey. He pawned his watch and bought a blackjack with the proceeds. He used the blackjack on Sheffield Clark, Sr., a Nashville, Tenn., businessman he had earlier attempted to blackmail at the Yung Hotel.
After disposing of Clark, Neu took the dead man’s car and $300, which was more than enough to get Eunice Hotte and himself to New York. The singer made a fatal mistake along the way. He removed the license plates from the vehicle and pasted a hand-written sign on the back that read: “New Car In Transit.” The New Jersey Police pulled him over and became immediately suspicious with his confusing stories. Taken to the station, detectives grilled him at length about the Lawrence Shead murder. “Sure I killed him,” Neu shot back. “This is his suit I’m wearing now.” He also confessed to killing Clark, and was extradited to Louisiana to stand trial. Doubts were expressed about his sanity, but Neu was judged fit to stand trial. Deliberations began on Dec. 12, 1933. He was eventually convicted of first-degree murder and was sentenced to die on the gallows. As he was led out of the courtroom he sang Sweet Rosie O’Grady. Neu was hanged on Feb. 1, 1935, after serenading his executioners with a selection of personal favorites from his own musical repertoire.
Newell, Susan, 1893-1923, Scot. A truck driver, observing a woman and her daughter pushing an odd-looking cart down Duke Street, in Glasgow, Scot., stopped his vehicle and offered the two a ride. Near the center of the city, the 30-year-old mother, Susan Newell, asked to be let off. As she stepped down from the truck Mrs. Newell slipped, and the cart containing the bundle spilled into the street. A local resident who happened to be looking out her window thought she noticed a hand and a leg protruding from the bundle. Alarmed by this, the housewife followed the pair down the street, then notified a policeman.
Mrs. Newell and her 8-year-old daughter Janet were stopped and the curious parcel was inspected. Just as the onlooker had expected, a body was found inside. The victim was 13-year-old John Johnston, a Coatbridge newspaper boy who had been collecting fees when he disappeared. Mrs. Newell blamed her husband John, a tube worker, for the horrible murder. The husband and wife were both indicted for murder, although there was no evidence to show that John Newell had anything to do with it. He was acquitted. A verdict of Guilty was returned after the jury sat in stunned silence, listening to the chilling tale of little Janet, who stated that her mother had killed the newsboy for his few coins and that she had been forced to help her mother tie up the body and place it in the sack. Susan Newell became the first woman to be executed in Scotland in fifty years when she was hanged at the Duke Street Prison on Oct. 10, 1923.
Nickell, Stella, 1944- , U.S. Stella Nickell, a native of Portland, Ore., grew up poor, married young, and had her first child, Cynthia, when she was only sixteen. In her twenties, Nickell was convicted of fraud, child abuse, and forgery. In her early forties, Nickell married Bruce Nickell, a maintenance man who was often unemployed. The couple lived in a trailer in Auburn, Wash. Nickell talked of buying the property the trailer occupied and opening a tropical fish store. According to her daughter, Cynthia, she also spoke often of killing her husband to get the money. For five years Nickell studied books on poisoning, and once gave him what she hoped was a lethal dose of toxic seeds.
Attending a rehabilitation session with her husband, a reformed alcoholic, she learned that he would be vulnerable to other addictive substances, and played with the idea of killing him with cocaine, heroin, or amphetamines. But then she became intrigued with the recent Tylenol poisonings in the Chicago area. In 1984, seven people died after taking cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules.
Late in 1985, Nickell took out an insurance policy on her husband’s life for $40,000, naming herself as the sole beneficiary. His state employee’s policy would deliver another $31,000, with an additional $105,000 in the case of accidental death. On June 5, 1986, when her husband returned from his job, he took four Excedrin capsules for a headache. A few minutes later, while watching TV on the patio, he collapsed. Nickell called for a paramedic and, when her husband was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, declined to go with him because she was too upset. Bruce Nickell died within hours. When she called her daughter the next day to inform her, Nickell added, “I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is ‘no.’” The coroner failed to detect the poison in Bruce Nickell’s body and reported the cause of death as pulmonary emphysema. To collect the full value of the insurance, Nickell had to prove that his death was an accident. She opened several containers of Extra-Strength Excedrin and Anacin-3, refilled several capsules with cyanide, clumsily taped or reglued the boxes, and put them on the shelves of three nearby stores.
On June 11, 1986, just six days after Nickell’s death, Susan Katherine Snow, a 40-year-old Auburn bank manager, took her daily morning dose of two Extra-Strength Excedrin Capsules. Fifteen minutes later, her 15-year-old daughter found her on the bathroom floor. By noon Susan Snow was dead. Three days later the King County medical examiner announced that Snow had been poisoned with cyanide. Within a week, Stella Nickell called authorities and suggested that her husband had died of the same cause. Tissue tests corroborated her story. When Snow’s husband, Paul Webking, filed a wrongful death suit against Bristol-Meyers, manufacturers of Excedrin, Nickell filed too. Three circumstances brought Nickell under suspicion: two of only five contaminated bottles of pills were found in her home, detectives discovered the existence of the insurance policies, and she refused to take a polygraph test. There was still not enough evidence to bring Nickell in for questioning until January 1987, when her daughter Cynthia came forward.
Nickell was charged with five violations of the Consumer Tampering Act passed in response to the Tylenol killings, and two counts of causing death by tampering with a consumer product. She was tried in a federal court in Seattle, in April 1988, and found Guilty on May 9. She was the first person convicted under the new federal law. Judge William Dwyer, citing crimes of “exceptional callousness and cruelty,” imposed two 90-year sentences for the murders and three ten-year sentences for tainting the capsules, with all five sentences to run concurrently. Nickell may be eligible for parole in 2018.
Nickols, Kevin, 1963-74, U.S. On Mar. 26, 1974, police in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, were called to the scene of a family murder/suicide. From evidence at the scene of the crime, it appeared that 11-year-old Kevin Nickols, a spelling bee champion, killed his father, mother, and 12-year-old sister before shooting himself with the same .22-caliber revolver. The bodies were discovered in the family’s Richardson, Texas, home a week after the slayings.
Nigrisoli, Dr. Carlo, prom. 1963, Italy. The head of the famous family-owned La Casa di Cura, a medical clinic in Bologna, became infatuated with a charming young woman and wished to be rid of his wife of many years, Ombretta Nigrisoli. When he told his wife’s doctor of her supposed fatigue and insomnia, the doctor gave her a series of regular injections, which her husband continued to administer. Because everyone knew that his wife’s health was precarious, he expected to be believed on Mar. 14, 1963, when he wept over her corpse and said she had died of a coronary thrombosis. But the staff at the clinic and Ombretta’s father-in-law thought otherwise. Then the coroner found traces of curare in her body.
Dr. Carlo Nigrisoli was charged with murder. His trial, which began on Oct. 1, 1964, was the first in Italy involving curare and the first filmed by television cameras. Nigrisoli won the right to stay in his cell during the trial and speak over a microphone. The trial lasted 117 days. The younger woman for whom the doctor committed murder, Iris Azzali, testified that she had no intention of marrying the doctor. The jury found Dr. Nigrisoli Guilty and he was sentenced to life in prison.
Nilsen, Dennis Andrew, 1945- , Brit. Between 1978-83, Dennis Nilsen etched his name in criminal annals as one of Britain’s worst mass murderers. In that five-year period he ended the lives of fifteen young men at his two London addresses.
Nilsen was dangerously obsessed with death and dying from an early age. His sense of isolation was fueled by his homosexuality which he was forced to suppress for much of his life. Nilsen was the son of an alcoholic Norwegian sailor named Olav Nilsen, and a Scottish woman named Betty Whyte. When Dennis was four his parents were divorced. The boy was sent to live with his grandparents to whom he became quite attached. His social problems apparently began when his grandfather died in 1952, and the boy was forced to view the corpse. Nilsen lived with his mother and her second husband in Fraserburgh, Scot., until August 1961 when he joined the army. The military life provided him with an identity he had never known before. Nilsen served as an army cook in Aden, Sharjah, and Cyprus. He remained in the service until 1972 when he retired to take a job with the London Police. The military aspects of the job appealed to Nilsen, but he was quarrelsome and unable to relate to his younger colleagues on the force. He quit the police to become a civil servant at a job center for the unemployed in the Soho district of London.
In 1975, he formed an attachment to a younger man named David Gallichan and moved to his apartment on Teignmouth Road. Though there was no homosexual relationship between them, Nilsen was fond of his roommate who provided the emotional stability previously lacking in his life. When Gallichan moved to the country in 1977, Nilsen was emotionally devastated. The overpowering feeling of rejection continued when a young male prostitute took up residence with Nilsen in his flat. The arrangement proved unsatisfactory and the man moved out. Then, in December 1978, the killings started, coinciding with the arrest of mass-killer John Wayne Gacy in Chicago. Nilsen, picked up a young Irish laborer in a Soho pub. He brought him back to the flat, strangled him, and concealed the body under the floorboards. Horrified at what he had done, Dennis Nilsen fully expected the police to appear at his door and take him away.
When nothing happened, Nilsen tried to repeat the crime three months later. Like Gacy in Chicago, the British mass murderer cruised the homosexual hangouts for likely victims. Nearly all of the young men Nilsen encountered were drifters, cut off from mainstream society. One of Nilsen’s intended victims was a Chinese cook named Andrew Ho, who was fortunate to escape after Nilsen tried to strangle him in the Melrose Avenue apartment. The London police made only a cursory investigation before dropping the case.
The next victim was 23-year-old Canadian Kenneth James Ockendon, who disappeared in the vicinity of High Holborn on Dec. 3, 1979. Ockendon was strangled after he showed more interest in watching TV and listening to the stereo than in Nilsen. His remains were dissected and flushed down the toilet. After the Ockendon disappearance the murder toll climbed with gruesome rapidity. In May 1980, Nilsen lured 16-year-old Martin Duffy back to the apartment and strangled him. The corpse was placed under the floorboards where it was joined by the body of 26-year-old Billy Sutherland a few months later. The seventh victim was an under-fed vagrant that reminded Nilsen of a concentration camp inmate. After eating a sumptuous meal at the apartment, Nilsen strangled the man while he listened to rock music. “You’ll have no more troubles now, squire!” he gloated.
The fifteenth and final victim was Stephen Sinclair, a 20-year-old Scotsman with a serious drinking problem. Nilsen met up with Sinclair in the George Pub off Charing Cross and took him back to Nilsen’s apartment. After strangling Sinclair, Nilsen disposed of the body in the following manner. “I put the head into a pot, popped the lid on and lit the stove,” he said. “Later I listened to music and had a good drink, also watching some TV as the head was simmering.” The remaining body parts were wrapped in plastic sacks and thrown into the sewer.
On Feb. 8, 1983, a sanitary engineer named Michael Cattran answered a complaint from Cranley Gardens in the Muswell Hill section of north London where residents were unable to flush their toilets. He removed a manhole cover to discover the gruesome remains. Cattran phoned his supervisor for instructions. They returned the next day to discover that the material had been removed. A tenant told Detective Chief Inspector Peter Jay and Steve McCusker that she had heard a man going up and down the stairs in the middle of the night. When questioned about the remains, Nilsen proved most cooperative. He pointed to his closet and said: “It’s in there, in two plastic bags,” adding, “it’s a long story but I’ll tell you everything.” The floorboards were torn up and the grisly remains removed. As news of the arrest spread, anxious parents of missing children phoned Scotland Yard for information.
Nilsen was tried for murder on Oct. 24, 1983. Defense attorneys argued unsuccessfully that their client suffered from a personality disorder dating back to childhood when his father abandoned him. Dr. Patrick Gallwey explained that Nilsen suffered from the “False Self Syndrome.” The prosecution countered these arguments by testimony from Carl Stotter, Paul Nobbs, and Douglas Stewart, who had been brutally assaulted by Nilsen. On Nov. 4, 1983, the jury found the defendant Guilty by a ten to two vote. Justice Croom-Johnson sentenced Nilsen to life imprisonment.
Nilsson, Richard, 1949- , Brit. Nineteen-year-old construction laborer Richard Nilsson of Buckden, England, had trouble staying away from younger boys. He had already been warned away by the police and was known to have tried to strangle one boy. On May 19, 1968, when most of the village was at home watching the Football Association Cup Final on television, Nilsson met 8-year-old Christopher Sabey, who was riding his bike. When Christopher did not come home that evening, a search began. Early the next morning, his body was found near a sandpit. He had been strangled but not molested.
Police from London investigated every possible clue, but they kept their eyes on Nilsson from the start. Each time they interviewed him, however, he insisted he knew nothing about young Christopher. Police found three fawn-colored dog hairs on the boy’s clothing. In the first use of such evidence, the police gathered hair samples from every light-colored dog in the area. They were sent to the Home Office Central Research Establishment at Aldermaston for analysis by neutron activation procedures. Only three dogs in the area could have shed the hair, and one of them belonged to Richard Nilsson. He was charged with murder, found Guilty, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Nisby, Marcus (AKA: Michael Player), 1960-86, U.S. During a thirty-six-day period in September and October of 1986, ten men, most of them homeless, were found shot in Los Angeles, some attacked as they slept. Then, on Oct. 9, an eleventh victim survived the attack. The next day, 26-year-old Marcus Nisby shot himself in a motel room. The gun he used was the same one he had used to kill the street people. Nisby had been under some suspicion since the discovery of the first murder victim, Rudolfo Roque, fifty-four, on Sept. 4. Nisby had been identified as a possible witness to the shooting.
Nischt, Joseph, 1914- , U.S. Joseph Nischt, a 30-year-old janitor, had been under suspicion since Rose Michaelis fifty-eight, disappeared in the late afternoon of Feb. 28, 1945, after leaving her Chicago apartment to get some filtered water. Nischt, who worked in the apartment building, was taken into custody after a witness saw him picking up fragments of the bottle Michaelis used to carry the water from a nearby filtration plant. Police gave Nischt a polygraph test, which was inconclusive. He had been questioned by Captain Edward Kelly, Lieutenant Philip Breitzke, and Sergeant Patrick Touhy. The heel of Michaelis’ shoe had been found in an alley near the apartment complex, along with pieces of her water bottle and her house key. Nischt said he was out of the building at the time of Michaelis’ disappearance, picking up a paycheck, and that he stopped for a few drinks, returning home at around 11 p.m. With no evidence of murder, the police charged Nischt with disorderly conduct and released him on $100 bond. Then, on Mar. 2, Mrs. Matt Werner, wife of another janitor, told police that Nischt had come by, drunk, looking for her husband, and told her that he had killed a woman. Police picked up Nischt a second time and, as they were questioning him in the alley, Breitzke abruptly asked, “What did you do with the body?” Nischt responded, “I put it in the furnace.”
Nischt confessed that he had seen Michaelis in the alley, struck her with his fist, dragged her into the basement, and then shoved her body into the furnace. The janitor said he did not know if Michaelis was dead or alive when he pushed her into the fire, explaining that her body was “motionless” on the floor. In the statement he gave to Assistant State’s Attorney Blair Varnes, Nischt explained his crime: “When I saw her in the alley I had an urge to hurt or kill someone. I didn’t dislike her. I knew her for twelve or fourteen years. I used to play cards with her husband.” Police found charred bones in the furnace, including skull and jawbone fragments, a kneecap, and a tooth. Sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, Nischt served twenty-one years of his sentence at Joliet, and was released on Apr. 18, 1966.
Nixon, Robert (AKA: Thomas Crosby; The Brick Moron), c.1920-39, U.S. For nearly two years Chicago and Los Angeles police officials puzzled over the identity of the killer called the “Brick Moron” by the media. On June 29, 1936, the body of Florence Thompson Castle, a 24-year-old cocktail hostess, was found in her room at Chicago’s Devonshire Hotel. The killer had gained entry from the fire escape and accosted Castle with a brick. The murder was witnessed by the woman’s 7-year-old son Jimmy who described the assailant as a “white man painted black.” The man picked up a tube of lipstick and scrawled the words “Black Legion Game” on the dresser mirror before fleeing out the window. He left behind a set of fingerprints which later proved useful to the police in both cities.
Mrs. Castle’s murderer was an 18-year-old black man named Robert Nixon, who had earlier been picked up by Chicago police for juvenile offenses. Following the Castle murder, Nixon moved to Los Angeles where he was known as Thomas Crosby. He got into trouble with the local police, and was arrested four times in 1937 on charges ranging from purse snatching to suspicion of grand theft. On Mar. 2 of that year, 20-year-old Rose G. Valdez was murdered in her home by a brick-wielding assailant. Several days after that Mrs. Zoe Damrell was beaten in a similar fashion. The brick was found outside the window of her home. On Apr. 4, police were summoned to the home of 48-year-old Edna Worden, wife of a disabled WWI veteran, on Olive Street, Los Angeles. Worden and her 12-year-old daughter Marguerite had been brutally slain in their apartment. As with Rose Valdez and Florence Castle in Chicago, their skulls had been battered by a brick.
Nixon had already been fingerprinted by the Los Angeles police when he made his way back to Chicago. He murdered his final victim, Florence Johnson on May 27, 1938, shortly before being arrested by Chicago police. Nixon named an accomplice, 19-year-old Earl Hicks, but under heavy questioning by State’s Attorney Thomas Courtney and Detective Chief John L. Sullivan, the young man broke down and confessed. The story was picked up on the wire services by officials from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), who noted the similarities between the Johnson and Castle murders and those of Mrs. Worden and her daughter. A fingerprint comparison was made, and it was determined that Nixon and Crosby were one and the same. The LAPD requested extradition, but Nixon remained in Chicago where he was convicted of murdering Johnson, wife of a city fireman.
After receiving seven stays of execution, the so-called “Brick Moron” was executed in the electric chair on June 15, 1939, by Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. O’Brien.
Noel, Harrison, 1905- , U.S. In September 1925, 20-year-old Harrison Noel, a student who had had a nervous breakdown, admitted he kidnapped and murdered 6-year-old Mary Daly of Montclair, N.J. Noel patterned the killing after the murder of Bobby Franks, after reading everything he could find on the killing. A major difference was that Noel kidnapped the child in a taxi, then killed the taxi driver so the driver could not testify against him.
The court tried Noel, not for the murder of Mary Daly, but for the murder of the taxi driver. He was found Guilty but an appeals court reversed the decision, and Noel was committed to a mental hospital.
Noor, Marvin Dean, 1961- , and McCarter, James T., 1960- , and Shope, Dani Lee, prom. 1979, U.S. Three young people on a hunting trip turned their sights from deer to a black man, saying they found the experience “neat.” Marvin Dean Noor, eighteen, James T. McCarter, nineteen, and Noor’s 23-year-old girlfriend, Dani Lee Shope, went hunting in the Sierra Nevada mountains not far from their hometown of Oroville, Calif., on Jan. 13, 1979. They smoked marijuana and drank beer. Failing to find a deer to shoot, they shot a black man, Jimmy Lee Campbell, twenty-two, when they saw him walking along a railroad track. They took more random pot shots at other blacks they saw when they returned to town. They bragged to their friends about killing Campbell and an anonymous phone call to the police started an investigation.
The three were charged with first-degree murder. The black community in Oroville wanted a trial so the death penalty could be imposed if they were found Guilty. District Attorney Will Mattly accepted a plea bargain in which McCarter and Noor pleaded guilty—McCarter confessing he pulled the trigger—eliminating the possibility of capital punishment. Mattly believed premeditation could probably not be proved and a trial might open the way for a defense of diminished capacity due to the alcohol and drugs used before the murder.
Shope confessed to the crime and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. She was sentenced in November 1979 to fifteen years to life in prison. The two men were sentenced the following February to twenty-five years to life in prison. “They forfeited their right to freedom and to live in a free society, as they are a perpetual danger to the lives and safety of others,” said Judge Jean Morony.
Nordlund, Herman, prom. 1931, U.S. Two men who ran a small tire shop together in San Francisco had a difference of opinion on how to treat their customers. Bill Oetting, who enjoyed the business and liked helping people with their problems could no longer work with his partner, Herman Nordlund, who was driving the business into the ground with his rudeness, violence, and inefficiency. Police went looking for Nordlund when Oetting, who kept and rebuilt the business himself, was killed by a gunshot to the head.
They found Nordlund lying in his bed behind a door that was boobytrapped so anyone going through would trip the trigger on Nordlund’s gun, killing him. In addition, there were cans that looked like explosive powder on the window sill, as well as a knife and a revolver within his reach. Led by Chief of Police William J. Quinn, the police broke into the back door of the house, ran across a room, broke an inner window into the bedroom, and grabbed Nordlund before he could use his lethal weapons. Arrested and tried for murder, Nordlund said he did it because his ex-partner was so annoyingly contented. Found Guilty, Nordlund was sentenced to life in prison but was paroled after less than eight years on July 26, 1939.
Nortje, Jan Christian, 1900- , and du Plessis, Dirkie Cathrina, 1903- , S. Afri. Adriaan du Plessis and his sister Anna both married in 1918. After Adriaan died at age twenty-seven, his widow, Dirkie Cathrina du Plessis, twenty-two, moved in with Anna and her husband, Jan Christian Nortje, twenty-five. The problem was that Jan fell in love with Dirkie, and to be together, they decided to murder Anna. They planned to put strychnine in her dinner on Aug. 9, 1925, and claim she had committed suicide.
Several weeks passed before the police began to question whether Anna Nortje committed suicide. Then they learned du Plessis had moved back to her own house, to which Nortje came every night. By December, police had gathered enough evidence to arrest the pair. Their trial took place the following June in the courtroom of Justice Richard Feetham. They denied all accusations, including ones to which they had earlier confessed. The jury found them both Guilty. They were sentenced to hang, but the Executive Council, which had to rule on death sentences, decided that Nortje had controlled du Plessis, and decided she should not hang. She was sentenced to prison and released in 1933. Hours before Nortje’s execution, the minister of justice stayed the execution and Nortje’s sentence was commuted to life in prison. He served thirteen years before being released in 1939.
Noziere, Violette, 1915- , Fr. When Violette Noziere could not get as much money as she wanted from her doting father, she spent the evenings working as a prostitute to earn money to spend on the young men she fancied. Her parents assumed that she was at one of the Paris nightclubs she favored.
In 1934, when she was nineteen, Noziere promised one young man a sportscar and a holiday abroad, funds for which she planned to take from her father’s life savings. On Aug. 23, she drugged her parents’ coffee with massive doses of Veronal. When she found them apparently dead, she turned on the gas and waited briefly before calling the neighbors. However, she had not given her mother enough of the tranquilizer, and she survived.
Noziere, realizing that the police suspected her, grabbed what money she could and disappeared. A week later, a man who recognized her from photos in the newspapers turned her in. She was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Hers would have been the first execution of a woman in France in fifty years, but at the last minute, President Albert Lebrun, at the pleading of her mother, commuted her sentence to life in prison.
Nuccio, Richard L., prom. 1968, U.S. On June 4, 1968, Chicago police officer Richard Nuccio pursued 19-year-old Ronald Nelson down an alley after a fracas at a drive-in restaurant and fatally shot Nelson in the back as he ran. Charged with murder, Nuccio swore at his trial that Nelson had thrown a knife at him, but witnesses disagreed. Nuccio was found Guilty of murder and sentenced to fourteen years in prison. Illinois Governor Dan Walker later reduced Nuccio’s sentence to six to fourteen years, allowing him to be paroled after less than four years.