A Calender of Creeps and Crimes

On the 28th of February 1995 Denver International Airport officially opened but before it had even opened it's doors, speculation grew and conspiracy theories started to spread. The airport was was completed after, several delays, 16 months behind schedule and a whopping $2 billion over the original $2.9 billion budget.  Blue Mustang Arriving to the airport you will be greeted by a blue mustang horse made of fibreglass, standing at over 30 ft tall. The piece was commissioned from Luis Jiménez in 1992. The piece is officially known as Blue Mustang but has been nicknamed as Blucifer. Unfortunately Blucifer did not appear outside the airport until February 11th 2008, more than 15 years after it was first commissioned. While working on the completion of the piece, Luis died when a piece of the statue fell off in June of 2006 and pierced an artery in his leg. His studio had to complete the piece after his death. This led to people believing the sculpture was cursed, the bright blue colo...

Petr Zelenka is not a serial killer that stands out in my mind as being particularly vicious, gruesome or evil, it's his profession that scares me the most. In a year where so many people each and every single one of us has have known people who have become ill, we have trusted medical staff to be there and have our best interests at heart. We trust them to save lives and make decisions for us, to guide us and lead us on the path to recovery, even when sometimes, we feel too weak to carry on ourselves. Petr Zelenka was a Czech nurse who worked in a hospital about 100 km away from Prague. I think the most terrifying part about his story is that most people who become nurses, doctors, carers, vets, fire fighters, any profession where caring for another life is at the core of the profession, do so because they want to help people, help make their lives better, help save lives... Not take them away. The trust we put in people when our lives are in the balance is, in most cases, unwaver...

  John George Haigh was born in 1909 to John Robert & Emily, members of the Plymouth Brethren, who took their religion very seriously. They lived in a village in West Yorkshire. Haigh's parents were very protective of their child and did not want him to mix too with the outside world in fear that he would become corrupt, a sinner. They built a tall fence around the garden of their home so nobody could look in or out and as a child he was told that if he ever sinned, a blemish would appear on his skin. He learned how to play piano and sang in the church choir, he listened to classical music. He done well in school, a bright boy, and even obtained a scholarship. It seems that the religious upbringing made Haigh's want to rebel and see what he was missing even greater. Haigh would later tell people of reoccurring religious nightmares he suffered with with as a child followed him into adulthood.  In 1923 Haigh was jailed for fraud. He had been working as a motor engineer but h...

February 25th 1994, police began excavating the home of Fred and Rosemary West at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester. The majority of the couples crimes happened at the Cromwell Street address. How did a couple this devious go undetected for so long? Their crimes started in 1971 , although Fred's crimes are believed to have dated from before this, and it was not until 1992 that police were alerted to any serious goings on in the three story terrace house and it would be 1994 before they finally had the couple with charges that would stick.  Rose had a very tough upbringing, born into a poor family where her mother suffered greatly with depression. During her pregnancy with Rose she underwent electric shock therapy to try and cure her depression but the therapy was unsuccessful and many have stated that this could have had huge developmental consequences on the unborn Rosemary. As a result, her parents separated and following a trial period of living with her mother, she went to live ...

  On February 24th 1979 Yoshie Shiratori died at age 71. Yoshie had led an exciting life by most people's standards and was known as The Japanese Houdini.  Born on the 31st of July 1907, Shiratori was born on the Japanese mainland. As a teenager he took on odd jobs working on farms, in a tofu shop and also as a fisherman catching crab, none of these jobs paid particularly well and Shiratori found himself wanting an easier life, or perhaps he just wanted to be more wealthy. He found himself sucked into a life of gambling and stealing. During an attempted mugging in 1936 Shiratori accidentally killed his victim in the commotion. He was arrested for the crimes and detained in Aomori prison while his sentence was pending.  Recently in Japan, senior citizens have been committing crimes in order to land themselves in prison for the good health care, meals and living conditions, unfortunately for Yoshie Shiratori, prisons in Japan in the 1930s were not a desirable place to be. P...

  On February 23rd 1885 in Exeter, the execution of John "Babbacombe" Lee was scheduled. He had been found guilty of murder earlier in the month. He worked as a servant for a wealthy lady called Emma Keyse and she had been found beaten, her throat slashed and her body set on fire in the home she shared with John Lee. The evidence against Lee was circumstantial. He had been in trouble before for petty theft and he had also threatened to destroy the house claiming he would "level the place to the ashes".  John Lee claimed that he had not been in the house at the time the fire was started but unfortunately, he had no credible alibi. The trial moved forward and all the evidence was put to a jury.  Lee had cuts on his arm and his clothes were covered in blood. There was a bloody knife found in a drawer in the locker beside his bed.  He had a criminal record.  He was the only person in or around the house at the time of the murder.  He had threatened to "level th...

Mike Malloy was born in a rural village in Co. Donegal and like many other Irish at the time he found himself making his way across The Atlantic, in search of a better life in America. While Malloy was a firefighter he fell upon hard times in the 1930s and found himself unemployed and homeless on the streets of New York City. What little money he had, he would spend in a small speakeasy bar called Marino's, located on Third Avenue.  In 1933 a plot was developed by a group who knew Mike for being the local drunk. Tony Marino, Joseph Murphy, Francis Pasqua, Hershey Green, and Daniel Kriesberg would later be called The Murder Trust by the media. The plan was simple, they took out a life insurance policies on Mike's life to the value of $3,500 with the idea that they would let Mike drink himself to death at Marino's speakeasy.  Marino had hatched a similar scheme in the past, taking out a life insurance policy on a woman, with himself named as the sole b...

  February-21-1978  Stephen Kubacki's abandoned skis and his backpack were found by a group of snow mobilers. Stephen (23) was a college student, set to graduate that same year when he decided to go for a cross-country ski arounf the Saugatuck area and was expected to be gone for a couple of days. The skis were found at the edge of Lake Michigan and the footprints that could be seen in the snow stopped abruptly, it was believed that Kubacki had fallen into the lake and his body would float to the surface as it began to thaw.  Stephen was born into a working class family, his father worked at a local factory and his mother worked as a secretary. He gradated from Deerfield Academy as a day student. He went on to study a major in German, after swapping his choice a handful of times. He wrote for the college newspaper and he is described as being free spirited with a keen interest in Dungeons And Dragons.  While the majority of people who knew Stephen started setting abo...