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Axe murder

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

According to legend, a man called Lalli killed Bishop Henry with an axe on the ice of Lake Köyliö in 1156.[1][2] The murder of St. Henry by Lalli, painting by Karl Anders Ekman (1854).

An axe murder is a murder in which the victim was struck and killed by an axe or hatchet.

List of axe murders

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The following are some notable cases.

  • Smallwood, New York New Years Day axe murders. January 1, 1964. Frank Scaramuzzo aged 24 killed Joseph McAdam age 49, and Judith Meddaugh age 19 and attempted to kill Florence McAdam age 20 in Smallwood, Sullivan County NY. While the 3 were out celebrating the New Year Mr Scaramuzzo a serviceman who had received a “dear John letter” a few months before from Ms McAdam entered the McAdam home through the basement. He found an axe in the basement and waited in a closet until his victims returned home. After Mr McAdam and the girls returned home they sat in the kitchen for almost an hour before retiring. He killed Mr McAdam with the axe in his first floor bedroom then he went upstairs to the girls bedroom and attacked the sleeping girls, killing Ms Meddaugh with the axe. He strangled Ms McAdam until he thought she was dead then he called the police.
  • Raymonde Jouhanno murdered her husband and three children in France with an axe in 1971. She subsequently committed suicide by jumping into a well.
  • Candy Montgomery was acquitted of the axe murder of her lover's wife, Betty Gore, which occurred on June 13, 1980. Montgomery was found not guilty in self-defense, despite striking Gore 41 times.
  • Kumudini boat massacre, an incident in which at least 23 minority Sri Lankan Tamil men, women and children on a ferry boat named Kumudini sailing from the island of Delft to the island of Nainathievu were alleged to have been hacked to death with a hatchet by Sri Lankan Navy personnel, 1985.
  • Daniel Morgan, British private investigator who was investigating police corruption, found dead with an axe wound to the back of his head, 1987.
  • In December 1990, during a gang clash at Marsiling, Singapore, a 20-year-old bystander and Malaysian citizen Sivapragasam Subramaniam was struck by an axe and he died from fatal head injuries. Sagar Suppiah Retnam, the leader of one of the gangs involved, was identified as the one who killed Sivapragasam, and he was caught three years later in Malaysia. Sagar was sentenced to death in May 1994, and he was hanged on 7 July 1995, while 13 members of Sagar’s gang were arrested and jailed between 31 months and seven years for rioting and causing grievous hurt.[9][10]
  • In November 1992, 32-year-old odd-job worker and moneylender Tan Heng Hong was lured into a hospital room by two men under the pretext of buying gold, and Tan was killed by both men who fatally slashed his neck with an axe. Between 1993 and 1995, the two perpetrators, S. S. Asokan and Maniam Rathinswamy, were arrested and sentenced to hang for murder. Both men were hanged on 8 September 1995.[11]
  • In October 1993, two patrons of a coffee shop in Singapore’s Little India were attacked by a group of three gang members armed with weapons. One of the two victims, 34-year-old airport operation assistant Thampusamy Murugian Gunasekaran, died after being struck by an axe. Anbuarsu Joseph, who was responsible for killing Thampusamy with the axe, was caught and sentenced to death in 1994, and he was hanged on 7 July 1995, but the remaining two perpetrators of the attack were never caught till today.[12][13]
  • The Night of the Pitchforks, an incident in which Israeli Arab guerrillas from the Wadi Ara area, members of the Islamic movement, infiltrated into an IDF military recruit training base near Kibbutz Gal'ed in the Plain of Manasseh, and killed three Israeli soldiers with axes, knives and a pitchfork, 1992.
  • Mikhail Popkov, a Russian policeman and a serial killer known as "Angarsk maniac", murdered 77 women and one man in the areas of Angarsk, Irkutsk and Vladivostok between 1992 and 2010. While killing people, he used an axe along with other instruments and objects as a weapon. Popkov was arrested in 2012 and sentenced to life imprisonment twice in 2015 and 2018.
  • Greenough Family Massacre, the axe murders of Karen MacKenzie, 31, and her three children, Daniel 16, Amara, 7, and Katrina, 5, at their remote rural property in Greenough, Western Australia, 400 km north of Perth, on 21 February 1993,[14] by William Patrick Mitchell, 1993.
  • Boo Tiang Huat, a Singaporean police officer who was struck on the axe by a man during his routine spot check in 1994. The killer, Zainal Abidin Abdul Malik, was found guilty of murdering Boo and hanged on 30 August 1996.[15]
  • Ramil Safarov, an Azerbaijani soldier who hacked to death and almost decapitated an Armenian soldier during a NATO partnership for peace training in Budapest. Hungary returned him to Azerbaijan in 2012, where he was immediately pardoned and given a hero's welcome, and causing an international incident.[16][17]
  • Murder of Peter Porco, on November 15, 2004, Peter and Joan Porco were discovered having been attacked with an axe in their Delmar, NY, home. Peter died of his injuries while Joan survived. Their son Christopher was convicted of the crime in 2006; the prosecution relied on various sightings of his distinctive yellow Jeep to argue that he had traveled several hours from Rochester, NY, where he was attending college at the time, to Delmar and back again that night to commit the murder.
  • Anthony Walker, a Black British student from Huyton, Liverpool, was murdered with an ice axe by Michael Barton and his cousin, Paul Taylor, in 2005.
  • South African rugby player Joseph Ntshongwana was arrested in 2011 and jailed in 2014 for hacking three men to death and wounding a fourth with an axe to avenge the gang-rape and subsequent HIV infection of his daughter.[18]
  • Tyree Smith, alleged murderer and cannibal, was arrested in Connecticut in 2012 for murdering a homeless man with a hatchet and then eating parts of his body.[19]
  • Henri van Breda, convicted South African murderer. Authorities believe he killed his father, mother and older brother and attempted to kill his younger sister who survived the attack in January 2015.[20] Henri van Breda was found guilty of murder and attempted murder on 21 May 2018 by the Western Cape High Court.[21][22]
  • Arthur Bonifas and Mark Barrett, U.S. Army soldiers, were killed in the Korean Demilitarized Zone by North Korean forces by their own axes they were using to trim trees in what was called the Korean axe murder incident.
  • The Man from the Train, killed entire families in their sleep, arriving and departing by train. Alleged existence (and possible but far from proven identity) hypothesized over 100 years after the murders, by analysis of contemporary records, showing a supposedly common modus operandi for many unconnected murders.
  • River Valley High School attack in Singapore, in which a 16-year-old teenager from River Valley High School, Singapore murdered his 13-year-old schoolmate Ethan Hun Zhe Kai with an axe, which the accused allegedly purchased online, at school. The victim's body was later found in a toilet and the 16-year-old was charged with murder. The accused was mentally ill and attempted suicide in 2019 and later he was remanded for psychiatric evaluation.[23][24][25] The perpetrator was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 16 years in prison.[26]
  • Jordan Poole killed his roommate and attacked his brother with a hatchet in Payson, Utah shortly before midnight on December 22, 2023. When questioned by police, "Jordan admitted to seeing a flash of light, then voices told him he needed to take care of 'them.' Jordan stated he knew what he needed to do so he grabbed a hatchet and started swinging. Jordan stated he hit Marcus multiple times in the head with the hatchet because he kept getting up and was afraid Marcus was going to attack him," according to the affidavit.[27]
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References

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  1. ^ Michell, Thomas (1888). Handbook for Travellers in Russia, Poland, and Finland. J. Murray, [etc., etc.] pp. 532. Lalli bishop.
  2. ^ Fryxell, Anders Fryxell (1844). The History of Sweden. Original from the New York Public Library: R. Bentley. pp. 192. Lalli bishop.
  3. ^ Anon. (1 May 1879). Life and Confession of Stephen Dee Richards: The Murderer of Nine Persons, Executed at Minden, Nebraska, April 26, 1879. Lincoln, Nebraska: State Journal Co. pp. 1–20.
  4. ^ Recker, Lynne. "VACELET family - Bians-les-Usiers, Doubs". Genealogy Forum. Retrieved 24 March 2012.
  5. ^ "BRUTAL BUTCHERY, 1878. Vacelet Family Ax Murder Perhaps Knox County's Most Horrendous Crime". The Weekly Western Sun. Archived from the original on 3 September 2009. Retrieved 24 March 2012.
  6. ^ "RETRIBUTION. The Quadruple Murder of the Vacelet Family Avenged by the Accused Murderer's Own Hand". Weekly Western Sun. Archived from the original on 26 July 2008. Retrieved 24 March 2012.
  7. ^ "The Meeks Family Murder". Murder by Gaslight. Retrieved 24 March 2012.
  8. ^ "Jake Bird is hanged for the murder of two Tacoma women on July 15, 1949". HistoryLink. Retrieved 24 March 2012.
  9. ^ "Gang chief to hang for mistaken identity killing". The Straits Times (Overseas). 4 June 1994.
  10. ^ "Drug trafficker and 2 murderers hanged at Changi". The Straits Times. 8 July 1995.
  11. ^ "Two murderers hanged". The Straits Times. 9 September 1995.
  12. ^ "Secret society chief sentenced to death for murder". The Straits Times. 20 August 1994.
  13. ^ "Drug trafficker and 2 murderers hanged at Changi". The Straits Times. 8 July 1995.
  14. ^ Nicole Cox (19 May 2007). "Throw away the prison keys". Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 11 November 2007. Retrieved 11 January 2009.
  15. ^ "Trafficker, murderers hanged". The Straits Times. 2 September 1996.
  16. ^ armeniapedia.org
  17. ^ armeniapedia.org
  18. ^ "Ex-Blue Bulls Player gets 5 life sentences". News24. Retrieved 19 December 2014.
  19. ^ Calhoun, S. Brady. "Police arrest accused cannibal Lynn Haven authorities say suspect brutally killed Connecticut man". Panama City, Florida, News Herald. Retrieved 24 March 2012.
  20. ^ "Van Breda killings: what happened that night". IOL. 15 June 2016. Retrieved 15 June 2016.
  21. ^ "LIVE: See Henri van Breda's girlfriend leaving court in tears, alone". News24. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  22. ^ "WATCH: Henri van Breda guilty of murder". www.enca.com. Archived from the original on 21 May 2018. Retrieved 21 May 2018.
  23. ^ "Teenager charged with murdering fellow student at River Valley High School". CNA. Archived from the original on 26 July 2021. Retrieved 20 July 2021.
  24. ^ Amy Sood (20 July 2021). "Singapore police arrest teen for suspected murder of 13-year-old boy". CNN. Retrieved 20 July 2021.
  25. ^ "Singapore shocked by killing of boy, 13, at school". BBC News. 20 July 2021. Retrieved 20 July 2021.
  26. ^ "18-year-old who killed River Valley High School student with axe sentenced to 16 years' jail". TODAY. 1 December 2023.
  27. ^ Pat Reavy. "Payson man used hatchet to kill 1 man, then injure his brother, police say". KSL News. Retrieved 26 December 2023.