Three years ago on Monday

I found this article about Alyssa Angelique McLemore, who disappeared on April 9, 2009. At the time of her disappearance, her mother was dying, and when her mom passed on April 12 Alyssa didn’t get in touch with her family or attend the funeral. Even more disturbingly, there was a 911 call placed on her cell and a female voice asked for help, but then the phone got disconnected and they couldn’t trace its location.

Alyssa left behind a toddler-age daughter, who is now being jointly raised by her grandmother and former boyfriend. Obviously, the circumstances of her disappearance indicate foul play.

Great article about Wendy Huggy

I was sent this awesome, in-depth article about Wendy Huggy, a sixteen-year-old girl who disappeared from Clearwater, Florida thirty years ago today. I hadn’t had much info on her before, but I do now. Among other items of interest: she’d left her husband who lived in Illinois, and she was pregnant when she disappeared. Her case reminds me a lot of Jean Marie Stewart’s.

Too bad the article didn’t also include a better quality photograph. The one I’ve got is not the best.

George Chapman (and a roundup)

I’ve taken a bit of a break from Charley-related work, but here’s another ET entry for you: George Chapman, a serial killer in turn-of-the-century Britain who might have been Jack the Ripper.

I have written 70 guest entries for that blog thus far since I discovered it nearly two years ago. Of those, 24 have yet to run. I’ll keep writing them for as long as the Headsman maintains the blog, for I find it a most engrossing diversion from my usual topics of research. A breakdown (which may not be entirely accurate):

19 Holocaust entries
9 World War II related entries that weren’t from the Holocaust
16 executions of multiple people at once
27 executions for murder (that is, 27 entries; I don’t count more if more than one person was executed)
11 mass or serial killers
3 executions for nonfatal sex crimes
11 executions of minors
9 executions for treason
7 wrongful executions (that is, either the guy was probably innocent or the trial was grossly unfair)
11 executions in the United Kingdom
12 executions in the USA (counting colonial America)
6 entries where the person did not actually die
15 borderline “executions” (many people would call plain ol’ murder)
25 books I have read because of the blog (either for research or because they were mentioned in the entries)
6 books I plan to read because of the blog

I will also note that, in a list of the good things that came out of my encounter with Rollo (and there are a few; there’s rarely an event so terrible that at least SOME good doesn’t come from it), my work on Executed Today is one of them. On the first anniversary of the attack, I was feeling very bad and desperately pawing through the internet trying to find some distraction, and found that blog, and the rest is history. Given my interests in true crime and history, I probably would have found it anyway eventually, but I found it at a most opportune time. It was a terrific distraction from my depression and unease.

So. Yeah.