It’s the old, old story: conniving war profiteer helps client get divorce, conniving war profiteer installs divorced client as mistress, rival lover also awaiting divorced client’s divorce shoots conniving war profiteer, rival lover winds up on Executed Today.
It’s the story of George Botts (hanged January 27, 1872) and D.C. Civil War gadabout Oliver “Pet” Halsted. Friends of the site Murder By Gaslight has the details.
On this day..
- 1597: Jaakko Ilkka, Cudgel War victim
- 1725: James Casady, aged beggar
- 1697: George Seager, deserter and burglar
- 1591: Arnold Cosbie, writing his own elegy
- 1928: Edward Rowlands and Daniel Driscoll
- 1868: Three Italian bandits
- 1565: Benedetto Accolti, would-be papal assassin
- 1961: Wasyl Gnypiuk, sleep-killer
- 1550: The leaders of the Prayer Book Rebellion
- 1940: Isaak Babel
- 1781: Mutinous ringleaders of the New Jersey line
- 1142: Yue Fei, paragon of loyalty