Three years ago, we paused a moment to highlight the already-intrepid contributions made these pages by Meaghan Good.
Meaghan contacted me out of the blue back in June 2010 — so, roughly the neolithic in Internet time — to suggest some execution stories that her voluminous reading had made her aware of.
From her debut in July of 2010 until now, Meaghan has favored this site with more than 160 posts, plus enough additional ones pending future publication to make a clear double century. There are numerous guest authors who have a post here or there and to whom I am immensely grateful … still, only Meaghan has made herself a part of the impossible ongoing enterprise that is Executed Today. Her relentless historical crime research has even made news.
Nobody visits these pages to read about bloggers’ tribulations but it’s hard to overstate just what an gigantic difference it has made to the site and to myself personally to have a perspicacious writer carrying nearly 10% of the daily posting burden over such a protracted period of time. Meaghan has seen this joint through fat years and lean ones, and no exaggeration: absent Ms. Good, Executed Today would not now be nearing an eighth anniversary of every-single-day posting.
That Meaghan has been a godsend for these pages while also continuing her own excellent and heavily researched site, the Charley Project, speaks to a fathomless humane tenacity. Even while moonlighting on our execution beat, Meaghan’s site has made an important contribution to missing-persons investigations in the U.S. — more than 9,000 are profiled there. It’s an incredible project for one human to take on and maintain, as a glance at her log of recent updates to the Charley Project at any given moment will confirm.
Thank you, Meaghan, for five excellent years.
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July 12, 1936: Earl Gardner
July 13, 1918: David Stevenson — n.b. the editor erred here; David Stevenson was actually shot on July 18
July 14, 1909: Garry Richard Barrett
July 15, 1936: Charlotte Bryant
On this day..
- 1822: Gullah Jack
- 1391: Amerigot Marcel, cast down
- 1758: Not Florence Hensey, Seven Years' War spy
- 2008: Two alleged prostitutes, by the Taliban
- 1995: Boris Dekanidze, the last in Lithuania
- 1936: Earl Gardner
- 2013: Zeng Chengjie, China's Bernie Madoff
- 1960: Manfred Smolka, East German border guard
- 1833: Frankie Silver, Morganton legend
- 2006: Rocky Barton, suicidal
- 1916: Cesare Battisti and Fabio Filzi
- 1537: Robert Aske, for the Pilgrimage of Grace
- 1726: William Fly, unrepentant pirate
- Themed Set: Embarrassed Executioners