On this date in 1879, a third of a conspiracy known as the “Blue-Eyed Six” — guess why — hanged for murder.

Having taken out insurance policies on an aged recluse named Joseph Raber, four other men grew tired of waiting for their prospective windfall to shuffle off and hired our date’s principals, Charles Drew and Frank Stichler, to accelerate his actuarial table.

Around dusk on Saturday, December 7, 1878 Drews went into the tavern at Brandt’s hotel and told the people there that Joe Raber was dead. That afternoon he and Stichler had paid a call on Joseph Raber and offered him some tobacco if he would accompany them to Kreiser’s Store. Raber agreed to go with them. The trip to the store had required crossing Indiantown Creek on a crude bridge made of two twelve inch planks. Drews said Raber had a dizzy spell part way across, fell into the water and drowned.

That’s from the account of the sensational case by our friends at Murder By Gaslight. Read on to discover the fate of the four insurance investors …

On this day..

• 1989: Solomon Ngobeni, the last hanged in South Africa
• 2018: The Sultan of Coins
• 1738: False Tsarevich Alexei
• Daily Double: Georgia
• 1996: Larry Lonchar, bad gambler
• 1864: Franz Muller, "Ich habe es getan"
• 1888: William Showers, "pathetic soul"
• 1930: Yang Kaihui, Mao Zedong's wife
• 1960: Phineas Tshitaundzi, the panga man
• 1963: Four Cubans as CIA spies
• 1726: The Gypsy outlaws of Hesse-Darmstadt
• 1817: Policarpa Salavarrieta, Colombian independence heroine
• 1226: Frederick of Isenberg