On this date in 1845, husband-and-wife murderers Crawford and Lavinia Burnett (nee Sharp) danced a gallows jig built for two in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
The duo contrived with their son, John, to rob and murder a nearby recluse, Jonathan Selby, for the money he was thought to be hoarding.
The family the slays together, pays together.
Alas for mom, dad, and big brother, 15-year-old daughter Minerva shopped them.
John-boy was still on the lam at this time — he’d be caught soon, and hanged December 26 — but Lavinia and Crawford hanged together before a large crowd in the vicinity of the present-day Fayetteville National Cemetery.
It was the first recorded execution of a woman in Arkansas history, and would be the only such until the year 2000.
Among the ranks of the Burnetts’ illustrious if unsuccessful defense team was Isaac Murphy, who would go on to become a notable pro-Union pol during the Civil War (with a murky part in an infamous massacre of Confederate sympathizers), and subsequently became governor of the state during Reconstruction.
On this day..
- 1738: George Whalley and Dean Briant, wife-murderers
- 1842: The prisoner-mutineers of the Governor Phillip
- 1721: Catharaina Margaratha Linck, lesbian
- 1873: Twelve Cuban revolutionaries
- 1866: Robert Dodge, haunter
- 1944: Joseph Watson and Willie Wimberly Jr.
- 1793: Madame Roland, éminence grise
- 1752: James of the Glen
- 1676: Anna Schmieg and Barbara Schleicher, Langenburg witches
- 1861: Sushun, by Empress Dowager Cixi
- 1969: Nahashon Isaac Njenga Njoroge, assassin of Tom Mboya
- 1892: Jens Nielsen, the last in Denmark
- 1520: Stockholm Bloodbath