Celebrity Morgue

[SIZE=+2]Benito Mussolini[/SIZE]

On April 28 1945, at the Piazzale Loreto in Milan, Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were shot and hanged in a spectacle that was photographed repeatedly. His last words were, "Shoot me in the chest!"
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[SIZE=+2]Abraham Lincoln Assassinated[/SIZE]






Lincoln's Box at Ford's Theatre

Lincoln attended Ford's Theatre to view the play "Our American Cousin". Seven hours before the assassination, John Wilkes Booth left a note at Vice President Andrew Johnson's residence, "Don't wish to disturb you. Are you at home? J. Wilkes Booth."




Lincoln is Shot

Currier & Ives print, The Assassination of President Lincoln.
[SIZE=-1]Account by William Cullen Bryant:[/SIZE]
After Booth shot Lincoln he lept on the stage from Lincoln's box, breaking his leg. As he ran from the stage, some heard Booth shout sic semper tyrannus , which is Latin for "thus always to tyrants". Others in the audience thought he shouted "The South is avenged!". Booth ran backstage, and being famliar with the theatre where he had acted, made his way downstairs and out the back door where he had a horse waiting for him in the back alley-way. One year previous to this fateful event, Booth, who was a leading Shakespeare actor of his time, played in Julius Caesar, in which after the assassination of Caesar one of the assassins, said "How many times shall this, our lofty scene be acted o'er, in states unborn and accents yet unknown?" The scene was acted o'er again, only this time it was real and Booth was the perpetrator and Lincoln the victim. When Lincoln passed away at 7:22 am on April 15, his Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, standing at Lincoln's bedside, said "Now he belongs to the ages."




Lincoln's Body Lies in State

Lincoln died April 15, 1865 at 7:22 AM. Here his body lies in state at the East Room of the White House, where it remained until his funeral on April 19. Lincoln's tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetary, Springfield IL, was built in 1871, where thieves attempted to steal the body in 1876 for ransom. In the early 20th century the tomb was redesigned to prevent a recurrence.




Conspirators Ready to Hang

July 7, 1865, the Lincoln conspirators prepare to hang. Booth escaped hanging; he was killed April 26 by the slightly looney Sgt. Boston Corbett, a man who had castrated himself to protect himself from sin.




The Dead Conspirators

The Lincoln conspirators, finally dead. 1,500 people witnessed the spectacle.

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[SIZE=+2]Kurt Cobain[/SIZE]





Prelude

To the left, a 1995 publicity still showing Kurt Cobain mocking suicide. This was taken quite some time prior to his death, which was accomplished with a shotgun rather than a semiautomatic rifle. In his later life, Kurt was plagued by intense stomach pain, one of the reasons he relied so much on drugs. Not an attempt to justify drug use, just his answer to the pain.
Four weeks before his death, Cobain attempted suicide in Italy, leaving him in a temporary coma, widely reported in the media at the time.





Suicide

Kurt Cobain's body was discovered on April 8, 1994 by electrician Gary Smith, who was to install a burglar alarm in the residence. It is likely he killed himself on April 5. Heroin and valium both were found in his blood. The shotgun blast destroyed his head to the point where he was not recognizable; the body was identified from fingerprints. Cobain was 27.
Word spread quickly. MTV took the unprecedented step of ceasing all normal programming. An outdoor vigil in Seattle witnessed the playback of Cobain's suicide note, recorded by his wife Courtney Love. One fan killed himself after this event. Several others scattered about the country also followed.
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[SIZE=+2]Ted Bundy, Serial Killer[/SIZE]




Clean-cut serial killer Theodore "Ted" Bundy confessed to 28 killings, but other estimates indicate that he killed as many as 33 to 100 female victims during the 1970's. Often he sexually assaulted his victims with such instruments as crowbars or hairspray bottles. While under arrest, Bundy managed to escape twice, one time living for months on the run in Tallahassee.




Bundy, a law student at one time, served as his own attorney, but his smooth talking was not able to escape a sentence of death.




Ted Bundy was executed January 24, 1989. The hundreds of people holding a vigil outside the prison held up signs such as "Burn Bundy Burn", and celebrated once news of his death was announced.
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[SIZE=+2]Jumbo, P.T. Barnum's Prize Elephant[/SIZE]

P.T. Barnum's prize elephant Jumbo was killed September 15, 1885, crossing railroad tracks in St. Thomas, Ontario. The collision derailed the train, and 150 people were required to haul the elephant's body up an embankment.
Jumbo's death was a great loss to Barnum's show, but the loss was somewhat mitigated when both the taxidermied hide of the beast and its skeleton were exhibited together.
Vital statistics: height 11.5 feet, weight 6.5 tons, age 24
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[SIZE=+2]Edgar Allan Poe[/SIZE]

An account by Hervey Allen, August 1927:
[Poe] traveled by steamer to Baltimore and arrived there on September twentyninth. Exactly what happened to him in that city cannot now be ascertained. An election was in progress, and the preponderance of evidence points to the fact that he began to drink and fell into the hands of a gang of repeaters who probably gave him drugged liquor and voted him. On October third he was found by Dr. James E. Snodgrass, an old friend, in a, horrible condition at a low tavern in Lombard Street. Summoning a relative of Poe, Dr. Snodgrass had the now unconscious and dying poet taken in a carriage to the Washington Hospital and put into the care of Dr. J. J. Moran, the resident physician. Several days of delirium ensued with only a few intervals of partial consciousness. He called repeatedly for one "Reynolds," and gave vent to every indication of utter despair. Finally on Sunday morning, October 7, 1849, "He became quiet and seemed to rest for a short time. Then, gently, moving his head, he said, 'Lord help my poor soul.'" As he had lived so he died--in great misery and tragedy.
Poe is buried in the Old Western Burial Ground in Baltimore, Maryland. Every January 19, Poe's birthday, for more than fifty years a man dressed in black and fedora has left cognac accompanied by three red roses on Poe's grave.
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[SIZE=+2]Malice Green[/SIZE]

Black motorist Malice Green was pulled over for a traffic stop on November 5, 1992. It is not clear what exactly happened, but Malice did not completely cooperate with police, and he ended up getting fatally beaten by a flashlight wielded in some manner by two white police officers.
Mayor Coleman Young quickly suspended the officers involved, and their superiors. The Los Angeles riots over the Rodney King verdict were still in recent memory, and it seemed prudent to avoid additional problems in the already tense city.
The city of Detroit tried to get the coroner, Kalil Jiraki, to testify that cocaine was involved in the incident. Jiraki refused, but not without consequences to his job. But he was subsequently awarded $2.5 million in a harrassment, defamation, and wrongful termination suit.
A topless bar owner pledged to donate $4,000 to the officers' defense fund, every time his establishments were raided.
Officers Larry Nevers and Walter Budzyn were charged with murder and convicted by a mostly black jury.
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[SIZE=+2]Tupac Shakur[/SIZE]

In late 1997 Cathy Scott published "The Killing of Tupac Shakur", which contained an autopsy photo of Shakur that had been leaked by a source within the Las Vegas police department.

Tabloid offers as high as $100K were turned down for the photo, which we reproduce above. LVMPD was not happy about the photo being leaked, but being property of the people of the United States, it is in the public domain. We reproduce it here.
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