1922 | Crime
Crime
The Hall-Mills murder case makes world headlines. Children looking for mushrooms in a field across the Raritan River from New Brunswick, N.J., early in the morning of September 16 find the bodies of overweight clergyman Edward H. Hall, 44, and a member of his church choir, Eleanor Mills, 34, wife of a local gardener and mother of two. Both have been shot in the head, they have been dead for 36 hours, and police find notes suggesting that they have been lovers (Hall's widow, Frances, is a Johnson & Johnson heiress and about 20 years his senior) (see 1926).
London housewife Edith Thompson goes on trial at the Old Bailey on charges of having, with her accomplice, Frederick Bywaters, stabbed her husband on his way home from the theater. The trial creates a tabloid sensation, both defendants are found guilty, and they will be executed next year despite repeated petitions for reprieve.