1955 - Crime

Crime

Welsh-born English nightclub hostess Ruth Ellis (née Neilson), 28, shoots her former lover in a jealous rage outside a Hampton pub April 10 (he has been trying to end their often violent relationship). She is hanged July 13 (no other woman will receive the death penalty in Britain for more than 40 years).

A gun battle with police at Gwalior in Uttar Pradesh August 25 ends with the death of 65-year-old Indian landowner Man Singh and his eldest son, Subedar Singh. Man Singh was imprisoned briefly 13 years ago in connection with a vendetta that he has had with a Brahmin priest, vowed to kill every member of the priest's family, turned bandit, became known as the "Robin Hood" of India, but has reportedly committed a thousand robberies and 150 murders over a 1,000-square-mile area in northern India.

Long Island, N.Y., socialite Ann (Eden) Woodward (née Crowell), 33, shoots her husband, banker-horsebreeder William Woodward Jr., 35, just after 2 o'clock on the morning of October 30 and tells police she mistook him for a prowler. Awakened by a sound downstairs, she has picked up a rifle and aimed at a moving shape in the night. Police find her bent over her husband's naked body; she is not prosecuted.