Yesterday in Manchester, England, 46-year-old Stephen Seddon was found guilty of murdering his parents for £235,000 in insurance money. Robert and Patricia Seddon were found shot dead in their home in July 2012, a sawed-off shotgun on the scene indicating a possible murder/suicide. But ballistic experts decided that scenario was not possible, and soon Stephen Seddon—who had boasted to acquaintances before his parents’ deaths that he was about to come into a large sum of money—was arrested. Yesterday’s conviction marked the final chapter of just another sad, senseless murder tale. What’s shocking, though, is the preamble.

In March 2012 Seddon was driving with his parents on a highway when his car hit a brick and skidded into a canal. He dragged his nephew Daniel from the car, then went back for his father while bystanders saved his mother. Seddon was hailed as a hero. Some details of the accident were strange, but police glossed over them. The details? There was no evidence of the car hitting a brick, and Seddon coincidentally happened to be carrying a knife with which to cut his seatbelt and a wheel lock with which to smash out the driverside window as the car went down. Oh, and several witnesses saw him jumping up and down on the roof of the car as it sank. Red flag? You’d tend to think so.

This shot of American actress Lana Turner shows her at the height of her fame during the filming of the 1946 film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice. Turner’s own life rivaled that of any of her characters, encompassing the murder of her father to her daughter stabbing a Mafia thug to death. 

This two-color cover from Headquarters Detective appeared in March 1958 and features a pose that you see quite a bit on vintage crime magazines—the man standing above a terrorized woman, often with a phallic symbol in hand. We’ve been gathering up some covers in this style and we’ll share what we’ve found pretty soon. This cover is also noteworthy because it reports at bottom left on the last of six murders that occurred in the Chicago area between October 1955 and August 1957. Three boys and three girls ranging from ages eleven to fifteen were stripped, battered, strangled, and in the cases of two of the girls, raped.

But it was the sixth murder that truly horrified already shaken Chicago residents. The killer—and if it was the same killer his violent tendencies were growing—dismembered Judith Anderson and set the body parts afloat in Montrose Harbor in two metal drums. The smaller drum contained the girl’s head, right arm and left hand, the second the rest of her. The head had four bullets in it. Police followed many leads—according to at least one account they investigated 109,000 homes, 40,000 to 50,000 garages and basements, 900 businesses, and 200 boats. They heard countless confessions, all of which turned out to be false—save for possibly one.

Some local fishermen told police that several nights before Anderson’s remains turned up they saw a car on the opposite shore of the harbor. They knew it had backed up to the water because they could see its brake lights. A person they described as well-built got out, opened the trunk of the car and threw something—or several somethings—into the water. When he drove away they noticed that one of his brake lights was out. The detail of the broken light helped generate a suspect, someone with a criminal record and a history of sexual violence, but police were never able to pin the killing on him even though at least one investigator claimed he had confessed. Ultimately police never solved Anderson's murder, or the other five.

Partying was the lure, but robbery was the motive. In the town of Joilet, Illinois in mid-January four people—Joshua Miner, Alisa Massaro, Bethany McKee, and Adam Landerman, seen from clockwise above, invited two acquaintances into Massaro’s house where they strangled them. When police arrived on the scene they found the bodies of Eric Glover and Terrance Rankins, below, face down inside the house with plastic bags tied around their heads. Local police chief Mike Trafton said at the time, “After the homicides were committed, [the killers] continued the party atmosphere, I guess I would say, without getting into it any further.” Yesterday the public found out what he didn’t want to get into back in January—at least two of the killers had sex atop the bodies of the victims. Joshua Miner told police after his arrest that his girlfriend Alisa Massaro said “years back that she wanted to have sex with a dead guy.” She can cross that off that bucket list. Problem is, if prosecutors get their way she and her cohorts may be kicking the bucket sooner than any of them ever imagined.

This photo shows a woman named Ruby M. Reed at the Long Beach, California police station taking a sobriety test. This was probably the most important test she ever took, because not only was she suspected of driving while intoxicated, but she had also struck and killed a pedestrian. Reed failed the test and was booked on charges of felony drunk driving and manslaughter. That was 29 February 1952. By the way, if you don’t know the reference in our subhead, then watch one of the funniest scenes ever put on celluloid here. Photo courtesy of the USC digital archives. 

A few days ago we mentioned the Noir City Film Festival and waxed nostalgic about San Francisco. The festival schedule reminded us of noirs we haven’t seen in a while, and revealed others we’ve never seen. On the Noir City bill this evening is a film from the latter category, Edward Dmytryk’s 1952 thriller The Sniper. We watched it last night and it more than deserves a slot in a prestigious festival like Noir City. The film was shot in San Francisco, and stars Arthur Franz as a former mental patient named Eddie Miller who is gripped by murderous impulses. Perching in windows and on rooftops, he uses a carbine and scope to target unsuspecting victims. As yet the gun isn’t loaded, but his sexual feelings for a female acquaintance catalyze his urges. The expert marksman begins killing, ultimately slaying four women (that’s not a spoiler, given the four scoped targets on the poster art). Eddie Miller treads similar ground as hundreds of other cinematic lost souls, but film historians say he was first—American film’s first serial killer. This one is worth it both for the movie and for its usage of San Francisco exteriors, which are so expertly and extensively intergrated into the production, we have a feeling Bay Area audiences will marvel over that more than the actual plot. But they should pay close attention to both. Dmytryk is the same director who gave the world Murder, My Sweet and Crossfire. This is top tier filmmaking. 

Above, a photo of Betty Bersinger, the woman who discovered the mutilated body of Elizabeth Short, aka The Black Dahlia, seen here at the police station looking unaffected by her grisly encounter. While on a morning walk with her young daughter she saw what she thought was a discarded mannequin that had been broken in two. Instead it was the two halves of Elizabeth Short’s bisected corpse. That happened today in 1947.

Yesterday we showed you two of the most expensive pulp paperbacks we’ve ever run across. Today we’re going to do the opposite and show you something that was free. Above is the cover of Agatha Christie’s 1950 Miss Marple mystery Se anunucia un asesinato, aka A Murder Is Announced, and we found it in a disused closet in the stairwell of our building. The collage style cover is credited to P. Ramírez, and there are also interior illustrations credited to someone billing himself simply as Moreno. It’s funny that we went all the way to Morocco expecting to find pulp when just one floor below there was a closet stacked high with hundreds of Spanish, English, and French magazines that go back forty years. Most of it seems unremarkable at first glance, but we haven’t had much time to explore, so there’s no telling what we’ll find. Since the door isn’t locked, we’re thinking it all probably belonged to a departed tenant. If not, well, it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.