New Year in True Crime Infamy
New Year’s blast bares family secret
Seat Pleasant, Maryland – The package that arrived at the Hall family home on New Year’s Day 1930 was gaily wrapped—outwardly, a belated Christmas gift for the eldest daughter, 18-year-old Naomi. As she began to unwrap it in the kitchen, her younger siblings, 4-year-old Dorothy and 19-month-old Samuel, crowded close to see the surprise.
The blast that followed killed all three children instantly.
The investigation quickly unmasked a tangled web of domestic deception. Police first arrested Herman Brady, who had secretly married Naomi weeks earlier. However, suspicion soon shifted to Herman’s older brother, Leroy, a 26-year-old mechanic.
Naomi was pregnant, and prosecutors alleged the child was actually Leroy’s. The bomb was his desperate attempt to "erase" the evidence of their illicit affair.
Despite the loss of three lives, the legal resolution was underwhelming. After a year of maneuvering, Herman was released for lack of evidence. Leroy was convicted only of second-degree murder—and only for the death of Naomi, not the two young children. He was sentenced to just 10 years in the Maryland Penitentiary.
The case briefly resurfaced in 1932 when a cache of dynamite was discovered in a garage Leroy had once used. Though it hinted at further premeditation, the authorities declined to pursue additional charges, leaving the tragedy of the Hall children as a grim, partially closed chapter in Maryland history.
Poison blunts lover’s attack
Sydney, Australia – One-time Australian cycling champion James Honeyman rang in the year 1934 by sinking a tomahawk in his girlfriend’s skull – then swallowing cyanide.
Honeyman, 42, celebrated New Year’s Eve with 24-year-old Irene Skinner and her sister Marie, but Irene kicked him out when she caught him stealing a letter from her bedroom dresser.
No stranger to domestic violence—having survived a 1928 throat-slashing by his then-wife—Honeyman snuck back into the house around 2 a.m., as both women slept, and whacked Irene in the head with the hatchet. Then he ingested the poison, which took effect before he could strike another blow.
Marie woke to the moans of her sister and watched Honeyman topple dead to the floor.
Irene recovered.
Honeyman had been a bicycle-racing legend in New South Wales. The wife who attacked him in 1928 pleaded self-defense and won acquittal.
Secret wife kills mate in New Year’s Eve shooting
Saying “You are happier than I am,” Helen Wills Love kisses Harry Love, the man she shot dead. She was allowed out of jail to view Love’s body. She said they secretly married eight months previously.
Santa Monica, California – On December 31, 1936, festivities at the tony Del Mar Beach Club took a deadly turn when an angry woman approached Harry Love, 46, who was enjoying dinner with his mother, Cora.
The woman upbraided Harry, saying he promised to celebrate the New Year with her.
Harry grabbed the woman by the arm and marched her to the lobby. That’s when the woman pulled a revolver from the pocket of her raccoon coat.
Harry started running, shouting, “Someone stop her, she is shooting me!”
She hit Harry twice in the back, killing him.
The woman gave her name as Helen Wills Love, age 31. She said she and Harry had secretly married in Mexico in May, but Harry refused to tell his wealthy mother, with whom he continued to live.
In jail that night, Helen tried to hang herself. The silk scarf she used broke.
When a jury rejected Helen’s insanity claim and convicted her of second-degree murder, she fell into a weeklong coma. She was sentenced to 25 years, but prison records suggest she was released before 1950.
Helen subsequently married twice and died in 2000 in San Francisco. She was 95.
(Big tip of the hat to Blue Miller and her blog, Never Quite Lost.)
‘Duchess’ dies in baffling New Year’s Day murder
DeLand, Florida – On a lonely dirt road east of DeLand, someone yanked Ethel Wigington from her car and led her to the front of the vehicle where a wild struggle ensued. The attacker stabbed her twice in the chest and slashed her throat, then put a .25-caliber gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.
It was January 1, 1940. The body wasn’t found for two days.
Sheriff S.E. Stone called it the most baffling murder in Volusia County’s history.
Wigington was 32, a divorced mother of four who lived in Daytona Beach. Her nickname was “The Duchess” because of a resemblance to Wallis Simpson, the woman for whom Britain’s King Edward VIII gave up his throne.
She had driven to DeLand to attend a New Year’s party but never arrived.
Sheriff Stone suspected she picked up a hitchhiker who killed her, but the case went cold – until two months later when a man in a town 500 miles away made a surprise deathbed confession.
Shot five times in a gunbattle with police in Etowah, Tennessee, Charles Oliver said he was wanted for the murder of a woman in Florida in January.
Oliver was a former minor-league baseball player reportedly embittered by his failure to reach the Major Leagues.
A sample of his red hair matched strands collected from Wigington’s clothing and car. A watchband found at the scene was etched with the word “RED.” In addition, an acquaintance said he saw Oliver in Daytona Beach around the time of the murder.
Sheriff Stone declared the case closed.