If you hear I committed suicide, I didn’t
Retired safety manager John Barnett was to answer questions Saturday as part of a deposition related to a legal dispute with his former employer, Boeing, related to safety concerns he had raised. He never made it to court. The week before his death, Barnette told friends and family, “If you hear I committed suicide, I didn’t.”
Minnie Wallace: Gold Digger or Murderess?
On April 19, 1914, The Times-Picayune reported that New Orleans-born heiress Minnie Wallace inherited one-fourth of the estate of Chicago businessman, financier, and railroad magnate Delancey Horton Louderbach after the man died suddenly from “accidentally swallowing poison.” Coincidentally, years earlier, two of “Black Widow” Minnie Wallace Walkup Ketcham’s husbands died the same way.
Famous Gordon Anderson remembered
Following the death of Marshal Victor Gordon Anderson, Jr., age 78, who died September 29, 2023, at North Oaks Medical Center, a family member asked that I revisit the death of Hammond’s original Marshall Gordon Anderson in 1933.
Justice catches up with Goodyear Killer
Last week, we recounted the multiple crimes of the Goodyear Killer, 23-year-old Charles Ray Spears of Greensburg, and the many times he escaped justice. After a defense attorney used police collaboration to build a case for coercion, the New Orleans District Attorney dropped all charges in the murder of Ernest Smith. In Slidell, Judge Wallace Edwards sentenced David E. Lewis to die following the robbery of the Champagne Jewelry Store, the near-death of store clerk Betty Hodge Graves, and the execution of Sergeant Earl Alfred, the first black officer to serve with the Slidell police department.