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Today in True Crime History: February 4
1880 — The Black Donnelly murders occurred. Members of the Vigilance Committee kill James, Johannah, John, Thomas, and Bridget Donnelly in their home in Biddulph, Ontario, Canada. Nobody was ever convicted.
1896 — Two Mormon sheepherders are murdered while camping in Cassia County, Idaho. The deaths were dubbed the Deep Creek murders and became part of a sheep war in Idaho and Nevada.
1972 — Two young girls, Maureen Louise Sterling and Yvonne Lisa Weber, disappeared at 9 p.m. They middle school students had been at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena and decided to hitchhike on Guerneville Rd., outside of Santa Rosa, California. Their bodies would not be found until the end of December. Their deaths are part of the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders.
1974 — At 19 years old, Patty Hearst is kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley by the Symbionese Liberation Army. She is beaten to the point of unconsciousness. She was found 19 months later and convicted of a bank robbery she said she was forced to take part in. She was later pardoned.
1999 — Amadou Diallo is shot and killed by four plain-clothed NYPD officers. The 23-year-old man was mistaken for a rape suspect. He was shot 19 times while outside his apartment in The Bronx. The four officers were acquitted of second-degree murder.
2016 —Five members of the Martinez family in Gage Park, Chicago, are found stabbed to death in their home. Another is shot. Several months later, a relative and his girlfriend would be arrested. They claimed the murders were part of a robbery gone wrong.
