Ruth Brown: Jazz and Murder

The original femme fatale, Ruth Brown was just 20 years old in 1915 when she married Albert Snyder, editor of Motor Boating magazine, where Brown worked as a secretary. But Brown, who had a penchant for dance halls and parties, didn't take well to marriage nor her stoic, stay-at-home husband, and she quickly took up with a corset salesman, Henry Judd Gray. Unlike Snyder, Gray was happy to accompany Brown to jazz joints around New York City, and the two became an item, so much so that Brown decided to get rid of her husband and cash in his $100,000 life insurance policy. In a rather poorly planned scheme, the lovers killed Snyder and attempted to make the scene look like a robbery. But when police found a bloody sash and Brown's jewels stashed in a mattress, the game was up. Brown and Gray pointed fingers at each other, but a jury found them both guilty of murder. To the disappointment of 164 men who proposed marriage to her while in prison, Brown became the first woman executed in the state of New York. She lived on, however, as the model for the femme fatal character in James M. Cain's famous novel Double Indemnity.

More on the case from Crime Library.

Carolyn Warmus: A True Fatal Attraction

By all outward appearances, elementary school teacher Paul Solomon had a happy home life. He lived with his wife and 14-year-old daughter in Greenburgh, N.Y., about 20 miles north of New York City. But Solomon, 41, also had a mistress. Carolyn Warmus, 27, had once taught at the same school as Solomon, and the two had become lovers. On Jan. 15, 1989, Solomon left his wife at home to go bowling and later meet Warmus for drinks. When he returned, he found his wife, Betty Jeanne, lying on the living room floor in a pool of blood. She had been shot eight times. Police suspicion initially focused on Solomon, who admitted his affair and his whereabouts that night. But they eventually turned their attention to Warmus, a woman some had described as "mentally unstable." Obsessed with Solomon, who refused to leave his wife, Warmus had obtained a gun and, according to prosecutors, entered the Solomon home when she knew her lover would be out. After her first trial ended in a hung jury, Warmus was eventually convicted of the murder and is serving 25 years to life.

More on the case from Crime Library.

Jean Harris: The Scarsdale Diet Murder

Jean Harris was having a difficult time as headmistress of the Madeira Girls' School, an exclusive boarding school in McLean, Va. Parents were in an uproar over her harsh disciplinary methods and were threatening to pull their girls out of school. Her favorite students were turning against her. To make matters worse, she had begun to suspect that her boyfriend, Dr. Herman Tarnower, the doctor famous for developing the Scarsdale diet, was in love with someone else. She had long suffered from depression, and on March 10, 1980, Harris snapped. She drove to Tarnower's house with the intention of committing suicide, she claimed, but instead killed Tarnower in a fierce struggle over a gun. The jury failed to believe her story, however. She was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 15 years to life. Paroled in 1992, Harris has published several books, including an autobiography.

More on the case from Crime Library.

Madeleine Smith: Victorian Murder Mystery

The daughter of an upper-class Glasgow family, Madeleine Smith was far too sophisticated to be courted by the likes of Emile L'Angelier, a young warehouse clerk from a French family. Nonetheless, the two met in 1885 and began a relationship, which eventually led to talks of marriage. Smith's parents had other ideas, however. They forbade their daughter to see L'Angelier and instead arranged a marriage for her with a wealthy merchant. Smith had no choice but to end her relationship with the young warehouse and clerk and follow her parents wishes, and she gradually grew found of her new suitor. But L'Angelier would not disappear so easily. He wrote to Smith incessantly, begging her to return to him. Then, after a mysterious bout of stomach illnesses, L'Angelier fell dead in his boarding house. The police later discovered that Smith had made several purchases of arsenic at the apothecary. Although she was tried for his murder, the jury was unable to find sufficient proof that she had poisoned the clerk, and Smith was set free. After the trial, she changed her name and took the secret of L'Angelier's death with her to the grave.

More on the case from Crime Library.