The Rosenbergs

In the 1950s, the attention of Americans were focused on the Cold War, and Senator Joseph McCarthy preyed on a country fearful of communist infiltrators. The trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg represented the fears and tensions of that era.

The couple was accused of passing information from the Manhattan Project to spies for the Soviet Union, allegedly compromising the United State's position in the race to develop the atomic bomb.

In his sentencing statement, Judge Irving Kaufman told the Rosenbergs, "Plain deliberate contemplated murder is dwarfed in magnitude by comparison with the crime you have committed." He preceded to blame them for at least 50,000 deaths stemming from the Soviet aggression in Korea and said that their actions had "undoubtedly ... altered the course of history to the disadvantage of our country."

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg died in the electric chair on June 19, 1953 at Sing-Sing Prison. Mrs. Rosenberg, whose ties to the crime were limited primarily to typing up notes for her husband, was the first woman executed by the United States government since Mary Surratt was implicated in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Mrs. Rosenberg was reportedly restrapped to the electric chair after the first jolt failed to kill her.

Bruno Hauptmann

Charles Lindberg, Jr., just 20 months old, was snatched from the safety of his parents home on a rainy March evening, 1932. By the next morning, the New Jersey estate of Charles and Ann Linberg was swarming with reporters and the interested public, all wondering who stole the baby out a second-story nursery window.

The kidnapper, whose makeshift ladder apparently broke as he descended with the Lindberg baby, left the following note on a radiator near the window:

Dear Sir!
Have 50,000$ redy 2500$ in 20$ bills 1500$ in 10$ bills and 1000$ in 5$ bills. After 2-2 days we will inform you were to deliver the Mony. We warn you for making anyding public or for notify the polise the child is in gute care. Indication for all letters are singnature and 3 holes.

After a sinister game of cat-and-mouse, during which an outraged Al Capone even offered $10,000 for any information leading to the recovery of the baby, a truck driver pulled over on a New Jersey road to relieve himself in the woods. He saw a child's head and arm poking out of the ground, and the search for the Lindberg baby officially ended.

The child had apparently died from a severe blow to the head, perhaps delivered by the fall from the ladder. And it was not until 1934 that Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a thirty-five-year-old carpenter living in the Bronx, found himself in court.

The month-long trial was a full-scale media event, ending with a murder conviction and offers of money for a confession from Hauptmann. The convicted killer maintained his innocence until the day he died, refusing to save his life by admitting to the crime. He even refused an offer of $75,000 for his wife and son from if he confessed.

Hauptmann was put to death in the electric chair on the evening of April 3, 1936, in the New Jersey State Prison.

Charlie Starkweather & Caril Ann Fugate

Standing at five feet two inches, Charles Starkweather felt picked-on most of his life. At sixteen, he found companionship with 13-year-old Caril Ann Fugate but never got over anger for his poverty and limited intellect. Death, he decided, would be the great equalizer for all the people who held themselves above him.

On December 1, 1957 Starkweather committed his first murder, killing a 21-year-old gas station attendant who had allegedly mocked him the day before. He forced Robert Colvert, married with a baby on the way, to turn over money from the cash register before driving to a desolate area and shooting the attendant twice.

But thrill from this twisted form of power was not enough to pay the rent. Less than two months later, Starkweather found himself with no place to live, no money and on the receiving end of wrath from his girlfriend's parents — who were against the relationship.

On January 21, 1958, Starkweather got into an argument with Caril's parents and killed them both. In a display of extraordinary brutality, Starkweather hit Mrs. Bartlett with the butt of his rifle when she attempted to reach for her 2-year-old daughter, and then killed the little girl himself.

While his girlfriend's reaction to seeing her family's murder remains unclear, the young couple did live in the house for a week among the rotting corpses, buying food on credit. A few days later, when the local authorities became suspicious, Starkweather and Fugate left to continue their killing spree

In the end, they killed 11 people and turned on each other when they were caught. Starkweather was put to death in June 1959, and Fugate was sentenced to life because she was only 14 at the time of the murders. She was paroled in 1976.