6 Years Ago Today: 'Most Hated Woman in America' Murdered!

On Sept. 29, 1995, a trio of kidnappers killed, dismembered, and buried American Atheists founder Madalyn Murray O'Hair, her son Jon Murray, and her granddaughter Robin Murray O'Hair. Police in Austin, Texas, did little to investigate the abduction, torture, and murder of the person who had become known as "the most hated woman in America" as a result of her efforts to have prayer expunged from public schools.

While state and federal investigators initially assumed the O'Hair family members had been murdered by religious fanatics, they eventually learned that victims had been abducted and slain by a former employee and his accomplices. They did not benefit from their crimes, however, as one of them was killed by another and they lost the half million dollars they had extorted.

The demise of O'Hair is the subject of "The Most Hated Woman in America," a chapter in the "Murder" section of Texas Confidential: Sex, Scandal, Murder, and Mayhem in the Lone Star State.

Breaking News: Michael Jackson Death Trial Begins for Houston Dr. Conrad Murray!

Attorneys for the prosecution and defense made opening statements Tuesday, Sept. 27, in the trial of Houston physician Dr. Conrad Murray, 58, who has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of pop star Michael Jackson in June 2009. The cardiologist has been free on $75,000 bail since February 2010, when he was charged in the felony death of Jackson.

"The evidence in this case will show that Michael Jackson literally put his life in the hands of Conrad Murray," prosecuting Deputy District Attorney David Walgren told the told the seven-man, five-woman jury in the presence of a packed courtroom. "The evidence in this case will show that Michael Jackson trusted his life to the medical skills of Conrad Murray. ... That misplaced trust in the hands of Conrad Murray cost Michael Jackson his life."

Walgren said that Murray administered to Jackson a powerful sedative called propofol in levels equivalent to those used for general anesthesia. Autopsy results showed that Jackson also had a combination of other drugs in his system that contributed to his death.

"The acts and omissions [of Murray] directly led to [Jackson's] premature death at the age of 50," Walgren said and that evidence would show that Murray repeatedly acted with gross negligence, repeatedly denied appropriate care to Jackson, that his repeated incompetence and unskilled acts led to Jackson's death. The pop star was pronounced dead at 2:26 p.m. June 25, 2009, at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.

At a hearing in January during which Murray was ordered to stand trial, one of Jackson's security personnel and two paramedics testified that it appeared the singer was already dead before he was taken from his rented home in Holmby Hills to the hospital. The Los Angeles County Coroner's Office later determined that Jackson had died of acute propofol intoxication and declared his death a homicide.

Murrary and his defense attorneys maintain that he has been wrongly accused in Jackson's death and suggest that Jackson may have given himself a larger, lethal dose of propofol while the doctor was out of the pop star's bedroom.

Prosecutors allege that Murray administered propofol to Jackson to help him fall asleep after a bout of insomnia following a rehearsal for an upcoming series of concerts in London, failed to properly monitor his patient while focusing on telephone calls and text messages.

Seats were reserved for both Murray's supporters and Jackson's family members and most of them were in court Tuesday, including his parents, brother Jermaine, and sisters Janet and La Toya.

Reporters from more than 30 media outlets also had reserved seats and six members of the public were chosen through a drawing outside the courthouse (but barred from wearing anything related to Jackson or Murray into court).

Testimony is scheduled to begin once the opposing attorneys finish their opening statements. The trial is expected to last four to five weeks. If convicted, Murray could be sentenced to up to four years in prison.

Breaking News: Jasper Hate Killer Executed!

HUNTSVILLE, TEXAS -- On Wednesday, Sept. 21, the state of Texas put to death white supremacist gang member Lawrence Russell Brewer, 44, for his role in the 1998 dragging murder of a black man in Jasper, Texas. All of his appeals had been exhausted and their were no last-minute attempts to stay his execution.

Brewer and two accomplices chained James Byrd Jr., 49, to the back of a pickup truck and then dragged him down a bumpy road until he was not just killed but actually decapitated and dismembered.

"No," Brewer said when asked if he had any final words, a single tear hanging in the corner of his right eye. "I have no final statement."

A lethal injection was administered to Brewer at 6:11 p.m. and he was pronounced dead 10 minutes later. Both of his parents and two of his victim's sisters were in attendance.

One of Brewer's accomplices, John William King, 36, also was convicted of capital murder in Byrd's death and is currently on death row pending sppeal. A third accomplice, Shawn Berry, 36, was sentenced to life in prison.

"One down and one to go," said retired Sheriff Billy Rowles, who initially investigated the horrific scene. "That's kind of cruel but that's reality."

"He had choices," Byrd's sister, Clara Taylor said of Brewer the day before the execution. "He made the wrong choices." She said that someone from her brother's family needed to bear witness to Brewer's execution.

Around 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 7, 1998, witnesses saw Byrd walking on a road not far from his home in Jasper, a 7,000-person community located northeast of Houston. Soon after another witness then saw him riding in the bed of a dark pickup truck. Byrd subsisted on disability payments, could not afford a card, and walked or hitch-hiked to get around.

Around 8:30 a.m., Rowles discovered the grisly scene, in which body parts and blood were spread over a wide area.

"I didn't go down that road too far before I knew this was going to be a bad deal," he testifed at Brewer's trial.

According to testimony at the trial, the three white men drove Byrd out into the country and then stopped along an isolated logging road. There, they attacked their victim, tied him to the truck bumper with a 24-foot logging chain, and dragged him for three miles, dumping his mutilated remains between a black church and cemetery where the pavement on the road ended.

Police arrested Brewer, King, and Berry by the end of the next day.

184 Years Ago Today: Jim Bowie Wins 'Sandbar Fight'!

On September 19, 1827, knife fighter Jim Bowie gained national fame for his role in what became known as "the Sandbar Fight." This armed brawl outside of Natchez, Mississippi, exploded in the wake of an organized duel that ended with its antagonists shaking their hands and walking away.

Bowie was considered to be the most dangerous man in the faction he was part of and some of the men opposing it tried to kill him right away. One of them shot him in the hip and then hit him in the head with the emptied pistol so hard that it broke, knocking Bowie to the ground.

Sheriff Norris Wright of Rapides Parish, Louisiana, with whom Bowie had a running feud, took advantage of his enemy’s predicament and also took a shot at him but missed, upon which Bowie returned fire and may or may not have struck Wright. The sheriff then attacked the prone Bowie with a sword cane and ran him through, embedding the blade in his body. When Wright planted his foot on Bowie’s chest to dislodge his weapon, Bowie grabbed him, pulled him to the ground, and fatally disemboweled him, possibly with one of the long, broad-bladed knives that bears his name.

Bowie was both shot and stabbed at least once more each before the fracas was dispersed but survived his injuries and was lauded in newspapers that covered the incident.

Bowie appears in the chapter "Rogues of the Alamo," one of the "Scandal" section chapters in Texas Confidential, where he warrants inclusion for his role as a slaver in the early 19th century.

6 Years Ago Today: Francis Newton Executed

On September 14, 2005, the state of Texas executed Frances Elaine Newton, who was convicted murdering her 23-year-old husband Adrian, her seven-year-old son Alton, and her 21-month-old daughter. She was the eleventh woman in the United States and the third in Texas to be executed after the reintroduction of the death penalty in the nation.

After apparently shooting all three of her family members with a .25 caliber pistol she had obtained from a man she had been seeing, Newton claimed that they had been slain by a drug dealer. It was Newton, however, and not any drug dealer, who had taken out $50,000 life insurance policies on each of her three victims just three weeks before the murders, forging her husband’s signature and naming herself as the beneficiary.

Despite the fact that the Houston police believed that Adrien Newton was indeed a drug dealer who was in debt to his supplier, reservations among jury members about information that had been withheld during her trial, evidence that her defense attorney was demonstrably incompetent, and other irregularities, Newton was sentenced to death. All subsequent appeals and writs of habeas corpus were denied by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, as were two appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Newton is one of the three women executed by Texas who appears in "The Women of Death Row," of the of the "Murder" chapters in Texas Confidential: Sex, Scandal, Murder, and Mayhem in the Lone Star State.

'Texas Confidential' Dedication

Following is the dedication to Texas Confidential. While it is brief, it was important to me to emphasize that, even though my book is concerned with every sort of crime and iniquity, I have not forgotten the victims of those crimes and do not glorify the people who have perpetrated them.

"To the good people of Texas who have, over the years, been preyed upon by the villains of this volume and suffered the effects of their countless crimes."