Death Row Information: A Real-Time Database Of Texas Inmates’ Last Words

Death Row Information compiles things you never wanted to know from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Peruse the site to check out the next upcoming execution on the calendar, or learn more about the people currently on the row.

On one page, a chart of executed offenders gives you the name, county, race, age, and date of passing. In fact, you can click on a link to read the last statement left by the man or woman before their end.

A Columbine Site: Cataloging The April 20, 1999 Tragedy

A Columbine Site is exactly what it sounds like: it offers documents and videos you never wanted to learn about the tragic events that occurred at Columbine High School. For those looking to relive this horrible 1999 experience, or perhaps gain further insight into the culprits, this is a one-stop shop.

People can watch creepy videos of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold before they became infamous, and trace their routes through the school on that fateful day. The site warns viewers about its disturbing content and rightfully advises them to proceed with caution.

Skyway Bridge: Tracking The Suicides From One Of The Most Popular Bridges In The US

Skyway Bridge is named after the fourth most popular bridge to end one’s life from, and this website tracks those incidents. People can click around and find recent people who have jumped off the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, which is on the West Coast of Florida. The “jumper pages” creepily take you back through the decades in order to see just how long and popular this deadly tradition is.

On one part of the site, you can even fill out an online form in order to report a “jumper” who has leaped (including a link to their Facebook page).

Psychiatry’s Incurable Hubris

The biology of mental illness is still a mystery, but practitioners don’t want to admit it.

The protracted attempt to usher psychiatry into medicine’s modern era is the subject of Anne Harrington’s Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness. As her subtitle indicates, this is not a story of steady progress. Rather, it’s a tale of promising roads that turned out to be dead ends, of treatments that seemed miraculous in their day but barbaric in retrospect, of public-health policies that were born in hope but destined for disaster.

LINK: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/mind-fixers-anne-harrington/583228/

Jack the Ripper’s identity may finally be known, thanks to DNA

Researchers tested blood and semen found on a shawl near the body of the killer’s fourth victim, a woman whose mutilated body was found in September 1888.

The identity of Jack the Ripper, the notorious serial killer from the late 1800s in England, may finally be known.

A DNA forensic investigation published this month by two British researchers in the Journal of Forensic Science identifies Aaron Kosminski, a 23-year-old Polish barber and prime suspect at the time, as the likely killer.

The “semen stains match the sequences of one of the main police suspects, Aaron Kosminski,” said the study authored by Jari Louhelainen of Liverpool John Moores University and David Miller of the University of Leeds.

LINK: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna984536

Serial Art For Sale: A Market In True Crime Collectibles

Murderabilia is an online market where collectors buy and sell items related to serial killers. William Harder is the owner of murderauction.com, where murderabilia items are for sale. Here & Now‘s Robin Young talks with Harder and Andy Kahan, a long-time victims advocate for the city of Houston, Texas.