True Crime On This Day August 11th

Last Updated on September 27, 2022 by Ben Oakley

August 11th

On August 11th in true crime, airplane bomb, murder in Florida, wrongful conviction, Hutchinson County John Doe, serial killing couple.

1978

In New South Wales, Australia, violent murderer John Ernest Cribb raped and killed Valda Connell and her children, Sally and Damien.

After his arrest, he was sent to Morisset Hospital for the criminally insane where he escaped one month later with convicted armed robber William Munday, who was serving a 28-year sentence.

Before they were caught again, they had carried out eight armed robberies, multiple assaults, and had kidnapped two 17-year-old schoolgirls from outside the Hakoah Club in Bondi.

They dragged them to a hotel, held them hostage, and repeatedly raped and tortured them over a two-day period.

Cribb was sentenced to 30 years for the robberies and kidnapping and another three life sentences for the murders. He died in February 2018.

1979

In Manchester, Georgia, a 74-year-old woman was raped and beaten in her own home. The attacker then demanded all her money before destroying the telephone so she could not call for help.

On September 21^st 1979, the victim identified John Jerome White in a line-up. Despite a lack of physical evidence, White was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

White claimed his innocence and was released on parole in 1990. He incurred further convictions for drugs and robbery, and in 1997 he was returned to prison to serve out his original sentence.

In 2007, when DNA technology had improved, a new investigation showed that White was not responsible for the attack. White was exonerated of the crime and released as a free man.

Using the new DNA evidence, police arrested James Parham and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Parham had been on the original line-up but had not been picked by the victim.

1980

In California, American female serial killer Carol M. Bundy was captured after leaving clues from the murder of her final victim. Her accomplice and lover, Doug Clark, was arrested the next day.

Clark would bring sex workers back to their apartment for both of them but then turned his attention to young girls, who Bundy helped lure into their van and home.

In June 1980, they had lured two teenage girls into their garage where they were shot dead before Clark had sex with the corpses. Upon her arrest, Bundy confessed to everything and gave a full confession of hers and Clark’s crimes.

Bundy was sentenced to life in prison but died of heart failure in 2003. Clark was sentenced to death, despite pleading innocent to the murders. Between them, they had killed at least six people.

1981

In Hutchinson County, Texas, the partial skeletal remains of an unidentified white male between the ages of 15 to 25 were recovered from a field.

Some of his limbs and both of his hands were never found. It is suspected he had been dead for at least a year but no match to a missing person has ever been made.

The circumstances surrounding his death and his identity remain a mystery. His was the second set of remains to be found in Texas, over a period of just two days.

1982

Over the Pacific Ocean, a bomb exploded on Pan Am Flight 830. The flight from Narita International Airport in Tokyo, Japan, to Honolulu International Airport in Hawaii, remarkably made an emergency landing in Honolulu a short time later.

The bomb exploded under a seat cushion and killed 16 year-old Japanese national Toru Ozawa. It injured another 16 people and caused damage to the floor and ceiling of the craft.

The bomb was placed by Mohammed Rashed, a Jordanian linked to the 15 May Organization, a Palestinian liberation group.

He was arrested in Greece in 1998 and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Despite the mid-air explosion, there were 284 survivors.

1983

In Santa Rosa County, Florida, 60-year-old night security guard George Wilson was shot dead by two criminals on the run.

Anthony Braden Bryan and Sharon Cooper were on the run for robbing a bank when the fishing boat they were hiding in, broke down in Pascagoula.

When they came ashore, Wilson loaned the duo some tools to help fix it but they struggled to fix it and instead abducted Wilson and placed him in the trunk of their car.

Bryan drove George to an isolated location in nearby woods then shot him in the face with a sawn-off-shotgun. Both Bryan and Cooper were arrested shortly after. Bryan escaped custody and went on the run again but was recaptured 15 months later.

He was subsequently sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection in Florida on February 24^th 2000. Cooper testified against Bryan and received a life sentence.

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