True Crime On This Day January 10th

Last Updated on September 20, 2022 by Ben Oakley

January 10th

On January 10th in true crime, undercover KKK officer, mystery disappearance, mob boss murder, macabre discovery, and cold cases.

1978

Nicaraguan journalist and publisher Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal was shot dead. At his funeral, thousands of people followed the coffin to his family home, taking turns carrying it.

Following Chamorro’s murder, 30,000 people rioted in the streets of Managua against the Somoza regime who had been accused of killing Chamarro.

His surviving wife, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, would later become the President of Nicaragua from 1990 to 1996.

1979

After an extraordinary undercover police operation involving a black police officer infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan, the leader of the KKK met with the officer, unaware of who it really was.

Officer Ron Stallworth had answered a KKK ad in the newspaper and spoke to members of the KKK over the phone, convincing them he wished to be a member.

The then Grand Wizard of the KKK, David Duke, was due to visit the town where Ron Stallworth worked.

In a bizarre twist on this day in 1979, Stallworth ended up protecting Duke as he gave a press conference in the town, with Duke never realising who Stallworth was.

1980

In New South Wales, Australia, 18-year-old Annette Shirley Briffa vanished without a trace. She had last been seen hitchhiking on the Pacific Highway and getting into an orange Mazda.

Her disappearance remained a mystery until January 2005 when a New South Wales Deputy State Coroner suspected to a strong degree that Briffa has been abducted and murdered.

She had been out drinking the night before with Raymond Nixon who was later incarcerated for the murder of his wife but the investigation did not consider him a suspect.

There were suggestions that Briffa may have killed by serial killer Ivan Milat, who lived in the area and killed at least seven backpackers from 1989 to 1993.

Another theory led to Briffa’s uncle who owned an orange vehicle that was similar to the witness description. Not long after Briffa disappeared, the uncle dumped his car in remote bushland.

Despite many suspects, the murder of Shirley Briffa remains unsolved.

1981

In Torrance, Los Angeles County, California, the decomposing body of an unidentified white male between the ages of 27 to 35-years-old was discovered just off the side of a highway.

He had been dead for at least three days and was found with no personal belongings.

The circumstances surrounding his death and the identity of the victim have long remained a mystery. The case is still open with the Los Angeles authorities.

1982

In Telfair County, Georgia, 29-year-old James T. White was beaten to death by his friend, 40-year-old John Wayne Conner, during a violent dispute.

Along with other people, they had spent the night drinking at various parties and bars, and smoking marijuana before returning to Conner’s residence that he shared with his girlfriend.

White and Conner then went out to look for more alcohol and drugs but they got into a fight with each other over Conner’s girlfriend.

Conner beat White to death with his bare hands, a whiskey bottle, and a stick. The next day, White’s body was found in a drainage ditch near a school.

An autopsy showed he had drowned in his own blood. Conner was arrested the following day and subsequently sentenced to death in July of 1982. He was executed by lethal injection in Georgia, on July 15^th 2016.

1983

In New York, Italian-American mobster and Gambino Crime Family member, Roy DeMeo was shot dead.

He ran the infamous DeMeo Crew who were responsible for at least 100 grisly murders in the 1970s and 1980s, DeMeo himself was known to decapitate some of his victims to make examples of them.

The crew were notorious for the way in which they disposed of some of their victims. Their infamous Gemini Method involved dismembering them, packaging the remains in boxes, and shipping them to the Fountain Avenue Dump.

On January 20^th, DeMeo’s Cadillac was discovered in the parking lot of the Veruna Boat Club in Brooklyn. His partially frozen body was found in the trunk with a chandelier on top of him. No one has ever been charged with DeMeo’s murder.

Check out the Mega List of True Crime Podcasts