True Crime On This Day July 27th

Last Updated on September 27, 2022 by Ben Oakley

July 27th

On July 27th in true crime, Turkish Embassy bombing, macabre discovery, serial killers, grenade attack, murder, and unsolved crimes.

1978

Six months after his arrest, Ted Bundy was formally charged for the murders at the Chi Omega sorority house of the Florida State University (FSU).

He had bludgeoned to death two female victims and beat another three victims who went on to survive the attack.

Bundy would go on to admit 30 murders, but it was expected the death toll was far higher. He was executed in 1989.

1979

In Kentucky, back in February of 1979, Karu Gene White and two accomplices robbed a convenience store. Using a wrench and branch of a tree, they beat to death three elderly people, 75-year-old Charles Gross, his wife 74-year-old Lola Gross and 79-year-old Sam Chaney.

They robbed the store of $7,000 in cash. White was arrested on July 27^th and pleaded insanity. In 1980, the insanity plea was thrown out and he was sentenced to death for the murders.

1980

In Antwerp, Belgium, Said Al Nasr, a member of the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) threw two grenades at a bus stop where a group of 40 Jewish schoolchildren were waiting for a bus.

They were getting ready for the bus to take them to Summer Camp. One boy was killed outright and 20 more were seriously injured.

The ANO were a Palestinian nationalist military group who are also known as the Fatah. Witnesses to the attack, chased down Al Nasr and restrained him for police to arrive.

He was sentenced to life in prison but was traded in a prisoner transfer in 1990, for a Belgian-French family who had been kidnapped in Libya.

1981

In Hollywood, Florida, six-year-old Adam Walsh, was kidnapped from outside a Sears department store. Two weeks later, his severed head was found in a drainage canal.

His father was hotel executive, John Walsh, who went on to become an activist and campaigner for missing children and crime prevention. He would later become the host for the America’s Most Wanted TV show.

In 1983, serial killer Ottis Toole confessed to the murder but was never convicted of that particular crime. The case was closed in 2008 when investigators concluded that Toole had indeed killed Walsh.

1982

In Hillsborough County, Florida, the skeletal remains of an unidentified white adult male in his forties were discovered. They were found by hikers in a remote wooded area of Tampa.

An investigation discovered a bullet wound in his skull and it was suspected he had been shot dead at the location he was found.

He has never been matched to any missing person report and his identity remains a mystery. The case remains unsolved.

1983

In Lisbon, Portugal, five gunmen attacked the Turkish Embassy. It began when one attacker opened fire on police near the area, only to be shot dead himself by an embassy bodyguard.

Portuguese police and elite teams descended upon the area where the four remaining gunmen forced their way into the ambassador’s residence and took its residents hostage.

An estimated 170 riot police and special forces surrounded the building, where the gunmen were threatening to detonate bombs, they had with them.

The special forces team were the GOE (Grupo de Operações Especiais), who were trained by the British SAS, and were being deployed for the first time.

Before the rescue operation could begin, the attackers detonated one of their bombs which sent a fireball through the building.

When GOE stormed the building, they found the burned bodies of the four gunmen and two embassy workers.

The attack had been carried out by members of the Armenian Revolutionary Army (ARA), who were an Armenian militant terrorist organisation that carried out seven attacks between 1983 and 1985.

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