True Crime On This Day March 28th

March 28th

On March 28th in true crime, two cases of a body on the highway, Three Mile Island nuclear disaster, murder, and Carlos the Jackal.

1978

What looked like an accident suddenly turned into something much more macabre. Wanda Murry was hit by a passing car as she lay on a highway.

Charles Clark was driving his pickup when he ran over Wanda, claiming he was distracted by another car. He slammed on the brakes when he realised he had hit a person.

An autopsy showed that Wanda was already dead when she was hit by the pickup. The investigation uncovered a violent argument between Wanda and an ex-boyfriend the same evening.

Then the coroner discovered that Wanda had untreated diabetes and the amount of alcohol she drank my have killed her.

The investigation concluded that Wanda was being driven home by another man when she died in the car. The man then pushed her body out of the car and fled the scene.

The investigation decided not to pursue the man for abusing a corpse due to lack of funds and resources.

1979

One of America’s worst nuclear disasters took place at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station (TMI-2) in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.

It became known as The Three Mile Island Incident and caused the release of radioactive gases and radioactive iodine into the environment.

The disaster was caused by failures in the secondary system of the site, which led to a partial meltdown of Reactor Number 2.

Combined with computer and human error, the incident led to the decline of new reactor construction in the United States. The clean-up began in August 1979 and ended in December 1993, at a cost of $1billion (USD).

A research article published by Dr. Steven Wing in 1997, claimed that there was a significant increase in cancers from 1979 to 1985, in people who lived within ten miles of Three Mile Island.

As of 2022, scientists are conflicted as to whether there was a significant health fallout from the disaster.

The public’s interpretation was not helped by the release of ‘The China Syndrome’ movie, just 12 days prior, which dealt with a fictional cover-up at a nuclear power plant.

1980

In Florida, optometrist John Young Bradford was murdered in a plot carried out by his wife Priscilla Bradford, two other adult women and a 13-year-old girl.

They all worked at the same optician shop and the motive behind the murder was because they wanted an all-female laboratory. Together they concocted a plan. The pre-planned defence was going to be that of a battered wife. They all beat Bradford to death.

Towards the end of the beating, Priscilla ordered her 13-year-old daughter to beat her father with an iron skillet. They were all arrested shortly after and their story fell apart.

Bradford’s daughter was given immunity as a witness for the state. The other three women were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

1981

In Bowie County, Texas, 18-year-old Johnny Lynn Hamlett was robbed and killed by brothers William Kendrick Burns and Victor Burns.

It was not the first victim. Back in February of 1980, they shot dead Leon Calahan as he stood outside of a nightclub. The same night, they kidnapped Bryan Keith Sanders during a robbery and threatened to kill him. They stopped the car near a lake and threw Sanders out of the car.

They were about to kill him when they were interrupted by law enforcement. Believing it was just a fight, the officers let them go. After the 1981 killing, they were arrested and charged with both murders.

Victor Burns was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. William Burns was sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection in Texas on April 11^th 2002.

1982

In Ambazac, France, a large bomb was detonated on a train, killing five people and injuring 28 others. The bomb exploded on a Le Capitole train on the Paris-Toulouse express near Limoges.

The attack was claimed to have been carried out a by a group calling themselves the International Terrorist Friends of Carlos. However, in December 2011, Carlos the Jackal was convicted of the bombing, while already serving a life sentence for previous attacks.

Carlos, whose real name is Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, was a Venezuelan terrorist responsible for at least 16 murders.

1983

In Marion County, Indiana, 31-year-old Jane Brumblay was attacked as she was preparing to get into her car at the Glendale Shopping Mall.

She was forced into her car by James Allen Harris, who tied her hands, then drove to a cinema parking lot where he raped her more than once.

He then strangled Brumblay with her own scarf. Realising he had killed her, Harris drove to Broad Ripple Park, where he put her body in the trunk and abandoned the car. Brumblay’s body was found the next day and Harris was arrested shortly after.

Despite an insanity plea due to deteriorating mental health, Harris was sentenced to death. An appeal in 1992 saw him resentenced to 160 years in prison.

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