Eli Lilly (1838 - 1898)

Eli Lilly (July 8, 1838 – June 6, 1898) was an American soldier, pharmaceutical chemist, industrialist, entrepreneur, and founder of the Eli Lilly and Company pharmaceutical corporation. Lilly enlisted in the Union Army during the American Civil War; he recruited a company of men to serve with him in an artillery battery, was later promoted […]

Eben Byers (1880 - 1932)

The son of industrialist Alexander Byers, Eben Byers was educated at St. Paul’s School and Yale College, where he earned a reputation as an athlete and ladies’ man. He was the U.S. Amateur golf champion of 1906, after finishing runner-up in 1902 and 1903. Byers eventually became the chairman of the Girard Iron Company, which […]

James Howard Marshall (1905 - 1995)

Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, J. Howard Marshall II attended George School, a private high school in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and then studied liberal arts at Haverford College, both Quaker institutions, graduating in 1926. While at George School and Haverford he edited the school newspapers, captained the debate teams and was an All American soccer player and […]

Henry J. Heinz (1844 - 1919)

Founder Henry John Heinz began packing foodstuffs on a small scale at Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1869. There he founded Heinz Noble & Company with a friend, L. Clarence Noble, and began marketing horseradish. The company went bankrupt in 1875, but the following year Heinz founded another company, F & J Heinz, with his brother John […]

Elwood Haynes (1857 - 1925)

Elwood Haynes (October 14, 1857 – April 13, 1925) was an American inventor, metallurgist, automotive pioneer, entrepreneur and industrialist. He invented the metal alloys stellite and martensitic stainless steel and designed one of the earliest automobiles made in the United States. He is recognized for having created the earliest American design that was feasible for […]

George Dewey Hay (1895 - 1968)

George Dewey Hay Rightfully given credit as the founder of WSM’s Grand Ole Opry, George Dewey Hay was a remarkable visionary and colorful romantic who played a vital role in the commercializing and promotion of country music. Following service in the army, the Indiana native made his way to Memphis, where he worked as a […]

Dave Thomas (1932 - 2002)

Dave Thomas was born on July 2, 1932 in Atlantic City, New Jersey to a young unmarried woman he never knew. He was adopted at 6 weeks by Rex and Auleva Thomas,[2] and as an adult became a well-known advocate for adoption, founding the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. After his adoptive mother’s death when […]

Donald Beardslee (1943 - 2005)

Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1943, Beardslee was the oldest of three children whose father died when he was 11. He was sent to a military school at age 15 and joined the U.S. Air Force at 19, where he served for four years as an aircraft mechanic. He and another airman were caught […]

Napoleon Beazley (1976 - 2002)

Napoleon Beazley (August 5, 1976 – May 28, 2002) was a convicted murderer executed by lethal injection by the State of Texas for the murder of 63-year-old Texas businessman John Luttig in 1994. Beazley shot Luttig in his garage on April 19, 1994 in order to steal his family’s Mercedes-Benz car. Beazley also shot at […]

Kenneth Biros (1958 - 2009)

Kenneth Biros Biros admitted to killing 22 year old Tami Engstrom during February 1991 in a fit of rage. Biros then cut up the body and spread numerous parts over a wide territory encompassing portions of northeast Ohio and northwest Pennsylvania.  Biros was convicted of aggravated murder, attempted rape, aggravated robbery and felonious sexual penetration […]

Kenneth Lee Boyd (1948 - 2005)

After leaving school in the ninth grade, Boyd later joined the United States Army and volunteered for a tour of duty in Vietnam in 1967. Two years later he received an honorable discharge. After his first marriage had ended in divorce, he married Julie. This second marriage, which resulted in three boys, had a series […]

David Brewer (1959 - 2003)

David Brewer Eighteen years after David M. Brewer was sentenced to death for kidnapping and murdering Sherry Byrne, her mother and husband watched the state inject three drugs into Brewer’s body to end his life. “I hope that David Brewer today saw my daughter’s face and her plea for mercy as he left this world,” […]

Jack Carter (1922 - 2015)

Jack Carter Carter was born in New York City, New York, in 1922 to a Jewish family. Carter served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. He hosted an early television variety program called Cavalcade of Stars on the DuMont Network. He was lured to NBC to host his own program […]

Boxcar Willie (1931 - 1999)

Boxcar Willie Boxcar Willie was perhaps the most successful invented character in the history of country music. With his kitschy persona and stage act — highlighted by his amazingly accurate impersonation of a train whistle — Willie played into the stereotype of the lovable, good-natured hobo who spent his life riding the rails and singing […]

Merle Travis (1917 - 1983)

Merle Travis Grammy Award-winning country music artist. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall Of Fame in 1977. He wrote the hit single, “Sixteen Tons,” in addition to several other hit records. He was well known for his legendary guitar work, and made an art form of his unique style of finger-picking. He was […]

Eddie Grant (1883 - 1918)

Eddie Grant Eddie Grant was a typical Deadball Era third baseman: mediocre offensively (as attested by his lifetime .249 batting average and .295 slugging percentage) but defensively reliable, particularly against the bunt. “As a batter [Grant] was noted for his ability to sacrifice,” remembered Mike Donlin, “and he could lay back near third base and […]

Gregory Bryant-Bey (1955 - 2008)

Gregory Bryant-Bey Bryant-Bey was sent by his mother to New York City to live with a woman who “adopted” him. The woman allegedly beat him regularly, and forced him to care for her daughter. When Bryant-Bey was 13, his mother brought him back to Toledo, then left him in the care of her ex-husband. Bryant-Bey […]

Robert Anthony Buell (1940 - 2002)

Robert Anthony Buell Executed this morning by lethal injection for the July 1982 abduction and slaying of 11-year-old Krista Lea Harrison of Marshallville. Buell, a former loan specialist with the city of Akron’s Planning Department, was pronounced dead at 10:30 a.m. inside the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville. Buell, 62, gave a one-minute statement […]

Timothy Carr (1970 - 2005)

Timothy Don Carr (May 30, 1970 – January 25, 2005), a 34-year-old white male, was executed by lethal injection at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, Georgia on January 25, 2005. Carr was found guilty of the 1992 murder of Keith Patrick Young, a 17-year-old white male. Carr, who was 22-years old when […]

Desmond Keith Carter (1967 - 2002)

Desmond Keith Carter (October 15, 1967 – December 10, 2002) was convicted of the 1992 murder of Helen Purdy and executed in 2002 by the State of North Carolina at the Central Prison in Raleigh.  Desmond Carter was born in the state of Rhode Island and lived with his grandmother since his mother moved away […]

Oba Chandler (1946 - 2011)

Oba Chandler (October 11, 1946 – November 15, 2011) was an American man convicted and executed for the June 1989 triple murders of Joan Rogers and her two daughters, whose bodies were found floating in Tampa Bay, Florida, with their hands and feet bound. Concrete blocks had been tied to their necks and duct tape […]

James Lee Clark (1968 - 2007)

Clark was born in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. Court documents revealed that his father disappeared the day he found out Clark’s mother was pregnant. Testimony from a psychologist at his appeals hearing stated that Clark told him he had his first drink when he was seven years old and was commonly drunk by the age of […]

Terry Clark (1956 - 2001)

Terry Clark was convicted of kidnapping and raping a six-year-old girl from Roswell, New Mexico in 1986. Pending appeals in that case, he was released on bond. While he was out on bond in that case, nine-year-old Dena Lynn Gore of Artesia, New Mexico was raped and killed on July 17, 1986. Dena’s bound and […]

Troy Davis (1968 - 2011)

Troy Davis An American man convicted of and executed for the August 19, 1989, murder of police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia. MacPhail was working as a security guard at a Burger King restaurant when he intervened to defend a man being assaulted in a nearby parking lot. During Davis’s 1991 trial, seven witnesses […]

David Thomas Dawson (1957 - 2006)

David Thomas Dawson Dawson broke into a family’s Billings, Montana motel room on 18 April 1986. He forced the Rodstein family to go to his room at the motel, which was located right next door to their own room. He bound the family of four with tape, gagged them, and took their money. Over the […]

Adremy Dennis (1976 - 2004)

Adremy Dennis, (23 January 1976 – October 13, 2004) was a convicted murderer executed by the State of Ohio. He was found guilty of the 1994 murder of Akron, Ohio resident Kurt Kyle. Dennis was the 15th person executed by the state since it reinstated the death penalty in 1981.  Late on Saturday, June 4, […]

Andrew Grant DeYoung (1974 - 2011)

Andrew Grant DeYoung On October 13, 1995, Andrew DeYoung was convicted of the murders of his parents, Gary and Kathryn DeYoung, as well as his 14-year-old sister, Sarah. According to the prosecution, DeYoung killed his family in order to collect an inheritance from their estate, which DeYoung estimated to be worth approximately $480,000.  On June […]

John David Duty (1952 - 2010)

John David Duty was born on April 25, 1952, to Charles Houston Duty and Mildred Duty Hall. Duty stated that he had been raised in a broken home, his mother having remarried twice. His family included two brothers, a sister, a half-brother, and a half-sister. For some time, Duty went by the name of John […]

James Homer Elledge (1942 - 2001)

In 1965, Elledge robbed a Western Union office in Albuquerque, New Mexico. During this robbery, he also kidnapped a female attendant. He was sentenced to prison in Santa Fe, New Mexico and, after his parole, he wound up in Seattle, Washington, where he killed motel manager Bertha Lush in 1974 by beating her to death […]

Eric Nenno (1961 - 2008)

Nicole Benton from Hockley, Texas disappeared on March 23, 1995, during a birthday party organized by and for her father Buddy Benton, a friend and a neighbor of Eric Nenno who lived a few houses down the road of the Bentons. The house where Nenno was residing belonged to the Bentons.  As Buddy was playing […]