Highlighted crime
story of the week -
On June 26, 1957, Margaret Harold was shot and killed while
out for a drive with her boyfriend near Annapolis, Maryland. Her killer swerved
in front of the couple’s car, approached with a .38 revolver, and shot Harold
in the side of the face, while her boyfriend managed to escape. Investigating
police found an abandoned building nearby, filled with pornographic pictures,
but its full significance would not be revealed until nearly two years later.
Early in 1959, the Jackson family was driving along a dirt
road in Virginia, returning home, when they were forced to stop and abducted at
gunpoint. Two months later, two men came across the bodies of Carroll Jackson
and his one year-old daughter Janet, dumped in a remote area of Fredericksburg,
Virginia. A short time later, Mildred Jackson and her five-year-old daughter
Susan were found buried in a shallow grave, just outside the abandoned building
that police had discovered when investigating Harold’s murder.
Mildred had been brutally raped in the same room where the
pornographic pictures had been found two years earlier. Since investigators
were reasonably certain that the same killer had committed the murders, the
media jumped on the story. Tips began to pour in, and although most of them
were worthless, one pointed authorities towards Melvin Rees.
Rees was eventually found in West Memphis, working as a
piano salesman. Margaret Harold’s boyfriend picked him out of a lineup and a
search of his home turned up a .38 pistol. The most damning evidence, however,
was a note paper clipped to a newspaper article about Mildred Jackson in which
Rees described his horrific crimes in detail.
Detectives found evidence that linked Rees to the slayings
of four other young women in the Maryland area as well. Rees was tried in
February 1961 for the murder of Margaret Harold and in September 1961 for the
murders of the Jackson family. He was convicted of both and sentenced to death.
His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1972, and he died in prison
from heart failure in 1995.
Check back every
Monday for a new installment of “This Week in Crime History.”
Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author
of seven nonfiction books that includes In
the Company of Evil Thirty Years of California Crime, 1950-1980. Visit
Michael’s website www.michaelthomasbarry.com
for more information. His book can be purchased from Amazon through the
following link:
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