1960s Timeline

Mar. 15, 1963 - A glamorous American opera soprano clad in a scarlet nightgown was found shot dead today in her room in a fashionable...

Mar. 13, 1963 - Nathan Leopold (second from left in 1924), a man who has spent his adult life atoning for a crime committed in his youth,...

Mar. 11, 1963 - Two former convicts confessed today to kidnapping two Hollywood police detectives, but each accused each the other of...

Mar. 10, 1963 - Ian James Campbell (pictured), a 31-year-old Los Angeles policeman, was kidnapped with a fellow officer, Karl Hettinger,...

Feb. 10, 1963 - A wealthy Maryland farmer turned himself in to police today after a statewide alarm was broadcast for his arrest on...

Feb. 9, 1963 - A statewide alarm was broadcast today for the arrest of a socially prominent Southern Maryland tobacco farmer charged with...

Feb. 2, 1963 - They call themselves Hell’s Angels. Their symbol is the grinning Death’s Head. Perhaps you’ve seen them on the highways of...

Jan. 31, 1963 - The Ohio Pardon and Parole Commission today rejected a clemency plea from Dr. Sam Sheppard (pictured left in the early...

Jan. 28, 1963 - Love has come to Dr. Sam Sheppard in the prison where he is serving a life sentence for the 1954 murder of his wife...

Jan. 27, 1963 - A 17-year-old Pawtucket, R.I., high school student and star athlete spent much of the day telling police how he slashed...

Jan. 24, 1963 - A condemned killer today won a last-minute stay of execution despite his bitter protests. He had denounced Norman...

Dec. 17, 1962 - The myth of Alcatraz was shredded today as investigators tried to discover how a convict escaped and then survived the...

Dec. 8, 1962 - Massachusetts State Police said today that 14-year-old Thomas Cadigan, brother of slain Margaret Cadigan (pictured), 17,...

Dec. 5, 1962 - A 21-year-old woman was strangled with a pillowcase today in the Boston area’s seventh strangling of a woman since...

Nov. 21, 1962 - In a suburb of Lille, France today, Jacques Vasseur (pictured) left his mother’s house for the first time in 17 years....

Nov. 12, 1962 - A collection of rare coins was stolen early today from the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Mo. John W. Snyder,...

Nov. 10, 1962 - A Belgian jury acquitted a young mother and four other persons today in the “mercy-killing” of the woman’s week-old...

Nov. 5, 1962 - In Liège, Belgium today, the mother and grandmother of a deformed thalidomide baby wept in court as they gave evidence of...

Oct. 25, 1962 - Abe Turner (pictured left with Bobby Fischer in 1958), a chess master who was one of the top players in the country, was...

Oct. 9, 1962 - Winnie Ruth Judd (pictured in 1932), the “trunk murderer” of the early 1930s, escaped last night from the Arizona State...