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January 16, 2023. 60 years, 76 days. United States. Longest served prisoner in California history. Accused of stabbing and killing fifteen-year-old Marlene Miller with scissors in the small town of Hanford. Originally sentenced to death for murder but changed to life in prison in the 1970s.
- 10 Richard Honeck: 64 Years
- 9 William Heirens: 65 Years
- 8 Warren Nutter: 65 Years
- 7 Sammie Robinson: 66 Years
- 6 Johnson Van Dyke Grigsby: 66 Years
- 5 Walter Bourque: 67+ Years
- 4 Joseph Ligon: 68 Years
- 3 John Phillips: 69 Years
- 2 Paul Geidel: 69 Years
- 1 Francis Smith: 72 Years
Richard Honeck was nabbed way back in 1899 for the murder of a former high school classmate. Honeck and an accomplice named Herman Hundhausen had been arrested early that year after a series of fires broke out in the small town of Hermann, Missouri. Cops thought they were intentionally set, but for a while, they couldn’t prove it. That was until Ho...
Late in 1945, Chicago police were dealing with a terrifying serial killer. Cops first found a woman named Josephine Ross dead from unnatural causes. Then, weeks later, another woman, Francis Brown, was found murdered. Her death caused a citywide uproar. There had been a terrifying message scrawled in lipstick on the wall near her body. “For heaven’...
Warren Nutter was just 18 years old when he made a series of terrible decisions that would alter the course of the rest of his life. It all started early in 1956 when he was arrested with a group of friends for a gas station robbery. Cops hauled them into an Iowa jail and put the young men in a holding cell. Somehow, Nutter escaped. Not content to ...
Samme Robinson was just 16 years old when he was sent to Louisiana’s infamous Angola Prison in 1953. He had been arrested and convicted on an aggravated rape charge and was sent to serve out what should have been a medium-length sentence there. But in 1954, he killed another inmate during a fight inside the prison. The state charged Robinson with t...
Johnson Van Dyke Grigsby first went to prison way back in 1908. That year, he had been playing cards in an Indiana bar when another man caused a disturbance. The other man accused Grigsby of cheating and challenged him to a fight. The two tussled, and Grigsby stabbed the man. Then, he went back to playing cards. The man didn’t die right away, thoug...
By the end of it all, Walter Bourque may wind up at the very top of this infamous list. His prison tale started way back in 1955. That year, he was convicted of the murder of a four-year-old Boston girl named Patricia Johnson. Cops say he killed her because he was afraid she was going to tell someone he’d been molesting her. He had been just 17 yea...
Joseph Ligon was born in the Deep South and moved to Philadelphia when he was just 13 years old. But what should have been a fresh start for the rest of his life didn’t turn out so well. Two years after the move, Ligon and a group of friends were hanging out one Friday night. The year was 1953, and the kids were looking for trouble. Ligon didn’t kn...
John Phillips’s case is one of the more bizarre—and lesser-documented—of all these prison sentences. It all started back in 1952 when the North Carolina native was just 18 years old. In July that year, he was arrested on a first-degree rape charge. Cops caught him the day after he’d reportedly assaulted a four-year-old girl. When they interviewed h...
Paul Geidel was born into a tough home way back in 1894 and then orphaned when he was just seven years old. In his early teens, he moved to New York City. By 17, he was working as a bellhop at a high-end hotel in the big town. But he couldn’t keep up with the demanding job, and after a while, he was fired. Gone on a bender days after losing the gig...
Francis Smith was born in 1924 and lived most of the first quarter of his life in relative anonymity. But in 1949, he became wrapped up in one of Connecticut’s most notorious murder cases ever. The 25-year-old was accused of shooting to death a night security guard at the Indian Harbor Yacht Club in Greenwich, Connecticut. Cops knew they were looki...
Jul 5, 2023 · Likely the longest-serving prisoner in America, he’s been paroled into a Connecticut nursing home. But he’s still not out. By Annalisa Quinn Globe Staff,Updated July 5, 2023, 5:41 a.m. Frank ...
- Annalisa Quinn
Nov 25, 2019 · Launched in the 1980s, the war on drugs and the emergence of private, for-profit prison systems led to the imprisonment of many minorities. Other scholarship has shown that the modern mass ...
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Jun 10, 2021 · Raymond Riles (pictured), the nation’s longest serving death-row prisoner, has been resentenced to life.. On June 9, 2021, Harris County, Texas District Judge Ana Martinez imposed the life sentence via a Zoom teleconference after county prosecutors determined that Riles was incompetent to participate in a capital resentencing trial and, if again sentenced to death, would never be mentally ...
Nov 12, 2021 · But Peltier is still alive, now 77 and ailing in a Florida penitentiary. He is perhaps America’s longest-serving political prisoner, a holdover from a different era of justice. Here in 2021, his story still moves hundreds of thousands of people to sign petitions in support of his release.
Feb 14, 2022 · Thomas Silverstein was an explosively violent, lifelong convict who murdered four people while imprisoned. And his death in 2019 marked the end of an era — as he had become the longest-held prisoner in solitary confinement in American history. Violently bullied as a child, Silverstein was raised to respond in kind.
