Every day, the number of open criminal cases around the world increases. People continue to surprise with their cruelty, greed and self-interest. Regardless, most offenses are forgotten with time, since even after the biggest thefts, people regain their wealth. The situation is different for crimes that result in the loss of the most valuable thing: life. Find out more at dallas-yes.
Dallas has repeatedly made headlines in the world’s media for very sad causes, including sensational crimes. In this article, we tell you about the most high-profile of them.
Criminal cases related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy
Only the deaf could not have heard that John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, had been killed in Dallas. The case was so high-profile that it was actively discussed for over a decade. The tragedy took place on Elm Street on November 22, 1963. Kennedy had just arrived in Texas as part of his electoral campaign. His presidential limousine, which his wife and several security guards were riding as well, was on its way to the exhibition center. Despite his team’s advice, Kennedy instantly refused to lower the car’s roof. He believed that this could bring him closer to the people who gathered in the city’s streets to congratulate him. This nuance proved to be important for the killer, who fired several shots into the president’s head with a rifle.
Almost immediately after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the main suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, was captured. However, he was killed two days after the crime was committed, on November 24, 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald was shot and killed in the basement of the Dallas Police Department by local nightclub owner Jack Ruby. Dozens of police officers led the suspect to a car and drove him to a more secure area, while millions of TV viewers witnessed another high-profile crime. As Jack Ruby stated, he assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald to avenge John F. Kennedy. However, the most exciting events were still to come. Without waiting for a court ruling on the murder of the key suspect, Jack Ruby died of lung cancer.
A series of strange coincidences resulted in the deaths of all those involved in the president’s assassination. As a result, for decades, hundreds of theories have spread among people about what really happened, making Dallas an infamous city around the world.
Serial murders of women in Dallas
The story of Billy Chemirmir stirred up the entire city. A Kenyan native who resided in the United States with a green card his entire life has gained a worldwide reputation as a brutal serial killer.
Chemirmir was sentenced to short prison terms for drunk driving in 2010 and 2011, assaulting an old woman in 2012 and entering the territory of an elderly boarding house in 2016. However, it turned out that these were not the worst offenses that the man was capable of. In 2018, Billy Chemirmir was accused of a terrible crime: a series of murders. Chemirmir disguised himself as a medical worker and entered lonely old women’s houses, where he strangled them with pillows. All of his victims were fairly wealthy, fair-skinned women. Officially, his involvement in two murders has been proven, but according to an unofficial version of the investigation, the man murdered more than twenty women. For this, he received a life term in prison. Several psychologists attempted to determine why Chemirmir only killed fair-skinned elderly women. However, the motives for the crimes could not be fully determined as Billy Chemirmir was murdered by his cellmate in 2023 for making inappropriate sexual comments about his minor children.
Crime committed against a child: the murder of Amber Rene Hagerman
The following tragic story will not leave anyone indifferent. On January 13, 1996, Amber Hagerman, who was only nine years old, went on a bike ride with her brother close to her grandmother’s house. Then, when the children arrived at the abandoned Winn-Dixie grocery store, the boy remembered his grandmother’s warning not to go far from home and decided to return. Amber, however, disobeyed the rules and continued driving down the road. 78-year-old Jimmy Cavill witnessed what happened next.
According to the single witness, a black truck suddenly stopped next to the girl, and a light-skinned man jumped out and quickly dragged her inside. Amber Hagerman’s body was found four days later in a local stream in the middle of the forest. The killer undressed the girl naked and violently murdered her, striking her neck multiple times with a sharp object.
Many years passed, but the girl’s killer was never caught since he left no evidence. However, the tragedy that happened to Amber served as a catalyst for saving thousands of other children’s lives. The girl’s mother worked with law enforcement agencies to create the AMBER (America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) Alert system. It works in such a way that it alerts as many people as possible about the missing child. This significantly increases the chances that there will be important witnesses or even those who will interfere with the attacker. Furthermore, AMBER Alert deters the kidnapper by forcing him to consider the gravity of his actions. Dozens of cases have already been reported in which criminals freed children after receiving an emergency alert themselves.
Shooting at a police station
The shooting, which occurred on July 7, 2016, at the Dallas police station was one of the bloodiest incidents for law enforcement in the United States of America. The deadliest targeted attack on police officers occurred in 1932 when six officers were killed in Missouri. However, the bloodshed in Dallas also went down in history.
The crime was committed by an African-American Micah Xavier Johnson, a 25-year-old US Armed Forces soldier who served in Afghanistan. He had never broken the law before and had always been an exemplary individual. He felt driven to take such a dreadful move since, in his perspective, all American police officers went above their official rights and shot black men out of prejudice.
He decided to shoot the Dallas officers just at the end of one of the protests over the recent police murders of black men, Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota. Since about 800 people joined the protest, the city council decided to assign 100 police officers to maintain the law and order. Micah Johnson parked his car near the protest area and began shooting at police officers. First, he killed Senior Corporal Lorne Ahrens, Officer Patrick Zamarripa and Officer Michael Krol. Several other officers and one civilian were injured.
After that, Johnson entered the building of a nearby educational institution, went up to the second floor and started shooting from the window. So he killed Sergeant Michael Smith. Other police officers had to eliminate the attacker by detonating a remote-controlled bomb as it was difficult to detain him inside the educational institution’s building. This was the first occasion in the history of the United States Police Department that an offender was killed using a robotic device.