Category: News

Meet the team behind The True CRIME Museum! Shan: Shan Smith - Museum Assistant Job title: Museum Assistant Fun fact: “I am a freelance illustrator alongside this job! Which criminal would you most like to meet? “Definitely Harold Shipman to try and understand if he ever actually wanted to be a doctor to care for people, or if his motivations were malicious all along”. What’s your best story from working at the TCM? “Reece and I were filming TikToks after we closed the Museum at the end of the day and he leaned on the chain across Haigh’s display (which is not strong enough to support body weight) and he immediately fell to the floor onto his bottom!” Reece: Reece Edwards - Junior Museum Assistant Job title: Junior Museum Assistant Fun fact: “My favourite TV show is Doctor Who and when I saw Christopher Eccleston filming outside the Museum, I was too scared to ask for a picture with him”. Which criminal would you most like to meet? “I’d...

Strange Exits from Hastings It’s time for another TRUE CRIME book review and our customers and followers will NOT want to miss this one!!! At the True CRIME Museum, you will find FOUR FASCINATING items once belonging to victim MAUD MARSH. She was murdered by her husband George Chapman, a one-time Hastings barber, who is believed by many to have been JACK THE RIPPER. Items belonging to The Hastings' Ripper Suspect's victim, Maud Marsh, on display at The True CRIME Museum's ERA of the RIPPER Exhibition! Author Helena Wojtczak is the undisputed AUTHORITY on the life and crimes of George Chapman and if you have an interest in JTR, I URGE you to grab a copy of her book, ‘JACK THE RIPPER AT LAST’ from the True CRIME Museum shop. Her latest work, ‘STRANGE EXITS FROM HASTINGS’, is an anthology of thirty three deliciously dark tales of murder, misery and misfortune befalling Hastings residents and visitors from 1804 -1948. The title page states; “Life is infinitely...

Here at The True CRIME Museum we regularly get sent CRIME books for review on our news page and for sale in our Museum Shop. Curator Joel Griggs needs little encouragement to PORE over every morbid, sordid page. TODAY, he reviews a new title, ‘SERIAL KILLER – MEANS. MOTIVE. OPPORTUNITY’, published by Welbeck and written by Ben Biggs. “JUST what the world needs.” I thought, “ANOTHER Serial Killer Anthology!” But before putting it on the pile of books for review on the True CRIME Museum front desk, I noticed it was written by former REAL CRIME MAGAZINE Editor, Ben Biggs. I was a paid-up subscriber and always a BIG FAN of Real Crime Magazine. The editorial style very much mirrored what we have tried to create at the Museum. The layout and imagery were GORGEOUS and the written information BITESIZE. And WE have her BODICE! Ben’s book, ‘SERIAL KILLER – MEANS. MOTIVE. OPPORTUNITY.’ adheres to this format, with less emphasis on the sumptuous and lurid visuals. What you get is the lowdown on 100 of the world’s deadliest murderers in easily digestible,...

Poisoning was the favoured method for housewives dispatching their husbands in the Victorian era. Commonly used was cyanide – a rat poison widely available at the local chemist! Asides from it’s availability and deadliness, cyanide was also favoured for being – at the time – quite difficult to detect after death. The decline of cyanide poisoning came about with the invention of the Prussian Blue test, a relatively straightforward way of testing for the presence of cyanide. The poisons we’ll be looking at here are a little different though. The most potent poison on this list is up to 50,000 TIMES more potent than cyanide. Strychnine Strychnine, like most poisons, comes from a plant – Strychnos Nux-Vomica. It causes the muscles to spasm uncontrollably and is known for causing an excruciating death. Due the effect that Strychnine has on muscles, victims often end up with what is called a ‘Rictus Grin’, where the muscles in the face contract to make it look like the affected person is smiling. It’s known as the poison of...

Prisoners on Death Row don’t get to make a lot of decisions, but there’s one big one that comes right before they meet their end – their last meal. We’re going to look at the last meals of some of most NOTORIOUS serial killers in history! Killer clown John Wayne Gacy was sentenced to death for the murder of at least 33 young men. His last meal consisted of a dozen deep-fried shrimp, a bucket of original recipe chicken from KFC, French fries, a pound of strawberries, and a bottle of diet Coke. Infamous serial killer Ted Bundy declined to choose and got the traditional last meal - steak cooked medium-rare, eggs over easy, hash browns, toast with butter and jam, milk, and juice. He also refused to eat this. Murderer Aileen Wuornos was a prostitute who murdered seven men in Florida between 1989 – 1990. She was sentenced to death for six of the murders and was executed on 9 October 2002. Wuornos ALSO declined...

We scoured the web and came up with 7 CRAZY UK Laws. We're not entirely sure why all of these exist - but they're worth sharing!! 1. It is illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament wearing a suit of armour. A 1313 Statute Forbidding Bearing of Armour forbids members of Parliament from entering the House while wearing armour or carrying weapons. This weird law stems from a time of intense political turmoil where there was a real worry that people would turn up and start swinging a sword around! 2. It’s considered treason to place a stamp the wrong way up. Placing a postage stamp bearing the monarch’s head upside down on an envelope is considered as act of treason. Also, defacing or destroying anything bearing a likeness of the monarch is illegal, which means damaging notes or coins as well as stamps! 3. It’s illegal to gamble in a library. The Library Offenses Act of 1898 makes it illegal to gamble in a library. The law also prohibits abusive or obscene language. We’re not sure...

I figured we'd talk about a contraption that's a cut above the rest... the guillotine! The guillotine became a popular method of execution during the French Revolution and became an iconic symbol of what was known as the 'Reign of Terror '. Initially it was known as the louisette but was later renamed the guillotine after Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. Guillotin was a physician who, in 1789, suggested to the National Assembly that capital punishments should always be carried out by decapitation "by means of a simple mechanism". Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin Interestingly though, Guillotin was ANTI death penalty! He loathed the fact that the contraption was named after him. He thought that the guillotine would make it a more swift and painless death than the other (somewhat less successful) methods of execution. The actual inventor of the prototype was a man named Tobias Schmidt working with the king's physician, Antoine Louis. The history of guillotine style machines stretches a long way back before the...