William Henry Bury (1859–1889) was suspected of being the notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper. Hanged for the murder of his wife Ellen, he was the last person executed in Dundee, Scotland. Orphaned at an early age, he was dismissed from a clerk job for theft, and became a street peddler. In 1887, he was married in London; in January 1889, they moved to Dundee. The following month, he strangled his wife with a rope, stabbed her dead body with a penknife, and hid the corpse in a box in their room. A few days later, he presented himself to the local police and was arrested for her murder. This was shortly after the height of the London Whitechapel murders, which were attributed to the unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper. Bury's previous abode near Whitechapel and the similarities between the Ripper's crimes and Bury's led the press and executioner James Berry to suggest that Bury was the Ripper. He protested his innocence in the Ripper crimes, and the police discounted him as a suspect. Later authors have built on the earlier accusations, but the idea that Bury was the Ripper is not widely accepted. (Full article...)
1965 – Eli Cohen, a spy who is credited with gathering significant intelligence for Israel in the Six-Day War against Syria, was publicly hanged after having been captured four months earlier.
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