Thurston Theodore Lewis -- Rubeville

One day after slashing both wrists in the bathroom of his home at 310 South Massey Street in Watertown, New York, the 56-year-old cornetist died at Mercy Hospital on April 17, 1941.  A musical prodigy, Lewis became a member of B. A. Rolfe's orchestra and in 1916 joined the Barnum & Bailey circus as assistant leader of the tent show's band.  For 15 seasons, until 1931, Lewis served as musical director and manager of C. B. Maddock's musical acts on the B. F. Keith vaudeville circuit.  While on the circuit, the musician scored a hit in the musical act, "Rubeville," later recreating his role on film in a Pathe Studios short.  Returning to his hometown of Watertown, New York, in 1931, Lewis became the director of both the high and junior high school bands.  According to his surviving wife, Lewis had long been ill with a liver ailment.

Joseph La Franie -- "It is of No Use..."

The 26-year-old stage actor had been drafted and was awaiting a call to go to camp when he traveled to Brooklyn, New York, to visit his aunt.  On November 25, 1917, tormented by paranoid delusions, La Franie covered his head with towels and blankets in his second floor room and turned on the gas.  A letter addressed to his relatives read:  "I have been followed day after day by Secret Service men and police detectives, and I am in deadly fear of arrest as they think I am a German spy.  Yesterday and today were something terrible, and I can stand it no longer.  Good-bye and God bless you for all that you have done for me.  It is of no use while these fellow are after me."

Spencer D. Bettelheim -- Not Having a Wonderful Time

Lyceum Theatre

"Spence," as he was widely known among theatre folk, was the treasurer of Sam H. Harris Productions, the lessee of the Lyceum Theatre, and president of the Lyco Realty Corporation, whose offices were located on the second floor above the Lyceum at 149 W. Forty-fifth Street in New York City.  The Lyceum's production of Having a Wonderful Time had concluded on November 5, 1937, when Bettelheim's nephew found his uncle's body on the floor of the theatre man's office.  A .38-caliber revolver still clutched in his right hand, Bettelheim, 43, had evidently fired two practice rounds into the floor before firing a bullet into his right temple.  A decorated veteran of World War I, Bettelheim was gassed during the conflict and still suffered from a pulmonary infection.  Weeks prior to his death, he intimated to friends that the agonizing pains around his heart had become nearly unbearable.  In the absence of a suicide note, death was attributed to ill health combined with a heavy tax penalty levied against him by the IRS for accepting gratuities from ticket agencies.  Accorded a military funeral with full honors, the Bettelheim burial cortege was routed past the Lyceum Theatre out of respect for his memory.

Benita Breen -- Pills or Heart?

The 25-year-old vocalist (real name Mary Louise Breen) had been a featured singer with various "name" bands like Ted Weems, Henry King, and Bob Strong.  On November 13, 1945, Breen's body was found in bed by her mother in their home at 915 Margate Terrace in Chicago.  Police located an empty bottle of sleeping pills in the bathroom.  While a coroner's jury was unable to determine whether the death was accidental or suicide, Breen had been treated for a nervous disorder five month prior to her death.  Her father insisted that Breen had instead suffered from a heart condition.

Abraham M. Fabian -- The Artful Diversion

The son of Jacob Fabian, vice-president and principal stockholder of the Stanley-Fabian Amusement Corporation and First National Pictures, Fabian, 31, had been the assistant treasurer of his father's corporation and an executive board member of First National before resigning due to ill health.  Shortly after his marriage in September 1926, Fabian suffered a nervous breakdown on his honeymoon from which he never fully recovered.  Fabian's wife obtained an annulment (no grounds cited) one month prior to his death.  The elder Fabian purchased a country home on Norwood Avenue in Elberon, New Jersey, and there installed his son and a full-time nurse to look after him.  In the early morning of June 1, 1927, Fabian stopped up the bathroom toilet with paper and called his nurse to unclog it.  The 15 minutes she labored on the plumbing gave the deranged man more than enough time to enter the kitchen, lie on top of the stove, and asphyxiate himself with gas.

Yoshiaki Yasuda -- Big Hit in "Little Nippon"

Yasuda, president of the Japanese Theatre Association and owner of the Fuji Theatre in what the Los Angeles Times called the city's "Little Nippon" district, was gunned down in front of his palatial home at 241 North Dittman Street at 1:30 A.M. on June 9, 1930.  The theatre owner, accompanied by his wife and their two chauffeurs, had just returned to the residence when a pair of gunmen stepped from the shadows and pumped five shots into his chest and abdomen.  One assailant pitched his .38-caliber handgun in an alley about 150 feet from the site as he fled the scene.  Yasuda, also the head of the Japanese Wrestling Association, recently brought a troupe of Asian actors to the city to promote a series of bouts featuring Japanese wrestlers.  Police theorized the unsolved crime was the result of a long-standing feud between Yasuda and others in the L.A. Japanese community.

Herbert Heckler -- The Sour Note

Throughout their two year engagement, Pearl Palmer, a 23-year-old prima donna best known for her role in Victor Herbert's opera Princess Pat, had delayed marrying Heckler, a 27-year-old opera singer from Chicago, in order to pursue a career.  On September 26, 1915, Palmer was in her studio at the Conservatory Building at No. 240 West Seventy-second Street in New York City when a depressed Heckler arrived for a visit.  Palmer complained of being ill and dispatched her beau to a pharmacy for medication.  A friend who accompanied Heckler later told authorities that the singer had burst into tears when discussing his belief that Palmer no longer loved him.  Returning to her studio, Heckler entered the room alone.  Moments later, the sounds of a violent argument were heard followed by four gunshots in quick succession.  When police forced the door they discovered Palmer unconscious, a bullet lodged in her head and two in her body.  She died shortly afterward in the Polyclinic Hospital.  Heckler, the spurned suitor, lay dead in the center of the room, a gaping gunshot wound in his forehead.

Timothy Colwell -- Crime Watch Gone Wrong

A respected jazz saxophonist who played with the British musical institution Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen in the 1960s, the 65-year-old musician continued to receive regular BBC airplay with his group, Timothy Colwell's Jazzfriends.  On the evening of September 19, 2003, Colwell was at home in his ground-floor flat in Lymington, Hants when someone outside began shouting and banging on his windows.  The musician had been a target of verbal taunts, graffiti abuse, and violent threats for months since phoning police to report truants congregating in a park near his home.  His practice of sometimes photographing the neighborhood toughs led the youths to falsely brand him as a pedophile.  Two weeks earlier, someone (later identified as Richard Harris) crashed a tractor tire through his living room window.  When Colwell left his apartment on what proved to be the final night of his life and walked to the nearby playground to investigate the disturbance, Richard Harris, 20, and Daniel Newham, 17, knocked the elderly man to the ground, and repeatedly punched and kicked him.  Neighbors intervened, but Colwell collapsed as he walked back to his flat.  Shortly afterwards, he died in hospital without regaining consciousness.  While Colwell had a previous heart condition, it was ruled that the assault was so brutal that it could have caused a heart attack in a healthy 65-year-old while the kicks to his head were sufficient to have killed a 25-year-old.

Harris, who boasted of liking to hurt animals and acting like a vigilante, was on parole for two earlier violent assaults at the time of his attack on Colwell.  Conversely, Newham had no previous convictions and apparently came from a decent, supportive family.  At trial in February 2005, both men were cleared of murder charges, but found guilty of manslaughter.  At a hearing in London in April 2005, Mrs. Justice Harlett sentenced Richard Harris to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of three years before being considered for parole.  "It is clear that, whether or not you are mentally disordered," the judge told Harris, "your personality is such that you are likely to remain a danger for many years to come, possibly forever."  Daniel Newham was sentenced to five years youth custody."