Mysterious Days: 1 May

Henri Landru
1915.
French mass murderer Henri Landru takes out his first lovelorn ad in the Parisian newspaper Le Journal and in this fashion the "French Bluebeard" lures at least ten victims to their death.

Alvin Karpis
1936.
Alvin Karpis, who follows John Dillinger as "Public Enemy Number One" is captured in New Orleans by J. Edgar Hoover and a small army of G-Men. Sentenced to life imprisonment at Alcatraz, he is eventually released. He will die in Europe in 1979.


1939.
Batman, the first and best-known of the costumed comic book heroes to utilize detective skills in addition to fisticuffs, debuts in issue 27 of Detective Comics. His first story is "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate." In the tale "the Batman" battles Alfred Stryker, a business executive turned murderer, finally tossing him into a vat of acid and leaving him with the epitaph: "A fitting end for his kind." Batman would become less grim as the years passed (only to be resurrected as the very grim "Dark Knight" in the 1990s.