Partners in Crime Trivia Quiz

Answer: Burke and Hare

William Burke and William Hare have gone down in history as The Bodysnatchers who sold fresh corpses to Dr. Robert Knox for use in his anatomy classes at the Edinburgh Medical College. Popular lore has them digging up bodies from fresh graves, but that's just one more urban legend. With the exception of the first body (a lodger had died owing Burke rent, so they stole his body from its coffin prior to burial and sold it to Dr. Knox), Burke and Hare murdered the rest of the people whose bodies graced Dr. Knox's dissecting table. Burke and Hare would lure their victims to the tenement house where they lived with Burke's common-law wife Helen MacDougal, and Hare's wife Margaret, and dispose of them there.

Another tenant of the tenement house discovered the body of their last victim and called in the police.

By the time the police arrived, Burke and Hare had already sold the body, but it was not long before their crimes were pinned to them, and they were charged with 16 counts of murder. Hare turned state's evidence, and was imprisoned for his part in the murders.

After his release he left Edinburgh and moved to England and nothing more was heard of him, although he was rumoured to have become a beggar. Burke was hanged. Helen MacDougal had a verdict of Not Proven returned against her and she was released. Margaret Hare escaped lynching and fled back to Ireland. Dr. Knox was not charged, but his career was on the rocks. He moved to London where he died in 1862. The case resulted in the passing of the Anatomy Act of 1832, which gave schools of medicine honest access to bodies for the purposes of teaching anatomy.

Answer: Sawney Bean

The legend of Alexander 'Sawney' Bean and his murderous clan was first circulated in the 18th century, although the events are supposed to have taken place in the early to mid-fifteenth century in the Scottish lowlands. There is some speculation that the legend of Sawney Bean was circulated by agents of the Hanoverian rulers, Georges I and II, to discredit the Jacobites who had taken part in the rebellions of 1715 and 1745.

The rebellions were intended to restore the Stuart monarchy - James Francis Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender, and Charles Edward Stuart (aka Bonnie Prince Charlie), the Young Pretender, were the son and grandson of the deposed James II/VII.

The stories claim that Sawney Bean and his wife terrorized the countryside in Galloway for 25 years, murdering the travellers they ambushed on the roads, and then dragging the bodies away to their cave to dine on their victims. According to the legend, when the authorities caught up with them the cannibalistic Bean clan numbered some 48 children, grandchildren and great-gandchildren - all born of incestuous relationships - living in a honeycomb of caves festooned with the pickled arms, legs, torsos and other choice bits of the murdered travellers.

The band of fearless citizens who finally tracked them down was headed by none other than King James V himself. Historians doubt the legitimacy of the tale because there's no official record of James V having done any such thing, and you'd think there would be. There are, however, records of instances of cannibalism during the great famines that occurred in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries in Scotland, and that's probably where the Hanoverians got the idea for the Sawney Bean legend.

Answer: Leopold and Loeb

In 1924, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, both aged 19, murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks for no other reason than Loeb had a fantasy about committing the perfect crime and Leopold would do anything for Loeb. Both killers had genius IQs (Loeb's in the 160 range, Leopold's was pegged at 215+) but that doesn't seem to have helped them to be smarter at covering their tracks than any other murderer, and they were quickly apprehended, offered guilty pleas, and sentenced on September 19, 1924 to spend the rest of their natural lives in prison.

Their lawyer, the famed Clarence Darrow, is credited with saving them from the death penalty. On January 28, 1936 Loeb's cellmate attacked him with a straight razor, claiming that Loeb had made unwanted homosexual advances.

Despite the efforts of a team of surgeons, Loeb died. He was 32. Leopold was paroled and released in March 1958. He moved to Puerto Rico, earned a Master's Degree at the University of Puerto Rico, wrote a book called "The Birds of Puerto Rico" and married the widow of a local doctor.

He died in 1971, aged 66.

Answer: Fred and Rosemary West

This depraved pair murdered ten young women and girls (including their own daughter and Fred's daughter by his first wife) over a period of 16 years, burying the bodies in their house and in the garden at 25 Cromwell Road, Gloucester, U.K. Fred came into this marriage-made-in-hell with two previous murders to his discredit - that of his first wife and a former mistress. Fred committed suicide in prison before being sentenced. Rosemary is serving ten life sentences for ten murders.

Answer: Ian Brady and Myra Hindley

The horrific crimes of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley have been well-documented (Emlyn Williams' book "Beyond Belief" published in 1968 is probably the best examination of the case). Suffice it to say that Brady was a sociopath who idolized Hitler and all things Nazi, collected (and created) pornography, and thought the Marquis de Sade had some very good ideas. Myra Hindley was an average, seemingly well-adjusted girl until she met and fell in love with Brady. Psychologists who examined the pair after their arrest determined that it was Myra's masochistic tendencies that caused her to go along with Brady's sadistic actions and beliefs.

She was completely under Brady's spell and was dominated by him. The pair was apprehended after they had attempted to involve Myra's young brother-in-law in their last murder. David Smith was no angel, and he shared many of Brady's strange theories, but he was aghast at what he had seen when Brady murdered seventeen-year-old Edward Evans by striking him repeatedly with a hatchet in the living room of the house Brady shared with Hindley and her grandmother.

The following day Smith went to the police, and the rest is history. In 1966, Brady and Hindley were sentenced to imprisonment for life, with no hope of parole. Brady received three life terms for the murders of Leslie Ann Downey, 10, John Kilbride, 12, and Edward Evans. Hindley received two life terms for the murders of Leslie Ann Downey and Edward Evans. It is highly probable that there were several other victims, but nothing could be proved conclusively. Myra Hindley died of a heart attack in November, 2000 at the age of 60. She had repeatedly declared her remorse for her part in the killings. In 1985 Brady was declared insane and is now confined to Broadmoor, Britain's prison for the criminally insane.

Answer: Clutter

Hickock and Smith met while serving time in prison. Hickock, who exhibited above average intelligence, was a sociopath and paedophile, while Smith, who also had above average intelligence and was gifted both musically and artistically, had been abused as a child and had grown up to be a misfit who blamed others for his failures in life.

They hatched the plot to rob the Clutters after Floyd Wells, a fellow inmate who had been one of Clutters ranch hands, told them that Herbert Clutter had a safe in his house in which he kept "thousands of dollars".

After their release from prison, the two journeyed to Holcomb, Kansas, and broke into the ranch house. When they found no safe containing any money at all, they brutally tortured, then killed the four family members - Herbert and Bonnie Clutter, their sixteen-year-old daughter Nancy and their fifteen-year-old son Kenyon.

The case became the subject of a non-fiction novel by Truman Capote "In Cold Blood".

Answer: Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme

Pauline Parker, 16, and Juliet Hulme, 15, were arrested in Christchurch, New Zealand, on June 23, 1954, the day after they had beaten Pauline's mother, Honora Rieper, to death. (Honora Rieper was in actual fact legally Honora Parker, but she used the surname of her common law husband.) The two girls had developed an obsessive relationship that troubled both sets of parents, and Pauline's mother had sought the aid of Juliet's parents in separating the girls.

When the Hulme's marriage foundered, Juliet's father announced his intention of moving to South Africa and taking Juliet with him.

The girls decided that Pauline would go too. When Pauline's mother nixed the plan, the pair decided on the murder. Because of their youth, they served only five years in prison, and were released on the proviso that they never contact one another again. Juliet Hulme now lives in Scotland and writes detective fiction under the name Anne Perry, and Pauline Parker lives in England as a recluse, using the name Hilary Nathan.

They have abided by the terms of their release.

Answer: Beresford

We first meet Tommy Beresford and Prudence 'Tuppence' Cowley as a young couple in their twenties in Agatha Christie's second book(which creaks with age!) called "The Secret Adversary", published in 1922. Unlike Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, who barely age at all between the first and last books in which they appear, Christie allowed the Beresfords to age appropriately. Through the years, they were featured in five books. "Partners in Crime" (published in 1929) is a collection of short stories featuring Tommy and Tuppence, now married and in their late twenties/early thirties.

In 1941, Christie published the third book featuring the Beresfords, "N or M?" (which I consider to be the best of the lot), by which time they're in their mid-forties, with adult twin children.

In "By the Pricking of My Thumbs" (1968) Tommy and Tuppence are in their early sixties, and in the last book in which they appear, "Postern of Fate" (1973), they are in their seventies. In the 1980s James Warwick and Francesca Ennis brought Tommy and Tuppence to life on British television in the series "Partners in Crime", and in 2006 by Anthony Andrews and Greta Scaachi portrayed the Beresfords in "By the Pricking of My Thumbs" (which, inexplicably, features Miss Marple who is not in the original book, turns Tuppence into a borderline alcoholic, Tommy into a neglectful husband, and completely louses up the plot! Dame Agatha must be rolling in her grave.)

Answer: Nick and Nora Charles

There's a school of thought that holds that Hammett modelled the witty, sophisticated Nora Charles on his lover Lillian Hellman. Be that as it may, the screen adaptation of Hammett's book "The Thin Man" in 1934 proved to be so popular that Powell and Loy were paired in five more Nick-and-Nora screen adventures.

Although "The Thin Man" is actually the villain of Hammett's book, casting the trim, slim Powell as Hammett's overweight, out-of-condition Nick caused some confusion for audiences, and the urbane Mr. Powell became known as the Thin Man. Even now, some 70 plus years after they first appeared on the silver screen together as Nick and Nora one can appreciate the chemistry between Powell and Loy.

Answer: The white girl

Ellie Hanley, the Colleen Bawn, was 15 in 1819 when she attracted the attention of the local squire of Ballycahane, County Clare, one John Scanlan. She resisted his advances, however, holding out for marriage. He was, after all, of the landed gentry, while she was merely a farmer's daughter, and orphaned to boot. What a feather in her cap marriage to the dashing Mr. Scanlan would be! Eager to get Ellie into bed, Scanlan proposed that they elope.

She promptly raided her guardian's strongbox and relieved him of his life savings -over 120 pounds, and the pair made off to Glin in Limerick with the money and Stephen Sullivan, Scanlan's former batman and now his manservant. Scanlan had arranged for a defrocked priest to perform the marriage ceremony in Glin, and was horrified to discover that although the priest was defrocked, the marriage was legal - a twist he hadn't considered. Knowing that his mother would never accept Ellie as his wife (because she wasn't a 'lady'), Scanlan conspired with Sullivan to dispose of the unwanted bride.

They took Ellie for a midnight boat trip on the lake on July 14, three weeks after the wedding. Scanlan rowed out to the middle of the lake - some four miles - and there Sullivan beat Ellie to death with the butt of a shotgun. They tied the girl's body to a large stone and tipped her overboard. Unfortunately for Scanlan and Sullivan, Ellie's body washed up on the shore of the lake in the following September, and she was identified by her clothing. A hue and cry ensued. After dodging all over Ireland, Scanlan and Sullivan eventually returned to Ballycahane in November. They planned to lie low in Scanlan's ancestral home. It was there that the police tracked them down, acting on a tip from a neighbour. Scanlan and Sullivan were tried and sentenced to death. They were hanged in 1820, on July 25 and 27 respectively. The tale of the Colleen Bawn featured all the ingredients of a Victorian morality tale - an innocent girl, a wicked seducer and an evil henchman - and the Victorians lapped it up, seemingly blind to the fact that Ellie had robbed her guardian of his life's savings!