William King Thomas
William King Thomas (born: Alexander Keith Jr. ) (born November 13, 1827 in Halkirk , Scotland , † December 16, 1875 in Bremerhaven ) was a Canadian criminal and mass murderer , whose most famous - and at the same time last - act was the attack on the ship Moselle was.
Life
Alexander Keith Jr., called "Sandy", was born to John Keith in Halkirk, Scotland. In 1836 his parents emigrated with him and his two siblings to Halifax in Canada, where his uncle Alexander Keith sen. as the founder of Alexander Keith's Brewery brought wealth and political influence.
In the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865, he is said to have been a blockade breaker with a ship and was taken prisoner. He was also suspected of having committed an explosives attack. By 1864 he had finally adopted his original alias William King Thomas and had to flee the USA because he had made too many enemies on both sides. He lived in Vienna , Linz and Leipzig and for a long time in or near Dresden ; here he married.
He led a lavish life. He lost his considerable fortune through speculation. He wanted to solve his money problems through an insurance fraud in which he insured a worthless cargo at a very high rate and then sank the ship with explosives. In 1873 he ordered a watch from a watchmaker, which was supposed to trigger an explosion of the explosive Lithofracteur ten days after it was put into operation . In 1875 he assembled the bomb, disguised as a harmless freight barrel.
Keith made his first attempt in June 1875 when he sent a barrel filled with explosives to New York on the Lloyd steamer Rhine , which he had insured in London for 9,000 pounds (around 850,000 pounds in today's purchasing power). He himself followed the ship on the steamer Republic , but after arriving in New York found that the ignition mechanism had failed and the bomb had not detonated. In a further attempt, the paymaster of the steamer Celtic refused to acknowledge receipt of a box allegedly filled with dollar coins without first inspecting the contents. On the third attempt, Keith wanted to have the explosives barrel with the clockwork set in motion in Bremerhaven loaded onto the emigrant ship Mosel of the North German Lloyd . He himself wanted to disembark in Southampton . The Moselle was to explode and sink with the 400 people on board during the crossing across the Atlantic . When the bin was loaded on December 11, 1875, it slipped out of the hand of the porters, hit the pavement and exploded. The enormous destructive force left 83 dead and around 200 injured.
Thomas was already on board and shot himself two bullets in the head in his cabin, but was not immediately dead. He confessed to the act and died about six days later in a Bremerhaven hospital. His severed head was in the Bremen Crime Museum until 1944 or 1945 and was destroyed in an explosion. A plaque on the animal grottoes in Bremerhaven commemorates the attack.
literature
- Herbert Black Forest : The Great Bremen Lexicon . 2nd, updated, revised and expanded edition. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-693-X .
- Ann Larabee: The Dynamite Fiend: The Chilling Tale of a Confederate Spy, Con Artist, and Mass Murderer . Palgrave Macmillan , 2005, ISBN 9781403967947 .
Web link
- German history: When the infernal machine made Bremerhaven tremble with a biography of William King Thomas on spiegel.de
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Thomas, William King |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Keith, Alexander |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Canadian assassin |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 13, 1827 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Halkirk , Scotland |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 16, 1875 |
| Place of death | Bremerhaven |