This day in history: On this day (March 12) in 1979, three brothers — Linwood, James and Anthony Briley — began a series of random home invasions and murders that terrorized the city of Richmond, Virginia and its suburbs over a period of more than seven months, starting with their attempt to burn a married couple to death. On March 21, they would kill the first of 11 victims, a vending machine salesman.
The following is a description from _The Briley Brothers: The True Story of The Slaying Brothers: Historical Serial Killers and Murderers_:
"As reported in this book, the Briley gang were responsible for the killing of 11 people (among these, a 5-year-old boy and his pregnant mother), but possibly as many as 20. Unlike most criminals, however, the Briley gang's break-ins and robberies were purely incidental—mere excuses for rape and vicious thrill-kills. When authorities (aided by plea-bargaining Duncan Meekins) discovered the whole truth, even their tough skins crawled. Nothing in Virginian history approached the depravities, many of which were committed within miles of the Briley home, where single father James Sr. padlocked himself into his bedroom every night. But this true crime story did not end with the arrests and murder convictions of the Briley gang. Linwood, younger brother James, and 6 other Mecklenburg death-row inmates, hatched an incredible plan of trickery and manipulation—and escaped from the “state-of-the-art” facility on May 31, 1984. The biggest death-row break-out in American history."
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