Werewolves of London on This Day in History

 

This day in history: Warren Zevon died on this day in 2003. Zevon is best known for his hit "Werewolves of London" It was released in 1978 and made it to #21 on the US Billboard Top 40. 

It was the only single of Zevon's career. 

BBC Radio 2 listeners rated it as having the best opening line in a song: "I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand".

Zevon later said of the song, "I don't know why that became such a hit. We didn't think it was suitable to be played on the radio. It didn't become an albatross. It's better that I bring something to mind than nothing. There are times when I prefer that it was "Bridge Over Troubled Water", but I don't think bad about the song. I still think it's funny." He also described "Werewolves of London" as a novelty song, "[but] not a novelty the way, say, Steve Martin's "King Tut" is a novelty."

The song had a resurgence in popularity in 1986 due to its use in a scene in The Color of Money, where Tom Cruise dances and lip-syncs to the song in a scene in which Cruise "displayed the depths of his talents at the billiards game of 9-ball."

After Zevon's death in 2003, Jackson Browne stated that he interpreted the song as describing an upper-class English womanizer: "It's about a really well-dressed, ladies' man, a werewolf preying on little old ladies. In a way it's the Victorian nightmare, the gigolo thing."

There are other songs about Werewolves, notably, Hungry Like the Wolf by Duran Duran, Little Red Riding Hood by Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs, I Was a Teenage Werewolf by the Cramps, and my favorite: Werewolf by the Five Man Electrical Band.

Warren Zevon died of mesothelioma on September 7, 2003, aged 56, at his home in Los Angeles. His body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles. 

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The Lufthansa Heist on This Day in History

 

This day in history: The Lufthansa heist happened on this day in 1978. 

The Lufthansa heist was a robbery which took place at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport. An estimated US$5.875 million (equivalent to US$27.6 million in 2023) was stolen, with $5 million in cash and $875,000 in jewelry, making it the largest cash robbery committed on American soil at the time.

James Burke, an associate of the Lucchese crime family of New York, was reputed to be the mastermind of the robbery, but was never officially charged in connection with the crime. Burke is also alleged to have either committed or ordered the murders of many co-conspirators in the robbery, both to avoid being implicated in the heist and to keep their shares of the money for himself. The only person convicted in the Lufthansa heist was Louis Werner, an airport worker involved with the planning.

The money and jewelry have never been recovered. The heist's magnitude made it one of the longest-investigated crimes in U.S. history; the latest arrest associated with the robbery was made in 2014, which resulted in acquittal.

Nine murders were associated with the heist. 

The Lufthansa heist is a key plot element in the 1990 film Goodfellas.

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The 1978 Indiana Burger Chef Murders on This Day in History

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Today in History: The Burger Chef murders happened on this day at a Burger Chef restaurant in Speedway, Indiana in 1978. Four young employees went missing in what was initially thought to be a petty theft of cash from the restaurant safe. By Saturday morning it became a clear case of robbery-kidnapping, and by Sunday, when their bodies were discovered in the woods 20 miles away, it became a a case of murder. Despite thousands of hours of police investigation, as well as Burger Chef offering a reward of $25,000 to anyone who could capture the murderers or provide information about their whereabouts, the attackers were never prosecuted, and the case remains officially unsolved.

1978 was also the year we had the Blackfriars Massacre where an unsolved Irish Mob and/or Italian-American Mafia massacre occurred in the Blackfriars Pub in Downtown Boston, Massachusetts. Four criminals were killed, allegedly over the sale of cocaine. 

1978 was also the year that the Clinton Avenue Five went missing. The Clinton Avenue Five are five young men who disappeared in Newark, New Jersey. The name is derived from the street where they were last seen. The case eventually went cold. 

1978 was also the year of the deliberately set Holiday Inn fire. The 1978 Holiday Inn Fire broke out at the Holiday Inn-Northwest which was located at 1525 West Ridge Road in the Town of Greece, near Rochester, New York, and killed ten people. Seven of the fatalities were Canadian. The case remains unsolved as well.

1978 was also the year of the Marseille bar massacre, which refers to the mass murder of ten people in the Bar du Téléphone in Marseille, France, on 3 October 1978. Three armed gunmen entered the bar and shot everyone present in the head, with the sole survivor being the owner's wife Nicole Léoni, who was in another room. This was believed to be part of a gang war, and it remains unsolved to this day.

1978 was also the year of the Sirloin Stockade murders. Armed with a handgun, Roger Dale Stafford and his wife and brother went to rob the restaurant and ended up killing six employees execution style. Roger Dale Stafford was suspected of 34 murders and was executed on Death Row in 1995.

1978 was also the year of the Jonestown mass suicide.

See also: The Untold Truth of the Burger Chef Murders