Murder
Abimelechslew his 70 brothers to become ruler. [O.T.: Judges 9:5]
noble motives cause him to murder uncle. [Br. Lit.: The London Merchant; Barnhart, 695]
kills the man who had seduced his wife; he is murdered by an enemy and his wife kills herself. [Am. Lit.: Warren World Enough and Time in Magill II, 1160]
closets away bodies of former wives. [Fr. Fairy Tale: Harvey, 97–98]
(Henri Désiré Landru, 1869–1922) executed for murders of ten women (1915–18). [Fr. Hist.: EB (1972), XIII, 661
(Albert De Salvo, 1932—) strangled thirteen women between 1962 and 1964. [Am. Hist.: Misc.]
murders predecessor to gain Egyptian throne. [Gk. Myth: Avery, 231]
jealous, slays Abel. [O.T.: Genesis 4:8]
with brothers, arranges murder of cruel father. [Br. Lit.: The Cenci]
murders brother to gain throne. [Br. Lit.: Hamlet]
slew husbands on wedding night. [Gk. Myth.: Kravitz, 74]
throws Miriam’s persecutor over cliff to death. [Am. Lit.: The Marble Faun]
killed by Alla for abandoning his wife and son at sea. [Br. Lit.: Canterbury Tales, “Man of Law’s Tale”]
brutally murders his estranged young wife and her parents. [Br. Poetry: Browning The Ring and the Book]
poisons 48 elderly people in nursing homes. [Am. Hist.: Elizabeth S. Baxter Newington; Am. Drama: Kesselring Arsenic and Old Lace]
young social climber lets his pregnant mistress drown in a boating accident and is convicted of murder. [Am. Lit.: An American Tragedy in Hart, 30]
stabs Siegfried in back; kills Gunther. [Ger. Opera: Wagner, Götterdämmerung, Westerman, 245]
kills Joe’s father; lets mother die in childbirth. [Am. Lit.: Light in August]
a confessed murderer, yet a sensitive, romantic man. [Br. Lit.: Peter Ibbetson, Magill I, 736–738]
nonfiction novel about a brutal, senseless murder in Kansas. [Am. Lit.: In Cold Blood]
stabs town doctor to death. [Am. Lit.: Tom Sawyer]
first murderer of a relative in classical mythology. [Gk. Myth.: Zimmerman, 142; Rom. Lit.: Aeneid]
killed and disemboweled 9 London prostitutes (1888–1889). [Br. Hist.: Brewer Note-Book, 463]
mistakenly kills his parents in their sleep. [Fr. Lit.: Flaubert “The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaler”]
intrigue in the court of Elizabeth I. [Br. Lit.: Scott Kenilworth in Magill I, 469]
motion picture about a child-murderer hunted down by organized criminal element. [Ger. Cinema: Halliwell]
became king of Scotland through a series of ruthless murders, but was ultimately slain by his enemy, Macduff. [Br. Lit.: Shakespeare Macbeth]
murdered her two children. [Gk. Lit.: Century Classical, 684–685]
murders wife’s lover; hides body under cloak. [Ital. Opera: Puccini, The Cloak, Westerman, 362–363]
fiend presiding over homicide. [Br. Lit.: King Lear]
illegitimate son and treacherous killer of Arthur. [Br. Lit.: Le Morte d’Arthur]
commits matricide to avenge father’s honor. [Gk. Lit.: Electra]
believing false evidence of Desdemona’s infidelity, he strangles her. [Br. Lit.: Shakespeare Othello]
brutally kills a mother and her daughter. [Am. Lit.: Poe The Murders in the Rue Morgue]
murders Crown, who tried to take Bess. [Am. Opera: Gershwin, Porgy and Bess, Westerman, 556]
plans and carries out the murder of an old woman pawnbroker. [Russ. Lit.: Crime and Punishment]
girl assaulted and murdered, her corpse thrown into the Seine. Am. Lit.: Poe The Mystery of Marie Rogêt]
murders master and gardener. [Br. Lit.: Barnaby Rudge]
hanged for killing of Nancy. [Br. Lit.: Oliver Twist]
dispatched wives and lovers in bathtubs in 1910s. [Br. Hist.: Wallechinsky, 274]
cynic opposed to fascist Everard Webley attacks and kills him, then commits suicide. [Br. Lit.: Huxley Point Counter Point in Magill I, 760]
his killing of Gilda fulfills curse against Rigoletto. [Ital. Opera: Verdi, Rigoletto, Westerman, 300]
religious devotion to Kali involves human strangulation. [Indian Hist.: Brewer Dictionary, 1080]
at the king’s behest, arranges the deaths of two young princes in the Tower. [Br. Drama: Shakespeare Richard III]
Allusions—Cultural, Literary, Biblical, and Historical: A Thematic Dictionary. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.