Alexander Keith Jr aka Dynamite Fiend aka William King ThomasClassification: Mass murdererCharacteri
Alexander Keith Jr aka Dynamite Fiend aka William King Thomas
Classification: Mass murderer
Characteristics: Murder/insurance scam on a large scale
Number of victims: 88
Date of murders: December 11, 1875
Date of birth: September 23, 1830
Victims profile: Men, women and children
Method of murder: Barrel-bomb (dynamite)
Location: Bremerhaven, Bremen, Germany
Status: Commited suicide by shooting himself the same day. Died 5 days later
Keith was born in 1827 in Caithness, Scotland, immigrating to Halifax when he was a small boy. The nephew of Alexander Keith, founder of the Alexander Keith’s brewery, Keith worked for a time as a clerk in his uncle’s brewery.
Keith became a secret agent for the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, acting mostly as a blockade runner and courier. He was involved with Luke Blackburn in an infamous plot to send clothes infected with yellow fever to northern cities in the United States.
In 1865, he swindled his associates-in-crime and fled to St. Louis, Missouri, settling finally on the prairie. There, he married Cecelia Paris, a milliner’s daughter from St. Louis.
Hunted down by one of his victims, he fled again with Cecelia to Germany, where they lived the high life in Dresden and Leipzig, hobnobbing with wealthy socialites and Saxon generals under the assumed name of William King Thomas. When the couple began to run out of money, Keith concocted a plot to blow up passenger ships and collect the insurance money.
This led to a major catastrophe in Bremerhaven, in December 1875 when one of his bombs accidentally went off on a dock, killing eighty people. At the time, the deed was known as the “crime of the century. Keith was aboard another ship at the time and was aware of the premature detenation of his time bomb, and the massive carnage. He went to his suite in the ship he was on and shot himself. He died in a week’s time.”
Wed, 29 Jul 2015 08:02:16
