On this day in conspiracies

Mollie Smith, a young servant, is killed at the home where she worked in Austin. The man she lived with, Walter Spencer, is badly wounded but survives. The attack sets the pattern that later killings will echo: a victim struck in bed at night, in the servants' quarters behind a residence.

Sonny Liston is found dead at his Las Vegas home; the body is discovered in early January 1971. The official causes are listed as heart failure and lung congestion, with heroin also found. His murky death revives every old theory about his life, including the fix talk around Lewiston, and gives the phantom-punch legend a darker afterlife.

Within hours all three feel ill. Betty Cash, who spent the most time outside the car, develops severe nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, blisters, reddened swollen skin, and later loses patches of hair.

Late in the evening, an intruder enters the Miyazawa family's two-story home in Kamisoshigaya, Setagaya, through a small unlocked window in a second-floor bathroom, reached by climbing near an adjacent tree. The family of four is home for the New Year holiday.