A storm in the blood

"On December 16, 1910, three unarmed London policemen were killed by a gang of Latvian revolutionaries. Among the most sensational crimes of the era, the Houndsditch Murders sparked an unprecedented manhunt across the capital, and then exploded into the gunfight that entered history as the Siege of Sidney Street. Hundreds of heavily armed soldiers, assembled by then home-secretary Winston Churchill, descended upon the gang. After hours of bloody battle, the police broke into the hideout and discovered the corpses of two men. The ringleader they had expected to find--an urbane and charismatic revolutionary known as Peter the Painter--had mysteriously vanished, along with his mistress, Rivka, a young refugee and Yiddish music hall singer"--Publisher.