1Murder of Rick Parker
A corrupt boxing promoter named Rick Parker poisoned his fighter's opponent when he refused to throw a fight. The opponent, Tim Anderson, survived and murdered Parker. Anderson is now serving life in prison.
2. French Knight Gilles de Rais, who is known for being a former ally of Joan of Arc was executed for occultism and murdering 600 children. He may have been the victim of a plot by the Catholic Church and/or the French state. No corpses were found at his estate and the prosecutor used the trial to seize his land.
3. Hatfield-McCoy family feud was one of the most famous feuds in America. Both families were Confederates, but one of the McCoys fought for the Union. While returning home from the war, he was murdered by a Confederate militia with the prime suspect being a Hatfield.
4. The Seattle band ‘The Gits’ were gaining popularity until their lead singer, Mia Zapata, was raped and murdered in 1993 at the age of 27. Despite bands like Nirvana hiring a Private Investigator, her killer wasn’t caught for another decade.
5. Famed historical detective novelist Anne Perry helped murder her best friend's mother, Honorah Rieper, at the age of 15. This story became the basis of the 1994 film Heavenly Creatures, directed by Peter Jackson and starring Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey in their feature film debuts.
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6Chess Player Killer
A man named Claude Bloodgood is serving life in prison for the murder of his mother. While in prison, he became the second highest-rated chess player in the US by obtaining USCF membership for other inmates and playing tournaments against them.
7. Shannon Jo Ryan was the daughter of US Representative Leo Ryan, who was famously murdered while investigating the cult at Jonestown in 1978. She went on herself to join the Rajneesh movement, which orchestrated the first and largest bioterror attack ever in the US and plotted to assassinate a US Attorney.
8. Father James Coyle was a Catholic Priest in Alabama who was murdered in 1921 for celebrating a secret interracial marriage.
9. A one-legged clown was convicted of murdering an heiress in Chicago in 1912 and was sentenced to life in prison, but he escaped and was never found.
10. In 1937, two men tried to kill the Viceroy of Italian occupied Ethiopia. In response, the Italian army and Italian civilians went on a killing spree, burning down houses, and killing an estimated 20% of the population of Addis Ababa including sympathetic Ethiopians. Italy still downplays the massacre.
11Murder of Cynthia Hoffman
An 18-year-old Alaskan girl named Denali Brehmer was convinced by a man she met online, who claimed to be a multi-millionaire, to kill her best friend, Cynthia Hoffman. She then convinced 4 others to help her murder her best friend to split a $9 million dollar prize. The five killers bound Cynthia with a duct tape, shot her in the back of the head and dumped her body in a River.
12. When a meteor fell in the kingdom of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, someone wrote on it, “The First Emperor will die and his land will be divided.” When he heard of this, he sent someone to investigate who did it, and when no one admitted it, everyone living near the meteor crash site was killed.
13. Andrés Escobar was a Colombian footballer who scored his own goal in Colombia’s group match against the United States during the 1994 FIFA World Cup. Five days later, he was assassinated by drug cartels as a punishment.
14. A soldier named LaVena Johnson in Iraq was found dead in her tent in 2005. Her autopsy report and photographs revealed a broken nose, black eye, loose teeth, burns from a corrosive chemical on her genitals, and a gunshot wound to the head. Her death was ruled a suicide.
15. A Utah woman named Kristy Manzanares was allegedly murdered by her husband while on a murder mystery trivia cruise in Alaska. The event was a musical Sherlock Holmes-themed murder mystery trivia program, and some of her fellow passengers thought the screams coming from her cabin were part of the show.
16Moroccan Serial Killer
In 1906, a Moroccan serial killer named Hadj Mohammed Mesfewi was sentenced to be walled up alive after he was found guilty of murdering 36 women (the bodies were found buried beneath his shop and garden). His cries for help were heard for two days before he went silent.
17. People in The Philippines have been murdered after doing karaoke of the song “My Way,” popularized by Frank Sinatra.
18. A German nurse named Niels Högel was sentenced to life in prison without eligibility for parole after he murdered more than 85 patients because he wanted to show off his resuscitation skills and be the hero who saves them on the hospital bed.
19. In 1991 NBA basketball player, Metta World Peace also known as Ron Artest, witnessed the murder of a fellow basketball player when, during an altercation, someone threw a broken-off table leg at the player and it went straight through his heart.
20. Two murderers in a labor camp in Siberia persuaded a man named Ivan Vasilievich to escape with them. Ivan was a well-fed cook and they ate him on their journey towards freedom.
21Richard B. Fitzgibbon Jr.’s Death
Richard B. Fitzgibbon Jr., who is known as the first American to die in Vietnam, was actually murdered by a fellow soldier in 1956. He was giving candy to local children when he bumped into a drunken colleague who shot him on sight. It took 43 years for his name to be added to the Vietnam War Memorial.
22. In 1922, Union workers in Southern Illinois made 19 replacement miners crawl to their own graves before beating, shooting, urinating on, and slitting their throats while a mob of 1,000 cheered.
23. ‘The Boy in the Box’ is a still unsolved murder of a toddler whose naked, battered body was found in a cardboard box in a wooded area of Philadelphia in 1957.
24. In 2010, 26-year-old man named Hugo Hernandez was kidnapped by Mexican cartel and killed. His corpse was cut into seven pieces and his face was stitched onto a soccer ball as a threat to rivals.
25. The murder of Laetitia Toureaux is a real life locked-room mystery. She was found stabbed in an empty carriage in Paris Metro. No one was seen entering the car. Her killer had less than 90 seconds to commit the crime and was never caught.
