Real life does not follow a script. These 50 cases are messy, cruel, and stranger than anything a studio would greenlight. Each entry is short, sourced, and tightly told so you can move from one jaw-dropping crime to the next without filler. If you think you have seen it all, Part 2 will prove you wrong.Read Part 1 here
1 Melvin Carr’s Fatal Gas Plot
In 1977, triple murderer Melvin Chelcie Carr set out to kill his three victims by carbon monoxide poisoning inside a garage. He sealed the doors and ran the car engine to fill the space with exhaust fumes. But the plan backfired as Carr accidentally inhaled the same toxic gas and died alongside his victims. When his wife returned home, she discovered all four bodies in the garage.
2 The Rolex Murder of Ronald Platt
On July 28, 1996, a fisherman off the coast of the UK discovered a man’s body floating in the sea with no identification except a Rolex Oyster watch on his wrist. Detectives traced the serial number through Rolex’s meticulous service records, which revealed the owner’s identity as Ronald Platt. The trail led straight to Albert Johnson Walker, a Canadian fugitive who had assumed Platt’s identity. Walker was later convicted of murder, thanks to the ticking Rolex that refused to stay silent.
3 Lindow Woman and the False Confession
In 1983, workers in Cheshire, England, uncovered the head of a woman preserved in a peat bog. Believing that his long-hidden crime had finally surfaced, Peter Reyn-Barnett confessed to killing his wife and disposing of her body there in 1961. But radiocarbon dating revealed the remains were 1,750 years old, belonging to the Iron Age Lindow Woman. Despite the mix-up, Reyn-Barnett’s confession sealed his fate, and he was convicted of his wife’s murder.
4 Cartel Murder of Sergio Vega
In June 2010, Sergio Vega, a Mexican singer known for his narcocorridos, which frequently glorified drug lords, publicly refuted online rumors that claimed his murder. The false report surfaced after rival cartels allegedly killed several musicians in the same genre. Just an hour after his denial, gunmen intercepted his red Cadillac on the highway near Los Mochis, Sinaloa, and shot him dead. Investigators believe that drug cartels, who had previously threatened Vega over his performances honoring cartel figures, killed him.
5 Kristy Manzanares and the Cruise Killing
In July 2017, Utah resident Kristy Manzanares was found dead in her cabin aboard the Emerald Princess cruise ship while it sailed through Alaska’s Inside Passage. The ship was hosting a Sherlock Holmes-themed murder mystery dinner when passengers heard screams from her room, assuming it was part of the performance. Her husband, Kenneth Manzanares, was later arrested and confessed to killing her during an argument.
6 Michael Haim’s Backyard Murder Secret
In 1993, Bonnie Haim disappeared from her home in Jacksonville, Florida, leaving behind her husband, Michael Haim, and their 3-year-old son, Aaron. Aaron told police that his father had killed his mother and buried her in the backyard, but investigators dismissed it as a child’s imagination. Twenty years later, in 2014, Aaron was renovating the same house when he uncovered his mother’s remains under a concrete slab. His discovery confirmed the truth, and his father, Michael Haim, was later convicted of murder.
7 Roberto Solis: Poet Turned Fugitive
In 1969, Roberto Solis was sentenced to life in prison for murdering an armored truck driver during a failed robbery in San Francisco. While behind bars, he reinvented himself as a poet under the name Pancho Aguila, earning literary praise and support from well-known writers who petitioned for his parole. After his release in 1992, Solis vanished with Heather Tallchief after stealing an armored truck loaded with 3 million dollars in Las Vegas, and both of them remain at large to this day (October 2025).
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8 Denali Brehmer’s $9 Million Catfish Killing
In 2019, 18-year-old Denali Brehmer from Alaska was manipulated by a man she met online who claimed to be a wealthy millionaire. He assured her that she would receive 9 million dollars if she killed her best friend, Cynthia Hoffman, and provided evidence of the crime. Brehmer recruited four friends to help carry out the murder, binding and shooting Hoffman before dumping her body near a river. The “millionaire” turned out to be a catfish named Darin Schilmiller, and all five teens were arrested for the brutal, senseless crime.
9 Theodore Streleski’s Campus Murder Protest
In 1981, Karel deLeeuw, a respected mathematics professor at Stanford University, was shot and killed in his campus office by his doctoral student Theodore Streleski. Streleski had spent 19 years unsuccessfully pursuing his PhD and grew increasingly bitter over his academic failures. After murdering deLeeuw with a hammer, he calmly turned himself in to the police and later said he committed the act to protest the university’s treatment of graduate students. Streleski served seven years in prison and was released in 1985.
10 Leopold and Loeb’s Perfect Crime
In 1924, University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb set out to commit what they called “the perfect crime” to prove their intellectual superiority. They kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks, believing their brilliance would keep them from being caught. Instead, police quickly traced a pair of Leopold’s distinctive eyeglasses found near the body.
RE: Fact #27 (Christa Pike: The Teenage Torture Killer) – What an absolute fu*k’n psychopath.
Seriously? “Motivated by jealousy” my foot. That’s some truly messed-up stuff.
RE: Fact #9 (Theodore Streleski’s Campus Murder Protest) – first its stated he was murdered with a hammer then he was shot. It say he was killed in 1981 and the killer served 7 years and released in 1985. Doesn’t sound too factual,.
RE: Fact #21 (Chris Benoit’s Tragic Wrestling Murder-Suicide) – Staying in character even when you’re not performing is what “kayfabe” means, it’s not just a storyline. When someone breaks kayfabe, they’re breaking character, which ruins the illusion for fans. So, in this situation, keeping kayfabe would have meant Chris and Nancy hanging out together more in public, and that’s how they ended up getting together.
So that’s why people say politics is like pro wrestling, because you gotta stay in character when you’re out and about.
Sullivan was really old school about keeping kayfabe. He specifically mentioned that Chris and Nancy would be seen out having dinner and even sharing hotel rooms.
Yeah, that’s right. People think “kayfabe” probably started with carnival folks, like a secret language they used so others wouldn’t get what they were talking about.
One idea is that it’s like pig Latin for “fake,” messed around so people couldn’t tell. Or maybe it came from a twisted word used backstage in wrestling way back when.
Wrestlers and their bosses used kayfabe to keep the tricks of the trade hidden, especially back when wrestling was treated like a real sport. It made audiences more into it by making it hard to tell what was real and what was staged.
Thinking about how a lot of early wrestling matches were just side attractions at carnivals, that whole “carny” vibe totally makes sense.
RE: Fact #43 (The Lynching of Mary Turner) – It’s like inviting a bunch of people to your place, then getting upset because they showed up.
RE: Fact #3 (Lindow Woman and the False Confession) – It’s kind of like “The Tell-Tale Heart” but with a bog mummy.
I’d definitely tune in for that adaptation.
There are some really interesting books out there about “bog bodies”! You should check out “The Bog” by Michael Talbut.
RE: Fact #8 (Denali Brehmer’s $9 Million Catfish Killing) – If my friend plans to kill me, I hope the news doesn’t say we were besties.
It’s so sad to hear that the victim considered their killer their best friend. That’s a truly heartbreaking comment from the parents.
Totally! A developmentally disabled girl reporting her killer was her best friend? Man, that made me feel awful for her.
There’s this kid in the neighborhood who seems really troubled. His dad has pretty much told me the kid is in therapy because he’s seriously hurt pets and shown other worrying signs. So, I’m not saying this without reason.
My son used to think this kid was a good friend, maybe even his best friend if they’d kept playing. But after seeing how the other kid’s behavior got more violent when they were alone, we stopped them from hanging out. I still worry that this kid might convince my son to go on a walk by the creek and never come back.
A lot of the parents around here don’t seem to see it. They miss the signs. It’s like those interviews after a crime where people say, “He was such a good kid, we had no idea…” That’s just not seeing what’s right in front of you.
I’ve had what I hope is the right conversation with my son for his age. But I’ve got a lot to keep an eye on as a person and a parent, and this kid only needs one chance. They haven’t really interacted for over a year, but it only takes one time.
RE: Fact #41 (William Burke: The Body Snatcher Killer) – So, Burke was actually from Tyrone in Ireland, even though he did his crimes over in Scotland. You can actually see his skeleton at the Anatomical Museum at the University of Edinburgh. And get this, the pocketbook made from his skin is at the Surgeons’ Hall Museum, also in Edinburgh.
RE: Fact #11 (Katherine Knight: Australia’s Cannibal Killer) – This doesn’t make sense at all.
So, in school, Knight was apparently a real bully who picked on younger kids. She never learned to read or write and dropped out at 15 to work in a clothing factory. Then, a year after that, she got what she called her “dream job” at a slaughterhouse, where she was tasked with removing animal organs.
In business, we call that “foreshadowing.”
RE: Fact #39 (Kari’s Law and the Hotel Murder) – As a network engineer, I was taught that when setting up any phone system, the dial plan should always allow for common external extensions and 911 calls. We’re supposed to drop any other calls if necessary to ensure 911 always goes through. This law seems to be a response to people not doing their jobs properly, but safety laws are often created after serious incidents.
Back in the day, phone systems made it a real pain to dial 911 and stuff like that. It wasn’t impossible, but you had to do a ton of programming to handle all the different ways you might dial numbers, like 7, 8, 10, or 11 digits. That depended on the phone company and whether the number was local. You’d end up writing tons of rules just to get it working, not to mention handling internal extensions.
It was way easier to just set up trunk groups and let people dial 9 or 8, or whatever, followed by the regular home number. Then you’d just put a sticker on all the phones. Since these phone systems were usually set up and left alone until they broke, it didn’t help when phone companies finally let everyone dial ten digits for all calls – it was way too late. Most places figured they’d deal with it when they eventually got IP phones, if they even thought about it.
In network engineering, we’re taught that when setting up phone systems, the dial plan should be set up so that common outside-extensions always work, and 911 should definitely always work.
That’s a great policy. It really highlights how much harder good interface design is than most people realize. From an engineer’s point of view, always requiring the “9” for outside calls seems “simple” and “intuitive,” but it’s actually the opposite for regular users. Eventually, engineers figure this out and make an exception for 911. But if they don’t test thoroughly, they might accidentally break “9911,” which is usually fine for casual users but causes problems for experienced ones who automatically type the prefix.
RE: Fact #38 (Robert Maury: The Tipster Killer) – I like how his defense basically said he was just a good guy who randomly found three dead bodies. Totally by chance, naturally.
RE: Fact #10 (Leopold and Loeb’s Perfect Crime) – It’s wild how these guys messed up so many times. They apparently dumped the body near a railway, and workers found it the next day. Plus, they stabbed him with a chisel in a rental car and got blood all over the seats. The chauffeur saw them cleaning it up at Leopold’s house. And get this, they tossed the bloody chisel out of the car in front of some witness who thought that was suspicious enough to tell the police. Their idea to pretend it was a kidnapping for ransom fell apart pretty quickly.
Did the guy not even realize he lost his glasses? What the fu*k, this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever read.
It really feels like everything here points to narcissism, at least with Loeb. People like that are just so sure they’re better than everyone else, and since they’ve bought into their own hype, they expect everyone else to as well.
They seemed well-off, so I bet they just got a new pair. Honestly, if you haven’t hung out with rich folks, you might not realize that a big expense for some is just pocket change for them. They likely had a backup pair or someone else handled getting new glasses the next day. They probably wouldn’t even stress about losing them.
Or that he had a fu*king chauffeur? How did they think that alibi would hold up?
RE: Fact #16 (Officer Craig Peyer’s Deadly Deception) – This Craig Peyer guy, the cop who killed 20-year-old Cara Knott, had a thing for pulling over young women just to flirt and bother them. He almost got away with Knott’s murder ’cause he cleaned up the crime scene super well, leaving hardly any evidence. The only thing he missed was a gold fiber on Knott’s clothes, which forensics traced back to the California Highway Patrol patch on Peyer’s uniform.
The book “One Day” by Gene Weingarten has a deep dive into this whole case – the crime itself, the investigation, the trial, and how it affected Cara’s family. It talks about a bunch of things that happened all over the US on December 28, 1986, which is the day Knott’s body was found. That’s where I first heard about this murder, and where I learned all this.
RE: Fact #2 (The Rolex Murder of Ronald Platt) – Seriously, who mugs someone and doesn’t snag the Rolex afterward?
This whole situation is wild. We’ve got a guy who’s a big-time thief, embezzling millions and on the run with his daughter, who’s pretending to be his wife and even had two kids with him. It’s just one crazy twist after another.
Apparently, the trawler owner almost didn’t even report the body because finding one can mean all your catch gets taken away, ruining your whole day’s work.
I remember seeing something like this on a crime show where they talked to the British detectives and the dead guy’s ex. The detectives only figured out it was murder when they went to the wrong house by mistake. The addresses sounded alike, and the lady at the wrong place mentioned someone with the same name lived at the right one.
Forensic Files even covered this in a 25-minute episode.
This story is so wild, if they ever make a movie about it, they’ll definitely need to flash “THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED” in big red letters during some of the crazier parts.
Whoa, hold on a sec. I saw the part about his daughter pretending to be his wife. The original article I read didn’t mention them having kids at all. Pretending for a cover story is one thing, but…
It seems like there are a bunch of reasons why someone might not be wearing a watch for, like, “business” reasons or just based on how they’re feeling. A careless killer could also be a reason.
RE: Fact #49 (The Parachute Mystery of Stephen Hilder) – If it really was murder, the takeaway here is that if you’re going to go skydiving, it’s probably a good idea to make sure people like you.
Or figure out how to pack your own parachute.
So, if someone’s a pro at messing with things, wouldn’t that mean they could mess with it so well that the owner wouldn’t even notice?
RE: Fact #9 (Theodore Streleski’s Campus Murder Protest) – He straight-up murdered someone with a hammer, and only got 8 years for second-degree murder? Seriously?
He didn’t really earn that third degree, though.
RE: Fact #35 (The Jenny Jones Show Murder) – Yeah, I remember a story like that from Jerry Springer. A woman thought her ex wanted to reconcile when they went on the show, but turns out he’d moved on and was with someone else, and unfortunately, things ended really badly for her.
RE: Fact #50 (Clementine Barnabet: The Voodoo Axe Killer) – I’m surprised she didn’t get the death penalty, they weren’t concerned about age back then.
I’m sure being female probably had something to do with it too. There’s some evidence pointing to gender bias in death sentence cases in the US.
Yeah, pretty much. There’s this woman who was in psychiatric care her whole life because she was so violent. It got so bad that the people watching her weren’t even allowed to stop her suicide attempts, because she’d try to kill them if they came near. She spent her entire life assaulting and harassing everyone around her, a really clear case of someone not being fit for society. The full story of what she did and got away with is just sad. At one point, she followed a teacher home and sat outside her house threatening her. She was even denied tampons because she’d choke herself with them. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a male equivalent for this because all the sh*t she did would have landed a guy in prison.
RE: Fact #13 (The Unsolved Murder of William Lewis Moore) – Back on April 21st, 1963, Moore started his journey. He wore a sandwich board with “Equal rights for all & Mississippi or Bust” on one side, and “End Segregation in America” and “Eat at Joe’s – Black and White” on the other.
Just in case someone was wondering how the killer would have known.
The governor of Mississippi back then, Ross Barnett, was really known for being super racist, even for those times.
He famously interrupted a trial for a KKK guy to talk to the accused and praise him in front of the jury. That Klansman ended up being found not guilty.
Barnett also said Mississippi had the most Black Americans because “they love our way of life here, and that way is segregation.”
Everyone in America should learn about the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. It was pretty much Mississippi’s taxpayer-funded white supremacist gestapo. This state agency secretly spied on thousands of people who wanted racial equality and even helped out white supremacist groups. The commission also used the info they gathered to help defend Byron De La Beckwith, who murdered Medgar Evers in 1963, during his second trial in 1964.
RE: Fact #25 (The Fig Tree That Grew from Murder) – The way Hergune died is pretty wild too. The cops figured out that he and two others were killed by dynamite in the cave, and the explosion blew a hole that let sunlight in. Seems like Hergune ate that fig right before it all went down.
It doesn’t say if someone else caused their deaths, or if they were trying to build a bomb and accidentally blew themselves up.
Honestly, this sounds more like it. It seems like inexperienced folks attempting to make a bomb ended up having it go off on them.
RE: Fact #3 (Lindow Woman and the False Confession) – Honestly, it sounds like the English police might not be prepared to handle evidence that’s older than England itself.
RE: Fact #25 (The Fig Tree That Grew from Murder) – If I murdered someone and they only found out decades later because of this, I’d be pretty annoyed. It’d be way crazier than anything on a Law & Order show.
So, did they ever catch the killer? It’s been ages, so I’m guessing there’s probably not much solid evidence left.
He died during a violent conflict. He joined the Turkish resistance, so I’m guessing you can put two and two together.
RE: Fact #47 (The IRA Murder of Robert McCartney) – This sounds super similar to the Jessica Lall murder case in Delhi, India. She was shot at close range at a busy party by a politician’s son because she wouldn’t serve him a drink after the bar was closed. So many people claimed they were “on the roof” when it happened. In total, 32 witnesses changed their stories. The guy who did it was first found not guilty, but then retried and convicted because of a massive public outcry and all the media attention.
On the flip side, there’s the murder of Ken Rex McElroy back in 1981 in Missouri. McElroy was a real menace in town, known for arson, child rape, attempted murder, burglary, assault, animal cruelty, and cattle rustling. The townspeople finally reached their breaking point after he attacked the 70-year-old storekeeper. He was shot in broad daylight, and even though about 50 people saw it happen, no one ever came forward. The case remains unsolved.
That situation is crazy, and it’s one of the rare times I totally get why everyone is covering for the person who shot that monster. He was brought to trial so many times for his crimes, and it’s truly wild that he always got away with it. The system was broken, and honestly, they just didn’t have any other options.
This also brings to mind the Jay Given case from Chicago, I recall it from Unsolved Mysteries ages ago. He was shot right at the front door during a fundraiser, with hundreds of people around, and somehow there were no witnesses. The only piece of evidence was a shell casing that the lead detective kept in his desk instead of the evidence locker. When it was finally retrieved, someone had gotten to it and damaged any identifying marks. It’s still an unsolved case.
And the person who did it is walking free today.
RE: Fact #16 (Officer Craig Peyer’s Deadly Deception) – This reminds me of the Soham murders and Ian Huntley. Ten-year-olds Holly and Jessica went missing. The school janitor, Ian Huntley, did a TV interview saying he’d seen them that day and hoped they were okay. About two weeks later, their bodies were found. It turned out Huntley had killed them both and tried to burn their bodies before dumping them in a field. He was found guilty of both murders and got life in prison. His girlfriend at the time, Maxine Carr, got almost four years for obstruction. It was a huge story in the UK for a really long time.
I remember this case too since they were around my age back then. I couldn’t recall names or any details, so I always wondered if they ever caught the person responsible.
RE: Fact #24 (Dr. Harold Shipman: Britain’s Deadliest Doctor) – What’s mind-blowing about Shipman, besides not having a clear motive, is how long it took for him to be caught.
Even back in 2003, some folks pointed out that if they’d been keeping an eye on the stats, an alarm could have been raised way back in late 1996. At that point, there were already 67 more deaths than expected in women over 65, and by 1998, that number jumped to 119.
It’s easy to look back and say someone should have seen all those deaths and said something, but people did! Several doctors actually got suspicious about the high number of patients dying under Shipman’s care, but the police dismissed their concerns.
For instance, in March 1998, a doctor named Linda Reynolds at the Brooke Surgery in Hyde told the local coroner, John Pollard, that she was worried about how many of Shipman’s patients were dying, especially all the cremation forms for elderly women he wanted signed off. But the police couldn’t find enough proof to charge him and wrapped up their investigation on April 17th.
Even a taxi driver noticed the crazy number of people dying under Shipman’s care just a few months after the police supposedly looked into it.
A bit later, in August, a taxi driver named John Shaw went to the police because he suspected Shipman was killing 21 patients. Shaw got suspicious because he’d drive many elderly people to the hospital who seemed fine, but they’d end up dying while under Shipman’s care.
After hundreds of murders, Shipman was finally caught because he clearly forged the will of the former mayor. The mayor’s daughter was a solicitor, and that’s what ultimately did him in.
Shipman’s last victim was Kathleen Grundy, a former mayor of Hyde who was found dead at her home on June 24, 1998. Shipman was the last person to see her alive and signed her death certificate, saying she died of old age. But Grundy’s daughter, a solicitor named Angela Woodruff, became suspicious when another solicitor told her about a will supposedly made by her mother. The will left out Woodruff and her kids, but gave Shipman a huge sum of money – £386,000.
RE: Fact #18 (Finland’s Chilling Lake Bodom Murders) – I remember reading about it when I was in high school and just starting to get into Children of Bodom. It’s just awful to think about, especially them being out camping by a lake.
Sounds like the dude who rolled up to the hospital the next day all bloody. He was suspected of a bunch of murders and admitted to one right before he died.
It really seems like the dude who was left in the tent and couldn’t remember anything did it. I mean, they found his bloody shoes somewhere else and all that. The acquittal feels a bit shaky, honestly.
RE: Fact #48 (Nancy Brophy: The “How to Murder” Author) – Did she not read the book?
It’s called “How to murder your husband,” not “How to murder your husband and get away with it.”
RE: Fact #22 (Jairo Mora’s Murder on Turtle Beach) – Even after being held at gunpoint and told to back off, and with guys on motorbikes carrying AK-47s following him into town, Jairo Mora Sandoval kept going back to Moin Beach every spring for the leatherback nesting season.
Why did these people hate turtles so much?
They don’t care about preserving the species, they just want money. Most of the poachers are probably super poor, so it’s not like you can just ask them nicely to stop.
It’s more like poachers see wild animals as just free money waiting to be snatched up. If they don’t take it, it’ll just die eventually with no one benefiting. They don’t really think of these animals as living beings, just a way to make a quick buck.
RE: Fact #13 (The Unsolved Murder of William Lewis Moore) – It seems like people who are racist tend to dislike members of their own race even more if those people don’t agree with their racist views.
The Malfoys have always looked down on the Weasleys.
RE: Fact #37 (Dan White and the Twinkie Defense) – Dianne Feinstein found Harvey Milk’s body after he was assassinated. She heard shots, called the police, and then discovered him.
RE: Fact #1 (Melvin Carr’s Fatal Gas Plot) – The fact really doesn’t capture the full picture. He was actually convicted of child rape. I truly hope there’s a hell and that he’s suffering in it.
RE: Fact #44 (Kerry Hamill’s Khmer Rouge Confession) – So the fact threw me off a little too. Basically, his boat drifted into Cambodian waters because of a storm. The Cambodians grabbed him and tortured him, thinking he was a spy. He wasn’t. To get them off his back, he just made up a bunch of silly stuff, saying his childhood friends and Colonel Sanders were his “commanding officers” and “coworkers.” It’s wild he could still find humor under those circumstances.
That’s exactly why torture isn’t effective. They end up just torturing someone until they say what the torturer wants to hear, even if it’s not true.
The Khmer Rouge were known for being really out of touch, like a statue, because they killed off educated people or anyone wearing glasses.
So, 24 has Jack Bauer torturing people ’cause he’s on a tight deadline, right? But that’s exactly when torture wouldn’t even work. Any terrorist would just have to send him the wrong way, and boom, the terrorists win, haha.
After you’ve seen what happened in Cambodia, you’ll probably feel the same way about wanting to seriously hurt Henry Kissinger. It’s hard to read about that lying, murderous dirtbag having friendly chats or going to fancy events without feeling sick. What Henry did in Cambodia, and the results of his “statesmanship,” make you wonder why he isn’t on trial at The Hague like Milošević.
A lot of people also don’t realize that Noam Chomsky defended the Khmer Rouge and tried to silence escapees long after the atrocities were known.
Seriously though, why did Henry Kissinger push North Vietnam, China, and North Korea to back Pol Pot? Guess we’ll never find out.
Seriously, if you’re going to look into the Cambodian genocide, make sure you’re in a good headspace because it’s really heavy stuff.
RE: Fact #42 (Jack Gilbert Graham’s Airplane Bombing) – You know, it’s wild that detonating a nuclear weapon in the UK only became illegal in 1998. Before that, I guess you’d probably just get hit with arson charges or maybe a noise complaint for an environmental disturbance.
RE: Fact #38 (Robert Maury: The Tipster Killer) – So, it looks like it’s about $2000 for three of them, in case you were curious!
Seriously? If it was like half a million bucks, I’d get why someone might spill the beans. But you’re handing over evidence that could put you away for murder, and all you’re getting is under $2k each time? That doesn’t add up.
RE: Fact #45 (Aleksander Trofimov’s GPU Murder) – So, I get that there are a lot of jokes, but these kinds of topics can really get people riled up. I actually got into a pretty bad fight with my neighbor about AMD versus Intel processors.
Yeah, things can get pretty intense sometimes. Have you considered liquid cooling?
RE: Fact #32 (The Murder and Myth of Bridget Cleary) – Michael’s mom was the one who’d gone off with the fairies, Bridget told him. Then Michael tackled his wife near the fireplace and threatened her with a burning piece of wood. Her chemise caught fire, and he poured lamp oil on her. The witnesses weren’t sure if she was already dead then. Michael kept everyone away from her body as it burned, saying she was a changeling and had been for a week, and he was going to get his wife back from the fairies.
RE: Fact #33 (James Richardson and the Poisoned Lunch) – Normally I’m not one for getting even, but I’d be okay with jailing prosecutors who pull stunts like this for the same amount of time. I bet they understand the idea of deterrence.
From what I understand, it’s pretty much impossible to go after prosecutors. There’s just nothing you can do. The reasoning behind it seems to be, “if we allow this even a little, the whole justice system will fall apart.”
RE: Fact #46 (Donald Harvey: The Angel of Death) – So, cyanide actually has a pretty distinct smell! It turns out, there are these millipedes that contain cyanide and sometimes they show up in parts of Victoria, Australia. If you happen to squash a bunch of them, you can really pick up on that smell. Sometimes there can be hundreds of them on the floor at night, so it’s pretty hard to not step on them now and then.
Seriously, is it dangerous if you step on a bunch of them? I don’t know much about cyanide, except that it’s the go-to poison for dying. Can the fumes be a problem? Or is there just not enough cyanide in millipedes?
Seriously, some people just deal with floors covered in bugs every night? That wouldn’t bother them at all? Antarctica sounds better than that.
When I lived in the Dominican Republic, my house was at the top of a hill. One night, something small hit my face while I was sleeping. I grabbed it and turned on the light – it was a shiny black millipede. Then I looked up, and the ceiling was covered in them! They were climbing in through the window because it was raining and they were trying to escape the flood. Even though they’re totally harmless, that shiny black, squirming mass of worm-like bodies still sh*ts me up. Like, all over the ceiling, for fu*k’s sake.
RE: Fact #28 (Mark Twitchell: The Real-Life Dexter) – It’s really sad that someone lost their life because this person decided to play pretend after watching a TV show.
And he didn’t even have much in common with Dexter. Dexter was like a vigilante who went after other killers. But this person just killed a random stranger they met online through a dating site.
Dexter was a real psychopath, you know? He just had this urge to kill people. His dad basically just pointed that “dark passenger” of his at bad guys instead. Dexter wasn’t killing them because he was a good person or anything.
RE: Fact #41 (William Burke: The Body Snatcher Killer) – Wow, science was really something else back in the day!
Was it really that different back then? People still go nuts for this kind of sh*t.
I’d be interested to see a modern, peer-reviewed paper published in a murderer’s blood.
RE: Fact #12 (The Wrongful Hanging of Timothy Evans) – Don’t worry, they granted Evans a pardon, but sadly, it was after he passed away.
I bet he feels way better about it now.
RE: Fact #47 (The IRA Murder of Robert McCartney) – It’s wild that none of those 71 people changed their story.
They didn’t want to get an extra alarm clock put under their car.
Imagine a car bomb going off outside a pub, and then another one 10 minutes later when everyone, including emergency services, had gathered there.
It’s no wonder the IRA is considered a terrorist group. They also had snipers in rural areas who’d shoot at cars with English license plates, not just military or police, but regular people just going about their day. And they never apologized for any of it.
RE: Fact #4 (Cartel Murder of Sergio Vega) – This is like that meme of the Mexican cartel hitman who forgot what he was supposed to do, then saw the news and was like, “Oh yeah!”
Or maybe they grabbed the wrong person. “Yeah boss, we got him. What? He’s on the news? I’ll fix it right away, sir!”
Yeah, I bet gangs will pull stuff like that to scare people too. Imagine seeing a “missing” poster with your own face on it, or your kid’s – that’d be terrifying. Maybe when he called the station, he was basically telling the mob he wasn’t going to be intimidated.
RE: Fact #43 (The Lynching of Mary Turner) – Turner was hung upside down and set on fire. While she was still alive, her abdomen was cut open, and her child fell to the ground. She then watched as the lynch mob stomped him to death.
I just found out about this recently while looking up historical markers in Georgia. It’s really a shame that there are only three markers in that county, according to the Georgia landmark website I was checking. I’m happy we haven’t just swept it under the rug. As awful as it is, we need to remember this history. But it also makes me think about how many other terrible events like this weren’t documented back then and later got labeled as “historic events,” possibly as a way to downplay the racist and criminal stuff that happened in that area. It was a truly vile and cruel incident, but I’m glad it was recorded and is now being shared so people can learn from it and the folks who went through so much suffering back then won’t be forgotten.
RE: Fact #47 (The IRA Murder of Robert McCartney) – Imagine messing up so bad your bosses publicly offer to off you as an apology.
The IRA also made a bit of a mistake here. They were trying to signal they were moving towards peace at this point, but in their rush to show they were taking a hard line against their violent members, they accidentally showed they were still a violent group by saying they’d shoot them. Just so you know, there’s no death penalty in Ireland or Britain.
This also proved that Sinn Fein, which used to basically be the IRA’s PR team, wasn’t handling the IRA’s statements anymore. There’s no chance Adams or McGuinness would have screwed up like that. Sinn Fein had become a full-fledged political party, and the IRA was becoming a real headache for them.
I think it’s the most interesting time in history. It’s also pretty tough to look into.
RE: Fact #21 (Chris Benoit’s Tragic Wrestling Murder-Suicide) – I used to love wrestling, even though I knew it wasn’t real. I really admired the whole show – the costumes, the drama, and how they made the moves look so convincing. The feuds felt so real too, it was like watching a play. But then I started hearing about behind-the-scenes stuff, and after this particular event, I just couldn’t watch anymore.
RE: Fact #14 (Marvin Gaye’s Murder by His Father) – This quote is from my favorite episode of TV, “Teddy Perkins” from Atlanta, season 2, episode 6. It says, “I want this wing of the museum to be dedicated to great fathers; my father, Joe Jackson, Marvin Gaye Sr, Tiger Woods’s father, Serena Williams’s father, the father that drops off Emilio Estevez in The Breakfast Club.”
That episode was wild, seriously made me worried about Darius.
Is this the episode with the strange Michael Jackson impersonator? I don’t recall him or that episode much, but it definitely felt weird and unlike Atlanta if that’s the one I’m thinking of.
RE: Fact #6 (Michael Haim’s Backyard Murder Secret) – It’s really sad that the crime scene techs and forensics couldn’t find the woman who passed away. That young guy must have carried such a heavy weight for so long.
I’m not sure about how competent these investigators were. It’s like they thought, “Oh, a woman is missing. Should we look under that fresh concrete slab?” instead of, “Wow, what are the odds someone would actually hide a body there?”
He likely didn’t put the slab down right away. He probably just buried her, covered the spot with brush, and then poured the concrete after the investigators left.
So, on the flip side, do we just demolish entire buildings every time someone goes missing?
And get this, his grandparents apparently told him he’d been brainwashed into saying his dad murdered his mom.
They probably had a feeling it was happening but didn’t want to believe it and wanted to keep him safe.
So it sounds like those grandparents paid the bail to get that person out. How can someone be so in denial?
RE: Fact #49 (The Parachute Mystery of Stephen Hilder) – If you knew you might second-guess yourself at the last minute and messed with your own chutes, that’s a kind of determination I hope to never have.
Sometimes in suicides, people try to make it look like it wasn’t a suicide. They do this because they don’t want their friends and family to think they took their own life. That’s probably why someone would mess with the chutes to make them fail, instead of just not pulling the cord.
Yeah, I get it. People probably want to avoid feeling embarrassed about that kind of stuff.
Especially if someone was counting on that life insurance payout for a loved one.
RE: Fact #41 (William Burke: The Body Snatcher Killer) – So basically, William Hare, his partner, ratted on Burke to save himself. Even though they were in on the murder and selling bodies together.
Two guys can keep a secret, but only if one of them is gone.
I remember learning about these guys from the very first issue of that Horrible Science magazine they used to sell. It went into all the details about them robbing graves and how they eventually started killing people just to get bodies. They did talk about how Hare managed to get off the hook, but they didn’t mention it was because of what you just brought up. I guess Horrible Science figured the whole snitching thing was too much to get into.
RE: Fact #28 (Mark Twitchell: The Real-Life Dexter) – “Inspired” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. That dude was a fu*king idiot. I’m inspired to play in the NBA, but that sh*t isn’t happening, not in this life or any other.
Yeah, if he was just randomly killing guys, he sounds more like a typical psychopath than any kind of vigilante.
RE: Fact #19 (King James I’s Fatal Tennis Drain) – Honestly, this story is pretty funny, but it’s really unlikely he would’ve gotten away even if that tunnel hadn’t been blocked.
RE: Fact #9 (Theodore Streleski’s Campus Murder Protest) – When he was released in 1985, he said, “I have no intention of killing again. On the other hand, I cannot predict the future.” He had been eligible for parole three times before, but he turned it down because the parole terms meant he couldn’t go to the Stanford campus.
RE: Fact #31 (Travis Lewis: Killer Who Returned) – Being able to forgive someone for murder after so many years is one thing, but letting them back into your life and home is a whole different ballgame.
It’s the difference between letting go of a grudge for your own well-being and just being a total idiot who learned zero.
RE: Fact #33 (James Richardson and the Poisoned Lunch) – So, after 21 years in a terrible situation, unable to save for retirement, buy a home, or deal with losing your whole family, what’s a fair compensation? About $50,000 a year, in theory.
Honestly, no amount of money could ever make up for something like this. If I were in his situation, the only thing I’d ask for is a gun to end it all and escape that nightmare. I feel so bad for that guy.
RE: Fact #5 (Kristy Manzanares and the Cruise Killing) – So, a witness goes into the couple’s cabin and sees something awful. He notices Kenneth Manzanares has blood on him and asks what happened. The guy supposedly says, “She would not stop laughing at me.” Then, Manzanares allegedly drags his wife towards the balcony, but the witness grabs her ankles and pulls her back inside. Security shows up after that. Honestly makes you wonder if the witness thought this was part of some weird tour at first.
RE: Fact #11 (Katherine Knight: Australia’s Cannibal Killer) – She wrote in her article that there were so many warning signs before he was killed that he must have been colorblind. She was hospitalized for violence three times before she met him and apparently had a habit of hitting people with frying pans. At some point, you have to wonder if she can really be fixed.
RE: Fact #39 (Kari’s Law and the Hotel Murder) – Yeah, tons of hotels have the checkout time as 9 AM now, but 911 still works. I’ve accidentally called 911 so many times trying to dial out, and security would call me back saying emergency services got a hang-up. Then I’d have to explain that I’m the one who messed up.
RE: Fact #26 (The Osage Indian Murders) – When I see anything about Indigenous people and the government in a post, I know it’s not going to be good news.
It was nice to hear something positive happening about Native American tribes for a change, but then Congress stepped in with a law saying “guardians” had to manage their money. I guess that *could* have been a good thing since the Osage probably weren’t used to handling so much wealth. But then… over 60 Osage people were killed between 1921 and 1925, and their land went to those guardians. That’s just awful.
I moved to Central Alberta five years ago, and the abuse stories I heard from Indigenous people were unbelievable. For the last 50 years, there’s been a cultural genocide where kids were separated from their parents and subjected to brainwashing. The Catholic Church was mainly responsible for the mental, physical, and sexual abuse. Indigenous people are overrepresented among the homeless and drug addicts, and hearing their stories is heartbreaking. Reserves around here have much higher suicide rates, especially among young people. I’ve made many Indigenous friends, and it’s striking to think about how different our histories are. One thing that really annoyed me is their treaty cards. They still say “Indian” instead of “Native.” As CK Louis said, it’s a 500-year-old mistake by white people that hasn’t been fixed because they don’t care. Newspapers and TV don’t use the word “Indian” anymore, so why is it so hard to change it on their ID?
RE: Fact #29 (Eric Edgar Cooke: The Night Caller) – Reminder to self: don’t go back for the murder weapon.
RE: Fact #19 (King James I’s Fatal Tennis Drain) – Tennis players don’t get involved, for them, love means nothing.
RE: Fact #14 (Marvin Gaye’s Murder by His Father) – I had no idea Gaye was murdered, and by his own father, no less!
RE: Fact #7 (Roberto Solis: Poet Turned Fugitive) – Looks like he had lots of time to figure out what went wrong last time.
It sounds like something really similar happened with an Austrian serial killer. In 1974, he murdered a woman, and he was sentenced to life in prison. While he was inside, he wrote books and plays, and one of them even became the basis for a documentary.
Then, in 1985, people started a campaign to get him released, including famous writers, artists, and politicians. The president initially refused, but after he served the minimum 15 years, he was released in 1990.
And get this, the very same year he got out, he went on to kill a woman in Czechoslovakia and seven more in Austria, all strangled with their bras.
A year later, he was even hired by an Austrian magazine to write about crime in Los Angeles. While he was there, three sex workers were found murdered in the same way.
So yeah, I guess writers aren’t always the best judges of whether someone is truly reformed.
This is just another reason I don’t wear bras.
Yeah. And also, someone can write amazing literature and poetry that touches your heart – but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t fu*k you over without a second thought. We connect with a writer through the feelings their work brings up in us. It’s tough to grasp that while they can express these complex, subtle emotions, they might also be capable of others that are totally foreign to us. Pretty much, reading someone’s book doesn’t mean you actually know them.
RE: Fact #21 (Chris Benoit’s Tragic Wrestling Murder-Suicide) – That line about Benoit’s brain being so damaged it looked like that of an 85-year-old Alzheimer’s patient really sticks with me from that story.
RE: Fact #40 (Kate Webster and the Barnes Mystery) – Described as “tall,” she was 5’5″. We’ve come a long way in a short time, pun intended…
The average height is only 5’3″ or 5’4″, so she’d still technically be taller than average.
RE: Fact #35 (The Jenny Jones Show Murder) – There’s a true crime series called Trial by Media that talks about this case. It’s just really sad for everyone involved. I think the producers should have been held responsible for what happened too. It turns out they were, and had to pay damages.
RE: Fact #16 (Officer Craig Peyer’s Deadly Deception) – This went down close to where I live and of course, it was all over the news. My roommate back then knew Cara’s family pretty well. It was a tough period. I remember some interviews with the officer on TV talking about the case, especially how women could be safer at night after Cara’s murder. You could see scratches on his face in some of those interviews. That was from Cara fighting back.
Mercy Road! I think they closed that exit for about a year after she passed away. Wow, what a tragically ironic name.
RE: Fact #45 (Aleksander Trofimov’s GPU Murder) – So, there was this guy playing Counter-Strike who got killed by another player in the game with a knife. He was so mad about it that he spent six months finding the other player, who lived pretty close by. Then, he grabbed a real knife and went to the guy’s house and stabbed him. The victim actually survived, luckily. Now the gamer is in jail.
Looks like he even lost a real-life knife fight.
Two years seems pretty light for stabbing someone in the heart because of a video game.
RE: Fact #19 (King James I’s Fatal Tennis Drain) – Just a heads-up, that’s James I of Scotland, not James I of England.
So, the Scots weren’t exactly thrilled about Queen Elizabeth II because they’d never had a queen before.
It would be great if they were happy with another James, given that because of the highest number rule, he’d be James VIII of the UK, even though England hasn’t had seven Jameses before him.
Super confusing, right? I always figured British historians must be like savants to keep track of all those names and what they did.
RE: Fact #38 (Robert Maury: The Tipster Killer) – Seriously, how many times did he think he could pull this off before someone finally pointed out, “Hey Bob, is it just me or does this guy seem a little too connected to these killings?”
No one figured out Peter Parker was Spider-Man.
RE: Fact #28 (Mark Twitchell: The Real-Life Dexter) – You missed the most important part: the key evidence was a document on his laptop titled “SKConfessions.” It starts with “This story is based on true events. The names and events were altered slightly to protect the guilty. This is the story of my progression into becoming a serial killer.” The document also details every aspect of his murder of John Brian Altinger. Twitchell then tried to claim he acted in self-defense, saying he decided to turn his “attacked and forced to kill someone in self-defense, hid his body because I was scared” story into a murder story just for fun.
I’m pretty sure the prosecution and everyone else also said his Dexter claim was BS, since Dexter only killed bad guys. This guy was trying to put a TV show on trial to help lessen his responsibility. Kind of like someone trying to blame violent video games.
So, if I’m understanding this correctly, he basically just nabbed the car of the person he killed? That’s a really dumb move, not something Dexter would ever do.
Apparently, Twitchell said Altinger was going with some rich lady to Costa Rica and wouldn’t need his Mazda 6 anymore. The story goes that Altinger sold the car to Twitchell for the $40 cash Twitchell had on him.
The attempt to cover up the crime was absolutely wild. He actually went into the victim’s apartment to email friends saying he’d gone on a long vacation to Costa Rica with his date. Twitchell also sent a resignation email to Altinger’s job, but then wouldn’t say how to get Altinger’s last paycheck to him. And the craziest part? He stole the victim’s car and then claimed he just bumped into Altinger, who was apparently going to Costa Rica with some rich lady and didn’t need his Mazda anymore. Twitchell said Altinger sold it to him for the $40 he had on him.
Sounds like a messed-up mix of Dexter and American Psycho.
Me when I’m bored: “Maybe I’ll grab a snack.”
This other dude when he’s bored: “I gotta become a serial killer.”
RE: Fact #46 (Donald Harvey: The Angel of Death) – It’s messed up that some of his employers suspected him of murder and just fired him instead of calling the cops.
The article mentioned that one place did report him, but the sheriff’s office wasn’t keen on taking the case.
Even though the hospital suspected [Cullen], they didn’t have proof that he tampered with IV bags by injecting insulin, basically “sending them out like grenades” to patients who were already struggling, according to Graeber’s writing. And when security told the local police about it, the police chief wasn’t really interested in pursuing it.
You wouldn’t want to wreck someone’s life and career just because they killed a few people or, you know, abused some kids.
They probably didn’t want to get involved with that and just passed the problem along to someone else.
RE: Fact #1 (Melvin Carr’s Fatal Gas Plot) – So, you go to the grocery store, and when you get back, you find your husband dead and three strangers too.
Who would marry this person? He’s been convicted multiple times and spent a good chunk of his life in prison.
I’m not sure if his wife would have known that. Back then, before the internet, it was easier to start fresh and be someone new.
I would have thought of it as some kind of sex-related thing.
RE: Fact #19 (King James I’s Fatal Tennis Drain) – Just a cool thing to know: the tennis we play today isn’t the same as the Royale Tennis he was playing. It’s actually a bit of a different sport. When a lawn version of Raquettes was invented, they called it “Lawn Tenis” to make it sound more upscale.
RE: Fact #34 (The Murder of Dian Fossey) – So, I just learned she was murdered, which is totally new to me. I was really little when she passed, so I’ve only ever heard her name and what she left behind. It’s also interesting to see in the comments why she doesn’t seem to be brought up as much as Jane Goodall.
Yeah, Dian could be a bit much if you really dug into it, but the movie about her is stunning and totally nails the vibe of the Virunga mountains.
It’s been a while since I saw the movie, but if I remember right, she torched some huts in a rage because she thought they were the poachers who killed a gorilla she was studying. Then, they killed her in revenge. What she did was definitely wrong, I guess, but I can’t say I feel sorry for poachers either. I just can’t recall if it was made clear whether the huts she burned had anything to do with the ones who killed the gorilla.
RE: Fact #6 (Michael Haim’s Backyard Murder Secret) – That sounds absolutely awful. Imagine the extreme PTSD they’d deal with forever.
It’s wild that the article mentions the father was charged but is out on bail. I can’t even imagine what it would be like living with a father like that for so many years. It would be great to see an update on this, especially since the arrest was back in 2014.
RE: Fact #20 (Richard Fitzgibbon: The First Vietnam Casualty) – So it turns out the guy who did it was named Edward C. Clark. He was a radioman who was drunk and had a small grudge. It sounds like he was the second American to die in Vietnam – after shooting Fitzgibbon, he got into a shootout with the Vietnamese police and then apparently jumped or fell out a two-story window while trying to get away.
RE: Fact #13 (The Unsolved Murder of William Lewis Moore) – It’s wild how the civil rights movement wasn’t that long ago, but so many people don’t really know what went down or how much we owe those early activists.
Some people say “after the civil rights movement” like it wrapped up ages ago, but honestly, not that long ago, many of those folks were still around and even in charge.
The 1990s saw the end of Apartheid in South Africa.
Here in the States, most people didn’t approve of interracial marriage until 1997.
RE: Fact #46 (Donald Harvey: The Angel of Death) – Yeah, that was a pretty big blunder. He ended up confessing to a colleague who was secretly recording him.
RE: Fact #31 (Travis Lewis: Killer Who Returned) – Setting boundaries is super important to protect yourself. For instance, I’ve got a firm “do not hire” rule for anyone who’s murdered my family.
It’s hard to imagine anyone hiring someone who murdered their parent.
Hiring them back feels like a way to get revenge on the killer. Like, if I killed someone’s parents, went to jail, and then years later their kid hired me? Yeah, I’d probably walk into that situation.
She stopped talking to him because his mom said he was “going back to his old ways.” So, he wasn’t invited over when the murder happened, and she already knew his behavior was becoming an issue. I don’t think there was much else she could have done, except maybe pay for some protection.
Maybe not talking to him at all was the best move. It’s not like it’s a small mistake to trust the person who killed your mom and cousin.
RE: Fact #15 (The Mistaken Hit on Aamir Siddiqi) – Some people will spend that much on a bottle of wine and then forget all about it a couple of days later. And yet, here we are, with someone apparently deciding that this amount of money is enough to have someone killed on contract. It’s a wild world we live in.
You can get a really nice bottle of something, or you could hire a terrible hitman. If that’s the budget you’re working with, you’d probably have a much better time just enjoying a drink and forgetting about whatever the problem was.
Yeah, this has been happening a bunch in Sweden the last 5-10 years. I think the bounties are way bigger though. But for real, it’s been wrong people getting shot, bystanders, even folks with the same last name as someone who ratted out their old gang. Relatives, wives, parents, uncles, all getting shot too.
Yeah, this really sounds like something you’d get for about a thousand bucks.
RE: Fact #37 (Dan White and the Twinkie Defense) – It’s a lesser-known fact that the Twinkie defense actually paved the way for the Chewbacca defense.
RE: Fact #40 (Kate Webster and the Barnes Mystery) – It’s not hilarious, but it is pretty wild that they were arguing about Webster not being good at cleaning, and she got caught so fast mainly because she didn’t clean up the crime scene well. Yikes, what a story.
RE: Fact #10 (Leopold and Loeb’s Perfect Crime) – So, what’s the deal when you only read half of Nietzsche?
Could you tell me more about who you’re referring to? I haven’t really read any books, I’m more into video games.
Lots of people misunderstand Nietzsche because they only read about half of his ideas and come away with some really weird notions.
For instance, a lot of folks who say they’re into Nietzsche believe life is circular, like it repeats forever. But Nietzsche actually suggested living your life as if you had to live it all over again, which could mean living a really full and meaningful life.
Another thing people get wrong is his idea of master-slave morality, where he talked about how the elite and regular folks have different moral codes. People hear this and think, “OMG, I gotta be a master with that master morality!” They miss the part where he said both systems are old news and a new morality needs to be created that goes beyond them. His idea of the “Superman,” for example, is more like Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia, which is a goal for humanity to strive for based on virtue, separate from Christian morality.
Plus, Nietzsche’s writings were later published by his brother-in-law, who was an anti-Semite. This led to his work being linked with Nazism, and it still has that association to some extent, even though there’s nothing authoritarian or militaristic in Nietzsche’s writings.
Yeah, that pretty much nails it. The Wikipedia article explains that Leopold was really into Nietzsche’s idea of “supermen.” He saw them as these exceptional people with super smarts who were way above regular folks and didn’t have to follow the same rules. Leopold thought he and Loeb were like that, and according to his take on Nietzsche, they weren’t held down by normal ethics or society’s rules.
That’s more of their own interpretation, because a “ubermensch” wouldn’t see breaking the law as transcending rules. They’d understand that rules don’t actually stop them from doing something that might seem wrong in certain situations, not that they’d look for trouble for no reason.
An Ubermensch is also like a moral powerhouse, so someone who is one wouldn’t try to murder a child on any level, as that’s completely immoral.
They’ve seriously misunderstood Nietzsche, if he was even their inspiration for this. He wasn’t saying an Ubermensch is above the rules and should break them. He meant that an Ubermensch knows the rules don’t “tie them down” from their freedom and liberty.
Some people think being able to “break the law” means they’re above the rules. Others know it doesn’t, but also know they could if they wanted to, not that they would or even desire to. But it doesn’t stop them from doing anything wrong or right.
The fact that doing “wrong” is an option if you want to doesn’t mean the discussion should stop there, because people can indeed do wrong. That’s usually how these conversations end up. Committing a wrong act isn’t the final word on the reasoning behind it. There are plenty of cases where people do wrong things for the sake of good, and also people who see a wrong deed and immediately judge without considering if it might have been done for a good reason.
Another example could be someone breaking the laws of a tyrant who is exploiting people who go along with the tyrant’s rules.
An Ubermensch would know that the tyrant’s laws don’t prevent them from doing the right thing for people, but a tyrant would try to make it seem that way, just like a corrupt government would.
Some people really thought they were Raskolnikov.
RE: Fact #36 (The Church Killing of Alberta King) – Wow, I had no idea about this! Definitely a cool fact I learned today.
I totally get that. It’s wild how this isn’t more widely known, right?
Yeah, I bet a lot of stuff from Summer ’74 is still super memorable for folks who weren’t even born yet. Nixon stepping down probably overshadowed a lot of other big events from that period. That particular story was all over the front pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times on July 1st, 1974. The New York Times also had headlines about the King murder, Mikhail Baryshnikov defecting from the USSR to Canada, and a fire that killed 24 people in a suburban NYC nightclub.
RE: Fact #36 (The Church Killing of Alberta King) – If you’re interested in learning more about her life, there’s a fantastic biography called “The Three Mothers” by Dr. Anna Tubbs. It focuses on the mothers of MLK Jr., James Baldwin, and Malcolm X. I learned a ton from it!
I really dig this kind of unique perspective on history. Thanks for sharing!
You should totally check out the “Significant Others” podcast by Conan’s wife! It’s a great series that shines a light on the people who were around the famous folks we always hear about. I really enjoyed it and highly recommend it.
RE: Fact #23 (The Unsolved 9/11 Murder of Henryk Siwiak) – This lady’s disappearance is pretty strange too. Sneha Anne Phillips, an Indian-American doctor, was last spotted on September 10, 2001, on a store’s security camera close to her home in Lower Manhattan. She might have gone back to her building that night or the next morning. Because her place was so close to the World Trade Center and she was a doctor, her family thinks she died trying to help people during the terrorist attacks the day after.
I’m really split on whether she was murdered or if she actually died in the building collapse.
I still think someone else killed her late on September 10th or early on September 11th, and the murderer totally got lucky.
RE: Fact #5 (Kristy Manzanares and the Cruise Killing) – Murder boat! I was working in Skagway, AK when this went down. As a tour guide who works with the ships, everyone on my tour that day was either super quiet or couldn’t stop talking about it. It was definitely the strangest day I’ve ever had touring.
RE: Fact #11 (Katherine Knight: Australia’s Cannibal Killer) – She skinned him and hung his pelt up in their house.
When the police went into the house, one of them moved what he thought was a curtain in a doorway, only to realize it was actually Price’s skin when he touched it.
Wow, that’s seriously intense! Is there a documentary about this?
RE: Fact #17 (The Kidnapping of Graeme Thorne) – His dad gave a speech on TV and by the middle of it started begging the kidnapper to let him go. It was really heartbreaking.
RE: Fact #12 (The Wrongful Hanging of Timothy Evans) – Christie was the main witness for the prosecution in Evan’s trial.
I checked out Christie’s wiki, and it says he murdered four women after Evans was hanged. Definitely a miscarriage of justice!
Haha, if you think courts, lawyers, and politicians actually deliver justice, you’re in for a surprise. They’re just trying to keep things stable, and justice isn’t really part of the equation.
The whole issue with the death penalty is that mistakes can happen.
RE: Fact #37 (Dan White and the Twinkie Defense) – The “Twinkie defense” is usually misunderstood to mean Twinkies themselves were the reason for his actions, which is pretty silly. But you nailed it – the Twinkies were more like a sign of his depression, not what actually caused it.
RE: Fact #18 (Finland’s Chilling Lake Bodom Murders) – That photo of the unknown guy in their funeral crowd is super creepy.
Why was someone nobody knew at the funeral a big deal? I figured a wild, sensational crime would draw a bunch of supporters to the funeral, assuming it was public.
RE: Fact #17 (The Kidnapping of Graeme Thorne) – Here are the two golden rules for winning the lottery:
1. If you can stay anonymous, definitely do that.
2. Don’t tell more than five people.
RE: Fact #39 (Kari’s Law and the Hotel Murder) – Seriously, it’s wild it wasn’t a thing until 2013. I bet there were other similar situations before that. Makes you wonder when dialing 9 became the usual thing to do.
Back in 2007, I was working at a hotel in Chicago, and we had to call 9-1-1 about once a week. It was always a struggle to dial 9-9-1-1 when things were stressful, with people yelling and chaos all around.
Yeah, that’s why it’s called “Nine-One-One” and not “Nine-Eleven”. Apparently, they used to tell folks to dial Nine-Eleven, but then someone stressed and panicked needed to dial 911 but couldn’t find the “Eleven” key. You know, when you’re panicking, it’s easy to make dumb mistakes like that.
When I was younger and in school, the teachers would tell us to dial 9 before any number, especially if we needed to call 911. The rule was “911 at home, 9911 at school,” and we just went with it. Even now, my work phones still need that extra 9.
Way back before 911 was a thing, businesses started using “9” to get an outside line. This happened in the 1950s when switchboard operators were replaced by automatic switching systems.
Pressing “9” signaled the equipment that you wanted a connection to the outside world, not an internal extension.
Karis’s law doesn’t change that; it just means the system needs to recognize both 911 and 9911 as the same emergency call.
Some newer systems let you make outside calls without dialing “9” first, but they often wait for a timer to run out after you finish dialing. People get annoyed because it feels slow compared to hearing a ring immediately after hanging up.
RE: Fact #10 (Leopold and Loeb’s Perfect Crime) – When the kid who always talks about how smart he is raises his hand and gets the answer wrong, you can see his face turn red real quick while everyone laughs.
I had a classmate who constantly boasted about his physics skills and how inferior other subjects were. Plus, he was just a jerk. He aimed for a top score to get into the best physics program in the country. But since he thought he was so “good,” he completely ignored our teacher’s practice tasks for the exams. He figured that stuff was too easy and not worth his time. Well, come exam time, he ended up with one of the lowest physics scores in the whole class.
The truly smart ones know they don’t know everything, which is why they’re always picking up new knowledge.
RE: Fact #35 (The Jenny Jones Show Murder) – I remember that Jenny Jones episode! Everyone had a good laugh, and the guest seemed to take it all in stride. It was a total shock when I found out later that he’d murdered the guy who had a crush on him. If I remember right, he’d actually told the producers beforehand that he wasn’t cool with his crush being the same sex. I don’t think the show got in trouble for it, but I do recall Jenny Jones having to testify. It was a really sad situation.
RE: Fact #18 (Finland’s Chilling Lake Bodom Murders) – Yeah, the band Children of Bodom got their name from this!
Rest in peace, Alexi.