From political assassinations and royal executions to shocking modern-day murders caught on camera, these stories prove that truth is often stranger and darker than fiction. In this third installment of our true crime series, we explore 50 more unbelievable murders that span centuries, continents, and motives. Each one exposes the chilling extremes of human nature and the unpredictable ways justice can unfold.
If you haven’t read the previous parts, check them out here:
Part 1 | Part 2
1 The Colloredo Twins’ Deadly Trial
In 17th-century Italy, a man named Lazarus Colloredo stood convicted of murder while living with his parasitic conjoined twin, Joannes Baptista. He had killed that man in a fit of rage after he made fun of Joannes. Facing execution, he argued that carrying out the sentence would also kill his attached brother, who had committed no crime. They pardoned him to spare the innocent twin.
2 Curtis Reeves’ Popcorn Shooting
In 2014, retired Tampa police captain Curtis Reeves confronted a man named Chad Oulson over cellphone use at a movie theater. As the dispute escalated, Oulson threw popcorn at Reeves, and Reeves drew a handgun and fired, killing Oulson and injuring his wife. In 2022, a jury acquitted Reeves of murder, accepting his self-defense claim.
3 Rapper G. Dep’s Guilty Conscience
In 1993, rapper Trevell “G. Dep” Coleman shot and killed a man. In 2010 he walked into a police station and confessed because the guilt weighed on him. Officers did not act, so he returned about two weeks later and confessed again. Investigators then matched his account to a cold case and charged him with murder. He was convicted in 2012 and sentenced to 15 years to life. His sentence was commuted in 2023, and he was released on parole in April 2024.
4 Mount St. Helens Hidden Murders
In 1980, the eruption of Mount St. Helens devastated Washington State, covering the landscape in ash and debris. Over a year later, searchers discovered the bodies of two women thought to be victims of the eruption hidden beneath the volcanic rubble. Investigators only later found they had been murdered before the eruption and buried in the area to conceal the crime. The victims, Weatter and Allen, were later identified and linked to serial killer Martin Lee Sanders.
5 Mia Zapata’s Murder and Justice
In the early 1990s, Seattle punk band The Gits were gaining national attention for their raw energy and distinctive sound. In 1993, their 27-year-old lead singer, Mia Zapata, was found raped and murdered after leaving a friend’s apartment. The case shocked the music community, prompting bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam to help fund a private investigator. Nearly a decade later, DNA evidence identified her killer as Jesus Mezquia, finally bringing justice to Zapata’s memory.
6 Malcolm Caldwell’s Fatal Meeting
Malcolm Caldwell was a Scottish Marxist academic who was an outspoken supporter of the Khmer Rouge. He traveled to Cambodia in December 1978 and met with dictator Pol Pot to discuss the revolution and the future of the country. Hours after the meeting, armed men stormed the guesthouse where he was staying and shot him dead. The motive behind Caldwell’s murder remains unclear to this day.
7 Rachel Hoffman’s Undercover Death
In 2008, 23-year-old Florida State University student Rachel Hoffman was arrested for possessing cannabis. Police pressured her to work as a confidential informant to avoid charges, sending her to arrange a deal for 1,500 ecstasy pills, two ounces of cocaine, and two handguns. The sting operation went wrong when the suspects realized she was working with police. Hoffman was murdered during the failed deal.
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8 Jill Dando’s Unsolved BBC Killing
In 1999, BBC journalist Jill Dando was shot dead outside her home in London. At the time, she was the beloved host of Crimewatch, a series that reconstructed real unsolved cases. The program later recreated her murder, and police arrested Barry George, who was convicted in 2001. After years of appeals, his conviction was overturned, and he was acquitted at a retrial in 2008, leaving one of Britain’s most high-profile killings unsolved to this day.
9 George Rose’s Murder in Paradise
British actor George Rose, a celebrated stage performer who won multiple Tony Awards, enjoyed a long and successful career on Broadway. While residing in the Dominican Republic in 1988, his adopted teenage son, the boy’s father, and two accomplices tortured and murdered George Rose. They buried his body in an unmarked grave near his home.
10 The Resurrection of Ewen McDonald
In 1752, a Scottish soldier named Ewen McDonald stabbed a man in Newcastle’s Bigg Market during a pub fight and was convicted of murder. After his hanging, officials sent his body to Surgeons’ Hall for dissection. To their shock, McDonald revived on the table, and the surgeon, fearing punishment for using a living man in dissection, grabbed a wooden mallet and struck him until he was dead.
RE: Fact #37 (Celia Blay’s Online Murder Investigation) – It’s wild, right? The power of words to cause harm is pretty unbelievable, and this isn’t me saying I support it or think it’s great.
RE: Fact #27 (The Lainz Angels of Death) – It’s pretty wild how some folks can find other people who are on the same wavelength, build up trust with them, and then get them on board for their “cause.”
Seriously! I have a hard time finding people who are into my super niche hobbies, and these folks are finding their perfect matches for everything.
RE: Fact #14 (Temujin Kensu’s “Ninja Killer” Case) – Sounds like only the person telling this story knows how they did it.
The prosecution’s story is just a theory because there’s no physical evidence to back it up.
Just because there’s no physical evidence doesn’t mean it’s “no trace” when there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence.
RE: Fact #1 (The Colloredo Twins’ Deadly Trial) – Ugh, you made me look up “parasitic conjoined twin.” Guess I’m not sleeping tonight.
RE: Fact #5 (Mia Zapata’s Murder and Justice) – So, he got convicted and sentenced to 37 years, but then his appeal went through and they knocked it down to 36 years.
He also died rotting in jail! Thanks, COVID.
RE: Fact #18 (The Murder of Skylar Neese) – Wow, I had no idea that was even a possibility!
RE: Fact #18 (The Murder of Skylar Neese) – This reminds me of that story about two 12-year-old girls who tried to murder their friend. They believed Slender Man told them to do it. They stabbed her 19 times, but she somehow made it out of the forest to a road. A cyclist saw her, called 911, and she survived.
Even Slender Man thought that was going a bit too far.
I think they tried to murder her just because they wanted to, and they used the Slenderman thing as their excuse, like “we’re just messed up kids.”
So, according to their lawyers, one of them was apparently diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder and schizophrenia, and the other with schizotypy and a delusional disorder. I’m not sure if the investigation ever found any other reason, but it’s possible they just wanted to kill someone and figured the whole Slender Man thing would help them claim insanity.
And now there’s an HBO documentary about it. This case bugs me because some people have tried blaming their age and say sh*t like “kids can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality.” They’re fu*king 12. What 12-year-old can’t tell Slenderman is fake?
I was 12 once and had 12-year-old friends. I’m pretty sure we never fu*ked murdered anyone, even though we all really enjoyed playing violent video games and watching violent movies.
RE: Fact #16 (Storage Wars Corpse Discovery) – Hey Brandon, there’s a dead body in here, so we’re probably not gonna get much for this.
God, I fu*king heard that in my head.
Sometimes I do that a few times a year with my folks when we’re at garage sales or estate sales.
RE: Fact #11 (Huey Long’s Capitol Assassination) – It’s true, Huey Long definitely didn’t hold back with his modesty. I’ve often heard he was a bit of a blowhard who’d tell people whatever they wanted to hear just to get their votes. A little populism is fine, but he went around making promises he couldn’t possibly keep, even if he had become president.
This was a major issue. He knew how to connect with everyday people and made huge promises. But those folks, lacking money and education, couldn’t question how he planned to deliver. He had no idea and definitely didn’t have the power to do most of what he pledged. These Cajuns were so smitten they’d go hungry to save up cash just to hear him speak.
Sound familiar to anyone?
That’s just not true. He brought roads and infrastructure to people who had never had it before. He actually laid out his plans for how to accomplish things.
Also, it really shows how fu*ked up your thinking has to be to compare a man who wanted to cap wealth and helped the poor to Trump.
He actually did get things done. Okay, so maybe he lied big-time to the KKK to get elected, but honestly, it’s the KKK, so who’s surprised? And then he went and built roads, gave out free school books, and set up night classes for poor Black communities in rural Louisiana. So yeah, he definitely did some good things. The downside? He pretty much acted like a dictator to make it happen, which isn’t so great.
So, he was a bit of a controversial Democrat, but it’s pretty rare to hear someone propose actual limits on how much wealth people can have, like he did. I’m curious if anyone could actually make that happen. Lots of people definitely wanted him gone for all sorts of reasons.
It’s like people are acting like the assassin’s reasons are still a big secret, or that it was some kind of secret capitalist plot. But we actually know what happened:
Back on September 8, 1935, Long went to the State Capitol to push through a law that would redraw the boundaries of an opponent’s district. This opponent was Judge Benjamin Pavy, who had been in his role for 28 years. Around 9:20 p.m., right after the bill that would essentially remove Pavy passed, Pavy’s son-in-law, Carl Weiss, walked up to Long. The most widely accepted story is that Weiss shot Long once with a handgun from about four feet away, hitting him in the torso.
RE: Fact #44 (Michael Laudor’s Murder Ends a Film) – I read a detailed article about this written by a journalist who was friends with Laudor as a kid. It’s a really tragic story. He was incredibly smart as a teenager, but his life went totally off track when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia in his early twenties. He ended up in the hospital for months because he became convinced his family had been swapped out with fakes who were trying to kill him. He tried to get back on track by going straight to Yale; he was so smart he could get admitted. From what people say, his girlfriend was an amazing, caring person and wanted to stick by him even with his schizophrenia. But then he went through another bout of delusions, convinced his girlfriend was actually a clone or a doll trying to harm him, and he tragically killed her. It really highlights the types of situations where the “insanity defense” is supposed to apply. I think he’s still in a mental hospital.
If you’ve ever been in that headspace, you know it’s pure hell. I’m pretty sure the idea of hell is just describing a psychotic break or the extreme end of schizophrenia. Poor guy. I think about him a lot.
He wrote a book called “The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions.” It dives into their friendship, the history of schizophrenia, and the deinstitutionalization movement. It’s a really excellent read.
There’s also another fantastic book, “Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family” by Robert Kolker. This one is about the Galvin family, who had twelve kids. Five of them were diagnosed with schizophrenia, and the book talks about their efforts to find a genetic cause for the illness.
RE: Fact #47 (Henry Rathbone’s Post-Lincoln Breakdown) – He was buried next to his wife, whom he shot and stabbed.
I’m not trying to make excuses for it, but I bet it was some sort of military burial ground where the land was already set aside. My grandpa’s first wife, who he apparently couldn’t stand, is buried right next to him! They were divorced and both remarried, but the government plots were already in place.
It’s pretty common for folks who served in the military to get a free plot of land. I’m guessing the family just didn’t want to spend extra cash burying them somewhere else.
RE: Fact #19 (Journalist Vlado Taneski’s Secret Crimes) – Nightcrawler was a really good movie.
I went in expecting a typical Marvel movie but ended up really appreciating Jake Gyllenhaal. It was an amazing film.
RE: Fact #22 (Madalyn O’Hair’s Texas Disappearance) – What do we do now? We weren’t supposed to kill them! Uhhh, I don’t know, disembowel them?
RE: Fact #30 (Tookie Williams’ Crips and Execution) – Being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize doesn’t mean all that much. Lots of people can put someone up for it, like university professors in fields like history, law, or religion. So, if you have a friend who’s an associate professor and they fill out a form on the Nobel website, you can get nominated.
I’m a Nobel Peace Prize nominee myself. And honestly, even if I weren’t, there’s no way anyone could prove me wrong because the list of nominees is kept private for 50 years.
RE: Fact #42 (James Fannin’s Denied Last Requests) – Imagine him watching them do the total opposite of what he asked for, like “Seriously?”
RE: Fact #32 (Niels Högel’s Hospital Killing Spree) – Basically, it’s called “Hero Syndrome.” It’s when someone engineers a situation just so they can swoop in and be the hero. You see it a lot with firefighters and arsonists, but it can pop up in other areas too, like this.
I do this too! I tend to cram way too much filling into the subs I make, just to make people think, “No way you can close that!” Then I manage to do it, and I feel like a total rockstar.
So, in The Incredibles, the villain Syndrome actually has “Hero Syndrome.” Pretty wild, right?
And Mysterio too, in Spider-Man.
Buddy was acting like a little b*tch boy.
RE: Fact #31 (The Bisbee Massacre of 1883) – Huh. I’m curious why the last person got a different punishment. Usually, murder back then meant a hanging, and the other robbers faced that too. So, why not the last guy?
He asked for a separate trial, and honestly, his claim of innocence seemed a lot more believable. The only thing they really had against him was that some other criminal – who wasn’t even involved in this – said they overheard this guy and five other robbers talking about the robbery plan. That’s just hearsay, and from a witness you can’t really count on.
This is really fu*king scary. You don’t get a lighter sentence just because you’re more likely to be innocent. That’s horrifying. If someone isn’t proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt, they’re acquitted. The strength of the evidence should have no bearing whatsoever on the penalty, only on whether someone is guilty or innocent. Someone getting life in prison because “well, the charge was murder, but the evidence was really flimsy” is terrifying.
RE: Fact #2 (Curtis Reeves’ Popcorn Shooting) – There’s an episode about this case on Hulu’s “Taking the Stand” show. His story keeps changing and doesn’t really add up.
RE: Fact #20 (The Duel of Dog and Killer) – Greyhounds seem like they were way cooler back in the day. Now, all they do is run, shiver, and sleep.
Everything used to be way cooler back in the day, especially the plague.
Yeah, it was a great time to be the plague.
Just cuddling my greyhound right now because she’s all shivery from the traffic noise in the morning, haha.
RE: Fact #27 (The Lainz Angels of Death) – I’m not sure what the “justice ministry” actually handles, but it definitely doesn’t seem to be administering any justice.
They’re getting off light. It’s mentioned they think the actual number of murders is closer to 200. So, not only did these women admit to killing over 36 people, but you think the real count could be way higher, and you’re just letting them walk away with new identities?
It’s pretty wild that you can murder 200 people and not end up spending your life in prison. Seems like something’s not quite right there.
RE: Fact #20 (The Duel of Dog and Killer) – So they gave him tools and stuff? How could you lose with tools against a dog? What kind of guard loses to a dog? The king’s guard, maybe? What was he even guarding for the king? I hope it wasn’t anything important because it clearly wasn’t safe!
RE: Fact #48 (Pippa Bacca’s Peace Journey Murder) – This reminds me of that robot from Canada that was killed in Philly.
RE: Fact #6 (Malcolm Caldwell’s Fatal Meeting) – Makes you wonder how much he actually knew about that dictator who systematically killed educated people.
It looks like he knew, but he just brushed off those reports as “western propaganda.”
RE: Fact #23 (The Scientology Killing of Elli Perkins) – It’s just heartbreaking that the kid’s lawyer was swapped out for someone who works with the church, especially after they met with a church leader. It really feels like they almost had a shot at freedom, but then got dragged back in.
I’m sure the argument about confused alien souls making him do it was pretty convincing in court.
Space ghosts are the worst.
RE: Fact #47 (Henry Rathbone’s Post-Lincoln Breakdown) – Could this have been caused by late-stage syphilis?
RE: Fact #5 (Mia Zapata’s Murder and Justice) – That attacker was a complete stranger and it was a random act of violence – it freaked me out so bad. So glad they finally caught him.
The suspect had a history of violence against women. This is a good reminder not to wear noise-blocking headphones if you’re in a potentially dangerous environment. A lot of people think headphones shield them from the world, but they actually do the opposite.
Totally, that’s exactly what happened when I got hit by a car. I didn’t hear a thing until it was too late.
I use bone-conducting headphones when I’m listening to music out and about. I really recommend them.
RE: Fact #7 (Rachel Hoffman’s Undercover Death) – This reminds me of a story about a University of North Dakota student who got caught with some weed. They apparently pressured him to make a buy for the police, and then he was found dead in the Red River. All over a bag of weed.
Seriously, that kid’s story is messed up. He got caught selling weed to a student who was apparently an informant. The amounts were tiny – like, an eighth once and then just a gram another time. When the cops searched his room, they didn’t even find anything except a grinder. Some big-time drug dealer, huh? Like the Pablo Escobar of Whapelton, North Dakota.
The police task force then threatened him with a major felony charge for supposedly selling drugs “on a college campus.” To get out of it, they forced him to become an informant himself. And what did he manage to buy undercover? Just what you’d expect: a few times he bought an eighth of weed. It’s still unclear how he died. Whatever went down, I feel like those small-town North Dakota cops, who clearly had nothing better to do, shouldn’t have messed with kids’ lives over a bit of weed.
RE: Fact #48 (Pippa Bacca’s Peace Journey Murder) – 1) She really didn’t deserve that, poor thing.
2) What an absolute fu*k*ng idiot.
RE: Fact #26 (Carbine Williams’ Prison Gun Design) – I’d totally watch a movie about this guy’s life.
RE: Fact #15 (The Poisoning of Jane Stanford) – David Starr Jordan was a big deal naturalist back then, especially known for identifying fish. You know how he’d get to fish in tide pools that were tough to reach? He’d use strychnine!
He liked to use strychnine to get to creatures in tough-to-reach tide pools. Back then, it was a common poison for vertebrates and people even used it for medicine, so he probably wasn’t the only one around who had some.
RE: Fact #43 (Spotlight Priest John Geoghan Killed) – I can’t believe he only got 10 years. It feels like it should have been more, considering the charges. That’s the part that really doesn’t make sense to me.
So, he was only jailed for one groping incident, and those 500 other cases were settled out of court.
RE: Fact #4 (Mount St. Helens Hidden Murders) – This sounds like a really cool idea for a true detective show.
Call it “Ashes to Ashes” or something like that.
Wow, I guess we’re all going to see this happen. Great job on this!
Hey, just wanted to point out there’s already a BBC show called “Ashes to Ashes” and it also features police detectives. Pretty funny, right? Unfortunately, no volcanoes were used for hiding murders in that one, as far as I recall, though there was some time travel involved.
RE: Fact #8 (Jill Dando’s Unsolved BBC Killing) – I knew someone who studied law with a girl whose uncle was a major crime reporter for a big newspaper. He covered a specific trial every single day. Before he was a reporter, he was a barrister, and he told his family that the conviction was total nonsense the day it happened.
RE: Fact #8 (Jill Dando’s Unsolved BBC Killing) – I remember this really well. It was a massive story here in the UK when she was murdered. She was a really big deal at the BBC when she was killed.
It’s wild how the media in the UK picks and chooses what to cover. I think it’s really odd that hardly anyone heard about Raymond Sinaga. He just got a life sentence for drugging and raping almost 100 guys. He’s probably the worst rapist England has ever had, but the news barely mentioned it. You’d think a story like that would be huge. I’ve noticed American media often doesn’t report much on crimes where the victim is male or a minority, so I wouldn’t be shocked if the UK media does the same thing. It’s a real bummer.
This was a massive story when it first came out, but there were rules about reporting on it until the sentencing. By the time the media could actually talk about it, he’d already been through the trial and been found guilty. There wasn’t anything new happening to report on, it was all over and done by the time people found out.
Remember this: the guy they think did it went by Bulsara and had gunshot residue in his coat pocket.
That’s Freddie Mercury’s last name!
So, are you saying you actually remember being the one who did the killing?
RE: Fact #32 (Niels Högel’s Hospital Killing Spree) – This whole situation is fu*ked up in so many ways.
No one really knows the true number of people he killed; the convictions are just for the ones they could prove.
He did this at two different hospitals over several years. It really makes you wonder about the system when he could get away with it for so long without anyone noticing sooner.
It really depends on the unit he was working on. If it was an open-heart surgery recovery unit, it might have gone unnoticed for a while because of the nature of that unit. But if it was an orthopedic surgery unit, that would be way more suspicious.
And I can bet this person’s charting wasn’t accurate, which makes investigating this a lot harder. The main thing is that “what’s charted is what happened, and if you didn’t chart it, it didn’t happen.” There’s as much oversight as possible in healthcare, but a lot of it relies on honest reporting and requires coworkers to hold each other accountable.
This whole situation is fu*ked up. It would be interesting to know the demographics, the types of patients, and how much time passed between these murders to see what could have been done to stop it.
It seems like people are hesitant to accuse someone innocent. This reminds me of the Susan Nelles case. She was a nurse in the ICU at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. A lot of babies died there over a few months. She was working during most of those deaths, but there wasn’t any real evidence against her. Photos of her being led away in handcuffs were all over the news. An investigation happened, and they didn’t find her guilty. In fact, they decided no crimes had even been committed. Around the same time the deaths started, the hospital began admitting more babies who were in much worse condition. The deaths were eventually attributed to natural causes. This whole situation really ruined that poor woman’s reputation.
After checking Wikipedia, it looks like I might be misremembering some details. That case is actually still considered unsolved homicides. I’m not sure if I’m mixing it up with something else or if the article has different info. It also looks like autopsies found overdoses of dioxin in the babies’ blood. Nelles was cleared when they realized she wasn’t even working the night one of the babies died, and that baby was only added to the victim list after she was arrested.
It’s pretty messed up how much this situation was brushed under the rug. It was basically a textbook case of people ignoring problems and just passing them off to someone else. The vibe was totally “not my problem” and “surely someone else will handle this.”
So, here’s the rundown: back in August 2011, the doctors and nurses in ward 211 at Oldenburg Hospital noticed a really strange spike in resuscitation calls. This guy, Högel, was even part of those discussions and then conveniently took three weeks off sick. The head physician in the CT department had a weird feeling about him and moved him over to the anesthesia department.
The head anesthesiologist also got a bad vibe and basically pushed him to quit. He did, and got a regular recommendation letter that basically said he was all good to go.
Armed with that letter, he moved on to Delmenhorst hospital. After a while, some of his coworkers started to pull away because there were just too many odd incidents when he was around. But nobody really did anything, even when they found four full containers of a heart medication that no doctor had ordered.
The absolute worst part is that in June 2005, when he was actually caught red-handed at a patient’s bedside in the ICU, the hospital management took two whole days to even talk about it. They decided to wait until Högel’s next planned vacation. He only had one more day left to work before that, and on that day, he killed another patient. It was only after that when his colleagues finally went to the police.
Yeah, hospital systems often try to pass the blame around to avoid responsibility. That’s pretty much what happened with Dr. Duntch in that Dr. Death podcast story.
RE: Fact #39 (The FBI’s Deadly Informant Cover-Up) – Typical stuff. When even the good guys are acting like bad guys, what are regular folks supposed to do?
The FBI are the good guys? That hasn’t been true for a long time, sadly.
RE: Fact #3 (Rapper G. Dep’s Guilty Conscience) – That’s a tricky situation. You don’t want to make people afraid to admit something out of guilt, but you also don’t want folks to dodge responsibility for ages.
It’s one of those weird edge cases the system isn’t really built for. It’s designed to catch truly selfish jerks who’ll do anything to avoid consequences, or else give a slap on the wrist for small, harmless errors. It struggles with a massive moral difference between someone owning up to it and the actual offense.
The system is lacking, to put it mildly. Someone could commit the same or a worse crime, fight it hard, and get off with less time than someone who confessed and is only facing charges because they admitted it.
It’s not quite right to call the system inadequate. I mean, we still convict murderers, stop crimes, and the country hasn’t fallen apart into anarchy. It works okay, it’s just not perfect.
RE: Fact #8 (Jill Dando’s Unsolved BBC Killing) – A few years back, I got a CV for an open job where the person put this in their “other activities” section: “I was an early suspect in the Jill Dando murder inquiry.” Yeah, I didn’t even interview them.
That’s not really much of an accomplishment, you know.
RE: Fact #4 (Mount St. Helens Hidden Murders) – That’s so sad, but never forget how Landsburg used his own body to protect his documentation of the eruption in his last moments.
My parents knew him. My dad used to teach photography classes in Seattle, and that’s how they met, since my dad had his own darkroom. We all look up to him in my family for what he gave up for science and photography.
Yeah, I found out about him a few years back. I can’t even picture being in that situation, must have been so scary.
RE: Fact #38 (Indiana Teens’ Burglary Gone Wrong) – Yeah, I agree they’re responsible for the death. But honestly, charging them with involuntary manslaughter and attempted burglary feels more fitting to me.
Calling it murder feels off. They messed up big time, but it doesn’t seem like they meant for anyone to die. It’s a bad situation, but honestly, the kids who got shot were being pretty dumb and kind of brought it on themselves. I don’t see the point in taxpayers footing the bill for them to be locked up forever.
So, this seems like it would be considered felony murder. The idea behind felony murder is that if you commit a crime, you’re responsible for any deaths that happen because of it. It doesn’t matter if the death was accidental or if the person who died was even involved in the crime. Intent isn’t really a factor, as far as I understand it, because it’s a specific charge that’s different from regular murder.
They messed up big time, but they didn’t mean to hurt anyone. The issue is, they’re committing a felony that’s so dangerous, their intention doesn’t even matter.
RE: Fact #9 (George Rose’s Murder in Paradise) – I looked him up since I just found the 1983 movie version of “Pirates of Penzance,” and it’s really great. He plays the Major General. You can see him and Tony Azito, who was another fantastic actor and died from AIDS, in this video.
I totally remember seeing that “I am the Very Model” clip in my theater appreciation class over 10 years ago. I had no idea his life ended so tragically.
Is the song Mordin sings in Mass Effect 2?
So glad we have recordings of his and other great actors’ performances. This is one of those historical crimes where it’ll be tough to ever know all the details about how that adoption worked – was it a sugar daddy situation, abusive, or something else entirely?
RE: Fact #36 (Rene Castellani’s Arsenic Milkshake Murder) – The guy went to Disneyland the day after his wife’s funeral. Seriously, what else could he have possibly done that would seem more suspicious?
Ha, yeah, maybe if he opened an arsenic store or wrote a book about poisoning your wife…
Maybe he could call the title something like “If I Did It.”
RE: Fact #49 (JoAnn Nichols’ Body Behind the Wall) – Imagine if they actually made an episode about that and found it right in the middle of the show!
You should check out that HBO doc about Robert Durst. It’s basically that, but with a super weird billionaire instead of a hoarder. It’s seriously some of the most chilling TV you’ll ever watch. The show is called “The Jinx”.
You gotta see it through to the end! I bailed after a few episodes thinking “meh,” and big mistake. My brother practically had to drag me to keep watching, and that one favor he did for me basically let me spend way more on his Christmas gift.
RE: Fact #42 (James Fannin’s Denied Last Requests) – They were just requests.
RE: Fact #10 (The Resurrection of Ewen McDonald) – Stopping the zombie apocalypse before it even gets going.
RE: Fact #47 (Henry Rathbone’s Post-Lincoln Breakdown) – His wife was also his stepsister. They became step-siblings when he was 11 and she was 14.
RE: Fact #49 (JoAnn Nichols’ Body Behind the Wall) – I knew this guy back in the early nineties. I met him about seven years after his wife had died. He used to have dinner every Thursday night with a group of us at the Rustler steakhouse on Route 9 in Poughkeepsie. He always came with his girlfriend, who he’d been with for quite a while.
He was middle management at IBM, a really nice and smart guy. I think the trouble in his marriage probably started after his son died in an accident involving a car-boat. I never actually talked to him about any of this, but my friends who were the reason I joined that dinner group knew him way better. We did chat about him a couple of times when he missed dinner.
We did talk about his missing wife, though. The general feeling was nobody knew what happened to her. His story about her leaving seemed believable, but if she turned up dead, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine he had something to do with it, not because of anything specific about him, but just due to the circumstances of her vanishing.
Since everyone knew the details of her disappearance pretty well, and he had a normal, sensible girlfriend now, he seemed pretty normal. We felt for him and his life story.
It had been years since I thought about him until the news broke about her being found in the house. I called a few friends from back then, and we all kind of nodded, surprised but not really shocked by what came out. The biggest surprise was that he lived with her in that house for 28 years.
Wow, I’m more surprised he stayed with her in that house for 28 years. Guess it really was “till death do us part”!
RE: Fact #36 (Rene Castellani’s Arsenic Milkshake Murder) – So, she had this patch of hair grow in that was free of arsenic, and it lined up with the 9 days he was gone.
RE: Fact #33 (Rick Parker’s Fatal Boxing Fix) – This whole story is pretty wild, and honestly, a couple of sentence fact just doesn’t capture it all.
So, former Jets defensive end Mark Gastineau decided he wanted to get into pro boxing after football. Apparently, he wasn’t very good, and he ended up hooking up with this shady boxing promoter named Rick “Elvis” Parker, who started rigging his fights.
Here’s a weird part: during George Foreman’s comeback, there was a supposed deal that if Gastineau could win 12 fights in a row, he’d get a shot at fighting Foreman and make a ton of money. To make sure Gastineau stayed undefeated, Elvis started paying guys, like construction workers and old pro wrestlers, to take a dive in the first round. You can actually find some of these fights on YouTube, and they’re pretty obvious.
Eventually, he gets Tom “Doc” Anderson to fight Gastineau. But Doc wasn’t having it – he refused to throw the fight and ended up beating Gastineau badly, which tanked their chances for that big Foreman fight. It would have been hilarious to see.
Then, Fat Elvis convinced Doc to fight Gastineau again. But at the last minute, he switched out Doc’s usual corner crew for new guys who gave him water from paper cups instead of his normal water bottle. After a few rounds, Doc started feeling sick and had to be rushed to the hospital. He ended up in and out of the hospital for years, and doctors never figured out what he was poisoned with.
At his wit’s end, Doc planned to confront Elvis to find out what he’d been given. Fat Elvis started threatening him and his family, so Doc shot him dead in a hotel room and turned himself in.
So, I’m wondering why Anderson is still locked up. It seems like this whole situation could be a temporary insanity plea or something similar. It’s wild to think about, he’s already had his life messed up by that poison. He doesn’t seem like he’s a danger to anyone, and honestly, with Parker threatening his family, it sounds like he was just defending himself.
RE: Fact #30 (Tookie Williams’ Crips and Execution) – It’s like you’re praising a car’s paint job after it hit a crowd. And the guy who supposedly ran youth groups to keep teens out of gangs? Turns out he was involved in a robbery with two of those very teens. Truly awful.
But he was a children’s author!
That’s a great way to put it.
RE: Fact #41 (The Martinez Court-Martial Explosion Case) – So, just because someone pleads guilty doesn’t automatically mean they *are* guilty. Lots of folks take plea deals because their lawyers tell them their chances in court aren’t great.
RE: Fact #32 (Niels Högel’s Hospital Killing Spree) – If he wasn’t very good, he wouldn’t have been able to save 85 of his victims.
RE: Fact #28 (Byron Looper’s Election Assassination) – Wow talk about high motivation
Lowtax also made some really bad choices that ended tragically, even though he had everything going for him at first before he messed it all up. He gets a lot of hate for becoming a bitter jerk later on, but for years he was actually pretty fair as a site administrator, especially since he was the owner and had total control. He was also really funny.
RE: Fact #10 (The Resurrection of Ewen McDonald) – Soldier: I’m feeling better!
Dr: I have a cure for that.
RE: Fact #12 (Mayor Foster’s Lynch Mob Promise) – The American Justice System, everyone.
Justice! (Terms and conditions apply)
RE: Fact #30 (Tookie Williams’ Crips and Execution) – This person was a convicted gang member and murderer, and the literal founder and leader even got jailed for their crimes. But apparently, Arnie is the problem? Get out of here.
RE: Fact #5 (Mia Zapata’s Murder and Justice) – She was found with no ID, and was only recognized by the medical examiner who was a fan of your music
Medical Examiner: I wanted to see you up-close. Just not under these circumstances.
RE: Fact #45 (Prince Sado’s Death in a Rice Chest) – Yeah, it sounds like tough parenting, but at least they learned their lesson and never did it again.
RE: Fact #17 (Emperor Galba’s Fatal Reward) – Then Vitellius got killed and tossed into the Tiber River when Vespasian stepped in. That whole year was wild.
RE: Fact #11 (Huey Long’s Capitol Assassination) – Huey was a lying, corrupt individual.
RE: Fact #2 (Curtis Reeves’ Popcorn Shooting) – Yeah, the former police chief in Florida. That makes sense. Just another gun enthusiast looking for a reason to pull the trigger.
I hope they skip the memorial service when he dies. Nah, they’ll probably still block a highway for a few hours in his honor.
RE: Fact #40 (Phil Hartman’s Tragic Final Night) – Andy saying “I put the Phil Hartman hex on you. You are the next to die,” is what directly led to the face smashing. It would be pretty enraging to hear that from someone whose recklessness played a part in the death of such a kind and talented person. It’s almost as if Andy said it because he felt he deserved it.
RE: Fact #28 (Byron Looper’s Election Assassination) – Yeah, I can totally see how something like this could lead to someone like George Santos ending up in Congress for a bit.
RE: Fact #48 (Pippa Bacca’s Peace Journey Murder) – They didn’t just murder her, they gang-raped and murdered her. They caught one of the guys because he stole her phone and used it.
A lot of young folks with easy lives in Western democracies tend to see things similarly. They often think of themselves as independent thinkers who really get humanity, believing all global issues originate in Washington. She, and others like her, don’t really grasp the daily struggles many people worldwide face – the fact that you can’t always count on the people around you. For many, there’s no real justice, and no police to rely on. You have to be super cautious about the situations you end up in, what you say, how you dress, or if you step outside the expected roles in the relationships you’re born into. Every single day, countless people meet violent ends just like hers. They’re exploited by people who prey on their weakness, abused, murdered for perceived ‘dishonor,’ or have their meager belongings and essentials stolen.
That’s not to say there isn’t good in the world, not at all. But her project, even if she’d managed to pull it off, would have essentially downplayed and ignored the difficult realities of most people’s lives she would have encountered.
As someone from a developing country, I can totally back this up. It’s pretty wild sometimes seeing how people in western countries think.
From what I know, an ex-con trucker raped her, and he admitted it. As someone living in Turkey, I feel embarrassed whenever this story comes up. The way it went down and how the public and the government handled it were really messed up, in my opinion.
Turkey has a really mixed cultural background. Sometimes you get amazing hospitality and kindness, but other times it’s full of rape and murder. It’s the kind of mentality that actual feminists talk about when they mention “rape culture” – a mindset where women are seen as just objects of desire and property.
How does that relate to this? Well, I think she was raped, partly because she was traveling in a wedding dress.
Let me explain. There’s a scene from a popular old Turkish movie called “Arabesk.” In it, a young woman runs away from home to marry the guy her dad hates. Things go wrong, and she gets raped twice before she ends up at a trucker stop asking for directions to Istanbul, where she gets gang-raped again.
This movie is actually a dark comedy. It’s poking fun at the old Turkish movie industry, known as “Yeşilçam,” where tragic events happening to good people were super common. The movie references a lot of those old films.
If you look them up, you’ll find tons of rape, domestic abuse, wild west-style shootouts, and cheesy macho lines in those movies.
Yeşilçam films shaped the way three generations of Turkish people grew up. The themes in those movies got embedded in people’s minds, so much so that they unconsciously believe in the events from those films. Our sense of humor, how we argue, our slang, and even how we look are all influenced by this culture.
And this culture has some serious issues.
For example, when someone with a messed-up mindset, who sees women as objects to be conquered, and grew up with movies where bad things happen to women who step out of line, meets a foreign woman in a wedding dress who’s hitchhiking, it’s easy to see how they’d make a connection. The rapist apparently had a total disconnect from his actions; people saw him watching the news about the case and yelling at the TV, at himself.
RE: Fact #46 (Madame Popova’s Murder-for-Hire Ring) – She took money from both sides. The only assassin she’d hire would be herself. Ultimately, the tax collector got her.
So, one of her clients spilled the beans, and that’s how she got caught. It’s kind of a no-brainer, but I guess it’s a good reminder not to break the law while you’re already breaking the law.
RE: Fact #22 (Madalyn O’Hair’s Texas Disappearance) – She also tried to sue NASA because the Apollo 8 crew read the first few verses of Genesis while orbiting the moon.
So she’s like the real-life version of internet atheist?
I get what she was saying. It feels a bit off to use public money to take something amazing for everyone and then read from an ancient religious text from just one belief system. Especially considering the people who wrote it likely wouldn’t have imagined us flying, let alone going to space. The whole Tower of Babel story, which is about not understanding each other because we tried to reach heaven, makes it even stranger. It just seems out of place to be quoting old religious writings from one of countless unproven faiths when you’re literally orbiting the moon in a spaceship. It kind of watered down a big historic event, even if it wasn’t a huge deal overall. The golden record on the Voyager probe feels like a better fit, even if it wasn’t perfect.
It would be one thing if they did that privately because of their own beliefs, but doing it publicly like that felt pretty weak.
That suit was thrown out by the Supreme Court because they didn’t have the power to hear it.
That makes it so much better! It’s amazing.
RE: Fact #44 (Michael Laudor’s Murder Ends a Film) – You can’t really “overcome” schizophrenia, you can only treat it and learn to live with it.
Things are toughest when you’re just starting out and feeling lost, but it really does get better with treatment and time. I’m in a much more stable place now, and honestly, living with it is way easier than I ever thought it would be, especially since I’ve put in the effort.
RE: Fact #41 (The Martinez Court-Martial Explosion Case) – The case felt pretty weak, honestly. Martinez definitely had a motive and seems like a scummy guy, and there was some iffy evidence suggesting he might have had access to the murder weapon. But that was pretty much it. I’m not sure why the convening authority decided to proceed with a trial – maybe pressure from the families?
So, this guy nabbed a claymore mine and rigged it up right outside his commander’s office. It ended up killing the commander and his second-in-command. Apparently, this whole thing was payback because the soldier was being looked into for swiping Army gear and selling it on the internet. The whole case fell apart though, because the evidence handling was messed up.
The case fell apart because the chain of custody for key evidence wasn’t maintained, which really makes me question what you said in your first paragraph.
But clearly, if the prosecution had actual proof of that, this whole discussion wouldn’t even be happening, right?
They likely wanted to execute this guy as a warning to other enlisted soldiers. Near the end of the Vietnam War, there were tons of cases where enlisted men killed their commanding officers. This happened because drafted soldiers felt they were being sent on pointless missions that would get them killed, and the army was really close to a full-blown mutiny. Iraq and Afghanistan were similar, with the military being used politically to support and maintain governments the USA had set up, much like in South Vietnam.
Yeah, this stuff goes back to WWII, and likely even before that. My grandpa actually got a Bronze Star for stepping up to lead when the lieutenant got shot in the Mariana Islands. He figured events like that have been happening forever. Apparently, a lot of the guys were happy about it because the lieutenant was being reckless, and they thought he’d get them all killed.
RE: Fact #29 (The T-3 Iceberg Murder Case) – That’s a fascinating story! Apparently, they later cleared up that confusion with a change to the Federal Criminal Code. Basically, they added a rule that gives the federal government jurisdiction if a crime happens outside of any country’s territory and involves a U.S. national, either as the one doing it or the victim. This became law back in 1984.
Having the victim’s home country handle the prosecution just makes the most sense, instead of saying “if an American is involved, the US Government automatically steps in.”
RE: Fact #3 (Rapper G. Dep’s Guilty Conscience) – So, he apparently went to the cops twice, and they told him to scram ’cause he was obviously on drugs. Then, he confessed to a 20-year-old cold case where there wasn’t any evidence against him. But when he got in front of a judge, he pleaded ‘not guilty.’
So, from what I gather, the not guilty plea was mostly a formality. It seems like it’s to give the courts more time to look into his confession, which his lawyers think he made while he wasn’t thinking straight.
I also think his lawyers might have an issue with the exact charge itself, rather than arguing he didn’t do anything at all. This kind of thing has happened before.
Since he was apparently always on drugs, it’s definitely fair to wonder about his state of mind at the time.
Yeah, I recall an ad that said, “just because you did it, doesn’t mean you’re guilty.” Guilt is actually a legal concept that isn’t exactly the same as simply “whether you did it.” There are also things like legal procedures and whether the evidence is valid to consider.
So, there was this guy in Sweden who admitted to killing a bunch of people over the years. He was convicted even though there wasn’t any real evidence. Later on, when he wasn’t on drugs anymore, he recanted everything, and it turned out to be a massive mess in pretty much every way imaginable. It’s the whole Thomas Quick situation.
That’s why his lawyers told him not to plead guilty in this situation. They just wanted to make sure he wasn’t completely wasted when he confessed.
RE: Fact #40 (Phil Hartman’s Tragic Final Night) – Wow, that’s a heavy story. So, she had a fight with her husband after visiting someone, and he told her he’d leave if she used drugs again. She started drinking, and later, around 3 am, she went into the bedroom and shot him while he was asleep.
Then, she drove to a friend’s house, still drunk, and confessed. He didn’t believe her at first, but when she showed him the gun, he took it and they went back to her place. Seeing her husband’s body, he called 911.
When the police got there, they got the friend and the kids out. Brynn ran to the bedroom, locked the door, and then shot herself. An autopsy found she’d had alcohol, cocaine, and Zoloft. The coroner ruled it a suicide.
RE: Fact #2 (Curtis Reeves’ Popcorn Shooting) – It turns out things get even more complicated. Reeves said he was acting in self-defense and that he was afraid Oulson would attack him after they argued. The argument apparently started when Oulson texted his daughter’s babysitter during the movie previews, and Reeves asked him to put his phone away. Oulson’s wife was also hurt in the incident but she made it through.
And of course, he’s a retired cop. That totally explains why he wasn’t convicted.
RE: Fact #38 (Indiana Teens’ Burglary Gone Wrong) – Seriously, what planet are they on where teens breaking into houses and robbing people is considered typical?
So, the news clip showed a 3-pound milled steel .45 caliber pistol, but the actual weapon used was a 9mm.
This whole article has this “boys will be boys” vibe. It’s seriously infuriating. No matter how old someone is, if a group of people breaks into my house, I’m definitely going to start shooting.
And to everyone who is going to reply to me saying “yeah because lethal force is okay for breaking and entering”… fu*k you, you simple-minded, bleeding-heart pussies. You all act like you know exactly how this would go down. “Just yell that you have a gun and they’ll run away.” Really? You don’t fu*king know that. I’m not saying I want to kill anyone, but I’m certainly not going to just wait around to see what they do to me. Plus, I’m happy these idiots got the full consequences and have to live with the weight of their dead friend.
Totally agree with what you said. It’s like there’s a sudden idea that anyone under 18 is just a child and had no clue what they were doing. We all did dumb stuff when we were younger. But, being young and dumb used to mean like swiping a candy bar, not breaking into someone’s house or mugging people.
RE: Fact #29 (The T-3 Iceberg Murder Case) – I love the word “kerfuffle.” It’s right up there with “shenanigans” and “boondoggle.”
RE: Fact #49 (JoAnn Nichols’ Body Behind the Wall) – When he was found dead in December, slumped in a chair at home in that Hudson Valley town, there wasn’t a will to be found, just tons of old books, cameras, and computers. Six months later, a clean-out crew digging through the junk discovered a fake wall in the basement that sounded hollow.
Behind it, they found a barrel-like container. Inside that was a black garbage bag tied with rope. And in that bag were the skeletal remains of a woman who had been missing for almost 30 years: JoAnn Nichols, his wife. She was found on June 28, downstairs from where she used to greet people warmly with her Southern accent and a smile.
The county medical examiner said she died from blunt-force trauma to her head. This pretty much confirmed what her family, neighbors, and detectives had suspected since Ms. Nichols, a well-liked first-grade teacher, vanished back in 1985 – that her husband was responsible.
This is confusing to me. The woman disappeared, and her friends and family thought something bad had happened. Her husband was the main person they suspected, and her body was found inside the house. How did the police miss a freshly made hollow wall? Did they even check or smell around where she was last seen? It’s weird how some murders seem impossible to solve because of tiny clues like a drop of blood or a single hair, but then others, like this one, seem so straightforward. What’s the deal?
The stories we hear about those are usually the rare cases where they actually solve it because of some tiny clue that cracks a cold case. Most of the time, they just can’t or don’t look hard enough and give up. The U.S. solves about 60% of murders, which sounds way better than Brazil’s 3% solve rate. But that still means there’s a 40% chance a killer won’t get caught. And when you think about all the murders that happen in public with lots of witnesses or cameras, that number drops even more. So, it’s not that hard to believe someone could kill someone with no one around and no solid evidence like video and get away with it.
There should be an article on factrepublic for real-life events that feel like they’re straight out of a movie.
RE: Fact #19 (Journalist Vlado Taneski’s Secret Crimes) – He definitely sounds like a journalist who gets things done.
RE: Fact #9 (George Rose’s Murder in Paradise) – What the fu*k?? It sounds like this guy was grooming and possibly sexually assaulting this kid. Then, his family apparently got revenge. So, this rich gay celebrity with no family or partner moved to the Dominican Republic and had a teenage boy move in with him so he could have an heir? Yeah, riiiiiiigggghhhhhht…
RE: Fact #2 (Curtis Reeves’ Popcorn Shooting) – So death by popcorn is a thing then ! . Why was a gun self defence againgst popcorn ? What is missing from this story ? ) –
RE: Fact #26 (Carbine Williams’ Prison Gun Design) – So, this guy got kicked out of school in 8th grade, then worked as a blacksmith. He joined the navy at 15 but got kicked out because he was too young. After that, he went to a military academy but was expelled for stealing rifles and a ton of ammo. He got married, had a kid, and worked for the railway. He got fired from that job for shooting at a bird while on duty! To make extra cash, he started distilling, but the authorities raided him, and he ended up shooting the sheriff. He was arrested and convicted for that, but while in jail, he worked on guns and came up with some groundbreaking ideas. His family eventually got him released, and he went on to become super wealthy thanks to his gun patents. What a wild ride.
This person is basically the perfect example of what someone from the early 1900s in the US would be like.
Seriously, getting fired for shooting at a bird while on the clock? That’s a super strange reason to lose your job.
At my job, we’re only allowed to shoot at birds during our lunch break.
RE: Fact #43 (Spotlight Priest John Geoghan Killed) – The guards will help you out if they can, like saying “I’ll be back here in 5 minutes.”
Honestly, while I don’t feel any sympathy for the guy who was murdered, the way guards act in prisons is really messed up and seems to happen a lot. When they act like that, they’re basically accessories to murder, and they should be locked up too.
RE: Fact #24 (The Horrors of the Norris-Bittaker Tape) – Fun fact: Scott Glenn heard this tape from the director of Silence of the Lambs. The director was trying to help Glenn get into character as an FBI agent and apparently had a friend who was an agent that let them get a copy of the tape. Glenn mentioned in an interview that he wanted to punch the director for making him listen to it. He apparently stormed out and told the director to go fu*k himself.
That event also made him reconsider his stance on capital punishment.
So, I’m against the death penalty, but not really for moral reasons. It’s more about the practical stuff. I’m pretty sure some people deserve way worse than a firing squad, but the chance of accidentally killing someone innocent is just too big of a risk.
RE: Fact #45 (Prince Sado’s Death in a Rice Chest) – King Jeongjo built Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon to honor his father, Crown Prince Sado. It’s a really cool place to check out if you visit Suwon today. They’ve got the Hwaseong Suwon Museum and the Hwaseong Haenggung Palace there. You should also try the restaurant in Suwon called “Tasting Museum.”
Suwon’s pretty close to Seoul, like, it’s on the Seoul Metro. And guess what? Samsung’s main office is there too.
This rice is amazing.
RE: Fact #21 (Jeopardy Champion Paul Curry’s Murder Plot) – Seriously, look at what inflation has done. Twenty-four thousand dollars used to be a ridiculously high amount of money!
That actually made me chuckle!
RE: Fact #24 (The Horrors of the Norris-Bittaker Tape) – Seriously, I had no idea this was a thing and honestly, I’d prefer to keep it that way. Let me just stay in my own little happy world.
Yeah, I could use a feel-good moment myself.
RE: Fact #13 (The Denver Spiderman Murder) – That’s super creepy.
This kind of reminds me of Eugene Toombs from The X-Files.
That actor who plays Spider-Man also shows up in CSI living in Nick Stokes’ attic.
Alright, heading up to the attic now. If I don’t report back, someone please step in and help out!
I might share some memes about it.
RE: Fact #35 (The Mime Who Finally Spoke) – Did nobody else notice that he actually killed someone? Apparently, a kid on the street called him by his stage name, and this guy just killed the kid with one hit from his cane.
It would be rough to have a family member killed by a mime. You’d probably have to explain your extra hate for them way more often than most people.
RE: Fact #22 (Madalyn O’Hair’s Texas Disappearance) – It always bugs me when I see “prayer being removed from American public schools.” It sounds way worse than it actually is.
Basically, a court decision banned mandatory Bible verse reading in public schools across the US. But religious groups can still gather and pray on school grounds. Schools just aren’t allowed to force anyone to participate.
I have a feeling it sounds worse than it is “on purpose” by those who are offended by it.
You really can’t stop someone from praying, can you?
RE: Fact #6 (Malcolm Caldwell’s Fatal Meeting) – Noam Chomsky was convinced the New York Times was wrong about what was happening in Cambodia. He later said he got it wrong.
Yeah, that’s kind of it. He did admit that the Khmer Rouge’s atrocities were real, but there were a couple of issues.
First, it really seems like he was deliberately choosing not to know some things. His main point was that information we get in the West is shaped by media that’s usually pro-American, which is definitely true. But then he built his whole argument on sources from the Khmer Rouge and China, which aren’t just filtered; they’re straight-up propaganda. He basically said, “The Khmer Rouge and their main supporter claim they aren’t committing genocide, so obviously they aren’t! How silly of Americans to believe propaganda.”
Second, he did eventually admit he was wrong, which I can appreciate. But he kept making excuses for it. He suggested that the Khmer Rouge’s actions could be seen as a logical response to American imperialism. The US definitely messed things up in Cambodia, and I understand that violence leads to more violence, but there’s never a good reason for genocide.
Chomsky is a smart guy with some good points, but he seems so self-important, always defending regimes or movements he likes, no matter how much suffering they cause.
Just to add, Vietnam, which also suffered from US imperialism, actually invaded Cambodia to overthrow the Khmer Rouge and stop the genocide.
Just a heads-up, Vietnam, which also has a strong case for being a victim of US imperialism, actually invaded neighboring Communist Cambodia to depose the Khmer Rouge and put a stop to the genocide. But it wasn’t *just* about stopping the genocide. There were a lot of other geopolitical and historical factors that pushed the Vietnamese government to invade Cambodia and overthrow the Khmer Rouge.
For starters, there was the rivalry and competition going on between the USSR and Communist China back then. By the late 70s, Vietnam had aligned with Moscow, which naturally created some tension with China. Since China backed the Khmer Rouge, Vietnam felt caught between two enemies: China on its northern border and China-backed Khmer Rouge to the south.
Plus, the Khmer Rouge were pretty anti-Vietnamese, even talking about bringing back the old medieval Khmer Empire that once ruled over the area that’s now southern Vietnam. They also started launching military attacks into Vietnam.
So, from Vietnam’s perspective, the Khmer Rouge were definitely a security threat, and that’s a big part of why they invaded.
He’s saying that the Khmer Rouge’s actions could be viewed as a response to American imperialism. He even adds a hypothetical, twisted quote from Pol Pot about protecting the country from imperialism by killing everyone.
He’s a pretty big deal in our field, but man, he’s got some seriously questionable opinions. I really wish he’d just keep quiet sometimes.
Chomsky’s a bit of a hack, honestly. I’m surprised so many folks on the internet seem to like him. I mean, his linguistics work is awesome, no doubt. It’s just that on pretty much everything else, he’s off base. The Serbia situation alone…
RE: Fact #11 (Huey Long’s Capitol Assassination) – Louie always carried a cash box to pay his buddies. After he was shot, that cash box vanished. His right-hand man, Reverend Gerald LK Smith, then showed up in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and built a 3000-seat outdoor auditorium for the “Great Passion Play” and the “Christ of the Ozarks” statue.
Hey, do you have a source for this? I was curious to learn more, but from what I found, Huey Long was assassinated in 1935, and the Church of the Ozarks project didn’t actually start until 1963. During that time between those events, Gerald LK Smith was apparently causing trouble in Georgia and Michigan with his ‘America First’ stuff and connections to the KKK.
RE: Fact #1 (The Colloredo Twins’ Deadly Trial) – Glad the article skipped the murder details. It probably wouldn’t be that interesting to hear how a three-legged, two-headed guy offed someone. But hey, at least we know which cities his circus rolled through.
Seriously, the fact that he found someone willing to go along with him while his brother was like that is wild. Given his situation, it really makes you wonder about him possibly murdering someone.
Hey, I noticed the article mentions something about Lazarus and a fatal blow during a show, where he apparently got away with it because killing him would have meant death for his innocent younger sibling. However, the source linked in the article doesn’t actually say any of that happened.
RE: Fact #23 (The Scientology Killing of Elli Perkins) – So the Church says they have all the answers, but it seems like they won’t deal with people who are seriously mentally ill. That’s pretty hypocritical, don’t you think?