The Horror of Reality: 15 Shocking Murders That Defined a Generation

In 1977, the camp counselor at Camp Scott in Mayes County, Oklahoma woke up to a gruesome scene at the farthest tent from the camp. Three girls between the ages of 8 to 10 were dragged from their tents, raped, beaten, strangled and stuffed back into their sleeping tents. Gene Leroy Hart, an escaped convict who grew up near the camp was charged and acquitted. Although there was DNA evidence found on the bags in 2007, it was too deteriorated to be tested. The case still remains unsolved.

In 1874, the whole of Stelzriede family residing in the small town of Saxtown was murdered overnight. When their neighbor hadn’t seen them in a while, he went to investigate and found that his neighbor’s little boy had been brutally murdered with an ax. Inside, he found the boy's father, mother, grandfather, brother, and sister all killed with an ax, some with their throats slit. These murders deeply affected the town as the murderer was never caught and people grew suspicious of everyone in the town.

In 1981 6-year-old named Adam Walsh was kidnapped from a Sears store and 16 days later his severed head was found 120 miles from his family home. Seven years later, while his son’s killer was still unknown, John Walsh began to host America’s Most Wanted. He was a hotelier earlier, but after his son’s death, he devoted himself to criminal justice and more than 1200 criminals were captured thanks to AMW. In 2008, the Florida Police identified his son’s killer as Otis Toole, a serial killer who died in prison in 1996 while serving life for other crimes.

In 1974, two men robbing a Hi-Fi store in Odgen, Utah held captive and tormented five individuals. Only two of the captives survived. Among the sadism levied on the captives were the following: Violence included a pen being kicked into an ear and the brutal rape of a teenage girl who was later shot in the head. Corrosive drain cleaner was also forcefully given to the hostages causing horrific burns to their mouths and throats. Not only were they forced to drink drain cleaner but their mouths were then taped shut so they couldn’t spit it out or vomit it up. One of the victims, Orren Walker, was shot several times, strangled and had a pen kicked into his ear but still survived.

A Spanish woman named Enriqueta Martí turned to prostitution after divorcing her husband. During the day, she would dress up in rags and beg on the streets of Barcelona. She used poor children to pass off as her own in an effort to appeal to potential donors. When night fell, she prostituted the children or murdered them in order to use their remains for her “potions” because she was also a witch doctor. She was arrested in 1912 and died a year later at the hands of her prison mates.

Micajah Harpe and Wiley Harpe are the earliest documented serial killers in the USA. In the 1700s, the body count they left behind had every wilderness traveler on edge. They were kicked out of a pirate gang for being too brutal. They killed men, women, and children by disemboweling them and filling their cavity with rocks. They threw many victims off the cliffs. One of them even killed his own daughter for crying too loud. They murdered close to 50 people.

Robert Hansen who grew up in Iowa moved to Alaska after his wife divorced him. In Anchorage, he started a bakery, married second time and had two kids. Over 12 years, Hansen abducted women who were mostly prostitutes and strippers and raped them. Some of them, he let go, but other he flew into the Alaskan wilderness and proceeded to hunt them like a wild game, armed with a knife and his Ruger Mini-14 rifle.

Throughout the 1980s, a number of young women disappeared in Eastern Ukraine. They were abducted by Serhiy Tkach who killed them and performed necrophiliac acts on them. He was a former forensic expert used his law enforcement knowledge to throw police off his trail. He was eventually caught and he confessed to killing 100 people. However, before he was apprehended, 15 men were arrested and imprisoned for his crimes, one of whom even committed suicide.

In 1852, Mary Ann Cotton married a laborer. Seven out of eight of her children died of gastric fever. Later her husband died too of stomach sickness. She remarried and her second husband died and soon did her mother pass away. Later her last remaining child and her second husband’s children died. Her third husband kicked her out. Later her fourth husband died as well as his sister, his son and a child he had fathered with Mary. After 20 years of mysterious deaths, the police investigation found she was poisoning her victims with arsenic in order to collect insurance money.

In 1980, a 32-year-old woman named Dorothy Jane Scott disappeared one night when helping a coworker at a hospital. For months before her disappearance, she was receiving anonymous phone calls from a stalker who was threatening her. She was last seen in her vehicle speeding speed out of the parking lot of a hospital. Her parents then started receiving weekly, harassing phone calls from the abductor for several years. She was never found and her abductor has never been captured.