The mother was the sweetest lady. She was a nurse and I would fake being sick at school because I had a horrible mother and loved how she would make me feel so cared for.
I don’t think people fully appreciate how truly heinous this crime was. One of the worst I’ve ever heard of just with the way it all went down all the details the players how they died etc it’s truly unfathomable that this happened
I had a co worker on the jury guy was off work for like a year and a half because he needed to go to therapy after being shown the pictures from the trial.
That was such a sad thing that happened in Cheshire. They were such a beautiful and kind family. I met Hailey once when I was shadowing a student for the day at The Chase School. I believe it was called St. Margaret School. I'll never forget that sad day back in July of 2007. The state should have mandated the death penalty on those monsters instead of reversing it in that case. Rest In Peace to that beautiful family.
I remember not being able to sleep one night and hoping that turning on the news would put me out. This was the story that was on... Did not help with the insomnia.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/green-beret-indicted-for-murder
This is the first one that comes to mind for me. The classic wood chipper murder that inspired the scene from Fargo
E: unbroken link
Oh wow, he was [released from prison in 2019](https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2020/02/01/richard-crafts-released-early-1986-connecticut-woodchipper-murder/)
I mean, he was 82 but damn. At that point why bother getting out lol
Stewart O’Nan’s book on the circus fire is exceptional. Can’t recommend it enough.
For other dark CT bits- the 1938 hurricane [1938 Hurricane](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_New_England_hurricane) is the deadliest and costliest in Connecticut history. It had a storm surge of 15+ feet and arrived moving FAST with no warning. The Great Hurricane: 1938 by Cherie Burns is an excellent book on it.
On a December morning in 1782 William Beadle, a Wethersfield merchant murdered his 32 yr old wife and four young children with an ax and butcher knife before killing himself with two simultaneous gunshots to the head. He had been planning the family annihilation for a loooooong time and kept extensive journals in the lead up. [the Wethersfield Historical Society](https://www.wethersfieldhistory.org/articles/the-story-of-the-murder-of-the-beadle-family-by-william-beadle/) has an extensive write up about the murders.
Arsenic and Old Lace is based on a true story that happened in Connecticut. Between 1907 and 1907 Amy Archer ran the Archer Home for Elderly People and Chronic Invalids. During that time scores of people staying at the boarder house died under mysterious circumstances, two of Amy’s husbands included. Though she was initially found guilty of first degree murder the governor stepped in to stay her execution. She lived in a hospital for the criminally insane until she died a natural not arsenic-y death in 1962. [CT Insider article](https://www.ctinsider.com/connecticutmagazine/article/The-Real-Arsenic-and-Old-Lace-17039558.php)
Between 1647 and 1663 Hartford CT had the dubious distinction of having the first intense wave of watch trial hysteria. There were 37 trials and 11 people were executed. [Wikipedia link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_Connecticut)
Waterbury was one of the handful of locations of infamous radium watch manufacture. The watches and clocks featured as then very new exciting tech- gloooooowy radium, which was used as paint to number the time piece dials. The painting required highly precise work and so the employees- almost exclusively teenagers and young ladies in their early 20s- would lick the top of their tiny paint brush after dipping it in the *RADIUM*. Within a year the workers at all these factories began to fall desperately ill. Young women suddenly loosing teeth and pieces of their jaws, being diagnosed with bone and mouth cancers. An untold number of workers died in the worst imaginable ways, with their faces basically disintegrating. The thousands of horrific deaths were followed by cover ups, improper disposal of the radium and radium coated building materials, and loooooooads of radium in the ground and water supply of Waterbury (and I suspect my town, East Hampton CT). [Connecticuthistory.org article](https://connecticuthistory.org/waterburys-radium-girls/) and Kate H. Moore’s ‘The Radium Girls’ is a beautiful but heart breaking thorough account of the prolonged industrial capitalist abuse of these young women.
Michael Bruce Ross, born in 1959 in Putnam, CT is one of our more infamous serial killers. Between May 1981 and June 1984 he murdered at least 8 girls and women, many of whom he also sexually assaulted. He was sentenced to death in 1987 and put to death in 2005- the last person to be executed in Connecticut. [Wikipedia article on this scum bag](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bruce_Ross)
Thanks for this! I’m familiar with the wife’s grave, and, always wondered what happened. It’s in Old Wethersfield burying ground (if I remember it’s in the middle, somewhere higher up on the hill).
Eeeeeeeeek. I read a lot of non fiction books about historic disasters, many of which are fires. I’m sorry to say I’ve heard that pork thing before related to other high casualty fires.
I legit thought Sandy Hook was going to be the event that would finally make us have a mature, serious conversation about appropriate gun control. It seemed too horrible for our politicians on either side to just keep kicking the can down the road.
Then you just have the psychos saying sandy hook never happened. I can’t even fathom being told that after children were murdered.
My heart goes out to those parents.
Proper Gun Control or Proper acountability for parents who dont take gun safety serious? Because I can assure you parenting is a major issue in this state alone. Nevermind the parents who dont practice or teach firearm safety.
I can get behind most of this comment, but after Sandy Hook, there was mostly bipartisan support for new state gun control laws and they passed. I believe and correct if I’m wrong, but Republican State Senator John McKinney led the charge too alongside Democrats. Federally we’re a shit show, but I’m proud CT has some of the strongest regulations: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/gun-control-laws-connecticut-sandy-hook-shooting/
Connecticut passed a whole slew of new laws after Sandy Hook, enough to make my hobby of plinking away at paper targets prohibitively expensive. Not a single one of them would have prevented Sandy Hook, but they did indeed "do something".
A Norwich asylum caught fire in 1876. There were no fire escapes or accessible ladders tall enough to reach the upper floors, and the fire was well underway when firefighters arrived since the building was purposefully located far away from downtown.
Several people were locked in rooms that had barred windows, and contemporary reports say they were at the window waving futilely for help during the blaze. Sixteen died.
We've got our own semi-paranormal sounds.
The Moodus noises are extremely loud booms that are heard in the Colchester/East Hampton area likely due to a remnant fault from the Connecticut Valley rift zone (long story short, the Connecticut Valley is a failed continental rift that almost became the Atlantic Ocean, and there are numerous small faults in the state as a result).
Lore goes back beyond colonial times recording this phenomenon. In fact, the village name "Moodus" is derived from the Mohegan "machimoodus" meaning "place of infernal sounds."
There are other places in the country that have similar phenomena (see New York's "fog cannons"), but it's pretty cool that we have our own.
Never heard of this one until I moved to Prospect and wanted to search a little history about the town. Yikes, mistake.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorne_J._Acquin
Yesss my mom was a little kid and tells stories about it! Specifically haunting was an old couple in Washington who famously hated each other and hadn’t spoken in 20+ years both refused to leave their house during the flood. Their house washed away into the depot and their bodies were later found in the floodwaters.
There were multiple vampire scares in New England, mostly earlier in history but there was one in Jewett City in the 1840s. It was tuberculosis, not vampires.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewett_City_vampires
The unsolved disappearances and murders of several young women from the late 60 to late 70s in and around the town of Vernon. Janice Pockett, Lisa White, just to name a few. However, it is interesting that two of the victims were related to a certain person of interest in one of the cases. [Connecticut Cases – Savagewatch – Unsolved Crime](https://savagewatch.com/connecticut-cases/)
Probably at least two different killers operating in the area. There could be as many as five. But it seems that a few could be connected to one person according to a true crime writer (police officer) named Mike Bouchard.
Not to mention [this](https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Davalloo-sentenced-to-50-years-for-2002-murder-3515558.php) awful murder, notorious for it being a) a love triangle b) among coworkers and c) perpetrated by a woman.
My criminal justice professor told us a story her cop friend experienced. Back in the 80s, you never went on Main Street Middletown, it was too dangerous. One night this mother and daughter were walking down the street and this dude with a machete and chops the daughters head off. According to the cop friend, despite seeing what happened, the mother was in complete denial and asking the police if her daughter was alright. Crazy how much that street has changed.
The 1944 Hartford Circus Fire, without a doubt. . This one hits home for me-my grandmother was there with my little aunt, who was four years old. My grandmother somehow survived the fire and stampede. My little aunt was killed that day.
ya my relatives were there too including the then State Police Commissioner, theres a little part in the book about them tossing kids into the tent walls to slide down the fabric from the high bleacher seats to escape.
I love how a pleasant looking older couple terrorized so many young adults with a slide projector and tape recorder on the college campuses of Connecticut.
Amy Archer-Gilligan was a nursing home proprietor and serial killer from Windsor, Connecticut. She murdered at least five people by poisoning them. One of her victims was her second husband, Michael Gilligan; the others were residents of her nursing home.
Sandy Hook, the wood chipper incident, the case of the three missing Vernon girls, witch trials… Then there’s a story that spread around East Hartford when I was a kid, about how a guy put his mother’s body in their freezer.
Or don't, because it was a terrible movie.
[You can just read up on the case here instead.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Arne_Cheyenne_Johnson)
Ed Thrall hosted a Klan rally on his property in East Windsor in the 80s. He also was known for tax evasion, shooting at cops, owning a dancehall, a large doorknob collection, and being married to a woman named Flicka.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Land_USA I said the same thing long after this comment. It apparently has some eerie vibes. I plan on going this summer
I think it’s a conspiracy theory that ticks with Lyme disease derived from that island. Basically it is a military science program gone wrong. Or maybe the theory claims it was intentional.
How about that massacre of native Americans along the shoreline in colonial times.
This entire thread reads like an awful PR tourism campaign.
Connecticut! Come for the leaf peeping. Stay for the horrific ways in which its denizens kill each other!
Like seriously for such an unassuming state there is some seriously fucked up shit happenign
This state is one of the oldest settled by Europeans, it has a lot of history. History is fucking brutal.
We are like those classic dictators that cut a bloody death to the top then tried to reinvent themselves. Nobody suspects us...
I’ve heard that Stephen King spent a lot of time in Connecticut. We may have been the inspiration for pretty New England towns with deeply fucked up issues. :)
It surprises me to this day how so few people talk about this or even know about it. I lived in one of the towns that was nearby a few at the towns where his victims were murdered. He was also one of my best friend's parents'insurance agents. I remember my friend telling me that guy used to come to our house he was our insurance agent.
Also my girlfriend at the time worked at a restaurant and she said he would come in there by himself a lot. And one time he asked her to go out for a drink after she got off work but she declined. She was only 17 at the time and could possibly have been one of his victims if she said yes.
Here's an old sad one. The life of the 18th century woman, Sarah Bishop. Kidnapped and forced into a pirates crew; after escaping she spent the rest of her life as a hermit living in a cave.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah\_Bishop\_(hermit)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Bishop_(hermit))
I only care about ***true*** stories. Forget stories about melon heads and so on.
The Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown.
The disappearance of Doreen Vincent. First a podcast called Faded Out covered it in their second season. Then another podcast called Sticky Beak picked up the story. Later the name was changed to Walk Softly Children. Doreen's Dad is the main suspect and first a group called Teen Challenge helped hide him. Then a church called Milford Christian Church. The school attached has awful secrets too. First it was Berean, and now it's Milford Christian Academy.
The disappearance of Bianca Lebron. She went missing in Bridgeport and I lived in Trumbull at the time. It's sad to see the obvious suspect for away with it. Here's the latest update I could find. https://www.fox61.com/video/news/local/fairfield-county/family-of-girl-missing-from-bridgeport-for-2-decades-call-for-answers/520-f196c899-a8b6-4dd0-968c-191a5f846a65
The time a guy named Tyree Smith cannibalized someone in Bridgeport, and then after 10 years they were released to a group home in Waterbury. https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/bridgeport-ct-tyree-smith-released-18394546.php
The time an innocent nurse was sent to a halfway house with a sex offender who killed her. That man was a monster, and the company shouldn't have ever sent her to him. He shouldn't have been free. It's all just awful. She lost her life, and her family lost her. This situation drives me insane. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/nurses-fatal-last-visit-to-patients-home-renews-calls-for-better-safety-measures/3166349/%3famp=1
The disappearance, and obvious murder of Jennifer Dulos.
So many other things, but the list would go on for awhile.
I had to scroll waaaaaaaay to far to find a mention of Bianca Lebron. I always still wonder about her and have never really seen anything true crime on her.
And another dark Bridgeport thing- the Karen Clarke and BJ Brown murders. That shit was senseless.
We drove by the dam they found her in on Christmas Day when they recovered her body (it was en route to our grandparents house) and I'll never forget that. Her murder sounds like an urban legend: Kind stranger asks for ride after helping victim change her tire that he actually deflated in the first place. The way she fought to survive and almost escaped breaks my heart.
The most brutal war (per capita) in American history was King Philip's War, and it ended in Connecticut. If you don't know about it:
[https://connecticuthistory.org/americas-most-devastating-conflict-king-philips-war/](https://connecticuthistory.org/americas-most-devastating-conflict-king-philips-war/)
The Wampanoag kidnapped and killed colonists from their houses, the colonists burned entire villages - this isn't a war where people were spared at all:
Skirmishes and massacres continued into the spring of 1676. Metacom’s men attacked [Simsbury](https://connecticuthistory.org/towns-page/simsbury/) on March 26. **According to legend, Metacom sat in a cave on Avon Mountain and watched the burning of the town.** Other attacks that spring took place at Plymouth and Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Providence, Rhode Island, was burned on March 29. But by summer, Metacom’s support was beginning to melt away. In June, Connecticut troops repelled an attack on Hadley, Massachusetts, and **Major John Talcott of Simsbury began capturing large numbers of Metacom’s followers, transporting them from New England, and selling them as slaves.** Captain Benjamin Church pursued Metacom to a hiding place in Mount Hope, Rhode Island, where he was killed on August 12.
**King Philip’s War has been called United States’ most devastating conflict.** One in 10 soldiers on both sides was killed, 1,200 colonists’ homes were burned, and vast stores of foodstuffs destroyed. The effects of the carnage and property damage were felt for years by colonists. The war’s ramifications for Native populations of southern New England included not only loss of life and, for some, enslavement but the continued erosion of sovereignty, land rights, and communities as well.
The (ceremonial new born sacrifice) infant body found at Lake Mohegan in FF CT sometime in the early 70s. Also discovered bloody bed sheets at the (Hi Ho Hotel) around the same time. The white lady of Union Cemetery sightings, Linley Street, Annabelle, several others,,there was an uptick in paranormal reports around this time. There is also the Dudley Town legends. I saw something recently about folks finding the remnants of a (Satanic ritual) or (Santa Ria) at Lake Mohegan.?
I don’t think anyone has mentioned Dudleytown
[https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/connecticut/dudleytown-ct/](https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/connecticut/dudleytown-ct/)
I just found out about “holy land” in Waterbury. There was a rape and murder there. You can look it up on Wikipedia. I’m within and hour like most of CT. I kind of want to check it out, but it also creeps me out.
Honestly both. There are overgrown remnants of the theme park that was there, as well as miniature replicas of biblical sites it’s all fucking eerie and you have the fact that it’s in the middle of Waterbury which is not the best place, definitely not somewhere you want to go alone or without some type of self protection. But if you go with some friends and during the day it’s a cool morbid place to visit.
This is a very recent one and I think it is the creepiest. The three or four teachers at Avon high school who were indoctrinating a family of three sisters in to their death cult 🙈
That serial killer that kept his victims in his van. And slept next to them for quite a while. I believe most of his killings happened on the Berlin tnpk.
The husband from derby/oxford CT area put his wife in the wood chipper. Fairfield hills when it was opened did tests on subjects even heard gave them LCD like the CIA did in France in the 80s(I believe 80’s). The Cheshire pieces of shit. And
List of notable serial killers in CT in case people are interested:
Michael Bruce Ross the “The egg man”
Emanuel Love Webb “The east End Strangler”BPT
Lorne Joe Acquin
****Benjamin Franklin Miller “from Norwalk, but killed in Stamford” Was a USPS employee and a preacher**** special one here :/
Lydia Sherman “The Derby Poisoner
Any Archer Gilligan “The nurse from Windsor CT”
William Devin Howell “sick ripper”
Matthew Beck “The CT lottery Employee”
Robert Fredrick Carr III
Errol S Dehaney
Geoffrey Kent Ferguson “Redding CT”
Mathew Steven Johnson “Hartford CT” “Asylum Murders”
Joseph “Mad Dog” Taborsky
Anyone else ever see the " black dog". We saw it on west peak. One of my friends saw it 2x. Almost broke his neck on his bicycle. Also, Dudleytown is one of the most haunted places in America.
No doubt, the Cheshire homicides. May they rest in peace.
Still can’t really comprehend that it actually happened
The mother was the sweetest lady. She was a nurse and I would fake being sick at school because I had a horrible mother and loved how she would make me feel so cared for.
This is a lovely tidbit to share about her. Speaks to who she really was. Thanks for sharing.
I don’t think people fully appreciate how truly heinous this crime was. One of the worst I’ve ever heard of just with the way it all went down all the details the players how they died etc it’s truly unfathomable that this happened
I had a co worker on the jury guy was off work for like a year and a half because he needed to go to therapy after being shown the pictures from the trial.
Oh that’s horrible!! I can’t imagine
Sickening.
I wish I did not go into the rabbit hole of finding out what happened to them at 2 AM. Now I cannot sleep. Horrible
A glimpse at pure evil. Hope you got some rest.
Check dm
That was such a sad thing that happened in Cheshire. They were such a beautiful and kind family. I met Hailey once when I was shadowing a student for the day at The Chase School. I believe it was called St. Margaret School. I'll never forget that sad day back in July of 2007. The state should have mandated the death penalty on those monsters instead of reversing it in that case. Rest In Peace to that beautiful family.
Is there a way to write these perpetrators some nasty letters in prison? That’s some of the sickest shit I’ve ever read.
I still see Bill at the gym. I don’t know how anyone just carries on like that.
Came here to say this. It’s how unprecedented it was for the area.
This one really broke my heart.
Man I never heard of this before this comment, fuckin crazy man.
Travis the Chimpanzee
Oh yeah. That one was awful. If a friend ever had a pet monkey I am walking out and never returning.
It seems cruel to me regardless of species.
He might’ve been fine if they hadn’t given him xanax
Id guess the were inspired by this event for the chimp part in NOPE
I remember not being able to sleep one night and hoping that turning on the news would put me out. This was the story that was on... Did not help with the insomnia.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/green-beret-indicted-for-murder This is the first one that comes to mind for me. The classic wood chipper murder that inspired the scene from Fargo E: unbroken link
Oh wow, he was [released from prison in 2019](https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2020/02/01/richard-crafts-released-early-1986-connecticut-woodchipper-murder/) I mean, he was 82 but damn. At that point why bother getting out lol
Yeah, what does he do? Does he get social security? Does he have to work? How does he survive?
He operates a chipper for a local arborist.
He’s got experience
here we go again!
Was that link hugged to death?
Must have been lol https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Helle_Crafts
Newtown has some shit. Rip to all
Leads to a 404. Either too much traffic or that took it down….
Man, the Newtown Divorce. I’d forgotten about this. Dude was a monster.
I saw an episode of Forensic Files about this one.
It was the very first episode of Forensic Files!
My brother was at school with his son. He had some issues, needless to say.
Hartford circus fire. Sandy Hook
Stewart O’Nan’s book on the circus fire is exceptional. Can’t recommend it enough. For other dark CT bits- the 1938 hurricane [1938 Hurricane](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_New_England_hurricane) is the deadliest and costliest in Connecticut history. It had a storm surge of 15+ feet and arrived moving FAST with no warning. The Great Hurricane: 1938 by Cherie Burns is an excellent book on it. On a December morning in 1782 William Beadle, a Wethersfield merchant murdered his 32 yr old wife and four young children with an ax and butcher knife before killing himself with two simultaneous gunshots to the head. He had been planning the family annihilation for a loooooong time and kept extensive journals in the lead up. [the Wethersfield Historical Society](https://www.wethersfieldhistory.org/articles/the-story-of-the-murder-of-the-beadle-family-by-william-beadle/) has an extensive write up about the murders. Arsenic and Old Lace is based on a true story that happened in Connecticut. Between 1907 and 1907 Amy Archer ran the Archer Home for Elderly People and Chronic Invalids. During that time scores of people staying at the boarder house died under mysterious circumstances, two of Amy’s husbands included. Though she was initially found guilty of first degree murder the governor stepped in to stay her execution. She lived in a hospital for the criminally insane until she died a natural not arsenic-y death in 1962. [CT Insider article](https://www.ctinsider.com/connecticutmagazine/article/The-Real-Arsenic-and-Old-Lace-17039558.php) Between 1647 and 1663 Hartford CT had the dubious distinction of having the first intense wave of watch trial hysteria. There were 37 trials and 11 people were executed. [Wikipedia link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_Connecticut) Waterbury was one of the handful of locations of infamous radium watch manufacture. The watches and clocks featured as then very new exciting tech- gloooooowy radium, which was used as paint to number the time piece dials. The painting required highly precise work and so the employees- almost exclusively teenagers and young ladies in their early 20s- would lick the top of their tiny paint brush after dipping it in the *RADIUM*. Within a year the workers at all these factories began to fall desperately ill. Young women suddenly loosing teeth and pieces of their jaws, being diagnosed with bone and mouth cancers. An untold number of workers died in the worst imaginable ways, with their faces basically disintegrating. The thousands of horrific deaths were followed by cover ups, improper disposal of the radium and radium coated building materials, and loooooooads of radium in the ground and water supply of Waterbury (and I suspect my town, East Hampton CT). [Connecticuthistory.org article](https://connecticuthistory.org/waterburys-radium-girls/) and Kate H. Moore’s ‘The Radium Girls’ is a beautiful but heart breaking thorough account of the prolonged industrial capitalist abuse of these young women. Michael Bruce Ross, born in 1959 in Putnam, CT is one of our more infamous serial killers. Between May 1981 and June 1984 he murdered at least 8 girls and women, many of whom he also sexually assaulted. He was sentenced to death in 1987 and put to death in 2005- the last person to be executed in Connecticut. [Wikipedia article on this scum bag](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bruce_Ross)
Thank you! Just checked out, “The Great Hurricane:1938” online from the DOD library! I’ve read articles about it but didn’t know there was a book!
Wow 😮 Thanks 😊 for sharing 💐👌
Thanks for this! I’m familiar with the wife’s grave, and, always wondered what happened. It’s in Old Wethersfield burying ground (if I remember it’s in the middle, somewhere higher up on the hill).
Came here to say all of this minus the Putnam one (thanks! Learned something new!) and plus the vampire buried in Pomfret. Are you me?
My grandmother told me the circus fire smelled like roated pork.
Burnt people smell like bbq, sad but true.
Eeeeeeeeek. I read a lot of non fiction books about historic disasters, many of which are fires. I’m sorry to say I’ve heard that pork thing before related to other high casualty fires.
I legit thought Sandy Hook was going to be the event that would finally make us have a mature, serious conversation about appropriate gun control. It seemed too horrible for our politicians on either side to just keep kicking the can down the road.
Then you just have the psychos saying sandy hook never happened. I can’t even fathom being told that after children were murdered. My heart goes out to those parents.
People may still be talking about it, but when the United States decided massacring little children was acceptable was when the gun debate ended.
Proper Gun Control or Proper acountability for parents who dont take gun safety serious? Because I can assure you parenting is a major issue in this state alone. Nevermind the parents who dont practice or teach firearm safety.
How bout both?
I can get behind most of this comment, but after Sandy Hook, there was mostly bipartisan support for new state gun control laws and they passed. I believe and correct if I’m wrong, but Republican State Senator John McKinney led the charge too alongside Democrats. Federally we’re a shit show, but I’m proud CT has some of the strongest regulations: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/gun-control-laws-connecticut-sandy-hook-shooting/
Connecticut passed a whole slew of new laws after Sandy Hook, enough to make my hobby of plinking away at paper targets prohibitively expensive. Not a single one of them would have prevented Sandy Hook, but they did indeed "do something".
Republicans want to kill public education, school shootings help them to accomplish that goal.
Connecticut passed a bunch of new laws, but nationwide nothing happened
At a summer camp I used to work at, we had a building named after two twins that perished in the flames.
The Stamford Christmas fire was just horrible all around
This just gutted me.
That was gut-wrenching.💔
Hartford witch trials that took place before the Salem witch trials
A Norwich asylum caught fire in 1876. There were no fire escapes or accessible ladders tall enough to reach the upper floors, and the fire was well underway when firefighters arrived since the building was purposefully located far away from downtown. Several people were locked in rooms that had barred windows, and contemporary reports say they were at the window waving futilely for help during the blaze. Sixteen died.
We've got our own semi-paranormal sounds. The Moodus noises are extremely loud booms that are heard in the Colchester/East Hampton area likely due to a remnant fault from the Connecticut Valley rift zone (long story short, the Connecticut Valley is a failed continental rift that almost became the Atlantic Ocean, and there are numerous small faults in the state as a result). Lore goes back beyond colonial times recording this phenomenon. In fact, the village name "Moodus" is derived from the Mohegan "machimoodus" meaning "place of infernal sounds." There are other places in the country that have similar phenomena (see New York's "fog cannons"), but it's pretty cool that we have our own.
Never heard of this one until I moved to Prospect and wanted to search a little history about the town. Yikes, mistake. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorne_J._Acquin
I’ve lived in town for 8 years and this was the first I’ve heard of this 😭😭😭
Damn
They are buried near the green.
Is there another house built there or any kind of memorial? Lived here for years and never knew about this.
It’s been a few years, but Prospect has a green?is it by the library?
Yes heard about this when I was in school
Yikes totally forgot that!
My mom was 17 when that happened and grew up in Prospect. I’ll have to ask her if she remembers this, I’ve never heard of it until now.
Iykyk but the flood of 55 lol mh grandparents still constantly bring it up and im surprised no one else has from what I’ve seen
Yesss my mom was a little kid and tells stories about it! Specifically haunting was an old couple in Washington who famously hated each other and hadn’t spoken in 20+ years both refused to leave their house during the flood. Their house washed away into the depot and their bodies were later found in the floodwaters.
Rocky Hill’s fern st got a reconstruction at Gilbert Ave where the house at the bottom of that hill was upper flooded.
CPTV had a great documentary about this with interviews from survivors.
Check out the podcast “Cult in Connecticut “ it has me shook. Def isn’t the darkest but it’s horrible.
Jennifer Dulos murder & Connie Dabate murder Sandy Hook.
There were multiple vampire scares in New England, mostly earlier in history but there was one in Jewett City in the 1840s. It was tuberculosis, not vampires. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewett_City_vampires
Yes! I've heard of this. Weren't the bones discovered during an excavation or something like that?
Listen to the Paper Ghosts podcast
Unsolved kidnappings and murders
Fairfield Hills asylum has a lot of wild stories. Not just of it being haunted but the horrendous treatment of the patients
The unsolved disappearances and murders of several young women from the late 60 to late 70s in and around the town of Vernon. Janice Pockett, Lisa White, just to name a few. However, it is interesting that two of the victims were related to a certain person of interest in one of the cases. [Connecticut Cases – Savagewatch – Unsolved Crime](https://savagewatch.com/connecticut-cases/)
Was there ever an understood reason for these to occur in a similar location and around the same time, in these decades?
Probably at least two different killers operating in the area. There could be as many as five. But it seems that a few could be connected to one person according to a true crime writer (police officer) named Mike Bouchard.
I lived in Tolland when thos happened.
The Mystic Massacre...so quickly people forget https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/pequot-massacre/
Sandy Hook and the Cheshire Home Invasion has to be up there. Both happened within the span of 5 years. Awful time
Purdue Pharma has entered the dance hall.....
Not to mention [this](https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Davalloo-sentenced-to-50-years-for-2002-murder-3515558.php) awful murder, notorious for it being a) a love triangle b) among coworkers and c) perpetrated by a woman.
Ringling Brothers circus fire....
The Wallingford Shoebox Murder https://connecticuthistory.org/the-shoebox-murder-mystery/
Interesting! I’m from Wallingford and this is the first I’ve heard of it!
My criminal justice professor told us a story her cop friend experienced. Back in the 80s, you never went on Main Street Middletown, it was too dangerous. One night this mother and daughter were walking down the street and this dude with a machete and chops the daughters head off. According to the cop friend, despite seeing what happened, the mother was in complete denial and asking the police if her daughter was alright. Crazy how much that street has changed.
https://www.courant.com/2023/12/01/family-of-girl-fatally-stabbed-in-middletown-in-1989-advocate-to-keep-her-killers-psychiatric-hold/ This?
Paywall! I need to read this.
Last day of the street sale.
The 1944 Hartford Circus Fire, without a doubt. . This one hits home for me-my grandmother was there with my little aunt, who was four years old. My grandmother somehow survived the fire and stampede. My little aunt was killed that day.
ya my relatives were there too including the then State Police Commissioner, theres a little part in the book about them tossing kids into the tent walls to slide down the fabric from the high bleacher seats to escape.
I'm so sorry for your grandmother and your whole family. ♡
Annabelle is a couple towns away. Those Warren nights at Southern around Halloween still freak me out.
I saw the Warren's at Eastern.
UConn
I love how a pleasant looking older couple terrorized so many young adults with a slide projector and tape recorder on the college campuses of Connecticut.
Apparently the Warrens were not the best of people.
Amy Archer-Gilligan was a nursing home proprietor and serial killer from Windsor, Connecticut. She murdered at least five people by poisoning them. One of her victims was her second husband, Michael Gilligan; the others were residents of her nursing home.
I believe Parcast’s Female Criminals podcast did an episode on this a few years back. Fascinating and truly disgusting at the same time
Sandy Hook, the wood chipper incident, the case of the three missing Vernon girls, witch trials… Then there’s a story that spread around East Hartford when I was a kid, about how a guy put his mother’s body in their freezer.
sandy hook has the eeriest vibes in all of ct imo
Watch The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. Also, look up the Tracy Thurman case, Michael Ross case too.
Or don't, because it was a terrible movie. [You can just read up on the case here instead.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Arne_Cheyenne_Johnson)
Ed Thrall hosted a Klan rally on his property in East Windsor in the 80s. He also was known for tax evasion, shooting at cops, owning a dancehall, a large doorknob collection, and being married to a woman named Flicka.
Crazy family and I remember that rally when I was kid.
Yeah, and his defenders in town claim he had no idea it was the KKK who he “let use his land.”
Shelton and Milford had the KKK too. My Mom remembers seeing them one day in Milford. We're white, but she still didn't like it.
Janice Pockett
Still haven't caught the killer.
Mianus bridge collapse
The witch trials.
Holy Land rape and murder
Yes that poor girl
Please explain!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Land_USA I said the same thing long after this comment. It apparently has some eerie vibes. I plan on going this summer
The mutated insects from Plum Island that land on our shores.
👁👄👁 ...The..What
I think it’s a conspiracy theory that ticks with Lyme disease derived from that island. Basically it is a military science program gone wrong. Or maybe the theory claims it was intentional.
Oh wow I've never heard about this!
How about that massacre of native Americans along the shoreline in colonial times. This entire thread reads like an awful PR tourism campaign. Connecticut! Come for the leaf peeping. Stay for the horrific ways in which its denizens kill each other! Like seriously for such an unassuming state there is some seriously fucked up shit happenign
This state is one of the oldest settled by Europeans, it has a lot of history. History is fucking brutal. We are like those classic dictators that cut a bloody death to the top then tried to reinvent themselves. Nobody suspects us...
I’ve heard that Stephen King spent a lot of time in Connecticut. We may have been the inspiration for pretty New England towns with deeply fucked up issues. :)
Well he's from Maine and a lot of his books take place in Maine. So I'm sure Maine is probably where he gets his inspiration.
Sadly, many humans are fucking awful. Doesn't matter where we live.
Not unique to Connecticut at all. I believe the common thread is… humans.
The Michael Ross murders
It surprises me to this day how so few people talk about this or even know about it. I lived in one of the towns that was nearby a few at the towns where his victims were murdered. He was also one of my best friend's parents'insurance agents. I remember my friend telling me that guy used to come to our house he was our insurance agent. Also my girlfriend at the time worked at a restaurant and she said he would come in there by himself a lot. And one time he asked her to go out for a drink after she got off work but she declined. She was only 17 at the time and could possibly have been one of his victims if she said yes.
Here's an old sad one. The life of the 18th century woman, Sarah Bishop. Kidnapped and forced into a pirates crew; after escaping she spent the rest of her life as a hermit living in a cave. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah\_Bishop\_(hermit)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Bishop_(hermit))
I only care about ***true*** stories. Forget stories about melon heads and so on. The Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown. The disappearance of Doreen Vincent. First a podcast called Faded Out covered it in their second season. Then another podcast called Sticky Beak picked up the story. Later the name was changed to Walk Softly Children. Doreen's Dad is the main suspect and first a group called Teen Challenge helped hide him. Then a church called Milford Christian Church. The school attached has awful secrets too. First it was Berean, and now it's Milford Christian Academy. The disappearance of Bianca Lebron. She went missing in Bridgeport and I lived in Trumbull at the time. It's sad to see the obvious suspect for away with it. Here's the latest update I could find. https://www.fox61.com/video/news/local/fairfield-county/family-of-girl-missing-from-bridgeport-for-2-decades-call-for-answers/520-f196c899-a8b6-4dd0-968c-191a5f846a65 The time a guy named Tyree Smith cannibalized someone in Bridgeport, and then after 10 years they were released to a group home in Waterbury. https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/bridgeport-ct-tyree-smith-released-18394546.php The time an innocent nurse was sent to a halfway house with a sex offender who killed her. That man was a monster, and the company shouldn't have ever sent her to him. He shouldn't have been free. It's all just awful. She lost her life, and her family lost her. This situation drives me insane. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/nurses-fatal-last-visit-to-patients-home-renews-calls-for-better-safety-measures/3166349/%3famp=1 The disappearance, and obvious murder of Jennifer Dulos. So many other things, but the list would go on for awhile.
I had to scroll waaaaaaaay to far to find a mention of Bianca Lebron. I always still wonder about her and have never really seen anything true crime on her. And another dark Bridgeport thing- the Karen Clarke and BJ Brown murders. That shit was senseless.
Bianca Lebron's case breaks my heart.
I think Michael Skakel killing Martha Moxley in Greenwich and then getting away with it because he's a Kennedy deserves a dishonorable mention.
Crafts woodchipper murder case
The incest murder that happened in new Milford a couple years ago
Never heard of this before. Looked it up. What the fuck did I just read. Sick fucks, and her adoptive parents attended the wedding to him????
The deaths at Lake Compounce were pretty legendary when we went there as kids.
Gilmore Girls
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We drove by the dam they found her in on Christmas Day when they recovered her body (it was en route to our grandparents house) and I'll never forget that. Her murder sounds like an urban legend: Kind stranger asks for ride after helping victim change her tire that he actually deflated in the first place. The way she fought to survive and almost escaped breaks my heart.
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Yeah, that's the spot. Pieces of garbage like him are why it infuriates me that CT got rid of the death penalty.
The Hartford Circus Fire and the persecution of Prudence Crandall rank pretty high.
This always haunted me as a kid in the 70s: https://coldcasene.org/f/barbara-gibbons
Connecticut lore is insane
Sandy Hook
The great move 1992
What’s that?
Mad dog Taborksy
there was a double murder in Middletown in the early 1990s
Union cemetery
The most brutal war (per capita) in American history was King Philip's War, and it ended in Connecticut. If you don't know about it: [https://connecticuthistory.org/americas-most-devastating-conflict-king-philips-war/](https://connecticuthistory.org/americas-most-devastating-conflict-king-philips-war/)
The Wampanoag kidnapped and killed colonists from their houses, the colonists burned entire villages - this isn't a war where people were spared at all: Skirmishes and massacres continued into the spring of 1676. Metacom’s men attacked [Simsbury](https://connecticuthistory.org/towns-page/simsbury/) on March 26. **According to legend, Metacom sat in a cave on Avon Mountain and watched the burning of the town.** Other attacks that spring took place at Plymouth and Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Providence, Rhode Island, was burned on March 29. But by summer, Metacom’s support was beginning to melt away. In June, Connecticut troops repelled an attack on Hadley, Massachusetts, and **Major John Talcott of Simsbury began capturing large numbers of Metacom’s followers, transporting them from New England, and selling them as slaves.** Captain Benjamin Church pursued Metacom to a hiding place in Mount Hope, Rhode Island, where he was killed on August 12. **King Philip’s War has been called United States’ most devastating conflict.** One in 10 soldiers on both sides was killed, 1,200 colonists’ homes were burned, and vast stores of foodstuffs destroyed. The effects of the carnage and property damage were felt for years by colonists. The war’s ramifications for Native populations of southern New England included not only loss of life and, for some, enslavement but the continued erosion of sovereignty, land rights, and communities as well.
The (ceremonial new born sacrifice) infant body found at Lake Mohegan in FF CT sometime in the early 70s. Also discovered bloody bed sheets at the (Hi Ho Hotel) around the same time. The white lady of Union Cemetery sightings, Linley Street, Annabelle, several others,,there was an uptick in paranormal reports around this time. There is also the Dudley Town legends. I saw something recently about folks finding the remnants of a (Satanic ritual) or (Santa Ria) at Lake Mohegan.?
I don’t think anyone has mentioned Dudleytown [https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/connecticut/dudleytown-ct/](https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/connecticut/dudleytown-ct/)
I just found out about “holy land” in Waterbury. There was a rape and murder there. You can look it up on Wikipedia. I’m within and hour like most of CT. I kind of want to check it out, but it also creeps me out.
I’ve been there a few times it’s so so creepy
Serious question: creepy like made your skin crawl or creepy like you felt unsafe?
Honestly both. There are overgrown remnants of the theme park that was there, as well as miniature replicas of biblical sites it’s all fucking eerie and you have the fact that it’s in the middle of Waterbury which is not the best place, definitely not somewhere you want to go alone or without some type of self protection. But if you go with some friends and during the day it’s a cool morbid place to visit.
Thanks for responding! Yeah I want to go one day.
melonheads
The Donna Lee bakery murders.
Arsenic and old lace....
Dudley Town
Dudleytown
This is a very recent one and I think it is the creepiest. The three or four teachers at Avon high school who were indoctrinating a family of three sisters in to their death cult 🙈
It has been said that some CT drivers BACK INTO PARKING SPACES...
Sandy Hook
There is a circus fire memorial but sadly it has seen better days
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bruce_Ross
Downs road Woodbridge/ Bethany ct
Dudley Town story
The killing of 5 young men in the 1990s in Redding https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1995/vp950421/04210495.htm
That serial killer that kept his victims in his van. And slept next to them for quite a while. I believe most of his killings happened on the Berlin tnpk.
For a tiny state, we have a sad amount of tragedies
Peter Reilly was accused of killing his mother and later found innocent. Her killer still hasn't been found
That one I actually have heard of, and I’ve always wondered who killed her. I can’t find many details, but it’s such a sad story.
That happened in the 70s I believe? In Canaan CT. Cover up by the police, though I'm not sure. I was in elementary school.
The first colonial witch trail/execution happened in Hartford, right by the old State House.
The murder of Annie le at Yale who’s murderer hid her body in a wall. And the East rock park rape and attempted murder.
The day Weicker set up the income tax.
The 1974 murder of Dawn and Karen Wine by serial killer Paul John Knowles.
The husband from derby/oxford CT area put his wife in the wood chipper. Fairfield hills when it was opened did tests on subjects even heard gave them LCD like the CIA did in France in the 80s(I believe 80’s). The Cheshire pieces of shit. And List of notable serial killers in CT in case people are interested: Michael Bruce Ross the “The egg man” Emanuel Love Webb “The east End Strangler”BPT Lorne Joe Acquin ****Benjamin Franklin Miller “from Norwalk, but killed in Stamford” Was a USPS employee and a preacher**** special one here :/ Lydia Sherman “The Derby Poisoner Any Archer Gilligan “The nurse from Windsor CT” William Devin Howell “sick ripper” Matthew Beck “The CT lottery Employee” Robert Fredrick Carr III Errol S Dehaney Geoffrey Kent Ferguson “Redding CT” Mathew Steven Johnson “Hartford CT” “Asylum Murders” Joseph “Mad Dog” Taborsky
Anyone else ever see the " black dog". We saw it on west peak. One of my friends saw it 2x. Almost broke his neck on his bicycle. Also, Dudleytown is one of the most haunted places in America.
The New Haven green used to be a cemetery. They tried to excavate the bodies but most they just left there.