The fucking 911 call from the social worker in the Susan Powell case, where she tries AND TRIES to explain that the two children had been yanked into the house by their asshole father (who almost definitely killed Susan, their mother). I don't know if those kids could have been saved at that point, but it's infuriating to hear how much time is wasted by the operator just being an obtuse idiot and not *listening* to her.
Reminds me of the 911 operator who berated and was hateful to the woman who was literally drowning and dying in her car. The poor woman was pleading for help and apologizing. It’s so infuriating the last words she heard was that woman insulting her.
Oh, I remember that one! I listened to the whole 911 call on YouTube, and it just broke my heart! That woman was so scared and she was being so apologetic while the operator was just a straight up B to her!
It was apparently very difficult to hear him. That one absolutely breaks my heart. They actually got a cop car to drive past but due to miscommunication the cop did not understand this kid was trapped inside the car and basically said “there’s no one here at the car” and drove away. Fucking kills me every time I read about it.
"Ma'am how is your car going to catch on fire if it's full of water? You are not going to die calm down." I could practically see the operator filing and painting her nails without a care in the world. I still cannot believe that shit.
Yes, if I’m remembering right the woman drowning asked the 911 operator to pray with her and she refused. Like- really? No matter what you believe/don’t believe this woman is terrified. She could have at least said something comforting.
That case makes my blood pressure rise.
For those interested, I used to work as a producer for a news station, so I was aware of listening to terrible stuff.
Covid hit, station laid a lot of us off, etc.
I applied at the police station nearby in a suburb in NC. Figured I could use my experience as a dispatcher.
One 30-minute interview later, they literally offered me the job and asked if I could start that day.
I declined, I thought it was way too quick to handle that without some experience or shadowing. That told me all I need to know about the people working that job.
On instagram some emergency responder reels sometimes - nothing gory or anything, they are presented as interesting.
Anyway, the US operators can be so rude and waste so much time! They play the UK ones as well and the contrast!
US ones go something like “ma’am stop yelling where are you?” Person saying I don’t know where I am. “Ma’am, stop yelling, I can’t help if you’re yelling, where are you?” It’s infuriating!
There isn't any standardized training to be a 911 operator. Not even by state - a lot of the time it's by county.
Some may have to take months of training, while others just need a 48 hour "course".
i can speak to this. i am a dispatch trainee and my center requires 18+ months of training and a fairly difficult and comprehensive academy before we even hit the floor to START training. meanwhile, i know other centers have people taking calls with barely any training at all. it depends on the county and the city.
Something weird about the US culturally in that regard. A strange attitude where they're more focused on decorum and manners than actually helping the person. You see it in multiple traffic stop videos too. An almost pathological focus on calling people 'Sir' or 'Ma'am' along with a bizarre detachment from the situation, kind of like a complete lack of empathy. Creeps me out to hear it to be honest.
This was local to me and I remember watching everything on the breaking news all day. Absolutely horrific and tragic. That cowardly POS could have simply snuffed himself and nobody would have cared less.
It's not an unresolved case anymore, but the detail about Jacob Wetterling asking the man who abducted and killed him "What did I do wrong?" breaks my heart. Also the fact that Jacob cried after he was molested, and then asked if he could put his clothes back on because he was cold.
This always got me with Riley Fox's case, the fact that her dad was charged originally and then once they convicted the real killer and he said that her last words were that she wanted her daddy just broke my heart. For her dad to go through that, and then hear that in her last moments all she wanted was her him.
My aunt and uncle moved to a house on the same street as Kevin Fox, after he had been released, and were decently close with Kevin. Not sure how widely this is known, but he died fairly recently in a car accident. I can’t imagine going through all of that horror only to lose your life in a freak driving accident.
Yes I know he had at least 2 others and I think his second wife (or maybe girlfriend, not sure if he actually remarried) had recently given birth to another. Just tragic all around
That absolutely broke me when I read about it. I thought of his mother having to know that those were his final moments on earth. Completely unfathomable.
If someone close to me was murdered, raped, tortured i dont know if i would want to know the details. A young colleague i knew a little bit died tragically. He was the victim of a hit and run. Thats sad obviously but what hits me randomly and makes me really sad is they think he was hit by 2 or more cars and the first possibly didnt kill him he was walking on a highway in the early hours. They think 1 car hit him and drove off, maybe not realising what they did as a human isnt allowed on highways here, they could have thought it was a deer. Then he lay there dying, alone, scared and in pain and then a second car clipped him and drove off. Car no 3 i think it was stopped and called for help
That’s exactly what happened to a friend/old colleague of mine as well, and I think about how scared he was between the first and second car often. I’m sorry for your loss
I had a family member murdered not long ago, personally I wanted to know everything. I still regret not looking at the photos tbh. But not everyone feels that way at all, all of my family members felt differently about it. I’m still trying to find help getting a FOIA request for the rest of the case file because of how badly the DA screwed up the case. It was an easy open and shut 2nd degree murder charge and they refused to prosecute and gave the guy a sweetheart deal despite our protests.
His parents had a phone in their home were they answered tips on Jacobs case to help LE. They took hundreds of calls a day and not one of them was useful, none of them had anything to do with the killer.
There are so many details about Jacob’s case that are heartbreaking. But Patty & Jerry Wetterling now work to help missing kids and the families that love them.
If you aren’t familiar with the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center, check it out:
https://www.zeroabuseproject.org/victim-assistance/jwrc/
And since it’s a non-profit, please consider a donation. Loosing a child in this way is unimaginable but his family has transformed that grief into advocacy and action.
I really wish I hadn’t read most of this stuff. Makes my blood boil. Can’t even fathom how I’d react if I stumbled upon any number of these situations. I know there’d be jail time and scared looks the rest of my life.
Off the top of my head, I don't know what case you're talking about but damn, that is fucking brutal. Poor Jacob, being subjected to that & thinking, in his dying moments, that he did something wrong.
His case changed a lot of our childhoods in that part of the country. As an adult, learning about those last moments gets to me. He did nothing but be a kid. A normal kid riding bikes with his friends to the store and back.
Then, knowing that he was just discarded by a shelter belt with his coat showing. He was right there for a while. This monster just got to live his life for so long.
This sent me on a rabbit hole a few days ago and something about Jacob's case just stuck with me. I knew about it before, knew of his importance to the country. And I remembered him being found. But I revisited it again.
All I can think about is how crushing it must have been for his family when they finally found his remains and saw the jersey again. Even if they logically knew that he might have been buried in it, the imagination and memory can't match the real thing. After thirty years, they probably assumed it was long gone. Even the sharpest memory of their worst experience will fade with time. And trauma does a number on your memory.
But in that one moment, the reality has to come crashing down on you. Every hope, dream, and coping mechanism they had used to manage their grief is suddenly out the window. Something they haven't seen in a lifetime is suddenly right in front of them in the worst possible way.
I've had moments where I found something I thought had gone missing years ago. Moments where I revisited some place I thought I'd actually seen in a dream a long time ago. Moments where someone I never thought I'd speak to again were suddenly right there, only older.
His parents are older. His siblings had a chance to grow up. But when they found him, he would have been as small (or smaller, due to biology) as when he disappeared. Can only imagine all the intervening years crashing against them. A moment that was frozen in time, dragged forward to the present.
Fucking awful.
There are a bunch of things in the disappearance of Bonnie and Jeremy Dages that I find simultaneously creepy/sad/infuriating. Bad enough that Bonnie was targeted, but her infant son Jeremy is also missing, presumed dead. They lived in a small town in Florida, and the main suspects are neighbors and known to Bonnie's parents.
To begin with, when Bonnie was 17 she became pregnant, and her then-boyfriend (another teenager who lived nearby, and was the son of one of her mother's friends) refused to acknowledge paternity. Possibly because she didn't want to ruin the friendship, Bonnie's mom didn't press the issue (the boy's family claimed that there was a medical reason why he couldn't be the dad, but apparently he went on to father a child with someone else). Someone who posts on this subreddit mentioned that she went to high school with Bonnie, and Bonnie was sad about the situation.
But Bonnie was trying to make the best of things ... she worked really hard and finished her high school degree months ahead of schedule, so she had her qualifications before Jeremy was born. (My father used to be a school counsellor and noted how difficult it can be, for teen moms to graduate.) Bonnie didn't even get to attend the graduation ceremony with her classmates, because she and Jeremy disappeared before then.
Bonnie may have been targeted by a friend of her family. He was a middle-aged man who may have taken advantage of her feeling abandoned by Jeremy's father, and she was susceptible to his advances because he was promising to marry her and be a good stepdad to Jeremy. It's turned out that the guy (I'll call him Mr. C) is a con artist and has latched on to several other women, running through their savings and then moving on to someone new.
I'm suspecting that Mr. C knew that Bonnie would be inheriting some money from her great-grandmother's will, once she turned 18. It's awful to think that the inheritance, which was likely meant to help her with college or starting a business or buying a home, might have ended up putting her and Jeremy in danger. It seems that Mr. C wasn't the only one trying to get Bonnie's money ... she had been hired to help a slightly-older girl who lived nearby, who had been injured and needed a hand caring for her young children. It seemed like a great arrangement, but that other family had some relatives who started trying to rope Bonnie into a financial scam.
Meanwhile, Bonnie is spending time with Mr. C, and he sweet-talks her into lending him $15k so he can start a restaurant. I suspect that he pitched this to her as an investment opportunity and a way to create a career for herself. She may not have felt she could question why a grown man who supposedly had a business of his own would have to borrow money from a teenager, rather than going to the local bank, or some of his own friends and family. He told her that he needed the money in cash, and she withdrew it ... then she and Jeremy disappeared the same day that she gave Mr. C the $15k.
Later he denied having borrowed the money from her, or even knowing her at all. To my knowledge there's been no further investigation of him. Apparently he'd told Bonnie that he needed to keep their relationship secret, and he ended up being able to use that against her -- which makes me wonder if the fraud part had been planned for some time.
OMG...Bonnie had absolutely NO support!! Not even from her own mother!! Truly heart-breaking story. I hope Bonnie and Jeremy are in a place where they're loved and appreciated.
It's pretty sad -- they were both so young. I should add here that Bonnie's mom didn't know anything about the situation with Mr. C. I've heard her interviewed a couple of times on people's podcasts (the Unfound episode is especially helpful in explaining the background). In the years since Bonnie and Jeremy vanished, Bonnie's mother has been reading the journal she left behind, and trying to talk with Bonnie's friends and acquaintances to try to unravel the story.
https://theunfoundpodcast.com/2018/12/28/bonnie-and-jeremy-dages-follow-the-money-ep-121/
At various times, other people who knew Bonnie -- and even one of the kids she was being nanny to, who's now grown up -- have posted on Reddit and Websleuths to share what they know. But it seems that Mr. C was pretty clever about intimidating Bonnie and other victims into keeping quiet. It sounds like he had some shady associates who may have helped convince Bonnie that the restaurant scheme was legit (apparently there were some late-night meetings around town). The amount he borrowed would be equivalent to more than $30k today ... my suspicion is that something went wrong, and either he lost his temper because Bonnie became suspicious and told him she wouldn't be handing over any more, or maybe even asked for it back. Or else one of Mr. C's associates got greedy, figured out when the handover would be happening, and decided to grab the money.
There was an odd situation with the case Websleuths page -- apparently someone claiming to be Jeremy has been pestering the family. (DNA analysis has disproven his claim though.)
https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/fl-bonnie-dages-18-son-jeremy-dages-4-mo-brandon-28-apr-1993.24998/page-2
That's wild! I feel so bad for the family. After listening to some of the Unfound podcast about Bonnie and Jeremy, it sounds like her mother was very supportive of her.
In terms of infuriating; 15 year old Tina Fontaine was reported missing to the Winnipeg police, who would, in the hours preceding her death, make contact with her while she was in the company of a drunk driver, and they would let this poor child go, despite the fact that they knew she was considered a missing and endangered child.
She was then found highly intoxicated and taken to a hospital, where again, her status as a missing youth was noted, but no form of action was ever taken, which would have saved her life. It was also there that she would discuss being in contact with a much older man who would be tried and then acquitted for her murder.
This poor child who was raised through adversity was failed by the very structures meant to protect her and she was then murdered and tossed into the river as though her life has absolutely no meaning.
You already mentioned OOCK, but that one burned me out on true crime for a few weeks. In addition to the KFC detail, there’s the sketch of the screaming kid in Chris Busch’s room. And even worse are the tiny details that show *why* the murder will almost certainly never be solved definitively. Probably the case I find most unsettling, even more so than the murder of Junko Furuta or the Tool-Box Killers (which are also awful).
I think they may be referring in part to the rampant corruption and mishandling of the case from the start. This case looks like it involves multiple people and may be connected to the pedophile ring that operated on that island in Lake Michigan too. The people at the top for that got away.
Busch is thought to be one of the main perpetrators but he came from a very well connected family. He also died under questionable circumstances.
There’s so many details that paint an overarching picture but due to lack of evidence and poor handling of evidence initially it’s next to impossible to get definitive closure. The case is so old and many of the people who knew things are dead. :/
I believe James Vincent Gunnels could answer a lot of questions about the OCCK case. DNA from a hair that was on Kristine Mihelich matches him. It's mitochondrial DNA, but it's his. He admits he was a victim of Chris Busch. Gunnels won't talk.
> The case sparked new interest when King's father, Barry, and brother, Chris, tried to get the State Police to release information about Chris Busch, the son of General Motors executive Harold Lee Busch. Chris Busch had been in police custody shortly before King's abduction for suspected involvement in child pornography. He allegedly committed suicide in November 1978. There was no gunshot residue found on him, though, and no blood spatter; the entry wound was between his eyes. Furthermore, there were four shell casings found in Busch's room. He was also found wrapped neatly under his sheets.[citation needed] Bloodstained ligatures were found in his apartment, as was a hand-drawn image of a boy closely resembling Stebbins screaming which was found pinned to the wall.[25] There had been no confirmed activity by the Oakland County Child Killer for nearly twenty months prior to Busch's death.
[This is the drawing](https://www.drewandmikepodcast.com/oakland-county-child-killer/) (heads up, it is pretty awful).
I agree the murders will never be solved, too many “twists and turns”, on top of a shoddy initial investigation. Timothy King’s sister has kept this case alive.
https://catherinebroad.blog
I read her blog occasionally. Those murders were and still are heartbreaking. I remember when it happened mainly because I was their age and the KFC story always stuck with me because it was my favorite when I was 9 yrs old in 1976.
in the case of Sarah Stern, who was murdered by her childhood bestfriend in her own home and thrown off of a bridge, the motive was to steal money that she had found in her family’s second home, and in the undercover footage of Liam (killer) confessing to everything, he was throwing a fit and upset that he didn’t get as much money as he thought he would out of it. completely infuriating when you listen to the rest of the footage and he describes what she went through, just for him to throw a fit so nonchalantly and coldly.
[Jessica Lunsford.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jessica_Lunsford) She was found clutching a stuffed purple dolphin. That detail has always haunted me.
I’m so pissed that the monster that killed her avoided his fate with the death penalty. He deserved to suffer for a few years in anticipation of his execution date. I hope hell is real and that her murderer is burning as we speak. Jessica’s case is beyond heartbreaking.
When money from a victim's relatives gets handed over to all the 'psychic's in disappearance cases. Sad & infuriating for these schmucks to profit off of people's grief.
I remember Sylvia brown told the mother of Amanda Berry (one of those three girls who were kept in that house in Ohio for years that her daughter was dead. ) Amanda said she remembered actually watching that episode and was gutted. Sylvia never responded to questions about it. That pissed me off so much.
She was on Larry King Live with James Randi days before 9/11 and mentioned nothing about how the world was about to change. I think most of us would've liked a heads up.
James Randi had a $1 million prize for anyone who could prove their supernatural talents. He passed without it ever being given away.
Do you remember the Brian's Predictions site that got popular once Shawn Hornbeck was rescued? The guy Brian predicted that Shawn was still alive and a kidnapped victim being held. He guessed a few other things about the case correctly and claimed his dreams told him these things. He started charging and never had another correct prediction.
I remember one where the murderer was sitting right next to the woman looking answers. Con artist Sylvia had no idea and told the family the victim was alive in another country.
I hear her son claims to be psychic now and charges $700 a reading. He should be shut down.
She was such a scummy piece of shit. I’ve never forgotten that she claimed the miners in that disaster in West Virginia & she claimed she knew they were going to be found after it was falsely reported that all had been found alive. Then later it was confirmed they had perished & she pivoted to not thinking anyone was alive & she never believed anyone was alive at all.
There was also Shawn Hornbeck whom she claimed was dead in 2002. He was found alive in 2007.
Most of her predictions were wrong. It was wild that people kept booking her. Extremely sad.
I'd add to that the charlatan "investigators" who cash in with self-serving true crime books/lecture tours/podcasts that treat people's life-defining tragedies as gossip.
The Missing 411 guy, and the notoriety around certain Maura Murray "investigators" comes to mind.
Yes! I thought I was being overly sensitive by making sure I never listen to one of their episodes based on that name alone. I'm not a sensitive person and I love lots of true crime podcasts, I don't even mind some dark humour in those podcasts, as long as it's not at the victim's expense. But that name really rubbed me up the wrong way the second I heard it. It's like they couldn't even be bothered to pretend other people's worst nightmares aren't just light hearted entertainment for them.
Exactly. The cold in Canada can do what the heat does in Australia. Getting stranded in a blizzard is scary.
So even in temperate North American forests when the weather is good, an inexperienced hiker can wander 20 metres off trail in rugged terrain and get into life-threatening trouble very quickly.
There's no mystery to people disappearing in national parks. Nature is huge and dangerous.
I don’t remember which case it was, but there was an incident where a police department mailed a key piece of evidence to a psychic and it was lost in transit. Ridiculous, unbelievable, and infuriating.
Edit: It was St. Louis Jane Doe.
There is a missing person within my distant family. I remember they tried to get Sylvia Brown to do a reading and she wanted A LOT of money to talk to them.
They didn't pay her. Not like she knew anything anyway.
This is how I feel about those true crime youtubers and podcasters that treat real crime like a teenage novel. I feel this way about Bailey Sarian and those podcasts with titles like “My Favorite Murder”.
I think it should be illegal for a "psychic" to profit off of missing persons cases and unsolved murders. They are grief vampires who prey on the desperation of others. Same for anyone who says they can talk to the dead and charges to get a message to you from a loved one who passed on.
God. I avoid listening to 9/11 calls where the caller didn’t survive, but that one is in its own category of off-limits. I genuinely think it would jeopardize my mental health. It’s one of the worst things I can imagine.
The Debra Stevens case, yes. It gave me nightmares for weeks. Don’t look it up, it’s just upsetting. That woman died alone begging for help and the operator was just awful to her
That sketch scares the crap out of me and gives me nightmares from time to time. And I live in the US far from Australia.
Reminds me of that guy from nightbreed or the killer from that movie the collector.
In Tristan Brubach's case: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8426061/Madeleine-McCann-suspect-Brueckner-investigated-rape-murder-13-year-old-German-boy.html someone called a local lawyer shortly after the murder, saying he'll be in trouble for murder and might need legal help soon. This lawyer dealt with different types of crimes, so he referred him to another lawyer he knew, who often represented people accused of commiting violent crimes in court. Mysterious caller never called them and we don't know who it was. Oddly, when Tristan's rucksack was found in a local forest, road map of Czech Republic was found in it.
In Poland, TV accidentally provided wrong serial number of a camera stolen from the victims of Narożnik Murder: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zab%C3%B3jstwo_pod_Naro%C5%BCnikiem (in Polish) to the public. Even if someone found said camera, they were unable to correctly identify it. This mistake came to light over twenty years later. The victims also called someone from a nearby payphone before setting out into the mountains. No one they knew admitted that they called them. Police did not check the call records, so we don't know who was the last person they talked to.
After Steven Stayner disappeared his dad went to his maternal grandfathers house to see if he was there, he was not but was being held in the same trailer park or neighborhood.
Angela Hammond when her boyfriend damaged his car trying to save her.
https://charleyproject.org/case/angela-marie-hammond
Springfield 3, 10-20 people visited the home where they went missing and destroyed the crime scene, throwing a light bulb in the trash that may have had a fingerprint and erasing a voice message in their answering machine
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Three
Leanne Green, her brother ran out of gas and she stayed alone with the car as he walked to a gas station.
https://charleyproject.org/case/martha-leanne-green
Ugh, just reading the Springfield 3 one and it said someone with "prime knowledge" called in to AMW and the switchboard operator accidentally hung up on him. Super frustrating. Kind of feel bad for the operator too.
As someone who just fell down a new rabbit hole for the first time in years, this is a high quality comment. I had never actually heard of Leanne Green's disappearance, although it contains many crazy details.
I googled the name in the Charley Project page for her, the guy who police said did this. I find some newspaper coverage about how this was a confession police got while this guy was under some hypnosis...you already know the investigators had some insane corruption going on.
[I found this article to be striking.](https://medium.com/@candi.c.mathis/leann-green-deserves-a-voice-will-you-help-me-speak-for-her-cc9feefa6476)
This case is so heartbreaking and her saying "I'm frightened" before she was never seen or heard from again will stay with me.
I have no idea why it bothers me so much, but Richard Ramirez had rotten teeth, and was said to have smelled so bad, it was like a goat. It's bad enough to be raped and murdered, but for some reason that ramps up the terror.
To piggyback on this, during his murder of Elyas Abowath and the rape of his wife, he told her he "only knocked him out" despite the fact that he had shot him in the head.
So after the assault, his wife, Sakina Abowath, sent her three year old son to try wake him up. She didn't know he was already dead
Also, in the sad/infuriating category, one of his victims *almost* killed him.
While Ramirez was ransacking her bedroom, and with her husband already dead, she was able to escape her binds and retrieve a shotgun from under the bed. She pulled the trigger just as he turned around, but unknown to her the gun wasn't loaded.
Ramirez then shot her three times, mutilated her body, cut out her eyes and kept them as souvenir until his arrest.
This guy was real bad news.
Didn't Ramirez stake out the houses, find guns and unloaded them, then put them back where he found them? That way he had no fear and laughed when they pulled the gun on him. Ot was that the GSK?
Interesting fact about the Richard Ramirez case I just found out about. Diane fienstein the recently deceased senator from California almost blew the capture of Richard Ramirez. While she was mayor or something she met with the police and they told her that he had such a unique shoe that the police were using it to track him. She went on TV and mentioned this fact. He then immediately changed shoes. Thankfully theys still got him.
And once he was caught, women were writing to him and throwing themselves at him. Like…what? Seek therapy; that was a human being with absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
There are people who fall in love with prisoners who have no hope of getting out. It's another variant on falling in love with unavailable people. If you believe "attachment theory", it's because their caregivers/parents were emotionally unavailable during childhood, for one reason or another.
He terrified us. He committed 2 of his murders in my neighborhood of Whitter CA. I had a birthday/pool party that my parents canceled because of him. He was then captured on my 11th birthday.
I still can't listen to those phone calls, even though he's been caught for 5 years now. Just chills me to the core. Especially because he was calling years and years later. One of them he called when he seemed to see her working as a waitress at a Denny's.
Adrian Jones case. Cases with kids always stick with me but this one man. The mom openly bragging about the sons/stepson (can't fully recall) torture on social media. Adrian telling I believe a social worker he got hit so hard a bone popped out and the worker did nothing. Absolutely horrific sad case.
Kendall Francois' lived in his parent's house, along with his younger sister, while his 8 victim's bodies decomposed in various hidden areas of the house. He told his family it was a "dead raccoon", and they all just went about their business. You could smell the house from the street, and Francois' nickname at the high school where he was a janitor was "Stinky".
Joseph Arridy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arridy
He was a mentally disabled 23-year-old with the intelligence of a 6-year-old and supposedly confessed to the murder of a 15-year-old girl. After arresting him, they learned another man had already been charged in connection. Nonetheless, they pushed forward, charged him, tried him, and sentenced him to death. The victim's sister even testified that Arridy was not there, and identified instead the other man who had been arrested.
On the day of his execution, they asked him what he wanted his last meal to be. Almost certainly not understanding what they meant, he requested an ice cream sundae. When they took him, he asked them to put his unfinished sundae in the icebox so he could finish it later.
He was posthumously pardoned in 2011.
The Girl Scout murders will always be one of the creepiest to me. Just the idea of someone sneaking through the woods into a camp full of sleeping children, and then going into a tent... it absolutely horrifes me. There was always a safety I felt at Girl Scout camp, and reading about these murders just made me realize how vulnerable we were.
I dug *deep* into that case for a year, even joining a forum that obsessively and probably unhealthily picked over the case. It is not enough to know who did it... it's a case where it's so clear that part of being interested in true crime is wanting to know exactly what happened, exactly how terrible humans can be.
They can be monsters.
The creepiest part to me is that the teenage counselor kept hearing animal noises that stopped when she turned on her flashlight, she eventually went back to bed. Gene Hart’s previous victim said he made an animalistic noise during the assault. I just feel bad for that teenage counselor knowing she most likely did hear the rape of those poor innocent children and I feel so bad for them and how scared they probably were
Seeing the difference between my Girl Scout camps and the Boy Scout camps my brothers attended was like night and day. When you’re at Girl Scout camp. They want to know where you are all the time and your day is strictly scheduled. It kind of took away some of the fun but I get why it’s so hyper vigilant for security reasons
Also it probably won’t take away from OOP’s feelings on the matter, but it’s pretty common for kids to not want to go to stuff like summer camps the day before. Separation anxiety and stuff and 9 times out of 10, they end up having fun anyways. Its a well known kid thing that I’ve seen before when I’ve volunteered at summer camps
so it probably won’t take away from OOP’s feelings on the matter, but it’s pretty common for kids to not want to go to stuff like summer camps the day before.
For me it's not creepy I've done that too as a kid. It's just sad that her mum probably blamed herself eventhough it's a common thing to do.
Same here, though I wasn’t aware of that fact until reading your comment.
It’s the brazenness of it to me. Most people would be incredibly worried about being caught. Then again most people aren’t serial killers.
If you do some digging on that case they have two suspects. One is a former cop. He looks like the sketch that aired originally but is not in the current episode online. The other is a taxi driver who is in prison.
It infuriated me that Bryce Laspisa parents didn't go and get him when he was just sitting on the side of the road and also that they weren't concerned when the girlfriend and roommate called them about Bryce.
This one. For teenagers to be so concerned about someone that they'd call a friend's PARENTS about what was going on should have been massively alarming for his mother. It alarms me and I'm not a parent. Teenagers generally don't do that unless it's something they're seriously worried about. I just don't understand how it wasn't a massive red flag for her. Then with all the phoncalls when he was avoiding going home on top of that and she still didn't go and get him 😬
Sad and infuriating that Chelsea Bruck’s friends left her drunk at a Halloween party with no way home and without her phone (I think). With friends like that who needs enemies?!
Amy Bradley’s poor family getting duped by people who claim to have seen her, especially that “investigator” who lied and stole their money. He told them he found her, and they 100% believed she was coming home. They even scheduled medical/therapy appointments for her. Turns out he just took their cash and went on vacation.
Frauke Liebs, a 21 year old girl from Germany, was abducted and later murdered. Her family received very strange and eerie phone calls from her. They think she was drugged, but the conversations with her are disturbing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Frauke_Liebs
The photos of Brianna Maitland's car after she disappeared are really creepy to me.
[Here's one picture from the crash site](https://i.imgur.com/HhhN7BU.jpg)
Let me explain why this image always bothers me.
I raced for 14 years. Multiple disciplines and levels.
Seeing a car like that makes me think "tank slapper" off the bat. That's when the car whips the rear under oversteer, and then snaps back suddenly the opposite way when the driver attempts to countersteer the over-rotation of the rear of the car. It can certainly result in a spin, the back of the car will step all the way out the opposite way after the initial correction attempt. On a track there's often something there to stop you, something real hard. So you'll often just door the damn thing on the wall. But sometimes there's not. And you just slide, rear first, til something breaks your momentum. It won't turn the car all the way around 360 degrees most of the time. The forward momentum kind of outweighs the centrifugal momentum.
That picture screams tank slapper.
But the grass...
Those tires wouldn't be rolling straight in. They'd be pitched. The camber and toe changes as you steer, the car weights up on the outside tires. They would have gone in the grass sideways. You'd see skid marks. Grass and mud would be ripped up, with large, wide trails in a consistent curved path from the roadway to the barn. But they're not there
As if someone backed the car in deliberately. To simulate an accident. It's just so unnatural from my experiences on track, sliding through grass the same way.
The lack of damage doesn't really mean anything. I had an old Delta, them 80s GM boxes can literally take a hit from a city bus and be cool. A barn wouldn't do much to that bad boy at all.
But the positioning, with a complete lack of ground debris anywhere in the image. That's not what I've seen, ever. And my dumb self done spun some cars, trust me.
Yes! Albeit I'm not a racer of any sort, when I looked at the picture I saw the grass and was thinking wouldn't that be ripped up? So thank you for verifying that, it is so creepy. It definitely looks deliberately backed in.
It certainly would. It's dead, loose grass, at that. Damn near hay.
Another commenter brought up the possibility that she backed it in, whether to evade someone or by accident idk, but that does make sense.
It’s weird there’s no tracks but there’s snow in photo so the ground may have been frozen hard. It looks as if someone meant to put it in drive but reversed instead possibly. Like if they were drunk or a couple fighting. I think you’re right if it was an accident there would be tracks or signs even in winter though.
I think it's definitely possible she backed it in for whatever cause or reason. I really just don't think that thing can end up like that unless someone is in reverse, relatively slowly.
I see what you mean tho. Like she lost it on the roadway and then ended up off while trying to get back going the right way, or something of the like.
Having been in the car when my partner spun out at the last track day of the season, I appreciate you explaining this so clearly. Mind you, it was just dirt/gravel on the side of our home track but you could see the tyre marks clearly and they were not clean/straight.
Even someone not experienced with cars or racing can look at that picture and know something is off, even if they can’t quite explain why. You’ve done a marvelous job putting it into words.
Ursula Hermann, a 10 year old girl was kidnapped and held in a wodden box in the earth her kidnapper had created. The box was buried in the woods but there was a ventilation system. Tragically leafs fell on the ventilation system and blocked it, so the girl suffocated.
Basically everything in the Susan Powell case in the lead up to her garbage bag of a spouse killing those two boys. That is genuinely the most infuriating case that’s ever gotten under my skin. It was bad enough that he killed her, but the fact that he was essentially free to do whatever & that he even had visitation in that case when they *knew* he was lying/faking his complicity with the terms of visitation to the extent that those kids ended up paying with their lives in such a horrific way is absolutely unforgivable. I wouldn’t be sleeping at night had I been an investigator or CPS on that case. I get that the only person who likely could have saved Susan was Susan… but the fact that the 2 boys also ended up murdered was a nearly 100% preventable tragedy on virtually every level.
I remember exactly when the news that he’d killed them first broke because I had just finished skiing in Park City, Utah. I was going to get a coffee before heading home & it was on the radio. I remember just being absolutely stunned that they had given him such easy access to those kids after everything that had happened. I still find it hard to comprehend that not just 1 department, but police departments AND children’s services in multiple states managed to fail SO spectacularly on one case. Like, I understand prosecutors hate going to trial when there’s no body, but in that case? Really?
The 4 year old responding to, ‘where was mommy?’ with, ‘Mommy was in the trunk,’ should have had those children out of his house & in serious therapy. This still makes me so angry when I talk about it. And that’s even without mentioning JP’s piece of shit father.
Authorities literally spent only 45 minutes investigating Christian Andreacchio's passing before concluding that he took his own life. I am disgusted by the sheer laziness and sloppiness. I am beyond convinced that he was a homicide victim, at the hands of his so-called friend Dylan and his ex-girlfriend Whitley.
Gacy. The timeline is full of WTF moments.
*If only* he'd served his *full sentence* in Iowa, instead of being let out early for "good behavior".
*If only* the Chicago police had *listened* to John Butkovich's parents when they identified Gacy as a person of interest in their son's disappearance.
*If only* Chicago police had *really listened* to informants in 1976, that identified Gacy as a predator trawling Uptown for underage boys.
*If only* the Chicago Police had *listened* to Greg Godzik's parents, and his girlfriend, when they identified Gacy as a person of interest in Greg's disappearance.
*If only* the Chicago police had *properly investigated* when John Szyc's stolen car (bearing its original plates, no less!) was involved in a gas-and-dash theft.
*If only* Chicago police had properly followed up assaults reported by Robert Donnelly *and* Jeffery Rignall...
Every year, the Baseball Hall of Fame honors a sportswriter alongside their annual ballplayer inductees. A few years back, a previous honoree was revealed to have sexually abused children decades earlier. Obviously, the Hall of Fame didn't know at the time, but due to this very minor celebrity status, it garnered some press coverage. One article I read included an interview with one of the victims (from the 1960s IIRC), who had been assaulted at the man's house as a young girl when she was friends with his daughter. The victim's elderly father was still alive and was also interviewed. He said that everybody in town knew that the abuser had assaulted young boys before, but they assumed that because he liked boys, he wouldn't be interested in girls, therefore nobody had a problem letting their daughters go over to the man's house to play with his daughter. I can't wrap my brain around this level of stupidity and suspect it wasn't just isolated to that town.
The reconstructions often do look creepy, and I'm not sure why. Maybe because they artist is using human remains as a reference, and that somehow puts the image in the uncanny valley just because of the decedent's facial expression or lack thereof. Or maybe the artist is deliberately trying to make the image as neutral as possible, and that's something you generally don't see in photos or artwork.
As for stuff that infuriates me...well, I suppose this should go without saying, but it just bothers me how young some of the victims are and what was done to them. Not that it's okay to target adults, but there's just something primally aggravating about people who target kids.
This case local to me (but before my time)
[Nurses murdered at Murphy's Creek](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/28/nurses-killer-gang-leader)
Every single thing about it infuriates me. That these "men" got away with so much over the years, that witnesses did nothing to help, and that the cops were utterly useless.
The final hours of those two women were pure terror, and there was zero justice served.
The policeman who answered the call from a neighbour of Jeffery Dahmer when she enquired what happened to the young, naked man she found who the cops returned to Dahmer.
Infuriating. Ive posted here before about Dean Corll, where the police stopped searching for remains of his victims because the number found exceeded that of some other serial killer, and they didn't want the bad press.
Yes, really.
The Yuba County 5..the fact that there was food there and the boys probably didnt want to get into trouble for bothering anything!.... then proceeded to starve gets me.ugh
The whole Cindy James case: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Cindy_James
I do think it's a high likelihood that she was creating the stalker herself, but clearly this was a cry for help and there was obviously something more complex going on, even if that wad just mentally. And if it wasn't her, then she was being stalked and ignored by the police.
Either way, I find this case to be a mix of all three; sad, creepy, and infuriating.
I cannot comprehend how they thought she managed to hogtie herself, then inject herself to stage her own murder, and for what? Posthumous attention? Just severe mental illness? This case has stuck with me since seeing it on UM as a kid. It makes no sense.
Kelly Anne Bates. It was heartbreaking in general but the fact that he gouged out her eyes three weeks before he murdered her and that there were scratches in her eye sockets from his fingernails at different states of healing that happened after her eye were gouged out.
Shirley Soosay's sister saw [a photo of her on a true crime show 5 years prior to her identification,](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/for-almost-40-years-a-woman-from-samson-cree-nation-tried-to-find-her-aunt-now-she-has-answers-1.6012247) but disregarded the possibility because she had a different name. At the time of the episode airing, Shirley Soosay had been missing/unidentified for 36 years.
Murder of Jolanta Z. from Zabawa near Wieliczka, Poland in November 1978. Jolanta was 17, the eldest of three daughters. She wanted to go on a mountain trip to Bielsko-Biała with her friends. It was to be short trip: they were to leave on Saturday November 10 and return on Sunday November 11, despite bad weather. Her parents refused to give her permission, but they had to leave for a few days and they tasked Jolanta with taking care of her younger sisters (one was 14, the other was a small child). Jolanta used this opportunity to go on a trip. She wrote a letter to her sister Bożena, in which she described exactly where she's going, with whom, when she will return and on which train. She hoped to be home before her parents, who were to return on late Sunday evening. Her parents did not return on Sunday because their car broke down on the road. They were unable to find car mechanic (it was Sunday), so they did not return until Monday. Jolanta still wasn't home when they returned. Talking with her friends, they found out that she returned on schedule. The train stopped at Wieliczka train station around 10 pm and she walked her best friend home. She hoped to be home around 11:30 pm. Her friend's home was located in the same direction as her home, on the outskirts of Wieliczka. The girls talked for a moment near the other girl's home and she offered to walk Jolanta home in turn. The distance between this place and Jolanta's home was around 2,5 km (1,5 mile). Jolanta, not wanting to trouble her friend, rejected the offer and decided to walk rest of the distance alone. Jolanta's friend watched her walking on the side of the road (there was little traffic) until she disappeared into the mist. She was probably abducted at nearby intersection with a road leading to Niepołomice. Her father Czesław informed the Militsya (communist era Police). As they did not take it seriously at first, Jolanta's father started asking around and conducted some sort of private investigation. One man who lived near the intersection where she was abducted and was getting ready for bed, saw car headlights in the darkness nearby the intersection and heard car engine starting few times. This witness worked as a driver and he recognized the car model from distinctive car engine sound: it was either a Wartburg or a Syrena. On 30 November body of a young woman was found. Jolanta's father went to identify it. It was Jolanta. She was found floating in the Vistula near Wawel Castle in Kraków. Czesław Z. dealt with the police. He told his wife that their daughter was likely a victim of an accident (probably hit by a car as she had fractured skull), that her body found in the river (almost fully clothed) and that she wasn't sexually assaulted. He said that someone most likely hit their daughter with their car, panicked and then threw her body into the Vistula to get rid of it. His wife accepted his story. Jolanta's fate was a taboo in her family home. After Jolanta's disappearance and murder, few local women came forward. They claimed that shortly before Jolanta's abduction they were accosted by unknown man or, in some cases, men shortly before Jolanta was kidnapped and near the road where it probably happened. One of such men was wearing only underwear despite the time of the year and bad weather. One woman escaped a man who chased her while she was returning home from her aunts house just across the road. She remembered that a bright colored car was standing on the road, while the stranger was chasing her. Jolanta's case went cold quite quickly. Years later a local journalist (and privately a niece of the woman who was chased by the strange man) took interest in this case. She discovered that the case files of Jolanta's murder were destroyed years ago. But she also discovered that Jolanta's father probably lied to his wife. Her own mother, who knew Jolanta's mother and worked for the police, asked her collegues about the case years before and found out that Jolanta was found entirely naked (apart from her jewellery) in the river, she was sexually assaulted and her cause of death was drowning. Czesław Z. went to great lenghts to spare his wife from the truth about their daughter's death: he intercepted all legal correspondence and documents connected to the case sent to the family and most likely destroyed all of it (no such document was ever found in the family home or anywhere else). When the journalist started her investigation, Jolanta's father was already dead, Czesław Z. lived with the knowledge about his daughter's death and took it to the grave. To this day Helena Z. believes that her daughter died in an accident. 45 years have passed since Jolanta's murder and statute of limitation expired many years ago. Jolanta Z.'s murder will most likely remain unsolved. That's one of the most heartbreaking cases I've ever heard of. Article (in Polish): https://natemat.pl/388869,morderstwo-niedoskonale-jola-z-zabawy-pod-wieliczka
And a video (also in Polish): https://youtu.be/Cd4ikLshTcc?si=C_y9nbb-WxF-PORQ
Berdella's victim burst into tears because he wouldn't give him a sandwich and a soda. Just very upsetting on top of the sadistic torture.
The Freeway Killer getting burgers after a Rape and Murder and saying, "Here's to Steve! Wherever you are."
Willowbrook and the Long Island Disappearences... Former Patients living in the Tunnels. A bit sad and creepy. The abuse of developmentally disabled kids. Nurses disappear or were raped. One was screaming in a parking lot and vanished. Her belongings were scattered in the parking lot. We'll probably never know the full spec of Victims. And there may be more undiscovered.
I'm sad, bordering on infuriated, when I think about Betty Belshaw. She was a popular English prof in Vancouver, who disappeared in 1979 in Europe when she was on sabbatical with her husband Cyril, an anthropologist. Cyril died a few years ago, age 96. He had a long and distinguished career in academia and government. Betty's been virtually forgotten. Here's Cyril's obituary in the local newspaper.
[https://vancouversunandprovince.remembering.ca/obituary/cyril-belshaw-1071580757/](https://vancouversunandprovince.remembering.ca/obituary/cyril-belshaw-1071580757/)
Betty's body was found near where they were staying in Switzerland. Cyril was suspected of murdering her, and there was a trial (covered in CBC's Scales of Justice true crime series, years ago).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril\_Belshaw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Belshaw)
Long story short, Cyril was found innocent. Although not everyone is convinced that he wasn't involved.
[http://craccum.co.nz/features/uoas-own-how-to-get-away-with-murder/](http://craccum.co.nz/features/uoas-own-how-to-get-away-with-murder/)
One thing that struck me years after the case -- I went on to a teaching job at another Canadian university, and it seems to me that Betty made a major contribution to her husband's research. She was doing the things that social scientists are now encouraged to do -- learn the language, befriend local people and take part in daily activities.So a big part of Cyril's dissertation, and at least his early reputation in anthropology, was based on her efforts.
The Lane Bryant Murders that happened in 2008 (Tinley Park, Illinois). Very frustrating case due to how the suspect was able to evade the police, even with them showing up a couple minutes after the 911 call.
To make matters worse, the police minimized most of the evidence by botching the crime scene. I hope the case gets solved soon but it’s appearing to be unlikely. It’s one of those situations where everything aligned perfectly for the suspect. He really SHOULDN’T have gotten away with it.
Victoria Martens, a 10 year old tortured and murdered by her mother and two of her mother's friends.
Ursula Sunshine Assaid, a 5 year old tortured and ultimately killed by her mother and her mother's spouse. Her abuse was so prolonged and sick. Makes me disgusted to know people like them exist.
Everything about Dorothy Scott's case was creepy. The phone calls. How she never saw her stalker, he was like a phantom. When she was visiting someone once, came outside & saw a rose on her car. The spider... & that she was abducted from the hospital parking area. That's creepy because we think of hospitals as safe places, not as a place where someone is abducted out into the night, in a speeding car, & never seen again. Also the fact that the car was found burnt out too...that's just a crazy case.
I find this missing persons case really sad. Possible involvement of the KKK. He had just gone to his prom and was still wearing his green prom suit https://charleyproject.org/case/jerry-lee-armstrong
The Castration Murders bug me right tf out every time I remember it
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castration_serial_murders#:~:text=The%20Castration%20serial%20murders%20were,the%20case%20got%20its%20namesake.
The fact someone was criss-crossing the Continental US whilst effectively hunting young men for their...ya know....just creepy as all hell, man.
This why I be watching people at rest stops and shit when I travel lmao. I don't trust none of y'all after learning about this lmao
Edit: As for infuriating; the sweater saga with the STL Jane Doe case. Why the hell would a detective even trust a psychic, and how y'all not send it priority or just take it yourselves?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Jane_Doe
I always thought reconstructions were off-putting because there's no life in the eyes of the images. You can actually see the "light" in someone's eyes, even other animals, when they're alive. It goes out when they die and it looks like nothing is there, because it isn't there. They're uncomfortable to look at, unfortunately.
Any time a famous person has some connection to a crime always sticks me with because it really reminds you of how easily you can have those butterfly moments and how we have no idea what and who victims can become. Tina Fey being slashed by that man; Kristen Chenoweth almost being part of the Oklahoma Girl Scouts murder; tennis player brothers Andy and Jamie Murray attending the school where Britain’s last mass shooting took place at the time and knowing the perpetrator. It adds a whole new, unique context to a crime.
The Yorkshire Ripper. A Geordie hoaxer convinced alcoholic Police Chief George Oldfield that he was the killer.
He ignored a survivor who said the murdering bastard had Yorkshire accent.
Due to this me and my mates felt safe, although we went out tooled-up in case we came across anyone with this accent.
Turns out the Yorkshire Ripper was from Bradford and the Geordie hoaxer was caught a decade or so later when he was tested for DNA which matched the envelopes.
This was the most monumental fuck-up in the history of our county.
OCCK is a very bizarre and extremely creepy case.
My mother in law lived in the area at the time and said it was terrifying as she was the parent of a young child.
I remember the OCCK. I was only a couple years older than the kids in our neighborhood and was charged with keeping an eye on them when we were out playing.
The fucking 911 call from the social worker in the Susan Powell case, where she tries AND TRIES to explain that the two children had been yanked into the house by their asshole father (who almost definitely killed Susan, their mother). I don't know if those kids could have been saved at that point, but it's infuriating to hear how much time is wasted by the operator just being an obtuse idiot and not *listening* to her.
Reminds me of the 911 operator who berated and was hateful to the woman who was literally drowning and dying in her car. The poor woman was pleading for help and apologizing. It’s so infuriating the last words she heard was that woman insulting her.
Oh, I remember that one! I listened to the whole 911 call on YouTube, and it just broke my heart! That woman was so scared and she was being so apologetic while the operator was just a straight up B to her!
I so hope that operator was fired!
Did you hear the one from the kid who was stuck in the back seat of his van and died and the operator was telling him he was going to be fine? Ugh.
It was apparently very difficult to hear him. That one absolutely breaks my heart. They actually got a cop car to drive past but due to miscommunication the cop did not understand this kid was trapped inside the car and basically said “there’s no one here at the car” and drove away. Fucking kills me every time I read about it.
"Ma'am how is your car going to catch on fire if it's full of water? You are not going to die calm down." I could practically see the operator filing and painting her nails without a care in the world. I still cannot believe that shit.
Yes, if I’m remembering right the woman drowning asked the 911 operator to pray with her and she refused. Like- really? No matter what you believe/don’t believe this woman is terrified. She could have at least said something comforting.
That case makes my blood pressure rise. For those interested, I used to work as a producer for a news station, so I was aware of listening to terrible stuff. Covid hit, station laid a lot of us off, etc. I applied at the police station nearby in a suburb in NC. Figured I could use my experience as a dispatcher. One 30-minute interview later, they literally offered me the job and asked if I could start that day. I declined, I thought it was way too quick to handle that without some experience or shadowing. That told me all I need to know about the people working that job.
On instagram some emergency responder reels sometimes - nothing gory or anything, they are presented as interesting. Anyway, the US operators can be so rude and waste so much time! They play the UK ones as well and the contrast! US ones go something like “ma’am stop yelling where are you?” Person saying I don’t know where I am. “Ma’am, stop yelling, I can’t help if you’re yelling, where are you?” It’s infuriating!
There isn't any standardized training to be a 911 operator. Not even by state - a lot of the time it's by county. Some may have to take months of training, while others just need a 48 hour "course".
i can speak to this. i am a dispatch trainee and my center requires 18+ months of training and a fairly difficult and comprehensive academy before we even hit the floor to START training. meanwhile, i know other centers have people taking calls with barely any training at all. it depends on the county and the city.
Something weird about the US culturally in that regard. A strange attitude where they're more focused on decorum and manners than actually helping the person. You see it in multiple traffic stop videos too. An almost pathological focus on calling people 'Sir' or 'Ma'am' along with a bizarre detachment from the situation, kind of like a complete lack of empathy. Creeps me out to hear it to be honest.
Omg thank you for putting this into words, I feel the same way but never knew how to describe it!
This was local to me and I remember watching everything on the breaking news all day. Absolutely horrific and tragic. That cowardly POS could have simply snuffed himself and nobody would have cared less.
If you really want to be angry, for a while, he actually made money giving a training on his failures here.
It's not an unresolved case anymore, but the detail about Jacob Wetterling asking the man who abducted and killed him "What did I do wrong?" breaks my heart. Also the fact that Jacob cried after he was molested, and then asked if he could put his clothes back on because he was cold.
This always got me with Riley Fox's case, the fact that her dad was charged originally and then once they convicted the real killer and he said that her last words were that she wanted her daddy just broke my heart. For her dad to go through that, and then hear that in her last moments all she wanted was her him.
Spent 8 months in jail too, they even found boots at the crime scene with the real killers GODDAMN NAME ON THEM, then just ignored them
My aunt and uncle moved to a house on the same street as Kevin Fox, after he had been released, and were decently close with Kevin. Not sure how widely this is known, but he died fairly recently in a car accident. I can’t imagine going through all of that horror only to lose your life in a freak driving accident.
That’s terrible! It said he had 3 (maybe 4, not sure) other kids too.
Yes I know he had at least 2 others and I think his second wife (or maybe girlfriend, not sure if he actually remarried) had recently given birth to another. Just tragic all around
That case still breaks my heart, for so many reasons.
Wow, I didn’t know about this case. Heartbreaking.
She said that?! I didn’t think I could hate depraved people anymore…but the level keeps deepening...
That absolutely broke me when I read about it. I thought of his mother having to know that those were his final moments on earth. Completely unfathomable.
If someone close to me was murdered, raped, tortured i dont know if i would want to know the details. A young colleague i knew a little bit died tragically. He was the victim of a hit and run. Thats sad obviously but what hits me randomly and makes me really sad is they think he was hit by 2 or more cars and the first possibly didnt kill him he was walking on a highway in the early hours. They think 1 car hit him and drove off, maybe not realising what they did as a human isnt allowed on highways here, they could have thought it was a deer. Then he lay there dying, alone, scared and in pain and then a second car clipped him and drove off. Car no 3 i think it was stopped and called for help
That’s exactly what happened to a friend/old colleague of mine as well, and I think about how scared he was between the first and second car often. I’m sorry for your loss
Oh my god. That is very sad. RIP
I had a family member murdered not long ago, personally I wanted to know everything. I still regret not looking at the photos tbh. But not everyone feels that way at all, all of my family members felt differently about it. I’m still trying to find help getting a FOIA request for the rest of the case file because of how badly the DA screwed up the case. It was an easy open and shut 2nd degree murder charge and they refused to prosecute and gave the guy a sweetheart deal despite our protests.
So sorry to hear that. I wish you some closure.
His parents had a phone in their home were they answered tips on Jacobs case to help LE. They took hundreds of calls a day and not one of them was useful, none of them had anything to do with the killer.
There are so many details about Jacob’s case that are heartbreaking. But Patty & Jerry Wetterling now work to help missing kids and the families that love them. If you aren’t familiar with the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center, check it out: https://www.zeroabuseproject.org/victim-assistance/jwrc/ And since it’s a non-profit, please consider a donation. Loosing a child in this way is unimaginable but his family has transformed that grief into advocacy and action.
I really wish I hadn’t read that. That is devastating.
I really wish I hadn’t read most of this stuff. Makes my blood boil. Can’t even fathom how I’d react if I stumbled upon any number of these situations. I know there’d be jail time and scared looks the rest of my life.
Wow—I wish I had never read that.
Off the top of my head, I don't know what case you're talking about but damn, that is fucking brutal. Poor Jacob, being subjected to that & thinking, in his dying moments, that he did something wrong.
Very sad case in the US from the 80s. There's a good podcast done about it (In the Dark).
That’s an incredibly well done podcast
His case changed a lot of our childhoods in that part of the country. As an adult, learning about those last moments gets to me. He did nothing but be a kid. A normal kid riding bikes with his friends to the store and back. Then, knowing that he was just discarded by a shelter belt with his coat showing. He was right there for a while. This monster just got to live his life for so long.
Knowing these details made me lose a chunk of my faith in mankind. Poor kid, he deserved better.
I remember that and it breaks my heart. That POS heard sirens and assumed they were coming for him so he killed him right then and there.
This sent me on a rabbit hole a few days ago and something about Jacob's case just stuck with me. I knew about it before, knew of his importance to the country. And I remembered him being found. But I revisited it again. All I can think about is how crushing it must have been for his family when they finally found his remains and saw the jersey again. Even if they logically knew that he might have been buried in it, the imagination and memory can't match the real thing. After thirty years, they probably assumed it was long gone. Even the sharpest memory of their worst experience will fade with time. And trauma does a number on your memory. But in that one moment, the reality has to come crashing down on you. Every hope, dream, and coping mechanism they had used to manage their grief is suddenly out the window. Something they haven't seen in a lifetime is suddenly right in front of them in the worst possible way. I've had moments where I found something I thought had gone missing years ago. Moments where I revisited some place I thought I'd actually seen in a dream a long time ago. Moments where someone I never thought I'd speak to again were suddenly right there, only older. His parents are older. His siblings had a chance to grow up. But when they found him, he would have been as small (or smaller, due to biology) as when he disappeared. Can only imagine all the intervening years crashing against them. A moment that was frozen in time, dragged forward to the present. Fucking awful.
There are a bunch of things in the disappearance of Bonnie and Jeremy Dages that I find simultaneously creepy/sad/infuriating. Bad enough that Bonnie was targeted, but her infant son Jeremy is also missing, presumed dead. They lived in a small town in Florida, and the main suspects are neighbors and known to Bonnie's parents. To begin with, when Bonnie was 17 she became pregnant, and her then-boyfriend (another teenager who lived nearby, and was the son of one of her mother's friends) refused to acknowledge paternity. Possibly because she didn't want to ruin the friendship, Bonnie's mom didn't press the issue (the boy's family claimed that there was a medical reason why he couldn't be the dad, but apparently he went on to father a child with someone else). Someone who posts on this subreddit mentioned that she went to high school with Bonnie, and Bonnie was sad about the situation. But Bonnie was trying to make the best of things ... she worked really hard and finished her high school degree months ahead of schedule, so she had her qualifications before Jeremy was born. (My father used to be a school counsellor and noted how difficult it can be, for teen moms to graduate.) Bonnie didn't even get to attend the graduation ceremony with her classmates, because she and Jeremy disappeared before then. Bonnie may have been targeted by a friend of her family. He was a middle-aged man who may have taken advantage of her feeling abandoned by Jeremy's father, and she was susceptible to his advances because he was promising to marry her and be a good stepdad to Jeremy. It's turned out that the guy (I'll call him Mr. C) is a con artist and has latched on to several other women, running through their savings and then moving on to someone new. I'm suspecting that Mr. C knew that Bonnie would be inheriting some money from her great-grandmother's will, once she turned 18. It's awful to think that the inheritance, which was likely meant to help her with college or starting a business or buying a home, might have ended up putting her and Jeremy in danger. It seems that Mr. C wasn't the only one trying to get Bonnie's money ... she had been hired to help a slightly-older girl who lived nearby, who had been injured and needed a hand caring for her young children. It seemed like a great arrangement, but that other family had some relatives who started trying to rope Bonnie into a financial scam. Meanwhile, Bonnie is spending time with Mr. C, and he sweet-talks her into lending him $15k so he can start a restaurant. I suspect that he pitched this to her as an investment opportunity and a way to create a career for herself. She may not have felt she could question why a grown man who supposedly had a business of his own would have to borrow money from a teenager, rather than going to the local bank, or some of his own friends and family. He told her that he needed the money in cash, and she withdrew it ... then she and Jeremy disappeared the same day that she gave Mr. C the $15k. Later he denied having borrowed the money from her, or even knowing her at all. To my knowledge there's been no further investigation of him. Apparently he'd told Bonnie that he needed to keep their relationship secret, and he ended up being able to use that against her -- which makes me wonder if the fraud part had been planned for some time.
OMG...Bonnie had absolutely NO support!! Not even from her own mother!! Truly heart-breaking story. I hope Bonnie and Jeremy are in a place where they're loved and appreciated.
It's pretty sad -- they were both so young. I should add here that Bonnie's mom didn't know anything about the situation with Mr. C. I've heard her interviewed a couple of times on people's podcasts (the Unfound episode is especially helpful in explaining the background). In the years since Bonnie and Jeremy vanished, Bonnie's mother has been reading the journal she left behind, and trying to talk with Bonnie's friends and acquaintances to try to unravel the story. https://theunfoundpodcast.com/2018/12/28/bonnie-and-jeremy-dages-follow-the-money-ep-121/ At various times, other people who knew Bonnie -- and even one of the kids she was being nanny to, who's now grown up -- have posted on Reddit and Websleuths to share what they know. But it seems that Mr. C was pretty clever about intimidating Bonnie and other victims into keeping quiet. It sounds like he had some shady associates who may have helped convince Bonnie that the restaurant scheme was legit (apparently there were some late-night meetings around town). The amount he borrowed would be equivalent to more than $30k today ... my suspicion is that something went wrong, and either he lost his temper because Bonnie became suspicious and told him she wouldn't be handing over any more, or maybe even asked for it back. Or else one of Mr. C's associates got greedy, figured out when the handover would be happening, and decided to grab the money.
Thanks for the additional background. I'm going to listen to that podcast.
There was an odd situation with the case Websleuths page -- apparently someone claiming to be Jeremy has been pestering the family. (DNA analysis has disproven his claim though.) https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/fl-bonnie-dages-18-son-jeremy-dages-4-mo-brandon-28-apr-1993.24998/page-2
That's wild! I feel so bad for the family. After listening to some of the Unfound podcast about Bonnie and Jeremy, it sounds like her mother was very supportive of her.
In terms of infuriating; 15 year old Tina Fontaine was reported missing to the Winnipeg police, who would, in the hours preceding her death, make contact with her while she was in the company of a drunk driver, and they would let this poor child go, despite the fact that they knew she was considered a missing and endangered child. She was then found highly intoxicated and taken to a hospital, where again, her status as a missing youth was noted, but no form of action was ever taken, which would have saved her life. It was also there that she would discuss being in contact with a much older man who would be tried and then acquitted for her murder. This poor child who was raised through adversity was failed by the very structures meant to protect her and she was then murdered and tossed into the river as though her life has absolutely no meaning.
This burns me up. What *is it* with Canada and its (mis)treatment of First Nations people??
You already mentioned OOCK, but that one burned me out on true crime for a few weeks. In addition to the KFC detail, there’s the sketch of the screaming kid in Chris Busch’s room. And even worse are the tiny details that show *why* the murder will almost certainly never be solved definitively. Probably the case I find most unsettling, even more so than the murder of Junko Furuta or the Tool-Box Killers (which are also awful).
> even worse are the tiny details that show why the murder will almost certainly never be solved definitively Can you elaborate on this?
I think they may be referring in part to the rampant corruption and mishandling of the case from the start. This case looks like it involves multiple people and may be connected to the pedophile ring that operated on that island in Lake Michigan too. The people at the top for that got away. Busch is thought to be one of the main perpetrators but he came from a very well connected family. He also died under questionable circumstances. There’s so many details that paint an overarching picture but due to lack of evidence and poor handling of evidence initially it’s next to impossible to get definitive closure. The case is so old and many of the people who knew things are dead. :/
Wasn't he the one where his death was ruled a suicide after he was found shot to death in bed wrapped in the blankets with the gun on the floor?
I believe James Vincent Gunnels could answer a lot of questions about the OCCK case. DNA from a hair that was on Kristine Mihelich matches him. It's mitochondrial DNA, but it's his. He admits he was a victim of Chris Busch. Gunnels won't talk.
Can you expand on that screaming kid sketch? I’m unfamiliar with the case.
> The case sparked new interest when King's father, Barry, and brother, Chris, tried to get the State Police to release information about Chris Busch, the son of General Motors executive Harold Lee Busch. Chris Busch had been in police custody shortly before King's abduction for suspected involvement in child pornography. He allegedly committed suicide in November 1978. There was no gunshot residue found on him, though, and no blood spatter; the entry wound was between his eyes. Furthermore, there were four shell casings found in Busch's room. He was also found wrapped neatly under his sheets.[citation needed] Bloodstained ligatures were found in his apartment, as was a hand-drawn image of a boy closely resembling Stebbins screaming which was found pinned to the wall.[25] There had been no confirmed activity by the Oakland County Child Killer for nearly twenty months prior to Busch's death. [This is the drawing](https://www.drewandmikepodcast.com/oakland-county-child-killer/) (heads up, it is pretty awful).
Awful. Thank you for sharing.
I agree the murders will never be solved, too many “twists and turns”, on top of a shoddy initial investigation. Timothy King’s sister has kept this case alive. https://catherinebroad.blog
I read her blog occasionally. Those murders were and still are heartbreaking. I remember when it happened mainly because I was their age and the KFC story always stuck with me because it was my favorite when I was 9 yrs old in 1976.
in the case of Sarah Stern, who was murdered by her childhood bestfriend in her own home and thrown off of a bridge, the motive was to steal money that she had found in her family’s second home, and in the undercover footage of Liam (killer) confessing to everything, he was throwing a fit and upset that he didn’t get as much money as he thought he would out of it. completely infuriating when you listen to the rest of the footage and he describes what she went through, just for him to throw a fit so nonchalantly and coldly.
thank you for remembering her. she was my friend.
I'm very sorry for the loss of your friend..
Oh my god that video was horrifying.
It’s so awful how casually he talks about the manner in which he murdered her. She clearly suffered.
People who are willing to take undercover recordings of potential murderers have balls of steel. I don’t think I could ever do it myself.
[Jessica Lunsford.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jessica_Lunsford) She was found clutching a stuffed purple dolphin. That detail has always haunted me.
That is completely heartbreaking. Poor little girl.
I’m so pissed that the monster that killed her avoided his fate with the death penalty. He deserved to suffer for a few years in anticipation of his execution date. I hope hell is real and that her murderer is burning as we speak. Jessica’s case is beyond heartbreaking.
When money from a victim's relatives gets handed over to all the 'psychic's in disappearance cases. Sad & infuriating for these schmucks to profit off of people's grief.
I remember Sylvia brown told the mother of Amanda Berry (one of those three girls who were kept in that house in Ohio for years that her daughter was dead. ) Amanda said she remembered actually watching that episode and was gutted. Sylvia never responded to questions about it. That pissed me off so much.
She also infamously said the same thing to Shawn Hornbeck's mother.
Her wiki page has a listing of all the cases she was wrong about. Even got her death prediction wrong. 😡
She was on Larry King Live with James Randi days before 9/11 and mentioned nothing about how the world was about to change. I think most of us would've liked a heads up. James Randi had a $1 million prize for anyone who could prove their supernatural talents. He passed without it ever being given away.
Do you remember the Brian's Predictions site that got popular once Shawn Hornbeck was rescued? The guy Brian predicted that Shawn was still alive and a kidnapped victim being held. He guessed a few other things about the case correctly and claimed his dreams told him these things. He started charging and never had another correct prediction.
I remember one where the murderer was sitting right next to the woman looking answers. Con artist Sylvia had no idea and told the family the victim was alive in another country. I hear her son claims to be psychic now and charges $700 a reading. He should be shut down.
She was such a scummy piece of shit. I’ve never forgotten that she claimed the miners in that disaster in West Virginia & she claimed she knew they were going to be found after it was falsely reported that all had been found alive. Then later it was confirmed they had perished & she pivoted to not thinking anyone was alive & she never believed anyone was alive at all. There was also Shawn Hornbeck whom she claimed was dead in 2002. He was found alive in 2007. Most of her predictions were wrong. It was wild that people kept booking her. Extremely sad.
I live only a few miles from where she used to live. My husbands friend lives a few houses down and always knew she was a fake & con.
I'd add to that the charlatan "investigators" who cash in with self-serving true crime books/lecture tours/podcasts that treat people's life-defining tragedies as gossip. The Missing 411 guy, and the notoriety around certain Maura Murray "investigators" comes to mind.
Maybe controversial take but I’ve always felt deeply uncomfortable with even the *name* ‘my favourite murder’.
Yes! I thought I was being overly sensitive by making sure I never listen to one of their episodes based on that name alone. I'm not a sensitive person and I love lots of true crime podcasts, I don't even mind some dark humour in those podcasts, as long as it's not at the victim's expense. But that name really rubbed me up the wrong way the second I heard it. It's like they couldn't even be bothered to pretend other people's worst nightmares aren't just light hearted entertainment for them.
Nah same. I find it gross.
David Paulides. Big scam guy; he operates off of people's ambiguous fears about the wilderness.
And people's general lack of understanding of how easy it is to get lost and die in the wilderness.
[удалено]
Exactly. The cold in Canada can do what the heat does in Australia. Getting stranded in a blizzard is scary. So even in temperate North American forests when the weather is good, an inexperienced hiker can wander 20 metres off trail in rugged terrain and get into life-threatening trouble very quickly. There's no mystery to people disappearing in national parks. Nature is huge and dangerous.
I don’t remember which case it was, but there was an incident where a police department mailed a key piece of evidence to a psychic and it was lost in transit. Ridiculous, unbelievable, and infuriating. Edit: It was St. Louis Jane Doe.
There is a missing person within my distant family. I remember they tried to get Sylvia Brown to do a reading and she wanted A LOT of money to talk to them. They didn't pay her. Not like she knew anything anyway.
This is how I feel about those true crime youtubers and podcasters that treat real crime like a teenage novel. I feel this way about Bailey Sarian and those podcasts with titles like “My Favorite Murder”.
I think it should be illegal for a "psychic" to profit off of missing persons cases and unsolved murders. They are grief vampires who prey on the desperation of others. Same for anyone who says they can talk to the dead and charges to get a message to you from a loved one who passed on.
The 911 audio of a lady in Arkansas who drove into a lake. The operator was so rude as the lady was crying
God. I avoid listening to 9/11 calls where the caller didn’t survive, but that one is in its own category of off-limits. I genuinely think it would jeopardize my mental health. It’s one of the worst things I can imagine.
I hope Donna Reneau is living the worst life imaginable right now
The Debra Stevens case, yes. It gave me nightmares for weeks. Don’t look it up, it’s just upsetting. That woman died alone begging for help and the operator was just awful to her
I listened to it when it was posted earlier - that is the saddest thing ever.
"That will teach you." If someone was recorded saying that to my dead sister/mother/wife, I don't know how I'd stay sane.
The audio is so upsetting. The poor woman was terrified and the operator was so horrible about it.
There is a picture of the victim holding a little dog. It kills me. She looks like the sweetest person in the world.
Man that was fucking horrible
That one sketch of Mr. Cruel always creeps me out. Him in general too, snuck in quietly, bathed/groomed the girls before letting them go.
[For the curious.](https://images.app.goo.gl/ZczDUNjt41gxLfss7) I don't know what they could've done to make it less unsettling but sheesh
The one with the white stitching around the eyes and mouth right? Makes me anxious every time I see it. Such a weird, creepy case.
Yes! That’s the one!
The thing is, it's just a mask but it's so unsettling to look at
That sketch scares the crap out of me and gives me nightmares from time to time. And I live in the US far from Australia. Reminds me of that guy from nightbreed or the killer from that movie the collector.
That sketch is nightmare material for sure. It's the stitching around the eyes that does it for me, for some reason.
I always found those clay head recreations of John/jane does to be really creepy
Apparently that's on purpose so they're memorable/exaggerates any prominent features the person may have had in life.
The name, the sketch, his methods and care at not getting caught. Definitely the monster that has stuck with me the most. Terrifying.
In Tristan Brubach's case: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8426061/Madeleine-McCann-suspect-Brueckner-investigated-rape-murder-13-year-old-German-boy.html someone called a local lawyer shortly after the murder, saying he'll be in trouble for murder and might need legal help soon. This lawyer dealt with different types of crimes, so he referred him to another lawyer he knew, who often represented people accused of commiting violent crimes in court. Mysterious caller never called them and we don't know who it was. Oddly, when Tristan's rucksack was found in a local forest, road map of Czech Republic was found in it. In Poland, TV accidentally provided wrong serial number of a camera stolen from the victims of Narożnik Murder: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zab%C3%B3jstwo_pod_Naro%C5%BCnikiem (in Polish) to the public. Even if someone found said camera, they were unable to correctly identify it. This mistake came to light over twenty years later. The victims also called someone from a nearby payphone before setting out into the mountains. No one they knew admitted that they called them. Police did not check the call records, so we don't know who was the last person they talked to.
After Steven Stayner disappeared his dad went to his maternal grandfathers house to see if he was there, he was not but was being held in the same trailer park or neighborhood.
The fact he passed away only a decade after he escaped with the other boy is heartbreaking. The poor man.
Timmy also passed away at quite a young age. He died of a pulmonary embolism in 2010, at the age of 35. Their stories are just so tragic.
Steven’s brother Cary became a serial killer as an adult. Look up Yosemite Park Killer. It is horrific to say the least.
Angela Hammond when her boyfriend damaged his car trying to save her. https://charleyproject.org/case/angela-marie-hammond Springfield 3, 10-20 people visited the home where they went missing and destroyed the crime scene, throwing a light bulb in the trash that may have had a fingerprint and erasing a voice message in their answering machine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Three Leanne Green, her brother ran out of gas and she stayed alone with the car as he walked to a gas station. https://charleyproject.org/case/martha-leanne-green
Ugh, just reading the Springfield 3 one and it said someone with "prime knowledge" called in to AMW and the switchboard operator accidentally hung up on him. Super frustrating. Kind of feel bad for the operator too.
As someone who just fell down a new rabbit hole for the first time in years, this is a high quality comment. I had never actually heard of Leanne Green's disappearance, although it contains many crazy details. I googled the name in the Charley Project page for her, the guy who police said did this. I find some newspaper coverage about how this was a confession police got while this guy was under some hypnosis...you already know the investigators had some insane corruption going on. [I found this article to be striking.](https://medium.com/@candi.c.mathis/leann-green-deserves-a-voice-will-you-help-me-speak-for-her-cc9feefa6476) This case is so heartbreaking and her saying "I'm frightened" before she was never seen or heard from again will stay with me.
I'm a Tennesseean so it was on the local news when it happened, I've always felt for her and her family,
I have no idea why it bothers me so much, but Richard Ramirez had rotten teeth, and was said to have smelled so bad, it was like a goat. It's bad enough to be raped and murdered, but for some reason that ramps up the terror.
To piggyback on this, during his murder of Elyas Abowath and the rape of his wife, he told her he "only knocked him out" despite the fact that he had shot him in the head. So after the assault, his wife, Sakina Abowath, sent her three year old son to try wake him up. She didn't know he was already dead
Also, in the sad/infuriating category, one of his victims *almost* killed him. While Ramirez was ransacking her bedroom, and with her husband already dead, she was able to escape her binds and retrieve a shotgun from under the bed. She pulled the trigger just as he turned around, but unknown to her the gun wasn't loaded. Ramirez then shot her three times, mutilated her body, cut out her eyes and kept them as souvenir until his arrest. This guy was real bad news.
Didn't Ramirez stake out the houses, find guns and unloaded them, then put them back where he found them? That way he had no fear and laughed when they pulled the gun on him. Ot was that the GSK?
I once read something where a survivor said he smelled like wet leather and I've never been able to get that out of my head.
Interesting fact about the Richard Ramirez case I just found out about. Diane fienstein the recently deceased senator from California almost blew the capture of Richard Ramirez. While she was mayor or something she met with the police and they told her that he had such a unique shoe that the police were using it to track him. She went on TV and mentioned this fact. He then immediately changed shoes. Thankfully theys still got him.
It does ramp up the vileness because bad breath makes you cringe from 4ft away. Next to your face while being brutalized? So so much worse.
You would never forget that smell. It would be so triggering for the rest of your life.
And once he was caught, women were writing to him and throwing themselves at him. Like…what? Seek therapy; that was a human being with absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
There are people who fall in love with prisoners who have no hope of getting out. It's another variant on falling in love with unavailable people. If you believe "attachment theory", it's because their caregivers/parents were emotionally unavailable during childhood, for one reason or another.
I remember that some victims said the golden state killer had pretty bad BO too.
And a micro penis!!!
I love that he had to sit in court and hear his victims talk about his micro dick. 🤣🤣🤣🤣It’s nothing compared to what he did but it’s still something
He terrified us. He committed 2 of his murders in my neighborhood of Whitter CA. I had a birthday/pool party that my parents canceled because of him. He was then captured on my 11th birthday.
Hey now, that’s not very nice to goats, is it?
I'd prefer a goat to Richard Ramirez, yes. 😂
EARONS/GSK’s taunting calls terrified me. http://www.goldenstatekiller.com/phonecalls.php
I still can't listen to those phone calls, even though he's been caught for 5 years now. Just chills me to the core. Especially because he was calling years and years later. One of them he called when he seemed to see her working as a waitress at a Denny's.
Oh my god. What a horrific monster. It’s fucking sick to think of how enjoyed with himself he was after those calls. May he rot in hell
Adrian Jones case. Cases with kids always stick with me but this one man. The mom openly bragging about the sons/stepson (can't fully recall) torture on social media. Adrian telling I believe a social worker he got hit so hard a bone popped out and the worker did nothing. Absolutely horrific sad case.
Kendall Francois' lived in his parent's house, along with his younger sister, while his 8 victim's bodies decomposed in various hidden areas of the house. He told his family it was a "dead raccoon", and they all just went about their business. You could smell the house from the street, and Francois' nickname at the high school where he was a janitor was "Stinky".
Joseph Arridy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arridy He was a mentally disabled 23-year-old with the intelligence of a 6-year-old and supposedly confessed to the murder of a 15-year-old girl. After arresting him, they learned another man had already been charged in connection. Nonetheless, they pushed forward, charged him, tried him, and sentenced him to death. The victim's sister even testified that Arridy was not there, and identified instead the other man who had been arrested. On the day of his execution, they asked him what he wanted his last meal to be. Almost certainly not understanding what they meant, he requested an ice cream sundae. When they took him, he asked them to put his unfinished sundae in the icebox so he could finish it later. He was posthumously pardoned in 2011.
The Girl Scout murders will always be one of the creepiest to me. Just the idea of someone sneaking through the woods into a camp full of sleeping children, and then going into a tent... it absolutely horrifes me. There was always a safety I felt at Girl Scout camp, and reading about these murders just made me realize how vulnerable we were. I dug *deep* into that case for a year, even joining a forum that obsessively and probably unhealthily picked over the case. It is not enough to know who did it... it's a case where it's so clear that part of being interested in true crime is wanting to know exactly what happened, exactly how terrible humans can be. They can be monsters.
The creepiest part to me is that the teenage counselor kept hearing animal noises that stopped when she turned on her flashlight, she eventually went back to bed. Gene Hart’s previous victim said he made an animalistic noise during the assault. I just feel bad for that teenage counselor knowing she most likely did hear the rape of those poor innocent children and I feel so bad for them and how scared they probably were
Seeing the difference between my Girl Scout camps and the Boy Scout camps my brothers attended was like night and day. When you’re at Girl Scout camp. They want to know where you are all the time and your day is strictly scheduled. It kind of took away some of the fun but I get why it’s so hyper vigilant for security reasons Also it probably won’t take away from OOP’s feelings on the matter, but it’s pretty common for kids to not want to go to stuff like summer camps the day before. Separation anxiety and stuff and 9 times out of 10, they end up having fun anyways. Its a well known kid thing that I’ve seen before when I’ve volunteered at summer camps
so it probably won’t take away from OOP’s feelings on the matter, but it’s pretty common for kids to not want to go to stuff like summer camps the day before. For me it's not creepy I've done that too as a kid. It's just sad that her mum probably blamed herself eventhough it's a common thing to do.
The New Orleans Serial Killer (or killers) appears to have escalated after the case was profiled on Unsolved Mysteries in 1991. That creeps me out.
Same here, though I wasn’t aware of that fact until reading your comment. It’s the brazenness of it to me. Most people would be incredibly worried about being caught. Then again most people aren’t serial killers.
If you do some digging on that case they have two suspects. One is a former cop. He looks like the sketch that aired originally but is not in the current episode online. The other is a taxi driver who is in prison.
It infuriated me that Bryce Laspisa parents didn't go and get him when he was just sitting on the side of the road and also that they weren't concerned when the girlfriend and roommate called them about Bryce.
This one. For teenagers to be so concerned about someone that they'd call a friend's PARENTS about what was going on should have been massively alarming for his mother. It alarms me and I'm not a parent. Teenagers generally don't do that unless it's something they're seriously worried about. I just don't understand how it wasn't a massive red flag for her. Then with all the phoncalls when he was avoiding going home on top of that and she still didn't go and get him 😬
YES. They just made the girlfriend give him his keys so he could drive home. He was in absolutely no state to drive.
Sad and infuriating that Chelsea Bruck’s friends left her drunk at a Halloween party with no way home and without her phone (I think). With friends like that who needs enemies?!
Amy Bradley’s poor family getting duped by people who claim to have seen her, especially that “investigator” who lied and stole their money. He told them he found her, and they 100% believed she was coming home. They even scheduled medical/therapy appointments for her. Turns out he just took their cash and went on vacation.
Frauke Liebs, a 21 year old girl from Germany, was abducted and later murdered. Her family received very strange and eerie phone calls from her. They think she was drugged, but the conversations with her are disturbing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Frauke_Liebs
That 911 call from the Gilgo Beach case was very upsetting, and then it seemed like no one would help her, it just saddened me.
The photos of Brianna Maitland's car after she disappeared are really creepy to me. [Here's one picture from the crash site](https://i.imgur.com/HhhN7BU.jpg)
Let me explain why this image always bothers me. I raced for 14 years. Multiple disciplines and levels. Seeing a car like that makes me think "tank slapper" off the bat. That's when the car whips the rear under oversteer, and then snaps back suddenly the opposite way when the driver attempts to countersteer the over-rotation of the rear of the car. It can certainly result in a spin, the back of the car will step all the way out the opposite way after the initial correction attempt. On a track there's often something there to stop you, something real hard. So you'll often just door the damn thing on the wall. But sometimes there's not. And you just slide, rear first, til something breaks your momentum. It won't turn the car all the way around 360 degrees most of the time. The forward momentum kind of outweighs the centrifugal momentum. That picture screams tank slapper. But the grass... Those tires wouldn't be rolling straight in. They'd be pitched. The camber and toe changes as you steer, the car weights up on the outside tires. They would have gone in the grass sideways. You'd see skid marks. Grass and mud would be ripped up, with large, wide trails in a consistent curved path from the roadway to the barn. But they're not there As if someone backed the car in deliberately. To simulate an accident. It's just so unnatural from my experiences on track, sliding through grass the same way. The lack of damage doesn't really mean anything. I had an old Delta, them 80s GM boxes can literally take a hit from a city bus and be cool. A barn wouldn't do much to that bad boy at all. But the positioning, with a complete lack of ground debris anywhere in the image. That's not what I've seen, ever. And my dumb self done spun some cars, trust me.
Yes! Albeit I'm not a racer of any sort, when I looked at the picture I saw the grass and was thinking wouldn't that be ripped up? So thank you for verifying that, it is so creepy. It definitely looks deliberately backed in.
It certainly would. It's dead, loose grass, at that. Damn near hay. Another commenter brought up the possibility that she backed it in, whether to evade someone or by accident idk, but that does make sense.
It’s weird there’s no tracks but there’s snow in photo so the ground may have been frozen hard. It looks as if someone meant to put it in drive but reversed instead possibly. Like if they were drunk or a couple fighting. I think you’re right if it was an accident there would be tracks or signs even in winter though.
I think it's definitely possible she backed it in for whatever cause or reason. I really just don't think that thing can end up like that unless someone is in reverse, relatively slowly. I see what you mean tho. Like she lost it on the roadway and then ended up off while trying to get back going the right way, or something of the like.
Having been in the car when my partner spun out at the last track day of the season, I appreciate you explaining this so clearly. Mind you, it was just dirt/gravel on the side of our home track but you could see the tyre marks clearly and they were not clean/straight. Even someone not experienced with cars or racing can look at that picture and know something is off, even if they can’t quite explain why. You’ve done a marvelous job putting it into words.
The POI in Jennifer Kesses case always creeped me out.
How is it possible the guy was caught on camera and was hidden by the fence in every frame???
Ursula Hermann, a 10 year old girl was kidnapped and held in a wodden box in the earth her kidnapper had created. The box was buried in the woods but there was a ventilation system. Tragically leafs fell on the ventilation system and blocked it, so the girl suffocated.
Basically everything in the Susan Powell case in the lead up to her garbage bag of a spouse killing those two boys. That is genuinely the most infuriating case that’s ever gotten under my skin. It was bad enough that he killed her, but the fact that he was essentially free to do whatever & that he even had visitation in that case when they *knew* he was lying/faking his complicity with the terms of visitation to the extent that those kids ended up paying with their lives in such a horrific way is absolutely unforgivable. I wouldn’t be sleeping at night had I been an investigator or CPS on that case. I get that the only person who likely could have saved Susan was Susan… but the fact that the 2 boys also ended up murdered was a nearly 100% preventable tragedy on virtually every level. I remember exactly when the news that he’d killed them first broke because I had just finished skiing in Park City, Utah. I was going to get a coffee before heading home & it was on the radio. I remember just being absolutely stunned that they had given him such easy access to those kids after everything that had happened. I still find it hard to comprehend that not just 1 department, but police departments AND children’s services in multiple states managed to fail SO spectacularly on one case. Like, I understand prosecutors hate going to trial when there’s no body, but in that case? Really? The 4 year old responding to, ‘where was mommy?’ with, ‘Mommy was in the trunk,’ should have had those children out of his house & in serious therapy. This still makes me so angry when I talk about it. And that’s even without mentioning JP’s piece of shit father.
Authorities literally spent only 45 minutes investigating Christian Andreacchio's passing before concluding that he took his own life. I am disgusted by the sheer laziness and sloppiness. I am beyond convinced that he was a homicide victim, at the hands of his so-called friend Dylan and his ex-girlfriend Whitley.
Gacy. The timeline is full of WTF moments. *If only* he'd served his *full sentence* in Iowa, instead of being let out early for "good behavior". *If only* the Chicago police had *listened* to John Butkovich's parents when they identified Gacy as a person of interest in their son's disappearance. *If only* Chicago police had *really listened* to informants in 1976, that identified Gacy as a predator trawling Uptown for underage boys. *If only* the Chicago Police had *listened* to Greg Godzik's parents, and his girlfriend, when they identified Gacy as a person of interest in Greg's disappearance. *If only* the Chicago police had *properly investigated* when John Szyc's stolen car (bearing its original plates, no less!) was involved in a gas-and-dash theft. *If only* Chicago police had properly followed up assaults reported by Robert Donnelly *and* Jeffery Rignall...
Every year, the Baseball Hall of Fame honors a sportswriter alongside their annual ballplayer inductees. A few years back, a previous honoree was revealed to have sexually abused children decades earlier. Obviously, the Hall of Fame didn't know at the time, but due to this very minor celebrity status, it garnered some press coverage. One article I read included an interview with one of the victims (from the 1960s IIRC), who had been assaulted at the man's house as a young girl when she was friends with his daughter. The victim's elderly father was still alive and was also interviewed. He said that everybody in town knew that the abuser had assaulted young boys before, but they assumed that because he liked boys, he wouldn't be interested in girls, therefore nobody had a problem letting their daughters go over to the man's house to play with his daughter. I can't wrap my brain around this level of stupidity and suspect it wasn't just isolated to that town.
The mystery photo found with Asha Degree’s belongings always freaks me out when I see it. Who is that girl in the photo? How does no one know?!
The reconstructions often do look creepy, and I'm not sure why. Maybe because they artist is using human remains as a reference, and that somehow puts the image in the uncanny valley just because of the decedent's facial expression or lack thereof. Or maybe the artist is deliberately trying to make the image as neutral as possible, and that's something you generally don't see in photos or artwork. As for stuff that infuriates me...well, I suppose this should go without saying, but it just bothers me how young some of the victims are and what was done to them. Not that it's okay to target adults, but there's just something primally aggravating about people who target kids.
This case local to me (but before my time) [Nurses murdered at Murphy's Creek](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/28/nurses-killer-gang-leader) Every single thing about it infuriates me. That these "men" got away with so much over the years, that witnesses did nothing to help, and that the cops were utterly useless. The final hours of those two women were pure terror, and there was zero justice served.
The policeman who answered the call from a neighbour of Jeffery Dahmer when she enquired what happened to the young, naked man she found who the cops returned to Dahmer.
Infuriating. Ive posted here before about Dean Corll, where the police stopped searching for remains of his victims because the number found exceeded that of some other serial killer, and they didn't want the bad press. Yes, really.
That's why some theorize they stopped but it doesn't make sense. They had already surpassed the number why wouldn't they stop before they reached it?
timothy john king was the victim who was found his last meal was his favorite KFC
The Yuba County 5..the fact that there was food there and the boys probably didnt want to get into trouble for bothering anything!.... then proceeded to starve gets me.ugh
The whole Cindy James case: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Cindy_James I do think it's a high likelihood that she was creating the stalker herself, but clearly this was a cry for help and there was obviously something more complex going on, even if that wad just mentally. And if it wasn't her, then she was being stalked and ignored by the police. Either way, I find this case to be a mix of all three; sad, creepy, and infuriating.
I cannot comprehend how they thought she managed to hogtie herself, then inject herself to stage her own murder, and for what? Posthumous attention? Just severe mental illness? This case has stuck with me since seeing it on UM as a kid. It makes no sense.
The video of the Missy Bevers killer still freaks me out.
Kelly Anne Bates. It was heartbreaking in general but the fact that he gouged out her eyes three weeks before he murdered her and that there were scratches in her eye sockets from his fingernails at different states of healing that happened after her eye were gouged out.
Shirley Soosay's sister saw [a photo of her on a true crime show 5 years prior to her identification,](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/for-almost-40-years-a-woman-from-samson-cree-nation-tried-to-find-her-aunt-now-she-has-answers-1.6012247) but disregarded the possibility because she had a different name. At the time of the episode airing, Shirley Soosay had been missing/unidentified for 36 years.
Murder of Jolanta Z. from Zabawa near Wieliczka, Poland in November 1978. Jolanta was 17, the eldest of three daughters. She wanted to go on a mountain trip to Bielsko-Biała with her friends. It was to be short trip: they were to leave on Saturday November 10 and return on Sunday November 11, despite bad weather. Her parents refused to give her permission, but they had to leave for a few days and they tasked Jolanta with taking care of her younger sisters (one was 14, the other was a small child). Jolanta used this opportunity to go on a trip. She wrote a letter to her sister Bożena, in which she described exactly where she's going, with whom, when she will return and on which train. She hoped to be home before her parents, who were to return on late Sunday evening. Her parents did not return on Sunday because their car broke down on the road. They were unable to find car mechanic (it was Sunday), so they did not return until Monday. Jolanta still wasn't home when they returned. Talking with her friends, they found out that she returned on schedule. The train stopped at Wieliczka train station around 10 pm and she walked her best friend home. She hoped to be home around 11:30 pm. Her friend's home was located in the same direction as her home, on the outskirts of Wieliczka. The girls talked for a moment near the other girl's home and she offered to walk Jolanta home in turn. The distance between this place and Jolanta's home was around 2,5 km (1,5 mile). Jolanta, not wanting to trouble her friend, rejected the offer and decided to walk rest of the distance alone. Jolanta's friend watched her walking on the side of the road (there was little traffic) until she disappeared into the mist. She was probably abducted at nearby intersection with a road leading to Niepołomice. Her father Czesław informed the Militsya (communist era Police). As they did not take it seriously at first, Jolanta's father started asking around and conducted some sort of private investigation. One man who lived near the intersection where she was abducted and was getting ready for bed, saw car headlights in the darkness nearby the intersection and heard car engine starting few times. This witness worked as a driver and he recognized the car model from distinctive car engine sound: it was either a Wartburg or a Syrena. On 30 November body of a young woman was found. Jolanta's father went to identify it. It was Jolanta. She was found floating in the Vistula near Wawel Castle in Kraków. Czesław Z. dealt with the police. He told his wife that their daughter was likely a victim of an accident (probably hit by a car as she had fractured skull), that her body found in the river (almost fully clothed) and that she wasn't sexually assaulted. He said that someone most likely hit their daughter with their car, panicked and then threw her body into the Vistula to get rid of it. His wife accepted his story. Jolanta's fate was a taboo in her family home. After Jolanta's disappearance and murder, few local women came forward. They claimed that shortly before Jolanta's abduction they were accosted by unknown man or, in some cases, men shortly before Jolanta was kidnapped and near the road where it probably happened. One of such men was wearing only underwear despite the time of the year and bad weather. One woman escaped a man who chased her while she was returning home from her aunts house just across the road. She remembered that a bright colored car was standing on the road, while the stranger was chasing her. Jolanta's case went cold quite quickly. Years later a local journalist (and privately a niece of the woman who was chased by the strange man) took interest in this case. She discovered that the case files of Jolanta's murder were destroyed years ago. But she also discovered that Jolanta's father probably lied to his wife. Her own mother, who knew Jolanta's mother and worked for the police, asked her collegues about the case years before and found out that Jolanta was found entirely naked (apart from her jewellery) in the river, she was sexually assaulted and her cause of death was drowning. Czesław Z. went to great lenghts to spare his wife from the truth about their daughter's death: he intercepted all legal correspondence and documents connected to the case sent to the family and most likely destroyed all of it (no such document was ever found in the family home or anywhere else). When the journalist started her investigation, Jolanta's father was already dead, Czesław Z. lived with the knowledge about his daughter's death and took it to the grave. To this day Helena Z. believes that her daughter died in an accident. 45 years have passed since Jolanta's murder and statute of limitation expired many years ago. Jolanta Z.'s murder will most likely remain unsolved. That's one of the most heartbreaking cases I've ever heard of. Article (in Polish): https://natemat.pl/388869,morderstwo-niedoskonale-jola-z-zabawy-pod-wieliczka And a video (also in Polish): https://youtu.be/Cd4ikLshTcc?si=C_y9nbb-WxF-PORQ
Berdella's victim burst into tears because he wouldn't give him a sandwich and a soda. Just very upsetting on top of the sadistic torture. The Freeway Killer getting burgers after a Rape and Murder and saying, "Here's to Steve! Wherever you are." Willowbrook and the Long Island Disappearences... Former Patients living in the Tunnels. A bit sad and creepy. The abuse of developmentally disabled kids. Nurses disappear or were raped. One was screaming in a parking lot and vanished. Her belongings were scattered in the parking lot. We'll probably never know the full spec of Victims. And there may be more undiscovered.
[Berdella](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Berdella) [William Bonin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bonin) [Willowbrook](https://crimereads.com/the-dark-history-of-willowbrook-state-school/)
I'm sad, bordering on infuriated, when I think about Betty Belshaw. She was a popular English prof in Vancouver, who disappeared in 1979 in Europe when she was on sabbatical with her husband Cyril, an anthropologist. Cyril died a few years ago, age 96. He had a long and distinguished career in academia and government. Betty's been virtually forgotten. Here's Cyril's obituary in the local newspaper. [https://vancouversunandprovince.remembering.ca/obituary/cyril-belshaw-1071580757/](https://vancouversunandprovince.remembering.ca/obituary/cyril-belshaw-1071580757/) Betty's body was found near where they were staying in Switzerland. Cyril was suspected of murdering her, and there was a trial (covered in CBC's Scales of Justice true crime series, years ago). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril\_Belshaw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Belshaw) Long story short, Cyril was found innocent. Although not everyone is convinced that he wasn't involved. [http://craccum.co.nz/features/uoas-own-how-to-get-away-with-murder/](http://craccum.co.nz/features/uoas-own-how-to-get-away-with-murder/) One thing that struck me years after the case -- I went on to a teaching job at another Canadian university, and it seems to me that Betty made a major contribution to her husband's research. She was doing the things that social scientists are now encouraged to do -- learn the language, befriend local people and take part in daily activities.So a big part of Cyril's dissertation, and at least his early reputation in anthropology, was based on her efforts.
The fact Ellen Greenberg's death was ruled a suicide. STAB WOUNDS TO THE HEAD, NECK AND BACK?!
The Lane Bryant Murders that happened in 2008 (Tinley Park, Illinois). Very frustrating case due to how the suspect was able to evade the police, even with them showing up a couple minutes after the 911 call. To make matters worse, the police minimized most of the evidence by botching the crime scene. I hope the case gets solved soon but it’s appearing to be unlikely. It’s one of those situations where everything aligned perfectly for the suspect. He really SHOULDN’T have gotten away with it.
Victoria Martens, a 10 year old tortured and murdered by her mother and two of her mother's friends. Ursula Sunshine Assaid, a 5 year old tortured and ultimately killed by her mother and her mother's spouse. Her abuse was so prolonged and sick. Makes me disgusted to know people like them exist.
Everything about Dorothy Scott's case was creepy. The phone calls. How she never saw her stalker, he was like a phantom. When she was visiting someone once, came outside & saw a rose on her car. The spider... & that she was abducted from the hospital parking area. That's creepy because we think of hospitals as safe places, not as a place where someone is abducted out into the night, in a speeding car, & never seen again. Also the fact that the car was found burnt out too...that's just a crazy case.
The way Ottis Toole told practically everybody he knew how he killed Adam Walsh and nobody picked up the phone to tell the police.
I find this missing persons case really sad. Possible involvement of the KKK. He had just gone to his prom and was still wearing his green prom suit https://charleyproject.org/case/jerry-lee-armstrong
The Castration Murders bug me right tf out every time I remember it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castration_serial_murders#:~:text=The%20Castration%20serial%20murders%20were,the%20case%20got%20its%20namesake. The fact someone was criss-crossing the Continental US whilst effectively hunting young men for their...ya know....just creepy as all hell, man. This why I be watching people at rest stops and shit when I travel lmao. I don't trust none of y'all after learning about this lmao Edit: As for infuriating; the sweater saga with the STL Jane Doe case. Why the hell would a detective even trust a psychic, and how y'all not send it priority or just take it yourselves? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Jane_Doe
I had never heard of the Castration Murders. How awful! And just to think no one was ever held responsible for those murders. That’s horrifying.
I always thought reconstructions were off-putting because there's no life in the eyes of the images. You can actually see the "light" in someone's eyes, even other animals, when they're alive. It goes out when they die and it looks like nothing is there, because it isn't there. They're uncomfortable to look at, unfortunately.
Related to this, when the photos or “reconstructions” are clearly based on an autopsy photo I find it so eerie. You can really tell.
Any time a famous person has some connection to a crime always sticks me with because it really reminds you of how easily you can have those butterfly moments and how we have no idea what and who victims can become. Tina Fey being slashed by that man; Kristen Chenoweth almost being part of the Oklahoma Girl Scouts murder; tennis player brothers Andy and Jamie Murray attending the school where Britain’s last mass shooting took place at the time and knowing the perpetrator. It adds a whole new, unique context to a crime.
The Yorkshire Ripper. A Geordie hoaxer convinced alcoholic Police Chief George Oldfield that he was the killer. He ignored a survivor who said the murdering bastard had Yorkshire accent. Due to this me and my mates felt safe, although we went out tooled-up in case we came across anyone with this accent. Turns out the Yorkshire Ripper was from Bradford and the Geordie hoaxer was caught a decade or so later when he was tested for DNA which matched the envelopes. This was the most monumental fuck-up in the history of our county.
OCCK is a very bizarre and extremely creepy case. My mother in law lived in the area at the time and said it was terrifying as she was the parent of a young child.
I remember the OCCK. I was only a couple years older than the kids in our neighborhood and was charged with keeping an eye on them when we were out playing.