Serial killer Jerome Dennis #truecrime
Jerome Dennis
Over just a few short months from 1991 to 1992, a vicious killer took the lives of at least 5 women in New Jersey. What makes the murders worse is that the monster was on parole for prior attacks on women after serving only 10 years of a 30 year sentence. It is frustrating how many of these guys slip through the cracks to kill again. This killer stabbed strangled and bludgeoned his victims and most were dumped along a toll road that runs the length of New Jersey.
Jerome Dennis, the Garden State Parkway Maniac
Jerome Dennis was born on December 14 1966 in the Christopher Columbus Public Housing Projext in Newark New Jersey as the 7th of 9 children. Raised by his mother, Jerome got into trouble early but avoided any serious punishment due to his young age. This would not last however.
Dennis dropped out of school in the 7th grade and his crimes escalated. On November 6 1981 at age 14, he and his brother attacked a woman in downtown Newark. What is strange is that he and his brother reported the attack to law enforcement from a pay phone and stayed on the line until police arrived to arrest them.
Once in custody, the brothers confessed to 2 other assaults in the preceding months. They were tried as adults and their father even testified against them. In December of 1981 they were convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
While in prison, Jerome Dennis participated in various programs. He learned to bake and took part in Bible studies. Perhaps, authorities thought he had turned his life around and he was released in November 1991 after serving 10 years- the absolute minimum allowed by the court.
He moved into a home in East Orange and began working as a porter at the Pleasantdale Bakery. While he put up. Good front of being reformed, once he was free, Dennis could not stop himself from victimizing women.
On December 12 1991, he attacked a 26 year old named Zelda Bailey, but luckily she survived. After Bailey escaped alive, Dennis was eager to find his next victim. Only days later on December 16, he met 41 year old Robyn Carter. After assaulting her, Jerome strangled her to death. Her body was found later that same day.
There was a pause after the first murder, but on February 15 1992, he was once again on the hunt. 30 year old Elizabeth Clenor was on her way home after a job interview when she was abducted. After assaulting her, Dennis beat her to death and left her body in an abandoned house.
Less than a week later, Jerome Dennis was in search of a victim. On February 21 1992, He stabbed 30 year old Stephanie Alston to death then dumped her body near where he had left Clenors body along the Garden State Parkway. The killer had become addicted to murder as in many other cases and the very next day he was at it again.
His next victim, 16 year old Khydijah Harris, would survive his attack on February 22. On the night of April 10 1992, 16 year old Jamillah Jones was walking home from her friends house. Just blocks from her home, Jerome attacked her and stabbed her to death. Once she was dead, he dumped her body off an overpass.
The day of Jones murder, police would discover the series of murders. Over 2 days the bodies of Clenor, Jones, Alston, and a 14 year old named Shakia Hedgespeth were discovered along the Garden State Parkway. A panic fell over the area as news of an active serial killer spread.
Going through offenders records, Jerome’s history made him stand out as a suspect. His dna was on record and compared against that of the killer. The surviving victims were also called in to see if they could pick him out of a photo lineup which they did without hesitation.
Jerome Dennis was arrested on April 13 1992 and charged with nearly 3 dozen felonies. While his lawyers tried to convince the court that he was schizophrenic, this did not allow him to espcape prosecution. The game was up and on February 27 1993 he plead guilty to 5 murders, 2 counts of aggravated assault, one count of armed robbery, 2 counts of criminal restraint, and a parole violation. The other charges were dropped as part of the plea agreement.
Here’s where this case gets frustrating, as apparently the courts did not learn their lesson with this monster. He avoided the death penalty and was sentenced to multiple life sentences in prison. However, he is eligible for parole after 60 years when he is 85. But, who’s to say that this will not change? Others who were on death row have had their sentence commuted then were released. Why would he have any chance at parole? Jerome Dennis is currently housed at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton.
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Unsolved- The Dayton Strangler Serial Killer #truecrim
Dayton Strangler
In the first years of the 20th century, a depraved maniac terrorized the people of Dayton Ohio. At least 5 women and a man would lose their lives to an unknown monster, 11 year old Ada Lantz, 20 year old Dona Gilman, 18 year old Anna Markowitz and her boyfriend Abe Cohan, 15 year old Mary Forschner, and 18 year old Elizabeth Fulhart. There is also speculation that 3 additional murders are also part of this series. Some victims had been shot, others strangled, and the youngest of the 5 may have been drowned in the the filth of her family’s outhouse. The reign of terror began on October 14, 1900 and would last until February of 1909. While there were suspects and even confessions none held up under scrutiny. To this day no one can answer the question of, who was
The Dayton Strangler
In the early 1900’s and before, Dayton Ohio was a bustling hive of innovation. Inventions such as the cash register getting their start in the city. But, like all cities, Dayton had its dark side. Crime is an ever present problem in society, but starting in the first year of the 20th century a series of murders would captivate the area as police sought the culprit.
The first murder took place on October 14 1900. Ada Lantz was 11 years old and her father was a respected carpenter in the community. On that night Ada disappeared during a party in her parents home. When they realized she was missing, her parents and their friends immediately began searching for the young girl.
She was found stuffed down the hole of an outhouse in the back yard. She had been assaulted and beaten severely with marks from a cane or stick across her forehead. Evidence indicated that she may have been alive but unconscious when she was shoved into the filth where she drowned.
There were 5 arrests of people who had been seen in the area around the time Ada went missing. One of these suspects even confessed, but the charges against him were eventually dropped due to a lack of evidence.
Because of the space between the first murder and the others, some suspect that Ada Lantz was not killed by the Dayton Strangler. The next Murder in the series occured on November 20 1906. 20 year old Dona Gilman worked at the National Cash Register Works. She took the train to and from work with friends and often her sister.
On that fateful day, Dona said goodbye to her friends as she transferred trains to the one that would take her home. This is where she crossed paths with the killer. She was last seen getting off the bus at the stop in her neighborhood. Her gloves and umbrella were found across the street from her home, while her body was found dumped in some grass nearby.
The body was positioned in a way that made it clear that she had not been killed at that location and it was suspected that it had occured in one of the houses that were within view of the dump site. Gilman had been strangled to death and newspapers reported that she had been mutilated. Skin from her attacker was found under her fingernails, but this was far before the dna would do any good.
Almost a year passed before the killer struck again. Anna Markowitz and her boyfriend, Abraham Cohan were walking in an isolated road with Bertha, Annas younger sister on the night of August 4 1907. They stopped to talk in McCabe park when the creature saw them. He approached from behind and hit Abraham in the head with a club then as he turned shot him twice in the stomach.
Bertha was able to escape to find the sheriff. When she returned with a group of people to find the attacker, they found Abraham clinging to life. Some tracks led them to the Annas body. She had been viciously assaulted and her clothing was ripped and torn before she was strangled.
Cohan was rushed to a hospital where he succumbed to his injuries after 2 days. Due to his condition, he was unable to give police any information on the murderer. A housekeeper reported hearing the gunshots and someone shout out the name “Harry” but no one by that name was ever arrested. Another man was convicted of the crime, Layton Hines, but he is widely considered to have been innocent. There is a record of him contesting the conviction in 1917 but not the outcome
The next murder occured on January 24 1909. 15 year old Mary Forschner was sent by her step father to make a bank deposit. When she did not return her stepfather called 2 neighbors and the 3 went to look for her. They found her just after midnight in a shed at the edge of a large property. She had been assaulted and strangled. The coroner noted that her killer had very large hands from the marks left on her neck.
A strange man had been seen in the area and a different woman had also been attacked on the same day as the Forschner murder. One witness, Sam Morris, was arrested in suspicion of the murder and said that he had seen a stranger in the neighborhood. When morris approached him, but fled when the man threatened to shoot him.
Not far from where Morris had seen the man, a woman referred to as Mrs. James Powers was attacked. Her husband had come home to find a man strangling his wife and her clothing had been ripped similar to the victims of the Dayton Strangler. Luckily Mrs Powers survived, but her attacker was able to escape.
The attacks had all occured within walking distance of railroad tracks and many believed that this was how the killer traveled. Indeed jumping freight cars was not uncommon in these days, my grandfather left the family farm and did the same to find better opportunities than were in his hometown. A few days after the Forwchner murder, a black man was seen getting off a train with abnormally large hands. Though it is unlikely that this was the Strangler, he did have scratches on his face and was dressed in similar clothing to the man seen near the Forschner murder scene, but were unable to locate this suspect.
The last known murder of the Dayton strangler occured just weeks later on February 8 1909. A young woman named Elizabeth Fulhart had come to Dayton to look for work the day before she disappeared. A week later, her body was discovered floating in a water storage tank behind an unoccupied house.
Fulhart had been assaulted before she was killed. There was a lack of bruising on her neck leaving authorities unsure as to the exact cause of death. Her clothing was askew, indicating she had been redressed post Mortem. Before she had been dumped into the cistern, she Elizabeth had been stuffed into a sack, which some believe had been used to suffocate her.
The Fulhart murder is the last believed to have been committed by the Dayton Strangler. While Layton Hines had been arrested for the Markowitz attack, even newspapers at the time refer to the killer of Anna and her boyfriend as unknown and note that the evidence against Hines was purely circumstantial.
However, there were other suspects investigated by police. There was a former employee of the National Cash Register company named David Curtis who was suspected of the Gilman murder. A semi-anonymous reporter claimed to have an eyewitness who saw Curtis kill Dona.
The suspect would eventually confess to the murder, but as he had made a false confession 2 years prior, people were skeptical of his account. Investigators continued to try to connect Curtis to the murder, but the case fell apart when it came out that he had been threatened into confessing. When the charges were dismissed the people of Dayton celebrated as very few thought he had actually done it.
One of Gilmans brothers had testified against Curtis, but it seems that this was more to divert blame from himself and his family. Accusations of abuse led to the arrest of Dona’s mother and siblings. While in custody, Kate Gilman attempted to end her own life upon hearing her children had been arrested as accessories to the crime.
But again, the evidence was purely circumstantial and the family was eventually released. The town once again celebrated the exoneration. But the tragedy of the Filman family continued, when Kate passed away in December of 1907, soon after the Gilmans were cleared of all charges.
There were several other suspects, however none were accused of the entire series, but were tied through circumstantial evidence to individual victims. They included the brothers of Anna Markowitz, who were said to disapprove of her being with Abraham Cohan. . The others were seen in the area of one of the murders, but none of the accusations held up under the investigation.
With more than 100 years since the crimes of the Dayton Strangler occurred, it is unlikely that anyone will ever be conclusively named as the killer. This is compounded by the fact that this case does not have the name recognition or interest that other unsolved cases have, such as the Jack the Ripper murders or the Zodiac. We still must keep hope for a resolution, and remeber each of the victims who lost their lives to the Dayton Strangler.
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Serial Killer Gary Grant #truecrime
From 1969 to 1971 a vicious killer committed 4 brutal murders in Renton Washington. 2 of the victims were teenagers and 2 were young children. They were all targeted for sickening abuse both before and after their deaths. Investigators and the community were shocked when they found that the killer was a local teenager.
Gary Grant, the Fiend of Washington
Gary Grant was born on June 29, 1951 in Renton, Washington. His family was impoverished and struggled to pay for the trailer at the edge of the city they lived in. His mother was also an alcoholic and often had loud fights with his father as he grew up.
As a child, Grant had trouble in school. He found it too difficult and often became frustrated trying to keep up due to having some form of undiagnosed mental illness. After a while he began skipping school and then eventually dropping out altogether.
After leaving school, Gary Grant decided to enlist in the military. However he did not last long. Almost immediately, the others began to mock him, and the mental issues he struggled with became more severe. He reported having health problems and was dismissed from service in the late 1960’s to return home to Renton. Soon the murders would begin.
He killed his first victim on December 15 1969. 19 year old Carole Adele Erickson was walking home from the library when Grant attacked her. The creature rushed her with a knife and stabbed her to death.
Once she was dead he then dragged her into the bushes nearby and out of view where he abused the young woman’s body. The disgusting assault was so vicious that he left additional damage and lacerations on her neck.
9 months later, the killer was watching for his next victim. On September 20th 1970 he attacked and killed Joanne Mary Zulauf. In broad daylight Gary ran up and smashed her in the head with a rock. Once again he dragged his victim out of sight.
The sick monster violated Zulauf before strangling her. Once she was dead he took her watch off her arm to give to his girlfriend. He left her nude body in the woods where he assaulted her where it was discovered on September 22 1970.
The final 2 known victims of Gary Grant were 2 young boys he came across while walking Through Renton. 6 year old Scott Andrews and Bradley Lyons were playing outside Bradley’s home on April 20 1971 when Grant spotted them. He pulled his knife and threatened them into leaving with him.
He walked into the woods more than a mile from where he found them. Once he was away from witnesses he attacked them. He beat them both savagely then stabbed Andrews to death and strangled Lyons. Grant left the bodies hidden under leaves and brush. Police would find them days later and take a imprint of the shoe prints they found by the bodies.
A man named John Chance wandered into a local hospital and began making bizarre claims. The mentally disturbed veteran told staff that he was the son of Saturn and that he had met Jesus Christ near Tillicum Washington. Hr also gave them details of the 2 boys murders and became a prime suspect. But other evidence would soon lead to police arresting a different man for the crimes and Chance was released after a week in custody
.
Investigators had a major break in their serial killer case on April 28th 1971 when they found a bloody knife near the latest murder scene. The blood was tested and came back as a match for Scott Andrews and a name was found on it as well, Tom Evenson.
When Evenson was interrogated he told police that he had sold the knife to a friend. That person had also sold the knife as had the owner. Police eventually found that the last person to have posession of it was a man named Gary Grant.
On April 30 1971, Grant was brought in for questioning. He was not able to give police an alibi for his whereabouts during the 2 boys murder. He initially claimed to have amnesia and not remeber the day of the murders, further questioning led the killer to breakdown and confess to tue killings.
The following day Grant was back in the interview with a lawyer with more to tell investigators. He confessed to all 4 murders in detail and he was charged with the crimes and put in jail until his trial.
Grants lawyers argued that the charges should be dismissed after it was discovered that police captain William Frazee had illegally recorded the second confessions. However this was dismissed since the killer had been legally recorded giving his first confession the day before. Frazee would eventually be placed on leave and given 4 months probation for his violation, but the trial proceeded.
The murder trial began on August 12 1971. The prosecution had a good amount of evidence against Grant. They had the knife which was drenched in the blood of his 6 year old victim, the shoe imprints which matched those he was wearing, and witnesses who placed him near the murder scenes.
The defense argued that Grant was mentally unstable and that he should be treated with leniency. Family and acquaintances testified that he was a passive and gentle person and a psychiatric evaluation was ordered. While he was found to be sane, doctors determined that Grant was impulsive and lacked self control. He would often react to high stress situations by acting out.
After the evaluation, the trial continued. The psychiatrist stated that the murders were committed as a way to release the tension and stress that Grant felt. This leads one to believe that it was more than possible that he would offend once again if he was allowed to go free. On August 25, 1971 after a 2 week trial, Gary Grant was found guilty of all 4 murders and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for each murder.
He is now housed at the Monroe Correctional Complex and is 71 years old as of 2022. His case received some attention in 2020 when a book was released with details of the case that were not public such as the claims of John Chance. However he is still a relatively obscure serial killer.
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Serial Killer Thor Christiansen #truecrime
Thor Christiansen
In the late 1970s a vicious killer was stalking the young women of the Santa Barbara suburb, Isla Vista and the surrounding communities. His MO was to pick up young female hitchikers then take them somewhere remote to abuse and execute them with a gunshot to
the head. 4 young women would fall prey to the killer, their bodies found dumped on quiet roads. Eventually the killer met his end in prison at the hands of the other inmates.
Thor Christiansen, the Isla Vista Executioner
Thor Christiansen was born on December 28 1957 in Denmark. He moved to the US with his family when he was 5 years old. They settled into a Danish community in Solvang, California where Thors father ran a restaurant. The nearby city of Isla Vista is a college town closely associated with UC Santa Barbara and full of students.
Growing up, Thor exhibited signs of what was to come. Childhood friends said that he would kill animals starting in 6th grade. In some cases he would step on the animals, but he also caught birds and frogs with a butterfly net and would blow them up with firecrackers. At home, Thor was treated harshly by his alcoholic father when the two were together. Around the same time he started killing animals, he began drinking.
In middle school, Thor began to let his studies slide and his previously good plummeted before he eventually dropped out. Friends reported that he had trouble with girls which spurred resentment in Thor. His parents did not spend a lot of time with their son, and gave him money instead. By age 16 he was drinking regularly and driving an Audi, paid for by his parents.
He moved out of his parents house and started working at a local gas station. As time passed, Thor became more withdrawn and said things that spooked his acquaintances. One childhood friend said he seemed to be mad at the world. His growing fixation on killing along with his frustration at his own situation led to his weight gain and depression.
When he was still a teenager, the murders began. In 1976, Christiansen was 19 and on November 20th, he picked up 21 year old Jacqueline Ann Rook from a bus stop. She had been hitchhiking when she disappeared.
2 weeks after Rook disappeared a 19 year old waitress named Mary Ann Sarris was taken. She had been known to hitchhike and was last seen outside a hospital after an appointment at 4:30 pm. With 2 disappearances, the community began to fear that a maniac was on the loose.
On January 18th a 3rd young woman disappeared. Patricia Mae Laney was a 21 year old student. She had been active in the searches for the first 2 victims. She vanished from the same intersection where Sarris was last seen.
Her nude body was found 1 day later on dumped on the side of secluded road that led to one of Ronald Reagan’s properties. She had been shot in the head and near her body police also found bloody paper towels that had fingerprints on them that had likely been used to clean up the killers car.
Unfortunately there was not a match for the fingerprints as the killer did not have a criminal record. But, police pushed the investigation forward and 2 days later on January 19th Jacqueline Rooks body was found up the same road where Patricia Laneys body was found. She had been shot twice and her clothing had been removed after her death.
Police suspected that the killer was someone who was familiar with the area as the road that the women were found was not well traveled. It was a back road used by residents to drive to Solvang. But this did not lead to the killers discovery.
A month after the grisly discoveries, Thor and a friend were drinking and smoking marijuana in his car looking out over the ocean. A policeman saw them and stopped. He confiscated their alcohol and wrote the boys a ticket.
When the officer went to check the trunk of the car, Thor tried to refuse, but the cop insisted and inside the trunk he found a 22 caliber pistol which he also confiscated. Despite the alcohol, drugs, and pistol the 2 young men were not arrested.
After this close call, Thor left the area and moved to Oregon. While he was away his 2nd victims body was found. Mary Ann Sarris had been dumped on a quiet road outside of Los alamos.
He did not stay in oregon for long, and when he returned he had lost a considerable amount of weight. The creature also began making regular trips to Los Angeles. One can only imagine what he did on these trip, but it was a much larger city with the anonymity of scale where disappearances would be less noticeable. Friends remarked that Thor had also become obsessed with keeping his car clean, with paying particular attention to the trunk.
Thor Christiansen killed his 4th known victim on May 26th 1979. 23 year old Laura Sue Benjamin was working as a prostitute in Los Angeles. The killer picked her up and the 2 drove off into the San Gabriel mountains. Once he was out of sight, Thor pulled a gun on Benjamin and shot her to death. Her body was found a month later, dumped in a culvert.
On April 18 1979 Thor picked up 21 year old Lydia Preston. They had made a deal to exchange adult services for $45 dollars. Lydia began to worry as her John drove past several hotels then into the Hollywood hills. Once they were out of the city, Thor shot her in the head.
However, Preston survived and grabbed the steering wheel. The car spun out of control and crashed. Preston jumped out and ran to a nearby house. She survived with scars, a deaf ear, and shattered skull. Luckily the bullet did not cause brain damage. The young woman’s escape would mark the beginning of the end for the hitchhiker slayer.
3 months later on June 11 1979, Lydia Preston was sitting at the Bottom Line Bar in Hollywood, when she crossed paths once again with the killer. When she saw him walk in, she ran to the back and used the phone to call police. They showed up and arrested Thor Christiansen.
As they investigated the 22 year old, authorities saw distinct similarities between the attack on Preston and the murders they had been working to solve. They also saw the record of the 22 pistol that had been confiscated from Thor and were able to match his prints to those found on the paper towel by the body of Patricia Laney.
When Christiansen was confronted with the evidence that police had compiled, he confessed to the 4 murders on July 27. It is possible he withheld other murders that he believed police were unaware of as he had followed his cases in the press. He tried to convince investigators that the killings were justified because the victims had made fun of his weight.
Initially, Thor plead not guilty due to insanity, but a court appointed psychiatrist disagreed. In early 1980 he went to trial for the killing of Laura Sue Benjamin. And in June he plead guilty to the first 3 murders. For his crimes, Thor Christiansen was sentenced to life in prison.
But the killing did not end there. His defense team had told the court that he would be in danger when he arrived in prison. They knew that the young blond haired man would be targeted by the other inmates due to his crimes against women. And they were right. 6 months after he arrived at Folsom prison, on March 30 1981, Thor was stabbed to death. His killer has never been identified.
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Serial Killer Ronald Dominique #truecrime
Between July 1997 and October 2006 23 young men would fall prey to a vicious serial killer in Louisiana. After luring them into his home, he would attack them, and tie them up, before abusing them, then strangling them to death. Once he was done, he loaded them up in the back of his truck and dumped them in secluded places in the area.
Ronald Dominique, the Bayou Strangler
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Serial Killer Peter Kurten #truecrime
From 1913 to 1929 a shadow loomed over Düsseldorf and the nearby city Cologne where he was born. No one was safe from this monster and it is believed he had murdered 2 children before his 10th birthday. Before he was done, at least 9 people lost their lives at his cruel hands.
Peter. Kurten. The Vampire of Düsseldorf.
Peter Kurten was born in 1883, 5 years before Jack the Ripper would stain the streets of London with blood and gore. He was the oldest of 13 children and everyone in his family suffered the abuse of their sadistic father. The father was a sadistic drunk who would stumble home to the one bedroom apartment the family shared to beat his wife and children before forcing himself onto his wife in front of the kids. It was not long before he would molest his daughters in the same way.
Because of the extreme poverty in which the family lived, Kurten learned to steal food at a young age to stave hunger. By the time he reached adulthood, he had already been in and out of jail many times. When reflecting on his crimes, Kurten would say that the brutality he suffered in jail and prison led to his wanting to get revenge on society through violence and murder.
The first deaths attributed to Peter Kurten occured when he was only 9 years old in 1892. While playing on the Rhine river with friends, he shoved another boy out of the raft they were in. When another boy jumped in to save him, Peter held his head under the water until he stopped thrashing. The incident was marked down as an accident.
During his childhood, Kurten also learned of other disgusting acts from a dog catcher who lived in the same building as his family. This man taught him to use animals for his pleasure and the two spent an indecent amount of time together assaulting animals.
At the age of 16 Peter Kurten fled his home, and soon after his father was arrested for the horrors he committed against his own 13 year old daughter. At this point, crime became Peters only means of survival.
The first murder Kurten committed as an adult was a 10 year old girl named Christine Klein. He was lurking on the streets of Cologne after being released from custody for theft, looking for something to steal, when he saw the child asleep in her bed. Her room was above an inn. He crept in to assault her before stabbing her to death. Fluids left by the killer showed how excited he was during the attack. The next day when her body was discovered, blame fell on her uncle who had argued and threatened her father the night before. Meanwhile the creature had gone to drink in a bar across the street so he could watch the results of the depraved murder. Peter followed the trial until at last the uncle was acquitted for lack of evidence. The disgusting creature also visited the young girls grave and would become excited as he handled the soil. The true culprit would not be discovered for 18 years.
Shortly after the murder of Christine Klein, Kurten attacked a 17 year old girl named Gertrude Franken. He was burglarizing her home when he came across her asleep in her bed. He strangled her, but was unsuccessful in killing her and fled before he was caught.
As the First World War loomed, Kurten was called up into the German army. However, discipline and honest work did not suit him and he deserted. He was soon caught and imprisoned throughout the war. While he was locked up, Kurten intentionally broke rules in order to stay in solitary confinement.
After he was released in 1921, he moved in with his sister in a city called Altenburg. Soon after arriving he met a former prostitute named Augute Scharf. She owned a candy shop and would become his wife. She had herself spent several year in prison for shooting a man for standing her up at the marriage altar.
The couple lived in Altenburg until 1925. Kurten found work as a moulder, which was the same occupation as his abusive father. During this time he also became a trade union organizer. However this brief period of peacefulness fell apart as Kurtens self control faltered.
In 1925, the couple moved to Düsseldorf and the creature known as Peter Kurten soon left his mark on the city.
Over the next 3 years he would commit arson and would attack at least 4 women. He strangled them until they were unconscious, sometimes during sex. In 1929 Kurtens restraint fell by the wayside and once again he gave in to his murderous impulses.
On the 3rd of February, he attacked a woman named Apollonia Kuhn. He pulled her into some bushes where they were concealed from view then stabbed her repeatedly with a pair of scissors. Luckily she survived rhe attack, but 1929 would be marked by other murders committed by Kurten.
An 8 year told girl named Rosa Ohlinger was walking in the city on February 8th when Peter Kurten attacked her. He stabbed her 13 times and then attempted to light her body on fire using gasoline but was not successful. Her remains were found shoved underneath a hedge. Less than a week later, he stabbed a mechanic named Rudolph Scheer to death. Again he returned to the scene of the crime to watch the investigation unfold.
In august of 1929, Kurten murdered 3 people, including 2 sisters. These killings began with the murder of Maria Hahn. Hahn was a young woman who hoped to find a husband. Kurten took her on a date and the two spent several hours with together on August 11 1929 before they went into a meadow. He stabbed her in the head and body using his scissors and also strangled her as he knelt on her chest. It is thought that her ordeal lasted over an hour before she died of her injuries. This time Peter Kurten did not want the body to be found as he feared that his wife might connect the murder to the bloodstains on his clothing. Hahn was buried in a field and Kurten visited the site periodically and even attempted to nail her to a tree to get the public outrage he craved. When she proves to be too heavy for the monster to lift, he returned her to the grave after fondling her corpse.
Gertrude Hamacher was 5 years old and her adopted sister Louise Lenzen was 14 when they crossed paths with the monster as they walked home from
A fair. He stabbed them to death on the 21st. He killed Gertrude first after sending her sister to buy him cigarettes in return for some money. When Louise returned he pounced on her, stabbing her repeatedly in the chest and throat. Kurten also but her neck and sucked blood from the wound. Bloody footprints led investigators to believe she had tried to flee her attacker.
On the 24th, Kurten murdered a woman whose identity is unknown.
In September Kurten branched out and chose another weapon to use on his next victim. He found a young woman named Ida Reuter alone in the woods outside Düsseldorf. Kurten beat her to death using a hammer.
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Serial Killer Roberto Arguelles #truecrime
Over just a few short months in 1992, a vicious monster stabbed or strangled at least 4 girls and women in Salt Lake City Utah. After a lifetime of abusing kids, the killer crossed the line to murder. Countless unknown other victims of his perversion survived the ordeal. Even after the murders, it was not until the killer bragged to others in prison that police were able to find the victims and charge his with murder when other inmates were so disgusted by his claims that they reported him.
Robert Arguelles, the Salt Lake City Strangler.
Robert Arguelles was born on the 14th of February, 1962 in Kearns, Utah. He had one brother, and when they were young, their stepfather moved the family to a pig farm in Salt Lake City, Utah and put them to work. While he was a teenager, Arguelles began to have run ins with the law.
In September 1977 at age 15, he was arrested for attempting to steal a car. He received probation which did not deter him from future committing future crimes. 1 years later, in June 1978 he was back in custody, this time for physically assaulting his girlfriend and family. Arguelles would spend a month in a group home after the attacks.
Upon returning home his criminal activity escalated. On October 5 1978, he kidnapped and assaulted a 10 year old girl. Once again, he received soft treatment from the court. Despite the heinous act, Robert was only put on house arrest and not made to remain locked up until his trial.
While awaiting his trial, Arguelles continued abusing children and began assaulting other teenagers as well. There was a charge of violating a 7 year old in November of 1978 which was later dropped. And only months later he was arrested for assaulting a 17 year old.
For the crimes he committed against the 10 year old and 17 year old, Arguelles was found guilty. He was sent to State Youth Devlopment Center in Ogden, Utah. It was recommended that he remain incarcerated until his 21 birthday, however once again he was treated gently by the justice system.
The facility did not have a treatment program for offenders such as Arguelles. Staff attempted to get him into Utah State Hospital where they did have such a program. He was rejected as a candidate as the hospital found him resistant. Instead, he was released on December 19, 1979 with the stipulation that he attend therapy sessions at the University of Utah.
These sessions did not have their intended effect and in March of 1980 he was once again victimizing kids. He took a 15 year old and assaulted her before releasing her outside of her school after threatening her with death if she told anyone what he had done.
Only days later Arguelles kidnapped a 14 year old. This time he took the girl to the pig farm and abused her at knife point. When she struggled against him, he slashed her neck then dropped her off in a neighborhood in West Valley City. She survived and was able to get help at a home. While in the hospital she gave police a detailed description of both her attacker and his vehicle.
Soon Arguelles was arrested for the 2 attacks he had committed since his release. He was charged with 2 counts of attempted murder, aggravated rape, and sexual abuse. He was sent to Utah State prison where he stayed until he was paroled on June 25 1991.
In August 1992, Arguelles assaulted 2 children in front of an elementary school. He told the siblings, a 10 year old girl and an 8 year old boy, that he was a security guard looking for some stolen items. Under the guise of searching them, he violated both children. When he was done, he dropped them off at their home.
Barely a week after assaulting the elementary school kids, Arguelles tried the same trick again, this time using a fake police badge. When he attempted to lure 2 10 year olds into his car, a nearby road worker saw him and intervened. Arguelles was soon arrested after the incident.
He was charged with assaulting the brother and sister and recieved a life sentence with the chance of parole. However, judge Kenneth Rigtup told the court that parole should never be granted to Arguelles, citing his repeated deviant offenses.
For the next 3 years, Roberto Arguelles spent his time in prison bragging to other inmates about a series of murders he had committed. In 1995, police approached him for an interview. It was not long before he began to direct them to the first 2 victims bodies.
16 year old Lisa Martinez was walking to the local mall on March 30, 1992 with her friend 15 year old Tuesday Roberts when the 2 disappeared. Arguelles picked them up then drove them to the family pig farm. There he stabbed Lisa more than 40 times with a wood chisel. Once she was dead, he strangled Tuesday with a rope then buried them on the farm where they were later found by police.
Months later, Arguelles told police about 2 more murders. Margo Bond was a 42 year old janitor on her way to work at Kennedy Junior High school in February 1992. In June she was found stabbed to death in Tooele County.
The last victim that Arguelles confessed to killing was 13 year old Stephanie Blundell. She went missing on her way to school. One month later her body was found in the American Fork Canyon. She too had been stabbed to death.
This confession was reinforced with a former roommate, Pamela Milstein. She told investigators that Arguelles had shown her the jewelry he had taken from Stephanie Blundell. However, the jewelry was never recovered. Even with such damning confessions on record, Roberto Arguelles was not willing to submit to the justice system without a fuss.
To begin the new legal proceedings, his lawyer petitioned to have the original convictions that put him behind bars thrown out. The argument was that Arguelles did not receive proper representation. When the attempt was thwarted by the Supreme Court, the killers plea was changed from not guilty to guilty and he waived the right to appeal.
Now guilty for murder, Arguelles demanded that he receive the death penalty. The monster represented himself at the sentencing hearing, and questioned several witnesses under the advisement of appointed lawyers. These attorneys claimed that Arguelles suffered from a variety of mental problems including multiple personality disorder.
On June 21st 1997, the killer was sentenced to death. Arguelles opted to be killed by firing squad and to not by hooded when he was shot. A date was set but the automatic appeals process began as with all death penalty cases. While these appeals were underway, Arguelles began efforts to carry out the sentence himself.
The first attempt came after he had spent one year on death row. In 1998 Roberto tried to hang himself and when this was unsuccessful, he began ingesting inedible objects such as paper, plastic, and his own waste. During this time, he became more violent in his legal proceedings as well. After multiple outbursts, he was wheeled into court strapped to a wheelchair with a spit mask over his head.
Roberto Arguelles got the last laugh on the world on November 15 2003. A guard noticed the killer was unresponsive and ordered he be taken to the infirmary. There he was pronounced dead of natural causes in the Utah state penitentiary in Draper.
#serialkiller #truecrimedocumentary #crime #evil #utah
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The Alphabet Murders #truecrime
In the early 1970s a disgusting monster murdered 3 girls in the Rochester area of New York. This vicious creature seemingly picked his victims based on the first letters of their first and last names. The killer would also dump his victims by a town that began with the same letter. To this day the killer has not been apprehended or even conclusively identified.
This is the story of the Alphabet Murders
The Alphabet murder victim’s first and last names all began with the same letters. The girls names were Carmen Colon, Wanda Walkowicz, and Michelle Maenza.
The first murder was that of 10 year old Carmen Colon. On November 16 1971 she was running an errand for her grandmother. After school that Tuesday Carmen was sent to a pharmacy on West Main Street in Rochester by her grandmother and arrived a bit after 4 pm.
When the pharmacist told her that the prescription was not ready she left. Passerby’s saw her getting into a dark colored Ford Pinto parked nearby. Less than an hour later she was seen running along the side of Interstate 490. She was stripped nude from the waist down and the Pinto was in reverse on the shoulder chasing her.
Despite dozens of witnesses none of the drivers passing by stopped to help the young girl even as they saw her being led back into his vehicle. At 7:50 that night, Carmen Colons family reported her missing. And 2 days later her body was found.
On April 18th, 2 boys found her body doscarded in a ditch along the same highway outside a town called Churchville. Her jacket was found nearby but her pants were not found for weeks, near where she had been seen running from her captor.
Her autopsy revealed that she had been violated and viciously beaten. She had a skull fracture and a broken vertebrae. She had also been extensively scrarched from what appeared to be fingernails. However the cause of death was found to be strangulation.
Public outcry over the brutal murder led to billboards a $6000 reward was rAised for information leading to the perpetrators arrest. An advertising company contributed 5 billboards to use for the search for the killer for a month. Despite several suspects being interviewed no one was identified as the killer.
There were no other known victims until 1973. On Monday April 2nd 11 year old Wanda Walkowicz was on her way to buy groceries shortly after 5 pm. She was then seen walking along Avenue B in Rochester carrying the heavy load of groceries. She was reported missing at 8 pm.
A search was immediately started but she was nowhere to be found along the route to the store nor the areas she liked to play. The next morning however, Wanda Walkowicz was found fully dressed near an access road near Webster New York. Investigators believe that she had been pushed out of a moving vehicle to roll down a small hill.
She too had been assaulted and strangled. While the medical examiner believed Carmen had been strangled by hand, it appeared that Wanda was strangled using a belt. She also had denfsive wounds from trying to fight off her attacker and she he killer had put her clothes back on after her death. There was fluid and hair found on her as well as hair from a white cat.
There were 2 sightings of Wanda reported. The first was a person who had seen her talking to someone in a brown car. The other said they had seen her being forced into a light colored Dodge Dart, but neither led to an arrest.
A $10,000 reward was offered and a tip line set up, though once again there were no solid leads. While police said that they did not think the two girls murders were connected, one of the investigators from the Colon murder was moved to the Walkowicz investigations.
The last of the murders attributed to the Alphabet Killer was that of 11 year old Michelle Maenza. She seen on November 26 1973 at around 3 PM leaving school to walk home. She had planned to stop at a store where her mother had left her purse. Michelle was later seen in the passenger seat of a tan car driving quickly. The witness said she appeared to be crying as the car turned and sped out of sight.
This was not the last sighting of Michelle. At 530 pm a driver saw a car parked on the shoulder of the freeway near Walworth New York with a flat tire. There was a man standing beside it with a young girl who the witness was nearly sure was Michelle Maenza.
This time the driver stopped to try to help. However, when he approached the pair, the man pushed the girl behind him and stood in front of his license plate to avoid it being seen. The witness said the man looked at him with such anger that he turned and drove away without trying to intervene, leaving the girl alone with the killer.
2 days later Michelle Maenzad body was found in Macedon New York. She had been viciously beaten and violated by her killer. The cause of death was ligature strangulation using a rope or cord. Once again, whit cat hair was found on her body as well as the fluids of her assailant.
She also had a partially digested hamburger which corroborated the reports that she had been seen at a fast food restaurant with an unknown man 1 hour before being seen along the roadway beside the car with a flat tire. A composite sketch was made of the man she was seen with, however it did not lead to an arrest.
The police conducted many interviews and an extensive investigation. There were a handful of suspects that seemed promising however none were convicted of the murders.
The first main suspect in the murder of Carmen Colon was her uncle, a man named Miguel Colon. Shortly before she went missing, he bought a car that matched the car witnesses saw her running from. When police examined the vehicle, they found that it had been scrubbed clean with soap including the trunk.
A friend of Miguel said that 2 days after the murder Miguel had said that he had to flee the country since he had “done something bad in Rochester.” He relocated to Puerto Rico soon after. When he was brought back for questioning, he was unable to provide a strong alibi for his whereabouts when the murder occurred.
With no physical evidence connecting him to the crime, he was not indicted despite the circumstantial evidence. In 1991, Miguel committed suicide after an altercation in which he shot his wife and brother, who survived.
Another suspect in the murders was a 25 year old Rochester Firefighter named Dennis Termini. He committed more than a dozen assaults on young women during the same period as the murders and was known as the “garage rapist.”
Dennis Termini owned a vehicle similar to that seen by witnesses and lived near where Michelle Maenza was last seen alive. His crime spree ended abruptly in 1974. He kidnapped a young girl, but was pursued by police. A chase ensued which ended when he shot himself in the head.
When investigators examined his vehicle, they found white cat hair similar to that found on the Alphabet murder victims. In 2007, his body was exhumed so that dna tests could be run against the fluid found on the body of Wanda Walkowicz. It was not a match and the dna from Maenza and Colon could not be tested to confirm or reject him as the killer.
The next suspect in the murders was well known serial killer Kenneth Bianchi, one of the hillside stranglers. At the time of the murders he was working in Rochester at an ice cream shop near the first 2 murder sites. While denies any connection to the killings, he is known to have had a vehicle similar to that driven by the killer.
The last major suspect in the Alphabet murders was a man named Joseph Naso. In 2011, Naso was arrested for 4 murders he committed in California from 1977 to 1994. Each of these victims first and last names began with the same letter similar to the New York murders.
However, once again the dna testing rejecting him in the Wanda Walkowicz murder. In 2013 he was sentenced to death for the California murders. Investigators had no way to pursue him as a suspect in the Alphabet murders as there was no useable dna to compare him with for 2 of the 3 victims.
To this day, no one has been conclusively identified as the killer of these 3 girls. It is possible that there was more than 1 perpetrator although this cannot be proven. Up to the 2000s tips have come on to police, but none have led to an arrest.
It seems strange that the killer would be able to find victims with first and last names that start with the same letter which lead me to believe it was someone who would know the kids names already such as a teacher or community leader of some sort.
#serialkiller #crime #newyork
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The Mormon Monster #truecrime
Arthur Gary Bishop
Young boys were being hunted from 1979 to 1983 in SALT lake City, Utah. A monster used a fake name to join the big brother program to gain access to the children while he hunted others in braid daylight. 5 boys were murdered and many more were abused before the creature was finally stopped.
Arthur Gary Bishop, the devil of Salt Lake City.
Arthur Gary Bishop was born on September 29th, 1952 in Hinckley Utah. The bishop family was Mormon and Arthur served the church faithfully as a young man. In addition to becoming an Eagle Scout, when he was 19 he went to the Philippines to work as a missionary.
When he returned to Utah, Bishop studied accounting at Steven Henager College and graduated with honors. However the facade of an honest man soon faltered. In 1978 he was charged with embezzling money from his job at a used car dealership.
Arthur agreed to pay back the money in return for a suspended sentence. But instead of paying restitution, he fled to Salt Lake City and began using a different name. As a result an arrest warrant was issued and he was excommunicated from the church.
It was in Salt Lake City, Bishops true evil nature was revealed. He registered with the Big Brother program under the name Roger Downs. After his arrest dozens of the kids the program was meant to help came forward with allegations of abuse.
Arthur Bishop killed his first victim soon after his arrival in Salt Lake City. On October 14 1979, he used the promise of candy to lure 4 year old Alonzo Daniels into his apartment. Daniels family lived across the hall from the man they knew as Roger Downs.
After assaulting the child, Bishop beat him with a hammer and drowned him. He loaded the body into a cardboard box and carried it out to his car, walking right past Alonzo’s mother as she looked for her son. He took the boy and buried him in the desert near a town called cedar Fort.
After the first murder, Arthur Bishop sought out an alternate way to act out his sadistic impulses. He would later tell investigators that he visited animal shelters and adopted roughly 20 puppies that he would then kill. But the animals did not satisfy the monsters desires.
Just over a year later on November 9th 1980, the killer killed for the second time. He came across an 11 year old boy named Kim Peterson at a skating rink the day before. Peterson was selling a pair of roller skates and went to Bishops apartment the following day where the monster said he had money for the skates.
Witnesses saw him talking to the boy and gave investigators a description. Unfortunately police were not able to save Peterson. Once the killer got him back to his apartment, Bishop abused Peterson then beat him to death. He buried the body near his first victim.
Once again the creature waited nearly a year before he struck again. On October 20 1981 Bishop lured 4 year old Danny Davis from a grocery store nearby his apartment. The boy had been with his grandfather when he was taken.
Once again witnesses saw a man talking to Davis and police launched a massive manhunt and a 20 thousand dollar reward. Bishop was interviewed as he had been in regard to the disappearance of Daniels, but it was routine and police did not find anything suspicious about the answers he gave.
After his second interview with investigators, Arthur Bishop waited twice as long before he killed again. 6 year old Troy Ward was playing in the park on June 22 1983 when Bishop approached him. He was last seen leaving the park with a man around 4 pm. Bishop assaulted Ward in his apartment, bludgeoned him then drowned him in his bathtub and buried his body near Cottonwood Creek.
The final victim was known to spend time around the man known as Roger Downs. 13 year old Graeme Cunningham disappeared on July 14, just 2 days before he was scheduled to go on a camping trip with some friends and an adult named Roger Downs who had agreed to chaperone the boys.
When Cunningham vanished, police interviewed those involved in the trip. When they realized that the chaperone was not a parent they became suspicious and checked out his background. They found that he lived near where all of 4 of the other victims had been taken.
When police brought him in for questioning for the 3rd time they finally had some success in removing the mask from the monster. First he gave them his true identity. Then as of the dam had broken, Bishop confessed to all 5 murders. The next day he led police to the bodies he had buried.
As police investigated they found that Bishop had abused dozens of children while he was part of the Big Brother program. Disturbingly, they learned that some parents had known of his misdeeds yet had not informed the authorities despite the fact that children were going missing.
Inside Bishops home, police found the hammer he had used to bash in the boys heads as well as a pistol. They also found photos he had taken of his victims and used them to identify the boys abused by the killer. And to make matters worse, while Arthur was incarcerated, his brother was arrested for abusing children though there was no connection between their crimes.
The trial started on February 27 1984. The courtroom heard the recorded confession the killer had given. The creature giggled at some points as the jury listened to the horrific recording, bishop also imitated the boys final words in a high pitched voice mocking their deaths. He stated “I am glad they caught me, because I’d do it again.
On March 19, Arthur Bishop was found guilty 5 counts of 1st degree murder, kidnapping, and abusing a minor. After he recieved a death sentence, he apologized to the families of his victims. There were attempts at an appeal but they failed and on June 8th 1988, Arthur Bishop met with his family for the last time and on June 10th he was executed by lethal injection.
#serialkiller #crime #evil #scary #horror
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Unsolved- The Tylenol Murders #truecrime
Tylenol Murders
Have you ever wondered why pill bottles have the little seal under the cover? It can be irritating to peel off, but it’s seems like a good idea to have something to show if someone mess with the contents. It stems from a series of murders that took place in 1982. Throughout the Chicago area someone was lacing over the counter pain relievers with cyanide. When ingested, the chemical causes nausea, headaches, difficulty breathing, then seizures and death from cardiac arrest. Imagine the terror that must have gone through the Chicago and beyond when nothing that they bought in the supermarket could be trusted. Despite a thorough investigation in 1982 and a renewed investigation in 2009, the culprit was never brought to Justice.
#serialkiller #crime #unsolved
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Serial Killer Charlie Chop Off #truecrime
Charlie Chop Off
Over just over a year 4 children were murdered by a sadistic killer in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City during the early 1970s. The community was in an absolute panic as their rooftops became the killing ground for a vicious monster. He stabbed his victims repeatedly, then chopped off a certain part of their body sometimes taking it away with him. While a man confessed to 1 of the murders, he was found to be insane and institutionalized without being tried in court, leaving the remaining murders unsolved and doubt regarding the confession. With no one to blame for the deaths of the 4 boys, the world will remember the creature by the name used to refer to him in the papers:
Charlie Chop Off
The 1970’s were a time of culture and creativity in Harlem. But there was a shadowy undercurrent of drugs and crime as in all cities. In this case, heroin was being sold to the area by a crime syndicate known as the council, and led by Nicky Barnes. There was also Frank Lucas, subject of American Gangster, selling the poison.
Despite the issues, most families in Harlem were working hard to make ends meet, with many households making less than $10,000 a year, the equivalent of a little over $70000 in todays dollars. On March 9th of 1972 these families began a new nightmare that left parents in an absolute panic.
On that day, a boy was found murdered on a rooftop just blocks from his home. Douglas Owens was only 8 years old when he was killed. He had been assaulted and stabbed over 3 dozen times in the neck, chest and back. His shoes had been taken, but horrifyingly the killer had slashed at the boys genitals, nearly severing his member.
It is possible that the police could have stopped the killing after the first victim. On March 26 1972, a tip came in pointing the finger at a man named Erno Soto. It was speculated that his motivation was his wife leaving him and having a child with an African American man. This led him to became deranged and to lash out at those who blamed for his problems. However, profilers describe him as a lust killer indicating he in fact was attracted to his victims and the violence achieved some sick sort of gratification.
Despite the call, police did not investigate Soto, and on April 20th the monster struck again. An anonymous 10 year old boy was found on another rooftop 2 miles from where Owens had been found. He had been abused and ravaged with a knife like the first victim, but this time the removal of his manhood had been successful.
Luckily the boy survived the attack. His body part was found discarded in a park. When police were able to interview him, the boy told them that his attacker had been either an Italian or Hispanic man in his late 30s. He had a pockmarked face with a mole on the left side and black marks on his chin.
Perhaps due to the attention the second attack had gotten, the killer did not strike again until October 23rd. Wendell Hubbard was only 9 years old when he was murdered on the roof of the building his family lived in. He had been stabbed 17 times in the neck, chest, and stomach. Once again the killer chopped off his genitals and took them with him.
There was not another attack until 2 days prior to the anniversary of the murder of Douglas Owens. On March 7 1973, a 9 year old boy named Luis Ortiz was found dead in a basement. Breaking the past pattern, Luis was Puerto Rican while the past victims had been African American.
Despite the difference in race and location, it was clear that Ortiz had been murdered by the same killer as Owens and Hubbard. He had been stabbed 38 times and had his genitals cut off and taken away. Ortiz had been running an errand when he disappeared close to his home.
The vicious attacks outraged the community. They felt that the police were not doing enough to catch the killer. Protests and community meetings were held and children were instructed on the danger in their midst and to avoid any interaction with strangers.
In response the police formed a task force to find the killer, with 50 detectives working on the case. They received 300 tips, investigated 150 individuals, and conducted house to house searches in the area where the bodies were found. The records of thousands of offenders were reviewed to find a connection to the murders. The children of Harlem began referring to the killer as Charlie Chop Off and the press adopted the term for the elusive psychopath.
At one point, a suspect was brought to the police station and exonerated, but a mob formed and demanded he be turned over to them. The police had to put up barricades as a riot seemed imminent and eventually the man had to be disguised as a police officer and smuggled to safety. Another man was pursued through the streets and had to jump in the Harlem River to escape.
In May of 1973, Erno Soto was arrested for abusing a child, yet he was not incarcerated long enough to prevent another murder that year. On August 17 an 8 year old named Steven Cropper was found dead on a rooftop. Varying from the past methods, the killer slashed him with a razor in an X pattern instead of stabbing the boy. He also did not chop off his genitals. However his shoes were taken like prior victims and he was posed in a suggestive position.
There were so many razor slashes that his body resembled ground meat. Cropper was last seen around 4:30 and his body was found an hour later so the killer moved quickly. A limping man was seen fleeing the area matching previous sightings of the killer. This murder also took place in a different part of New York City but it was connected to Charlie Chop Off due to the body being found on a rooftop and the suspect bystanders witnessed.
There was a break in the case on May 15 1974 when Erno Soto was apprehended by members of the community after attempting to abduct a young boy. It was discovered that he had spent over a decade in prison and had been in the area where the murders occurred. Soto confessed to the murder of Steven Cropper.
However, he did not confess to the entire Charlie Chop Off murder series. Further dashing the hopes of the community and police of closing the other cases, the surviving victim did not identify Soto as his attacker, saying only that he was similar looking. This combined with the differences between the Cropper murder and the prior attacks, made it hard to definitively identify Soto as the killer they sought.
Soto was charged with the murder of Cropper and in 1976, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity and permanently placed in a mental hospital. While he was not charged with the other murders or named as the killer, there were no additional attacks after his arrest. He had been hospitalized for psychosis soon after the murder of Owens, but slipped away prior to the attack on the surviving victim.
He had also been in a mental hospital at the time of the Cropper murder, but authorities say he was easily able to come and go from the facility. The case is still officially unsolved but it seems police were confident that Soto was their killer. But we will never know for sure whether he was in fact Charlie Chop Off or whether the serial killer simply moved to a different area to continue his brutal reign of terror on a new community or began using different methods.
#serialkiller #truecrimedocumentary
#crime
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Serial Killer Derrick Todd Lee #truecrime
Derrick Todd Lee
From 1998 to 2003, a vicious killer was on the loose in Baton Rouge Louisiana, taking the lives of at least 7 women, though many believe his rampage started earlier and he is suspected of several other cases in the area. During this time, another monster, Sean Vincent Gillis was also active in the area complicating the investigation. The primary method of attack was stabbing or slashing though he also beat and strangled victims to death. The killer would either talk his way into the victims home or break in but he left no sign of forced entry, then assault his victims before killing them. Even as he killed, the monster committed a variety of less severe crimes such as robbery and trespassing, but his arrests for these crimes did not stop his more than 10 years of murder. Often Sean Vincent Gillis is referred to as the other Baton Rouge Killer, so who was the first to hold that title?
Derrick Todd Lee, the Baton Rouge Killer
Derrick todd Lee was born in St Francisville Louisiana on November 5 1968 to an abusive father and overbearing mother. His parents were not his only problem, Derrick was mentally challenged and was put into special Ed classes. He was also mistreated by the other kids who called him names. Perhaps because of the pressures at home and school, Lee began acting out at a young age.
On November 8 1981, at age 13, Lee was arrested for burglary and vandalism. He also assaulted a woman around the same time. At 16 he was arrested on suspicion of murder, but was released without being charged. There was also an attempt at insurance fraud and in July of 1988, he was arrested for robbery serving a brief sentence in jail.
In 1988, Derrick also met a woman named Jaqueline Sims and the 2 got married on August 17. Their relationship was tumultuous, marked with domestic violence. On one occasion Lee threatened his wife’s father with a gun. Life went on in this fashion for a while, with Derrick committing petty crimes until 1998, when his aggressive and violent tendencies led him to commit the murders he would become known for, but there are earlier murders he is also suspected of committing.
On April 18 1998, a 28 year old woman named Randi Mebruer disappeared from her home in Zachary, Louisiana. Her home was drenched in blood, but her body was never found. She lived just blocks away from another woman who was killed in August of 1992. 41 year old Connie Warner’s body was found in September of that year. The cause of death was a skull fracture that resulted from blunt force trauma. A hurricane had washed any evidence left by her killer and this crime is considered unsolved though Lee is strongly suspected.
The second murder that Derrick Todd Lee is known to have committed occurred on September 23 2001. The body of 41 year old Gina Wilson Green was discovered the next day in her home near the campus of Louisiana State University. A coworker had come to check on her when Wilson did not show up for work. Investigators determined that she had been assaulted prior to being strangled. Her cell phone and purse had been stolen.
4 months later on January 14 2002, a man came home to find that his wife had been murdered. Geralynn Desoto was a 21 year old LSU student. She had been beaten, stabbed and slashed. Once again the monster had assaulted the young woman before killing her. The pace of the known killings adds credibility to the theory that Lee had many more victims that have not been solved.
On May 31st the killer struck again. Charlotte Murray Pace was another LSU student and the 22 year old was one of the youngest recipients of an MBA from the school. A roommate came home to a horrific scene- the apartment was drenched in blood. Pace had put up a heroic fight against her attacker receiving defensive wounds in the process. In the end she succumbed to blood loss after being stabbed more than 80 times in her neck, face and torso. Police immediately suspected a connection to the Green murder as the 2 women lived just a few blocks from one another, and dna testing confirmed that they had indeed been committed by the same killer.
The next person that Lee is known to have attacked survived the ordeal and was able to give police information about her attacker. On July 9th 2002, Dianne Alexander was alone at her home in Breaux Bridge. Derrick todd Lee approached the rural home and asked the young woman if he could use her phone.
Once Lee was inside and knew Dianne was home alone, he attacked her. She was beaten severely and Derrick began strangling her with a phone cord as he attempted to assault her. As he did so her son got home and caught the creature from the house. He saw the attackers vehicle then called for help.
After she had recovered enough to speak to police, Dianne described her attacker so investigators could put together a composite sketch. This along with dna evidence got the wheels turning for Derrick Todd Lees eventual downfall and arrest.
Only days later on July 12, Lee was once again on the prowl for another victim. 44 year old Pam Kinamore had been at her Briarwoods estates home in Baton Rouge when she vanished. 4 days later her body was discovered discarded under a the whiskey bay bridge. She had been assaulted and her neck was cut so violently that her head had been nearly severed.
Her husband had come home to find bloodstains and signs of a struggle. Once her body had been recovered the DNA was found to match some of the other open cases that investigators were working to solve. A length of telephone cord was found near her body, which came back as a match to the cord used in the attack on Dianne Alexander. But with the time it took to connect them to the man who attacked Dianne Alexander, the monster would take 2 more lives.
23 year old marine recruit Trineisha Dene Colomb was kidnapped from a cemetery as she visited her mothers grave on November 21 2002. She was found 3 days later in a patch of woods near Lafayette by a hunter. She had been assaulted like the previous victims and beaten to death. Her cause of death was found to be blunt force trauma to the head. A pool of blood was found 30 feet from where she was found, indicating that she had been dragged through the mud.
The last known victim of Derrick Todd Lee was 26 year old Carrie Lynn Yoder. She was kidnapped from her home, which was between the the homes of Pace and Green
on the night of March 3rd of 2003. The body of the LSU student was found 10 days later in Whiskey bay close to where Pam Kinemore had been discovered. The killer had beaten, stomped, and assaulted her then strangled her to death. Police believe she was thrown from the Bridge.
On May 5 of 2003, investigators collected a dna sample from Lee in convection with the murder of Connie Warner in 1992 and the murder of Randi Mebruer. On May 22 Dianne Alexander met with police and adjusted the hairline of the composite sketch and it was again shared through the media. Calls began pouring in, pointing the finger at none other than Derrick Todd Lee.
3 days later on the 25th the dna testing results came in. The dna taken from Lee was a match to that found on Gina Greene, Charlotte Pace, Pamela Kinemore, Trineisha Colomb, and Carrie Yoder. Dianne Alexander immediately recognized Lee in a photo lineup, and his picture was circulated.
Derrick fled Louisiana, but was arrested in Atlanta Georgia on May 27 2003. The DNA evidence was too strong for the defense to overcome and the guilty verdict was unanimous for the murder of Geralyn Desoto and Charlotte pace resulting in a death sentence. Due to the emotional strain on the victims families of reliving their loved ones last moments more prosecutors declined to push for additional trials.
During the penalty phase for his convictions, it was argued that because Lees IQ was below 70, he could not fully understand the seriousness of his actions. However due to his work history and the fact that he was able to obtain a truck driving license, this argument was rejected and he was sent to death row at the Louisiana State prison in Angola in December 2004.
He later developed health issues related to heart disease that led to him getting a pacemaker. On the 21 of January 2016, these difficulties led to Derrick Tods Lee being rushed to a hospital where he died.
#truecrimedocumentary #serialkiller
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Serial Killer Danny Figueroa #truecrime
Danny Figueroa
Imagine the panic you would feel if residents in your community were being gunned down at random. This is exactly what happened in Southern California during just 2 months in 1986. 3 people would lose their lives to a self described survivalist in a rampage that struck fear into people just trying to live their lives. One victim was killed while doing yard work, one while driving to work, and the last while walking her dog. No one was safe during this reign of terror at the hands of Danny Figueroa, the Backwoods Sniper.
Danny Figueroa was born in Moreno Valley California on September 24 1959. He was a troubled child, said to enjoy spending time in the wilderness more than with his family or other people. As he grew older it was clear that something was not right with Danny. He was described as having the mental abilities of a child and preferred hanging around kids who he taught how to camp and hunt with BB guns.
His hometown, Perris California, became an imaginary battlefield where Figueroa and his young friends fought countless wars. But, to Danny, the battles became all too real in 1986. He came out of the wilderness dressed like a soldier and began a series of murders that gripped the area with fear.
On May 13, 1986, 53 year old Reynold Johnson was working in his yard. Figueroa killed him with a single shot from his rifle. A strange man had been seen lurking in the neighborhood dressed in military fatigues earlier in the day, but no one knew who the man was… yet.
Once Figueroa had crossed the line to murder and brought his fantasies to life, he was eager to kill again. Barely 2 weeks later, on May 29, he struck again. A 19 year old named Ray Webber was working on a ranch near San Timoteo canyon in Riverside county. He was found in his truck dead from a single shotgun blast that destroyed his skull.
5 days later, an undocumented migrant was walking through a field on his way to meet with some friends who were going to take him to LA. He was approached by a man wearing a military uniform and carrying a rifle, but it was not a border patrol officer like he had thought. Instead of arresting him, the man shot him and left him there bleeding. Thankfully the victim was able to crawl to get help and was rushed to a hospital.
Once he recovered and could speak the man gave a description of his attacker to police. Soon afterward police found Danny Figueroa creeping around in his military paraphernalia. They took his weapon and questioned him about the shooting which he denied. Unfortunately the victim did not identify Danny as his attacker and the killer was let go.
Only days later, Danny was on the prowl again looking for a victim. He came across Robert Jimenez barbecuing in his backyard in Indio California. Danny was walking in the area behind his home and waved to Jimenez before raising his rifle. His bullets hit their target multiple times and Danny continued firing as Jimenez ran to a neighbors house to find cover. Eventually the killer stopped shooting and fled, and thankfully Jimenez survived.
9 days later on June 17 1986, Figueroa killed his final victim. The last time anyone heard from 72 year old Mary Lengrich alive, she was going to walk her dog in San Timoteo canyon. Danny came across her and shot her 5 times in the back. When her husband reported her missing, police searched the area she had gone to and found her body. They also met 2 construction workers who had seen a man in military clothing fleeing the area.
Putting 2 and 2 together the police sought out Danny as he matched the description of the suspicious man seen near the murder scene. They spent the next week searching the desert and open space where Danny’s family said he was camping. Using dogs, helicopters, and infrared scopes they eventually caught Figueroa on June 28th.
He had been seen by hikers only 2 miles from his home. The helicopters and police zeroed in on the location and took him into custody without a shot fired. He was charged with 3 counts of murder and 1 count of attempted murder for the shooting of Robert Jimenez.
Danny confessed to the murders, claiming that the he had killed Raymond Webber out of self defense after the 19 year old had followed him in his truck as he hiked. Anxious to avoid a death penalty, Figueroa plead guilty and in late June of 1987 he was sentenced to 66 years to life in prison. Danny Figueroa died on December 20th 1998 at age 39.
#serialkillerdocumentary #crime #truecrimedocumentary
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SERIAL KILLER Anatoly Slivko #truecrime #serialkiller
For more than 20 years a depraved killer was luring the boys the Soviet city Nevinnomysk to their deaths. 7 are known to have died at his hands, but many more were taken to the woods and subjected to bizarre patterns of abuse. His victims were gently hanged until they were unconscious but so their necks would not break them then he took them down and photographed the atrocities he committed against them. Not all of his victims would survive the ordeal. He even filmed some of these bizarre hanging rituals and attacks and the videos can still be found online to this day.
Anatoly Slivko, the childrens Hangman
Anatoly Slivko was born on December 28 1938 in the Soviet city Iverbash. Not much is known of his childhood aside from the fact that he knew he was gay at an early age. Despite this he married a woman named Lyudmila in 1967 and the pair settled in Nevinnomysk. 6 years prior to his marriage he witnessed an event that would shape his crimes to come.
In 1961, Anatoly saw a horrific accident. A drunk man on a motorcycle plowed into a group of people. One of them was a boy wearing a young pioneers uniform. The young pioneers were a group for boys age 9-15 formed in 1922 when the Boy Scout organization was banned for not supporting the communist regime.
The boy was hit hard by the motorcycle and fell to the ground. He convulsed until he died there in the street and Slivko described later how excited he had become watching the boy slowly die as the air filled with the smell of gasoline and fire from the accident. The image was burned into the monsters mind and soon he would recreate the scene of a dying young pioneer over and over.
2 years after the motorcycle crash Anatoly Slivko began a youth program and began to prey on the boys that joined. He always seemed to have 1 or 2 favorites who were typically between 11 and 15 years old and of slight build. Part of the creatures scheme was to convince the boys he knew a way to make them taller. The method was for them to hang from their neck.
The hangings took place in the woods and were often photographed and filmed. Once the boys were unconscious, Slivko took them down and abused them. Each time, the monster bought a new Young Pioneers uniform for the victim to wear. 43 boys were put through this horrific process and 7 of them would never be seen alive again.
On June 2 1964, Slivko killed for the first time. 15 year old Nikolai Dobryshev had run away from home and Slivko took him under his wings. He claimed that the boys death was accidental and had not been able to revive him as he had with other boys. He panicked and dismembered then buried Nikolai’s body and destroyed the photos he had taken.
But the panic subsided and in May of 1965, he struck again. The victim was a boy named Aleksei Kovalenko. The process of dressing him as a young pioneer and hanging him until he was unconscious was the same. However this time, Slivko intentionally killed his young victim.
A year later, the youth club that Anatoly had started burned down, but the creature was not deterred. He started a new club called Chergid for boys. He waited for 8 years before he killed again. Once again his victim was another member of his club.
On November 14 1973, he took a 15 year old named Aleksander Nesmeyanov into the woods. The boy would never be seen alive again. And the killer was not done yet, and though he space the killings out, he would not wait another 8 years.
The next victim would disappear on May 11 1975. 11 year old Andrei Pogasyan told his mother that he was going to take part in a film with Anatoly Slivko in the woods nearby the city. When he vanished, police did not investigate Slivko as he was a known filmmaker and had actually won awards for it in the past.
In 1980, Slivko killed a 13 year old Sergei Fatsiev. Once again, his victim was a member of the club that the killer ran. 2 years later, he killed a 15 year old Slava Khovistik. With the growing number of missing kids, police were looking for any leads they could find and after Slivkos next victim they would not be so quick to dismiss him as a suspect.
On July 23rd 1985 a 13 year old named Sergei Pavlov told his his neighbor he was going to meet the head of the Chergrid club. When he never returned, police began to investigate his disappearance. And they soon zeroed in on the Chergrid club.
Almost all of the victims had been in Anatoly Slivkos clubs and prosecutor Tamara Langue was assigned to investigate the disappearances in November 1985. She started by interviewing the current members. What she heard from them was disturbing enough but the boys did not even know the worst of what Slivko had done.
Many of the children told the prosecutor that they had periods of time they could not remember when they spent time with Slivko. This was when they were unconscious and being abused by the monster. They also told her about the experiments to make them taller by hanging that Slivko had performed. After hearing the same story repeated severely times, Langue prepared the police to arrest the club leader in December of 1985 after investigating for 1 month.
After what we can only assume was an aggressive interrogation, Anatoly Slivko confessed. He spent January and February leading police to the bodies of his victims. They were able to recover all but his first victims remains. They bodies had been either chopped up or burned then buried in the woods. The killer had kept the shoes of his victims and they can be seen in the haunting films he made.
In 1989 Anatoly Slivko was sentenced to death for 7 counts of murder, 7 counts of of abusing a child, and 7 counts of abusing a corpse. He was sent to Novocherassk prison where he would remain until 1989. In that year he gave police insights into the mind of a monster to help them better hunt a new serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo who murdered 52 women and children. Later that same day The time came for the creatures sentence to be carried out. On September 16 1989, Anatoly Slivko executed by a gunshot to the head.
#documentary #crime
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Serial Killer Brian Dugan #truecrime
From February 25 1983 to June 2 1985, a depraved killer took the lives of 3 people in the suburbs of Chicago. The youngest to die at the hands of this creature was only 7 years old. He also assaulted multiple women and girls in addition to the murders. In his childhood he exhibited Al 3 of the early indicators of a psychopath who could grow up to kill.
Brian Dugan, the Illinois Creeper
Brian Dugan was born on September 23rd 1956 in Nashua, New Hampshire. There were complications during his birth which family suspected led to brain damage and the problems that plagued his childhood. His alcoholic parents had 5 kids- 4 sons and 1 daughter.
From an early age Brian suffered from extreme headaches. They were accompanied by vomiting and he was prescribed medication until he was a teenager. In addition to these headaches he demonstrated signs of psychopathy and the warning signs of a future killer.
The 3 warning signs, known as Macdonalds triad, are bedwetting, cruelty to animals, and fire setting, and all 3 were present throughout Dugans childhood. At age 8 he burned down the family’s garage and at 13 he used gasoline to burn a cat. In 1967, the Dugan family moved to Lisle, Illinois.
In 1972, at age 16, Brian’s legal troubles began. He dropped out of school and ran away from home and was arrested for burgulary and spent some time in a group home. When he returned home his brother reported that he attempted to touch him inappropriately indicating possible abuse at the group home.
Dugan would later claim that in 1972, he met a man in a grocery store who offered him a job. The 16 year old went with the man, who instead abused him then dropped him off after giving him some money. In 1978, Dugan saw the man on television being arrested and learned his name was John Wayne Gacy.
In 1974, Brian tried to kidnap a young girl from a train station. He was arrested, but the charges were eventually dropped. He became more violent, and threatened to kill his sister and her child in 1975. This was the same year that his father died of cirrhosis of the liver.
Dugans relatively minor crimes continued until a 3 year incarceration from 1979 to 1982 in the Menard Correctional facility. He would later tell one of his brothers how he had been assaulted there and how a person had to submit or die when in prison to the demands of other inmates. This victimization spurred the violence in Dugan to commit heinous acts against defenseless victims soon after his release.
The first murder occurred on February 25th, 1983. 10 year old Jeanine Nicarico was kidnapped from her home in Naperville, Illinois. She had stayed home sick from school and was alone while her parents were at work and her sister was at school. Dugan had taken her then abused her before beating her to death. Her body was found on February 27th several miles from her home.
This case received a lot of publicity and a reward was offered for the arrest of her kidnapper. A 20 year old named Rolando Cruz tried to claim the reward by implicating 2 others in the murder. Instead police arrested all 3 and they were put on trial for the killing. 2 of the 3 would end up convicted and sent to prison where they would remain until authorities were forced to release them due to evidence pointing to their innocence.
On July 15 1984 the monster struck again. 27 year old Donna Schnorr was driving when Dugan noticed her. He followed her for a while then ran her off the road. The creature dragged her from her car assaulted and beat her. Dugan then dragged her to a quarry and drowned her.
There was not another killing until Jen 2 1985. Throughout May he abducted and assaulted at least 2 women and tried to take a 3rd but was unable to get her in the car. The series of attack cumlminatwd with the murder of 7 year old Melissa Ackerman.
The young girl was riding her bike in Somonauk Illinois with her friend, 8 year old Opel Horton. A man driving a blue Gremlin stopped and got out then approached the girls. He acted like he was looking for directions until they were within reach. Dugan threw Opel into the car then grabbed Melissa to do the same. While he wrestled her into the car, Opel got out and ran for her life.
With Ackerman in his car; the monster sped off. He assaulted the young girl then drowned her in a creek 15 miles from where he had taken her. 2 weeks later, her body was found only days after what would have been her 8th birthday.
The day after the the last murder, police arrested Dugan at his job. They were following up on an unrelated assault against a woman. Soon they got a description of the killer and his car from Opel Horton and charged Brian Dugan with the murder of Melissa Ackerman.
He confessed to all 3 murders. But later only plead guilty to the killing Ackerman and Schnorr after police found evidence in his car connecting him to the last murders. He was trying his best to avoid the death penalty for the vicious killings. He succeeded and received 2 life sentences. But he slipped through the cracks with regard to the Jeanine Nicorico murder, at least for a while.
In 1995, the 2 men who had been convicted Nicoricos murder were released from prison. An investigation led to the indictment of 14 7 police officers, 3 prosecutors, and 4 sheriffs deputies on charges for conspiring to convict the 2 men despite evidence pointing to their innocence. They were given a $3.5 million dollar settlement for the time they had spent behind bars.
Then the state took its time putting together a case against Dugan for the Nicorico murder. He was indicted in 2005 for the crime after advances in dna testing allowed investigators to match Dugan’s to the dna found on the young girl.
In 2009, he plead guilty but was thankfully still sentenced to death. However in 2011 Illinois abolished capital punishment, and Brian Dugan is currently housed at the Pontiac Correctional facility.
Cruz and the two others, Alejandro Hernandez and Stephen Buckley were then charged with the assault and murder of Jeanine. Despite the lack of evidence, Cruz and Hernandez were convicted and sentenced to death. Buckley’s trial resulted in a deadlocked jury and the charges he was not retried. The 2 men convicted would remain in prison until 1995 when they were able to use the true killers confession to get exonerated. Even so the authorities had this information for years before their release.
#serialkiller #truecrimedocumentary #crime #horror #evil
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Serial Killer Juan Corona #truecrime
Juan Corona
Just 2 years before The discovery of Dean Corll, a different serial killer shocked the world with the sheer number of lives he took. In Northern California over less than 4 months in 1971, this monster lured at least 25 drifters into the fields where he worked. In his position as a labor contractor, he had access to transitory men whose disappearances would not be readily noticed. The monster then hacked them to death with a machete before burying them there in the fields. A list was later discovered in his possession with 34 names, several of which were known victims leading to the suspicion that the men on the list might all be people that he killed including many that have never been discovered.
Juan Corona- the Machete Maniac
Juan Corona was born in Autlán Mexico on February 7 1934 to Sebastian and Candida Corona. Opportunities were limited in his home, so in 1950 at age 16, Juan dropped out of school to cross the border into California. The industrialists teenager worked on various farms during the day and at night he took classes to perfect his English.
In 1953 he moved to the Yuba city area to be closer to his older brother who had moved to the us in 1944. Later that year in October, Corona married a woman from Sacramento named Gabriella Hermosillo. The couple split up after only 3 months and 2 years later in 1955, the area was devastated by floods which left 38 people dead many of whom were undocumented migrants.
Juan Corona had a fear of water and was a schizophrenic. The flooding had a massive impact on his mental health, and in January of 1956 he was sent to an insane asylum. While there he received repeated shock treatments until they deemed him cured and deported him back to Mexico. Corona returned later that same year, this time legally.
In 1959 he married again, this time to a woman named Gloria Moreno. Over the next years, the couple had 4 daughters and Corona established himself as a labor contractor. During this time he also demonstrated a violent temper and hostility towards gay men. In March of 1970 he was once again committed to the asylum for a short time. But the treatment did not work and in May the violence began.
On May 25th, a man named Jose Romero Raya was eating at the cafe that Coronas older brother owned. He was in the bathroom when he was attacked. Corona assaulted him and used a machete to hack into his face and head leaving him barely alive. Police came and Juan was considered a suspect, but Jose chose to sue his brother instead as the owner of the cafe.
The lawsuit resulted in Coronas brother being ordered to pay Jose $250,000, but he instead sold his properties and returned to Mexico. Without his brother to hold him accountable, juan Coronas violence escalated leaving dozens dead. The mo used by the killer was to find men who were looking for work through his job as a labor contractor and lure them out to the fields he had been hired to find workers for. Once alone Corona used a machete to slash and stab at them before burying them nearby. Many of the bodies had wounds inflicted after they were dead indicating a frenzied attack.
Due to the transitory lifestyles of the men Corona killed, it is difficult to time each murder exactly. They were drifters with substance abuse problems who were not well known in the community and some who have still not been identified. However, based on the analysis of the bodies when they were discovered, a window can be established for when they were murdered though they often overlap.
The first 4 were killed between February 25 and May 11 of 1971. John Joseph Haluka was 52 years old when he crossed paths with the killer after coming to California from Mew Jersey. Like nearly every victim he had been hacked and stabbed with a large knife or a machete in the head and neck. Sigurd E Beierman was 62 years old at the time of his death. He had lived in Marysville, where Corona found workers. 2 of the victims from this window have not been identified.
From the last 2 days of February to May 13, 5 men would lose their lives to the depraved killer. Clarence Hocking of Illinois was 53 when Corona killed him. There were 2 more unidentified bodies were determined to have been killed during this time. Pennsylvanian Albert Leon Hayes nicknamed Scratchy was 58 when he met his end. One of the victims from this period stands out as 62 William Emery Kamp of Minnesota was shot with a 9mm rather than savaged with a blade.
The ages of the 25 known victims were all but 4 either in their mid 50’s or older. These men led hard lives and were unlikely to put up much of a fight against the abuse Corona inflicted upon them particularly after being clubbed. Many were found with their pants pulled down as a sign of what they went through. 62 year old Texan Warren Jerome Kelley was killed on March 30th 1971.
On April 28, Corona killed 56 year old Mark Beverly Shields who had come from the nearby city of Santa Rosa. Late April and May were the bloodiest days of the depraved killers murder spree. New Yorker John Henry Jackson was 64 when he fell into the hands of the monster. Joseph Maczak of Illinois was 54. It should be noted that none of Juan Coronas victims were reported missing before the makeshift graveyards were found.
Donald Smith of Kansas who went by the name Red was 60 years old when he was killed. James Wylie Howard came from New Mexico and was 64 years old. In Mid May, a 60 year old man from South Dakota named Lloyd Wallace Wentzel was killed. With many of the later victims the death date is a lot more certain.
Sam Bonafide who also went by Joe Carriveau came from Washington state was 55 when he was killed on May 6 1971.
Between May 9 to the 13th 43 year old Edward Martin Cupp of Missouri was massacred by the twisted psychopath.
Charles Levy Fleming was killed on May 11. The 67 year old had come from Louisiana for work. The very next day Corona murdered 56 year old Jonah Raggio Smallwood of Tennessee. His nickname was Driftwood, indicating a highly transient lifestyle even among the others who moved with the seasons for work.
Around the same time as the murder of Smallwood, a 56 year old man from Arkansas named Elbert Riley was also killed. 3 days later, on May 15th another man from Arkansas was murdered, 59 year old Paul Buell Allen. May saw Corona accelerate the pace of his violence until he was in a frenzy of death, taking a victim almost every day.
Raymond Reand Muchache was killed on May 18 1971. The 47 year old had come from Fall River Mills, California finding work where he could. The first victim to be found was also the youngest, 40 year old Kenneth Edward Whiteacre of Oakland California was killed on May 19 by blows to the head, throat, and torso from a machete as well as blunt force trauma to the head, likely to incapacitate him. Even after Whiteacres body was discovered, Corona was not done yet.
Melford Everett Sample was the last to die at the hands of the killer. The 59 year old had started in Nebraska and ended up in a field in California alone with a monster on May 21 1971. By this time, bodies were being discovered. On May 19, a farmer noticed a hole that looked eerily like a grave on his property. When he saw that it was filled the next day he investigated and discovered the body of Kenneth Edward Whiteacre. Days later another the grave of Charles Fleming was found.
Other fresh holes were dug up and more bodies were found. After just over a week of digging, 25 bodies were found with similar machete or large knife wounds to their heads and bodies. In one of the graves, receipts were found with Juan Coronas name on them and another had bank deposit slips with the killers name as well. Witnesses came forward and said that they had seen some of the victims riding in Coronas truck around the time they disappeared. With the circumstantial evidence building, police served a search warrant at the killers home on May 26 1971.
Inside Coronas lair, investigators found a mountain of more evidence. A bloody machete, knives, and club were seized along with bloodstained clothes and a pistol. Investigators found bloodstains in Coronas van and meat receipts that matched those found in the graves. This is also when they discovered the list of names. In early 1972, the death penalty was ruled unconstitutional in California and so life in prison was the worst sentence that Corona could receive for his vicious crimes.
The trial began on September 11 1972. Due to a change of venue, it took place in a Fairfield court right by where I work. While Corona did plead not guilty, his legal team did not call any witnesses to speak on his behalf. The evidence against him was strong, though there were some hiccups in the prosecution. A witness who had stated he saw Corona with the victims became unsure after the defense cross examined him.
The defense also tried to put the blame on Juan’s brother, who had a history of violence based on the false accusation made against him for the bathroom attack at his cafe. But these efforts were in vain and on January 18 1973, juan Corona was found guilty of all 25 murders. During the time leading up to the trial, he had health issues and so he was first incarcerated at the Vacaville Medical facility.
While at the medical prison, Corona was attacked by another inmate who stabbed him more than 30 times, supposedly because he had failed to say excuse me. After being treated for his injuries, Corona was transferred to Soledad state prison now with only one functional eye. His wife divorced him in 1974 and he lost an appeal in 1982.
The end of the line for the killer would be Corcoran state prison. After transferring to Corcoran in 1992, Corona was housed in the sensitive needs yard where hang dropouts and offenders whose charges put them at risk from other inmates are housed. In Coronas case it was due to dementia. After repeated failed attempts at parole, Juan Corona died on March 4th 2019.
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The Black Dahlia Murder #truecrime
Black Dahlia
On January 15 1947 one of hollywoods biggest mysteries was born. A woman named Betty Betsinger was walking with her infant daughter when she saw what looked to be a store mannequin abandoned in a Los Angeles Park. Upon closer inspection, she realized it was in fact a body that had been horrifically mutilated. This case has become almost a piece of Hollywood folk lore and the killer has never been identified. However, we do know what happened to the poor woman who was left in the park that day. She had been drained of blood and sliced in half at the waist. The corpse had been washed after death and strips had been sliced from her legs and breasts. Her face had been sliced to mimic a hideous grin similar to the Joker in batman. The woman’s intestines had been neatly rolled up and tucked beneath her lower half and the segments of her body were staggered about a foot apart and her limbs had been posed. This case has worked its way into popular culture, sometimes obscuring the vicious and sadistic nature of the murder.
Elizabeth Short- the black dahlia murder
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Serial Killer Albert Fish #truecrime
Albert Fish, the Brooklyn Vampire
The monster known as Albert Hamilton Howard Fish was born on May 19 1870 to Randall and Ellen Fish. His father was more than twice his mothers age and was 75 when Albert was born. There were 3 other Fish children and a 4th named Albert who had passed away. Hamilton Howard would adopt his deceased brothers name.
Mental illness was sprinkled throughout the family. Alberts mother suffered from hallucinations, while one of his brothers was institutionalized. Several other relatives had slightly less severe conditions. In 1875, Randall Fish had a heart attack and Albert was put into an orphanage when his mother could not support the family.
It was at the orphanage that the real trouble began for young Albert. He was at Saint Johns Orphange in Washington DC until 1880 and endured horrific abuse. The children were regularly whipped in front of each other. And over time, Albert began to enjoy both being beaten and watching the other kids suffer. It was here he took the name Albert to avoid being called Ham and Eggs.
In 1880, his mother got a steady job and was able to take her son home. But the damage and violence from the orphanage stayed with him. He began harming himself wit a studded paddle, and in 1882 he started spending time with an older boy who pushed Albert further into depravity. He was introduced to bizarre practices such as eating human waste.
Around this time Albert started going to the public baths where he would watch other boys change. In 1890, Fish moved to New York City and worked as a male prostitute. He also began abusing young boys. After spending 8 years in this way, his mother arranged a marriage for him with a teenager named Anna Mary Hoffman.
The new couple had 6 kids, whom Albert mistreated in a variety of ways, taking inspiration from the treatment he received at St. John’s orphanage. Being married did not stop any of Alberts depravities. He went on a date with a man to a wax museum where he saw models of human organs that had been opened up to show the inner workings. This spurred an interest in recreating the wax sculptures using real human parts.
In 1903, fish spent a brief time in the infamous Sing Sing prison for theft. One of the first known victims of Alberts abuse was a teenager named Thomas Kedden. He met the 19 year old while working in Wilmington Delaware. His later writings indicate that Thomas was mentally handicapped, but this did not stop Albert.
Over 2 weeks he tortured the young man in an old barn. Fish had intended on killing and dismembering him, but the hot weather gave him pause as he feared the smell would get him caught as he transported the meat. Instead he cut the boys member off and left him in the barn with a $10 bill, never to hear from him again.
In 1917, Alberts wife left him, taking most of their possessions. This pushed the creature further over the line of insanity. He began having auditory hallucinations, believing that people from the Bible were giving him commands and also began pushing needles into his groin and stomach. The other ways that Albert hurt himself included using a studded paddle and also lighting a wick with lighter fluid on fire after inserting it into himself. He also encouraged his children and their friends to use the paddle on him.
Alberts violence against children also escalated with his preferred victims being handicapped or black kids as he did not think their disappearances would be as noticeable if he killed them. And unfortunately this seems to have been the case as the 3 known murder victims were all white children.
The first of Alberts known victims was an 8 year old boy named Francis McDonnell. The boy and his mother, Anna, had seen a man walking near their home in Staten Island on July 15, 1924. Anna would later describe how the man shuffled down the road talking to himself and how “everything about him seemed faded and gray.”
That afternoon Francis disappeared while playing in the park. His friends said that they last saw him following an an old man into the woods. When his family and police searched the woods, they found him. He had been stripped naked, beaten, and strangled with his own suspenders. The viciousness of the crime made police question whether an elderly man could have done it. Aside from the sightings, the only clues they had were the raisins that the boy had eaten prior to his death, and which they believed had been used to lure him into the woods.
The next known victim of Fish, was a 4 year old boy named Billy Gaffney. On February 11, 1927 the child was playing outside his family’s apartment with the neighbors. They were being watched by a 12 year old, who went inside for a moment to check in his baby sister. When he came back outside Billy and another boy were gone. Billy would never been seen again, and the other child was found hiding. When asked he said that the boogeyman had taken Billy.
It was not until after Albert was arrested that the truth about what happened to Billy would come to light. In a horrific letter, the creature described what he did to the boy. Be warned this is graphic and shows the pure evil inside of the monster. Fish took him to a dump where they would not be seen. He stripped him and burned the clothes and tied Billy up and left him there so he could return later with his tools. He used a belt that he had cut into strips to whip the child. He then cut off the boys ears, nose, gouged out his eyes, and and slit his mouth from ear to ear.
By this time Billy was dead. Fish opened his stomach and drank blood from the wound. He cut up the body and packaged most of it in weighted potato sacks to dispose of in some water along the road, but he put the facial parts, some stomach, and his pelvic area from just below his bellow button to the upper thigh he put into a bag to take with him to eat.
The sick creature detailed how he cooked and ate the pieces. He roasted the boys behind with bacon and made a stew with the pieces he had cut from Billy’s face. He wrote that he had never tasted anything as good as the boys backside.
The case that would lead to Alberts arrest is likely the most well known murder that he committed. On June 3, 1928, he answered an add that the Budd family had put in a newspaper seeking work for their son Edward. Fish had planned on taking the boy with him, but when he arrived at their Manhattan home he saw the Buds daughter, 10 year old Grace and made up his mind to take her.
He had brought some small gifts for the family that he said came from the farm he claimed he wanted Edward to work on. He pulled a wad of cash out and asked Grave to count it. The family was extremely poor and they had never seen such wealth. When she was done counting he gave her 50 cents for some candy as a reward and some money to her brother to go to the movies.
The Budd family had been drawn in by the disgusting creature and so when he asked if he could take Grace to his nieces birthday they were hard pressed to refuse as the girl rarely got to have fun and Fish had presented himself as a wealthy and kind man. When they did not return, the budds contacted the police. They found out that the name Fish had given them was fake and that the address of the party did not exist.
Despite tips and information on the man who had taken Grace, police made little progress in the case. This would change in November 1934. The monster sent the Budd family a letter, which Edward read aloud to her parents as they were illiterate. It told of a man the killer knew who had worked on a steam ship. The man had visited China during a famine and found human meat being sold. The description of the meat had led Fish to want to try human meat for himself.
He then went on to write how he had tricked the Budds into letting him take their daughter. Fish took the young girl to an empty house he had picked out for the murder. He strangled the poor girl then cut her into pieces. According to the letter, it took the monster 9 days to eat all of her. While the letter mortified the Bud family, it also provided police with some clues as to the identity of its author.
The envelope was stamped with the letters NYPCBA which stood for the New York Chauffeur’s Benevolent Association. Police learned that some of this stationary had been taken by a janitor and left in a boarding house room. Investigator learned from the landlord that a man named Albert Fish had just vacated the same room and expected mail which he asked the landlord to hold for him.
The lead investigator, William F King, staked out the boarding house to wait for the killer to return. When fish came back he took him to the police station for questioning. The monster did not attempt to hide the fact that he had killed Grace. He was locked up and his trial began on March 11 1935.
The trial lasted 10 days during which Fish claimed he was insane. Psychiatrists detailed the sick compulsions that drove the creature to kill which included sadism, masochism, piquerism which is when a person derives pleasure from penetrating a person with sharp objects, eating human waste, pedophilia, and necrophelia.
Alberts children testified how he had taught them various “games” that involved abuse and masochism. By the trials end, there was little doubt that Fish was insane for the jurors, but that he was insane and evil enough that he had to be punished and he was sentenced to death. He would remain in prison until his execution. On January 16 1936 Albert Fish was sent to the electric chair.
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The Christmas Massacre of 2008 #truecrime
In 2008, on Christmas eve, a horrific massacre ripped a family apart leaving 10 dead. The killer knocked on the front door dressed as Santa and carrying several pistols as well as a wrapped package. Within that package was a homemade flamethrower that this vicious monster used on his victims. What made the attack more gut wrenching was the fact that the perpetrator was the ex husband of one of the victims who had come for revenge on her and her family as they celebrated the holiday. None of the attendees of the party were safe as he shot anyone from his young niece to his elderly in laws. Once he was done, he torched th home with several gallons of gasoline before he made his escape.
Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, the Santa Claus Massacre
Bruce Jeffrey Pardo was born in the San Fernando valley on March 23 1963. He graduated from John H Francis Polytechnic high school in Los Angeles then he attended California State University, Northridge to study computer science. After graduating Pardo, went to work as a software engineer at the Jet Propulsion lab in La Canada Flintridge.
Friends and colleagues remember him as a friendly and smart man. At work he came and went as he liked, often vanishing at a report of snow to go skiing. He even hacked the computers to find out his coworkers salaries. He did not seem to think that others mattered much.
In the late 80s, Pardo was engaged. His fiancé used her savings to pay for their wedding and honeymoon. Instead of going through with the ceremony, Bruce drained the last of the money from his fiancés bank account and went to Palm Springs. By 2001 he was living with a different woman with their son.
In early January, their son fell into the pool and his girlfriend came home to find him screaming and holding their child. Pardo stayed by the hospital bed for a week, but when the doctors determined that the young boy would not regain full brain function, Bruce left and neither the child or his girlfriend ever saw him again.
In 2004, he met a woman named Sylvia Orza. They were introduced by a coworker, Sylvia’s brother in law. No one could know what horrors laid in store. They only knew that Sylvia and her 3 kids could use a man and a second income stream and that she and her kids might help ground Pardo. On January 26, 2006, the 2 married.
While the marriage started off pleasantly enough, they descended into arguments over money and Pardo became withdrawn with Sylvia’s family. After a while of trying to make things work, the couple split up. In June of 2008, a judge ordered Bruce to pay child support which he never did. Meanwhile he had begun planning an act of violence that would mar the Christmas holiday for countless people.
From June to November of 2008, he bought 5 9 millimeter pistols- one per month which was the maximum allowed under the law. In September he also obtained a Santa suit to wear during the attack. On December 18 2008, the divorce was finalized, pushing Bruce Jeffrey Pardo over the edge.
On Christmas Eve, Sylvia and her extended family were having a holiday party at her parents house. Around 11:30 PM most were gathering near the front door preparing to say goodbye. Pardo knocked on the front door wearing the Santa suit with 4 of his pistols and a large package that was wrapped to look like a gift.
When the door opened, his 8 year old niece, Katrina Yusefpolsky, saw him and yelled out that Santa had come. As she ran towards him, Bruce shot her in the face. He then proceeded to fire on the more than 2 dozen people as they fled. The little girls uncles were shot next, Charles and James Ortega tried to fight off the shooter despite their injuries.
As Pardo moved through the house executing people as he went, the 8 year old girls mother, Leticia Ortega, called 911. Bruce had been recognized and she was able to tell authorities who the killer was. He was indiacrimate in his shooting, no one was safe, but he paid special attention to certain people at the party.
He killed his in laws, 70 year old Alicia Ortega and 80 year old Joseph Ortega. Both died as a result of several gunshots as was his ex wife, Sylvia. Her brothers who had tried to stop the killing, 52 year old James and 50 year old Charles also did not survive their injuries. Bruce also killed 3 of his 4 sister in laws, 45 year old Cheri Lynn, 52 year old Teresa, and 46 year old Alicia.
When the shooting was done, Pardo unwrapped the package he had brought. Inside was a air compressor that he had converted into a flamethrower. He drenched the house in gasoline then ignited it. More people were injured as they jumped out of upstairs windows.
Upstairs, the youngest person to die that night, 17 year old Michael Ortiz had been working on his computer. As the home was engulfed in flames he was trapped and burned. The inferno was so intense that it took 80 fire fighters well over an hour to put it out as the flames reached as high as 50 feet in the air.
Leaving death and destruction in his wake, the psychotics killer changed clothes and drove the 2008 Dosge Caliber he had rented to his brothers house in Sylmar California. Then Bruce Jeffrey Pardo placed one of the pistols in his mouth and blew off the top of his head. His brother got home and him found him there around 3:30AM Christmas Day.
Some speculate that Bruce had not intended on ending his own life after the attack and evidence supports this. He had $17,000 in cash strapped to his leg and in his shoe was a plane ticket to Illinois. Around the corner from his brothers house was another rental car he planned to use to escape in. But things did not go to plan. When setting the fire, Pardo had burned himself badly which may have led him to scrap his escape plan.
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Serial Killer Ryan Scott Brinston Arrested in 2020 #truecrime
Over just a few short weeks in 2020, a vicious monster took the lives of 3 people and attacked at least 2 others who barely survived the ordeal in Oroville and Las Molinos, California and a motive has never been determined for the heinous crimes. The killer scouted out his victims as he worked as a tree trimmer, hmm that sounds familiar. The creature targeted older customers with the youngest of the 3 he killed being 57 while the others were at least in their 80’s. Once a person or couple had been selected he returned alone after his crew left and slashed his victims throats then left without stealing a thing. The killing was what he came for.
Ryan Scott Blinston, the Northern California Cutthroat
Ryan Scott Blinston was born on August 26, 1983 in California. There is little information aside from this on his early years, but he entered into the public record at age 22, when he stole a ford explorer in Hanover, New Hampshire. He was charged with felony theft.
The next time Blinston pops up is in 2013. He had returned home to California and was using methamphetamines which led him to burglary and theft. Police arrested him in possession of 3 stolen guns while driving a stolen car. The drugs pushed him over the edge into crime, but after his release, he was ready to escalate further, this time into violence. But what is strange is that the murders did not seem to be motivated by theft.
In the year 2020, Blinston was working as part of a tree trimming crew that serviced Butte and Tehama county in california, just north of Sacramento. In mid May they were doing a job for an elderly couple in Los Molinos. Loreen Severs was 88 and her husband Homer was 91 at the time. Blinston scouted out the couple as they worked and realized how vulnerable the couple was.
The night before the murders, cell phone tracking showed that Blinston returned to the house again, perhaps to see their routine. Then, around 7:45 AM on May 23, he came back. This time, he did not simply watch the elderly couple. Blinston broke into the home and attacked Loreen and Homer. Loreen died from a stab wound to the upper torso and both had their throats slashed. Thankfully Homer survived the ordeal and was rushed to the hospital in a helicopter.
Once Blinston crossed the line to murder, he seems to have been unleashed internally as he soon killed again. On June 4, less than 2 weeks after the Severs murders, the creature was working another tree trimming job. Sandra George was 82 years old and likely never suspected the evil in her midst.
The drug addled monster waited until the rest of the crew left after the job was done then returned to the home. He broke in and attacked the elderly woman, slashing her throat and leaving her dead in the home. She was discovered the next afternoon around 5pm and declared dead on the scene.
The final murder took place only 2 days after the George killing. This time the victim was an acquaintance of Blinston rather than a customer. 56 year old Vicky Cline was last seen with the monster in downtown Oroville on June 6 2020. Later that day, he doused her car in gasoline and lit it on fire. When it was discovered police searched it for DNA and fingerprint evidence. Her body was not discovered until 3 weeks later on June 21 a week after the creature had been arrested. She had been dumped in a river an hour away from Oroville in the town called Belden.
Police were able to connect Blinston to the burned car and before Clines body was found, police wanted to question Blinston. They learned that he had been camping out on a property in the town of Brush creek and SWAT was sent to arrest him. When they arrived, they discovered yet another crime in progress.
Blinston was outside a mobile home with a hatchet trying to break in. When he saw the police, he ran but was soon captured after being pepper sprayed and tased. Inside the trailer, they found a wounded man who had had his throat slashed. He told police that he had let the killer move into the trailer for the night after Blinston complained of bears on the property.
He woke up to find the creature standing over him. Blinston had stabbed him in the throat, yet the man was able to fight him off and force him out of the mobile home. Now in custody, police were able to connect Blinston to the killings they had been working to solve in the area. He was charged with 3 counts of 1st degree murder and 2 counts of attempted murder.
2 years later in May of 2022, the trial began. The prosecution called dozens of witnesses and hundreds of pieces of evidence including photos, cell phone tracking data, and business records that all pointed to Blinston as the killer. On August 4, he was found guilty on all charges and given 3 life sentences without the possibility of parole. Ryan Scott Blinston is currently housed at the Pleasant Valley state prison in Coalinga.
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Serial Killer Andrew Cunanan True Crime
Andrew Cunanan was an American serial killer responsible for several deaths including his own in the late 1990’s. This true crime documentary will examine the killer, crimes, and victims.
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Serial Killer Joseph Miller
Joseph Miller is an American serial killer responsible for the deaths of at least 6 women in Chicago and Peoria Illinois. He was arrested after the first 2 murderers but was released to kill again.
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Serial Killer David Allen Lucas
David Allen Lucas is an American serial killer who operated in the San Diego area of California. He committed at least 3 murders by sawing at his victims throats including a 3 year old boy. He is currently on death row in San Quentin prison.
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Serial Killer Randy Kraft True Crime Documentary
Randy Kraft is an American serial killer responsible for up to 67 murders. He was convicted and sentenced to death for 16 of these heinous crimes.
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Serial Killer- The Axeman of New Orleans Part 2
The Axeman of New Orleans is an unidentified serial killer who operated in the early part of the 20th century. This is the conclusion of the case and will examine the crimes and victims of this vicious killer.
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