Major Crimes and True Crime

Nazi photo album made from HUMAN SKIN of a death camp victim is discovered after collector noticed book cover had 'a tattoo, human hair and bad smell' A gruesome WWII photo album made from the skin of Nazi death camp victims has been found at a bric-a-brac antiques market in Poland. The battered WWII album was handed over to staff at the Auschwitz Memorial Museum after the buyer noticed the cover had 'a tattoo, human hair and a bad smell'. Museum experts have now analysed the album's cover and binding and say it is likely that the skin came from an inmate murdered at the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald, in Germany. They added that it was 'without doubt proof of a crime against humanity.' The wife of camp commandant Karl-Otto Koch, Ilse Koch is said to have had male prisoners with interesting tattoos murdered and then had their skin turned into interior designs. Her interests included lampshades, books, albums, table covers and thumbs whic...

Haunting photographs of Victorian patients who were banished to lunatic asylums are brought to life after being These haunting portraits of Victorian patients banished to asylums have been brought back to life after being painstakingly colourised. One of the striking pictures shows Frances Mary Antoinette Spackman whose husband Henry had her declared insane in 1901 and sent her to a private asylum near Bristol, then later to the Herrison Asylum in Dorset. Her husband Henry died in 1904 and left his considerble wealth to Frances, but for an unknown reason the maintenance payments stopped in 1908, she was removed from Herrison and sent to Wells Asylum as a pauper lunatic. She died in May 1909 from a twisted bowel and was buried in an unmarked grave in Mendip Hospital Cemetery, in Somerset.  Other haunting photographs show a woman with a vacant expression, open mouth, dribbling saliva, and fixed attitude, John Constantin who was deaf mute and admitted aged just 10 befo...

The 'blonde poison' Jew who betrayed her people to help the Nazis: The story of Stella Goldschlag who lured 3,000 Jews to their doom - even after her family were sent to Auschwitz A Jewish woman, nicknamed 'blonde poison,' lured 3,000 to their doom as she collaborated with the Nazis, even after her family were killed at Auschwitz.  Stella Goldschlag was a beautiful, blue-eyed girl, raised in a middle-class Jewish family, who turned traitor to help the gestapo capture Jews living in Berlin's underground. The beauty showed a voracious appetite for her role, luring men to the bedroom, snaring widows at funerals and turning in her old classmates.  Although she originally agreed to work for the Nazis to protect her family, she continued to do so even after they had been killed at Auschwitz.  The shocking tale is revealed in a new novel, 'Stella', based on her life by Takis Wurger. Born in 1922, Stella Goldschlag's family tried to flee Germany aft...

In the Early 1900s, Albino African-American Brothers Were Stolen From Their Virginia Home to Be Circus Performers. This Is Their Story. Their music briefly became famous, but today their history is mostly forgotten. In an excerpt from her book Truevine, Beth Macy resurrects their mother’s fight to free her boys. Talk to any person of color over age 60 in my part of Virginia and they know the story by heart: Black children reared during the postwar baby boom rarely left home without being admonished by their mothers, “Y’all stay together now or you might be kidnapped, just like Eko and Iko.” Eko and Iko were the sideshow stage names of George and Willie Muse, the grandsons of former slaves. They were born at the turn of the century to parents who sharecropped tobacco, like everyone else in the rural enclave of Truevine, Virginia. George and Willie were just six and nine, as the elders tell the story, when a circus promoter crept onto the tobacco field where they were wo...

The Nazi Persecution of Black People in Germany When the Nazis came to power in 1933, there were several thousand Black people living in Germany. The Nazi regime harassed and persecuted them because the Nazis viewed Black people as racially inferior. While there was no centralized, systematic program targeting Black people for murder, many Black people were imprisoned, forcibly sterilized, and murdered by the Nazis. When Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933, there were several thousand Black people living in Germany. The Nazi regime discriminated against them because the Nazis viewed Black people as racially inferior. During the Nazi era (1933–1945), the Nazis used racial laws and policies to restrict the economic and social opportunities of Black people in Germany. They also harassed, imprisoned, sterilized, and murdered an unknown number of Black people.  Before World War I, several thousand Black people came to Germany from Africa, North and South A...

The Germans invaded Ukraine in 1941, and they began to order Jews to the ghettos. Esther Stermer, the matriarch of her family, refused to bring her family into the ghettos. The Stermers lived in Korolowka when the Nazis arrived in fall of 1942. The Gestapo began to force the Jews of the city into trucks to transport them to the concentration camps. Over the next few weeks, the Germans found the remaining Jews left in the city and forced them to dig their graves before killing them. The Stermers and five families fled the town in the middle of the night and found shelter in a cave. For a year and a half, the families lived underground, hiding from the Germans. In all, thirty-eight people were living in the cave. They stayed hidden during the day, and they would come out at night for food and supplies. Eventually, the Germans found the cave in which they were hiding. When the Germans found the cave, Esther confronted the soldiers. She reportedly said, “What are you afrai...

Revenge at Birkenau This is more than just a story—it is believed to be true. A woman at Birkenau killed a Nazi guard while she was being forced to take off her clothes on the way to the gas chambers. But who was she? For months, young Jewish women like Ester Wajcblum, Ella Gärtner, and Regina Safirsztain secretly took tiny bits of gunpowder from a weapons factory inside Auschwitz. They gave it to Róza Robota, another prisoner working in the camp. Even with guards watching, they hid the gunpowder in small cloth or paper packages and carefully passed it on. Róza then gave it to a secret group called the Sonderkommando—prisoners forced to work in the crematoria. Their plan was to use the gunpowder to blow up the gas chambers and start a fight. On October 7, 1944, when the prisoners found out many of them were going to be killed, the Sonderkommando at Crematorium IV fought back. The Germans quickly stopped the rebellion. About 250 prisoners died in the fight, and another 2...

Margarita Gracheva. She is from Serpukhov, a small town south of Moscow, Russia. On December 11th, 2017 Dmitry, her estranged husband, kidnapped her in his car, drove to the forest, tied her wrists with tourniquets and  chopped her hands off with an axe . Then he escorted her bleeding back to his car. Yelling at the top of his lungs “adrenaline rush!” he drove her to the hospital and dumped at the ER. Margarita had stayed conscious the whole time. Margarita and Dmitry lived in a rented apartment with their two sons. The were married in 2012, and their son Dmitry was born in 2013, and Daniel in 2014. By all accounts, they were a picture of a perfect, ideal, loving family. Margarita’s career was on the rise after coming back from maternity leave. She was the head of the marketing department in the local newspaper, and with her sister she co-owned a successful beauty salon, while Dmitry’s career was stuck in a rut. She was making more money than he did and alwa...

The Springville Three (1992) The Springfield Three (Sherrill Levitt, Suzanne “Suzie” Streeter, and Stacy McCall) went missing on June 7, 1992. Despite over 5,000 public tips, almost 30 years later, there are no clues to what happened to the three women. (Image:  News-Leader) The Disappearance: On June 6, 1992, friends Suzanne “Susie” Streeter and Stacy McCall graduated from high school in Springville, Missouri. Little did anyone know, this would be their last milestone.  [1] Stacy McCall (Middle) and Suzanne “Suzie” Streeter (Right) pose with their friend at their high school graduation from Kickapoo High on June 6, 1992. Their last big milestone before they disappeared alongside Sherrill Levitt, Suzie’s mom. (image:  KHQ Today ) The girls went out to celebrate their graduation and planned on crashing at their friend, Janelle Kirby’s home. However, the house was too crowded, so the girls went to Suzie’s house to sleep. The girl...

The Kobe cannibal who got away. Still in the shadow of the Second World War, a baby has been born vastly premature in the port city of Kobe. His name is Issei Sagawa.   He’s so small in fact, that he fits in his father’s hand. He develops enteritis, but injections of potassium and calcium spare him. Despite that, his health remains fragile in childhood, leading him to become introverted. In first grade, after seeing a man’s thigh, he experiences his first cannibalistic impulse. At the age of 24, Sagawa’s early health issues are reflected in his abnormally short stature, standing at just 4′9. He’s moved to Tokyo to study at Wako University and one night whilst out, he spots a tall German woman. He follows her through the clean streets, passing the variably coloured neon signs that line them until she arrives at her apartment. When she’s sleeping, he breaks in and creeps up to her bed, pulling out a knife. Before he can do anything though, she awakes a...