Major Crimes and True Crime

Last known photos of Sharon Tate taken by her friends Jay Sebring and Wojciech Frykowski days before they were murdered by the Manson Family, 1969. The fleeting hot summer of 69’ was upon them as Sharon Tate, The enchanting figure whose allure left an indelible mark on Hollywood and and friends bask in heat as seen through these intimate glimpses before their tragic and untimely murders by members of the Manson Family.  Of all the notorious celebrity deaths, suicides, and murders that have occurred throughout the annals of Hollywood history, none was as bizarre and gruesome as the murders that occurred on a warm night during the summer of 1969 in Benedict Canyon, a hilly suburb of L.A.  A young, pregnant Sharon Tate and 4 of her houseguests were brutally stabbed and/or shot to death for simply no reason other than being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Even decades after this horrific crime, the mere mention of the murderer's name, Charles Manson, brings blood curdling ch...

Tourist ‘raped and murdered by her friend’ on Goa trip Danielle McLaughlin, 28, was attacked in an isolated area after she had asked Vikat Bhagat, a man she had known since last year, to take her to a nightclub  A tourist whose naked and battered body was found dumped in a field near an Indian beach was raped and murdered by a friend, according to police in Goa. Danielle McLaughlin, 28, was attacked by Vikat Bhagat, 24, who confessed to the crime while being interrogated yesterday afternoon, Inspector Uttam Desai said. Police said Vikat Bhagat had confessed to the The man has been charged with murder.  Details that he provided on where her clothes were hidden and how he had injured Ms McLaughlin’s head and face matched police findings, Mr Desai said. “He claimed he was totally drunk and does not remember much after the murder,” the inspector added.  Ms McLaughlin, who had dual British and Irish citizenship, was from Buncrana, Co Donegal. She had studied at Liverpool John ...

Richard Trenton Chase, a.k.a. the Vampire of Sacramento Richard Chase believed that the Nazis were turning his blood into powder by poison they had planted below his soap dish. This made him paranoid that he would run out of blood. He would shoot his victims, have sex with the dead body, and then bathe in the resulting pool of blood. Of the number of small children he killed, he ate their internal organs and drank their blood. He was eventually arrested and sentenced to the gas chamber. On 26th December 1980. However last, he was found to have commit suicide in prison Richard Trenton Chase (May 23, 1950 – December 26, 1980) was an American serial killer, cannibal, and necrophile who killed six people in the span of a month in 1977 and 1978 in Sacramento, California. He was nicknamed The Vampire of Sacramento because he drank his victims' blood and cannibalized their remains. On December 29, 1977, Chase killed his first known victim in a drive-by shooting. The victim, Ambrose Griffi...

The Candy Man and The Houston Mass Murder's Dean Arnold Corll (December 24, 1939 – August 8, 1973) known as the "Candy Man" or the "Pied Piper" due to having worked in a sweet shop, often giving out free sweets to children and allowing teenagers to hangout at the shop where he had a pool table. Between 1970 and 1973, Corll is known to have killed a minimum of 28 victims. All of his victims were males aged 13 to 20, the majority of whom were in their mid-teens. Most victims were abducted from Houston Heights, which was then a low-income neighborhood northwest of downtown Houston. With most abductions, he was assisted by one or both of his teenaged accomplices: Elmer Wayne Henley, and David Owen Brooks whom he would pay $200 per boy.  Several victims were friends of the two. Corll's victims were usually lured into either one of the two vehicles he owned. This enticement was typically an offer of a party and the victim would be driven to his house. At Corll...

The Bloody Benders Were a family of serial killers who lived and operated in Labette County, Kansas from 1871 to 1873. The family consisted of John Bender; his wife, Elvira Bender; son, John, Jr.; and daughter, Kate. The family would sit guests at the head of a table in front of a larger curtain. Once settled a family member would emerge from behind the curtain and kill the unsuspecting guest with a hammer. The body would then drop through a trap door to the basement. It is believed they murdered at least 12 travellers. In October 1870, five families of spiritualists homesteaded in and around the township of Osage in northwestern Labette County, approximately 7 mi (11 km) northeast of where Cherryvale was established seven months later. One of the families was John Bender Sr. and John Bender Jr., who registered 160 acres (65 ha) of land located adjacent to the Great Osage Trail, which was then the only open road for traveling farther west. After a cabin, a barn with a corral, and a wel...

The Forgotten Cannibal Karl Denke (February 12, 1860 – February 22, 1924) was a Prussian serial killer and cannibal who killed and cannibalized dozens of homeless vagrants and travelers from 1903-1924. He is credited with killing at least 40 people. Born in Münsterberg, Silesia, which is what was once known as the Kingdom of Prussia, coming from a wealthy family that worked as farmers. As a child, Denke proved to be difficult for his parents to raise; at the age of twelve, he even ran away from home. When he graduated from elementary school, he started an apprenticeship under a gardener, and then started life on his own at the age of 25.  Soon after, his father died. His brother took over the family farm while Karl was given money to buy some land. Being an unsuccessful farmer, he sold the land and bought a house in town (on present Stawowa Street). However recession forced him to sell again this property. He was finally left with a little apartment on first floor and a small shed ...

The French Ripper Joseph Vacher was a French serial killer known as "The French Ripper" owing to comparisons to the infamous Jack the Ripper murderer of London, England, in 1888 Born in 1869, Joseph was the fifteenth child of illiterate peasants. He spent much of his childhood in a strict Catholic school where he was taught to fear and obey God. In 1892 a 23 year old Vacher would join the army and become infatuated with a with a young servant girl called Louise.  Louise did not reciprocate the soldiers affection and openly mocked his proposal. Vacher did not take this well, returning with a pistol he shot the servant girl four times and attempted suicide, neither of these attempts were successful though and Vacher would be forever paralyzed on one side of his face.  Following this incident Vacher was placed into a mental institution though was deemed to be cured within a year of entering. He would start his killing spree not long after, his first victim being murdered in 1894...

Timeline of serial killer John Wayne Gacy's life, case. Photographs from John Wayne Gacy’s home. Gacy killed 33 teenagers and young men. Of those, 26 were stashed in the crawlspace under his home. John Wayne Gacy (March 17, 1942 – May 10, 1994) was an American serial killer and sex offender who raped, tortured, and murdered at least 33 young men and boys in Norwood Park Township, Illinois, near Chicago. He became known as the Killer Clown due to his public performances as "Pogo the Clown" or "Patches the Clown", personas he had devised, prior to the discovery of his crimes. Gacy committed all of his murders inside his ranch-style house in Norwood Park Township. Typically, he would lure a victim to his home and dupe them into donning handcuffs on the pretext of demonstrating a magic trick. He would then rape and torture his captive before killing them by either asphyxiation or strangulation with a garrote. Twenty-six victims were buried in the crawl space of his ...

How Donald 'Pee Wee' Gaskins Terrorized 1970s South Carolina Donald Henry Gaskins was the most prolific serial killer in South Carolina history. Once his brutality was unleashed, he knew no boundaries, torturing, killing, cannibalizing victims, both male and female. In his taped memoirs for the book, Final Truth by author Wilton Earl, Gaskins said, 'I have walked the same path as God, by taking lives and making others afraid, I became God's equal. Through killing others, I became my own master. Through my own power I come to my own redemption.. He was given several nicknames some such as Pee Wee and the Meanest Man In America. He was given the name pee wee because kids at school would call him that and also got picked on a lot. He had a pretty messed up childhood, his stepfather beat him and his four half-siblings regularly. Here is the full story Donald Henry "Pee Wee" Gaskins Jr. (born Donald Henry Parrott Jr.; March 13, 1933 – September 6, 1991) was an Amer...

The Internet’s First Serial Killer In the early 80s, John “J.R.” Robinson, worked hard to maintain the appearance of a family man. A father to four, J.R. became a Scout Leader, baseball coach, Sunday school teacher and a board member for a local charity. It was around this time, however, that J.R. also joined an S&M cult called The International Council of Masters, where he participated by luring victims to the cult’s gatherings for sex and torture. In 1984, J.R. hired 19-year-old Paula Godfrey as a sales rep for a shell company he created. After she told her family she was being sent for “job training”, she was never heard from again. In 1985, J.R. lured Lisa Stasi and her 4-month-old daughter from a women’s shelter in Kansas City with the promise of a job. After a few days, J.R. contacted his brother and sister-in-law who were looking to adopt and told them there was a baby available whose mother had committed suicide. After paying J.R. $5,500, they were given Lisa’s baby, Tiffan...

Burke and Hare: Murderers at the Service of Science Ladies and gentlemen, hold on to your seats, and enjoy the real story of Burke and Hare in five acts Act 1: A Cry in the Night October, 1828. It is another night at the Hare’s lodging house, located in Tanner’s Close, Edinburgh. Except that this very night everything will change at the capital, who will be taken aback by the headlines some days later William Burke and William Hare, tenant and owner respectively of the lodging house, are killing Marjorie Campbell Docherty, using the technique known as “burking” in their honor: one of them sits on the victim’s chest, while the other suffocates him (or her) with his hand. It leaves no signs of a violent death, and it allows them to live confortably enough to not work But this night, neighbours could hear Mary Campbell’s cry for help: “Murder!”, and became suspicious. The other tenants at the lodging house, the Grays, had the chance to look under Burke’s bed the next day, where they found...

America's First Serial Killers and Many More Deadly Historic Figures Micajah “Big” Harpe and Wiley “Little” Harpe terrorize the western frontier for years killing men, women, and children without discretion. Considered to be America's first recorded serial killers. Earning the dubious distinction of being the United States’ first documented serial killers, Micajah “Big” Harpe and Wiley “Little” Harpe were murderous outlaws who operated in Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Mississippi in the late 1700s. Often referred to as the Harpe Brothers, they were cousins who often passed themselves off as brothers. Their fathers were Scottish immigrants who had settled in Orange County, North Carolina. Micajah Harpe was born to John Harpe and his wife, while Wiley Harpe, actually named Joshua, was born to John’s brother, William, and his wife. Soon after the arrival of the Harpes in America, they changed the spelling of their original name from “Harpe” to “Harp.” Growing up near each oth...

'House of horrors' alleged at abortion clinic Kermit Gosnell’s Abortions 'House of horrors' alleged at abortion clinic An abortion doctor has been charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a woman patient and seven babies that prosecutors say were born alive and then killed with scissors. Twisted serial abortionist Kermit Gosnell performed late-term abortions in his unsanitary and unsafe clinics at the Women’s Medical Society in West Philadelphia. He had owned the medical center since 1979 and complaints about his practice stretched back decades. In 2011, Gosnell was arrested on suspicion of murdering seven infants who had at first, survived his initial abortion attempts but later fell victim to his unspeakable evil. A grand jury heard that Gosnell was not an obstetrician or gynecologist as he had failed to qualify, however, he was charging up to $3,000 for each late-term abortion. His staff members testified against him detailing how they witnessed infants m...

Albert Fish’s Letter Serial killer Albert Fish preyed on young children in the state of New York. The sadistic child torturer and murderer bragged that he “had children in every state”. In 1936, he was executed for the murders of 10-year-old Grace Budd, 9-year-old Francis McDonnell, and 4-year-old Billy Gaffney. The details of the murders are only for those with a strong stomach as Fish also spoke in detail how he also cannibalized the remains. Fish also sent a twisted letter to the mother of Grace Budd just to add to her suffering. He wrote to her: “I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mamma. First I stripped her naked. How she did kick – bite and scratch. I choked her to death then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms, cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body.” He is remembered as one of the evilest serial killers in history. Albert Hamilton Fish (May 19, 1870 – January 16, 1...

Tamara Samsonova: The Granny Ripper killing and cannibalism in a diary, which she wrote in Russian, English and German. According to the diary entries, she removed her victims’ lungs and ate them. Tamara Samsonova was born on April 25, 1947, in the city of Uzhur, now part of the Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. After graduating from high school, she arrived in Moscow and entered the Moscow State Linguistic University. After graduating, she moved to St. Petersburg, where she married Alexei Samsonov. In 1971, she and her husband settled in the newly built panel house number 4 on Dimitrov Street. For some time she worked for the Intourist travel agency, in particular, in the Grand Hotel Europe. The amount of work experience Samsonova gathered at the time of her retirement was 16 years. In 2000, Tamara’s husband disappeared. She appealed to the police, but subsequent searches yielded nothing. Fifteen years later, in April 2015, she turned towards the authorities again, this time to the investigat...

Serial Killer John Wayne Gacy As An Infant Before American serial killer John Wayne Gacy was finally caught in 1978, he raped, tortured, and murdered at least 33 teenage boys and men in his Illinois home. But long before his murderous reign, during which he worked as a clown at children's birthday parties, John Wayne Gacy was just a normal boy. This is undeniably one of the most creepiest babies ever. John Wayne Gacy was convicted of the torture, rape, and murder of 33 males between 1972 until his arrest in 1978. He was dubbed the "Killer Clown" because he entertained children at parties and hospitals as "Pogo the Clown." On May 10, 1994, Gacy was executed by lethal injection. Gacy's Childhood Years John Gacy was born on March 17, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois. He was the second of three children and the only son born to John Stanley Gacy and Marion Robinson. From age 4, Gacy was verbally and physically abused by his alcoholic father. Despite the abuse, Gacy ad...