Major Crimes and True Crime

This Couple Was Buried Alive Because of $99,000 In July 2005, a retired Florida couple was buried alive by a woman they tried to help. Mr. and Mrs. Reggie Sumner lived in South Carolina before relocating to Jacksonville, Florida, in March 2005. Before they left South Carolina, they were on good terms with Tiffany Ann Cole, the daughter of one of their neighbors. They even sold their car to her at a discounted rate and told her to visit anytime she wanted. In June 2005, about three months after they left South Carolina, Tiffany visited them. Image: Mrs. and Mrs. Reggie Sumner, and the group celebrating after the attack, Tiffany can be seen with money in her mouth. During this visit, they told her they had sold their house in South Carolina and made a $99,000 profit. They were happy to share this with Tiffany, but deep down, she wanted to take that money from the couple. In early July 2005, Tiffany teamed up with three others, and they came to the Sumners' house at night...

Did you know that during World War II, some Italian doctors made up a fake deadly disease to trick the Nazis and save Jewish people? They called it Syndrome K (or Il Morbo di K). It was described as a serious, contagious illness — but it didn’t actually exist. The hospital was called Fatebenefratelli, and it was known as a safe place for Jews, thanks to Professor Giovanni Borromeo. On October 16, 1943, the Catholic hospital opened its doors to Jews looking for shelter. But Borromeo knew that the Nazis might search the hospital. So, he and two other doctors — Vittorio Sacerdoti and Adriano Ossicini — came up with a smart plan. They decided that every Jew who came to the hospital would be listed as a new patient and “diagnosed” with Syndrome K. These patients were then put in quarantine. When the Nazis came to search the hospital, they were told that certain rooms had people with a terrible, highly infectious disease that caused disfigurement. The trick worked. The Nazis stayed away from...

Every year this week, I remember Maximillian Kolbe. Whether you know his story well or not at all, it is always the right time to remember. Father Kolbe was a Catholic priest and Franciscan friar in Poland. During the German occupation, he stayed at Niepokalanów, a monastery with 650 friars. Many Polish refugees and Jews came there for safety, and Kolbe and the friars helped hide, feed, and care for 3,000 people. On February 17, 1941, Kolbe was arrested by the Gestapo for helping Jews. After being held briefly in a harsh Polish prison, he was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp and given prisoner #16670. On June 15, he wrote a letter to his mother: “Dear Mama, At the end of May I was moved to Auschwitz. Everything is fine with me. Do not worry about me or my health. God is everywhere and cares for everything with love.” One month later, three prisoners were said to have escaped. As punishment, the deputy commander of Auschwitz ordered 10 men to be starved to death in a bunker. One of ...

Belarusian boy Gena Muraviev with Polish Halina Gruszczyński, his adoptive mother, around 1947. The outbreak of World War II found 24-year-old Zinaida, her husband Pavel and their five-month-old son Gena in the village of Novka, near Vitebsk, Belarus. The husband was mobilized, but the mother and child remained in the village. In 1943, the Nazis, hunting partisans, organized a raid and captured Zinaida and her son, both of whom were sent to Auschwitz. From that moment on, they were deprived of names and surnames, the Nazis called them only by their tattooed numbers: Zinaida - 62105, Gena - 149850. Zinaida memorized her son's number. Soon after they were moved to different areas and lost contact. When the Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz, only children and very sick prisoners remained there, unable to move to another camp. The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where Zinaida was held was liberated by Anglo-Canadian troops in April. Sick and exhausted, Zinaida returned to her hometown...

On this day, 84 years ago on August 14th 1941, Polish Catholic Priest Maximilian Kolbe is executed by lethal injection at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. On February 17th 1941, he was arrested by the  Geheime Staatspolizei  (Gestapo) and imprisoned in the Pawiak prison. On May 25th, he was transferred to Auschwitz I as prisoner #16670. In July 1941, a man from Kolbe’s barracks vanished, prompting  ϟϟ-Hauptsturmführer  Karl Fritzsch, the deputy camp commander, to pick 10 men from the same barracks to be starved to death in Block 13 (notorious for torture) to deter further escape attempt (the man who had disappeared was later found drowned in the camp latrine). One of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out, lamenting his family, and Kolbe volunteered to take his place. During the time in the cell, he led the men in songs and prayer. After three weeks of dehydration and starvation, only Kolbe and three others were still alive. Finally, he was execute...

MAY 11, 1960. THE CAPTURE OF ADOLF EICHMANN Ricardo Klement worked as a welder at the Mercedes-Benz factory in Buenos Aires. On the evening of May 11, 1960, after finishing his work, he got on the bus to go home to a suburb of Buenos Aires. But what Klement didn’t know was that people had been watching him closely for days to learn his routine. That night, in a quick move, he was kidnapped and forced into a car. After being given strong drugs to make him sleep, he was put on a special plane. The plane looked like it belonged to the Israeli airline El Al, and it flew him to Israel. This was the end of the long hunt for Adolf Eichmann, one of the most wanted Nazi leaders. Eichmann was one of the main people responsible for the killing of millions of Jews during World War II. He had escaped the Nuremberg trials and first hid in a small town in northern Germany. Later, he moved across the ocean and lived in Buenos Aires with his family, using a fake name. The quick kidnapping was done by M...

It pains and is hard to write about such things, but they are true. There are many records during the Holocaust of Nazi soldiers using small children for shooting practice. I have read many history books; sometimes it's not about the orders from the top leaders, but just the cruelty of the guards in the camps or ghettos. One of these places often referred to is the Janowska camp. During the Nuremberg Trials, survivors shared some stories that were hardly believable. They testified that SS officers would toss babies or little children up in the air trying to shoot them before they hit the ground. For them it was just a horrific game. Other times they would make kids run in a field simply to practice hitting a moving target. Why did they do this? Well I think it's because of propaganda. For years, the soldiers were being told that Jewish people were not human. Therefore for a guard shooting a child was not much different from hunting a creature in the woods. Older officers used t...

Rarely, some people managed to survive the gas chambers and were not killed immediately afterwards. One such person is Gena Turgel and her story is more than astonishing. She survived three Nazi concentration camps and in Auschwitz-Birkenau was forced naked into the gas chambers. Gena and Norman She was 16 when her hometown of Krakow, Poland, was bombed by the Luftwaffe on September 1, 1939, the first day of the war. Norman had relatives in Chicago, but the family delayed putting plans to move there into action, and Poland was quickly conquered by the Germans. In the Jewish ghetto of Krakow Gena lost two brothers fighting against the Nazis. She was then sent to Plaszow concentration camp, where she survived for two and a half years until her transfer to Auschwitz. There she survived numerous experiments conducted by Nazi "Angel of Death" Josef Mengele. The most surprising part of her story is that she did not realize she was in a gas chamber until another prisoner told her. ...

This is Adolfo Kaminsky. At the age of 17, he became a member of the French resistance following the tragic loss of his mother to the Nazis in 1941. Throughout World War 2, he dedicated most of his time to operating in an underground laboratory located in Paris, where he skillfully fabricated passports. His remarkable efforts are believed to have safeguarded the lives of approximately 14,000 French Jews. "I'll always remember our biggest request for documents: 300 children in 3 days. It seemed impossible. I had to remain awake for as long as I could, fighting against sleep. The math was simple. I could produce 30 fake documents in an hour. If I allowed myself to sleep for even one hour, 30 lives would be at risk. My greatest fear was making a technical mistake, overlooking any small detail. The fate of a human being depended on each document. So, I toiled relentlessly until exhaustion overcame me. Upon waking up, I resumed my work. There was no room for us to pause." Kami...

In a case that shocked the public, a woman received the death penalty for coldly poisoning her husband and three of her siblings’ children. After a thorough trial, the People’s Court of Dong Nai Province sentenced Nguyen Thi Hong Bich to death for using cyanide to poison her husband and three children of her siblings, causing especially severe consequences. The court stated that the sentence serves both as punishment and deterrent. Bich confessed to poisoning her husband and three nieces and nephews with cyanide. Photo: Hoang Anh On November 27, the provincial court found Bich (born 1986, residing in Phuoc An Commune) guilty of murder and also sentenced her to 15 years in prison for the illegal possession, transportation, and use of toxic substances. The combined sentence is death. The panel concluded that Bich had committed multiple acts of murder, targeting her own family members. The methods were described as calculated and emotionless, reflecting utter disregard for the law and inf...