Major Crimes and True Crime

"You're not a serial k-iller, right?"⁠ ⁠ These were some of the last words that 20-year-old Sarah Butler who lost her life in 2016 texted the young man she was heading out to meet for the first time after connecting with him on the dating app, Tagged. Later that very night, her fears proved warranted when her date, Khalil Wheeler-Weaver, mur-dered her. Her body was discovered in a parking lot beneath a pile of sticks, having been strangled and rap*ed. ⁠ But then, her family used the same app to track the murd*erer down and get justice. Her sister created a fake profile on Tagged and used it to lure Wheeler-Weaver into a trap — where he was finally captured after having murdered three women. Now, he's been handed a prison sentence totaling 160 years.⁠ Footnotes: Khalil Wheeler-Weaver targeted vulnerable women via social media and then went on a three-month k-illing spree Sarah Butler, age 20, texted Khalil Wheeler-Weaver 53 minute...

On December 6, 2014, a 19-year-old woman, Jessica Chambers was found severely burned in Courtland, Mississippi. The assailant had doused her in the liquid accelerant and even poured some in her mouth before setting her and her car on fire; more than 90% of her body was burned. When the rescue team came, they asked her if she knew who attacked her, and she managed to give a name. The name sounded like Erik or Derek. She lost her life about four hours later. Image: The area where Jessica was burned and her car after the fire However, in the small Mississippi town, there was no one with such a name. But, Quinton Tellis, a man with a criminal history was seen that evening with Jessica hours before the fire. Quinton's DNA was also found on Jessica's car keys. Despite the evidence that pointed to Tellis, he was tried twice and the jury could not return a verdict; they were confused. To date, no one has been convicted on the brutal mur-der of Jessica Ch...

19-year-old Brianna Denison was a college student who was abducted in the early morning of January 20, 2008, from her friend's house in Reno, Nevada. On February 15th, a civilian discovered Brianna's body and two pairs of women's underwear in a field not far from her home, she had been ɍậpḛd and strậngled. Image: The location where her body was found(bottom) Months later, a young woman reported that her friend confided in her about several pairs of underwear she had found in her boyfriend's truck. This girlfriend actually allowed investigators to test their son's DNA, and it ended up being a match the DNA found at the crime scene. It was that of 27-year-old James Biela, and it didn't just match the strange DNA found in a room where Denison was abducted. Police were able to connect him to a series of unsolved śḛxual assaults in the area, and although he argued he did it because he was abused as a child, he was ultimately sentenced to dḛậ...

This is the story of Mark Kilroy, who was a student at the University of Texas. In 1989, Mark and a group of friends decided to go on spring break in Mexico. While he was there, he was abducted and taken to a ranch in the middle of nowhere, where he was tortured and soᶁomized for hours before being ǩille ᶁ  in a human sacrifice ɍitual. He was ǩille ᶁ  by having his head cut off with a machete. His brains were then removed and boiled in a pot. His ǩillers inserted a wire through his spinal column. They amputated his legs at the knees and buried him on the ranch's property along with 14 other bodies. The culṭ leader told his followers they had to do this in order to gain immunity for their drug crimes. When police showed up on the property, they found Mark's gravḛ with a wire sticking out of the ground. The culṭ buried him this way so they would be able to pull the wire and more easily extract his bones from his decomposing body. They would then wear the bones as j...