Major Crimes and True Crime

Langford, Victoria: Eighteen-year-old Kimberly Proctor was friends with the same small group of friends as Kruse Wellwood (16) and Cameron Moffat (17). They all attended Pacific Secondary School in the small town of Langford, BC. Kimberly Proctor. (Photo Source: ctvnew.ca) Kimberly had briefly dated a boy named Zach who was also part of the group, but like many teenage relationships, their relationship was very short-lived. Kimberly was heartbroken and would find solace chatting online with Kruse and Cameron. During one of these chats, Cameron confessed that he liked her; however, Kimberly politely said she wasn’t interested. Her heart still belonged to Zach. Kimberly did start to get closer to Kruse though. They started talking online and on the phone nightly. In addition, the two started dating, but only for a very short time before Kimberly broke it off in a text message to him. She still wasn't over Zach yet and didn't see how that was fair to Kruse. This ange...

The Disappearance of Katelin Akens On December 5, 2015, Katelin Michelle Akens went missing from Springfield, Virginia. The last person believed to see her is her former stepfather, James Branton. Almost five years later, Katelin remains missing with few leads. (image: Patch.com) Katelin lived with her fiancee in Arizona and went home to Spotsylvania, Virginia, in December 2015 to visit her family. Little did they know this was the last time they would see her. Katelin’s mother, Lisa, entrusted Branton, her ex-husband and Katelin’s former stepfather to take her daughter to the airport. At approximately 1:52 p.m., Branton text messaged Lisa that Katelin had been dropped off at Regan National Airport and a few minutes later, Katelin text messaged her mother that her phone was low on battery and couldn’t talk. Nothing about this seemed suspicious, but, Katelin’s fiancee, Amber received a text message from her phone saying that she’s not coming home and something had come ...

The Mcdonald’s Boys A case remembered by many in the country with a borderline boogeyman reputation, two 12-year old boys, Toh Hong Huat and Keh Chin Ann, went missing without a trace. All that remained of them were their school books and bags which were found under a tree. They were dubbed ‘The Mcdonald’s Boys’ by the press after the fast-food chain offered a $100,000 reward for anyone who had any information on the whereabouts of the boys, and their missing posters were placed in the chain’s outlets throughout the country. Despite the cash reward, and an extensive police search, no trace of the boys have been found. Many theories emerged, from abduction to murder, but with no evidence to prove any of their credibility, the case remains open. One of the most solid theories is that the boys were kidnapped by a syndicate, had their limbs chopped off, and made to beg on the streets of a foreign country. This theory gained even more credence after a Singaporean on holiday...

Ray Gricar Ray Gricar was a District Attorney for Centre County, Pennsylvania for 20 years. He was a respected official and known for his tough stances. One day, in 2005, he called his girlfriend to tell her he was out for a drive in the countryside, and then proceeded to never be seen again. Some time later, authorities found Gricar`s car outside an antiques store with everything but his cell phone missing. There were no signs of a struggle. A search was carried out, and police eventually found Gricar`s laptop in a nearby river, too damaged to recover any files. Meanwhile, his credit cards went unused and his bank account left alone. And then…… The investigation overturned info that Gricar was, at the time of his disappearance, working on what would later blow up as the Penn State sex abuse scandal. For anyone from overseas who may not have heard much about the case, said scandal involved the equipment manager and head coach of the Penn State football team- Jerry Sandusk...

The murder of  Tara Munsey . Tara Rose Munsey was born on February 2, 1983 in Radford, Virginia to parents Billy Munsey and Katherine Irwin. She was described as being a loyal, unique, and outgoing girl who had many friends. She got good grades in school and had a boyfriend named Nick who she planned to marry after she graduated. To earn some extra money, 16 year old Tara worked at a Taco Bell. On the afternoon of January 25, 2000, Tara went with some friends went to the apartment of a man they knew named  James Moede  and smoked marijuana before Tara went to work. Tara had plans to watch a basketball game with her father and brother that night after her shift was over. She left Taco Bell at 7:30 that night but didn’t show up at the basketball game like she was supposed to, and Tara’s father found her car in the Taco Bell parking lot. The door was unlocked, Tara’s keys and purse were gone but her hat and some food was there. Nobody had hear...

Parkmann was one of the richest men in Boston, a powerful and mean-spirited landlord. He disappeared one day trying to collect a debt from an second-rate chemistry professor at Harvard named Webster, cousin of Daniel Webster, the famous lawyer. The newly-formed Boston Police Department (formed in 1835, first in the nation) was brought in and the first Detective in America (Derastus Clapp) was on the case. The case was broken when Webster’s assistant/janitor, a man named Littlefield, discovered burned bones on the outhouse. He reported to Clapp who had all the bones collected. Parkmann had been an unusually large man and the bones were of an unusually large man. But that wasn’t proof. So the BPD went to Harvard to ask for a definitive test and they invented Forensic Dentistry, taking molds of the teeth and the police when to his dentist who positively identified them as those of Parkmann. Webster was arrested but loudly proclaimed his innocence. Even his cousin wouldn’t ...

The man who killed his pregnant wife and two beautiful daughters for his mistress. Chris Watts had a beautiful wife named Shanann and two young daughters  Bella Marie  and  Celeste Cathryn.  Shanann would often post loving posts like"Happy Husband Appreciation Day! I couldn't imagine a better man for us," .She was pregnant with their third child, a boy they were going to name  Nico , when Chris Watts killed all of them. Chris was living a dual life and was having an affair with a young colleague named Nicol kessinger, who was very much aware about his wife and children. He admitted killing his wife to marry Nicol. Shanann's body was found buried in a shallow grave and the girls had been dumped in oil tanks on the property of Watts' former employer - the Anadarko oil and gas site. It was Shanann's best friend who contacted police and got him arrested. There are so many videos where his daughter is saying that he is the best father. H...

The murder of Jeffrey Curley. Jeffrey Curley was a 10-year old Cambridge, MA boy who was abducted by Charles Jaynes and Salvatore Sicari after the two men offered to help him with his bicycle on October 1st, 1997. Sicari drove the trio to a gas station where Jaynes sexually assaulted Curley and then fatally smothered him when the boy naturally resisted. The two men then proceeded to drive up to the NH-ME border where they sexually assaulted Jeffrey’s corpse in a Manchester apartment before dumping his body in the Piscataqua River, the area in which I was living at the time. I was only a couple of years younger than Jeffrey. Fortunately, Jaynes and Sicari were caught the next day, and both received life in prison. Jaynes was actually up for parole in 2020, but it was understandably denied. This case is disturbing for the obvious reasons- who couldn’t be disturbed by child assault and murder? However, the fact that his body was found so close to where I, a boy of the...

The murder of Tia Sharp Tia was born on June 30th 2000 in Croydon (London) to her teenage mother Natalie Sharp and her father Steven Carter. She was absolutely adored by her mother and her grandmother, a teenage mom herself. When Tia was born, her mother was 18 and her grandmother was 33. Her parents split up shortly after (not sure when), he wasn’t really in the picture. Natalie later got togheter with David Niles and had 2 more kids. Tia was a fun, loving 12 year old, 4`5″ girl. She loved films, music and singing and would often pretend her BlackBerry was a microphone. On Saturday nights, she would be glued to the television for The X Factor; one day, she said, she wanted to be an actress herself. She already had one star billing: above her bed her name was spelled out in giant letters on the wall in her favourite pink. We now know, however, that Tia had a less‑than-perfect home life with her mother and stepfather. In fact, Davit and Natalie, who have two young sons — Tia’s...

On January 28, 1958, Charles Starkweather, a 19-year-old high-school dropout from Lincoln, Nebraska, and his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, kill a Lincoln businessman, his wife and their maid, as part of a murderous crime spree that began a week earlier and would ultimately leave 11 people dead. The killer couple’s deadly road trip, which generated enormous media attention and a massive manhunt, came to an end the following day, when Starkweather and Fugate were arrested near Douglas, Wyoming. The crimes later inspired a slew of books, movies and music, including Terence Malick’s 1973 film “Badlands,” starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, and Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 song “Nebraska.” Growing up, Charles Starkweather was bullied and did poorly in school. He later idolized James Dean and identified with the actor’s rebellious, outsider image. Starkweather committed his first murder on December 1, 1957, when he robbed a gas station and killed the...

Miranda Barbou and Elytte Barbour were lovers who later got married. One of the things they wanted to do together was kill someone. Three weeks after their wedding, Miranda placed an ad on Craigslist offering to have s-ex with a man in exchange for $100. Troy LaFerrara was the unfortunate man who responded to the ad. Image: LaFerrara’s wife (bottom left), and LaFerrara. On November 11, 2013, Miranda and LaFerrara met at a parking lot in Hummel's Wharf, Pennsylvania. After the payment was finalized, they drove in Miranda's car to a place where they were supposed to carry out the act, but Miranda's husband, who was hiding in the backseat of the car under a blanket, jumped out and strangled LaFerrara before Miranda stabbed him to d-eath. LaFerrara's body was discovered the next day, and his last phone call led the investigators to Miranda and her husband. On September 18, 2014, they were sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole. In this cas...

The Story of Gina DeJesus and Her Kidnapping Gina DeJesus (left) was 14 years old in 2004, and so was her best friend Arlene Castro (right). The two girls were close friends. On April 2, 2004, Gina lent Arlene 50 cents so she could call her mom. They planned to have a sleepover at Gina's house. But when Arlene called her mom, she was told to come home right away. So, Arlene said goodbye to Gina, and the two friends went their separate ways. With only 50 cents left, Gina didn’t have enough money for the bus ride home, so she decided to walk instead. On her way home, Gina was stopped by Arlene’s father. He was a bus driver at her school, and she knew him well. He offered to give her a ride. But Gina never made it home. The man who took her was 44-year-old Ariel Castro. He kidnapped Gina, took her to a hidden part of his house, and chained her up. She was kept with two other women, Michelle Knight and Amanda Berry, who were also held captive by Castro. The three women...

In 1971, 46-year-old John List lost his job at a bank and couldn't bear to tell his family the truth. After a failed job search, he would later say that he had only one option: murdering his family and disappearing. He believed that without money, his family would turn away from God and therefore miss heaven. To ensure they went to heaven, he decided to murder them while their hearts were still right with God. After methodically shooting his wife, mother, and two children, List made himself a sandwich, closed all his bank accounts, and cheered for his only surviving son, John, at his high school soccer game. He gave him a ride back to their Westfield, New Jersey, home, then shot him in the chest. He slept in the mansion where his family lay dead, then walked out the door the next morning. He changed his name, relocated to Colorado, and even got married. He was arrested 18 years later and died in prison.  Continue reading

Executing The Beautiful Spectre. Seen here are several former SS camp guards and overseers executed after the first Stutthof trial, in 1946. The Stutthof trials were a series of war crime tribunals held in Poland for the prosecution of former Stutthof concentration camp staff and officials. The Stutthof concentration camp was the first German concentration camp outside German borders in WWII, located near the village of Stutthof, Free City of Danzig(now Gdánsk, Poland). Stutthof was originally a civilian internment camp, but eventually expanded and became a vast network of forced-labor camps. It turned into a regular concentration camp in early 1942. A crematorium and gas chamber were added in 1943-44, to be used as a part of the final solution. Over 60 000 prisoners of Stutthof and its subcamps died as a result of executions, disease, starvation, brutal treatment, forced labour ,and death marches after forced evacuations. Soviet forces liberated Stutthof on May...

IT was murder on the dancefloor, quite literally, in the case of James Smith. The 21-year-old didn't go to the dancehall to meet his sweetheart or show off his moves. A visit to a dance gave Smith the opportunity to fight. On November 17, 1951, the Evening Times reported on Smith's arrest, which happened hours after he killed a father-of-two. Martin Malone was among the 500 people who had poured into the Ancient Order of Hibernians at Royston Road to boogie the night away on November. The 35-year-old was at the dance with his wife, above. He had been working on board a ship at Ardrossan and arrived at his home in Acrehill Street, Blackhill, hours before the dance. His wife gave him a ticket for the dance and went ahead as she was ready. Malone joined her later and his encounter with Smith forced the couple apart forever. Smith is escorted from his court hearing The day after the dance Smith was arrested at around 5am at a house in Blackhill in connection with the murd...