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The Early Years: From Henry McCarty to "Kid Antrim"
The wild, wild west, a place where outlaws could become members of law enforcement overnight, or vice versa for that matter, and a place where many would carve out a level of fame and fortune that…
Lori’s Early Life and Tumultuous Marriages
In 1973, Lori Cox was born to Mormon parents in San Bernardino County, California. She got married for the first time at 19 years old but swiftly divorced her new husband, marrying another man three …
“Lizzie Borden took an ax,And gave her mother forty whacks.When she saw what she had done,She gave her father forty-one.”
Immortalized for the savage and sickeningly cold killing of her parents, Lizzie Borden has gone down in history as…
“I verily believe in my heart that Giles Corey is a dreadful wizard, for since he had been in prison, he or his appearance has come and most grievously tormented me.”
Giles Corey: The Unlikely Defendant
Before Giles Corey found himself…
How It All Started: The Strange Case of Betty and Abigail“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” reads the Bible and there was one infamous village in particular that was dead-set on living by that doctrine.It was in Salem, 1692, that n…
“I know you know what’s going on and why we’re here,” an officer spoke to the person who’d just opened the door he’d knocked on. “We’re investigating a murder.”The woman he was talking to…
The Liske Family Murders: A Halloween Tragedy in Martin, Ohio
“This was the most disturbing murder scene I’d seen over the course of my career,” a state prosecutor would later describe the case he had just been a part of. “I…
A Childhood of Trauma: The Making of Danny Rolling
Daniel Rolling had a childhood unlike most. His father, James Harold Rolling, was a Korean War veteran turned Shreveport police officer. In 1953, he married Daniel’s mother, Claudia, when she…
The Chilling Discovery in Carly's Room
Let me take you back to a cold day in March 2024. Picture a mother—Ashley Smylie, a high school math teacher—getting news no parent wants to hear: something disturbing is happening in her o…
Early Life and Troubled Upbringing
If looks can kill, then what can a cold and very public dismissal do? That was the question a husband facing his wife in the British courts would find out in the mid-1990s.The man himself was Frederick Walter Step…
A Darker Side of the Roaring 20s
When it comes to the Roaring 20’s America, we usually think of big parties, champagne glasses, and new cars. Rarely do we think about healthcare or even that someone could be struggling with something like obe…
“I told him to stop back when he got out if he needed anything… He stopped back.”
That heart-wrenching line came from a husband who never imagined that a small act of kindness to a stranger would end in de…
A Fresh Start Turns to Horror in Cabin 28
In the early '80s, Sue Sharp was ready to embrace a fresh start, leaving behind a turbulent marriage and relocating to the serene woods of California with her five kids. But little did she know, the…
Lovers' Lane Murders Along the Colonial Parkway
A lovers’ lane is the perfect place for a young couple to enjoy a moment of privacy…but it is also the perfect place for a serial killer to find his next pair of victims.
During the late…
The Chilling 1996 Christmas Morning in Boulder, Colorado
On Christmas morning, 1996, the police in Boulder, Colorado received an unusual phone call. The caller was Patsy Ramsey, and she told them that her daughter, 6-year-old JonBenet, had been kid…
The Tragic Events of July 6, 2016, in Robbinsdale, Minnesota
On July sixth, 2016, something tragic and incredibly heartbreaking happened in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. News of this terrible ordeal traveled like wildfire and eventually brought the whole…
The 1960s. Every channel on the TV had some sort of cheesy comedy ripe with ill-timed laugh tracks and poorly executed jokes. But there was one comedy series out there that dared to stand out from the rest. Hogan’s Heroes was a CBS series loos…
Derelict, desolate and still ravaged from the constant raids and bombings of the World Wars, 10 Rillington Place was a desperate home for desperate people. Jutting out of the war-torn street of Notting Hill in London, rubble, refuse and even human r…
Pamela Smart’s Early Life: The Perfect Cheerleader
Strikingly beautiful and outrageously popular, Pamela Smart just seemed to have it all and that’s just the way that things had always been for her. She was born on August 16th, 1967, in…
The Emergence of the Serial Killer Concept
Today the concept of a serial killer, and even the very term itself, is so ingrained in our cultures and in our minds that it’s almost impossible to imagine a point in time when we weren’t cons…
Early Struggles and Neglect
In the 1930s, a little boy named James Jones was being raised by a pair of struggling parents. His father, also named James, had been injured in a chemical warfare attack in the first World War, making it difficult for h…
Charles Albright was born in Amarillo, Texas, on August 10, 1933. His biological mother dropped him off at an orphanage where he was later adopted by Fred and Delle Albright. It’s said that Delle Albright was a fiercely protective and somewhat…
Beneath the guise of a friendly neighbor who delighted children with his clownish antics at local parties, John Wayne Gacy hid a darkness that would forever haunt the American psyche. Dubbed the "Killer Clown," Gacy's name became synonymous with pur…
The Murder of Ben Renick: Snake Breeder, Millionaire, and a Deadly Betrayal
June 17th, 2017, in Montgomery County, Missouri, law enforcement responded to a 911 call that you just don’t see every day. As they pulled into a farm sprawling over …