On August 8, 1973, at approximately 8:15 a.m. Pasadena Police receive a phone call. The caller was a young man claiming that he had just shot another man and identified himself as Elmer Wayne Henley. Investigators would later learn that Henley had not only just killed the most notorious serial killer within the state of Texas, if not the country, but also played an integral role in the wave of mysterious child abductions that had been occurring within the Houston Heights area.

Before Ted Bundy’s misogynistic victimization of women and the Son of Sam was commanded by his neighbor’s dog to go out and kill, a Texas man by the name of Dean Corll was on the hunt for teenagers and young boys. His only intention was to torture, rape, and murder these boys, before dumping their plastic wrapped bodies into a mass grave housed inside of a boat storage facility, a lake outside of Sam Rayburn, and in shallow graves at the sandy shores of High Island.

Together with his two teenage accomplices, Elmer Wayne Henley and David Owen Brooks, Corll amassed a body count the likes the world had never seen. 28 bodies in total were discovered, wrapped in plastic and soaked in lime in order to speed up the decomposition process. A grisly tale that all began at the dawn of the 1970s.

The Candy Man

Before the term “serial killer” entered into public vernacular, Dean Corll was the worst murderer the world had ever seen.

Not to be confused with the Clive Barker film by the same name, Corll picked up the nickname “the Candy Man” for his reputation of giving out free candy he had gotten from his family’s candy company, located conveniently near an elementary school. Corll would often hand out candy to the children walking by or hanging around the area of the shop. A number of male teenage employees who worked with Corll at the candy store reported that he often seemed to come off as flirtatious. Later, Corll would take up a job as an electrician after his mother closed the candy shop and relocated to Colorado.

Corll seemed to have a way with children, especially troubled teenage boys. He found it easy to relate to them and was able to quickly gain their trust. By all appearances Corll was just a friendly neighborhood electrician, but that was all a part of Corll’s cleverly crafted facade. Inside, Corll was a cold and calculated monster who thrived on the suffering of his young teenage victims.

David Owen Brooks was one of the few boys to get close to Corll who wasn’t brutally murdered. It is believed that initially Brooks may have been a potential victim of Corll’s, but for unknown reasons Corll decided to spare him as long as he went along with his plans. It would be shortly after this introduction that Brooks would take up residency with Corll and bore witness to some of the carnage less fortunate boys had suffered at the hands of the Candy Man.

It was through Brooks that Corll would be introduced to his future accomplice, Elmer Wayne Henley. Henley looked at Corll as a mentor and almost as a father figure in some regards, but aside from that the two would later develop a type of business relationship. Corll extended an offer of $200 for every boy that Henley brought back to him and Henley agreed to the deal. Like Brooks, Henley may have been a potential victim, but for reasons known only to Corll he decided he would be of more use as partner.

Ask any resident of Adelaide, Australia what they think of their city and most will say the same thing. It’s a tired and beat up town with a bad reputation, but generally it’s quiet and full of friendly people. Though many claim “there’s nothing bad about Adelaide”, most of those originally hailing from Adelaide are ashamed to admit it due to its unseemly reputation. Perhaps it’s unfair to label Australia’s fifth largest city “the murder capital of Australia”, as some media outlets have, when larger Australian cities such as Melbourne and Sydney see more murders per capita annually, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that Adelaide seems to be a vortex for bizarre, horrifying, and particularly cold blooded cases.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when Adelaide made the transition from quiet fishing town to “city of corpses”. Perhaps it was the Maria Massacres during 1840, which left 25 men, woman, and children clubbed to death by Aborigines after a shipwreck, or maybe it was when the mysterious Somerton Man washed up on the shores of Adelaide in 1948, leaving investigators baffled on the man’s identity to this day, that initially set Adelaide on the map for peculiar and grisly occurrences. However, it would seem that the two odd cases occurred much too far apart for either of them to be the reason of Adelaide’s notorious reputation. If anything it would have to be the string of (mostly) unrelated, yet gruesome murders and unsolved child abductions, that wrecked havoc on the quiet town beginning in the 1960s.

The Disappearance of the Beaumont Children

The three Beaumont children who went missing after a trip to the beach.

Jane(9), Arrna(7), and Grant(4) Beaumont left their Adelaide home on January 26, 1966, never to be seen again. The children were spotted by witnesses at the local beach speaking with a man until approximately noon that day and were suspected to have taken the bus home shortly thereafter. Their mother, Nancy Beaumont, waited at the bus stop for the children, but when the bus finally arrived the children never got off. The last person to witness the children alive was a postal worker doing his usual mail route in the area. The postman claimed that he had waved to the children and saw them walking in the direction of their home coming from the beach. After ruling out drowning, the children were assumed by authorities to have been abducted and listed all three as missing. Although there is still no concrete evidence that the three Beaumont children were murdered, their mysterious disappearance in the summer of 1966 seemed to have set off a shockwave in Adelaide and more mysterious disappearances and grisly murders shortly followed.

Bevan Spencer von Einem and The Family Murders

Bevan Spencer von Einem initially became a person of interest in 1972, when two men were thrown into the River Torrens by a group of men. One man, Dr. George Duncan, drown as a result of the incident, while the other, Roger James, was rushed to a local hospital by von Einem for a broken leg. Rumors swirled that the group of men were actually members of the vice squad and there was plenty of cover-up speculations to accompany it. Though von Einem was the hero in this case, he was everything but a good Samaritan.

Bevan Spencer von Einem

Just a hair over a decade later Von Einem would again become public interest when he was indicated in the murder of a local news personality’s 15-year-old son, Richard Kelvin. It’s believed that Kelvin was abducted by von Einem and his accomplices on the evening of June 5, 1983. Kelvin was drugged, raped, and tortured by von Einem for nearly five weeks before he was finally murdered. Kelvin’s body was discovered on July 24, 1983 after having been left on an airstrip near the Adelaide Hills area. Von Einem was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

After von Einem’s conviction for the kidnap and murder of Richard Kelvin, four other unsolved murders between 1979 and 1982 were connected to von Einem and a group of accomplices. The group was nicknamed “The Family” by local media. The pedophilic, homosexual murder cult that von Einem was believed to have been involved with was ripe with conspiracy. Some believed that the group was comprised of  high-ranking officials and a massive cover-up was involved, due to the police’s inability to produce any suspects. Although prosecutors believed they had enough evidence to connect von Einem with The Family murders, all charges were later dropped and the murders remain unsolved.

As of 2007 investigators began following leads which connected von Einem to another unsolved case, the disappearance of the Beaumont children. A police sketch of the man the Beaumont children were seen speaking with on the beach the day of their disappearance fit the profile of a much younger von Einem. Like The Family murders, in spite of investigators’ best efforts to pin von Einem to the children’s mysterious disappearance there was not enough evidence to bring von Einem to trial.

The Oval Abduction

Joanne Ratcliff and Kristie Gorden, abducted from a football game, along with a police sketch of the man they were seen leaving the stadium with.

Joanne Ratcliff and Kriste Gorden were attending a football match on August 25, 1973, along with their families. The girls had been well-acquainted since their families were both season ticket holders and sat by one another often. Joanne left to go to the restroom and took Kriste along with her. The two girls returned back to their seats several minutes later. Some time had passed and the girls had to use the restroom again. They left their seats and walked to the bathroom, but this time the two girls never returned. Members of both families combed the stadium, with one remaining behind in case one or both of the girls returned. Witnesses claimed they saw the girls leave with a man, but neither the man nor the girls were ever seen again.

It wouldn’t be until March of 2015 that the potential identity of the man would be discovered. Stanley Arthur Hart was known within his family to be a pedophile and was more than likely near the stadium the day the two girls had been abducted. A search of the childhood home of Hart, which he had unrestricted and unmonitored access to at the time of the girls disappearance and also featured an underground bunker, uncovered a few small pieces of evidence but nothing substantial. While Hart hasn’t been positively identified as the girls’ abductor, there has been a number of tips and other leads that detectives are hopeful will finally close this cold case. In addition to Hart, a man by the name of Arthur Stanley Brown has also been named as a potential suspect in both the Beaumont children’s disappearance and the abduction of the two girls.

The Truro Murders

James Miller along with his lover, Christopher Worrell, killed seven young women during a seven week murder-spree.

Aside from child abductions, Adelaide became famous for its connection to a seven week murder spree at the hands of one of the worst serial killers Southern Australia has ever seen, and left seven young women between the ages of 15 and 26 dead. The first body was found in Truro, just North of Adelaide by a man collecting mushrooms. It was clear that the woman was met with foul play before her body was dumped in the woods. The body of a second woman turned up just East of Adelaide, near the Murray Bridge. She had been shot in the head. A third body was discovered in March of 1978 in a landfill. This time the victim had been beaten and stabbed to death. All three women were reported missing within a two month period and some similarities between the cases suggested that the murders were the work of a serial killer.

On Easter Sunday 1979 a fourth victim would be discovered in Truro within the brush close to where the first victim was found. After police offered a reward for the capture and conviction of the killer involved in any of the unsolved murders a women claimed to know who the killers were. She reported to investigators that James Miller had confessed to committing six murders, with the help of his lover Christopher Worrell, during a conversation they were having two days after Worrell died suddenly in a car wreck.

The woman’s story explained why the murders had suddenly stopped and Miller’s description matched one of them men described by witnesses. During police interrogation Miller agreed to show investigators where he had left the bodies. In March of 1980 Miller was found guilty of six of the seven murders he stood trial for and sentenced to life in prison.

Snowtown/Bodies in Barrels Murders

Perhaps the most famous murders involving Adelaide and would supersede the Truro murders as the work of the worst serial killers in Australian history were the Bodies in Barrels Murders, later referred to as the Snowtown Murders in spite of the fact that most of the murders never happened there.

Serial killers, Mark Haydon, John Bunting and Robert Wagner, responsible to the Bodies in Barrels Murders that rocked Southern Australia.

The murders originally occurred between 1992 and 1999 and were later uncovered when eight dismembered bodies were found in barrels left behind an abandoned bank in Snowtown, located around 90 miles mid-North from Adelaide. It is believed that before the bodies were discovered they were moved to various locations around Adelaide, before finally being brought to Snowtown.

John Justin Bunting, along with his accomplices Robert Wagner, James Vlassakis, and Mark Haydon, were accused of flaying, murdering, and dismembering their victims. These victims were all specifically targeted by the group because Bunting considered them to be the dregs of society. In addition to the eight victims found sealed within the barrels in Snowtown, two more victims were also murdered by the group and later recovered from the backyard of one of Bunting’s former homes.

Bunting claimed that he and his friends murdered many of their victims because they were believed to be pedophiles, but it is also known that some had been targeted solely on the fact that they identified as homosexuals. The trial against Bunting and Wagner would become the longest in Australia’s history, lasting nearly a year. By the end Bunting would be sentenced to 11 life sentences with no chance of parole, Wager would receive a similar sentence with 10 consecutive life sentences, while the other two boys received relatively lighter sentences by comparison. Vlassakis received four consecutive life sentences with the possibility of parole after serving 26 years, and Haydon – who wasn’t an active participant in any of the murders, but did help the others hide the bodies – was ordered to serve 25 years with the possibility of parole after eight.

The Hectorville Siege

Donato Anthony Corbo was responsible for ambushing his neighbors with gunfire, killing 3 and wounding 2.

Things stayed quiet around Adelaide once the Snowtown trials came to a close in 2002, but then in 2011 another crime would rock Southern Australia, with Adelaide again thrown into the center of the ordeal. In the suburb of Hectorville, about 14 minutes East of Adelaide, a man with a shotgun went on a shooting rampage in the early morning hours on April 29. After a alleged dispute with neighbors over the poisoning of a dog, Donato Anthony Corbo, took out his shotgun and began opening fire on the family of South African immigrants. The woman who initially called the police was able to escape the home unharmed, however, the woman’s parents and husband were killed during the ambush and her 14-year-old son was wounded.

Police arrived on the scene and began exchanging fire with the suspect. As a result of the standoff an officer was left in critical condition after having been shot in the face. Corbo was able to be apprehended by police and the victims were rushed to an Adelaide hospital.

Corbo’s criminal history as well as his mental state at the time of the crime were a hot topic for discussion as his trial date drew closer. On May 12, 2012, Corbo was acquitted of all charges including three counts of murder and two additional counts of attempted murder, by reason of insanity.

With so many shocking and bizarre cases involving Adelaide for the better part of the last 50 years, it’s easy to see why an outsider would come to the conclusion that Adelaide is a cursed city, plagued by horrific murders and the tragic disappearance of young children. Maybe with time Adelaide will begin to fade out of the limelight and return to the quiet little town, full of friendly neighbors and prime fishing spots it once was. But for now, like it or not, Adelaide can’t escape its less-than-honorable reputation.

Leonard Lake

Leonard Lake’s sexually deviant behaviors can be traced all the way back into his childhood. Allegedly encouraged by family to take nude photos of his sisters, Lake’s fascination with pornography soon spiraled into extorting his sisters and forcing them to perform sexual favors on him. It shouldn’t come to much surprise that as Lake grew older his fantasies began to become more extreme.

His first wife divorced him after he was caught starring in some home videos involving bondage and other sadist sex acts with women other than Mrs. Lake. After his divorce he packed up and made a new home at a hippie commune, nestled within the Northern California valley.

It was at a renaissance fair that Lake would meet his second wife, “Cricket”, and convinced her to come live at the commune with him. Cricket enjoyed exploring Lake’s sexual fantasies and the pair would often make amateur sex tapes together. Living together for eight years at the commune, the two would eventually marry. It would seem that finally Lake had everything he needed, but things weren’t all daisies and sexual sadism at the hippie commune.

Lake’s Cabin

Aside from his obsession with making pornography, Lake also liked to stockpile guns. Having spent several years in the Marines, Lake was medically discharged after a mental breakdown led to a diagnosis of schizoid personality disorder. Lake’s years of going untreated for his psychological disorder began to get the best of him.

He became increasingly paranoid about an impeding nuclear holocaust and as his delusion grew, so did his need to create a bunker. Now living at the Greenfield Ranch, another hippie commune, Lake’s first attempt at creating the bunker was thwarted once the landowner saw the earth movers and ordered him to halt the construction. This prompted Lake and his wife to rent their own cabin in the remote area of Wilseyville, California.

Lake’s decision to build the bunker revolved around an idea he had, one which he would later coin “Operation Miranda”. Lake’s personal logs described how he would go about constructing his bunker with the intention of capturing and enslaving women there. Once the world had been destroyed, Lake planned to emerge from the bunker and repopulate the world through the use of his female sex slaves. Aside from the plans detailed within Operation Miranda, Lake also had much darker plans. Plans that would include rape, torture, and murder with the help of one very ambitious accomplice.

A recent photo of Charles Ng take from behind prison walls.

It was around this time that Lake began corresponding by another man, Charles Ng. Charles, originally from Hong Kong and a former Marine himself after falsifying his citizenship, became acquainted with Lake through a survivalist magazine. Ng only spent a year in the Marines before he had been caught stealing weapons and charged with desertion. Sentenced to serve 14 years behind bars, Ng’s sentence was later commuted after just three and received a dishonorable discharged.

Once Ng was released he agreed to go live with Lake and Lake’s wife over at their Wilseyville cabin. By the time Ng arrived, Lake already had his bunker built and killed two people. In order to fund Operation Miranda, Lake had murdered his own brother and as well as his best man, taking their money as well as their identities.

Together the dynamic duo killed between 11 and 35 people. Known victims include 2 young families – the Dubs family as well as the Bond family – Kathleen Allen, Michael Carroll, Robin Scott Stapley, and Randy Johnson, along with three other suspected victims, including Lake’s brother and best man. Investigators also reported finding burned and shattered bone fragments on at Lake’s cabin, and a collection of identification cards, suspected to belong to other victims.

Male victims and children were believed to have been murdered outright. Women were kept alive longer so that Lake and Ng could video tape themselves raping and torturing them. On one tape Ng is heard telling one victim, Brenda O’Connor (part of the Bond family), “…you can cry and stuff, like the rest of them, but it won’t do any good. We are pretty—ha, ha—cold-hearted, so to speak.”

“The Rules”

The pair probably would have carried on their reign of terror for longer if it had not have been for Ng’s problem with shoplifting. After breaking a vice the two had used to torture their victims, Ng and Lake took a drive to a local hardware store. Ng went into the store where employees witnessed him shoplifting and alerted the police.

Ng fled the scene and Lake was pulled over by the police. Inside the vehicle a .22 revolver was found to be equipped with a silencer, silencers being illegal to possess within the state of California. When police asked Lake for identification he produced a drivers license identifying him as Robin Stapley, Lake’s best man who was presumed to be dead. Noticing that the heavy-set, bearded man looked nothing like the man in the photo, police became suspicious and held Lake for further interrogation.

The truck Lake had been driving was found be to registered to Paul Cosner, a man reported to be missing eight months prior to Lake’s apprehension by the police and subsequent arrest. Noticing the blood on the front seat, police asked Lake a few more questions before taking him down to the station for further interrogation.

A search of Lake’s cabin uncovered a far more peculiar scene. Lake’s arsenal of weapons were inventoried and a written manifesto on Operation Miranda was found, along with videos of both Lake and Ng torturing and raping female victims. An excavation of the grounds surrounding Lake’s cabin unearthed 12 bodies and 45 pounds of charred bone fragments.

40 pounds of charred bone fragments were unearthed on the property surrounding Lake’s cabin.

Still in police custody, officials were able to discover the true identity of Lake, along with his accomplice, Ng. Lake was then able to produce two cyanide pills he had carefully affixed to the inside collar of his shirt, unnoticed by police. During the interrogation Lake asked for some water, claiming he wanted to take some aspirin, and ingested the cyanide. He then scribbled a short note on a piece of paper before immediately slumping over and going into convulsions. He died several days later. The note read “I love you, please forgive me. I forgive you. Please tell Mama, Fern, and Patty I’m sorry.”

Ng managed to evade officials by fleeing to Canada. It would be less than a week later that Ng would be caught shoplifting, yet again, and arrested after shooting the security guard who attempted to apprehend him. Ng was sentenced to four years for felonious assault and possession of a concealed weapon, awaiting extradition to the U.S. upon the completion of his sentence.

Knowing that if he could have his trial for his hand in the murders at Lake’s cabin in a Canadian court he would not face the death penalty, Ng’s defense team fought hard to prevent his extradition. Though Ng put up a costly fight, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled against his petition and was extradited back to face capital murder charges in the state of California in 1991.

Ng further postponed the trial by firing several lawyers, filing frivolous motions, and other ludicrous requests. His formal conviction and death sentence would not be handed down to him until 1999, nearly 15 years after Lake’s cabin was uncovered and Ng’s arrest in Canada. Ng’s trial would cost the state of California close to $10 million, at the time the most costly trial in the history of California.

There are those killers whose minds work in a very different way from the one, we, everyday people know. There are those criminals whose tastes are not the ones we are used to. And then, there is Fritz Haarmann, whose story is full of blood, sex, and perversion. Behold, madness in all its glory.

Fritz Haarmann was born on October 25, 1879, as Olle Haarmann’s and Johanna Claudius’ last child. His mother stayed disabled right after her last, spoiled son’s birth who was always by her side taking care of her until the day she died. Fritz and his father never got along with each other, and it is said that Olle Haarmann suffered from bipolar disorder, proving that, in general, his family was not the typical one you would meet at German suburbs since his older brother had been convicted as a child molester, and his mother dressed Fritz as a girl. This environment turned him into a disturbed child who enjoyed tying and abusing his sisters, and after many signs of problematic behavior and lawsuits for sexual abuse, the court locked him up in a psychiatric hospital from where he, later, escaped. Sadly, not forever.

After two years in Switzerland, Haarmann returned to Hannover convincing everyone he was healed. In September of 1918, Fritz Haarmann felt the thirst for blood for the first time and the fact that hundreds of people every day were moving to his hometown pursuing a better life, made him quite happy. And rich. And lethal. And a monster.

Fritz had a ritual that he never really changed. Every day he went to the train station looking for his next victim, took a young boy home offering a hearty dinner, and, when the boys were sleepy, he raped them while he was severing their carotids using his teeth. After pleasing his twisted sexual needs, he cut them into pieces and sold their meat, and Hannover used to eat his dirty, little secret. When he realized that he could double his revenue, he started selling their clothes as well. Fritz Haarmann quickly became a wealthy man.

In 1919, he met Hans Granz, a male prostitute he fell in love with, and made him his partner. Since Granz was a good looking man, he was the one to undertake to kidnap the boys at the station. The two men worked together at the local market selling the cheapest meat in the area, and when someone asked them why it was at a so low price, Haarmann claimed that it was horse meat. Of course, the whole city fed on the boys Fritz had raped and killed in his attic. Yummy.

In 1923, more than 50 young boys had gone missing, and Hannover’s public opinion demanded answers from the police authorities. In 1924, a human skull washed ashore in the Leine river and after investigation, 500 human bones were found. Haarmann was the main suspect. In June, policemen entered Fritz’s apartment discovering blood, a pile of clothes, and human bones. He got arrested and, after a while, he confessed. The game was over.

During his trial, 45-year-old Fritz Haarmann kept swearing and describing without remorse the procedure of the kills. As he later said, he would only reach orgasm after he tasted the blood of his victims. His lover, Hans Granz, remained silent and afraid. He was sentenced to life while Haarmann received a death sentence.

Fritz seemed to enjoy the whole process, and he was always polite and close to the guards he used to spend time with. He did not ask for forgiveness and all he wanted was to die at the very same square he used to work. Fritz Haarmann requested from the judge to be executed on Christmas Day to spend the holidays with his mother. The judge declined.

His last words were: “I will not petition for mercy, nor will I appeal. I want to pass just one more night in my cell, with coffee, cheese, and cigars, after which I will curse my father and go to my execution as if it were a wedding.”

Honestly, we will never know for sure what turns a man into a monster. Is it the way their families treat them? Is it their criminal nature? If you want an answer to these questions, you have to know that the story below will not give you a single clue. The story below is about a criminal who loves being one. Meet Christa Gall Pike.

Christa was not an easy child to bring up and, according to her mother, she was one of those stubborn kids that would do anything to make it all about them. She didn’t live with her mother and the only person she was close to was her alcoholic grandmother, who died in 1988 when Christa Gall Pike started living between her mother’s and her father’s house. But there was a problem: she hated both of her parents. Christa’s mother dated a man who hit her, and her father had had another child whom Pike loved to beat and sexually abuse. That child was her sibling, and she was 2 years old.

Yes, criminality was in Christa’s blood, and she started using drugs before her 14th birthday. According to her mother, Colleen, she grew marijuana by the age of 9, and when she turned 14, Christa left her family home to live with a friend. Note that by the age of 14 she had already attempted to commit her first murder when her mother’s boyfriend hit her, and she attacked him with a knife before calling the police. However, not even one of her family members thought about offering help to Pike, despite the signs of criminal and abnormal behavior. In 1995, Pike dropped out of school.

While attending a seminar on finding a job, Christa told a friend of hers, Kim Iloilo, that she was going to kill one of the people in the room, because she “just felt mean that day.” Iloilo thought that her friend was just kidding, but the truth is that on January 11, 1995, Christa Gall Pike killed Colleen Slemmer, 19.

She was happy. She felt complete, and everything had gone as it was planned right from the beginning. She had killed, and, later that night, she visited Kim Iloilo’s cubicle to describe how she had done it. According to Iloilo, while Pike was describing the killing process, she was moving around the room in an ecstatic dance. The very next day, Pike told another student the same story, and she did not hesitate to show a piece of Colleen’s skull she carried with her, just to prove herself true.

Only two days after her murder, Colleen Slemmer’s body was found in a greenhouse and its condition was worse that any human being can ever imagine. Her face was crushed, her torso was full of scars and symbols, and her neck was, literally, shredded while parts of her body were just “not there.” The forensic surgeon could not count the number of the wounds and officially reported that they “were too many to count.” Sadly, Colleen was not dead while Christa Pike was torturing her, and she only left her last breath after a hit to the head.

Christa confessed her guilt describing the way she allured her and defaced her body. In her 46-page-long testimony, Christa noted that both of the girls liked the same boy and that Colleen was the first to threaten her some days before. Pike told her victim that they would hang out in the woods to smoke some marijuana, and, as soon as they arrived there, she started hitting her. Christa’s boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and a close friend, Shadolla Peterson, helped her complete her work keeping Colleen still.

We will never know what made Christa Pike kill since tests suggested that she was “of sound mind and memory,” and the only thing that may had caused her problematic behavior may be her drug addiction causing her some borderline personality disorder.

But Christa is not mentally ill. She just doesn’t care that killing is a criminal offense and, after her imprisonment, she tried to strangle to death one of her inmates.

Today, Christa is 39 years old, and she is waiting for the death penalty since she is the youngest woman to be sentenced to death in the United States during the post-Furman period. We will never know what went wrong with her, and the truth is that she does not want us to. She still doesn’t care. She never will.

It may be one of the most popular show on television, but the truth is that the criminal mind of the creator, Ryan Murphy, would not be enough to cover the stories that shocked the viewers all around the world. Some of the sickest stories presented during the five seasons of AHS were actually inspired by true facts, and the characters whose cruelty no one could ever imagine being true were real and have shocked the world in the past. Here are the real monsters behind the fiction of American Horror Story.

In the list below you will come across some of the most beloved people of the show and you will connect their stories to real people that history has declared mad, monstrous, and evil. Really, really evil. Take Madame LaLaurie for example.

Madame Marie Delphine LaLaurie (American Horror Story: Coven)

One of the main characters in the third season of American Horror Story was Madame Delphine LaLaurie, portrayed by the one and only Kathy Bates. Madame LaLaurie’s only joy was torturing slaves, draining their blood and using their blood as a face lotion because that’s what she believed what would keep her young and alive.

In real life, things were not that different. On April 10, 1834, a fire broke out in the LaLaurie mansion revealing the outrageous secret in the attic where servants were captured and tortured while many of them had already died in pain. Marie Delphine LaLaurie is always included in lists with the most infamous serial killers in history because her brutality against her slaves is what ranks her as one of the evilest people ever existed.

When authorities opened her hidden attic, they came across human organs, dead bodies, alive slaves in cages and in chains, while slaves with their eyes, ears, and hands unattached were begging for help. Others had their mouths sewn while being full of animal dirt, their bones broken, and their skin peeled off.

The reason why Madame Marie Delphine LaLaurie became this monster lies behind the fact that her favorite uncle had been killed by slaves in 1771 while her third husband, Louis LaLaurie, never gave her the love she wanted, turning her into a violent mother and a disgusting human being. Madame Marie Delphine LaLaurie was never found and her mansion in New Orleans is still said to be haunted.

Richard Speck (American Horror Story: Murder House)

There are many fans of the series claiming that the first season of American Horror Story is the best of them all and one of its story lines still is considered to be one of the most exciting so far. Yes, this story-line is based on true events too: The nurses killed in the Murder House.

On July 16, 1966, Richard Speck broke into a house in Chicago where nurse students used to live. After hours of raping, torturing, beating and brutalizing, Speck killed eight of them with his favorite knife but he failed to notice that the student that had opened the door for him was hidden. Corazon Amurao called the police and Speck’s arrest came three days later when he tried to commit suicide but changed his mind and drove himself to the hospital. His distinctive “Born To Raise Hell” tattoo gave him away and he got arrested after a surgery that repaired his severed artery.

Richard Speck was sentenced to death, but his death sentence was commuted to 50 to 100 years in prison. On December 5, 1991, he died of a heart attack, and six years after his death, a journalist released a prison video of him using drugs while wearing women’s underwear. We’ll never get to know his mind.

The Axeman of New Orleans (American Horror Story: Coven)

The Axeman of New Orleans was a character that the fans didn’t really like at first, but after his story became popular, they all got the importance of having a historical figure in a show. Because the Axeman of New Orleans was a real, very real person. 

We may never know his identity, but the facts indicate that there was a man between the years 1918 and 1919 killing women with their own axes and, when their husbands tried to get in his way, he would kill them as well. In American Horror Story, the Axeman used to let people who listened to jazz music go away, and we have to tell you that this is a true story as well since he had written a letter in which he stated that he would spare the lives of those who played jazz music in their homes:

—

Esteemed Mortal:

They have never caught me and they never will. They have never seen me, for I am invisible, even as the ether that surrounds your earth. I am not a human being, but a spirit and a demon from the hottest hell. I am what you Orleanians and your foolish police call the Axeman.

When I see fit, I shall come and claim other victims. I alone know whom they shall be. I shall leave no clue except my bloody axe, besmeared with blood and brains of he whom I have sent below to keep me company.

If you wish you may tell the police to be careful not to rile me. Of course, I am a reasonable spirit. I take no offense at the way they have conducted their investigations in the past. In fact, they have been so utterly stupid as to not only amuse me, but His Satanic Majesty, Francis Josef, etc. But tell them to beware. Let them not try to discover what I am, for it were better that they were never born than to incur the wrath of the Axeman. I don‘t think there is any need of such a warning, for I feel sure the police will always dodge me, as they have in the past. They are wise and know how to keep away from all harm.

Undoubtedly, you Orleanians think of me as a most horrible murderer, which I am, but I could be much worse if I wanted to. If I wished, I could pay a visit to your city every night. At will I could slay thousands of your best citizens, for I am in close relationship with the Angel of Death.

Now, to be exact, at 12:15 (earthly time) on next Tuesday night, I am going to pass over New Orleans. In my infinite mercy, I am going to make a little proposition to you people. Here it is:

I am very fond of jazz music, and I swear by all the devils in the nether regions that every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have just mentioned. If everyone has a jazz band going, well, then, so much the better for you people. One thing is certain and that is that some of your people who do not jazz it on Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the axe.

Well, as I am cold and crave the warmth of my native Tartarus, and it is about time I leave your earthly home, I will cease my discourse. Hoping that thou wilt publish this, that it may go well with thee, I have been, am and will be the worst spirit that ever existed either in fact or realm of fancy.

The Axeman

—

The murders stopped just like they had started: Suddenly. The Axeman was never caught.

Twisty the Clown (American Horror Story: Freakshow)

Clowns were always considered to be some kinds of monsters of the occult, and the­ entertainment industry has played its part portraying them like the evil murderers who want to take children’s souls. Twisty of the American Horror Story was a clown that wanted to be the best entertainer of children while he was trying to protect them (in his own way) from his parents. You think this is creepy? What would you think if we told you that this evil clown was real?

On March 17, 1942, John Wayne Gacy was born to become one of the most infamous serial killers in the U.S. and in 1980, he was found guilty of killing 33 boys. His abusive childhood turned him into a criminal mind that got convicted for sexual assault in 1968. However, after his 10-year-conviction, authorities found out that Gacy had killed 33 male children dressed up as his alter ego, Pogo the Clown.

John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection in 1994.

Aileen Wuornos (American Horror Story: Hotel)

Even though the episode of American Horror Story: Hotel, has not been aired yet, we know that Lily Rabe, the star of the show that has starred in every single season, is going to portray Aileen Wuornos, the woman that Charlize Theron incarnated for the movie “Monster” in 2003.

Aileen Wuornos was born on February 29, 1956, and she was thrown out of her house as a teen after being sexually abused by her grandfather. Having no other choice, she started working as a prostitute, but it was not until 1989 when she killed a client of hers. Police authorities tracked her down and she was arrested in Florida where she was executed in 2002 after found guilty of killing six men.

Shanda Sharer

Junior high can be a difficult time in a young girl’s life. Jealousy and drama run rampant in the halls and once someone becomes a target, other students can be relentless in their taunts and bullying. Teenage girls can be down right cruel to those they have tagged as an enemy and those of us who have made it out of our junior high years intact are probably glad we never have to go back. There are some of us, however, who never get the chance to make it out alive.

Shanda Sharer was only 12-years-old when her life was taken by the hands of other teenage girls. Girls who were ultimately jealous over a friendship forged between Sharer and the love interest of another girl. Tortured and humiliated for hours by girls who would later claim their mental illnesses are what drove them to the cold and callous murder of the young athlete, Shanda’s life was ended before it even had a chance to truly begin.

On the night of January 10, 1992, 16-year-old Melinda Loveless convinced three friends – Laurie Tackett(17), Toni Lawrence(15), and Hope Rippey(15) – to help her scare Shanda Sharer. Loveless believed that Sharer had stolen her girlfriend, Amanda Heavrin, and was upset with how much time Amanda wanted to spend with Shanda rather than her.

The girls all piled into Tackett’s car and drove to Shanda’s house, stopping at McDonald’s on the way in order to ask for directions. Once the girls arrived at Shanda’s home, two of the girls went to the door and told her they were on their way to meet up with Amanda Heavrin at the ruins of a stone home overlooking the Ohio River, nicknamed “The Witch’s Castle”. Shanda was reluctant to go with the girls at first, but agreed to sneak out once her parents were asleep.

Shanda didn’t know that Loveless had been waiting in the car, hiding under a blanket and holding a knife. The other girls interrogated Shanda on her relationship with Amanda in order to antagonize Loveless, who had still been hiding in the back seat. Loveless sprang out from under the blanket and held the knife to Shanda’s throat. Shanda was sobbing and scared by the time the four girls reached the Witch’s Castle.

Melinda Loveless, Laurie Tackett, Hope Rippey, and Toni Lawrence.

Shanda was forced to enter into the Witch’s Castle where the other girls bound her hands and feet. One of the girls removed the rings she had been wearing and passed them out to the remaining girls, then danced to a tune played by Shanda’s Mickey Mouse watch she had been wearing. Tackett began telling Shanda how the room they were in was once a dungeon that had been filled with human bones and her’s would be soon added to the collection. Tacket and Lawrence then went back to the car to retrieve a smiley face sweatshirt Shanda had brought with her. The girls lit the sweatshirt on fire, but soon extinguished it, fearing that passing cars would see it and call the police.

The girls led Shanda back to the car. Shanda begged for the girls to take her home. Instead she was mocked and forced to take off her bra. The girls became lost and stopped at a gas station in order to get directions. Shanda was forced to hide under the blanket in the backseat while some of the other girls chatted to boys they knew, before they all climbed back in the car and drove to a patch of woods in Madison, IN, close to where Tackett’s home was located.

The girls turned down a logging road leading to a nearby garbage dump. Loveless and Tackett got out of the car and forced Shanda to strip naked. Loveless punched Shanda and slammed her face into her knee repeatedly, causing her mouth to be sliced open by her braces. Loveless then pulled out the knife she had been carrying and tried to slash Shanda’s throat, but found that the knife was too dull. Rippey got out of the car and helped hold down Shanda as Loveless and Tackett took turns stabbing her in the chest and strangled her with a rope until she became unconscious. They then picked up Shanda’s body and stuffed her into the trunk, assuming she was dead.

The girls all went back to Tackett’s house to clean up. As the girls were in the kitchen grabbing some drinks, they heard Shanda screaming from the trunk of the car. Tackett grabbed a paring knife from the kitchen and went out to the car and stabbed Shanda several more times. Tackett came back inside and washed the blood off of her. The girls hung out for a little longer, before Tackett and Loveless decided to go for a drive, while the other girls decided to stay behind.

As Tackett and Loveless were driving they began to hear gurgling noises coming from the trunk. They pulled the car over and looked in. Shanda sat up, but was unable to speak. Tackett beat Shanda with a tire iron until the noises stopped. Tackett and Loveless returned to Tackett’s home and told the other girls what had happened during their drive. The commotion awoke Tackett’s mother and she was forced to take the other girls home.

Instead, Tackett drove to a local gas station. One of the girls went inside and purchased a bottle of soda, which they emptied and filled with gasoline. Rippey directed Tackett to drive to a grassy field she knew of off of U.S. Route 421. Lawrence refused to participate as the other girls got out of the car. When Tackett opened the trunk, Rippey sprayed Shanda with windex and taunted “You’re not looking so hot now, are you?” The girls removed removed the rest of Shanda’s clothing and wrapped her in a blanket. Somehow Shanda was still struggling to hang on as the girls doused her in gasoline and lit her on fire. The girls then drove to McDonald’s for breakfast and joked how Shanda’s body had looked like the sausage patties.

A roadside memorial for Shanda Sharer near where her body was found.

Shanda’s father had noticed Shanda was missing early the next morning and reported her missing. After Tackett had dropped off Lawrence she told her mother and they went down to the police station to confess what had occurred with the girls and Shanda the prior evening and early morning of January 11. Loveless and Tackett were both arrested the following day based on Lawrence’s statement and the positive identification of Shanda Sharer’s body.

All four girls were tried as adults for, arguably, one of the most horrific cases Indiana had ever seen. Lawerence received a reduced sentence for her cooperation and was ordered to serve a maximum of 20 years for criminal confinement. Both Tackett and Loveless were sentenced to serve 60 years, but could be released for good behavior by 2020. Rippey had originally sentenced to serve 60 years, but had her sentenced later reduced to 35. All of the girls will be in their mid-40’s by the time they’re released.

When most people think of torture devices and techniques often they think back to Medieval times and the Spanish Inquisition, where contraptions with ominous sounding names like “the rack” or “the iron maiden” were common to use in the questioning of prisoners. It’s easy to forget that torture is still used, even today, as a means of gaining intelligence against opposing forces. Today we are going to look at some of the most horrific torture techniques used in modern times.

Tucker Telephone

Originating at Arkansas’ Tucker State Prison Farm in the 1960s, the Tucker Telephone was a torture device constructed from an old fashioned crank shaft telephone. The generator of the phone would be wired to two batteries. The ground wire would be connected to the prisoner’s toe, while the hot end of the wire would be applied to the prisoner’s genitals. Prison staff would then crank the phone generator, which would then send electrical currents shooting through the inmate’s body. The inmate often suffered irreparable organ damage after a date with the Tucker Telephone and the practice was retired after 1968.

Dog Rape

Several years ago there was a controversy over whether or not waterboarding – a method of torture where a wet cloth is placed over a person’s face and mimics the act of drowning – was ethical in United States run detention facilities. Regardless if you believe that this is an acceptable practice or not, there is far worst methods allegedly sanctioned by the U.S. Government against those deemed as enemies of the state. According to journalist Lawrence Wright, who visited Egyptian prisons where key al-Qaida officials were being detained, men were often tied up in the nude. Officials would then release dogs on the prisoners and allow the animals to have their way with them, including rape. It is in Wright’s opinion that the use of such torture methods were catalysts for the radicalization of many of these detainees. There has since been no verification on whether or not Wright’s claims are true.

Force Feeding

In 1999, followers of the spiritual Falun Gong faced persecution by the Chinese communist government. As part of this government crackdown, like the days of the Spanish Inquisition, followers were taken prisoner and tortured. Beatings and other horrific practices were common, but the most heinous of all were force feedings.

Prisoners would have tubes shoved down their throats, sometimes repeatedly, before a slurry of food, garbage, urine, and feces were poured into the detainee’s stomach. Tear gas, hot mustard, as well as common household chemicals have also been used to abuse and torture inmates.

Shuanggui

Falun Gong practitioners were not the only group to be persecuted by the Chinese government. In fact, anyone deemed a threat to the government could mysteriously disappear at a moment’s notice. The practice became so common it even has an official name – shuanggui.

Citizens in question are ordered to meet with top party officials at a designated place and time. Typically this place is a hotel room or another secret location. Rumor has it that the interrogation room is always on the first level, so persons under investigation cannot easily jump to their deaths. Suspects are subject to questioning at any time during the day or night. This process can go on for weeks or months at a time. However, it is impossible to know the full extent of what happens during these interrogations. Some claim that there is other physical and psychological torture which occurs in conjunction with the sleep deprivation. Some of these suspects held during these secret interrogations have never made it out alive.

The German Chair

Syria has been in the spotlight for the horrific conditions and torture they subject their prisoners to. Beatings and forcing prisoners to hold their bladders until their one allotted bathroom break a day are only some of the common place methods for brutalizing their detainees. The most horrific method of torture, however, is one taken from the middle ages.

The method is known by several different names, including the German Chair, the Flying Carpet, or simply the Tyre. When a person is captured they are often tied to a metal chair. Their arms and legs are then secured and the chair is tipped backwards and towards the ground. This causes severe stress to the detainee’s back, neck and spine, and often causes permanent damages to the body.

Throughout history, many heinous crimes have been committed by many evil, troubled men and women. Some of the stories have survived through the centuries while others have been all but forgotten and left behind. The story of the Demon Tailor, also known as the Werewolf of Chalons, is one such case. Historically, people believed in a thing known as Damnatio memoriae, which is a Latin phrase that means “damnation of memory”. This was the ultimate dishonor to criminals, that they would essentially be erased from history. In ancient times, this was much easier because there was less documentation but as time went on, it became a much more complex process and by association, a much lesser used tool in convicting and sentencing criminals.

In the 1500s in France, this unnamed man owned a tailor shop in the heart of Paris. According to historical records, he would lure children into his shop unsuspectingly, where he would then torture, rape, and eventually kill them by slitting their throats. In the form of a butcher, he would dismember and dress the bodies, consuming the remains and disposing of the bones by bleaching them and hiding them in barrels. It was also reported that he would scour the woods looking for victims, purportedly in wolf’s form, where he supposedly killed several dozen more victims. The total number of murders in this case is still unknown but it was definitely a heinous case and he definitely was a serial killer in a time when such a term might not have existed in common language yet.

In December of 1598, the man was arraigned on multiple murder charges. He was convicted quickly and easily, likely because of the superstitious nature of the case. Sentenced to burning at the stake, the man never showed a single ounce of remorse or asked for forgiveness. Even as his body burned, he simply cursed to the very end. The interesting part of this case is definitely the reported werewolf element, but it’s even more interesting that he was convicted with such a lack of proven evidence. Although the bones were presumed to be human, he never confessed and it’s not clear whether officials determined the species or if they were just superstitious and acting on fear or assumptions.

After the Werewolf of Chalons was executed, every single record of his trial, crimes, and his very existence were destroyed. The state decided it wanted no memory of this heinous criminal and the things that he did. For serial killers, after all, the fame and notoriety is what it’s all about. Even in death, remembering and revisiting serial killers and their crimes is giving them exactly what they wanted. Back then, officials considered it very important to dishonor their names by eliminating them -as much as possible – from history.

Mystical Madness in the Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages in Europe, witches, werewolves, vampires, and other supernatural beings were very common and often caught and burned at the stake. It was a standard solution for these types of fiends, who may or may not have actually been criminals or have supernatural powers. Rather than relying on evidence and trying to get the facts, law enforcement and other officials simply relied on their superstition and word of mouth to find and kill all of the offenders that claimed to be any type of werewolf, witch, or other supernatural being.

In that regard, the Demon Tailor wasn’t really all that unique. Of course, the fact that he killed as many as 50 people (the exact body count is unknown), puts him on a much higher level than other offenders. Another thing working against him is the fact that his sister, brother, and two children all were tried the same year for murder, as supposed werewolves and witches that killed children. All of them were convicted and burned at the stake. The sister was the only one who’d committed any crimes but they were all executed because of their claims of supernatural abilities and the fear that such a claim inflicted on the general public. France was just one of the many countries in Europe that was affected by the mystical, potentially mythical creatures of the Middle Ages.

Within the depraved pedophile community online there’s a subgenre of child pornography so vile, so shockingly heinous, that even most pedophiles find it to be revolting. It’s called hurtcore, and it is exactly what it sounds like. Children of all ages are raped, tortured and abused on camera in order to appease the sexual appetites of sadistic pedophiles. For upwards of $10,000, pay-per-view child pornography – including hurtcore – can be custom tailored for anyone with knowledge of the deep web and enough cash on hand.

Hurtcore and the Deep Web

Curiosity led student and local Melbourne babysitter Matthew Graham down a depraved path to become one of the dark web’s child pornography kingpins.

Ironically, the road to the hurtcore scene on the dark web was paved with good intentions. The hacktivist group Anonymous had been planning covert operations in an attempt to eradicate the growing number child pornography and pedophile websites from the deep web. The group’s plan was called #OpDarkNet, and it was discussions of attacks against the hidden websites on image sharing boards such as 4chan that captured the attention of a man known only as Lux.

Lux learned of a number of pedophile communities operating on the Tor Network through conversations on message boards involved in #OpDarkNet. That’s when Lux says he became hooked.

The massive takedown staged by Anonymous completely backfired. Some of the smaller sites remained offline, but the larger communities thrived once the threat of Anonymous had mostly passed. What may have began as a sadistic curiosity, escalated into full-on depravity for 22-year-old Lux. Lux admits that he had always felt ashamed of the feelings he had towards children, but in the online pedophile communities, Lux finally felt a sense of belonging.

Eventually Lux graduated from participating in online communities to building his own child pornography websites, the most popular being called “Hurt 2 the Core.” Though there was certainly a niche market within the pedophile community for extremely hardcore child pornography, pornography where children are intentionally harmed is generally frowned upon.

Hurt 2 the Core would be the first dark web community dedicated primarily to hurtcore. Featuring a forum, image sharing, chat room and video streaming service, the site was a one-stop-shop for pedophiles in search of the most depraved of the depraved pornography. It wouldn’t be long before Hurt 2 the Core became a host for tens of thousands of downloads daily and personally commissioned exclusive site content. As if thousands of photos and videos of young children being assaulted and raped wasn’t enough, the forums also included a special “Producers’” board, designed to connect child pornographers with buyers looking for something specific. One of those producers included Peter Skully.

Daisy’s Destruction

Introducing Daisy’s Destruction

Come see a child’s mental ruin

her innocence lost…

Used as a tool…

she will learn to please her mistress…

Her body will be ravaged…

her dignity stolen…

Helpless…

She will hang for your amusement…

Relentless…

Her mistress will break her…

Would you dare…

to witness…

Daisy’s destruction?

Woven into the fabric of internet lore are hushed whispers of a pornographic video so disgusting, sane people who have stumbled across it had suffered irreparable psychological damage. This film was actually a series of video clips, collectively titled Daisy’s Destruction.

Few have actually seen the video, though it isn’t uncommon to stumble across someone online who has claimed to have seen it or, “knew a guy once…” Like all legends, what the film actually contains depends on who you talk to, but the general consensus is that whatever the is on the video makes no real difference, it is depraved in the worst ways imaginable.

The clip series was just a few of the hundreds of videos up to stream through the Hurt 2 the Core website. The film’s producer, Peter Scully, was happy to please eager buyers looking to commission something a little bit different from the content already available on the site.

A still shot of Scully’s teenage girlfriend taken from his hardcore child pornography film, Daisy’s Destruction

With the help of his two teenage girlfriends, Scully and his partners would seek out children on the streets. An agreement would be made with a child’s parents or the child directly; that Scully would take the child in, feed them and help them to get an education. Instead the children were beaten, raped and forced to dig their own graves.

Many of Scully’s known victims were later located alive, but at least one 11-year-old girl wasn’t as lucky. Her bones were found buried beneath the home Scully rented in Malaybalay, Bukidnon. The girl was strangled to death on film before being buried in the shallow grave she dug for herself.

Dutch authorities would catch wind of the Daisy’s Destruction videos making their rounds within the dark web pedophile community. They were able to not only identify the film’s country of origin, but noticed one distinctive feature of the man in the films. Scully was clever enough to obscure his face, but his distinctive Australian accent was an important clue in piecing together the film’s digital trail.

Lux Goes into Retirement

After three years of running the biggest “PedoEmpire” the dark web had ever seen, Lux announced in June of 2014 that he would be taking down his websites. Originally published on Deep Dot Web, his final farewell to the disturbing community he helped to create stated:

As always, all Empires eventually fall and today is the day that the {Removed} falls.

After years of running CP hidden services, today is the day that I walk away. There are personal issues which my close friends have been made aware of that have forced me to make this decision.

I will leave {Removed} (and it’s chat) as well as {Removed} up for the time being however if I host for you via {Removed} I suggest you start looking for a new hosting provider ASAP.

I don’t like long awkward farewells, so… Goodbye

Regards,
Lux.

Lux said his decision to resign was due to family matters, but an anonymous source was able to tell Deep Dot Web that he speculated that Lux may have resigned due to fear of being exposed by law enforcement. Unfortunately, the gap left by Lux’s fallen empire did little to cripple the sprawling underground community of active or aspiring child rapists.

Scully Gets Busted

Peter Scully is currently facing a number of charges related murder, child abuse and sex trafficking.

The Hurt 2 the Core website may have been voluntarily taken offline, but Scully still had plenty of distribution networks at his disposal. Scully continued to cater to his clients, which included selling off children to sex slavers, until his arrest on February 20, 2015.

A Dutch probe into deep web pedophilia websites lead to the arrest of a handful of small-time players involved in online child pornography rings. It was through these arrests that Dutch officials were able to connect the videos already within their possession back to Scully in the Philippines. Now that police were certain they had their man cornered, they needed to have enough evidence to indite Scully.

Dutch law enforcement worked with Filipino police to identify the children in the videos. Their investigation led them to a 13-year-old girl who said that Scully approached her parents with a job proposition, offering to employ the girl to do household chores for him. The girl’s parents agreed to allow her to work for Scully and he shuttled her back to his home.

While in his custody, the girl was ordered to strip and bathe before she was forced to perform sex acts on other young girls, as Scully and his teenage girlfriend took photos and video. If any of the girls refused to cooperate they were beaten by Scully’s girlfriend. The girl claimed that she was able to flee from Scully’s home while she was waiting to be picked up by a German man who had purchased her from Scully days before her escape.

With the girl’s statement and other key pieces of evidence linking the videos to Scully, police were ready to strike. They stormed Scully’s Malaybalay home and charged the Australian with the murder of the 11-year-old girl buried beneath his home, as well as for trafficking and abuse of least eight children – the youngest being an 18-month-old.

Scully is facing life in prison, with no chance for extradition back to Australia, if found guilty. The death penalty was outlawed in the Philippines in 2006, but Scully’s arrest has raised questions on whether or not the death penalty should be reinstated for crimes as deplorable as his.

Lux is Identified

Lux had been well into retirement when a multi-agency effort across Europe, Australia and Canada led to the former pedophile kingpin’s capture. Identified as a 22-year-old Melbourne student and babysitter named Matthew Graham, the arrest of both Scully and another Australian child pornographer nicknamed “Skee,” led investigators to the websites Graham once operated. Among the videos distributed through the website included Scully’s Daisy’s Destruction series.

The former king of child pornography was charged with 88 separate counts related to the dark web communities he once ran. In addition to 13 counts of child pornography, charges against Graham include providing advice to another pedophile on the abduction, rape and murder of a 5-year-old Russian girl, as well as another charge related to a man whom he advised on the abuse of a young, female relative and forced her to hold up a sign in honor of Lux.

Graham has since plead guilty to 13 counts of pandering child pornography. His official sentencing will be on February 3^rd of this year.

Blogging mommy Lacey Spears seemed like the all-American mom who got dealt a bad hand in life. Her son’s father had allegedly died in a car accident, leaving Lacey to raise their son as a single mom. To make matters worse, Garnett was in and out of the hospital with chronic illness. Lacey tried to turn her hardships into strength and began blogging about Garnett’s prognosis.

On November 11, 2009 Lacey writes on her Twitter:

“My Sweet Angel Is In The Hospital For The 23rd Time Please Pray He Gets To Come Home Soon…”

Garnett was a newborn infant at the time of her post, and it certainly wouldn’t be his last hospital stay. By the time the boy had reached age of 5, little Garnett was equipped with a feeding tube and doctors couldn’t seem to get to the bottom of the various illnesses the boy had been suffering from. For most parents, a chronically ill child is a source of constant worry and heartache, but Lacey seemed to take Garnett’s illness in stride and even reveled in the attention she received from friends and strangers across the internet.

On January 19, 2014 Lacey had rushed Garnett to the hospital once again. The boy had been having seizures and blood tests were able to show that his sodium levels were alarmingly high. Doctors were baffled, but Lacey continued to post photos of her sickly and dying child to her Facebook up until his final moments. By January 23, 5-year-old Garnett would be dead.

Garnett’s death was ruled a homicide and, according to prosecutors for the case, Lacey Spears was the murderer. Using the boy’s feeding tube, Spears introduced toxic amounts of sodium into the boy’s system. Hospital cameras showed her taking the boy into the bathroom multiple times, where it is believed that she continued to give the boy potentially fatal doses of salt. Toxicology tests proved that there was as much as 69 McDonald’s salt packets worth of sodium in the boy’s system at the time of his death.

It’s been claimed that Lacey Spears was suffering from Munchausen by proxy, an unusual neurotic disorder where a caretaker purposefully makes a person ill in order to get attention. Often the victims are children and many times caretakers go undiagnosed until tragedy strikes.

Lacey venomously denied the allegations against her, and even speculated that Garnett could have been responsible for his own death. At her home, two feeding bags were found and tests showed that they both contained high levels of sodium. There had also been a container of sea salt sitting open on her kitchen counter. A neighbor testified during her trial that Spears had asked them to hide the bags before investigators arrived at the residence.

In March of 2015, a jury found Spears guilty of second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter. She is currently serving 20 years to life in prison. Spears had always maintained her innocence and, in light of what came out during her trial, there are still those who stand beside her.

While the Facebook page “Mothers 4 Lacey Spears” may not have many followers, Spears’ first television interview may change some opinions. Her supporters claim that Spears was unjustly portrayed as a child-killing monster before she had even seen her day in court, and that media propaganda was responsible for her guilty verdict.

The Lacey Spears 48-Hours interview airs on April 9, 2016 at 10 PM ET/PT on CBS.

Joseph Edward Duncan III is as cold-blooded as any killer comes. Having spent most of his adult years in prison, Duncan began his serial-rapist career at the tender age of 15, when he forced a 9-year-old to perform oral sex on him at gunpoint. A year after the incident, Duncan was picked up for driving a stolen car. While he was in police custody, Duncan admitted to having raped at least 13 young boys. In 1980,  Duncan was in trouble with the law again for raping another boy at gunpoint. This time Duncan was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was released in 1997, but was sent back for parole violations during this period. He was officially released in 2000, after serving out the rest of his initial sentence.

Shortly after his release, Duncan moved to Fargo, ND and fell off police radar. While he still had to register as a sex offender, police had no other incident with Duncan during this time. In 2005, Duncan began blogging. On his blog titled The Fifth Nail Duncan talked about everything from his thoughts on inmate reform to his struggles as a convicted sex offender, as well as his inner turmoil.

On February 17, 2005 Duncan writes:

As long as we keep attacking the symptoms of social disease–the so called offenders–then our problems will keep getting worse. Some day (soon I hope) society will be forced to “wake up” and recognize how it propagates its own misery by denying the truth that criminals are victims too.

Playing the victim is something Duncan was good at and prison is known to be particularly tough on inmates convicted of sex crimes against children. His posts suggest that it’s his opinion that certain inmates should instead be coddled and slapped on the hand for their heinous acts, rather than being forced to pay for their crimes by being sent to prison. In another post Duncan states:

“The only cure for crime is Love. Everything else is just more crime.”

Coming from a man who admitted to the rape of 13 children before he had reached the age of 18, the belief that love alone would have cured him of his sadistic fantasies is his own wishful thinking, at best. At its worst, it’s a narcissistic plea for love and acceptance, in spite of his heinous crimes.

He continues to blog about his growing relationship with God and his desire to adopt a more positive attitude by leaving his checkered past behind. Little did Duncan know that the past was about to come rearing its ugly head. In the summer of 2004, prior to starting his blog, Duncan had been accused of molesting a 6-year-old boy at a park in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. In March of 2005, authorities caught up with Duncan and by April of 2005, Duncan was being held on a $15,000 bond. A wealthy associate was able to bond him out and Duncan skipped bail.

In his April 15, 2005 entry titled “The Boogieman Will Get You,” Duncan begins talking about his pending charges.

“So, I’ve been accused of molesting a little boy. Those close to me know I didn’t do it of course, how could I, I’m not even a pedophile. Well, I’m not a psychopath either, I feel the full force and pain of everyone I have ever hurt, but that doesn’t stop me from doing what I need to do. Ultimately my feelings don’t matter, I learned that in prison. I have to carry out my orders or a lot worse than just me dying could happen.”

For nearly two weeks, Duncan takes a hiatus from maintaining his blog. When he finally returns his post become more erratic, discussing his inner struggles. The second entry after his arrest is titled “Wrestling with Demons,” and is dated April 24, 2005. In this post Duncan writes:

Yes, I am still alive. I honestly wish not, I just don’t know how to kill myself so it makes sense. Nothing makes sense to me right now. Last night I realized I was “scared and alone.” Being scared doesn’t bother me as much as being alone, but it is a fate that I probably chose sometime before I was ever born because I’ve been making the decision to fight my battles alone since I was a small child. The current battle is of epic proportions (I do not make this claim idly either). It is a battle between me and my demons. Only two people in the world have a clue as to the power and nature of my demons (besides me) and they will probably never read this. But just the same, these demons are stronger than even I gave them credit for, and now they are taking my best blows and not even staggering. I’m afraid, very afraid. If they win then a lot of people will be badly hurt, and they’ve had their way before, so I know what they can do. I’ve been praying a lot and asking God for help. I’ve asked him to step in and intercede directly, because I see no other way at this point that I can win. If you are reading this, and you believe in God, please pray for God to help me defeat my demons. God has shown me the right choice, but my demons have me tied to a spit and the fire has already been lit. I don’t know if the right choice is even an option any more!”

By May 11, 2005, Duncan says that he has given into his “demons” and describes how he “got even” and was never got caught, as well as his natural inclination to want to cause as much harm to society as possible. This post reads:

Thanks for the comments. As far as letting God take care of the Demons, too late. They’ve locked up the “Happy Joe” person in the same dungeon that “Happy Joe” kept them in for so many years. Now they are loose and I am very afraid. From now on I may refer to “Happy Joe” as “Jet” (me) and the demons as “The Bogeyman.” If you are familiar with me or even my fifthnail website then you will understand the names (see www.fifthnail.com).
I have been asking God to help defeat the demons. In fact, last night I was on my knees begging him, crying out loud to him, to help me. He didn’t answer, again. The problem is I am loosing my religion. I don’t accept anything at face value, not even my own thoughts. So when I start having religious convictions I question the source. And in my current situation I figure I am under a lot of stress, and there are perfectly natural human mechanisms that account for all religious experiences. The demons (if that’s what they/it are/is–I use the term for mere convenience) have convinced me that I should at least question my religious beliefs, (this makes sense, otherwise I would believe anything) and that is how they got the key to the dungeon, and trapped me inside.
To be more specific, I am scared, alone, and confused, and my reaction is to strike out toward the perceived source of my misery, society. My intent is to harm society as much as I can, then die. As for the “Happy Joe” (Jet), well he was just a dream. The bogeyman was alive and happy long before Happy Joe.
I was in prison for over 18 years, since the age of 17. As an adult all I knew was the oppression of incarceration. All those years I dreamed of getting out…And getting even. Instead, I got out and I got even, but did not get caught. So, I got even again, and again did not get caught. So, I figured, well, I got even twice (actually more, but that’s here nor there), even if I’m the only one who knows, so now what? Well that was when the “Happy Joe” dream started. I met a bunch of really great people, the kind of people I didn’t even know existed, but here they were, bunches of them, my neighbors, my landlords, my professors, my coworkers, and they were all good people, who were willing to give me a chance despite my past. They were willing to accept me and be my friend, something that was new for me, having been betrayed by many “friends” and even my own family.
So, I tried to make it work. But the problem was those demons. The ones who “got even” for me. They kept reminding me that if my new “friends” knew about them (and what they, I, had done to even), then so much for their friendship. So, “Happy Joe” was just dreaming, or pretending to be happy.

On May 13, 2005 Duncan types his final post:

“My blog entries lately are erratic and full of a lot of B.S., for that I apologize. I am just trying to put down what is in my head, regardless. As far as “taking people with me” well, I don’t know if that is right or wrong. In fact, I don’t know much any more what right and wrong even is. My view is either everything is right (in some regard) or everything is wrong (in some other regard). The question (one I am struggling with at this point) is, “Does it matter?”
Does anything matter? My mother is crying right now, because her son is in trouble again. She tried to raise a good son, and she knows her son has a good heart, so why does he do these things? She is probably more hurt and confused than me. Does it matter? It hurts me to know these things, but DOES IT MATTER???
A hundred years from now, all my mothers pain will be forgotten, and other mothers will cry for there sons. A million years from now there probably won’t be any mothers (at least not like we know).
I have feelings, in fact I think I must be more sensitive than most people because I seem to feel more than they do, at least more than what they openly express. I feel for the starving children and families in the world, others say, “Oh, that’s too bad, but I can’t do anything so…”
I wish I could be more honest about my feelings, but those demons made sure I’d never be able to do that. I might not know if it matters, but just in case, I am working on an encrypted journal that is hundreds of times more frank than this blog could ever be (that’s why I keep it encrypted). I figure in 30 years or more we will have the technology to easily crack the encryption (currently very un-crackable, PGP) and then the world will know who I really was, and what I really did, and what I really thought. Also, maybe then they will understand that despite my actions, I’m not a bad person, I just have a disease contracted from society, and it hurts a lot.
I hope to complete this journal before I die (soon) or turn myself in (I still might do that, I think it is the right thing, but of course, I’m not sure).
Speak of being sure; I wish I could be sure about my thoughts. But right now the only thing I’m sure about is that I’m sure about nothing. It is not a good position to be in considering my circumstances (being a felony fugitive and all).”

Just days later, Duncan would get his “revenge.” On May 16, 2005, the bodies of Brenda Groene, her boyfriend Mark McKenzie, and her 13-year-old son Slade were found bound and bludgeoned to death in their Lake Coeur d’Alene home. Additionally, two other Groene children – Shasta;8 and Dylan;9 – had been reported missing from the scene. Duncan would be found nearly two months later, sharing a meal with Shasta at a Coeur d’Alene Denny’s. The restaurant workers, having recognized the little girl from the Amber Alerts for the missing Groene children, immediately phoned the police and refused to let Duncan nor the girl leave the restaurant.

On July 4, 2005, Dylan’s remains were discovered at a campsite near St. Regis, Montana. According to reports taken directly from Shasta, the boy was severely sexually assaulted and strangled, before being shot point blank in the head. Duncan also filmed Dylan’s final hours, where Duncan can be audibly heard shouting how “the devil likes to watch children suffer and cry” as he tortures and sexually abuses the boy. Shasta was also repeatedly tortured and sexually assaulted, but for unknown reasons she was allowed to survive the ordeal.

Duncan was sentenced to serve three life sentences without possibility of parole. After his sentencing, FBI officials launched a nation-wide search in order to determine if Duncan could possibly be connected to a number of unsolved murders involving children. Authorities were able to link Duncan to the disappearance of Anthony Michael Martinez who was only 10-years-old when he went missing from the front yard of his Beaumont, California home in April of 1997. Duncan also confessed to two additional murders, Sammiejo White; 11 and Carmen Cubias; 9, who were last seen leaving a Seattle, Washington hotel in order to panhandle on July 6, 1996. All three murders occurred while Duncan was paroled.

In 2010, Duncan began blogging again. Though prisoners cannot maintain their blogs directly, speaking through contacts Duncan has made on the outside, he writes letters, which are then transcribed by people he has appointed to maintain the blog.

In a post dated April of 2014, a poster known only as “Silence” addresses the purpose of the blog. The user writes:

This section is a virtual “look” into the mind and madness of an insane man. Joseph E. Duncan III kidnapped, sexually assaulted and then murdered several children over a period of eight years and in four different states. He has been convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole in two states (Idaho and California) and has three Federal death sentences. He currently resides on Federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana while his court appointed attorneys appeal on his behalf and against his wishes (Duncan himself has expressly rejected all appeals).

On July 2nd, 2005, in the early morning hours, Duncan was spotted at a Denny’s restaurant in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, with eight year old Shasta. Shasta and her nine year old brother, Dylan, were the subject of an “Amber Alert” after three other members of their family were found bludgeoned to death in their home six weeks earlier. Duncan later confessed that he had entered the home while the family slept with the express intent of murdering the parents and kidnapping the children. He claims he wanted “revenge against society” for sending him to prison for twenty years for sexually assaulting a younger boy (fourteen year old) when he himself was only sixteen years old.

Duncan says he had an “epiphany” as he was seconds away from murdering Shasta, that caused him to stop what he was doing and drive the child back to Coeur d’Alene (over 100 miles from the Montana wilderness where he’d camped out with both children, and murdered Dylan just days before). Shasta later told police, after Duncan was arrested at the Denny’s, that “Jet”, as she called Duncan, was taking her home and turning himself in.

The “Reflections”-section of The Fifth Nail is a collection of Duncan’s most intimate thoughts and reflections as he tries to sort out the madness, or sickness, that lead him to believe he had a “right to justice”. Duncan makes no claim of understanding or justification for what he has done, and repeatedly insists on his profound ignorance and responsibility. He has said in court many times (while representing himself in order to prevent his attorneys from “distorting the truth” about what happened and why) that there is “no excuse” for what he did, and that he accepts responsibility for it, “to the death if necessary”.

Duncan plead guilty unconditionally in Federal court (i.e. there was no “plea deal”) against his attorney’s advice. He also expressly refused to appeal his death sentences, not because he wants to die, but because “society must learn on its own what I have learned”. (Duncan believes that an appeal would only serve to distract society from the truth of what it is doing, which he says is no different than what he was doing; seeking “false justice”).

Duncan’s current blog, The Fifth Nail Exposed, is updated in infrequent intervals, with his latest post dated March 3, 2016. Duncan uses the blog as a space to talk about his day-to-day prison life and to pretend he is walking the path of the righteous, while simultaneously being reprimanded for possessing child pornography and other infractions he committed while serving out a handful of life sentences for his  murders and a death sentence for another.

Duncan’s blogs can be seen as an interesting glimpse into the delusions of a narcissist, serial rapist and murderer. Duncan has eluded to having a third blog that is encrypted and had even offered to give FBI officials the encryption keys if they wished. His offer was declined.

Animal abuse may break your heart and it has been a lot of public outcry from the general population and celebrities over the death of Cecil the Lion.  Hunting lions apparently has become a commodity. The truth behind it is exposed in a documentary called Blood Lions- The Untold Story of Canned Lion Hunting in South Africa. They want the animals protected and Prince Harry flew to Kruger Park reserve to confront the poachers.

I think anyone who cares about animals needs to know about extreme cases of animal abuse.

One particularly cruel prank originating in England, included cooking cats in the microwave. One such story is of a black and white cat named Roxy. The three menaces involved put her in the microwave for ten seconds. They then placed her in the dryer and in the final act of torture dunked her into a bowl of water. Thankfully she lived and the three were charged with animal cruelty.

This next one is equally as cruel. This ugliness took place in Australia. A fox terrier puppy Peanut was kidnapped. He was sliced with a knife and garden shears, his legs amputated, nose severed, and his agony ends with decapitation. The pair who did this violence laughed while doing the deed. One of the offenders did it in retaliation for a dispute he had with the female owner.

A mother of seven in Long Island, Sharon McDonough had a long history of dog and cat torture. Her son described it as a concentration camp for animals. This woman did not allow her younger children to use the bathroom and they were forced to urinate and defecate in a bucket. Her evil behavior also included kidnapping dogs and cats and making her offspring restrain them while she taped their mouths and noses closed before watching them die a slow death. The authorities found 42 dog corpses in her backyard. She was sentenced to two years in prison for her mistreatment of her children and the animals.

Investigations in the United States found that this abuse happens on a regular basis. All species include companion, circus, and farm animals as the targets. Another burden is there is no law that protects them or serve justice. Often law enforcement will turn a blind eye. If a defendant is charged, it is a misdemeanor and a small fine is the consequence. Take a New Jersey woman who deprived her dog of food, disposed of him in a trash bag, and left him to die in the garbage. She was given 18 months’ probation and a $2000 fine. One story of workers who kicked and stomped cows at a dairy farm are punished with measly $500 fines. Some may not consider this travesty a crime. There are reasons why it should; one is basic human decency. Now if you think of a violent crime the victim is injured or threatened with violence. American law defines it as assault, murder, rape, robbery, and sexual assault. These are grave acts and recorded by the authorities and receive harsh punishments. A human being is considered a victim; not an animal. They are looked at as property. They feel emotions and suffer physical and psychological scars. Bear in mind we need a change in values; and then an amendment to the law.

Sword and Scale episode 67 discussed a horrifying case of a mother convicted for killing her own children, but many were left to wonder how these kids were able to slip through the cracks. Neighbors and investigators were completely baffled how children could go missing for over two years and no one took notice or called the police.

Homeschooling was cited as a major contributor to the demise of these children. Unlike children who attend schools outside of the home, the safety net of teachers, guidance councilors, coaches and other school faculty simply did not exist and ultimately lead to the disappearance of these children going unnoticed and unreported.

Caregivers for homeschooled children often may have legitimate concerns about the curriculum in public or private schools, but what Blair’s case showed us is that there is another group of children who are also homeschooled. These kids are suffering unspeakable torture and abuse at the hands of their caregivers who use homeschool as a means to cover up the abuse, and these cases are on the rise.

The most recent case to shed light on this issue comes to us from Toledo, Ohio.

In early May of 2016, two cleaning ladies were reporting to duty when they came across a 13-year-old girl outside of the Toledo Port Authority building. The girl had been described as disheveled and appeared as if she hadn’t bathed in some time. After speaking with the girl the two cleaning ladies determined she had been a runaway.

One of the ladies dialed 9-1-1 and spoke with the girl as they waited for an officer to arrive to the scene. The girl told the woman that she had been chained up in a basement for a year. She was forced to urinate in a bucket of ammonia and often only had food scraps to eat. The girl said she had been chained up in the basement of a Toledo home as punishment and only escaped because she had been able to steal the key from her captors.

The basement window the 13-year-old girl was able to escape from.

Two men – Timothy Ciboro, 53 and his adult son Esten Ciboro, 27 – were placed under arrest. They are awaiting trial for charges related to kidnapping and endangering children.

The girl claimed that her stepfather, Timothy Ciboro, was the one who determined these bizarre punishments and his son Esten helped to enforce them. The girl had been searching for a relative of her mother’s when the two cleaning ladies found her.

The girl’s mother, Stafonda Hawkins, was also picked up on an unrelated warrant. She is also the mother of two other children found in the home at the time of the Ciboros’ arrests. Many wonder how much she knew about the treatment of the 13-year-old runaway and the other children in the home.

Cases like Blair’s and Ciboro’s both serve to show the dark underbelly of homeschooling. Their cases may be bizarre, but they are hardly unique. For this reason organizations have been established to push for safeguards to protect children in homeschooled environments.

Homeschooling should be a contract between parents and children who wish to strive for an alternative to the traditional school environment, but with the lack of regulations that currently exist, abusers are able to use this system as a way to hide the truth of what is going on in their homes. Sometimes, as we saw in Blair’s case, it even allows them to get away with murder.

“What if science one day discovered that all evil behavior has a biological cause? What if thieves and murderers were “fixable” with a few minor adjustments to their brain chemistry? Author Quantz asks these big questions and more in a daring if too brief graphic novel. Dr. Wolfe is an obsessed neuroscientist seeking to discover the root of evil in the human brain. With the help of a genius movie set designer and a voluptuous actress, he concocts an elaborate false reality to experiment on a convicted serial killer. Think of it as The Truman Show meets Natural Born Killers. The explicit discussion of morality gives the story a Greek tragedy feel, and the intriguing cast makes for a surprisingly character-driven story …”

The description Amazon gives for the graphic novel Syndrome – the latest graphic novel Canadian real estate heir Blake Leibel is credited with co-authoring – explores some of the darkest aspects of the human psyche. With the recent news of Leibel’s arrest for the torture and mutilation of his girlfriend, many are wondering if Leibel’s fascination with the criminal mind had been taken too far.

Leibel is credited as an award winning Halflife player, who decided to focus his energies on other forms of media. With the help of an $18,000 a month allowance, Leibel has written a number of graphic novels, screenplays and, according to IMDb, had acted as a creative consultant for the 2008 animated series based on Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs

Leibel was placed under arrest on May 26, 2016 after West Hollywood police entered into the couple’s barricaded apartment. Inside, investigators came across a scene that seemed to mimic Leibel’s notable graphic novels and screenplays. Iana Kasian, who had just given birth to couple’s first child three weeks prior, was found tortured, mutilated and completely drained of her blood according to a press release from the offices of district attorney Jackie Lacey.

According to an article written by The Washington Post the couple had been having trouble in their relationship after Leibel was picked up on charges related to a sexual assault. Friends say that Kasian was not the victim of the sexual assault, but Leibel’s arrest did not go over well with the new mother. She went to live with her mother, but had returned to the apartment to speak with Leibel. Kasian’s mother said she never returned.

Kasian’s mother called police and asked them to conduct a welfare check on her missing daughter. Police arrived to find furniture and other household items had been used to barricade the door. Leibel, as well as the mutilated body of Iana Kasian, were found inside.

More details on exactly how the woman died are sure to come out as Leibel faces charges including murder, mayhem, aggravated mayhem and torture.

Leibel has since plead not guilty to all charges. If convicted Leibel faces the death penalty.

Peter Frederiksen was already a wanted fugitive for selling illegal firearms in his native country of Denmark when South African officials uncovered 21 bags of preserved pieces of female genitalia in his freezer.

Frederikson’s estranged wife, Anna Matseliso Molise, initially contacted police about what had been stored in Frederikson’s freezer in February of 2015, but the police did not believe her story. It wouldn’t be until she had become one of Frederiksen’s victims that investigators would take her claims seriously.

In September of 2015, Molise reported to police that Frederiksen had fed her drugged champagne and proceeded to physically assault her, before adding pieces of her genitalia to his gruesome collection. Frederiksen was placed under arrest when surgical instruments, pornographic photos of children, a hook with pieces of female genitalia drying on it, as well as a diary documenting the genital mutilations dating back to 2010 were found in Frederiksen’s townhouse.

Frederiksen was immediately placed under arrest. Ms. Molise – who was offered witness protective services by police, but declined the offer – was gunned down a month later.

Frederiksen says it was his wife who collected the female genitalia in the freezer and had willingly agreed to undergo the procedure herself, due to her interest in black magic. Frederiksen says that she and all of his victims had been willing participants.

According to footage provided to the courts by Danish journalists asked by Frederiksen to ghostwrite his memoirs, Frederiksen says he was involved in sadomasochism, and had first been introduced to the practice 20 years prior to his arrest. He claims a satanic priestess had been the first to request that he perform the procedure on her. He also went on to boast how he had been the only man allowed to assist in the procedure in the mountains of Lesotho.

Frederiksen says that after having performed the ritual on the satanic priestess, he was taken under the wing of famous plastic surgeon Jørn Ege Siana – known as “Dr. Penis” for his penis enlargement surgeries – and was given lessons on how to perform the procedure properly. It is unknown how many female circumcisions Frederiksen may have assisted in while living with his wife and children in his native Denmark, but he was already on the police’s radar for illegal gun sales.

Force to flee the country and leaving his wife and children behind, Frederiksen went to South Africa to start a new life. There, Frederiksen met his second wife, who would later go on to be the key witness in his trial. He also claimed that upon his arrival, an elderly woman offered to take him into the mountains and show him how female circumcisions were performed there.

In many African, Asian and Middle Eastern countries female circumcisions are performed in non-medical environments once young women reach a reproductive age. The procedure makes it nearly impossible for women to have sexual pleasure and has often lead to infections and death due to the lack of sanitary conditions and other problems that may arise after the procedure. There has been pressure from the medical community, as well as women’s rights organizations, in these countries to end the practice and laws have been passed in order to circumvent the tradition, but some people still force young women to undergo the procedure illegally.

After Frederiksen claims he bore witness to the barbaric practice, he says he was asked to assist in performing the procedures for the women of Lesotho. He says that after the procedure had been performed on up to 15 young women, the external genitalia is then boiled with different herbs and consumed by the girls.

Though the ritual seems bizarre by Western standards, it does not explain why Frederiksen had been preserving the pieces of female genitalia within his own freezer.

Frederiksen is facing charges including bigomy (since he had a previous wife he abandoned in Denmark), sexual assault, illegal removal of human tissue, grievous bodily harm and distribution of child pornography, as well as charges related to his involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate the prosecution’s key witness.

When done correctly, movies should transport us into another world. A world that defies logic and temporarily suspends our grasp on reality. We all have our favorites and our reasons for enjoying certain films. Some of us like to laugh, some of us just want to watch things explode and some people want to take notes. The killers we’ll look at today, like ourselves, had their favorite films, but they took the fantasy of horror films a little too far and decided that they wanted to become killers themselves.

The Loved Ones Copycat Killer

In August of 2012, Australian movie buff Gary George tortured and murdered his best friend. One of George’s favorite films, The Loved Ones, was said to have been the inspiration for the crime. George mimicked a scene from the film by cutting into Nall’s chest and pouring salt into the fresh wounds. Cleaning products had also been sprayed into the man’s eyes before he fatally stabbed his friend 49 times, leaving him on a bedroom floor in a pool of his own blood. George is now serving 12 years in prison.

The Scream Killers

Wes Craven’s iconic Scream trilogy inspired a slue of copycat crimes, but two particular cases are infamously tied to the films.

17-year-old Mario Padilla, with the help of his 15-year-old cousin, stabbed his mother to death with four different knives and a screwdriver. According to the testimony of the teens, the murder of Padilla’s mother was supposed to be the beginning of a Scream-inspired murder spree. Before the pair had a chance to execute their plans of purchasing costumes like the killer in the movie and a voice box in order to disguise their identities they were arrested in connection to Padilla’s mother’s murder. It didn’t take long for a jury to find both Padilla and his cousin guilty of all charges.

Two years later, 24-year-old Belgian lorry driver Thierry Jaradin had become smitten with a 15-year-old girl. The girl agreed to meet Jaradin at his home, believing that they were just going to trade movies and talk for a while. Jaradin began to make advances towards the girl, but she made it clear that she didn’t have any interest in him. Jaradin excused himself from the room after the girl shot down his advances towards her and changed into a costume similar to the one worn by the killer in the Scream series. He returned to the room wielding two kitchen knives. He covered the girl’s mouth and proceeded to stab the teenager 30 times. He placed her body on his bed and slipped a rose into her hands before phoning his father and a friend in order to confess to his crime.

Freddy’s Protege

In 2004, a mentally ill British man went on a three day stabbing spree, killing four people. Daniel Gonzalez was allegedly inspired by films like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13^th, when he decided he wanted to become a famous serial killer. Gonzalez targeted a handful of elderly people, some within their own homes, while wearing a hockey mask similar to the one worn by Jason Voorhese in the Friday the 13^th film series. Throughout the spree Gonzalez wrote letters addressed to “Zippy,” his childhood nickname. In one letter Gonzalez said he felt just like Freddy Krueger.

Prior to the incident Gonzalez’s mother had written to authorities about her son’s deteriorating mental state, one of which criticized that it would take a serious incident for her son to get the psychiatric help he so desperately needed. Gonzalez attempted to plea not guilty by reason of insanity, but the courts rejected the plea and instead sentenced him to six consecutive life sentences.

The Murder of James Bulger

In 1993, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson would become the two youngest persons to ever be successfully sentenced to prison for murder after they kidnapped and murdered 2-year-old James Bulger. Prior to the murders Jon Venables had been exposed to a number of violent films, such as Child’s Play, which he had watched just weeks before to killing the tot. It’s been alleged that these films, particularly Child’s Play, may have been what inspired the boys to carry out this senseless crime. After the trial there were serious talks about censoring films like Child’s Play and follow-ups to the series received considerable backlash across Britain, with some theaters refusing to premier the later films. Critics of the notion that a film had inspired the boys’ decision to commit the murder have pointed out that there were a number of other environmental and social factors that may have had more of an influence on the boys and that a single film cannot be held accountable for the children’s behavior.

Inspired by Saw

In 2009, two Salt Lake City, Utah teenagers plotted to kill and torture two of their classmates, as well as a police officer. A tip came in from a mother of one of the two boys who said they were inspired by the movie Saw and had constructed detailed plans based on some of the torture scenes in the film. The boys were arrested without further incident and their plot was ultimately thwarted.

The incident would only be one of several Saw-inspired crimes. In March of 2013, a British man had attempted to mimic a scene from the fourth installment of the Saw series when he held his neighbor at knife point and forced him to tell him his bank pin numbers. 25-year-old Matthew Tinling then stabbed the man 17 times, at one point attempting to re-enact a gruesome scene from the film where one of the killer’s victims has their spine severed. The man then withdrew money from the victim’s bank account in order to purchase crack cocaine. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Nearly every parent who works and has children under school age dreads the idea of dropping them off at daycare. In most cases parents do everything within their means to ensure that they are dropping their children off in a safe environment. Unfortunately, there are times that even those checks are not enough to keep predators and abusers at bay, and even the best of parents question what they could have done differently when they find that the place they’ve entrusted their children to is responsible for some of the most reprehensible acts imaginable.

Throughout the 1980s the daycare abuse hysteria, which heavily tied into the Satanic panic, caused many families to forego daycare altogether, but in today’s times that notion is not always a feasible one. While we can rest assured that most daycare providers strive to give children the best environment possible for them to be able to learn and grow, there are some who enter into the field for much darker reasons.

Background checks are in place to prevent some of the more sinister elements from ever having the opportunity to step foot on the center’s grounds, but sometimes people fall through the cracks and even the best preventative measures could not have prevented some of society’s worst monsters from having access to our children. Today we will look at five of the most horrible cases of daycare abuse.

ABC Kidz Child Rape

In 2013, sheriffs deputies conducted a standard check on registered sex offender James Osborne and discovered an unregistered laptop in his possession. On the laptop, footage of daycare worker Heather Koon was discovered. In the videos Koon can be seen carrying out sexual acts with young children who attended ABC Kidz Child Center in Elyria, Ohio, some as young as one and two years old. Koon had been dating Osborne at the time of her arrest and through his encouragement, Koon agreed to engage in sexual encounters with four of the children she cared for.

Koon has since pleaded guilty to charges including rape, illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material, kidnapping and pandering obscenity involving a minor. She is currently facing life in prison, but may be able to serve 15, on the condition that she registers as a sex offender for the rest of her life.

As for Osborne, he has also pleaded guilty to all charges, which include complicity to rape, complicity to kidnapping, pandering obscenity involving a minor, engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, failure to register as a sex offender and use of a minor in nudity-oriented material. He also faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, but may be able to serve as little as 15 depending on the judge’s decision.

The Boston Child Rapist

At 25-years-old John Burbine had been convicted of molesting three young children aged 5 to 7 years old. Burbine had been hired as a babysitter for the boys and it wouldn’t be long thereafter that one of the boys would report that Burbine had been fondling him to his parents. Burbine was charged, but received only a 6-month sentence and ordered to serve a two-year probation. The family believed that Burbine, now being a convicted sex offender, would never be able to care for children again. They thought wrong.

Between 2010 and 2013 Burbine and his wife owned and operated an unlicensed daycare called Waterfall Education Center. Burbine advertised the service online, including on parenting message boards and coupon sites. Burbine would go on to rape 13 young children ranging in age from 8 months to 3-years-old.

The prosecutor’s office began to receive complaints about the center and Burbine in September of 2012. Burbine was placed under arrest and officials assured the public that, if convicted, Burbine would never again see the light of day and certainly would never step foot near a child again. Burbine committed suicide in his jail cell as he awaited trial.

Baby Fight Club

Two workers at the Minnieland Academy daycare center in Virginia were charged with cruelty or injury to a child and assault and battery after social workers investigated complaints against the center. Allegations against Kierra Spriggs and Sarah Jordan included stepping on children’s bare toes as a form of punishment, dunking children into portable pools, tossing children into their cots at naptime, beating a child with an easel, spraying children in the face with hoses and feeding kids spicy hot cheetos. Additionally the pair were accused of running a “baby fight club” from the center, where toddlers were forced to fight one another for their amusement.

As soon as Minnieland Academy got word of the allegations against the workers they were fired immediately. Spriggs was found guilty of child cruelty and assault and battery after a two week trial. Jordan was also found guilty of similar charges. Both are still awaiting their sentencing, but could receive up to 40 years in prison.

Drugged Children

When Adam Seagull suddenly died at an in-home daycare operating in Fairfield, Connecticut his death was initially explained away as SIDs. The baby was found with no apparent trauma and had not been reported to have been ill prior to his death. It wouldn’t be until an autopsy report revealed extremely high levels of Diphenhydramine, most commonly known as Benadryl, found in the infant’s system.

No criminal charges have been filed over the March 2016 incident, but the 4 month old’s death has been ruled a homicide.

Fire While Worker Shops

24-year-old Jessica Tata was sentenced to 80 years in prison after she left four children left within her care to go shopping. Tata, who had been running an in-home daycare at the time, allowed seven children to stay at the home unsupervised as she went shopping at a nearby Target store. Two children were seriously injured, while a 16-month-old perished in a fire that erupted in the home after a pan of oil Tata had left boiling on the stove ignited.

During her trial it was discovered that Tata had often left children she had been paid to care for home alone while she ran her errands and it was only a matter of time before a fatal accident occurred. Tata was found guilty of murdering the 16-month-old in her care due to her gross negligence.

On October 13, 2011 the body of a young woman was found hacked up and shoved into a black Nike duffle bag as well as a laundry bag and placed behind a Bethany, Oklahoma grocery store. According to her autopsy report she had been completely dismembered with her hands and feet missing. There was evidence of duct tape having been wrapped around her thighs, as well as evidence that the perpetrators attempted to cut off her tattoo in order to conceal her identity. It is not clear whether she was dismembered before or after her death.

Using her dental records, investigators were able to positively identify the young woman’s remains as 19-year-old Carina Saunders. Investigators used this information to quickly build a case. It was believed that Saunders may have been involved in a human trafficking ring and her grizzly murder may have been to intimidate witnesses and to force the women to cooperate with the ring’s demands.

The following year two men were arrested. Jimmy Massey and Luis Ruiz, who were both suspected to be heavily involved in the drug trade, were brought in after a female witness claimed she had witnessed both Massey and Ruiz torture Saunders to death.

According to the witness, the two men had Saunders strapped to a table. They cut off Saunders’ left foot with a hacksaw and attempted to cut off her right foot until the saw broke. The woman claimed that she jumped out of the window in order to escape the ordeal.

A second witness came forward and claimed she had viewed a video on Ruiz’s phone of him torturing and murdering Carina Saunders. She also claimed that she had recognized Ruiz as the person who had been seen sawing off Saunders’ left foot.

Police were unable to obtain this video. Both men had their murder charges dismissed without prejudice due to a lack of evidence. Ruiz was able to walk free, while Massey was held on unrelated drug charges.

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation has since taken over the Saunders murder case, but no arrests have been made. Any information on the case can be forwarded to their tipline at 1-800-522-8017 or by email Tips@osbi.ok.gov

On the evening of November 13, 1992, three teenage girls – Miriam García Iborra, Antonia “Toñi” Gómez Rodríguez and Desirée Hernández Folch – decided to attend a high school party hosted just outside of Velencia, Spain. According to reports, the three girls first stopped at another friend’s home, but she decided to stay home that night. The girls then set out to find a ride to the “Coolor” club where the party was being hosted that evening.

Miriam García Iborra, Antonia “Toñi” Gómez Rodríguez and Desirée Hernández Folch

Miriam asked her father if he would take all of the girls to the club that night, but he was sick in bed with the flu. The girls decided that they would hitchhike instead, since it was a common practice in the small town.

The girls were able to hitch a ride with a couple who took them to a gas station in Picassent, near where the club was located. While at the gas station the couple witnessed the girls get into another car, but they claimed it was dark and difficult to make out the second vehicle the girls were seen entering. That was the last time the girls were seen alive.

The girls were discovered on January 27, 1993, when two beekeepers uncovered the bodies in an inhabitable wasteland known as “La Romana.” It was clear that the girls had been beaten, tortured and raped before being dumped in their clandestine graves. For the country of Spain, the case was, and still remains, the most gruesome murders they’ve ever seen.

According to the official report, police uncovered near the grave a social security letter addressed Enrique Angles Martins. Following that lead, officials reported to the home of the Angles’ in order to ask some questions. Some of the family members in the home were taken in for questioning, while Antonio Angles Martins — the man suspected to have been one of the men to pick up the girls on the night of the party — was able to jump out of his fourth floor window to the roof of a neighboring building and flee the police.

Antonio Angles remains one of Interpol’s most wanted, though many presume that he is dead.

From there it’s alleged that he hid in and around the city of Valencia, until police finally caught up with him in the municipality of Villamarchante. Again, Angles was able to evade capture and turned up several days later in Minglanilla, Cuenca. He was last spotted in Lisbon, Spain in March of 1993. There are two theories on what may have happened to him.

The first theory says that he boarded as a stowaway on a boat. He was discovered near the coast of Ireland and was forced to jump overboard in order to evade capture. He was either able to swim to safety or (more than likely) froze to death in the frigid waters.

The second theory is that Angles simply boarded a boat for his native Brazil using his passport, never to return to Spain again. He remains on Interpol’s most wanted list to this day.

Miguel Ricart was taken in for questioning and later charged with the brutal slaying of the three teenagers.

Angles’ alleged accomplice, Miguel Ricart, wasn’t quite as difficult to apprehend. The official report states that Ricart told investigators that he, Angles, and another unknown suspect had picked up the girls on the night of November 13. As they drove past the club they were supposed to drop the girls off at the girls began to scream. Angles turned around and hit the girls in the mouth with the butt of his gun, knocking out some of their teeth in the process.

The group arrived at a crumbling house in the isolated and uninhabited area of La Romana. The girls were taken into the home, which was sometimes used as a hideout for career criminal Antonio Angles. They proceeded to tie up the girls and rape two of them vaginally and anally, including with various objects. The men then left and went to a nearby town in order to get some food. They returned two hours later and proceeded to rape and torture the third girl.

The hideout of Angles’ the three girls were taken. The lack of blood in the various photos taken from the alleged scene of the murders has been pointed out by numerous people interested in the case and is just one of many interesting inconsistencies in the investigation.

They continued to torture all three girls until they fell asleep, ignoring their screams of agony. When they awoke to hear the girls screaming and crying the following day, the men forced the girls to walk to a pit they had dug, taking the opportunity to beat and torture them some more before shooting them and throwing the girls into the makeshift grave. Angles and Ricart then spent the rest of the day cleaning the car and picking up the shell casings.

Two autopsies were conducted on the girls, both containing discrepancies within the details, as well as official reports directly contradicting witness statements from the evening of the girls’ disappearance. DNA reports stated that pubic hairs from seven different individuals had been collected from the bodies, none of which belonged to the girls themselves nor the alleged perpetrators. It wasn’t until the father of one of the girls, Fernando Garcia, pointed out these inconsistencies, too numerous to list, and the possible connection to high-ranking officials within the Spanish government and local law enforcement that the case began to receive national attention.

Like the Mark Dutroux case in Belgium, many theories have come out in the case over the years, including satanic involvement and the possibility that the girls were murdered in order to make a snuff film, possibly by an international ring of wealthy investors. The only thing that has been proven is that police displayed an alarming amount of ineptitude in investigating this case in their need to wrap it up as quickly as possible in order for the Spanish people to put the horrific murders behind them.