10 Horrific Crimes You've Never Heard Of
The Death of Sylvia Likens
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Sylvia and Jenny Likens were born to two carnival workers who regularly traveled around the country. During one of their parents’ trips in 1965, the girls were left in the care of Gertrude Baniszewski, who agreed to house them for a weekly $20 payment. When this money began coming in late, Baniszewski took out her anger on the Likens girls. Eventually, she directed the extreme abuse almost entirely at Sylvia, sometimes to the point of starvation. Sylvia’s maltreatment came not only from Baniszewski, but also from her children and other neighborhood kids, culminating in Sylvia’s tragic death on October 26th 1965. Baniszewski served less than twenty years in prison, while the others arrested for the crime were handed much shorter sentences.
The Crimes of Jerry Brudos
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Born in Webster, South Dakota in 1939, Jerry Brudos developed a fetish for women’s shoes at a very young age. As he grew older, this obsession manifested in the form of attacking women, only to steal their shoes and keep them for himself. When the bodies of Linda Salee and Karen Sprinker, two young Oregon women, were discovered in the Long Tom River in 1969, police were quick to identify similarities in their deaths. They questioned students at the nearby Oregon State University and were led to Brudos, who later confessed to the murders in gory detail. Brudos opted for a guilty plea and was sentenced to three consecutive life terms. He died of liver cancer in 2006 while incarcerated.
Dennis Rader, the “BTK” Killer
In February 2005, Dennis Rader, a family man and local church leader in Wichita, Kansas, was arrested and charged with the murders of ten people. Between 1974 and 1991, Rader had stalked most of his victims to their homes, where they were bound, tortured and then killed. He derived his own nickname, the BTK killer, from this method. Rader stopped his spree after 1991, only to begin sending taunting letters to police and media houses a little over a decade later. He may have gotten away with the crimes, if not for a floppy disk he sent to police, which was traced back to him. Rader pleaded guilty to the killings and was sentenced to ten consecutive life terms.
John Haigh’s Life of Crimes
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Dubbed the “Acid Bath Murderer,” John George Haigh was a British serial killer who was active between 1944 and 1949. Haigh began his life of crime selling fraudulent stocks under a false identity. He was eventually caught and served multiple prison terms for his scams. After leaving prison in 1943, Haigh started targeting wealthy individuals and killing them for their money. He would then dissolve the bodies in sulphuric acid, believing it would leave no trace of the crime. Haigh claimed five lives in this manner without getting caught, but his sixth victim would prove to be his downfall. At his trial, Haigh pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity but regardless, he was convicted and executed by hanging.
The Disappearance of the Sodder Children
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George and Jennie Sodder, alongside nine of their ten children, were asleep on Christmas Eve 1945, when their Fayetteville, West Virginia house caught fire. The couple managed to escape with four of the children, but all attempts to rescue the other five trapped upstairs proved futile. The family initially believed all five children died in the fire, only to find no remains of them in the rubble. Despite multiple theories and investigations at the state and federal levels, the case turned up no new leads and eventually grew cold. For decades, the Sodder family kept up a billboard at the site offering a $5,000 reward for any information about the disappearance. It was, however, taken down after Jennie’s death in 1989.
The Cleveland Torso Murders
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In the 1930s, a serial killer reigned terror in Cleveland, Ohio, murdering and dismembering at least twelve people in the span of four years. The remains of these individuals were found scattered around the city, with most of them having died from decapitation. Of the twelve known victims, only two were positively identified as Edward Andrassy and Florence Polillo. A third victim was thought to be a woman named Rose Wallace, but her identity was never confirmed. The investigation into the murders, which was the largest in Cleveland history, turned up two suspects, but no charges stuck. Today, the identity of the Torso Murderer remains unknown.
The Hunts of Robert Hansen
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Growing up in Iowa, Robert Hansen was a shy loner who spent his free time hunting. After serving multiple jail sentences for petty theft, he moved to Anchorage, Alaska, where he settled with his family. While there, Hansen began abducting young women to his home at gunpoint and assaulting them. With his private plane, he flew some of these women out into the wild, where he hunted them like prey before taking their lives. In total, Hansen killed at least seventeen women. With the help of one of his victims who escaped, police were able to nail Hansen in 1983, and succeeded in sending him to prison. He died in 2014 of natural causes.
The Murder of John Price
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In 2001, Katherine Knight became the first woman in Australian history to be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. Her crime was the gruesome murder of her romantic partner, John Price. Price had kicked Knight out of his house after years of living together, during which she was repeatedly violent towards him. On the night of February 29th 2000, Knight returned to Price’s house and stabbed him repeatedly before doing and planning far more heinous actions. Police, responding to a call from Price’s neighbor and co-worker, found Knight comatose in the house and placed her under arrest.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist
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Around 1:24 am on March 18th, 1990, guards at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts buzzed in two men who appeared to be police officers. Once inside, the men subdued the guards and set about what would become one of the largest museum heists in history. Over the next hour, the robbers stole thirteen works of art, worth over half a billion dollars, leaving empty frames hanging in their place. The FBI jumped on the case immediately, but their investigation stalled due to a lack of physical evidence at the crime scene. The heist remains unsolved to this day, but one popular theory is that it was orchestrated by the Boston Mafia.
The Disappearance of Dorothy Jane Scott
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Dorothy Jane Scott was a thirty-two-year-old single mother who was working as a retail store secretary in California when she disappeared in 1980. In the months leading up to the incident, Scott had received multiple calls from an anonymous man who claimed to love her, but also threatened her life. Those threats were ostensibly made manifest on May 28th when Scott was abducted in her own car after driving a co-worker to the hospital. Her car was later abandoned and set on fire in an alley, where it was found the next day. Scott, however, remained missing until four years later, when her burnt remains were discovered by a construction worker.
