True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History

He was evil personified. In the Spring of 1997, a serial killer held Nashville, Tennessee in an icy grip of terror. In February, he murdered two employees at a Captain D's restaurant. In March, he struck a McDonalds just miles away, killing three people and maiming one. In April, he kidnapped and slaughtered two Baskin-Robbins employees. They called him "The Fast Food Killer" but his real name is...

During WWII, Lithuanian collaborator Silvestras Griekshell had been plucked from a Nazi death camp and sent on covert missions by his Allied handlers. Now during the Cold War, he'd been redeployed as Steve Griggs, a nondescript American husband and father of four serving stateside as a cook in the U.S. Army. Though still doing black-bag jobs on the side, this dangerous, volatile man was consumed b...

Nancy Pfister, heir to Buttermilk Mountain, the world-renowned site of the Winter X Games, was Aspen royalty, its ambassador to the world. She lived among the rich and famous: she partied with Hunter S. Thompson, dated Jack Nicholson, had a joint baby shower with Goldie Hawn, and globetrotted with Angelica Houston. She was also a philanthropist, admired for her generosity. But behind the warm faça...

On December 13, 1934, Albert Fish was apprehended by Detective William King for the kidnapping and murder of ten-year-old Grace Budd. Fish’s defense attorney obtained the services of Dr. Fredric Wertham for Fish’s psychiatric examination. Dr. Wertham’s files were ordered closed until 2010. Documents from Wertham’s files, including confessions and writings by Albert Fish, are published here for the...

A LOVING FATHER A typical morning in the Atlanta suburbs: Businessman Rusty Sneiderman drops his beloved son off at the Dunwoody Prep nursery. In the parking lot, a minivan pulls up next to his car. The driver pulls out a gun-and shoots Rusty four times in the chest. A HEARTBROKEN WIFE Sneiderman's devoted wife, Andrea, is devastated by the crime. Who could have done this? She is shocked when poli...

A true recounting of the high-profile Oregon murder case that led to Karly's Law. Part memoir, part investigative journalism, this is the story Ann Rule called "A Must Read." Reminiscent of Capote's In Cold Blood, the book has been written in the tradition of new journalism. The writer's proximity to the people involved make for unrelenting storytelling. As Karly's abuse escalates, the investigati...

Do you think I’m pretty. No one likes me.  I hate my life.  I wish I had a friend. It was the mantra of fourteen-year-old Sherokee Harriman, who in September 2015 faced her alleged bullies in a small Tennessee public park and pulled out a concealed kitchen knife. She drove the knife into her stomach as the horrified teens watched. Local media focused on sensationalism rather than truth. The word “...

A reign of terror swept the streets of Birmingham in the 1920s. Criminals armed with small axes attacked immigrant merchants and interracial couples, leaving dozens dead or injured over the course of four years. Desperate for answers, police accepted clues from a Ouija board, while citizens clamored for gun permits for protection. The city's Italian immigrants formed their own association as prote...

Before domestic violence hot lines and safe houses were widespread, June Briand shot four bullets into her husband’s head and was sentenced to fifteen years to life. This is the shocking true story of survival—and the intense bond June shared with her pathologically violent husband, a monster who physically and sexually tortured, degraded and dominated her so relentlessly that she refused to belie...

On March 13, 1980, In Ventura County, California, prominent attorney Lyman Robert Smith, on the verge of being appointed a Superior Court judge, and his wife Charlene were murdered in their home. Author Anne Penn her actual name Laurie, is the couple's neice. She was close to her grandfather, Lyman's father and saw the devastaing impact the murders had on the family. Once she realized it was the w...

Det. Richard Shelby was the first Sacramento detective to make a connection between a series of rapes that began in communities in East Sacramento. Law enforcement failed to stop him before he transformed in to a Southern California serial killer, committing  some 53 rapes and 12 homicides from 1976-1986. After Shelby's retirement, 20 years after the case had gone cold, he was contacted by his old...

Absolute Madness tells the disturbing true story of Joseph Christopher, a white serial killer who targeted black males and struck fear into the residents of Buffalo and New York City in the 1980s. Dubbed both the .22-Caliber Killer and the Midtown Slasher, Christopher allegedly claimed eighteen victims during a savage four-month spree across the state.  The investigation, aided by famed FBI profil...

Presenting the most notorious unsolved crimes in Northeast Ohio . . . Investigative reporter James Renner reopens cold cases and delves into dark secrets that have baffled Clevelanders for years, including: • Murder? Beverly Jarosz, just 16 years old, felt a dark foreboding in the months before she was stabbed to death in her quiet Garfield Heights home. It all started with an anonymous gift. • St...

On February 5th, 2007 Charity Lee Bennett was working her shift at Buffalo Wild Wings in Abilene Texas when two police officers came to inform her that her 4 year-old daughter Ella was dead and her 13 year-old son Paris had killed her. He had convinced the babysitter she could go home and afterwards entered the room of his sister. She was beaten and strangled and stabbed 17 times. Paris first call...

The year was 1965. The Beatles, Elvis Presley, and The Righteous Brothers filled the airwaves. Television shows like "The Adventures of Ozzy and Harriett" and "The Andy Griffith Show" mirrored the innocence of life in the dusty city of Tucson, Az. But the sunbaked desert surrounding Tucson was hiding a sinister secret. A psychopath names Charles Schmid, later nicknamed the "Pied Piper of Tucson" b...

In the pantheon of serial killers, Belle Gunness stands alone. She was the rarest of female psychopaths, a woman who engaged in wholesale slaughter, partly out of greed but mostly for the sheer joy of it. Between 1902 and 1908, she lured a succession of unsuspecting victims to her Indiana “murder farm.” Some were hired hands. Others were well-to-do bachelors. All of them vanished without a trace....

Discover the haunting untold true story of the woman whose crimes inspired speculation that Jack the Ripper was a woman. On October 24, 1890, a woman was discovered on a pile of rubbish in Hampstead, North London. Her arms were lacerated and her face bloodied; her head was severed from her body save a few sinews. Later that day, a blood-soaked stroller was found leaning against a residential gate,...

Investigation Discovery’s MURDER CHOSE ME, featuring legendaryShreveport, Louisiana homicide detective Rod Demery returns for its second season on Wednesday,April 4 at 10/9c, only on ID. The series follows Demery as he reflects on memorable cases from his 14 years as a homicide detective, where he miraculously achieved a confession and 100% solve rate in the more than 250 homicide cases where he s...

In May, 1988, in Everett, Washington, four-year-old Feather Rahier disappeared while playing outside after dinner. Her frantic cries drew Feather's mother to the dark garage that was home to Richard Matthew Clark. Clark had stolen the child, bound and gagged her, and begun to undress her. Only at the last instant was the little girl saved by her mother's desperate intervention. The next victim wou...

JUDGE. JURY. EXECUTIONER. On a cold January morning, the killer executed Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse in broad daylight. Eight shots fired a block from the Kaufman County Courthouse. Two months later, a massacre. The day before Easter, the couple slept. Bunnies, eggs, a flower centerpiece gracing the table. Death rang their doorbell and filled the air with the rat-a-tat-tat of an assault...

They stared into the faces of pure evil . . . and survived! Ted Bundy . . . Jeffrey Dahmer . . . David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz . . . Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer . . . These are some of the names that strike terror into even the bravest of hearts. Human monsters, they preyed upon the unsuspecting, freely feeding their terrible hungers. Their crimes were unspeakable, as they maimed, tortured, killed...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, a radical new way of thinking about depression and anxiety. What really causes depression and anxiety - and how can we really solve them? Award-winning journalist Johann Hari suffered from depression since he was a child and started taking anti-depressants when he was a teenager. He was t...

" We never lock our doors." This is an often-heard remark expressing a commonplace American attitude or belief that, despite whatever danger might prevail in public spaces, life inside our own homes remains (or at least should remain) safe, carefree, normal. This book covers 13 high-profile cases in which evil paid an untimely visit and found the entrance open--when everything was normal, until it...

She was his second wife—to die. . .  Coming off a failed marriage, a beautiful woman named Toni joined an online dating site, hoping to find true and lasting love. Harold Henthorn seemed like her dream come true—a handsome man who said he had “a heart for others.” Only weeks after meeting, they were wed. But Toni’s family began noticing Harold’s dark side—especially his controlling nature, which T...

This January, FilmRise released the chilling true crime documentary “Unseen,” from award-winning director and producer Laura Paglin. For two years, women had been disappearing from Mount Pleasant – a poverty-stricken,  African-American neighborhood in Cleveland – with little investigation from police and city officials. Then in 2009, a reported rape led Cleveland police to a grisly discovery— the...