The Son Of Sam
For thirteen months between July 1976 and August 1977, a man with a .44 calibre revolver shot couples in parked cars across the outer boroughs of New York City. He killed six people and wounded seven. He wrote letters to…
Author: snakeballs
Patrick Mackay
He has been called Britain’s forgotten serial killer. He was diagnosed as a psychopath at fifteen, was convicted of three killings at twenty-three, confessed at the time to eight more, and has been imprisoned continuously since 1975 — making him,…
The Black Dahlia
A warning: this article concerns a murder whose physical particulars are extraordinarily violent. It is not possible to tell the story honestly without referring to them, and they are part of why the case became famous in the way it…
The Zodiac
Five murders. Two survivors. Four ciphers, two of which are still uncracked. More than fifty years of suspects, theories, documentaries, and confessions that turned out to be nothing. The Zodiac is the most famous unsolved case in American criminal history,…
The Peoples Temple
On the afternoon of 18 November 1978, in a clearing in the Guyanese jungle, 918 people died. Most of them were poisoned. Some of them were children. Their leader, a man who had once been celebrated by mayors and congressmen…
Fred & Rose West
A warning before this article. What follows is an account of one of the most disturbing criminal cases in modern British history. It involves rape, torture, the murder of children, and prolonged abuse over more than two decades. There is…
H.H. Holmes
He is often called America’s first serial killer, the man who built a hotel of horrors to murder hundreds of fairgoers at the Chicago World’s Fair. The reality is darker in some ways and far smaller in others. This is…
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Andrei Chikatilo
A note before this article: the Chikatilo case involves the murder of children, sustained physical mutilation of victims, and the wrongful execution of an innocent man for crimes he did not commit. The physical details of the murders are described…
Jeffrey Dahmer
The Dahmer case involves murder, necrophilia, cannibalism, and the sexual abuse and killing of a fourteen-year-old child. It also involves documented and sustained failures by Milwaukee law enforcement that allowed killings to continue, rooted in the marginalisation of the victims.…
The Hinterkaifeck Murders
A warning before this article. The Hinterkaifeck murders involved the killing of two children, including a seven-year-old girl whose injuries indicate she remained alive for some hours after the initial attack. The case also involves documented incest within the victim…
The Yorkshire Ripper
A warning before this article. The Yorkshire Ripper case involves sustained physical violence against women, including women who survived attacks that left them with lifelong injuries. The investigation itself was, by the eventual official assessment, profoundly compromised by attitudes that…
The Manson Family
A warning before this article. The Manson Family murders involved sustained physical violence and the killing of a pregnant woman near term. This piece does not dwell on graphic detail beyond what the historical record requires, but the case is…
The Moors Murders
A serious warning before this article. The Moors Murders involved the abduction, sexual abuse, and killing of children. The youngest victim was ten years old. The trial included the playing in open court of an audio tape recording of one…
Jack The Ripper
A warning before this article. The Whitechapel murders involved sustained physical mutilation of the dead, and any honest account of them must say so. This piece does not dwell on graphic detail beyond what the case requires, but the killings…
Lizzie Borden
Lizzie Borden took an axe / And gave her mother forty whacks. / When she saw what she had done / She gave her father forty-one. The schoolyard rhyme is wrong on almost every count. Abby Borden was not Lizzie’s…