Category: Top Story

How easy can it be to get away with murder time and time again?

There is a saying in law enforcement, that there is no such thing as a perfect crime. 

There is always evidence left somewhere, a strand of hair, a DNA sample, a fingerprint, a fiber of clothing, or a grain of dirt that doesn’t belong at the crime scene. 

There is always someone who has seen something, has heard something, or knows something. 

The only way that a serial killer gets away with murder time and time again is not because they have committed the perfect crime, nor that they are criminal geniuses, but because there is an imperfect investigation that misses crucial incriminating evidence.  

Such was the case with Arthur John Shawcross, destined to become known as the Genesee River Killer. 

The Impulses of a Killer 

He wasn’t your typical serial killer who had a screw loose and started strangling cats and drowning dogs at an early age. It wasn’t ingrained in his DNA. It was just something he did, killing people, but after the first two murders, he found that he liked it, enjoyed the feeling of powerfulness – and just had to keep doing it again and again. 

Like most serial killers, though, he had no sympathy, no empathy, and no feelings whatsoever toward his victims. 

They were after all victims, their lot in life just to die at his hands. 

But his career as a serial killer didn’t really go to plan even from the very beginning. 

Born in 1945 in Kittery, Maine, his family moved to Watertown, New York when he was still young. 

At the age of 21 in 1967, he was drafted and sent to serve in the Vietnam war. He came back scarred, claiming to have witnessed atrocities during the war that included beheadings and cannibalism. 

His military record, however, stated that he was never placed in any combat situations, and all his stories were just tall tales. 

Upon being discharged after one tour, he spent some time in Fort Sill in Oklahoma before moving back to New York with his second wife. His first wife, who he had had a child with, divorced him before he went into the army, and the second one divorced him soon after he came out. Both cited his strange behavior as a reason for getting the hell away from him. 

Linda, his second wife, was most disturbed when her husband seemed to take a perverse pleasure in setting things on fire. The final straw for her came just before he was sentenced to five years in prison for arson and burglary.  

She decided to get out before her name was burned to ash like his late-night projects and she was banged up in the cell next to him. 

The Release of a Killer 

Just short of two years, Shawcross was released early in 1971, partly due to his timely rescue of a prison guard during a riot, and his good behavior over the last 22 months. 

It was a big mistake. The first. 

No sooner was he released than, amazingly, he got married for the third time – and killed for the first time. 

His first victim was a 10-year-old boy called Jack Owen Blake on May 7, 1972. His second was 8-year-old Karen Ann Hill on September 2. Both were raped and mutilated. 

Shawcross was tied to the murder of Karen Ann Hill with witnesses testifying to seeing him with her on the night of her disappearance; shortly afterward an anonymous tip-off linked him to the murder of young Jack Owen Blake.  

He was arrested on September 3 and, on the advice of his lawyer, confessed to both murders as the evidence against him was undeniable.  

Further lawyerly advice, who understood that his client was as guilty as guilty can be without being photographed over a dead body with a bloody knife, counseled pleading for a lesser charge of first-degree manslaughter on the proviso that Shawcross led the authorities to where he had disposed of his first victim. 

At 27 years old, Arthur John Shawcross was sentenced to 25 years in jail.  

He spent barely half of that time locked away before he was released early. Again. 

During his incarceration, he had been a model inmate and social workers considered him rehabilitated and no longer a danger to society; the staff supported the social workers’ report that he should be given a second chance at life 

Numerous, numerous psychiatrists balked at this decision, shocked to their core. They repeatedly issued stark warnings that Arthur John Shawcross was still an incredibly dangerous predator and stressed that they now considered him a full-blown psychopath. 

And that he should never be released. Ever. 

Shawcross To Be Freed Again? 

But Shawcross didn’t appear to be your typical cold-eyed killer with pure evil lurking deep within his gaze, or a cruel sneer twisting thin, bloodless lips.  

No, that wasn’t how he appeared, how he came across. To an observer, he was just your typical overweight man in his forties, harmless-looking who was pleasant to all the wardens and other inmates. And especially to the social workers. 

The objections of the psychologists fell on deaf ears, their warnings ignored, their reports unheeded. 

In April 1987, Arthur John Shawcross was released again. 

Settling down in one city became problematic for the newly released convict, however, and many times he had to relocate with his new girlfriend, Rose Marie Walley when his presence became known in the area. 

An oversight by his parole officer to notify the local authorities when he moved them to Rochester in October, allowed them to settle down somewhat. It wasn’t long before the inner darkness slipped out from behind his mask, and he was on the prowl again. 

It was on 18 March 1988 that twenty-seven-year-old Dorothy Marie “Dotsie” Blackburn found the iron grip of Arthur John Shawcross clamped around her throat, squeezing the last vestiges of life from her limp frame. 

Her body was found 6 days later and Shawcross, under no illusion that he was not a criminal mastermind, waited to be arrested. But the police were unaware of his presence in their area, and the fact that Dotsie was a working girl may have tempered their sense of urgency to track down her killer. 

He made sure that his next two victims, Anna Marie Steffen who he murdered in July 1988, and Dorothy Keeler in July 1989, were disposed of in rivers, both bodies not being discovered until months later. 

They had been killed in different ways so the police presumed that more than one killer was involved and pursued their investigation on that basis, unfocused, overlooking evidence, overlooking an inept serial killer who was literally getting away with murder right under their noses. 

It wasn’t until after Shawcross had murdered Frances “Franny” Brown, his seventh victim in the area, that the newspapers began to splash his nickname across the front pages “The Genesee River Killer”, strikes again. 

Shawcross realized that he had to be more careful as surely the police would be onto him by now. But they weren’t. Due to the randomness of his victims, even though most of them were prostitutes from the same area, they were no closer to catching him, even with a description. 

What was going to undo this particular serial killer, though, was his urge to mutilate and cannibalize his victims. 

More Victims of the Genesee River Killer 

The urge became irresistible for him on his fifth victim, 30-year-old June Stotts, who he sliced open so he could eat her organs. It was a horrific sight, one that would have forever haunted the nightmares of the social workers who had seen fit to release him if they had witnessed this atrocity. 

June Stott’s body was not discovered until a month later on November 23, 1989, by which time he was just about to murder victim number 9, Elizabeth “Liz” Gibson.  

Darlene Tripp and June Cicero were murdered two days apart in December 1989, with both bodies destined not to be discovered until January 1990. From beyond the grave, June Cicero was going to make sure that Shawcross’s reign of terror was soon to be ended, even though eleven days after killing her, he went on to strangle Felicia Stephens on 26 December. 

But how was June Cicero going to be his undoing? 

Two days after strangling her on 13 December and hurling her lifeless body from a bridge near the Salmon River where it was hidden by foliage, Shawcross had returned to the scene of the crime.  

He hadn’t returned to ensure that the body was still properly hidden, that it hadn’t been discovered but to cut off her genitals and eat them. 

Even then he wasn’t caught in the act but his presence hadn’t gone unnoticed. 

No alarm bells had been set off at the time from the eyewitness who had seen him urinating from the bridge, nor from the overhead police helicopter who had taken note of his license plate but didn’t pursue the matter any further. 

That changed when first Felicia Stephen’s body was found on January 3, 1990, which was then followed by the discovery of June Cicero’s mutilated corpse two days later.  

This set minds whirring into action – and to revisit any leads that may connect both victims together, no matter how tenuous the thread. 

With too much of a coincidence that his name and presence were being traced back to his victims, as well as being known among the prostitutes, Shawcross was brought in for question on January 5, 1990, and his premises were searched. 

Catching the Genesee River Killer 

Shawcross denied everything until a necklace he had gifted to his girlfriend turned out to have belonged to one of his victims.  

Finally, more by chance and Shawcross’s luck, the police had finally caught the Genesee River Killer. In November of that year, Shawcross was sentenced to 250 years for the horrific murders he had committed.  

But he was still let out of prison one last time. 

In November 2008, Shawcross was rushed to Albany Medical Center where he suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 63. 

Two teenagers with a dream that was going to end in murder

Brian Lee Draper and Torey Michael Adamcik had been the best of friends since becoming classmates at Pocatello High School in Salt Lake City, Utah. Their shared hobby was filmmaking and one day they dreamed of being famous, as most 16 –year-olds do.

For them, unlike many teens across America, the dream was going to become a reality — but unfortunately in the wrong way.

Cassie Jo Stoddart was also a junior at the same school in 2006 along with her boyfriend, Matt Beckham. In September she was asked by her aunt and uncle to look after their house, their 3 cats, and 2 dogs in Bannock County while they were away.

Being quite mature and responsible for her age, they knew that their pets and property were in capable hands, and went away with their minds at ease. If only they knew what was about to transpire…

On September 22, Cassie invited her boyfriend around and he arrived around 6 pm. It was a surprise to Cassie when Draper and Adamcik turned up to just hang out, invited by Matt who had failed to tell her.

For Cassie, it wasn’t a problem and she gladly gave them a tour of the house, from the bedrooms above to the basement below. Afterward, they all settled down to watch a movie then Draper and Adamcik left before it ended to watch a feature movie at the local movie theater.

And then things started to get a little creepy.

First, the lights went out, throwing the house into complete darkness, strange shadows slinking across the walls. Cassie and Matt were further scared when some lights, but not all, came back on again. Strange.

But what was most disconcerting was how one of the dogs kept staring at the door that led down to the basement, an occasional bark or growl rumbling in its throat.

By this time, it was getting late and Matt was growing concerned about leaving Cassie by herself in the house. When he called his mother, she suggested that Cassie stay at their place rather than him staying in the house alone, but Cassie declined, taking her house-sitting duties seriously.

At 10.30 Matt was picked up by his mother, leaving Cassie all alone in a house with faulty lights and a couple of dogs whose hackles were up and whose ears were alert to every creak in the house.

If only she had known at that moment that she was not actually alone in the house…

What Cassie was completely unaware of was that the basement door that led outside had been left ajar by Brian Lee Draper and Torey Michael Adamcik earlier on in the night. Now, having crept back inside, they were playing with the circuit breaker in an attempt to scare Cassie and Matt and lure them down into the basement.

When that didn’t work, they just waited until Matt left, until Cassie was alone so they could begin the final scene of the movie they had started filming days ago.

Cassie Stoddart was in the living room when the lights went out again. A door slammed somewhere in the darkened house. The dogs started barking.

Their noise concealed the approach of Draper and Adamcik who had crept out of the basement, their eyes revealing that they were no longer intent on just instilling fear. On their faces they wore masks, in their hands they carried daggers.

The first that Cassie was aware of their presence was when the first blade was plunged into her body. She screamed, struggled, tried to get away, but both teenagers had practiced this scene beforehand and in a frenzied attack stabbed her over and over again until her screams were silenced and her struggles faded to nothing.

The scene completed, their lust to kill satisfied, the two friends left the house stealthily to dump all their blood-splattered clothes and the bloody knives in Black Rock Canyon.

When Cassie’s body was discovered, the police immediately concentrated on the last people to see her alive. Unsurprisingly, Draper and Adamcik were not as good at acting as they thought and they were soon the prime suspects. On September 27, they were both arrested and charged with first-degree murder.

At the trial in 2007, a piece of evidence was presented to the jury that was as damning as a piece of evidence could get. It was a videotape of Draper and Adamcik planning to kill Cassie in the exact same manner she had been murdered.

Both boys, at 17 years old, were sentenced to life imprisonment.

They were both unrepentant, Cassie Stoddart’s death nothing more than a plot in their homemade movie.

As budding filmmakers, they had yearned for fame, had wanted to create a celluloid masterpiece that would elevate them to cult status. Unfortunately, they had achieved the notoriety they had craved at the expense of a young girl’s life.

Their goal of becoming famous had been realized.

Regrettably, in the worst way imaginable.

How two men took down a casino for a record-breaking score.

It wasn’t the $12,500 price tag placed on the cognac-based cocktail that was going to splash the Crown Casino’s name on front pages across the world. It wasn’t even the entrance of that particularly expensive shake into the Guinness World Record books that was going to set eyebrows raising in February 2013.

Noooo. What was going to make the casino the talk of Melbourne, what gave the casino unwanted worldwide publicity, was the incident that was shielded by the news of the exorbitant cocktail, a beverage invented solely as a cover story to cover up a major heist.

The multi-millionaire who was due to purchase “The Winston”, as it was called, was New Zealander, James Manning. The historic significance of the drink, and the reason for its hefty price tag, were attributed to Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower. 

When planning the D-Day landings during the war they were known to have a drink or two between sessions of this particular cocktail.

As good as the cocktail was, however, at the end of this particular day, James Manning was not going to spend a dime on the super expensive cocktail but was going to steal $32 million from the Australian casino in one night right under their noses.

Months previously, James Manning had been invited, as a known high roller used to gambling thousands on the turn of a card or the roll of a dice, to the casino by the VIP services manager. In anticipation of his arrival, the manager made a villa available for him and his family and ensured that the vault was properly stocked with sufficient funds just in case Manning got lucky.

Manning’s game of choice was Blackjack. He was good at it, but it was still a game of chance, results dependent on the players at the table and the simple turn of a card.

Now, winning at a casino’s blackjack table is not illegal, irrespective of the amount. This night Manning was planning on betting huge sums with wanton abandon so he could win big. On this particular night, he was going to bet confidently, fearlessly, even recklessly, because he knew that the outcome was never going to be in doubt and that it would have nothing to do with luck.

His intention was to rob the casino even as they watched his every move and he smiled in anticipation as the first cards were dealt.

Days earlier the intricate security system of the casino that had cost millions had been hacked by his inside man, nonother than the VIP services manager himself. With his experience, he easily gained access to the computerized system, not so he could manipulate the cameras, but so he could know what cards were coming next.

One aspect that the security system possessed was the ability to monitor the cards as each one was installed with an identifying chip to prevent fraud, to prevent players from bringing in identical cards and cheating the casino.

Having access to this information was a goldmine and a system was set up between the two so Manning could receive signals when to bet. How much was up to him, but when all the odds were rigged in his favor, he decided to bet millions.

And so, without a gun being raised, without anyone being threatened, with no complicated getaway needed to be meticulously planned, Manning and his accomplice stole the most money ever from a casino in only 8 hands of blackjack.

It was, to put it mildly, daylight robbery.

He bet enormously when he should have folded. He stuck when any normal player would bet to beat the dealer. He played flawlessly, and a mere eight hands later he was $32 million richer.

Satisfied with his night’s work, and more so that everything had gone off without a hitch, Manning sauntered back to his comped villa to spend the rest of the night with his family, his newfound riches waiting in the casino vault ready to be transferred to his private account in the morning.

That night he slept soundly. 

Or he would have done if there hadn’t been a loud knock on his door in the middle of the night.

On the other side of the door were some big men with big frowns. Their unblinking eyes showed that they were firm believers in the motto that “The House always wins.”

Manning’s big win had been scrutinized from every suspicious angle, and the surveillance officers pored over every hand that Manning had played, over and over again. As elaborate as his scheme was, they soon cottoned on that something unusual was going on. 

When they realized that Manning was being signaled when to bet by their very own VIP Manager, they immediately understood that they were being robbed in plain sight!

Acting quickly, they blocked any attempt to transfer the $32 million out of the casino and went to pay James Manning a visit.

In the middle of the night, he was confronted by the burly security guards and not-so-kindly instructed to leave the casino immediately. And never to return. The police weren’t called for two reasons. First, no money had actually been transferred out of the casino or withdrawn from the vault. And secondly, the casino was embarrassed.

To admit publicly that they had been robbed in such an easy fashion and for that exorbitant amount of money, would not reflect well on the organization. They had to cover it up, and The Winston cocktail publicity was a perfect diversion to deflect from the robbery. 

The occasion was hyped up in an attempt to smother any leak of the heist, using the involvement of the Guinness Book of World Records as a convenient smokescreen.

No charges were filed against Manning or his accomplice. They were both banned but at least they were not thrown into prison.

Yet o add insult to injury, not only did they not get away with the $32 million from their elaborately planned heist, but they didn’t even get a chance to drown their sorrows with a sip of the record-setting $12,500 cocktail.

Too young to drink. Too young to vote. Old enough to kill

The Richardson family consisted of Marc Richardson, Debra Richardson, and their children, Jasmine and Tyler Jacob, aged 12 and 8.

They all lived in Canada, southeast Alberta, a city along the South Saskatchewan River called Medicine Hat, to be exact. The city was classed as the sunniest place in Canada with a population in 2006 of 56,997.

By the end of April 23, 2006, that figure was going to be reduced by 3 to 56,994. All because of a tragic love story.

Marc and Debra Richardson loved their daughter but disapproved of her boyfriend and forbade her to continue seeing him. At 12 years old, Jasmine was headstrong and was convinced that her first love was her one and only.

It wasn’t just the age difference, he was 11 years older at 23, that her parents were aghast at, but the fact that he also thought he was a 300-year-old vampire, going so far as to profess that he liked the taste of blood; there was no way he was going to be a good influence on their impressionable daughter.

Jasmine, not surprisingly rebelled, refusing to be grounded, going as far as to consider running away from home.

But her boyfriend, Jeremy Steinke, had other ideas. So enamored was Jasmine that she agreed with his suggestion of how they could stop her parents from interfering in their relationship. The solution came to him after watching Natural Born Killers, a story of two young lovers, and she embraced the idea he came up with.

It was a simple plan. Kill them all.

The horror that greeted police officer Brent Secondiak when he arrived at the Richardson home on April 23 at 1 pm was a bloody crime scene that rattled him to his core.

It wasn’t finding the bodies of Marc and Debra in the basement of the premises, their throats ruthlessly slashed open, that tore at his soul. It was the body of their young son, Tyler Jacob, still in his bed, his peaceful face in stark contrast to the jagged wound across his throat, dried blood soaked into the sheets around his little head.

At first, he feared that Jasmine may have been a victim also. But when she was found 130km away on the other side of Saskatchewan the very next day with Steinke, questioned, showing no remorse, it was obvious that they were the actual killers.

Both were promptly arrested, Steinke confessing to murdering the parents and Jasmine to killing her little brother. When the news broke across the airways, the whole city of Medicine Hat shuddered with shock.

Disbelief and the horror of what had happened was laid out for all to hear in November 2007 when Jasmine was sentenced to 10 years in prison, the maximum term under the law for a person of her age. Steinke, being older, had his punishment fit the crime and was given 25 years without the possibility of parole.

The city of Medicine Hat exhaled in relief that justice had been given to the victims. But the painful scar was still there in the local community, and the loss of loved ones forever felt by family members and close friends.

In the end, Steinke changed his name to Jackson May while Jasmine became notorious for being the youngest person in Canadian history to be convicted for multiple first-degree murders.

She was released in 2016, her term served, rehabilitated, a psychiatric evaluation deeming her to be no threat to the public.

When interviewed about her release, now an Inspector, Brent Secondiak expressed his hope that Jasmine Richardson would finally show some remorse for her crimes.

When asked if he thought she would re-offend, if she would kill again, he confessed that didn’t know. He was concerned that she had simply fooled the system and her true nature had been revealed years ago when she had slaughtered her family.

Could she change?

The response from the community, when asked, was a lot simpler, “Time will tell.”

The dark secrets of a simple boarding house landlady

Born on January 9, 1929, Dorothea Helen Puente Gray was going to die on March 27, 2011.

The time between those two dates were going to be harsh for her, a life filled with trauma, and fatal for her victims.

By the time she was 10 both of her alcoholic parents were dead, one from tuberculosis and the other in a motorcycle accident, resulting in her and her siblings being sent to an orphanage. She was there for about six years and during that time she was repeatedly sexually abused.

Her escape came in the form of a soldier, Fred McFaul. They had two children together, one she put up for adoption and the other she sent away to live with a relative in Sacramento, but within 3 years the marriage was over.

The next few decades of her life were turbulent, with brief stints in jail for forgery and running a brothel, a second failed marriage, and being diagnosed as a pathological liar.

With that particular trait in her box of tricks, Gray set about reinventing herself in Sacramento, opening a boarding house for the elderly and contributing to local causes and charities. She even changed her appearance to appear kindlier and more matronly, the little grey-haired old lady who was kind to everyone.

Under this new contrived persona, Dorothea Helen Gray set about cashing checks of some of her tenants, and it wasn’t long before her greed escalated to murder.

Her first victim in the boarding house came about in 1982. Her name was Ruth Munroe, and Gray convinced the investigators that the codeine and acetaminophen found in her system was a suicide due to Munroe’s depression over her husband being terminally ill.

Learning her lesson, Gray adjusted the dosages for her next few victims, drugging them just enough so that she could steal their welfare checks. She would have been better off killing them, she later realized, as their later accusations ended up with her serving 5 years in prison.

While locked up, Gray developed a pen pal relationship with a retired gentleman from Oregon. When she got out after three years in 1982, wedding bells were on the cards for them and the 77-year-old Everson Gillmouth couldn’t have been happier.

Three years later he was dead, his decomposing corpse found in a coffin-sized box floating at the side of a lake. The grisly discovery wasn’t immediately connected to Gray, and no one suspected that it could be Everson Gillmouth because his pension checks were still being cashed regularly. By Gray.

So, free from suspicion for the first time in years, she was able to reopen her boarding house and continue business as usual.

Which in her case meant drugging her tenants, stealing their checks, and occasionally murdering them.

If it hadn’t been for a relative reporting the disappearance of one of her tenants in 1988, one Mr. Alvaro Montoya, the ensuing investigation wouldn’t have unearthed the 7 bodies buried around her property.

The court case lasted for months, Gray pleading not guilty on all charges. The jury almost bought her defensive strategy, though, her ability to lie convincingly almost winning them over, her claim that her unfortunate tenants had all died of natural causes almost getting her off the hook.

In the end, the Death House Landlady, as she came to be known, was only convicted for 3 of the 9 murders but was nevertheless sentenced to life in prison.

Her death in March 2011, at 82 years old, was going to be from natural causes, peaceful.

The same couldn’t have been said for the victims she had consistently drugged to the point of unconsciousness and then, callously, smother the last breath out of their frail bodies. 

Afterward, she would always continue to communicate with their relatives while cashing their checks for as long as possible.

For all the years she was imprisoned, Gray never admitted her guilt, never showed any signs of remorse despite the damning evidence of her crimes. 

She was a classic psychopath who couldn’t comprehend right from wrong, who lacked the ability to empathize, and who was just as good at lying to herself as she was to the rest of the world.

The curious case of a young man who vanished without a trace for 10 years– and then…

Larry’s mother knew that there was something wrong with her son when he started to complain of chest pains and the need to eat sugar to alleviate the discomfort. The fact that he was also having hallucinations didn’t bode well for his state of mind.

It was on Thanksgiving Day in 2009 when the latest argument between Larry and his parents erupted. It ended as it usually did, with Larry stomping out of the house in a rage and then returning a few hours later when he had calmed down, and the whispering voices in his mind had faded away.

This particular Thanksgiving Day was going to end a little differently.

For starters, Larry left without his car, without his keys for the house, without his jacket, and, considering that there was a blizzard raging outside, without his shoes.

Still, his parents weren’t worried. He normally headed over to the No Frills Supermarket where he worked when this happened, stayed there for a few hours then came back all calmed down.

This particular Thanksgiving Day he didn’t come back.

Larry was reported missing the very next day and Iowan police Sgt Brandon Danielson was placed in charge of locating the missing 25-year-old. He interviewed family, friends, and even workmates at the No Frills Supermarket.

No one had spoken to, seen, nor heard from Larry since he had wandered off into the snowstorm. And no one was going to see him again for the next 10 years.

Sgt Danielson continued the search until the case petered out, no clues whatsoever surfaced over the years and the case went as cold as the night Larry had disappeared.

At the No Frills Supermarket business went on as usual but in 2016 the store closed down.

It was in January 2019 that the grisly discovery was going to be made when some workmen were dismantling shelves in the now abandoned store.

Behind the cooler, a badly decomposed body was found by the workmen. But the body had been there so long and was so badly decomposed that immediate identification was impossible.

It took months until the identification was made and in the meantime, the police questioned former supermarket employees just in case murder had been committed.

In July the body was identified as Larry’s.

Apparently, after his argument with his parents in 2009, he had automatically trundled the short distance to his safe place, to work. There he had climbed on top of the 12-foot cooler as he was wont to do and promptly fell behind it. He became wedged in the narrow 18-inch gap at an awkward angle, arms and legs trapped, unable to move, barely able to breathe in the tight space.

There he stayed, crying out feebly, waiting, waiting, and waiting to be rescued, his weakening cries for help going unheard due to the ambient noise. Every day, shoppers, workers, and possibly even his own parents, undertook their grocery shopping in that corner of the store as poor Larry lay lodged between a hard wall and an immovable object.

No one will ever know when the voices in his head stopped along with his breathing.

Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada died bizarrely in a busy shopping store, alone, surrounded by hundreds of people. 

He could have easily lain in his final resting place forever if not for an accidental discovery 10 years after leaving his home alone. At the time he had been angry after the argument, barefoot in his haste to leave the house, and accompanied only by the whispering voices in his head.

The raging snowstorm had hounded and tormented him all the way to the No Frills Supermarket where the voices in his head were finally going to be stilled, where he was destined to spend his last and final Thanksgiving Day.

A drink-fuelled night ends in the worst kind of tragedy

The incident that was going to kill Francis Daniel Brohm was going to be a devastating shock to his family and friends, a blow that was going to be hard for them to recover from, so sudden was the loss.

But it was going to be more of a shock to his best friend, John Kemper Hutcherson, his killer.

At the time of the incident in August 2004, they were both young men, Francis 23 and John 21, and had been lifelong friends since high school, some would say as close as brothers.

The night they went out for a drink together was nothing special, nothing they hadn’t done hundreds of times before on a Saturday night. Their usual plan was to start early and finish late, drink as much as possible, and have a great time.

This time they may have overdone it. Sometime in the early hours of Sunday morning, Francis Daniel Brohm complained of feeling unwell and the young men, both incredibly drunk, decided to call it a night.

Hutcherson was behind the wheel, following the same path home he had driven countless times, while both drunk and sober, but this time Brohm unusually emptying the contents of his stomach out of the passenger window after every twist and turn the car made.

The following Sunday morning, the police were called to arrest Hutcherson for the murder of Brohm.

They found him still fast asleep in his bed, still drop-down drunk from the night before, his memory still soaked in the beers from the night before, his clothes still splattered with the blood of his best friend.

He had no memory initially of what had happened mere hours earlier, but when the police question him about his recollection of the night before, he vaguely recalled swerving to avoid another vehicle, clipping something then waking up to find himself under arrest.

They then explained to him fully what had happened and the blood drained from his face to be replaced by sheer anguish and disbelief.

The swerve off the road had forced Hutcherson’s truck towards a telephone pole. Amazingly, he had avoided a head-on impact, just the support wire from the pole sheering off the mirror. Minor damage that could have resulted in a major accident.

Unfortunately, his best friend was still hanging out of the window at the time and the same wire sliced completely through his neck, decapitating him.

Too drunk to notice what had just happened, Hutcherson continued to drive the remaining miles to his home, parked in his driveway, stumbled up to bed, and left the headless body of his best friend still hanging out of the window.

The grisly scene was discovered by a neighbor out for a walk with his daughter, and the police were called.

John Kemper Hutcherson, at 21 years old, was charged with a DUI, failure to stop even though he had been completely unaware of the accident at the time, and first-degree vehicle homicide.

The Brohm family asked for leniency when the case came to trial the following year in 2005, understanding that no one was to blame, that it was a one-in-a-million accident. Perhaps because of this the judge only sentenced him to five years in prison.

Maybe also because he understood that in one night one man had tragically lost his life in a horrific fashion, while the other would have to live with the memory of a life-ending and life-changing incident for a lifetime.

A life of privilege shrouded in lies and cover-ups.

Kathleen McCormack Durst went missing on January 31, 1982. Suddenly. She had been married for nearly 9 years to Robert Durst. Most of it happy, some of it not.

Her body has never been found.

Her story started when she met her husband in 1971. At the time she was working as a dental hygienist while he was attempting to escape his billion-dollar family business by opening a health food shop in Vermont after leaving UCLA.

As soon as their paths crossed, they were inseparable and were soon living together and planning their future settled in a state far away from New York and Robert’s heritage.

But circumstances were conspiring against them. First, the small health-food enterprise failed in 1973, and then, caving into the not-so-subtle parental pressure from his CEO father, Robert Durst returned to New York and Kathleen went with him. In April of that year, they were married. And Robert took his seat at the table.

Even though he had initially resisted being brought into the organization, real estate was in his blood, was ingrained in his genes from his father and from his grandfather before him.

The Durst real estate empire was started in 1915 by Joseph Durst, an immigrant from Austria who arrived in America with just $3 in his threadbare pockets. Ambitious, and hardworking, he grew the company aggressively from the start and within 12 years had founded the Durst Organization.

He worked tirelessly to build his real estate business into a million-dollar juggernaut before handing it down to his son, Seymour Durst.

Like his father before him, Seymour’s ambition was to expand the company to even greater heights and, of course, to hand the reins of the organization down to the eldest of his four children, Robert, when it was his time to retire. Like a dutiful father, Seymour steered his eldest son in the right direction and groomed him to sit in the big chair one day.

Robert Durst was sent to the best schools, studied hard, and got a bachelor’s degree in economics before dropping out. Still, his father understood that the best way to really learn the business was to be in the business, and was pleased when Robert finally entered the organization in 1973, aged 30.

Returning from Vermont, Robert immersed himself fully into learning the business from the ground up, dutifully preparing himself to take over the operations one day when his father stood down.

But where his business was progressing well his marriage, however, was soon on shaky ground, far less stable than the foundations of his buildings; arguments, fights, and bruises witnessed by friends and colleagues on a regular basis bore witness to the demise of his relationship.

Divorce was looming, Kathleen wanting out and a fair settlement, Durst reluctant to surrender any of his fortune, even going so far as canceling her credit cards.

Things were turning nasty. Kathleen’s family knew it and feared for her safety on more than one occasion.

The night she disappeared was after a party that they had both attended. Both of them were cordial in public, while privately they had been living in separate accommodations for the last three years.

Nevertheless, within a few days of her going missing, Durst posted a reward of $100,000 for any information leading to her whereabouts. It was never collected, and 8 years later Robert Durst officially divorced her on the grounds of spousal abandonment.

Her family had their suspicions, her mother and sister convinced that Durst had murdered her.

But with no body, and no proof, there was no case.

The police had nothing to follow up on either, no clues, and an alibi from Durst’s long-time friend, Susan Berman, helped to halt any further investigations.

Then a few years later there came a twist to the case. But was there a connection to the missing Kathleen McCormack Durst?

The incident occurred on December 24, 2000, when Susan Berman, the person who had diverted any murderous suspicions away from Durst, was found dead in her Californian home, killed execution style, a bullet to the back of the head.

Was her death suspicious? Definitely. Was it connected to Robert Durst? Maybe, maybe not.

What muddied the waters was the fact that Berman’s father was reportedly a gangster back in the 1940s in Las Vegas, operating the Flamingo Casino that was well known for having underworld connections. Perhaps her death was related to the criminal enterprises of her father’s business interests.

That could well have been the direction that the LAPD focused their investigation if not for the discovery of the wire transfer. A quick examination of her bank records revealed the recent transfer of $50,000 from Robert Durst, who, it had transpired, had also been in California days before her body was discovered.

With nothing to hide, Durst admitted wiring money to his friend who, he explained, was having financial problems. But when the LAPD began to question him further about any possible connections to his ex-wife’s disappearance, he declined to answer any more questions.

Now, back in New York, Kathleen McCormack Durst’s family had pressured the police to re-open the investigation into her disappearance even before hearing about the death of Susan Berman.

Robert Durst, recently remarried, and notified that the old case was active once again, went underground in Galveston, Texas, going into hiding to avoid further scrutiny.

And then events took an even more bizarre turn.

Durst, returning one night under cover of darkness to his apartment in Texas, found his neighbor, Morris Black, relaxing in his chair, watching his tv, and eating his food. Durst was shocked, then incensed, then he killed him.

But that wasn’t even the bizarre part.

Realizing how this would look to the authorities, what with police in two states looking at him for two possible murders, he decided to expertly chop up Black’s body, secure the limbs and torso in garbage bags, and throw them into Galveston Bay.

The grisly body parts were soon discovered, the trail leading straight back to him. He was promptly arrested, and, when questioned by the authorities, he would later claim it was self-defense. Black’s death occurred, he explained, accidentally when he was fighting for his life after Black had pulled a gun on him.

There were no witnesses to his accidental discharge self-defense story, so he was allowed out on bail while further investigations were conducted — and then he promptly went on the run.

It took six weeks to recapture him, and in 2003 at the age of 60, he was put on trial for the murder of Morris Black. The jury, amazingly, believed that the frail old man before them had feared for his life in his altercation with Black, and he was acquitted.

He did serve a few months for skipping bail and a few minor offenses, but he was as free as a man could be who had just killed and dismembered another person.

His good luck continued when a settlement of $65 million came his way in 2006 after suing the Durst Organization. The claim was that he had wrongfully been cut out of his inheritance, which was true. At the time his father had lost confidence in his eldest son due to the negative media attention surrounding his ex-wife’s disappearance. and had appointed his second eldest son, Douglas, as his successor in 1994.

Although Durst had never wanted to be in the business, he nevertheless wanted the money.

And he knew he had to protect it.

With that in mind, he made sure that everything he owned was placed under the name of his wife, Debrah Lee Charatan. Their marriage was one of convenience, true, but she was there when he went on trial for Black’s murder.

After he was acquitted, she distanced herself from him somewhat over the years but strongly cautioned him a few years later against going through with a planned documentary based on his life with HBO.

He ignored her advice.

The unrestricted interviews began in 2010, culminating in 2012, with the intention of airing the six episodes from February 2015.

Robert Durst should have listened to his wife.

What the filmmakers of the show heard while combing through hundreds of hours of recordings, shocked even them, and they knew it would be tv gold. A previous hot mike moment inadvertently recorded off-camera in 2012 but not heard until years later, damned Durst.

On it, unaware that his mike was still live, he could clearly be heard admitting to murdering Kathleen McCormack, Susan Berman, and Morris Black.

The evidence was handed over to the FBI and Durst was arrested in March 2015.

Opening statements for the trial didn’t start until 2020, with the now frail 76-year-old Robert Durst still refusing to admit in a court of law that he had killed his ex-wife. So, with the murder of Morris Black also behind him, he was sentenced to life in prison in 2021 just for the murder of his friend, Susan Berman, who, it transpired, had tried to squeeze more money out of him in a blackmail attempt.

After decades of getting away with murder, he was finally being taken down by a careless whisper.

The show was called “The Jinx” and it definitely brought back luck to Robert Durst. His life of privilege and escaping justice for decades was unceremoniously brought to an end by his overinflated ego.

If he had refused to do the show, if he had stayed out of the spotlight for a few more years, he wouldn’t have died as a prisoner in San Joaquin General Hospital in California at the age of 78, a sad and lonely old man.

He hadn’t set out that day to become a murderer…

Joseph Scott Pemberton, at 19 years old, was inadvertently going to start an international incident on October 11, 2014, that was going to cause protests to erupt on the streets of the Philippines and cause a major headache for the occupant of the White House thousands of miles away.

Pemberton was in the Philippines at the time to take part, as a Lance Corporal in the US Marine Corps, in a joint exercise between the two countries. The incident that was going to cause such controversy occurred after the exercises had ended and some of the US troops were allowed on shore to unwind.

The Ambyanz Disco was their destination, a popular bar in Olongapo that was a regular haunt of the visiting troops and the personnel stationed at the local Naval base. The Americans had maintained their presence in this region since 1901, realizing the strategic importance of having a Naval Station in this zone; that presence had helped the city to flourish.

Such was the size and influence of the base, that thousands of Filipinos were employed directly and indirectly by the Americans, many of whom chose at one time or another to join the Navy to escape their simple life of subsistence farming.

Even after the base was relinquished back to the Filipinos in the 1950s, joint military exercises continued regularly, contributing to the thriving city. In a nutshell, the American servicemen were always welcome.

But there were occasionally problems. Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton was about to fall foul of the law like no other US serviceman before him.

At the bar, music blaring, having a good time with his shipmates, Pemberton soon spotted Jennifer Laude through the throng. Approaching her, it wasn’t long before they were hitting it off, chatting away, each quickly feeling a mutual attraction.

After a few drinks together, he suggested that they go over to the nearby Celzone Lodge to get to know each other better. Even though she was engaged at the time, Jennifer decided to go with Pemberton to the hotel.

Laughing, they left the bar with some of Jennifer’s friends who went their separate ways on reaching the hotel.

At the hotel room, events took an unpredictable turn within a mere 30 minutes of their arrival. Pemberton, visibly shocked, shaken, fled the room in a panic, leaving the room door slightly ajar behind him.

The hastily departed room was a chaotic scene. Furniture was strewn everywhere, used condoms littered the floor, lamps were overturned, and, slumped awkwardly on the bathroom floor, lay Jennifer Laude’s dead body.

Her naked form was partially covered, her neck was badly bruised from strangulation marks, and her head was still submerged in the toilet.

The very next morning Pemberton was arrested for her murder while still on board his ship. At first, he denied killing her, citing self-defense. But when he was brought before a judge the following March, his plea had changed to guilty, but his reason for killing her, his excuse for committing murder, was a trans panic defense.

Lance Corporal Pemberton testified that he hadn’t known when he had taken Laude back to the hotel that she was a transgender person, that he hadn’t been aware of her previous gender until after he had had sex with her, that he didn’t have a clue that she had been born a male.

That revelation had triggered something inside him, he stated, that had ended up in the unfortunate death of 26-year-old Jennifer Laude. He admitted that they had fought, but maintained his self-defense argument despite the marks on Laude’s throat and the position she had been found in.

The public reaction when the news broke of the murder of a transgender at the hands of a US Marine was vitriolic.

Protests erupted across the Philippines by transgender rights activists immediately and only got louder and angrier as the case progressed. The people wanted revenge for the victim, wanted the murderer to be fully punished for his crime, while her family just wanted justice.

There were rumors of a bribe being offered to Laude’s family to reduce the charge from murder to homicide which would carry a lesser penalty, but they were unsubstantiated. Justice was screamed for at every protest, was scrawled boldly on every banner waved angrily outside the courthouse, and those voices could not be silenced nor the family bought off.

When the judge spoke at the end of the trial, his verdict was heard loud and clear across the country. In December 2015, Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton, a United States Marine, was found guilty of homicide and sent to jail for up to 12 years.

Sort of.

There can be no doubt that the Americans had had a strong influence on the outcome of the trial, financially invested in Pemberton’s trial expenses and bringing to bear the full force of the United States in an effort to free one of their own.

Even after his guilty verdict was handed down, the Americans had ensured that Lance Corporal Pemberton would not be languishing in New Bilibid Prison. That place was an overcrowded hellhole, a sweltering, disease-ridden cesspit, where the temperature in the summer was nothing short of brutal.

Imprisoned there, he wouldn’t have survived for long as a foreigner packed into a tiny cell with too many evil-eyed cellmates who hated Americans.

Instead, the US Navy had ensured that he was stationed in a converted, air-conditioned shipping container on Camp Aguinaldo, a military base under their control. Hardly a prison for a convicted murderer.

Still, although not as long a term as the family had wanted, and his luxury prison cell hardly a punishment, at least Pemberton had been found guilty and would be robbed of his freedom for over a decade.

If only that was the case.

In September 2020, Pemberton was pardoned, his conviction expunged and freed to return to the States by President Rodrigo Duterte.

The LGBT community were outraged, and in response, it seemed that the whole country had taken to the streets, angry as all hell when news of his sudden pardon exploded on every news channel and across every newspaper headline.

The marine’s obvious further special treatment sparked political unrest in the Philippines and protests in the United States. Even senators made their displeasure known with President Duterte himself coming under fierce criticism.

Regardless of the backlash, by September 13 Pemberton was back home in America.

Was the decision solely Duterte’s to gain favor with the White House or had pressure been put on Duterte himself by the US to free one of their troops?

To add further insult to the Filipinos, Lance Corporal Pemberton collected over $160,000 on his release, which was the sum of his monthly salary since his incarceration in 2015.

Back on home ground, he was free to get on with his life. Back in the Philippines, the LGBT activists demonstrated fiercely to show their displeasure.

They believed that their President had placed the interests of Donald Trump’s America before the will of one of his citizens.

They feared that the LGBT community in the Philippines was not held to the same standards of justice as the rest of the population by their own President.

They understood completely that Jennifer Laude had been killed because of who she had become, and Pemberton had killed her because of who she had been.

Where was the justice?

Childhood rejection turned him into a killer who liked to hunt down his victims like animals

Celia Van Zanten was never going to celebrate another Christmas again. On December 22, 1971, she popped out to buy some soda but wouldn’t be popping home again any time soon. 

Her body was found a few days later on Christmas Day partially covered in leaves and snow at the base of a cliff, naked from the waist down. Frozen blood from the slashes across her chest contrasted starkly against the fresh snow she was half buried in.

Her hands had been bound, she had been sexually molested, and she had only been 18 years old when her killer had pounced and robbed her of her future.

That killer’s name was Robert Christian Hansen. Celia Van Zanten, known as Beth to her family and friends, was his first victim. She was going to be the first of many.

Robert Christian Hansen was born in Iowa in 1939, in a city of fewer than 6,000 people. His hatred of women began at an early age, festering like a sore throughout his teens, the local girls ridiculing him at every opportunity over his stuttering and the scars pockmarking his face from a severe outbreak of acne.

Their rejection forced him inwards, branded him a loner, and caused him to fantasize constantly about ways he could take out his frustration and his boiling rage against them.

Going into the Army Reserves in 1957 only lasted a year and didn’t straighten him out much. Even getting married in 1960 couldn’t extinguish the hatred that was constantly simmering just below the surface, waiting for the right victim to cross his path.

A brief 20-month stint in prison for arson saw the demise of his marriage, and then his second marriage ended in a similar fashion after he was incarcerated again but this time for rape. While inside he was diagnosed as manic depressive, and due to a plea deal and this diagnosis only served 6 months of his 5-year sentence.

The year was 1971. This was the year that he killed Ceilia Van Zanten.

Honing his newfound talent for murder, Hansen specialized in abducting sex workers, torturing them, raping them, and then hunting them down like animals.

He reveled in taking them to secluded areas sometimes by plane after violating them in his home near Anchorage in Alaska where he now lived. Afterward, he would let them run for their lives, offering them hope that they could escape, survive, and prolong his fantasies while extending their torment. 

He would take a perverse pleasure in tracking them down, feeding off their terror, and then shooting or stabbing them to death when fear robbed their legs of energy, when they just couldn’t go any further no matter how much they tried to crawl away.

For the next decade, Hansen raped, tortured, and killed women at will, their half-naked bodies found in shallow graves, gravel pits, and frequently along the banks of the Knik River.

It was along the Knik River in 1983, that Hansen transported 17-year-old Cindy Paulson. He had already raped her in his home, had already tortured her to increase his pleasure, and now it was time to dispose of her in his usual fashion — the hunt.

Plasti-cuffed in the back of the car, Cindy Paulson instinctively knew that she was about to be killed. All the working girls in Alaska had heard of the killer picking them off at random over the years. She felt in the trembling core of her soul that her time had come.

When the unexpected opportunity presented itself to escape her survival instinct kicked in. 

Hansen was preoccupied with preparing his airplane to fly them to his hunting ground, and the brief moment to escape was there. 

She snatched at the chance, her heart thudding in her chest as she snuck out of the driver’s side door, terrified that at any moment he would catch her in the act. 

He didn’t, and once out of the car, she ran as if her life depended on it. Which it did.

Still handcuffed, her bare feet bleeding, Hansen chasing after her, she barely made it to Sixth Avenue where a truck driver picked her up before Hansen caught up to her. The driver, shocked at her appearance, transported her to the nearest Inn and called the police.

When Hansen was brought in for questioning, the first thing he did was discredit his accuser. He didn’t deny picking her up for sex but he then accused her of reporting him to the authorities because he had not paid the exorbitant price she had tried to extort from him.

Not knowing who to believe, the police let him go.

One person who wasn’t fooled by Hansen’s meek demeanor, however, was Detective Glenn Flothe. He had been investigating the recent murders of Joanna Messina and Sherry Morrow, both women found around the Knik River area, and fancied Hansen as the killer.

A recent FBI profile report had described the serial killer as someone with low self-esteem, a loner who liked to hunt, had a hatred of women, and even maybe had a stutter. What caught Detective Flothe’s attention from the profile was the mention of a plane as a viable method of transportation, and that the killer would most likely be collecting souvenirs from his victims.

On October 27, 1983, those souvenirs were found after a search warrant was granted for Hansen’s plane and home, souvenirs that were quickly linked to several of the women. Additionally, guns and rifles were discovered that ballistically, later on, were going to be matched to recovered bullets

Incredibly, those weren’t the most damning pieces of evidence.

An aerial map was found behind his headboard with 37 x’s on it. Dozens of those x’s marked the spots where bodies had already been found. Arresting Hansen, further investigations into the map x locations helped the FBI to unearth more of his victims.

Hansen’s denials didn’t last long before he confessed, confessed, and confessed some more. The evidence against him combined with the testimony of Cindy Paulson was too damning to ignore. The only thing that could have been worse would have been photographic evidence of him actually burying the bodies.

At his trial, he was jailed for a total of 461 years. He spent 30 years locked away from a society that he preyed upon before dying of natural causes in 2014. His hunting days were over. And his many victims could finally rest in peace.