Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

Matthew Cox is a former Tampa, Florida-based mortgage broker who became one of the most prolific mortgage fraud con artists of the early 2000s, stealing an estimated $55 million by crafting elaborate synthetic identities and forging extensive loan documents. After his initial mortgage company collapsed in 2002, Cox escalated his crimes, leading to a three-year multi-state fugitive spree while on the U.S. Secret Service's Most Wanted list.

Davion Irvin is the man who was arrested in 2023 for a series of high-profile incidents at the Dallas Zoo, including the theft of two monkeys.

Bruno Fernandes de Souza, a prominent Brazilian soccer goalkeeper and captain for Flamengo, had his career abruptly ended in 2010 when he was arrested for orchestrating the abduction and brutal murder of his former girlfriend, Eliza Samudio.

In the 1960s, naturalist Margaret Howe Lovatt took part in a NASA-funded experiment on the island of St. Thomas aimed at teaching a bottlenose dolphin named Peter to understand and speak English. To facilitate constant interaction, Lovatt lived in a partially flooded house called the Dolphin House, where she spent nearly every waking moment with Peter. The study gained notoriety not just for its ambitious goals, but for the controversial turn it took when Lovatt began a physical relationship with the dolphin.

The Randy Stair case refers to a tragic incident that occurred on June 8, 2017, at a supermarket in Eaton Township, Pennsylvania. Stair, an employee at the store, opened fire during an overnight shift, killing three of his coworkers.

Valerie Cincinelli, a former 12-year veteran of the NYPD, was sentenced to four years in prison in 2021 after being caught in a murder-for-hire plot targeting her estranged husband, Isaiah Carvalho, and her boyfriend’s daughter. Cincinelli reportedly paid her then-boyfriend, John DiRubba, to hire a hitman to kill Carvalho as well as DiRubba’s daughter whom she viewed with sheer jealousy.

Suzan Carson, along with her husband James "Bear" Carson, became known as the "San Francisco Witch Killers" during a notorious murder spree in the early 1980s. Driven by a shared paranoid schizophrenia and a radicalized religious delusion, the couple believed they were "holy warriors" tasked with eliminating "witches" who threatened their spiritual survival. Their trail of violence claimed the lives of three people: their roommate Keryn Barnes in San Francisco, farmworker Clark Stephens in Humboldt County, and hitchhiker Jon Hellyer in Sonoma County.

An unidentified person or persons pretended to be Eon Musk and successfully pulled a romance scam on a Texas woman.

Luka Magnotta is a Canadian convicted murderer who gained international notoriety in 2012 for the murder of international student Jun Lin in Montreal

Quincy Promes, once a star forward for the Netherlands national team and Ajax, has seen his career derailed by a series of high-profile criminal convictions. After a 2020 family party ended with Promes attacking his cousin in the knee, he was sentenced in absentia to 18 months in prison for aggravated assault. This was followed by a much more severe six-year sentence in February 2024 for his involvement in smuggling drugs through the port of Antwerp. For several years, Promes avoided his prison terms by living and playing for Spartak Moscow in Russia, which has no extradition treaty with the Netherlands. However, while on a winter training camp in Dubai in early 2024, he was detained by local authorities following a traffic accident and subsequently arrested on a Dutch extradition request.

Lillo Brancato Jr. is an American actor whose rapid rise to fame was followed by a public descent into addiction and a high-profile criminal case. After being discovered at age 15 for his striking resemblance to Robert De Niro, he gained stardom as Calogero in the 1993 film A Bronx Tale and later appeared in several episodes of The Sopranos. However, Brancato’s promising career was derailed by a severe addiction to drugs, leading to a tragic incident on December 10, 2005, when he and an accomplice, Steven Armento, were involved in a botched burglary in the Bronx.

Bruce McArthur is a Canadian serial killer who murdered eight men in Toronto between 2010 and 2017. A self-employed landscaper who occasionally worked as a shopping mall Santa Claus, McArthur targeted vulnerable men, many of whom had ties to Toronto's Gay Village.

Eliyahu "Eli" Weinstein is a New Jersey-based repeat fraudster who masterminded multiple high-stakes Ponzi schemes totaling over $250 million in losses, specifically targeting investors within the Orthodox Jewish community. Originally sentenced to 24 years in federal prison for a $200 million real estate scheme, his sentence was commuted to time served by the president in January 2021 after serving only eight years. Almost immediately following his release, Weinstein began a new $41 million scheme.

Kelly Cochran and her husband, Jason, lived by a "marriage pact" that required them to kill anyone with whom they had an affair. In 2014, they fulfilled this vow by luring Kelly’s lover, Christopher Regan, to their Michigan home where Jason shot him; the couple then dismembered his body and allegedly served his remains to unsuspecting neighbors at a barbecue. Two years later, Kelly murdered Jason in Indiana by injecting him with a lethal dose of heroin and smothering him, claiming it was revenge for Regan's death.

Yasutomo Ihara is a former Japanese stuntman and "suit actor" who gained notoriety for using his professional training to commit a series of high-profile burglaries in Japan. He is frequently associated with the Green Power Ranger in viral reports, though his actual work was as a suit actor in the original Japanese Super Sentai and Kamen Rider series, which were later adapted for the American Power Rangers franchise.

In 1982, Malcolm Macarthur, a refined but impoverished socialite, committed two brutal murders in Ireland as part of an ill-conceived plan to rob a bank. After squandering his inheritance, Macarthur bludgeoned nurse Bridie Gargan with a hammer to steal her car and later shot farmer Dónal Dunne with a shotgun he was pretending to buy. The subsequent manhunt ended in a major political scandal when Macarthur was discovered hiding in the home of the Irish Attorney General, Patrick Connolly, who was an unwitting acquaintance.

Katherine Kealoha, a former high-ranking deputy prosecutor in Honolulu, was the central figure in Hawaii's largest public corruption scandal. Together with her husband, then-Police Chief Louis Kealoha, she orchestrated an elaborate scheme to maintain a lavish lifestyle by defrauding her own family and financial institutions. Her downfall began when she conned her elderly grandmother into a reverse mortgage and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund luxury car payments, high-end concert tickets, and an expensive brunch for her husband’s induction. When her uncle, Gerard Puana, sued her for this financial abuse, the Kealohas abused their power by using a specialized police unit to frame him for stealing their mailbox in an attempt to discredit him. 

Jesse Kempson is a New Zealand man who became the center of a major international criminal case following the 2018 murder of 21-year-old British backpacker Grace Millane in Auckland. After meeting Millane on the dating app Tinder, Kempson strangled her in his hotel room and subsequently attempted to hide her body in a suitcase, which he buried in a shallow grave in the Waitākere Ranges.

The 1994 Tonya Harding scandal involved a conspiracy to break the leg of rival figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, orchestrated by Harding’s ex-husband Jeff Gillooly to ensure Harding’s path to Olympic gold. While the January attack failed to break the leg, it caused a massive media sensation. Though Harding pleaded guilty only to hindering the prosecution after the fact, the scandal resulted in a lifetime ban from U.S. Figure Skating and an eighth-place finish at the 1994 Olympics, forever defining her career as one of the most bizarre in sports history.

Tiger Woods 2009 cheating scandal began with a tabloid report of an affair with nightclub manager Rachel Uchitel, which escalated into a global media frenzy after Woods crashed his SUV into a tree outside his home. Following the crash, dozens of women came forward claiming to have had affairs with the golfer, shattering his carefully maintained clean image.

21-year-old Jordan Marie Shaver shot and killed 49-year-old Brian Barton Geddes in his Garden City, Idaho, home after he had allowed her to stay with him. After the shooting, Shaver wrapped Geddes’ body in a comforter and hidden it in the crawlspace beneath his house. For nearly three weeks, she lived in the home, drove his cars, spent his money, and used his cell phone to send text messages to his family to cover up his disappearance.

Paul Bateson was a radiological technician in New York City who gained notoriety for his brief appearance in the 1973 film The Exorcist and his subsequent conviction for the 1977 murder of film critic Addison Verrill. During his trial, Bateson allegedly bragged about killing several other men.

Robert Pickton was a Canadian pig farmer and serial killer who, in 2007, was convicted of murdering six women, though he confessed to an undercover officer that he killed 49.

Ephren Taylor II rose to fame as a self-proclaimed "teenage tycoon," building a massive public profile as a financial guru and "social capitalist" who supposedly earned his first million by age 16. Leveraging this manufactured persona and his status as a minister’s son, he launched a "Building Wealth" tour that targeted African American megachurches, including Bishop Eddie Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. Under the guise of Biblical, "risk-free" investments in small businesses and sweepstakes machines, Taylor orchestrated a $16 million Ponzi scheme that defrauded over 400 people of their life savings.

Marjorie Ann Orbin was a former Las Vegas showgirl convicted of the 2004 murder of her husband, Jay Orbin, a successful jewelry dealer.

Leon Jacob was a failed medical resident in Houston who, along with his girlfriend, veterinarian Valerie McDaniel, orchestrated a plot to hire a hitman to murder both of their ex-partners. Motivated by a desire to prevent his ex-girlfriend from testifying in a stalking case against him and to resolve McDaniel's custody battle, Jacob offered cash and luxury watches to an individual he believed was a contract killer but was actually an undercover officer.

Jonathan Crupi was a Brooklyn high school English teacher who, on July 5, 2012, murdered his wife and fellow teacher, Simeonette Mapes-Crupi, in their Staten Island home.

In 2005, Amy Bosley made a frantic 911 call reporting that an intruder had broken into her Kentucky home and shot her husband, Bob Bosley, while their two young children were asleep nearby. However, investigators quickly grew suspicious of her story after finding bullet casings in the washing machine and evidence that she had staged the break-in by breaking glass after the shots were fired. The true motive was revealed to be financial: Amy had embezzled approximately $1.7 million from their family roofing business and was desperate to hide the theft from both her husband and the IRS, who had scheduled a meeting with Bob for that very morning.

In September 2025, a California jury unanimously cleared Cardi B of all liability in a $24 million civil lawsuit brought by former security guard Emani Ellis. The legal battle stemmed from a 2018 encounter at a Beverly Hills medical office where Ellis claimed the rapper- who was four months pregnant at the time- physically assaulted her, spat on her, and used slurs after a disagreement regarding privacy and recording.

Robyn Lindholm, a former Melbourne adult dancer often dubbed the "Black Widow," is a convicted double murderer whose crimes involved orchestrating the deaths of her own partners by manipulating other men into doing her bidding. In 2013, she arranged for her then-boyfriend Torsten Trabert and another associate to kill her former partner Wayne Amey following a bitter property dispute; Amey was bashed with a baseball bat and his body was later found hidden between boulders at Mount Korong. While serving a 25-year sentence for Amey's murder, Lindholm was further convicted in 2019 for the 2005 murder of her fiancé George Templeton, a crime she had ironically recruited Wayne Amey to help her commit years before.

Wendi Andriano is an Arizona woman currently on death row for the brutal October 2000 murder of her terminally ill husband, Joe Andriano. Driven by financial greed and resentment over her role as a caregiver, Wendi first attempted to poison Joe with sodium azide before ultimately bludgeoning him with a barstool.

In the 1980s, Dorothea Puente operated a boarding house in Sacramento, California, where she presented herself as a kind, grandmotherly figure who cared for "shadow people"—the elderly, alcoholics, and the mentally disabled who had no one else to look after them. In reality, she was a cold and calculating serial killer who drugged her vulnerable tenants with sedatives, strangled or suffocated them, and then buried their bodies in her backyard to continue cashing their Social Security checks.

She had no loyalty at all.--In November 2000, Kristin Rossum, a toxicologist at the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office, murdered her 26-year-old husband, Gregory de Villers, by administering a lethal dose of drugsstolen from her workplace. After finding him dead in their La Jolla apartment, she staged the scene to resemble her favorite movie, American Beauty, by sprinkling red rose petals over his body. Prosecutors argued that Rossum killed de Villers to prevent him from exposing her relapse into drug addiction and her illicit affair with her boss, Michael Robertson.

Kay Young and Katherine Mock are two Missouri women convicted of a murder-for-hire plot involving the death of Young's husband, Melvin Griesbauer, in 2006.

On New Year’s Eve 2018, U.S. Army Sergeant Tyrone Hassel III was fatally shot in an ambush in his father's driveway in Michigan while on holiday leave. Investigators later discovered that his wife, Kemia Hassel, also an active-duty soldier, had orchestrated the murder with her lover and fellow soldier, Jeremy Cuellar, so they could continue their extramarital affair.

Randall Dale Adams was wrongfully convicted of murdering a Dallas police officer in 1976 and sentenced to death, spending over 12 years in prison despite being innocent. His case gained national attention through Errol Morris’s 1988 documentary, The Thin Blue Line, which exposed suppressed evidence and perjured testimony, revealing the real killer was David Harris.

Ryan Wedding, a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder who competed in the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, transitioned from professional athletics to becoming one of North America's most wanted drug kingpins.

Jonathan Gerlach, a 34-year-old former metalcore vocalist from Ephrata, Pennsylvania, was arrested in January 2026 for a massive grave-robbing spree that officials described as a "horror movie come to life." Following a months-long investigation and an anonymous tip, police caught Gerlach leaving the historic Mount Moriah Cemetery with a burlap sack containing human remains.

In February 2008, facing massive debt and a Medicare fraud conviction, 40-year-old Lake Barrington contractor Ari Squire hatched a plan to fake his own death to collect on a $5 million life insurance policy. He lured 20-year-old Justin Newman to his home with the promise of a high-paying construction job, then murdered him and staged a horrific scene in his garage.

Kulthum Akbari is an Iranian serial killer arrested in 2023 who confessed to murdering her 82-year-old husband and 13 men over a twenty-year span, though investigations suggest she may have killed over 20 men through a scheme involving multiple fraudulent marriages. Operating in Sari, Iran, between 2001 and 2023, Akbari targeted elderly husbands, marrying them before killing them.

John Hinckley Jr. became infamous in 1981 when he attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton Hotel, shooting Reagan and three others, including Press Secretary James Brady, who was left permanently disabled. Hinckley later said he carried out the attack in a delusional effort to impress actress Jodie Foster, with whom he had become obsessed after watching the film Taxi Driver.

Lance Armstrong was a professional cyclist who won the Tour de France seven times from 1999 to 2005 after recovering from testicular cancer. For years, he denied allegations that he used performance-enhancing drugs. In 2012, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency concluded that Armstrong had participated in a long-running doping program involving substances such as EPO, testosterone, and blood transfusions, and that members of his team were also involved. As a result, he was stripped of all seven Tour de France titles and banned from professional cycling for life.

This is the story of Martin Bryant and the Port Arthur Massacre.

Eric Conn, once self-proclaimed as the "Mr. Social Security" of eastern Kentucky, orchestrated the largest Social Security fraud in United States history, totaling over $550 million in redirected government funds. Between 2004 and 2011, Conn utilized a network of bribed officials- including an Administrative Law Judge and complicit doctors- to systematically approve thousands of fraudulent disability claims based on falsified medical evidence.

Heather Stephenson-Snell was a professional psychotherapist and leader of an all-female biker gang who became obsessed with revenge after her former partner, Adrian Sinclair, ended their relationship to be with another woman, Diane Lomax. Following an 18-month campaign of harassment, she drove from York to Radcliffe on Halloween night in 2003 disguised in a "Scream" mask and ghostly white sheet, carrying a sawn-off shotgun with the intent to kill her rival. When her knocking at Lomax's door disturbed the neighborhood, a 43-year-old neighbor named Robert Wilkie confronted her and attempted to remove her mask; Stephenson-Snell shot him at point-blank range, killing him almost instantly.

In 1981 in Kansas, Melinda Raisch became the center of a deadly love triangle that ended in brutal betrayal. Unhappy in her marriage to David Harmon, Raisch began an affair with Mark Mangelsdorf, and together the two conspired to eliminate Harmon rather than pursue divorce.

In early 2017, William "Billy" Boyette and accomplice Mary Rice led law enforcement on a violent, week-long manhunt across the Florida Panhandle and South Alabama. The spree began on January 31 with the double homicide of Boyette's ex-girlfriend and her friend in Milton, Florida, followed by two more fatal shootings during carjackings and home invasions in Alabama and Beulah, Florida.

In 1992, the movie American Me directed by Edward James Olmos portrayed a fictionalized rise of a Mexican Mafia leader inside California’s prison system, aiming to expose the brutality and cyclical violence of gang culture. But its stark realism angered members of the real Mexican Mafia, who reportedly saw it as a humiliating portrayal. After the film’s release, several people connected to the production, including consultant Ana Lizarraga, were murdered in what many believed were acts of retaliation. Danny Trejo, who appeared in the film and had real-life prison experience, later revealed that he warned Olmos during production that certain scenes could provoke serious backlash from gang leadership, and he has spoken publicly about the tension and fear surrounding the fallout.

Robert Hendy-Freegard is a British con artist who, in the 1990s and early 2000s, posed as an undercover MI5 agent to manipulate, isolate, and financially exploit multiple victims across the UK. Presenting himself as a secret operative hunting the IRA, he convinced young professionals and students that they were in danger and needed to go into hiding under his direction, extracting hundreds of thousands of pounds from them while controlling their movements, relationships, and even identities.

Chad Ollinger, a 41-year-old reality TV personality best known for appearing on the Discovery Channel’s Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch with his father, has been charged with open murder in the December 26, 2025 death of his cellmate, Christopher Kelly, at the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas.

Christopher and Raquelle Judge, a married couple from Fort Worth, Texas who built an online lifestyle and renovation following, pleaded guilty to federal wire fraud conspiracy charges in late 2025 for orchestrating a nearly $5 million home-building scam that defrauded more than 40 homeowners between August 2020 and January 2023. Through their company Judge DFW LLC, they promoted themselves on social media as custom home builders and designers, even falsely claiming Christopher was a licensed architect, then took large installment payments for construction and renovation projects that were never completed, often leaving families with unfinished or unsafe homes

Sante Kimes was a calculating con artist whose life read like a blueprint for manipulation, fraud, and ultimately murder. Alongside her younger accomplice and son, Kenneth Kimes, she spent decades drifting across the United States, spinning elaborate schemes that ranged from check fraud and insurance scams to exploiting wealthy older men. Their crimes escalated in 1998 with the murder of 82 year old Irene Silverman, a wealthy Manhattan widow whom Sante befriended before killing her in a bid to seize her townhouse and fortune; Silverman’s body was never recovered. Investigators later tied the pair to the 1998 killing of Los Angeles businessman David Kazdin, whose body was found in a dumpster.

Dawn Bennett was a Washington, D.C.–based luxury sportswear entrepreneur and former financial advisor who built a glittering public persona while secretly running what prosecutors later described as a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. Through her company she marketed high-end alpaca and vicuña apparel and promised investors sky-high returns, claiming their money would fund inventory and expansion, but instead she used much of it to bankroll an extravagant lifestyle that included designer goods, jewelry, and personal expenses.

Willard Chaiden Miller was a 16 year old Iowa high school student who, along with his classmate Jeremy Goodale, was charged with murdering their Spanish teacher, Nohema Graber, in 2021.

Joe Caronna was convicted of murdering his wife, Tina Caronna, in a case prosecutors said was driven by financial desperation and insurance fraud.

The tragic story of Brandon Hole, the My Little Pony fan who committed murder at a FedEx Ground facility in Indianapolis Indiana.

Raynaldo Rivera Ortiz Jr., a once-trusted anesthesiologist at a Dallas surgical center, was convicted of grotesquely betraying his medical oath by secretly injecting powerful drugs into bags of IV fluid meant to help patients, turning routine procedures into life-threatening crises.

Betty Lou Beets was a Texas woman who became known as the “Black Widow” after murdering two of her husbands in the early 1980s for financial gain.

Jadion “Jay Icon” Richards and his wife Akwele “Apple” Lawes-Richards were arrested and charged in the U.S. with shoplifting and related fraud offenses related to the retail chain Lululemon.

Rod Blagojevich was the Democratic governor of Illinois whose political career collapsed in 2008 when federal prosecutors charged him with corruption, most famously accusing him of trying to sell or trade the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

Molly Bloom was a former competitive mogul skier whose Olympic dreams ended after a severe injury, pushing her into the world of high-stakes underground poker in Los Angeles, where she eventually ran some of the most exclusive illegal games in Hollywood, attracting A-list actors, professional athletes, and powerful businessmen. As the operation grew, Bloom became deeply entangled with Russian mob figures who helped bankroll and protect the games, dramatically raising the stakes and the risks.

In November 2025, a Tennessee jury found Latoshia Daniels guilty of second-degree murder for the 2019 shooting death of Memphis pastor Brodes Perry, as well as attempted reckless endangerment for wounding his wife, Tabatha Perry Archie. The trial, dubbed the "Broke My Heart" murder trial, centered on a two-year secret affair between Daniels and Perry that ended shortly before the shooting at the couple's Collierville home.

Johnny Lewis was a troubled actor best known for his role on Sons of Anarchy whose life unraveled amid escalating violence, mental health struggles, and drug abuse. In September 2012, Lewis brutally attacked his 81-year-old landlady, Catherine Davis, inside her Los Angeles home, beating and strangling her to death, and evidence suggested he may have assaulted other residents before fleeing.

John Donald Cody is a Harvard-educated lawyer and former U.S. Army intelligence officer who spent decades as a fugitive after disappearing from his Arizona law practice in the 1980s amid allegations he stole client funds. Decades later, using the alias Bobby Thompson, he founded the United States Navy Veterans Association, a bogus charity that raised tens of millions of dollars from donors under the pretense of helping Navy veterans, but instead siphoned off funds and even made political donations, all while hiding behind a fake identity and mail-drop addresses.

Katie Piper is a British model and television presenter whose life changed dramatically in 2008 when she was the victim of a brutal acid attack orchestrated by her ex-boyfriend, Daniel Lynch, who hired an accomplice to throw sulfuric acid in her face as she stood outside her London apartment. The attack left Piper with severe facial burns, blindness in one eye, and extensive injuries to her esophagus, requiring more than 40 surgeries and years of rehabilitation.

Marni Yang was a former girlfriend of NFL safety Shaun Gayle who, in July 2007, murdered Gayle’s pregnant girlfriend, Rhoni Reuter, in her Deerfield, Illinois condo.

Heidi Fleiss, dubbed the Hollywood Madam in the 1990s, became nationally infamous when federal investigators exposed her high-end prostitution ring catering to wealthy clients in Los Angeles, a scandal that erupted into pop-culture spectacle once actor Charlie Sheen publicly admitted he had been one of her customers.

Vonlee Nicole Titlow was convicted of second-degree murder in the 2000 death of her uncle, Donald Rogers, in Michigan after prosecutors said she helped her aunt, Billie Jean Rogers, kill him.

During a Coldplay concert when the stadium’s kiss cam landed on two attendees who very clearly did not want to be seen together, triggering an instant internet pile-on. As the camera lingered, the pair awkwardly recoiled, hid their faces, and appeared panicked rather than playful, which viewers quickly interpreted as evidence of an affair. Online sleuths soon identified the man as Andy Byron, the CEO of data company Astronomer, seated beside Kristin Cabot, the company’s head of HR, despite both reportedly being married to other people. What might have been a throwaway crowd gag became a corporate and personal scandal within hours, with memes exploding, workplace ethics questions swirling, and the incident turning into a cautionary tale about public visibility in the age of viral video.

Daylon Pierce became known for running a widespread online dating scam in which he used social media and dating apps to target women, often presenting himself as charming, emotionally invested, and sometimes falsely claiming stable careers or military ties to build trust quickly. After forming intense romantic relationships, Pierce would manufacture financial emergencies and persuade victims to send him money, gifts, or access to funds, only to disappear or cycle them into ongoing manipulation. The scheme unraveled as multiple victims compared stories and reported similar patterns of deception, leading to a criminal investigation that revealed a consistent playbook of emotional exploitation and fraud.

Christina Paolilla is from Clear Lake, Texas, and was involved in a brutal double murder in 2003. Along with her boyfriend, Steven Spence, Paolilla carried out a home invasion that resulted in the execution-style killings of her childhood friends, Clara Harris’s relatives Josh and Alicia Moffatt, whom Paolilla had grown up with and once considered family.

Lorenzen Wright, a former NBA center who played 13 seasons in the league, was found murdered in July 2010 after disappearing from Memphis, Tennessee, his body discovered in a wooded area riddled with multiple gunshot wounds. The case drew national attention due to Wright’s prominence and the disturbing revelation of a 911 call in which he appeared to be fleeing for his life. After years of stalled investigation and public pressure, prosecutors alleged that Wright’s wife, Sherra Wright-Robinson, conspired with her lover, Billy Turner, to have him killed over financial disputes tied to Wright’s multimillion-dollar assets.

Ezra McCandless, also known as Ezra McCandless Mitchell, was convicted for the 2018 murder of her former boyfriend, Alex Woodworth, in rural Wisconsin, a case that initially appeared to be a tragic act of self-defense but unraveled into a carefully staged homicide.

Gerald Payne was the pastor and director of Greater Ministries International, a Tampa-based religious organization that operated in the 1990s as a massive Ponzi-style fraud cloaked in faith-healing rhetoric, promising believers that if they “gifted” money to the ministry they would receive double their money back in about 17 months through supposed divinely blessed investments in foreign currency, mines, and other ventures. The scheme pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars from tens of thousands of devout investors across the United States.

In January 2007, a guerrilla marketing campaign for the Adult Swim show Aqua Teen Hunger Force triggered a widespread public panic in and around Boston when LED light boards depicting the show’s Mooninite characters were mistaken for explosive devices.

Sandra Beltrán, known as La Reina del Pacífico, was a prominent Colombian drug trafficker who rose to power in the 1990s and early 2000s as a key intermediary between Colombian cartel and Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel.

Gilberto Valle, a New York City police officer nicknamed the “Cannibal Cop” by the media, was arrested in 2012 after investigators discovered his online chats and writings.

Mary Ellen Samuels was a California woman who orchestrated a murder-for-hire plot in 1988 to kill her estranged husband, Bob Samuels.

Edmund Kemper was a highly intelligent but profoundly disturbed killer whose violence grew out of years of psychological abuse and deep resentment toward his mother. After murdering his grandparents at fifteen and spending five years in a state psychiatric hospital, he was released as a “rehabilitated” young man and returned to Santa Cruz, where he began targeting female college students in 1972. Over the next year, he abducted and murdered six young women, carefully manipulating police and projecting the image of a polite, trustworthy giant

Sheriff James Lujan’s case centered on a pattern of compromised judgment and abuse of authority during his tenure as the elected sheriff of Taos County, New Mexico. Investigators found that Lujan repeatedly interfered in law-enforcement efforts involving Sage Hammer, a local fugitive, including warning him about police activity and attempting to shield him from arrest. 

David Sconce built what became the largest cremation business in the United States by turning his family’s mortuary operation into a factory of exploitation and deception, routinely cremating multiple bodies at once, mixing remains, returning fake ashes to grieving families, and harvesting organs and tissue without consent.

The case of Tay-K centers on Taymor McIntyre, a teenage rapper whose rising career was eclipsed by a violent spiral that began with his involvement in a 2016 home-invasion robbery that left 21-year-old Ethan Walker dead. While awaiting trial, McIntyre cut off his ankle monitor and fled, turning his run from the law into a combustible piece of internet lore as he recorded “The Race,” a song that unintentionally documented his own flight. During that period, he was linked to additional violent incidents, including an alleged robbery and the fatal assault of 23-year-old Mark Saldivar outside a Texas Chick-fil-A.

Sidney Dorsey, once the elected sheriff of DeKalb County, Georgia, slid from power into infamy after a bitter 2000 election he lost to challenger Derwin Brown. Investigators later uncovered that Dorsey, desperate to keep control of the department and shield himself from internal corruption probes, orchestrated a murder plot targeting Brown before he could take office.

Irina Gaidamachuk was a Russian serial killer who spent nearly a decade preying on elderly women across the Sverdlovsk region, posing as a social-services worker to slip into their apartments before bludgeoning them to death and stealing small amounts of cash to fuel her alcoholism. Her crimes stretched from 2002 to 2010 and baffled investigators, partly because police assumed the killer was a man.

Wallace Souza was a former police officer turned TV host in Manaus who rose to fame in 1996 with his crime show Canal Livre, a sensational program that often arrived at murder scenes faster than law enforcement. As his popularity grew, he leveraged his tough-on-crime persona into political power, winning a seat as a state legislator. But in 2009, investigators uncovered evidence suggesting that Souza and his inner circle were operating a criminal organization that not only trafficked drugs but allegedly ordered murders so his TV crew could film exclusive footage for higher ratings.

Tom Monfils’s death in 1992 at the James River paper mill in Green Bay became one of Wisconsin’s most controversial homicide cases. After Monfils made an anonymous call reporting a coworker for theft, the recorded tip was improperly released to the mill, exposing him and heightening already strained workplace tensions. He vanished during his shift, and the next day his body was found submerged in a pulp vat with a rope and weight attached. Investigators concluded he had been murdered in retaliation.

Missy Giove rocketed to fame in the 1990s as one of the most aggressive and charismatic downhill mountain bikers in the world, blasting through the NORBA circuit and winning the 1994 UCI Downhill World Championship while turning herself into an extreme-sports icon with her punk-charged energy. After retiring from competition, her life swerved into scandal in 2009, when she was arrested in a federal operation for transporting hundreds of pounds of illegal drugs.

Carl Rinsch’s case centers on the collapse of his Netflix project White Horse aka Conquest, in which he was entrusted with a large production budget but allegedly misused significant portions of the funds. Instead of directing the money toward the series, Rinsch reportedly diverted millions into personal luxury purchases and high-risk options trading, losing vast sums before briefly recovering money through a lucky market swing. As production stalled and the show failed to materialize, Netflix and former crew members accused him of financial misconduct, mismanagement, and erratic behavior.

Between 2005 and 2007, Tim Donaghy bet on games he officiated and supplied inside information to gamblers, exploiting injury reports, referee assignments, and his influence over foul calls. His actions triggered a federal investigation that exposed a network of illicit betting tied to organized crime.

Elliot Rodger’s case is a documented progression from early social withdrawal and untreated psychological distress to a lethal act of targeted violence in Isla Vista in 2014. Born in 1991, Rodger struggled for years with isolation, rigid self-focused thinking, and growing resentment toward peers, particularly women, whom he believed rejected him. After enrolling at Santa Barbara City College in 2011, these grievances intensified as he retreated further from meaningful relationships and built an elaborate narrative framing himself as a victim of injustice. He expressed these views in a lengthy written manifesto and a series of videos that revealed both deep-seated misogyny and deteriorating mental stability.

Heather Tallchief’s life took a drastic turn in 1993, when she became involved with Roberto Solis, a recently paroled murderer whose influence drew her into one of the most successful armored-truck thefts in U.S. history. At age 21, while working as a Loomis driver in Las Vegas, she quietly drove away from her route with millions of dollars and disappeared into Europe with Solis.

In 2022, Deveius Weathers allegedly shot and killed another man at a neighborhood barbecue, after an argument involving chicken wings.

Youtuber Pierogi aka Scammer Payback along with fellow Youtube channel Trilogy media work together to expose and dismantle a $65 million dollar mutinational fraud ring.

Michael Gargiulo, the so-called Hollywood Ripper, was a predator who operated in plain sight, drifting through Los Angeles with the easy confidence of a man no one suspected. His violence began in 1993, when he murdered 18-year-old Tricia Pacaccio in Illinois at just sixteen, then followed him west years later. In Hollywood, he befriended and fixated on 22-year-old fashion student Ashley Ellerin, stabbing her to death in 2001 the night she had a date planned with Ashton Kutcher. Four years after that, he murdered Santa Monica resident Maria Bruno with the same frenzied knife attack style.

Pazuzu Algarad, born John Lawson, was a deeply disturbed man in Clemmons, North Carolina who reinvented himself as a self-styled demon and gathered vulnerable people into a chaotic, drug-soaked, filthy house where violence and decay festered unchecked. In 2009, he murdered Joshua Wetzler, leaving the body in his basement for weeks before burying it in a shallow grave in the backyard, and later that same year his girlfriend Amber Burch killed Tommy Welch, whose body was buried beside the first.

Jean-Claude Lacote and Hilde Van Acker were a Belgian couple who became internationally notorious after the 1996 murder of British businessman Simon Dale, a crime they committed in Knokke-Heist before fleeing the country and vanishing for more than two decades. Skilled con artists, they slipped through Europe, the United States, South Africa, Brazil, Mauritius, and Ivory Coast while living under fake identities, running fraud schemes, and even raising a daughter on the run.

Jenny Cataldo spun a long, emotional hoax by pretending she had terminal cancer, complete with shaved-head photos, fake medical stories, and tearful updates that pulled friends, coworkers, and strangers into her invented struggle. Over several years she accepted money, gifts, and donations from people who genuinely believed they were helping her survive, until inconsistencies in her claims triggered suspicion and investigators discovered there was no cancer diagnosis at all.

Sabrina Taylor spent years weaving a sympathy-soaked lie, pretending she had multiple sclerosis and a stack of other crises so she could drain more than half a million dollars from friends and online acquaintances who believed they were helping her stay alive, stay in school, or rescue family members who didn’t actually exist. Beginning around 2013, she told people she needed money for MS treatments, tuition, and emergency bailouts, even forging documents to keep the illusion afloat, all while spending the cash on travel, shopping, and luxury items.

In 2025, Michael Scaletta-Teates of Washington state goes to great lengths to pretend to be a police officer- outfitting his car with red and blue emergency lights, wearing a ballistic-style vest and badge, and appearing at crime scenes.

Albert Johnson Walker was a Canadian financial adviser who stole over $3 million CAD from clients in the late 1980s, then fled Canada in 1990 with his teenage daughter Sheena to avoid prosecution. While living in England under false names, he manipulated and ultimately stole the identity of a British man named Ronald Platt, even convincing Platt to move to Canada, which left the identity available. When the real Platt returned to England in 1996 and threatened to expose him, Walker murdered him in Devon, weighted the body with an anchor, and dumped it at sea.

Pam Hupp is a Missouri woman at the center of one of the most notorious wrongful-conviction cases in the U.S. in 2011, after her close friend Betsy Faria was brutally stabbed to death, Hupp- who had secretly made herself the beneficiary of Betsy’s $150k life-insurance policy just days earlier- helped steer police toward Betsy’s husband Russ Faria, who was wrongly convicted and imprisoned for nearly three years before being fully exonerated; when investigators began refocusing on Hupp in 2016, she staged a fake kidnapping plot to frame Russ again and instead murdered Louis Gumpenberger, a cognitively impaired man she lured with a fake Dateline acting job.

Andrew and Alecia Schmuhl’s case is one of the most shocking and bizarre crimes in recent Virginia history: after Alecia was fired from her law firm, she and her husband spiraled into desperation and rage, culminating on November 9, 2014, when Alecia drove Andrew- dressed in an adult diaper, latex gloves, and a fake badge- to the home of her former boss, Leo Fisher, in McLean. Posing as law enforcement, Andrew forced his way inside, tased and zip-tied Leo and his wife, Susan, then tortured, stabbed, and slashed their throats using a kitchen knife while demanding passwords and information, all while Alecia waited outside in the getaway car. Miraculously, both victims survived and gave police detailed descriptions that led to a short car chase and the Schmuhls' arrest minutes later, with Andrew still wearing only the diaper.

Timothy McVeigh was a Gulf War veteran whose growing hatred of the federal government- fueled by the Ruby Ridge standoff, the Waco siege, militia-movement ideology, and The Turner Diaries- led him to plan and execute the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Apparently we need to get into the pigeon racing business 😳-Arlan Galbraith known as The Pigeon King, ran one of Canada’s strangest and most devastating Ponzi schemes, convincing hundreds of farmers across Canada and the U.S. to buy expensive breeding pigeons with promises that he would buy back the offspring at a guaranteed profit. Galbraith claimed he was building a massive pigeon-meat and racing-bird industry, but no such market existed, and the only money coming in was from new farmers joining the scheme.

The Joe Rosebrook case centers on a long-simmering grudge, a murder-for-hire plot, and a catastrophic case of mistaken identity that went unsolved for nearly a decade. Rosebrook, a small-time Ohio fraudster and chop-shop operator with a habit of retaliating against people he believed had crossed him, sought revenge against a man named Daniel E. Ott- someone he blamed for exposing one of his earlier scams. The murder contract passed through several intermediaries until it reached Chad Testerman, who located the wrong Daniel Ott.

Samantha Azzopardi is an Australian serial con artist whose crimes span more than a decade and multiple countries, built almost entirely on elaborate false identities.

In 2009, Michael Jackson died of an overdose at his Los Angeles home. A powerful anesthetic propofol had been administered by his personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray. In a highly publicized 2011 trial, Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

Actress Winona Ryder was caught stealing more than $5,000 worth of designer clothing and accessories from Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. Security detained her after observing her cutting sensor tags and walking out with the merchandise, leading to her high-profile arrest and a media frenzy that dominated early-2000s pop culture.

In July 2001, German couple Daniel and Manuela Ruda- deeply involved in Satanic and vampire-themed beliefs- lured their friend, 33-year-old Frank Hackert, to their apartment in Witten and brutally murdered him in what they described as a ritual killing. Manuela had filed her teeth into fangs and slept in a coffin, and Daniel claimed he’d received a vision of the number 6667, which he believed meant they should marry on June 6 and kill themselves on July 6 after offering a human sacrifice to Satan.

Yareni Rios-Gonzalez was involved in a reported road-rage incident in Weld County, Colorado, on September 16, 2022, after a man called 911 claiming she tailgated him and pointed a firearm. Police pulled her over near Platteville, where officers from two departments handcuffed her and placed her in the back of a patrol SUV that one officer had parked directly on railroad tracks. While officers searched her truck, a freight train approached; body-cam video shows Yareni screaming for help moments before the train slammed into the police vehicle, critically injuring her and leaving her with a traumatic brain injury, broken bones, and requiring surgery.

Devan Schreiner, a former USPS worker from Longmont, Colorado, was locked in a turbulent custody battle with her ex-boyfriend, postal carrier Jason Schaefer, the father of their young son. Their relationship had soured after years of conflict, and shortly before the murder she was fired from the post office following an undisclosed “incident.” Prosecutors said Schreiner became enraged when Jason sought increased custody, and on October 13, 2021, she ambushed him on his mail route, shooting him as he sat in his postal truck.

Leonardo Notarbartolo was the mastermind behind the 2003 Antwerp Diamond Heist, one of the most ingenious burglaries ever pulled off. Working with a crew of elite Italian thieves, he spent over a year posing as a diamond trader to gain access to the Antwerp Diamond Center, a building considered nearly impenetrable thanks to its multilayered security

John Orr was a respected Glendale, California fire captain and arson investigator who spent nearly a decade secretly setting the very fires he was supposed to prevent. Between 1984 and 1991, Orr ignited hundreds possibly thousands of fires.

Rafael Pérez was an LAPD officer whose crimes detonated the largest police-corruption scandal in Los Angeles history. A member of the elite Rampart Division CRASH unit, Pérez spent years planting guns, framing suspects, falsifying reports, beating civilians, and even shooting unarmed people- including paralyzing 19-year-old Javier Ovando, then lying to send him to prison.

Ronnie O’Neal III committed one of Florida’s most shocking family murders on March 18, 2018. His son miraculously survived, crawled out of the burning house, and later testified against his father in court.

Velma Barfield was a North Carolina caretaker who became one of the most notorious female poisoners in U.S. history. Between 1971 and 1978, she quietly murdered multiple people in her orbit- beginning with her husband, Jennings Barfield, who died in a suspicious house fire while he slept, and later her own mother, along with an elderly couple she stole money from. Her final victim was her boyfriend, Stuart Taylor, whom she poisoned after he discovered she’d forged his checks.

The Nigerian cook Harrison Okene was using the bathroom on a tugboat when a massive wave capsized the vessel and sent it to the ocean floor about 100 feet down. Trapped in total darkness, surrounded by drowning crew members, Okene found a tiny pocket of trapped air inside a bathroom and laundry area. He survived nearly three days in that pitch-black bubble.

Jodi Arias brutally murdered her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, a charismatic Mormon salesman from Mesa, Arizona. The pair had met two years earlier at a business conference and quickly began a passionate but toxic relationship marked by jealousy, obsession, and sexual tension that clashed with Travis’s religious values. After he tried to end things and invited another woman on a Cancun trip, Arias drove from California to Arizona, where she stabbed him 27 times and shot him in the head.

Samuel Israel III was a New York hedge fund manager who founded the Bayou Hedge Fund Group in 1996 and orchestrated one of the largest financial frauds of the early 2000s. After years of falsifying trading records and using a fake accounting firm to hide losses, Israel’s $300 million Ponzi scheme collapsed in 2005 when investors tried to withdraw their money. Facing charges of fraud and conspiracy, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. In a bizarre twist, just before reporting to prison in 2008, Israel staged his own death.

Gilberte Van Erpe aka Madame Gil is a Belgian con artist who launched a fake health and cosmetics company called Crema in the early 2000s. Posing as the mystical “Madame Gil,” she convinced thousands of people- especially in Chile- to invest in a bogus line of “magic cheese” and other products that supposedly contained miraculous healing or cosmetic properties. Investors were promised huge profits from selling this special cheese, but the entire operation was a pyramid scheme.

In 2003, Thomas “Bart” Whitaker orchestrated a murder-for-hire plot against his own family in Sugar Land, Texas, in order to claim his inheritance. After luring his parents and brother home from a celebratory dinner, his friend Christopher Brashear ambushed them inside the house, killing Bart’s mother and brother and seriously wounding his father, Kent.

Mississippi Elvis impersonator Paul Kevin Curtis was wrongly accused of sending ricin-laced letters to President Obama, Senator Roger Wicker, and a local judge. Curtis had a history of posting online about an alleged hospital cover-up after he claimed to have discovered human body parts in 2001 while working as a janitor.

In December 2023, 44-year-old Daniel Krug of Broomfield, Colorado murdered his wife, Kristil Krug, in the garage of their home after months of secretly tormenting her with fake messages from a made-up stalker he created using burner phones and multiple online identities. Posing as her ex-boyfriend Jack, Daniel sent harassing emails and photos to both himself and Kristil to convince her she was being watched, all while portraying himself as her protector.

In 1994, Bobbi Parker, the wife of an Oklahoma prison deputy warden, vanished from the Oklahoma State Reformatory along with inmate Randolph Dial, a convicted murderer and artist who had been given unusual privileges due to his painting skills. For 11 years, the two lived under assumed identities on a remote chicken farm in Texas until their discovery in 2005.

Gerald Barnbaum was a conman who spent decades posing as a medical doctor despite never being one. Born in 1933 in Chicago, he was originally a licensed pharmacist, but his license was revoked. Rather than reform, Barnbaum found a new and more dangerous way to exploit the medical system: he began impersonating real physicians, using their stolen identities to practice medicine illegally.

In November 1971, Theo Albrecht, the reclusive German billionaire co-founder of Aldi supermarkets, was kidnapped at gunpoint outside his company’s headquarters in Essen, Germany, by Heinz-Joachim Ollenburg and Paul Krüzen, a pair of small-time criminals seeking a massive ransom. The kidnappers held him for 17 days.

Matthew Muller was a former Marine and Harvard-educated lawyer whose life spiraled into a series of bizarre crimes. In 2015, he broke into the Vallejo, California home of Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn, abducting Denise and demanding ransom in what police initially dismissed as a hoax inspired by Gone Girl. Muller, who suffered from mental illness and believed he was a kind of vigilante, held Huskins captive for two days before releasing her. 

Kwang Chol Joy was a California man who became infatuated with 37-year-old Maribel Ramos, an Army veteran and college student who had taken him in as a roommate in her Orange County apartment. Over time, his obsession with her deepened, but she rejected his romantic advances and eventually asked him to move out. In May 2013, shortly after a heated argument about rent, Maribel disappeared. Weeks later, her remains were discovered in a remote canyon

Barry Minkow was a teenage entrepreneur who founded the carpet-cleaning company ZZZZ Best in the 1980s and became a Wall Street sensation- until it was revealed to be one of the biggest Ponzi schemes of its time. Minkow fabricated fake restoration projects and used forged documents to trick investors, inflating his company’s value to over $200 million before it collapsed in 1987.

Israel Keyes was an American serial killer, burglar, and arsonist who operated from 2001 until his arrest in 2012. A meticulous and methodical predator, he murdered at least eleven people across the United States, hiding “kill kits” containing weapons and supplies years in advance to use during his crimes.

John DeLorean was a trailblazing automobile executive who rose to prominence at General Motors by engineering iconic muscle cars like the Pontiac GTO and Firebird. In 1975 he struck out on his own and founded the DeLorean Motor Company (DMC), aiming to build a futuristic sports car—the DMC-12 with gull-wing doors and stainless steel panels. Unfortunately, despite early hype, DMC’s production launch in 1981 suffered cost overruns, delays, and poor market timing, and by 1982 the company was insolvent. In a desperate bid to save his enterprise, DeLorean became entangled in a high-profile FBI sting involving drug trafficking.

Bernie Madoff was an American financier who ran what is widely regarded as the largest Ponzi scheme in history, defrauding thousands of investors of billions of dollars by paying returns to earlier investors with funds from newer ones rather than from legitimate profits.

Jermell Jones is a 41-year-old Florida man who was arrested in July 2025 while working as the mascot for Chuck E. Cheese in Tallahassee. He was taken into custody in full costume during a children’s birthday party after surveillance linked him to using a woman’s child-support debit card to make fraudulent charges.

Elizabeth Wettlaufer is a Canadian former registered nurse who confessed to murdering eight elderly patients and attempting to kill six others between 2007 and 2016 in long-term care homes in southwestern Ontario.

Todd Davis, the co-founder and CEO of LifeLock, became famous in 2007 for publicly displaying his real Social Security number in ads to prove confidence in his company’s identity-theft protection service. But the stunt backfired when his identity was stolen at least a dozen times, exposing flaws in LifeLock’s system.

Pedro Rodrigues Filho was a Brazilian serial killer who claimed to have murdered more than 100 people- most of them other criminals.

Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, was a Harvard-educated mathematician who abandoned academia to live in a remote Montana cabin, and between 1978 and 1995 carried out a nationwide bombing spree targeting universities, airlines and individuals he believed were advancing technology.

Joran van der Sloot whose criminal history includes the 2010 murder of 21-year-old Stephany Flores Ramírez in Lima, Peru- he was convicted and sentenced to 28 years in prison for the crime. He first came to international attention as the prime suspect in the disappearance of 18-year-old Natalee Holloway in Aruba in 2005.

Jeremiah “The Bull” Evans was a Utah-based entrepreneur who, between July 2019 and July 2022, ran a fraudulent investment scheme through his company Alpha Influence, LLC, claiming to sell clients stakes in automated stores.

Heather Mack is an American woman convicted of conspiring to murder her mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, during a 2014 vacation in Bali. Heather had secretly used her mother’s credit card to fly her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, to Bali, and the two exchanged messages plotting her mother’s death.

James Hogue is an American impostor and career con man best known for infiltrating elite institutions by assuming false identities. 

Gina Champion-Cain is a former San Diego business executive who orchestrated what is considered one of the largest woman-led Ponzi schemes in U.S. history. Beginning around 2012, she raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors by promising to use their funds to make high-interest loans to individuals seeking California liquor licenses—funds she claimed would be held in escrow. In reality, she diverted the money to prop up her struggling businesses, to pay returns to earlier investors, and to sustain her lifestyle, while fabricating documents and attempting to conceal her fraud.

Mark Acklom is an English conman and fraudster who for decades used false identities and elaborate scams to swindle large sums from victims, often posing as a wealthy Swiss banker or even an MI6 agent.

James and Suzanne Agnew, a couple from Lakewood, Colorado, were arrested in July 2025 after authorities discovered the decomposed body of 64-year-old James O'Neill in their home. The Agnews allegedly kept O'Neill's body under a deflated air mattress for nearly 18 months following his death.

Mark Hofmann is a former document dealer and convicted murderer from Salt Lake City, Utah, known for perpetrating one of the most elaborate forgery schemes in American history. In the early 1980s, Hofmann created and sold numerous forged documents related to the history of the Latter-day Saint (LDS) movement

Michael Swango is a former American physician and convicted serial killer believed to have caused the deaths of up to 60 individuals across the United States and Zimbabwe.

Tilly Smith, a 10-year-old British schoolgirl, saved approximately 100 people from the Indian Ocean tsunami while vacationing with her family at Mai Khao Beach in Phuket, Thailand. Two weeks prior, she had learned about tsunamis in her geography class, including the warning signs such as the ocean frothing and receding. Recognizing these signs on the beach, she urgently alerted her parents, who then informed hotel staff. The staff evacuated the beachgoers just minutes before the tsunami struck, making it one of the few areas on the island with no reported fatalities.

Sture Bergwall, formerly known as Thomas Quick, was a Swedish man who, in the 1990s, confessed to over 30 murders across Scandinavia, leading to his conviction for eight of them. These confessions were obtained during therapy sessions at a psychiatric institution, where he was treated for personality disorders and heavily medicated.

Latarian Milton became an internet sensation at age 7 in 2008 after taking his grandmother’s Dodge Durango on a joyride through Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. During the escapade, he caused significant property damage, including hitting parked cars and mailboxes. When interviewed by local news, Milton infamously stated, “I want to do hood-rat stuff with my friend,” which quickly went viral. Despite the severity of his actions, he faced no formal charges due to his age. In the years that followed, Milton encountered further legal issues, including a 2017 arrest for armed robbery and carjacking. He was arrested again in 2023 in New Jersey on charges of simple assault and resisting arrest.

Arno Funke, known by his alias "Dagobert," was a German extortionist who gained notoriety in the late 1980s and early 1990s for his inventive and non-violent blackmail schemes. A failed cartoonist and sign painter, Funke turned to crime in 1988, planting bombs in luxury department stores in Berlin and demanding ransoms.

Lou Pearlman was a music producer and manager who rose to prominence in the 1990s by creating and managing successful boy bands such as the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC. However, behind his musical empire lay one of the largest and longest-running Ponzi schemes in U.S. history.

Thomas Chan is a Canadian man from Peterborough, Ontario, who was convicted in 2018 for the 2015 stabbing death of his father, Dr. Andrew Chan, and the assault of his father's partner, Lynn Witteveen. The incident occurred after Thomas consumed a large quantity of magic mushrooms and meditated to enhance the hallucinatory effects.

Jan-Erik Olsson was a Swedish convict who, on August 23, 1973, attempted to rob the Kreditbanken in Stockholm's Norrmalmstorg Square. During the robbery, he took four bank employees hostage and demanded the release of his former cellmate, Clark Olofsson, who was serving a prison sentence at the time. The Swedish authorities agreed to his demand, and Olofsson was brought to the bank to assist in negotiations. The hostage situation lasted for six days, during which the hostages developed an unexpected bond with their captors, a phenomenon that was later termed Stockholm syndrome.

On July 7, 2016, Micah Xavier Johnson, a 25-year-old Army Reserve veteran, carried out a sniper attack during a protest in Dallas, Texas, resulting in the deaths of five police officers and injuries to nine others.

Neil Hopper, a 49-year-old former NHS vascular surgeon from Truro, Cornwall, was sentenced to 32 months in prison after admitting to self-inflicting injuries that led to the amputation of both his legs. In 2019 Hopper used dry ice to damage his legs, necessitating their removal. He then falsely claimed to insurers that his amputations were due to sepsis, resulting in fraudulent payouts.

In 2011, Dan Saunders, a 29-year-old bartender from Wangaratta, Australia, discovered a glitch in the National Australia Bank's ATM system that allowed him to withdraw money beyond his account balance.

The Shaggs were a rock band formed in 1965 by sisters Dorothy ("Dot"), Betty, and Helen Wiggin in Fremont, New Hampshire. Their father, Austin Wiggin Jr., believing his mother's palm reading had foretold their musical success, insisted they form a band. Despite lacking musical training or interest, the sisters practiced daily under his strict supervision. In 1969, they recorded their only album, Philosophy of the World, characterized by off-key vocals, erratic rhythms, and unconventional melodies. Initially dismissed, the album gained cult status in the 1980s, praised for its raw authenticity.

The 2015 Clinton Correctional Facility escape was a high-profile jailbreak in which two convicted murderers, Richard Matt and David Sweat, escaped from a maximum-security prison in Dannemora, New York. On June 6, 2015, the inmates used power tools to cut through the backs of their cells, accessed a network of tunnels, and emerged through a manhole cover approximately 500 feet outside the prison walls. Their escape was facilitated by Joyce Mitchell, a prison seamstress who smuggled in tools and had planned to assist them in their getaway.

The Robin Ramirez coupon scam was a large-scale counterfeit coupon operation based in Phoenix, Arizona, led by Robin Ramirez and her associates.

The Killdozer story revolves around Marvin Heemeyer, a welder and small business owner in Granby, Colorado, who in 2004 became enraged over disputes with city officials and local businesses that he felt had wronged him, including zoning decisions and fines. In response, Heemeyer secretly modified a Komatsu bulldozer into an armored vehicle by welding thick steel and concrete plating over it and installing cameras and guns inside, creating what became known as the Killdozer.

The Brian Draper “Scream” murder story was the 2006 murder of Cassie Jo Stoddart in Pocatello, Idaho, committed by her classmates Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik. Inspired by the movie Scream

Jamie Waylett is best known for playing Vincent Crabbe in the first six Harry Potter films, but his life took a sharp turn after the series ended. In 2009, Waylett was arrested for growing illegal plants at his mother’s house. His legal troubles escalated during the 2011 London riots.

Russell Williams was a high-ranking Canadian Air Force officer—Colonel Williams—who led a double life of trust and terror. Revered as commander of CFB Trenton and a decorated pilot who flew dignitaries, Williams’s façade hid decades of escalating violence: beginning with sneaking into homes to steal women’s underwear.

Albert Spaggiari was a French criminal known for masterminding what was called the “heist of the century” — the 1976 break-in of the Société Générale bank in Nice. He and a team dug an eight-meter tunnel from the city sewers to reach the bank vault, breaking into hundreds of safety deposit boxes and stealing millions of francs in money, bonds, and valuables.

Charles V. Harrelson was an American contract killer and the father of actor Woody Harrelson. A career criminal with a long history of violence, Harrelson was convicted of multiple murders for hire, including the 1979 assassination of federal judge John H. Wood Jr.

Gina Marks, often dubbed the “Psychic Scam Queen,” was a self-proclaimed psychic who conned multiple clients out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by claiming she could lift curses, reunite lovers, and cleanse their lives of bad luck.

An online love triangle spirals into a deadly obsession. Thomas Montgomery, a married man in his mid-forties, pretends to be a younger Marine named “Tommy” in an internet chat room. He meets “Talhotblond,” an online persona used by an 18-year-old high schooler named Jessi.

The Michelle Renee bank robbery took place in 2000 in Vista, California, when three masked intruders broke into the home of bank manager Michelle Renee. They held her and her daughter hostage overnight, rigging their bodies with fake dynamite and threatening to kill them unless Michelle robbed her own bank the next morning.

Stéphane Breitwieser is a French art thief who, between 1995 and 2001, stole more than 200 artworks and artifacts from small museums across Europe, with an estimated total value of over $2 billion.

Robert Bardo is best known as the man who murdered actress Rebecca Schaeffer in 1989, a crime that shocked Hollywood and led to major changes in stalking laws.

Christian Gerhartsreiter’s story is one of the most bizarre cases of deception in modern history. Born in Germany, he came to the United States in the late 1970s and reinvented himself multiple times, adopting false identities, most famously posing as a Rockefeller, a supposed heir to the wealthy Rockefeller family.

Harold Henthorn’s story is a chilling tale of manipulation, murder, and greed disguised as bad luck. Henthorn’s first wife Lynn Henthorn, died in 1995 when their car mysteriously fell off a jack during a roadside tire change, a death initially ruled accidental. In 2012, his second wife, Toni Henthorn, fell to her death during a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park under suspicious circumstances—after Harold had taken her to a remote, dangerous trail despite her fear of heights. Investigators later uncovered that Harold stood to gain millions in life insurance policies, had lied repeatedly about his background, and was the common denominator in multiple accidents.

Demi Skipper, a TikTok creator behind “The Trade Me Project,” gained fame by bartering up a single bobby pin into a house via a series of increasingly valuable trades. In a generous move, she gave the house to an emerging creator named Shay, but the seemingly heartwarming gesture took a dark turn after Shay allegedly trashed the place, didn’t finalize the deed transfer, neglected maintenance and taxes, and effectively abandoned it

Ellen Gilland, a 76-year-old Florida woman shot her terminally ill husband, Jerry Gilland, in his Daytona Beach hospital room in January 2023- a killing she claimed was part of a mutual pact after his suffering became unbearable.

Ashley Grayson, a 35-year-old Dallas-based online influencer known for teaching others how to monetize their skills, orchestrated a chilling murder-for-hire scheme after feuding online with a business rival in Mississippi.

Glenn Hirsch, a 51‑year‑old Queens resident, became infamously known as the "Duck Sauce Killer" after authorities said he fatally shot Chinese food deliveryman Zhiwen Yan following a dispute at the Great Wall restaurant over allegedly not receiving enough duck sauce packets

Detectives and others later found that Vicky White had allegedly fallen in love with the inmate, and gave him special treatment at the jail. She ultimately helped concoct the plot for Casey White to escape which ended 11 days later with his capture

The Great Maple Syrup Heist took place in Quebec, Canada, between 2011 and 2012, when thieves stole nearly 3,000 tons of maple syrup valued at about $18 million USD from a warehouse belonging to the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers

Milli Vanilli was a pop duo assembled in the late 1980s by German music producer Frank Farian—the mastermind behind Boney M.—and fronted by dancers Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan, who lip-synced to vocals recorded by session singers. The duo skyrocketed to fame with hits like “Girl You Know It’s True”, even winning a Grammy for Best New Artist in 1990. But their bubble burst when Farian revealed that they never sang on the tracks, leading to the unprecedented revocation of their Grammy and condemnation from fans and critics alike.If you think about it, they were kind of ahead of their time#truecrime #truestory #90s

The Golden State Killer, later identified as Joseph James DeAngelo, was a former police officer who terrorized California from the 1970s through the 1980s

Former MLB pitcher Dan Serafini, who played for several teams from the mid‑1990s through 2007 and later faced financial setbacks, was convicted in July 2025 of first‑degree murder, attempted murder, and burglary

Jonaris Badlishah—nicknamed “Liar Joe” —was identified as the prime suspect in Singapore’s infamous 1998 “Rolex watch murder.” The victim, beautician Sally Poh Bee Eng, was found brutally slain near the Marina South bus stop, and investigators traced her missing Rolex back to Jonaris, who had apparently gifted it to his girlfriend the same day

Chelsea Perkins, a former U.S. Coast Guard veteran who later became an adult model under the name “Selena Savage,” pleaded guilty in May 2025 to second-degree murder after luring Matthew Dunmire to a remote area of Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio

When 24-year-old Antoine Sims called 911 to complain about receiving cold French fries at a McDonald’s in Kennesaw, Georgia, law enforcement responded only to discover he was a murder suspect out on bond—wanted in connection with a 2018 case involving a woman found in a burning car.

Mark Andrew Twitchell was a Canadian filmmaker–aspiring from Edmonton who was convicted in 2011 of first-degree murder.

In 2010, art dealer and memoirist Forrest Fenn hid a bronze chest containing gold, jewels, and rare artifacts—worth over $1 million—in the Rocky Mountains of the United States. He embedded nine cryptic clues in a 24‑line poem published in his memoir The Thrill of the Chase, inviting the public into an epic, decade‑long treasure hunt that drew more than 300,000 searchers and sadly resulted in five deaths.

A fast‑escalating scandal in 2025 centers on a woman known publicly as “Sika Golf” (aged 35), who is accused of entangling herself with high-ranking Buddhist monks in a vast temple fund and corruption scheme.

Allen Pace III, a security inspector at the Dunbar Armored facility in Los Angeles, used his insider knowledge to pull off the largest cash heist in U.S. history. Fired from his job the day before the robbery in September 1997, Pace recruited five childhood friends and devised an elaborate plan, memorizing security routines, bringing a camera to scope out the vault, and even sketching chalk diagrams of the building in parking lots during planning sessions. On the night of the heist, they tied up employees, broke into the vault, and escaped with nearly $18.9 million in untraceable cash.

Jen Shah, a cast member of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, built her persona around glamour and wealth, but behind the scenes, she was running a nationwide telemarketing scheme that defrauded hundreds of elderly and vulnerable people. Alongside her assistant, Stuart Smith, Shah operated lead lists and sales floors that tricked victims into paying for bogus “business services” they didn’t need. The scheme raked in millions, fueling her lavish lifestyle and reality TV image.

Jerad and Amanda Miller were a married couple from Indiana who embraced extreme anti-government and anti-law enforcement views, often posting conspiracy-laden, anti-police rhetoric online. After moving to Las Vegas in 2014, the pair’s hostility toward authority escalated into violence on June 8 of that year, when they ambushed two Las Vegas police officers while the officers were eating lunch, killing them both. The Millers fled to a nearby Walmart, where they shot and killed a civilian who tried to intervene

Tom Girardi, a once-celebrated Los Angeles trial attorney famous for the Erin Brockovich case, and his wife, reality TV star Erika Jayne of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, became embroiled in a massive legal scandal starting in 2020. Girardi was accused of embezzling millions of dollars in settlement funds from vulnerable clients

Susan Kuhnhausen, a 51-year-old ER nurse in Portland, Oregon, survived a murder-for-hire plot orchestrated by her estranged husband. Coming home from work one evening, she was attacked by Edward Haffey, a man armed with a hammer who had broken into her house.

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 was hijacked on November 23, 1996, by three Ethiopian men seeking asylum in Australia. Shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa en route to Nairobi, the hijackers—armed with an axe and a fire extinguisher—stormed the cockpit and demanded the Boeing 767 fly to Australia, despite the captain warning they didn’t have enough fuel. Forced to keep flying, the aircraft eventually ran out of fuel over the Indian Ocean. The pilots attempted an emergency ditching near the Comoros Islands, but the plane struck the water at high speed, breaking apart.

Christopher Dorner, a former LAPD officer and U.S. Navy reservist, launched a violent ten‑day revenge campaign in February 2013 after being terminated—he claimed for exposing misconduct within the department

In 2008, Helen Golay, then 77, alongside her accomplice Olga Rutterschmidt, 75—two seemingly benign elderly women residing in California—were convicted of orchestrating the staged hit-and-run murders of two homeless men.

Auburn Calloway, a disgruntled FedEx flight engineer facing imminent dismissal over falsified flight hours, attempted a shocking act of disguising a hijacking as an accident. Smuggling hammers, a speargun, and a guitar case aboard as a deadhead passenger, Calloway planned to murder the cockpit crew mid-flight, crash the DC‑10, and ensure his family cashed in on his life insurance.

The story of Christopher Scarver, the man who murdered Jeffrey Dahmer.

Glenn Rycroft—a former British Airways steward from Salford and a prolific con artist—spent years fooling family, friends, and co-workers into donating money by fabricating a terminal brain tumor, shaving his head, faking seizures, and even using fake medical documents to support his lies

Shin Sang‑ok, once hailed as the “Prince of Korean Cinema” for directing nearly 80 films in South Korea’s golden age, was kidnapped in 1978—along with his actress ex-wife Choi Eun‑hee—on the personal orders of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Il, who sought to elevate the country’s movie industry by forcing them to create internationally acclaimed propaganda films

In July 2020, rapper Megan Thee Stallion was shot in the foot after leaving a Hollywood Hills party, later accusing fellow artist Tory Lanez (real name Daystar Peterson) of firing the shots from inside their SUV following an argument.