Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast

In 2007, 19-year-old former college tennis player Heather Johnston gained international notoriety alongside her roommate, Ashley Miller, when they were dubbed the "Barbie Bandits" after being caught on surveillance footage laughing in sunglasses during a $11,000 heist at a Bank of America branch inside an Acworth, Georgia grocery store.

Sharee Miller was convicted of second-degree murder and conspiracy in 2000 for orchestrating what became known as the internet’s first highly publicized murder trial. Living in Michigan with her husband, Bruce Miller, Sharee engaged in an intense online affair with a former Missouri police officer, Jerry Cassaday. 

Dieter Dengler was a German-born U.S. Navy pilot who became one of the few American servicemen to successfully escape enemy captivity during the Vietnam War. After fulfilling his childhood dream of flying by immigrating to the United States and joining the Navy, Dengler's A-1 Skyraider was shot down over Laos in February 1966.

A True Story compilation of women who killed their partners

The Laverne Pavlinac story is a bizarre case of a false confession that derailed a murder investigation and allowed a serial killer to remain free. In 1990, following the murder of 23-year-old Taunja Bennett in Portland, Oregon, 57-year-old Pavlinac concocted a detailed lie to frame her abusive boyfriend, John Sosnovske, as a desperate way to get him out of her life. She eventually implicated herself as an accomplice, leading to both of them being convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1991, despite Pavlinac recanting her story at trial. Because police closed the case based on her fabrications, the real perpetrator—the notorious "Happy Face Killer" Keith Hunter Jesperson- went undetected and murdered at least seven more women over the next several years.

The 2004 Transylvania University book heist was an audacious, movie-inspired plot orchestrated by four affluent Kentucky college students- Spencer Reinhard, Warren Lipka, Eric Borsuk, and Chas Allen- who attempted to steal over $5 million worth of rare books from the university's Special Collections Library.

Hamish McLaren (born Hamish Watson) is a notorious Australian serial fraudster and con artist often dubbed the "Bondi Swindler" or "Australia's King Con". Over a deceptive career spanning three decades and four continents, he is estimated to have scammed between $60 million and $70 million globally from victims in Australia, the US, Canada, Britain, and Hong Kong.

Brittany Norwood is a former Lululemon employee convicted of the brutal 2011 murder of her coworker, Jayna Murray, inside a Bethesda, Maryland retail store. 

Christa Pike is an American convicted murderer who became one of the youngest women in modern U.S. history to be sentenced to death. In 1995, Pike, her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, and an accomplice lured their classmate Colleen Slemmer into a secluded wooded area in Knoxville, Tennessee, where they murdered her.

Caleb Flynn, a 40-year-old former American Idol contestant and Ohio worship pastor, was sentenced to life in prison on October 5, 2026, for the aggravated murder of his 37-year-old wife, Ashley Flynn.

A True Story Compilation of entitled teens who think they can get away with murder

Joel Guy Jr. committed the gruesome premeditated murders of his parents, Joel Guy Sr. and Lisa Guy, at their home in Knoxville, Tennessee. Motivated by financial greed after his parents planned to cut off his lifelong financial support

Sabrina Limon and her firefighter lover, Jonathan Hearn, conspired to murder her husband, railroad worker Robert Limon. Although Sabrina and Robert had been in an open marriage, Sabrina kept her intense relationship with the younger Hearn a secret.

Carl Gugasian is known as "The Friday Night Bank Robber" and is widely considered the most prolific bank robber in U.S. history. Over a 30-year criminal career, he meticulously planned and executed more than 50 bank robberies, stealing more than $2 million. 

In 2018, Jake Thomas Patterson committed a highly publicized double murder and abduction when he broke into a home in Barron, Wisconsin, and fatally shot James and Denise Closs. And then kidnapped Jayme Closs.

Anthony David Flores, a former Fresno hair salon owner and grifter, orchestrating a malicious fraud scheme alongside his then-girlfriend, actress Anna Rene Moore, that targeted Dr. Mark Sawusch, a wealthy Malibu ophthalmologist suffering from severe bipolar disorder.

In 2010, debt-ridden California community theater actor Daniel Wozniak executed a gruesome double-murder plot to steal $62,000 in combat savings from his neighbor, 26-year-old Army veteran Samuel Herr, to finance his own upcoming wedding and honeymoon.

A Compilation of the creepiest true stories we've covered

Diane Staudte is a Springfield, Missouri woman who was convicted of first-degree murder for fatally poisoning her husband and son with antifreeze. Alongside her favorite daughter, Rachel Staudte, she orchestrated what became widely known as the "Antifreeze Murders," a series of planned family poisonings carried out between 2012 and 2013.

Ghyslain Raza, famously known as the Star Wars Kid, became one of the internet's very first viral phenomena after a private video he recorded in 2002 was leaked online without his consent.

Joyce McKinney is a former Miss Wyoming who became an international media sensation in 1977 after allegedly abducting Kirk Anderson, an American Mormon missionary, in England.

In 1972, American novelist Clifford Irving orchestrated one of the most audacious literary frauds of the 20th century by concocting a completely fabricated autobiography of the notoriously reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes.

Ippei Mizuhara, the longtime personal interpreter and close friend of Major League Baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani, was at the center of a massive sports gambling and theft scandal.

In 2022, 23-year-old Juan Baron strangled his 73-year-old lover, Gary Ruby, inside Ruby's multimillion-dollar mansion in Honolulu's exclusive Hawaii Loa Ridge neighborhood.

A Ray William Johnson True Story compilation of people who went viral getting in trouble with the law.

In 1994, part-time handyman Darryl Kuehl shot and killed 53-year-old retired schoolteacher Paul Gruber at his home near Muskrat Lake in Sandpoint, Idaho.

In 2007, former NFL star O.J. Simpson led a group of armed men into a room at the Palace Station hotel-casino in Las Vegas to confront sports memorabilia dealers Alfred Beardsley and Bruce Fromong. Simpson claimed he was merely reclaiming personal mementos, family photos, and sports artifacts that had been stolen from him years prior. However, because members of his group carried firearms and used force to take the items, Simpson was arrested and later convicted in 2008 of multiple felonies.

John Arthur Getreu was an American serial killer whose decades-long evasion of justice finally ended through modern investigative genetic genealogy.

Tyler Barriss is a California man who was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison after orchestrating a deadly December 2017 swatting hoax that resulted in police killing an innocent man.

Monica Sementilli masterminded the 2017 murder of her husband, Fabio Sementilli, a prominent Los Angeles celebrity hairstylist and beauty company executive. Monica conspired with her secret lover, Robert Louis Baker, to kill her husband in order to collect on a life insurance policy.

Hossein Nayeri and Kyle Handley orchestrated a 2012 plot to abduct and extort a Newport Beach medical marijuana dispensary owner, mistakenly believing the victim had buried 1 million dollars in cash in the Mojave Desert.

A Ray William Johnson True Story compilation of people committing murder for petty and ridiculous reasons

Fetty Wap rocketed to global superstardom in 2015 when his breakout melodic hip-hop anthem "Trap Queen" reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and achieved diamond certification. Despite pioneering a distinct, chart-topping sound in the mid-2010s, his career faced a severe derailment following a 2021 arrest for federal drug conspiracy charges.

Mary Anne Oliver-Snow, a popular TikTok cosplay influencer known online as "Yandere Freak," accidentally shot and killed her friend Helen Hastings on in 2021, in Houston, Texas.

Grant Hardin is former police officer and convicted felon whose criminal history spans multiple decades. He was originally sentenced to 30 years in prison for the 2017 broad-daylight shooting murder of city worker James Appleton. After his conviction, his DNA entered into the federal database linked him to a cold case from 1997 involving the assault of a schoolteacher.

Erik Maund is a wealthy former Texas auto dealer executive who orchestrated a brutal double murder-for-hire plot after becoming the target of an extortion scheme. In early 2020, Maund traveled to Nashville and had an extramarital affair with a woman named Holly Williams. When Williams' estranged boyfriend, William Lanway, discovered the affair and threatened to expose it to Maund's wife unless he paid him a sum of money, Maund chose to hire private security operatives and former military personnel instead of going to the police.

Lisa McVey was abducted by serial killer Bobby Joe Long in Tampa, Florida, in 1984. She outwitted him to escape.

Larry Rudolph, a wealthy and prominent Pennsylvania dentist, was convicted of murdering his wife of 34 years, Bianca Rudolph, during a 2016 big-game hunting safari in Zambia.

A True Story Compilation of Pro Athletes turning to crime

In 2011, Tyler Hadley murdered his parents, Blake and Mary Jo Hadley, inside their Port St. Lucie, Florida home. After spending hours cleaning up the crime scene and locking their bodies in the master bedroom, Hadley posted an invitation on FB hosting a massive, house party that same night.

The story of Dr. Anthony Garcia is a tragic case of a disgraced medical resident who launched a deadly, years-long revenge campaign against those he blamed for ruining his career.

Eric Rudolph is an American criminal who carried out a series of bombings across the American South between 1996 and 1998.

In the early morning hours of September 14, 2019, a bizarre art heist took place at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England, when a gang of thieves stole a fully functional, 18-karat solid gold toilet worth millions. Titled America, the 216-pound sculpture was created by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan as a satirical commentary on excessive wealth and had only been on display for two days. Armed with sledgehammers and crowbars, the burglars rammed through the palace gates, smashed a window, and ripped the toilet directly out of the floorboards in just over five minutes.

John Birges Sr. was a landscaping contractor who masterminded the 1980 Harvey's Resort Hotel bombing in Stateline, Nevada, after racking up massive debts from a severe gambling addiction.

Jocelyn Kirsch was a Drexel University student who, alongside her University of Pennsylvania graduate boyfriend Edward Anderton, became infamously dubbed Philadelphia's "Bonnie and Clyde" of identity theft. From 2006 to 2007, the attractive, jet-setting couple executed a sophisticated fraud operation by using computer spyware, fake IDs, and stolen keys to burglarize the apartments and intercept the mail of their friends, neighbors, and co-workers.

A Ray William Johnson True Story compilation of crimes so shocking they became world famous.

In 1988, 24-year-old David Jackson vanished from Pembroke Pines, Florida, amidst a bitter custody battle with his ex-wife, Barbara Britton. The case remained a cold case for nearly two decades until Jackson's remains were discovered buried under a hotel parking lot, leading investigators to uncover a deadly plot orchestrated by Britton and her second husband, Michael Wolfe.

Ashpia Natasha posted viral dashcam footage in October 2024 exposing a staged insurance fraud scheme on the Belt Parkway in Queens, where a vehicle intentionally reversed into her car after cutting her off. The widely shared video prompted law enforcement investigations that ultimately resulted in prison sentences for the orchestrators of the crash-for-cash ring.

Roberto Succo was an infamous Italian serial killer who terrorized France and Italy during the 1980s.

In 2016, media personality Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint inside her luxury residence at the Hôtel de Pourtalès in Paris, France. The heist was masterminded by Aomar Aït Khedache. Five thieves disguised as police officers bound and gagged her, ultimately stealing roughly $10 million worth of jewelry, including her 20-carat Lorraine Schwartz engagement ring. The masterminds behind the heist, known as the "grandpa gangsters" due to their older ages, tracked her movements through her social media posts to coordinate the attack.

Serhat Gumrukcu is a California-based biotech executive who was sentenced to life in prison in November 2025 for orchestrating a cross-country murder-for-hire plot. Gumrukcu, a Turkish national who co-founded Enochian Biosciences and falsely claimed to have discovered a cure for HIV, was finalizing a multi-million-dollar biotech merger when a former business partner, Gregory Davis, threatened to expose his prior fraudulent activities related to a failed oil commodities deal.

Olivia Henderson, a 23-year-old former DoorDash driver known online as the DoorDash girl is facing criminal charges after recording and posting a viral TikTok video of an incapacitated customer inside his Oswego, New York home.

A Ray William Johnson Compilation of actors committing crimes

In 2009, CBS News producer Robert "Joe" Halderman attempted to extort $2 million from late-night talk show host David Letterman by threatening to expose Letterman’s extramarital affairs with female staff members, information Halderman discovered in the diary of his live-in girlfriend (and Letterman's assistant), Stephanie Birkitt.

Donthe Lucas was convicted of first-degree murder in 2021 and sentenced to life in prison without parole for the 2013 disappearance and death of his 21-year-old pregnant girlfriend, Kelsie Schelling. 

Marco Mariolini was an Italian criminal driven by anoressofilia, an extreme obsession with severely thin women. Mariolini published an autobiographical warning explicitly stating he was a monster and begging authorities to stop him before he murdered.

Aquinas Kasbar broke into the Santa Ana Zoo after hours using bolt cutters to steal an endangered animal to keep as a pet. While his actions inadvertently allowed several lemurs and capuchin monkeys to escape, Kasbar made off with Isaac, a 32-year-old ring-tailed lemur recognized as the oldest of his species in North American captivity. After placing Isaac in an unventilated plastic bin, Kasbar ultimately abandoned the animal outside a Marriott hotel the next morning with a note requesting its safe return to the zoo.

Charles Van Doren was a brilliant, charismatic Columbia University instructor who became a national celebrity in 1956 by winning on the popular television quiz show Twenty-One. His clean-cut, intellectual charm captivated millions of Americans, landing him on the cover of Time magazine and earning him a lucrative regular commentary spot on NBC’s Today show. However, the triumph turned to scandal in 1959 when a congressional investigation revealed that the show’s producers had systematically rigged the program, providing Van Doren with the answers and scripts in advance to boost viewer ratings.

Collier Landry began a lifelong pursuit of justice following the December 1989 murder of his mother, Noreen Boyle, in Mansfield, Ohio. At just eleven years old, Collier heard the murder take place and later provided the crucial, dramatic courtroom testimony that led to the conviction of his father, Dr. John Boyle

In 2011, Elliot Turner murdered his girlfriend, aspiring New Zealand model Emily Longley, by smothering and strangling her at his parents' home in Bournemouth, England. Driven by an obsessive, controlling need to monitor her social activities, Turner flipped out after falsely suspecting she was seeing other men. Following the murder, his affluent parents, Leigh and Anita Turner, attempted to cover up the crime by destroying their son's written confession letter and removing vital evidence from the scene.

Carlos Rafael, known as "The Codfather," built a massive, vertically integrated commercial fishing empire in New Bedford, Massachusetts, eventually controlling over 25 percent of the region’s groundfish revenue. For decades, Rafael circumvented strict federal overfishing regulations through a prolific fraud scheme known as "painting fish," where his business intentionally misreported hundreds of thousands of pounds of restricted, high-value species like cod and sole as abundant, low-value haddock.

In 2022, Julie Harding, a veteran California Highway Patrol captain, orchestrated a multi-state murder-for-hire plot against her estranged husband, Michael Harding, amidst a bitter divorce. Prosecutors revealed that after uncharacteristically draining money from their shared bank accounts, she hired her romantic partner, Thomas O'Donnell, to assassinate Michael.

David Vander Meer was a former Las Vegas youth pastor who was arrested in June 2026 and charged with murder and insurance fraud following the reopening of a 20-year-old cold case. Investigators alleged that Vander Meer intentionally shoved his 29-year-old wife, Bernadette, off the 1,200-foot Angels Landing trail at Zion National Park in August 2006.

Sanal Edamaruku is a prominent Indian author and president of the Indian Rationalist Association who spent decades debunking superstitious claims, famously making headlines in 2012 by exposing a "weeping" crucifix miracle at a Mumbai church as nothing more than capillary action from a leaky sewage pipe. Following this revelation, Catholic organizations filed multiple police complaints against him under India's strict blasphemy laws, forcing him to flee into self-imposed exile in Finland to escape potential imprisonment.

Jennifer Mee, known as the "Hiccup Girl" gained national fame in 2007 for a continuous, multi-week bout of hiccups. Years later in 2010, she orchestrated a robbery by luring an online acquaintance to a vacant home where her accomplices shot and killed him.

Mother-and-daughter duo Marsha Allen and Ashley Jones orchestrated the "Root Beer Float Murder" in Freetown, Indiana, poisoning Marsha’s 52-year-old husband, Harold "Peanut" Allen, with an antifreeze-laced treat to collect his life insurance policy. Although Harold's death was initially misclassified as a natural heart condition, the plot imploded nine months later when Marsha stopped paying Ashley her monthly allowance. In retaliation, Ashley masterminded a burglary of her mother's home using her best friend, Steven White, who was quickly caught on security footage and defected by exposing the murder plot to police.

Jamison Bachman, who became widely known as the "Worst Roommate Ever," was a serial squatter and con artist who terrorized roommates across the United States for over a decade. A charismatic and legally savvy man with a law degree, Bachman would use his deep knowledge of housing laws to systematically take over apartments, refuse to pay rent, and aggressively manipulate or evict the actual leaseholders.

Cheung Tze-keung, nicknamed "Big Spender," was a notorious 1990s Hong Kong gangster who orchestrated massive heists and high-profile abductions, most famously kidnapping Victor Li, the son of billionaire Li Ka-shing, for a record billion dollar ransom.

Aurora Phelps is a dual U.S.-Mexican citizen who orchestrated a deadly, international romance scam by luring, drugging, and robbing older men she met on online dating applications.

Pastor David Love, the married pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Independence, Missouri, engaged in a decade-long affair with a parishioner, Teresa Stone. In 2010, he Love shot and killed Teresa's husband, Randy Stone, inside his insurance office.

Jorge Landeros was a yoga and Spanish instructor who spun a web of romantic and financial manipulation around Sue Ann Marcum, a beloved accounting professor at American University. Over the course of their relationship, Landeros acted as a con man, mismanaging and draining Marcum's investment funds. Following an escalating dispute over the missing money, Landeros brutally beat Marcum with a liquor bottle and strangled her to death inside her Bethesda, Maryland home.

In 2026, in Citrus Heights, California, three girls were arrested and charged with felonies including aggravated arson and burglary after security cameras captured them throwing a lit firework through a window into an expectant couple’s newly prepared baby nursery, destroying the room just two weeks before the baby's due date.

Samantha Jo Petersen was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to criminal vehicular homicide and operation for a September 2023 crash in Minnesota where she struck an Amish horse-drawn buggy while driving.

Brad Lee Davis is an Oklahoma man who gained national attention when he was convicted of killing his 58-year-old stepfather, Denver Lee St. Clair, during a drunken physical altercation in December 2013. Davis, a former U.S. Marine, claimed the fight began after St. Clair insulted Davis's mother. After knocking St. Clair unconscious, Davis pulled his stepfather's underwear waistband up over his back, head, and tightly around his neck in a severe variation of the prank known as an atomic wedgie.

Haleigh Morgan Knight is a Henderson, Nevada influencer and mother who defrauded close friends and family out of nearly 20 grand. Between June 2023 and April 2024, Knight posed as a luxury trip adviser for the Four Seasons hotel chain, collecting expensive trip "deposits" for fake vacations. When her victims began asking questions about the repeatedly canceled trips, Knight fabricated a terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis to deflect suspicion and evoke sympathy.

Walter Moody was an American man who carried out a deadly mail-bomb campaign in December 1989, killing federal appeals court Judge Robert S. Vance and civil rights attorney Robert E. Robinson. Driven by a decades-long grudge against the legal system after a 1972 bomb conviction he desperately sought to overturn, Moody mailed explosive packages to targets.

Natalie Cochran, a former West Virginia pharmacist, is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole after being convicted of first-degree murder. Between 2017 and 2019, Cochran operated a $2.5 million Ponzi schemethrough her family's defense contracting company

Anthony Curcio pulled off one of the most elaborately planned armored car heists in American history in 2008 by using Craigslist to orchestrate his getaway. Months before the robbery, the former college football star placed a fake advertisement on the website offering high-paying landscaping work, instructing applicants to wear a specific uniform consisting of a blue shirt, yellow vest, safety goggles, and a respirator mask. On the day of the heist in Monroe, Washington, Curcio dressed in the exact same outfit, pepper-sprayed a Brink's armored car guard, and fled with over $400,000.

Christopher "Cool C" Roney was a rising Philadelphia rapper in the late 1980s known for his hit song "Glamorous Life". His music career faded, and on January 2, 1996, he joined fellow rapper Steady B in a botched bank robbery. During the heist, Cool C shot and killed Philadelphia Police Officer Lauretha Vaird

Nathan Gale was a 25-year-old former U.S. Marine who suffered from severe mental illness and fatally shot legendary guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott along with three other people.

Ashley McArthur, a former Florida crime scene technician, was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder in 2019 for the 2017 slaying of her close friend, Taylor Wright.

Stephen Jackley is a British former geography student who became known as a "modern-day Robin Hood" after executing a series of armed bank robberies in the UK between 2007 and 2008.

Wisconsin kayaker who faked his death and fled overseas says plan was a 'crazy, emotional dream' Ryan Borgwardt left his family behind in an attempt to meet a Ukrainian woman he had secretly been courting online in the country of Georgia.

Jonathan Toebbe was a U.S. Navy nuclear engineer who conspired with his wife, Diana, to sell highly restricted military secrets regarding Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines to a foreign government.

Isabelle Valdez is a student from Altamonte Springs, Florida, who was arrested in January 2026 for plotting to murder a classmate at Lake Brantley along with her accomplis Lois Lippert.

In 2004, Britney Spears impulsively married her childhood friend, Jason Alexander, in Las Vegas while heavily intoxicated. Though they were not in love, the pair tied the knot at 3:30 a.m. at A Little White Chapel. The spontaneous union was annulled just 55 hours later. Years later, Alexander re-entered the spotlight by attempting to crash her 2022 wedding to Sam Asghari.

Dana Ewell masterminded the 1992 ambush murders of his parents, Dale and Glee, and his sister, Tiffany, inside their Fresno, California home to inherit an estimated $8 million family fortune. Driven by greed, the 21-year-old college student hired his roommate, Joel Radovcich, to carry out the executions on Easter Sunday.

Dolly Oesterreich orchestrated one of the most bizarre secrets in true-crime history by hiding her secret lover Otto Sanhuber in her attic for over a decade and helping cover up her husband Fred's murder.

1976, three kidnappers hijacked a school bus in Chowchilla, California. They buried the hostages in a ventilated moving van inside a Livermore rock quarry for a 5 million dollar ransom. After 16 hours, the group successfully dug their way out, leading to the captors' swift capture and conviction.

David Carl Kinney fatally shot his best friend and secret romantic partner, Brad McGarry, twice inside McGarry’s West Bellaire, Ohio home. To conceal their long-term homosexual affair.

1996, during a midnight dinner break on the Halifax, Nova Scotia set, an unknown culprit spiked the cast and crew's clam chowder with some substance. Director James Cameron was among the roughly 80 people hospitalized.

19-year-old Texas Tech University student Hollis Daniels III was taken into custody by campus police following a routine student welfare check. While being processed and left temporarily un-handcuffed at the campus police headquarters, Daniels drew a stolen handgun he had hidden in his pants and fatally shot Texas Tech Police Officer Floyd East Jr.

In 2007, prominent Utah doctor and former LDS bishop Dr. Martin MacNeill pressured his wife of nearly 30 years, Michele MacNeill, into getting a facelift. Just days after the procedure, he intentionally overmedicated her with a lethal cocktail of prescription drugs and left her to drown in their bathtub so that he could freely pursue a relationship with his mistress, Gypsy Willis.

Shannon Guess Richardson, an actress with minor roles in television shows like The Walking Dead, was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison in 2014 for mailing letters laced with poison to Barack Obama and Michael Bloomberg.

Swept overboard in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1967, U.S. Navy sailor Doug Hegdahl was captured and sent to the infamous Hoa Lo Prison. Feigning illiteracy and ignorance, he earned the nickname "The Incredibly Stupid One", granting him the freedom to sabotage enemy trucks and memorize the names and details of 256 POWs using the tune of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm".

Matthew Hughes repeatedly stalked and broke into the Michigan home of rapper Eminem. In a terrifying 2020 encounter, Hughes smashed a kitchen window and woke a sleeping Eminem.

Skylar Preciosa Deleon is an American convicted murderer and former child actor who was sentenced to death for the 2004 murder-for-profit killings of Thomas and Jackie Hawks.

Barry Keenan is a former businessman best known for masterminding the 1963 kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr. facing severe financial ruin and drug dependency, Keenan formulated a bizarre plan to solve his money problems by abducting the 19-year-old singer from a Lake Tahoe hotel room.

Frank Tassone a public school superintendent in Long Island, New York. Over the course of 12 years, Tassone meticulously elevated his school district to one of the top-ranked in the United States while leading a secret double life funded by the community's taxpayers. Alongside assistant superintendent Pamela Gluckin, Tassone stole over $11 million in school funds to finance luxurious vacations, expensive homes, and extensive cosmetic procedures.

Aubrey Lee Price is a former Georgia banker and pastor who orchestrated a massive Ponzi scheme that defrauded over 100 investors and led to the 2012 collapse of the Montgomery Bank & Trust. To escape prosecution after losing or embezzling the bank's capital, Price faked his own death.

Jennifer Pan orchestrated a 2010 murder-for-hire plot against her strict parents in Markham, Ontario, staging a home invasion that resulted in her mother's death and her father's severe injury. Motivated by a desire for freedom and her forbidden boyfriend.

Randy Roth was a Washington state mechanic who married and murdered women to collect lucrative life insurance payouts. He famously caused the death of his fourth wife in a staged 1991 Lake Sammamish drowning. An investigation into this incident and the 1981 fatal cliff fall of his second wife ultimately exposed his deadly scam

Keanu Reeves was forced to star in the 2000 thriller The Watcher when a trusted friend and director Joe Charbanic forged his signature on a contract. Unwilling to endure a lengthy, expensive legal battle, Reeves fulfilled the role but negotiated an agreement to minimize his marketing involvement and keep the forgery quiet for a year

Roy Sullivan, a United States park ranger in Virginia, earned a unique spot in history by surviving seven verified lightning strikes between 1942 and 1977. Recognized by the Guinness World Records as the most lightning-struck person to survive, Sullivan endured multiple injuries from these encounters

Kumiko Yasufuku was arrested and indicted in Japan for the 1999 cold-case murder of Namiko Takaba. Driven by a long-held, unrequited obsession with the victim's husband, Satoru, Yasufuku.

Stephen Allwine was a Minnesota IT specialist and church elder convicted of first-degree premeditated murder for the November 2016 slaying of his wife, Amy Allwine. Motivated by a desire to exit his marriage without ruining his religious standing, Allwine initially used the dark web to hire a hitman.

Alexander Pichushkin is a notorious Russian serial killer known as "The Chessboard Killer" and the "Bittsa Park Maniac," who is serving life imprisonment for murdering at least 48 people.

Tommy Thompson is an American marine engineer who made history in 1988 by locating the SS Central America, a California Gold Rush-era steamship that sank in 1857 with tons of federal gold. While initially celebrated for recovering millions in treasure from the "Ship of Gold" using deep-sea robotic technology, his triumph quickly soured when the 161 private investors who funded his expedition sued him for failing to share the profits. Instead of complying with a 2012 court order to reveal the whereabouts of a missing batch of 500 gold coins, Thompson became a fugitive, living under aliases in Florida hotels

Jolly Joseph is an Indian woman from Koodathayi, Kerala, who confessed to murdering six of her family members over a 14-year period between 2002 and 2016

Kenan Thompson lost an estimated $1.5 million in childhood earnings after a trusted family accountant absconded with his money. Thompson, who had granted the accountant power of attorney, discovered the devastating theft while attempting to buy his first home in Atlanta. He later faced unpaid tax issues with the IRS, which forced him into bankruptcy.

Mark Winger is an Illinois nuclear engineer who was initially hailed as a hero in 1995 after claiming he shot and killed a shuttle driver, Roger Harrington, who had broken into his Springfield home and bludgeoned Winger's wife, Donnah, with a hammer. Police originally closed the case believing Harrington acted in retaliation over a previous customer complaint, allowing Winger to collect life insurance and marry his daughter's new nanny.

James "Jimmy the Gent" Burke was a ruthless Irish-American associate of the Lucchese crime family who masterminded the 1978 Lufthansa heist at JFK Airport, netting over $5 million. Driven by paranoia, he subsequently orchestrated the murders of numerous accomplices to keep the stolen money and avoid prosecution.

Celeste Beard Johnson is a Texas woman convicted of orchestrating the 1999 murder of her wealthy, 74-year-old multimillionaire husband, Steven Beard. After marrying Steven in 1995, Celeste embraced a lavish lifestyle, but the marriage grew strained as he threatened to curtail her extravagant spending. While receiving treatment at a psychiatric facility, Celeste met Tracey Tarlton, whom she allegedly manipulated into murdering Steven.

Cherish Gomer was arrested multiple times for repeatedly trespassing at the Utah home of musician Post Malone. Police and family noted the behavior escalated from simply showing up at the property to instances like walking barefoot from Salt Lake City and jumping in front of the artist's moving vehicle. Claiming a spiritual connection, Gomer racked up multiple felony charges for stalking and violating protective orders.

Pop star Aaliyah died instantly in a tragic plane crash on August 25, 2001, in the Bahamas. After wrapping the music video for "Rock the Boat" at Marsh Harbour Airport, the 22-year-old singer and eight others boarded a Cessna 402B bound for Florida. The flight ended in devastation when the aircraft, carrying excessive luggage, crashed shortly after takeoff due to being hundreds of pounds overloaded.

XXXTentacion was ambushed and fatally shot on June 18, 2018, while leaving RIVA Motorsports in Deerfield Beach, Florida. The 20-year-old rapper, born Jahseh Onfroy, had just withdrawn cash from a bank. As he attempted to drive away, an SUV blocked his vehicle, and two masked gunmen confronted him at his driver’s window.

In August 2018 David Katz was responsible for a shooting at a Madden NFL 19 video game tournament in Jacksonville, Florida. Katz, a 24-year-old competitive gamer from Baltimore Maryland, opened fire inside the GLHF Game Bar after losing earlier in the tournament.

JoAnne Chambers, a first-grade teacher at Coolbaugh Learning Center in Monroe, Pennsylvania, seemingly endured an 18-month nightmare of terrifying harassment. However, investigators eventually discovered that Chambers herself was the mastermind behind the entire campaign to frame her colleague, Paula Nawrocki.

Edward Shin was convicted in 2011 for the first-degree murder of his business partner, Chris Smith, whose body has never been found. In 2010, Shin killed Smith inside their San Juan Capistrano, California office after a bitter legal and financial dispute over their lucrative marketing firm, 800Xchange.

David Edward Taylor, a self-proclaimed televangelist and "Apostle," led the Kingdom of God Global Church (KOGGC). In a sweeping 2025 federal indictment, prosecutors revealed that Taylor and executive director Michelle Brannon operated a coercive multi-state forced labor and fraud scheme.

Karl Karlsen is an American murderer convicted of killing his first wife, Christina Karlsen, in a staged 1991 California house fire and his 23-year-old son, Levi Karlsen, by crushing him under a truck in New York in 2008. Motivated entirely by financial gain.

Edwin Valero was a Venezuelan professional boxer who finished his career with an undefeated record of 27–0, winning every single match by knockout. He is remembered both as one of the most explosive and destructive punchers in the history of combat sports and for the horrific real-life tragedy that ended his life.

In 2011, a woman named Debbie Stevens reportedly donated a kidney through a transplant chain to help her boss. After the surgery, Stevens later claimed she faced workplace problems during recovery and was eventually fired.

Artur Samarin was a 23-year-old Ukrainian national who famously posed as a teenage honors student at Harrisburg High School in Pennsylvania to remain in the United States after his visa expired in 2012. Under the fabricated identity of "Asher Potts," he maintained a 4.1 GPA, joined the National Honor Society, and participated actively in the school’s ROTC program. He reportedly orchestrated the scam with his American host parents to gain legal status and pursue an education.

Ricardo Lopez was an obsessed, delusional fan of singer Björk who documented his downward spiral in a video diary culminating in his 1996 incident.

Jean-Claude Romand was a French impostor who spent 18 years pretending to be a successful medical doctor and researcher for the World Health Organization. In reality, he never finished medical school, spending his days hiding in cars or highway rest areas. When his colossal web of deceit and financial fraud began to unravel in January 1993, Romand committed murder to avoid the shame of exposure.

Jennifer Faith pleaded guilty in February 2022 to orchestrating the October 2020 murder of her husband, American Airlines technology director Jamie Faith, outside their Dallas home. She was sentenced to life in prison in June 2022. She manipulated her high school boyfriend, Darl Niemann, into shooting her husband by using fake email accounts to pose as her husband and a colleague, fabricating vivid stories that she was being abused.

In 2019, 18-year-old Berfin Ozek from Turkey was brutally attacked with sulfuric acid by her ex-boyfriend, Casim Ozan Celtik, who told her "if I can't have you, no one can". The assault left her permanently disfigured and partially blind.

Charlize Theron’s father, Charles Theron, was legally shot and killed by her mother, Gerda, in self-defense on June 21, 1991, after he violently attacked his family. Charles, a chronic alcoholic, returned to the family’s South Africa home in a drunken rage.

Andrés Escobar was a Colombian national team defender tragically murdered in Medellín on July 2, 1994, just days after accidentally scoring an own goal against the United States at the FIFA World Cup. The own goal contributed to Colombia's shocking early elimination from the tournament and sparked widespread outrage, deeply compounding the tension already driven by the nation's political chaos and cartel violence.

The story of James Farthing centers on a dramatic turn of fortune where a historic lottery win was immediately followed by a cascade of serious legal troubles. In April 2025, Farthing, a Kentucky resident with a prior criminal record, made history by winning a massive $167.3 million Powerball jackpot, the largest ever in the state. However, just days after claiming the prize and publicly promising to turn his life around, he was arrested at a hotel bar in Florida for battery on a law enforcement officer. Over the following year, Farthing's legal spiral worsened with multiple additional arrests in Kentucky, including charges for a 100-mph hit-and-run crash, witness intimidation, and a burglary charge involving his ex-girlfriend.

The Kenneth Noid story is a bizarre and tragic piece of fast-food history involving a 1989 hostage situation fueled by extreme paranoia. Domino's Pizza was running a highly successful advertising campaign featuring "The Noid," a claymation character who tried to ruin pizzas, alongside the slogan "Avoid the Noid." Kenneth Lamar Noid, a 22-year-old man from Georgia who suffered from severe mental illness, became convinced that the commercial campaign was a personal attack directly mocking him. Believing the company was out to get him, he entered a local Domino's restaurant, held two employees hostage for over five hours, and demanded $100,000 and a getaway car.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, along with his older brother Tamerlan, perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2013, detonating two pressure-cooker bombs near the race's finish line.

That’s disrespectful to Jurassic Park--Actress Jenifer Lewis was scammed out of $50,000 by her then-boyfriend Antonio Mariot Wilson, a serial con artist who orchestrated a multi-year romance scam targeting several women.

Chris Latham, a former wealthy bank executive from Charleston, South Carolina, was convicted in 2014 for his involvement in a failed 2013 murder-for-hire plot against his estranged wife, Nancy Cannon. Motivated by a bitter divorce and a desire to avoid substantial alimony payments, Latham collaborated with his mistress and assistant, Wendy Moore, who orchestrated the scheme by hiring her ex-husband, Samuel Yenawine, and another accomplice, Aaron Wilkinson, to execute the hit.

George Trepal, a chemist and Mensa member, was convicted in 1991 for the murder of his neighbor, Peggy Carr, and the attempted murder of her family in Alturas, Florida.

Colleen Stan, famously known as the "Girl in the Box," was abducted at knifepoint in May 1977 by Cameron and Janice Hooker while hitchhiking. Held captive in a remote Red Bluff, CA home for seven years, she was often confined to a coffin-like wooden box beneath a waterbed.

Jeffrey Stenner, a former Connecticut bank vice president and restaurant owner, infamously orchestrated two high-profile armored car robberies in West Hartford, including a 1988 heist where he wore a Santa Claus. Fearing that his accomplice and getaway driver, Robert Schmidt, was talking too much and would expose their crimes to federal investigators, Stenner hired several men to murder him.

Maximilian Schmidt is a German cybercriminal who, at age 18, single-handedly ran a multi-million-euro international drug empire named "Shiny Flakes" from his childhood bedroom. Over 14 months, he sold roughly one ton of illegal narcotics worldwide using his website and standard postal services.

Suzane von Richthofen is the mastermind behind the murder of her wealthy parents on October 31, 2002. Then an 18-year-old law student, Suzane conspired with her boyfriend, Daniel Cravinhos, and his brother, Christian, to bludgeon Manfred and Marísia von Richthofen to death in their São Paulo home while they slept.

Joe Conforte operated several illicit brothels before successfully lobbying for the state's first legal brothel license at his famous Mustang Ranch in 1971. His career was defined by high-stakes battles with the government, including a stint in prison for extortion and a scandalous association with the shooting death of boxer Oscar Bonavena on his property. Facing mounting federal indictments for tax evasion and racketeering, Conforte fled to Brazil in 1991, where he lived as a fugitive until his death in 2019, successfully avoiding extradition for nearly three decades.

The eBay stalking scandal was a bizarre and criminal harassment campaign orchestrated in 2019 by company employees against Ina and David Steiner, authors of the newsletter EcommerceBytes, in retaliation for their critical reporting. Led by eBay’s security team, the harassment included sending terrifying packages—such as a bloody pig mask, live insects, and a funeral wreath—to the couple’s home, alongside physical surveillance and public Craigslist posts inviting strangers to their property.

Juliana Peres Magalhães, a Brazilian former au pair, was a central figure in a sensational 2023 double-murder case in Northern Virginia, where she participated in a plot with her employer and lover, Brendan Banfield, to kill his wife, Christine Banfield. The pair orchestrated an elaborate scheme using a fetish website to lure a stranger, Joseph Ryan, to the family's home, where they fatally shot and stabbed him and Christine while attempting to stage the scene as a home invasion.

Founded in 2004 by Nicole Daedone, OneTaste marketed itself as a revolutionary wellness company focused on OM to foster female empowerment and healing. While it initially gained mainstream acclaim through high-profile endorsements and a popular TED Talk, investigative reports in 2018 exposed a dark side, with former members alleging cult-like manipulation, financial exploitation, and psychological abuse.

Michael Mastromarino, a former oral surgeon whose license was revoked due to drug addiction, orchestrated a massive illegal body-snatching enterprise between 2001 and 2005 through his company, Biomedical Tissue Services. He conspired with several funeral directors to plunder tissue, bone, and organs from over 1,000 cadavers.

Wayne Couzens is a former Metropolitan Police officer who is serving a whole-life prison sentence for the kidnap and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard in March 2021.

Jessy Kurczewski was a Wisconsin woman convicted in 2023 for the first-degree intentional homicide of her friend, Lynn Hernan, for whom she had been acting as a caregiver. In October 2018, Kurczewski reported finding Hernan unresponsive in her home, initially suggesting the death was a result of a self-inflicted overdose. However, investigations and toxicology reports later determined that the death was a homicide caused by poisoning.

Nanette Johnston (now Nanette Packard) orchestrated the 1994 murder of her millionaire fiancé, Bill McLaughlin, to secure a $1 million life insurance payout and hide her extensive embezzlement of his funds. While living with McLaughlin in Newport Beach, she maintained a secret affair with former NFL player Eric Naposki and provided him with a house key and his schedule to facilitate the shooting.

Malcolm Webster, a British nurse dubbed the "Black Widower," was convicted in 2011 for the 1994 murder of his first wife, Claire Morris, and the 1999 attempted murder of his second wife, Felicity Drumm, both staged as car accidents to claim life insurance money. Operating as a calculated, financially-driven sociopath, Webster drugged his victims and attempted to kill them on different continents to fund an affluent lifestyle, eventually defrauding his second wife of her savings.

Dr. John Schneeberger, a trusted physician in Kipling, Saskatchewan, was revealed in the late 1990s to be a predator who assaulted patients and his own stepdaughter, launching a sensational true-crime case centered on an audacious forensic deception.

The Nick Perry lottery scandal, famously known as the "Triple Six Fix," was a 1980 scheme to rig the Pennsylvania Lottery’s "Daily Number". Orchestrated by beloved local TV host Nick Perry, the plan involved injecting white latex paint into all but the number 4 and 6 ping-pong balls used in the drawing, making the weighted balls too heavy to be sucked into the machine’s chute.

In 1995, McArthur Wheeler robbed two Pittsburgh banks in broad daylight without a mask, believing that smearing lemon juice on his face would render him invisible to security cameras, a misunderstanding based on the logic of invisible ink. Wheeler, who was not delusional but simply profoundly mistaken, was shocked to be arrested later that evening after his clear image appeared on local news, stating "But I wore the juice".

In January 2009, Rosa Hill and her mother, Mei Li, entered the Dublin, California, home of Hill’s estranged husband, Eric Hill, during a contested custody battle over their daughter. During the incident, the women killed Eric's 91-year-old grandmother, Selma Hill.

Stewart Parnell, the former owner and CEO of the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), was at the center of one of the deadliest food safety scandals in U.S. history after his company knowingly shipped salmonella-tainted peanut products between 2008 and 2009.

In May 2015, Glenna Duram fatally shot her husband, Martin "Marty" Duram, five times in their Sand Lake, Michigan. Glenna claimed to have no memory of the event, but investigators uncovered evidence of a motive rooted in severe financial troubles and a gambling addiction that had led to their home's foreclosure. The case gained international attention due to the couple's pet African Grey parrot, Bud, who began eerily mimicking an argument in Marty's voice following the murder.

Trey Eric Sesler, known online as "Mr. Anime," was a 22-year-old YouTuber from Texas popular in the late 2000s for his anime review channel, LensCap Productions. Sesler committed a horrific familicide in 2012.

In November 2004, 21-year-old University of Rochester student Christopher Porco used an axe to murder his father, Peter, and severely injure his mother, Joan, in their Delmar, New York home.

Kouri Richins, a Utah mother of three and real estate agent, was convicted in March 2026 of murdering her husband, Eric Richins, by spiking his cocktail.

Father Gerald Robinson, a Catholic priest in Toledo, Ohio, who was convicted in 2006 for the brutal 1980 murder of a 71-year-old nun, Sister Margaret Ann Pahl.

Bryan Cranston was once wanted for murder. And this could have ended his acting career before it had a chance to start.

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.