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Curated playlist

American mass murderers

  • Nikolas CruzNikolas Cruz told a psychologist that he chose Valentine's Day for his attack because he believed no one loved him. On the 14th of February 2018, Cruz walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where he had once been a student, and…
  • Eric Harris and Dylan KleboldEric Harris and Dylan Klebold carried out the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado, on the 20th of April 1999. They killed 13 students and one teacher and wounded 23 others. Then both died by suicide in the school library.…
  • Susan AtkinsOn the 24th of September 2009, Susan Atkins died at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla. Her husband, James Whitehouse, told reporters that her last whispered word was "Amen." At that moment she was California's…
  • Charles MansonOn the first day of testimony in his 1970 murder trial, Charles Manson arrived with an X carved into his forehead.
  • Dzhokhar TsarnaevDzhokhar Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan planted two pressure cooker bombs at the 117th Boston Marathon. The bombs exploded at 2:49 in the afternoon on the 15th of April 2013, Patriots' Day. One had been placed at the finish line,…
  • Jim JonesJim Jones was an American preacher who founded the Peoples Temple. On the 18th of November 1978, 912 people died at his jungle commune in Jonestown, Guyana. Among them were 304 children. Jones called the event "revolutionary suicide," a…
  • Allen Lawrence PopeAllen Lawrence Pope was carrying about 30 incriminating documents when Indonesian forces took him prisoner in May 1958. One of them was his own flight log. The papers turned a covert operation into a diplomatic crisis, and they deepened…
  • Dylann RoofDylann Storm Roof, born on the 3rd of April 1994, is an American white supremacist and neo-Nazi who carried out the Charleston church shooting. On the evening of the 17th of June 2015, a routine Bible study was under way at Emanuel African…
  • Stephen PaddockStephen Paddock spent the night of the 1st of October 2017 in a hotel room above a crowd of about 22,000 people. They had gathered for a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. By the end of that night, 60 of them were dead and…
  • Robert Eugene BrashersRobert Eugene Brashers died in January 1999, and while he lived, no investigator ever named him as a suspect in any of his murders. Investigators now link him to at least eight murders in Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina and Texas…
  • Richard SpeckRichard Benjamin Speck entered a townhouse at 2319 East 100th Street in Chicago on the night of the 13th of July 1966. By the next morning, eight young women who lived there were dead. The building stood in the Jeffery Manor neighborhood…
  • Andrea YatesAndrea Yates, a woman from Houston, Texas, was alone with her five children on the morning of the 20th of June 2001. Her husband's mother was due to arrive one hour later to take over. In that hour, Yates drowned all five children in the…
  • John List (murderer)John Emil List left behind a mansion in Westfield, New Jersey, that blazed with light in the autumn of 1971. Every room was lit, day and night, and yet nobody seemed to be living there. Neighbors waited and watched. Then the light bulbs…
  • James Holmes (mass murderer)James Eagan Holmes, an American born in 1987, made a phone call to a mental health crisis hotline in the moments before he carried out the 2012 Aurora theater shooting. By his own account, he hoped someone might talk him out of it at the…
  • Dennis RaderDennis Rader, the man who called himself BTK, made a strange request while police questioned him in February 2005. He asked an officer to write "BTK" on the lid of his cup before it went into the refrigerator, instead of his own name. The…
  • David HeadleyJudge Harry Leinenweber of the federal court in Chicago told David Headley that he deserved to be executed. Then he sentenced him to 35 years in prison. Headley, born Dawood Sayed Gilani, was a Pakistani-American who gathered the…

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