Curated playlist

American murderers of children

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…
Cary StaynerCary Stayner is an American serial killer whose crimes began to surface in March 1999, when police near Yosemite National Park received an anonymous note. It held a hand-drawn map, and across the top someone had written, "We had fun with…
John Wayne GacyOn the 21st of December 1978, an evidence technician named Daniel Genty crawled into a space measuring 28 by 38 feet beneath a ranch-style house outside Chicago. He worked his way to the southwest corner and began to dig. Within minutes he…
Dean CorllDean Corll was the man whose death a frightened caller reported to the Pasadena Police Department at 8:24 on the morning of the 8th of August 1973. The operator who answered was named Velma Lines. The caller was a teenager, and he blurted…
Ted BundyIn June 1974, Ted Bundy walked into the middle of an active Seattle police investigation to collect evidence he had left behind. Bundy would murder dozens of young women and girls in 1974-1975 and 1978. On the night of the 11th of June…
George Armstrong CusterGeorge Armstrong Custer, born on the 5th of December 1839, graduated from West Point in 1861 ranked 34th out of 34. In four years at the academy he piled up 726 demerits, one of the worst conduct records in its history. A roommate observed…
Zodiac KillerA letter postmarked the 29th of January 1974 reached the San Francisco Chronicle and ended with a tally: Me = 37, SFPD = 0. The writer was the Zodiac Killer, an unidentified serial killer who treated the San Francisco Police Department as…
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,…
Elmer Wayne HenleyAt 8:24 on the morning of the 8th of August 1973, Elmer Wayne Henley Jr. phoned the Pasadena Police Department from Dean Corll's home in Pasadena, Texas. He was seventeen years old. He told the operator: "Y'all better come here right now!…
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…
Jeffrey DahmerJeffrey Dahmer killed seventeen men and boys between 1978 and 1991. He became known as the Milwaukee Cannibal and the Milwaukee Monster. On the night of the 22nd of July 1991, police officers in a Milwaukee apartment pinned him to the…
Timothy McVeighTimothy McVeigh was driving on Interstate 35 in Noble County, Oklahoma, when state trooper Charles J. Hanger noticed his yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis had no license plate. Hanger also noticed a bulge under the driver's jacket. McVeigh…
Gilgo Beach serial killingsThe Gilgo Beach serial killings came to light because of a frightened phone call placed at 4:51 in the morning on the 1st of May 2010. Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old escort, rang 911 from a client's property in the gated community of Oak…
West Memphis ThreeThe West Memphis Three are three men who were convicted as teenagers of murdering three young boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, in 1993. Around 7:00 pm on the 5th of May 1993, John Mark Byers made the first report to police. His adopted…
Franklin Delano FloydFranklin Delano Floyd died of natural causes on the 23rd of January 2023, at the age of 79, while still on death row. He was an American murderer and child sex offender, and he spent most of his life moving under borrowed names. For years,…
Gary RidgwayOn the 30th of November 2001, police arrived at the Kenworth truck factory in Renton, Washington, to arrest a spray painter as he was leaving work. The man was Gary Leon Ridgway, born on the 18th of February 1949. For years the press had…
Rodney AlcalaRodney Alcala walked onto the set of the television game show The Dating Game in 1978, and host Jim Lange introduced him as a successful photographer. Lange promised that between takes he might be found skydiving or motorcycling. The…
Richard RamirezRichard Ramirez was an American burglar, sex offender and serial killer who terrorized Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. A California judge, upholding nineteen death sentences against him, said his deeds showed "cruelty,…
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…
Robert HansenBehind the headboard of a bed in an Anchorage home, investigators found an aeronautical chart marked with thirty-seven handwritten x symbols. The home belonged to Robert Hansen, a baker nicknamed the Butcher Baker. Between 1971 and 1983 he…
Edmund KemperEdmund Kemper stood in a phone booth in Pueblo, Colorado, in the spring of 1973 and confessed to murder. The police officer who answered did not believe him. Kemper was told to call back later. He had just driven more than 1,000 miles,…
Larry Hall (criminal)Larry DeWayne Hall has confessed to more than thirty-five murders, and he has taken back every single confession. He is an American man convicted of kidnapping and suspected of far worse. Hall was devoted to the history of the American…
Albert FishAlbert Fish was caught because of a letter he mailed in November 1934 to the mother of a girl he had killed six years earlier. Mrs. Budd could not read, so her son read the pages aloud to her. The letter carried no signature. Police traced…
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…
Henry Lee LucasHenry Lee Lucas, later nicknamed The Confession Killer, sat in a Texas jail in 1983 and wrote a note to the local sheriff. "I have killed for the past 10 years and no one will believe me," it began. "I cannot go on doing this. I also…
Hart family murdersThe Hart family murders, a murder-suicide in 2018, took the lives of two women and their six adopted children. Years before, one of those children became known across the country through a single photograph. In 2014, at a protest in…
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…
Sammy GravanoSammy Gravano, known to the world as Sammy the Bull, once faced up to 20 years in prison and received a sentence that amounted to less than one year. In 1994 a federal judge gave him five years, but he had already served four. The judge…
H. H. HolmesH. H. Holmes confessed to 27 murders, and some of the people he named turned out to be alive. He was born Herman Webster Mudgett, and newspapers later called him the Beast of Chicago, the Devil in the White City and the Torture Doctor. His…
Leopold and LoebLeopold and Loeb, two University of Chicago students, killed 14-year-old Bobby Franks on the 21st of May 1924. Nathan Leopold was 19, and Richard Loeb was 18. Afterward Leopold described his state of mind to a psychiatrist with a single…