Curated playlist

American people convicted of kidnapping

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…
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…
O. J. SimpsonO. J. Simpson sat in the back of a white Ford Bronco on a Los Angeles freeway, and an estimated 95 million people watched it roll along. Commentators called it the most famous ride on American shores since Paul Revere's. The passenger was…
R. KellyBeneath the Chicago "L" tracks, at the Jackson stop on the Red Line in the Loop, a young school dropout named Robert Kelly sang for passing commuters. Decades later, as R. Kelly, he had sold more than 75 million albums and singles…
Lawrence SingletonLawrence Singleton, born in Tampa, Florida, in 1927, once told a judge that he was "a confused, muddleheaded old man." His record said otherwise. Singleton committed one crime so brutal that California rewrote its sentencing law because of…
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,…
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…
Gary HiltonGary Michael Hilton, born in 1946, earned the nickname The National Forest Serial Killer because every one of his four known murders took place inside a national forest. Those killings came between 2007 and 2008 and stretched across three…
Joseph James DeAngeloDeputies arrested Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. in the side yard of his Sacramento home on the afternoon of the 24th of April 2018. He was 72 years old, a retired truck mechanic and a former police officer. For more than four decades,…
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…
Grim SleeperLonnie David Franklin Jr., known as the Grim Sleeper, was responsible for at least ten murders and one attempted murder in Los Angeles between 1984 and 2007. His nickname came from an absence. Between 1988 and 2002, investigators saw no…
Matthew MullerMatthew Muller was once nominated as one of the American Bar Association's Techiest Lawyers. He held a Harvard law degree, an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps and a reputation for fighting deportations. Then, in 2015, he was…
David CarpenterDavid Joseph Carpenter is the American serial killer whom the press came to call the Trailside Killer. In 1980, detectives in Marin County, California, were searching for a man in his twenties or thirties. Carpenter was 50. Pathologists…
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…
Joseph Edward DuncanJoseph Edward Duncan III was recognized by strangers in a Denny's restaurant in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, in the early morning of the 2nd of July 2005. A waitress, a manager and two customers noticed a girl sitting with a man none of them…