Curated playlist

American people who died in prison custody

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.
Phil SpectorPhil Spector's first number one song came from his father's gravestone.
Charles HarrelsonCharles Harrelson went to prison for the murder of federal judge John H. Wood Jr., who was shot dead on the 29th of May 1979 in the parking lot outside his townhouse in San Antonio, Texas. No federal judge in the 20th century had been…
James Burke (gangster)James Burke, nicknamed Jimmy the Gent, spent his criminal life beside the Lucchese crime family without ever being allowed to join it. He was born on the 5th of July 1931. He is believed to have organized the 1978 Lufthansa heist. His…
Robert HanssenRobert Philip Hanssen, a veteran FBI agent, drove to Foxstone Park on the 18th of February 2001. The park sits near his home in the Washington suburb of Vienna, Virginia. He was there to leave a package of classified material at a dead…
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…
Jack RubyAt 11:21 on Sunday morning, the 24th of November 1963, Jack Ruby stepped out of a crowd of reporters in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters. Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, was holding a revolver. A few feet away stood Lee Harvey…
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,…
Ted KaczynskiTed Kaczynski wrote a letter to The New York Times in 1995 and attached a promise to it. If the Times or The Washington Post printed his essay in full, he would "desist from terrorism." The essay ran to roughly 35,000 words and carried the…
Bernie MadoffBernie Madoff told his own sons in December 2008 that the fund he ran was "just one big lie." Bernard Lawrence Madoff was an American financier, born in 1938, who had once served as chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange. He admitted to…
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,…
Richard KuklinskiRichard Kuklinski, born in 1935 and later known as the Iceman, lived in the New Jersey suburb of Dumont with his wife and children. His wife Barbara described him as a wholesale distributor who employed an accountant. Neighbors saw a…
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…
Wilhelm ReichIn 1956, a United States court ordered six tons of Wilhelm Reich's books and papers burned.
Robert DurstOn the 30th of November 2001, Robert Durst was caught inside a Wegmans supermarket in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He was trying to steal Band-Aids, a newspaper and a chicken salad sandwich. In his pocket he had $500 in cash. Durst, an…
James Earl RayJames Earl Ray escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary on the 23rd of April 1967 by hiding in a truck that carried bread out of the prison bakery. Thirty-one years later, on that same date, he died. In the years between, he became the…
Whitey BulgerOn the 22nd of June 2011, agents in Santa Monica, California, used a ruse to lure an 81-year-old man out of his apartment. They arrested him without incident. He was James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger Jr., who had once led the Winter Hill Gang,…
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…
Ed GeinEd Gein was a quiet handyman from Plainfield, Wisconsin, and the last receipt Bernice Worden ever wrote was for him. It was a sales slip for a gallon of antifreeze, written on the morning of the 16th of November 1957. By that evening, 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…
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…
Lou PearlmanIn June 2007, a tourist couple from Germany noticed a man staying at a hotel in Nusa Dua, on the Indonesian island of Bali. Their sighting ended a search that had stretched across several continents. On the 14th of June 2007, the man was…
Gregory ScarpaGregory Scarpa Sr. sometimes left the numbers 666, the biblical number of the beast, on his victims' pagers. His longtime girlfriend Linda Schiro later recalled the habit. Scarpa was called the Grim Reaper and the Mad Hatter. He was a…
John GottiJohn Gotti ran the Gambino crime family of New York City, and one of his fellow mobsters once delivered a harsh verdict on him. Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, the former underboss of the Lucchese crime family, said: "what John Gotti did was the…