Curated playlist

Crimes adapted into films

Watergate scandalA botched burglary at Watergate led to the first resignation of a U.S. president. In all, 69 people were charged.
September 11 attacksThe September 11 attacks, known around the world simply as 9/11, unfolded across a single Tuesday morning in 2001. Four airliners bound for California left airports in Boston, Washington and Newark that morning. Before the morning ended,…
Assassination of John F. KennedyMoments before he was shot in Dallas, President Kennedy said his last words: "No, they sure can't."
Columbine High School massacreThe Columbine High School massacre was meant to be a bombing. On the 20th of April 1999, seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold carried explosives into Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, expecting them to kill hundreds of…
Assassination of Abraham LincolnLincoln's assassination began with a letter Booth picked up at the theater. It said Lincoln would attend that night.
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…
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…
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!…
Jack the RipperJack the Ripper remains an unidentified serial killer, and one of the strangest pieces of evidence tied to him arrived by post on the 16th of October 1888. George Lusk, leader of a local vigilance committee in London's East End, opened 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…
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…
Murder of John LennonJohn Lennon signed an autograph for his killer hours before the shooting. Chapman waited outside the Dakota.
Bonnie and ClydeBonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, together known as Bonnie and Clyde, died on the 23rd of May 1934 on Louisiana Highway 154 in Bienville Parish. Six lawmen crouched in the roadside bushes as a car came toward them at high speed. They fired…
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…
University of Texas tower shootingThe University of Texas tower shooting began at 11:48 a.m. on the 1st of August 1966, when a gunman opened fire from the observation deck of the Main Building tower in Austin. The deck stood 231 feet above the ground, and from it the whole…
Lindbergh kidnappingThe Lindbergh kidnapping began at about 9:00 in the evening on the 1st of March 1932, when the nurse Betty Gow went looking for a 20-month-old boy and could not find him. His mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, had just come out of the bath,…
Murder of Sylvia LikensSylvia Likens was 16 years old when she died in Indianapolis, Indiana, on the 26th of October 1965. Days before, she had confided in her younger sister, Jenny: "Jenny, I know you don't want me to die, but I'm going to die. I can tell it."…
Andrei ChikatiloOn the 20th of November 1990, four plainclothes police officers stepped up to a man leaving a cafe in Novocherkassk. He was carrying a large jar of beer and offered no resistance as they handcuffed him. The man was Andrei Chikatilo, a…
2011 Norway attacksThe 2011 Norway attacks began with an explosion in central Oslo at 15:25:22 on the afternoon of the 22nd of July 2011. Less than two hours later, a man in a police uniform stepped off a ferry onto the island of Utøya. Between the bomb and…
Murder of James BulgerA grainy frame from a security camera in the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle, near Liverpool, shows a two-year-old boy being led away by the hand. The child is James Patrick Bulger. The two boys leading him are ten years old. Later,…