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Curated playlist

Prisoners sentenced to death by California

  • 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.
  • 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…
  • Patricia KrenwinkelPatricia Krenwinkel spoke these words during her trial, describing how she stabbed a woman: "I stabbed her and I kept stabbing her." Asked how it felt, she replied: "Nothing, I mean, what is there to describe? It was just there, and it was…
  • 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,…
  • Randy KraftAmong the things investigators found after Randy Kraft's arrest was a ring binder. Inside it was a hand-written list of 61 terms and phrases, neatly printed. Some entries were a single word. One read Dog. Another read Deodorant. A third…
  • Richard ChaseRichard Trenton Chase kept a calendar on the wall of his apartment in Sacramento, California. On the dates of two murders in January 1978, he had written a single word: Today. He had written the same word on forty-four other dates through…
  • Charles NgCharles Ng, a Hong Kong-born man who now sits on California's death row, was undone by a theft worth $75. On the 2nd of June 1985, an employee at the South City Lumber Store in South San Francisco spotted a man carrying a vise out without…
  • 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…
  • 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…

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