Curated playlist

Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by the United States federal government

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…
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…
Keith RaniereKeith Raniere was addressed by his followers as Vanguard, and for twenty years he led a company in Albany, New York, called NXIVM. The company sold personal development seminars. From 1998 to 2018 it drew 700 members at its height, among…
Jared Lee LoughnerAt 2:05 on the morning of the 8th of January 2011, Jared Lee Loughner left a voicemail for a friend. "Hey man, it's Jared. Me and you had good times. Peace out. Later." The message was short and casual. Within hours, a shooting in the…
Terry NicholsTerry Nichols is held at ADX Florence, a super maximum security prison near Florence, Colorado. His cell block is commonly known as Bomber's Row. The men who shared that block with him include Ramzi Yousef and Eric Rudolph. Ted Kaczynski…
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…
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…
Freeway Ricky RossRicky Donnell Ross, better known as Freeway Ricky Ross, was born on the 26th of January 1960 and learned to read at the age of 28. That happened during his first stint in prison. He then spent much of his time behind bars studying law. 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,…
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…
Joseph Paul FranklinJoseph Paul Franklin chose his own name, and it was not the one he was born with. By his own admission or by court verdict, he shot 22 people across ten American states. Sixteen of them died. He was a white supremacist, and he picked…
Eric RudolphEric Robert Rudolph was picking through a dumpster behind a Save-A-Lot store in Murphy, North Carolina, at about four in the morning on the 31st of May 2003. A rookie officer named Jeffrey Scott Postell, on routine patrol, assumed he was…
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…
Carlos LehderOn the 10th of July 1982, Carlos Lehder said goodbye to the Bahamas by bombarding Clifford Park in Nassau with pamphlets. Each one carried the same three words: DEA go home. Some had $100 bills attached. Lehder was a Colombian and German…
Anthony CassoAnthony Casso signed his letters "Tony Gaspipe." In 2006, writing to his biographer Philip Carlo from a federal cell, he made a startling statement for a man in his position. "I have always hated rats and as strange as it may sound I still…
Jeffrey R. MacDonaldAt 3:42 in the morning on the 17th of February 1970, a dispatcher at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, picked up a call from Jeffrey R. MacDonald, an Army physician with the Special Forces. His voice was faint. "Help! Five forty-four Castle…