Рассказы о преступлениях на английском

Crime has been around us for many centuries. Every day when we open a newspaper or turn on TV almost all we read or hear is about criminals and their illegal actions. According to the law, people who commit a crime must be punished, imprisoned or even sentenced to a death penalty. Without punishment our life in the society would be less secure, although sometimes punishment isn’t strict enough, to my mind.

Some kinds of crimes are as old as the human society (such as stealing, pick-pocketing, vandalism, assault or domestic violence, murder and manslaughter), others are a more recent phenomenon. Armed robbery of stores and banks, hacking into computers (so called “cyber frauds”), corruption or forgery of money and documents, for instance, are some of them. The 20^th century has also seen the appearance of organized crimes such as drug-trafficking, drug-smuggling and hijacking. Statistics show an alarming rise of violent crimes and crimes to do with the illegal sale of arms across the world. Unfortunately women and children often become the victims of crime. Sometimes criminals kidnap rich people or their kids and ask for a ransom to be paid for them.

Besides violent crimes, there are so called “white-collar crimes” in our modern society. These are frauds when a person isn’t physically threatened or hurt. Among them are tax evasion (when people are accused of not paying taxes on purpose), bribery, identity theft (when a criminal steals personal information of another person in order to use his credit cards or bank accounts, for example).

To crown it all, we must regret that today a great deal of crimes is committed by teenagers who want to become independent as soon as possible and to find a royal road to getting much money. Teenagers use drugs and drink alcohol, so they can’t control themselves. Moreover, modern TV programs and films containing much violence and sex often have huge and negative influence on teenagers.

In conclusion I should say that crime prevention in our society is an extremely difficult and complicated task because we should change our social and moral principles at large.

 

Перевод 

Преступления в нашем современном обществе

Преступления окружают нас многие столетия. Каждый день, когда мы открываем газету или включаем телевизор, почти все, что мы читаем или слышим – это преступники и их противоправные действия. По закону люди, совершившие преступления, должны быть наказаны, заключены в тюрьму или даже приговорены к смертной казни. Без наказания наша жизнь в обществе была бы менее безопасной, хотя иногда наказание бывает недостаточно строгим, по моему мнению.

Некоторые виды преступлений стары, как само человеческое общество (такие как воровство, карманная кража, вандализм, разбой и домашнее насилие, умышленное и непредумышленное убийство), другие виды  стали более недавним явлением. Вооруженное ограбление магазинов и банков, взлом компьютеров (так называемый «кибер-криминал»), коррупция или подделка банкнот и документов, к примеру, являются некоторыми из них. 20-й век также увидел появление организованных преступлений, таких как контрабанда и незаконный оборот наркотиков и захват самолета. Статистика показывает тревожный рост жестоких преступлений и криминала, связанного с незаконной продажей оружия по всему миру. К сожалению, часто женщины и дети становятся жертвами криминала. Иногда преступники похищают богатых людей или их детей и требуют за них выкуп.

Помимо жестоких преступлений, в нашем современном обществе существуют так называемые должностные преступления. Это мошеннические действия, когда человеку не угрожают физически и не причиняют боль. Среди них – уклонение от налогов (когда люди обвиняются в преднамеренной неуплате налогов), взяточничество, хищение персональных данных (когда преступник похищает личную информацию другого человека с целью использования его кредитных карт или банковских счетов, к примеру).

Ну и наконец, мы должны с сожалением признать, что сегодня большое количество преступлений совершается подростками, которые хотят стать независимыми как можно быстрее и найти легкий способ добычи денег. Подростки употребляют наркотики и алкоголь, поэтому они не контролируют себя. Более того, современное ТВ и фильмы содержат много жестокости и секса и часто имеют огромное негативное влияние на подростков.

В завершение хочу сказать, что предотвращение криминала в нашем обществе  является крайне трудной и сложной задачей, потому что нам следует менять наши общественные и моральные принципы в целом.

Тема «Преступления в нашем обществе» (Crime in our society) — 4.6 out of
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These true crime stories are so horrific, it’s difficult to believe they actually happened, or that human beings could be capable of committing such atrocities. And yet, these stories are indeed all true. Sometimes, real life is a lot grimmer than fiction. Sometimes, real life involves murder, abduction, betrayal, torture, and death…

12 True Creepy Crimes That Will Make You Lock Your Doors Tonight

1. Angela Hammond

“She was talking on the payphone with her fiance and saying how there is this suspicious truck that keeps driving around the block. Then, that truck parks near her where the payphone is, he gets out and starts looking around with his flashlight as if he lost something, then he confronts Angela and abducts her. Her fiance heard all of this on the other line and immediately got in his car to drive where Angela was. When doing so, he drove past the guy in the truck and Angela was apparently screaming his name for help, so he turns around and tries following the truck and his transmission fucks up and the guy got away. Angela has never been heard from again. And, she was pregnant.”

2. Annie Borjesson

“I find the case of Annie Borjesson really weird. She was a Swedish student studying in Edinburgh. She then went to Prestwick airport (literally the other side of the country, then down a bit), caught on CCTV at the airport for ten seconds, then left. She tried to take out money multiple times from different ATMs, but didn’t have the funds so was denied. She was seen wandering about Prestwick, and then was found dead on the beach. Her long hair had been cut off, and the post mortem (as far as I have read) concluded death by drowning.

She may have been victim to foul play, or it was suicide. I also found that her parents’ e-mails were allegedly hacked later on. It may be a case of self-inflicted violence/mental health issues, but I find Annie’s case just so bizarre and sad.”

3. The Hinterkaifeck Murders

“The Hinterkaifeck murders. A family saw footprints in the snow leading to their farm, but no footprints out of the farm. A few days later, they were killed in their own home. There was evidence that the perpetrators were staying in their house or the farm before the killings.

It’s creepy because your house is supposed to be the safest place. It’s hard to feel secure when you think about the possibility that your killer may be living with you without you noticing.”

4. Dorothy Scott

“I was just reading about Dorothy Scott recently. Her story is the saddest, and the creepiest was the bones of the dead dog the killer left on top of her remains to throw scavenger dogs off of his trail. Also, how her watch was stopped to the exact moment she died. I just can’t believe that he called her family so often and they could never trace the calls…I know it was the times though. But the whole thing is so horrifying.”

5. Brandon Swanson

“For those who are not familiar with his story, Brandon was a 19 year old who lived in Marshall, MN. He was returning home from a party recently celebrating his graduation from a community college up in a town north of Marshall called Canby and was on his way home.

Along the way home he crashed in a ditch. For some reason he was taking gravel roads even though the highway between the two towns was a straight shot North to South. I am guessing he took this route as a joy ride type of thing since he loved his car and driving in general or maybe he had a little too much to drink at the party and didn’t want to deal with any state troopers on patrol. He called his dad for a ride and eventually got tired of waiting inside his crashed car and started to walk towards Marshall. He claimed to his dad to see ‘lights’ of something nearby then abruptly exclaimed “Oh shit!” to his dad while still on the phone and his call ended. To this day no one knows what happened to him. No body found, none of his belongings found, nothing. There’s more to the story but that’s my summary. If you want to learn more just dig around.

My guess on what happened to Brandon is either he slipped and fell in a river due to not being able to see in the darkness, got shot and buried somewhere by a belligerent farmer who hated people trespassing on his property and would rather shoot then ask questions or was abducted by aliens (which would explain the lights). This case just creeps me out because I too live in Southern MN and I’m semi familiar with the Marshall area. It’s mostly flat farmlands around here so I really do not understand how someone can just disappear into thin air in the middle of nowhere without a body or any remains being found.”

6. The Bennington Triangle Disappearances

“Beginning in November 1945 through October 1950, five people — ages 8- to 74-years-old — went missing in the area. One was an experienced hunting guide and another was a 53-year-old woman described as an experienced camper and hiker who knew the area like the back of her hand. I’ve hiked Vermont’s Long Trail myself and there are places where you get a feeling of being watched by someone or some “thing.” In 2008, an instructor at Bennington College and experienced hiker got lost on the mountain, later recounted his strange experiences and swore he would never again hike the trail alone.”

7. The Setagaya Family

“The killer stayed in the house for hours, eating their [the Setagaya family’s] food, logging into the family computer and sleeping on their couch. It’s so creepy because rarely does a killer stick around for hours after they commit their crime making themselves at home.”

8. Brandon Lawson

“Ran out of gas in Middle of Nowhere, TX in 2013. Called the cops, much of it is inaudible but he implies he’s being chased into the woods, and says he needs the cops. When police arrived, they find his truck but nothing else. Not a trace of him since.”

9. Katarzyna Zowada (The “Skin case”)

“A young Polish student disappears in Krakow city.

Few months later a ship on the Vistula river stops because ‘something’ stuck into a propeller. What they have found surprised everyone.

They have gotten out a… skin of missing Katarzyna Zowada. To be more precise: A suit made of human skin. Someone had cut all the limbs and head then created a ‘body suit’ from remaining part which was probably worn by the murderer for some time.

Despite media attention and increased police interest every few years a perpetrator never had been found.”

10. Cassie Jo Stoddart

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZNFpZfMnew

“She [Cassie Jo Stoddart] was house-sitting for her aunt. She invited her boyfriend over and his two friends came over as well. His friends left and said they were going to the movies. They didn’t.

At some point before “leaving”, they unlocked a basement door, unbeknownst to her. They shut the power off to scare her. They sat there (hiding) until her boyfriend left and she was alone and proceeded to put masks on, come in the house and stab her. If that isn’t bad enough, a video was found where they planned to murder her ahead of time. There was footage of them right after they killed her as well.”

11. Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon

“Another creepy mystery that resonates with me is the disappearance of Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon. Long story short, two Dutch girls visiting Panama decide to go on a hike a day before they were scheduled to meet a guide for a tour and they go missing the same night. 10 weeks later their remains and possessions are found down stream from where the girls were hiking.

What creeps me out the most about this disappearance is the pictures that were found on Lisanne’s camera that turned up in the remains. The pictures go from the usual nice pictures of landscapes and of the girls posing with landmarks to cryptic pictures of the darkness as what many assume were attempts to use the flash of the camera to act as a signal for rescuers. Also there was a photo of back of Kris’s head with what possibly looks like blood by her temple. Just the fact that no one knows what happened to these two during their time in the jungle is what is most unsettling about this mystery.”

12. Daniel LaPlante’s Murders

“Daniel LaPlante is a triple murderer. He killed a nursery school teacher & her 2 kids in 1987. After a massive man-hunt they still could not find him. The ultra creepy thing is what happened. He was eventually discovered-after being on the run-in the closet of a girl he’d dated. She opened her door one night to see him standing there, in her mother’s clothes, face smeared with makeup, holding a machete. He tied her & her family up , but the youngest narrowly escaped. As if this isn’t bad enough, they AGAIN could not find him, till 2 weeks later. The family, who’d moved out, came back home and SAW LAPLANTE IN THE WINDOW. The police were called and later found out why he’d been so hard to find. Daniel had been living in the walls of his former girlfriend’s house the entire time.”

7 Of The Most Brutal Murders Ever Committed In The History Of The Human Race (NSFL)

1. The Toolbox Killer

The transcript of what happened to Shirley Ledford at the hands of Toolbox Killers Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris is the most disturbing thing you will ever come across.

An excerpt from the transcript:

“At this point, after Bittaker had forced Shirley to fellate him, repeated sounds of an administered beating, interspersed with loud screams can be heard as Bittaker savagely beat Shirley about the breasts and, to a lesser degree, head. Bittaker then extracted his pliers from the tool box. Shirley then emits several high-pitched, prolonged screams and cries of agony as Bittaker alternately squeezes and twists her labia, clitoris, nipples and breasts with the pliers. Bittaker then returns the pliers to the tool box. Banging sounds can also be heard throughout, which are believed to have been made as Shirley came into contact with the walls and inner contents of the van as she writhed and flailed.”

Ledford: My God! Please stop it! (Screams)
Bittaker: Is the recorder going?
Norris: Yeah!
Bittaker: Scream baby! Scream some, baby.

2. Kelly Anne Bates

Bates was horrifically tortured for days before her tormentor finally killed her. Below are a few examples of what she went through.

According to Wikipedia, Kelly Anne Bates (18 May 1978 – 16 April 1996) was a British teenager murdered on 16 April 1996 at age 17 in Manchester after being tortured for four long weeks. Kelly’s eyes were gouged from their sockets up to three weeks before she actually died from drowning in a bathtub. These horrific crimes were committed by her partner, James Patterson Smith.

Below is a list from Wikipedia of the specific injuries Kelly Anne Bates endured through torture:

• Scalding to her buttocks and left leg
• Burns on her thigh caused by the application of a hot iron
• A fractured arm
• Multiple stab wounds caused by knives, forks and scissors
• Stab wounds inside her mouth
• Crush injuries to both hands
• Mutilation of her ears, nose, eyebrows, mouth, lips and genitalia
• Wounds caused by a spade and pruning shears
• Both eyes gouged out
• Later stab wounds to the empty eye sockets
• Partial scalping

3. Junko Furuta

Furuta was a 17-year-old Japanese girl whose case became known as the “concrete-encased high school girl murder case.” Furuta was kidnapped by four teenage boys and, aside from the brutality of the assaults against her, the most disturbing thing is that she was held at one of the kidnapper’s houses and his parents were present the entire time, knew what was going on, and did nothing to stop it.

Also extremely disturbing is that Furuta turned 17 while she was in captivity and enduring these horrors. There’s something tremendously upsetting about that.

According to Wikipedia:

To avoid concern over her abduction, the perpetrators forced Furuta to call her parents and tell them that she would be staying at a friend’s house for a while. Over the course of her confinement, Furuta was repeatedly raped, beaten, and tortured by her four captors until they killed her. The parents of Kamisaku were present in the home for at least a part of the time that Furuta was held captive, and though she pleaded with them for help, they did not intervene, later claiming that they feared their son too much to do so.

The killers hid her corpse in a 208-litre oil drum filled with concrete. They disposed of the drum in a tract of reclaimed land in Kōtō, Tokyo.

4. The Hi-Fi Murders

In 1974, two men robbing a Hi-Fi store in Odgen, Utah held captive and tormented five individuals. Only two of the captives would survive. Among the sadism levied on the captives were the following, according to Wikipedia:

Violence included a pen being kicked into an ear and the brutal rape of a teenage girl who was later shot in the head. Corrosive drain cleaner was also forcefully given to the hostages causing horrific burns to their mouths and throats.

Not only were they forced to drink drain cleaner but their mouths were then taped shut so they couldn’t spit it out or vomit it up.

One of the victims, Orren Walker, was shot several times, strangled and had a pen kicked into his ear but still survived.

5. The McStay Family

In 2010, in Fallbrook, California, the McStay family (including Joseph McStay, his wife Summer, and their two children), was brutally murdered. The four were then moved by the killer and buried in a shallow grave in the desert but their remains weren’t found until 2013. For three years they’d simply believed to have disappeared.

Forensic evidence showed that all had been beaten to death with a sledgehammer which was found near the family’s remains. Joseph McStay suffered four blows to the head and the family’s youngest child, only four years old, suffered seven. Investigators also believe the family was tortured prior to being killed.

Charles Merritt, McStay’s former business partner has been charged with the family’s murder.

6. James Bulger

In 1993, in England, two-year-old James Bulger was abducted by two ten-year-olds at the mall while his mother was distracted.

After taking him from the mall, the two boys took Bulger on a two and a half mile walk. At one point they picked Bulger up and dropped him on his head which caused him to have a bump on his head and, according to bystanders, cry.

The two then took him up an embankment and onto a set of railroad tracks where they began torturing him.

More details of the murder according to Wikipedia:

At the trial it was established that at this location, one of the boys threw blue Humbrol modelling paint, which they had shoplifted earlier, into Bulger’s left eye. They kicked and stomped on him, and threw bricks and stones at him. Batteries were placed in Bulger’s mouth. Police believed some batteries may have been inserted into his anus, although none were found there. Finally, a 22-pound (10.0 kg) iron bar, described in court as a railway fishplate, was dropped on him. Bulger suffered ten skull fractures as a result of the iron bar striking his head. Dr. Alan Williams, the case’s pathologist, stated that Bulger suffered so many injuries—42 in total—that none could be isolated as the fatal blow.

Police suspected that there was a sexual element to the crime, since Bulger’s shoes, socks, trousers and underpants had been removed. The pathologist’s report read out in court stated that Bulger’s foreskin had been forcibly retracted.

Before they left him, the boys laid Bulger across the railway tracks and weighted his head down with rubble, in the hope that a train would hit him and make his death appear to be an accident.

After Bulger’s killers left the scene, his body was cut in half by a train. Bulger’s severed body was discovered two days later on 14 February.

7. Amora Bain Carson

Amora Bain Carson, the 13-month-old baby who was tortured to death by her mother’s boyfriend during an “exorcism.” I’ll tell the story by copying some things from each of their appeals. Jesseca Carson was the baby’s mother, and the boyfriend was Blaine Milam. Jessica Carson was sentenced to life, while Blaien Milam was sentenced to death.

WARNING: Graphic Content

“Carson concluded that the child was like ‘Chucky’ or ‘Pet Sematary’ (horror movies) when the “boy dies and comes back to life all evil and stuff” because the child was “biting Blaine to where it was drawing blood on his hands.” After Milam returned to the child, he took a picture of her and gave it to Carson. One of the child’s eyes was stretched and ‘like warped down.’ Carson heard horrible cries from the child as Milam was attempting the exorcism.”

“During the hours involved, Milam had taken the child to a back bedroom in their small dwelling and wedged the door shut. The evidence would allow a jury to conclude that Carson was necessarily aware of what was happening to the child, because she admitted hearing the screams that accompanied such torture and because she saw the child’s deformed head after some time had passed and heard the sounds caused by the blows.”

“They found blood-spatter stains, consistent with blunt force trauma, near the south bedroom. Among the items collected from the south bedroom were: blood-stained bedding and baby clothes; blood-stained baby diapers and wipes; a tube of Astroglide lubricant; and a pair of jeans with blood stains on the lap. DNA testing later showed that Amora’s blood was on these items.”

“As a result of the ‘exorcism’ conducted by Milam, Amora suffered innumerable injuries that led to her death. Forensic evidence showed the child was beaten so severely that the multitude of fractures to her skull connected with each other like a jigsaw puzzle, and her brain was torn and severely damaged. An arm and leg had spiral fractures indicating they were twisted in two, her torso was either struck by a blunt object or squeezed until the ribs and sternum broke, and her body (neck, chest, abdomen, buttocks, both elbows, both forearms, both feet, right arm, left shoulder, left upper arm, left hand, right thigh, and left knee) was riddled with no less than twenty-four distinct bite marks. Her head and face were so scraped and bruised that all the discrete injuries combined into “one giant injury.” Her liver was torn, and her vaginal and anal orifices were so torn that the vagina and rectum were actually connected, an injury the forensic examiner had never seen before. The underside of her tongue was lacerated from blunt force trauma. She was also strangled. Because of all the injuries she sustained, it was not possible to determine which one was the final injury, and no specific, singular cause of death was determinable. Forensic testimony reflected that several of the injuries standing alone would have each been fatal. Police were called several hours later; when they arrived, the child was entirely stiff and in rigor.”

“On December 13th, appellant’s sister, Teresa, went to see appellant in jail. That night, she told her aunt that she ‘was needing to find a way to get back out to the trailer in Tatum’ because “Blaine had told her that she needed to go out there to the trailer to get some evidence out from underneath of it.” The aunt called Sgt. Rogers and told her that “she needed to get out to the trailer immediately, that Teresa was wanting to go out there to get some evidence out from underneath the trailer.”

“Sgt. Rogers immediately obtained a search warrant, crawled under the trailer, and discovered a pipe wrench inside a clear plastic bag. The pipe wrench had been shoved down ‘a hole in the floor of the master bathroom.’ Forensic analysis revealed components of Astroglide on the pipe wrench, the diaper Amora had been wearing, and the diaper and wipes collected from the south bedroom.”

Werner Herzog did an episode of On Death Row about Blaine Milam and the full episode is on YouTube. It has security footage from the pawn shop where they were supposedly pawning a chainsaw to get money for an exorcism (after Amora was already dead) and a gas station, the 911 call, crime scenes photos (not of Amora’s body, of course, just the trailer) and interviews with pretty much everyone involved (except Jesseca Carson). It doesn’t make it any easier… but this case raises a lot of questions and searching online for these kinds of cases can take you horrible places that use Amora for shock value or misrepresent autopsy photos of other unfortunate victims as her (no post-mortem photos of Amora have been released and her autopsy was sealed). Especially since Amora’s case hasn’t been in the MSM very much due to the graphic nature of her death. With Herzog you’re getting quality information on the case coming straight from those involved.

Bonus: 36 Locals Share The Most Horrific True Crimes That Happened In Their Home Towns

1. “Stacey Castor poisoned her husband and then poisoned her daughter on the daughter’s first day of college. She wrote a fake suicide note for her daughter saying that she had killed her father and was committing suicide because of the guilt. The daughter almost died but recovered from the poison and testified against her mother. They also found out she had poisoned her first husband.”

2. “When I was in 3rd grade I saw a kid get into a police car while I was in chess club. Turns out his father murdered his younger twin sisters by stabbing them to death. Apparently he told them to play hide and seek and murdered them when he found them. When he finally returned to school he got bullied by the shitbag kids at our school, making fun of his dead sisters. He was placed in the custody of his aunt who later committed suicide and he was left in the care of the state after that. That boy’s life was horrible.”

3. “Around 3 years ago, my friend’s father went berserk and killed my friend, his younger brother and his mother, and then proceeded to hang himself. I remember talking to him the week before about a project we had in lit class. His extended family took the project because it was the last thing he worked on before the incident. I had grief counselors talk to me for every class I had with him (Which was almost all of them). Our school still has a Tree and a memorial dedicated to him.”

4.“Probably David Meirhofer’s murders. Among other things he snatched a seven year old girl out of her tent while her family was camping, molested her, then strangled her to death. They caught him because he called her mother to taunt her a year later.”

5. “Neighbors that lived across the road from me were having domestic issues. The wife brings over a box of stuff for us to stash because she is afraid he will steal/burn it. We stash it for her no problem. A week later she is missing, the following week they found her dead, stuffed in a box in his storage unit. He got life. We gave the box of stuff to her daughter.”

6. “Guy beat his pregnant girlfriend to death in front of her kids, then beat her 8 and 6 year old to death. Couldn’t bring himself to beat the 2 year old to death so he threw him in the dryer and turned it on.”

7. “When I was a kid one of my neighbors and his sister murdered their mom by bashing her head in with a real heavy frying pan and then strangled her with the phone cord. (Back when phones had cords) because the mother told the son that he couldn’t take his underage sister out with him to a party. So they killed her and left her body in the closet and then went to the party like nothing happened.”

8. “I live in a (relatively) rural county in England, so we normally don’t have many crimes that you could consider too bad.

About three years ago a 17 year girl I’d met once or twice went missing, she was popular and the community really pulled together in trying to find her. She was also the daughter of a detective who works in our town.

Turns out she was murdered by another lad I’d also met a few times. He was a bit older (22 I think) He seemed okay when I met him, a little cocky but nothing too unusual. He was a photographer who once staged a picture with one of my friends where she was hanging by the neck with a bag on her head. Pretty strange stuff, but I assumed it was all in the name of art.

He’d been rejected by this girl so he lured her to his house on the pretense of taking modelling photos. He strangled her to death when she got there and dumped her body miles away.

Apparently the cops found essays he’d been writing obsessively about her. He’d also taken pictures labelled “before-during-after” of her murder, so it was obviously pre-meditated.

He was given a whole-life sentence (which are very rare in the UK) so chances are he’ll never get to see the light of day again.”

9. “My neighbor that became our family’s friend had a nice step dad. He used to give me rides sometimes. We lived in a bad part of Miami (think inner city, not South Beach) and my nickname there was “smart girl” because I’m the only one in “the hood” that went to college.

Anyway, I moved away and apparently one day my friend’s mom told his step dad she wanted to leave him. He went insane. He grabbed his gun and told her she’s going to die before she leaves or something like that. My friend’s little sister was there too and was crying the whole time (she was like 16). My friend stepped between his step dad and his mom. His step dad told him if he didn’t move he’d kill him too.

He didn’t move. He killed my friend, then the mom. He turned to the little girl and said he couldn’t kill her and that he was so sorry. Then he killed himself.”

10. “The murder of Maddie Clifton. An 8 year old girl went missing in Jacksonville, FL and it became a huge national story in 1998. There was a massive hunt to find her by law enforcement and local residents. Everyone was looking. It’s all anyone talked about. A week into the search, a mother went into her son’s room while he was at school to clean it after the stench coming from it became overwhelming. His waterbed seemed to be leaking. When she looked more closely, she discovered Maddie’s body stuffed inside the pedestal of the bed.

The woman’s son was only 14 years old. He said him and Maddie were playing baseball, and when he hit the ball, it hit Maddie in the eye causing her to bleed. He says he panicked when she wouldn’t stop screaming, and said his father was abusive and was afraid what would happen to him if he she told on him. So, he dragged Maddie inside, stabbed her 11 times and beat her to death with the baseball bat.

Horrible, tragic story.”

11. “A woman murdered an expectant mother and cut the baby out, drove off, then called 911 in an attempt to pass the baby off as her own. I was just off work around that time that night and definitely drove by that exact spot before they found the body. It’s right off the highway. Creepy shit…”

12. “Our neighbor on our street was having an affair and decided it was a good idea to kill her husband then burn the house down so she could be with her pilot boyfriend.

Stupid thing was her boyfriend used to come into one local bar, said he was never that serious about her and that she was clingy, even went so far as to try and get him to be her alibi. All this happened while we were on vacation, weirdest trip home ever.”

13. “If you guys aren’t aware what’s going on in the Philippines. Most drug users/dealers are now being killed by unknown assailants. Just last week we have 2 people dumped near where I live with their heads fully wrapped with tape and hands as well with a cardboard sign saying “I’m a drug dealer. Don’t be like me” (translated from our native language).”

14. “Grew up in a small town north of the bay area, while watching a documentary about Jim Jones my teacher started crying. Found out for several years Jones’s church was in our town (2miles from my house) and after everyone committed ‘suicide’ in Guyana they ran a list of names on the local news. A large number of previous students and their parents were on the list. The shit didn’t go down in my town but a whole generation where I grew up lost friends and family to that guy and the church (with a guard tower) still stands to this day but with a different denomination.”

15. “When I was a baby there was this nice couple that lived down the street from me. No kids, middle aged, average couple. The wife and my mom would talk sometimes – casual pleasant neighborly chatter. Apparently this lady was a total sweetheart and was loved around town.

So one day my mom is driving home, and the couple’s house is surrounded by police cruisers. Turns out the wife commit suicide by shotgun. The problem was – she shot herself twice.

For months they were investigating the husband…they were so close to having the evidence that they needed to nail him for the murder.

One day, my mom and grandma were going to the store. When they left, he was sitting in his driveway in his car. He waved at them as they left. When they get home, there are police and an ambulance outside his house – he was slumped over dead in his car – suicide by carbon monoxide.

They literally saw him as he was killing himself after he killed his wife. Yikes.”

16. “Andrea Yates drowning her five kids. Happened five minutes away and our family still sees her ex husband and his new family on occasion. They’re very nice.”

17. “Let’s see… Where to start? This list doesn’t even include the stuff related to the meth epidemic.

(1990’s) A guy cut another dude into pieces with a carving knife and stashed the body in the deep freezer in his apartment. The police only found them a week later.

(2000’s) A guy got into an argument with their cousin at the club, drove to their house and chucked a firebomb inside. The fire killed all five of their kids, who were home at the time.

(2000’s again) Another guy heard that his estranged parents had a huge life insurance policy in their name. One night, he left home, drove to his parents’ place in Iowa, and killed almost everyone (6 people) with a shotgun, then drove home to eat dinner, while awaiting the news. He was only caught because his 7 year old niece hid in the closet the whole time and she was able to tell who did it.

(2015-now) Several fatal shootings and beatings that have killed a few people. Heroin epidemic.

Oh also, Michael Swango AKA “Dr. Death”, a serial killer known for poisoning victims (4-60; true number unknown), worked as an EMT around the area here in the 80’s.

So, yeah, Central Illinois is just low-key slang for ‘Trevor Philips country’.”

18. “Just happened this month, a mother of a one month old punched her baby to death because she was tired of feeding it. She then blamed the father. Fucked up.”

19. “Whitey here. I live in a small south east town. Back in the 80’s the town was still pretty segregated school wise. Where the railroad tracks once ran through town, was the diving line. South side of the railroad was probably 99.9% black. My backyard fence was part of that dividing line. When I was 10, my parents fostered a black boy my age. He lived in my neighborhood, played on my baseball team. His dad went to prison up in NY and the boy lived with us for 4 years. He moved back when his dad got out. But 30 years later, we still tell people we are brothers.

‘D’ taught me a lot about black community. Especially about times when crimes are committed and the whole black community knows who did it. But don’t tell because “fuck the police” or retaliation from the criminal.

we lived 2 blocks from the closest convenience store/arcade. People walking to the store from the south side of the tracks, walked by my house. It wasn’t the wild west or anything. We may not have gone to the same school sometimes, but we only had 1 recreation department so we played sports together. So we always saw people we knew at the store.

But there was this one guy. For the late 80’s this dude was pretty out and flamboyant when it came to being gay. Remember those 70’s and 80’s short shorts with the stripe. If you hung em just right, your balls were exposed.

Anyway, dude used to walk up and down the street, short short, flip flops, tank top t shirt, medium size afro, and usually sucking on a sucker. He was very friendly. He would stop and talk. He acted like he was a girl. He was alright. My sister and her friend were nice to him. He stopped and talked to them if they were ever about.

Fast Forward. So the dude is found in the bathroom at the ballfield. He had been murdered. Just fucked up big time. Beat to hell and back. And the story every one has head as an urban legend before. They had cut his dick off and put it in his mouth. His balls were in his hand and a broom stick had been shoved in his ass.

No suspects.

Year later, out in the county, a white sherriff’s deputy off duty from another county happens to be in our jurisdiction, checking on his parents’ house. Happens to catch 2 black guys robbing the house. He shoots and kills both after a scuffle.

Oddly enough, under routine drug test, because of the shooting, cocaine shows up on his system. This story is really fishy. Investigation goes on for a long time. The cops finally drop the case, declare it self defense or what have.

This is where my foster brother ‘D’ comes into play. Years later. We’re in our 20’s, shooting the shit and somehow bring up the murder of the gay dude. I was like, ‘I can’t believe they never solved that case.’

D was like what you talking about? Everybody knew who did it. What? He asked, ‘remember the 2 black dudes the off duty cop killed breaking into his parents house?’

Yea I remember that.

Well those were the dudes that did it. Everybody in the “hood” knew it was them. They were always terrorizing everybody. And the house they were breaking into and got caught? Drug deal. Those 2 dudes were dealing drugs, and that white guy, off duty sheriff deputy from another county. Shot em in the middle of the deal.

So two drug dealers/murderers are murdered by a crooked cop, but in the end, I don’t really consider that justice for our friendly neighborhood gay boy that probably never hurt a flea in his 20 years of life.

You may not have any love for ‘the man’ or ‘the police’ but how can a community be silent when innocent people are hurt?”

20. “Second week in my new apartment and my neighbor gets robbed and stabbed. I heard the whole encounter and was the one that called the cops.”

21. “I was emancipated really young. I just moved into emergency housing commission and had to sleep in the lounge room because it had the only light bulb and I’m scared of the dark.

For anyone not in Australia Housing Commission is cheap units or houses owned by the government and rented to disadvantaged people. Mostly junkies and welfare bludgers.

Anyway I was sleeping in the lounge room which had the front door attached when I hear the most blood curling screams.

One junkie had poured boiling water over another chick, stabbed her repeatedly and cut off one of her tits.

I was laying maybe 10 meters away.”

22. “A child was raped and murdered. Guy was arrested and he was killed within 24 hours of being arrested and in a community cell of like 6 inmates instead of segregation he died and no one in the cell seen it.”

23. “I only remember some of the details as I was on holidays at the time and only heard second hand what happened. So a guy who lived around the corner had an argument with his wife over something, got pissed off and then shot her. People heard the gunshot and called the police, which prompted him to run away in his car down the main road about 2km to his parents house where he got into their gun locker, killed his parents and then had a standoff with the police that lasted a couple of hours and ending in him shooting himself.”

24. “We had a group of people who would pretend to be the cops, dressed in all black and wore ski masks and stuff, knock on your door, say they had a warrant, and if you opened it up, they would force their way in and rob you.

This went on for months, like, month after month after month. They decided they were above the law, so their crimes kept getting worse and worse, one of their later houses they beat an old man until he had jaw, facial, and skull fractures so bad he had to have a life flight to a major trauma center where he had emergency surgery. The next old couple they killed.

They were sure the local police couldn’t do anything, the newspaper even said the police had nothing to go on, and it just kept getting worse. One of their last home invasions, they just killed the homeowner as he opened the door for absolutely no reason.

I realized that if someone had defended themselves earlier in the chain of criminality, things never would have reached this point. I ended up getting a Ring Video Doorbell and a Strikemaster II door reinforcements for each external door. I keep firearms in electronic safes ready to use at any moment. Nothing like that is going to happen to my family.”

25. “There was a family in the area I used to live in and I played soccer with the middle daughter. It was three girls — two were adults and one was still in high school — and the parents. The parents were very religious, the mother especially, and they had a lot of beliefs that I (and many people) found…strange.

The eldest daughter (whose name I don’t recall) had a serious mental illness that she managed perfectly well when she lived out of home. She had a job, had a decent life and all was well. The relationship she was in fell apart and she had to move back home for financial reasons. One of the rules her parents had was that she wasn’t to take her meds anymore because they weren’t what they considered ‘godly.’

Things deteriorated over time and the parents continued to withhold her medications. Now, I have a chronic mental illness myself and without my meds things descend into chaos quite quickly so I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like for her with her illness being more serious than mine. Her parents were told by their church to pray over her and everything would be ok.

As I’m sure you can imagine things were not ok. She lost her tenuous grip on reality and became unstable. She attacked her family while doing battle with a series of hallucinations that were telling her awful things about her parents and sisters. She took a sharp kitchen knife and went after her youngest sister (the middle one that I knew wasn’t home at the time) and stabbed her to death in the kitchen. Her father kept trying to defend his youngest child while trying to settle the eldest and he sustained serious injuries. The eldest followed him when he ran from the house to get help and she caught him from behind and stabbed him multiple times in the neck. He died on the front lawn. The mother was injured as well but appeared not to be the target of the eldest daughter’s hallucinations and she managed to survive.

The girl was taken down by tasers when the police arrived — they were called by neighbours who heard the commotion — and she was sent to a high security facility where she still is now. She was very obviously not in control of herself at the time so she avoided criminal charges and the mother moved away from the area.

I feel for the mother most; she essentially lost her whole family. The youngest and her husband had been killed and the middle child moved away eventually too, changing her surname when she got married and chose to disconnect from her mother. I know she blames her mum for what happened because she was the one who withheld the medication. I can imagine that the mum blames herself too.

When that happened it helped my mum to put my illness into perspective — if I’m treated properly, everything will be alright. It was a “there, but for the grace of God, go we” moment.

That was the worst crime that happened in our area for quite a while. Years before that there was a massacre (the Milperra Masacre, if you want to google it) between rival biker gangs who had, and continue to have, a presence in that particular suburb. Since then there was a child drowned during an exorcism after parents were told by a priest (or something) that the kid had a demon inside him and trying to force it out was the only way to save him…he was going through puberty, that’s all.”

26. “The kidnapping of Michael Dunahee. He is still just considered missing but its been 20+ years. You’d have to be pretty optimistic to believe he didn’t meet a horrible fate. He was just a small boy when taken and the incident absolutely ROCKED My small crime free city. It changed everything…parents kept a much more careful eye on us kids..many of our freedoms were taken away…I still feel sick when i think about what horrible things must’ve happened to that poor boy.”

27. “Growing up two brothers murdered their parents and put them in bags in the Attic. They did this because their parents would not let them go to a party nor own a cell phone, this was when cell phone were just becoming affordable for the upper middle class.”

28. “DEA bust next door, serial killers dumping ground five minutes from my house, and Sandy hook is within a 30 minutes drive.”

29. “We sold our house when I was 9 and moved a few miles away. The couple we sold the house to was nice enough, but a little odd. I don’t even know what it was, but even I noticed they were weird, and I was a little kid.

Fast forward about 12 years. I’m in college and these people have a son themselves. One day the man cornered his wife in the dining room and blew her head off with a shotgun. They had been having marital trouble prior to that but I’m not sure what exactly set him off. Kind of creepy to know that happened in my old house.”

30. “The girl who got stabbed by the two slenderman girls? My second cousin. My younger siblings actually played with her 2 weeks prior at a family gathering. Crazy.”

31. “Some kid beat another to kid to death with a bat over an argument that had to do with something related to weed. Mind you the population in my town is like 8,000. This was crazy.”

32. “Well, we’ve got a serial killer running around now – he’s killed seven people so far. (Referring to the current serial killer loose in Phoenix, Arizona).”

33. “I live in Downtown Dallas. I was packing for an international trip the night of the police shooting. I took note of the crowds after work and just made a mental note to “stay inside for awhile” after I got home. It wasn’t until I walked downstairs to get some tacos at around 10pm and a couple cops with sniper rifles were posted up in our lobby and told me to “get the fuck back upstairs, we are on lockdown!” that I realized some shit went down. What I witnessed that night and the following day really changed my perspective on a lot. They didn’t show the majority of it on the news. I have always been very supportive and stood behind a lot of social movements…but there is zero excuse for a 14 year old to spit on a cop, tell me I was a “Mexican bitch” that he “ought to rape,” loot a 7-11, or do any of the insane things that I saw.”

34. The Snowtown, Australia Murders

“In my city some guys went around torturing people to death and then dissolved their bodies in vats of acid. But they used the wrong type of acid (Not strong enough) and people complained of a foul smell, so the police investigated and found semi-liquified remains in barrels.”

35. “Two people ordered a pizza and killed the teenage driver because they wanted to know what it was like to kill a man.”

Crime has been around us for many centuries. Every day when we open a newspaper or turn on TV almost all we read or hear is about criminals and their illegal actions. According to the law, people who commit a crime must be punished, imprisoned or even sentenced to a death penalty. Without punishment our life in the society would be less secure, although sometimes punishment isn’t strict enough, to my mind.

Some kinds of crimes are as old as the human society (such as stealing, pick-pocketing, vandalism, assault or domestic violence, murder and manslaughter), others are a more recent phenomenon. Armed robbery of stores and banks, hacking into computers (so called “cyber frauds”), corruption or forgery of money and documents, for instance, are some of them. The 20^th century has also seen the appearance of organized crimes such as drug-trafficking, drug-smuggling and hijacking. Statistics show an alarming rise of violent crimes and crimes to do with the illegal sale of arms across the world. Unfortunately women and children often become the victims of crime. Sometimes criminals kidnap rich people or their kids and ask for a ransom to be paid for them.

Besides violent crimes, there are so called “white-collar crimes” in our modern society. These are frauds when a person isn’t physically threatened or hurt. Among them are tax evasion (when people are accused of not paying taxes on purpose), bribery, identity theft (when a criminal steals personal information of another person in order to use his credit cards or bank accounts, for example).

To crown it all, we must regret that today a great deal of crimes is committed by teenagers who want to become independent as soon as possible and to find a royal road to getting much money. Teenagers use drugs and drink alcohol, so they can’t control themselves. Moreover, modern TV programs and films containing much violence and sex often have huge and negative influence on teenagers.

In conclusion I should say that crime prevention in our society is an extremely difficult and complicated task because we should change our social and moral principles at large.

Перевод 

Преступления окружают нас многие столетия. Каждый день, когда мы открываем газету или включаем телевизор, почти все, что мы читаем или слышим – это преступники и их противоправные действия. По закону люди, совершившие преступления, должны быть наказаны, заключены в тюрьму или даже приговорены к смертной казни. Без наказания наша жизнь в обществе была бы менее безопасной, хотя иногда наказание бывает недостаточно строгим, по моему мнению.

Некоторые виды преступлений стары, как само человеческое общество (такие как воровство, карманная кража, вандализм, разбой и домашнее насилие, умышленное и непредумышленное убийство), другие виды  стали более недавним явлением. Вооруженное ограбление магазинов и банков, взлом компьютеров (так называемый «кибер-криминал»), коррупция или подделка банкнот и документов, к примеру, являются некоторыми из них. 20-й век также увидел появление организованных преступлений, таких как контрабанда и незаконный оборот наркотиков и захват самолета. Статистика показывает тревожный рост жестоких преступлений и криминала, связанного с незаконной продажей оружия по всему миру. К сожалению, часто женщины и дети становятся жертвами криминала. Иногда преступники похищают богатых людей или их детей и требуют за них выкуп.

Помимо жестоких преступлений, в нашем современном обществе существуют так называемые должностные преступления. Это мошеннические действия, когда человеку не угрожают физически и не причиняют боль. Среди них – уклонение от налогов (когда люди обвиняются в преднамеренной неуплате налогов), взяточничество, хищение персональных данных (когда преступник похищает личную информацию другого человека с целью использования его кредитных карт или банковских счетов, к примеру).

Ну и наконец, мы должны с сожалением признать, что сегодня большое количество преступлений совершается подростками, которые хотят стать независимыми как можно быстрее и найти легкий способ добычи денег. Подростки употребляют наркотики и алкоголь, поэтому они не контролируют себя. Более того, современное ТВ и фильмы содержат много жестокости и секса и часто имеют огромное негативное влияние на подростков.

В завершение хочу сказать, что предотвращение криминала в нашем обществе  является крайне трудной и сложной задачей, потому что нам следует менять наши общественные и моральные принципы в целом.

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A coincidence is defined as a series of events and circumstances which seemingly have no apparent connection to each other but wind up being related by pure chance. Whenever a mysterious crime occurs, investigators will attempt to solve it by piecing together the events and circumstances surrounding the case. However, complications can ensue when a coincidence enters the picture. An investigation can be seriously hampered when one is forced to look into events that, at first glance, appear to be connected to the crime but turn out to be nothing more than a bizarre coincidence. In many of these cases, the coincidence had no direct connection to the crime but made for an interesting “story-within-a-story.”

10The Deaths of Iqbal Al-Hilli and Her Secret Ex-Husband

On September 5, 2012, a shocking mass murder took place near Chevaline, France. A British tourist named Saad al-Hilli traveled on a mountainside road with his wife, Iqbal; their two young daughters, Zainab and Zeena; and Iqbal’s elderly mother, Suhalia al-Allaf. Sometime that afternoon, their vehicle was ambushed near Lake Annency and riddled with bullets. Saad, Iqbal, and Suhalia were all shot to death. Zeena survived the attack by staying hidden, and Zainab was wounded but managed to pull through.

A French cyclist named Sylvain Mollier was also found dead at the scene, presumably at the wrong place at the wrong time. To this day, investigators have been unable to determine who was responsible or what their motive might have been, and the shooting has been described as the perfect crime.” If that wasn’t enough, the murders were also followed by an astonishing coincidence.

None of Iqbal’s family or friends knew this wasn’t her first marriage. In February 1999, Iqbal was working in the U.S., and, to get a green card and remain in the country, she agreed to marry an oil worker named Jim Thompson. The marriage did not work out, and the couple split up the following year.

When Iqbal left the country, she eventually remarried and started a family with Saad al-Hilli but never told anybody about her previous marriage to Thompson. However, the marriage ceased to be a secret after a stunning turn of events. Mere hours after Iqbal al-Hilli’s murder, Jim Thompson suffered a fatal heart attack while driving through his hometown of Natchez, Mississippi. Naturally, there was some suspicion of foul play, but it appears that Thompson’s death had no connection to his ex-wife and was nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence.^[1]

9The Disappearances of Stacy Peterson and Her Mother

One of the most sensational crime stories of recent years was the disappearance of 23-year-old Stacy Peterson. In 2007, Stacy lived in Bollingbrook, Illinois, with her police officer husband, Drew Peterson, 30 years older and on his fourth marriage. On October 28, Stacy went missing, and since her marriage to Drew was troubled at the time, suspicion immediately turned to him.

Three years earlier, Drew’s third wife, Kathleen Savio, was found dead in her bathtub in what was initially believed to be an accidental drowning. Drew collected a substantial life insurance policy, but Stacy’s disappearance prompted another investigation into Kathleen’s death. In 2009, Drew was charged with his ex-wife’s murder and eventually sentenced to 38 years in prison. He remains the prime suspect in Stacy’s disappearance, but her body has never been found.

Stacy’s disappearance was just the latest in a long line of tragedies for her family. In an eerie coincidence, Stacy’s 40-year-old mother, Christie Cales, had also vanished under suspicious circumstances nine years earlier. Christie had six children but lost two of them during the 1980s when they were infants. Christie abused drugs and alcohol, was often in trouble with the law, and had a turbulent relationship with her husband.

The couple often neglected their children, but when they divorced in 1990, Christie’s husband got sole custody. In 1998, Christie was living with her boyfriend in Blue Island, Illinois. On March 11, she apparently walked out of her home and never returned, and that was the last anyone ever saw of her. Much like with Stacy, Christie’s family has always suspected that her spouse was responsible for her disappearance, but there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him. Officially, both Christie Cales and her daughter remain missing.^[2]

8The Murder Victim Who Succumbed to a Rare Blood Disease

In 1964, 33-year-old Calvin Jones was involved in a relationship with 23-year-old Sara Tolbert. On June 13, the Philadelphia couple got into a heated argument inside Jones’s vehicle, and he responded by viciously beating his girlfriend with a rubber hose 15 times. Jones then spent the next several hours driving around with Tolbert’s body inside his car, and, at some unspecified point, she died. Jones finally decided to drive to a police station and confess to murder.

He had previously spent time in prison for trying to poison his wife, so it seemed like his punishment would be severe. However, Jones would not face a murder charge when he went to court, as a remarkable set of circumstances would allow him to plead guilty to the lesser charge of aggravated assault and battery.

In a stunning coincidence, it turned out that even if her boyfriend did not beat her, Sara Tolbert still would have died the following morning. After a medical examination was done on Tolbert’s body, it was discovered that she was suffering from a rare blood disease called sickle-cell anemia.

At the time Jones assaulted her, Tolbert only had hours to live before the disease became fatal. Two different medical examiners officially concluded that Tolbert died of natural causes, so it was impossible to prove that Jones’s beating played any role in her death. In the end, the judge agreed to accept Jones’s guilty plea to assault and battery but stated that the defendant would have been indicted for murder were it not for the unlikely coincidence.^[31]

7The Wrongful Conviction of Dennis Maher

On the evening of November 16, 1983, a woman walking through Lowell, Massachusetts, was attacked by a male assailant and raped. The following night, another woman was attacked by a man in the exact same area, but she managed to escape and provide a description to the police. Later that evening, a resident named Dennis Maher was detained, and both victims positively identified him as their attacker.

Maher would be charged with the attacks, and after an unsolved rape from the previous summer was also pinned on him, he was sentenced to life in prison. Years later, he got in touch with The Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to helping wrongfully convicted people. They successfully lobbied for DNA testing on the evidence, and it excluded Maher as the perpetrator of the rapes. In 2003, he was released after serving 19 years in prison for crimes he didn’t commit.

Unfortunately for Maher, he had been railroaded because of an unbelievable series of coincidences. The second victim told police that her attacker wore a red-hooded sweatshirt and military-style jacket and had threatened her with a knife. Later that night, while exiting a liquor store, Maher garnered a cop’s attention because he wore a red-hooded sweatshirt. A military jacket and a knife were later found in Maher’s vehicle.^[4]

Given the circumstances, it seemed perfectly logical to believe Maher was the attacker, especially after the victims identified him. However, at the time, Maher was a sergeant in the United States Army, so it wasn’t unusual for him to have a military jacket and military knife in his vehicle. After DNA testing exonerated Maher, it became apparent the victims who identified him were mistaken and that he was just a tragic victim of bad luck. The real perpetrator was never found.

6The Mary Morris Murders

On the morning of October 12, 2000, 48-year-old Mary Henderson Morris left her Houston home. Later that day, her burned car was found in a remote area with Mary’s torched body inside. Curiously, the victim’s wedding ring was missing. By all accounts, Mary was a loving wife and mother without any enemies, so no one could figure out why she was murdered in such a horrific fashion.

However, the case took a surprising turn three days later when a 39-year-old woman was found dead inside her car in the same vicinity. She had been beaten and shot with her own gun in a failed attempt to make her death look like suicide—the victim’s name: Mary McGinnis Morris.

Shortly before her death, Mary McGinnis Morris had made a frantic phone call to 911 while being attacked. Attention soon turned toward Mary’s husband, Mike Morris, who stood to collect a substantial life insurance policy from his wife’s death. While Mike had an alibi during the time of Mary’s murder, phone records showed that he made a four-minute call to Mary’s cell phone two hours after her frantic call to 911.

Mike claimed that no one answered the call and let Mary’s phone ring for four straight minutes. This led to a theory that Mike hired someone to murder his wife but that they killed another person named Mary Morris by mistake. A contract killer may have taken Mary Henderson Morris’s missing wedding ring as proof that they completed the job. However, police have since leaned toward the position that the two Mary Morris murders are nothing more than a bizarre coincidence and have no connection to each other. Nevertheless, they both remain unsolved.^[5]

5The Disappearances of the Palmer Brothers

In missing person cases, it’s not uncommon for siblings or family members to disappear together. However, it’s extremely rare for two siblings to go missing at different times under completely different circumstances. In 1999, 15-year-old Michael Palmer lived in Wasilla, Alaska, and was the youngest of three brothers. During the early morning hours of June 4th, Michael and three friends left a graduation party on their bicycles, but Michael got so far behind that they lost sight of him.

When Michael never returned home, he was reported missing. Michael’s bicycle was later discovered in the Little Susitna River, and his wet, muddy sneakers were found 180 meters (600 ft) away. A search of the river turned up no trace of Michael’s body, and he has never been found.

Believe it or not, Michael’s older brother, Chucky, would also disappear under mysterious circumstances over a decade later. On April 13, 2010, 30-year-old Chucky was staying with friends and relatives at a cabin in the Talkeetna Mountains. That night, they decided to take a ride through the area on their snowmobiles. However, much like his younger brother, Chucky became separated from his group at some point and was never seen again.

The following day, his snowmobile was found, but there was no sign of Chucky or any footprints in the area. Chris Palmer, the oldest sibling in the family, had stayed behind at the cabin the night Chucky disappeared. He now had to go through the ordeal of searching for a missing younger brother—for the second time in 11 years—and coming up empty.^[6]

4Couple Reports Murder Before Being Charged With Unrelated Murder

Shortly after midnight on July 3, 1991, 21-year-old Kirsten Davis was finishing up a trip from her hometown of Boulder, Colorado, to visit a friend in Vidalia, Georgia. Davis was approximately 8 kilometers (5 mi) away from her destination when another vehicle pulled up alongside her station wagon. Someone from the vehicle pulled out a shotgun and fired it at Davis’s head. She was killed instantly, and her car overturned on the side of the road.

Shortly after, a young married couple named Tracy and Karen Wilkes happened upon Davis’s overturned car and reported her murder to the police. In a strange coincidence, the couple would soon find themselves embroiled in another murder in the area—which they themselves committed.

About 45 days after the Davis murder, Tracy and Karen Wilkes burglarized and burned down the Treutlen County home of 69-year-old Moril V. Hudson, shooting him three times in the head. The couple attempted to flee the area and escape to Alabama. When Tracy decided to return home to retrieve some items, he was subsequently arrested. Shortly thereafter, Karen was found living in a trailer in Alabama and had the murder weapon in her possession.

On August 23, they were both formally charged with murder, burglary, and arson. Naturally, authorities started to suspect that the couple who found Kirsten Davis’s body was actually responsible for her murder. However, they both passed polygraph tests, and there is no evidence they committed the crime. Tracy and Karen pleaded guilty to the Hudson murder and went to prison, but Kirsten Davis’s senseless—and seemingly random—murder is still unsolved.^[7]

3The Lucia De Berk Trial

One of the most sensational murder cases in the history of the Netherlands was the trial of Lucia de Berk, where the very concept of coincidence was introduced as evidence. De Berk worked as a pediatric nurse at three different hospitals in The Hague. On September 4, 2001, De Berk was present when an infant girl died at the Juliana Children’s Hospital. Her co-workers soon expressed concern after noticing a pattern: De Berk just happened to be on duty during a large number of deaths and resuscitations at the hospital, most of them involving infants.

After an investigation, the hospital concluded that these deaths were unnatural and decided to press charges against De Berk. On March 24, 2003, she was sentenced to life imprisonment on four counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder.

Since there was no physical evidence against De Berk or any witnesses to her crimes, statistics were used as the lynchpin of the prosecution’s case. They claimed that De Berk’s presence in the hospital when all these deaths took place could not be coincidental. An expert testified that the odds of it being a coincidence were 1 in 342 million. However, De Berk had numerous supporters who believed she was the victim of a miscarriage of justice and appealed her conviction.^[8]

They sought to debunk the statistics from De Berk’s trial, which had been presented by an unqualified law professor. A professor of mathematical statistics argued that the odds of all these deaths being a coincidence were 1 in 48. The case was heard in front of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, which agreed that the statistical evidence was flawed and granted a new trial. A new investigation concluded that De Berk’s alleged murders were likely natural deaths. In April 2010, she received a not guilty verdict and was exonerated.

2The Elisa Lam Case

Elisa Lam’s 2013 disappearance was strange, to say the very least. It unfolded at the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, a place marked by a history of death, suicide, and serial killers. Days before a hotel worker discovered Lam’s body in the main water tank, the LAPD released surveillance footage of Lam acting bizarrely in an elevator. The oddities definitely didn’t end after the video went viral, baffling even the most rigid skeptics. Some of the coincidences surrounding Lam’s disappearance and death are downright creepy.

Several days before Lam’s body was found by LAPD in the hotel’s water tower, guests had complained about the low water pressure and weird tasting and discolored water. The film Dark Water, released in 2005, has a basic storyline that mirrors Lam’s case. There’s also the case of a death metal musician who posted a video about staying at the Cecil hotel a year before Lam. Some of his music mentions women being chased and murdered, sparking some to attempt to connect him to Lam’s death. After Lam died, a tuberculosis outbreak plagued Los Angeles, especially among the homeless community in Skid Row by the Cecil Hotel. The test for tuberculosis was literally her name in reverse order: LAM-ELISA, which stands for Lipoarabinomannan (LAM) Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA). Conspiracy theorists immediately speculated that Lam was effectively a biological weapon of sorts sent to deal with an out-of-control homeless population in LA.

The questions surrounding Lam’s disappearance and death have not been thoroughly answered. However, her death was ruled accidental by the LA County medical examiner.^[9]

1The Trunk Murders

During one seven-year period, the town of Brighton, England, had two unrelated murders in which female victims were dismembered and found inside trunks. There were also two similar murders nearby. In 1927, a trunk containing the body of a dismembered woman named Minnie Boniati was found at Charing Cross Station in London. Her killer, John Robinson, was soon charged with the murder and hanged.

Seven years later, two trunk murders took place within one month of each other. On June 17, 1934, an unclaimed trunk was discovered at Brighton Railway Station containing the dismembered torso of a young woman. Her head, arms, and legs were missing but, one day later, a suitcase containing the legs was found at another railway station. The victim was five months pregnant, but there was no indication about who she was. To this day, the identity of the woman and her killer remains unknown.

In an attempt to solve the murder, police started searching through residences in the area. Incredibly, they would find a trunk containing another dismembered woman. The decomposing victim was identified as a 42-year-old prostitute named Violette Kaye, who had been missing since May. When Kaye disappeared, her boyfriend Tony Mancini told everyone she left for Paris. The trunk containing Kaye’s body was found inside Mancini’s flat, and he was arrested and charged with her murder. At trial, Mancini’s defense team argued that Kaye had been killed by someone else.

When Mancini found her, he was worried about being accused of the murder, so he decided to dismember her body and hide it inside a trunk. Believe it or not, the jury bought Mancini’s story and acquitted him. In 1976, Mancini finally confessed to Kaye’s murder, but he could not be tried for the crime again. Despite their similarities, the two Brighton trunk murders were determined to be unrelated.^[10]

Robin Warder is a budding Canadian screenwriter who has used his encyclopedic movie knowledge to publish numerous articles at Cracked.com. He is also the co-owner of a pop culture website called The Back Row and recently worked on a sci-fi short film called Jet Ranger of Another Tomorrow. Feel free to contact him here.

Текст Have you been the victim of a crime? с переводом.

Have you been the victim of a crime?
Вы были когда-нибудь жертвой преступления?

Tue Oct 26 16:34:06 Debbie A couple of months ago, I received a letter out of the blue saying I’d won a prize in an international lottery. I couldn’t even remember buying a ticket! Anyway, I contacted the people the letter was from, who asked me to send them a ‘fee’ to process my winnings. Like an idiot, I fell for it and sent them the money. I realised it was a scam when I didn’t hear from them again. So basically, the ‘prizes’ don’t exist. These terrible fraudsters are just trying to trick gullible people (like me!) into sending them money. The police say they’ve been investigating this crime for a while now, but they haven’t found the culprits yet.		Вторник, 26-е октября, 16:34:06, Дебби Пару месяцев назад, как гром среди ясного неба, я получила письмо, в котором было сказано, что я выиграла приз в международную лотерею. Я даже не могла вспомнить, что покупала билет! Как бы то ни было, я связалась с людьми, от которых пришло письмо и которые попросили меня выслать им оплату за обработку выигрыша. Как идиотка, я повелась на это и отправила им деньги. Я поняла, что это был обман, когда я перестала получать от них известия. Так что, в сущности, “призы” не существуют. Эти ужасные мошенники просто пытаются обманным путем выманить деньги у доверчивых людей (как я). В полиции сказали, что они уже некоторое время расследуют это преступление, но пока они еще не обнаружили преступников.
Mon Nov 1 09:03:12 Steve Burglars recently broke into our house while we were sleeping upstairs! My sister and I heard a noise, so we woke up our dad, who called the police. By the time the police arrived, though, the burglars had gone. While we were checking what they had taken, a neighbour reported a burglary at their house too. The police caught them red-handed! My dad’s got to give evidence in court in a few weeks!		Понедельник, 1-е ноября, 09:03:12, Стив Недавно в наш дом проникли грабители, пока мы спали на верхнем этаже! Мы с сестрой услышали шум, поэтому разбудили папу. который вызвал полицию. Хотя к тому моменту, как полиция приехала, грабители убежали. Пока мы проверяли, что они взяли, сосед сообщил об ограбление его дома тоже. Полиция поймала их с поличным! Через несколько недель мой отец должен давать свидетельские показания в суде!
Thur Oct 28 11:14:32 David I used to think crime was just something that happened to other people until I got mugged on the way home from school last year. The attacker just came out of nowhere, threatened me with a knife, grabbed my mobile phone and ran away. Fortunately, I was able to identify the mugger from a photo at the police station. He was a well-known criminal in the area, so the police knew where to find him. Anyway, he confessed to the crime, the police arrested him, and he received a two-year prison sentence! I was shaken up and bruised, but it could have been a lot worse. I even got my phone back!		Четверг, 29-е октября, 11:14:32, Дэвид Раньше я думал, что преступление было чем-то, случающимся с другими людьми, пока на меня не напали уличные грабители в прошлом году по дороге домой со школы. Нападавший появился ниоткуда, пригрозил мне ножом, схватил мой мобильный телефон и убежал. К счастью, я смог узнать грабителя по фотографии в отделе полиции. Он был известным преступником в этом районе, так что полиция знала, где его найти. Как бы то ни было, он признался в преступлении, полиция арестовала его, и он получил приговор в виде двух лет тюрьмы! Я был перепуган, и у меня были синяки, но все могло бы быть еще хуже. Я даже получил обратно свой телефон!
Sat Oct 30 20:11:54 Anna I was out shopping in the town centre when suddenly, something that looked like bird mess landed on my shoulder! Immediately, a so-called passer by appeared with a cloth to wipe it off. It wasn’t until I reached for my wallet to buy something that I realised it had been stolen. When I reported the crime to the police, I was told that this has been happening a lot lately. These people are professional pickpockets, who use any means they can to distract their victims!		Суббота, 30-е октября, 20:11:54, Анна Я совершала покупки в центре города, когда внезапно что-то, похожее на птичье испражнение, упало мне на плечо! Тут же появился так называемый прохожий с платком, чтобы убрать с меня грязь. И только когда я потянулась за своим кошельком, чтобы кое-что купить, я поняла, что он был украден. Когда я сообщила о преступлении в полицию, мне сказали, что подобное случается много в последнее время. Эти люди – профессиональные карманники, которые используют любые средства, чтобы отвлечь своих жертв!