Many crimes over the years have been described as a “loss of innocence” of one particular city or town, and in the case of Austin, Texas, this crime is unarguably the horrific quadruple murder that took place on the night of December 6th, 1991. Seventeen-year-old girls Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harbison worked at the I … More The Austin Yogurt Shop Murders
In the Midwestern United States, in the summer of 1981, an extraordinary case would make headlines around the nation, a crime that would explore the uncomfortably gray area between the arguable breakdown of the rule of law and the conspiratorial actions of an alleged group of fed-up vigilantes. Residents of the tiny town of Skidmore, … More Ken Rex McElroy
In the winter of 2000, in a Colorado suburb still reeling from a notorious mass murder, a shocking double homicide in a sandwich shop would devastate the community anew. It was the eve of Valentine’s Day, February 13th, and sixteen-year-old high school sophomore Stephanie Hart-Grizzell had spent the Sunday evening doing homework before saying good … More Stephanie Hart-Grizzell & Nick Kunselman: The Subway Murders
It was March 27th, 1971, and off-duty special constable David Nathan was taking a stroll on an island in the River Trent in Staffordshire when he spotted something that appeared to be part of a bag of cement poking out of the soil. Curious, he retrieved a spade and began digging. Unfortunately, what Nathan found … More Pink Socks, aka Fred the Head
The town of Montverde, less than forty miles from downtown Orlando in central Florida, was home to less than four-hundred residents in 1980, and was bordered by Lake Apopka on one side and vast stretches of scenic orange groves on the other. It was also the kind of place where everyone knew their neighbors, and … More Georgia Crews
In November of 1969, a terrifyingly random attack on a Pennsylvania graduate student would leave a community reeling, and police scrambling to unlock a motive in a crime that would come to be known as “the murder in the stacks.” Twenty-two-year-old Betsy Aardsma was originally from the Michigan town of Holland, and after graduating with … More Betsy Aardsma: Murder in the Stacks
Early 1968 would see the first in a series of three related murders committed by an as-yet-unidentified serial killer. In February of that year, in the working-class East End of Glasgow, Scotland, a twenty-five-year-old nurse named Patricia Docker left her four-year-old child in the care of a baby-sitter and went out on the town. She … More The Bible John Murders
In the UK in the summer of 1946, the heartbreaking rape and murder of a schoolgirl in Wales would grab headlines under the chilling appellation of the Little Red Riding Hood Murder. It was June 27th, and twelve-year-old Muriel Joan Drinkwater rode the bus home from Penllergaer Grammar School, near Swansea, as she did every … More Muriel Drinkwater: The Little Red Riding Hood Murder
In the summer of 1966, in Paterson, New Jersey, a triple homicide at a local restaurant would ignite a firestorm of controversy, ultimately leading to a groundswell of pop-culture support, allegations of wrongful conviction, and a big-budget Hollywood film. It was about two-thirty a.m. on the morning of June 17th, 1966. Fifty-one-year-old James Oliver, part … More The Lafayette Bar & Grill Murders
In 1943, amid the bright lights and dark shadows of Hollywood, California, an actor who had been born into a world of privilege would meet a strange and rather ignominious end. Gaspar Griswold Bacon, Jr., who later changed his name to simply David Bacon, was the scion of a wealthy and politically influential family in … More David Bacon: The Masked Marvel Murder
