Nightmare Fuel / Investigation Discovery

By their very nature as True Crime shows, many of the programs broadcast on ID are a ripe source of Nightmare Fuel.

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• Some of the murders are so horrifying that even the hardened cops investigating them break down, to say nothing of the reaction of the victim's loved ones. Doubles as a Tear Jerker.
• The I Almost Got Away With It episode "Got to Get Revenge" details the crime spree of Scott Eizember, one of the worst in Oklahoma history:
  • He has a history of abuse towards women, stalks and threatens his wife until she leaves him, and when she comes to retrieve her belongings, he leaves her a grisly surprise: a life-size model of a woman, made out of raw hamburger meat. It looks like a scene out of a horror film.
  • He similarly abuses his new girlfriend Kathy, tying her up and holding a knife to her throat when she tries to leave him, and threatens to cut her head off. He only releases her after several hours of this.
  • He breaks into Kathy's apartment to try to find her, but she's already left. He vents his rage by destroying all of her belongings in the apartment.
  • When he's jailed for violating his restraining order, he decides to get even with Kathy, breaking into a neighbor's house to watch her parents' house across the street. When the elderly owners return, Eizember holds them at gunpoint as they try to reason with him. The situation escalates until Eizember murders them both, shooting Patsy Cantrell in the back and bludgeoning her husband with the butt of his shotgun until his skull collapses. He then shoots Kathy's teenage son Tyler and severely beats the boy's grandmother. When Tyler manages to get into his truck and drives off, Eizember jumps into the back of the truck with his shotgun and fires more shots at Tyler, nearly killing him, and Tyler is forced to crash the truck on purpose to knock Eizember out, only for him to escape soon after.
  • When he steals a car and runs out of gas in Arkansas, Eizember poses as a stranded motorist and kidnaps Dr. Sam Peebles and his wife at gunpoint, forcing them to drive him from Arkansas to Texas and telling them he's on death row and has nothing to lose. This goes on for six hours until Dr. Peebles becomes convinced Eizember's going to kill them, and manages to draw his own revolver and shoots Eizember several times. This doesn't kill him, and Eizember overpowers Dr. Peebles and beats him with his pistol before trying to shoot his wife in front of him, with her life only being spared because the gun he'd stolen didn't have a firing pin. When finally caught, Eizember shows no remorse for his victims but blames them for not doing what he told them to do.
• The Killer Beside Me focuses on cases involving deadly coworkers and their often totally blindsided victims.
• Most Evil focuses on serial killers, ranking their deeds on a scale of 1 (self-defensive killers with no signs of psychopathy) to 22 (psychopathic torture-murderers). Each episode depicts three cases, all linked by a common theme, and at the end, host Kris Mohandie will use the aforementioned scale to determine which of the three individuals is most evil. The sheer monstrous behaviour of many of these killers is patently horrifying and often enough to stifle your faith in humanity.
• Obsession: Dark Desires and Stalked: Someone's Watching both focus, as their names imply, on stalking cases. The premise itself is pure Paranoia Fuel, but what makes it especially chilling (and sad) is the fact that in many of these cases, the authorities refuse to do anything about the situation until it's too late, leading to tragedy.
• Signs Of A Psychopath features interrogation footage of people who’ve committed terrible, heinous crimes. Many of whom describe it in such a calm, casual manner you’d think they were talking about running an errand, which only serves to reinforce why they shouldn’t be released.
• Your Worst Nightmare certainly lives up to its name. Episodes deal with everything from stalkers, jealous exes and unstable family members, even ignoring those that don’t make it, those that do survive are absolutely not the same people they were beforehand.
  • “When the Lights Go Out”: Cassie Jo Stoddart house sits for a cousin of her mother. When her mother calls to check on her in the morning there is no answer, even after trying again a few hours later there is still no response, so she decides to head on up to the house. When her cousin arrives back at her house she sees the terrible sight of Cassie’s body on the floor of the living room. When her mother arrives she is blocked from seeing the corpse. At her school the student body is reeling and the community is on edge. Initial suspicion falls on her boyfriend Matt, who tells them when he was at the house we was joined by Tory Adamchik and Bryan Draper. The boys tell the police they eventually left to go see a movie but the theatre they reportedly went to was across the street from an FBI center, and security cameras proved their claim false. They then claim they were burglarizing cars but the police can see straight through that lie as well. Matt is discharged and eventually Bryan tells them he and Tory waited for Matt to leave and they snuck back into the house, cut the power and scared Cassie by wearing horrific masks and then Tory went berserk and killed her, claiming it was all a joke that went wrong. He also informed them that they buried their evidence in a valley nearby, including a damaged video tape. Both of the boys are brought into custody. When the tape is reconditioned it shows several days worth of material, some of which is innocuous but also included was them driving up to Cassie’s house to commit the crime and the immediate aftermath, throughout the tape they seem to be adamant about making a “real life Scream (1996) film”. At the trial both boys try pin the blame solely on the other but forensic evidence proved that Cassie’s wounds were consistent with 2 assailants attacking her simultaneously, so both Tory and Adam were sentenced to life without parole. To this day the Pocatello community is still unable to comprehend the reason why Cassie died, but they will forever keep her memory alive.

American Monster

American Monster differentiates itself from other shows by not relying heavily on re-enactments but instead plays old home movies of the victims and/or victimizers, many of which are being displayed publicly, or being rewatched, for the first time. Quite disheartening to think you could either be looking at the only remnants of someone you had taken away from you too soon or watch how you were in close proximity to a murderer and never realized it.

• "Falling Down" tells the tragic tale of the Jenkins family. Alene and George adopt 2 kids, Joshua and Megan, and everything seems like the perfect life. Then in the mid 90s George looses his real estate job and they fall on hard times. After downsizing significantly, 12 year old Joshua, who always had learning disabilities and social problems, becomes more unpredictable and violent, at one point breaking his father's arm. Eventually he's sent to a boarding school for troubled children but it's there his anger only simmers and grows. In 1996 Alene's mother is diagnosed with breast cancer and the whole family has a gathering for support, including 15 year old Joshua. One night Joshua officially jumps off the slippery slope when he grabs a hammer and uses it to deliver over 160 blows to his adopted family, going father, mother, grandmother and finally grandfather. When that's done he gets Megan, whom he told to stay down while he was killing, and tries to drive back to Vegas but is unable to do so and turns around and drives back to the house but along the way he buys an axe which he uses to cave Megan's head in. When that's done he sets fire to the building before driving off. He's apprehended nearly 2 days later and throughout the trial and interrogation process displays an incredibly flippant attitude, even laughing at the grizzly crime scene photos, and is sentenced to 112 years behind bars. To add another terrifying layer to this tale, one of the people interviewed was Joshua's own aunt Sandy Sulzman, who was supposed to be at the house but couldn't get time off work, and must now live with the fact that her nephew, in spite of all the love and affection he received growing up, committed such a horrible crime but still holds out for him because that's what her sister would want.
• “Two Families” tells the unfortunate tale of April and Michael Holton, whose American dream came crashing down hard. April's parents had been frequent drug and alcohol users, and despite being a child herself, April did what she could to help take care of her two younger twin brothers, Chris and Michael. For a while, the children lived with their grandparents but they were eventually turned over to a foster care agency which put them in an Alabama town. At age 17, April met Michael, the couple married when she was 19 and had three sons. Michael became a fire fighter and a popular figure in town, and was elected mayor in 2012, but behind the scenes, trouble was brewing. Michael and his teenage son, Madison, were battling their demons — including issues with drugs. By 2016 April and Michael had begun divorce proceedings and were living in separate houses. One September evening Michael called 911 claiming that Madison threw a party with drugs involved and trashed his home while he was at work. A deputy came over to see what was wrong and noticed that Madison had been handcuffed behind his back by his father as a form of punishment. April was also there because their son’s rebellious phase was the one thing the former couple could agree upon without a doubt. Together, the adults then made arrangements to take him to the police station the following morning with a juvenile warrant before the deputy left the family alone. Eleven minutes later, the police received another 911 call, this time from Holton’s neighbor who said that Madison, still handcuffed, came over to their house, frantically talking about his parents physically fighting and his father holding a gun against his mother. When the police arrived at the scene a few moments later, they found both April and Michael lying on the floor of a bedroom, with a gun in between them. Michael, who had a gunshot wound to the back of his head was pronounced dead at the scene, whereas April, who was breathing at the time, was taken to the hospital, but unfortunately she passed away a day later from severe head trauma. The medical examiner who conducted the Holton’s autopsy determined both their injuries to be from “close contact wounds.” Furthermore, although the pathologist classified their deaths as a homicide, they could not rule out the possibility of it being the result of a murder-suicide, partially due to the fact that Michael was ambidextrous. As the only witness Madison is arrested on the charge of their supposed murders but due to insufficient evidence he is eventually released after spending over a year in custody. This decision has split the family, and the town, in 2, April’s family believe he is guilty while Michael’s believe he is innocent. All in all, it’s a very complicated case with no clear answers that might never be solved in a way that will satisfy everyone.
• "Cabin Fever": Molly McAfee falls in love with Adam Buchanan, who has a son from a previous relationship named Nolan, and together they have a son named Gavin. However their relationship is never on solid ground and Adam is particularly tough on Nolan, demanding he be better in school, more hardworking in his business and more sociable to others. One September the family’s cabin in the El Dorado hills catches fire and when the smoke clears, the remains (if you can even call them that) of Adam, Molly and little Gavin, only 8, are discovered. Incredibly it wasn’t local wild fires that killed them but gunshot wounds to the head and an accelerant was used on the house. Nolan is discovered at the family home, proclaiming he had been in the city all weekend long. When the rest of the family meets up to consolidate him they find him to be incredibly unemotional and decide to work with police. Through analysis of security cameras, vehicle use, ATM card receipts and a cleanup which turned up Molly’s purse and the shotgun, it was determined that Nolan killed them all in order to be a free child. He is tried as an adult and charged with 3 counts of first degree murder and sentenced to over 100 years in prison, parole not possible until 2039. Even though the rest of the family will agree that Adam could be tough and astringent nothing he did could’ve justified him, Molly and Gavin dying the way they did.
• "The Green Monster": Jack and Linda Myer marry and blend their families together. Though it all seems like rural country bliss, problems lie underneath the surface. Jack’s eldest son Travis left the farm after Jack decided to remarry and rarely meets up with them, he didn’t even go to the wedding. Granddaughter Amber gets pregnant in her teens but is unable to keep a relationship with the boys father. Little Dameon is raised predominantly by Jack and Linda while she gets her life back on track. Meanwhile things go wrong for Jack’s other son Greg, losing his job and divorcing his wife, and eventually Jack and Linda decide to cut him off. Late one March 4 year old Dameon runs out from the house to his preschool, over a mile away, shouting to a teacher “my grandparents are melting!” When investigators arrive they find Jack and Linda in their bed, dead from gunshot wounds. Above Jack’s head is their first pieces of evidence, a homemade silencer made out of masking tape, red plastic shavings, shoe impressions found near a basement window, and worst of all blood in the Dameons room. With no other witnesses the police must prod the little boy for answers. Dameon recalls finding the bodies and through playing with dolls he winds up describing a point in the night where he sees, in his words, a “green monster” who pointed a gun at him but incredibly doesn’t shoot it. Linda’s daughter Kim thinks her brother in law Travis is a likely candidate. When police try to contact Greg for help they are surprised to find Travis living with him, and has been doing so for several weeks. While they’re being interviewed, a family friend comes forward saying he had a conversation with Greg and that he wanted to purchase a gun with the intention of shooting Jack and Linda. Greg is put into custody and as they comb through all the evidence they find a receipt from Greg regarding ammunition and footage from Walmart of him purchasing both it and a gun. Later the gun is fished out of a river, it has the same tape around it that was found at the crime scene, not only that but there’s a trash bag filled with latex gloves, green clothing and shoes that match the foot prints. They concluded that Greg wanted to kill Jack and Linda as he was the only beneficiary in their will. Greg will now spend the rest of his life behind prison and the family can only hold onto the memories of Jack and Linda in their hearts.
• "It Was All of Them": The Futo family was founded by patriarch Emory Sr who fled Hungary to escape communism. He eventually marries a woman named Euna and has 3 sons. They seem like the quintessential family, and when Emory Jr grows up he joins the navy while youngest brother John joins the army upon his graduation. Middle child Nick meanwhile struggles to find a purpose. Emory Jr eventually has his own son but when Emory Sr appears to be growing discontent with his family, worry sets in. When Euna doesn’t show up for work one summer day the police make a shocking discovery at her house, Euna was strangled with an electrical cord while Emory Sr suffered multiple stab wounds. At 6 that evening cemetery workers make another gruesome discovery, the body of Nick which has a piece of paper with the words “American West 1408”. Joe Futo’s car is discovered 2 miles away, with Joe Futo’s body inside as well. At the crime scene there’s a bloody shoe print and broken pictures frames. Emory Jr is contacted and his first words are “They don’t think I did it, did they?”, even though the word murder was never mentioned. Emory Jr claimed to be camping but a friend confirmed he took him to the airport to catch a flight to St Louis, which corroborates with the paper found on Nick’s body. After being detained and flown to St. Louis, Emory Jr is interrogated. He confesses to helping Nick with a big drug deal when he heard gunshots and vacated the scene but when asked about the footprint he claims to have visited his parents house and found them deceased before heading out. When asked why he didn’t alert someone right then and there he then confesses that Nick killed their parents and when Joseph came he had to shoot him as well. Then he claims that Nick wanted them to perform a suicide pack but he could only shoot Nick. Not buying the cock and bull story Emory finally confesses that for years his father had been abusing the entire family, something a cousin can attest to. Emory is charged with 4 counts of homicide and gets 4 life sentences. Even if Emory Sr was abusive, that didn’t mean Euna, Nick and Joseph had to die along with him.

Deadly Women

• The killers that stand out the most are mothers who kill their own children. Sometimes it's for insurance benefits, other times they no longer want to be a mother, and sometimes it's just out of pure hatred.
  • Dena Schlosser was a loving mother who became deeply involved in her church, which was later revealed to be an off-shoot extremist branch, to the point it affected her mental state. It all comes to a head when she hears voices that compel her to stab her infant daughter 40 times to the point where she lost her arms! She's found not guilty by reason of insanity but is forbidden from contacting her living daughters ever again and has been committed and recommitted to various psychiatric hospitals.
  • Kelly Silk saw her mother die by drowning in a bathtub when she was only 7. She later married and had three children, and with every child, her postpartum depression got worse. She reached out to a pastor that told her that she didn't need to take medication but to pray more. Her depression worsened and cumulated in her stabbing her husband. This awoke a daughter whom she non-fatally stabbed 61 times, then got a gasoline can and poured it on her and herself before setting it ablaze, along with the house. Incredibly, her daughter ran out of the house and into the lawn of a neighbor, who put out the fire and called 911. Only she and one other sibling survived that night.
  • Christie Scott killed her autistic son Mason in a house fire, while also taking out a life insurance policy to profit off the boy's death. An early red flag was that in her initial 911 call, she didn't even mention the fact that her son was inside the burning house. And at his funeral, she voiced opinions to her husband to give their remaining son a new sibling. Fire investigators found that she had a history of setting fires at the houses of her father, grandmother, and others. (Her home once caught fire twice in the same week, but arson was never proven.) When questioned, she denied all involvement but was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to death. She remains on Death Row to this day.
  • Farzana and Iftikhar Ahmed are strict, conservative Pakistani British immigrants who are upset by their teenage daughter Shafilea's embrace of Western culture, which they are unable to suppress despite holding her hostage in her own home. After Shafilea attempts suicide to avoid an arranged marriage to an older man, her parents suffocate her in September 2003, then dispose of her body in a river and swear the rest of their family to secrecy. After nearly a decade of evading justice, the Ahmeds are turned in by their surviving daughter and are serving 25 years to life.
  • Theresa Riggi's devotion to motherhood instantly becomes an obsession when she homeschools her kids. Frustrated with his wife attempting to isolate his children, her husband Pasquale asks for divorce, breaks up with her and takes custody of the kids, but Theresa puts trackers on her children while keeping a close eye on where they're going. Alarmed by this, her ex-husband decides to act fast, but vengeful and furious Theresa kills her children by using knives to stab them 8 times and then she throws herself off the balcony but, surprisingly, a black car breaks her fall and the suicide attempt backfires. She was sentenced to 16 years in prison and dies of successful suicide in 2011.
  • Elise Ledvina is a caring Catholic mother who values setting a good example, but secretly battles with intense delusions due to schizophrenia. She was on medication for a while but grew distrust it and stopped taking it. Convinced she's a bad mother and that this world was a bad place for her two sons, the voices in her head drive her to bludgeon them with a baseball bat; her elder son is saved due to his father's intervention, but the younger son dies (the boy was on his asthma machine when he was struck). She is acquitted by reason of insanity and is committed to a psychiatric institution for nearly a decade before being discharged, professionals say she is no longer a danger but Elise is still never allowed to have contact with her living son.
  • Penny Boudreau's boyfriend was sick of the bickering between her and her 12-year-old daughter, so he said "either she goes or I go". He meant that she must go to live with her father, but Penny took things too far and strangled her only child to keep her boyfriend. She's charged with second-degree murder and sentenced to a minimum of 18 years in prison.
  • Susan Leigh Vaughan's father committed suicide when she was 6 years old. Her step-father abused and molested her. At 13, she attempted suicide. As she grew she could not handle rejection by men. Eventually Susan had fallen in love with her supervisor at work, Tom Findlay, a wealthy businessman, and had an affair with him. This happened when her marriage to her husband David Smith was in jeopardy and had already filed for divorce. One day she came to someone's house claiming that she had been carjacked by a black man who stole her car and two sons, only 3 and 1. The case became a nationwide story and even appeared on tv, but some noticed she tried too hard to make herself cry but could not and referred to her children in the past tense. The police also suspected something sinister and put Smith on a lie detector. She continued to fail the question of if she knew where her children were and kept changing her story about the carjacking. Nine days after the disappearance, she confessed to murdering her children all because Findlay wrote to her that he didn’t want to be involved with any kids that weren’t his. She went to a local lake and stopped the car at the ramp. With her children strapped in, she got out and took the car out of gear and let the car go roll into the lake. The bodies' were found still strapped in their car seats when the vehicle was pulled out of the lake. Smith was found guilty of two counts of murder. She was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
  • Gunn-Britt Ashfield loathed her six-year-old son Johnathon because he reminded her of her ex-husband. She and her live-in boyfriend falsely accuse him of molesting his sister and brutally beat him to death (so bad the iron rod they used bent), then claim John was attacked in a park, but the police aren't fooled and both are sentenced to 21 years in jail, reduced to 19 years on appeal, with a minimum of 14 years. When Gunn-Britt, now called Angelic, is released, no one from her family is there for her, and she is forbidden from ever visiting Johnathon's grave.
  • Marybeth Tinning loses a child and laps up the outpouring of sympathy from others. Over the course of several years, she gives birth and loses many children to various causes, but people wise up when an adopted child dies. Turns out Marybeth had been killing her own babies due to Munchausen by proxy and feeding off the compassion of other people. She gets 20 years to life but is out as of 2018.
  • Marie Noe never really wanted children, unlike her devoted husband Arthur, and is unable to emotionally cope with the stresses of motherhood. Whenever they get too loud, she'd use a soft pillow from a shelf or a chair to suffocate her children. Over two decades, she gives birth to ten children, two of whom are stillborn, but none of the surviving children live long as she smothers them when they're alone. She isn't caught until 50 years after the first murder and confesses to all of them while Arthur is forced to learn about the unbearable truth. She gets 20 years probation and a psychiatric examination.
  • Manling Williams found life as a wife and mother too confining, but she didn't want the financial strain of divorce. Despondent after her extramarital affair ends, she turns to murder, smothering her two young sons with a pillow and slashing her husband Neal 97 times with his prized Japanese sword. She gets the death penalty. This was also documented in an episode of American Monster “Live By The Sword”, which has videographic evidence of them crime scene in which you can see Neal's blood practically decorating the walls of their apartment.
  • Nicole Diar spent most of her life being ridiculed for burns she sustained as a young girl. At the age of 28, she's a single mother with a 4-year-old son named Jacob and would often leave Jacob at home with teen babysitters so she could go out to bars and parties for the night, often telling them to give him adult medication if he got hyper. One night a fire broke out in her home, and she escaped while Jacob didn't; he was found in his bed with his dead puppy. The coroner determined that he already died inside the home hours earlier, but it was impossible to determine the exact cause due to how badly he was burned. Fire marshals concluded that the fire was started with gasoline. And to top it off, Nicole was seen at a bar singing karaoke and dancing the day after his burial. She was sentenced to life in prison, with no chance of parole.
  • Lauren Stuart is devoted to her Jehovah's Witnesses faith. But when she and her husband Dan decide their two children should go to college, something the religion is against, they get shunned by the church. After five years of ex-communication, Lauren suffers from depression, which makes her believe too much about Armageddon so she murders Dan, her children Steven and Bethany, and the family dog, before ultimately committing suicide.
  • Angela Mc Anulty runs her household with an iron hand, but she reserves her worst for her eldest daughter, Jeanette, whom she brutally tortures, starves, and beats. After Angela is investigated by social services, she pulls Jeanette out of school and the abuse escalates, culminating in Jeanette's death (at which point she weighed less than 80 pounds), for which both she and her husband, who failed to report the abuse, are prosecuted. Angela is sentenced to death, being the first since Oregon brought back the death penalty. It should be noted Angela (a victim of abuse herself as a child) had 2 other children but only abused Jeanette, exactly why is anyone's guess.
  • Rachel Pfitzer is a violent-tempered drug addict who hates her infant son, Dean, to the point of starving and torturing him, all to get revenge on the boy's father, Paul. In October 2007, Rachel shakes the two-year-old in a fit of rage, then stuffs him into a suitcase and dumps the body in a duck pond. She pleads guilty to murder and is sentenced to a maximum of 25 years in prison. Needless to say this is a tragic case of “can’t live with them, can barely live without them.”
  • Sandi Nieves has 3 kids in her first marriage and later says “I do” to the man she once called stepfather. They have 2 more kids but her aggressive and controlling nature leads him to leave her. Following this, she has a relationship that once again leaves her pregnant, but the father left her, causing her to abort it. To get revenge on the men in her life, she set the house on the fire. Her four daughters died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Before setting a gasoline-soaked rug on fire, she taped the doors and windows to keep the smoke in the room. One daughter threw up before death. Her 14-year-old son, whom she attempted to blame at her trial, survived after being treated for gas poisoning. Detectives also found angry letters written to her second husband and believe she may have intended to die with her children. Nieves was convicted of four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder and sentenced to death.
  • In 1983 Diane Downs approaches a hospital claiming she and her children are victims of a drive by shooting. 2 are seriously wounded and one cannot be saved. A thorough analysis of her car, the supposed crime scene and the children’s injuries proved in fact she was the shooter. Diane's motive was simply to free herself of parenthood so she could pursue a romantic relationship with a man who didn't want children, rather than give them full-custody to her husband. She was convicted in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison.
• There are also a select few women who aren't even women when they commit their crimes.
  • Sharon Carr suffered from a very troubled childhood, beheading a dog with a shovel at one point, and at age 12 she lures an 18-year-old exiting a club and stabs her to death multiple times in the breasts and vulva. She gets away with the crime until she is imprisoned for stabbing another girl two years later and police find her diary, in which she described the stabbing as an exhilarating thrill. She's sentenced to life in a mental health facility.
  • 16 year old Melinda Loveless, 17 year old Laurie Tackett and 15 year olds Hope Rippey and Toni Lawrence were responsible for the murder of 12 year old Shanda Sharer. Loveless became jealous of the beautiful, sweet Shanda when she started dating 15 year old Amanda Heavrin, Melinda’s ex-girlfriend. So she enlisted the other 3 to "scare" her with a knife. Hiding under a blanket in the backseat of a car at Shanda's house, Melinda waited as Shanda was lured to the car, sneaking out. Once Shanda was in and they were driving, Melinda took Shanda by the hair and held a knife to her throat, screaming "You stole my girlfriend!" Laurie drove them to a garbage dump, where she and Melinda made Shanda leave the car and strip half naked, then Melinda beat Sharer with her fists, repeatedly slamming her face into her knee, then both took turns stabbing Shanda in the chest; they then strangled her with a rope until she was unconscious, placed her in the trunk, drove off, realized she was still alive, stabbed her again, drove around for a while before getting gasoline. They drove off, dumped Shanda, still alive, in a blanket and carried her into a field by the gravel country road. Hope poured the gasoline on her, and then Laurie set her on fire. The following evening, Toni Lawrence (who had mainly acted as a driver and refused to torture Shanda) turned herself in to the police and told them everything that had transpired. Shortly thereafter, the others were arrested. One person said she couldn't fathom that 4 girls would do this to another human being. All 4 were tried as adults and given heavy sentences, but as of 2019 all are out.
  • For the first 6 years of her life Patty Columbo is the apple of her parents eye but when her brother is born she fights for their attention by constantly acting out. By her teens she has given up on getting their attention and instead finds it by starting a sexual relationship with married pharmacist Frank De Luca. After her father assaults him, knocking out 2 of his teeth, Patty convinces De Luca to help her murder her family by promising him a cut of her inheritance. Her father is shot first but doesn’t immediately die so she beats him to death with a lamp, her mother is shot in between the eyes but also remains alive so Patty cuts her throat, and finally her brother, who just turned 13 days earlier, is awoken from his bed before being shot as well, and then Patty grabs a pair of scissors to stab him 92 times. She tried to convince cops it was mob hit but a single hair found on her bother tells them all they need to know. Both she and Deluca are serving 200 to 300-year sentences. It’s hard to imagine someone having the gall to that to anybody else, let alone someone they are related to.
  • Christa Pike had to be raised by her grandmother when both her parents gave up on her, and when grandma dies, she's shuffled around from relative to relative. In college, she joined the Job Corps, but she was focused more on her lover Tadaryl Shipp than job education. He had been in Satanic worship and Christa became a Satanist after meeting him, wearing a pentagram necklace. She was jealous and very possessive of Tadaryl. She believed Colleen Slemmer was her rival for his affections, even though she wasn't. One night, Christa, Tadaryl and their friend Shadolla Peterson invited Slemmer for a walk in the woods with the promise of marijuana. Once in the woods, the three began to attack Slemmer, with a meat cleaver and a box cutter, kicking her repeatedly before being cut at least 300 times for 45 minutes. Shipp carved a pentagram on Slemmer's stomach while she was still alive. Pike then took a piece of asphalt and beat Slemmer in the head with it, crushing her skull. Pike took a piece of Slemmer's skull as a trophy. When questioned, she happily admitted her guilt, even playing out parts of the murder for the police and imitating the body movements of Slemmer. Peterson received a six-year suspended sentence. Shipp was sentenced to life in prison. Pike received a death sentence and is currently on Death Row awaiting execution.
  • Alyssa Bustamante had parents with histories of drug use. Eventually, child services removed Alyssa from the custody and put her in the custody of her grandmother. Despite this, Alyssa still had a darkness in her. She had violent and suicidal thoughts and even once tried to commit suicide by swallowing a bottle of pills when she was 13. She was afterwards prescribed anti-depressants and saw several therapists. She was diagnosed with depression but what went unnoticed was she also has anti-social personality disorder. While Alyssa seemed like a good person with good grades, in private her dark side came out. She cut herself and dealt in gothic-style morbid fascinations. She would cut on herself the word HATE but also the 1960s peace symbol, and burn marks and bites also decorated her body. While Alyssa did talk about killing people to her group of friends, unfortunately, they didn't take her seriously. Eventually Alyssa prepared herself for murder by digging up a grave. She lured Elizabeth Olten, the 9 year old friend of her half sister, to the area and then stabbed and buried her. Police discover she’s the perpetrator by reading her diary and the writings on the wall behind a bookcase. Her explanation is that she wanted to see the light go out in someone’s eyes. A few weeks later, she was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of conditional release, and a consecutive sentence of 30 years.
  • Natasha Cornett is an outcast in her rural Kentucky town due to her Gothic appearance and devil worship. However, she soon finds like-minded friends, Jason Bryant, Dean Mullins, Joseph Risner, Crystal Sturgill, and Karen Howell who decide to embark on a killing spree. They eventually become responsible for the killings of a Jehovah's Witness family at a Tennessee rest area; Vidar Lillelid, his wife Delphina, their 6 year old daughter Tabitha, 2 year old son Peter. Vidar had approached the group to discuss his religious views and help them with their van. At some point, Risner displayed one of the guns and directed the Lillelids into their van, Vidar pleaded with the group, offering his keys and wallet in exchange for being left at the rest stop, but Risner refused. The Lillelids were then lined up against a ditch along the road, where they were shot. Vidar and Delphina had equilateral triangle markings on their bodies. Everyone was shot in the head then laid in an inverted cross before being run over, incredibly little Peter survived but is blind one eye and walks with a limp. Natasha and her gang each get life without parole.
  • Australian teenager Helen Moore is every parents' worst nightmare. While working as a babysitter, she suffocates two infants in her care. Thereafter, she strangles her seven-year-old brother to death, and is turned in by her devastated mother. She receives a life sentence, but is paroled after only thirteen years.
  • Shauna Hoare and her boyfriend Nathan Matthews seemed like a normal enough couple but harbored disturbing sexual fantasies. They exchanged intimate messages about kidnapping petite girls. Their phones and computers were used to access pornography focused on teenagers, young women dressed as schoolgirls, and threesomes. The pair were not content to watch their dark imaginings fulfilled on a screen and turned one of their fantasies into reality when they targeted Nathan's 16-year-old stepsister, Becky Watts, they equip themselves with a kidnap kit including stun-guns and handcuffs. Becky was suffocated in her bedroom and stabbed 15 times in the abdomen. The pair then coldly took her body back to their home and used a buzzsaw to hack it to pieces before dumping them in a neighbor's shed. Both Matthews and Hoare were convicted of conspiracy to kidnap, preventing the lawful burial of a body, perverting the course of justice, and possession of deadly weapons. Matthews is sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 33 years and Hoare to 17 years. Since their imprisonment, both have been subjected to multiple beatings from fellow inmates.
  • Jasmine Richardson (known as J.R. in the episode due to Canadian law at the time) is a 12-year-old who falls in love with a 23-year-old man named Jeremy Steinke. When her parents cut off the relationship, the two began communicating online. After watching Natural Born Killers, she began emailing him, talking about a "plan" that involved killing her parents and it ending with them staying together forever. Jeremy snuck into her house with a butcher knife. Both her parents were asleep when a noise woke mom up. Upon getting out of bed and going to the basement, Jeremy began viciously stabbing her. Upon hearing his wife scream, her dad ran down into the basement to try to fight Steinke off, even using a screwdriver, but he was unable to and was stabbed to death as well. Jasmine runs to her 8-year-old brother's room, presumably at first to try to calm him down, because he was frightened, however, Steinke met her at the entrance to his room. They cornered him and decided they couldn't let him live, proclaiming that he was too sensitive, and it would be wrong to leave him without parents. Jasmine fatally stabbed him in his chest, and then Steinke slit his throat. They run for it and the next morning a 6-year-old neighbor discovers the family's remains. The police set forth to find Jasmine and Steinke and 11 days later they are put on trial. Jasmine was convicted of three counts of First Degree Murder for the killings and given the maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment, including 18 months already spent in custody, as well as 4 years in a psychiatric rehabilitation program, followed by 4.5 year supervision in the community. Jeremy was sentenced to three life sentences on each of the three counts of murder, his sentences are to be served concurrently. Jasmine has since been released and is now living under a new identity.
  • Troubled teen Sarah Gonzales McLinn moves in with her boss, Hal Sasko, who hopes he can get her on the right path but instead ends up drinking and doing drugs with her. In addition, Sarah has a morbid fascination with death, and, after "practicing" on a rabbit, develops the desire to kill a human being. When Hal becomes suicidal over financial woes, Sarah chooses him as her first victim, drugs him, and then drives a knife through his neck. Her sentence is 50 years to life.
  • At an early age Mary Bell was exposed to sexual acts by her own mother and her prostitute clients. In 1968, when she’s only 10, she invited Martin Brown to a house. Then, she strangled him and disguised the murder as an accident. Later at age 11, she and a friend killed another young boy named Brian Howe. After strangling him to death, she carved the letter M into his abdomen. Eventually, she was arrested for the double murders. Because of her age, Mary is sentenced to lifetime detention but the sentence will have to be commuted when she grows older. Surprisingly, she has stopped her killing spree, assumed a new identity and has a new child of her own, much to the chagrin of her victims families.
  • Brenda Spencer’s parents divorced when she was young and she went to live with her father. As she grew it seemed like the only thing that could make her happy was learning how to fire a rifle. In January of 1979 Brenda, only 16, tells her father she doesn’t feel well enough to go to school so he lets her stay at home. From her window she watches the kids across the street at Grover Cleveland Elementary playing and sets up her Ruger 10/22 rifle. She opens fire, hitting 8 kids and 2 adults before her view is blocked by a garbage truck. She barricades herself in her roof for several hours. During this time a journalist somehow found her home phone number and called. When asked why she did the shooting, she responded: "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day." She later also spoke with police negotiators, telling them those she had shot made easy targets, and that she was going to "come out shooting." but ultimately, she surrendered. The only two victims were Principal Burton Wragg and custodian Mike Suchar. A police officer was also wounded. Out of the 30 rounds she fired, she hit eleven people with eleven hits, meaning she hit them all once. In April 1980, Spencer pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Spencer remains in prison despite several parole hearings. One thing to keep in mind, unlike most other school shootings Spencer had only moved to the area several months prior to the shooting meaning this isn’t some sort of twisted revenge scheme against an individual or the institution itself.
  • Danielle Black initially had a great relationship with her father Billy. When she gets to high school however she is drawn to the world of goth, letting her grades slip and occasionally cutting herself. Billy is at his whits end trying to help her. Danielle lies to her friends that he is victimizing her and one of them takes it deeply to heart, Alec Hagar who already comes from an abusive background. He vows to protect anyone from harm and Danielle gets an idea. Early on Halloween morning when Billy heads off to work Alec comes at him with a knife in hand, stabbing him repeatedly while Danielle watches from her window. Alec tries to paint it as a mugging gone wrong. Elementary school kids discover his body and police are stumped to find a motive and a suspect. Following his funeral, where Danielle nearly spills the beans, other friends of hers report that they too have been approached with the intent to kill Billy and police bring in Alec who confesses to everything. Alec is sentenced to life imprisonment while Danielle is sentenced to life with 6 years commuted and is paroled in 2021.
  • Christine Paolilla was 2 years old when her father was killed in a construction accident. Following his death, her mother Lori began abusing drugs and eventually lost custody of her children to her parents. Christine suffered from alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that caused bald spots, which required her to wear wigs. By high school, she had become popular with some teenagers and had a boyfriend, Chris Snider, who introduced her to drugs. On July 18, 2003, Christine and Snider went to the home of their friend Tiffany Rowell with the purpose of robbing her for drugs and money. Also there was Rachael Koloroutis, Rowell's boyfriend Marcus Precella, and Precella's cousin Adelbert Sanchez. Rowell let them in. The two immediately pulled out their guns and held them at gunpoint. Christine took Koloroutis to the back to look for the drugs and money. Hearing gunshots, the two women rushed back into the living room to find that Snider had shot Precella, Rowell and Sanchez, though they were still alive. Paolilla finished them off one by one. She then shot Koloroutis before they left. Koloroutis was still alive and tried to get help but Christine returned to make sure all four were dead, her gun was out of bullets so she beat Koloroutis to death with the pistol. Snider then took her to work. For three years, she got away with mass murder, but her conscience plagued her. She would later admit to her husband Justin Rott what she had done and would later be arrested. When Snider became aware that the police were looking for him, he swallowed an overdose of pills and went off to die in the woods. Christine was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
• Hilma Marie Witte's relationships go bad and she turns to her sons, Eric and John, to help - Eric shoots his father, Paul, and John murders his grandmother, Elaine, with a crossbow so his mother can keep stealing Elaine's money. John eventually exposes his mother as the mastermind of both murders. She's sentenced to 90 years in prison while her sons plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter and were released early in 1996 due to good behavior. This was also documented in an episode of Evil Lives Here entitled “She Made Me Do It” told from the perspective of Eric. He describes a period of several years when Hilma was actively trying to poison his father. And later he tells of how he came home one day and she presented both he and his brother with the remains of their grandmother in bags. He tried to vacate but she put some of the bags in his truck and he was nearly found out by a police official and was spared due to a speeding car.
• Estibaliz Carranza wanted to be a mother more than anything. Fed up with no children, she killed 2 lovers, hacked their bodies to pieces, and hid them in containers in the basement of her ice cream shop. During her trial, Esti gives birth to a son she had with a 3rd man, but her dreams are forever shattered when, due to her crimes, her son is permanently taken out of her hands to be raised by her parents instead, leaving Esti to plead guilty to the two murders and be sentenced to life in a maximum-security psychiatric prison.
• Gertrude Baniszewski took out her frustration with her disintegrating home life on an innocent teenage girl whom she had been hired to babysit, resulting in said girl's death. This included burning her with cigarettes and matches, locking her in the basement, scalding her with boiling water, hardly ever feeding her, inserting a large glass coke bottle into her vagina, and literally branding her as a prostitute with a needle. That by itself would be bad enough, but what made this case especially horrifying and infamous is that she managed to convince both her own children and the neighbors' to assist her in the abuse. Gertrude and her daughter Paula were formally sentenced to life imprisonment while Richard Hobbs, Coy Hubbard, and John Baniszewski Jr. each received sentences of 2-to-21 years. Gertrude got out in 1985 but died of lung cancer in 1990. Her male accomplices also die relatively young from various causes like cancers and heart failures.
• Jody Herring's alcoholism causes her to lose a 3rd child to social services. She goes to an ex's house, grabs a rifle meant for shooting elk, and uses it on 3 relatives (2 cousins and an aunt, who called paramedics that saved her life when she attempted suicide) and the social worker for her case. Worse, the social worker was talking to her daughter when she was shot meaning she'll forever know the sound of her mother dying. Herring pleads guilty to one count of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder and is permanently separated from her children when she is sentenced to life without parole.
• Trudi Lennon was an ordinary suburban mom from Australia who fell under the throe of Jemma Lily. They became obsessed with serial killers, especially David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz, so they decided to bring their murder fantasies to reality. They lured a friend of one of Trudi's sons into their clutches, killed him and buried him in Trudi's backyard. The only reason they were caught? Jemma bragged about the killing to a coworker. Both of them get life with parole after 28 years.
• Patty Cannon was an illegal slave trader who for about a decade abducted hundreds of free Black people and fugitive slaves, across multiple state lines to sell into slavery in southern states. Legend says she tossed the baby into a fire and made its mother watch under the belief it was mixed. She even went so far as to kill clients. When she finally was captured, she poisoned herself rather than face the hangman's noose.
• Amy Bishop's crimes started when she was a college student by shooting her brother for outshining her (somehow her mother convinced the chief of police to have the death labeled as an accident). Years later she loses her tenure as a university professor and responds by shooting up a faculty meeting, killing three people, and wounding three others. She is serving life without parole.
• Styllou Christofi didn't think her daughter-in-law was doing an adequate job at raising her grandchildren, so she retaliates by bludgeoning and strangling her and then attempting to burn the corpse and the house. Incredibly, years earlier in her home nation of Lebanon she killed her own mother-in-law by shoving a lit torch down her throat. She becomes one of the last women to be hanged in Britain.
• Paige Conley had been plagued by drug and alcohol addiction since her teens, resulting in her trying to steal meds from neighbors and causing her poor mother endless grief. She completely loses it when she discovers what her mother is cooking for a joint birthday celebration for her and a nephew, wrestling her to the floor and stabbing/biting her a total of nearly 80 times. When officers first showed up she tried to blame it on trick or treaters, even though it was the middle of March! She was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 20 to 27 years in prison but the conviction was vacated and she was granted a new trial, since she had been denied funding for an early mental health evaluation at her first trial. To avoid going back to trial again, Paige accepted a plea deal for 20 years. This was also documented in an episode of Evil Lives Here called “She Knew It Was Goodbye”, featuring testimony from her sister Ginger and niece Taylor. They tell their recollections of how Paige always tried to keep her mothers attention strictly on her, constantly berated and/or hurt them all and when we see the crime scene photos Ginger hits the nail on the head when she says you can see the evil in her sisters eyes.
• Korena Roberts has 2 kids from previous relationships but fears her latest boyfriend will leave her if she doesn’t have a baby with him. Following a miscarriage Karina decides to lie about being pregnant with twins (although she voluntarily gave up that ability following the birth of her 2nd child) and winds up meeting actual expectant mother Heather Snivley on a baby website. They meet up several times over the course of Heathers pregnancy but when Korena’s hypothetical due date approves she decides to act fast, using a collapsible baton she beats Heather to death and she then cuts open her abdomen to extract the baby. However Heather was still 10 weeks away from giving birth meaning the baby is dead on arrival. After hiding Heathers body under the house she decides does to fake a stillbirth and calls her boyfriend. However Korena’s lie about pregnancy quickly falls apart at the hospital and it’s not long before police are alerted and find Heather’s body under the crawl space. Korena is charged solely with the murder of Heather and will spend the rest of her life behind bars. Furthermore Korena established a new law in Oregon which punishes those who kill unborn children with life imprisonment.
• Cai Xia Liao is smitten with Chinese-born Australian businessman Brian Mach, who is recently separated from his wife of 40 years, Mai. Brian promises to bring Cai Xia to live in Australia with him as his new wife but pulls out when Mai convinces him to reconcile. In March 2015, Cai Xia takes her revenge by beating and torturing Brian and murdering his wife and four-year-old grandson with garden shears. (She was waiting for his daughter to come home and kill her as well when police arrived, courtesy of the neighbors overhearing horrible things.) She is serving life in prison with a minimum of 32 years.
• Sabrina Kouider and her beau hire a 20-year-old from France as an au pair for their children. Eventually, she came to believe that the nanny was a spy sent by her ex to destroy her and her family. She and her partner began denying her food and treating her like a slave, then escalated to physical abuse, slaps and beatings with electrical cords and other instruments. She told her she could only leave if she confessed that she was working for her ex. This resulted in hours of interrogation and torture, which they recorded on smartphones. Even when she "confessed" they responded by trying to drown her in the bathtub in between beatings. When she finally died they burned her body in the yard and attempted to hide the smell of burning flesh by claiming it was a sheep brisket. When it was all over they both tried to pin all the blame on each other. Both were convicted of murder, conspiracy, and perverting the course of justice and are serving 30 years to life.
• In 1930s France, Christine and Léa Papin are abandoned by their mother. Later they’re subjected to constant verbal abuse working as maids for the Lancelin family, their only comfort being their unusually close relationship, which turns sexual. When Madame Lancelin discovers their secret, the sisters beat and stab both her and her daughter to death and gouge out their eyes. When Mounsier Lancelin later arrived and contacts authorities they initially assume it is massacre of the entire house until they go upstairs and see the sisters in their bed. Christine is sentenced to life in prison. Léa, who is thought to have acted under Christine's lead is sentenced to 10 years. Christine wasted away without her sister by her side, dying at 32. Léa lived the rest of her life under a false identity before dying in 2001.
• Beulah George Tann was considered by many to be the mother of modern adoption. Turns out she abducted children and sold them to wealthy couples and left those she deemed unfit to die. It's estimated as many as 500 children were victims of her illegal trafficking. The terrifying details of her crimes only came out following her death in the 50s.
• Edith McAlinden stabbed a boyfriend after an argument erupted following a drinking session. She then notices his flatmates bore witness and kills them too, and if that wasn't enough, she used her 17-year-old son and his 16-year-old friend as accomplices. Edith gets life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 13 years. John and Jamie were each given a minimum tariff of 12 years.
• Valerie Pape decided to deal with her abusive husband by dismembering his corpse and hiding it throughout the Arizona desert. Only his torso has been found. She gets 16 years before being released.
• In 1870s England Kate Webster was a housekeeper even though she resented doing the work. On top of that she's also a terrible drunk. Her employer tells her that she needs to leave but Kate responds by strangling her to death. In the basement, Kate uses a razor and a meat saw to decapitate her head and an axe to chop her body into pieces. She dissolves the fat, flesh and bones in a pot to get rid of the evidence,she disguises the human lard as pig lard and sells it to her friends at the local tavern. (Though the validity of this detail has been debated amongst contemporary historians.) Kate throws a wooden box with her organs in it and keeps her head in a brown handbag until she was found by the cops and hung. The skull of her employer wasn't discovered until 2010.
• Tina Powell & LaFonda Faye Foster kidnapped four friends in an attempt to cash in on one of the group's social security checks, along the way, they added a fifth hostage. Powell stabbed the group while Foster shot them with a .22 caliber revolver. They ran over one of the men before shooting him to death. The last victim was burned alive in the car. Both women are sentenced to life. (Though in Foster's case, it was initially death but switched to life in 1991)
• Jackie Greco's relationship with her husband goes south and she fears a divorce will leave her with nothing. One day he is shot to death in a home invasion and Jackie blames her daughter for leaving the door unlocked. 34 years later, Jackie's sister helps bring her to justice for planning the murder. Jackie is finally arrested and gets a 30-year sentence but the triggermen who shot her husband were never identified and the daughter who blamed herself for her father's death, later committed suicide.
• Sabah Kahn had an affair with her sister's husband, they all occupied the same house, for years which eventually resulted in a pregnancy. After the husband tells her to abort it, she vents her frustration one night by luring her sister back to the home and stabbing her 68 times. She tries to stage it as a robbery gone awry but the violence on the body and her own injuries prove otherwise, she is sentenced to life with a minimum of 22 years.
• Melanie Smith was a violent alcoholic who frequently fought with neighbors. Following a dispute over a stroller, she sets fire to their apartment house, killing the young couple, their son and his two cousins who were just there for a sleepover. Smith was sentenced to life in prison with her own children agreeing she should never be released.
• Omaima Aree had a track record of manipulating men; as a young woman, she begins seducing older men, then robbing them blind. She meets William Nelson at a bar in Costa Mesa CA, married him two days after they met but instead of simply robbing her new husband, she murders him, then goes on to dismember and consume his corpse, disguising the remains as part of a Thanksgiving dinner. She gets 27 years to life in prison.
  • In a similar, terrifying vein there's Katharine Knight. She however went a step further and skinned her lover John Price, hung the skin from a meat hook on the architrave of a door to the lounge room, then decapitated him and cooked parts of his body, serving up the meat with vegetables and gravy in two settings at the dinner table, along with notes beside each plate, each having the name of one of his children on it. She's serving life without parole, with her file literally bearing the words “never to be released”.
• Larissa Schuster carries on affairs behind her husband's back. When he leaves the family home – instead of continuing her affairs, she permanently dissolves their marriage by dissolving his body in a blue barrel of acid in the garage. She gets life without parole.
• Gurpreet Ronald and Jagtar Gill are neighbors and initially friends until both of their marriages start to dissolve, in part due to Gurpreet having an affair with Jagtar's husband, Bhupinder. Gurpreet separates from her husband, but Bhupinder fears a divorce will drain his finances and cost him custody of his kids, leaving murder as the only option for the couple. On the Gills' wedding anniversary, the day after Jagtar has a major operation, Gurpreet bashes Jagtar 20 times with a barbell and then slashes her repeatedly. Bhupinder and a daughter come home to find her body, when police investigate, they find someone else's blood amongst the victims. After digging further and discovering the affair, they trick Gurpreet into giving some of her DNA under the belief it's to win a contest, both she and Bhupinder get sentenced to 25 to life.
• Vickie Frost was a single mom still living with her mother Betty and constantly fighting. She earns the fancy of a visually impaired man named Rick Whitcomb but eventually, her dark side came out and due to the stigma of men being hit by women, he didn't tell anyone about Vickie's abuse. But at his sister's wedding, everyone became witness to her behavior. Drunk, she walked up and attacked him, slapping him repeatedly, not wanting to share him with anyone, not even his family. He decides to leave but fearful of how she will react, he made a bluff that he needed treatment for his eyes in Cleveland. Vickie didn't believe him and assumed he was having an affair, the two had a large argument in earshot of Vickie's family. That night, after a year of abuse, Rick finally snapped and began choking her but he released her when a friend intervened. Enraged, Vickie stabbed him in the chest, Rick staggered outside, struggling to breathe. Someone called 911, but Vickie accused him of faking and pounded him in the chest. Rick died before paramedics could arrive. Vickie pleads guilty to voluntary manslaughter, a lesser felony. She has not shown remorse or apologized. She served nine years before being paroled. After that, her anger control problems have lead to police responding to assault, domestic violence, burglary, and theft at her residence.
• When Clare Nicholls met Andrew Gardner, he became a surrogate father to her three children from previous relationships before fathering one of his own. While still pregnant, Clare's violent temper showed, it took little to provoke her, smacking Andrew frequently when he tried to get something to eat. Having a below-average I.Q., Andrew submitted to her because he'd get beaten if he did stand up. Clare also dominated her younger brother Simon, nobody in the house acted without her permission. She wouldn't let Andrew take their child to see his family, he was only allowed to drop the children off at school down the street. She even began to starve him and called him useless, worthless, and a drain on the household budget. The very few times Andrew dared to protest, Simon beat him down with Clare's encouragement. Andrew was reduced to stealing food in the home he lived in. He wouldn't leave because he wanted to be with his daughter. Making his torture worse, Clare invited ex-lover Steven Martins, also afflicted with a low IQ, to move in and join in the abuse of Andrew. Clare got Steven to burn him with a lighter. Weeks of abuse took a toll on Andrew, he didn't have the strength to protest while Clare had sex with Steven right in front of him. One day Clare began jumping on him, which fractured his ribs and pierced his lungs, heart, and tissue. Slowly suffocating to death, he died in agony. When they called the paramedics, they said he came home after being mugged but his autopsy proved otherwise. All three were arrested and convicted of murder, Simon Nicholls was sentenced to 25 years in prison, Steve Martins was sentenced to 20 years while Clare was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 32 years.
• Shawna Forde grew up a teenage delinquent and as an adult despises Mexican immigrants in her Arizona town. She joins a minutemen organization to stop them but is ejected for being too unruly so she forms her own primitive border patrol. To fund it she decides to rob drug dealers and one of her associates gives her the name of a former friend he knew from the drug trade, Raul Flores. Shawna and her 3 recruits enter his house in the middle of the night and shoot Raul point blank, his wife Gina is merely wounded but his daughter Braseñia doesn’t survive. The team finds no money or drugs and just take some jewelry. Gina calls for help and informs them that she is familiar with one of the perpetrators. FBI officials are also alerted to Shawna’s next hit job by a man who conversed with her group. All 3 assailants are convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, and one count of attempted first-degree murder. One gets life in prison and both Shawna and the other are sentenced to death.
• Kayliegh Woods and her boyfriend Jack Williams are obsessed with Satanism. Their toxic relationship is witnessed by their housemate Bethany Hill, his ex-girlfriend. After having Jack removed from their apartment by police, he is soon back with Kayleigh once again and living in the apartment. One night Bethany calls her father to pick her up in the morning, but that same night, Kayleigh and Jack attack Bethany, binding her and placing her in a bathtub before torturing her and severing her jugular vein. After cleaning up the crime scene, Kayleigh calls the police and claims Bethany had committed suicide, but her claim soon fails, and both killers are caught and receive 26 years to life.
• Lynn Carlson suffers from multiple sclerosis. She buys a house and invites her son David and his wife Doris to live with her. David and Doris do not seek employment and scrounge off Lynn’s trust account, they also refuse to take care of her, even though Doris is an accredited caregiver. When the 2 mortgages on the house are spent Doris decides to take in teenaged renters to bring in extra cash but the noisy environment proves to be too much and Lynn moves out into an assisted care facility. With their debt climbing Doris and David try to convince Lynn to help them out but for once Lynn stands her ground, Doris however refuses to take no for an answer. Knowing that if Lynn dies they get her assets Doris convinces a 20 year old lodger, John Mc Reaken , to commit the crime and his 17 old friend, Scott Smith, helps him out. Doris drives them to the facility late one night, gives them the knives and the key to the house. Daniel has second thoughts but Scott goads him into going forward with the stabbing, however they abandon Lynn partway through and she is only discovered the next morning, still alive by a thread. When David goes to see the investigation the following morning detectives know something is up by his total lack of emotion, and his concern as to whether or not she can talk, which she can’t. 3 days later a friend of the lodgers agrees to take part in a sting operation which results in the 4 of them being arrested. When Lynn dies 6 months after the attack they are charged with her murder. Daniel is charged with first-degree murder and gets a life sentence. Scott is sentenced to 10 years for second-degree murder. David is charged with conspiracy to commit murder and also gets life. Doris gets the death sentence, but it’s later reduced to life imprisonment.
• Latonia Bellamy her cousin Shiquan and friend Darmelia Lawrence decide to have a night of fun by grabbing a few guns and trying to rob people. They wind up finding victims in Nia Haqq and Michael Muchiok, a young couple who had just celebrated their engagement dinner. Both are ordered to the ground before being shot in the back of the head, the trio then try to escape with their car but a lock on the steering wheel prevents them from getting anywhere so they ditch the scene. Days later Shiquan is arrested on unrelated charges and subsequently confesses to the crime. Darmelia gets 40 years while Shiquan and Latonia are both serving life. Nia and Michael’s family friends now host an annual fundraising event in their honor at the restaurant where they were killed.
• Marjorie Diehl Armstrong was one of the people responsible for the death of Brain Wells. Better known as the man who was forced to hold up a bank with a collar bomb, not knowing it wasn't fake until it was too late. She's convicted of armed bank robbery, conspiracy to commit armed bank robbery, and of using a destructive device in a crime and gets life in prison.
• Becky Reid meets up with the former lover of a cousin, Lyndsey Vaux, an adoring and devoted single mother of a young daughter. The two became fast friends, and their friendship soon developed into a romantic relationship, but Becky's antisocial behavior was an early cause of concern for Lyndsey's mother as Becky would hide out in her bedroom when Lyndsey invited her over to meet. Things got worse from there, as Becky began to isolate Lyndsey from her family and friends. Becky finally invited Lyndsey to move in with her, but made it clear Lyndsey's young daughter was not welcome. Lyndsey Vaux was oblivious to Becky's history of violence against previous girlfriends. Becky had nearly beaten one, Samantha Newns, to death, and unbelievably was aided in the assault by her mother, who held Samantha down while her daughter attacked her. Ann Vaux heard about this from a former acquaintance of Becky's and tried to warn Lyndsey about it, but her warnings fell on deaf ears. Lyndsey remained steadfastly devoted to her girlfriend, eventually coming to believe she deserved the physical and emotional abuse Becky heaped on her. Before much longer, their relationship developed into a master-slave dynamic with Becky forcing Lyndsey to beg for money on the streets and then beat her if she didn't bring home enough. Lyndsey's physical condition deteriorated - she lost over 100 pounds and her body was covered in bruises, and she was forced to scavenge for food in dumpsters since Becky denied her food. She explained away her injuries as the result of falls if anyone dared to inquire. One day, Becky called paramedics to her residence, claiming Lyndsey fell down the stairs and had become unconscious. Lyndsey's body displayed over 90 separate injuries. Her physical condition was so weakened that her body shut down and she passed away. Becky was convicted of the murder of Lyndsey and of assaulting Samantha, and was given a life sentence with a minimum of 20 years.
• Marie Poling has 2 children with her husband Richard but their conflicting job schedules mean they rarely have time together. At her job Marie starts an affair with Raphael Garcia and lies to him about being pregnant with his child, it’s actually Richard’s, and that Richard abuses her. When Richard comes home from work one evening she shoots him while he’s on the couch, using a pillow for a silencer, and then calls a friend from work named Carlene. She helps Marie wrap him in bed sheets and drag him to the basement, Marie then gets Raphael to pick up some supplies from a hardware store but he must be coerced by her into decapitating him. They then drop the head and body in separate locations but it takes less than 2 weeks for his body to be found and Richard to be identified from fingerprints. When investigators interrogated her accomplices they fall like dominoes. Carlene is convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury and sentenced to 18 months. Rafael is convicted of aggravated burglary, abuse of a corpse and obstruction of justice, he serves 13 years in prison. Marie is convicted of aggravated murder and abuse of a corpse, she was sentenced to life with a minimum of 20 years and has been denied parole several times.
• Wendi Andriano's husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She gets fed up with having to care for him all the time and decides to spice it up with an affair. Still thinking the cancer is taking too long she tries to poison him with weed killer, but that plan fails after she and a neighbor call 911. As the staff is about to come into the house, Wendi locks the door and tells them that he doesn't need CPR, then she bludgeons Joe 23 times with a wooden chair from the kitchen before stabbing him in the left side of his neck with a knife. After the murder, Wendi plays the victim card, but her plea for sympathy falls on deaf ears. Wendi is arrested for 1st-degree murder and still remains on death row.
• Elisa Baker has her online lover and his young daughter move from Australia to North Carolina to be with her. Elisa takes delight in torturing her stepdaughter Zahra, who earlier survived bone cancer that left her almost deaf and took one of her legs. Zahra eventually dies and Elisa dismembers her body. She was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
• Samantha Pachynski is a gifted student with a bright future until she begins a romance with career criminal Patrick Selepak, who draws her into his life of crime. Samantha becomes his willing accomplice in a series of armed robberies across Michigan and then in three murders - a young couple (that was expecting a child) whose identities the killers plan to steal after suffocating them with plastic bags and duct tape, and a friend who made the mistake of letting them hide out at his house. Both are serving life without parole.
• Manisha Patel attempts to carve out a new life in Sydney, Australia but within a year her marriage has failed. She finds love with a man named Niraj Dave who already has bride waiting for him back in India named Purvi Joshi. When Manisha discovers she is pregnant, she and Niraj agree to terminate it. Manisha is allowed to shackle up with Niraj until his bride arrives, but Manisha believe she can persuade him to leave her but is unsuccessful. When Purvi finally arrives Manisha doesn’t give up in her mission until one day she decides to choke Purvi in the early morning hours and stab her twice for good measure. Niraj is quick to find Purvis body and knows there’s only one person who would’ve wanted to see her dead. Manisha attempts to feign a mugging but her story quickly falls apart when the apartments security footage shows her walking to and from the building during the time of murder. She was initially sentenced to 24 years in prison but an appeals court overturned the initial conviction and replaced it a manslaughter charge that will keep her behind bars for a little under a decade. As one of the commentators pointed out, under other circumstances the 2 could’ve easily been friends but Manisha chose to see her as an obstacle to be removed and did so in the most gruesome manor imaginable.
• Diane Borchardt was a teacher's aide at the local high school, other teachers liked her because she was always willing to help and students would share their troubles with her. But at home, Diane tried to erase all traces of her husband Ruben's late wife, she got rid of pictures of her and wouldn't allow discussion of her, wanting her stepchildren to accept that they had no other mother but her. She became more controlling and erratic, calling the police sometimes and falsely saying he was assaulting her even if she was the perpetrator. Unable to take it anymore, Ruben found a new woman and decided to divorce Diane. She filed for sole custody of the children, claiming constant neglect, but he got custody of the children and the house. Diane told 2 students, Douglas Vest, and Joshua Yanke, that he had beaten her and they recruited 15-year-old Michael Maldonado, with a promise of cash, cars, and jewelry, to kill Ruben. She sets up an altercation which results in her being escorted from the house, having official witnesses establishing an alibi. The next morning, Ruben gets up early to attend church, Maldonado shoots him twice, then the three hitmen flee, dumping the shotgun in a vacant lot. His son wakes up and finds his father bleeding on a chair, Ruben managed to say "I can't believe she did this to me." He's rushed to the hospital but later dies. As Ruben's murder happened two weeks before Diane had to move out, she was the prime suspect, but she had not physically done it. But when Ruben's life insurance payout was frozen, Diane was unable to pay the boys and they turned themselves in. Vest and Maldonado were convicted of first-degree murder and were sentenced to life. Yanke plead guilty to second-degree intentional murder and was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Diane was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, with a sentence of 40 years before she can be eligible for parole.
• Sandra Layne tried to get her 17-year-old grandson Johnathon back on the right track after he starts to become addicted to drugs. She outright refuses to send him to rehab facilities and eventually shoots him 6 times in anger. However, she shot him while he was dialing 911, so her claim of self-defense falls flat and she gets 20-40 years.
  • Elva Bottineau takes 2 of her grandchildren into her house, already having others in her custody. It seems as though she is the perfect caregiver but in reality only the eldest and youngest are cared for adequately. 5 year old Jeffrey and his 6 year old sister are kept locked in a room with poor lighting, no bathroom and no heat. Only the sister is allowed out to go to school. Jeffrey’s growth is severely stunted by the living conditions and incredibly everyone in the house enters a non-spoken agreement to ignore their plight. Even Elva’s online degrees in childcare are revealed to be fraudulent. Her only justification for keeping the kids is to reap in their child support payments. After 4 miserable years Jeffrey finally dies from sepsis, weighing less than he did at the age of 18 months. Elva finally calls paramedics and Elvas lies are finally revealed, just in time to save his sister. Even as far back as the 70s Elva was abusing her own children, one girl dying from pneumonia at only 5 months but a postmortem showed bruising and it was revealed her husband abused another 2 by caging them. Elva and her husband are convicted of second-degree murder and forced confinement. Both will spend the rest of their lives in prison. This case lead the Ontario Department of Child Welfare to conduct background checks on care givers.
• In the 1970s, Rita Gluzman successfully pressured the Soviet Union to allow her scientist husband Yakov to emigrate to the West with the rest of their family. Years later, their marriage falls apart, and, wanting money from widowhood rather than divorce alimony, she conspired with her cousin Vladimir Zelinin to kill him by making him believe he'd go back to the USSR if they divorced. Yakov was stabbed and struck with an axe, and his body was chopped into pieces with a hacksaw, but Vladimir was caught trying to throw trash bags full of his body parts into a river. Rita was sentenced to life in prison but released in 2020 while Vladimir got 22 1/2 years in prison before being released in 2015.
• Denise Gay moves in with a coworker after his wife dies from years of chronic illness. When his 19-year-old son tries to get into an Arts college, she forges an acceptance email that tells him he must make a plaster cast of his face to get in. She and one of her own daughters, Latoya, used this as an opportunity to suffocate him all while a younger daughter, Alana, watched. He was reported missing for days until his body was discovered bound in a plastic bin, left in a wooded area. Denise and her daughter were found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. Denise was sentenced to life in prison while Latoya received 20 years for the murder and 10 years for the conspiracy.
• Shirley Allen's family is dealt a tragic double blow when both Shirley's husband, Lloyd, and the family dog die from mysterious illnesses. Shirley's daughter Norma exposes her mother as a murderer who poisoned both Lloyd and her dog with antifreeze for Lloyd's life insurance money; Shirley is also suspected of murdering her previous husband in 1978 under similar circumstances. This case was also documented in an episode of Evil Lives Here entitled "Poisoned By Love", in which Norma describes how growing up with her was still a terrifying experience. Shirley wouldn’t allow her kids to socialize with others, and would even lock them in the house and take the phones with her if she went out. Norma even describes a time when Shirley was bathing her, both her arms were broken, and nearly drowned her.
• Kimberly Cargill has 3 kids by 3 different men, and when she meets a new man it becomes 4. Though she claims to be abused by her exes it soon becomes obvious to her latest husband that Kimberley is in fact the abuser, beating children and berating in laws alike. 2 of her sons find solace in a babysitter named Cherry Walker. With a custody trial for her last remaining child coming up, she tries to prevent Cherry from testifying against her and loose her last victim, so Kimberley takes her out to dinner, then drives her out to a secluded spot, strangles her and then lights her on fire, when questioned she tried to claim the woman had suffered a seizure, but no one buys it. Kimberly was found guilty of capital murder, and spends the remainder of her days on death row in Texas. This was also documented in an episode of Evil Lives Here entitled "Master Manipulator" featuring testimony from both one of her sons Jamie and her ex-husband Brian, who describe how tumultuous it was to live with her. Jamie also told of how following trial he became violent and addicted to meth before getting back on the straight path.
• Stephanie Hudnall has her children under her cruel thumb, keeps them in squalor before eventually turning her teenage daughters against their father, Bill (with whom she as a long and turbulent relationship), claiming he is to blame for the hardships they have suffered. At Stephanie's urging, her 19-year-old daughter, Guenevere, hacks her father to death with a pickax, so her mother can collect on Bill's Social Security.Upon being interrogated Stephanie is quick to sell out Gwen. Stephanie and Gwen were both found guilty of second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder after signing a no-contest plea. The court sentenced them both to 40 years of jail-time each. This was also documented in episodes of American Monster (“I Did What I Had To”) and Evil Lives Here ("Let Her Rot"), the latter of which has testimony from her son Joshua, who passed away between the episodes interview and airing from what's believed to be liver failure.
• Malaika Griffin was an intelligent person who kept to herself and was viewed a quiet, shy woman. In her diary, Malaika expressed both her anger at her neighbors and a hatred of European Americans. She wrote that black women needed to launch an uprising and kill white men. One day her neighbor Jason Horsley began sorting things from his vehicle, setting them down his tools on the sidewalk, which set Malaika off. His girlfriend Deborah Loseille threatened to call the police when she started kicking his tools around. Malaika went back into her house and retrieved a 9mm pistol with a laser sight. She came back outside and shot Horsley in the back. She then fled the scene as he laid dying. Jason died within 30 minutes. In Malaika's abandoned room, police found a 9mm assault rifle, ammunition, two hand grenades and the library of a terrorist, with books about bomb making. Her diary told she was sick of looking at white people and wrote about killing them. Evading capture for six years, Malaika held down pharmacy jobs but police appeals on TV led to a colleague recognizing her and calling the police. She pleaded not guilty to felony murder on the grounds of self-defense. She was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
• Joe Meyers marries a Philippine nurse named Irene. Joe's best friend is a mentally handicapped man named David O’Dell. Irene wants to make enough money to send for her family and thinks she has the perfect plan. She convinces Joe to take out a $46,000 insurance policy on David, and later Joe makes a flimsy excuse to fire him. One cold February night they enter David’s house where Joe hits him on the head (non-fatally) and then they set fire to his basement. When the sun arises nothing is left of the house and investigators think it is all a tragic accident, until Joe and Irene arrive very early in the investigation and give conflicting reports. Investigators then get their hands on Joe’s security cameras, which showcases their planning. Irene tries to pin it all on Joe but it’s all for naught. Joe is convicted of first-degree murder, two accounts of first-degree arson and criminal conspiracy. Irene is charged with second-degree murder, two counts of first-degree arson, insurance fraud, conspiracy, and falsely reporting to the police. Both get 23 years to life.
• Carmen Montenegro is financially supported by her boyfriend and later fiancee, Samuel Wiggins, but far from being grateful, she steals additional money from him. Sam finally has enough and breaks off the relationship which sends Carmen into a murderous rage as she stabs him 24 times, then dismembers his corpse with a chainsaw and deposits the remains in various places, including in two potted plants she gives to a cousin. Incredibly she’s caught pushing a garbage container that contained his torso and tried to claim he assaulted her. She is serving life behind bars with the possibility of parole after 26 years.
• Brittany Norwood goes to college on an athletic scholarship but looses it when she is caught stealing from teammates. 8 years later she is working for a Lululemon store under the management of Jana Murray. One night while locking up Jana discovers Brittany has once again stolen something from her place of work. Knowing that termination will spell doom for her future career prospects Brittany calls Jana and tells her that she left something back at the store and they head back. The following morning Jana is discovered dead while an injured Brittany is on the floor of the bathroom, claiming that they were raped by 2 men who left bloody footprints on the floor. Police do some digging in the store and find a washed men’s size 14 shoe that matches the imprint of footprints at the crime scene. DNA tests would prove Brittany had worn them. Police surmise that Brittany used 10 objects to beat Jana to death, dealing a total of 332 blows and Jana felt each and every one, molested the corpse to throw them off her trail and then she injured herself for good measure. Brittany is charged with 1st degree murder and gets life in jail with no parole.
• Sylvia Seegrist had an obsession with the military and paranoid schizophrenia. When she attempted to enlist in the Army she was discharged in early 1985 due to her mental illness. She had regular delusions but refused to take medication, although her mother attempted to help her. Sylvia feared that her mother and her doctors were trying to hurt her and viewed a mental hospital was worse than prison. On October 30, 1985, Sylvia got dressed in Army fatigues and went into the Springfield Mall in Springfield, Pennsylvania. She approached with a .22 caliber Ruger 10/22 rifle and began shooting. She missed the first four people she shot because she was firing from the hip. One of the men she shot at slashed her tires to prevent her from escaping. She was hardly aiming when she hit 2-year old Recife Cosmen in the chest, who would later die. Entering the mall, she fired indiscriminately, only hitting seven people. Some witnesses recognized her having visited the mall before, complaining in clothing stores how bright the colors were bothering her. Sylvia continued firing while conversing with the voices in her head through clenched teeth. As she muttered to herself, she shot Dr. Ernest Trout three times, who died in the hospital. She then fatally shot Augusto Ferrara but John Laufer, mistaking her for a prankster, seized the gun from her, saying, "You picked the wrong person to mess with." His intervention caused Sylvia to briefly experience lucidity and she was arrested. Sylvia was found guilty (but mentally ill) of three counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder. She was served with three life sentences. While in prison, and on medication, she criticized her ability to easily purchase a rifle for $104. While signing the forms to buy the gun, she checked no on the part that asked if she had a mental illness. She wrote to politicians, including President Bill Clinton, asking for more gun control, saying, "I shouldn't have been allowed to get this gun."
• Power-hungry drug addict and prostitute Karla Faye Tucker got addicted to marijuana at 8 and was using meth by 14, courtesy of her mother. After a three day binge she used a pickaxe to murder an ex-boyfriend and a woman he was having a one-night-stand with. Upon being sentenced to death however, she experiences some profound changes for the better, making her execution one of the most controversial in United States history.
• Jessica Mc Cord suffers from both narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder making her intolerable to live with. Eventually her first husband Alan left her but she used their children as a lure to keep him coming back and then commanded her new lover, police officer Jeff Kelley, to shoot them in the head and then send both Alan and his new wife Tara to a fiery grave in the trunk of a car. Both are sentenced to life imprisonment.
• Diana Hahn is a meek and mousy woman who mostly keeps to herself. At her new grocery store job she strikes the fancy of her manager Michael Daly, who’s married to his high school sweetheart Sherry and has 2 sons. Although Sherry has been aware of his philandering for years she sticks it out due to her commitment to marriage. Things between Michael and Diana grow more intense and eventually even Sherry realizes this is a war she can’t win, she wants to separate but Michael won’t let her have the children. He and Diana then concoct a plan get rid of Sherry, proclaiming it to be a human sacrifice. Diana purchases a wig, make up, handcuffs, an axe and a cop uniform. In the parking lot of a Target Diana approaches Sherry pretending to be a police officer and tells her to get in her car. It doesn’t take Sherry long to realize this isn’t a real police procedure when Diana takes her to a rural location. Immobilized in the back of the car she is almost entirely helpless as Diana strikes her with the axe and follows it up with several stabbings with a knife, while Sherry was still technically alive. Diana then hacks her to pieces and tosses the remains across the wilderness. Michael informs the police that his wife is missing and gives them Diana’s info. Upon meeting Diana they notice that not only is Michael’s van in her driveway but Michael is in her house! There’s also scars on her forehead. As police dig deeper they find various purchases and phone messages and witnesses that saw Sherry being forced into the car. Sherry’s remains are eventually found, minimal as they are. Both Michael and Diana are sentenced to life in prison for murder and conspiracy to commit murder. This was also documented in an episode of American Monster entitled “Remote Control” showing how much Shelly loved caring for her kids and how pointless and cruel her demise was.

Evil Lives Here

Evil Lives Here is about a person having to recount the time they were around a truly vile human being. The show also goes into some more detail about how the person was even before they killed like when a father beats his son with a branch many times. In fact, many episodes involve the interviewee getting so overcome by emotion they have to stop filming so they can cry.

• "Fear Thy Father" chronicles the horror that is Eddie Lee Sexton, a convicted murderer and serial rapist, who was known for compelling his children to commit similar offenses within their massive family. One of his sons recalled how he once made them drink the blood of their cat (which Sexton killed himself). In fact, not only did Sexton father at least three children with two of his daughters, but he forced his children to function as a mini militia against the police. He then took them off the grid and into the woods, one day one of his daughters couldn't get her baby to stop crying and wound up suffocating him so Sexton made them bury the body. Finally, he went to prison for orchestrating the murder of his son-in-law by threatening one of his mentally challenged offspring. The mother of the dead baby served six years, and the mentally challenged son serves 25 years. Sexton himself gets the death sentence but dies behind bars after 22 years, as does his poor wife. One of the sons interviewed said the experience nearly drove him to shoot himself but when the gun didn’t go off he took it as a sign he has a purpose and now he has a family of his own.
• "Blood Atonement"^note A disputed Mormon doctrine which states that some people have sinned so much not even the sacrifice of Jesus can save them, so the only way they can go to heaven is to kill them. tells about the evil that is Ervil LeBaron by one of his (many) daughters, Estefania. LeBaron led a fundamentalist Mormon sect, isolating his 13 wives and 50 children from the outside world. He ordered the death of at least 22 people at that time, but things didn't stop when he died. LeBaron’s followers carried out his orders, killing people from a "list" he had compiled, cumulating in the infamous 1988 “4 O’Clock Murders.”
• "Something is Different About Robbi", ^note Tells of Robert Hawkins, perpetrator of the Westroads Mall Shooting "I Tried To Prevent This", ^note Tells of Michael Swanson, who killed 2 women within a manner of hours "Not My Boy”, ^note Tells of serial arsonist Paul Kenneth Keller and "I Raised a Sociopath" ^note Tells of Aaron Foust, who strangled a man to death are just a few of many episodes dealing with every parents worst nightmare.From a young age you can tell there’s something wrong with your child, you hope that it is something they will outgrow, but in fact, it only gets worse over time. And although you try everything in your power (especially financially), you are unable to prevent your child from becoming a homicidal criminal.
• "Sleeping with the Enemy": Sarita Anderson's lover Karim Zakikhani intentionally lies about his STD status and infects her with HIV. She survives, even after a failed suicide attempt, and when she goes to social media to spread the word, she's shocked at how many other women he also infected, 2 of which died. Karim is sentenced to spend 30 years behind bars and Sarita is now in remission and has given birth to a completely healthy son.
• "They Let Him Out": Clare Bradburn’s sons Jason and Joby were burned to death in a storage room fire set by their stepfather Ed Graf. Though Graf was found guilty, he was put on retrial in 2014, because old cases of arson-related deaths were being reviewed by the authorities. In that time, there had been significant improvements in forensic science which rendered the old methods useless and the evidence gathered back then obsolete. Graf confessed to the crime and was granted parole, under strict supervision, meaning Clare must now live with the fact that the killer of her children roams free.
• "Locked In The Closet": Jesse Eging details his abhorrent life under the thumb of Alice Jenkins. His mother Mary Rowles had 6 kids by the time she met Alice at 21. While the 3 eldest lived with their fathers, Jesse and a step-brother lived with Alice who would tie them to beds while she went to work and Mary was occupied caring for her youngest baby. They would go to school for a while but then Alice pulls them out before anyone can raise suspicion. Eventually, she'd force them into a closet for days on end, with no food and no bathroom breaks, and Jesse would lose track of time (at one point while talking he gets tunnel vision and imagines himself back in the closet). Also included was physical abuse. At one point CPS was called but Alice manages to convince them there is nothing wrong, conveniently making sure they don't go upstairs and see the closet. When his sister tries to alleviate their situation by supplying them food, Alice deprives them for 3 days before making them eat dog feces. Eventually, the kids manage to escape in the middle of the night before they encounter a police officer, which leads to Alice's and Mary's arrests. The eldest head back to their fathers while the youngest are treated for malnourishment before being adopted. An investigation would prove Alice had the means to supply a normal home life but purposefully did what she did out of pure sadism and to make sure she was Mary's sole focus. A judge openly called Mary just as responsible because at any moment, she could've stopped this had she been paying attention. They both pled guilty to multiple child abuse charges and were sentenced to 30 years behind bars. It's not lost on Jesse how he literally lived through worse conditions than what they endure in a state prison. He also admits he's struggled with eating disorders over the years and is visibly quite emotional many times throughout the interview, especially when he recalls how his sister died after dropping her kids off at school courtesy of a street racer.
• "The Face of My Torturer": William Knorr tells of his mother Theresa. She'd abuse all 6 of her children regularly (beat them with a wooden plank, isolate them from their peers, throw knives at them, etc.) and when one daughter, Susan, tried to put an end to it, she paid the price. She got CPS to come to the house, but they made the mistake of interviewing the kids with Theresa present and so they lied about the truth. When they leave, Theresa handcuffs Susan to a table and gags her for extra measure. She pulls them out of school yet forces some kids to work for income but keeps constant supervision to make sure they don't run away. At one point, she makes her youngest hold Susan at gunpoint, and when it goes off, she doesn't take Susan to the hospital but instead puts her in the bathtub. Susan tries to plead for release on the condition she'll never tell or come back but Theresa only allows it on the basis she removes the bullet, which predictably kills her. She then forces William and a brother to help her dispose of the body by making them burn it at gunpoint (all these years William has had to convince himself that he burned his dead sister, not his dying sister). She then turns her abuse on a sister named Sheila, who dies of malnourishment from being locked in a closet. After disposing of her body, William officially runs away. Years later William is arrested on the charge of connection to the murder of his sisters but gets off with probation while Theresa is sentenced to 50 years to life. To this day, William openly admits he's still detached from most of his emotions.
• "I Should've Turned Back": Kat Harris and Marla Kreuger, the sister and the ex-wife of Larry Harris, respectively, tell their terrible recollections of him. Kat said he was a destructive child for whom punishment meant nothing. As he got older, his interests changed from destructive to witchcraft. It was assumed he mellowed out when he got into culinary school and married Marla, but his temper would flare up for the most superfluous reasons. One January day, Marla is informed that a fire erupted at her house and her daughters did not survive, but not due to smoke or burns. Larry stripped them, raped them, and then strangled them. Kat admitted she was at the house just hours before their deaths and could've gone back for the debit card she forgot, and possibly saved them. Larry is serving 2 life terms but the question on many minds still is "why?" Marla suspects this was punishment for what he perceived as unfaithfulness from her, Kat believes it was a Satanic ritual brought on by his stepdaughter getting her first period, but it's clear that any explanation Larry gives only makes sense in his mind.
• "I Watched Daddy Bury Mommy" chronicles the story of Lyle Eugene Keidel, a domestic abuser who constantly mistreated his family, at one point even shouting at his children that once his wife left him, they would have nothing and fall into ruin while simultaneously calling their mother horrible names. One night after their separation, when the mother went out on a date, Lyle came back to the house unannounced. Naturally, when his ex-wife returned, he was furious, and this started a terrible argument, culminating in Lyle, in his daughter Lori's words, hitting her with a punch strong enough to knock a full-grown man out. Mercifully, Lori was shielded from the rest of the scene when her sister took her to another room. But the horror didn't end there, Lori snuck out of the house and saw Lyle bury her mother in their backyard. Being a child at the time, Lori couldn't understand what really happened, but her father was not pleased that she witnessed the act. Sometime later, a fire breaks out in the house, killing two of the children (her brother escaped through a window). It was only because Lori's sister shielded her from the flames that she survived (however she had burns down to the bone that still left some scars on her over 4 decades later). Even after that, her father would often take her out to sea and force her to swim all the way back to shore, then be surprised when she did. Ultimately as an adult, and finally realizing the truth, Lori does turn her father in for his crimes years later, but when caught, he shows little to no remorse for his actions up till his dying day.
• "It Was All Judith": Corey Breininger's father Robert marries a woman named Judith Hawkey. She soon starts to abuse him when his father is away at work, manages to convince him to lie in order to separate him from his grandparents and even turns him and his father against each other by forcing him to act out. One day she lies to him, then only 10, that Robert has terminal cancer and to spare them all the heart ache and finical problems he should shoot him in the head. Corey does it and everyone else thinks it's just an accident. It wasn't until years later that Corey told the truth by disguising it in an English assignment, and an investigation would reveal that she took $500,000 insurance payout on her husband’s life. Investigators also noted that she had started the paperwork to process the payment the very next day after the shooting. She was indicted on one count of aggravated murder, four counts of endangering children, and one count of insurance fraud, found guilty and was sentenced to life in prison without parole but was granted a retrial due to circumstantial evidence and reached a deal that would get her out of prison in only 10 years, with 5 already served. On top of having eventually face her again, Corey still has to live with the indelible scar of being the one who technically put the bullet in his father's head.
• "Divorce? Never. Murder? Maybe.": Vernon Jensen was a recent divorcee studying to become a respiratory therapist when a registered nurse at the hospital where he worked at struck up a friendship with him. Vicki Arlene was a divorced mom to a four-year-old son. As the two grew more acquainted during long shifts at the hospital, Vernon decided to take her on a few dates and explore the mutual feelings they seemed to have for one another, but not long after their first dates Vernon left town for a long weekend with his buddies and when he returned to the home he shared with his mother, she told him he needed to call and check in with Vicki but Vicki didn’t know the phone number at his home, and she had never met Vernon’s mother, the first sign that when she wanted something she got it with no negotiating about it. When they moved in he noticed how her temper would fly off the handle at any time, trying to provoke him into fighting her at times and throwing a knife at his head. Vernon gets fed up and leaves, but never reports Vicki's threats to the authorities, and eventually meets a woman named Aleta Diane Ray. It doesn't take long for Vicki to find them and one day after he leaves for work she and some accomplices break into their apartment and inject Aleta with a fatal dose of methamphetamine and insulin. Vicki and one accomplice are sentenced to life while a third, only a teenager at the time, has since been released. Quite scary to think how someone you've never met in person can get so angry at you just for knowing someone they once loved that they'll personally take your life.
  • In an episode of the spinoff Shadows of Death, "They Killed My Mom", Vernon meets up with Aleta's daughter for the first time in 20 years. She describes the morning in question her mother died, she recalls seeing a bunch of people come into the house, hold her mother down, even while she screams for her life, and then inject her with something that makes her stop screaming. When questioned by police she outright says things like "my mommy is dead" and "her lips are blue" unaware of the full weight of those statements. When she finally meets with Verne again he’s a wreck for feeling like he invited her mothers death in but she tells him he has nothing to feel guilty about.
• "She Should Be Left To Die": Chris Matechen strikes the fancy of Alyssa Dayvault, a woman with 2 children who tells him early on in their relationship that she can no longer get pregnant. As their relationship progresses Alyssa becomes more irritable and heavier. After he leaves to spend Thanksgiving with his family, he returns to find Alyssa not only nicer but thinner too. Charles doesn't think anything of it until the same routine is repeated and one day she is on the floor, bleeding profusely. At the hospital he is asked by doctors if he knew she was pregnant. Feeling like someone is lying, he asks Alyssa for answers but she manages to convince him it's nothing more than a phantom pregnancy, which he buys. It's not until a few years later that he learns the awful truth, Alyssa had been pregnant at least twice in the time he knew her but dumped the babies in the trash before he could find out. She is found guilty on 2 accounts of child abuse related homicide and received 2 consecutive 40 year terms and Chris has to live with the fact he potentially lost 2 children he never even knew he had.
• "What If He Gets Out?": From an early age, Amy Chessler's brother, Jesse Winnick, is both volatile and deceitful. At one point he called CPS on their mother in an attempt to get her out of their life. For a period of time he manipulated her into performing sexual acts for him, careful to never lay an actual finger on her. As he got older he amassed weapons and began to actually resent their mother, who by then was using a wheelchair. One day Jesse finally snaps and kills her (over making a sandwich of all things if you can believe it) and leaves Amy to discover her body, the terror in her voice evident on the 911 call. For nearly 4 years he drags out the legal process and even tries to frame her as an accomplice before accepting a plea deal, but it doesn’t end there. Shortly before the interview was filmed she had gotten word that he’d be up for parole. At the hearing he recited how he knew her address, had stabbed a multitude of people in prison and still expressed a desire to kill both her and her family. Parole was denied but every 2 years it'll come back up and if he’s released Amy has very real reason to worry for her life. For her, the nightmare is nowhere near over.^note Amy eventually started an online petition to keep her brother behind bars longer. Not only did it gain thousands of signatures, but her brother was also charged for attempting to murder a correctional officer. His sentence will be extended and Amy can finally see some light at the end of the tunnel.
• "He Was A False Prophet": Benjamin Risha is a child who grows up under the Alamo Christian Foundation, headed by Tony Alamo and one of his wives Susan Alamo. They had a very warped Pentecostal view of Christianity and forced their followers to function as textile producers, especially young children. When Susan dies Tony forces everyone to pray for days on end but when she doesn't arise from the dead he goes further down the road to no return. He forced one child to slap his mother for heresy and started taking young girls across state lines to men who would marry them and took on several of his own. At first Benjamin abuses his privilege as one of Tony's favorites to have his way but eventually comes to realize his madness. He escapes and manages to find his birth mother, while in 2008 Tony is finally arrested and charged with multiple counts of sexual abuse and dies behind bars in 2017, aged 82.
• "The Werewolf Butcher": Jack Roy Sullivan's sisters, May and April, say that from an early age he was kind of off, at one point he gifted them a rabbit he personally killed. As a teenager he faced issues with indecent exposure and by the time they were adults he spent time in jail for being accessory to rape (or at least that's how he tells it). He also gains an unhealthy fascination with wolves. One day he overhears his niece saying she's really angry at someone in her school. Days later that girls house is broken into, vandalized and even has a dead hamster at the scene. Years later a little girl goes missing and it's not long until a young girl and her mother also die in a gruesome manor. Eventually Roy is arrested for both crimes and while trying to get him to take the plea deal he tells them how the victims begged for mercy. He will spend the rest of his life in prison and sisters can only wonder what went wrong with him.
• "He Was My Hero and A Monster": Daniel Rolle used to idolize his father Donald but early on he saw the red flags. His family would take a long road trip to visit grandma’s house every few months, except for his father. One time he found a hand mirror with lines of cocaine on it, then he flushed the drugs down the toilet. His mother came in and started yelling at him, which he now interprets as being afraid of his dad because some of his drugs were now gone. During a camping trip, his dad erupted into a whirl of anger and violence, throwing and punching things. After destroying the entire campsite, and then just walked away like nothing had happened. Two hours later Donald was in a completely different mood and then asked Daniel if he wanted to go fishing. He also punched one of their dogs after it ran away and had another one killed after it, non-seriously, bit a child and made the boys watch. After damaging a knife Daniel was subjected to beating with a belt. (He later found out it was his mother who did the beatings, for fear that if his father did them Daniel's injuries would be worse.) The marriage ended during a really violent night where Donald destroyed the house and pushed Daniel’s brother. The police showed up that night and tackled Donald in front of him. He remembers feeling that ambivalence of feeling bad for his dad for being arrested but also being afraid of him as he fought the police. Daniel would eventually date a woman name Jennifer Randall but Donald would be responsible for her death following an argument at a bar. Daniel testified to the jury to spare his father's life. He remembers his father not even looking at him and asks them to “stop the cycle of violence.” Even though Daniel fought for his dad, Donald chose to hurt his son when speaking to the jury. He admitted to killing Jennifer, then tells the jury to put him to death. Daniel took that as an act of cruelty against him because he had put so much on the line to testify to the jury and argue to not give Donald the death penalty. Daniel’s life was a wreck after Jennifer's murder, he lost his job and constantly worries about people finding out. He also worries that the capacity of murder is “genetically inside” of him, and is something he can pass to his children.
• "To Infinity And Back": Claire Throssell's relationship with Darren Sykes seemed to be off to a good start, with him constantly showering her with gifts. (Though experts will say this is a classic technique of manipulation, known as “love bombing”). After they married Darren showed how controlling he was, checking her emails and mailbox, and would call her constantly (as in multiple times a day) at work. He also made sure she never was truly alone with anyone else, when she was even allowed to leave their domicile. His needs for sex were also very demanding and non-negotiable. When their first son Jack is born his controlling nature doesn’t subside. They are joined by another son named Paul 3 years later, as they grow Darren treats them no differently than he treats Claire, he’d hate it when Jack played his trumpet (smacking it out of his hands constantly) or when Paul auditioned for track and field (trying to cripple him so he can’t run away). One night they hear on the news of a terrible case of Pater Familicide and Darren responded he understood where it was coming from. At this point Claire knows she should leave but doesn’t have the money to take her children with her and must stay for their sake. Even after she files for divorce, Darren’s abuse just increases and she files for sole custody but due to a lack of physical evidence of abuse he is allowed 5 hours of custody a week, unsupervised. On one of these days Darren does the unthinkable, he sets fire to his flat with the boys inside. Darren is beyond saving, and despite the efforts of doctors neither do the boys, Paul didn’t last a day while Jack lingers for 5 days in the burn ward before passing. Since then, Claire is determined to change legislature to make sure no one else has to suffer like her. She keeps the boys close by mixing their ashes into tattoo powder and has it placed over her heart, it reads their last words "To Infinity And Back"
• "They Said I Killed My Brother": From an early age, Eric Nance torments his sister Belinda, at one point running over her duck with a lawnmower and burying it alive, and at another point nearly drowning her. When he’s older the family has frequent run ins with the police. When they reach adulthood Eric moves to another state and it’s not long before he’s arrested and sentenced to 23 years for what’s later revealed to be the rape/beating of 2 women but is released after serving only 11. Eric finally goes over the edge when he kills a young lady and tries to make it out so that he’s the fall guy for the real criminals. When she went to confront him he tells her where to find the murder weapon and wants her to destroy it. Though it was a difficult decision Belinda brings it to the police even though her mother urges her not to. Eric is sentenced to death and everyone from family to his defense attorney all say she’s responsible for it. The day before he dies she called him one last time to figure out why he made her do that, he responds “I didn’t wanna put anyone else through that”, not exactly the answer she was looking for. Over the years Belinda has struggled to break out of the infamy being Eric’s sister has brought upon her and several family members are still miffed at her but she knows she did the right thing for the sake of the victim’s family.
• "Momma Made Me Help": Shirley Furgala tells her of her mother Betty Lou Beets. From an early age her mother’s relationships were always torrid affairs but she also has a history of public lewdness. Betty Lou would also berate Shirley constantly, and even made her hold a gun to one man. Eventually Betty Lou shot Doyle Barker and made Shirley help her bury the body. Years later Betty Lou killed her husband Jimmy Don and tried to disguise it as fishing accident, but made Shirley and her brother bury him too. Surprisingly Betty reported Jimmy missing, which started a police investigation. Subsequently, officers came across Jimmy’s remains still in a wishing well and, on further inspection of the property, also recovered Barker’s remains from below the garage. Both Betty Lou and Shirley are arrested but Shirley is granted immunity in exchange for testifying, but Betty Lou still tries to blame her as a co-conspirator. Betty Lou is sentenced to death which is eventually carried out by the time she’s 62. Bad stuff, but to give you an idea of how bad it was for Shirley, in the episode’s intro Shirley gets emotional and starts to cry and eventually just up and vacates the interview, not returning to conclude it until the following day.
• "My Twisted Sister" details the Turpin Child Hoarding Case from the perspective of one of their aunts, Elizabeth Flores. From an early age she and her sister Louise were molested by their grandfather and as they got older Louise would take turns meant for Elizabeth (their grandfather was never charged with child abuse and lived until the age of 95). When Louise is 16 she marries David Allen Turpin, who comes from a respected family in the area and not long after begins having the first of her many children. When Elizabeth is in college she stays with them for a while, at the time they only have 4 children, and begins to notice some things that aren’t right. Louise and David would spend all night at casinos, leaving her and the kids in a car, Louise also didn’t seem interested in keeping the house tidy and was rather uninterested in bonding with her youngest child, and at dinner time the children would be called one by one down to the table and wouldn’t even take a bite without Louise telling them to. Elizabeth was never allowed to have anyone over or even talk to anyone outside the family. One night while she’s showering David and Louise peeked in on her and and started to heckle her. When she breaks the no contact rule, Louise takes her keys and literally leaves her on the sidewalk (she’s invited to stay with the man she would eventually marry). For the next few years Louise’s family grows and she and Elizabeth barely meet. When they do Elizabeth notices how spaced out and thin her nieces and nephews look and then Louise informs her they are moving to California (because state authorities don’t check up on you if you decide to homeschool your children). Years later while conversing with a niece, who looks much younger than she appears due to malnutrition, she notices how Louise seems to be watching her like a hawk and preemptively ends the conversation. When all the horrific details come to light, Elizabeth does not initially believe it until she goes to California and sees the awful truth with her own eyes. When they meet in prison Louise gives no satisfactory answers for why she did all that she did. In regards to David and Louise’s sentencing, both get life with parole after 25 years, Elizabeth says it is entirely deserved and now wants to help her nieces and nephews as they try regain some semblance of a normal life. Quite tragic to think how someone you once saw as a hero can become a villain that you are initially blind to until it is too late for someone else.
• "The Prom Night Killer": Jessie Toronjo’s mother remarries to a pastor but not all was well in the mixed family. Her stepbrother Jeffrey Pelley was anything but welcoming, he never seemed to come around liking, or even tolerating her. Jeff is at particularly at ends with her mother, regardless of how nice she is and no matter how much his own father tries to discipline him Jeff is unfazed. Jeff tormented Jessie in many ways, like shooting his BB gun at her cat, taking her clothes as she was in the shower and mocking her when she had to run to her room, dragging her out of her tent when she was camping in the backyard, scaring her when she had to go into the basement during a black out, and dunking her in an ice bath while using her sisters as a bargaining chip. Unfortunately her parents never believed her when she told them. When Jeff was not allowed to go to his senior prom he got even more angry than he ever had been. On the night of the prom Jessie went to a friend’s house for a weekend sleepover, and on Sunday morning she was driven back home and notices the yellow tape surrounding her house, she’s informed by her friend’s mother that her mother, biological sisters, and stepfather were all dead (her stepsister had also gone away for the weekend). Jessie knew very little of what really happened, believing her stepfather performed a murder suicide, but police ruled it out quickly due to there being no murder weapon (Jeff having told them the all guns they had were recently sold). Years after the incident Jessie is living in a foster home when Jeff contacts her and wants to meet up with her, when she agrees Jeff asks what she believes happened and she responds that she still believes it was his father (she now believes that had she answered literally anything else, she may not be alive today). A decade after this, Jessie is contacted by detectives who want to hear her side of the story, after telling her it couldn’t have been her stepfather she finally realizes that Jeff was the perpetrator. Jeff is extradited back to Alabama and Jessie agrees to testify in regards to the guns in the house. During the trial Jeff never looks at her and she is pleased when he is sentenced to 160 years but Jeff continues to seek his appeal. Jessie has since gotten married and has a family of her own but at the back of her mind the threat of Jeff getting out is always present, as is the eternal question she may never get any answers for “why?”
• "The Horror I Don’t Remember": Early on Sherry Schaefer knew something was off about her brother, Brian Britton. He’s initially a sweet boy but had a streak of selfishness, often fighting younger brother Jason for their dad’s attention. His roughhousing with Sherry could also go beyond normal sibling spats. When he was a teenager he went far beyond the typical phase of rebellion, stealing her allowance and using it to buy firearms. He also becomes obsessed with violence, weapons and the military. When he got a girlfriend he refused to be forbidden from seeing her, becoming even more defiant to his parents who are at their whits end. On the 45th anniversary of their grandparents wedding Brian staunchly opposed going to the celebration as though he resented all of them. 2 nights later Sherry went to sleep in her bed but woke up in the hospital with her head bandaged up and stitches all over. Detectives informed her that her father, mother and brother Jason were all dead. As the sole survivor Brian was being interrogated by police, although he informed them about where he hid the gun he used he tried to paint his parents as abusive, but no one was fooled.Incredibly 2 months prior to the incident Brian nearly died from overindulgence of vodka and had to have his stomach pumped. Brian was sentenced to 25 years to life, but now every 2 years he comes up for parole and Sherry is determined to keep him behind bars, no matter how many bad memories it drags up or how exhausting it is. In March of 2023 Brian nearly got parole but it was overturned due to a lack of empathy and his history of victim blaming. The worst part of this whole ordeal is how Sherry can only visit those she loves at the cemetery, mournful that her parents never became grandparents and Jason never got to really live his life.
• "The Black Widow": Cindy Taylor is the daughter of Blanche Taylor Moore, a woman who likes to present herself as a good Christian but can’t help but flirt with other men in spite of being married, much to the chagrin of her devoted husband James. One day James falls ill, though Blanche is by his side tending to him he never seems to bounce back. One day Cindy awakens to find her father dead, following his funeral Cindy stayed away from home for weeks but returned in time for Thanksgiving and found her mother already making waves with her coworker Raymond. As Cindy got older they started dating in secret for 17 years, then one day he too falls ill and is hospitalized. Following his death Blanche once again moves on remarkably quickly and gets involved with a pastor named Dwight. She eventually marries him but not long after he too falls ill and this time Blanche is hounded by detectives and barred from being in his hospital room. Doctors would conduct a heavy metals test and found arsenic in his system. Cindy and her sister are called to the district attorney’s office and asked if Blanche had ever attempted to poison Dwight, much to their confusion. Investigators exhume Raymond’s body and find arsenic in him as well. Cindy also agrees to allow her father to be exhumed, expecting them to find nothing but in fact he had the most arsenic out of all of them. It doesn’t end there, 5 more bodies were exhumed and arsenic was discovered in them as well, including Cindy’s own grandfather. Blanche is charged with the murders and the poisoning. At the trial Cindy and her sister still believe in her innocence, but Blanche is found guilty beyond reasonable doubt when several nurses got sick from eating a cake she brought Dwight. Blanche is sentenced to death but it has still yet to be carried out even tough she is now in her 90s. Cindy is doing her best to live a life beyond being known as Blanche’s daughter and encourages people to look for the signs in even the most well adjusted people, however small they may be.
• "We’re Glad Mom Is Dead": From an early age the Lizowski sisters, Victoria and Christine, know their mother Sungham is a tough, domineering and inflexible woman. She would wake them up early for piano practice and would personally, and forcibly, right any wrongs as she saw fit, not caring if it was something her daughters actually wanted to do. When they got into fights, as sisters occasionally do, she would break it up by beating one of them and making the other watch. Their father John is also not exempt from her wrath, but finds a way around it by traveling a lot for work. As they got older her punishments got more severe. At one point they recall a time when she locked them in a hot shed and made them keep their hands above their heads for who knows how long until they realized she wasn’t even at the house anymore. Another time they missed the bus, for the second time that week, and she drove them to school in such an erratic manor they thought she was purposely going to crash the car. Her biggest vice however was her ability to spend money faster than John could make, leading the house to nearly be foreclosed upon. After one too many physical altercations John makes plans to leave her. Sungham finds evidence that John apparently had found someone else and will take the girls with him. Unwilling to let that happen she plans a fun family holiday evening. One of the girls can see something peculiar about her dads drink but can’t make out what. The following morning they wake up to the sounds of a gun going off and eventually Sungham approaches them both with a gun in her hand. Christine was shot first while Victoria ran to call 911 before being shot herself, then Sungham turned the gun on herself. When they wake up in the hospital the girls learn that although their mother is still alive, their father died. Victoria was shot through her elbow and still bears some scars while Christine literally has pins and screws holding her hand together. Sungham was charged with 1st degree murder and attempted 1st degree murder and sentenced to 45 years in prison without parole. The girls are raised by relatives in New England. Their mother attempted to keep contact early on in her incarceration but they refused to talk her ever again. 20 years into her sentence Sungham hung herself with her bedsheets, much to the relief of her daughters. They can now focus on having families of their own and while they want to keep the memory of their father alive, they know that sooner or later they’ll have to mention their mother and all that she did, but for now it’s about enjoying the small things in life, Victoria had her 1st daughter not even 3 weeks after the interview.
• "The Body in the Backyard": At only 16, Karina Her has her first daughter Mailene. More children soon follow, including youngest daughter Dahlia. From an early age Mailene knows of the animosity building up in her mother. Karina outright told her she regretted having her so young and at one point burned her with a spoon. One night their father came home and saw Karina dousing the house with gasoline in an attempt to burn it. Not long after he files for divorce. Karina soon finds another man named Kou whom she marries, but it’s unfortunately not long before her old habits resurface. Mailene recalls one instance in which she claimed to have poisoned his dinner. She also puts up multiple cameras to spy both on him and her kids. When she nearly burns down the house again, and stabs Kou, the kids lived with their father for a while but eventually half of them go back to live with Karina and Kou, and she forbids the girls from talking to each other. Eventually Kou decides to finally begin divorce proceedings but agreed to stay with her until they could sell the house. One day Dahlia is instructed by her mother to stay at a friend’s house for 2 days, something that is highly out of character for her, and when she returns Kou has apparently vacated. Days pass and they still hear no word from him. Dahlia notices there’s a hole in the backyard that wasn’t there before Kou left, which Karina eventually puts a shed on top. One day she enters her mothers bedroom and notices there’s a hole in the mattress where Kou slept, she alerts Mailene and they conclude that she must have killed him and is hiding the body. Dahlia discreetly contacts police officers and they tell her to keep a close eye on her mother while they investigate. It takes a few days but Karina is finally arrested and charged, police later get a warrant to search the backyard and sure enough Kou’s body is under the shed. She is sentenced to 45 years in prison but could be out on parole after serving only 14. The sisters are prepared to stand up against her should the situation arise that she gets out early but for now they know that moment is years away and are enjoying the time they have together now.
• "I Made It Out": Gabi Blair is the oldest of 4 children born to Mitchelle Blair. Her relationships never last and she can’t hold down a steady job, not only are they growing up at the poverty level but Mitchelle is also very unsympathetic to the children’s struggles and needs. On top of all this her fuse is very short, it was common for her to make them stand against a wall for hours at end. Because Mitchelle can paint the illusion of normalcy to other people and the kids don’t understand how very abnormal their lives are, she can continue to elevate the punishments. One day, she finally goes over the edge, after noticing her youngest son positioning his action figures in a suggestive manor and interprets this as proof of him being assaulted by his brother. Mitchelle beats him periodically over the course of several days, this included asphyxiating him with trash bags and denying him food. Though Gabi saw this unfold, she felt as though if she intervened she would join him. By the time Mitchelle stops there is no chance of him recovering and Gabi and can only watch him pass on. Then comes the unthinkable, Gabi must assist her mother as she places her brother’s body into the freezer. The family is sworn to secrecy but unfortunately this isn’t the end of Mitchelle’s torment. Months after her brothers death Gabi witnesses an all too familiar scene, her mother antagonizes her youngest son into admitting one of his siblings is assaulting him. Once again he says yes begrudgingly, most likely to avoid becoming her next target. She piles on the same torture she delivered to Gabi’s brother to her sister and she can only watch. After Mitchelle strikes her over the head and then strangles her Gabi is forced to place another body in the freezer, only this time the victim isn’t dead but dying. Mitchelle threatens Gabi into silence once gain by threatening the lives of everyone in the house. For 2 years Gabi lives fearing everyday could be her last until her mother is presented with an eviction notice, Gabi fears this means she will try and terminate them all but she merely sends her over to a neighbors house and tells her the truth. On the evening news Mitchelle’s crime is finally exposed. When investigators try to understand her motive she doesn’t even try to hide her dislike of her kids, outright saying “I don’t regret what I did. And if I had to do it all over again I wouldn’t change a thing.” She is sentenced to 2 life long terms. While Gabi was originally pining for her mother to get the death sentence she now sees the imprisonment as a chance for her to spend every day of her life thinking about all that she did and how she can never atone for it. Gabi had to overcome the guilt of outliving her siblings but now looks forward to a life without her mothers dictatorship looming over her, especially as the guilt of the crime is now apparently starting to tear her apart.
• "I Wanted My Father to Die": Teresa Holman's father Freddie Bowen is an abusive monster, but on the surface, Freddie was a Jehovah's Witness and a well-respected member of the community. One day, while Teresa and her siblings, who were little kids mind you, were playing in the house, Freddie exploded and literally duck taped his own children's mouth shut so he could have peace and quiet. Even when they were crying, he ripped the tape painfully off of their mouths. The punishments became more severe, he began using his own homemade paddles to gleefully spank Teresa and her siblings to bring them under his control. When Teresa's brother innocently took one of Freddie's records for show and tell at school, Freddie was extremely angry and brutally beat the boy with a paddle, scaring Teresa so much, she hid in the closet. Freddie wouldn't stop until their mother finally begged him to stop. Even then, Freddie showed no remorse. Another day, when Teresa let a ball roll down stairs, Freddie hogtied the girl, then beat her with a belt. Their mother was so afraid of him, she told Teresa and her siblings that they should tell adults at school, about what was happening, as she was too afraid herself to stand up to him. Not long after that, when money is missing, Freddie falsely accuses one of his children who has a history of pilfering candy from stores and threatens to burn the boy's hand on a stove! Even as Teresa and the rest scream and cry for him to stop, Freddie dangles his son's hand over a fire, clearly enjoying the fear from his eyes. Teresa personally believed this incident was because he wanted to blow off some steam. His violence wasn't contained to the family either, while on a road trip, Freddie nearly gets into a wreck with another driver, Freddie gets out of his car and savagely beats the other driver. He then talks happily about what he did with his family, like he just won a competition. Teresa also recounted a time when she was a little girl that her father asked her to get one of his brief cases, she saw one that had church pamphlets, the other had sexually graphic pictures of naked women who appeared to be drugged. This causes Teresa to believe that her father is a sexual predator, a belief that's proven right years later as her father makes her and her sisters wear long-sleeved clothing no matter the weather, to hold back his sexual urges. One night, when Teresa is older, Freddie makes her go down to their basement, strip naked, and then he beats her with a belt while he's not wearing a shirt for 10 minutes, enjoying every second of it. He then orders her to keep it secret, Teresa agrees, and feels so horrible she wishes to die. Freddie's insane and aggressive behavior towards his family escalated to the point where Teresa actually contemplated asking her boyfriend who was a gang member to murder him, before ultimately deciding against such a drastic act. Eventually, Freddie is kicked out of the church when they discover his deviant behavior. Abandoning his family to move to another state with his mistress, Freddie is killed in a shootout with police years later after he murders her for not wanting to marry him. Teresa regrets not being able to warn the woman about the kind of man her father was, but she ultimately decides to forgive her father in spite of his evil and move on with her life.
• "Nobody Believed Me": As a baby Matt Roth is adopted by a woman who is engaged to a man named Kenneth. Although they knew he had had been to prison for murder charges, Kenneth seemed to have reformed himself, but he could fly off the handle rather easily, seemed to take a sadistic enjoyment in hunting, and could disappear for days on end with no explanation. After failing to procure a table at a garage sale Ken later comes back and steals it. Not long after he is questioned by police regarding the murder of the neighbor who he stole from, but faces no charges due to a lack of solid evidence. Matt would often join him on his handyman odd jobs, on one of these instances Matt left the truck to find a bathroom and discovered a bloody body on the floor. Ken is quick to silence him, get him out and tell him it was an accident. Though Ken is questioned by police officers again, Matt is told to keep his mouth shut and once again Kenneth is uncharged. Matt tried to convince himself he didn’t really see what he saw, something he wound up doing multiple times over the years. On another occasion Matt overheard a loud noise, when he went down it seemed like the client was on the couch resting a headache, Ken then made Matt exit the house by using a washcloth on the handles. 2 days later Matt learned the client had died. Following the police’s prodding this time (which one again goes nowhere), Matt believes that Kenneth is responsible but nobody he tells, from a therapist to his own mother, believes him, all just claim he’s blowing the instances out of proportion. Ken himself just claimed that the police have it in for him as an ex con. Ken spends 5 years in prison for an altercation with a business partner, by this time Matt is engaged and in a custody battle for his 2 previous children. On his wedding day, Matt learned that Kenneth offered to kill the mother of one of his kids. After another client winds up dead Matt finally goes to the police and gives them details about the crime scenes he couldn’t possibly have known about without being there. Matt agrees to wear a wire, conflicting and perilous as it is, to see if he can get Ken to unconsciously spill the beans, but to no avail. Afterwards Matt experiences a series of occurrences ranging from getting run off the road, the failure of his house’s plumbing, things going missing, windows being opened, disconnected batteries, things being stolen and a red sniper light targeting his family. Matt knows at this point that Ken must be doing all this in an effort to get him to shut up about the murders. Matt’s family had to hide in a basement for 2 years before Ken got arrested for illegal possession of firearms. During this time a DA finally charges him with the murder of one of his past victims and he spent the rest of his life in prison before dying in 2020. Matt was simultaneously relieved and conflicted about his dad’s incarceration feeling that if people listened to him sooner so much turmoil could’ve been avoided, especially as how 3 murders are still considered unsolved.
• "Kill Him, Save Yourself": David Magnano and Jessica Rosenbeck are the son and stepdaughter of Scott Magnano, his marriage with their mother Jennifer initially seemed amiable but early on they saw the cracks in his visage. Rules dominated their lives to a complete degree, and would often change on a whim. Even from a young age Jessica can see their mother is being hurt and is fearful for everyone in the house. On one instance Scott told them to remain quiet while he beat Jennifer and David proclaimed he could see a demon in his eyes, not long afterwards he got the first ideas of killing him. Scott also tried to coerce Jessica to enter a relationship with him when she turned 18. Eventually Jennifer gets fed up and decides that they will all leave when Scott takes his shower later at night. They grab everything they can before getting in the car and driving all the way to California. Scott however had a plan for this, he drained her account, put out an amber alert and even filed for custody which he won by default as they never even knew about the trial. They responded by filing a report and got a restraining order, Jessica was sent to find a job so they could get some financial security. When they attempted to get a few things from their house before leaving, a baby monitor and a note saying the telephone wasn’t working went unnoticed by police. Turns out Scott was in the home, living in a part of the house occupied by his mother that she didn’t let the police search. A few days later David comes home to a horrific sight, his father holding his mother hostage with a gun. David pulls out a knife he had carried with him for safety but can’t muster up the gall to kill him. Scott drags Jennifer out of the room before shooting her 5 times, letting her body fall down the stairs to David’s abject horror. Scott then gets in his car and drives away before police show up. David and his other sister are taken to a hospital where they learn that Scott had shot himself in the head but David wouldn’t believe it until he saw his corpse himself. The one thing that will forever disgust him is that his mother’s body was so horrific but his father was so pristine. The siblings strayed apart for years afterwards but managed to reconnect in time for the lockdown. They are trying to move on with life and keep the memory of Jennifer alive but Scott has still left indelible scars on them, David is only 30 and has a pace maker on his heart as a result of the all the stress.
• "I Hate Being Daddy’s Girl": As a girl Robin Lindsey greatly preferred her father Bill to her alcoholic mess of a mother, with whom he frequently fought with. He would often take them camping and fishing while mom at one point abducted Robin and her siblings and took them to a cabin in the forest. When Bill finally regained custody of them Robin saw things she didn’t anticipate. Once when they were all in a car she and her siblings started fighting and the next thing she remembers is being surrounded by paramedics as the result of a car crash, one brother had to learn how to walk and talk again and another wound up in body cast. Her mother believes Bill tried to kill them on purpose. Turns out when Bill was 3 months old his own father attempted a similar stunt with his family. Bill remarried and while her new stepmother was initially nice, she found herself frequently clashing with her when she got older, and Bill’s temper was always flaring up in response. When she was a teen they relocated constantly throughout the county and with each move he bought a new used car. Robin’s first boyfriend also told her Bill threatened him constantly, but she took no concern. Robin moved out when she was 17 but not long after her stepmother contracted cancer. After her death Bill acted strangely, giving Robin a wig as a gift, burning a mattress he claimed he was sick of, and was constantly on surveillance. One day Robin’s husband, a member of the swat team, got an alert that Bill was arrested for the murder of a prostitute, something she absolutely cannot comprehend. Things only got worse when a detective caught wind of Bill’s arrest and began to connect him to a series of unsolved murders in Florida. Bill confesses and Robin realizes he was symbolically killing her mother over and over again, and often used places he took her to as crime scenes. Bill was sentenced to 30 years in prison but would die of cancer just 2 years after his conviction. Ever since then Robin has tried to make sense of her life beforehand and where she will go now, often wondering if he ever really loved her.
• "One Of His Women": Aswad Ayinde is a highly desired director of music videos, most notably The Fugees, but at his home both his wife and his children, especially eldest daughter Aziza, are subjected to a life full of torment. Aswad would use various religions to justify not sticking to a monogamous relationship and would punish Aziza if any of her siblings faltered. While his actions didn’t go unnoticed Aswad never faced charges as he could use his connections and charm to quell the police. One day Aswad asks her to do something he said would make her a woman and molested her, something she hated but figured it was for her best interest. When her mother found out Aswad responded by beating her with his belt. Aziza wanted to escape but couldn’t bring herself to do it without leaving her siblings behind to face her father’s wrath. Aziza is startled one day when she misses her period and finds out she is pregnant at only 15, and her father proposes to her by proclaiming its in Gods will. Aswad didn’t believe in western medicine so Aziza had to give birth at home, and is aware that now she has someone else she must protect from Aswad. After learning that Aswad is still trying to have his way with her sisters Aziza and her siblings plotted to kill him and then run away but ultimately can’t go forward with the act due to the intervention of another sibling. When Aziza is 22 her 3rd child is born and becomes ill, forcing her to take the boy to the hospital. It’s there Aswad’s atrocities finally come to light and Aziza’s children are removed from the house. Through the help of social services Aziza not only gets her children back but learns the full magnitude of what her father has done to her family, giving her the confidence to stop him before he can molest another sibling. Not long after Aswad is forced to go on the run and nearly leaves the country before being arrested, and then is charged for sexual assault on his daughters where he is given a 90 year sentence. It took Aziza years to tell her children the awful truth but it’s through this process she can take pride and joy in them. (She calls them her lotus flowers, beauty that came out of ugliness) She now also works to save other women from going through the same ordeal she did.

Fear Thy Neighbor

Fear Thy Neighbor focuses on neighbourhood disputes that grow out of control and escalate into violence. What’s really unfortunate is that many times, it’s a case of “X Says, Y Says” and without a definitive bad guy to detain authorities can’t do anything until murder happens.

• One of the nastier cases featured in the series was the murder of Ann Hoover by Roy Kirk (both renamed in the episode to protect the innocent). The two were members of a city beautification firm in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania living in adjacent houses which they had set out to renovate. But whereas Hoover knew her limits and hired contractors to carry out those tasks she lacked experience in, Kirk greatly overestimated his abilities and attempted to renovate the building entirely by himself. The result was that the house eventually became so filthy and dilapidated that Kirk was kicked off the firm's board of staff. After some time, the damage eventually spread to neighbouring buildings, including Hoover's, leading her to file a complaint against Kirk and demand he be evicted from the property. However, he never showed up on the day of the hearing — and neither did Hoover. When police were called to investigate, they discovered that Kirk, who blamed Hoover for the whole thing, had smashed open the wall dividing the two buildings, knocked her unconscious, dragged her back into his place, strangled her to death, and dismembered the corpse, something described in graphic detail to the audience. After being arrested, Kirk committed suicide by hanging himself in the back of the police van, using his belt as a noose. To think that someone could be driven to commit such an act over something as trivial as a leaky roof is frightening in and of itself.
• Another lovely episode has a man named Bruce slowly and surely go mad from the fact that a woman he loves is with another man. We watch as Bruce torments the happy couple until he gets the great idea to kill the husband. After he kills the husband, the wife rejects him and so Bruce kills her too. Now with what little sanity he had left gone, Bruce kills himself via shooting himself in the head. And like the above example, we get to see the bodies.
• Dog lovers be wary of watching this show as many of the neighbors are very willing to harm dogs either for their plans or just because.
  • One episode (Hell Hounds) had the dogs become the murder weapon, by mauling a woman to death outside her own home.
• "Head In The Oven". One guess as to what the outcome is. ^note  Long Story, Brett Smith and William Perry lived in trailers parked right next to each other and the pair often argued, eventually Perry (a war veteran who got off his PTSD mediation) beat Smith and then strangled him to death. He then cut off Smith’s head and then attempted to burn it in an oven, he also cut off Smith’s fingers and thumbs, before wrapping the remaining body in plastic and covering it in paint. Smith’s body was found on the following Monday after his worried mother and a neighbor broke into his home.
• Another episode named "Backyard Blood." has us watch as a family moves back into their old home right next to a bitter old man named James Dellavecchia. James has a grudge against Scott because of what happened in the past like minor pranks. The nightmare starts when James tries to kill Scott with his car because of a shed Scott is building. It all boils over when after Scott finishes building his shed, James shoots Scott and his stepdaughter Kristen. Scott died on the scene while Kristen lingered with chronic pain for decade before succumbing to her wounds. What makes it worse is that it's mentioned that James could've just let his grudge pass and yet James tries to justify himself via the fact that Scott and his brothers were cruel to him and his family. Quite scary to think of how someone can just refuse to not let go of a long grudge.
• "Sour Grapes" is very fitting for the title. It starts with a neighbor knocking on her former friend's door like a maniac. And while it's revealed that she just wanted some garlic salt, it's still a good jumpscare. And while the feud starts pretty silly like when both of the women throwing fruit onto the other's yards, the real fun begins when one of the women decides to trash the other's car thus stopping the husband from getting to work. From there, both sides end up attacking each other with one of the men getting out his gun and shooting at the other side. It all ends with one dead and one arrested. What makes it worse is that, unlike many other episodes, both sides were at fault for making the whole thing worse and yet everyone blames each other for what happened. It's even mentioned that both women could've easily stopped their feud at any point. And with the authorities deciding to not do anything till after the shooting occurs, you will likely finish viewing the episode scared, sad and bitter.
• "Hell in Hawaii". A kind hearted woman invites a friend to live/look after her house when she must tend to her ailing mother on the mainland. Unfortunately, his involvement in the Polish Armed Forces causes him to to become paranoid and distrustful of people, initially it starts with tourists but soon grows to the point where he menaces the other neighbors. Eventually his friend tells him to vacate and he responds by stabbing her and dragging her to the basement, beating another tenant of the property with a gardening hoe, and fatally shooting 2 responding officers. When more police arrive, he sets fire to the complex and all of the ammunition he stockpiled in the basement goes off meaning firefighters cannot immediately respond and the blaze grows so large it consumes several other houses on the block.
• "Deadly Turn". Kevin Neal initially is unhappy with the scrapyard that is his neighbor Danny's yard, believing it'll drive down property values. Things escalate when he believes an obnoxious smell is proof Danny's family is cooking meth. It all comes to a head when Kevin's wife threatens to leave him, so he shoots her and hides her body under the trailer they shared. The following morning, he shoots Danny and his mother and then drives off to the school where his son goes. Along the way, he shoots at random people, including one neighbor taking her son to school. Thankfully, the school's secretary hears the gunfire near the school and quickly orders the school to go on lockdown; she is credited as the reason no one at the school itself was killed. Kevin crashes through the gate, fires nearly 100 rounds of ammunition, and discards the rifle when it jams. His truck was ultimately rammed by two law enforcement officers. As it came to a stop, he fired at the officers, who exchanged heavy gunfire with him, then he killed himself with a shot to the temple.
• "Neighborhood Madhouse". The Villar family moves next door to Holli Bodner. Initially, she's put off by the commotion generated by a family with a young daughter but tensions increase when an innocent prank made her look up the patriarch's name on a criminal database. She mistakes Jean Pierre Villar for John Villar, a criminal with a history of abuse and molestation. She perceives any action as a threat to her safety and eventually abuses her psych license to have him committed. When the police arrive to take JP, they exacerbate back injuries he was recuperating from and because it wasn't an injury from work, he gets no financial compensation from it, forcing the family to move away. Less than a year later he dies from complications of the injuries. All Holly faces from this is being on probation for 5 years and 10 "weekends'' in jail. But years later,she is charged with four counts of supplying drugs to prisoners.
• "Boom Town". Patrick Dolmage teaches AJ Wilson how to pick up scrap metal. When a series of fires erupt on nearby streets, Dolmage and his wife accuse him of setting them deliberately for profit. Later AJ is invited to a party and is accused of stealing Patrick's Wallet, which contained his daughter's birth certificate. It all comes to a point of no return when AJ leads 40 people (by some estimates) to assault the Dolamge house with rocks and try to set fire to their truck! Patrick has no other choice but to shoot him 5 times before authorities come and take him away for questioning and AJ to the hospital. However, at about 3 a.m., firefighters were called back to the scene following reports of an explosion, a gas bomb was placed in the basement. The home of the Dolmages was engulfed in flames, and the front portion of it had collapsed entirely. Luckily, no one was at home because they’d all left to spend the night elsewhere after the terrifying run-in with AJ. And thankfully the Dolamages had home insurance. AJ survived but is charged with arson and gets 2 years of probation, Patrick is charged with felony assault but the charges were later dropped. Nowadays only AJ remains in the neighborhood, which will never be the same again.
• "Desperate Times, Deadly Measures"; Erwin Lynn Jarvis and his wife are initially friends with the Mathesons, but things go sour when they have a miscarriage. They leave and return 10 years later, but not for the better. They harass the Jarvises constantly, even throwing human feces at them, and manage to charm the police into believing there is no cause for alarm. Officers were called to the neighbors’ homes more than two dozen times in three years. One day, things officially go too far and Erwin uses the gun he bought for protection to shoot them 15 times. A neighbor driving home and the victims' 12-year-old son told authorities that they saw Jarvis stand over one of the bodies on the ground and shoot one more time. With no other witnesses present, one woman admitting she went into her house just seconds before the gunfire erupted, Jarvis pleads guilty to two counts of second-degree murder and was sentenced to 32-40 years in prison. Even worse, when authorities investigated the house of the victims, they saw a scenario right out of Hoarders. Clearly, the Mathesons needed help but never accepted it from anyone, overall, nobody won this feud.
• "Gone To The Dogs"; it first begins when the retired Ronald and Sandra DelSerro's dog mauls one neighbor, leading to series of legal battles to curtail the dog and ends with Ron invading their home (during which both a math tutor and their niece, who were both unrelated to the conflict, were inside) and shooting both the father and a little girl, the latter of whom was literally about to walk out the door to safety. And then he turns the gun on himself.
• "Inferno Of Hate"; in this 2-hour episode, we learn of the crimes of Stanley Ford, who's even worse than the Melanie Smith example up above. He despises the children of the Boggs family, allegedly suspecting them of dealing drugs, damaging cars, and other illegal activities in the neighborhood. After many confrontations he set fire to their house killing all 7 of them, just days before they were set to move out, the bodies were so severely burnt beyond recognition that the forensic examiners had to conduct DNA analysis and dental record testing to separate and identify each of the victims. Incredibly, 2 years earlier he did the same thing to an elderly couple who couldn't evacuate due to mobility issues. The damning evidence that got Stanley arrested? His security system, or rather the fact that he turned it off on the dates he set both fires. He's convicted of 9 counts of murder, 3 counts of arson, and one count of attempted murder. He gets 9 life sentences. Justice served but a grisly trail was left in its wake.
• " Night Of the Machete", 2 young couples in an Idaho apartment building cope with a difficult neighbor who dislikes one couple's music and the other couple's dog. Tensions eventually lead to the man breaking into one of their houses with a machete. There's even videographic evidence showing the break-in in all its terrifying glory.
• Dear Lord, the intro! It has two versions. One is of showing dogs barking, one person calling another crazy, and then screams and groans. The second version is somewhat calmer until we hear a woman screaming as we hear gunshots. And both intros end with a bloody hand scraping down from a window.

Web of Lies

Web of Lies focuses on internet-related crimes. By itself, the premise lends itself heavily to Paranoia Fuel, but it gets even worse once you remember that the events portrayed actually happened. The worst cases tend to be those involving abduction and/or murder, but even those that don't end in death still carry a pretty sinister vibe since there's a distinct possibility that the same thing could easily happen to the viewer as well.

• There are more than a few cases involving an individual taking their own life because of the online threat. Including such infamous cases as those of Amanda Todd, Rehtaeh Parsons, and Megan Meier
• "Catfished": A young woman named Tiffany Watkins has her sexy photos exploited via a porn site. Someone uses them to start a relationship with Brian Hile and when he finds out the truth he's furious and determined to exact revenge. Even worse Tiffany finds out that an account filled with disturbing imagery and racist/hateful comments is using her face as its face. She tries to get the police to do something but as there's no direct threat against her specifically they can't. Through intense virtual sleuthing, Brian finds out where Tiffany lives and drives across the country, with zip ties, chloroform, rope, and duct tape, to get even. He eventually finds Tiffany's home, but on that very night, she is away with her sister, possibly sparing her life. When he's finally captured, authorities discover that he knew the real perpetrator was in South Africa but wanted to harm Tiffany as she was easier to get to. Though he's sentenced to 5 years behind bars, Tiffany has to end her relationship with her boyfriend and openly admits she can never feel safe again. And the authorities are never able to identify who was responsible for running that hateful account.
• "High On Love": A high school student named Brandon Wentzell falls in love online with a beautiful girl named Clarissa Chistiakov online. However, the relationship doesn't run smoothly as he tries to meet his online girlfriend four times, but each time she cancels or has an excuse. The last time she does this leaves Brandon so broken-hearted that he turns to drugs and alcohol and dies from an accidental overdose. Soon after his mother is notified about her son's death, she receives multiple text messages from someone purporting to be Clarissa's mother. The text messages say that Clarissa has committed suicide immediately after learning of Brandon's death and suggests the two grieving mothers should meet. This leads the police to expand their investigation and charge an 18-year-old named Jessica Boudreau with public mischief and nothing more.
• "The Sick Boy": Lacey Spears gives birth to a boy she named Garnet. From birth, he is plagued with health problems, even undergoing an operation that makes him unable to vomit in order to ensure he receives proper nutrition. In spite of this, he still doesn’t receive proper nutrition and Lacey moves them to Florida, and while down there she confesses to a neighbor that Garnet’s father is her own father, and had even been responsible for a miscarriage. With Garnet’s health problems never subsiding she decides to move him into an alternative living community and tries holistic medicines but eventually Garnet is rushed back into the hospital for seizures, with Lacey blogging about every aspect. When it seems like Garnet can be discharged he suffers a massive sodium overdose that puts him on life support. Detectives do some digging and discover Lacey has 3 different Facebook accounts and all of them are filled with fraudulent details about her life, including the incest. They are given a very crucial piece of evidence from a neighbor — Garnet’s feeding bag, which is full of 29 grams of sodium. Lacey takes Garnet off life support and tells it to the world. Detectives charge her with her sons murder and find the smoking gun needed to put her behind bars, EEG video of Lacey removing Garnet from his bed and into the bathroom, followed by a feeding tube, when she put him back, she just waits for him to have his last seizure. Further investigation would reveal that none of Garnet's health problems were actually real, and that Lacey did it all so she could lap up all the sympathy she wanted. Lacey will spend the next 20 years incarcerated. A sobering reminder that what you see online is rarely the whole story and how easily you could unintentionally be furthering the abhorrent plans of an atrocious person.
• "Only Way Out": Robert Best does not have an easy start in life. His birth mother gave him up and his adopted parents eventually divorced when his mother has has an affair, and his father has to go to jail for assault on the lover. He stays with his grandparents on a ranch, isolated from anyone else his age, but in his teenage years he finds solace through an online game, where he meets a girl by the name of Grace Dillman who lives over 2000 miles away in Ohio. They spend all their time conversing and Robert’s guardians worry it will affect his grades. He manages to manipulate his way into attending a college in in the state of Ohio, making it easier to see Grace. However Grace’s affluent and deeply Christian parents torpedo the relationship. For a year they don’t see each other but Grace contacts Robert saying her parents are abusing and molesting her. (Which hits especially hard for Robert as his grandmother was a victim of child rape.) They concoct a plan to to get rid of them down to the tinniest details but when the night comes to enact it Robert finds himself suffering from cold feet and needs to be coerced by Grace to do it. He begins stabbing her father but part way through asks "Why’d you molest her?" to which he responds "she’s lying!" and Grace doesn’t refute it. Robert stops, calls 911 and even attempts medical aid. When police/ambulances arrive and take the 2 into questioning Grace is incredibly uncompliant so they have to take their computers to get answers. Grace’s father survives and Robert is charged on attempted murder and sentenced to 8 years imprisonment. Grace gets 2 years probation and an 8 year suspended sentence. The real motive behind the crime may never be known, as the Dillmans did not participate in the episode and Grace’s mental health records are sealed. In spite of it all Robert still holds some love for Grace.
• "Fatal Facade": Tawnee Baird is a good teenage girl. When she and some friends are caught smoking some weed, she takes the rap and gets 90 days in juvenile detention, and in that time she meets a girl named Victoria Mendoza, whose mother is dying of cancer and whose father committed suicide when she was 10, and they bond over a shared love of music. When Tawnee is released she tells her family that Vitoria is now her girlfriend, and when Victoria is released she moves in with Tawnee’s family. While their relationship looks good on social media, Victoria seems to resent Tawnee so much as even talking to other people, especially other boys. The girls have a turbulent on and off relationship and many times Tawnee tries to end it but Victoria always manages to weasel her way back in. It all reaches the point of no return one night in October of 2014, the girls are arguing while Tawnee is driving and Victoria stabs her over 40 times with a knife. After miraculously not crashing Victoria tells a relative to call 911 and the gruesome aftermath comes to light, with Tawnee’s body slung over in her seat. Incredibly, Victoria doesn’t remember most of incident, not that it helps her at trial. Victoria eventually is sentenced to 16 years to life in prison. If there are two things to take away from this case, it’s that these girls never should have met and Victoria destroyed the only important thing she had going for her in life all because she couldn’t control her jealousy. This was also documented in an episode of American Monster entitled “I Took Her Somewhere Peaceful“.
• "The Deadly Hoax": When Tyler Barriss fails to make the grade as a professional video gamer he becomes obsessed with finding internet infamy by any means necessary. What starts as an online prank quickly evolves into a deadly crime called "swatting". A turf war between him and 2 other disgruntled gamers eventually leads to the death of a 28 year old man named Andrew Finch. Barriss is sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to 51 counts of making fake emergency calls and threats around the country. Unfortunately, that still isn’t the end, as Finch’s daughter later commits suicide over the loss of her father.
• "Crime Scene Selfie": Amanda Taylor doesn’t have a good home life growing up so eventually she leaves to stay with an uncle. She falls in love with a guy named Rex with whom she not only shares an interest in horror movies, but a birthday, March 27. They spend a lot of time on horrific message boards. Eventually Amanda becomes pregnant at the age of 15. 8 years later they have 2 children and Rex’s lifelong battle with depression is becoming bothersome. Rex turns to his father for help, but all he does is get him addicted to pain killers, further exacerbating his family’s issues. Eventually Amanda leaves with the children. On their son’s 7th birthday Rex hangs himself. Amanda is devastated when she learns the news and puts all the blame on Rex’s father. She becomes more obsessed with the dark net and eventually meets a fellow enthusiast named Sean Ball, who claims to have been in the navy and has killed people. When Amanda nearly kills herself at Rex’s grave on their birthday she’s admitted to a hospital for 5 days but leaves after just 2, courtesy of Sean. She then convinces him that they must go and kill Rex’s father, something Sean is all too eager for. They drive to his house and Amanda kills him at 3:27 by stabbing him nearly 30 times, and then she takes a photo of herself with the corpse and posts it to Facebook. Police arrive and discover Rex’s bedridden grandfather heard everything and recognized Amanda. Police track her web activities and eventually find the 2 of them a state over. Amanda wants to commit a killing spree but Sean can’t muster up the courage to do so (because his navy credentials are in fact fraudulent) she shoots him, leaves him for dead and then drives off. Incredibly she actually calls police for directions, and warns them not to follow her, but police circumvent her escape plan and she is taken into custody, as is Sean who miraculously survived the shooting after a hospital visit. Amanda is sentenced to life imprisonment, while Sean is sentenced to 40 years. Her children are now being cared for by relatives. On some level, Amanda is right about losing her husband because of his father but the moment she decided to kill him, she only did it for her own interest, not caring about what it meant for her children.
• "Pipe Nightmare": On an innocuous day, Barry Hornstein notices a mysterious item in his driveway which winds up exploding and nearly killing him. The whole family is aghast, including Barry’s estranged wife Kathy, and immediately detectives try to find the perpetrator. Kathy is worried that their son Jack is losing himself to his online girlfriend Cindy, and Jack himself would reveal that he’s been the target of a smear campaign, claiming him to be a molester. 6 days after the blast Jack gets an anonymous letter from someone claiming to be the bomber, and apparently Jack was the intended victim. Jack thinks he will be safer if he goes to live with his girlfriend for a while. However, one day a device similar to the bomb that nearly killed Barry is found on Cindy’s property. Although it’s revealed to be a fake Jack must leave Cindy and go back to his parents. Days later Cindy’s mom receives a letter in the mail proclaiming she’s now in the crosshairs too. To prove he isn’t falsifying information Jack is given a polygraph test and fails, but an analysis of his computer would prove his innocence. His parents decide to send him elsewhere but the assailant apparently knows of this too. However Police discover the address that sent him that email is also responsible for the smear campaign and therefore must know Cindy. Credit card statements would lead them to Timothy Goff, after securing a warrant for his computer they learn he had information on the Hornsteins. They also found cassette tapes that featured Goff having sex with Cindy. Goff had responsible for everything that had befallen the Hornsteins in order to get Cindy back for himself, who unwillingly supplied him with info. He pleads guilty to attempted murder and got 12 years in jail. Though Barry lost part of his leg in the process, he and Kathy reconciled and Jack is now a police officer himself.
• "Love You To Death": Jessica Schobert was adopted by a couple named Peg and Jeff, as was her sister Chelsea. While they are truly loving parents Chelsea always feels like somewhat of an outcast due to being a black girl raised by white parents. Chelsea wants to bond with peers more like herself and finds one in a boy named Shawn Forde Jr. Shawn is Chelsea’s total opposite economically but they attempt to make things work. Peg and Jeff welcome Shawn wholeheartedly and Shawn shows Chelsea around his neighborhood. Shawn however is quick to be protective of Chelsea and she becomes more involved in Shawn’s lifestyle, spending almost all her time with him. Jeff and Peg are worried that sooner or later she’ll become involved in gang activity and tell her that she can only drive the car if it has a GPS tracker. Chelsea meets more of Shawn’s friends and family and not all are welcoming of her. On Chelsea’s 18th birthday Shawn takes her to a party in his neighborhood but the following morning she is in critical condition at a local hospital, having been stabbed 10 times. Peg and Jeff tell Shawn he is no longer allowed to see Chelsea. Incredibly Chelsea is able to come off the ventilator 5 days later and wants to know about Shawn. Police begin to investigate her attack and eventually her parents head back home. However, the following day, Jessica can’t contact her parents no matter what she tries and then when a family friend heads over to do some maintenance a horrible discovery is made. Jeff and Peg have been murdered in their home, courtesy of a sledgehammer. The first piece of evidence was another police man’s card, coincidentally the same one that is leading the investigation into the attack on Chelsea, believing the 2 are connected the departments work together. It doesn’t take them long to find the Schobert’s stolen SUV followed by gloves, a knife and a hat. Police also find a series of messages sent by Jeff and Peg that came hours after they died. Shawn is brought in for questioning but it was his friend Jamal that confessed to aiding him in homicide. Shawn admitted to texting Peg to come home after killing Jeff and then sent Chelsea messages from her dead mother’s phone. When Chelsea is informed of what happens she confesses that Shawn was the one who stabbed her at the party for refusal to have sex with him, had she told the truth he probably would’ve been arrested and her parents would still be alive. Jamal gets life while Shawn is sentenced to death, so many lives irrevocably marred.
• "Web of Spies": Christine Belford at one point loved David Matusiewicz and even had 3 daughters with him, but eventually things become horribly hostile his parents Thomas and Lenore move in with them, totally unannounced. Christine files for divorce but unfortunately it doesn’t go as amiable as she wants, even with joint custody. During one of these weeks David promises to take them on a vacation but in fact he and his mother abducted the girls and took them all the way to Nicaragua, making them live there for 19 months before Interpol found them. Following this both are sent to prison, David for 48 months & Lenore for 18 months, but the threat did not end there. Christine becomes the victim an online smear campaign claiming her to be physically and sexually abusive to her daughters, complete with a (totally innocuous) candid video of her being uploaded to YouTube. After Lenore is released from prison the smear campaign is mailed to everyone in the community, from teachers to lawyers to members of Christine’s church. Christine wants to move away and even tries to purchase a gun for protection. On the day of the hearing for David’s child support Christine and her friend go to the local courthouse but it’s there that both are shot dead by Thomas, who then takes his own life. David is immediately detained and authorities know they must stop both Lenore and David’s sister Amy before they can harm the girls, who are immediately taken into witness protection. In the days after the shooting Amy files for custody of the girls, not only that but Lenore once again tries to make it out so that Christine was a bad parent by giving a series of radio interviews. At a house owned by the family authorities found a cache of weapons and papers that seemed to indicate that they were determined to revolt against the government. It was discovered that David began the smear campaign from his prison cell by mailing letters that informed relatives and associates of what to do. This included a close Facebook friend of Christine; Cindy Bender and a real estate agent that tried to help Christine sell her house. The day before David was to be released from police custody, the Matusiewicz family is brought before federal court. All were sentenced to life without parole but the 3 girls are still in the care of the state and their whereabouts unknown. As one of Christine’s close friends best said “Crazy always finds a way.”

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