What infamous crime from your childhood actually changed the American landscape?

I was in the 8th grade when Columbine happened. There had been school shootings prior to that. I think Columbine changed things a bit more.

I don't know about the nation but it definitely changed Vermont

In 1981, the Vermont Legislature worked from the gut. In the middle of the summer, legislators flocked to the State House in a rare special session to pass what would become one of the toughest juvenile crime laws in the nation. They did it for Meghan O’Rourke and Melissa Walbridge. The two Essex girls were walking home from the Albert D. Lawton Middle School a few months before when they made a fateful decision to shave 10 minutes off their trek by cutting through the woods of Maple Street Park. Inside the dense patch of brush and trees on that early spring day, the 12-year-old friends were repeatedly raped, tortured, stabbed and shot with a BB gun by two assailants who had been stalking them. Melissa died in a small clearing, beneath a musty mattress that her attackers had deposited over her body to conceal her from view. Meghan, naked and coated in her own blood, stumbled to nearby train tracks, where workmen found her and rushed her to the hospital. She survived to assist police in putting her attackers behind bars, but the news that those responsible were not much older than the two pre-teen girls shook the state. Vermont, seemingly, had lost its innocence. Jamie Savage, 15, and Louie Hamlin, 16, had been familiar faces in the state’s juvenile criminal system by the time they ambushed the girls in the woods that day. The pair were tried and convicted, but news that Savage would serve no more than three years — because at 15 the law demanded he be tried in juvenile court — set off a public frenzy.

It can only be Dallas, November 22, 1963.

Son of Sam: summer of 1976...I was thirteen.

Ethan Patz disappearance spring of 1979...I would argue this had the most impact on so many things.

Murder of John Lennon, December 1980.

R2 something similar happened in Houston that really shocked the city.

Ted Bundy's rampage at FSU; I was a freshman.

Manson Family.

JFK.

Jeffrey Dahmer in Milwaukee. And it LITERALLY changed the landscape: The apartment house he lived in was demolished!

Tylenol poisonings. Nobody went trick or treating that year and packaging changed on many products.

I'd forgotten that one R10 but even before that was the father who poisoned his son's pixie stick Halloween candy. I think he put cyanide in his it for the insurance payout. That was way back in the early 70's. Scared the shit out us kids.

I stopped trick-or-treating because I was afraid of the Tylenol killer. It was a very big deal at the time, and marked the beginning of tamper-proof packaging.

oops, I was posting at the same time at R10, evidence of what a big deal it was.

Ice Age

I remember when razor-blades-in-candy-apples ruined Halloween.

R9, I agree - Dahmer. That hit way too close to home for me. I briefly used to be drinking buddies with someone (albeit older than me) when I first turned 21, that used to hang out with him in the 80's.

John Kennedy's assassination.

R1 I neverr heard of that case. Horrifying.

Well, OP, my childhood murder, which affected America happened 3,000 miles away from you shores, in a sleepy village in Leicestershire. I was in the village on the night of both murders.

Two girls were murdered and the police arrested a Richard Buckland for the murders, but something didn't sit quite right. So they called in a scientist from the University of Leicester, who was called Alec Jeffreys, to undertake some tests in a new field of forensics, DNA profiling. It was the very first case in the world where it was used.

Jeffreys compared semen samples from both murder victims against a blood sample from Buckland and conclusively proved that both girls were killed by the same man but not by Buckland. The police, knowing that it must be a local man, undertook mass testing of men from the local area and Colin Pitchfork was identified as the murderer and convicted.

So, from that childhood murder, Leicester gave the world DNA testing. Something that has altered not only British policing, but American and the world's.

The OJ Simpson murder case. It really put DNA on the map and changed the LAPD’s protocol in collecting forensic evidence.

Jonestown.

Sharon Tate and her friends murders.

We're so glad you could tell us your story after your murder, R19!

Born in 1975, I remember are the San Ysidro McDonald's shooting in 1984, at the time so horrifying to be unthinkable. Now grade schoolers prep for it. It stuck out to me because several of the victims were kids my age. They'd ridden their bikes over which were laying there on the grass as they loaded the bodies out. I remember the pictures.

And then the next year a group from my hometown Catholic church were hostages in the TWA Flight 847 hijacking so it was all anybody talked about. Lots of yellow ribbons all around town that summer. I remember watching the interview on TV with the pilot out the plane window with the hijackers aiming their guns at him. They'd taken a mission trip with the church and the flight back was hijacked. All the folk from my town made it back, but it made Islamic terrorism very real to me very early on.

Terrorists flying planes into the World Trade Center. It changed airport security.

No comment.

R23 You're welcome!

Rebecca Schaeffer, killed by a stalker in 1989.

Fatal Vision, aka Captain Jeffrey MacDonald's killings of his family in the 1970s and blaming them on rando Manson-like "killers" - his blood evidence was all over the house. Became big news in the 80s.

I can still remember waking up that morning, turning on the radio, hearing the news and thinking "Oh, God, not again."

Megan Kanka's murder happened a couple towns over from mine in NJ. We were both born in 1986. It resulted in 'Megan's Law,' the federal law which requires law enforcement to disclose details relating to the location of registered sex offenders.

I was living in suburban Maryland in 1976 when Bradford Bishop slaughtered his family. It was a great feat of forensic policing because it was the pre-Internet era when cops did not have the resources to quickly share info. Bishop loaded up the bodies in his car and drove down to a remote forest in North Carolina where he dug a pit, threw in the bodies, and then tried to set them on fire. Then he vanished.

A forest ranger saw the smoke of the fire. When law enforcement arrived, there was little to indicate who the victims were. However, there was a tool, either a shovel or gas can, that Bishop left there. The cops were finally able to locate the origin from a partial label on the handle, and it was purchased at a hardware store in Potomac, Maryland.

It was one of the first 'middle class family man kills his family' murders, and it had a big effect on people in the area. The fact that Bishop escaped and turned into a mythic figure like D.B. Cooper was creepy.

Most of the posts above really don't meet OP's criteria, but carry on.

[quote]For me, it was the Mark Kilroy murder. Until that happened thousands and thousands of college kids descended upon Padre Island in TX and Matamoras, MX.

OP, this may have affected *you*, but it didn't "actually change the American landscape" – which I know in part from spending two consecutive spring breaks in Padre ('95 & '96), including nightly walks over the border from Brownsville into Matamoros. There were still thousands of college kids partying & heading south of the border for 25-cent beers and the like. They're already there this week, and the crowds are likely to grow now that Texas's idiot-asshole governor has declared the state to be "100% open," despite Covid infections still being higher than they were at any point last summer.

What *has* changed the entire Mexican border region – from Matamoros all the way to Tijuana – are three things: the wars between the larger Mexican drug cartels that consumed the better part of a decade; the post-9/11 crackdowns on "easy" border crossings, namely not being able to cross over with nothing more than a driver's license; and, of course, President Fuckwad ruining relations with Mexico in general for likely a long time to come.

[quote]Jeffrey Dahmer in Milwaukee. And it LITERALLY changed the landscape: The apartment house he lived in was demolished!

As was OJ's house, FYI.

Polly Klaas -- it really put the fear in a lot of parents. I mean, there was always already the awareness that there were dangerous, scary predators out there like that, but none so frighteningly bold as to abduct a kid from her own bedroom. It definitely amped up the paranoia.

This happened in Harris County when I was a baby and I don't remember being able to trick or treat until the 80's.

I first read about Mark Kilroy here on DL. I had never heard about it, and its horrible.

Growing up the Manson murders made me realize how evil the world really is. For me 9/11 was a defining moment. It totally changed America.

One of the worst crimes i've heard about were the murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. Just pure evil.

The OKC bombing happened close enough to my teen years that it counts, I suppose.

Prior to that, the Luby's massacre.

Oh, and the Branch Davidian massacre as well.

"One of the worst crimes i've heard about were the murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. Just pure evil."

Yes, it's certainly one of the worst crimes ever committed. Those two young people were tortured for hours, raped, and murdered. Channan Christian was raped every way possible, multiple times and with at least a foreign object. She was kicked and beaten in the genital area. While still alive she had bleach poured into her orifices to eliminate DNA evidence. She died of suffocation after being stuffed into a trash bag. WHY was this crime not national news? I gather most people have never even heard of it.

Agree with Bonnie Prince Charlie at R4 that Ethan Patz changed everything.

Happened six years before I was born, but the whole notion that children could be snatched without a trace seemed to have quickly changed the landscape of childhood. 60s and 70s kids were free range but 80s, 90s and on we were constantly watched, playdated and otherwise had tabs kept on us, which technology certainly amplified.

Think children on milk cartons.

[The fact is that most children are taken by relatives, usually as part of a custody dispute, but the Patz case got everyone freaked out about strangers. I remember receiving lessons about that at home and at school and being freaked out by even old ladies who'd stop to say hi when I was with my mother or the babysitter.]

Adam Walsh and Etan PatZ

IIRC the John Wayne Gacy killings led to police departments across the country sharing information about prior convictions and missing children.

If Gacy's prior for sodomy of a teen had come up during one of his arrests, many of his victims would have been saved.

Watergate

I remember being freaked out by white vans as a kid because of John Wayne Gacy. Plus, the clown 🤡stuff.

Locally, Bob Berdella the gay serial killer. I used to visit the Westport Flea Market as a kid with dad when Bob had his creepy ass booth there.

Richard Speck’s murder of the nurses. I was a child in the Chicago burbs. My mom had been a nurse before I was born and the murders upset her greatly.

Here are some infamous crimes during my lifetime that stand out for me:

Jonestown murders/suicides

Assassinations of Harvey Milk and George Moscone

Dean Corll the "Candyman" who tortured and killed young boys

Jeffrey MacDonald, the doctor/Green Beret who butchered his pregnant wife and two children

Ted Bundy, killer of young girls

John Wayne Gacy, killer of young boys

The Manson murders

Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, who kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered young girls

Jeffrey Dahmer, cannibal killer

Murder of Rebecca Schaeffer and the attack on Teresa Saldana

Murder of Dominque Dunne

The Menendez brothers, parent killers

O.J. Simpson killing of his wife and Ron Goldman

Jean Harris, who killed her lover Herman Tarnower

Betty Broderick's killing of her ex-husband and his new wife

Pamela Smart's killing of her husband Gregg

The disappearance of Susan Powell and the murder of her children by her husband Josh Powell

The torture murder of Jeanne Clery, killed in her dorm room by Josoph Henry

The murder of the Harvey family in Richmond, VA by a couple of spree killers

Gary Gilmore, killer of two young Mormon men during petty robberies

The 'Hi-Fi murders in Utah, where five people were shot (three of them died) and forced to drink liquid Drano

The Main Line murders in Pennsylvania, a woman found dead in the trunk of her car and her children vanished never to be seen again

The murder of Ruth Pelke, an 78 year old woman stabbed 33 times by a 15 year old girl during a petty robbery

The murder of Shanda Sharer, a 12 year old who was beaten and sodomized with a tire iron and then burned alive; her assailants were all teenage girls under 18

Murder of JonBenet Ramsay

John Wayne Gacy

Patty Hearst kidnapping

I was traumautized by the John Wayne Gacy murders. I was the same age as the murder victims and I made the mistake of reading the details. I don't read true crime stories now.

The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand, The Archduke

That poor Kilroy boy. I never knew that. I was down there and missed hearing about it. That's some crazy shit.

There was also this time part of the bridge to Padre collapsed and people drove off into the water and fell to their death.

R48 I was driving home from college for the weekend and passed through Gacy’s Neighborhood as the radio station was announcing the discoveries. I was an undergrad at the time, though not yet out even to myself, so didn’t overidentify, but it still chilled me.

Chowchilla.

I agree, OP. After that murder Texans no longer traveled to the border for casual vacations.

OP, I had never of that case. How horrific.

Definitely Adam Walsh. It started the missing children panic that helped bring about the helicopter parenting of today, even though most missing children were taken by parents embroiled in custody battles.

Adam Walsh

R49 = Olivia deHavilland

I don’t remember the details, but whatever the incidents surrounding Amber that we now have her alert.

1) JFK

2) MLK

3) RFK

4) Nixon’s crime and resignation

5) 9/11

6) Trump’s corruption

7) Coronavirus

[quote]The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand, The Archduke

From your childhood R49? Are you 110+ years old?

The big one me was The Port Arthur Massacre. The banning of semi-automatics, strict gun licensing laws and massive gun buy back that followed the massacre put a big dampener on the gun culture here.

Bless your heart, r60.

For me it was THE Amityville Horror murders. Next town over.

Spawned books and bullshit about the supernatural, when in reality DeFeo killed them simply because he was a druggie who hated his parents. Knowing if he killed his parents his brothers and sisters would squeal, he killed them too.

R61 It's nice they would cooperate and sell their guns. Unfortunately we have too many over my dead body types here and they mean it. Wish the assault weapons ban would go back into place.

Sometimes I think teachers use Covid as an excuse not to go back but they are really afraid of being caught up in another school shooting.

The Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo. Killed 13 women between 1962 and 1964. Up until that time it was customary in New England to leave doors unlocked even at night. Brought several people to notoriety including Massachusetts Attorney General and future senator Edward Brooke and famous attorney F. Lee Bailey, who would later represent Patty Hearst and O. J. Simpson.

R65 I'd like to start a thread on F. Lee Bailey but I don't know how may DL patrons know of him. He appeared to be such an opportunist...one of the first 'celebrity' attorneys.

Al Sharpton has always been a cheap wearing suit fat assed liar.

For R67

I grew up in Seattle in the 60s and 70s and the first one i remember was Ted Bundy's original spree killing college girls he found in local parks. Don't know if it changed the world but all my teen girl babysitters were given rides home by my dad after rather than walking.

The Helle Crafts murder in 1986 was the famous crime from my childhood. Also known as the Woodchipper Murder. Happened in my town in Connecticut. This was the case where a husband bludgeoned his wife, froze her body in an industrial sized freezer, dismembered her with a chainsaw, and fed her pieces through a wood chipper into a river.

This was the first case in CT where someone went to trial for murder but there was no body. Police found hair, fingernails, a crown from a tooth, and bone fragments along the riverbank and the husband was found guilty and sentenced to 50 years in prison. He was released in 2020.

I remember there was a huge snowstorm that night and major power outages in the area. My family and I slept downstairs in front of the fireplace b/c the house was freezing. And my dad swears to this day that he heard the wood chipper going late at night but at the time he thought it was someone’s generator. We lived on the river, close to where he dumped her, so I guess it’s possible. Super creepy to think about. Also creepy is that three days before the murder, the husband came to my house to pick his son up from my brother’s birthday party. That was probably the last normal/fun night that kid had. I always felt bad for him and his brother and sister.

Some joker put a mailbox out on the sandbar in the river with ‘Crafts’ written on the side. Stayed there for years. I thought that was mean. The case was kind of treated like a joke with ‘Divorce: Connecticut Style’ bumper stickers and shirts showing up everywhere. Of course they had a picture of a woodchipper on them.

And the wood chipper scene in Fargo was inspired by this case.

I've been robbed at gun point, been robbed inside my home, been robbed while at work, and have been in a hostage situation. All true, and could get stranger than that. I think the worst thing that has ever happened has been the fear that the media sells.

There are certain types of risk that can avoided, but there is a whole lot of what the vast majority of the media is absolutely making you into their own bitch. They are crippling you. You are living off the fear they are creating.

You either believe you can overcome "trauma" or you believe anyone who has been "traumatized" your life isn't worth living, and you should be beheaded or shamed for all of your life because you have had such bad things happen to you, there is no redemption. So why bother with any of it? once you've been touched? You're done. You're a vast wasteland of a human being.

So how exactly are you changing things? Because so far it seems to be an obnoxious snob? Yeah, that's fun.

I hate you. The very wealthy and poor will always be my friends.

The nastiest people I've ever known are the the middling middle class who cling to the mediocrity as if it were some sort of trophy.

And yes, I do have a point, you are the ones that are keeping this sort of crime alive and well. It is your bread and butter. You thrive on it, and you are sick.

Why would I? Everything is going to be about how awful everything is. I know I'm not supposed to be allowed to, but I do find more fun in very high-brown and very low-brow people I meet on my very own.

No one needs the nagging class. I'm sick of it.

I know, I have a whole lot of oh, dears. and oh mys. Fuck yourselves. That's right. Keep it going.

You have done nothing but harm others. The only ones you champion are those who live in pain and misery. You are predators, and get off on it.

Everyone should sit inside their homes staring at screens, chained inside our homes with masks around our faces so you will feel safe and comfy. Right? Just keep watching Netflix.

Definitely Gacy. I was 8 and all of Chicago was just so caught up in fear.

the Samantha Runion case did it for me, during 2002. it rocked my world. i had two younger kids (under 11) and it just scared the living shit out of me. i didn't grow up in the church, but it made me seek counsel of a priest at one point because i just couldn't understand how someone could do this to a little girl. it's still with me.

it really screwed me up for years, i was truly devastated that someone could do something like this to a child and i had never heard of it (as a 20+ year old - yes call me naive but i didn't grown up with cable tv/movies, and at that point then was in a very rural part of NY that didn't show that kind of programming until CNN came on).

After that, i was on lockdown with my kids and never let them out of my sight (which was easy, we lived in a very rural community of upstate NY) for years. i recall crying my eyes out for the poor girl and her fate for days, it really affected me. it was the first time i was glued to the tv to find out what the hell had happened to this poor little girl. and after that...i've watched Forensic Files, Cold Case Files and all the real crime drama shows since then.

i wish i would have gone into this field along time ago. i would wipe this scourge of shit off the face of the earth every time i had the chance to.

also, i grew up in Southern California and we'd never had a case of a little 5 year old girl being ripped out of her front yard and being raped and killed. it just hit me that could have been me since i was assaulted as a 7 year old kid in a local park but was able to scream and run away from whoever he was. i think it's always stayed with me that this little girl was not able to escape and it scared the living shit out of me that this might happen to my kids.

Sorry, i'm spewing now. sigh. i guess i never realized how it affected me and why i reacted so harsh to that event, why i made so sure i knew where they were always. and why i grieved so when she died. just ignore me. but it feels good to let some of this out.

Manson Family. I lived a few miles away. Scared my family big time!

Saturday is the 25th anniversary of the Dunblane school massacre in Scotland. It's the school that the tennis player Andy Murray attending on the day of the murders.

As a result of the massacre and the Hungerford killings, gun control was brought in by successive UK governments, to a point where hand gun ownership in the UK is pretty much illegal.

Son of Sam EST, and The Hillside Stranglers, PCT.

Two small children, a little boy & his little twin sister, whose parents attended our church in NYC, disappeared. They weren’t found until much later, and the details are fuzzy, but I believe they were kidnapped, raped and killed or something....

It was the 70s, and the NYPD was too busy doing other shit, rather than find a child killer, target small children of color in poorer Burroughs in which non-English speaking immigrant families reside. I do not recall any media on the incident, but I do recall our oil crisis, the gas lines, the American Hostages and Watergate, and I took a particular interest in Watergate, cannot explain why, since I was pretty young.

Personal crimes were impactful, since those are not subject to ambiguity and are profoundly subjective.

As a very young adult, I had an addiction issue where I was addicted to a gram of blow every few days. Because cocaine isn’t glamorous, contrary to popular 1980s Miami Vice and Scarface nomenclature, I ended up meeting and spending time around some really colorful yet very dangerous, fucked up individuals. And keep in mind, as a sober person, I wouldn’t spend two seconds around these POS.

When I relapsed after long term sobriety, I was completely off the blow but was going in deep with the booze, and much to my real disappointment, shock, disgust and regret, I invited some really AWFUL people into my home. And not because I needed drinking buddies, but because I was so broke and barely functioning, that I needed financial supplementation of income and rented my place out or shared my place with, an unvetted fringe culture of nefarious personalities, who would later go on to pull some really shady shit after we parted ways.

2 of these people have committed suicide under very different and opposing circumstances, yet for the same reasons, I believe. They couldn’t live with themselves and what their crimes had wrought, and took their exit via ending their lives, rather than face the music.

Those events have affected me in ways that are at this time, very meaningful and painful, too. One of these people was scum and deserved mental health treatment, even so, and the other was by all interactions that I experienced with them, a really good and compassionate person who got in over her head with a really fucked up individual.

It has finally dawned on me how vulnerable my then, untreated alcoholism and childhood experiences made me. I have subjected myself to really high risk, and in my gut, I knew at that time that things were not normal or OK or even safe, when I allowed these people to tent from me or be roommates with me. And I 100% believe that had I not been then, as I am now, a person who doesn’t take much shot about much from anyone, I could have easily have found myself caught up in some complicated web of lies, deceit, and criminally mired behaviors that people who cannot tell people to fuck off, find themselves in.

I cannot wrap my head around how people go all in with the malignant and psychopathic narcissist. I do not understand how smart people with everything going for them fall under the malignant narcissist’s spell. It is SOOO easy to find one’s self crossing the invisible yet defined line from being an unhappy person dealing with a contentious, high stakes divorce, and becoming an accessory to a crime that can and will land you in prison for most of your natural life. Even when falling down drunk, I knew when to say, “Please get the fuck out of my house within 30 days or less. Thanks so much!” But man, better human beings than I, smarter, financially successful and the kindest of souls, DO.

And 🖕🏽 THIS🖕🏽 is what has had and will continue to have a really profound and lasting effect on me. I thought I truly loved myself and appreciated myself as a person, because I had forgiven myself for the alcoholism and the dysfunction it breeds, but I know now that this was not the case and my biases cling to me as they do to all of us.

It’s a lesson learned in a way that nothing else can really teach it. In order to be happy and truly be free from all of the shit you never asked for but got anyhow, as a child, you MUST make a purposeful decision to NEVER compromise with your own fears and doubts and you mustn’t ever compromise with your own life, by keeping company with full blown narcissists.

Real narcissists are like non sentient yet animated objects who have a very specific set of behaviors, which almost mimic mania, yet are actually compulsory and at the top of the OCD scale. They become obsessed with defining control as an achievement, and they will do anything to keep a perception of control over others, which is the only resolution possible in order for them to feel calm and safe. And they will project this types of neuroticisms on anyone in their midst and they are totally non sensical nor even valuable or effective in any positive way or trajectory, and that being said, they will attach to all in their periphery in such a manner, and this is why these people are so fucking dangerous.

And yep. I invited several of these monsters into my environment, just to make rent and drink myself to near death every night. That’s a small crime all in and of itself and I’m just now, learning of things and processing this.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck!!!!

I was in high school in LA when OJ happened. I was also in junior high during the LA Riots. Wasn't a fun few years.

Well, the OJ thing was sort of fun. In a fucked up sort of way.

The Zodiac Killer

Manson Murders

In Cold Blood- I think that Americans, who live in rural places ,will never give up their guns because no one wants to end up being murdered in a home invasion like the Clutter family Kansas)

R85, the Rodney King footage and trial was another one that had me glued to the TV set. And then, when OJ happened, I barely paid attention, as I knew in my gut two things:

1) He killed two innocent people,

2) Because of criminal police in the foothill division, OJ would not spend a day in prison for these murders.

I was so angry and disappointed. That’s when I lost faith in LAPD. And I knew no amount of rioting or looting was gonna suffice as blood offerings for the LAPD terrorizing black men and women.

People who aren’t from LA do not realize that these dudes are the worst in all of the US, but blacks do and did. And what they also do not get is that while the police forces might be filled with white supremacists, LAPD is filled with actual gang bangers, both crips and bloods. That’s the truth and OGs in the hood know this as well.

R71, once you’ve been touched, you either die or move on.

PTSD sucks and it is a lifelong thing regardless of therapy. And it is exacerbated in this pandemic amongst us all.

Another vote for Adam Walsh. I was preschool age when his story was all over the media. My mother and paternal grandmother were especially fearful for my safety, and my mother told me about what happened to Adam. Of course, I was frightened too.

At school we rehearsed and discussed scenarios of what to do if approached by strangers. Never approach a car if offered candy, never go with someone you don’t know, even if they tell you something like they need help finding their puppy, etc. Never reveal on the phone or to an unknown adult that you’re home by yourself, because, of course, we were also the latchkey group of kids.

There’s even a line in Home Alone where Kevin is buying groceries and answers the checkout girl’s questions with something like, “I can’t tell you, because you’re a STRANGER.”

I was also kept home for Halloween over the Tylenol scare.

R70 Dr. Henry Lee became famous for his forensic work on the wood chipper murder.

I was in a Catholic elementary school when Patty Hearst got kidnapped. We would say a prayer for her in the morning.

Hitch hiking was thing when I was growing up. Well for my older sisters it was anyway. By the time I made it to high school, there were so man missing, murdered hitch hikers it put the whole thing to a dead stop. It was such an odd thing to see even as a kid to randomly stop and pick up a total stranger when at the same time being told as a kid not to take candy from strangers so to speak.

Patty Hearst scared all the well to do. Before her kidnapping, it was not uncommon for kids from rich families to be dropped off at school in limos and pretentious cars. After her kidnapping, suddenly no limo in sight, just a "driver" in a generic car.

Polyester

Flairs

This shocked me to my core.

James Patrick Bulger (16 March 1990–12 February 1993) was a 2-year-old boy from Kirkby, Merseyside, England, who was abducted, tortured and killed by two 10-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, on Friday, 12 February 1993. Bulger was led away from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle as his mother had taken her eyes off him momentarily. His mutilated body was found on a railway line 2.5 miles (4 km) away in Walton, Liverpool, two days after his abduction. Thompson and Venables were charged on 20 February 1993 with Bulger's abduction and murder.

The killers were released several years later under new identities and the British government has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect them since. It's a crime -- contempt of court -- to disclose any current information about them and there have been many prosecutions. Odd.

I read up on Mark Kilroy’s case since I’ve never heard of him until OP mentioned it. It seems like he at least had a quick death after he was raped or just sodomized, hard to tell why really happened. I wouldn’t wish his fate on anyone but it doesn’t sound that out the norm until you include what they did to his body. Thankfully he was already dead by that point.

People on Reddit acted like it was the worst case ever. I was just happy for his relatively quick death considering everything else they had planned for his body.

I think the one about the Japanese girl that was kidnapped by some guys and raped for a week(s) was the worst. They put fish and shit in her virgins which caused an infection. Just prolonged torture. I think she couldn’t walk by the end of her ordeal and they kept her locked in a closet.

The couple from Knoxville was also horrifying. I also wonder if it want national news because the monsters were black.

R79 I lived 10 minutes from where little Samantha Runnion lived when she was abducted. I was 5 months pregnant at the time and had a 3 year old daughter. We moved to the Central Coast 3 months later. I named my baby Samantha.

One of the Bulger killers is in jail for repeaded possession of child pornography.

Manson gave a lot of people nightmares.

Dyatlov Pass.

The Donner Party. I refused to move to California with mom and dad and stayed in Kansas instead.

The assassination of JFK. I was in the fourth grade, about to break for lunch, and our teacher made the grim announcement. That pivoted the rest of the 60s and beyond...to today.

R103 the name I always give for dinner reservations. When they call it over the speaker “Donner Party of 5, Donner Party” I stand and say great cause we’re starving!

R96 I know of one of the prosecutors on the case. The scene of crime photos were particularly troubling.

R106 What kind of ghoul are you that you would want to see crime scene photos of such an awful crime?

[quote]I know of one of the prosecutors on the case. The scene of crime photos were particularly troubling.

I can imagine, esp when you think 10 year old boys were the perpetrators. The UK justice system has to go to extraordinary length to keep Thompson's and Venable's identity hidden. Several people went to jail who exposed them and their whereabouts.

Hopefully at least Venable will be locked up indefinitely.

R107, what makes you think he viewed them?

I took his comment to mean the prosecutor he knew told him about them.

*shrug*

R109 Everyone heard and read the details from the news; pictures were never used. The poster wrote that the scene of the crime PHOTOS were extremely troubling. If the poster didn't view them, what's the point of the post? To tell us he 'knew' one of the prosecutors?

R5, that story is horrifying.

People can be monsters.

25th Anniversary of the Dunblane massacre today.

[quote]I hate you. The very wealthy and poor will always be my friends. The nastiest people I've ever known are the the middling middle class who cling to the mediocrity as if it were some sort of trophy.

What are you babbling about, you cretin? DL certainly attracts some fucking psychos.

R70-77 seems to have been having some kind of drug induced conversation with himself. Wow......

Sorry R71, not R70.

John List lived around the corner from me. I don't remember the murders, but I remember the house burning down, which happened a year or so after he disappeared after killing his family. My father remembered him as being peculiar but not threatening.

It was strange as we grew up because he got away with it. It was never a threat like he was going to harm us, but it really drove home that anyone could snap and kill the people around them that trusted them and then disappear into the night.

I lived in Salt Lake when Ted Bundy was kidnapping and murdering young women with long brown hair. Scary times. Ted made America realize that serial killers don’t always look like monsters.

I gotta say all these crimes really suck. Thinking about them and how horrible it all is. Over and over.

Really hoping it's like those NDEs. They pop out of their body after death, hover over it a little. Are surprised it's them. Then the light comes and they feel peace and the ones who have to go back are really mad.

That physicists suggest reality is a simulation, mind expansion through psychoactive substances, NDEs and religious experiences. Maybe there's something more after death.

I'd like to think all those suffering victims are at peace like chill, man. I'm not reliving the incident over and over like you are. Maybe it's like The Lovely Bones, they're cool and we're the ones left behind horrified.

R6- In Ann Rule's book on Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me, she wrote about a house cat the girls had at Chi Omega. She said the cat was always there until 2 weeks before the murders. The cat disappeared and even though they looked everywhere for her, they could not find her. She finally came back 3 days after the murders. I was very young when I read that book, about 14, but the cat story has always stayed with me for some reason. Ann Rule said it was like the cat had sensed evil and did not return until she felt safe. That has always made me wonder how long Bundy had been casing the place before he killed them. Fun fact: Employees at the prison where Bundy was executed reported seeing his ghost sitting in the very electric chair he was killed in. They were very frightened and refused to go into that room alone. They all said that he just sat there, smirking as if to say he had beaten them somehow. I do not know what they meant by that, but that is what all of them said they felt. Then whoever was in charge forbid them from talking about this and told them they would lose their job if they spoke of it again. Make of it what you will.

@R116- Thanks. I had no idea the house burned down. I remember the officers on the scene saying the ballroom music that List had playing made the crime scene so eerie, sureal. The bodies were in the ballroom side by side and the ballroom music had been left on, and on high volume.

Boo. Bundy ghost story.

R116 Yes, he killed them all and moved them to the ballroom, except his mother, who died on the third floor of the house. Supposedly his son was shot several times, as he struggled and attempted to escape. Horrible to think about. The true irony of the thing was that supposedly John List was broke and didn't want to make his family go through losing their home and to be embarrassed, so he killed them, when the house he owned had a signed Tiffany skylight in the ballroom that would have made his money problems vanish.

During his imprisonment, List was interviewed and said he didn't want to take his own life because he thought suicide would keep him from seeing his family in heaven. Religion is fucked up.

R121 Did the skylight survive the fire?

There were several very good articles in the Bundy ghost story link. The the views of prison staff and the findings if the psychological testing on Bundy were very interesting to me. He is and was always betrayed as a very confident, charismatic man, however, they found just the opposite. It seems that was a superficial part of his personality, one he could not maintain for long periods of time. He was also portrayed as highly intelligent when in fact he only scored 124 on his IQ test. About the List house, I had forgotten about the skylight! List was a selfish little man who would rather annihilate his family than admit he was a failure. A judgemental control freak. I found him particularly repulsive and cowardly.

R123 Nothing survived. It remained a vacant lot for several years until someone rebuilt on it. As kids we were wary even of the lot. As if the land was tainted. I can't imagine what options that creepy old house would have done for us. Lots of double dares to go on the porch I'd imagine.

Even if List knew about the value of the skylight, he'd have to admit to his wife why they needed to sell it, and expose himself as a failure.

Yes, I believe he would have killed them anyway. He disapproved of them all, his wife, his children. He probably felt his mother was a burden as well. ( It was years ago when I read the books.) His mother and wife hated each other That was an interesting read about the grandmother. I did not understand the part about her cancelled visit. She had canceled a planned visit to the List home, but it reads as if the children were supposed to visit at her home. She cancelled due to illness. John List said in court had she not cancelled she he would have been killed as well. Makes you wonder what his original plan was. Thanks so much for the link.

So, suicide = going straight to hell, but murdering your whole family is ok. Got it.

Reminds me of Ed Kemper and how he apologized to one of his victims when his hand accidentally brushed her boob, before proceeding to brutally murder her.

The disappearance of Laci Peterson.

I'm sure this has been mentioned already: the kidnapping of Etan Patz. I grew up in NYC after this happened and parents became much more protective and restrictive with their kids after Etan's disappearance. Like 9/11, there was a clear before and after,

The Tool Box killers is one of the worse accounts I have ever read. Laurence Bittaker and Roy Norris, the Toolbox Killers. The pair were dubbed “the Tool Box Killers” because of the instruments of torture, including ice picks, vise grips and a sledgehammer. The victims, some of them hitchhikers, ranged from 13 to 18 years old and were from Los Angeles County’s South Bay, Long Beach and San Fernando Valley. They recorded the murders and the audio recording of their murder of Shirley Lynette Ledford is so horrible it is used to desensitize FBI agents. Detective Paul Bynum, a chief investigator involved in catching serial killers Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, committed suicide years after the two were found guilty. In his suicide note, he outlined that one of his main reasons was his fear of the two ever being released from jail.

Dyatlov Pass changed the American landscape forever.

The Johhny Goshe kidnapping.

For me it was the Jacob Wetterling kidnapping/murder in St. Joseph, MN. I remember the news of that kidnapping throwing communities all around Minneapolis and across the US into major paranoia. It was especially creepy for me and my friends because we were all around the same age as him. And I remember the "stranger danger" education we all had to go through as a result of it. That kidnapping really changed things, making parents much more hyper-aware of their children's activities and schools enacted redundant protective measures to ensure kids were safe. It was a very strange time to be a kid. In 2015 his killer was brought to justice and it was a sad end to the epic story. If anyone is interested, there is a radio series called In the Dark that replays the entire saga in great detail. IT is excellent and well-researched. While Jacob really never stood a chance of surviving (he was killed pretty quickly after being kidnapped), his killer was so close to being caught so many times; the bumbling small-town police force that kept fucking up the investigation. I'm actually surprised his kidnapping hasn't yet been mentioned, as I remember it being a major news story.

Does anyone remember when Bill Cosby's only son Ennis died back in the 90's? I wasn't a child, but I remember it getting lots of coverage on the news back then.

The biggest crime story of my childhood was the Atlanta child murders. I'm still not convinced the right guy was convicted.

JKF, RKF, and MLK

Manson murders (reading about the murders still put me in a funk. I know, Mary!)

9/11

Recently, George Floyd