Buzz
Crimes such as theft, robbery, alienation, fraud, political corruption, vice, twisted desires, physical and sexual abuse, recklessness, and manipulation are all tied to the horrific incidents featured in this list.
The criminal acts, including body-snatching, train robberies, kidnappings, and fraud, involved the use of tools such as picks, shovels, dynamite, 'burking,' pistols, ropes, knives, water, machine guns, and even cameras. Each crime has been the basis for a chilling thriller, as intense and horrifying as the events themselves.
10. The Body Snatcher & The Flesh and the Fiends
William Burke (1792–1829) and William Hare (d. 1859?) are believed to have met while working as laborers on the Union Canal in Scotland. After leaving the grueling labor, they turned to supplying bodies to Edinburgh’s medical schools, which were constantly in need of cadavers for anatomy dissections.
Initially, they resorted to digging up graves and stealing corpses, but they soon realized that this task was just as strenuous as the manual labor they had previously done at the canal. They eventually discovered a more straightforward and less physically demanding method of obtaining bodies. Rather than stealing from cemeteries in the dead of night, they chose to murder individuals and sell their remains to medical schools. In the process, the duo developed a method for suffocating their victims, which became known as 'burking,' named after Burke himself.
Everything went smoothly—until their sixteenth murder—when a witness alerted the police to a dead body hidden under Burke's bed. Burke, his mistress Helen McDougall, Hare, and Hare’s 'wife' Margaret were arrested (though they weren’t legally married, they lived as husband and wife). Fearing there was insufficient evidence to convict the defendants, Lord Advocate Sir William Rae granted Hare immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony against Burke and the others. His 'wife' was also granted immunity.
As a result, Burke was executed by hanging on January 28, 1829. McDougall was acquitted due to a lack of evidence. Ironically, Burke’s body was given to a medical school for dissection, and his skeleton is still on display at the University Medical School in Edinburgh. While Hare’s fate remains unclear, one account suggests that he may have died in London in 1859, living out his last days as a blind beggar.
The crimes of Burke and Hare are immortalized in a gruesome piece of 19th-century verse, which includes a reference to one of their main customers, Dr. Robert Knox: “Up the close and doon the stair,/ But and ben’ wi’ Burke and Hare./ Burke’s the butcher, Hare’s the thief,/ Knox the boy that buys the beef.”
Their body-snatching and murders also inspired the 1884 short story 'The Body Snatcher' by Robert Louis Stevenson, which, in turn, loosely inspired the 1945 film of the same title, directed by Robert Wise. The film centers on the unethical doctor Toddy MacFarlane (Henry Daniell) and his medical student protege, Donald Fettes (Russell Wade), who are blackmailed by the body snatcher John Gray (Boris Karloff) into keeping quiet after Fettes learns that Gray has killed to provide cadavers for their research.
In the film, Dr. Knox is not depicted as the body-snatcher’s customer, but rather as MacFarlane’s mentor. In one particular scene, MacFarlane recounts the story of Burke and Hare to Joseph (Bela Lugosi), an assistant who also happens to be a blackmailer. This leads to several complications, including more murders.
A later British film, The Flesh and the Fiends (1960)—which was released in the U.S. under the title Mania—also draws from the Burke and Hare murders. Directed by John Gilling, it stars Peter Cushing as Robert Knox, Donald Pleasence as William Hare, and George Rose as William Hare.
9. Special Agent
The DeAutremont brothers—twins Roy (1900–1983), Ray (1900–1984), and their brother Hugh (1904–1959)—carried out the last train robbery in the American West, according to a December 22, 1984, article from the Meriden, Connecticut, Record-Journal. The newspaper reports that the brothers “jumped aboard…the Southern Pacific ‘Gold Special’ bound for San Francisco as it passed through a remote mountain tunnel near Ashland,” with the intent of relieving the U.S. Post Office Department of the contents in the mail car.
Things didn’t go as planned. The dynamite they used to break into the car scattered its contents. Even worse, four of the train’s crew members were shot by the heavily armed brothers. The robbery failed because, as the robbers later learned, the money they sought to steal wasn’t even on the train.
After fleeing the crime scene, the brothers adopted new identities. Hugh enlisted in the army and was stationed in the Philippines, where a fellow soldier, recognizing him from a wanted poster, tipped off the police. Meanwhile, the other brothers, disguising themselves with mustaches, found work at a steel mill. However, their attempts to blend in failed as authorities, not fooled by the facial hair, tracked them to Steubenville, Ohio.
Accused of murdering three members of the train’s crew, Hugh denied his involvement, while the twins admitted to the killings. Despite this, all three brothers were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Hugh passed away in prison at the age of 55, while the twins were eventually paroled—Ray in 1961 and Roy in 1983, after undergoing a lobotomy in 1949. When asked about the motives behind the train robbery and the murders, Ray replied, “I suppose at the time I was carrying my share of adolescent neurosis.”
The DeAutremont brothers' attempted robbery and subsequent murders inspired the 1949 film Special Agent. Directed by William C. Thomas and starring William Eythe, the film features two brothers, Edmond and Paul Devereaux, played by Paul Valentine and George Reeves, instead of three.
In the film, the brothers, hoping to save their farm from financial ruin, decide to rob a train, which leads Detective Johnny Douglas to pursue them. To add an air of realism, the film’s opening credits state, “This picture is based on material in the official files of the American Railroads,” but instead references the fictional “Devereaux Case” rather than the actual crimes of the DeAutremont brothers.
8. The Hitch-Hiker
Upon his release from prison at the age of 21, Billy 'Cockeyed' Cook shared his singular ambition with his father: to live by the gun and roam freely. In December 1950, while hitchhiking through Texas, Cook began fulfilling this dream when he kidnapped a driver who had stopped to offer him a ride. The victim, locked in the trunk of Cook's car, managed to escape.
The second man Cook kidnapped was 33-year-old Illinois farmer Carl Mosser, who was heading to New Mexico. Unfortunately for Mosser and his family, they made the same fatal error as Cook's first victim: they stopped to pick up the hitchhiking killer.
After driving to Cook’s hometown of Joplin, Missouri, Cook murdered Mosser, his wife Thelma (29), their two sons Ronald (7) and Gary (5), their daughter Pamela Sue (2), and their family dog, before disposing of their bodies in a well. Later, near Blythe, California, Cook kidnapped a deputy. The deputy was fortunate, as Cook had previously worked with the deputy’s wife, who had treated him kindly. In return, Cook spared his life.
Robert Dewey, a Seattle salesman, was not so fortunate. Cook shot him dead and dumped his body in a ditch. Cook’s killing spree finally came to an end when he forced two hunters to drive him to Mexico. There, Santa Rosalie Police Chief Luis Parra recognized Cook, arrested him, and handed him over to the FBI.
Cook was tried and convicted in Oklahoma for the murder of Mosser and his family, receiving a 300-year sentence. However, the justice system wasn’t finished with him. In California, where he was found guilty of murdering Dewey, he was sentenced to death. Cook was executed in San Quentin’s gas chamber on December 12, 1952, at the age of 23, having achieved his goal of 'living by the gun and roaming.'
As noted by journalist Ben Cosgrove, in a Life magazine article about the killer, Cook became the subject of a movie less than a year after his execution. Directed and written by actress-director Ida Lupino, with William Talman portraying Emmett Myers, The Hitch-Hiker stands out as one of Hollywood's earliest films inspired by a killer whose crimes were still vivid in the public's memory.
7. The Night of the Hunter
Harry Powers was supposedly a self-proclaimed lonely heart. In his 1939 American Friendship Society ad, he presented himself as a wealthy widower, earning between $400 and $2,000 a month, and claimed to be worth over $100,000. He also boasted about his beautiful '10-room brick home,' which he promised would be an ideal residence for his future wife, who would also receive a car and ample spending money.
Asta Eicher, a 50-year-old widow from Chicago, believed she had found the perfect partner. Powers, who went by the name 'Mr. Pierson' in his ad, seemed capable of supporting both her and her children—Greta, 14; Harry, 12; and Annabel, 9—very comfortably. Strangely, they appeared to be living in Eicher's house instead of his 10-room home. To accommodate him, Eicher asked her boarder, William O'Boyle, to move out.
When O'Boyle returned to Eicher's home to collect some forgotten tools, he encountered 'Mr. Pierson,' but noticed the absence of Eicher and her children. To his surprise, Pierson was seen moving the family's belongings. Pierson explained this by handing O'Boyle a letter, supposedly from Eicher, claiming she and her children had relocated to Colorado, and requested that he handle her personal matters. The lack of further details raised O'Boyle's suspicions, as well as those of the police, who launched an investigation.
Love letters led investigators to a location near Quiet Dell, West Virginia, which would come to be known as the 'murder farm.' Inside a garage, police discovered the personal belongings of Asta Eicher, her children, and another victim—Dorothy Lemke, a 50-year-old divorcee from Northboro (also spelled Northborough), Massachusetts. Tragically, the victims' bodies were found there as well.
Authorities uncovered that Powers had been preying on women for many years. A trunk found on the property contained over 100 letters exchanged with 'love-starved widows and spinsters from all across the country,' as reported by Mara Bovsun in a New York Daily News article. His pattern was to court these women, deplete their bank accounts, and then abandon them—or, as in the cases of Lemke, Eicher, and her family, murder them.
The jury reached a verdict less than two hours after beginning its deliberation. Powers was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Before his execution on March 18, 1932, he was asked if he had any final words. Despite having confessed to police that he hanged his victims one by one, allowing 12-year-old Harry to witness the murders of his mother and the others until the boy screamed, prompting Powers to kill him with a hammer, he remained unusually silent. He simply replied, 'No.'
The Night of the Hunter (1955), directed by Charles Laughton and featuring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, and Billy Chapin, is loosely inspired by the crimes of Powers. However, the film diverges from the real events in several key ways. Mitchum portrays Harry Powell, a self-proclaimed minister who claims to do God's work by swindling women out of their money before murdering them. He marries a widow named Willa Harper, but things take a dark turn when her children refuse to reveal where their father hid the $10,000 he stole during a robbery. After killing Willa, Powell is arrested, and a lynch mob nearly catches him. As he is taken away, the state's executioner ominously assures Powell that they will meet again soon.
6. The Phenix City Story
Phenix City, Alabama, was a haven for crime, both during the Great Depression, when it attracted bootleggers, and after World War II, when soldiers from nearby Fort Benning, Georgia, frequented its shady bars, brothels, and gambling venues. A Washington Times article notes that Albert Patterson, a Democratic candidate for state attorney general, sought to clean up the town, but his assassination ended those efforts. His murder made national headlines and inspired a 1955 movie. Patterson’s son, John, explained how corruption flourished in Phenix City in the 1930s. The city allowed illegal gambling to fund its operations and pay off debt, while officials at the state Capitol ignored the situation, and the federal authorities stayed away.
Once the criminals had gained control over the juries and ballots, Albert Patterson became the last hope for the honest citizens of Phenix City. Sadly, he was killed on June 18, 1954. Although Circuit Solicitor Arch Ferrell was tried and acquitted, Albert Fuller, the chief deputy sheriff of Russell County, was convicted of Patterson's murder and served 10 years in prison before being paroled.
Following Patterson’s assassination, Governor Gordon Persons declared martial law and ordered the National Guard to take over local law enforcement duties. Additionally, the local judiciary was replaced, and special agents from the state’s Investigative and Identification Division (now the Alabama Bureau of Investigation) began an inquiry. Within six months, the organized crime syndicate controlling Phenix City was fully dismantled. The investigation revealed the depth of the corruption and criminal activities Patterson had fought against. The grand jury handed down 734 indictments, targeting law enforcement officers, local business owners linked to organized crime, and elected officials.
The Phenix City Story (1955) is based on the murder of Albert Patterson. Directed by Phil Karlson, the film portrays Rhett Tanner (Edward Andrews) as the town’s crime boss, overseeing its bars, brothels, and gambling operations, while bribing the police. When political candidate Albert 'Pat' Patterson (John McIntire) vows to end the corruption, he is killed, and his son John (Richard Kiley), who returns home after serving in the military, swears to avenge his father’s death.
5. While the City Sleeps
William Heirens, a 17-year-old who became infamous as the 'Lipstick Killer,' spent 65 years and 181 days behind bars serving three consecutive life sentences. He spent his final years at the Dixon Correctional Center in Dixon, Illinois, where he died in 2012 at the age of 83. His confession to three murders led to his incarceration on November 15, 1928. Charles Einstein's novel The Bloody Spur is inspired by Heirens’s brutal crimes, and it later served as the foundation for the 1956 film While the City Sleeps.
Heirens’s victims included two women, Josephine Ross and Frances Brown, as well as a young girl, Suzanne Degnan, who was either 6 or 7 years old, with reports differing on her exact age. Brown had been stabbed through the neck and shot in the head, while Ross had been stabbed multiple times in the neck. Heirens admitted to police that his motive for killing all three victims was the same: sexual gratification.
A contemporary account of the police investigation into the murder of the kidnapped child, published in The Daily Banner of Greencastle, Indiana, recounted the chilling results of the crime: 'The child’s blonde, curly head, her legs and torso were found…in separate cesspools within a one-block radius of her parents’ home.' The police determined that an ax had been used to dismember and decapitate the girl.
While the City Sleeps (1956), directed by Fritz Lang, takes significant creative liberties with the actual events, centering on a competition between journalists at a news company to identify the serial murderer known as the 'Lipstick Killer' (John Drew Barrymore). The winner of the contest is promoted to the role of executive producer. The film also stars Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, Ida Lupino, and George Sanders.
4. Butterfield 8
Starr Faithfull was a stunning young flapper who, according to her diary, led a promiscuous life that involved sexual encounters with 19 different men. Though her parents struggled financially, her affluent cousins covered her tuition at Rogers Hall Academy in Lowell, Massachusetts, a prestigious boarding school.
Tragically, an older cousin, Andrew J. Peters, ‘drenched her in ether and seduced her,’ frequently taking her on overnight trips. As a teenager, Starr often displayed strange behavior, sometimes disguising her femininity by dressing in boyish clothing. After her parents’ divorce, her mother, Helen, married Stanley Faithfull, and Starr took his surname. She began frequenting parties, abusing alcohol, barbiturates, and inhalers, and even overdosed on sleeping pills once.
When Starr confided in her mother about Peters’s abuse, Peters silenced Helen and Stanley with a financial settlement. On June 8, 1931, Starr’s lifeless body was discovered on a desolate beach, entangled in seaweed. It seemed she had drowned, possibly intending to board a ship heading to the Bahamas. However, her autopsy revealed bruises that suggested she didn’t die alone.
Neither the investigation nor the inquest could determine whether Starr Faithfull’s death was a murder or suicide. Her diary did, however, mention ‘AJP’ as one of her lovers. The public speculated that these initials referred to her cousin, Andrew J. Peters, especially after Faithfull’s stepfather, convinced that she had been murdered, confronted the district attorney, accusing him of mishandling the investigation. He even presented the D.A. with the agreement Peters had made him sign in 1927 and a copy of the $20,000 check he received to ‘exonerate Peters.’
After Starr’s death, it was reported that Peters suffered a nervous breakdown. Meanwhile, Dr. George Jameson Carr disclosed that Faithfull had written him letters, one of which expressed her feelings of living a dull and worthless life and her desire for ‘oblivion.’ Whether Starr’s death was caused by murder or suicide, it seems apparent that the sexual abuse by her cousin played a significant role in her tragic end.
The turbulent life of Faithfull served as the inspiration for the film Butterfield 8 (1960), directed by Daniel Mann. In this adaptation, Elizabeth Taylor reluctantly takes on the role of Starr Faithfull, a character she initially did not want to portray. Taylor was under contract with MGM Studios at the time, and they insisted on her participation. Despite her hesitation, Taylor’s performance earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress.
3. To Die For
While reports of inappropriate relationships between high school teachers and students, both male and female, have become more common in recent times, such incidents were far rarer—or at least not as widely reported—back in the day. One notable case from 1990 involved 22-year-old Pamela Smart, a media coordinator at a New Hampshire high school. She was convicted of conspiring with a 15-year-old student, William Flynn, to murder her husband. Despite claiming she never asked Flynn to commit the crime, Smart, now 54, has been denied parole twice during her life sentence.
The story behind the murder of Smart’s husband, Greggory, became the basis for the 1995 film To Die For, directed by Gus Van Sant. In this fictionalized version, Nicole Kidman plays Suzanne Stone-Maretto, a woman resembling Smart, who seeks freedom from her husband Larry Maretto (Matt Dillon). Joaquin Phoenix stars as Jimmy Emmett, the teenager she manipulates into killing Larry.
As expected, the film’s storyline departs from the real-life case it’s based on. In the movie, Stone-Maretto, an ambitious television journalist, desires her husband's death for different reasons than Smart. Additionally, unlike in the actual crime, the Mafia plays a role in avenging the murder in the film—something that never occurred in real life. While art often reflects life, the two do not always align.
While the movie was generally well-received, one person did not share the same opinion about Nicole Kidman’s portrayal of the murderous seductress—Smart herself. Smart felt the Academy Award-winning actress’s performance was both embarrassing and oversimplified, lacking accuracy. Although Smart respects Kidman as an actress, she felt Kidman portrayed her as a clueless airhead and noted that Kidman never consulted her on how to authentically portray her character. Instead, Kidman gave a one-dimensional depiction. Smart firmly asserted, “I’m not that person.”
2. 10 to Midnight
10 to Midnight, the 1983 film directed by J. Lee Thompson, stars Charles Bronson as Detective Leo Kessler. The movie is inspired by the murders committed by Richard Speck. The killer’s fictional counterpart, Warren Stacey (Gene Davis), is a cold-blooded, almost insane serial killer who takes pleasure in murdering women while naked, as he himself is also nude. Kessler, determined to stop this ruthless killer, resorts to planting evidence despite objections from his partner. When Stacey is released on a technicality, Kessler takes the law into his own hands and pursues him as a vigilante cop.
The details of Richard Speck’s crimes are well-known. On July 14, 1966, he brutally murdered eight student nurses in a Chicago townhouse. The chilling memory of these murders resurfaced for John Schmale when he found a water-damaged cardboard box in his basement after a flood. Inside, he discovered four carousels of slides, which were part of a legacy left by his father. Among these slides were photographs of his sister Nina, one of Speck’s victims.
Ironically, Richard Speck became notorious for his heinous actions, while his victims have been largely forgotten. John Schmale felt that they deserved to be remembered: Nina Jo Schmale, Patricia Ann Matusek, Pamela Lee Wilkening, Mary Ann Jordan, Suzanne Bridget Farris, Valentina Pasion, Merlita Gargullo, and Gloria Jean Davy.
The 2007 horror film Chicago Massacre is another take on the Richard Speck murders. Directed by Michael Feifer, it stars Corin Nemec as Speck. The story begins with the abuse the main character suffers as a child, causing him to run away from home. He later marries, gets divorced, and embarks on a spree of torture and murder. After drifting for a while, an attempted suicide lands him in a hospital, where a doctor recognizes a tattoo that leads him to realize the patient is a fugitive. Speck is eventually arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison, where he dies.
1. Mad Dog Coll
Critics did not have much praise for Mad Dog Coll (1961). The New York Times reviewer Harold Thompson believed the film “belongs back in the pound.” Directed by Burt Balaban, the movie stars John Davis Chandler as Mad Dog Coll, Vincent Gardenia as Dutch Schultz, and features Telly Savalas as Lt. Darro. The film opens with a striking scene where Coll violently machine-guns the headstone of his abusive father.
As the leader of a street gang, Coll keeps his Tommy gun close and never hesitates to unleash a barrage of bullets on his enemies. The plot of the movie takes significant liberties with the real-life story of Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll, with the film’s sensationalism emphasized by the poster, which describes him as a “maniac with a machine gun” whose mere presence strikes fear into crime lords who “tremble when Killer Coll calls.”
However, Coll was undoubtedly a brutal and cold-blooded killer, with his most infamous crime being the accidental killing of a child. Operating during Prohibition, Coll was erratic, volatile, and reckless. Following the murder of his brother Peter by Dutch Schultz in May 1931, Coll sought revenge by gunning down four of Schultz’s men over the course of three weeks. The conflict between Coll’s gang and Schultz’s continued to escalate, often erupting into gunfights on the streets of New York, leaving many dead in their wake.
In June, while trying to abduct rival bootlegger Joseph Rao, Coll's gunfire hit five children, one of whom, a five-year-old boy, tragically lost his life. This shocking act led New York’s Mayor Jimmy Walker to label Coll a 'Mad Dog.' Although he was later acquitted in court, Coll's life ended on February 8, 1932, when he was shot dead at the age of 23. Mad Dog's reign of terror was over.
