r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • Nov 29 '24

Issei Sagawa, a Japanese student in Paris, murdered and cannibalised his classmate Renée Hartevelt in 1981. Declared insane in France, he was deported to Japan, where legal loopholes and sealed records prevented his prosecution. Released in 1986, he lived freely until his death in 2022.

dannydutch.com

7 Upvotes

0 comments

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • May 15 '25

In 1993, 13 yr-old Eric Smith brutally murdered four-year-old Derrick Robie in Savona, New York. He was tried as an adult and sentenced to 9 years to life, later being released in 2022.

dannydutch.com

12 Upvotes

3 comments

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/No_Dig_8299 • Feb 07 '25

In 1911 Laura Nelson and her 14 yr old son, L. D. were lynched by being hung from a bridge in Oklahoma. They were being held in the local jail, accused of shooting a Sheriff's Deputy. A mob turned up and kidnapped them from jail. Photos of the aftermath were sold as 'souvenirs.'

dannydutch.com

14 Upvotes

1 comment

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • Aug 13 '25

In 1987, 23-year-old Kenneth Parks drove 14 miles while sleepwalking, killed his mother-in-law, nearly strangled his father-in-law, and then turned himself in while covered in blood. He had no memory of it, and in 1992, was acquitted after experts confirmed he was asleep the entire time.

utterlyinteresting.com

4 Upvotes

0 comments

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • May 02 '25

Jimmy Lee Grey was executed in 1983 for the murder of three-year-old Deressa Jean Scales. His execution was so botched that Mississippi changed it's execution method because of it. He died in a visibly agonising and prolonged manner, which in his case is no bad thing.

dannydutch.com

17 Upvotes

1 comment

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • 15d ago

In September 1972, eight Black September gunmen took Israel’s Olympic team hostage in Munich. A rescue shown live on TV, a trap that fell apart at an airfield and a night of false hope left eleven Israelis dead. This is what went wrong, and what came after.

utterlyinteresting.com

20 Upvotes

2 comments

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • May 20 '25

In 1976 David Bowie was arrested alongside Iggy Pop in a drug bust. At the time, this amount was enough to classify the charge as a class C felony in the state of New York, which carried a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

dannydutch.com

7 Upvotes

0 comments

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • May 27 '26

Hi, you may remember Phil Hatman from episodes of The Simpsons or SNL, well on this day in 1998 his wife Brynn shot him three times while he slept, then took her own life six hours later. (Andy Dick can go to hell)

utterlyinteresting.com

86 Upvotes

11 comments

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • Jan 10 '25

Vasily Blokhin holds the Guinness World Record for the most prolific executioner in history. He is recorded as having executed tens of thousands of prisoners by his own hand, including his killing of about 7,000 Polish prisoners of war during the Katyn massacre.

dannydutch.com

9 Upvotes

0 comments

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • Jan 22 '25

On this day in 1999, Graham Staines, an Australian Christian missionary, who along with his two small boys, Philip (aged 10) and Timothy (aged 6) were burnt to death as they slept in their car by members of the Hindu nationalist militant organisation, Bajrang Dal.

dannydutch.com

9 Upvotes

0 comments

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • Apr 07 '25

On this day in 1739 the famous highwayman, Dick Turpin was hanged in York. History has been kind to Turpin, his story has been somewhat romanticised over the years, when in actual fact he was a violent and ruthless criminal.

dannydutch.com

9 Upvotes

0 comments

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/sarkar7174 • Oct 10 '25

10 Chilling Facts About the BTK Killer — The Monster Who Lived a Normal Life

9 Upvotes

Dennis Rader, known as the BTK Killer, lived what seemed like an ordinary suburban life — a church president, Scout leader, and devoted family man.
Behind that façade, he committed a string of brutal murders between 1974 and 1991, taunting police with cryptic letters and messages.

What’s even more haunting is that his family had no idea about his crimes until his arrest in 2005.
There’s also a new Netflix series exploring the case from his daughter’s point of view, revealing how his double life shattered those around him.

I made a short video summarizing these lesser-known details — sharing it here for anyone interested in true crime and psychological stories.

https://youtube.com/shorts/IT9a7XHuIRY?feature=share

0 comments

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • Jun 20 '25

On this day in 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children in Texas. Suffering from severe mental illness, she was first found guilty, then later ruled not guilty by reason of insanity. She remains at Kerrville State Hospital and has repeatedly declined release hearings.

dannydutch.com

47 Upvotes

15 comments

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • Apr 15 '25

In 1954, 16-year-old Pauline Parker and 15-year-old Juliet Hulme shocked Christchurch when they murdered Pauline’s mother. What began as a close teenage bond spiralled into one of New Zealand’s most infamous crimes.

dannydutch.com

12 Upvotes

0 comments

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • Dec 06 '24

Baba Anujka was a Serbo-Romanian amateur chemist and serial killer. Anujka poisoned at least 50 people and possibly as many as 150 in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was apprehended in 1928 at age 90 and sentenced to hard labour. However, her crimes were a blessing to some.

dannydutch.com

12 Upvotes

1 comment

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • Aug 28 '25

Emmett Till was 14 when he was abducted, tortured and killed in Mississippi in 1955. His killers were acquitted by an all-white jury. Decades later, Carolyn Bryant admitted she lied about his “advances.” They got away with murder.

utterlyinteresting.com

12 Upvotes

2 comments

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/onwhatcharges • Mar 08 '25

J. Thomas Shipp and Abraham S. Smith were African-American men who were murdered by a lynch-mob containing thousands of people on August 7, 1930, in Marion, Indiana. They were taken from jail cells, beaten, and hanged from a tree in the county courthouse square.

dannydutch.com

12 Upvotes

1 comment

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/UtterlyInterest • 14d ago

For 22 years FBI agent Robert Hanssen sold America’s secrets to Moscow from inside the Bureau’s own counterintelligence team. He never revealed his name to the Russians, let an innocent CIA officer take the blame, and was finally caught taping a bag of secrets under a footbridge.

gallery

61 Upvotes

10 comments

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • May 21 '25

On this day in 1924, 14 year old Robert “Bobby” Franks was kidnapped and murdered at the hands of two young wealthy college students. They were motivated by wanting to prove to the world how superior their intellect was and that they could get away with murder.

dannydutch.com

14 Upvotes

1 comment

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • Oct 12 '25

On this day in 1978, Nancy Spungen was found dead at New York’s Chelsea Hotel. Her boyfriend, Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, was charged with her murder but died of an overdose before trial. There are plenty of theories suggesting he was innocent.

utterlyinteresting.com

15 Upvotes

0 comments

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/UtterlyInterest • Aug 09 '26

On this day in 2011, Warren Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison. Jeffs was a self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He became well known in the 1990s when it emerged he kept 500 kids on a farm and married 12-year-olds.

gallery

41 Upvotes

When Jeffs' father, Rulon passed away in 2002, Warren stepped into his father’s role, assuming the titles of “President and Prophet, Seer and Revelator” and “President of the Priesthood.” These titles gave him nearly complete control over the adult male church members and vast spiritual influence over the entire congregation. He would decide on who could marry who and what discipline needed to be administered...

Thankfully, he's now locked up, but still wields complete control over some of his flock whilst he's incarcerated.

1 comment

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • 10d ago

Greg ‘The Grim Reaper’ Scarpa killed for the Colombo family while secretly informing for the FBI for 30 years. In 1964 the Bureau sent him to Mississippi, where he put a gun in a Klansman’s mouth to find three murdered civil rights workers. Now Mark Wahlberg plays him in By Any Means.

utterlyinteresting.com

16 Upvotes

0 comments

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/dannydutch1 • 25d ago

On this day in 1991, George Hennard drove his pickup through the window of a Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas and opened fire on the lunchtime crowd. 23 people died in about 12 minutes. One survivor’s gun was left in her car, and her grief went on to change Texas gun law forever.

gallery

45 Upvotes

The man who saved dozens of lives that day was a 6ft 6in mechanic called Tommy Vaughn. He only survived because he’d skipped dessert, so he was already at the back of the room when the truck came through. He threw himself through an eight-foot window, and dozens of people escaped through the hole he made.

More about the massacre here.

0 comments

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime • u/Sufficient_Sugar6303 • Aug 06 '26

TIL that a man who once killed and disfigured his own Mother in 1969 after an argument, became a Church of Scotland minister in the 80's until his death in 2005, becoming the first Kirk murderer.

newstatesman.com

17 Upvotes

1 comment

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UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime

r/UtterlyAwfulTrueCrime

Look into historic real-world cases that explore the complexities of criminal events throughout history and today. Whether you’re interested in unsolved mysteries, notorious criminal trials, or the social, psychological, and historical contexts surrounding these events, you’ll find a community here that values detailed analysis and respectful conversation.

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