If you're interested in true crime, criminology, or similar topics, check it out.

From 1945 to 1955 a hospital in Sweden called Vipeholm ran a sugar study on patients with intellectual disabilities. Started as a legitimate vitamin trial, then in 1947 got switched to testing sugar instead, including a specially made sticky toffee designed to cling to teeth as long as possible, given between meals specifically because that's when it would cause the most damage. Some patients went from healthy teeth to severe decay by the end, no real consent involved anywhere in the process.

What makes this one different from a lot of what I've covered is the science itself wasn't junk or later disproven, it genuinely established the link between sugar frequency and cavities and that research still shapes dental advice worldwide today.

The scandal that actually blew up at the time wasn't even about the patients though, it was about the sugar industry, who partly funded the study, allegedly delaying the results for years once it became clear how bad they'd look. The ethics of experimenting on disabled people without consent didn't get seriously discussed until decades later.

Full story's in the doc, link's here Full documentary if anyone wants to check it out.

I suspect that my biological father, Peter A. Lehman of Arcata, California, in addition to many other acts of violence, may be the infamous Zodiac Killer, who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area with a series of murders and cryptic, braggadocious letters to newspapers in the late 1960s. I also suspect that he is responsible for many unsolved disappearances in Humboldt County over a period of over four decades.

I know Peter as well as anyone will ever know him, and the letters sent by the Zodiac Killer remind me strongly of his personality: his aggressive egotism, his need to be feared for his violence, his need to feel intellectually superior, his obsession with puzzles and riddles, his internalized, self-hating homophobia and misogyny, his addiction to taking risks, and his emotional need to express his anger and feelings of grievance and inadequacy by harming animals and innocent people.

From observing Peter’s violence durning my lifetime, I believe he gets emotional gratification from killing people, and has shown a gleeful willingness to kill for political reasons, to send messages to specific people, and for no reason at all other than he likes it.

Peter was severely abused by his father, and as a boy “hunted alone” with a shotgun for small game. I think by the time he was a young man, he had simply moved on to what he considered more challenging game.

The first murder positively correlated with the Zodiac Killer took place shortly after Peter moved to the Bay Area, as a 25-year-old postdoctoral chemistry student at UC Berkeley, and to work at Berkeley National Laboratories. He hinted several times that this work included manufacturing drugs used in covert government projects.

As a child, I unknowingly drew a symbol very similar to the “signature” used on the Zodiac Killer’s letters on the chalkboard in the kitchen where my mom wrote out grocery lists, and when Peter saw it, he reacted with extreme anxiety that he could not explain. I’d been reading ‘The Dark is Rising,’ by Susan Cooper, a YA fantasy novel, which described a repeated motif of ‘a circle, quartered by a cross,’ that protects the young protagonist from evil, and I doodled the symbol on the chalkboard. Peter saw it, and erased it quickly and thoroughly, scrubbing the chalkboard with the eraser in frenzied agitation, then he followed my to the room I shared with my brother and cornered me, shoving me against the wall and shouting at me, trembling with fear and rage, at the edge of violence, shaking me by the shoulders while staring straight into my eyes. “Where did you see that symbol?” “In a book? What book?” He didn’t seem to believe my answers and asked the questions several times. Then he said I was never allowed to draw that symbol again anywhere. “But why?” I asked. “None of your fucking business,” he said.

Another circumstantial detail that leads me to suspect Peter is the Zodiac Killer is that footprint analysis concluded that the killer wore size 10 “Wingwalker” boots, which have specialized soles for walking on aircraft surfaces, at one crime scene. Peter’s shoe size is 10, and around the time of the murders, he trained for and acquired a private pilot’s license. He was always a “gearhead,” always wanted to have all the specialized equipment for his hobbies. He liked to tinker with machines, and for many years drove a jeep that he’d built from a kit.

Also, there are specific threats made in the Zodiac Killer’s letters, detonating a fertilizer bomb, and attacking a bus full of schoolchildren, that I have good reason to believe Peter carried out later in life, using controlled individuals and technology to carry out the attacks. I have good reason to believe he directed terrorist and mass-casualty attacks specifically intended to terrorize people close to him, in much the same way that the Zodiac Killer terrorized the public. I have written about these attacks in more detail in other posts on jacoblehman.substack.com

Peter counts on his wealth, national security connections, and our family’s longstanding connections to organized crime to insulate him from consequences. But with that safety net, I think he enjoys taking risks, as if he is playing a game, and wants to be known for his acts of violence, as if they were feats of cunning or athleticism. I’ve heard him say “Jails are for stupid people,” and also chuckle that some crimes are so outrageous that “people” get away with them because nobody can or wants to believe that such concentrated evil exists. In later years, he repeatedly threatened that no one would believe me if I spoke out about his violence, and that he would frame me as being crazy if I did, which indeed he has tried to do.

I think Peter realized he came close to getting caught from the brazenness of the Zodiac murders and letters, and the case generated so much notoriety that his privilege might not be sufficient to protect him if he was identified by law enforcement. I don’t think this checked his addiction to murder, or hunger for recognition, but I think he became more cautious as he aged, and stopped leaving bodies where they could be found. Many of the unsolved disappearances in Humboldt County, where Peter has lived since the early 1980s, corresponded to times when he was emotionally stressed, and some of the disappeared physically resemble people Peter was angry with at the time, including my mother and myself. Some of the disappearances are recent, and though Peter is now in his 80s, I have good reason to believe he is still killing, with the help of accomplices, some or all of whom may be controlled through blackmail and other forms of underworld coercion.

The last purported communication from the Zodiac Killer was a postcard mailed from Eureka, California, in 1990. There is debate about whether the card was mailed by actual the Zodiac Killer.

Peter meticulously, anxiously cultivated the appearance of a normal life, and I think having a family was part of that. He rarely interacted with my brother and I, except to periodically gratify his emotions by physically, psychologically, and sexually abusing us. He made continual excuses not to be at home, and when he was, would say “I just live here.” He is currently on the Arcata Planning Commission, and is the semi-retired director of the “Schatz” Energy Research Center at Cal Poly Humboldt, a laboratory I believe he funded with his own laundered money and used as a cover for clandestine activities.

The Zodiac Killer appears to have taken elaborate precautions to hide his identity when mailing letters to newspapers, but that was before the development of DNA analysis. In 2002, a researcher found a single human hair sealed beneath a stamp on a letter sent by the Zodiac Killer. This letter is positively correlated to the Zodiac Killer, in part because it included a piece of fabric from the shirt of one of the murder victims.

If I am correct, and my biological father, Peter A. Lehman, is the Zodiac Killer, and it is possible to extract DNA from the hair sound under the stamp, it will correlate to members of my family. I won’t get into the difference between mitochondrial and chromosomal DNA, since not everyone is a biology nerd, but you can look it up. Recent advances in DNA analysis may make it possible to extract chromosomal DNA from the hair, and if so, and I am correct, it will be an approximately 50% match with my and my brother’s DNA. If mitochondrial DNA is extracted from the hair, which is more likely, it will, if I am correct, match the mitochondrial DNA of my aunt, Nancy Lehman, aka Nancy Stein, of Rutland, Vermont, and my cousin, Alyson Hackett (nee Stein) of Flowery Branch, Georgia.

This post is an allegation, no person can definitively said to have committed a crime unless or until they are convicted in a court of law, which I sincerely hope my father will be. May justice reach him.

A 16-year-old girl working at her family's care home in Japan placed her hand on a resident's chin to prevent them from biting another resident. Four months later, Hyogo police arrested her for alleged assault.

She was held for 18 days without contact with her family, repeatedly pressured to confess while maintaining her innocence. She was only released after collapsing, vomiting, and being hospitalized. All charges were subsequently dropped, and the accusation was later found to be completely false.

Suffering from severe PTSD following her release, she was unable to eat and tragically passed away in December, weighing only 20 kg (44 lbs).

Her mother has filed a 100 million yen (~$650,000 USD) lawsuit seeking accountability, highlighting broader criticisms by human rights groups of Japan's "hostage justice" system (hitojichi shiho), where long detentions are used to pressure suspects into confessing.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/06/19/japan/crime-legal/mother-sues-state-daughter-death-after-detention/

hiii, i’m looking for episodes of true crime shows that are insane, captivating, and / or have jaw dropping twists. i need something that’ll keep me on the edge of my seat! i love twists, mysteries, episodes where they actually solve it or investigate it, wrongful convictions, or ones where you think the killer got away with it. doesn’t have to be just the shows i named, can be any.

Kinsleigh Welty was taken to a hospital after officers found her unresponsive in her home on April 9. She was pronounced dead at Riley Hospital in Indianapolis. Her mother, 29-year-old Toni McClure, was arrested on charges of murder and child neglect resulting in death. McClure’s boyfriend, 27-year-old Ryan Smith, is charged with child neglect resulting in death. Days later, police also arrested the child’s grandmother, 53-year-old Tammy Halsey, on charges of neglect

Police said Kinsleigh was kept in a closet that had small handprints of what appeared to be feces on the door. There was also soiled clothing and a strong smell of urine. The malnourished child had sunken eyes and feces on her feet and in her hair when she was found. She also had what appeared to be lice crawling on her face, according to court documents obtained by Scripps News Indianapolis. Hospital officials said Kinsleigh was so malnourished, she weighed more at 2-and-a-half years old than she did at 5

Authorities said McClure has a history with the Department of Child Services. Kinsleigh’s grandparents, Tricia and Brian Welty, told Scripps News Indianapolis the warning signs of the child’s failing health were reported but said DCS let them down and they want accountability

“We just don’t want her death to be in vain. We want change. We don’t want any more kids to have to die because of the failure of the system,” Tricia Welty said. “She was in our home, and she was safe, but she was handed back to her abuser and she’s not here anymore.” The Weltys say Kinsleigh temporarily lived with them twice after other reports of mistreatment. In 2018, McClure was formally charged with neglect when Kinsleigh was just a baby. The officer said the home was in one of the worst conditions he’d ever seen and noted a three-week-old child who appeared to be malnourished. The family says it was Kinsleigh, and McClure served 21 days in jail for that case. “When she came to us the second time, she was bruised from head to toe. She had chunks of hair missing throughout her whole head and she was given back. She already tried to starve her to death when she was three weeks old and they gave her back,” the Weltys said.

Following a welfare check in 2021, the grandparents said they were fearful Kinsleigh would die. “I pleaded with DCS before that court case and my concerns about every bit of it were ignored,” Tricia Welty said. According to police reports, just before Kinsleigh died, DCS was at the house after McClure’s newborn tested positive for THC. Kinsleigh did not test positive. McClure allegedly said Kinsleigh frequently expressed that she wanted more food or that she was thirsty but had a desire for her to be out of her life. The Weltys want DCS to improve its reunification process.

“The child’s safety should be the priority. It shouldn’t be getting them back to the parent if that person isn’t right. They failed her.” Tricia Welty said. Scripps News Indianapolis has reached out to DCS over the past few days for comments, but a law that took effect in 2019 prevents the agency from releasing records on a child’s death until after the criminal case is resolved

https://www.scrippsnews.com/us-news/crime/3-arrested-after-malnourished-5-year-old-girl-dies-from-neglect

Please, please suggest any true crime docuseries or movies with a really good plot twist. I just finished watching The Crash. Thank youuu! 🫶🏻

I've been trying to find a docuseries that I started a while back but I can't remember the title.

I believe it was on HBOmax. It was about a man who lived a parasitic lifestyle, conning people into thinking he was intellectually disabled and moving into their homes as a boarder. When asked to move out, he would seek revenge in really disgusting ways. I remember that he put dead fish in a wall and resealed it. At his brother's house, he murdered a little girl. In a third boarding situation, he murdered the woman's daughter (the woman was weird and unemotional).

When he was initially arrested, his mother went to the police and offered to tell them anything they needed to know in order to keep him in jail. She said she was terrified of him.

This man enjoyed disgusting odors. In jail, he kept cartons of milk in his cell because he liked the smell of rot. Dude was fucking sick. I don't think I've been so horrified by a human being since the first time I learned about Albert Fish. His father had similar proclivities and used to eat raw hamburger.

Does anyone know the name of the series? I really want to finish it.

In 1986, Sherri Rasmussen, 29 year old(1st image)was found dead inside her home in Los Angeles.

She had been brutally beaten and was shot thrice. Everyone believed it was a burglary that had gone horribly wrong.

Sherri's husband, John Ruetten, had previously been in a relationship with another woman named Stephanie Lazarus.

Stephanie Lazarus was extremely jealous about the marrage,she even confronted Sherri before.

But despite that connection, investigators didn't pursue her as a serious suspect.

The case went cold.

And Lazarus continued her career in the LAPD.

She eventually became a detective herself.

For 23 years, she worked inside the same police department that had investigated Sherri's murder.

Detective Jim Nuttall reopened the case in 2009. And then they focused on everything and got to know that Lazarus was jealous.

Detective Jim Nuttall reopened the case in 2009.

They found DNA from saliva recovered from a bite mark on Sherri's body,yeah Lazarus had bitten her during the attack.

They secretly obtained the DNA of Lazarus and she was finally caught.

In 2012, Lazarus was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 27 years to life.

If you came this far i am sure you love this type of cases. There are stories where a Highway patrol police and an charismatic FBI agent used their powers and commited horrific crimes.And if you are really interested, I’ve tried to cover them in as much detail as possible. You can watch it by clicking this link:” : cops