Back in 1912, a little house in Iowa became a grisly crime scene where 8 people (6 of them were children). They were all beaten and stabbed to death and to this day, no one has found out who the murderer was. Over the last couple of decades the house has become a destination for paranormal investigators from every corner of the globe.
It’s probably going to get even more traffic now that a paranormal investigator has apparently stabbed himself.
Just after midnight local police got a call from the house stating that a lone paranormal investigator from Wisconsin, Robert Laursen Jr.,needed medical attention from an apparently self-inflicted stab wound.
Details on his condition and his own story about what happened have yet to be released.
Sitting out in the middle of Death Valley is a grim reminder of one of the most horrific and notable murder stories in American history.
Recently journalist Amy Beddows rolled through Death Valley in search of that grisly reminder.
Arriving in Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America and one of the most desolate places in the world, Beddows headed down the Trona 178 highway to the dirt road which leads to the isolated town of Ballarat.
Beddows drove past the sign at the entrance to the now-dead mining town which reads, “You learn nothing by sitting in the car.” Her and her fellow traveler got out to explore Ballarat to find the macabre object they were looking for.
The only other person in town? The owner/operator of the “Outpost” camping store which sits quietly in the middle of this long forgotten dot in the middle of nowhere.
He happily pointed out what Beddows was looking for…
A truck…but not just any truck…
Bobby Beausoleil’s truck that the Manson family used both in Los Angeles and to drive out to the Barker Ranch where Manson was caught by the Inyo County Sheriff Department and the California Highway Patrol for vandalism within the Death Valley National Park before they realized who they’d caught.
And there it sat in the fading sunset with the word ‘WAR’ vaguely remaining hand-painted on the door and the interior covered in spray-painted silver stars, a recurring image in the Manson family’s disturbing legacy.
Beddows and her companion left town before the notorious sandstorms began blowing into the basin later that evening leaving behind an old rusted truck.
A truck that sits alone on a small hill in the middle of nowhere where it’s held its ground for almost half a century.
A truck that holds a darkly grim history should the curious care to explore the speck of a town in the middle of nowhere.
At first this headline sounded like a joke. This kind of treatment doesn’t still happen ala the Salem witch trials, does it?
It apparently and disturbingly does.
Muree bin Ali Issa al-Asiri was executed several days ago in Saudi Arabia for possession of books and talismans associated with witchcraft.
Asiri wasn’t executed old-school before-the-gun-style either…he was beheaded.
Details on the incident are slowly leaking out at this point. Sebastian Usher, the BBC’s Arab Affairs Editor states that the country’s powerful conservative religious leaders strongly prohibit such practices. A few of them even calling for highest possible punishment for anyone caught practicing ‘sorcery’ which includes fortune tellers and faith healers.
The very real threat of losing your dome over practicing ‘sorcery’ isn’t stopping people from getting all ‘witchy-like’. While pressure from human rights groups saved a television host of a fortune-telling show in 2010, it didn’t save a Saudi woman last December or a Sudanese man last September even after Amnesty International called for their release on both occasions.
Travel tip? Don’t try to catch up on True Blood while you’re there.
Okay, that’s a deliberately provocative headline, I apologize.
But after all I’ve read pushing back on the popularity of the Hunger Games film and book series while citing the 1999 novel and 2000 film Battle Royale as the originator of the reality television kill show concept, it’s worth mentioning that either invented the idea.
Even The Running Man, penned by a scrappy author named Richard Bachman (Stephen King’s pseudonym), published in 1985 comes decades after the grand daddy of them all… Richard Sheckley’s The Prize of Peril, originally written in 1958.
It follows Jim Reader, a poor young truck driver’s assistant who takes on a career as a professional reality show contestant. The shows that pay the most are ones where you risk your life and where you could be forced to take the lives of other contestants.
He finds himself on the biggest of them all, The Prize of Peril.
A quick read, Peril deals with a lot of similar themes to Hunger Games (contestant as public inspiration, help from viewers, game manipulation) and just goes to show that as long as television game shows have existed, we’ve dreamed of killing each other on them.
A man convicted of his wife’s murder will get a new trial for two reasons.
1) It has come to light that the, since fired, State Bureau of Investigation agent in charge of his investigation mishandled evidence in several of his cases.
2) A new theory, backed by several experts, that a rogue owl got into the house and triggered the wife’s fatal fall down the stairs.
A successful author, Michael Peterson was first convicted of his wife’s murder in 2003. The new owl theory hinges on a feather found at the scene of the crime and injuries to the head of the victim which specialists from the Smithsonian Institute say are consistent with what would occur if an owl was tangled in her hair.
The case, sans owl theory, was dramatized in the 2007 Lifetime Original Movie “The Staircase Murders” starring Treat Williams.
You are almost positive that a friend, neighbor or even family member is a psychopathic murderer. But how to be sure?
Well wait no longer! Researchers based out of Cornell have concluded that there are tell-tale signs in the speech of psychopathic murderers even specifically different than those of non-psychopathic murderers.
To examine the emotional content of the murderers’ speech, Hancock and his colleagues looked at a number of factors, including how frequently they described their crimes using the past tense. The use of the past tense can be an indicator of psychological detachment, and the researchers found that the psychopaths used it more than the present tense when compared with the nonpsychopaths. They also found more dysfluencies — the “uhs” and “ums” that interrupt speech — among psychopaths. Nearly universal in speech, dysfluencies indicate that the speaker needs some time to think about what they are saying.
The study also found that psychopaths were more fixated on self-preservation factors including eating, drinking and monetary resources to justify their actions.
Daniel Scott Lasky final wish was to be buried at sea. Unfortunately he accidentally set of a murder investigation when those hired to lay him to rest in a watery grave did not properly weigh down his corpse.
…Lasky’s body resurfaced Saturday. About 9:30 that morning, a fisherman reported a man’s body floating about four miles offshore. Its wrappings had come undone. Sheriff’s marine deputies raced to the scene, along with the Coast Guard. Homicide detectives waited onshore.
Investigators later found Lasky’s intended resting place in his obituary in the Hickory Daily Record: “Burial will be at sea.”
No word yet on if burial regulations were followed.
So your kindly grandfather makes it a point every Thanksgiving to spook the kids with a little ghost story. Back in 1832, he’d say whilst wiping the remains of cranberry sauce from his white button down, 57 Irish immigrant railroad workers were murdered and buried in a spooky old spot by the rail road tracks called Duffy’s Cut.
Fat on stuffing, everyone would shuffle home, wondering why grandfather kept telling that story on Thanksgiving instead of Halloween.
Timing aside, it turns out that story wasn’t so much as a spook tale meant to give the youngins nightmares as it was a grisly confession that he had proof of a few dozen murders. Now a pair of twin grandsons are spearheading a project to dig up the bodies and find the truth.
Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Murders ever committed.
Sometimes the best-laid plans of mice and men…no, wait…that was Steinbeck. Nevermind.
Today we’re talking about Upfield. Arthur Upfield. More specifically we’re talking about one of his better-known pieces of crime fiction and the weirdness that surrounds its history.
While still trying to “make it” as a writer despite two mild successes under his belt Upfield took a job as an itinerant laborer on Australia’s well known Rabbit Proof Fence project while he tried to come up with a new mystery for his fictional detective to solve. It wasn’t unusual for him to discuss the project of the campfire with other itinerant workers and eventually, with some help, he devised (bum bum bahh…) the “perfect murder.”
He figured if you burned the body, sifted out the left over bone bits, dissolved them in acid and threw all the ashes to the wind then there would be no evidence left with which to convict anyone. Great idea for a villain’s MO, right? Except with no evidence he found his plot stuck again with no great way for his detective to solve the case.
Back to the campfire.
Enter Snowy Rowles, yet another itinerant and one with a history of burglary. Without much to add to the conversations he nonetheless listened to the stories.
Soon after, two men disappeared and somehow Snowy ended up with a sweet new ride that looked suspiciously like one of the missing worker’s brand new Ford. It seems Snowy decided to take this whole “perfect murder” thing on a test drive.
Three murders deep, however, he got a little sloppy and didn’t quite do all the necessary “throwing to the wind” that might have been recommended in Upfield’s book.
In an additional case of bad luck, the officer assigned to the case instantly recognized Snowy as John Thomas Smith, an escaped convict. Suddenly the detective had all the time in the world to scrap up little tiny bits evidence that may or may not have been vaguely reminiscent of people while Snowy (er…Smith) flounder in a jail cell waiting to be executed.
No word on whether Upfield was more upset with providing inspiration for murder or with being so poorly emulated.
The end.
That’s all for this week gang! Now for my favorite part…time for the Weird Off! Let’s see your ranks when dealing with some of the Weirdest Murders ever committed. We have:
Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Murders ever committed.
I’m sure you’ve all heard the phrase, “Eat your heart out…”. As in, “Eat your heart out Google, there’s a new iPhone in town,” or “Eat your heart out Thierry, I just ate your lung.”
Right, well…something like that.
Want more explanation? I thought you’d never ask.
In 2007, Nicolas Cocaign’s lawyer TRIED to explain that the French attempted rapist was crazy. He TRIED to get the dude shipped to a psych ward. Unfortunately, when the prison officials refused, it was up to Cocaign to provide the actual proof.
That’s where Cocaign’s cellmate, Thierry Baudry, comes in…or exits rather. After stabbing Baudry repeatedly in the chest with a pair of scissors Cocaign finished him off by suffocating him with a plastic bag. (Why a crazy rapist had access to a pair of scissors and a plastic bag I leave up to you to try to figure out.)
Apparently satisfied with his attempt to prove his insanity Cocaign then set out to prove that he also had no anatomical knowledge whatsoever.
In an effort to absorb Baudry’s soul by eating his heart, our buddy Cocaign, managed instead to eat a lung AND two chest muscles. (I like to think that after finishing the lung he looked down, saw another one and with a quiet sigh, said to himself, “crap.” Before resigning himself to chowing down on the more centrally located albeit no more heart-shaped chest muscles.)
Fun fact: At his subsequent murder trial the lead juror announced the verdict by standing up and singing:
He’s a plight,
He’s a plight,
He’s a plight,
COCAIGN.
(Shoot. I promised myself no more Eric Clapton jokes.)
Your thoughts? Have any other weird cannibal/murder stories? (Or Eric Clapton jokes?)
Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Murders ever committed.
The wheels were set in motion on January 25th, 1979. Now it’s just a matter of time…
That’s the date that Robert Williams of Flat Rock, Michigan, during an otherwise uneventful shift on an assembly line, met his fatal demise at the murderous hands of (…wait for it…) A ROBOT!
Never before in history had a robot been responsible for the death of a human being. I like to picture that in the year 2025, a short ten years after the release of the hover board, in the wastelands of the new Robotopia will stand a monument to the robotic arm that crushed Williams for getting in its way while it tried to retrieve some vital parts.
No word on whether or not the robot had foreknowledge of Williams’s grandson becoming the leader of the human resistance.
According to an article on wired.com, “The jury agreed the robot struck him in the head because of a lack of safety measures…” Which I can only assume means the robot was a stickler for safety and eventually had all it could take of Williams’s careless work practices.
For those of you that say this one is cheating and not an actual murder, I say, “Time will shed full light on the truth and I for one welcome our new robot overlords.”
What are your thoughts on the coming Robopocalypse? What’s the best way to fend off a murderous robot?
Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Murders ever committed.
I’m going to be honest here folks, today’s story not only feels like a strong early contender for the number one spot in this week’s Weird Off…but may also retroactively take away Wenseslao Moguel’s title from the Weirdest Survival Stories Weird Off of two weeks ago. (Is it just me or was that an awful lot of ‘W’ words for one sentence?)
Michael Malloy was once known as the most durable man in history…of course, he was also once known as the town drunk, a hopeless alcoholic and a strong candidate to drink himself to death. So naturally, five friends took it upon themselves to take out a series of life insurance policies that would pay out the exorbitant sum of $3500 in the event of Malloy’s accidental death. (I should mention this all happened in 1933, so that’s almost $60,000 in real money.)
Since no one likes to stake their financial gains on chance, these five guys decided nature might need a little helping hand and started referring to themselves as the Murder Trust. It all started out innocent enough (Relatively speaking. Don’t get me wrong, they were trying to kill some homeless drunk for pecuniary gain.) with one of the Murder Trust offering Malloy an unlimited tab at a speakeasy in an effort to speed up the whole drinking himself to death process.
Apparently that just wasn’t getting the job done…so they started switching out alcohol for antifreeze.
Didn’t work.
Turpentine?
Nope.
Horse liniment?
Uh-uh.
Rat poison?!
Thanks to an iron stomach (and no taste buds?), he just kept coming back for more.
In an effort to up their game the Murder Trust started feeding him methanol soaked oysters and spoiled sardine sandwiches mixed with poison. (That’s the one that gets me. I’ve had sardines out of a can before and they almost put me down for the count…and those weren’t even arsenic flavored.)
Bottom-line: When all that did was give Malloy a shinier winter coat (I have no reason to believe that’s true.) things got serious.
One night when temperatures dropped to below zero the five really-wish-we-could-be-murderers fed our hero drinks until he passed out, dumped him in the nearest snow bank, took off his shirt and dumped five gallons of water on his chest. And finally, FINALLY, after Malloy died a miserable, frozen death, they were able to collect their ill-gotten gains.
Just kidding. He showed up at the bar the next day looking for a drink.
Eventually they settled on a more direct approach and just ran him over with a taxi. Once they set out to collect their ill-gotten gains however, they found it was difficult to prove his death without the body. Luckily, it mysteriously showed up at the bar three weeks later…asking for a drink. It seems they at least managed to hospitalize Malloy for almost a month on that attempt. Way to make progress, murderers!
Okay, for reals this time, they finally did, really for real, no take backs, kill him on their next attempt by sticking a gas hose in his mouth after he passed out drunk one night and successfully collected the policy…only to get busted by police because they couldn’t stop telling their friends the crazy story after a few drinks.
Final score: Michael Malloy 10; Murder Trust 1
Weird enough? What do you think? Was the Murder Trust doing it all wrong or was Michael Malloy really the toughest hobo who ever lived?
Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville is bringing us the Weirdest Murders ever committed.
It was my favorite American author (well, maybe my second favorite) who once said, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” Which would be a PERFECT analog to today’s story if just a couple hours after Samuel Clemens uttered one of his most famous phrases…he dropped dead.
In a startling display of topicality, hitherto unseen in this column, just two short days ago José Sergio Vega was murdered in his red Cadillac by an unknown gunman somewhere in Northwest Mexico.
“Pfft. Getting shot is not exactly ‘weird’, Brett.”
I hear what you’re saying, Mr. Disembodied Voice, and, I assure you, I whole-heartedly agree. However, maybe you just need to sit tight and listen to the rest of the story instead of being so damn argumentative and judgmental.
Here’s the weird part: Just a few short hours before “El Shaka” (That’s Vega’s rad musical nom de er…music) was shot dead he was giving an interview expressly to dismiss the rumors that he had been shot dead! (I can neither confirm whether he used the phrase, “Las noticias de mi muerte eran una exageración.”)
Apparently El Shaka is well known around the Mexican Country Music circuit (according to my Mexican Music sources, that’s a real thing) for performing “narcocorridos,” which are songs mostly about the amazing feats of Mexican drug traffickers. Not unlike a 50cent ditty but with less being shot in the face and more running drugs hidden in the headrest of a ’92 Civic across the border (I guess…).
The problem there is that seven such performers have been killed by rival traffickers (miffed by the power ballads extolling their competitors virtues) in the last three years. El Shaka’s lawyer however, seems to think he was being targeted for his sweet ride…
Regardless, kind of makes you want to stop going around telling people you’re not dead, right?
So, how excited are you for a week of weird murders? Got any you think need to make it into the final five? Most importantly, why do drug traffickers have so many songs about them that there’s actually a name for their style of music and I can’t get you guys to write one tiny little theme song about me?!
Sheep are being brutally murdered in the United Kingdom country side. Who’s to blame? Psychotics? Hellfire ritualists? Revenge-driven sheep?
In one man’s opinion, it’s proof of UFO visitation.
In rural Britain, dead sheep are being found by famers with mysterious – and gruesome – injuries. Mike says a “highly active” area in the UK includes Shrewsbury, Dartmouth and parts of Wales.
“We’re talking about some fairly remote areas,” he said
“These injuries to the animals – the animals are invariably killed – are very specific. If you’ve seen some of the bodies that I’ve seen, it’s just absolutely incredible.
“The flesh appears to have been cauterized indicating some sort of thermic lance or micro-sonic wand has been used. We’re talking incredible technology. There is never any blood.”
Ahhh, the tell tale signs of the thermic lance or micro-sonic wands…
You know, we tend to lionize our cultural demon hunters: Van Helsing, Simon Belmont, Buffy Summers.
But you want to know when we don’t celebrate those who locate paranormal evil and vanquish it? When the acts of holy vengence look strangely like encouraging a populace to scar and murder their children because they cry too much.
Enter Helen Ukpabio, she is a Nigerian Pentacostal preacher who has made a reputation the world over for identifying children whose souls have been corrupted by Satan. She makes movies like the one you see above and her work is partly to blame for the trend in certain Nigerian villages to identify, beat, torture and sometimes murder children who are thought to be possessed by Satan.
And she’s here in America!
“Do you think Harry Potter is real?” Ms. Ukpabio asked me angrily, in the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express where she was staying. “It is only because I am African,” she said, that people who understand that J. K. Rowling writes fiction would take literally Ms. Ukpabio’s filmic depictions of possessed children, gathering by moonlight to devour human flesh.
Still, “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” makes clear that many rural Nigerians do take her film seriously. And in her sermons, Ms. Ukpabio is emphatic that children can be possessed, and that with her God-given “powers of discernment,” she can spot such a child. Belief in possession is especially common among Pentecostals in Nigeria, where it reinforces native traditions that spirits are real and intervene in human affairs.
You, me and the rest of the school. Run home, grab any knife you can and meet at the cemetery. We are looking for someone seven feet tall with iron teeth. He already kidnapped and ate two kids, so be careful.
“I think somebody saw someone wandering about and the cry went up: ‘There’s the vampire!’
“That was it – that was the word to get off that wall quick and get away from it.
“I just remember scampering home to my mother: ‘What’s the matter with you?’ ‘I’ve seen a vampire!’ and I got a clout round the ear for my trouble. I didn’t really know what a vampire was.”
There were no records of any missing children in Glasgow at the time, and media reports of the incident began to search for the origins of the urban myth that had gripped the city.
Unfortunately, outside forces seized on the story as a rallying cry to push through legislation regulating comic book content sold to minors. Instead of, I don’t know, lauding and rewarding these brave kids for knowing that brutal mob violence was the safest most efficient way to take down a child-murdering denizen of the undead.
