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.

[MSNBC]

We’ve all been there.

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.

[MSNBC]

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.

[Sun-Sentinel]

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.

Oh grandpa…

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:

1. El Shaka – The man who wasn’t murdered…until he was.

2. Michael Malloy – The bum who wouldn’t die.

3. The world’s first homicidal robot

4. Nicholas Cocaign – The would-be soul stealing lung eater.

5. The “perfect murder”…on paper.

Sound off!

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…

[BBC News]

Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. This week we pity the poor Babysitter. Monday we found out why these darlings are hunted. Come back Friday for the conclusion.

I don’t know how the story of the intercourse-interloping hook murderer plays out these days – the inset latch that adorns most modern car doors doesn’t seem especially conducive to bloody-hook dangling. Likewise, “hitchhiker” is a distinctly 20th century identifier. Vanishing or not, a trail-schlepping wayfarer with a hopefully extended thumb would confound even the hippest wagoneer or pony express messenger. So that whole police- or phone company-traced call coming from inside the house thing? Nothing to worry about, right? The legend is quarantined in the 1960s, a primitive ape of a horror story, thwacking an analog phone receiver against a monolithic switchboard to the swelling soundtrack of a droning dial tone.

Well, no. Not exactly.

It’s true that the initial story was rooted firmly in the days of land lines and ancient analog phone hook-ups, when a few patient taps to the receiver button could make intra-house Jerky Boying possible, but unlike the aforementioned door handles, which made it increasingly difficult for murderers to lose their deadly prostheses to inadvertent chastity warnings (though probably much easier for murderers to simply click open the door and bury their tines into the writhing flanks of the intertwining lovers), technology kept pace with the psychos. Despite the death of the veritable Cro-Magnon phones of the (club) swinging 60s, in-house murderers were quickly afforded new means of telephonic harassment in the form of multi-line phone systems (note that in many versions of the babysitter v. homicidal stranger story, one of said babysitter’s employers is a doctor, a fact that lends veracity to the presence of a second phone line in the house). Then, of course, everyone got cell phones, which put every babysitter (not to mention every babysitter-employing landline-reliant household) just ten digits away from the hungry fingers of the merciless sadist upstairs. Give it a few months and the stab-happy psychotics will be Skypeing their victims from portable media devices.

Do the evolution… AFTER THE JUMP

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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.

Such a screwed up story…

[New York Times]

Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. Look read about the origins of the legend from Monday and come back Friday for the finale…

The grisly half-truths associated with the Manson Family did more than just inspire one author to off-handedly coin the term “snuff film” (see Monday’s post) – they inspired a nation to collectively wet its pants and shriek at the thought of a cult pandemic. Manned by the media and powered by irrational fear, the rumor mill began grinding out stories of cult activity, both in the US and abroad. The assumptions offered about Manson snuff films had some basis in fact – In 1969, several of Manson’s BFFs hijacked and robbed an NBC-TV truck packed full of film equipment, some of which was eventually recovered, snuff-free, by police. The ancillary whisperings of an International outbreak of brainwashed cabals with wicked leaders and sinister agendas, though? Grossly (and I mean really extra disgustingly) exaggerated in almost every way possible.

But no less artistically inspiring.

The story of the first nationwide snuff freakout supposedly began with one man, one newspaper and one appallingly awful exploitation film. When Allan Shackleton, President of Monarch Releasing Company, a small film distribution venture known for releasing low-budget nudie flicks, read a newspaper article about a rumored South American snuff ring, he saw dollar signs. And motorcycles. And boobs. Shackleton was remembering a little-known exploitation film called “Slaughter” that had been just barely released in the early ‘70s. It had what he needed: South America and a cult-themed premise. All it was missing was the snuff climax. But it took a lot more than that to discourage the executive producer of 1972’s “When the Cat’s Away” (tagline: “She’s X-rated and IN COLOR!”)

In 1976, Shackleton re-released “Slaughter” as “Snuff,” complete with the tagline “The film that could only be made in South America… where life is CHEAP,” and a newly filmed ending, in which an abrupt cut gives way to a vérité-style scene of an actual murder. To help sell the implication that the film contained real-life snuff footage, Shackleton even pulled a William Castle-esque stunt in which actors playing anti-“Snuff” picketers were planted outside theaters. He needn’t have made the effort. Women Against Pornography (WAP), a radical feminist group that, three years later, held a notorious protest march through Times Square, immediately bunched up their panties, declaring the film a revolting paean to sexual violence. Their very-real boycott of the movie was covered by CBS news. By the time “Snuff” was outed as a fake, and “Slaughter”’s original filmmakers were suing Shackleton for altering their film without permission, the idea of snuff had become a mass cultural folktale, spawning a bevy of low budget horror films (including Weird Things favorite, “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer”) and plenty o’ friend-of-a-friend accounts of actual snuff film screenings.

Learn how Faces of Death and Charlie Sheen play pivotal roles in our international fascination with the snuff film urban legend AFTER THE JUMP…

(more…)

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.

Let’s go kill us a vampire.

Or so was the logic for 400 Scottish kids in late September 1954 when a local constable had to break up the armed youth mob repeatedly after word got out that a massive vampire was picking off students one by one. Of course now it’s just a(n awesome) story that aged schoolmates can tell each other but while it was happening, it caused quite a stir in Glasgow and beyond.

“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.

[BBC via Conspiracy Journal]

Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. Look for new installments Wednesday and Friday…

This week, I want to talk about the rumors and assumptions surrounding snuff films, and the supposedly booming black market that creates and distributes them. First things first, though, we need to look at how most folks define snuff in order to understand one of the core truths about it – Snuff doesn’t not exist because of the limits of human greed or depravity; snuff doesn’t exist because of the limits of its definition.

The verbal dances we undertake in attempting to nail down specific definitions for broadly understood, but taxonomically elusive, phenomena like pornography have nothing on the addendum-flinging rumba that people perform in pinning down snuff films. In this sense, snuff is the opposite of the former example – the struggle to dogmatically codify pornography is an exercise in encapsulating an ever-expanding set of subjectivities as they relate to the perceptions and intentions of both producer and consumer. Porn can encapsulate anything from video recordings of fully exposed penetrative intercourse to a photograph of a person’s bare feet. The working definition of a “snuff film” is so ludicrously specific as to systematically eliminate every known snuff-like recording from the mass hypothetical understanding of what constitutes true snuff.

Snuff started out as a fairly open-ended term. First used by author Ed Sanders in his 1971 true crime book “The Family: The Story of Charles Manson’s Dune Buggy Attack Battalion,” the term “Snuff films” was used to describe an alleged series of violent (possibly murderous) home movies shot by Manson and his acolytes. Though no footage ever surfaced, the term caught on and became a catch-all label for any video recording depicting the actual murder of a human being (I’ll get into the specific history and examples in Wednesday’s column).

Today, the definition has been vastly constrained by a huge honkin’ caveat:

Said murder must have been committed for the express purpose of distributing (and, according to the strictest definition, profiting from) the recorded footage.

Click AFTER THE JUMP for the rest!

(more…)

Weird Thing Thing Th-th-thing Things! I just got home from Niagara Falls, Canada and have plenty of legends to share with you. Most are awesome, and a couple are even not gross fabrications. But before I get to the good stuff, I need to check up on some facts and catch up on some Caprica. Until Wednesday’s information-stuffed edu-palooza of falls facts and historical japery, please accept these ramblings on some Weird Things-relevant Canadian miscellanea that I encountered:

Apparently, nothing complements an enduring wonder of nature like creepy waxen celebrity models. The Ripley-owned Louis Tussaud’s waxworks are here, as are the Movieland Wax Museum of the Stars and the Rock Legends Wax Museum. The clear winner, though, if even just for its esoteric morbidity, is the Criminals Hall of Fame Wax Museum.

The heart of a standard wax gallery’s charm is, of course, physical recognition – artistic skill is represented through the artist’s ability to create lifelike facsimiles of ubiquitous public figures. The Criminals Hall of Fame clearly understood this principle enough to know that, given their artist’s ability, it might be best to stick to the second- and third-stringers. In other words – name recognition. The downside is that the well-known criminals – Al Capone, John Wilkes Boothe, Charles Manson – all end up looking like the same dead-eyed off-the-shelf mannequin in a fly-by-night Halloween store’s window display. Even Hitler comes off as a Fuhrer-inspired SS surplus emporium floor model. The upside is that you get to see what are probably the only existing wax replicas of halfway-obscure, all-the-way-bitchin’ ne’erdowells like Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory (bonus: this display features a gratuitous, but lovingly sculpted, naked tit) and 19th century American serial killer H.H. Holmes.
Sure – some of the costumes were probably bought wholesale from a bankrupted Olde Time Photo business, and yes, many of the wigs look to have been stripped off inherited taxidermy, but the museum does a good job of varying up the criminal element, such that cowboy fans, gangster aficionados and serial killer buffs will all find something to enjoy. In particular, the Mafia displays have extensive information placards. Also, it’s the cheapest wax museum in the area… and where else are you going to see a life-sized wax statue of Timothy McVeigh sharing a jail cell with a one-to-one scale model of Ted Kaczynski?

Unrelated Note: Saw that the Lundy’s Lane Best Western has a delightful little restaurant called “Windows on the Lane,” with (doy!) floor-to-ceiling windows boasting views of the aforementioned lane. Sights include a Wendy’s, a paint shop and an adult video store. If they really want to make people happy, put the windows on the adult video store so the shiftless, defeated pervert of a counter clerk can stare out of the glass and, for at least one moment, revel in the unobtainable beauty of a mid-priced corporate hotel franchise.