What is the most disturbing true story youve ever heard?

I was watching a show that talks about true crime on YouTube a few years back and the story of this Japanese cannibal came up. He was at college in Europe when he lured a pretty coed to his apartment in the pretense of studying and proceeded to murder and eat her flesh. He got off the hook for being “insane” and went back to Japan. There he was a subject of interest and celebrity. Even giving food reviews. Absolutely disgusting.

Did he do things with her skin?

Why are women so into true crime, especially serial killers?

R3 I’m not a woman and I’m into true crime. Pretty sure a lot of people are since they keep making movies, writing books and tons of documentaries about it. Those dreadful Law And Order shows even talk about how they are “ripped from the headlines”. That godawful trash has been on the air for more than twenty years.

^^^R2 damn my fat thumbs.

Since you named a Japanese story, Junko Furuta. I have to warn everyone that it's extremely horrible, depressing, and disturbing, so don't read it if you're vulnerable.

Long story short, schoolgirl is kidnapped by gang trash and held in one of their houses for weeks being raped and tortured until she asks them to kill her, and they finally do. Many people knew she was there but did nothing.

There was a story where a poor couple got a temporary high pay job out of town and left their daughter in the care of a relative with other kids. The caretaker was a mother to other kids including an adult daughter. She was also being paid by her parents. She was a good kid but targeted by the mother and daughter and following rumors started by them the neighborhood kids taunted her too. This story has haunted me my whole life. Apparently an autopsy revealed she was a victim a virgin as her hymen was intact even after they accused her of being a slut and pregnant etc. She was burned by cigarettes and fireplace irons including having a red hot iron put in her vagina. She was beaten starved and ultimately killed. It’s way more horrifying. The mother recently died in jail. When up for parole she said the other inmates called her mum and she was a role model. I get really mad and I know there have been so we Crimea but this makes me cry and furious. It was in the early 1970s

I heard this story about a pandemic and all the stupid leaders didn't act responsibly and more people died than needed to.

[quote]R2 Why are women so into true crime, especially serial killers?

Because they’re about 90% of the victims? It affects their lives directly in a way males don’t have to worry about, most of the time.

[quote]...he lured a pretty coed from outside his program to his apartment in the pretense of studying, using used textbooks, and proceeded to murder and eat her flesh.

The murder of Junko Furuta.

It's one of those stories I really, really wish I could unread.

The Theresa Knorr story is up there too -- she tortured two of her teenage daughters to death in separate incidents. She dropped off one -- near death from abuse -- on the side of a deserted road, had her son set her on fire, and then drove away.

not Crimea I meant crimes.

Murder of Sylvia Likens Wikipedia

R6 There's a great (depressing) film version of the story with Ellen Page and Catherine Keener. I lived in Indianapolis when Gertrude Banijzeski(the "caregiver") was released from prison. I was in jr high and it was like hearing stories of the boogie man. Such a horrible story. I used to look at that poor girl's picture knowing she was close to my age when she was murdered and get so sad.

The Thomas Valva case is horrifying. The dad was a cop so he got away with constantly abusing his small children. So sad and so disgusting, I wish I hadn’t heard the details about it.

Elisa Lamm. Don't drink the water.

I saw something on youtube a long time ago about a vacationing young couple in Florida who met another young vacationing couple. Couple A goes back to Couple B's hotel room to party, and Couple B end up fucking in a hot tub with Couple A's severed heads. Some sort of thrill kill thing. Just awful.

[quote]The Theresa Knorr story is up there too -- she tortured two of her teenage daughters to death in separate incidents. She dropped off one -- near death from abuse -- on the side of a deserted road, had her son set her on fire, and then drove away.

Yes. That and the Sylvia Likens case were the most appalling and hopeless for me, somehow. Young girls killed by maternal figures who should have protected them.

r16 I remember the day I saw the Theresa Knorr story on Cold Case Files. I was not expecting it . After I watched it, I took a very long walk outside to remind myself ... that there is good in the world, I guess.

Well, there is this thread right here on the Datalounge called "I got into a big argument with my friend last night via FaceTime...."

r16 another disturbing detail about the Theresa Knorr story: when authorities found the charred body of the daughter by the side of the road, they couldn't identity her. They found some children's diapers and other belongings strewn about, and thought maybe the woman had a child.

Well, Knorr had tossed out the daughter's stuff with the body, and the diapers were for the daughter, who had become incontinent.

Like ... that was one of the worst things to me for some reason.

^^ the younger sister who finally got the police to investigate had gone to authorities in the past, and also alerted her therapist.

Each time they wrote her off as a kook : (

Emmett Till.

Any and all lynchings, actually. Bombing church with four little girls, killing a young black man, jogging down the street.

But the Emmett Till story kept me up at night. And the fact that justice was not given to his family, was my first conceptualization as a child, that evil has little reason, or remorse, but it has enablers, and those willing to just say nothing, and look the other way.

They had to build a bullet proof memorial for him, because... Mississippi.

Here is one that's a blast from the past. In grad school I took a class on the early modern witch hunts and this story from a primary source really bothered me.

In fifteenth-century Germany, an alleged witch was being tortured on the strappado. She was rather stubborn and refused to confess, no matter how much torture was applied. Eventually the two inquisitors decided to take a break for lunch or something and told her to think about confessing until they returned.

The woman screamed, "No! No! Let me down! Please! Please! I'll confess! I promise! Let me down!" They refused and left her suspended.

When they came back, she had died.

John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer.

I think r22 was actually in sixteenth-century Germany, not fifteenth

The podcast Root of Evil. George Hodel was a sick fuck!

Also saw a murder show on hulu about a schizophrenic mother who started hearing voices telling her she needed to kill her child. She then put her screaming toddler into an oven and baked him to death. So fucking disturbing.

Baked toddler is an underrated delicacy r26!

What? Yes!

My adopted cousin has Native American ancestry and is in a white supremacist gang. He has the tattoos on his face that would send you to the exit if he came into the 7-11 you were shopping in.

He worked at a mechanic’s garage which was a criminal gang’s hangout and drug center. He found someone to torture. He injected the guy with Meth. (You don’t do that, unless you’re getting some sex out of it, do you?) He also sanded the victim’s tattoos off. He continued with the torture. He mistakenly left the guy alive, and he lived to testify against my cousin.

My cousin was convicted. He plead mitigation by fetal alcohol syndrome. While in prison, he couldn’t find the person he was mad at, so he murdered someone else, by mistake. Now he is convicted again, and is on death rol.

He fascinates me because he shares my full name.

There's a really weird story about a German man who met some other guy online who agreed to fulfill his request to cook and eat his penis. There was something so disturbing and sad about it all.

R30, you're a fucking racist, just because we eat live baby rats from the ground does NOT mean we like human flesh!!

Also the Canadian couple who, the wife agreed to, along with her husband, drug, rape, and kill her younger sister. I think they did it on camera.

This guy who kept his daughter locked up in a secret basement he build under the house for 24 years where he kept impregnating her. The whole time, he got his wife to believe she had just run away.

Gee, what a wonderful way to spread quarantine cheer, OP! Thanks.

I haven't read this whole thread because it would be too upsetting but I am not at all surprised two of the stories here involve Japan/Japanese people. I lived in Japan and saw crazy, terrible things. I think that a lot of weird stuff goes unreported there because everyone lives on top of each other, and people train themselves to ignore their neighbors because otherwise you'd go insane.

Another very dark Japanese story is told in the film "Nobody Knows," which is based on true events. The real story is much worse than the film. In the film, the youngest sister dies in an accident. In real life, she was beaten to death by a couple of kids.

R38, is Japan much less safe than their crime rate would indicate?

R38, is Japan much less safe than their crime rate would indicate?

I’ve been to Japan and it was safer than the US. Twisted stuff happens everywhere. I’d take my chances walking the streets there at night, over walking around Detroit or Atlanta.

Donald Trump elected President

I got some of the facts wrong about the Sylvia Likens murder. The mother using insanity as a defense yet her being calculated enough to have this inncocent child write a bullshit note exonerating the caretaker, giving her scalding hot baths, burning off her skin, claiming investigators she was a troublemaker runaway that corrupted her own daughter into being knocked up herself, all the fucking neighborhood kids involved in abusing her, branding her with a burning needle across her breasts and stomach "I'm a prosittue and I love it" , Sylvia taking the blame and abuse to keep her sister safe, every single abuser from the mother (caretaker) to all the abusive kids dying by their early 50s except the caretaker being free died at 61....talk about guilt eating you alive, the smirking kid detailing how he beat her over 40 different occasions,, the mother selling tickets to beat the poor girl, force feeding her feces, the mother proclaiming innocence blaming her own daughter and other kids and her being oblivious to her abuse because she was so busy caring for all the kids, her beating and starving her becsause she ate too much food at a pot luck dinner at church....I was born in the 70s and I vaguely remember this still being a news item even though it happened mid sixties...how the fuck were any of them given parole? The only sadist in me is that I'm against capital punishment....murderers like this need to live out thieir days remembering their crimes. I wish I could forget this but, the acts commited against this pretty, young inncoent girl that didn't even know what "having sex" really was more than liking a boy and cuddling under a blanket. WTF?!?!?!? All those teenage girls and boys involved paying a nickel to hurt that child while the mother sat and knitted giving instructions to humiliate the girl with cocacola bottles etc....I with I never knew....The poor sister and parents.

[quote]R40 Is Japan much less safe than their crime rate would indicate?

Are you kidding?? Incidents like THIS are commonplace in every household and public establishment!!

[quote]There's a really weird story about a German man who met some other guy online who agreed to fulfill his request to cook and eat his penis. There was something so disturbing and sad about it all.

Gee, ya think!

Japan is safe for men but not for women. Japan does not count many kinds of assaults on women in their crime figures, and women are discouraged from reporting rapes. The crime rate is artifically low for that reason. Women have to deal with low-level harassment and it doesn't even register for many women that it's not like that in other countries.

I am a woman and I was involved in one larger incident. The police took it seriously because I am an American. They do not give a shit about what happens to Japanese women, who are expected to keep their mouths shut. I lived in very rough areas as well as wealthy areas, and I never had problems in the bad areas. Crimes against women are worst in wealthy areas because the perpetrators are white collar workers who are forgiven for just "blowing off steam."

People say "oh Japan is so safe" or "nothing like that ever happened to me." But this side of Japan becomes visible only if you know Japanese and live among Japanese people.

R47, I have read that in other places too. Japan is far from western standards regarding treatment of women. I've read that in Tokyo, women's panties get stolen a lot.

Why did I click on this thread. Morbid curiosity is the worst.

The worst thing is, I already know most of these from Reddit, where these threads pop up with depressing regularity even now (I used to read them years ago).

On Howard Stern back in the late 90's, he had some guy on that had his dead daughter taxidermied, and he dressed her every day and made it so he could have sex with her. She died from natural causes in her teens, but the dad was super fucked up and treated her like some kind of living doll.

What in the Sam holy fuck is r6 blathering about? That whole entry reads like a mental patient being allowed library time to use the computer.

To me, the most disturbing story is still Jack the Ripper's. I grew with images of hansom cabs driving around in foggy London nights and a serial killer with "only" 5 kills who terrified a city. I never believed any of the bizarre conspiracy theories nor any of Scotland Yard's suspects. They were never arrested due to lack of evidence. Yeah, sure. At the height of the panic, a member of the Bank of England went around in women's clothing trying to lure him, so the pressure to make an arrest must have been immense.

It was all very Sherlock Holmes, remote, from a bygone age. That is until I saw the only picture ever taken of Mary Kelly. His last victim, a photo in situ after he finished. I then understood the terror that man wrought.

IMO, the lack witnesses may have been due to fear among the general public. It was obvious the police could not stop him. Several times he killed right in front of windows with people sleeping behind them. Night guards were conveniently elsewhere when the crimes occurred. Beat policemen (unarmed) would arrive while the body was still bleeding and warm.

Below Mary Kelly, ICYMI. On the night stand, her interior organs.

R52 you probably already had to be aware of the case to understand it.

R51 that sounds similar to the story of Carl Von Cosel. Grave robbed the body of one of his female patients that he had been perving over. Took her home and turned her into a corpse sex doll.

R51, that is not true! I know what you're talking about. LOL. It was a fucking mannequin he brought in. Everyone was laughing. Do you honestly think that he could LEGALLY bring his dead, stuffed daughter into a corporate building? For fuck sake, honey. Get with it.

R51, and here's the video. It was hilarious.

R55 is that the story where they had to take the body away from him and secretly bury it for fear he would find it and dig it back up again?

R59 Yup. Then he blew up the mausoleum he built for her. He was raping her corpse every night. Creepy shit.

There was once a famous pedophile who slept with little boys. However, he was never charged. He even has a rabid fanbase that continues to listen to his music and denies he did anything wrong. Michael Jackson is his name. He's dead now. Good.

Lucille Ball signing to play Mame Dennis in the film version of Jerry Herman's smash Broadway musical.

Joan Crawford in Trog. Dear god, look away!

The Gypsy Rose Lee murder, was a doc called Mommy Dead and Dearest.

Layers of dysfunction, abuse and manipulation to the point of subjecting the daughter to unnecessary chemo, among a whole host of other unnecessary 'treatments'.

No one here has read "The Devil In The White City," I take it?

[quote] [R2] Why are women so into true crime, especially serial killers?

My sister says it's because she and other women are terrified they'll be victims, and they want to do know what the victims should have done if a calamity happens.

The woman in New Mexico who really wanted a baby, and dug one out of another pregnant woman with just a car key.

The police actually had several witnesses who thought they had seen Jack the Ripper and their accounts were taken as credible. 5"7" or 5"8" , ruddy complexion, mustache and some sort of peaked cap.

On Reddit, they have their own acronym for stories like these: NSFH.

The Toolbox Killers are up there for me, in large part because they made a recording of one of their torture/murders so they could jerk off to it again and again.

Lawrence Bittaker, the mastermind, died in prison earlier this year. I can only hope his death was very, very painful.

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole last night, reading about the Sylvia Likens case, which was so disturbing that I had to stop reading. One of the Baniszewski children, Stephanie, was 15 years old at the time of Sylvia's murder. "Though she admitted to participating to some degree in Sylvia’s abuse, she was granted a special trial and then all charges against her were dropped, likely because she agreed to turn state’s evidence against her family." She changed her name and is now living in Florida. Wikipedia lists her new name, and a Google search brought up her address and information in Florida. She is, of course, a Republican.

[quote]The police actually had several witnesses who thought they had seen Jack the Ripper and their accounts were taken as credible. 5"7" or 5"8" , ruddy complexion, mustache and some sort of peaked cap.

Yes, they did. The police had other competing, equally vague descriptions.

The Ripper trawled Whitechapel where most of the murders occurred, which was under the jurisdiction of Scotland Yard. But on the night of the double event, he wandered into the City of London proper, where he just nicked its jurisdiction and killed Catharine Eddowes. The City police force was much better manned than the Scotland Yard. They still own the best files of any murder. They found an person who saw someone with Eddowes approx. 10-15 minutes before her murder. They also found the only evidence the killer ever left behind - a bloody piece of Catharine's apron. From the site of the murder to the location of the item, they surmised he was heading back to Whitechapel.

They found a respectable witness who gave the description above - minus the ruddy complexion. The witness identity was kept secret and he lived under armed guard for a while. (The ruddy complexion comes from the Kelly scene and is not definitive.)

This was not enough to go on. Regardless, the Ripper took Catharine from where he was spotted to Mitre Square - there he was missed by two security guards and a Bobbie who got to her body there minutes too late. The killer took one of her kidneys. This fact is why the From Hell letter is the most likely to be from him. Note he did not sign himself Jack the Ripper - a moniker created by the press.

The witness may or may not have identified a suspect and was very reluctant to continue after his initial report.

[quote]My sister says it's because she and other women are terrified they'll be victims, and they want to do know what the victims should have done if a calamity happens.

She's probably right to a point. Because most serial killers murder disposable members of our society (altho that term is broader every day), these stories serve as a morality tale of sorts. What happens to those who take unnecessary lifestyle risks.

In terms of "everyday victims," she is on the nose. The "Gift of Fear" shows women how to be aware of inconsistencies in their surroundings, because most perpetrators do something innocuous that it is completely off.

So here is my story. I was reading late at night - I can read a whole book in one night if I am interested. About 3 AM there is a knock on the door. I live in a super safe neighborhood, if anything the police are practically the Gestapo around here. Usually, I would immediately inquire as to the knock, who is there - a neighbor with an emergency. But not this time. I screamed bloody murder. A man with an educated accent simply asked for directions. (It's a neighborhood with cul-de-sacs, etc.) My pug began running and ramming the door. I said, "I'm calling the police!" He booked it out of there so fast, heading straight out of area.

What was the tip-off? The knock. Do you know the difference between a late night knock at your neighbors and your boss knocking on your office door. The latter is assertive, the first is tentative w/immediate identification. Guess which knock I heard.

I have r65. There are theories that HH Holmes was Jack the Ripper escaping to the US.

The two stories that disturb me the most are Rosemary and Fred West and the two Russian (Ukrainian possibly) teens who robbed and murdered unsuspecting people in broad daylight and then uploaded their murders to the web. I think they’re called the Icepick killers. That story made me lose sleep.

r71 I went down a bit of a rabbit hole last night, reading about the Sylvia Likens case, which was so disturbing that I had to stop reading. I am sorry to drag you down into his rabbit hole of Sylvia Likens. I had this uncanny ability as a child to place myself in the victims shoes in my imagination. It has haunted me and when it gets refreshed in my brain I'm absolutely re-horrified. I cannot fathom the group torture party of grown late teen age kids violating and torturing this beautiful girl. Old news reels and news photos show the others as greasy Patty Hearst and Charles Manson Chicks. The mother looks like the jail warden from Wendy O's classic str8 soft porn movie Reform School Girls. I am not making light of the horror I am truly pointing out the obscene irony. Other types of women, now that you mention republican, seem like the type of Michele Bachman, Sharon Angle and Sarah Palin. I cannot fathom the fact that these kids were all teetering on adulthood, like the Stephanie you mentioned. All the other neighborhood kids etc....I look at Sylvia's class photo and shit, this never should have hapopened. How the fuck did it go unnoticed? I get the fear of not reporting the victim statements but, all those grown children acting as one big murderous, torture beasts inividually. It really freaks me out. Again, I'm waiting another bitch to make a snarky comment on my input on this story....same kind of gang :"kick him in the nuts" mentality....on a much smaller scale of course but, same group type of group bully bullshit.

The little British boy tortured by the two British monsters

R73 That's so creepy! I'm glad you're ok.

R70 Norris died recently, too.

This is the first story that came to mind when I saw the title of this thread, I think because it sounds completely unbelievable.

"On October 26, 2001, 25-year-old Chante Jawan Mallard struck 37-year-old Gregory Glenn Biggs, a homeless man, with her automobile. The force of the crash lodged Biggs into the windshield. Mallard then drove home and left the man lodged in her windshield, where he died a day or two later.[1] Mallard was convicted and sentenced to 50 years imprisonment for her role in his death."

I heard a story about a woman who wore white after Labor Day. Let's just say It didn't end well.

R65 Devil in the White City gave me chills. A serial killer on a spree in the middle of the Chicago World's Fair. Every once in awhile I read that someone is making a movie based on the book but then the rumor fades away...

Devil in the White City had many exaggerations. For example, the hotel didn't open until after the Chicago Exposition had closed, It was still under construction. Most of the details of its voyeuristic construction are true but there is little evidence of their use.

Also, Holmes, though often mentioned as a Jack the Ripper suspect, was most likely not. Serious Ripperologists have never been able to place him in London at the time of the attacks.

^ Didn't mean to imply Holmes wasn't a deranged serial killer. He was. But it is highly unlikely he was JTR.

[quote]There's a great (depressing) film version of the story with Ellen Page and Catherine Keener. I lived in Indianapolis when Gertrude Banijzeski(the "caregiver") was released from prison. I was in jr high and it was like hearing stories of the boogie man. Such a horrible story. I used to look at that poor girl's picture knowing she was close to my age when she was murdered and get so sad.

I remember that movie. After I first viewed it, I went on IMDB message boards and there were posts from people who live or lived in Indianapolis and one woman said she was in college around the time Getrude was about to be released. Some group had a petition that opposed her release from prison. The woman said that she and a few college friends agreed to volunteer to get the petition signed. At the time, they didn't own cars so they bicycled into some neighborhoods or rode public transit to get petitions signed. For some reason I ended up crying when I read that. It just pissed me off because that cunt Getrude should have died in prison.

[quote]There's a great (depressing) film version of the story with Ellen Page and Catherine Keener. I lived in Indianapolis when Gertrude Banijzeski(the "caregiver") was released from prison. I was in jr high and it was like hearing stories of the boogie man. Such a horrible story. I used to look at that poor girl's picture knowing she was close to my age when she was murdered and get so sad.

I remember that movie. After I first viewed it, I went on IMDB message boards and there were posts from people who live or lived in Indianapolis and one woman said she was in college around the time Getrude was about to be released. Some group had a petition that opposed her release from prison. The woman said that she and a few college friends agreed to volunteer to get the petition signed. At the time, they didn't own cars so they bicycled into some neighborhoods or rode public transit to get petitions signed. For some reason I ended up crying when I read that. It just pissed me off because that cunt Getrude should have died in prison.

[quote]How the fuck did it go unnoticed?

From what I recall, a public health nurse was sent to the house where Sylvia Likens was at because there was some report made to public health about malnourished or injured teen not receiving medical treatment. It was said that a neighbor contacted public health. IIRC, Getrude somehow managed to send the nurse away.

R65 I read it. Made my skin crawl. I was planning to mention it here but saw your post as I was scrolling through.

I had heard about the Japanse case and Sylvia Likens years ago. A couple of years back, I read the case about the Adrian Jones murder in Kansas City, Kansas and it was very depressing.

The Girl Next Door is a much more disturbing version of the Likens case than An American Crime. It has Blanche Baker from Sixteen Candles as Gertrude and she's terrifying in it. Never thought she had something like this in her. An American Crime is still disturbing, but it's somewhat more polite and subdued than the real case. It's a very tasteful movie for the most part and tries to give Gertrude some dimension and nuance.

r77

[quote]That's so creepy! I'm glad you're ok.

It was frightening, but I never felt in danger. [italic]Part was how completely normal he looked, a young man, clean-cut, with preppy clothes on, speaking in that accent Ivy-leaguers have.[/italic] If he had looked like the stereotypical thug, I would have felt more threatened. The other part is my pug barks above her weight and she was making a ruckus.

But the way he knocked the door gave him away -- three taps, rapidly one-after-another, with the first knuckle of the index finger. Just like my boss would knock on closed door. Completely out of place to the time and circumstance.

[bold]Did I mention he drove a newish gold-tone pickup truck, one which undoubtedly had GPS[/bold]

r36 I'm not going to read about that story again, but if I remember correctly she didn't have enough room to stand all the way up when she was in captivity, and as a result walked hunched over.

I try to understand human psychopathology in all its forms, but there are things that I really cannot wrap my head around, and that story is one of them. I don't understand what motivates someone to do that.

In the 1960s, a mentally disturbed man went on a killing spree at a Cologne elementary school with a self-made flamethrower.

Cursory internet search reveals socio-political, cultural reasons for preponderance of men as serial killers.

Excerpt from link:

The controversial conclusion he reached to explain the 2,065 butchers who grabbed headlines for spilling blood in the second half of the 20th century: A “hidden surge of war-traumatized fathers” returned home from battlefields in Europe and the Pacific and spawned a generation of murderous emotional cripples.

I haven't read the link yet r93, but I always assumed that serial killers thrived in the 1970s and 1980s because the interstate highway system made it easier for them to remain anonymous.

And then increasing technology in the 1990s and 2000s flattened the curve.

I think the article is trying to unearth triggers for the serial killers, r94. See link as it also discusses risks of next wave.

Gertrude Baniszewski's eldest daughter, Paula, participated enthusiastically in Sylvia's abuse and served prison time (including time for an escape in the early '70s). Eight years ago, someone tracked her down on Facebook, and she had been working as a special-ed teacher's aide at a high school in Iowa for 14 years. An anonymous tipster called the school district, and she was fired despite being well liked by the kids she worked with—she had lied on her job application about whether she had a criminal record.

In 1959, these Russian hikers went missing in the Ural Mountains.

Has anybody else heard of this story?

[quote]One of the Baniszewski children, Stephanie, was 15 years old at the time of Sylvia's murder. "Though she admitted to participating to some degree in Sylvia’s abuse, she was granted a special trial and then all charges against her were dropped, likely because she agreed to turn state’s evidence against her family." She changed her name and is now living in Florida. Wikipedia lists her new name, and a Google search brought up her address and information in Florida. She is, of course, a Republican.

Back around 2006–2007, she used to post at a message board dedicated to the case. Not surprisingly, she tried to minimize her involvement in the abuse and portrayed herself as a good friend to Sylvia.

There's also a theory that there were more violent crimes in the 70s and 80s because car fumes were literally poisoning people with lead. Obviously, it didn't cause violence so much as lead poisoning takes away impulse control.

I think it's probably a mix of factors that all came together during those two decades.

The crimes of William Hickman and his enthusiastic admirer Ayn Rand.

The genocide and exile millions of Armenian and Greek Christians by Turkish muslims. Thousands were crucified, among other horrific atrocities.

R93, I've heard that theory used to explain the proliferation of cults in the 1960s and 70s. So many people who grew up with cold, alcoholic fathers looking for unconditional love, thinking they've found it in a cult leader.

I followed this story's initial reports when it was just on a feminist- job-empowerment-versus-phony-good-ol'-boy arc; supposedly no one involved with the lawsuit trial knew this slumlord killed his own family as a teenager. Certainly why I'm voting, if it ever comes up, that juvenile court records be automatically unsealed if past capital crimes are similar when adult-age and on trial.

R36, I'm not going to read the link. But how do you hide SEVEN kids in a basement? The man's wife didn't hear the children?

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