Face painting comes with risks, the least of which being that you end up looking like a botched Picasso. From incarcerated clowns to rowdy wrestlers, these face paint mugshots reveal the tightrope straddled when simultaneously engaging in crime and cosmetics. Each entertaining mugshot of arrested face painters represents one less reckless mind on the street. This may seem like a harsh stance to take until you realize that for every face painter arrested, a menace to public order and decency is removed. 

It makes you wonder what these folks were up to before the law came for their vibrant visages. Perhaps they wanted to make a statement, or simply make their way into your nightmares. 

Werewolves: ancient legends, or real-life monsters? Whether you believe in these creatures or not, crimes committed by werewolves appear in the history books and on the Internet. A number of these supposed werewolf crimes originate from 16th century Europe, particularly France and Germany. This was the height of werewolf hysteria, when many men and women were burned at the stake or tortured after being accused of possessing dark powers. A few of these victims truly believed that they could turn into beasts.

But modern-day werewolves may have been found as well. One had a run-in with the cops after terrorizing a campsite; another claimed that the neighbor he killed was a vampire. And that's not to mention the self-proclaimed werewolf who snapped photos with a severed dog's head. 

Read on to learn more about crimes committed by these so-called werewolves throughout history.

Albert Fish is one of the most notorious serial killers in history, also known as the Brooklyn Vampire, The Boogey Man, and the Werewolf of Wysteria. Before he became a full-blown murderer and cannibal, he reportedly liked to eat raw meat during every full moon. Later, he began preying on children.

He met one of his victims, Grace Budd, after responding to an employment ad that Grace's brother had placed in the paper. He went there with the intention of offering the boy a job, luring him away, and killing him, but he changed his mind when he saw Grace. He said he'd love to take her to his niece's birthday party, and her parents agreed to let her go with Fish. They never saw Grace again.

Years later, her family received a mysterious letter detailing how the writer had killed Grace and consumed her flesh. The letter was traced back to Fish and he was arrested. The exact number of his victims is unknown.

In the late 1500s, the city of Bedburg, Germany was terrorized by a wolf-like creature. Both townspeople and livestock were being killed, and children were disappearing. Citizens were terrified but could do nothing to stop the mysterious killer.

Year later, a group of men were out hunting for the wolf. They spotted the animal and moved in for the capture, but when they got closer, they realized it was a man: Peter Stumpp. He was a farmer who lived just outside of the city.

Stumpp was threatened with torture and confessed to killing one man, two pregnant women, and thirteen children. He said that at the age of twelve he entered into a pact with the Devil, who gave him a magical belt that would transform him into a werewolf.

He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. His mistress and his daughter, whom he was accused of having an incestuous relationship with, were also sentenced to death as a way to make sure they killed all of the evil in his family. Stumpp's execution was brutal: he was stretched on a wheel, his limbs were broken with an ax, and he was beheaded. His daughter and mistress were burned at the stake.

Not only was Manuel Blanco Romasanta a self-proclaimed werewolf, he is also believed to be Spain's first serial killer. He was born in 1809 and for the first few years of his life, he was raised as a girl. Doctors didn't discover that he was male until he was six years old.

After becoming a widower in 1833, he started working as a travel guide in Spain and Portugal. In 1844, he was suspected of killing the constable of Leon after the official had tried to collect a debt. Romasanta fled the country and became a fugitive, hiding in a small village and using a fake name.

His murder count only grew after that. Several of the women who had hired him disappeared along with their children, and he covered up their absences by writing letters to their families explaining that they had moved. Finally, the other villagers caught on. They accused him of killing the missing people and making soap out of their fat.

At his trial, Romasanta claimed that he had been cursed to transform into a wolf. In his animal form, he would go on five-day killing sprees before returning to his human body. The court took his claim seriously and asked him to prove it by turning into a wolf before their eyes, but he explained that the curse lasted for thirteen years and had just expired the previous week.

He was acquitted for some of the murders after it was proven that a few victims had died in real wolf attacks, but he was convicted on nine charges and sentenced to death. Queen Isabella commuted his execution because a doctor hoped to treat his lycanthropy, but he died in prison a few months later.

Thiess of Kaltenbrun was in his eighties when his neighbors accused him of being a werewolf. The authorities didn't take the charge seriously, since he seemed like a harmless old man, but that changed in 1691 when he was brought in for questioning about a totally unrelated matter.

He confessed that ten years earlier, he had indeed been a werewolf. Thiess explained that on certain holidays, he and a few other humans would transform into werewolves and then roam the countryside killing and eating animals. He also claimed that werewolves were the Hounds of God, and they were meant to travel to Hell to fight witches and the Devil. The Hounds would bring back the livestock and other things the witches had stolen from the human realm.

Thiess was exiled after revealing that he also practiced folk magic in addition to being a self-proclaimed werewolf. There is no record of what happened to him in exile.

Emily Isabella Burt, also known as The Werewolf of Georgia, returned after a semester in Europe as a changed woman. Her mother noticed that she looked ill and often stared off into the distance. She suffered from insomnia, began to grow hair in odd places, and her teeth became pointed like fangs. Sometimes when she had trouble sleeping, she would wander in the woods.

Around the same time, local farmers began waking up in the morning to find that their livestock had been slaughtered in the night. They suspected a wolf attack and formed nightly hunting parties, determined to kill the animal. One night as they hunted during a full moon, the farmers shot at a figure lurking in the woods. The next morning, Emily Isabella awoke with a bullet wound in her hand.

After that, her mother shipped her off to Paris to be treated by a doctor who specialized in lycanthropy. The attacks on the livestock ended. When Emily Isabella completed her treatment, she returned to Georgia and lived there until her death in 1911.

Wolfie Blackheart is a self-proclaimed werewolf who belongs to a teenage "wolf pack" in Texas. In 2010, the eighteen-year-old gained some notoriety after posting a photo of a dog's severed head on her MySpace page. The photo prompted an investigation by the San Antonio police and Animal Care Services.

When interviewed, Wolfie admitted that she had found a dead dog, severed its head, and boiled it. She had a small collection of animal skulls that she insisted had all come from roadkill. "I would never kill a canine. I am a canine," she said.

Her mother also insisted that Wolfie would never hurt a living animal, but their neighbor, Kathy, was suspicious. When she saw the photo of the dog's severed head, she thought it looked a lot like her missing pup, Rigsby. However, the police were never able to prove that Wolfie harmed a live animal.

In 2013, a California man named Mark Andrews used a rifle to kill his neighbor, Colleen Barga-Milbury. He tried to claim insanity during the trial, saying he was a werewolf, that he was married to a she-wolf, and that he had lived through medieval times. He told a psychologist that he first transformed into a werewolf when he was three years old.

He also said that he believed that his neighbor was a vampire who was stealing his dreams, perhaps continuing to lay tracks for an insanity defense. However, there was evidence that he had planned the crime and tried to avoid being caught. He was even interviewed by a TV reporter and feigned shock at his neighbor's death.

Andrews was convicted of murder in 2015 and sentenced to fifty years in jail.

The real name of The Werewolf of Chalons has been lost. He was accused of crimes so horrific that officials wanted him erased from the history books and his true identity is now unknown. 

Here's what historians think they know: he was a tailor living in Paris, and he allegedly lured children into his shop so that he could torture and murder them. He then carefully carved them up and ate them for dinner. To capture even more children, he would transform into a wolf and stalk his victims through the forest at night. 

When his shop was searched, a barrel full of bleached children's bones was discovered. He confessed to his crimes and showed no remorse at his trial, even going into explicit detail about what he had done to the children. He was burned at the stake and court officials destroyed all court documents relating to the case.

Pierre Burgot and Michel Verdun were French serial killers who also said they were werewolves. At his trial in 1521, Pierre Burgot claimed that as he was out searching for his lost sheep one night, three men in black approached him. They demanded that he renounce God, but said that in return, they would make him rich and give him back his lost sheep. He reluctantly agreed.

Soon after, he met Michel Verdun, who claimed to be a shapeshifter able to transform into a werewolf. Verdun supposedly took Burgot to a meeting of warlocks, where they stripped naked and applied a strange salve all over their bodies. Burgot claimed that they morphed into wolves and started murdering people throughout the French countryside.

Both men confessed to their crimes, which included eating a nine-year-old girl after breaking her neck. They were convicted and burned at the stake.

In 2011, police in Lorain County, Ohio were called to a campground after Thomas Stroup was reported for being violent. When they arrived, Stroup's friend told them he was concerned because Thomas had been very aggressive towards other campers and some animals.

Police found Stroup passed out drunk among a pile of knives and swords. He refused to open his eyes and started growling at the officers. Whe he finally spoke, it was with a thick Russian accent. He explained that ever since he was scratched by a wolf in Germany, he blacked out during the full moon and went on rampages. He then started threatening to kill the deputy's cousin, Keith, even though the deputy didn't have a cousin named Keith. He was arrested for under-age alcohol consumption.

In 1870, homesteaders John and Elvira Bender (originally from Holland or Germany) and their adult children Kate and John Jr. arrived by wagon in Labette County, Kansas, and built a cabin that served as their personal living quarters, as well as a store that sold goods to travelers who were passing through the area and an inn that provided lodging to people who were heading out west.

The Benders were spiritualists who believed they could communicate with the dead and Kate Bender claimed to be a skilled psychic and healer, which, along with their store and inn, attracted a number of visitors to their home on the Osage Trail. Unfortunately, few travelers realized the danger posed by the seemingly harmless family of four, and many of the people who set foot inside the cabin were never seen alive again.

Historians believe John, Elvira, Kate, and John Jr. brutally murdered at least 12 victims, earning this family the terrifying nickname of the Bloody Benders.

When searchers visited the Benders' home to look for evidence related to the disappearance Dr. William York, George Loncher, and Loncher's young daughter, they found the family had abandoned their cabin and left their animals to starve to death. In addition to leaving behind their livestock, the searchers realized the Benders' wagon was missing, causing them to suspect the family might have fled when they learned people were looking into the mysterious disappearance along the Osage Trail.

Near the chair they encouraged their guests to use, the Benders had constructed a trapdoor which allowed them to easily move the bodies of their victims to the cellar. After removing a victim's clothing and stealing anything of value, the Benders would drop the person's body into the cellar using the trapdoor, stashing the corpse until they could bury it in their orchard or vegetable patch under the cover of night.

While nearly all of their victims were men who appeared to have been hit in the head and had their throats cut, searchers discovered a grave containing a young girl who had been buried with the body of her father, George Loncher, on top of her.

The girl didn't have any obvious injuries except for a broken arm, leading some people to conclude she may have been buried alive, covered with the corpse of her dead father.

Kate Bender, the family matriarch, was described as a very attractive woman who claimed to have rare spiritual gifts. 

According to an 1873 article in Harper’s Weekly, Kate claimed she was able to cure “blindness, fits, deafness, and drunkenness.” “She claimed to have power over evil spirits, and to cure diseases of every kind."

In fact, William York's brother actually sought Kate's help as a clairvoyant while searching for William. Naturally, Kate turned suspicion away from herself.

It was said that for the right price, Kate would also have sex with visitors to their inn.

After discovering the blood in the cellar, people searched the land surrounding the Bender's cabin, and they soon discovered the remains of several men, a woman, and a young girl buried in the family's orchard and the vegetable patch. There were at least a dozen confirmed murders, but because of the rudimentary forensics of the era, it's unclear exactly how many male victims were found near the Bender home. Some accounts indicate the family may have killed as many as 21 people.

While the Benders presented themselves as a family of four, most likely only Kate and her mother Elvira were actually related. In fact, it is widely believed that Kate and John Jr. were actually husband and wife, not brother and sister, indicating the Benders were trying to pass themselves off as something they weren't.

The Bender family lived on the Osage Trail, a very popular route with travelers, so lots of people stopped at their cabin on their way out west. Sadly, not everyone made it to their destinations. George Loncher and his infant daughter vanished when they took the trail on their way to Iowa, causing Dr. William York to go searching for the pair.

However, York also went missing while traveling on the Osage Trail, and his brothers, one a senator and the other a colonel, began diligently investigating the mysterious disappearances.

Following the discovery of the crimes, the authorities determined that when someone stopped at their cabin to eat, purchase supplies, or stay the night, the Benders would get their guest to sit at the table with their back to a canvas wagon-cover that served as a room divider. Then, one or both of the Bender men would strike their unsuspecting victim in the back of the head with a hammer through the partition. In order to guarantee the person was dead, the Benders would also slit the victim's throat with a knife, making certain they didn't survive the attack.

Suspecting the farm and home had been deserted, the township trustee broke into the Bender's cabin, where he was confronted with a terrible odor that permeated the entire house. Trying to find the source of the pungent odor, the searchers discovered a trapdoor, and they quickly learned the disgusting smell was coming from a thick layer of congealed blood that covered the floor of the house's cellar.

If they were actually husband and wife and not brother and sister, then it might seem strange that John Jr. and Kate never had any children. However, according to legends, the couple had at least one child, but shortly after the baby was born, Kate and John Jr. murdered the infant with a blow to the head.

In 1982, Lam Kor-wan, a taxi driver in Hong Kong, murdered four young women over the course of just five months, making him the territory's first known serial killer. However, it was the disturbing and horrifying acts the 27-year-old committed after killing his victims that caused him to be known as "The Hong Kong Butcher," "The Jars Murderer," and "The Rainy Night Butcher." From hiding his victims beneath the couch in the apartment he shared with his family to removing their breasts and keeping them as souvenirs, Lam Kor-wan earned every one of his monikers. However, it's his mother's defense of her son in the courtroom that might just surprise you the most.

After Lam Kor-wan's parents and brother left the apartment the family shared in Hong Kong, the taxi driver would remove the dead bodies of his victims from the hiding place under the sofa and rape their lifeless corpses. While horrifying and disgusting, engaging in necrophilia was just one of the deeply disturbing steps in Kor-wan's vile and depraved post-murder ritual.

After they arrested Lam Kor-wan, the authorities searched the tiny apartment he shared with his family, and they quickly discovered a chest containing a huge amount of pornography, videotapes and pictures of his crimes, and plastic containers filled with dismembered body parts. Given the size of the small home and the quantity of evidence they found in the bedroom Kor-wan shared with his brother, the police were convinced the taxi driver hadn't acted alone. As a result, they arrested Kor-wan's father and younger brother, but both men were released when the 27-year-old taxi driver confessed to the murders and took full responsibility for the killings.

Lam Kor-wan murdered all four of his victims, Chan Fung-ian, Chan Wan-kit, Leung Sau-wan, and Leung Wai-sum, by strangling them to death with electrical wire after picking them up as fares. After killing the women in his cab, he brought their dead bodies back to his home to continue his depraved and disturbing ritual.

In addition to making videos and taking photographs to remember his crimes, Lam Kor-wan actually kept his victims' sex organs to help him relive his gruesome acts of murder and necrophilia. When he dismembered his victims' corpses, Kor-wan would cut off their breasts and other pieces of their bodies and store them in Tupperware containers, preserving these revolting souvenirs in formaldehyde. When police discovered these containers hidden in a chest in Kor-wan's bedroom, along with his extensive collection of pornography and videos and photos of his crimes, he was dubbed "The Jars Killer."

Incredibly, Lam Kor-wan actually tried to get film featuring pictures of his victims' dismembered bodies developed by a Kodak store in Hong Kong. Initially, the technician who processed the film thought it contained run-of-the-mill pornographic images of a woman, but when he realized one of the photos featured a severed breast, he told his supervisor who in turn contacted the police. When Kor-wan came back to the shop to collect his photographs, members of law enforcement were waiting to arrest him.

Lam Kor-wan lived in an apartment with his parents and his younger brother, so when he returned home with the dead bodies of his victims, he hid their corpses under the sofa in the living room until all of the members of his family left for the day. Consequently, Kor-wan's mother, father, and brother unknowingly shared their home with the bodies of four dead women, and they may have even sat on the couch while a corpse was hidden beneath it.

Not content to simply remember the gruesome acts of necrophilia and dismemberment he perpetrated on his victims in his own mind, Lam Kor-wan actually documented his crimes. Following his apprehension, police discovered videos and photographs Kor-wan had taken of himself as he raped the dead bodies of his victims and dismembered their corpses.

27-year-old Lam Kor-wan worked the graveyard shift as a taxi driver, which meant unsuspecting women willingly got into his cab all the time, not realizing they would never get out alive. In fact, all of the women he murdered were fares he picked up in his taxi, proving just how dangerous it can be to get into a stranger's vehicle alone at night, even if they are a cab driver. He also killed the majority of his victims late at night or in the early hours of morning when it was raining, so he was called "The Rainy Night Butcher." 

After strangling the women and raping their corpses, Lam Kor-wan covered his bedroom with plastic sheeting and dismembered the bodies of his victims. Amazingly, he actually shared a miniscule room with his younger brother, but because the two were rarely home at the same time for very long, Kor-wan was able to keep his disturbing acts a secret from his family, including his fraternal bunkmate.

After killing and dismembering his victims' corpses, Lam Kor-wan got rid of the body parts, save the ones he preserved in plastic containers, by depositing the women's remains in various places around Hong Kong while driving his cab. Incredibly, the authorities were able to locate the body parts of all of his victims, allowing them to return the remains of the murdered women to their families.

America has a deep and pervasive history of racism. A blight that has persisted for centuries, it continues to seep into the justice system in both blatant and insidious ways. You don't have to look very far to see the disparity between how whites and minorities are treated in the criminal justice system - it seems that almost daily there is a new outrageous case that defies belief. 

Everyone has heard about a murder where race was a factor, whether it happened a hundred years ago or just last week. And all too often, people are getting away with these horrific crimes thanks to racism. This list explores these egregious injustices and takes a look at racist murderers who almost got away with it, as well as crimes where race was a factor and the offending parties emerged almost completely unscathed.

Read on to learn more about terrible crimes people almost got away with due to racism.

On September 15, 1963 - just weeks after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech - a bomb went off at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL. The terrorist attack killed four young African-American girls, and wounded many other innocent churchgoers. 

The church was a popular meeting place and focal point for the Civil Rights Movement, a distinction that made it a target for the Ku Klux Klan, who repeatedly called in bomb threats. Though there were individuals immediately suspected as culpable for the crime, it took over a decade any arrests to be made. 

In 1977, local Klan leader Robert E. Chambliss was tried and convicted of murder for his connection to the bombing. Two other Klan members, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry, were ultimately convicted for their involvement as well, though not until 2001 and 2002. 

Why did it take decades for any justice to be served? It turns out that in 1965, the FBI had specific information on the men involved, and did nothing with it. Speculation says the inaction was due to then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's distaste for the Civil Rights Movement.

On August 28, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was brutally murdered for speaking to a white woman. The young black man from Chicago was visiting was some family in Money, MS. Till went into a candy store, and was reportedly heard saying "Bye, baby" to the white woman behind the counter as he left.

The woman told her husband Roy Bryant what had happened. Bryant, in a fit of rage, picked up his brother-in-law J.W. Milam and drove out to Till's uncle Mose Wright's home, where the young man was staying, and forced him into the car. 

The two men drove Till to the Tallahatchie River, where they forced him to carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank. They then stripped him, severely beat him, gouged out his eye, and shot him in the head. They then threw his body, fastened to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river.

A few weeks after the murder, Bryant and Milam went on trial, where an all-white jury found them not guilty, citing the dubious reason that the state failed to prove the identity of Till's disfigured corpse. 

Absolved of their crimes, an emboldened Bryant and Milam gave a notorious interview to Look magazine in which they were utterly unrepentant. The reaction to such brazen callousness was strong, and former supporters turned on them. Both men's businesses struggled, as no one would give them loans and they were unable to hire any black employees. A small price to pay, however, as they lived out the rest of their lives in freedom.

Serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin had a simple motivation for his murderous spree: he was a vehement racist. Franklin claimed 18 lives during a reign of terror that went on for over a decade. A rabid white supremacist, Franklin loathed blacks, Jews, and other minorities, and consumed with hatred, he frequently sought blood. 

In 1980, Franklin shot and killed Darrell Lane, 14, and Dante Evans Brown, 13, in Cincinnati, OH. He had been laying in wait under a railroad trestle, waiting to murder the first black person he saw.

It would be years before Franklin faced any sort of justice. He was finally executed in Missouri in 2013 for another murder conviction. During that crime, he had killed a Jewish man outside of a St. Louis synagogue, a sniper-style execution he carried out in the name of the purity of white race.

Critically-beloved actor Mark Wahlberg has a dark history he tends to avoid addressing. In 1988, in Dorchester, MA, a young Wahlberg assaulted two Asian men during a convenience store robbery. Wahlberg reportedly called them men "Vietnam f*cking sh*t," and repeatedly struck them with a wooden stick.

When arrested, Wahlberg was defiant, telling police officers, "I’ll tell you now that’s the motherf*cker whose head I split open," and repeatedly calling his victims "gooks." He was convicted of assault and served just 45 days behind bars. 

Wahlberg asked the state of Massachusetts for a pardon for his crimes, saying that he is a devout Catholic and changed man, but dropped the request in 2016.

On June 19, 1982, 27-year-old Vincent Chin was beaten to death with a baseball bat in Detroit, MI. Out on the town for his bachelor party - he was to be married the following week - Chin and his friends attended the Fancy Pants gentlemen's club where they ran into two autoworkers, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz.

Eben and Nitz blamed the Japanese for America's waning automotive industry, and though Chin was Chinese, they took out their ire on the innocent groom-to-be. In the parking lot of the bar, Nitz put Chin in a headlock while Ebens struck him four times in the skull with a baseball bat. Vincent Chin died four days later. 

On March 18, 1983, both men pleaded guilty to the racially-charged killing. Judge Charles Kaufman sentenced them to an incredibly light 3 years probation and a small fine. When asked for his reasoning for such leniency, the judge offered this: "These aren't the kind of men you send to jail. You fit the punishment to the criminal, not the crime."

Warning: this video contains graphic images.

On July 6, 2016, Philando Castile was pulled over for a broken taillight by police in Falcon Heights, MN. In the car with him were his fiancée Diamond Reynolds, and her 4-year-old daughter. The officers had thought the group matched the description of suspects in a recent armed robbery.

Castile, who had a permit to conceal and carry a firearm, alerted Officer Jeronimo Yanez that he had a gun on him and went to remove it from his person. A panicked Yanez then shot Castile, who died shortly after. Reynolds, aware of the police's historically hostile relationship with the black community, began live-streaming the traffic stop on Facebook Live after the officer fired the shots.

Without the aide of video evidence, it's impossible to say whether Yanez would have faced any repercussions for death of Castile. The St. Anthony police officer faces charges of second-degree manslaughter and two felony counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm.

Trayvon Martin was a 17-year-old black high school student who was shot to death on February 26, 2012 in the city of Sanford, FL. He had been walking back to his father's house after a trip to a nearby convenience store when local vigilante and neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman spotted him. Zimmerman, convinced that Martin was up to no good, pulled over and harassed the teenager - though when Zimmerman called 911 to report a suspicious person, he was instructed specifically to stay in his car. A scuffle ensued and Zimmerman shot and killed Martin in what he described as self-defense.

On April 11, 2012, after a national fervor and endless headlines decrying what appeared to be a racially-charged execution, George Zimmerman was charged with second degree murder. On July 13, 2013, Zimmerman was found not guilty.

George Zimmerman went free in what is considered to an incredible miscarriage of justice. However, his life has not been easy. He claims to live in constant fear of retribution, and has had several dust-ups with the law.

On May 2, 1964, teenagers Charles Moore and Henry Dee were kidnapped and murdered in Franklin County, MS. They had been abducted from the main street of a small town called Meadville and brought to Homochitto National Forest, where they were tied to a tree and beaten nearly to death. The two 19-year-olds were then placed in the trunk of a car and driven to the Mississippi River, where they were thrown in, still alive and tied to an engine block. Their bodies were found two months later by area fishermen.

On November 6, 1964, after a thorough FBI investigation of the murders, James Ford Seale and Charles Marcus Edwards - both active members of the Ku Klux Klan - were arrested. The following year, however, charges against both men were dismissed by the district attorney for reasons that remain unclear, though there are suspicions that acting officials also had Klan involvement.

Edwards and Seale almost got away with it. In 2004, however, justice seemed to be on the horizon. A Canadian filmmaker doing a documentary on the cold case began sniffing around the two former Klansmen, and the FBI - who had re-opened the case in 2000, but had thought Seale to be dead - made an arrest in 2007. Edwards was granted immunity for rolling on Seale, who ended up with three consecutive life sentences. He died in a federal correctional facility in Terre Haute, IN in 2011.

There are some downright terrifying facts about Armin Meiwes, the German cannibal killer. Not only did he fulfill his fantasies of eating another person, but he managed to find a willing victim who enjoyed it. His monstrous dream came true the night he invited a stranger he met online to his home where they sliced, prepared, and consumed said stranger together. He probably should have done his research on what happens to you if you eat human flesh. 

Eventually earning himself the frightening title of Der Metzgermeister or "The Rotenburg Cannibal," Armin Meiwes was a real-life Hannibal Lecter, a man who found beauty in the culinary preparation of human flesh. Eventually captured by police, his bizarre fantasies were uncovered along with a two-hour video documenting the extremely graphic nature of his endeavor. The details of this interlude were so shocking, they left the nation of Germany speechless and reminded everyone that there are still monsters in the world. 

Over a period of ten months, Meiwes defrosted and cooked several parts of the body in olive oil and garlic, eventually consuming about 53 pounds of human flesh before he was caught. According to Meiwes, "with every bite, my memory of him grew stronger," and he was able to revisit the most memorable evening of his life again and again with each new meal.

In all, Meiwes was able to carve off about 65 lbs of flesh from the body and even tried to grind the man's bones into flour. Leftovers, teeth, and inedible organs were buried in the garden next to his home. When the meat began to run low, Meiwes jumped back online and began searching for a new victim. 

Like Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs, Meiwes took great pleasure in preparing his first meal of human flesh. He set the table with candles, his best dishes, and opened a bottle of his finest South African wine. He chose "a piece of rump steak—a piece from his back" for this "special occasion" and prepared it with potatoes and sprouts. He told the court the meat tasted "like pork, but stronger. More substantial." He later told reporters he understood what he did wrong. "The wishes, the fantasies you have, these could never be fulfilled. These things you dream about could only be a dream."

Delirious with happiness (and significant blood loss) at having his penis lopped off, Brandes agreed to soak in a warm bath until he slipped into unconsciousness and eventual death. Meiwes gave Brandes some more sleeping pills and pain killers and waited for his friend to bleed out by patiently reading a Star Trek book for the next three hours. But when he checked on the Brandes in the early morning hours, he realized he was still alive. Kissing him on the forehead, he finally killed him by stabbing him in the neck. 

After his victim was dead, Meiwes had to "prepare" him. Meiwes had designed a special room in his house called the"Slaughter Room" designed for the purpose of cutting up another human, and he was finally able to use it. This windowless upstairs room was furnished with a bar bed and a special cage for holding his victims. 

He hung the body on a butchering hook suspended from the ceiling and used two different saws to cut Brandes's body into edible portions. Placing the pieces in freezer bags, he stacked them neatly in a secret compartment in the bottom of his refrigerator next to some takeaway pizza. Then he went outside and buried the man's skull in his backyard. When the police arrived and found the frozen meat, Meiwes claimed it was wild pig. 

It was Friday night and Armin Meiwes had been waiting a long time for this "date." Once his new friend, Berndt Brandes, arrived the men hit it off immediately and had sex in the upstairs bedroom. After that, Brandes swallowed 20 sleeping pills with a bottle of schnapps and instructed Meiwes to bite his penis off. When that didn't work, Meiwes burst both the man's testicles with his teeth and used a kitchen knife to slice off his member. In a later memoir, he said Brandes "screamed horribly... for maybe 20 to 30 seconds. The blood was squirting from the open wound, similar to a fountain."

He offered Brandes a bit of his own penis to try, but the organ was apparently "too chewy" for either man to enjoy. Meiwes proceeded to fry up the severed flesh in some of Brandes's fat and a bit of garlic. According to his testimony in court, however, he became distracted by taking care of Brandes and burned the "food," in the end feeding it to the dog.

Meiwes began scouring the internet for men who wanted to be eaten in 2001 using a site called The Cannibal Café. Although the site is now offline, many disturbing pleas for human flesh are still floating around the Internet. Using the name of his imaginary childhood friend "Franky," Meiwes was a regular on the forum where people posted their cannibal fantasies and tried to meet like-minded friends.

Before Brandes, Meiwes met several men online who seemed interested in being devoured, and he had several unsuccessful meetings. The first man Meiwes found wanted him to "pick him up in a cattle truck and slaughter him like a pig," so they met at the train station and returned to Meiwes's house. Once the man was licking Meiwes rubber butchering boots and being wrapped up to be slaugthered, he backed out. Afterwards, the men just "fooled around, drank beer, and ate pizza."

Another Italian man made such a shocking suggestion, even Meiwes couldn't go through with it. The man had asked Meiwes to "burn his testicles with flamethrower and hammer his body down with nails and pins," all the while being whipped to death. Meiwes was even offered the body of a young boy at one point who could be purchased for a price. Apparently, the boy was used in the meal of a Russian Orthodox feast instead, and the offer was rescinded. 

Meiwes's childhood in Essen, Germany was not particularly normal. He was abandoned by his father and lived alone with his mother who kept a close eye on him, often accompanying him on dates and even to his Army training excursions.

She eventually died when he was a young adult, and Meiwes described his life as "lonely" without family to keep him company. Since he the age of eight, he had always fantasized about killing and eating another person, including his classmates. And after the death of his mother in 1999, this urge grew even stronger. He often felt alone and directionless, until he discovered a way to bring his fantasies to life. 

Crucial to the case against Meiwes was a four-hour video tape made during his evening with Brandes. Even though only 19 minutes of the entire film were shown during his trial, many jurors sought therapy afterwards as a way to erase the horrifying images. The video was deemed "too disturbing to show" and was promptly locked away in a police warehouse so it could not be leaked to the press. The video is rumored to show sex and conversation between the two men, as well as the eventual slaughter of the Brandes.

Although some screen shots have been leaked, the video is not available anywhere online and is rumored to have been destroyed after the trial to avoid voyeurs and copycats. While the video is terribly incriminating, it did clearly show Brandes giving his explicit consent to all that happened and corroborated Meiwes's testimony about consensual cannibalism. 

Although Meiwes offered a full confession of his crimes, the unprecedented case proved problematic for the prosecuting lawyers who soon discovered cannibalism is actually not illegal in Germany. Instead, Meiwes was charged with murder for the purpose of sexual pleasure and "disturbing the peace of the dead."

This was certainly true, but the charge did not speak to the depraved nature of the crime or the intense level of perversity. Meiwes's lawyers responded with a unique defense claiming that his victim had actually agreed to be killed and eaten which would negate the charge of disruption. His defense went on to say that Meiwes was, at worst, guilty of "killing on demand" which is only punishable by five years in jail.

During his pre-trial interview, Meiwes claimed to feel better and more stable after eating his friend. Brandes spoke excellent English, and Meiwes claimed his language skills had also improved since eating the man.

While Armin Meiwes seemed to enjoy the process of butchering and parceling the sections of the body, the real thrill came when he was able to eat it. Described by psychiatrists as a "highly specific form of fetishism, where his desire for attachment and comfort is achieved by contact to his fetish," Meiwes found tremendous pleasure in preparing and devouring the body of his past lover.

His fetish was to eat the flesh of a man who he knew and liked - the experience not only fulfilled an ongoing childhood fantasy, it apparently also created a meaningful connection between him and his victim. This condition is known as Paraphilia, which is intense sexual arousal resulting from deviant behavior - in this case, cannabalism. By eating the body of Brandes, Meiwes was able to achieve both a sexual and emotional release, giving him a feeling of contentment and well-being. 

Collars and leashes are used by murderers to degrade, control, strangle, and even kill their victims, and they're frequently employed by killers who are obsessed with torture and bondage. Like killers who keep their victims as torture pets before eventually ending their lives, murderers who use collars and leashes are particularly intent on dehumanizing their victims, allowing them to treat other people like animals who exist solely to serve their depraved needs and help them fulfill their darkest fantasies, making these killers some of the worst monsters the world has yet seen.

On March 22, 1999, 21-year-old Cynthia Vigil escaped from the trailer where she had been held captive, raped, and tortured by 59-year-old David Parker Ray and his 39-year-old accomplice, Cindy Hendy, wearing only chains and a dog collar around her neck. Vigil was able to get help, and police arrested the couple as they were leaving the trailer in Elephant Butte, New Mexico.

Authorities searched the trailer, which had been converted into a mobile torture chamber, and they discovered a number of disturbing pieces of evidence, including a gynecologist's table, sex toys, a portable toilet, lists of rules for holding people captive, and a number of videotapes that contained footage of women being tortured. Parker was convicted of torture and kidnapping, and he was sentenced to 223 years in prison on September 20, 2001.

Parker died of a heart attack on May 28, 2002, before police were able to find any concrete evidence of the 40 murders he had boasted about committing before his death. Authorities believe he may have buried the bodies of his victims near the Elephant Butte Reservoir, but their searches have failed to turn up any human remains.

On a Friday night in August 1987 in Clackamas County, Oregon, 33-year-old Dayton Leroy Rogers's four-year span of torturing, raping, and murdering sex workers, runaways, and drug addicts came to an end when witnesses saw 25-year-old Jennifer Lisa Smith, a woman he had stabbed 11 times while the two were sitting in his truck, escape from his vehicle. Tragically, Smith died at the hospital from her injuries, but her bravery allowed the police to arrest Rogers and connect him to several unsolved murders.

The authorities learned that Rogers would bind his victims with coat hangers and dog collars, before torturing, stabbing, and mutilating the young women and dumping their corpses in wooded areas near Molalla, Oregon. Rogers has been convicted of killing seven women and was given death sentences in 1989, 1994, 2006, and 2015, but all but his most recent sentence have been vacated by the Oregon Supreme Court.

On April 2, 1988, 22-year-old Christopher Bryson escaped from the Kansas City home of 39-year-old Robert Berdella by jumping from a second story window, wearing nothing but a dog collar. With Bryson's escape, police and the people of Kansas City learned that Berdella, who was the owner of a shop that specialized in selling oddities and antiquities, had been responsible for raping, torturing, and murdering at least six men and teenagers from July 1984 to August 1987.

Berdella had drugged his victims and subjected them to depraved and vicious acts of torture, including electric shocks, bondage, and sodomy. A search of Berdella's property yielded a journal and photographs that documented his crimes, as well as two human skulls, one of which was in a closet while the other was buried in the backyard. Berdella was arrested and confessed to the crimes in order to avoid the death penalty, but he died in prison of a heart attack on October 8, 1992.

On April 1, 2016, 50-year-old web developer Stefano Brizzi and 59-year-old police officer Gordon Semple got together at Brizzi's London apartment after meeting through the dating app Grindr. According to Brizzi, the two men agreed to engage in bondage, but he strangled Semple to death with a dog leash shortly after the two began. After killing the police officer, Brizzi dismembered the man's corpse, dissolving some of his body in acid (in homage to his favorite how, Breaking Bad) and cooking other pieces of flesh in his oven. 

Brizzi's terrible crime was discovered when his neighbors called the police to report the sickening smell coming from his apartment, and law enforcement officials searched his home and discovered Semple's remains. Brizzi admitted to killing the police officer, first claiming he had been compelled by Satan to take Semple's life and later stating he had accidentally choked the man to death while playing a strangulation game. Brizzi was sentenced to life in prison on December 12, 2006, but he committed suicide in his cell on February 6, 2017.

On April 1, 1990, a highway patrol officer stopped to investigate a semi-truck that was parked on the side of an interstate in Arizona, only to find a woman, handcuffed, naked, and screaming, and 44-year-old Robert Ben Rhoades, the driver of the vehicle, inside. Rhoades, who had converted the cab of his truck into a torture chamber, was arrested for unlawful imprisonment, aggravated assault, and sexual assault, and the detective investigating the case was able to link him to multiple unsolved killings, including the murder of 14-year-old Regina Kay Walters.

Officials got a search warrant for Rhoades's home, and they discovered several photographs, including an image taken of Walters wearing a dog collar shortly before she was killed. In 1994, Rhoades was convicted of the first-degree murder of Walters, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

On November 3, 1984, 30-year-old Bobby Joe Long abducted 17-year-old Lisa McVey and took her to his apartment where he raped and sexually assaulted her for 26 hours before the teenager was able to convince her captor to release her. Less than two weeks later, police in Tampa, Florida arrested Long on November 16, 1984 for kidnapping and assault, and during the course of the interrogation, he admitted that he had raped and murdered more than 10 women over the course of an eight-month period.

Most of Long's victims were sex workers; he would take them to his home, tie them up and, place collars made of rope around their necks, using this ligature to choke the women while he raped them.

On September 24, 1985, Long pled guilty to his crimes and received 26 life sentences without the possibility of parole, as well as seven life sentences with the possibility of parole after 25 years. However, the following year, Long was convicted of an additional murder for killing Michelle Simms, and he was given the death penalty and sent to Florida's death row.

On August 20, 2001, the body of 16-year-old Leanne Tiernan, who had been missing since November 26, 2000, was discovered in a shallow grave by a hiker in the Lindley Woods in West Yorkshire, England. The teenager had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death, and she had been wrapped in plastic bags, with zip ties on her wrists and a dog collar around her throat. With few clues to help them track Tiernan's killer, the police found out which stores in the area sold the distinctive dog collar left behind by her murderer, and they ultimately learned that a number of those collars had been purchased by John Taylor, a 46-year-old delivery driver.

When investigators searched Taylor's home, they found twine and zip ties that matched the ones used to bind Tiernan's body, as well as another dog collar exactly like the one that had been placed around the teenager's neck. Taylor confessed to abducting and killing Tiernan, and he was given two life sentences on July 8, 2002.

On November 4, 2016, officers used cell phone records to track the last known whereabouts of 30-year-old Kala Brown, a young woman who, along with her boyfriend, had been missing since August 31, 2016. The records led them to the 95-acre Woodruff, South Carolina property of 45-year-old realtor Todd Kohlhepp. When they heard sounds coming from a metal shipping container, they discovered Brown inside with chains around her neck and ankles. Her boyfriend had been murdered, and she had endured months of rape and torture, only being allowed outside of the container for short periods of time and given food just once a day.

Police arrested Kohlhepp, and they eventually learned he was a registered sex offender who had been arrested for kidnapping and raping his 14-year-old neighbor in 1986 when he was only 15. While in custody, he also confessed to killing a total of seven victims, including an unsolved quadruple homicide that occurred on November 6, 2003. Kohlepp has been charged with kidnapping and multiple counts of murder.

Popular culture and entertainment has taken a lot of the fear out of witchcraft these days. Movies, television shows, and books often portray magic and witchcraft as fun, sexy, or silly. But modern-day witches and their victims can be as dangerous today as they were when they still featured in fairy tales and ghost stories.

It seems as if no one believes in real witches anymore, but people who claim to be witches are out there, and their intentions aren't always benign. Some of these self-proclaimed witches have made headlines for committing all-too-real crimes. The crimes committed by witches in real life (as well as those who claim to be possessed or hexed by witches) are not as cinematic, sexy, or glamorous as witchcraft in the movies, but they are definitely as scary.

Angela Sanford was charged for the 2010 murder of Joel Leyva, whom she lured to the Sandia Foothills Open Space Park in New Mexico. Sanford told to Leyva take off his clothes at the park, and after partially undressing herself, she straddled him before stabbing him over a dozen times. Leyva suffered 14 stab wounds in the head and neck, as well as many in the stomach, from a dagger intended to be used in Wiccan rituals.

Wiccans distanced themselves from her actions, saying that the dagger, called an athame, is intended to be used as a ceremonial, symbolic item in nonviolent rituals.

While going through Sanford's cell phone, police found Leyva's number programmed under the word "Sacrifice."

Lawrence Harris of Iowa was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of his stepdaughters, Kendra and Alysha Suing. The two girls were found stabbed and strangled inside their home, and Harris claims that the girls died when he cast a spell to protect their brother. According to him, the spell reversed itself, which led to their deaths.

AlyshSuing's blood was discovered on Harris's hands and body, as well as on a long knife that Harris referred to as his "ritual knife." The knife was found placed inside his spell notebook. Harris's attorneys tried to prove insanity on his part, but the jurors found Harris guilty of two counts of first-degree murder.

In 1996, Diana Haun abducted Sherri Dally in a Target parking lot in Ventura, California. Haun then drove a rented Nissan Altima (which was later discovered to have blood on its seats) to a remote canyon where she killed Dally. Haun, previously an aspiring actress and model, used that experience to dress herself as a security guard before approaching Dally.

Haun also dabbled in witchcraft. She shared her plans to kill Dally with a co-worker, stating that she wanted to make a human sacrifice as a birthday present for a friend. This friend was Michael Dally, the married man she had been seeing for two years. Haun wanted to sacrifice Michael's wife, Sherri, as a gift for his birthday.

Cara Williams-Covert and her boyfriend Dale Farquhar of Ventura, California, were accused of the shooting murder of Larry Roger Fisk in 2009. Originally, the murder was chalked up to jealousy on the part of Farquhar. However, a journal found inside the Palm Springs condo where Fisk was murdered revealed the plans for a strange dual murder with a Satanic basis.

Within the journal, Williams-Covert referred to herself as a "witch," and Farquhar called himself a "true demon." The pair claim that the journal simply contained a horror movie script.

"In the script, Farquhar played a character named Dave Hatcher, a transsexual in an open relationship with a 'witch' named Cat.

"Williams-Covert played Cat, a meth addict who lured men to their condo for sex.

"Prosecutors believe Williams-Covert was acting out the script when she allegedly lured the unsuspecting victim back to the condo to his eventual death.

"Based on the journal, prosecutors alleged Williams-Covert tried to lure a man back to the condo on Halloween 2009 but failed, and that Fisk was killed on Friday the 13th."

Handwritten lyrics were also found inside the journal, which included the words, "get up and kill, kill, kill" and "an epidemic is in Palm Springs... an epidemic of mass murder."

Farquhar was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. Williams-Covert was released almost immediately from county jail on parole.

Irenia Cotner, Jenny Wolfe, and Oscar Eck of Illinois were all charged in the stabbing death of Joshua Bennett in 2005. They were also charged, alongside Misty D. Gangloff, with the conspiracy to murder Lindsey Kasinger. According to testimony, the conspiracy to murder the pregnant 16-year-old Kasinger was intended to save them all from a hex - a hex that Cotner convinced them they were under.

Eck admit to "messing with witchcraft" for over a year, after developing an interest from vampire and Harry Potter movies. Gangloff denied an interest in witchcraft, but admit to owning books on the topic and pushing pins through a doll many times a week in order to "relieve pressure."

The group allegedly participated in a séance where they were told to murder Kasinger ans her unborn child:

"Three days before the Aug. 23, 2005, slaying of Bennett, Eck said he participated in a séance with Cotner and David Lindner, a fourth suspect who died on Feb. 28, 2006, of gunshot wounds he received during the alleged home invasion that resulted in Bennett’s death. He said he was led to believe that his own family and friends would die if Kasinger and her baby lived.

Eck said Cotner interpreted the flickering of candles during the séance. She said Kasinger and the baby must die and anyone else in the house must be hurt, Eck testified."

Canadian Cherrylle Dell received a life sentence for murdering her husband, Scott Dell, in 1995. The pair had been estranged for four years when Cherrylle gave Scott a bottle of wine laced with anti-freeze as a gift. She later stayed on the phone with him for nine hours to coax him into drinking the entire bottle while she promised him they would get back together.

While the anti-freeze is what ultimately killed Scott, witchcraft is believed to have been a major tool in regaining his trust. According to Nancy Fillmore, one of Cherrylle's lovers, once Scott left her home, Cherrylle "got out her witchcraft books and lit candles" before vocalizing weird "rituals or prayers or whatever." Other testimonies at the trial claim that Cherrylle Dell performed bizarre rituals on a home-made doll that resembled Scott Dell. The doll had pins in it, and eventually Cherrylle buried it.

Nancy Fillmore died in 1997, soon after her testimony. Her apartment was set ablaze by a young teenage boy whom Cherrylle had seduced into murdering Fillmore.

Wayne Hartung, Sr. of Pensacola, Florida, was arrested for the murders of three of his family members in 2015. Voncile Smith and her two sons, Richard and John, were found dead during a welfare check at their home. Authorities state that all three bodies had slit throats and had been badly beaten with claw hammers. Richard Smith was also found with a gunshot wound in his head.

Family members state that Hartung dabbled in the practice of witchcraft and kept at least one Wiccan book in his office. Authorities claim that the evidence they gathered leads them to believe that witchcraft was involved in the ritualistic deaths. The triple homicide also occurred near the night of a blue moon, which carries important symbolic significance in witchcraft, and only occurs once every three years.

Heather Miller was convicted of attempted murder, solicitation to commit murder, and aggravated and simple assault in 2000. The victim was her own husband, Kevin Miller. Before considering murder, however, Heather tried to push her husband from her life with black magic. When that wasn't effective, she made a plan to poison Kevin's lunch each day with belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade.

The downfall to Heather's plans was telling her neighbor, Mindi Robbins, who alerted police. Apparently, the two women had a sexual relationship and had bonded over a shared interest in witchcraft. 

Joseph Cala II is serving a 30-year prison sentence for the murder of his 79-year-old mother, Lydia Cala, in 2001. Cala admit to beating his elderly mother to death before cutting open her body and removing a few of her organs. One officer on the scene testified that he saw Cala, naked and bloody, through a bedroom window. He was standing over a mutilated body eating what looked like an organ. That organ turned out to be Lydia's heart, which contained teeth marks where a piece was missing.

Cala, who has battled schizophrenia for decades, claims that he was overcome by the spirits of witches who made him commit the violent acts. Other officers who came upon Cala at the crime scene state that he was talking about worshipping the devil and that he accused them of interrupting his sacrifice.

In 2016, Sarra Gilbert murdered her own mother in her New York apartment. Sarra's mother, Mari, had apparently been involved in the occult since she was a teenager and her children had been severely affected by her practices. While it isn't clear whether or not Sarra practiced witchcraft herself, she claimed to experience delusions involving witches and demons.

Sarra struck her mother with a fire extinguisher and stabbed her several times with a 15-inch kitchen knife because she believed that her mother was a demon.

One of the most harrowing things that can happen to someone is to be the sole survivor of a horrible accident or massacre. The emotional toll of being a lone survivor weighs heavily on anyone who has ever seen their entire family or group of close friends perish in an instant. The lone survivor is a modern true-crime trope, and for good reason; it’s genuinely miraculous when someone manages to live through a disaster, be it personal, environmental, or otherwise.

As you’ll come to see, there is no such thing as normal survivor stories. Everyone who has lived through a tragedy has a different story; some of them have lived through an attempted murder, and others have watched entire camps of people die in front of them. In many aspects, the life of a survivor is unenviable, to say the least.

Imagine being the only person left alive after a plane crash. At first you would probably feel gracious for being lucky enough to live through such a nightmare, but then the survivor’s guilt would set in and that’s when things get dark. All of the stories you’re about to read are full of strong people who survived horrific tragedies, some political, and some personal. Keep reading to find out about the most insane sole survivor stories where people lived through the unthinkable. 

In 2011, Hattie Stretz was waiting to get her nails done at the Salon Meritage in Seal Beach, CA, when the building got lit up. According to ABC News, Scott Dekraai decided to kill his ex-wife, Michelle Fournier, because of their aggressive child custody battle, and attacked the salon she was at. After Dekraai murdered Fournier he continued firing and gunned down eight more people in under two minutes. 

Five years after the attack, Stretz  gave her first interview. She said, "The only noise that I can remember from that day is the pop, pop, pop, pop." Even though Stretz survived, that doesn't mean that she didn't take a hit. "I had this searing pain in my heart, and I looked down at my arm and it was just hanging in shreds." When she was shot, a bullet entered her arm and then went through her left breast. 

On December 14, 2016, Elianna Vazquez, a high school senior in Bismark, ND, woke up covered in rubble. She assumed it was a dream.Vasquez was the only survivor of a freak accident that blew up her house, killing her mother and step-father. According to the Morton County Sheriff's Department the explosion was an accident but the cause of the destruction remains a mystery. If something can be considered lucky in a situation like this, local authorities are considering it fortuitous that the house only exploded and didn't catch on fire. 

In 2006, one of the most brutal crimes imaginable happened in Khairlanji, India, when four members of the Bhotmange family belonging to the Dalit caste (an incredibly oppressed group of people known as the "untouchables") were murdered by members of the Kunbi, or working class, caste. But this wasn't a simple murder. In this case the family members were dragged from their homes, paraded around their village naked, and sexually assaulted before being hacked to death.

The only survivor of the attack, Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange, spent the two years following the attack attempting to bring his family's murderers to justice. When eight members of the group who destroyed his life went on trial he heavily advocated for the death penalty. Bhotmange passed away in 2017 from a heart attack in Nagpur's Shrikrishna Hospital.

Enietra Washington, the only survivor of Los Angeles serial killer Lonnie David Franklin Jr., aka the Grim Sleeper, lived through the killer's brutal attack when he shot her in her chest as she rode in the passenger seat of his Pinto. Almost three decades after the attack, Washington took the stand in Franklin's trial and explained how after shooting her he forced himself on her while taking photos of her.

When she tried to escape after the attack, he got tired of fighting with her and pushed Washington out of his car. On the stand, Washington claimed that she lost her driver's license in Franklin's car, and a year later, a man that she believes was her attacker approached her in front of her home to see if she recognized him. 

Northern Ireland in the 1970s was the scene of a series of tit-for-tat murders between Protestants and Catholics that saw multiple groups of people being dragged from their homes, pubs, and vehicles to be shot at point-blank range. The most gruesome of these crimes was the Kingsmill Massacre, a response to the murder of six Catholics the night before. On January 5, 1976, IRA gunmen stopped a van carrying 11 Protestant workmen, lined them up outside and shot each of them execution style with automatic rifles. It was later believed that the men unloaded 136 rounds in less than a minute. The only survivor of the massacre, Alan Black, was taken to a nearby hospital where he was brought back from the brink of death despite his 18 bullet wounds. 

In the 1970s, Ines Etienne Romeu lived through the Brazilian military's House of Death, a torture prison in Petropolis, near Rio de Janeiro. According to retired lieutenant colonel Paulo Malhães, the casa de morte was referred to as a "convenience center" to pressure prisoners into becoming informants. The main method used to "convince" prisoners was torture, but in a few cases, prisoners were offered money to drop a dime on their friends and family.

Malhães noted that Romeu's release from the prison was an accident, and that she had tricked her captors into believing that she had accepted their programming. Of course, this came after the military attempted to make her throw herself under a car to prove that she was loyal to their cause. According to the BBC more than 400 people were murdered or "disappeared" in Brazil between 1964 and 1985.

Twenty-six-year-old Rebecca Cutler and her three children were the victims of a horrific assault at a Ramada Inn in Staten Island, NY, carried out by none other than Cutler's boyfriend, Michael “Da Kid” Sykes. At around 10 a.m. in early February 2016, Sykes accused Cutler of maintaining a relationship with one of her children's fathers and butchered Cutler and her two daughters, Ziana Cutler, one, and Maliyah Sykes, four months, as well as stabbing two-year-old Miracle 11 times. After finishing his rampage, Sykes called his mother and confessed to the crime before ditching the knife and went on the lam before finally being caught by New York area police. Miracle pulled through and, one year later, she paid a visit to the officers at the 121st Precinct that helped save her life. 

Known for its rolling hills, farmland, Midwestern values, friendly people, and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indiana is rarely thought of as being home to some of the worst serial killers in America.

However, the Hoosier State has seen more than its fair share of depraved murderers and horrifying killings. Since it's was established in 1816, Indiana has been home to a slew of serial killers who range from demented killers who preyed on the vulnerable to those who wanted money and power. Don't let their Midwestern politeness fool you - these Hoosier state killers are brutal, horrifying, and twisted. These killers from the Midwest might make you rethink that trip to Indiana. 

Alton Coleman, 28, and his girlfriend Debra Brown crisscrossed the Midwest from May to July in 1984, leaving the bodies of eight dead victims in their wake. After committing their first murder in Illinois, the couple went to Gary, IN, on June 18, 1984, and sexually assaulted Annie Hillard, 9, and her niece, 7-year-old Tamika Turks. Annie was choked unconscious, but she survived the attack, while Tamika was strangled to death with a ligature and dumped in bushes where her lifeless body was eventually discovered.

On June 19, 1984, authorities believe the couple abducted, raped, and murdered 25-year-old Donna Williams in Gary and disposed of her body and vehicle in Detroit, MI. Coleman and Brown went on to kidnap, assault, and kill a number of additional victims in other Midwestern states, before returning to Indiana, stealing a car in Indianapolis, and murdering the vehicle's owner, 75-year-old Eugene Scott.

Soon after killing Scott, the couple was arrested on July 20, 1984, in Evanston, IL, and Coleman was convicted of multiple murders, sentenced death, and executed on April 26, 2002, at the age of 46. Brown was originally sentenced to death, but her sentence was commuted, so she is now serving life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Born Brynhild Paulsdatter Størseth in Norway, Belle Gunness moved to the United States in 1881 at the age of 22. She adopted an American name and found work as a servant. Gunness married her first husband shortly after moving to America, but he died in 1900 under suspicious circumstances, leaving behind a sizable life insurance policy. Following her husband's death, Gunness committed arson a number of times to collect insurance payouts, and she used her ill-gotten fortune to buy a farm near La Porte, IN.

Shortly after settling Indiana, Gunness married again, but her new husband didn't live very long after their wedding, nor did his daughter, his brother, or many of the other people who spent any time at the farm. Following the death of her second husband, Gunness began placing ads in local newspapers, advertising herself as a wealthy widow in search of a new beau. Many men came to visit Gunness, but very few of them ever left, until April 28, 1908, when a fire burnt her home to the ground, leaving behind the bodies of three children and a headless woman.

A further search of the farm found the remains of several men, presumably the suitors Gunness killed in order to steal their money. The authorities were never able to determine if the woman's body found in the burnt down house was actually Gunness, leaving many to suspect she murdered her children and faked her own death to start her life over again with a new identity.

When David Edward Maust was just nine years old, his mother sent him to a mental institution because she said he was violent towards his brother and small animals. According to Maust, while he was institutionalized, he was subjected to repeated sexual abuse and longed to be back with the family he felt had abandoned him.

Shortly after he turned 18, Maust joined the Army and was stationed in Germany. There he took the life of his first known victim, 13-year-old James McClister. Maust said the death was an accident. He was sentenced to four years in prison for killing the teenager, and upon his release returned to the US.

During the next few years, Maust was in and out of prison for attempted murder and assault, until 1982 when he was sentenced to 35 years for killing 15-year-old Donald Jones in Illinois. However, Maust was paroled in 1999 after just 17 years, despite writing a letter asking the authorities not to let him out of jail.

In 2003, Maust murdered three young men, hiding their bodies under freshly poured concrete in the basement of his apartment building in Hammond, IN. His crimes were eventually discovered, and he was given to three life sentences. A month after his sentencing he committed suicide in jail. He left a suicide note behind admitting to five killings and apologizing to the families of his victims. 

In June 1996, the skeletal remains of a number of young men from Indiana's gay community were found on the grounds of the 18-acre estate Herb Baumeister shared with his wife and children in the affluent Indianapolis suburb of Westfield. Shortly after this grisly discovery, Baumeister, 49, committed suicide in Canada. Baumeister was accused of murdering at least 19 young men whom he met while visiting gay clubs in Indianapolis. Because he killed himself, he was never formally charged. 

A man who met Baumeister at a bar said he and Baumeister engaged in erotic asphyxiation while in Baumeister's $1 million house's indoor pool. This led police to believe Baumeister may have intentionally or accidentally choked his victims to death.

After Baumeister's death, his wife denied knowing her husband frequented gay clubs or harmed any of his alleged victims, but police later learned one of the couple's children discovered a skeleton on the grounds of the property years before. When Mrs. Baumeister questioned her husband about this disturbing find, he told her it was an anatomical skeleton that belonged to his deceased father - a doctor - and she accepted that explanation.

From December 1954 to March 1955, Leslie Irvin went on a crime spree, committing several robberies and burglaries, and taking the lives of at least six people in the process. When Irvin was finally apprehended in April 1955, he stood trial in Indiana and was convicted and sentenced to death for his crimes. However, in 1961, Irvin, who had been given the nickname "Mad Dog" by the media, successfully appealed his conviction, with the Supreme Court finding the constant pretrial publicity his case received made it nearly impossible for him to get an impartial jury in the county where he was tried.

Irvin stood trial again the following year, and he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. On November 9, 1983, the 59-year-old convicted murderer died of lung cancer at the Indiana State Prison.

When elderly patients at a Clinton, IN, hospital started dying at an alarming rate, authorities launched an investigation, and eventually zeroed in on Orville Lynn Majors, a nurse in the intensive care unit. Thirty-six-year-old Majors was arrested on December 19, 1997. Inside his house and car was a large number of epinephrine and potassium chloride - the same drugs used in the killing of Majors's patients.

During his trial, a witness testified Majors hated old people, which might explain the motivation for his crimes. In November 1999, Majors was convicted of murdering six victims, although investigators suspect he may have killed more than 100 people during his time at the hospital. He was sentenced to 360 years in prison.

From 1982 to 1984, Larry Eyler killed a number of boys and young men, dumping their bodies along Indiana's highways. Officials believe he killed at least 21 victims, largely based on information provided by his defense attorney after Eyler's death, but he was only convicted of one murder - the killing of 15-year-old Daniel Bridges.

In 1986, Eyler was sentenced to death for the teenager's murder, but he passed away from AIDS-related complications in 1994 at the age of 41. Before his death, Eyler claimed to have had multiple accomplices, including a middle-aged Indiana State University professor named Robert David Little. According to Eyler, while he tortured and dismembered his victims, Little would masturbate and take photos. Based on Eyler's allegations, the professor was arrested and charged, but Little was acquitted in 1991.

Sadly, many of the victims Eyler claimed responsibility for killing have never been identified, leading the police to conclude they were probably runaways or hitchhikers who may have been estranged from their families when they were murdered.

Following the death of his mother in 2012, William Clyde Gibson sexually assaulted and strangled Christine Whitis. The 75-year-old woman had come to his New Albany, IN, home to offer her condolences to the grieving 54-year-old man. After killing her, he mutilated Whitis's corpse; and the next day, his sister discovered the woman's remains in Gibson's garage and called the police.

After Gibson's arrest for murdering Whitis, authorities found the remains of 35-year-old Stephanie Kirk buried in his backyard. Confronted about Kirk's remains, Gibson admitted to sexually assaulting the woman and strangling her to death on March 27, 2012. Then, he shocked officials by confessing to the unsolved murder of Karen Hodella, a 44-year-old woman who was killed 10 years earlier. According to Gibson, he stabbed Hodella to death on October 10, 2002, and dumped her corpse near the Ohio River.

Gibson was convicted of killing all three woman, and he was given two death sentences and 65 years in prison for his crimes.

In April and May of 1992, a serial killer terrorized the states of Indiana, Kansas, and Missouri. He went to stores located in strip malls just off I-70 and shot and killed the people who were working in the shops. Some experts believe the man may have left the Midwest for Texas, because three women working in stores there were shot in 1993 and 1994, with one of these victims surviving her injuries.

The I-70 killer has never been identified, but at the time of the murders, the authorities released a sketch of the suspect. A witness described the killer as a white male between the ages of 25 and 35, and the police determined the man used a .22 caliber weapon to viciously murder his victims.

On October 17, 2014, the strangled body of 19-year-old sex worker Afrikka Hardy was discovered in the bathtub of a Hammond, IN, hotel room. A friend became concerned after she hadn't heard from the teenager when she went to meet a client. The authorities were able to use the young woman's phone records to track down the man who hired her via an escort website, and they arrested 43-year-old Darren Deon Vann. When he was apprehended, Vann - a convicted sex offender - still had a number of Hardy's possession, and he confessed to murdering the 19-year-old.

Vann admitted to killing a number of other young women, and he led investigators to the remains of six victims whom he had murdered and dumped in abandoned houses all over Gary, IN. Vann was charged with seven counts of murder. As of early 2017, he is still awaiting trial. 

If there’s one day when you can expect every person with even a tangential Irish heritage to go ham, it’s Saint Patrick’s Day, the green, beer-soaked day that always devolves into a hijinks-filled weekend. The mixture of large quantities of alcohol and rowdy lads and lasses ensure most St. Patrick's Day crimes involve either a brawl, public intoxication, or a combination of the two.

But some of the St. Patty's Day arrests covered on this list branch out into lesser blarney stone crimes like masturbating during a parade and robbing a church; still illegal, but not quite in the spirit of St. Paddy's, no? Take a look at these St. Patrick's Day mugshots and try to figure out which person who partied too hard did what. If these green goblins look all greener than usual, it's probably from envying your freedom. 

What is it about Florida? Some of the craziest stories come from Florida, most involving criminals (and their hilarious mugshots). And those enforcing the law in the great Sunshine State are not exempt from strange and downright unbelievable actions. 

Judges sit at the top of the criminal justice hierarchy, and for judges in Florida, they hold the power of sentencing some of the most creative and stupid criminals known to man. And for those people, the oddity of their crimes is reflected in the oddity of their sentencing. Judges in Florida sentencing criminals to weird punishments is sadly more common than you'd think. These weird Florida sentences range from the practical to the absolutely absurd. So before you think of committing a crime, you might want to take a peek at these funny sentences by Florida judges before booking your ticket. 

Rather than simply punish those who have committed road traffic offenses, Judge Carmine Bravo wants to actually educate drivers with infractions. The Seminole County judge often asks defendants to write essays about people who have been killed in traffic accidents. These 500-word articles have to be researched, with the criminals visiting memorial spots, getting hold of accident reports, and finding out about crash victims. He hopes this teaches them more about road safety and gives them a better perspective of the consequences that dangerous driving can bring.

Former teacher Debra Lafave hit headlines in 2005 after she was accused of slept with a 14-year-old male student several times. Facing a possible 30 years in prison, she was let free on probation with a number of constraints. Part of the reason she avoided jail was because her lawyer argued she was too sexy to go to prison.

“To place an attractive young woman into that kind of hellhole is like putting a piece of raw meat in with the lions,” the lawyer said. “I am not sure that Debbie would be able to survive.”

Of course, other issues also played a part, including the fact the parents of the victim were willing to accept the plea bargain to ensure their child didn’t have to go through the trauma of giving evidence in court.

In 2010, Alexandra Espinosa-Amaya ended up in more trouble than she would ever have imagined. The 24-year-old was ejected from a nightclub in Orlando while celebrating her birthday, prompting police officers to respond when they saw bouncers struggle with her. This eventually led to Alexandra pushing over an officer. The judge at her trial took a novel approach with her punishment, sentencing her to anger management classes and having to parade outside of the police station where the officer was located for four hours while telling people what she had done.

Following reports a man in Fort Lauderdale had put his hands around the neck of his wife and raised his fists during an arguments, Broward County Judge John Hurley issued a rather weird punishment for the offender with the agreement of the victim. The man was to take his wife on a date to make up for his actions. This included a meal at Red Lobster and a night of bowling, two activities the man's his wife enjoyed doing. While domestic violence charities did speak up about the apparent leniency of this sentence, it was also noted he would have to attend marriage counseling.

Judge Peter T. Miller took a novel approach to punishing first-time shoplifters in Putnam County, FL. Instead of sending them to jail for 30 days as usual, he often forced these thieves to go to the store they stole from and march outside holding signs that explain what crime they committed. He believes it is a deterrent, as the community is small and the perpetrators cannot remain anonymous.

“You have to see them because this is also for the folks out there who obey the law,” Miller told a local news station. “They see that the punishment is something more than just a slap on the wrist. They can see this is what happens when you break the law. It’s maybe something they can point out to a child they’re raising.”

One court in Florida decided to take a new approached to educating young drivers after they realized fines weren't working. Rather than give them the ordinary sentence, Judge Louis H. Schiff had them create scrapbooks about road traffic accidents from newspaper clippings and had them raise their grade-point average. He then kept these scrapbooks for other defendants to go through while they are in court waiting for their own traffic infractions.

In 2009, then-19-year-old Andrew Gaudioso and his friend Thomas Towers, an Iraq war vet, were driving in the Tampa Bay area when they crashed. Gaudioso had drugs in his system at the time of the crash, and was held responsible for the crime. He was charged with vehicular manslaughter and expected to get a jail sentence. However, the parents of Towers petitioned for a different sentence, which the judge later granted. Rather than spend time behind bars, Gaudioso went on probation, was banned from driving, and would have to send a postcard to the family every week for 15 years as a way of reminding him of what he had done.

In 2013, an 18-year-old Miami woman was arrested for possession of Xanax - a crime typically worthy of jail time if it's a first offense. But Penelope Soto made matters worse for herself when she lashed out at Judge Jorge Rodriguez-Chomas for having her bond set at $10,000. She flipped off the judge before calling him an expletive. Not taking too kindly to this, he found her in contempt of court and jailed her for 30 days. Fortunately, the story had something of a happy ending as she came back to court the next day, apologized to the judge, and agreed to participate in a drug rehabilitation program, prompting him to immediately release her from custody and suspend her sentence.

One judge in Bradford County, FL, took a novel approach to punishing petty criminals by giving them really unique sentences. Most boiled down to some form of to public shaming where the perpetrator held a sign in a prominent public place telling everyone what they did. The technique has largely been used against those convicted of theft or DUI and is seen as a way of stopping people from reoffending, as well as cutting down on fines or prison time. Considering how small the area is and how concentrated the population is, law officials believe it is also preventing others from committing similar crimes as they don’t want to go through the embarrassment of everyone finding out what they did.

While judges are often expected to come down hard on criminals, the same cannot be said for those working directly for them. In fact, most people would expect a court official to be understanding of the work their employees do. That wasn’t the case for Judge Charles Greene. After his typists failed to complete a report and transcript for a particular case, he found her in contempt of court and jailed her. Stenographer Ann Smith was released shortly afterwards but was then ordered to remain under house arrest until she had completed the work.

While he might not be as well-known as some serial killers, Alexander Pichushkin was a cold, calculated killer from Russia who killed at least 60 people. In 2006, Pichushkin - also known as the Chessboard Killer - admitted to murder, telling authorities he would attack his victims and leave their bodes in a Moscow's Bitsa Park and sewer drains. 

Pichushkin wanted to kill enough people to fill the squares on a chessboard - hence his nickname. Pichushkin was a killer who kept one very specific trophy - a log with the date each of his victims died. There are plenty of creepy facts about Pichushkin and his deeds - and the horrifying details are sure to scare and intrigue.

Pichushkin killed people because it made him feel like God. He liked that he was the person who chose to decide whether a person lived or died. During his trial, he stated that "In all cases I killed for only one reason. I killed in order to live, because when you kill, you want to live." He went on to say "I felt like the father of all these people, since it was I who opened the door for them to another world." His statements made it clear that he felt no remorse about the people whose lives he snuffed out. 

In 1992 - the year Pichushkin first turned to murder as a pastime - his fellow Russian citizen, Andrei Chikatilo, was convicted of mutilating and killing 52 people. Pichushkin dreamed of surpassing Chikatilo's record. He set his sights on the number 64, which equals the amount of squares on a chessboard. Although Pichushkin didn't quite meet his goal of 64 murders, he did out-kill Chikatilo in some sort of weird serial killer contest by confessing that 61 people met their deaths at his hands.

Pichushkin's life of crime began in 1992 when he was 18. He invited one of his friends, Mikhail Odichuk, with him on a "killing expedition." They began walking around, trying to find someone to kill. When it became clear that Odichuk wasn't taking it seriously, Pichushkin killed him instead of a random victim. Pichushkin claimed the police questioned him about his friend's death, but nothing really came of it. Pichushkin later said "This first murder, it’s like first love, it’s unforgettable."

Pichushkin also said he threw a romantic rival out of a window when he was 18. According to Pichushkin, his girlfriend Olga broke up with him and began dating his friend Sergei. In response, Pichushkin killed him, although the circumstances of Sergei's death led the police to declare it a suicide, not a homicide. He would not kill again for five years after the alleged murder of Sergei. 

Bitsa Park, the nickname for Moscow's Bitsevsky Park, consists of 2,700 acres of woods. It has a stream, access to a nearby sewer, and it is the place where Pichushkin not only killed his victims, but also where he left their bodies. Locals describe the neighborhood near the park, where Pichuskin lived (it was a six minute walk from his home to the edge of the park) as a bad neighborhood. The easy access to the park and the homeless people who lived around it are just two of the many reasons why Pichushkin chose it as his killing and dumping ground. 

Unlike other serial killers who tried to cover up their crimes, Pichushkin didn't. At first, he tossed his victims's bodies in a nearby sewage works, but after awhile, he stopped caring. He began to leave their bodies where they died - right out in the open, along the pathways and other areas of Bitsa Park. However, he did place some of them in a stream that ran through the park.

One of Pichushkin's main sources of prey were homeless men living in the streets near Bitsa Park in Moscow. He did this for two reasons - the older men reminded him of his deceased grandfather who he felt abandoned him, and no one truly kept track of them. Many serial killers go after so-called "easy prey" who will not be reported missing, and Pichushkin was no exception. Because of his choice of victims, no one immediately realized there was a serial killer in the area until Pichushkin began leaving the bodies in plain sight. 

Some serial killers keep souvenirs from their victims, whether they are small items or even internal organs. Pichushkin kept a small notebook in his pocket on which he had sketched out a chessboard. Each square had a date written in it that corresponded to one of his murders. At the time of his arrest, 61 of the 64 squares on the chessboard were filled in. 

With the exception of four people - three women and a child - Pichushkin killed adult and elderly men. His father abandoned the family when Pichushkin was a year old, and his grandfather (and only father figure) died when Pichushkin was young. It could be said that he was taking out his aggression and anger towards men with his choice of victims. Reportedly, the few women he killed were people he took on dates.

His last victim - and one of his only female victims - was Marina Moskaloyova. She was a coworker of Pichushkin's. The two went on a walk in Bitsa Park when he killed her. In her pocket was a metro ticket and a piece of paper with Pichushkin's phone number on it, leading authorities to search his home where they found his list of kills.

One of Pichushkin's rare female victims was found with small metal stakes pounded into her skull. The stakes were also around her eyes. When he was arrested, he claimed to have lured his childhood ex-girlfriend Olga into the park to meet her doom. The body with stakes was never identified, and it's possible that this was her body. However, the names of all of his victims have not been released - at least not in an English language publication.

Pichushkin lured some of his victims into the park (some were already there, relaxing or walking one of the paths) where he hit them in the back of the head with blunt objects. Pichushkin would tell them his dead dog's grave was in the park as a way of getting his victims to let down their guard. The two would stoop down to pray over the grave, and then Pichushkin would hit them in the back of the head with a blunt object, like a hammer, a wrench, a log, or anything else that was handy. He claimed to aim for the back of the head in order to avoid getting blood on his clothing. He often left the murder weapon near the body, and in some cases, he would insert an empty bottle of vodka into the indentations in his victim's skulls. 

By all accounts, Pichushkin was a loving, very social child - at first. However, when he was young, he was in an accident with a swing. He fell backwards off of the swing and it reared back and hit him in the head, damaging the front lobe of his brain. He was never the same afterwards; he became aggressive, impulsive, and hostile, and later attended a school for students with learning disabilities. According to experts, damage to the frontal lobe of the brain can cause these personality changes. This, combined with his early abandonment issues (from both his father and his grandfather) may have led to Pichushkin becoming a serial killer. 

Across the world, as many as 30 million people are currently being held in bondage, moved from location to location as victims in the lucrative global human trafficking trade. Even the United States isn’t immune to human trafficking. As many as 17,500 sex slaves and indentured servants are moved into the US each year. California is home to three of the FBI’s most notorious sex trafficking areas - San Francisco, L.A., and San Diego - while Texas’s Dallas-Ft. Worth region is home to 15% of the total calls sent to the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

The average cost of one of these slaves is a mere $90. 80% of these victims are forced into a sexually exploitative situation. Horrifyingly, the average age of a person forced into the sex trade is 12 to 14 years old. 

Human trafficking is a blight on the face of humanity. It destroys the lives of thousands of people, even as it pads the pockets of criminals with as much as $32 billion each year. When someone manages to escape the world of human trafficking, it’s a miracle, and when these survivors summon the courage to tell their stories, it’s nothing short of inspiring.

The following are human trafficking and sex slave stories from the brave people who lived through the torture and made it to the other side. 

Names have been changed to protect those victims who fear reprisal.

Until the age of 20, Phalla lived a relatively normal life in Cambodia. After her father died, with no one to support her family, she was forced to move in with her grandmother.

About two months after she’d arrived, her grandmother drove her into a nearby city, Kampong Som, and sold her to a brothel. Phalla didn't realize this until several days after she’d arrived. At the brothel, she was locked in a room and raped several times a day. This was was her reality for the next several months, being sold from one brothel to another. 

Then, she met a man who helped her back to her native Cambodia. It seemed like a new lease on life, but she was soon put to work in a karaoke bar, and her employers sold her to foreign tourists for days at a time. When she tried to leave, she was beaten. It took several more months before she was able to gain her captor’s confidence, escape, and turn herself over to authorities.

In the first three months of 2017, the National Human Trafficking Hotline reported 2,000 calls related to trafficking in Texas alone. Forced into the world of prostitution at age 14, Erica says that human trafficking is shockingly common near the border. "You would never know how many guys are out picking up girls. Girls you might just see walking on the sidewalks, a 14-year-old girl can be out prostituting and you would not know that.”

Though she says she had several interactions with El Paso police, no one ever asked her if she was a victim. These days, Erica is working to correct that institutional problem. If police were more sympathetic to certain “offenders,” authorities could shine a light on human trafficking in the Texas area.

Loreta was born to two alcoholic parents, and they were incapable of taking care of her and her 13 brothers and sisters. At a young age, she and her siblings were shipped off to Lithuanian state homes across the country. She lost track of her family.

Soon after she arrived at the state home, Loreta was visited by a man who called himself her godfather. He began visiting her repeatedly. The other kids told her she was lucky, and she felt that way too, until her “godfather” raped her at the age of 13. At 15, she was sent to live with him against her will.

After her 16th birthday, Loreta was courted by a madam named Dana, who befriended the teen with promises of fun before ultimately luring Loreta and six of her friends into a life of forced prostitution. For two years, Loreta lived with Dana before the madam sold her to a pimp in Ravenna, Italy.

In Italy, she was forced to have sex with clients in the public restrooms within a 15 minute window. It wasn’t until she happened to have a client that spoke Lithuanian that Loreta dared beg for help. Fortunately, the john had a change of heart and took Loreta and some of her friends to the Italian police. They helped get her some documentation and return back home.

The only surviving member of her family in the wake of the Rwandan genocide, Sabine was more than happy to accept an offer working for a wealthy American family. Upon her arrival, the girl was imprisoned and forced to work around the clock. She slept on the kitchen floor. 

It took six months before Sabine was allowed one hour off each Sunday to go to church. While there, one of her fellow parishioners caught wind of her situation and helped her escape. At first, Sabine’s ordeal had left her traumatized. She was afraid to leave her new apartment after 4 pm. She was too afraid to go anywhere in the city alone, and she was even terrified to use a gift card. 

A few months later, Sabine found her courage. She’s now able to travel on her own, and she's learning English as she slowly works to rebuild her life.

In 1984, Alma left her hometown of Manila to move to Olongapo City, because her brother offered to pay for her education. Unfortunately, when she arrived, her brother confessed that he was simply hoping to use her to hook a “rich American” from the nearby military base who might help support Alma’s family.

Alma refused, and instead was forced to take a job as a waitress. There, the bar owner allowed US military and other visitors to pay a “bar-fine” in order to have sex with the establishment's waitresses. At first, Alma was offended at the thought, but the bar owner threatened to fire her if she didn’t let the men rape her. For fear that her children might go hungry, Alma agreed, taking her first step down a path of forced prostitution. She was in bondage for three years until she was able to escape.

Over the course of 16 years, Mari was in a relationship with a man who fathered her four children. He was abusive in every way: verbally, physically, and sexually. At some point, the man started forcing Mari to have sex with other men in order to make some extra cash. Along the way, he recruited another girl - a woman named Janice - to join his prostitution ring.

If not for a fateful traffic stop, both women might still be in the monster’s thrall. When they were pulled over, a particularly observant officer noticed that the man had both Mari and Janice’s IDs in his wallet. This prompted the officer to ask to speak to each of them privately. At that point, Mari was able to get some help and free herself of her captor.

When a man came to Kevin’s door selling magazines, he was dismayed to find that Kevin was out of a job and suffering from financial troubles. He immediately offered Kevin a traveling sales job on the spot, promising a regular salary and a signing bonus.

The signing bonus never showed up, but that was the least of Kevin’s problems. On the job, the rest of the “sales team” were constantly miserable, but they worried about leaving because the management team - who all boasted about their arrest records - would beat them severely. Kevin personally witnessed several such events himself.

In addition, the managers refused to pay any money to their people unless they met their daily quota. The team was forced to work grueling 16 hour days and reimburse the “company” for any hotel or gas costs they accrued. What’s more, when they were paid, several employees were paid in drugs instead of money.

When Kevin tried to leave, he was threatened with death. His managers subsequently confiscated his ID. When Kevin ultimately failed to make enough sales, he was abandoned on the side of the road with no ID. Kevin was able to contact the National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC), and they helped him put his life back together. 

Born in a small village in Ghana, Natalia’s parents struggled to make the money they needed to send their daughter to school. So, when an offer came along and offered to see their daughter educated in the United States, Natalia’s family were happy to send her overseas.

Upon her arrival, Natalia was immediately imprisoned. Over the course of the next six years, she was repeatedly abused, both physically and sexually. She was forced to work 18 hour days cooking and cleaning for her “host” parents and their three children. Not only did the family not enroll Natalia in school, they refused to even allow her outside.

Fortunately, one day Natalia was able to slip out of the house and a neighbor called the authorities.

One survivor of human trafficking, who calls herself Kendall, told authorities that her parents only had her in order to sell her to an international sex trafficker. Her life began with sexual abuse, says the survivor, and she claims she was molested even before she could even walk. 

Kendall explained that the man, who she referred to only as “the man who owned me,” said that she wasn’t allowed to use the word “trafficking.” Kendall was told that, “I was made for that [sexual slavery], and trafficking is when girls who aren’t made for that get kidnapped or sold into it.”

Cristopher grew up in the Philippines, dreaming of moving to the United States. When a job recruiter told him that he’d found a job for Cristopher working at a hotel in the Appalachians, Cristopher happily paid $5,000 for the opportunity to travel to the US and live his dream.

When he arrived, he was told the job didn’t exist. Instead, he was bused to a Gulf State against his will. The journey lasted three days, during which time Cristopher had no money for food or water. Once at his destination, he was forced to work 18 hour days cleaning hotels for a pittance.

He was monitored constantly and regularly threatened with deportation.

In March 2013, then-30-year-old Joanna Dennehy went on a crime spree that rocked the people of England and left several men either dead or injured, making her one of the most infamous female serial killers in British history. When she was finally apprehended for the Peterborough ditch murders, law enforcement learned that Dennehy was driven by a "sadistic lust," which was noted by the judge who later sentenced her for her crimes.

In fact, Dennehy was determined to be so "cruel, calculating, and selfish," killing seemingly without motive, she was given a sentence that British courts reserve for only the most vicious and dangerous offenders, making it unlikely that she'll ever be able to brutally attack another unsuspecting man.

After she viciously attacked dog walkers John Rogers and Robin Bereza, Joanna Dennehy, who was wanted for the killings in Peterborough, was arrested and taken to a Hereford police station to be charged with three counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder. However, the young woman didn't appear to be the least bit upset by her situation, and instead she laughed and flirted with officers as she was being booked into jail.

When asked if she was suicidal, Dennehy responded that she felt "cheery," and she repeatedly smiled and played with her hair, indicating she was a deeply disturbed individual who felt no remorse for her crimes.

Long before she committed her first known murder, the stabbing death of Lukasz Slaboszewski, Joanna Dennehy told multiple people she had spent time in prison for killing her abusive father. However, her father was very much alive, and there is no evidence to support Dennehy's claims of abuse. In fact, she came from a relatively happy and stable family, but a dark side began to emerge when she started drinking heavily and using drugs as a teenager.

At the age of 15, Dennehy moved in with her 20-year-old boyfriend, and the couple had two children. However, their relationship ended, and the father of her daughters got custody of the girls after accusing Dennehy of behaving violently.

After murdering Lukasz Slaboszewski, Joanna Dennehy placed the young man's body in a trash can, and the killer was so proud of the murder she had committed, she showed the 31-year-old's corpse to a teenage girl. She was also unable to stop herself from boasting after she killed her roommate John Chapman, so she called one of her friends and sang lyrics from "Oops... I Did It Again," a song by Britney Spears.

Allegedly, Dennehy also danced after seeing television coverage of the murders, indicating she clearly got some pleasure and joy from her brutal and depraved crimes.

Over the course of 10 days in March 2013, 30-year-old Joanna Dennehy viciously stabbed three men to death, murdering her first victim, 31-year-old Lukasz Slaboszewski on March 19, 2013. Slaboszeski, who was originally from Poland, was Dennehy's roommate, and they shared a house in the city of Peterborough, England. 10 days after killing Slaboszewski, Dennehy stabbed another one of her roommates, John Chapman, 56, to death, and hours after taking the life of her second victim, she murdered her landlord, 48-year-old Kevin Lee. 

After killing each man, Dennehy dumped his body in a ditch not far from her home in Peterborough, but she didn't get rid of her victims' corpses by herself.

After disposing of the lifeless bodies of John Chapman and Kevin Lee, Joanna Dennehy and Gary Richards drove to Hereford, a town 140 miles from Peterborough, in search of people to attack, with Dennehy telling Richards, "I want my fun".

On April 2, 2013, Dennehy, with the help of Richards, attempted to murder two men, Robin Bereza and John Rogers, who were simply out walking their dogs. She stabbed Bereza once in the shoulder and once in the chest, and 10 minutes later she attacked Rogers, stabbing him 40 times and puncturing both of his lungs.

In order to get her victims into vulnerable situations that would make it easier for her to kill them, Joanna Dennehy used sex to lure men to their deaths. In the case of Lukasz Slaboszewski, her Polish roommate, he believed Dennehy was his girlfriend, and she used the closeness of this relationship to convince him to meet her at an empty house that belonged to her landlord. Shortly after he entered the home, Dennehy blindfolded Slaboszewski and stabbed him to death.

In addition to the professional relationship she had with her landlord, Kevin Lee, Dennehy was also regularly having sex with the married father. So, she was able to get him to meet her at the same property where she had killed Slaboszewski. After murdering Lee, she returned home and stabbed her roommate John Chapman six times, killing the middle-aged man.

Before killing Kevin Lee, her landlord and the man who gave her a job helping him tend to his rental properties, she convinced him to put on a black sequin dress. Then, after killing him, with the help of her accomplices, she dumped his corpse in a ditch, positioning his body in a sexually explicit manner undoubtedly designed to further degrade and humiliate the deceased husband and father. 

However, after murdering Lee and her roommates, John Chapman and Lukasz Slaboszewski, Dennehy had no intention of stopping her crime spree, and with the help of Gary Richards, her 7'3" friend and accomplice, she continued her reign of terror.

Although they didn't help her actually stab her victims to death, two men, Gary "Stretch" Richards and Leslie Layton, assisted Joanna Dennehy by disposing of her victims' bodies, dumping their corpses in ditches for her. Richards, who was more than seven feet tall, and Layton later claimed they didn't want to help Dennehy get rid of the bodies of the three men, but they agreed to assist her because they were afraid of the 30-year-old woman.

In the years before she committed the crimes that made her one of Britain's most notorious women, Joanna Dennehy displayed signs that she was an extremely troubled young woman. From the time she was a teenager, Dennehy had been a heavy drinker and drug user, and she had grisly scars all over her body caused by cuts she had inflicted on herself with razor blades.

She also worked as a prostitute or stole to get money to pay for drugs and alcohol, and she was arrested for theft in February 2012. Following her arrest, 29-year-old Dennehy was admitted to a hospital for psychiatric treatment, and she was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder and anti-social disorder. However, she didn't receive the medication or therapy she needed to stop her from going on to commit violent and deadly crimes.

On November 18, 2013, Joanna Dennehy pleaded guilty to murdering Lukasz Slaboszewski, John Chapman, and Kevin Lee, and the following year on February 28, 2014, she was sentenced to life in prison for her crimes. The judge who gave the confessed murderer a life sentence declared her to be "a cruel, calculating, selfish, and manipulative serial killer." Meanwhile, Dennehy proved him right, laughing and smiling as he addressed her and the court.

Only two other women have been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in Britain: Myra Hindley, who tortured and murdered multiple children with her boyfriend in the 1960s, and Rosemary West (pictured here), who was convicted of helping her husband murder several young women from 1971 to 1987.

From 1984 to 1988, Robert Berdella, who was known as an eccentric business owner and collector of rare and bizarre artifacts, took the lives of at least six young men and boys. However, before killing his victims, Berdella subjected these men and teenagers to terrifying and shocking acts of torture, even holding them captive for several weeks and raping and abusing them on a daily basis. He was the kind of killer who kept humans as torture pets for exceedingly long periods of time, slowly torturing them for months at a time.

Berdella's secret life as a sadistic killer was finally uncovered when one of his victims escaped from the shop owner's Kansas City home, wearing nothing but a dog collar around his neck. The people of Missouri's largest metropolis were horrified to learn of the brutal crimes that had been taking place in their community for years, causing Berdella to be dubbed "The Butcher of Kansas City" for his depraved acts.

When he was a teenager, Robert Berdella watched a film version of The Collector, a book by author John Fowles about a man who abducts a woman and imprisons her in his basement. Berdella claimed the film had a huge impact on him, and it served as inspiration for his crimes. In The Collector, a man named Frederick Clegg uses chloroform to kidnap Miranda, an art student he had become obsessed with, and he keeps her captive in his cellar in hopes that she will grow to love him over time.

The similarities between Fowles’s novel and Berdella’s crimes are undeniable; however, the book is obviously not to blame for the acts of torture and murder the killer carried out as an adult.

Robert Berdella’s first known victim was 19-year-old Jerry Howell, the son of one of the other seller’s at the flea market and a young man who was reportedly involved in prostitution. On July 4, 1984, 35-year-old Berdella picked the teenager up in his car, claiming he was taking Howell to a dance, but the 19 year old was never seen alive again by his family and friends. While Berdella met Howell through his store, a number of the killer’s other victims were sex workers he had befriended.

Berdella, who claimed he wanted to help men who were involved with prostitution, developed relationships with a number of sex workers he met in downtown Kansas City. However, according to people who knew Berdella’s victims, not all of the men he killed were gay or involved in prostitution.

After Jerry Howell disappeared, his father Gerald, who was also a merchant at the same flea market that housed Bob’s Bizarre Bazaar, suspected Robert Berdella had murdered his son. In fact, Mr. Howell reported his fears to law enforcement, claiming the middle-aged man was the last person to be seen with the teenager before he went missing.

Consequently, Berdella was put under police surveillance, but the authorities were unable to uncover any evidence to charge him with a crime or prevent him from committing future murders.

When he was 20 years old, Robert Berdella dropped out of art school and devoted most of his time to working as a chef at various restaurants in Kansas City. He also bought a home in the city in 1969, and he started filling it with oddities and antiquities that he purchased or acquired by trading artifacts with other like-minded collectors. However, his collection began to take over his three-story home, so Berdella got a booth at Kansas City’s Westport Flea Market in 1970.

The shop, which he called Bob’s Bizarre Bazaar, sold a range of unusual items, including drug paraphernalia, shrunken heads, and books on the occult. It also introduced him to a number of different people, including some of his future victims.

While he killed some of his victims by suffocating them with a plastic bag or strangling them to death with a ligature, others died as a result of asphyxiation caused by the gags Robert Berdella had forced into their mouths. After his victims died, Berdella would use a chainsaw to cut up their corpses, and he would wrap these body parts in plastic bags and put them in his garbage can for trash collection.

Afraid the sanitation workers would discover these grisly packages, Berdella watched from his window to make sure the garbage men didn’t become suspicious about the contents of his trash can. Because of the way he disposed of the corpses, most of the victims’ remains were never recovered.

Robert Berdella appeared to delight in inflicting pain on his victims, many of whom had considered him a friend, and he bound their wrists with rope and used leashes and dog collars to restrain the young men. Berdella subjected his victims to painful electric shocks that he administered using a 7,700 transformer, and he also applied caustic chemicals, such as bleach, to their eyes, causing them excruciating pain and temporary blindness.

To prevent his prisoners from screaming, he placed gags in their mouths, but Berdella also injected drain cleaner into their vocal cords to stop them from being able to cry out. However, perhaps the most disturbing act of torture was his practice of sodomizing his victims with his fist, causing such severe damage that he punctured the anal cavities of the young men.

While he was attending art school, Robert Berdella began using drugs and drinking heavily, and he eventually started selling narcotics, including marijuana, amphetamines, and LSD. Berdella was arrested twice during his second year of college for crimes related to drugs, once for selling amphetamines to an undercover cop and another time for possession of LSD and marijuana.  

Berdella was given a five-year suspended sentence for his crimes, but it did little to curb his criminal appetite or stop him from experimenting with drugs.

Robert Berdella approached his appalling torture as if he were a scientist conducting experiments, logging details about the sadistic acts, including when they were administered and how his victims reacted. He also injected the men with sedatives to keep them compliant and gave them antibiotics to stave off infection, so he noted down these doses as if he were a nurse or doctor attending to patients.

In some instances, he kept these young men in his home for weeks, subjecting them to unspeakable horrors multiple times a day. In addition to the written logs of his crimes, Berdella took lots of Polaroid pictures of his battered and bleeding victims, often shirtless or nude and with collars around their necks, gags in their mouths, and restraints around their wrists.

Like the main character in The Collector, Robert Berdella used drugs to incapacitate his victims, guaranteeing they would be easier for him to control. Typically, Berdella would invite someone back to his home, often by offering them a meal, drugs, or a place to stay, and then he would serve the unsuspecting men food or drinks laced with powerful sedatives.

Once the men were unconscious and unable to defend themselves, Berdella would move his victims to the basement or a spare bedroom where he would subject them to unspeakable acts of sadistic torture.

After graduating from high school, Robert Berdella attended the Kansas City Art Institute; initially, he wanted to become an art professor, but he turned his attention to culinary arts and studied to become a chef. While he was in college, Berdella incorporated animal cruelty into his art, even decapitating a live duck and dancing around with its corpse as part of a performance piece.

It’s not uncommon for people who become serial killers to treat animals cruelly and sadistically before they go on to harm and murder human victims, indicating there were signs that Berdella was dangerous from a relatively young age.

The systematic segregation that took place in South Africa during apartheid has left a lasting imprint on the nation as a whole. It's a country with complicated race relationships that stretch back years, and even centuries. The rise of gangs in South Africa can be traced to the Group Areas Act of 1950, which displaced black people from their homes and expelled them to designated regions. Forced into overcrowded areas, the population was driven to in-fighting and eventually splintered into gangs. Membership is on the rise in South Africa; in 2013, police estimated that there were 100,000 gang members in the Western Cape province.

This list explores some of the more notorious gangs in the country. South African gangs have carved out spaces in a nation that continues to struggle with its grim legacy. For marginalized groups, this life of crime is often one of the few options available.

Perhaps the most infamous criminal organization in South Africa is the Numbers Gang. It was founded in the late 1800s, when two men fought against inhumane conditions in the mine they were working in. 

Today, the organization is particularly pervasive in the South African prison system, where The Numbers Gang is divided into three tiers: 26s, 27s, and 28s. The lowest rung, the 26s, specialize in robbery and smuggling goods into the prison, while the 27s are the blood component - to join them, you must stab a guard or warden. The 28s, the top of the line, are violent sexual offenders who must assault another male inmate in order to join up.

According to some sources, being a part of the Numbers Gang is near compulsory if one wishes to successfully navigate, and survive, the South African prison system.

The Junky Funky Kids - also known as the JFKs - are no joke. Centering their activity in the Lavender Hill neighborhood of Cape Town, the JFKs are a serious drug-running enterprise that frequently issues "shoot at sight" orders on any rivals coming onto their turf.

The JFKs are also known for their legendarily brutal initiation process. New members have to strip and run through a gauntlet of two rows of existing gang members, all of whom hold clubs, leather belts, and wooden planks. As the new recruits run through, they are beaten bloody by the older members, proving their toughness and value to the gang.

The Firm was formed in the early 1990s as a who's who of local gang members in Cape Town. By joining forces and concentrating their power, the organization quickly became a major player in underworld activities.

The Firm is known most for running the drug trade in Mandrax (a type of Quaalude popular in South Africa), as well as operating shebeens, speakeasy-style bars that operate without licenses. The Firm has also been known to dabble in more white-collar crimes like tax fraud, for which their founder Colin Stanfield was convicted and imprisoned.

One of the oldest gangs in Cape Town, the Mongrels are known for their drug running and shebeen operations. They don't take kindly to rivals and are quick to pull the trigger on anyone infringing on their turf. The Mongrels account for a large percentage of the city's gang-related homicides.

The Mongrels start training their soldiers at a young age, sometimes as young as 12. They're also an outfit that's not scared to cut off an enemy's face and give to their mother.

Founded in the Chestnut Place, Belhar area of Cape Town, the Sexy Boys are known most for their drug running and ruthless racketeering (taxi drivers have to pay a "tax" to even drive through the neighborhood). Despite their more lighthearted name, the Sexy Boys have a reputation for brutality and murder. 

Though the gang saw much of their leadership sent to prison in the early 2000s, they still flourish as an active criminal enterprise.

Apartheid led directly to the creation of the Americans. The gang's name references how members relate more to black Americans than they do black Africans, being relegated to the fringes of society via forced segregation.

Members wear red, white, and blue, and their arms display tattoos reading "U.S.A." or bear imagery of Uncle Sam. The Americans are the largest gang in Cape Town, and have seized control of the meth trade, often to violent ends. 

Once you join up with the Americans, you take a serious, solemn oath: you are told that from that day forward you must be prepared to die at any given moment.

After the Americans, the Hard Livings are considered to be the second biggest gang in Cape Town. The gang was founded in 1971 by twin brothers Rashied and Rashaad Staggie in the Manenberg neighborhood, and as their criminal enterprise grew, so did tensions with their neighboring rivals. Things came to a head in 1996 when Rashied Staggie was publicly set on fire by a vigilante group.

Though the death of Staggie was a hit to the gang's leadership, they remained active in the drug trade and have been known to ally with the Sicilian mafia and the Chinese triads, taking their criminal activity to an international level.

Gary M. Heidnik wasn't exactly a serial killer, although he was responsible for the deaths of two woman he had kidnapped and held in his basement. Heidnik was born in Eastlake, Ohio, in 1943, and his checkered past included dropping out of high school, a short stint in the army, spending some time in jail, and even working as a psychiatric nurse - despite his own diagnosis of mental illness.

However, all of this pales in comparison to his later deeds, which landed him on death row in Pennsylvania. Heidnik kidnapped six women and held them in his basement lair in a horrifying torture dungeon that later provided the inspiration for Buffalo Bill from The Silences of the Lambs. Gary M Heidnik may not have had a high body count, fortunately, but he certainly committed some horrific acts. 

During his stint in the US Army, Gary Heidnik was diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder. Symptoms of this disorder include showing emotional detachment and coldness, not having any close friends or family members, and always choosing solitary activities over group ones. While Heidnik's later proclivities certainly make sense if he did have this disorder, several friends who were in the army with him claimed that he faked the diagnosis in order to be discharged with a disability pension. 

After his discharge from the army, Gary Heidnik took advantage of his medical training and began a career as a psychiatric nurse - despite his own diagnosis of schizoid personality disorder. Heidnik obtained his LPN (licensed practical nurse) status, and worked at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, but he only lasted a few months on the job before being fired for being rude and abusive to patients.

Gary Heidnik dropped out of high school in ninth grade. He joined the army, possibly inspired by the two years that he'd spent at Staunton Military Academy in Virginia. Heidnik spent 13 months in the US Army, receiving medical training and transferring to a post in Landstuhl, West Germany at the 46th Army Surgical Hospital. However, in April 1962, he began complaining that he suffered from severe headaches and other medical ailments. He was transferred to an army hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he received an honorable discharge. 

Throughout their short marriage, Gary Heidnik repeatedly beat and tortured his wife, Betty. She claimed that he forced her to watch while he had sex with other women. He also regularly beat Betty with his fists, despite the fact that she was pregnant with his child. She didn't want to leave him, as she had just arrived in the United States from the Philippines, but one of their neighbors finally convinced to escape for her own good. 

Gary Heidnik was arrested for his crimes on March 24, 1987, when one of his victims, Josephina Rivera, convinced him to let her go and visit her family. Of course, she walked away and called 911. The book The Silence of the Lambs was published in 1988 and turned into an award-winning movie three years later. The basement pit where Heidnik kept his victims inspired the creepy movie version where Buffalo Bill held the senator's daughter, warning her that "it puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again." 

Deborah Dudley died in Heidnik's basement on March 19, 1987. Heidnik decided to torture her by forcing her into the hole in his basement floor. He ran water into the hole, and then electrocuted her by holding a hot hot wire to the chains attached to her wrists. She died instantly. He made Josefina Rivera, another of his captives, sign a document stating that she helped kill Dudley, then took her with him when he dumped Dudley's body in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. The other three women that he was holding at the time stayed behind in the basement. 

Gary Heidnik not only raped the women that he held in his basement, but he also tortured them with electric shocks. The women spent a majority of their time in chains. The chains were either attached to the basement pipes, or loosened when the women were in the hole dug into Heidnik's basement. No matter what, the chains were around their wrists at all times. Heidnik would take a loosened live wire and hold one end to the metal chains, sending volts of electricity through his victims' bodies. He also tortured them by sticking a screwdriver into their ears. He played incredibly loud music 24/7 to drown out the sound of their screams.

Despite all of his previous activities, Gary Heidnik's terrible career was only beginning. He kept six women in his basement, chained to pipes and trapped at the bottom of a hole that he dug into the soil beneath his Philadelphia house.

The women were all captured at different times, and one (his first victim, Josefina Rivera) helped him obtain several others. Rivera was a prostitute; his second victim, Sandra Lindsay, was mentally disabled; and Lisa Thomas was a 19-year-old single mother who thought she was accepting a ride from a kind stranger. All three were captured by Heidnik in 1986. The other three, all picked up in 1987, were Deborah Dudley, Jacqueline Askins, and Agnes Adams.

Four of the six women survived their stint in Heidnik's basement, where they were tortured and raped repeatedly. 

Gary Heidnik's first victim died, he claims, by accident. Sandra Lindsay upset him because she wasn't eating the bread that he had given her fast enough, so he suspended her from his basement ceiling by her arms, supposedly not realizing he was slowly suffocating her.

Heidnik took her dead body upstairs and dismantled it with a chainsaw before cooking her remains. Josefina Rivera (whom he trusted enough to let wander throughout the house) remembered going upstairs and seeing Lindsay's head floating in a boiling pot of water on the stove. Heidnik claimed that he cooked her body, eating some of it himself before feeding the rest to his victims. However authorities did not find any proof that Lindsay's body was cooked. Instead they believe he dismembered her in order to scatter her body parts in various locations. 

Gary Heidnik wound up having three biological children with three different women. The first, a son named Jesse John Disto, was the product of his marriage with Betty Disto (later Betty Heidnik). Their marriage didn't last long - less than a year - as she reportedly left him when she came home one day and found him in bed with another woman. His other children, Gary, Jr. and Maxine Davidson, were the product of later relationships. The latter child's mother was an illiterate and mentally disabled woman named Anjeanette Davidson. Heidnik raped her, and their child grew up in foster care. 

The Fritzl case came to public attention in April 2008, when Elisabeth Fritzl and two of the three children living with her emerged from their basement prison in Amstetten, Austria. She had spent the last 24 years in a hidden basement "compound," locked up by her own father, Josef Fritzl. The horrors that she had to endure were both physically and psychologically scarring: her father raped her, impregnated her, and forced her to give birth to their incestuous children all inside that small space, while her mother lived in the upper sections of the home, believing her daughter was missing.

There is no doubt that Elisabeth would have remained there for the rest of her life, if her eldest daughter, Kerstin, had not gotten sick. In 2008, Elisabeth managed to convince her father (who was also Kerstin's father) to take the girl to the hospital. There, doctors wanted more information on the girl's medical history and made public pleas for her mother to come forward. Amazingly, Josef let Elisabeth out of the basement for the first time since she was 18 (she was now 42) and took her to see Kerstin and speak with the doctors. The police intervened, and everything unraveled from there. 

The cellar space where Elisabeth lived was sealed in by concrete in 2013, although the rest of the building still stands. Elisabeth and her children are living somewhere in Austria and undergoing therapy. Amazingly, Josef only received a prison sentence of 15 years, despite being found guilty of multiple charges, including murder, rape, enslavement, and incest. 

Elisabeth spent the first months of her imprisonment chained to the walls of her family home. Her father, Josef, first chained her arms to the metal bedposts in one of the rooms that became her living version of Hades. He then moved the chains so that they were around her waist. After a time (she believes it was either six or nine months), he removed all of the chains because they were getting in the way of his sexual activity with his daughter. 

Josef Fritzl didn't just rape his daughter, Elisabeth, repeatedly over the 24 years that he kept her imprisoned in his basement; he also made her reenact scenes from pornographic movies. Although explicit details have not been released (for good reason) it is safe to assume that was very degrading. Josef reportedly brought a television, VCR, and handfuls of pornographic VHS tapes into the basement, where he would make Elisabeth watch them with him and then act them out. 

Josef Fritzl began molesting his daughter Elisabeth when she was 11 years old. Elisabeth had six other siblings - four sisters and two brothers. It is unknown whether they were also subjected to Josef's abuse. 

When she was 15, Elisabeth completed her standard education in Austria and prepared to become a waitress. She ran away from home in 1983, staying at the home of a friend, ostensibly to get away from her father. Three weeks later, the police found her and brought her back home. Little else is known about her early years, as most news stories focus on the atrocities that came later. 

As if the rapes, forced pornography reenactments, pregnancies, and basement imprisonment weren't enough, Josef Fritzl also physically abused his daughter, Elisabeth. He kicked her and punched her with his fists, causing physical injuries, not to mention psychological scars. He also threatened her, saying "If you do not do as I say, your treatment will get worse and you will not escape from the cellar anyway." 

In 1996, Elisabeth Fritzl gave birth to her fifth and sixth children. They were twins, one of whom died three days after he was born. (The living twin, Alexander, was snuck outside and later adopted by Josef and his wife after being declared "abandoned.") Apparently the twin who passed away had trouble breathing and required medical attention. Josef, the father of the boy, refused to remove him from the basement, and later incinerated the unnamed child's body. 

When Elisabeth angered Josef, he would punish his daughter by cutting off the lights in the basement. He would also stop delivering food, forcing her and her children (fathered by him, of course) to starve at times. He also psychologically tortured the children by showing them pictures of other kids (possibly their siblings, three of whom lived with him and his wife, Rosemarie) playing outside in the sun. The three kids living in the basement never saw the sun, as the space had no windows. 

It goes without saying that the horrific nightmare of Elisabeth's imprisonment in her father's basement was made much worse by the fact that he repeatedly raped her. After she bore his children (three of whom stayed with her in the basement), he raped her in front of them. According to Elisabeth's testimony, Josef would visit every three days or so, bringing food and other necessities. During these visits, he would force himself on her. 

Elisabeth Fritzl was only 18 when her father, Josef, lured her into the basement. He claimed that he needed her to help him carry a door downstairs - the door, in fact, was the last remaining piece of the dungeon. Fritzl then knocked his daughter out with a rag dipped in ether. 

Unbeknownst to anyone else in the family, Josef had spent several years building a small section of the basement into a dungeon-like lair for his daughter. He got a permit for some of the space, and it was even inspected and approved by Austrian officials! The excavated space had several rooms that were connected by very narrow hallways. He even added a small bathroom, as well as a refrigerator, a hot plate, and a bed. The space was not temperature-controlled, and there were only two ways to access it, both hidden in Josef's workshop, which itself was behind a series of five locked doors. 

During her time in captivity, Elisabeth Fritzl gave birth to seven children, six of whom lived. After her release, a DNA test proved that her father, Josef, was indeed the father of all six of them. Three of the children - Kerstin, Stefan, and Felix - grew up in the basement prison with their mother. The other three - Lisa, Monica, and Alexander - were adopted by Rosemarie (Elisabeth's mother) and Josef. Josef brought them in, claiming that the children were Elisabeth's and he had discovered them abandoned on their property. He forced Elisabeth to write notes stating she couldn't care for each of them because of the cult she belonged to.  Rosemarie believed him. 

Over the 24 years that Elisabeth was trapped in her father's basement, he impregnated her eight times. The first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. In all, she gave birth to seven of Josef's children. The second-to-last pregnancy consisted of twins, one of which did not survive very long after birth. There is nothing more horrible than being forced to live in a dungeon-like atmosphere while giving birth to children brought about by an incestuous situation.