10 Seemingly Normal People Who Hid Chilling Secrets In Their Homes

Even the most normal people have secrets behind closed doors. But when those seemingly normal people have something terrifying inside their home - tucked away from prying public eyes - it's downright terrifying. After police uncover dead bodies in someone’s basement or live human captives chained to beds, everyone’s so shocked - and not just at the acts but of the identity of the perpetrator. It’s rarely who you suspect. It’s usually the guy on the block with the perfect lawn who gives the best Halloween candy that has a secret obsession for all things Satanic and the occasional man-meat sandwiches. Some strange, most disgusting, all of them creepy; this list explores a few of those cases where the secrets creepy people kept locked inside their homes were exposed and continue to stun the masses.

Ahmad Suradji was a cattle breeder in Indonesia who just so happened to also be a serial killer. He also had an affinity for collecting strange objects, including corpses. He pretended he was a shaman who could work spells and heal diseases, which led women to seek him out for help. Instead he killed them. Suradji lured women out into the sugarcane field by his house to perform his ritual, then buried them up to their waists and strangled them to death with a cable.

Suradji confessed to murdering 42 females ranging in age from 11 to 30 during an 11 year period. But he didn’t dispose of the bodies, he kept them. Once they died he would dig them up only to rebury them closer to his house. He strategically placed them with their heads pointing towards his house as part of the ritual. Apparently, he thought his creepy feng shui corpse garden was going to send him extra magic powers. As if that wasn’t grotesque enough, he also collected their saliva. After his arrest in 1997, Suradji told police his father came to him in a dream and told him he had to kill 70 women and drink their saliva in order to become a mystic healer. He was executed by firing squad on July 10, 2008.

Charles Albright of Dallas, TX, was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of Shirley Williams, Mary Pratt, and Susan Peterson which took place between 1990 and 1991. Albright is known for his creepy obsession with eyes. Not only did police find he had a habit of removing eyes from photographs and dolls, but he also removed the eyeballs of his victims with surgical precision.

Ed Gein, also known as The Butcher of Plainfield, was the notorious grave robber and killer who inspired some of the creepiest characters of cinema - Leatherface of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Norman Bates of Psycho. Gein was thought to be shy, socially awkward, and a bit strange, but no one could have guessed what horrors were hoarded away in his home. Following his mother's death, Gein dug up graves and mutilated the bodies to craft random household items for years.

It wasn’t until November 16, 1957, when a local hardware store owner named Bernice Worden disappeared that Gein was brought to the attention of police. Gein had been the last person to see Worden and that prompted a search of Gein's property. Not only did they find Worden's decapitated and mutilated body hanging upside down in Gein’s shed, but they also found the body parts of women he’d dug up on at least 30 different visits to the cemetery. Gein also confessed to the murder of Mary Hogan, a local tavern owner.

Gein had nine vulvae in a shoebox, four noses, human heads, lips, fingernails, a corset made from a torso, and a human heart by his stove. He’d made bowls and bedposts from human skulls. He used women’s skin to make a chair, lampshades, masks, and a wastebasket. Police also found Mary Hogan’s face in a paper bag–Gein had literally carved it off. Gein was found guilty of first-degree murder but also legally insane so he was locked up in a mental hospital for the rest of his life. He died on July 26, 1984.

Jeffrey Dahmer, the Milwaukee Cannibal, raped, murdered, and dismembered seventeen men and boys from 1978 to 1991. Dahmer’s later murders evolved into acts of necrophilia, cannibalism, and even preservation of parts of his victim’s remains; most notably, their genitals. Dahmer liked to store his male genitalia collection in his lobster pot and had a freezer full of human organs, including an entire torso. Investigators also uncovered 74 Polaroid pictures depicting the dismemberment of Dahmer's victims. As the chief medical examiner said in reference to Dahmer’s house, "It was more like dismantling someone's museum than an actual crime scene." Dahmer was sentenced to fifteen life terms in 1991, but was beaten to death by a fellow inmate in 1994.

Josef Fritzl of Amstetten, Austria, had a soundproof dungeon constructed under the home he shared with his wife and daughter Elisabeth. Apparently Fritzl had been sexually abusing his daughter since she was 11-years old and when she turned 18 he locked her up in his cellar and reported her missing. For 24 years Fritzl kept his daughter hidden, repeatedly raping her while his wife went about her day without a clue that her daughter was being brutalized beneath her feet.

Elisabeth gave birth to seven of her father’s children, one was sick as a newborn so Fritzl burned him in the furnace. Three of the six surviving children were kept captive down in the basement with Elisabeth, never knowing the outside world existed. The other three children were brought upstairs, Fritzl claimed Elisabeth abandoned her children on the doorstep and ran off with some cult. It wasn’t until one of the children, Kerstin, got sick and needed to be hospitalized that Fritzl’s secrets came out. In 2008 Elisabeth (42 years old at this point) and her hidden children (Kerstin, 19; Stefan, 18; and Felix, 5) were finally freed. Josef Fritzl plead guilty to kidnapping, rape, incest, false imprisonment, slavery, and murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Ariel Castro wasn't necessarily considered normal - his wife and child left him because he had been abusive - but nothing about him alarmed anyone who knew him. No one took much notice of him in the neighborhood, so no one knew his wife leaving him didn’t end his reign of terror on women. Castro kidnapped three women who accepted rides from him. He abducted Michelle Knight on August 23, 2002, when she was 21, Amanda Marie Berry on April 21, 2003, the day before she turned 17, and Georgina "Gina" Lynn DeJesus  on April 2, 2004 when she was only 14.

All three victims were locked in Castro’s dark basement or tied to his bed. They suffered brutal beatings, emotional abuse, and were raped repeatedly during the 10 years they were held captive. They were only fed once a day, allowed to shower once or twice a week, and given a tiny, dirty toilet. Castro impregnated Michelle Knight at least five times and would cause her to miscarry by starving her and beating her with dumbbells.

Amanda Berry gave birth to a daughter while in captivity, and DNA evidence confirmed Castro was the father. It was Berry who saw the opportunity to escape on May 6, 2013. Castro left an interior door leading to the upper floor unlocked by accident, allowing Berry to go into the living room and yell for help out the window. By getting the attention of neighbors, Berry got out of the house and called Cleveland PD to Castro’s house to free the other two women. Castro pled guilty and was given a life sentence but committed suicide after just a month in jail.

Fred and Dolly Oesterreich appeared to be a normal married couple but behind closed doors, Fred was a heavy drinker and the two were constantly fighting. Dolly decided she’d had enough of her husband’s nonsense and actively sought out to have an affair. After seeing 17-year-old Otto Sanhuber, a repairman working in her husband's Milwaukee factory, Dolly’s sewing machine suddenly came down with some mechanical issue that needed his services right away. When Sanhuber showed up to the house, he was greeted by Dolly, penthouse forum style in nothing but stockings and a slinky robe. He gladly became her sex slave.

They grew tired of sneaking around town to carry out their affair so Dolly moved the boy into her attic without her husband knowledge. Sanhuber was all too happy to throw everything away and exist solely for this woman. He’d spend his days doing Dolly’s household chores and sexually pleasing her, then creep back up to the attic to work on his pulp fiction novel once her husband came home. When the Oesterreich’s moved from Milwaukee to Los Angeles Dolly moved her lover with them.

Things exploded one night when the Oesterreichs were having a fight. Sanhuber stormed down from his belfry with two .25 caliber pistols and shot Fred three times, killing him. The lovers tried to make the whole thing look like a break in and for years the murder remained unsolved but eventually the police found the guns and some items allegedly stolen in the robbery. Dolly Oesterreich was arrested in 1936 but the charges against her were dropped, her trial resulted in a hung jury. Sanhuber hadn’t interacted with anyone but Dolly in over 10 years but he feared murder charges more than the outside world and fled the country. Sanhuber was eventually caught and convicted for manslaughter, but due to the statute of limitations he was cut loose.

Thomas Mair did volunteer work, taught disabled children, and wore the face of a kindly neighbor willing to help everyone with their gardening, all while devouring as much creepy Nazi propaganda he could get his hands on in his West Yorkshire home.

Apparently, no one, not even his family knew of his obsession with the Third Reich or of his ties to online networks of white supremacists. It wasn’t until Mair brutally murdered Jo Cox, a Labour Member of Parliament on June 16, 2016 (one week prior to the EU referendum outlining Brexit) that his secret life was revealed. Witnesses heard Mair screaming, "Britain first. This is for Britain. Britain will always come first," as he shot Cox three times, and then stabbed her 15 times with a dagger.

Police uncovered hoards of books and pamphlets on the Holocaust and SS Race Theory in addition to his own writings, including letters that were previously published in SA Patriot-in-Exile. Mair wrote that he felt "white liberals and traitors" were the "greatest enemy" of apartheid. His writings also stated, "I still have faith that the White Race will prevail, both in Britain and in South Africa, but I fear that it's going to be a very long and very bloody struggle." Mair was found guilty of murder November 23, 2016 and sentenced to life in prison.

Anatoly Moskvin was a writer and historian capable of speaking 13 languages who's been described as a genius. It seems there really is a fine line between genius and insanity. Moskvin developed a sick fetish his parents had the unfortunate luck of discovering when popping in for a surprise visit in 2011. The couple walked in to find their son had been digging up female corpses, some as young as three-years-old, and was keeping them inside his apartment. They called police immediately and upon further inspection, they found the bodies had “repairs” made to them and were dressed up like dolls. 

Moskvin openly admitted to the grave robberies - he’d taken 29 corpses and desecrated 150 graves by rummaging through them for clothing. He said he’d visited over 750 cemeteries around the country and claimed his dolls of the dead collection was simply research for his next book.

Later, Moskvin went on to express his sympathy for dead children and his belief that eventually, through science or black magic, they could be brought back to life. Crafting dolls from their remains was his way of preserving them. He felt he was giving them functional bodies to use when they were eventually reanimated.

For Jerome Brudos of Oregon, it all began at the age of 5. He found his first pair of women’s shoes and hoarded them away until his mother finally found them and destroyed them. This didn’t end his guilty pleasure, he continued to collect women’s shoes and his obsession escalated to stalking women simply based on their shoes. His first known assault occurred when he was just 17. He threatened a teenage girl with a knife, forced her to strip, and beat her. After high school he became an electrician and got married. Despite his seemingly normal domestic life, he was still stalking and raping women before stealing their clothes and shoes.

Unfortunately, stalking wasn’t enough either. Bruno went on to murder four women who he chose based on their shoes, which he stole from their corpses. Brudos also took his victim’s breasts as trophies, and even took a victim’s foot so he could see how it looked in the other women’s shoes he’d acquired. Brudos and his shoe collection were taken into police custody in 1969. He was found guilty of all four murders and spent the rest of his life in prison.