Horrifying Stories Of Someone Hearing Another Murder Over The Phone

Can you think of anything more terrifying than hearing someone being murdered over the telephone? Today nearly everyone carries a phone with them everywhere they go, which has led to an increasing number of people who have had to experience the paralyzing fear that comes with listening to a murder being committed over the phone with no way to help. 

In some cases, individuals were simply having a conversation with a friend or family member when tragedy struck. In other cases, witnesses or victims have contacted 911 dispatchers, who then have to listen to the murders as their happening over the phone. Still others place a call just to make sure that a record of their murder is preserved as evidence. Murders that occur during phone calls can indeed help to convict a killer, but the experience of listening to it as it is happening has to be one of the most frightening and heartbreaking experiences one can endure.

Once more people began carrying cell phones, the opportunity for emergency phone calls to be placed has increased significantly. Such was the case in the tragic event that occurred in Orlando, FL, in 2016, which ended with the deaths of a mother and her two young children.

The first call that came in concerning the case came from a local Chili's restaurant, where the caller reported that a fight had broken out in the parking lot. Within minutes, numerous calls were coming in to 911 reporting a fatality at the same location. Recordings of those calls reveal the heartbreaking last moments of thirty-one-year-old Chericia Brown. Her estranged husband, Henry Romone Brown, was clearly a deeply troubled man with ferocious anger in his heart. He approached his wife in the parking lot and took his anger out on her by stabbing her, and then driving a car into her and two others.

One of the 911 callers was by Chericia's side when she fell, and was helping to care for her wounds. The caller stated "It looks like she got stabbed, She's awake. She keeps saying, 'Help me, help me.' She's not being very responsive." Seconds later, the voice of another woman cried out, "Oh my God!" and the horrifying sound of a car hitting bodies came across the phone line. At that point, chaos erupted, and the 911 operator could hear only screaming and the sounds of running. One of the callers then told the operator that a car had hit three people, including Brown: "There's two [knocked] out, and another one's crying." The dispatcher asked for more details as to the victims' conditions, and the caller responded, "There's one that's dead, so..."

That one fatality was Chericia Brown, who was pronounced dead later that evening at the hospital. The two people helping her, one a nurse and the other a paramedic, were also injured, but thankfully survived.

Unfortunately, the evening held still more tragedy. Henry Brown managed to get away from the scene of the crime and drove to a nearby hospital, where he engaged in a shootout with local authorities. He then fled the hospital parking lot, with the police hot on his heels. When they finally caught up to him, the couple's two children were found dead inside their father's vehicle.

Rachel Jeantel was on the phone with Trayvon Martin just moments before he was shot by neighborhood vigilante, George Zimmerman. Jeantel was a good friend of Martin's, and the two were catching up on the phone as he walked down the street in Sanford, FL, on a late February night in 2012.

As the two were talking, Martin mentioned that a "man was watching" him, describing the man as a "creepy-a** cracker." Both Martin and Jeantel became a little anxious at that point, but continued their conversation. Jeantel testified that Martin told her he was trying to lose the man by walking back home. But Zimmerman continued to follow Martin, who was clearly becoming more anxious, according to Jeantel.

Soon, Martin told her that the man was right behind him. She advised him to run, which he did, and then the call was dropped. She called him back immediately and he was able to pick up and answer. She heard Martin say, "Why are you following me for?" Jeantel said she then heard the heavy breathing of the man standing next to Martin. "What are you doing around here?" he demanded of Martin. Then Jeantel heard some shuffling as Martin's phone headset fell off. She heard Martin shout, "Get off!" and then the call was lost again. Jeantel looked at her phone to see that the call ended at 7:16 p.m.

Sometimes people not only hear murders being committed over the phone, but actually witness the crimes via Skype or Facetime. Famed boxer, Floyd Mayweather, unfortunately became one of these people when he bore witness to a criminal act being committed by his friend, rapper Earl Hayes.

Hayes had called Mayweather claiming to be severely depressed and that he was thinking of killing himself. Mayweather spent two hours on Facetime trying to convince his friend not to commit suicide. At some point, though, Hayes put the phone down with Mayweather still connected and listening. Mayweather then heard Hayes walk away into the bathroom where he suddenly shot his wife, Stephanie Moseley. He then calmly returned to the phone and resumed his Facetime conversation with Mayweather, who was horrified. According to the boxer, Hayes was still determined to kill himself. Mayweather continued to plead with this friend, but it was of no use - the troubled rapper shot and killed himself, too.

In 2004, drug-crazed killer Danielle Lee Fels decided to make a phone call while in the midst of her murder spree in Brisbane, Queensland. Fels went to the home of siblings April and Ian Bailey in order to scare them into giving their drugs to her. However, things didn't go as planned, and when she called her friend Jacqueline Graham, she had already killed Ian Bailey, telling Graham, "I think he is dead."

Next, according to Graham, she heard "blood curdling screams" from an unknown woman. “It sounded like the woman was terrified and the scream was a blood-curdling sort,” Graham told police. Fels, who was 34 at the time and the mother of five children, wasn't charged until 2016, when she was finally brought in for murdering the Bailey siblings.

One evening, Prabha Arun was walking home from her job at an IT department in Sydney, Australia. She was chatting on the phone with her husband, Kumar, when out of nowhere, Prabha was stabbed only a few feet away from her home. Her husband, of course, had no idea what was happening to her, but became terrified when he heard her scream, "I think I've been stabbed!" He then heard her pleading with her attacker and screaming for help. She begged the man to not harm her and offered up all of her possessions if he would just leave her alone. Those may have been her last words, as the phone line then went dead and her husband was left horrified.

Police quickly found Prabha, who was still alive, and took her to a nearby hospital where she later died.

Nicola Cross was at her home in St. Albans, England, with her children when someone suddenly began banging on the front door. Nicola did not recognize the stranger and refused to open the door. She made a call to the police, and then phoned her husband, Daniel, who was away on business, and was assessing the situation with him when the man at the door broke into the home.

Nicola, 37, calmly told her husband to hang on while she investigated. Then, her husband heard frightening sounds from over the phone. Nicola was shouting at the intruder, "Get out of my house! What do you want?" Then he heard her beg, "You don't need to do this, you don't." A male voice then responded, "I do, I do." It turned out to be the voice of Marcin Porczynsk, a Polish auto mechanic, and the crazed individual who had broken in to the family's home. Daniel suddenly heard his wife scream, and then there was silence.

Court and medical experts later stated that Porczynsk brutally stabbed her, and that Nicola likely died almost instantly. Daniel, was quoted in his victim impact statement as stating, “I was on the phone before, during, and after. That phone call plays over and over in my head, along with Nik’s screams and her pleading for her life. I will never forgive myself for not being there to protect her. I am totally and utterly heartbroken. Our family had been broken and our futures taken away from us in a blink of an eye.”

Nicola Cross was murdered in front of her children, who survived the attack. Porczynsk pled guilty to a lower murder charge and is now in prison.

Joe Horn, of Pasadena, TX, was a man who minded his own business and was considered by many in his neighborhood to be a grandfatherly figure - but he was also very protective of his property. In 2007, when some neighborhood burglars came into his yard and began stealing some of his belongings, he called 911 and reported the activity along with his intentions to defend his property using a shotgun.

He reminded the dispatcher that Texas had a castle law, which under certain circumstances permitted a property owner to use firearms against intruders. The dispatcher remained on the line with Horn, trying to persuade him not to venture outside the house. "It's not worth killing anyone over," he pleaded with Horn. The dispatcher also warned Horn that officers were on their way to the scene, and that Horn should exercise extreme care so that he would not be shot and that the arriving officers would not be harmed.

Horn continued to speak to the dispatcher, one hand on the phone, the other on his shotgun. Finally, he announced that he was going out. He would not stand for anyone coming onto his property and stealing from him. The dispatcher continued to listen and then heard Horn say loudly, "Bang! You're dead!" followed by a series of gunshots. The suspected thief fell to the ground and was later pronounced dead.

In March 2013, a Dallas, TX, 911 dispatcher received a call from a woman named Deanna Cook, who was frightened for her life. The dispatcher remained on the line with her for at least eleven minutes. The dispatcher initially tried to get an address from Cook, but to no avail. The terrified Cook pleads over and over, "I'm not doing anything. Baby, please..." while her attacker mutters, angrily, "I'll kill you. I'll kill you. I'll kill you."

Within moments, the dispatcher hears Cook choking and apparently being strangled. Cook never speaks again on the call, but the dispatcher continues to listen, without notifying police that a murder is taking place. The only sound that is heard after the choking is the frightened barking of Cook's dog. Police finally arrived at the residence fifty minutes after the call ended. No one answered the door, but Cook was later found strangled to death inside the home. The dispatcher was severely questioned as to why she did not label the call as a murder case when she notified the police department. Cook's ex-husband, Delvecchio "Red" Patrick was charged with her murder.

In January 2016, Michelle Enright of Victoria, Australia, answered her phone to hear the frightened voice of her cousin, 39-year-old Samantha Kelly. Kelly told her that "they" had put something strange into her drink and that she was feeling "drowsy and funny in the head." Kelly pleaded with Enright to stay on the line with her and help her stay calm.

"Then she told me that they were planning on killing her," Enright said. Allegedly the "they" Kelly had referred to were Christine and Ronald Lyons and Christine's ex-husband, Peter Arthur. Kelly had long suspected the three of wanting to kill her so that they could take her children away. "She told me that she overheard them...they were arguing about how they were going to do it," continued Enfield. "Toward the end, she said 'they're here now' and that's when they've gone in and I heard...and then she's muffled," Right after that, according to Enfield, she heard Kelly make "a funny noise," and then the call disconnected. Three weeks later Kelly was found dead in a dry creek bed. Police said she had been bludgeoned to death.

Hearing someone suffer - and even die - over the phone is, unfortunately, part of the job for 911 operators. Training and experience don't make this aspect of the job any easier, and emergency operators are regularly exposed to frightening situations - all over the phone.

In 2014, a Denver 911 operator was on the phone for 12 minutes trying to get help to a woman whose husband was trying to murder her. The caller identified herself as Kristine Kirk, and said that she was terrified of what her husband, Richard Kirk, was doing in the couple's home. Kristine told the operator that her husband had started rambling on about how the end of the world was coming, and that he wanted her to shoot him. She told the operator that he was hallucinating and that the couple's three young children were frightened. The operator asked Kristine if there was a gun in the house, and she said there was, but that it was locked in a safe.

Immediately following that statement, the operator heard scuffling over the line, then screams and gunshots. According to the operator, "the victim was not heard again." Police finally arrived to the home and discovered that Kristine Kirk had been shot and killed. Her husband later confessed to the crime.