Death Row

Killers who were sentenced to death.

54 cases

The Toolbox Killers

Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris met behind prison walls, then bought a windowless 1977 GMC van they nicknamed 'Murder Mac' — and began cruising the Pacific Coast Highway toward a fire road in the San Gabriel Mountains.

The Glamour Girl Slayer

Long before he posed as a professional photographer hiring Los Angeles models, Harvey Glatman was a bullied Denver kid with a disturbing childhood fascination with rope — an obsession that never let him go.

A Walking Shadow

Nineteen-year-old Myles Fukunaga worked eighty-hour weeks to keep his family afloat in 1929 Hawaii, but when the Hawaiian Trust Company came collecting back rent once again, his quiet desperation fixed on a plan inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case.

God Chose Us

Two days before her high school graduation, Shari Faye Smith's little blue Chevette sat idling at the end of her family's long South Carolina driveway, the driver's door open and the mail scattered — and seventeen-year-old Shari was gone.

The Lady Killer

Neville Heath charmed postwar England posing as a decorated airman with aristocratic names — but when Margery Gardner was found dead in a London hotel room, the trail led to the crowded seaside resort of Bournemouth, where Heath was already courting someone new.

The Broomstick Killer

Doted on by his pistol-packing mama in tiny Rosebud, Texas, Kenneth McDuff grew from small-town bully into one of the most sinister figures in Texan history — a killer handed unprecedented leniency by the very system meant to stop him.

Cold Storage Killer

After a Morrissey concert in June 1991, Denise Huber's gray Honda Accord was found abandoned on the Corona del Mar highway with a flat rear tire, just miles from her Newport Beach home — and for three years there was no trace of her at all.

The Jacksonville Monster

Struggling mother Rayne Perrywinkle thought the kindly stranger offering a $150 Walmart gift card for her daughters' clothes was an answered prayer — but 'Don' was a man a Jacksonville girl had once hidden from inside a playground slide.

Dead in the Water

Jo Rogers and her daughters Michelle and Christe left their Ohio dairy farm for their first real vacation, snapping photos from a hotel room overlooking Tampa Bay — days before the Coast Guard began pulling bodies, roped to concrete blocks, from the water.

The Mousse Can Killer

Robert Mark Edwards was raised on beatings and addiction and turned early to burglary — and when a woman was found beaten and strangled, the bloody can of hair styling mousse left on her bed became the case's strangest piece of evidence.

Blue Mist #22

On a snowy January morning in 1972, eight-year-old Shelly Mickelson climbed into her trusted neighbor Robert Moorman's Chevelle for a lunch her mother never approved — the start of a story that would end at the Blue Mist Motel in the prison town of Florence, Arizona.

The Crybaby Killer

Feeling ill, bartender Tami Engstrom left her shift early and stopped at the Nickelodeon Lounge in Masury, Ohio, where she showed off her new diamond ring and drank into the night with her uncle's friend, Kenneth Biros — and never made it home.

Slayer's Book of Death

Texas teenager Jason Massey tortured animals to feed the urges festering inside him and filled notebooks with fantasies of death. When a younger boy asked him for a ride to see his girlfriend, thirteen-year-old Christina Benjamin, Massey started making plans of his own.

The Eagle Scout

Thirteen-year-old paperboy Danny Joe Eberle vanished from his Bellevue, Nebraska route one Sunday morning in 1983, leaving behind his beloved BMX bike and a bag of undelivered newspapers. Just thirteen days earlier, another paperboy had disappeared two hours away in Des Moines.

Baby Lollipops

A utility crew working along Miami's North Bay Road spotted what looked like a candy wrapper behind a hedge. It was a lollipop decal on a tiny shirt — worn by a battered, starved toddler no one could identify, a boy the case would name Baby Lollipops.

Pied Piper of Tucson

Charles 'Smitty' Schmid stuffed his cowboy boots with crushed cans, wore pancake makeup, and painted on a fake mole — and Tucson's teenagers followed him anyway. Then he told Mary French he wanted to know what killing felt like, and asked her to pick the girl.

The Girl Scout

Selling Girl Scout cookies door to door in Sabre Springs, California, Brenda van Dam and seven-year-old Danielle stopped at the immaculate home of wealthy neighbor David Westerfield — who bought cookies, showed off his kitchen, and mentioned his 'adult parties.' That weekend, Danielle vanished.

The IHOP Murder

Alcohol carried Dee Casteel from executive secretary for Hialeah's mayor to waitress at a Florida IHOP owned by Art Venecia. When Venecia's younger lover, Alan Bryant, complained that he was sick of 'the old fuddy-duddy,' Dee was the one listening.

The Bushy-Haired Stranger

Eight-year-old Vicki Lynne Hoskinson pedaled her pink Christmas bicycle two blocks to mail a birthday card in Tucson, Arizona, in September 1984. Minutes later, her sister found the bike lying in the middle of the road — and no sign of Vicki.

The Sunday School Teacher

Eight-year-old Sandra Cantu skipped across the street outside her Tracy, California mobile home park on March 27, 2009, and was never seen again. At a community vigil, a tearful Sunday school teacher named Melissa Huckaby pressed a note into the hands of police.

Twisted Triangle

Karen and Kraig Kahler had the marriage other couples tried to emulate. Then, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, a neighbor in Burlingame, Kansas, watched a man park a red SUV outside great-grandmother Dorothy Wight's farmhouse and stomp toward the porch carrying something large.

The Kuwaiti Wedding

Nasra al-Enezi's mental illness went undiagnosed her whole life in Kuwait, where stigma kept her suffering in silence as she raised two special-needs sons. When her husband Zayed decided to take a second wife, the wedding celebration ended in catastrophe.

The Screwdriver Killer

In 1957, Connecticut's George Davies answered a newspaper ad — 'French girl desires light housekeeping' — with devious intentions. Seventeen-year-old Gaetane Boivin left a note about a job opportunity and never came home; days later, nine-year-old Brenda Jane Doucette vanished walking to school.

Death in the Cornfield

Sierah Joughin pedaled her purple bicycle home through the cornfields outside Metamora, Ohio, after a lazy July afternoon with her boyfriend Josh, promising to call him that night. By 9:30, her bedroom light was on — but Sierah was nowhere to be found.

The Zombie Hunter

The day before her twenty-second birthday, Angela Brosso set off on a five-mile bike ride along a Phoenix canal near her home and never came back. For more than two decades, the canal killings haunted the Sunnyslope neighborhood.

The Leaf Killer

When Tina Herrmann missed her shift at the Mount Vernon Dairy Queen, her manager drove out to check on her — and found a house full of blood but no trace of Tina, her two children, or her friend Stephanie Sprang.

The South Side Strangler

A car left running all night on a quiet Richmond street led police to Debbie Davis's apartment in September 1987 — the first in a series of brutal stranglings across Virginia that would push detectives toward a brand-new forensic tool called DNA.

The Cape Coral Monster

Jan Cornell rushed home before her early-morning shift in May 1990 to find her Cape Coral townhouse silent — her eleven-year-old daughter Robin and roommate Lisa Story inside. The DNA left behind would wait twenty-six years for a match.

A Bad Actor

Struggling Orange County actor Daniel Wozniak needed money for his wedding and honeymoon. His friend and neighbor Sam Herr, an Army veteran, had $62,000 in combat-pay savings — and Wozniak had written himself a script no one saw coming.

The City Planner

Twelve-year-old Tina Marie Harmon stopped for a fudgesicle in Creston, Ohio, and never caught up with her friends. Two men were charged in her death — while matching orange carpet fibers kept turning up wherever more young girls were found.

The Slumber Party

After her bitter second divorce, Sandi Nieves gathered her daughters for a special slumber party, letting them fall asleep together in the kitchen of their California home. What the morning brought would put her at the center of one of the state's most disturbing trials.

An Easy Target

Eighteen-year-old Kelsey Smith dashed into a Target in Overland Park, Kansas, on June 2, 2007, to grab a last-minute anniversary gift for her boyfriend. Store cameras recorded her leaving — and what happened in the seconds after she reached her car.

The Bedroom Basher

While Marine Kevin Green stepped out for late-night food in September 1979, someone entered his Tustin, California apartment and savagely beat his pregnant wife, Dianna. She survived with shattered memories — and what she remembered would cost Kevin sixteen years.

The Bathtub Killer

Schoolteacher Christine Vu was found bound and drowned in her own bathtub at Arlington, Texas's Peartree Apartments in 1996. When another young woman was found the same way, police realized a predator was choosing victims frighteningly close to home.

The Viking Princess

Seven-year-old Athena Strand, who dreamed of being a Viking princess in pink armor, hopped off the school bus near her home in Paradise, Texas, in November 2022. By nightfall she was missing — and the search led to a delivery driver named Tanner Horner.

The House on Chipman Street

After a Saturday night dinner date in January 2007, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom lingered in a Knoxville apartment parking lot, unaware of the shadows moving between the cars. The carjacking that followed became one of Tennessee's most horrific crimes.

The Reno Predator

Nineteen-year-old Brianna Denison fell asleep on a friend's couch near the University of Nevada, Reno campus in January 2008, a teddy bear tucked under her head. By morning she was gone — and police realized a predator had been stalking the university district for months.

The Jack in the Box Murders

Late on a Sunday night in May 2002, a familiar face in uniform knocked at the locked door of a Mesa, Arizona Jack in the Box, claiming he had been called in to work. Assistant manager Fausto Jimenez recognized recently fired coworker Christopher Hargrave — and turned the lock.

The Animal

In July 1979, Rose Hlavka came home to a silent Portland apartment and found her twenty-year-old sister Anna Marie strangled with a clock radio cord — a crime so cold it would wait decades for an answer.

The Baseline Killer

It began on Baseline Road in Phoenix in August 2005, when a calm stranger with a silver handgun ambushed three children walking home from church — the first attack in one of Arizona's most terrifying crime sprees.

The I-70 Rapist

A beeping smoke detector in a vacant Wichita apartment led a maintenance man to a scene that broke veteran detectives — and reopened the trail of a predator who had stalked the highways along I-70.

Imprint of Evil

A blood-soaked sleeping bag dumped beside an Oregon highway held the belongings of twenty-year-old Carrie Love, a Seattle woman who had just taken a job with trucker Jesse Pratt — and never made it to her destination.

They'll Blame Us

When four-year-old Genny Rojas was found burned and lifeless in her aunt and uncle's Chula Vista apartment, Veronica Gonzales begged the neighbors not to call police — and she and her husband Ivan each had a story to tell.

The Kite Flyer

Eleven-year-old Junny Rios-Martinez made the local paper when he won a kite contest on Florida's Space Coast. The very next day, a man calling himself a Florida Today photographer phoned his family asking to meet the young champion.

The Killing Cousins

Fifteen-year-old Michael Rock was riding his bike past a Vero Beach house in July 1983 when a naked, bound teenage girl came running down the gravel driveway, screaming — with a large man in pursuit.

The Boardwalk Murders

Kosta Fotopoulos told Daytona Beach police he had shot a burglar who put a bullet in his sleeping wife's head. But the dead intruder had stolen nothing — and had walked straight to the couple's bedroom.

The Kennedale Murders

Eight days before Christmas 2009, a house fire lit up a quiet street in Kennedale, Texas — the home of John Hummel, his wife Joy, their five-year-old daughter, and Joy's father. Investigators soon realized the fire was only the cover story.

The Lakewood Monster

On the Fourth of July 1996, nine-year-old Cynthia Allinger left her Lakewood, Washington, apartment in her favorite flowered dress to visit friends nearby. By the time the fireworks faded, she still hadn't come home.

Mockingbird Hill

On a December morning in 1987, a man in a black coat and cowboy hat shot receptionist Kathy Kendrick in a Russellville law office and drove off toward the next name on his list — and what Ronald Gene Simmons had already done at Mockingbird Hill was worse.