Family Murders

Parents, children, siblings and other relatives killed by one of their own.

53 cases

The Tiger Parents

Hann and Bich Pan pushed their daughter Jennifer toward perfection at any cost — and when she told police three armed men had burst into the family's Toronto-area home, investigators noticed her story didn't quite add up.

The Homeschoolers

Eleven-year-old Hana Alemu was adopted from Ethiopia into Larry and Carri Williams' strict homeschooling household of nine in Sedro-Woolley, Washington — a rescue rooted in faith, and in the harsh discipline of a book called To Train Up A Child.

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.

Like Mother, Like Son

In Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, Cheryl Kunkle raised her son Greg Rowe on resentment and control. When sixteen-year-old Kristin Fisher refused the abortion Greg demanded and gave birth to baby Kaylee, mother and son came to share far more than a grudge.

A Heartless Mother

After her young son David died, St. Louis mother Ellen Boehm bought a new car rather than pay his $2,348 funeral bill — and seemed more upbeat than ever. She still held a $5,000 life insurance policy on each of her surviving children.

Mommy's Little Helpers

Hilma Witte's Indiana household was ruled by her husband Paul's beatings — until it wasn't. Before the story ended, a grandmother lay dead in her bed, shot with a medieval crossbow as she slept, and Hilma's teenage sons carried the secrets.

A Cruel Hoax

Rebecca Koster promised her mother she'd message when she made it home from a night out in Holbrook, Long Island. The message never came — and a single fingerprint on a strip of duct tape led police to a stranger named Evans Ganthier.

Horseshoe Lake

Martha McKay returned to Horseshoe Lake, Arkansas, to restore Snowden House, the antebellum mansion of her childhood summers — the same estate where her mother had been murdered years before. The teenager convicted of those crimes, Travis Lewis, wouldn't stay behind bars forever.

The Cam Girl Obsession

Grant Amato spent more than $2,000 a night on Silvie, a Bulgarian cam model he'd never met but called his girlfriend, inventing a life of BMWs and big houses. His real, devoted family in Chuluota, Florida had no idea what his obsession would cost them.

Worlds Worst Mom

Driving near Lake Tahoe at dawn in June 1984, Maybel Harrison spotted flames beside the highway: a young woman burning on a makeshift pyre, bound, gagged, and unidentifiable. Nearly a decade later, Terry Knorr told police a story about her own family that no one believed.

Beyond Redemption

Sixteen-year-old Jason Sweeney saved every paycheck from his father's construction company to pay for military academy — his first step toward becoming a Navy SEAL. In Philadelphia's Fishtown, his lifelong best friend Eddie Batzig and the Coia brothers were growing jealous of every dollar.

The Closet

At 3:00 a.m. in Akron, Ohio, patrol officers found three emaciated, shoeless boys wandering the sidewalk, drinking from garden hoses and digging through trash cans. Over foot-long sandwiches — the best food they'd ever tasted — the brothers began to explain what their lives had been.

Wheres Savanna

Nursing student Savanna Greywind, twenty-two and pregnant, lived with her close-knit family in a Fargo apartment building where neighbors rarely got past hello in the hallway. Then the woman from the third floor knocked on the Greywinds' door — and Savanna answered.

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 Swindler

Widowed cellist Janine Sutphen found late-life love with Rob Petrick, a churchgoing computer tinkerer she married within a year. When her devoted sons called in January 2003, Rob always had an answer: their mother was in bed, too depressed to talk.

Hidden Betrayal

Interior designer Jade Janks had cared for her ailing stepfather, Tom Merriman, through his decline in Solana Beach, California. Then, on his computer, she discovered more than a hundred intimate photos of herself — meticulously organized, some dating back to when she was sixteen.

The Santa Fe Strangler

A maid opening room 205 of a Santa Fe motel in November 1983 found a twenty-two-year-old woman strangled with a red handkerchief, her hands bound with a pillowcase. When secretary Teri Mulvaney was murdered months later, her family already had a name: David Bruce Morton.

Vanished Innocence

Two days after Christmas 1962, six-year-old Mona Rae Minyard walked to Portland's Three Brothers Market with a five-dollar bill and her mother's short grocery list. She never came home — and suspicion settled on Joseph Walton Holmes, the man who lived just across the field.

Bloodstained Secrets

The Kinney family said they discovered their best friend Brad McGarry shot dead in his basement while dropping off a weed eater in Bel-Air, Ohio. The house was ransacked, yet nothing was missing — and David Kinney's tearful account began to unravel.

Touchdowns and Pom-Poms

Freshman cheerleader Emma Walker and senior football star Riley Gaul were Central High School's picture-perfect couple in Knoxville, Tennessee — he the polite boy next door, she a girl dreaming of nursing newborns. Her parents' fondness for Riley wouldn't survive what came next.

The Revolving Doors

Born to a bootlegger's family in small-town Missouri, Charles Ray Hatcher grew from a bullied, brutalized boy into a cold and remorseless predator. His life became a revolving door through America's prisons — and the danger returned each time the door swung open.

The Champions

The Champions were pillars of Cadiz, Kentucky — a farming family, an award-winning teacher, a Farm Credit director. Then police found a stranger named Vito Riservato dead at the family home, and son Ryan sitting beneath a tree in the yard, mumbling incoherently.

The Hitchhiker Slayer

In 1970s Isla Vista, hitchhiking was simply how UC Santa Barbara students got around — until young women with outstretched thumbs began to vanish. When Jacqueline Rook missed Thanksgiving with her family, the community's free-spirited trust began to crumble.

The River Brent Killer

On a warm August afternoon in 2014, fourteen-year-old Alice Gross texted her father that she was heading home along West London's canal towpath. Dinner came and went, and Alice never arrived — and the search would lead police to a Latvian immigrant with a dark past.

Mother's Day

In the months before Mother's Day 2017, Joshua Webb of Colton, Oregon, told friends that a black box in his garage was recording him and that voices in his head were growing louder. What he carried into an Estacada grocery store that day defied belief.

Collateral Damage

Five-year-old Nathan O'Brien begged to sleep over at his grandparents' Calgary home the night of their estate sale in June 2014. When his mother returned the next morning, Nathan, Alvin, and Kathy Liknes were gone — and the house told a grim story.

Web of Lies

Chandler Halderson told everyone a story: a degree nearly finished, an IT job waiting, a move to Florida planned. When his parents, Bart and Krista, went silent at their home near Madison, Wisconsin, in the summer of 2021, detectives began pulling at the threads.

Harvard Trained

Amy Bishop grew up in Braintree, Massachusetts, forever in the shadow of her effortlessly brilliant younger brother, Seth. What happened between them one afternoon in 1986 would be ruled an accident — and stay buried for more than two decades.

Friendly Reminders

No one outside the family noticed that thirteen-year-old Erica Parsons had been missing for a year and a half — until her adoptive brother Jamie, kicked out after a fierce argument, walked into the Rowan County Sheriff's Office with a chilling accusation about their parents.

No Body, No Crime

On Mother's Day 2018, hairstylist Joleen Cummings failed to pick up her three children in Yulee, Florida. Suspicion fell on a coworker at Tangles Hair Salon — a woman who, it turned out, had lived under eighteen different names across fourteen states.

Sacred Trust

Thirteen-year-old Danny Croteau was found dead along the Chicopee River in 1972, and suspicion quickly settled on a family friend no one dared accuse: Father Richard Lavigne, the parish priest. The case would stay open for nearly fifty years.

The Frankston Serial Killer

In the winter of 1993, the seaside Melbourne suburb of Frankston lived in terror as three young women — a student, a new mother out buying milk, a girl taking a shortcut home — were murdered in a matter of weeks. A yellow Toyota spotted near a bike path changed everything.

The Mission Valley Mall Murders

Days before Christmas 2013, Ilona Flint and Salvatore Belvedere were shot in a San Diego mall parking lot while searching for Salvatore's missing brother Gianni — Ilona's fiancé. Three weeks later, Gianni's car turned up a hundred miles away with a terrible secret in the trunk.

Child of Chaos

Lorraine Thorpe was fifteen, drifting between squalid flats, and caring for her alcoholic father among Ipswich's forgotten street drinkers in the summer of 2009. What unfolded inside that hidden world would force Britain to confront an almost unimaginable case.

The Unraveling

To neighbors in Gilbert, Arizona, Marissa DeVault and Dale Harrell looked like a typical family — generous enough to take in a brain-injured Army veteran the kids called 'Uncle Stan.' What detectives found in the master bedroom shattered that picture.

Bail Granted

Dr. Andrew Bagby, a young physician beloved by his Pennsylvania patients, was found dead after ending his turbulent relationship with Shirley Turner, a medical-school classmate twelve years his senior. She fled to Newfoundland — carrying Andrew's unborn son.

The Hudson Murders

The St. Croix County medical examiner walked into O'Connell Family Funeral Home in Hudson, Wisconsin, expecting routine paperwork — and found funeral director Dan O'Connell and a young intern shot dead. Hudson hadn't seen a murder in twenty-four years.

Blue Earth Jane Doe

Michelle Busha fled her strict Bay City, Texas home and called her family from the road — until the calls stopped in the spring of 1980. That May, a young woman found murdered near Blue Earth, Minnesota, was buried without a name, a Jane Doe for decades.

The Forbidden Closet

For years, Michele Kalina kept one closet in the family's Reading, Pennsylvania apartment locked, forbidding her daughter ever to look inside. In July 2010, nineteen-year-old Elizabeth finally opened it — and called 911 about what she found in a cooler.