Torture Cases

Crimes involving prolonged and deliberate cruelty.

31 cases

The Gorton Confession

On an April afternoon in 1996, forty-eight-year-old James Patterson Smith calmly walked into a Manchester police station to report that his teenage girlfriend, Kelly Anne Bates, had drowned in his bathtub — but the crime scene brought seasoned officers to tears.

Master and Slave

Elaine O'Hara vanished near Dublin in August 2012, the day after her release from a psychiatric hospital — and the investigation that unfolded over the next three years exposed one of the most shocking crimes in Irish history.

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 Girl in the Box

In 1977, twenty-year-old hitchhiker Colleen Stan turned down rides that looked like trouble before accepting one from a clean-cut young couple with a baby — a decision near Red Bluff, California that would swallow seven years of her life.

The Repo Man

Repo man Mike Adams kept his Frisco, Texas showplace in flawless order — labels facing forward, a couch no one could sit on, handguns sorted by caliber — and his fixations turned menacing after Nicole Leger and her teenage son moved in.

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.

The Canal Killer

In February 2001, two boys fishing in London's Regent's Canal snagged a duffel bag weighted with bricks — the first of six bags divers would recover, holding a woman whose missing head, hands, and feet made her nearly impossible to identify.

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.

The Kičevo Monster

In sleepy Kičevo, Macedonia, three older women were beaten and strangled between 2005 and 2008 — and mild-mannered local journalist Vlado Taneski covered the murders with an uncanny eye for details no reporter should have known.

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.

Unlucky 13

On Friday the 13th of April 2012, Brittany Killgore was packing to leave Fallbrook, California when Marine Louis Perez offered a Hornblower dinner cruise in San Diego — an evening entangled with Dorothy Maraglino, a woman who despised her.

Consumed by Desire

When eighteen-year-old Heather Gibson tried to break up with Chad Wiersma, he drove her to a remote spot outside Kalamazoo and threatened to kill her and her family — the opening act of an obsession that would not let go.

The Carnival Cult

Johnson County police wrote off the pentagrams and '666' graffiti around Whiteland, Indiana as harmless heavy-metal kids — but Mark Goodwin's homegrown cult, Satan's Disciples, had begun recruiting among the traveling carnival crews.

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.

The Family Murders

In 1972, Bevan Spencer von Einem was hailed a hero for rescuing two men thrown into Adelaide's River Torrens. Seven years later, sixteen-year-old Alan Barnes stuck out his thumb on Grand Junction Road to hitch a ride home — and never arrived.

Her Dissociative State

Betty Devore carried the scars of a brutal Iowa childhood — beatings, rape, and a mother in and out of mental institutions. Three weeks after meeting charming antique dealer Harold Frieberg at a singles meeting in Fairfield, she married him. Her buried past came along.

The Killer Cop

When a sheriff's cruiser stopped teenage hitchhikers Nancy Trotter and Paula 'Sue' Wells on Florida's Treasure Coast in July 1972, Deputy Gerard Schaefer lectured them about the creeps and kidnappers out there — then kindly offered the girls a ride to Jensen Beach.

Fossil Creek

Konstantin Simberg arrived in Phoenix from Russia dreaming of the America he'd seen on MTV — fast cars, easy money, beautiful girls. Then he fell for Kseniya, a dancer at Christie's Cabaret, and his American dream began a dark slide toward a place called Fossil Creek.

Room 3109

By the time British banker Rurik Jutting reached Hong Kong — a vice president who cried at his desk and snorted cocaine through the workday — the boy raised to believe he was a 'great one' was unraveling. Room 3109 was waiting.

The Leg Thing

Fourteen-year-old Chris Steiner vanished from his Baraboo, Wisconsin home on the night of July 4, 1994, leaving a window screen cut from the outside and muddy footprints on the carpet. A year later, thirteen-year-old Thad Phillips woke to find himself being carried into the dark.

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 Sacrificial Shack

Pre-med student Mark Kilroy and three childhood friends made their third annual spring-break trip to South Padre Island in March 1989. One night across the border in Matamoros, Mark stepped away from his friends — and vanished into something far darker than anyone imagined.

Langworthy Road

Two motorists on a country lane outside Manchester stopped for a horribly burned girl staggering toward the road. 'Help me. I'm Suzanne Capper,' she rasped — then named every one of her tormentors, exposing a week of horror at 97 Langworthy Road.

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 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.