When it comes to true crime stories, urban environments often serve as a hotbed for vicious murders and nefarious deeds. Presented here are ten examples of urban true crime stories, ranging from mob violence to serial killers to meticulously planned robberies. This article does feature mentions of graphic violence, drug use, and sexual assault, so reader discretion is advised.

10. St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

When it comes to true crime stories, one can never forget the world of the mob and underground crime. This is most relevant to our first story, that of the  St. Valentine’s Day Massacre which occurred in Chicago on February 14, 1929. This story focuses on two gangs, each led by Bugs Moran and Al Capone respectively, both big players in Chicago’s mob scene. The two gangs were in a constant state of contention until things finally boiled over that faithful Valentine’s Day morning.

That morning, seven members of Bugs Moran’s North Side Gang were seized by men posing as police officers, lined up executioner’s style against a garage wall, and horrifically gunned down! Despite never being officially linked to the crime, all signs pointed to the massacre being the brainchild of Capone. Given the brutal and violent nature of the incident, the  St. Valentine’s Day Massacre proved to be a major turning point in the public’s perception of organized crime. 

Despite the widespread notoriety of the crime and subsequent investigations, no one was ever convicted of the massacre. This was most likely due to a lack of witnesses who were willing to step forward, compounded by the likely influence of mob intimidation methods.

9. The Great Train Robbery

Although the idea might seem quite old-fashioned now, train robberies were and still are a rather common crime in many countries. If you are looking for a major example of this rather theatrical crime, one needn’t look any further than the Great Train Robbery of 1963. On August 8, Bruce Reynolds and his team of 15 robbers halted the Royal Mail train in transit from Glasgow to London. After disabling the train’s signals, as well as overpowering its crew, Reynolds and the other robbers made off with around £2.6 million (or $3.3 million).

It wasn’t long before this cinematic-level crime was all over the front page news, capturing people’s attention due to the scale and meticulous nature of the robbery. Not only was there the aforementioned signal jamming but the gang had also used insider information to map out the precise layout of the train. Additionally, they were also well aware of the exact amount of cash that was going to be transported that day onboard the train well in advance. 

However, while these wannabee-Robin Hoods may have planned the robbery out to the last detail, the same can’t be said for their habits afterward. Due to many gang members’ excessive spending habits, as well as a concurrent police investigation, the crew was eventually brought to justice. 

8. The Zodiac Killer

In the annals of serial killer history, there are few names as mystifying and bone-chilling as the Zodiac Killer. Beginning in the late 60s, the Zodiac Killer began a string of five murders in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969. Additionally, on July 31, 1969, he sent three letters to three Californian news outlets: The Vallejo Times Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Francisco Examiner. 

These letters were not only where he dubbed himself as the Zodiac Killer but where his other trademark, his cryptic letters and cryptograms, were established. In these crazed letters, Zodiac would tease and taunt law enforcement, all while claiming his victims would be his slaves for the afterlife. Despite only taking credit for a total of five murders, all within the state, Zodiac found himself linked to several other cold cases as well. 

In the years since his crimes and cryptic messages, Zodiac has never been caught, despite several suspects having been looked at in the years since. After all the books, podcasts, and critically acclaimed movies dedicated to him, the sinister legacy of the Zodiac Killer still looms over the Gold Coast.

7. The Boston Strangler

In one of the most gruesome crimes to ever hit the city of Boston, 13 women were assaulted and strangled in their apartments between June 1962 and January 1964. The twist perpetrator was initially dubbed the Mad Strangler of Boston, the Phantom Strangler, and the Phantom Fiend. This moniker stemmed largely from the Strangler’s M.O. which consisted of making his way inside his female victim’s homes with seemingly minimal effort. His other trademark was the brutal and horrifically efficient method he opted to kill his victims with, that being the use of their clothes as his instruments of murder.

Despite the widespread panic and a sizable manhunt effort, a culprit was never found, that is until late 1946 and the emergence of Albert DeSalvo. After assaulting a young woman in her own home, DeSalvo was identified by the victim with his photo later being published in the newspaper. Following the publication of his image, DeSalvo was identified by several past Boston Strangler victims, confident that he had been their assailant. Following his arrest, DeSalvo confessed to being the Boston Strangler, though some still maintain that he only did so under coercion or to attain notoriety.

6. The Cocaine Cowboys

Miami, Florida in the late ’70s and early ’80s was marked by a manic and violent chapter due to a massive influx of cocaine from Colombia. This is where the Cocaine Cowboys, a group of drug smugglers and traffickers, came into existence. Their smuggling efforts were nothing short of bold, frequently moving staggeringly colossal quantities of cocaine over the border with great frequency. This resulted in many of the Cowboys being able to afford the most lavish lifestyles one could have at the time, complete with fast cars, big yachts, and all-night parties. 

Many might be familiar with the Cowboys via the eponymous Netflix docuseries focusing on two key figures in the drug trade, Sal Magluta and Willie Falcon, AKA Los Muchachos. When all was said and done, both men were accused of smuggling at least 75-plus tons of cocaine into the United States, resulting in over $2 billion in profits. These two men were just the tip of the iceberg regarding the amount of people profiting off these highly illegal activities. However, the party couldn’t last forever, as eventually, law enforcement efforts caught up to the Cowboys, resulting in several high-profile arrests and prosecutions.

5. The Axeman of New Orleans

In the early 1900s, the streets of New Orleans were turned into a nightmare, with Italian immigrants being brutally murdered in their own homes. The Axeman of New Orleans claimed six lives while injuring six others, from May 23, 1918, until October 27, 1919. Based on his rather theatrical moniker, the killer’s weapon of choice was often a straight razor or, more frequently, an axe, the murder instrument he’d become known for. However, in additionally odd detail,  the killer would use an axe that was already on the premises of whoever’s home he had broken into. 

As previously mentioned, a majority of the Axeman’s victims were Italian immigrants, leading to theories that the crimes were motivated by mafia ties or ethnicity. The strangest wrinkle in the story came when the Axeman sent a handwritten letter to the local newspaper outlining his motives. The Axeman, claiming to be a supernatural being, noted that he’d spare those who played jazz music in their homes on a specific night. Motives from sexual sadism to jazz music appreciation were all proposed at one time or another, all varying in their likelihood. Despite many theories, the Axeman was never caught, leaving his specter to haunt New Orleans to this very day. 

4. The Atlanta Child Murders

Any fans of the David Fincher-helmed Netflix series Mindhunter will be immediately familiar with the events of the Atlanta Child Murders. From 1979 to 1981, close to 28 African American children youths ranging from children to adolescents to even young adults were abducted and killed. All of the victims, a majority of them male, were often found to have been dumped in remote areas such as nearby woods or the river.

As the murder continued and bodies kept turning up, Atlanta’s black community began expressing their outrage due to the slow response of local law enforcement. They attributed this slow response, not unreasonably, to racial biases that were present at the time, and sadly still exist today. The dark cloud of these killings loomed over Atlanta until eventually an arrest was made in the form of 23-year-old Wayne Williams. Through forensic evidence, Williams was convicted with two of the older victims with authorities simply opting to attribute the child murders to him as well. Despite his arrest, many people, especially the parents of the victims, weren’t satisfied, still maintaining there was more to the murders. Whether or not Williams was the sole perpetrator of the Atlanta Child Murders or if the case had multiple culprits is still debated even in the modern day. 

3. Ariel Castro kidnappings

In May 2013, the neighbors of Ariel Castro were alerted by the screams of 26-year-old Amanda Berry, who’d been imprisoned in his house since 2003. Following her escape, it was revealed that Berry was one of three kidnapping victims, the two others being Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus.

All three girls had been subject to sexual and physical violence at the hands of Castro, with Knight having gone through five separate miscarriages. Additionally, all three girls were barely fed, only receiving a meal a day, and were only allowed to bathe twice a week if they were lucky. Berry ended up giving birth to Castro’s child in 2006 with the delivery being done in a small inflatable swimming pool.

Eventually, Castro got a bit careless and forgot to lock a large inside door that usually prevented the girls’ sounds from reaching the streets. This is what allowed Berry to flag down some neighbors who were able to help her escape, finally ending the trio’s decade-long nightmare. Following their rescue, all three girls were immediately rushed to a nearby hospital to begin their long recovery process. Castro was subsequently arrested and given a life sentence, something he’d escape by hanging himself a month into his sentence. 

2. The Night Stalker

Richard Ramirez, AKA The Night Stalker, was a serial killer who terrorized the streets of California in the mid-1980s. He earned his sinister moniker from the nature of his crimes, breaking into the homes of his victims often late at night and under the cover of darkness. After breaking in, Ramirez would viciously sexually assault, mutilate, and murder his victims, with only a few surviving to tell the tale. 

The most miraculous was Maria Hernandez, who survived a gunshot from Ramirez due to holding her keys in front of her head at the moment of impact. Others were not so lucky and would end up as just another gruesome victim claimed during the Night Stalker’s moonlight activities. During this time, many West Coast residents were gripped in fear, locking their windows and doors at night, lest they be the Night Stalker’s next victim.

Despite his illusive nature, Ramirez was far from a criminal mastermind, as the man was just insanely lucky when it came to his misdeeds. So it shouldn’t be too much of a shock that eventually his luck ran out when a widespread manhunt finally resulted in his capture in 1985. Ramirez ended up spending years on death row before dying of complications from B-cell lymphoma in 2013 before his planned execution.

1. Son of Sam

It was only a matter of time before our urban true crime discussion brought us to the streets of New York City. The city that never sleeps has played host to many a gruesome crime, whether in broad daylight or under rows of flickering street lights. 

However, when it comes to noteworthy crimes native to NYC, one needn’t look any further than the summer of 1976 to 1977 and David Berkowitz, better known now as the Son of Sam. From 1976 to 1977, the boroughs of the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn were hit with a string of horrific murders. Using a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver gun, Berkowitz claimed six people’s lives while wounding seven others, sending panic through the streets of New York. Though his choice of victims seemed fairly random, he seemed to frequently target couples parked in cars.

During his crime spree, Berkowitz would taunt the police, as well as the news media, with cryptic notes, wherein he’d dub himself the “Son of Sam.” He even went as far as to claim that he’d been commanded to commit these crimes by a demonic talking dog named Sam, hence the strange moniker. In August 1977, Berkowitz was finally arrested and sentenced to six consecutive life terms in prison, putting an end to the Son of Sam’s reign of terror.

The world of true crime is a diverse place of various incidents, running a wide gamut of locations and circumstances. From city prowling serial killers to incidents in international waters, you can never been too sure where evil will make its presence felt. Case in point, the suburbs, in any community, are often regarded as a safe haven for many, a calming place free from the hustle and bustle of bigger metropolitan areas.

However, as this list will show you, the suburbs and small communities have played host to a sizable crop of disturbing true crime stories. Fair warning, this list will touch upon some rather distressing topics, so definitely be ready before proceeding any further. 

10. Murder of Tara Lynn Grant

The murder of Tara Lynn Grant unfolded in Washington Township, Michigan, in 2007. Grant, a 34-year-old mother of two, disappeared under very mysterious circumstances, with her husband Stephen Grant declaring her as missing in February of that same year.  It was later revealed that Stephen himself had murdered Tara and dismembered her body following a domestic dispute. Authorities would later find Tara’s dismembered remains hidden in various locations in the state of Michigan.

Stephen was eventually convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 50 to 80 years in prison, with another six to ten years added on for mutilating her body. The Tara Lynn Grant murder case shocked the local community and even garnered national attention due to its brutality. It was simply unbeleivable for many people that such a heinous crime could’ve occured within such a seemingly normal family.  The case raised questions about domestic violence and anyone can be capable of some truly heinous crimes in the right circumstances. 

Tara Lynn Grant’s sickening murder serves as a grim reminder of the horrors of domestic violence and the tragic consequences it can have. Tara’s memory still lives on almost two decades later, still serving as a poignant symbol of the need to address issues of abuse within a familial environment. 

9. The Silk Road

If you’ve been plugged in to the internet for long enough, then the term dark web has likely entered your vocabulary. Basically it refers to overlay networks that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations, or authorization to access.

This brings us to the Silk Road, a notorious online black market that operated on the dark web from 2011 to 2013. Using the cryptocurrency Bitcoin as a form of payment, users were able to  buy and sell a wide range of illegal goods and services. The puppetmaster behind this illicit marketplace was one Ross Ulbricht, operating from his suburban home under the name of “Dread Pirate Roberts.”

While the website primarily branded itself as a place for more than just the purchase of drugs, that became what it was predominetly known and used for. This heavily contributed to growing concerns about public safety and the ease of accessing illegal substances online.

Ross Ulbricht was charged and arrested in 2013 for crimes including money laundering, hacking, and even conspiracy to commit murder. The latter charge involved alleged murder-for-hire, targeting various individuals who threatened the operations of the Silk Road website. In 2015, Ulbricht was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. 

8. The Austin Yogurt Shop Murders

In a disturbing act of violence, four teenage girls were found murdered at a local yogurt shop in Austin, Texas, on December 6, 1991. The victims, Amy Ayers, Eliza Thomas, Jennifer Harbison, and Sarah Harbison, were not only shot but also the shop was set on fire in an attempt to destroy evidence. News of the incident quickly traveled through the community, leaving the case’s investigators with a baffling and very disturbing crime scene.

Despite an intense and protracted investigation, the case remains unsolved, and numerous theories have emerged over the years. Complicating the matter, the crime scene was contaminated, and evidence was mishandled in the early stages of the investigation. Despite multiple suspects being considered, none have been definitively linked to the murders.

The Austin Yogurt Shop Murders continue to haunt both the victims’ families and the community as well, serving as a tragic aexample of an unsolved crime. At the time of this writing, he case still remains open, with law enforcement and amateur sleuths periodically revisiting it with hopes of one day bringing the perpetrators to justice, offering some closure to the families and the community at large.

7. The Menendez Brothers

Beverly Hills, that’s where I want to be, but we can’t think of too many who’d want to die there. This was the fate that befell Jose and Kitty Menendez, both murdered by their own sons, Lyle and Erik, in August 1989.  

The tale of the Menendez Brothers, Lyle and Erik, is regarded as one of the most sensational and disturbing murder cases in American history. In the late-’80s, the two brothers brutally killed their wealthy parents in their own lavish mansion located in Beverly Hills, California. The crime, initially regarded as a random act of violence, was soon determined to have been fueled by more sinister motivations. 

After their arrests, Lyle and Erik would claim that they acted in self-defense, stating that they were subjected to years of abuse, both physical and emotional,  at the hands of their parents. In 1993, the brothers were put on trial, a legal proceeding that ended up capturing the entire nation’s collective interest. On one side, the defense argued that the alleged abuse of Jose and Kitty Menendez drove their sons to murder, wheras the prosecution portrayed Lyle and Erik as sadistic bloodthirsty monsters. While not initially convicted, both brothers ended up being found guilty in a 1996 retrial, wherein they were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

6. The Original Night Stalker

Joseph James DeAngelo, better known as the Golden State Killer, was an elusive serial murderer, as well as sexual predator, who terrorized California from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. DeAngelo’s crime were simultaneously heonous and extremely calculated, often targeting the residents of single-story suburban houses. This macabre methodology allowed DeAngelo to commit horrific acts of sexual assault before murdering several of his victims and their partners. These crimes earned him the fitting moniker of the Original Night Stalker, predating Richard Ramirez, another serial killer with a similar title. 

DeAngelo’s ability to evade law enforcement made him one of American history’s most notorious and feared criminals. It was wasn’t until April 24, 2018, that Sacramento County Sheriff’s deputies arrested DeAngelo in the side yard of his Sacramento home. DNA analysis had come a tremendously long way since the days of DeAngelo’s original crimes and finally gave law enforcement all they needed to track him down. 

After more than 40 years of eluding capture, investigators used modern DNA analysis to identify and arrest DeAngelo. In the summer of 2020, DeAngelo plead guilty to 13 counts of first-degree murder, as well as several acts of burglary and sexual assualt. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole later that same summer.

5. The BTK Killer

In the pages of The Last Book on the Left, written by Ben Kissel, Marcus Parks, Henry Zebrowski, they make a point of stating just how unlikable the BTK Killer is. They specify that no serial killer is actually likable but, unlike a few others who at least have a tragic backstory, the BTK Killer — AKA Denis Rader — is perhaps the most loathsome of all. 

The BTK stood for “Bind, Torture, Kill” which was Rader’s prefered method of handling his victims during his infamous crimes. Between 1974 and 1991, Rader turned Wichita, Kansas, as well as its surrounding areas, into his own personal hunting ground. As his disturbing moniker would imply, his sickening crimes were marked by the binding, torturing and eventual murders of his victims.  

Adding to his repugnant crimes was Rader’s immense ego, often taunting the media and law enforcement with cryptic lettes and detailed descriptions of his murders. He even went as far to include sickening mementos of his murders in his sinister little care packages. Rader went untouched by law enforcement for decades, that is until his ego got the better of him for the last time and was finally undone by the advent of modern technology. Rader was ultimately sentenced to 10 consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole, much to the relief of many. 

4. The West Memphis Three

In the ’90s and early-2000s, the case of the West Memphis Three garnered immense attention and controversy. The case revolved around the  the convictions of three teenagers, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley Jr., for their alleged involvement in the brutal murders of three young boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, in 1993. Much of this was fueled by the “Satanic Panic” revolving around the fact that the trio enjoyed playing Dungeons and Dragons. (In fact, the fan favorite, D&D-playing character of Eddie in season four of Stranger Things was directly inspired by Echols.)

The case itself was affected by several issues, not the least of which being the questionable confessions from Misskelley, who was intellectually limited. In addition to Misskelley’s comments, the trial was plagued by allegations of Satanic ritual abuse, which only intensified the proceedings. 

The case gained immense notoriety due to the efforts of various supporters who believed in the innocence of the three men. Additionally, documentary films like Paradise Lost and West of Memphis led to increased public scrutiny due to elaborations on the flawed investigation. However, in 2007, new DNA evidence did not link the West Memphis Three to the original crime scene.

After spending nearly two decades behind bars, Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley entered an Alford plea, which allowed them to maintain their innocence while acknowledging that there was enough evidence for conviction. They were subsequently released from prison in 2011.

3. The Slender Man Stabbing

If you were the type to frequent horror message boards and binge creepy content on the 2010s internet, then you might be already familiar with the Slender Man. Simply put, the character is a internet-born horror character, a tall faceless man in a suit who often lurks in the woods of small towns. However, the character has also gained some unfortunate notoriety due to his involvement in the aptly named Slender Man Stabbing. 

In 2014, two 12-year-old girls, Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser, lured their friend, Payton Leutner, into the woods where they brutally stabbed her 19 times. Thankfully, young Payton survived the attack and was able to crawl to a nearby road where she was eventually rescued. It was later revealed that Weier and Geyser committed the act as part of a ritual to become proxies of the Slender Man, protecting them from his evil powers. 

Soon the two girls and this once-niche internet character were making national headlines, raising discussions about the the influence of the modern internet. Both girls were ultimately found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, and they were committed to psychiatric facilities.

2. The DeFeo Murders

If you grew up in New York, more specifically within the Long Island area, then the name Amityville should be instantly familiar to you. Back in 1974, on the night of November 13, the small town of Amityville was rocked by something ripped right from the pages of a horror novel. On that night, Ronald DeFeo Jr., the eldest son of the DeFeo family, murdered six of his family members in cold blood. This included his parents, Ronald DeFeo, Sr. and Louise DeFeo, and his four younger siblings, Dawn, Allison, Marc, and John Matthew. This alone makes it quite disturbing but it only gets creepier when you learn the specifics of the killings.

It was learned that Ronald, only 23-years-old at the time, carried his heinous actions out while his family members were in bed, shooting them all while they were asleep. However, physical evidence indicates that Louise DeFeo and Allison were both conscious prior to their respective demises. The story here doesn’t even end with the murders themselves, as the subsequent homeownwers, The Lutz family abandoned the home, citing supernatural disturbances as the cause. It was these paranormal claims that inspired Jay Anson’s 1977 book The Amityville Horror and the subsequent horror film franchise. 

1. The Cheshire Home Invasion

The Cheshire Home Invasion occurred in Cheshire, Connecticut, in July 2007. The incident involved the Petit family, consisting of Dr. William Petit, his wife Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and their two daughters, 17-year-old Hayley Petit and 11-year-old Michaela Petit.

Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, two career criminals, invaded the Petit family’s home, tied up the entire Petit family, and subjected them to various acts of horrific violence. The assailants set the house on fire, causing the deaths of Jennifer, Hayley and Michaela, leaving Dr. Petit as the only survivor. Following their horrific misdeeds, Komisarjevsky and Hayes were apprehended, tried, and sentenced to death. During the trial, it was argued that the crime may have had a few contibuting factors, the main one being monetary. Another reason may have been Komisarjevsky’s own sick interest in Michaela who had had sexually assualted amidst the invasion. 

Needless to day, the case shocked the nation, exposing many to the viscous brutality that some criminals are capable of. It jumpstarted new conversations about home security, the response of various law enforcement groups, and the how repeat offenders are dealt with via the legal system.

Whether it’s the most crowded cities or the sleepiest of suburbs, one needn’t look too far for what evil men can do. However, the often tranquil countryside or the most desolate of rural locales can also play host to some truly horrific events. From small towns to scenic farmlands, these rural true crime stories will keep you up at night. As always, given the subject matter, we’ll discuss some rather disturbing topics, so keep that in mind before diving in. 

10. The Villisca Axe Murders

Terrifying true crime stories might be a fixture of modern media, but they’ve also been present since the early 1900s. Case in point is the tale of the Moore family, as well as two of their friends, who were slain one hot night in the summer of 1912.

The victims consisted of Josiah, Sarah, their four children, and two of their close friends, Ina Mae and Lena Gertrude Stillinger, who were visiting at the time of the murders. However, what should have been a peaceful evening soon turned into an unimaginable horror show. Following a pleasant night out at the local local Presbyterian Church, the whole group returned home and went to bed. Following their drift off to slumber, the still-unknown assailant entered their home and began their cruel work.

The next morning, several missed calls from Josiah’s clerk and the family’s absence during their usual morning rituals quickly set off warning signs for their neighbors. Eventually, the town marshall arrived on the scene, kicking down the door and eventually discovering everyone slaughtered in various rooms throughout the house. Amongst the mangled remains of the victims were a bloodied axe, a slab of bacon, as well as clothing covering any mirrors in the house. 

9. The Keddie Murders

In the early 80s, the small town of Keddie, located in Northern California, was rocked by a crime nothing short of stomach-churning. The sight of the murders, a quaint cabin, was populated by the Sharp family who had only moved in the previous year. The family consisted of the mother Sue, a divorcee, and her children – John, Sheila, Tina, Rick, and Greg. However, the charming Keddie Resort where the family made their home would soon become their final resting place in April 1981. 

On the evening of April 11, Shelia stayed at another nearby cabin, taking part in a sleepover with the Seabolt family. That night, a 14-year-old Sheila went to bed, comforted in the knowledge that her whole family was only a stone’s throw away. However, the next morning, upon returning to her family’s cabin for a change of clothes for church, she walked right into a waking nightmare. There, in the cabin’s living room, were the bodies of Sue, John, and Dana all bound with medical tape and electrical cords. Tina’s body was the only one unaccounted for, eventually discovered three years later roughly 100 miles from Keddie. To this day, despite some theorizing and several fruitless leads, the culprits behind the murders have yet to be identified. 

8. The Ken and Barbie Killers

Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, as far as outward appearances go, were as unthreatening and normal as possible. However, underneath their blonde hair and white bread demeanors, were two greatly disturbed minds who’d soon turn Toronto into their twisted playground. 

Paul Bernardo was already well on his way to infamy before his marriage to Karla, having committed several sexual assaults in Scarborough, Ontario back in 1987. Bernardo’s sadism did appeal to one woman, Karla, who much like Paul, was far more unhinged than her appearance and upbringing would suggest. In a disturbing twist of fate, Karla was not only okay with Paul’s deranged sexual proclivities but encouraged and participated in them. In 1990, they carried out their most heinous crime when the duo drugged, beat, and sexually assaulted Tammy Homolka, Karla’s 15-year-old sister. 

This streak of sexually charged cruelty and murder carried on until early 1993 when Karla left Paul following a beating with a flashlight. Eventually, DNA evidence was able to link Paul back to his crimes in Scarborough leading to his arrest and both of them being put on trial. These circumstances turned the once-sadistically star-crossed lovers against each other, with Karla seeking a plea bargain in return for her testimony against Paul.

7. The Lawson Family Murders

We now shift focus to the farmlands of Northern Carolina and the disturbing crimes of tobacco farmer Charlie Lawson. Unlike a few of the aforementioned crimes in this list, while we do have a culprit, the reasons for Charles’ actions are, to this day, still an enigma. 

It was just a few days before Christmas, 1929, and Charlie Lawson had taken his entire family into town for some brand-new clothes and a family photo portrait. This included his wife Fannie and his seven children – Marie, Arthur, James, Maybell, Raymond, Carrie, and Mary Lou. However, in a horrific turn of events, it appears Charles made this day as pleasant as possible to offset the atrocity he was poised to commit. On Christmas Day, as the family was getting on with their day Charles went to work killing all of them one by one. In quick succession, Charles executed his family with a 12-gauge shotgun and blunt force trauma before eventually shooting himself in the nearby woods. 

The only family member spared from the murders was Charles’ eldest son, Arthur, who’d been running an errand at the time. One theory behind Charles’ actions has been his covering up acts of sexual abuse he’d committed against Marie. However, these claims have never fully been substantiated with any actual evidence beyond familial gossip and hearsay. 

6. The Rhoden Family Massacre

The crimes committed against the Rhoden family in 2016 were nothing short of a premeditated attack, carried out with an ample amount of malice. On the night of April 21 and into the early hours of April 22, eight members of the family were gunned down in their own homes. The victims included Christopher Rhoden Junior, Christopher Rhoden Senior, Clarence “Frankie” Rhoden, Dana Lynn Rhoden, Gary Rhoden, Hanna May Rhoden, Hannah Hazel Gilley, and Kenneth Rhoden.

The first of the four separate crime scenes was discovered when Bobby Jo Manley, Dana’s sister, came over to feed the house’s pets. After calling 9-1-1, Manley went to the second home on the property where she found more bodies waiting for her. Shortly after, her brother, James Manley, came over to check on her and discovered the third crime scene with more of the family’s bullet-riddled bodies. Finally, later on in the day, another 9-1-1 call alerted police to the discovery of another victim in a private residence in Piketon, a nearby village.

It wasn’t until 2018 that the culprits, the Wagner family, were arrested and charged for the eight murders. One of the driving forces behind the killings was revealed to be a custody dispute over Hanna and Jake’s then two-year-old daughter.

5. The Grimes Sisters

The 1950s were a time of great technological progress for America, especially following the conclusion of World War II, with America seeing growth in employment and birth rates. However, that didn’t mean that there didn’t still exist an undercurrent of darkness and malevolence lurking in the shadows of American streets.  

For example, on the night of December 28, 1956, Barbara and Patricia Grimes, two Chicagoian sisters, left their home for the last time. The two sisters had ventured to the cinema for the evening to take in a screening of the Elvis Presley movie Love Me Tender at the Brighton Theater. 89 minutes later, the two sisters saw the credits roll and exited the theatre to begin their journey home. They’d never make it back unfortunately as their departure from the theatre was the last time either of them would be seen alive.

Following a widespread search for the two sisters, their bodies were eventually found on January 22, 1957, just off a rural road in Burr Ridge, Illinois. To this day, no definitive culprit or explanation has been given regarding the Grimes sisters’ abductions and subsequent murders. While a few suspects were questioned and looked into, this sadly seems to be another true crime story that’ll go unsolved. 

4. The Sodder Children Disappearance

Christmas Eve, is a time of celebration and excitement for the wonders of Christmas day, unless you’re the Sodder family that is. As the Sodder family went to bed on that very evening in 1945 with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads, their home would soon be set ablaze!

Following a strange late-night call from a woman with a strange laugh, the family’s mother Jennie was later awakened by a commotion on their roof. Within moments a devastating fire broke out and quickly engulfed the entire house, sending the entire family into a justifiable panic. Jennie, her husband George, and four of their children – Marion, Sylvia, John, and George Jr – were able to escape the raging inferno. However, this left their five remaining children – Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jennie, and Betty – still inside their burning home. 

Despite some failed rescue efforts, the family was left to watch their home transform into a smoldering wreck, accepting the likely demise of their other children. However, when the fire department eventually began culling through the house’s remains, they found neither hide nor hair of their remains in the ashes. Long after the night’s tragic events, speculation ran rampant regarding what became of the five missing children and where they went. 

3. The Gainesville Ripper

All discussions of illegal, illicit, and disturbing events will eventually lead to one or more stories set in the state of Florida. The “Florida Man” in this particular story is Danny Rolling, the Gainesville Ripper, one of America’s most notorious serial killers.

In late August of 1990, Rolling made Gainesville his personal hunting ground as he would claim the lives of five college students. The victims were Sonja Larson, Christina Powell, Christa Hoyt, Manuel Taboada, and Tracy Paules, all having their lives snuffed out in the most horrific ways possible. Rolling’s disturbing deeds didn’t end with simply killing the girls, as he would go as far as to arrange their bodies in ritualistic and intentionally shocking ways. This included placing the head of Christa Hoyt on the shelf opposite her decapitating body that was left sitting on the edge of her bed. 

The next month, Rolling was arrested on unrelated charges in Ocala, Florida, but would still end up confessing to his five murders in Gainesville. 16 years later, Rolling was finally sentenced to death and was executed by lethal injection on October 25, 2006, at Florida State Prison.

2. The Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders

A crime this horrific is something that should’ve probably been left in the fictitious world of the Friday the 13th film franchise. Sadly, what occurred in Mayes County, Oklahoma, in June 1977 was far from fictional, it was quite real and aggressively disturbing.

When the young girl scouts of Camp Scott went to bed on June 12, none of them could’ve expected the horrors that would await them at daybreak. Early the next day, en route to the showers, a camp counselor discovered the first of what would soon be confirmed as three dead bodies. As the morning progressed, the bodies were identified as ten-year-old Denise Milner, 9-year-old Michele Guse, and 8-year-old Lori Farmer. In a stomach-churning revelation, it was later confirmed that the girls had all been sexually assaulted, beaten, and strangled. The neighboring community was horrified and Camp Scott was immediately closed off, with all remaining campers being sent home.

Following a long and highly publicized investigation, one suspect was arrested in connection to the case, though on unrelated charges, that being Gene Leroy Hart. Despite this, there was never enough substantial DNA evidence to confirm Hart as the definitive culprit fully. Given his death just two years after the murders, it’s doubtful we’ll ever get a definitive answer to who committed the Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders.

1. The Butcher of Plainfield

Much like many famous serial killers, Ed Gein was a product of his environment and his upbringing, specifically his aggressively religious mother Augusta. Known as a strange fellow even during his childhood, most people in Plainfield, Wisconsin only ever saw Ed as an awkward yet ultimately harmless guy. This assumption starkly contrasted the darkness that resided behind his withdrawn expressions, as Ed was nothing short of deranged. 

Ed was obsessed with his mother, committing his life to taking care of her after she’d suffered a debilitating stroke and up until she died in 1945. Her death seemed to flip a switch in Ed who began a dual hobby of grave robbing and fashioning human remains into clothing. Following his murder of Bernice Worden, a local hardware store owner, police swarmed Ed’s home where they’d discovered, not only Bernice’s corpse in the barn but Ed’s handiwork as well. This included chairs made of human skin, faces, skulls, noses, and even a belt made of severed nipples.

Ed’s heinous crimes quickly made front-page news, terrifying the masses and even stoking more than a few people’s creativity. One can see the influence of Ed Gein in several horror classics, including Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs.

What do you do if you’re the victim of a crime? In the 21st century, you call the police. They go out and arrest the criminal, and an impartial justice system deals with him from there. You can go about your life, secure in the knowledge that the law makes sense, and everyone can expect to be treated fairly. Or that’s the idea, anyway.

In England before the 19th century, that was not the way that things worked. From a modern perspective, everything looks backward and upside down. For starters, you didn’t call the sheriff when a crime was committed. The sheriff called you.

10 You Had To Arrest Criminals Yourself

There were no police officers in Anglo-Saxon England, or if you look at it another way, every able-bodied male between the ages of 15 and 60 was a police officer.^[1] If you saw a crime committed in your neighborhood, it was your job to “raise the hue and cry.” This literally meant shouting something like, “Stop, thief!” or “Murder!” at the top of your lungs. Doing so let your neighbors know it was time to jump into action. All of you had to work together to catch the criminal and bring him to court.

Every man was required to keep weapons at his house just for events like this. The more important a man was, the more expensive weapons he had to keep. Knights needed a chain mail shirt, an iron helmet, a sword, a knife, and a horse. The poorest people had to make do with a bow and arrows. If your arrest attempt failed, and the criminal got away, you and your neighbors had to pay a fine. This sounds unfair to us, but the Anglo-Saxons had a very strong sense of community responsibility. If one person broke the law, that meant the whole community had failed. It was everyone’s job to make sure that justice was restored.

9 You Had To Pay To Be In Jail

In modern times, the money spent to feed and house prisoners comes out of our taxes. This wasn’t true in the past. Back then, prisoners paid for their own upkeep. It didn’t matter if they were eventually found innocent—they still had to pay. Prisons could be a profitable business for the officials who ran them. The warden, or “keeper,” of Newgate Prison paid up to £5,000 to the government for the privilege of running the prison. He recovered his investment by making prisoners pay a fee when they entered Newgate and another one before they could leave.

Inmates paid to have leg irons put on and taken off. They paid for candles, soap, and bedding. If they died in the prison, their relatives had to pay a fee to get their bodies back.^[2] Prisoners also had to pay money to the other inmates. When new prisoners entered, the criminals who’d been there a while would tell them, “Pay or strip.” If the newcomers had no cash to hand over, they were forced to give up some of their clothing, which would then be sold. This system was particularly cruel to debtors, who were in prison precisely because they had no money.

8 You Could Be Executed For Practically Anything

This wasn’t originally the case in England. In 1688, only 50 crimes carried the death penalty. By 1815, the number had swollen to 288. Crimes you could be hanged for included stealing something worth more than five shillings (about $40 today), stealing from a rabbit warren, impersonating a pensioner, cutting down a young tree, damaging Westminster Bridge, and hunting while in disguise. The laws were so harsh that juries sometimes refused to convict defendants who were obviously guilty. Jurors didn’t want to see people executed over minor crimes, so they just set them free.

Most of the new capital crimes added during the 17th and 18th centuries were for theft. During that time, many people left farms in the country for London and other cities. The newcomers were looking for work, but they often didn’t find it. There was a growing number of very poor people in the cities. At the same time, new inventions in manufacturing were making a small number of people very rich. The rich citizens feared “the mob” of the poor and pushed for harsher and harsher punishments for those who stole.^[3]

7 The Criminal Code Often Made No Sense

Preindustrial English law operated by making terrifying examples of a small number of criminals. The hope was that people would remember these rare but frightening punishments and be too afraid to commit crimes.

This helps explain why it was a minor offense to pick fruit from someone else’s fruit trees but a capital crime to steal fruit that had already been picked. You could be executed for breaking a window to rob someone’s house if you did it after dark, but if you waited until after sunrise, breaking and entering was only a misdemeanor. Pickpocketing carried the death penalty, but kidnapping a child did not.

Historian Frank McLynn summed the situation up nicely: “The criminal Code was unjust, irrational, and exceptionally severe.”^[4]

6 You Could Pay A Thief To Catch Another Thief

England had no professional police force until 1829. Before that, laypeople took turns acting as constables in their neighborhoods. The constable’s job was to chase and catch lawbreakers, not to investigate crimes. So what could you do if you didn’t know who had stolen your property? And how could you get that property back? One thing you could do was hire a kind of combination private detective and bounty hunter called a thief-taker. Thief-takers used their contacts in the underworld to find out who had your stolen goods. For the right price, they’d haul the thief in front of the sheriff and bring you your things back.

Some thief-takers were legitimate and performed a valuable service. However, it won’t come as a surprise that not everybody with extensive contacts in the underworld was honest. Some thief-takers operated on both sides of the law, taking citizens’ reward money on one hand and then demanding protection money from criminals on the other. Others convinced gullible people to commit crimes, only to turn around and arrest them in exchange for payment.^[5]

The most famous of the thief-takers was Jonathan Wild, the self-styled “Thief-Taker General.” At one time hailed as a crime-fighting hero, Wild was secretly “finding” goods that he himself had stolen. At the height of his career, he was both a London gang leader and an anti-crime consultant to the British government. Unsurprisingly, Wild’s advice to the Privy Council was that they should offer higher rewards to thief-takers. Wild was betrayed to the authorities by some members of his gang and executed in 1725. He was the inspiration for the character of Peachum in The Beggar’s Opera by John Gay.

5 You Could Have A Great Time At An Execution

If the public was frightened into submission by the spectacle of public executions, then no one seems to have told the execution-goers. In London in the 18th century, hanging days were holidays. Up to 200,000 people took the day off from work and lined the 5-kilometer (3 mi) path from Newgate Prison to the hanging scaffold at Tyburn.^[6] The event was supposed to be a kind of morality play, in which the deaths of criminals inspired people to be obedient to church and civil authorities.

The criminals themselves seldom acted the part of remorseful penitents, though. It was common to curse the courts and witnesses for the prosecution. Some people dressed in their finest clothes and behaved as if they were at a party in their own honor. Some were so drunk on the alcohol that sympathetic spectators gave them that they barely seemed to know what was going on.

Many of the spectators were drunk, too. They drank gin and ate snacks sold by enterprising peddlers. They bought good seats in public viewing stands and copies of what were supposed to be the dying speeches of the condemned. They threw things at unpopular prisoners and cheered the popular ones, especially those who faced death with courage and panache. Executions were so popular that they were written up as a tourist attraction in the 1740 Foreigner’s Guide To London.

4 You Could Be Jailed For The Rest Of Your Life For Owing Money

Being unable to pay your debts was a civil offense in England, but you could still end up in prison because of it. If someone sued you for the nonpayment of a debt, the court could order you to be jailed until the debt was paid. But if you couldn’t pay a debt while you were still working at your job, how were you going to pay it from inside a prison cell? Things got worse for you every day you spent in jail, because you had to pay the jailer for your upkeep while you were imprisoned. With each day that went by, you owed more money.^[7]

Debtors in prison had different strategies for paying their way out. Some got money from their families and friends; others found ways to work in prison. Some were able to renegotiate the terms of their debt with their creditors. And some just died in prison.

In 18th-century London, the poorest of the poor often ended up in the “common side” of Marshalsea prison. (Those who had more money could pay to stay in the more comfortable master’s side.) The prison officials weren’t required to provide food, so they didn’t. Charitable donations provided the only food poor prisoners got, and that wasn’t much. Inmates who got on the jailers’ bad side were sometimes beaten with clubs, tortured with heavy chains attached to their legs, or forced to stay in rooms where people were dying of smallpox. Deaths were very common.

If you didn’t die in debtor’s prison, you might have to stay there a long time. When London’s Fleet Prison finally closed, two of its debtors had been locked up for 30 years. Most people who went to debtor’s prison owed large sums of money, sometimes many times what they earned in a year. That wasn’t true of everyone, though. In one London prison in 1789, about a third of the debtors owed less than £20, which would be an amount up to $30,000–$40,000 today.

3 You Could Be Arrested For Wandering Around While Poor

This had to do with how charity was distributed. A parish was a subdivision of a county and the basic unit of English government. Parishes charged a form of property tax called rates from all the local house owners. Part of the rate money went to help support poor people who lived in the parish. For the most part, citizens were fine with supporting their poor neighbors, but they didn’t want to have to look after the poor of other parishes. For that reason, poor people were discouraged from traveling. “Persons wandering abroad and begging” were labeled vagrants or vagabonds and could be subjected to punishments ranging from being put in the stocks to two years of slavery.

In 1695, two men named Peter Lawman and Francis Buckley were actually sentenced to death for vagabonding. Buckley was found with a pistol, which could have been part of the reason the sentence was so severe. There was virtually no practical difference between “vagabonds” and simple poor people, except that vagabonds were more likely to be strangers to the neighborhood.^[8]

The 1744 Vagrancy Act contained a long list of who was considered undesirable, including all kinds of travelers who had no steady employment. Some examples of prohibited people were “common players of interludes,” unlicensed peddlers, “persons pretending to be Gypsies,” and vaguest of all, “All persons wandering abroad and lodging in alehouses, barns, outhouses or in the open air, not giving a good account of themselves.” Essentially anyone without resources in the form of money or connections could be prosecuted as a vagrant, especially if they wandered far from home.

2 It Was Alarmingly Easy To Be Charged With Piracy

According to the Piracy Act of 1698, it was a crime to “receive, entertaine, or conceale” a pirate or to accept any of his stolen goods.^[9] Accessories to piracy could be punished with death.

This is precisely what happened to six Englishmen who had the misfortune of boarding Calico Jack Rackham’s ship in 1720. Their day started with them in a canoe looking for turtles. Then Rackham’s crew invited them on board to share a bowl of punch, and a few hours later, they were at anchor and drunk. While the pirates and their guests were indisposed, pirate-hunter Jonathan Barnet slipped up on them and captured the lot. Three months later, the punch-drinkers were on trial for their lives. They were condemned to death based on the facts that they were found armed and had helped Rackham row his ship. They were executed in February 1721. Likewise, in 1722, four men were hanged for being seen drinking and carousing with “Black Bart” Roberts’s crew.

The obvious moral of this story is to never drink with pirates, or if you must drink with pirates, don’t let anybody catch you. Essentially any felony committed on or in a body of water could count as piracy, and that fact sometimes resulted in surprisingly mundane “piracy” convictions. In 1768, a man named George Geery was executed for piracy after boarding a Dutch ship, assaulting one of its officers, and stealing several of his hats. The broad definition of piracy was still on the books in 1848, when several men were tried for piracy for trying to mutiny aboard a steamship. The cause of the mutiny? An argument over whether one particular sailor could bring his chickens aboard. All of the men were acquitted.

1 There Was No Real Equal Protection Of The Law

The whole legal system was stacked in favor of the rich and against the poor. You can see this in the way that power was distributed. Government officials got their positions one of two ways. One was patronage, in which officials were chosen for their jobs by a powerful friend, relative, or person who owed them a favor. The other was the sale of offices. Sometimes, men with money but no powerful friends bought their jobs. These jobs were then treated as private property, much like owning a piece of land. Those who paid for their offices charged for their services as a means of making back the money they’d invested.^[10] This was not considered corruption; it was just thought of as business as usual.

Judgeships were appointed offices that didn’t pay. Even if a poor person was offered the job of judge, they couldn’t have afforded to work for free. Likewise, you had to be a man of property to sit on a jury. If you had no money and didn’t know anyone who did, you stood virtually no chance of becoming an important decision-maker. You stood no chance at all if you happened to be a woman. Only men were allowed to have power in the realm of government and the law.

If a wealthy and important citizen was accused of a crime, it was often difficult to find witnesses for the prosecution. Nobody wanted to get on the bad side of a powerful person. On the other hand, defense witnesses could always be found, for a price. In the unlikely event that someone with a lot of money was arrested, the practice of allowing people to bring to prison the most luxurious comforts they could afford ensured that the accused didn’t suffer too much. The poor had no such advantages. Instead, they were imprisoned, fined, executed, and transported to prison colonies at far higher rates than their wealthy neighbors.

Ben Eggertsen is a freelance writer, former special education teacher, and amateur historian. He lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

“If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime” is a fairly well known saying that dates back some years now. The meaning of the idiom is simple enough – be prepared for the consequences of your actions. 

That sounds straightforward on the surface, but sometimes the consequences are curiously off balanced compared to the actions and people don’t always know that ahead of time. For that reason, if you plan on doing any crime, familiarize yourself with the punishments beforehand so you don’t run into any situations like these.

10. Owning a Bald Eagle Feather Can Get You Sent to Prison and Fined

Bald eagles have been a symbol of America since 1782. In 1978 the birds were listed as endangered. In 2007 they actually got off the endangered list thanks to huge efforts to save the species, and now it’s not even threatened any longer. But the road to that success was paved with harsh rules for anyone who dared cross paths with the majestic bird. 

Hunting and killing bald eagles is very much illegal, and that makes plenty of sense. What makes a little less sense is that possessing anything to do with a bald eagle is also illegal. That means if you have bald eagle feathers you’re committing a crime, even if you just found them on the ground.

The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940 makes it illegal for anyone to take one of these birds or anything to do with them including nests, eggs and feathers. The language of the act makes it clear it’s preventing people from hunting and poaching the birds focusing specifically on trafficking and selling but “possess” is specifically mentioned as well. 

The punishment, for a first offense, can include a $100,000 fine and a year in prison or both. Legally, only members of recognized Native American tribes may possess the feathers which can be used for certain ceremonial purposes. 

Keep in mind that these are maximum penalties and you probably won’t be fined and imprisoned if you find a single feather. That said, you could definitely be forced to return it and, if you refuse, legal action may then be taken. 

9. Thai Cops Are Punished With Hello Kitty Armbands

There’s a certain train of thought that says humiliation is a suitable form of punishment. Think of The Scarlet Letter and the idea that an adulterer be branded so all can see and mock their discretion. Psychologists don’t necessarily agree that humiliation is ideal, especially for kids, but it still happens. 

In Thailand, if members of the police department are found to have broken some sort of rules, their punishment can be meted out with a noticeable and humiliating brand. In this case, it’s a pink Hello Kitty armband. 

Police are supposed to be role models for following the rules so if a cop is caught littering or parking illegally, they get put on desk duty with the armband for their coworkers to see. They’re spared the shame of having to work out in public wearing it, so the shame of being among fellow officers is supposed to be enough. 

8. Touching a Member of the Thai Royal Family Was a Capital Offense

Speaking of Thailand, the country’s rules proved to be so daunting that, in one extreme example, they backfired horribly. It was in 1880 when Queen Sunandha Kumariratana was vacationing with her family and crossing a river by boat with her daughter. The current was strong, and the boat capsized.

There were many guards and servants about and you’d think someone would have rushed in to save the Queen’s life, but you’d be wrong. One law of the land at the time stated no one was allowed to touch a member of the Royal family for any reason under pain of death. Any touch could be considered a capital crime. As such, the Queen and her daughter both drowned.

The King is said to have imprisoned everyone who could have saved them despite their adherence to the law, and then abolished the law altogether so it could never happen again.

7. Attempted Suicide Has Been Criminalized In Many Countries

Most people generally recognize a suicide attempt as a symptom of a mental illness of some kind, and likely linked to depression. Those who attempt suicide can be arrested or detained in hospitals but the hope is that the person will be able to see a doctor and get help to get to the root cause of why they tried to take their own life. That’s the ideal outcome, anyway.

In many places, especially in the past, a suicide attempt was simply vilified. Up to the 1950s, Britain criminalized suicide attempts and a small portion of offenders were sentenced to jail time. Back in the 13th century if someone did commit suicide, their surviving family was punished and all their possessions were taken by the government.

Though England eventually decriminalized attempts, not everyone did. In many countries it’s still a crime. The Bahamas has the stiffest laws on the books for offenders and if someone survives, they can be sentenced to life in prison for it.

6. DreamWorks Animators Were Punished by Having to Work on Shrek

Most jobs have a process for dealing with employees who aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing. In extreme cases if you commit a crime beyond the confines of work they’ll call the police. But within the realm of poor performance you may get fired at worst, or written up for a small-scale offense. 

Some businesses have a three strikes rule before a firing, or maybe you’ll have to take some training again to prove you can do the job expected of you.

DreamWorks Animation opted for a more unusual approach to punishment after the studio was first formed. The studio’s first movie, The Prince of Egypt, was done with traditional animation. Remember, this was the mid 1990s and computer animation was not really a thing yet. Pixar had only just released Toy Story in 1995.

When an animator was found to have messed up in some way on the production of Prince of Egypt they were sent to work on Shrek as punishment. Shrek started production around 1995, but it wasn’t released until 2001. The movie had gone through numerous changes including character designs and voice actors. It was treated like the “ugly stepchild” of the studio that no one believed would ever get made let alone succeed.

Animators called the punishment being “Shreked.” Why was it so maligned? Because, when it was first pitched, the story was terrible, the budget was miniscule, and the studio had hired a bunch of recent grads with no experience. Work was done in an ugly warehouse and the team kept changing as people walked out or were fired. And, because it lasted years, to many it must have seemed endless.

5. Etiquette Breaches at Oxford Were Punishable by Drinking Beer

One thing people tend to find very disagreeable is when an organization polices itself and metes out punishments that are, by most measures, ineffective. Police officers getting suspended for egregious crimes is an extreme example of things, but schools are known to behave similarly.

At Oxford, that prestigious old British university, those who breach etiquette in some way suffer a punishment called sconcing. These breaches could include poorly speaking Latin or talking about women. This dates back to the 1600s and has evolved somewhat since then to its current form, which exists in numerous schools.

A person found to have violated some ethical rule is forced to sconce, which involves drinking a pint of beer. In some cases everyone gets to drink at the same time. In others it’s something of an elaborate drinking game that can get everyone drunk if done right. In other versions, a person has to propose a sconce by accusing the others of some act. Anyone guilty of that act must drink. You may recognize this as basically “never have I ever.”

4. A Teen Was Tried as an Adult for Sending Selfies of a Minor (Himself)

One of the most infamous crimes of the age of computers has been the proliferation of videos and images of child pornography. Whole task forces have been set up to stop this and there are cybercrimes units across the globe that deal with these issues. And while that is absolutely something that needs to be dealt with, it’s not always dealt with in the right way. 

In North Carolina, a 17-year-old boy was tried as an adult for possessing nude photos of an underage person. That person was himself. The pictures were selfies he’d taken when he was 16. The boy ended up taking a plea deal just to keep himself off of a sex offender list and avoid jail time.

His charges included four counts of making and possessing images of himself and one count of having a photo of his girlfriend, who was the same age. The girl was also charged and took a similar plea deal. In both cases they were the adult perpetrator and minor victim of the same crime.

A 15-year-old girl in Ohio was facing similar charges years earlier, and the FBI has several other examples on file.

3. George R R Martin’s Punishment for Avoiding Vietnam Was Being Called a Coward

Numerous people came out against the Vietnam war draft back in the 1960s, and Game of Thrones writer George R. R. Martin was among them. He applied for conscientious objector status which would exclude him from going to war and, according to Martin, he was granted it very quickly. But it did come with a price.

Martin said the draft board decided that Martin would be punished by being branded a “coward for life” as a result of his actions, and that would be a suitable burden to bear. Seems like he’s handled it pretty well.

2. More Than One School Has Taken Canes Away From Blind Students

Education is considered a vital part of any child’s life but, if the news has taught us anything as adults, it’s that schools are constantly fumbling the ball in new and creatively horrible ways. For instance, when it comes to the punishment of blind kids.

Sure, a blind child could have a discipline issue that needs to be addressed, but you’d think anyone with common sense might think twice before taking away the child’s cane, which is necessary for getting around as a person with limited or no vision. Nonetheless, it’s happened a few times.

In Kansas City, an 8-year-old had their cane taken and replaced with a pool noodle after he was accused of hitting someone on the bus with it. The child, who was born without eyes, is known to fidget and sometimes raises their cane just to move it around. The bus driver reported this as the child being violent. 

In the UK, a student was banned from using her cane because the school felt it was a risk to others who might trip over it.

1. Until 2009 There Was No Punishment For Selling Children in Mississippi

For many of these entries we’ve seen a punishment that seemed too extreme for the crime. In a few, the punishment was more of a joke that didn’t match the crime for the opposite reasons. And finally, we’re one where the crime seems unbelievably egregious and the only thing more unbelievable is that there was no punishment at all.

Until the year 2009 there was no punishment in the state of Mississippi for selling a child. As in, a human child. It wasn’t technically a crime. This only came to light because, in 2008, a woman tried to sell her granddaughter for $2,000 and a car. The woman was only charged with a probation violation unrelated to the incident because they couldn’t find a valid crime on the books to charge her with as it relates to, and this can’t be stressed enough, selling an entire human being.

When the case came to light, a new law was proposed and passed, letting Mississippi leap into the 19th century, just a couple hundred years late. Of interest, however, is that there is still no federal law prohibiting the sale of children. A law was passed to protect them from sex trafficking but the language omitted the sale of children for black market adoptions or just for good, old-fashioned profit.

There’s just something about podcasts, more than many other media, that inspires fanatical devotion. The same can be said, and arguably more so, for the true crime genre. When the two combine, then you’d be safe in assuming that more than a few smash hits are in store. For the better part of a decade, those hits have kept on coming, and by now, in 2021, the world of true crime podcasts is massive and massively popular.

Those with an appetite for the macabre and mysterious have hundreds of major true crime podcasts to choose from in just as many different styles. Some tell true events as nonfiction narratives, some delve deep into the psychology of slayers, and some bring comedy to balance out the crime.

No matter how you want your horror served up, it’s available. This list gathers ten sources for you to whet your unhinged whistle—ten of the best and creepiest podcasts for true crime junkies.

Related: Top 10 Horrific True Crime Cases You Should Never Web Search

10 Redhanded

It’s hard to express exactly what makes Redhanded, and its hosts Hannah Maguire and Suruthi Bala, such an excellent podcasting experience. If we had to pin it down into one word, it would be “charm.”

Redhanded has built itself an impressive following. Its fans, who refer to themselves as Spooky B*tches, keep coming back, not just for the grizzly murders, but for the exceptionally tight banter, wit, and humor. Redhanded’s unique and welcoming charm makes the murder medicine go down a bit smoother.

9 Morbid: A True Crime Podcast

Do your own research and check out A. the number of reviews that Morbid: A True Crime Podcast has on Apple Podcasts and B. how many of those reviews are five stars. For a podcast just over three years old, its success is exceptional.

The fact that Morbid is hosted by Alaina Urquhart, an autopsy technician, and Ashleigh Kelley, a hairdresser, should hint at the series’ tone, a mix of lighthearted chatting and gory details. Morbid is an effortless listen and more accessible than most, making it a great starting place for new true-crime fans.

8 And That’s Why We Drink

And That’s Why We Drink is a great choice if you’re looking for a little bit of everything in your podcast. The series is part comedy and part serious exposition, as well as being half paranormal and half true-crime. Every episode starts with a paranormal story and follows it with a true crime story, ensuring a 50/10 split between the, in their own words, “eerie and theory.”

Host Christine Schiefer and Em Schulz, especially in the series’ middle years, incorporate its title by ending episodes with a list of reasons why these creepy cases forced them to drink. For new true crime junkies who want to taste the variety in the podcast medium, And That’s Why We Drink is an excellent first step.

7 Serial

It would be impossible to list the best true crime podcasts without including the one that started it all: Serial. Hosted by Sarah Koenig, Serial debuted in 2014 to immediate acclaim from fans and critics alike. Its first season quickly became a cultural phenomenon, even earning a Peabody.

It would hardly be an exaggeration to describe Serial as the one podcast that did most of the leg work in promoting podcasting to the mainstream and in reinvigorating popular obsession with all things true crime. As the Peabody committee themselves wrote, “Beautifully and intricately composed, utterly gripping… Serial rocketed podcasting into the cultural mainstream and inspired countless follow-up pieces… For its innovations of form and its compelling, drilling account of how guilt, truth, and reality are decided, Serial is honored with a Peabody Award.”

6 Last Podcast on the Left

The Last Podcast on the Left is a very singular experience. Unlike the intimate, measured style listeners have come to expect from many podcasts, due to hosts like Garrison Keillor and Ira Glass, the Last Podcast on the Left is loud, rapid, and in your face. Hosts Ben Kissel, Marcus Parks, and Henry Zebrowski perform more like a morning radio zoo-crew than they do podcasters, but contrasted with the darkness of the true-crime subject matter, the style is a blast.

Unlike the poise and preparation of a series like Serial, every episode of Last Podcast on the Left feels like its hosts just finished a bar crawl and snuck into a recording booth to continue their boisterous conversation about grizzly murders and goblins. As a result, certain true crime purists will be turned off. Those that aren’t, however, are in for a party whose theme is split between My Brother, My Brother, and Me and Unsolved Mysteries.

5 Anatomy of Murder

Anatomy of Murder is one of those true crime podcasts hosted by experts in the field, and, pound-for-pound, it may boast the most expertise of them all. The show is hosted by former New York City homicide prosecutor Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi and deputy sheriff-turned-investigative reporter Scott Weinberger. On top of that, every episode sees the pair joined by someone close to the case, be it a detective, prosecutor, or family member.

When the show debuted just over a year ago (at the time of writing, December 2021), it promised “to take listeners behind the scenes, for an insider’s perspective,” and it has consistently delivered. The hosts are as professional as they are knowledgeable, and the episodes are tightly edited; the result is a podcast that feels authoritative and practical—in the best possible way.

4 Lore

There are a few million true crime purists that will see the name Lore and cry, “Hey, that’s not true crime!” Indeed, Apple doesn’t even include the hit Aaron Mahnke podcast in their true crime section, placing it instead within history. But there is one little facet about Lore that earns it a place in the true-crime family: most episodes of Lore are about crime. And are true. And they are consistently some of the most entertaining podcasts episodes out there.

With Lore, Mahnke explores folk tales, their alleged, often paranormal, extents, and their very real bases and inspirations. This leads Mahnke down rabbit holes both historical and modern, and in either case, leads to fascinating stories with “Aha!” reveals. Mahnke’s smooth, rhythmic voice and his well-structured storytelling, in particular, hook you fast. Rare for a podcast, Lore even spawned a spinoff television series, which streams on Amazon Prime Video.

3 Cold Case Murder Mysteries

This will likely be the most surprising entry on the list, as you’re unlikely to see the Cold Case Murder Mysteries podcast grace even the top 100 among Apple’s true crime rankings. But what the show lacks in breakout success, it makes up for in its uniqueness and, surprisingly often, genuinely profound insight.

The driving force behind this underrated gem is Ryan Kraus, a podcast host who is truly unlike any other. And unlike many hosts who gain that praise, Kraus actually deserves it. We challenge you to finish any random episode of Cold Case Murder Mysteries and ask yourself, “Has anyone drawn connections in this case that are as unexpected and revelatory as Kraus’s?” Particularly regarding the psychology and sociology of those involved in crimes, Kraus’s Cold Case Murder Mysteries may be one of the best podcasts out there.

2 Crime Junkie

Most weeks, Crime Junkie is Apple Podcasts’ most-listened-to true-crime podcast. That should say it all. If you need more convincing, you’ll want to hear that the podcast has been downloaded over 500 million times and has been ranked at or near the top of dozens of major “best of” lists regarding true crime podcasts.

Hosts Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat have been repeatedly cited for their passionate presentation and thorough research of their cases. Their prowess and sensitivity have even allowed Crime Junkie to transcend genres, earning it repeated top spots among most played podcasts lists among all genres.

1 My Favorite Murder

There’s no number one choice that would please everyone, especially not a comedy/true-crime hybrid. But My Favorite Murder, anchored by the unparalleled rapport and flawless repartee between hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, is sure to please most. Almost since the very beginning, the series has consistently ranked among the most listened-to true crime podcasts, and branched out into live tours, a book, its own podcast network, and perhaps best of all: one of the most dedicated and fervent fan-bases (or “fan cults”) you’ll ever find.

Episodes of My Favorite Murder vacillate between recorded and live sessions, both with their own fun and flavor. In recorded sessions, Kilgariff and Hardstark spend the first portion riffing on their lives and current events and the rest reading each other selected true crime accounts. In the live shows, though the format is technically the same, there is an added section: the near-constant crowd work and frequent breaks for applause and wild screams.

Their fans, dubbed the Murderinos, are rapid in their zeal for the podcast and become as much a part of the show as its hosts and stories. If you’re a part of the minority of true crime fans that haven’t already, give the ladies a chance, and you’ll quickly see why they’ve earned the devotion of so many.

From prison gangs to extortion rackets to neo Nazis, the United States is home to a variety of criminal groups and organizations. While we don’t hear about them as often as we should, they remain an active threat for the security apparatus of the country, with membership numbers comparable to some large, multinational corporations. 

10. Jewish Defense League

The Jewish Defense League is recognized as a far-right terrorist group by the FBI. Formed in 1968 by Rabbi Meir Kahane, one of the stated aims of the organization was protection from anti-Semitism worldwide. It was primarily founded on the principles of Jewish nationalism, territorialism, and the use of force to defend Jews against their enemies. The JDL has since been accused of numerous terrorist attacks, including bombings, assassinations, and extortion.

The group is primarily active in the US and Israel, where it has been responsible for a number of violent incidents over the years. It first gained prominence in the 1970s, when JDL members carried out a number of high-profile attacks against Arab targets in the United States and Europe. They were also known for their staunch opposition to the USSR, as Jews across the Soviet Union were barred from emigrating to Israel. Despite its small size, the JDL was able to gain a large following in the Israeli-American Jewish community due to its aggressive tactics.

9. MS-13

MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, is an international criminal organization that originated in Los Angeles, California, in the 1980s. Originally formed as a protection racket for Salvadoran refugees in the city, the group gradually evolved into a violent criminal organization involved in activities like drug and human trafficking. Today, the group operates in several countries, including the United States, El Salvador, Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala.

MS-13 got popular attention in the 1990s and early 2000s, when it was responsible for a string of murders and assaults across the country. The gang is infamous for its brutal tactics, like their preference for machetes and other melee weapons to fight their rivals. Despite its notoriety, however, MS-13 remains a relatively-small gang, with an estimated 6,000 – 10,000 members in the US. In central American countries, however, the gang’s membership may be as high as 60,000.

8. Vice Lords

Vice Lords Nation originated in Chicago, Illinois, in 1958 as a community organization aimed at helping local African Americans overcome poverty and discrimination. Over time, however, the group grew into one of the largest criminal organizations in the United States, with a chapter in almost every city and town across the country. The group is known to be involved in various criminal activities, including drug trafficking, robbery, extortion, and murder. 

The gang mainly operates in the Midwest and southern regions of the United States, and has an estimated total membership of anywhere between 30,000 – 35,000 regular and associate members. The US government has designated the group as a criminal organization, though despite several high-profile arrests over the years, it remains a large and influential gang, particularly in Chicago. 

7. Barrio Azteca

With an estimated 3,000 members across the United States and around 5,000 in the Juarez region in Mexico, Barrio Azteca – also known as Los Aztecas – began as a prison gang in the El Paso prison system in Texas. It was formed in 1986, and has since expanded its presence to other states like Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico. While it’s not a particularly large gang, they’ve set themselves apart by the sheer intensity of their violence, which often spills over to either side of the border. 

By the 2000s, Barrio Azteca had aligned itself with Mexico’s Juarez Cartel in their brutal fight against the Sinaloa Cartel. Many of the gang’s members have been killed or arrested in the years since – including its leader Eduardo Ravelo – severely weakening the group’s influence in the region. According to reports by law enforcement agencies, however, Barrio Azteca has regained a lot of its strength in recent years, particularly in the city of Juarez, where it’s still heavily involved in a variety of criminal activities like drug smuggling, money laundering, and extortion.

6. Mongols Motorcycle Club

The Mongols Motorcycle Club is a notorious outlaw motorcycle club founded in Montebello, California, in the 1970s. They have a strong presence in the Pacific and southwestern regions of the United States, with chapters in California, Nevada, Arizona, and other states. The group is predominantly made up of Hispanic members, though it also includes members from other ethnic backgrounds.

The Mongols gained fame in the 1980s and 1990s as a powerful and violent motorcycle club. They’ve been involved in a variety of criminal activities like assault, intimidation, and murder, including a high-profile shootout with members of rival Hells Angels gang in Las Vegas in 2002. 

Despite several attempts by law enforcement agencies to stop them, the Mongols Motorcycle Club remains a potent and influential gang, with many of its members maintaining strong ties with other Hispanic street gangs spread across the Los Angeles area. 

5. Crips And Bloods

Crips and Bloods are two rival gangs based in Los Angeles, California. Their origins are disputed, but some reports from the time suggest that Crips was born as a neighborhood protection gang in 1971, and Bloods was formed in response to the growing power of the Crips. Both the gangs eventually evolved into influential criminal organizations involved in drug trafficking and extortion, as well as violent crimes like robbery and murder.

Crips and Bloods have a long-standing rivalry that has resulted in numerous violent clashes over the years. It’s fueled by a complex mix of factors, including territory, reputation, and personal conflicts between various gang members. Both are known for their heavy use of graffiti, hand signs, and colors to identify themselves.

The gangs’ criminal activities have led to a lot of violence and devastation in the communities they operate in, with innocent bystanders often getting caught in the crossfire. Despite various efforts by law enforcement, however, Crips and Bloods remain a major problem in many urban areas of LA.

4. Latin Kings

Latin Kings was formed in Chicago in the 1960s as a predominantly Mexican and Puerto-Rican street gang. They’re known to be involved in multiple criminal activities, like drug trafficking, burglary, homicide, identity theft, and money laundering, as well as high profile assassinations of law enforcement officers in cities across the United States. Currently, Latin Kings operate under two umbrella factions, Motherland and Bloodline, for their Chicago and New York Chapter, respectively. 

The group first got media attention in the 1980s and 90s, when they were associated with several gang-related murders and other crimes across Chicago. With over 160 chapters and 20,000 – 35,000 members around the country, Latin Kings is easily one of the largest gangs in the US, with a strong presence in multiple cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Miami. 

3. Gangster Disciples

Black Gangster Disciple Nation – later renamed to Gangster Disciples – is a prison and street gang formed in Chicago in the 1960s. It was founded by the merger of two gangs led by Larry Hoover and David Barksdale – the Black Disciples and Supreme Gangsters. It’s a predominantly African-American gang involved in activities like drug trafficking, extortion, and murder.

While Gangster Disciples have a significant presence in the Midwest, particularly in Chicago and Detroit, the gang is also known to be active in other parts of the country like the East Coast and the South. It has grown into a large and powerful group in recent years, with an estimated 25,000 – 50,000 members spread across the United States.

2. Aryan Brotherhood

The Aryan Brotherhood started out as a white supremacist prison gang formed in response to race wars against rival black gangs. Over the years, it has grown into one of the most feared criminal organizations in the country, with many of its members openly sporting tattoos of Nazi insignia and other fascist symbols. 

Members of the Aryan Brotherhood primarily operate in prisons, though they’re also quite active on the streets. The group is involved in a wide range of criminal activities like drug trafficking and extortion, and while it’s not as large as other gangs like the Mexican Mafia, the Aryan Brotherhood remains a potent force in the criminal underworld.

While law enforcement agencies have been working to dismantle the Aryan Brotherhood for decades, the group’s highly-structured hierarchy and its members’ fierce loyalty to the organization make it difficult to infiltrate. Still, there have been numerous high-profile arrests of Aryan Brotherhood members in recent years, and many of its leaders have been sentenced to long terms in prison. Despite these efforts, however, the Aryan Brotherhood continues to operate as an influential and fairly-large gang in multiple parts of the country.

1. Mexican Mafia

Also known as La Eme and Los Carnales, Mexican Mafia is one of the largest prison gangs in the United States, with members active in over 13 states. It was founded in 1957 in southern California by former street gang member Luis Flores, and many of its early members were leaders of hispanic gangs active in LA and nearby areas. Since then, it has grown into one of the deadliest and most influential gangs in the country.

As of now, the Mexican Mafia operates both inside and outside the US prison system, and its crime portfolio includes robbery, extortion, assault, murder, and drug trafficking. It’s estimated that the gang has about 350 to 400 members inside US prisons, with tens of thousands of additional foot soldiers on the streets throughout California and beyond.

Think of a notorious crime boss from history and you’re probably picturing a man. Al Capone, Pablo Escobar, El Chapo, Lucky Luciano, Carlo Gambino, the CIA… 

However, plenty of women have been in charge – and not just as madams of brothels. Here are 10 of the most notorious.

10. Cheng Chui Ping, “Sister Ping” (1949-2014)

For more than a decade, Sister Ping, as she was called in New York’s Chinatown, smuggled up to 3,000 Chinese immigrants into the US — amassing a fortune of more than $40 million. Her fees were extortionate – $40,000 per person – and those who couldn’t pay in full were hounded for the balance, threatened with violence, and even held prisoner. Conditions aboard the smuggling ships were also inhumane. In June 1993, one ship carrying 300 immigrants ran aground in Queens and 10 drowned swimming to safety.

Ping set up her human smuggling (“snakehead”) operation shortly after her arrival in the US in 1981. From her store in Manhattan’s Chinatown, she joined with other snakeheads and steadily expanded operations. With the proceeds, she set up legitimate businesses – a travel agency, real estate company, restaurants, and a clothing store. She also bought real estate in Chinatown, apartments in Hong Kong, and a farm in South Africa.

After her indictment, she fled to China and continued to run her operation. In 2000, she was captured by Hong Kong police and, three years later, extradited back to the US. Witnesses from around the world testified against her.

9. Thelma Wright, “Boss Lady” (b. 1951)

Raised a Catholic in a loving family, Thelma didn’t seem fated for a life of crime. But she fell in love with Philadelphia heroin dealer Jackie Wright. Together, they enjoyed the lifestyle only crime can provide. And she was so in love that, when Jackie was eventually murdered, she impulsively agreed to keep his business going. She reasoned that it would at least put her son through college. Really, she wasn’t ready to let go of the life she’d got used to.

In any case, the new Boss Lady ran the coast-to-coast heroin and cocaine empire differently to her husband. For one thing she didn’t have employees, only people she supplied. And her careful, calculated approach actually won her more respect – and success – than her husband ever had. She continued to live the high life – private jets, custom cars, speed boats – until in 1991 she found herself in a shootout. One of her friends was killed, along with some of her associates, and she felt a desperate need to get out of the business. 

So she became a receptionist and kept her head down. Thelma Wright was never caught, and it’s probably a good thing. She’s doing far more good nowadays, helping vulnerable women and teenagers avoid the path she took. 

8. Tilly Devine, “Queen of the Loo” (1900-1970)

Tilly started out as a hooker in London, making £20 a week between the two World Wars (when the average wage was less than £3 a week). Then, at 17, she married one of her johns – Australian serviceman Jim Devine – who, three years later, became her pimp in Sydney.

Settling in Woollomooloo (or “the Loo” as locals call it), Tilly was in her element. It didn’t take her long to build a reputation for herself in the seedy seaside pleasure district. Within the first five years, she’d racked up 79 convictions – the last of which, for slashing a man with a razor, got her two years in jail.

But even this didn’t curb her ambition. When she got out, she opened a brothel. This was actually legal for a woman due to the naive wording of the Police Offences Act (1908), which only made it a crime for a man. In her new role as madam, she pampered her girls and took half their money while Jim kept them hooked on cocaine. It was a winning formula. By the end of the decade, she’d opened 18 brothels and amassed more diamonds than the Queen of England (“better ones too,” she liked to say). She dressed in furs, traveled the world, and, between lavish parties, even helped pay for Australia’s war effort. She also ditched Jim. In the press, she was dubbed “the Queen of the Night” or the “Queen of the Loo” or simply the “worst woman in Sydney.” 

7. Marica Licciardi, “The Godmother” (b. 1951)

Maria Licciardi was born into the mafia. Her father and brother were both bosses within the Camorra. It was when a nephew, next in the line of succession, was murdered that she took over as la Madrina (“the Godmother”).

Under her watch, the Licciardi Camorra ran extortion rackets, trafficked drugs, and hijacked public works contracts. Following one of the bloodiest mafia wars in living memory, she also formed an alliance between the Camorra clans – convincing her fellow leaders that cooperation was more profitable than war. She always had more sense than her associates. In 1999, when a large shipment of heroin arrived from Istanbul so pure that it was deadly, Licciardi ordered clans not to sell it. The Lo Russo clan defied her, killing numerous addicts and prompting public outrage, a police crackdown, and the collapse of Licciardi’s alliance.

Even the police respected her approach – even as she became one of Italy’s most wanted. 

6. Stephanie St. Clair, “Queenie” (1887/97-1969)

Born on Guadeloupe in the late 1800s, Stephanie St. Clair got to New York on a steamer, settling in Harlem aged 13 or 23 (her year of birth is disputed). Because she spoke in her native French as well as English, she was able to pass as an immigrant from France – and a sophisticated one too, given her education. At a time when African-Americans were arriving en masse to escape segregation in the south, this proved to be an advantage.

Setting herself up as the boss of the 40 Thieves, she got into “policy banking” – a numbers racket involving extortion and theft. And she was good at it too, maybe too good. Before long, her success (and notoriety) drew unwanted attention from New York’s established mobsters – especially after Prohibition ended. Dutch Schultz, one of the city’s top gangsters, began to move in on her racket. 

And he probably would have ousted her had his plan to assassinate the District Attorney not drawn the attention of the kingpin. Lucky Luciano, “chairman of the board” of New York’s Five Families, warned Schultz against the hit. When Schultz proceeded anyway, Luciano had him shot. It took Schultz a full day to die – just long enough for St. Clair to send him a telegram: “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

5. Alice Diamond, “Queen of the Forty Elephants” (1896-1952)

The Forty Elephants were a gang of working class women specializing in shoplifting, blackmail, and extortion. Under various female bosses, or “queens,” they worked London for almost a century – between the 1870s and 1950s. Their modus operandi was walking into department stores and stuffing the most expensive goods up their dresses. There was more than enough space in the fashions of the day.

The most famous Queen of the Forty Elephants was Alice Diamond, who at 5-foot-9 and with a full figure, was a match for most men of the time. She was known for her diamond rings and knuckle dusters, as well as for reorganizing the gang into separate cells allowing for simultaneous heists. This, she reasoned, would divide police attention and catch their targets by surprise. 

She also drafted the Hoister’s Code, outlining how they should operate. It mandated, among other things: the equal division of money; caring for relatives of imprisoned members; providing alibis for each other; and absolute fealty on pain of “ridicule or beating.” 

Unfortunately it was this Code that ultimately brought her reign to an end. She became too controlling, forbidding members from doing anything without her say so – including getting married. When one of the Elephants defied her on this point, she led an attack against the newlyweds – for which she was jailed for a year and a half. By the time she got out a new queen had replaced her.

4. Phoolan Devi, “Bandit Queen” (1963-2001)

As a low-caste woman in India, the naturally headstrong Phoolan Devi had a hard time growing up. In fact, her family hated her. When she was 10, her uncle knocked her out with a brick for saying he stole her father’s land. Then he married her off to a 45-year-old man to get rid of her. When she came back, aged 12 and no longer a virgin, her mother told her to jump down a well. She didn’t, so her uncle arranged for the local bandits to take her away for good. 

In captivity, Phoolan may have faced a lifetime of gang rape had it not been for an unlikely savior. Bikram Singh, a bandit of the same low caste as she, shot the high caste leader to death. The two became lovers, but not for long; Singh was killed in revenge, and Phoolan locked up in a village.

When she escaped, she gathered followers and took revenge of her own. On Valentines Day 1981, dressed in a khaki police coat, blue jeans, boots, and lipstick – with a gun and ammo slung over her shoulders – she marched her men to the village and demanded to know the whereabouts of her captors. The villagers didn’t know, so she had 30 of them (all men) lined up and shot. Because they were all from the landowning warrior caste, she became the most wanted person in India with a $10,000 bounty on her head.

Two years later, aged 20, she gave herself up. By this time, she had won the hearts of the Indian public. 8,000 people gathered at her hideout for the surrender. Evidently touched, she entered politics when she got out of prison.

3. Ma Barker, “Machine Gun Kate” (1872-1935)

Once called “the most vicious, dangerous, and resourceful criminal” in America by J Edgar Hoover, Ma Barker was, in her day, as infamous as Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and even Al Capone. She was the mother of a group of outlaws that terrorized the Midwest in the early 1930s. Ma helped them out and knew all their plans. She was also proficient with the Tommy gun, for which she earned the nickname Machine Gun Kate. 

Together, she and her boys “swept the nation like a spring tornado,” as one newspaper put it, amassing a fortune of up to $2 million. Their specialties were highway robbery, bank and post office heists, extortion, and kidnapping. They also killed cops. One of her sons, Herman, was already implicated for killing a policeman when he shot himself to avoid capture at a roadblock. That was in 1927. A few years later, the remaining Barker boys killed the police chief of Pocahontas, Arkansas, as well as the sheriff of Howell County, Missouri.

When kidnapping became a federal offense, however, they fell foul of the FBI. So they split up. Ma took her son Fred to Florida, while the other, Arthur, laid low on his own. Unfortunately for them all, when Arthur was arrested, the Feds found a map in his hideout showing the whereabouts of his mother and brother. Surrounding the house before sunrise, agents threw tear gas inside – to which Ma and Fred responded by opening fire from the second floor windows. It became a shootout – the “battle of Oklawaha” — and when the smoke finally cleared, Ma was found dead in an upstairs bedroom, machine gun still in her hands.

2. Maria Dolores Estevez Zuleta, “Lola la Chata” (1906-1959)

Lola la Chata grew up in La Merced, one of Mexico City’s oldest barrios, running drugs for her mother from a market stall. Here, in a neighborhood so criminal the police were afraid to invade, the young girl learned lessons that set her up for life. She learned the layout of the city, how to evade pursuers, and – from her prostitute friends – how to manipulate men.

After rounding out her education smuggling for a drug lord internationally, Lola returned to La Merced to build an empire of her own. Like her mother, she started out from a stall. She paid off the police and got kids to mule heroin in yo-yos. And she branded her products (a first for Mexico City) to encourage customer loyalty. She also offered loans to members of her community who couldn’t otherwise get one. 

By the 1950s, she was known as the “drug empress” – with her notoriety reaching the US.

1. Griselda Blanco Restrepo, “Cocaine Godmother” (1943-2012)

Raised by an abusive mother in Colombia, Griselda got into crime and prostitution at an early age. But it wasn’t until she met her second husband that she started trafficking cocaine to the US. Her contribution to the Medellin Cartel’s existing infrastructure was the design of a special undergarment for smuggling coke across the border.

She’s also known for killing her own husbands, earning her the nickname Black Widow. Her second husband she killed in a parking lot shootout, along with six of his bodyguards, while her third she had assassinated for cheating.

By this time her standing in the criminal underworld rivaled that of Pablo Escobar, and the DEA was out to get her. She was the Godmother of Miami’s cocaine underworld between the 1970s and 80s, but in the end was taken down for murdering her husbands, as well as a few others — although it’s estimated she killed as many as 200. Blanco was sentenced to almost 20 years in prison in the US before she was deported to Colombia. There, before her 70th birthday, she was gunned down outside a butchers shop in Medellin.

In the surveillance state era you might think the Golden Age of organized crime is over, but gangs are very much thriving – even some of the old ones. They’ve just adapted. While some still manage to evade the law, others are enabled by governments. And some are so embedded in the fabric of their society, they’re like de facto governments themselves.

Based on their revenue, membership, and/or global distribution, here ten of the most powerful today.

10. CJNG

The killing of Sinaloa Cartel capo Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel in 2010 left a power vacuum in the drug trafficking underworld, with rival factions battling for control of Jalisco. It was out of this frenzy that the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) emerged.

As its name suggests, the CJNG really is a new generation of Mexican drug cartel. For one thing, it’s highly resilient – continuing to expand despite the capture of multiple leaders and bank accounts. For another, it’s even more violent than its ultra-violent forerunners. Right from the beginning, Jalisco saw a spike in murders, missing persons, and mass graves. Victims included not only rival gang members (such as Los Zetas (“the Zs”)), but also police and public officials. Attacks were fierce and sophisticated, using machine guns and grenade launchers and even downing helicopters. To ensure all members are capable of the actions required of them, training for the CJNG involves kidnapping, torturing, murdering, and eating people – and new members may be as young as 12. At the same time, though, the CJNG reaches out to ordinary citizens with its PR campaigns.

Active throughout Mexico, the CJNG now has an international network including contacts in South and Central America, the US and Canada, Australia, Southeast Asia, and China.

9. Wo Shing Wo

The Wo Shing Wo has been steadily expanding since the 1990s when police started paying more attention. The gang has spread throughout Hong Kong as well as around the world with a significant presence in San Francisco.

It is, of course, a triad – a Chinese gang named for the unity of heaven, man, and earth. While the Wo Shing Wo is known mainly for its involvement in illegal gambling, triad activities also include: drug trafficking; protection rackets and extortion; wildlife smuggling; fraud and counterfeiting; loansharking; cyberscams; and money laundering. Not all their activities are illegal, however. Triads are also involved in legitimate businesses (nightclubs, casinos, bars, etc.) and even the production and distribution of movies. Triads simply exist to fill a gap in the market – or provide services the government doesn’t.

Today, Wo Shing Wo has over 20,000 members.

8. Black Axe

“Nigerian prince” scams may seem comically naive, but they’re only the tip of the iceberg. They’re part of an expanding global empire of crime, in which members share “formats” or blueprints for ways to rob people online. 

The most powerful of the cybercrime gangs originating from Nigeria is Black Axe – a cult-like organization involved in human trafficking and brutal murders as well. Members, called Axemen, coordinate online, sharing photos of recent killings and mutilations – usually of rival gang members. Internationally, their activities are thought to generate billions of dollars. In Canada alone in 2017, authorities uncovered a money laundering scheme worth more than $5 billion. And it’s not clear how many others exist; Black Axe is active in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, among other regions, and is thought to have more than 30,000 members. This is thanks to their organization, such as splitting the world into “zones” – each with a local “head” to which “dues” are payable before revenue can be returned to Black Axe’s base in Benin City. In Italy, for example, the gang cooperates with the local mafia.

Now more than four decades old, Black Axe tends to recruit university undergraduates in Nigeria – many of whom, facing one of the world’s highest unemployment rates, are desperate for opportunities and contacts. Initiation (“bamming”) reportedly involves a symbolic death and rebirth — a savage naked whipping with bamboo followed by crawling between the legs of other gang members and emerging to songs and chants. With members in the Nigerian armed forces, academia, religious establishment, law enforcement and politics, Black Axe is extremely difficult to combat at home.

6. Sinaloa Cartel

Famously associated with the drug lord El Chapo, the Sinaloa Cartel is today the largest and most powerful of Mexico’s drug trafficking organizations. According to Fortune in 2014, its annual revenue is estimated to be upwards of $3 billion. But it may be much more, with operations in more than 50 countries. Unlike other cartels, which have branched into other areas, the Sinaloa cartel has remained firmly focused on drugs – especially cocaine, meth, heroin, and cannabis.

Because of its non-hierarchical structure, lacking any single leader or kingpin, the Sinaloa cartel has resisted efforts to destroy it. This is also thought to have facilitated its global expansion, with many local groups operating semi-independently around the world. Members are often bound, however, by blood relation or marriage. In fact, it began as an affiliation of farming families. Another characteristic of the Sinaloa cartel is its preference for non-violent solutions – preferring to bribe but still prepared to kill. This is in stark contrast to its number one rival today, the CJNG.

6. Camorra

Thought to be centuries old (older than Italy, in fact), the Camorra mafia controls the city of Naples. Such is its influence that Neapolitans, who call it “the system”, tend not to testify against it – as if it were the government itself. It might as well be; the gang provides not only work but protection to the people. It also owns much of the city through debt, dominating the lives of many citizens.

Membership includes 100 “autonomous clans” and around 10,000 “immediate associates”, as well as a larger base of dependent clients and friends. Annual revenue from combined operations (including in the Americas and Europe) was estimated in 2014 to be $4.9 billion. 

Contrary to popular belief in the rise of other gangs in Naples, Camorra is still in control of the city. Among its enterprises there are the piazzas or drug bazaars – fortified apartment blocks with dozens of lookouts and a clandestine system for exchanging drugs and money that makes police raids basically pointless.

5. ‘Ndrangheta

Long thought to be non-hierarchical or horizontal in structure, similar to the Sinaloa Cartel, ‘Ndrangheta is now known to have a single central kingpin, or capo crimine (“head crime”). In fact, this is the mafia associated with New York City’s real-life inspiration for The Godfather, Carlo Gambino.

Surrounding the capo is the ‘Ndrangheta’s governing body, the crimine. Below them are the “colonels”: the mastro generale (“general master”), capo societá (“head of the society”), and contabile (“accountant”). Then there are the ‘ndrine or clans – usually families of at least 49 members – in charge of local territories. The ranking system is closely tied to Catholic saints, and initiations are known as “baptisms”.

As of 2014, ‘Ndrangheta’s operations across 30 countries and 60,000 members were thought to generate $66.4 billion a year – or 3.5% of Italy’s GDP. That’s more than the country’s biggest bank UniCredit. And if ‘Ndrangheta were a country itself, it would make more money than Luxembourg.  Activities mainly include drug trafficking and “illegal waste disposal”, but also gambling, extortion, prostitution, gun-running, and counterfeiting.

4. Sun Yee On

Triads in China date back to the 17th century when they worked in secret to restore the Ming dynasty to power. Though unsuccessful in that aim, they continued to operate below the radar and, by the 1960s, triad membership in Hong Kong had grown to an estimated one-sixth of the population. 

Traditionally, triads are honor-based societies – an alternative to corrupt institutions. Sun Yee On, however, is a notable exception to the rule. Formed in the early twentieth century, members are solely interested in self-preservation and wealth. Though its main rival is Wo Shing Wo, for example, and fighting is common, it’s not above teaming up to make money. Similarly, in WWII, it cooperated with the Japanese.

By the 1970s, Sun Yee On had 47,000 members. In the 80s and 90s, it took over Hong Kong’s film industry, and today its influence extends to senior government officials. Its precise annual revenue is unknown but is thought to be hundreds of billions, in part because it controls 12% of the global heroin supply.

3. 14K

The 14K triad is thought to be the largest by far in terms of membership and has been active in Hong Kong since the 1940s. Officially, police attribute its resilience to its pyramid-like structure, its alertness to undercover operations, and the public demand for its services (which include heroin, illegal migration, and gambling).

Unofficially, however, the 14K and other triads are aided by government officials. This is nothing new; in 1984, CCP leader Deng Xiaoping openly expressed his willingness to work with organized crime – praising their patriotism and honor. In fact, triads have provided protection for CCP officials overseas. In return, the government ignores some of their more questionable activities, like the smuggling of drugs, wildlife, and people through the Golden Triangle “special economic zone” (SEZ).

As recently as 2020, former 14K leader Wan Kuok-koi (aka “Broken Tooth”) acted as a dignitary himself, meeting with the president of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea to discuss plans for a new SEZ as part of China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ trade network.

2. Solntsevskaya Bratva

The Solntsevskaya Bratva (or “Solntsevo fraternity”) rose from the ashes of the Soviet Union to become the most powerful of the Russian mafias. Although it controls banks and businesses in Russia, it’s virtually invisible on the streets – so much so that some think it doesn’t exist.

Part of this is down to discretion. The leadership is thought to comprise twelve individuals who meet secretly in different locations around the world. But it’s also because its activities are kept in check by the Kremlin, while at the same time enabled by the Russian elite, or “kleptocrats”. Similar to the triads in China, Russian gangsters have been embedded in the political establishment ever since Stalin first employed them to rob banks and raise funds for revolution. In the 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia’s subsequent entry to the capitalist free market was a “feeding frenzy” for gangs. Ultimately, they helped shape the new status quo. Nowadays, there’s no clear line between crime and state. The trafficking of drugs and humans is almost seamlessly combined with legitimate business enterprises.

1. Yamaguchi-gumi

For many years, police have sought to destroy the Yamaguchi-gumi yakuza – “one of the most feared crime syndicates in Japan”. From its fortress-like headquarters, it runs the world’s largest and wealthiest gang or, as some would put it, “Japan’s second largest private equity group”. Members are known to gather insider trading information, as well information to blackmail powerful politicians and executives, through a network of hospitality workers. Other activities include drugs trafficking, fraud, theft, and violent crimes.

However, they also run legitimate businesses and humanitarian groups. For a criminal gang, they actually have a very public image in Japan – from office buildings and business cards to fan magazines and “comic books about their exploits”. This is a far cry from its origins as a loose labor union of dock workers in early twentieth century Kobe. This yakuza also bucks many of the usual stereotypes, with younger members tending away from tattoos, chopping off their pinkies, and so on to avoid identification as gang members. Gang warfare involving shootouts has also become much less common. The penalties for firearm possession are just too severe to make sense to the new generation of yakuza.

Nevertheless, Yamaguchi-gumi operations extend throughout Asia and into the United States. Domestically, the gang also plans to expand into Tokyo – historically not their territory. Despite the more punishing laws in Japan and internal splits, it remains dominant both at home and abroad.