Called the "Cross Country Killer," this good-looking, smooth-talking extrovert "always got what he wanted" and took extraordinary risks as he traveled all across the country to murder and rob the redheaded women that especially appealed to him. It was a balmy Wednesday on August 19, 1987, and residents of the small market town of Hungerford, England. Just after noon, it all began.
Susan Godfrey was on a picnic with her children in Savernake Forest, a few miles west. and Mrs. Roland Mason were enjoying a quiet day at home, Ken Clermont was out walking, and Abdul Rahman worked in his garden.
Since more people were in town for the open market, Officer Brereton was making rounds in his patrol car. Francis Butler was walking his dog in the Memorial Recreation grounds, Douglas Wainwright was house-hunting, and Ian Payle was enjoying a shopping trip with his wife and two children. To these people, as well as others who would soon cross paths with a rampaging killer, it seemed like a perfectly fine day.
The weather was good and there was no particular reason to worry about anything. Someone needed shoes, others sought fresh air, and still others were simply relaxing. Except, perhaps, for Dorothy Ryan, who was home in South View, not far from Hungerford.
She was concerned about her 27-year-old son, Michael. Unemployed once again, he seemed irritable and restless. Lately, he'd been tense but she'd been unable to learn what the trouble was.
The incident that was about to unfold would make it a day that Britain would never forget. Ryan went out shopping before going to work as a waitress, unaware of what she would face when he returned. United Flight 629 explodes in the air outside Denver, killing 44 people.
Intensive FBI investigation yields the murderer who sabotaged the plane. By now, Americans are virtually unshockable. When we hear of the latest workplace shooting, the latest school shooting, the latest loner who snapped and took others with him to his final rest, we are saddened, certainly, but not shocked.
It has happened so often that we've long since lost count of the shooters and the victims, long since forgotten which towns bear the indelible marks of random violence. Mentally disturbed woman goes into a crowded Phildelphia mall with a semiautomatic rifle and starts killing. Three students die in the worst dormitory fire in the U.
S. Worst of all, it was deliberately set. Many young men are brutally murdered at a gay massage parlor.
Was it a mob hit, hate crime or theft? A fatal fire in Quebec ski resort followed by another in Switzerland leads to a bizarre, wealthy religious cult with a terrifying plan. Judy Dykton decided to get some early morning studying done for a neurology exam.
She heard a sound like an animal crying outside. Ignoring it, she decided to do some laundry before hitting the books. Once more she heard something.
This time she thought it sounded like a child crying out. She pulled open the blinds and saw a woman across the street at 2319, perched on a ledge. Judy pushed open the window and heard Cora's tearful cry.
"Oh, my God, they are all dead!" Reporter Joe Cummings went up to the second floor, looked down the hall and turned right. It was still dark, the sun had begun to rise.
He walked down the hall. To his right, he saw bodies of the nurses inside the bedroom, their skin a sickly ochre. A little further down the hall, he saw another bedroom with three more bodies and said.
"Oh my God." That made seven upstairs and one downstairs. Eight in total.
James Dean wannabe and his teen girlfriend tour the MidWest murdering as they go. The inspiration for movies Natural Born Killers, Badlands, and Wild At Heart. Chief inquistor of the infamous Spanish Inquisition was responsible for the torture and execution of thousands.
One of the first terrorist cases in the U.S. dealt with the poisoning of medicines.
Tremendous investigative efforts and preventive techniques did not completely stop copycats from continuing the initial reign of terror. Unsolved rural ax murders seemed almost epidemic in parts of the Midwest. Were they related in some way or committed by one depraved individual who murdered indiscriminately without any clear motive and moved along to the next community to wreak his havoc there?
Vlad the Impaler: Called the "Cross Country Killer," this good-looking, smooth-talking extrovert "always got what he wanted" and took extraordinary risks as he traveled all across the country to murder and rob the redheaded women that especially appealed to him.
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