There are pages and pages of email addresses and correspondents … A site on the dark web where you can hire hitmen … A journey into contract killing sites on the dark web … The deeper I got the more responsibility I felt to those marked for murder. How to Hire a Hitman, Channel 4 2022
The sheer scale of the hack, the amount of people who had ordered murder online was astounding. ibid.
We [UK] have the most per surface area … In America there were hits in nearly every single state. ibid.
All I had to do is enter the dark web and click for a killer. ibid.
The hitmen sites are a scam. The online hitmen don’t exist. ibid.
The case of Amy Allwine: her husband Stephen ordered a hit on the dark web that led to a real-world murder. How to Hire a Hitman II
I wanted to know what it was like to be told about about a hit but to have no resolution. ibid.
In 2004 Terence Hodson and his wife were gunned down. The double execution-style homicide … ‘involved police corruption’. Six years later criminal Carl Williams was bashed to death in jail. The killings struck at the heart of the criminal justice system. Four Corners: The Underbelly Killings, ABC 2015
Drugs, criminals and corrupt police … There’s never been a period like it in Australian criminal history: 36 people murdered murdered in 12 years of slaughter within Melbourne’s gangland community from 1998 to 2010. ibid.
A stain on the Victorian police force over its failure to protect important police informers whose evidence was crucial in exposing alleged corruption in the force and alleged police involvement in murder. ibid.
1948: The body on Somerton beach … He was dressed in a suit with shiny new shoes … No cash and no ID. True Crime Recaps: 3 Infamous Crimes, Youtube 33.25, 2021
His liver and stomach were congested with blood which indicated poisoning. But how and why? ibid.
Austin: Four teenage girls were executed in a strip mall yoghurt shop. For the next 30 years the case would be known simply as the Yoghurt Shop murders. True Crime Recaps: Two Unsolved Murders, Youtube 36.42, 2022
Las Cruces: Seven were attacked [four killed] in a small slaying at a local bowling alley. ibid.
Austin: All four girls were naked, bound, gagged with their own clothes and they’d all been shot … The store went up in flames. ibid.
Their alleged victims are all white males in their early to mid twenties; they go missing after a night-out with friends and weeks later they are found drowned; they have GHB or some other sedative in their bloodstream; their wallets and keys are found with them but they’re missing their phones; and in each case smiley-face graffiti can always be found close-by. Is it all just coincidence or is something more sinister happening here? True Crime Recaps: The Smiley Face Murders, Youtube 19.51, 2022
Dozens of college-age guys just like Patrick have been found dead in bodies of water across 25 cities in 11 different states, and 94 of those death happened within 100 miles of Interstate 94. ibid.
Lowndes County High School got a terrible shock on January 11th 2013. Around 10.30 that Friday morning students filed into the gym … a pair of stockinged feet in the middle of a rolled-up wrestling mat. Standing on end it was 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson. He’d been missing since Thursday … Accident or murder? True Crime Recaps: Tragic Accident or Police Cover-Up? The Kendrick Johnson Case, Youtube 15.30, 2022
There was a bruise on the right side of his jaw and chest that led the second doctor to conclude he was killed by blunt force trauma. ibid.
A crash course in creepy killers:
Randy Kraft, the Scorecard Killer: This computer consultant from Long Beach lured males into his car with promises of rides or booze. Most were in their late teens or early 20s. 16 were raped, tortured and killed by him, and he’s suspected of doing the same thing to 51 others. True Crime Recaps: 10 Most Terrifying Serial Killer Stories, Youtube 15.20, 2022
The Grim Sleeper: It’s believed he took a 14-year break between killing sprees. From the mid-80s until the early 2000s Lonnie David Franklin violated and shot sex workers in South Central Los Angeles … His son’s DNA was added to the national database … In 2010 he was found guilty of 10 charges of murder, but they believed he was actually guilty of killing dozens more. ibid.
Ed Kemper: In the mid-60s he killed his grandparents then he killed his mother and told her what he’d done … He just wanted to know what it would feel like … He started targeting female hitchhikers: he murdered six … ibid.
Pee-Wee Gaskins has been called the Meanest Man in America … He was a rapist cannibal killer who bragged about killing more than 100 victims … He met his maker in the electric chair. ibid.
Dorangel Vargas, Hannibal Lecter of the Andes: He used a homemade spear and heavy rocks to hunt and kill 11 victims over the span of 2 years. But he would only eat the flesh of a young man, never women, children or the elderly. Why? Because the tasted better. ibid.
Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer: Bind, Torture and Kill … 10 victims … in Wichita, Kansas. He’s a pompous narcissistic man … He enjoyed taunting police. ibid.
Pedro Rodrigues Filho, ‘Little Petey’: A Brazilian serial killer who targeted bad people even while he was in prison … It’s been reported that while he was locked up he murdered 47 other inmates … He’s believed to have killed at least 100 men. ibid.
Ted Bundy & Gary Ridgway: They both ended up in prison and Ted Bundy helped put Gary there. ibid.
Nannie Doss, the Giggling Granny: Over three decades she’s suspected of killing eleven people in Alabama including four husbands, her mother, her mother-in-law, her sister, her newborn granddaughter and her toddler grandson. ibid.
In the early ’80s some madman turned ordinary bottles of Tylenol into lethal weapons. It was one of the most horrifying mass murders you’ve probably never heard of. And no-one has ever been caught and convicted for it. True Crime Recaps: Unsolved Tylenol Mass Murder, Youtube 17.38, 2022
September 1982, Chicago: Mary Kellerman … died in the ambulance on the way to hospital. ibid.
Other Chicago residents started dying under oddly similar circumstances. ibid.
The test results came back … the lethal contaminant was indeed cyanide. ibid.
There were poisoned bottles in pharmacies all over Greater Chicago. ibid.
Who put Bella in the witch elm? True Crime Recaps: Who Put Bella in the Witch Elm? Youtube 12.07, 2022
This is the story of a wartime spy, or maybe it’s about the sad demise of a troubled woman, although some people say it’s actually the tale of a sinister occult ritual. ibid.
A late afternoon in Hagley Wood on a private estate in the West Midlands region of England in April 1943 when four teenage boys snuck into the woods … An old witch elm tree … Nestled in the tree’s hollow trunk was a human skull, two crooked teeth stuck out from the mouth, and a patch of rotting flesh remained on its forehead with strands of long filthy hair still attached. ibid.
When the police took a closer look they found more than a skull inside the witch elm: there was also a shoe, a fake gold wedding band, and a nearly complete skeleton. ibid.
She’d been dead for at least a year and a half. ibid.
Mysterious graffiti appeared on an abandoned building. It read: Who Put Bella Down the Witch Elm. ibid.
The tragic death of an abandoned baby girl in South Korea uncovered a bizarre tangle of family secrets. True Crime Recaps: Case of Abandoned Gumi Baby Reveals Shocking Plot Twist! Youtube 7.59, 2022
In the empty apartment was a mummified body of a two-year-old girl. She’d been in the apartment alone for six months; she starved to death. ibid.
December 12th 2021: A developing case out of Bridgeport, Connecticut … A 23-year-old woman meets a man on a dating app and invites him over for a get-to-know-you movie night. Eight hours later she’s dead. The coroner calls it an accidental overdose but the people closest to her says she didn’t use drugs. True Crime Recaps: The Mysterious Death of Lauren Smith-Fields, Youtube 7.53, 2022
The man who called 911 was her date: 37-year-old Matthew la Fountain. He slept over at her place the night before. He says he woke up around 6.30 a.m. and found her lying on her right side with blood dripping from her nose, and she wasn’t breathing. ibid.
She ended up taking a deadly dose of Fentanyl. ibid.
According to NBC Connecticut there was a pool of blood in the middle of the bed with streaks going off to the right. ibid.
There was also a used condom in her bathroom and an open tube of lubricant on her dresser. ibid.
They also found an unidentified pill in her room but it wasn’t collected for testing until almost three weeks later. ibid.
‘Mark was lying the full length of the bed because he was six foot four, on a ventilator, and they said he’s fallen from a balcony … I was the last person to say goodbye. When he died, the police were waiting for me outside ICU.’ Peter Doherty, Who Killed My Son? mum, Channel 4 2023
The flat was home to Paul Roundhill; he and Pete Doherty had a volatile relationship. ibid.
An inquest into Mark Blanco’s death would later rule out suicide. ibid.