Bizarre True Crime Stories
(As heard on the #WeirdDarkness episode, “The Weird And Strange Side of True Crime” on August 01, 2024:https://weirddarkness.com/weirdstrangetruecrime/)
No matter how you consume detective stories, the more absurd true crime cases are usually the ones that stick with you the longest. Some cases are just plain weird—possibly hauntingly eerie. A prime example: Carl Tanzler kept his dead sweetheart’s body at home for seven years, occasionally buying her new dresses. Then there’s Danny LaPlante, who, at 17, lured a girl to his home, murdered her and her family, and lived secretly in their house for days. As you’re about to find out… our fascination with true crime runs deep.
Walking into a Pennsylvania bank on August 28, 2003, a man passed a note to the teller, threatening to blow up the place if he didn’t get $250,000. He left the bank with just $8,000; surrounded by police, the man identified himself as Brian Wells, a pizza deliverer forced by others into robbing the bank. He claimed the device around his neck was a bomb, which eventually exploded in front of live television cameras, killing him. Police found detailed instructions in Wells’s car outlining tasks he needed to complete to get rid of the bomb, including the holdup. However, Wells could not have finished all the tasks before the device’s timer ran out. Later, police attributed the plot to three people: Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, Kenneth Barnes, and William Rothstein. After Wells’s death, Rothstein turned on Diehl-Armstrong, leading police to the body of her ex-boyfriend, James Roden, hidden in his freezer. Investigators believe Diehl-Armstrong killed Roden after he threatened to inform police about the bank heist. Debate remains as to whether Brian Wells was involved in the robbery. Diehl-Armstrong was sentenced to life in prison in 2011, and she died in prison in 2017. The case received renewed attention in 2018 with the release of a Netflix docuseries called “Evil Genius.”
At around 3 a.m. on December 22, 1939, a blindfolded man stumbled out onto a snow-covered highway in Mishawaka, IN, and was struck by a melon truck. The man was identified as 44-year-old factory worker Stephen Melkey. Footprints leading to where he lay dead showed that Melkey had his hands tied behind him, and his eyes and mouth were sealed with strips of surgical tape. Inside Melkey’s mouth was a handkerchief covered in red lipstick. Melkey had been led approximately 140 feet from where he was actually hit by the car. At first, his legs had been bound, but he managed to get them loose and walked blindfolded through the snow across the highway. More baffling was a set of parallel footprints through the snow, suggesting that the person who tied him up had also disturbed his walk. Some suspect Melkey was pushed onto the road. Three suspects were taken into custody: local tavern waitress Bette DeVos and her fiancé Allan Polomskey, as well as a former school chum of Melkey’s. Although all three were questioned, none of the automobile tire marks were conclusively matched. The case of Stephen Melkey remains unsolved.
Donna Doll, a 21-year-old senior majoring in Russian at Northern Illinois University, left her job at the school library on October 2, 1970, and was never seen alive again. Three days later, her body was found in a cornfield near the school. The coroner determined suffocation with a bag or pillow was the cause of death, but several details didn’t add up. First, no fibers were found in Doll’s mouth. Second, there were unidentified substances in her system. Most bizarrely, it emerged that Doll had consumed 5-6 pounds of potatoes shortly before her death. Despite countless leads, Donna Doll’s killer has never been found, and the case remains unresolved.
On December 8, 1986, everything changed for the Bowen family. Initially, they thought a ghost was performing tricks, but father Frank was sure their imagination had run away with them. The family’s eldest daughter, Tina Bowen, managed to escape through a window and call the police. But by the time they arrived, the boy was gone. Two days later, Frank Bowen returned to the house to pick up some belongings and saw the boy staring out a second-floor window. They found 16-year-old Daniel LaPlante hiding in a hollow space within the bathroom wall. LaPlante had been living secretly in the Bowens’ house for days, harassing the family bit by bit. LaPlante was arrested and sent to juvenile hall but received a relatively light sentence. A year later, in 1987, LaPlante murdered a woman named Priscilla Gustafson and her two young children. He was sentenced to three life terms and practiced Wicca in prison.
On the evening of October 4, 1986, after dinner, NBC news anchor Dan Rather walked home from a restaurant. He quickly realized he was being followed by two men. As the men closed in, they asked Rather, “Kenneth, what is the frequency?” After Rather said they had the wrong guy, the men punched him and turned on him together. Rather fled into a nearby apartment house where someone called the police. The attack on Rather made headlines and became part of pop culture. In 1994, William Tager shot and killed a stagehand on The Today Show. Tager claimed that NBC had been sending him messages through his television set. A decade later, Tager confessed to being one of the men who attacked Rather, claiming he was a time traveler and Rather looked like a vice president named Kenneth Burrows from his timeline. Although Tager’s confession solved the mystery for some, others remain convinced there were more people involved.
In July 2019, Vatican City authorities received a new lead in a 35-year-old cold case. In 1983, 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, disappeared in Vatican City on her way home from a music lesson. She was never seen again. An anonymous tip led investigators to the tombs of two 19th-century German princesses in the Pontifical Teutonic College. Two ossuaries holding thousands of bones were found on-site, but Emanuela Orlandi’s body was not among them. It was eventually determined that these bones were at least 100 years old, and multiple individuals were involved in the burial.
In 1991, the bodies of Lesley Howell and Trevor Buchanan were discovered in a car filled with exhaust gas. Authorities initially concluded that both had killed themselves due to an existential crisis caused by their spouses, Colin Howell and Hazel Buchanan. Nine years later, Colin Howell, a respected oral surgeon, confessed to killing his wife and Buchanan’s husband, staging their murders to look like a double suicide. Howell also confessed to sexually molesting female patients while they were under anesthesia. Both Colin Howell and Hazel Stewart were found guilty of the murders, with Howell receiving a 21-year minimum sentence and Stewart an 18-year one.
In 1931, Carl Tanzler, a radiology technician, fell in love with 22-year-old Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, a patient being treated for tuberculosis at Key West’s hospital. Tanzler, who could not treat tuberculosis, claimed he could cure Hoyos. In October 1931, she succumbed to her illness and died. Grief-stricken, Tanzler paid for a mausoleum to house her remains and visited the corpse every night for two years. Then, in 1933, Tanzler removed Hoyos’s body from the mausoleum and took it home, unbeknownst to her immediate relatives. He kept the body from decomposing by stuffing it with rags and wire hangers and covering its surface in plaster of Paris. The body was eventually removed from his home in 1940 after a neighborhood boy saw Tanzler dancing with what he thought was a giant doll. Tanzler was charged with grave robbery, but the statute of limitations had run out, and he walked free. The incident was often portrayed by the media as a touching love story, with Tanzler frequently quoted as believing he could one day bring Hoyos back to life.
David Hampson, 45, from Swansea in Wales, was found guilty in 2015 of breaching a criminal behavior order and being ‘mute of malice.’ Starting in 2014, he developed a habit of standing in front of cars to prevent traffic from moving. When the police spoke to him, he didn’t utter a word, though he was capable of speaking. Hampson was repeatedly arrested for stopping traffic, even climbing onto the hood of a mail van at one point. The jury in Hampson’s trial found him guilty after just five minutes of deliberation.
Brooklyn politician and multimillionaire Marty Markowitz claimed his psychiatrist, Isaac “Ike” Herschkopf, took over his life for 30 years starting in 1981. Herschkopf allegedly had Markowitz establish a foundation funded by Markowitz but controlled by Herschkopf. Herschkopf used Markowitz’s Hamptons home for parties, where Markowitz was forced to serve guests. Herschkopf also talked Markowitz into disinheriting his sister and leaving all his possessions to the foundation. Markowitz eventually cut off all contact with Herschkopf in 2010, leading to Herschkopf giving up his medical practice after authorities heard testimony from Markowitz and two other former patients. The story was made into a television series called “The Shrink Next Door,” starring Paul Rudd and Will Ferrell.
On August 29, 2016, Mark and Jacoba Tromp, along with their three kids, walked away from their home outside Melbourne, Australia, believing their lives were in danger. They made their three adult children—Riana, Ella, and Mitchell—leave their phones and other identifying items behind. As the trip went on, the children began to separate. Mitchell left after his father made him throw his phone out the window. Riana and Ella stole a car and later separated, with Riana found “catatonic” in the back seat of a stranger’s car. Jacoba was found agitated in Yass, Australia, and received psychiatric treatment along with Riana. Mark was the last to be found, six days after they set out, near Wangaratta airport. Police did not believe the family was in danger or that anyone was out to get them. Some guessed the Tromps were affected by chemicals on their farm, while others thought they were suffering from a collective delusion called “folie à deux.” The family themselves seemed at a loss, with Ella Tromp stating, “It is very confusing, I still feel confused… There’s no one reason for it–it’s just bizarre.”
(“The Weird And Strange Side of True Crime” source: Patrick Thornton, Weird History at Ranker.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p9fsamf)
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