Jacob Shelton

As if tales of murder aren’t weird enough, there are some slayings that get stranger as time keeps passing.

Weird twists don’t just happen in the movies. Strange true crimes often take brutal turns out of nowhere: the crooked juror, the letters from serial killers discovered only years later, a memory of something a criminal said years ago that now is downright chilling. There are countless weird cases that became weirder as more evidence came to light.

It goes to prove that no matter how much people think they have something figured out, there’s always something else waiting around the corner – be it a living victim everyone thought passed or a gruesome villain who was more evil than anyone realized.

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• Photo: Sacramento Sheriff / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Over 40 Years After His Crime Spree, DNA Analysis Helped Catch The GSK

In April 2018, the public was shocked when authorities announced they had apprehended a suspect in the Golden State Killer (GSK) case. The criminal terrorized California during the ’70s and ’80s in a spree of multiple rapes and 12 suspected fatalities, but he abruptly ended his reign of terror in the late ’80s, leading to widespread speculation that he died and his identity would never be revealed.

The suspect, Joseph James DeAngelo, was identified via complex DNA profiling, though. Investigators compared DNA found at various GSK crime scenes to DNA publicly available via genealogical websites. This led them to a connection via a family member of DeAngelo.

What makes this twist even more bizarre was that DeAngelo was living a relatively normal life near Sacramento, CA. A retired police officer, he was a regular at a local diner where his only notable trait was being grouchy. It remains unclear why he decided to end his crime spree and resume a normal life.

• Photo: Milwaukee Police Department / Wikipedia / Fair Use

Jeffrey Dahmer’s Human Meat Sandwiches

Sometimes it takes a long time before a twist is finally recognized, and in the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, it took many years for his neighbors to realize the personal impact of Dahmer’s violence.

Pamela Bass was one of Jeffrey Dahmer’s neighbors when he lived in Milwaukee. The two were congenial, so much so that when he offered her a sandwich one day before his arrest, she accepted it.

After it was discovered that Dahmer was a cannibal as well as an amateur mad scientist, Bass began to worry that she might have eaten human meat. In the film The Jeffrey Dahmer Files she said, “I have probably eaten someone’s body part.”

• Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Ted Kaczynski’s Brother Recognized Some Familiar Handwriting

Blood is thicker than water, unless your brother is the Unabomber. Ted Kaczynski, more commonly referred to as the Unabomber, wrote a manifesto that he wanted published by the biggest US media outlets in 1995. In it, he stated that if his demands were not met, he would continue his bombing campaign.

Unfortunately for Kaczynski, his life’s work was also his life’s undoing. His brother David read the manifesto, recognized his brother’s handwriting and turned him into the federal authorities. To hear David tell it, he never planned on reading the manifesto, even after recognizing similarities between the bomber’s theories and his brother’s letters that were written while he was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Despite Ted’s arrest, David had trouble believing his brother was the Unabomber: “I had never seen him violent, not toward me, not toward anyone. I tended to see his anger turned inward.”

• Photo: State of California, San Quentin Prison / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

One Of Charles Manson’s Victims Returned From The Grave

The story of Charles Manson, his life, and his “family” is full of more strange twists than an M. Night Shyamalan retrospective, but one of the weirdest twists is the mystery of Bernard Crowe.

Before his infamous actions, Manson was in a dispute over drug money with Crowe. Worried about the money and Crowe’s affiliation with the Black Panthers, Manson went over to Crowe’s apartment and shot him.

Manson thought he took Crowe’s life, and when he was arrested for the murders of Sharon Tate and the LaBiancas in 1969, he included Crowe as one of his victims. However, Crowe was still alive.

He had never gone to the police about the shooting, never told any of his fellow Black Panthers about it, and never retaliated against Manson, leaving the cult leader to believe Crowe was dead.

Susan Atkins – a member of the Mason family – wrote in her book The Myth of Helter Skelter that Manson didn’t realize Crowe was alive until he was arrested for a crime unrelated to Manson.

• Photo: US Military / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Dean Corll’s Henchman Ended His Life

Dean Corll preyed upon young men in the Houston area between 1970 to 1973. What ultimately brought him down was not a police investigation, but one of his own henchmen. Corll raped and murdered at least 28 young men with the help of David Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley – two teenage henchmen. It’s likely Corll would have continued to assault men until police finally caught on, but when Corll attacked Rhonda Williams, a 15-year-old friend of Henley’s, his spreed ended.

Henley invited Williams back to Corll’s house after her alcoholic father attacked her. The two drank and did drugs before going to sleep. After waking up in a stoned stupor, Henley discovered that Corll had tied up Williams and a teen boy Henley had brought for Corll the day before. Henley himself had been tied up, but Corll let him go after Henley agreed to attack Williams. Instead, he shot Corll, ending his life.

He later went to the police detailing Corll’s crimes and showing them where they had gotten rid of the bodies.

• Photo: El Dorado Police Department / Wikipedia / Fair Use

BTK Got Himself Caught

Dennis Rader, also known as the BTK Killer, was cocky – so cocky that he would send taunting messages to the police officers investigating him. Police used one of those messages to trace Rader to his home and arrest him.

Rader acted maliciously over a period of 17 years, taking lengthy breaks between casualties. He was obsessed with being considered the best and scariest criminal and getting credit for his work.

He taunted the Wichita Police Department, sending them poems about victims and snapshots of the bodies. He left cereal boxes around town with information that only he could know.

In 2004, The Wichita Eagle wrote an article speculating that the unnamed criminal had either died or been put in jail, since there hadn’t been a BTK attack in a decade. Angered by this, Rader began sending the paper letters telling them he was still alive and free. In a message left at a hardware store, he asked whether a message left on a floppy disk could be traced. Investigators said no, and Rader sent a floppy disk with a document saved on it.

Also saved on the disk was the name “Dennis” and a location of where the disk was used – Rader’s church. He was arrested, and DNA evidence from the scenes matched Rader. Some believe Rader knew exactly what he was doing and that he wanted to be caught. Others believe he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was and ended up telegraphing his final play completely on accident.

• Andrei Chikatilo Followed His Own News Story 

Andrei Chikatilo was an infamous criminal. He began in 1973 while he was a teacher in the Ukraine. He routinely sexually assaulted his students without facing any formal discipline. When he was caught abusing students, he was usually told he could quit his job or be fired. This allowed him to move from school to school unnoticed. He escalated from sexually assaulting his victims to taking the lives of young runaways, sex workers, and homeless women.

Police and media outlets began noticing the deaths, and estimated there was a serial killer moving around Russia and the Ukraine. They noted the responsible party had a job that allowed them to move freely throughout the country (by this time Chikatilo was working at a locomotive factory and traveled quite extensively.)

It turned out that Chikatilo was reading all of this and using it to evade capture until 1990.

• Two Brothers, Years Apart, Died In The Same Tragic Way

In 2003, Robert Kissel was poisoned and beaten to death by his wife, Nancy. After her arrest, she alleged Robert subjected her to years of sexual sadism while abusing drugs and alcohol. Nancy was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

It seemed like a cut-and-dry story. But then, three years later, Robert’s brother Andrew was found posthumously with his hands and feet bound in the basement of his Greenwich home. Robert received the same treatment years before.

At the time of Andrew’s passing, author Joe McGinniss was working on a book about Robert’s death. While the two incidents were not connected directly, McGinnis noted it was a strange twist that both brothers would suffer in the exact same way.

McGinniss said the book “became a very different story. A brother who had been a very minor character in my book now meets the same fate. Clearly, this gives it a dimension beyond the average family tragedy.”

• Photo: King County Sheriff’s Office / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Gary Ridgway Cleared Up A Mystery For The Police

Usually, criminals aren’t apt to tell the police about their crimes. Not Gary Ridgway, also known as the Green River Killer. In a weird twist on the typical interrogation story, Ridgway was so excited about being able to revel in the glory of being “accomplished” that he immediately gave the police information about everyone he hurt.

During his confession, while police were trying to pin him for 49 different attacks, Ridgway one-upped them and admitted to ending 80 victims’ lives.

• The Hubers Case Was Overturned Because Of A Juror’s Faulty Memory

In 2012, Shayna Hubers shot and killed her boyfriend, 29-year-old lawyer Ryan Poston. Despite behaving bizarrely when she was being interrogated, Hubers’s lawyers would go on to claim self-defense. Hubers had a by-the-books trial, and she was convicted by a jury and ordered to serve 40 years in prison. In a surprise ending, however, Hubers was awarded a new trial.

Why? One of her jurors was a convicted felon, and in Kentucky – where the trial was held – felons aren’t allowed to serve on juries. The juror in question said he fell behind on child support payments more than 20 years ago, doesn’t remember pleading guilty in the case, and didn’t realize he was a convicted felon.

Hubers’s case was thrown out completely, and she was awarded an entirely new trial. However, she was convicted again in 2018 and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

• A Cop Whose House Was Burglarized Found His TV At A Crime Scene Five Years Later

An Indiana sheriff’s deputy whose house was burglarized was able to recover his stolen TV – five years after it was stolen.

Deputy Ricky Buchanan was driving home from a meeting in 2008 when he heard a report over his radio about a burglary. The address? His house. He rushed home to find that the thieves had made off with his 32-inch Viore TV.

Fast forward five years later, when a tip came in about a pair of brothers suspected of multiple burglaries in Durham County, IN. After they were apprehended, police officers found hundreds of stolen items around their home: jewelry, high school diplomas, handguns, and a 32-inch Viore television.

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