True crime case files
These are the true crime files in this archive.
Each file is built from primary documents.
What the document says is what we report.
No speculation.
The company had internal studies proving radium was lethal. They buried the reports. Over 100 died. No executive was ever charged.
Nestlé knew formula mixed with contaminated water killed infants. They calculated the cost of harm against the cost of profit. They sold it anyway.
There is no federal law governing surrogacy agencies in the United States. No licensing. No oversight. No minimum standard of care. Anyone can open one tomorrow.
He told his neighbours he was in construction. For a decade he brokered black market kidney sales — flying donors from Israel, keeping the spread between $10,000 and $160,000.
He told them the world was ending in February 1979. He told them he was the only way out. He was wrong about the world. He was right about everything else he could control.
She had a prior conviction for drugging elderly victims. Parole agents visited her boarding house repeatedly. They kept leaving. Seven bodies were in the yard.
At 22 Carroll Cole walked into a police station and told an officer he fantasised about strangling women. A doctor later wrote in his file that he must kill women before he could be intimate with them. Both signed his discharge. Then they opened the door.
He gave free sweets to the neighbourhood children. He let them use the pool table in the back room of his factory. Between 1970 and 1973 he murdered at least 28 of them. Families reported their sons missing for months. The police called them runaways and closed the files.
In 1919 a serial killer sent a letter to every newspaper in New Orleans. He said he would spare any home playing jazz at midnight on a specific night. The city played until dawn. He kept his word. He was never identified.
He sent coded letters to newspapers daring police to break them. One cipher went unsolved for 51 years. He killed at least 5 people across San Francisco in 1968 and 1969. He was never identified. The file is still open.
He carried a Bible. He dressed neatly. He knocked on doors and asked for a room. In 18 months he killed 22 boarding house landladies across the United States and Canada. He was caught because he tried to sell a stolen watch for 50 cents.
She placed lonely hearts advertisements in newspapers across America. Widow seeks good man. Must bring funds. The men who answered her ads travelled to a remote Indiana farm. At least 14 were never seen again. When the farmhouse burned down she disappeared too. Nobody knows if she died in the fire or walked away.