Random Completely Bizarre True Crime Stories (14 items)

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  (#9) A Con Man Used Masonic Paranoia To Strip An Aristocrat Of Her Family Fortune

  In the age of the Internet, it may be hard to believe that hucksters and confidence men can still run a good game. Con artist Thierry Tilly made more than £4.3 million off the gullibility of a French aristocrat. According to the former wealthy Christine de Védrines, Tilly convinced her - and 10 members of her family - that she was the target of a vast conspiracy perpetrated by an evil cabal composed of various entities, including other members of her own family.

  Tilly encited them to increasingly paranoid behavior, to the point that the group was barricading itself behind the doors of its ancestral home, Chateau Martel. Over the course of a decade, from 1999 to 2009, Tilly reportedly siphoned the Védrines' vast fortune into offshore accounts and even made off with the family’s historic jewels. He’s now serving 10 years in prison for extortion and imprisonment, and Christine de Védrines and her family are completely broke.
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  (#7) The Mary Morris Murders Were Likely The Work Of One Really Incompetent Hitman

  In October 2000, two Texas women were murdered in a similar manner within days of one another. Neither woman had any known enemies. In fact, both families reported that the women were loving, kind, and professional - one a nurse, the other a loan officer - living completely unconnected lives. They had only one thing in common: both women were named Mary Morris. Police found both Mary Henderson Morris, 48, and Mary McGinnis Morris, 39, dead in their cars. 

  An investigation into the matter turned up no evidence, and both cases remain unsolved. The prevailing theory is that Mike Morris - husband of Mary McGinnis Morris - hired a hitman to kill his wife. Unfortunately, the assailant made a mistake and targeted the wrong Mary Morris first. 
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  (#11) Bernie Tiede Was The Murderer People Couldn’t Help But Love

  As of 2016, former mortician Bernie Tiede is in a Texas lockup for the 1996 murder of Marjorie Nugent, a well-to-do widow whom Bernie shot to death before hiding her body in her freezer for several months. Perhaps the strangest bit of this story is that in the wake of Nugent’s disappearance, no one seemed to care. Thanks to her reputation for being somewhat of a curmudgeon, her disappearance drew no concern.

  Reportedly, Tiede was in a relationship with Nugent, who was 40 years older than him. When Tiede’s crime was eventually discovered, the small-town characters surrounding the mortician actively fought against his incarceration, calling Tiede infallibly generous - possibly because he spent a lot of Nugent's $6 million fortune on various gifts to the town. Few people could believe the sweet-natured man could possibly have committed such a crime, even after he confessed to the "sweetheart scam."

  Jack Black portrayed Tiede in the 2011 movie Bernie. Although Tiede was actually convicted in 1999 and sentenced to life, he was released in 2014 pending a second trial. In 2016, his original sentence of 99 years was reinstated.
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  (#3) Jasmine Richardson Helped Kill Her Family Under The Influence Of A 'Werewolf'

  In August of 2016, 22-year-old Jasmine Richardson was set free from a Canadian prison, 10 years after her and her ex-boyfriend's convictions. In 2006, then-12-year-old Richardson and her boyfriend, Jeremy Steinke, murdered Richardson’s family - her parents and younger brother - in cold blood. The crimes took place in the Richardson family's home in Medicine Hat, Alberta.

  In the months leading up to the murders, the pre-teen reportedly had made a quick transition from a bright and happy girl to dark and morbid. Authorities claimed that this transition was a result of 23-year-old Steinke’s influence. Steinke, in fact, believed himself to be a 300-year-old werewolf. 
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  (#4) Issei Sagawa Might Be The World’s Most Horrendous Case of 'Affluenza'

  In June 1981, Japanese citizen Issei Sagawa was caught in a Parisian park with two suitcases in his hands. Inside the suitcases were the remains of Renée Hartevelt. Three days before he was caught, Sagawa had shot and killed Hartevelt and then spent the intervening time eating various parts of her body. For his crime, the affluent Sagawa spent five years in a psychiatric hospital, after which time he was able to check himself out and return to his native Japan.

  Over the 30 years since his crime, Sagawa has not only enjoyed freedom, he’s become something of a minor celebrity, essentially crafting his own cottage industry from his notorious reputation. Everything from manga to paintings to macabre re-enactments - in which Sagawa plays himself - have been created in the wake of his crimes. Sagawa is notoriously known as the "Celebrity Cannibal."
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  (#2) Carl Tanzler Lived With A Corpse For Over Seven Years Before He Was Discovered

  In 1931, 56-year-old Carl Tanzler was working at a hospital in Florida when he fell in love with a 22-year-old Cuban-American woman named Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos. When the couple met, de Hoyos was dying from tuberculosis - a terminal condition in the 1930s. Throughout the last year of her life, Tanzler reportedly showered the young woman with gifts and even purchased an expensive mausoleum when she passed. 

  After her death, Tanzler visited de Hoyos’s grave, singing Spanish love songs to her. He later claimed that her spirit encouraged him to remove her from the grave and take her home. So, one night in 1933, allegedly haunted by these ghostly requests, Tanzler carried de Hoyos back home in a wagon.

  Over the next seven-plus years, Tanzler preserved the woman. He replaced her skin with silk and wax, stuffed her body with rags to keep its shape, and used perfumes to disguise the smell. It wasn’t until 1940 - when de Hoyos’s sister, Florinda, stormed into his home with police in tow - that the truth was discovered. Tanzler wasn’t actually prosecuted because the statute of limitations on his initial crime had already lapsed.

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