Random Strangest Twists In True Crime History (12 items)

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  (#8) 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."
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  (#7) Andrei Chikatilo

  • Film subject

  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. 
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  (#5) Dean Corll

  • Person

  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. 
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  (#3) Ted Kaczynski

  • Mathematician

  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."
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  (#9) Gary Ridgway

  • Person

  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. 
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  (#10) 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. 

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