40 Of The Nastiest And Most Gruesome Plot Twists In Infamous True Crime Cases Around The World

Just before Christmas in 1997, a fire started in the Philadelphia home of Luz Cuevas. Fighting through the smoke and flames, she ran into the room where her 10-day-old daughter, Delimar, was sleeping in her crib, but saw no sign of her. Suffering burns to her face and at risk of passing out from smoke inhalation, she got out of the house with her two other children.

Firefighters quickly put the blaze out, which was primarily contained to the baby's room. After an initial search for the newborn, authorities determined she had perished in the fire, which they said was caused by an overheated extension cord on a space heater. Human remains were never found in the debris, but investigators concluded any remains had been incinerated in the flames. Cuevas, however, insisted that her child had been kidnapped. But, because there was no evidence of a kidnapping aside from her desperate pleas, it was considered a closed case.

For six years, Cuevas mourned the loss of her child and wondered what had truly become of her. In 2003, at a birthday party for an acquaintance, Cuevas saw a little girl who looked strikingly like her other children and was the exact same age as her lost Delimar. She was able to obtain some of the girl's hair that day under the ruse of getting bubblegum out of her hair. With assistance from a state legislator, she had police open an investigation and test the hair for DNA. The test proved that 6-year-old "Aaliyah Hernandez" was actually her daughter, Delimar Vera.

The woman who kidnapped Delimar was Carolyn Correa, a cousin of the child's father, Pedro Vera. Cuevas and Correa had only met the day before the fire, when Correa came by the house. The following day, Correa returned, claiming she had left her purse upstairs. The blaze started as Correa left the house.

Delimar, still going by Aaliyah, was reunited with her parents the next year, who were both given custody. Her abductor was convicted of kidnapping, arson, and other crimes.

In 2015, a Florida woman named Cheryl Treadway was held hostage by her boyfriend, but she convinced him to let ger order a pizza using Pizza Hut app. In the space for special request, she wrote "Please help. Get 911 to me. 911 hostage help!" Police arrived at the location and she was released.

Dave Kroupa had been dating casually after his 12-year relationship ended and ended up meeting a woman named Cari Farver. They hit it off instantly and spent a lot of time together over the next few weeks. This was until Cari texted Dave at work and asked if they could move in together - this was a shock to Dave and he said no. Cari then sent a super nasty response.

Dave then started getting bombarded with texts and emails from Cari. The harassment, already relentless and almost daily, started to expand to include other people in Dave’s life, like his recent ex (sort of) girlfriend Liz Golyar. Liz became a constant target of Cari’s stalking and harassment. Things escalated - at one point Liz’s house burned down. (I suggest looking up this case for the full details because there’s so much more to this story).

As it turned out, Liz had k****d Cari - ostensibly out of jealousy of Cari’s quickly growing relationship with Dave. Liz then began impersonating Cari and sending messages pretending to be Cari. That’s right, Liz was the one behind all those messages.

In 2015, a prostitute/escort named Heather Saul met with a man named Neal Falls. They’d spoken online before, but this was the first time they met in real-life. However, Neal attacked Heather almost immediately after entering her house. It’s unclear if he was invited in or if he broke in. Either way, Heather ended up in a fight for her life.

Neal grabbed her neck and squeezed it hard, telling her that he’d k**l her if she didn’t do as she was told. With his other hand, he pointed a gun at her. Heather managed to slip away momentarily, and a fight ensued. As Heather fought with Neal, she realized that he wasn’t going to shoot her; he actually wanted to keep her alive, at least in the short-term.

Once Heather realized that Neal wouldn’t shoot her, she was able to fight back more effectively. She grabbed a small rake from her kitchen, the kind used to clean up dog poop. Heather swung the rake at Neal. This turned out to be the best thing she could have done, because Neal set down his gun so he could use both hands to grab the rake away from her.

As soon as she saw that, Heather let the rake get pulled away from her and dove for the gun instead. She immediately shot Neal in the head as soon as it was in her hands. The whole encounter, from the time Neal entered the house to the time he was shot, lasted less than a few minutes.

Many people in town would later call her "Heather the Hero" for her actions that night, but Heather didn’t feel like a hero; she felt sick. She’d never wanted to k**l anybody; she never asked for this. When police showed up, she was sobbing hysterically. She was also injured; she had a broken back and dislocated shoulder from her fight with Neal.

This was by far the most traumatic experience of Heather's entire life; she cried profusely throughout her interview with detectives.

When a police officer searched Neal’s deceased body, he found 4 pairs of handcuffs; right away that was seen as a red flag. A search of Neal Falls’ car revealed an enormous k**l kit. In Neal Falls' vehicle, police found an axe, a shovel, a sledgehammer, bowie knives, bleach, cleaning supplies, handcuffs, duct tape, guns, and a bulletproof vest.

"It's likely that Mr. Falls is a serial k****r," said Steve Cooper, Charleston Police Department Chief of Detectives. "I believe she saved lives by shooting Mr. Falls, based on what he did to her and based on the items found in his car.”

It would eventually be confirmed that Neal Falls had kidnapped, tortured, and k****d at least several other women before he met Heather.

Whilst digging up the backyard, something in the dirt caught Aaron’s eye: a plastic bag. Something hard was inside. Upon pulling it out, Aaron discovered it was a coconut.

He was puzzled: Why would someone bury a coconut, especially this deep, in a plastic bag? A closer inspection of the coconut revealed a full set of teeth and eye sockets.

He was holding a human skull—not just any skull, but that of his mother.

It started in 1996 when Sally Snowden McKay, 75, and her nephew, musician Joseph ‘Lee’ Baker, 52, were found shot dead inside the historic property.

It was understood they’d disturbed a burglar and the suspect – 16-year-old Travis Lewis – had shot them in fright. He then, reportedly, set fire to the house.

Despite saying someone else had been involved, on April 7, 1998, Lewis pleaded guilty to the crime.

Tried as an adult, he was handed a 28-and-a-half year jail sentence of which he had to serve at least 70 per cent.

Sally’s big-hearted daughter, Martha McKay, believed he deserved to be rehabilitated.

When Lewis was eventually freed in 2018, after serving 22 years, Martha quietly gave him a job.

History was repeating itself as they quickly discovered a body. Martha, 63, was found at the top of the marble stairs wrapped in a blanket.

She’d been stabbed. Noticing a back door open, the two officers were searching for an intruder, when they saw a man jump from an upstairs window.

Running to a car, the man drove across the yard, but got stuck, and instead headed on foot for the lake.

‘He was observed going under the water and never came back up,’ Sheriff Allen said.

The man had drowned.

Specialist equipment was used to search the lake, and the body of the suspect was located and recovered.

The identification must have caused considerable shock. He was discovered to be Travis Lewis.

Short story of it is that she showed up at a hospital claiming a strange man had accosted her and her three children, tried to carjack her, then started shooting. One of her daughters was already deceased, her other daughter had a stroke, and her son was injured so severely that he was left paralyzed from the waist down.

Well, turns out what actually happened was that Diane had been involved with a guy at her work. The man was married, but had an affair with her; he had wanted just a casual fling and ended up reconciling with his wife, but Diane had become obsessed with him and wanted more. He had been pretty open/vocal about not wanting children, so Diane tried to "take care of the problem" by k*****g her kids, thus (in her mind) getting rid of any obstacle to them having a relationship.

Anyone Remember The Serial K****r Brothers Of Kalamazoo, Larry And Danny Ranes? One Brother Robbed And Shot Five Men In 1964; The Other K****d Four Women Eight Years Later. Only Family In America To Produce Two Serial Killers That Went On Independent Crime Sprees.
They committed their m*****s separately and independent of one another. Their MO’s & m****r weapons were also different. The only twisted similarity, they were married to the same woman!!!

Tore Hedin was a Swedish mass murderer and police officer. The act perpetrated by Hedin, commonly known as Hurvamorden, is infamous for being the worst known act of spree k*****g in Swedish criminal history, and for the fact that Hedin, as a police officer, had been assigned to investigate his own first m****r for an extended period.

Hedin also employed a medium, itself unique for a Swedish homicide investigation. The medium, Olof Jönsson, claimed to be able to "see" the k****r anywhere in the world by touching objects belonging to the victim. He could not.

The police officer, Tore Hedin, had k****d his friend after a game of poker and stolen his money. A year later he k****d 9 more people, including his parents, before finally k*****g himself.

The Phantom of Heilbronn, often alternatively referred to as the "Woman Without a Face", was a hypothesized unknown female serial k****r whose existence was inferred from DNA evidence found at numerous crime scenes in Austria, France and Germany from 1993 to 2009. The six m*****s among these included that of police officer Michèle Kiesewetter, in Heilbronn, Germany, on 25 April 2007.

The only connection between the crimes was the presence of DNA from a single female, which had been recovered from 40 crime scenes, ranging from m*****s to burglaries. In late March 2009, investigators concluded that there was no "phantom criminal", and the DNA had already been present on the cotton swabs used for collecting DNA samples; it belonged to a woman who worked at the factory where they were made.

Ronald Clark O'Bryan nicknamed The Candy Man and The Man Who K****d Halloween, was an American man convicted of k*****g his eight-year-old son on Halloween 1974 with a potassium cyanide-laced Pixy Stix that was ostensibly collected during a trick or treat outing. O'Bryan poisoned his son in order to claim life insurance money to ease his own financial troubles, as he was $100,000 in debt. O'Bryan also distributed poisoned candy to his daughter and three other children in an attempt to cover up his crime; however, neither his daughter nor the other children ate the poisoned candy. He was convicted of capital m****r in June 1975 and sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal injection in March 1984.

Brittany Norwood - A former soccer star that worked at a Lululemon athletic clothing store in an upscale wealthy neighborhood. She had worked the nightshift with her manager and both were the victim of a brutal robbery/m****r. A co-worker arrived at the Lululemon store the next morning, discovered the scene and contacted the police. The manager, Jayna Murray, was brutally m******d and stabbed over 60+ times. Norwood suffered minimal injuries, her pants ripped and she was tied up. Norwood claimed an African-American man first k****d Murray, then approached Norwood, ripped her pants apart and raped her. The police initially believed Norwood's story and sent her home.

During the investigation, the police came across text messages of manager Jayna Murrary discovering Norwood had been stealing merchandise and she was going to confront her about the theft, then fire her. The police soon made Norwood a suspect, especially after discovering Murrary's car, with Norwood's blood inside, was parked 3 blocks away from the store. Norwood claimed the robber told her to move the car, then walk back to the store, or they will k**l her. The police believed this was absurd she would be allowed to leave , then return after being allowed to leave. She was arrested, charged with m****r, convicted and sentenced to life without parole. It was later revealed at her trial the entire m****r was overheard by several people who did not intervene. An Apple store employee overheard women fighting and assumed it was, "just drama."

Kathleen Megan Folbigg is an Australian woman who was wrongfully convicted in 2003 of m*******g her four infant children. She was pardoned in 2023 after 20 years in jail following a long campaign for justice by her supporters, and had her convictions overturned on appeal a few months later.

No direct evidence of the alleged crimes was ever found, but in the personal diary discovered by her husband and handed over to the police, several entries seemed to suggest she might have harmed, and indeed m******d, her children. She was arrested in 2001 and convicted in 2003, sentenced to 40 years with a non-parole period of 30 years. Folbigg maintained her innocence, however, claiming the four children had died from natural causes.

Scientific and medical research suggesting the daughters might indeed have died of natural causes was rejected by a judicial inquiry in 2019. Subsequent research published in 2020 led ninety eminent Australian scientists and medical professionals, in March 2021, to petition the NSW Governor to pardon Folbigg. The petition succinctly demonstrated that all four deaths could be explained as the effects of very rare genetic factors. On 5 June 2023, Folbigg was unconditionally pardoned by NSW Governor Margaret Beazley and was released from prison.

Mackenzie Shirilla, her boyfriend and another friend were involved in a crash that k****d the boyfriend and the friend.

She was a driver and she survived. At first it seemed like maybe there was some fault in the car or that she simply lost control of the vehicle, but as the investigation went on they realized she planned the crash and ran into that wall on purpose.

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."

Susan Smith. She was all over the news begging for the return of her two boys who were toddlers. Stating she had been carjacked. After several days, it was discovered that she had let her car roll into a lake with her babies strapped into their car seats.

The case gained international attention because of Smith's false claim that a black man had kidnapped her sons during a carjacking. Her defense attorneys, David Bruck and Judy Clarke, called expert witnesses to testify that she had mental health issues that impaired her judgment when she committed the crimes.
Smith was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years.

Colleen Stan Was Kidnapped In 1977 By Janice And Cameron Hooker And Held As A S*x S***e In Their Ca Home For Over 7 Years. They Tortured Colleen And Kept Her Locked In A Box Under Their Bed For 23 Hours A Day. In 1984, Colleen Escaped. Janice Was Granted Immunity And Cameron Was Sentenced 104 Years.

On May 19, 1977, 20-year-old Colleen Stan was hitchhiking from her home in Eugene, Oregon, to a friend's home in Westwood, California, where she was going to attend a birthday party. Cameron Hooker kidnapped Stan after picking her up along Interstate 5 in Red Bluff, California. Stan stated that she was an experienced hitchhiker and earlier had declined two rides before accepting Hooker. She reportedly "felt confident climbing into the blue van", because Hooker's wife, Janice, and their baby were in the car.

When they stopped at a gas station along the way, Stan went to use the restroom. "A voice told me to run and jump out a window and never look back," she recalled, but she calmed her fears and went back to the car. Around 20 minutes into the ride Cameron pulled off the highway, claiming to be interested in investigating some nearby caves. It was at this point, Stan said, that "Janice got out of the car and went down to a lake with the baby. They were playing when Cameron got into the back seat and held a knife to my throat. He tied me up and placed a box over my head." She was subsequently locked in a wooden "headbox" that was designed to prevent light, sound, and fresh air from entering.

Elizabeth Short, known as the Black Dahlia, was an American woman found m******d in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, on January 15, 1947. Her case became highly publicized owing to the gruesome nature of the crime, which included the mutilation and bisection of her corpse.

Although he was never formally charged in the crime, George Hodel came to wider attention after his death when he was accused by his son, LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel, of k*****g Short and committing several additional m*****s. Prior to the Dahlia case, George Hodel was suspected, but not charged, in the death of his secretary, Ruth Spaulding; and was accused of raping his own daughter, Tamar, but acquitted. Hodel fled the country several times and lived in the Philippines between 1950 and 1990. Additionally, Steve Hodel has cited his father's training as a surgeon as circumstantial evidence. In 2003, it was revealed in notes from the 1949 grand jury report that investigators had wiretapped George Hodel's home and obtained recorded conversation of him with an unidentified visitor, saying: "Supposin' I did k**l the Black Dahlia. They couldn't prove it now. They can't talk to my secretary because she's dead. They thought there was something fishy. Anyway, now they may have figured it out. K****d her. Maybe I did k**l my secretary."

Franklin Delano Floyd was an American murderer, rapist, and death row inmate. He was convicted of the 1989 m****r of Cheryl Ann Commesso, as well as the kidnapping of 6-year-old Michael Anthony Hughes, who he claimed was his son, from his elementary school in Choctaw, Oklahoma. Floyd was also considered a person of interest in the 1990 hit-and-run death of his second wife and kidnapping victim Sharon Marshall, mother of Michael Anthony Hughes. It was later discovered that before becoming his wife, Sharon had been raised by Floyd from an early age as his daughter and was kidnapped by Floyd as a child.

Marshall's true identity remained a mystery until 2014 when she was positively identified as Suzanne Marie Sevakis, the daughter of a woman to whom Floyd was briefly married. He disappeared with Sevakis, her two sisters, and infant brother Phillip (also known as "Stevie") while her mother was serving a 30-day jail sentence in 1975. Sevakis' brother remained missing until 2019 when a man came forward believing he was Phillip; DNA tests confirmed his identity in 2020.

On December 1, 1987, LaPlante entered the Townsend home of Priscilla Gustafson, a nursery school teacher. Gustafson, who was pregnant, was found face-down on her bed, her pillows covered in her blood. LaPlante had raped her and shot her multiple times at point-blank range. LaPlante drowned both of her children (7-year-old Abigail and 5-year-old William) in separate bathrooms.

LaPlante was questioned by police about two days after the m*****s but at the time there was not enough evidence to arrest him. Later the same day police went to LaPlante's home to interview him further and seeing the police approach LaPlante leapt off the porch and fled. A manhunt was launched involving police, police dogs and helicopters. Meanwhile LaPlante had made his way on foot to a home in the neighbourhood where he stole a van and briefly took the woman who owned the van hostage. He then drove towards Ayer where he was spotted and pulled over by a policeman. LaPlante left the vehicle and escaped into a lumberyard where he threatened the owner with a gun and then hid in a dumpster. LaPlante was then apprehended by two policemen who kept him under guard until reinforcement arrived at the scene- where LaPlante could be arrested and taken into custody.

A year later, LaPlante was sentenced to three life sentences for the m*****s of the Gustafsons. On March 22, 2017, a re-sentencing hearing for LaPlante was held at Middlesex Superior Court in Woburn, Massachusetts. LaPlante asked for a reduction in his sentence. At the hearing, it was mentioned that during his first appeal, previous court rulings were cited saying that juveniles convicted of m****r should be given a meaningful opportunity to re-engage with society. There was also a new law allowing “juveniles convicted of m****r with extreme cruelty and atrocity to ask for parole after they’ve been behind bars for a minimum of 30 years.” The judge, however, affirmed LaPlante's sentence of three consecutive terms of life imprisonment, with the possibility of parole after 45 years, after a forensic psychiatrist evaluated LaPlante and found that he was not remorseful for his crimes.