James Mitchell DeBardeleben was a man of contradictions. A man who loathed women with a vicious, acidic anger, and yet was married five times. Although he owned the Washington based photo studio “The Naked Eye”, Mitchell used counterfeit $20 notes in various malls across 44 states. By 1982 when he was finally arrested, he was able to counterfeit and pass over $130,000.
The lost girls of Duisburg and the Ruhr Cannibal
On a sunny Tuesday, June 16th, 1959, 24-year Klara Frieda Tesmer’s life ended in the green meadows of the Rhine, in the small city of Duisburg, Germany. Her cold, naked body was found the next day by five boys on their bicycles for a day out. The police investigation would ultimately arrest a nervous mechanic […]
Iran’s Desert Vampire murdered 20 without remorse
About 25 kilometers southeast of Tehran, Iran lies the poverty-stricken city of Pakdasht. Past the slums of the industrial city, and the burning, soot-covered chimneys, out by the barren desert once lay the shallow graves of 17 young boys and three adults who were killed between 2002 and 2004.
Killing in Cairo: The unsolved murder of an entire family
WARNING: This article contains crime scene photos that show the blood of the victims. In the early morning of May 5, 2018, security guards at an upscale residential compound in the east Cairo neighborhood were called to attend to a villa with a dog that had been barking incessantly, tied up outside in the courtyard. […]
Iraq’s hatchet man: International smuggler, serial killer and secret police?
Hatem Kazem Al-Hadum, who would later be known as Abu Tubar or the hatchet man, returned to Baghdad after years of criminal escapades across Europe in the early 1970s. His murderous rampage in Iraq soon spread like wildfire.
A tale of many maybes: The bewildered butcher of Yemen
As the relentless heat seared the grounds of Sana’a University in Yemen, the morgue below was frigid. Hidden in the basement, it was empty save for the dead, locked away in their cold steel cabinets. As the world welcomed the new millennium, the morgue was left behind; it was dilapidated, falling apart from inadequate funding […]
Murder in Vain
Little is known of Kanpatimar Shankariya, except that he was born in 1952 in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. And that between 1978 and 1979, he confessed to killing over 70 men and women by bludgeoning them with a hammer behind the ear, earning him the nickname, Kanpatimar, which literally means “one who strikes under the ear”. […]