Every town has its secrets… The kind that rarely make it into history books or glossy tourist brochures. They’re the stories that people whisper about behind locked doors, or in dimly lit corridors. True crimes are so unsettling that some locals would rather not speak about them and instead pretend they never happened. Until now…
Someone recently asked, “What’s a disturbing crime from your town that doesn’t get talked about?” and the answers read like a Stephen King horror. From people chopping off relatives’ heads, to entire families wiped out in a moment of madness, and shady black market body part shops… This is the stuff nightmares are made of.
Bored Panda has put together a list of the most bone-chilling ones for you to scroll through while you ponder the hidden secrets of your own neighborhood. We also explore why many people are so obsessed with true crime stories. And why that’s not necessarily a good thing. You’ll find that info between the images. Please note that some people might find the following content extremely disturbing.
#1
A man on my street beat his wife to death and poured boiling oil over her body in an effort to cover it up. His two children saw this happen and escaped the house alerting neighbours. The man got 15 years and didn’t even serve that. His children were forced to live with his parents and he maintained contact while the wife’s family never saw the kids again. He was also released temporarily on compassionate grounds on a day dedicated to domestic violence awareness in her name. An absolute travesty of a crime that spat in the name of victims everywhere. The poor woman’s name was Caroline Crossan
Image source: TheLordofthething, toyakisfoto / freepik (not the actual photo)
#2
A man kidnapped and a****d a child, who was terrified and in captivity long enough to keep quiet for years despite having access to internet and phone. At one point, he even left a message for his parents on a message board, asking if they’d keep looking for him. His parents thought this was a troll, as he used his own name.
Years later the man kidnapped another child. This child happened to have been walking with another boy around his age before he was taken. The other boy happened to know a lot about/have a special interest in trucks, and was able to relay to the police that he saw a (color/make/model/rust pattern). The police caught the man days later with that information, and both boys were safely released.
If you grew up in the community when he was growing up, you knew him. You worked with his mom, he managed you at the local pizza chain back in the day, he went to your high school, he asked your friend out long ago.
My partner and I were walking our dogs last night and saw a little girl playing outside her home unaccompanied by her parents. She was sweet, and we were sweet back. But it made me think about Michael, Sean, and Ben. How we talked about them growing up, and now not so much.
Almost half a million children are reported missing each year in the U.S.
Image source: July38th, freepik (not the actual photo)
#3
This didn’t happen where I lived but it was very disturbing. This happened in Florida. Back in the late 1980’s, the Ray Brothers were barred from school for having AIDS. They had hemophilia and got AIDS thru blood transfusions. In 1987 someone set their home on fire and the family was forced to move as a result. I don’t think they ever caught the arsonist but I find it hard to believe that no one who lived in that town knew who might have done this.
Image source: baronesslucy, Yunus Tuğ / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#4
We had a mentally handicapped high school kid k**l both his parents because he got upset. It was pretty awful, he didn’t understand that what he did meant they couldn’t come back.
Image source: Creepy-Agency-1984, freepik (not the actual photo)
#5
More than 15 years ago my friend, Jennifer Cooke of Grandview, Ohio, was stabbed to death in her home. No one has ever been arrested. Her ex husband, let’s call him Stabby McStabberson to protect his identity, was a person of interest.
Image source: gullible_skeptic_74
#6
Funeral home was selling body parts and gold from teeth/jewelry without permission, (using funds for luxury items and vacations) and giving loved ones cement mix in place of cremains. They literally operated a business called “Body Brokers” from the same address as the funeral home.
Image source: sofakingWTD, Wikipedia (not the actual photo)
#7
S**t, this one wasn’t even on the news; a guy went ice fishing with his wife, but came back alone. Said she was coming back after she was done visiting family. She never comes back and the guy puts on a sob story about how they are divorcing and she moved away. Life went on.
About six months later, a couple of magnet fisherman on the lake snag something but can’t pull it up, so one of them swam down to release the magnet and the line; it was the wife. She of course was terribly decomposed, and the reason she didn’t float to the top was her jacket was filled with a s**t ton of sand. They pulled her up and ran a DNA test. Called in the husband to ID her, and his very first statement was, “I thought cold water preserves people.” They had not told him yet where they found her.
I guess she had brought up divorce during the fishing trip, he got mad, beat her to death, and then filled her jacket was sand from one of the sandbags that lined the Icehouse, shoved her through the hole in the ice, and left.
Now he’s spending life in a prison cell.
Image source: Guardian-Boy, Clay Banks / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#8
Small town. Guy beat his wife to death with a hammer then shot himself in the head. Then a few years later his parents donated money to a municipal project, an area of a public building bears his name. Grosses me out.
Image source: kylathekoala, Andrew George / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#9
As of recently in Houston, multiple bodies have been found in Buffalo Bayou and this maybe linked to an active serial killer.
Image source: Cheetodude625
#10
The star high school quarterback was charged with possession and distribution, then while on bail tried to leave the state (and was caught by the Texas Rangers at the border), was given additional charges for all that, was once again released on bail and eventually was fined 5 figures and time served.
Then he hanged himself and it all came out that he had molested his daughter (4 years old at the time) and beat his wife.
When people talk about him, they only talk about how good a football player he was.
Along the same lines, the high school football coach in the 90s (same time as quarterback) was found guilty of encouraging steroid use in his players, fraud/money laundering of school funds, covering up sexual a***e allegations and he literally left town being chased by the cops.
He then went on to do the same thing at the university level (including a university many people would recognize) and similar things happened there. I believe he is now coaching in Europe.
But all anyone talks about is how great a football coach he is.
Image source: the_owl_syndicate
#11
I live in Hannover in Germany. About 100 years ago, there was a guy called Fritz Haarmann. I’m not fully aware of his crimes but here he’s known as the “Vampire of Hanover”. He was a cannibal.
He’s somewhat known in Germany — especially here in Hannover obviously — but outside of Germany, I don’t think too many people have heard of him and his crimes.
Image source: Informal_Aerie8078
#12
I lived in a very white suburban / rural town in the 1980s. A black family bought a large house directly across the street from the local country club. It was burned down within a month. Even though everyone knew who did it, or at least who was responsible, there was never an arrest made.
Image source: HoraceBenbow, Jen Theodore /Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#13
Where a grew up this guy was neighbors with some of my parent friends. He seemed a nice guy and seemed a good neighbor. He managed to place multiple hidden cameras in my parents friends house and was recorded the wife in the shower and bed room and would get in their attic to grab the vhs tapes and replace with new ones to continue recording. I think he was able to manage this by acting like he was boring a friendly neighbor and helping with house repairs and renovations if my memory serves me correctly. The wife started to get suspicious of some things or would say or do and became super paranoid. She eventually noticed something wrong in the ceiling above the shower which led to her finding the recordings. My parents went to the guys house multiple times because he had a pool and they would all get together . My mom started to get the creeps because he was always very insistent that my parents wait to get to his house before they change into swimsuits ( he had cameras set up in the pool house). They made a lifetime movie about it but no one really talks about it back home. We only did because we were friends with the family that it happened to.
Image source: THEBEAR4412, Claudio Schwarz / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#14
Not my hometown but just a bit down the road, where I lived for a few years.
Wife files for divorce and a restraining order, from her a*****e husband, files for full custody of their 2 kids all that fun stuff. A few weeks later, the husband shows up at the grocery store she works as a clerk at, armed with a .22 handgun, which he stole from his brother. He goes in intending to kidnap her at gunpoint.
He goes in and grabs her by her hair and begins dragging her into the parking lot but as he’s forcing her out of the store a customer at the customer service counter attempts to step in and is shot and k****d, a second customer attempts to step in in the parking lot and meets the same fate, at which point she gets loose and attempts to flee, and he turns the gun on her k*****g her before sitting on a bench in front of the store and shooting himself.
My aunt was childhood friends with her, and my grandma told me the story one day when I found some pics of them together while I was trying to track down embarrassing childhood photos of my dad in the photo albums. To date, I’ve never seen any mention of the story outside of my family and old newspaper articles.
Image source: ashyguy1997, Ty Feague / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#15
My family lived next door to a dude who k****d his wife, chopped her head off, left her head in the crawl space of his home, and threw her body off a bridge near the neighborhood of another family member of mine. The body didn’t make it into the water below so it was quickly spotted and the guy was thrown in jail.
Image source: xxxTHEW0LFxxx
#16
Oh man. Few girls went missing in my middle of nowhere town. A body or two was found in the river after a while of searching. They search one potential guys house, even the pile of concrete rubble behind it.
One day, this same guy is drunk driving and runs into a school bus. Police search his car and find a pretty little pink cell phone apparently belonging to one of the missing girls. They search his house again, and this time in the pile of rubble find the last missing girls body.
Population of literally 135 where I grew up.
Image source: Interesting-Driver94, Valeriia Miller / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#17
A couple went to rob a local hotel, the guy bashed the night clerks head in with a rock and they tried to cover it up but got found out, and then turned on eachother in court. The girl walks free amongst us…I think about the man they k****d often, he was a very nice man and his poor wife never recovered.
Image source: DatheMaMa
#18
There’s a stretch of road just outside of town that’s got some really dark history that most people living there have no clue about.
It’s along a small river. In a little forested area completely hidden from the road is the oldest cemetery in the county. Across the road is corn fields now, but you can still see parts of a building foundation. The foundation is what remains from a church that burned down with the congregation inside, about 30 people iirc, in the 1920s.
A little further down the road, about 1/4 mile, was a house. In the 1960s the family that lived there was found m******d in their beds, husband, wife, and 3 kids between 5 and 13. No suspects were ever identified.
About another 1/4 from there the road curves and crosses the river. That bridge was used for lynchings until at least the 1950s. There’s no clear verifiable number of lynchings that happened there that I’ve ever found but it was at least a couple dozen. .
Image source: Leftfeet, ilia Dolidze / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#19
This guy that was in my friend group, but I only met him once, k****d his whole family on Thanksgiving night. Mom, dad, grandma, and little brother. One by one he lured them into a room alone and then bashed them with a pipe. I’ve never seen it on any true crime shows or podcasts despite being an absolutely batshit story. He spent the night in the house with the bodies and then went on the run with his underage girlfriend.
Image source: Acceptable-Bullfrog1, Davey Gravy / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#20
When I was in 11th grade , there was a quiet , kinda nerdy kid who sat behind me in my first period English class . He was sometimes annoying and other kids were a******s to him but I always tried to be nice . One day I was talking to another friend in that class about a book I really wanted to buy . He obviously overheard our conversation bc the next morning the book was sitting on my desk when I arrived at school . He’d gone out and bought it for me the night before and said it was because I was always kind to him . It was a little awkward, but thoughtful . I remember this incident vividly because a few days later he ended up k*****g both of his parents with a s*****n while they slept . He then went “on the run” and was featured briefly on Americas Most Wanted . I believe he was 17 at the time . He was caught a few weeks later somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, which is far away from where we lived in Southern Ontario , Canada . Crazy.
Image source: TeaganTorchlight, Bade Saba / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#21
The Singer D4VDs car was discovered to have a chopped up body of a minor in his car. Everything points to him being in a relationship with her since she was around 13. Apparently she grew up in my area of Lake Elsinore CA as her school district sent out an email about it. (My kid goes to the same district).
Image source: InternationalFace790
#22
The event didn’t happen in my town, but one of the people involved used to frequent it a lot. About 20 minutes from me there’s an old hospital that I thought was closed off due to it being closed/abandoned since the 80s. Apparently, in the early 2000s, some guy owned it and lived in it. This guy had a son who eventually got into d***s really bad and ended up owing some dealers a lot of money. Dealers know he lived in that hospital so they decided they were going to go get their money from him. They showed up and only the dad was there so they went after him. There’s two versions depending on who you’re able to get to talk about it, the first is they shot him in the head with a s*****n, blowing his brains all over one of the rooms. The second is that they beat him so badly that his brain went every where. Both are plausible because he was beaten really badly and there were s*****n blasts along the walls, there was also a trail of blood. This happened in a town even smaller than the one I live in (pop of 50 vs. pop of 403), so everyone knows everyone’s vehicle and several people saw an unknown vehicle driving slowly through the town. The son wasn’t well liked before this happened and he for sure isnt well liked now. The dad was loved. The people were never caught, and the son’s d**g problem got worse. I’m not sure who owns the hospital now, but I do know that as of 2020 the blood stains were still there and it’s suspected the brain matter is still there too because no one went in to clean it up and it’s never been torn down. I have to drive by it every time I go to my friend’s house in that town.
Image source: Early_Vegetable3932, Hoshino Ai / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#23
Once an old lady m*dered another one because she wouldn’t return her necklace, so she KOd her on the shoreline, leaving the water red for hours, which spread for meters. People at first thought it was something related to nature, but then discovered what happened and she got caught.
Image source: wonderful-exquisite, Anita Austvika / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#24
Parents and their children were tortured and executed with a knife from their own kitchen. Police suspect it involved a professional Hitman from a different country. No one was ever seen or caught. Also a man down the road from me mutilated his father and mother while they were sleeping. Dad went about his morning routine before dropping dead in the kitchen.
Image source: ToYits821, Ahmed Zalabany / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#25
My former town: Thief River Falls, MN, had a dude beat to death with a traffic sign. The victim was out smoking a cigarette in the smoking break area and the killer saw this dude and just got bad vibes. The killer got out of his car, pulled a traffic sign out of the ground, carried across the field to the break area, then proceeded to beat the victim to death. Apparently the victim tried to run away but the killer chased him down and continued the beating.
Image source: Sunnyfishyfish
#26
This dude k****d his wife, dismembered her, and then cooked her in a restaurant they used to own together.
The cops arrested him while he was in the process of putting her boxed head on the neighbor’s porch.
Image source: Empty-Day-9619
#27
Chief of police got caught having an affair with his 18 year old son’s 17 year old girlfriend. He’s still a cop, but no longer the chief, and I think she’s a s******r now. Nobody talks about it because most people don’t know – the only reason I do is because she and I were both seniors in the same class.
Image source: ants-on-my-balls
#28
Three teenagers were slashed to death in the concrete riverbed/channel behind a miniature golf/arcade parking lot. Nobody was ever arrested
If youve ever seen the original Karate Kid movie, that’s where they filmed the date scene right around the same time it happened .
Image source: Additional-Software4
#29
I mean it doesn’t get talked about much anymore, especially on a national scale.
Marcus Wesson. He was involved in an incestuous relationship with his daughter. He had 9 kids and one day, he made the oldest shoot the younger children through the eyes before she k****d herself.
Image source: XxDrummerChrisX
#30
I was friends with this kid whose brother m******d his ex girlfriend. Hammer blows to the head, burned her body in front her mother’s house. The town went silent … never heard anything about it since. That was 17 years ago.
Image source: Various-Place8946
#31
A girl from my high school was followed home by a boy she rejected, and lit on fire in her own garage.
To be fair I think (I’m hoping) some of that might be for her sake (she survived, but very badly injured) but the story just disappeared after it was initially reported. Like I don’t even know what happened to the guy that did it (he was caught, but I don’t know if he ever got sentenced).
Image source: lumoslomas, rawpixel / freepik (not the actual photo)
#32
In my hometown, in a building that used to be the high school, a state politician was paying a company called Clonaid, who have ties to a UFO cult, to clone his dead son.
Image source: -Great-Scott-, Julia Koblitz / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#33
I lived in one of the houses on the Alamo property here in Arkansas. Tony and Susan Alamo. I was completely unaware when i first moved my family in. The guy I was paying to mow my lawn was very happy to enlighten us of the story. The cult still seems alive in that town. If you park at the grocery store from time to time you will still get Alamo flyers on your windshield. We moved. Couldn’t get far enough away from all of that.
Image source: SpareCollege3818
#34
I lived in a very rural town, farming community. Fishing is big there.
1. Farms bus in illegal families. If the family tries to escape the farm, they k**l the mother and bury her in the fields. Then threaten the father that his children will be next. Majority of the town knows about it, but no one openly talks about it because the farmers control everything.
2. Local bad boy fell in love with a somebody’s daughter. She, for all anyone could tell, was equally in love. She got him to start cleaning up his life. And he had even enrolled in the local community college to get his GED. He suddenly went missing. His parents found a handwritten note on their door, to not call the police or go looking for him. But that it was time to hold a service. He was gone. They called police, investigation was over within a week. He was officially declared missing, possible runaway. Parents held a service. Rumor has it, that the service was paid for by someone else. As the service itself happened quickly, and was a bit nicer than this family should’ve been able to afford. Literally a week later, the girl was shipped off to a private school. And just like that, nobody ever talked about it again.
Image source: Jealous-Trouble-4425
#35
Went to elementary school with stephen grant’s kids…don’t know if that was a national story or pretty local. dude chopped his wife up and spread her throughout the area woods because she caught him f*****g the maid or something. i don’t really remember, i was in middle school when it happened.
Image source: 27ce
#36
In the 70s the BLA threw a g*****e at a cop car, blowing that s**t up and injuring two officers.
In my life time, the Genovese and Gambino families did a lot of stuff that barely made local news.
Image source: idreamofmnemosyne
#37
Sexual A*****t is rampant in the swinger lifestyle scene in New York. Which is a shame because most people in the scene overall are very nice and respectful. We went to a Hacienda Villa party in Brooklyn which is a very popular poly-swinger organization. We witnessed at least two rapes. When we tried to report it, we were shunned and thrown out of the club permanently.
There is even a New York Times article about this place describing this. I wish we knew earlier.
Image source: torodominantebi
#38
Like 10-15 years ago a young girl (high school) was brutally m******d on an overpass walkway by a few classmates. It was big news at the time and now noone speaks of it. They named the overpass after her. They mutilated the poor girl.
Image source: naus226
#39
Serial killer Israel Keyes came through in 2011, abducted and m****r an older couple. Bodies/remains have never been found. Was talked about for years but lately, sort of just forgotten for most.
Image source: mchisto0450
#40
Theres a case from the city I lived in New Zealand where a poor girl was tortured to death by her own family to “exorcise” her.
Image source: anon
#41
Renowned gynecologist in my city used to put women under sedation for made up reasons and sexualy a***e them. Was only caught when one of those women woke up mid a***e.
And on top of all that this came to light same time as his son opening his own gynecology practice.
Image source: Affectionate-Yam-113
#42
The first Zodiac murders were discovered in a turn-out a couple miles from my parents house. It doesn’t get mentioned often, but it’s covered with creepy graffiti, and there *is* a Geocache there.
Image source: FroggiJoy87
#43
My cousin who was m******d by a group of people who premeditated it.
They gave him weed laced with fent cause his gf was in a love triangle and wanted him gone saw all but 2 online news article’s about it never seen it talked about at all yet . People still not convicted yet either this happened some time in 2024.
Image source: ottermoment
#44
A man made a VBIED for a lawnmower to k**l his old landlord, failed, hid in the woods for while, and then torched the farm that the Budweiser Clydesdale horses used to live at.
Image source: C_A_M_Overland, Andres Siimon / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#45
Ohhh my turn. So my dad goes to a small Baptist church, I went there growing up with my mamaw, I know everyone. So there was two couples (stay with me) the men were best friends and as were the women. One couple (b&m) had three young kids and (j&t) had three grown kids and grandkids. So B is sleeping with T and M has no idea but T’s husband J finds out. T is supposed to be babysitting a child from another family and leaves the child with T to go and get cozy with B while his wife M and her family are on vacation. J drives there and calls M and says his wife T is at their home and he’s going to deal with the issue, he goes in the house and shoots and kills both T and B, he calls M to tell her he did it and she thought it was a joke so he’s sent her pictures OF THE DEAD BODIES. So J had the small child in his car and he packed the trunk full of guns and went to m****r his wife and best friend for sleeping together. B and T did a horrible thing but J ruined so many lives. I just went to visit her grave recently, I loved that woman, she was one of the kindest and most loving women. Honestly before this if you had told me he would do this I never would have believed you, this is the same guy who gave me almost $1000 worth of tires for free when I couldn’t afford s**t. It is one of the messiest things I’ve ever had to witness. B & T are dead, J is in jail awaiting trial, and M is raising three kids (who adored their father) alone. It’s F****D.
Image source: No_Construction_9178
#46
I live in a super small town. A high schooler k****d his best friend in a crash while driving home drunk from the mayor’s party where he was served alcohol as a minor. Rumors can get out of hand in towns like mine but there is a lot of talk that the party was known to be a massive o**y/swingers meetup so there’s plenty more reason that the town government covered it the hell up.
This wasn’t that long ago- maybe 15 years? Definitely does not get talked about enough.
Image source: carollaraul
#47
In the 70s there was a dude who would kidnap/k**l young men and glue their eyes and mouths with super glue.
Image source: YugeTraxofLand
#48
City Council woman who was running against the incumbent for the mayor seat submitted a questionable reimbursement request for mileage to a meeting she did not attend. Political opponent mayor brought charges against her and threatened to publicly disgrace her. Councilwoman calls Police Dept. late at night and says something about the door being unlocked before hanging up. Then she shoots her sleeping husband before turning the gun on herself.
Image source: Inevitable_Professor
#49
My partners friend died along with her children to a family annihilation by her husband. 5 gunshots 4 dead including the shooter s*****e. Maybe it gets talked about but not to us.
Image source: VeterinarianTrick406
#50
They found a human skull at the river this summer and there’s been no update on the identity. I feel like I’m the only person who cares.
Image source: Roland_Moorweed
#51
Not my current town, but one froma few years back. The city’s fire marshals wife went missing. After a while people stopped looking. It wasn’t until the chief of police got a little tipsy one night that they tied him to the m****r. Apparently the fire marshal k****d his wife, and called his buddy chief of police to come help disposed of the body. I moved before I think either were convicted. This was in Louisiana.
Image source: LunaTavi
#52
That time a woman threw her six-year-old child off a bridge after taking him to get ice cream. He drowned in the bay.
Image source: PM_ME_YOUR_SNICKERS
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