Crime Stories

Having told neighbors and police that her house had been broken into and her mother and brother murdered by Albanian thugs, Erika De Nardo's story began to crumble upon a closer police investigation. Finding physical evidence that contradicted her story, police took her into custody, and discovered a disheartening plan that ended with Erika and her boyfriend murdering her family.

In November 1996, Raymond Collin went missing in his home town of Timmins, Ontario. The discovery days later of his body in a snow-covered truck in the downtown led Timmins police to uncover an assortment of possible suspects. However, police picked up the trail of the killers following another murder, this time in southern Ontario.

On a wintry morning in Sweden, Alexandra Fossmo, wife of pastor Helge Fossmo, was found shot to death in her bed. Soon after, their former nanny Sara Svensson confessed. However, investigators wisely suspected there was more to the story. Text messages revealed the pastor and his nanny had a relationship and proved that he incited her to murder his wife.

When neurologist Richard Boggs called 911 early in the morning to report a patient's death, paramedics immediately had their doubts. However, it took a clever insurance agent and a private investigator to get to the bottom of this twisted case. In the end, three men, including the "dead" patient, were found guilty of murdering an innocent man for insurance money.

In rural Ohio, Jamie Paxton was found dead. Investigators found no evidence at the crime scene, but Paxton's murder mirrored multiple deaths in the area. A psychological profile pointed to Thomas Lee Dillon as a suspect. Police arrested Dillon on firearms charges, giving authorities enough time to gather enough evidence to charge him with the murders that had plagued the community.

On Valentine's Day weekend 1999, three Yosemite National Park tourists disappeared and were found tragically murdered a month later. At the time, handyman Cary Stayner was questioned but released due to lack of evidence. Later that summer, when another woman turned up dead, Stayner would not be so lucky.

American Atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair and her family vanished in August 1995, leaving behind an ominous note claiming a family emergency. When the IRS started looking for some of the organization's missing money, they found a former employee with the motive to commit murder instead.

Stephen Grant reported his wife, Tara Lynn Grant, missing five days after he said she left their house in an unidentified black car. Macomb County Sheriff in Michigan focused on the mystery sedan, but attention soon turned to Stephen Grant. A search of the family home revealed Tara Lynn's dismembered body parts.

A common-law couple were found guilty of the 1990 rape and murder near Portland of Taunja Bennett. But a letter signed with a happy face sent to a Portland newspaper claimed responsibility for Taunja's murder, and others. The Happy Face Letter remains a mystery until Keith Jesperson is arrested on an unrelated murder.

Three separate women, unrelated to one another, went missing from the Kansas City area in the 1980s and 90s. They all disappeared shortly after meeting a man online and coming to Missouri to meet him. Police suspected one man was behind the disappearances, and their surveillance of conman John Edward Robinson led them to gruesome evidence of the women's fate.