11 Utterly Bizarre True Crime Stories That Are Keeping Us Up At Night
Whether you're reading a true crime article, listening to a podcast, or watching a show, the weirdest true crime cases are often the ones that stick the longest. While some cases are just plain weird, others can be as equally odd as they are terrifying.
Take Carl Tanzler, who kept his beloved's remains in his home for seven years, regularly buying new clothes for her corpse. Then there's Danny LaPlante, who held a family hostage in their basement with a hatchet. The world of true crime is full of bizarre stories that can seem too strange to possibly be true, until you realize that they were all real people with real lives that were suddenly upended.
In the list below, we'll explore some of the strangest and creepiest cases throughout true crime history.
- Photo: ML / Find A Grave / Fair Use
In The Middle Of The Night In 1939, A Blindfolded Man Stumbled Onto A Highway And Was Struck By A Car
Around 3 am on December 22, 1939, a blindfolded man stumbled onto a snowy highway in Mishawaka, IN, and was immediately hit by a car and killed. The man turned out to be 44-year-old factory worker Stephen Melkey. Melkey was found with his hands bound behind his back, and both his eyes and mouth had been covered with surgical tape. Inside his mouth, police found a handkerchief covered in red lipstick.
A police investigation revealed that Melkey had been dropped off by a vehicle about 140 feet from the place he was struck. While initially bound at the ankles, he managed to free his legs and walked blindfolded through the snow before crossing the highway. More perplexing, though, was the parallel set of footprints through the snow, suggesting that the person responsible for tying him up was also following him. Some even theorize that Melkey was pushed onto the road.
Three suspects were taken into custody, including local tavern waitress Bertte DeVos and her fiance Allan Polomskey. Melkey and DeVos reportedly had some sort of relationship that made Polomskey jealous, and he'd been seen fighting with Melkey prior to his passing. Another man involved with DeVos, George Smith, had also argued with Melkey before the incident. While all three were questioned, none of the tire tracks from their cars were determined to match those of the car that dropped off Melkey. No one was ever apprehended and Melkey's case remains unsolved.
- Photo: Evil Genius / Nextflix
Brian Wells Showed Up To Rob A Bank With A Bomb Around His Neck
On August 28, 2003, a man walked into a Pennsylvania bank and handed a note to the teller demanding $250,000. The note also warned that a bomb would go off if he didn't get the money.
Leaving the bank with just $8,000, the man was surrounded by police, and revealed himself to be Brian Wells, a pizza delivery driver who had been forced to rob the bank. He claimed the device around his neck was a bomb, and it eventually went off in front of police and media, killing Wells. Police soon uncovered detailed instructions in Wells's car of actions he'd need to complete to turn off the bomb, including the bank heist. But they determined that there was no way that Wells could've possibly finished all the tasks before the device exploded.
Authorities would later attribute the plot to three people: Majorie Diehl-Armstrong, Kenneth Barnes, and William Rothstein. After Wells's death, Rothstein turned on Diehl-Armstrong, even leading police to a body he'd kept in his freezer for her - that of her ex-boyfriend James Roden. Investigators believe Diehl-Armstrong killed Roden after he threatened to inform police about the impending bank heist. Diehl-Armstrong was alleged to be the mastermind of the robbery, reportedly needing the money so she could have a hit taken out on her father, who she wrongly believed to be wealthy.
For her part, Diehl-Armstrong claimed that Rothstein was the real brains of the operation. Debate remains on whether Brian Wells had any involvement in the plot or not. Diehl-Armstrong was eventually sentenced to life in prison in 2011. She passed in prison and was buried in an unmarked grave in 2017. The complicated case gained attention the same year with the release of a Netflix docuseries centering on Diehl-Armstrong, Evil Genius.
A Teen Boy Lived In A Family's Walls For Weeks
In 1986, Tina (15) and Karen (9) Bowen began noticing items moving and disappearing in their Pepperell, MA, home. They wondered if the source of the disturbance was a ghost, but their father, Frank, simply thought their imaginations were running wild.
Everything changed on December 8, 1986, when a teenage boy with spiked hair suddenly appeared in the family's home and forced them into an upstairs bedroom. He wore face paint and wielded both a hatchet and a wrench. The family's eldest daughter, Tina Bowen, escaped through a window and called police, but when they arrived to investigate, the boy was gone.
Two days later, Frank Bowen returned to their home to collect some belongings when he saw the boy staring out a second-floor window. This time, police found the boy, 16-year-old Daniel LaPlante, hiding in a wall cavity in the family's bathroom. LaPlante had been secretly living in the Bowens' home for days, slowly tormenting the family before finally revealing himself. The space where LaPlante hid was just large enough for him to squat in place, and he apparently even slept this way, all while the family continued using the bathroom.
LaPlante was arrested and sent to juvenile hall but received a lenient sentence. One year later, in 1987, LaPlante murdered a woman named Priscilla Gustafson and her two young children in their home. He received three life sentences for his crimes and began practicing Wicca in prison.
- Photo: Alexbaumgarner / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Donna Doll Mysteriously Ingested 5 To 6 Pounds Of Potatoes Before Her Death
Donna Doll was last seen leaving her job at the school library on October 2, 1970, before disappearing. Doll was a 21-year-old senior at Northern Illinois University who was studying Russian and planned to be a teacher. Doll's remains were found in a cornfield about a mile from the university nine days after she went missing.
The coroner marked her cause of death as suffocation with a bag or pillow, but something didn't add up. To begin with, even though the COD was suffocation, no fibers were found in Doll's mouth. Furthermore, there were "mystery substances" found in her system that couldn't be identified. Perhaps the oddest finding was that Doll had apparently eaten 5 to 6 pounds of potatoes before she was murdered.
Doll's killer has never been identified and the case remains open.
- Photo: Diliff / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA 3.0
While Searching The Tombs Of The Vatican For A Missing Girl, Investigators Uncovered Chambers Containing Thousands Of Bones
In July 2019, authorities in Vatican City received a new tip in a 35-year-old cold case. In 1983, 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, disappeared in Vatican City on her way home from a music lesson and was never seen again.
The anonymous tip said to look where the statue of an angel was pointing, leading investigators to the tombs of two 19th-century German princesses in the Pontifical Teutonic College. Although Orlandi's remains were not found, two ossuaries containing thousands of bones were discovered. It was eventually determined that the bones were at least 100 years old and belonged to dozens of unknown individuals.
- Photo: CBS Evening News / CBS
Anchorman Dan Rather Was Walking Home When He Was Attacked By Two Men Asking, ‘Kenneth, What Is The Frequency?’
On October 4, 1986, NBC news anchor Dan Rather was walking home from dinner when he realized two men were following him. The men began asking Rather, "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" When Rather explained they had the wrong person, the men began beating Rather, who fled into a nearby apartment building.
Rather's attack made headlines and became a part of pop culture with songs and a graphic novel containing the altered phrase, "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" R.E.M. even released a hit single of the same name in 1994. That same year, a man named William Tager shot and killed a stagehand on The Today Show. Tager claimed NBC had been sending messages to him through the television.
In 1997, Tager confessed to being one of the men who attacked Rather over a decade earlier. Tager claimed to be a time traveler, and said that Rather resembled his timeline's vice president Kenneth Burrows.
While the case seemed solved, the other man involved in the assault on Rather has never been identified. Also, some have continued to theorize about other possible motives for the attack. Some have connected the incident to author Donald Barthelme, who wrote a story with a character named Kenneth and the line "What's the frequency?"
Others believe the real target was a man named Ken Schaffer, who found a way to use satellite dishes to receive Soviet television broadcasts toward the end of the Cold War, when they weren't available in the US. As many wanted to know how Schaffer was accessing the signals, "What's the frequency" might have been a logical question to ask him. Schaffer set up these broadcasts for the public, and one such visitor was Dan Rather. Rather and Schaffer even talked outside of the broadcasting event - the same night he was later attacked.
- Photo: Florida Keys--Public Libraries / Flickr / CC-BY 2.0
A Doctor Lived With The Body Of His Deceased Patient For Years
In 1931, 54-year-old radiology technician Carl Tanzler fell in love with 22-year-old Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos. Tanzler had met Hoyos at the hospital he worked at in Key West, where she was being treated for tuberculosis. Though not qualified to treat tuberculosis, Tanzler claimed he could cure Hoyos, but she succumbed to her illness in October 1931. A grief-stricken Tanzler paid for Hoyos's mausoleum, and would visit her corpse every night for the following two years.
In 1933, Tanzler took Hoyos's corpse out of the mausoleum and brought it back to his home, unbeknownst to her family, where he lived with it for seven years. He kept the body from decomposing by stuffing it with rags and wire hangers, and covering the body in plaster of Paris.
Hoyos's body was eventually removed from the home in 1940 after a neighborhood boy saw Tanzler dancing with what the boy claimed to be a giant doll. Charges were pressed against Tanzler for grave robbery, but he eventually walked free, as the statute of limitations had expired. In fact, the media portrayed the ordeal as a romantic story, often mentioning that Tanzler believed he could someday bring Hoyos back to life.
Colin Howell And His Lover Gassed Their Spouses With Carbon Monoxide And Got Away With It For 20 Years
In 1991, Lesley Howell and Trevor Buchanan were found deceased, their bodies in a fume-filled car. Investigators concluded that the two had committed suicide after learning of the affair between their respective spouses, Colin Howell and Hazel Stewart.
It wasn't until 2009 that Colin Howell, an esteemed dentist, confessed that he and Stewart had murdered their spouses and made it look like a double suicide. Howell had first eliminated his own wife, attaching his baby's feeding bottle to a garden hose and running it into the house, gassing her with carbon monoxide while she slept. He then went to the house Buchanan and Stewart shared and did the same thing to Buchanan, staging their bodies in the car and inventing a suicide story.
After his relationship with Stewart later ended, Howell got remarried to a woman named Kyle. He told his wife what he'd done in 1998, and though she said she urged him to confess, he swore her to secrecy. Howell was known to be deeply religious, and followed certain "signs" to let him know when and how he should confess. As a dentist, Howell was also accused of assaulting female patients while they were under sedation.
After the arrest, Kyle described Howell as follows: "Everyone thought he was this great Christian guy but they were so wrong. He was a monster." Colin Howell and Hazel Stewart were both convicted for the 1991 murders, with Howell sentenced to a minimum of 21 years in prison and Stewart to a minimum of 18 years.
- Photo: Graham Richardson / Flickr / CC-BY 2.0
A Welshman Known As ‘The Silent Man’ Stood In Front Of Traffic And Refused To Tell Police Why
In 2015, 45-year-old David Hampson of Swansea, Wales, was found guilty of breaching a criminal behavior order and being "mute of malice." Beginning in 2014, Hampson developed a habit of standing in front of cars to prevent traffic from moving. When police would speak to him, he wouldn't say anything. However, Hampson was known to have the ability to speak.
Hampson had previously been taken into custody for stopping traffic, and would commit the same offense as soon as he got out of jail. At one point, he even climbed on the hood of a mail van and pressed his face against the glass.
The jury in Hampson's trial found him unanimously guilty after deliberating for five minutes.
The Tromp Family Fled Their Home Together - And Not Even They Know Why
On August 29, 2016, Mark and Jacoba Tromp, along with their three children, fled their home just outside Melbourne, Australia. Mark and Jacoba believed their lives were in danger, and made their three adult children, Riana, Ella, and Mitchell, leave their phones and other identifying belongings behind.
As the trip wore on, the children began leaving. Mitchell left after it was discovered he had brought his cell phone, and his parents made him throw it out the window. Riana and Ella stole a car, but later separated. Riana was found "catatonic" in the back of a stranger's car. Jacoba and Mark were then somehow separated from each other. Jacoba was eventually found wandering in Yass, Australia, in an agitated state, and received psychiatric care along with Riana. Mark was the last Tromp family member to be found, six days after the trip began, on the side of a road near Wangaratta airport.
Based on the back and forth directions of their movements, it didn't seem as though the Tromp family had any destination in mind. Authorities did not believe that the family was in any actual danger or that anyone was out to get them. They weren't in any debt, there was no evidence of drug use, and none of the family members had any history of mental illness.
Some theorized that the Tromps could have been affected by chemicals on the family farm. Others believed that the family was suffering from a collective delusion known as "folie a deux" or "madness of two." The term was coined for a French couple in the 1800s who shared the same paranoid delusions with each other. Doctors couldn't tell which had become psychotic first, as the couple had evidently fallen into a cycle where they each reinforced the false beliefs of the other.
However, we may not ever know what caused the unusual incident, as members of the Tromp family were also mystified. As Ella Tromp put it in a press conference,
It is very confusing, I still feel confused... I think our state of minds wasn't in the best place, um, and yeah, I can't even really... There's no one reason for it – it's bizarre.
- Photo: The Shrink Next Door / Apple TV
Marty Markowitz Accused His Psychiatrist Of Taking Over His Life
Millionaire Marty Markowitz claims that his psychiatrist, Isaac "Ike" Herschkopf, took over his life for 30 years beginning in 1981. Herschkopf allegedly made his patient set up a foundation that Markowitz funded, but was controlled by Herschkopf. Herschkopf would host parties for the foundation at Markowitz's Hamptons home, and forced Markowitz to serve guests as part of the catering staff.
Herschkopf also reportedly persuaded Markowitz to disinherit his sister and subsequently rewrite his will to leave his entire estate to the foundation Herschkopf controlled. He also gave Herschkopf power of attorney. Markowitz told Forward:
I was living a lie when I was with Ike. Ike sucked me into this cult of Ike and I was spending six or seven hours a week with him, he kept me constantly busy transcribing his handwritten books, throwing these parties, and I didn’t appreciate what was going on. He didn’t let me have a girlfriend. I would go on a date, and he’d call her a gold digger. He would say, "Everyone is out to get you, I’m going to protect you." And I was stupid enough to buy it.
Markowitz eventually broke ties with Herschkopf in 2010, and Herschkopf lost his medical credentials based on testimony from Markowitz and two other patients. The story was turned into a limited series called The Shrink Next Door starring Paul Rudd and Will Ferrell.
