The Most Horrible Crimes Committed On Halloween
Poisoning Of Timothy O'Bryan
Photo: TheDeliciousLife / Flickr / CC BY 2.0While the vast majority of Halloween scare stories about razor blades in apples or poisoned candy are either urban legends or moral panics, one story is, unfortunately, completely true. Eight-year-old Timothy O'Bryan had a packet of Pixy Stix given to him by his father Ronald to cap off his trick-or-treating. He perished less than a hour later.
The tragic event sent the O'Bryan's small Texas town into a panic, and the police determined that the Pixy Stix that Timothy ate was laced with cyanide. When Ronald's story kept changing, police began investigating him. They found him to be deeply in debt, and that he'd taken out massive life insurance policies on his children. Police found that the other children had also been given candy by Ronald, but hadn't eaten it.
Ronald O'Bryan was found guilty of murder and executed in 1984.
Murders Of Leslie Mazzara And Adriane Insogna
Photo: Napa Police Department / Fair UseLate on Halloween night 2004, roommates Leslie Mazzara and Adriane Insogna went to bed after handing out candy. A third roommate, Lauren Meanza was woken up at 1 am by the sounds of a scuffle. Not knowing what was happening, she ran in terror from the house. When the coast was clear, she ran back upstairs and found both of her roommates dead.
Throughout the investigation, FBI agents found cigarette butts near the scene of the crime that matched blood evidence inside the house, but found no known matches in any DNA databases. Officers and FBI agents spoke to nearly 1,000 persons of interest during the investigation, including one of Insogna’s friends, Lily Prudhomme. Her husband, Eric Copple, became a person of interest during the investigation when he began avoiding the police. Nearly a year after the crime, Copple turned himself in and confessed to the crime.
At the time of the crime, Copple was only engaged to the friend of one of his victims and carried on with the wedding thinking he was in the clear. This quote from Adriane Insogna's mother, Arlene Allen, gives a chilling insight into a slayer who thought he got away with it:
You are the man who is so cruel as to invite me, the mother of the woman you murdered, to stand up for you at your wedding, to read scripture to you of love and death and to bless your union.
Liske Family Murders
Video: YouTube
On Halloween 2010, Ohio teenager Devon Griffin returned home from Sunday church services to find his brother Derek, mother Susan, and Susan's new husband, William Liske, murdered. Devon was so traumatized he could only say that the scene was like “something out of a haunted house.”
The culprit was found to be William Liske’s son from a previous marriage, William Liske Jr., who had a history of schizophrenia and aggression. Liske was later picked up and pleaded guilty to all three murders. He took his own life in prison in 2015.
Murder Of Karl Jackson
Video: YouTube
Bronx resident Karl Jackson was a 21-year-old data entry clerk at Morgan Stanley. On Halloween night 1998, Jackson went with his girlfriend to pick up her young son from a party. While there, some teenagers threw eggs at their car, but the classic Halloween prank soon turned ugly.
Jackson got out of his car, exchanged words with the teens, and got back in the car. Then one of the teens pulled out a side arm and shot Jackson, ending his life instantly. Police later arrested 17-year-old Curtis Sterling for the crime.
The Woodbridge Abductions
Photo: Woodbridge Police Department / Fair UseIn 2009, three teenage girls were abducted by a man on their way home from trick-or-treating in Woodbridge, Virginia. All three were taken at gunpoint to a wooded area, and two were sexually assaulted. The third girl was able to call her mother, causing the man to flee.
Police arrested Aaron Thomas, who was already a suspect in numerous sexual assault cases since the 1990s. Thomas pleaded guilty to the crime in 2012.
- Video: YouTube
Yoshihiro Hattori was a Japanese exchange student living in Baton Rouge as part of the American Field Service program. On Halloween night 1992, Hattori and the young son of his host family went to a Halloween party for AFS students. Unfamiliar with the neighborhood where the party was, the boys rang the doorbell of the wrong house.
When they got no answer, they started walking back to their car. The owner of the home, Rodney Peairs, then opened the door armed with a .44 Magnum. Hattori turned around and said, "We're here for the party." Claiming he feared for his life and that the exchange student was "scary," Peairs shot Hattori, ending his life.
Only when both the governor of Louisiana and the Japanese consulate got involved was Peairs arrested, after which he was acquitted of manslaughter.
Murders Of Ronald Sisman And Elizabeth Platzman
Sometime in the early hours of Halloween 1981, Manhattan couple Ronald Sisman and Elizabeth Platzman were slain in their Chelsea apartment. The couple was severely beaten before being shot execution-style, with the apartment completely ransacked. New York police initially believed drug money to be the motive, but then the case took a turn for the bizarre. A prison informant claimed that one of his fellow inmates had predicted the crime weeks before it actually happened. That inmate turned out to be the “Son of Sam” killer, David Berkowitz.
Berkowitz had long been rumored to be involved with a satanic cult that helped him with some of his misdeeds. According to the informant, Berkowitz had told him that his cult was planning to enter a residence near Greenwich Village (Chelsea would qualify for that) on Halloween to carry out a ritual slaying. When questioned, Berkowitz claimed that Sisman had footage of one of the “Son of Sam” shootings and was planning to hand it over to the authorities in exchange for dropping some controlled substance charges.
While no evidence was found to support Berkowitz’s claims, he was basically right about the description of Sisman’s apartment. The crime is still unsolved.
Pasadena Gang Shootings
Photo: Antony-22 / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0On Halloween night 1993, a group of five Pasadena gang members opened fire on trick-or-treating teenagers returning from a party, killing three and wounding three others.
The gang members were soon arrested, and police determined they had fired at the wrong people. Three Bloods were found guilty of the crime.
Murder Of Peter Fabiano
Photo: mohamed hassan / PxHere / Public DomainLos Angeles hair stylist Peter Fabiano was slain on Halloween night 1957. He opened his door for what he thought was a trick-or-treater, but was actually a grown-up in a costume. The adult shot Fabiano in the chest with a .22 in a brown paper bag before fleeing the scene.
Several weeks later, Goldyne Pizer and Joan Rabel were arrested in what turned out to be a deftly plotted crime of passion. Pizer was friends (or possibly in a relationship) with Rabel, and Rabel was also apparently in love Fabiano’s wife, Betty. The two women conspired to get Peter out of the equation, and Rabel bought a side arm for Pizer to shoot Peter with. The arrests kicked off a firestorm of lurid coverage, as lesbians were seen as abnormal monsters with dangerous urges. The two pleaded guilty and served long prison terms.
Taylor Van Diest Murder
Video: YouTube
On Halloween 2011, Taylor Van Diest was leaving a party in the small town of Armstrong, Canada. She never came home, and was found beaten to death near a set of railroad tracks. The event traumatized the town, especially after it was revealed that she’d sent a text to her boyfriend before the attack saying she was being “creeped on.”
Police eventually used DNA found under Taylor's fingernails to arrest Matthew Foerster for carrying out the deed, and his father, Stephen, for helping him cover it up.
Murder Of Marvin Brandland
Video: YouTube
Fort Dodge, Iowa, resident Marvin Brandland and his wife were handing out candy to trick-or-treaters in 1982 when a man wearing a mask came to their door. He said, “Trick-or-treat. Give me your money or I’ll shoot.” The Brandlands thought it was a Halloween prank, and tried to remove the man’s mask. Instead, he barged into the house and pulled out a side arm, demanding that the couple give him the money they had stashed in their basement safe.
Marvin made a grab for the masked man's gun, and the robber shot Marvin in the throat. He then ran away, but left the mask behind. In the years that followed, Marvin's wife perished, and the mask was tested for DNA evidence. As virtually nobody knew about the safe, suspicion fell on the Brandland family, and a family member did brag about committing the robbery. But there's never been enough evidence to charge him.
Death Of Chris Jenkins
Chris Jenkins was a 21-year-old student at the University of Minnesota who was last seen leaving a downtown Minneapolis bar on Halloween night in 2002. Four months later, his body was discovered in the Mississippi River, still wearing his Halloween costume. Since Chris was intoxicated that night and he appeared to have drowned, authorities initially believed his demise was either an accident or self-inflicted.
But his parents refused to believe this and pressed for a more thorough investigation. Finally, in 2006, the death was reclassified as a homicide. Police claimed that an incarcerated suspect told them he was present when Chris was slain, then thrown off a bridge into the river. While the story is credible, there's never been enough evidence to file charges. However, one possible theory is that Chris Jenkins could have been a victim in the mysterious and unsolved “Smiley Face Murders.”
These bizarre killings involved approximately 40 male college students in the United States who all drowned. In some of these cases, unexplained “smiley face” graffiti was found near the body of water where the targets turned up. While no “smiley face” graffiti was ever found in connection to Chris Jenkins’s death, the scenario does have a number of similarities to these killings. It remains unsolved.
Disappearance Of Cindy Song
Video: YouTube
Penn State grad student Cindy Song disappeared after leaving a party on Halloween night 2001. She'd been dropped off at her apartment, and had gone inside, but nobody saw her after that, and no trace of her has ever been found. The case has taken a number of bizarre twists, and for a while, the investigation focused on a man named Hugo Marcus Selenski.
Selenski had been arrested after five corpses were found in his backyard. A police informant linked Selenski and another man to Cindy, claiming the duo had kidnapped, raped, and murdered her. To make things even weirder, the other man named in the kidnapping was found dead - in Selenski's backyard. More bodies have been found there, but none have been proven to be Cindy, and the case remains open.
