On New Year's Eve 2011, thousands of people planned to visit Red Square in Moscow, Russia, which is a popular site for New Year's Eve festivities. Little did these people know that a militant jihadist organization, possibly the Caucasus Emirate, was planning to send a suicide bomber to kill and injure as many people as possible in Red Square. The plan was to have the woman wear an explosive belt and have her mingle among the crowd. A fellow terrorist was going to watch her, and then he was going to detonate the belt by sending a text message to a phone that was the detonator for the belt. When constructing these bombs, the bomb makers usually just buy cheap cell phones. Also, most of the time, they don't keep the phone attached to the explosives or at the very least, they keep the phone turned off until it's needed. Hours before the planned attack, the woman and two of her handlers were waiting in a safe house. For some reason, the phone was on and it was attached to the explosive belt. Then, to the shock of all three of them, the mobile carrier sent a spam text message saying "Happy New Year!" The text message caused the belt to detonate. The proposed suicide bomber was killed in the blast, and her two handlers fled the safehouse. Luckily, thanks to the spam text message, no one else was hurt. The identity of the would-be suicide bomber has never been made public. On November 21st 1973, 25-year-old Troy Leon Gregg was hitchhiking with his companion, 16-year-old Floyd Ralford Allen. They were in Florida and they were traveling north. They were picked up by 44-year-old Fred Edward Simmons, and 37-year-old Bob Durwood Moore. Gregg took over driving and Simmons and Moore started drinking. At some point, they picked up another hitchhiker and then a few hours later, they dropped him off. Later that day they were in Gwinnett County, Georgia and Simmons and Moore needed a bathroom break. As the two men were walking out of the bathroom at a rest stop, Gregg opened fire on them with a 25-caliber automatic pistol. The two men tried to find cover in a drainage ditch, but Gregg jumped in and shot them at point-blank range. After killing the men, Gregg and Allen stole the money the two men had, and got into their car and drove off. Two days later, the hitchhiker that had been riding with them read about the murders in the newspaper and he knew that Greg and Allen were heading to Asheville, North Carolina. He called the police and told them to look for Gregg and Allen in Asheville. The police in Asheville kept an eye out for the stolen car, and it wasn't long before Gregg and Allen were arrested. Gregg was convicted of murder, and he was sentenced to death. Gregg appealed his death sentence, but he lost the appeal. July 29th, 1980 was set as Gregg's date with the electric chair. The day before he was set to be executed, Gregg and three other inmates escaped from death row. They had sawed the bars of a cell and then using stolen guard outfits, they walked away from the prison. Within 48 hours of the escape, three of the men were recaptured. Gregg was not one of those men. Instead, his badly beaten body was pulled from a lake. It turned out that the night after Gregg escaped, which was the day he was supposed to be executed, he went to a biker bar. He was apparently rude to a female employee and James Horn, a 30-year-old Outlaw biker, who went by the nickname "Butch", took exception to this. On the day that he should have died in the electric chair, Horn beat Gregg unmercifully. When Horn was finished beating Gregg, he realised that Gregg wasn't breathing. So he dumped Gregg's battered body into a lake that was near the bar. Horn was charged with second-degree murder, but the results of those charges could not be found. 36-year-old Brenda Schaefer lived with her parents in St. Matthews, Kentucky. She worked as a nursing assistant and she was engaged to be married. At 3:00 pm on September 24th 1988, she left her parents' home to go on a date with her fiancé. Schaefer told her parents that she would be coming home that night. When she didn't return home, her parents called her fiancé, Mel Ignatow. He told them that she left his place a few hours earlier, around 11:30. He had no idea where she was. Ignatow then called the police. Schaefer's car was found a few hours later. It was found abandoned on the side of the road, about half a mile from her house. Her right rear tire was flat and the car had been vandalised. A window had been smashed and the car radio was missing. After a few days Schaefer was still missing and her family told the police to investigate Ignatow. They said that Ignatow was abusive and controlling, and Schaefer was planning on leaving him. The police did investigate Ignatow, but they couldn't find any evidence that he had anything to do with her disappearance. Ten months after Schaefer disappeared, no trace of her had been found. Ignatow remained the police's prime suspect, and Ignatow had remained adamant he had nothing to do with Schafer's disappearance. He even volunteered to testify in front of the Grand Jury. The District Attorney decided to take him up on his offer. In his testimony, Ignatow mentioned a woman named Mary Ann Shore. He said that he and Shore started dating a month after Schaefer went missing. The District Attorney thought that this was unusual, so he called Shore to testify. After a few questions, she was severely rattled and she even ran away from the witness stand. After a few days of testifying, Shore and her lawyer approached the District Attorney. Shore said that she and Ignatow had been having an affair before Schaefer went missing. Instead of leaving Schaefer, Ignatow said that he wanted to kill her. For several weeks she and Ignatow worked on a plan on how they would torture and kill her. They decided the best place to do it was in Shore's home. They did tests in her house to see if anyone would hear her screaming if they were standing outside. It turned out that when they were in the living room, no one outside would be able to hear someone scream. Shore said that on the day that Schaefer went missing, Schaefer went over to Ignatow's home. He pulled a gun on her, then tied her up and gagged her. He put her in the trunk of his car and drove to Shore's house. In the living room, he bound Schaefer to a glass-top coffee table. Before the murder, Ignatow and Shore wrote out a plan on how they wanted to rape, torture, and eventually murder Schaefer. They followed their step-by-step plan, checking off each item as they went and Shore took photographs of the sexual assault and torture. Ignatow finally killed her with chloroform. The police asked Shore for the photographs of the torture, but she said she didn't have them. She said that Ignatow took the rolls of film and she had no idea where they were. But Shore did have something to share that would prove she was telling the truth. She knew where Schaefer's body was buried. She told the police the body was buried in a pre-dug grave in the woods behind her house. Sixteen months after she went missing, the police found Schaefer's body exactly where Shore said it would be. The police had Shore wear a wire, and she recorded a conversation with Ignatow. During the conversation, he talks about the burial site. Ignatow was arrested and was charged with Barbara Schaefer's murder. Only two things tied Ignatow to the murder. The first was the conversation that was recorded when Shore wore the wire, and the second was Shore's testimony. But the case wasn't a slam dunk for the District Attorney. The first problem was that there was no physical evidence that connected Ignatow the murder. Another problem was the quality of the audio of Shore and Ignatow's conversation about the burial site. Some of the key parts of their conversation were inaudible. When some members of the jury heard the recording, they didn't think that Ignatow was talking about a buried body. Instead, they thought he was talking about a buried safe which had stolen items in it. The third problem with the District Attorney's case was Mary Ann Shore. When Shore testified, she wore a short and revealing skirt. She also giggled while she testified. The jury disliked her and didn't believe her testimony. They thought it was more likely that she killed Schaefer because she was jealous. As a result of all these problems, Ignatow was acquitted of murder. He walked out of the courtroom a free man. After the verdict, the judge who presided over the case wrote a letter to Scheafer's father. In the letter, he blasted the jury's decision. He closed the letter by writing, "Whether in this world or another, one day justice will be done." While Ignatow walked on the murder, Shore, who took a plea deal to testify against Ignatow, was sentenced to the maximum: 5 years in prison. Six months after Ignatow was acquitted, a carpet layer was working on the house where Ignatow lived at the time of the murder. Under some old carpet, he found a bag of jewelry and he contacted the police. The jewelry belonged to Barbara Schaefer and it had not been seen since she went missing. The police searched the rest of the house and they found three undeveloped rolls of film. They had the photographs developed, over a hundred in all, and they were horrifying. They depicted exactly what Mary Ann Shore said happened to Schaefer. In many of the photographs, Schaefer was bound to a glass-top coffee table. Ignatow's face wasn't in any of the photographs, but the police were able to match his body to the man in the photographs. After the photographs were found, Ignatow was arrested. Then, while standing in front of a judge, Ignatow confessed to torturing, raping and murdering Barbara Schaefer. After he confessed, he turned to Schaefer's family and said that she died peacefully. Her family was beyond disgusted. Unfortunately, there was not much the police or the District Attorney could do, because Ignatow had already been acquitted of Shaffer's murder. If they charged him again, it would have been double jeopardy. All they could do was charge him with perjury. In 1992, he pleaded guilty to those charges, and he was sentenced to 9 years in prison. Ignatow, who bound his fiancée to a glass-top coffee table and then tortured, raped and murdered her while his mistress took pictures of the rape and torture, only ended up serving 5 years in jail. In September 2008, Ignatow had been out of prison for almost two years. On September 1st, Ignatow who was 70, fell into a glass-top coffee table. His head and arms were cut severely by the broken glass. There were signs that he desperately tried to crawl for help, but his attempts were unsuccessful. He bled to death, all alone in his apartment. Thank you so much for watching today's video. Hopefully you found it interesting. If you did, please give us a thumbs up and subscribe for more videos just like it. Also, please go to CriminallyListed.com, where you can suggest cases, buy merchandise and find out about an exclusive podcast. Well, that's all for today. Thanks again for watching.
