5 Scary Infamous Christmas True Crime Cases

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30 days go to shutter.com and use promo code let's read that's s-h-u-d-d-e-r.com and use promo code l-e-t-s-r-e-a-d at shutter.com promo code let's read [Music] for three young women from fort worth texas december 23rd of 1974 was much like any other day in the run-up to christmas houses had been drenched with festive decor mall santas had occupied their grottos in just about every shopping center in the country while both national and regional radio stations pumped out christmas songs both classic and modern overcome with festive spirit seventeen-year-old rachel terlitza fourteen-year-old renee wilson and nine-year-old julie ann moseley took it upon themselves to visit the seminary south shopping center in order to buy presents for their families now down at the fort worth town center the mall hosted many popular department stores such as sears burlington and jcpenney the trip head started with rachel driving over to renee's parents place in her 72 oldsmobile 98 and asking her to accompany her on the outing both adored nine-year-old julianne who lived just across the street from renee seeing themselves as a blend of maternal and sisterly figures to the young girl so they took it upon themselves to call over at her home to ask her parents if they minded if she might like to join them the girls had promised to be back by home by at least four pm renee in particular was excited to attend a christmas party that night and was said to have wanted plenty of time to do her hair to pick out a festive themed outfit however 4pm passed by and the girls families were yet to hear back from them around 6 pm renee's father was growing exceptionally worried and drove over to the shopping mall with the intention of scolding his daughter for being so uncharacteristically late he drove all over the mall's multi-story parking lot eventually finding rachel's oldsmobile on the uppermost floor the vehicle appeared to contain numerous bags containing recent purchases made from the mall stores but the girls were nowhere to be found for the next few hours renee's father waited by the car under the assumption that the girls would make their way back to the vehicle in due course but as time ticked by assumptions turned to hope and as the night grew later and later hope turned to abject terror as the girls didn't reappear at all the following morning the girls terrified parents went straight to the fort worth police department informing them that their daughters were missing but they were shocked and appalled by the initial response as the police simply believed that the most likely explanation was that the girls had ran away from home the parents argued this could not possibly be the case as if they had ran away why would they leave the car to travel on foot and why would they leave their recent purchases just sitting there in the vehicle itself surely they wouldn't have made the purchases at all and would have needed the cash to buy their way onto some kind of public transportation it was irrefutable that running away was a possible explanation but to do so two days before christmas seemed extremely unlikely at the time most police forces assumed that missing children were runaways it seems ridiculous today that this might be the case but the 1970s were a time when the idea of stranger danger wasn't nearly as prolific as it is now that might seem naive in retrospect but those are the facts at hand regardless of their initial speculation regarding the girl's disappearance fort worth police moved forward with collecting witness statements and spoke to several people who claimed to have seen all three girls at the shopping mall that day one of these witnesses gave a horrifying account of seeing a group of them pushing the girls into a yellow pickup truck but could provide no further details in the make or model of the truck itself another person told police officers that they had personally witnessed all three girls be put into the back of a security patrol vehicle which led them to believe that they had been caught shoplifting or at least caught doing something that security personnel found objectionable it's not unusual for a pair of teenage girls to misbehave in public but what's disturbing is that this leads us to believe that mall security staff may have been involved in their disappearance somehow many years after the girls disappeared an individual came forward who claimed to have seen the trio being cajoled into a van by a strange aggressive man apparently this person then attempted to confront the man asking him just what he thought he was thinking treating a trio of young women like that but was told to mind his own business as it was a family dispute the police investigated these leads as much as physically possible but they yielded nothing in terms of concrete results there was also a great deal of speculation regarding the idea that at least one of the teenage girls renee or rachel knew the identity of their kidnapper and went with them willingly believing them to be someone that they could trust but that this misplaced trust had led them to meet a sinister fate at the hands of whoever forced them into the van that day new evidence came to light on the morning after the disappearance christmas eve of 1974 when rachel's husband of just six months came forward with a letter that appeared to be written by rachel herself the letter read i know i'm going to catch it but we had to get away we're going to houston see you in about a week the cars and sears upper lot love rachel it was written in ink on a single sheet of paper yet the envelope was written in pencil the name rachel was written in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope but appeared as if though it was misspelled at first before being scribbled out and written correctly the latter was addressed formally the thomas ate her liza but this was highly unusual since rachel never ever called her husband anything but tommy the postmark on the envelope didn't have any city on it either just a scribbled number that was either 76038 or 76083 the police found this all very suspicious and sent the letter off to be examined by handwriting experts but when it was compared to rachel's handwriting the experts could not come to any concrete conclusive conclusion as to if it was really hers or not renee had a boyfriend at the time of her disappearance a young man named terry and he gave an interview to dateline in the aftermath of her disappearance during the interview he told them i don't understand the letter at all the letter seems to me like it almost points to someone who knew them people say it's to throw us off track throw us off what track there have never been any track i don't know if we will ever know what happened terry had his doubts but the girls families were insistent that they did not run away and rachel's family in particular seemed absolutely certain that it wasn't her that wrote the letter asserting that the handwriting and language was all off in light of this the families refused to give up on finding their daughters and canvassed their neighborhoods with missing persons posters at one point even going door to door to spread awareness of their children's untimely disappearances as a result of this a witness came forward who claimed to be a friend of rachel's stating that they had seen her the day she went missing in one of the mall's music stores they had gone over to say hi and engaged in a brief conversation with her but had also noticed that there was a strange man with them hanging around the peripheries who seemed to be keeping a close eye on rachel yet infuriatingly enough the friend was unable to give a comprehensive description of this person and was only able to state that they gave them a bad feeling as the year ticked over in 1975 the families of rachel renee and julianne were still without any solid answers as to what happened to their girls they prompted them to get in touch with the local private investigator by the name of john swaim swaim subsequently drew a great deal of media attention when he said to have received a phone call from an anonymous man who wished to collect the reward money that had been offered in exchange for any information on their whereabouts the pi later received another anonymous tip one of which was considerably more morbid this person claimed that the girls were dead and that their bodies were rotting in a shallow grave near port lavaca swain followed this lead up enlisting the help of local police officers to search the areas with corp sniffing dogs but nothing was found and the tip was then assumed to be some kind of sick hoax yet john swaim was later to become something of a controversial figure dying of a drug overdose in 1979 after he died it became apparent that he wanted all of his case files to be destroyed as was stated in his will it appears he was not the clean-cut figure of justice that he made himself out to be and his involvement in the case became a point of contention for many who've become interested in the missing girls over the next 10 years or so the girls families received legions of anonymous phone calls regarding their daughter's disappearances some of which were from people claiming to be one of the missing girls the calls were assumed to be sick jokes and they became so frequent that the families had to change their phone numbers to stop the cruel pranksters from being able to contact them the whole situation was disturbing enough but hearing that people were deranged enough to taunt the families of the missing girls is enough to turn one's stomach these calls and the disappearances in general had a horrible effect on rachel's younger brother rusty rusty grew into an adult who was obsessed with his sister's disappearance and was consumed by a conspiratorial frenzy unable to reconcile or let go of the raw anguish that plagued him he was of the opinion that it was definitely not rachel who wrote the letter to tommy that arrived on christmas eve and that it must have been the kidnapper trying to throw them off the scent in the years that followed many witnesses claimed to have seen rachel and renee together at a series of different places including a walmart a country store or a gas station rusty has dismissed these apparent sightings as hoaxes but was increasingly in touch with another private investigator named dan james who became personally interested in the case during 1975. dan said the case lit a fire in him being one that was multi-layered and extremely complex and became so eager to solve the case that he even offered a 25 000 reward out of his own pocket in exchange for information that led to the arrests of the person or people responsible for the girl's disappearance it once he became publicly involved dan james began to receive anonymous death threats from a number of different sources telling him to drop his interest in the case or face dire consequences yet thankfully this not only didn't deter dan from getting involved but spurred him on to get to the bottom of the case that became more and more terrifying as time went on in the course of his investigation he found several credible witnesses one of which claimed to have seen rachel and fort worth during the christmas of 1998. to him she is the only one left alive and has possibly become complicit in some wider conspiracy headed up by someone extremely sinister powerful and perverse but who exactly this person or persons might be dan james is unsure and has been hesitant to speculate given the threats to his life rachel's mother has since dedicated every single christmas time to spreading awareness of the missing fort worth three decorating her lawn with the images of three angels that represent the lost souls of each of the missing girls it has been more than 45 years since the initial disappearance and many have moved on but not rachel's mother who has been only left to wonder as we are perhaps the most terrifying aspect of this case is that it seems evident that there is some wider conspiracy at work a veritable army of individuals who issue death threats made hoax calls and purported to have seen the girls in the years since not to mention those in apparent positions of power who may have had a hand in kidnapping the girls in the first place could there have been a group of powerful individuals who not only orchestrated the girl's disappearance but also co-opted one of them into aiding the kidnapping of the two younger girls it is this terrifying prospect that we are left to wrestle with and the idea that there is a great shadowy evil among us not one of ghosts and goblins and evil spirits but fellow men and women whose desires are just as dark as the creatures we've invented to take their place in our collective consciousness the tranquil northwestern city of shadra nebraska has long prided itself on being a safe homely place to make a life in despite being quite a large place chadron has an air of small town charm to it and the area's natural beauty makes it an ideal place for visiting nature lovers to feel more at one with the natural world it's the kind of place where cowboy hats are still worn for work a place where rodeo trophies are one of the first things to greet students and guests of chadron state college a public four-year college offering more than 50 majors to steven hataya this remote corner of nebraska represented the chance for a fresh start a place where the mathematician could begin his new life as a college professor having just earned his doctorate stephen quickly became something of a recognizable figure in chadron wearing his fedora he often roamed the city's wide old west style streets and was always on foot because he didn't own a car believing it was much better for the environment that neglected such modern means of transportation in favor of walking besides his apartment was only about a mile away from the state college so moseying on down there was no big deal to him at all but only after having lived in chadron for around seven months the man whose colleague said was of astounding intelligence appeared to vanish into thin air he stopped showing up to his scheduled lectures stopped getting in touch with friends and those that were used to seeing him striding to and from the state college remarked that they hadn't seen him in a while he was reported missing to local police who immediately began an investigation into his whereabouts they discovered that he had attended a christmas party on december 2nd and those that had seen and talked to him at the party reported that he had seemed in remarkably good spirits a neighbor had then seen him leaving his apartment at around 10 pm on december 4th after which police were able to trace his movements to a local atm where he withdrew a hundred dollars before walking down to the state college where he apparently logged on to the computer system at exactly 11 41 pm after this he simply dropped off the face of the earth he didn't return to his apartment and there were no more sightings of him around chadron it took until march 9th the following year to find stephen when two ranchers walking through the nearby hills came across him what they saw horrified them stephen was dead his body bound by the wrists and ankles so hard that the thin ropes had cut into his flesh what's more he had been set alight the ranchers found a blackened charred corpse that had been stripped of its clothing an official autopsy determined that stephen had died of smoke and soot inhalation along with a series of brutally painful thermal injuries accelerant was found on his corpse in a nearly empty bottle of peppermint schnapps was found close to where he lay there were no signs of a struggle nor any indication that there had been any additional people there with hataya when he died a local newspaper interviewed mike bloom one of the ranchers who had found his body quoting him as saying when you see something like that somebody in that kind of condition you just hope that they catch whoever did it local police were quickly subjected to some pretty heavy criticism from the local townsfolk who asked why they hadn't done more to find the gregarious math professor that many had come to know and love after a month of silence from the authorities police admitted that they should have acted faster acknowledging that their investigation had noted that stephen hadn't talked about leaving chadron and seemed perfectly happy with his life there we could search those remote areas for days and days and days but where do you start said acting shadron police chief margaret kuiper without any concrete answers regarding his death intense speculation over the nature of stephen's death drove the citizens of chadron into a near frenzy kit reeves who worked across the street from stephen's apartment and was one of those who regularly saw him walking to and from the state college admitted that things had gotten a little crazy going on to say that some people are really freaked out over this like was he just randomly picked up or was there a reason he was killed in such a way in the aftermath of the frightening revelations surrounding steven's death former city councilman morgan mueller along with several other prominent figures said that they worried that hataya was the victim of some kind of hate crime one of steven's students kellan cars said that they in a handful of their classmates had been theorizing that stephen had been deliberately targeted due to his apparently effeminate mannerisms there had been several rumors floating around town which centered around stephen's orientation but a man named tim sorensen stephen's best friend in chadron strongly asserted that he was not gay he knew stephen very well by the time he disappeared and insisted that if anyone knew of any alternative lifestyle that stephen was living it would be him local police refused to comment or speculate on the idea that stephen's death had been a homophobic hate crime but in spite of the fact that stephen was found bound and buried others have suggested that unbelievably the cause of death might actually be him taking his own life stephen was once hospitalized for severe depression a mental illness so severe that he apparently lost the ability to look after himself it is believed that part of the reason he made the move to rural nebraska was to escape his demons but that throughout the process of carving out a life for himself there said demons caught up with him and he was overwhelmed by these ideations it is then that he decided to walk up into the hills surrounding the city to take his own life but it is a matter of record that it most definitely would not have been easy for the 46 year old to make the solo journey up into the wild rolling hills where his body was found stephen was ice skating in march of 2005 when a nasty fall caused him to suffer a broken hip the experience made him extremely cautious and despite him apparently walking everywhere tim sorensen testified that he tended to avoid walking on bumpy sidewalks and would navigate around objects more than a couple of feet tall instead of trying to step over them so the idea of him deciding to take the risk of walking the rough terrain of the hills is extremely dubious this is the most mysterious thing that's ever happened here said khan marshall a lifelong area resident who has worked at chadron state college for 38 years other professors who worked alongside stephen said that he didn't seem in the least bit depressed or anxious in the run-up to his disappearance stating that their colleague was excited for the future and was enjoying his new life in chadron phil carey stephen's assistant professor said that he wasn't one to isolate himself or obsess over his work and that stephen was in such good spirits around the time that he vanished that there was no way he would have guessed that he had a history of depression or mental illness i know a person can hide depression but i didn't see any of it kerry was quoted as saying by a local news publication kerry said stephen had a dry sense of humor but was otherwise very sociable and enjoyed lighthearted conversation on a plethora of different subjects he also cared a great deal about his students and was constantly trying to find more effective ways of teaching and explaining mathematical concepts to them steven apparently enjoyed his new job a great deal and immersed himself in all its facets often working late into the night as is evidenced by him logging onto the college computer network a short while before midnight as local police forces floundered in their attempts to get a break in the case they handed over responsibility to the nebraska state patrol who could devote considerable more time and resources into the investigation lorenz zimmerman a retired los angeles police detective turned criminal justice professor was one of steven's colleagues over at chadron state college and they took a great deal of interest in the case having gone as far as beginning his own semi-professional investigation into the case zimmerman was quoted as saying that he was confident that state agents could solve the case but it's going to take a little bit of work perhaps one of the darker theories surrounding stephen's death is that he had indeed been hiding his alternative lifestyle and it was the pursuit of this gratification that had gotten him killed some posed the idea that bigoted members of the chadron community had long suspected stephen of being gay and had set up a kind of sting operation to discover whether or not he actually was as the theory goes stephen was lured into the hills surrounding chadron by someone posing as a romantic interest when they heard and confirmed that stephen wished to engage in these intimate acts he was ambushed by people who were lying in weight where he was then bound tortured and then set on fire for some the insistence by those in authority that his death was in fact him taking his life as evidence that there is some greater conspiracy at work how can a man who was tied to a tree than set on fire have possibly have done such a thing who in their right mind would opt for that method of taking their own life over other more conventional methods such as hanging exsanguination death by fall or even overdose and who in their right minds would find someone tied to a tree and set a light then conclude that it was evident that the person had done this to themselves the fact that a police officer had said that they believed it to be this is very very suspicious indeed we can all agree that the circumstances surrounding stephen's untimely death are extremely fishy that it doesn't at all make sense that a man in his position would want to take his own life and even if he did his chosen method would most certainly not be by tying themselves to a tree and setting themselves alight but regardless of her own speculation this is yet another horrifying tragic case where there are far more questions than answers stephen's death is a puzzle one that starts with a jolly christmas party and ends with a body being found bound and burned in the hills around a quiet close-knit nebraska community we can only hope that one day and one day soon the people that subjected him to such a horrific death are brought to justice and that the sleepy little city of chadron can once again find peace [Music] in edinburgh neighborhood of clermiston in scotland on christmas day of 2013 elderly apartment block resident alan williamson heard a loud banging on the front door of his apartment he was reluctant to answer the door and we can understand why as he's had a considerable amount of trouble with the neighbor of his over the previous six months or so but given what day it was and how lonely it can be for some elderly people on the most festive day of the year allen decided to roll the dice and open up the front door to whoever it was possibly in the hopes that it was someone coming to wish him a merry christmas but the only thing that greeted alan when he opened up his apartment door that christmas morning was death the person waiting on the other side of the threshold set upon the elderly man with a six-inch kitchen knife stabbing him 29 times in an attack that ended with alan lying lifeless in a pool of blood in his own apartment other residents of the apartment block heard a commotion coming from the apartment and were quick to get in touch with the police to inform them that something terrible was going on officers arrived to find alan williamson dead in his apartment with a trail of blood leading from allen's home all the way to another apartment in the same complex they followed the blood and knocked on the other apartment where the blood trail ended only to find that the door was unlocked they entered and found 37 year old melissa young in a state of frenzy covered in blood the officers asked melissa if she had just stabbed the man in the apartment across from her to which they were amazed to find her reply in the affirmative stating that the power it gave me was amazing she was promptly arrested then taken over to a nearby police station for questioning during her interview not only did melissa admit to killing alan but she essentially blamed him for provoking the attack saying that she was enraged that he had professed to not licking a christmas present that she had bought for him she went on to explaining that she had managed to get hold of the pair of sneakers that she believed alan would like but that he found the colors on the sneakers to be objectionable melissa had tried to explain that the colors were unisex but that allen had insisted that he didn't like them and that melissa herself should keep the sneakers the rejection simmered in her for days into apparently boiling over on december 25th when she called on his apartment and murdered him a subsequent toxicology report revealed that in the immediate aftermath of her arrest melissa had traced elements of four different illegal drugs in her system as well as having a blood alcohol count that would have made it illegal for her to drive during her trial a doctor told the courtroom that melissa was an alcoholic that was liable to dangerous violent outbursts the doctor also explained that melissa inhaled solvents daily was on 14 different prescription drugs and had even smoked heroin on the morning that she murdered alan williamson it also emerged during the trial that melissa had been violently harassing allen for quite some time and that earlier in 2013 had actually abducted and assaulted him in a horrific incident that stemmed from a false belief that he had stolen her house keys allen was held at knifepoint for a number of hours with the situation only ending when melissa turned her back for a moment giving allen a chance to escape by jumping from the first floor balcony of her apartment and into the garden below at the end of her trial in 2014 melissa was sentenced to serve at least 20 years before being eligible for parole with a judge having previously rejected her plea for a reduced sentence the court heard that melissa had a fixation with the catholic church writing letters to the pope in cardinal keith o'brien and attending a central edinburgh church she also had a tattoo of the virgin mary on one arm and one of the devil in the other claimed at the trial that the archangel saint michael had taken over her body and used her as an instrument of god to punish the unclean demon while passing the sentence the judge told melissa having murdered him you set about trying to persuade health professionals that you were suffering from diminished responsibility while it's true that you have a severe personality disorder it's clear it played no part in what happened that night you show no remorse in fact you told the court that you were indifferent to his death in june of 2014 while being held before her trial at the women's prison court and veil melissa was convicted of assault after she attacked and bit a female prison officer in the stomach so hard it drew blood the court heard that melissa left forward towards the female prison officer dragging her to the floor by the hair before lying on top of her before striking and biting her as a result melissa was sentenced to a further six months imprisonment for the vicious assault despite her defense attorney attempting to gain sympathy on account of melissa's poor mental health telling the court there is a substantial medical health background as she has a severe personality disorder in the aftermath of melissa's conviction a prominent scottish newspaper managed to secure an interview with her old boss who used to employ her at an adult sauna the man spoke of her troubled childhood and dissent into violence crime addiction and religious mania explaining that he had to fire her after it was discovered that she had stolen from her clients while working at the sauna the pair remained friends after she was fired but the former boss stated that he felt extremely unlucky that he didn't end up suffering a similar fate to alan williamson after he was forced to let her go the former boss told a story of how he was once a melissa's home and how he witnessed her playing with a carving knife before telling him i could kill them all at the time i thought it was scary but i was used to her saying strange things and trying to get attention melissa's former employer said during the interview i don't know if she was talking about killing men or everyone i feel fortunate to have escaped when i look back in many ways melissa was a broken broken person who was never accepted by society but i wasn't surprised when she carried out this murder i could picture her stabbing this man 29 times with a knife in a frenzy for sure melissa who is six foot three and who used the name chloe at work was popular with clients at the adult sauna young joined a roster of around a dozen women at the sauna and west annadale street but her former boss said his newest recruit quickly became a volatile source of tension she had run-ins with all the girls he explained they were frightened of her she would start fights because she had an inferiority complex she once told me that she had been pretty severely bullied when she was a teenager gangs of kids used to beat her up in the street around the age of 14 or 15. she didn't have much of a life after that she suffered from paranoia and thought everyone was always talking about her her smoking cannabis on a daily basis didn't help that she never had any relationships with men either it was all one night stands which there were many and punters she was too unbalanced to get close to a heavy drinker since her teens melissa was unable to mask her addiction to alcohol and drugs while at the sauna her former employer said he once found a bottle of vodka that melissa had stashed in the toilet cistern malicious shouted that that's mine i said i was gonna flush it and she screamed if you do that i'll kill you yeah to be tough to run a sauna so i stood my ground and she backed down but you never knew with melissa she was like a tiger and could lash out at any moment co-workers also saw melissa's anger boil over when her former employer took his girls to see the lady boys of bangkok at the edinburgh festival it was going to be a great night out but soon all devil broke loose when melissa ended up in a fight with a massive butch lesbian the other sauna girls also claimed that young would steal their possessions and strongly suspected that she would sell them to pay for drugs after nine turbulent months at the sauna young had an explosive row with her boss i'd spent thirteen thousand pounds on a facelift and melissa was very jealous he said she had almost no breasts and wanted me to lend her three thousand for a chess job i refused and said that she should save her money instead of drinking it then i found out that she had started turning tricks at her flat i was angry because she was trying to steal our customers after everything that had happened i sacked her melissa was evicted from her apartment after a client knocked on the wrong door and her neighbors called the police her former employees said he witnessed her descent into greater depravity over the years he claims she boasted of taking groups of drunken men as many as 13 at a time to the back of a nightclub to have their way with her she was also a serial shoplifter who had clothes worth thousands of pounds piled in her flat when she was arrested the interview with her former employer painted a picture of a highly disturbed person who exacerbated their poor mental health with a habitual use of hard drugs and alcohol someone that was so disconnected with any sense of human decency that they'd murder a person over a christmas present maybe this christmas we should all be a little bit more grateful for the gifts we receive you never know who might take the rejection to heart and plot a terrible bloody revenge [Music] for dayton ohio christmas time of 1992 would become synonymous with a group whose name would haunt the city for many years to come the downtown posse what began as an itch for easy cash somehow morphed into some of the most bloodthirsty killing sprees in ohio's history and the one who did it got little more than a couple of dollars some jewelry and a pair of gym shoes since they met during a night of drinking just two weeks prior twenty-year-old marvelous keane and his 16-year-old girlfriend laura taylor had been inseparable their whirlwind romance had been intense but it has also been expensive laura had recently been kicked out of her parents house after an intense argument stemming from her poor behavior she had no job and had quickly become financially dependent on marvelous who had burned through what little cash she had keeping her entertained in the two weeks before christmas they had spent the last of their cash on a single night stay in a downtown dayton hotel and they were desperate for more but that night laura had an idea of how they would make some fast cash she knew of a man named joseph wilkerson who had a rather lucrative job at a general motors a man who spent a sizable amount of his disposable income on deviancy and the plan was simple laura would call joseph and invite him to an adult party that involved debauchery and revelry in exchange for a sizable amount of cash once they knew he had the cash on hand they would get into his home with the help of a fellow member of the downtown posse heather matthews and rob him but the raid turned into something far more horrific than a simple smash and grab on christmas eve once marvelous heather and laura had forced their way into joseph home at 3321 prescott avenue they tied him to his bed with an electrical cord torturing him until he gave up the cash but once the money was secured marvelous used a 32-caliber derringer to execute their victims so that he couldn't report them to the police after the murder had been committed the trio made themselves at home raiding joseph's fridge and playing loud music before stealing his car which facilitated their killing spree from that point it was like a group of sharks smelling blood in the water and the downtown posse began a frenzy of violence the next victim was danita goulet who was shot multiple times while using a pay phone at 517 neil avenue there was no plan this time it seemed they just shot a total random person in the middle of the street before jumping out of the stolen car and taking her shoes jacket and backpack after they were apprehended by police the surviving members of the downtown posse would admit that the sole motivation for denise's cold-blooded murder was to steal her brand new felis sneakers the third victim that night was a man named jeffrey wright who was shot four times while standing outside of 157 yuma place thankfully he was lucky enough to survive the attack but as it turned out jeffrey had a personal connection to the group he was the ex-boyfriend of heather matthews who was by that time in a relationship with fellow downtown posse member demarcus smith and it was he who pulled the trigger four times hitting jeffrey in both legs fortunately he was able to escape to a neighbor's house and get himself medical assistance the downtown posse then rested for the night but planned on resuming their killing spree the very next day as the sun set on christmas day 1992 the group had decided on their next victim a man named richard maddux and he too had a connection to the posse he was laura taylor's ex-boyfriend who was lured from his parents house with a promise of reconciliation he picked her up in his car and the pair drove around discussing their past relationship but unbeknownst to richard the rest of the downtown posse followed close behind richard soon cottoned on to the fact that he was being tailed and grew nervous attempting to make a quick getaway that's when laura taylor put the derringer pistol to his head and pulled the trigger killing him instantly then as the car was about to crash laura threw herself out of the moving vehicle and was picked up by her fellow gang members the following day sarah abraham was working at the family-owned shortstop mini-mart on west 5th street when the downtown posse entered the store once again laura taylor seemed to be leading the group and selecting their victims scouting ahead and entering the store first to ensure that they would not be overwhelmed or outnumbered she was followed by demarcus and marvelous who shot sarah in the face before wounding a customer who was picking up groceries sarah would survive for five days in the hospital before eventually succumbing to complications stemming from her grievous wounds immediately following the short stop shooting the posse made their way to salem avenue where they found a woman airing up her tires at a gas station as soon as the woman saw them approaching with guns drawn she fled but it wasn't this that saved her life it later came to light that laura taylor had demanded that marvelous keene shoot her as she ran but he hesitated and the woman was able to make her escape it's a highly disturbing detail that the youngest and seemingly most innocent of the four was evidently the most bloodthirsty the posse then stole the woman's black dodge shadow the same car that was pulled over in a traffic stop that led to their arrest in the aftermath of them being apprehended the group told the police where to find two more bodies those of wendy cottrell and marvin washington the bodies were at the city owned gravel dump located on 1654 richly drive these two were members of the posse that laura taylor ordered the execution of because she believed they knew too much and would break under police pressure they told the two soon to be victims that they all just wanted to party to get them in the car a short while later marvelous pulled the car over into the gravel pit and ordered wendy and marvin to get out then he and demarcus shot them both in cold blood it's terrifyingly apparent that the downtown posse quickly went from killing for financial gain to simply killing for the thrill of it and all that during the most festive time of year when the families of the victims would have been extra devastated to learn of their loved ones demise given that christmas is such a family-oriented holiday perhaps the only solace we can take in a case like this is to learn that marvelous keane was executed for his part in the murders and that the families of the victims managed to get some measure of revenge london's gatwick airport is one of the busiest centers of travel on the face of the earth and in the run-up to christmas of 2018 thousands upon thousands of travelers and holidaymakers are making their way through the airport journeying home to visit their beloved families or simply wishing to escape the frigid british winter for the balmy southern hemisphere all seems well and the festive season is bringing some much needed cheer to the people of britain but little do they know that an incident is about to occur which will highlight how scarily vulnerable the nation's air travel network really is and will leave many unanswered questions demanding answers for many years to come at around nine o'clock at night on december 19 2018 one of gatwick's security officers finishes his shift and makes his way towards the nearby bus stop to catch a ride home the bus stop happens to have a clear view of one of the airport terminals as well as the perimeter fence surrounding it and as the security officer was waiting he happened to notice something hovering in the air above a vehicle near the airport as well as something else that seems to be traveling through the air above the perimeter fence he called a colleague on his cell phone to report having spotted a pair of possible unmanned aerial vehicles or drones flying around the grounds of gatwick itself now this might not seem like such a big deal at first but within mere minutes of the call being made several of gatwick's runways were completely shut down and a huge convoy of around 20 police cruisers were dispatched to patrol and scour the surrounding area several officers and airport staff confirmed that they too had seen drones flying around the exterior of the airport yet despite extensive searches being conducted no operators were located by any of the patrolling police around three hours later near midnight the pair of intruding drones had not been seen for almost an entire hour and with pressure from travel companies mounting the airport's director gave the go-ahead to re-open several of the runways then almost as soon as flights were once again scheduled to take off the drones reappeared out of nowhere and would appear to be a deliberate attempt to disrupt air traffic out of gatwick airport as the night went on and the date ticked over into december 20th all flights out of gatwick remain grounded and runways remain completely locked down police continue to search for drone operators in the immediate area surrounding the airport and at that point the operation included multiple police forces and reportedly members of the intelligence services but still no drone operators could be located and apprehended spotters reported that there were no recent sightings of the drones so once again there were attempts to reopen the close runways and get scheduled flights off the ground after long and inconvenient delays but yet again the drones reappeared right as the planes were about to take off almost as if though someone was intercepting radio traffic one could be a coincidence twice gave police and intelligence officials the idea that this was some kind of concerted effort to sabotage commercial and public flights during one of the busiest times of the year as the sun rose on the morning of december 20th there were still multiple sightings of the drones being reported from all over the airport members of the press flocked a gatwick to try and obtain pictures of the objects that were disrupting air traffic at one of the busiest times of the year but despite their efforts no clear photographs of the drones could be taken by anyone that late afternoon it was fast reaching the point where drastic action had to be taken in order to prevent some pretty serious commercial losses so the british government called upon the nation's armed forces to end the drone problem once and for all the 14th signals regimen was immediately dispatched to solve the problem as the army's only regiment providing a electronic warfare capability the 14th signal regiment's mission is to achieve superiority in the electromagnetic spectrum and deliver intelligence to the army's infantry forces it wasn't often that they were called upon to venture into the civilian world but regardless the regiment rolled into action at around five o'clock that same day december 20th military vehicles belonging to the 14th signals regiment arrived at gatwick some of which were equipped with so-called drone domes these are highly advanced specialized pieces of rf jamming equipment designed to locate and disable unmanned aerial vehicles belonging to enemy forces the equipment was booted up and switched on at around nine o'clock that night but they could not locate any of the invasive machines and after a long period of searching they were deemed to be gone for good flights were resumed as quickly as possible and with the presence of the military in the area the drones did not reappear and the situation appeared to be resolved to all involved it seemed absolutely no coincidence that the drones had gone for good now that the british army was involved if whoever was piloting them was as observant and well informed as was previously guessed they would know well that the ante had been well and truly upped it would be far too risky to bring down the heat of britain's armed forces onto them the bulk of the incident was over but there were still many unanswered questions the only sighting of a potential suspect was around three miles from gatwick itself reported by a couple delivering some christmas presents to family they told police that they had seen a man leaning over a gate who appeared to be closely observing two drones about three feet in length that were equipped with powerful guidance lights the couple shone their car headlights on him but the man didn't seem to react at all the suspect was never identified or arrested and we can only really speculate as to if he was the culprit controlling them or simply an interested observer the idea of it being a terrorist act was also ruled out since there was no obvious attempts at violence or destruction and the presence of the drones was more of a nuisance albeit a financially costly one than any kind of abject threat to human life the very next day after the drone incident ended two individuals from nearby crowley less than two miles from gatwick airport were arrested in a dawn raid conducted by local police forces sussex police were looking to charge them with disrupting civil aviation to endanger or likely to endanger safety of operations or persons a criminal offense with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment under the aviation and maritime security act of 1990 two days later on december 23rd the pair who turned out to be a married couple with an interest in drone technology were ruled out of the investigation and released without charge having been questioned for almost a day and a half but the damage to their personal reputations had been done as their names and photographs had already been published by a handful of national news outlets they were even named by the local member of parliament henry smith who had to subsequently issue a personal apology to the couple when their innocence became apparent naturally sussex police were heavily criticized for their handling of the investigation an employer of one of the suspects provided an adequate alibi stating he was at work when the incidents took place making it an impossibility that he was guilty of being the drone operator that authorities were looking for he has since accused the force of completely ignoring his attempts to contact them regarding the alibi in a blinkered attempt to get a conviction at all cost the employer told a prominent british newspaper that although there was a complete lack of evidence the police ripped his house apart i know this will mentally destroy him sussex police have really dropped the ball on this one heads should roll police had arrested the couple after learning that they were drone enthusiasts who live close to the airport but this is apparently all the evidence they had in hand and there was nothing to suggest they had the technology or the capabilities of such an invasive foray in a statement the couple said they felt completely violated by the sussex police and the subsequent media intrusion into their lives speaking to the bbc on december 29th 2018 giles york the chief constable of sussex police said he felt sorry for the couple but unbelievably stated that he still believed their arrest was justified no further arrests were made and in june of 2020 sussex police were forced to pay out a cool two hundred thousand pounds to the couple in an out of court settlement to keep them from taking their complaint to the high court the question of whether or not the crowley couple were to blame for the intrusion and disruption seems to have been answered but there is one particularly frightening point to be made about the entire ordeal and that is the issue of what is known as geofencing geofencing is a system by which a pre-programmed area can be blocked off to consumer drone flight this is typically a safety issue for places such as airports but can only apply to secretive restricted areas such as military research or defense areas essentially if a store-bought drone tries to fly into such an area a pre-programmed stop-gap control mechanism will simply prevent it from doing so the point being that whoever was manning the drone that day was in possession of technology that could override some of the most powerful programming in the modern world the police actually released a statement saying that the drones in question were thought to be of industrial quality which i think we can all agree is something of a euphemism for military quality was a powerful foreign state to blame for what happened that december was it the russian fsb who wished to show the british government that they can and would use powerful military drone technology to disrupt one of the busiest commercial airports in the world there have been even more sinister outlandish suggestions that the drones in question weren't made up of man-made technology at all but were something entirely otherworldly that they were probes from a group of beings that wish to observe and report after all it would be relatively easy to trace and block a civilian or even military drone but the operators of the drones in question always seem to be one step ahead and no one has been seriously charged since the incident it's also interesting to note that members of the press were completely unable to secure photographs of the drones despite trying desperately for hours at a time to do so so the question remains exactly who was responsible for the disruption at gatwick airport on those chilly december days was it simply to pose a nuisance albeit with highly advanced technology was it an individual or group that wished to prove that if the drones were armed could have ended the lives of hundreds if not thousands of innocent people in one fell swoop or perhaps like we mentioned it was some cold extra-terrestrial force that was simply observing gathering intelligence perhaps in preparation for its next move we can only really wonder but no matter what you believe it is undeniably frightening that those who claim to be in control those who claim to be able to keep us safe are simply incapable of doing so hey friends thanks for listening click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations if you got a story be sure to submit them to my subreddit let's read official and give and receive feedback from the community and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video and join my discord to interact with me and other listeners directly and if you want to support me even more grab early access to all future narrations for just one dollar a month on patreon and maybe even pick up some let's read merch on spreadshirt and check out the let's read podcast where you can hear all these stories in 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Channel: Lets Read!

Views: 116,260

Rating: 4.8849759 out of 5

Keywords: true scary stories, scary stories, scary true stories, true horror stories, horror stories, true stories, stories from reddit, asmr reading, lets not meet, true creepy stories, scary horror stories, reddit, true scary stories from reddit, true horror stories from reddit, subscriber submissions, reddit scary true stories, lets read, asmr sleep, ASMR, creepy stories, Christmas stories, christmas horror stories, scary christmas stories

Id: k4k6SAEj2t4

Length: 56min 58sec (3418 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 21 2020