6 True Scary Psycho Family Stories

[Music] i live in a place called dark hollow about 20 minutes outside of pittsburgh it's a really nice neighborhood really leafy and green with some really nice old houses and i won't deny that i've been immensely privileged to have grown up there but at the same time there was a huge downside to living there too and that came in the form of the ward family the wards were an absolute nightmare to live near to and they made pretty much every other family's lives unbearable at some point for a variety of different reasons individually they were bad enough but collectively they were like a horror movie level of nightmarish like i wouldn't be surprised if there was some budding horror filmmaker who writes or directs the next hereditary and it all comes out that it was inspired by the wards the patriarch of the family was named winston or wind for short but being one of wynn's neighbors was nothing short of a serious loss now for reference i had most of my encounters with wynn when i was a teenager and being a girl wynn always took a certain liking to me that he just didn't show to other people he was always sickeningly polite with me the kind of polite that verged on weirdly flirtatious to other people it probably just seemed like he was overly nice maybe a little socially awkward but being alone with wynn or in situations where there weren't close observers that was a different situation entirely there were a handful of occasions where i caught wind looking at me in a way that made my skin crawl he had a hunger in his eyes like this beastly ravenous look like he wanted to eat me alive his eyes would glaze over and his lips would curl up ever so slightly in this horrifically perverted way that always made me feel stupidly uncomfortable there was one time when i bumped into him in a convenience store near to downtown pittsburgh after he said hi and made a little small talk he seemed to follow me around the store for a little while he acted all innocent making out like he was just browsing stuff in the aisles but at some point he got way too close to me i think i was just too nervous to actually do anything about it i didn't want to make a scene or cause any unnecessary conflict after all what would i tell people mr ward stood near me in a store anyways when he was standing close to me i heard him sniffing the air like taking these big inhalations of breath through his nose almost like he was trying to smell me i couldn't walk away fast enough and in the end i left the store without even picking up what i went in there to buy like i said he was overly nice to girls and women but an absolute monster to any boys or men who happened to catch him in the wrong mood he once ran out of the house with a baseball bat when my big brother used their driveway to turn around once and the way he told it if he hadn't driven away as fast as he could mr ward probably would have done some damage to his car then there was his wife maggie maggie always wore way too much makeup i mean so much it looked really jarring and she plucked her eyebrows really really thin i'm pretty sure she was a good few years younger than wynn but the way she made herself up made it seem like she was 20 or 30 years older and was just trying to look younger maggie was famous for sitting out on their porch and knitting which i think contributed to the whole old person vibe she gave off only she didn't really ever seem to be knitting anything i remember walking our dog around the neighborhood and getting a look at the tangled mess of yarn she just seemed to be poking needles into it was like a lime green spider web just a tangle of thread she stared at like she was in some kind of trance she also had this talent for turning super happy sounding innocent nursery rhymes into the creepiest sounding things singing them all slow and deliberate in a sing-song voice that sounded like a combination of a creaking door and nails on a i remember one time when we got some of their mail delivered to our house by mistake and my mom made me go over to drop it off mrs ward was sitting on their porch poking these dirty looking knitting needles into a tangle of yarn and singing ring around the rosie a pocket full of posies ashes ashes we all fall down when she looked up to see me standing there with the mail in my hand she acted all scared which was nuts because i think i was way more freaked out to be over there but she thanked me for bringing the mail over anyway yeah before i turn the leave she asked me if i knew what nursery rhyme she was singing i nodded and she asked if i knew what the origins were i said no and she went on to explain to me that the song had its roots in some old plague that had swept across england i think she meant the black death but i can't be certain she said the ring around the rosy part was a reference to a rash that was a symptom of the disease and a posey was a collection of herbs that was carried to mass the scent of rot that the dying people were said to have given off then she tells me that the all fall down part was a reference to people dying from the plague i don't know how true any of that is but jesus it freaked me out to have her tell me that in her weird scratchy voice with her face all painted up like some circus clown their younger son jacob ward was a total freak he was obsessed with native american culture which i'm not saying is a bad thing at all but jacob was totally toxic about it it was rare that you'd see that kid and he didn't have his face painted or have this grim homemade headdress on or whatever he also liked to run around with the bow and arrow that his parents insisted was totally harmless and used those cartoony sucker tip arrows but there are a lot of people myself included that swear that they'd seen him using actual sharp tip arrows on a handful of occasions he'd aimed them at you pulled the drawstring back to the point you'd actually run for cover but he never seemed to fire any and you can never catch him using them whenever there were any grown-ups around they actually got a social worker called over at some point because a few people had seen jacob walking around with dead squirrels or pigeons i'm not sure if he'd shoot them himself with his bow and arrow or they were just roadkill or something but it was alarmingly enough to enough people that they actually had a visit from someone although whether or not that actually came to anything i don't know then finally their older son was this kid named johnny johnny was the kind of kid that growled at people in high school when they got too close to him and before he got expelled for fighting did something seriously messed up apparently he asked this girl to go out on a date some super pretty but super nerdy girl who happened to be his lab partner she says no and johnny doesn't take it very well at all he made things difficult for her during chemistry by not talking or looking at her and eventually she had to basically beg the teacher to switch partners so she could even get a passing grade not long after she was driving back from school in her seemingly empty car when she looks in the rearview mirror to see johnny just sitting in her back seat grinning at her he'd apparently broken into her car and hidden in the foot well in her back seat under some blankets or something or at least that's what we all figured he'd done she was so scared she crashed her car and had to spend a week in the hospital all johnny got was a visit from the cops and a warning to stay away from her and somehow it was all just blamed on teenage high jinks i think maybe because the girl's family were too scared of the words to press charges or whatever i'm sure there's more to that story but that's all i know of that when the for sale sign finally showed up from the ward's house i think dark challah was about ready to throw a big party to celebrate them leaving and after they did they became something of an urban legend basically a campfire tale that only a handful of people really knew was actually true and not something we made up to scare people like i still think it's a miracle that there wasn't any bigger drama to happen involving the wards something like a murderer or whatever little jacob shooting someone with an actual arrow i know johnny basically almost killed his lab partner in that car crash but but somehow they never actually went through was seriously hurting anyone but who knows maybe a couple more years and there would have been a fatality and who knows what they've been up to wherever they move to maybe it's only a matter of time before they seriously hurt someone [Music] before i moved across the country for college i lived with my mom in fresno california i love her and she always did her best for me and my sister with what little she had but i think she'd be the first to admit that we live in a terrible neighborhood with little opportunity to improve our situation but i guess that's just how life is when your teenage pregnancy with a father who just disappeared in the thin air but growing up i always thought my mom was kind of terrible she rarely let us play outside wouldn't ever let us go to the store on our own she acted like an all-around control freak whose goal was to make our lives as boring and uneventful as possible later in life we had a major heart to heart where she leveled with me about why she was so strict with us when we were growing up after that i understood why she was the way she was the family next door were heavily involved in meth and gang activity but they weren't just partying and dealing out of the family home they were a group of seriously sadistic psychopaths who did things to the local community that could pretty fairly be described as pure evil they got raided by the cops in the end but not before they done some pretty irreparable damage to the neighborhood and my mom opened up by telling me about one particular incident that had been the catalyst for her being so strict with us apparently they used a little recruitment tactic on more than one occasion one that involved inviting a young girl over to party before forcing her to smoke meth they'd keep her there for days just feeding her meth and loaning her out to partygoers that's the least obscene way i can phrase it but you get the idea then they'd threaten to tell her parents or tell the call of cops on her some kind of blackmail method to keep them coming back and bringing their friends and siblings etc from what i understand it was kind of a vicious cycle of like brainwashing girls which in turn attracted more guys which then allowed them to sell considerably more meth since lewd activity was involved my mom also said that more than once she saw two guys carrying unconscious people out to a car throwing them in the back seat then driving them away and then on a couple of occasions she saw missing posters for these people tacked up around the neighborhood i asked her why she didn't go to the cops about the family and she actually broke down crying she said she was constantly terrified and had multiple encounters with the family members next door who told her that if the cops ever showed up they'd make sure that she suffered she told me that they once warned her that they were heavily armed had all kinds of automatic weapons inside their place and that if the cops ever came they'd rather all die in a shootout than be taken alive apparently they laughed about how they had guns so powerful that they'd rip through the neighborhood and that our family would probably die in the crossfire or something that was something that absolutely terrified her we were all she had in the world and she wanted to protect us at all costs so the idea of us losing our lives to some horrific drug fueled shootout it was unimaginable my mom was a quarter mexican too and she knew a few things about something called santa muerte a kind of pagan figure that some mexican people worship is like a personification of death she said she could sometimes hear people in the backyard of the meth house invoking her name possibly even making sacrifices since she heard chickens squawking and goats bleeding in and according to her a lot of people who worshipped santa muerte were connected with mexican cartels and were not to be messed with she didn't want to take the chance it took her years before she was able to afford to move and by that time i was a sophomore but i can't even describe the relief i felt when i heard she was moving away from fresno with my little sister for the first time in years i was actually excited about going home to visit we were finally away from that psycho family of meth addicted death worshipers for the longest time me and my family lived next door to these absolute insane people that made our lives a complete living hell for like an entire year they were pretty well behaved for the first few months after they moved in but after a while they started absolutely blasting music in the middle of the night i'm not just talking about that gentle kind of bass thump that passively is annoying i'm talking the kind of loud where you couldn't get a wink of sleep the police had to be called out a few times to get them to turn it down and even then they confessed that they couldn't really do anything other than issue fines they got progressively worse though and it turned out half the reason the music was so loud was to mask the sounds of the mom and dad having these legit fistfights in the middle of the night it wasn't even a case of it being a one-sided domestic abuse either the dad sometimes had worse black guys than the mom and scratches all down his face where she'd obviously clawed him to death they used to knock the seven shades out of each other but we didn't think they were too dangerous to anyone outside their own family once or twice my dad had gotten into confrontations with them about the smell coming from their backyard or the fact that they used to blast music the dad of this insane family had threatened to kill my dad once or twice but none of us thought that he would actually go through it that and thank god they didn't then for some reason it went really quiet over there for a few weeks and it got to the point we thought that it actually moved only they hadn't moved at all they were just keeping their heads down because they'd straight up killed their own daughter apparently she tried to run away from home and ended up in a shelter somewhere they tracked her down dragged her into their car one night taking her somewhere secluded and then beat her to death i'm not sure they even meant to kill her they just beat her up so bad that she ended up dying not long after that that's why they've been so quiet they didn't want to bring down any attention on themselves when they were dealing with disposing of her body we had police basically camped out on our street for like a week after they'd been arrested all kinds of forensic vans with people in those full body white fabric suits going in and out all hours of the day they were obviously looking for traces of the girl but whether or not they found anything i'm not really sure i do know it was in the paper though and like i said i thank god the guy never did anything to my dad because he did actually go on to murder someone his own daughter at that [Music] i feel like every neighborhood has a family of absolute psychos almost everyone i've spoken to about this sort of thing seems to remember one group of absolute wrongins be it from their childhoods or from their current lives and if there's one thing i've learned from their collective memories and stories it's that whenever there's a family like that around it's only a matter of time before something comes to a head or something finally boils over that's exactly what happened with this insane family that lived in my neighborhood when i was a kid only the thing is most of the people i've spoken to said the breaking point came when some kind of family argument or confrontation with neighbors spilled out into the streets outside police were called arrests were made usually a for sale sign or two went up in the aftermath but i almost wish my story was that simple or ended that relatively amicably because what happened in my case is something that haunts me to this day with possibilities and ramifications that i find genuinely terrifying i grew up in the 70s britain in a pretty small town in a place called wiltshire we were quite a small community everyone knew everyone and consequently everyone knew everyone's business too there was this one boy called lewis and he was the only child of the prestige family a very peculiar family name if ever there was one but that's not the reason i'll never forget it the prestige family were peculiar by name and peculiar by nature too but then peculiar seems like entirely the wrong word to use peculiar makes you think of something quaint and adorably abnormal but there was nothing adorable about the prestige family they were just weird scarily weird too and mean i think one of the earliest memories of lewis is during an assembly in primary school it's about eight in the morning and all the kids in school are sat in the main hall and it's deathly quiet apart from our head master making announcements and the soft sobs of young lewis he didn't stop crying for the whole of the assembly and it didn't just remain this quiet weeping either his tears built in pitch in intensity until he was wailing so loud that a teacher had to remove him altogether i remember feeling really sorry for him but as time went on it was just something you sort of got used to they were the weird family in town and since they didn't get into any serious confrontations outside of their own family unit people just sort of let them be the next serious incident i remember was years later in secondary school when the schoolyard suddenly became abuzz with people gossiping over something people were crowding around the school gates looking at something some of them laughing some of them just gapping at the sight of a lad dressed entirely in a school uniform except for one crucial piece of it his trousers and it turned out to be lewis from what i heard he had been basically pushed out of the car by who we assumed to be his dad and rumors went flying around that lewis hadn't quite been ready to leave the house when his dad was ready to take him to school that morning instead of waiting for him to put his school trousers on lewis's dad had just dragged him to the car and taken him to the school with no pants on basically to teach him a lesson to be ready on time i'm not entirely sure how true that reasoning was but i do know that i witnessed louis having to walk into school in nothing but a school jumper his shoes and his underwear with my own eyes i'm also not entirely sure how lewis was still allowed to live with his evidently abusive parents either again rumors went around that they'd had a visit from social workers but this i believe because for a while there seemed to be little in the way of serious incidents coming from the prestige household obviously the visit from child welfare services has been enough to shake them up into changing their ways or so it seemed now this all came to a head when i was 15 maybe just over a year before we left secondary school and bid farewell to compulsory education for good one morning lewis turns up to school in his own clothes a pair of pumps and a colorful jumper he gets pulled aside by a teacher who i think at that point was well aware of the situation at home and lewis says something quietly to him before the pair of them disappeared to the building which housed the main office the next thing i know is that apart from the shoes he was wearing lewis has an entirely new school uniform new blazer new tie new jumper everything and from that day on he seemed like almost an entirely new person he didn't get dropped off at school by his parents anymore he seemed more confident and open more talkative with the other kids he even started playing football with us at lunch times something he'd never done before we actually got quite pally with him for a while and on more than one occasion he invited us back home with him to play we politely declined of course thinking of some made up excuse not to have to go around the prestige house but still things seem to be making a vast improvement emphasis unseemed though because after a long bank holiday weekend lewis failed to turn up to school at all this didn't have anyone talking about it too much kids were routinely off on the odd one or two days with illness but lewis went an entire week without showing up for school and that really did get us talking i don't know if it was because i was so young and naive or i just didn't connect the dots but i didn't think that there was any link between all the police activity around our town and louis not being in school one saturday afternoon my mum and dad called me into the kitchen and asked me if i'd been around to lewis's house at all recently i told them no but that i'd been invited at one point and when i said that my mom gave my dad this look that seemed to be a weird mix of horror and relief like i dodged a bullet or something not long after that i got word through some friends of mine that there had been a brutal double murderer in the town that someone had been arrested for it too our little town barely had any crime at all i think the most serious thing to happen for decades at that point was a car theft committed by some out of towner said the idea that there had been a single murder let alone two just set the town a light and there was much speculation over who the killer was and how the killings had come about looking back now i can see why the adults might want to shield us from the whole thing it was only a few years later that i actually realized why the police had made such an effort to keep the identity of the murderer a secret it's like that when a murderer is under the age of 18. when they're a minor their identity is kept secret for as long as is able and that's only really possible with the media because it didn't take long before the residents of our town figured out what had happened and it was bound to trickle down to us sooner or later the reason lewis's parents didn't seem to be around anymore the reason he was so happy and confident and carefree was because he had killed them it finally rid himself the people that made his life torture i get that but the fact that a kid killing their own parents could make them so happy that's something i've never been able to truly understand the horrible thing was looking back on the events later and sort of piecing together the puzzle for example the day he came to school in his own clothes was probably the morning he'd killed them and since he gotten blood on his school uniform he had to dispose of it all the times he'd invited us back to his place to watch tv or play football his parents would have been dead in the upstairs bedroom assuming that's where he killed them if we'd gone round maybe we would have been able to smell them or see flies buzzing around the bedroom door something we were all just one little spur of the moment yes from finding out finding their bodies maybe if that was the case then lewis would have killed us too [Music] alexander bean was born in the scottish county of east lothian sometime during the 16th century his father was employed as a laborer with duties mostly consisting of ditch digging and hedge trimming alexander tried to follow his father's footsteps and take up the family trade but realized rather quickly that the hard work and measly pay did not suit him he is also said to have attempted to train as a tanner and become proficient in the process of treating the skins and hides of animals to produce leather the modernity and paltry wages caused him to become fed up with the profession but it seems he learned skills that he carried with him into later life skills that would not just provide a means of living but a great deal of infamy too alexander was not like other people he was rough ill-tempered and violent and felt he simply did not belong around regular folk so when he met a girl of similar inclinations named agnes douglas nicknamed black agnes due to her shock of black hair as well as her distinctly dark personality he knew he'd found a soul mate alexander's mother and father strongly objected to their union having heard rumors that black agnes practiced witchcraft so they told their son that he would be forbidden from living in the family home with his new bell should they choose to wed the couple then chose to elope leaving east lothian and traveling across the scottish lowlands moving from place to place and surviving on what little work each of them could find but the couple quickly grew contemptuous of their employers as well as the work they were doing and one night they hatched a plan to earn some easy money they lay in wait at a crossroads near to a tavern ambushing murdering and robbing weary travelers as they trudged towards what they assumed to be a safe haven for the night the couple's dark deeds then took an even darker turn when at one point during a robbery and murder and airshare they decided on the easy way to cut their costs instead of using the money they stole from their victims to buy food they would simply turn their victims into food by dragging their corpses before butchering and eating them alexander was used to dealing with the corpses of animals and found that human corpses were all too similar to the ones he'd worked with during his tanner training after one such incident agnes and alexander dragged off the body of their victim to a coastal cave in benin head between girvin and ballon tray it was there they made a fire on which they roasted the poor soul's limbs feasting on the flesh once it was properly cooked the cave was almost 200 meters deep and the couple discovered that during high tides the entrance was almost completely blocked off to outsiders they had managed to find themselves the perfect home a subterranean layer from which they could launch raids into the nearby countryside and one they could retreat to after their grisly crimes to avoid being apprehended by the law the couple lived in the cave completely undiscovered for more than 25 years agnes and alexander raised a family there producing eight sons and six daughters who in turn birthed 18 grandsons and 14 granddaughters all of which were products of inter-family breeding what began as a small family grew into something that more resembled an actual clan and as time went on the bean family turned their bloody work into an industry of robbery murder and cannibalism they began to strip all remaining scraps of meats and organs from their victims pickling the leftovers and barrels so they could more easily survive during the harsh scottish winters they also employ the rather shrewd strategy of tossing the skeletal remains of their quarry into the sea the bones then would be washed up on beaches far from the coastal cave they called home leading terrified villagers to believe that it was in fact animals that were attacking and eating travelers at completely different locations throwing them off the bean family's scent altogether naturally the frequent disappearances did not go unnoticed by the local villagers but the bean family remain hidden in their cave during the day and only ever ventured out under the cover of darkness to claim their victims their methods were so furtive that the villagers were completely unaware that there was a group of murderous cannibals living right under their noses as the years went by more and more villagers seemingly vanished from the face of the earth and the more that did the more the local population seemed to take note eventually several organized searches were undertaken in an attempt to find those responsible for the vanishings during one such search it is said that a group of men noticed the coastal cave that the being family called home but were unable to believe that anything human could survive in it and thus failed to properly explore it but if they had they would have discovered horrors beyond their imagining unable to locate the culprits the local townsfolk became incredibly frustrated and volatile in their quest for justice they actually ended up lynching several innocent people brutally executing them in spite of their pleas for mercy and totally ignoring their insistence that they were guiltless they often suspected local inns keepers since they almost always happened to be the last people to see the victims alive several were dragged from their homes in the middle of the night and hung from the branches of large trees nearby yet still the disappearances continued then one night as a married couple were returning from a local county fair on horseback the bean family spied their approach they ambushed the couple dragging the wife from her mountain savaged her as she lay in the road they then tried to do the same to the husband but found he was not so easy to be overpowered little did they know he was a former militiamen who was skilled in combat and carried a sword and pistol whenever he was out riding the husband was able to hold off his attackers but as he did so he was forced to listen to the blood-curdling screams of his wife as the bean family tore into her with knives and hatchets carving her up while she was still alive eventually after the husband had dispatched a fair few of bean family himself a group of travelers who were also returning from the very same county fair appeared on the same trail and were horrified to have stumbled on the grisly scene that lay before them they ran to assist the former militiamen chasing the bean family away with their superior numbers before escorting the newly made widower to the local magistrate to tell them of what he had experienced upon hearing of the pure animal veracity of the attack and how the poor murdered wife of the former militiamen had been carved up and butchered while she was still alive the magistrates seemed convinced that those responsible for the many disappearances over the years had finally been discovered with local authorities sounding the call to arms it wasn't long before none other than the scottish king james vi heard of the horrifying atrocities he subsequently made the decision to personally lead a search team of over 600 men and several bloodhounds on a quest to find and eradicate the bean family once and for all using clothing from the bodies of the slain bean family members taken from the site of the recent county fair ambush the bloodhounds were able to track a scent trail which led all the way back to the previously overlooked coastal cave a benane head using flaming torches to illuminate the cave's dark interior the king's men found the bean family surrounded by the spoils of their blood-soaked pillaging piles of stolen heirlooms jewelry clothing and gold coins littered the ground around them but would line the walls of the cave made the king's men's blood turn to ice in their veins chunks of meat human meat hung to drive from ropes that were strung above their heads barrel left a barrel was stuffed with picked human organ meat the smell was enough to turn a man's stomach but it wasn't nearly as disturbing as the inbred features of the clan that cowered before them the majority of the family mostly women and girls were captured alive and without a fight and were dragged wailing from the cave by the furious king's men but many of the men and boys ran into the depths of the cave and refused to come out barking out that they'd kill any man that tried to take them instead of risking their lives to root them out the king's men placed gun powder at the cave's entrance blowing the opening sky high and ensuring that any that remained inside would surely suffocate those that were captured were initially taken to tollbooth jail in edinburgh before being transferred to leith or glasgow there their captors were extremely disturbed by the family's lack of humanity both in their physical appearance as well as in their morality seeing them as no better than animals the king's men subjected the being family to summary executions believing they were too inhuman to even warrant a proper trial alexander bean the family patriarch was subjected to a terrible retribution for the crimes he had masterminded the king's men cut off his private parts and burned them before his eyes a visual metaphor that he would never again pass on his rotten seed he then had his hands and feet severed and was made to bleed to death a slow and painful end to a truly evil man yet as he died he supposedly screamed out it isn't over it will never be over hinting that some of the family had actually survived the raid by the king's men after this agnes and the rest of the women along with a number of the being children were tied to stakes and burned alive there may have been some truth to alexander's claims that some of his ilk had survived the raid as in the nearby town of gervan there are those that speak of a woman who appeared among the populists not long after the raid of the beans coastal cave home apparently after being interrogated by the locals regarding her origins she admitted to being an escaped member of the bean family who were by that point infamous for their murder and debauchery she was reportedly taken to a nearby tree and hung from a bow while a bang mob roared in approval over the years that followed truth passed into rumor which in turn passed into legend and these days there are many who dispute that alexander bean and his cannibalistic family even existed the fact that alexander earned the nickname sani bean during the time that followed a derogatory name given to scots by their english neighbors there's quite a flimsy argument that the whole story was concocted by englishmen simply to give scotland a bad name but a remarkably similar account can be found in a book by nathaniel crouch a compiler and popular history writer who published his work in the year 1696 in it he tells the tale of an incident which supposedly happened in 1459 the year before king james ii's death a passage from it reads as follows a thief who lived privately in a den with his wife and children were all burned alive having made it their practice for many years to kill young people and eat them only one girl of a year old was saved and brought up to dundee who at 12 years of age was found guilty of the same horrid crime when great multitudes witnessed her execution wandering at her unnatural villainy she turned toward them and with a cruel accountant said what do you thus rail at me as if i had done such a heinous act contrary to the nature of man i tell you that if you did but know how pleasant the taste of man's flesh was none of you all would forbear to eat it and thus with an impenitent and stubborn mind she suffered deserve death what's clear from this testimony is that even if some of the details have gotten confused or twisted over the course of the centuries that followed there was indeed a family of cannibals up in scotland maybe even more than one a family that didn't just eat human flesh because they were forced to do so out of poverty but because they actually enjoyed it [Music] 46 year old anessa tarver dieva and her 35 year old husband roman podcopayev led very comfortable lives roman earned a generous wage as a dentist in the southern russian region of stavropol while anessa held down a full-time job as a nursery school teacher their combined income was considerably higher than most russian households and they made sure their 13 year old daughter victoria wanted for nothing on the surface they seemed as normal and well adjusted as any other family and often went on camping trips to the nearby area of rostov yet while on these seemingly wholesome family outings something dark and primal was driving the trio along with two of their in-laws to commit some of the violence acts a human being is capable of on february 17 2008 in oxide a small town in the greater rostov region anessa roman and victoria pulled up outside the home of mikhail zlidnev head of the information security department of the state drug control service with all the efficiency of a military raiding party the family smashed their way into the house quickly incapacitating mikhail and his wife with shots from firearms they had concealed in their vehicle once they were downed and incapable of defending themselves the family took their time butchering the couple with knives they carried making sure that mikhail was forced to watch as they carved up his beloved wife before finally finishing him off the family then went about collecting trophies from the house items that would serve as mementos of their first hunt together including items of clothing and a television remote the trio believed that such a horrendous act of violence might sate their desire to hunt and kill and that afterward they could return to being pillars of their small russian community but the raid only fueled a bloodlust that would lead them to claim many more victims it only took a few months before the family was banging for blood again so once again they got on the road the rostov for another one of their supposed camping trips it was july 17th of 2008 when alexei sazonov and julia vasolieva were traveling on a federal highway through aksai district it was a routine drive for them right up until bullets began smashing through the windscreen of their vehicle alexi was killed almost instantly and julia was seriously wounded when their car veered off the highway and crashed into an embankment all julia could do was watch while dazed and bleeding as roman inessa and victoria approached the car wrenched open the doors and took yet more trophies in the form of a purse a driver's license and a passport evidently they wanted something to remember what their victims look like but in their haste to flee the scene fearful that other motorists would catch them in the act they neglected to finish julia off she turned out to be one of the few survivors of the murderous clan somehow the podcopaya family was able to wait an entire year before they felt the inclination to strike again on july 8 2009 paratrooper lieutenant colonel dmitry chudakov was sitting in a parked car on the shoulder of a stretch of highway along with his wife their 11 year old daughter and seven-year-old son they were on their way back from a family holiday and had stopped briefly to rest before continuing their journey dimitri was awoken when a fearful cry from his wife had him opening his eyes to see nessa approaching their car she was shouldering a powerful semi-automatic shotgun and pointing the barrel directly at the car's windscreen dimitri was no stranger to violence and immediately reacted trying to gun the car's engine and get his family out of there but no one can move faster than a bullet and as anessa pulled the trigger over and over again scores of shotgun pellets ripped through the glass and tore through dimitri's body as well as that of his wife and small son eleven-year-old veronica was the only one left alive she had been sat behind her father and his body had absorbed most of the shotgun's blasts leaving her with only scrapes and nicks from the ricochets and flying glass but she was also completely and utterly shell-shocked from the sudden eruption of violence and barely fought back as roman and victoria dragged her from the back seat plunging a knife into her almost 40 times to extinguish her young life once the entire chuluko family was dead at the roadside the podocapayavs looted their belongings stealing an expensive laptop a hairdryer and a digital camera it should be noted that they happen across almost fifteen hundred dollars worth of gold jewelry in the chotokov's luggage but neglected to take it they were killing purely for sport not for any kind of financial gain this is entirely at odds with the russian media's description of them as bandits as they were not robbers who just so happened to kill to make their tasks easier they were murderous psychopaths killing for the sake of killing the fact that dmitry chudakov was a high-ranking officer in russia's elite vdv paratroopers made this particular set of murders front-page news all over russia and the authorities were desperate to quickly find the perpetrator this led to a completely innocent man named alexi sirenko being falsely accused and convicted of the murders which ended up with him spending two years in prison the only evidence levied against him was the hastily gathered results of the ballistic examination and as the owner of a similar kind of semi-automatic shotgun alexi was erroneously branded as the chudakov's murderer alexi was also accused of killing three other people in the same area based on the same ballistics evidence but after further examination he was cleared and released from prison with the russian government only offering him meager compensation the following year the potakopaev family planned another bloody attack and this seems to be the first that was motivated by actual financial gain vanessa was aware that the family of her goddaughter were in possession of a number of high-tech firearms as well as a considerable amount of cash both of which could be used to carry on their campaign of rapacious terror the podcapaevs drove out to the home of their prospective victims under cover of darkness lying and wait for them to come home from eating dinner at a nearby restaurant yet the only two people to return home after quite some time were the family's two daughters one of which was just 12 years old both girls were grabbed up held down and tortured in order to force them to reveal the location of both the weapons and the stash one of the girls was said to have their eyeballs gouged out before she finally broke and told them where the money could be located after somehow finding it in herself to kill her own god daughter anessa then led her family on a murderous rampage that lasted four long years the killings mostly consisted of home invasions much in the same style as the first set of killings that the family committed but during that time frame the pot kapayevs also developed a new style of attack one of which they would ambush those who responded to burglar alarms that they had deliberately set off on september 19th 2012 in novocherkovsk the family killed two employees of private security company who responded to alarms going off at a local dental clinic the port capacs then stole the security guard's firearms which included a kalashnikov assault rifle and two semi-automatic pistols all of which were used to replenish their arsenal of weaponry then on april 8 2013 the family unloaded hundreds of rounds of ammunition into the car of grocery store employees responding to alarms that they had set off at their store miraculously only one of the men died with the driver somehow surviving the vicious attack that should have easily snuffed him out after five years of intermittent killing and looting it seemed the podcapaevs were unstoppable in their slaughter but on september 8th 2013 unsatisfied with shooting a husband and wife couple who were out on a stroll in a sky countryside roman and his daughter victoria decided they would rob the home of a former military officer they didn't find any cash in the residence and so they made the rather bizarre decision to steal candles and chicken drumsticks apparently being completely unwilling to leave empty-handed the father-daughter hit squad fled on a scooter that they had previously stolen that day but were soon pulled over by police officer ivan shakovoy ivan was investigating the shootings that the podcapaevs had committed earlier on and demanded to see some identification from the pair instead of showing any documentation roman pulled out a pistol and executed officer shakovoy at the roadside what followed was a running gun battle that ended up with roman being shot dead and victoria arrested while anessa was later taken in custody whilst guarding a huge cache of stolen weaponry which included silencers grenades and dozens of ammunition cases police also found dozens of items belonging to slain victims among the weapons cash proving that the port capacs were responsible for their murders during the interrogation that followed anessa told investigating homicide detective that she hated police and lamented that her family was not able to kill more of them during their murder spree a shocking revelation also brought to light the fact that the pot kapayevs were being assisted by anessa's sister and brother-in-law who happened to be a former policeman since he was connected with law enforcement the brother-in-law was able to pass on inside information regarding police operations and movements which enabled them to escape justice for such a long time but what would drive a former nursery school teacher one that was apparently capable of such nurturing instincts to describe herself as a gangster by nature what could possess her to view herself as something of a hero for having targeted military men and police officers she was certainly worshipped as one by a handful of anonymous sadists as not far from the site of the church of murders police officers found three homemade knives on which were written the phrases to my beloved bandit girl and to my beloved amazon a reference to the warrior woman of legend it's clear that some are driven to violence and thievery out of a desire to simply survive but what's absolutely horrifying about the case of the poke capaya family is that they chose to kill because of some hideous evil desire to dominate and destroy because hunting ambushing and killing human beings was what thrilled them more than anything else they didn't need the money what they needed was the blood 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 r 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 a live stream to catch an invite to my discord 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 long compilation form and say huge on data located anywhere you listen to podcasts links in the bio thanks so much friends and remember alright alright i'll put the lotion on my skin say it don't spray it

Channel: Lets Read!

Views: 169,982

Rating: 4.9104476 out of 5

Keywords: family stories, scary family stories, psycho family stories, true scary family stories, 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

Id: 2OAfYiOsZDU

Length: 51min 38sec (3098 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021