When Willard Asylum closed in 1995 after 126 years of operation, staff members discovered hundreds of forgotten suitcases that told the stories of the patients who had died there.

Mickey Cohen took over for Bugsy Siegel and controlled virtually all the vice on the West Coast in the late 1940s and 1950s — and did it all while schmoozing with celebrities like Frank Sinatra.

Herb Baumeister seemed like a family man, but as soon as his wife would leave town, he would cruise local gay bars, looking for his next victim.

Westley Allan Dodd estimated that he'd molested at least 175 children before he was hanged in 1993 for killing three boys in Vancouver, Washington.

Legend has it that Joaquín Murrieta and his band of outlaws terrorized California during the Gold Rush to avenge the Mexicans who were mistreated by American miners.

After vanquishing his rivals, crime boss Carlo Gambino took control of the Mafia's Commission and made the Gambino family into the most powerful outfit in America.

In 2001, Kathleen Peterson was found dead in a pool of blood at the bottom of the staircase in her home. Two years later, her husband Michael Peterson was convicted of her murder — but many believe he didn’t do it.

Beginning in 1978, Christian Gerhartsreiter took on numerous identities as he conned and killed his way into America's upper crust — then passed himself off as a distant relative of the Rockefeller family for 16 years.

Following a long downward spiral marked by substance abuse, Elvis Presley died of heart failure on August 16, 1977 in Memphis, Tennessee at age 42.

Perhaps the most fearless mobster of all time, "Crazy Joe" Gallo took on his own bosses in the Colombo crime family and sparked an all-out civil war that finally ended with his murder in 1972.

The Sahara was once a grassy woodland until human activity and a changing climate turned it into the immense desert we know today. The Berbers were the only people who decided to call it home.