crime

Bundy. Dahmer. Gacy. Much of the modern world remains so captivated by true crime that names like these need no introduction. We need only hear the words BTK, Night Stalker, or Iceman, and our minds are racing with crime scene images, kill counts, and unanswered questions.

And for those enthralled by the likes of serial killers, vanished teens, brazen heists, mob hitmen, and all manner of unsolved mysteries, there’s much more to be found in the darkest annals of true crime than what’s covered by Netflix and HBO.

For starters, there are the insatiable murderers of the distant past, predators who plied their bloody trade before the term “serial killer” was even invented — fearsome figures like H. H. Holmes, Mary Ann Cotton, Gilles de Rais, and the “Bloody Benders.” Then there are the more modern murderers whose grisly crimes have gone overshadowed by more prolific predators — killers like the “Grim Sleeper,” the “Vampire of Sacramento,” and the “Cleveland Strangler.”

But as any true crime aficionado knows, there’s more out there than murder. Sometimes the most chilling cases are the ones where we never even know what happened to the person at the center of it all, which is why the disappearances of Maura Murray, Bryce Laspisa, Amy Lynn Bradley, and countless others remain fascinating to this day.

Sometimes, meanwhile, it’s not a person that’s disappeared, but instead an enormous trove of cash or jewels. Heists like these may seem outlandish enough to be plucked straight out of a movie plot, but truth is often stranger than fiction. There’s the Miami airport heist where thieves made off with $7 million, the North Carolina robbery where they made off with $17 million, or the Canadian theft where the haul was $18 million — worth of maple syrup.

Whether it’s vast sums stolen, people vanished forever, or victims snuffed out by inveterate murderers, go inside the world of true crime like never before with the stories below.