On January 22, 2008, Australian actor Heath Ledger died of an accidental drug overdose at age 28. But that’s just the start of the story. When Heath Ledger died in 2008, the world was in shock. The handsome Australian actor was just 28 years old — and he was at the pinnacle of his career. To his adoring fans, he seemed to have it all. So what really happened on the day of Heath Ledger’s…
Doreen Lioy was an ordinary magazine editor — until she wed Richard Ramirez and became the wife of the “Night Stalker.” After 11 years of writing love letters to her prospective husband, Doreen Lioy finally got to marry the man of her dreams. Although Lioy was overjoyed, the news of her wedding shocked the world. After all, the 1996 ceremony took place in San Quentin State Prison — and her new husband was the notorious…
For 30 years, Boy Scout troop leader and church council president Dennis Rader was secretly the BTK murderer — while looking like the perfect family man to the outside world. Dennis Rader was the president of his church congregation as well as a loving husband and a doting father. Altogether, he seemed to be a reliable and responsible man to all who knew him. But he was leading a double life. Though not even Rader’s…
Joan Vollmer opened her New York City home to the raucous Beats — and was ultimately shot in the head by one of the movement’s most influential writers, her common-law husband William S. Burroughs. In the throes of America’s post-World War II period, there arose a counterculture literary movement known as the Beat Generation. These artists called Beatniks shirked mainstream conventions in favor of a more fluid lifestyle, hitchhiking, and creating art. But the influence of…
In the 1970s and ’80s, Judy Buenoano killed her husband, her next boyfriend, and even her own son for insurance money. And no one suspected a thing — until she tried to firebomb her last fiancé’s car. Judy Buenoano was one of the most cunning American serial killers of the 1970s and ’80s. Though she didn’t have the highest body count, she still became infamous for killing people who were close to her. She murdered…
Todirel/Imgur Sometimes, the most mindblowing treasures imaginable can be found tucked away in our own homes.. While sifting through the contents of his grandmother’s art room, one man happened across an old hidden safe, long forgotten and rusty. No one had known of its existence — and what awaited inside would forever alter what he knew about his past. A Cluttered Disarray The inside of an old art room covered floor to ceiling with the…
Imagine everyone around you is in on a secret, except you. “I found out that everything I knew about myself was a lie.” Steve Lickteig was like many adopted children in hoping that one day he would learn the truth about his biological parents. But when the truth finally revealed itself, it exposed family secrets that would forever alter their life together. Living In A Lie Steve Lickteig’s life as he knew it began in…
Jorge Porto-Sierra’s plan to burn sex offenders to death was only thwarted when police arrived too soon. “I’m going to kill you, child molester,” screamed Jorge Porto-Sierra as he poured gasoline on the door of the Friendly Village Inn in Osceola County, Florida. With a cigarette in hand, Porto-Sierra continued to dump the flammable fluids all over the premises in hopes of setting the property ablaze and burning the sex offenders inside to death. As…
“I told my husband, ‘If Blue doesn’t make it, you might as well dig a hole big enough to put both of us in.’ I just don’t know if I can handle life without her.” Sometimes, a person’s love for their pet can overcome any obstacle or financial hurdle. For Seleta Nothnagel of Colorado, her two-year-old chicken named Blue is invaluable. She not only feeds it human food, but she lets it sleep by her…
For more than 20 years, Michael Kent was a fervent white supremacist covered in hate tattoos. But that all changed when he met Tiffany Whittier and the pair struck up an unlikely friendship. One look at Michael Kent, a white man speaking alongside Black activists about bridging the country’s racial divide, and you’d never guess he was once a neo-Nazi. But after striking up an unlikely friendship with his Black probation officer, Tiffany Whittier, he…