From the animal activist who was eaten alive by a bear to the girl who was tortured by her own caregiver, these might be the worst deaths in history.
Ideally, we all peacefully die in our sleep at an old age after living a long and fruitful life. The unfortunate reality is that this is often not the case, and most of us should count our blessings if it’s simply over with quickly.
The deaths featured here don’t fall into either of the above categories. Many of them were long and drawn out. All of them caused the victim immense pain. Some were tortured and murdered, others met a brutal fate at the hands of Mother Nature, and others were victims of horrible circumstances.
These agonizing deaths might serve as a reminder that things could always be worse, that we shouldn’t take life for granted, or perhaps another life-affirming sentiment. But at the end of the day, there’s no denying that all of these demises are haunting — and far worse than any horror movie.
Giles Corey: The Man Who Was Crushed To Death After Being Accused Of Witchcraft
Bettmann/Contributor/Getty ImagesAfter Giles Corey refused to cooperate during his trial, he was punished with one of the worst deaths in history.
The Salem witch trials were, to be blunt, a low point in American history. According to the Smithsonian Magazine, more than 200 people were accused of practicing “the Devil’s magic” in colonial Massachusetts. As a result, 20 people were executed for being “witches” in the early 1690s.
There was one notably bizarre and especially cruel death among those killed at Salem, though: Giles Corey, an elderly farmer who was stripped naked and forced to lay on the ground with a board covering his body, as heavy rocks were placed on top of him one by one over the course of a few days.
The circumstances surrounding Corey’s death are equally unusual. Years prior, Corey had stood trial for killing his farmhand Jacob Goodale after the young man supposedly stole some apples. At the time, the town didn’t want to imprison one of their most prominent farmers, so they hit Corey with a fine and, presumably, a stern warning not to murder anyone else.
Naturally, Corey fell out of favor with some of the townsfolk — including Thomas Putnam, who would play a key role in the witch trials.
When the witchcraft hysteria first hit Salem in early 1692, 80-year-old Giles Corey reacted like many of the other townspeople: confused and terrified. By March, Corey was convinced that his own wife Martha was a witch and even testified against her in court. But before long, suspicion fell on him as well.
Wikimedia CommonsThough most victims of the Salem witch trials were hanged, Giles Corey was pressed to death with stones.
In April, an arrest warrant was put out for Giles Corey. He had been accused of witchcraft by numerous “afflicted” girls in the area — including Ann Putnam, Jr., who was the daughter of Corey’s enemy Thomas Putnam.
Giles Corey’s examination began on April 19, 1692. Throughout the process, Ann Putnam, Jr. and the other “afflicted” girls mimicked his movements, supposedly under his magical control. They also had numerous “fits.” Eventually, Corey stopped cooperating with the authorities entirely.
The punishment for standing mute, however, was a brutal one. A judge ordered peine forte et dure — a torture method that involved stacking heavy stones upon the accused’s chest until they entered a plea or died. And so in September 1692, Corey would literally be crushed to death by stones.
Over the course of three agonizing days, stones were slowly added to the wood plank resting on top of Giles Corey. But despite the torment, he still refused to enter a plea. The only thing he said was this: “More weight.”
One spectator recalled seeing Corey’s tongue “being prest out of his mouth,” after which, “the Sheriff with his cane forced it in again when he was dying.”
So why would Corey suffer one of the worst deaths in history — especially when others accused of being witches were simply hanged? Some believe that Corey didn’t want a guilty verdict attached to his name. But others think that he wanted to stop authorities from taking his land so that his surviving family members would be left with something after he was dead.
Either way, he was able to ensure the prosperity of some of his relatives. But his wife Martha was not one of them. Found guilty of witchcraft, she would ultimately be hanged just days after her husband’s gruesome demise.
Sylvia Likens: The 16-Year-Old Who Was Tortured And Murdered By Her Own Caregiver
Wikimedia CommonsSylvia Likens was abused by her caregiver — who convinced her children and other neighborhood kids to join in.
Born in Lebanon, Indiana to two traveling carnival workers, Sylvia Likens and her four siblings grew up with parents who struggled to make ends meet. Her father, Lester, only had an eighth-grade education. And during the summer of 1965, Sylvia’s mother was thrown into jail for shoplifting.
When Lester decided to start working with the traveling carnival again, 16-year-old Sylvia and her 15-year-old sister Jenny were sent to stay with a family friend named Gertrude Baniszewski in Indianapolis. Meanwhile, the girls’ other siblings were placed in the care of their grandparents.
Gertrude was far from the ideal caregiver. She already had seven children of her own and lived in a run-down home. She struggled with mental health issues and made ends meet by helping neighbors with laundry. Still, Lester Likens offered to pay her $20 a week to “straighten his daughters out.”
Then, one week, the payment from the girls’ father came late — and Gertrude snapped. She told them, “I took care of you two bitches for two weeks for nothing,” before dragging Sylvia into a room and slamming the door, forcing Jenny to listen to her sister’s screams from the other side. The money showed up the next day, but Gertrude’s torture was just beginning.
She began to abuse Sylvia and Jenny with a paddle and a belt, enlisting the help of her own 17-year-old daughter, Paula, when she grew too tired to beat the girls herself. But eventually, Gertrude focused her torture on Sylvia, demanding Jenny join in if she didn’t want to take her sister’s place.
Wikimedia CommonsGertrude Baniszewski spent 20 years in prison for the torture and murder of Sylvia Likens.
According to Sylvia’s Child Advocacy Center, Sylvia Likens was subjected to almost unimaginable abuse for nearly three months straight.
Gertrude burned Sylvia’s fingertips, force-fed her hot dogs until she threw up, and then made her eat her vomit for wasting good food. Meanwhile, Gertrude encouraged her children to join in on the abuse. She told them to use Sylvia’s skin as an ashtray, practice karate on her, and rub salt into her wounds. At one point, Sylvia was even forced to lick soiled diapers.
Some of the worst torture came from Paula, who accused Sylvia of being pregnant and mutilated her genitals. (At the time, Paula herself was pregnant.) Before long, Sylvia was no longer able to voluntarily use the toilet.
Meanwhile, Gertrude spread lies about Sylvia to other children in the neighborhood, encouraging them to join in tormenting her. The kids obliged, and one even helped Gertrude’s 11-year-old daughter Marie carve the words “I’m a prostitute and proud of it” into Sylvia’s abdomen with a heated needle.
Three days before her death, Sylvia told Jenny, “I’m going to die. I can tell.”
Gertrude forced Sylvia to write a letter to her parents, saying that she had run away and met a group of boys, whom she had given sexual favors. Apparently, Gertrude planned to blame the “boys” for Sylvia’s murder. Though Sylvia made a desperate escape attempt, she was caught by Gertrude, who enlisted a local boy named Coy Hubbard to help her beat Sylvia to death.
When the police came, Gertrude stuck to her cover story. But then, Jenny told a police officer, “Get me out of here, and I’ll tell you everything.” Before long, the full truth about one of the worst deaths in history came out.
But to make an already terrible situation even worse, many felt that justice wasn’t truly served in this case. Gertrude ultimately spent 20 years in prison for first-degree murder before being granted parole in 1985. She died of lung cancer five years later. Paula spent about eight years behind bars for second-degree murder. And three boys — including Hubbard — were convicted of manslaughter, but they all just spent two years in prison.
Hisashi Ouchi: The Lab Technician Who Suffered The Worst Radiation Death In History
Peak Interest/YouTubeHisashi Ouchi became the most radioactive man in history after a lab accident.
There’s a reason why workplace health and safety guidelines exist, and the chilling story of Hisashi Ouchi shows just how important they are — especially if you happen to work at a nuclear power plant.
On September 30, 1999, the 35-year-old Ouchi and two others were working at the Tokaimura Nuclear Power Plant in Tokaimura, Japan under a tight deadline put in place by the Japan Nuclear Fuel Conversion Company.
The plant converted uranium hexafluoride into enriched uranium for the purposes of nuclear energy. This usually involved a meticulous, carefully-timed, multi-step process. But Ouchi and his coworkers Masato Shinohara and Yutaka Yokokawa attempted to take a shortcut to meet their deadline.
Unfortunately, this led to a horrific nuclear accident involving a uranium solution. The plant underwent emergency evacuation as the three men were rushed to the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba. They had all been directly exposed to harmful radiation, but to different degrees.
Yokokawa, the sole survivor of the group, was exposed to three sieverts of radiation. Shinohara was exposed to 10 sieverts. And Ouchi was exposed to a whopping 17 sieverts — which was more than any human in history.
Wikimedia CommonsThe nuclear plant where Hisashi Ouchi worked.
By the time Ouchi arrived at the hospital, his body was already covered in burns, and his eyes were leaking blood. But his agony had just begun.
Three days after the accident, Ouchi was transferred to the University of Tokyo Hospital. His lack of white blood cells and his nonexistent immune response prompted experts to try a number of procedures to save him.
At first, doctors tried countless skin grafts and blood transfusions. Then, they attempted stem cell transplants. Sadly, none of this seemed to be working. And according to the Daily Star, Ouchi soon cried out, “I can’t take it anymore! I am not a guinea pig!” just a week into his treatment.
But although he begged for death, his family insisted that doctors keep trying experimental treatments. Even when Ouchi’s skin began to melt from his body, his relatives ordered his doctors to do whatever it took to keep him alive. All in all, Ouchi was kept alive against his will for a harrowing 83 days.
At one point, he suffered three heart attacks in one hour. Following the guidelines from his family, the doctors resuscitated him again and again. Every time he died and came back, he suffered brain damage.
On December 21, 1999, Ouchi finally, mercifully died of his last heart attack after multi-organ failure. It was only then that his torture ceased.
Colin Scott: The Yellowstone Tourist Who Was Boiled Alive By A Hot Spring
FacebookColin Scott was looking for a place to swim in Yellowstone National Park when he tragically fell into blazing hot water.
In 2016, a 23-year-old Oregon man named Colin Scott and his sister Sable were visiting Yellowstone National Park when they decided to wander into a prohibited section in search of a place to swim or to soak.
Although certain regions of the park are safe and open for swimming, the Norris Geyser Basin is not one of them. According to the National Park Service, the basin is the oldest and hottest thermal region in the park. Most thermal features in the region reach at least 199 degrees Fahrenheit.
But its natural beauty makes it a popular spot for visitors. One area of the basin has a 1.5-mile trail of boardwalks, where tourists can safely explore. Generally, those sticking to the boardwalks won’t encounter any issues.
Colin and Sable Scott, however, did not stick to the boardwalks.
Going off the path, the siblings explored a restricted area near the basin and looked for a spot to “get into and soak.” Sable was filming a video of her brother trekking along when he suddenly tripped — and fell into a hot spring.
In a panic, Sable desperately tried to help her brother out of the water, but she couldn’t save him. Since she had no cell phone service at the basin, she ran to a nearby museum for help, according to The Guardian.
But when park officials arrived, Colin was already dead, and authorities could only see “portions” of his head, torso, and hands in the spring. He had been boiled alive. And unfortunately for his family members, an incoming storm made it too difficult for officials to safely recover his body that day.
By the next morning, his body was no longer visible. A report concluded: “The consensus among the rescue/recovery team… was that the extreme heat of the hot spring, coupled with its acidic nature, dissolved the remains.”
Timothy Treadwell: The “Grizzly Man” Who Met A Grisly Death At The Hands Of A Bear
Lions Gate PicturesTimothy Treadwell had been warned several times that his bear encounters would one day turn deadly.
To earn the nickname “Grizzly Man,” you need one of two things: a deep enthusiasm for grizzly bears or immense amounts of gray hair.
Timothy Treadwell had the former.
Starting in the late 1980s, Treadwell rose to notoriety through his documentary films chronicling the lives of grizzly bears in Alaska’s Katmai National Park. He spent several summers in the park, claiming to feel more at home in nature with the bears than he did in human society.
The Grizzly Man filmed himself approaching the bears, touching them, and occasionally even playing with the cubs, attributing his closeness with the grizzlies to a sense of trust and mutual respect. Park rangers and the National Park Service disagreed, frequently warning Treadwell that his interactions with the bears would eventually turn deadly.
But nothing would deter Treadwell from spending time with his beloved grizzlies — not even a citation from park rangers for leaving food in his tent and for his failure to follow other established camping rules.
And after 13 summers with the bears, the rangers’ prediction came true.
Willie Fulton/Alaska MagazineTimothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were both mauled to death by a bear in 2003.
In October 2003, 46-year-old Treadwell and his 37-year-old girlfriend Amie Huguenard once again found themselves in Katmai National Park. It was a good bit later in the season than Treadwell usually stayed.
By autumn, the bears were usually storing up food for the winter and preparing for hibernation, but Treadwell was determined to track down a favorite female bear of his. On October 5th, Treadwell and Huguenard prepared to be picked up by a chartered floatplane the next morning.
But when the pilot arrived as scheduled, he was unable to find the couple anywhere near their campsite. Instead, according to The Mirror, he saw the “meanest looking bear” feasting on what appeared to be a human ribcage.
When park rangers arrived, the bear attacked them, forcing them to kill it. Human body parts were later discovered in its stomach. And there were also some uneaten human remains left behind in the general area.
But as gruesome as this scene was, the true horror emerged after Treadwell’s video camera was uncovered at the couple’s campsite. At first, it appeared as if the tape was blank, but the rangers quickly realized that it wasn’t — the video was just too dark to see anything. But the audio was crystal clear. And it had captured Treadwell and Huguenard’s final moments.
On the tape, which has never been released to the public, Treadwell reportedly screams that he’s “being killed out here” as the bear rips him apart. Huguenard first urges him to “play dead” and then to “fight back.” But just moments later, she meets the same grisly fate as her boyfriend.
Doug McKay: The Man Who Suffered One Of The Worst Amusement Park Deaths In History
Paradise Amusements/FacebookBefore his death, Doug McKay co-owned Paradise Amusements with his wife Sherry.
Doug McKay had only recently been handed the reins of his family carnival business by his father when he was killed by one of his own rides.
Forty-year-old Doug and his wife Sherry McKay co-owned Paradise Amusements, a family-owned and operated outdoor carnival based in Idaho. In 2003, they were in the middle of a three-year contract with the Whidbey Island Fair — located on an island just north of Seattle, Washington. But on August 16th, Doug noticed something wrong with one of their rides.
The Super Loop 2, a small roller coaster that involved a single vertical loop, needed lubrication along a portion of its track. As the Whidbey News-Times reported, Doug made the fateful decision to climb onto the ride’s platform — while the ride was still in operation — to fix the issue.
According to the Seattle Times, Sherry explained that Doug had been around carnival rides for most of his life and was experienced in maintaining them. He even had experience working on rides that were in motion before.
But this time was different. As Doug was spraying lubricant onto the track, he suddenly slipped and fell. Doug then became entangled with a passenger cart, likely because his long hair got caught on it. Horrified park visitors watched as Doug was dragged 40 feet in the air before he was dropped.
During his final fall, he struck the ride multiple times before finally landing over a metal fence. He was immediately pronounced dead at the scene. And although law enforcement quickly tried to hide Doug’s bloody body from view, the damage had already been done to dozens of witnesses.
No one had a worse view than those on the ride — which was packed with children at the time of Doug’s death. Many of these kids were splattered with the carnival operator’s blood. And some of the children’s parents later criticized the police officers who rounded up the kids after the ride to question them before they had the chance to clean the blood off.
After the accident, the Whidbey Island Fair was dead quiet. But the silence lasted less than an hour, and soon enough the fair continued its busy Saturday night. The next day, it opened as usual — except the Super Loop 2.
Sherry later said that she had promised her husband that if anything ever happened to him, she would “keep the show going.” She kept her word.
Adelir Antônio De Carli: The Priest Who Perished After Being Carried Away By Party Balloons
Renita Pelissari/Agencia O Globo via Associated PressAlong with being a priest, Adelir Antônio de Carli was also reportedly an experienced skydiver.
On April 20, 2008, a 41-year-old Roman Catholic priest named Adelir Antônio de Carli donned a helmet, a thermal flight suit, and a parachute. Amid cheers from a crowd, he then strapped 1,000 helium-filled party balloons to himself and ascended into the sky over the port city of Paranagua in Brazil.
What could compel a man to fly thousands of feet into the air, carried only by balloons? As it turns out, charity — and a desire to break a world record.
De Carli had been trying to raise money to fund the building of a “spiritual rest stop” for truckers driving along the highway in Paranagua, CBS reported. To attract attention for the cause, he was attempting to break the record for the longest time in-flight with party balloons. (At the time, it was 19 hours.)
But although the priest was an experienced skydiver with extensive survival and wilderness training — and he had also brought a GPS device and radio with him so that he could report his status and location to the Brazilian Navy and air traffic control — his journey would lead to his terrible demise.
He was reported missing just eight hours after he took off. And two days after he vanished, the cluster of balloons was found floating in the Atlantic Ocean near Santa Catarina. De Carli was not with them.
For nearly three months, there was no sign of the priest.
Then, in July of that year, tugboat workers just off the southeastern coast of Brazil came across a body floating in the water near the city of Macae. When they brought it to shore, authorities believed that it belonged to de Carli.
DNA tests later confirmed it to be true.
Much of de Carli’s final moments remain a mystery. However, he reportedly called friends on his mobile phone just before he vanished to say that he was about to crash into the ocean. If he did indeed crash, it’s possible that he died on impact, or that he drowned after hitting the water. Either way, there’s no question that his last few breaths were agonizing ones.
Junko Furuta: The 17-Year-Old Who Was Tortured For 44 Days For Rejecting A Classmate
Wikimedia CommonsJunko Furuta was kidnapped and murdered by four teenage boys in 1980s Japan.
Born in Misato, Saitama, Japan in 1971, Junko Furuta appeared to have a promising future. She had a reputation as a beautiful and intelligent student at Yashio-Minami High School. Furuta was also widely known as a “good girl,” who refused to drink, smoke, or do any kind of illegal drugs.
But unfortunately, she crossed paths with a classmate named Hiroshi Miyano at school in November 1988. Miyano had connections to the Yakuza, a powerful Japanese organized crime syndicate. He was also determined to date Furuta, and he was enraged when she turned him down.
Mere days after the rejection, Miyano and his friend Shinji Minato were at a local park preying on girls and young women when they spotted Furuta on her bike. Miyano and Minato soon abducted her, raped her, and took her to their other friends, Jō Ogura and Yasushi Watanabe, who also raped her.
Tragically, that was just the beginning of her agony. The four teenage boys then smuggled Furuta into a home owned by Minato’s family. There, she would be held captive and forced to pose as Minato’s girlfriend whenever his parents were around. And she was soon subjected to a barrage of heinous beatings, rapes, and torture until her eventual murder in January 1989.
Over the course of 44 days, Furuta’s captors continued to rape her, inviting other boys and men who they knew to join in on the abuse. In total, Furuta was raped over 400 times. Her captors also subjected her to other forms of torture, like shoving scissors, fireworks, and a lightbulb into her vagina and anus. Eventually, they completely destroyed her internal anatomy.
The boys also made her drink her own urine, eat cockroaches, and masturbate in front of them. They hung her from the ceiling and beat her with golf clubs, bamboo sticks, and iron rods, and burned her eyelids.
Facebook
The four murderers of Junko Furuta (Hiroshi Miyano, Shinji Minato, Jō Ogura, and Yusushi Watanabe).
Perhaps most tragic is that Furuta could have been saved. Once, a boy who had been invited over to the home left when he saw Furuta and told his brother about her. The brother alerted their parents, who called the police. But when the cops arrived, the Minato family, allegedly fearing Miyano’s Yakuza connections, told the police there was no girl in the home.
Furuta, too, tried to contact the police, but the boys discovered her and hung up before she could speak. When the cops called back, Miyano assured them the call had been an accident. As punishment for calling the authorities, the boys doused Furuta’s legs in lighter fluid and set her on fire.
On January 4, 1989, Junko Furuta’s kidnappers finally murdered her. After brutally torturing her one final time, they placed her body in a 55-gallon drum, filled it with concrete, and dropped it on a cement truck.
Furuta’s body was only discovered after Miyano and Ogura were arrested two weeks later on an unrelated gang-rape charge. When an officer mentioned an open murder investigation during Miyano’s interrogation, the boy mistakenly believed that Ogura had confessed to Furuta’s murder. And so Miyano ended up telling the police where to find her body.
According to Tokyo Reporter, all four boys received shockingly light sentences for the crime. Miyano was sentenced to 20 years in prison, Minato received a term of five-to-nine years, Ogura was sentenced to five-to-10 years, and Watanabe received a term of five-to-seven years.
The light sentences were attributed to the boys’ youth, but it’s widely believed their connections to the Yakuza played a bigger role. Because of this, many people in Japan feel justice has never been served in the case of Junko Furuta. And unfortunately, it seems as if it never will be.
Shanda Sharer: The 12-Year-Old Who Was Tortured And Killed By Four Teenage Girls
Wikimedia CommonsShanda Sharer was tormented by her captors for hours until they killed her.
When 12-year-old Shanda Sharer met Amanda Heavrin at Hazelwood Middle School in New Albany, Indiana, in 1991, they became fast friends. Shortly thereafter, Shanda and Amanda became romantic partners.
Unfortunately, jealousy reared its ugly head in the form of Melinda Loveless, Amanda’s ex — and a deadly plan began to take shape. Shanda and Amanda attended a dance together in October 1991, where they were confronted by the 16-year-old Melinda. Envious of the new couple, Melinda publicly threatened Shanda and even openly talked about killing her.
Shanda’s mother Jacque Vaught eventually transferred the 12-year-old to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic School in an effort to keep her safe.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. On January 10, 1992, Melinda and three of her teenage friends — Laurie Tackett, Hope Rippey, and Toni Lawrence — drove in the bitter cold to Shanda’s father’s house, where she was spending the weekend. They claimed that they would take Shanda to see Amanda.
Shanda told them to return after dark, which they did. But instead of taking her to Amanda, they attacked her soon after she got in the car. It all started in the backseat, where Melinda was hiding underneath a blanket with a knife. She suddenly sprung out and held the weapon against Shanda’s throat, demanding that she admit to stealing Amanda away from her.
Melinda then commanded her friends to drive to a remote location where no one could hear them. Thinking that Melinda intended to scare Shanda into leaving Amanda, the girls obliged. Instead, they spent seven hours torturing Shanda, who would later suffer one of the worst deaths in history.
MurderpediaShanda Sharer’s killers. Clockwise from top left: Melinda Loveless, Laurie Tackett, Hope Rippey, and Toni Lawrence.
First, Melinda and Laurie stripped Shanda naked near a remote trash dump while Hope and Toni waited in the car. Melinda and Laurie punched Shanda repeatedly before stabbing her in the chest and strangling her with a rope. Thinking she was dead, they threw her into the trunk of the car.
It was only later at Laurie’s house, while drinking sodas, that they realized that the young girl was still alive and screaming from the car. Laurie attacked Shanda once again, stabbing her several more times. She then got into the car with Melinda, drove away to another remote location, and brutally beat and sodomized Shanda with a tire iron. When they returned, Laurie laughed as she told the others about what they’d done to Shanda.
Then, in the early morning hours, the girls drove a still-alive Shanda Sharer — who was whispering the word “Mommy” — to yet another remote location. There, they doused her in gasoline and lit her on fire. Then, to confirm that Shanda was really dead, Melinda instructed the girls to light her on fire once more.
The girls stopped to eat breakfast at McDonald’s on the way home, making jokes about how Shanda’s body looked like the burnt sausage they’d ordered. Later that same morning, two hunters found Shanda’s body.
By the end of the day, Hope and Toni had gone to the police to confess to their roles in the murder. Before long, all four of the killers were in custody. Ultimately, they were all tried as adults and took plea deals.
Toni and Hope — who were both younger and less involved with the torture — received shorter prison sentences and were released in 2000 and 2006, respectively. Laurie and Melinda received longer sentences, but they too were eventually released in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
Shirley Ledford, The Final Victim Of The “Toolbox Killers” Roy Norris And Lawrence Bittaker
Wikimedia CommonsShirley Lynette Ledford suffered one of the worst deaths in history at the hands of the “Toolbox Killers” in 1979.
Over the course of five months in 1979, Roy Norris and Lawrence Bittaker stalked Los Angeles County, kidnapping and raping five teenage girls before torturing them to death with instruments from their “toolbox.”
According to The Independent, Bittaker and Norris had met in prison earlier in the 1970s. At the time, Norris had been imprisoned for rape, and Bittaker had been locked up for stabbing a store clerk who accused him of shoplifting. It was there that they had planned their deadly spree. Once they were released, Bittaker and Norris wasted no time in carrying it out.
On Halloween night in 1979, 16-year-old Shirley Lynette Ledford became their fifth and final victim. Shirley had decided to hitchhike home after a Halloween party and was fatefully picked up by Bittaker and Norris.
Much like the other victims, Shirley endured horrific rapes and torture with several instruments, including screwdrivers. But it wasn’t enough for the Toolbox Killers to commit the heinous acts. They recorded them too.
However, the audio tape of Shirley’s torture and murder was instrumental in ensuring both Bittaker and Norris would never again see the light of day.
Getty ImagesLawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris had bonded over a love of sadism and fantasies of rape and torture.
As Oxygen reported, the men were only caught because Norris bragged to a friend about their crime spree. That friend went to the police, and Norris was arrested. Bittaker, hearing about the arrest, started destroying the evidence. He missed one crucial piece, though: the audio tape of Shirley’s murder.
“For those of you who do not know what Hell is like, you will find out,” prosecutor Stephen Kay told the jurors during Bittaker’s trial.
The tape played for 10 minutes in court. Bittaker sat emotionless as the jurors cried. Other people, including the courtroom artist, fled the room. Some jurors said they had nightmares after hearing the tape. “I had a dream I was coming down an elevator at the courthouse,” one said, “And when it opened, Bittaker was standing there, and he threw cinders in my face.”
Criminologist Laura Brand later interviewed Bittaker while he was in prison, describing to The Independent the chills she felt when he spoke so casually of his crimes. She could only listen to 30 seconds of Shirley’s tape.
“It’s just her screaming,” she said. “It’s a visceral reaction because you’re hearing a real-life scream. It’s so much different than what you’d hear in a horror movie. You can feel it in your gut when you’re hearing the screams.”
Bittaker was sentenced to death for his crimes, but he ultimately died in prison in 2019. Norris, who had pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, was sentenced to life in prison and died shortly after Bittaker in 2020.
Omayra Sánchez: The 13-Year-Old Who Was Trapped For Three Days In A Mudflow
Wikimedia CommonsThis picture of Omayra Sánchez captured one of the worst deaths in history.
In November 1985, French photojournalist Frank Fournier arrived in the small Colombian town of Armero, which had just been almost entirely demolished by mudslides in the aftermath of a nearby volcanic eruption.
Fournier was hailed by a farmer, who informed him that there was a little girl in need of help. He followed the farmer through the thick, heavy sludge that covered the ground, and eventually, the two came upon Omayra Sánchez, a 13-year-old girl who was buried up to her neck in the muddy water and debris. While she had been trapped for three days, she was still alive.
Though rescue workers attempted to save Omayra, they were unable to pull her out from the debris. Chillingly, they later discovered that her legs had been trapped by a brick door and her dead aunt’s arms.
By the time Fournier arrived, Omayra was drifting in and out of consciousness, as three days of being exposed to the elements had weakened her. As Fournier sat by her side, she told him she was worried about missing school. She even asked if Fournier could take her there.
Fournier sat by Omayra’s side for three hours, capturing her final moments in a series of heartwrenching images. She finally asked the volunteers around her to let her rest, and bidding her mother adiós, she died.
“When I took the pictures I felt totally powerless in front of this little girl, who was facing death with courage and dignity,” Fournier said. “I felt that the only thing I could do was to report properly… and hope that it would mobilize people to help the ones that had been rescued and had been saved.”
Indeed, the pictures sparked a backlash against Colombia’s lackluster rescue efforts. The volcanic eruption and subsequent mudslide ultimately claimed 25,000 lives, many of whom suffered horrific deaths just like Omayra. And in the town of Armero, only a fifth of the population survived.
But while the government was forced to answer for its inaction in the aftermath, the images also sparked criticisms of Fournier’s photojournalism and debates over whether he should’ve taken the pictures at all.
Fournier, for his part, stood by his difficult decision to photograph Omayra and share her tragic story with the public. He said, “There are hundreds of thousands of Omayras around the world — important stories about the poor and the weak and we photojournalists are there to create the bridge. I was lucky that I could act as a bridge to link people with her.”