The Amazing Stuff

When you think of a serial killer, you probably envision a solitary figure — probably a male — stalking the night with a weapon and an ugly leer. That’s often true, but sometimes, the nastiest people come in pairs.

Throughout the 20th century, there have been some notable killers that have made this deadly pastime into a couple’s affair. This just proves that getting a boyfriend or girlfriend isn’t the benchmark of stability. In fact, as far as these couples are concerned, it’s quite the opposite.

1. Suzan and James Carson

After doing many drugs and moving to a marijuana farm in San Francisco, these two took it upon themselves to kill anyone they felt gave off an “evil energy.” Their first victim was their roommate, who they bludgeoned with a frying pan and stabbed almost a dozen times. They killed at least two more people, and received life sentences.

2. Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate — the Badlands Killers

Inspiring films like Natural Born Killers, these two young murderers swept across the American Midwest in the 1950s, killing almost everyone in their path. It started when 14-year-old Fugate’s mother and stepfather disapproved of her 19-year-old boyfriend, Starkweather, so Starkweather murdered them, along with Fugate’s two-year-old sister. They killed 11 people and two dogs in eight days before being captured. Starkweather was executed, and Fugate got a life sentence. However, she paroled in 1976, and now lives in Michigan.

3. Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck — the Lonely Hearts Killers

While in prison, Fernandez became interested in the occult, and believed that he could use these powers to woo women, steal their money, and disappear. When he got out, he promptly began scamming women. Then he met Beck, who wanted to stay with him. She even dumped her two kids at the Salvation Army to do so.

She agreed to let Fernandez continue his scams, but her jealousy caused her to attack and kill some of the women. Eventually, the couple decided it was easier to just kill them all. Finally, someone noticed when a young widow and her two-year-old went missing, and the couple was finally caught. Together, they killed about 20 people. They were both sentenced to death by electrocution in Sing Sing’s famous chair.

4. Faye and Ray Copeland

This couple proves that old people aren’t always innocent. Ray and Faye, 76 and 69, respectively, lured drifters onto their property in the early 1990s, hiring them to buy cattle with fake checks. They’d then sell the cattle for a huge markup and murder the drifter to avoid giving them a cut. They killed five people this way, and were only caught when the sixth drifter spied human remains on the property.

Evil until the end, Faye tried to get out of a conviction by saying that Ray abused her, but her complicity was proven when a quilt made from the dead drifters’ clothes was found in her possession. Given the death penalty, Faye’s sentence was commuted to life. Ray died in 1993, and Faye died of natural causes 10 years later.

5. Gwendolyn Graham and Catherine May Wood

This couple met while working at a nursing home in Michigan. When the sex got dull, they got their thrills by murdering elderly women at the home, and then having sex next to the bodies. They even bragged about it to coworkers, but no one believed them. Graham and Wood broke up when Wood refused to kill a woman just for fun, and she would eventually break down and turn Graham and herself in. Graham got life, but for her cooperation, Wood got 20 years.

6. Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole

This pair met at a soup kitchen in 1973 and quickly became lovers — and killers. It’s not clear when the killing started, but when Lucas was arrested for a weapons charge in 1983, he started bragging about all the people he’d killed.

Upon hearing this, Toole also began confessing, and together, the couple admitted to hundreds of murders. The exact details and truths were never uncovered, but their information helped close 246 missing persons cases. Unlike many of the other killers, they had no preferred method of killing and targeted anyone, regardless of age, race, or sex. They were both given life sentences.

7. Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka

As a twisted “wedding present,” Homolka gave Bernardo her 15-year-old sister. After drugging the girl, the couple raped her while videotaping the crime. The sister, barely conscious, ended up choking to death on her own vomit. The death was not ruled a homicide, so the couple continued raping and murdering girls. However, Homolka turned on Bernardo in 1993 after he beat her, and negotiated a 12-year sentence in exchange for her cooperation. He was sentenced to life, and she was released in 2005.

8. Myra Hindley and Ian Brady

Hindley fell in love with Brady and his neo-Nazi ideals in the 1960s, even dying her hair blond to be more “Aryan.” Of course, that was the least of it. They hatched a plan for the perfect murder, and kidnapped, raped, and murdered a 16-year-old girl. This led to the similar attacks and murders of five more children between 1963 and 1965. Eventually, though, their perfect crimes unraveled and they were both sentenced to life in prison. Brady is currently spending the remainder of his life in a psychiatric ward.

9. Charlene and Gerald Gallego

From 1978 to 1980, this couple raped and murdered nine young women, including a 13-yaer-old and a pregnant woman. Apparently, they shared a twisted fantasy of having “young, disposable sex slaves.” They were finally apprehended when someone witnessed them kidnapping a young woman and wrote down the license plate number. Charlene testified against Gerald and got 16 years, while Gerald got the death penalty, but he died in prison before it was carried out.

10. Fred and Rosemary West

These two were messed up from the start. Rosemary murdered Fred’s stepdaughter and, with Fred’s approval, worked as a prostitute in his home, often with their children present. Fred also took to sexually abusing his daughters.

Between 1973 and 1987, the couple murdered nine women, including one of their own daughters. This was the murder that eventually led the police to investigate, and in all, the couple was charged with 21 counts of murder. Fred hanged himself while awaiting trial, and Rosemary got life in prison.

(via All Day)

So if that doesn’t make you feel a little less than romantic, we don’t know what will. Luckily, these creeps have all been caught.

The world will always need good nurses. Years of schooling and late-night shifts make it one of the most demanding fields. The majority of nurses in this country are dedicated to upholding the welfare of mankind, but there are a select few who are just as dedicated to eradicating it.

Here are some of the most notorious serial-killing nurses of all time.

Daniela Poggiali

Nicknamed the “Angel of Death,” this Italian nurse is accused of killing 96 of her patients between 2013 and 2014. This would make her the second most prolific serial killer in history. Her motive? Well, if she thought that certain patients were annoying, she killed them. She murdered people with complicated cases by overdosing them on drugs. She even took selfies with their corpses afterwards.

Charles Cullen

Suspected to have killed up to 300 patients during his 16-year stint as a nurse, Charles Cullen may be the most prolific killer in America. Cullen injected his patients with lethal amounts of digoxin, which helped his crimes go undetected. He claimed that he only killed them out of mercy. Despite being helpful in the investigation, Cullen was sentenced to 11 consecutive life sentences with no chance for parole.

Amy Archer-Gilligan

Because of the 60 deaths that took place in her Windsor, Connecticut, nursing home between 1907 and 1917, people grew suspicious of Amy Archer-Gilligan’s practices. It was eventually discovered that she was lacing patients’ food with arsenic. Several of her patients and five of her husbands died this way…after naming Archer-Gilligan as the sole benefactor in all of their wills.

Genene Jones

While most of these serial-killing nurses went after elderly patients, Genene Jones is known for killing infants. Jones was addicted to the gratitude she received after reviving babies from critical conditions. Between 1971 and 1984, she injected babies with digoxin in order to turn around and save them. As many as 60 infants died after the initial injection.

Benjamin Geen

Benjamin Geen was caught with a lethal dose of muscle relaxers in his possession back in 2004 after a suspicious number of his patients died of cardiac arrest. It seems that Geen got a kick out of watching people resuscitate patients, but many of his victims could not be saved.

Because of the inherent intimacy nurses have with vulnerable people, heath professionals with murderous tendencies are particularly disturbing. It’s important to remember, however, that these cases are extremely rare. You can rest assured that most nurses really do make it their mission to help you.

Modern-day Norway is a beacon for Western civilization. Using any number of metrics, it’s easy to see how truly progressive Norway is as a country. However, like every country on Earth, Norway is not without its flaws or dark spots. It might come as a shock, but one of these dark spots was in the early ’90s, when the country was terrorized by satanists.

In the late 1980s, the thriving Norwegian death metal scene started to turn darker.

The music became heavier. Several guitarists pioneered new ways of voicing chords that gave them a darker tone. The lyrical content of the music referred heavily to satanism. Thus, black metal as a genre was born.

The event that was said to have sparked the black metal genre was the suicide of Per Yngve Ohlin.

Ohlin was the singer of a black metal band called Mayhem. In 1991, after battling depression, Ohlin shot himself in the bathroom he shared with his bandmates. Mayhem’s guitar player, Øystein “Euronymous” Aarseth, found Ohlin’s body. Instead of calling the police right away, he took a photograph of the scene, and collected bits of Ohlin’s skull from around the bathroom. It’s said that Euronymous made necklaces from those bits of skull and gave them to different people in the black metal scene.

After Ohlin’s death, Mayhem went on and used their singer’s death to gain publicity.

The scene began to pick up steam in Norway and Sweden after that. At the height of the movement, Euronymous opened a record store in downtown Oslo called Helvete, which translates to “hell.” Helvete was where members of the black metal scene gathered. Founding members at the top jokingly called themselves the “Black Circle.”

While Helvete was a meeting ground for black metal fans, it soon started drawing the attention of police.

Because of their staunchly anti-Christian ideology, black metal fans began acting out against the Christian establishment in Norway by burning down churches. The attacks first began in 1992. By 1996, at least 50 churches had been targeted by black metal fans.

But the crimes did not stop there. Several murders were committed by black metal fans during that same time.

In August 1992, the guitar player for black metal band Emperor stabbed a gay man to death in the forest outside the city of Lillehammer.

By 1993, police began watching the Helvete record store. To avoid the publicity, Euronymous shut down the shop.

There were those not happy about Euronymous closing the shop, which came back to haunt him. In August 1993, two black metal musicians drove to Euronymous’ apartment. When they arrived, there was a fight and one of the musicians stabbed Euronymous to death. Police found his body with 23 stab wounds to the head, neck, and chest.

While the black metal scene in modern Norway is still going strong, it’s not nearly as radical as it was during those early days. Still, this was perhaps just as violent, if not more violent, than the hip-hop wars in the U.S. during the same time. Yikes!

Death is never a funny thing…except when it totally is. Nothing accentuates the frivolity of life more than a funny death story, am I right?

Okay, I know it’s not polite to laugh, but these stories are just too ridiculous. Sometimes life is unfair…and so, so hilarious.

In 620 B.C., an Athenian lawmaker named Draco was a pretty popular guy.

He was so popular, in fact, that he suffocated to death under a pile of gifts given to him by locals one night at the theater. Death by swag.

A deacon named Lawrence of Rome was roasted alive on a grill in 258 A.D.

Supposedly, the man yelled to his torturers, “Turn me over. I’m done on this side.” He is now the patron saint of cooking. Seriously.

Edward II of England was killed by his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer in 1327.

They shoved a hot metal rod up his butt, effectively roasting his internal organs. Talk about heartburn.

In 1660, Scottish writer Thomas Urquhart died from a serious laughing fit.

Evidently, he found it hilarious that Charles II had become king. This is how I’ll die if Trump becomes president.

Adolf Frederick is known to Swedish children as “the king who ate himself to death.”

In 1771, the ruler dined on a meal of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring, and champagne. But it was dessert that really sent him over the edge…all 14 servings of it.

In 1926, a 16-year-old Australian boy named Phillip McClean was killed by a cassowary.

He and his friend decided that it would be fun to beat the bird with hammers, so the unhappy cassowary knocked the boy down and cut a blood vessel in his neck. The little abuser eventually bled out.

British actor Gareth Jones died while performing a televised version of Underground in 1958.

He died of a heart attack backstage, which wouldn’t have been that odd if his character in the play didn’t die of the same thing. He clearly took his job very seriously.

In 1974, a health food advocate named Basil Brown died after consuming 10 gallons of carrot juice in 10 days.

Doctors said that he overdosed on vitamin A, so that’s a thing.

Mike Edwards, a cello player for the Electric Light Orchestra, was killed in 2010 when a bale of hay rolled down a hill and crushed him.

That’s one way to go.

In 2014, a Belarusian man attempted to take a selfie with a beaver.

The critter, displeased by the whole thing, chomped down on the man’s leg and hit an artery. The man didn’t last long after that.

I don’t wish death upon anyone, but when your time comes, I hope that you leave this world extravagantly. I mean, dying of old age is boring. Everyone does that. Dare to be different, friends.