25 Famous Crime Scenes And Their Gruesome Stories

This is the site of the infamous University of Texas tower shooting that occurred on August 1, 1966. Charles Whitman, a former Marine, went up to the observatory deck of the tower and opened fire on people below in the surrounding campus buildings and streets.

After moving to Chicago in the late 1880’s, Holmes built what became known as his “Murder Castle” at 63rd and Wallace streets. There, he invited guests, mostly young women, to spend the night; many of the women mysteriously went missing shortly after their stays. When the cops began investigating, they discovered a number of disturbing sights: a third-floor soundproof room equipped with a gas pipe for asphyxiating his victims and a cellar equipped with an oven designed especially for body cremation. Holmes’ Murder Castle is now the site of a post office.

On November 13, 1974, American mass murderer Ronald DeFeo, Jr. shot and killed six members of his family at 112 Ocean Avenue, a large Dutch Colonial house located in the suburban neighborhood of Amityville on Long Island, New York.

On August 8, 1969, Sharon Tate’s body was discovered along with the bodies of three other guests on the property of her home. The murders were carried out by serial killer Charles Manson, in what would later be known as the Tate murders.

On March 1, 1932, 20 month old Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. was discovered as missing from his crib by his nurse. A ransom note was found on the windowsill, and a ladder made of scrap wood, with some slates broken, was abandoned by the side of the house. The baby was never returned even after the ransom was paid. Nearly four months later, Lindbergh’s infant body was discovered on the side of a road, decomposed and covered in leaves.

John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.

On May 1, 1947 Evelyn McHale leapt off the 86th floor observatory deck of the Empire State Building and died immediately upon impact. A photograph was captured of her body lying seemingly gracefully atop a crumpled car by Robert Wiles, which would later become one of the iconic suicide photographs in history.

The Oklahoma City Bombing took place on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people and injuring another 680 more people. This was the deadliest attack on American soil until the September 11th attacks.

On Christmas evening the night of December 25–26, 1996, American child beauty pageant queen, JonBenét Patricia Ramsey, was killed at the age of six in her family’s home in Boulder, Colorado.

Former resident of Texas, Andrea Pia Kennedy Yates confessed to drowning her five children in their bathtub on June 20, 2001. At the time, Yates was reported as suffering with very severe postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis.

Meredith Kercher was found dead at the age of 21 in her flat in Perugia, Italy on November 1, 2007. Kercher’s death resulted in the highly publicized trials of her American roommate, Amanda Knox, who was suspected of killing her.

On the evening of August 20, 1989, Jose Menendez and his wife, Mary Louise “Kitty” Andersen, were murdered in their home in Beverly Hills. Their sons, Erik and Lyle, were later charged with their murders.

On Christmas Eve in 1985, Mexico City’s National Museum of Anthropology was robbed of 140 valuable figurines. The robbers climbed over the museum’s seven-foot fence and crawled into the building through the air duct, getting away with Aztec and Mayan treasures valued at millions for each individual article.

On July 15, 1997, Italian fashion designer and founder of the international fashion house, Gianni Versace, was shot to death on the steps outside of his Miami Beach mansion.

On the evening of July 20, 2012, a massacre occurred inside a Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, during a midnight screening of the film The Dark Knight Rises. James Holmes, a former university student, left the theater through the back door, propped the door open, and returned to open fire on the people in the theater. 12 people died. 

On August 9, 2014, 18 year old Michael Brown was fatally shot by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Michael Brown’s case became highly publicized due to the grand jury’s decision not to formally accuse Wilson. The story of Michael Brown, along with a series of killings happening across the nation of unarmed, young black boys spurred the Black Lives Matter movement.

On June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were found stabbed to death outside Simpson’s condo in Los Angeles. The murder of Brown Simpson and Goldman led to the infamous O.J. Simpson trials.

On June 25, 2009, pop superstar and legend Michael Jackson stopped breathing while attempting to sleep after being given an array of medications under the care of his personal physician, Conrad Murray. Jackson was pronounced dead in his home, Neverland Ranch in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles.

Hip hop legend and icon Tupac Shakur was brutally gunned down on a Las Vegas strip on September 7, 1996 in a drive-by shooting. To this day, the shooter has not been identified, leaving the tragic and early death of the nineties rap legend a mystery.

On March 13, 1964, Catherine Susan “Kitty” Genovese was stabbed to death outside her apartment building in Kew Gardens, a neighborhood in Queens. The murder of Kitty Genovese became the basis for the highly studied “bystander effect,” as a result of the 37 people who witnessed her death but made no effort to contact authorities.

On December 14, 2012, 20-year old Adam Lanza fatally shot and killed 20 children between six and seven years old and six adult staff and faculty members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The Columbine High School massacre was a school shooting that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Colorado. The massacre resulted in 15 deaths, including the shooters.

On the morning of January 15, 1947, the body of Elizabeth Short (aka the Black Dahlia) was found naked and split in half on a vacant lawn on South Norton Avenue between Coliseum Street and West 39th Street in Leimert Park, Los Angeles. Her murder was never solved, and her case remains one of the oldest cold case files in LA. 

On March 31, 1995, Selena Quintanilla, the reigning “queen of Tejano music” died as a result of a gunshot wound to the back. Quintanilla was shot outside her motel room at the Days Inn located in Corpus Cristi, Texas. The shooter? Former president of Selena’s fan club. 

On Monday, December 8, 1980, Beatles member and music legend John Lennon was shot by Mark David Chapman in the archway of the Dakota, his residence in New York City. Lennon sustained four major gunshot wounds and died as a result of them at Roosevelt Hospital in NYC. To commemorate his life, on March 26, 1981, the Strawberry Fields in Central Park was designated as a memorial in honor of his memory, where fans worldwide gather annually to pay their respects to the late musician.