Number 7 Erik Charles Maund During a traffic stop conducted in Austin, Texas,
in December of 2021, businessman Erik Charles Maund was arrested and charged on multiple counts,
including conspiracy to commit kidnapping resulting in death. 46-year-old Maund was
a married man and grandson to the founder of the Maund Automotive Group, based in Austin,
a prestigious business where he was also a partner. He’d allegedly been having an affair with
33-year-old Holly Williams. Emails between them suggested they’d sometimes meet up when he visited
Nashville, Tennessee, and it’s believed they’d seen each other in February of 2020. Then,
in March, Maund started receiving messages from 36-year-old William Lanway, a man with romantic
ties to Williams, who threatened to reveal the affair lest he was paid for his silence.
On March the 12th, Lanway and Williams were found dead, in the former’s Acura sedan,
at a Nashville construction site. The vehicle had crashed into a tree, after veering down an
embankment, and both occupants had been shot multiple times. Three ex-military operatives,
who’d moved into the private security sector, were identified as suspects in the double murder.
Gilad Peled, aged 47, was reported as a former member of the Israeli Defense Forces
who owned a company called Speartip Security, specializing in “responding to extortion demands”.
Working in conjunction with former US Marines Byron Brockway and Adam Carey,
aged 46 and 30, respectively, they’d allegedly kidnapped then executed Williams and Lanway.
Evidence relating to communication and financial transfers revealed that Maund had paid them over
$750,000 to do so. He’d even left Speartip a glowing review online, under his real name. All
four men were arrested, with FBI involvement, in several states, and the case is ongoing.
Number 6 Barb Raber
In June of 2009, a brutal murder sent shockwaves through an Amish community in Apple Creek,
Ohio. On June the 2nd, someone had broken into the home shared by Eli Weaver, his
30-year-old wife Barbara, and their five children. As Barbara lay in her bed, the intruder shot her
through the heart, killing her. Eli, then aged 29, had a solid alibi as he’d been fishing with
friends. He would, however, eventually be proven to have masterminded the murder. Eli had been
leading a double life through the online persona “Amish Stud”, creating profiles in which he posted
shirtless photos of himself. A number of women were attracted by his purported lack of experience
with the world outside the Amish community and supposed unfamiliarity with technology. Eli
had multiple affairs and eventually manipulated one of his mistresses, 39-year-old Barb Raber,
into killing his wife. The woman, a married mother-of-three, had been raised Amish and was
working as a “taxi lady”, driving members of the community to places where a horse
and buggy couldn’t take them. She and Eli had had relations on multiple occasions, including
in the barn where the funeral for the man’s wife would eventually be held. Investigators found
messages exchanged between her and Eli, from late May to early June, discussing the various ways in
which the killing could be carried out. Poison was proposed by Eli, as was blowing up the house. When
Raber asked about his children, while discussing the latter, Eli reportedly replied “the kids
will go to heaven because they’re innocent.” Investigators would later find hundreds of
Internet searches made by Raber regarding poison before the plotting pair eventually settled on a
gun. Both were arrested on June the 10th. Raber admitted to taking a firearm from her husband’s
gun cabinet and heading to her lover’s home but claimed that she’d only wanted to scare Barbara
and shot her by accident. She was sentenced to 20 years to life for aggravated murder while
Eli cut a deal and was handed down a sentence of 15 to life for complicity to commit murder.
Number 5 Summer A In 2020, a 25-year-old woman,
only identified as Summer A., drove to Belgium’s Wielsbeke municipality alongside her husband
Imraan Ayub, aged 31. They visited a 72-year-old Dutch woman, named as Grietje, who’d previously
been in an extra-marital relationship with Ayub. They’d been involved, for several years,
since he was 18 years old and working as her gardener. Grietje at the time was married to
a wealthy Italian businessman who was often away abroad. Ayub had enjoyed lavish gifts as a result
of the affair with Grietje, including a BMW X6. However, upon marrying Summer, in 2017, he assured
her that the affair was over. The couple still regularly travelled to the elderly woman’s villa
to help her with gardening and housework. Summer had accepted that Grietje would always be a part
her husband’s life and, by her own admission, felt sorry for her. During a visit to the villa,
in February, a discussion occurred which revealed that Ayub and the woman over 40 years his senior
were still having an affair. Summer would later tell the authorities “they turned on me,
laughed at me, called me too fat”. She was allegedly also told that she had no choice but to
accept their relationship. It was at that point that she brandished a handgun and shot Grietje
twice. The woman was hit in the head and chest but, remarkably, survived and recovered. Summer,
who in the aftermath faced 10 years in prison, maintained that she’d found the handgun in her car
and placed it in her jacket pocket. She claimed to have been unable to withstand the humiliation
and denied having gone to the villa with the premeditated intention of killing Grietje.
Number 4 Timothy Brehmer On May the 9th of 2020, a member of
law enforcement fatally attacked his mistress in the parking lot of the Horns Inn pub, in Dorset,
England. Police Constable Timothy Brehmer had been having an affair with 41-year-old Claire Parry,
a nurse and mother-of-two. Parry’s marriage had been breaking apart after her husband, an officer
with Dorset Police, had uncovered her illicit relationship with Brehmer. The latter’s wife,
a detective on the same force, had been unaware of the affair which was reported to have been going
on for roughly a decade. Parry had allegedly met Brehmer at the pub to confront him about another
one of his flings. At some point, Parry took her lover’s cellphone and sent a message to his wife
which read “I am cheating on you”. They then got into an altercation inside the car, at around 3
pm, resulting in Parry’s neck being broken in three places. She suffered devastating brain
injuries to which she succumbed the following day. Two versions contextualizing the fatal incident
emerged in the aftermath. Prosecutors would argue that Brehmer had intentionally applied pressure
to Parry’s neck with his forearm or the crook of his elbow, underlining that his training would’ve
enabled him to realize she was in distress. Brehmer maintained that he’d fallen on Parry
and accidentally injured her while trying to push her out of his car. He also cut his forearm with
a knife, trying to claim that his mistress had stabbed him, but later admitted it to have been
a fabrication. Bodycam footage taken during his arrest showed him covered in blood and crying in
the minutes following the altercation. He was ultimately sentenced to 13-and-a-half years in
prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter. Number 3 Craig Heidt
On August the 25th of 2008, in the middle of the night, an intruder broke into the home
of 59-year-old Philip Heidt, in Springfield, Georgia. Philip and his son, 32-year-old Carey,
were both fatally shot in the head. The intruder also tried to execute Philip’s wife, Linda, but
she turned away at the last moment and survived, with disfiguring scars, after being shot through
the left side of her face. The intruder began dousing the house in gasoline but, upon hearing
Linda call 911, fled the property. When she was interviewed by the authorities, Carey’s wife and
the mother of his three children, Robin, admitted that she’d been having an affair with his brother,
Craig, since April of that year. As the self-professed “black sheep” of the family,
Craig had distanced himself from their successful realty and development business. The avid hunter
lived in a mountain cabin, hadn’t settled down and, as prosecutors would later argue, secretly
wanted the life that his brother had. After Carey and the family uncovered the affair, there was a
falling out. Before the murders, Carey had had an argument with Robin that led to him spending the
night at his parents’ house. Craig, then in his late 30s, reportedly felt that his mother, father
and brother stood in the way of him having a future with Robin. Four months after the killings,
he moved into the house that she’d once shared with his brother. After Craig was officially tied
to the murders, Robin was reported to have paid for his first lawyer with the money collected from
Carey’s life insurance. While no physical evidence placed him at the scene, Craig didn’t have an
alibi, failed a lie detector test and had bruising on his arms consistent with shotgun recoil,
the weapon type used in the attack. Two years after the horrific crime, Craig was sentenced to
two life terms plus 85 years. By that point Robin had turned and testified against him. The woman
was rumored and suspected to have been somehow involved in the murders but was never charged.
Today's topic was requested by James Williams, Metamorphic Me and Cher Cher. If you have any
other topics you'd like to learn about, subscribe & let us know in the comments section below.
Number 2 David Clark
On New Year’s Eve 2017, David Clark, aged 49, stabbed his wife to death at their home
in Stoke Prior, Worcestershire, England. On the night, the couple had been drinking
heavily at a friend’s home before returning to their residence. Leading up to the killing,
44-year-old Melanie had reportedly teased and taunted David. Her remarks towards his failings
as a partner had included often-repeated comments about the size of his manhood,
which she reportedly knew was a complex of his. The culmination of the fight that had ensued
at their home was Melanie admitting to having had an affair with 31-year-old Katie Bastians,
an Australian journalist and daughter to one of David’s longtime friends. After plunging a kitchen
knife through Melanie’s chest, David called the authorities and confessed by saying “I've killed
my wife. She did my head in.” He was arrested in his bloodied pajamas and begged the officers to
kill him upon their arrival. Melanie, who’d been married to David for about 10 years, was survived
by four children from a previous relationship. David, whose defense alleged that he’d
suffered a “loss of control”, was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 15 years served.
Number 1 Yvonne Schmidt and Birgit Koenig In 2015, a German man was kidnapped, tortured and
left for dead following a planned attack that had been orchestrated by his ex-wife and his mistress.
The victim, only identified as Thomas L., was taken from a Berlin truck stop by four unnamed
men. He was stripped naked, bound with gaffer tape and blindfolded, prior to being thrown in the back
of a refrigerated van. The assailants took him to a remote forest where they brutally beat him up.
Thomas was then told to count to one hundred before removing his blindfold.
The man did so and found that he’d been abandoned, naked and exposed to temperatures of around
35 degrees Fahrenheit. He managed to flag down a passing car and survived, subsequently needing
treatment for severe skull and stomach injuries. The attack also left him deeply traumatized and he
required extensive psychiatric counseling in the aftermath. At one point during the assault he’d
been told by the attackers “stop bothering Yvonne or you'll really get it.” The woman that they’d
been referring to, as an investigation would later reveal, was the man’s ex-wife, 39-year-old
Yvonne Schmidt. She’d reportedly collaborated with Thomas’s mistress, Birgit Koenig, aged 37,
to plan the attack and hire the henchmen that then carried it out. Schmidt admitted to the charges on
the first day of her 2017 trial. She claimed to have been abused for 10 years during her
marriage to Thomas and that he’d kept stalking and harassing her after the relationship had ended.
She described the attack as a spontaneous decision and didn’t identify the henchmen she’d hired,
claiming to have only met them a short time before, at a supermarket parking lot. Koenig,
reported as the woman with whom Thomas had been having an affair while still married to Schimdt,
is believed to have sought revenge after he’d cheated on her as well. How the two women had come
to collaborate wasn’t specified by investigators. Thanks for watching! Knowing you’d never be
caught, would you cheat on your significant other? Let us know in the comments section below!