10. Anastasia King
Anastasia King, from Kyrgyzstan, was only 18 years old when she met 36-year-old Indle King Jr, from
Washington State. Anastasia had been introduced to Indle through a mail order matchmaking service.
Indle, a University of Chicago graduate, came across as a charming man, but soon turned out to
be a textbook abuser. He’d initially made a good impression and won over Anastasia’s parents but,
after their wedding, he turned into an aggressive, controlling monster. He pressured Anastasia to
have children right away. He also demanded she tell him her location at all times, didn’t allow
her to get a driving license, and told her he’d kill her if she ever left him. Anastasia was also
forced to take up work as a waitress as Indle had lied about his income. He reportedly funneled her
earnings into his own pockets. Predictably, their relationship spiralled downwards,
and Anastasia began contemplating getting a divorce. She’d been married to Indle for 2 years,
which meant she could apply for permanent residency in the United States. However,
Indle didn’t want the divorce, having previously lost $55,000 while divorcing his previous wife,
another mail order bride. He plotted to have Anastasia killed, enlisting the help of Daniel
Larson, a 21-year-old boarder who lived in their house. Anastasia was last seen alive in September
of 2000. Upon returning from a trip to Kyrgyzstan, Anastasia was lured by Indle into the garage of
their home, where he then grabbed her tightly. Larson tied a necktie round her neck and Indle
strangled her with it. Larson later testified against Indle when offered a plea bargain
for second-degree murder. In December of 2000, he led investigators to the site where Anastasia
had been buried in a shallow grave. Indle received a 28 year prison sentence for Anastasia’s murder.
9. Elena Barykina
Elena Barykina, a young Ukranian woman, met David Sartin, from Texas,
through a website promising western men beautiful Russian and Ukrainian brides.
Sartin and Barykina began seeing each-other, with Sartin flying to Barykina’s home country
six times. He sent her tens of thousands of dollars in money and in gifts, such as
expensive gold and diamond jewelry. He also helped fund her singing career. Anything she wanted,
Sartin provided. However, when Sartin learnt that she was cheating on him and sleeping with
her former boyfriend, he hatched a plot to have her shipped over from Kiev in a crate. He planned
to then imprison Barykina in his home and slowly poison her to death with lead. David hired who
he thought were members of a Russian gang to do the job for him, but it later turned out that
he was talking to federal agents executing a sting operation. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
8. Oksana Makarova
Oksana Makarova, originally from the Ukraine, hit it off with Carl, a Florida physician in his 50s,
at a mail order bride mixer in the city of Odessa. Oksana was a single mother with a two year old,
and she was looking to ensure that her child had the best possible future ahead of him.
When Oksana and Carl met, even Oksana’s parents told her not to pass up the opportunity to
be with him. It was only after the pair moved back to the United States
that she would discover who he really was. Carl had pretended to be a kind family man
who’d promised the world to Oksana and her son, but he was revealed to be a controlling abuser.
He wanted children immediately, even purchasing ovulation kits
so that he could track Oksana’s fertility. He went as far as to dye Oksana’s child’s hair
so that it more closely resembled his own. Carl soon began isolating Oksana from her family
and friends, and threatened to have her child deported if she didn’t obey him. On one occasion,
at a Walmart, Carl punished Oksana’s child so harshly that social services were called. Oksana
took the opportunity to tell them everything, and they helped her to escape the marriage safely.
7. Reina Swierski
Reina Swierski was a Filipino mail order bride who went missing in 2005. She had recently married
Gary Swierski, an American with a long history of abusing women. In 2008, hikers in Castle Rock
State Park, California, came across a skull. Two years later it was identified as Reina’s.
Swierski’s daughter confessed to authorities that she had aided her father in disposing of Reina’s
body, after he’d strangled her. His daughter was just 19 years old at the time. The rest of
Reina’s remains are undiscovered, and Swierski was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his crimes.
6. Susana Remerata
In 1991, Susana Remerata met Timothy Blackwell through a mail order bride catalog.
After a couple of years, the pair was married in Remerata’s hometown, in the Philippines.
Just ten days later, their marriage ended in divorce proceedings as Blackwell had beaten and
choked Remerata. During the divorce trial, Remerata, who was pregnant from a previous
relationship, was shot and killed by Blackwell in the courthouse lobby. Blackwell was apprehended
immediately, and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole.
5. Ayou
Ayou, a Vietnamese mail order bride, married Chinese man Lai Binghao in Guangdong, China.
Binghao had purchased Ayou for just over $4,000, and less than one year after marriage, Ayou gave
birth to twins. Binghao’s mother moved in with the couple to help look after the baby boys,
but things soon took a turn for the worse. Ayou and three Vietnamese men tied up and
strangled both Binghao and his mother to death. Lai Shehui, Binghao’s father, discovered them.
Ayou had fled with the twins to a nearby town and she was caught less than 24 hours later. She was
arrested on suspicion of murder while reportedly attempting to sell the babies for $9,000 each.
4. Jerry Mentzel
Jerry Mentzel was 69 years old when he lost his wife of 43 years to cancer. He became
lonely, and eventually met 24-year-old Valantina, a Moroccan mail order bride,
online. Mentzel brought Valantina to the US and proposed to her, but Valantina had other
plans. She demanded that he send $32,000 to her brother-in-law, in London. Mentzel obliged, and
the two married shortly thereafter. Their marriage ended less than two weeks later, and suddenly
Mentzel was in the middle of a divorce. He had to pay Valantina alimony, and overall lost around
$100,000. Valentina, believed now to be an alias, is said to be back in Morocco, and federal agents
are investigating the incident as it may be linked to an international organized crime ring.
3. Alla Barney
Alla Barney was a 26-year-old engineer from Ukraine who’d become the mail order bride
of an American man named Lester Barney, who was 30 years her senior. The marriage
between the two eventually failed, with Alla filing a restraining order against Lester.
She also gained custody of their 4-year-old son, Daniel. One day, Alla picked up her son from
school and was strapping him into the car seat when Lester attacked her with a knife. She bled
to death in front of her son. Lester tried to claim the murder as self-defense, but the court
saw through his story and he was sentenced to life in prison.
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2. Emelita Villa
Emelita, a Filipino mail order bride, met her husband through an agency, when she was just
18. She was paired up with Jack Reeves, who was 46 years old at the time and a retired
Army Master Sergeant. The couple went through 8 years of turmoil in their marriage before
Emelita finally decided she’d had enough. She’d started making plans to leave him,
but was murdered by Reeves before she got the opportunity to do so. Her body was found in Lake
Whitney, a place where Jack’s previous mail order bride had allegedly drowned. In 1996,
Jack Reeves was found guilty of the murder of Emelita, as well as of having murdered his
previous wife, Sharon, who was killed by a shotgun in what had been initially regarded as a suicide.
1. Number 1 William Chase Hargrove In April of 2017, the body of 27-year-old
Anna Repkina was found outside the lumber town of Alsea, in Oregon. Judging by her mangled remains,
the authorities determined that she’d been killed via a shotgun blast to the head.
The only lead available to the police was the name “Kevin Thomas” found on a receipt,
in a takeout bag near the corpse. They followed up on it and interviewed the man in question.
From that point on, a sinister murder plot began to unravel. Days before Repkina’s body was found,
Thomas had shared a KFC meal with 29-year-old William Chase Hargrove,
who’d also asked to borrow his shotgun. The police uncovered that Repkina, a Moscow native,
had been lured by Hargrove to the US with the promise of marriage.
At the time, Hargrove was in an open relationship with a woman named Michelle Chavez. When it became
clear that Repkina would be permanently moving to the US as Hargrove’s wife, Chavez became jealous
and gave the man an ultimatum, asking him to choose between them. Hargrove told Chavez that he
was loyal to her even though Repkina, his fiancée, was still living with him. Chavez pressured him to
“get rid of” the other woman. Consequently, on April the 16th, he took Repkina to the
woods and shot her in head. The murder weapon was found in his car and cellphone tracking
placed him at the scene. Hargrove was arrested and sentenced to life in prison.
Thanks for watching! If you had the chance to marry someone who was PERFECT for you on paper,
but you weren't allowed to meet them beforehand,
would you do it? Let us know in the comments section below!