Hello and welcome back to the Most Amazing Channel on the internet.
I am your Most Amazing host, Rebecca Felgate, and today we’re delving into the deep dark
world of Craigslist as we talk the Top 10 Scary Craigslist stories….
Any site that provides its users with a certain degree of anonymity should be approached with
a lot of caution – so please do be careful when using sites like Craiglist yourself.
Evil people using the site for no good…let this list be a warning to you too…almost
everyone here got caught.
Okay let’s do this.
10 - America’s Most Wanted Roommate In 2003, Brian Boucher advertised for a new
roommate on Craigslist…pretty standard practice.
Boucher managed to find a new mate, no problem…
Enter John Williams….except he wasn’t John Williams at all….although we aren’t
at that part of the story yet.
Boucher found his new roommate to be very strange, he would not socialise and he would
spend hours on end in his room.
One day, after the pair had been living together 10 months, Boucher picked the lock on his
roomies door when he was out.
Turns out good old John had been keeping extensive notes on his roomie, along with his credit
card numbers and a diagram of his family tree.
Oh, and John actually turned out to be a guy called Dino Loren Smith who was on Americas
Most Wanted list for his part in a 10 million dollar jewellery heist.
9 - Accidental Heist Assistants Ever answered a Craigslist advertisement for
work then realize you have accidentally agreed to be part of a heist?
No?
Well 15 labourers in Monroe, Washington did!
Asked to wear jeans, a blue shirt, work shoes and a yellow safety vest, the group had no
idea that for just 28 fifty an hour, they had agreed to assist in a Bank of America
heist elaborately thought up by Antony Crucio.
The then 28 year old carried off well planned heist, using the labourers as decoys.
Eventually he was caught, but not before gaining national attention and admiration for his
scheme.
8 - Sexual Predators Lurking There have been countless stories of sexual
predators using Craigslist to find victims – but recently in December 2017 a Woman
from Kitchener, Canada, was caught using the site to sexually abuse a seven year old girl.
It seems a pedophile ring was operating below the surface of Craigslist and a man managed
to list his girlfriends 7 year old daughter on the site, in exchange for money.
How disgusting and horrifying to know this is going on below the surface of one of the
worlds biggest websites.
Eventually the whole ring in Hamilton, Ontario, was exposed
7 - Killer Carer You have to be careful who you hire off Craigslist….while
I feel this goes without saying, stories like this one happen all too often.
In 2011, 70 year old Mary Jane Scanlon advertised on Craigslist for a carer.
She didn’t think to screen her applicants and ended up hiring Diane Warrick as her helper….only,
she didn’t know she had spent six years in a mental hospital and had a drug problem.
After working for the 85 pound pensioner for a short time, Warrick stabbed her repeatedly
in her bed.
She was sent to jail for 31 years.
6 - Fake Babysitting Advertisement 20 year old Michael John Anderson lured 24
year old Katherine Anne Olson to his home with a fake advert on Craigslist.
In October 2007, he posted that he was seeking a babysitter, however prosecutors in his murder
trial said he was simply looking to kill someone.
When Olson, who had found other work on the site, showed up at Anderson’s parents house,
the 20 year old shot her then stuffed her body in a car.
When speaking to the press, her father said: "Katherine was, unfortunately, too trusting,"
her father said.
"She had found benefits on Craigslist, but in her trusting nature, she fell into this
trap.”
5 - Diamond Death In April 2010, James Sanders made the fatal
error of advertising a Diamond Ring on Craigslist.
A woman got in touch in response, telephoning to say she was interested for Mothers Day.
When the Sanders family arranged a meeting so that the interested buyers could view the
diamond at their home in Edgewood Washington, the quickly discovered it was all a rouse.
The family was held at gun point and James was killed trying to protect his 14 year old
sun.
The murderers, Kiyoshi Higashi, Joshua Reesem Amanda Knight and Clabon Berniard, all in
their 20s, were arrested and sent to jail.
4 - Philip Markoff Philip Markoff was sent to jail in 2009 following
the murder of Julissa Brisman, a women whom he met by responding to an advert offering
massage services.
Brisman was a 25 year old aspiring actress with some financial problems which led her
to offer up massages on Craigslist.
Markoff was an engaged trainee doctor with a secret pastime of brutalising women he met
online.
When he met Brisman in April 2009, he bludgeoned and shot her.
He then went to a casino, leaving her body in a 20th floor Marriot suit in Boston, Massachusetts.
When she was found, detectives traced her emails to Markoff, who later committed suicide
in jail.
3 - Craigslist Hunters Lone survivor, 48-year-old Scott Davis, answered
a Craiglist advertisement for work as a farm hand.
The listing read: “We need someone to watch our farm down in southern Ohio.
Live for free in a double-wide trailer, nothing in the way of duties except to take in the
peacefulness of the countryside and remark on the changing of the seasons and make sure
no one steals any farm equipment or perpetrates any mischief.
The pay is $300 a week.”
– sounds pretty great, right?
Davis thought so, so he applied to work for 52 year old Rich Beasley and 16 year old Brogan
Rafferty.
After fending off what he believed to be hundreds of applicants, Davis went for an interview,
to be told he had the job.
On his way down to check out the farm, Beasley and Rafferty lured him into a trap and shot
him.
Unlike 4 guys before him, he managed to get away.
Bleeding, Davis found his way to a rural house, where he convinced the owners to call the
police.
When they arrived, they found that the pair of assailants had made a trick of this, and
had buried 3 other single men before Davis in shallow graves.
2 - Long Island Killer Four bodies discovered in Gilgo beach on Long
Island have been linked to a Craigslist killer.
Maureen Brainard Barnes, Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman and Amber Lynn Costello, all
in their 20s, were found dead along the strip between 2009 and 2010.
All of the girls had advertised their services as an escort on the site.
It is thought that the much famed Long Island Killer users the site as one of his resources
to find murder victims.
I don’t even know how to go about talking about what happened in the story at our number
one spot, where a woman cut an unborn baby out of a pregnant woman’s womb
Ergh.
Michelle Wilkins responded to an advert for free maternity clothes, little did she know,
the woman behind the listing had some dark intentions.
27 year old Wilkin’s traveled to 35 year old Dynel Lane’s house to look at the clothes,
when Lane lured her into the basement, hit her over the head with a glass bottle, stabbed
her then cut her 7 month old fetus out of her stomach.
In a weird twist of events, Lane went to the Longment Emergency Room with the stillborn
baby, exactly the same place Wilkins ended up when she managed to call 911, feeling her
insides falling outside.
Dynel Lane was sentenced to 100 years in prison.
Sooo… that was the Top 10 Scary Craigslist stories.