Number 8 Iuliana Tudos
On Christmas Eve, 2017, Iuliana Tudos was heading home through north London’s
Finsbury Park. The 22-year-old, who worked as a bartender at the World’s End, had finished her
shift and was planning on spending Christmas with friends after collecting some things from
her residence. CCTV captured Tudos entering the park at 8:33 pm but she never emerged from it.
After she’d failed to turn up to meet her partner and friends, a group of them consequently searched
Finsbury Park. On December the 27th, they found her naked body in a burnt-out shed. Tudos had
been tortured and fatally stabbed. There were cuts to both her wrists deep enough to expose the bone
along with other devastating wounds to her neck and torso. Paramedics discovered that a symbol
resembling the Batman logo had been carved deep into her chest. There was no evidence of abuse,
but investigators determined that her killer’s motivation had likely originated
out of frustration and sadistic tendencies. The police identified Kasim Lewis, aged 31,
as a suspect due to the fact that he’d extracted Tudos’ PIN number during the prolonged attack and
later withdrew money from her account. Lewis, a registered offender with a criminal record dating
back to his teens, had used a bottle to strike the young woman and then inflict the slashes and stabs
found on her body. Earlier in the day, Lewis had reportedly had a fight with a man he’d been seeing
and stormed out of his home. His defense argued that, in addition to the preexisting rage,
his mind had been “bedeviled” by drugs and alcohol. Lewis ultimately pleaded guilty to the
murder and was sentenced to 29 years in prison. Number 7 Bridget Shiel
On the night of May the 30th of 2016, Atlanta model Bridget Shiel was spotted in the parking
lot of a Shell gas station. The 19-year-old was accompanied by two men as she sat on
the passenger’s side of her red Ford Fusion and, according to an eyewitness report,
seemed “extremely nervous”. It marked the last time that she was ever seen alive.
The teenager’s naked body was later found at the Oakland City Park, where she’d been fatally shot
multiple times in her back, buttocks and legs. Two years later, 28-year-old Christopher Spencer
was charged with the murder, after his DNA was recovered from a Sprite bottle found close to
Shiel’s abandoned car. Spencer was, at the time, serving a life sentence for one of five murders,
including Shiel’s, to which he’d been tied. Even though a suspect had been charged, the teen’s
family was left with several unanswered questions, the main aspect being her killer’s motivation.
Shiel had posts on Backpage, advertising escort services, under various aliases, claiming she
aimed to “please in the most desirable ways”. There was some suspicion that she’d been forced
to become an escort by boyfriend Kevin Kinnie, who was an initial suspect in her murder but
never charged. Leading up to her death, she’d been living with Kinnie and the mother of his child,
Brittney Allocca. The two women didn’t get along and, two months before the shooting,
they’d spent the night in jail following an altercation. Shiel was reportedly terrified
of Kinnie. She’d once called the police after he’d allegedly struck her but told the dispatcher that
Kinnie was going to kill her if he found out she’d placed the call. The nature of the murder was also
considered rather personal and described by an investigator as “overkill”. The shooter had used
radically invasive projectiles, also known as R.I.P. bullets, designed to fragment upon
impact. It was a choice of ammo meant to “send a message”, a hypothesis also supported by the fact
that the shooter had keep firing as they stood over Shiel’s body. According to updates on the
case, in 2020, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld Spencer’s conviction for the model’s murder.
Number 6 Margaret Muller
Margaret Muller, an American artist studying in London, went jogging in Victoria Park, on February
the 3rd of 2003. Muller had moved to England’s capital city in the late 1990s, to study at the
Slade School of Art. She’d set up her own studio in Hackney, had had multiple exhibitions and,
by all accounts, had a bright future in her craft. Unfortunately, while she was out on her run,
the 27-year-old’s life was violently cut short. She was found, covered in blood, on path leading
to a rose garden, after having fallen victim to either a failed mugging or a thrill attack.
Muller was stabbed to death, in broad daylight but, close to two decades since her murder, no
one was charged or convicted. The police conducted a massive reconstruction of the circumstances
leading up to the fatal stabbing and asked over a hundred park visitors to retrace their steps on
the day. Investigators took hundreds of statements and performed over a thousand house-to-house
enquiries. Several arrests were made but none produced a definitive result. With the aid of
criminal profilers, the authorities were able to issue a description of the suspect as being white,
then-aged 18 to 20, between 5ft 6in and 5ft 8in tall, with short brown hair and a London accent.
Number 5 Michael Vivona Olympic karate athlete
Sakura Kokumai was warming up for a run at Grijalva Park, in Orange County, California,
on April the 1st of 2021. A man suddenly approached her, yelling insults and threats.
He misidentified the Hawaii-born American/Japanese woman as “Chinese” during a racially-charged
remark. The man eventually walked away and Kokumai subsequently shared a video of the
encounter to her over 32,000 Instagram followers, expressing disappointment that people witnessing
the incident hadn’t intervened. On April the 17th, an unnamed couple of Korean descent was
walking through Grijalva Park, shortly after 7:30 pm. Without warning or provocation,
an attacker punched the man and woman, aged 79 and 80, respectively, to the ground. Fortunately, they
didn’t sustain severe injuries, aside from a few bruises and scrapes. Multiple other people at the
park recognized the attacker as being the same man from Kokumai’s video. They surrounded him until
an officer arrived at the scene and arrested him. The suspect was identified as 26-year-old Michael
Orlando Vivona, who at the time was living out his car. Through the statements he’d made during
interviews, officers determined that the attack on the elderly couple and harassment of Kokumai
had been racially motivated. Vivona was charged with two felony counts each of inflicting injury
on an elder adult and violation of civil rights with violent injury, along with sentence-enhancing
hate crime allegations. Number 4 Tessa Majors
On the evening of December the 11th of 2019, Barnard College student Tessa Majors was walking
through Morningside Park, in New York City’s Upper Manhattan area. The 18-year-old passed a trio of
male teenagers, while looking down at her IPhone. They charged Majors in an attempt to mug her,
with the attack led by Rashaun Weaver who kicked her hard in the back. He, along with accomplices
Luciano Lewis and Zyairr Davis, then tried to snatch Majors’ phone but she fought back.
The device reportedly contained three years’ worth of songs that the aspiring musician had written
and planned to record over the coming winter break. At some point during the altercation,
she allegedly bit Weaver on the finger, which caused him to fly into a rage. He repeatedly
stabbed Majors in the chest as Lewis held her in a headlock. One of the knife strikes pierced
her heart and, after her attackers had fled, the teenager collapsed while trying to climb the steep
stairs at one of the park’s entrances. A security guard found her at the top of the staircase and
called 911. When she was still conscious, Majors had told a witness about what had happened in
the park. She was later pronounced dead at Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital. Davis was sentenced
to 18 months in detention after pleading guilty in family court to robbery in the first degree.
In addition to robbery, Lewis and Weaver pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. The former was
sentenced to 9 years to life in prison while the latter, who acknowledged that he’d "intentionally
caused the death of Tessa Majors by stabbing her with a knife”, was sentenced to 14 years to life.
Number 3 Gary Jenkins After the break-up of his marriage,
Welsh psychiatrist Dr. Gary Jenkins would reportedly go to a park behind Cardiff Castle,
to seek intimate encounters with men. On July the 20th of 2021, he’d allegedly gone to Bute Park
with that intention in mind. Simultaneously, 25-year-old Jason Edwards, Lee William Strickland,
aged 36, and teenager Dionne Timms-Williams, were reportedly stalking out the spot he frequented,
looking for vulnerable men to rob. 58-year-old Jenkins was ambushed by the trio,
who’d initially targeted his bag but then started beating him relentlessly.
Passerby Louis Williams tried to intervene after witnessing them repeatedly striking the victim,
but he was attacked as well. Williams would later tell the authorities that Edwards, Strickland and
Timms-Williams were laughing and egging each other on as they stomped on Jenkins’ head and body. The
teenager, whom Williams described as “evil” and “sadistic”, was reportedly caught on CCTV laughing
and jeering “I needed that” in the aftermath of the vicious beating. Police rushed to the scene
after the alarm had been raised and found Jenkins unconscious, with his trousers pulled down and his
lower half exposed. He died 16 days later from a brain injury sustained in the onslaught. All three
of his attackers pleaded guilty to manslaughter, robbery and assaulting Williams but denied murder.
They were, nevertheless, found guilty of it in February of 2022, and each sentenced to life
imprisonment. Timms-Williams had to serve a minimum of 18 years while the other men had
to each spend at least 33 years behind bars. Today's topic was requested by Jenny G. If
you have any other topics you'd like to learn about subscribe & let us know in
the comments section below. Number 2 Courtney Herron
25-year-old Australian woman Courtney Herron met Henry Hammond, who was also in his mid-20s, at
Melbourne’s Royal Park, in May of 2019. The latter didn’t have a fixed address at the time and Herron
invited him to smoke ice with her and her friends. Early next morning, Herron and Hammond, went for
a walk together through the park. At one point, the latter picked up a tree branch. A park sleeper
would later report having overheard Herron ask “are you going to kill me?” Hammond then struck
the young woman in the face and, over the course of nearly an hour, beat her to death with the tree
limb. The park sleeper reportedly witnessed the attack and later recounted Hammond’s terrifying
intensity during the onslaught, claiming that he was grunting while relentlessly bashing Herron. He
then tied her legs together and dragged her body into a clearing. When the authorities caught up to
him the following day, Hammond claimed that he’d recognized Herron from a past life and that he’d
gotten revenge on her for being treacherous to his family. Hammond was eventually found not guilty
of murder by way of mental impairment, after it was determined that he’d been in the grips
of a schizophrenic relapse at the time. He’d been having symptoms associated with the mental illness
since 2017 and, after killing Herron, was ordered to spend 25 years in a psychiatric facility. In
the aftermath, Herron’s father sued Corrections Victoria, alleging negligence in their supervision
of Hammond. He’d been released on appeal against a 10-month jail sentence for offences that
included making a threat to kill. The victim’s father maintained that Hammond should’ve never
been let out, considering that he lacked family support, was homeless and dealing with substance
abuse. It was also alleged that he’d refused counseling while in custody and that he hadn’t
been subjected to a psychiatric evaluation. Number 1 Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman
Sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman were at a picnic spot in Fryent Country Park,
north-west London, on June the 6th of 2020. Henry and Smallman, aged 46 and 27, had been celebrating
the former’s birthday and, after others in their group had left, they decided to spend some more
time at the spot. The sisters never left the park and were subsequently reported missing to
the authorities. Smallman’s boyfriend found their lifeless bodies, the day after the report had been
filed, and law enforcement determined that they’d succumbed to multiple knife wounds. Their killer
was subsequently identified as 19-year-old Danyal Hussein, whom the authorities learned had targeted
them as a form of human sacrifice. DNA had linked him to the scene and the police raided his home.
They found a letter, signed in Hussein’s blood and addressed to Lucifuge Rofocale, determined to have
represented a demon-like entity. In it, Hussein promised to sacrifice six women every six months
in exchange for winning the Mega Millions Super Jackpot. Henry and Smallman were thus the first
victims of the twisted campaign he’d planned. In another note, Hussein offered blood to
"demon Queen Byleth" in exchange for making a girl at his school fall in love with him.
In the fall of 2021, he was given two concurrent 35-year jail sentences at the Old Bailey.
Thanks for watching! Would you rather sleep in a park for a week
OR never find a place to park for a month? Let us know in the comments section below!