Number 7 Joseph James Pappas On July the 20th of 2018, heart surgeon Mark
Hausknech was riding his bike while heading to work at the Texas Medical Center, in Houston.
The 65-year-old physician, who in the past had treated US President George W. Bush Senior,
was followed by a second biker for several miles.
As the latter passed him, at around 9 am, he turned around and opened fire on Hausknech
before riding away.
The doctor was hit in the head and torso, sustaining injuries from which he was pronounced
dead at Ben Taub Hospital.
The shooting was captured by a METRO bus camera and its exceedingly deliberate and unprovoked
nature puzzled investigators for days.
A woman then called the police claiming that her neighbor resembled the suspect in the
footage.
He was identified as 62-year-old Joseph James Pappas, a former deputy constable who was
described as an expert marksman.
The authorities contacted a family friend from whom they learned that Pappas had threatened
to take his life in text messages.
He’d also sent the deed for his house and title of his vehicle to the aforementioned
friend’s mother, claiming he had a terminal illness.
A search of his nearly-empty Westbury home revealed a Last Will and Testament as well
as a file he’d collected on Hausknech’s job, home and routines, which confirmed that
he was his killer.
The police eventually tracked Pappas down in Houston and, as the bulletproof vest-clad
suspect was approached by two officers, he fatally shot himself in the head with .22-caliber
snub-nosed revolver.
The motive for the killing, which had eluded investigators at first, was revealed to have
been a grudge of over two decades that Pappas had held against Hausknech.
Its origins were traced back to 1997, when his mother had died on the cardiologist’s
operating table but it wasn’t clear why Pappas had targeted him so long after her
passing.
Number 6 Kaitlyn Conley 60-year-old Mary Yoder, the owner of a chiropractic
clinic in Whitesboro, New York, unexpectedly passed away on July the 22nd of 2015.
A few days earlier she’d been perfectly healthy but, during the 48 hours leading up
to her death, she was in severe pain from what was initially believed to have been a
stomach virus.
The woman was mourned by her family and those with whom she had a working relationship,
including her receptionist Kaitlyn Conley.
The latter paid tribute to Mary on Facebook, the day after her passing, through a moving
post which began with “if love could have saved you, you would have lived forever”.
Conley, then in her early 20s, was involved in what was described as an on-again off-again
romantic relationship with Mary’s son, Adam.
The woman’s death was ultimately deemed suspicious and, upon further examination of
her body, it was determined that she’d been fatally poisoned with a drug called colchicine,
used to treat gout.
Her husband and son were the initial persons of interest, with the potential motives of
an extramarital love interest for the former and inheritance for the latter.
Then, in November of 2015, the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office received an anonymous letter
that indicated a vial of colchicine could be found under the passenger seat of Adam’s
jeep.
He allowed law enforcement to search his vehicle and was bewildered when the container turned
up as the letter had stated.
His alibi, however, was solid as he’d been visiting family in Long Island during the
timeframe of his mother’s poisoning.
Attention ultimately turned to Conley when investigators learned that her sporadic relationship
with Adam had been fraught and tensed.
A theory began to take shape that Conley held a grudge against him and that she’d poisoned
Mary to hurt someone he loved.
It was suspected she’d spiked a protein shake her boss drank daily.
The young woman admitted to having written the letter during her interviews with detectives
and claimed she feared Adam.
However, the purchase of the colchicine was traced to Conley, her online activity indicated
she’d researched the most lethal poisons and her DNA was found on the vial taken from
Adam’s jeep.
She maintained her innocence but was eventually found guilty of first-degree manslaughter
and sentenced to 23 years in prison.
Number 5 Walter Moody On May the 7th of 1972, Hazel Moody opened
a package she’d found in the kitchen of her Georgia home and it immediately exploded
in front of her.
The woman survived the blast but was left with extensive injuries to her hand, thigh,
shoulder and eye, which had been struck by scrap metal.
The package she’d opened contained a pipe bomb that her husband Walter, then in his
late 30s, had allegedly intended to send to an auto dealer who’d repossessed his car.
Moody was found not guilty of making the bomb but guilty of possessing it and sentenced
to five years in Atlanta State Penitentiary.
Moody’s hatred of the justice system steadily began to build during his incarceration and
after his release.
He’d gone to law school but couldn’t practice due to his criminal conviction which the Court
of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit refused to overturn.
The grudge he harbored was translated into murderous action, in December of 1989, when
Moody sent out four mail bombs.
One package arrived at the home of federal Judge Robert Vance in Mountain Brook, Alabama.
He proceeded to open it, on December the 16th, and was killed instantly in the blast, while
his wife was severely injured.
Two days later, black civil-rights attorney Robert Robinson died in a similar explosion
at his office in Savannah, Georgia.
Two other packages were intercepted and diffused, one sent to Eleventh Circuit Court's headquarters
in Atlanta and another to the office of Willye Dennis, president of the NAACP branch in Jacksonville,
Florida.
An extensive investigation identified Moody as a culprit and he was arrested with his
second wife, Susan.
She agreed to testify against him in exchange for immunity.
Investigators determined that only the Eleventh Circuit Court and Vance had been targets valued
by Moody.
The other two packages Moody had sent were meant to distract and make it seem like the
bombings had been racially motivated.
He was sentenced to death and the punishment was carried out via lethal injection in April
of 2018 when Moody was 83 years old.
Number 4 Alexander Palmer On August the 5th of 2017, pensioner Peter
Wrighton was walking his two dogs in woodland known as The Heath near East Harling, England.
During the day out, a knifeman approached 83-year-old Wrighton from behind and began
stabbing him relentlessly.
Passersby stumbled upon the man’s lifeless body hidden under brambles and alerted the
authorities.
The police found that his head had nearly been severed from his body and discovered
further injuries inflicted with such brutality that they’d initially believed Wrighton
had been mauled by a wild animal.
A murder investigation was eventually launched but the authorities struggled to identify
a suspect in what appeared to have been a random killing.
A psychologist then pointed them into the direction of ex-Army commando Alexander Palmer,
aged 24.
The medical specialist had treated him at RAF Marham where Palmer had told staff he
heard a voice in his head, called “Little Alex”, with a particular hatred towards
dog walkers.
The voice reportedly urged Palmer to stab and kill them.
The police tracked his personalized license plate L666 AHP to the area of the attack.
During the ensuing police interviews, Palmer was asked about the number, a reputed mark
of Satan, and joked that he was “a little devil”.
He admitted being in the area but denied killing Wrighton.
During his case’s legal proceedings the prosecution argued that him being in the woodland’s
vicinity was no coincidence and said that Little Alex “appears to have some ill-feeling
or a grudge towards dog walkers”.
During his talks with mental health staff, Palmer had claimed that “when” he “eventually
hurt someone” that his victim would likely be chosen at random.
It only took a jury 44 minutes to find Palmer guilty at Nottingham Crown Court and he was
sentenced to life with a minimum of 28 years served.
Number 3 David Hall On Father’s Day, 2018, a man was gunned
down in Brooklyn following a months-long dispute over a parking space.
46-year-old David Hall had been nursing a grudge against William Fernandez, aged 33,
since the younger man had taken what he’d claimed as his spot back in January.
It was a public parking space on Forest Street, in Bushwick, where Hall lived with his wife
and two children.
The two men had a heated verbal exchange and nearly came to blows.
Hall’s animosity towards Fernandez increased in the months that followed, when he found
that his vehicle’s tires had been slashed and he came to suspect that the latter had
been responsible.
Roughly six months after their initial clash, Hall confronted Fernandez while armed with
a handgun.
After chasing him around the neighborhood, he fired at him seven times and a bullet struck
the man in the back.
He suffered critical damage to his heart and lung from which he died at Wyckoff Hospital,
just hours away from spending Father’s Day with his four children.
Hall remained on the run for roughly three weeks but ultimately surrendered to the police
at the 83rd Precinct.
He was subsequently convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 20 years to life in
prison.
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Number 2 Zhang Koukou In 1996, Chinese man Zhang Koukou, aged 13
at the time, witnessed his mother being beaten to death by Wang Zhengjun, then in his late
teens.
It was the brutal culmination of a longstanding feud between Zhang and Wang’s families who
lived in a village in the southwest of the Shaanxi province.
Following a dispute, the woman had struck Wang in the face with a piece of metal before
the teenager dealt the fatal blow with a wooden bat.
Upon considering his age and the active role Zhang’s mother had had in the conflict,
the authorities sentenced Wang to seven years in prison.
There were no more conflicts between the two families but, over the course of the two decades
that followed, Zhang was consumed by a grudge that affected his job, lifestyle and mental
health.
Then, on February the 15th of 2015, he learned that 40-year-old Wang would be returning to
the village for the celebration of the Spring Festival.
A few days later, on the eve of the Lunar New Year, Zhang ambushed the man and his brother,
46-year-old Xiaojun.
He knifed them both to death shortly after they’d come back from paying tribute to
their ancestors.
Zhang then went to the home of their father Zixin, aged 70, and fatally stabbed him as
well before setting their family car ablaze.
Two days later, Zhang turned himself in to the police and was subsequently given the
death penalty.
In July of 2019, the Supreme People's Court in Shaanxi announced that he’d been executed.
Zhang’s capital punishment received mixed reactions on the Weibo social media platform,
where some praised him for being a “real man” and avenging his mother while others
condemned the triple murder and saw the punishment as befitting.
Number 1 Brian Kesner Texas couple Brian Kesner and Krista Copeland
got married in 2012 but, within several years, began having problems in their relationship.
By 2017, they were separated and Copeland had started seeing another man while reportedly
retaining custody of their 9-year-old son.
Reports from those familiar with their situation suggested that Kesner resented Copeland for
moving on with her life.
In September of 2017, Kesner asked to see his son and his former partner agreed, with
the ensuing rendezvous taking place in the parking lot of Southwest Regional Branch Library,
in Fort Worth.
Witnesses from a synagogue nearby were reported to have heard the pair arguing loudly before
Kesner brandished a gun.
He then shot Copeland in the head as she sat in the driver’s seat of her car.
Their son was present at the scene but not in the vehicle and he was physically unharmed
in the incident.
The woman was rushed to a local hospital where she succumbed to her injuries a short time
later.
In the moments that followed, Kesner got back in his truck and drove a short distance before
ultimately turning the weapon on himself and ending his life via a gunshot to the head.
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