Number 6 Chandler Halderson
In March of 2022, Wisconsin man Chandler Halderson was sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole for the brutal murder and dismemberment
of his parents. Halderson, a man in his early 20s, had been lying to his parents, Bart and Krista,
as well as to others who knew him about attending the Madison Area Technical College. He’d also
falsely claimed to work for the aerospace company SpaceX and that he was a police scuba diver,
using fake email addresses to further con his parents into thinking he was on a promising
career path. Halderson’s intricately-constructed lie was discovered in the summer of 2021 when
Bart contacted Madison College to ask about his son’s status at the school and was told that he
hadn’t attended classes for more than a semester. 53-year-old Bart consequently scheduled a meeting
with school officials. On July the 1st, hours before the meeting, Halderson executed his father
by shooting him in the back of the head. He then killed 50-year-old Krista when she returned to
their Dane County home later that same day. After dismembering his parents, Halderson tried to burn
their remains in the house’s fireplace before eventually discarding them in a rural area
and along the Wisconsin River. He then reported them missing to the police, about a week later,
claiming they hadn’t returned from a trip to their Langlade County cabin. Bart’s remains were found
on July the 8th and Krista’s were discovered six days later. Witness testimony placed Halderson
at the former scene and, before the body parts had been unearthed, the police discovered he’d
searched the Internet for “Wisconsin dismembered body found” and “woman's body found in Wisconsin”.
Facial and knee bones, as well as fragments of human skulls were also retrieved from
the couple’s fireplace. Halderson didn’t speak during his trial and his defense didn’t call upon
any witnesses. It only took a jury two hours to convict him of the murder and associated charges.
Number 5 Courtney Ireland-Ainsworth From July the 15th to December 13th of 2020,
British woman Courtney Ireland-Ainsworth, of Brackendale, Runcorn, made nearly a dozen
calls and statements to local police claiming that she was being stalked and harassed by her
ex-boyfriend. 19-year-old Ireland-Ainsworth had dated Louis Jolly, aged 22, for roughly two years
and had broken up on seemingly amicable terms in October of 2019. In the aftermath,
successive accusatory reports from the young woman included that Jolly had stalked and threatened her
and her new boyfriend as well as allegations of physical and verbal assault. Ireland-Ainsworth
also provided the authorities with screenshots of messages and the names of fake Instagram accounts,
which she claimed Jolly had created in order to harass her. The man was arrested and later
released, with Ireland-Ainsworth subsequently alerting the police that his stalking had
only gotten worse. She offered images of damaged property and a scar on her chest,
which she reported had been inflicted by Jolly with a box cutter. The police requested data
information from Facebook, which owns Instagram, but releasing the information took time.
The monstrous persona that had been cast upon Jolly resulted in him being arrested six times
and spending 81 hours in custody, including being detained overnight, as well as losing his job.
On December the 4th of 2020, he was handed down an interim stalking protection order and fitted
with an electronic monitor that tracked a daily curfew of 7 am to 7 pm. On December the 13th,
Ireland-Ainsworth accused him of breaching the order and her mother called the police. However,
by then the young woman’s “web of poisonous deceit” had begun to unravel. Upon retrieving
her social media data, the police found that at least 17 Instagram accounts had been created using
two of Ireland-Ainsworth's email addresses and IP addresses connected to her home and mobile phone.
Jolly’s stalking, harassment and assault had been entirely and unscrupulously fabricated by his ex.
Ireland-Ainsworth’s mother, grandmother and boyfriend had become unsuspecting participants in
her complex lie. Even after she was arrested and charged Ireland-Ainsworth tried blaming Jolly for
her actions but eventually abandoned the claims and pleaded guilty to perverting the course of
justice. Her defense argued that she suffered from severe childhood trauma and PTSD but,
in January of 2022, she was jailed for 10 months and given a 10-year restraining order.
Number 4 Alejandro Giraldo In May of 2019, a Miami-Dade
police officer was taken into custody for forcefully arresting a woman and then
lying about the circumstances in which the arrest had occurred. On the morning of March the 5th,
26-year-old Dyma Loving had called 911 to report that her neighbor, Frank Tumm, had brandished
a shotgun and threatened her and a friend, Adrianna Green, using racially-charged epithets.
Several members of law enforcement arrived at the scene but it was Loving herself who ended up being
arrested by Officer Alejandro Giraldo. He grabbed the mother-of-two by the head and dragged her to
the ground where he and other officers proceeded to handcuff her. While she was being restrained,
the woman insisted that she was only trying to call her child and that her phone was dead,
adding that she was stressed after having just had a gun pointed at her. Loving was
subsequently charged with resisting arrest but the case was eventually dropped. Giraldo reported that
he’d initiated the arrest because Loving hadn’t complied with the officers’ commands while being
disruptive and causing a scene in a residential neighborhood. Sworn testimonies from all of the
other officers at the scene as well as video footage, from body cams and Green’s cellphone,
disproved his claims. An internal investigation concluded that Loving had in no way acted
in a threatening manner towards the police. Following his arrest, Giraldo was charged with
battery and official misconduct, a felony, for making false statements in an official report.
Number 3 Jamie Climie
On November the 24th of 2013, Jamie Climie reported to police in the township of West
Chester, Ohio, that her IPhone 4S had been stolen. The claim came just one day after explicit selfies
of the woman, who at the time was a fifth-grade science teacher at the Cincinnati Hills
Christian Academy, had surfaced on the website My Ex, which specialized in revenge adult content.
The 36-year-old wife and mother maintained that she’d only sent the X-rated photos to her husband
and had no idea about how they’d gotten leaked. However, users on the website appeared to be
familiar with Climie, as a number of them identified her as a teacher and alleged that
she’d had extramarital affairs at other learning institutions where she’d been employed. One user
commented that she “makes memories at each and every school she teaches”. The woman was initially
placed on administrative leave but eventually resigned from the Cincinnati private school,
which had a code of conduct and morality by which staff had to abide. Forensic investigators tracked
IP addresses and examined cellphone records before determining that Climie had sent at least
one nude selfie to someone other than her husband. Confronted with the finding, she admitted to
having lied about her phone being stolen and was charged with obstruction of official police
business, on January the 16th of 2014. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 days in jail in
addition to paying the $200 fine and court costs. Number 2 Stevie Bamford
Australian swimsuit model Stevie Bamford made international headlines in 2012, after an incident
in Thailand in which she’d falsely accused a tuk tuk driver in Thailand of assaulting and
abusing her. The 21-year-old Sydney native, who is the daughter of famed ruby player Peter Tunks,
had been vacationing in the country with her boyfriend at the time. Bamford alleged that,
while she was returning to their resort at night, she was taken to a secluded area by the tuk tuk
driver and two other men. She told investigators that the driver had forced himself on her
while the others held her down. After a few days of interrogation, she admitted to local police
that she’d made up the story so that her boyfriend wouldn’t be angry at her for returning late to the
resort. Bamford was found guilty at the Phuket Provincial Court, in June of 2012, and sentenced
to spend 15 days in the Baan Bang Jo detention center in Thalang. Commenting on the gravity of
the woman’s false claims a senior Thai police officer told a media outlet “this sort of thing
could damage Phuket’s tourism industry”. Number 1 Jussie Smollett
Once lauded for his groundbreaking portrayal of a gay black man on the Empire TV series, actor
Jussie Smollett became the subject of widespread outrage and ridicule as it emerged that he’d
staged a hate crime against himself, in 2019. On January the 22nd of that year, a letter addressed
to the actor was sent to the Chicago studio of his employer. It read "Smollett, Jussie you will die"
while depicting a stick figure hanging from a tree with a gun pointed towards it. About a week later,
Smollett reported to Chicago police that he’d been beaten and demeaned by two men, one of whom he
said was white, in the Streeterville neighborhood. The actor’s assailants had reportedly yelled
out racial and homophobic slurs while using their hands, feet and teeth in the purported
beatdown. The ski-masked men then poured a chemical substance, later determined to have
been bleach, on him and wrapped a rope around his neck. They’d also supposedly yelled at the actor
“This is MAGA country” in reference to President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan.
Smollett, who claimed to have fought off his attackers, wasn’t seriously injured and
later released in good condition from Northwestern Memorial Hospital. In the immediate aftermath,
there was instant support for Smollett from a number of prominent figures, including
then-presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, who compared it to a modern lynching.
However, the supposed hate crime’s true nature was revealed shortly thereafter. Nigerian brothers
Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, who worked as extras on Empire, revealed that Smollet
had staged the attack. Police had raided their apartment and discovered records indicating that
the actor had paid them $3,500 to take part in it, while surveillance footage from a clothing store
had captured them buying the gloves, ski masks, and red hat they’d used. The brothers became key
witnesses against Smollett and claimed they’d rehearsed the attack which the actor had hoped
would be captured on nearby surveillance cameras with the intention of sharing the
footage on his social media. Unfortunately for him, the cameras were facing the wrong way.
The authorities reported that he’d fabricated the hate crime out of dissatisfaction with his pay on
Empire. In March of 2022, Smollett was found guilty on five counts of felony disorderly
conduct and sentenced to 150 days in jail. In several video recorded courtroom outbursts,
he professed his innocence and repeatedly shouted “I am not suicidal”, seemingly suggesting there
was a conspiracy to assassinate him if he’d be sent to jail. He was released
on a personal recognizance bond, in mid-March, pending the outcome of his conviction appeal.
Thanks for watching! Would you rather always speak the truth, regardless of the consequences,
OR always have someone else pick the clothes you wear when going out?
Let us know in the comments section below!