• Technically, people in prison can only stay in prison for so long.
But still, who got over a hundred thousand years without actually injuring anyone?
Who was sentenced to 5 thousand years per count?
These are the 15 longest prison sentences ever.
15 – Terry Nichols • Terry Nichols, the accomplice of infamous
Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh, holds the record for most life sentences given to
a single person.
• Nichols is currently serving 161 life sentences, one for each count of first-degree
murder.
14 – Martin Bryant • The perpetrator of the Port Arthur massacre,
the worst mass shooting in Australian history, killed 35 people and injured 23 others in
cold blood, leading to one of the most extreme national gun reforms in the world.
• For his shooting spree, Bryant was sentenced to 35 life sentences, one for each person
he killed.
• However, he was also sentenced for wounding 23, shooting AT 14 others, four counts of
stealing a motor vehicle, three for arson, and a kidnapping.
For those, he was given another thousand and thirty-five years in prison.
13 – Charles Scott Robinson • The jury took all of 35 minutes to deliberate
the guilt of Charles Robinson, who was convicted of six disturbing counts of sexual assault
on a 3-year-old girl, including “rape by instrumentation,” and “forcible oral sodomy.”
• However, due to Oklahoma sentencing laws, the court could not technically give Robinson
life without parole.
So they did the next best thing.
• They gave him 5 thousand years for each count, for a total of 30,000 years in prison.
12 – Allan Wayne McLaurin and Darron Bennalford Anderson
• When these two were tried in 1993 for multiple counts of rape, kidnapping, assault,
robbery and larceny, they were given a combined 6,475 years in prison.
• That was, at the time, the harshest sentence ever handed down in their county.
• That was until three years later, when they appealed the ruling, only to be re-convicted
and re-sentenced to a combined 32,500 years.
That’s the most jail time ever added as a result of an appeal.
• They later got 500 years knocked off that sentences, for some reason.
11 – Gary Ridgway • The man known as the “Green River Killer”
was a notorious serial killer who, between 1982 and 1998, was responsible for killing
71 prostitutes – and those are only the ones he admitted to.
• He was give 49 life sentences on top of 480 years in prison.
For some reason, only 48 of those life sentences are without parole.
10 – The 2004 Madrid Train Bombers • Jamal Zougam was one of the primary perpetrators
of the 2004 Madrid Train Bombings, the deadliest terrorist attack ever in the history of Spain.
• 192 people were killed, and Zougam was sentenced to 42,922 years in prison.
Othman el-Gnaoui received a sentence 2 years longer, while the accomplice that provided
the explosives received over 34,000 years.
• However, due to Spanish sentencing laws, the maximum sentence any of them can serve
is 40 years.
9 – Billy Joe Godfrey • Between 1995 and 1999, this guy sexually
abused two children while they were between the ages of 8 and 13 hundreds of times.
• And for more than a decade, he got away with it.
When the victims became adults, they spoke out against him, and Godfrey confessed.
• He is now serving 35 consectutive life sentences.
8 – Charles Fossard • If I tell you that Charles Fossard served
just under 71 years in prison, that may not sound like much, surrounded by people with
multiple life sentences, and thousands of years in prison.
• But Fossard ACTUALLY spent that time in prison.
He was arrested in 1903 for murdering a man for his boots, and remained in prison until
his death in 1974.
It’s the longest anyone has ever spent serving a sentence.
7 – Henri Parot • The Spanish separatist group ETA has been
responsible for a number of terrorist attacks since its formation in 1959, including the
Zaragoza Barracks bombing in 1987, which killed 11 people.
• Henri Parot was one of those implicated in those attacks, and was given a 4,797-year
sentence for 26 murders, and 166 attempted murders over a 13-year span.
6 – Bobby Joe Long • 33 life sentences is a lot.
That’s what Bobby Long got for raping more than 50 women, and killing more than 25.
• It was such a long sentence, so Long decided to appeal that ruling.
And sure enough, he got it reduced to 28 life sentences.
• But he was also sentenced to the death penalty, so…
5 – The Don Erres Massacre Soldiers • One of the most brutal military massacres
in modern history happened in 1982 in Don Erres, Guatemala.
• Over 200 civilians – improperly accused of being rebel sympathizers by the militant
government – were rounded up and executed in one night, including small children who
had their heads bashed against trees to save ammunition.
• It wasn’t until nearly 30 years later that five soldiers involved in the massacre
were sentenced to 6,060 years in prison each.
4 – Moses Sithole • This South African serial killer committed
most of what locals called the “ABC Murders.”
• He was convicted of 40 counts of rape, 38 murders, and six robberies.
• His sentence is for 2,410 years, but if he can make it to 930 years, he has the possibility
of parole. 3 – Paul Geidel
• In 1911, Paul Geidel was 17 years old and working at a bellhop at an upscale hotel
in New York.
After killing a wealthy guest of the hotel, he went to jail.
• But then, more than 68 years later, something happened.
He was released.
• At 68 years and 245 days, Geidel is the longest-serving prison inmate to actually
get paroled.
• He was actually paroled in 1974, but stayed by choice for six more years for fear he wouldn’t
make it on the outside.
In 1980, he was released at age 86, and lived seven more years before dying in a nursing
home at age 93.
2 - Chamoy Thipyaso • Believe it or not, on this list of murderers
and rapists, the two longest sentences belong to people who never harmed a soul.
Physically, anyway.
• Chamoy Thipyaso didn’t kill anybody, she just ripped off half of Thailand.
The wife of a high-ranking military official, Thipyaso enacted an elaborate pyramid scheme
that defrauded over 16,000 people to the tune of about 204 million U.S. dollars.
• They sentenced her for each individual victim, which brought her total term up to…
141,078 years.
Except that under Thai law, the maximum sentence that can be served for fraud is 20 years.
And she actually only served 8.
1 – Gabriel March Granados • You know how sometimes you just get tired
of your job?
Yeah, Gabriel March Granados is right there with you.
• In 1972, this Spanish mailman just stopped delivering mail.
He kept 42,784 letters, stealing the contents of over 35,000 of them.
• Upon his conviction, the prosecutor recommended a maximum sentence of about 9 years per letter,
which set his sentence at 384,912 years.
However, the actual sentence he served was 14 years and 2 months in prison, and a fine
of 9,000 pesetas.
Okay, so which of these sentences is the craziest to you?
Leave us your thoughts and we’ll pin our favorite!