#8 - Nathalie Fraser
Canadian woman Nathalie Fraser sold her house in Montreal, in December of 2019,
to move to the western Cuban province of Matanzas with her musician boyfriend, Leonel Leon Nuviola,
who was 13 years younger than her. On January the 18th of 2020, only a month after her move abroad,
52-year-old Fraser was reported missing by relatives who were unable to get in contact with
her. Shortly thereafter, local authorities found her body stuffed inside a travel suitcase that
had been left at a landfill site near Varadero, a popular spot for Western holidaymakers. The police
identified the victim’s boyfriend as the prime suspect in her murder and he was consequently
taken into custody. In the incident’s aftermath, some of Fraser’s family members publicly revealed
that they’d had reservations about her romantic partner even before his criminal allegations.
One of the victim’s daughters told a French newspaper that she’d found Nuviola
“possessive, impulsive, and controlling” upon first meeting him.
#7 - Robert Kissel
Investment banker and American expatriate Robert Kissel was murdered, on November the 2nd of 2003,
at the Parkview Apartment Complex in Hong Kong, where he lived with his wife and children.
Chinese police quickly arrived at the conclusion that the incident had been a case of matricide,
and the victim’s spouse, Nancy, was promptly taken into custody. She allegedly confessed to
killing her husband, but claimed that she’d done so while defending herself from his
repeated acts of domestic violence. As the investigation progressed, however,
the authorities ultimately concluded that Nancy’s claims of self-defense were wholly unfounded.
As detailed in subsequent reports, the woman had gone on a trip to the United States in mid-2003,
during which she’d allegedly had an affair with an electrical repairman. Upon her return to China,
Robert confronted his spouse about her infidelity and, on the night of his death,
announced his intention to initiate divorce proceedings, as well as secure custody of
their children. Shortly thereafter, Nancy gave Robert a milkshake that she’d secretly
laced with sedatives. After the drugs had taken effect, she allegedly bludgeoned the man to death
and rolled up his body in a carpet, which she then placed in a storeroom at the apartment complex.
Following a highly publicized criminal trial at the High Court of Hong Kong,
Nancy was convicted of her husband’s murder and consequently given a mandatory life sentence.
The Court of Final Appeal overturned the woman’s conviction, in February of 2010, due to purported
“legal errors” during the initial trial. In March of the following year, however, Nancy’s
retrial culminated with another guilty verdict, and she was again sentenced to life imprisonment.
#6 - Laura Beatriz Garcia Cordova On May the 7th of 2021, Salvadoran national Laura
Beatriz Garcia Cordova was killed in a traffic accident in Taiwan’s Tainan City. In the evening,
the 26-year-old was reportedly riding her scooter on Fuqing Road, in the city’s Yongkang District,
when a concrete mixer abruptly swerved into her lane and crashed into her. Garcia was consequently
knocked off her scooter and crushed by the mixer’s massive rear tires. Although she was rushed to a
nearby hospital, she ultimately succumbed to severe head trauma. The victim had reportedly
moved to Taiwan in 2012 upon winning a government scholarship to attend Ming Chuan University,
where she earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Business Administration.
Prior to her untimely death and after making the decision to extend her stay in the country,
Garcia had been working at a local car part manufacturer. A breathalyzer test
administered at the scene of the deadly accident determined that the driver of the concrete mixer
hadn’t been intoxicated at the time, and he was thus released from police custody.
Taiwanese police notified Garcia’s family of her death through the Salvadoran ambassador to South
Korea, as the diplomatic relations between Taiwan and El Salvador had been severed back in 2018.
#5 - Catherine Serou
Catherine Serou, a former member of the United States Marine Corps, went missing on June the
15th of 2021, while studying law at Lobachevsky University in Russia. As local authorities
learned during their ensuing investigation, the 34-year-old woman had last been seen getting into
a stranger’s car in a suburb of Nizhny Novgorod, a city located roughly 250 miles east of Moscow.
Serou’s final communication came in the form of a chillingly prescient text message to her mother.
In it, she’d written “In a car with a stranger. I hope I'm not being abducted”. Police and
volunteers combed through a forested area outside of the city where Serou's cell phone had last been
detected. Her lifeless body was discovered four days after her initial disappearance. A male
suspect, reported as being in his 40s, was taken into custody in connection to the incident. The
man was later identified as Alexander Popov, whom local law enforcement claimed had had a record of
past violent crimes. Popov had reportedly offered to give the victim a ride while she was reportedly
in a hurry to get to a clinic in Nizhny Novgorod. The man subsequently drove Serou to a wooded area,
where he abused and beat her before fatally stabbing her three times. As of the latest
updates on the case, Popov was still awaiting the commencement of his criminal trial.
#4 - Geoffrey Elton
British expatriate Geoffrey Elton was arrested, in March of 2019, for the brutal murder of his
wife at their home in the Spanish resort town of Estepona. According to subsequent reports,
57-year-old Elton had just engaged in intimate relations with the victim, named as
Gloria Tornay. He then allegedly struck her in the face, strangled her, and fatally stabbed
her at least eleven times with a 6-inch kitchen knife. A medical examination later uncovered that
the woman had been sedated by a combination of methadone and morphine, prior to being knifed to
death by her husband. Court records indicated that the man, a wealthy computer programmer,
denied having any recollection of the incident during his interviews with the police.
Investigators learned, however, that Elton had grown upset with the victim after she’d expressed
her intention of getting a divorce. During the his trial, in November of 2021, Elton’s legal defense
team reportedly contended that he shouldn’t be held criminally responsible for his wife’s murder
given his supposedly unstable and delusional mental state. They asked for him to be admitted to
a secure psychiatric facility in lieu of a prison sentence. However, the jury assigned to the case
dismissed the defense’s arguments, and Elton was ultimately convicted of murder at the
Provincial Court in Malaga. He was consequently sentenced to 20 years in a Spanish prison.
#3 - ChenWei Guo On October the 31st of 2017,
police in Salt Lake City, Utah, arrested Austin Boutain, at the Downtown Library, on suspicion of
gunning down a foreign exchange student during a botched carjacking. Official records detailed how
24-year-old Boutain had fired five shots into a car parked at Red Butte Canyon, a protected
research area immediately adjacent to the University of Utah campus. The incident resulted
in the death of the vehicle’s owner, ChenWei Guo, a computer science major from China. Boutain’s
wife, Kathleen, was also taken into custody. It subsequently emerged that the couple had driven
from Colorado to Utah, two days earlier, with the alleged intention of finding someone to
rob and kidnap. Boutain was charged with multiple offenses, including aggravated murder, attempted
aggravated murder, and aggravated kidnapping. While he and his wife were being detained,
investigators from Golden, Colorado, traveled to Salt Lake City in order to interview them about
the murder of 63-year-old Mitchell Bradford Ingle, which had occurred the previous week.
It was ultimately determined that the Boutains had fatally shot Ingle with a crossbow before stealing
his truck and driving it to Utah. In September of 2018, Austin Boutain pleaded guilty to his
various charges and was consequently sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The following year, his wife was sentenced to 16 years in prison after pleading guilty to reckless
manslaughter and aggravated robbery. #2 - Beverley Mitchell
British woman Beverley Mitchell moved to the Turkish resort city of Fethiye, in 2007, with
the stated purpose of finding herself a romantic partner. The 34-year-old ultimately began dating
a local man, whom her relatives later claimed was both verbally and physically abusive towards her,
on a regular basis, during the course of their relationship. Mitchell, an IT professional,
was also reportedly assaulted on two separate occasions during her time in Turkey, prompting
her family to implore that she return to England. Despite her exceedingly negative experiences in
the new environment, Mitchell maintained that she felt safer in Turkey than in the UK, and chose to
stay. In July of 2012, the woman contracted a mysterious illness that caused “respiratory
failure”. Her boyfriend, named only as “Shahin”, delayed taking her to the hospital until it was
too late for her to receive help. On the evening of July the 16th, he reportedly came upon her
unconscious, at which point he finally called an ambulance. Mitchell was rushed to Fethiye State
Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Shahin subsequently fled the resort town, leaving both
British and Turkish authorities with little hope of ascertaining what had transpired in the days
and weeks leading up to Mitchell’s death. Turkish investigators decided not to pursue the matter
further while an inquest launched in Britain determined that the cause of the woman’s passing
had been disease-related and not connected to the alleged abuse she’d suffered at Shahin’s hands.
#1 - Sarah Papenheim
On December the 12th of 2018, police in the Netherlands responded to reports of
a disturbance at an apartment on Kralingse Kerklaan, in Rotterdam. Upon their arrival,
officers found 21-year-old Sarah Papenheim lying in a pool of blood with multiple
stab wounds on her body. Although emergency responders attempted to resuscitate the woman,
she was ultimately pronounced dead a short time later. It subsequently emerged that Papenheim,
originally from Andover, Minnesota, had moved to Rotterdam two years earlier in order to study
psychology at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioral Science. At the time of the violent
assault that ended her life, she was reportedly preparing for a return trip to the United States
to visit her family for the upcoming winter holidays. An investigation into the killing
led to the arrest of Papenheim’s roommate, a 23-year-old Dutch national named Joel Schelling.
The victim’s mother later told an American news station that her daughter had been regularly
harassed by Schelling, who was described in court records as psychotic, schizophrenic, and autistic.
It was also reported that, just 10 days prior to her death, Papenheim had told some of her
friends that she believed her roommate might try to kill her. Following his criminal trial,
in December of 2019, Schelling was found guilty of manslaughter and consequently jailed for 6 years.
Thanks for watching! Would you rather live in North Korea for a year or only be able to
communicate by blinking your eyes? Let us know in the comments section below!