Number 7 Kamari Belmont
On May the 1st of 2015, Kamari Belmont broke into a Chicago home with the intention of robbing it,
when the homeowner put up a fight. Belmont shot him in the leg before fleeing the scene,
only to rob yet another person, just a few hours later that same day. When a bystander
flagged down a police car that happened to be passing by, Belmont was arrested and charged with
two robberies and attempted murder. About three weeks later, the man he’d shot in the leg died,
and prosecutors tried to elevate the charge to murder. However, a paperwork loophole would lead
to Belmont becoming a free man. It took the District Attorney’s office too long to raise
the charges and, due to the state’s speedy trial statute, the charge had to be dropped.
The only charges that remained were the two robberies out of which a friend of Belmont’s
bailed him with $10,000. Just minutes after walking out of jail, Belmont was gunned down
and killed by a rival gang who drove by in an SUV, in what was described as a “well-planned hit.”
Number 6 Richard Rosario On June the 19th of 1996,
17-year-old Jorge Collazo was shot and killed as he was walking in the Bronx with his friend
Michael Sanchez. Collazo was reported to have been shot by a Hispanic man, who’d gotten out of a car
and briefly argued with him, before delivering the fatal shot and speeding off in his car.
Evidence would later suggest that the argument was related to drug activity, since a handgun and
illegal substances were found on Collazo. When conducting their investigation, the authorities
asked Sanchez and other witnesses if they’d seen anyone around when the crime took place, and asked
them to take a look at photographs of people who’d been arrested at that precinct. Richard Rosario’s
photograph was among the many they sifted through, since earlier in his life he’d been arrested for
robbery and possession of stolen property. When Sanchez came across Rosario’s photo,
he identified him as the attacker. Rosario was subsequently charged with second-degree murder
and went to trial. There was strong evidence to suggest that he wasn’t linked to the shooting.
It included witness testimony that he wasn’t even in New York when it had taken place,
but rather in Florida for the birth of his son. However, the prosecution discredited the witnesses
as friends of Rosario’s. On November the 23rd of 1998, Rosario was sentenced to 25 years to life in
prison. The fight for proving his innocence didn’t stop as Rosario appealed multiple times. Yet,
despite having seven more witnesses testifying to his presence in Florida at the time of the murder,
three of which were given a polygraph test and passed, none of the appeals were successful.
Further investigation found that the police and prosecution hid evidence which revealed that,
in Sanchez’s original statement, he said that he’d never even seen the gunman. In fact,
he never even picked Rosario out of a line-up, and that he’d been subtly guided into selecting him
as the culprit by the police. It wasn’t until March the 23rd of 2016 that Rosario was finally
cleared of all charges and released from prison. Number 5 Albert Flick
Kimberly Dobbie, a 48-year-old mother from Maine, was fatally stabbed eleven times,
in broad daylight outside of a Laundromat, on July the 15th of 2018. The attacker was 77-year-old
Albert Flick, an ex-convict who’d become obsessed with Dobbie and stalked her. He allegedly followed
the woman around town but she rejected any type of relationship with him, leading to the violent
attack which took place right in front of her children. Flick was convicted of murder and
will spend the rest of his life behind bars. This wasn’t his first time in jail for murder,
as in 1979 he was convicted for the same crime. He fatally stabbed his wife fourteen times,
resulting in a 25-year jail sentence. Flick was released in 2004, but would go on to commit
more violent crimes. In 2010, he was convicted of assaulting two women and, in spite of the
prosecutor asking for 9 years in jail, the judge ultimately only sentenced him to 4 years,
arguing that he “would be too old to commit any more violent acts.” It would prove to
be a tragically misguided assessment. When he was released in 2014, Flick moved to Lewiston,
Maine, where his infatuation with Dobbie began, ultimately concluding with her violent killing.
Number 4 Johnny Frank Garrett On Halloween night 1981, Sister Tadea Benz, a
76-year-old nun, was abused and strangled to death at her convent, in Texas. At the young age of 17,
Johnny Frank Garrett was accused and convicted of the crime. He was put on death row, scheduled
to be executed on January the 6th of 1992, but was given temporary reprieve by a Texan governor after
Pope John Paul the Second asked for leniency on his behalf. Shortly thereafter, a hearing was held
to determine whether Garrett’s sentence should be reduced to life in prison or if he’d be executed.
Ultimately, the death sentence was upheld by a 17 to 1 vote, and he was executed by lethal injection
on February the 11th of 1992, at the age of 28. However, there’d always been shadows of doubt
as to whether he was truly guilty. Garrett had insisted until the very end that he was innocent.
Even after the execution, Texas attorney Jesse Quackenbush continued to investigate, insisting
that Garrett had been a victim of poor defense attorneys and ruthless prosecutors. A break in the
case wouldn’t arrive until March of 2004. The cold case of another nun, 77-year-old Narnie Bryson,
who was killed in a chillingly similar manner, just four months before Benz, resurfaced. New
DNA evidence identified a man named Leoncio Rueda as Bryson’s abuser and murderer. Police
and prosecutors agreed that both deaths were so similar that they’d likely been committed
by the same person. Rueda eventually confessed to Bryson’s murder but didn’t receive the death
penalty. That would’ve involved an extended trial, which would’ve brought attention to Benz’s case
again and the unjust execution of Garrett. The State of Texas wasn’t keen on publicly revealing
that its legal system had potentially failed him. Number 3 Emma Presler
On August the 6th of 2021, 19-year-old Texas teen Emma Presler fled the scene of the crime
after breaking into a home and setting a young couple on fire. The victims were 33-year-old Devin
Graham and his girlfriend, Karissa Lindros, aged 26. They were able to escape the home,
which was subsequently engulfed by flames as well, and were taken to the hospital with severe burns.
A motive for the attack has yet to have been released, but one of Lindros’s relatives did tell
a media outlet that Presler knew her. A few days after the incident, Graham died from his injuries.
Lindros suffered severe burns to 70% of her body but was expected to make a full recovery. Presler
was charged with murder, while on the run from the police. She was found and arrested later in
the month, on August the 26th. The teenager was charged with the murder of Devin Graham but it
wasn’t, in fact, her first run-in with the law. Less than a year prior, in September of 2020,
Presler was charged with murder in the shooting of 20-year-old Sierra Rhodd, a woman suffering
from cerebral palsy. Rhodd was in her bed when she was shot through her bedroom window. Presler was
allegedly at the scene with her then boyfriend and three other people, when they surrounded the house
and fired 40 to 60 rounds into it. Police said that the group had meant to harm Rhodd’s younger
brother, who had some feud with them, with the young woman being caught in the crossfire. Presler
was said to have acted as the getaway driver, but a judge later determined that the evidence
wasn’t strong enough to link her to the crime, and dropped the murder charge for that case.
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Number 2 Courtney Hackney 57-year-old Holly Barnett was beaten
to death with a baseball bat in her Missouri home, on May the 16th of 2017. The attacker
was 32-year-old Courtney Hackney, reported as Barnett’s niece, to whom she’d opened her home up
in light of her transient status. Another family member living with Barnett came home and witnessed
the horrific scene. As she tried to run out of the house, Hackney attempted to drag her back in,
but, fortunately, she was able to escape and call the police for help. Officers arrived at
the scene and shortly thereafter found Hackney hiding in a nearby cemetery. She was charged
with second-degree murder but her 2018 court proceedings resulted in a mistrial when the jury
couldn’t come to a unanimous decision. A second trial, set for 2019, was attempted, but due to
several scheduling conflicts with the witnesses, they dismissed the case and planned to refile.
However, because of double jeopardy, a rule in place that prevents a person from being
tried twice for the same crime, prosecutors had no choice but to drop all charges.
Due to this legal technicality, Hackney walked away with no consequences.
Number 1 Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin On June the 17th of 2004,
the bodies of 47-year-old Cheryl Williams and her mother, 68-year-old Carol Bareis,
were found in their Florida trailer home. Williams was stabbed 129 times and bled to death, with a
stab wound to her left lung believed to have been the fatal blow. Bareis suffered two stab wounds,
one in the back and one in the left ventricle. The third resident of the home, Williams’ daughter,
Samantha, was out that night and reportedly sleeping at her boyfriend’s house. The main
suspect in the double homicide was their neighbor, with whom they’d spend time and socially drink,
a 24-year-old Honduran immigrant named Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin. After living through extreme
levels of violence and personally witnessing at least three murders in his home country,
Aguirre-Jarquin desperately fled to and illegally entered the United States, hoping for a safe
haven. Early in the morning, on June the 17th, he had knocked on his neighbors’ door and was shocked
to find Cheryl’s body blocking it. He pushed his way inside and fruitlessly checked for a pulse. He
also discovered Bareis’ body, slumped over in her wheelchair. Being an illegal immigrant, he feared
that if he called the police, they would never believe that he was innocent. As Aguirre-Jarquin
discovered the horrific crime scene, Samantha was waking up at her boyfriend’s house. She told him
she had a strange feeling about her mother and asked him to go and check on her and to pick up
some work clothes. Upon reaching the residence, he discovered the double murder and immediately
called the police. Williams gave Aguirre-Jarquin’s name to the police, saying that he must have done
it. Aguirre-Jarquin explained to the police that he had discovered them earlier that same morning
and tried to help, which is why he had blood on his clothes, but was afraid to call the police
because of his immigration status. He was arrested and charged with double-homicide and burglary. He
was then put on death row. However, the nonprofit organization Innocence Project believed he wasn’t
guilty and worked tirelessly to exonerate him. After collecting DNA samples and working with
blood splatter experts, they found that Samantha’s blood was mixed in with her mother’s, suggesting
that she was present at the scene and highlighting her as a suspect. Her boyfriend also shared that
he’d seen her sneak out of the window, on the night of the attack, before sneaking back in
later. In the months following the crime, Samantha even admitted to multiple people that she had
killed her mother and grandmother, saying that she “hated them” and that “the demons made her do it.”
Aguirre-Jarquin was finally exonerated after being sentenced to death and spending 14 years in jail.
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