Top 10 Stupid Criminals Who Recorded Their Crimes
10.
The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel
Anneliese Michel, a young Catholic German woman, exhibited strange behaviors toward
the end of her life.
Claiming to be possessed by Nero, Hitler, and other “demons,” she made strange faces,
suffered seizures, and demonstrated an aversion to holy symbols, such as the crucifix.
Although her family attempted to treat her medically, they gave up when her symptoms
continued anyway.
They enlisted Fathers Arnold Renz and Ernst Alt to perform an exorcism, which the priests
recorded on audio tapes, which can be listened to online.
The strange noises made by Michel as her priests try to free her of her claimed possession
are downright chilling, whether you believe they be demonic in nature or just the ravings
of a schizophrenic.
In any event, these efforts to cleanse her failed, as she endured almost a year of semi-starvation
and dehydration.
You can see her emaciated form in photographs available online.
Unsurprisingly her malnourished body gave out on July 1, 1976.
Both Michel’s parents and the two priests were charged with negligent homicide.
They were convicted of manslaughter and given a suspended sentence of six months in jail.
Her story inspired the film The Exorcism of Emily Rose and is easily one of the most famous
exorcisms in Christian history.
9.
Leonard Lake and Charles Ng
Leonard Lake and Charles Chi-Tat Ng are two of the most infamous raping and murdering
duos in modern history.
Their crimes have included rape, torture, and murder of anywhere from eleven to twenty-five
victims all between 1983 and 1985.
The two spent their time together bringing victims to their ranch, where they deluded
themselves into believing that they would be the survivors of a nuclear war, and would
use sex slaves to repopulate the world as part of what they dubbed “Operation Miranda.”
Their downfall came when Ng was caught shoplifting, and Lake was arrested for possessing an illegal
silencer on a firearm discovered by police in his car.
Authorities subsequently discovered numerous bodies of men, women, and even a baby buried
on their ranch.
To add to the horror, but to better confirm Lake and Ng’s guilt, was the discovery of
video tapes of their crimes, some of which can be viewed online.
These tapes do not show the murders, but they do suggest the sexual and mental abuse of
their female victims.
One woman even asks about her baby, only to be told by Lake that its “going to be taken
away.”
Lake escaped court justice by committing suicide (he swallowed a cyanide capsule after his
arrest,) while Ng is currently on death row at San Quentin State Prison in California.
8.
Prince Yormie Johnson
Liberia’s twenty-first president Samuel Kanyon Doe is not exactly a sympathetic figure,
coming to power after a violent coup toppled previous president William Richard Tolbert,
Jr.
Given the bloody rise to power of Doe, it should hardly surprise anyone that his fall
was equally bloody.
When that fall came, about ten years after his coming to power, a man named Prince Yormie
Johnson captured Doe after Doe lost a gun battle against the rebel forces.
A relatively lengthy video of Doe’s subsequent torment, as well as various photographs of
his torture and murder, are available on the internet.
One video, for example, shows a Budweiser-drinking Johnson watching as a partially unclothed
and bloody Doe has his ear cut off.
His nude corpse, surrounded by armed men, can be seen in a notable black and white photograph
readily available online.
7.
Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka
Canadian serial killers Paul Kenneth Bernardo and wife Karla Leanne Homolka are responsible
for various sexual assaults and at least three murders, including Karla’s sister, Tammy.
The video-taped portion of their crimes, known as the Schoolgirl Killer murders, includes
the rape of Tammy.
Reportedly the tapes show Homolka sexually assaulting four females and drugging at least
one unconscious victim.
Reports of what these tapes contain is shocking to say the least, and the tapes do serve as
crucial evidence in support of the two perpetrators’ convictions.
Bernardo received a sentence of twenty-five years without the possibility of parole, while
Homolka was sentenced to twelve years.
In the aftermath of the trial, Canadian authorities determined that they had no possible future
use for the videotapes, and so destroyed all six videotapes depicting the torture and rape
of the duo’s various victims.
6.
The Master Butcher
German cannibal Armin Meiwes’s crime involved a bafflingly willing victim, Bernd Jürgen
Brandes.
Meiews and Brandes met via website “The Cannibal Café,” which is exactly what it
sounds like.
They agreed to video tape Meiews consuming Brandes.
This tape has not been released to the public but, if you must, you can see a reenactment
in the movie Grimm Love.
What is allegedly on the actual tape is mind-blowing.
For example, Meiews tries and fails to bite off Brandes’s penis.
So, he cuts it off and both men try to eat it before feeding it to a dog.
Meiews finally killed Brandes by stabbing him the throat, before hanging his body on
a meat hook.
Over the course of several months, Meiews ate much of the fleshy remains of Brandes.
Meiewes was eventually arrested, tried, convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to eight years
in prison.
He was then retried, convicted of murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment, which
was probably a wise decision, given that he allegedly still fantasized about eating flesh.
5.
Various Beheadings By Islamic Terrorists
In the years following the American-led coalitions to defeat Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Osama
bin Laden in Afghanistan, various terrorists groups developed stiff and barbaric resistance
to the coalition forces.
This included videotaped beheadings of, in some cases, civilian journalists.
For example, Daniel Pearl, an American journalist, was kidnapped and executed on film via beheading
in Pakistan.
The eventually-arrested terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed claimed he personally beheaded Pearl.
In addition, another noted terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi personally beheaded American Jewish
businessman Nicholas Evan Berg in Iraq.
Later that same year, both American helicopter engineer Paul Marshall Johnson, Jr., and South
Korean translator and Christian missionary Kim Sun-il were videotaped being beheaded
in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, respectively.
Finally, Owen Eugene Armstrong was also videotaped being beheaded (possibly by al-Zarqawi as
well,) along with two other hostages in the autumn of 2004 in Iraq.
Given the multi-faith and international background of these victims, global condemnation of these
acts of terrorism have been considerable.
Even many who opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could hardly endorse such barbaric,
medieval murder of civilians.
Unfortunately, not all responsible for these crimes against humanity have been apprehended,
but at least now-deceased mass murderers Zarqawi and bin Laden can no longer participate in,
or endorse, such savagery.
Watching the videos of these murders is stomach-churning.
4.
Mr. Hands
“Mr. Hands” is the nickname of Kenneth Pinyan.
His videos are gross enough from the news descriptions that there’s even less need
for our eyes to view them than with some of the other videos mentioned here.
According to media sources, Pinyan had recorded himself engaging in bestiality, and then shockingly
(and stupidly) distributed those recordings online.
In 2005, during an incident that has become known as “the Enumclaw horse sex case,”
Pinyan and two other men decided to include an stallion known as “Big Dick” in one
of their depraved acts of animal abuse.
Without getting into all the details, ever hear the expression “hung like a horse?”
It exists for a reason, one that Pinyan learned the hard way, after he ultimately succumbed
to death via perforated colon.
Given his death, he could not be charged criminally with anything; however, one of his accomplices,
54-year-old photographer James Michael Tait, pleaded guilty to trespassing on the farm
in which the fatal incident occurred.
The state of Washington, where the bestiality took place, subsequently made such acts (both
the act itself and the recording of it) formally illegal.
3.
The Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs
The Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs refer to Ukrainian serial killers Viktor Sayenko and Igor Suprunyuck,
both of whom were arrested and charged with 21 murders, as well as a third conspirator,
Alexander Hanzha, charged with two armed robberies.
Of the people included on this list, the Maniacs are among the most prolific in terms of both
animal and human abuse, in a relatively limited amount of time.
They committed as many, if not more crimes, in two months than Lake and Ng did in nearly
three years.
Bravo?
They photographed and videotaped acts of brutality against everything from cats to young women
to old men.
All of these horrors that made up their crime spree occurred from June through July 2007.
Of the victims videotaped or photographed, the most well-known was 48-year-old Sergei
Yatzenko, who is shown in a despicable video titled “3Guys1Hammer.”
In the video, the three thugs stab their helpless victim in the eye and stomach with a screwdriver
before hammering his head repeatedly.
Ultimately, the two murderers received life sentences in prison, while Hanzha received
nine years.
2.
The Murderers of Muammar Gaddafi
Muammar Gaddafi was the self-proclaimed “King of Kings of Africa,” and leader of Libya
for over forty years.
His October 2011, video-recorded murder by rebels is perhaps the most widely seen of
all these murders we’ve mentioned here.
Multiple angles of the events leading to his death have been seen on news reports and websites
around the world.
Gaddafi’s death is one of the more notable of recent history, enough so to be the subject
of a rather lengthy Wikipedia article, with videos of his murder remaining widely available.
The defeated Gaddafi is seen on the videos pleading with his captors, who shout and cheer
as he is manhandled by them.
He appears in various videos bloodied, partially stripped, possibly beaten and shot, and at
one point has something shoved between his butt cheeks, suggesting he may have even sexually
assaulted/sodomized by a stick or bayonet prior to finally succumbing to some number
of gunshot wounds.
Whether or not you consider Gaddafi a sponsor of terrorism, he was apparently captured and
summarily executed without trial, which makes how he died technically a criminal act.
1.
Luka Rocco Magnotta
The most recent video-taped crime of note is also one of the worst.
It appears to come from Canadian porn star Luka Rocco Magnotta, who is currently being
investigated for a wide array of sickening videotapes of him torturing kittens by suffocating
them in a vacuum cleaner, or by feeding them to a large snake.
But even more controversial is an eleven-minute recording titled “1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick,”
an obvious allusion to the most notable recording by the Ukrainian murderers listed above.
For as bad as the Ukrainian murder tape is, so too is the video of Magnotta purportedly
committing acts of murder, and even cannibalism and necrophilia, on someone named Lin Jun.
Later, a dismembered foot, likely belonging to Jun, was mailed to the national headquarters
of Canada’s Conservative Party, while a right foot was delivered to St. George’s
School, and a right hand to False Creek Elementary School.
Magnotta was ultimately captured in Berlin, having apparently fled from Canada, but he
has since been returned to his home country to face justice for his crimes.