True Crime Brewery

Child molester and killer Westley Allan Dodd is remembered as one of the most evil men in modern history. What I find interesting about this case is how early in his life Dodd began to have sick urges and how his behavior progressed from exposing himself to murder virtually unchecked.

Peter Bergna picked up his wife Rinette from the airport and drove up Slide Mountain near their home to talk about their marital problems. According to Peter, the brakes on his truck malfunctioned, causing the truck to crash through a guardrail and nosedive off of an 800-foot cliff. Peter was lucky. He had somehow been expelled from the driver’s side window and landed without serious injury on the upper slope of the mountain. Rinette was not so lucky. Her broken body was found inside the crushed truck hundreds of feet below.

The murder of Andrew Bagby was a crime that shocked and brought terrible grief to the loved ones he left behind, especially his mother and father. Andrew was David and Kate Bagby’s only child. He was very well-liked with a promising future as a family physician.

Jack Unterweger was an evil man whose lust for violence was insatiable. His first known murder victim was Margret Schafer, an 18-year-old German girl. Unterweger would tell a jury that, at the moment of her killing, he had seen his mother reflected in her face and he acted out of a lifetime of rage. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. But in jail, Unterweger read voraciously and he began to write poetry, short stories, plays, and an autobiography.

Apparently hard-working and intelligent mother of two and registered nurse, Kristen Gilbert, was living the life of a middle-class soccer mom. She had a good job, a loving husband, and two children. She seemed a lot like the other Massachusetts suburbanites in her neighborhood, but she held sinister secrets that would eventually bubbled to the surface.

After suffering for years in an abusive marriage, Helle Crafts filed for divorce in the summer of 1986. Soon afterward, she disappeared. Her friends filed a missing person’s report, but her husband, Richard Crafts, gave various stories that Helle was off visiting relatives or that she just needed some time alone.

Middle-aged mother of two Susan Fassett was an unlikely victim in the love triangle that ended in her murder. Married to a policeman and an active member of the church choir, Susan had a reputation as an honest, upstanding person. After her death, the secrets revealed about her life came as a shock.

A Florida woman saw the state patrol car’s lights flashing behind her and wondered why she was being stopped. She didn’t think she was speeding, she later told investigators, but she pulled her car onto the southbound shoulder of Interstate 95 and waited as Trooper Tim Harris approached her car.

To say that Stella Nickell had a rough upbringing would be a huge understatement. She had a childhood of poverty, neglect, and abuse. At 16, she gave birth to a daughter. In the years that followed, she had numerous failed relationships, a failed marriage, and spent time in jail. In early 1974, when she was 32, she met Bruce Nickell and they married.

In 2012, Harold and Toni Henthorn celebrated their 12th wedding anniversary with a hiking trip in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. Toni fell off of a 100-foot cliff and died a horrible death. Harold told police that his wife was busy taking photos and must have slipped. He didn’t see exactly what had happened, he added, because he was using his cell phone at the time.