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As a boy growing up in Germany in the late 1880s, Hans Schmidt enjoyed some pretty disturbing past-times. If he wasn’t hanging out at the town’s slaughterhouse mesmerized by the carnage, he was slicing the heads off animals just to watch the blood flow. Years later, as a priest within the ranks of the Catholic church, he would go on to do far worse. By the time he was arrested in 1913, Father Schmidt had committed a long list of crimes, but it’s what he did to a young woman in New York City that sent him to the electric chair. To this day, he is the only Catholic priest in US history to be executed.

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Ever since the invention of the freezer, people have been using it for imaginative ways to store stuff. Why not? Why would you expect to find anything other than frozen dinners and stale ice cubes in there? But if you need safe and secure storage for things you don’t want people to find, there’s no better place. From the congressman who stashed almost $100k in frozen pie crust boxes to the 97-year-old woman whose granddaughter wanted to continue to collect government assistance, the freezer is the one place people don’t look.

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When two police officers arrived at the side entrance of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the early hours of March 18th, 1990, the night guard buzzed them in. They said they were responding to a disturbance call and had a few questions. Before he had time to react, the officers had him in handcuffs. Just over an hour later, the two men dressed in police uniforms exited the side door, loaded their car, and drove off with over half a billion dollars in artwork. Over 30 years later, the stolen items have never been found and no one has ever been charged. To this day, it’s the most valuable property theft of all time.

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It’s incredibly rare for astronauts to make headlines for anything other than their epic space adventures. But in 2007, astronaut Lisa Nowak changed that when she drove 900 miles across the country to threaten her astronaut ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. With a successful career in the US Navy and NASA’s elite space program, she wasn’t one to take rejection lightly.

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Like any small community, it's hard to keep anything secret. But in the late 1970s, the quiet town of Circleville, Ohio found out just how deadly secrets could be. In a series of anonymous letters that brings new meaning to the old saying, the pen is mightier than the sword, a mystery writer used whatever information they could find to terrorize their targets. The letters, which number in the hundreds, have ruined lives, destroyed families, and left the people of Circleville terrified of skeletons in the closet.

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In the only known case where a ghost helped police solve her own murder, the Greenbrier Ghost is not the only time the deceased have spoken from beyond to identify their killer. In their online blog, a victim documented the minutes leading up to his murder. And when a Russian spy was poisoned by a radioactive substance, he was able to tell officials where, how and when he was killed. Just when they thought they got away with murder, the dead had more to say.

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In 1968, while most of the world was looking toward space as the new frontier, a group of adventurers back on earth was embarking on an intrepid voyage of their own. The goal was to be the first person in history to sail around the world solo…. non-stop! It was called the Golden Globe Race and would test even the most experienced sailor, both physically and mentally. No assistance, total isolation, and mother nature constantly trying to sink them, racers risked it all for the excitement and glory. Some would die trying. Nine boats entered that year. Only one crossed the finished line.

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Most people have watched a high-speed police chase on television. There’s excitement and drama, but most of all, it’s the anticipation of how and when it will end that captures our attention. While most pursuits conclude with the driver pulling over and surrendering, some end in such spectacular fashion that even the police are left shocked. From driving straight off the edge of a cliff into the ocean to trying to get away backwards in a limo, some people will do anything to escape a hot pursuit.

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It can be a zoo out there, especially in the world of crime. Just when authorities think they’ve seen it all, they’re reminded that, no, they really haven’t. In 2018, a man was kidnapped and held for ransom in a hotel room… by an alligator. Not weird enough? How about a parrot that helped put a murderer behind bars? Or the Florida Gators fan that used an actual Florida gator as a weapon? So yeah…that happened. You know it’s a jungle out there when animals get involved.

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When the events leading up to someone’s death raise more alarm bells than the actual cause of death, you know there’s a rabbit hole just waiting to be explored. The more chaotic and random the victim’s movements are prior to their demise, the more challenging it can be to put the pieces together. If the case doesn’t go cold, that is. The strange last days of both Blair Adams and John Wheeler top the list of bizarre cases of erratic behavior that still have investigators puzzled.

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