The Emerald Order

He looked like a ghost in plain clothes: gray, forgettable, swallowed by Soviet streets. Yet Andrei Chikatilo, the “Butcher of Rostov,” turned that invisibility into his greatest disguise.

For over a decade he prowled train stations and bus depots, preying on the vulnerable while a state too proud to admit the truth looked the other way. His trial revealed not just a killer, but a system rotting from denial.

Full write-up here.

What do you think?

• How do you interpret the Soviet state’s refusal to acknowledge a serial killer in its midst?

The Lure of the Death House Landlady

What if your next landlord turned out to be your undoing? Dorothea Helen Puente, born 1929 in Redlands, California, and later dubbed the Death House Landlady, pulled off just that.

She presented herself as a benign matron running a cozy Sacramento boarding house for the elderly, mentally ill, and addicted... until the bodies started surfacing in her yard, buried like secrets waiting to rot. Her crimes unfolded throughout the 1980s, culminating in her arrest in November 1988 and fading into her death in prison in 2011.

The Making of a Predator

Puente’s childhood reads like a tragedy. Her father, a cotton picker plagued by tuberculosis, was abusive and often threatened to kill himself in front of his children. He never carried it out; the disease claimed him when she was eight. Her mother died soon after in a car crash, and the siblings…

What kind of predator slips through America’s seams, living under countless names and identities, leaving bodies in deserts, motels, and culverts? Meet Stephen Peter Morin, “The Chameleon”, an American drifter born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1951, who stalked young women across state lines until his capture in December 1981.

The Ghost in the Machine

Morin grew up in poverty, abandoned to drugs and petty crime before he could vote. By his teens he was stealing cars, cycling through juvenile detention in Florida, and slipping out of reform schools like they were revolving doors.

The pattern hardened: escape, vanish, reappear under another false name. In 1976, his escalation was undeniable; he lured a 14-year-old girl under the guise of needing help, bound her to the ceiling, and tortured her for hours before dumping her alive in a shopping center. From then on, his life became a blur of aliases, Rich…

In 1929, Düsseldorf’s streets had become a place of whispers. Someone was attacking without pattern or warning, leaving survivors bloodied and witnesses terrified. The man behind it, Peter Kürten, would later admit he hunted for the thrill of it, choosing victims on impulse and feeding an appetite that had been growing since childhood.

Background

Peter Kürten was born May 26, 1883, in Mülheim am Rhein near Cologne, the third of thirteen children in a violently abusive, impoverished family. His father, an alcoholic, beat the family and was imprisoned for molesting Kürten’s 13-year-old sister.

Early accounts describe attempted drownings of playmates in childhood, repeated running away, and early immersion in petty crime. These conditions formed the scaffold for a pattern of cruelty and sexual sadism that appears in the contemporary case literature and later analyses.

Modus operandi

If you somehow missed this one during the height of true crime’s Netflix boom, consider this your official summons.

Making a Murderer is a two-part true crime docuseries released by Netflix. The first installment premiered in 2015 and consists of 10 episodes, while Part 2 followed in 2018, adding another 10 episodes that continue and expand the story. Though labeled as one series, they cover two distinct stages of legal proceedings, with a noticeable shift in tone, focus, and cast of characters.

The documentary centers around a man from rural Wisconsin and the legal cases that come to define nearly his entire life. What begins as a story of exoneration quickly spirals into a deeper examination of the justice system, police procedure, public perception, and the fine line between guilt and reasonable doubt.

What the Documentary Got Right

• Long-form storytelling: Making a Murderer helped revolutionize how true crime was delivered. Its episodic, serialized format gave viewers…

  
  

Henry Louis Wallace did not look like a monster. He looked like someone you might trust. And that's exactly what made him lethal.

Born in Barnwell, South Carolina, in 1965, Wallace was raised by a single mother in poverty. He endured emotional abuse, and by many accounts, developed deep-seated anger toward women, especially Black women, like his mother, who were struggling under the weight of survival. After a stint in the Navy, Wallace began drifting. He developed a crack addiction and found low-wage jobs in fast food, working as a manager at Taco Bell in Charlotte, North Carolina, where several of his victims also worked.

Between 1990 and 1994, Wallace murdered at least ten women in Charlotte, and one earlier in his hometown. All were young Black women, mostly in their late teens or twenties. All were people he knew: coworkers, friends, girlfriends of friends. Some considered him a brother…

This week’s entry drags us into the mud, both literal and moral. Robert “Willie” Pickton was a Canadian pig farmer and prolific serial killer who preyed on some of society’s most vulnerable. By the time the truth came to light, the scale of his crimes had shaken the entire nation.

THE VICTIMS

Pickton primarily targeted women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, many of whom were sex workers or struggling with addiction.

The systemic failure to prioritize missing person cases involving marginalized women allowed his crimes to continue undetected for nearly two decades. He lured them to his farm under the pretense of drugs or money.

In 1997, a woman escaped from Pickton’s farm, bleeding and handcuffed, and ran to a nearby road for help. She told police that he had tried to kill her. Charges were filed, but later dropped when the case was deemed too weak to prosecute. That woman’s…

They called her The Angel of Death, but Beverly Allitt wasn’t delivering mercy, she was manufacturing tragedy.

In 1991 during a 3 month period, this British pediatric nurse abused her position of trust at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, deliberately harming, and in some cases killing, the very children she was supposed to protect. Her weapons? Insulin overdoses, air embolisms, and deliberate tampering with medical equipment.

Four children died. Three more narrowly escaped with their lives after Allitt’s murder attempts failed. Six others suffered grievous bodily harm; injuries that ranged from seizures to collapsed lungs, cardiac arrests, and brain damage. In some cases, children who survived were left with lifelong disabilities.

Her Motive? Allitt’s suspected driving force: Munchausen syndrome by proxy; a rare psychological disorder where a caregiver fabricates or causes illness in others to gain attention, sympathy, or a sense of power. In Allitt’s case, investigators believe she thrived on…

Few cases in true crime have stirred the pot like The Staircase. Was it a tragic accident? A brutal murder? Or a narrative twisted by both sides until no one could tell fact from fiction?

In 2001, novelist Michael Peterson called 911 to report his wife, Kathleen, had fallen down the stairs. What followed was a legal saga that unraveled layer by layer; accusations of murder, questions about Peterson’s private life, a suspicious death in his past, and a courtroom drama that played out over years.

The Staircase doesn’t just tell a story, it drags you straight into it. Filmed in real time with rare access to Peterson’s defense team, this docuseries changed how people saw true crime on screen. It blurred the lines between documentary and narrative, raising questions about bias, media influence, and how justice actually works.

So, let’s open the case file:

❓If you’ve watched it, what stood out…

Some killers hunt for power. Others for pleasure. Sheila LaBarre hunted for control. And she made her victims believe they deserved every second of it.

Operating out of a New Hampshire farmhouse that looked like the setting of a folk song, LaBarre lured vulnerable young men into her life: men with low self-esteem, mental health struggles, or intellectual disabilities. She promised love, sex, shelter, even salvation. What they got instead was manipulation, psychological torture, and brutal violence.

LaBarre claimed she was on a divine mission to punish pedophiles, a twisted self-appointed vigilante with no proof her victims were guilty of anything at all. Her “motive”, if you can call it that, was a lethal mix of control, delusion, and sadism. Prosecutors argued it wasn’t about protecting anyone. It was about isolating, dominating, and ultimately destroying men she deemed weak enough to trap.

By the time authorities uncovered her crimes in…

What started as a lighthearted documentary about party clowns takes a sharp left turn when filmmaker Andrew Jarecki stumbles across a far darker story: the downfall of a seemingly ordinary Long Island family.

Arnold Friedman, a respected teacher and father of three, is arrested after a federal investigation uncovers child pornography in his home. Soon after, he and his youngest son Jesse are accused of abusing children in after-school computer classes held in their basement. As the case builds, the Friedman family begins video recording themselves, capturing their own unraveling in real time.

Through a mix of interviews, court records, and deeply personal home footage, Capturing the Friedmans offers an unfiltered look at a family in crisis. But it’s not just about the allegations. It’s about the way memory distorts, the way fear spreads, and how justice can become tangled in emotion, pressure, and doubt.

There are no easy takeaways. No…

“To save their souls, I had to kill them.”

John List was the kind of man who looked respectable on paper. A devout Lutheran. Army veteran. Father of three. Crisp suit. Accounting degree. But on one quiet November day in 1971, he lined up the members of his family like dominoes and knocked them down one by one. His wife. His mother. His teenage children. Each murdered in cold blood inside their Victorian home.

Then he disappeared.

He didn't vanish in a panic. He planned it. Wrote letters. Canceled deliveries. Turned off the lights. Played classical music over the intercom. Even adjusted the thermostat so the bodies wouldn’t decompose too quickly. Then he walked out the door and lived under a new name for 18 years.

His motive?

You don’t have to care about football to get pulled into this one. I didn’t. Still don’t. But Killer Inside tells a story that’s bigger than sports — one of fame, secrets, violence, identity, and the wreckage left behind.

Before clicking play, I didn’t even know his name. By the end, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

This doc walks the line between psychological profile and media storm autopsy, and whether you watched it for the brain science, the court case, or the human unraveling, there’s plenty to dig into.

Did Killer Inside answer your questions, or leave you with more?

Did it handle Hernandez’s story ethically, or fall into sensationalism?

Some killers want freedom. Others want revenge. Isakin Drabbad claimed he wanted psychiatric care.

In 2005, Drabbad brutally murdered his girlfriend, Helle Christiansen. But this wasn’t just a fatal stabbing. He decapitated her, placed her head in the kitchen, and either staged or committed acts of sexual violence post mortem. He then cooked parts of her body and admitted to eating them.

When asked why, Drabbad said he believed killing someone was the only way to access long-term mental health treatment. He had been in and out of care for years, but said the system failed him. So he forced its hand in the most horrifying way possible.

So now the questions shift:

🟩 Was this a desperate plea from someone slipping through the cracks, or a manipulative excuse crafted after the fact?

This brief but gripping documentary follows one man caught in the crosshairs of a criminal investigation. It’s a real case with unexpected twists, strange timing, and a search for truth that pushes the limits of what counts as evidence. At just under an hour, it’s a fast watch that still leaves a mark.

What stood out to you the most after watching?

Do you believe our justice system is designed to catch mistakes?

If you were accused of something you didn’t do, how confident are you that the system would get it right?

Dr. Harold Shipman wasn’t the type of killer you’d expect to rack up over 200 suspected victims. He didn’t stalk alleys or leave ransom notes — he made house calls.

As a trusted family GP in Hyde, England, Shipman used his medical license to quietly inject elderly patients with lethal doses of diamorphine. Most died in their homes, in what appeared to be peaceful passings. But beneath the surface was a long pattern of forged records, falsified wills, and an ego large enough to play god with the people who trusted him most.

Motive Monday asks the question: Why?

Was it about control? A need to feel powerful after witnessing his own mother die under morphine care? Was it financial — or simply the thrill of getting away with it, again and again? How do we even begin to measure motive in someone who never confessed? Drop your thoughts below.

🟩Do…

Some motives are messy, impulsive, and emotional. Others are cold, patient, and razor sharp.

Today’s case falls squarely in the second camp — a story where heartbreak simmered into poison, and love curdled into calculated murder. But let’s talk motive, not method.

How do we draw the line between a crime of passion and a premeditated act of vengeance?

Can long-held resentment ever be “understood” — or does time erase empathy?

Do you think Singh’s motive was rooted in obsession, ego, cultural expectations... or something else entirely?

Fear of punishment is one thing. But is it ever a reason for murder?

Joshua Phillips claimed he killed 8-year-old Maddie Clifton not out of rage, not out of cruelty—but out of fear. Not fear of her… but of what his father would do if he found out she was at the house.

Does that make it more disturbing? Or less?

This wasn’t a snap moment of violence that ended in a panicked 911 call—it was a cover-up that lasted days. So here’s where I pass the mic to you, Emerald Order:

🟩 Do you believe him?

A pizza delivery, a collar bomb, and a scavenger hunt from hell.

Evil Genius isn’t your average true crime binge. It starts with a man walking into a bank with a bomb locked around his neck—and somehow, things only get weirder from there. Manipulation, mental illness, conspiracy, and a trail of lies buried under decades of dysfunction.

Some people say Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong was a criminal mastermind. Others say she was a deeply disturbed woman used as a pawn in a much bigger game.

🧠 Do you think she was the “evil genius” the title suggests?

💣 Was the collar bomb heist really as chaotic and improvised as it seemed?

Jerry Brudos didn’t just kill—he collected. Shoes, underwear, photographs, and worse.

His case leaves behind a thousand questions, but let’s start with just a few:

🔹 When does a fetish cross the line into danger?

🔹 Could early intervention have prevented his crimes, or was Brudos always headed down this path?

🔹 Do you think the media’s lurid focus on his shoe obsession helped or hurt the understanding of his actual crimes?

Some documentaries leave you disturbed. Abducted in Plain Sight leaves you staring at your screen, whispering “What the hell did I just watch?”—and then rewinding to make sure you actually heard that right.

Released in 2017 and streaming on Netflix, this jaw-dropping documentary tells the story of Jan Broberg, who was kidnapped twice in the 1970s by her neighbor and family friend, Robert Berchtold. But “kidnapped” doesn’t begin to cover it. Berchtold didn’t just groom Jan—he manipulated her entire family with such eerie ease, it feels like psychological warfare. We’re talking aliens, seduction, blackmail, and one of the most bizarre cases of familial denial you’ll ever witness.

It’s not just the crime that’s shocking—it’s the trust, the complicity, the complete collapse of boundaries. And the way it's told? Calm, matter-of-fact… and more terrifying for it.

🗣 Have you seen Abducted in Plain Sight?

What stuck with you most—the alien abduction narrative, the…

What drives someone to murder? For Donna Perry, prosecutors painted a picture of deep resentment, identity turmoil, and cold calculation.

Three women—Yolanda Sapp, Nickie Lowe, and Kathleen Brisbois—were found dead in 1990. The case sat unsolved for over two decades… until DNA from a gun seized in 2012 pointed to someone who no longer existed. Douglas Perry had become Donna Perry—and the defense claimed Donna wasn’t responsible for what Douglas had done.

But a jailhouse confession painted a darker motive: jealousy. Perry allegedly resented sex workers for their ability to have children, something she could not. The prosecution went further, accusing her of transitioning to throw off suspicion—a radical reinvention to outrun her crimes.

⚖️ The jury didn’t buy the split-self argument. Perry was convicted on all counts.

So let’s discuss:

He blamed a demon dog. He later recanted.

He claimed it was part of a cult. He later denied that, too.

So—what was the real motive behind David Berkowitz’s killing spree?

Was it untreated mental illness? A thirst for attention? A need to feel powerful after a life of rejection and isolation? Or do you believe there’s more to the cult theory than he let on?

📌 Do you think Berkowitz wanted to be caught—or was he just sloppy?

Ever get too cozy with a true crime show and then feel weird about it later? Same. This week’s Watchlist Wednesday pick is The Thing About Pam — a campy, darkly comedic six-episode miniseries starring Renée Zellweger as the notorious Pam Hupp. It’s based on a real murder, narrated by the one and only Keith Morrison, and somehow manages to be hilarious and horrifying.

It’s not a documentary, it’s a dramatized dive into sociopathy, manipulation, and Dateline’s most memeable villain.

Is it okay to laugh when the absurdity is real?

Or does the tone undercut the tragedy?

Tell me what you think:

Over the course of eleven years, cattle breeder and self-styled shaman Ahmad Suradji murdered 42 women and girls in Indonesia. The youngest was 11. His victims came to him seeking charms for love, beauty, or good fortune. What they got instead was ritual execution, strangled while buried waist-deep in a sugarcane field.

Suradji claimed his father’s ghost visited him in a dream with a command: kill 70 women, drink their saliva, and grow stronger with each death. Each body was buried facing his house to “channel” power back to him. Some of the women were brought by friends or family, unknowingly delivering loved ones to their deaths.

His motive wasn’t rage. It wasn’t revenge. It was supernatural ambition — a twisted pursuit of status and strength.

Do you believe Suradji was a con man who believed his own con? Or just a predator using ritual as a cover?

Let’s talk…

Okay. We need to talk. I watched Love Has Won about a year ago and I’m still not the same. This doc isn’t just disturbing—it’s metaphysically offensive. Cults are usually bizarre, but this one? This one is wrapped in sparkles, live-streamed delusions, and a woman called “Mother God” who thought she was the reincarnation of Jesus, Marilyn Monroe, and a sentient cosmic lightbeam or whatever the ether told her that day.

There’s a mummified corpse, a blue face, galactic ascension babble, and a quote so deranged I actually yelled at my screen:

“To the untrained mind, this may look like alcoholism…”

Excuse me??

This three-part doc on Max messed me up. Every cloud looks suspicious now. And the color blue? Forever cursed.

Herbert Mullin believed he was saving California from a devastating earthquake. Between October 1972 and February 1973, he killed 13 people in a brutal spree fueled by untreated paranoid schizophrenia, apocalyptic delusions, and the eerie conviction that human sacrifices were needed to satisfy Mother Earth.

Mullin’s victims ranged from hitchhikers and a priest to a mother and her children. The variety in victims and methods made his crimes hard to track—especially since another killer, Edmund Kemper, was simultaneously active in the same region. Mullin confessed that he was following telepathic commands, often hearing the voice of his father instructing him to kill.

Though diagnosed as mentally ill and previously committed to psychiatric facilities, Mullin was ultimately found legally sane at trial. He died in prison in 2022, denied parole eight times.

🕵️‍♀️ What do you think—does Mullin’s delusional belief system change the way we interpret his crimes? Should his mental…

Today’s Motive Monday is a wild one. Dana Sue Gray killed to fund a shopping addiction so intense it cost people their lives. She wasn’t struggling to survive — she was chasing the high of luxury malls and boutique spending.

What do you think — is this greed taken to its extreme, or something deeper? Compulsive disorder? Sociopathy wrapped in silk? Drop your thoughts below — let's break it down like a clearance rack after Black Friday. 🧵👇

This week’s Motive Monday isn’t about shock value — it’s about warning signs ignored, systems failed, and what happens when delusion turns deadly.

Here’s a partial case breakdown: Richard Chase didn’t kill out of greed, revenge, or ideology. He killed because he believed the Nazis were turning his blood into powder via poison hidden under his soap dish. This wasn't metaphor—it was delusion. *Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Chase was in and out of institutions, deemed “not a danger” despite a growing fixation on blood. In 1977, he murdered six people in a span of one month in Sacramento, California, committing acts so brutal they earned him the nickname The Vampire of Sacramento. But beneath the horror lies a deeper tragedy: a man clearly unwell, clearly spiraling, and repeatedly released back into society without adequate care or oversight. His story isn’t one of evil genius—it’s a cautionary tale about what happens when mental illness…