7 Horrifying Unsolved Mass Murders
7. The Keddie Cabin Murders
Sue Sharp and her five children moved into Cabin 28 at the Keddie Resort in Sierra Nevada, California in early 1981. By the time April rolled around, the family had been there for two months and they had been enjoying themselves. That was until April 12th, when Sue's 14-year-old daughter returned to Cabin 28 after spending the night at a neighboring cabin. Upon entering the cabin, the young Sharp found her mother Sue, her 15-year-old brother, John, and his 17-year-old friend, Dana Wingate, all bound and gagged. They had been beaten and stabbed to death.
Thankfully, the three youngest Sharp children and one of their friends were found unharmed and asleep in another room. However, one person was missing from the cabin, and that was 13-year-old Tina Sharp. Her disappearance would stay a mystery over the next three years until her skull was found a short distance away from Cabin 28. It became obvious that Tina had died around the same time as a mother and brother. The whereabouts of the rest of her body remain a mystery. Police have never had a suspect in the Keddie Cabin murders, but they believe there were probably two killers.
They believe that the killers came back to the cabin with John Sharp and Dana Wingate, where they were spotted by neighbors who gave the details for the official police sketch, which is shown here. Police are still looking for information about the killers, and without it, the four murders in Cabin 28 will likely never be solved.
6. The Vilisca Axe Murders
In June of 1912, the City Council of the small town of Villisca, Iowa, was having a disagreement with the electric company. This led to the power company turning off all electricity to the town on the night of June 9th. It was sometime during that [?] night that someone broke into the Moore house and murdered Josiah and Sarah Moore, their four children, who ranged in age from 5 to 11, and two other girls, ages 8 and 12, who were visiting the Moore household on that fateful night.
All of them had been murdered in their sleep. The killer had taken an axe and whacked all his victims in the head multiple times. There were a handful of suspects in the case, one of them included Iowa state senator Frank F. Jones, who was angry with Josiah Moore over a business deal. Some people believe the senator paid a man named William Mansfield to commit the murders. Mansfield was a pretty nasty guy. He is suspected of murdering another family with an axe four days prior in Paola, Kansas.
Mansfield also murdered his wife, his child, his mother-in-law and his father-in-law, again with an axe. Another suspect was
serial killer Henry Lee Moore, who was active in the area at the time. Moore, who is not related to the victims, is believed to have killed at least 25 people, and he also liked to use an axe. A third suspect was Reverend George Jacqueline Kelly, who was a traveling preacher in the area at the time of the murders. He was even charged with the murders, but ultimately he was acquitted. While the case may never be solved, the house in Villisca is now a tourist attraction.
5. The Aurora Hammer Slayer
Sometime between midnight and 06:00 am on January 16th, 1984 a man broke into the Bennett home in Aurora, Colorado. 27-year-old Bruce Bennett became aware that someone was in the house, and he fought with the man on several different floors of his house and the stairway. Sadly, this wasn't a fight Bruce Bennett would win. He was found beaten with what police believe was a hammer, and his throat was slit. After murdering Bruce, the killer attacked his 26-year-old wife Debra, and his two daughters, 7-year-old Melissa and 3-year-old, Vanessa.
Both Debra and Melissa were sexually assaulted and bludgeoned to death. Vanessa was also beaten severely with a hammer, but survived the deadly home invasion. Sadly, this massacre wasn't the only home invasion committed by the unknown suspect. On January 4th 1984, they believe the killer broke into the home of James and Kimberly Haubenschild, and beat the couple into a coma with a hammer. Luckily, they survived the attack. Then, on January 10th, two women were beaten with a hammer in two separate attacks in their homes.
Donna Dixon was put into a coma, but survived. 50-year-old Patricia [Smith] wasn't as lucky, and she was killed in the attack. Currently, there's a John Doe warrant out for the suspect. A John Doe warrant is issued when the police know who committed the murders because of evidence like DNA, but they do not know the identity of the person. Using the DNA that was pulled from the crime scenes, a forensic artist was able to draw a sketch of how the man may look when he committed the crimes, and an age-progressed photo to show what he may look like now. Police are still looking for information and hope that one day this case will be solved.
4. The Hinterkaifeck Murders
63-year-old Andreas Gruber lived on a farm called Hinterkaifeck in Germany, with his 72-year-old wife, 35-year-old widowed daughter, and her two children, who were 2 and 7. On March 31st 1922, a maid, Maria Baumgartner, started working on the farm. Within a day of the new maids arrival, the Gruber family stopped appearing in public. On April 4th, their neighbors began to suspect something was wrong, so they went to investigate the farm, and they found the barn door locked. They broke in and found four bodies: Andreas Gruber, his wife, his daughter and his 7-year-old granddaughter.
In the farmhouse they found the bodies of the maid and the 2-year-old. They all had been killed with a pickaxe. Authorities believe that the four family members found in the barn were lured there one at a time and then murdered. The murderer then moved inside and killed the toddler and the maid. It is also believed that the killer stayed at the farm for a few days after the murders, in which the killer fed the farm animals, milked the cows and ate the Grubers' food. What is really strange about the murders is that Andreas Gruber had reported strange occurrences happening at the farm in the months leading up to the murders.
In fact, the reason Maria Baumgartner came to live at the farm was because the last maid had quit because she believed the farm was haunted. There are a number of theories as to who killed the Gruber family and their maid, but the case remains cold and it is unlikely that it will ever be solved.
3. The Yogurt Shop Murders
On the night of December 6th 1991, in Austin Texas, a police officer discovered that an "I Can't Believe It's Yogurt" shop was on fire. He called the Fire Department, who arrived a short time later and put out the fire. Inside the shop they found the bodies of 13-year-old Amy Ayres and 15-year-old Sarah Harbison, who were visiting the store. They also found the bodies of Sarah's sister, Jennifer Harbison, along with Eliza Thomas, both who were 17 years old and worked at the store. They were all stripped and then their clothes were used to bind their hands in their legs.
At least two of them had been raped, and all four girls had been shot in the head. Three of the bodies were stacked together in the storage room, but Amy's body was found in an adjacent room. The fire had been set to cover the crime, and for the most part it worked.What evidence the fire didn't destroy was contaminated by the sprinkler system and the Fire Department. The only piece of physical evidence the investigators were able to pull from the scene was DNA from the two girls who had been raped. Over the next few years, police took DNA samples from over 100 men, but no match was ever found.
In 1999, cold-case investigators were looking into the massacre and detectives started looking into a man named Maurice Pierce. On the night of the murder Pierce was 16 years old and he had been arrested for carrying a gun not too far from the yogurt shop. However, the caliber of his gun didn't match the gun that had been used in the murders and he was dismissed as a suspect back in 1991. They also interrogated one of Pierce's friends, Michael Scott, for over 20 hours. It concluded with Scott's confession to the murders, saying that he, Pierce, and two other men named Robert Springsteen and Forrest Wellborn had committed the rapes and murders. All four men were arrested, and once in custody, Springsteen also confessed to the murders. The problem was that the DNA pulled off the girls did not match any of the four men.
As a result, only Springsteen and Scott went to trial for the murders, because they had confessed. They were convicted in 2000, but in 2009 their convictions were overturned because it was proved that the police had coerced their confessions. The police believe the two men are guilty and believe the DNA belongs to a fifth man who was involved with the crime, which would explain why the DNA doesn't match any of the four suspects. Others believe that the police have tunnel vision for the men, and say that Springsteen and Scott were innocent men who spent nine years in prison while the real killers remain free.
2. The Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders
June 12th, 1977 was the first day of girl Scout Camp at Camp Scott in Oklahoma for 8-year-old Lori Farmer, 9-year-old Michelle Guse, and 10 year old Doris Milner. During the evening, there was a thunderstorm that forced the girls into their tent for the night. The next morning, a counselor went to get the girls from their tent, but found they were missing. Sadly, their bodies were found a short distance away. They had been raped, beaten and strangled, and then their bodies were stuffed into their sleeping bags. There was one main suspect and that was Gene Leroy Hart, who was a convicted rapist that had escaped from prison four years prior to the murders and was on the lam when the murders were committed.
Hart had grown up around the camp, and police believe he was in the area at the time of the murders. He was even charged with the murders, but was acquitted in March 1979. Hart was in prison for unrelated charges when he died of a heart attack a short time after his acquittal, and no one else has ever been charged in connection with the Oklahoma girl scout murders.
1. The Arellano Family Massacre
25-year-old Manuel Arellano, his 25-year-old wife Monica, their three children: 5-year-old Manuel Jr, 2-year-old Leticia, and 15-month-old Eduardo, along with Manuel's sister, 19-year-old Rosa Elia, were driving from their home in Villa de Fuente, Mexico, to San Angelo, which is just inside the Texas border. At some point the family got a flat tire and Manuel fixed it, but then a short distance later they got another flat. That was when a blonde-haired man with the cowboy hat driving a pickup truck stopped to help them. He offered to drive them the 30 miles to Sonora, and then back to their car with her fixed tire.
Sadly, the
mysterious stranger wasn't there to help them at all. Next morning, the bodies of the six members of the Arellano family were found scattered along a mile stretch of highway about eight miles from their car that still had a flat tire. They all had been shot and stabbed and the women had been raped. Sadly, only 5-year-old Manuel survived the massacre. In 2006, after an anonymous tip came in, police thought they were closer to identifying a suspect, but no arrests have ever been made, and the identity of the blonde cowboy remains a mystery.
