If crimes only happened in the movies, where do you think they get the inspiration from? The list below has a story that inspired Borderland. Most of the crimes are not reported to the police, and most reported crimes are not solved. The real stories listed here from Reddit include tales of murderous family members, chainsaw deaths, and small-time serial killers.
From user shehulkie: “Cyber Rape: There was a guy who went online pretending to be this woman he didn’t like and told a stranger to come to rape her under the guise of it being a fantasy of hers. Crazy stuff.”
The Dead Man in the Car
From user u/jacyerickson: “I drove past a car on my way to class (in college). I always took the back roads to avoid traffic, so it was a bit odd to have a car parked on the side of the road. When I came back from class it was still there.
I drove by a bit more slowly and saw what I thought was someone sleeping in there. I thought that was odder still, but maybe someone was traveling and decided to pull off to take a rest and just fell asleep longer than they planned? Nope, next morning I read in the paper that a woman killed her husband and dumped his body and the car on that back road.”
Neighbors complained Starting a Lawnmower in an Apartment
From user u/Your_Friend_Steve:” He[my father] was working the night shifts around apartments when he received a noise complaint. Since this was nothing unusual, he wasn’t in a big hurry to get over there. The only thing weird about the call-out was that the neighbors said it sounded like someone was starting a lawnmower in an apartment. But dispatch thought it was just weird music. So he gets over to the apartment building and walked up to the unit to find the door open a bit.
Before I go on with the incident, let me tell you about the occupants of this apartment. They were a mid-twenties married couple. The husband had just returned from being deployed and the wife was an accountant at someplace that’s not important to the story. Now, while the husband was still overseas, he found out that his wife was cheating on him… heavily. So when he got back, he did what any normal guy would do; he bought her a new dress and they went out to have an expensive dinner.
While they were out, he made sure she got extra drunk. And as a precaution, he slipped some sleeping pills into her food/drink. They left and she passed out in the car. He drove her home and carried her up to the living room, laid her on the couch, and took off all her clothes. He then went to the garage, grabbed his handy-dandy chainsaw, and ran back to his loving wife. He then started the chainsaw, and “butterflied her from cooch to chin” (my father’s words). After slicing his bride open, he went onto the back porch and “french-kissed his Mossberg” (committed suicide with his shotgun).
So when my father knocked on the door and it opened a bit more, he saw the bloody mess that was formerly their living room. He called for backup, and they got there pretty quick. They entered the apartment and after clearing, a few had to leave the area because of the wife’s corpse.
Guy killed Girl as she was Pregnant
From user u/brewbrew : “Something happened to a friend of mine actually. She had a small rebound fling with a guy, both 19 years old. She finds out she’s pregnant with this guy’s child. She sends text messages to friends on May 10th, 2006 before she goes over to this guy’s house to talk about their situation, which he is already aware of. She is never seen or heard from again. Her car turns up at a random strip mall in a busy area.
Fingers are obviously pointing at the particular guy. Police are on his house like stink on shit. They find a hacked up, blood-soaked mattress. Guy says she was menstruating. They find two blood-spattered swords, as well as blood, spatter on the walls and ceiling. They have him on tape buying cleaning supplies from a local Walgreens, and blood traces in the back of his SUV.
He turns himself in to authorities because he knows he’s going to be apprehended. He pleads not guilty and maintains innocence the entire time. The Court of public opinion has already hanged him pre-trial. He is convicted of second-degree murder, given 80 years (50 years minimum) in state prison. Guy has tried to appeal several times and has been categorically denied each time. He still maintains innocence. A body has also never shown up and nobody has any idea why he won’t give the location of the body up. I’m still convinced there was someone else involved.”
Angel of Death case
From user u/Chilly773: “In my hometown in Indiana, there was ash of elderly folks dying at a rather alarming rate in the local hospital. It took local, state, and federal officials almost two years to discover that it was an ‘angel of death’ case. The killer was a male nurse named Orville Lynn Majors. It was reported that he murdered patients who were demanding, whiny, or disproportionately added to his workload.”
The crime that inspired Borderland
From user u/Stingerc: “I live in a town on the US/Mexico border and there are 2 that really stand out. One happened on the US side and the other on the Mexican side. I’m including both just because of how much exchange goes on in between the town and how close they are. Most people have family and roots on either side and both cases caused a lot of stirring on either side of the border.
The first happened when I was a kid. A college kid named Mark Kilroy was partying in Matamoros, the town on the Mexican side. Back then it was a huge spring break spot. Basically all the kids who came to South Padre Island also drove into Mexico for cheap drinks, drugs, etc.
This guy was trying to score some drugs, he got on a van with some guys who said they could get him drugs. Nobody ever saw him alive again. I remember his picture was on the news every day, and his parents were always on, asking for help finding his son.
About a month later, a guy in Mexico ran a police check point and police chased him to a remote ranch. They found a drug stash house and after interrogating the guy and other at the ranch, they confessed that Kilroy and others were buried there. What they found was pretty gruesome. Apparently the drug gang that ran the ranch were into black magic and performed human sacrifices. In total, they found the sacrificed remains of 14 other people beside Kilroy. Apparently they drug gang believed that the human sacrifices gave them magical powers and protected them. Police in both sides of the borders were soon arresting people on either side of the border, including a pretty young student, Sara Alderete, at a local university here in Brownsville. She was the girlfriend of the guy and “Priest” of the clan, Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo.
They even made a film loosely based on this crime, Borderland
The other big case happened in Brownsville. I wasn’t living there when it happened but got tons of emails and calls about it.
It involved a couple, John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho. These two got high on glue or spray paint, then while high began to hallucinate and choked and then decapitated their 3 children.
Here is the gist of what i heard, while he and Camacho were high, Rubio killed the kids hamsters, thinking they were possessed by demons. He killed them with a hammer. One of the kids saw this and started screaming.
Rubio and Camacho then became convinced demons had also possessed the children. They began to choke, stab and decapitate the 3 kids. After they did this, they ran out and flagged down a passing police cruiser, who seeing them disheveled and terrified went to their apartment, and found the gruesome scene. More details on the case“
The Creepy kid from the class
From user Kagrenasty: “So I took a terrorism class my senior year of college to round out my credits, and there was a really outspoken kid who made the professor and all the other students feel threatened by his general demeanor.
A year later I read in the paper that a 23-year-old man pulled out a gun, shot three people in a movie theater, put the gun on the concession stand, and calmly waiting for the police to arrive. Was tried, convicted, and thrown in a mental institution. It was the creepy kid from that class.”
Upto 300 sexual partners
From user u/rederic: “Nushawn Williams knew he was HIV positive, had unprotected sex with at least 75 people — including a 13-year-old girl.
Nushawn Williams also known as Shyteek Johnson, is an American convicted sex offender who admitted in 1997 to having unprotected sex with numerous girls and women after having been told that he was HIV positive. New York state and local public health officials stated that Williams had sex with up to 47 women in Chautauqua County and at least 28 more in New York City. Williams, who has boasted openly in the media about his sexual promiscuity, said in a news interview that his actual number of sexual partners was up to 300.
Roommate was stealing money
From user ryanoh: “My first year in college this happened at a popular apartment complex. One guy thought his roommate was stealing money from him and he told his roommate that he was going out of town for spring break, but really he was waiting in his room with a crowbar waiting to bash the guy when he came in to take his stuff.
His roommate walks in, the guy jumps out with a crowbar, roommate pulls out a gun and kills him. The first guy’s mother calls the police in town to see what’s going on since her son never came home for spring break, and the roommate calmly lets the police in and leads them right to the body that’d been laying on the bed for like a week.”
Neighborhood filled with murderers and rapists
From user u/listen_hooker: “Last year there was a man who beat the ever-loving shit out of his GF that was leaving him, popped out her eyes, and left her in a hotel room – he then went to a creek nearby and slit his own throat.
There was also a rapist who struck twice – the first time he was apprehended with a list of women who he intended to rape from the local University. He was later released, and then kidnapped and raped a woman that worked at a sex store in town. She somehow got away as he was driving her into the hills and was found naked and crying in a suburb.
There was also a murder that my friend witnessed on the highway. A man shot his friend in the head while on the side of the highway as my friend passed by. He said all of a sudden he looked over and the car window just went red. He ended up having to pull over to a gas station and report it. This man who shot his friend was chased by the police and took a bystander hostage. I believe he was shot as well, but lived.”
Fortune Teller gets murdered by her client
From user u/Kneepee: “A woman and her daughter were murdered in their home. They were stabbed to death and the murderer mutilated their faces. The woman was a fortune teller, there were some rumors floating around that the murderer might’ve been one of her clients. I don’t know if they ever found the murderer.”
Only one boy Survived
From user u/gypsycamptrash:” Not creepy but very sad, but there was a mother with four girls aged 12, 11, seven and five. She was having a custody battle with her husband, and I guess she was losing, so she told the girls that they were having a slumber party in the kitchen, and turned on the gas burners and set the house on fire. It didn’t work out so well for her, because she lived, but all four girls died from smoke inhalation. Her one remaining child, a teenage boy escaped the fire. The mother’s on death row in Chowchilla right now.
News articles say different places, but it happened in San Jacinto/Perris where I live, and they are buried in the Perris Valley Cemetery.
I periodically go to their graves to visit them. They are in a row, with two headstones. Four cute little angels with smiling pictures. Cut down by a selfish woman who wanted revenge on her ex.”
Murder with a Flute
From Redditor welltechnically: “As explained by my Law Studies teacher in high school: Back in the 80s, at my high school, there were a couple of band nerds crushing on each other. They would walk home through the park together. One day, walking through the park right behind my school, they stopped and sat down to talk and hang out for a bit. Apparently, the girl could tell the guy was going to make a move, and like the SAP the poor thing probably was, she tried to distract him by playing her flute.
He got annoyed and grabbed the flute from her while she was playing it, and the flute snagged her face, effectively causing a torrent of blood to rain down and make them both start freaking out. He basically freaked and beat her to death with the flute. The story after that wasn’t too clear, it’s been years since it was told to me, but I recall the point for discussing it was search warrants. The cops searched the kid’s house looking for the murder weapon (he’d thrown the flute in a pond or something along those lines) and saw blood in the bathtub drain. The warrant didn’t cover the pipes of the house, so when the cop extracted the damning evidence, the case ended up getting thrown out due to the technicality. Apparently the guy moved to Texas.”
The neighbor of Child Beauty Queen JonBenet Ramsey
From user u/unknown: “JonBenet Ramsey was my neighbor when he was murdered. She was like 5 or 6, the same age as my sister and I was about 8. We were acquainted with the family because they attended the same church. The murder occurred during a Christmas party in their own home. The girl was found in the basement tied up with a fractured skull and strangled. The weird thing is that the case is still open and there is speculation that the murder was somehow motivated by the competitive nature of the beauty pageants that the young girl was successful in.”
Read about the JonBenet Ramsey case.
Ex-Boyfriends shoots 4 then kills himself
From user u/unknown : “Not my home town, but 2 boys that I went to high school with, as well as a girl that went to another high school in town, were on their way to the airport in Lethbridge, AB, to come home for Christmas, and there was a fourth girl in the car. Her ex-boyfriend followed them and then ran them off the road.
The girl that was driving got out of her car to see what the guy’s problem was, and he shot her three times and then proceeded to shoot his ex-girlfriend and the two boys that I went to high school with. It was one of the boy’s 22nd birthday and only 10 days before Christmas. After he shot everyone, he killed himself. The girl who was driving survived being shot three times, saw her boyfriend die on his birthday, as well as three of her best friends, and then crawled to a cell phone and called the police. She’s amazing!!”
The Snuggler and The Shoe Burgler
From user u/popiyo: “About a year ago fairly small suburban college town had a crime streak by a guy known as “The Snuggler.” Sounds pretty harmless, and he kinda was. Basically this guy broke into multiple apartments late at night and just got in bed and tried to go to sleep with random college girls. He didn’t touch them or say anything, and when they woke up he just ran. Happened 4 or 5 times before he was finally caught.
Another creepy crime the year before. The Shoe Burglar. This guy was going around campus stealing shoes. Cops eventually caught him, he had dozens of pairs of shoes and other personal items. They think he was jerking off while wearing other peoples’ shoes.”
Women cut her boyfriend into pieces
From user u/cupcake_overlord: “I live in a really small town in PA, nothing ever goes on here. I mean nothing. The most exciting thing we have around here is a bowling alley. Safe to say when I heard this story I was beyond shocked.
So apparently, in this small town in the seventies, this woman’s boyfriend goes missing. Nobody can find him anywhere. I bet you can guess what happens next. Turns out, she got pissed at him for something, chopped his body up and threw the pieces everywhere. Oh, and did I mention this lady was a local butcher? And that her home was right behind the store where she worked? That’s a gruesome thought, and a lot of people stopped going to that store after this was all brought to light.
They found her out because she had left the body in the tub too long before disposing of it, and the blood and gore leaked everywhere.
They found most of his body, but they never did find his left arm or his head. They even drained a dam that’s close to the town looking for it, but it wasn’t there. I’m now afraid I’m just going to stumble upon a skeletal hand or his skull somewhere now, although I know it’s not likely.
The kicker is that this lady apparently got off scot-free! She pleads insanity, and they just let her go, and she skipped town. That’s terrifying to think about. Like she could just come back again, or do the same to some other poor chump in another town. I know the seventies were a different time, but c’mon!”
Former student hacked his parents
From user u/Wirenutt: “A guy in his 20’s, who I used to coach in little league, hack his parents up into parts small enough to stuff down the vent pipe of the septic tank. He was still working on chopping up his father when his sister came looking for the parents and found what was left of dad – pretty much just his torso. The cops dug up the septic tank and found most of the mom’s parts and the missing parts of dad. He had been working at this for several days.
He was a perfectly nice kid, but according to my son, he apparently got drunk one night and fell and whacked his head pretty hard. He was not the same person afterwards. Dad was a cigar-chomping, loudmouth, misogynistic twat, and mom was a waifish, passive doormat.
I actually ran into the people who bought the house a few years later, and it turned out they had no idea what had happened there. No one told them. Ugh. You should have seen the looks on their faces. I think they tried to sue the real estate agency”
Guy shoots himself in the head
From user u/DrPanties: “Well, I live in a small college town called New Concord (Ohio). One day a man in Zanesville (20 minutes away from New Concord) who owned over 30-40 exotic animals let all the animals out, covered himself in chicken guts, and shot himself in the head. The animals escaped and were running rampant throughout Muskingum county.
Schools in the area were closed for the day, a tiger was hit and killed in the freeway, and sadly, the cops were called and told to shoot any animal on contact. They were dealing with lions, tigers, a bear, monkeys, etc. But literally 17 endangered tigers, handfuls of lions. There was virtually no way to save them or put them down and transfer them somewhere else”
The attempt to Kill English Teacher
From user u/Azov237: “When I was a sophomore in high school, I had a kid that at behind me in English. This guy wasn’t very smart and had been held back a grade. He wasn’t too fond of the English teacher, but none of us really liked her anyway.
The guy was your typical high school pot-smoking slacker, and his sister had the creepiest crush on me for years going all the way back to second grade. He knew this and was always pretty nice to me so he didn’t make his sister mad at him. I would help him out every now and then on assignments to keep him with a passing grade. Anyway one day he apparently had a confrontation with a said English teacher that apparently ticked him off.
The next day, he turns in his writing assignment that says “die bitch” over and over. He excuses himself to go to the restroom and tells me to go to the lab and grab a spare textbook for him. She finds the journal entry before he returns and notifies the truancy officer. The officer tracks him down about 15 feet from the door to our classroom with a loaded 38 special. Without a doubt, I know what he was going to do. He didn’t want me in there. If she hadn’t thumbed through the papers, she would have never known.”
“Stay Charming”
From user u/Bryceybryce: “When I was young, I had a pediatrician, as we all do. Now this pediatrician was a really good guy and every time I would leave his office he would say to me, ‘Stay charming.’ Mind you, I was three or four at the time.
One day I stopped going to this pediatrician, and I asked my parents why I was no longer going to my favorite doctor of all time. They told me that he had moved away and I could not go to him anymore. What actually happened, however, was that he had had a mistress. Now said mistress ended up pregnant, and my married pediatrician refused to deal with the situation as a normal person would do. Instead, he killed his mistress, with his illegitimate child in her womb, and drove his dead mistress up to Angeles Crest. He then proceeded to torch the car and shove it over a ravine with a said mistress and unborn child inside. He was convicted of the crime and got life in prison.
I, however, am still charming.”
If you want to murder someone, make sure you do it Marietta, Ohio
From Redditor jayond: “I lived in a town where I think 11 murders went unsolved. I believe it was Letterman who joked if you want to murder someone, make sure you do it Marietta Ohio. There were three really bizarre murders with which I had some connections. Let me explain, I had nothing to do with any of them but I knew of all three victims and one of the killers.
The first one was a girl who lived up the hill from me. She was abducted and found dead off the road when I was still high school. Two years later a girl I went to high school with was found in the Mound Cemetery. Little info (as is the case of most crimes in Mid Ohio Valley) was released but someone later told me that the blood literally ran down the sidewalk and took all a long time to clean (he was doing the cleaning).
I was actually questioned about this because the slain girl had written my brother’s name in one of her books and I knew someone they suspected was involved. I did see get into a huge fight when she was high school and that’s recognized her when they asked about her. Of course, neither of these leads panned out because neither my brother or the guy I barely knew were involved (he was a suspect because he was in and out treatment centers for psychological problems). I don’t know that either has ever been solved and since officials never released many details, there were some really creepy rumors going around that the women had been sacrificed. You know the usual satanic ritual bullshit. I knew both the murderer and victim in the third one. They had transferred to Marietta College from Mesa Community College in Arizona but were just friends.
However, the male who I had classes with and knew socially wanted more. When she made it clear she wasn’t interested, he poisoned her and stuffed her in the drain pipe. The kid was little off but I never thought he would murder someone which makes it even more creepy because you don’t think anyone you hang out with could do something like that.”
Now that you’ve read about People describe horrific crimes in their neighborhood, you might also like Funeral workers describing the creepiest cases they’ve witnessed, then you might also like the real life abduction stories.
