From chilling handwritten notes to disturbing symbols drawn in blood, these haunting messages left behind by killers continue to send shivers down our spines. Join us as we explore some of the most unsettling crime scene messages that have ever been discovered by investigators.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're taking a look at 10 times killers left behind creepy
00:12messages for investigators to find. The son of Sam letter. I want you to go out and kill. Kill!
00:28Kill! Kill!
00:33David Berkowitz, also known as the son of Sam, terrorized New York City in the mid-70s,
00:39killing and wounding many with his .44 caliber revolver. On April 17, 1977, Berkowitz committed
00:45the double murder of Valentina Suriani and Alexander Esau, bringing his body count to five.
00:51Up to this point, he was known as the .44 caliber killer. However, that changed when authorities
00:56found a handwritten note by Berkowitz, in which he not only taunted the police force,
01:01but also identified himself as the son of Sam. The letter is incredibly eerie, not just for its
01:07taunting content, but also its frequent misspellings, grammatical errors, and rambling.
01:12Often of an incoherent nature, it provides a glimpse into the troubled mind of its author.
01:17You thought what you were doing was right?
01:19It was not right, but that somehow this had some kind of plan.
01:23Message machete. There was no questioning the intentions of one Prince Hepburn after the
01:29forensic report of this crime scene came back from the lab.
01:31After just over an hour of deliberations, a jury has determined that Prince Hepburn is guilty
01:37of killing his girlfriend, Nellie Brown Cox, two years ago.
01:41This is because Hepburn actually left behind the murder weapon with a very specific pair of
01:46messages written about both the actual and intended victims. A bloody machete was found at the scene
01:51where Hepburn murdered his girlfriend with the phrase, this is what cheaters get scrawled on the
01:56blade. On the other side was a message for the other potential victim. It's the level of morbidity
02:01that only tends to be seen in horror movies, but in this case, the horror was very, very real.
02:07When the verdict was handed down, Hepburn appeared calm, the same way he had appeared throughout the
02:11trial.
02:12Tarot cards. The Beltway snipers terrorized the Washington, D.C. area back in 2002,
02:18utilizing long-distance rifles to maximize the cold and detached distances between them and their victims.
02:29Go. Go.
02:32John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo utilized different calling cards over the course of
02:37their terror spree. But one particularly chilling moment occurred after the October 7th shooting
02:42of Iron Brown. Malvo and Muhammad left the death tarot card at the crime scene,
02:48inscribed with the words,
02:49Do not release to the press. For you, Mr. Police, and Call Me God.
02:54Leads that once didn't mean anything started to bring the case together.
02:58It was creepy and deeply disturbing, to say the least.
03:02I mean, I was a monster. If you look up the definition, I mean, that's what a monster is.
03:06I was a ghoul. I was a thief. I stole people's lives.
03:11Pentagrams.
03:11Why did you kill those people?
03:15No comments. No comments. I cannot answer that at this time.
03:21Richard Ramirez, better known as the Night Stalker, had a strange fascination with pentagrams.
03:26He famously drew one on his hand during his initial court appearance,
03:30but that wasn't the first time law enforcement encountered the symbol in this case.
03:34Back on May 29th, 1985, Ramirez assaulted sisters Mabel Bell and Florence Lang in their home.
03:40Following the attack, he stole Bell's lipstick and drew two pentagrams on the bedroom walls.
03:45He just left so much destruction and lives.
03:49But the thing that was so frightening about it from, like, the public's point of view,
03:54remembering back then, was that it was all so random.
03:56He continued this M.O. when he attacked married couple Peter and Barbara Pan on the night of August 18th.
04:02After shooting them both, Ramirez grabbed some lipstick and drew a pentagram on the bedroom wall,
04:07along with the phrase, Jack the Knife.
04:09I think she was spared because he said, get on your hands and knees and say you love Satan.
04:16She said, I just looked in the eye and says, no, I will not do that. I believe in Jesus Christ.
04:21BTK's Polaroids.
04:22The three photos are of a woman's dead body.
04:26The driver's license belongs to Vicki Wegerly, killed in her home in 1986.
04:30After at least 10 victims and many long years, the BTK killer, real name Dennis Rader, was finally caught on February 25th, 2005.
04:40Virtually every place associated with Rader became an instant crime scene, including his church, house, and business.
04:47And in all three places, investigators found disturbing evidence of his crimes.
04:52He had dolls that he used to help facilitate his imagination, and he would experiment.
04:58Rader had personally taken Polaroids of his victims in various stages of distress and decomposition,
05:05and stored these photos throughout the aforementioned locations.
05:08The macabre images served as irrefutable proof of his guilt,
05:11and helped secure a conviction and sentence of 10 consecutive life terms.
05:15I always had the tripod, and so I rigged that up, and lo and behold, I could take pictures of myself.
05:23Dead driver's license.
05:24David Kaleck was unapologetic after murdering his ex-girlfriend in 2014,
05:30so much so that he posted his grotesque handiwork to the internet.
05:34He was drinking beer while police were hunting for him,
05:36and talking about his dead girlfriend as if she was still alive.
05:40It was known as the 4chan murder in the press,
05:43after Kaleck uploaded photos of the crime and text apparently lamenting the fact that,
05:48quote,
05:48It's way harder to strangle someone to death than it looks on the movies.
05:52Additionally, Kaleck wrote messages around the house,
05:55including bad news on blinds in the home,
05:57and she killed me first on a framed photo.
06:00Finally, Kaleck scrawled out a blunt statement on his ex's driver's license,
06:05one that simply said,
06:07Dead.
06:07And in his confession note, Kaleck also said,
06:10Running from the cops was so much fun,
06:12then he signed his initials DK.
06:15A deadly plea.
06:16The random savagery of the lipstick killer didn't jive
06:19with a city known for its strong, safe neighborhoods.
06:23The legal case of the lipstick killer, William Herons, was a mess,
06:27featuring inconsistent prosecution,
06:29shoddy police work,
06:30and illegalities behind the scenes.
06:32It was then, with his own lawyers encouraging him,
06:35that he stopped fighting,
06:37and decided to take the rap for three murders he did not commit.
06:41There are some who feel that Herons wasn't even the notorious serial killer
06:44who left a creepy, moniker-defining message at the scene of a crime.
06:48It was scrawled on a victim's apartment wall,
06:50and it said,
06:51Quote,
06:52For heaven's sake, catch me before I kill more.
06:54I cannot control myself.
06:56Herons was ultimately sentenced to life in prison for three separate murders,
07:00although he died in prison maintaining that his confession was coerced.
07:04He insisted he had confessed solely to save himself from the electric chair,
07:09not because he was guilty.
07:11A promise to return.
07:13She may currently live under an alias,
07:16but the woman born Mary Bell possesses the gruesome distinction
07:19of being Britain's youngest female killer.
07:21Oh, she was wicked.
07:23She was.
07:24I think there's no question about it.
07:26Bell was still a preteen when she strangled the first of her two victims back in 1968.
07:31By all accounts, Bell's home life was full of trauma and mistreatment at the hands of her mother,
07:36and she displayed troubling and dangerous behavior for some time
07:40before killing her first victim, Martin Brown.
07:42She was deeply embedded in a sort of petty crime environment,
07:47an environment in which violence against each other
07:50was something that was almost acceptable and the norm.
07:55Later, Bell and an accomplice would not only harass Brown's mother prior to her son's funeral,
08:00but they also left taunting notes to police at a nearby nursery they vandalized.
08:05One of the notes read,
08:06I murder so that I may come back.
08:08The general tenor of these notes
08:11was to tease and provoke the police
08:17because the police weren't making any progress.
08:21Bloody Writings
08:22While the Manson family is notorious for killing Sharon Tate,
08:29their true victim count is actually much higher.
08:33Throughout the summer of 1969,
08:35the family killed nine individuals,
08:37although they are suspected of more.
08:39At three of these crime scenes,
08:41various messages were written in the victim's blood.
08:44After murdering Gary Hinman,
08:45one member wrote the phrase political piggy on the wall.
08:48At the infamous Tate crime scene,
08:50Susan Atkins wrote pig on the front door.
08:53Go around there,
08:54see if there's a back entrance.
08:56Let me go.
08:57The last and perhaps most famous message
08:59was left at the LaBianca scene.
09:01Patricia Krenwinkel wrote the phrases
09:03rise,
09:04death to pigs,
09:05and
09:05helter-skelter.
09:06The latter of these was misspelled
09:08and became the eventual title
09:10of Vincent Bugliosi and Kurt Gentry's landmark book.
09:12Before we continue,
09:19be sure to subscribe to our channel
09:21and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
09:24You have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them.
09:28If you're on your phone,
09:29make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications.
09:34Ciphers
09:35A cipher is a coded message that's deliberately disguised
09:39in order to convey a hidden message.
09:41There have been a number of killers over the years
09:43that have communicated in ciphers,
09:45most notably the Zodiac.
09:48It's okay.
09:50This is all gonna be okay.
09:53The case of Ricky McCormick is another involving ciphers,
09:57and one that also remains unsolved.
10:00Here, the message was found on McCormick's body
10:02after his remains were found in a Missouri cornfield
10:05on June 30th, 1999.
10:07Within Ricky's pockets were two pieces of paper,
10:11both filled with seemingly random letters and punctuation
10:14that local police had no chance of being able to decipher.
10:18The FBI is still actively seeking public assistance
10:22in cracking the cipher at the time of this writing,
10:24since it's believed that the clue to the identity
10:27of McCormick's murderer lies within the code.
10:29The head of the CRRU says,
10:32We are really good at what we do,
10:34but we could use some help with this one.
10:36Breaking the code could reveal the victim's whereabouts
10:39before his death,
10:40and could lead to the solution of a homicide.
10:43Which of these stories creeped you out the most?
10:45Let us know in the comments below.
10:47I'm not sick, I'm insane,
10:49but that will not stop the game.
10:50This letter should be published for all to read.
10:52He wants to be published, he calls it a game,
10:54I mean, this could be our boy.
10:55Let us know in the comments below.