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They were doctors, athletes, musicians, and community leaders - until their dark secrets were revealed. Join us as we examine the most infamous cases where highly regarded individuals shocked the world by becoming murderers. From decorated military officers to beloved entertainers, these respected figures had everyone fooled.
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00:00Even with my kids, they all loved when he was Pogo the Clown.
00:04Welcome to WatchMojo.
00:06And today, we're examining the most infamous times respected or beloved people
00:11in a community or within an industry were discovered to have taken lives.
00:16He just didn't want to be places and be seen.
00:21Dorothea Puente.
00:23After a long history of petty crime,
00:25Puente appears to have gotten her act together when she opened a boarding house in Sacramento, California.
00:31As the birds chirp and the cars whiz by,
00:34the home where a cold-blooded caretaker turned unexpected killer once lived sits quietly.
00:40She quickly earned the admiration of the neighborhood by helping those struggling.
00:45However, she wasn't exactly a saint, having been convicted of multiple grand theft charges.
00:51She knows that vulnerable people aren't really looked after,
00:55that people are forgotten about, that people don't care about them.
00:59And she goes and she targets them.
01:01And it didn't stop there.
01:03In 1982, Puente's tenants began vanishing or perishing mysteriously.
01:09Their landlady had been taking their lives with medications
01:12and then committing fraud by cashing in on their social security checks.
01:18In 1988, with the help from a former resident, Puente was arrested for murder.
01:24In 1993, she was found guilty of three murders,
01:28with the jury deadlocked over six other cases,
01:31earning Puente life imprisonment before passing away in 2011.
01:36She did it, without hesitation, without remorse.
01:41She set out on a journey.
01:43And that journey ended November 11th, 1988, when we arrived at her doorstep.
01:50Gordon Cummins.
01:52As a member of the UK's Royal Air Force during World War II,
01:56Cummins was well-respected for his service during a difficult time.
02:00Cummins was married, but he had a reputation amongst his fellows for drinking and womanizing.
02:07He was often out and furtively sneaking back in late after curfew.
02:12Yet, in 1942, shortly after being transferred to London,
02:17he took his first life outside an air raid shelter.
02:20Within six days, Cummins killed three more women,
02:24earning him the moniker of the Blackout Killer.
02:27After a failed attempt, and leaving behind RAF items that could easily be traced to him,
02:33Cummins was arrested.
02:35On the 17th of February, the day before his 28th birthday,
02:38Cummins appeared at Bow Street Police Court to be charged with the murders.
02:43After 35 minutes, the jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to death.
02:48Yet, when the sentence was set to be carried out, an air raid siren rang.
02:53Despite that, Cummins became the only convicted murderer in Britain to have been executed during an air raid.
03:00Karl Denke
03:02After several business failures, everything looked up for Denke,
03:06as he ran a leather and meat store and volunteered at his local church in modern-day Zambice, Poland.
03:13The German national was well liked by locals, even nicknaming him Papa.
03:18However, in 1903, Denke began taking the lives of travelers.
03:23He kept a ledger noting his murders, and also appeared to sell the remains as pork products.
03:30Even when an escaped victim told the police, their account was doubted due to Denke's reputation.
03:48Yet, when the police were forced to arrest him, Denke took his own life in 1924.
03:54However, the cops soon discovered his horrible crimes.
03:58Denke's ledger had 31 victims listed, including the one who escaped, but evidence suggests he might have taken over 42 lives.
04:07Investigators also came across an entry in his diary that indicated to them that Karl may have murdered someone as early as 1903.
04:17Bevan Spencer Von Einem
04:19In 1972, Von Einem was driving down the road when he spotted Roger James crawling out of the River Torrens near Adelaide, Australia, with a broken ankle.
04:30James, George Duncan, and a third unknown man were thrown into the water in a homophobic attack believed to have been conducted by police officers.
04:39One academic, Dr. E. H. Medlin, said he too had been attacked on the banks of the Torrens, and he believed his attacker was a member of the Vice Squad.
04:48Unfortunately, Duncan didn't survive.
04:51Von Einem drove James to the hospital for treatment.
04:54Yet, that Good Samaritan Act didn't last.
04:57In 1983, Von Einem abducted Richard Kelvin, the teenage son of reporter Rob Kelvin.
05:04Weeks later, he took Kelvin's life, eventually leading to his arrest and being sentenced to life imprisonment.
05:11However, it's also suspected that Von Einem could be responsible for the family murders, five killings that took place between 1979 and 1983.
05:22This is one of the most disturbing crimes I've ever written about.
05:26Aaron Hernandez, a rising star in the NFL, in 2012, shortly after signing a multi-million dollar contract extension with the New England Patriots,
05:37Hernandez donated $50,000 to Robert Kraft's charity that he set up after his wife's passing.
05:44However, within a year, the tight end's reputation was forever tarnished when he was arrested for the murder of Odin Lloyd.
05:51Family members say Lloyd played some semi-professional football. They say he was an honest, hard-working young man.
05:57In 2015, Hernandez was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.
06:03At the same time, he was also charged with a 2012 double murder in Boston, Massachusetts.
06:09He acted in the manner, like a tough guy all the time, is the way I would explain it.
06:18However, in 2017, five days after being acquitted of this crime, and while the Lloyd murder sentence was vacated under appeal, Hernandez took his own life in prison.
06:29In 2019, his conviction for killing Lloyd was reinstated.
06:34John Edward Robinson. After being a scout as a child, and performing for Queen Elizabeth II, and meeting Judy Garland,
06:43Robinson would later become a scoutmaster, a baseball coach, and a Sunday school teacher.
06:49He loved animals and got along great with everybody.
06:55Yet, he was also committing fraud, resulting in his arrest. By 1984, Robinson went further by taking his first victim's life. By the 90s, he'd become the first internet serial killer.
07:08The internet changed everything for us.
07:15But the internet also changed a lot for John Robinson. It gave him a new weapon.
07:21Robinson, under the alias Slave Master, would go to adult websites to lure victims. By the time bodies were found on his farm, resulting in his arrest in 2000, Robinson had taken at least eight lives across Missouri and Kansas.
07:37As well as receiving life imprisonment in Missouri, he was sentenced to death in Kansas.
07:42Daniel Marsh. In 2008, young Marsh received public acclaim for saving his dad's life by performing CPR as he had a heart attack.
07:52Yet, despite being handed an American Red Cross Heroes Award, only three years later, he'd do the opposite by taking lives.
08:01After walking the streets of Davis, California, Marsh, then a teenager, broke into the home of Claudia Malpin and Oliver Northup and murdered the couple.
08:10Friends of Marsh said they saw him in the days before his arrest and had a hard time believing he could be responsible.
08:16He did have a lot of joy in his life. And personally, I couldn't ever see him doing what he's been accused of.
08:25There was no evidence linking him to the crime, but because he bragged about it to his then girlfriend and a friend who told the police he was arrested.
08:34Daniel just told us exactly what's going on with the psychopath aspect where he doesn't feel empathy for anyone and that he wants to kill people.
08:44And when they come together, that's the perfect storm and results in these horrific crimes.
08:49In 2014, Marsh was sentenced to 52 years to life with parole eligibility after 25 years due to being a juvenile at the time of the crime.
08:59The community that my mom and ship love so much can rest easy tonight knowing that he won't be back anytime soon to their community.
09:09Russell Williams. For 23 years, Williams was an exceptional officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
09:16After all, he'd led several projects and flown dignitaries such as Queen Elizabeth II and Canada's Prime Minister, earning him the rank of Colonel.
09:26However, everything changed for the family man in 2010.
09:30How could we have missed this? Is there something that we did or didn't do that would have given us a clue?
09:36After Jessica Lloyd had vanished from her home, the police found unique tire impressions.
09:42As they canvassed the area, they spotted Williams driving a car that matched.
09:47During the interrogation, he confessed and provided evidence to a mountain of crimes, including many assaults and the murder of Lloyd.
09:55I saw her in her house on her treadmill.
09:59Williams was later charged with the killing of Corporal Marie-France Comu.
10:03The disgraced colonel was sentenced to life imprisonment and was stripped of his military honors, including having his uniform burned.
10:11The people that knew Russ Williams, that shepherded him along in his career, that helped him at key points,
10:18that selected him, as I did for senior leadership positions, view this as the ultimate betrayal of that honor.
10:25Dean Corll. Following his honorable discharge from the U.S. Army in 1965, Corll moved back to Houston, Texas,
10:34to take up a position of vice president at his family's business, the Corll Candy Company.
10:39There's still a reason to tell this story, because there's still people like this out there.
10:44He began handing out free treats to children, earning him the nickname of the Candy Man,
10:50as he installed a pool table in the factory for employees and local youths to use.
10:55However, Corll didn't do this solely out of the goodness of his heart.
11:00Instead, he groomed David Owen Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley into being his accomplices in murders.
11:07From 1970 to 1973, Corll had taken at least 29 lives.
11:13His spree ended when he was killed by Henley.
11:16Corll turns around to leave. Henley followed him and pumped three into his back and that killed him.
11:22Due to their participation, Henley and Brooks both received life imprisonment.
11:27It needs to be told. It needs to be told to our next generation to be careful, you know.
11:33Watch out for that Candy Man, you know what I mean? Because they're out there. You know, they're out there.
11:39Bernie Tita. In 1996, Tita's employer and friend, Marjorie Nugent, vanished in Carthage, Texas, leaving him in charge of her finances over her own son, Rod.
11:51Is this case about money? Yes, it is. How so? I think that defines everything.
11:58With a new $10 million fortune, the former mortician funneled a chunk of it into aiding the community and friends.
12:06However, after Rod arrived at his mother's, he found her body in the freezer.
12:11In 1997, Tita was swiftly arrested and confessed to murdering Nugent, eventually resulting in a life sentence.
12:19I deserve time. I've done a particularly horrible thing, the worst thing in my life.
12:25However, with the story explored in the 2011 film, Bernie, Tita was released for a retrial after new evidence that he was in a disassociative state during the murder following a childhood trauma.
12:37In 2016, after living with Bernie director Richard Linklater, Tita was re-sentenced to 99 years to life.
12:45Ted Bundy. Nowadays, we know of Bundy as a prolific serial killer who took upwards of 20 lives across several states, resulting in his execution in 1989.
12:56The end for Ted Bundy, a 42-year-old killer who left a trail of at least 20 murders from one end of the country to the other.
13:03However, back in the late 1960s and into the 70s, he was seemingly very different, at least before his horrible crimes were known.
13:12Bundy was heavily involved in politics, helping with Nelson Rockefeller's presidential campaign, and other politicians such as Daniel J. Evans and Arthur Fletcher.
13:22People thought he was going to be, you know, a young Ted Kennedy, but for the Republican Party.
13:27But again, they saw an exterior that he worked hard to create.
13:32While studying psychology at the University of Washington, he was an honor student who volunteered at a hotline helping those experiencing a mental health crisis.
13:42According to Bundy, while working on the hotline in 1971, he took his first life, claiming that he killed 30 people altogether.
13:51I deserve certainly the most extreme punishment society has, and I deserve, I think society deserves to be protected from me and from others like me.
14:03Marcel Petiot.
14:04With many demographics fearing for their safety in Nazi-occupied Paris, France during World War II, someone was willing to help them escape.
14:13Petiot.
14:14People were intrigued. It was so gruesome.
14:18The doctor had a network to help people escape persecution and go to South America.
14:23Petiot even provided them with vaccines to enter the countries.
14:27However, it was all lies.
14:29Instead of vaccines, Petiot injected people with fatal poison before stealing what little they had brought for their new life.
14:37People came, they phoned, they said, so-and-so had left a friend of mine. She was going to go to a doctor to help her escape. I think it could be Dr. Petiot.
14:49After neighbors complained of foul-smelling smoke coming from his chimney in 1944, the doctor's crimes were discovered.
14:56Petiot, who claimed he was secretly working for the resistance, is believed to have taken at least 27 lives.
15:03In 1946, after being found guilty of murder, Petiot was executed.
15:08Petiot accepts no guilt whatsoever, and maintains that he was acting only on orders as a genuine member of the resistance.
15:17Elizabeth Bathory.
15:19Nobles are typically thought of as being polite and respectful, albeit perhaps detached from average civilian life.
15:26So even those nobles who are below her would probably be treated with indifference and a certain amount of disdain as well.
15:33However, Bathory, a noble woman in the Kingdom of Hungary, was anything but decent.
15:38While living a decadent and social life as one of the elite, she and her servants were kidnapping nearby peasants to torment and murder.
15:46She was allowed progressively to discover that she could get away with more and more.
15:51In 1610, with evidence and witness statements mounting, Bathory was arrested.
15:56Depending on the sources, after being found guilty, she was either under house arrest or secluded in a bricked up room.
16:04Four of the servants accused of helping her take up to 650 lives were executed.
16:10However, Bathory's true victim count is unknown, and it's speculated by some that she was framed.
16:17She is the ultimate mysterious character who is the starring role in her own story.
16:23Diomedes Diaz.
16:26Known as the King of Vallenato, Diaz was a beloved figure in Colombia's music scene.
16:32After all, he was born into poverty before becoming one of the country's biggest names.
16:44Yet, in 1997, Diaz was linked to the death of Doris Adriana Nino.
16:50He was accused of murdering her after an argument and getting his bodyguards to dispose of her body.
16:55While he was under house arrest in 2000, Diaz escaped and fled to a paramilitary group in the mountains.
17:03Eventually, in 2002, the musician gave himself up.
17:07Diaz was found guilty of manslaughter, earning him a very lenient 37 months in jail, outraging Nino's family.
17:15Diaz continued releasing music before passing away in 2013.
17:20Phil Spector.
17:27As the pioneer of the wall of sound recording technique, Spector was one of the most influential music producers of all time.
17:35He worked with many top acts, including The Beatles, The Ramones, and Ike and Tina Turner.
17:41Yet, in 2003, all that respect and legacy was destroyed when Spector fatally shot Lana Clarkson at his Alhambra, California mansion.
17:56Following a highly publicized trial in 2007 that ended with a hung jury, the producer was retried the following year.
18:04Spector showed no emotion as he was found guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Lana Clarkson.
18:10In 2009, Spector, who claimed Clarkson had done it to herself accidentally, was found guilty of her murder.
18:17And it could have happened years earlier with any of the other one, but she got the bullet.
18:21He was sentenced to 19 years to life before passing away in 2021.
18:26Dennis Nilsen.
18:28A corporal who spent 11 years in the British Army, a former police officer, and then working in the civil service in a job center while active in trade unions, Nilsen's history was incredible.
18:40Yet, his respectable past was covering a much darker side.
18:44In 1983, a plumber checking on blocked drains on a street in London, England, found it filled with human remains.
18:53The source was traced to Nilsen's residence, where he soon admitted his crimes to the police.
18:58Since 1978, he'd been luring men and teenagers to his home before taking their lives.
19:05The whole area has now been completely cordoned off, and newsmen ordered away from the scene.
19:10Nilsen initially confessed to taking 16 lives, but it's believed he killed at least 12.
19:16He was sentenced to life imprisonment before passing away in 2018.
19:20The only reason he was stopped is because his activities imposed on somebody else.
19:27Nothing to do with the victims.
19:29John Wayne Gacy.
19:31If he wasn't at his own construction business, Gacy could be located entertaining children while dressed in one of his clown personas.
19:38Or being active in local politics.
19:41He would meet important people, Mayor Daley.
19:43He was so well respected in Chicago that he was even able to meet then First Lady Rosalind Carter in 1978.
19:51However, since 1972, Gacy had been a serial killer.
19:56Often with the promise of work, he lured men and teenagers to his house before murdering them.
20:01Gacy fits his car with red flashing lights to make it look like an unmarked police cruiser.
20:07He would see somebody that he wanted as his prey.
20:10He would stop him, turn his red lights on, say, you're out after curfew, get in the car.
20:16It's believed Gacy took at least 33 lives.
20:20However, after he was tied to Robert Piest's disappearance and murder, the search of Gacy's house found human remains leading to his arrest.
20:29In 1980, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to execution, which was enacted in 1994.
20:35And I am at peace with myself.
20:38Dennis Rader.
20:39Living in Park City, Kansas, Rader had the respect of locals as he was previously a Cub Scout leader, served on the Sedgwick County Animal Control Advisory Board, and was president of the local church council.
20:52In 1975, Rader became a father and by day led the life of a normal family man with a job at a security company.
20:59However, in 2004, after he read articles about the BTK cold case with the Wichita Eagle newspaper, he couldn't ignore it.
21:07After all, Rader was BTK, taking at least 10 lives from 1974 to 1991.
21:14BTK started sending packages with mementos from his crimes.
21:20After taunting the newspaper and the K.A.K.E. news channel, he wanted to send them a floppy disk of his writings.
21:27However, after he was deceptively told he couldn't be traced, the police were able to discover his location from the disk's metadata and arrested Rader.
21:36In 2005, he received 10 consecutive life sentences.
21:41One minute, you had a man in your life who you thought was a loving father.
21:46The next minute, he's a serial killer.
21:48Right.
21:49I had to learn how to grieve the loss of somebody I loved very much that no one else loved anymore.
21:56Chris Benoit.
21:57For 22 years, the Canadian wrestler wowed audiences all over the world, earning titles everywhere as he worked for some of the biggest promotions around, such as WWE, WCW, and New Japan.
22:10Watching Chris Benoit was one of the reasons why I really enjoyed Stampede Wrestling and why I started really thinking, maybe I can do this.
22:17In 2007, Benoit stated his family had food poisoning, forcing him to miss some WWE house shows.
22:25However, when he didn't turn up for the pay-per-view Vengeance Night of Champions, the police arrived at Benoit's house.
22:32There was an odor in the house.
22:34They found the bodies of the wrestler, his wife Nancy, and their son Daniel.
22:39The tragedy was then announced on WWE Raw.
22:43However, it soon emerged that Benoit had taken the lives of Nancy and Daniel before taking his own.
22:49It's believed that chronic traumatic encephalopathy and substance misuse played a role in Benoit's terrible actions.
22:56Do you think you will ever be able to or want to give forgiveness towards Chris?
23:03Yes, I think I do someday want to be able to forgive him.
23:07I do.
23:08Because carrying around the burden of hate gets exhausting.
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23:30Harold Shipman
23:33Since 1974, Shipman had been working as a general practitioner in England.
23:38Dr. Shipman was very much the old school type.
23:41He liked to deal with the patients from the cradle to the grave.
23:45Patients who may be with another doctor may have been admitted to the hospital he would care for at home.
23:54Despite being fined for forging prescriptions for his own use, he soon became a beloved doctor, setting up his own surgery in Hyde.
24:03Shipman was even interviewed on TV about treatment for the mentally ill and was known to do house visits for his patients, often being included in their wills over their families.
24:14Just how many patients in the town of Hyde has this doctor killed?
24:18However, in 1998, he was arrested for administering lethal medications to his patients and then forging their wills on his own typewriter.
24:27In 2000, Shipman was found guilty of 15 murders and sentenced to life imprisonment.
24:33However, he took his own life in 2004.
24:36His crimes opened up the Shipman inquiry, which concluded that he'd killed 250 people.
24:43For the families of Harold Shipman's hundreds of victims, it will leave forever unanswered.
24:48The question of why he killed on such a scale.
24:51And if he ever felt any genuine remorse for the terrible suffering he caused.
24:57Which other respected person who turned out to be a killer did we miss from the video?
25:01Let us know below.
25:03You can say goodbye.
25:04We can go first.
25:05Let us know.
25:06Let us know in one second.
25:07ansen
25:08Part 2
25:14로
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