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Some secrets are taken to the grave, but others are revealed just before it. Join us as we explore history's most chilling final confessions, from murderers who cleared innocent people to fugitives who revealed their true identities. From the Rolling Stones mystery to the Yorkshire Ripper case, these deathbed revelations solved decades-old crimes and exposed shocking truths that changed lives forever.
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00:00What happened to Amy Billig, a pretty 17-year-old who vanished without a whisper in 1974?
00:06Told that her daughter had been abducted by a renegade motorcycle gang,
00:10Amy's mother infiltrated the dangerous biker world,
00:13only to come up empty-handed time and time again.
00:16Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're examining the most shocking times in history
00:21when someone confessed to a terrible crime to clear their conscience
00:25before they believed they would pass away.
00:27It's the man police say made a deathbed confession,
00:31claiming to have killed someone and buried the remains here.
00:34Sherrard died just weeks ago.
00:37Michael Lee Wilson
00:39A jury convicted Wilson of murdering a Tulsa convenience store clerk.
00:43In February of 1995, a group of men robbed a Tulsa quick trip.
00:46They beat Richard Yost to death with a baseball bat.
00:50Michael Lee Wilson took part in the 1995 slaying of Richard Yost in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
00:55his colleague at a store, earning him the death penalty.
00:58The execution was carried out in 2014.
01:01However, shortly before, Wilson told officials that he was part of a group that fatally shot
01:06Karen LaShawn Summers in 1994 at a Tulsa house party.
01:11On the witness stand, Harjo testified he was a passenger in the car when Wilson did the drive-by shooting.
01:16With no forensic evidence besides eyewitness accounts that were later recanted,
01:21DeMarco Carpenter and Malcolm Scott, teenagers at the time,
01:24had been convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison.
01:28In 2016, the duo were finally released from jail and were later found to be innocent at the hearing.
01:33The state of Oklahoma convicted Scott and DeMarco Carpenter of the 1995 murder of Karen Summers.
01:39His sentence?
01:40Life plus 170 years.
01:42Sharon Diane Crawford-Smith
01:45In 2008, Sharon Diane Crawford-Smith received the news that her kidney and heart disease were terminal.
01:53Before she met her demise, she had something to tell the police that she'd kept buried for decades.
01:59In 1967, Smith was working at the Highs Ice Cream Shop in Stanton, Virginia,
02:04where Constance Smoots Heavener and Carolyn Heavener Perry teased her for her sexuality.
02:10Smith eventually snapped and shot her colleagues.
02:13Before criminal proceedings took place, she passed away.
02:17She also alleged that a detective on the case, David Bocock,
02:21helped her cover it up by getting rid of the firearm.
02:24However, he died in 2006.
02:26You want to know what I confessed in there?
02:29What my greatest sin was?
02:31James Brewer
02:32In 2009, Michael Anderson suffered a stroke.
02:36Now you're...
02:37Believing his life was coming to an end,
02:45he and his wife Dorothy sold their belongings in Shawnee, Oklahoma,
02:48and traveled to meet police in Hohenwald, Tennessee.
02:52Anderson revealed that his real name is James Brewer,
02:55and that he'd fatally shot his neighbor, Jimmy Carroll, in 1977,
03:00in the belief that he was trying to seduce Dorothy.
03:03After being arrested for the crime at the time,
03:06he jumped bail and fled the state, changing his name to Hyde.
03:10When Brewer wound up surviving the stroke,
03:13he was arrested and convicted of murder.
03:16Unidentified Man
03:17In 1946, Margaret Cook, who went by several other names as a sex worker,
03:22was fatally shot outside the Blue Lagoon nightclub in London.
03:26While there were witnesses, they lost sight of the murderer as they escaped in a crowded tube station.
03:31The killer was never found.
03:33In 2015, an unidentified 91-year-old man,
03:37dealing with terminal cancer in a care home in Canada,
03:40confessed to ending Cook's life after she stole money from him.
03:44UK police sent officers to speak to the man and discuss extradition to face criminal charges.
03:50However, due to his advanced age and illness,
03:52likely making him unfit to stand trial,
03:55the Canadian authorities were hesitant to agree to the extradition.
03:58Denied. Denied.
04:00It's an unnecessary risk.
04:02Larry Sherrard
04:03It was the deathbed confession that prompted this investigation.
04:07WLKY's Lauren Adams was there today as the excavation.
04:10In 1989, four explorers were looking inside the Great Saltpeter Cave in Kentucky
04:15when they came across a grisly discovery.
04:18The group had found the remains of Thomas Jones Jr.,
04:21who'd vanished in 1988 shortly after leaving prison.
04:25In 2014, Pamela Reinhardt was caring for her uncle Larry Sherrard
04:30as he was dying from aspiration pneumonia.
04:32Yet, hours before he succumbed, he confessed to her that he was part of a group that murdered Jones.
04:39A letter written by a dying man prompts a police investigation.
04:42The author confesses to a crime and, according to police,
04:45provides a general area where they could find a body.
04:48Reinhardt got Sherrard to write a letter, which she took to the police after he passed away.
04:52He also detailed that he was involved with another murder,
04:56disposing of the body at a residence where he lived during the 1990s.
05:00Investigators soon evacuated the site and found fragments of bone.
05:05James Washington
05:06James Washington confessed to murder back in 2009 when he was on his deathbed.
05:11He suffered a heart attack and he thought he was going to die,
05:14except he didn't die, he got better,
05:17and then he had to face trial for the murder that he confessed to.
05:20Already in jail after being sentenced to 15 years for attempted murder in 2006,
05:25James Washington further got into trouble following a seizure in 2009.
05:31As he was taken to the hospital, he didn't believe he had long left.
05:34So Washington told the guard watching over him that he killed Joyce Goodner
05:39and left her body at an abandoned house in Nashville in 1995.
05:43In all that time, the police had no idea who'd done it.
05:48Washington's belief in his demise turned out to be greatly exaggerated when he recovered.
05:52He tried to recant his confession, which didn't work out too well.
05:56I'm getting better!
05:57No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment.
05:59He was found guilty at the trial and convicted of Goodner's murder.
06:02That's an awesome fail!
06:04Paul Branch
06:05In 1974, high school student Amy Billig vanished
06:10as she hitched hikes to her father's art studio in Coconut Grove, Florida.
06:14For decades, the police and her family had no idea what happened on that fateful day.
06:19We checked with hospitals and morgues and police departments all over the state and all over the country.
06:25In 1997, Paul Branch, a former high-ranking member of the Pagans Motorcycle Club,
06:31was approaching his death when he detailed to his wife what happened to Billig.
06:36Branch claimed that the Pagans had abducted her and taken her to a party
06:39where she was assaulted and forcefully given substances leading to her death.
06:44They then disposed of her body in the Everglades.
06:47While Branch did name one killer who was already in jail for murder,
06:51he denied any involvement when questioned by the police.
06:59Roy Heath
07:00In 2010, after getting a tip-off, police searched a residence in London.
07:04With the aid of radar technology, investigators discovered human remains
07:09buried beneath concrete in the property's backyard.
07:12The police traced the whereabouts of the previous occupant, Roy Heath,
07:16who was staying at a hospice with a terminal illness.
07:19After several interviews, Heath confessed.
07:22Alright, I confess! I did it!
07:23The body belongs to Mohamed Taki, who was last seen in 1998.
07:27Heath admitted he'd fatally strangled Taki.
07:34Thirteen days after revealing he was a killer,
07:37Heath passed away before charges could be issued and before a motive could be discovered.
07:42Henry Alexander
07:43In 1957, black driver Willie Edwards Jr. vanished in Montgomery County, Alabama.
07:50Several months later, his body washed up on the Alabama River shore.
07:54However, decomposition made it difficult to figure out what caused his death.
07:59In 1976, the case was reopened,
08:02as members of a local Ku Klux Klan chapter were suspected of having been involved.
08:06Yet, with a lack of evidence and an unknown cause of death, nothing was proven.
08:11But that changed in 1992, when one of the accused was dying from lung cancer.
08:17Henry Alexander admitted to his wife that he had lied to his Klansmen that Edwards had made a pass
08:22at a white woman, leading to them forcing him to jump off a bridge to his demise.
08:28It's true that I've never given a second thought to anyone that I've let die, but I take no pleasure in it.
08:36Like a truly evil man would.
08:39Satoshi Kirishima
08:40His is often seen near wanted posters for members of the Japanese Red Army, the Nihonseki-gun.
08:47The far-left terrorist group later joined by many of Kirishima's anti-Japan front compatriots
08:52after their organization collapsed.
08:54In 2024, construction worker Hiroshi Uchida checked himself into a hospital in Fujisawa, Japan,
09:02as he received care for terminal cancer.
09:04Yet, he then told staff that, since he didn't have long left,
09:08he wanted to live under his real identity, Satoshi Kirishima.
09:13For 49 years, he was a wanted fugitive,
09:16after being involved with the extremist group East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front,
09:20which killed targets with explosives.
09:23By 1975, the majority of the group had been arrested, and they were disbanded.
09:28Kirishima had managed to avoid capture under a pseudonym.
09:31Within days of his arrest, he passed away.
09:34However, DNA tests, compared to relatives,
09:37posthumously confirmed that Uchida was, in fact, Kirishima.
09:41I can remember it so clearly because of the shock of it all.
09:44We know who Kirishima is now because he said so himself,
09:47but I still want him to atone for his crimes.
09:50Margaret Gibson.
09:52The 1922 murder of prolific silent film actor and director William Desmond Taylor
09:57remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in Hollywood history.
10:01Even with multiple suspects being considered,
10:03the investigation was botched,
10:05leaving the case officially unsolved to this day.
10:08When the police arrived on the scene,
10:10there were various people all over the house.
10:13The studio personnel were running around making off with all important letters, documents, possible evidence.
10:19More than four decades after the crime, however,
10:23Margaret Gibson, a Hollywood actor who had worked with Taylor early in his career,
10:27made a shocking confession.
10:29As Gibson slowly passed away on her kitchen floor after a heart attack,
10:33the then 70-year-old owned up to shooting and killing Taylor.
10:37And she went on to say that she had shot and killed a William Desmond Taylor.
10:43With zero physical evidence left from the case and a lack of apparent motive,
10:48there was no way to verify Gibson's sensational claim.
10:52Mark Chopper Reed.
10:53One of the most notorious criminals to ever come out of Australia,
10:57Mark Chopper Reed lived a large chunk of his adult life in prison.
11:01Through his stage shows, his books and a very successful feature film,
11:04he became Australia's favourite crook.
11:07But for all the mythology around Chopper,
11:09the truth is what he did in his lifetime was monstrous.
11:13The infamous gang member spent time behind bars for crimes such as armed robbery,
11:17kidnapping and arson,
11:18but always somehow evaded a murder conviction.
11:21While serving his time, Reed contracted Hepatitis C
11:24and years later he was diagnosed with liver cancer.
11:27You see that in the camera?
11:29That's the tumour. Look at that.
11:31That's a pretty big tumour, isn't it?
11:33Yeah, that's a big tumour.
11:35Look at the size of the glasses.
11:37Perhaps realising that his time on earth was slowly coming to an end,
11:41he sat for an interview with 60 Minutes Australia,
11:44just 16 days before he died.
11:46During the interview, Reed casually admitted his involvement in the deaths of 19 people,
11:53describing the details with an astounding lack of remorse.
11:56I don't know why, and as I sit here now, I couldn't care less.
12:01I don't know why.
12:03Did why ever matter to you?
12:06Why had nothing to do with it.
12:08Neyman Diller.
12:09The most expensive heist in Israeli history occurred in 1983,
12:13when the Museum for Islamic Art was robbed clean of items worth tens of millions of dollars.
12:20One of these was a custom-made pocket watch for Marie Antoinette, estimated at about $30 million.
12:26Probably the collection's most famous watch is Berger's Marie Antoinette, made for the French Queen.
12:31It was prepared to her.
12:34She was, you know, executed before she could enjoy it.
12:38The dastardly heist was carried out by Israeli criminal Neyman Diller.
12:43Diller had fled Israel after the crime and settled in the U.S., where he died in 2004.
12:48Just before his death, he confided in his wife about everything and left the rest of the stolen collection in her possession.
12:55Diller, on his deathbed four years earlier, had confessed to her that the priceless antique watches scattered around their Los Angeles home,
13:03including the Marie Antoinette, were his catch from raiding the museum that night.
13:07The 25-year-old case was finally solved, after Diller's widow tried selling some of the items back to the museum,
13:15and the authorities were tipped off.
13:17Christopher Smith
13:18Between 1975 and 1980, the Yorkshire Ripper claimed the lives of 13 women in the English areas of Manchester and West Yorkshire.
13:27Over a period of six years, all of these women were murdered by the same man.
13:3213 families' lives, torn apart by Peter Sutcliffe.
13:36When 26-year-old Joan Harrison was killed in 1975, her murder was initially attributed to the notorious killer.
13:44But after his arrest in 1981, he was eliminated as a suspect.
13:48Sutcliffe had been ruled out of the Joan Harrison investigation, and detectives were back to square one.
13:55From there, it would take 30 years for the case to come to resolution.
13:59In 2008, Harrison's death was linked to 60-year-old Christopher Smith.
14:04Smith had terminal lung cancer, and recently had his DNA sample taken after he was arrested for drunk driving.
14:11With his impending death looming, Smith penned a rambling letter in which he confessed to Harrison's murder, and pleaded for forgiveness.
14:18We found a note, which to my mind is clearly a confession note.
14:22And it's significant to me that he wrote that letter the day before he died.
14:27He talked about being remorseful, things that he's done.
14:30He passed on a few days later.
14:32Hannah Quick.
14:32In 1980, Hannah Quick was the landlord of a townhouse in Brooklyn, New York, that got burned to the ground in February of that year.
14:41The fire led to the unfortunate deaths of some of the tenants.
14:44Three men, Raymond Mora, William Vasquez, and Amari Villayobos, were arrested and later convicted of setting a fire that killed a mother and her five young children in a Park Slope apartment at 695 Sackett Street.
14:55When she was interviewed by police, Quick claimed to have seen three men walk out of the house around the time of the fire.
15:02The three men, Raymond Mora, Amari Villayobos, and William Vasquez, were convicted.
15:08Mora died in prison, whereas the other two spent over 30 years incarcerated for the incident.
15:13They also found the building owner, Hannah Quick, who accused the men, was a known substance abuser and habitual liar who admitted to family members she sent three innocent men to prison.
15:23Years later, on her deathbed, Quick confessed to her daughter that she lied about seeing the men.
15:30The case was overturned, and the men were exonerated of the crime.
15:33Today, I feel that if I die this afternoon, I'll be able to go to my tomb and rest in peace because my name has finally been played in.
15:42After all, these years in prison, yeah, I feel great.
15:45Christine Kett.
15:46The death of 18-year-old Christine Kett in her Dayton, Ohio home was a mystery that lingered for years.
15:52In January 1867, Kett's body was found by her brother, who immediately alerted their neighbors and the authorities.
16:00While police sorted through the crime scene, Kett's mother, whose name was also Christine, arrived at the house and was inconsolable.
16:07I pretend!
16:08What is it?
16:11Too inconsolable, as many onlookers noted.
16:14The case remained unsolved until years later, when Mrs. Kett became sick and was at the point of death.
16:19On her deathbed, she admitted to killing Christine in a fit of rage.
16:24Please, talk to me.
16:27Don't try to be brave, Mellie.
16:28Yell all you want, and there's nobody to hear.
16:30Mrs. Kett swore her son to secrecy until his own time came, but after her death, he notified the police.
16:37Frank Thorogood.
16:38On July 3rd, 1969, Rolling Stone's co-founder Brian Jones was found dead in the swimming pool of his Sussex home.
16:47Brian Jones is found dead in his swimming pool at around midnight on the night of the 2nd of July, 1969, at his country mansion, Cotchard Farm.
16:55His death was ruled by authorities as an accidental drowning, but that didn't stop multiple theories from popping up in the following days.
17:02One of the more credible ones involved construction worker Frank Thorogood, who was recommended to work in Jones' house by the Stones' chauffeur Tom Keylock.
17:12Brian was having a lot of refurbishment done on the house, and Frank was doing that refurbishment, but he was actually living in an apartment above the garage attached to Brian's house.
17:23Thorogood, who last saw Jones alive, allegedly told Keylock on his deathbed that, quote,
17:30It was me that did Brian. I just finally snapped, end quote.
17:34With both men now dead, and Keylock later denying the confession, there's likely no way of knowing if Jones' death was really an accident.
17:42Alice Mock.
17:44In November 1986, 76-year-old Alice Mock made a confession to her neighbor as she lay on her deathbed.
17:51Mock recounted that in 1975, a false allegation she made sentenced a man to jail for 15 years.
17:59The man, Wayman Camille Jr., stayed over at Mock's apartment after a drunken night out.
18:05Mock robbed Camille when he passed out, but then she cried out for help, alleging that he had robbed and assaulted her.
18:12She claims to have been afraid Camille would find out about her theft.
18:16Mock's confession exonerated Camille, who was released after spending 12 years of his 15-year sentence.
18:23Geraldine Kelly.
18:25Geraldine Kelly lived with her husband John in Ventura, California, where they worked as motel managers.
18:31In 1992, Kelly told her two estranged children that John had been struck and killed in a car accident.
18:38With no reason to question her story, they accepted it.
18:40It wasn't until Kelly was dying of cancer in 2004 that the truth was revealed.
18:46On her deathbed, Kelly confessed that she had killed John, reportedly because he was violent towards her.
18:52She kept his body in a storage unit and even shipped it along with her when she moved from California to Massachusetts.
18:59An official in the latter state described the entire situation as, quote,
19:03Very bizarre.
19:05And frankly, we couldn't agree more.
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19:24Christian Bankowski.
19:25The Brabant Killers were a notorious gang of armed robbers who terrorized Brabant, a former province of Belgium.
19:32Their violent activities resulted in the deaths of 28 people from 1982 to 1985.
19:39The group usually comprised of three core members, the Giant, who was thought to be their leader,
19:44the Killer, and a getaway driver called the Old Man.
19:48After the Brabant Killers suddenly vanished in 1985, police were unable to officially charge anyone with the crimes.
19:54In 2017, a man came forward claiming that his brother, a retired policeman named Christian Bankowski,
20:02had confessed to being the Giant on his deathbed two years earlier.
20:06He made this confession on his deathbed two years ago, and the man's brother has just revealed the information.
20:13While it initially seemed like a breakthrough in the case, the claim was later disproved through forensic DNA.
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