- 18 hours ago
History's darkest moments broadcast to millions... Join us as we examine the most shocking crimes that unfolded live on television! Our countdown includes the O.J. Simpson Bronco chase, the North Hollywood shootout, Ruby killing Oswald, and other disturbing incidents that changed how we consume news forever. Which live tragedy do you remember most vividly?
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00:00Channel 4's reporter sensed that something awful was about to happen that he did not want on camera.
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at 10 disturbing true crimes that people watched in real time.
00:11Officials in Grand County say the man who was behind the wheel in a bulldozer rampage is dead.
00:18Daniel V. Jones' standoff.
00:20There's an old chestnut in local television news, if it bleeds, it leaves.
00:24Which is a rather direct way of saying the public seems to have a never-ending appetite.
00:30For crime and violence.
00:31Los Angeles is famous for televised pursuits, but this 1998 incident changed live news forever.
00:37Daniel V. Jones, distraught over a recent HIV diagnosis and insurance disputes,
00:42led police to the busy interchange of the 110 and 105 freeways.
00:46With news choppers circling, Jones stopped his truck, unfurled a protest banner, and set the vehicle on fire.
00:53Not that anyone guessed that Jones was minutes away from killing himself.
00:57The truth is, no one was sure what he was going to do next.
01:01The truth is, that's why this highway traffic story was such compelling television.
01:06The broadcast reached a mid-afternoon audience, including children,
01:10who watched in abject terror when the standoff ended with Jones taking his own life.
01:14The brutal footage stunned the public, and forced networks to immediately overhaul their protocols.
01:19This event is widely cited as the reason live news now utilizes a seven-second delay,
01:25allowing producers to cut the feed before anything too graphic hits the air.
01:29The Manila hostage crisis.
01:30Police in the Philippines are defending the way they handled a hostage crisis in which eight tourists were killed.
01:36The world watched a hostage crisis tragically unfold in the Philippines.
01:40Rolando Mendoza, a disgruntled former officer armed with an M16, hijacked a tour bus in Manila, taking over 20 people
01:47hostage.
01:48Most of them were tourists from Hong Kong.
01:50He held police at bay for 10 hours, demanding reinstatement to the force.
01:55A lone gunman held the Hong Kong tourist captive on a bus for 11 hours.
01:59By the time police moved in, he'd already begun shooting them.
02:02But in a horrific twist, the bus had an onboard television which allowed Mendoza to watch the police preparing their
02:08rescue in real time.
02:09This led to a chaotic firefight involving sledgehammers and tear gas,
02:13and the tragedy resulted in the deaths of the gunman and eight hostages.
02:17The event drew global condemnation,
02:19serving as a grim lesson on how media coverage can endanger lives during tactical operations.
02:25And the way is a handle, particularly the way of the outcome, I find it disappointing.
02:31Raoul Mote.
02:32In 2010, the largest manhunt in modern British history was launched, when Raoul Mote declared war on Northumbria police.
02:40In July 2010, the United Kingdom was gripped by one of the largest police operations in its history.
02:46After shooting his ex-girlfriend, killing her new partner, and blinding police officer David Rathband,
02:51fugitive Raoul Mote went on the run in the Northumberland countryside.
02:55The manhunt culminated in a tense six-hour standoff on a riverbank in the village of Rothbury.
03:01It's quite quaint. Everybody knows everybody else. It's a really tight community. It's just a lovely, wonderful place, and it's
03:07just beautiful.
03:10But Rothbury was about to become the focus of the world's attention.
03:16With news helicopters circling and 24-hour channels broadcasting the siege to millions,
03:21negotiators frantically tried to talk Mote down.
03:23The surreal media spectacle, which even featured a bizarre attempted intervention by football legend Paul Gascoyne,
03:30ended in tragedy when Mote took his own life.
03:32The horrifying event sparked a nationwide debate about the ethics of rolling news coverage during active standoffs.
03:38Just being glued to the television at night and waiting for things to happen.
03:42The whole world seemed to be transfixed on what was happening in Rothbury.
03:46The assassination of Andrey Karlov.
03:48The latest we heard from the capital city Ankara is that
03:52the gunman has reportedly been shot in an operation that the police conducted.
03:56In the age of high-definition news, this assassination was captured with jarring cinematic clarity.
04:03In December 2016, Russian ambassador Andrey Karlov was delivering a speech at an art gallery in Ankara.
04:10Standing calmly behind him was Mevlut Mart Oltentas, an off-duty Turkish officer posing as a security guard.
04:17He shot the ambassador a few times again. He has been taken to hospital, reportedly, and he is heavily injured.
04:26There are three more people injured.
04:28Suddenly, Oltentas drew his weapon and fired nine shots, taking the ambassador down.
04:33Cameras rolled as the assassin paced around the body, pointing a finger in the air and shouting,
04:38Don't forget Aleppo. The footage went viral within minutes, presenting the world with a terrifying
04:43real-time glimpse into modern geopolitical violence that looked disturbingly like a movie scene.
04:49North Hollywood Shootout. It played out like an action movie, but it was a terrifying reality.
04:54In February 1997, Larry Phillips Jr. and Emil Matasaranu robbed a Bank of America in North Hollywood.
05:01Wearing heavy, homemade body armor and wielding illegal automatic rifles, they were met by the LAPD,
05:07triggering one of history's most intense gun battles.
05:10You really don't have time to think about things like family, or whether or not you're going to live or
05:17die.
05:17At that point, you're just trying to get to some type of concealment, so where you don't get shot.
05:22News choppers broadcast the chase, as the robber's armor deflected standard police bullets.
05:27Desperate officers were forced to commandeer high-powered rifles from a nearby gun store
05:32just to match the robbers' firepower. The 44-minute shootout left both perpetrators dead
05:37and nearly 20 people wounded. It also fundamentally changed American law enforcement, leading to the
05:42rapid militarization of police departments, to ensure officers were never outgunned again.
05:47The murders of Allison Parker and Adam Ward.
05:50Our WDBJ-7 morning crew was live this morning at Smith Mountain Lake when shots were fired around 6.45.
05:57And our general manager and WDBJ-7 vice president, Jeff Marks, is here to tell us more about what happened.
06:06This tragedy highlighted the brutal intersection of live news and social media fame.
06:11On the morning of August 26, 2015, reporter Allison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward were conducting a
06:18lighthearted interview in Moneta, Virginia. Suddenly, viewers heard gunshots and screams
06:23as the camera tumbled to the ground, capturing a fleeting glimpse of the shooter.
06:27It is my very, very sad duty to report that we have determined, through the help of the police and
06:36our own employees, that Allison and Adam died this morning, shortly after 6.45 when the shots rang out.
06:44The perpetrator, a disgruntled former co-worker named Vester Flanagan, fled the scene and later uploaded
06:50his own first-person GoPro footage of the attack to social media. The incident forced news crews
06:55everywhere to rethink security during live remote broadcasts. And it stands as a grim example of
07:01a crime designed specifically to go viral. And by doing so, we all gave the killer exactly what he
07:07wanted. The day of the attack, you were standing with Allison in what was supposed to be her last
07:10live shot of the day. Did you see the attacker approaching, coming up to you in the cameraman's
07:15position? I did. I did. Of course, who would have ever guessed in a million years what was about to
07:21happen?
07:22The Granby Killdozer Rampage. We're told he took about 10 or 15 minutes at this one building alone.
07:28It gives you an idea of just how much time he spent at some of these places. Damage, we're told,
07:34could be in the millions. Sometimes the weapon isn't a gun, but a machine. In June 2004,
07:40muffler shop owner Marvin Heemeyer took revenge on Granby, Colorado, in a way the world had never seen.
07:46Furious over a zoning dispute, Heemeyer spent months modifying a Komatsu bulldozer with concrete
07:53and steel armor, essentially creating an unstoppable tank. For two hours, news helicopters broadcast live
07:59as he methodically crushed the town hall, the police station, and the homes of council members.
08:05Police fired hundreds of rounds and even used explosives, but nothing could penetrate the
08:09makeshift armor. The rampage finally ended when the machine became trapped in a basement,
08:14where Heemeyer took his own life. It was a destructive spectacle that caused seven million dollars in
08:19damages and became an instant legend in true crime history. As authorities try to get into the cab of
08:25his homemade tank, Marv Heemeyer takes his own life. It takes officers several hours and a cutting torch
08:33to finally get inside the cab. The Munich Olympics massacre. In 1972 at the Munich Olympic Games in
08:39Germany, Palestinian gunmen slaughter 11 Israeli hostages. It was meant to be a celebration of peace,
08:48but it became the first time terrorism was broadcast live to a global audience. During the 1972 Munich
08:54Olympics, the group Black September infiltrated the Olympic village, killing two Israeli athletes and taking
09:00nine others hostage. For nearly 24 hours, the world watched anxiously as live cameras trained on masked
09:07terrorists patrolling the balconies. I sat in front of the television. I had one television with the
09:13German program, one with the Dutch program, one radio next to me and trying to figure out. It was terrible
09:20because I had no clue what was going on. The crisis ended in a disastrous botched shootout at a nearby
09:27airfield, resulting in the deaths of all remaining hostages and a police officer. The broadcast is
09:32forever remembered for sportscaster Jim McKay's somber delivery of the bad news to a waiting world.
09:38The event was soon immortalized in pop culture, the image of a masked terrorist on the balcony
09:43becoming one of the most popular in true crime.
09:45The defining moment is that image of the guy coming out with the black mask on his head,
09:50hanging out in that balcony, looking out. That's the image which is sort of seared into people's memory.
09:55The Bronco chase. What you are looking now is a police chase of Simpson and his friend Al Cowling.
10:01The finish to this bizarre case began with that picture you're looking at now. Roughly 18 police
10:06cars picking up Simpson's trail as he and another man, Al Cowling, rode along a Los Angeles freeway
10:11in that white Ford Bronco that you see in the center of the screen. While it wasn't a murder caught
10:15on
10:16tape, it was a run of the century that literally stopped the world. In June 1994, O.J. Simpson,
10:23famously charged with a double homicide, failed to surrender to the police.
10:27What followed was a surreal, low-speed pursuit of his white Ford Bronco across Los Angeles freeways.
10:33Well, Bill, as we've watched these events unfold tonight, there have been many comparisons that
10:37this is something like out of a Hollywood movie. But this went far beyond a simple police chase,
10:42and became a massive cultural phenomenon. 95 million Americans tuned in to watch the chase live,
10:48interrupting the NBA Finals and even driving record pizza sales. Crowds lined the overpasses to cheer
10:54him on as if it were a parade. The phenomenon solidified both the 24-hour sensationalist news
11:00cycle and reality TV culture, proving that sometimes the getaway is just as famous as the crime itself.
11:06New Yorker's appetite for sports is bigger than ever these days, but many who headed into the garden for
11:11championship game number five found the day's biggest news real distasteful.
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11:19about our latest videos. You have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them.
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11:31Jack Ruby shoots Lee Harvey Oswald. It's the moment that fueled a million conspiracy theories.
11:41Two days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the prime suspect,
11:46Lee Harvey Oswald, was being transferred from jail. As he was led through the basement of the Dallas
11:51police headquarters, live NBC cameras were rolling to capture the legendary Perk Walk. But suddenly,
11:57local nightclub owner Jack Ruby lunged from the crowd of reporters and shot Oswald point blank in
12:02the stomach. It began with the fatal shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of John
12:07Kennedy, by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, in the basement of Dallas police headquarters.
12:12Here's how it looked and sounded on live nationwide television. Millions of Americans witnessed the
12:17murder of the man accused of killing the president in real time. It silenced the only person who could
12:22provide answers, turning a national tragedy into an enduring mystery, and standing as the most infamous
12:28crime ever broadcast live. Absolute panic here in the basement of Dallas police headquarters.
12:34Detectives have their guns drawn. Oswald has been shot. There is no question about it,
12:40Oswald has been shot. Did you happen to catch these? Let us know in the comments below.
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