The Massacre of the Albertis

November 11, 2015November 11, 2015 / Tristan / Leave a comment

The town of Pentedattilo. (Image source/credit here.)

Located in the southern Italian region of Calabria, Pentedattilo is a ghost town with a very interesting history. Its name, which means “five fingers”, refers to a mountain located around the town. Before an earthquake disfigured it in 1783, the mountain had five rock towers that resembled a human hand with fingers. Local legend held that the mountain, nicknamed the Devil’s Hand, would one day collapse and fall on mankind. This curse was said to have been cast by Lorenzo Alberti, one of the victims of an infamous historical incident known as The Massacre of the Albertis.

In 1686, Baron Bernardino Abenavoli fell in love with Antoinette Alberti, the daughter of the family that had owned the fiefdom of Pentedattilo since the late 16th century. The Abenavolis, the former lords of Pentedattilo, had been in a rivalry with the Alberti family ever since. Due to this feud, Antoinette had little interest in Bernardino. When it was announced in April that Antoinette would be marrying Don Petrillo Cortez, the son of the Viceroy of Naples, Bernardino was struck with rage.

Picture of Pentedattilo. (Image source/credit here.)

On the night of April 21, Bernardino carried out a horrific plan for revenge. After bribing one of the Alberti family’s servants, Bernardino was let inside their castle with a group of his followers. Their first victim was Lorenzo, Antoinette’s brother and the head of the Albertis. As he was sleeping in his bedroom, Lorenzo was ambushed by Bernardino and then shot and stabbed to death. With the exception of Antoinette, the Alberti family and most of their guests were all massacred, including Antoinette’s 9-year-old brother Simone, who had his head bashed against a rock.

Don Petrillo Cortez and his family were spared as well, but they were taken by Bernardino as hostages. On April 19, Bernardino married Antoinette. Word of the massacre spread quickly, however, and Cortez’s father sent a military expedition to capture Bernardino and his collaborators a few days later. Although 7 of Bernardino’s men were captured and beheaded, including the servant who let them into the Alberti castle, Bernardino managed to escape to Malta. He later joined the Austrian army, and died on the battlefield in 1692. Antoinette, filled with grief that she was the cause of the massacre, spent the rest of her life as a nun.

Ruins of the Alberti castle. (Image source/ credit here.)

Now even though Lorenzo Alberti died in his castle, the town’s folklore says that he was killed near the rock walls of the mountain. As he laid dying, Lorenzo pushed his bloody hand against the walls, leaving a permanent imprint that glowed red when the sun went down. On some nights, his screams can be heard coming from the mountain. On the anniversary of the massacre, shadows of the victims are said to appear all over the town, running from other shadows that chase them with knives.

Another legend related to the massacre and the mountain’s disfigurement involves a secret treasure allegedly left behind by Bernardino Abenavoli. One night, a ghost told a knight who was passing by the mountain that the five fingers would collapse and reveal the Abenavoli treasure if somebody would run around the mountain five times. Many people tried running around the mountain, but it never collapsed. A knight from Sicily heard about the challenge and decided to give it a try. Right as he was about to finish his fifth lap, one of the fingers suddenly fell off the mountain and crushed him.

Following an earthquake in 1783, a lot of the townspeople left Pentedattilo for the town of Melito Porto Salvo. Pentedattilo was completely abandoned by the 1960s, although today it hosts the site of an annual international film festival.

The Case of Jaclyn Dowaliby: An Unreliable Witness and a Wrongly Accused Man

October 11, 2015May 14, 2016 / Tristan / 22 Comments

Jaclyn Dowaliby. (Image credit/source here.)

On the morning of September 10, 1988, David and Cynthia Dowaliby reported to the police that their 7-year-old daughter Jaclyn had gone missing from their home in Midlothian, Illinois. Jaclyn wasn’t in her bedroom when her parents woke up, and one of the windows in the house’s basement was found broken. The Dowalibys thought somebody must have broken the window from the outside, but the more numerous shards of glass outside suggested to police that the window had been shattered from inside the house. Equally suspicious, how didn’t anybody wake up while the abduction was taking place?

Four days later, Jaclyn’s body was discovered in a field behind an apartment complex. One of the apartment’s residents, Everett Mann, told police that he saw a suspicious Caucasian man in a dark car driving away from the field on the night of Jaclyn’s disappearance. After being shown pictures of the case’s suspects, Mann identified David Dowaliby as the man he saw. David and Cynthia were arrested on November 22, charged with murder and concealing a homicide.

Picture of Jaclyn Dowaliby. (Image credit/source here.)

Although public opinion was set harshly against the Dowalibys, several investigators behind the scene believed they were innocent. A forensic report confirmed that the basement window in the Dowaliby’s home had been carefully broken from the outside, while Everett Mann’s reliability as a witness came under serious scrutiny. Mann changed the description of the car he saw numerous times, and identified David in the line-up from his nose, which he claimed to have seen 75 yards away in the middle of the night. He was also mentally unwell and suffered from bipolar disorder.

As the Dowaliby trial unfolded, Cynthia was cleared of any wrongdoing in April 1990, but David was convicted of murder nearly a month later. After spending a year in jail, David’s conviction was overturned due to a lack of evidence, and he was released in November 1991. Although the Dowalibys were proven to be innocent, the question still remained of who was guilty of killing their daughter?

Clip from an Unsolved Mysteries segment about Jaclyn’s murder.

Before Jaclyn’s body turned up, her biological father, Jimmy Guess, had been the main suspect in the case. Guess had tried abducting Jaclyn before, but he was ruled out once it was discovered that he was in jail during the time for sexually assaulting a woman. After the Dowalibys appeared on an Unsolved Mysteries segment in 1993, authorities received a tip that Guess’s schizophrenic brother Timothy had lied to the police about his alibi on the night Jaclyn was abducted.

When earlier questioned, Guess said that he had spent the evening at an all-night restaurant. Several other people at the restaurant, including two waitresses, reported that Guess was only there for a short while at 9:30. When Guess gave a taped interview to a professor involved in the case, he claimed that he was possessed by a spirit that could make him invisible.

Despite never having been to the Dowaliby’s home, Guess was able to accurately describe the inside of it. At one point, he described in the first-person where Jaclyn’s room was located. When asked how he knew this, Guess explained that the spirit told him. While Guess might very likely have been the killer, Jaclyn’s case is still open. Guess died years ago, and not much has developed since the Dowalibys were let go.

UPDATE: (5/14/2016)

A Chicago news station recently aired a segment about this case that you can watch here. It doesn’t offer any new leads or tips, but it does include some interviews with the Dowalibys’ attorneys and Jimmy Guess. The Dowalibys were also asked to be interviewed for the segment, but they ignored the invitation. Since being cleared of their daughter’s murder, the Dowalibys have changed their last name and no longer live in Midlothian.

The Black Magic Murders of Ahmad Suradji

October 1, 2015October 1, 2015 / Tristan / Leave a comment

Picture of Ahmad Suradji. (Image source/credit here.)

Ahmad Suradji, also known as Nasib Kelewang, was a self-proclaimed black magic master who ritualistically killed 42 women and girls over an 11 year period.

A cattle breeder by trade, he lived in Medan, in West Java, Indonesia, where many women would make the journey to his house seeking guidance and assistance in matters of health, love and finance.

Suradji would generally charge between $200-$300 for his services, with most of his female clients longing to be wealthy or attractive and some asking him to perform black magic rituals to keep their significant others from cheating. As a Dukun, or Shaman, they believed, just as the vast majority of the Indonesian population does, that black magic could help them.

Ahmad Suradji on trial. (Image source/credit here.)

A revered position, many Dukuns make a living with this occupation, and although primarily healers, they are used for a variety of reasons; some are exorcists, some perform blessings on new businesses, and farm lands and on individuals, and some can see the future through spirits. Some Dukuns even offer a darker service of casting curses and hexes and spells for revenge.

Suradji was something of a sorcerer, and between the years of 1986 – 1997 he murdered 42 of his clients in ritual slayings that he believed would ultimately make him more powerful.

Inspired by a dream he had in 1988, in which his deceased father visited him, Suradji would lead the woman and girls out to a sugar cane plant on the outskirts of Medan, and bury them up to their waists in earth before strangling them with a cord. Once dead, he would strip the bodies of the women naked and bury them facing in the direction of his house.As instructed by his father in the dream, he would also consume the victim’s saliva.

His objective was to kill 70 victims in this way, but he was caught at just over half way through his mission at confirmed victim number 42, after the discovery of a body, later identified as Sri Kemala Dewi, by a local man at the sugar cane plantation.

Picture of Ahmad Suradji. (Image source/credit here.)

Investigators found clothing linked to over 20 women who had been reported as missing in and around the local area. All of the victims were between the ages of 11-39 years old. If Suradji was running low on clientele, it was said that he would also kill local sex workers to get closer to his goal.

Despite the official recorded body count of 42 victims, it is possible that the actual number could be almost double that.

Suradji was convicted, along with one of his three wives (all sisters) who had helped him hide the bodies.

Despite protests by Amnesty International, he was executed by firing squad in 2008.

This article originally appeared on Real Life is Horror, a blog about the unexplained, the creepy, and the unsolved. It has been reposted with the author’s permission.

The Case of Russell and Shirley Dermond, an Elderly Couple Brutally Murdered in Their Own Home

September 23, 2015February 2, 2016 / Tristan / 2 Comments

Picture of Russell and Shirley Dermond. (Image credit source here.)

Picture of Russell and Shirley Dermond. (Image source/credit here.)

88-year-old Russell Dermond and his 87-year-old wife Shirley lived in a $769,000 two-story lake home in the gated community of Great Waters, Georgia. Russell and Shirley were both from New Jersey, but had moved to Great Waters in the late 1990s. They were well-liked by their neighbors, and there was nothing particularly unusual about them. Shirley enjoyed spending her time playing bridge and going to church, and Russell liked to play golf.

On May 3, 2014, the Dermonds were invited to a Kentucky Derby party held by some friends in the neighborhood. Despite earlier saying they would show up, they never made it. Nobody had seen Shirley since the 1st, when she was playing at a bridge club. Russell was spotted at a grocery store that day, and had been seen on a golf course on the 2nd.

The Dermond home. (Image source/credit here.)

On the morning of May 6, after not hearing from the Dermonds for a couple of days, the couple that had thrown the derby party went to their house and found their front door unlocked. There was no immediate sign of the couple, and everything in the house seemed to be in its usual place. After looking through the house, the husband decided to try the Dermonds’ garage. In between the two cars stored there, he found Russell’s body, decapitated and with his head nowhere in sight.

By the time police arrived, there was still no trace of Shirley. Authorities suspected that she had been abducted, but had little hope that she was still alive. On May 16, Shirley’s body was found floating facedown in the near-by lake by two fisherman at a spot about 5 miles away from her home. Her killer had tied her body down with a pair of 30 pound concrete blocks.

The back of the Dermond home. (Image source/ credit here.)

According to forensic tests, Shirley had been beaten on the head with something like a hammer. She had been tossed into the lake after she died. The cause of Russell’s death is still undetermined. Without his head, it’s been difficult to figure out how exactly he died. He’s believed to have been beheaded, possibly with a knife, only after he was murdered.

While the Dermonds had no known enemies, that’s not to say that the family hadn’t experienced trouble before. Their son, Mark, had been shot to death on his 47th birthday while buying crack cocaine in 2000. While Mark’s killer was caught, nobody associated with him has been suspected of his parents’ murder. Investigators have poured over the Dermonds’ relatives and friends, even collecting phone conversations and information from their college days, but have yet to find anybody with a possible grudge against them.

Putnam County sheriff Howard Sills, the man in charge of the Dermond case. (Picture credit source here.)

Putnam County sheriff Howard Sills, the man in charge of the Dermond case. (Picture source/credit here here.)

Due to the savage nature of the attacks, the sheriff in charge of the case believes that the Dermonds were murdered by somebody they knew. He’s suggested that the killer came to the house by car or boat. How exactly they got into the house is uncertain. While nothing was missing, the intruder could have demanded something that the Dermonds didn’t have. Rather than the work of a single person, there might have been multiple people involved. An unidentified man was seen on the lawn of the Dermond home around the time of their deaths, but authorities have declined to say anything more than that the man is a person of interest.

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The Case of Carolyn Wasilewski, a Murdered Schoolgirl who was Found with a Mysterious Lipstick Message on Her Thigh

August 28, 2015August 30, 2015 / Tristan / 11 Comments

Picture of Carolyn Wasilewski.
Image source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fc/Carolyn_Wasilewski.jpg

Carolyn Wasilewski was a pretty blonde-haired girl who dated and hung around drapes, a variant of the greaser subculture popular in the 1950s. She was a freshman student at Southern High School in Baltimore, Maryland, and was called “Peaches” by her friends.

On November 8, 1954, Carolyn told her family that she was going out to meet her friend Peggy Lamana. The two girls planned to sign up for a dance program at a local elementary school. Carolyn left her house at 6:15 PM, but never met up with Peggy. Her family got worried, and though they spent all night looking for her, found no trace of Carolyn.

Later that morning, around 7 AM, an engineer on a train passing from Harrisburg to Baltimore suddenly slowed down and switched off course to another track. He saw a body lying on the initial trackline the train was taking, and when the police went to check it out, they discovered that it was Carolyn Wasilewski, dead and laying face down.

Carolyn was found half-naked, but her body showed no signs of being sexually assaulted. She was covered in bruises and scratches. The name “Paul” was written in lipstick on her right thigh. Her skull and jaw had been battered, and one of her ring fingers was broken too. Police suspected that she was killed someplace else, and was then either tossed from an above bridge or moved to the track. The autopsy concluded that Carolyn died the night before, around 11 PM.

Newspaper picture of Carolyn Wasilewski.
Image source:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1734&dat=19541111&id=t1EqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=21AEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6985,778881&hl=en

Near her house, and about 8 miles away from the railroad, police found bloodstains in a vacant lot. They also found Carolyn’s shoes and a few other personal items of hers. Over 300 people were questioned by the authorities, including local drapes, but Carolyn’s murderer was never identified.

Police had two strong suspects, but both were eventually ruled out. The first was a man who sexually assaulted one of Carolyn’s friends. Carolyn testified against this man a week before her death. While he was brought in for questioning, police dismissed him, believing he had nothing to do with the crime.

The other suspect was a middle-aged man named Ralph Garret. Garret lived in the area and was allegedly seen with Carolyn the night of the murder. Garret didn’t come home to his wife that night, and subsequently disappeared. His car was found abandoned 2 days later. out of town. The same day police started looking for him, a man stumbled upon Garret’s body near the same vacant lot where Carolyn’s bloodstains and shoes were found. He had committed suicide by hanging himself with a belt from “a brake wheel on top of a gondola car.” His suicide, however, was later deemed unrelated. According to Garret’s wife, he was depressed because his mother had died.

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The Frog Boys

August 19, 2015August 11, 2017 / Tristan / 6 Comments

On March 26, 1991, a group of five boys between the ages of 9 and 13 left their homes in Daegu, South Korea and walked to near-by Mount Waryong to look for frogs. U Cheol-won, Jo Ho-yeon, Kim Yeong-gyu, Park Chan-in, and Kim Jong-sik were all students at Seongseo Elementary School. The boys knew the area well and lived only a few miles away from the mountain.

The “Frog Boys”, as they would come to be known in the media, never came back. Their parents reported them missing, and while both townspeople and local police searched the area, not a single trace of the boys was found. As media attention escalated and the whole country became engrossed in the case, President Roh Tae-woo ordered 300,000 policemen to join in the search.

Over 8 million flyers were distributed all over the country, and a reward of 42 million won ($35,000) was promised to anybody who could locate the boys. Some of the Frog Boys’ parents became so determined to find their sons that they quit their jobs so they could devote all of their time to searching.

A picture from 1991 of the Frog Boys’ parents and other supporters passing out flyers.

Despite all the extra help, investigating the case proved to be difficult. Authorities received over 550 false leads, and at one point, a man called the police and lied that he abducted the Frog Boys. “I have kidnapped the boys for an exchange of ransom, and they’re dying of malnutrition,” he said in one of the calls.

The case went nowhere until September 26, 2002, when a man looking for acorns in Mount Waryong found scattered pieces of children’s shoes and clothing. He called the police, and after they searched the mountainside, found all five bodies of the Frog Boys in a shallow pit. At first, the police suspected that the boys had froze to death. It was cold and rainy the day they went missing, and the boys might have gotten lost. The fact that their bodies were so close together might have been because they tried huddling for warmth.

Their parents, however, were skeptical. Their sons were found only 2 miles away from their village, so how could they have gotten lost? And why would they have taken off some of their clothes when the weather was so bad? Lastly, perhaps the most damaging point, Mount Waryong and the surrounding area had been searched and examined over 500 times the past decade. How could the bodies have possibly gone unnoticed for such a long period of time?

After the boys’ bodies were exhumed, police admitted that their hypothermia theory was incorrect. Three of the boys’ skulls had marks on them, suggesting they were beaten to death by a blunt object. Additionally, two of the skulls had traces of blood on them, and another had two bullet holes inside of it, possibly from a shotgun. The police were no longer dealing with a case of missing persons; the Frog Boys were murder victims.

The Frog Boys’ parents at the burial for their sons.

No further developments have taken place since the boys’ autopsy back in 2002. They were eventually buried on March 25, 2004, and their skulls were donated to Gyeongbuk University for medical research. In 2006, the case reached South Korea’s 15 year statute of limitations on murder, meaning the investigation was stopped and the murderer can’t be prosecuted for the crime anymore. Fortunately, South Korea removed the statute in July 2015, so perhaps there still is hope that the Frog Boys and their families will finally receive justice.

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The Werewolf of Bedburg

August 17, 2015 / Tristan / 4 Comments

Woodcut print of Peter Stubbe’s execution.

As the Cologne War raged in the Electorate of Cologne from 1583 to 1588, the rural town of Bedburg was plagued with a streak of mysterious murders and animal mutilations. Children who went missing soon turned up dead in the fields, and people began to report seeing a strange wolf-like creature.

In one of the few incidents that left a survivor, the monstrous wolf attacked a group of children playing in a meadow. The wolf carried off one of the little girls, but the children’s cries attracted the attention of some near-by cows suckling their calves. Fearing for the lives of their young, the cows with their sharp horns came running to the rescue, and the wolf dropped the girl and took off.

After years of trying to search and trap the beast, some hunters stumbled upon it and let their dogs loose to chase it. When the hunters caught up with their dogs, however, they found that they had caught something entirely different. It was not a wolf, but a local farmer named Peter Stubbe.

The hunters were terribly confused. Peter Stubbe was a wealthy and well-respected man in their community. At first, they were afraid that their captive was the Devil. They went to Stubbe’s house to see if he was there, and when they discovered that Stubbe was missing, were then assured that they had the right man. They turned him over to the authorities, and Stubbe was tortured on the rack until he made a confession.

Stubbe admitted that he was the wolf that had been terrorizing the town. He said that he could transform into a wolf by putting on a magical belt that the Devil had given him when he was 12-years-old. His list of crimes was vast and gut-wrenching. Besides killing lambs and eating their raw flesh, he admitted to murdering 13 young children and 2 pregnant women. He even tore the fetuses out of the women’s wombs, and “ate their hearts panting hot and raw.”

If this wasn’t horrific enough, Stubbe also said he regularly committed incest with his teenage daughter Beele. They had a little boy, but Stubbe killed him and ate his brain. His mistress, a tall and beautiful woman named Katherine Trompin, participated in the bloodshed as well. Beele and Trompin were arrested and charged as accomplices, and the three were sentenced to death on October 28^th, 1589.

Three days later, Trompin and Beele were burned at the stake. Stubbe was first laid on the wheel, and then had flesh pulled off his body in 10 different places with hot burning pincers. After that, his arms and legs were broken with a wooden axe, and then he had his head chopped off. As a final punishment, his body was burned and his head was placed on a pike.

More woodcuts of Peter Stubbe.

Most of what he know about Stubbe (whose name has also been given as Stumpp, Stumpf, and Stube) comes from a London pamphlet that was printed in June 1590. The pamphlet, which takes the claims of Stubbe being a werewolf seriously, was translated from a now lost German source. While we don’t exactly know how true the pamphlet is, Stubbe was certainly a real person, and his case was mentioned in the diaries of a local city councilor named Hermann von Weinsberg.

There is the possibility that Stubbe was innocent, a victim of religious prejudice. The Cologne War was a conflict fought between Catholics and Protestants, and even though the war was over by the time Stubbe was caught, tensions remained high. In a region that was overwhelmingly Catholic, Stubbe was Protestant. If he really was the killer, he probably suffered from schizophrenia. The reports of a werewolf might have stemmed from hysteria, or Stubbe possibly wore a wolf’s skin while committing his crimes. In any event, the authorities never found the magical belt he claimed to have possessed.

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The Mysterious Suicide of French Politician Robert Boulin

August 16, 2015August 17, 2015 / Tristan / Leave a comment

Robert Boulin.

On October 30, 1979, the body of Robert Boulin was found in a pond in the forest of Rambouillet in southern France. Boulin, a Gaullist politician and veteran of the French Resistance during World War II, had not been seen since the day before, when he had gone out to lunch with his son. His car and an empty container of barbiturates were found near his body. Inside the car were some letters declaring his intention to kill himself.

A note he wrote to police, dated the day of his death, was received a few days later. Boulin wrote, “I have decided to drown myself in a lake in the forest of Rambouillet, where I enjoyed horse-riding.”

The autumn of that year, Boulin was embroiled in a real-estate scandal in which he illegally acquired five acres of land in the Rambouillet area. At that time, Boulin was the Minister of Labor, and was well on his way to becoming the next prime minister. The revelation of the scandal in the press, however, harshly tarnished his political career and reputation. According to the official account of his death, Boulin was so devastated that it drove him to suicide. The authorities closed the case quickly, attributing his death to drowning.

The spot where Boulin’s body was discovered.

Boulin’s family has publicly denied this. They’ve pointed out that the water he was supposed to have drowned in was only a foot-and-a-half deep. Furthermore, as was only recorded in a second autopsy that was conducted in 1983, there were “bruises around his wrists and a blood clot behind his head.” The judge in charge of the case asked for Boulin’s lungs to be checked to confirm that they contained water, but the jars storing the lungs inexplicably disappeared. Boulin’s family believe that his death was the result of foul play, and have accused his former Gaullist colleagues of plotting and covering up the murder.

After years of keeping quiet, the local policeman who first saw Boulin’s body came out publicly in 2011 with some new information. The officer, Francis Deswarte, reported that Boulin’s head was out of the water, and had red marks all over his face. Deswarte said that he was dismissed from the case only a half-hour later. Two or three months passed, and he was then called in for questioning by federal police, who ordered him to keep quiet about what he saw. When he asked about the red marks, they told him that Boulin’s body had been dropped by the firefighters who were taking it out of the water, despite that Deswarte himself saw the body being removed without a problem.

In light of this new information, no new investigation has been opened.

This article originally appeared on Bizarrepedia, a site full of interesting articles about serial killers, unsolved crimes, and other strange things.

5 Conspiracy Theories About the Death of Marilyn Monroe

August 4, 2015November 1, 2016 / Tristan / 23 Comments

In the early hours of August 5, 1962, movie star Marilyn Monroe was reported dead in her home in Los Angeles, California. She had been found lying face down in her bed, naked and with her hands by her side.

Around midnight, her housekeeper Eunice Murray had noticed that Marilyn’s bedroom light was on. She knocked on the door a few times, but Marilyn didn’t answer. At 3:00 AM, Murray started to worry and called Dr. Ralph Greenson, Marilyn’s psychiatrist. After he failed to knock down her door, he looked through her window and saw her lying on her bed. He then broke the window, checked her for a pulse, and realized she was dead. The police were called at 4:30 AM.

Marilyn Monroe’s bedroom.

When they arrived, they questioned Murray, Greenson, and another doctor on the scene. They inspected the room and noticed that despite that there were empty pill bottles on her nightstand, there was no glass or cup of water anywhere to be found. Greenson estimated that Monroe died around 12:30 AM, while undertaker Guy Hockett thought her time of death sometime between 9:30 and 11:30 PM. The autopsy, conducted by Dr. Thomas Noguchi, concluded that Monroe had overdosed on sedative drugs, possibly to commit suicide.

Marilyn’s body being taken out of her home.

Her death has since been surrounded in controversy, and many of her fans and admirers believe that she was given the pills against her will. The investigation was quick and suspicious, and the official account of her death begs numerous unanswered questions. Why, for example, did it take Murray so long to call for help? What about the reports that Greenson summoned an ambulance and then turned it away after finding Marilyn dead? And how did a drinking glass, after the police search, turn up in Marilyn’s room? Murray would later change her story several times over her life, and the first policeman on the scene, Jack Clemmons, said that “Her hands were by her side and her legs were stretched out perfectly straight. It was the most obviously staged death scene I had ever seen. The pill bottles on her bedside table had been arranged in neat order and the body deliberately positioned, it all looked too tidy.”

There have been numerous theories about what really happened to Marilyn Monroe, many of them placing the blame on the Kennedy brothers or Dr. Ralph Greenson. Below are five of the most common ones, provided by crackpots and experts alike.

5. She was Murdered by Communists

Author and conspiracy theorist Frank A. Cappell.

In June 1964, far right-wing author Frank A. Cappell published arguably the first book that expressed skepticism about the official account of Marilyn’s demise, The Strange Death of Marilyn Monroe. Cappell’s 70 page booklet featured some of the earliest tropes now common in conspiracy circles, including that the Kennedys had a hand in her death. Cappell argued that both Marilyn and Robert F. Kennedy were communists, and that Marilyn was ultimately the victim of a vast communist conspiracy. According to Cappell, “Many ‘suicides’ and ‘heart attacks’ and ‘accidental deaths’ are in reality murders ordered by the Communist Party.”

4. She was Killed by the FBI or CIA

Cover of Norman Mailer’s best-selling biography.

A lot of the ideas in Cappell’s booklet were introduced to the mainstream in Norman Mailer’s best-selling Marilyn: A Biography, which was published in 1973 to great public attention. Mailer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist never shy of provoking controversy, repeated the link between Marilyn’s death and the Kennedys.

He believed, to get back at the Kennedys for the disastrous Bay of Pigs fiasco, right-wing agents of the FBI or CIA killed Marilyn to upset the Kennedy brothers. He also claimed that Marilyn called the White House on the night of her death, and that the FBI confiscated her phone records. Mailer, however, didn’t have a single shed of evidence to back up his claims, and later admitted he only wrote the book for money.

3. It was a Fake Suicide Attempt Gone Awry

Peter Lawford and Marilyn Monroe at John F. Kennedy’s birthday celebration in 1962.

According to this theory, based on a non-authenticated report supposedly circulated among the FBI in 1964, Marilyn thought she could revive her career by making a suicide attempt. Peter Lawford, a friend of Marilyn and the brother-in-law of Robert F. Kennedy, heard about this plan from some of Marilyn’s other friends. After telling Kennedy, whom allegedly was having an affair with Marilyn and wanted to get rid of her, Lawford persuaded Dr. Ralph Greenson and Eunice Murray to help orchestrate the suicide “attempt”.

So Greenson prescribed a few bottles of Seconal tablets to Marilyn, and then Murray is said to have put them in Marilyn’s bedroom on the night of her death. Believing that the pills could easily be pumped out of her stomach, Marilyn swallowed dozens of the them to overdose. After she became unconscious, Murray called Greenson, and they waited to contact the police until Marilyn died.

2. She was the Victim of a Mafia Hit

Mob boss Sam Giancana.

Darwin Porter, a biographer and travel writer who has written dozens of books, claims in Marilyn At Rainbow’s End that Marilyn was killed by the Mafia. Porter speculates that mob boss Sam Giancana, possibly paid off by one of the Kennedy brothers, ordered a hit on her. He said that Robert F. Kennedy had gone to Marilyn’s house that day and gotten into an argument. After he left, a partner of Gianacana named Johnny Roselli visited her at 10 PM.

When he left, he unlocked the front door, and then let five Mafia hitmen in. One of the hitmen sneeked up behind Marilyn while she was in the front room, and then slipped a chloroform-soaked washcloth over her face. They then undressed her, administered an enema of barbiturates, and moved her into her bedroom. They left after hearing Eunice Murray walk into the house. After the police were called, Peter Lawford arrived at the scene and stole a little red diary, which was said to have been filled with details about Marilyn’s affairs and sex encounters.

1. She was Killed by RFK and Ralph Greenson

Marilyn Monroe with the Kennedy brothers.

Journalists Jay Margolis and Richard Buskin in their book The Murder of Marilyn Monroe: Case Closed, repeated the story about Marilyn and Robert F. Kennedy having an affair and then getting into an argument the day before her body was found.

According to this theory Kennedy told Marilyn that he wouldn’t marry her, and Marilyn threatened to stage a public conference and reveal her affairs with him and his brother John. Kennedy demanded that Marilyn leave him alone, and to hand over the diary in which she kept track of her affairs. Marilyn refused, and Kennedy left in a fit of rage.

Dr. Ralph Greenson, Marilyn’s psychiatrist.

He called up her psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, another man Marilyn had been sleeping with. Kennedy falsely told Greenson that she was planning to go public with the affair she was having with him. Greenson, worried that his reputation would be ruined, agreed to go with Kennedy to convince Marilyn to hand over the diary. That evening, Kennedy came back to Marilyn’s house, bringing along two bodyguards, Greenson, and his brother-in-law Peter Lawford.

One of the bodyguards shot Marilyn with an injection of Nembutal to calm her down, and then Kennedy threw her to the floor. While Kennedy and Lawford were looking for the diary, his bodyguards tore Marilyn’s clothes off and administered a powerful enema that would further sedate her. The group of men left around 10:30 PM, and Marilyn’s housekeeper Eunice Murray and son Norman Jefferies found her naked and unconscious on her bed a short while after. They called for an ambulance, and one of the attendants, James Edwin Hall, attempted to revive her with a resuscitator.

Suddenly, Ralph Greenson appeared on the scene, explained who he was, and then ordered Hall to remove the resuscitator. Greenson thrust a foot-long syringe into Marilyn’s chest, and then allowed her to be moved into the ambulance. At about 4:30 AM, Greenson called LAPD sergeant Jack Clemmons and told him that Marilyn had committed suicide. Marilyn was taken back to her home, and her death was subsequently ruled a suspected suicide.

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Sources:

http://www.marilynmonroe.ca/camera/books/89.html

https://books.google.com/books?id=eb2oQbu8xcsC&pg=PT32&lpg=PT32&dq=marilyn+monroe+norman+mailer+cia&source=bl&ots=4dlzbnrxMZ&sig=_pVvqZVqm6z534ZfYhYrjePcjLI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEoQ6AEwCmoVChMIwOePo9P_xgIVCJANCh0lHQDr#v=onepage&q=marilyn%20monroe%20norman%20mailer%20cia&f=false

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2630449/EXCLUSIVE-Bobby-Kennedy-ordered-Marilyn-Monroes-murder-lethal-injection-prevent-revealing-torrid-affairs-RFK-JFK-dirty-Kennedy-family-secrets-new-book-claims.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/marilyn-monroe-death-new-book-1174703

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-443111/Did-Kennedy-clan-fool-Marilyn-killing-herself.html

20 Bizarre and Disturbing Japanese Woodblock Prints

August 1, 2015August 22, 2015 / Tristan / 2 Comments

(This article is recommended for mature audiences only. It contains images of graphic violence and sexual content.)

This is a gallery of mostly 19th century woodblock prints. Many of them were made by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, an artist who pioneered the muzan-e (“bloody print”) genre in the 1860s. This collection also features prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Takato Yamamoto, Utagawa Kunisada, Katsushika Hokusai, and Utagawa Yoshiiku.

20. “Sakuma Daigaku Drinking Blood from a Severed Head.” Sakuma was a mid-16th century samurai who served Oda Nobunaga, an important historical figure who paved the way for the unification of Japan when it was engulfed in social and political turmoil during the Sengoku period (1467-1603).

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.

19. “People Join Together to Form Another Person.”

Utagawa Kuniyoshi.

18. “Reizei Hangan Takatoyo”. Takatoyo was a 16th century samurai and poet. He is shown here committing seppuku.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.

17. “Night of the Scarlet Moon.” This is actually the work of a modern artist. You can visit his official site right here.

Takato Yamamoto.

16. “Bound to Death.” Scene from the kabuki play Yotsuya Kadian.

Utagawa Kunisada.

15. “The Demon’s Arm.”

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.

14. “The Lone House.” The old woman in the center is the Hag of Adachi Moor, a deranged serial killer and cannibal who ran an inn.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi.

13. Not sure about the title of this one, or if it’s even by Yoshitoshi.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.

12. “Cat Janken.” Janken is a Japanese game similar to Rock-Paper-Scissors.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi.

11. “Greedy Old Woman.”

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.

10. That “monster” coming out of the tanuki is actually one of its testicles. Kuniyoshi created a whole series about tanuki and their gonads.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi.

9. “Gosho Gorozo Battling a Shadow.” Possibly a scene from a kabuki play called Gosho no Gorozo.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.

8. “Two Severed Heads in the Reeds.”

Katsushika Hokusai.

7. “Princess Shiranui and Captive Man.” Princess Shiranui was the wife of Minamoto no Tametomo, a 12th century samurai who committed seppuku after being surrounded by enemy soldiers during the Genpei War.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.

6. “Furuteya Hachirobei Murdering a Woman in a Graveyard.”

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.

5. “The Prostitute Oyaku and a Seated Ghost.”

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.

4. “Seimonya Keijuro.” I think this is a scene from a kabuki play of the same name.

Utagawa Yoshiiku.

3. “Naosuke Gombei Ripping Off a Face.” I’m not exactly sure, but I believe this Naosuke Gombei was an 18th century servant who killed his master, his wife, and their three children.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.

2. “The Lonely House.” Another depiction of the Hag of Adachi Moor, getting ready to kill a pregnant woman.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi

1 This piece seems a bit obscure; I have no idea who made this or what it’s called.

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