Guy Hadleigh True Crime Stories

The White House Farm Murders: The Night An Entire Family Was Wiped Out

Sun, 17 May 2026 20:19:33 -0700

The White House Farm Murders: The Night An Entire Family Was Wiped Out

In the early hours of 7 August 1985, police officers arrived outside an isolated farmhouse in the quiet Essex village of Tolleshunt D’Arcy. What they would soon discover inside White House Farm would become one of Britain’s most infamous and controversial murder cases.

Five members of the same family lay dead.

At first glance, the explanation appeared horrifying but simple: a mentally unstable woman had suffered a breakdown, murdered her family, and then taken her own life.

But within weeks, detectives began to suspect that the truth was far darker.

The only surviving member of the family — handsome, articulate Jeremy Bamber — was no grieving victim at all.

He was the killer.

A Frantic Telephone Call

At precisely 3:36 a.m., a call came into Chelmsford police station.

Twenty-four-year-old Jeremy Bamber sounded panicked. He told officers that his father had phoned him moments earlier saying that Jeremy’s adopted sister Sheila had “gone berserk” with a gun.

Patrol officers were dispatched immediately to White House Farm.

When police arrived outside the farmhouse, they found Jeremy already waiting at the gates. He appeared distressed and repeated his claim that Sheila had snapped and that people inside might already be dead.

But despite the urgency, police hesitated.

They feared entering the farmhouse in case Sheila was still alive and armed with a rifle. Officers surrounded the property for hours while attempts were made to telephone inside. No one answered.

Eventually, police forced entry.

5 Bizarre True Crime Cases So Strange They Sound Completely Fictional

Béla Kiss – The Metal Drum Murders (Hungary)

In a quiet Hungarian town in the early 1900s, Béla Kiss was known as a polite, well-liked tinsmith. He kept to himself, worked hard, and had an unusual hobby—collecting large metal drums, which he stored neatly on his property.

When neighbors asked about them, Kiss offered a simple explanation: gasoline. With war looming across Europe, it seemed almost sensible to stockpile fuel. No one questioned it. No one looked closer.

Then, suddenly, he was gone.

Called away to serve during World War I, Kiss disappeared from the village. Months later, authorities arrived to take inventory of his belongings. The house stood abandoned, silent. The drums still sat where he had left them—heavy, sealed, and undisturbed.

At first, there was no urgency to open them.

But when one was finally pried loose, the truth surfaced in the most grotesque way imaginable.

Inside was not gasoline.

It was a body.

Preserved in alcohol.

One drum became two. Two became many. Each contained the remains of women—victims lured through lonely hearts advertisements, promised companionship, and instead met with calculated, methodical murder. Kiss had drained their blood before sealing them away, as if trying to halt time itself.

And then came the most unsettling detail of all:

He was never caught.

Sightings of Béla Kiss emerged across Europe in the years that followed—on battlefields, in hospitals, even under assumed identities. Each lead went cold. Each trail ended in...Read More

The Serial Killer Cobbler of Marrakesh

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 05:19:01 -0700

The Serial Killer Cobbler of Marrakesh

Hadj Mohammed Mesfewi murdered and buried thirty-six women beneath his shop floor. Then a city walled him alive — and the world watched.

Marrakesh, June 11, 1906. The Djemaa el-Fna — the great square at the heart of the medina — is packed before the sun has cleared the rooftops. The storytellers and snake charmers are gone. This morning the crowd has come for something else.

Two masons have been working since dawn on a section of the bazaar wall. They have cut a niche into the ancient masonry — two feet deep, two feet wide, six feet high — and fixed chains to its back wall. On the floor of the opening sit a small loaf of bread and a vessel of water. The chief jailer places these himself. In the grim arithmetic of what is about to happen, this passes for mercy.

The procession arrives from the city jail. The man at its centre has spent the past four weeks being flogged every morning in this same square — ten strokes of thorny acacia switches, his wounds dressed with vinegar and oil so they would heal just enough to be torn open again the following day. He has endured this with a fatalistic stillness that unnerved the crowds who watched. He had hoped, it was said, that his heart would give out under the thorns. It refused.

Now he turns the corner into the square, sees the niche, sees the bricks stacked beside it, sees the thousands of faces pressing in, and understands for the first time what this morning actually is. He begins to scream.

His name is Hadj Mohammed Mesfewi. He is a cobbler. He is also, as the thirty-six bodies found beneath his shop and in his garden have established beyond any doubt, the most prolific serial killer in Moroccan history — and...Read More

Gordon Cummins

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 22:42:38 -0800

The Blackout Ripper: The Serial Killer Who Used Hitler's Bombs as Cover

The air raid shelter on Montagu Place sits empty, concrete walls radiating cold from the February night. Sunday morning, February 9, 1942. Harold Batchelor descends the stairs to check the lighting system. His torch beam catches something wrong—a woman's body, face-up on the floor, scarf wound around her head. Her shoes are scuffed. She fought back.

Evelyn Hamilton, 41 years old, pharmacist, strangled. Her handbag is missing. Eighty pounds gone—a fortune in wartime Britain.

The Metropolitan Police think robbery gone wrong. A crime of opportunity in the blackout, when streets go dark to confuse German bombers and criminals exploit the shadows.

They're wrong. This is the beginning of a killing spree that will terrorize London and earn comparisons to Jack the Ripper himself.

Welcome to the story of the Blackout Ripper. Six attacks in six days. Four women dead. And a mistake so stupid it gets him caught within hours.

The Gentleman Airman

Gordon Frederick Cummins doesn't look like a monster. Born in 1914 to a middle-class York family, he shows promise early—stays in school, earns a chemistry diploma, cultivates a polished manner. His RAF comrades nickname him "The Count" and "The Duke" because he insists on being called "The Honourable Gordon Cummins," spinning elaborate tales about aristocratic heritage that don't exist.

In 1936, he marries a theatrical producer's secretary. The marriage seems stable. No violence. No scandals. Nothing suggesting the husband is anything worse than a vain fantasist who dreams bigger than his work ethic.

But in October 1941, while stationed at RAF Colerne, two women are murdered in London during his leaves....Read More

Peter Manuel

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 19:17:53 -0800

Peter Manuel - The Beast of Birkenshaw

How Scotland's Most Dangerous Serial Killer Almost Got Away With It
On the morning of Monday, 17 September 1956, a daily help named Mrs Helen Collison arrived at 5 Fennsbank Avenue in High Burnside, Lanarkshire, expecting an ordinary workday. What she found instead would set in motion one of the most chilling criminal investigations in Scottish history — and expose a calculating killer who had been hiding in plain sight for years.

The small, neatly-kept bungalow belonged to William and Marion Watt. The curtains were still drawn. The back door was locked. Mrs Collison knocked. She called out. She circled the house, growing more uneasy with every step. When she reached the front door and saw that the glass panel above the lock had been smashed, her unease curdled into dread. She looked through the hole. Every interior door in the bungalow was standing wide open.

She went inside.

What she found in the bedroom would haunt her for the rest of her life. Marion Watt and her sister, 42-year-old Margaret Brown, were lying in bed, their pillows soaked through with blood. Steeling herself, Mrs Collison pushed open the door to 16-year-old Vivienne Watt's room. The girl was in bed, head on a bloodstained pillow. As Mrs Collison approached, Vivienne gave out a single, spine-chilling groan — and died right there in front of her.

A Family Destroyed in a Single Night

Police were on the scene within minutes. They quickly established that all three victims had been shot at point-blank range with a .38-calibre revolver. There was no evidence of robbery. No sign of sexual assault. But food had been inexplicably scattered across the floor — a strange, unsettling detail that would prove to be a calling card.

The Last Confession

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 19:39:43 -0800

The Last Confession

Sacred Heart, Holy Saturday, and the Priest Who Got Away with Murder for 57 Years

The high heels click on the concrete walkway. Click. Click. Click. It is the sound that will haunt him, the priest will later confess—not the woman's face, not her pleas, not even what he did to her. Just the sound of her heels on the hard floor.

Holy Saturday, April 16, 1960. The sun drops behind the palm trees lining Beaumont Avenue in McAllen, Texas, and Irene Garza checks her reflection one more time. Twenty-five years old, dark hair perfectly set, lavender blouse pressed, black patent leather heels polished. She tells her parents she's going to confession at Sacred Heart Catholic Church—routine for a woman who attends daily Mass, who serves with the Legion of Mary, who teaches second grade to the poorest children on McAllen's south side.

She drives the seven blocks to Sacred Heart. Parks on the street. Walks toward the church in those black heels, carrying her patent leather purse. Several parishioners see her enter. No one sees her leave.

Inside the rectory next door, a 27-year-old visiting priest named John Bernard Feit is hearing confessions. Horn-rimmed glasses. Dark hair. Neat. Unremarkable. Temporary assignment from San Antonio, helping with Holy Week crowds. He's been in the Valley for exactly three weeks.

The next morning is Easter Sunday. Irene doesn't come home for breakfast. By noon, Nicolas Garza files a police report. His daughter never came back from confession.

The Border and the Power Structure

McAllen sits eight miles from the Mexican border, the northernmost edge of a cultural corridor that stretches back to Spanish colonial times. In 1960, the Rio Grande...Read More

The Invisible Serial Killer

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 03:50:57 -0800

The Invisible Killer: How UK Killer Steven Wright Hid in Plain Sight for 27 Years

My new book examines Britain's Suffolk Strangler—the forklift driver who proved that the most dangerous predators don't look like monsters

I was born in Norwich. I've had drinks in the Ferry Boat Inn on the corner of King Street, a Victorian pub with exposed beams and a clientele that ranged from regulars nursing pints to students stumbling in after last call. It's the kind of place every English town has—unremarkable, familiar, safe.

Except in the late 1980s, the landlord of the Ferry Boat Inn was Steven Wright, (although I never actually met him as far as I can recall). But by the time he left that job, at least one woman—possibly more—was already dead.

I didn't know this then, of course. Nobody did. That's the thing about predators like Wright. They don't announce themselves. They blend in. They serve you beer with a smile. They clock in for their forklift shifts. They live on ordinary streets in ordinary houses and kill with such calculated precision that it takes decades to catch them.

My new book, The Invisible Serial Killer: Steven Wright and the Murders That Spanned Decades, tells the story of how a man spent twenty-seven years hunting vulnerable women across Norfolk and Suffolk before finally being brought to justice. It's a story about delayed justice, forensic breakthroughs, and the families who refused to give up. But it's also a story about proximity—about what it means when murder happens in your hometown, when the killer works in your local pubs and drives past your house and exists so close to your daily life that the distinction between "them" and "us" collapses entirely.

September 1999: The Ghost

Victoria Hall was...Read More

The Boy Who Learned To Kill - The Montie Rissell Murders

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 22:02:14 -0800

The Boy Who Learned To Kill - The Montie Rissell Murders

The Making of a Killer

The rain hammered Alexandria, Virginia, that night in August 1976, turning the parking lot outside the apartment complex into a mirror of sodium vapor lights. Twenty-two-year-old Aura Marina Gabor walked toward her car, keys in hand, unaware that a seventeen-year-old boy was watching from the shadows. Montie Ralph Rissell had already decided she was going to die.

He approached with the practiced ease of someone who understood vulnerability. A polite request. A sudden movement. She never reached her car. Within hours, Gabor's body would be found in a wooded area, raped and strangled, her death the opening act in a killing spree that would claim five lives in less than a year. But to understand the monster that Montie Rissell became, you have to go back further—to the quiet rot that began long before any blood was spilled.

Rissell was born in 1959 in Wellington, Kansas, into a family already fracturing at the seams. His parents divorced when he was seven, and his mother moved the children to Sacramento, California. The West Coast offered no salvation. By age twelve, Rissell had committed his first rape—an act of violence that should have triggered every alarm in a broken juvenile justice system that instead treated it as a behavioral hiccup. Counseling. Probation. The machinery of consequence ground forward without teeth.

At fourteen, he was in custody again for another sexual assault. The pattern was forming—predatory, calculated, escalating. But Rissell was smart, articulate, capable of mimicking contrition. He knew how to work the angles. By fifteen, he'd been convicted of car theft and sent to a treatment facility, a halfway house between accountability and the abyss. When he turned sixteen, his...Read More

The Lady Killer - Neville Heath

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 23:12:43 -0800

THE LADY KILLER - AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN

A tall, handsome young Air Force hero, home from the war...to women his easy charm was utterly fatal. Neville Heath was more than a fraud... he was certainly suave, but also a violently depraved sex-maniac.

Lunchtime had come and gone, yet there was still no sign of life from Room No. 4 at the Pembridge Court Hotel in Notting Hill, London. The maid responsible for the room, eager to get on with her cleaning and tidying, was understandably irritated. She peeped through the keyhole. The room was in darkness and there was nothing to be seen. She knocked at the door again. Still there was no answer.

Perhaps she should inform someone. She sought out Mrs. Alice Wyatt, who helped her father-in-law to run the 19-bedroomed hotel, and explained the situation. Mrs. Wyatt looked at the clock. It was 2 p.m. She thought it was time to investigate. She let herself into the bedroom with her pass key and drew back the curtains. In one of the single beds, the sheets and blankets pulled up around her neck, lay a young, dark-haired woman. It was hardly necessary to move the bedclothes to establish that she was dead. The red bloodstains all over the second bed told their own story.

The police arrived within minutes. Beneath the bedclothes they found a badly mutilated body. The dead woman's nipples had been practically bitten off. There were 17 weals, apparently made by the plaited thong of a whip with a metal tip, across her back, chest, stomach, and face. Her ankles were bound together with a handkerchief and she had bled from the vagina. It was clear that her face had been washed, but there were still traces of blood on her cheeks and in her nostrils. The blood on the second bed suggested that she had been killed there and her body moved after death —...Read More

The Ghoul of Plainfield - Ed Gein Parts 4 and 5

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 20:13:17 -0800

In 1958, Ed Gein - who had murdered two women and mutilated 15 corpses, yet appeared to be nothing more than a harmless odd job man - was committed to Wisconsin State insane asylum. His horrifying deeds had shocked America and provided the factual basis for Hitchcock's classic spine-chiller, Psycho and other terrifying horror movies.

Continued from parts 1, 2 and 3 here

PART FOUR – EXHUMATION

Digging for the Dead

Gein confessed to a catalogue of fiendish crimes. Apart from murder, he had dug up corpses and put them to unspeakable uses. At the snowed-under Plainfield cemetery, police investigations were able to confirm his desecrations.

While the gruesome discoveries were being made at his farmhouse, Edward Gein sat quietly in the Wautoma County jail guarded by the arresting officers, Chase and Spees. At 2.30 a.m. on Sunday, 17 November, Sheriff Schley returned from the nightmare scene in Plainfield.

Over the next 12 hours, Gein was questioned almost continuously, without an attorney present, but continued to stay silent. In the meantime, the initial autopsy report on Bernice Worden confirmed that she had died from a .22 calibre gunshot wound to the head.

The following morning, Monday, 18 November, Gein broke his silence. He said he had shot Mrs Worden, loaded her corpse into her truck and driven it out to a nearby pine forest. Leaving the truck there, he had walked back to town to fetch his car, then driven back to the forest. The corpse was transferred from the truck to the car and then taken to Gein's farmhouse, where it was trussed up and butchered.