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20 Extremely Dark True Crime Stories From Countries Outside The United States · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the deep Dive. Now, if you're like me,
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you probably know the usual true crime names, the ones
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that pop up all the time, mostly from the US,
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maybe the UK. Bundy, Gacy, Ramirez, those guys.
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Speaker 2: Right, the household names of horror.
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Speaker 1: Unfortunately, exactly we spend a lot of time on those,
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you know, domestic nightmares. But today we're doing something different.
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We're really widening the lens, looking globally. We've got a
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huge stack of sources here covering some truly notorious, horrifying,
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and often frankly less understood crimes from all over the world.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's absolutely crucial to do this. The material we're
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digging into today is well, it's vast. We're looking at
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twenty major cases Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America. It's a
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global spread.
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Speaker 1: Wow, twenty cases, twenty cases.
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Speaker 2: And this isn't just about listing bad deeds, you know.
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Our goal here, our mission for this deep dive, is
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to try and understand what these international atrocities tell us
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about that universal darkness of human depravity, is one source
0:57
puts it, and maybe more importantly, how evil tends to
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flourish when systems breakdown or fail.
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Speaker 1: Okay, So the goal for you listening is we hope
1:07
to get a kind of shortcut to understand something really fundamental.
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Geography changes the context, right, the tools, the victims, the
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police work, that all.
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Speaker 2: Changes specifics very wildly.
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Speaker 1: But the underlying darkness, the depravity itself, that seems to
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be pretty universal, and honestly, when you look at the
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sheer scale some of these global predators managed, the numbers
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are just staggering, really unsettling.
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Speaker 2: They are. And to make sense of this huge amount
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of well dark history, we've grouped the cases. We're looking
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at three main themes, three pillars that show how crime
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connects with society.
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Speaker 1: Okay, what are they?
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Speaker 2: First up, we're diving into the enduring unsolved enigmas. These
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are the mysteries, the big ones that still baffle modern forensics,
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cases that remain cold, often because of, let's be honest,
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major investigative failures or maybe even deliberate cover.
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Speaker 1: Ups, got it unsolved mysteries. What's next?
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Speaker 2: Second, the monsters without borders. These are the really prolific
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serial killers. Their victim counts are shocking, and often they
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managed it by exploiting social chaos, political denial, or extreme
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vulnerability within certain groups.
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Speaker 1: Okay, the big names, the high numbers, and the third the.
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Speaker 2: Third pillar is societal fault lines. These are the crimes that,
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when you look closely, expose really deep problems within a country,
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systemic injustice, political corruption, huge class divides, things that allowed
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the crime, or maybe the failure to solve it, to
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happen in the first place.
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Speaker 1: Right, So the crime itself shines a light on bigger issues. Okay,
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let's attack this. Then where do we start with the
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mysteries the ghosts of history?
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Speaker 2: Exactly? We have to start with the case that arguably
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created the whole modern myth of the uncatchable killer. We're
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going back to eighteen eighty eight.
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Speaker 1: Oh, London Whitechapel. It has to be Jack the Ripper.
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Speaker 2: It has to be the Ripper. Wasn't just a murderer
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operating in those foggy, destitute streets of London's East End.
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He became the cultural phenomena, a symbol of terror.
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Speaker 1: And the victims our sources confirm at least five, right,
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the canonical five Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride,
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Catherinetto's and Mary Jane Kelly.
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Speaker 2: That's right, And crucially, these were women living on the
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absolute margins of Victorian society, extremely poor, working as prostitutes
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to survive, already invisible or dismissed by the.
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Speaker 1: Mainstream, which made them vulnerable.
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Speaker 2: Incredibly vulnerable. And the horror wasn't just the murders themselves,
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it was the way they were killed, the method the
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bodies were mutilated with this bizarre combination of what looked
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like frenzied rage, but also some accounts said surgical precision.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I've read about that. Throats slashed violently, but then organs, kidneys,
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uteruses systematically removed.
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Speaker 2: It's gruesome, it is, and it led to speculation immediately.
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Was he a doctor, a butcher, someone with anatomical knowledge,
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or just someone acting out a very specific, very sadistic ritual.
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We still don't know.
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Speaker 1: For sure, and the investigation itself, that's key to why
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he became such a legend, isn't it. White Chapel back
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then was like a maze, dark, overcrowded, immense poverty.
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Speaker 2: And the police, the Metropolitan police were just not equipped
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for it. They were overwhelmed. Their structure wasn't great, local
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jurisdictions were confusing, and public panic didn't help.
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Speaker 1: Total chaos pretty much.
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Speaker 2: And the killer or someone claiming to be him, exploited
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that chaos famously sending those letters assigned Jack the Ripper,
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taunting the police, taunting the press.
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Speaker 1: That media frenzy was huge, wasn't it basically created the
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term serial killer as we use it today. I put
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the spotlight on Whitechapel, on the poverty, the misogyny.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely, and fast forward over one hundred and thirty years. Yeah,
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the case is still officially unsolved, open.
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Speaker 1: Although there was that recent DNA thing right twenty twenty
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five something about a shawl.
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Speaker 2: Yes, a significant development or potential development. DNA analysis performed
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on a shawl supposedly found Neil. One of the victims,
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Catherine Eto's pointed towards a man named Hyam's. He was
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a local cigar maker, had a history of epilepsy, mental illnes,
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violence against women. Fits the profile in some ways.
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Speaker 1: So case closed, not quite.
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Speaker 2: We really have to emphasize this that DNA evidence is
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highly controversial. The shawl's provenance, its chain of custody over
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one hundred and thirty years is incredibly shaky. Contamination is
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a huge risk. So while it's a fascinating lead, it's
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far from conclusive. The Ripper's legacy isn't just the brutality.
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It's a master class and how investigative failure under immense
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pressure can create an enduring myth.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so The Ripper is about chaos, poverty, and early
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forensic struggles. Now the next enigma you mentioned it sounds
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completely different. Norway nineteen seventy, The ISDHL Woman. This one
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feels more like deliberate secrecy.
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Speaker 2: It really does. It's like something straight out of a
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Cold War spy novel. Hikers in the Isdelan Valley, this
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remote spotan your Bergen. Find a body badly charred, almost
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completely burnt, intentional burning, definitely and around her body, strange
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items sleeping pills, lots of them, matches, petrol residue, and
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some cryptic notes that seemed like maybe a code. But
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the really striking thing every single label on her clothes,
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every identifying mark on her possessions removed, cut out, scraped off,
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total erasure.
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Speaker 1: Wow. So someone went to a lot of trouble.
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Speaker 2: Immense trouble, and the investigation revealed she'd been living like
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a ghost before she died, checked into multiple hotels in Bergen,
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always using different fake names, different aliases. Witnesses mentioned she
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wore various.
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Speaker 1: Wigs, trying hard not to be identified exactly.
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Speaker 2: Police eventually found her luggage left of the train station
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and inside more weirdness, coded labels, maybe detailing travel plans,
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Belgian coins, even eyeglasses with prescriptions that didn't match each other,
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which is just bizarre. It's all designed to confuse, to obfuscate.
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Speaker 1: So what did the autopsy say? How did she actually die?
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Speaker 2: Suggested she died from a massive overdose of sleeping pills,
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phenobarbital specifically, and possibly strangulation before she was set on fire,
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so likely murder staged to look like suicide.
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Speaker 1: Possible, And the spy theory where does that come in?
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Speaker 2: Will consider the time nineteen seventy, height of the Cold War,
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Norway's location NATO member bordering the Soviet sphere, Spenar's was rampant,
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the excreme efforts to hide her identity, the coded messages,
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the potential travel patterns. It all points towards someone involved
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in intelligence, maybe a defector caught or an agent being eliminated.
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Speaker 1: And the dental work. I read something about that being unusual.
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Speaker 2: That's a key piece. Sources noted her dental fillings were
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of a type and quality very specific to Eastern or
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Central Europe, not common in Norway at the time. It
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adds another layer suggesting an international, possibly covert background.
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Speaker 1: So despite all this, still unsolved today twenty twenty five.
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Speaker 2: Completely unsolved, her identity remains a total mystery. She's a ghost, really,
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a chilling reminder of just how deep those Cold War
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shadows ran and how effectively someone could.
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Speaker 1: Just vanish Okay from Cold War secrets to something much
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more recent and in the place often seen as incredibly safe.
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Japan two thousand A guy a family murder. This one
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sounds brutal, It.
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Speaker 2: Was devastating, and it absolutely shattered Japan's image of itself
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as a safe, orderly society, especially in those quiet residential suburbs.
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The Miyazawa family Mikio the father, Yasuko the mother, eight
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year old Nina, and six year old Ray.
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Speaker 1: All murdered in their own home in Tokyo.
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Speaker 2: In Tokyo Soujino. You word yeah, on December thirty, two thousand. Slaughter.
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Speaker 1: But the truly bizarre part, the thing that makes this
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case stick in your mind is what the killer did afterwards, right.
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Speaker 2: That's what elevates it to peak Enigma status. He didn't
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just kill him flee The evidence suggests he stayed in the.
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Speaker 1: House for hours, hours doing what.
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Speaker 2: Unbelievable things, eating ice cream from the freezer, using their computer,
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apparently logging onto the internet. Some reports suggest he even
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took a nap on the sofa, changed his clothes, possibly
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tended to do an injury he sustained during the attack,
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and then before leaving, he apparently swapped the father's slippers
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for his own. It's this chillingly calm, almost mundane routine
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after horrific violence, little violation of their home, their sanctuary.
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Speaker 1: That is deeply disturbing. But staying so long, surely he
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left evidence everywhere.
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Speaker 2: An absolute mountain of it. That's the irony. This shouldn't
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be an unsolved case. Based on the forenjics, they found
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at least ten distinct fingerprints, multiple bloodstains, not just the victors,
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but the killers too, as he was cut likely on
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his hand.
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Speaker 1: Okay, fingerprints, killer's blood that sounds solvable.
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Speaker 2: You'd think, plus clothing fibers from a very specific type
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of sweater and jacket, footprints from a particular brand of
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Korean made sneakers that weren't widely sold in Japan, very
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specific model in size.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so they even know his shoe size and brand.
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Speaker 2: They do, And maybe the most specific clue microscopic grains
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of sand found on the killer's discarded hip bag. Analysis
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showed it was a rare type of sand not common
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in Tokyo, but matching sand found in specific locations, including
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potentially near a US military base not far away.
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Speaker 1: So DNA fingerprints, specific clothing, rare sand linked possibly to
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a location. How is this still unsolved? Twenty five years
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They had something like two hundred and eighty thousand tips, too.
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Speaker 2: Immense public response, massive police effort, and yet nothing definitive.
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It remains Japan's single most infamous unsolved murder.
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Speaker 1: So what's the theory? How does someone leave that much
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behind and just disappear?
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Speaker 2: It raises that disturbing question, doesn't it. If the ripper
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got away because of chaos and primitive methods, and the
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Isdahl woman through calculated maybe state sponsored to rasure, how
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does a killer in the modern age leaving a forensic
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roadmap vanish. Maybe it's sheer luck. Maybe he fled the
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country immediately. Maybe it was at psychological calmness. You mentioned
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someone so detached they didn't panic, didn't make obvious mistakes afterwards,
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or perhaps initially, the sheer volume of data overwhelmed the investigation.
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Speaker 1: It's baffling that idea of calculation. It reminds me of
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another case closer to home for UK listeners, Jill Dando's
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assassination in nineteen ninety nine. The Crime Watch presenter, the
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irony is just awful.
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Speaker 2: It's incredibly poignant, isn't it. Hosting a show of appealing for
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help solving crimes, only to become the victim of a
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very calculated, unsolved one herself shot dead on her own
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doorstep in Fulham, London.
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Speaker 1: And the method suggested it wasn't random.
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Speaker 2: Right now, not at all. It looked like a professional hit.
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A single point two two caliber bullet farked directly to
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the head, execution style. The gunman was apparently masked, vanished
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without a trace almost instantly.
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Speaker 1: Theories flew around, didn't they stalkers, disgruntled criminals she'd featured,
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but also something more organized?
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Speaker 2: Yeah? Strong speculation never proven linked it to Serbian organized
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crime figures or even paramilitaries, possibly retaliation for an appeal
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she'd made regarding Kosovo refugees shortly before her death.
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Speaker 1: And they did convict someone, initially Barry George.
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Speaker 2: They did in two thousand and one, but the forensic
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evidence against him, particularly a single particle of gunshot residue,
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was later deemed unsafe, his conviction was quashed and he
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was fully acquitted after a retrial in two thousand and eight.
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The case remains officially unsolved.
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Speaker 1: So that single precise shot the clean getaway and speaks
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to that same kind of calculation needed to evade capture,
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similar to Isdahl or Setagaya, maybe using precision to beat
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the system exactly.
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Speaker 2: Whether it's espionage level tradecraft, the cold calm of the
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Setagaia killer, or the professional execution of Dando's murderer, these
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cases show how deliberate planning or a specific mindset can
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sometimes defeat even modern motivated investigations.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so those three ripper is Dahl, Setagaya with Dando
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as a sort of relating point. They share the range
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of challenges right system failure and chaos, deliberate erasure, and
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just failing to connect the dots despite having loads of
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evidence precisely.
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Speaker 2: It covers the spectrum of why some cases just refuse
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to be solved, why they become these enduring enigmas.
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Speaker 1: Right now, you said, we're moving from these calculated, maybe
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elusive mysteries to something else, something about just sheer, terrifying scale,
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the monsters without borders. Okay, here's where it gets really
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interesting and I imagine quite disturbing.
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Speaker 2: Yes, the scale, pticularly with some of the Latin American
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predators we have sources on, is genuinely difficult to comprehend.
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These weren't individuals killing a handful of victims over years.
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They operated with a level of impunity that allowed their
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victim counts to reach potentially into the hundreds hundreds.
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Speaker 1: That's hard to process, it is.
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Speaker 2: Let's start with Pedro Lopez, known chillingly as the Monster
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of the Andes. He was active across Columbia, Ecuador, and
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Peru mainly during the nineteen seventies, roughly nineteen sixty.
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Speaker 1: Nine to nineteen eighty, and the numbers.
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Speaker 2: Lopez himself confessed to murdering over three hundred young girls,
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primarily preteen girls.
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Speaker 1: Three hundred confessed and believed.
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Speaker 2: Believed because when he was finally caught in Ecuador in
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nineteen eighty after trying to abduct a young girl. He
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actually led the police to the burial sites of one
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hundred and ten of his victims, just an Ecuador alone
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shallow graves, proving his claims weren't just boasts.
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Speaker 1: My god, how was that even possible? How could someone
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kill that many children across three countries without being stopped sooner?
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Speaker 2: It comes down to those societal fault lines we talked about.
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He exploited them the most vulnerable, imaginable demographic, young poor,
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often indigenous girls in rural or marginalized urban areas. He'd
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lure them with small gifts candy, then assault, strangle, and
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often pose their bodies ritualistically.
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Speaker 1: In the context the region the time, plagued.
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Speaker 2: By political instability, extreme poverty, lack of infrastructure, especially in
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policing and communication between jurisdictions, disappearances of poor children tragically
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often went unreported and investigated, or were simply lost in
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bureaucratic in difference or corruption. He thrived in the gaps.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so he's caught in nineteen eighty, led them to
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one hundred and ten graves. Surely he was locked up forever.
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Speaker 2: This is the most shocking part, the impunity he was
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convicted in Ecuador, but somehow, after psychiatric evaluations, deemed insane,
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he was released in nineteen ninety eight after only sixteen years.
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Speaker 1: Sixteen years for over three hundred confessed murders.
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Speaker 2: Sixteen years. He was then to poured back to Columbia,
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apparently spent a short time in a psychiatric facility there,
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was released again and then just vanished. Poof ah gone.
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Speaker 1: He's out there, out there.
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Speaker 2: Sources suggests he's still alive. Has been cited occasionally in Colombia,
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possibly living a normal life under a different identity. His
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comment when arrested, apparently very calm, was something like, I
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just lost my temper. It speaks volumes about the depth
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of the depravity and the utter failure of the justice
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systems involved to contain it.
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Speaker 1: That is horrifying, truly horrifying. And you mentioned another one
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from Columbia, Garavito.
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Speaker 2: Luis Caravito, Yes, yeah, nicknamed Lebestia the Beast, he operated
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a bit later, mainly in the nineteen nineties, from around
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nineteen ninety two to nineteen ninety nine, and again used
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the backdrop of Columbia's intense internal civil.
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Speaker 1: Conflict as covered similar scale.
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Speaker 2: Similar horrific scale. He confessed to one hundred and forty
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seven child murders, mostly boys, this time three children, often impoverished,
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but investigators estimate his true toble could easily exceed three hundred.
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He targeted boys, often those working are begging on the streets,
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lured them with offers of money, food, sometimes drinks laced
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with sedatives, then took them to remote locations for torture, rape,
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and eventually decapitation was common. He was known to change
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his appearance frequently, sometimes dressing as a priest, a farmer,
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a vendor to gain trust.
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Speaker 1: Across fifty four towns. I read how.
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Speaker 2: Again the chaos at the time, civil unrest, displaced populations,
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paramilitary violence, state institutions were stretched incredibly thin, focused elsewhere,
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and his victims were largely invisible, homeless kids, runaways, Their
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disappearance barely registered until the bodies started turning up in
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mass Graves.
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Speaker 1: And Gervido, what happened to him? Please don't tell me
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he got out too.
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Speaker 2: He didn't get out, but the sentence was still incredibly
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controversial due to Colombian law at the time. In a
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plea deal where he confessed and helped locate bodies. His
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initial sentences were capped and reduced. He ended up being
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sentenced to effectively around twenty two years that he could
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actually serve. He actually died in prison from leukemia in
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October twenty.
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Speaker 1: Twenty three, twenty two years for potentially three hundred child murders.
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It's unbelievable.
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Speaker 2: It highlights that same issue. When the victims are marginalized,
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the justice system's response can seem shockingly lenient, even for
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monsters of this scale. The chaos provided the camouflage, but
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societal indifference allowed the scale to grow unchecked.
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Speaker 1: Let's move away from Latin America for a moment. Former
17:10
Soviet Union. You mentioned Andre Chikatillo, the butcher of Rostov.
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He operated for a long time too, right, seventy eight
17:16
to ninety that's.
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Speaker 2: Right, twelve years Chickatila murdered at least fifty two people,
17:20
women and children. His methods were brutal, extreme mutilation, sexual assault,
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often targeting victims near train stations or bus stops, luring
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them into wooded areas. Cannibalism was also a feature in
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some cases.
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Speaker 1: Fifty two victims over twelve years. Why wasn't he caught sooner?
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This was the Soviet Union, a powerful state.
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Speaker 2: That's the crucial point. His case perfectly illustrates how ideology
17:42
and bureaucracy can hinder an investigation. Chikatila was driven by
17:47
severe sexual dysfunction impotence, and his attacks were ritualistic, often
17:52
focusing on eyes and genitals. But the Soviet authorities for
17:55
a long time simply refused to believe that a serial
17:57
killer of this type could exist in their society.
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Speaker 1: Why what was the thinking?
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Speaker 2: The official line was that serial murder, this kind of
18:04
senseless violence was a product of decadent capitalist societies. It
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supposedly couldn't happen in a well ordered socialist state. So
18:12
early on, even when evidence pointed towards a single repeat offender,
18:16
the police were often directed to look for hooligans or
18:18
dissidents or blame incompetence.
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Speaker 1: They wasted years, so denial allowed him to keep killing.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely. Institutional denial was his greatest ally. They even arrested
18:28
and wrongly convicted and executed an innocent man for one
18:31
of Chikatilo's early murders. Chikatila himself is actually arrested earlier
18:35
on a minor charge, but let go. He was just
18:39
this outward. The unremarkable, seemingly pathetic, middle aged guy, a
18:43
former teacher, didn't fit their profile of a monster. His
18:46
case exposed massive flaws in Soviet policing and the dangers
18:50
of ideological blindness.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's shift to Asian again. Japan. You mentioned Sutomi Miyazaki,
18:54
the Otaku murderer. This sounds different again. Four victims preschool
18:59
girls late eighties.
19:00
Speaker 2: Yes, nineteen eighty eight to nineteen eighty nine. While the
19:03
number of victims was smaller compared to Lopez or Chicatilo,
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the nature of the crimes and the societal reaction were profound.
19:08
Miyazaki abducted, murdered, and dismembered four little girls aged four
19:11
to seven.
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Speaker 1: And the rituals the sources mentioned truly grotesque things.
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Speaker 2: Extremely disturbing. He engaged in necrophilia cannibalism, specifically drinking blood
19:20
and eating parts of his victims hands, and then the
19:23
psychological terror aspect. He mailed preserved body parts like hands
19:28
back to the victims' families, along with tnking letters, photographs,
19:32
and even videotapes documenting parts of his crimes.
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Speaker 1: That's beyond comprehension. Mailing body parts.
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Speaker 2: It caused a national shockwave, and this is where the
19:41
term otaco panic comes in which we need to be
19:43
careful about. Miyazaki was found to have a huge collection
19:46
of anime, manga, and horror videos in his small, cluttered apartment.
19:50
He was socially isolated, fitting the stereotype of an otaku.
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Speaker 1: Which is basically someone really intensely into a hobby often
19:56
anime or manga, may be a bit reclusive.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, and the media lashed onto this immediately. He was
20:02
branded the otaku murderer. This sparked a massive moral panic
20:06
across Japan, suddenly linking this entire subculture, millions of fans
20:11
with deviants, perversion, and potential violence. It was a huge,
20:15
arguably unfair generalization, but it forced Japan to confront uncomfortable
20:19
questions about social isolation, mental health, and the potential darkness
20:24
lurking beneath its surface.
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Speaker 1: So the crime had a huge cultural impact. Escapegoating a
20:28
whole group.
20:29
Speaker 2: A massive cultural impact. Now, if we look at South
20:31
Korea slightly later two thousand and three, two thousand and four,
20:34
we find you Young Chul, another killer with ritualistic elements,
20:37
specifically cannibalism.
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Speaker 1: Right, he killed twenty people a mix of victims.
20:41
Speaker 2: Yeah. Initially he targeted wealthy elderly people, legending them in
20:44
their homes. Then he switched to targeting female sex workers,
20:47
luring them to his apartment. Twenty confirmed victims in less
20:50
than a year.
20:51
Speaker 1: And the cannibalism what was his stated reason?
20:54
Speaker 2: Again deeply bizarre and disturbing. You claimed he ate his
20:58
victim's livers. He apparently told police he believed it would
21:02
purify his spirit or maybe give him courage. He also
21:05
dismembered many of his victims, sometimes leading torsos in public places,
21:09
seemingly to taunt the police and incite public fear.
21:12
Speaker 1: So again exploiting vulnerability, sex workers, elderly people living.
21:16
Speaker 2: Alone, precisely victims less likely to be missed, immediately operating
21:20
in the shadows of Soul's nightlife, or praying on isolated seniors.
21:24
His spree caused immense public outrage in South Korea, leading
21:27
to crackdowns on prostitution, but also highlighting societal anxieties about wealth, inequality,
21:32
and safety.
21:33
Speaker 1: It seems like this pattern exploiting vulnerable groups during times
21:36
of change or chaos, keeps repeating. You mentioned Moses Sitthole
21:40
in South Africa post apartheid.
21:42
Speaker 2: Yes, Moses Sithole known as the ABC Killer because he
21:44
seemed to be moving alphabetically through areas near Johannesburg, Pretoria
21:48
and the East Rand. He operated between nineteen ninety four
21:51
and nineteen ninety five, a time of huge transition and
21:54
upheaval in South Africa as apartheid ended.
21:57
Speaker 1: How did he find his victims?
21:59
Speaker 2: He prayed on women's hopes in the new South Africa.
22:02
He'd approached women, often unemployed, promising them jobs with his
22:06
non existent business. He'd arranged to meet them, often needing
22:09
them to travel with him, then lure them to secluded
22:12
areas where he would rape and strangle them.
22:14
Speaker 1: Many victims.
22:15
Speaker 2: He was convicted for thirty eight murders. His crime starkly
22:19
highlighted the ongoing crisis of gender based violence in South Africa,
22:22
amplified by the instability and vulnerability that came with that
22:26
massive political and social transition.
22:28
Speaker 1: Okay, so looking back at all these monsters without borders, Lopez, Garavito, Chikatila, Miyazaki,
22:33
you Sitthole, the common thread seems to be the sheer
22:38
numbers are enabled by something systemic.
22:40
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's the vulnerability of the victims definitely straight children,
22:44
sex workers, women seeking jobs, people on the fringes. But
22:48
it's also the context political chaos in Colombia, ideological denial
22:52
in the USSR, the anonymity possible in sprawling cities, the
22:57
social upheaval, and post apartheid South Africa. These conditions provided
23:01
the camouflage, the opportunity for these predators to operate on
23:04
such a massive scale, often for years before the system
23:08
even fully recognized the pattern.
23:10
Speaker 1: The individual monster needs the right environment or the right
23:13
societal blind spots to become that prolific exactly.
23:16
Speaker 2: The ability to hide, to evade, to continue. It's almost
23:20
always tied to the structure of the society they're in,
23:22
which leads us perfectly into our third section, the cases
23:25
that don't just involve a monster, but where the crime
23:27
itself or the investigation really rips the cover off deeper
23:31
systemic failings within a nation.
23:33
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, let's connect this to the bigger picture. Then
23:35
these are the crimes that expose those fault lines you
23:37
mentioned earlier, poverty, racism, corruption, class privilege, the stuff society
23:42
doesn't always want to.
23:43
Speaker 2: Look at precisely, and we have to start with a
23:46
situation that's not a single event, but an ongoing crisis
23:49
reflecting generations of systemic failure. Canada's Highway of tiers.
23:53
Speaker 1: Hiwi sixteen in British Columbia right a really remote stretch.
23:56
Speaker 2: Of road, hugely remote, about four hundred and fifty miles
24:00
running through sparsely populated, heavily forested areas and along this
24:05
highway Since at least the late nineteen sixties, but intensely
24:08
from the eighties onwards, dozens of women and girls have
24:11
disappeared or been found murdered, and.
24:13
Speaker 1: The victims are overwhelmingly.
24:15
Speaker 2: Overwhelmingly Indigenous women. The official RCMP count linked directly to
24:19
the highways around eighteen, but Indigenous groups and researchers say
24:23
the real number connected to the region is far far higher.
24:26
Many were last seen hitchhiking.
24:27
Speaker 1: Why hitchhiking in such a dangerous place.
24:29
Speaker 2: That's the systemic issue. Poverty, lack of reliable public transport
24:33
connecting remote reserves and communities, lack of economic opportunity forcing
24:37
travel for work or services. Hitchhiking becomes a necessity for many,
24:41
despite the known risks.
24:42
Speaker 1: And the response from authorities. That's where the fault line comes.
24:45
Speaker 2: In absolutely for decades, these disappearances and murders were tragically underinvestigated,
24:50
often dismissed. You heard police or media using phrases like
24:55
high risk lifestyle to describe the.
24:57
Speaker 1: Victims, which sounds like victim blaming.
24:59
Speaker 2: It effectively is it shifts focus away from the systemic failures,
25:03
the poverty, the lack of infrastructure, the jurisdictional confusion between
25:06
RCMP and Indigenous policing, and crucially, the deeply ingrained systemic
25:11
racism that devalued Indigenous lives and led to investigations being
25:15
less thorough less urgent.
25:17
Speaker 1: Has there been any accountability? I remember hearing about an inquiry.
25:20
Speaker 2: Yes, progress has been slow and painful, but there have
25:23
been inquiries. Notably, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered
25:27
Indigenous Women and Girls, which reported in twenty nineteen, documented
25:32
widespread RCMP negligence, lost evidence, apathy, and systemic bias. It
25:37
linked the Highway sixteen cases to a nationwide crisis. Estimates
25:41
suggest over twelve hundred, possibly thousands of unsolved cases involving
25:45
Indigenous women and girls across Canada, while individual killers like
25:49
the American serial killer Bobby Jack Fowler have been linked
25:52
to a few Highway sixteen cases. The larger story is
25:55
one of institutional failure rooted in colonial.
25:57
Speaker 1: History, a devastating example of how neglecting one group allows
26:01
tragedy to compound for decades. Now you mentioned India, than
26:04
Nathari killing two thousand and six, This sounds like a
26:06
similar exposure of vulnerability.
26:08
Speaker 2: Incredibly similar in terms of exposing the vulnerability of the poorest,
26:11
but perhaps even more viscerally shocking in its details. This
26:15
happened in Athari village, right on the edge of Neuda,
26:17
a relatively affluent suburb of Delhi.
26:19
Speaker 1: What happened there?
26:20
Speaker 2: Skeletons and remains of multiple children were discovered in the
26:23
drain and backyard of a house owned by a businessman
26:26
monitor saying pander his living servant surrender. Coley confessed to
26:31
luring children, mostly daughters and sons of poor migrant laborers
26:35
living nearby, into the house, than sexually assaulting, murdering, and
26:39
dismembering them.
26:40
Speaker 1: How many victims at.
26:42
Speaker 2: Least sixteen confirmed, maybe more. The details that emerged were
26:46
horrific cannibalism, necrophilia, suggestions of organ trafficking, though that was
26:51
less proven. It was a literal house of horrors, operating
26:54
right next door to middle class.
26:55
Speaker 1: Homes, exposing the vulnerability of the underclass living in the
26:59
shadow of wealth.
27:00
Speaker 2: Exactly, it starkly revealed the dangers faced by the children
27:03
of India's vast population of internal migrants and the urban poor,
27:07
often living without proper documentation or protection. But the fault
27:11
line aspect became even clearer after the arrest.
27:13
Speaker 1: How so the legal process.
27:15
Speaker 2: Yes, Pander and Coli were both convicted and sentenced, many
27:19
to death. However, as recently as twenty twenty three, the
27:22
Allah bought High Court acquitted Pander in two key cases
27:26
and overturned Coli'S death sentence in twelve cases, commuting them
27:29
to life imprisonment. Why because of major flaws in the
27:32
prosecution's case, mishandled evidence, coursed confessions, procedural errors.
27:37
Speaker 1: So justice denied or at least complicated because of failures
27:41
in the system.
27:41
Speaker 2: Precisely, it left the victim's families devastated and in limbo,
27:45
and it fueled public perception that the wealthy employer Pander
27:49
might escape true accountability due to legal maneuvering, while the
27:52
servant Koali bore the brunt. It highlighted how even with
27:56
monstrous crimes, the quality of the investigation and prosecution can fail.
28:00
Most vulnerable letting perpetrators potentially exploit loopholes.
28:03
Speaker 1: Okay, shifting from vulnerability of the poor to maybe the
28:06
opposite crimes involving the elite were privileged, might play a
28:09
role in evasion or how the case is handled. France,
28:12
twenty eleven. The du Pont de Legonesque case sounds like
28:15
something out of a novel.
28:16
Speaker 2: It really does a modern ghost story. Xavier du Pont
28:19
de Legness was, on the surface, a respectable family man
28:22
from an old aristocratic lineage, living in Nante. In April
28:26
twenty eleven, police discovered the bodies of his wife, Agnes,
28:29
and their four children, aged thirteen to twenty.
28:31
Speaker 1: One, all murdered, all murdered drug.
28:34
Speaker 2: Then shot with a point two two rifle, likely while
28:36
they left. Their bodies, along with the family's two dogs,
28:40
were carefully wrapped and buried under concrete beneath the back
28:43
terrace of the family home.
28:44
Speaker 1: Horrific and motivated by.
28:46
Speaker 2: It, emerged he was drowning in debt, his business is failing,
28:50
his entire image of success a facade. He seemed driven
28:53
by a combination of financial ruin and narcissistic delusions of grandeur,
28:58
perhaps unable to face the collapse of his careful, constructed life.
29:01
Speaker 1: So a family annihilator who then killed himself.
29:03
Speaker 2: That's what usually happens, but not Exavier. He didn't commit suicide,
29:07
he didn't surrender, He just vanished completely before the bodies
29:11
were found. He'd sent letters to friends and family claiming
29:14
the family had to leave suddenly for the US because
29:17
he was a secret agent entering a witness protection program.
29:20
He meticulously planned his disappearance, withdrawing cash, closing accounts, abandoning
29:26
his car far.
29:27
Speaker 1: From Nades, and he's never been found.
29:29
Speaker 2: Never he remained France's most wanted fugitive. There have been
29:34
alleged sightings, even a mistaken identity arrest in Scotland once,
29:37
but he's achieved total erasure. It's a chilling example of
29:41
how someone with resources, planning, and perhaps a certain cold
29:45
blooded calm, can exploit their privilege to simply disappear, leaving
29:49
behind a massacre and an enduring.
29:50
Speaker 1: Mystery, privilege enabling evasion. Now what about privilege potentially influencing
29:55
the outcome of an investigation? You mentioned Mexico twenty ten
29:58
the Paulette Jabbara Ferrik. This one sounds incredibly strange.
30:02
Speaker 2: It's one of the most baffling and controversial cases in
30:04
recent Mexican history. Paulette was a four year old girl
30:07
with physical disabilities who disappeared from her bed in her
30:09
family's upscale apartment in whisk Kalukan, a wealthy suburb of
30:13
Mexico City.
30:14
Speaker 1: Danished from her own bed.
30:16
Speaker 2: That was the initial mystery. The family claimed she was
30:19
put to bed and gone in the morning. The apartment
30:22
had security, A massive search was launched, huge media attention,
30:26
appeals from the parents.
30:28
Speaker 1: And where was she found?
30:30
Speaker 2: This is where it defies belief. Nine days after she disappeared,
30:35
after forensic teams, sniffer dogs, investigators, family members, even journalists
30:40
had been all over her bedroom, with the mother giving
30:42
interviews sitting on the bed, Paulette's body was found where
30:48
wedged in the space between the mattress and the footboard
30:51
of her own bed.
30:51
Speaker 1: In the bed they'd been searching and sitting on for
30:53
nine days. That sounds impossible.
30:56
Speaker 2: It sounds physically impossible for her body to have been
30:58
there unnoticed for that long, especially given the decomposition that
31:01
would have occurred. The official cause of death was ruled
31:04
accidental asphyxiation, that she had somehow rolled or moved into
31:08
that position herself and suffocated accidental.
31:10
Speaker 1: How did the public react to that?
31:12
Speaker 2: With outrage and complete disbelief. The ruling was widely seen
31:16
by the Mexican public as utterly implausible, a cover up.
31:20
The perception was that the wealthy, politically connected family was
31:23
being protected, that the investigation was botched or manipulated to
31:27
avoid scandal or difficult questions. It became a symbol of
31:31
impunity for the elite, exposing deep public distrust in the
31:34
justice system and highlighting those massive class divides.
31:37
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, from potential elite impunity to outright political intrigue.
31:42
The Brabant Killers in Belgium nineteen eighty two to nineteen
31:46
eighty five, This sounds like terrorism, not just crime.
31:48
Speaker 2: It blurred the lines completely. This wasn't a single killer.
31:51
He was a gang, maybe three core members, known as
31:54
the Crazy Brabant Killers. They carried out a series of
31:56
incredibly violent robberies, mostly targeting supermarkets, but also so restaurants,
32:01
jewelry stores. How violent, extremely disproportionately violent. They killed twenty
32:06
eight people in total, often shooting customers and staff seemingly
32:10
at random with military grade weapons. The culmination was the
32:14
horrific Del Highs supermarket massacre in Elst in November nineteen
32:18
eighty five, where they killed eight people in minutes for
32:21
a relatively small amount of cash. Their motive didn't seem
32:23
to be just robbery. It felt like sowing terror and chaos, and.
32:27
Speaker 1: The political angle suspicions of who was behind it that's.
32:30
Speaker 2: Where it gets murky and conspiratorial, but persistently so. The
32:34
gun used highly professional, almost military tactics. They seemed well trained,
32:38
well armed. Theories have swirled for decades, linking them to
32:42
far right extremist groups, possibly with connections inside the Belgian
32:45
police or gendarmerie or even intelligence services.
32:48
Speaker 1: Why would state actors be involved in supermarket massacres.
32:51
Speaker 2: This connects to the concept of the strategy of tension.
32:54
It's a theory prominent during the Cold War, particularly in Italy,
32:58
but suspected elsewhere that clanned out in groups maybe far right,
33:02
maybe linked to state security forces, would carry out violent
33:05
attacks blamed on leftists or criminals. The goal to create fear,
33:10
destabilize society, discredit democratic institutions, and ultimately justify a crackdown,
33:16
a shift towards more authoritarian control.
33:18
Speaker 1: So using terror to manipulate politics, that's.
33:22
Speaker 2: The suspicion, whether true or not. In the Bromin case,
33:25
the failure to ever definitively identify or catch the core killers,
33:29
despite clues and deathbit confessions over the years, has profoundly
33:33
damaged public trust in Belgian institutions. It remains a potent
33:36
symbol of that dark Cold War era suspicion where crime
33:39
and politics might intersect in horrifying ways.
33:42
Speaker 1: And you mentioned similar suspicions in Luxembourg the bomb Laer bombings.
33:45
Speaker 2: Yes, a related phenomenon perhaps. Between nineteen eighty four and
33:48
nineteen eighty six, Luxembourg experienced a series of around twenty bombings,
33:53
targeting mostly infrastructure, power lines, gas pipelines, government buildings, even
33:57
the airport. No one was killed, but the attacks were
34:00
sophisticated professional Again, motive unclear, but strong suspicions linger about
34:06
involvement from elements within the state's security services, possibly another
34:10
domestic strategy of tension aimed at creating fear or achieving
34:13
some hidden political goal still unsolved.
34:16
Speaker 1: Okay, before we wrap up, there were a few other
34:18
cases in the sources that seemed to fit these themes
34:21
of vulnerability or systemic issues.
34:24
Speaker 2: Right quickly touching on them. Charles Sobras the Serpent, who
34:27
operated across Asia in the seventies, perfectly illustrates preying on
34:30
the vulnerable traveler. His victims were mostly young Western backpackers
34:34
on the hippie trail transient, often out of touch with families,
34:37
easily drugged, robbed, and murdered because they existed outside the
34:40
usual systems of protection.
34:41
Speaker 1: Makes sense. What about Snowtown in Australia.
34:43
Speaker 2: The Snowtown Murders or bodies in Barrel's case from the
34:46
nineties in South Australia. Horrific Led by John Bunting, this
34:51
group tortured and murdered at least eleven people. While financial
34:54
gain was a motive, sometimes many victims were targeted because
34:57
they were gay, suspected pedophiles, or simply disliked by the
35:00
group's leader. It exposed a terrifying pocket of homophobic vigilantism
35:05
and extreme social deprivation hidden within a seemingly ordinary suburban
35:09
rural community.
35:10
Speaker 1: He Plea's Monster of Florence.
35:11
Speaker 2: The Monster of Florence active intermittently from the late sixties
35:14
to mid eighties, killed sixteen people, mostly couples parked in
35:17
lover's lanes around Florence. Often involved ritualistic mutilation of the
35:21
female victims. It terrified the region for years, spawned complex investigations,
35:26
false accusations, and became a touchstone for the idea of
35:29
the elusive ritualistic killer, feeding into true crime mythology, again
35:34
exploiting people in vulnerable private moments.
35:36
Speaker 1: And finally, Kiliki Sari.
35:38
Speaker 2: In Finland, a much older case nineteen fifty three, sometimes
35:42
called Finland's Black Dahlia, Kiliki Sari, a seventeen year old
35:46
girl disappeared while cycling home from a prayer meeting in
35:49
her rural village. Her body was found months later, hidden
35:53
in a bog It was a shocking, brutal crime and
35:56
a small, tight knit community, shattering the illusion of rural
35:59
safe and becoming one of Finland's most infamous unsolved cases,
36:03
a reminder that this darkness can strike anywhere.
36:06
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? We've journeyed across the globe,
36:09
haven't we? From the fog of Victorian London with the Ripper,
36:12
through Cold War espionage with the Isdahl woman political shadows
36:15
in Belgium to the forensic overload of the Sedegaya case
36:20
in Japan.
36:20
Speaker 2: It really shows that the core depravity, the willingness to
36:23
commit horrific acts. Well, it's everywhere. Geography just changes the stage,
36:27
dreffing the specific context exactly.
36:29
Speaker 1: But the crucial takeaway, the pattern that emerges when you
36:31
look at all twenty of these cases together is something
36:33
more systemic. The outcome of the crime, whether it gets solved,
36:37
whether justice is served, whether the killer truly faces consequences,
36:41
seems almost predetermined by who the victim is. Yeah, that
36:44
seems undeniable. The failures we talked about, they weren't just
36:48
random mistakes where they they followed a pattern.
36:50
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Look at Chickatillo. Soviet bureaucracy, blinded by ideology, allows
36:55
fifty two murders. Look at Lopez and Garavito's civil war
36:59
and crush poverty in Columbia make hundreds of street children
37:02
disposable in the eyes of the struggling state, allowing killers
37:06
impunity for decades.
37:07
Speaker 1: The Highway of tears, systemic racism and negligence, creating a
37:11
hunting ground for generations. Nathari, the poorest children killed, and
37:15
even convictions falter on technicalities.
37:17
Speaker 2: Even in wealthy nations. You see the contrast Duponteligoness uses
37:21
his resources and status to orchestrate a disappearance after a massacre.
37:25
The Paul Ett Jabbara Fara case raises huge questions about
37:28
whether elite status bought an implausible official story.
37:31
Speaker 1: So the uncomfortable truth is that successful evasion, or cases
37:35
going cold, or justice being weak, it rarely happens when
37:38
the victims are powerful, wealthy, or well connected.
37:40
Speaker 2: It almost exclusively happens when the victims are already on
37:43
the margins. Sex workers like the Ripper's victims or you
37:46
young Jools, street children in Latin America, Indigenous women in Canada,
37:51
the poor in Nathari, backpackers like Soaubraj's victims, people rendered
37:55
invisible or less important by societal structures, by political denial,
38:00
by economic hardship.
38:01
Speaker 1: Which means our vigilance can't just be about spotting the
38:04
individual monster. It has to be about looking at the conditions,
38:08
the biases, the institutional priorities that allow certain lives to
38:12
be treated as well as disposable. When things go wrong.
38:16
We have to question why some crimes get massive resources
38:19
and others languish.
38:20
Speaker 2: Precisely, we need to challenge the silence, the indifference that
38:24
allows such scale, such impunity to occur in the first.
38:26
Speaker 1: Place, and that really leaves us and you listening with
38:29
a final, maybe difficult thought to consider as you process
38:32
all this darkness. What does this persistent global pattern, this
38:36
link between victim status and the likelihood of justice, truly
38:39
reveal about which lives our societies actually prioritize and which
38:43
ones tragically get neglected or forgotten when that darkness.
38:46
Speaker 2: Descends, Something profound to think about. Thank you for joining
38:51
us on this deep and I agree often difficult, but
38:54
necessary dive into these global criminal archives.
38:57
Speaker 1: We appreciate sticking with us. We'll see you next time.
39:00
A deep dive