TRUE CRIME

There are few scenarios more terrifying than being buried alive, it’s the stuff of nightmares, horror films and gothic fiction. But in December 1968, for one young woman from Florida, that fear became a gruelling and all-too-real experience. Barbara Jane Mackle, a 20-year-old university student and heiress to a multimillion-dollar fortune, was kidnapped at gunpoint and left in a purpose-built box beneath the Georgia soil. ... View more

Few names evoke as much dread in modern Iraqi history as that of Uday Hussein. Born into privilege as the eldest son of Saddam Hussein, Uday could have led a life of diplomacy or governance. Instead, he chose a path of unchecked brutality, making even his father’s brutal regime appear, by comparison, coldly pragmatic rather than maniacally sadistic. For Iraqis, the name Uday came to symbolise more than corruption or power—it ... View more

In 1969, a North Carolina home went up in flames. Inside, Thomas Burke, husband to Velma Barfield, was found dead. At first, no one suspected a thing. But this incident marked the beginning of a deadly pattern. Over the next nine years, friends, family members, and employers of Velma Barfield would die under suspiciously similar circumstances. Velma Barfield would become the first woman in the United States to be ... View more

"My mom." That’s all eight-year-old Christie Downs needed to say. After surviving a stroke and slowly regaining her ability to speak, this soft-spoken reply to investigators shattered the alibi of her mother, Diane Downs — and confirmed what many already suspected. On 19 May 1983, in a quiet corner of Oregon just outside Springfield, Diane Downs pulled her car over on Old Mohawk Road and did the unthinkable: she ... View more

On 2 August 1993, in the sleepy village of Savona, New York, an act of violence so shocking in its brutality would forever alter the landscape of juvenile justice debates in the United States. The victim was four-year-old Derrick Robie, a cheerful, red-headed boy with a love for nature and baseball. The perpetrator was thirteen-year-old Eric Smith—another redhead, known in the village for his quiet nature and trademark thick ... View more