Marie Fikáčková, born Marie Schmidl, entered the world on 9 September 1936 in Sušice, a picturesque town nestled in what was then Czechoslovakia. Her upbringing within a troubled Sudeten German family was marked by dysfunction and instability, influencing her formative years profoundly. Despite these hardships, Marie pursued a career in nursing, perhaps driven by a desire to find stability and meaning in helping others. After ... View more
true crime
Tokyo Joe: The Incredible Life, Betrayal, and Survival of Ken Eto, the Chicago Outfit’s Highest-Ranking Asian-American Mobster
“They took their shot. They muffed it.” It’s not every day that someone gets shot three times in the head—and walks away. But then again, Ken Eto was never your average mobster. Known on the streets of Chicago as “Tokyo Joe” and, more insidiously, as “The Jap,” Eto occupied a strange, powerful niche in the Chicago underworld. As the highest-ranking Asian-American ever to work for the Outfit, Chicago’s infamous ... View more
Gary Heidnik: The Basement Horror That Inspired ‘The Silence of the Lambs’
Before there was Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs, there was Gary Heidnik—a name that became synonymous with one of the most grotesque and psychologically disturbing true crime cases in modern American history. Between 1986 and 1987, Heidnik kidnapped six women and held them captive in a pit in his Philadelphia basement. Two of them did not survive. His crimes involved rape, starvation, torture, and murder—and what ... View more
The Millennium Dome Diamond Heist: Britain’s Most Bizarrely Brilliant Botched Robbery
It sounds like the start of a bad joke: What do you get when you cross a JCB digger, a fake bomb made out of a Fray Bentos pie tin, and the most expensive diamond in Britain? Answer: one of the most spectacularly unsuccessful robberies in UK criminal history. Welcome to the Millennium Dome Diamond Heist—a plot so outrageous, so elaborate, and ultimately so doomed, it could only have been dreamt up by a gang with more ... View more
Carlos Lehder and Norman’s Cay: The Cocaine Empire in Paradise
Imagine an idyllic Caribbean island transformed into a fortress of wealth and power, hidden behind crystal-clear waters and white sandy beaches. This paradise-turned-empire was Norman's Cay, a remote Bahamian island commandeered by Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas, a co-founder of Colombia’s notorious Medellín Cartel alongside the infamous Pablo Escobar. The Early Days: Setting the Stage Born on 7 September 1949 in ... View more
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