The Cemetery of Fools | M.P. Pellicer

Bohnice is a district in northern Prague. It is home to a psychiatric hospital built at the beginning of the 20th century. The asylum was one of the largest in Europe. Small houses surround a large park with an Art Noveau church. However what attracts tourists and legend trippers is the cemetery that received the dead for fifty years.

The six acre parcel of land is known as the Cemetery of Fools. Like many asylums built during these years, it had its own graveyard. Patients from the hospital were buried there from 1909 to 1951. Originally it was used for the patients' children, but eventually the inmates were buried there as well.

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Death by Suggestion | M.P. Pellicer

On September 19, 1911 Lady Frances M. Garnett-Orme was found dead in her room at the Savoy Hotel in the hill station of Mussoorie in northern India. The body was carefully laid out, as if posed after she died, and the doors were locked from the inside.

A post mortem examination found the presence of prussic acid. Two months later her companion Eva Mountstevens was arrested at Jhansi, after she left Lucknow.

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The Millionaire and the Telephone Girl | M.P. Pellicer

Two officers of the bicycle police brigade of Fresnes-sur-Marne were patrolling the road to Claye, when they came in the night upon a smoldering hayrick in a field belonging to Farmer Ernet. Under the rick about 100 feet off the main road and up a cart track, they smelled the odor of burning flesh. It was the body of a slender girl, and it was obvious by the charring of her body someone had set her on fire.

On August 13, 1926, a Friday, the police in the French city of Freses-sur-Marne were trying to solve what was dubbed by the press as the "Friday the 13th" murder. The body of a young girl was found in a burning haystack near a lonely road. The girl was strangled and the fire was assumed to have been started to conceal the crime.

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The Wicked Stepmother | M.P. Pellicer

Mary Hoge's slashed body was found stuffed in a steamer trunk, and the suspect was none other than her stepson.

Jacob Hoge, 48, a baggage manager for the Pennsylvania Railroad told police that his son Joseph, 21, sat on a steamer struck while waiting for an express man to remove it. He thought it was odd, but not as odd as the fact that he couldn't find his wife. He'd only been married 10 months, and he hurried home from work like the newlywed he was. His first wife Sarah, mother of his children, had died in 1929.

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The Mirror in Suite 72 | M.P. Pellicer

On October 24, 1905 Mary Jane Caley was staying in Suite 72 at The Aberdeen Hotel; the same one she had rented several times in the past. That day she had already bought her ticket to return by train to her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. Then for some unfathomable reason she shot herself in the temple. Why would a wealthy, 21-year-old woman do this?

Manhattan, New York, 1901
Penn Station was under construction, and Macy's had opened on 34th St. Around the corner from Tiffany, B. Altman and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, plans were underway to build a new Beaux-Arts hotel. A style called apartment hotels, which were the latest thing for out-of-towners who needed a pied-a-terre, without the need to hire servants or worry about maintenance. Residents dined in a communal dining room or restaurant, and hotel staff catered to their needs.

 

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A Rose on the Grave | M.P. Pellicer

Arlis Perry, 19, was murdered inside Stanford Memorial Church two weeks before Halloween, 1974. Her body was posed and mutilated in what appeared to be some type of ritual murder. Decades would pass before the identity of her killer would become known, however questions still lingered.

California, 1974
Arlis grew up in Bismarck, North Dakota and married her high school sweetheart Bruce D. Perry. Both of them attended the same high school and were popular students. Arlis was a cheerleader and Bruce, the son of Dr. Duncan Perry a dentist, had played sports. They both belonged to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. During his year as a freshman in Stanford, Bruce corresponded with his fiancée, and he came back home to tie the knot and return with his bride to continue his studies. They had an apartment at Quinnel Hall, a residence on the campus for married students.

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Louise's Last Resting Place | M.P. Pellicer

​In 1966, Louise Pietrewicz disappeared without a trace. The mystery of her whereabouts appeared to be solved with the discovery of a woman’s remains found in a burlap sack on Long Island.

October, 1966

Louise was in a troubled marriage, and after 16 years she had separated from her husband, and moved to her parents' home in Sagaponack. She took her 11-year-old daughter Sandy with her, with plans to leave to Florida. And then the 38-year-old disappeared after withdrawing close to $2,000 from her bank account. When her purse was recovered a week later on the shoulder of Route 25, with a WWII bond and her Social Security card inside, it should have raised concern on the part of the authorities. Instead they treated the case as a missing person and not a murder, and the local newspaper took no notice of it.

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Exorcist's Murder Still Unsolved | M.P. Pellicer

In 1998, a priest was brutally murdered in a little, rural town in Wisconsin. His throat was slit, and despite the advances in DNA identification and the public’s mistaken belief in the CSI effect, the crime remains unsolved till this day.

Rev. Alfred Kunz had just finished co-hosting a faith-based radio show named Our Catholic Family on WEKZ in Monroe, Wisconsin on the evening of March 3, 1998. He had been dropped off at St. Michael Church by Father Charles Fiore (1934-2003), and he spoke on the phone at 10:23 pm. Later it was verified by investigators the call was to another priest to discuss church business.

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Evil Never Dies | M.P. Pellicer

​​There is a place in Indiana. It's a spacious house sitting on several, wooded acres, which for many years became the final, but not restful place for young men, the victims of a ruthless killer.

His name was Herb Baumeister, born on April 7, 1947, the son of Dr. Herbert and Elizabeth Baumeister. He was one of four children. His father was an anesthesiologist who had been practicing since the late 1950s. One has to wonder what Dr. Baumeister thought of the oldest of his four children. His behavior was disturbing from an early age, but it became undeniable when he reached puberty. He started to develop a fascination with death, and wondered aloud what urine would taste like. He would chase his male classmates asking for a drink. Herb would torture animals and play with the corpses. Another time he took the carcass of a dead crow he found on the road, and placed it on his teacher's desk.

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Murrell's Protégée | M.P. Pellicer

The place was Sandtown Road, once known as the Sand Town Trail, near the West End in Atlanta where a man's skeleton was found. It was a swampy area, some distance from the road in a dense area of cane growth. Most noted that it was an "admirable spot for a murder."

Atlanta, April 12, 1897

The bones were found by a policeman's young son, and soon crowds flocked to the place. All believed the person was a victim of murder, with the body not fully decomposed. He appeared to have been a man of means. Near to the remains was a piece of a gold chain, a small silver ring and a dainty gold locket, which was in the man's pocket, and not discovered by his attacker, if theft was the motive.

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The Dead Man at Devil's Elbow | M.P. Pellicer

What was left was just a skeleton found in a pine stand at a place called the Devil's Elbow.

October 30, 1886, Palatka, Florida

A boy hunting found him. His head lay to the roots of the pine tree, and his flesh had been completely stripped off by animals and buzzards. The condition of the clothes indicated he had been dead several months, and that he might have been the victim of the prior winter's freeze.

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Murder at Matanzas Inlet | M.P. Pellicer

In 1875, Henry Keech came to St. Augustine, Florida and established a farm a few miles away at Matanzas Inlet, named for the massacre of French sailors decades before. Little did he imagine that death stalked him as well.

June 1875

Henry Keech came to St. Augustine from Wisconsin in 1873. He purchased a farm in St. John's county 14 miles from the old fort Matanzas Inlet. He was industrious and prospered. He came with a woman who all believed was his wife.

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Skull in the Sagebrush | M.P. Pellicer

A hunter in pursuit of an elk he'd just shot found the unexpected: a human skull in the middle of nowhere.

November 12, 2023, Wyoming

The sun-bleached bone stood out amongst the sagebrush in Wyoming's Red Desert that spans more than 9,000 square miles. On a map it's known as Area 118, and it literally is the middle of nowhere, just an expanse dotted with oil rigs and wells near Wamsutter, Wyoming. The lower jaw lay nearby, and nothing else—no more bones, no clothing.

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These Things Don't Happen in Nice Towns | M.P. Pellicer

Karen Klaas was raped and then strangled with a pantyhose. Despite the attention the case received since she had been married to Bill Medley from the Righteous Brothers, eventually the investigation went cold, and stayed that way for decades.

Karen was attacked on January 30, 1976. She lived in Hermosa Beach, California and had returned home at 9 a.m. after dropping off her son Damien at McMartin Preschool. Her older son was with his grandfather.

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The Hexed House | M.P. Pellicer

It was after 1912 that the first houses were built overlooking Benedict Canyon in Beverly Hills. A spacious, Bavarian-style house was constructed at 9820 Easton Drive in 1930 for Paul Bern, an MGM executive. Why grisly death was to become a familiar visitor there remains a mystery.

Completed when Prohibition was the law of the land, the architects hid a bar behind a book case. However there would be darker secrets the house would keep as the years passed.

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Bella's Bones | M.P. Pellicer

It was April 1943, and World War II raged throughout Europe when four English teenagers were hunting for birds' nests in a private estate near Birmingham named Hagley Wood.

Bob Farmer climbed up an old Wych-elm tree, looked down the stunted top and made a gruesome discovery inside the hollowed out bole that has mystified police ever since. It was not a bird that stared back at him, but a human skull.

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Honeymooners and Murder at Niagara Falls | M.P. Pellicer

Niagara Falls has been a favorite destination for honeymooners for decades. Like a magnet, it also draws daredevils and those wishing to release themselves from this mortal coil.

Niagara Falls is made up of three waterfalls that are 18,000 years old. Two in the United States and one in Canada. Horseshoe Falls spans the border of both countries, and empties into the Niagara River; it's the largest of the three. The falls have a vertical drop of more than 165 feet.

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Who Murdered Mamie? | M.P. Pellicer

In June 1932, Mamie Thurman was killed. But who would want to murder the pretty wife of a patrolman?

On June 23, scandal was in the air. Harry Robertson, the Logan city commission president, and Clarence Stephenson his servant were being held in connection to a murder. And it wasn't just any murder, but that of Mamie Thurman, the wife of Alvin "Jack" Thurman, who was a political friend and appointee of Robertson's. The Thurmans lived above a private garage at the rear of Robertson's house on Stratton Street.

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Murder Begets Murder | M.P. Pellicer

In the span of six years three members of the same family were shot, two of them died. Now the grave of one of the victims was broken into and the head of the corpse removed.

Sabrina Tavares de Almeida, 31, was shot dead in Nova Iguaçu, Brazil in August of 2022. She was buried in Iguaçu Velho Cemetery which is also known as the Cemetery of the Slaves. It's located on a dirt road with land and brush bordering the graveyard.

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The Betrayer | M.P. Pellicer

John Morgan was only 22 years old when he took a hatchet and killed three persons that had treated him like family.

1897, West Virginia

Chloe "Cloah" Koontz married Francis Marion Pfost and had eight children, five girls and three boys. The youngest Matilda "Tilley" was only 2 years old when her father died in 1873. Chloe Pfost remarried two years later. Her second husband was Edward H. Greene, who was 28 years older than her. He had lost his wife the year before and he had seven children by her. He would have another son with Chloe named James.

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