Masks of shame were used as a punishment device in Europe during the middle ages until the 18th century. Typically, they were made of metal and were created in various designs with the purpose of humiliating the offender.

On April 23, 2006, a quiet Canadian community was shattered by a gruesome discovery. The lifeless bodies of Marc and Debra Richardson, along with their 8-year-old son Tyler Jacob, were found in the basement of their home. The couple's 12-year-old daughter, Jasmine, was missing from the scene, sparking fears that she had been abducted by the killer.

However, the truth behind the Richardson family murders would soon emerge. The day after the bodies were discovered, Jasmine was picked up in Leader, Saskatchewan, over 130 kilometers away, accompanied by her 23-year-old “boyfriend,” Jeremy Allan Steinke. Both were charged with the brutal murders of Marc, Debra, and Tyler Jacob.

The motive behind the murders sent shockwaves through the community. Friends of Jasmine revealed that her parents had vehemently opposed her relationship with Steinke due to the fact he was an adult and she was a child; he had evidently been grooming her.

According to friends of Steinke, he claimed to be a 300-year-old werewolf and an affinity for the taste of blood. Reports emerged of Steinke's fascination with violent media, including the film "Natural Born Killers," which he allegedly watched with friends just hours before the murders. In a chilling echo of the movie's plot, Steinke reportedly expressed a desire to emulate the protagonists' violent spree, sparing no one, not even Jasmine's young brother.

Further investigation into the couple's online activities revealed a disturbing trail of communication on websites frequented by young Canadians, including VampireFreaks.com and Nexopia. Richardson posted under the username "runawaydevil” while Steinke's accounts painted a picture of a troubled individual fascinated by dark and macabre themes.

The couple ultimately stood trial, and during Richardson’s trial, it was revealed that Steinke had broken into the family’s home armed with a knife. Debra had come down the stairs after hearing a noise, and Steinke stabbed her to death. After hearing the noise, Marc came to investigate and he was overpowered during a struggle and stabbed to death.

As for Tyler Jacob, Richardson admitted to stabbing him. She said that after stabbing him once and handing the knife to Steinke, her little bother cried: “I’m too young to die.” Steinke then slashed his throat. Richardson also claimed that she was in a “zombie late” state when Steinke carried out the murders.

Both Richardson and Steinke were convicted of the murders. Because of her young age, Richardson was sentenced to the maximum that was allowed for somebody her age – ten years. She was released in May of 2016. As for Steinke, he was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years.

On July 7, 1960, a typical school day turned into a parent's worst nightmare for Freda Thorne. That morning, she bid farewell to her 8-year-old son, Graeme Thorne, never imagining it would be their final goodbye. Little did she know, Graeme would become the first victim of a ransom kidnapping in Australia's history, sparking a nationwide tragedy that would forever change the landscape of lottery procedures.

Graeme was supposed to meet family friend, Phyllis Smith, for the school run, but when she arrived at their designated spot, he was nowhere to be found. Concern turned to panic as Freda reported her son missing to the police, initiating a desperate search that would grip the nation.

The chilling reality of Graeme's abduction became starkly evident when Freda received a phone call demanding £25,000 for his safe return, accompanied by a horrifying threat to "feed the boy to the sharks" if the ransom wasn't paid by 5PM. Sergeant Larry O'Shea, posing as Freda's husband Brazil Thorne, engaged with the kidnapper, unaware that Brazil had recently won £100,000 in the Opera House Lottery, a fact that had been widely publicized in the media.

Despite efforts to comply with the kidnapper's demands, including instructions to prepare the ransom money, the ordeal took a grim turn. Graeme's empty school case was discovered near the meeting spot with Phyllis Smith, followed by the discovery of his lunch bag and school books miles away.

The agonizing wait for Graeme's return came to a devastating end when his lifeless body was found on August 16, 1960, in Seaforth, Sydney. Wrapped in a tartan blanket, bound with string, and gagged with a scarf, Graeme had been killed within 24 hours of his abduction.

Forensic analysis uncovered crucial evidence linking Stephen Leslie Bradley, a Hungarian migrant, to the crime. Despite fleeing to Britain, Bradley was apprehended in Colombo, Ceylon, and subsequently found guilty, receiving a life sentence. His death in prison on October 6, 1968, provided little solace to a grieving family and a nation in shock.

Mental illnesses can have a profound impact on a family, affecting various aspects of relationships, communication and overall well-being. They can exert strain on interpersonal connections, and 2011, the question of mental illness within a family raised questions as detectives scrambled to investigate a shocking murder of a mother....

16-year-old Sylvia Likens was the daughter of two carnival workers, but when her parents' separated and her mother was jailed for shoplifting, somebody needed to care for her. Ultimately, Sylvia and her sister, Jenny, were sent to live with Gertrude Baniszwewski and her family, paying them $20 to take care of the two girls.

When the payments were late, Baniszwewski would turn on the girls, particularly Sylvia. She would hit the girls with paddles, and whip them. Being fragile and asthmatic herself, Baniszwewski recruited her children and neighbourhood children to subject Sylvia to horrendous abuse over the period of three months.

This abuse included putting cigarettes out on her skin, burning her with scalding water, beating her, rubbing salt in her wounds, forcing her to eat things which would cause her to vomit and on at least two occasions, she was sexually assaulted with a Coca-Cola bottle. On another occasion, a neighbourhood boy, Coy Hubbard, used her to practice his judo, which as a result, caused her to become incontinent. Baniszwewski responded to this by forcing her to eat her own faeces as well as her one-year-old sons.

Jenny, Sylvia’s sister attempted to get help and contacted their older sister, Diana, who came to the house yet did nothing to help. Shortly before her death, Baniszewski took a hot needle and carved “I’m a prostitute and proud of it!” on Sylvia’s stomach. A neighbourhood boy, Richard Hobbs, helped. He also helped 10-year-old Shirley Baniszewski burn the number “3” into her chest with an iron poker. The night before Sylvia died, she attempted to escape the house of horrors. She was caught by Baniszewski who threw her down the stairs into the cellar which had become her home.

The next day, on October 26, 1965, Sylvia’s body gave up after the countless beatings, burnings, sexual assaults, and lack of food and water. She died of a brain haemorrhage, shock, and malnutrition. She had suffered unimaginable torment. Her body was covered in wounds, bruises, and burns. In her final moments, she had almost completely severed her lips with her teeth from the beatings.

Gertrude received a life sentence while the younger assailants received petty sentences and were all released and went on to lead normal lives, something Sylvia could never do. Disgustingly enough, Gertrude was released for good behaviour after just a measly fourteen years in prison.

25-year-old Mary Shotwell Little worked as a secretary in a bank in Atlanta, Georgia. In August of 1965, she married Roy Little, a bank examiner. Just six weeks after their wedding day, Roy left town on a training course. On the afternoon of 14 October, Mary went grocery shopping, and that evening, she went to the Lennox Square Shopping Center for dinner with a co-worker at the Picadilly Cafeteria.

At around 8PM, she left the Lennox Square Shopping Center to her parked car, but was never seen again....

When Mary didn’t show up for work, she was reported missing. Initially, the security guard at the shopping center said he couldn’t find her car. However, later when police arrived, her 1965 Mercury Comet was found in the car park where she had left it. A coating of red dust was covering the car’s exterior. It looked as if it had been driven along a dirt road.

A stocking that had been cut with a knife was found on the floor of the car along with underwear. Specks of blood were found on the undergarments as well as the steering wheel and the handle. It was determined it was Mary’s blood. Some police theorised that due to the small amount of blood, it had been staged. However, there was an unidentified fingerprint in blood on the steering wheel of the vehicle.

An investigation uncovered that Mary’s credit card had been used twice in North Carolina the day after she disappeared. Both times, petrol had been purchased. The workers recollected seeing a woman who appeared to have blood on her head and legs. They recalled her being with two middle-aged men who appeared to be directing her what to do and what to say.

Investigators also discovered that Mary’s license plate was a North Carolina one that had been stolen as opposed to her Georgia one. Police believed that somebody abducted Mary and then moved her car back to the same parking spot afterwards.

Over the years there have been many theories as to what became of Mary. One of the more peculiar theories was that her disappearance was connected to lesbian sex scandal that was occurring at her place of her employment. It was also revealed that Mary had received alarming phone calls in the run up to her disappearance. These calls came to her work and her colleagues heard her telling the caller she was now a married woman that could no longer visit them.

Despite an exhaustive investigation, Mary Shotwell Little still remains missing today.

On the 14th of April 1984, a tragic discovery shook the shores of White Strand Beach in Cahirsiveen, County Kerry, Ireland—a newborn baby boy, discarded and brutally stabbed to death. The investigation that followed cast a spotlight on Joanne Hayes, a local woman who had recently been pregnant. Taken into police custody for questioning, Hayes reportedly confessed to the crime. However, she later recanted, asserting that her confession had been coerced.

Hayes admitted to giving birth to a baby son at the family farm, who tragically died shortly after birth. She confessed to burying him on the premises. Subsequent DNA testing on the buried infant corroborated Hayes' account—the DNA matched her story. The clandestine nature of the birth and death of her son stemmed from the fact that the father was a married man.

Despite the lack of a genetic match between the baby found on the beach and the one buried on the farm, indicating they did not share the same parents, police asserted that Hayes had conceived simultaneously by two different men—a phenomenon known as heteropaternal superfecundation, exceedingly rare but theoretically possible.

Hayes faced a murder charge, yet this accusation was ultimately dismissed by a judge. The infant found on the beach was christened "Baby John," yet his identity and the identity of his killer remain a mystery.

Lori Zimmerman from Hagerstown, Maryland, was just 15-years-old when she disappeared on the 6th of April, 1984. Since her parents divorce, Lori spent most of her time with her mother. They had just moved to their new home. In fact, Lori had only slept there one night before vanishing. On that fateful day, Lori got into a taxi to deliver her to Hagerstown High School. When she didn’t return that evening, her concerned mother reported her missing.

An investigation uncovered that Lori had arrived and left school safely that afternoon. She had caught the bus to stop at a nearby friend’s house for 10 minutes. This was the last time she was ever seen alive. The following week, Lori’s family received the grim news that she wouldn’t be coming home.

A couple were walking along Reno Monument Road when they stumbled across a gruesome scene. It was the partially clothed body of Lori. She had been beaten, strangled, and then hidden under cardboard and leaves. A foreign object had been shoved down her throat and all of her jewelry had been smashed. Police revealed that they didn’t believe Lori had been murdered at the location where her body was found.

The case remains unsolved.

In 2002, anthropologist Grover Krantz made a unique arrangement for his final resting place: donating his body to the Smithsonian, with a heartfelt condition. Krantz insisted that his cherished Irish Wolfhound, Clyde, accompany him in death. True to his wishes, when Krantz's body was put on display in 2009, Clyde stood faithfully by his side for all to see.

15-year-old Karen Perez from Houston, Texas, had just recently celebrated her Quinceañera and had ambitions of one day working in a day care or animal shelter. She was kind and a good student who often spoke about her excitement of becoming a mother one day. “Her words were as soft as rose petals; she wouldn’t harm a fly,” recalled one of her friends.

On the 27th of May, 2016, however, Karen disappeared. After she was reported missing, a search party was assembled. Attending the search party was Karen’s 15-year-old boyfriend. As he and his father drove around searching, the teenage boy told his father to “just take him home because she is not alive…” His father immediately called the police.

Days later, members of the search party discovered Karen’s body in an abandoned building in the 1600 block of Avenue M, just across the street from South Houston High School. She had been strangled and then shoved into a cabinet under a sink.

Police immediately brought the boyfriend in for questioning and confiscated his phone as well as Karen’s phone. On his phone, police found text messages to Karen in which he demanded she skip school with him on the day she disappeared. When she said she couldn’t, he said he would kill her.

What investigators found on Karen's own cell pone was even more disturbing. She had captured the audio of her own murder. In the audio, her boyfriend was heard sexually assaulting Karen who exclaims “I don’t want to, I told you I don’t want to!” Afterwards, Karen was manually strangled by her boyfriend as she mumbled "I don’t want to die…“

The boyfriend was eventually identified as Jesus Campos Jr. He was convicted of Karen's murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Throughout the 1980s, David and Catherine Birnie committed a series of brutal sexual assaults and murders in Perth, Australia, targeting four women aged between 15 and 35. Most often, their victims were killed strangulation or stabbing.

However, the horror reached new depths in the case of 31-year-old Noelene Patterson, whom they imprisoned for days. Chained to a bed, she endured relentless sexual assaults until Catherine grew concerned about David's disturbing attachment to her. Catherine issued a chilling ultimatum: either David kill Noelene or Catherine would take her own life. David responded by forcing sleeping pills down Noelene’s throat before ultimately strangling her once she had lost consciousness.

Following the murders, the Birnies disposed of their victims' bodies, burying them in shallow graves within forests. Their reign of terror finally came to an end on November 10, 1986, when they abducted a 17-year-old, whose identity remains protected. She managed o escape from their home, fleeing naked down the road to seek help.

David leaded guilty to the crimes, stating it was "the least I could do." He took his own life in prison by hanging in his cell in 2005, just before facing further charges for sexually assaulting another inmate. Catherine, however, remains incarcerated and is serving a life sentence.

The 1947 "doll test" was a experiment conducted by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark, which played a significant role in the legal battle against segregation in the United States. The study aimed to investigate the psychological effects of segregation on African American children.

In the experiment, African American children aged between three and seven were shown two dolls. These dolls were identical except for their skin colour - one doll had white skin while the other had brown skin. The children were then asked a series of questions, including which doll they preferred, which one was the "nice" doll, and which one looked most like them.

The results of the study were startling and disturbing. The majority of the children, regardless of their own race, consistently showed a preference for the white doll over the brown one. Many attributed positive qualities to the white doll and negative qualities to the brown one. The doll test demonstrated that segregation not only deprived African American children of equal educational opportunities but also harmed their self-esteem and sense of identity.

The findings of the doll test provided evidence of the damaging psychological impact of segregation and racism on African American children. These results were instrumental in the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

In the early hours of July 22nd, 1977, firefighters rushed to extinguish a blaze consuming a home in Prospect, Connecticut, near Route 68 and Cedar Hill Drive.

Amidst the charred remains, responders discovered the tragic fate of eight children and a woman. They were identified as Cheryl Beaudoin, 29, and her seven children—Frederick, 12, Sharon, 10, Debra, 9, Paul, 8, Roderick, 6, Holly, 5, and Mary, 4—the ninth victim was Cheryl's niece, Jennifer, 6.

But they hadn't died in the fire. Over at the medical examiner's office, it was discovered they had all been beaten to death with a tire iron, and then the fire was intentionally set. Cheryl had additionally been stabbed. At the time, her husband, Frederick Beaudoin, was away at his job in the Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Group factory in North Haven.

A massive investigative effort ensued, involving around 200 state police officers who meticulously pursued leads, questioning motorists and potential suspects, including family members. Among them, 27-year-old Lorne Acquin, Frederick's foster brother, drew immediate attention. With a criminal record including first-degree larceny, Lorne eventually confessed to the mass murder.

According to Lorne's account, he entered the home around 2AM via the cellar. Encountering Cheryl in the kitchen, he falsely claimed a need for tools, and she led him to her husband's tool box. Seizing a tire iron, Lorne savagely attacked Cheryl before proceeding to the children's bedrooms, binding some with shoelaces and then bludgeoning them all to death.

Lorne Acquin was convicted of multiple counts of murder and received a sentence of 25 years to life for each offense. Despite the confession, he never revealed a motivation.

The tale of L'Inconnue de la Seine, or the Unknown Woman of the Seine, revolves around a death mask created from the face of a woman purportedly found in the 1800s, having allegedly taken her own life and retrieved from the Seine river near Quai du Louvre in Paris.

According to legend, the pathologist conducting her post-mortem was so struck by her beauty that he had a mask made to immortalize it. However, skepticism arose over the years due to the serene and flawless expression on the mask, leading some to speculate it was taken from a living model rather than a deceased body.

Despite the mystery surrounding her true identity, the visage of this woman became a popular decorative item, widely produced and adorning many homes in the early 1900s.

Kenneth Maxwell tragically lost his life while courageously attempting to respond to what he perceived as a crisis. On February 22nd, 2003, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Kenneth spotted a raging house fire and promptly dialed 911 to report the emergency. However, during the call, the line abruptly went dead after another man's voice was heard in the background.

When firefighters arrived at the scene, they discovered Kenneth lying outside the burning house in a pool of blood, having been shot once in the head. Upon entering the residence, police uncovered the bodies of Rebecca Susan Barney and her ex-husband, Freddie Barney, both of whom had been fatally shot.

The killer had also stolen a computer but left everything else undisturbed, attempting to mask the true nature of the crime by setting the house ablaze. Detectives quickly established that after Kenneth spotted the blaze and approached the home to try and offer assistance, he encountered the killer outside and became another victim.

James Lynn Kidwell was swiftly apprehended for the murders. Investigations revealed that he had met Rebecca on a dating website and had been seen with both her and Freddie at a local bar prior to the murders. Despite Kidwell's denials of any sexual activity, forensic evidence, including semen and saliva matching Kidwell's, was found on Rebecca's body. Additionally, ammunition consistent with that used in the murders and a bloodstained t-shirt were discovered at Kidwell's residence.

Ultimately, James Lynn Kidwell was convicted and sentenced to three consecutive life terms.