This is Halloween: crimes that took place on October 31

WARNING! The following content may be disturbing to some of you!

Have you ever thought about what hides in a murderer’s mind? How do they plan the perfect crime and also when they think it would be the best time to do it? If not, that means you are probably an innocent person and I am about to ruin that for you. If you know anything about Halloween or you even like to celebrate it, I am sure you’re also aware that this is and will always be the darkest time of the year and there is no doubt that some people like to take advantage of that more than they actually should, because nothing else in this world screams “perfect crime” more than the one committed on the night dedicated to evil and the dead. With that being said, you are now going to read about 3 murder cases that happened exactly on the famous date of October 31,but be careful…you might change your enthusiasm for the spooky season after this.

  • The case that was unsolved for 23 years

    It was the year 1957, 15 year old Martha Moxley was participating at a “mischief night” ( meaning children and teens pulling pranks on Halloween night). The girl started flirting with Thomas Skakel, a boy from her friend group who also had a brother, Michael. On that night, Martha was last seen fooling around with Thomas and in the morning she was found dead near a tree in her backyard with a broken six-iron golf club next to her. Of course Thomas was the first suspect , but his father did not allow access into his school or into his mental health records. The case remained unsolved for 23 years and it seemed that it was going to remain a mistery, because both Thomas and his little brother Michael changed their stories for the night of Martha’s murder and the cause would’ve been dead if  two former students from a private residential behavior modification hadn’t said that they overheard Michael Skakel confesing that he murdered Moxley and, more important, that he was going to get away with that because he is a Kennedy. And that was in fact true, because his aunt and uncle were none other than Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy (born Skakel).  He is currently released and, shockingly, people are in a continuous match of debate when they’re talking about this case, many of them say that he truly is a murderer, but some say that Moxley is innocent and could never do such a thing, although this could easily be a symptom of the Kennedy fever.

●       The Toolbox Killers’ last hit

  Lawrence Sigmund Bittaker and Roy Lewis  Norris were two famous serial killers and rapists, known as the ToolBox Killers. Their target was teenage girls and they managed to torture, rape and eventually kill five girls in Souther California in the span of five months in the year 1979. The Tool Box Killers’ last murder was actually on October 31, wich really brought the Halloween spirit on another level. The victim in this crazy story is a girl named Shirley Ledford, who was coming home from a Halloween party, but, unfortunately, the girl never made it home. Lawrence and Roy took her in a van, but the girl didn’t know who they were and what they were famous for. The guys were actually known for kidnapping teenage girls at night in order to abuse and torture them with tools that were usually found in a toolbox (such as pliers, sledgehammers and more). The cherry on top was the fact that they would never stop at just torturing, because the two guys took pictures while they were traumatising young girls most of the time. After they were done with Shirley Ledford, they left her on a strange property. That was the fifth and last crime the Toolbox Killers ever committed, because one of their friends turned them in. They didn’t actually have the same faith, because, thanks to the fact that Norris recognised all the crimes he and his partner committed and testified against Bittaker, he was given 45 years of imprisonment. His mate didn’t have the same lucky faith, because he remained silent and refused to cooperate. He was sentenced to death, but he actually died on December 13 2019 at San Quentin State Prison.

●       The mistake of opening the door on Halloween night

     Our last real horror story started during the spooky season, in 1957 in Los Angeles. Peter Fabiano and his wife, Betty Fabiano had a big downfall in their marriage, because the woman was being infidel to her husband with her female lover, Joan Rabel. Eventually Betty left Joan and came back to her husband, which made her blood boil. That was when Rabel made a very calculated plan with Goldyne Pizer to murder Peter.

    On Halloween night, the two women decided to implement their big plan. They showed up to the Fabianos’ house wearing costumes and being armed with a 38-caliber handgun. Joan rang the bell and, as she was hoping, Peter answered the door and she shot him. Betty found her husband dead in the doorway and called the police. The woman later testified that she left her husband to be with Joan Rabel and that was the key to this case. Rabel and Pizer agreed to not speak after the incident, but Goldyne wasn’t actually a good ally. The cops eventually managed to find the gun that Joan used to kill Peter and came to interrogate Goldyne, who spitted all the truth out without hesitation. Both women were arrested. Goldyne eventually passed away in 1998, but what happened to Joanne remains a mystery to this day.

      Still in the mood for Halloween? And just think about the fact that there are so much more stories that are so horrifying you won’t even believe are real. No matter how much time is going to pass, these stories will remain in the history of Halloween as the ones who brought the holiday’s spirit to a crazy level.

Editor: Alexia Ștefania Iova

Grafician: Mădălina Moroșanu