10 Creepy Deathbed Confessions
Margaret Gibson
The 1922 murder of prolific silent film actor and director William Desmond Taylor remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in Hollywood history. Even with multiple suspects being considered, the investigation was botched, leaving the case officially unsolved to this day. More than four decades after the crime, however, Margaret Gibson, a Hollywood actor who had worked with Taylor early in his career, made a shocking confession. After suffering a heart attack, the then seventy-year-old owned up to shooting and killing Taylor, as she slowly passed away on her kitchen floor. With zero physical evidence left from the case and a lack of an apparent motive, there was no way to verify Gibson’s sensational claim.
Mark “Chopper” Read
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One of the most notorious criminals to ever come out of Australia, Mark “Chopper” Read lived a large chunk of his adult life in prison. The infamous gang member spent time behind bars for crimes such as armed robbery, kidnapping and arson, but always somehow evaded a murder conviction. While serving his time, Read contracted Hepatitis C and years later, he was diagnosed with liver cancer. Perhaps realizing that his time on Earth was slowly coming to an end, he sat for an interview with “60 Minutes Australia” just sixteen days before he died. During the interview, Read casually admitted his involvement in the deaths of nineteen people, describing the details with an astounding lack of remorse.
Naaman Diller
The most expensive heist in Israeli history occurred in 1983, when the Museum for Islamic Art was robbed clean of items worth tens-of-millions of dollars. One of these was a custom-made pocket watch for Marie Antoinette estimated at about $30 million. The dastardly heist was carried out by Israeli criminal Naaman Diller. Diller had fled Israel after the crime and settled in the U.S., where he died in 2004. Just before his death, he confided in his wife about everything and left the rest of the stolen collection in her possession. The twenty-five-year-old case was finally solved after Diller’s widow tried selling some of the items back to the museum and the authorities were tipped off.
Christopher Smith
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Between 1975 and 1980, the Yorkshire Ripper claimed the lives of thirteen women in the English areas of Manchester and West Yorkshire. When twenty-six-year-old Joan Harrison was killed in 1975, her murder was initially attributed to the notorious killer. But after his arrest in 1981, he was eliminated as a suspect. From there, it would take thirty years for the case to come to a resolution. In 2008, Harrison’s death was linked to sixty-year-old Christopher Smith. Smith had terminal lung cancer and recently had his DNA sample taken after he was arrested for drunk driving. With his impending death looming, Smith penned a rambling letter in which he confessed to Harrison’s murder and pleaded for forgiveness. He passed on a few days later.
Hannah Quick
In 1980, Hannah Quick was the landlord of a townhouse in Brooklyn, New York that got burned to the ground in February of that year. The fire led to the unfortunate deaths of some of the tenants. When she was interviewed by police, Quick claimed to have seen three men walk out of the house around the time of the fire. The three men - Raymond Mora, Amaury Villalobos and William Vasquez - were convicted. Mora died in prison, whereas the other two spent over thirty years incarcerated for the incident. Years later, on her deathbed, Quick confessed to her daughter that she had lied about seeing the men. The case was overturned and the men were exonerated of the crime.
Christine Kett
The death of eighteen-year-old Christine Kett in her Dayton, Ohio home was a mystery that lingered for years. In January 1867, Kett’s body was found by her brother who immediately alerted their neighbors and the authorities. While police sorted through the crime scene, Kett’s mother, whose name was also Christine, arrived at the house and was inconsolable. Too inconsolable, as many onlookers noted. The case remained unsolved until years later when Mrs. Kett became sick and was at the point of death. On her deathbed, she admitted to killing Christine in a fit of rage. Mrs. Kett swore her son to secrecy until his own time came, but after her death, he notified the police.
Frank Thorogood
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On July 3rd 1969, Rolling Stones co-founder Brian Jones was found dead in the swimming pool of his Sussex home. His death was ruled by the authorities as an accidental drowning, but that didn’t stop multiple theories from popping up in the following days. One of the more credible ones involved construction worker Frank Thorogood, who was recommended to work in Jones’s house by the Stones’ chauffeur Tom Keylock. Thorogood, who last saw Jones alive, allegedly told Keylock on his deathbed that, “It was me that did Brian. I just finally snapped.” With both men now dead, and Keylock later denying the confession, there’s likely no way of knowing if Jones’s death was really an accident.
Alice Mock
In November 1986, seventy-six-year-old Alice Mock made a confession to her neighbor as she lay on her deathbed. Mock recounted that in 1975, a false allegation she made had sentenced a man to jail for fifteen years. The man, Wayman Cammile Jr., stayed over at Mock’s apartment after a drunken night out. Mock robbed Cammile when he passed out, but then she cried out for help, alleging that he had robbed and assaulted her. She claimed to have been afraid Cammile would find out about her theft. Mock’s confession exonerated Cammile, who was released after spending twelve years out of his fifteen-year sentence.
Geraldine Kelley
Geraldine Kelley lived with her husband, John, in Ventura, California, where they worked as motel managers. In 1992, Kelley told their two estranged children that John had been struck and killed in a car accident. With no reason to question her story, they accepted it. It wasn’t until Kelley was dying of cancer in 2004 that the truth was revealed. On her deathbed, Kelley confessed that she had killed John, reportedly because he was violent towards her. She kept his body in a storage unit and even shipped it along with her when she moved from California to Massachusetts. An official in the latter state described the entire situation as “very bizarre,” and frankly, we couldn’t agree more.
Christiaan Bonkoffsky
The Brabant Killers were a notorious gang of armed robbers who terrorized Brabant, a former province of Belgium. Their violent activities resulted in the deaths of twenty-eight people from 1982 to 1985. The group usually comprised three core members - “the Giant,” who was thought to be their leader, “the Killer,” and a getaway driver called “the Old Man.” After the Brabant killers suddenly vanished in 1985, police were unable to officially charge anyone with the crimes. In 2017, a man came forward claiming that his brother, a retired policeman named Christiaan Bonkoffsky, had confessed to being “the Giant” on his deathbed two years earlier. While it initially seemed like a breakthrough in the case, the claim was later disproved through forensic DNA.
