10 People Who Got Away With Crimes For Decades
The Grim Sleeper
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Active initially in the 1980s, the Grim Sleeper earned his moniker from the extended break that he took between 1988 and the early 2000s. Real name Lonnie Franklin Jr., the Sleeper took his first confirmed victim in 1984. He then claimed a further nine lives, with his final murder occurring on September 11, 1988. He did attack a 30-year-old woman the following November, but she survived. Perhaps fearing the repercussions of her survival, the Sleeper lay dormant for over a decade, his next victim likely being 43-year-old Georgia Mae Thomas on December 28, 2000. It wasn’t until the advent of DNA testing that Franklin was considered a suspect, and he was finally arrested in 2010 - 26 years after taking his first victim.
John Paul
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It’s rare that a killer turns themselves in. It’s even rarer that they do so after 40 years. Back on June 6, 1980, 42-year-old Anthony Bird was found bound, beaten, and killed in his west London apartment. Police were called after he failed to turn up for work, and they knocked his door down with a sledgehammer, finding the dead body. Fast forward to 2021, when 61-year-old John Paul walked into a Hammersmith police station and confessed to the decades-old crime. He arrived at 9:38 AM and was arrested by 3:35 that afternoon. Paul’s fingerprints matched those taken from the crime scene, ending the 40-year-old cold case on a rather unpredictable note.
Thomas Cass
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It was the morning of September 1, 1966, and retired Navy veteran Everett Delano was working in Sanborn’s Garage. That’s when a thief walked in, shot Delano three times in the head, and fled with $100 in cash. The case was never solved, and it eventually became New Hampshire’s oldest cold case. It was quite literally forgotten by the police, but a cold case unit received a call from Delano’s family in 2013 hoping for some kind of progress. The authorities quickly looked into the file and found an old fingerprint that investigators had lifted from the scene. They matched it to one Thomas Cass. Authorities informed Cass about the match in 2014, and he soon after took his own life.
Joseph George Sutherland
Back in 1983, Toronto was hit with a series of grisly murders. In August, 45-year-old Susan Tice was fatally stabbed in her Bickford Park apartment. Four months later, 22-year-old Erin Gilmour was found stabbed in her Yorkville apartment, which was located near Tice’s. Both victims were found by family members, and both had been assaulted. The murders went unsolved for decades, but advances in DNA testing confirmed that they were slain by the same person. However, it wasn’t until 2019 that investigators used genetic genealogy to trace the DNA to five brothers. After eliminating four from contention, they finally found Joseph George Sutherland, who pleaded guilty to the killings in 2023, 40 years after they occurred.
Glen Samuel McCurley
We move from the north to the south, with this crime occurring in Fort Worth, Texas in 1974. 17-year-old Carla Walker was in a car with her boyfriend Rodney McCoy when the door suddenly burst open and the couple were attacked. McCoy was knocked unconscious, and Walker was kidnapped. Three days later, her body was found in a culvert. The case quickly went cold and remained as such for the next 46 years. In 2020, investigators tested DNA taken from Walker’s clothing and matched it to 77-year old Glen McCurley. Horribly enough, McCurley was actually considered a suspect back in the ‘70s, but a passed polygraph test cleared him of suspicion. He was sentenced to life in prison and died in 2023.
The Chameleon Killer
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Terry Rasmussen earned the moniker Chameleon Killer not because he blended in, but because he went by a number of different aliases. While Rasmussen has only been convicted of one murder, experts believe that he committed at least five. Many peg him as the man behind New Hampshire’s Bear Brook murders of the late 1970s, which encompassed the deaths of four girls, including Rasmussen’s daughter. He died before he could be tried for their deaths. He is also thought to have slain his girlfriend Denise Beaudin in 1981. Finally, he did away with his wife Eunsoon Jun in 2002, and it was for this crime that he was finally arrested and imprisoned. He died in High Desert State Prison in 2010.
BTK
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Having given himself the famous nickname “BTK,” Dennis Rader was active for many years within the general Wichita area, killing at least ten people between 1974 and 1991. And he may have gotten away with it if it weren’t for his own hubris. Despite the high body count, police were unable to solve the crimes, and the trail was cold by 2004. But it was then that BTK began communicating with the media, and in 2005 he sent a floppy disk to Wichita’s KSAS-TV. Investigators found metadata within the disk with the words “Christ Lutheran Church” and a Word modification made by “Dennis.” A simple Google search found that one Dennis Rader was president of the church council, and the rest is now history.
David Zandstra
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In July 2023, an 83-year-old retired minister named David Zandstra was arrested and charged with murder. The case went all the way back to 1975. It was August of that year when a young girl named Gretchen Harrington disappeared in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Two months later, her body was found by a jogger. Zandstra was responsible but played dumb, even calling the police to report the missing child when Harrington’s dad approached him for help. Zandstra then moved south, leaving his crime in the rearview mirror. That is, until 2023, when investigators received new information and traveled to Georgia to interview Zandstra. The retired minister finally confessed to and was charged with the decades-old crime.
The Long Island Serial Killer
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One of the most infamous cold cases of our time was the Gilgo Beach killings. Dating back to 1996, a man did away with at least ten people and dumped their remains in the Gilgo Beach area of Long Island. In December 2010, the remains of four women were found, and they were dubbed The Gilgo Four. Just a few months later, investigators found six more sets of remains, bringing the body count to ten. The case was extensively studied until July 2023, when a Manhattan architect named Rex Heuermann was arrested and charged with killing three of the Gilgo Four. And so it seems that, 27 years after the death of the first victim, the mystery of the Gilgo Beach killings may have been solved.
The Golden State Killer
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The Visalia Ransacker. The Night Stalker. EARONS. The Golden State Killer. Whatever you want to call him, Joseph James DeAngelo is a nasty man. DeAngelo was active throughout California between 1974 and 1986, committing over 100 burglaries and killing at least thirteen people. He was also known to have quite an ego, often taunting both his victims and the police with threatening phone calls. It wasn’t until 2018 that DeAngelo was finally arrested, having been caught via the modern-day magic of genetic genealogy. He was sentenced to life in prison on August 21, 2020 - 46 years after his crime spree began, and at the age of 74. Does the idea of criminals walking among us scare you? Let us know in the comments below!