Top 20 Most Startling Confessions in History

Back in the ’90s, he was a big tennis star, famous not just for winning Wimbledon and multiple Grand Slams, but for his impressive mullet hairstyle. However, Agassi admitted in his autobiography “Open”, published in 2010, that this crazy hair was actually a wig he wore to hide the fact he was bald. Even worse, he said that he was so distracted thinking about what would happen if it fell off that he suffered an embarrassing defeat during his first ever Grand Slam final. Good thing he finally ditched it and came clean.

A career criminal, Israel Keyes committed many serious felonies and killed at least three people between the mid ‘90s and early 2010s. Keyes was arrested after killing a woman named Samantha Koenig and was extradited to Alaska, where the crime occurred. In Alaska, Keyes provided a detailed and graphic confession to law enforcement. Not only were the words horrible, but his behavior signified an uncomfortable air of menace. He calmly relayed some grotesque stories while eating a bagel and drinking coffee, like he didn’t have a care in the world. The FBI Special Agent who interviewed Keyes later called his confession “very chilling,” and that’s coming from a professional who hears these types of stories every day.

Hailing from Ontario, Canada, Elizabeth Wettlaufer was one of the most active serial killers in the country’s history. Between 2007 and 2016, while working as a nurse at long-term care homes, Wettlaufer murdered eight senior citizens by injecting them with lethal doses of insulin. She made unsuccessful attempts on the lives of six others, but the intended victims survived as the insulin doses administered were insufficient. Surprisingly, the only reason Wettlaufer was caught was because she decided to come clean. Apparently seeking redemption, she committed herself to a Toronto psychiatric hospital and admitted her shocking crimes to the staff. They promptly notified the police, to whom Wettlaufer gave a more detailed confession. She was handed eight concurrent life sentences.

The personal life of Tiger Woods came under intense scrutiny in 2009 when he became the subject of an infidelity scandal. Rumors had already been circulating in the press about a possible affair when, on November 27, Woods crashed his SUV while leaving home around 2:30 am, sparking numerous questions and suspicions. On December 2, he released a vague statement apologizing for unclear and unspecific “transgressions.” However, as the days went by, several women came forward claiming to have had relationships with Woods. It all proved too much for the golf star, and on December 11, he finally confessed to being unfaithful. The debacle resulted in his divorce and significantly impacted his performance on the green, which took years to overcome.

“Jerusalem of Gold” is an important song in its native Israel, often regarded as an unofficial national anthem. Unfortunately, it also comes with some degree of controversy. For years, singer-songwriter Naomi Shemer was accused of plagiarizing the melody, but she repeatedly denied those allegations. That is, until she was dying of cancer and confessed to fellow musician Gil Aldema that she had, in fact, plagiarized the tune. It came from an old lullaby called “Pello Joxepe,” which she heard at a concert in 1962. Shemer claimed to have unconsciously lifted the melody from memory, having loved it so much. However, she regretted this to the very end, even suggesting that the endless stress may have contributed to her fatal illness.

One of the most notorious American serial killers, Edmund Kemper murdered ten people by the age of 24, including his own mother and grandparents. Kemper was imprisoned twice for these crimes, both as a result of his own confession. After killing his grandparents, he informed his mother, who instructed him to call the police. He then confessed that he “just wanted to see what it felt like to kill Grandma.” Kemper was released on parole and resumed his murderous activities soon after. His spree, which resulted in the deaths of his mother and seven others, came to an end when Kemper called the police to confess. When asked why he turned himself in, Kemper coldly explained that killing was “a pure waste of time.”

Mystery continues to shroud Richard Kuklinski, an American career criminal who murdered at least five people. For example, Kuklinski claims to have worked as a hitman for the Mafia, but investigators have been unable to verify this. He also asserts that he killed up to 200 people, but only five deaths have officially been linked to him. Back in 1988, Kuklinski was found guilty of four murders and sentenced to life in prison. However, in 2001, during an interview for the HBO documentary “The Iceman Confesses,” Kuklinski dropped a bombshell, admitting to the 1980 killing of NYPD officer Peter Calabro. Prosecutors later corroborated this story, resulting in thirty more years being added to Kuklinski’s sentence.

Who the heck is Christian Spurling, you ask? Well, heard of a little creature called the Loch Ness Monster? Back in 1934, the famous “surgeon’s photograph” was published in The Daily Mail, and while some had their doubts, it was long considered to be verifiable proof of the monster’s existence. That is, until January 1991, when Christian Spurling confessed that it was all a hoax. He and his father-in-law, a man named M. A. Wetherell, had concocted the scheme along with Wetherell’s son and an insurance agent named Maurice Chambers. They made the Monster’s head out of wood putty and a toy submarine, and had the photo sold to The Daily Mail. And with that, the world of cryptozoology was never the same.

Between 1978 and 1983, Scottish serial killer Dennis Nilsen strangled at least twelve men and mostly disposed of their remains by flushing them down the toilet. In February of 1983, residents in Nilsen’s building complained of plumbing problems. Upon investigation, experts found bones and human flesh blocking the system, specifically in a pipe leading to the top flat, which belonged to Nilsen. When police entered his house, they immediately noticed the smell of decomposition. Nilsen played innocent at first, but after a cop told him to stop “mess[ing] about,” he came clean and admitted that there was a body in the wardrobe. With that startling confession, Dennis Nilsen’s crime spree came to an abrupt end.

Arguably the most infamous female serial killer, Aileen Wuornos was active in Florida for just one year, between 1989 and 1990. In that time, she engaged in sex work and killed seven male clients before robbing them of their cash. There’s a slight misconception of Wuornos as a sympathetic victim, due to her traumatic upbringing, her claims of self-defense, and her portrayal in “Monster,” which her real-life acquaintances have criticized. In reality, Wuornos met the professional criteria for psychopathy, and she openly confessed to being a cold-blooded killer. While in court, Wuornos declared, “I am guilty as can be. I want the world to know I killed these men, as cold as ice.”

One of the world’s most evil serial killers, upon his arrest in the mid-1970s, he denied every count of assault, murder and kidnapping brought against him. It was only until immediately before his execution on January 24th, 1989 that he finally admitted to his crimes. In the weeks and months preceding the execution he finally confessed to the crimes he was accused of in great detail, describing what he did with his victims’ bodies. Bundy also admitted to revisiting the locations where he buried some of his victims’ remains, and even owned up to other crimes that the police didn’t know about. Despite this, Bundy’s actual death toll could be much higher than we think.

Some of the most valuable and revered musical instruments in the world are Stradivarius violins; antiques built in Italy hundreds of years ago. One in particular from 1713, currently known as the Gibson ex-Huberman Stradivarius, was stolen from a virtuoso called Bronisław Huberman in 1936 by struggling musician Julian Altman. For half a century it remained lost, until on his deathbed Altman confessed to his wife that he was in possession of the violin, telling her where to find it. His information proved true and she received a $263,000 finder’s fee. It was last sold to violinist Joshua Bell for almost $4 million.

In 1922, Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor was shot dead in his Los Angeles bungalow, a crime which went unsolved until 1964, when retired actress Margaret Gibson confessed to murder. Following a heart attack, Gibson knew she was about to die and told one of her neighbors that she had been the one to kill Taylor all those years ago. Police can neither prove nor disprove this admission, and while it doesn’t conflict with the information they know about Taylor’s murder, all of the police files relating to it had mysteriously vanished by the 1940s – though Gibson did once become hysterical after seeing a piece about Taylor’s unsolved murder on TV.

In 1983, one of the most successful art heists in history was pulled off. At the time, police had few-to-no leads about who stole a collection of antique timepieces from the L.A. Mayer Institute for Islamic Art in Jerusalem. One of these pieces was owned by Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France, and worth an estimated $30 million. Then in 2008, Nili Shamrat, the widow of notorious Israeli art thief Naaman Diller, was arrested after many of the stolen timepieces were found in her possession. Shamrat told police that Diller had confessed to her four years earlier on his deathbed and revealed the location of the stolen assets. She was only caught after she attempted to sell the pieces.

An icon of Black Civil Rights, Emmett Till was visiting family in Mississippi when he was lynched after being accused of inappropriately flirting with a white woman named Carolyn Bryant. Bryant’s husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother J. W. Milam kidnapped Till, killed him, and threw his body in the Tallahatchie River. An all-white jury acquitted Bryant and Milam of all charges. Shockingly, both men later profited by selling their confession to Look magazine for the modern-day equivalent of $43,000. The story, sadly, gets worse. In 2017, a historian named Timothy Tyson alleged that Carolyn Bryant had admitted to fabricating her accusation in a previous interview with him. If true, that would mean that the entire tragedy began over a monumental lie.

Upon suffering a severe stroke in 2009, James Brewer was convinced he was going to die. As a result, he called the police in Tennessee with a shocking confession. Brewer admitted to fatally shooting Jimmy Carroll in 1977, because he thought Carroll was trying to steal his wife, Dorothy. As it turned out, Brewer had actually been arrested in Tennessee shortly after the murder, but he escaped on bail and fled to Oklahoma, where he began living under a different name. But it appears the hands of justice were not quite ready to let him go. Following his confession, Brewer recovered from his stroke, after which he was arrested and charged with Carroll’s murder.

In 2015, HBO was making a six-part documentary series called “The Jinx” about the murders Durst was accused of. The series ended with an apparent confession as he talks to himself while in the bathroom, unaware that his body mic was still switched on. It recorded a confession where he literally says he “killed them all”, but there’s some debate over whether or not this is admissible in court. On the one hand, he was aware of the microphone, while on the other it was a spontaneous admission. To make matters even more complicated, he was also allegedly taking an illicit substance at the time of the interview.

He’s now one of the most famous dope fiends in sporting history, but there was a time when his confession to using performance enhancing drugs shook the world. Armstrong winning the Tour de France seven times consecutively aroused suspicions, and he finally admitted to what he was being accused of in a televised interview with Oprah. The widely celebrated athlete had taken various cocktails of drugs to improve his cycling. Armstrong was completely unapologetic and even blamed the doping scandal on the cancer he had survived. In the interview, he told Oprah that after becoming so ill and then making a miraculous comeback, he just “got carried away.”

On the 26th of January 1998, the President famously declared that he “did not have sexual relations with that woman”. The woman in question was Monica Lewinsky, who worked as an intern at the White House before being relocated when she spent too much time with him. He went on to repeatedly deny the allegations for seven months, even perjuring himself in court, before finally admitting that he did have “a relationship with Ms. Lewinsky that was not appropriate.” The sex scandal was so huge there were even attempts to have Clinton impeached, but he was ultimately acquitted of all charges and remained in office for two more years.

The Milwaukee Monster’s reign of terror finally came to an end when he was arrested on July 23rd, 1991. That night, an intended victim of Dahmer’s escaped and led the police to his apartment, wherein they found several human remains, as well as numerous disturbing pictures. Over 60 hours of police interviews, Dahmer willingly confessed to the sexual assault and murder of more than 17 men and boys over the course of 13 years. Even detailing his habit of preserving the entire skeletons of his victims. Dahmer’s confession was nearly 250 pages long and he ultimately met his end at the hands of a fellow prison inmate in 1994.

What do you think is the most shocking confession in history? Be sure to let us know in the comments.