Levils

Thirteen days before her execution, Christa Pike said her worst nightmare was the lethal injection failing. It did. In 1995, she was 18. She murdered 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer with a box cutter and a piece of asphalt over a boyfriend. She carved a pentagram into Colleen's chest and kept a piece of her skull. Her confession to police: "I just kept hitting her and hit her and hit her." Pike became the youngest woman sentenced to death in modern America. In 2006, from death row, she said: "I did something horrible that is unacceptable. But I don't deserve to die." In the video below, recorded in September, she describes her greatest fear: "The thought of suffocating and drowning on my own bodily fluid and blood isn't very appealing to me." On September 30, 2026, Tennessee administered two doses of pentobarbital. Pike survived. She woke up days later in a hospital. Colleen's mother had traveled from Florida to witness the execution. This week Pike spoke publicly for the first time: "There hasn't been a moment since that night when I haven't been in pain. My body hurts, my arms hurt, my hands hurt, my throat hurts." The governor says her death sentence remains in place. Should Tennessee try again, or has she already paid?

Before shooting his parents, 16-year-old Daniel Petric asked them: "Can you close your eyes? I have a surprise for you." Daniel was a pastor's son in Ohio. His father banned violent video games at home. Daniel secretly bought Halo 3 for about $70. His father took the game and locked it in a safe. Inside was also his 9mm pistol. On October 20, 2007, Daniel found the key. He took the game. He took the gun. His parents were sitting on the couch. He shot his father in the head first, then his mother. Susan Petric died. Mark Petric survived. Daniel placed the gun in his father's hand. He wanted the scene to look like a murder-suicide. His sister and her husband arrived unexpectedly. Daniel refused to let them inside. They forced the door open, and she called 911: "My mom is shot and my dad is shot." Daniel drove away in the family van. He took Halo 3 with him. In the video below, he explains his thinking from prison: "At the end of every round, everything just resets. At the end of every level, everybody's still there." At sentencing, his father asked the judge for mercy. Daniel received life in prison with parole eligibility after 23 years. He can first seek release in 2030. His father forgave him. Should anyone else?

A 13-year-old shot his favorite teacher on the last day of school. The teacher had told him to return to class instead of talking to two girls. Lake Worth, Florida. May 26, 2000. Nathaniel Brazill had been sent home that morning for throwing water balloons. He went home, took a .25-caliber pistol, and returned. In his pocket was a love letter to one of the girls: "I'm gonna miss you. I love you always." His English teacher, Barry Grunow, told him to go back to class. The school hallway camera recorded Brazill raising the gun and firing once. In the video below, Brazill shows the jury how he held it. Twenty-five years later, he still says: "The gun went off. One shot." The jury convicted him of second-degree murder. He received a 28-year sentence. Grunow left behind a wife and two young children. In prison, Brazill earned his GED at 16 and became a paralegal at 18. He later represented himself in a lawsuit against the prison system and won. His release date is May 18, 2028. He will be 41. "This is a nation of second chances," he says. "That's all I'm asking for." Grunow's widow declined to comment. Should Brazill get another chance after 28 years, or is that sentence the price of taking a teacher's life? Follow for more stories behind the world’s richest people

In June 2014, Sandra Bullock hid in her closet and called 911 while a stranger walked through her house. Police later seized 24 guns from his home. Three years later, he walked out on probation. In the video below, her call is played in court. "I can’t hear anything. I’m locked in my closet. It’s a safety door. It’s shut." His name was Joshua Corbett. He had been lurking outside her gates for several days. On June 8, 2014, he climbed her fence, rang the doorbell for several minutes and came in through a sunroom door. Bullock saw him pass her bedroom door. She locked herself in a closet and stayed on the phone with 911 for 15 minutes. Her son Louis was not home. When officers found Corbett on the stairs, he told them: "I’m sorry. I love you, Sandy." He was carrying a handwritten letter. “You are my wife by law, the law of God, and you belong to me,” it said. At his home, police seized 10 handguns, 13 rifles, a shotgun and a machine gun. He faced 26 counts, and his bail was set at more than $2 million. Then a judge ruled that Corbett had not freely agreed to the search of his house and gun safe. The weapons charges were dropped. In 2017, he pleaded no contest to stalking and burglary. He had spent about three years in jail. The sentence was five years of probation, mental health treatment and a 10-year stay-away order. "Everyone wins here," his lawyer said. "The victim wins, the defendant wins, and the court wins." In May 2018, he missed a court date. When police came to arrest him, he threatened to kill them. He was found dead in his house about five hours later. Did the court protect Bullock with a 10-year order, or did it let the man with 24 guns walk because of how police searched his house?

In 2011, Nancy Brophy wrote an essay called "How to Murder Your Husband." Seven years later, her husband was shot dead at the cooking school where he worked. Daniel Brophy was 63 and taught at the Oregon Culinary Institute in Portland. On June 2, 2018, a coworker found him dead in the kitchen. He'd been shot twice while preparing for work. In the video below, Brophy takes the witness stand and tries to explain why she bought parts for a gun. She says they were research for a future novel. When asked to explain why having gun parts didn't mean she had a working gun, she compared them to ingredients for an omelet. "I've got eggs and flour in my pantry and that's not an omelet either." Investigators had another problem for her. Surveillance footage placed a minivan matching hers near the school around the time Daniel was killed. Brophy initially told police she'd been home. She later said she had no memory of that morning and insisted she never entered the building. Prosecutors argued that money was the motive. Brophy stood to receive a substantial life insurance payout, and three days after the murder, she tried to collect on a policy. The murder weapon was never found. Her defense said the evidence was circumstantial and disputed the claim that money drove her to kill. The jury never heard her 2011 essay. The judge excluded it from evidence. But on May 25, 2022, jurors found Brophy guilty of second-degree murder. She was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 25 years. Was she a novelist whose research went too far, or did she write about murder long before putting a plan into action? Follow for more stories behind the world’s richest people

John List killed his mother, his wife and three children because he couldn't afford their house. Then he made himself lunch and went to watch his son play soccer. It was November 9, 1971, in Westfield, New Jersey. List was a bank vice president who had lost his job and was struggling to maintain a 19-room mansion with a ballroom and a Tiffany skylight. In the video below, a police officer involved in the case explains how investigators tracked List down after he vanished. Five bodies were found inside the house on December 7. List had left a letter to his pastor, then disappeared without a trace. He started a new life as Robert Clark, moved to Virginia, worked as an accountant and married again. His new wife had no idea she was living with a man wanted for killing his first family. For nearly 18 years, List stayed hidden. Then America's Most Wanted aired a sculpted bust showing what he might look like with age. A viewer recognized him, and FBI agents arrested him at work in June 1989. In a later interview, List was asked how he could eat lunch after the murders. His answer was simple: "I was hungry. It was just the way it was." He was convicted of five murders and died in prison in 2008. The mansion burned down less than a year after the killings. List had tried to protect his home and his reputation, but lost both. Was he a man crushed by financial shame, or someone who valued appearances more than his own family?

In 1942, Joe Louis gave $83,646 from two title fights to the Army and Navy. Eight years later, the IRS said he owed more than $1 million. When his mother died in 1953, the government collected the $667 she left him. The money never reached Louis. His promoter sent it to charity, but the donations were never claimed as tax deductions. In the video below, a historian explains what happened: "To treat him like a common criminal is criminal in and of itself." On January 9, 1942, Louis knocked out Buddy Baer in the first round. He gave $47,500 of his $65,200 share to Navy Relief. On March 27, Louis beat Abe Simon in the sixth round. He donated $36,146 from his $45,882 purse to Army Relief. Louis enlisted as a private, earning $21 a month. He reportedly already owed $217,000, more than half of it to the IRS. ESPN's documentary says promoter Mike Jacobs gave the purses to charity without paying Louis. Madison Square Garden filed his tax return but failed to claim the donations as deductions. ESPN also says Jacobs's tax adviser deducted about $300,000 in advances paid to Louis during his four years in the Army. In 1950, an IRS audit put Louis's debt above $1 million. He returned to boxing and fought Rocky Marciano in 1951 for $300,000. The referee stopped the fight in the eighth round. The IRS later capped the debt and set payments at $20,000 a year until Louis's death, according to UPI. He eventually worked as an official greeter at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Across 71 fights, Louis earned about $4.7 million in purses. How could a man donate his fight earnings to help his country, then spend the rest of his life paying for money he never received?