On April 23, 1973, the Santa Cruz police received a call that they could not quite believe. It was from a phone booth in Pueblo, Colorado, from a twenty-four-year-old man who had eaten with them, drank with them, and talked with them for hours: Big Ed, or Edmund Kemper. And now he was telling them that he had committed murder.

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On February 8, 1955, Joachim Kroll killed the first victim of his 20-year tear. Neighbors thought he was likeable, but not very smart, and the children, even those would become his victims, called him "uncle".

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On this day last year, Missouri teen Alyssa Bustamante pleaded guilty to killing her neighbor, Elizabeth Olten. After the murder, Bustamante wrote in her diary, “I just f*cking killed someone. I strangled them and slit their throats and stabbed them. Now they’re dead. I don’t know how to feel ATM. It was ahmazing…”

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The tragic element of murder is enhanced when a child is the perpetrator — we mourn not only for the victim, but for the loss of a young person who made a terrible choice.

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This gentle-looking, benevolent grandfather cleverly lured children to their death, then devised recipes to eat them. This cannibal model for Hannibal Lecter is a study in criminal psychology and a true enigma. His wife thought him to be a wonderful husband and his children believed him to be a model father. What inner torments caused him to drive many spikes into his pelvis and tell people that he looked forward to his execution?

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Labor Day, September 4, 1989, one of the darkest days in the annals of crime history: the day that Dodd launched his murderous plan to abduct, rape and torture little children.

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On August 21, 1973, police followed up on a tip that a suspect matching the description of pedophile child killer Charlie Chop-off had been spotted. By the time it became clear that this was the wrong man, an angry mob gathered outside the police station. The unfortunate suspect had to leave the station dressed as a policeman for his own safety.

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