The Most Infamous Crime Committed in Every State

“Lizzie Borden took an ax/And gave her mother 40 whacks/When she saw what she had done/She gave her father 41.” The popular rhyme sums up the brutal hatchet murders of Andrew Borden and Abby Borden, the father and step-mother of Lizzie Borden. Police found no clues as to who committed the crimes, but arrested Lizzie based on circumstantial evidence. She was acquitted by a jury, but the people in her town still held her responsible. The home where the Bordens lived is now a tourist attraction.

To his neighbors in Dearborn Heights, John Eric Armstrong was a Navy vet and devoted father. Yet the supposed gentle giant – he weighed more than 300 pounds – never got over a breakup with his high school girlfriend. Possibly to avenge the rejection, he started raping and murdering sex workers while he was in the Navy, starting when he was just 17 and claiming victims across four states and several Asian countries. He was arrested in 2000 and convicted of killing five women, but may have murdered at least six others. He is serving a life sentence in prison.

Criminals do harm not just by inflicting physical pain. Financial crimes can be just as devastating, like the $3.65-billion Ponzi scheme run by Minnesotan Tom Petters. Among other ill effects, his financial machinations led to the bankruptcy of Minneapolis-based Sun Country Airlines, which had been relying on a loan from the Petters Group, and to the shuttering by regulators of the First Regional Bank in Los Angeles, which facilitated Petters’ schemes. The fact Petters gave much of his criminal gains to charity didn’t absolve him. He’s currently serving a 50-year sentence in Leavenworth.

Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, an African-American, was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he stepped into a store owned by Roy and Carolyn Bryant. The young man was accused of whistling at Carolyn, a white woman, an act that infuriated Roy. He and his brother, J.W. Milam, kidnapped Till, shot him in the head, and dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River. Roy Bryant and Milam were arrested and charged, but were acquitted by an all-white jury. The two men later admitted they committed the crime, but because they couldn’t be tried for the same crime after an acquittal, they were never punished for Till’s murder. The horrific crime helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement. Carolyn subsequently admitted that her allegations against Till were false.

Dee Dee Blanchard appeared to be a caring mother to her disabled daughter, Gypsy Rose. In reality, Dee Dee suffered from Munchausen’s by proxy, a disease that makes parents subject their children to abuse so they appear sick in order to get attention. After years of abuse, Gypsy Rose and her boyfriend murdered her mother. Although public opinion turned in her favor after the years of abuse were detailed, Gypsy Rose pled guilty to second degree murder and is currently serving a 10-year sentence in Missouri’s Chillicothe Correctional Center. She will be eligible for parole next year at age 32.