The Most Infamous Crime Committed in Every State

Theodore Kaczynski began mailing untraceable explosive devices in 1978. Over the next 17 years, he sent or delivered bombs to university professors and others he disdained for crimes against the environment or for developing modern technology, killing three and wounding nearly two dozen. Termed the Unabomber, Kaczynski eluded the FBI for years until his brother, David, identified his brother’s writings in a manifesto published in the Washington Post. That led authorities to an isolated cabin in Montana where Kaczynski lived. The Unabomber pled guilty and is now serving eight life sentences without possibility of parole.

Caril Ann Fugate was just 14 when she and her 18-year–old boyfriend, Charles Starkweather, went on a two-month killing spree through Nebraska and Wyoming. In all, they murdered 11 people, including Fugate’s mother, stepfather, and baby half-sister. Caril Ann claimed that Starkweather held her hostage, but a jury nevertheless convicted her and sentenced her to life in prison. Starkweather was executed in the electric chair. After serving 17 years, Fugate was paroled and to this day maintains her innocence. The story of Fugate and Starkweather was the basis for the movies, “Badlands” and “Natural Born Killers.”

It was a starry night in Las Vegas and 22,000 concertgoers were enjoying an outdoor music show by Jason Aldean. That all changed when 64-year-old Nevada resident Stephen Paddock began firing at the audience from a window on the 32nd floor of the nearby Mandalay Bay Hotel. When the shooting stopped, at least 59 were dead and 527 others injured. Paddock killed himself as police rushed into his room at the hotel where 10 guns were stored. No motive has yet been uncovered for his heinous act.

The bodies of an adult woman and a younger girl were discovered in 1985 in a 55-gallon drum at Bear Brook State Park near Allenstown. In 2000, the remains of two more girls were found in the same place under similar circumstances. All four victims had died by blunt force trauma. Although suspicion fell on Terrence Peder Rasmussen, aka Bob Evans, the father of one of the victims, the case remains unsolved. Rasmussen, however, was convicted of killing a woman he married in 2001, and sentenced to 15 years to life. He died in prison in 2010.

Ashamed to tell his family that he’d lost his accounting job, John List murdered his mother, wife, and three children in Westfield. He wanted them to go to heaven, he later said. After the murders, he left for North Carolina with his savings bonds. To cover his tracks, he cut himself out of family photos. For 18 years, List got away with the crime, taking on a new identity and remarrying. But when a neighbor saw an image of what List would look like on “America’s Most Wanted,” he called the police. List was arrested and died in prison in 2008.