108- Black Widow
In 1903 Chicago, a peculiar murder unfolded on the city's southside. Despite her insistence that a burglar broke in and shot her husband in bed, authorities immediately suspected Jane Quinn, who was covered from head to toe in blood. And that was BEFORE they found out about the pile of dead bodies Jane left behind when she fled Michigan years earlier.
107- Invisible Strings
In 1981, a 23-year-old woman was dragged kicking and screaming from her East Lansing apartment in front of an entire building full of onlookers. In 1982, a rebellious teen vanished while hitchhiking in a Detroit suburb. In 1983, almost exactly one year later, another pretty brunette teenager disappeared while hitchhiking in the same neighborhood. Three years, three murdered women, three cold cases. One would become the first case in Ingham County to use DNA as evidence. One would be solved through new advancements in DNA technology decades later. And one would be solved by a team of eagle-eyed students at Michigan State University's School of Criminal Justice. But for decades, their grieving families waited for invisible strings to connect and lead to justice.
106- The Four
On a Monday afternoon in May of 1930, the world's first set of identical quadruplets were born in Lansing, Michigan- even though nobody knew they were coming. Instant celebrities, the Morlok quads were treated like a sideshow attraction by the community that insisted on naming them and claiming them as their own. While the girls were paraded around the country in matching dresses performing adorable song-and-dance routines as they racked up Guiness World Records, their sweet smiles hid ghastly secrets. Behind the picture of a wholesome American family was a house of horrors.
105- The Clown
99- Roar
98- Bamba
It was 35 below, the wind was howling, and the snow was waist-deep when three young men burst through the door of Hotel St. James in the remote town of Ironwood, Michigan during the early morning hours of Feb 1, 1959. They were inadequately dressed for the dangerous weather, disheveled, and visibly shaken from a near-death experience. Even still…there was something about them. They were handsome. Charming. Special, even. That much, the townsfolk knew. What they didn’t know, couldn’t have known, was that the events that unfolded on the desolate highway that separates Northern Wisconsin from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula started a chain reaction that led to an unspeakable tragedy that rocked the world less than 48 hours later.
96- Fugitive
95- Holy
The news was shocking. Occult obsessed cult leader Benny Evangelist, his wife, and their four young children had been murdered in their lavish Detroit home by an ax-wielding maniac. Beheaded. Dismembered. As police ran down the long list of suspects, an unfathomable possibility emerged. Was Benny himself behind the murders? The 1929 St. Aubin Street Massacre is one of Detroit’s oldest and most notorious cold cases, but it is not alone in its tragedy. In 1990, it happened again. And while the circumstances were very, very different, the end result was the same- six lives lost, and many more destroyed in a massacre on St. Aubin Street.
94- Ghosted 4.0
93- The Tower
As the Great Depression sunk its teeth into America, a Lansing man's fortune was on the rise- literally. Auto magnate R.E. Olds built a decadent sky scraper, the tallest building in Michigan's capital city, to house his bank. But less than a year after the Olds Tower opened its doors, blood and bullets tarnished its immaculate reputation. What drove a pillar of the community to a shooting rampage? Deak Mead wasn't motivated by money. He was after revenge.
92- Photograph
91- Scrappers
90- Riot
The summer of 1967 was an especially violent one in the United States. Known as "the long, hot summer," there were 159 race riots in America over the course of just a few months, the deadliest of which occurred in Detroit in late July. What led to the deaths of nearly fifty citizens, mostly at the hands of law enforcement officials called in to quell the violence? And what really happened inside The Algiers Motel?
89- You Go
A charismatic waitress in a Yugo headed north to visit the man she hoped to marry. A young father in a Bronco driving south, back toward home. Though their paths did not cross in life, their fates are forever linked by the tragedy that befell them both on the Mackinac Bridge, one of the world's longest (and most treacherous.)
88- Delicate Conditions
A disgraced Lansing doctor out to make a quick buck by performing "illegal oprations" left countless bodies in his wake. A socialite unable to live with the shame of being an unwed mother took her own life in a Charlotte hotel room. A Benton Harbor farmboy felt murder was the only way out when his flapper girlfriend wound up pregnant. This was the harsh (but not uncommon) reality of the early 1900s, when abortion was illegal in Michigan. Are we headed there again?
87- Creeper
When a leisurely Sunday drive near the Michigan/Indiana border turned into a scene out of a horror movie for Ray and Marie Thornton, their lives were changed forever. Their experience, quite literally, inspired a horror movie. But the true story was so much more terrifying than anything Hollywood could conjure up.
86- The Box
In 1998, the body of a young boy was found beneath a billboard along a North Carolina highway. With very little to go on, authorities were not able to determine who the boy was, or who killed him. But one investigator was determined to solve the case no matter how long it took, so he kept the case file in a box beneath his desk, right in his way, so that he bumped his leg on it every time he turned in his chair. The box never let him forget, and he watched and waited for the scientific advancement that would crack the case wide open. When it finally happened, a heartbreaking story emerged, leading authorities to a small Michigan town and another unsolved murder.
85- Bad Apples
In the early 1900s, the auto industry reigned supreme in Lansing. But another, more deadly industry was making moves in the shadows. Fruit. When two rival fruit companies owned by Italian immigrants with strong ties to La Cosa Nostra went to war, no one was safe. Using fruit stands as a front throughout the city, a secret battle raged for years- contract killings, bombings, murder, extortion. Lansing's Fruit War was among the Capital City's best kept secrects...until now.
