Etan Kalil Patz was an American boy who was six years old on May 25, 1979, when he disappeared on his way to his school bus stop in the SoHo neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. His disappearance helped launch the missing children movement, which included new legislation and new methods for tracking down missing children. Several years after he disappeared, Patz was one of the first children to be profiled on the "photo on a milk carton" campaigns of the early 1980s. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan designated May 25—the anniversary of Etan's disappearance—as National Missing Children's Day in the United States.
The Ripper Crew or the Chicago Rippers was an organized crime group of serial killers, cannibals, rapists, and necrophiles. The group was composed of Robin Gecht and three associates: Edward Spreitzer, and brothers Andrew and Thomas Kokoraleis. They were suspected in the murders of 17 women in Illinois in 1981 and 1982, as well as the unrelated fatal shooting of a man in a random drive-by shooting. According to one of the detectives who investigated the case, Gecht "made Manson look like a Boy Scout."
DLASTHR is an Assyrian criminal organization that is active in the south western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. The group is said to have originated from another gang, called the Assyrian Kings. The crime gang was formed by Raymon Youmaran who is now serving a 17-year sentence for the murder of Dimitri DeBaz in 2002.
On November 29, 2009, four police officers of Lakewood, Washington were fatally shot at the Forza coffee shop, located at 11401 Steele Street #108 South in the Parkland unincorporated area of Pierce County, Washington, near Tacoma. A gunman, later identified as Maurice Clemmons, entered the shop, shot the officers while they worked on laptops, and fled the scene with a single gunshot wound in his torso. After a massive two-day manhunt that spanned several nearby cities, an officer recognized Clemmons near a stalled car in south Seattle. When he refused orders to stop, he was shot and killed by a Seattle Police Department officer.
The history of violence against LGBTQ people in the United States is made up of assaults on gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender individuals, legal responses to such violence, and hate crime statistics in the United States of America. The people who are the targets of such violence are believed to violate heteronormative standards and they are also believed to contravene perceived protocols of gender and sexual roles. People who are perceived to be LGBTQ may also be targeted for violence. Violence can also occur between couples who are of the same sex, with statistics showing that violence among female same-sex couples is more common than it is among couples of the opposite sex, but male same-sex violence is less common.
In 2013, two prosecutors and a prosecutor's wife were murdered in Kaufman County, Texas. The case gained national attention in the United States due to speculation that the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang was responsible, but this was later found to be untrue. Eric Lyle Williams, a former lawyer and justice of the peace whose theft case was prosecuted by two of the victims, was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death for two of the murders. He was also charged with the murder of prosecutor Mark Hasse, but a decision was made not to prosecute him as he had already received a death sentence for the other murders. His wife, Kimberly Irene "Kim" Williams, was tried separately, and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Odin Leonardo John Lloyd was a professional American football player in the New England Football League who was murdered by Aaron Hernandez, a former tight end for the New England Patriots of the National Football League, in North Attleborough, Massachusetts, on June 17, 2013. Lloyd's death made international headlines following Hernandez's association with the investigation as a suspect. Lloyd had been a linebacker for a New England Football League (NEFL) semi-professional football team, the Boston Bandits, since 2007.
Troy LaFerrara was a Port Trevorton, Pennsylvania man murdered on November 11, 2013. Miranda Barbour and her husband, Elytte Barbour, were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in September 2014. The murder is notable because of the unsubstantiated claim by one of the killers, Miranda Barbour, that she had murdered at least 22 other people, triggering worldwide news coverage of the case.
On the night of September 6, 2018, 26-year-old accountant Botham Jean was murdered in Dallas, Texas, by off-duty Dallas Police Department patrol officer Amber Guyger, who entered Jean's apartment and fatally shot him. Guyger, who said that she had entered Jean's apartment believing it was her own and believed Jean to be a burglar, was initially charged with manslaughter. The absence of a murder charge led to protests and accusations of racial bias because Jean—an unarmed black man—was killed in his own home by a white off-duty officer who had apparently disregarded police protocols. On November 30, 2018, Guyger was indicted on a charge of murder. On October 1, 2019, she was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment the following day. The ruling was upheld on appeal in 2021.
On October 24, 2018, a man and woman were shot and killed by a gunman at a Kroger grocery store in Jeffersontown, Kentucky, a suburb of Louisville.
On June 2, 2020, David Dorn, a 77-year-old retired police captain, was fatally shot after interrupting the burglary of a pawn shop in The Ville, St. Louis. The incident took place during riots in St. Louis, Missouri following the murder of George Floyd. Stephan Cannon, who was 24 years old at the time of the incident, was convicted of his murder on July 20, 2022.
Jerome Dennis is an American serial killer and kidnapper who abducted and sexually assaulted seven women and young girls in Essex County, New Jersey, from late 1991 to early 1992, killing five. At the time of the murders, he was on parole for a prior rape conviction. After his arrest, Dennis pleaded guilty and was later sentenced to life imprisonment in 1993.
Ramon Torres Hernandez was an American serial killer, kidnapper and rapist responsible for at least three murders in Bexar County, Texas from 1994 to 2001, and is a prime suspect in two others. Following his arrest, he admitted to the killings, was sentenced to death and ultimately executed in 2012.
Steven Dean Gordon is an American serial killer and sex offender who, together with accomplice Franc Cano, killed at least four sex workers in Santa Ana and Anaheim, California from 2013 to 2014. Convicted and sentenced to death for his crimes, Gordon admitted responsibility for at least one further murder, with which he has never been charged.
The Vestavia Hills church shooting occurred on June 16, 2022, at 6:22 p.m. local time in Vestavia Hills, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. A man entered the St. Stephen's Episcopal Church and opened fire during a potluck meeting, which the church had previously advertised. Two people were killed at the scene, a third died later in hospital, and the suspect is subsequently in custody. The suspect was a 70-year-old Birmingham man named Robert Findlay Smith, a gun dealer. On May 2, 2023, Smith pled guilty in the shooting and was sentenced to life without parole.
Larme Price, known as the Thrill Killer, is an American serial killer who murdered four people in New York in 2003. Price claimed he carried out the murders in revenge for the September 11 attacks and said he was driven to kill by a paranoid hatred of Arabs. Despite this claim, only one of his victims was Middle Eastern. Price confessed to the murders, was found guilty, and was sentenced to 150 years in prison without parole. He remains incarcerated at the Sullivan Correctional Facility.
Methodist Dallas Medical Center is a non-profit, 592-bed teaching hospital in Dallas, Texas owned and operated by Methodist Health System.
Alexander Hernandez is an American serial killer who murdered five people during a series of drive-by shootings in the Los Angeles Metropolitan area of California between March and August 2014. He targeted random people and dogs, murdering five people, injuring 11 others, and killing two dogs. He was later convicted of the crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
The Bandidos Motorcycle Club has been designated an outlaw motorcycle gang by the U.S. Department of Justice. The club is involved in drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, prostitution, money laundering, explosives violations, motorcycle and motorcycle-parts theft, intimidation, insurance fraud, kidnapping, robbery, theft, stolen property, counterfeiting, contraband smuggling, murder, bombings, extortion, arson and assault. The Bandidos partake in transporting and distributing cocaine and marijuana, and the production, transportation and distribution of methamphetamine. Active primarily in the Northwestern, Southeastern, Southwestern and the West Central regions, there are an estimated 800 to 1,000 Bandidos members and 93 chapters in 16 U.S. states.
