Everyone's A Little Crazy

Contraband in a prison setting, is a very general term that refers to any item or object that an inmate is not allowed to have. Every facility is different in what is considered contraband. However, the most common items include homemade weapons, gambling paraphernalia, drugs, cigarettes/chewing tobacco, nudie magazines, tattoo guns/ink, food, etc. Cigarettes and chewing tobacco are the same thing as cash money in prison and can be traded or used to purchase anything the inmate could possibly get their hands on. In certain cases, if an inmate has an excessive amount of allowable items (food and toiletries) these allowable items can be considered contraband because they indicate that the inmate is running a gambling or drug operation.

Joe Arridy was a mentally disabled 23-year-old who was falsely accused of rape and murder of a 15-year-old schoolgirl in Pueblo, Colorado. He was put to death on 6 January 1939. Arridy was officially pardoned in 2011 (72 years after his death) as evidence proved he was coerced into confession. 

Arridy was known for spending his time on death row playing with a toy train, given to him by prison warden Roy Best, who called Arridy “the happiest prisoner on death row.” He was liked by both the prisoners and guards. His execution was commented on by warden Roy Best “He probably didn’t even know he was about to die, all he did was happily sit and play with a toy train I had given him.”

For his last meal, he requested ice cream. When questioned about his impending execution he showed “blank bewilderment” and it was clear that he didn’t realize the meaning of the gas chamber, telling the warden “No, no, Joe won’t die.” He even saved some of his ice cream for after the execution.

On the 14th of October, 1959, Ruth Mae Urdanivia left work at the admitting department of the Sacred Heart Hospital and went back to her tidy apartment at 217 N 7th St, Allentown. Her husband, Jose Urdanivia,  had died several years earlier, leaving Urdanivia a widow and the mother of five children aged between 4 and 12-years-old.

At home, Urdanivia gathered her children around her and handed them a drink that had been mixed with several pills. She told the children the pill was medicine to help them with the nasty cold they had all had that week. The pill, however, was strong painkillers; fed up with life, Urdanivia had decided to end her life as well as her childrens. The children drank up and Urdanivia tucked them into their beds. Afterwards, she wrote a note to her father and drank a glass of the concoction herself.

While the sleeping pills were enough to kill all five children, Urdanivia woke up several days later. Upon realising what had happened, she frantically ran into the kitchen and broke a glass and attempted to slit her wrists but the glass was too dull. Thinking of another way to commit suicide, she opened the valves of the apartment’s illuminating gas and allowed the apartment . Fearing that the gas could lead to an explosion or harm her neighbours, she stopped. Finally, she stuck her head in the oven and turned on the cooking gas. As Urdanivia fell in and out of consciousness, police burst through the door after being alerted by a caretaker. In the bedroom, they found the lifeless bodies of Urdanivia’s children: Christina, 12; Ruth Lucille, 10; Luis, 9; Anna Marie, 7, and Carol Miriam, 4.

Following the death of her husband, Urdanivia had suffered tremendously - both financially and emotionally. They had been together for over a decade and those who knew them said their life was filled with much love and happiness. Moreover, Jose had a good job and could easily provide a comfortable life for his wife and children. At the time, welfare agencies were few and far between and government support programs were highly stigmatised. In a statement she gave to police, she said she was “tired of seeing my children living in a pigsty and eating inferior food.” The police officer who took the statement would later say: “I’ll never forget it. She bared her soul to me. It turned me gray overnight.”

Cassidy Goodson was 14-years-old when she became pregnant with her first baby. Instead of telling her parents, Cassidy decided to hide the fact she was pregnant; she wore baggy clothes and even handed her mother bogus pregnancy tests that showed she wasn’t pregnant.

When she was ready to give birth, Cassidy used a pair of scissors to “pry the baby out” and subsequently delivered her baby - a little boy - in the toilet of the home she shared with her parents. Afterwards, she strangled the newborn boy to death. “Its eyes weren’t open but I felt to see if it was breathing or not, and it was breathing so I put my hands around its throat to make it stop breathing,” she confessed to police. When asked what motive she had, Cassidy told police she was afraid of disappointing her parents and afraid of getting in trouble. After killing her newborn son, Cassidy hid his body in a shoebox in her bedroom. After three days, Cassidy’s mother, Teresa Goodson, started to smell the decomposition and made the grisly discovery.

Following Cassidy’s arrest, Teresa was asked why she was unaware of her daughter’s pregnancy to which she replied she thought her daughter was just gaining weight. “Honestly, if I would have known, this would have never happened,” she said. Rumours had circulated around the school that Cassidy was pregnant and the father of the baby - a classmate - questioned Cassidy. Initially, she confessed before telling the boy she was only joking around and that “even if she was, she would not have kids with him.” 

31-year-old Peru-born Maria Nemeth was a leasing manager at an apartment block in Sunrise, Florida. Maria had quickly learnt English and worked in retail before securing the job as a leasing manager. She had been married before but it didn’t work out. She was ecstatic when she met mechanic, 24-year-old Fidel Lopez. The duo started to date and then moved into an apartment.

They had only been living there for one week when the unimaginable happened. On the 30th of September, 2015, Maria cooked a chicken dinner and purchased a bottle of tequila. They wanted to celebrate the big move. In the early hours of the morning, Fidel called 911. “She’s not breathing,” he shouted down the line while sobbing. “She’s going to die, man!” He told the dispatcher that they had been having “rough sex” when Maria ran to the bathroom to be sick. Now she wasn’t responding, he claimed. When paramedics arrived, it was evident that Fidel had been stretching the truth, to say the very least.

The walls were splattered and smeared with blood; they were also covered in punch holes. A glass door was shattered and the doors of the wardrobe had been ripped off. When they entered the bathroom, they found the lifeless body of Maria surrounded by her own blood. Beside her body was “several chunks of bloody tissue.” It soon became apparent that they were Maria’s intestines. She was pronounced dead an hour later.

Eventually Fidel confessed what had happened. He said while having sex, Maria had called out her ex-husband’s name. This infuriated him so much that he started to beat Maria and smash up the apartment. He then raped her with her own hair straighteners and a beer bottle. Finally, he disembowelled her by ripping her intestines out of her genitalia.

After moving to Canada in 1987, Dr John Schneeberger put his medical degree to use and began a career as a successful physician. In 1991, he married mother of two Lisa Dillman, and the couple went on to have two daughters of their own.

However, behind the trustworthy facade of a well-respected medical professional, Schneeberger was a sexual predator who sought to prey on the more defenceless and vulnerable. In October 1991, he sedated a 23 year old female patient named Candace and proceeded to rape her while she lay unconscious. Although the drug he used possessed the ability to obscure or even wipe memory, the dosage he administered proved not to be strong enough and Candace was able to recollect the horrific series of events. As a result, she was able to report the crime to authorities. The police subsequently extracted a blood sample from Schneeberger’s arm. However, the DNA taken did not match the samples of semen left by the young woman’s attacker. Due to the fervent assertion by the victim that her physician had been the assailant, the test was repeated in 1993. Once again, however, the result did not provide a positive result and this time the case was closed. Becoming increasingly determined to achieve justice, Candace hired a private investigator named Larry O’Brien to look into the case further. O’Brien was able to secretly obtain DNA evidence from Schneeberger’s car, which was again tested and this time matched seminal fluid left on the victim’s underwear. 

Shortly after this discovery, Schneeberger’s wife learned that her husband had been repeatedly drugging and sexually assaulting her 15 year old daughter from a previous marriage. After reporting it to the police, multiple samples were taken from the accused doctor: hair follicles, saliva swabs, and blood. This provided a positive match to semen left by the young girl’s rapist. As a result, the doctor was arrested.

While on trial in 1999, Schneeberger revealed the way he had been avoiding detection during the numerous DNA tests formerly carried out; he had implanted a thin, 15cm rubber tube into his arm containing another man’s blood and was consistently able to trick those in charge into taking a sample from where the tube was located. This therefore explained why none of the blood samples taken could provide a match. 

im guessing you mean jonestown

the bodies were airlifted to dover air force base in delaware, and there were so many bodies that they temporarily ran out of bags for the remains. it took eight full days to fully remove all of the remains. there were roughly 400 people who weren’t able to be identified due to extensive decomposition, and they’re buried in a mass grave in oakland, california. the rest of the bodies were given to families for their own burial/cremation.

here are some chilling photos of the military working to remove the remains in body bags and aluminum coffins:

The death of Olivia Mabel is a sad and unique mystery that remains unsolved to this day. When Mabel found her seven year old son, Aiden, drowned in their pond, she was so overcome with grief that she secluded herself from everyone, including her husband. After their divorce in 1991, she was not seen again for over two and a half years. 

On February 27, 1994, police in Celina, Texas received a series of silent 911 calls from the home. Upon arriving, police broke down the door of the unresponsive home and discovered Olivia Mabel dead before an altar to her son. She was holding a crude doll that resembled Aiden. It appeared she had been dead for months. The altar was covered with photos, drawings, letters, some of Aiden’s possessions, and an urn of ashes. Affixed to the front of the altar was a message written in Sanskrit.

One investigator described feeling a “dark, angry presence” in the room, and it was speculated that Mabel may have created a “tulpa” or “thoughtform,” or physical entity of her grief. Even more bizarrely, a handwritten letter was found next to Mabel’s body that was dated February 27, 1994, despite clear evidence that Mabel had been dead for a long time.

A couple walking their dog discovered the decomposing body of a late-term fetus in Richmond’s Point Isabel Regional Shoreline Park, in San Francisco. The autopsy reported showed that there was nylon tape around the neck of the fetus and a large gash on his body. The following day, the body of a recently pregnant woman washed ashore just one mile from where the fetus was found. The body was so far decomposed that the cause of death could not be determined but the body had been dismembered - both forearms were missing, as  was the left foot and the left leg. The autopsy showed that she had received two cracked ribs before she had died. DNA testing confirmed that the bodies were Laci and her unborn son, who she had planned to call Conner. 

In April of 1991, only 19 at the time, Peter Lundin strangled his mother to death in Maggie Valley, North Carolina. With the help of his father, Peter buried her body on a beach where it was discovered eight months later. He was given fifteen years in prison, while his father received two years for aiding him. However, Peter was released only seven years later and he left America, immigrating to Denmark. There, he met a sex worker named Marianne Pedersen, mother of two. In 2000 they inexplicably went missing, and Peter claimed they were on vacation and he was painting the house for them. Peter changed his story a number of times before confessing to the murders of not only Marianne, but her two sons as well. He revealed he killed Marianne because she had been ‘’talking sweetly’’ to a man on the phone. He then killed her sons. He first broke all their necks, and then hacked their bodies with an ax. 

32-year-old Joe Sotello from Kingsport, Tennessee, needed money and he knew the perfect victim to steal from. Or at least that’s what he thought… 52-year-old Lisa Morelock stood at just 4'11". Joe had known her for years and thought he could easily barge into her house and rob her without her being able to defend herself or her belongings.

On the night of 29 April, 2017, Lisa heard a knock on her door. She opened it to see a young woman with a “lost dog” flyer. As she went to take the flyer, a masked man stepped out from behind the wall and grabbed Lisa. This was a robbery, he warned her. “I was scared for a few seconds in there, and then momma bear kicked in on me and no, not today..” she said. As a scuffle ensued, the mask fell off to reveal that the attempted robber was Joe, a long time family friend.

Aum Shinrikyo is an active Japanese “doomsday” cult who heavily believe in the biblical atrocity of the Apocalypse and the prospect of World War III. Bizarrely enough, the cult started off as a Yoga group in 1985, but it’s leader, Shoko Asahara (the bearded man in the picture above), quickly turned to brainwashing his group into believing nonsensical theories. 

In the spring of 1995, Aum Shinrikyo carried out a devastating terrorist attack during rush-hour in Tokyo. They dispersed a toxic nerve gas called Sarin into the subway system, killing 13 people and injuring thousands of others. The surviving victims suffered permanent neurological damage due to the effect of the gas and were unable to walk, speak, or function properly. The cult has never confessed to the attack, claiming that those who carried out attacks did so secretly, without being known to ordinary believers. Despite this controversy, the cult has over 1,950 members and remains one of the biggest of it’s kind in the modern world.

BONUS: A follower just directed me to an unnerving video of some of these cult members dancing in a brainwashed state. The apparent translation of the song repeats the word LEADER over and over again.