Fascinating Horror

Something a little different today. Since it was so difficult to find online, I decided to upload a reading of John List's full confession letter. It's fascinating - especially when you know the details of his terrible crimes. What do you guys think? Is he being honest, or lying about his motives?

On the 16th of February 2009, at around 3:40pm an adult male chimpanzee named Travis, who had been kept as a beloved and pampered pet for many years, went berserk, mauling and severely injuring a 55-year-old woman. This prolonged assault continued until police arrived on scene and shot Travis dead. What triggered the violent attack will forever remain a mystery.

At around 11:07pm on the 20th February 2003 at the Station Nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, pyrotechnics used as part of a concert by the hard rock back Great White set fire to acoustic foam surrounding the stage. The flames spread with incredible speed. As patrons rushed to escape exits became jammed. All in all 100 people lost their lives, and hundreds more were injured and traumatised, all in the space of just a few short minutes.

On the 30th of October 1858 a batch of sweets which had accidentally been adulterated with arsenic were put on sale at a market stall. More than 200 people consumed them, with the vast majority becoming severely ill as a result. 21 people – including many children – died as a result of what turned out to be one of the first mass poisonings in British history.

On the 26th of October 2002, while participating in an elaborate treasure hunt known only as “The Game”, software engineer Bob Lord entered an abandoned mine shaft in the desert near Las Vegas. He was convinced that he was on the right track to retrieve the next clue in the 24-hour marathon hunt. He was wrong. In the pitch blackness Bob slipped and fell to the bottom of an unseen shaft, sustaining injuries that would change his life forever.

On the 11th of June 1955 at a motor racing event in Les Mans, France, a severe crash sent debris from a fast-moving car hurtling into a tightly-packed crowd of spectators. 84 people lost their lives, and more than 100 were seriously injured in what would go down in history as the most deadly motor racing crash of all time.

In the middle of July 1518, seemingly without reason, residents of the French town of Strasbourg began dancing compulsively in the streets, with many unable to stop even when restrained or physically exhausted. The dancers continued day and night, with many dancing until they collapsed and died. The mysterious dancing plague, which lasted in the heat of August, is said to have claimed as many as 400 lives.

At around 2pm on the 28th of June 2008 a 17-year-old boy on a trip to the Six Flags Over Georgia theme park made a fatal mistake. For reasons unknown he scaled two fences and entered a restricted ride area, and was subsequently decapitated by a passing train. The horrific incident made news nationwide, but it was not the first to occur on that same rollercoaster.

On the 24th March 2015, at around 10:41am, Germanwings flight 9525 crashed in the French Alps, resulting in the death of every single person on board. An investigation would reveal that the crash was caused deliberately – but not by sabotage or a terrorist attack. In the case of the Germanwings disaster the crash was caused by the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, who purposefully and calculatedly flew the plane into the side of a mountain.

At around 6:29pm on the 6th of March 1987 the MS Herald of Free Enterprise – an eight-deck car and passenger ferry – capsized just moments after leaving the Belgian port of Zeebrugge. The incident resulted in the deaths of 193 passengers and crew. It was the most deadly sinking of a British ship in peacetime in more than 50 years.

At around 7:17am of the 30th of June 1908 near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia, Russia a gigantic explosion took place. The force of the blast flattened around 80 million trees, and cleared an area more than 2,100 square kilometres (800 square miles) in size. For many years after this devastating impact, the true cause of the blast remained entirely unknown.

At around 12:30pm on the 15th of January 1919, in the North End neighbourhood of Boston, Massachusetts, a huge storage tank filled with molasses burst. The sugary substance within flooded into nearby streets at great speed, destroying buildings, lifting cars and trucks on the crest of the wave, and smothering any unfortunate people in its path. In mere moments, the Boston Molasses Flood claimed 21 innocent lives.

At around 11:25am on the 28th of April 1995, a group of students from the Tai Poutini Polytechnic at Greymouth in New Zealand crowded onto a viewing platform high above Cave Creek in the Paparoa National Park on South Island. The viewing platform collapsed, sending the entire group tumbling into the chasm below. The vast majority did not survive the fall.

At around 1:50pm on the 27th of September 1986 more than a million helium-filled balloons were released from a public square in Cleveland, Ohio, as a fundraising publicity stunt. While the launch itself was successful, the wind blew the mass of balloons in an unexpected direction, resulting in utter chaos: millions of dollars of property damage, many injuries, and possible even two deaths were the result.

On the 27th of October 2009 folk singer Taylor Mitchell was in the middle of solo concert tour of the Maritime Provinces of Canada. During downtime between two concerts she decided to go walking on the Cape Breton Highlands National Park Skyline Trail. This walk in the woods, however, ended up costing Taylor Mitchell her life.

At around 9:00pm on the 28th of May 1977 a fire began at the Beverly Hills Supper Club, a sprawling entertainment venue and nightclub just outside Cincinnati. Despite plenty of warning that a fire had started, many of the 3,000 guests within the building that evening were unable to evacuate in time. The blaze ultimately claimed 165 lives, making it the third deadliest in US history.

At around 8:00pm on the 24th of November 2009 John Edward Jones – an avid amateur caver – entered the Nutty Putty caves just south of Salt Lake City in Utah. He was accompanied by a large group of family and friends – it was, after all, just before Thanksgiving. The trip was intended to be a brief adventure that they could share before the holiday. What it turned into was a living nightmare that would cost John Edward Jones his life.

At around 6:49am on the 22 May 1915, a fully-loaded troop train was passing close to Gretna Green in Scotland. The train was bound for Liverpool, where its passengers – mostly soldiers of the 7th battalion of the Royal Scots – would be loaded onto ships and sent onwards to Gallipoli, where they expected to encounter challenging conditions, and fierce fighting against Ottoman forces. Little did the men on board realise, however, that the vast majority of them would never make it beyond Gretna Green. The train on which they travelled was about to become part of one of the worst rail disasters of all time.

At 3:00pm on the 16th of June 1883 a children’s magic show began at Victoria Hall, a theatre in Sunderland, England. The venue was packed with children of all ages – as many as 1,500 boys and girls had paid a penny each to see the show. As the entertainers took to the stage and the magic began, none present in their seats knew that almost one in seven of the audience would not leave the theatre building alive.

On the 26th of May, 1978, a new attraction opened in the township of Vernon, New Jersey. For the next 20 years this unassuming US town would be the home to Action Park – a theme park and waterpark that would soon become notorious for its terrible safety record. Before the sale of the park to new owners in 1998, six guests would have died while riding its insanely unsafe attractions, and many hundreds of more would have sustained serious injuries.

At around 9:15am on the 27th of May, 1983, on a farm near Benton, Tennessee a powerful explosion took place. The blast was heard more than 32 kilometres (or 20 miles) away, and created a mushroom cloud the height of a six storey building. The site was all but levelled by the blast, and many workers present were instantly killed. But what could have caused a blast of such magnitude on a small, unassuming fishbait farm in rural Tennessee?

At around 7:30am on the 21st of October 1966 workers arriving at the site of a coal mine near the village of Aberfan in Wales discovered that one of several spoil heaps on site had shifted during the night. Supervisors called a halt to any work that day, and began to assess the damage. They were still doing so at 9:15am, when a huge amount of material broke away from the heap and flowed downhill in a giant wave, directly towards the village below.

On the 25th of October 2016 at the Dreamworld theme park in Australia, a river rapids ride malfunctioned. The failure of a water pump precipitated a deadly accident that claimed four lives in a matter of moments – an accident which, later investigation would reveal, could have been prevented.

In the early hours of the 24th of January 1961 a B-52 military aircraft was in the middle of a routine operation when it encountered severe technical difficulties, and began to break apart in mid-air. The captain ordered everyone on board to bail out, and they did so, leaving the disintegrating aircraft unmanned, shuddering violently as it plummeted towards farmland near Goldsboro, North Carolina. On board were two nuclear weapons, each one 250 times more powerful than the bomb which destroyed Hiroshima.

At around 12:05pm on the 11th of July 1978, a fully-loaded tanker truck left a state-owned refinery in a small town in the autonomous Catalonian region of Spain. It set off on a routine trip to Puertollano, an industrial city approximately six hours away by road. The truck never reached its destination. Before it was even half way to its destination it would become the cause of an accident which would claim more than 200 innocent lives.

At 7:00pm on the 17th of July, 1981, more than 1,000 people were gathered in the atrium of the Hyatt Regency Kansas City Hotel for a tea dance, when a structural failure occurred. Two skywalks which crossed the lobby collapsed, crashing down onto the revellers below. The incident would cause the greatest loss of life from a structural collapse in American history, only ever to be superseded – 20 years later – by the destruction of New York City’s World Trade Centre.

On the 15th of September, 1896, around 40,000 people gathered in the temporary town of Crush in Texas. The crowds were there to witness a unique spectacle – two trains would, for the sole purpose of entertaining the masses – be driven head first into one another at high speed. The staged train wreck would be a once in a lifetime sight for many in the crowd… and for a small number of onlookers, the very last thing they would ever see.

On the 10th of April 1991, the Moby Prince – an Italian passenger ferry – collided with another ship, resulting in an oil fire on the deck of the Moby Prince. The crew promptly radioed for help, and herded passengers to a fireproofed room within the ship. The Moby Prince was mere minutes from a Port Authority base, and the fire was spreading relatively slowly. It seemed all but certain that they would be rescued in plenty of time… and yet, as the minutes ticked by, help never came. The fire on board the Moby Prince would turn out to be one of the worst maritime disasters in Italian history… in part because of a few tiny human errors and one tragic miscommunication.

Something a little different this week. Once a year, around the holidays, I want to share the story of a disaster that *didn't* happen - a tragedy that, whether through luck, the bravery of those involved, or simple good planning, was averted. In this story, everyone survives... although it's definitely a close call.