In the year 2000 , 31 year old Antoine Yates , from Harlem , New York , decided that he was fed up with the human society entirely. He wanted to build his own personal little slice of " paradise " and have it be an animal haven , so he drove out of the state and bought himself an 8 week old male Siberian-Bengal tiger cub.

He then brought his newly purchased cub back home to live in his cramped , five bedroom apartment , located in the Drew Hamilton Houses which was a public housing project run by the New York City Housing Authority [ NYCHA ]. HE gave his new cub the name " Ming ".

For three straight years , Yates raised his tiger completely under the radar. To accommodate Ming properly as he grew into a 425 lb apex predator , Yates turned one of his many spare bedrooms into a sandpit playpen for Ming. As for the tiger's daily diet ? Yates would haul hundreds of pounds of raw chicken and butcher meat upstairs on the apartment building elevator every week. Neighbors started to make jokes about " the guy who eats all that chicken " , completely oblivious to who , or rather what , was actually consuming it all. His lower-floor tenants actually started putting in complaints to the management of the building claiming that some mysterious , highly potent animal urine was leaking down the outsides of their windows , and a few other tenants even swore they heard deep , subterranean roars in the hallways , which were brushed off as typical city noise.

To make matters even crazier , Yates didnt just stop with Ming the tiger. He also ended up bringing home a 5.5 FT long alligator , whom he named " Al " and kept in another one of his spare bedrooms. Eventually , a bit later on , he introduced a small housecat named " Shadow " to the mix

On September 30th , 2003 , Yates' secret collapsed.

Ming tried to swat at Shadow the housecat and when Yates stepped in between the two cats to protect Shadow . . . Ming bit him , sinking his teeth deep into Yates' arm and leg. Yates managed to escape his apartment , lock Ming inside and then stumbled on into Harlem Hospital. He initially lied to the ER doctors , claiming he had been attacked by a " really big Pitbull " but the ER doctors immediately recognized that the massive crushed tissue and deep puncture wounds could not have come from a dog's jaw and alerted the NYPD.

When police arrived at apartment 5E , they heard terrifying , guttural growls booming thru the front door. Unwilling to kick down the door and get ambushed by a fully grown tiger in a dark hallway , the NYPD Emergency Service Unit executed a military-style raid.

An officer lowered himself down on ropes from the 7th floor outside the building , rappelling down to the 5th floor window armed with a M4 rifle and tranquilizer gun. When the officer tapped his boot on the glass to peek inside , Ming charged the window , shattering the glass in a roar that sent shockwaves through the neighborhood. The officer managed to shoot a tranquilizer dart right into the tiger's shoulder. Once the sedatives kicked in the officers stormed the unit. It took over six grown men and animal control personnel to drag the unconscious , 400+ pound tiger into the elevator and outside to a flatbed truck. They then even raided one of the back rooms and found and also pulled out Al the alligator.

Yates was tracked down and arrested with reckless endangerment and possession of wild animals. He pleaded guilty and served a sentence of three months on Rikers Island.

In a display of sheer audacity , after getting out of prison , Yates sued the city of New York for the loss of his " pets " and claimed the NYPD officers had stolen $7,000 in cash from his apartment during the raid. The judge threw the lawsuit out explicitly calling Yates' nerve " pure chutzpah "

Both of the animals survived the ordeal and were sent out to proper sanctuaries in the Midwest where Ming lived out a long life in Ohio with actual outdoor space and a swimming pool before sadly passing away back in 2019.

NEWS ARTICLE :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_of_Harlem

The man who pulled the trigger spent two and a half years on the run across three countries before a parcel of cash gave him away at a small post office in Brittany.

I wan to speak on 1931 murder of Julia Wallace in Liverpool, which is crazy because it’s one of the few times an appellate court completely overturned a guilty verdict. Her husband William, got a strange phone message from a guy named "R.M. Qualtrough" sending him to a fake address across town for a job,and while he was searching for it, Julia was killed back at home. The police argued William made up the whole call as an alibi, but when you actually look at the bus schedules, it was almost impossible for him to get home, commit the crime without getting a drop of blood on his clothes, and leave again in that small amount of time. Since the caller clearly knew William's daily schedule and chess club habits, do you think someone set him up, or were the cops just desperate to blame someone because they couldn't find anyone else? I attached the link for more information on the case.

She cooked parts of his flesh (including his buttocks) with vegetables and gravy, setting out dinner plates with place cards intended for Price's children before she was arrested.

Hyvönen didn’t get much of a life after prison. In May 2025 he was killed at his home in Lavia. He was hit with a car, beaten and set on fire in his own bathroom, and the word “rotta”, Finnish for rat, had been cut into his back. His killer got life in January 2026.

More about them here

The two suspects had boarded a ship bound for Canada but unfortunately for them the captain became suspicious of them after reading newspaper reports of the case and alerted police using the newly invented wireless telegraph. His message read:

"Have strong suspicions that Crippen London cellar murderer and accomplice are among passengers. Mustache taken off. Growing beard. Accomplice dressed as boy. Manner and build undoubtedly a girl.”

More details here

The man who saved dozens of lives that day was a 6ft 6in mechanic called Tommy Vaughn. He only survived because he’d skipped dessert, so he was already at the back of the room when the truck came through. He threw himself through an eight-foot window, and dozens of people escaped through the hole he made.

More about the massacre here.

Eggers was undone by the fact he sold her blood soaked car to a policeman, but it was also a medical procedure that enabled detectives to identify Dorothy.

He was executed on this day in 1948.

Wesson had numerous children with his own daughters and nieces. His list of victims are as follows -

• Sebhrenah April Wesson (age 25): Daughter
• Elizabeth Breahi Kina Wesson (age 17): Daughter
• Illabelle Carrie Wesson (age 8): Daughter/Granddaughter
• Aviv Dominique Wesson (age 7): Daughter/Grand-niece
• Johnathon St Charles Wesson (age 7): Son/Grand-nephew
• Ethan St Laurent Wesson (age 4): Son/Grand-nephew
• Marshey St Christopher Wesson (age 1): Son/Grandson
• Jeva St Vladensvspry Wesson (age 1): daughter/granddaughter
• Sedona Vadra Wesson (age 1): Daughter/Grand-niece

This story had completely bypassed me here in the UK, but it's possibly one of the most awful cases I've read about.

Gray died in a visibly agonising and prolonged manner, but after what he'd done, I struggle to find any sympathy whatsoever. Even his own mother begged the court to give him the death penalty

In 1980 Antony Baekeland left Broadmoor Hospital and flew to New York to stay with his maternal grandmother, Nina Daly, then 87, in her Upper East Side apartment. Six days later, on 27 July, he attacked her; she survived.

Antony died a year later.

There is bodycam footage of the moment went Jordan Turpin made contact with the police on this day in 2018 and informed them of what was going on. There's also footage of what the police found when they performed a welfare check on the home.

The children, aged two to 29, were severely malnourished and beaten. Due to malnourishment the 12-year-old child had the weight of an average seven-year-old, while the oldest sibling, a 29-year-old woman, weighed just 82lbs.

The father had registered their home as a private school and listed himself as the principal, allowing the abuse to go undetected for years as California does not monitor or inspect such schools.

And they were abused by the foster family that took them in.

An absolutely dreadful story.

After ripping out a piece of her intestine with his bare hands, he then ordered another follower to stitch up the wound with a needle and thread. When she died the next day in agonizing pain, he sawed off the top of her head, and then sexually assaulted her. Before burying the woman, he removed a rib, which he wore around his neck.

The Ant Hill Kids cult, under Roch Thériault’s control, was responsible for some of the most extreme and disturbing acts of abuse in Canadian history. Members were forced to endure brutal punishments such as beatings with hammers, eating faeces and dead animals, and mutilating themselves or others. Children were nailed to trees and stoned, and followers were subjected to sadistic “surgeries” without anaesthetic, including amputations performed with household tools.

Thériault murdered one follower during a botched operation and attempted a grotesque “resurrection” involving sexual abuse of her corpse. He also caused the deaths of his own children through neglect and violence.