10.The Covina Massacre
On Christmas Eve 2008, at a Christmas party in Covina, California, nine people were killed by a man dressed as Santa. The man, Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, was motivated by his recent divorce settlement and spousal support payments. The divorce process, which lasted for months and ended only a week earlier, had cost Pardo a lot of money and he didn’t have it. However, he was having serious mental problems, so he devised a plan to attack a Christmas party that his in-laws would organize and his ex-wife would attend. He appeared in a Santa suit, with a flamethrower that he carried in a cart and a total of four automatic pistols. Pardo killed nine people, either with a gun or a flamethrower, including his own 8-year-old niece, and set the house on fire as partygoers fled. He committed suicide later that night. But that was a small restitution for his ex-wife and his family, who died in pain.
9.The Dresden Bombing
If you’ve read “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, you’ve already heard of the horror that was the bombing of Dresden, Germany. On Valentine’s Day 1945, a fleet of more than 1.00 aircraft from the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces attacked the German city, dropping nearly 4,000 pounds of explosives. Estimates of casualties vary mainly due to the undetermined number of war refugees remaining in the city. The conservative estimate is 25,000, with others rising steeply from there. Critics of the bombing cite the city’s lack of military significance and its abundance of cultural significance to German society. Vonnegut, himself a German prisoner in Dresden during the bombing, recounts his experience gathering bodies for burial. Eventually there were simply too many to bury and German troops began piling them up and incinerating them with flamethrowers.
8.The Shanghai Stampede
On New Year’s Eve 2014, around 300,000 people gathered at Chen Yi Square in Shanghai, China. Along the banks of the Huangpu River, crowds turned out to see a light show meant to celebrate the upcoming New Year. No one anticipated such a massive crowd, and there was little in the way of official crowd control to help organize everyone. Just a few minutes before midnight, a stampede broke out from the crowd. Thousands rushed and trampled each other, leaving 36 dead and 49 wounded. Chinese media reports were vague and contradictory on what actually started the stampede and as of now, no official cause is listed, only vague reports of confusion and panic from the crowd.
7.The Lawson Family Murders
On Christmas Day 1929, farmer Charles Lawson killed his wife and six of their seven children. He started with two of his daughters and ambushed them next to the family’s tobacco farm with a shotgun. He returned to the porch and shot his wife Fannie. This alerted the rest of the children, who tried to hide in the house. He found them and killed them all. His last victim was his 4-month-old baby. Then Lawson carefully positioned the bodies, crossed his arms, and rested his head on the rocks. He then he disappeared into the forest. Within hours, a crowd of neighbors had discovered or heard of the place and gathered on the property. Witnesses heard a single shot coming from the forest. They later found the body of Lawson, killed by suicide. A clear motive for Lawson’s gruesome revelry has never been determined, but there were rumors among family and friends that he had recently gotten his daughter, one of the victims, pregnant.
6.The Tool Box Killers
Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris were serial killers known as Tool Box Killers. Considering their predilection for using a variety of household tools to torture and kill their victims, it’s easy to see why they got that name. They claimed their fifth and final victim on Halloween night in 1979. That night, they kidnapped young Shirley Lynette Ledford while she was outside a gas station. They then proceeded to tie her up, repeatedly rape her, and torture her with her signature tools before killing her. They dumped her body on a randomly chosen lawn, just to see what the press would say about the location.
5.The Tangiwai disaster
A passenger train carrying 285 people was speeding across a bridge in New Zealand on Christmas Eve 1953. Unbeknownst to the passengers and crew, a nearby dam had recently burst, causing a strong surge mud will pass under the bridge and damage its supporting structures. . When the train passed over the bridge, its weight caused the entire structure to collapse. 151 of the 285 souls on board died in the accident. Rescuers searched for days through the wreckage, hoping to find survivors or at least identifiable bodies, but never found 20 passengers, believed to have been carried downstream.
4.Ronald Sisman And Elizabeth Platzman
On Halloween night in 1981, New York City couple Ronald Sisman and Elizabeth Platzman were murdered in their home. The two were brutally beaten and forced to kneel, then shot in the head in execution style. Because his home was ransacked and his items stolen, the police initially believed that the entire event was a robbery gone wrong, except that authorities were warned of the killings in advance. While in prison, the infamous serial killer David Berkowitz, better known as “Son of Sam,” warned prison officials that the satanic cult to which he had belonged was going to commit a ritual murder that Halloween night. He gave the correct location of the murder and described the house that the cult had been guarding. He perfectly matched the description of the victims’ residence.
3.The Carnation Murders
The Carnation murders are named after the city in which they took place: Carnation, Washington, a small country town with no claim to fame except sadly this murder spree. Christmas Eve 2007 saw Joseph McEnroe and Michele Anderson murder the entire Anderson family. The two arrived at Anderson’s parents’ home, where the family gathered and waited, weapons in hand. Anderson’s parents arrived first and were shot and killed. Their bodies were hidden, the entrance was cleaned and the murder trap was reset. Then Anderson’s brother and sister-in-law arrived with her two children. They too were shot dead, including children. When asked why she did it, Anderson said that she had felt unfairly treated by her parents and that her brother owed him money, and McEnroe said … a series of incoherent nonsense.
2.Omaima Nelson
It was Thanksgiving 1991 when Egyptian model Omaima Nelson murdered her husband. She claimed that she was in retaliation for him sexually assaulting her that same night. Perhaps that was true, but what happened after the murder was more “demonic cannibal” than “avenger.” After the alleged sexual assault, Nelson tied up her husband and stabbed him in the chest with scissors. He survived that attack, for which she beat him to death with a clothes iron, hitting him hard enough to break it. She then she cut his body into small pieces, even castrated him and put his severed head in her freezer. She put her severed hands in a pot to boil to remove the fingerprints. She admitted to eating pieces of it, but later retracted these statements, saying that instead, she had simply put the missing pieces in the garbage disposal. In total, when investigators found the body of her husband, the whereabouts of about 80 pounds were unknown.
1.The Cocoanut Grove Fire
The Cocoanut Grove Fire is the deadliest nightclub fire in history, killing 492 people. The Cocoanut Grove, which was unusually busy the night of the fire, was a popular club in Boston, Massachusetts. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving and many were in town visiting relatives. Also, it was the first Thanksgiving after America joined WWII and distraction destinations like clubs were thriving. The Cocoanut Grove was packed and investigators never determined the cause of the nightclub fire. They said, however, that the fire started in the frond of an artificial palm tree. The fire spread across the ceiling and quickly made its way into all areas of the club, taking only five minutes to engulf the entire establishment. The side doors and several other exits had been bolted to prevent customers from snapping their tabs. That left only one exit open: the front door. The door was a revolving door that was rendered inoperative by the crowd of people trying to rush through it to safety. 492 people died in the fire. The small silver lining is that the incident sparked a wave of fire safety laws and regulations in the hopes of preventing another tragedy of this magnitude.
