Diana

How spies, detectives and liars really think. One story per post.

[Diana @0xDianax]

@xbtnoah small twist: the relative didn't upload anything about him. investigators uploaded the crime scene DNA themselves and found a distant cousin already in the database

[Diana @0xDianax]

When police finally arrested him at 72, his first words were "I have a roast in the oven!"

He had killed 13 people and raped at least 50 across California, from the mid-1970s to 1986. Then the attacks stopped, and the case went cold for 30 years.

Joseph DeAngelo had been a police officer until 1979, when he was fired for shoplifting a hammer and dog repellent.

In 2018, investigators uploaded crime scene DNA to GEDmatch, a public genealogy site, and found a distant relative. From there they built a family tree of more than a thousand names and narrowed it by age, location and police or military background. Three men were left.

Detectives went through DeAngelo's trash and took a tissue. The DNA matched.

In the interview room he sat alone for almost two hours. When they offered him a Dr Pepper, he wouldn't touch it, apparently so they couldn't get his DNA. They already had it.

In court he came in a wheelchair and spoke in a weak, shaking voice. Then the DA released jail footage of him exercising and climbing on furniture in his cell.

He pleaded guilty in 2020 and got life without parole.

[Diana @0xDianax]

@gosh_sol_eth the money question is the easy one. the harder one is why she chose live TV, next to him, to say it

[Diana @0xDianax]

@gosh_sol_eth "i'll be gone in the dark" came out in february 2018. two months later he was in handcuffs. she just didn't get to see it

[Diana @0xDianax]

@orshovskiy no one, as far as anyone has reported. he even signed off on the search plane. the tires were the first real lead, and that came from a random roadblock

[Diana @0xDianax]

He commanded Canada's largest air force base. When a young woman went missing, his base sent a plane to help search for her.

He was the one who took her.

Colonel Russell Williams had flown prime ministers and royalty. In July 2009 he took command of CFB Trenton. Four months later, Corporal Marie-France Comeau, who served on his base, was murdered in her home.

In January 2010, 27-year-old Jessica Lloyd disappeared from her house near Belleville. A search-and-rescue aircraft from Trenton joined the search. Williams had signed off on it.

Police had one real clue: tire tracks in a field near her house. On February 4 they set up a roadblock on the highway and checked passing cars. Williams drove through in his Nissan Pathfinder. The tires looked like a match.

Three days later, Detective Sergeant Jim Smyth asked him to come in to tie up "a few loose ends."

Williams walked in relaxed and joking. He was wearing the same boots.

Smyth never raised his voice. He had the boots printed, and more than three hours in, he put two sheets of paper on the table: one print from outside Jessica's house, one from the boots Williams had just taken off.

"These are identical."

Williams stopped talking. Smyth kept going: "This is getting out of control really fast, Russell. Really, really fast."

That night the colonel confessed to both murders and told police where to find Jessica's body.

He is serving life in prison. The military stripped him of his rank.

[Diana @0xDianax]

@mmoklaaa and he walked into the interview joking with the detective. watch his face when the boot prints hit the table

[Diana @0xDianax]

@rickyrates And he had the story ready before anyone asked. He told police he'd last seen Shanann at 5:15 that morning, when he left for work. Everything after that was built on one line.

[Diana @0xDianax]

HE STOOD ON HIS PORCH AND BEGGED THE CAMERAS TO HELP FIND HIS FAMILY. HE HAD KILLED THEM HIMSELF.

August 2018, Frederick, Colorado. Shanann Watts, 34 and pregnant, and her daughters Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, disappeared overnight.

Her phone, purse, car and wedding ring were still in the house.

Her husband Chris told police he'd left for work at 5:15 that morning and had no idea where they were.

In the days after, he spoke to local TV outside the house and asked for his family to come home.

Two days after they vanished, he failed a polygraph. Then he confessed, first to his father and then to investigators.

Later, a neighbor's security camera showed him early that morning, backing his truck into the garage.

He pleaded guilty to all the murders and got five life sentences without parole.

[Diana @0xDianax]

@orshovskiy He was the last person to see them, so police were talking to him from day one. But it was the polygraph two days later where his story fell apart. He confessed right after.

[Diana @0xDianax]

@mmoklaaa He kept it going for about two days. The polygraph broke it, and the neighbor's camera showed what he'd done that morning.

[Diana @0xDianax]

@gosh_sol_eth Agreed. Shanann was 15 weeks pregnant with Nico. Four lives, not three.

[Diana @0xDianax]

@verygoodalexei The FBI says "at least 11." He never gave them a full list, so nobody knows the real number.

[Diana @0xDianax]

The FBI believes he killed at least 11 people. They still don't know who most of them were.

Israel Keyes ran a small construction business in Anchorage, Alaska. He had a daughter and a quiet life.

He chose total strangers so nothing could connect him to them. He flew thousands of miles across America to find them, and paid for some of the trips by robbing banks.

Years before some of the murders, he buried "kill kits" near the places he planned to use: weapons and supplies to get rid of a body. He hid one in Vermont in 2009 and came back for it two years later.

It worked for over a decade.

Then in February 2012 he kidnapped an 18-year-old barista from a coffee stand in Anchorage. After he killed her, he kept using her bank card.

Police followed the withdrawals through Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. On March 13, 2012, they arrested him in a parking lot in Lufkin, Texas.

In FBI interviews he talked about killings in several states, but never gave all the names or places.

In December 2012 he died in his jail cell before trial. Most of what he knew died with him.

[Diana @0xDianax]

@verumidest Exactly. He gave the FBI pieces, never the full list. Somewhere there are families who still don't know he's the answer.

[Diana @0xDianax]

He admitted to 19 murders and spent about 5 years in prison for them.

Sammy "The Bull" Gravano was the underboss of the Gambino crime family, second only to John Gotti.

In December 1990, the FBI arrested them both. Gotti expected to walk again. He had beaten three trials already, and the papers called him the Teflon Don.

Then Gravano heard the FBI's tapes. Agents had bugged an apartment above Gotti's social club, and on the recordings Gotti talked about the murders and put the blame on Sammy.

In 1991, Gravano agreed to testify against his own boss.

In April 1992, Gotti was convicted and sentenced to life without parole. He died in prison 10 years later.

Gravano kept testifying for years and helped put around three dozen mobsters behind bars. When someone once put his count at 18 murders, he corrected them: "It's 19."

His deal was 5 years, and he had already served about 4. In 1994 he walked out, entered witness protection in Arizona under a new name and started a pool installation company.

Six years later he was arrested again, this time for financing an ecstasy ring with his son. Police said it moved up to 30,000 pills a week, and he got 20 years.

Since his release in September 2017, he has been telling mob stories on his own YouTube channel.

Would you have flipped?

[Diana @0xDianax]

In 2011, Don Johnson took $15 million from three Atlantic City casinos at blackjack in six months, and he never counted a card.

Fifteen years earlier he was betting $25 a hand. By 2011 he was a racetrack executive with a head for numbers, and he could see how badly Atlantic City was doing. Gambling revenue there had fallen from $5.2 billion in 2006 to $3.3 billion, and the casinos were fighting over every whale who still showed up.

Before he sat down, he made them agree to his terms: $100,000 a hand, the dealer standing on soft 17, extra freedom to split and double, and a 20% rebate on his losses once they passed $500,000.

The Borgata agreed first. Caesars and the Tropicana matched the offer so they wouldn't lose him to a competitor.

With that rebate, a $1 million loss cost him $800,000. It wiped out most of the house edge, and at $100K a hand the swings could run his way for hours. They ran his way for months. Caesars lost over $4 million to him and the Borgata about $5 million.

At the Tropicana he played for 12 hours straight and left $5.8 million up. In one stretch he won $1.2 million in three hands, $800,000 of it on a single hand. The casino's blackjack tables finished that month $1.8 million down, the first sustained blackjack loss for an Atlantic City casino since gambling was legalized there in 1978.

The Tropicana's CEO was replaced soon after, although he denied it had anything to do with Johnson. Caesars stopped letting him play, two Las Vegas casinos banned him, and two more in Atlantic City turned him away.

Everything he did was legal. The casinos had run those terms through their own models before signing off, and somebody got the math wrong.

Would you have given him that deal?

[Diana @0xDianax]

@xbtnoah Same. And he did have a chance: he drove back to LA with his last million. Then he came back.

[Diana @0xDianax]

In December 1992, a Greek waiter named Archie Karas drove to Las Vegas with $50 in his pocket. He had just lost everything at a poker table in LA.

A friend lent him $10,000. He walked into the Mirage, played pool against a high roller at $40,000 a game, and came out $1.2 million up.

Then he beat the same guy at poker for another $3 million.

Three months in, he had $7 million. Six months in, $17 million.

At Binion's Horseshoe he switched to dice, up to $300,000 a roll. He ended up owning every $5,000 chip in the building, so the casino minted $25,000 chips just for him.

By 1995 he was up more than $40 million. Winning it took three years. Losing it took about three weeks: $11 million on dice, $17 million on baccarat, then the rest.

In 2013, cameras caught him marking cards at a California casino to win $8,000. Nevada banned him from every casino in the state.

He died in 2024, reportedly broke. In the video below, he tells the whole story himself.

Would you have walked away at $40 million?

[Diana @0xDianax]

@mmoklaaa He basically said it himself. He claimed money meant nothing to him, and that's exactly why he had no fear at the table.

[Diana @0xDianax]

@verumidest Exactly. The same thing that got him to $40M is what took it all back. You can't have one without the other.