From the man who donned a Santa suit and went on a bloody rampage to the 15-year-old tortured for being a “witch,” these grisly murders turned the cheeriest time of the year into a nightmare.
For many, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. But for some, this holiday has been marked by ferocious family feuds, mysterious disappearances, and murder.
Many of history’s worst Christmas crimes unfolded due to long-held personal grudges, as in the case of Bruce Pardo, who dressed as Santa Claus and murdered his ex-wife and eight members of her family on Christmas Eve in 2008 following his divorce. Then there’s the story of Ronald Gene Simmons and Michele Anderson, who used Christmas gatherings as a way to take out multiple family members at once.
And while some Christmas murders were open-and-shut cases, others remain tragic mysteries. To date, no one knows exactly what happened to the Sodder children, who seemingly vanished from their family home after a fire on Christmas Day in 1945. Likewise, the murder of six-year-old pageant star JonBenét Ramsey, who was found dead the day after Christmas in 1996, remains unsolved.
The Christmas Murder Of Child Pageant Queen JonBenét Ramsey
FacebookJonBenét Ramsey was just six years old when she was murdered at Christmastime in 1996.
One of the most infamous Christmas crimes of all time happened in 1996 when six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey was allegedly kidnapped from her family’s Boulder, Colorado home. JonBenét’s lifeless body was soon found in the family’s basement, launching a mystery that endures to this day.
According to JonBenét’s parents, Patsy and John Bennet Ramsey, the family first realized that something was wrong around 5:30 a.m. on Dec. 26. when Patsy reportedly found a ransom note in the family’s home declaring that JonBenét had been kidnapped and was being held for a $118,000 ransom.
Hours after the Ramseys called the police, John found JonBenét’s body in the family basement. The six-year-old had been bound and gagged, bludgeoned over the head, strangled, and possibly sexually assaulted.
Wikimedia CommonsThe ransom note apparently found by JonBenét’s parents after she disappeared.
Before long, the mystery of this shocking Christmas murder gripped the entire nation. JonBenét had participated in a number of child beauty pageants, and magazines quickly printed photos of the six-year-old in costumes and full makeup. Some critiqued her parents for letting JonBenét participate. And others levied much more serious accusations.
As the case unfolded, suspicion fell on the Ramsey family. Not only did the paper and pen used for the ransom note come from the house, but the alleged kidnapper asked for a specific amount — $118,000 — that happened to be the same amount of money that John Ramsey had received as a bonus that year. Some even suspected that JonBenét’s parents had covered up her murder after her nine-year-old brother, Burke, killed her by accident.
Multiple suspects have been considered in the decades since, from the family’s housekeeper to a local sex offender who told a friend that he’d “hurt a little girl” to a man who outright confessed named John Mark Karr. But to date, this tragic Christmas murder remains unsolved.
The Mysterious Disappearance Of The Sodder Children
Public DomainThe Sodder children vanished after their house burned down on Dec. 25, 1945, though alleged sightings of them have
On Christmas Day in 1945, the Sodder family home in Fayetteville, West Virginia, went up in flames. When the smoke cleared, George and Jennie Sodder were devastated to discover that five of their 10 children had apparently been unable to escape the blaze. But as the years passed, the couple became convinced that their missing children hadn’t died in the fire at all.
Though there was no sign of the missing Sodder children, Maurice (14), Martha (12), Louis (nine), Jennie (eight), and Betty (five), investigators also didn’t find any of their remains in the house. And as a crematorium worker told Jennie, bones take around two hours to burn into ashes. The Sodder home was only on fire for 45 minutes before the flames went out.
What’s more, a number of odd incidents had bookended the children’s disappearance. Before the fire, an insurance salesman had told George Sodder that his home would go up in smoke because he’d criticized Benito Mussolini, angering Italian Americans in town. And during the blaze, George had found his ladder missing and both his trucks unable to start.
Public DomainA memorial pleading for information about the missing Sodder children decades after they vanished in 1945.
Were the missing Sodder children victims of a Christmas murder? Or did something more complicated happen that night on Dec. 25, 1945? To date, the answer depends on who you ask. George and Jennie spent the rest of their lives believing that their five children had been kidnapped in retaliation.
