GRISLY: 40 People Describe The Most Horrifying Crime Scenes Ever

Flickr / jp
Flickr / jp
Found on AskReddit.

1. A newborn infant had been microwaved by her mother’s boyfriend because she wouldn’t stop crying.

“I’m not in law enforcement but ended up working very closely with them on one case that presented to my ER. A newborn infant had been microwaved by her mother’s boyfriend because she wouldn’t stop crying after he sexually violated her when changing her diaper. The baby’s uncle found the baby and got enough neighbors gathered to set the boyfriend on fire. Police came in first with the baby. They gave me a heads-up that the boyfriend might follow but they decided to wait for ambulance to show up and transport him.”


2. The semi truck smeared the motorcyclist like spreading peanut butter on toast.

“My friend and his dad are volunteer firefighters. I was staying the night and they got a call at 1 AM. They knew it would be a long call based off of info from their radios, so I went with them. According to a witness, a motorcyclist going about 120 MPH was going around a wet corner at midnight passed a semi truck. He leaned too much into the corner, slid across the road (still on his bike), hit a tree (he disengaged from his bike when he hit the tree) and skidded in front of the semi, where the semi smeared him like spreading peanut butter on toast. I stayed in the truck with the windows down but could see everything due to all the flashing lights. Semi driver was a wreck, crying and sobbing, saying that it happened so fast that he couldn’t do anything. I got to watch my friend and his dad scrape a guy off the road. Drive safe guys, esp. motorcyclists.”


3. The electrical charge was causing the head to bounce and sizzle.

“My stepfather worked traffic homicide for years and encountered any number of frankly gruesome things, but the story I remember really sticking out in my mind involved a car hitting an electric pole on a rainy night. The car’s occupant had, in the course of the accident, become decapitated—head sheared completely off. The electric pole was severely damaged, one of the lines breaking and falling down to rest in a puddle—which now also contained the severed head. The electrical charge was, apparently, causing the head to bounce and sizzle in a very disconcerting fashion, to put it lightly.”


4. This crack addict ended up cutting off his dog’s cock and microwaving it.

“My brother’s husband is a cop. He dealt with this crack addict who ended up cutting off his dog’s cock and microwaving it. Apparently it took three officers to hold him back from the microwave as he ferociously battled to get at it to munch.”


5. It was like a scene out of a horror movie where they walk up to a cave and bats come pouring out. There was just this flood of flies.

“A friend of mine is a patrol officer right now and he got called to perform a wellness check on a fairly overweight guy who lived alone. This is a pretty Podunk backwoods Southern town and it gets pretty hot. There’s also quite a ways in between houses so it’s not unheard of for neighbors to not see you for a while. He pulled up to the house and immediately felt that something wasn’t right. He noticed that this man had painted his windows black so he didn’t bother looking in the windows and just walked straight up to the front porch and knocked on the door. No one answered so he kicks in the door and is greeted by the worst smell he has ever encountered. There are flies everywhere. They fly past him out the door and he said it was like scene out of a horror movie where they walk up to a cave and bats come pouring out. There was just this flood of flies. That’s when he discovers that this man hasn’t painted his windows black. The flies were so thick in this house that it looked like the man had painted his windows. So he ducks back out onto the porch until everything is settled, but there is just this atrocious smell coming out of the house and he’s gagging. Eventually he summons the will power to drag himself back in the house and finds the owner dead on the couch. This dude was probably 400 pounds before dying and my friend said it looked like somebody had blown him up like a balloon he was so bloated. It took 7 people to put him on the coroner’s stretcher. That was the first instance that he went through as an officer that I noticed he behaved a little different after for a while.”


6. They then filled those semen-infested wounds with cigarette butts.

“My friend is a criminal lawyer. He once received a call from prison; his client had been murdered. When he got there, the body was on the floor. Several inmates had stabbed him with knives in the legs, back and butt. They then proceeded to rape him in the cavities made by said knives. They then filled those semen-infested wounds with cigarette butts. He had over 10 of said holes. He bled to death about half an hour after they were finished.”


7. He couldn’t fit inside her to rape her so he cut her with a knife, inside…then proceeded to rape her.

“I was a detention officer. The worst thing I found out was this one prisoner who raped a little girl. I think she was about 4. He couldn’t fit inside her to rape her so he cut her with a knife, inside…then proceeded to rape her. It was hard to treat him like a human being which is why as an officer you’re not supposed to look up why they’re in there but we would anyway. Took care of lots of crazies and weirdoes and pedos and murderers but that guy was by far the worst piece of shit.”


8. I still remember chunks of flesh and underarm hair stuck to the wall.

“I once went to a scene where an ex-boyfriend show up at the house where the girl lived. He knocked and then started firing a shotgun through the door, hitting a toddler. He then went in and shot the girl’s mother (I still remember chunks of flesh and underarm hair stuck to the wall). Shot the father and then left. The girl was out for the evening.

He then left the gun and a suicide not at the top of a bridge. He went on the run instead of killing himself and was captured shortly thereafter by the marshals. Fucked-up scene.”


9. He died watching his wife freeze to death.

“Friend’s dad is a cop.

Keep in mind this was during a really bad ice storm a few years ago, and in the country, about a good 15-20 minutes from a town, and wasn’t a very busy road.

Got called from a woman saying she hadn’t talked to her mom in a few days, which was weird since they talked every day. Went to go check on her, drove up to the address, and saw a truck sittin’ in gate. Got out and walked up, didn’t see anything in or around the truck, decide to walk past.

That’s when I saw it. Old lady was by the mailbox, she fell into a puddle and had literally frozen over. Fire department had to come to basically burn her out.

Then I decided to walk up to the house after calling in what happened. Door was slightly open, I walked in and announced myself, no answer. Walked around, and her husband had died staring out the window at her. He was handicapped and in a wheelchair, didn’t have any power in the house for a week, and didn’t have a cell phone. He died watching his wife freeze to death.”


10. He put his finger over his lips and said, ‘Shhhhhhhhhh,’ then jumped in front of the train.

“I was on vacation in Tokyo a long time ago. Strolling through the streets one day I came to a train crossing and several pedestrians stopped as the train approached.

One guy, a mid-fifties salaryman in a cheap suit, turned to me, put his finger over his lips and said ‘Shhhhhhhhhh,’ then jumped in front of the train. It happened so fast I couldn’t tell what happened. It was like he was there, looking me in the eyes, then he took a step back and was replaced by a train.

Still shakes me to this day even though I have no idea what happened or why. There was something casual about it. He wasn’t totally insane or disheveled. He looked like a guy on his way home from work.”


11. Garbage cans full of body parts.

“My dad has been on the job for 25+ years and has some crazy stories, but one of his friends has the absolute worst crime scene story I’ve ever heard.

Back in the 90’s he used to work in a pretty shitty area in NYC. He routinely had some really messed-up experiences, but the worst scene he ever came across was a noise complaint in a more residential area (as opposed to the projects, where most of his calls took place). Neighbors called about this guy making all kinds of noise in his garage after hearing some screaming from the house earlier on. When they arrived and went to the door, no one answered, but then they opened the garage door and there was this guy, standing in his garage covered almost head to toe in blood, with blood all over the floor. He was screaming something about ‘they had to die.’ They approached him, guns drawn, and he dropped whatever he had in his hands and they cuffed him. There were several garbage cans in the garage, and they both almost threw up when they opened them to find the guy’s wife and two kids, chopped into pieces and thrown in the trash. Just filled to the top with the bloody chopped-up limbs, torsos, and heads. I can’t imagine responding to a noise complaint, expecting to tell a rowdy or intoxicated resident to keep it down, only to find a garage of garbage cans full of body parts.

The guy kept going on and on about how his family was being controlled by the Devil and they needed to die. That’s the part I remember most. Of all the crazy stories I’ve heard from cops, this is by far the worst and most horrifying.”


12. There’s a popular gang ‘mark’ where I am where you insert a knife into the anus and basically slash around in there, and both guys were thought to have this.

“Not police but work on an ambulance. Few months back we were called to an address in a very nice, expensive area. Call came through as something like ‘assault, query stab wound.’ Turned up the same time as the police, assault was an understatement.

Two guys had been beaten and stabbed multiple times each. There’s a popular gang ‘mark’ where I am where you insert a knife into the anus and basically slash around in there, and both guys were thought to have this. There was so much blood we didn’t know where to even put our bags down. The guys had also both shat themselves. The smell of blood, shit, vomit and weed all mixed together is something I would like to forget but it probably won’t happen anytime soon. One poor new police officer was throwing up outside and couldn’t come back in.

I wasn’t part of the crews who took the men to hospital and haven’t actually found out what happened to them, but it was one of the scariest scenes I’ve ever seen. Literally something out of a horror movie.”


13. They would kill the kids and preserve them so that they could stitch cocaine and heroin inside their bodies.

“My dad used to work DEA. He told me about how they figured out the cartels used to use stillborn and orphans to traffic drugs. They would kill the kids and preserve them so that they could stitch cocaine and heroin inside their bodies. They would hand the stuffed kids off to a girl that looked like a mom and they would pretend their kid was sleeping when they were crossing a border. Went on for years until a drug dog attacked one of the stuffed infants and cocaine snowed everywhere.”


14. She tells me as a form of punishment she inserts fingers into her 5-year-old’s vagina.

“Little girl tells her school nurse it hurts to pee. This leads to her making statements indicating molestation so they send her to hospital and call me. Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner confirms there is trauma to her vagina. Because she is a child I cannot ask her questions (we set up a ‘forensic interview’ with people trained to deal with this so it is less stressful) but I can listen in while she is talking to doctors. I hear her say ‘when I’m bad mommy and Uncle Badtouch (name changed for privacy) stick fingers inside me.’

So now I go find mom, expecting to hear complete denial. Nope. She tells me as a form of punishment she inserts fingers into her 5-year-old’s vagina. Her brother, who lives with her, does it also.

I wish I was making this up. Before you ask, the case was sent to the county prosecutor. I haven’t heard anything from it since which means she pled out, it was dropped, or it’s still awaiting trial.”


15. Dicks might not be able to ‘break,’ but this was a very broken dick.

“My dad is currently sitting right by me. He has 20 years active patrol duty and then 7 as sheriff.

Well, one time we got a call from guy saying his girlfriend broke his dick. Obviously, we were skeptical. So we go along with ambulance and fire to their house and walk in to his girlfriend sobbing and shaking in the corner. We walk into the bedroom and let me tell you: Dicks might not be able to ‘break,’ but this was a very broken dick.

Turns out they had gotten drunk and she wanted to hop on his dick by jumping from the top of their headboard onto him. Yeah…didn’t work. She bent his dick in half. By the time we got there it had turned black and purple and the bottom part was swelled but the top part was just flopping. I felt bad for that guy.”

The other one was a call we got from this woman saying ‘Mrs. XYZ is 90 years old and we haven’t seen her in 7 weeks. Can you perform a wellness check?’ This was in the middle of August after a couple streaks of 100-degree weather. Seven weeks is a long time.

So me and Rich (his partner) go over and lo and behold no visible AC unit in this 100-year-old house. So we load up our noses with Vick’s and open the door. Yeah… The Vick’s didn’t help. That house was well over 90 degrees F.

This lady had basically melted into a sludgy mess with some human feature still visible on her couch. The vapor her body was giving off was on the windows like condensation. Rich and I both threw up and called the coroner who basically had to remove this lady with her couch cushions. It was bad.”


16. A schizophrenic guy who was convinced he was a dog.

“I know a guy who is a jail guard, and he also worked in TBS (Dutch equivalent of jail for people with severe mental health problems). There was this schizophrenic guy who was convinced he was a dog. Now that might just sound sad and pathetic, but the guy actually bit someone in the throat and shredded his jugular. He tried to do it in jail as well, and he now has to wear a muzzle 24/7.”


17. He beat his wife to death with a porcelain toilet cover.

“A guy came back mid-deployment and asked his wife for an Xbox. She stated that they didn’t have enough money and the started arguing about finances. The guy leaves his house and comes back a short while later when his wife is in the shower. He drags his wife out of the shower and puts her head in between the toilet bowl and the toilet seat, takes the porcelain toilet cover and proceeded to beat her to death with it. Awful bloody mess of a scene.”


18. A three-year-old burned from the waist down in a bathtub.

“Not a cop but paramedic. The worst thing I’ve seen was a three-year-old burned from the waist down in a bathtub. The way this happened was the mother was ‘super pissed’ at the baby’s father and filled the tub with very hot water and dunked the child into the water. She then tried to hide what she did by putting pajamas on the baby, which caused the fabric to stick to the burns. I almost lost my job that night because I couldn’t handle the smugness that was across that bitch’s face.”


19. What used to be his face and chest was now a large amount of maggots and goop.

“I mean, where do you start? What to you mean by worst? The saddest scene was a fire where a number of children had died. There is nothing as sad and disturbing as seeing a lifeless child.

The most grotesque scene was an obese man who died on the toilet and fell forward onto the linoleum floor. He lay there for three days. We had to peel him off the floor and what used to be his face and chest was now a large amount of maggots and goop.

The scene that made me most angry was the home where the big fat husband had thrown his tiny wife around the place and put her head through the plasterboard of a wall. The sight of her cowering and him standing there laughing made my blood boil. Fortunately he violently resisted arrest. He didn’t think he could be arrested in his own home.

The most frustrating scene was the rape victim who was too afraid to name her attackers because they were connected to the I.R.A. That feeling when you can do nothing to bring such a heinous man to justice.”


20. A ring of people who bullied and assaulted vulnerable adults with the mental capacities of children.

“My dad’s in the police in Britain, and works in child and vulnerable adults protection in an English constabulary he’s seen some pretty fucked-up things. But the worst one by far was this ring of people who bullied, tormented, and physically assaulted (punch, hosed water) vulnerable adults with the mental capacities of children. I have no idea how he copes with it, but he seems to and I love him so much for the amazing work he did and continues to do. Here’s the article if you’re so inclined.”


21. The appetizing aroma of a burning human body.

“A friend of mine’s dad is a cop. He told the story of one time he was called to investigate a fire that was lit in an alleyway. This was midday, he’d yet to eat lunch and had skipped breakfast, and upon arriving to the scene noticed a particularly appetizing aroma coming from the fire. His mouth was involuntarily watering. Turns out, the fire was an ignited carpet, rolled up, with a dead person inside of it.”


22. Brains and various red goo all in the branches of the tree.

“Probably the four suicides I’ve worked.

My very first; a man who had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer decided to prematurely end his life. He jumped in the early morning from a 5-story parking structure. He landed in such a way that his brain pretty much ‘popped’ out of his head. When we found him, his brain was fully intact…but sitting in a puddle of blood exactly 23 feet from his body. He left a note apologizing ‘to whomever finds my body’ and asking that his wife and daughter were cared for.

The second, we got a suspicious circumstances call regarding a possible ‘explosion’ next to a baseball stadium. It was a little after midnight. Upon arrival, and not seeing any smoke or flames, I got out and walked around. There were big tents set up for a game the next day. I saw what looked like a person sitting in a chair in the middle of a tent. I called out to him and he didn’t answer. As I approached, I put my flashlight on him and nearly soiled myself; the top half of his head was just…gone. I walked under the tent and noticed a shotgun sitting next to him. As I was calling it in, I felt something like rain hit the top of my head. I shined my flashlight up, and the inside of the top of the tent was absolutely coated with blood and brain matter. He did not leave a note. I still have nightmares about that one.

The third, we got a report of a single gunshot in a field next to a church. I had a trainee at the time. It’s about 02:00. We drive next to the field and pretty quickly spotlight a body lying next to a lone tree. Pretty much the same thing as the last one; top half of the head missing, single-shot 12-gauge sitting next to the body. He had sat down, leaned against the tree, and put the shotgun in his mouth. Brains and various red goo all in the branches of the tree. No note.

And the most recent one; an RA at a dormitory had reported a bad smell to a maintenance worker. The maintenance worker keyed into a room on the first floor after knocking and getting no answer. He said when he opened the door, he recognized the smell and immediately called us. A paraplegic student had committed suicide by overdosing on prescription medication. We found him in his wheelchair with his head in the sink. Apparently he was vomiting into the sink, and the sink had clogged up. His head was partially submerged in vomit, and, as the A/C was off, he was very, very ripe. I couldn’t seem to get that smell out of my uniform no matter how many times I washed it. He didn’t leave a note, but we found out later he sent a text message to a girl he was fond of. She ignored it, thinking he was just being dramatic.

The mental healthcare system in my state is severely broken, overburdened, and rife with bureaucracy.”


23. Dead bodies in the desert.

“Dead bodies in the desert. Ranging from skeletal remains to just a couple of days or less old.

Bloated and half-eaten bodies are gross. It’s also a stark reminder of how badly the desert can kick your ass.”


24. I hit the TV accidentally and thousands of dead roaches fell out.

“Went to a call for a dirty house with children in it (child abuse hotline). The door is open but you can smell something really bad has happened. We call the landlord and he lets us come in the property.

Summary:

Roaches everywhere. I hit the TV accidentally and thousands of dead roaches fell out.

The carpet was moving… rats had tunneled under the carpet pad and you could see the floor wiggle.

One of the bedroom’s walls stunk really, really bad, and my partner hit it with a baton. The wall collapsed and hundreds of dead mice fell out.

The people had the water turned off, so they disconnected the toilet drain and just pooped into the hole in the floor. The basement was full of feces and old McDonald’s bags and trash.

The power had been off so everything in the fridge was molded over and rotten. They had been peeing in the sink with no water to rinse it down.

Rancid milk in baby bottles. I mean there were literally 40 or so bottles with milk in them. Really weird.

Turns out the people had moved to a hotel, so we took the kids and placed them in foster care, and set the parents up with drug court.

I stripped down in my garage when I got home and just threw everything I was wearing away. Filthiest house I was ever in.

The landlord ended up donating it to the fire department so they could practice putting out fires. They poisoned the remaining mice first.

They had just thrown all their garbage down the basement steps. They took the time to bag up the garbage then threw it down there…it was up to the ceiling.”


25. They caught a local teacher with something 8 full CDs of child porn.

“My dad was a cop and the worst case he ever had was while he was a detective. They caught a local teacher with something 8 full CDs of child porn. The most awful thing about it that you have to go through it all to see if you can identify any adults in the pictures to try and get them busted. Fucking sick.”


26. There were a fair amount of organs hanging out.

“I’m no cop, but my stepfather wanted me to tell his story. Here goes:

My father got a call about a car crash. Usually they’re pretty bad, but this one was the worst he’d ever seen.

The car had two parents and four kids inside. The parents were pulled out immediately, and neither had serious injuries. They were both understandably scared about their children, so he put on some rubber gloves and went into the flipped car.

All of them were dead. And none were clean deaths. The youngest’s spine was protruding from his back, and the oldest was missing most of his head. Another had his face mangled by debris, and the last one was cut in the abdomen by his seatbelt; and there were a fair amount of organs hanging out.

He had no clue what to do; he didn’t want those parents to see that. So he wrapped them up inside of the car. When the mother saw the smallest one come out in a bloodied blanket, she fell to the ground and just screamed. The father walked up to grab the child, and my stepfather just said, ‘Sir, I don’t think you want to see this’ and the father just started to wail unlike anything my stepdad had ever heard. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he choked out.

And after they’d taken the bodies, he was there to clean up and investigate. While he was searching, he found a small, bloody sock sitting on the ground. He told me it was the only time he’d ever cried on the job. In his words, “I’ve seen grown men blow their brains out, I’ve seen people beat their spouse until their face was mush; hell, I even had to reach into someone’s chest cavity once to resuscitate them; but I’ll never forget those kids.”


27. Her head was completely removed, crudely and raggedly, as though it was sawn off.

“My partner and I got a tip from a narcotics source to check out an abandoned bowling alley for some activity. It was the middle of the day, so we didn’t expect anything to be going on right then. We called in and pulled up from the back entrance to have a look around. Lo and behold, there were heavy chains on all the doors except for one side door, where the chain had been cut with an angle grinder or something similar.

The bowling alley faced a fairly busy highway, so our first thought was that local drug dealers were using it as a convenient stash/pack spot, or that there were squatters inside. We pulled our weapons and flashlights, called for another car, and went in. We came in from the side, looking across the lanes, about even with the scoring terminals. A quick look around, and it was obvious that people had been there: empty beer cans, cigarette butts everywhere, some boxes of sandwich bags sitting out on the little tables. The place smelled like 20 years worth of cigarette smoke, mildew, wet wood, old plastic, rusty metal, and musty seat cushions. It was a very familiar smell after Katrina.

I don’t remember who saw her first, my partner or me. There was a woman at the far end of the lanes, away from the door and hidden from the front windows. She was in an orange dress, the skirt pulled up around her waist and the top pulled down under her breasts. She was lying on the floor between two benches, as if she were passed out drunk, a young black lady. She was wearing very dirty sandals with gold-colored straps and little fake jewels across the tops. Her skin was dark shiny and blotchy and contrasted sharply with the soft bright orange material.

Her head was completely removed, crudely and raggedly, as though it was sawn off. We stared at her for a few seconds, taking it all in, the colors washed out somewhat by the harsh beams of our bright TacLights. All my partner could muster was the word, ‘Goddamn.’ I barfed into my mouth before the smell even really registered. The scene turned out to have been a couple of days old and the metallic rotting smell was turned up to 11 by the midday heat trapped inside the building. There was a huge pool of blood around her torso and neck, almost black and blending into the dark industrial carpet that was between the lanes and the snack bar. Her limbs were grotesquely swollen and flung outward, the straps of her sandals digging into her feet.

Backup pulled up right as we staggered back through the side door into the harsh sunlight. It was our supervisor and the young officer he was FTOing. We explained the situation, and he called for more units and the coroner so they could secure and begin processing the scene. We put some Vick’s on and went back into look behind the snack bar and the counter where the shoes are. The sergeant found the lady’s head on the floor behind the snack bar. Her teeth were showing as if she were growling, and her eyes were swollen and puffed out. There were several squadrons of flies and gnats buzzing around the head. She was wearing a wig, which had partially come off and the whole thing was almost comical, like a wax head where the details weren’t quite right, but my brain kept screaming at me that this was a person’s head. It felt like all the emotions I could possibly feel were fighting together in my stomach. I’ve seen hundreds of corpses throughout my careers, but this one is burned into the film of my memory.

We continued to perform some mundane functions at the scene for a little while, but once others started arriving, our LT sent us back to the office to start writing up our notes. The investigation later revealed the woman was a prostitute. She was involved with a drug dealer who used the bowling alley for business purposes and to entertain clients. I think the story came to be that she was offered as payment to another drug dealer from Central America, and this person murdered her while he was having sex with her, right there on the floor. He slit her throat with a knife and continued until she was fully decapitated, either during or right after the rape. I think I remember that the suspect was identified, but I know he was never caught. This was, by far, the worst scene I ever saw firsthand.”


28. The woman was being strapped down to a stretcher screaming for us to kill her.

“On Christmas night, a woman got in a fight with her boyfriend and decided she was going to kill herself and her two kids. So drunk and high, she got her car over 90MPH and ran off the road. The car hit the ditch and went airborne, hit a small tree turning it sideways. The car then hit an oak tree and split in half, throwing the front half with mom still buckled another 20 yards down a ravine, and the back half spun around back toward the road. The kids were thrown, they survived miraculously with minor injuries, and the girl’s head smacked a telephone pole, dead instantly.

I arrived and the woman was being strapped down to a stretcher screaming for us to kill her, blood pouring from a 6-inch gash in her leg. The boy was already loaded in the ambulance, and fire was working on the little girl, as she hadn’t been declared yet. I was still pretty fresh off field training and I had seen some shit, but this was something else. The ground was soaked and a muddy mess from rain, and there was blood and debris everywhere. I noticed kids’ shoes and little toys strewn everywhere, and when I saw the little girl and how mangled her face was I had to walk away before I could pull it together to start helping direct traffic and assist Fire/EMS. The whole scene was surreal.”


29. There was practically nothing left of his face.

“Not a cop but I am in college to become one. One of my professors at the time worked homicide as a lieutenant at the precinct and brought in crime scene photos all the time to show us on the projector. One was of this 17-year-old kid named Jason Sweeney who’d had his head caved in on the early 2000s. It was a pretty big case at the time in Philadelphia. He worked construction part-time and walked home every Friday with a couple hundred dollars in cash for his pay. His best friends, one girl and two guys, all in the 16-18 range, wanted to make a quick buck. The girl lured him to this regular meet-up spot for sex out near some woods. When he started taking his clothes off, the three friends jumped him. The 18-year-old guy if I remember right had a hammer, and his brother had a cinderblock. Kid didn’t stand a chance. His parents had to identify him based on the clothes he was wearing because there was practically nothing left of his face or hands (defensive wounds).

The brother got tried as an adult and got 25 to life, the 18-year-old got life, and the girl got 15 for ratting out the other two.”


30. I saw four guys blown away with a AK-47 that had a double drum clip.

“I saw four guys blown away with a AK-47 that had a double drum clip. One guy’s face looked like the Predator. I had a 9-person shooting another time. Last month I cut a lady down who hung herself from the third floor balcony. The neighbors in the second floor found her hanging outside their porch window when they woke up for work. I probably have been to at least 20 shootings. Not sure what the worst is. I have seen a few jumpers. Worst calls are children. I have seen a few killed by cars. Grossest calls are burns. Saw two people tied to chairs. One was shot. The house was set on fire. The one who lived was the one who was shot. That was a bad call. But I am a firefighter so I don’t know if this counts. The op was asking cops.”


31. I can remember the smell of gun smoke in the air and the tiny ‘plops’ of brain falling from the ceiling.

“We had a kid (late teens) hang himself on Halloween on a hill visible to the whole neighborhood. Of course everyone thought it was a prop until someone complained that it was in poor taste decided to check it out.

Also a suicide with a high-powered rifle. I was dispatched to go check on the guy because he was sending vaguely upsetting texts to his wife. As I was on my way I kept getting updates that the texts were escalating and finally a ‘goodbye. Tell our son this isn’t his fault.’…shit…guy shot himself under the chin as I was pulling up at the house. The shot split the front of his head in two. There was no surface in the garage that wasn’t covered in brain matter. I can remember the smell of gun smoke in the air and the tiny ‘plops’ of brain falling from the ceiling. The absolute worst part was when the coroner was examining the body on scene, we had to put him on his stomach. As we did, the split sides of his face were in such a way that they were splayed out on either side, and both eyes were looking back at us. I still have nightmares about that one. When I got back to the office to gear down for end of shift, I found that I had some of his brains on the back of my vest carrier. That went straight into the garbage.

Also, not a “scene” per se, but we recovered an avalanche victim and found a go pro on his helmet. Go Pros were still a novelty at the time so we weren’t quite sure what we’d find. I watched it and sure enough it caught the whole thing. The worst part was moments after we were buried, he realized what was going on and began screaming. I had to listen to the whole thing (in case he screamed out any messages for the family or anything). The screams were muffled inside the waterproof case, but still horrifying :(”


32. A doctor in the children’s department at a very popular hospital was raping the pre-teen terminally ill girls during the night shift.

“Probation officer for violent sex offenders here. I’ve got a few I could add to this but this one sticks with me as the ‘worst.’ A doctor in the children’s department at a very popular hospital was raping the pre-teen terminally ill girls during the night shift. This went on a couple times a month for years before he was finally caught. One of the girls lived longer than the doctors expected and complained of ‘pains.’ During an inspection they discovered the rape and posted cameras which eventually caught him. He ended up getting probation because he A: could afford great lawyers who got him in front of a sympathetic judge; and B: most of his victims were dead. He’d up the pain meds before the act so that there would be less resistance. The court never knew the extent of his deviance, but after I finally got his polygraphs back we learned the full story. He eventually died in custody after we got him on a violation.”


33. The fire traveled up from his shoe and the boy was engulfed in seconds.

“Not a cop, but I work in a police station in a civilian position. One of the worst described to me by a coworker was early in her career, a group of boys, probably around 12, were playing in an empty lot. They had a jerry can of propane and were dipping a stick with a rag wrapped around it into the can, then lighting it on fire. Anyways, one of the boys managed to get some of the propane on his shoe and lit his shoe on fire. He bent down to pat the fire on his shoe out, and one of his friends thought it would be funny to toss the rest of the jerry can on to his friend. The fire traveled up from his shoe and the boy was engulfed in seconds. My colleague arrived only minutes later, but it was too late. She was ordered to remain with him until he arrived at the hospital and to stay with him until the coroner arrived, because though he was still alive when she arrived, it was clear that he wasn’t going to make it, and she needed to do continuity on the body. She said when they performed the autopsy, the only part of his body that hadn’t sustained second or third degree burns were the bottoms of his feet. My colleague says the hardest this she has ever done was traveling to the hospital with him, and listen to him beg to see his parents again, as they both knew he was going to die.”


34. He was the first deputy on-scene at a fatal accident where his daughter turned out to be the victim.

“One of the deputies in the county I grew up in was the first on-scene at the fatal one-car accident where his only daughter was the driver.”


35. That’s not a dog. That’s one of the guys from the party. He’d been hit by a car.

“I’m posting this for whatever first responders arrived on the scene:

14 years ago I worked at a fast food restaurant in a small town. All the people who worked there (besides me) came from this other small town about 15 miles away.

They invite me to a party.

I wimp out and don’t go.

The next morning I come in to work and nobody is there. Nobody. No managers, no cooks, wait staff, nobody. When someone finally does come in, he looks like he just got back from the trenches in WWI.

Pale, haggard, he informs me that their party took place at our cook’s house. There were people inside the house and people having fun outside.

There was a THUD in the street as a car passed and people started yelling at the host that his dog had been hit by a car. So everyone runs out to check on his dog.

So there’s the whole party lined up on the side of the road and everyone registers it at the same instant:

That’s not a dog. That’s one of the guys from the party. He’d been hit by a car.

Shock takes time to set in. While it was setting in, a second car drove through and cut him in half.”


36. The perp gave his name as ‘Explosion the Aquarius.’

“My father is a retired Detroit cop. One of his better stories is about a guy that he arrested for disorderly conduct (and later assault). The perp was both very high and very aggressive, and whatever drugs he had taken seemed to dull the pain that he should have been feeling from getting into a brawl with my father and his partner at the scene. Finally they were able to subdue him, and try to get his name:

Explosion the Aquarius

That’s the only name that he would give.”


37. There were chunks of hair and scalp all over the place and you could tell they had been torn out of the woman’s head.

“Not a cop, but I did crime scene investigation for a little while.

While I was in training we got a call to a scene of a girl that had been killed. I looked it up in the dispatching system and one of the lines stuck out to me. It was a part of the description of the scene from the 911 caller and it said ‘head blown off.’ That’s when I knew we were in for a crazy scene. We got to the scene and went into the home and there was a young woman who was dead on the floor. The description in the dispatching system was 100% correct. I won’t go into major details, but there was basically nothing left of the head. What stuck out to me most about the scene was that it was very obvious there was a violent struggle. There were chunks of hair and scalp all over the place and you could tell they had been torn out of the woman’s head. Her pants and underwear were across the room from her, and we learned later that she had been raped. We also found out later that the woman was mentally handicapped, which added to the sadness of the story, although it doesn’t have much to do with the murder. She had also been shot multiple times in the head with a shotgun. It was almost impossible to avoid the blood and brain and skull matter everywhere. One thing I’ll never forget about that scene is how much it smelled like iron. Blood has a rather irony smell, and in this scene it was absolutely everywhere. The images and smells from that scene will stay with me forever, and I still think about it at times. It doesn’t really bother me, it just reminds me of what some people are capable of and helps reinforce my desire to work in the field that I do.

Anyway, the case was decided and the guy got life in prison. He was caught because of excellent CSI work and DNA evidence.”


38. A headless clown with some neck bits still attached.

“Ex-girlfriend’s dad broke in on a b-day clown who killed his wife for cheating on him and he was hiding in the bathroom. When my g/f’s dad kicked in the door it knocked the shotgun back and the guy accidentally blew the majority of his head off. He was hiding in the shower and the door hit the barrel and it managed to get under his chin and somehow it went off when the guy fell back into the shower/tub. He described it to me as a headless clown with some neck bits still attached. He laughed as he said it was funny. I think it was his coping mechanism for dealing with a messed-up situation. He was a really nice guy to his family, so that’s all I experienced about him.”


39. The driver was decapitated from his chin up, the passenger was decapitated from the middle of her nose up.

“My father was a cop for 25 years; he’s seen some shit in his time. Here’s what he thinks was his worst crime scene:

A domestic murder where a husband attacked and killed his wife with hammer blows to the head. She was discovered by her children, ages 4 and 7, who told their neighbors, who called the police. He was found on an industrial estate nearby, in his car, having expired through breathing exhaust fumes.

Worst accident scene:

A 7-and-a-half-ton goods vehicle lost control on a motorway, crossed all three lanes, went through the central reservation, hitting several vehicles on the opposite carriageway. One of these vehicles was a Mercedes Sprinter van. The impact flattened the Mercedes from the driver’s side across the vehicle’s back; the passenger walked away with a minor head injury, the driver’s body had been stretched to approximately 9 feet long due to the impact force. The occupants of the 7-and-a-half tonner were both dead, the impact being on front driver’s side corner diagonally across the cab; the driver was decapitated from his chin up, the passenger was decapitated from the middle of her nose up. Extracting the remains was…an interesting experience.”


40. She got the gun, shoved it into his stomach, fired, and blew the back half of his torso away.

“Former paramedic here. Was called to a murder scene, not for the victim, but for a rookie female cop who started vomiting and then became catatonic at the scene. A woman had killed her husband with a blast from a shotgun. He was drunk, naked, and farted right in her face at the dinner table. She got the gun, shoved it into his stomach, fired, and blew the back half of his torso away. Then, after he was already dead, she put it in his mouth, and blew his head off. The cop was unable to continue, and resigned a few days later.” Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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