This article was originally published on HistoricTalk
A Lonely Librarian With a Secret Past
Lorraine Jacob was found passed away in Liverpool in 1970. However, authorities never managed to catch the person who did it until cleaners found an envelope marked "confidential" hidden away in Librarian Harvey Richardson's closet after his passing years later. In the letter, Richardson admitted to ending Jacob's life after she'd stolen two of his cameras containing photos he'd taken of her children. There was no evidence the photos were sinister, but they led to a fight, and Richardson ultimately took Jacob's life.
Richardson didn't have a spot on his criminal record and had worked a quiet life as a librarian. Police never even considered him as a suspect.
He Thought His Time Was Coming so He Confessed... But Then He Survived
A man named James Brewer thought he was on his deathbed in 2009 after having a stroke and made a confession to the police. The man told them that he had shot his neighbor, Jimmy Carroll, 32 years earlier because he thought that Jimmy was trying to seduce his wife. After taking Jimmy's life, the man and his wife fled to Oklahoma, where the two lived under different names for more than three decades.
Unluckily for Brewer, he ultimately survived his stroke, and police charged him with the crime after he recovered and returned home to Tennessee, where the crime took place.
Serial Killer Confesses to Killing Famous TV Host's Son
If you've ever seen the T.V. show America's Most Wanted, then you probably know that the host's son's life was taken years earlier, and that inspired him to create the show. However, you may not know the full story. Adam Walsh was six years old when he was abducted from a mall while out with his parents. Authorities later found the boy's head some 100 miles away, and despite identifying Ottis Toole as a suspect, the investigation was botched.
Toole would later be imprisoned for setting his apartment on fire with his boyfriend locked inside. When he was passing away in prison, he claimed to have taken the lives of around 1,000 people; a six-year-old Walsh was among them.
She Shipped the Freezer Containing the Evidence All Around the Country
Her family apparently didn't question her too much when Geraldine Kelley told them that her husband had passed away in a car accident a couple of years earlier. The truth was that she had done away with him and hidden his body in a freezer while the two were living in California. When she moved back home to Massachusetts, she even had the fridge shipped to the state. She eventually told her daughter about the whole ordeal while on her deathbed in 2004.
Though the crime had happened 14 years earlier, the body was still in the unplugged freezer, which was hidden away inside a storage unit. Kelley said that she had been a victim of domestic violence, but authorities were never able to prove a motive for certain.
She Missed Curfew and Her Mom Totally Lost It
Christine Kett's brother found her lifeless body on the stairs to their basement in 1867. It appeared as though she'd been struck in the head with something. Police questioned family members, including the brother, but he was proven to only have been coming home from work at the time. The mother cried in hysteria upon getting home and seeing the crowd. However, when she told police that she hadn't seen her daughter since the morning, neighbors quickly noted that they'd heard the two arguing earlier that same day.
But the police didn't have enough evidence to charge her. On her deathbed, she confessed to her son about the murder, which she said started after the daughter returned home late. The exchange led to the mother hitting the daughter in the head and the girl's ultimate demise.
Her Adoptive Mom Confessed to Buying Her on the Black Market
It's not uncommon for some people to only learn later in life that they'd been adopted at birth. However, finding out you were stolen from your birth family is a whole different story. One woman traveled back to China to be with her dying mother, and that's when her mom confessed that she'd been bought on the black market. The mother told her on her deathbed, and her granddaughter, who wrote about the incident online, said that her mom was overcome with grief after learning the truth.
She was sad for her biological parents, who she would probably never meet, and her adoptive mother, who always did their best for her.
He Spent 12 Years in Prison Until She Admitted It Was All a Lie
Wayman Cammile Jr. was released from prison in Delaware in 1987 after he took a plea deal in a rape case years earlier. He was released because the woman who accused him of the crime told authorities it was all a lie. She said that she made up the story in 1975 to cover up her robbery of him after he passed out in her apartment from drinking. She also said that she didn't want her landlord to think she'd invited this man to her apartment.
Cammile was released at the age of 50 and was united with his wife. However, authorities denied any wrongdoing or mishandling of the case at the time of his release.
Police Took Her Weapon yet Never Suspected She Was the Perpetrator
The 1967 killing of two women who worked at an ice cream parlor would remain unsolved for some 41 years until another woman confessed while on her deathbed. The other woman worked with the victims, Carolyn Perry and Constance Hevener, and she said that the two women would tease her about being a lesbian. So, that influenced Sharron Diane Crawford Smith's decision to bring a weapon when she went to tell them that she wouldn't be able to work the next day.
The conversation escalated, and Smith killed both the women, according to her confession. However, the crime weapon wouldn't turn up for some time, as a detective told her to give it to him at the time the crime took place because it was "dangerous for a young girl" to be carrying it. That police officer's widow would bring it forward after he passed away.
The Eerie Reason This 86-Year-Old's Hospital Room Was Covered in Crosses
A nurse reported that she once had a patient who'd set up 14 crosses all around her room. The nurse asked the 86-year-old woman to take them down in order to better treat her, but the woman refused. The elderly patient added that she had to keep them up because they represented "one cross for each soul she took." And that's what we call both surprising and creepy as heck. We can't even trust grandma!
This really makes you start to wonder about some people. It also makes you unlikely to trust anything anyone ever tells you ever again.
Man Admits Famous Loch Ness Monster Photo Was Fake
Probably one of the more famous photos on this list, this picture allegedly shows the Loch Ness monster. It was taken in 1934 by Colonel Robert Wilson. Though many skeptics attempted to disprove the photo over the years, it remained one of the most famous taken of the so-called monster. However, when Wilson's stepson was on his death bed in 1994, he confessed that he'd helped his step-father take the photo using a toy submarine.
And just like that, one of the most famous photos of the Loch Ness monster was proven to be a fake, even though the photo had persisted in the public's imagination for nearly a century.
Elderly Man's Murder Confession Was Proven False - He Just Wanted the Credit
Police thought that they had their man when a psychiatrist walked into their station and said that one of her recently deceased patients had confessed to the killing of 14-year-old Jacob Wetterling. Authorities quickly searched the home and found photos of children, children's shoes, and newspaper clippings about the abduction. They also found tufts of hair and newly poured concrete in the basement. However, when they cracked it open, they didn't find anything.
It wouldn't be until police raided the home of Daniel Heinrich in 2015, suspecting that he had inappropriate content involving children, that the case would come to a close. Inside, they found newspaper clippings about the abduction, and after questioning, Heinrich confessed to the crime.
A Killer Who Mistakenly Thought He Would Pass Away Soon
Already serving a prison sentence for a second-degree murder charge in 2006, James Washington confessed to another one in 2009. This time, Washington had suffered from a heart attack and thought he was about to pass. He told a guard that he was responsible for the 1995 killing of Joyce Goodener in Tennessee. However, Washington would recover and go on to try and tell authorities that he was hallucinating during his confession.
However, authorities learned that the two had been dating, and he was convicted and given life in prison without the possibility of parole. The trial only lasted around three days.
A Secret Affair
Sometimes a confession only affects a family, but other times it can rock the entire neighborhood. Someone wrote that their uncle was in a bad car accident, and right before he passed away, he wanted someone to tell his wife, "Wendy is my daughter, and I love her." While the sentiment is noble, here's the twist: Wendy was the neighbor's 5-year-old daughter. Well, that's awkward.
The person said that this created quite the ruckus after his uncle had passed away, but it was probably the right thing to do at the time.
"We Dumped Her Body in the Everglades"
A 17-year-old Amy Billig was last seen getting into a van in a Florida neighborhood on her way to visit her father's work before she disappeared in 1974. Her body was never found, and her mother would eventually exhaust every possible avenue in her search for her daughter. However, a former member of the Pagan's motorcycle club admitted to kidnapping Billig, forcibly feeding her substances, and violating her with other members of the gang before she passed away due to the substances.
While on his deathbed, he told his then-wife that they had dropped her body off in the Everglades, where alligators presumably ate the remains. However, authorities and her mother were both skeptical of the confession after it surfaced.
He Asked for Forgiveness but Who Was Left to Forgive Him?
Police found Joan Harrison after being violated and beaten until she passed in Preston, England, in 1975. Authorities would later go on to pin the crime on the Yorkshire Ripper, identified afterward as Peter Sutcliffe. However, even though Sutcliffe had terminated the lives of some 13 women from 1976 to 1981, he never violated them. Jump forward a couple of decades, and a convicted offender named Christopher Smith was arrested for a DUI in 2008.
When police found that his DNA matched the DNA found on Harrison the night of the incident, questions started to arise. And while Smith passed away from lung cancer during the investigation, he confessed to having done it in a hand-written note where he also asked for forgiveness.
Elderly Woman Reveals Her Late Father's Long-Kept Secret
Speaking of unsolved cases, another hospice worker told her daughter-in-law a story about a confession she received from an elderly woman once. The woman had called her over right before kicking the bucket and told the nurse that when she was little, she'd been out with her father and a couple of friends while they were drinking. On their way home, they hit a 3-year-old girl and proceeded to hide the body under the porch.
Hopefully, the nurse reported it to authorities, as the woman wanted the family to know what had happened.
Convicted Serial Killer Confesses One Last Crime
Minnesota was being terrorized by a serial killer dubbed "The Weepy Voiced Killer" in the 1980s. He got this name because he'd call the police right after or right before a crime and confess in a high-pitched voice. Police finally found him after one woman hit him in the head with a glass bottle. He called the police for help, claiming it had happened during a robbery, but the police were able to identify his voice in the recording.
He would confess to another murder on his death bed that authorities previously couldn't solve. Strangely, he had never called the police about this crime before or after it happened.
A Mother Admits She Covered up Her Son's Crime
A woman named Janet Tessier called the Illinois State Police in 2008. She told them that her mother had confessed 14 years earlier to having provided her brother with a false alibi in 1958. The police had questioned her brother, John Tessier, after receiving an anonymous tip about the passing of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph. His mother lied and told police her son had been on a military base on the night of the incident.
John had changed his name by this time and was working as a police officer in Seattle. Charges were brought in 2012, and he was convicted to life in prison. However, records of a collect call he made in another town on the night of the incident apparently surfaced, and he was declared innocent and released in 2017.
His Father Admitted He Did Away With His Mom
One of the things they don't prepare you for if you're in medical school or nursing school is the number of patients who will confess to crimes during their last days or last minutes of life. Sometimes, healthcare workers are accidentally there to witness confessions that change other family members' lives. One hospice worker wrote that they saw someone's father admit to their son that he finished off their mom.
There was no motive given or even any context related to the death. How difficult for the son.
His Victim? His Own Twin Brother
Probably one of the more bizarre confessions on this list, a nursing home worker reported that a patient once told her about doing away with his own twin brother. The crime allegedly happened in Vietnam during the war, and he did it to steal his brother's identity and return to the U.S. to be with his wife. His wife had already passed away by the time he confessed, and the children reportedly blamed the confession on dementia. That is until they found indisputable evidence.
They found a hand-written confession from decades earlier hidden away in a bible while they were cleaning out their parents' belongings.
Her Real Father Lived Just a Couple of Blocks Away
A boyfriend wrote this one, but in it, he said that his girlfriend had grown up not knowing her father because her mother had always said she didn't know him either. The mother had always said that she was simply sleeping around too much in the 1980s to know, but on her deathbed, she confessed and gave the man's name. The couple looked him up, and it turned out that he only lived a couple of blocks away.
The man had other children, who all looked like the girlfriend did when she was younger. However, because his criminal record was so long, the girlfriend decided not to make contact with him.
KKK Members Confessed and the Authorities Did Nothing
Willie Edwards Jr. was driving a truck for Winn-Dixie one night in 1957 when he was threatened by four men near Montgomery, Alabama. The men were part of the Klu Klux Klan and accused Edwards, who was only 25, of offending a white woman. They forced him to get into their vehicle and drove out to the Alabama River, where they made him jump 125 feet off the bridge.
Despite numerous investigations, no indictments would ever be made. Two of the men went on to confess to the murder. Raymond Britt confessed to authorities in 1976 and acted as a witness against Sonny Kyle Livingston, Henry Alexander, and James York, but the case was thrown out by a judge twice. Alexander would confess on his deathbed.
The Body Was Under His Patio
On his deathbed in 2010, a man named Roy Heath told police that he'd taken the life of someone named Mohammad Taki and disposed of the body under his patio. Taki was a 53-year-old Iraqi national, but police were never able to investigate the death fully because Heath passed away 13 days after his confession. However, authorities previously had their suspicions, and Heath apparently gave them a motive before he passed away.
Heath was reportedly also connected with a London gangster named Reggie Kray and had been accused of putting an end to the life of a business associate even before his confession. But authorities were never able to tie him to that case.
He Learned the Real Reason His Grandfather Fled Ireland
It's often hard to tell what our relatives were like when they were younger. This is especially true if a relative came from a foreign country with no recorded past or friends to fill you in. Someone posted a story online about a grandfather that admitted to killing his first wife in Ireland before he fled to the U.S. However, the person contended that the grandfather was one of the nicest people he'd ever met.
He also said that the grandfather found his first wife "harming" the neighbor's son, who was five years old at the time. The grandfather passed away three minutes later, and the family was shaken.
His Grandfather Lied and Declared "no Prisoners"
Unlike other wars, WWII is often depicted as clear-cut and a war that had obvious good guys and obvious bad guys. However, it was still a war, and bad things still happened on both sides. For example, someone posted a story online that his grandfather told him about the war. His unit was ambushed once in northern France and practically ripped apart. Only one other person from the unit was left standing afterward.
Despite this, they were left with three German prisoners. But his grandfather declared no prisoners and ended all of their lives.
That Was the Last Thing His Niece Expected Him to Say
There's nothing like talking to your uncle when he's close to kicking the bucket and him casually saying that he once took the lives of two men. That's what happened when Larry Sherrard was speaking to his niece right before his death and told her that he had killed two men after they "screwed me on my drugs, and I screwed them." She went to the police and reported the crime after he passed away.
The police had already found the location of one of the bodies, but with her help, they were able to find the bones of another at a different location.
Signs of a Different Time
Sometimes confessions can serve as reminders of a time very different than the one we live in today. That's what this confession is, as reported by a hospice worker. She said that a woman once told her that she once gave birth by herself to a stillborn. Because the child was illegitimate and she was ashamed of the birth, she hid the body. This one is sad and heartbreaking for everyone involved.
Not only is that very disturbing, but it's also very telling about society in general when this woman was growing up. When someone is forced to take measures this drastic out of pure shame, something is definitely wrong.
The Killer Confessed but Was Never Punished
Canadian police were astounded when one day in 2015, a 91-year-old man walked into their precinct and confessed to a murder that had happened 70 years prior in London. The man had been diagnosed with cancer and said that in 1946, he was cheated out of some money by a woman named Margaret Cook. After an altercation, the man pulled out a weapon and took her life outside the Blue Lagoon nightclub.
Because of his age, Canada never extradited the man to England to face charges, and his identity remains a mystery. Police during the time of the crime reported arriving on the scene and chasing a man wearing a coat and hat down the street before he was lost. It wasn't clear if this was the same man.
An Admission That Freed Two Innocent Men
Authorities were surprised when a man by the name of Michael Lee Wilson confessed to another crime right before his execution. Even more surprising was the way in which he confessed. He simply said: "Malcolm Scott and De'marchoe Carpenter are innocent." The two had been convicted in a drive-by 20 years earlier, despite authorities looking at Wilson first and finding him with the same weapon used in the crime.
Other irregularities in the case included the fact that Scott and Carpenter were convicted after only two eyewitnesses linked them to the murder. These two later recanted their stories.
Meeting Long-Lost Siblings
Despite the ethics of not telling your children that they might have siblings out there that they've never met, it actually isn't as uncommon as you might think. That's what one person found out when their father was on his deathbed and confessed to having more children than the son previously thought. He wrote that four children showed up to the funeral, in addition to two that he'd already known about.
After meeting them, they learned that there might be even more siblings out there, and now they all see each other when they have time.
Australian Gangster Admits He Exaggerated His Wrongdoings
Probably one of the only people to confess to murder well before his death, Australian gangster Mark Read published a biography insinuating that he'd been "involved" with 19 life-terminating crimes. However, he came clean after being diagnosed with liver cancer and told police he'd only directly cause the demise of four people. One of them happened while he was in prison. Another was the head of a prominent biker gang named Sydney Collins.
Read had hurt him after an argument over money, and Collins had turned him into the police because of it. So that's when Read took his life. However, authorities never found the body as Read passed shortly after his confession.
Another Family Secret Discovered
An anonymous user wrote this one, probably because he came across it by accident and wasn't supposed to know. He wrote that his grandfather had told his mom that her little brother wasn't his biological son while he was on his deathbed. The grandmother and grandfather were not together, but because it was scandalous at the time, everyone kept it a secret.
The grandmother took the secret to her grave, but the mother said that their father had always treated her little brother as if he were his own son.
The Actress Who Took Her Director's Life
William Desmond Taylor was a Hollywood director during the early days of cinema. He passed away in February 1922, but police were never able to determine with any certainty who was behind it, despite having several different suspects. That is until a former actress confessed to killing the director while she was on her deathbed. Margaret Gibson had previously worked with Taylor in 1910, but she failed to give a motive or many details about the case before she passed away.
It's probably because of this and the fact that there's nothing else linking her to the director's demise that the case remains unsolved to this day. Some theorize that another woman Taylor was seeing at the time may have been the one who committed the act as the evidence points to her, but we may never know for sure.
The Real Cause Of Death
Family secrets can be hard to stomach, especially when you grow up thinking you know someone or something well. A user wrote online that her mother and aunt were in their 20s when their sister passed away. They were told by their father that the sister had slipped and fallen while in the shower. However, they found the death certificate when they were cleaning out their father's house, and it listed the cause as suicide.
They confronted their father while he was on his deathbed, and he finally came clean and told them that was indeed how she passed away.
Maria Antoinette's Pocket Watch Is Recovered After Being Stolen From a Museum
Nili Shamrat had worked with a personal lawyer to negotiate the sale of a number of old watches after her husband passed away. She ended up selling around 40 pieces to the LA Mayer Museum in Jerusalem, but there was one problem. One of the timepieces had belonged to the museum years earlier and was known to be made for Maria Antoinette. The timepiece was stolen around 1983 and is thought to be worth around $30 million.
It turned out that the woman had been married to Na'aman Diller, a prolific forger and thief who'd been living in Tel Aviv during the 60s and 70s. Police had suspected him at the time but weren't able to link him to the crime. However, he confessed to his wife on his deathbed, who told the police when they questioned her.