Perry Smith And Truman Capote Shared A Profound And Intimate Connection, Leading To Speculation That

What is that? Strange figure caught on camera at Amarillo Zoo

The City of Amarillo is asking for help identifying a strange figure seen on surveillance...

KFDA reports security cameras captured the image around 1:25 a.m. on May 21 inside a perimeter fence at the Amarillo Zoo.

City officials said there were no signs of vandalism or attempted entry into the zoo and no animals or people were harmed.

Now, the city is encouraging the public to submit ideas for what the figure could be.

On 15 July, 1974, 29-year-old Christine Chubbuck informed co-workers that she was going to read a newscast to open her talk show, Suncoast Digest, which wasn’t something she normally did. Her guest for that day’s show sat in the studio while Christine went and sat down at the news anchor’s desk. 

The cameras began rolling and Christine began reading from her news report. She covered a news article on a local shooting in a restaurant. She then began reading a piece on suicide. During the reading, she explained that she would be declared dead within eleven hours and followed this by saying: “In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts, and in living color, you are going to see another first: an attempted suicide.” 

She then produced a .38 revolver that she had concealed throughout the news report and shot herself in the head. The entire thing had been aired and members of the public began to ring 911 while others rang the station asking if it was fake. 

Christine was rushed to hospital but was declared dead 14 hours later.

Tamara Samsonova, known as the “Granny Ripper,” defied the common stereotype of a serial killer, as she was a 68-year-old grandmother. Her arrest in 2015 shocked the world and launched one of the most bizarre true crime cases in history.

Authorities arrested Samsonova on suspicion of murdering 79-year-old Valentina Ulanova, whose dismembered body was found in a pond. Samsonova shared an apartment with Ulanova and was caught on CCTV disposing of her body, which led to her becoming a suspect. When police searched the apartment, they discovered a gruesome diary containing details of not just this murder, but several others.

The diary contained Samsonova’s confession to killing at least 13 people, including her husband, whom she murdered in 2005, and another tenant. She described how she dismembered their bodies with a knife in the bathroom and disposed of the remains in different locations. Shockingly, Samsonova also confessed to cannibalizing her victims and getting rid of unwanted body parts and organs.

The Bleeding House on Fountain Drive

One day in Sept of 1987, Atlanta Georgia resident, Minnie Winston awoke to find dark red splotches of blood in several rooms (on both the walls and floor) of her house. There was blood on the bathroom’s lower walls, the kitchen, living room, bedroom, hallways, and basement. Blood was also found in a crawlspace and under a television set.

The police came, collected samples of the blood and sent them to the state crime lab. It was concluded that the blood samples belonged to a human but the police had no idea where it came from. It didn’t belong to either Minnie or her husband. There was no evidence of a break-in or wrong doing. The couple had never witnessed anything like this before and were terrified. Given the amount of blood they found, it appeared to have been placed, or dripped, on the spot from a very lively source. In other words, someone inside their home had been bleeding profusely. To this day, there has been no explanation of how the blood got there and who it belonged to. The source of the blood was never found.

NY Times Article

Additional Source (since NY Times has a paywall now)

Fort Worth Museum Hauntings

In 2015, Kevin Brown snapped a series of photos on his iPad while he was at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History in Texas. Brown, who was there with his niece and two nephews didn’t see anything strange about the images at the time they were taken. It wasn’t until later that day that his niece noticed something very unsettling in one of the photos.

The photo appears to show a withered old hag dressed in dirty rags floating above the floor with outstretched hands.

“That is the first time in my life I’ve actually had the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It freaked me out. It freaked (my niece) out,” Brown said in a newspaper report.

‘I’m positive I would have noticed something like that and it was strange.’ Brown added, It wasn’t noticed until we looked at the pictures.’

The museum has a history of strange occurrences particularly when it played host to a Titanic exhibition. Security guards have reported unusual shadows showing up on cameras and objects mysteriously moving around by themselves.

“ Okmulgee, Oklahoma fire crews say they had a bizarre lightning strike call at the Oxford Apartments overnight. They say lightning came through the vent in the roof and struck the toilet, shattering it.“

I will accept precisely one form of toilet humour and it is jokes about these three pictures.

are chimps as unpredictable and dangerous as people say? I remember there being a famous mauling story from a woman who had one as a pet, but he was drugged with xanax or something similar and was having withdrawals, something like that. Definitely not a normal set of chimp circumstances, so I was wondering if they are usually randomly violent and difficult for humans to predicts

Lets talk about Travis, the tragic chimp that famously mauled Charla Nash.

(source)

Travis was a chimpanzee that was raised in a human household and acted in several commercials in his youth. He was taken from his mother and sold to his owners at 3 days old and lived with them until his death at 13 years of age. What makes us think of Travis as dangerous and unpredictable is that when he was young he was known for being docile, intelligent, obedient, and kind to the humans around him. He even play wrestled with people and was known to stop if his wrestling buddy became overwhelmed or he was told to stop. Travis did not lead a normal or natural life for a chimpanzee by any means; not only was he socialized as human and was raised to do chores and take part in human enrichment (he even knew how to drive a car, which is absolutely not good), but as you can see he was very overweight as a result of eating ice cream, tea, and other human foods instead of the balanced and diverse diets chimpanzees need.

Circumstances escalated with Travis when one of his owners and their only son died, and his remaining owner Sandra Herold became increasingly attached to Travis. The two would sleep in the same bed and bathe together. This was all at a time when Travis was entering adolescence and the divergence between his chimpanzee instincts and human socialization was widening. While human teenagers are able to journal, have conversations, and express themselves in order to process the challenges of puberty, Travis had no outlets for the natural frustration, aggression, and challenges he was facing. This led to the 2003 incident where Travis was on the loose for several hours after a pedestrian threw an empty soda bottle at the car that he was in, which went through a partially open window and struck him while stopped at a traffic light. Travis unbuckled his seat belt, opened the car door and chased his assailant. He also escaped from a police car when apprehended and chased the police officers around the car. Basically, there were warning signs that Travis was becoming too much to handle 6 years before the incident where he mauled, but because he had been a member of the family and community for so long he was allowed to continue to live with Sandra Herold.

The main thing I take away from Travis’ story here, even before the mauling incident, is that Travis’ behavior makes perfect sense for a chimpanzee. Because he was anthropomorphized to the point where his owner essentially thought of him as her son, the media sensationalized the story as a beloved animal “turning” on his loved ones. The thing is though, he didn’t really act unpredictably at all, the signs were there from the beginning and his behavior escalated gradually before it came to a head in 2009, the people around him just ignored the warnings. Even taking xanax out of the question which can have some pretty adverse effects on humans let alone chimps, the 2009 incident began with Travis leaving the house with his owners car keys (his property, as far as he is concerned), and his owners friend Charla Nash trying to lure him back to the house with his favourite toy. Essentially, Travis was leaving his territory when he saw someone who he may not have recognized as a member of his troupe in his territory, with his treasured item. When he tried to defend his territory by attacking her, Herold began to attack him which escalated the conflict. Additionally, chimpanzees are 5-6 times stronger than humans and as he grew up play fighting with humans he was not really capable of conceptualizing how disproportionate his strength was.

Now, lets turn to talk about another chimp. Meet September: 

(source)

Like Travis, September started her life as a pet. She was raised as a human child would be, and when she reached adolescence her owners recognized that she was too large and strong to safely keep in the house, and began keeping her in a cage in their backyard. Luckily, her owners recognized that this was no life for a chimp and surrendered her and two other chimpanzees to Save the Chimps, a sanctuary in Florida in 2002 when September was 23. She is now 42 years old, and despite having tragically similar circumstances to Travis, is thriving. Due to her history as a pet, September found it very difficult to become accustomed to living with other chimps, even the two other chimpanzees that lived with her when she was a pet, but has become a member of a troupe and spends her days painting, braiding strips of fabric, and exploring her island home.

Basically, there are no bad chimps, only tragic circumstances. Even when chimps in the wild are violent there are rational explanations for their behavior such as territorial disputes and interpersonal conflicts. They are only difficult to predict if you expect them to act like humans, and not chimpanzees.

Throughout the 1970′s, Rodney Alcala brutally raped and murdered at least eight women in New York and California. It is believed that he may have killed as many as 130 women due to the thousands of photographs of unidentified women found inside his home. He would post as a Playboy photographer and would take photographs of his victims before and after killing them.

In 1978, Alcala appeared on the TV show, The Dating Game. The purpose of the game was that a contestant could interview three eligible bachelors who were hidden behind a screen and then she had to choose a winner. Alcala won, but fortunately Cheryl Bradshaw, the contestant, refused a date with him because she found him “creepy” after meeting him backstage.

ISSEI SAGAWA – “the Kobe Cannibal” – DEAD at 73

ISSEI SAGAWA – “the Kobe Cannibal” – DEAD at 73

Issei Sagawa, a Japanese murderer known as the “Kobe Cannibal”, died of pneumonia on November 24 2022 at the age of 73. His funeral was attended only by relatives, with no public ceremony planned, according to a statement from his younger brother and the publisher of the brother’s 2019 memoir. In 1981, 32 year old Sagawa, then a Japanese exchange student, murdered a young Dutch woman, Renée…

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