These infamous murder cases dominated headlines and divided nations. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most divisive murder cases that tend to spark disagreements and arguments.
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00:00Trail. Oh, man.
00:03Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most divisive murder cases
00:08that tend to spark disagreements and arguments.
00:11It's death for Hoffman!
00:14No!
00:17Lyle and Eric Menendez.
00:19Why did we do it?
00:20Yes, Eric. Parasite is a very, very serious course of action to take.
00:27The question isn't whether Lyle and Eric Menendez killed their parents.
00:30That much is a given.
00:32The question is whether the killings were justified.
00:34And it's here where people tend to diverge.
00:37The brothers committed the crime on August 20th, 1989, and when put on trial,
00:42they claimed that they had suffered horrible abuse at the hands of their parents.
00:46And in that moment, I knew it was going to happen.
00:49I knew we were going to go through with it.
00:51The defense claimed that the killings were performed out of fear and revenge,
00:54while the prosecution argued that they had financial motives.
00:58The mixed public perception was mirrored in the two juries,
01:01who came back deadlocked and without a verdict.
01:04It wasn't until the second trial, when the brothers' abuse claims were severely limited,
01:08that they were found guilty and imprisoned.
01:10Earlier, a jury recommended that Lyle and Eric Menendez
01:13be sentenced to two consecutive life terms
01:16for the brutal slaying of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez.
01:20The killing of Johnny Stompanato.
01:22Frank, look, if I divorce Nick, he'll never give me a nickel.
01:25He'll keep the Twin Oaks and everything.
01:27Oh, what do we care?
01:28Lana Turner is an icon of the Golden Age of Hollywood,
01:31and she also had a very public relationship with Johnny Stompanato,
01:35the famous enforcer of gangster Mickey Cohen.
01:38He was known to be abusive towards Turner, and on April 4th, 1958,
01:42he was stabbed and killed by Turner's daughter Cheryl Crane in an act of self-defense.
01:47While Crane was exonerated, public opinion was and remains divided.
01:52The press fiercely criticized Turner's performative behavior during the trial,
01:56and she later settled a wrongful death lawsuit brought on by Stompanato's ex-wife.
02:00A conspiracy theory has also grown in recent years,
02:03claiming that it was Turner herself who stabbed Stompanato,
02:06and that Crane took the blame to protect her mother's reputation.
02:09There's... there's one thing we could do that would fix everything for us.
02:15What? Pray for something to happen to Nick?
02:18Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey
02:20And she says, Brendan, how could you possibly have done some of this?
02:24I saw you at home at 5 o'clock p.m.
02:27The story of Steven Avery and his young nephew Brendan Dassey
02:30earned widespread attention through the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer.
02:34The show was a pop culture sensation,
02:36with viewers engaging in fierce debate and discussing the merits of their imprisonment.
02:41Both men were allegedly involved in the murder of Teresa Halbach,
02:45and both were sentenced to life in prison.
02:47He was only interested in getting Brendan to plead guilty
02:51so Brendan could be an asset for the prosecution against his uncle.
02:57However, many aspects of the case, including Dassey's coerced confession
03:01and the potential for police misconduct,
03:03have raised some major quandaries and brought their guilt into question.
03:06The case has become emblematic of concerns over wrongful convictions,
03:11abuses of power, and the treatment of vulnerable defendants in the legal system.
03:15I would hope that those people don't give up on Steven Avery.
03:19Michael Peterson
03:28One of the most infamous and debated criminal cases in recent American history
03:32began on December 9, 2001.
03:34That night, Peterson called 911,
03:37saying that he had found his wife Kathleen at the bottom of the stairs,
03:40unconscious and covered in blood.
03:43He claimed she had fallen after drinking alcohol and taking Valium.
03:51However, authorities were suspicious
03:53due to the extensive amount of blood found at the scene
03:55and Kathleen's severe injuries,
03:57which they argued were inconsistent with a simple fall.
04:00Peterson was found guilty of murdering his wife, but was released in 2017.
04:05Kathleen's true cause of death remains a point of fierce debate,
04:09and some serious issues with the forensic evidence have been raised,
04:12casting further doubt on Peterson's presumed guilt.
04:24Kayleigh and Casey Anthony
04:32One of the first trials of the social media age,
04:35the death of Kayleigh Anthony has sown incredible division.
04:38Many people believe that Kayleigh was murdered by her mother, Casey Anthony,
04:42supposedly to free her from the obligations of motherhood.
04:45The defense claims that Kayleigh drowned in the family pool,
04:48and that her grandfather helped cover it up.
05:01The case became a media circus,
05:03and Casey was ultimately acquitted, upsetting many.
05:06The verdict had hinged entirely on reasonable doubt,
05:09as the prosecution could not definitively prove how Kayleigh died,
05:13or that Casey was responsible.
05:15Many believe Casey got away with murder,
05:17while others argue that the jury made the correct legal decision
05:21based on the evidence presented.
05:22What has changed in that time for Casey?
05:25She's tried to experience some semblance of freedom,
05:28but she's never left alone.
05:30The death of Heyman Lee
05:32Now this is a story WJZ has been following for years,
05:35and now another twist in the long legal battle,
05:38as a new hearing is ordered in Baltimore Circuit Court.
05:41Serial was one of the first big true crime podcasts,
05:44telling the captivating story of Heyman Lee.
05:47Lee was a high school student who was found dead in Baltimore's Leakin Park,
05:51about a month after she was reported missing.
05:53Lee's ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was charged with her murder.
05:56Our family, we've suffered so much,
05:59you know, just over the past 20, almost 24 years,
06:02and it's just really hard for us.
06:04The prosecution relied heavily on the word of Jay Wilds,
06:08a friend of Syed who claimed that Syed killed her,
06:10and that he helped him bury the body.
06:12However, his and other witness testimonies
06:14have been heavily questioned and scrutinized.
06:17Syed has also bounced around the legal system.
06:19His conviction was vacated in 2022 owing to new evidence,
06:23but it was officially reinstated just a few months later.
06:26This is a confusing one.
06:28Huh, Adnan Syed from the serial podcast is released from jail.
06:34Nah, that's way too controversial for me.
06:44An enormously popular story from turn-of-the-century America,
06:47the tale of Lizzie Borden has endured in folk rhymes, literature, and film.
06:52On the morning of August 4th, 1892,
06:54Andrew and Abby Borden were found brutally murdered
06:57in their Massachusetts home.
06:59Suspicion immediately fell on Lizzie,
07:01and she was arrested just a few days later.
07:03I'm not afraid of you.
07:07Then you haven't been paying attention.
07:09However, she was eventually acquitted
07:12because much of the evidence was circumstantial,
07:14and the murderer never faced justice.
07:16However, Lizzie never shed her cloud of supposed guilt,
07:20and she was ostracized by the community in which she lived.
07:23Ultimately, while Borden remains the prime suspect in public perception,
07:27the lack of concrete evidence and the ambiguity surrounding the case
07:30allow it to live in infamy.
07:32All these years, 127 years,
07:35no one ever found out who he was.
07:38So why did Richard Kimball kill his wife?
07:40He did it for the money.
07:42What do you mean he did it for the money?
07:43He's a doctor, he's already rich.
07:44Well, she was more rich.
07:46On July 4th, 1954,
07:48the Shepherd home was seemingly invaded by an intruder,
07:51who bludgeoned Marilyn Shepherd to death in her bed.
07:54Her husband Sam was charged with her murder.
07:56And while the defense went with the mysterious intruder angle,
07:59the jury was not convinced,
08:00and he was found guilty of killing his wife.
08:03I didn't kill my wife.
08:06I don't care.
08:07But in 1964,
08:09after serving nearly a decade in prison,
08:12Shepherd's conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court,
08:15who criticized the, quote,
08:16carnival atmosphere of the trial and a biased judge.
08:20While the prevailing view supports Shepherd's innocence following his acquittal,
08:23there still remains a segment of the population
08:26that believes he may have been involved.
08:28This is largely owing to some inconsistencies in his testimony
08:31and various pieces of circumstantial evidence.
08:34I thought you didn't care.
08:36I don't.
08:39The Lindbergh Kidnapping.
08:41How did he get up there?
08:42Are there marks on the window and wall as well?
08:44There was a ladder we found at 100 yards away,
08:46three pieces, we moved it inside.
08:48Famously called the biggest story since the resurrection,
08:51the Lindbergh Kidnapping occurred on March 1st, 1932,
08:55when young Charles Lindbergh Jr. was kidnapped from his home and murdered.
08:59The finger was pointed squarely at a German immigrant named Bruno Hauptmann,
09:03who was charged with the crime
09:04and ultimately executed following a highly publicized trial.
09:07It is the address and telephone number of Dr. Condon,
09:11the man who paid the ransom,
09:12written in your writing,
09:13found on a board in your closet.
09:16However, he professed his innocence until his death,
09:19and many modern scholars have brought his guilt into serious question.
09:23The case relied heavily on circumstantial evidence
09:25and unreliable witness testimonies,
09:27and many have criticized both the prosecution's misleading tactics
09:31and the media's influence on the proceedings.
09:33We, the jury, find the defendant, Bruno Richard Hauptmann,
09:37guilty of murder in the first degree.
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09:56O.J. Simpson
09:57We, the jury, in the above entitled action,
09:59find the defendant Orenthal James Simpson
10:02not guilty of the crime of murder in violation of penal code section 187.
10:07There are media circuses,
10:09and then there's the O.J. Simpson trial,
10:11arguably the biggest cultural event of the 90s.
10:14Simpson was charged but ultimately acquitted
10:17of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman.
10:20There are many arguments for his guilt,
10:23including a revenge motive and pieces of physical evidence.
10:26Hey, you should see this.
10:31We're gonna need a criminalist to confirm that that's blood.
10:33But the trial was ultimately tarnished with police misconduct,
10:36racial biases, and a flawed prosecution.
10:39Opinions on Simpson's guilt are influenced not only by the evidence,
10:42but also by individual perspectives on larger issues like race and police conduct.
10:47Division continues along these lines.
10:50According to a 2015 poll from ABC News and The Washington Post,
10:5483% of white people believe that Simpson is guilty,
10:57compared to just 57% of black people.
11:0020 years in public service,
11:04and I feel like my headstone will say he lost O.J.
11:08What are your opinions on these cases?
11:10Let us know in the comments.
11:11Overkill with a sharp object and the police bungled it.