From stalking laws to the death penalty, these shocking crimes reshaped America's legal landscape. Join us as we explore the tragic stories behind some of the most impactful laws in US history. Discover how these cases led to crucial reforms in public safety, criminal justice, and victim protection.
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00:00The case forever changed the way parents guard their children, and how Florida and the nation
00:04look for those who disappear.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're examining 10 famous true crime cases that altered or
00:11gave rise to new American laws.
00:12Cyanide-contaminated Tylenol has been responsible for three deaths in the Arlington Heights area.
00:18Do not take Tylenol until further notice.
00:22Rebecca Schaefer
00:22Hi, I'm Patty Russell, and this is my sister Sam.
00:25I just moved in.
00:26We haven't lived together since we were kids.
00:27This young actress found success on the short-lived CBS sitcom My Sister Sam,
00:32which ran for two seasons in the 1980s.
00:34The show, and especially Rebecca Schaefer, attracted the attention of one Robert John Bardo,
00:39who became obsessed with finding her.
00:41Robert Bardo became enamored with Rebecca Schaefer because of My Sister Sam.
00:47Back in December of 1986, when I was watching TV shows like Magnet P.I.,
00:51the commercial for My Sister Sam came on, and that's when I first saw her.
00:55He ultimately turned to a detective agency,
00:57who found Schaefer's home address in California's DMV records.
01:01On July 18, 1989, Bardo walked up to Schaefer's front door and shot her in the chest.
01:06She was dead at just 21, and her murder led to two new laws.
01:09The first is California Penal Code 6469, which makes it illegal to stalk an individual.
01:14The second is the Driver's Privacy Protection Act,
01:17which prohibits the DMV from disclosing a person's home address.
01:20So he hired a private investigator who went to the DMV
01:25and obtained Rebecca Schaefer's home address. It was very, very simple.
01:32William Henry Fuhrman
01:36William Henry Fuhrman's name may not be familiar to you, but he altered how the death penalties
01:40applied in the United States. Fuhrman, a black man, killed the white William Mick during a
01:44home invasion and was sentenced to death. However, his fate went to the Supreme Court,
01:48who found that the death penalty was applied inconsistently and was often influenced by
01:52racial and economic biases. Basically, if you were black or poor, you were sentenced to death.
01:57He said it violated the 14th Amendment,
01:59the one which guarantees that all citizens will be treated equally regardless of their race.
02:04Yes, that one.
02:06Supreme Court ruled in favor of Fuhrman, requiring new rules to eliminate arbitrary decisions
02:11and institute a degree of consistency. This new law invalidated the death sentences of over 600
02:16inmates. And it's why we now have bifurcated trials to separate the guilt-innocent and
02:20sentencing phases. Jacob Wetterling
02:37On October 22, 1989, 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling was abducted at gunpoint by a masked man while
02:43riding bikes with his brother and friend. They were both ordered to run away while the
02:46man took Wetterling. He was never seen again, and his fate remained a mystery until 2016,
02:51when a man named Danny Heinrich confessed to his murder and led investigators to his remains.
02:56Savannah, for 9,827 mornings, this young boy's mother
03:01had woken up wondering in agony what had really happened to her son.
03:05Today, she no longer has to wonder after that chilling confession in this courthouse.
03:09They were found buried in a pasture near Painesville, Minnesota, which was close to
03:13where Heinrich lived in 1989. And he's the reason why America now has a registry for sex offenders.
03:18In 1993, Congress passed the Wetterling Act, making it mandatory for a convicted
03:23offender to register their home address with the state.
03:26The seven-year-old girl from New Jersey became the motivation behind Megan's law,
03:39enacted exactly 30 years ago. Jacob Wetterling is the reason America has a database of registered
03:45sex offenders. Megan Kanka is the reason that database is public knowledge.
03:49On July 29, 1944, Kanka was lured into her neighbor's house and murdered.
03:54The neighbor, a man named Jesse Timmendiquas,
03:56had been convicted of sexual assault on two prior occasions.
03:59That was really our mission, you know, because we felt that
04:03if we knew about the danger across the street, we wouldn't let the kids outside by themselves.
04:09At the time, there was no systematic way for communities to be informed about convicted
04:13sex offenders living nearby, even if they had a history of predatory behavior like Timmendiquas.
04:18That changed with the introduction of Megan's law, which enabled law enforcement to notify
04:22communities about known offenders living nearby. That public information often includes
04:26the offender's name and home address. Here on Tulsa Police's website, for example,
04:30you can zoom in and see where sex offenders are in your neighborhood. These are details law
04:35enforcement tell me they keep a close eye on and update often to keep our neighborhoods as
04:39safe as possible. Emmett Till.
04:41Steve, you have spent a lot of time with the Till family over the years.
04:46What are you thinking about this moment and the fact that this bill will finally be signed into
04:51law? His name is synonymous with the American civil rights movement, but Emmett Till wasn't
04:55alive to enjoy it. That's because in August of 1955, Till was mutilated and murdered by two
05:00white men in Mississippi. Till was visiting relatives in the state and had reportedly
05:04flirted with a local white shop owner named Carolyn Bryant. This act violated local customs,
05:09and Bryant's husband kidnapped and murdered Till with the help of his half brother, J.W. Miller.
05:13I'm so sorry, Mamie. He's dead.
05:21The crime became national news, and with the help of the Rosa Parks incident later that year,
05:25galvanized the wider civil rights movement across the country. And 67 years later,
05:30Congress passed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, which made lynching a federal hate crime
05:34punishable by 30 years in prison. Congress has tried and failed to pass
05:38anti-lynching 200 times before. 200 times! You know, it's passed the Senate with not just
05:45bipartisan support, but unanimous support now. The Chicago Tylenol Murders.
05:50This product may be contaminated with cyanide and should be destroyed.
05:56Those pill bottles may be a pain to open, but they're literally saving your life.
06:00The story dates back to the fall of 1982, when an unknown perpetrator tampered with
06:04Tylenol bottles throughout the greater Chicago area. They had opened the bottles in the store,
06:08laced the pills with potassium cyanide, and then put the bottles back,
06:12dooming whoever decided to buy it. Still, with more than 93,000 bottles from the same
06:17batch distributed through more than 30 states, the manufacturer ordered store owners to clear
06:22their shelves. At least seven people were killed by ingesting poison Tylenol throughout September
06:27and October of that year, and the perpetrator was never caught. Numerous changes were adopted
06:31in response. Pills were altered from traditional capsules to more modern caplets, and manufacturers
06:37introduced tamper-resistant packaging to their bottles. When you opened a bottle of Tylenol in
06:41the early 1980s, or any product for that matter, you didn't see this protective seal. Now, it's
06:47the law. Adam Walsh. The search for Adam Walsh stretched to the wooded areas of Pembroke Pines.
06:53There are some 30 square miles here, but a number of people, all wanting to get involved,
06:58continue the hunt for the missing youth. You may know the name John Walsh, host of
07:02America's Most Wanted. Well, he became a renowned activist following the murder of his son Adam in
07:061981. Adam was abducted from Florida's Hollywood Mall while shopping with his mother, and his death
07:12was confirmed two weeks later when remains were found in a drainage canal. The murder has
07:25officially been linked to Oddis Toole, although he recanted his confession and was never officially
07:29convicted of the crime. Walsh's death resulted in the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act,
07:34which aims to improve the tracking and management of sex offenders. It requires offenders to
07:39continuously register with up-to-date information, increases penalties for crimes against children,
07:43and publishes all information through a shared national database. And while the clearinghouse
07:48has moved on to modern quarters, the Walsh's work continues to pay dividends today. Ernesto Miranda.
07:55You have the right to remain silent. You know the line from every cop show or movie you've
08:00seen created after the mid-60s. Yeah, it's the first in a list of rights known as the
08:05Miranda warning. Maybe you haven't heard the name Ernesto Miranda, but you've certainly heard of the
08:09Miranda rights. You know, you have the right to remain silent and all that. The origin dates back
08:13to 1963 when Miranda was arrested for the kidnap and sexual assault of Lois Ann Jameson. Upon his
08:20arrest, Miranda was not informed that he could remain silent, and neither was he informed that
08:24he could have a lawyer present. And I said, well, you didn't do so good, Ernie, kind of sympathetically.
08:30And he said, well, I guess I better tell you about it then. I suggest I think you should.
08:35As such, he implicated himself and later confessed to the crime after a lengthy police
08:39interrogation. Miranda was convicted based largely on this confession. He later filed an appeal,
08:44and the subsequent Miranda versus Arizona ruled that all arresting police officers
08:49must inform the subject of their rights. You have the right to remain silent and make no
08:53statement at all. Any statement you do make can be used against you in judicial proceedings.
08:58Amber Hagerman
08:59We're leaving. We're leaving the very second that casino's finalized and the cartel's out of town.
09:04I got a plane standing by and we wouldn't have been able to take this baby out of the country
09:07without triggering an Amber Alert.
09:09On January 13th, 1996, nine-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted from a parking lot in
09:14Arlington, Texas. Four days later, her body was found dumped behind an apartment complex. While
09:19the case remains tragically unsolved, it helped introduce an effective system that has spread
09:23beyond the United States. This system, of course, is the Amber Alert.
09:26Amber's legacy lives on through the Amber Alert, named after her.
09:32The FCC endorsed the alert in 2002, and by 2005, it was officially implemented in all 50 states.
09:38In fact, it was such a good idea that many international countries began implementing
09:41their own version of the Amber Alert, and it's estimated that over 1,000 children have been
09:45saved thanks to the famous notifications.
09:47The Amber Alert, I'm very, very proud of it,
09:50because it has helped saving our children's lives. It's helped bringing our children back.
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10:11Kitty Genovese
10:12Her story is taught in psychology classes,
10:15and her name is synonymous with people who look the other way when trouble happens.
10:20It's hard to imagine a world without 911, but that was very much the reality through most of
10:24human history, even much of the 20th century. At the time, there was no centralized emergency
10:28number. Instead, calls went to the local station, and officers handled the calls themselves.
10:33Let's go back to March 13, 1964, when a bartender named Kitty Genovese
10:37was stabbed and murdered outside of her apartment.
10:39It happened here. Kitty Genovese was almost home when she heard a man's footsteps behind her.
10:45She ran, but the man caught up to her and stabbed her twice in the back.
10:49She screamed, oh God, I've been stabbed.
10:52According to the New York Times, dozens of witnesses saw the crime but failed to report it,
10:56citing in part the obtuse call system of the time. This has since been largely debunked,
11:01but the Fuhrer elicited a groundbreaking response. In 1967, the Katzenbach Commission
11:06recommended a centralized system, resulting in the now-famous 911 number.
11:10It led to many sermons in churches. It led to gossip. It went viral in the way that things
11:17could in 1964. Did you know the story
11:19behind these laws? Let us know in the comments below.
11:22This morning, the search for their son is finally over. Their pain is not.
11:27His legacy will go on.