23 Extremely Dark True Crime Stories From The United States Deep South
Warning: Graphic and disturbing content ahead including mentions of murder.
1.The unsolved gruesome murders of Russell and Shirley Dermond, an elderly couple in Putnam County, Georgia in May 2014 that left a community shaken.
On May 6, the couple was supposed to attend a Kentucky Derby party with some friends. But when they didn't arrive, friends went to their house to check in on the couple. What they found was Russell's decapitated body in the garage. Over one week later, his wife Shirley's body was found floating in the lake, having been weighted down with concrete blocks.
Although investigators had multiple leads, no perpetrator(s) or motive was ever discovered.
2.The wild story of Audrey Marie Hilley, aka the "Black Widow Killer" of Alabama who poisoned her husband, Frank Hilley, with arsenic in May 1975 and even faked her own death at one point.
According to the LA Times, "She was sentenced to life in prison in 1983 for the 1975 murder of her first husband, Frank Hilley. She also was convicted of attempted murder in the 1979 arsenic poisoning of her 19-year-old daughter, who recovered.
Federal authorities say she was living under a false identity when she met her second husband, John Homan, while a fugitive between 1979 and 1983. She married Homan but faked her own death while on a trip to Texas. She returned to Homan in New Hampshire after losing weight, dyeing her hair, and posing as her sister."
Hilley died of exposure while she was visiting her husband, while on a three-day pass from prison, in 1987.
3.The tragic and suspicious death of 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson, whose body was discovered inside a vertical rolled-up mat in the gymnasium of his high school in Valdosta, Georgia in 2013.
The initial investigation came to the conclusion that Johnson "accidentally slipped into the center of the mat while reaching for a shoe and got stuck." And an autopsy at that time determined the cause of death as "accidental positional asphyxia."
However, it was reported that there were inconsistencies in the official reports and this eventually led Johnson's family and the community to question the cause of death.
According to CNN, "An autopsy conducted by a pathologist who was hired by Johnson’s family determined that the cause of death was 'unexplained, apparent non-accidental, blunt-force trauma' to the neck."
In turn, a federal investigation was launched in 2013, but was closed in 2016 after authorities said they found “insufficient evidence to support federal criminal charges.”
As of 2023, according to WALB News 10, "Over the past 10 years, the Johnson family has filed several lawsuits and led many public protests. His body has been exhumed twice, and there have been three autopsies. The last two concluded Kendrick’s death was caused by blunt-force trauma."
4.The recent high-profile trial of American former lawyer Alex Murdaugh who was found guilty of murdering his wife, Maggie, and their 22-year-old son, Paul, on June 7, 2021, in South Carolina's Lowcountry.
According to NBC News, "The slayings set off a bizarre chain of events that officials say included Murdaugh hiring a man to kill him so his older son could collect on his life insurance policy, and dozens of charges against Murdaugh accusing him of financial crimes."
In a wild twist during the trial, the prosecution presented a video taken from Paul's phone where the voices of Alex, Paul, and Maggie could be heard in the background shortly before the murders happened. The video thus placed Alex at the scene of the crime, which undermined his alibi that he had "not seen his wife and son in the moments before their deaths."
Alex Murdaugh was found guilty on charges of two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon in the commitment of a violent crime. He was sentenced to life in prison.
5.The disappearance of Wetumpka, Alabama resident Traci Pittman Kegley in 1998. Her car was found abandoned with her unharmed two-year-old daughter, purse, and ID still inside.
The day before, Kegley had reportedly been running errands with her daughter. The last confirmed sighting of Traci was at a gas station that afternoon in Elmore County, Alabama.
When her Geo Storm was discovered the next day, the car was unlocked, had a full tank of gas, and the keys were in the auxiliary position with the radio still playing.
The case remains unsolved.
6.The puzzling death of Tamla Horsford whose body was discovered in the backyard of a friend/fellow "football mom's" home in Cumming, Georgia in November 2018.
Forty-year-old Tamla, a mother of five, was at a sleepover birthday party at a friend's house when she was found "in her pajamas, unresponsive in the backyard," the next morning. Of note in the case (which became a key point in the news and social media), was the fact that Horsford was also the only Black person at the party.
Her death was initially ruled an accident with the conclusion being that she fell from a second-story balcony — an autopsy report said she had a blood alcohol level of .23, and that traces of Xanax and marijuana were also found.
However, Tamla's family did not believe it was an accident. Their attorney, Ralph Fernandez, stated, "There’s a strong possibility Horsford’s death was a homicide," citing things like a lack of autopsy photos, the placement of her body, the multitude of injuries (which he considered to be defensive injuries), and inexplicable post-mortem bleeding.
In 2020, the case was reopened, but by 2021, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation closed it again, concluding that the death was accidental.
7.The unsolved case of seven-year-old Daffany Tullos, who went missing in July 1988. Tullos had gotten into an argument with her mother over some fish sticks and left home that night.
WJTV News 12 noted that the same morning Daffany disappeared, the father of her twin brothers was released from jail. However, investigators were not able to connect him to her disappearance.
Daffany's family scoured the neighborhoods looking for her, and they said there have been times throughout the years when they thought they found her, but sadly, Daffany was never found.
8.Donald Henry "Pee Wee" Gaskins Jr., a serial killer and rapist in South Carolina who murdered more than a dozen people (although he claimed to have killed more than 100) over the course of several decades from the 1950s–1980s. He would either stab, shoot, drown, or poison his victims.
A prolific serial killer, Gaskins was active primarily along the coast of South Carolina. He was also the only person who killed another inmate while both were on death row. Gaskins was executed on Sept. 6, 1991.
9.The Bigham family murders which is about a powerful family active in Florence County, South Carolina during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is believed that, over three generations, the family was responsible for nearly 20 murders, including their own family members.
According to Southern Living, "Throughout six generations of the family living in South Carolina, a number of the members were accused of circumventing the law, murdering family members and workers and general unpleasantness, culminating in the events of Jan. 15, 1921, where five members of the family were killed. The surviving member of the family, Edmund Bigham, was put on trial for the murders and was tried three separate times, once in Florence County and twice in Conway, all while maintaining that it was his brother, Smiley, who had killed his family then taken his own life."
10.The horrendous murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955, which brought nationwide attention to racial violence and injustice in Mississippi.
According to the Library of Congress, "While visiting his relatives in Mississippi, Till went to the Bryant store with his cousins and may have whistled at Carolyn Bryant. Her husband, Roy Bryant, and brother-in-law, J.W. Milam, kidnapped and brutally murdered Till, dumping his body in the Tallahatchie River. The newspaper coverage and murder trial galvanized a generation of young African Americans to join the Civil Rights Movement out of fear that such an incident could happen to friends, family, or even themselves. Many interviewees in the Civil Rights History Project remember how this case deeply affected their lives."
11.The story of Lana Clayton, a nurse who used eyedrops to poison and kill her husband, Steve Clayton, in Lake Wylie, South Carolina in 2021.
After Steve was found dead at the bottom of a staircase, authorities initially thought that he had died as the result of a heart attack. However, after toxicology reports came back it was revealed that tetrahydrozoline (a chemical found in eye drops), was found in his blood, and the cause of death was actually determined to be poisoning.
Lana claimed that Steve had been putting eye drops in his coffee to "help him go to the bathroom," however, she eventually confessed to putting an entire bottle of Visine into his water while he was asleep. She was sentenced to 25 years in prison for her crime in 2020.
12.Eric Robert Rudolph, aka the "Olympic Park Bomber," an American domestic terrorist who was convicted of a series of bombings from 1996 to 1998 in the Southern US, including the infamous Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.
Rudolph was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list on May 5, 1998, and managed to elude law enforcement officials for years while hiding out in the mountains in western North Carolina before being captured in 2003.
Rudolph, whose bomb attacks killed two people and injured over 100 others, was sentenced to two consecutive life terms without parole.
13.The strange and inexplicable disappearance of 25-year-old Atlanta, Georgia resident, Mary Shotwell Little, in 1965. Little was last seen by her friend and coworker around 8 p.m. after they had dinner and parted ways.
Among many of the wild twists and turns to the case, Little's vehicle was eventually located and found with groceries, random blades of grass, a slip, bloodied underwear, and a girdle inside. There was also blood smeared on the steering wheel, on the driver's side door, inside the passenger window, and on both front seats. Police officers at the time believe it had all been staged. Not long after, Mary's credit card was used at gas stations in North Carolina, both signed with her name. However, Little was never found.
14.Viola Hyatt, aka the "Torso Slayer," who shot and dismembered two men on June 28, 1959, in Alabama before throwing their remains out of her car window.
According to Alabama Heritage, "What transpired on June 28, 1959, goes undisputed, mostly thanks to Viola’s confession. Around midnight, she went to the trailer of Emmett and Lee Harper, where they lived on the edge of her property, and shot them in the face with her father’s shotgun. She cut o? their arms, legs, and heads—a fully intact body too heavy to load into the family car on her own—and littered their body parts across multiple counties in northeast Alabama.
Viola gave little explanation for the act, saying only four words in her defense: “They done me wrong.” She was released from prison a decade later and never gave further explanation.
15.The "Axeman of New Orleans," a serial killer active in the New Orleans, Louisiana area from 1917 to 1919 who mainly targeted Italian immigrants and Italian-Americans and was never caught or identified.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, "In the dead of the night, the Axeman of New Orleans (as he came to be known) broke into a series of Italian groceries, attacking the grocers and their families. Some he left wounded; four people he left dead. The attacks were vicious. [One victim] Joseph Maggio, for example, had his skull fractured with his own axe and his throat cut with a razor. His wife, Catherine, also had her throat cut; she asphyxiated on her own blood as she bled out."
16.The unsolved case of Kenny Joe Johnson, a 14-year-old boy who was strangled to death before his body was wrapped in a carpet and left in a park on the edge of Mississippi in 1987.
Johnson was last seen alive on Oct. 8, 1987, after getting into a dispute with a teacher at school. Apparently, Jonson was supposed to report to the principal's office that morning, after the incident, but instead ran away. According to the Des Moines Register, it was actually the third time he had run away in two weeks.
The teen's body was discovered by a fisherman.
Although investigators have been searching for answers for nearly three decades, and even believed they had some insight and theories into the killer's personality, they were unable to establish exactly what happened in the days leading up to Johnson's death.
17.The disappearance of a young woman named Dail Dinwiddie in Columbia, South Carolina, which still remains a mystery decades later.
Dinwiddie had been at a concert where she got separated from her friends and went missing on Sept. 24, 1992. She was last seen walking toward a large intersection around 1:30 a.m. by a bouncer at a bar nearby called Jungle Jim's. The bouncer reported, "He remembered watching Dail walk down the sidewalk toward another bar in the next block."
18.The unsolved death of Quawan Charles, a 15-year-old Baldwin, Louisiana teen whose body was found in a sugar cane field in 2020 after he went missing.
According to CBS News, Quawan was allegedly picked up at his father's home by two people — a woman named Janet Irvin and her teenage son — and, apparently, Quawan's family did not know them.
The coroner's office at the time reported that the teen "likely drowned and had no injuries before his death." Interestingly, the forensic report failed to declare how Quawan may have drowned, though.
As of February 2021, Janet Irvin is facing charges "of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and failure to report a missing child."
19.The dark stories surrounding the Valley of the Kings cult in Tylertown, Mississippi, whose leader and believed son were indicted on charges of sexual battery, conspiracy to commit sexual battery, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor in 2001.
Led by a man named David Earl King and a man named Nathan Paul King (who is believed to be David's adopted son), the Valley of the Kings Church called itself "an independent holiness church" during the hearing. However, the prosecution called it "a cult-like group, with the elder King as its patriarch."
The parents of a 14-year-old boy — who was one of the victims — claimed that "the Kings sexually abused their son and threatened to castrate him if he spoke of it."
20.Serial killer Todd Kohlhepp who was convicted of murdering seven people (and possibly more, as he claimed) in South Carolina between 2003 and 2016.
According to ABC News, "In all, the killings took place over more than a decade, as Kohlhepp ran a real estate business. Among his victims were four people killed at a motorcycle shop in 2003.
Kohlhepp was arrested in 2016 after Kala Brown, who had gone missing along with her boyfriend, was found chained on his property. Brown later told police she saw Kohlhepp shoot and kill her boyfriend, Charles Carver. Carver's body was later found in a shallow grave on Kohlhepp's property."
In May 2017, Kohlhepp pleaded guilty to 14 charges including seven counts of murder in exchange for serving seven consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole. The prosecutor agreed not to seek the death penalty as part of the deal.
21.The unsolved brutal murder of high school senior Rhonda Sue Coleman in Hazlehurst, Georgia in 1990.
Rhonda had been at a friend's house to decorate a graduation banner on the night of May 17, 1990, before she disappeared. After the banner decorating party, she and some friends went to a nearby convenience store, and then she headed home. This was the last time anyone saw her alive.
Late that night, another friend passed Rhonda's car, pulled over on a dirt road, lights on, still running, with the driver's door open, but Rhonda was nowhere in sight. According to NBC News, "Police found Rhonda’s purse inside her car. They also found footprints leading from her car toward the tire tracks of another vehicle."
Just 3 days later, after a wide search, Rhonda's severely burned, fully clothed, body was found in the woods just 15 miles away.
22.The suspicious death of Christian Andreacchio in Meridian, Mississippi in 2014, whose death was ruled a suicide, but whose family believes he was murdered.
According to police, Christian was found in the bathroom of his apartment by his girlfriend Whitley Goodman, and friend Dylan Swearingen. Dylan told police that Christian had been "acting erratically" before he died.
Investigators initially ruled his death a suicide, (a ruling that stands to this day), but his family did not believe it. "I believe 100% he was murdered," Dylan's mother, Rae, told CBS News.
Dylan's family hired their own team of investigators who actually came to the conclusion of murder. "Forensic pathologist Dr. Jonathan Arden believes the way Andreacchio was found – leaning over a bathtub, with little blood spatter – didn't make sense. Arden believes Andreacchio's body was moved after he was killed," according to CBS News.
23.Finally, the unresolved murder of Isadore Banks, a wealthy Black businessman, land owner, and war veteran in Arkansas* who was brutally killed in June of 1954. Although the FBI opened an investigation into the crime in 2007, it was closed just five years later in 2012 after "no subjects (were) identified."
As reported by PBS, "According to his wife, Banks left home to pay some farmworkers on June 4, 1954 and never returned. Four days later, his body was discovered shot and burned beyond recognition, chained to a tree. An empty fuel can, a set of keys, and some change lay near the corpse. Banks’ truck also was nearby, its ignition turned on and the battery dead."
Although Banks' murder allegedly "received substantial publicity due to its brutality and his standing in the community" at the time, there wasn't much local investigation done because no one came forward with information.
When the FBI opened a case in 2007, it was discovered that many case files had been lost due to flooding in the '70s and that the original FBI file had actually been destroyed in 1992, too. Also, because so much time had passed since the crime, they realized that people who might've had direct information about the case had since died.
The FBI concluded, "Because of the destruction of the FBI and local investigative files, the lack of any known living witnesses, the various unsubstantiated theories of motive, including insufficient evidence that the victim’s death was in fact racially motivated, there is no reasonable possibility that further investigation will lead to a prosecutable case."
*Note: I am aware Arkansas is not technically considered a part of the deep south, but this happened very close to that area and was included because it's an important story.
If you or anyone you know has information on a missing person case, call local law enforcement first. You can also contact the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678 (THE-LOST) or visit the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System site for regional case assistance.