In gritty 1970s New York, an unidentified serial killer known as "Charlie Chop-Off" targeted young Black and Puerto Rican boys and viciously mutilated their genitals — and he was never caught.Public domainA 1972 police sketch of Charlie Chop-Off.
It sounds like an urban legend: a serial killer that targets young boys and severs their genitals. But the nightmarish case of “Charlie Chop-Off” was very real and remains chillingly unsolved.
Between 1972 and 1973, a serial killer targeted young Black and Puerto Rican boys living in Manhattan, brutally cutting them, mutilating their genitals, and sometimes even taking the severed penis with him as a macabre trophy. Read More...
Explore the haunting story of the Radium Girls, a group of women exposed to lethal amounts of radium while working in watch factories in early 20th-century America.Wikimedia Commons“Radium girls” painting alarm clock faces in the Ingersoll factory in January 1932.
In 1917, scores of patriotic young women, later known as “radium girls,” counted themselves lucky to have landed war work at a large warehouse complex in Orange, New Jersey.
The pay was fantastic – roughly three times the average working girls’ wage – and the work was light. Read More...
Richard Cottingham brutally murdered prostitutes he found on the seedy streets of 1970s New York, earning his horrifying legacy as the Times Square Torso Killer.Today, Times Square is a glittering tourist attraction. But it had a much seedier reputation in the latter half of the 20th century. Not only was Times Square filled with porn shops, peep shows, and prostitutes, but it also became the hunting ground for serial killer Richard Cottingham, the Torso Killer. Read More...
