17 Disturbing Murder Cases That Will Keep You Awake For Days

Read at your own risk.

We asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about the most horrifying murder cases they've ever heard. Here are the terrifying results.

🚨WARNING: This post contains highly disturbing and graphic content. Please continue at your own risk.🚨

1. Jon Venables and Robert Thompson:

Wikipedia Creative Common / Fair Use / en.wikipedia.org

In 1993, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, both 10 years old, became the youngest convicted murderers in modern British history. While at a shopping mall, they lured and abducted a two-year-old boy, James Bulger, away from his mother. Bulger's body was found two days later on railroad tracks. His body was so mutilated that the autopsy couldn't even reveal his actual cause of death.

—bridgets41

2. Diane Downs:

ABC

In 1983, Diane Downs shot her three children and drove them to the hospital. One of her daughters was pronounced dead upon arrival, her other daughter suffered a stroke, and her son was paralyzed from the waist down. Diane claimed a "strange man" tried to steal her car and then shot at everyone. However, police later found her secret diary which "detailed her obsession with a married man who did not want kids." This ultimately led to her arrest. She was sentenced to life in prison, plus 50 years.

—lindseyabrown2000

3. Dennis Nilsen:

Wikipedia Commons / Fair Use, Central Television

Dennis Nilsen murdered six people in the late '70s and early '80s. He'd pick up young men at London bars and bring them back to his home where he'd strangle them. He'd also bathe and dress the corpses, often keeping the bodies for weeks or even months, and would also talk to them and have sex with them before ultimately burning or flushing the remains down the toilet. In fact, he was only caught because "a drain outside his home became blocked by the human remains he had tried to flush away."

—cheersavl

4. Katherine Knight:

murderpedia.org

Katherine Knight was the first Australian woman to be given life imprisonment without parole. She stabbed her husband, John Price, to death and then skinned him. Soon after, she decapitated him and cooked random parts of his body with the intention of feeding them to her unsuspecting kids. She even set the table and had place cards to tell her children where to sit.

—wootenkw

5. The Alphabet murders:

Discovery / youtube.com

Between 1971 and 1973, three young girls were raped, strangled, and killed in upstate New York. Each victim's first and last names started with the same letter, and their bodies were found in cities that started with the same letter of their names: Carmen Colon in Churchville, Michelle Maenza in Macedon, and Wanda Walkowicz in Webster. These killings were known as the Alphabet murders. Though several hundred people were questioned, no one has ever been convicted of the crimes.

—christinat4

6. Issei Sagawa:

Visual Voodoo, Channel Five

In 1981, Issei Sagawa shot and killed a woman in his apartment. He ate different parts of her body over a two-day period because he thought it would let him "absorb her beauty." He also had sex with her corpse. Later on, Sagawa tried to dispose of the leftovers in a lake in France, where he lived. He awaited trial for two years, was declared insane, and the charges against him were dropped. He ultimately became a mini-celebrity in Japan, where he couldn't be legally detained, so he remains free to this day.

–Lena Liu, Facebook

7. The Papin Sisters:

Wikipedia / Creative Commons / en.wikipedia.org

Christine and Léa Papin were two French sisters and live-in maids. In 1933, after working for and living with the Lancelin family for seven years, they murdered Madame Lancelin and her daughter, Genevieve. Both were beaten and stabbed to the point where the bodies were practically unrecognizable. Their eyes were also gouged out. The police discovered the Papin sisters in their room, naked, in bed together with the murder weapon.

—ellad4d

8. Carl Tanzler:

Wikipedia / Creative Commons / CC BY 2.0 / en.wikipedia.org / en.wikipedia.org

Carl Tanzler was a radiology technologist at a hospital in Florida. In 1930, he met Helen Milagro de Hoyos, who was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Tanzler became obsessed with Hoyos, who died in 1931 (even though he didn't technically murder her, this story is too disturbing to not include). Two years later, Tanzler removed Hoyos' body from the cemetery. He tried to preserve it by attaching her bones together with wire, placing wax-soaked cloth over her skin, and sticking rags in her body to help keep its shape. Several years later, in 1940, Hoyos' sister heard a rumor that Tanzler was "sleeping with the disinterred body of her sister." She confronted him, and Hoyos' body was ultimately found.

—britt246

9. Gertrude Baniszewski:

Wikipedia / Fair Use / en.wikipedia.org, Indiana Women's Prison / Public Domain

Gertrude Baniszewski facilitated the torture and murder of 16-year-old Sylvia Likens in 1965. Likens was tortured in unspeakable ways for three months by the Baniszewski family while she lived with them (to be honest, I felt physically ill while reading about the things they did to her). These events were so horrifying that they're considered "the most terrible crime ever committed in the state of Indiana."

—juliak46

10. Tamara Samsonova, aka the "Granny Ripper:"

CNN / Wikipedia / Creative Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

Samsonova is a 71-year-old Russian serial killer who murdered and ate at least 11 people from 2000–2015. She kept a detailed diary of her crimes and even confessed to killing her friend "after a quarrel over unwashed cups." She drugged the friend with sleeping pills and used a handsaw to dismember her... while she was still alive. Samsonova is also suspected of killing her husband, who she reported missing back in 2005. She is currently in prison and awaiting trial.

—skailyr

11. Carl Panzram:

Wikipedia / Creative Commons / en.wikipedia.org, youtube.com

Carl Panzram is known as "America's most repulsive serial killer." He admitted to killing 21 people (though not all have been confirmed) and sodomizing over 1,000 boys and men throughout the 1920s. One of Panzram's most brutal murders involved hiring six men to work on a boat with him, shooting them, and then feeding them to crocodiles. In his autobiography, he wrote, "For all of these things, I am not the least bit sorry."

—eliseh6

12. Mary Bell:

youtube.com

Mary Bell was 10 years old when she committed her first murder by strangling a 4-year-old boy. Later that year, in 1968, she strangled a 3-year-old boy. This time she had an accomplice. Both of them carved their initials on the boy's body and cut off his private parts. Bell was sent to prison for 12 years, and in 1980, at the age of 23, she was granted anonymity. She now has a daughter and lives in England under a new name.

—phandabox

13. The Cleveland Torso Murderer:

Wikipedia / Creative Commons / Cleveland Police Department / en.wikipedia.org

At least 12 people (and as many as 20) were killed and dismembered by an unknown person in the late 1930s. Random body parts started to turn up in Cleveland, Ohio – the first ones being discovered by kids who were playing in a field – and only two of the 12 victims have ever been identified. The top-left picture is a casting of John Doe II's decapitated head, which was put on display "at the Great Lakes Exposition of 1936-37 with the hope that one of the more than a million visitors could identify the victim." He remains unidentified to this day.

—helen1990t

14. The Hello Kitty Murder:

youtube.com / youtube.com

Fan Man-yee was a 23-year-old nightclub hostess who was kidnapped by three men in 1999. They tortured her for a full month before she died, though it's unclear if her death was caused by the men or from a drug overdose. After she died, the men decapitated her and put her skull in a giant Hello Kitty doll. All three men were convicted of manslaughter. The Hello Kitty Murder is recognized as one of the most cruel and callous cases to ever appear in court in Hong Kong.

—kagaminerin

15. Edmund Kemper, aka the "Co-ed Killer:"

Wikipedia / Creative Commons / CC BY 3.0 / Santa Cruz Police Department, Wikipedia / Public Domain / en.wikipedia.org

Edmund Kemper brutally murdered 10 people, including his paternal grandparents and his mother. During an 11-month killing spree in the early '70s, Kemper killed six students in the mountains of California, decapitated them, and had sex with their corpses. He also killed his mom with a claw hammer, decapitated her head and had sex with it, and then called the police to turn himself in.

—leshaarielf

16. Kenneth Troyer:

ABC7 / Wikipedia / Creative Commons

In 1976, Karen Klaas was raped and strangled with her own pantyhose by an unknown assailant. She was unconscious when police found her and was in a coma for five days until her death. Nearly 41 years later, thanks to familial DNA testing, police were able to identify Kenneth Troyer as the attacker. Troyer had already been dead since 1982. This was Hermosa Beach’s longest-running cold case ever.

—annakopsky

17. And The Boy in the Box murder:

Warning This image is graphic Tap to reveal Click to reveal

Wikipedia / Creative Commons / buzzfeed.com

An unidentified boy was found in a cardboard box in a Philadelphia field in 1957. His naked body was covered in bruises and a blanket. Because he was so malnourished, police couldn't determine the boy's actual age (they assumed he was between four and six years old). More than 400,000 flyers with the boy's likeness were distributed, in hopes of finding out more information about what happened, but no one came forward with any concrete tips or claims. There are several theories about what actually occurred, but this case remains unsolved to this day, over 60 years later. The boy's headstone reads "America's Unknown Child."

—sashaf459