← Twisted Tales with Heidi Wong
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Hi Crime House Community, It's Heidi Wong and if you love digging into the most gripping true crime stories, then you need to listen to another Crime House original Crimes of with Sabrina Diana Roga and Corinne Vien. Crimes of is a weekly series that explores a new theme each season from Crimes of paranormal, unsolved murders, mysterious disappearances, and more. Sabrina and Corinne have been covering the true stories behind Hollywood's most iconic horror villains, and this month they'll be diving into the paranorma. Listen to Crimes of every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. This is crime house. A peaceful campsite by a serene lake destroyed by a horrific act of violence. A cozy cottage in the forest that became the site of a terrible murder. These might sound like scary stories you tell in the dark, but sometimes out in the forest, real monsters are lurking. Welcome to Twisted A Crime House Original. I'm Heidi Wong. Every week I'll take you deep inside the real stories behind horror's most terrifying legends. From vengeful ghosts to bloody slashers to alien encounters and more, these real life accounts are guaranteed to keep you up at night. But scary stories aren't any fun if you're telling them alone. If you've ever had a haunted moment or a twisted tale of your own, I want to hear about it. Drop it in the comments. The creepier, the better. Crime House is made possible by you. Follow Twisted Tales and subscribe to Crime House on Apple Podcasts for ad free early access. And if you're into true crime as well as horror, go search and follow Crime House Daily, our team's twice a day show bringing you breaking news, updates and unbelievable stories from the world of crime that are happening right now. Today, I'm taking you deep into the wilderness to explore one of my favorite horror tropes, the Cabin in the Woods. If you're a horror fan like me, you've probably seen movies like Friday the 13th or the strangers. Both films use the fear of isolation to bring our deepest nightmares to life. Like a killer stalking you through the woods with no one to call for help, or an unknown attacker targeting your family just because they can. In this episode, I'll tell you about the true events that inspired both movies. And after we're done, you'll think twice before going camping.
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In 1980, Friday the 13th hit the screen and an overnight sleepaway camp became the stuff of nightmares. The movie launched a franchise that's still pumping out sequels today. Its poster boy, masked murderer Jason Voorhees, has been resurrected again and again to terrorize generations of camp counselors, fight other movie monsters, and even go to space. Jason Voorhees in space? Let's do Terrifier 4 in space. Like Terrifier 4, Art the Clown colonizes Mars. But the whole saga started with the very first film, which went a little something like this. On a Friday the 13th in 1958, two counselors are murdered at Camp Crystal Lake in New Jersey and the place was shut down. 22 years later, on the anniversary of the killing, a new owner reopens the camp and hires a group of teenagers to set things up. In true slasher fashion, the teens start dropping like flies. After a series of brutal slayings, one final girl survives to the end of the movie. She discovers the killer stalking them is really an unassuming middle aged woman named Pamela Voorhees, Jason's mom. It turns out that Pamela had killed the Counselors back in 1958 too. She blamed them for letting her son Jason drown. And now, on the anniversary of his birthday, she's out for more blood. She doesn't get all of them though. The final counselor lives through the night and the film ends with the police finally coming to rescue her. But a horrifying creature that emerges from the lake shows that the story of Friday the 13th isn't over. In fact, it's just the first chapter, and next time, Jason himself would take center stage. Friday the 13th was an instant horror hit, but the real story that inspired it was much stranger than fiction, and much, much scarier. On June, 4, 1960, a group of teenagers drove into the town of Espuol, a Finnish suburb just outside of Helsinki. They were here for a short camping trip a few days away from the city, watching the midnight sun cast a gold glow over the pristine waters of Lake bodum. There was 18 year old Seppo Boyman and his best friend, 18 year old Niles Gustafson. And their two girlfriends, 15 year old Myla Bjorklund and 15 year old Anya Mackey. The plan was pitch their tents, light a campfire, spend some time in nature and probably to get a bit rowdy. It's something teens around the world do every summer vacation. But for these four, this camping trip would be anything but normal. The two couples set their tent on the lakeshore surrounded by dense forest. As the night grew darker, the teenagers drifted off to sleep in their small tent. They had no idea they were being watched. How people just be falling asleep in places is crazy to me. The next morning, several people passing by noticed something strange on the lakeshore. A collapsed tent ripped to shreds and stained with blood. The police arrive and determine that between 4 and 6am Someone had cut the ropes holding the tent up, causing it to suddenly collapse on the sleeping campers. Then they attacked, stabbing the canvas at random with a knife and hammering it with a rock. Asleep, trapped in the collapsed tent, the teens never had a chance. Think about that for a moment. These kids went to sleep under the stars, probably talking about their futures, their dreams. And they never woke up. Except for one of them. Niles. When authorities found him the next morning, he was badly injured. His jaw was broken, his cheekbones shattered, and he was nursing a nasty concussion. He was alive, but he couldn't remember a thing. The investigation into the Lake Bodom murders was doomed pretty much from the start. First there was the crime scene. Before the police could block it off, dozens of people contaminated the place. Reporters, locals and other campers walked right through the area to get a better look. This is really bad when it comes to identifying a killer because all these people left their hair, DNA, footprints, all kinds of personal traces that could muddy the evidence. And speaking of evidence, some of it seemed to be missing. A few of the camper's personal items like keys to the boys, motorcycles, clothing, wallets and Niles shoes had been taken. Some of this stuff was found later hidden in the brush just a few hundred feet away. Other items were never recovered. It might be that these items were grabbed by a curious onlooker, or they might have been stolen by the killer. Either way, the evidence at the scene told a confusing story. And the only surviving witness wasn't the most helpful. Niles said the last thing he remembered was drifting off to sleep in the tent with his friends. The next thing he knew, he was in the hospital. He even went under hypnosis just to see if that could jog his memory. Jury's out on whether or not this is actually useful, but it did yield some interesting results. Now, Niles thought he'd woken up during the attack and managed to get free of the tent. And then a man wearing all black had kicked him in the face. And the last thing Niles saw? The killer's piercing red eyes. Was it a memory? A nightmare? Who's to say? But there wasn't a lot of other info to go on. A few boys who were out bird watching earlier that morning said they saw a blonde man walking away from the campsite, but otherwise, no one knew anything. The questions that haunted investigators were who could do such a thing? And why? Was it a random psychopath passing through a local with a grudge? Someone the teens knew? Or was it something even more sinister? A total stranger who attacked just because they could? The authorities had no real lead, missing evidence, no good description. And this was decades before DNA testing. So the case sat unsolved for years. But that didn't mean people didn't have theories. Every time something awful happens in a small community, it isn't long before fingers start pointing. And almost immediately after the murders at Lake Bodom, locals from Espu started telling police to look into one man, Carl Valdemar Gylstrom. By all accounts, Carl was not a nice guy. He owned a small store about half a mile from the murder site and defended what he thought was his property. Aggressively, Carl threw stones at kids who rode bikes on his road and in one instant, shot at them with a shotgun. Real get off my lawn energy. Locals said they would never camp where the victims did because Carl would cut people's ropes and collapse their tents. Which, as we have noticed, did happen to the Lake Bodom victims. This guy was accused of being a violent alcoholic who targeted kids. One rumor claimed he'd hidden razor blades in apples because young boys would sometimes steal them from his store. And Carl even came clean to some of his friends after a late night of drinking. Not once, but three times, he allegedly told people that he was the one who killed the campers. And for some reason, nobody believed him. If this were a slasher movie, I would say we have our man. A violent local who hates kids and hates campers. Say no more. We've got our Jason Voorhees. But real life murder cases usually don't tie themselves up as neatly as a Hollywood script. And Carl wasn't as good of a suspect as he seemed to be. The authorities thought Carl was emotionally disturbed and wouldn't take his confession at face Value. And there was one other very important detail. There wasn't any physical evidence tying him to the crime scene. Carl was definitely a grade A jerk. But a murderer? They didn't think so. But he wasn't the only person police looked into. There was another potential suspect in town who may have been a KGB spy. The morning after the murders, medical doctor Jorma Palo was doing his usual rounds at the Helsinki Surgical Hospital. He stepped into a room to evaluate a new patient, a man named Hans Asmin. Hans spoke fluent Finnish with a bit of a German accent. He had red stains on his clothes and dirt caked under his fingernails. And though he was perfectly polite, something seemed off with him. The more Jorma and the rest of the staff dealt with him, the more suspicious they became. Hans was acting oddly. Sometimes he seemed confused, other times he got angry. At one point he felt unconscious. But Jorma had the strange sensation that the man was faking it. Finally, Hans was treated and sent on his way. But Jorma still had a lingering feeling of unease. Perhaps Jorma was right to feel apprehensive, because a few days after Hans was discharged, he cut his long blonde hair. Which wouldn't have been weird, except remember there were those kids who thought they saw a guy with long blond hair with walking away from the campsite after the murders. And Hans got his hair cut right after the police released those details. Not suspicious at all, right? Well, Jorma definitely thought it was, and so did the cops. As they looked into Hans, they also uncovered a dark secret. Hans was a former Nazi soldier, and some people even accused him of being a member of the kgb. It all added up to something exceedingly weird. But the police didn't see it that way. After questioning Hans, they decided they believed his alibi and he'd been home with his wife all night. They didn't even bother to test his clothes to see if the stains Jorma had noticed were from blood. And he was struck from the list of suspects. But people still wondered if Hans was the one who attacked those campers, especially since he kept having run ins with the law. Hans was accused of several other murders, though none of the charges had ever stuck. But again, being accused of murder isn't the same as being convicted of it for over 40 years. The case of the Lake Bodom murders went cold until 2004, when authorities made a shocking arrest and they charged Niles Gustafson, the only survivor of the attack, with murder. In the years since the horrific attack, Niles had tried to move on with his life. He settled in Espu the same suburb where the murders had happened. He got married and had two kids, and he spent the next few decades driving a bus for the city. While Niles was living his life, forensic science was getting more advanced. And in the early 2000s, the Finnish Bureau of Investigations started retesting the evidence of the Lake Bodom murders. And they thought the evidence pointed to Niles. Think about it. Being the sole survivor of a horrific attack, it's kind of the perfect cover. He was the final boy. Niles was the only one left alive. His injuries were less severe than the others and he claimed to have no memory of the attack. Plus, some of the blood evidence at the scene was complicated. DNA testing eventually proved that the bloodstains on Niles shoes had blood from the three victims, Seppo, Mela and Anya. But not Niles himself. The police had always assumed the attacker hid Niles shoes during the assault. Why would he do that, though? That's so random. This was because Niles was found barefoot, lying unconscious on top of the tent, and his shoes were found a few hundred feet away. But now the prosecution argued this told another story, that Niles had hidden the shoes himself to hide the evidence of his crime. The story they painted in court went like this. Early in the morning of June 5, 1960, something set Niles off. Maybe it was something to do with the two girls. Maybe he was jealous and worried Seppo would steal his girlfriend. Or maybe he was just drunk and some argument got out of hand. Either way, the lawyers argued that Niles had attacked and killed his friends, getting their blood on his shoes, which he tried to hide in the brush. And then he attacked himself, giving himself injuries so people would believe he was a victim too. Then he lay down on the tent and waited for the police. If that sounds a little far fetched, that's because it is. Giving yourself a black eye is one thing. Breaking your own skull, that's entirely different. And the court saw it that way too. In 2005, Niles was acquitted of all charges and the country of Finland even made a settlement with him for mental suffering. The day of his acquittal was probably a huge relief for him. He was cleared of a horrible accusation that he had killed three of his best friends in cold blood. But one burning question still haunted him and everyone else involved with the if Niles hadn't done it, who did? 65 years later, we still don't have answers. Which means somewhere out there in the waters of Lake Bodom, a killer may still be lurking. Coming up next, the terrifying true story behind the strangers and another reason not to go in the woods.
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By the time the strangers premiered in 2008, the Cabin in the woods was a common setting for horror movies. Movies like 1981's The Evil Dead, 2002's Cabin Fever, and of course, the Friday the 13th franchise had already established this classic trope. But the Strangers took this concept to a terrifying new direction. It went like this. A couple arrive late at night at a summer house in a remote area. Almost immediately, things get unsettling. An unknown girl knocks at the door, and when they answer, she asks, for someone who doesn't live there, is Tamara home? That's why I think it's Tamara. You know what I mean? Then the phone lines suddenly go dead, and one of the characters starts to notice objects in the house aren't where they should be, meaning someone is in there with them. Before long, the couple is under siege by three people in super creepy masks. They terrorize the couple, playing cat and mouse games before finally capturing them. And when one victim asks them why they're doing this, they simply reply, because you are home. That randomness is what's so scary about the Strangers. Humans like logic. They like problems that have a simple cause and effect. And when we can't figure out the why of a murder, that terrifies us. And that's also what makes the case that many believe inspired the Strangers so terrifying. If you've ever driven through the Sierra Nevada mountains in Northern California. Then you know how beautiful they can be. Tall pines, crystal clear streams and cabins tucked away in the woods. It's the kind of place that people go to escape from it all. For Sue Sharp and her five children, it all meant their abusive husband and father, James Sharp. In 1979, sue and her kids fled from Connecticut to start a new life in Northern California. They eventually settled at Keddie Resort, a collection of 33 rustic cabins in the Sierras, which could be rented out long term. By 1981, they'd set up shop in cabin number 28. It's hard to move to a new place, especially when you're fleeing a bad relationship. But pretty quickly the kids had made friends with the neighbors. Sue had gotten a part time job. Things were going well until April 11, 1981. That evening, Sue Sharp was home with four of her children. 15 year old John, 12 year old Tina, 10 year old Rick and 5 year old Greg. Their young neighbor Justin Smart And John's friend, 17 year old Dana Wingate were also at the house. Meanwhile, Sue's 14 year old daughter Sheila was next door sleeping over with a friend at the C. Bolt family cabin. And when Sheila returned to cabin 28 the next morning, she expected to find her family getting ready for a normal Sunday. Instead, she walked into a massacre. Sheila was horrified to find Sue, John and Dana dead in the living room. Someone had broken into the house late at night. They tied up sue and the boys with electrical wires and tape and then they'd stabbed and beaten the three of them with knives and hammers. After witnessing this horrific scene, Sheila rushed straight back to the Sebold's cabin for help. Mr. Siebold went to check it out and realized Sheila's two little brothers, Rick and Greg and their friend Justin were still in the boy's bedroom. All three were alive. The killer hadn't even woken them. One by one, Mr. Siebold lifted each little boy out of the window and set them down on the ground outside so they wouldn't see what happened in the living room. Meanwhile, a neighbor called the police. Somewhere in the middle of all this activity, Sheila had a realization. One of her siblings had been murdered along with her mother. Another two had been sleeping safely in another room and she had been next door. That was only five out of six sharps. Sheila's 12 year old sister Tina was missing. Like the Lake Bodom murders, the investigation into the Keddie murders was botched from the get go. As one investigator put it in 2018, quote, this case is screwed up as a soup sandwich. Which is certainly one way to describe it. Both Sheila and Mr. Sebold had walked through the crime scene, potentially contaminating the evidence there. Which, given the panic Sheila was in and the fact that three boys were still alive in the other room, is pretty understandable. But it didn't help to clarify the case. And the initial description of the killers was not super helpful. Justin Smart, the friend who had been staying over with Rick and Greg, claimed he may have seen the murderers. Or maybe it was a dream. He couldn't quite tell. Under hypnosis, he gave a description to a sketch artist. He described two men, one blonde and one with long dark hair. But in this case, it wasn't really helpful. One of the reasons being that the police used a guy who had no experience experience in forensic sketching. So the sketches they got were based on a dream put on paper by a man with no business drawing them. Not a great way to find a suspect. There were other weird things about the investigation, too. Like how just two weeks after the FBI started looking for Tina Sharp, they called it off. At this point, Tina was considered a victim of kidnapping, not murder. As far as anyone knew, she might still be alive. But the FBI claimed they thought the state police had a handle on things and pulled their resources. Spoiler alert, they didn't. Pretty quickly, the police hit a dead end. They had no idea who killed three people and kidnapped a fourth, or why. There were no signs of robbery or assault. It really seemed like someone had killed them just because they could. Or because sue and the kids were home. After that, Lee's dried up. Until three years later, when, on the anniversary of the murders, another clue was found.
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This episode is brought to you by.
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Netflix from the creator of Homeland.
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Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys star in the new Netflix series the Beast, and.
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Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences.
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The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt, justice, and doubt. You will not want to miss this.
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The Beast in Me is now playing only on Netflix.
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Hi, I'm here to pick up my son, Milo.
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There's no Milo here. Who picked up my son from school. Streaming only on Peacock.
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I'm gonna need the name of everyone that could have a connection.
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You don't understand. It was just the five of us. So this was all planned? What are you gonna do? I will do whatever it takes to get my son back. I honestly didn't see this coming.
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These nice people killing each other. All her fault. A new series streaming now only on peacock.
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On April 11, 1984, a call came into the Butte County Sheriff's office in the next county over from Keddie. It was a man who said he'd been out by a campsite looking for bottles and cans. He'd found something else. Parts of a skull. Shortly after the discovery, another call came into the sheriff's office, this time from someone anonymous. The caller told the deputy that he thought the skull belonged to the missing Sharp girl, and he seemed pretty confident about it. Two months later, the test came back. The caller was right. The skull was Tina's. It was a tragic development in the investigation, but for some reason, all of this just wasn't followed up on. In fact, the anonymous call wasn't even logged at the time it came in. It was only entered into evidence 32 years later in 2016, when an investigator found the tape in a closed envelope. If the police had paid attention to the call at the time, the story might have gone very differently, because this call meant that just three years after the murder, Tina's killer, who probably killed the rest of the people in the cabin, were still around, and they were watching the investigation closely. After the discovery of Tina Sharp's remains, the investigation into the Keddie murders kind of just petered out. Until 2013, when the sheriff decided the case needed fresh eyes. Ploumis County Sheriff George Hagwood had close ties to the Keddie murder case. He knew the Sharp boys and Dana Wingate growing up. So when he had the chance, he hired a special investigator to go back through the evidence. And soon after that, two suspects emerged. One of them was the father of Justin Smart, one of the boys who survived the attack back in April 1981. Police interviewed most of the other residents of the Keddie resort, including Justin's parents, Marilyn and Martin. They asked the Smarts if anything unusual happened in the days leading up to the murder. Yes, actually, Martin told them. One of his tools had gone missing. A hammer. And Sue, John, and Dana had been beaten with a blunt object, which a hammer definitely qualifies as. But they didn't think to look closer at the man who owned it. A police were work these guys. But years after the murders, the special investigator appointed by the Sheriff decided to do what the officers back then hadn't and investigate Martin Smart. The special investigator, Mike Gamberg had known the murder victims. He coached John Sharp and Dana Wingate in martial arts. In fact, Dana had been at Mike's house the day before he died. As Mike sifted through years of disorganized files, he began to force form a theory all about Martin Smart and his missing hammer. Martin Smart lived in cabin 26, right near the Sharps. His wife Marilyn and her sons Justin and Casey also lived in the cabin, along with Martin's friend Bo Boity. As Mike Gamberg looked into Martin's history, he discovered that Martin was allegedly abusive. He'd reportedly tried to hit his stepkids with a car and once held a knife to Marilyn's throat. Martin had lost his job as a cook right before the murders and was allegedly supporting himself by dealing drugs. His friend Bo Bobetty had links to organized crime in Chicago and Las Vegas. So, yeah, not the nicest neighbors. And Mike Gamberg believed that Sue Sharpe may have gotten on his bad side. Mike's theory was that sue was helping Marilyn get ready to leave her abusive husband. And when Martin found out, he decided to put a stop to it. The night of the murders, people saw Martin, Beau and Marilyn at the local spot named Keddie's Backdoor Bar. Martin and Bo were wearing suits and sunglasses, which definitely stood out. And they also made a big scene about the music at the bar before leaving. But they apparently weren't done for the night because a few hours later, Martin and Bo came back to the bar and had a nightcap. Mike Gamberg was pretty sure this was their attempt at creating an alibi. The suits stuck out, so people remembered them being there that night. When they went home, they called the bar again to complain, making sure the story would stick in the bartender's brain. And then Bo and Martin came back to the bar, which in Mike's opinion, was another ploy for an alibi. But sometime that night, maybe in between visits to the bar, Mike believed Bo and Martin entered the Sharp's cabin. They tied up Sue Sharp, her son John and his friend Dana Wingate and murdered them. The duo then kidnapped 12 year old Tina Sharp, probably because she was a witness. They killed her and hid her body at a nearby campground. Four people dead. All because Martin didn't want sue talking to his wife. In 2016, Mike Gamberg reported a new piece of evidence he'd found that had been given to the police but overlooked. Shortly after the murders, Martin Smart left Keddie his marriage was over. Marilyn moved out of their house the day the murders were discovered. In one last attempt to save the relationship, he sent Marilyn a letter that she turned into the police. In it, he wrote, I've paid the price of your love. And now that I bought it with four people's lives, you tell me we are through. Great. What else do you want? The letter was never entered into evidence. Mike Gamberg and the sheriff's department are still trying to solve the Keddie murders today. Their two main suspects, Bo Bobity and Martin Smart, are long gone. Bo died in 1988, and Martin died in and 20,002. 2006. The police are still finding new leads. In 2016, they recovered a hammer from a pond that they believe was the one Martin reported missing. But they haven't been able to close the case. 40 years is a long time. Evidence has gone missing, DNA has degraded, and witnesses have died of old age. And with no hard evidence, there's still a chance that Martin and Beau are innocent. Which is a terrifying thought. Because if they didn't kill the people in cabin 28, who did? And why? And most importantly, where are they hiding Now? These cases show why there are so many horror movies that take place deep in the woods. The isolation, the whispering trees, the infinite places to hide. I don't know about you, but I think I'm gonna stay in this city for a while after this. Because when you watch something like the Strangers or Friday the 13th, you can tell yourself it's just a movie. But in a real life horror, there's no turning it off if it gets too scary. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of Twisted Tales, a crime House original. I'd love to hear from you. What did you think about today's stories? Anything you're dying for me to COVID Leave a comment or review wherever you're tuning in. And be sure to follow Twisted Tales so we can keep building this community together. I'll be back next week with another unbelievable true story. Until then, stay curious and remember, there's no reason to fear the dark unless you try to hide from it.