5 Brutal Murderers Who Aaaalmost Got Away With It

Amazingly, Howell had managed to stay frosty during the murders because he was convinced that God was totes cool with his murdering ways. But ever since his son suddenly died in a tragic accident in 2007, Howell, a massive narcissist, started doubting if the big man still had his back. So when, only a year later, he discovered he had been easily scammed out of all of his money, the religious nut became so convinced he was being punished by God, he went home and confessed to the murders. As if that wasn't enough, he then also admitted to having sexually assaulted many women while they were under sedation at his dental clinic. In 2011, he and his accomplice Hazel were sentenced to life in a maximum-security prison where the only buried treasure he'll find will be a dead rat in his porridge.

When his wife went missing, the police immediately suspected Reyn-Bardt but had no evidence without the body. Eventually, they managed to imprison him on unrelated pedophilia charges (like he wasn't giving the British gay community enough of a bad name already), but even after he bragged about the murder to a cellmate, the charges didn't stick. And then Malika turned up. At least, that's what both the police and Reyn-Bardt thought. In 1983, over twenty years after the murder, two bystanders discovered the decomposed skull of a middle-aged woman in the peat bog. After forensics matched its age with that of Malika, Reyn-Bardt realized the jig was up and confessed in the face of overwhelming evidence, claiming, "It has been so long, I thought I would never be found out."

The murder was finally brought to trial, but in a surprise twist, an Oxford professor arrived to testify that they had not, in fact, found the remains of Malika but those of an ancient Brito-Roman woman. As it turns out, some peat bogs can create "bog bodies" where ancient corpses are preserved by the pickling powers of the peat so perfectly they look better than even the best-prepared mummies. So despite looking like spring cadaver, the remains were 1,700 years old which, doing some quick math, is slightly older than Malika Maria de Fernandez was. Reyn-Bardt tried to recant his confession, but it was too late. He was convicted of the murder of Malika and sentenced to a badly preserved life in prison.

Walker may have taken Platt's nationality, identity, and life but he had forgotten to take his watch, a very expensive and well-crafted Rolex, the only thing that survived the journey from watery grave to police evidence locker. The Rolex not only allowed investigators to determine the time of death with Swiss precision but also to trace its serial number back to its owner, Ronald Joseph Platt. Which was strange, since a man by that name was still walking around Harrogate with his young and facially similar wife.

Despite trying to pretend to be a completely different American man, one who implausibly said "eh" at the end of each sentence, Walker was finally found out. Not as easily conned, a British judge described the Canadian sociopath as "a plausible, intelligent and ruthless man who poses a serious threat to anyone who stands in your way" and sentenced him to life in prison. Afterward, having politely waited their turn, the Canadian government shipped Walker back home to give him another five years for the fraud on top of his life sentence, which is the kind of deal that only a ruthless scam artist like Walker could appreciate.

John Cooper was a Welsh serial killer. In the '80s, he was the prime suspect of the murders of Richard and Helen Thomas and Peter and Gwenda Dixon. His M.O. for both was the same. Cooper would hold them up at gunpoint, rob them, and, no matter what, kill them anyway with a shotgun blast to the face at point-blank range. Unfortunately, Cooper was a clever psychopath who knew how to get rid of DNA evidence, even if it meant burning down an entire house. But the police managed to get their hands on an eyewitness, who gave a detailed description of ... the back of the perpetrator's head.

With very little to go on, the case went cold. But the police had time. Aside from being a murderer and arsonist, Cooper was also a thief, armed robber, and pedophile rapist, so the police were eventually able to throw him in jail for while they kept their fingers crossed for a break. The murders laid dormant for twenty years until a cold case unit finally solved it thanks to the greatest modern inventions: DNA testing and DVR taping.

The investigators found out that two months before the last killings, Cooper had competed on everyone's favorite darts-themed game show Bullseye with below-average accuracy. (What can you expect from a guy who used a sawn-off shotgun at a one-pace distance?) More DVD-savvy than their '80s counterparts, the investigators realized they could commandeer a tape and "freeze John Cooper in exactly the same position as the artist's impression" of his back, which, according to the lead investigator, turned out to be so similar it made the sketch look like a "tracing."

With the gruesomely compelling before-and-after images and some new DNA evidence, a jury was easily convinced that the mulleted monster in the courtroom was the same mulleted monster in the sketch which was the same mulleted monster winning a washing machine on the telly. Fresh out of prison for robbery, The Bullseye Killer was marched right back in for a life sentence.

Army Sergeant Timothy Hennis might as well have had "guilty" tattooed on his forehead. He had been to the Eastburn house days before to adopt their dog, and several neighborhood eyewitnesses saw a man with his exact description wearing a Members Only jacket and sneaking out of the house with a trash bag. Meanwhile, Hennis had tried to have his Members Only jacket dry cleaned, was seen burning a bunch of stuff in a barrel in his backyard, and, despite always being broke, was suddenly flush with cash (the Eastburns' credit card had been stolen). After all the witness statements and Hennis' impassive face when the bloody crime scene photos were presented, it took a jury roughly half a second to convict him of the murders and sentence him to death.

But Hennis had a great lawyer. After several appeals, North Carolina State Supreme Court ruled that the the jury had been unfairly influenced by having been shown the graphic pictures of the murders (i.e. evidence) and allowed a retrial. Meanwhile, Hennis maintained his innocence, even claiming he had received letters from "the real killer," a "Mr. X" thanking him for taking the rap. So with the prosecution having one hand tied behind their back and the defense going full O.J. by sowing as much doubt as possible, Hennis was once and for all found not guilty.

For seventeen years, Hennis walked around as a free man, even re-enlisting in the Army and retiring as a Master Sergeant. But during those years, DNA testing got a lot better, and in 2006 a cold case detective managed to match the semen in Katie's rape kit to Hennis' DNA. But despite the new slam dunk evidence, there was a tiny problem: Double jeopardy, the rule in the United States Constitution that says the same court can't judge the same guy for the same crime twice. So North Carolina couldn't put Hennis behind bars again.

But Hennis wasn't just a Carolina man, he was also an Army man, a federal institution with its own court system. So when the military found out that Hennis was about to walk free on a technicality, they recalled him to active duty for no other purpose than to drag his uniformed ass in front of a federal court-martial. There, a jury of his well-disciplined peers found, for the second time, that he was guilty as all hell and put him on death row, where Hennis remains to this day.

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Abraham is a Mexican lawyer. When he isn't doing law stuff he writes comedy! You can say hi to him on Twitter here or follow him on Wattpad to read some of his upcoming fictional stories here.

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