Wednesday, October 26, 2022

The disturbing case of Daniel Halseth: Murdered by his own daughter

Daniel Halseth was born in Estacada, Oregon on January 28, 1976. He loved to make music, travel, take photos and post on social media. He frequently posted on tiktok, and had around 20 thousand followers. Daniel worked as an IT specialist, and had three children with his ex-wife, Elizabeth Halseth, who is a former Nevada state Legislator. Elected at age 27, Elizabeth Halseth is the youngest woman to ever be elected to the Nevada state senate. The two got married in 2001, and in 2011, the couple decided to get a divorce, but would remain friends despite of their own differences for the sake of their three children Jordan, Dana and Sierra.
In 2020, Daniel's youngest daughter Sierra, who was sixteen at the time, began seeing eighteen year old Aaron Gurrero. The relationship started in June of 2020, but in December of 2020, Daniel was informed by Aaron Gurrero's parents that the two teenagers had a plan to run away to Las Angeles, and Daniel demanded that Sierra break up with Aaron. However, they were not willing to break things off so easily. Instead, they started planning Daniel Halseth's murder. On April 9th, 2021, Aaron Gurrero and Sierra Halseth stabbed Daniel over 70 times, attempted to dismember his body, and then stuffed his lifeless body into a sleeping bag and set the sleeping bag on fire. His body was soon found by his landlord, who his mother sent out to do a wellfare check after being unable to reach him. After this, the couple stole Daniel's blue Nissan Altima and ran away to Salt Lake City, where they were found three days later and were extradited back to Las Vegas. On Sierra's phone, investigators found a video of Sierra and Aaron confessing to the murder, while laughing. The teens were arrested and charged with murder, arson, conspiracy to commit robbery, and 4 counts of fraudulent use of a credit card. The two initially were going to plea not guilty, but ended up taking a plea deal that would give each of them 22 years in prison.

Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Christa Pike: The satanic "sacrifice" of Colleen Slemmer


   



Christa Pike was born in West Virginia on March 10th, 1976. Her mother was an alcoholic and her

 father was out of the picture, so Christa was raised by her grandparents. Christa and her grandmother

 were very close, but her grandma had a friend, named Earnest, who abused Christa for the majority of

 her childhood. According to Christa, the abuse began when she was still in diapers. However, this

 didn't affect the love that Christa had for her grandmother, and when she passed away, Christa

 attempted suicide at the age of 12. 


   She moved in with her mom, Carissa, who introduced Christa to marijuana almost immediately after

 moving in. But Christa and Carissa did not get along at all, because Carissa had multiple boyfriends,

 and a lot of them abused Christa, but her mom did nothing to stop the abuse.


   Later in her teenage years, Christa was arrested for shoplifting and served a month in juvenile. When

 she got out, she decided to join job corps to begin training as a nursing assistant. But when Christa

 arrived at job corps, she met a boy named Tadaryl Shipp, and became completely obsessed with him.

 Tadaryl was 17, and he was enrolled in the culinary arts program. He, like Christa, was also a high

 school dropout. He dropped out in the 9th grade and joined a gang, which was when his mom decided

 to send him to job corps. Tadaryl also had a dark obsession with satanism and the occult.

   Christa and Tadaryl's relationship progressed quickly, and it wasn't long before Christa took on

 Tadaryl's dark interests as her own. She became a satanist as well, which attracted the friendship of

 another job corps student, Shadolla Peterson. 

   But there was one girl on campus that Christa developed a jealous hatred for. Her name was Colleen

 Slemmer. Colleen was from Jacksonville, FL, and she was studying computer technology.


Colleen Slemmer

   Christa was worried that Colleen had an interest in Tadaryl, even though Colleen and Colleen's

 friends told her that she wanted nothing to do with Tadaryl. There was no logical reason for Christa to

 assume this about Colleen, but she still began to follow Colleen around campus and even back to her

 dorm room, threatening her and accusing her of liking Tadaryl over and over. Christa decided that

 Colleen should be sacrificed to Satan, and since Tadaryl and Shadolla both wanted the experience of

 sacrificing someone, Christa was easily able to convince them to help her. 


   On January 12th, 1995, Christa, Shadolla, and Tadaryl convinced Colleen to go into the woods with

 them and smoke some weed. They claimed they wanted to apologize for Christa's past behaviour. The

 four of them went into a nearby park. They walked around for a little while, and the three led Colleen

 to a nearby tunnel. Colleen started to become suspicious and asked the others if they were really going

to be smoking weed. Then, out of nowhere, Christa began to scream at Colleen, and started hitting her

 in the face. Colleen begged Christa to stop and tried to talk things out with her. But this just pissed

 Christa off more and she began to kick Christa in the face. 


   Christa removed a box cutter from her pocket and cut Colleen all over her body. Then, she handed the

 knife to Tadaryl, who carved a pentagram into Colleen's skin. They tortured Colleen for nearly an hour.

 They would let her stand up and beg for her life, then they would knock her back down and continue to

 beat her, cut her, and throw rocks at her. 

   When Christa and Tadaryl were finally done with the torture, Christa picked up a large piece of

 asphalt from a nearby pile, and bashed Colleen in the head with it. Over and over until she died.

   They hid her body in some bushes and Christa stole a piece of Colleen's skull to keep as a trophy. 

   Christa's other job corps friend Kim described her as being happy and giddy, showing off the piece of

 Colleen's skull and telling them all about the murder while laughing and dancing. But Kim wasn't the

 only person Christa bragged too. She told plenty of her other friends about the horrific murder. But

 none of them reported her right away. It didn't take long for Colleen's body to be found by a job corps

 employee. Her body was mutilated and one of the officers at the crime scene couldn't even tell if he

 was looking at Colleen's face when first examining the body. Christa actually showed back up to the

 crime scene for unknown reasons but was denied entry. She wasn't afraid of acting suspicious. She

 even left her hoodie in the job corps administrator's office, that had the piece of Colleen's skull stuffed

 inside the pocket. The campus handed it over to the police.


   After police spoke with Christa's peers and found out that she had been bragging about a murder, they

 brought Christa in for an interrogation. She cooperated with the police and immediately 

 confessed to the murder. She was excited to boast about the sick things she did to Colleen.

 In fact, she described the murder in so much detail that when her confession was typed out, it was 42

 pages long.


   Tadaryl, Shadolla and Christa were all arrested within two days of the killing. Shadolla plead guilty to

 being an accessory after the fact, and agreed to testify against Christa and Tadaryl, so she was given 6

 months of probation, since she technically didn't play a violent role in Colleen's murder. Tadaryl was

 convicted of capital murder and was given life with the possibility of parole after 25 years. Christa was

 convicted of capital murder and conspiracy to commit murder. She was sentenced to death by

 electrocution. She is awaiting death day at the Tennesse Prison for Women.


Monday, October 3, 2022

Tiernan Darnton: The Truth or Dare Killer


   Mary Gregory, a 94-year-old woman, was found clinging to life in her burned down and smoke-filled 
home in Heysham, Lancashire, England.  Mary struggled with dementia, and because of this, along with her age, the police initially thought that the fire was accidental. They assumed that Mary likely caused the fire and was unable to make it out in time. 


   Sadly, that was not the case.


   Mary had a step grandson, Tiernan Darnton. His father left him during his early childhood, but Mary's son Chris took over the fatherly role in Tiernan's life. Although Tiernan got along well with his mom and stepdad Chris for the most part, he began struggling with severe anxiety and depression.  It got to the point to where as a teenage boy, he didn't want to have friends and eventually, he stopped going to school.



   His parents began homeschooling him but being indoors 24/7 only made his depression grow worse. His mom took him to see a psychiatrist, and he was prescribed anti-depressants and anxiety medication. However, this didn't seem to help as he began treating his parents horribly, and eventually, when he was seventeen, his mother kicked him out of the house. 



   That was when the 94-year-old victim opened up her home to Tiernan. She invited him to live with her, but she made it very clear that the arrangement was only temporary. Since he was seventeen and entering adulthood, Mary treated him like an adult. But Mary didn't trust Tiernan, and she told some of her relatives that she despised him and wanted him away from her. They brushed it off as her being paranoid with her dementia.



   On May 28, 2018, Mary's two sons, Chris and Peter, received the horrifying news that Mary had been in a housefire, and was found curled up under a table barely alive with burn marks all over her body, including on the inside of her mouth. She was taken to the hospital, where she would unfortunately pass away only four days later. 
   


   Just a couple of weeks later, Tiernan was hanging out with some of his friends when they decided to play truth or dare. When it was Tiernan's turn, he was asked what his darkest secret was. That was when he confessed wo what he did to his grandmother for the first time.
 


   He told them that he blocked off all of the exits to ensure that Mary couldn't escape, and then set fire to her curtains. He then walked outside and smoked a cigarette, while watching the house burn, and listening to Mary's screams. 



   His friends didn't believe him, though, so they didn't report him. But in 2019, Tiernan was transferred to an adult psychology clinic and was given a new therapist. During his first appointment with her, he told her that he felt powerful in a situation that resulted in someone's death. At the end of the appointment, she said to him "I'm not really clear what you're saying, but I think you're trying to tell me you've killed someone."  Tiernan looked at her, and silently mouthed "Yes."



   She waited until their next session to contact police, to try to get more information. Tiernan decided to bring his stepdad Chris to the appointment and confessed everything to Chris and his therapist. He claimed it was an act of mercy, since Mary suffered from dementia. He also told them about some of the fights he had been in with Mary, and claimed that the day of the fire, she told him that she despised him and that his presence annoyed her. That was when Tiernan disconnected her phone, dismantled all of the smoke alarms, blocked the exits and set fire to the home. 
 


   After the appointment he was arrested, and he immediately changed his story. He even accused his therapist of lying about his confession. But when the detectives searched his room, they found his diary, which contained a hit list, and a very detailed drawn-out map of Mary's home. He had labeled every exit in the home, as well as where Ms. Gregory kept her money and valuable items. Next to the map, he even wrote himself a reminder to have a good alibi. They also found that after the fire, Tiernan had searched things like "I have the urge to kill again" and "I think I'm turning into a serial killer."  


   
   A can of coke was found in Mary's home, along with some little cake wrappers. Tiernan was spotted on CCTV footage purchasing these just hours before the fire. With all of this undeniable evidence, Tiernan was sentenced to life in prison.