20 Chilling Moments Killers Were CAUGHT In The Act

20 Times Killers Were Caught in the Act

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re looking at twenty examples of a killer being caught in the middle of a murder.

Coral Eugene Watts

We begin with a capture that proves the value of quick thinking. Coral Eugene Watts was a drifter who had already claimed dozens of lives by 1982. In fact, some suspect that he is the most prolific serial killer in American history. But his spree ended when he broke into a Houston apartment and attacked two roommates. While Watts was attempting to drown one woman in the bathtub, the other roommate - who had feigned unconsciousness - slipped out the balcony and alerted the neighbors. They called the police and spotted Watts as he fled the apartment. Authorities cornered him in a nearby yard, ending a cross-country nightmare and proving that a neighbor looking out for another can be the only thing standing between a predator and his prey.

Harvey Glatman

The self-styled Glamour Girl Slayer, Harvey Glatman used photography appointments to lure aspiring models to their deaths. His reign of terror was cut short in 1958 by a stroke of sheer luck and the brave actions of a potential victim. A highway patrolman was cruising past a parked car when he noticed a violent struggle occurring in the front seat. He pulled over to find Glatman wrestling with a woman, Lorraine Vigil, who had grabbed the killer's gun and was fighting for her life. The officer’s arrival ended the standoff, leading to the arrest of a serial killer just seconds before he could claim another victim. Glatman was executed in 1959, and Vigil outlived him by over forty years, passing away in 2002 at the age of 66.

Matej Curko

Moving from the ‘50s into the digital age, we have the disturbing case of the Slovak Cannibal. Matej Curko treated the internet as his own personal grocery store, seeking voluntary victims who wished to be killed. In this way, he murdered and ate at least two women. In 2011, a Swiss man agreed to meet Curko but secretly contacted the police. An undercover agent then took the man’s place and arranged a rendezvous in the woods. When Curko arrived, he was armed with knives, body bags, and spices, fully expecting to butcher and eat his date. But he quickly realized it was a sting and drew a firearm, shooting the agent. He was then struck by a sniper’s bullet and died in the hospital a few days later.

Karl Denke

This entry takes us back to 1924 for a story straight out of a gothic horror novel. In a small German town in the Kingdom of Prussia, residents were startled by agonizing screams coming from the home of Karl Denke, a respected local organist. Suddenly, a man burst from the apartment, covered in blood and screaming for help. This man was Vincenz Olivier, who had just been hit in the head with a pickaxe. Police initially didn’t believe Olivier owing to Denke’s charitable reputation and actually arrested him for vagrancy. But a judge insisted on investigating further, and Denke was taken in for questioning. He then took his own life inside the holding cell before police could interrogate him. When police searched his home, they found human flesh being cured inside jars of brine.

Tsutomu Miyazaki

Sometimes, getting caught for a lesser crime exposes a monster. Tsutomu Miyazaki, known as the Otaku Murderer, had been kidnapping and killing young girls across Tokyo throughout the late 1980s. And his downfall didn’t come from a homicide investigation, but from a concerned father. In 1989, a man spotted Miyazaki taking lewd photos of his daughter in a park and confronted him. Miyazaki attacked the father and fled on foot, leaving his vehicle behind. When he foolishly returned to the park to retrieve his car, police were waiting for him, having been called by the concerned father. He was taken into custody, and a search of his home revealed thousands of videotapes and photos of his previous victims, pulling the curtain back on a serial killer hiding in plain sight.

Robert Black

This is arguably the closest call on this list. In 1990, a resident in the Scottish village of Stow was mowing his yard when he saw a six-year-old neighbor getting into a stranger’s van. While it didn’t look like a violent struggle, the neighbor’s intuition screamed that something was wrong. He took note of the vehicle’s license plate and ran to the girl’s house, informing her mother. She then called the police, who quickly intervened and captured the vehicle. In a horrible twist, the girl’s father was one of the responding officers, and he found his terrified child bound and gagged inside a sleeping bag in the rear of the van. The man was arrested and identified as Robert Black, serial predator and killer of at least four young girls.

Arthur Shawcross

By 1990, the Genesee River Killer had Rochester, New York, under siege, having murdered at least a dozen people. With no leads, police launched a helicopter surveillance team to monitor the local riverbanks. On January 3, 1990, the body of June Cicero was discovered in Salmon Creek. It was also around this time that both an eyewitness and a police surveillance team spotted a man standing on a bridge over the creek, performing an act of a sexual nature. The man’s car was identified, leading police straight to one Arthur Shawcross. It was a capture that felt cinematic, utilizing both aerial tactics and boots on the ground to capture one of New York’s most infamous killers.

Joachim Kroll

This German serial killer claimed at least eight lives between 1955 and 1976. And the break in this case came from the unlikeliest of places - the plumbing. The waste pipe in Joachim Kroll’s building was clogged, and when a neighbor asked what it could be, Kroll told him it was “guts”. Not knowing if it was just a morbid joke or a grim reality, the neighbor alerted a nearby policeman. This led them straight to Kroll’s apartment, where they found a human hand boiling on the stove and human remains crammed into the waste pipe. Needless to say, Kroll was arrested immediately, earning the moniker The Ruhr Cannibal in the process. After decades, Kroll was finally apprehended simply because the plumbing couldn’t handle the evidence he was trying to flush away.

William Bonin

The Freeway Killer William Bonin murdered at least fourteen young men in California, and his spree ended in, of all places, a parking lot. On the night of June 11, 1980, police spotted Bonin picking up a teenage boy in his van. They followed the vehicle to a gas station parking lot and then approached, hearing screams and bangs coming from within the van. They then opened the doors and found Bonin actively assaulting his latest victim. A search of the vehicle uncovered a toolkit of horrors, including ropes, knives, and newspaper clippings related to the Freeway Killer. The officers had physically interrupted an assault and probable murder in progress, and Bonin became the first prisoner to die by lethal injection in California, having been executed in 1996.

Richard Cottingham

If you hear screaming coming from a hotel room, please don’t ignore it. In 1980, housekeeping staff at a New Jersey Quality Inn heard muffled cries and screams coming from room 117 and ran to help. They entered to find Richard Cottingham, the so-called Torso Killer, attacking his latest victim, Leslie Ann O’Dell. Police were quickly summoned. O’Dell had been bitten and was bleeding heavily, but she was alive. Luckily, the swift arrival of authorities put an end to Cottingham’s double life as a suburban father and brutal killer, and he was arrested in the motel hallway at gunpoint. His capture unraveled a series of murders that had plagued New York and New Jersey, all because some concerned people refused to turn a blind eye to a disturbance.

Issei Sagawa

It’s 1981 in Paris, and a Japanese student named Issei Sagawa is struggling to drag two heavy suitcases into the city’s Bois de Boulogne. Passersby watched with suspicion as he tried, and failed, to dump the luggage into a lake. They also saw what looked like blood seeping from the suitcases. The witnesses called the police, who tracked Sagawa down shortly after and arrested him. You see, inside the suitcases were the dismembered remains of Sagawa’s classmate, Renée Hartevelt. He had shot her and eaten parts of her body before trying to dispose of the rest. A man walking through a public park carrying the bloody remains of his victim has to be one of the strangest and most surreal captures on record.

Shawn Grate

This 2016 case went viral thanks to a terrifying piece of audio. A woman held captive in an abandoned house in Ohio managed to loosen her bonds while her kidnapper, Shawn Grate, slept nearby. She grabbed his phone and dialed 911, telling the operator that she was imprisoned and that her abductor was currently sleeping. When police arrived, the courageous woman was able to open the door for them, leading officers right to the bedroom where Grate was woken and arrested without incident. While processing the scene, investigators discovered two other decomposing bodies on the property. Grate was convicted for murdering five women between 2006 and 2016 and is currently on death row in the Chillicothe Correctional Institution.

Joel Rifkin

This famous serial killer murdered a suspected seventeen women in New York, but he wasn’t taken down by a massive manhunt or DNA evidence. He was caught because of a missing license plate. In 1993, state troopers attempted to pull Rifkin over for the minor traffic violation. But Rifkin panicked and floored it, leading police on a high speed chase that finally ended when he crashed into a utility pole. When troopers approached the wrecked car, they were hit with the undeniable stench of death. Wrapped inside a blue tarp in the trunk of the vehicle was the decomposing body of his final victim, Tiffany Bresciani. It’s a classic example of how traffic stops are often the most dangerous - and ultimately the most revealing - part of police work.

Randy Kraft

While Rifkin went down thanks to a missing license plate Randy Kraft went down after making an illegal lane change. In 1983, California Highway Patrol pulled Kraft over after he made the move, believing that he was driving under the influence. As Kraft fumbled through a sobriety test, one of the officers turned his attention to Kraft’s passenger, who was slumped over and unresponsive. He initially believed that the man was drunk or sleeping, but upon closer inspection, the officer made the horrifying realization that he was dead. Kraft had been driving down the freeway with a fresh corpse propped up in the seat next to him. Kraft also had a coded list of victims in the car, leading to his nickname as The Scorecard Killer.

Wayne Williams

Atlanta was in a state of panic in 1981 due to the Child Murders plaguing the city. Desperate for a break, police began staking out bridges over the Chattahoochee River, hoping to catch the killer dumping evidence. In the very early morning of May 22, a recruit heard a loud and distinct splash in the water. They immediately stopped the first car to emerge from the bridge, which was being driven by one Wayne Williams. Two days later, the body of Nathaniel Cater surfaced downstream. It’s now widely believed that the splashing sound the officer heard was Cater’s body hitting the water. Williams was arrested and convicted of two murders (including Cater’s), but some believe that he was responsible for dozens more as the Atlanta Child Killer.

David Parker Ray

This man spent $100,000 building a soundproof trailer equipped with grotesque surgical tools and mirrors to torment his kidnapped subjects, leading to his nickname as The Toy Box Killer. But in 1999, one of his victims, a woman named Cynthia Vigil, fought back. When Ray left the room, she managed to grab an ice pick, stab his accomplice in the neck, and flee the Toy Box wearing only a dog collar and chains. She then banged on a neighbor’s door, screaming for help. The neighbor called the police, who quickly arrived and investigated the trailer, exposing decades of horrific abuse and suspected murder. Ray was a sadist who thought he had created the perfect prison, but he underestimated the bravery and the strength of Cynthia Vigil.

Katherine Knight

We head to Australia for a crime scene that traumatized even veteran officers. Back in February of 2000, police arrived at the home of Katherine Knight, hoping to conduct a simple welfare check. Katherine’s partner, John Price, failed to show up for work, and an employee was concerned. The house was a grotesque showpiece. Knight had murdered and skinned Price, hanging his “pelt” from a meat hook in the living room. When police walked into the kitchen, they found Price’s head in a pot. And that’s not all. Knight had even cooked some of his flesh and set two plates on the dinner table with place cards for his children, intending to feed them their father. Knight was found asleep in the bedroom and was promptly arrested.

Peter Sutcliffe

The Yorkshire Ripper was the most wanted man in Britain in 1981, evading capture for years. And to think, it all ended in a Sheffield driveway. Police spotted a car parked in a known red light district and approached. Inside was Peter Sutcliffe and a sex worker he likely intended to murder. Sutcliffe was arrested when officers discovered that the car had false plates. But before being taken in, Sutcliffe asked to relieve himself behind an oil tank, and he used that moment to ditch a hammer, knife, and rope. The arresting officer, suspicious of the sudden bathroom break, returned to the scene the next day and found the discarded tools. Sutcliffe was confronted with this sudden find and immediately confessed to being The Yorkshire Ripper, killer of at least thirteen women.

Dennis Nilsen

Another killer, another plumbing downfall. Dennis Nilsen, known as the Muswell Hill Murderer, had been killing men in London for years, often taking them back to his apartment, dismembering their bodies, and flushing their remains down the toilet. This worked for a while, but the drains in his apartment building eventually backed up. A plumber named Michael Cattran was called to investigate, expecting a routine blockage. Instead, he pulled up a gruesome slurry of human flesh and bone. The remains were traced to the top flat, which belonged to Dennis Nilsen. Police were notified, and when Nilsen returned from work, they went upstairs to his flat. They immediately noticed the smell of rotting flesh and confronted Nilsen, who admitted that two bags of human body parts were currently inside his wardrobe.

Jeffrey Dahmer

And who can forget the lucky break that ended the nightmare in Milwaukee? In July 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer lured a man named Tracy Edwards back to his apartment. When Dahmer pulled a knife on him, Edwards realized that he was in mortal danger and bolted from the apartment, running down the street with a pair of handcuffs still dangling from one wrist. He flagged down a passing patrol car, and the officers agreed to return to the apartment to help him get the key for the handcuffs. Once inside, an officer opened one of Dahmer’s dressers and found numerous Polaroids of dismembered corpses. Dahmer tried running but was quickly taken down and arrested. Police later searched his apartment thoroughly, finding the notorious fridge of body parts and the tub of dissolving torsos.

Can you believe these stories? Let us know in the comments below!