I absolutely love the joy and excitement that comes with falling down a rabbit hole of true-crime documentaries and stories. There’s something so interesting about looking into murders, who the murderers are, and why they decided to commit the crime. Rarely, murderers will actually confess to what they’ve done for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, a criminal will come forward and, either out of guilt or pity, confess to their crimes on camera. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s true. I took a deep dive into the world of video confessions and listed out what I believe to be the top five craziest murder confessions ever caught on video.
5. Earl Valentine
Earl Valentine used a rather unconventional method of confessing to the crime of murdering his son and critically wounding his ex-wife: Facebook Live. The North Carolina resident took to the popular social media platform in September 2016 to reveal what he had done and comment that he felt no remorse. In the video, however, he had believed that he had killed both his ex-wife and his son. It’s unclear exactly how many people were on the Live, but it was definitely enough that local police were notified and immediately began tracking Valentine’s cellphone, finding him dead from a self-inflicted wound in South Carolina.
Valentine’s ex-wife, Keisha Valentine, had a restraining order against the former that expired just a month before the fatal shooting. The two likely had an incredibly strained relationship, resulting in Earl’s figurative explosion. Police say that during the debacle, Earl had been targeting his wife, but their son got in the way, leading to his death. Watching the video back to write this piece, it’s incredibly ominous and chilling.
4. Jerrod Murray
Jerrod Murray’s murder confession wasn’t just creepy, it was incredibly detailed and direct. In December 2012, Murray asked a friend of a friend named Generro Sanchez to drive him to a local Walmart in exchange for some cash. However, when the two arrived, Murray pulled a handgun on Sanchez and forced him to drive north of town. During the drive, Murray shot and killed Sanchez, hid his body, and attempted to cover up any potential fingerprints with some WD-40 he had borrows from his roommate’s father. While trying to hitchhike away from the scene, he flagged down an officer in an undercover police vehicle, where he was quickly taken into custody.
It’s when he arrives at the station that things get creepy. On camera, Jerrod Murray not only confesses to the murder of Generro Sanchez, but he also reveals that he only did it because he wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone and selected Sanchez at random. Looking back at the tape, he only sat in the interrogation room for two hours. Of course, he is sitting with the camera at an angle so that his eyes are covered, wearing a full suit and coat and sporting long, dark hair, while sparsely making any movement with his body, making things immensely creepier.
3. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier
I felt that the murder confessions of Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier in the 2014 murder of their friend were among the craziest I had seen. This is mainly because, at the time, the two were only 13 and 14 years old. The two teenagers had lured a friend into the woods only to stab her 19 times in response to a ritual they were performing to appease Slender Man. You read that right; that Slender Man.
After being apprehended, only Weier displayed remorse while Geyser seemed to feel little to no empathy. She was the one who made the video confession detailing how and why they murdered their friend. The girls thought that it was a necessary killing because otherwise, they would be victims themselves to whatever it is that Slender Man was planning. The murder confession came under scrutiny when police determined that Geyser was likely not in the right state of mind. However, there has not been a change in her innocence since then.
2. Gary Ridgway
The murder confessions of Gary Ridgway, a man, concerning the various people he killed in the 1980s and 1990s are almost unbelievable. In a series of video interviews, voice recordings, and written documents, Ridgway had confessed to 49 killings, more than any other American serial killer at the time and even now. There is even a taped interview where he confesses to having killed over 65 women for a total of 71 to 90+ murders, though police didn’t officially confirm those numbers as accurate. His killing spree came to an end in 2001, when he was apprehended by police, making these various murder confessions only two years later in exchange for being spared the death penalty.
Of the 49 confirmed murders, 42 of them were also those police had connected to the Green River Killer, who was previously thought to be a separate criminal. Between his arrest, murder confessions, and now, there are still remains of Gary Ridgway’s victims being found across Oregon. Realistically, he’s still alive and could very well lead police to the bodies of even more victims.
1. Robert Durst
While Robert Durst’s murder confession wasn’t necessarily caught on video, the microphone that a production crew had put on him to film a miniseries, in which he maintains his innocence in the deaths of three people in his life, was. In the 2015 docuseries The Jinx, Durst sits down with director Andrew Jarecki after being well-known for not cooperating with any journalists. It is only after production began that the stepson of one of the women murdered discovered a letter that implicated Durst as the murderer. After this, Durst became more apprehensive about doing more interviews with Jarecki.
In the sixth and final episode of the first season, it is revealed that during one of the interviews, Durst left the room, unaware that his microphone was still on, and went to the bathroom. Here, he rambles about various things until finally, he confesses, “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.” This murder confession granted the series a second season that detailed the arrest and subsequent trial at length.
