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Buzzfeed Unsolved - True Crime S4 • E9
The Bizarre Winchester Murder Spree
The episode began as it always did- with the sound of shattering glass, a siren screaming in the distance, as a swinging lightbulb illuminated the name of the show: Buzzfeed Unsolved.
“This week on Buzzfeed Unsolved we are discussing two of the most prolific and strangest serial killers in recent history: Sam and Dean Winchester.”
“That’s a bold claim,” Shane said, raising his eyebrows. “Because most serial killers are already by default a little, uh,” he twirled his finger around his temple to indicate crazy.
“That’s true, but also, most serial killers haven’t been reported dead six separate times.”
“Is that between them, or?”
“Averaged, actually.”
Shane raised his eyebrows and leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands. “Well. Color me intrigued.”
“Let’s get into the background. There’s a lot to go through here.”
With that, the show faded to its standard style of graphics and photographs overlaid with narration. The first image to appear is an outline of Kansas, the city of Lawrence marked with a dot.
“Dean Winchester was born in Lawrence, Kansas, on January 24th, 1979. His younger brother, Sam, was born four years later, on May 2nd, 1983.”
so we’re starting like at the WAY beginning
no but this is actually important
i mean, the weird stuff starts happening pretty fast
“Exactly six months after Sam’s birth, the Winchester home burned down, killing Mary Winchester. Many acquaintances of the family said that this had an extreme adverse effect on John Winchester’s mental state. Winchester was a marine, and had already shown several signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, but testimonials from friends and family suggest that this event may actually have pushed him to a psychotic break.”
that’s six months to the day, by the way. november second
man, what a way to celebrate your first half birthday
any chance that this was like a blowing out the candles gone- horribly horribly wrong situation?
“I’m going to play part of a recorded statement from Anita Blossom, a former neighbor of the Winchesters from when they lived in Lawrence.”
‘We brought them some food, to the hotel room they were staying at during the fire investigation and… and the funeral. We just felt so awful, John all alone now with those two baby boys… I remember he left that lock chain on when he opened the door, so we could only see him through a little crack. He looked like he hadn’t slept since the fire. He wouldn’t take the food… it was like he didn’t trust it. The next day was the funeral, and the day after that they were just gone. I never saw them again, until last year, on- on the news.’
“After moving out of Lawrence, the Winchesters don’t have any permanent address for longer than six months in any location. The brothers were constantly moving through different schools in different states, though Sam managed consistently high grades despite this and was generally recognized by his teachers as having a lot of potential. He eventually broke with his father and brother on turning eighteen and receiving a full ride to Stanford.”
“According to accounts by Sam’s friends at this time, he was a well-adjusted and very friendly man, who didn’t like to talk about his family and wanted to be a lawyer. Facts that all paint the picture of someone doing a very good job of moving on from a chaotic childhood and unhealthy family life- which makes what happened next all the more baffling.”
see, this is the part ive never understood, because Sam is- he’s in the clear, at this point
he’s moved on, he has a really good life, he’s obviously split with his family, and then all of a sudden something happens that just- yanks him back
“Halloween, 2005. Sam Winchester disappears in the middle of the night and doesn’t show up to any of his classes for the next two days. Friends note that this is extremely out of character for him. On November second, a fire starts in the dorm room he shared with his girlfriend, Jess, killing her and destroying about a third of the building. Sam attends the funeral, but immediately after drops out of Stanford and disappears. After this is when the Winchester brothers start making their first appearances as suspects and persons of interest in murder cases.”
that is the worst case of deja vu i ever heard
i was wondering if you’d pick up on that
so mary and jess, murder or not murder?
i’m honestly not sure
because obviously the deaths are very similar, right
right
and the authorities do attribute jess’s death to the winchesters, but that charge was only added later when their notoriety prompted a re-examination of the case
but like, none, none of the theorized motives here make a single grain of sense
because normally serial killers are so logical and rational
“Two weeks later, Dean Winchester is caught torturing a young woman, Rebecca Warren, in Saint Louis. He evades police initially but is eventually caught and shot to death in the sewers beneath the city. This is the first time either Winchester is the prime suspect in a felony, and also the first time Dean Winchester is declared dead. Bafflingly, it wouldn’t be the last on either count.”
“It’s worth noting that despite fingerprint, photographic, and DNA evidence all placing him at the scene of the crime, Rebecca Warren has for years categorically denied that it was Dean Winchester who attacked her. This sort of denial became a common thread among victims or would-be victims of the Winchesters, to the frustration and confusion of investigators.”
so is it like
”is this the man who attacked you? the one who’s a wanted murderer and whose fingerprints were found in your house?”
”nah”
pretty much
we’ll talk about this some more later, in the theories, because some of them have had some very weird things to say
“Doctor Alma Gillespie, an FBI behavioral analyst specializing in serial killer methodology, has said that the case of the Winchester brothers is the most bizarre she’s ever encountered. She spent nearly a year attempting to make sense of it. The following is a quote from her conclusive report.”
“‘Most serial killers have a defined pattern to their killing that is driven by a specific neurosis or pattern of neuroses. They adhere to a specific victim range, method and motivation of killing and of behavior after the act [...] No such pattern is visible within the Winchester crimes. There is no correlation in timing, location, victim demographic or method of murder. An occult, ritualistic theme recurs throughout many of the crimes, but not all. There have been multiple mass shootings and multiple private torture-murders, and a shocking number of non-felony crimes, such as grave robbery. I would almost be more inclined to call them spree murderers than serial killers due to the complete irregularity of their behavior.’”
“‘Sometimes the brothers will separate as well, and I want to emphasize this as extremely unusual in the case of two codependent killers. There have been multiple, significant periods of time in which only one of the Winchesters was active, and multiple full years- the first spanning between 2009 to 2010 and the second covering most of 2012- wherein both brothers dropped off the map completely.’”
“‘In conclusion, I can reach no conclusions about the methodology behind the Winchester killings besides the fact that it simply does not make sense.’”
imagine being so next level weird that a person whose whole job it is to figure out the brains of psychos just has to throw up her hands and say “fuck it”
(wheeze)
”that’s it. i’m out”
“The Winchester murder spree continued for several years seemingly unchecked, despite multiple reported deaths and arrests, with, as Dr. Gillespie’s report stated, a constantly shifting modus operandi. After the second year-long ‘lull,’ in 2012, for example, the brothers briefly conducted a series of mass shootings, crimes that were much more simple and public, and infinitely more deadly, than their largely single-victim murders up until that point. In fact, a now-famous video taken during the first shooting, in a restaurant in Saint Louis, indicates that the Winchesters intended these crimes to be visible.”
The screen switched to a shaky phone-camera video. Dean Winchester is seen standing on a counter, firing down at people cowering on the floor. The phone starts to dip down, and raspy, frightened breathing is audible behind it.
’Hey! Hey hey hey hey! Keep that up! I didn’t say you could put that down!’
Sam Winchester, holding a semiautomatic rifle, moves into the frame, pointing at the person filming.
’I want the whole world to know what Sam and Dean Winchester are capable of.’
Sam guns down the woman sitting across the seat from the filmer, then moves to stand next to his brother.
’That all of them?’
’All but one.’
The filmer can be hear gasping out no, please, no- before the final burst of gunfire. The phone is dropped, and the video is focused on the ceiling for a moment before Dean Winchester’s grinning face appears in frame once more, giving a mocking salute.
’Welp, goodnight, Saint Louis. You’ve been a wonderful crowd. Grab your socks and hoes, Iowa, cause we’re headed to you next.
Dean winks exaggeratedly, then drops the phone. The video ends.
okay so this is like- one of the most cartoonishly evil things i’ve ever seen
jesus, the wink at the end
who does that?
i know, right?
“There’s one more event I’d like to cover before we get into the theories, and that’s the destruction of the Monument, Colorado sheriff's office in 2008. FBI agent Victor Henriksen, who had been pursuing the Winchester case for months, successfully caught and arrested the Winchesters and detained them overnight at the sheriff’s office until they could be transported to the nearest supermax prison by helicopter.”
taking no chances, huh
“However, that night, there was a massacre, with most of the policemen of Monument county as well as the pilot of the helicopter being brutally slaughtered. Most bizarre- and alarming- is that fact that Sam and Dean Winchester were still in their cells when this occurred.”
well, then, who the fuck did it?
i mean, that’s the question
“Information about what happened inside the police station that night is scarce, for reasons that will soon be obvious. What is known is that Sam and Dean Winchester escaped custody, and that the next morning- after the Winchesters were already gone- the station exploded, killing Agent Henricksen and everyone else inside. From there, let’s get into the theories, and I want to note that most of these theories can explain parts of the story, but not the whole thing. More than one of these theories might be true.”
“Our first theory is that the constant contradictions in the official record of the Winchester murders is a result of misrepresentation by police, attributing crimes committed by other killers to the Winchesters.”
“This theory was proposed by Jacob Weathers, a long-time crime reporter at the Chicago Tribune and famous investigator into police misconduct. Weathers suggests that only the occult-element murders and grave robberies were actually committed by the Winchester brothers, which would create a more constant modus operandi, and that all others were merely attributed to them due to similar elements, similar location, or murderers with similar descriptions, an effect that was likely exacerbated as the Winchesters grew more infamous.”
so he’s saying that basically whenever the police bumped into something they didn’t get or they were like just about to go home for the weekend, they just sorta shrugged and labeled it ‘winchesters, probably’
“However, a major flaw in this theory is that it fails to explain the chain of shootings starting with the Saint Louis restaurant massacre, which do not fit this occult theme and were definitively committed by the Winchesters, a fact proved by the video we played earlier.”
“Despite that inconsistency, the main gist of this theory is widely accepted, and most law enforcement agrees that at least some of the crimes attributed to the Winchesters were not committed by them. A thorough re-examination of the Winchester case files in 2015 proved that some of the crimes the Winchesters were supposed to have committed took place within very close timespans of each other, and would have required them to be in two places at once, or otherwise be able to travel cross-country impossibly fast.”
so like, this doesn’t explain everything, but law enforcement agrees it’s probably true at least for some of these cases
alright, i mean this seems fairly grounded. So far.
“Our second theory is that Sam and Dean Winchester were raised in a cultlike religious upbringing by their father, after he had a psychotic break triggered by the death of Mary Winchester. I’ve mentioned a few times now that many of the murders attributed to the Winchesters have occult elements, such as inverted pentagrams and other runic symbols spray-painted at the scene of the crime, and several witnesses have reported them making reference to angels or demons.”
“This was a focal point of Agent Victor Henricksen’s investigation. Files left behind after his death indicate that he believed the boys’ father had instilled a religious terror of ‘monsters’ in them, and possibly convinced them that it was their duty to hunt such monsters. This could indicate that the murders could be a holy mission of sorts, purifying the world.”
so like the blues brothers
what??
yknow, “we’re on a mission from god?”
“A recorded confession by Dean Winchester from when he was briefly in police captivity in 2006 seems to confirm this.”
The screen switches to a grainy, blue-hued video of a man chained to an interrogation room table, staring intently into the camera.
’My name is Dean Winchester. I'm an Aquarius. I enjoy sunsets, long walks on the beach, and frisky women. And I did not kill anyone. But I know who did. Or rather what did. Of course it can't be for sure, because our investigation was interrupted. But our working theory was that we're looking for some kind of vengeful spirit.’
A police officer can be heard groaning in the background, and the video cuts out.
okay, so, i’m not an expert, but that seems like a completely different person from mister ‘goodnight saint louis’ cheery mass murderer we saw earlier
THANK you
i was hoping you’d notice that, okay, that brings us to our next theory
“Our third theory is that the Winchester brothers are actual, successful hunters of the paranormal.”
god damn it
“There are many elements of the Winchester murders that are unexplainable by normal means. Most noticeable of these are the multiple false death declarations, and the multiple bodies that have been found. However, there’s an exchange in the earlier police interview that may explain this. When he was questioned about the torture-murders in Saint Louis, where he was first declared dead, Dean Winchester said, quote, ’That wasn’t me [...] That was a shapeshifter creature that only looked like me.’”
and he’s a crazy person, ryan
“If this were true, and the Winchesters were genuine hunters of the paranormal, including some sort of shapeshifter creatures, this could explain many of the inconsistencies in their case- the multiple false death reports, for example, as well as the sudden and out of character rash of mass shootings. What if they weren’t committed by the Winchesters at all, but by monsters trying to defame and hurt their greatest hunters?”
don’t strain yourself reaching that far
w- do you have a better explanation?
just because i don’t doesn’t mean your nutjob explanation is true!
you’re trying to tell me that two of the most famous serial killers ever were actually framed by magic shapeshifting monsters?
be realistic, ryan
“The Winchester brothers are still at large. Perhaps someday, they’ll be caught for good, and we’ll finally have an answer to the endless questions their case has created. But until then, the case remains… unsolved.”