For 20 years, Snapped has captivated viewers with the tales of how seemingly on a regular basis girls can change into cold-blooded killers.
Over 33 seasons, the beloved true-crime sequence has centered on killers — or close to or suspected killers — of all ages, races, and backgrounds. The murders could also be motivated by jealousy, greed, revenge, or just a misplaced sense of loyalty, however regardless of the pull, these girls are prepared to threat their freedom and fame to hold out the sinister acts.
Throughout its prolonged tenure on tv, Snapped has featured a whole lot of circumstances, however a few of these femme fatales stand out from the pack as a result of sheer brutality of their crimes or the notoriety that adopted.
Earlier than Snapped airs its two-hour 20th anniversary special, premiering Sunday, Could 12 at 6/5c on Oxygen, let’s look again at 9 of probably the most infamous circumstances ever lined throughout Snapped’s 20-year historical past:
Pamela Good
Pamela Good all the time dreamed of being well-known — however the broadcasting hopeful by no means imagined her time in the spotlight can be linked to a stunning and brutal crime.
The blonde bombshell was simply 22 years outdated and dealing as a media coordinator at Winnacunnet Excessive Faculty in Hampton, New Hampshire when she convinced her teenage boyfriend, William “Billy” Flynn, to murder her 24-year-old husband, Gregg Smart, based on New Hampshire Magazine.
Good — whose case was lined in Season 2 of Snapped — met Flynn, then 15 years outdated, whereas working on the college and shortly began an affair with the teenager. He’d later testify that he and his good friend Patrick Randall broke into the Smarts’ house on Could 1, 1990 and killed Gregg in what they hoped would seem like a theft gone incorrect. Buddies Vance Lattime Jr. and Raymond Fowler waited in a getaway automobile.
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Good all the time contended that Flynn, who pulled the set off, had acted on his personal in an try and win her coronary heart, however she was convicted of being an confederate to first-degree homicide after scholar Cecelia Pierce recorded damaging conversations with Good, underneath the path of the police, that instructed she orchestrated the homicide, based on WMUR.
“In case you inform the [expletive] reality, you will ship me to the slammer for the remainder of my [expletive] life,” Good was recorded telling the teenager.
The sensational story would later encourage the1995 hit film To Die For, starring Nicole Kidman.
Right this moment, Good is serving out a life sentence with out the opportunity of parole on the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Whereas she admits to having an affair with Flynn, Good nonetheless insists she didn’t assist plan her husband’s homicide.
“Nobody has ever defined any sort of enough motive for why I’d wish to homicide my husband once I may have simply gotten divorced,” she advised Dateline: Secrets Uncovered from behind bars. “My dad and mom lived in a gorgeous home proper up the road. We had no youngsters and no property or any — there was nothing to lose.”
Good has made probably the most of her time in jail and has earned a Grasp’s in Legislation, a Grasp’s in English literature, and was working towards a doctorate in biblical research, based on the newsmagazine. She additionally enjoys “reward dancing” in church.
Flynn and Randall, who have been each convicted of second-degree homicide, have each been launched after serving their sentences. Lattime and Fowler additionally hung out behind bars for his or her function in planning the crime, however have been paroled in 2005, WMUR stories.
Margaret Rudin
As soon as dubbed the “Las Vegas Black Widow,” Margaret Rudin’s case took a stunning flip in 2022 when her murder conviction was vacated.
Margaret, whose story was advised on Snapped in Season 5, was convicted of murdering her rich husband, Ron Rudin, in 2001 after spending years on the run, based on KTNV.
Police on the time believed Margaret had shot Ron to loss of life in his sleep in December 1994. His burned physique was discovered within the desert the subsequent month. Investigators theorized Margaret killed her husband to realize entry to his hundreds of thousands as the wedding was falling aside, per The Las Vegas Review Journal.
She was formally indicted in 1997, however by then she had already gone on the run, taking up new identities to maintain investigators at bay. Rudin was tracked down in 1999 residing in Massachusetts and was arrested. She was convicted three years later and sentenced to serve two life sentences in jail, per KTNV.
After serving many years behind bars, Rudin’s conviction was vacated in 2022 after a court docket dominated her protection legal professional had offered ineffective counsel. Prosecutors introduced later that very same yr that they didn’t plan to re-try the case.
Rudin, who continues to keep up her innocence, advised The Las Vegas Evaluate Journal that she was “very grateful.”
“I’m writing a ebook and placing the entire data in there,” she mentioned in 2022 of her future plans.
Jodi Arias
Jodi Arias‘ brutal homicide of ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander was so stunning it took two episodes to inform in Season 11 of Snapped. The notorious homicide was additionally revisited in an 120-minute episode overlaying the most recent within the case in Season 26.
The case started in June 2008 after Alexander, a good-looking Mormon businessman, was found lifeless within the rest room of his Mesa, Arizona house. He had been shot, stabbed almost 30 instances, and had his throat slit, based on The Arizona Republic.
Investigators quickly turned their consideration to Alexander’s ex Jodi Arias, a lady Alexander’s good friend Sky Lovingier Hughes described to 20/20 as possessive and “utterly obsessive about him.”
The poisonous relationship ended, but the pair continued to be drawn collectively and buddies say Arias was “stalking” Alexander earlier than his loss of life.
Arias was linked to the brutal crime scene after investigators found lengthy brown hairs and her fingerprints, based on PEOPLE. A digital digital camera that was thrown within the washer additionally had images of the pair collectively the day of the homicide.
Arias was arrested and charged with first-degree homicide.
The sensational homicide trial that adopted garnered a lot media consideration and public curiosity it drew comparisons to O.J. Simpson’s 1995 murder trial and has impressed a sequence of books, motion pictures, and podcasts in its wake.
Arias took the stand herself for 19 days, claiming that she killed Alexander in self-defense after being trapped in an emotionally and bodily abusive relationship. She additionally described the couple’s intercourse life in graphic element.
Arias was convicted in 2013 and was later sentenced to life in jail with out the opportunity of parole.
Right this moment, Arias is serving out her sentence on the Perryville state girls’s jail in Arizona, the place she works as a library aide, based on PEOPLE.
Brynn Hartman
Actor Phil Hartman was on the high of his sport when his wife, Brynn, shot him in the head as he slept at his Encino, California house.
The Saturday Night time Reside alum was identified for his work on The Simpsons, the NBC sitcom NewsRadio and films like Jingle All of the Method and Sgt. Bilko.
Phil — an avid sailor and pilot — additionally beloved being a dad to his youngsters Sean, 9, and Birgen, 6, PEOPLE reported.
However by Could 1998 there have been some apparent cracks in his marriage to Brynn. Buddies say the mannequin and aspiring actress was jealous of her husband’s success and resented the period of time he spent away from house both for work or pursuing his personal hobbies, based on ABC News. Brynn additionally struggled with a cocaine dependancy.
Then, on the early morning hours of Could 28,1998, Brynn returned house after an evening out and shot her husband as he slept thrice, together with one bullet to the brow.
Ron Douglas, Brynn’s ex-boyfriend, would later inform police that though he noticed her earlier that evening, she returned to his home round 3:45 a.m. to admit to the killing.
“I killed Phil,” he reported her saying, per ABC Information. “I don’t know why.”
Douglas went along with her again to the home, and after discovering the actor lifeless, he took the gun and went out within the hallway to name 911. Brynn managed to barricade herself contained in the bed room and shot herself with one other gun.
“For me it is without doubt one of the most tragic scenes … [Hartman] had really skilled the American dream that most individuals do not get to expertise,” responding LAPD officer Daniel Carnahan mentioned of discovering the 2 our bodies aspect by aspect on the mattress. “To have that taken away on this style appears so contradictory and so misplaced and so unfair.”
The couple’s two youngsters — who had been house on the time of the taking pictures however weren’t harm — have been raised within the midwest by Brynn’s sister and her husband.
Aileen Wuornos
Referred to as the “Damsel of Demise,” female serial killer Aileen Wuornos is believed to have taken the lives of seven males.
Wuornos — whose story was featured in a particular version of Snapped: Infamous in Season 23 — had a troubled childhood, stuffed with abandonment, with allegations of rape and violence. By the age of 16, based on Tampa Bay Times, Wuornos dropped out of highschool, was often utilizing medicine, and was working as a prostitute.
After a number of years transferring throughout the nation, Wuornos settled in Florida, the place she continued to help herself with intercourse work and commenced relationship girlfriend Tyria Moore.
Moore would later inform investigators, based on court documents, that on Dec. 1, 1989 an intoxicated Wuornos returned to the motel the place they have been residing and mentioned she had shot and killed a person, later recognized as Richard Mallory.
When media stories surfaced just a few months later that authorities have been trying to find two girls suspected in a string of murders, Moore panicked and left Wuornos to return to her household in Pennsylvania. She ultimately agreed to return to Florida to assist authorities catch a taped confession of Wuornos admitting to the killings.
“I cannot allow you to be concerned within the image. You’re not the one,” she advised Moore in a single recording, based on The Los Angeles Times. “I’m the one who did all the pieces. I did all of it myself.”
Police suspect she killed seven males who had been purchasers, usually leaving the bullet-ridden our bodies in wooded areas.
Throughout her trial for killing Mallory, Wuornos insisted she killed the person in self-defense after he raped her. However a jury didn’t purchase her declare and she was convicted of first-degree murder on Jan. 27, 1992 and sentenced to loss of life. She later pleaded no contest to 5 different deaths.
The remaining sufferer’s physique was by no means found and he or she was by no means formally charged in that case.
Wuornos was executed by deadly injection in 2002, based on ABC News. The subsequent yr, her story would play out on the large display screen within the critically acclaimed film Monster. Actress Charlize Theron, who performed the troubled killer, took house an Oscar for her efficiency.
Amy Fisher
Amy Fisher — later nicknamed the “Long Island Lolita”— was simply 17 years outdated when she knocked on her lover’s entrance door and shot his wife in the head.
The sufferer, Mary Jo Buttafuoco, miraculously survived, however the stunning case, profiled in Season 24 of Snapped, would captivate the nation and change into a permanent image of the ‘90s.
Fisher started an affair with married father and auto mechanic Joey Buttafuoco after her father introduced her into the auto store to get his automobile repaired, based on Fox News.
The teenager quickly turned so infatuated along with her much-older lover that she determined to eliminate his spouse and boldly knocked on the household’s entrance door in Massapequa, New York on Could 19, 1992. When Mary Jo answered, she fired a shot into her head.
Fisher was arrested and charged with tried homicide. She later pleaded responsible to first-degree assault and spent seven years behind bars, PEOPLE reported.
Joey was indicted on 19 counts of statutory rape, sodomy, and endangering the welfare of a kid for the underage relationship and later pleaded responsible to 1 depend of statutory rape, based on ABC News. He obtained a six-month sentence.
Whereas Mary Jo initially stood by her man, she and Joey divorced in 2003 and he or she later released a book in regards to the harrowing ordeal. In September 2017, based on PEOPLE, Mary Jo underwent surgical procedure to restore the partial paralysis she suffered in her face on account of the taking pictures.
Fisher — now a mother of three — launched her own book in 2004 and went on to have a short-lived profession within the grownup leisure trade after a intercourse tape was launched.
Joey, who has since remarried, has additionally cashed in on his fame by showing in a number of motion pictures and tv reveals together with Movie star Boxing and Choose Janine Pirro.
Pam Hupp
Pam Hupp was as soon as the star witness in her good friend’s grotesque homicide — however she now stands accused of killing her.
The sophisticated case, featured in Season 26 of Snapped, started on Dec. 27, 2011 when Betsy Faria, a Missouri mother not too long ago identified with terminal most cancers, was discovered stabbed to loss of life in her Troy, Missouri house with the knife nonetheless lodged in her neck.
Betsy’s greatest good friend, Pamela Hupp, was the final identified individual to see Betsy alive after driving her house that evening. Simply 4 days earlier than the killing, Betsy had modified her life insurance coverage coverage to listing Hupp as the only beneficiary.
When police spoke to Hupp she was fast to level suspicion towards Betsy’s husband, Russ Faria, claiming he had a violent mood and insisting Betsy was afraid of him and was contemplating leaving the wedding, based on St. Louis Magazine.
Russ insisted he had nothing to do along with his spouse’s loss of life and had been at a good friend’s home all evening, one thing 4 different alibi witnesses confirmed.
However Russ was arrested and charged with the homicide. Because the trial received underway, Hupp served because the prosecution’s star witness, serving to to place Russ away for the homicide. However three years after he was convicted and sentenced to life in jail, the decision was overturned and Russ obtained a brand new trial. This time, Russ was acquitted in a bench trial.
The case took one other unusual twist in 2016 when Hupp claimed 33-year-old Louis Gumpenberger attacked her within the driveway of her house, holding her by knife-point and demanding she take him to get “Russ’s cash,” an obvious reference to the life insurance coverage cash she had collected in Betsy’s loss of life, based on KMOV.
She claimed she bumped into her house, grabbed a gun, and shot Gumpenberger — a person who suffered a mind harm years earlier — in self protection. But, authorities would later announce that they thought Hupp had really posed as a Dateline producer, convincing Gumpenberger she’d pay him to re-enact a 911 name for the present earlier than taking pictures him in chilly blood, St. Louis Journal reported.
She hoped the killing would draw suspicion in Betsy’s homicide again onto Russ. After being charged with homicide in Gumpenberger’s loss of life, Hupp took an Alford plea, which doesn’t admit guilt however acknowledges prosecutors had sufficient proof to convict her.
She’s at the moment serving out her life sentence on the Chillicothe Correctional Heart, based on data from the Missouri Division of Corrections. However her authorized troubles don’t finish there. Hupp can be now suspected of killing Betsy herself to money in on the life insurance coverage and is facing pending murder charges.
Hupp’s sensational story served because the backdrop for the favored podcast, The Factor About Pam and the NBC restricted sequence of the identical title, starring Renee Zellweger as Hupp.
Betty Broderick
When Betty Broderick snuck into the California house belonging to her ex-husband, Dan, and shot him and his new, much younger bride to death as they slept, the stunning case divided the nation.
Whereas some believed Betty, who was profiled in Season 27 of Snapped, was nothing greater than a cold-blooded killer, others noticed the mother of 4 as a hero of types to scorned girls in all places. Whereas ready to go on trial for the brutal homicides, Betty received scores of fan mail.
The connection between Betty and Dan started with a lot promise. Betty was simply 18 years outdated when she met Dan, then a senior, whereas spending the weekend on the College of Notre Dame, based on The Los Angeles Times. The couple ultimately married and Betty helped put Dan by way of medical college and legislation college.
After years of saving, the couple was lastly capable of benefit from the fruits of their labor after they moved to southern California and Dan started his profession as a profitable medical malpractice legal professional.
However simply as Betty was settling into her life as considered one of San Diego’s social elite, Dan left her for his a lot youthful secretary Linda Kolkena, based on KFMB-TV.
Betty shortly set out for revenge, burning Dan’s garments on the street, leaving obscene telephone messages for the couple, and as soon as even driving her automobile by way of the brand new couple’s entrance door.
Through the long-drawn out divorce battle, Dan used his legal prowess to usually acquire the higher hand and engaged in what Betty would name “overt emotional terrorism,” based on The Los Angeles Times.
The feud lastly got here to a head on Nov. 5, 1989 when Betty stole her daughter’s key to Dan’s house, snuck in, and shot the newlyweds as they slept. Earlier than fleeing, Betty disconnected the telephone from the wall so the victims have been unable to name for assist.
At trial, whereas prosecutors claimed she was fueled by notions of revenge, Betty mentioned she was pushed over the brink after struggling years of emotional and psychological abuse.
The primary trial resulted in a hung jury, however Betty was later convicted of two counts of second-degree homicide, per KFMB-TV. She was sentenced to 32 years to life behind bars.
Right this moment, Betty is serving out her sentence at the California Institution for Women. Though she’s appeared earlier than the parole board on a number of events, her requests have all the time been denied.
A dramatized model of her story was not too long ago retold within the restricted sequence Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story.
Sweet Montgomery
Suburban housewives Sweet Montgomery and Betty Gore first met at a Methodist church service, however their last assembly would show deadly, based on Texas Monthly.
Sweet Montgomery, a mom of two, was rising stressed in her personal marriage to Pat Montgomery when she approached Betty’s husband, Allan Gore, about beginning an affair. Allan initially turned Sweet down, however earlier than lengthy, the 2 have been carrying on a secret relationship, agreeing that they’d finish their association if both received “emotionally concerned.”
Sweet didn’t let the connection intrude along with her friendship with Betty and even hosted a child bathe in honor of Betty’s second youngster.
However by the summer time of 1980, Allan put an finish to the key romance in an effort to deal with his personal marriage. Then on June 13, 1980, whereas Allan was away on enterprise, Betty was discovered by a neighbor brutally hacked to death with an ax on the laundry room floor.
“It was a vicious set of blows to the physique, the face, the arms, the pinnacle, the torso. even into the legs,” Dr. Irv Stone, former chief of bodily proof in Dallas, advised Snapped.
Sweet shortly turned the prime suspect within the slaying after investigators realized that she had been the final individual to see Betty alive. Sweet in the end admitted to killing her good friend, however claimed she had killed her in self-defense after she mentioned Betty confronted her in regards to the affair, grabbed an ax, and commenced to assault her, based on Texas Monthly.
Sweet grabbed the ax and struck Betty 41 instances, solely stopping when she reached “the purpose of utter exhaustion,” she claimed.
After listening to the protection, a jury discovered Sweet not responsible of the homicide.
Right this moment, Candy’s whereabouts are unknown. The Dallas Morning News reported in 2010 that she moved to Georgia and have become an authorized household counselor.
Sweet’s sensational case not too long ago impressed the miniseries Love & Death, starring Elizabeth Olsen as Sweet. Jessica Biel additionally performed the controversial mom within the 2022 restricted sequence Candy.
