14 Times Life Wasn't All Sunshine And Rainbows

1.

“Terrible Tom” was the longest serving federal inmate in solitary confinement. He killed two fellow inmates and a guard. Spared execution since it wasn’t an option at the time, Tom spent his last 36 years in complete isolation. Even guards refused to talk to him, out of respect for the slain guard.

2.

On the night of March 9-10 1945 in Tokyo, Operation Meetinghouse was conducted by the United States. The fire bombing raid killed at least 100,000 civilians and left over 1 million homeless. It is considered the most destructive bombing raid in history as it destroyed approximately 16 square miles

3.

Moments before 14 year old Tyre Sampson (right) fell to his death from the Orlando Free Fall ride where 30 riders rise to the top, tilt 30 degrees forward and plunge nearly 400 feet at speeds reaching over 75 mph.

4.

Russian conscript with his family before being deployed to the front, Karachev, Bryansk, Russia, 1943.

5.

Hilda Clayton, the war photographer, captured the moment of her own death when a mortar bomb accidentally exploded in Afghanistan killing her and four others in July 2013. This is her final photograph.

6.

“Riding With Death” (1988). One of the last paintings by Jean Michel Basquiat before his own death at 27.

7.

Just one of the dozens of prison letters from female admirers sent to mass murderer James Holmes who opened fire on a theatre full of moviegoers at a midnight screening of the new Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado.

8.

A typical cell at ADX Florence. Supermax facility in Colorado, known for housing some of the worst terrorists and cartel leaders in US history.

9.

Martin Bryant, Australian Mass Murderer smiles and laughs as he confesses he killed 35 people at Port Arthur in 1996 believing the cameras weren’t recording

10.

In December 2015, 25-year-old Jamesha Roberts, a mother-of-two walking from her shift at Starbucks, was gunned down by a gang member. Her killer was in a competition with another gang member for who could shoot the most people, and shot Jamesha for no other reason than to “improve his stats”. Five people, including Jamesha, were killed. Six others were wounded. Only one of the people killed had any involvement in gang-related activity.

11.

One of the extras in the hospital scene in the Excorcist (1973) is convicted murderer and suspected serial killer Paul Bateson. Bateson appeared as a radiological technologist in a scene from the 1973 horror film The Exorcist, which was inspired when the film’s director, William Friedkin, watched him perform a cerebral angiography the previous year. In 1979, Bateson was convicted of the murder of film industry journalist Addison Verrill and sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in prison; in 2003 he was released on parole, which ended after five years. Prior to Bateson’s trial, police and prosecutors implicated him in a series of unsolved slayings of gay men in Manhattan, killings he had reportedly boasted about while in jail, bringing it up at his sentencing. However, no additional charges ever were brought against him.