New Year’s celebrations turn into tragedies
Offices may be shuttered, banks may be closed, but murder doesn’t take time off for the holidays. Ring in the New Year with these true crime episodes featuring murders around New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Tales of mass murder, friends killing friends, intimate partner homicide, cold cases, and even serial killers who got their start on New Year’s Eve. There’s something for everyone in this smorgasbord of true crime!
Homicide for the Holidays: “New Year’s Evil” (Season 2, Episode 4)
Murder Comes to Town: “Lord of the Rockies” (Season 2, Episode 9)
Killer Kids: “Simon Says/For No Good Reason” (Season 3, Episode 7)
It’s New Year’s Eve 2000 in Guffey, a small town in Colorado, and Tony Dutcher spends the night at the house of his grandparents, Carl and JoAnna Dutcher. When no one hears from them a few days later, sheriffs do a welfare check and find Carl and JoAnna shot and Tony missing. They discover Tony in a fort nearby, with his throat slashed. They turn to his friends to solve the case.
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Homicide for the Holidays: “Bloody New Year’s” (Season 2, Episode 8)
Two days before New Year’s Eve 2014, in Edmonton, Alberta, Cindy Luu is shot while her husband and three children are home, by a man unknown to them. Police then receive a 911 call from a woman concerned about her father, who seems suicidal. They go to his house and discover three bodies lined up in the living room and four others throughout the house. They eventually realize the link between the murders and find the killer.
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Dateline NBC: “After the Party” (Season 24, Episode 47)
It’s 2011 in West Evans, Colorado, and a New Year’s Eve party at the Fallis house just ended. Ashley and Tom Fallis are arguing. Soon after, Tom calls 911 and tells the operator that Ashley shot herself. He reveals to the police that she was upset about a recent miscarriage and had threatened to commit suicide in the past. The coroner rules the death a suicide, but the case is later reopened after new witnesses come forward, and Tom is charged with murder. Keith Morrison narrates the episode.
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The Murder Tapes: “Sergeant Hassel” (Season 8, Episode 2)
Deadly Women: “Making a Killing” (Season 14, Episode 13)
American Justice: “Sleeping with the Enemy” (Season 16, Episode 7)
Snapped: Killer Couples: “Kemia Hassel and Jeremy Cuellar” (Season 13, Episode 8)
Killer Cases: “The New Year’s Eve Murder” (Season 2, Episode 1)
New Year’s Eve 2018 in St. Joseph, Michigan. Kemia Hassel calls 911 to report that her husband, Tyrone Hassel III, had been shot outside the house. Family and friends reveal to police that Kemia was having an affair with an army colleague of Tyrone, and that she would receive hefty life insurance and death benefits if Tyrone died.
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Wicked Attraction: “Evil in the Blood” (Season 3, Episode 3)
New Year’s Day 2006 in Richmond, Virginia, and firefighters respond to a fire at the house of the Harvey family and find all four members stabbed and bludgeoned to death. A few days later, police do a welfare check on Ashley Baskerville and discover her and her parents, Mary and Percyell Tucker, suffocated and stabbed to death. Police connect the cases through a ring found on one of the victims, and link both to an older murder.
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Unusual Suspects: “New Year’s Evil” (Season 8, Episode 1)
2013. It’s New Year’s Eve in Robesonia, Pennsylvania, and Ashley Kline is a no-show at a party. Police discover her personal items at a factory two days later, then two hikers stumble across her burned body in a wildlife preserve on January 12. She had been stabbed and beaten.
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Cold Case Files: “Weepy-Voiced Killer; The Mr. Big Sting” (Season 3, Episode 14)
Mark of a Serial Killer: “Killer Caller” (Season 2, Episode 1)
New Year’s Day 1981 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Police get a phone call from a man reporting that a woman is hurt outside an industrial building, a man with a “weepy” voice. Karen Potack, who celebrated New Year’s Eve in the Twin Cities at a bar, had been beaten, but is still alive. After another phone call and a murder in June, police release the calls to the media, hoping someone can identify the Weepy-Voiced Killer. An additional body and call 14 months later, and witnesses at a bar come forward to identify the person seen with the victim. Yet another victim is found, and police receive a call in which the killer claims that he’s hurt. They find and arrest him, and he eventually confesses.
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Heartland Homicide: “Cooperstown, ND” (Season 1, Episode 13)
Kurt Johnson lives a seemingly peaceful life in Cooperstown, North Dakota, and disappears after going to a bar on New Year’s Eve in 2010. Police question the person he left with and find Johnson’s decapitated head in his basement.
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Cold Case Files: “The Clock Strikes Murder” (Season 7, Episode 16)
Pensacola, Florida. New Year’s Day 1985. Tonya McKinley is found strangled and sexually assaulted. The case goes cold, and it takes 35 years for police to solve it, using genetic genealogy matching the DNA from a discarded cigarette butt to the killer.
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