A sexually fanatical gunman shoots at an Asian spa, a fiancé mysteriously returns home from a road trip without a girlfriend, a lawyer fakes his own shot for money, and a long-suspected serial killer ends up in jail. In the overall chaos of 2021, a series of crimes have taken place that have shocked the country.
One: The Atlanta Hot Springs Killings
Robert Aaron Long, then 21, shot and killed eight people at three different spas in the Atlanta area on March 16, according to police. Six of the victims were Asian women.
Lang pleaded guilty to four murders in Cherokee County and was exempt from the death penalty through a plea agreement in exchange for four life sentences.
Long told the judge that the motive for the killing was his sex addiction and that he wanted to "punish those people as much as I can.""
But Lang pleaded not guilty to four murders in two different Atlanta spas in Fulton County, where district attorneys are seeking the death penalty.
TWO: On March 22, 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa shot and killed 10 people at the King Soopers supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, just north of Denver.
One of the victims was a police officer named Eric Tully, who was the first to respond to the shooting.
In October, Alissa was ruled unfit to appear in court. Prosecutors immediately appealed the ruling, but it was upheld in early December. If Alyssa goes to trial, he will face more than 100 charges, including 10 counts of first-degree murder.
Three: FedEx shooting in Indianapolis
Gunfire rang out at a FedEx factory in Indianapolis, where Brandon Scott Hole, 19, shot eight people and then committed suicide.
Four of the eight victims were Sikhs, and the processing building employed many Sikhs. Hall will also know this because he knows to work at the factory before leaving in 2020.
But the FBI said the teenager's motive was "suicide murder" and simply chose a location he was familiar with and vulnerable to attack.
Four: Former NFL player kills doctor and grandson
On April 7, former New York Jets player Phillip Adams shot Dr. Robert Lesslie, his wife, their two grandchildren and two HVAC maintenance technicians working outside their home in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Adams, 32, was previously treated by Leslie and later committed suicide.
In mid-December, doctors confirmed that Adams had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition common among former footballers that can cause serious mental health problems.
V: Death of Gabi Petito
In August, Gabby Petito, a 22-year-old travel blogger on Long Island, was reported missing by his family on Long Island.
Petito and her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, went on an off-road trip. He went back to his home in Florida; she didn't. Petito's body was later found in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Her death was ruled a strangulation murder.
After an extensive search, Laundrie's body was found at Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park in South Florida. Laundrie was listed only as someone interested in Petito's death. His family's lawyer said he committed suicide.
Six: The Murdo Murders
The case of Alex Murdaugh, a south Carolina lawyer with disrepute, is still pending.
Alex was the latest member in a long list of powerful Murdofs at the South Coast Family Law Firm in South Carolina, and until June, things for the entire Murdolph family changed dramatically.
Alex's wife, Maggie, 52, and their 22-year-old son, Paul, were shot dead in their home, and no one was arrested in their killing.
But the deaths that triggered them led to years of unraveling of family secrets and alleged crimes, including Paul's drunken rowing accident in 2019 that led to the death of a young woman, the mysterious death of a family housekeeper in 2018 and the legend surrounding the law, the suspicious death of a young man in 2015 involving Paul and his brother Buster, and Alex Merdo's opioid addiction that led him to embezzle funds from his own law firm.
Allegedly, as his world collapsed, Alex tried to kill himself with the killer, but failed. He is currently in jail for $7 million in bail.
Seven: Robert Durst was found guilty
Robert Durst's long and tortuous criminal history became the subject of widespread attention after the release of the 2015 HBO documentary Kinks, and the eccentric descendants of a real estate family in New York City were eventually convicted in 2000 for murdering friend Susan Berman.
The 78-year-old Waster was sentenced to life in prison for firing-style shooting because Berman learned so much about the death of his first wife, Catherine Dester, in 1982.
After Durst was sentenced to life imprisonment for several weeks, Westchester prosecutors indicted him in the case. Kathleen Durst's body was never found.