5 Shocking Crimes Committed By Senior Citizens

hello everyone nigel and luke here and welcome to crime zone if you are like us then you probably remember being told as a child to always respect your elders although the sentiment is understandable of course there are always exceptions today , we wanted to take a look at some cases where older definitely does not mean wiser just before we get to today's stories a reminder that if you find our videos interesting and informative please like and subscribe for more true crime content like this really helps us to continue building the channel. and if you've already watched some of our videos you may not even realize you're not subscribed while you're there, don't forget to hit that notification bell to stay up to date with our latest releases with that out of the way we're going To the video prior to the spring of 2012 most people in Craig County, Oklahoma probably didn't pay much attention to Darlene Mays, 73, a retired Department of Human Services worker.

Darlene lived in what appeared to be a Quiet life just a few miles from small-town Veneta, however, Darlene's image would be forever changed in the minds of both locals and law enforcement in April of that year, when county investigators Craig's discovered the

shocking

secret of a 73-year-old who was reportedly the kingpin of one of the area's largest illegal marijuana trafficking operations when police raided Darne's home on the night of April 10, 2012, The entire place allegedly reeked of drugs and soon over four pounds were found inside, two handguns and nearly $277,000 were also recovered. cash, the cash was reportedly packaged and hidden in numerous locations around the residence in unsealed vacuum bags under a bed in the closet and in the back seat of a vehicle on the property according to articles written in the At the time when a large amount of cash was even found on Darlene's person despite being caught red-handed, the 73-year-old apparently claimed the money was all hers and had been legally obtained for her retirement, however investigators did not believe this story, it turned out that while the police had been investigating darlene's operation for months they were finally able to obtain a search warrant for her property after her own son ratted her out son jerry van dorsey had been arrested the day before with two pounds of weed and thousands of dollars in cash he actually told investigators he had stolen both the drugs and cash from his mother's house according to jerry he had originally helped darlene get in in the marijuana business by introducing her to some contacts in arizona from whom she got her drugs darlene had allegedly grown the operation to the point where investigators believed she controlled 40 percent of the local market with her territory, including tulsa , as well as parts of arkansas, kansas and missouri, jerry said the relationship between him and his mother soured due to his meth use, causing her to cut him out of the business, she said he stole the money and drugs from his house while she was at a doctor's appointment because he was angry at being cut up and also said that darlene had tricked him with a horse trailer at the time of the raid on Darne, his house, she was arrested and subsequently slapped with numerous charges, including possession with intent to distribute and multiple counts of possession of a firearm while committing a felony, according to reports, though ultimately it was Darlene who got the last laugh as follows. year, a judge dismissed all charges against him during a preliminary hearing, his lawyers were able to successfully argue that jerry was the actual mastermind behind the drug operation and that there was insufficient evidence linking darlene to the crime, in Instead, Jerry ended up pleading guilty to possession of a controlled substance with the intent to distribute the drugs he was originally caught with and received a 15-year suspended sentence, though prosecutors vowed to appeal the case against Darlene at the time that the charges against him were dismissed, it appears they were unsuccessful.

Since this was the last available information we could find on the case, as the old saying goes, it's never too late to change careers, as this chilling story below proves that, sadly, to be true, even if the new business is the murder, although ray copeland was born in 1914 in oklahoma. His family was never really wealthy to begin with and moved constantly throughout his childhood. Things got even more difficult when Rey was a teenager with the onset of the Great Depression. Eventually, he dropped out of school and began trying to get money any way he could, unsatisfied.

With the abysmal salaries that were available at the time, Rey quickly turned to a life of crime. He started out stealing cattle and forging checks, but eventually moved on to a slightly more sophisticated scheme that combined the two

crimes

. Essentially, he would be going to a cattle auction. a fraudulent check and then sell the cattle before the person who got it found out it all went well rey would have left town with his money when the police got involved unfortunately for ray he wasn't exactly a brilliant con artist and this Combined with the fact that he rarely changed his plan, it meant that after a while he always managed to get caught and thrown in jail after one of those stints in 1940, rey was released and met a woman named faye wilson, the two had a brief courtship but he married quickly and soon after began having several children with the rapidly growing family money was tight and king found himself moving his wife and children around the country in much the same way as it had been done by his parents as a child during this time he continued his cattle rackets and was caught several times and sentenced to short jail terms finally, in the mid 1960s, rey came up with a variation of his scheme which he thought would be more successful, this was partly so that he and his family could settle down for good, but also partly out of necessity, as he had been banned from many cattle auctions and was known for fraud in various places around the world.

Country In 1967, Rey and Fey purchased a farm in Mooresville, Missouri, where they planned to put down permanent roots. Soon after they began employing hobos and drifters to be their laborers. Now, instead of going to the cattle auctions himself, Rey would send in the unknown pawns, who would write their fraudulent checks in his name. Once Rey had the cattle, the plan would work just like before. he would sell the animals and get his money before anyone noticed what had happened on occasions when the checks went back to king, he would simply claim that they had been forged by one of his unknown pawns who by then would have left the city after being struck by lightning, although this scam was much more successful than king's previous

crimes

, eventually the plan was exposed and he was once again sent to prison this time for a longer stay, while you might think this it would finally be the point at which the king learned the lesson that was not the case, in fact, in his mind, the only problem with his plan was that the vagabonds he had hired his pawns could still be tracked down and present evidence against him. , decided that when he got out of jail this time he wasn't going to leave any witnesses behind after all, now he was almost 70 years old and he wanted to avoid going back to jail at all costs while rey was still an unpopular presence in town in the eyes of Their neighbors for years, things remained relatively quiet on the copeland estate until late 1989 when police received a disturbing tip from a man named jack mccormick who jack had been hired to work as a laborer on ray and faye's property copeland in mooresville and during his time there ray had tried to kill him he didn't think it was the first either as he had seen what he believed to be bones scattered around the farm given rey's criminal record the police obtained a search warrant for his property the The investigation was initially slow but the authorities were persistent and soon discovered something truly horrific: the remains of five men buried in shallow graves throughout the farm.

Autopsies would reveal that all of them had been shot in the back of the head at point blank range. When detectives did some more searching, they found a 22-caliber bolt-action rifle at Copland's home that they determined was the same weapon that had been used to shoot the five men. They also found some sort of ledger in Faye's handwriting with the names of the farmers who had worked on the Copland property over the years. this was used to uncover the names of the five victims found on the property who were later identified as dennis k murphy wayne warner jimmy dale harvey john w freeman and paul j coward eerily ex had been written alongside the names of all these men on the ledger, but they weren't the only ones, seven other names were marked this way on the list, though no trace of them was ever found, perhaps the most chilling of all investigators would make a final discovery at the copeland house during their search , a quilt that had allegedly been sewn under the victim's clothing, while Rey was immediately charged in connection with the five murders.

Initially, the investigators were more sympathetic to Faye. murder if she provided them with information on the location of the other seven alleged victims, this would have meant minimal prison time compared to a possible death sentence; however, Faye claimed that not only was she not involved in the murders but she had no knowledge of them. As a result, she was charged with the same crimes as her husband while this was taking place. Rey unsuccessfully tried to plead insane before changing his tune and trying to cut a deal with prosecutors who refused and was charged with five counts of First Degree Murder Faye was the first to go to trial in November 1990 and her defense argued that she had been forced to accept her husband's actions because he was violent and abusive towards her.

A jury disagreed, and Faye received the death penalty. when rey was informed about the outcome of his wife's trial, he supposedly responded, cite well, those things happened to some, you know that the rey himself would not fare any better in the trial and in 1991 he was also sentenced to death when He was 76 and Faye was 69, making them the oldest couple ever sentenced to death in the United States. Rey would die on death row just two years after his conviction in 1993. Faye's sentence was eventually commuted to life in prison. arguing that her husband had abused her although she would remain in jail until the fall of 2002, when she was released on humanitarian grounds after suffering a stroke, she died in a nursing home in Missouri at the age of 82 years.

To this day, the remains of Copland's other alleged victims have yet to be recovered. In the spring of 2009, residents and business owners in the Japanese city of Higashi Osaka began to fall victim to a spate of robberies each time the culprit attacked under cover of darkness and made off with hundreds or even thousands of dollars in cash. stolen. and merchandise, although the police were able to link many of these crimes to a single perpetrator, to their dismay they soon realized that they were dealing with a true professional: he was athletic and showed great physical abilities to traverse confined spaces and run and jump without stress along the walls. to avoid being seen on the streets on the rare occasions when the suspect was caught on surveillance cameras, the footage proved to be of little value to police, the suspect was dressed in black from head to toe and his face was covered, all What the police could do was guess that based on the thief's athleticism, general size and attributes that they were looking for a young man, the mysterious thief was nicknamed the Jese ninja, apparently named after the current era in the Japanese history at the time when the police remained vigilant while receiving more and more reports of robberies.

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by the suspect, but to his frustration, he continued to attack with impunity for more than eight years.

The heisei ninja eluded the police until finally, in July 2017, he made what appeared to be his first critical mistake while robbing an electronics store in which he was caught. cctv with his mask down giving authorities their first look at his face to their surprise the suspect was older than they had thought slightly older according to this video over the next few months police were able to retrace the man's steps and identifying him turned out to be a 74-year-old man named mitsuwaki tanagawaDuring their surveillance, investigators learned that during the day Tanagawa was indistinguishable from other males older than his age, however, some time before nightfall, he would leave his residence, walk to an abandoned apartment building, and change into his ninja outfit waiting for it to get dark before heading out to commit robberies once he was done, he would return to the same abandoned building where he would change back into his street clothes, allowing him to blend back into the community like any normal person.

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citizen tanagawa was arrested in october 2017 and accused of stealing approximately $230 from the electronics store where he was caught on surveillance video without his face covered reportedly upon being arrested he said i am defeated adding if you were more young man would have not been caught, he said the motive behind his crimes was simple, he did not want to work and the robbery went faster, although the articles written about tanagawa at the time mentioned that more charges would likely be filed against him, not it is clear what happened to him. from here, since this is where the information about the case falls into the public record, it is estimated that between 2009 and 2017 he

committed

between 200 and 250 robberies involving more than 260,000 worth of valuables in cash and stolen property, although the next story rates pretty low on the severity scale when it comes to crime, we decided to include it because of how ridiculously juvenile it all was, in fact you'd be forgiven for forgetting that the people involved weren't actually teenagers before the spring 2014 carlisle was like every other retirement community in abbotsford british columbia at least as far as the public was concerned the condominium complex was built in 1989 and consisted of 42 different units overseen by a property management company called campbell strata within in real estate circles the carlisle was well regarded as a good place to live had good amenities was relatively new construction and was centrally located a convenient walk to many local businesses as well as the nearby seven oaks shopping center was also relatively affordable Compared to many places in BC's runaway real estate market;

However, that year, Carlisle would become known for something that had nothing to do with the building itself when it was revealed that it had been the site of a multi-year legal trial. Battle due to a bizarre ongoing feud between several of its elderly residents it all began in September 2009 when a man named Brian Chance and his wife Gene Gorman moved into Carlisle's Suite 203 like all the other residents there. Brian was head over heels. from the building 55 years old minimum, however his wife Jean, unfortunately, not even the court records we found while researching this story did not mention exactly how old Brian was, although it's safe to assume, based on the ages of everyone else in this story, that he was probably in his 70s, Jean was only 42 years old.

If you're anything like us, then you're probably thinking that this should have been a relatively minor issue. apparently this was a big deal for some of the other residents who supposedly let it be known that they were unhappy with the situation to make matters worse instead of just talking to their new neighbors. It would soon become clear that Brian and Jean were more than willing to escalate hostilities over the next couple of years, things essentially devolving into a petty turf war, while it's nearly impossible to discern who started what, as court records are only a sketch. endless string of mutual accusations, what we know for sure is quite frankly some bananas.

Things happened at the Carlisle between the fall of 2009 and when the story made headlines in the spring of 2014, much of it seems to have happened specifically between Brian and Jean and 77-year-old condo board president Tarik Bullion, Brian and Jean they claimed they had been the victims of a sustained campaign of harassment in the carlisle their car was spray painted with words like rat pig and cow jean's motorized scooter was tampered with a condominium council member allegedly fired a flare at jean's car as she was leaving the compound and another elderly resident allegedly hid under a blanket in the back seat of a vehicle to take so-called surveillance photos of her gene and claimed the taric bullion had threatened her with a chopping motion to the throat while walking past her and that her thumb had been dislocated when she was attacked by two male residents in one of the building's hallways, the couple also claimed they received a note on Christmas day that included a link to a website on how to remove life for his part tarik ingots as well as multiple other residents and condo council members stated that this was all normal as brian and jean had been the actual assailants at the carlisle they were accused of things including but not limited to , breaking chairs in the recreation area, removing doorknobs from the garage, poking holes in the walls, deliberately driving into the security gates of the parking lot, spraying oil on the windshields of people's cars, cutting the alarm wires, making prank calls to residents in the middle of the night repeatedly opening and closing the parking lot gates in the middle of the night to keep people from stalking and threatening condo council members by spraying bears and throwing eggs at people's cars as if these accusations weren't crazy enough.

Brian allegedly had an affair with Tarik Bullion's wife during all of this and at one point wrote detailed letters about the affair which he posted on the couple's doorstep, while some of these incidents resulted in criminal charges against Brian Jean and other residents for crimes including harassment, assault and mischief, most legal battles in the carlisle were civil in nature In a 2014 article, a writer for the national post stated that he was aware of at least 12 different lawsuits related to incidents in the carlisle which had been brought by just brian and gene, the vast majority of these were apparently thrown out by exasperated judges who were of course not impressed by the behavior of either party involved one particularly upset judge robert hamilton was quoted as saying about the residents of the carlisle citation one would expect to find emotional children who have not yet learned the basics of acting civilly towards each other, not

senior

citizens

while it is unclear how long the legal battles in the carlisle ostensibly raged at the time the citation broke out story back in 2014 brian and jean still owned their unit there but he has since moved out although unfortunately this is the most up to date information we could find on the case maybe on the bright side it means that in the years since life back to normal for those with the carlisle who simply moved there to enjoy their retirement on november 8, 1999 the lapd received a 9-1-1 call regarding an alleged hit and run near north la brea avenue and beverly boulevard, the victim was an elderly man who was found lying in an alley;

He would later be identified as a 73-year-old Hungarian immigrant named Paul Vados. When officers arrived at the scene, they were shocked by the strangeness of the scene. Paul was obviously dead, but based on his injuries, he did not appear to have been standing or walking when he was struck. , but it appeared that he was lying down and had not tried to stop the vehicle that had killed him. of running over him despite this bizarre detail when investigators discovered Paul's identity and discovered that he was homeless they concluded that he must have passed out in the alley when he was struck by the car this conclusion persisted even after an autopsy found no drugs or alcohol in the 73 year old system at the time the police found out who paul was they found out his fiancee and cousin had reported him missing the fiancee came to pick up paul's remains from the morgue and later his cousin came to the At the police station and requested his death certificate, neither woman seemed particularly concerned about Paul's death, though with no surveillance footage in the area and no witnesses to the crime, investigators had little to do to solve his murder, the case soon settled. slipped into the silent darkness about.

Six years later, in June 2005, the LAPD received a 9-1-1 call with strikingly similar details: a homeless man had been struck and killed by a car in an alley, but when officers went to investigate, it seemed that the man had not been sitting or standing at the time of his death, instead, he had been lying down and his chest and skull had been badly fractured. He also had grease marks on his clothing that police said came from the underside of the vehicle that had hit him yet again. Investigators concluded that the victim likely passed out in the alley at the time he was killed, although this time the man's autopsy turned up traces of drugs and alcohol in his system, most notably the sedative zolpidem and the opioid hydrocodone thanks to From identification cards found with the man's body, he was quickly identified as 50-year-old Kenneth McDavid. in the alley where kenneth was killed the vehicle had stopped in the alley all its lights had gone off for a few minutes then came back on and drove off it identified itself as a ford taurus or mercury stable van when the police began to Investigating Kenneth's last known address, they were taken to an apartment building where the manager informed police that the 50-year-old had not lived there for some time, had been unemployed and unable to pay his rent, however, the manager was pretty sure he knew where kenneth had gone next he had apparently been taken in by a kind older woman who was connected to a local presbyterian church around the same time all this was going on by an investigator named ed webster who worked for an insurance company A company called Mutual of New York was investigating claims made on two life insurance policies that had come to its attention. the policies were for $1 million and they were both for kenneth mcdavid because the policies on kenneth's life were less than two years old, apparently it had triggered an automated investigation and ed was starting to see red flags almost all the information provided about the The policies were turning out to be false.

The beneficiaries of the policies were supposed to be two women who identified themselves as Kenneth's fiancee and cousin. However, when Ed investigated the police reports on his death, he discovered that these women had told investigators that they were his business associates when ed tried to approach the women and was obstructed, instead going to the police in a surprising stroke of luck when ed was discussing his findings with one of the people investigating the kenneth case it just so happened that another detective overheard them and said the details of kenneth's case sounded very familiar to him and after some digging he pulled out an old file which was the cold case of paul ford this is when the first pieces started to fall into place.

It turned out that the alleged fiancés and cousins ​​who were the beneficiaries of Kenneth's life insurance policies were the same women who would claim Paul's body and death certificate in 1999. Their names were Helen Goulet and Olga Rudderschmidt, both of whom Both women were in their 70s, not only that, but Helen was the supposedly kind old lady who had taken Kenneth in when he was going through hard times. When detectives began to investigate further, they soon discovered that the life insurance policies at Mutual of New York were just the tip of the iceberg—in fact, the women had taken out more than 20 life insurance policies for Kenneth and Paul before they her death as investigators continued to follow up on evidence that they were led to the hollywood presbyterian church when the pastor was asked about helen and olga said they were wonderful women who had been with the church since 1997. in particular, they had taken an interest in the church programs that provided meals to the homeless; in fact, they had even gone further. helen was involved in real estate and used some of the property she owned to provide housing for those in need the presbyterian church is where the women had met paul varus and kenneth mcdavid for detectives it seemed like even more pieces of their investigation were now falling into place They were almost positive that Helen and Olga were behind the murders of the two men and that they had committed the crimes to raise as much money as possible from the many life insurance policies they had been disturbingly asked for while the police investigated the case. two women discovered that they seemed to be courting a new victim feeling they had little timeto act before something more terrible happened the police arrested helen and olga on mail fraud charges linked to the forged life insurance documents in may 2006 even though the detectives didn't however i have enough to charge them with the murder of that the evidence would come soon enough.

When they searched the women's homes, it turned out that Helen, in particular, kept extensive records and when investigators searched her home they found documents linking her to Paul Kenneth and a third man named fred downey fred was nearly 90 when He agreed to move from his Massachusetts home to the Los Angeles area so Helen could care for him. The evidence would show that Helen had taken control of his financial assets and drained his home of his bank accounts before Fred was mysteriously hit and run. killed by car in november 2000. that case was ruled an accident in addition to these records, detectives found rubber stamps that had been made with the signatures of paul and kenneth for the purpose of signing documents also such as a stolen driver's license , they also found significant amounts of the drugs zolpidem and hydrocodone, the same substances that had been found in Kenneth's system at the time of his death, perhaps most damning of all a partial vehicle identification number and license plate number. that the police found. at Helen's home that belonged to a 1999 Mercury Sable pickup truck, further investigation would reveal that on the night of Kenneth's death, Helen had called Triple A to have the vehicle towed less than a block from the crime scene .

The vehicle had been taken to Helen's house. it was then abandoned a short distance away before it was finally seized. Surprisingly, the police were able to track down the vehicle and when they did a thorough examination of it, they discovered that there was still blood on the underside. The blood matched Kenneth's again. Unbelievably, there were even more dark details to come, as when news of Helen and Olga's arrests broke, a man named Jimmy Covington came forward and told the police that he was really disturbing. he was approached by olga rudderschmidt who invited him to lunch and promised him a place to stay, as well as more help if she would agree to fill out some forms.

Olga described the situation as some kind of program that she and her friend Helen ran to help turn her luck down, however the men rallied. Shortly after Jimmy accepted the offer, she noticed that the two women wanted an unusual amount of personal information from him. They started out by asking for relatively minor things like your date of birth, but soon moved on to things like your social security number and even wanted to know. As his family's personal details were missed and suspicious of the whole affair, Jimmy decided to turn down the women's offer of help and went on his way. this was precisely what olga and helen had done to paul and kenneth although neither of them had been aware of the dark plan for approximately two years in both cases the men had lived on one of helen's properties believing that she and olga were simply they wanted to help them off the streets, yet all along the women had simply been racking up as many life insurance policies as they could until the time was right to fake their deaths and collect the money as if the evidence against them was not. was strong. enough olga and helen apparently incriminated themselves almost at the time they were arrested after refusing to speak to the detectives they were left together in a room where they were unaware they were being recorded olga immediately started berating helen calling her greedy saying she shouldn't.

She wouldn't have taken out so many insurance policies, the police would learn in the course of their investigation that despite spending so much time together, the women weren't even particularly friendly with each other, but had instead been attracted to each other. yes by their mutual desire. easy money in the spring of 2008, helen and olga were found guilty of the first-degree murder of paul vados, as well as conspiracy to murder him and kenneth mcdavid, only helen was found guilty of the first-degree murder of kenneth, although both they were sentenced to consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole at the time helen was 78 and olga 75. unfortunately neither woman was charged in connection with the murder of fred downey their story is particularly harrowing because it was clear how much he loved and trusted helen in fact according to the reports we found he bought headstones for her and their daughter so that when they passed they could be buried next to him according to fred's case and the information jimmy covington provided it seems possible helen and olga they had other unfortunate victims whose murders have not yet been discovered at the time of this recording both women are still alive and incarcerated helen goulet is 91 while olga rudderschmidt is 89. before we wrap up today's video we just wanted to take a second of your time Just to ask you for a little bit of feedback, you may have noticed that this is the first video of various list style cases we've done in a while for our mid-week release, as we recently started doing a more look to the individual cases basically we just want to know which format you all prefer if you like to hear about various stories built around a theme a deeper dive into a specific case or you like both and appreciate when we do a mix of each we want to know of you, so be sure to let us know in the comments section below, as always, don't forget to let us know if there are any other stories like this that you've heard of and think we missed or additional story ideas you'd like to send us with that shot. bliss care and thanks for viewing