The past twelve months captured in photographs
Believe it or not, Christmas is the most dangerous time of the year! Crime rises during the holiday season for many reasons. More stress, family tension, and loneliness at Christmas can all contribute to an increase in criminal activity. But it's not just petty crime that is committed at this time of year. That's right, many murders have been committed during the Christmas season over the years, dating back centuries.
In this gallery, you'll find the most gruesome of them. Click through for bone-chilling stories of horrific holiday murders.
On December 26, 1996, six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was found dead in her family home. The murder was a widely publicized Christmas tragedy and one of the most famous crimes of the decade.
Her mother Patsy stated that she had found a ransom note, while her father John claimed to have discovered her lifeless body. Despite suspicions about their stories, her parents (pictured) were never charged with the murder. To this day, the case remains unsolved.
In 2008, Bruce Jeffrey Pardo arrived at his former in-laws' house on Christmas Eve armed with a gift-wrapped flamethrower and a semi-automatic pistol, all disguised as Santa Claus.
Pardo murdered nine people in the house and set it on fire. After the incident, he fled the scene and took his own life.
In 2007, Joseph McEnroe (pictured) and his girlfriend Michele Anderson traveled to visit Anderson's parents who lived near Carnation, Washington.
The couple killed six people across three generations of the Anderson family in the house. They were both convicted of the mass murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
In December 1929, sharecropper Charlie Lawson went Christmas shopping with his family and had a family portrait made. But on Christmas Day, Lawson killed his wife and six of their seven children. He then took his own life, leaving his son Arthur Lawson as the only survivor.
In 2011, Aziz Yazdanpanah killed his family in an act that became known as the Texas Christmas Day Massacre.
Yazdanpanah, reportedly estranged from his family, disguised himself as Santa Claus and entered the home, shooting all six of them. He then turned the gun on himself before the police arrived.
A Christmas nightmare unfolded when three teens were brutally killed in one of their homes on the night of December 23, 1881.
The killers tried to cover up their crime by setting the house on fire. A man named George Ellis confessed to the crime and was killed by a lynch mob, while the other two suspects were sentenced to death by hanging.
On Christmas Eve 2014, Preston Pollard traveled more than 1,100 miles from Venus, Texas, to Marion Oaks, Florida, to take revenge on his ex-girlfriend, Rose Courter. Courter had broken up with Pollard and gotten engaged to someone else.
Pollard showed up at her family home in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. He shot her father and her stepmother who both eventually died of their wounds, but Courter managed to escape. Pollard took his own life while being pursued by the police.
On December 25, 2010, nurse Kashmier James died in a suspected gangland shooting. The incident occurred in the Manchester area of Los Angeles.
James was tragically murdered by gang members Darnell Deshon Houston, Lamar McKnight, and Ezekiel Simon in what was probably a case of mistaken identity.
Marvallous Keene was the leader of a gang that went on a deadly crime spree during the Christmas holidays in Dayton, Ohio, in 1992.
Keene, accompanied by three others, went on a three-day rampage of robbing and murdering that left six people dead. Keene was executed in 2009.
In December 1959, Dr. Harold Perelson horrified Los Angeles with his horrific murders. They occurred in a neighborhood known as Los Feliz, in an ironic twist of fate.
Perelson murdered his wife and tried to kill one of three children, Judy, who managed to survive. The doctor then killed himself by taking a deadly dose of Nembutal.
On Christmas Eve 2012, a man named David Thomas O'Sullivan horrified the Welsh town of Carmarthen.
O’Sullivan killed his girlfriend of three weeks in his home. After the murder, he went to have a pint and a pizza. The body was eventually found by her parents, who called the police.
In December 1987, Ronald Gene Simmons, a retired US sergeant, caused chaos in Arkansas. The series of horrific events began on December 22, when he murdered his wife, children, in-laws, and grandchildren. The ruthless killing spree continued on December 28 when he killed two more people. He was sentenced to death and executed in 1990.
On Christmas Eve 2012, Alan Greaves, a church organist, crossed the path of two menacing men—Jonathan Bowling and Ashley Foster—after a service at St Savior's Church in Sheffield.
Bowling and Foster attacked the grandfather with a pickaxe. He died of his injuries three days later.
Two brothers were behind a shocking murder that took place in the UK in 2014, and had bizarre links to 'Star Wars.' One of the brothers, Roger Cooper, was having an affair with a woman named Sameena Imam.
Roger wanted to bury the truth about his affair, so he and his brother David planned to kill Imam. The brothers sent coded texts inspired by 'Star Wars' to plan the murder. They killed Imam shortly before Christmas and buried her in the woods. Her body was found in January and the brothers were both sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Dustin Lee Klopp committed a horrific crime on Christmas Eve in Lancaster in 2014. The 36-year-old murdered his wife with an ax on Christmas Eve while his children were in the house.
Klopp hid the body and took his children to his parent's house before turning himself into the police. He later took his own life in his jail cell.
Sources: (Grunge) (The Sun)
See also: The best Christmas movies to watch this year
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Chilling murders that happened during the festive season
LIFESTYLE Crime
Believe it or not, Christmas is the most dangerous time of the year! Crime rises during the holiday season for many reasons. More stress, family tension, and loneliness at Christmas can all contribute to an increase in criminal activity. But it's not just petty crime that is committed at this time of year. That's right, many murders have been committed during the Christmas season over the years, dating back centuries.
In this gallery, you'll find the most gruesome of them. Click through for bone-chilling stories of horrific holiday murders.