The Creepiest Murder Fridges And Freezers In History

Murderers will often do nearly anything to hide a body. Without a body, the case becomes much more confounding for investigators, and is more prone to going cold if they cannot come up with enough evidence.

Some bury their victims in forsaken places. Others (such as John Wayne Gacy) right beneath their feet, and still others will dismember a corpse and scatter body parts in far-flung areas in the hopes that the police will never identify them. Then there are those who prefer the secrecy of a freezer or refrigerator. Not only does the cold keep flesh from putrefying and leading on potentially suspicious neighbors or police officers, but you would never expect to open the door to a refrigerator and find the glazed eyes of a decapitated head staring emptily back.

There have been different motives to use refrigerators besides the obvious. For some killers, they were temporary storage for victims' bodies until they could finally get rid of the evidence somewhere the remains would be less likely to be found. Others became trophy cases that held severed heads and hands and feet while the whereabouts of the rest of the body remained unknown. Still others, like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ed Gein, were cannibals who stored human flesh for consumption later.

Warning: the following article contains graphic descriptions of crime scenes and includes allegations of domestic abuse, child abuse, and sexual abuse.

Some relationships end with one person considering the other dead to them. For Malik Lee, the final fight he had with boyfriend Marcus Merge meant literal death.

Merge had no idea he would be found dead in his own refrigerator a year after he met Lee. Both struggling drug addicts, they dated on and off, often meeting up to use drugs, according to CWB Chicago. Lee and his family would sometimes receive money from the terminally ill Merge. Unfortunately, the last time Merge was seen alive was June 28, 2020, when surveillance cameras captured him and Lee entering his apartment building and taking the elevator, arguing the entire time. Merge allegedly struck Lee, and Lee then grabbed an extension cord and attempted to strangle his soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend. Merge escaped, but did not survive being smothered with a pillow.

As soon as Lee made sure Merge was dead, he dragged him to the bathtub and left to buy six bags of ice, which he then dumped over the body, as Law Enforcement Today states. It was later when he decided to instead take the shelves out of Merge's refrigerator so he could use it to hide the corpse. Police who scoured the crime scene found Lee's fingerprints on the shelves and arrested him.

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

Romance gone wrong met another fatal end. That was what police discovered when they responded to a call about the body of an unnamed woman stashed in a refrigerator.

Though it is unknown what events led up to Sherbert Maddox being murdered, WPRI reports that her boyfriend, Nathan Cooper, ended up in handcuffs. Maddox had apparently been showering in Cooper's apartment when he allegedly shot and killed her. Cooper later admitted to police that right before that shower, they had both been smoking marijuana and crack cocaine. After pulling the trigger, Cooper waited to be sure Maddox was no longer breathing, and then wrapped her body in blankets, towels, and plastic wrap. He then shoved her inside his refrigerator and eventually managed to haul the fridge from the kitchen to the bedroom.

Police knew they had a murder on their hands when they reached the apartment and realized that the smell of death hung in the air. It wasn't long before they found Maddox's partly decomposed body in Cooper's refrigerator. They also discovered that Cooper owned a handgun (believed to be the murder weapon) and a rifle, as well as two cell phones, which they immediately tried to obtain a search warrant for. ABC 6 says he was charged on nine counts, including murder.

Some scorned lovers don't go directly for their significant other, but for what is dearest to them. This is what happened when Brandon Toseland's abusive relationship plummeted further.

Toseland constantly abused his girlfriend, as the Reno Gazette-Journal reports, holding her hostage at home and refusing to allow her in the garage. Her children (whom Toseland was not the father of) were apparently allowed to go to school, or else her daughter's teacher wouldn't have received a horrifying note which would reveal murder. The mother had written the note out of desperation. She explained that she was locked in the house and suspected that her boyfriend had killed her 4-year-old son, who was her younger child.

The teacher called the police and set off an investigation that ended in a chilling discovery. Authorities were waiting nearby when they spotted Toseland and his girlfriend driving out, though nobody knows how she convinced him to leave the house. Toseland was arrested while his girlfriend was questioned. There was apparently a reason she was not allowed to go into the garage. KLAS says that what officers found in there after obtaining a search warrant was a freezer with the boy's body, which had been languishing inside for at least two months. Toseland was charged with murder.

Not all murderers go it alone. Brycen Scofield and his two accomplices were already planning to rob Aaron Stitt when they lured him to Scofield's apartment, but it escalated.

Scofield, along with Dylan McLeod and Austin McLeod, were apparently ready to take Stitt down when he knocked on their door. Local news station KDRV says that Stitt is thought to have been dealt the last deathblow with a hammer or some other sort of tool: The wounds were consistent with a wrench or hammer. Investigators figured out that Stitt was deceived into thinking he was invited to hang out, but was instead bludgeoned to death. Scofield and his cronies were not about to let evidence slide. They managed to get rid of Stitt's clothing, along with whatever was the murder weapon, and stuffed what remained of Stitt in a refrigerator. That was where police found him.

Though the three suspects had been meticulous in cleaning up every last smear and spatter of blood that was on the scene, someone heard something, because police came running in response to an urgent phone call. Scofield and his friends didn't exactly have a record to be proud of. KTVL reports that their former employer fired Scofield for meth possession. Austin McLeod had also been fired for drugs.

New York's Orthodox Jewish community was stunned by the sudden abduction and murder of 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky — and what made it worse was that one of their own was the suspect.

It was the first time that Leiby was allowed to walk to and from day camp alone that summer, according to The Guardian. He had been walking home in what was supposed to be a safe area when he lost his way and asked a stranger on the street for help. That stranger, who was later identified as Levi Aron, a fellow Orthodox Jew, snatched Leiby and drove him to a Rockland County wedding. What sealed his identity was video footage of Leiby climbing into Aron's car outside a dentist's office.

The frantic search for the boy ended when police came upon Aron's blood-spattered freezer and opened it to reveal a grisly scene. They saw the boy's severed feet in plastic bags. There was also a cutting board, carving knives, and towels in a garbage bag in the refrigerator, all soaked in blood. Aron later revealed that the other fragments of the body had been bagged or packed in some way and scattered all over Brooklyn. Though The New York Times says Aron suffered from brain trauma and had a family history of schizophrenia, that was not considered an adequate defense.

Younis already had police on his trail for previous crimes that included torture and sexual abuse, as the BBC says, but he would eventually go from sex offender to murderer.

Victims Henriett Szucs and Mihrican Mustafa were already considered vulnerable. Szucs had previously suffered beating and rape at the hands of a previous boyfriend, while Mustafa had also been subjected to domestic violence in relationships. Sky News reports Younis fled after Mustafa's murder. That was when police raided his home end pried open the freezer — which had lost electricity and gave off an overwhelming odor of rotting flesh — to find Mustafa's body. Her corpse was not alone. The medical examiner had the freezer X-rayed only to find another body which was identified as Szucs (who had been in there around three years). Szucs was Younis' first relationship of the two, and evidence suggests he bought the freezer specifically to hide her body after he killed her. Mustafa would be next.

Because the bodies were somewhat decomposed, not all injuries could be made out, but autopsies did expose rib fractures and head trauma along with many other wounds that implied violence. Younis came up with an alibi when he was questioned about Szucs. It was proven wrong and he was sentenced to life in prison.

Weaver, a former college basketball star, is now known for something much more sinister. He murdered his own son and almost got away with it.

According to WTVR, when investigators with a search warrant opened Weaver's freezer, they found the lifeless body of his toddler son, Eleil Adon Weaver (less than 5 years old at the time of his death, per the Richmond Times-Dispatch). The body is thought to have been trapped in there for at least two (if not two and a half) years. An autopsy found skull and rib fractures, evidence he had been beaten repeatedly, but what finally killed him was blunt force trauma, something that should come as no surprise since Weaver's wife, Dina, suffered abuse at his hands. Dina Weaver was suspected of being an accomplice by helping to hide the corpse. Later, as WRIC reveals, those charges were dropped, and evidence of abuse that included burns and a black eye was added onto her husband's list of charges instead.

At least Weaver is now imprisoned and banned from contacting his wife or other son. His defense attorney argued that Weaver should be allowed out on bail, citing the rental properties he owned as one of the reasons, since it was difficult to access some information from behind bars.

If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.

Would you suspect anything out of the ordinary if you came upon a haphazardly graffitied, almost clownish-looking school bus parked outside of a suburban home?

Julia Dardar moved in with boyfriend Benjamin Beale around Christmas. WWL says she was soon reported missing by her estranged husband, and while the garish bus stood out, it wasn't the first place police looked. They instead searched Beale's house and found several extension cords which they followed to the locked bus. Those extension cords were attached to a freezer, and when that freezer was opened, it revealed a decapitated torso that had also been slashed postmortem. In an additional report, WWL reveals that an electric saw splattered with gore was near the freezer, along with several garbage bags hiding the goggles and face shield Beale wore during his grisly undertaking.

Beale insisted that his late girlfriend had been suicidal, but he was still charged with murder and seven other counts, which included running an illegal meth lab in his home. The coroner found Beale had apparently strangled Dardar, according to WBRZ, and even though the head was missing, what remained of her body also betrayed him as an abuser. Dardar had apparently also suffered blunt-force trauma to her neck and head.

Like many teens do after school, 16-year-old Leanne Tiernan went out shopping, but what nobody knew at the time was that she would never be coming back.

Tiernan was snatched by John Taylor as she walked home, according to Leeds Live. She was then blindfolded before the horrors began. Taylor lived eerily close to where Tiernan did, and what her concerned mother didn't know what that she was being possibly raped and then strangled to death just down the street. The former dog breeder had even put a collar around her neck before tying up her hands and trying to hide her body in plastic bags before shoving it in his refrigerator. An autopsy determined that her body had remained in that fridge for up to nine months. Another Leeds Live report states that Taylor, a serial rapist, pedophile, and sexual abuser, had tried to preserve Leanne's body so he could hold on to it as a trophy.

Finding any trace of Tiernan was nearly impossible. The BBC revealed how a dog walker discovered a body dumped in the woods. Police were finally able to secure evidence when Taylor's hairs were found on the corpse, which finally led to the arrest that would keep him in prison for the rest of his life.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

Charles Rogers murdered both his parents, but that was just the beginning of what would end up being one of the most bizarre and gruesome cases Texas had ever seen.

According to a 1965 article in the Amarillo Globe-Times, Rogers — so reclusive that some neighbors had no idea he even existed — became a suspect after cousin Marvin Martin found the house locked. Police soon arrived on the scene, and it wasn't long before they opened the refrigerator and thought they were looking at unwrapped pieces of meat when the reality hit them. This was dismembered human flesh. Rogers had also cleaned up so well that the medical examiner had a difficult time figuring out where the double homicide was committed, until traces of blood showed up on the bathroom and kitchen floor. In their book "The Ice Box Murders," Hugh and Martha Gardenier uncover more nightmarish details. What police witnessed once they opened the fridge was so gory that they didn't even feel the need to venture into the freezer.

"As the door swung all the way open, the enormity of the situation came into full focus," they write. "A decapitated head was lodged in the vegetable keeper. A women's head, her lifeless eyes staring, paralyzed in the last instant of death."

This is one Thanksgiving dinner you may want to skip, because that definitely wasn't turkey in Omaima Nelson's refrigerator — or oven.

What the 23-year-old Egyptian model claimed was that her 56-year-old husband treated her like a trophy wife he was all too eager to share. According to Investigation Discovery, Bill Nelson allegedly abused her and also forced her perform sexual services with strange men for money. She lost control and stabbed him in the chest with a pair of scissors. Then she went at his stomach with the scissors and beat him to death with a clothing iron. She finally decapitated, castrated, and butchered his body in a frenzy of heated revenge.

Omaima wasn't done yet. Bill's head was shoved in the freezer, and his dismembered hands were boiled in oil to erase identifying fingerprints. She threw the rest of the body in trash bags that she had two ex-boyfriends do away with. Police who discovered body parts in Bill Nelson's trunk arrested Omaima and brought her in for questioning. It was then that she gave a court psychiatrist this a chilling admission, as the L.A. Times reports. "I did his ribs just like in a restaurant," she said. "It's so sweet, it's so delicious ... I like mine tender."

Ed Gein was the local weirdo, but those who came into contact with him during those rare times he would appear in public were right to be apprehensive.

A 1957 newspaper article from Redlands Daily Facts details some of the ghastly scenes police witnessed in Gein's deceptively nondescript farmhouse. They found 10 human skulls, which led to Gein talking enough to be implicate himself in the murder of storekeeper Bernice Worden. She was decapitated before the rest of the headless corpse was hung in a shed outside. He also admitted to murdering women for seven years, and the detective who questioned Gein suspected he was face to face with a cannibal. He wasn't wrong.

Officers who first stormed the house found a human heart cooking on the stovetop. Organs from his eviscerated victims were found in the refrigerator, possibly being stored either as trophies or to eat later. Gein didn't even eat from ordinary dinnerware. He had turned some of the skulls he collected into soup bowls. Some other objects, according to History Channel, were not what they seemed, such as upholstery made from human skin. How many women he killed is unknown — he only admitted to two murders and also raided graves for bodies. He was committed to a psychiatric institute until his death in 1984.

Jeffrey Dahmer worked at a chocolate factory by day, but he had more than just a craving for candy. That became obvious when police dared to open his refrigerator door.

As a 1991 Vanity Fair article states, police picked up the smell of death as they approached Dahmer's door on the second floor of a Milwaukee apartment building. They were horrified to find their suspicions confirmed. The place was an entire shrine of human body parts kept as trophies. Opening the fridge revealed a decapitated head, and its freezer compartment was stuffed with another head in a box along with parts of dismembered bodies. Dahmer also had a separate freezer in which he stored three more heads. Some of the supposedly hardened officers working the investigation began to feel physically ill after raiding the serial killer's stash.

Dahmer's modus operandi was typically picking up men at gay bars, luring them to his lair, then drugging them and strangling them before having sex with the dead body, as a New York Times article from 1991 reports. He dismembered the bodies when they started to putrefy. The refrigerator and freezer were not enough, which is why he kept a drum full of hydrochloric acid to dissolve whatever he didn't want to keep into a rancid sludge.