This time of year might be all about celebrating romance and finally letting your crush know just how you feel, but on the other side of the bouquets of roses and boxes of chocolates comes something entirely darker. When unrequited love turns to obsession and passion is twisted, it can lead to some of the most terrible crimes in history. These are some of the worst recorded crimes of passion.
Allegedly raped by her husband after he returned home drunk one night, Lorena Bobbit responded in force by cutting off his penis. Leaving the house, she threw the severed appendage out of her car window into a field, before realising the severity of the crime and confessing to the police. Luckily for him, surgeons were able to reattach his lost member, while she was found not guilty on the grounds of the sexual abuse she suffered at his hands.
Struggling with alcohol and drug abuse for years, the Saturday Night Live comedian’s wife, Brynn, had come home intoxicated and argued with Phil Hartman, before shooting him while he slept. Leaving the scene, she confessed to a friend before returning to the house and killing herself as well, orphaning their two children.
In 2009, footballer Steve McNair was shot and killed in his sleep by his girlfriend, Sahel Kazemi, who then turned the gun on herself. The killing was Kazemi’s revenge after she found out McNair was cheating on her.
Disguised in a wig and trench coat and armed with a knife, BB gun, pepper spray and bin bags, astronaut Lisa Nowak stalked Colleen Shipman, Nowak’s romantic rival. Driving from Houston to Orlando, Nowak followed Shipman from the airport, before attacking her. Nowak was charged of kidnapping, burglary and battery but was sentenced to nine months probation as part of a plea deal.
When Jeffrey Freeman discovered his wife had been having an affair, he ordered her to end it. Instead, she and her lover brutally bludgeoned Freeman to death.
