5 Family Dinners That Turned Deadly
Thanksgiving dinner will be especially tense this year, and we all know why. It’s because different members of the family will be locked in fierce disagreement over whether to play virtual reality video games. It gives people motion sickness, one uncle of yours will insist, and that’s when your grandma will lose her temper because no one’s giving enough attention to the new Batman VR game that came out.
Hopefully, these arguments won’t end with actual murder. But going by the following stories, there’s always the chance that they might.
The Time a Cop Came to Dinner
On April 26, 1982, one family in the Korean village of Pyongchon-ni were surprised to see a police officer on the street armed to an unusual degree. He had two rifles on his back and two handguns at his hip, and he also had a belt of grenades strapped onto him. The officer, whose name was Woo Bum-kon, explained to the man of the house that North Korean agents had been sighted in the area, and he was on the lookout for them.
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These invaders from the north didn’t appear to be in sight, so the man invited Woo in to join them for a meal. The home was already packed with guests, and one more diner was welcome. At this point, we have to rely on rumor to know how the conversation went, because we don’t have the exact list of who was in this family and who got to speak afterward about what had happened. But the way the story goes, someone in the family expressed skepticism that Woo’s weapons were all real. This made sense, because no one walked around strapped like that, outside of a movie. Woo responded by proving his guns were real by killing 12 people at the table.
via Wiki Commons
That alone would put this among the craziest spree killings of all-time. But Woo was actually in the middle of a larger massacre, in which he traveled between villages over the course of the night, killing a total of 57 people. He started by killing people in a post office, killed more people in a grocery store and then killed several families in their homes. It ended when police chased him down, and he killed three more people with his grenades, including himself.
Apparently, what set him off was his girlfriend woke him up by swatting a fly on his chest. Woo tended to be “hard to please,” she later noted.
Nero and the Uninterrupted Party
The Roman emperor Claudius’ children included Nero by one wife and Britannicus by another. Like most stepbrothers, each had a strong motive to kill the other, because any heir of Claudius was a possible claimant to the throne.
In the year 55, Nero was the new 17-year-old emperor, while Britannicus was 13 and remained a threat. The two of them attended a dinner party, and things were bound to be awkward between them because in addition to being stepbrothers, they were brothers-in-law, as Nero had married Britannicus’ sister. During the meal, Britannicus dropped dead. It appears that he was poisoned.
Given that accounts say Nero had been experimenting with poisons right before this, we generally assume Nero poisoned him, or at least that someone at the dinner poisoned him on Nero’s orders. But a single fatality is no reason to call off a good party. Nero insisted that everyone ignore the death and go on enjoying the festivities.
An Incident at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home
In August 1914, Frank Lloyd Wright was in Chicago working on Midway Gardens, a planned beer hall/concert venue/overall fun place. Because of this, he was away from home on the 15th and was unable to have dinner with his mistress and her children. Given what happened that night, he probably wasn’t so disappointed about missing it
That was the night when the chef, Julian Carlton, decided to kill everyone in the house. It was his last day on the job, so if he was disgruntled, he didn’t have much longer to wait it out, but he figured murder was the right choice. He started by attacking people with his hatchet. Then he poured down some gasoline and lit it on fire. He poured more gasoline under the doors of those who ran from him, and he used his hatchet on their skulls when they fled the flames.
Having killed seven, Carlton now headed to the basement to kill himself by drinking hydrochloric acid. This would be a painful way to die, as well as an unreliable one, and it didn’t succeed at killing him. As a result, after neighbors showed up and put out the blaze, police arrived and arrested him. But while acid down the gullet didn’t kill him outright, it did injure him enough that he lost the ability to eat. He died of starvation in jail before he could go to trial.
Uday’s Birthday Clubbing
Egypt’s first lady, Suzanne Mubarak, was having a party in October 1988. It was on an island in the Tigris River known as Umm Al-Pigs, thanks to all the wild pigs there, and it was a famous party spot, particularly for weddings. But it’s located in Baghdad, which meant there was always the risk of Uday Hussein showing up uninvited.
Uday Hussein was a bad guy. He outfitted his private fighting force in costumes modeled after Darth Vader’s, and that’s actually the best thing he ever did. One time, he fatally shot a guard at a disco for telling him not to dance. Another time, he tortured the national soccer team for not winning enough matches. At this party, his target was Kamal Hana Geogo, Saddam Hussein’s personal food taster. Uday clubbed his head and then jumped on his chest till the guy died.
Along with tasting Saddam’s food, Geogo procured women for him, angering Uday, as Saddam was married to Uday’s mother (who happened to also be Saddam’s first cousin). Unusually, Saddam publicly acknowledged the murder and initially said Uday should be tried, just as anyone else would. Uday’s mother Sajida, whose honor Uday was defending, intervened and said he should be forgiven. “This is not the first time he has killed,” she said, which is always a winning defense. “Nor is he the only one in this family who kills.”
The Nepalese Royal Massacre
The royal family of Nepal were having a party, when the Crown Prince Dipendra decided it was time to kill them all. He killed King Birendra. He killed Queen Aishwarya. He killed two of their children (his own brother and sister), killed four of the king’s brothers and sisters and killed one other princess, while also injuring a handful others. This was not what’s generally considered legal, but it was against palace rules to prosecute the prince. It was palace rules, however, to pass the throne to the eldest heir, and they named Crown Prince Dipendra the new king.
You may have heard about this before, but if you haven’t, this sounds like some tale from many centuries ago, one that might even be just a legend. It actually happened in June 2001, and the weapon Dipendra used was an MP5 submachine gun. He ended the massacre by turning the gun on himself, which didn’t kill him instantly.
He was in a coma when he became the new king. Then he died, and his brother (one of the few in the royal family to escape the shooting) succeeded him. King Gyanendra had actually previously been king already briefly when he was a three-year-old. He now ended up the last real king of Nepal, because the country soon decided the monarchy was a stupid idea.
We don’t know exactly why Dipendra decided to kill the whole royal family. People speculate that it had something to do with the queen disapproving of his choice of bride. Killing everyone, including himself, didn’t ultimately let him marry this bride, so maybe he would have gotten further sitting down with his family and talking things out.
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