Crime Fabrications Case Studies

A City Burned

No one suspected that a woman would cut herself, set her business on fire and tie herself up.

Spiked Halloween Candy

But when university researchers tracked the stories to find out how many cases there really were of strangers spiking a treat-or-treater's candy, they found: zero. Why would people make up tales of such frightening crimes?

Usually, it was to stay out of trouble themselves. In one case, a father killed his child, then said the death was caused by poison in Halloween candy; in another, a kid found his uncle's heroin, ingested it and died of an overdoes, prompting the family to make up a story about spiked candy; and one woman spiked her own children's candy with steel wool because she thought they were too old to be trick-or-treating.

There were other motives. One hospital technician reported that his X-ray of a child's Halloween loot turned up candy laced with metal. He later confessed that he made it up, because he was trying to get credit for saving kids, in many cases, the stories are spread as urban legend.