The Most Frightening Crimes That Happened On Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is the American holiday, dating back to 1621 and celebrated off and on for the next two centuries. That is, until Abraham Lincoln, tired of receiving letters demanding an annual national holiday from a tireless woman named Sarah Josepha Hale, finally made it official in 1863. Since then, Thanksgiving is usually depicted as a warm, happy celebration. The standard image is a smiling family gathered around a lavish meal of turkey with all the trimmings.

The dark truth of Thanksgiving is that it marks the beginning of the most dangerous time of the year. It's a fact that crime spikes during the holidays. According to Vice, robberies go up about 20% in December each year, probably because people are walking around with more cash than usual, or carting expensive purchases out in the open. But it's even darker than that because Thanksgiving has also become known for some truly terrifying crimes.

Whether it's the stress of being cooped up with your family, financial concerns, or a secret side effect of the tryptophan in turkey, Thanksgiving is when a lot of people snap and decide to commit some really spectacularly violent crimes. The most frightening crimes that happened on Thanksgiving are all linked by two things: The violence involved, and their unexpected nature. So next time you're about to sit down with your family for a holiday dinner, make sure you know where all the sharp objects are.

On Thanksgiving, 2004, a woman named Janet Yeary in Kokomo, Indiana began cooking in anticipation of a traditional family gathering at her house. Hours later, her daughter Carlie —who lived across the street — began to wonder why she hadn't heard from her.

According to CBS 4, what Carlie found was her mother's brutally murdered body. The Thanksgiving meal had already been started — the turkey was in the oven. There was no sign of forced entry. The police had received reports that a man named Danny Case had been dropped off in the neighborhood the night before, and had been going from door to door seeking a ride.

The cops pursued Case and arrested him in January 2005 at Indianapolis International Airport using an outstanding warrant. They placed him in a holding cell, but Case committed suicide before he could be formally arrested and charged with the crime. While the police believe Case is the strongest suspect in Yeary's murder, two other murders following a similar pattern were committed in the area, and a man named Nathan Dodson — who liked to go by Nat Dog — has a violent past and ominous connections to all three victims. Some wondered if the police had chased the wrong man — and the case remains unsolved to this day.

More than a century ago in 1919, a State Game Protector named John H. Woodruff said goodbye to his wife and walked out of his house on Thanksgiving Day to go on patrol in Schenectady County, New York. According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, he was investigating reports of someone violating the local game laws. His wife was the last person to see him alive because he never returned.

According to his official PBA memorial, his wife called authorities, and a search was mounted, but there was no sign of him, and after several weeks the search was called off. A year and a half later, in 1921, his body was discovered by a man hunting. Woodruff had been hastily buried in a shallow hole dug into a creek bed that had been covered by loose stones. His gun was missing, and his skull had been caved in by a blunt object with such force that the top portion of his head was detached, suggesting the weapon had been an ax. The coroner ruled his death a homicide.

According to the New York Conservation Officers Association, his wife told police he'd received a threatening letter earlier in 1919 but had not disclosed the specifics to her. He later burned the letter, and his Thanksgiving Day murder remains unsolved.

The Privacky family Thanksgiving ended in horror in 1998. Stephen Privacky, his wife Linda, their son Jedediah, his girlfriend April Boss, and Stephen's father John were all murdered sometime after noon in their Muskegon, Michigan home. All five had been shot in the head. The prime suspect was their youngest son, Seth.

According to M Live, April's parents discovered the bodies when she didn't return from the Privacky's and they went searching for her. They reported seeing someone flee the house just before they stumbled on John's body in the garage. When police arrived, a young man named Steven Wallace approached them and said that Seth had called him and confessed to the murders, then asked him to dispose of the gun, which he did. He then helped Seth clean up the scene, but fled when April's parents arrived.

Seth was quickly arrested, and after initially claiming his brother had killed the family, he confessed. His motivation was rage at being informed he would have to move out of the house now that he was 18 years old; police described his demeanor as "flat," as if no one was home. Seth Privacky was easily convicted and sentenced to life in prison, and was shot to death in an escape attempt nearly 12 years later.

On Thanksgiving Day in Little Falls, Minnesota in 2012, cousins Nicholas Brady, 17, and Haile Kifer, 18, went missing. A day later, they were found in the basement of their neighbor Byron David Smith. According to the Duluth News Tribune, Smith claimed that Brady and Kifer had broken into his home and he'd shot them in self-defense, citing the state's "castle doctrine." This law makes it clear that a homeowner can use deadly force in order to prevent a felony from occurring in their own home if they feel they have no other choice.

But as NBC News reports, it quickly became clear that Smith had methodically planned a premeditated murder. Smith had been robbed several times and suspected his neighbors of being involved, and so on Thanksgiving, he set a trap. He moved his truck to make it appear that he'd left the house, then returned and waited in the basement, comfortably ensconced in an easy chair with water and energy bars — and two guns. He also recorded audio of the killings, which was later used to convict him of murder despite his claims that he feared for his life and that castle doctrine made his actions legal.

In light of his cold-blooded actions, including taunting the teenagers as they died and shooting Kifer a second time to ensure she was dead, it only took the jury three hours to convict Smith of murder.

In 2017, Tina Stewart accompanied her boyfriend Nicholas Holden to his father's house for Thanksgiving. Nicholas had previously been known to be physically violent. According to ABC News, he'd once posted a public apology on Facebook after head-butting Stewart in a bar.

Stewart and Holden got into a fight after drinking through the night, and at some point, the fight turned physical. According to KHQ News, Holden later told police, "We got into it last night. It was bad." When Stewart was found, she was dead and obviously the victim of a severe beating.

The story Holden told was horrifying — not just for the violence involved, but for the clear indifference he had to Stewart's well-being. He admitted to kicking and punching the victim. They calmed down and settled down to sleep. Holden admits he woke up several times to find Stewart cold and unresponsive, with blood and vomit on her face. But each time he merely rolled over and went back to sleep. It was only in the morning when he finally called 911.

After Holden agreed to a plea deal and a sentence of just 16 years in prison, Stewart's family began pushing for the passage of "Tina's Law," which would require violent abusers like Holden to publicly register with a national database.

While many terrifying crimes committed on Thanksgiving are linked to stress, there's always room for simple insanity. Such was the case when Jason Aaron Gibson woke up on Thanksgiving in 2018 and decided this would be the day he set several records in violent, horrifying criminal activity.

According to the El Paso Times, Gibson launched his rampage by invading the home of an 86-year old man in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Armed with a gun and a taser, he beat the man severely. When the man's daughter and her friend arrived, Gibson ordered the daughter to tie up her friend, then forced her to drive him to El Paso. Amazingly, Gibson had her drop him off and then just let her drive away. She rushed home to find police already investigating the incident.

Incredibly, according to Las Cruces Sun-News, while giving her statement to the police, the daughter saw an alert about a triple shooting occurring near where she'd dropped Gibson off. Gibson had randomly invaded a second home, where he shot three people, killing two. Although Gibson has a long rap sheet of criminal activity, no specific motive was found for his sudden crime spree. Then again, he might just be a terrible person: The Miami Herald reports that in 2019 Gibson was ratted out by his fellow inmates for feeding a pet iguana to an alligator at a petting zoo run by the county sheriff.