You may think the paperwork and legal procedures are onerous in buying a home or any kind of real estate, but there are good reasons for this. When you buy something, you want to make darn sure the person you're handing your money to has a legal right to sell it. That wasn't quite the case in 1879 when Stephen D. Richards was a newcomer in Kerney, Nebraska, and managed to sell the farm at which he was boarding. The farm belonged to the Harelson family. Mr. Harelson had been gone for some time, said to be a fugitive from the law. Richards told everyone that Mrs. Harelson and her three children had gone to be with him and had left the farm and all its contents to him. However, the bodies of Mrs. Harelson and her children, who had been bludgeoned to death, were found in a haystack.
An interstate manhunt chased Richards down and the sheriff finally arrested him in Mt. Pleasant, Ohio. It turns out that Richards was a serial killer, and claimed responsibility for at least nine deaths! You can read about that case at Murder by Gaslight, although it never explains what happened to the farm that had been sold through fraud. -via Strange Company
