Like many today, I'm thoroughly obsessed with watching, reading about, and listening to stories of true crime. From "Dateline" and "Serial" to "Making a Murderer" and "The Confession Tapes," I can't quite get enough of this sordid form of entertainment. (Exploring the psychological reasons for said obsession are best left for another time.)
If you spend enough time in the genre, you know one of the fundamental true crime truths: Most stories do not have happy endings. The majority end with grief and a grave.
However, there are some rare cases in which targets manage to fight back and survive. Not only that, they muster the courage to face their attackers in court and put them behind bars.
The following seven individuals did just that and saw justice served.
Corazon Amurao hid and a serial killer forgot about her.
Richard Speck's 1966 murder spree lasted almost six hours. After forcing his way into the Chicago home of nine female student nurses, he systematically robbed, raped, beat, strangled, and stabbed eight of them.
Only one survived — Corazon Amurao — who had opened the front door to him that fateful night. She hid under a bed and played dead, and Speck later said he lost count of the women during the carnage because he was so intoxicated. She fled the scene and found help.
Amurao provided a sketch of the suspect, including details about his "Born to Raise Hell" tattoo, and later testified against him in court. He was convicted of eight murders and sentenced to death. That sentence was later overturned and changed to eight consecutive terms in prison. He died in prison from a heart attack in 1991.
Carol DaRonch fled Ted Bundy.
In 1974, Carol DaRonch, a resident of Salt Lake City, Utah, narrowly escaped the clutches of one of the most diabolical serial killers of all time: Ted Bundy.
Dressed as a police officer, Bundy approached DaRonch in a parking lot, explained that her car had almost been stolen, and said she needed to file a report with him. She followed him to his Volkswagen and got inside where he quickly handcuffed her and tried to strike her with a crowbar. However, DaRonch resisted and fled.
Her story provided police with important details about Bundy's abduction techniques, and in 1975, an officer pulled over Bundy in his Volkswagen (which they knew about from DaRonch's report), in which they found handcuffs. They arrested Bundy, DaRonch identified him as the culprit, and he was put behind bars.
Even though he later escaped from prison, he was recaptured in 1978. After confessing to killing 28 women, he was sentenced to death and executed in Florida in 1989.
Maria Viricheva survived being pushed down a well.
In 2002, Maria Viricheva — 19 years old and three months pregnant — met one of Russia's most infamous serial killers, Alexander Pichushkin, also known as The Chessboard Killer (when he was caught in 2007 and charged with 48 murders, authorities found a chessboard marked with the dates of his kills).
He approached Viricheva in a Moscow metro station and offered her some work. When they arrived at a spot designated by Pichushkin, he pushed her down a 30-foot well. She managed to avoid drowning and climbed her way to the surface where a passerby heard her cries.
Although she reported the incident to police, they didn't investigate. She was only brought in to identify Pichushkin in 2007 — after he had committed many more murders. He was sentenced to life in prison.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider