2. The Vicious Crimes Of Lobster Boy
Grady Stiles Jr. was an American freak show performer who became known as “Lobster Boy”. He was born in Pittsburgh in 1937 as the latest in a lineage of “Lobster Men” carnival sideshows who inherited the congenital deformity ectrodactyly, which fuses their fingers together into claw-like extremities.
The Lobster Boy’s case was pretty serious: In addition to his hands, he also had ectrodactyly in his feet, and therefore could not walk. For most of his life, he primarily used a wheelchair, but also learned to use his upper body to pull himself across the floor with huge strength.
Due to his deformities, Grady Stiles Jr. grew up in the carnival world and fell madly in love with another carnival worker named Maria Teresa who joined the circus as a teenager after running away from home.
They soon married and had two children, but things took a sharp turn for the worse when Stiles started drinking alcohol and became abusive toward his wife and children. After a long time of abuse and domestic violence, Donna, Stile’s daughter fell in love with a man, but the problem was that Stiles didn’t like him. As a result, Stiles murdered his daughter’s lover in cold blood on the eve of the wedding.
At his trial, he admitted to this act with virtually no remorse and pointed out that he couldn’t possibly be imprisoned because no jail could properly accommodate his disability. He was let off with 15 years probation and allowed to return home.
Though they had divorced during the trial, his first wife, Maria Teresa agreed to remarry him in 1989. The family was shocked after receiving such news.
As you probably guessed, the beatings became more severe and few years after they remarried, she paid her 17-year-old neighbor, Chris Wyant, $1,500 to shoot and kill him, bringing one of history’s most incredible stories to an end.
Both Maria Teresa and Chris Wyant denied that they had killed Stiles. During the trial, his wife spoke at length of his abusive history. “My husband was going to kill my family,” she told the court, “I believe that from the bottom of my heart.”
