No sign of forced entry, nothing of value taken: it appeared as though the Zantops had known their killer. Both husband and wife had been stabbed repeatedly and had their throats cut suggesting that the killer was in a rage. But who would have that kind of rage at the Zantops?

The question hung over the investigation for quite some time until some good old-fashioned detective work led the police to two young men from good families.


Teen Killer Couples
Holly Harvey, 15, had lived with her grandparents Carl, 74, and Sarah, 73, Collier at their Fayette County home in Georgia for just four months when she decided that she had had enough. Holly had no intention of going to church as her grandparents had hoped or conforming to the rules imposed on her. Nor did she want to give up her one true love: Sandra (Sandy) Ketchum, 16, whom she was forbidden to see. She was going to live her life the way she deemed fit. So in the summer of 2004, she recruited her lover Sandy to assist her in a gruesome plan, which they believed would allow them to gain freedom and be able to stay together forever. Their devious plot would eventually lead to the brutal murders of both Colliers.

On September 17, 2003, firefighters and police rushed to a burning house on Detroit's east side. Inside one of the bedrooms, sitting in her recliner, was Bertha Atkins, 64. Her remains had been battered and burned. Atkins had been hit with a claw hammer, which pierced through her upper lip and tongue. She had then been doused with gasoline and set on fire.

Larketa Collier, 16, the granddaughter of the victim, and her lover, Sharon Patterson, 17, had just returned from seeing a horror movie. A witness had seen the two girls calming leaving the burning house, so they immediately became primary suspects in the case.


Gary Hirte
Gary Hirte shut off the headlights on the eleven-year-old Dodge Dynasty and eased it onto the roadside halfway down Arrowhead Lane. The way the cops would later piece it together, Hirte had it all planned in advance, and even in the dark on that moonless July night, he could feel the perfect place to park his father's car so as not to wake up the crazy guy who lived there. The next house was far enough away that Hirte felt confident that no one else would see him. He shut off the engine. So far, everything was going just as he imagined it, just as he had planned it, and just as he had practiced it a few nights earlier.

Hirte had gone to all that trouble to plan the perfect crime. He picked out the perfect victim: a guy whom no one would really miss and who could not be linked to Hirte. He had even taken the weather into account. Yet, for some reason he brought his friend Eric along on the dry run. Maybe Hirte, the golden boy, the Eagle Scout who had never failed at anything, couldn't even imagine that his friend would turn against him. To be sure, Gary Hirte knew that he was more than just Eric's friend; he was his hero.


Bryan & David Freeman Brothers
The scene at the chocolate-colored house on Ehrets Lane, outside Allentown, Pennsylvania, in Salisbury Township, was unthinkable for that quiet community. No one who knew the family would have believed that their growing troubles would have escalated to this kind of cold-blooded frenzy. True, the two older boys had been a handful, but everyone who saw the carnage on Monday, February 27, 1995, wondered what could have triggered such outright rage.

As their sons had grown into adolescents, and especially as Bryan developed an interest in a military career, Dennis and Brenda had noticed trouble. They had tried different programs to deal with his anger, but they weren't able to stop its momentum. He'd warned them before that he was going to kill them, and it appeared that he'd made good on his threat.

The two Neo-Nazis had bludgeoned and stabbed their parents and their 11-year-old brother Eric.



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