When Peter Fabiano answered his door shortly before midnight on Halloween 1957, he thought another trick-or-treater had arrived. The 35-year-old California businessman was preparing for bed, and his wife was still inside their home. Outside stood a woman in disguise, carrying a gun. Moments later, Fabiano was lying near his front door with a bullet wound to his heart. He had been murdered by someone who had come specifically to kill him.
Halloween offered an ordinary explanation for an unexpected visitor. On any other night, a stranger wearing a costume and approaching a house after dark might have attracted suspicion. On October 31, such encounters were part of the celebration. The same customs that brought families into the streets and neighbors to one another’s doors could also create opportunities for violence.
But the crimes committed on Halloween have rarely followed a single pattern. Some involved calculated attacks, with killers exploiting the holiday to approach their victims. Others emerged from domestic disputes, personal grievances or conflicts entirely unrelated to the celebrations. Children disappeared while visiting familiar houses. People were attacked in their homes. Young adults attending parties became victims of gunfire.
The investigations produced confessions, convictions, executions and continuing allegations of wrongful prosecution. Some fundamentally changed the lives of entire communities. Others left families facing decades of uncertainty, with one Manhattan double murder remaining unsolved 45 years after police discovered the bodies.
These are ten American murder cases connected by October 31, spanning more than six decades and involving victims whose plans for the day ranged from celebrating with friends to spending a quiet evening at home.
Peter Fabiano was preparing for bed when someone rang the doorbell of his Sun Valley home around 11 p.m. on October 31, 1957. The 35-year-old beauty salon owner believed a late trick-or-treater had arrived. His wife, Betty, heard him speak to the visitor before a gunshot sounded. She found her husband bleeding near the entrance. He died after a bullet struck his heart.
The shooter was Goldyne Pizer, a woman wearing a disguise, while her friend Joan Rabel waited nearby in a car. Investigators established a connection between Rabel and Betty Fabiano, whose friendship Peter had opposed. Prosecutors argued Rabel encouraged Pizer to kill him. Their precise personal relationships and the underlying source of Rabel’s hostility remained disputed. Both women pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 1958 and received sentences of five years to life.
Nine-year-old Lisa Ann French left her family’s Fond du Lac home to go trick-or-treating on Halloween 1973. Wearing a homemade hobo costume, she visited neighborhood houses, including the home of Gerald Turner, a man she knew. Turner sexually assaulted and murdered her, then disposed of her body outside the city. Her parents reported her missing, and hundreds of residents joined the search before investigators recovered her remains.
A jury convicted Turner in 1975 and sentenced him to a maximum of 38 and a half years in prison. The killing helped prompt communities across Wisconsin to move trick-or-treating into daylight hours. Turner subsequently left prison and returned following violations. Wisconsin authorities pursued his civil commitment as a sexually violent person, and as of spring 2026, he was still seeking release from state custody. A trial on the commitment proceedings was scheduled for January 2027.
Eight-year-old Timothy O’Bryan went trick-or-treating with his father, Ronald Clark O’Bryan, in the Houston area on October 31, 1974. Later, Timothy ate powdered candy from a Giant Pixy Stix and became violently ill. He died after ingesting cyanide. Ronald claimed someone at a neighborhood home had handed out the poisoned candy, an account investigators ultimately rejected.
Prosecutors established Ronald had prepared five cyanide-filled candy tubes and distributed several to other children. None of the other recipients swallowed the poison. He had also purchased life insurance on his children, and prosecutors said the murder was motivated by the prospect of an insurance payout. A jury convicted him of killing Timothy, and Texas executed him in 1984. The case intensified public fears about tampered Halloween treats, although the killer was the child’s father rather than an unknown neighbor.
On the morning of October 31, 1981, another nun found 76-year-old Sister Tadea Benz dead inside the St. Francis Convent in Amarillo. Investigators determined someone had entered the building and sexually assaulted and murdered her. Police recovered fingerprints and other evidence from the scene. Johnny Frank Garrett, a 17-year-old who lived nearby, was arrested and later convicted of capital murder.
Texas executed Garrett in February 1992. He had repudiated an alleged oral confession, and his lawyers challenged the reliability of the investigation. Questions grew after forensic pathologist Ralph Erdmann faced criminal charges for misconduct involving other autopsies. An attorney working for Garrett’s family later identified similarities with another elderly woman’s murder and sought further testing concerning a possible alternative suspect. Garrett’s conviction was never overturned, and no court formally exonerated him.
Police entered photographer Ronald Sisman’s Chelsea apartment on Halloween night in 1981 and found him dead alongside his girlfriend, Elizabeth Platzman, a Smith College student visiting from Massachusetts. Sisman was 39 and Platzman was 20. Both had been beaten and shot in the back of the head. Someone had ransacked the Manhattan apartment, but investigators found no sign of forced entry and established no definitive motive.
The case later attracted speculation involving David Berkowitz, the convicted Son of Sam killer. Journalist Maury Terry publicized an informant’s allegation claiming Berkowitz had known of the planned murders in advance. Terry connected the allegation to an unproven theory involving a satanic cult. Investigators never established the claimed connection, and no one has been convicted of killing Sisman or Platzman. Their precise time of death remains uncertain, although police discovered both bodies on October 31.
Doreen Erbert was eight months pregnant when her former husband, William Michael Dennis, arrived at her San Jose home on Halloween night in 1984. Dennis wore a wolf mask and carried a machete. Doreen’s husband, Charles, had briefly left the house, leaving Doreen with their four-year-old daughter, Deanna. Dennis attacked Doreen at the front door, inflicting fatal injuries on her and her unborn son. Charles returned to find his wife critically wounded. She died during transport to the hospital.
Prosecutors argued Dennis blamed Doreen for the drowning of their young son four years earlier. A jury convicted him in 1988 of first-degree murder for Doreen’s death and second-degree murder for the death of her unborn child. He initially received a death sentence. In October 2024, a California court vacated the death sentence and resentenced him to life without the possibility of parole. The convictions remained in place.
Photographer Teresa Halbach, 25, disappeared on October 31, 2005, after visiting the Avery family’s salvage yard in Manitowoc County to photograph a vehicle for Auto Trader. Her family reported her missing on November 3. Searchers located her Toyota RAV4 on the property two days later. Investigators recovered burned human remains and other evidence, and prosecutors charged Steven Avery with her murder. His teenage nephew, Brendan Dassey, also faced prosecution.
Separate juries convicted Avery and Dassey in 2007. The cases received international attention following Netflix’s Making a Murderer, which examined the investigation and challenged aspects of the prosecution’s account. Both men maintain their innocence, while the convictions remain in force. In September of this year, both applied to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers for sentence commutations. Their requests had not advanced to a scheduled advisory board review by the end of September. October 31 remains the established date of Halbach’s last known movements and the date prosecutors assigned to her murder.
Twelve-year-old T.J. Darrisaw approached a house in Sumter, South Carolina, while trick-or-treating with family members on Halloween 2008. Inside, Quentin Patrick believed rival drug dealers were arriving to attack him. He opened fire through the front door with an AK-47. T.J. was struck repeatedly and killed. The boy’s stepfather and brother also suffered gunshot wounds.
Patrick had a criminal history involving drug offenses and later said he feared retaliation from another dealer. The people outside his door were a family seeking Halloween candy. In 2013, Patrick pleaded guilty to murder and received a 30-year prison sentence. He also received a separate federal sentence for illegally possessing a firearm as a convicted felon. T.J. died because an armed man fired at visitors without establishing their identities.
An argument over missing Halloween candy preceded the fatal attack on Maria Adams, 49, inside a Chicago home on October 31, 2011. Ledell Peoples accused Adams of taking his candy. The disagreement escalated into violence, and police found Adams unconscious with extensive knife wounds and head injuries. Emergency workers transported her to a hospital, where she remained unconscious until her death on November 5.
Peoples claimed he acted in self-defense after Adams threw a plate at him. Prosecutors presented evidence of numerous stab wounds, defensive injuries to her hands and severe blows to her head. A jury found Peoples guilty of first-degree murder, and a judge sentenced him to 30 years in prison. An Illinois appeals court upheld his conviction and sentence in 2020. Adams was attacked on Halloween, although her death occurred five days later.
About 200 people attended a Halloween party in Joliet Township, Illinois, during the early hours of October 31, 2021. Shortly after 12:30 a.m., gunmen fired toward the crowd from an elevated position. Holly Mathews and Jonathan Ceballos, both 22, died at the scene. Nine other people suffered gunshot wounds, while attendees fled and emergency crews treated the injured. Investigators described the shooting as a targeted gang-related attack, although Mathews and Ceballos were not the intended targets.
Sergio Hernandez, identified by investigators as the intended target, was paralyzed and died from his injuries nearly a year later, bringing the death toll to three. Authorities charged Joskar Ramos and brothers Thomas and Jeremy Lopez with murder in 2022. They arrested a fourth defendant, David Grijalva, in October 2024 and filed additional murder charges. The charges represent allegations unless resolved through conviction, and the later death of Hernandez altered the original count of two fatalities.
Halloween has long been accompanied by warnings about dangerous strangers, poisoned candy and the risks of allowing children to wander from house to house. Some of those fears have become so deeply established that they influence how parents approach the holiday generations later. Yet the actual circumstances of these murders frequently contradict the threats Americans have been taught to anticipate.
The danger was not always a stranger waiting outside. Sometimes it came from someone the victim knew, trusted or lived with. In other cases, people found themselves caught in violence directed at somebody else. No amount of checking candy or choosing a safer costume could have prevented every one of these deaths.
Public reaction to a murder can also outlast the facts that originally inspired it. A single crime may lead to changes in community practices, become the subject of books and documentaries or generate theories that persist long after investigators have rejected them. Meanwhile, convictions do not necessarily end the arguments over what happened, and publicity cannot guarantee that an unsolved case will ever be resolved.
There is something particularly difficult about losing someone on a date the rest of the country celebrates. Anniversaries of violent deaths are painful regardless of when they occur, but October 31 arrives each year with decorations in shop windows, parties in neighboring homes and children gathering at front doors. Families have little opportunity to escape the reminders.
For everyone else, Halloween ends when the celebrations are over. For those whose relatives were murdered on October 31, the date marks the beginning of something that never really ended.
