 The holiday season is most often seen as a time for family, friends, and spending time with all the people you care about most, and the grueling task of finding gifts for the most difficult people to shop for. Essentially, the holidays are not a time that you would expect to be littered with true crime stories, murder, and countless unsolved cases. But I'll let you in on a little-known secret. More crimes are committed during the holidays than any other time of year, and today we'll be discussing 12 Christmas Murders from around the world. Welcome to True Crime Stories. My name is Ty Nott. If you like true crime documentaries and want to stay up to date with all the latest cold case files, be sure to hit the like button and subscribe. It's completely free and will keep you up to date with all of the latest true crime videos. Since it's the holiday season, and let's be honest, nobody's really watching YouTube this time of year anyway. I wanted to do something a bit different, and instead of a normal long form documentary, I wanted to cover 12 individual murder cases, all of which took place on or around Christmas. So with that, let's cut the chit chat and get into the first case. After all, nothing says Christmas quite like murder. Thirty-seven-year-old Patty White was a lovely young lady who heard about a woman in her area who was down on her luck. Sixty-seven-year-old Michelle O'Dowd had been having a difficult time during the holidays and was in desperate need of a place to stay. Patty, being the generous lady that she was, offered to let Michelle stay in her home for a few days around Christmas time. But unbeknownst to Michelle and the people that knew Patty, Patty had been hiding a dark secret. Patty's real plan wasn't to simply let Michelle stay in her home for a few days. Patty planned to rob her, murder her, and stage the crime scene to look like a robbery gone wrong, and that's exactly what she did. Michelle's twin brother was the one who discovered the grim crime scene, with Patty being given 45 years in prison. It's Christmas Day of 2013 when Bill Stevenson, a Victoria Australia, offered to let a couple spend the holidays with him. But Bill didn't know that these two were fiercely addicted to illegal drugs and that they'd planned to kill him and rob him blind. The two managed to stow Bill away in his car, then drive him out to the wilderness. Once here, they severely beat him and began laughing about their plans to quote, kill Bill. They then set his car on fire and casually walked back home. They were obviously caught and sent to prison for decades. So obviously, I had to include one of the most disturbing murder mysteries of all time, the case of John Benet Ramsey. On Christmas Day of 1996, John Benet Ramsey went missing from her home in Colorado. Soon after, her parents received a ransom note asking for $118,000. When police were called to the scene, they found that the young girl had been murdered and hidden in the family's basement. Obviously, the parents were suspected of killing the girl, but they were quickly cleared as suspects. Next, police thought that a scary masked man may have entered the home and intended to kidnap the girl, but accidentally killed her instead. The truth is, we don't know what happened and the case remains unsolved. On December 25th, 1929, in North Carolina, Charlie Lawson announced that he'd managed to bring in enough money from his business to take his family out to buy nice clothes and get their photo taken. However, in a truly tragic turn of events, he killed his entire family instead. He shot two of his young daughters, his wife, his oldest daughter, and two of his sons. He then killed his youngest daughter and then turned the weapon on himself. His oldest son, Arthur, was spared for unknown reasons. Historians and researchers still don't understand why Charlie committed the murders. There are rumors that he was having an intimate relationship with his oldest daughter and killed his entire family out of shame and guilt, but this has never been proven. Alexis Valdez killed his aunt's boyfriend, Sylvester Diaz Hernandez on Christmas Day in 2013. Valdez had been living with his aunt and her boyfriend after he'd been down on his luck. They agreed that he could do so, so long as he either went to school or had a job, but he had recently quit school and his job, leading to his aunt and her boyfriend asking him to leave. In response, Valdez killed Diaz Hernandez with a hammer, mutilated his body by removing all of his limbs and then decapitated him. Valdez later admitted to the murder and said that he would have killed his aunt too if she had been home. His motive, as far as we know, was nothing more than anger and frustration. Joanna Yeats disappeared just a week before Christmas in 2010. Her disappearance became a media sensation as everyone helped search for the missing woman. However, the search soon led them to a national forest, and unfortunately, Joanna's body was found in the snow just three miles from her home. The case received massive attention, and several media outlets, including The Sun and The Mirror, reported on the case and pointed fingers at a man named Christopher Jeffries. The thing was, Christopher Jeffries was innocent, but the tabloids labelled him as a murderer. In the end, the news outlets were hit with a massive lawsuit, and a while later, Joanna's neighbor was arrested and charged with her murder. This woman stabbed her neighbor 29 times over an argument about Christmas presents. 37-year-old Melissa Young claimed the life of her neighbor, Alan Williamson, on Christmas Day of 2013. As it turned out, Melissa had gifted her neighbor a pair of shoes and a copy of a provocative 2014 calendar. Alan seemed to have been offended by the gifts, but Melissa didn't take kindly to his rejection. In the end, Melissa was sentenced to 20 years in prison. It was three days after Christmas in 1987 when Ronald Simmons walked into a law firm in Arkansas and shot down a receptionist who he'd had a crush on after she rejected him. He then went to an oil company and claimed the life of one executive and injured another. He then went to his former place of work and fired at two people but they lived. He then went to the wood-lined freight company and fired at another woman who also lived. He then sat down and simply waited for the police to arrive. But what police found out next was that six days before this, Simmons had murdered his entire family but continued to live in the home with their bodies for four days. In total, he attempted to claim the lives of 16 people that Christmas. He was killed by lethal injection in 1990. Christie Bamu was just 15 years old when he lost his life after being drowned in a bathtub by his sister Maggie and her twisted boyfriend, Eric. It was Christmas Day of 2010. When police found his body, they found 130 separate injuries and learned that the two had been beating the teen for the last four days before murdering him. They were both given more than 25 years in prison. This murder took place on Christmas night of 1895 in St. Louis, Missouri. Stagger Lee and Billy Lyons were out drinking and playing cards together in a saloon when they got into an argument and a bar fight broke out. Lyons snatched Stagger's hat and just like a classic western movie, Stagger drew his gun and shot Lyons dead. The case would later inspire a popular folk song. It was Christmas Eve of 2004 when 25 close friends were having a party near Los Angeles. At around 11.30 p.m., someone knocked on the door. When one of the friends opened the door, they saw someone dressed as Santa Claus on the other side. Police would later learn that this man was none other than Bruce Pardo, the unstable ex-boyfriend of one of the women at the party. He forced his way into the home, holding a handgun and a flamethrower. I don't think I need to go into detail about what happened next, but he managed to murder nine people and injure three others. He then set the house on fire and fled the scene. During his escape, his Santa suit caught fire and melted to him, causing third-degree burns. He would later claim his own life. It was Christmas Eve of 2002 when Jean Hulaver and her two daughters, age 20 and 15, were at their home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Jean had left her husband after he was arrested for allegedly having intimate relationships with his daughters. A judge ordered that he stay away from his family after he was released on bail, but Ernest Hulaver had other plans. His brother drove him to his wife's home one evening and waited in the car while Ernest went inside and claimed the lives of his entire family, fearing that they would testify against him in court. In the end, police didn't need his family to testify because his own brother came clean with investigators. In the end, Ernest was sentenced to life in prison and his brother was given 25 years in prison for his part in conspiring against the family alongside Ernest. So there you have it, probably one of the strangest and most off-color videos I've ever done. While all these cases are truly terrible in their own ways, we've got to remember that the holidays are a time to be celebrating and spending time with family or at least loved ones. So now that you've had your fix of murder mysteries for at least the next few days, turn off your phone or TV and spend some time with the people you care about or at least the people that care about you, even if they have a strange way of showing it. But happy holidays, everybody.