The justice system can be a bit tricky when it comes to convicting criminals for murder. Sometimes, cases stretch on for years without any evidence or clue that could lead to the culprit. Surprisingly, there have been a number of cases where the victims themselves have left clues with regards to their murder. They have been brave enough to fight the last minutes of their lives to point towards their killer. Some have supposedly come back from their graves to drop hints. We bring you 10 such unbelievable murder cases where the victim helped crack their own case.

1 Simon Ng’s last blog post helped solve his own murder. Simon blogged that his sister’s ex-boyfriend was at the house downstairs and was getting agitated. He and his sister were later found dead in his apartment. Although the accused initially denied any wrongdoing, he confessed once the police found Simon’s blog.

Simon Ng was a blogger who wrote about self-improvement. He was a lonely immigrant from Hong Kong living in New York. His parents moved back to Hong Kong and left Simon and his sister alone in their Queens apartment.

On May 12, 2005, Simon was homesick when his sister’s ex-boyfriend came to the house. Simon’s blog had the following entry that day, “Anyway today has been weird, at 3 some guy ringed the bell. I went down and recognized it was my sister’s former boyfriend. He told me he wants to get his fishing poles back. I told him to wait downstairs while I get them for him. While I was searching them, he is already in the house. He is still here right now, smoking, walking all around the house with his shoes on which btw I just washed the floor 2 days ago! Hopefully, he will leave soon, oh yeah working on the jap report as we speak!”

That was his last entry. Soon after this, Jin Lin, the ex-boyfriend, stabbed him multiple times with a butcher knife. Jin denied the murder, but when police showed him the blog post, he confessed. He said that his motive was to get money. But crime scene experts said he might have purposefully tossed stuff around the room to make it look like a push-in robbery. He also confessed to having murdered Simon’s sister when she returned home.

In 2008, Jin Lin was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.(source)

2 A Google employee solves her own murder from beyond the grave as DNA from her nails led police directly to the killer. She fought back against her killer who sexually assaulted her before murdering her.

Vanessa Marcotte was an up-and-coming accounts manager at Google in Silicon Valley. She was visiting her mother in Massachusetts when she went for a jog. During her jog, she was attacked, raped, and murdered. Police had no clues except for discovering that Marcotte had fought her attacker. They were able to extract the killer’s DNA from beneath Marcotte’s fingernails.

Eight months after the brutal killing, DNA samples from her nails and hands provided a match with the prime suspect, Angel Colon-Ortiz. Angel was arrested and charged with aggravated battery, aggravated assault, and assault with intent to rape and murder.(source)

3 Russ Stager’s audio tapes helped convict his wife of his murder. Russ’s death was ruled out as an accidental shooting. But Russ Stager tape recorded himself prior to his death sounding fearful for his life, asking questions like: “Why if I was asleep at 4:30 in the morning would Barbara wake me up to give me sleeping pills?”

Russ Stager, a school football coach, slept with a handgun under his pillow. So when he was found dead in his bed with a gunshot wound, his wife, Barbara Stager, told the cops that the gun discharged accidentally. The police accepted this account and ruled Russ’s death as an accidental shooting.

But months after his death, a student discovered a tape in a locker at the school where Russ worked. The tape, which he made three days before he died, revealed Russ was worried about his wife waking him up in the middle of the night and trying to feed him pills. “Last night she woke me up and gave me what she said was two aspirins,” he said. “She stood there to see if I took it. I did not take it.” He later analyzed the pills and found them to be sleeping pills.

He also went on to describe that his wife had gotten into debt, had written bad checks, and was seen “making out” with another man. He even confided his fear for his life with his first wife, Jo Lyn Snow.

Barbara was found guilty after an investigation for not only the murder of Russ but also her first husband. She was sentenced to death.(1,2)

4 Catherine’s spirit allegedly whispered “Baba” into her mother’s ear while her mother was holding the dead body. Her mother then forced the police to follow the lead passed on to her by her dead daughter. As it turned out, the accused person’s fingerprint matched those found at the scene of the murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.

In 2004, Catherine Ballesteros was found covered in blood at her home. While going through the crime scene, the authorities found a bloody footprint on the bedroom floor. They swabbed some samples for possible DNA examination. Several items were missing which led the police to believe that robbery might have been the motive. The post-mortem report said that she was stabbed 33 times.

In the funeral home, Catherine’s mother, Emer, hugged her dead daughter’s body.  It was at that point when she claimed that she heard a whisper. She said that Catherine whispered “Baba” to her.

Emer forced the police to follow on this lead. The police asked around the neighborhood and found out that Catherine had a neighbor, Ryan Jay Viscarra, who goes by the name of “Baba.” Ryan was involved in robberies around the area. They located his house, but he was nowhere to be found. But three days after the murder, the suspect’s aunt gave his location to the police and he was arrested.

Ryan recounted how he committed the murder. He was found guilty and sentenced to prison.  He is currently detained at the New Bilibid Prison.(source)

5 Alexander Litvinenko worked with detectives to narrow down his murderers just before his death. Alexander was hospitalized as a case of poisoning by radioactive polonium-210. Working with Scotland Yard detectives as he lay dying, he traced his murder to a former comrade in the Russian secret service. The case is still open.

Alexander Litvinenko was a former Russian spy who was working for the British at the time of his death. He was hospitalized due to radioactive polonium-210 poisoning. Prior to his death, he was investigating corruption among senior Russian officials. He met two former Russian agents at a hotel in London.

Litvinenko had tea with Andrei Lugovoi and one other former agent, Dmitri Kovtun. Soon, Alexander fell ill and died after just three days. But in those three days, he worked with detectives to narrow down the search for his killers. He remembered that there was a certain pot from which only he had poured tea into his cup. Authorities searched and conducted tests on nearly every bit of crockery in the cafe where he’d taken the poison.

One particular teapot in the cafe answered the question as to whether it was poisoning and what caused it. Police discovered the poison was the radio-active and fast-acting polonium. There was enough in the teapot’s spout alone to kill several people. Unknowingly, the cafe staff had put the used teapot into the dishwasher and served it up to customers.

In 2007, Britain’s director of public prosecutions charged Lugovoi with the murder. Even after having enough evidence, Russian police refused to hand over Andre and the other agent. Moreover, public inquiries have come to the conclusion that Litvinenko’s murder was “probably” approved by President Putin. The case is still not closed.(source)

6 Teresita Basa’s supposedly possessed a woman to speak about her murder. During a trance, the possessed woman named the killer and described a way to catch him. She said they would find Teresita’s stolen jewelry with the killer’s girlfriend. Surprisingly, that is what the police discovered.

In 1977, Teresita’s body was discovered burned and unclothed with a kitchen knife sticking out of her chest and covered by her burning mattress. The murder investigation went cold after a couple of months due to few leads.

But everything changed when the police were contacted by a Dr. Jose Chua. Dr. Chua said that his wife, Remy, was possessed by the spirit of the murdered girl. She would go into a trance from time to time, and during one such episode, she named the murderer as Allan Showery. She stated that Showery went to the apartment of Teresita in order to fix a television set and stole jewelry that was purchased in France as a gift from Teresita’s father to her mother. Remy also said that Showery gave the stolen jewelry to his girlfriend. She also gave names, details, and phone numbers of people who could identify the jewelry.

Sure enough, everything Remy said during her trance proved to be true. Showery caved-in under the weight of the evidence and gave a full confession.

Although the paranormal side of the case sounded fascinating, it was later found out that Remy worked with the victim and was quite familiar with her life. She was also aware that Allan Showery frightened Teresita. Did she just make up the trances so that Showery could blame only Teresita’s spirit and not Remy for getting caught? How did she know it was him? Was she really possessed? That still remains a mystery.(source)

7 A 15-year-old’s voice saying “I don’t want to die” captured on a cell phone video helped the police arrest her murderer. The video had a black screen, but the voices were quite clear. In the video, it was clear that her teenage boyfriend allegedly raped her and then strangled her to death.

Karen Perez was fifteen years old and had just completed her first year of high school in June of 2016. She went missing that same month. Initially, her family, community, and even her boyfriend helped search for her and spread the word of her disappearance. Within days, her body was found partially nude and crammed into a cabinet under the sink in an empty apartment in Houston, Texas.

Even though she seemed helpless in death, Perez left texts on her cell phone and her boyfriend’s cell phone that clarified what happened to her. Those text messages revealed that the boyfriend demanded she skip school on the day she disappeared. His messages even came with a threat, with his final text stating that if she refused to meet him, he would kill her and that her life would “end on bloods.”

More incriminating evidence was found on the boyfriend’s cell phone that contained video with only audio preserving Perez’s last moments alive. Police listening to the video could hear the boyfriend demanding Perez have sex with him, even calling her by name. She refused him and he began choking her. Perez cried out, “I don’t want to die!” towards the end of the recording. The boyfriend was charged with murder and taken to juvenile court for prosecution.

Why did the boyfriend make the video with only sound? Why didn’t he erase it later? Did Karen somehow turn the recording on during the struggle? We will never know.(source)

8 Amarjit Chohan hid the address of his murderer in his socks. According to media reports, Chohan was held prisoner by his murderer for some time. During this time, Chohan must have realized that he would be killed. So, he hid the murderer’s address in his socks.

Amarjit Chohan was an English resident and businessman. He was murdered in 2003 along with his wife, children, and his mother-in-law. His killers dumped his body in the water thinking they had destroyed any and all evidence of their vicious crime. And yet, Amarjit himself gave a clue to the police when his dead body was discovered.

A piece of paper was found tucked into one of his socks. It was a letter that was addressed to one of his murderers, Kenneth Regan. The subsequent police investigation led to the conclusion that Chohan was kidnapped by Regan, Bill Horncy, and Peter Rees. He was tied up and held a prisoner in a house for several days. Police speculate that Chohan, anticipating his own murder, used the letter in his sock as a way to provide police with a clue.

The note was overlooked when the body was first examined. It was only months later, when forensic scientists were examining the sock, that they discovered the piece of paper. Although the letter was soaked with seawater, the ink remained legible because it had been folded over many times, always with the ink on the inside. Chohan definitely wanted his murderers to pay for what they had done.(source)

9 A teen murder victim turned on the audio recording on her cellphone to record the voice of her murderer. She even took a photo of the murderer who killed her and her friend. A suspect has been arrested recently.

On 14 February 2017, the bodies of Abigail Williams and Liberty German were discovered on an American hiking trail in Delphi, Indiana. The young girls had disappeared from the same trail the previous day.

The pair was just taking a walk on the hiking route. Sensing a man following them, Liberty took a grainy image of a man walking towards them. She also turned on her audio and police found a clip that consisted of three words in a man’s voice: “Down the hill.” Authorities have indicated that more evidence relating to the suspect was found on the phone, but it will not be released so as not to “compromise any future trial.”

In September 2017, a possible suspect was identified resulting in the arrest of Daniel J. Nations, a registered sex offender. The case is still open.(source)

10 Nadine Haag’s death looked like a suicide. But, she left a note hidden behind the suicide note in her own handwriting pointing to her ex-boyfriend as the murderer. The note clearly said, “He did it.” During that time, she was in a custody battle with her ex-boyfriend.

At first glance, the police thought that Nadine Haag had committed suicide in 2009. Her lifeless body was discovered with a slashed wrist in her shower. There was even a suicide letter in her handwriting, but her family refused to believe it. They had a suspicion that her violent ex-boyfriend, Nastore Guizzon, had staged her murder to look like a suicide.

Haag had been in a custody battle with Guizzon. Moreover, the cut on her wrist, which was almost to the bone, was excessively deep for a suicide. Forensics also found pills missing from a bottle as if she’d taken them before slitting her wrists. But nothing showed up in the scans.

What police hadn’t originally noticed was the scrap of paper behind her suicide note which read: “He did it.” Three years later, the same words were discovered etched on the bathroom wall by new tenants who had moved into the house where Nadine was murdered. In 2013, the coroner disagreed with the initial police finding of suicide, but there was still nothing to physically place Guizzon at Haag’s apartment the day of the murder.(source)