Cult Poisons Oregon Salad Bars, Man Hides in Walls to Kill, and Other Strange Murder Plots

Some murder plots are so unbelievable, so twisted, and so bizarre that they stay with police for years after they happen: A man who robbed a bank by pretending to be a doctor and handing out poisoned medicine. A commune who executed the largest biological terrorism attack in U.S. history in order to rig an election. A teenager who hid in the walls of a home before murdering a pregnant woman and her children.

The new Oxygen True Crime series A Plan To Kill,  premiering Sunday, October 27 at 7/6c, will take a closer look at murderers who design a grand plan to slay their victims, with first-hand accounts from investigators, and loved ones, according to a press release.

Ahead of the series premiere, keep reading to learn more about some of the other most unusual murder plots across the world.

Gene Thurnau and his friend Bob Peterson worked together at the St. Pete/Clearwater Airport. But for Peterson, it was more than a friendship — and when his love for Gene Thurnau wasn’t reciprocated, it turned deadly.

On Nov. 1, 2006, Thurnau and his wife, Juanita, invited Peterson to visit their new home. Then Juanita left. When she returned, she found a blood trail in the driveway, and her husband’s clothes in a bloody pile on the floor, along with a note on the end table addressed to Gene, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

“Peterson’s note said he wasn’t sure if he was gay, but he knew he loved Thurnau,” the Times reported. “But the letter turned threatening, with Peterson stating that he would not leave the house until they had sex.”

The missing men were found two days later in Peterson’s rental home.

“I feel like I’ve been living a lie all these years, and I just can’t do it anymore,” Peterson wrote in the note. "I have already asked for God's forgiveness.”

Police said Peterson kidnapped Thurnau and dragged him into the master bedroom of his home, where he cut off his genitals with a razor blade, before shooting and killing Thurnau, and himself, the Times said.

There were signs something was amiss with Peterson. He followed Thurnau to Florida after a job transfer. Peterson also bought the furnished home that Thurnau owned before he was married but was upset Thurnau’s linens weren’t included, Juanita told the Times. And just hours before he murdered Gene Thurnau, Peterson gave him a photo collection he’d secretly made of his new home in various stages of construction, the Times reported.

“I don’t hate Bob,” Juanita Thurnau told the Times. “How can you hate someone who is mentally disturbed?”

One of Japan’s greatest mass murders has never been fully solved to this day. Witnesses told police a man knocked on the door of the Teikoku Bank near downtown Tokyo on Jan. 26, 1948, and claimed to be a doctor sent by U.S. Occupation authorities, Huffington Post reported. The man went on to claim that there was an outbreak of dysentery, and he needed to give all the bank employees a vaccine.

A syringe for a vaccine injection. Photo: Getty Images

"The doctor pours out the vaccine into their sixteen teacups,” Huffington Post reported. “The sixteen people drink the medicine. Two minutes later, twelve of them are dead, four unconscious and the 'doctor' has disappeared along with some, but not all, of the bank’s takings.”

Although there were many conspiracy theories behind the plot, an artist named Sadamichi Hirasawa was arrested. He confessed, but then retracted his confession. Although he was found guilty and sentenced to death, no one ever signed the execution order and he died on Death Row of natural causes in 1987. Many still claim he was innocent and are actively trying to clear his name to this day, Huffington Post reported.

On Dec. 9, 1988, Robert Samuels was found dead in his home in Northridge, California by his wife, Mary Ellen Samuels. But police soon learned that Samuels hired a hit man to kill her husband, then hired more hit men to kill the hit man. She did it all to collect Samuels’ $500,000 life insurance policy, according to The Real Murders Of Los Angeles, which aired the case on Oxygen in November 2023.

Mary Ellen Samuels. Photo: Oxygen

About six months after Samuels was killed, the body of James Bernstein was found in a remote canyon, The Los Angeles Times reported. The prosecutor in Mary Ellen Samuels’ case argued that wasn’t a coincidence — and alleged at trial that Samuels had to hire more hit men to kill Bernstein when he asked for more money, and threatened to go to the police if she didn’t pay.

Prosecutors argued when Samuels was found dead in his home, that wasn’t the first attempt made on his life. His wife arranged for him to get drunk and left alone at a restaurant, so it’d be easier for a hit man to slay him, the Times reported. Another plot involved getting him drunk and driving him off a cliff. Once Mary Ellen even tried beating him with a broomstick herself, according to court records.

“Samuels complained bitterly to a friend that she and her hired hit man had ‘tried to do him’ three or four times…she said she’d spent almost $15,000 and nothing happened,” the Times reported.

She eventually became known as “The Green Widow” when she took photos of herself in bed wearing only $20,000 in strategically placed stacks of $50 and $100 bills she received from life insurance, the Times reported.

A guru from India named Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh gathered 2,000 of his followers to live on a remote eastern Oregon ranch. His followers dressed in red, worked for free, and built a religious empire. But they also turned to violence to get what they wanted. More than a decade before al-Qaida attacked the U.S. with planes, authorities said Rajneeshee leaders even considered flying a bomb-laden plane into the county courthouse, The Oregonian reported.

And in September 1984, details came out that the commune had executed the largest biological terrorism attack in U.S. history by poisoning at least 700 people, The Oregonian reported.

Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in Oregon in September 1985. Photo: Matthew Naythons/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

“They contaminated salad bars at numerous restaurants, but The Oregonian’s examination reveals for the first time that they just as eagerly spread dangerous bacteria at a grocery store, a public building and a political rally,” the newspaper reported.

The attack was the first documented bioterror incident in the U.S., according to the Homeland Security Digital Library.

“The cult planned to infect residents with salmonella on election day to influence the results of county elections,” Homeland Security said. “To practice for the attack, they contaminated salad bars at 10 restaurants with S. Typhimurium on several occasions before the election. A community-wide outbreak of salmonellosis resulted; at least 751 cases were documented.”

The commune’s murderous plot failed, however, when although 45 people were hospitalized, no one died.

In one of the most eerie and chilling murders in U.S. history, a 17-year-old boy terrorized two Massachusetts families before killing one of them. Daniel LaPlante was caught breaking and entering into the Bowen family home on Dec. 8, 1986, after Frank Bowen and his daughters realized that he’d secretly been living in their home, Oxygen reported.

Daniel J. LaPlante is led into Ayer, Mass., District Court by a court officer for his arraignment on charges stemming from the murders of Priscilla Gustafson and her two children, December 4, 1987. Photo: AP

“Frank Bowen's daughters, Tina and Karen, told him that objects were misplaced and TV channels were changed when they left the room. Frank assumed it was the girls messing with each other,” Oxygen cited from a police report. “However, Frank realized that LaPlante was lurking in the home's walls after he and the girls, as well as their friend Kathleen Knapp, noticed someone had used their toilet.”

LaPlante eventually tried to hold the family hostage, before running away, then returned later to write a message on the wall of their home, reading, “I’m going to kill you all” with a knife through it. Police eventually discovered him hiding behind a wall in the bathroom.

Although he was arrested, in October 1987, his mother raised the money to pay his bail. Less than a month after his release, his broke into the home of Andrew and Priscilla Gustafson and stole a cordless phone and a cable box, according to Oxygen reporting. On Dec. 1, 1987, he returned to the home and murdered pregnant Priscilla and her 7-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son.

To see more vicious murder plots like these, watch the series premiere of A Plan to Kill on Sunday, October 27 at 7/6c on Oxygen.