10 Shocking Cases of Incest That Led to Murder

Of all the weird crimes that can take place, incest has to be one of the most perversely interesting - just look at how enraptured we all are by Game of Thrones. And if incest is intriguing on its own and murders always hold a morbid appeal, incest and murder stories are a double whammy of the downright fascinating.

Considering the unstable environment created by acts of incest, it's not surprising when murder follows behind. Sometimes incest results in murder as a way to cover up the evidence. Sometimes it's a crazy sex cult gone wrong. Whatever the circumstances, it makes for a lurid story.

And the stories are as varied as you can imagine, from tragic cases of rape and murder to tales of sophisticated socialites and ancient queens to mysterious cults and unsolved murders. 

Barbara Daly Baekeland, a glamorous American socialite and actress, may seem an unlikely person to get involved in a case of invest and murder. Born in 1922, she found success as a model, even appearing in Vogue. After her divorce, her son Antony lived with her. They both suffered from severe mental illness, and when Barbara found out her son was sexually involved with a man, she tried to "cure" him.

When hiring prostitutes didn't cure his homosexuality, she convinced him to have sex with her in an another attempt. Antony didn't handle it well, unsurprisingly. In 1972, the then-25-year-old Antony killed his mother with a kitchen knife, after which he is said to have ordered Chinese food. After his release from an institution, he stabbed his grandmother, though she survived; later, he killed himself by suffocation. 

Eddie Lee Sexton "controlled his children with years of incest and horrific abuse." A self-avowed Satanist, Sexton forced his children to murder for him in a display of power. His daughter smothered her own infant because he told her to and one of his sons killed his son-in-law, Joel Good, by strangling him with a rope. Sexton was found more guilty than his "simple-minded" son, whom Sexton he had used as a "weapon of choice" to kill Good. 

Seemingly unmoved by either the descriptions of violence or his own sentencing, Sexton "sat passively in a wheelchair in the courtroom, nodding his head when the judge delivered the sentence." When the jury recommended the death penalty. he apparently shrugged and said, "That's life,"

It's amazing how far people will go to cover up their behavior. Daniel Rinehart had been having a sexual relationship with his daughter, Ashley, since she was five years old. The girl's mother not only allegedly knew about it, but threatened the other daughters if they told anyone else what was going on. Ashley had given birth to four children, three of whom died - two of them apparently put in coolers and left on a farm. One of Ashley's sisters, Hayley, finally managed to contact the police.

Daniel tried to argue that the relationship was consensual, but was ultimately convicted of incest, statutory rape, felony murder, and abandonment of a corpse. He was given a life sentence plus 22 years. 

Ancient civilizations certainly loved their murder and incest. Not only did Agrippa the Younger marry her uncle, the Emperor Claudius, it's believed that she didn't stop there. When Claudius was eventually poisoned, many thought Agrippa was responsible. Why? Claudius's death cleared the way for her son Nero to come to power. Not only that, historian and politician Tacitus recorded sensual acts between the mother and son. It may be that the cycle just continued. 

A truly tragic tale of an athlete and scholar murdered by her own father, Daizsa Bausby was first in her class, a cheerleading captain and basketball player when a maid found her her dead on a hotel bed. She was found to have been sodomized and then suffocated. Her father claimed to have rented the hotel room for her and some friends and said he had only stayed for "20 or 30 minutes," but DNA linked him to thh killing. Jerry was charged with murder, sodomy, incest, and sexual abuse. 

Rick and his wife Gail Brink had already been dead for two days when Rick was found in his car shot twice and Gail, in their home, shot three times. Following years of investigation, the case went cold, until a disturbing twist in 2013. Gail's brother, Ryan Wyngarden, was arrested after his wife told police he had confessed to her back in 1987 that he had murdered Gail and Rick. The reason?

He and his sister Gail had had an incestuous relationship in their teens and a mixture of jealousy and fear that Gail would tell their secret had fueled the murders. Wyngarden was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder.

One of the highest body counts and most disturbing stories on this list comes from Marcus Wesson, found guilty of the deaths of many of his children and grandchildren.  Nine children were killed in all, aged one to 25. Their bodies were found in a pile, each having been shot through the eye, after a stand-off with police. Wesson had bred and raised a clan of children through incest, isolating them from the outside world, and confiscating any money they made. 

There was some debate as to whether he had shot them all or if Sebhrenah Wesson, the eldest, had killed herself and the others. (It was said that the father had trained the children to kill one another if needed.) Despite that confusion, Marcus was found guilty even though the government fell short of proving he pulled the trigger. 

In 1922, five members of the Gruber family and their maid, Maria Baumgartner, were all found slaughtered in Germany, in a case that still remains unsolved. The father of the family, Andreas, was found to have been abusive to his children. Josef, a baby who was murdered, was discovered to be the result of incest with his daughter Viktoria. 

Most of the bodies were found piled in the barn covered in hay and theories abound as to what happened in this gruesome murder. One suspect was Lorenz Schlittenbauer, a suitor of Viktoria's, who it was thought may have lashed out in jealousy because of the incest - but this is only one of many theories, including a random burglary or even demonic intervention.

A tale of incest and murder all mixed up together, this story is messed up enough to deserve a place on this list. Fred West claimed that his own father brought him up surrounded by incest and bestiality, which "normalized" the behavior for him. While some doubt whether this was true or just an excuse made-up by Fred, what followed next was certainly not normal.

Between 1967 and 1987, Fred committed at least a dozen murders in England, most of them with his second wife Rosemary (who had been sexually abused by her own father). Together they tortured, raped, and killed young women before dismembering them and burying the bodies. Fred raped his daughter Anne-Marie, until she eventually escaped, and then he turned his sexual abuse to his daughter Heather. After Heather disappeared, Fred apparently joked about "Heather being buried under the patio." Police later found her bones and the bones of many other women on the premises. 

Not only is it likely that Cleopatra's parents were brother and sister, she and her own brothers had a... complex... relationship. As was common for Egyptian royalty in the time period, Cleopatra was meant to marry her brother, Ptolemy XIII, to keep power within the family. But her brother, perhaps threatened by Cleopatra's ambitions, exiled her. She returned aligned with Ceasar and married another brother, Ptolemy XIV, who it is rumored she poisoned. Oh, and she also had her sister and potential rival Arsinoe IV killed, for good measure. 

Just to prove how weird things got, it's thought that "only six individuals filled the 16 great-grandparent roles on Cleopatra’s family tree." At that point it's more of a wreath, really.