About Wandering Truths Tuesdays

In the summer of 1968, a quiet corner of Newcastle awoke to an unthinkable truth: a child had killed—twice. Eleven-year-old Mary Bell, born into chaos and neglect, took the lives of two young boys. With her was thirteen-year-old Norma, tangled in a web of silence and complicity. 

This was no ordinary tale. It was a tragedy wrapped in innocence, and a dark mirror held up to a world that failed to act when it mattered most.

In the stillness of North Korea’s most desperate years, a generation of children slipped through the cracks of war, famine, and political fear. Known as Kkotjebi—“flower swallows”—they wandered the streets, rootless and starving, their small hands grasping at survival in a country that refused to see them. 

Among them was Jang Gil-su, a boy who carried his family across the ice of a frozen river and into the unknown, sketching the truth of his homeland for the world to witness. His rare escape, and the thousands of silenced stories like his, remind us why these orphans must not be forgotten. 

Their names may be scattered like petals in the wind—but their suffering lingers, asking only to be seen.

She wore white aprons, offered gentle hands, and cared for the sick with devoted attention. But, behind the soft smile of Nurse Jane Toppan was a mind as methodical as it was murderous.

Between the 1880s and early 1900s, Toppan moved from hospital wards to private homes, weaving herself into the lives -and deaths- of those who trusted her most. Her weapons? Morphine, atropine...and a hunger for control. By her own admission, she derived pleasure not just from watching her victims die - but from lying beside them as hey slipped away.

In the quiet of an Oregon night in 1983, a mother arrived at the hospital with a chilling tale — a carjacker had shot her and her three children. But as her daughter clung to life and her story unraveled, suspicion fell on Diane Downs herself. 

What unfolded was a haunting portrait of obsession, delusion, and betrayal — where the line between love and control blurred under the barrel of a .22 caliber pistol. 

Some crimes shatter lives. Others masquerade as love before they do.

In the heart of 1830s New Orleans, beneath the elegance of silk gowns and candlelit parlors, Delphine LaLaurie built a name among the city’s elite. But behind the iron-laced balconies of her Royal Street mansion, history whispered a different tale—one drenched in blood and buried in silence. 

When fire cracked through the walls of her home, it did not just illuminate smoke and ash—it unveiled a hidden chamber of mutilated slaves and grotesque cruelty. The city recoiled. The mask of refinement was shattered, revealing a woman whose name would be etched into the annals of horror. 

She fled into legend, but the cries from her attic linger in the bones of New Orleans.

Behind the lace curtains of a well-appointed New York parlor, a most unlikely empire was born. Society knew her as Marm- a stout, sharp eyed woman with a refined manner and a generous spirit. But beneath the silk and civility, Fredricka Mandelbaum ruled the city's underworld with the precision of a banker and the cunning of a queen.

From the 1860's through the 1880's, Mandelbaum ran the largest fencing operation in New York City, turning stolen goods into gold and young street thieves into trained professionals. She didn't weild a gun or a knife- she wielded influence. And in a world dominated by men, she built a criminal legacy that no one saw coming...until it all came crashing down in 1884.