The Raid



On a warm August day in 1988, police raided the home of 42-year-old Deven Samuel. Samuel, a former surgeon with a number of child molestation charges to his name, spent most of his time locked up in his house, alone from the public eye in the countryside. After finding out that the only lead in a recent string of kidnappings was Samuel's truck leaving the scene of the crime, police were dispatched to his house. The first officers on site were greeted to a strong smell of something rotten emanating from inside.

Upon breaking down the door, police found the decomposing remains of children, ranging from ages six to sixteen, piled on top of each other in the middle of the living room. Despite the differences in age and size, every body in the pile was missing their arms. Officers quickly identified some of the corpses as missing children from several towns, including their own, and began to make their way throughout the house. When they couldn't find Samuel on the first floor, they headed into the basement. Blood coated nearly every surface of the downstairs room. Scattered across the floor were pieces of bone and flesh, as well as a few child-sized limbs and a bone saw. A trail of blood and excrement on the carpet led police to believe that the bodies had been dragged into the house through the open basement window, dismembered, and then disposed of up stairs. On a wooden desk in the corner of the room was a surgical kit and a blood-soaked journal, opened to the middle page with the words "I've done it!" written in pen. Investigators eventually discovered an extra pairs of limbs in the basement which, according to forensics, belonged to Samuel himself.

Written in the previous journal pages were detailed diagrams of a body, with the same height and measurements as Samuel. However, the arms and legs of the drawn body were replaced by two rows of several smaller arms that ran down his sides to the waist. The journal explained that these modifications would allow for "better maneuverability, enhanced acceleration, and easy access inside of walls and underneath furniture."