Thousands of people appear on game shows around the world each year, putting themselves out there for everyone to see. Some of the contestants have gone to do amazing work, but surprisingly, some of the contestants were cold-blooded killers hiding in plain sight. Some committed murders after appearing on game shows, but some were actively on the run from authorities when they made their appearance. Here is a list of ten murderers that appeared on game shows.
Related: Ten Cold Case Killings That Have Puzzled Police for Decades
10 John Cooper on Bullseye
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Bullseye is a British game show that was centered around dart throwing. A Welshman named John Cooper appeared on the game show in May 1989. Cooper was friendly on the show and talked about his hobby of scuba diving, but he was hiding a darker secret. Cooper was a burglar in the Milford Haven village, but he had also murdered two people four years before appearing on the game show. He would also murder again within a month of being a contestant.
In 1985, Cooper murdered the siblings of Richard and Helen Thomas, and three weeks after appearing on Bullseye, he killed Peter and Gwenda Dixon. He tied them up and held them captive on a coastal cliff in Pembrokeshire before stealing their bank cards and shooting them at point-blank range. The murders of the Dixons became known as the Pembrokeshire Murders.
It wasn’t until 2008 that evidence linked Cooper to the murders. When authorities discovered that Cooper, who was already a suspect, appeared on a game show, they searched for a copy of the episode to find any clues. They were shocked to find out that Cooper had casually spoken of the exact spot where the Dixons would be killed weeks later. A police sketch from that time also resembled Cooper when he appeared on Bullseye. After blood traces were found on Cooper’s items in his home, he was arrested and sentenced to life in prison.[1]
9 Sefir Calinak on Luck of the Draw
Sefer Calinak appeared on a Turkish game show in 2014 when he revealed that he killed his first wife. Calinak was looking for a new wife on The Luck of the Draw when he discussed his past imprisonment. He said his first wife irritated him, which led to her murder, and he also killed a subsequent lover after arguing about money. He said he accidentally killed her by swinging an ax when she attempted to kill him. Calinak explained that he served his time for the crimes, but the host asked him to leave the show, which was followed by loud applause from the crowd.[2]
8 Lori Vallow on Wheel of Fortune
In 2004, Lori Vallow appeared on Wheel of Fortune and brought in $17,500 as the episode’s winner. Vallow also appeared in a Mrs. Texas beauty pageant in the same year, where she said that being a good mom, wife, and worker was important to her. She followed that up with, “Being all those things together is not easy. So, I’m basically a ticking timebomb.”
In 2020, the ticking timebomb statement appeared to be true after the bodies of two of her children were found buried in her husband’s yard. Her husband, Chad Daybell, led a Morman religious group that was known as a doomsday cult. Vallow claimed that she believed the second coming of Christ was soon and that her children were zombies. The murders became known as part of the Vallow-Daybell doomsday murders that also involved the murder of Vallow’s previous husband and the murder of Daybell’s previous wife.[3]
7 Edward Wayne Edwards on To Tell the Truth
Edward Wayne Edwards is a notorious American serial killer who is confirmed to have murdered five people, but he is suspected to have murdered at least twice that amount. He escaped from jail in 1955, and he landed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list by 1961 after robbing gas stations around the country as a fugitive. He was captured in 1962, but he was paroled in 1967.
After prison, Edwards got married and became a motivational speaker. In 1972, He appeared on the game show To Tell The Truth, which was quite ironic for someone who didn’t tell the truth. His book The Metamorphosis of a Criminal: The True Life Story of Ed Edwards was also released in the same year. It didn’t take long for Edwards to return to a life of crime, and he murdered a young couple in 1977. A second couple was murdered three years later in Wisconsin, and he later confessed to the murder of his foster son in 1996.[4]
6 Liu Hao on Happy League
Happy League is a popular Chinese dating show where people search for a romantic partner. Thirty-nine-year-old Liu Hao serenaded the audience with his singing, and one woman even picked him out of eight bachelors on the game show. However, Hao was hiding a dark secret from the crowd. He was a killer that had been on the run for 13 years.
People started to think that Liu Hao was eerily similar to the fugitive Wu Gang. Authorities began to investigate the matter and arrested him after a month of looking into Hao. He admitted to stabbing a man outside a restaurant 13 years ago. Hao figured that nobody would recognize him after that length of time, which is why he decided to be a contestant on Happy League.[5]
5 Paul Curry on Jeopardy
Who is Paul Curry? It’s not an answer to a Jeopardy question, but Curry did star on the game show in 1989. Curry was a two-time winner, accumulating a total of $24,101 before losing on his third episode. He met his wife, Linda Kinkade, in the same month that he appeared on the game show. The couple were madly in love, but Curry would soon feel different.
After revealing to Kinkade that he previously fathered a child with one of his ex-wives, he booked a cruise to help make it up to his wife. They both became sick while on the cruise, but Kinkade’s condition continued to worsen after the cruise before the symptoms disappeared. She became sick again later and eventually passed away after not being able to recover from her illness.
Curry cashed in his wife’s insurance policies and retirement plan, totaling more than $400,000. Many family members and friends believed that Curry could have poisoned his wife, but the case went cold for eight years. Authorities discovered that his second wife believed she had been poisoned during their time together, too, but he left her after she refused to take out an insurance policy. A more advanced toxicology analysis revealed that Kincade died from severe nicotine poisoning, but she wasn’t a smoker. Curry was found guilty of first-degree murder in 2014 and sentenced to life in prison.[6]
4 Stephen Port on MasterChef
Stephen Port is now better known as the Grindr Killer, but he appeared on an episode of Celebrity MasterChef in 2014 before he was found to be a murderer. He cooked alongside celebrities such as JLS singer JB Gill and EastEnders star Emma Barton. Between 2012 and 2015, Port had attacked a total of 12 men, and he murdered four. Port used the dating app Grindr to lure gay men back to his flat before attacking them.
His killing spree began in 2014 when he murdered Anthony Walgate after hiring him as an escort. He gave him a fatal dose of GHB, and then he dragged his body outside and anonymously called the authorities. Next, he murdered Gabriel Kovari and dumped his body in St. Margaret’s churchyard, and three weeks later, Daniel Whitworth was found in the same spot. His fourth murder victim, Jack Taylor, was murdered and disposed of in the same churchyard. He was convicted of assaults by penetration, rape, and murder of the four men, along with ten counts of administering a substance with intent and four other sexual assaults.[7]
3 Francois Verove on Everyone Wants to Take Their Place
Francois Verove appeared on the French quiz show Tout le monde veut prendre sa place (Everyone Wants to Take His Place) in 2019. The retired police officer was relaxed on the game show as he joked with the host and answered questions, but he was hiding a big secret while being out in the open. Verove had been on the run from authorities for more than 30 years.
At the time, his identity was unknown, but he was nicknamed “The Pockmarked Man” after a series of rapes and murders that started in the 1980s and happened until 1994. The most famous case was the one where he was suspected of raping and murdering an eleven-year-old girl. He also raped at least two other small children. An investigating magistrate had started questioning about 750 people in the local armed forces after suspecting the rapist and killer might be a gendarme.
In September 2021, Verove was sent a summons for questioning, but he was reported missing three days after the summons. He was found dead after committing suicide. He left behind a written confession to the murders without any specific details. His DNA was matched to profiles found at several of the scenes, and he was officially announced to be The Pockmarked Man.[8]
2 Timothy Bliefnick on Family Feud
Timothy Bliefnick appeared on Family Feud in 2020 with some of his family members when host Steve Harvey asked him, “What’s the biggest mistake you made at your wedding?” Bliefnick jokingly replied, “Honey, I love you, but ‘Said I do,’” Harvey stared while the audience erupted in laughter. His wife did not appear on the game show, but that joke may have been telling for what was to come.
Bliefnick’s wife was found dead in the second-floor bathroom of her home, where she lived with their three children, after he filed for divorce. She had been shot 14 times, some of which were fired after she was lying on the ground. Bliefnick had become jealous after seeing another man’s car parked at her house and decided to murder her. He was charged with first-degree murder and home invasion.[9]
1 Rodney Alcala on The Dating Game
The most famous murderer to appear on a game show is the notorious Rodney Alcala. He was an American serial killer, rapist, and sex offender that was convicted of five murders between 1977 and 1979. He was also linked to several other murders, and some believe the number could be well over 100. He was accused of toying with his victims by strangling them until they regained consciousness and then repeating it over and over before killing them.
Alcala has been referred to as the “Dating Game Killer” after he appeared on the game show during his crime spree. He won the competition and a date with the episode’s bachelorette, Cheryl Bradshaw, but she refused to go on the date after finding him to be creepy. A fellow contestant also described him as a very strange guy. Alcala was sentenced to death in California for the five murders. His life has been detailed on several shows throughout the years, but Netflix recently released a biographical film, Woman of the Hour, that depicts several of his murders and the game show appearance.[10]