The Minneapolis Murderer | World’s Most Evil Prisoners | Forensic Files

SAM DOUGLAS: In the USA, some of the world's most dangerous individuals are locked behind bars.
A prison in Minnesota housed one of the most depraved murderers known by inmates
as the family killer. - Craig Bjork is probably one of the most dangerous prisoners in the country.
He seems to have a trail of dead bodies behind him. REPORTER: The murder case has been in newspapers,
on radio, and television. There are few people who haven't heard of the case. Four strangled bodies were found.
SAM DOUGLAS: Bjork, the serial killer, didn't hesitate in strangling his own flesh and blood.
DAVE KAMPA: I mean, how anybody can kill your own kids-- he should have been put to death a long time ago.
- Murdering anybody, of course, is inexcusable. Murdering your children-- well, you get a special spot
in hell for that. ANDY MANNIX: Newspaper articles at the time really painted a picture of sort of, like,
a Hannibal Lecter figure. You looked into his eyes, and there was just, like, no recognition of a person there.
SAM DOUGLAS: Even within the prison system, Bjork's lust for killing showed no sign of abating.
DAVE KAMPA: Craig Bjork grabbed a 3-foot pipe, proceeded to hit Edwin Curry in the head,
maybe up to eight times. He was basically a sick individual, and he was proud of it, I think.
ANDY MANNIX: The guard testified later that he started telling him, hey, it's a good thing you caught me when
you did because I was going to kill a bunch more people. LINA HAJI: This is not just your typical inmate.
This is an absolutely depraved, psychopathic, evil, remorseless human being. [theme music]
SAM DOUGLAS: Oak Park Heights is Minnesota's only maximum security prison and can house up to 473 criminals.
ANDY MANNIX: This is where they put the worst of the worst prisoners. I've toured it several times.
There's solitary confinement units where you can't hear anything except for your own breath.
DAVE KAMPA: At Oak Park Heights, I was bit. I've had feces thrown on me. I've had urine thrown on me.
I was almost stabbed by a federal inmate. My name is Dave Kampa. I spent 35 years as a correctional officer
and a special investigator. Oak Park Heights prison, when it was built in 1982, it was the supermax of Minnesota.
It's basically four stories underground built into a hill to make sure that nobody can escape from it.
JAMIE MORGAN KANE: On most any given day that I was in prison, there were some kinds of assaults.
It could be everything from just a good knock across the head to being a full-fledged killing.
If we went a couple of days and nobody had done anything, then you'd start worrying, because you
start thinking somebody is planning something. SAM DOUGLAS: One of its most notorious inmates
was convicted serial killer Craig Bjork. ANDY MANNIX: There was this question of,
what do we do with this prisoner who keeps killing people after he's been incarcerated?
I don't think that most prisons have the tools to deal with someone like Craig Bjork.
LINA HAJI: Bjork displayed quite a few psychopathic traits. He displayed lack of empathy.
He displayed impulsivity. He displayed criminal versatility, pathological lying.
- Yes, he would probably be the most dangerous person that I have ever dealt with.
SAM DOUGLAS: His cold-blooded murders stretch over four decades. - To call him evil is an understatement.
He is the rawest form of evil. DAVE KAMPA: He almost looks like a demon. He's a very evil man.
And how somebody could kill somebody like that, majority of people can't fathom that.
LINA HAJI: I believe, without a doubt, that if Bjork was released from prison, he would murder again.
He may murder again in prison. SAM DOUGLAS: Craig Bjork was born in 1959. His name at birth was Craig Jackson.
ANDY MANNIX: Craig Jackson had a really rough childhood. He had an abusive, racist father.
There are references of his dad molesting him when he was seven years old. His dad would beat him pretty brutally.
He talks about his dad wanted him to learn to tell time, so he would ask him what time it was.
And if he got it wrong, he would punch him. LINA HAJI: Abuse can affect the development of the brain.
By the age of four, you are starting to remember and learn and retain everything that your parents or your caregivers
are demonstrating. So when your own protector is the one who is engaging in the abuse, that can
really scar a child for life. Because if you can't trust your own parent, who now can you trust in the world?
PAUL LOPEZ: Jackson's father was described as an extreme racist and brought his son
up in the same belief system. ANDY MANNIX: His dad would scream the N-word on a regular basis, would talk about how
he thought Black people were destroying America. A big part of, I think, Craig Jackson's childhood
was being around that kind of just vitriol racism and absorbing a lot of it himself.
LINA HAJI: Modeled behavior is probably the best indicator of how a child is going to learn.
So if he's watching his father engage in racist and misogynistic behaviors, he's going
to normalize that kind of rhetoric, and he's going to internalize it. SAM DOUGLAS: Jackson's mom eventually left
her abusive husband and took her young son to live in cities across the state, but ultimately, they ended up circling back to their hometown
of Des Moines. ANDY MANNIX: Craig Jackson was mostly raised by his mom. He talked a lot about his mom being promiscuous.
He talked about hearing her having sex with every Tom, Dick, and Harry, as he put it, with only a towel in between them.
LINA HAJI: Jackson has already been set up for failure in terms of how to properly understand
sexual relationships, interpersonal relationships, friendships, parental relationships.
Before the time he's even 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, this child has a very, very skewed perception of what
relationships actually entail. SAM DOUGLAS: As a child, Craig Jackson began to echo his father's violent tendencies.
ANDY MANNIX: One time, he tied two cats' tails together and let them just rip each other apart.
He would stamp out flowers. He would fight other kids. I think in eighth grade he got into a fight that
got him kicked out of school. He pushed a teacher and was just rather violent. LINA HAJI: It's understandable that he had a lot of anger.
The problem is that anger was not addressed. There doesn't seem to have been any treatment or
adaptive outlets, and so the anger is only going to build upon itself. Jackson is really a ticking time bomb before the time
he's even an adult. SAM DOUGLAS: Still a child, Jackson began experimenting with drugs.
PAUL LOPEZ: He wouldn't even get out of bed, reportedly, at age 14 until he had smoked marijuana.
This was on a daily basis. Of course, marijuana, as some say, is a gateway drug.
He graduated to amphetamines and a very strong narcotic, PCP. ANDY MANNIX: At one point, he was
popping about 50 amphetamine pills a day, drinking up to a quart of whiskey a day,
so he became someone who was just a massive drug addict by his late teens. LINA HAJI: So the substance abuse
was really a maladaptive coping skill that was setting him up for disaster in the long run.
SAM DOUGLAS: In 1977, at the age of 18, Craig Jackson started a relationship with a young woman
called Terry Rice. Almost immediately, Jackson became physically violent towards her.
PAUL LOPEZ: He'd beat her to the point where she would suffer significant injuries
and would have to seek help from local hospitals and even at one point went to a woman's shelter.
LINA HAJI: It's a very cowardly act to engage in domestic abuse. So it makes you wonder, if you can do this to the people
that you supposedly love and are closest to, what can you do to full strangers? What are you capable of doing to anyone?
SAM DOUGLAS: Terry became pregnant and in 1978 gave birth to their son, Joey. The violence subsides.
ANDY MANNIX: It does seem like there was a moment there where things were fairly good between them.
After the first child was born, Craig was apparently a very happy father. He would go around showing everybody his young son
and say, I should charge you money to see this beautiful child. SAM DOUGLAS: Craig and Terry married in 1979
and moved to Minneapolis. ANDY MANNIX: So Minneapolis, in the early '80s in particular,
was considered this really safe, mid-sized to major American city. The murder rate was very low.
We were still five or so years away from having the emergence of the kind of gang activity
that we were seeing in places like Chicago and New York City, and people just generally thought
that Minneapolis was a city that didn't have those kinds of problems. SAM DOUGLAS: A year later, the couple
had a second child, Jason. ANDY MANNIX: After the second child was born, the abuse became more intense.
You know, he had a one and three-year-old, and being around them, he said, just made him really angry.
LINA HAJI: While he may have been in this pseudo-honeymoon phase, that quickly dissipates
when he realizes that two children and a wife requires a lot of work and a lot of selflessness, which
he's incapable of providing. Abuse was really all he knew. It was all he had learned as a child.
That being said, he's now an adult, and he is responsible for his actions. SAM DOUGLAS: Jackson's wife, Terry, was always
the main victim of his abuse. ANDY MANNIX: This made things a lot harder because she
felt like she couldn't leave Craig Jackson because he had, you know, access to their kids, so by leaving,
she would be putting their lives in danger as well. She did leave him several times,
but she always came back. SAM DOUGLAS: In 1981, Terry suddenly disappeared. ANDY MANNIX: Craig Jackson takes the family to Las Vegas
to see his father, and when he returns, he's got Joey and Jason, but Terry isn't with him anymore.
PAUL LOPEZ: When people would ask Jackson about the whereabouts of Terry, he would usually
provide the same response, saying that they were having relationship difficulties,
that she had gone back to Des Moines to be with family to give them some time apart.
SAM DOUGLAS: Jackson did not appear to miss his wife and mother of his children,
as he quickly found himself a new girlfriend. LINA HAJI: Jackson is now in his early 20s, and
he's developed a pattern now. It's almost akin to hunting. He's so predatory in nature that what
he does is he goes out to the world, goes to bars, and he essentially finds his next victim.
And that's where he met his next girlfriend, Ramona. PAUL LOPEZ: Ramona Yurkew was a 19-year-old girl who
graduated high school in 1980. She was very well liked in high school. She was a member of the school cheer squad.
She participated in several plays. She was even on the student government. And at that time, she was working at a local pizzeria.
SAM DOUGLAS: Ramona's affection towards Craig was repaid with violence. ANDY MANNIX: The relationship was very violent, very abusive.
I think he was ramping up actually from Terry. He beat her several times, sending her to the hospital.
He was really angry. He was angry at the kids. He was angry at Ramona, and he was really ramping up his drug
use around this time too. LINA HAJI: It's only making the psychopathic traits worse.
It's going to make him more impulsive. It's going to further his ability to manipulate,
because there's really nothing holding him back. ANDY MANNIX: Ramona did not leave Craig Jackson
despite people telling her to. I think in large part because she fell in love with these kids who
were very young at the time. LINA HAJI: Ramona seems to be an empathic, caring, loving,
well-rounded person, and he's aware that Ramona is attached to his two sons. And so he's using his sons as bait
in order to keep Ramona stuck in this abusive relationship. SAM DOUGLAS: On the afternoon of March 6, 1982,
Jackson dropped off his kids at a babysitter and headed to downtown Minneapolis.
He visited several bars, getting both drunk and high. ANDY MANNIX: Hennepin Avenue is sort
of the heart of downtown Minneapolis's bar and restaurant district. In the '80s it was sort of known as kind of a seedy place.
There was some nightclubs. There were places where you would have, you know, people who were, like,
considered day drinkers who'd spend full days at these bars. He meets a woman named Gwendolyn Johnson.
Gwendolyn is a young woman. She's about 20 years old. She's got two kids. One thing that's significant about Gwendolyn
is that she's a Black woman. Craig was sort of a pretty unapologetic racist at this time.
He talked about his hatred for Black people frequently. He brought Gwendolyn Johnson back to this house.
They had sex consensually, and during the act, he choked her to death. PAUL LOPEZ: Strangulation is a very personal
way to murder somebody. It requires close, upfront contact. There's no distance involved.
And typically speaking, it takes time for people to die through strangulation. ANDY MANNIX: He hid Gwendolyn's body
underneath his child's bed. He takes some of her belongings and puts them in the basement of his apartment.
He burns her ID. So there's some acknowledgment there, I think, that he knew what he was doing and that he
was trying to cover it up. LINA HAJI: He doesn't view her as a human. He views her as a prop, as a tool.
He picked her up. He got what he wanted from her, which was sexual gratification,
and then he had no need for her anymore. SAM DOUGLAS: The next day, March 7th, he picked up
his sons from the babysitter. ANDY MANNIX: The babysitter notices he's got some scratches, some kind of defensive wounds
on his face. She's a little bit concerned, but all the same, he takes the kids back and is just hanging out
with them in the apartment where there was a body hidden under a bed. SAM DOUGLAS: Later that day, Jackson put his sons to bed.
After finishing her shift at the pizzeria, Ramona went over to his house. ANDY MANNIX: They're smoking weed together,
and she's getting ready to leave. And he decides that he's going to choke her to death.
He wraps his hands around Ramona's throat and chokes her until she dies. LINA HAJI: Once he's killed the first victim, it's easy for him
to continue going on. Why stop? He's probably filled with adrenaline. He's probably realized I can do this.
He's probably getting some kind of gratification from it. And so it's just like any other addiction--
he just continues to do it because it feels good and it serves him. SAM DOUGLAS: Jackson then walked into the room
where his two sons, age one and three, were sleeping. - He decides that God wants him to choke them to death
and send them to heaven. Joey is sleeping on the bed with Gwendolyn Johnson's body
underneath it. He chokes them both to death. He describes it later as saying there was no big incident.
It was very peaceful, and he was just sending everyone to heaven. LINA HAJI: Murdering his children
and his girlfriend is the ultimate control. I mean, when you dictate when and how somebody dies,
there is no other level of control. Those were the easiest, most vulnerable targets.
They were closest to him, and they were just a means to an end. SAM DOUGLAS: Jackson spent the rest of the night
at home getting high with four dead bodies lying just meters away. - Ramona Yurkew was missing for several days,
and her family, knowing that she was in a very abusive relationship with Jackson,
became concerned about her. They contacted the local police department. The police department went to Jackson's residence.
However, they found that Jackson was not home. ANDY MANNIX: Minneapolis Police showed up
here looking for Ramona Yurkew, and they found four dead bodies. It was a really grisly murder scene
that I don't think anyone expected when they walked in the door. SAM DOUGLAS: Ramona's father was interviewed at the time,
telling reporters how he learned what had happened. - It was a doorbell, and a man in the suit, plainclothes suit,
identified himself as a chaplain. INTERVIEWER: Mm-hmm. - Police chaplain from Minneapolis.
I said, she's dead, isn't she? He said yes. And I said, the kids too? And he said yes.
PAUL LOPEZ: Nothing's more impactful than the death of children. The first thing is complete shock and sadness.
It's very painful, and those are visions in your brain that will be imprinted indefinitely.
I would immediately suspect the father. On a homicide scene where there's two dead children,
a dead girlfriend, and a fourth body, and the missing component is the father? Absolutely, he would be the primary suspect.
MAN: Well, what it boils down to is she gave her life for those babies. It's as simple as that.
She stayed there knowing she was in danger, but she wanted to protect those babies.
ANDY MANNIX: This was really described in the newspapers as like the murder of the century.
It was sort of a house of horrors, you know, walking into there. The newspapers described this as a vile and extremely
grim scene. SAM DOUGLAS: A murder investigation was immediately launched. It was quickly determined that all four victims had
been manually strangled and the main suspect was Craig Jackson. He had fled the state and was on the run.
For a month, he went undetected. Then on the morning of April 8th, he called the police from a restaurant in Wichita, Kansas.
[telephone rings] PAUL LOPEZ: Jackson contacted the lead detective and stated that he wanted to surrender.
When law enforcement arrived, Jackson was just in the back of the restaurant using a phone booth.
Jackson provided no resistance and even made a comment similar to, I'm not going
to give you guys any trouble. SAM DOUGLAS: Jackson was brought back to Minnesota
and charged with the homicides of Gwendolyn Johnson, Ramona Yurkew, and his sons, Joey and Jason.
Whilst Jackson was in custody, another body was found. ANDY MANNIX: About a month after Craig Jackson turns
himself in in Wichita, Kansas, there is a father and son in rural Iowa foraging for mushrooms,
and they find what is at this point basically skeletal remains of what turns out to be
Terry, Craig Jackson's wife. PAUL LOPEZ: Terry had been found dead, and it was believed she was dead up to 18 months.
Jackson denied killing her. SAM DOUGLAS: Police thought otherwise and charged Jackson
with his wife's murder. After being deemed mentally competent to stand trial, on October 18, 1982, the proceedings began
for the first four homicides. - He pleads not guilty by reason of insanity. The murders of Craig Jackson was a national news story.
I think people were horrified. There was a lot of interest in seeing him held accountable,
so the fact that his defense was arguing this insanity plea, I think a lot of people didn't want him to be
able to get away with that. LINA HAJI: Jackson flippantly saying that he was sending everyone to heaven
as if it was a mercy killing, to me, is just a load of bull. I don't buy any of it.
It's a way for him to control his image, control the narrative, manipulate other people,
have the world believe that he isn't the person that who he thinks he is. SAM DOUGLAS: On November 4th, the jury reached a guilty
verdict on all counts. - Jackson received three life sentences plus 20 years for second degree murder
for the murder of Gwendolyn Johnson. ANDY MANNIX: And the judge renders his opinion
by saying, this is one of the most heinous and evil acts that I've ever encountered in the criminal justice system,
and this sentence is to make sure that you never walk free again. PAUL LOPEZ: Even though Jackson was behind bars,
the path of death and destruction would not be over. SAM DOUGLAS: Despite being charged
with the murder of his wife, Terry Rice, it never went to court. Quadruple murderer Craig Jackson
was sent to Oak Park Heights penitentiary, Minnesota's newest prison at the time.
But this was only half the story. As violent as he was outside prison, once inside,
he became one of the world's most dangerous prisoners. DAVE KAMPA: Back when I started in '82,
Oak Park Heights was built as the supermax. It was built pretty elaborate. Most of the units were 52-man housing units.
Each inmate got to have their own private room. They brought in the worst of the worst
around the United States. We also were housing federal inmates, and they brought them to us because they couldn't handle
them in their facilities. It was a Wild, Wild West. JAMIE MORGAN KANE: My name is Jamie Morgan Kane,
and I served 34 and 1/2 years in California prisons. In the '80s it was a lot harder than it has become.
You were restricted on things you could have. Movements were a lot tougher. It was more punishment than rehabilitation.
You could be assaulted, could be stabbed, and brutality was something that came in droves from both staff and inmates at any given time.
DAVE KAMPA: Every day you go to work, you didn't know if you were going to have your shirt tore off or not,
or come home with a black eye. JAMIE MORGAN KANE: Death was cheap. I mean, I watched a person be killed
over a single pack of tobacco. ANDY MANNIX: Craig Jackson is first incarcerated at Oak Park Heights prison,
and he is a problem from the beginning. There's a lot of drugs in prison, so he's continuing to do drugs.
He's fighting a lot. He's making a lot of problems. And when he gets caught, he basically says,
what are you going to do? I'm already facing multiple life sentences. DAVE KAMPA: His room was always clean.
His appearance was always clean. Once in a great while, he had an issue, and whether it was threatening staff
or whether it was threatening another inmate, he would go to segregation for that.
75 days later, he'd come back out, and you wouldn't hear a peep out of them again for quite some time.
PAUL LOPEZ: If you were a child killer, you would have to be separated from the main lines,
because the guys would try to get you. And they would try to slash you up. They would try to stab you.
They'd try to cripple you. They didn't necessarily want to kill them. They wanted them to suffer.
It was basically an open contract. And everybody in the prison knew if you had a chance
and you didn't take it on doing something to one of them, then you could become a target, because they'd assume you had
some kind of like to the guy. You didn't want to be a friend of a child killer. ANDY MANNIX: Because he had killed two young kids,
his reputation in prison was notorious. Some of them called him the family killer.
SAM DOUGLAS: In 1991, after nine years in prison, Craig Jackson, now 32, decided that it was
time to change his identity. DAVE KAMPA: The state start paying for name changes,
and once the inmates got hold of, hey, we can get our name changed, and this DLC is going to pay for it,
everybody started changing their names. Craig Jackson became Craig Bjork. ANDY MANNIX: He said that the reason he changed his name
is because he just didn't even want to be associated with that version of himself anymore.
He didn't want to be the person who was known by some inmates as the family killer.
So he changed his name to Craig Bjork for, I guess, sort of a fresh start. LINA HAJI: I don't particularly buy that.
I think that it was another attention-seeking ploy. He's displayed narcissistic traits and
a huge ego his entire life, so it was all, you know, what we call impression management,
trying to control the narrative, trying to control the way he's viewed. People who actually change don't have
to announce it to the world. They just do it. DAVE KAMPA: We're currently at the Minnesota
Correctional Facility in Stillwater in Bayport, Minnesota. The prison was built, I think, in 1914.
Stillwater prison, I think, currently housed 1,700 offenders. SAM DOUGLAS: Stillwater prison lies a couple of miles
away from Oak Park Heights. - Kind of an overflow of Oak Park Heights. They got, like, seven housing facilities inside.
The average bed space is, like, 250 per cell block. At Stillwater, prisoners vary from child molesters
to killers to arsonists to burglars. We had cop killers in there. We had people who killed their wives
and put them in a garbage disposal. SAM DOUGLAS: In the 1990s, after being promoted
to investigator for the department of corrections, Dave was assigned to Stillwater.
DAVE KAMPA: When I first came in there, the first thing I noticed, how loud it was.
It doesn't have air conditioning. It stunk. You know, that many inmates and some of them don't bathe--
the people who didn't like their hygiene usually got their asses kicked. ANDY MANNIX: So in the mid-'90s, Craig Bjork is
moved to Stillwater prison, and he really doesn't want to be there. He doesn't like his cell location.
He doesn't like the facility. And he says, you know, I really want to be moved back to Oak Park Heights.
SAM DOUGLAS: After over a decade behind bars, Craig Bjork, now aged 37, was placed
within general population at Stillwater prison. DAVE KAMPA: In 1996, Craig Bjork
sent a letter to the warden here at MCF Stillwater, claiming that if he didn't get moved over back
to Oak Park Heights, he was going to start killing staff and inmates. ANDY MANNIX: He's basically saying,
I'm going to go on a murder spree if I don't get what I want. He's evaluated by a prison psychiatrist,
and the psychiatrist comes back and says, he's serious. And they keep him in general population,
and I think it's a fair question of whether or not they really took those threats as
seriously as they should have. LINA HAJI: You're in prison now for having killed multiple people.
You don't get to pick and choose what happens now. He's not understanding that, or he refuses to understand it.
SAM DOUGLAS: During the time that Craig Bjork was in MCF Stillwater, he was assigned
to work in the kitchen. He was in charge of cleaning the recycling containers and also taking out the garbage and stuff like that.
JAMIE MORGAN KANE: Generally, the rule of thumb is if you are able-bodied, you have to work.
In the butcher shops we used to have, most of the free staff butchers would not hire you unless you are either a killer or somebody who
was an extremely violent person assaulting with knives and sharp implements. And there were guys who were burglars that went for jobs,
and the guy goes, you ever killed anybody? No. Well, I only hire killers. Because the idea was that you didn't
have a problem with blood and all the other stuff. SAM DOUGLAS: Despite his threats of violence,
Bjork was still allowed to keep his job in the kitchen, where in 1997 he worked alongside convicted
sex offender Edwin Curry. - Edwin Curry had at least six months left on his sentence
before he was going to be released. ANDY MANNIX: It was Thanksgiving Day. Edwin Curry and Craig Bjork were both working
in the kitchen that day. Craig Bjork has this 3 foot of pipe that he's been hiding,
and he goes up behind Edwin Curry. DAVE KAMPA: He hit Edwin Curry about eight times
on the top of the head, back of the neck, and then he finally broke his windpipe.
And that's what caused Mr. Curry's death. ANDY MANNIX: This wasn't, like, a shank where he slit
his throat and it was quick. This was a slow beating of a man, you know, pummeling his head, crushing his windpipe.
This was a very violent killing. SAM DOUGLAS: After the murder, an officer walked in to find
Craig Bjork in the kitchen. - He immediately saw Bjork attempting to clean up a red liquid by washing it away with a hose,
and the correctional officer questioned what was happening. Bjork stated that he was cleaning up
the mess from some beet cans. At that point, Bjork said he had to go and left the area.
SAM DOUGLAS: The officer suddenly realized that the huge pool of red liquid was blood.
- The corrections officer realizes that these are drag marks in the blood and follows them to the garbage closet
and finds Edwin Curry's body wrapped in plastic wrap in the garbage cart. Immediately, you know, calls this in.
The guards go looking for Craig Bjork, and they find him in the cafeteria eating a candy bar
and drinking a glass of milk. LINA HAJI: It was premeditated. It was calculated.
He planned it. He did it. And then he went back to eating a candy bar and drinking milk.
That is how Bjork views murder. It's just another event in his life. SAM DOUGLAS: Special investigator
Dave Kampa was immediately called in to the prison. DAVE KAMPA: I received a call from home
and said that there was a homicide at the prison. About 30 minutes later, I arrived, and
I found a whole bunch of police, people here, ambulances here, other investigators
that came to assist. I've never seen that much blood in my life. It was covered every square inch of that room.
Curry's body was in a fetal position when the staff, Sergeant Schwartz, found him.
ANDY MANNIX: Edwin Curry was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He wasn't mad at Edwin Curry.
He was mad at the prison officials for ignoring him. He just wanted to make good on the threat that he had sent,
saying that if they didn't move him, he was going to kill somebody. DAVE KAMPA: He was saying he was going to do this,
and I think that by doing it on Thanksgiving, when the administration and all these people are at home,
they would all have to come in. And that way, he could say to them, I told you so.
ANDY MANNIX: The guard testified later that he started telling him, hey, it's a good thing you caught me when
you did because I was going to kill a bunch more people. PAUL LOPEZ: This murder was pointless.
There was no self-defense. There wasn't even an argument that had occurred. There was no lead-up.
It was a senseless taking of a life for a sociopathic narcissist who just wanted to make
a point to the prison system. ANDY MANNIX: When the guards searched his cell, they found a journal with an entry for that day,
and he had written them a little note that said, "You should have moved me, punks."
SAM DOUGLAS: After the murder of Edwin Curry, Bjork was immediately transferred back to Oak Park Heights.
DAVE KAMPA: He got what he wanted. He wanted to go to Oak Park Heights. And what he had to do, he did it just
to show the administration that you didn't listen to me, and you need to start listening to people from now on.
SAM DOUGLAS: On March 8, 1999, Bjork was convicted of first and second degree murder
in the killing of Edwin Curry. ANDY MANNIX: The judge renders another life sentence
for Craig Bjork to run consecutively with the three he's already serving. So by this stage, Craig Bjork is convicted
of killing five people, four of those, he's now serving life sentences for, plus another 20
years for the fifth one. SAM DOUGLAS: In January 2013, over a decade since the murder of Edwin Curry,
Bjork was transferred to Oregon State Penitentiary. ANDY MANNIX: Notably, this is against his will.
He described it as he was kidnapped. He was kidnapped and brought to this prison in Oregon.
PAUL LOPEZ: This was done through a interstate exchange agreement between prisons, which allows prisons
to essentially transfer or swap inmates that maybe have insecurity issues or they have high-profile crimes.
SAM DOUGLAS: Bjork, aged 53, was placed into a shared cell with 45-year-old Joe Akins.
ANDY MANNIX: Joe Akins is also a convicted murderer. He was convicted in 2008 of a crime
he committed in 1994, which entailed raping and murdering a woman. He was serving a 22-year sentence.
- Craig Bjork had stated that he was sober and he was no longer doing drugs while in prison, and additionally,
had almost no disciplinary history, essentially described himself as a model inmate.
That's the speculation as to why he received and was allowed a cellmate. DAVE KAMPA: The prison system there
was pretty stupid to put another inmate in the same cell with him, and I said, well, that was
probably one of the dumbest mistakes they've ever made. SAM DOUGLAS: On August 17, 2013,
Bjork confronted Akins, accusing him of hiding weapons and drugs in their cell. - Bjork took issue with that because he
felt that if it was found, they would both be blamed. Now, later that same night, Bjork
stated he was attacked by Akins in his sleep. At that point, he defended himself.
ANDY MANNIX: He holds Akins down on the bed. He grabs this apparatus that was made of shoelaces and belts
to keep the pillow on the bed, and he grabs this apparatus and wraps it around Akins's neck.
And he chokes him to death in what he described as self-defense. JAMIE MORGAN KANE: In prison, there is no self-defense.
It's called mutual combat. There is either defense or non-defense. In some cases, it's sometimes better to make
your defense become offensive. You're taking the person off there, being the aggressor,
and making them have to now defend themselves, and it just changes the parameters.
- When his cell opened, he just left, went out to the chow hall for breakfast like all the other inmates.
SAM DOUGLAS: After breakfast, Bjork went up to an officer in the yard and admitted what he had done.
PRISON GUARD: He was just very calm and matter of fact, and that's kind of why he had to convince me,
because it was just a normal conversation, a normal tone of voice. Hey, I can't get back to my cell.
My cell is dead. He didn't appear to be in any kind of distress about it. He was perfectly fine with it.
SAM DOUGLAS: Bjork was charged with his sixth murder, and because he was now in an Oregon prison,
found himself facing the death penalty. ANDY MANNIX: I reached out to him, seeing if he wanted to talk for the article,
and he said the death penalty is vengeance. And isn't that more evil than anything that I've ever done?
For the government to say, we're going to kill you in revenge for what you've done.
PAUL LOPEZ: However, by chance, while he was awaiting trial, the governor at the time abolished the death penalty
in the state of Oregon, and just like that, Bjork's no longer facing the death penalty.
SAM DOUGLAS: On December 23, 2019, Bjork, now aged 60, pleaded no contest to the charges against him.
ANDY MANNIX: In other words, he's saying, I don't really have an adequate defense to this,
so he was sentenced to yet another life sentence. So Craig Bjork is now convicted of killing six individuals,
and he's facing at least five life sentences. Is this more of a punishment? Only on paper, I think.
It's not really-- practically, it doesn't really change the situation that much.
JAMIE MORGAN KANE: In my experience, more than 70% of inmates have no desire to rehabilitate,
and this could be for a number of reasons. Some of them feel that if they rehabilitate,
they'll lose their street cred. But part of it is also they don't see a reason to put
the effort in to rehabilitate. A person has to want to do it. ANDY MANNIX: The prosecutor said that this
was a grave injustice. He says that Craig Bjork is someone who is the worst of the worst, and
that's what the death penalty should be for. This is somebody who's been convicted of killing
men, women, and child-- plural. He should be the poster child for the death penalty.
SAM DOUGLAS: In 2021, Bjork was transferred to ADMAX USP Florence in Colorado, the most secure
prison in the United States. ANDY MANNIX: What do you do with prisoners like Craig Bjork?
I think it poses a real problem for prisons and for lawmakers and for society. There's really not a lot of reason
to think about rehabilitating him because he's never going to get out. PAUL LOPEZ: At minimum, I would say he needs to be completely
and absolutely segregated from any human contact-- inmates completely and only officers when
it is absolutely necessary. DAVE KAMPA: I think that you give him an opportunity again
to kill somebody, he will. I think he enjoys it. - I think it would be naive to say there's no way this guy is
going to kill anybody again. I think he's proven that he is capable of it, though.
LINA HAJI: This is not a person who will stop murdering. I mean, as evidenced by the fact that not only did he
murder multiple times in the community, he murdered in prison. PAUL LOPEZ: Nobody is safe from this monster.
If you can kill your own children, you are capable of the rawest evil and violence on the planet, and you are irredeemable.
[theme music]

Craig Bjork's series of murders are described as one of the worst cases of mass murder that the city of Minneapolis has ever seen. After killing two women and both of his children, he remains a dangerous threat — even behind bars. World’s Most Evil Prisoners is a chilling exploration of the terrifying offenders sentenced to a lifetime behind bars. Locked away, yet still driven by their twisted desires, these inmates delve into acts of torture, abduction, and homicide. Prepare to confront the criminals from the darkest facets of humanity.

Brief Summary

Craig Bjork, a serial killer, murdered his family and continued violent acts in prison, showcasing his dangerous nature.

Key points

The Family Killer: Craig Bjork. Known as the family killer, Craig Bjork's heinous actions shocked the nation.
The Rise of Craig Jackson. From a troubled childhood to a violent adulthood, Craig Jackson's path to murder began early.
The Grisly Discovery. The police find four dead bodies in Jackson's home, leading to a shocking investigation.
Jackson's Surrender. After a month on the run, Craig Jackson calls police to surrender, shocking many.
The Insanity Defense. Craig Jackson pleads not guilty by reason of insanity, sparking public outrage.
Craig Bjork's Violent Path. After multiple murders, Craig Bjork continues his violent ways in prison, leading to more bloodshed.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

To call him evil is an understatement. He is the rawest form of evil.

SAM DOUGLAS describes Craig Bjork's nature.

4:25WatchJul 25, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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