The Dark Side Of Craigslist

The Deadly Nanny

In 2011, 70-year-old Mary Jane Scanlon put up an ad on Craigslist requesting a caregiver in Pleasant Hill, California. The woman who answered the ad and got the job was a woman named Diane Warrick. Scanlon should have done a background check on Warrick, because shortly after Warrick was hired, Scanlon was found stabbed to death in her bed.

It turns out, Warrick had a criminal past. In 1988 she robbed a pharmacy in Colorado and in 1997 she was confined to a mental hospital for another pharmacy incident, in which she shot at police and took hostages. Warrick claimed that she was hallucinating and thought she was stabbing her father when she was attacking Scanlon. She was sentenced to 31 years to life in prison.