Plot Synopsis

Using re-creations and first-person interviews with experts, attorneys, and investigators, DARK TEMPTATIONS chronicles perverse fascinations that took deadly turns, revealing the hidden worlds of compulsive obsessions, bizarre infatuations, twisted rituals and freaky fetishes. Each one-hour episode of this series documents two stories, including those of: Bryan Loudermilk, who died hours after being found pinned under the rear wheel of his car in 1999, barely alive; New York businessman Raymond Fernandez and Florida nurse Martha Beck, who met through a Lonely Hearts column in 1949 and started preying on lonely widows after dabbling in the dark arts; Darlene Summerford, whose husband forced her to prove her faith in 1991 by putting her hand into a rattlesnake cage, resulting in two bites; Heather Barnett, whose mutilated body was found by her children in 2002, leaving the police with few leads for the next six years; photographer Harvey Glatman, who went to great lengths in his search for pleasure in 1957, obsessed with auto-erotic asphyxiation and bondage; 16-year-old Jacob Hendershot, who went missing from his Florida home in 2011, possibly the result of a TRUE BLOOD vampire cult; Leith and Bonnie Von Stein, who were brutally attacked in 1988 in their North Carolina home in the early hours; and many more people with freaky fetishes.