The unhappiest time of the year? 12 crimes that took place at Christmas

When Ohio police pulled over a BMW on Christmas Eve in 2012, they saw the boot was packed with Christmas presents, which the driver of the car was supposedly dropping off to a nearby family.

However, the beautifully wrapped gifts didn’t contain toys but almost 13kg of marijuana, worth around $305,500.

On Christmas Day 1893, Adelaide businessman Henry Oxley and his family were found dead.

The walls were covered in blood, Oxley was laying on his bed with a razor in his hand, and his wife and children had horrific head wounds.

Carollers were initially suspected of the crime, but police eventually determined that Oxley murdered his family before his own life due to being in debt.

On Christmas Eve in 2008, Bruce Pardo put on a Santa suit and drove to his in-laws’ house, where he killed nine family members, including his ex-wife.

He then sprayed 18 litres of gasoline into the house and set it alight ad left a booby-trapped car outside his divorce lawyer’s house before taking his own life.

On Christmas Eve in 1945, five children from the Sodder family in West Virginia disappeared – and were never seen again.

Their father George claimed they were kidnapped by the Sicilian mafia as retaliation for his outspoken views.

The family erected a billboard near their home offering a reward for information, which remained in place until the children’s mother’s death in 1989.

A nativity donkey in Andalusia, Spain was fatally injured after a 146kg man climbed on its back to pose for photos.

The man faced court but the case was thrown out by the judge.

In 2010, Seattle-based Shon Shanell, 24, tried to convince police he was Santa after attempting to break into a house via a chimney.

The only problem? He was naked and got stuck.

When he was finally released by emergency workers, he was arrested and then sent to prison.

Between 24 and 26 December 1992, six people were killed in one of Ohio’s worst ever mass murders.

The killers, who ranged in age from 16 to 20, shot victims over three days on their spree.

Police caught them and one received the death penalty.

In 2011, Michelle O’Dowd, 67, offered her friend Patti White, 41, a place to stay in her Florida home over the Christmas holidays.

But when Michelle failed to turn up to work for her shift her brother discovered her dead body under the Christmas tree, buried under a pile of gifts.

White was sentenced to 45 years in jail for the killing.

In 1788, the makeshift colony of convicts and marines experienced their first Christmas in Australia.

When convict Michael Dennison stole a pound of flour, he was sentenced to 200 lashes of the whip.

But the Christmas spirit prevailed – only 150 lashes were delivered instead.

Adolph Theodore Laundenberg became known as the Santa Strangler because of his resemblance to Father Christmas.

After murdering a woman in LA and San Francisco during the 1970s he was only arrested after confessing to his daughter-in-law three decades later.

One Ohio man took Christmas decorating to another level in 2011.

After getting high on bath salts, he broke into his neighbour’s home and decided to adorn it with Christmas decorations before police found and arrested him.

The 2012 annual Christmas parade in Ontario, Canada took a turn for the worse when an intoxicated 24-year-old man in the crowd loudly announced that “Santa isn’t real” to horrified children.

He was arrested for causing a disturbance and public intoxication.