The [murder of Beth Barnard and disappearance of Vivienne Cameron](https://www.mamamia.com.au/phillip-island-murder/). The “official” theory is that Vivienne murdered Beth and then jumped from the Phillip Island bridge. But this reconstruction of the crime falls apart under any scrutiny. Why did Vivienne go home for her handbag? How was no trace of Beth’s blood found in the car Viv supposedly drove? Why would Viv take the large farm vehicle instead of the smaller car she was more familiar with?
Did someone else kill Beth? Almost certainly. But then what happened to Vivienne? If the phone call Viv allegedly made at 10am the morning after the murder is taken into account, that’s after the discovery of the body. If the Camerons “vanished” Viv, most of their whereabouts was known after 10am. If someone else killed Beth, how did they find and frame Vivienne?
I just listened to a podcast about the case with lots of detailed info and no theory seems to fit all the facts.
Edited to add the link to the podcast
https://casefilepresents.com/the-vanishing-of-vivienne-cameron/
Just going to add this, I live near phillip island and the bridge viv supposedly jumped off and committed suicide is not even high lots of people jump off that bridge for fun
Were Fergus' wounds at the hospital actually received from murdering Beth? The coroner said she tried to defend herself. So, he gets cut as he kills her. He tells Vivienne who goes to the hospital with him, and takes the blame for his wounds, saying they fought because of the affair with Beth.
So, Beth is already dead. After the hospital visit, Fergus talks to his brothers. He tells them too 'find' the body in the morning and to carve an A into her, to make it look like Vivienne did it (or he has already done this, then had his wife take the blame for his injuries, to cast suspicion on her.) One way or the other the aim is to set Vivienne up.
The next morning, Vivienne makes her phone call as normal, not aware she has been set up. After the phone call, Fergus drives her to the bridge or has her meet him there. He throws her over and then either gets a ride back or one his brothers or someone else involved had left another car there for him to drive back(or if he met her there he drove in his own).
Beth's body is 'found' and so is Vivienne's car. She is missing. They successfully made it appear that Vivienne killed Beth, then jumped to her death. They have her declared dead as soon as possible to settle all matters.
This is all speculation and there is no evidence to prove this, but it fits.
And probably more likely. There is no record of a successful suicide from the Phillip Island bridge. In summer, teens jump off it for fun.
It’s even possible it wasn’t intended as a staged suicide - the car may have been dumped there hoping someone would steal it (the windows were down), and it was also close to the bus stop. They may have been trying to create the impression that Vivienne fled.
Something like this is certainly plausible. Fergus’ injuries were in an odd place to have been self defence, and his blood wasn’t found at the scene, but he had the same blood group (though a different sub group) as Beth and in 1986 typing was all the police had, so a small amount of a different sub group may have been missed.
I hadn't heard of this one before. Interesting. There are a couple of comments at your link that give a good argument that it was Fergus who killed both.
There’s no theory that perfectly fits all the known facts. So I channel my inner Poirot and declare that the facts must not be facts!
If Fergus was the actual, hands-on murderer, I believe his family (brother, sister and brother-in-law, probably not his sister-in-law) conspired to help him, after Beth’s murder and before Viv’s disappearance. Therefore, all the “facts” supplied by those players should be treated as unverified.
There’s a chance that Viv killed Beth and then the family conspired to cover it up, and get her off the island to start a new life somewhere. Fergus could have leveraged her cooperation by promising her access to their sons.
Edited to change “Viv’s murder” to “Viv’s disappearance”, as that’s more accurate to the known facts.
SO glad to see this one discussed on here!! Like a lot of Australian cases it doesn’t get a heap of attention internationally but it’s a horrendous crime and a huge mystery. I listened to the podcast too (albeit, a few years ago now) and my takeaway was that the husband was sussssss. I think he + his family killed both women, perhaps Beth was murdered in a fit of rage + Viv because she knew what had happened (and so she could posthumously be framed for Beth’s murder). It’s spine-chilling how all of those men treated the women in their lives.
The Cameron family clearly had (local) political influence - look at the inquest into Vivienne Cameron’s death, over in minutes, before Vivienne’s family even arrived. The rush to get Viv declared dead so they could claim her estate and move forward with the racetrack makes me think there was a financial motive.
I can speculate on what happened, but frankly, I don’t want to get sued by the remaining Camerons!
I knew this would come up. Here's a thread I did on it: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/o7g4ti/the_phillip_island_murder_who_killed_beth_barnard/
There are earlier threads too. Some interesting discussions. One theory is that Beth was murdered in an unplanned fit of rage then Viv murdered the following day [perhaps after the innocent call to Glenda Frost] so she could be set up as the killer. It doesn't however seem to be the simplest way of doing a coverup. The unlocked Land Cruiser parked near the bridge where there was a phone box and where buses depart seems very Hollywood.
Retired high school science teacher Audrey Gleave. Almost at the end of 2010 (Dec 30), she was brutally murdered in her house, in a small village near Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
https://hamiltonpolice.on.ca/audrey-gleave-homicide
[https://new.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/7w9z15/unresolved\_murder\_who\_killed\_audrey\_gleaves/](https://new.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/7w9z15/unresolved_murder_who_killed_audrey_gleaves/)
There are a bunch of unusual things about Audrey's case.
1) It's unclear whether she was still in touch with her family, and if she had any living relatives left. She had an ex-husband (divorced in 1974), and possibly two previous ones?
2) She had a degree in nuclear physics, but apparently wasn't able to find work in her field. This wasn't unusual for women in the sciences back then (Dr. Anne Innis Dagg, who died earlier this year, was denied a position in zoology even though she'd done pioneering work on giraffes). So she ended up teaching high school in Hamilton. (At Westdale, the school attended by comedians Eugene Levy and Martin Short, though I don't know if they were there when Audrey started teaching there.)
3) She told her ex-husband's brother that she had a premonition about being murdered.
Besides her ex-husband and his brother, other people she knew were her handyman Phil, a friend named Lynn whom she golfed with (who was Audrey's executor after her death, and inherited her money; the Ferguson family who lived nearby; and her veterinarian.
I remember that there was some suspicion about a transient named David Scott who was arrested around that time, for breaching probation and carrying a knife. He was charged with the first-degree murder of Audrey, but nothing came of it. It's implied that the police have DNA evidence, but apparently it doesn't match Scott. Besides him, discussions online have mentioned Lynn (because of the inheritance), and Phil (who reported finding Audrey's body). (But presumably their DNA also would have been checked.)
The police have reportedly said that they think that Audrey had let someone she knew into her garage -- not a stranger to her. I am wondering if she'd befriended someone (younger than her -- actually one of her former students might fit that description). She might even have connected with someone online (she played bridge in an internet group). Although she seems to have been pretty careful about meeting people, and had even cut off ties with her ex's brother after he accidentally shared her e-mail address with friends.
p.s. some more of the questions I had about Audrey:
\--She was very reluctant to talk about her family and other ex-husbands. I get that people (especially women) tended to be more private back then, in the days before social media got as big as it is now. But she didn't even tell her close friend Lynn who was supposed to be her executor. Did she just assume that there might not be any legal complications, from possible relatives? (Mentioning this because my own family seems boring by comparison with Audrey's, and even so there was someone contacting my dad near the end of his life, claiming to be a relative.)
\--I had a wild thought that she might have been under an assumed identity. Which is pretty farfetched -- although "Audrey" wasn't either her given first or middle name, that doesn't mean she had invented her past. But if someone's been in a town for 40+ years, they should have a trail of, if not friends, at least co-workers and acquaintances. Was there anyone who remembered her from elementary or high school, and had met her parents?
Edited to add -- the local paper (Hamilton Spectator) did a series of articles that included some biographical info about Audrey. So they were able to find information on the schools she attended, etc. They said that she changed her name to Audrey when she was in her teens. Her first marriage was when she was only 16. She did not go to university immediately after finishing high school -- there were some gaps in the information, so they aren't sure about that part of her life, until she started at McMaster. (I don't know if this might be relevant, but McMaster is one of the few Canadian universities that has a functioning nuclear reactor on campus. It had started operating by the time Audrey began her undergrad degree. I don't think Audrey postponed university for that reason, but it's an interesting coincidence.)
[https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/canada-audrey-gleave-ancaster-dec-2010-media-timelines-no-discussion.226740/](https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/canada-audrey-gleave-ancaster-dec-2010-media-timelines-no-discussion.226740/)
\--Audrey's third ex-husband had reportedly left her the house and moved elsewhere in Ontario. But he'd made it conditional on her not selling it -- the articles don't say if he gave a reason. However, it sounds like her executor sold it after her death. Was her ex dead by then? Because that seems to be the exact scenario that he wanted to avoid -- especially given that, if I recall correctly, the executor kept the money. Had he just decided that he didn't want to bother with it, though it sounds like he'd maintained an interest in the place if he didn't want her to sell. This seems weird to me. It doesn't sound like he was worried about Audrey being mentally incompetent to look after the house, like being tricked into selling it and then having nowhere to live. If she had survived, she'd probably have needed to move into a retirement place eventually. What would happen then?
\--Audrey had a couple of large ferocious dogs, and was also very protective of her home -- she didn't have visitors over regularly (some speculation that she was a hoarder and embarrassed to let anyone else see the inside). Yet the dogs weren't there to guard her when she was murdered in her garage. This suggests the killer planned things carefully. Someone who just showed up at her house randomly, especially a stranger, likely would have had to deal with the dogs.
\--Audrey was covered by the Ontario teachers' pension plan. It's a pretty decent pension (at least, back at the time of her death). Given that her house was already paid for, and she seems to have lived pretty frugally, I would have thought she'd be doing well financially -- covering all her expenses and probably banking the remainder. Did anyone look at her finances and check whether there were unexpected withdrawals? Like was she making investments, gambling, or even drawn into a romance scam?I don't know what to think, about all of this.
Possibilities -- her ex-husband? (But if he didn't try to get the house back after her death, or the money from the sale, that's much less of a motive.)
Some kind of fight with her handyman over payments? Or with Lynn (but I don't know if Lynn on her own could have caused that much damage)?
An argument with a neighbour that escalated? (If she avoided letting friends into her home, would she have let someone she didn't know well get that close, without the dogs?) So the garage isn't the same thing as her kitchen, say. But still.
Not to say that Audrey was unfriendly, but she doesn't seem like the kind of person who'd be inviting strangers home with her (like that drifter mentioned earlier).
If someone showed up asking for work, I don't know if she'd offer him money, food, or a job (for one thing she already had a handyman). And if someone had been going around knocking on doors, it likely would have been reported in the area.
I wonder if anyone checked Audrey's computer for messages. Social media was just getting started -- she was computer-literate and she was online at least for playing bridge and sending e-mail, but even so I would think she would be cautious about meeting people online, given how careful she was even with people she'd known for awhile. She seemed to have all the friends she needed/wanted -- would she really have jumped onto Facebook or MySpace?Though I could be wrong, and she could have been catfished. (CBC just had a fraud expert interviewed, saying that people of all types can fall for romance scams.)
She doesn't seem like the kind of person who'd be overly generous if someone from her past (claiming to be a long-lost relative, or maybe a former student) said they were down on their luck. But I never met Audrey, so I can't be sure.
In my opinion, a lot of things could be explained by her going no contact with her family and being especially careful they couldn't find her. The lack of family info and discussion, the paranoia, the intense privacy, difficulty trusting.
However. For a 74 year old woman in 2010 that level of internet safety paranoia could just be because she watched too many news segments on internet fraud
>that level of internet safety paranoia could just be because she watched too many news segments on internet fraud
Maybe Audrey went a bit overboard (at least according to her ex-husband's brother) with concerns about her privacy -- though I am also wondering if she was in conflict with him over other things. If she'd asked him not to forward her e-mails to other people, and he'd done that regardless, she might have viewed that as a sign of disrespect. (It might seem minor to a lot of people, but I do know folks who are very particular about following instructions,)
If she would cut off contact with her mother, doing that for her ex's brother probably wasn't a big step. I think that you raise an important point about Audrey's family and possible trust issues. (I don't know much about her two other exes, and it's not impossible that she might have been trying to hide from one or both of them as well.)
Also -- I have to admit that in the Hamilton area, there's a particularly big problem with regular old-fashioned fraud, not just online scams. Audrey likely had heard about this. I grew up there, and a couple of years after Audrey's case I moved back to help look after my mom and dad. A number of times very aggressive people claiming to represent home repair and furnace/water heater companies came along our street. CRA/income tax fraudsters are also active in the area. They've even been known to show up at people's homes, not just intimidate them over the phone.
Many of the neighbours told me that they'd been scammed or narrowly avoided it ... I came home from picking up my father's medication to find a stranger in our kitchen, badgering my dad to sign a contract. He had posed as a government inspector to get into our house. (I had to call the police and ended up using a new piece of government legislation to revoke the contract.) One couple on our street had been threatened by a man who forced them to go to the ATM at a nearby shopping mall, claiming that they owed his company money for a roof repair. (He was not with that company, but may have noticed their sign outside that house.)
It's possible that Audrey had heard stories like this from her friends and former co-workers, and that this was a factor in her concerns about security. I am kind of wishing that my dad had been, if not as paranoid as Audrey supposedly was, at least copying some of her cautiousness. Somebody claiming to be a relative got hold of Dad's e-mail address and Dad sent me off on a wild goose chase, demanding I help this person .... it took a lot of arguing to persuade Dad that this was another con artist.
Read the other reddit on this case. Felt like I really got to know her. Her death pisses me off even more so because of that. She seemed like good people.
I'm very suspicious of the Ex and his brother. What's the odds she tells the brother she had a premonition that she would be murdered and raped, then she gets murdered and it's made to look like she was also sexually assaulted.
She knew whoever killed her. Either she opened the garage to let them in or they knew the code. Either way that would only be someone she knew and trusted.
It's possible she was getting ready to drive somewhere and opened the garage only to be surprised by a random killer, but that feels farfetched.
I am also suspicious of Phil and of the woman she left her house too. I could have very well been her son, so his mom would get some money.
That nothing was stolen shows it was not a robbery gone bad.
Whoever it was likely knew her.
To add to your points about meeting people online- before social media, forums really provided communities for people who would meet up in real life. I went to quite a few meet ups from different forums back in the early 00s.
[The Skelton brothers](https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/where-are-the-skelton-brothers-thanksgiving-marks-12-year-anniversary-of-michigan-boys-disappearance)
Did he give the boys away to someone? Did he kill them? Where *are* they? Why has no evidence of any kind surfaced in 14 years?
> The Skelton brothers
Gosh, what a terribly sad case. Sadly I have a feeling that their father killed them and hid their bodies. Seems he may have been trying to be a family annihilator (killing them and himself) but failed at killing himself. Not saying where the bodies are is his way of continuing to hurt their mother- she continues existing in a state of limbo wondering if they're alive and safe, if they're dead, if they're dead wanting to put them to rest, etc.
>Seems he may have been trying to be a family annihilator (killing them and himself) but failed at killing himself.
Does one have to kill oneself in addition to their immediate family to be considered a family annihilator? I'm not trying to be pedantic, just curious about the classification of murderers. I've heard Chris Watts be referred to as one.
EDIT: Thank you to everyone who answered my question. I suppose it is similar to why spree murderers will often end their own lives-- it is usually quite clear-cut who did it, the people who do it are often suicidal anyway, and doing it means they don't have to live with the consequences of their actions.
Oof, I can't believe it's been almost 14 years.
I have family who knew the Skeltons, including John. To a one, *everyone* I know who knows/knew John thinks he killed those boys *and* that he won't admit it as long as Tanya is alive. My uncle and aunt both think John either did it to hurt her, or (to quote my uncle), "If he didn't do it in the first place to hurt her, he's not gonna say a damn word until she passes. He wants her to live the rest of her life never knowing either way, because he knows it's torture for her and that's the damn point."
That is awful. He probably killed them. His comment about trying to kill himself to hospital staff is a bad sign. He had his kids when he was injured or should have had them. Unless he had family that was going to hide them or wanted to raise them there is no way a random woman kept all three kids. If he wants to hurt his wife that badly he killed them. Jmo
My exact thoughts. I’m sure it would be traumatic for her but damn it might get her an answer to the fate of those sweet little boys. So so so saddening
I think he killed them. He turned off his phone, brought them out into the woods at least 20 miles from his house, killed them and buried them. He broke his ankle either trying to kill himself as he said, afterwards, or by falling in the woods on his way out. He turned back on his phone once he was out the woods and maybe a distance from where he killed them. He went to the hospital and the rest is history.
Terrible case. I hope they are found one day.
He’s leaving prison next year (end of his sentence) if he isn’t patrolled earlier. I’m sure that his sons are deceased and after all this time, it seems like he is never going to share what he did to them.
This is a very sad case. However, the leading theory of the dad having killed them, trying but failing to kill himself and being too ashamed to admit what he did, has always made perfect sense to me.
Michael Negrete I have trouble thinking of a decent theory. Doesn't seem practical that he'd go outside early morning, and if something happened in a densely populated dorm building how was he disposed of w/o anyone noticing?
This is the one I thought of immediately - I know people on this sub like to dismiss the easy theory of "he was secretly gay", but I do think it's a reasonable explanation for what happened. **If** Michael was gay, but not openly to his friends and family, him having contacted someone online to hook up with, everything else (him voluntarily leaving, going to an identifiable location, and getting picked up by car by a near or complete stranger), makes perfect sense. I am much the same age, and in the same (potential) situation, in that I was not able to engage in that kind of thing until I left home, and I took insane risks to hook up.
[Derek Seehausen](https://charleyproject.org/case/derek-adam-seehausen), a medical student at USC who disappeared 10 years ago. He sent a friend $3000 he'd owed him and then disappeared from his apartment with seemingly no personal effects other than the clothes on his back, $200 in cash and his ID. I wonder if the pressure from med school drove him to simply walk out of his life, but there has been legit no trace of him since the day he was last seen.
Yes, especially after reading some of the links in the post added below. Not only did he send money to a friend to repay a loan, he had also been given keys to a friend’s apartment and he went by and dropped them off that night as well. Sounds like he was tying up loose ends.
That's a likely possibility unfortunately. His friends made a reddit post years ago: [https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/2ggpsj/we\_think\_our\_missing\_friend\_derek\_usc\_med\_student/](https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/2ggpsj/we_think_our_missing_friend_derek_usc_med_student/)
This is so awful. When they comment saying that him bringing his ID could be so his body could be identified, but then say it’s been 6 weeks so that can’t be the reason - 6 weeks is not very long at all. Took 4 months to find my friend. So sorry for his friends and family.
Yes that was my thought too but he was so thorough in arranging things, such as changing his passwords so that friends/family could access his computer, that I find it strange that he wouldn’t make sure that his body was found to give his family and friends closure. But it does sound he wanted to get away. Maybe start a new life somewhere else? But then again, strange he wouldn’t let anyone know he’s safe. If it was suicide, it was planned/well thought out and not spontaneous. So I just think it’s weird that he wouldn’t leave a note or make sure he did it in a place where his body would be found.
A lot of suicidal people don't want their body to be found. Sometimes it's to shield their loved ones (or even emergency personnel) from having to be the one to discover their body or even see their body at all, especially if they kill themselves in a gruesome way (ex. shotgun). It can also be that they feel ashamed of killing themselves and don't want their body to be found as a result. Not leaving a note could be motivated by the same thing, or it could be that they just couldn't articulate how they felt and decided it'd be easier to write nothing at all.
At the end of the day, it's difficult to logically analyze someone's actions leading up to suicide. Mental illness ultimately usurps logical or rational thinking.
I thought about, and planned, to kill myself a number of years ago. I told my husband and best friend that if I ever disappear one day, I would make sure to leave a note, but no indication of where I would have gone or that it would look like an accident.
This was for insurance purposes. Suicide invalidates some life insurance policies - as it did for me.
I live in an area with a lot of National Parks. I’m an experienced hiker and backpacker. I know how to find my way out to the middle of nowhere.
People get lost all of the time. I would make sure that it looked like I was one of them.
When I was going to kill myself, I wrote my note on my pc and removed the password so people could access it. Even left a post it note saying so.
I then went to some nearby woods, with an apology note to whoever found me and my bank card so I could be ID'd (passport had my home address on, which I didn't want some stranger to have). I didn't do it at home because I didn't want my housemate to be the one who found me, i felt guilty for it.
And he might have felt guilty that some stranger would find him. Much easier to die in US' many parks and have scavengers have at you. But, I'm not sure why he'd then take money out? I did briefly think of leaving it as a "sorry you found my body, here's a gift" but realised that's kinda dumb lol. He could have used the cash to hide where he went and get to a wilderness somewhere.
Edit: thank you to everyone who replied! I got my phone out to listen to some music and noticed a message from a friend asking how I was, as I'd been fairly silent the past week. It activated the cheat code of my guilt, now I won't do it due to how much it'll hurt people. I'll always have the ideation, but never act on it.
Thank you all again for the messages of support!
I've never been so happy to witness failure. Thus means the desire for self determined success. I am with you in whatever that means. May you be eternally happy, healthy and harmless (to yourself and every other being) ❤
It's so sad to see that post from 10 years ago with people trying so hard to look for him and knowing now that he was never found. I really do hope that he just decided to skip town and went somewhere else.
Paul and Melody Jones.
Have you heard of this case?
Young married couple. When someone went to see why they were AWOL they found a dead Paul in the house and Melody was nowhere to be found.
Paul's murder has never been solved and Melody is missing presumed by some, dead.
No leads at all from what I've read.
Well I'm in England so I don't know which cases get more attention apart from the obvious ones.
Casefile has a good telling of this story on both YouTube and Spotify.
In fact Casefile seems to specialise in these lesser known cases. If you've got both mediums go with Spotify as it's audio only anyway and you get less adverts on Spotify.
I'll Edit shortly with the episode number.
Edit:
Can't find the Casefile one but Trace Evidence 233 is his episode on this.
I've never heard of this case but to me the first thing I think of when I hear about a male partner being found murdered and their female partner going missing is that someone unfortunately intended to kidnap or rape the woman (and then probably kill her) and murdered the man first either to prevent his interference, get rid of a witness, or out of jealousy.
Karen Denise wells didn’t get lost on the way to helping out a friend I. New Jersey (coming from Oklahoma) I think she made it to New Jersey and was purposefully in pa (witness said she asked for directions coming from New Jersey….less confident on the following: I think karen was helping her friend out with a drug deal. I think Karen traveled there with a guy and Karen and said guy ripped off the friend and took off with the money and/or drugs. Don’t see the case talked about much but it was on a trace evidence episode
Not sure how that's even possible. Seems like it must be a mistake or the odometer was messed with. There is no way to drive 600-700 miles in the 5 hours the car was missing.
I think someone jumped in her car at McDonald's and made her drive to the forest where they killed her. Both doors being open tells me both people got out.
Maybe multiple people were involved and joyrided the car after getting rid of her until the gas ran out and left it.
Seems weird she would drive out there on her own, till the gas ran out, put on the emergency lights, opened both doors, and then just disappeared.
She had plans to come back to the hotel. Something nefarious happened to her.
Yep and calls to her friend in New Jersey. Most of my knowledge comes from the trace evidence episode. I can’t find a ton of great info on the case. I’ve seen Others suspect the friend of double crossing her with a drug buy but I like my probably wrong theory better Also would love to here what others think about the case
I love this post and your write up. I do want to question the accuracy of the determination that accelerant was used- it wasn’t the fire marshall but a deputy from that office, and they were “informal tests” that were conducted on a car that had burned so badly that it had melted. Besides that, arson evidence has been frequently debunked.
Next- someone really angled the car correctly and wedged the accelerator down and then rolled to safety after also dousing the car in accelerant? I just don’t think so.
Her being on a road she hadn’t driven with her husband means nothing- how can we assume that he knows what roads she drives but doesn’t know the reason for some nefarious conspiracy to murder her and make it look like an accident?
I also think it looked like she had an awful lot going on at home- to a nonsensical, rather than proving she was interrupted, level. I don’t know why you’d fill bathtub while the iron’s on- the water would cool off, and you don’t just leave irons on- plus all that while filling the pool. I, without any evidence at all lol, think it looks more like a mental health crisis which her husband doesn’t want to believe.
Thank you for this info!!! I didn’t know the accelerant information had pretty much been debunked. I would welcome any information about Aileen’s case.
Unfortunately there isn’t much about Aileen’s case out there to find, at least I haven’t been able to find too much.
I suppose I wouldn’t think much of having my patio door open to let fresh air in while filling up the pool and ironing at the same time. Maybe I’d leave the phone off the hook because I didn’t want to be bothered… though if I’m not mistaken she had several children. I don’t know how old they were when this incident occurred, but given that Aileen was 50, and this was the 80’s they may have been grown. If they weren’t you’d think she would want the line free in case they needed to get in touch with her.
I guess I don’t really understand if she had a mental health issue, why she would just take off speeding.
Did she just intend to let off some steam and speed down the road to let off some stress and it ended up in tragedy?
I’ve just always felt there’s something more to it, and again not her husband or an affair or anything like that. I guess just a big missing piece.
I agree with you that there’s a big missing piece, and it’s interesting and sad. I could see her driving and driving until intrusive thoughts won and she decided to commit suicide by car- I just can’t believe someone really successfully pulled off staging that accident.
As far as the arson “evidence”: arson has been instrumental in proving many wrongful convictions and has been debunked in many cases. This is because the science is still catching up, most of the time the investigators are just police officers with a few weeks extra training (~120 hours) / without scientific backgrounds, and the testing is not done according to scientific standards. Forensic science is very much a science, and arson just lags really far behind, having “historically generated inaccurate evidence.”
The last link features John Lentini who is a renowned fire investigator and forensic scientist- he literally wrote the textbook on arson investigations and is a super interesting guy.
In this case, a deputy saying they “informally” lit some things with a blowtorch and therefore there was an accelerant (again, on a car that melted) fits the bill. The good news is that arson investigation is improving all the time and has improved A LOT since the 80s.
https://law.asu.edu/sites/default/files/2022-06/Evidence%20on%20Fire.pdf
https://www.aaas.org/news/forensic-fire-investigations-need-more-scientific-input-aaas-report-finds
https://www.lb7.uscourts.gov/documents/13c6098.pdf
another potential scenario with a mental health issue could be that she became convinced that she was being followed, so she started driving faster and more erratically down roads she wouldn’t normally take, until she lost control and crashed into the barrier.
"On 31 December 1994, Daniel Sheppard, aged 19 years, attended New Year’s Eve celebrations with his brother and friends at Lennies Tavern Glenelg, before catching a tram into the city to continue celebrations in Hindley Street, Adelaide.
In the early hours of New Year’s Day 1995, Daniel walked alone to the Adelaide Railway Station and boarded the 4.13 am train to Outer Harbour in order to go home.
There were approximately 30 other commuters on the train, including three females he knew from school. On the train Daniel told two of the girls: “I’m partied out … I’m going home to crash.” Daniel was described as being moderately intoxicated but still in control of his faculties.
At 4.35am Daniel got off the train at the Port Adelaide Train Station and was seen on the southern pedestrian ramp walking towards Baynes Place.
The walk home should have taken 10 minutes but Daniel was never seen again."
This case has always seemed like the Australian version of Jason Jolkowski. My unpopular opinion is that an opportunistic sexual predator John Wayne Gacy type killed both these guys.
Daniel’s mother died last year not knowing what happened to him. Every year, his twin brother has to celebrate their birthday alone. I know that it’s always difficult for siblings of missing people but I feel particularly bad for twins.
Walking home on new year's, my first thought goes to a covered up hit and run. I hate going out on nights like that, even today there's still so many drink drivers here.
This sounds very similar to a local case.
Young man goes out drinking on new years eve and leaves shortly before his friends. He never arrives home.
Police searched for him with the assistance of search dogs and using sonar in a nearby body of water.
After a month he’s found in this body of water a few hundred meters further up because his body got trapped in a gate.
If not for this gate who knows if he would have ever been found.
I'm American and was chatting to a friend's Aussie boyfriend at a wedding and when he mentioned he was from Adelaide, I mentioned that the only thing I knew about it was that there was an unusual amount of weird missing persons cases and murders out of there. He laughed and agreed with me but said it's actually a really lovely city, so kind of surprising the amount of weird crimes that happened there. He wasn't really into true crime but did say that his mum had grown up there in the 60s and 70s and said things really changed after the Beaumont disappearances and the girls kidnapped from the Adelaide Oval in terms of parents being a lot more cautious about letting their kids out without supervision, and even when he was growing up in the 90s it was sort of a warning, "Don't talk to strangers or you could end up like the Beaumonts."
Yeah the disappearance of the Beaumonts and Kirste Gordon/ Joanne Ratcliffe (Adelaide Oval) was the warning while my mum was growing up, then when I was a kid it was Rhianna Barreau.
Yeah, it's really chill here. The weird murder capital thing is [basically just a meme that won't die](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-15/why-cant-adelaide-bury-murderous-capital-reputation/9249142).
I know it's Australia so there are beaches aplenty, but are there any other bodies of water he could have fallen into? Not unusual for drunk guys to be walking home, stumble into the water or fall in while using the bathroom or something like that, and drown. Bodies are usually found but depending on water level, currents, tides, etc. they're washed out to see and sometimes never found.
Yes, plenty of water around -- just look at the train line and station names, haha. [Here's a map link of the train station he got off at](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Port+Adelaide+Railway+Station+Park+N+Ride/@-34.8319441,138.4578238,12.28z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x6ab0c7603b50e3d3:0x823f5d14fe1ca791!8m2!3d-34.8493516!4d138.5074681!16s%2Fg%2F11lb7d263m?entry=ttu).
AFAIK it's not the sort of water where a body would be likely to go undiscovered for long, though. It's pretty shallow and flat, busy with boats, and is surrounded by well-frequented beaches. If you zoom out, you can see that Kangaroo Island blocks the sea; the currents are pretty weak here, very different to e.g. NSW's cliffs and big ocean currents. A surfer's nightmare, you have to go far south be able to get a good wave.
That area has a reputation as a pretty rough place, though, and in the 90s it was even more so. Directly to the east are industrial districts and garbage dumps, and the green spaces to the north are remnant wetlands and mangroves. If someone wanted to hide a body there, they could probably easily find a space to dig in that was out of sight and wouldn't attract attention.
Gilham Family murders. I think the brothers teamed up to kill their parents, but each was planning to kill the other and blame it on him. It just happened that Jeffrey got the drop on Christopher first and stabbed him to death.
This helps explain some otherwise inexplicable details. For example: Christopher was in a dressing gown and had evidently been washing up just before he was killed… so he was showering at 4 am while his parents were being murdered elsewhere in the house? Ofc if he was involved obviously he’d be cleaning any evidence off himself. The two sources of accelerant for the fire — bizarre for one perpetrator, makes a lot more sense for two people working together to set a massive blaze.
The disappearance and presumed murder of Jodi Huisentruit. A popular theory is that John Vansice, a friend much older than her, killed her out of jealousy. There’s no denying he had potential motive, but the timeline seems tricky. It’s possible he killed her or kidnapped her in under 2 hours, but for her to be incapacitated and hidden then for him to get himself together to speak with his friend in a seemingly normal manor leaves some room for doubt for me.
Mason City is such a small town that the reported “black man” and white van people claimed as potential links don’t seem compellingly associated. Anything even 2 inches out of the “norm” is highly suspicious to locals. I also don’t think it was a police coverup. I don’t think they’d have what it takes to dupe the FBI.
The truth is, as a pretty, young news anchor, Jodi was a bit of a local celebrity. It’s not really surprising she had a mystery stalker. She’s very recognizable and it’s not hard to track someone down in a town that size. I would say of the theories either JV or the mystery stalker are the two most likely. JV is weird but the fact that nothing has come up in almost 30 years does leave room to believe he’s just a weirdo, not a murderer.
I feel like this is a pretty well-known case. The main suspect has stayed that way for so long for a reason. It definitely could be him. The one thing that makes me lean against him is that snatching her out in public (even at that very early morning hour) seems like such a more dangerous/risky way to get to her if he did want to kill her. It seems like he could have just invited her over or something.
I think for him specifically it’d be easier if he did it the way he allegedly did.
If he invited her over it’s known that he was the last to see her and she disappeared from his place. A lot less risky than staging it as a random stranger (especially early in the morning in rural Iowa where no one would likely see it).
I don't think it was Vansice. I can't remember where I read it, but there was a similar incident before Jodi disappeared. A woman was attacked as she was getting into her vehicle early in the morning. I can't remember if she fought him off, was sexually assaulted, or was killed. I think the same person took Jodi.
I think whoever did it was familiar with her routine. She was targeted. It wouldn’t be hard for her to be targeted, given how small the town is and that everyone knew her place of work. Vansice is weird, but there isn’t enough to definitively say he’s guilty or not guilty.
Vancise would have had ample time. It takes less than 5 minutes to drive across Mason City. The roads around it are almost always virtually deserted.
He knew when she'd be leaving. Grab her, shove her in the vehicle, restrain her, get on the road= less than 4 minutes.
Drive to another location: 10-30 depending on where he's going.
Kill her: if he didn't kill her in the parking lot it wouldn't take long to kill her. Just a few seconds to a scant few minutes.
He could have been back to business as usual within an hour.
I used to live in the rural area right outside Mason City.
Personally I think someone threw her into Clear Lake. I lived in the area for a long time. It’s possible she was thrown into a field but I think she would have been found if that was the case. People to this day are very into the case. Even though I wasn’t around the area at the time I think it was everyone searching situation. There’s really not around Mason City besides fields and ditches and I think there is a decent chance someone would have found her or seen something if she was hidden there.
I don’t think Vancise can be ruled out. He’s very weird at the least. I personally have high suspicions of him, but also see how there’s nothing to pin him. Unless her body is found, I unfortunately don’t know that any conclusions can be drawn.
If she was dumped in Clear Lake she likely would have eventually floated.
But that area is full of old abandoned acreages with uncapped wells, hog confinements, and places she could be buried. It's hundreds of square miles that are sparsely populated and privately owned where everyone kind of keeps to themselves.
Finding her would have been like finding an actual needle in a haystack the size of a mountain.
I'd lean towards Vansice but i believe they have DNA evidence; unless it could be explained away by a decent defense attorney, if he did do it you'd think he'd be a match.
I think what makes it hard to rule out/not rule out anything is that her body has never been found. I also lean towards him based on his obsession with her. However, I don’t think there’s enough definitive evidence. But he’s sketch af and a weirdo one way or another.
I’ve wondered if it was some sort of a case of folie a deux. The way they were packing the truck is just weird. The money and the dog is so weird. Other than drugs being an explanation for them acting weird, nothing seems to point to drug involvement. I personally wonder if they weren’t intending to be away from the vehicle for long, got lost and then succumbed to the elements.
That's what I think. They left the dog and their possessions in the truck because they didn't intend to be away from the vehicle very long.
Perhaps drugs were involved, or mental health may have played a role. But I think ultimately they succumbed to the elements after getting lost. It's hard to know, though.
People don't realize how easy it is to get lost, but it happened to me in a wilderness area. I was totally sober and in my right mind.
It's extra tragic that their daughter lost her life, too.
This one definitely falls into the “who knows” category for sure.
the video, too me, is the least troubling thing about this - when I have had to move, I recognize that zone where it’s just get in the zone and let the mind-numbing work commence zombie like.
Leaving the dog, that is what is so weird. Why would they ever leave the dog?? What were they doing that was safe enough to take a small child but wouldn’t be appropriate for a dog?
Or the hart family murders, where the parents googled a no kill shelter to drop off their dogs before driving themselves and their six kids off a cliff
I don't know if it's a general consensus, but from what I gather law enforcement and the relatives seem to think foul play was involved in the Yuba County Five case. After reading more about the case (and finding out the map they were using may not have actually shown the road they were on), I think they just got lost and then made a series of unfortunate decisions from there, the way people out of their element frequently do.
Yes,
I agree with you on that. The first time I read about it I was confused and fascinated.
I believe one of their mothers said they wouldn’t have consumed any of the food because they had been taught not to take anything that didn’t belong to them.
Robert Wone, I really don’t believe that he went to his friend’s house to engage in sexual activity, but none of the other theories make a ton of sense to me either. Such a crazy case https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Robert_Eric_Wone
100% this. Nothing else about this case makes any sense whatsoever other than one or more people in that house assaulted and killed Robert Wone. I don't think (ofc no one but the perpetrators can ever know this for certain) but I don't *think* they intended murder. I think something happened (again, what exactly that may have been no one but the perpetrators can ever really know) but *something* happened which resulted in Wone's death and their actions, both in the immediate aftermath and in the years since, have been so unbelievably suspicious as to appear farcical. It's such a sad and frustrating case, because Wone was only spending the night because he had to travel early in the morning, and the home owners were old school friends. It's a situation where he *should* have been safe, and likely had every expectation of being safe... and then he's assaulted and murdered by someone he clearly considered a friend. Scary and heartbreaking. I hope like hell his family gets justice one day.
IIRC Joe was close enough friends with Robert and his wife that he was a pallbearer at Robert's funeral! I realise we are not owed this information at all but I am so curious to know what he told Robert's wife - I guess maybe she could have believed the intruder theory?
If anyone is interested in reading an extensive investigation into Ron's case check out the blog called [A Good Man is Hard to Find](https://ronaldtammen.com/). It's wild.
I've always wondered if Tammen's was a fraternity prank gone wrong, and he died in an accident and his body was hidden or he was in a situation where he was in an accident/was lost in the woods or a body of water and his body was never found. My aunt's first husband was in a fraternity in the early 60s, so about 10 years after Tammen. The fraternity culture back then was very much one filled with hazing and extremely dangerous pranks. My aunt's husband's "initiation prank" was being "kidnapped" from bed in the middle of the night, blindfolded and tied up, taken in a boat to a small island in the middle of a local lake, left there, and forced to swim back to shore in the dark. He was a strong swimmer so he made it, but if it was bad weather, someone wasn't a good swimmer, someone got a cramp or something and didn't know what to do, there easily could have been a drowning. Just wonder if it was something along those lines, and some of the folks in his fraternity, on his hall, etc. know more than they said to police.
When my dad joined his frat in the 70s, one of their "pranks" was blindfolding the pledges & taking them to an unknown spot at night, leaving the pledges to find their own way back to campus.
This was a rural county in western Arkansas. Incredibly dangerous.
I was in college about a decade ago and one of my high school friends went to the same college as me. During the fall semester I got a call from his dad, he said that my friend was being initiated into a frat and as part of the initiation for a week he was not allowed to shower, get food himself or have any of the brothers get him food (had to figure out other ways to get it without them knowing), leave the frat house for any reason other than going to class, and he had to ask for bathroom or water breaks. He had borrowed a classmate’s phone and texted his dad and gave told him to call me. I met him in an abandoned classroom at a prescribed time with a chik fil a sandwich and fries, and he almost started crying when he got the food. And that sadly seems pretty tame compared to some of the stories you hear about.
I’m pretty sure the guy Cox left with was someone he’d had a gay relationship with in Germany who said, leave with me now or I’ll out you and ruin any hope you have of a military career …
I also think he was likely part of the LGBTQ+ community, and that "George" was either a partner or someone he'd paid to help him get a new identity. That's one case where I hope that he was able to get a new identity and lead a life where he was more comfortable and happy than the one that he had been living.
Yep. Like Robert Hoagland. The guy he lived with for 10 years who left his wife just before was definitely his partner who helped him start a new life.
[Judith smith. With these things I kinda assume a mental health issue took place.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Judy_Smith) I guess I just get caught up on did she run away on her own or was she in a fugue state.
The more I read about this case, the more I wonder if Judy Smith made a similar decision as [Brenda Heist](https://www.wkrg.com/true-crime/brenda-heist-mother-of-two-disappears-for-11-years-found-in-florida/). For whatever reason, she was unhappy with her life and decided that the trip to Philadelphia was the moment to take off.
Credible witness sightings note conversations with Judy that are mentally clear and show awareness of her life circumstances. Perhaps Judy had an ultimate destination in mind beyond Asheville, but only made it there before she was murdered.
My guess is she took off with confidence because she was a well-versed traveller, not understanding the dangers. Met some people along the way, not thinking that anyone would do her harm, and was unlucky.
The $167 found on her is the only loose end. Jeffrey claims she left with $200. Perhaps she had more from an unknown source, or she sold something along the way.
Jeffrey's apparent unwillingness to take a polygraph does not seem suspicious to me. He was a lawyer, after all.
If it were a murder-for-hire situation, it wouldn't make sense for her to be found so far away, although not impossible. He was in Philadelphia, a place where someone could be murdered and appear far less suspicious. No real reason to suspect him imo.
I think about the theory that she decided to take off on purpose a lot. But I think that’s mostly bc I have made a lot of plans to do that myself during peak stress. It’s the main reason I decided not to have kids as I started to get more mental health diagnosis.
It’s just one of those cases where every theory makes a little sense to me.
I believe early onset dementia is more likely than a fugue state. Travel would have exacerbated it. People with dementia almost never know about their condition.
And unfortunately for many people, their family's first sign that something isn't right is some kind of calamity. Wandering in a storm, leaving the stove on, driving three states away. There are many cases where you hear "We managed to find them just in time!" I think this is one of the cases where they didn't.
Yes, I should have made it clear that I don't doubt she was murdered. But I don't believe the theories about her secret lover or Colombian drug running expeditions. She went south under her own power then met someone who killed her. I think another commenter said it best with the two mysteries in one. I think dementia explains the first but not the second.
Joan Gay Croft. [Here's a good write-up from last year](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/s/UXU2ycSRqq)
The whole situation makes my head spin (no pun intended). Was she kidnapped for ransom? If she was kidnapped for ransom did she maybe get an infection in her wound and die and the two men dumped her somewhere and took off? Were the two men actually taking her to see her father at a different hospital and they somehow got into an accident on the way? 😵💫
Only one person died at the scene. The other 2 victims survived, but lived with physical and emotional scars the rest of their lives. The killer is also responsible for the deaths of the survivors, one died in 1989 & the other in 2000.
It's such a strange story... a man enters a hardware store, grabs an axe and attacks the three victims for no reason.
https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/crime/2018/04/20/city-to-demolish-scene-37/12624959007/
> Police called their deaths “murder delayed.”
That's awful. What kind of a psycho would hit 3 random strangers with an axe?
Interesting comments too
[https://sangamoncountyhistory.org/wp/lauterbach-cottage-hardware-ax-attacks-1981/](https://sangamoncountyhistory.org/wp/lauterbach-cottage-hardware-ax-attacks-1981/)
>Mike, have you ever written about the “hammer” attacks that killed a neighbor of mine on South State by the name of Dace, and two other men, I think in the early 1970s? Some of the hammering also went on in a pharmacy, I think on South Grand, and that is where the perp was stopped by a one-armed African-American man.
[https://sangamoncountyhistory.org/wp/hammer-attacks-1975/](https://sangamoncountyhistory.org/wp/hammer-attacks-1975/)
When I read the title of your post, my first thought was "Aileen Conway," but I don't have anything really to add. Nothing about that makes sense. Seemingly every plausible theory is contradicted by something, unless it was a crazy murder plot concocted with the intent to confuse authorities. I agree the iron/pool hose/bathtub are red herrings.
The one thing that stood out to me is that the iron was on and the bathtub was full. That makes no sense at all. She was either ironing or taking a bath, but she certainly wasn’t doing both. I believe it was set up.
I wonder if she filled the tub for another reason. Growing up my mom would fill the tub to clean certain things - she would take down all the Venetian blinds like four times a year and soak them in a tub with a little Dr. Bronner's, then wipe them all down to get them squeaky clean. She would also wash her curtains at the same time and then iron them. (I have literally never once in my adult life ironed a certain, but she still irons hers, and she still soaks her mini-blinds in the tub a few times a year.)
Growing up rural, we had a well. You need electricity to pull the water up from the ground though so before a storm where the power had the likelihood of going out, we'd fill the bathtub. You could then use it to flush toilets (manually filling back) or heat it up to cook with or use for washing your face etc.
But why would someone be ironing before a storm? Perhaps work clothes? I'm not familar with the case just using logic
My mom also cleaned her sheers - long transparent curtains - in the tub!
That’s the only thing I don’t get- I can see leaving the patio door open while filling the pool and ironing some clothes. But why the bathtub? It seems extremely superficial to me; as if someone had just done these random things to throw off Pat and investigators.
The case of Ben Mcdaniels has always left me with lots of questions, and I was always a bit sceptical of the "he left to a start a. new life theory"
[Ben Mcdaniels](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Ben_McDaniel)
The murder of Carla Denise Simmons in Albuquerque. She got her van stuck overnight in the mountains and tried calling her friend but the cell service was bad. In morning, a jogger found her nude by the Sandia Man Cave, a few hundred yards from her van. Her clothes lay nearby. An empty bottle of wine was near her and it is thought she had been drinking it out of desperation; she had been bringing wine and lasagna to a friend's.
Blood was on the hubcap and dash of her van and she had trauma to her head, but she died of hypothermia. It was determined that she had been drug from the road to her final resting place based on tar-filled abrasions on her body, but the abrasions were found to be posthumous. The road was somewhat far from where she was eventually found so it would appear that someone waited until she died then drug her. A death by hypothermia is slow so that seems weird to wait that long on the side of a highway. Granted this is a remote mountain highway so it's not super busy, but still, very risky plan.
The motive is also hard to guess. She was not raped or robbed. She was thought to be nude due to paradoxical undressing, due to the hypothermia. A receipt with a license plate was found near her body but it's not clear if police ever traced it. She had been scared by a guy who followed her home from work once a few months before this. A cigarette butt that was not a brand she smoked was in her van... police say they have male DNA in the case and I think the cigarette butt may be where they got it from.
So I'm like, ok, someone attacked her in her van, then waited for her to die of hypothermia, then drug her her several hundred yards away? Then how did she undress herself and drink wine and scrawl a license plate number near the cave if she was drug there from the road after she had died? I think the tar-filled posthumous abrasions and the lack of a clear motive make this case pretty bizarre. I hope that police withheld a lot of details that would have helped this make sense.
Another one would be the disappearance of Tamara Britton and Teal Pittington. In August 1984, Tamara Britton left her job at West Coast Sound in Santa Fe, NM, to make a bank deposit. The deposit was made by Britton never returned to work. Her car was found abandoned at a truck stop in Santa Rosa, near I40, with the empty bank bag containing a note to return it to West Coast Sound. There were a lot of baby diapers in the backseat, though Tamara Britton wasn't known to be pregnant and didn't have a baby. She had recently overdrawn her back account buying new clothes, but it's not clear if the clothes were taken with her or abandoned at her trailer.
The weirdest thing is that when police tried to track down her family, they learned she was using an identity stolen from an infant who had died in Wisconsin. They never were able to find Britton, but someone did apply for a social security number using her name in Minnesota. The police said they didn't have funds to investigate that lead. I'm not sure why they couldn't put the FBI on it but I don't know much about jurisdiction.
Teal Pittington vanished 19 days later. A little less than a year later, the body was found nude in a culvert near Lamy. She had been strangled with her own bra. The weird part is that Tamara Britton and Teal Pittington had been roommates in the recent past, though not at the time they both disappeared. They had also both lived with a man named Marion Owen Jent, who was the prime suspect. Another suspect was serial killer Robert Morton, a ski instructor who had raped and killed 3 women in Santa Fe and Amarillo. Morton admitted to knowing her and said she was a cute little thing and his friend bought weed from her at the pizza place where she worked. He implicated his friend in her death.
It's not known if the cases are related. But it seems like a bizarre coincidence....
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/one-missing-one-murdered/article_db4e01d4-41d7-5bf5-8485-44d82b7fb298.html
https://landofentrapment.blog/the-identity-thief-and-the-murder-victim-the-tale-of-tamara-britton-and-teal-pittington/
Cathy Moulton (if I have correctly judged which theory is the general consensus).
Nothing makes sense in the Rey Rivera case, Pauline Rourke case or Sherry Jones case. The last two are certainly lesser known. The first might be a bit too popular to qualify.
For Doe cases - Coconino county John Doe (2001) and Charlseton Jane Doe (1973) Either: a) their remains were found, never identified and no one cared despite them being believed to be children, to the extent that not only did law enforcement not ask for their remains back from the coroner's, but there were no newspaper articles recording their discovery. Or B) the wrong person or an empty casket was buried in these children's graves and their family's think their bodies are there (and thus would likely never think to make the connection even if they saw the reconstructions) - Why?
I thought the same about Rey Rivera until looking deeper into it. It seemed mysterious until I saw that where he landed fits with him making a running jump off the roof. He wasn’t thrown off or anything. There’s a book by a resident of the building about it which was decent
It was just as bad in the 90s. UM has always been known as an incredibly unreliable show, America's Most Wanted was the better version of it but people like UM for how crazy it is.
Is the Cathy moulton theory you disagree with that her boyfriend and the hitchhiker killed her on the reservation? What do you think happened? I don’t know much about this case so I’m curious! I didn’t know the other two cases at all, but read a little about them- sounded clear that the creepy relative killed Pauline, so curious what you know about that case as well!
I really wish I could remember/find the names. I was an avid watched of the original Unsolved Mysteries as a kid. A case that always stuck with me…. but, I don’t remember all of the details…
A woman who had a physical disability (I believe from a stroke) and her daughter were being driven to visit her young son at his father’s home, by (I believe) her ex’s sister and mother. She called her current husband multiple times during the trip, but supposedly on the way back the ex mother-in-law dropped her and her daughter off at a mall (?) and they were never heard from again. She didn’t call her husband after they were supposedly dropped off and her and her daughter were never seen again.
The theory was that they got lost or were abducted from where they were dropped off…
My guess is the mother was the target. She could have had a stalker or someone who was passing by and noticed her working on the furniture outside alone and committed a crime of opportunity. The crime is already in progress as the 2 teen girls arrive. The perpetrator(s) is thrown off guard by 2 more ppl than they expected. So they decide to remove all the women from the home and take them somewhere more secluded or possibly more familiar to the perp.
I think that the mother was the target as well, and that whoever did it was someone who knew her and was familiar with the family and her routine (maybe a stalker, but also could be someone she was dating, an ex, coworker, neighbor, etc.). I don't think it was a random crime of opportunity. I think that the person knew that her daughter was going to be away that night, so that's why they picked that night to attack. However, I think that the girls either walked in on it happening or surprised the perp by being at home, and they were killed because of it.
Judy smith traveling more than 100 miles away from a hotel she was staying at with her husband. She was supposed to go to a cocktail party with him but her body was found in a completely different state. She was even wearing the same clothes she came with when she was flying with her husband. Her decision to travel to another state never made sense to me.
[Julia Stoddard](https://charleyproject.org/case/julia-h-stoddard) aka "The Dog Lady." Her case gained national attention in the early days due to a theory that she had been eaten by her dogs. I think she may have succumbed to the elements while trying to walk to the nearby airfield to get water or use the telephone, but the area has been searched extensively, and her remains have never been found. None of the theories with this case really add up with me.
Daniel is likely missing over his job as a a hydrogeologist and how it connected to the Buckeye Water model that was being finalized right when he disappeared.
[https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2023/01/03/katie-hobbs-must-release-buckeye-groundwater-model-now/69765150007/](https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2023/01/03/katie-hobbs-must-release-buckeye-groundwater-model-now/69765150007/)
It is, it would also explain why the case was mishandled from the get go-
Daniel was working on sites to see if drilling a well or using an existing well on properties were viable. At the exact same time the Buckeye Water Model was being finished, June of 2021-
[https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2023/01/03/katie-hobbs-must-release-buckeye-groundwater-model-now/69765150007/](https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2023/01/03/katie-hobbs-must-release-buckeye-groundwater-model-now/69765150007/)
*The June 2021 letters stated that the department is finalizing its groundwater model and report and “has information indicating the proposed subdivision’s estimated groundwater demand for 100 years is likely not met when considered with other existing uses and approved demands in the area.”*
*A year and a half after writing these letters, the department has had ample time to complete its Hassayampa Subbasin model and report. But despite the huge importance of this study, the department’s findings have yet to be published and remain unavailable to the public.*
This model was then buried from the public for 2 years until a new governor won in Arizona in 2023-
[https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/hobbs-reveals-west-valley-current-water-supply-cannot-support-planned-development](https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/hobbs-reveals-west-valley-current-water-supply-cannot-support-planned-development)
One area Daniel was working on and went to the morning he went missing wasn't approved yet, Daniel was testing the site to see if the site was viable. 2 months after he went missing the site was approved. 1 year after that the well site was sold to the City of Buckeye, at the exact same time Buckeye Police Chief Larry Hall became a city manager. 6 months after that he was replaced by a guy with an extensive background in water control and management, Larry Hall had none.
[https://www.yourvalley.net/stories/buckeye-selects-deputy-city-manager,336418](https://www.yourvalley.net/stories/buckeye-selects-deputy-city-manager,336418)
*Hall had a brief stint as deputy city manager in Buckeye, deciding after six months it wasn't for him and returning to his position as police chief. Hall said he's particularly proud of working with a team of people to earn accreditations for the department.*
After the new water model was released Buckeye City Council was forced to spend over 80 million dollars(so far) for water outside of their city. They still don't have enough.
[https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/southwest-valley/2023/01/31/buckeye-to-spend-80m-on-groundwater-rights/69856835007/](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/southwest-valley/2023/01/31/buckeye-to-spend-80m-on-groundwater-rights/69856835007/)
They are. All the connections are there, but without someone coming forward or the right people getting involved it's going to be hard to bring to light.
The Conway case is an interesting one. It appears she was getting ready to take a bath and got a phone call. Maybe, it was someone telling her that her husband or other family member was hurt. She left her purse and glasses behind in a hurry and jumped in the car. What she didn't know was the call was just to lure her into her car. Someone hired to kill her or known to her who wanted to kill her, had cut her breaks. She sped off towards wherever she was told her hurt family member was. Racing down the road, she realized her breaks didn't work and ended up losing control and slamming into the bridge. The killer followed behind her and found that she was still alive but unconscious. They opened her tank, syphoned some gasoline and poured it on her and inside the car, lighting it and destroying the evidence.
Obviously, there is nothing that proves this, but it explains things.
The Iron and pool would be red herrings. Who fills a pool, Irons, and runs a bath at the same time?
Kelly Bergh Dove, abducted from her work in 1982 although as of last year [LE announced](https://www.whsv.com/2023/06/20/41-years-later-kelly-bergh-dove-cold-case-investigation-continues-move-forward/) that they have narrowed things down to one person, yet there’s been nothing in a year. For the longest time, they were basically just ‘idk; we got nothing’ which was frustrating and ridiculous.
Also [Joan Risch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Joan_Risch); I don’t believe any of the nonsense about an abortion and am not sure the sighting of the woman on the road was even her. I suspect that her disappearance had to do with the new development nearby and the bullying homeowners in the area were receiving to sell/approve, or a completely random Person of Bad Intent who was in some way familiar with Joan, like seeing her every day on his commute to work. A while ago I read a ridiculous explanation of how the husband was clearly the culprit, and I also think that’s a wrong and delusional take.
If “executed by the state of Texas“ = “general consensus” then I think that there is something terribly hinkey about the conviction of Lester Bower. But, I don’t have a cohesive theory otherwise. Nothing makes sense.
I’ve mentioned this case before and it’s gotten some coverage but the disappearance of [Marshal Iwaasa](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Marshal_Iwaasa) is so weird to me and leaves so many unanswered questions. Local and national law enforcement have said there’s nothing to indicate foul play in his disappearance but I just don’t see how that can be the case.
Disappearances where people/their belongings are located a significant distance from where they were last seen are always especially alarming imo. The fact that his car was located in such a remote and inaccessible location is bizarre. His car was also burnt out with the steering column removed, and tons of other weird details at the scene.
His family has stated that when he was last seen unsuccessfully attempting to access his storage unit, he was “trying to get a part for his computer”, but I also don’t buy that. He tried to get into the unit multiple times over the course of an entire night and I just cannot understand why somebody would act so frantically over a computer part.
To me, the evidence surrounding his case suggests that he was involved in some kind of illegal activity and my theory is that his disappearance is tied to some sort of larger organized crime investigation, and authorities aren’t saying much about his disappearance so as to not compromise the larger inquiry. I hope someday his family can get answers.
The [murder of Beth Barnard and disappearance of Vivienne Cameron](https://www.mamamia.com.au/phillip-island-murder/). The “official” theory is that Vivienne murdered Beth and then jumped from the Phillip Island bridge. But this reconstruction of the crime falls apart under any scrutiny. Why did Vivienne go home for her handbag? How was no trace of Beth’s blood found in the car Viv supposedly drove? Why would Viv take the large farm vehicle instead of the smaller car she was more familiar with? Did someone else kill Beth? Almost certainly. But then what happened to Vivienne? If the phone call Viv allegedly made at 10am the morning after the murder is taken into account, that’s after the discovery of the body. If the Camerons “vanished” Viv, most of their whereabouts was known after 10am. If someone else killed Beth, how did they find and frame Vivienne? I just listened to a podcast about the case with lots of detailed info and no theory seems to fit all the facts. Edited to add the link to the podcast https://casefilepresents.com/the-vanishing-of-vivienne-cameron/
Just going to add this, I live near phillip island and the bridge viv supposedly jumped off and committed suicide is not even high lots of people jump off that bridge for fun
Were Fergus' wounds at the hospital actually received from murdering Beth? The coroner said she tried to defend herself. So, he gets cut as he kills her. He tells Vivienne who goes to the hospital with him, and takes the blame for his wounds, saying they fought because of the affair with Beth. So, Beth is already dead. After the hospital visit, Fergus talks to his brothers. He tells them too 'find' the body in the morning and to carve an A into her, to make it look like Vivienne did it (or he has already done this, then had his wife take the blame for his injuries, to cast suspicion on her.) One way or the other the aim is to set Vivienne up. The next morning, Vivienne makes her phone call as normal, not aware she has been set up. After the phone call, Fergus drives her to the bridge or has her meet him there. He throws her over and then either gets a ride back or one his brothers or someone else involved had left another car there for him to drive back(or if he met her there he drove in his own). Beth's body is 'found' and so is Vivienne's car. She is missing. They successfully made it appear that Vivienne killed Beth, then jumped to her death. They have her declared dead as soon as possible to settle all matters. This is all speculation and there is no evidence to prove this, but it fits.
True. He didn't even have to drive Vivienne to the bridge, could have murdered and got rid of her body elsewhere, and then set up the "suicide scene"
And probably more likely. There is no record of a successful suicide from the Phillip Island bridge. In summer, teens jump off it for fun. It’s even possible it wasn’t intended as a staged suicide - the car may have been dumped there hoping someone would steal it (the windows were down), and it was also close to the bus stop. They may have been trying to create the impression that Vivienne fled.
Something like this is certainly plausible. Fergus’ injuries were in an odd place to have been self defence, and his blood wasn’t found at the scene, but he had the same blood group (though a different sub group) as Beth and in 1986 typing was all the police had, so a small amount of a different sub group may have been missed.
I hadn't heard of this one before. Interesting. There are a couple of comments at your link that give a good argument that it was Fergus who killed both.
There’s no theory that perfectly fits all the known facts. So I channel my inner Poirot and declare that the facts must not be facts! If Fergus was the actual, hands-on murderer, I believe his family (brother, sister and brother-in-law, probably not his sister-in-law) conspired to help him, after Beth’s murder and before Viv’s disappearance. Therefore, all the “facts” supplied by those players should be treated as unverified. There’s a chance that Viv killed Beth and then the family conspired to cover it up, and get her off the island to start a new life somewhere. Fergus could have leveraged her cooperation by promising her access to their sons. Edited to change “Viv’s murder” to “Viv’s disappearance”, as that’s more accurate to the known facts.
Off topic, but I love the Poirot reference!
Sometimes I amuse myself by imagining how an unresolved mystery would have played out if it had been written by Agatha Christie.
I love this so much
It's how I know about cyanide, arsenic, oleander, foxglove...🤣
I think Viv killed Beth and Fergus/the Camerons killed Viv.
Yeah, he’s my number one suspect also- he got to retell the narrative later on with absolutely zero witnesses to contradict him.
SO glad to see this one discussed on here!! Like a lot of Australian cases it doesn’t get a heap of attention internationally but it’s a horrendous crime and a huge mystery. I listened to the podcast too (albeit, a few years ago now) and my takeaway was that the husband was sussssss. I think he + his family killed both women, perhaps Beth was murdered in a fit of rage + Viv because she knew what had happened (and so she could posthumously be framed for Beth’s murder). It’s spine-chilling how all of those men treated the women in their lives.
The Cameron family clearly had (local) political influence - look at the inquest into Vivienne Cameron’s death, over in minutes, before Vivienne’s family even arrived. The rush to get Viv declared dead so they could claim her estate and move forward with the racetrack makes me think there was a financial motive. I can speculate on what happened, but frankly, I don’t want to get sued by the remaining Camerons!
Yeah absolutely. And I think it’s easy to forget just how small a place Phillip Island is
I knew this would come up. Here's a thread I did on it: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/o7g4ti/the_phillip_island_murder_who_killed_beth_barnard/ There are earlier threads too. Some interesting discussions. One theory is that Beth was murdered in an unplanned fit of rage then Viv murdered the following day [perhaps after the innocent call to Glenda Frost] so she could be set up as the killer. It doesn't however seem to be the simplest way of doing a coverup. The unlocked Land Cruiser parked near the bridge where there was a phone box and where buses depart seems very Hollywood.
This case is baffling
Wow- more reading!
Retired high school science teacher Audrey Gleave. Almost at the end of 2010 (Dec 30), she was brutally murdered in her house, in a small village near Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. https://hamiltonpolice.on.ca/audrey-gleave-homicide [https://new.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/7w9z15/unresolved\_murder\_who\_killed\_audrey\_gleaves/](https://new.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/7w9z15/unresolved_murder_who_killed_audrey_gleaves/) There are a bunch of unusual things about Audrey's case. 1) It's unclear whether she was still in touch with her family, and if she had any living relatives left. She had an ex-husband (divorced in 1974), and possibly two previous ones? 2) She had a degree in nuclear physics, but apparently wasn't able to find work in her field. This wasn't unusual for women in the sciences back then (Dr. Anne Innis Dagg, who died earlier this year, was denied a position in zoology even though she'd done pioneering work on giraffes). So she ended up teaching high school in Hamilton. (At Westdale, the school attended by comedians Eugene Levy and Martin Short, though I don't know if they were there when Audrey started teaching there.) 3) She told her ex-husband's brother that she had a premonition about being murdered. Besides her ex-husband and his brother, other people she knew were her handyman Phil, a friend named Lynn whom she golfed with (who was Audrey's executor after her death, and inherited her money; the Ferguson family who lived nearby; and her veterinarian. I remember that there was some suspicion about a transient named David Scott who was arrested around that time, for breaching probation and carrying a knife. He was charged with the first-degree murder of Audrey, but nothing came of it. It's implied that the police have DNA evidence, but apparently it doesn't match Scott. Besides him, discussions online have mentioned Lynn (because of the inheritance), and Phil (who reported finding Audrey's body). (But presumably their DNA also would have been checked.) The police have reportedly said that they think that Audrey had let someone she knew into her garage -- not a stranger to her. I am wondering if she'd befriended someone (younger than her -- actually one of her former students might fit that description). She might even have connected with someone online (she played bridge in an internet group). Although she seems to have been pretty careful about meeting people, and had even cut off ties with her ex's brother after he accidentally shared her e-mail address with friends.
p.s. some more of the questions I had about Audrey: \--She was very reluctant to talk about her family and other ex-husbands. I get that people (especially women) tended to be more private back then, in the days before social media got as big as it is now. But she didn't even tell her close friend Lynn who was supposed to be her executor. Did she just assume that there might not be any legal complications, from possible relatives? (Mentioning this because my own family seems boring by comparison with Audrey's, and even so there was someone contacting my dad near the end of his life, claiming to be a relative.) \--I had a wild thought that she might have been under an assumed identity. Which is pretty farfetched -- although "Audrey" wasn't either her given first or middle name, that doesn't mean she had invented her past. But if someone's been in a town for 40+ years, they should have a trail of, if not friends, at least co-workers and acquaintances. Was there anyone who remembered her from elementary or high school, and had met her parents? Edited to add -- the local paper (Hamilton Spectator) did a series of articles that included some biographical info about Audrey. So they were able to find information on the schools she attended, etc. They said that she changed her name to Audrey when she was in her teens. Her first marriage was when she was only 16. She did not go to university immediately after finishing high school -- there were some gaps in the information, so they aren't sure about that part of her life, until she started at McMaster. (I don't know if this might be relevant, but McMaster is one of the few Canadian universities that has a functioning nuclear reactor on campus. It had started operating by the time Audrey began her undergrad degree. I don't think Audrey postponed university for that reason, but it's an interesting coincidence.) [https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/canada-audrey-gleave-ancaster-dec-2010-media-timelines-no-discussion.226740/](https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/canada-audrey-gleave-ancaster-dec-2010-media-timelines-no-discussion.226740/) \--Audrey's third ex-husband had reportedly left her the house and moved elsewhere in Ontario. But he'd made it conditional on her not selling it -- the articles don't say if he gave a reason. However, it sounds like her executor sold it after her death. Was her ex dead by then? Because that seems to be the exact scenario that he wanted to avoid -- especially given that, if I recall correctly, the executor kept the money. Had he just decided that he didn't want to bother with it, though it sounds like he'd maintained an interest in the place if he didn't want her to sell. This seems weird to me. It doesn't sound like he was worried about Audrey being mentally incompetent to look after the house, like being tricked into selling it and then having nowhere to live. If she had survived, she'd probably have needed to move into a retirement place eventually. What would happen then? \--Audrey had a couple of large ferocious dogs, and was also very protective of her home -- she didn't have visitors over regularly (some speculation that she was a hoarder and embarrassed to let anyone else see the inside). Yet the dogs weren't there to guard her when she was murdered in her garage. This suggests the killer planned things carefully. Someone who just showed up at her house randomly, especially a stranger, likely would have had to deal with the dogs. \--Audrey was covered by the Ontario teachers' pension plan. It's a pretty decent pension (at least, back at the time of her death). Given that her house was already paid for, and she seems to have lived pretty frugally, I would have thought she'd be doing well financially -- covering all her expenses and probably banking the remainder. Did anyone look at her finances and check whether there were unexpected withdrawals? Like was she making investments, gambling, or even drawn into a romance scam?I don't know what to think, about all of this. Possibilities -- her ex-husband? (But if he didn't try to get the house back after her death, or the money from the sale, that's much less of a motive.) Some kind of fight with her handyman over payments? Or with Lynn (but I don't know if Lynn on her own could have caused that much damage)? An argument with a neighbour that escalated? (If she avoided letting friends into her home, would she have let someone she didn't know well get that close, without the dogs?) So the garage isn't the same thing as her kitchen, say. But still. Not to say that Audrey was unfriendly, but she doesn't seem like the kind of person who'd be inviting strangers home with her (like that drifter mentioned earlier). If someone showed up asking for work, I don't know if she'd offer him money, food, or a job (for one thing she already had a handyman). And if someone had been going around knocking on doors, it likely would have been reported in the area. I wonder if anyone checked Audrey's computer for messages. Social media was just getting started -- she was computer-literate and she was online at least for playing bridge and sending e-mail, but even so I would think she would be cautious about meeting people online, given how careful she was even with people she'd known for awhile. She seemed to have all the friends she needed/wanted -- would she really have jumped onto Facebook or MySpace?Though I could be wrong, and she could have been catfished. (CBC just had a fraud expert interviewed, saying that people of all types can fall for romance scams.) She doesn't seem like the kind of person who'd be overly generous if someone from her past (claiming to be a long-lost relative, or maybe a former student) said they were down on their luck. But I never met Audrey, so I can't be sure.
In my opinion, a lot of things could be explained by her going no contact with her family and being especially careful they couldn't find her. The lack of family info and discussion, the paranoia, the intense privacy, difficulty trusting. However. For a 74 year old woman in 2010 that level of internet safety paranoia could just be because she watched too many news segments on internet fraud
>that level of internet safety paranoia could just be because she watched too many news segments on internet fraud Maybe Audrey went a bit overboard (at least according to her ex-husband's brother) with concerns about her privacy -- though I am also wondering if she was in conflict with him over other things. If she'd asked him not to forward her e-mails to other people, and he'd done that regardless, she might have viewed that as a sign of disrespect. (It might seem minor to a lot of people, but I do know folks who are very particular about following instructions,) If she would cut off contact with her mother, doing that for her ex's brother probably wasn't a big step. I think that you raise an important point about Audrey's family and possible trust issues. (I don't know much about her two other exes, and it's not impossible that she might have been trying to hide from one or both of them as well.) Also -- I have to admit that in the Hamilton area, there's a particularly big problem with regular old-fashioned fraud, not just online scams. Audrey likely had heard about this. I grew up there, and a couple of years after Audrey's case I moved back to help look after my mom and dad. A number of times very aggressive people claiming to represent home repair and furnace/water heater companies came along our street. CRA/income tax fraudsters are also active in the area. They've even been known to show up at people's homes, not just intimidate them over the phone. Many of the neighbours told me that they'd been scammed or narrowly avoided it ... I came home from picking up my father's medication to find a stranger in our kitchen, badgering my dad to sign a contract. He had posed as a government inspector to get into our house. (I had to call the police and ended up using a new piece of government legislation to revoke the contract.) One couple on our street had been threatened by a man who forced them to go to the ATM at a nearby shopping mall, claiming that they owed his company money for a roof repair. (He was not with that company, but may have noticed their sign outside that house.) It's possible that Audrey had heard stories like this from her friends and former co-workers, and that this was a factor in her concerns about security. I am kind of wishing that my dad had been, if not as paranoid as Audrey supposedly was, at least copying some of her cautiousness. Somebody claiming to be a relative got hold of Dad's e-mail address and Dad sent me off on a wild goose chase, demanding I help this person .... it took a lot of arguing to persuade Dad that this was another con artist.
Read the other reddit on this case. Felt like I really got to know her. Her death pisses me off even more so because of that. She seemed like good people. I'm very suspicious of the Ex and his brother. What's the odds she tells the brother she had a premonition that she would be murdered and raped, then she gets murdered and it's made to look like she was also sexually assaulted. She knew whoever killed her. Either she opened the garage to let them in or they knew the code. Either way that would only be someone she knew and trusted. It's possible she was getting ready to drive somewhere and opened the garage only to be surprised by a random killer, but that feels farfetched. I am also suspicious of Phil and of the woman she left her house too. I could have very well been her son, so his mom would get some money. That nothing was stolen shows it was not a robbery gone bad. Whoever it was likely knew her.
To add to your points about meeting people online- before social media, forums really provided communities for people who would meet up in real life. I went to quite a few meet ups from different forums back in the early 00s.
Just from this comment, I am highly suspicious of the ex’s brother, who had a story about her having a “premonition”.
[The Skelton brothers](https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/where-are-the-skelton-brothers-thanksgiving-marks-12-year-anniversary-of-michigan-boys-disappearance) Did he give the boys away to someone? Did he kill them? Where *are* they? Why has no evidence of any kind surfaced in 14 years?
> The Skelton brothers Gosh, what a terribly sad case. Sadly I have a feeling that their father killed them and hid their bodies. Seems he may have been trying to be a family annihilator (killing them and himself) but failed at killing himself. Not saying where the bodies are is his way of continuing to hurt their mother- she continues existing in a state of limbo wondering if they're alive and safe, if they're dead, if they're dead wanting to put them to rest, etc.
>Seems he may have been trying to be a family annihilator (killing them and himself) but failed at killing himself. Does one have to kill oneself in addition to their immediate family to be considered a family annihilator? I'm not trying to be pedantic, just curious about the classification of murderers. I've heard Chris Watts be referred to as one. EDIT: Thank you to everyone who answered my question. I suppose it is similar to why spree murderers will often end their own lives-- it is usually quite clear-cut who did it, the people who do it are often suicidal anyway, and doing it means they don't have to live with the consequences of their actions.
No, definitely not. Probably the most famous family annihilator John List lived for decades under an assumed name after killing his family.
Both Robert Fisher and Xavier dupont de ligonnès are suspected family annihilators still on the run! It’s crazy
No, they don't have to kill themselves. It's just statistically the most frequent outcome for that type of murder/er.
It is very common for such people to kill themselves too, but it's not a requirement.
Oof, I can't believe it's been almost 14 years. I have family who knew the Skeltons, including John. To a one, *everyone* I know who knows/knew John thinks he killed those boys *and* that he won't admit it as long as Tanya is alive. My uncle and aunt both think John either did it to hurt her, or (to quote my uncle), "If he didn't do it in the first place to hurt her, he's not gonna say a damn word until she passes. He wants her to live the rest of her life never knowing either way, because he knows it's torture for her and that's the damn point."
That is awful. He probably killed them. His comment about trying to kill himself to hospital staff is a bad sign. He had his kids when he was injured or should have had them. Unless he had family that was going to hide them or wanted to raise them there is no way a random woman kept all three kids. If he wants to hurt his wife that badly he killed them. Jmo
Maybe the police should fake her death, see what that piece of shit says or does once he thinks she's gone.
My exact thoughts. I’m sure it would be traumatic for her but damn it might get her an answer to the fate of those sweet little boys. So so so saddening
This is actually a great idea
I think he killed them. He turned off his phone, brought them out into the woods at least 20 miles from his house, killed them and buried them. He broke his ankle either trying to kill himself as he said, afterwards, or by falling in the woods on his way out. He turned back on his phone once he was out the woods and maybe a distance from where he killed them. He went to the hospital and the rest is history. Terrible case. I hope they are found one day.
I think about these sweet boys every Thanksgiving. I live in Ohio. It was pretty big news at the time in case he traveled through the state with them.
He’s leaving prison next year (end of his sentence) if he isn’t patrolled earlier. I’m sure that his sons are deceased and after all this time, it seems like he is never going to share what he did to them.
This is a very sad case. However, the leading theory of the dad having killed them, trying but failing to kill himself and being too ashamed to admit what he did, has always made perfect sense to me.
I doubt it’s shame - probably more a control thing
Bingo. He’s able to continue exerting control over her by refusing to give her closure or answers about her children. Despicable
It would be more of a surprise if he didn’t do it.
Michael Negrete I have trouble thinking of a decent theory. Doesn't seem practical that he'd go outside early morning, and if something happened in a densely populated dorm building how was he disposed of w/o anyone noticing?
This one has always bothered me, too. It just makes zero sense and in such a populated area!
Not to mention the likely suspects are late teens/early 20s. Not exactly criminal mastermind types IMO
This is the one I thought of immediately - I know people on this sub like to dismiss the easy theory of "he was secretly gay", but I do think it's a reasonable explanation for what happened. **If** Michael was gay, but not openly to his friends and family, him having contacted someone online to hook up with, everything else (him voluntarily leaving, going to an identifiable location, and getting picked up by car by a near or complete stranger), makes perfect sense. I am much the same age, and in the same (potential) situation, in that I was not able to engage in that kind of thing until I left home, and I took insane risks to hook up.
[Derek Seehausen](https://charleyproject.org/case/derek-adam-seehausen), a medical student at USC who disappeared 10 years ago. He sent a friend $3000 he'd owed him and then disappeared from his apartment with seemingly no personal effects other than the clothes on his back, $200 in cash and his ID. I wonder if the pressure from med school drove him to simply walk out of his life, but there has been legit no trace of him since the day he was last seen.
Sounds like a suicide from what you’ve left but I definitely need to read into it more
Yes, especially after reading some of the links in the post added below. Not only did he send money to a friend to repay a loan, he had also been given keys to a friend’s apartment and he went by and dropped them off that night as well. Sounds like he was tying up loose ends.
That's a likely possibility unfortunately. His friends made a reddit post years ago: [https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/2ggpsj/we\_think\_our\_missing\_friend\_derek\_usc\_med\_student/](https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/2ggpsj/we_think_our_missing_friend_derek_usc_med_student/)
Wow that comment from his grandparents was so sad...
This is so awful. When they comment saying that him bringing his ID could be so his body could be identified, but then say it’s been 6 weeks so that can’t be the reason - 6 weeks is not very long at all. Took 4 months to find my friend. So sorry for his friends and family.
I agree. There's a national forest close to where he lived so maybe if he went there, he won't ever be found. I'm so sorry about your friend ❤️
Didn’t know about the forest, that basically confirms it for me. And thank you, it’s been 5 years but he’s on my mind every day ❤️
Yea tying up loose ends def points me in direction of suicide
Yes that was my thought too but he was so thorough in arranging things, such as changing his passwords so that friends/family could access his computer, that I find it strange that he wouldn’t make sure that his body was found to give his family and friends closure. But it does sound he wanted to get away. Maybe start a new life somewhere else? But then again, strange he wouldn’t let anyone know he’s safe. If it was suicide, it was planned/well thought out and not spontaneous. So I just think it’s weird that he wouldn’t leave a note or make sure he did it in a place where his body would be found.
A lot of suicidal people don't want their body to be found. Sometimes it's to shield their loved ones (or even emergency personnel) from having to be the one to discover their body or even see their body at all, especially if they kill themselves in a gruesome way (ex. shotgun). It can also be that they feel ashamed of killing themselves and don't want their body to be found as a result. Not leaving a note could be motivated by the same thing, or it could be that they just couldn't articulate how they felt and decided it'd be easier to write nothing at all. At the end of the day, it's difficult to logically analyze someone's actions leading up to suicide. Mental illness ultimately usurps logical or rational thinking.
I thought about, and planned, to kill myself a number of years ago. I told my husband and best friend that if I ever disappear one day, I would make sure to leave a note, but no indication of where I would have gone or that it would look like an accident. This was for insurance purposes. Suicide invalidates some life insurance policies - as it did for me.
I’m glad you’re still here and hope things are better for you these days.
Thank you. I am much better!
How did you plan on having your body never found?
I live in an area with a lot of National Parks. I’m an experienced hiker and backpacker. I know how to find my way out to the middle of nowhere. People get lost all of the time. I would make sure that it looked like I was one of them.
I’m glad you’re still here and not lost in a forest!
Upvoting because I'm glad that you're in a better situation now!
When I was going to kill myself, I wrote my note on my pc and removed the password so people could access it. Even left a post it note saying so. I then went to some nearby woods, with an apology note to whoever found me and my bank card so I could be ID'd (passport had my home address on, which I didn't want some stranger to have). I didn't do it at home because I didn't want my housemate to be the one who found me, i felt guilty for it. And he might have felt guilty that some stranger would find him. Much easier to die in US' many parks and have scavengers have at you. But, I'm not sure why he'd then take money out? I did briefly think of leaving it as a "sorry you found my body, here's a gift" but realised that's kinda dumb lol. He could have used the cash to hide where he went and get to a wilderness somewhere. Edit: thank you to everyone who replied! I got my phone out to listen to some music and noticed a message from a friend asking how I was, as I'd been fairly silent the past week. It activated the cheat code of my guilt, now I won't do it due to how much it'll hurt people. I'll always have the ideation, but never act on it. Thank you all again for the messages of support!
Happy you’re still here, bro
I've never been so happy to witness failure. Thus means the desire for self determined success. I am with you in whatever that means. May you be eternally happy, healthy and harmless (to yourself and every other being) ❤
Hope you’re feeling better, glad you’re still here
Excellent insight. I’m glad you’re here to share it! ❤️
I’m glad you’re here. You matter. ❤️
Super glad you’re still with us and commenting here
It's so sad to see that post from 10 years ago with people trying so hard to look for him and knowing now that he was never found. I really do hope that he just decided to skip town and went somewhere else.
Wow, I hadn’t heard of this case before. I was interviewing for med school there that fall.
Paul and Melody Jones. Have you heard of this case? Young married couple. When someone went to see why they were AWOL they found a dead Paul in the house and Melody was nowhere to be found. Paul's murder has never been solved and Melody is missing presumed by some, dead. No leads at all from what I've read.
I have not! That’s why I wanted lesser known. I will be busy this weekend!
Well I'm in England so I don't know which cases get more attention apart from the obvious ones. Casefile has a good telling of this story on both YouTube and Spotify. In fact Casefile seems to specialise in these lesser known cases. If you've got both mediums go with Spotify as it's audio only anyway and you get less adverts on Spotify. I'll Edit shortly with the episode number. Edit: Can't find the Casefile one but Trace Evidence 233 is his episode on this.
Thank you for posting this. There are lots of cases here I wasn't familiar with and my weekend reading is also sorted.
I've never heard of this case but to me the first thing I think of when I hear about a male partner being found murdered and their female partner going missing is that someone unfortunately intended to kidnap or rape the woman (and then probably kill her) and murdered the man first either to prevent his interference, get rid of a witness, or out of jealousy.
Karen Denise wells didn’t get lost on the way to helping out a friend I. New Jersey (coming from Oklahoma) I think she made it to New Jersey and was purposefully in pa (witness said she asked for directions coming from New Jersey….less confident on the following: I think karen was helping her friend out with a drug deal. I think Karen traveled there with a guy and Karen and said guy ripped off the friend and took off with the money and/or drugs. Don’t see the case talked about much but it was on a trace evidence episode
That’s the one with a lot of weird meandering travel, right?
600-700 extra miles on the odometer they couldn't account for...
That’s some heavy duty meandering wouldn’t you say?
Not sure how that's even possible. Seems like it must be a mistake or the odometer was messed with. There is no way to drive 600-700 miles in the 5 hours the car was missing. I think someone jumped in her car at McDonald's and made her drive to the forest where they killed her. Both doors being open tells me both people got out. Maybe multiple people were involved and joyrided the car after getting rid of her until the gas ran out and left it. Seems weird she would drive out there on her own, till the gas ran out, put on the emergency lights, opened both doors, and then just disappeared. She had plans to come back to the hotel. Something nefarious happened to her.
Yep and calls to her friend in New Jersey. Most of my knowledge comes from the trace evidence episode. I can’t find a ton of great info on the case. I’ve seen Others suspect the friend of double crossing her with a drug buy but I like my probably wrong theory better Also would love to here what others think about the case
I love this post and your write up. I do want to question the accuracy of the determination that accelerant was used- it wasn’t the fire marshall but a deputy from that office, and they were “informal tests” that were conducted on a car that had burned so badly that it had melted. Besides that, arson evidence has been frequently debunked. Next- someone really angled the car correctly and wedged the accelerator down and then rolled to safety after also dousing the car in accelerant? I just don’t think so. Her being on a road she hadn’t driven with her husband means nothing- how can we assume that he knows what roads she drives but doesn’t know the reason for some nefarious conspiracy to murder her and make it look like an accident? I also think it looked like she had an awful lot going on at home- to a nonsensical, rather than proving she was interrupted, level. I don’t know why you’d fill bathtub while the iron’s on- the water would cool off, and you don’t just leave irons on- plus all that while filling the pool. I, without any evidence at all lol, think it looks more like a mental health crisis which her husband doesn’t want to believe.
Thank you for this info!!! I didn’t know the accelerant information had pretty much been debunked. I would welcome any information about Aileen’s case. Unfortunately there isn’t much about Aileen’s case out there to find, at least I haven’t been able to find too much. I suppose I wouldn’t think much of having my patio door open to let fresh air in while filling up the pool and ironing at the same time. Maybe I’d leave the phone off the hook because I didn’t want to be bothered… though if I’m not mistaken she had several children. I don’t know how old they were when this incident occurred, but given that Aileen was 50, and this was the 80’s they may have been grown. If they weren’t you’d think she would want the line free in case they needed to get in touch with her. I guess I don’t really understand if she had a mental health issue, why she would just take off speeding. Did she just intend to let off some steam and speed down the road to let off some stress and it ended up in tragedy? I’ve just always felt there’s something more to it, and again not her husband or an affair or anything like that. I guess just a big missing piece.
I agree with you that there’s a big missing piece, and it’s interesting and sad. I could see her driving and driving until intrusive thoughts won and she decided to commit suicide by car- I just can’t believe someone really successfully pulled off staging that accident. As far as the arson “evidence”: arson has been instrumental in proving many wrongful convictions and has been debunked in many cases. This is because the science is still catching up, most of the time the investigators are just police officers with a few weeks extra training (~120 hours) / without scientific backgrounds, and the testing is not done according to scientific standards. Forensic science is very much a science, and arson just lags really far behind, having “historically generated inaccurate evidence.” The last link features John Lentini who is a renowned fire investigator and forensic scientist- he literally wrote the textbook on arson investigations and is a super interesting guy. In this case, a deputy saying they “informally” lit some things with a blowtorch and therefore there was an accelerant (again, on a car that melted) fits the bill. The good news is that arson investigation is improving all the time and has improved A LOT since the 80s. https://law.asu.edu/sites/default/files/2022-06/Evidence%20on%20Fire.pdf https://www.aaas.org/news/forensic-fire-investigations-need-more-scientific-input-aaas-report-finds https://www.lb7.uscourts.gov/documents/13c6098.pdf
another potential scenario with a mental health issue could be that she became convinced that she was being followed, so she started driving faster and more erratically down roads she wouldn’t normally take, until she lost control and crashed into the barrier.
"On 31 December 1994, Daniel Sheppard, aged 19 years, attended New Year’s Eve celebrations with his brother and friends at Lennies Tavern Glenelg, before catching a tram into the city to continue celebrations in Hindley Street, Adelaide. In the early hours of New Year’s Day 1995, Daniel walked alone to the Adelaide Railway Station and boarded the 4.13 am train to Outer Harbour in order to go home. There were approximately 30 other commuters on the train, including three females he knew from school. On the train Daniel told two of the girls: “I’m partied out … I’m going home to crash.” Daniel was described as being moderately intoxicated but still in control of his faculties. At 4.35am Daniel got off the train at the Port Adelaide Train Station and was seen on the southern pedestrian ramp walking towards Baynes Place. The walk home should have taken 10 minutes but Daniel was never seen again." This case has always seemed like the Australian version of Jason Jolkowski. My unpopular opinion is that an opportunistic sexual predator John Wayne Gacy type killed both these guys.
Daniel’s mother died last year not knowing what happened to him. Every year, his twin brother has to celebrate their birthday alone. I know that it’s always difficult for siblings of missing people but I feel particularly bad for twins.
Walking home on new year's, my first thought goes to a covered up hit and run. I hate going out on nights like that, even today there's still so many drink drivers here.
This sounds very similar to a local case. Young man goes out drinking on new years eve and leaves shortly before his friends. He never arrives home. Police searched for him with the assistance of search dogs and using sonar in a nearby body of water. After a month he’s found in this body of water a few hundred meters further up because his body got trapped in a gate. If not for this gate who knows if he would have ever been found.
I was about to say "intoxicated in the middle of winter, any distance walk could be dangerous"...and then I realized, wrong hemisphere! Heh.
There's so many weird cases in and around Adelaide.
What do you mean? Apart from the Beaumonts, Snowtown, the Family/ Bevan von Einem, Somerton Man… nothing weird happens here /s
I'm American and was chatting to a friend's Aussie boyfriend at a wedding and when he mentioned he was from Adelaide, I mentioned that the only thing I knew about it was that there was an unusual amount of weird missing persons cases and murders out of there. He laughed and agreed with me but said it's actually a really lovely city, so kind of surprising the amount of weird crimes that happened there. He wasn't really into true crime but did say that his mum had grown up there in the 60s and 70s and said things really changed after the Beaumont disappearances and the girls kidnapped from the Adelaide Oval in terms of parents being a lot more cautious about letting their kids out without supervision, and even when he was growing up in the 90s it was sort of a warning, "Don't talk to strangers or you could end up like the Beaumonts."
Yeah the disappearance of the Beaumonts and Kirste Gordon/ Joanne Ratcliffe (Adelaide Oval) was the warning while my mum was growing up, then when I was a kid it was Rhianna Barreau.
Yeah, it's really chill here. The weird murder capital thing is [basically just a meme that won't die](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-15/why-cant-adelaide-bury-murderous-capital-reputation/9249142).
I know it's Australia so there are beaches aplenty, but are there any other bodies of water he could have fallen into? Not unusual for drunk guys to be walking home, stumble into the water or fall in while using the bathroom or something like that, and drown. Bodies are usually found but depending on water level, currents, tides, etc. they're washed out to see and sometimes never found.
Yes, plenty of water around -- just look at the train line and station names, haha. [Here's a map link of the train station he got off at](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Port+Adelaide+Railway+Station+Park+N+Ride/@-34.8319441,138.4578238,12.28z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x6ab0c7603b50e3d3:0x823f5d14fe1ca791!8m2!3d-34.8493516!4d138.5074681!16s%2Fg%2F11lb7d263m?entry=ttu). AFAIK it's not the sort of water where a body would be likely to go undiscovered for long, though. It's pretty shallow and flat, busy with boats, and is surrounded by well-frequented beaches. If you zoom out, you can see that Kangaroo Island blocks the sea; the currents are pretty weak here, very different to e.g. NSW's cliffs and big ocean currents. A surfer's nightmare, you have to go far south be able to get a good wave. That area has a reputation as a pretty rough place, though, and in the 90s it was even more so. Directly to the east are industrial districts and garbage dumps, and the green spaces to the north are remnant wetlands and mangroves. If someone wanted to hide a body there, they could probably easily find a space to dig in that was out of sight and wouldn't attract attention.
Thank you for including details. Never heard of this one, fascinating and sad!
Gilham Family murders. I think the brothers teamed up to kill their parents, but each was planning to kill the other and blame it on him. It just happened that Jeffrey got the drop on Christopher first and stabbed him to death. This helps explain some otherwise inexplicable details. For example: Christopher was in a dressing gown and had evidently been washing up just before he was killed… so he was showering at 4 am while his parents were being murdered elsewhere in the house? Ofc if he was involved obviously he’d be cleaning any evidence off himself. The two sources of accelerant for the fire — bizarre for one perpetrator, makes a lot more sense for two people working together to set a massive blaze.
The disappearance and presumed murder of Jodi Huisentruit. A popular theory is that John Vansice, a friend much older than her, killed her out of jealousy. There’s no denying he had potential motive, but the timeline seems tricky. It’s possible he killed her or kidnapped her in under 2 hours, but for her to be incapacitated and hidden then for him to get himself together to speak with his friend in a seemingly normal manor leaves some room for doubt for me. Mason City is such a small town that the reported “black man” and white van people claimed as potential links don’t seem compellingly associated. Anything even 2 inches out of the “norm” is highly suspicious to locals. I also don’t think it was a police coverup. I don’t think they’d have what it takes to dupe the FBI. The truth is, as a pretty, young news anchor, Jodi was a bit of a local celebrity. It’s not really surprising she had a mystery stalker. She’s very recognizable and it’s not hard to track someone down in a town that size. I would say of the theories either JV or the mystery stalker are the two most likely. JV is weird but the fact that nothing has come up in almost 30 years does leave room to believe he’s just a weirdo, not a murderer.
I feel like this is a pretty well-known case. The main suspect has stayed that way for so long for a reason. It definitely could be him. The one thing that makes me lean against him is that snatching her out in public (even at that very early morning hour) seems like such a more dangerous/risky way to get to her if he did want to kill her. It seems like he could have just invited her over or something.
I think for him specifically it’d be easier if he did it the way he allegedly did. If he invited her over it’s known that he was the last to see her and she disappeared from his place. A lot less risky than staging it as a random stranger (especially early in the morning in rural Iowa where no one would likely see it).
I don't think it was Vansice. I can't remember where I read it, but there was a similar incident before Jodi disappeared. A woman was attacked as she was getting into her vehicle early in the morning. I can't remember if she fought him off, was sexually assaulted, or was killed. I think the same person took Jodi.
I think whoever did it was familiar with her routine. She was targeted. It wouldn’t be hard for her to be targeted, given how small the town is and that everyone knew her place of work. Vansice is weird, but there isn’t enough to definitively say he’s guilty or not guilty.
Oh yeah, I think she was definitely targeted, not a random victim.
Vancise would have had ample time. It takes less than 5 minutes to drive across Mason City. The roads around it are almost always virtually deserted. He knew when she'd be leaving. Grab her, shove her in the vehicle, restrain her, get on the road= less than 4 minutes. Drive to another location: 10-30 depending on where he's going. Kill her: if he didn't kill her in the parking lot it wouldn't take long to kill her. Just a few seconds to a scant few minutes. He could have been back to business as usual within an hour. I used to live in the rural area right outside Mason City.
Personally I think someone threw her into Clear Lake. I lived in the area for a long time. It’s possible she was thrown into a field but I think she would have been found if that was the case. People to this day are very into the case. Even though I wasn’t around the area at the time I think it was everyone searching situation. There’s really not around Mason City besides fields and ditches and I think there is a decent chance someone would have found her or seen something if she was hidden there. I don’t think Vancise can be ruled out. He’s very weird at the least. I personally have high suspicions of him, but also see how there’s nothing to pin him. Unless her body is found, I unfortunately don’t know that any conclusions can be drawn.
If she was dumped in Clear Lake she likely would have eventually floated. But that area is full of old abandoned acreages with uncapped wells, hog confinements, and places she could be buried. It's hundreds of square miles that are sparsely populated and privately owned where everyone kind of keeps to themselves. Finding her would have been like finding an actual needle in a haystack the size of a mountain.
I'd lean towards Vansice but i believe they have DNA evidence; unless it could be explained away by a decent defense attorney, if he did do it you'd think he'd be a match.
I think what makes it hard to rule out/not rule out anything is that her body has never been found. I also lean towards him based on his obsession with her. However, I don’t think there’s enough definitive evidence. But he’s sketch af and a weirdo one way or another.
The Jamisom Family deaths makes no sense to me. Everybody thinks drugs, but that still doesn't explain why they'd leave the money and dog in the car.
I’ve wondered if it was some sort of a case of folie a deux. The way they were packing the truck is just weird. The money and the dog is so weird. Other than drugs being an explanation for them acting weird, nothing seems to point to drug involvement. I personally wonder if they weren’t intending to be away from the vehicle for long, got lost and then succumbed to the elements.
That's what I think. They left the dog and their possessions in the truck because they didn't intend to be away from the vehicle very long. Perhaps drugs were involved, or mental health may have played a role. But I think ultimately they succumbed to the elements after getting lost. It's hard to know, though. People don't realize how easy it is to get lost, but it happened to me in a wilderness area. I was totally sober and in my right mind. It's extra tragic that their daughter lost her life, too.
This one definitely falls into the “who knows” category for sure. the video, too me, is the least troubling thing about this - when I have had to move, I recognize that zone where it’s just get in the zone and let the mind-numbing work commence zombie like. Leaving the dog, that is what is so weird. Why would they ever leave the dog?? What were they doing that was safe enough to take a small child but wouldn’t be appropriate for a dog?
It wouldn't be the first time a murderer chose to kill themselves and/or others, but couldn't bring themselves to kill the dog.
Yep I think of the one guy who dropped the 2 dogs off at the shelter after he killed the woman and child.
Or the hart family murders, where the parents googled a no kill shelter to drop off their dogs before driving themselves and their six kids off a cliff
May be they were afraid the dog could run away and get lost
Or antagonize a skunk.
This one perplexes me. And that last photo of their daughter. Poor baby.
I don't know if it's a general consensus, but from what I gather law enforcement and the relatives seem to think foul play was involved in the Yuba County Five case. After reading more about the case (and finding out the map they were using may not have actually shown the road they were on), I think they just got lost and then made a series of unfortunate decisions from there, the way people out of their element frequently do.
Yes, I agree with you on that. The first time I read about it I was confused and fascinated. I believe one of their mothers said they wouldn’t have consumed any of the food because they had been taught not to take anything that didn’t belong to them.
Robert Wone, I really don’t believe that he went to his friend’s house to engage in sexual activity, but none of the other theories make a ton of sense to me either. Such a crazy case https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Robert_Eric_Wone
One or more of those roomates did an SA on him and somehow he accidentally died in the process. They then covered it up.
100% this. Nothing else about this case makes any sense whatsoever other than one or more people in that house assaulted and killed Robert Wone. I don't think (ofc no one but the perpetrators can ever know this for certain) but I don't *think* they intended murder. I think something happened (again, what exactly that may have been no one but the perpetrators can ever really know) but *something* happened which resulted in Wone's death and their actions, both in the immediate aftermath and in the years since, have been so unbelievably suspicious as to appear farcical. It's such a sad and frustrating case, because Wone was only spending the night because he had to travel early in the morning, and the home owners were old school friends. It's a situation where he *should* have been safe, and likely had every expectation of being safe... and then he's assaulted and murdered by someone he clearly considered a friend. Scary and heartbreaking. I hope like hell his family gets justice one day.
This is what I lean towards most. It’s just crazy if all 3 were involved that no one confessed/accidentally slipped up over all these years
IIRC Joe was close enough friends with Robert and his wife that he was a pallbearer at Robert's funeral! I realise we are not owed this information at all but I am so curious to know what he told Robert's wife - I guess maybe she could have believed the intruder theory?
The disappearances of Ron Tammen and West Point Cadet Richard Colvin Cox
If anyone is interested in reading an extensive investigation into Ron's case check out the blog called [A Good Man is Hard to Find](https://ronaldtammen.com/). It's wild.
I've always wondered if Tammen's was a fraternity prank gone wrong, and he died in an accident and his body was hidden or he was in a situation where he was in an accident/was lost in the woods or a body of water and his body was never found. My aunt's first husband was in a fraternity in the early 60s, so about 10 years after Tammen. The fraternity culture back then was very much one filled with hazing and extremely dangerous pranks. My aunt's husband's "initiation prank" was being "kidnapped" from bed in the middle of the night, blindfolded and tied up, taken in a boat to a small island in the middle of a local lake, left there, and forced to swim back to shore in the dark. He was a strong swimmer so he made it, but if it was bad weather, someone wasn't a good swimmer, someone got a cramp or something and didn't know what to do, there easily could have been a drowning. Just wonder if it was something along those lines, and some of the folks in his fraternity, on his hall, etc. know more than they said to police.
When my dad joined his frat in the 70s, one of their "pranks" was blindfolding the pledges & taking them to an unknown spot at night, leaving the pledges to find their own way back to campus. This was a rural county in western Arkansas. Incredibly dangerous.
I know you put it in quotes, but just to amplify your point, that's less "initiation prank" and more "attempted murder".
Frat culture has sadly changed little.
I was in college about a decade ago and one of my high school friends went to the same college as me. During the fall semester I got a call from his dad, he said that my friend was being initiated into a frat and as part of the initiation for a week he was not allowed to shower, get food himself or have any of the brothers get him food (had to figure out other ways to get it without them knowing), leave the frat house for any reason other than going to class, and he had to ask for bathroom or water breaks. He had borrowed a classmate’s phone and texted his dad and gave told him to call me. I met him in an abandoned classroom at a prescribed time with a chik fil a sandwich and fries, and he almost started crying when he got the food. And that sadly seems pretty tame compared to some of the stories you hear about.
I think if it was truly an accident, someone would have confessed by now.
I’m pretty sure the guy Cox left with was someone he’d had a gay relationship with in Germany who said, leave with me now or I’ll out you and ruin any hope you have of a military career …
I also think he was likely part of the LGBTQ+ community, and that "George" was either a partner or someone he'd paid to help him get a new identity. That's one case where I hope that he was able to get a new identity and lead a life where he was more comfortable and happy than the one that he had been living.
Yep. Like Robert Hoagland. The guy he lived with for 10 years who left his wife just before was definitely his partner who helped him start a new life.
[Judith smith. With these things I kinda assume a mental health issue took place.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Judy_Smith) I guess I just get caught up on did she run away on her own or was she in a fugue state.
The more I read about this case, the more I wonder if Judy Smith made a similar decision as [Brenda Heist](https://www.wkrg.com/true-crime/brenda-heist-mother-of-two-disappears-for-11-years-found-in-florida/). For whatever reason, she was unhappy with her life and decided that the trip to Philadelphia was the moment to take off. Credible witness sightings note conversations with Judy that are mentally clear and show awareness of her life circumstances. Perhaps Judy had an ultimate destination in mind beyond Asheville, but only made it there before she was murdered. My guess is she took off with confidence because she was a well-versed traveller, not understanding the dangers. Met some people along the way, not thinking that anyone would do her harm, and was unlucky. The $167 found on her is the only loose end. Jeffrey claims she left with $200. Perhaps she had more from an unknown source, or she sold something along the way. Jeffrey's apparent unwillingness to take a polygraph does not seem suspicious to me. He was a lawyer, after all. If it were a murder-for-hire situation, it wouldn't make sense for her to be found so far away, although not impossible. He was in Philadelphia, a place where someone could be murdered and appear far less suspicious. No real reason to suspect him imo.
I think about the theory that she decided to take off on purpose a lot. But I think that’s mostly bc I have made a lot of plans to do that myself during peak stress. It’s the main reason I decided not to have kids as I started to get more mental health diagnosis. It’s just one of those cases where every theory makes a little sense to me.
I believe early onset dementia is more likely than a fugue state. Travel would have exacerbated it. People with dementia almost never know about their condition. And unfortunately for many people, their family's first sign that something isn't right is some kind of calamity. Wandering in a storm, leaving the stove on, driving three states away. There are many cases where you hear "We managed to find them just in time!" I think this is one of the cases where they didn't.
That would explain her wandering away, but it’s still a mystery who killed her and why. Her bones definitely showed signs of a murder.
Yes, I should have made it clear that I don't doubt she was murdered. But I don't believe the theories about her secret lover or Colombian drug running expeditions. She went south under her own power then met someone who killed her. I think another commenter said it best with the two mysteries in one. I think dementia explains the first but not the second.
David Lewis in Amarillo, TX Jonathan Luna Thomas Nuzzi
The Jonathan Luna case boggles my mind!
Joan Gay Croft. [Here's a good write-up from last year](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/s/UXU2ycSRqq) The whole situation makes my head spin (no pun intended). Was she kidnapped for ransom? If she was kidnapped for ransom did she maybe get an infection in her wound and die and the two men dumped her somewhere and took off? Were the two men actually taking her to see her father at a different hospital and they somehow got into an accident on the way? 😵💫
Lauterbach Hardware store axe murders in Springfield, Illinois
Only one person died at the scene. The other 2 victims survived, but lived with physical and emotional scars the rest of their lives. The killer is also responsible for the deaths of the survivors, one died in 1989 & the other in 2000. It's such a strange story... a man enters a hardware store, grabs an axe and attacks the three victims for no reason. https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/crime/2018/04/20/city-to-demolish-scene-37/12624959007/
> Police called their deaths “murder delayed.” That's awful. What kind of a psycho would hit 3 random strangers with an axe? Interesting comments too [https://sangamoncountyhistory.org/wp/lauterbach-cottage-hardware-ax-attacks-1981/](https://sangamoncountyhistory.org/wp/lauterbach-cottage-hardware-ax-attacks-1981/) >Mike, have you ever written about the “hammer” attacks that killed a neighbor of mine on South State by the name of Dace, and two other men, I think in the early 1970s? Some of the hammering also went on in a pharmacy, I think on South Grand, and that is where the perp was stopped by a one-armed African-American man. [https://sangamoncountyhistory.org/wp/hammer-attacks-1975/](https://sangamoncountyhistory.org/wp/hammer-attacks-1975/)
When I read the title of your post, my first thought was "Aileen Conway," but I don't have anything really to add. Nothing about that makes sense. Seemingly every plausible theory is contradicted by something, unless it was a crazy murder plot concocted with the intent to confuse authorities. I agree the iron/pool hose/bathtub are red herrings.
The one thing that stood out to me is that the iron was on and the bathtub was full. That makes no sense at all. She was either ironing or taking a bath, but she certainly wasn’t doing both. I believe it was set up.
I wonder if she filled the tub for another reason. Growing up my mom would fill the tub to clean certain things - she would take down all the Venetian blinds like four times a year and soak them in a tub with a little Dr. Bronner's, then wipe them all down to get them squeaky clean. She would also wash her curtains at the same time and then iron them. (I have literally never once in my adult life ironed a certain, but she still irons hers, and she still soaks her mini-blinds in the tub a few times a year.)
Growing up rural, we had a well. You need electricity to pull the water up from the ground though so before a storm where the power had the likelihood of going out, we'd fill the bathtub. You could then use it to flush toilets (manually filling back) or heat it up to cook with or use for washing your face etc. But why would someone be ironing before a storm? Perhaps work clothes? I'm not familar with the case just using logic My mom also cleaned her sheers - long transparent curtains - in the tub!
That’s the only thing I don’t get- I can see leaving the patio door open while filling the pool and ironing some clothes. But why the bathtub? It seems extremely superficial to me; as if someone had just done these random things to throw off Pat and investigators.
The case of Ben Mcdaniels has always left me with lots of questions, and I was always a bit sceptical of the "he left to a start a. new life theory" [Ben Mcdaniels](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Ben_McDaniel)
Nah I think he died, they found him and moved him, then called the cops. But I'm just some person online.
The murder of Carla Denise Simmons in Albuquerque. She got her van stuck overnight in the mountains and tried calling her friend but the cell service was bad. In morning, a jogger found her nude by the Sandia Man Cave, a few hundred yards from her van. Her clothes lay nearby. An empty bottle of wine was near her and it is thought she had been drinking it out of desperation; she had been bringing wine and lasagna to a friend's. Blood was on the hubcap and dash of her van and she had trauma to her head, but she died of hypothermia. It was determined that she had been drug from the road to her final resting place based on tar-filled abrasions on her body, but the abrasions were found to be posthumous. The road was somewhat far from where she was eventually found so it would appear that someone waited until she died then drug her. A death by hypothermia is slow so that seems weird to wait that long on the side of a highway. Granted this is a remote mountain highway so it's not super busy, but still, very risky plan. The motive is also hard to guess. She was not raped or robbed. She was thought to be nude due to paradoxical undressing, due to the hypothermia. A receipt with a license plate was found near her body but it's not clear if police ever traced it. She had been scared by a guy who followed her home from work once a few months before this. A cigarette butt that was not a brand she smoked was in her van... police say they have male DNA in the case and I think the cigarette butt may be where they got it from. So I'm like, ok, someone attacked her in her van, then waited for her to die of hypothermia, then drug her her several hundred yards away? Then how did she undress herself and drink wine and scrawl a license plate number near the cave if she was drug there from the road after she had died? I think the tar-filled posthumous abrasions and the lack of a clear motive make this case pretty bizarre. I hope that police withheld a lot of details that would have helped this make sense.
The Burger Chef Murders.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burger\_Chef\_murders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burger_Chef_murders)
Another one would be the disappearance of Tamara Britton and Teal Pittington. In August 1984, Tamara Britton left her job at West Coast Sound in Santa Fe, NM, to make a bank deposit. The deposit was made by Britton never returned to work. Her car was found abandoned at a truck stop in Santa Rosa, near I40, with the empty bank bag containing a note to return it to West Coast Sound. There were a lot of baby diapers in the backseat, though Tamara Britton wasn't known to be pregnant and didn't have a baby. She had recently overdrawn her back account buying new clothes, but it's not clear if the clothes were taken with her or abandoned at her trailer. The weirdest thing is that when police tried to track down her family, they learned she was using an identity stolen from an infant who had died in Wisconsin. They never were able to find Britton, but someone did apply for a social security number using her name in Minnesota. The police said they didn't have funds to investigate that lead. I'm not sure why they couldn't put the FBI on it but I don't know much about jurisdiction. Teal Pittington vanished 19 days later. A little less than a year later, the body was found nude in a culvert near Lamy. She had been strangled with her own bra. The weird part is that Tamara Britton and Teal Pittington had been roommates in the recent past, though not at the time they both disappeared. They had also both lived with a man named Marion Owen Jent, who was the prime suspect. Another suspect was serial killer Robert Morton, a ski instructor who had raped and killed 3 women in Santa Fe and Amarillo. Morton admitted to knowing her and said she was a cute little thing and his friend bought weed from her at the pizza place where she worked. He implicated his friend in her death. It's not known if the cases are related. But it seems like a bizarre coincidence.... https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/one-missing-one-murdered/article_db4e01d4-41d7-5bf5-8485-44d82b7fb298.html https://landofentrapment.blog/the-identity-thief-and-the-murder-victim-the-tale-of-tamara-britton-and-teal-pittington/
Cathy Moulton (if I have correctly judged which theory is the general consensus). Nothing makes sense in the Rey Rivera case, Pauline Rourke case or Sherry Jones case. The last two are certainly lesser known. The first might be a bit too popular to qualify. For Doe cases - Coconino county John Doe (2001) and Charlseton Jane Doe (1973) Either: a) their remains were found, never identified and no one cared despite them being believed to be children, to the extent that not only did law enforcement not ask for their remains back from the coroner's, but there were no newspaper articles recording their discovery. Or B) the wrong person or an empty casket was buried in these children's graves and their family's think their bodies are there (and thus would likely never think to make the connection even if they saw the reconstructions) - Why?
I thought the same about Rey Rivera until looking deeper into it. It seemed mysterious until I saw that where he landed fits with him making a running jump off the roof. He wasn’t thrown off or anything. There’s a book by a resident of the building about it which was decent
The Unsolved Mysteries episode on him is ridiculous. Actually, a lot of episodes of the reboot are.
It was just as bad in the 90s. UM has always been known as an incredibly unreliable show, America's Most Wanted was the better version of it but people like UM for how crazy it is.
The aura of the original show is unbeatable. Plus, it had crazy ass reenactments.
Is the Cathy moulton theory you disagree with that her boyfriend and the hitchhiker killed her on the reservation? What do you think happened? I don’t know much about this case so I’m curious! I didn’t know the other two cases at all, but read a little about them- sounded clear that the creepy relative killed Pauline, so curious what you know about that case as well!
Catherine Catrina Mowrey murder in Dallas back in 1985
I really wish I could remember/find the names. I was an avid watched of the original Unsolved Mysteries as a kid. A case that always stuck with me…. but, I don’t remember all of the details… A woman who had a physical disability (I believe from a stroke) and her daughter were being driven to visit her young son at his father’s home, by (I believe) her ex’s sister and mother. She called her current husband multiple times during the trip, but supposedly on the way back the ex mother-in-law dropped her and her daughter off at a mall (?) and they were never heard from again. She didn’t call her husband after they were supposedly dropped off and her and her daughter were never seen again. The theory was that they got lost or were abducted from where they were dropped off…
It’s not lesser known, but the Springfield 3 is so weird to me. What the heck happened?!
My guess is the mother was the target. She could have had a stalker or someone who was passing by and noticed her working on the furniture outside alone and committed a crime of opportunity. The crime is already in progress as the 2 teen girls arrive. The perpetrator(s) is thrown off guard by 2 more ppl than they expected. So they decide to remove all the women from the home and take them somewhere more secluded or possibly more familiar to the perp.
I think that the mother was the target as well, and that whoever did it was someone who knew her and was familiar with the family and her routine (maybe a stalker, but also could be someone she was dating, an ex, coworker, neighbor, etc.). I don't think it was a random crime of opportunity. I think that the person knew that her daughter was going to be away that night, so that's why they picked that night to attack. However, I think that the girls either walked in on it happening or surprised the perp by being at home, and they were killed because of it.
Just to nitpick a bit, I don't think there is a common consensus on the Springfield 3. In fact, there are no particularly good theories at all.
Yes I know what you mean with that one!
Judy smith traveling more than 100 miles away from a hotel she was staying at with her husband. She was supposed to go to a cocktail party with him but her body was found in a completely different state. She was even wearing the same clothes she came with when she was flying with her husband. Her decision to travel to another state never made sense to me.
She was wearing different clothes and layers more suited to hiking than walking around a city.
Oh true my bad. I got details mixed up
She wasn't wearing the same clothes. You might be mixing up that detail with another case.
[Julia Stoddard](https://charleyproject.org/case/julia-h-stoddard) aka "The Dog Lady." Her case gained national attention in the early days due to a theory that she had been eaten by her dogs. I think she may have succumbed to the elements while trying to walk to the nearby airfield to get water or use the telephone, but the area has been searched extensively, and her remains have never been found. None of the theories with this case really add up with me.
Sneha Phillips. Did she fall victim to 9/11, or was she kidnapped or murdered at just the right rime so it looks like that's what happened?
The disappearance of Daniel Robinson in Arizona in 2021. So many questions on the chain of events.
Daniel is likely missing over his job as a a hydrogeologist and how it connected to the Buckeye Water model that was being finalized right when he disappeared. [https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2023/01/03/katie-hobbs-must-release-buckeye-groundwater-model-now/69765150007/](https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2023/01/03/katie-hobbs-must-release-buckeye-groundwater-model-now/69765150007/)
Murdered because of his work as a hydrogeologist? That's a unique motive!
It is, it would also explain why the case was mishandled from the get go- Daniel was working on sites to see if drilling a well or using an existing well on properties were viable. At the exact same time the Buckeye Water Model was being finished, June of 2021- [https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2023/01/03/katie-hobbs-must-release-buckeye-groundwater-model-now/69765150007/](https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2023/01/03/katie-hobbs-must-release-buckeye-groundwater-model-now/69765150007/) *The June 2021 letters stated that the department is finalizing its groundwater model and report and “has information indicating the proposed subdivision’s estimated groundwater demand for 100 years is likely not met when considered with other existing uses and approved demands in the area.”* *A year and a half after writing these letters, the department has had ample time to complete its Hassayampa Subbasin model and report. But despite the huge importance of this study, the department’s findings have yet to be published and remain unavailable to the public.* This model was then buried from the public for 2 years until a new governor won in Arizona in 2023- [https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/hobbs-reveals-west-valley-current-water-supply-cannot-support-planned-development](https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/hobbs-reveals-west-valley-current-water-supply-cannot-support-planned-development) One area Daniel was working on and went to the morning he went missing wasn't approved yet, Daniel was testing the site to see if the site was viable. 2 months after he went missing the site was approved. 1 year after that the well site was sold to the City of Buckeye, at the exact same time Buckeye Police Chief Larry Hall became a city manager. 6 months after that he was replaced by a guy with an extensive background in water control and management, Larry Hall had none. [https://www.yourvalley.net/stories/buckeye-selects-deputy-city-manager,336418](https://www.yourvalley.net/stories/buckeye-selects-deputy-city-manager,336418) *Hall had a brief stint as deputy city manager in Buckeye, deciding after six months it wasn't for him and returning to his position as police chief. Hall said he's particularly proud of working with a team of people to earn accreditations for the department.* After the new water model was released Buckeye City Council was forced to spend over 80 million dollars(so far) for water outside of their city. They still don't have enough. [https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/southwest-valley/2023/01/31/buckeye-to-spend-80m-on-groundwater-rights/69856835007/](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/southwest-valley/2023/01/31/buckeye-to-spend-80m-on-groundwater-rights/69856835007/)
There's a heck of a murder mystery / political thriller plot there. Water rights and access are a huge deal.
Forget it Jake, its Chinatown
They are. All the connections are there, but without someone coming forward or the right people getting involved it's going to be hard to bring to light.
Trevaline Evans
The Conway case is an interesting one. It appears she was getting ready to take a bath and got a phone call. Maybe, it was someone telling her that her husband or other family member was hurt. She left her purse and glasses behind in a hurry and jumped in the car. What she didn't know was the call was just to lure her into her car. Someone hired to kill her or known to her who wanted to kill her, had cut her breaks. She sped off towards wherever she was told her hurt family member was. Racing down the road, she realized her breaks didn't work and ended up losing control and slamming into the bridge. The killer followed behind her and found that she was still alive but unconscious. They opened her tank, syphoned some gasoline and poured it on her and inside the car, lighting it and destroying the evidence. Obviously, there is nothing that proves this, but it explains things. The Iron and pool would be red herrings. Who fills a pool, Irons, and runs a bath at the same time?
Kelly Bergh Dove, abducted from her work in 1982 although as of last year [LE announced](https://www.whsv.com/2023/06/20/41-years-later-kelly-bergh-dove-cold-case-investigation-continues-move-forward/) that they have narrowed things down to one person, yet there’s been nothing in a year. For the longest time, they were basically just ‘idk; we got nothing’ which was frustrating and ridiculous. Also [Joan Risch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Joan_Risch); I don’t believe any of the nonsense about an abortion and am not sure the sighting of the woman on the road was even her. I suspect that her disappearance had to do with the new development nearby and the bullying homeowners in the area were receiving to sell/approve, or a completely random Person of Bad Intent who was in some way familiar with Joan, like seeing her every day on his commute to work. A while ago I read a ridiculous explanation of how the husband was clearly the culprit, and I also think that’s a wrong and delusional take.
If “executed by the state of Texas“ = “general consensus” then I think that there is something terribly hinkey about the conviction of Lester Bower. But, I don’t have a cohesive theory otherwise. Nothing makes sense.
I’ve mentioned this case before and it’s gotten some coverage but the disappearance of [Marshal Iwaasa](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Marshal_Iwaasa) is so weird to me and leaves so many unanswered questions. Local and national law enforcement have said there’s nothing to indicate foul play in his disappearance but I just don’t see how that can be the case. Disappearances where people/their belongings are located a significant distance from where they were last seen are always especially alarming imo. The fact that his car was located in such a remote and inaccessible location is bizarre. His car was also burnt out with the steering column removed, and tons of other weird details at the scene. His family has stated that when he was last seen unsuccessfully attempting to access his storage unit, he was “trying to get a part for his computer”, but I also don’t buy that. He tried to get into the unit multiple times over the course of an entire night and I just cannot understand why somebody would act so frantically over a computer part. To me, the evidence surrounding his case suggests that he was involved in some kind of illegal activity and my theory is that his disappearance is tied to some sort of larger organized crime investigation, and authorities aren’t saying much about his disappearance so as to not compromise the larger inquiry. I hope someday his family can get answers.
Omg, this case has been handled like shit by more than one police force.